Beta + Cancelled Xbox Video Games - Page 51 of 72

Fable is an Action RPG developed by Big Blue Box, a satellite developer of Lionhead Studios, originally published by Microsoft for the Xbox in 2004. Originally developed under the name Project Ego, Fable’s development involved more than seventy people. The game’s release was widely anticipated, due in part to Lionhead creator Peter Molyneux’s enthusiastic hype of the game. [Info from Wikipedia]

Many of the features promised for Project Ego were never implemented: the original concept was to give the player total freedom on the game’s world, but the final game was instead very limited. A cooperative multiplayer mode was planned too, but it was later removed. Most of the places seen in the early screenshots were removed from the final game or heavily changed.

Big Blue Box wanted to create a time system in which seasons and years would pass according to the game’s time, making our character to age and the world to change according. This hyped time-system was completely removed. The main character does age in the game, but after a cutscene and not following the game-time. As we can read from an IGN preview:

Not enough to convince you of how intelligent this game may be? Well, let’s say you are a mean cuss and one day you cut a kid. That cut will become a scar and if you return to that town twenty years later, that kid will have that same scar and a serious hate-on for you. Or maybe you’re more into plant mutilation. Carve your name in a tree and it will stay there through the years.

As you can imagine, this is not possible in Fable.

Even if one of the beta screenshots shows that we could have been able to kill even kids, that was not possible in the final version. As noted by ResidentDante from the NeoGAF Forum:

I remember Peter Molyneux telling about this on a documentary on tv. They let you kill children in the beta version, which they tested with a group of people. When they noticed a guy playing the game killing all the children around in the village, they decided to remove this “feature”.

Thanks to FullMetalMC for some of these images!

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Microsoft, Xbox

Kameo [XBOX – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

16-04-2008

4 Comments

Kameo was originally slated for the Nintendo Gamecube and was set to be one of Rare’s flagship titles for the system, along with Star Fox Adventures and Donkey Kong Racing. However, when Microsoft announced its purchase of Rare in late 2002, Kameo’s future was put in question. It was decided that work would continue on the Xbox, and a planned release date of 2003 was given. After several revamps, causing repeated delays, Kameo was put on indefinite hold in late 2004. Following this, rumours began that the game was once again undergoing a platform change, this time from the Xbox to the Xbox 360, where it was finally released as a launch title. – [info from Wikipedia]

[Thanks to Matt Gander for some of these images!]

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Concept Art

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Microsoft, Xbox

B.C. (Lionhead Studios) [XBOX – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

16-04-2008

6 Comments

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 evolve 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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Microsoft, Xbox

Gaia Blade [XBOX – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

16-04-2008

1 Comment

Gaia Blade is a cancelled Real Time Strategy Game with RPG elements for the original Xbox console. It was in development around 2001 by FromSoftware, during a time when they worked on many interesting projects for Microsoft, such as Murakumo, Thousand Land, Otogi, Metal Wolf Chaos. Gaia Blade was designed specifically for online multiplayer on Xbox Live and it was planned to be released around 2002.

You could have been able to build traps and other defenses for your base, to protect it from AI enemies (in single player mode) or other humans (in online multiplayer mode). Gaia Blade was set in a fictional fantasy world inspired by Norse and Western literature: each single-player campaign would have put you as the leader of one of 12 different available families.

Characters development would follow classic RPG mechanics, while combat was in real-time: players just had to plan their strategy deciding which character to use for each task and area of the world. You would have been able to see all of your characters at the same time in different parts of the map using a split screen, choosing which one to impersonate when in need. The game was focused on teamwork, with 12 different protagonists, each one with their own skills and troops. Units would learn through their experience during the adventure and react differently to the player’s commands.

It’s not known why the game was cancelled: we can speculate the rather negative ratings of their games released in the early ‘00s made the team rethink their strategy of working on many different games at the same time (such as Code Inferno, ¼ RPG and Goldstar Mountain), to just focus on the few, most promising ones.

Article by The_Phantom_Mask

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Microsoft, Xbox

Perfect Dark Zero [XBOX – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors

16-04-2008

1 Comment

Perfect Dark Zero started out as a prequel to Rare’s highly successful Nintendo 64 FPS title “Perfect Dark”. Originally planned for a release on GameCube, Perfect Dark Zero became a Xbox game as Microsoft acquired both Rare and the Perfect Dark franchise. Perfect Dark Zero first appeared on an E3 2001 list for the Nintendo GameCube lineup. However, it was not until Microsoft’s X02, where they announced the acquisition of Rare Ltd, that Perfect Dark Zero appeared again. While it was said to be released until late 2004 at latest, nothing but a few artworks of a cel-shaded Joanna Dark were shown, which saw heavy criticism from fans of the N64 classic. This criticism as well as internal issues led to the game being started again. While the game got a more realistic art style, several key people who had also worked on Perfect Dark left the studio including PDZ’s original lead programmer Brian Marshall, Jamie Williams and B Jones. Thus the title saw several delays. In late 2004, it was decided to release Perfect Dark Zero to Xbox 360, on which it was released as a launch title in 2005.

Mai-hem, a Chinese super villain with a comedy name. With her long pig tails weighted down at the end the idea was that she would use them as a fighting weapon even though she looked unarmed. In the final version Mai-Hem was still a villain, but looks vastly different and she no longer uses her hair as a weapon.

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