Eidos Montreal on Multiplayer: Does it Belong in Tomb Raider?
Company initially questioned the extra mode.
E3 2012
Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider reboot will come with a multiplayer mode. Which is quite surprising, really. Even for Eidos Montreal, who reportedly questioned the idea before being convinced that the studio could pull it off.
In an interview with Videogamer, Eidos Montreal producer Joe Khoury revealed that he "wasn't surprised" by the initial backlash from fans following the multiplayer announcement. And he apparently hinted that there may have been some tension behind the scenes. "When we took on multiplayer, we were like, 'Does it even belong in Tomb Raider?"
But, Crystal Dynamics turned Khoury around to like the idea, based on the efforts made in single-player. "When you look at the theme of Tomb Raider, there's definitely potential for multiplayer there, but with this specific Tomb Raider, the idea of survival, the idea of co-operating, the idea of sticking together to get rescued essentially, there's a couple of solid foundations for something that we can do to allow the player to have a unique experience."
He added that multiplayer isn't a mode that should exist in every game franchise, but "the circumstances on this Tomb Raider title made it so that it made sense for us to do it."
"Putting in something like [multiplayer] will obviously get some reactions, some excitement and some people saying maybe it doesn't belong this way," Khoury concluded. "But the only way to really give it a shot is to have people play the single-player campaign - as they would have had multiplayer not existed - and then really see what we've done with multiplayer to make it different."
So we should be optimistic about multiplayer in a game because the single-player mode is quite interesting? That's certainly one way of looking at it.
In an interview with Videogamer, Eidos Montreal producer Joe Khoury revealed that he "wasn't surprised" by the initial backlash from fans following the multiplayer announcement. And he apparently hinted that there may have been some tension behind the scenes. "When we took on multiplayer, we were like, 'Does it even belong in Tomb Raider?"
But, Crystal Dynamics turned Khoury around to like the idea, based on the efforts made in single-player. "When you look at the theme of Tomb Raider, there's definitely potential for multiplayer there, but with this specific Tomb Raider, the idea of survival, the idea of co-operating, the idea of sticking together to get rescued essentially, there's a couple of solid foundations for something that we can do to allow the player to have a unique experience."
He added that multiplayer isn't a mode that should exist in every game franchise, but "the circumstances on this Tomb Raider title made it so that it made sense for us to do it."
"Putting in something like [multiplayer] will obviously get some reactions, some excitement and some people saying maybe it doesn't belong this way," Khoury concluded. "But the only way to really give it a shot is to have people play the single-player campaign - as they would have had multiplayer not existed - and then really see what we've done with multiplayer to make it different."
So we should be optimistic about multiplayer in a game because the single-player mode is quite interesting? That's certainly one way of looking at it.
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