On Friday Running With Scissors CEO Vince Desi announced that the third installment to the controversial Postal series is finally "coming home for Christmas." The game was initially released on November 23 in Russia, but will be released worldwide via Steam presumably around December 25 (no actual date was given). A $40 boxed "unrated" version is also now up for pre-order here.
"Our dearest friend, Editor and original RWS member Bill 'The Game Doctor' Kunkel passed away this past September," Desi said in a press release. "We’d like to honor Bill and the Postal Dude’s best friend Champ (who also passed away earlier this year) by proudly self publishing Postal 3 in their memory."
Postal originally arrived on the PC back in 1997 as a top-down isometric shooter full of over-the-top violence and irreverent humor, whereas the second installment appeared on the PC in 2003 as a first-person shooter using Epic's Unreal Engine. This third chapter, which went into development just after Postal 2 hit store shelves, will pull the camera back into a 3rd-person perspective using Valve's Source engine.
"As a developer, the most important element of an engine is stability," Desi said about switching engines in 2008. "The Valve Source engine provides stability, for single player and multiplayer, also they provide excellent support. As Postal 3 is its own unique game, we are doing a lot of custom coding, so it’s better for us to know what we have to work with from the start. And Steam is a major plus."
The Postal 3 story takes place just after the "accidental" nuclear destruction of Paradise, Arizona (aka Apocalypse Weekend) in Postal 2. "We rejoin the Postal Dude and his psychotic pitbull Champ as they emigrate to the ironically named town of Catharsis. Unfortunately, due to the Global Economic Meltdown, psychotic left-wing "Green" extremism and hypocritical right-wing Government corruption, life in Catharsis isn't much better."
The game reportedly has two paths to take: the "good path" which involves the Postal Dude joining the local police force, and the "bad path" which includes joining in on the schemes of Mayor Chromo and Uncle Dave. The Postal Dude initially ends up in Catharsis because he ran out of gas and the broken economy has jacked up the price-per-gallon cost to $17.
That in itself is a good reason to go postal.
Postal 3 is only slated for Windows PC via Steam and the Running With Scissors online store for now. A PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 version is slated for sometime in 2012, but an actual ship date is yet to be determined. The studio also plans to release a Linux and Mac OS X version at some point.
