Developer 1047 Games has announced that Splitgate 2, the sequel to the 2021 first-person shooter Splitgate, will launch for free on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC in 2025.
The upcoming game is a 4v4 multiplayer shooter built in Unreal Engine 5 and boasts "fast-paced portal gunplay with objective-based game modes and distinctive futuristic maps", and features a faction system, customizable weapons, and, you guessed it, portals.
"In the summer of 2021, when we released Splitgate on PS4, we didn’t know what to expect," said 1047 CEO, Ian Proulx in a new interview with PlayStation Blog. "We certainly weren’t ready for the millions of people who hopped online wanting to play our take on a first-person shooter.
"With Splitgate, we made a game we loved and that our awesome community embraced, but we didn’t make the game of our dreams."
Proulx continued, saying that he believes that the upcoming sequel is "the game I dreamed of making when Nicholas Bagamian [CTO and Co-founder of 1047 Games] and I got together in a Stanford dorm and decided to put portals in a shooter."
The developer said that the team has been working on the game for so long and will be ready to share more about it next month, adding that while it was hard to halt the development of Splitgate in 2022, Proulx and the team knew that the right way forward was to develop a sequel.
"We had to start fresh, in some ways," Proulx explained. "That meant building from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5, with completely new character models, new maps, new weapons, and even new portal walls and portals."
Despite being a multiplayer shooter, a narrative writer was hired to work on the universe, creating rich lore for Splitgate 2 with digital comics and cinematics set to arrive in the future.
The game doesn't arrive until 2025, but Proulx already has plans for the future, and explained that in order to keep the fun, the goal, the key was to "build a game that can last a decade or more".
"It’s not just about making sure we have lots of content ready when we launch," Proulx added. "It starts from the very foundations of design. Though the first Splitgate was inspired by classic arena shooters, we realized that to make a modern game that lasts, we had to develop the tools for a deep and satisfying gameplay loop. "
The developer said this starts with Splitgate 2's faction-based multiplayer, and although the team isn't ready to share details just yet, there's "a lot of it on display in our announcement trailer."
