Remedy And Tencent Partner To Develop Co-Op Shooter Codenamed Vanguard
Confusingly, we're not in fact referring to the latest Call of Duty game when we talk about Vanguard in this article, because that's the codename for the in-development co-op shooter coming from Remedy Entertainment and Tencent.
What Is Vanguard?
Announced by Remedy Entertainment on December 28, Vanguard is a co-operative, player-vs-environment (PvE) shooter that will be entirely free-to-play. The announcement states that Vanguard will combine "Remedy's narrative expertise and action gameplay into an immersive multiplayer experience", and it'll be developed using Unreal Engine for both PC and console platforms.
From this, we learn that the game won't be exclusive to any particular platform, not yet at least, and that it'll feature a heavy lean on the narrative element. Remedy is known for its work on games like Alan Wake and Control, so it's fairly safe to assume there could be some horror or supernatural elements involved.
Tero Virtala, CEO of Remedy Entertainment, explained that Vanguard is the company's first foray into the games-as-a-service business model and that they have a "top tier team of free-to-play experts". The game is something new and exciting that will work on top of Remedy's existing strengths, and that "expanding our capabilities to take on publishing responsibilities is the next step in the development of our company".
What Is The Vanguard Release Date?
As it stands, Vanguard is still in the "proof of concept" phase, which means the full release is a long way out. Finance-wise, it will have a similar budget to that of a usual AAA Remedy title, but it'll be co-financed by Tencent too, as they'll be localising and publishing the game for select Asian markets.
Interestingly, all of this also includes the rights to a mobile version of Vanguard, which will be handled by Tencent worldwide. Any guess as to when we could see either version of the game would be completely hypothetical, especially since Remedy is currently also working on CrossfireX, Alan Wake 2, a multiplayer game based in the Control universe, and another new title we know very little about.
