Turtle Rock Studios blasted onto the scene years ago with the original Left 4 Dead. It really changed up the co-op shooter genre by having players work together in multiplayer instead of being pitted against each other. They recently unleashed Evolve on home consoles and PC, and now they're hoping to revolutionize that sub-genre once more with their next FPS co-op game.
Gamespot is reporting that Turtle Rock Studios is working on a brand new co-op FPS game under Perfect World Entertainment, the publisher and developer of popular free-to-play MMOs such as Perfect World Online, Blacklight: Retribution, and Star Trek Online, just to name a few.
Turtle Rock's new game is also a new intellectual property. It won't be a successor to Left 4 Dead, which was handed off to Valve, who then made Left 4 Dead 2. In fact, they mention that the game won't even be about shooting zombies, nor will it be set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic atmosphere. The game will, however, continue to feature the four-player cooperative action that Turtle Rock became known for.
They mention in the article that the game will be free-to-play, just like other games released by Perfect World Entertainment, and it will be headed to PC and home consoles such as the Xbox One and PS4. They don't specify in the article if "home consoles" also means that we could be seeing this mystery title appear on the upcoming Nintendo Switch, but I think a lot of that will boil down to Perfect World's relationship with Nintendo and whether or not Turtle Rock's game can be optimized and scaled for the hybrid device from the Big N'. We do know that they seem to be tentatively targeting a 2018 release window, so it's still a ways off.
It wouldn't be surprising if we saw a glimpse of this new game either at E3 next year in June, at GamesCom in August, or at the Tokyo Game Show in September. But if it makes an appearance at any of the big three events next year it could help garner some major momentum heading into its 2018 release.
As far as story and characters go, we know absolutely nothing about the new game. They don't detail anything about who you play, or what kind of weapons you'll use, nor do they mention anything about vehicles or the setting, other than that it will have a "dark fantasy" element to it.
Some people assume that the game will be similar to the likes of Evolve, which was Turtle Rock's last big outing for home consoles and PC. The title was published by 2K Games but it didn't quite set the marketplace on fire. It made a comeback earlier this year during the summer as a free-to-play shooter that garnered a lot of attention during a short period of time, but after the novelty of playing an asymmetrical multiplayer shooter wore off, the numbers dropped once more.
With their new game, there's a lot of different ways they could go... but being set in a "Dark Fantasy" universe instantly makes me think of something out of Warhammer, similar to the cooperative first-person shooter, Vermintide.
Perfect World Entertainment, on the other hand, has a spotty track record when it comes to supporting MMOs and doing right by gamers with the cash shop. So we'll see how well this all comes together when it's time for the new IP to be revealed by Turtle Rock and Perfect World.
