Guerrilla Games might have several games in its portfolio, but the one series that has put it on the map is the futuristic first-person shooter, Killzone. However, thanks to the franchise's apparent conclusion with 2013's Shadow Fall and the attention that the upcoming Horizon: Zero Dawn has been getting in recent months, it's easy to forget that the series was once a heavy-hitter in the fps genre.
Fortunately for fans of the series, despite what the current atmosphere suggests, the series might not be done just yet. In an interview with Game Informer, October issue, Guerilla Games managing director Hermen Hulst stated that while the franchise came to a "conclusive" end in Shadow Fall, there is still a chance that more entries in the series could come in the future.
"Killzone is very key and very core to Guerrilla," he said. "We have a lot of love for the franchise. In a way it's conclusive, but at the same time we'll leave everything open for the future. Who am I to say we'll never do anything? There's too much in it to ever make any kind of definite statements on [the future of Killzone]."
These comments build off what Hulst said a year ago when questioned about the same subject. At the time, he said that it's too early to say what's next for Killzone, since the studio was too busy with Horizon: Zero Dawn.
"It's going to be a very big challenge for us to get [Horizon: Zero Dawn] out the door," he said back then. "And as for what's going to happen after that? We'll talk about that later."
These statements do provide a glimmer of hope for fans who have enjoyed the series since it debuted in 2004, but it's still too easy to think that the series doesn't have much of a future.
Aside from the alleged "conclusion," the time table for the series has been something of a concern. While it isn't uncommon for a series to come to an "end," only to be continued later on, the rate at which new Killzone games have come out since Shadow Fall, has indicated that the series had truly met its end.
Prior to Shadow Fall's release, Guerrilla Games and studio-owner Sony had released a new Killzone title almost every other year: Killzone came out in 2004, Killzone Liberation came out in 2006, Killzone 2 came in 2009, Killzone 3 was released in 2011, then lastly Killzone: Mercenary and Killzone: Shadow Fall in 2013. Based on those release dates, a new Killzone should have come out in 2015, but those expectations were effectively nixed when it became clear that Guerrilla Games was working on an entirely new IP for its next project: Horizon: Zero Dawn.
To be clear, no one ever said that Killzone was dead, but the chances of it getting a new entry seemed incredibly unlikely until now. And now that Hurst has said that there is still a possibility for the series to have more titles in the future, the chances of that new entry arriving have become a tad more likely.
However, with that said, we'll likely have to wait until Horizon: Zero Dawn actually arrives next year to see what happens.
