Deep Silver and its newly formed studio Free Radical Design today announced they’re going to be reviving the TimeSplitters franchise after over a decade of silence. The first-person shooter franchise was great fun when it was released in the early 00s, yet all but disappeared after the third game in the series was released. Now it’s making an official comeback.
Deep Silver, the publishing company behind the game, said on Twitter: “You asked and we listened. We have been working on plans to bring the TimeSplitters franchise back t o life and are pleased to let you know that we are setting up a new Deep Silver development studio to do just that… This is an exciting first step in the process; development on a new game has not yet started and we will update you when we have more news to share.”
Free Radical Design is the reformed version of the games’ original development studio. Founders Steve Ellis and David Doak were programmers and directors on the first and second TimeSplitters games respectively. The last game in the series was TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, which launched in 2005. Sequels were planned but never finished, so that means the series is returning after over 15 years of dormancy.
TimeSplitters fans were already working on a remastering of the original trilogy called TimeSplitters Rewind, which was announced a few years ago and is apparently still in development at the time of this writing. The official rights to TimeSplitters have been passed around so many times it’s hard to be sure who those fan developers would need permission from to make their game. However, if we’re getting a new game in the series, it’d also be nice to get a remastering of the original games, so that those who aren’t familiar with the franchise can get caught up.
Source: Deep Silver/Twitter
