Helldivers 2 was one of Sony's bigger hits of 2024, catapulting its developer, Arrowhead Studio, to an unexpected level of fame. Why are we talking about this on a Nintendo site? Well, while the group shooter might not share all that much DNA with the House of Mario, one of the studio's old game concepts does: an arcade rail shooter inspired by... wait for it... Star Fox.
That is according to Arrowhead CCO and Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt, who, in a New Year's post on Twitter, asked fans what they're hoping to see from the studio in the future, while highlighting some of the team's previous prototypes (thanks for the heads up, Eurogamer).
Replying to one fan's suggestion for a "Star Fox-style game", Pilestedt revealed that Arrowhead had once pitched a concept for exactly that. Tentatively titled "Eagles of Democracy", the studio CCO stated that the game would "basically try to capture Star Fox" in its mix of arcade and grounded gameplay, and it even went as far as building a prototype in Unreal to showcase it.
Pilestedt shared the following images of the high-flying project which, ironically, never made it off the ground:
We consider it very unlikely that anything from the Sony-published Helldivers team will make its way over to a Nintendo console any time soon, but the mere mention of Star Fox has us once again pining for a series reboot — come on, Nintendo, the Wii U entries were released almost 10 years ago!
Arrowhead recently came under fire for the release of the Helldivers 2 X Killzone crossover, considered by many to be drastically overpriced. The studio later took the blame for the pricing, releasing the second wave of the crossover for free.
What would you like to see from a future Star Fox game? Let us know in the comments.
[source x.com, via eurogamer.net]
Comments 5
One thing I'll say about Nintendo, do not hold your breath about any franchises, especially if they have been dormant.
Interesting, too bad it didn't happen in the end!
Anyway, fingers crossed we'll finally get a new Star Fox game now that Switch's successor is coming (would gladly take also rereleases of the GameCube games, especially Assault since I've never played that)!
I haven't ever played SF but if it is the path to NLife articles in this lovely blue, then I am all in.
The bar was set so low with star fox zero, any game would be a masterpiece in comparison.
Star Fox 64 is one of my favorite games, so its a shame that I almost never hear anyone trying to make something similar (see also: Metroid Prime). Nintendo's never been able to fully recapture the magic. (well they did twice but both Assault and Zero wasted their great arwing segments with, along with a misunderstanding of how replayability worked for 64, mediocre on foot segments and a mix of sameyness and hidden multiple control options, respectively)
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