Ubisoft, as it continues to face challenges after a series of commercial failures, is doubling down on its biggest franchise: Far Cry.
Reports suggest that two games are in the works: one single-player, the other multiplayer. This comes after Dan Hay, the former executive director of Far Cry, left Ubisoft to work at Blizzard Entertainment. The single-player project is now known as Project Blackbird, while the multiplayer Far Cry is referred to as Project Maverick, with Ubisoft Montreal heavily involved in both.
Although not much is known, the report suggests that the multiplayer Project Maverick will be set in the Alaskan wilderness and is set to be an extraction-based looter-shooter. This aligns with a previous poll that Ubisoft conducted, which PC Gamer noticed, asking fans which location they’d like the next Far Cry to be based, one of the options being Alaska.
Far Cry games have traditionally been single-player focused with the option to play co-op. This situation is reminiscent of The Last of Us Part 2, which was initially going to have a multiplayer component that was later spun out into its project, with more details to come this year. As multiplayer games become increasingly standalone, it will be interesting to see how many more games that typically combine single and multiplayer components begin to separate them.
A game that shipped with single and multiplayer modes was Dead Space 2. The remake of its predecessor just released, and in the original Dead Space’s remake, players think they’ve found an Easter egg to indicate the sequel will be getting the same treatment. After completing the game, players can replay the story with New Game Plus. Once they load back into the game, players will notice new text logs that weren’t originally there. In the new logs, players can read an email-like exchange between two characters talking about looking for new employment opportunities due to the “decommissioning” that’s supposed to happen within the next year. As the conversation continues, the two talk about potentially working at the Sprawl on Titan, a significant location in the Dead Space franchise.
With EA struggling to put out single player games that don’t involve the Star Wars franchise, if Dead Space Remake sells well, it’s likely that a remake of the equally popular sequel would be on the table. Just expect it to only ship with single-player, with a Dead Space multiplayer standalone game releasing down the line.
