Devil’s Third has been seldom seen or during the game’s 4-year development, THQ went bankrupt while developing the game which was set for release on last-gen consoles, which prompted a buyout of the IP by Valhalla Game Studios. While brief gameplay trailers were shown at E3 months earlier, lead designer Tomonobu Itagaki has now revealed that the game is set to have extensive multi-player support.
Itagaki recently posted a huge post on Facebook to post an update for fans detailing how far the game was to complete, but the post included a particular emphasis on the games multi-player functionality. Here’s a translated excerpt from the post;
‘Devil’s Third demolishes the standard of past console games in online multiplayer.
Almost all specifications I wanted to do were implemented. I got an up-close look at the great forerunners Call of Duty, Battlefield, Gears of War, and my beloved Halo. On that basis, we added completely new level of playability that only we can create.
Anyone can enjoy this game; from casual gamers to hard-core gamers. Let me put it this way. You guys can throw a fun party, or can kill each other in realistic war. You can play your heart out.’
While a shooter having extensive multi-player support wouldn’t normally be news as its fairly expected of the genre, this one stands out as it’s a Wii U exclusive. The last notable shooter the Wii U received was Call of Duty: Ghosts, but the franchise has subsequently stopped publishing on the console as of Advanced Warfare.
This means that there’s a huge open space on the Wii U for an online shooter, with Devil’s Third looking to fill that gap. While the gaming community might be skeptical of how well it’ll succeed considering Nintendo’s aversion to online gaming, in the last few months the company has shown that it is willing to modernize as we’ve seen through the implementation of DLC and much stronger online support for games like Mario Kart 8. However, ‘Devil’s Third demolishes the standard of past console games in online multiplayer’ is an absurd claim, as to how accurate that is, we’ll have to wait and see.