Spark Unlimited working on Lost Planet 3

Despite our collective sighs at the now-invalidated Battlefront 3 rumors, Capcom has gone on to announce that  Spark Unlimited will be working on the Lost Planet threequel.

Spark Unlimited, the minds behind games like Legendary and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, will be making some interesting changes to the series, which sees a return to frozen planet EDN III.

That’s right. Frozen. This, my friends, is actually a prequel to the first game.

Private contractor Jim, who features in the debut CG trailer released today, will be exploring EDN III as one of the planet’s initial colonists, working for one of the game’s most prominent factions, NEVEC.

At his disposal will be a utility rig, a rudimentary mech that will serve as an ancestor for the series’ weaponized VS mech. One of the more interesting concepts about this utility rig is that gameplay will be in first-person when piloting the mech.

This change comes along with other new twists, such as a refocusing of plot-progression around an open world setting with quest hubs, a marked difference from Lost Planet 2′s coop-heavy campaign.

We can expect to hear more about the game as it moves along toward its proposed release date in early 2012.