Where you hoping to see some form of online multiplayer in Cities Skylines 2? We have some unfortunate news to share here.
On Twitter, Colossal Order has been sharing some details about what they have planned next for the building simulation. As reported by PC Gamer, this is their response when they were asked about multiplayer:
“Cities Skylines II is our most ambitious project to date, expanding on every mechanic in the franchise. Adding multiplayer support takes an incredible amount of time and resources that would take away from building the core player experience we are striving to create.”
So, the way Colossal Order has explained it, they didn’t close the window to it completely. But, because multiplayer would be such a huge expansion to the game, and they already have so many things planned with it, the studio has ruled out even promising it. They just wouldn’t be able to make the core game itself good if they had to worry about the multiplayer as well.
If you are wondering why this is even a question at all, well, in fact, Cities Skylines players really want to have co-op multiplayer in the game. So much so that there is a popular multiplayer mod for the first Cities Skylines.
The mod is no longer working on the latest version of the game, but it had still been working as recently as last January.
Colossal Order also shared more details about their ongoing development of Cities Skylines 2. They had clarified that they are still using Unity as the game engine, dispelling speculation that they had shifted to Unreal Engine 5.
Cities Skylines 2 also won’t be compatible with mods made for the first Cities Skylines. As Colossal Order had explained, this new game is being built fresh from the ground up. That kind of compatibility won’t be there for Colossal Order’s own work from the first game so they can’t make it work for mods either. Colossal Order does promise to have more to share about mods for Cities Skylines 2 in the future.
All of these details seem to be Colossal Order citing the growing pains. But this is likely necessary work for the studio to properly move the game franchise forward.
The original Cities Skylines 2 dates to as far back as 2015. While Paradox Interactive had a remaster made for the game for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, that remaster definitely isn’t using the full capabilities of those consoles.
The shift to a completely new Cities Skylines will mean it will take full advantage of the power of the new consoles, and it will be a definitive step up between the two games on PC as well. It should mean Cities Skylines 2 will have better graphics, faster performance, faster or nonexistent loading, but it could be more than that.
Colossal Order promises the number of tiles players can control in the game will jump from 25 tiles in a 5×5 grid, to a staggering 150 tiles. They hadn’t elaborated if the tiles will still be the same size, but one tile represents 240 x 240 cells, or 3.6864 km2. It really is possible that the studio is talking about increasing that playable surface area considerably, to six times as much space.
Add to that the newer consoles’ impressive capabilities, such as Quick Resume, and you’re talking about a very impressive city building game. So it’s understandable that it’s a lot of work for Colossal Order to take on right now. But if the game does release this year as promised, maybe they really can manage a game plan for multiplayer down the line, possibly as a spinoff game or as the sequel to this one.
Cities Skylines 2 will be released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows via Steam on 2023.
