Bethesda Explains Why There's No Multiplayer in Wolfenstein

Bethesda VP of public relations Pete Hines recently spoke with Eurogamer to talk about the company's recent E3 portfolio which only consisted of The Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstein: New Order and The Evil Within. What I totally missed last month and didn't even think about while capping Nazis in the upcoming shooter was that it will not have a multiplayer component. That's surprising given that the game, at least in my opinion, screams deathmatch and capture the flag.

"We talked to Machine Games about the game they wanted to make and multiplayer wasn't in their thought-process," he said during the interview. "We're not going to force it down their throats and say, 'well, the last games did, so you have to do it.'"

"These guys do cool stuff," he added. "If you look at The Chronicles of Riddick or you look at The Darkness, those games have a creative element to them that is similar to the things they're doing in Wolfenstein and that's what attracted us to them, and that's what attracted us to their vision of Wolfenstein. And we said "okay, run with that." We're not going to say, "Oh, we'll find somebody else to do the multiplayer." Wolfenstein: New Order is as you describe it. End of discussion."

He also shot down rumors that Bethesda showed Fallout 4 to certain members of the press. If the company did, I didn’t have any part of it. The appointment consisted of (1) watching The Evil Within gameplay, (2) watching Wolfenstein gameplay, (3) playing The Elder Scrolls Online for 30 minutes and (4) playing a level of Wolfenstein. Any possible showings were likely conducted elsewhere in the convention center's little dedicated "offices".

Nevertheless, Pete Hines is denying any Fallout 4 showings during E3. "[We're] not talking about what those guys are up to," he said. "They just announced they're moving on to their next project and it is going to be a long while until they are ready to talk. And that's true of all of our studios, whether that's Arkane or whomever. When these guys move off a project- these are not short cycles. You should not expect within a day, week, month, or even a year, that they're just ready to roll out the next thing."

Hines also talked about Prey 2, the second game Bethesda has rejected within the last six months, following id Software's Doom 4. Like the latter demonic shooter, the Prey sequel just didn't live up to Bethesda's standards. The Doom 4 team started over whereas the Prey 2 project was handed over to Arkane Studios who thus rebooted the project and dumped everything Human Head Studios did into the trash.

"We were clearly not happy with where Prey 2 was in terms of where it was in its development," he said. "We're obviously very disappointed that we spent a lot of time and effort and a considerable amount of money supporting the development of that project to make it a great game. But it was also clear in development that it was not hitting the high bar that we'd expected and agreed to. That's ultimately where it rests. We're not going to continue with a project just because we said we were going to make it or people are interested in it."

"If and when we have an update beyond that, we'll let folks know," Hines added. "We understand that folks are disappointed. They're certainly not more disappointed than we are in how all this has played out given our commitment to the game up to that point, but we're not going to blindly stumble ahead if the game isn't living up to its promise."