Star Wars: Dark Forces cemented its status as one of the best remaster studios around, and now the dev wants to return to the holy grail FPS revival they let go 9 years ago
Mar. 21, 2024It’s a whole new world out there, after all
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Hot off of the release of the Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster, Nightdive Studios is once again campaigning for the chance to revive the cult classic FPS series No One Lives Forever.
Nightdive specializes in retro remakes and remasters, building very well-regarded revivals of titles like Turok, Quake, and System Shock over the past several years.Dark Forces may have already had an excellent fan remaster, but Nightdive brought an equally excellent upgrade of the Star Wars game to a much larger audience - all while successfully navigating whatever Disney licensing maze stood in the way.
But perhaps no licensing challenge is more labyrinthine than that of No One Lives Forever. Originally developed by Monolith Software in the early 2000s, the two games quickly captured the hearts of shooter fans. They blended FPS gameplay with a load of well-considered stealth mechanics, a totally mod ’60s aesthetic, and a charming sense of humor. The two campaigns quickly came to be regarded among the best single-player FPS experiences ever made, but the march of technology just as quickly made them challenging to run on increasingly modern PCs.
You see, WBmighthave the rights to No One Lives Forever through its ownership of the original developer, Monolith. But the rights might have belonged to Fox Interactive, a 20th Century Fox division that was eventually purchased by Vivendi Universal Games. Vivendi then eventually merged withActivision.
Nightdive went back and forth with representatives from all three potential No One Lives Forever rights-holders - WB, Fox, and Activision - butnobody knew who actually had those rights. The Activision rep suggested that the original contract would’ve predated digital storage, so proof of ownership might literally be buried in a box somewhere in one of those three corporate offices. And none of the three companies were willing to sign off on a remaster for fear that one of the other two would dispute the ownership.
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