Syndicate trailer looks great, but not the Syndicate I'd hoped for

After roughly a 15 year absence from the gaming scene, the much-revered Syndicate franchise will be returning to consoles and PCs in 2012, courtesy of Starbreeze Studios, the brains behind the FPS titles The Darkness and The Chronicles of Riddick.

Except this will be a very different Syndicate from those that fans of the series’ Amiga heyday will remember. As Starbreeze Studios FPS pedigree suggests, this is going to be a sci-fi shooter reboot much like the recently released Deus Ex: Human Revolution, as oppossed to the real-time strategy stylings of the classic Syndicate games.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, and the first official trailer for the game (posted above) certainly looks pretty slick.

But it also means it’s a Syndicate game in name only. Just as with the response seen to the the forthcoming X-Com reboot (another classic strategy title being turned into a shooter), hardcore Syndicate fans feel the long-awaited return to their favourite, complex strategy game is being watered down to appeal to as many Call of Duty players as possible.

It’s great to see Syndicate being revived so that more gamers get to experience its rich, BladeRunner-influenced universe, but Starbreeze are going to have to pull out all the stops to convince fans of the earlier Syndicate titles that this reboot is meant for them too.