Ok, before we get too excited, let's just sit back and remind ourselves that John Romero was the mastermind behind Daikatana. There, we said it.
Yet before that PC gaming "bomb" annihilated our hopes and dreams, the great Romero helped put the FPS genre on the gaming map by working on classic titles at id Software including Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake. We hated to see him go when he left id to form Ion Storm, and weren’t too thrilled with his numerous projects thereafter. But maybe, just maybe, he'll re-heat those creative juices that helped make id's popular shooters so great with his own upcoming FPS.
"Yes, I'm definitely going to be making another shooter and it will be on PC first," he explained to Eurogramer. "I don't want to talk about the details but I already know what it is. I've already kind of designed the thing and it's pretty cool - though of course, I am going to say that. I think it's a neat design, I haven't seen the design anywhere else."
Currently Romero is CEO of social game studio Loot Drop, but he didn't say if the new shooter will be an official Loot Drop release, or a side project. But what he did admit was that he hasn't formally started working on the project, only that the overall design has been etched in stone. Even more, it will be "MMO-ish."
"It's a persistent game, it has persistent player data, the character grows and gets better over time," he said. "I think most gamers expect that now anyway, but this was a design I'd done a while ago. I think it's pretty valid. You will be playing the game as you would expect a shooter to feel, but the specifics of your situation, narrative wrapper and reward system are all unique. I wouldn't want to give out any specifics until I'm close to shipping it. I've learned my lesson about talking too soon about specific game features and release dates."
To date, the last shooter Romero produced was Red Faction for the N-Gage gaming phone back in 2003. And again, let's not forget Daikatana which is considered to be one of the biggest commercial failures in video game history. Still, Romero believes he has the right tools to make a shooter that fits within modern times.
"I don't think it's changed other than that the 3D graphics have to be good and there are a ton of basics in the design that have to be there for players to feel that it's a current game," he said. "But I already have a lot of that stuff designed and none of what I've done has become invalid over time based on today's shooters. So I don't think there's an issue with it feeling dated or feeling old. It's not going to be an old-school shooter - it won't be pixelated. But it will probably have some faster movement than most games have right now."
To read the full interview, head here.
