With developer Turtle Rock Studios moving on from their latest release "Evolve", they have collaborated with "star Trek Online" publisher Perfect World Entertainment for a new "dark fantasy" co-op FPS.
According to an interview with GI.Biz, the title still remains unannounced, as stated by Turtle Rock co-founder Phil Robb.
"We are developing a new franchise set in an all new universe that leverages the style of gameplay our community loves and expects from Turtle Rock Studios," he said. "We're focusing on what we do best--heart-pounding moment-to-moment online co-op FPS action."
Robb assured that with developing the upcoming game, "players come first," basing the feedbacks of fans on how the game should be made.
Turtle Rock president Steve Goldstein would still try to use the old formula of the previous games, like "Left 4 Dead," but wouldn't want to consider the yet-unannounced game a spiritual successor to them.
"We think that kind of label has big expectations tied to it," he said. "Also, it sets an expectation that we're making something sequel-like that does not deviate too far from the original formula. And while we focus on awesome first-person shooting and co-op, we'd rather have the new game be something our players classify and designate and judge without us affixing the label ourselves."
Co-op play is the main focus of the game, according to the Turtle Rock president, with "plenty of baddies to shoot up." But it's something that has a different setting other than the sci-fi or post-apocalyptic setting their previous games had.
"What we can say right now is there's a strong dark fantasy element to it," he mentioned.
The "dark fantasy" co-op game will be made using the latest Unreal Engine and is set to arrive at 2018 at the soonest. Even if a business model has not been revealed yet, Perfect World Entertainment has usually been following the free-to-play type of games, which Turtle Rock has been looking forward to work with.
"We can't overstate how helpful [F2P] is to us as developers," Goldstein said. "It's a direct line toward taking the game that we wanted to play when we first started working on it and ensuring that it will be a game that our community wants to play for years to come. This completely changes the dynamic of how we make games."
In other news, Turtle Rock has finally handed over the development of "Evolve" to publisher 2K's internal team after it stopped working on the game. The game brand now belongs to "Grand Theft Auto" and "Red Dead" parent company Take-Two, which paid a huge sum to buy the franchise during THQ's bankruptcy auction.
"Evolve" has become a "permanent" franchise along with "GTA" and "Red Dead," opening up the possibilities of more games in the future. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick even mentioned that the game may have single-player possibilities sometime soon.
