There's a sequence in the middle of No One Lives Forever where you're thrown out of a plane and plummeting towards the earth, and, at the same time, dozens of goons have jumped out of the plane after you, so you're having a gunfight while freefalling. Monolith's 2000 FPS is filled with moments like this; inventive, imaginative set pieces that feel a million miles away from the traditional corridor shooter. 25 years have ed since NOLF. Monolith, which also created schlock-horror Build engine icon Blood and reached the apex of body physics and shotgun effects in 2005's FEAR, has closed down. But in a new interview, remaster master Nightdive says it remains "optimistic" about bringing No One Lives Forever back.
Last time PCGamesN checked in on the our interview was in 2024) Monolith was still operational, but it was unclear who precisely owned the rights to NOLF. Monolith developed it, but the publisher, Fox Interactive, was bought in 2003 by Vivendi. Five years later, Vivendi merged with Activision, which later became Activision Blizzard, and is now owned by Microsoft.
It's a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, inside an enigma. But even though the legal situation is still unclear – and with Monolith now sadly shut down – Nightdive says the dream of a No One Lives Forever remaster is still alive.
"I'm still optimistic on that," the studio's director of business development Larry Kuperman tells VGC. "I don't think we really know how that's going to shake out. I think that's [Monolith's closure] too recent an event, and I'm not sure. There's a certain challenge to that, but again, I'm not sure how that whole thing is going to shake out at this point."
"Any time that there's just a general kind of shift in the industry, it does open some windows every once in a while for that kind of stuff," Nightdive studio head Stephen Kick continues. "So optimism is kind of where we're at. I think that there's at least a potential for something good to come out of that, but I don't know. It's too recent. I don't want to keep on falling back on that. Never give up. We don't give up."
If you miss the days of NOLF, try some of the best PC games.
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