Next Red Faction coming March 2011, game going back to franchise roots

Red Faction: Guerrilla was generally well received by game critics, but its sales still failed to live up to publisher THQ’s expectations. They’re making sure that doesn’t happen with the franchise’s next entry.

Red Faction: Guerrilla was generally well received by game critics, but its sales still failed to live up to publisher THQ’s expectations. They’re making sure that doesn’t happen with the franchise’s next entry.

THQ is now building up awareness of the franchise by way of promos like the Guerrilla giveaway they ran with Darksiders.

“Giving away the stock now, on Red Faction, is getting more people exposed to the IP because we’re going bigger on Red Faction next time,” Danny Bilson, THQ’s executive VP of Core Games, told Joystiq. “If the game wasn’t so good, we wouldn’t be giving it away at all.”

The next Red Faction game currently has a March 2011 target. Bilson remained tight-lipped regarding details, but he did describe it as a hybrid between the old Red Faction games and Guerrilla. It’s still open-world and the destructible environments will still be there, but it will be far more “structured” like a “narrative” shooter.

“The new game takes [Red Faction] to a whole new place, it kind of goes back to the old Red Faction because about 80% of it is underground,” Bilson said.

Via [Joystiq]