According to THQ’s VP of Core Games, Danny Bilson, the follow-up to 2009’s excellent Red Faction: Guerrilla will release in March of 2011, and will represent a “hybrid” between that new entry to the Red Faction franchise, and the older series entries, Red Faction 1 and 2.

Speaking to Joystiq this week, Bilson said:

“The new game takes [Red Faction] to a whole new place, it kind of goes back to the old Red Faction because about 80% of it is underground.”

The game hasn’t yet been named, and by the sounds of it, there may have been serious doubts about carrying on the Red Faction name at all, after a bit of surprising news that Red Faction: Guerrilla didn’t meet THQ’s sales expectations.

Instead of scrapping the license, however, and taking the technology (which apparently cost THQ a “fortune” to develop) over to a new or different intellectual property, the team felt strongly that Guerrilla was a quality title that got the critical success it deserved, but not the commercial success that was necessary, and will continue on with Red Faction and try to introduce new fans to the series through special giveaways and promotions.

The next Red Faction game, explains Bilson, will be a more structured open-world game, and more of a narrative-based shooter, as compared to Guerrilla’s disparate mission-based and exploration system.

Look forward to ‘the next Red Faction game’ in March 2011, then, but until then you should look up El33tonline’s previous coverage of Red Faction: Guerrilla, and read our review, just for good measure.

Source: Joystiq