When the first F.E.A.R. launched for PC back in 2005, it raised the bar for first-person shooters. Its graphics were second to none, and the intelligent AI and creepy gameplay garnered legions of fans. However, all the factors that made F.E.A.R. such an excellent game on the PC did not transfer when the game was ported over to consoles. The graphics in both the 360 and PS3 versions took a hit, and the PS3 version suffered from framerate issues. However, Dave Matthews, the primary art lead for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, has assured fans that this will not be the case with Monolith’s latest title.

Speaking with CVG, Mathews said that he believes the poor console ports of the first F.E.A.R., which were handled by Day 1 Studios, caused the franchise to loose some potential fans. However, Monolith is taking charge of all three platforms this time: “Now we’re handling all three versions, we’ve changed our development structure to develop all three SKUs simultaneously and there’s no lead platform. While 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.”

F.E.A.R. 2 is also going to ignore the story laid out by the two previously released expansion packs for the first game: “TimeGate (the developer in charge of the expansion packs) 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.”

It’s good to know that the F.E.A.R. franchise is back on track. For a long time after its release, F.E.A.R. was used in the majority of benchmarks testing the power of CPUs and GPUs alike. With the original developer back at the helm, there’s no doubt that they will be pushing the performance of all three platforms to the max.

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