Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 reworked, cut loose from BiA series

Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 was a curious announcement from Gearbox at E3 2011, both because it went silent almost immediately and because, well, it seemed to be a very silly game for a once-po-faced World War 2 series. CEO Randy Pitchford said that it was "evolving" a few months back, then over the weekend at PAX Prime revealed it's been split off from BiA so Gearbox could comfortably go crazy with it.

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Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 was a curious announcement from Gearbox at E3 2011, both because it went silent almost immediately and because, well, it seemed to be a very silly game for what was once a po-faced World War 2 shooter series. CEO Randy Pitchford said that it was "evolving" a few months back, then over the weekend at PAX Prime revealed it's been split off from BiA so Gearbox can go crazy with it.

Whatever Furious 4 is now, it's no longer a Brothers in Arms game, with a mysterious new name. Gearbox is hosting its annual Community Day on September 15, so we may hear a little more then.

Pitchford hinted to Kotaku that, like Borderlands mixes FPS and RPG, Furious 4 is now a a genre hybrid too, though he wouldn't say which genres it was smooshing together. He explained that cutting loose from BiA gave Gearbox the freedom to do whatever it fancied, though it hardly seemed to be holding back with Furious 4 in the first place.

Here's that old announcement trailer again:

From The Chatty
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    September 3, 2012 9:15 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 reworked, cut loose from BiA series.

    Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 was a curious announcement from Gearbox at E3 2011, both because it went silent almost immediately and because, well, it seemed to be a very silly game for a once-po-faced World War 2 series. CEO Randy Pitchford said that it was "evolving" a few months back, then over the weekend at PAX Prime revealed it's been split off from BiA so Gearbox could comfortably go crazy with it.

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      September 3, 2012 9:25 AM

      If only this were becoming the promised Duke Nukem WW2 origin story, right gang!

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        September 3, 2012 9:26 AM

        And that's how Duke got his first ride stolen from him.

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        September 3, 2012 11:13 AM

        What promised WW2 origin story? Was Duke Begins supposed to take place in WW2 or are you talking about something else?

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      September 3, 2012 9:59 AM

      Given the serious take that the original BiA series had, this is good news.

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        September 4, 2012 2:23 AM

        Totally agree, it wasn't a fit at all.

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      September 3, 2012 10:16 AM

      oh hey, we're finally talking about this

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      September 3, 2012 5:05 PM

      This is pretty sick. Just like Inglourious Basterds, it glamorizes the ruthless killing of soldiers/people who where forced by their fanatic politics leaders to fight in this war.

      How would Americans feel about a game, in which a group of Native Americans takes pleasure in avenging the genocide of their people by murdering hundreds of frontiersmen...?

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        September 3, 2012 5:35 PM

        100% okay. We need a game like that.

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        September 3, 2012 5:43 PM

        [deleted]

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        September 3, 2012 6:12 PM

        Assassin's Creed 3?
        Custers Revenge?

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        September 3, 2012 6:14 PM

        i'd play that

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        September 3, 2012 6:59 PM

        Some Americans would hate that, but those would be the humorless idiot Americans, so we don't care.

        Also, a number of Eurasian diseases killed off massive numbers of the Native American population long before the aggressive expansion of colonial powers in the 18th & 19th centuries.

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        September 3, 2012 7:23 PM

        I wouldn't play it, or this game for that matter. I'm not stupid or humorless, but I feel there is a solid line between cruel humor and just plain cruel. According to the trailer, this game seems to define the latter.

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        September 3, 2012 9:19 PM

        You make a fair point but I don't think you understand something: Inglourious Basterds never happened. Neither did the events in this game. There were never a squad of ruthless revenge hounds. Hell, in IB they kill Hitler.

        No, what you're seeing here is a combination of revenge porn and gallows humor. There were probably a lot of Nazi soldiers that didn't agree with the war and didn't agree with (or maybe even know about) what the Nazis were doing (Holocaust, etc.), but there were some who did. These are the ones who were tried at Nuremberg, etc.

        This game is basically saying every Nazi was an evil fuck and so it makes killing them OK. Like I said, it's revenge porn and gallows humor. We know not everyone in Germany was on Hitler's side (see: Operation Valkyrie) but I don't think anyone takes this game seriously. Any more than any other game where you're murdering identical people wholesale because they're trying to get you. If this game was identical but about a fictional conflict it would be fine. Oh wait, it's been done already as Borderlands.

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          September 4, 2012 2:26 AM

          If my eyes roll any harder, they'd fall out. This is the worst "trying-to-be-even-handed" post that fails utterly at looking up the subject matter. I wanna see you say that when they're kicking down doors to get at your azz.

          They were nazis that gassed jews. Japs cut down Chinese civs by the hundreds of thousands and got their pics taken in the newspaper. And let's not forget the Italians, just cus they did their crime against humanity in remote places doesn't mean they weren't axis.

