Fact: the game is designed around the idea of being able to play it co-op. Not my opinion, fact. Tell me why I am wrong. Are you saying the game is not designed with co-op in mind? Are you saying that co-op considerations play no part in the development process? As someone who will not use the co-op features why I am out of line being a bit worried that co-op considerations may affect the single player experience yet still remaining "cautiously optimistic"?
Indeed, the game is designed in order to make co-op gaming possible. To me that does not imply that SP experience will be less per se:
I've always thought it to be strange that when having a party of for instance 4 people there's only one person who's making all the choices, the others just simpy go along (Well, sometimes they utter an objection, but nothing major changes). Rather boring really.
When reading that D:OS will be designed with co-op in mind, I thought: great, finally I will be able (as a single player) to influence other partymembers actions and reactions, finally I will be able to control their interactions! Finally I'll get a party that will act naturally, like in real life: they will have a unique effect (mine to decide) on other partymembers and NPCs, they will disagree amongst themselves - not because those disagreements were predetermined, but because I prefer them to disagree that way.
It's not just me controlling one character, no I'll be controlling two! That gives me a whole lot of more different outcomes in a situation. Apart from focussing on what's best giving a specific situaton, I could focus on people: I might favour one party member in one situation and the other person in a different situation.
And these words of Swen make me think my initial thought was not way off:
Swen Vincke in reply to Jack Dandy
@Jack Dandy: The idea is that the inclusion of the cooperative mode actually increases the quality of your single player experience. How that's going to work exactly I'll reserve for a future post, but rest assured that we're focussed on making single player as cool as we can.