Furious 4 may not be a title all of our readers will remember, so a little history lesson is in order. Announced at Ubisoft's E3 2011 conference with Gearbox as the developer, it was originally meant to be another entry in the Brothers in Arms series. However, given its non-historic portrayal of World War II (the setting and characters were more akin to Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds), Gearbox decided to spin Furious 4 into its own separate IP.
Sadly, that didn't prevent the game's cancellation in July 2015. During an interview from last week's G-Star, our Kai Powell managed to discuss the project a bit with Gearbox producer Randy Varnell. The 'Head of Story Group' still remembers Furious 4 quite fondly and wishes it actually released. Later, he said Gearbox as a whole would love to do something else in the Brothers in Arms franchise.
Actually, I did get to see Furious 4 when they were demonstrating it so many years ago.
Oh my gosh. Someone remembers!
Yeah, I thought the concept looked really cool.
Did you come to see the press demo?
Yeah.
You probably saw me doing the demo, I was handling that for the project at E3. It was like 2011, man. That game! I wish we would have shipped that game. Furious 4 was actually tremendously good. It was really good. The business reasons [got it canned], it wasn't any creative reasons, it was all that dumb stuff that happens at the back end that I can't talk about. But yeah, we were really excited about Furious 4. We paused that to go work on Borderlands 2, I don't think that was ultimately a bad decision as Borderlands 2 has done pretty well for us.
True. It just feels like the whole Brothers in Arms IP has just kind of been floating out there ever since.
It has and it's something we're very aware of at Gearbox. I can't say anything, but we would love to do something else there.
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford did state some time ago there is indeed work under the way on the IP, but the lack of proper announcements certainly doesn't provide any assurance as of yet. With Borderlands 3 mostly out of the way (DLC development excluded), though, it may be the next big project for Gearbox.
Check back tomorrow for our full interview with Borderlands 3 producer Randy Varnell.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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