          This kind of historical revisionism goes hand in hand with holocaust/nanjing massacre denial.

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            September 4, 2012 2:42 AM

            You've never spoken to anyone who actually lived in German when Hitler came to power, have you?

            The man was an evil fuck, to be sure, but it's not like the entire population of Germany was lining up to throw Gypsies, Jews, cripples, and homosexuals into the ovens. But when you simplify a complex geopolitical conflict like WWII down to "All Germans/Japanese/Italians were just evil!!!!!!!" you're putting your own black and white biases onto a very complex situation.

            Stating that not all of the Axis soldiers were the physical embodiment of Evil isn't historical revisionism, it's just pointing out the truth.

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              September 4, 2012 3:17 AM

              What is "physical embodiment of Evil?" That sounds like quasi-religious terminology that only clouds the issue and doesn't say anything about anything.

              If you spent any time learning about the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, you'd know that the German people at the time were complicit to a large degree that removes any argument any reasonable person could make to the contrary. Sure, they didn't order the gassing themselves, but the sweeping level of support might as well have. There's a myriad of historical reasons for why people so blindingly followed a fringe character, yes, but plenty of people were more than happy to take the Jewish belongings once they got rounded up. What happened in Germany is consistent with historical european-wide antisemitism, it just kicked it up a whole 3-4 notches.

              There's no such thing as totality of anything, nevertheless what happened was, without a doubt, a tyranny of majority.

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                September 4, 2012 4:24 AM

                It was, undoubtedly, a tyranny of a majority. But I think looking at in those terms discounts the fact that they were also a populace who were the first to be fully exposed to the propaganda machine that was made possible with the widespread adoption of radio, film, etc. Look at a film like "Triumph of the Will", for example; while the "ideals" expressed in it are utterly disgusting, it was unlike anything that had been seen in modern times when it comes to pushing forward a political/social agenda. If an entire populous is fed a diet of hatred towards "The Other" on a constant basis, is it any wonder that that viewpoint begins to take hold after awhile?

                I don't know if I'd go as far as to say that the German people are necessarily any more evil or complicit than any other society that has waged wars throughout history. From warring Greek city-states, to the Roman conquests of Europe, to the colonization of the Americas, humanity has a history of building a culture where your group is right, and "theirs" is wrong and needs to be eliminated. When you are raised from birth, or utterly inundated during your lifetime, with the belief that you are the chosen among all of humanity, it is remarkably hard to escape that viewpoint. We're all products of our environment. Unfortunately, some people have the misfortune of being raised in an environment that promotes hate and fear of any group that isn't their own. We're slowly moving away from this mindset, thank God, but I think it will take many generations to come before we realize we're all part of the same big family; tribalism is just too deeply ingrained into our beings.

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        September 4, 2012 2:14 AM

        Oh please. They weren't forced, they did it willingly. Everyone knows that. Nobody is forced to become so fanatically fascistic.

        And I find the comparison between the nazis and the native americans so blindingly inept and inappropriate, it turned me onto this nazi-killing game!

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          September 4, 2012 2:25 AM

          No they were forced to skin the scalps from our heads. Everyone knows this.
          They're as sadistic as we are. All humans are just as sadistic basically. Cirumstances don't matter much.

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            September 4, 2012 2:30 AM

            What are you talking about? That's a f**king movie!

            Whereas racism so extreme it warranted the wholesale slaughter of an entire group of people simple for being who they are, that is fact you have to live with.

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              September 4, 2012 2:44 AM

              Whereas racism so extreme it warranted the wholesale slaughter of an entire group of people simple for being who they are, that is fact you have to live with.

              I agree. The racism and zealotry with which European settlers carried out and justified the widespread slaughter of Native Americans is awful, and is a fact they have to live with.

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                September 4, 2012 2:54 AM

                And Australia. And Central/South America (Twice, first the Spanish/Portugese and later the Americans). And parts of arctic north.

                What Nazi did was nothing new. The reason people are up in arms with it is cus the Nazis did it to other Europeans. It's all the same to me.

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                  September 4, 2012 3:03 AM

                  Pretty much. This is also why I pray we never get contacted by another species. Based on our history as a species, if they're anything like us humanity is proper fucked.

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                    September 4, 2012 3:33 AM

                    For what it's worth, I'd have to give starfaring people some credit. I think movie aliens are just a reflection of us. It goes without saying that not all cultures of the world are like this.

                    Scifi movies with aliens who are hostile are, ironically, anti-imperial anti-colonist in nature. Take cowboys and aliens for example, the goal is to kill all aliens and destroy their ship before they can get back to their planet to bring more aliens/ships/weapons. Basically, kill all the pilgrims before word can get back to the old world.

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        September 4, 2012 2:31 AM

        I'd play the shit out of that game.

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      September 4, 2012 6:54 AM

      So, when can I give them my money?

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