Skip To...
If you can hear the faint sound of sobbing, that might be me. Hugely disappointingly, it seems that Guerrilla Games, the developer behind the Killzone and Horizon series, may be done with Killzone for good. In an interview with The Washington Post, long-standing art director Ray Postma says, of Killzone, “We were done with it as a team.” It certainly doesn’t sound like there’s much appetite to return to the gritty FPS series, but there should be.
Guerrilla Warfare
The original Killzone released back in 2004, a full 20 years ago (making me feel really old). The gritty FPS from then relatively new studio Guerrilla Games was a solid if unremarkable shooter, telling the story of the Helghast Empire’s brutal invasion of Vekta. With the release of Killzone 2 five years later, however, the series cemented itself as one of the best FPS franchises around. It improved on the original game in every way, leading to the brilliant but less lauded Killzone 3 in 2011.
The last Killzone title that graced our consoles, however, was Shadow Fall in 2013. Probably rushed out to be a PS4 release title, Shadow Fall lacked the grit and focus of the previous two main entries. And since then? Nothing.
Although acclaimed by critics and holding a special place in fans’ hearts, the Killzone series has lain dormant for nearly a decade. Sadly, it doesn’t sound like this is going to change anytime soon.
A New Horizon?
In an interview, Guerrilla Games art director Ray Postma, who has been with the studio since 2000, said of the Killzone series:
We were done with it as a team. As a studio, we needed to refresh the palette. It was, by choice, the opposite of ‘Killzone.’
That “refresh” led to the acclaimed open-world action-RPG Horizon Zero Dawn in 2017. Since then, we’ve seen the sequel Horizon Forbidden West and the VR title Horizon Call of the Mountain, as well as the upcoming remaster of Zero Dawn.
Clearly, Guerrilla Games feel that the Horizon series is an evolution of their development approach as well as a new direction. And whilst I acknowledge the quality of the Horizon games, I can’t help but feel it would be a tragic mistake to abandon the Killzone series altogether.
Back In Their Sights
The first and most obvious reason why Killzone should return is that the series has an established fanbase. Although not in the same league as the more family-friendly Horizon Zero Dawn, which has sold over 20 million copies, Killzone is no slouch. Despite its underwhelming reception, Killzone Shadow Fall shifted over 2.1 million copies, so the demand is clearly there. Keep in mind that the overall playerbase has only grown in the last 20 years. Lower sales figures were expected back in the early noughties.
I’d also argue that the video game landscape is in dire need of a gritty, more linear FPS. With games increasingly focusing on fantasy, colorful open-world settings, it would be a breath of fresh air to return to the hard-hitting first-person perspective that was so popular back in the early 2000s. It’s a running joke that PS3 games were various shades of brown, and Killzone 2 was the embodiment of this color palette. But now, if anything, we’re almost exposed to color schemes that are too vibrant for post-apocalyptic or war games with more mature themes.
We shouldn’t forget that the Killzone games, particularly Killzone 2 and Killzone 3, had excellent arena-based multiplayer modes. Coupled with the extremely solid gunplay, it’s not hard to envisage a new fanbase tired of Call of Duty‘s repetitive formula and focus on Warzone attracted to Killzone‘s more focused skirmishes.
In short, I’d love to see Guerrilla Games return to the Killzone franchise. I’m not saying they should abandon the Horizon series, by any means, particularly given its continued success. But a second, smaller team working on Killzone could do wonders with the updated Decima Engine and the knowledge the studio has acquired since Killzone Shadow Fall in 2013.
Pretty please, Guerrilla. Make it happen.
