The Best Thing to Happen - Metro: Last Light Removes Multiplayer

Yesterday developer 4A Games made the best move they possibly could have made for the future and quality of the Metro series. They decided to remove the multiplayer component of Metro: Last Light in order to focus on the single player game.

Throughout the development of Metro: Last light a small, dedicated team had been working on a number of multiplayer prototypes. After E3, we decided to fold this multiplayer team back into the main group and focus 100% of the studio’s resources on the single player campaign. As a result, Metro: Last Light will not ship with a multiplayer component. Your response to our E3 demo made it very clear that although there was a lot of interest and intrigue around Metro’s multiplayer, the single player campaign is what the fanbase cares about the most.

Bravo, and thunderous applause to both 4A Games and THQ eschewing the contemporary OCD to shoehorn a multiplayer component in every game to ever be pressed onto disk. For rejecting a nearly knee-jerk reaction to develop mutliplayer where it is not needed, and often times reduces the atmosphere to that of a standard soulless shooter. Congratulations to them for standing up for the slowly declining single-player age, and the perseverance to keep their eye on the proverbial ball.  

Of course, there are times when a seemingly unneeded multiplayer component can be implemented well and surprise us all. But these moments are few, and far in-between, and we can't always rely on a hope which has proved itself unreliable. No, in this instance 4A and THQ have done the right thing, and offers me even greater excitement for what the new Metro will bring. So again I say 'bravo' and offer tribute.

(In a previous version I stated that Metro: Last Light was being published by 2K Games. The publisher is THQ)