Black & White Remaster Might Be in the Works, Peter Molyneux Says
The creator of the god sim genre thinks that making EA and Microsoft develop Black & White 3 or 4 "is really tough."
Lionhead
"When will Black & White 3 be released?" is the question many fans of Peter Molyneux's god simulator genre have been asking for years now, but alas, neither we nor Molyneux himself have the answer. However, there might be something else going on.
In an interview with PC Gamer, he hinted at a remaster of the nostalgic series, although he didn't share any other details: "I think there are people working on a Black & White remaster. But it would be inappropriate for me to talk about it".
"I think" is the important part here, so don't expect the news to emerge soon or at all. Still, I hope there's truth in the rumor, even without Molyneux's involvement in the development.
It's been 21 years since Lionhead B&W 2 came out, published by Electronic Arts. A lot has changed since then: the studio and its IPs, including Black & White, Fable, and The Movies, were bought by Microsoft, with the publishing rights remaining at EA. Lionhead was shut down in 2016, and the future of its god simulators is now bleak.
"[Black & White] is such a difficult, difficult, challenging title to develop," Molyneux said. "It really is. I mean, there were so many systems in there which just were inventions, first-time inventions. You've got to remember there was no middleware [back then], so [mastering those systems] is the first big challenge, and this is a challenge with Masters of Albion, too. The player can look and be anywhere in the world at any time, and the traditional ways of doing optimizations on a game is knowing that the player is only in this space, and that means the rest of the world can just be forgotten."
In Black & White, the joy was zooming in and out of wherever you wanted at any time, and that created a lot of technical challenges. "[Also] that genre, that slice of the pie, is withering all the time. So, you know, getting a big developer like EA who owns the rights to Black & White 3, and Microsoft who own rights to Black & White 4, getting them to say, right, we won't do one of these big wedge games, [and instead] we'll do four other games [from smaller wedge genres, is really tough]."
This split between two big companies makes the triquel even less likely to be made, I assume, especially when they are so fond of live-service games.
As for Molyneux, he is now working at his 22cans studio on Masters of Albion, a title in his iconic god game genre, released in April in early access. It offers what the developer does best, although some players report bugs and other issues on Steam.
Hopefully, we'll see another Black & White game soon. For now, subscribe to our Newsletter, join our 80 Level Talent platform and Discord, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, and Instagram, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
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