Almost three and a half years have passed since Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2’s release in 2016 and we have yet to hear news about the plant/zombie shooter and plans for a third installment. That is, until today when screenshots for the tentatively titled Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville leaked, along with a rumor about EA’s trademark on the game’s title.
The screenshots were allegedly fetched from the game’s closed alpha community playtest, which is currently being run on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The leaked images showed off multiple character classes as well as a hub area map. The characters include notable returning favorites such as the Pea Shooter, Sunflower, and Cactus. A couple of new characters were also seen in the leak, such as the Snapdragon, which was previously a spawnable plant, and a mushroom character named Night Cap. As for the zombies, a similar lineup of 10 characters were also seen along with various upgrades for these undead characters. The hub area map shows what is assumed to be Neighborville, which is considerably bigger than the staging area in Garden Warfare 2.
Multiple videos of multiplayer gameplay have also apparently been leaked, which has been followed by EA’s swift removals.
As for the trademark, a series of email screencaps hinted at the beginning of closed beta testing for a Plants Vs Zombies game codenamed “Picnic”. After that, EA filed a trademark in Europe for title Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, probably to avoid confusion with upcoming shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
In the end, all of this is still nothing but speculations at this point, and as such we should wait for EA’s official announcement at Gamescom 2019 regarding news about the Plants vs. Zzombies franchise.
