They're making an open world Terminator survival game

True to its word, the Terminator keeps coming back. Nacon has announced the Terminator Survival Project, which I presume is a working title like the name of Blizzard's upcoming survival game, called Unannounced Survival Game. It's an open world game that will be the first ever survival game set in the Terminator universe.

If you're not familiar with the Terminator, it's a killbot from a post-apocalyptic future where machines are at war with mankind, and it starred in two good movies and four not-so-good ones. The cyborg (sometimes the terminator is covered in living tissue like skin and hair so it can pass for human) is known for traveling back in time from the future to kill young John Connor, because in the future old John Connor is very good at fighting robots. Bad news, though: Connor's mom, Sarah, is also very good at fighting robots.

There's an extremely brief teaser of the Terminator Survival Project above, where we see a pair of glasses on the floor of a warehouse—owner unknown, but they look a lot like Sarah Connor's metal rimmed shades from Terminator 2. A door opens and the shadow of a figure can be seen. Who is it? Did you guess "a Terminator?" Jackpot. There are flames behind it, because the Terminator loves to blow things up while trying to kill the Connor family and associates.

Unfortunately we don't have a whole lotta details about the Terminator Survival Project. "The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic open world and features an original story that builds on the events of the official films," says Nacon Studio Milan. "You play as a group of nuclear apocalypse survivors fighting to stay alive in a time period between Judgment Day and the creation of John Connor's resistance."

That's a tough timespan to pin down. Depending on which Terminator timeline you're in, Judgement Day could take place in 1995, 1997, 2003, 2004, 2011, 2017, or 2021. (Thank you, Terminator wiki.) This is what happens when you travel through time trying to murder children, the dates of things get messed up. So don't do that!

As for the years in our non-Terminator universe, there's no release date announced yet, but the Terminator Survival Project will become self-aware on PC and unspecified consoles in "the future."

Weirdly enough, we just took a look at nine survival games (also in the future) that every survival fan should keep their eyes targeted on.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.