Cheers!
1. Is the new game set in the same universe as the others? Hmmm... kinda-probably-maybe?
The overall setting in this one is on either Earth or an earth-like planet where the level of technology is kinda like ours now, but progressed maybe 50-100 years. Aka some things are the same (true now as of the 1950s), and many other things are different. However, aliens have invaded and they and their robots basically took over everything. There are some humans left, kinda working for the aliens and kinda slaves to them. Overall a lot of my inspiration comes from the White Mountain books, which I loved as a kid (the tripod trilogy). Really hard to go back and read them now as an adult, though, because it turns out they were fairly poorly written.
Anyway, a lot of that doesn't fit into the lore of what happened on Earth Prime, so to speak, in the general Arcenverse. However, there isn't any reason to say that this isn't Earth 28 actually set 1000+ years into our future. Some of the "historical" things that we'd find familiar might be intentional cultural aesthetic choices on the part of the (now former) denizens of that planet. Kind of a retro thing to mix in with their future tech (after all, we can't sacrifice convenience, now, can we?).
That would also explain why the wildlife is so very different. The trees and whatnot would be more similar thanks to terraforming and the fact that a lot of us have an attachment to that sort of vegetation. That said, not all of the trees are native to earth, not remotely. I'd been thinking that those were alien invasive species as they start terraforming Earth Prime, but the reality might be that those are actually the native plants to Earth #28 (or whatever it is), and WE terraformed the heck out of it, making life difficult for the local flora and fauna.
2. Will we be seeing Burlusts and similar in this game? Probably not, unless we do a successful kickstarter and that's a stretch goal. That's a lot of custom 3D modeling to really do them right. Lore-wise this would really have to be something other than Earth Prime for that to make any sense in the timeline, too. In general the AI kept humans far away from the TLF and SBR races, mainly because [redacted -- that would have been major spoilage for SBR]. But I'm sure that Jack, the official keeper of the Arcenverse lore/timeline at this point (Watashiwa) could come up with some sort of side timeline for this that would make sense. Everyone from each race didn't just go one place at all times, so there's thematic consistency there -- so long as this game was set in the correct temporal period.
3. I'd love to do DLC for Bionic Dues, but I don't think it would sell enough for it to be feasible for us to develop it with our core staff. If someone wants to do it as a passion project at some point, then we could work something out for royalties (whatever there would be) on said DLC if that was desired. But it would have to be the right people in terms of having existing knowledge of that game plus a solid plan for what to do, plus knowledge of the general type of code and blah blah.
4. As far as doing some sort of story patch-in for Bionic, it might be possible, yes. I'm not sure how exactly that would go, though. I do see this as being set on Earth Prime and part of the machine uprising. However, I also have thought of that as being far earlier in the timeline than the human civil war and earlier than the AI attacking them. A few hundred years, anyway. The stuff going on in Bionic Dues is more "the rumblings before the real storm," and you can see some of the potential causes of what leads to civil war later, as well as how the AIs get loose. But those AIs are not centralized or very good yet, and rebellion against the city-owning corporations has not yet begun.
5. Tidalis: The Last Skyward Bionic Rogue AI Haven Valley Beyond Reach. Love it -- sold!
