Syndicate unloading February 21

A reboot of the Syndicate franchise was rumored for years before Electronic Arts made it official earlier this month. The publisher is moving significantly faster offering the next bit of news for the game, as Gamasutra is reporting the shooter will be out worldwide in February.

More specifically, Syndicate will arrive for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in North America on February 21, with a European debut on February 24. Previously, Syndicate was scheduled to arrive in all regions during early 2012. No mention was made of a release date for the PC version. [UPDATE 9/29]: EA confirmed today that the PC version of the game will arrive alongside its console counterparts.

Unlike the top-down action strategy Syndicate titles from the 1990s, the new Syndicate will be a first-person shooter that casts players as Eurocorp prototype agent Miles Kilo. In 2069, three syndicates (Eurocorp, Cayman Global, and Aspari) wage war for control of the United States. The way they wage that battle is through small groups of technologically augmented humans whose modifications allow them to slow time, hack into rival augmented agents, and otherwise work for the benefit of their controllers.

EA is attempting to provide a new take on the Syndicate formula with weapons and setting from the original game pulled into the structure of a shooter. The game will also feature four-player cooperative missions, meaning players should be able to re-create the original game's four-man commando units, albeit from a new perspective.

On top of Syndicate, Sweden-based Starbreeze is also queuing up a new intellectual property with the help of Swedish filmmaker Josef Fares. Few details are available on that project, but reports suggest the game is being handled by the same team that worked on Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena.

[CORRECTION]: An earlier version of this story stated that Syndicate was releasing in Europe on February 23 in Europe. We regret the error.