PAX Prime 2012: Furious 4 is No More... Kind of

Many of you have probably already forgotten 'Furious 4' since its announcement at E3 2011. If you have, I hardly blame you. The title was planned as an entry in the long running Brothers in Arms franchise though it bore almost no resemblance to its predecessors. The game was immediately compared to the Inglorious Basterds thanks to its absurd, stylized take on World War II and the emphasis on violently eliminating every Nazi that crossed your path.

Furious 4 shared little more than a name with fellow Brothers in Arms games at first glance but was confirmed to have ties to the core franchise. The game centered around a rag-tag group of soldiers in World War II who take it upon themselves to hunt and kill every member of the Nazi party. Having seen the game demoed at E3 2011 behind closed doors, I was rather impressed by the bold new direction for the game. It played a lot like a standard first-person shooter but shared more in common with a game like Bulletstorm. The game was vibrant, crude, and incredibly cheeky about its approach to the violent subject matter. Take a look at the original trailer below:

Following almost a year of nothing new about the game and a rumor that Gearbox had scrapped the project, Gearbox President, Randy Pitchford, told CVG that Furious 4 had "evolved." This past weekend, Randy took the stage at the annual PAX Gearbox Panel to explain that Furious 4 would re-emerge eventually but not as a Brothers in Arms title. Given my enthusiasm for the game over a year ago, I was immediately delighted to find out that the game still existed. Perhaps I was even more excited to hear that it would cut ties with a franchise that it clearly had nothing to do with. New IPs are few and far between these days so I'm glad to see that Gearbox was willing to go back to the drawing board and evolve this title into something that could feel fresh and new. You know... like they did with Borderlands!

On a side-note, If you look back at Gearbox's history, you will notice that Aliens: Colonial Marines, another major title set to arrive this February, was in a very similar boat recently. For years after being featured on the cover of Game Informer, Aliens went silent while Gearbox assured the public that the game wasn't cancelled. It seems that Furious 4 has now taken up the mantle of the elusive but ever-existing Gearbox project. Now I just hope they don't completely change the name between now and its next unveiling. I have grown attached to "Furious 4" as a title. In all honesty, I think the game would do just fine if they just dropped the "Brothers in Arms" from the beginning.

Let us know how you feel about the news in the comments!