A new report from VICE’s Waypoint confirms that there was a sequel to United Front Games’ open-world title Sleeping Dogs that was in development, but was cancelled by Square Enix.
Patrick Klepek, senior reporter for Waypoint, got his hands on the documents that United Front Games used to pitch Sleeping Dogs 2 to Square Enix in 2013, shortly after Sleeping Dogs was released. The documents describe a lot of new features, such as co-op gameplay, procedurally generated missions, branching narratives, and a second screen experience using a mobile device. Apparently the second screen experience would have been free to play even if you didn’t own the game.
Additionally, players actions (whether using a smartphone or the main game) would affect the world for all other players. The document refers to this as “massively single-player,” with all copies of the game being connected to each other through cloud saves, so that actions taken by players affect the game world for everybody.
Unfortunately we won’t get to see this ambitious sequel, since the game never made it past pre-production. Even worse, United Front Games has shut down for good after failing to find success with their most recent game Smash+Grab.
Square Enix still owns the rights to Sleeping Dogs so it is still possible that there may be a sequel in the future, but up to this point they have shown no interest in doing so.