10th Planet (Bethesda) [PC – Cancelled]

10th Planet (Bethesda) [PC – Cancelled]

10th Planet was an ambitious space combat simulator in development as a co-venture between Bethesda Softworks (you know, the studio that published The Elder Scrolls series) and Centropolis Production, two names that in the mid / late ’90 meant an high value game and lots of hype. Centropolis is a film production company founded in 1985 by Roland Emmerich, behind such popular movies as Stargate and Independence Day.

Another small company named “XL Translab” was hired to create high quality cinematics for the game’s intro and the story that was handled by the same Hollywood team that produced ID4. Here’s a short teaser from the game’s auto demo:

Somewhere beyond the orbit of Pluto, a planet full of aliens is waiting. In a centuries long orbit, this 10th planet is heading toward earth. Only your brilliant strategies and expert piloting can destroy the alien invaders. Based upon the Xngine, which provides a true 3D environment for real time space combat.

10th Planet was in development at least since 1995 and Bethesda acquired XL Translab in December 1997, possibly because they were impressed by the FMV they created for the game. The project was briefly shown in Next Generation magazine on February 1997, were they called it “the coolest space combat sim since TIE Fighter“. Bethesda planned to recreate space battles against large sci-fi armies and huge alien ships, similar to the ones seen in Independence Day, but unfortunately something went wrong and 10th Planet had to be cancelled.

A former Bethesda developer remember that the cinematics created by XL Translab were beautiful for their time, but costed a lot of money and made the real time game on the Xngine to look ugly in comparison :

yeah I remember sitting in the Bethesda theatre and seeing what you produced. It looked great if we were going to produce a new TV show but unfortunately it probably killed the product. How on earth were we ‘the game artists’ supposed to recreate the world you were selling. Too much time and money was wasted on this trailer.

At the moment we don’t know how much of the game was completed before the cancellation, if you worked on this lost project, please let us know!

Thanks to Sam Jones for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:


What do you think about this unseen game? Give your vote!

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading...


Would you like to add more info, screens or videos to this page? Add a comment below!

(your first comment will be moderated before to be published)

monokoma




6 thoughts on “10th Planet (Bethesda) [PC – Cancelled]

  1. Simonc

    There was a second version of 10th Planet which was in development some time a bit later than this one – maybe 1997 or 1998 – at Simis (UK developer who went on to be Kuju.) Bethesda still wanted to release a version of the game. As far as I remember, this was ALSO cancelled because we were asked to do the game on quite short notice & so worked on gameplay over special effects. (There was probably some pressure to have a really good looking game after the first one didn’t work out.) Not sure the game was ever re-announced with this developer. [Simis worked on some similar games around that time such as Xenocracy so had an engine ready.]

    1. monokoma Post author

      Wow, thanks a lot for sharing them Sir! It’s always nice to save some forgotten documents like these, interesting to know Bethesda were already marketing the game way before it was complete :O

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *