Just Friday, we brought you word that Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser's new outfit, Absurd Ventures, was developing an open world action-adventure game. In an intriguing turn, IGN turned up some new information on the in-development title, suggesting that whatever the next game from the GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 writer is, it looks like it will take place in an expanded sci-fi universe.
Spotting that Absurd Ventures had announced a release date for the first volume of its sci-fi series, A Better Paradise, it seems like the sci-fi universe in which it takes place could be the setting for the studio's upcoming game. Out 10th June, the audio fiction series tells the tale of "the ill-fated development of an ambitious but addictive digital game-world project led by inventor and psychologist Dr. Mark Tyburn".
Buried further in the press release, it was revealed that: "In addition to launching Volume One of the A Better Paradise audio series, Houser, Lazlow [Jones], and the Absurd Ventures team are in various stages of development on multiple projects set in the A Better Paradise universe, including additional audio fiction seasons, as well as television and video game titles." IGN has confirmed with a source that the in-development open world action-adventure game is in the A Better Paradise universe.
It sounds pretty cool, and we can't help but get excited at the prospect of something so different from a storyteller like Houser. The description for A Better Paradise describes the undeniably evocative setup: "As the advanced software they developed began delivering unexpected and disturbing results, the team fell apart under strange circumstances, and the project was abandoned. The game world and the super-intelligence within were discarded, dormant, and undiscovered. Until now."