World War Z is out now, and is a certified success by almost all measures. It sold a million copies during its first week, and two million in its first month, making it a sleeper hit and a success story for the co-op zombie shooter genre. With more content on the way, and with Focus Home Interactive focused on delivering on its promises of fixing all bugs and issues for the game, it looks like the title will be here to stay for quite some time.
Before World War Z, however, developer Saber Interactive was relatively unknown. The New Jersey-based studio’s first licensed outing was the video game adaptation for the film R.I.P.D., titled R.I.P.D. The Game. It received less than stellar reviews, which prompted the developer to try its hand once again at remastering classics for the PC, starting with Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and Halo Online.
What’s surprising is that these are not the only titles Saber Interactive proposed for a proper remaster. It would seem that at some point, in a pretty ironic twist, Saber had approached Valve for a remake of Half-Life 2. I find it ironic because World War Z gets its roots from Left 4 Dead, another Valve creation. Seeing as how World War Z became a success, I’m left to wonder if that would’ve been a good idea if it happened.
"After we did Halo Anniversary and Halo 2 Anniversary, as part of the Master Chief Collection, I reached out to Gabe Newell personally, because I knew him from a past life, and I said I want to remake Half-Life 2," Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch told Game Watcher in an exclusive. "That's all I want to do. I won't charge you anything for it. I'll do it for rev-share and doesn't even need to be a big rev-share. I just really want to do it because I love that game so much."
Of course, as you would expect, the response from Valve was something along the lines of: “Sorry, if we're going to do it, we're going to do it internally."
What’s even weirder is the fact that Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve, has allowed a group of fans to remake the first Half-Life. In any case, it would’ve been interesting to see Saber’s take on the title, considering that they appear to be very big fans of Valve’s catalog.
World War Z is now available to play on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and the Epic Games Store on PC.
