While extremely linear and fairly short, this Starbreeze Studios-developed FPS was quite a looker back then … and it played well, too. In fact, Syndicate was ahead of its time in terms of gameplay. Being able to “breach” your opponents to cause damage/modify behavior eventually became a staple of modern shooters like Rage 2 and action-RPGs like Cyberpunk 2077. Syndicate’s art style, despite being 11 years old, remains current outside of the excessive bloom. It’s a beautiful, beautiful game.
It shouldn’t be too expensive (or too much trouble) to take the PC version and make sure it runs at 4K/60 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X – including HDR support, of course. As far as I know, EA owns the IP so remastering Syndicate should be a no-brainer. An exciting 7-hours single player campaign with fun gunplay and plenty of eye-candy – what’s not to like?
> It shouldn’t be too expensive (or too much trouble) to take the PC version and make sure it runs at 4K/60 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X – including HDR support
Erm… you’d be surprised.
If you’re looking at actual remaster… that’s not only getting access to original source code, and re-writing it to an engine that’s current and supports HDR/ 4K resolutions, but you’ll need huge art teams to re-do all of the materials and models, then there’s level design to ensure that the levels are recreated in the newer engine to include all the quirks of the previous game, but working in a modern engine. Animations need re-doing to animate with at least 30FPS…
It’s effectively creating a new game from scratch, but having reference source code, models, story and the likes. It would take years.
Unless you mean MGS-style of re-release. Where the resolution is still 360p, with absolutely zero changes to the game to meet modern requirements.
Yeah, but this got a PC release. What did the PC version look like when fully specced out?
As good as a 2012 game would look… which is not great by today’s standards.
It would require a lot of work, by multiple teams, which would take years to complete and a lot of money to pay for such a project.
There was no 4k resolution support for games back in 2012. Sure, you can do it now, with some config editing and what-not, but this would just make the image look worse than the original target resolution, due to low-resolution material textures and lower poly-count models.
I disagree. Not only was this an average shooter for the time…possibly even heading into below average territory, it was an insult to the syndicate name.
While I had fun with the Syndicate FPS I would like a new proper Syndicate game, meaning managing your squad from up above. While Satellite Reign is the spiritual sequel it didn’t click for me. The not so open world with unending waves of respawning reinforcements if you fucked up sneaking just wasn’t Syndicate.
This is what I want. A return to Syndicate and Syndicate Wars. I want to be able to nuke grenade the road into oblivion and watch the cars disappear for a few minutes before popping back up again. And miniguns. Lots of miniguns.
Maybe the same team that made the new Jagged Alliance could do a new Syndicate? Love the first two games. Also liked the fps.
I’m sure there are a lot of teams that could do it properly with enough time and money but I don’t think EA at the moment is very content just sitting on the IP because it’s not relevant anymore. And most likely they would like to make a new FPS or live service game or multiplayer focused because old school syndicate is… well… old school.
You don’t need to call it Syndicate outside of nostalgia reasons. EA doesn’t have exclusive rights to top-down tactical squad games in a dystopian cyberpunk setting, someone just needs to get the gameplay right.
A I agree with you and while they are at it, ea should consider hockey on PC.
No thanks. I’d rather have a good syndicate game instead of yet another great game reduced to being a fps.
Someone else said Sattelite Reign didn’t really click for them but i’d still recommend trying it. It’s not exactly the same as syndicate but it’s a decent entry in the same genre/theme.