Just over four years ago, Sins of a Solar Empire developer Stardock announced it had acquired the rights to Star Control from publisher Atari in order to create Star Control: Origins, a reboot of the space strategy series. Origins, which was recently delayed, is a prequel being made without the input of Star Control series creators Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III. Today, Ford and Reiche made it clear why: they were waiting for the right time to make a sequel of their own, and evidently that time is now.
"The stars have finally aligned," the pair wrote in an announcement post. "We are now working on a direct sequel to Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters, called Ghosts of the Precursors." The post also notes that the game is "early, early in development" and includes multiple returning characters and planets as well as all new alien races.
Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters released on MS-DOS PCs in November of 1992. Developed by studio Toys For Bob, which was founded by Reiche and Ford, The Ur-Quan Masters and its predecessor were published by Accolade, who passed the series rights to Atari in the late '90s. Toys For Bob was later picked up by Activision and put to work on the Skylanders series.
Stardock has been working closely with Reiche to prepare for this day. One of Origins' developers outlined their relationship in a recent post to the game's forums:
"Over the past four years, we have communicated [with Reiche] regarding the progress of Star Control: Origins. He asked us not to try to make a sequel to Star Control 2 and said that he hoped one day to be able to return to the universe he and Fred Ford created. Recently, Paul told me the good news: Activision was going to let him do a true sequel to Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters (i.e. Star Control 3 is not canon for that universe)."
Star Control: Ghosts of the Precursors does not yet have a projected release date. At the least, we can assume it won't take another 25 years.
