A Red Faction Guerrilla Sequel Was Reportedly Scrapped By Embracer Group

Summary

It’s been a whole decade-plus sinceRed Factionsaw a new entry in the franchise. Chalk it up to a change in players' gaming tastes, or perhaps a shift in gaming as a whole, but2011’s Red Faction: Armageddonwas the last time the franchise saw any new entries. Sure,there was the 2016 Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered release, a cheeky take on the standard remaster, but the fact remains that the franchise has been long dormant.

That said, the groundwork for a new Red Faction game was reportedly being laid out. Information about a Red Faction revivalcomes via Rock Paper Shotgun. Unfortunately, that revival was shut down, though what was being pitched had the bones of a worthy successor to the space-based franchise.

The Red Faction Successor Would’ve Ignored Red Faction: Armageddon

According to reporting by Rock Paper Shotgun’s Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, the team at Fishlabs, an Embracer Group-owned studio, began work internally on a successor to the Red Faction franchise. The game would’ve been more in line with Red Faction: Guerrilla while ignoring the events of Red Faction: Armageddon.In other words, more tearing down bases in an open environment, and less linear third-person shooter.

Per the reporting, the successor’s story would have taken place 100 years after the events of Guerrilla. The protagonist was planned to be female, and there would be a number of factions available to forge alliances with. As far as the map goes, it was designed to be “a more terraformed and colourful Martian world map of similar size to the previous game’s world.”

Beyond channeling Red Faction games of old, the game also sought to be more open-ended in its approach. According to the report, ideas for stealth infiltration with disguises and vehicle customization features were being discussed. The team even had hopes for a dynamic dialogue system in which NPCs could comment on how a player approached a particular quest.

With this in mind, Fishlabs began working on an Unreal Engine 5 trailer to present Plaion with. Apparently, Fishlabs pitched its vision for a Red Faction successor on several occasions, including a November pitch that reportedly featured its team members cosplaying as characters from the game. The feedback was reportedly positive, though a 50-50 split vote between shareholders ultimately doomed the project, and it was immediately canceled.

In the wake of the Red Faction cancelation, which occurred in late 2023, a large portion of Fishlabs' team was laid off. Those cuts spanned across a number of departments, including level design, art and animation. Such cuts and the overall cancelation of the project came as a surprise, according to the reporting, because creatives were told that both Plaion and Embracer Group liked what was being pitched.

Alas, a worthy successor to Red Faction no longer exists. More so, an entire group of creatives, who poured their hearts into the project, going as far as to cosplay characters in a pitch meeting, lost their jobs. Those circumstances will never not be a shame, though it’s especially brutal when considering the effort involved.