14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that publisher THQ is ready to announce something interesting related to Red Faction, its action franchise that managed quite good reviews and sales with the launch of the third game, Guerrilla. The company has registered two online addresses linked with Red Faction, Origins and Armageddon, making sure to get the URLs for a few alternate spellings as well. The registrations are valid until February 22, 2011 and THQ will likely use them before that date to promote a new videogame.
Even before Red Faction: Guerrilla came out, THQ had plans to launch a fourth game in the series, capitalizing on the idea of full terrain and structure destruction. Initially, it was set to come out before the end of March 2012 but since then, Brian Farrell, who is the president and the Chief Executive Officer of THQ, announced that due to the commercial and critical success of the series, the game would be coming out before March 31, 2011.
It's highly unlikely that the publisher will gamble on putting the title against the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Halo: Reach in the fall so a date for January of February 2011 could be a good bet. Details could be offered at the E3 trade show, which is coming up in June.
Volition might handle the development of the new Red Faction and the two names, Armageddon and Origins, could be linked with one product or two names that will be used for Red Faction 4 and another member of the same gaming family.
With Mars secured at the end of Red Faction: Guerrilla, the new Armageddon might refer to an assault from the EDF, aiming at taking over the planet again, while Origins might be a smaller downloadable or even free companion videogame showing off the background of some of the characters that will appear in Armageddon.