Sniper Elite brings two reheats this year, and a full sequel later

Well, this is great news for Sniper Elite fans, and I speak as one: The cult-hit stealth/shooter/period piece is not only getting a Sniper Elite 5, to tide its many friends over until then there are three other projects in the works.

That would be a remaster of 2012’s Sniper Elite V2, the launch of 2014’s Sniper Elite 3 on Nintendo Switch (as Sniper Elite 3: Ultimate Edition), and a virtual reality project. Rebellion Developments Ltd. chief executive Jason Kingsley outlined the franchise’s plans in a 2019 development update on Thursday (above).

You won’t hear anything else about Sniper Elite 5, or whatever it will be called, for at least the next year, Kingsley said. “It’s still very early in development,” he said, “but the team here are busy working away in the background to create the latest, greatest Sniper Elite experience.”

Sniper Elite 4 took the shovel-jawed, hawk-eyed hero Karl Fairburne up against Italy’s fascists after bagging and tagging Nazis in North Africa (Sniper Elite 3) and Berlin (Sniper Elite V2). The latter game — which Kingsley rightly noted really brought the series into the main — will bring its infamous X-Ray Kill Cam into higher resolution, so you can shoot the balls off those bastard fascists in 4K.

Sniper Elite V2 Remastered launches later this year for PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Xbox One, and will make the franchise’s return to Nintendo with a same-day launch on Switch. Sniper Elite V2 Remastered will also include new playable characters and a frame-by-frame photo mode to enhance players’ anatomically-correct executions.

Remastered packs in all the downloadable content for the original game as well. Four premium missions followed its launch. No word on whether that includes a remaster of Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army, which was a very popular tide-me-over that arrived about a year after launch (on PC, and then was packaged with a follow-up in 2015 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One). Nazi Zombie Army was a stand-alone title as opposed to an extension of V2.

Like Sniper Elite V2 Remastered, Sniper Elite 3 Ultimate Edition on Switch will include all of that game’s premium DLC, which includes three missions (and the Siwa Oasis’ first appearance in a video game, preceding Assassin’s Creed Origins by three years).

Finally, following the success of 2016’s Battlezone 98 Redux, Rebellion is bringing Sniper Elite to VR headsets. While this title will be “set in the same Mediterranean conflict as Sniper Elite 4,” Kingsley said it will be a stand-alone title, rather than an adaptation of that game for VR. Platforms were not announced, but the development update video showed a player testing it out on PlayStation VR.

The Sniper Elite franchise, which has maintained a loyal following despite consistently nonplussed review scores, launched 14 years ago with Sniper Elite on PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Rebellion counts a fanbase of some 20 million over the years.