Grave Gamer News & Views — free radical
Timesplitters 4 Not Happening Until Met with Higher Demand “I...
Timesplitters 4 Not Happening Until Met with Higher Demand
“I love Timesplitters, I’m a huge Timesplitters fan particularly of the multiplayer part. I love the idea, I love the brand, I love everything – but the publishers don’t. That’s reality. And I don’t want to spend our own money on the project in a retail business.”
- Cevat Yerli, founder and president of Crytek, speaking with VG24/7.
While public demand for a Timesplitters 4 is moderately high, Yerli doesn’t believe it’s past the threshold of putting the sequel into motion. What does Crytek have to do with Timesplitters, a franchise headed by English developer Free Radical, you ask?
Well, after LucasArts fucked Free Radical three different ways to Sunday during the troubled production of the aborted Star Wars: Battlefront III, the very nearly bankrupt development house (operating on a skeleton crew just to keep the lights on) was taken under Crytek’s wing and rebranded Crytek UK. Now, with Timesplitters being Crytek UK’s baby, and taking into account their parent company’s tendency to almost exclusively dish out first-person shooters, we’re closer than ever to seeing the once magnificent franchise resuscitated…
Except being out of the FPS scene for a whole console cycle sort of muddies your IP’s brand recognition. Consequently, no publisher in town cares about the property. Again, while demand hasn’t been enough to strong arm Crytek into fast-tracking a new installment, fans may take comfort in the fact that the company is at least thinking about the future of Timesplitters.
Fan feedback “did indeed trigger a deeper evaluation of what we do with Timesplitters,” says Yerli, “And I can only say this for now: we might have some surprises coming soon." There hasn’t been an entry into the series since 2005. For a lot of fans’ sakes, hopefully "soon” is soon enough.
LucasArts Bullied Free Radical’s Star Wars: Battlefront III Into...
LucasArts Bullied Free Radical’s Star Wars: Battlefront III Into Cancellation
“It was the most depressing and pointless thing that I have ever been involved in. The dream job which I once loved had become a nightmarish torture.”
David Doak, Free Radical founder, recalling his experience working on the troubled Battlefront III.
In an astounding interview with Eurogamer, Doak and fellow Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis say their business relationship with long-time Star Wars video game purveyors, LucasArts, was nothing short of enjoyable when production on the sequel began in 2006. After a succession of commercial failures (starting with the third TimeSplitters and ending flatly on Haze), being apart of LucasArts’ project was a “marriage made in heaven,” according to Doak. Because at his studio, “You don’t have to go very far in development to find someone with Star Wars shit on their desk.”
By 2008, however, when the developer decided to voice concerns about the title’s progress, Doak and Ellis picked the unfortunate time of broadcasting doubts to a new set of faces at LucasArts that, quite frankly, didn’t believe in Free Radical’s very costly (but ambitious) project. With familiar allies gone, Doak felt they “went from talking to people who were passionate about making games to talking to psychopaths who insisted on having an unpleasant lawyer in the room.”
While a contract protected Free Radical’s Battlefront from axing for a time, LucasArts still quickly cut funding, making obligatory milestones impossible to meet, and making it doubly impossible to continue functioning on a timely and regular basis. After numerous conversations degraded, and the tempting idea to have another studio, Rebellion, hastily patch together a simpler, less ambitious Battlefront III using Free Radical’s assets was considered, the game finally just buckled and died.
And to an extent, so did Free Radical. The studio was forced to let a significant portion of their staff go, leaving behind a skeleton crew meant to keep the developer breathing until the company was eventually bought by Crytek who transformed the once unique studio into the unimaginatively named Crytek UK.