Stardock's Star Control to be a prequel, release date to be decided next year

Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has told Ars Technica the firm's upcoming Star Control title will be a prequel taking place 40 years before the events of Star Control 2.

According to Wardell his team decided to go with the prequel angle in case the original creators of the series, Fred Ford and Paul Reich, decide to pick up where Star Control 2 left off. Currently, the Toys for Bob duo are working on the Skylanders franchise for Activision.

"I talked to them quite a bit about what level of involvement they would like to have in the new game," Wardell said. "The main issue is that Toys for Bob is owned by Activision now, and as a result they cannot be officially involved at present.

"This has been a much discussed topic internally. Since Paul and Fred can't officially be involved, we decided we would create a new continuity that splits off from the Ur-Quan continuity starting 250,000 years prior where something happened to the Precursors. Morally, we just didn't feel it would be right to try to impose our vision onto Paul and Fred's sci-fi universe.

"We plan to start the game around 2112 with aliens first contacting the Earthlings and the formation of Star Control."

Wardell said the game is still a ways off though, as Stardock doesn't "expect to even consider" a release date until some point in 2015.

"We do expect the new one to be home on the PC but also be available on Mac, PS4, Xbox One, Steambox and any other platform that the Nitrous engine supports," he said.

You can read the full, in-depth article through Ars Technica.