Warhawk fans have been waiting a long time for Dylan Jobe to show his hand, and a new message from the LightBox Interactive boss suggests the wait could be nearly over. Jobe, the director of the PS3 aerial combat game Warhawk, posted a short line on Twitter today that read simply “The calm before the storm.” There was no follow up, no image and no game name attached, but given the source, the community has drawn its own conclusions.
Starhawk Is Still Officially Unannounced
The working assumption is that the storm in question is Starhawk, the project widely believed to be LightBox’s first game. Nothing about it is official. Sony has never formally announced a Warhawk sequel, and LightBox has not confirmed what it is making. Still, the trail of clues is long. Kotaku reported back in March 2009 that the studio was working on a follow up described as Warhawk in space, and Sony registered a trademark for the Starhawk name the following month.
LightBox itself was founded in early 2009 by Jobe and other veterans of Incognito Entertainment, the Salt Lake City studio that built Warhawk for Sony. The team relocated to Austin, Texas later that year and has kept a low profile ever since, surfacing only occasionally to remind people it exists.
Jobe Has Been Teasing The Game For Months
Today’s tweet is the latest in a series of teases. Last month Jobe wrote that he had spent the previous couple of weeks working on builds for Sony, with plenty of play testing and refinement. He also acknowledged that keeping the game secret has been tough on fans and said he wanted the first showing to be real gameplay footage rather than a prerendered trailer. That comment alone suggested the game had reached a state Jobe was comfortable showing, at least behind closed doors.
Going back further, Jobe said last June that he was heading to Sony for a review and playtest, while cautioning that a beta was still very far away, and in October he stressed that the team would not rush the project. Taken together, the messaging has shifted from patience toward anticipation over the past few weeks, and the latest cryptic message from Jobe fits that pattern.
E3 Looks Like The Natural Stage For A Reveal
So when might we actually see something? E3 in June is the obvious stage for a Sony first party reveal, and many fans are betting on the show. Others in the community have floated the idea of an earlier announcement, a public beta, or even a reveal at a gathering of Warhawk players, but for now that is all speculation.
Warhawk launched on PS3 in 2007 as one of the console’s early online showcases, mixing ground combat, vehicles and dogfighting across large maps with support for big player counts. A single player campaign was never part of the package, which is one of the first things fans will be looking for if and when Starhawk is finally shown. For now, all anyone has is a five word tweet and a lot of hope.