Much of modern gaming is based around the principle of getting online, talking to your friends and interacting with them… and then occasionally making them look like chumps. It’s become a staple of gaming that if you’re going to make a game work, you might as well throw in a multiplayer portion as well, just to make sure the title has an extended shelf life and more of a social aspect.

That's why more and more long-standing single-player games and series have started to show up with multiplayer options, such as Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. However, this year Assassins won’t be the only ones playing together online: the Gods will, too, in God of War 4.

This is according to the UK’s Official PlayStation Magazine, who write, "Kratos is on his way back to consoles, and his next adventure is set to feature multiplayer." This seems to support previous rumors, spread by magazine PSM3, that said God of War 4 could arrive in September 2012.

Originally, the God of War series was supposed to end at the conclusion of God of War 3, yet Santa Monica Studio swore it wouldn’t be the end for the battle-hungry Spartan. Since then, we’ve seen Kratos in the latest installment of Mortal Kombat and his own PSP adventure, God of War: Ghost of Sparta. Yet aside from blatant tourney violence online, Kratos has been a solo-act all his career.

So if the rumors do end up being true, and Kratos does end up having a multiplayer element in his fourth console installment — which could be cooperative, versus, or both — how will that affect the overall tone of the series?

Given the nature of the design that Santa Monica Studios have put into the series so far, it seems like multiplayer may hurt God of War's overall gameplay, if not implemented in an extremely creative and inventive fashion. The impressive (and addictive) multiplayer in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood might stand as a good example.

As more information shows up, we will be the first to let you know the latest God of War 4 news.

What do you think of adding multiplayer to the God of War formula? Would it be better to keep the series single player only?

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Source: CVG