Master of Orion pleeeeeeaaaase!!!
We have GalCiv. We have no need of Master of Orion.
Troy
Totally forgot that Take Two owned Firaxis. That certainly opens up lots of possibilities. In that case, I’m guessing X-Com.
To each their own. I still think Master of Orion is the best space 4X game.
Man, I so want to believe itll be Xcom… but the words “Best loved PC franchise” means a different thing these days… so I’m expecting something like a sequel to No One Lives Forever or Max Payne…
X-Com tops almost every “best games ever” chart, so I think it can safely be described as a well loved franchise… hmmm, is it a well loved franchise though? I mean, beyond the first one who loves the games?
But that’s thinking too hard :)
Judging by the requirements for the job description, whatever game it is will probably be using the Unreal 3 engine.
Also, they’re looking for a programmer with “understanding of and desire to create first-person shooter gameplay”
And artists who have experience in “Mech and Tech concepting ability – weapons, vehicles, technology etc.”
Three was really good as well and II was ok.
Mechwarrior 5?
MOO2 was brilliance; better than GalCiv IMO. One of my favorite games of all time.
But MOO3 was a disaster and gives me no incentive to revisit the franchise when Stardock is doing the 4x space thing better than fine. SE IV is on the way, so it looks like the subgenre will be doing OK.
So a beloved franchise that gets revisited should be one there has been no obvious successor to. And I think MOO’s torch has been passed.
Troy
Take 2 doesn’t have to own it, do they?
IIRC, Irrational isn’t owned by anyone. Take 2 is publishing Bioshock, but Irrational is independant. The other game could be for another publisher.
As for the game - wouldn’t a new Ultima Underworld be great?
Hate to tell you this but
http://ir.take2games.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=183561
New York, NY – January 9, 2006 – Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO) today announced the acquisition of Irrational Games, the award-winning development studio behind such titles as System Shock 2 and Freedom Force. Irrational Games joins the team of development studios under Take-Two’s 2K Games publishing label.
That’s what I thought. That rules out the Mechwarrior or Ultima ideas.
The Baldur’s Gate stuff can also be tossed as Atari still owns the D&D stuff (as evidenced by their recent decision to stop NWN module development).
Based on speculation on another board, it seems like Max Payne is a strong possibility as the IP is owned by Take 2 and fits the Unreal 3 engine. Other than that it depends on what Microprose IP that Firaxis may have gotten when they split from Atari or what may have been purchased from Atari recently.
Ofcourse the easy answer would be Freedom Force 3. Which would be fine by me
You beat me to the punch. Sort of.
I was going to jump on the X-Com bandwagon by pointing out that it would make complete sense for the makers of Freedom Force to re-imagine X-Com.
Hell, I’d love to play X-Com with the Freedom Force engine. My preference would be turn based but a pause and strategize version would be just fine as well (don’t mention apocalypse, please).
I remember reading last year, during an interview with Ken Levine, they asked him why he had so many Car Wars rulebooks scattered around his office. The article said he quickly hid them.
Oh man. Irrational + Car Wars.
BRING IT ON!
This is probably one of those worst kept secrets in the industry. :) I’ve heard about it from three separate sources and I’m just a freelancer!
I expect 2K will announce it before long, probably in the form of an exclusive in PC Gamer or something. Suffice to say, a lot of folks are going to be ecstatic.
-Tom
Huh…I completely missed that. Thanks.
Don’t read too much into that. Something like 4 years ago when I was at CGM and Ben Sones and I went to Irrational’s offices to check out some Freedom Force stuff, it was the same deal. Ken’s office was littered with Car Wars books, and we got off topic geeking out for half an hour about how Car Wars is the perfect game setting: combines cars, racing, post-apocolypic future (no need for real-world car licenses to be “authentic”), blowing stuff up, car customization (Car-PG), collecting money and items… it perfectly accomodates both mission-based plot-heavy gameplay and freeform open world design. It scales from single player up through massively multiplayer and everything in between.
Max Payne - it’s a series that really only needs a good writer behind it, and Levine’s got the chops there.
This is where the gaming press really seems to be odd, to me. I mean, where are the “sources tell us that the new game from Irrational will be X!”-articles? Does everyone just accept that Take 2’s schedule is what they have to bow to?