Following its acquisition of several high profile studios from Square Enix, Swedish media company The Embracer Group says it has wide-ranging plans for the intellectual property associated with those studios. New Tomb Raider and Deus Ex games are on the table of course, but so are “remakes, remasters, and spinoffs”, as well as “transmedia projects”.
Earlier this month, the Embracer Group announced its plan with Square Enix to buy the studios Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montreal, and Square Enix Montreal. These studios come with some pretty big names in gaming IP, including Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief, and the long-neglected Legacy of Kain series. In its latest quarterly earnings report, Embracer says it sees “great potential” for new games and remasters across these series, which in some cases have languished severely over the past decade or more.
Take Thief, for example. The last new game in the series came out way back in 2014, to middling reviews. Rumours bubbled up a few years later about a sequel in the works at Eidos Montreal, but studio head David Anfossi responded by tweeting “forget it” – the studio lacked a team or a budget for such a project at the time.
Legacy of Kain is overdue for a proper revival, too. The last game even tangentially connected to Kain was the short-lived free-to-play game Nosgoth, which was cancelled in 2016 before it even left early access. Prior to that, you have to go back to 2003’s Legacy of Kain: Defiance, which was developed by Crystal Dynamics, with Amy Hennig writing and directing.
We’d be excited about a return to the cyberpunk world of Deus Ex, too. Last we heard, Anfossi was reassuring fans that the series was “not dead,” but that Eidos-Montreal wasn’t working on anything related to Deus Ex as of 2018 – at the time, it was busy working with Crystal Dynamics on Marvel’s Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, as well as Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Embracer says the acquisition deal is still in process, but expects everything to be finalised between July and September this year.