Tigon Studios: "true" Riddick sequel on the way

Tigon Studios' Head of Production Ian Stevens has revealed that a "true" sequel to much-loved Xbox hit The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is in the works - the upcoming Assault on Dark Athena should be considered an "episodic expansion" rather than a follow-up.

"We've really tried to maintain that core experience [of the original] and embellish it for Assault on Dark Athena, which we see very much as an episodic expansion of Escape From Butcher Bay." Stevens told Eurogamer at Atari's recent Live event in London, UK.

"We're not calling it a sequel; we've got a sequel in mind that's a couple of years out if you guys want it, and you like this and you tell us you want more."

"[The full sequel] is ambitious and that is definitely going to follow the precedent that we set with the first," he went on. "But for now we've got a new story that we want to tell and a little bit of a single-player expansion on that original game."

Given that the Assault on Dark Athena "expansion" features an additional ten hour campaign to compliment the Butcher Bay story, all-new multiplayer modes, upgraded combat and seductive current generation visuals, the idea that this somehow doesn't add up to a "true" sequel is, frankly, a bit of a mind-bender. Thank heavens there's all that space on a Blu-ray disc.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is due out on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 next spring.