EndWar to rage again

One would think that a game with the name "EndWar" wouldn't leave much room for a sequel. However, when the game in question involves one of the biggest brands from one of the largest publishers, that line of thinking would clearly be wrong.

Speaking with UK gaming site VideoGamer.com as part of the Develop conference in Brighton, England, last week, Ubisoft creative director Michael De Plater confirmed that the company is at work on a follow-up to last year's voice-controlled real-time strategy game. Ubisoft's Shanghai studio is once again handling development, with De Plater confirming that a "smaller team" there is currently at work on the title.

According to De Plater, the Shanghai team is primarily focusing its efforts on improving the game's single-player storyline, as well as the original's depth of gameplay. Notably, both areas mentioned by De Plater drew fire from GameSpot's generally positive review of the game last year.

Of the story, De Plater stated, "You compare [EndWar] to World in Conflict, or Company of Heroes, where they invest a lot in the storytelling. There's no mysteries about how we could do that and apply it in the game. It's just something we didn't give attention to. Giving more attention to the single-player is straightforward to address and will make the game a lot of fun."

De Plater went on to state that improving gameplay should also be a relatively painless endeavor. "Changing the way the combat chain works, the paper, scissors, rock, and adding the differentiation between the three factions, again, it's not something that's even necessarily hard to do; it's something that we chose not to do with the accessibility," he said. "So, yeah I think it's really easy and fun to address."

De Plater offered no expected release date or platform information on the sequel to EndWar, which was released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PSP, DS, and PC.