Heavenly Sword multiplayer possible

Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades has told Eurogamer that a multiplayer mode for Heavenly Sword could pop up sooner than we thought.

It won't feature at launch, he clarified, but his team has its sights firmly set on it.

"There's no multiplayer mode in Heavenly Sword as our focus was always to create an intense personal experience; it would have been too damn complex to deal with that as well," Antoniades told Eurogamer. "We did, however, develop the combat system using multiplayer test levels, as it's a great way of soak testing and balancing it."

"So who knows? Maybe we will decide to go down that route sometime soon. And when we do, it won't just be slapped-on to please marketing tick-boxes. You can be assured that we have our sights on multiplayer."

Heavenly Sword is around 90 per cent complete at the moment, reckons Antoniades, with mainly testing and bug finding to do before its September launch. And he's confident that Ninja Theory has used the extended development time to really wrestle an impressive performance from Sony's new console.

"We are pushing it bloody hard - that's for sure!" he promised. "But this is our first-generation engine for PS3, so there's certainly a lot more in the machine to give. And, more importantly, there's more in us to give it."

We'll be bringing you our full interview with Tameem Antoniades tomorrow morning.