One of the games during this year's E3 that attracted my attention was A Way Out, an action game that tells the story of two brothers escaping from prison and staying one step ahead of the law. I love games where the focus is on a strong narrative, but lead developer Josef Fares lost me when he said the game was co-op only, via local or online. There's not even matchmaking for online co-op. This was a bold move, but in my opinion, a bad one.
The fact that the focus on the game is co-op is commendable, but the exclusion of a single player mode is problematic. You need to find someone to play with. For most people who are quite social and have lots of friends, this may not be an issue, but for solitary and introverted people like myself, it does become an issue. For starters, you need to find a friend who has free time to do something with you. Good luck if all your friends are busy with school/family/careers. Then, that friend needs to be close by to visit, or have the same console you do if you want to play online. If the latter is the case, that person will also need to be interested enough in the same game you are to buy it. Lastly, both of you will need to continue to schedule future sessions in order to finish the game. Also, real life can affect either player at the drop of a dime, meaning the game can abruptly be put off when all the unaffected player wants to do is finish the game.
But see, even if I had one or many friends that could fit this perfect scenario, I honestly wouldn't want to play a story driven game with them, because I don't like playing games with other people when I'm trying to enjoy the story. Constant mic chat actually bothers me, because I tend to lose focus on what I'm doing. During a cutscene, I'll miss a key line of dialogue, or during gameplay, I might miss something in the background because I have to not only pay attention to what I'm doing but also what my partner is doing as well. I'd rather just not be FORCED to play a game co-op, so I won't play A Way Out at all.
It makes no sense for a game like A Way Out to be co-op only when there have been countless other action games that had co-op also have single player options with AI controlled characters. Army of Two and Resident Evil 5 are just a couple of examples that come to mind. Granted, the trade off is having to rely on an AI controlled character, and they're usually pretty brain dead, especially in Resident Evil 5, but single player games such as The Last of Us and Uncharted have proven that if you put forth the effort into programming decent AI, you can have partners that can carry their weight. What Josef's decision to omit single player proves to me is that he's unwillingly to do the work required to make a decent AI controlled character, so he's championing the decision as "bringing back the couch co-op game!" And I call bullshit on that. Fuck you, Josef. You ain't fooling me.
Then there's an issue that I encountered shortly before I decided to make this blog, which is actually the reason why I'm making this blog. Online bullies will assume that you have no friends if you have a problem with this game being co-op only. I was already told that by a few today. That just isn't the case. I don't have the right type of friends and the right moments to enjoy this game with, and even then, I would prefer to not play this kind of game with someone else. I am really irritated with that kind of behavior from people online, but it's the Internet and I should just learn to accept it already.
I hope this game fails. I hope it underperforms, because I want Josef Fares to realize that you don't cater to one group of gamers while completely omitting another group of gamers. To me, this is like making a car that can only be driven when someone is sitting in the passenger seat. No game on Earth that I can think of actually benefits from being co-op only, because again, there are games that have decent AI controlled partners. I just wish those that criticize players like myself would have a bit of foresight and realize single player games are impacted by this choice and will cause the game to lose sales. If Josef wants to patch in a single player option, then I'll bite, but until then, A Way Out is No Way for me.
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