14 DAY TRIAL // F.E.A.R. 2 is set to arrive in early 2009, on February 13, and the developers at Monolith Studios say that the game needs to bring back all those fans who have been driven away from the franchise by the expansions and ports that other companies handled in the past.
The original F.E.A.R. was developed by Monolith but due to various “creative differences” between the studio and the original publisher, Vivendi Games. The two parted ways before console ports had been created and before the development of the two expansion packs for the game. The Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 versions of the game, which were put together by Day 1 Studios, did not retain all the polish and atmosphere of the PC version and disappointed a lot of fans.
F.E.A.R. also got two expansions created by TimeGate and published by Vivendi, called Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate. Dave Matthews, who is working at Monolith of F.E.A.R. 2, stated that the expansion “took the story in a direction that we didn't intend. We look at Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate as an alternate universe, a 'what could have been', and because of that it doesn't necessarily diminish the story that we were trying to tell. F.E.A.R. was about Alma, F.E.A.R. 2 is about Alma, and we wanted to continue the story the way we originally intended.”
After Warner Bros. and Monolith re-acquired the rights to the original intellectual property, they renamed their Project Origin F.E.A.R. 2 and talked about how the game would build on the original title, creating a story where Alma would be again a mysterious destructive force that the player must contend with.
Matthews also said that “there will be some slight variations between the different versions, so if you're on PC you can push some things further, our main goal is to make sure the experience is synonymous across all three platforms.”