Despite rumors from a couple months back that the patent for the upcoming war shooter, Brothers in Arms: Furious 4, had been abandoned, it turns out Gearbox has actually been considering the title's future very carefully.
Apparently, they've decided that the game is no longer a true installment in the BIA series, and will be dropping the prefix from the name. Currently we don't know whether it will just be called Furious 4, or if they have another name in mind.
The news came today at a PAX panel reported on by Polygon in which Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford said, "the game that was announced as Brothers In Arms: Furious 4 has evolved," adding that when the company "pushed the gameplay loop, they got into a place that got away from the core."
He didn't mean that as a bad thing though. He added that they merely felt the game needed to be "unshackled" by the constraints of an established franchise. The resulting game will now be a completely new brand.
Given this new information, it now seems likely that the game's publisher, Ubisoft, had made the decision to abandon the Brother's in Arms name way back before May when the trademark for the name lapsed.
