Today at PAX East during the “Inside Gearbox Software” panel, Gearbox chief creative champion Mikey Neumann (yep, that’s his real title) hinted at a possible revival for the long-dormant Brothers in Arms series.
“A lot of people love Brothers in Arms and they love [series protagonist Sgt. Matt Baker]. Obviously we never really got to finish that story,” Neumann said about Baker’s character arc. “We’ve always said, ‘Man, we want to go back to this.'”
However, Neumann wouldn’t say if a new Brothers in Arms game is actually in development. “We have nothing to announce,” he said. “I certainly can’t announce anything.”
Neumann’s comments about the Brothers in Arms series came in response to comments from voice actor Troy Baker, who appeared during the panel to talk about his work on the Tales from the Borderlands series, but wound up discussing the military franchise.
Baker said: “[Sgt. Matt Baker] was the first lead character that I had, and it’s something that–as a gamer and an actor–I’ve always wanted to go back to.”
At E3 2011, Gearbox and Ubisoft announced Brothers in Arms: Furious 4, an Inglourious Basterds-like co-op game set in World War II where players would work together to hunt down Hitler. The game was later delayed, before Gearbox officially announced that it had been reimagined as a new IP, not a Brothers in Arms game.
In 2013, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford said the studio will return to the Brothers in Arms franchise some day, even if it’s not for a long, long time.
“We love Brothers in Arms. The other pledge is that there will be an authentic Brothers in Arms game,” Pitchford said at the time. Again, we haven’t announced that yet, but I’m really excited about where that’s going too. We’ll announce these things in due course. There’s a lot of neat things we have going on.”
The most recent entry in the core Brothers in Arms series was 2008’s well-received Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway.
A tease about the future of Brothers in Arms wasn’t the only highlight from the Inside Gearbox Software panel today. See the stories below for more.