Bulletstorm devs People Can Fly making mysterious new game with Square Enix
But what is it?
It is a shame that, right after releasing the romper-stomper of a shooter that is Bullestorm, Polish studio People Can Fly spent the next six years working with Epic Games on Fortnite and various Gears of Warses. That's all fine but I'd really like to see something new from the studio which created Painkiller and Bulletstorm. Well! Square Enix have announced that they've formed "a new, external development partnership" with People Can Fly to make "a new high-end original title". And that is all we know for now. But it's still good news.
No, genuinely, that is all we know. The new job listings put up to support this new game mention things like working with "scripted events and story moments" and AI, so I'd guess it's a singleplayer or cooperative game. Scraps. It's just scraps.
People Can Fly did keep the rights to Bulletstorm when they split from Epic Games but seeing as the announcement calls this new game "original", I'd rule more out.
Even the nature of the partnership is unclear. I'd assume Squeenix are simply publishing the game, but who knows!
The rest of yesterday's announcement is mostly folks gushing quotes like "We're massively excited to be working with the talented team at PCF" and "it's incredible to be working with Square Enix, a world-class publisher who shares our passion and excitement for the project." You know, press release quotes.
Square Enix say the game won't be at E3 this year so presumably it's very early days yet. Settle down for a long wait.
People Can Fly's most recent game was Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, a revamp of the 2011 FPS. It's fine because it's Bulletstorm and Bullestorm is good but its improvements are minor, our John thought. Oh, and Full Clip Edition publishers Gearbox will let you pay an extra £4 to make the game worse by replacing its main character with Duke Nukem. Perhaps, years from now, we'll see that DLC as a cheeky act of subversive capitalism - like Devo forming a tween band singing saccarine Devo covers for Walt Disney Records as proof of de-evolution. Sure, let's say that. That's probably true. No doubt. Absolutely.