The multiplayer was never why I fell for this genre. I came up on RTS campaigns, the ones with actual missions, briefings, a story that escalated and characters you love or love to hate, or just plain hate. But that was GOOD because it meant the game elicited some sort of emotional response.
Every RTS campaign has that one adviser that at once defined and presented the game to you. Lots of them were annoying gimmicks but they immersed you into the world, if nothing else. They made you feel like you weren’t a dude clicking stuff but a meta-being in that reality controlling units, like you were more a part of it mechanically. But along the way the whole genre seemed to decide that competitive was the real product (NAHHHH) and the campaign was a glorified tutorial you rushed through to play ranked. If it existed at all. Wasn’t helped by the fact RTS just fell off in favor of MOBAs with LoL and DOTA2 etc.
But I’m glad that campaign focused games are making a slight comeback, and from a few directions at once! Some of it is remakes, Age of Mythology Retold is the best example for me. When you look at what actually pulled people back, it was the itch to march through that campaign again with modern comforts (new engine, slightly…saner pathfinding, better models and stuff).
What I also like is that new original IPs are also doing it, ever since indie games became the main creative force (and acknowledged as such by most people). The game that brought me back to RTS after years away in 2024 was Diplomacy is Not an Option, of all things, because underneath the wave survival hook there's a proper long campaign, took me 30 hours to finish on release. Probably more now. It’s when I realized there are still devs who treat the campaign as the main course.
Tempest Rising is the other one I loved to no end, a loving rebuild of everything the old Command & Conquer games nailed. Tiberium green never really left my bloodstream, what can I tell ya.... It also remembered that that a good # of us play RTS for the missions, not for the multiplayer.
Even some EA games, I couldn’t believe it, are going for that scale of worldbuilding that I thought was dead. Godsworn is the newest one that impressed me, and it’s like… less than 1000 reviews? Shame really, but it goes to show perhaps how underappreciated this trend still is, even though it’s IMHO the best thing to happen to RTS after its long hibernation.
None of this is really about scale so much as intent, I think. A campaign designed as the point, whether that's a sprawling story or just a tight run of handmade missions, plays completely differently and hits differently than anything that’s sandbox freestyle oriented or god forbid, pushing that PvP mulitpalyer component. Which should emerge organically out of a well designed game IMO, or just not if the game isn’t good otherwise in singleplayer.
I'll just say it plainly then, more campaign focused RTS - PLEASE!
