The businesses have been working on it for years and used it for something else last year.
Both Tencent and Remedy, the company that was responsible for the development of Control and Alan Wake, have decided to entirely abandon their collaborative gaming project known as Kestrel, which they had been working on since 2021. In November of the previous year, the firms made the decision to move in a different route from their original plan to produce a free-to-play cooperative shooter they had been working on. They went back to the drawing board, changed the name of their project from Vanguard to Kestrel, and revised their original goal to create a “premium game with a strong, cooperative multiplayer component” instead. During that time, they stated that their game will “lean more into Remedy’s core strengths” and would make use of repurposed versions of the company’s assets and themes. However, it is quite clear that their partnership was not destined to be.
According to the announcement made by Remedy, the cancelation of the project will enable the company to devote more attention to the development of its other games being developed. The firm is now working on a franchise spin-off game that is currently known as Condor, in addition to the sequel to Control that will be launched on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and personal computers. However, the company did not name the games that it is working on. The company will shift developers to its other game projects, and because it was planning to co-finance Kestrel with Tencent, the cancellation of the project means that the company will have fewer requirements for investment and recruitment because of the cancelation.
Codename Kestrel was still in the early idea phase, according to a statement released by Remedy’s CEO Tero Virtala. On the other hand, the company’s other projects have already “advanced well” and are going on to the next phases in their development. “This is yet another means to ensure that our game projects continue advancing well,” Virtala stated further.