In recent years, game developer Gearbox Software has come to be associated solely with the extremely successful Borderlands series along with the notoriously poorly received Aliens: Colonial Marines. The former made its debut in 2009 and consists of five titles, with the upcoming standalone spin-off Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands set to release in March 2022. The Borderlands series has arguably been Gearbox’s most successful, as it sits securely on the list of bestselling video game franchises of all time. A Borderlands film adaptation featuring Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, and Jamie Lee Curtis is currently in development by Lionsgate as well.
On the flipside lurks Aliens: Colonial Marines, dubbed one of the worst video games based on the Aliens franchise ever made. Released in 2013, the first-person shooter was expected to be an exceptional Aliens game, coming as it did from Gearbox, a company with the first two award-winning Borderlands games already on its resume. What people received was a bug-ridden offering with poor AI and very little enjoyable content. There have been many attempts to dissect what went wrong with Aliens: Colonial Marines over the years, with blame being placed on everything from a premature announcement sparking unreasonable player expectations to the development team being diverted to work on Duke Nukem Forever.
Brothers in Arms, Road to a Reputation
Gearbox Software got its start in 1999 making the Opposing Force and Blue Shift expansions for the original Half-Life, and then went on to secure the contract to port Halo: Combat Evolved to PC in 2003. After spending five years working on expansions and ports of other games, Gearbox moved on to what became its first franchise in 2005, the Brothers in Arms series of tactical shooters. Though it never reached the same level of widespread acclaim as other video game franchises set during World War 2 like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor, the series has an established fan base waiting seven years for another installment. So it may be a little surprising to learn that there is another Brothers in Arms game on the way.
The series so far totals 11 games with a 12th, Brothers in Arms: Furious 4, canceled in 2015 due to negative fan feedback. While the focus of Gearbox has since seemingly shifted to its Borderlands franchise, the company’s CEO Randy Pitchford let fans know that Brothers in Arms had not been forgotten. He announced in April 2020 that a television series based on the games was being developed, though there has since been little news on that front. During an April 2021 interview on the podcast of Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac Games, Pitchford nonchalantly shared that a new Brothers in Arms game is currently in development by Gearbox.
The last major entry in the Brothers in Arms series was Hell’s Highway in 2008. The releases after that included one compilation of the first two games for Wii and OS X and five mobile titles. However, as far back as 2015, Pitchford had stated that the franchise had not been permanently shelved but was rather in an “incubation phase.” The next game, stated Gearbox’s CEO in an interview, would have to be authentic. “I feel like we have unfinished business there with both the fiction and the history.”
Homeworld, Branching Out
Much like Gearbox Software’s attempt to rescue the development of 2011’s Duke Nukem Forever when it seemed permanently stalled, the company also jumped in to revive another flagging series in 2013. The Homeworld franchise consists of four science fiction real-time strategy titles developed by Relic Entertainment. By 2013, it had been exactly 10 years since the release of Homeworld 2, the third game, and many fans believed that the award-winning series was no more. Ownership of the IP had switched hands a couple of times, and Gearbox purchased the rights from THQ.
Shortly after the acquisition, the company released a remastered collection of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 in 2015, and Gearbox announced that it would be publishing Homeworld 3, which is in development by Blackbird Interactive. Planned tentatively for a Q4 2022 release, development of Homeworld 3 was crowdfunded through Fig, a somewhat unusual step for what has become a AAA game development studio and publisher. This method of funding was chosen in order to give players the chance to work with Blackbird Interactive from the very beginning, influencing the direction and priorities of the game’s development. The crowdfunding campaign has now ended, having raised more than $1.5 million.
Along with Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, slated for release early next year, fans of Gearbox can therefore look forward to Homeworld 3 sometime later in 2022. And if all goes well, more information about the next entry in the Brothers in Arms franchise will be announced soon. With the Borderlands film and Brothers in Arms TV series also in the works, Gearbox Software is going to be a very busy studio for the next couple of years.