Although not surprising, the official unveiling of Just Cause 3 last week was a welcome one. Avalanche Studios had developed one of the largest and most over-the-top awesome open-world games ever with Just Cause 2 and five years later, the long-awaited followup will be arriving on PS4, Xbox One and PC in 2015.

Just Cause 2 was one of our favorite games of 2010 and it had such an impact on the community that players modded the game to include a fully functional multiplayer system, one that's available via Steam. The JC2-MP mod was praised by devs (and approved for release) and given the mention of asynchronous multiplayer alongside a projected 2015 release date on Avalanche CCO and co-founder Christofer Sundberg's LinkedIn profile a few years ago, it seemed a given that the next-gen Just Cause installment would come with some form of multiplayer. Not so.

Game Informer has the exclusive on all things Just Cause 3 since helping announce it last week and just like the game won't include microtransactions (win!) it won't include multiplayer (not a win...). Sundberg's response to the choice to focus on single player may not be what fans of the mod want to hear:

"The mod is absolutely fantastic. We owe those guys a lot. They have actually supported the game and helped it stay alive so many years after it was released. We don’t expect the fans to make the multiplayer for Just Cause 3, but at some point you have to make a choice on where your focus is. Our strength is the sandbox experience, and we want to deliver a great Just Cause 3 experience."

What we can expect is a massive open world with an overwhelming amount of content, something the devs say will help prevent players from feeling the need to trade it in. There's also the possibility that Just Cause 3 could get a multiplayer update down the road. They might have even already laid the groundwork for such a thing. Earlier this year, Square Enix announced a cloud gaming service called Shinra Technologies which just so happens to have a few keep people working out of Avalanche Studios.

Shinra's senior vice president of business Jacob Navok dropped some very interesting hints about what they may be working on with Avalanche:

"What we see in the near future are cloud games that are developed from the ground up as well as games that are in an existing pipeline that we will enhance. For example, taking a game that doesn’t have multiplayer right now and easily giving it multiplayer is what we imagine for enhancements."

Navok continued, revealing that they're "working on a possible future collaboration with Avalanche Studios" and that adding multiplayer to Just Cause 3 "does make a lot of sense." On the modding front, creators of JC2-MP said they'll "see what happens" when it comes to whether or not they'd spend the time developing a mod for the three-quel but we feel this time around, it should come from the developers. Hopefully they learn a lot from the JC2-MP mod and what Rockstar Games attempted with Grand Theft Auto Online.

Should Just Cause 3 feature open-world multiplayer mayhem? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Source: Game Informer