Crytek making Homefront sequel
Though Homefront's creator, Kaos Studios, has shut down, the franchise lives on. THQ announced today that Crysis developer Crytek will be making the sequel, headed to PC and consoles in 2014.
The closure of Homefront developer Kaos Studios earlier this year left the future of the near-future shooter franchise in question, but THQ announced today that a sequel's on the way. Surprisingly, it'll be made by Crysis creator Crytek.
THQ coyly avoids saying much about the game, but in 2010 it spoke of plans for a Homefront: London at some point in the series. Whatever this sequel turns out to be, it's headed to PC and consoles in 2014.
"Selecting Crytek to take Homefront forward underscores our strategy of working with the industry's best talent," THQ core games EVP Danny Bilson said in the announcement. "With Crytek's industry leading technology and legendary experience in the FPS genre, we're supremely confident that the next Homefront will deliver that AAA-quality experience that players demand."
Crytek is also unsurprisingly enthusiastic, with CEO Cevat Yerli saying, "We see Homefront as a really strong universe that has a lot of potential and that has been expertly created and marketed by THQ."
"We believe that bringing our level of quality, creativity and production values to the next Homefront title creates an opportunity for both THQ and Crytek to deliver a truly blockbuster game. It's really important to us that THQ has the faith in giving us a lot of creative freedom over one of its most important properties to allow us to bring the Homefront world to life in a new and innovative way."
Evidently, THQ's new strategy of focusing on "high-quality owned IP with broad appeal" includes using external studios to work on its own properties. That recent "strategic realignment" saw THQ close another two of its internal studios lay off around 200 people as it moved away from making licensed and kids' games.
The original Homefront launched to a lukewarm critical reception in March, but, according to THQ estimates, sold one million units in its first ten days. Today's announcement described Homefront as "a commercial success for THQ."
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Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Crytek making Homefront sequel.
Though Homefront's creator, Kaos Studios, has shut down, the franchise lives on. THQ announced today that Crysis developer Crytek will be making the sequel, headed to PC and consoles in 2014.-
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If I were a developer with Kaos, I would be totally pissed right now.
I'm sure that there's legal action, the IP all being in THQ's name and the like, but the fact they were shut down in line apparently due to the poor reception of the game ( http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35190/THQ_Shutters_UK_Studio_Homefront_Developer_Kaos.php ) -- only to have THQ revive it soon afterwards... that's really slimy.
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Well they should have put more effort into it, frankly. The multiplayer was OK, but hackers kinda put a damper on how much fun it was to play. The single player campaign had so much potential to tell an interesting story, but it's like they didn't actually get around to fleshing out the characters beyond a 1 page character sheet (including a picture). You never really spend time with any of the characters, or even really get to find out anything interesting about them. It's nearly impossible to care about them at all, especially since they're useless as AI teammates.
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One of the Relic devs made mention on a Space Marine forum about "unannounced Relic RTS" in his Steam list:
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=26528897#item_26528897 -
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Actually, it's Crytek UK who is getting tasked for Homefront. Crytek UK used to be Free Radical, the developers of the Timesplitters series of games. Timesplitters was a series of console-only first-person shooters, the last of which was released in 2005... that's about all I know about Timesplitters.
I'm still really nervous, and would hope that Crytek Frankfurt will keep some of their worst aspects off of Homefront, but I'd be setting myself up for disappointment.
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what baffles me is how decent Frontlines: Fuel of War was and how shitty Homefront turned out to be. Homefront was nearly a step backwards for them.
As much as I respect Frank Delise and Co. for Desert Combat, the prototyping of BF2 and the making of Frontlines, they really dropped the ball with Homefront. -
I could see this turning out well, but Crytek is really going to have to work on reducing the amount of derp factor they inject into their games. The things characters would say in Crysis 2 were downright embarrassing at times. The story was just plain bad. That game was only saved by the fact that it looked so good and was pretty fun to play.
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