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Aries (First Eye Interactive) [PC – Cancelled]

Aries is a cancelled Free to Play futuristic sci-fi Massively Multiplayer Online First-Person Shooter developed from 2010 to 2012 at least, by First Eye Interactive, exclusively for the PC. The game was officially revealed during Spring 2012 on Kickstarter:

The game takes place during Earth’s destruction the human race began an expedition to a new habitable planet they could call home. However, they were detoured during their travels and crashed landed on an unknown planet soon named Aries. During their time on Aries, civil rivalry between ranks broke out and sides were chosen on who should lead. Earth survivors soon realize many of their own technologies were found on Aries and a bigger story for the destruction of Earth starts to surface. The objective now for survival is to find resources to help rebuild the survival ships and to get back on course to the second Earth in the mean time surviving the dangers that Aries presents to Earth’s survivors.

Aries is a massive multiplayer online game filled with the latest weapons and vehicles. Players will be able to dictate their own reputation through weapon choice, class abilities and profession. Play as several class abilities that are unique in there own ways from Special Forces, Sniper, Naturalist, Artillery, Engineer, Medic, Spy, and many more to master in the world of Aries; not only will there be hundreds of weapons you can choose from, there will also be vehicles, alien domestic creatures  that can be driven or ridden. You will have to use your skills and wits with strategic tactics to do well. To avoid getting conquered in the player versus player in this game you should go through the top secret missions and raid missions.

Aries brings amazing scenery and destructive scenarios from town battles to remote locations hidden in the forest and jungles. Players will need to know what the advantages and disadvantages of weapons, vehicles and professions.

Team strategy and tactics is a major key to this game. Squad leaders will be able to call all the shots, call out enemy movements, and call in supplies, reinforcements, air support and artillery. You will need to use each team’s profession tactically when in battle

Gaining rank in Aries will bring you more rewards and influence with the side you choose. Gain General status and become your leaders go to unit. Rank can provide better missions for better rewards. Develop bases to be known in Aries and for refugees to seek out for safety. Establish your own special unit to be known in the world of Aries and build your own base to defend.

Aries will be operating on the Unreal 3 engine – a stable and proven medium for games with breathtaking visuals and visceral combat. Players will be able to experience both First and Third-Person Shooter gameplay, made possible by the Unreal 3 engine. This allows player to enjoy a combat experience similar to hit games like Mass Effect or Gears of War.

Aries’ game world is one of mysterious alien ruins, monstrous creatures, and inhospitable jungles. First Eye Interactive is committed to creating a game that is both accessible and incredibly immersive. Aries will achieve cinematic quality in both visual interaction and sound design. Players will be amazed by a lifelike and realistic world they can interact with in ways that have not been explored in other contemporary MMOs. Collision detection, visual degradation and destruction of both environments and items is all possible with Unreal Technology.

However, their first crowdfunding campaign didn’t work, the project only collecting 951 U.S.$ on a total sum of 275.000 U.S.$, Nonetheless, another Kickstarter campaign was launched by First Eye:

Does not look like we will reach our goal. However, I will repost ad at a lower amount to work on things in phases.

During this second crowdfunding campaign, some more information regarding the background had been shared:

Faction Choice

Choose the side of Solace, Kyridian, and Ghost. These legendary leaders from the old world Earth have their own plans to help protect the survival of the human race.

Solace

Solace is a man of action. For him, power is directly correlated with brute strength and the iron fist. Solace forces tend to exhibit many of his traits. Combat forces can acquire heavier armor than their alter-faction counterparts, and all Solace’s troops have access to weaponry that can pack a serious punch.

Kyridian

Doctor Kyridian’s forces make up a more gruesome side of war. He has embraced the art of biological and surgical enhancement to make his forces more powerful. Though the extremes of his experiments have led many to suspect that his mind has crossed into madness, no one can argue his results. Kyridian troops are bioengineered super soldiers, enhanced and modified to fill their roles perfectly. Doctor Kyridian uses an amazing array of implants, prosthetics, bio-engines and chemicals to increase performance

Ghost

Ghost’s troops are true to their nature, they are ghosts. Lethal and deadly assassins preferring to strike from the shadows and disappear just as quickly. They use their stealth as a tactical advantage over bombarding their enemy in open combat. Ghost’s forces tend to use highly coordinated strikes to disable and dismember their enemies.Ghost forces tend to shy away from heavy or clumsy armor and focus on training and equipment that aids them in fighting with smart tactics versus pure brawn.

First Eye also planned this time to launch the title first on mobile devices, then, eventually, on PC.

