Arrowhead Game Studios, the company behind the year's biggest shooter Helldivers 2, once prototyped a successor to space combat sim Star Wars: TIE Fighter that "could have been amazing."
Just yesterday, Arrowhead's freshly minted CEO Shams Jorjani hosted an ask-me-anything session on the Helldivers 2 subreddit where he broke down what his gaming history looked like. Jorjani cited Subnautica, Kerbal Space Program, Dota 2, and Super Smash Bros. ("I'm a Kirby main and I hate myself for it") as some of his most-loved games, but his "all time favorite game is TIE Fighter."
Star Wars: TIE Fighter came out in 1994 and put players in the cockpit of the Imperial space fleet during the events of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The game itself was actually a follow-up to the similar Star Wars: X-Wing games, and it now sounds like we could've received another successor from the Helldivers studio.
"TIE Fighter, the game that killed its entire genre because all of its successors were just never as good," one fan commented. "You should've seen the prototype we did," Arrowhead founder and Helldivers 2 director Johan Pilestedt responded, "It could have been amazing."
The only question now is whether the studio prototyped a spiritual successor similar to the space combat classic or an actual successor with all the Star Wars beeps and bots and designs, but either way, whatever it was had been worked on by the studio.
Arrowhead is unlikely to go down that flight sim route now since, y'know, the team is a little preoccupied with adding to the ongoing Galactic War effort in live service juggernaut Helldivers 2, which is set to receive "more and better stuff" long-term. But with so many fans down bad for anime girl Eagle-1, I wouldn't put it past the studio.
