Why Far Cry Primal Won't Support Co-op Gameplay

Ubisoft has made it known that the upcoming first-person, Mesolithic survival game, Far Cry Primal, won't feature multiplayer modes. It seems totally odd given the fact that the game seemed destined for cave bear clans battling each other; but it's not happening because Ubisoft wants to focus on a single-player experience.

PC Gamer picked up the news from Ubisoft community manager Jason Paradise, who took to the Steam forums to explain why the game will be a single-player only experience, writing...

This is actually one of the few times where I'm a little taken aback by the decision. Usually multiplayer is tacked onto games that don't necessarily need it, or there are games where they center a large portion of the progress around the online modes that are only really active and bustling for the first few months of the game's release before they fade out and die off altogether.

A game like Far Cry Primal seemed like it had been steadily building up to announcing some sort of multiplayer component. The thing is, the game has no guns, no modern vehicles, no modern gadgets, and weapons all focused on the stone age era of combat – so it's all things before the iron age, which means you're going to be greatly limited on your arsenal. No swords.

The other thing that seems to be a little baffling with Far Cry Primal is that the game is just a month out from release and I have no idea what you're really doing in the game. There is no main bad guy that they've advertised and they don't seem to have any kind of direction for the game other than taming animals and growing a clan. The motivation of the game is kind of lacking, the impetus to do things is lacking and now we find out that there will be no co-op... what?

Maybe there's some other aspect to the game that they haven't showcased yet, but it's starting to become a bit worrying that they want to charge $60 for what's essentially a really, really stripped down version of Far Cry 4. Fewer weapons, fewer modes, fewer features, and no real direction for the story has me wondering what the appeal is exactly of this particular Far Cry entry? I imagine some people might be pointing to the success of games like The Stomping Land (before it was pulled), or Primal Carnage and recent games like ARK: Survival Evolved as possible inspiration, but even in comparison to those games Far Cry Primal doesn't quite match up in its uniqueness or features.

Now this isn't to say that Far Cry Primal will be bad; it could end up being a very good game.

I think that the major thing that's throwing me for a loop is exactly what is going to compel gamers to lay down $60 for this game? For $35 gamers can tame more than a dozen different dinosaurs and use stone age, modern age, and futuristic weapons in ARK: Survival Evolved on the Xbox One or PC... and it has multiplayer.

We'll see what Ubisoft has up their sleeve to convince gamers why this latest Far Cry will be worth the financial plunge.