However, it was another fail, the title collected this time 437 U.S.$ on a total of 10.000 U.S.$. Despite this second attempt, developer announced that they planned a third campaign:

We thank you so much for your support. We are not stopping development at all. We will open up another Kickstarter page soon. However, we want to get a lot of our followers aware of our facebook page and twitter page. Check us out there to get up-to-date info every week. New art work and information about the game.

However, it didn’t materialize and the last glimpse about the game was on November 2012 on the project’s Facebook profile. Since then, main developer Derrick Smith turned into a fantasy author and has written two books.

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The Amazing Eternals [PC – Cancelled]

The Amazing Eternals (formerly known as Keystone) is a cancelled Free-to-Play sci-fi team-based multiplayer online first-person shooter and cards game hybrid developed and published by Digital Extremes, from 2015 to 2017, exclusively for PC. It used collectible cards to determine the character’s additional abilities during a match and included deck-building for customized gameplay.

Players was traveling through a 1970s-themed “multiverse” represented by a virtual game board with decks of cards that confered special bonuses, powers, and weapons. The game moved into closed beta in September 2017 with a total of 6 playable characters named Eternals:

Winter – A ruthless Carythian bounty hunter, the most infamous in the galaxy. Rumored to have assassinated the King of the Cosmos, he rarely rejects a job.

As word spread of the arrival of alien heroes into his reality, whispers of a galactic prophecy began to circulate. Winter is now contracted to track down and stop the rebel scientist responsible.

Winter, Skirmisher specializes in intense frontline combat. With a well-timed Red Vora stim, he stabilizes his health and jump starts regeneration, keeping him in the fight.

Nautica – Shipwrecked at the age of five she survived on her own, clinging to the debris of her ship for weeks on end. Found and rescued by the World Turtle, Nautica grew up with the colorful residents who lived on her protector’s back.

Imbued with the powers of the ocean, and trained by powerful water elementals, Nautica has returned to save the planet and heal the world.

Nautica, Sea Star calls forth a giant, shimmering sea star to shower allies with healing water.

Ray – Mission Specialist Raymond Windstone: Astronaut. Mechanic. Nozzle enthusiast.

Four-time “Action Science” Magazine”s Man of the Year, Ray is a man out of time. Pulled from his reality by mysterious forces and facing danger on the fringes of known space his wit and mechanical skills keep him alive… and looking good doing it.

Ray, Combat Engineer supports ally positions with a Pulse Turret, putting additional pressure on enemy forces or just causing a clever distraction.

Niia – A resourceful huntress. Surviving in the harsh desert wastes, she’s become a master marksman and tracker out of necessity. Spending almost her entire life alone she drifts between settlements taking odd and often unsavoury jobs that suit her particular set of skills. She has never lost a quarry and has never missed a shot. Charging her bow increases effectiveness. She also uses a Ritual Spear, an ancient family heirloom.

Her unnatural talents may stem from her ability to attune her spirit to those of her ancestors, calling on them in times of need.

Niia, Elusive Trapper throws a slowing trap that makes enemies easier targets. Can help Niia evade pursuers. Her Haunt ability tracks and exposes targets.

Bristle – A creature of myth; a manifestation of pure primal terror.

Folktales tell of Bristle taking children in the dark of night when nothing stirs, their bones discovered years later, meters from where they had entered the forest.

He comes for you: a creature born of your fear of the forgotten places. A ravenous legend.

Lumbering. Hungering. Pitiless. Starving for the nourishment of your blood, and bone.

Bristle, Bark Wall springs forth a dense woodland barrier that blocks pathways and sightlines, allowing allies a safe place to take cover.

Dread – Grotesque and vile, Dread is both a monstrosity of creation and a marvel of science. After a series of forbidden experiments to resurrect the dead a husband and wife team, to their great misfortune, discovered the secret of eternal life.

A horrible accident crippled Anabel, killed her husband and leveled their lab. Years later, obsessed and mad with grief Anabel, harnessing the blackest of machinery and unholy electricity, honored their work by reanimating her husband; but what came back was something else. Something… not him.

Dread, Havoc Bag throws a volatile contraption that explodes with electric fury, dealing damage and disabling enemy devices for a short time.

But unfortunately, the game was quickly put on-hold on October 27th, 2017, less than two months after lauching into beta, as we can read on MCV:

“After many discussions internally on the state of The Amazing Eternals, we have decided to hit the pause button on development at this time,” a Digital Extremes statement confirmed. “This decision didn’t come lightly. We worked hard to make a game that we are proud to say was shaping up to have great potential.

