Just after Brad and I finished speculating about what Starbreeze might be working on next during this week's Bombcast, the Swedish developer has started talking a bit more about its mysterious Project RedLime.
As pointed out by Internet sleuth superannuation, Starbreeze is a publicly traded company in Sweden, which means the developer must issue financial statements on a regular basis. Given Starbreeze's main source of income is games, its latest statement does talk a fair bit about Starbreeze's gaming plans.
What little we know about Project RedLime involves continued rumors about a Syndicate reboot. The Syndicate rumors stem from the original project announcement, which called for Electronic Arts and Starbreeze to collaborate on something "to reinvent one of EA's most acclaimed classic franchises."
EA and Starbreeze have apparently decided to expand "scope" of Project RedLime. I've used Google to translate Starbreeze's Swedish-laden financial documents, by the way, so excuse the garbled English.
"The reason for our joint decision is above all that we wish to implement a number of creative enhancements, we want simply [to] do an even better game," said CEO Mikael Nermark. "It also requires an expansion of the project because of the high staff turnover during the autumn and winter, as we have previously reported. It has taken time and resources to recruit key employees, while it takes time for new developers to come into the project. We have now secured the [manpower for] RedLime."
It's still unclear when we'll hear about Project RedLime, but hey, E3 is just a few weeks away...
In addition to Project Redlime, Starbreeze has been self-funding a downloadable game.
"The gaming industry is [in the] midst of an interesting and tumultuous phase of great changes [for] both publishers [and] game developers, as well as in the distribution chain, with more focus on including downloadable games," said Nermark. "We must, of course, adapt to changing market conditions. We will continue to do AAA games and we should more often work with new business models for small downloadable games."
Makes sense. Unfortunately, nowhere in the document does it say Starbreeze has decided to hijack development of The Darkness 2. Having just finished playing The Darkness, that really bums me out.
I hadn't heard this. How is Paradox involved with Starbreeze?
However I'm still into this game. Open world games are my favorite, and since Stalker I've been more interested in the first person variety. While playing The Darkness, I remember all I could think of was how awesome it would be if the game had an open world. Let's hope that's what the "expanded scope" means.
Apparently it's a third-person shooter..
They're Swedebros.
Source - penultimate paragraph.
There's more to a game than the combat mechanics... if they can capture the world and style I'll be happy. Similar to Fallout: New Vegas.