The veteran studio from Europe will take over developing the shooter franchise set in an America invaded by Korea.
The world and story behind Homefront held a lot of promise. Freedom-fighters in a near-future Great Plains of the United States rising up to combat a Korean occupation pulled several strings in our psyches from fervent patriotism and latent racism to a childhood love of the movie Red Dawn. But Homefront, for all of its promise, just didn’t deliver on the excellent marketing strategy devised by THQ. Even though sales of Homefront weren’t terrible, lackluster critical reception forced developer Kaos Studios to close its doors back in March 2011. Today, THQ announced that Crytek – makers of Crysis – will create the next Homefront.
Both sides of the new deal praised the strength of the IP. “We see Homefront as a really strong universe that has a lot of potential and that has been expertly created and marketed by THQ,” said Cevat Yerli, head of Crytek. “It’s really important to us that THQ has the faith in giving us a lot of creative freedom over one of its most important properties to allow us to bring the Homefront world to life in a new and innovative way.”
“Homefront‘s unique setting and storyline captivated gamers the world over,” said former screenwriter Danny Bilson, the mouthpiece of THQ. “With Crytek’s industry leading technology and legendary experience in the FPS genre, we’re supremely confident that the next Homefront will deliver that AAA-quality experience that players demand.”
To Bilson’s and Yerli’s credit, they were careful not to slam the original game or the work of Kaos Studios.
Do you think that hiring Crytek to develop the next Homefront is a good move? I’m not sure that there is a much better candidate among THQ’s studio partners, but the fact that Crytek is a European development house – based in Frankfurt with subsidiaries everywhere around the world except North America – makes me pause. I’m no purist, but a game that taps so much into American patriotism might be handled better by designers who actually live in the United States.
I mean, who else knows the meaning of “Wolverine!”
Published: Sep 20, 2011 01:03 pm