New Red Faction Developer Diaries

THQ has released two developer diaries for Red Faction Armageddon.

Half a century after the Red Faction resistance freed Mars, the red planet again becomes a battleground. Colonists struggle for survival in the underground mines after the surface is rendered uninhabitable. When Darius Mason, grandson of revolution heroes Alec Mason and Samanya, unknowingly releases a long-dormant evil, Armageddon is unleashed on Mars. As settlements are torn asunder, only Darius and the Red Faction can save mankind, in a battle that takes them to the core of the storm-blasted planet through ice caves and lava flows until they are face to face with the unspeakable threat.

Red Faction: Armageddon expands on the critically acclaimed, best-selling franchise with new, groundbreaking challenges.

The two videos released are titled “Red Faction Armageddon – Dev Diary – Danny Bilson” and “Red Faction Armageddon – Dev Diary – Jacque Hennequet.”

The Red Faction series began in 2001 on PlayStation 2 and PC, developed by Volition and known at the time for its GeoMod technology, which allowed players to blast holes through walls and terrain rather than being confined to scripted destruction. That focus on destructible environments became the franchise’s defining trait, carried forward and expanded across every subsequent entry in the series.

Red Faction: Guerrilla, released in 2009, moved the series to a fully open-world Mars and rebuilt destruction around the Geo-Mod 2.0 engine, letting players topple entire buildings and structures using explosives, vehicles and heavy tools rather than just carving holes in walls. Armageddon follows that game chronologically, picking up decades after Guerrilla’s uprising freed Mars from Earth’s rule, and shifts the setting underground as colonists are forced into the planet’s mining tunnels after the surface becomes uninhabitable.

Volition remained the developer for Armageddon, with THQ continuing as publisher, and the game introduced the Magnet Gun, a new weapon that lets players link two points in the environment together so that whatever is at one end gets violently pulled toward the other – a mechanic built specifically around the series’ destruction-focused identity. The shift to enclosed underground caverns and tunnels marked a departure from Guerrilla’s wide-open Martian frontier, trading exploration of a sprawling map for a more linear, action-driven campaign.

Developer diaries like the two released here have long been a way for studios to walk fans through decisions made during production, and Volition used the format to talk through both the story reasoning behind Armageddon’s darker, more claustrophobic setting and the technical work behind its destruction and combat systems. Coming from THQ, a publisher that backed the Red Faction series across multiple console generations, the diaries also served as a signal of confidence in the franchise heading into another major release, reinforcing the game’s positioning as a continuation of a series already known for pushing destructible environments further with each entry.