Visceral Games has confirmed the rumour that originated last year, but was named only because it was the fourth project and not because it included four-player multiplayer.
"That was an internal thing we had," senior producer James Nance said.
"We had [two Army of Two games] and then there was an expansion pack for Army of Two, so it became Four internally. It's not the fourth instalment, it was an in-development, working title. Now it's The Devil's Cartel."
When asked whether four-player multiplayer was considered, Nance responded: "We certainly talked about it, but we really focused on two-player co-op, that's our thing.
"We could have done competitive multiplayer, we could have done four-player or something like that, but we didn't think it was true to what the franchise is. Couch co-op, online co-op, we wanted to stick with that."
Alongside death, taxes and terrible Adam Sandler movies, video game sequels are just another crushing inevitability of life. Sequels and franchises are the lifeblood of the industry, so you can bet any halfway successful game will be aiming towards at least five more follow-ups and spin-offs in pursuit of more delicious money.
Yet even major franchises tend to run themselves into the ground eventually, where they can either reboot themselves and come back stronger than ever (think the new Tomb Raider games) or stay buried in the past.
We all have game franchises we love so much that we don't care what others
think. Then there are games that the majority just agree shouldn't exist.
Sometimes it just takes one of these to kill our most beloved series.
It Takes One Game to Kill a Franchise
Street Fighter V and SoulCalibur V come to mind.
True, and it depends on what the devs learn from the experience whether or not the franchise can make a comeback. Or even make it's first "comeback". Like with Nier. Nobody cared about the first one, but it's hype all around for the sequel :p
Sometimes a game can kill a franchise even before it starts, if it doesn't perform as well as expected. The Order 1886 is an example of this.
I want to say socom with socom 4 as it was by far the worst but confrontation had its issues also. However compared to socom 4 confrontation was amazing. Still not socom 2 but it worked.
Only in gaming can you engage in multiple planet-clearing world wars or explosive shootouts where one man somehow takes on hundreds of opponents. There's stiff competition as to which game really has the highest body count, so to make it simpler here we're going to generally avoid anything that's too “big picture” in the death department. Check out the top games with the most ridiculous body counts now!