Starbreeze Studios, developers of The Darkness and Chronicles of Riddick, were working on two projects for EA. Now it's working on one, a potentially bad sign for Syndicate—or Jason Bourne—fans hoping that "Project RedLime" would reinvent the franchise.
EA and Starbreeze had partnered to work on two games, one based on Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne character, another dubbed "Project RedLime," officially described as a reinvention of "one of EA's most acclaimed classic franchises." That classic franchise was reported to be Syndicate, the Bullfrog-developed line of PC games released in the '90s.
Starbreeze announced in a press release this week that it was now focused on just one of those projects, with the other "still in pre-production phase" to be shut down. The developer did not specify which of the two had been put on hold.
"We will continue to focus only on a big production together with EA," says Starbreeze CEO Johan Kristiansson, in a press release originally in Swedish. "Our relationship with EA is stronger than ever, and the aim now is to spend more resources on the game that demonstrated the greatest potential. This game is already in full production."
Starbreeze is reported to have been hard at work on its Syndicate revival since 2007, with its planned Bourne-starring game officially announced late last year.
Which game has greater "potential"? Another Bourne game—possibly known as The Bourne Ascendancy—or an update to Syndicate? Commercially, it would seem like the former, but we've reached out to EA and Starbreeze to clarify.