Xbox 360

BioShock 2 [Beta – PC Xbox 360 PS3]

BioShock 2 is a FPS developed by 2K Marin and Irrational Games, released in february 2010 for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Users at 2K Forums noticed many beta differences in the early trailers of the game, especially in the “Hunting the Big Sister” demo:

  • It would have been possible to explore areas from the 1st game (some of them underwater)
  • Tenenbaum was going to be the player’s guide
  • Splicers ran away in fear from the player
  • Textures looked more like the original Bioshock
  • You were able to carry more health packs and eve hypos
  • The whole demo is set up differently. It starts as the normal game would, but the path and events are fairly different, including the final scene of the demo, that location, Fontaine Futuristics, is towards the end of the game.
  • Looks like the drill recharges when it’s not used. In the final game you had to find drill fuel.

Also, as we can read on Wikipedia, the original story and gameplay elements related to the plot were changed / removed from the final game:

The story received major changes over the course of development, with two of the most important relating to the player’s character and the Big Sister. Initially there was only going to be one Big Sister who would continually hunt the player down throughout the course of the game and then retreat once she was defeated.

This Big Sister was written as a Little Sister who, as she grew up on the surface, could not leave the memory of Rapture behind and eventually returned. The reason for the change, as explained by Zak McClendon, Lead Designer for 2K Marin, “If you have a single character that the player knows they can’t kill because they’re so important to the story you’re completely removing the triumph of overcoming that encounter with them.”

Jordan Thomas explains however, “The soul of the original Big Sister character still exists, but in the form of somebody you get to know over the course of the game.” The other major change is that the player’s character, Subject Delta, is no longer the first Big Daddy, but rather the fourth prototype. He is, however, the first to be successfully ‘pair-bonded’ to a single Little Sister.

Also, according to Rockpapershotgun’s BS2 review the special edition’s art book shows lots of unused designs

I’ve already completed Bioshock 2. None of these things were in there – the Big Daddy with arms like tortured tentacles, another which looked like a spaceship on legs, the Splicer whose grotesquely mutated face had become a fleshy whirlpool, a hideous sea-beast halfway between a merman and giant phallus, a frail, frock-wearing Big Sister who carries her hulking oxygen tank around on a rickety hand cart… Where are they? What happened?

Thanks to Robert Seddon, Robert and Dr. Swank for the contributions! If you can find more differences in the early Bioshock 2 screens and videos, please let us know!

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2 Finger Heroes (Natal) [X360 – Cancelled]

2 Finger Heroes is a canceled beat ’em up  made by Arkedo studios that was supposed to be played with the Natal, the Xbox 360 “play without a joypad” add-on.  From the concept arts, we can see that the characters were controlled using the fingers o with some basic gestures, like folding your arms.

An interesting  project, which like the other Arkedo games also displayed an original graphic style (as seen in the concept arts below) and  a twisted story.

Unfortunately in the end the game got shelved because of development issues. As we can read on NeoGAF:

“One of the designs flaws of this, apart from the fact that it demanded some very precise pattern recognition from the Natal system, is that it would have been HELL to localize. Yup, what can be understood as the victory sign in France, could be a terrible insult in the UK, for instance. And we are not even talking about Italian. Oh, the possibilities..”

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Hei$t (Heist) [X360/PS3/PC – Cancelled]

Heist (HEI$T) is a cancelled action game that was in development by inXile Entertainment and would have been published by Codemasters for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. The game was to be set in San Francisco, California, circa 1969, where the players would have been able to control a group of criminals as they perform various thefts. In January 2010 Codemasters announced that the game had been officially cancelled, as we can read on CVG:

“After a much extended development period, Heist has been terminated as a project and removed from our release schedule,” a Codemasters spokesperson told CVG.

“Codemasters is focusing its future portfolio on high quality titles that will, in the majority, be developed and produced by our internal studios.”

Some more info on Heist’s gameplay can be found in the original press release:

In addition to knocking off banks, each with their own set security precautions, throughout the city, players will be highly motivated to pull off further jobs. These include raiding bars, restaurants, strip clubs, armoured cars, and more in order to acquire the bigger and better tools needed to penetrate the increasingly more difficult banks.

Thanks to Robert Seddon and Landlock for the contribution!

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GoldenEye 007 Remake [Xbox 360 – Cancelled]

A remake of GoldenEye 007 (codenamed “Project Bean”) for Xbox Live Arcade was in development at Rare Ltd. during 2007 and 2008. Goldeneye 007 was a critically acclaimed FPS for the Nintendo 64, originally published by Nintendo in 1997 and still loved by many fans. Although Microsoft, Activision (current owners of the game rights to the James Bond franchise)and Nintendo were said to have agreed upon a licensing deal for the title initially, Nintendo Japan allegedly refused to grant their permission at last minute. Therefore the remake had to be canned only months before completion.

Much like the original Goldeneye for the N64, the developers who were involved in the making of this XBLA remake had their faces scanned and implemented into the game (as enemies / civilians / scientists / naval officers). In the game we would have been able to change the HD converted graphics to N64 graphics, an online multiplayer mode was planned, along with the traditional split screen mode. Goldeneye XBLA would had over 200 point’s worth of achievements and a time trial leader boards.

Some more info can be found at Mundo Rare:

[…] the game was developed in just one year by just 8 people; Dam, Depot and Frigate levels are selectable as multiplayer arenas (even the fabled Citadel was considered just “for the fan reaction”) and the N64 version isn’t technically a port, but a rather smart graphic filter use that makes the new game look the old-fashioned way.

It’s possible that the engine used for this Goldeneye remake was later reused for the Perfect Dark XBLA Remake. Some images in the gallery below are from XBOX Magazine. In August 2016 Rare Thief uploaded on Youtube more than 30 minutes of footage from this lost game, you can see the video below! Some more details were also shared on their website:

Throughout the video the player uses the rumored feature of switching the game’s graphics between the original Nintendo 64 textures and the remake textures on the fly. The switch between the two appears to take zero effort or time, and can be done whenever without having to pause the game.[…] After the tour of some select missions, the video presents a few of the multiplayer options. On top of the expected multiplayer levels are three news ones including Dam, Frigate and Depot. Something even more interesting than that is the option to set all character heights to be equal, meaning Jaws and Oddjob would no longer have their advantages.

Thanks to DCodes7 for the contribution!

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Saint Row 2 [X360/PS3/PC – Beta]

Saints Row 2 is a sandbox / action game game developed by Volition Inc and published by THQ for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2008. James Tsai,  SR2’s Lead Designer, in and interview with IGN revealed that some content had to be removed from the game before it was published:

JT: In the early stages of development we had some really crass stuff in the game, the kind of things that put you in that weird place where you’re laughing and squirming uncomfortably with guilt at the same time. One prototype had you driving a truck full of smuggled underage foreign prostitutes across the city while rival pimps rammed into you, knocking the girls out and cutting into your human trafficking profits. Another had you using a high pressure fire hose to wash homeless people off the street and into the gutter. Not exactly Nobel Prize material.

There was a lot of stuff we had in that didn’t register very high on the human decency scale, so we dialed some things back. For instance we changed the gender of the first character you encounter, since beating a female doctor to death with an IV stand wasn’t the impression we wanted to leave with the very first player action in the game. Instead, we have you beat a male doctor to death with an IV stand, to ease you into the killing.

From the early screens we can also notice various beta differences:

  • You can not customize characters in youe crib in the final
  • There was a different looking crib
  • Hideout has a different appearance
  • A pic shows  a cutscene that was removed

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