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?
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.