United Front’s Sleeping Dogs is one of the best open-world games ever made. A blend of Hong Kong martial arts action and John Woo gunplay, the story of Wei Shen is so good that Hollywood has been attempting to make a live-action adaptation for over a decade.
While a sequel was in development, it was quickly scrapped alongside an online MMO spin-off dubbed Triad Wars. With the closure of United Front, it seems unlikely that we’ll ever get another game in the Sleeping Dogs series, but designer Alastair Cornish has faith that fans will get to embody Wei Shen again one day.
Cornish, who worked on the original Sleeping Dogs, explained on an episode of our FRVR Podcast that they weren’t surprised that a sequel was scrapped. However, the loss of a potential follow-up was a major disappointment.
“It was super disappointing because there was a tonne of space there and you’ve got a fantastic team,” Cornish said. “The funny thing with teams is that you’ve got to really look at where they’re positioned. Where’s the studio? What are the studio overheads. What’s the rent like? How expensive are the teams and are there competitive studios around there that are driving up wages? And in terms of UFG (United Front Games) and Vancouver, boy, that was the epicentre of that happening. That’s happened a few times where a sequel would be possible, but not really at the costs.”
After Sleeping Dogs 2 was scrapped, United Front did move to the aforementioned Triad Wars, which Cornish believes was a “big misstep”. “I think they were chasing different—at that point, the business strategy was the hit a different market and a different audience,” he said.
The closure of United Front Games was a huge hit, and Cornish explained that the “experience” of that team would’ve led to a great sequel. While making a new game in the series would be a huge undertaking—creating gun combat, melee combat, parkour, driving, and more—the designer believes there’s always a possibility of a return.
“People love open world titles. I think, it depends to what fidelity you’re going for. It depends [on[ the market you’re targeting. It depends on what tools or techniques have helped bring down, if any, the cost of development,” he said.
“Never say never in game dev. So no I think it could happen, but you would need a bit of planetary alignment, right? You’d need really passionate people with a lot of different strings to their bow who are really tight about where they’re spending, really smart about where they’re spending, really honest with themselves about what’s working on what’s not.”
If a Sleeping Dogs 2 was to happen, Cornish explains that it needs to use the open world well and justify its existence. The original game did this very well with side activities that made sense for Wei Shen’s background and the story being told, and a sequel or successor would have to follow suit.
“Sometimes open world games, why is it even an open world game? You have games that feel like there’s too many cookie cutter activities, too many whatever collectathons and they’ve made a bloated world to have a bloated world,” he said, adding that there used to be an “arms race” to have the biggest world that shouldn’t really exist anymore.
“I think we’ve got over that now,” he said. “I think you get more tightly focused worlds now. I think the whole chasing the bigger map thing now has thankfully died.”
Right now, a new Sleeping Dogs isn’t in active development, and there isn’t a team really set up to deliver on one. Nevertheless, there’s still a fervour to experience a new game in that vein, even with the behemoth of GTA 6 coming over the horizon.
