5 Reasons Bungie Should Take Over The Killzone Franchise (& 5 Reasons They Should Take Over The Resistance Franchise)
After Sony acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion in January, fans of both Sony and Bungie franchises have been salivating at the potential projects the collaboration could have in the works. The Killzone and Resistance series have both achieved a cult-classic status for many Sony fans, but neither series have released a title for almost a decade, as their parent studios have both gone on to bigger and brighter things.
With Bungie's impressive resume of grand space alien shooters, it's hard for gamers to not imagine what the former-Microsoft studio could do if tasked with a potential revival of either series.
It's no secret that a few weeks before Sony acquired Bungie, Sony biggest manufacturing competitor Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for a whopping $68.7 billion.
The potential exclusivity rights that Microsoft will have over classic games like the Call of Duty universe for the foreseeable future means Sony needs a strong FPS competitor in the market, pronto, and a revival of the Killzone series with a genre juggernaut like Bungie at the helm could be the solution. The series is a fan favorite and offers an established world with a consistently strong FPS structure, an ideal scenario where fans can imagine Bungie stepping in and creating the next big shooter.
The main reason that fans are excited about the collaboration between Sony and Bungie is due to the plethora of amazing FPS games that Bungie has created over the years.
With a resume that includes every Halo game from Combat Evolved to Reach and both Destiny 1 and 2, fans have seen the quality of FPS games that Bungie can craft, especially when it comes to making a crunchy and snappy shooter for the modern era. The idea of Bungie applying their expertise to a franchise that already has a solid FPS foundation in Killzone is the stuff that dreams are made of.
The original creators of Killzone, Guerrilla Games, have likely not worked on any new Killzone content because they have been busy making a generation-defining franchise in the Horizon Zero Dawn series.
But while they have their hands full, Guerrilla Games working under the same Sony umbrella as Bungie could hopefully lead to a sharing of expertise and experience on what made the original Killzone games so great. If Bungie is assigned a revival of the series, fans will feel confident knowing the original creators are all working under the same wing.
The common theme that gives a lot of these future-oriented FPS's a similar direction is the massive conflict that often stars as the setting for these game's storylines. Halo has the battle for humanity versus the Covenant, and Destiny depicts the Guardians defending Earth against a variety of hostile alien races.
The interplanetary conflict in Killzone between the ISA and the Helghan Empire is ripe with storied lore and memorable characters, and with Bungie's impressive track record of engaging galactic-war storylines, it's not a stretch of the imagination that Bungie could take the Killzone story in a new and exciting direction.
When the PS4 was released in 2013, one of the initial flagship games that was released in order to show off the potential of the next-gen hardware was Killzone: Shadow Fall. While the graphical fidelity of the game was an incredible step up for the era and the title sold well, fans of the franchise were left a little dissatisfied with the lack of gameplay innovation and a dull single-player campaign.
The fervor for the franchise is still strong though, and a Bungie-created Killzone title could provide the fresh-yet-experienced ingenuity the series needs right now to succeed as a shooter in the modern generation.
For all of the incredible exclusives that Sony-affiliated studios have released over the years, they have been missing a strong FPS exclusive that can compete with the genre juggernauts like Halo or Call of Duty, and with Microsoft recently acquiring the rights to both, Sony's need for a consistent FPS competitor is greater than ever.
The Resistance franchise has a strong history of FPS mechanics as well as a dedicated fanbase, and who better to create a strong competitor to Halo than Bungie, the original Halo creators?
For any gamer who has played games in either the Halo or Destiny franchise, it's pretty evident that Bungie knows how to make some fun futuristic space combat. Both series have consistently offered diverse and engaging gameplay options, like Destiny 2's huge arsenal of exotic weapons or Halo's varied alien enemy types, all traits that the Resistance series is well known for too.
A Bungie-created Resistance game would offer developers a creative playground they know all too well and might provide the energy needed to revive the cult-classic franchise.
As is the case with the Killzone series, Sony has also retained the studio that originally made the Resistance franchise, Insomniac Games. But just like with Guerrilla Games, Insomniac has also moved on to making some critically acclaimed projects, like Ratchet and Clank and Marvel's Spider-Man.
While Insomniac has a busy schedule ahead of them, if Bungie were assigned to a revival of the Resistance series, fans would feel comforted knowing that the studio that initially made the magic would be there to offer some tips and tricks to help bring the Resistance series into the modern era.
With Halo, Bungie created a multiplayer experience that not only defined the online FPS genre, but shaped the industry as a whole, so fans can only dream of what the team at Bungie might do with a Resistance multiplayer mode. Resistance 2 was way ahead of its time, offering the most amount of players in an online mode on PS3 at the time with a 30 vs. 30 multiplayer mode.
With a resume of some of the best multiplayer modes ever in Halo, if Bungie can utilize its taste-making prowess to bring Resistance into the modern multiplayer era, fans of the series and FPS games alike are in for a treat.
As exciting as it is to imagine a full-fledged Resistance game made by FPS legends Bungie, a free-to-play, live-service revival of the franchise might be a more plausible outcome, especially if they focus on a multiplayer-only experience.
With Destiny 2, Bungie showed how to make a high-quality and content-filled FPS multiplayer that is also free-to-play, so if the most plausible path for a Resistance revival is through a live-service model, fans should feel comforted knowing that the experienced team at Bungie might be at the helm of it.