“However, we took an honest look at the current gaming landscape and how the game was performing in Closed Beta. Unfortunately, the game wasn’t attracting players fast enough to support a viable matchmaking player base with the current game design direction, which is the lifeblood of this type of game. So, with heavy hearts, we’re taking a step back to reevaluate the design and may revisit our intrepid heroes in the future.”

The game was announced last spring and only received its official name in August. It was to be a free-to-play multiplayer “hero shooter”. Early footage had a whiff of Overwatch about it, but it certainly boasted its own style, leaning into a 1960/70s aesthetic.

Some months later, on July 9th, 2018, Meridith Braun shared to PCGamesN more information on why they decided to pull the plug on the project:

“A lot of things were converging at the same time then and what we realised was that it was the right game at the wrong time. The competitive landscape at that time was pretty hefty. We just saw LawBreakers not do so great, and it was a fantastic game, so that was sad. That happened right when we were starting our closed beta for Amazing Eternals.”

LawBreakers got plenty of negative publicity around its release, but it was directed more at the game’s low player count than its actual quality. The game reviewed well enough, and the few players it had seemed to enjoy sticking with it, though it wasn’t enough to compete against the likes of Overwatch and the rising tide of battle royale. At the time, director Cliff Bleszinski pointed to Warframe as an example of a game able to escape low player counts.

At around the same time, Digital Extremes announced the Plains of Eidolon expansion. Braun says “that really blew up and doubled the numbers on Warframe, and suddenly that became the resource hog that we hadn’t realised.”

“We weren’t seeing the traction we had hoped for in the closed beta, and weighing that against the success of Plains of Eidolon it just made good business sense to pour those resources back into Warframe.” Thus, The Amazing Eternals was cancelled. “It was a hard decisions but it was the right decision at that time.”

But the developers aren’t giving up entirely on launching a new game.

“I think we’ll try again, but I don’t know when.”

Today, Digital Extremes is still around and kicking, thanks to the huge success of Warframe, whose last expansion was released on September 7th, 2022. On July 2022, they announced a brand new game called Soulframe, alongside a game developed by Airship Syndicate that they will publish.

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Twilight War: After the Fall [PC – Cancelled]

Twilight War: After the Fall is a cancelled futuristic post-apocalyptic Massively Multiplayer Online First-Person Shooter developed by Smiling Gator Productions, then General Computers Inc, from 2003 to 2007 at least, exclusively for the PC. As we can read on the old defunct website, the game took place in 2296 after a cataclysmic catastrophe called “the fall” by the survivors have wiped out most civilizations from the planet. It was pretty similar to the Fallout series.

Twilight War: After the Fall is an Extreme Online Roleplaying Game (XORG): a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) with an integrated First Person Shooter (FPS) style combat system, where thousands of online players come together in an expansive and immersive three dimensional world. Twilight War takes place on a unique world where vast areas of the planet have been reformed following a catastrophe of cataclysmic proportions called The Fall by survivors.

Some areas of the World remain relatively untouched, but the ravaged areas are mixtures of wastelands, wilderness, mutant and alien biology. Nomad tribes, lawless brigands, and mutants roam the ruined Outlands, and in the darker places twisted animals and horrible creatures prowl. Bioengineered creatures and mutants resulting from radiation make the world dangerous to traverse. The remnants of Human civilization are scattered and divided both by vast stretches of wilderness, and by ideological rifts.

Another race lives alongside the remaining Humans, a dying alien race desperate to find a new home world. The Skel came with advanced technology, genetically manipulated warriors, and the will to conquer. These aliens lurk in the wilderness, adding to the danger.

Seek shelter and a more orderly existence in the pockets of civilization that remain, or explore kilometers of wild Outlands and ruined cities. Find, buy, or create a vehicle to suit your needs – but remember that fuel and spare parts are rare. Find and train, or purchase, a mount – more vulnerable than a vehicle but more affordable and nearly self-sustaining. Think you have the perfect high tech rifle? It is the bullets that are sometimes hard to obtain. Battle among the ruins against creatures and brigands. Scavenge Pre-Fall materials and sell them for a profit. Join an allegiance and fight against their enemies, or remain neutral and indifferent to everyone but yourself.

There are four types of character associations in the game – factions, alliances, allegiances and clans.

Factions refer to in-game groups of associated characters, such as the Silics or the Hell Riders. Factions are not player-controlled entities, though player activity can influence them. Every character has a faction rating with each of the factions, based on many factors such as race (Human or Mutant), how many of the faction members they have slain or wounded, and the results of faction-based missions that they choose and complete. How other characters react to you is based on your faction rating with them, as well as on your actions (if you shoot a friendly character, you take negative faction hits and the character may defend themselves or run away).

