Guerrilla Games has revealed that they are done with their previous signature franchise, the Killzone series of multiplayer first-person shooters.
Killzone launched on the PlayStation 2 in 2004, shortly after Dutch studio Lost Boys Games decided to rebrand as Guerrilla Games. This first-person shooter offered a story campaign and multiplayer modes, and invited comparisons to Microsoft’s signature franchise, Halo.
Killzone is set in a fictional future world where humanity launched galactic colonization, only to fall to war between two factions. Under the science fiction military trappings was a thinly veiled antifascist narrative, similar to Helldivers’ world. However, while Helldivers revels in tongue-in-cheek satire, Killzone takes its story just a bit more seriously.
Killzone would go on to get 6 games in total, three in the main series, and two spinoffs. The last game in the franchise, Killzone Shadow Fall, is in a nebulous place where fans were left to speculate whether it should be considered a spinoff or part of the main franchise.
As a launch title for the PlayStation 4, Killzone Shadow Fall had a major timeskip from the rest of the franchise, and also came with major gameplay changes from prior games.
Guerrilla Games art director Roy Postma was interviewed by the Washington Post. As reported by Eurogamer, Postma revealed the state of Killzone himself. In Postma’s own words:
“We were done with it as a team. As a studio, we needed to refresh the palette. It was, by choice, the opposite of ‘Killzone.”
While we’re sure there are Killzone fans disappointed with this news, we do think they need to reckon with the elephant in the room. When the game was launching, many fans were high on expectations that it would be one of many supposed “Halo killers.”
The Killzone franchise definitely has a loyal fan base, but it eventually placed as one of the lesser PlayStation franchises. These games were not particularly critically acclaimed, and they also didn’t become system sellers like Sony’s real big-name franchises, like God of War and Uncharted.
And we have to remember the studio’s history. Horizon: Zero Dawn was a watershed moment for Guerrilla Games. Whatever criticisms you may want to level against the original game, and the franchise as a whole, it still elevated the studio to the top of Sony’s properties.
Horizon has seen enough success that it placed Guerrilla Games’ CEO, Hermen Hulst, to his current position as CEO of Studio Business Group, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and Head of PlayStation Studios.
Perhaps what Killzone should want to hope for is for Sony to lend or give the franchise to another developer to work on. Hermen Hulst is actually in the position to do that, but he hasn’t revealed any interest in doing so, at least not as of this writing.
Perhaps Killzone is now in the same position as many other video game franchises in limbo. Maybe Sony isn’t shutting the door on it completely, but they aren’t going to go back in until they come up with a new idea that could successfully revive it, something like F-Zero 99.
