Monolith: Original F.E.A.R. expansions hurt the franchise

Posted Dec 29th 2008 5:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Interviews, FPS, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

Monolith created the first F.EA.R. game in 2005 for publisher Vivendi Games but because of a legal dispute over the F.E.A.R. title, Vivendi Games hired developer Timegate Studios to create two PC expansion packs for the original F.E.A.R (Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate). Niether expansion was as good as the original game and when Vivendi Games was absorbed into the new Activsion Blizzard, the new company gave the F.E.A.R. title rights back to Monolith and Warner Bros. Interactive.

Gof all that so far (yes we know it's confusing)? Now as Monolith prepared to release F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin in February its art lead Dave Matthews believes those Timegate expansions might have hurt the franchise. In a recent chat with Computer and Video games Matthews states, ""[TimeGate] took the story in a direction that we didn't intend. We look at Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate as an alternate universe, a 'what could have been', and because of that it doesn't necessarily diminish the story that we were trying to tell. F.E.A.R. was about Alma, F.E.A.R. 2 is about Alma, and we wanted to continue the story the way we originally intended."

Gallery: F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

Tags: activision-blizzard, fear-2, fear-2-project-origin, monolith, timegate-studios, vivendi-games, warner-bros-interactive

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

There's no "might have" about it. Taking the game from Monolith was a terrible decision.

The only good thing Vivendi did was to come to their senses and give it back.Posted at 1:29PM on Dec 30th 2008 by Sqube27