Codenamed ‘RedLime’, the latest project coming out of the Starbreeze development team will focus heavily on the multiplayer aspect of the game.
CEO Johann Kristiansson (who has since stepped down) also talked about the new project, though didn't confirm that RedLime is the Syndicate game:
"I think [our] technology focus used to be strong, and we had a strong storytelling focus in The Darkness, but now I think we mostly focus on the core gameplay mechanic. We're trying to be innovative there – and we have something really exciting in our new EA title in this area.”
It’s assumed that based on the prior knowledge this gameplay mechanic will be the multiplayer portion of the game, however, this early in the game its too early to be sure.
"A lot of it has to do with going from more of a technology-oriented company and story-oriented company, and becoming more of a gameplay-focused company.”
"I think now when we start pitching and creating a concept, we always start with the question, 'What's the core mechanic? What are you doing in this game that's different from other shooters, or other similar games?'”
"A few years ago, we weren't too focused on that," he continued. "We managed to pull off a great genre mix in Riddick, with shooting, sneaking, fighting, and dialogue, but there was no real core mechanic that differentiated it from other games. Now we are trying to differentiate ourselves more."
It’s easy to tell that though Mr. Kristiansson is now gone, the studio that he left is ready to shock the world with its next release.
Purportedly, the game has had a hard time throughout development. The project has been restarted several times thanks to technical problems, creative differences have spliced the team, and a number of staff has left the studio.
It seems that EA hasn’t been making the development cycle any easier, as a correspondent had this to say: "If [EA producers] step in, which they have done now on Syndicate, where they send producers over there to embed them with the dev team, that's a really bad sign…Starbreeze did something very, very wrong for a very long time with Syndicate."
No whereabouts now as to when the game will see release, or even go gold. Earlier in the year, the original inventor of the series Peter Molyneux said that he would enjoy very much a chance to sit down with the studio and discuss where the game should go.
