B.C. [XBOX - Cancelled]

BC was going to be an action-adventure video game in development for Microsoft’s Xbox video game system by Intrepid Computer Entertainment, a satellite of Lionhead Studios. It was cancelled in 2004, having been in development for some time; why is not known though it has been alleged that it was “overly ambitious”. Set in a Harryhausen-esque prehistoric time period, BC featured the player having to advance their tribe in a world inhabited by dinosaurs and other anachronistic creatures. From what is known, the player would assume the role of a tribal chief who is responsible for the welfare of his people. It is up to the player/chief to spur his people’s technological development and lead his tribe of cavemen to a Valley free of predatory dinosaurs and savage ape-man where they can evlove in peace. Part of that means that the player/chief would assign various duties to his tribesmen. However, it would also have been possible to play as any member of the tribe.

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Early images at E3 showed extreme clarity and self shading but early reviews called the artificial intelligence the most impressive thing. According Gamespot.com’s information on the game, the game would have had a foodchain, like Peter Jackson’s King Kong (video game), in which each thing would have been subject to being eaten by something higher on the foodchain. In addition the dinosaurs and other creatures would have been intelligent, interacting with each other acting independently of player. It would have been possible to affect the videogame world as a whole, leading some people to comment on the driving certain species to extinction.

Other things would have included capturing and training certain animals to use against tribal enemies. Animals known to exist in the world would have been Tyrannosaurs, Velociraptors, Pachycephelosaurs, Sabre-Tooth Tigers, Apatosaurs (or Brontosaurs as the game would have focused on anachronisms) dodos, ape-men, and others. As part of the exaggeration, the game, in addition to anachronims in dinosaur ages, would have featured dinosaurs as larger than they really were. In one preview, Molyneux was quoted as saying that the Rex seen in screenshots was a child, a third the size of its parent. the game was also planned to be very bloody. Gamespot quoted Molyneux as saying that the dinosaurs will spill “swimming pools full of blood” when killed.

At the moment, the game has been cancelled, fans believing that it was too ambitious to be made; indeed, even while the game was still in production, Molyneux said that he was unsure when he could release it due to “the ambitious nature of the gameplay and the high standards the people developing it are pushing for.” According to one article, as of May, 2002, “[the demo build] was roughly 50 percent complete”. Its cancellation was announced in late 2004 with Molyneux saying “The decision to suspend work on any games project is always a very difficult one, particularly when it is a title with the potential of BC.” However, fans hope that Molyneux will live up to his suggestion that the game might be revived at a later date

[info from Wikipedia]

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