Developer : Electronic Arts
Release date : 2008
Synopsis :
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames is an action-adventure video game developed by Pandemic Studios and published by Electronic Arts for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. It is the sequel to 2005’s Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. The game is a third-person shooter with an open world, set in a fictionalized war-torn Venezuela. The game’s primary objective is to kill the President of Venezuela whose betrayal of the protagonist mercenary acted as a stepping stone to their current position.
Following the closure of Pandemic Studios, EA announced in November 2009 that EA Los Angeles were working on a title known as Mercs Inc. The game was eventually canceled following the closure of Danger Close Games in 2013.
Following the events of the Second Korean War, the Mercenary and their technical support advisor Fiona Taylor leave Executive Operations to work independently. Three years later, the Mercenary is referred to a contract in Venezuela by Blanco: a Liberian who the Mercenary had worked with in Dakar. Blanco introduces them to Ramon Solano – a billionaire software entrepreneur with family ties to drug trafficking. Using his connections, Solano had convinced General Carlos Carmona and large portions of the Venezuelan Army to overthrow the government. However, General Carmona had since been captured by loyalist army units – leading Solano to hire the Mercenary to rescue him.
Upon rescuing Carmona and returning him to Solano, however, the Mercenary is betrayed and Solano attempts to execute them, shooting them in the butt as they flee his mansion. Humiliated and penniless, the Mercenary watches as Solano overthrows the Venezuelan government in a coup d’etat, then decides to take revenge and set up a PMC of their own.
Pandemic Studios began developing early ideas of Mercenaries 2 in December 2005; an early pitched concept took place in the studio’s home country of Australia, and featured robotic soldiers and a final boss that was secretly a cyborg. This idea would later be reserved for the shelved Mercenaries 3: No Limits. To counter the “dark and gloomy” atmosphere of the first game, developing artists wanted to create a colorful environment and were immediately attracted to somewhere tropical. It was decided relatively early on for the game to be set in South America, with beta tests taking place in Argentina and Suriname until Venezuela was chosen due to its massive links to communism, history of internal conflicts, and its importance to the international oil industry. In addition to the three playable mercenaries from the first game, a fourth and fifth mercenary character were also considered; one planned mercenary included Fiona Taylor, a prominent character who appears in both games as a non-playable character.
Mercenaries 2 was notorious at the time for its constantly changing release dates. Its original launch date was December 2006, before being pushed back to Spring 2007, Winter 2007, Spring 2008, Summer 2008, and then to its final release date of September 2008. This was met with a very negative reaction from fans, especially when retailers such as Walmart and Gamestop allowed preorders marked with a Winter 2007 release. Developers have since alluded that the game was released unfinished by EA Studios.
Source : Wikipedia
