TimeSplitters, a popular FPS franchise from the PlayStation 2 era, has been lost in time for nearly a decade and a half now, but a recent acquisition could possible bring it back. THQ Nordic, a subsidiary of Koch Media, has announced they purchased the rights to the franchise from Crytek, alongside its sister franchise Second Sight.
In addition, THQ Nordic hinted that a game will enter production now that they have acquired the rights.
We are hugely excited to have acquired Timesplitters. The original games gave fans a massive content offer and provided a pure and genuinely fun arcade shooter experience. We have many fans of the Timesplitters series among our own staff who are passionate about creating a product that will thrill today's gaming audience.
Koch Media had already purchased the Homefront franchise from Crytek back in 2014.
Nothing but good news all around here, folks!
TimeSplitters is a franchise that holds near universal acclaim among those who played it back in the day. Developer Free Radical, a now-defunct team primarily made up of ex-Rare employees and Goldeneye 007 veterans, tore into Halo's dominance of the FPS genre with the series peak, Timesplitters 2, in 2002, and many see the game as a proper spiritual successor to the Nintendo 64 FPS classic.
Playing that game on a GameCube was like pure magic. FPS games were all about size, strategy, and scope in 2002 thanks to Halo's influence, but Timesplitters 2 kept its gameplay down in the trenches with tight level design, fun objectives, and pure mayhem. Versus mode with more than four players is something not a lot of people ever got to see, and to think… it might be possible soon.
Second Sight was Free Radical's attempt to make a more serious narrative-based game using its unique graphical style. I've never played it, but like Timesplitters, it's a cult-hit and clearly a product of its era.
For its part, THQ Nordic has released plenty of remasters of the properties it has acquired over the years through its Deep Silver label, especially those from that era of gaming. Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy, Darksiders, de Blob, The Legend of Kay, all cult-hits that skirt the outer rims of gaming history. Even if our dreams don't come true and a proper TimeSplitters sequel never gets released, we at least will probably see the original TimeSplitters trilogy remastered and made available to modern audiences.
However, outside of Darksiders, Timesplitters is now easily the biggest property under the company's belt, and you can bet we'll be seeing news of one after Darksiders III launches later this year.
