A new report published by Rock, Paper, Shotgun reveals that the Embracer Group recently canceled a sequel to 2009’s third-person shooter game Red Faction: Guerrilla.
The game was not in development at Volition, the original creator of Red Faction, which was shut down last year following the disappointing sales of the Saints Row reboot. It was instead being made by Fishlabs, the Hamburg-based developer behind 2021’s space combat game Chorus.
Interestingly, before the Red Faction pitch, Fishlabs also pitched a new Lord of the Rings game to fellow Embracer Group colleagues at Middle-earth Enterprises. However, they never really got a proper response, so the studio moved to the next pitch: a new Red Faction game that would have followed the events of Guerrilla around a hundred years later, featuring a more terraformed and colorful Mars. A female protagonist would have been leading the underground workers’ revolution. An internal source told RPS:
We were trying to look at what did Guerrilla do right, what did Armageddon do wrong, and how can we marry the two and continue on with it.
While the original goal was to focus on what worked with Guerrilla (chiefly the excellent destruction enabled by the GeoMod engine), the team also had hoped to implement some immersive sim elements, vehicle customization, and even dynamic dialogues.
Plaion’s initial reaction to the pitch was positive, but in late November, an internal vote from the publishing label decided that the Red Faction project would be canceled. Fishlabs was also forced to lay off around 50 employees as a result. According to the report, the German studio now essentially lives on as a support team, helping other Embracer Group studios develop their games. It is unclear whether Fishlabs will ever get another shot at making their own game, and if so, when.
If this article made you itch to play Red Faction: Guerrilla again, the Re-Mars-tered version is available for $20 on PC and consoles.
