The team working on WWE 2K22 is looking to successful wrestling games of the past for inspiration on how to make the next chapter in its franchise a memorable one.
Fan backlash to WWE 2K20 was so forceful that for the first time this century, there will not be a regular WWE video game released this year. 2K will instead take an extra year to get the series back on track. In the meantime, WWE 2K Battlegrounds will fill the gap left by what would have been WWE 2K21’s release this fall.
As for WWE 2K22, which will be the next installment in the mainstream series, work on the game has already begun. That was revealed by Visual Concepts’ new executive director Patrick Gilmore. Gilmore, who previously worked on the Medal of Honor series, has been brought in to help get WWE 2K back on track.
Gilmore gave some promising information about 2K22 during an AMA on Reddit over the weekend. The most exciting revelation of all was where he and the rest of the team working on the wrestling game are drawing inspiration from for the title. “We are looking at much-loved previous games like No Mercy or Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain,” Gilmore explained when asked about 2K22’s core gameplay.
2K22 will not pull ideas directly from those classic wrestling games but will mix what made them great with elements from other “top franchise installments, and more modern wrestling and fighting games” Gilmore added. 2K and Visual Concepts also doesn’t want the game to be nothing more than pressing the right buttons. The entire system is getting an overhaul in an attempt to allow players to anticipate what their opponents are going to do next.
Gilmore also admitted there has been talk of cross-platform play for the first time in WWE gaming history, but could not confirm whether that will be a feature in 2K22. After 2K20, the series was in desperate need of a revamp, and it was always going to take more than twelve months to do that.
Source: Reddit
