Brendan Greene, otherwise known as PlayerUnknown, recently spoke about the potential for a single-player and cooperative campaign for Battlegrounds, and said that it’s something his team is considering. He’d have to get the rather vague lore nailed down first, though, and discussed the possibility of setting it at some point during the 1970s.
Battlegrounds has been an amazingly successful game, despite having only entered early access in March. It solidified that recently with a popular charity drive, and it was that success and the future of the game that Game Informer discussed with Greene when they had a phone call during a recent episode of the show (thanks, Destructoid).
Among discussions of planned bug fixes, server improvements and additions of two new maps in the future, one feature that Greene mentioned which has more than a few tongues wagging is the possibility of a single-player or cooperative campaign mode.
“Maybe someday I’ll get to do a single-player campaign, but I’m not holding my breath for that,” he said. As much as it’s very much something that’s not planned out and certainly not happening anytime soon, he said that theoretically it could be set in the ’70s, with players working together cooperatively against a military occupation of the island.
Of course, adding any sort of story to the game means that Greene and his fellow designers need to figure out where and when the game is set and just why people are congregating on this island to kill each other.
As it stands, that lore is almost nonexistent, which is where the developer, Bluehole, will need to start before it crafts any sort of campaign mode. As it stands, there is a “brutalist,” architecture with an Eastern European slant to it, which could hint at the game’s location. However, Greene said during the interview that that’s not necessarily the case, and that he just liked the style of it when crafting the game’s visuals.
The original design document for the game says that it’s set on a “forgotten island in the Black Sea,” suggesting it could have links with a number of neighboring nations. However, the two new maps that Greene said his team is currently working on will shake up that dynamic, adding a desert map based in Peru, and another island set in Northern Europe.
As exciting as all of this is though, it’s worth taking on board that Greene said during the interview that a campaign of any sort isn’t even on the roadmap yet. It’s something he’d like to do, but it’s so far ahead that it’s not worth getting too excited over. Yet.
Other news that came to light during the interview is that 2D and 3D replays are coming in the future and that the console versions of the game are still planned, but only after early access is finished.