Midway’s Newcastle studio may be closing soon, but that hasn’t stopped the Wheelman developer from working on their open-world detective drama, Necessary Force.

Craig Duncan, head of Newcastle, sat down with Develop, where he expresses his desire for the team to stick together.

“It’s really important that people know that this is a team that wants to stick together – sometimes when you look at buying a studio you can worry that the real talent, the people, will just flee the ship, leaving you with some IP, kit and an empty building; the pieces of the puzzle that aren’t really worth anything,” asserts Duncan. “But everyone here as worked together for at least two years, with the original core team still together after about ten years. We’ve been through the ups and downs and all want to stay working together.”

Duncan’s revealed a “great project” that the team is currently working on.

“The idea of a detective who sets his own rules is the sort of story that’s been around in movies for a while, but we don’t think anyone’s managed to capture the essence of those choices and consequences in games,” he says. “That unprecedented level of open world influence and troubled morality is something we’re really keen to explore.”

Necessary Force, as they’re calling the game, already has it’s own website and first trailer after just three months of development.

“I think that, because we were an internal studio within Midway, a lot of people don’t really know what we’re about,” says Duncan. “We’re not really a driving studio, although it’s in our heritage; we’ve got this great backbone of technology that enables us to make flexible open-world content relatively quickly.”

I guess now we know why Wheelman was so terrible.

Midway Newcastle reveals new IP as it seeks buyer [Develop]