14 Not So Secret Secret Sequels

Nov 6, 2007

It's hard enough keeping the simplest of secrets. But, when you're a successful, well known videogame developer, keeping a project locked down in the folder marked 'Confidential' is an almost impossible task, like herding cats. Cats made out of whispery adjectives and hushed verbs. It's just like that.

And when these closely-guarded secrets concern the development of sequels to popular (read: massively profitable) new games, loose lips and the leak-friendly nature of the Internet mean we regularly know a new instalment is being crafted long before the official announcement.

The devs don't like it, the publishers pretend it isn't happening, but we know. And, in case any evidence was needed to prove an already belaboured point, here's 14 so-called secret sequels we already know are in development. Spoilers, of course, are inevitable...

BIOSHOCK 2

How we know
Sometimes, the easiest way to discover unconfirmed sequels is to give the developer, or the suits who own the developer, an opportunity to let the cat out of the bag.

"BioShock is shaping up to be a very important franchise" stated Take-Two Interactive's chairman Strauss Zelnick during a post-earnings repor... zzzzzz. Sorry, we dropped off for a second. Fortunately, sensing that rational listeners might miss the meaning in all this business dross, Zelnick was also heard to stress that, with BioShock, "clearly [Take-Two] has a new hit franchise on its hands". And, as we all know, Franchise = Sequels.

THE DARKNESS 2

How we know
TopCow Comics, publisher of The Darkness' original comicbook incarnation, made developer Starbreeze's life immeasurably harder when it let slip the news of a 'top secret' Darkness sequel to Dutch rapper Lycan-Strife.

Helpfully, Lycan-Strife - who'd produced a 'tribute' track for The Darkness - immediately got in touch with a Dutch gaming site to spill the beans, going so far as to explain that The Darkness 2 would launch in either late 2008 or early 2009, and would carry on directly from where the original left off.

There's a lesson for every developer here: Famous people talk, but not-so-famous people practically babble.