14 DAY TRIAL // In spite of the general console publisher orientation toward always-online and multiplayer-driven titles, Battlefield Hardline developer Visceral Games believes that there's still a lot of steam left in the idea of creating single-player campaigns for video games.
"Well, I can speak from my perspective as a gamer. I love single player, and I find that single player and multiplayer provide different outlets for me. When I want to feel heroic, when I want to get immersed, when I want to 'get away', playing a single player game allows me to be the hero. It allows me to do cool stuff that I don't get to do normally," Visceral Games General Manager Steve Papoutsis tells OXM.
Publishers are showing trends of looking more toward titles such as Titanfall, Fable Legends, The Division, and Destiny, where players share an online universe for which they themselves create the context and content, but the developer of Battlefield Hardline feels that a single-player campaign has the potential to offer a completely different kind of experience.
"I think people also enjoy single player as it pertains to Battlefield because it's an opportunity to explore a little bit of the game. Specifically, certain weapons, how they work and the awesome visuals. So I think single player is important to me, as a gamer. I like to know that there is a single player in the games that I play."
"But I think ultimately for gamers too, it's part of the value proposition, right? That they want to know that for the money that they're spending they're getting a 'full' game - so I think it's important, and speaking just from my own personal perspective, those are the reasons that I think it's important," Papoutsis reveals.
The campaign in the upcoming first-person shooter is said to allow players much more freedom when it comes to combat tactics than any of the former installments in the Battlefield series does. The gameplay demos showcased so far show solid evidence that Visceral is working toward creating a more open-ended campaign, based on a wider range of choice than the previous titles, which were pretty linear when it came to how to go about certain situations.
"When I turn to multiplayer, I generally do that in more of a social way, with all my friends that are online. Like, maybe I'll jump into some matches with them and maybe spend an hour or two playing and talking with them and so that satisfies another part of my gaming interests," Papoutsis explains.
He concludes by saying that the most important thing is to offer gamers the opportunity to be themselves and discover a world and an experience that the creators carefully put together, in addition to taking part in multiplayer activities.
Battlefield Hardline is coming out in early 2015, headed for PC and last- and current-generation consoles.