All characters start the game “neutral,” though faction ratings are adjusted based on whether or not the character is a Human or Mutant. Characters can eventually join an alliance, if they like. To declare allegiance to a faction, characters work toward the common goals of the faction. For example, to become a member of the Silic Republic, one would take Silic missions, hunt down and destroy Silic enemies, or exterminate local nuisance creatures. Once a character declares an allegiance to a faction, they can gain faction ranks, which in turn allow the character to use special faction items, take special faction-only missions, provides access to faction-only areas, own property on faction land, etc.

Characters can only join one faction at a time, though you can nullify your allegiance and join a new one after a period of time – but beware! Leaving a faction will to some degree hurt your faction rating with your former friends. Also, if your faction rating drops below a certain point, you may find yourself forcibly removed from your faction!

Clans are player-created and controlled entities like you find in any MMORPG. A clan can be formed by player characters wanting to make their own in-game community. The clan leader’s character determines what kind of other characters can join the clan. Members of enemy or warring factions will not be able to join, and if an existing clan member’s faction rating drops far enough, they could be automatically ejected from the clan. Though clans are player-created and controlled, they still have to abide by faction restrictions. If your faction ratings are neutral enough, you will probably be able to join any clan. If a clan becomes large and influential, they may have an impact on the in-game factions and story plot.

Using the Source Engine, development was progressing quite well during the first two years and Smiling Gator’s members Matthew Simmons and Kingsley Montgomery were interviewed on RPG Vault:

R.A.: What is the game’s basic underlying concept or premise, and what are the core gameplay elements we can expect?

K.M.: Twilight War takes place in Earth’s future, with a virtual environment encompassing over 1,000 square kilometers of total terrain on release, with plenty of expansion space. In the late 21st century, a recently united Earth is devastated by a war with an alien race called the Skel, a war that, over the course of several years, utterly destroys civilization and most of Earth’s inhabitants. Two centuries after this Doomsday War, remnants of humanity, a new breed of biogenetically and radioactively altered mutants, and the descendants of the Skel fight to survive in a hostile world. Skirmishes are fought over scavenging rights in the skeletal remains of once great cities, and over the limited resources and remaining technology that litter the landscape. Exploration and scavenging will be a large part of the game. There will be far fewer resources compared to most games, so in many ways the game will be a quest for resources.

R.A.: How much of a backstory and story element are you planning, and to what extent will the latter be ongoing?

K.M.: The setting takes place in 2296, 200 years after the Doomsday War and The Fall destroyed human civilization. A number of survivor factions have emerged to stake their claims on the remaining resources and hidden technology left behind. Player characters can join many of these factions, and fight for their supremacy, or choose to remain aloof and forge their own destiny in the wastelands.

R.A.: Aside from post-apocalyptic settings being relatively uncommon, how do you intend for Twilight War to differ from other upcoming online worlds?

K.M.: First, the combat system will be a true merging of RPG and FPS – you will point and shoot, and move more like you do in a shooter game, but the effectiveness of your attacks will be partially based on your character’s skill with the weapon. We are also going for realism and depth – there will be complete systems for encumbrance, item decay, economics, item modification and exploration.

R.A.: Will the gameworld be varied in terms of having different types of terrain and architecture? And what means of travel will be available to cover long distances?

M.S.: The world will be large and diverse, with areas of alien forests, volcanoes, seas, wastelands, old battlegrounds and ruined cities. Travel and exploration will come in many forms. Players will be able to train and own mounts, and find and modify vehicles, each with advantages and disadvantages. Driving an armored buggy may be superior to riding a destrier, until you run out of gas or blow a tire in the middle of the wastelands! Most long distance travel is expected to involve mounts and vehicles, since there will be encumbrance restrictions placed on carrying items. But there are also skills that allow the adventurous types to live off the land and explore areas inaccessible to vehicles and most mounts.

R.A.: Just how combat-oriented will the gameplay be, and what are your primary goals what will obviously be a pretty major element?

K.M.: The game is highly combat-oriented. The future is all about survival. This also plays into the FPS-style combat system, which will make combat very intense. There are many reasons to fight other than outright survival. You may choose a faction and fight for its ideals. You may fight over scavenging rights, fuel, ammunition or that fine-looking, partially rusted 2291 model year sedan that still has a working fuel cell engine. You may fight over drugs, or you may fight to destroy a nest of energy vipers to make the nearby village a safer place. You may also take bounties out on Outlaw player characters.

R.A.: What kinds of computer-controlled enemies will players encounter? Will they face a large assortment, and what are some interesting examples?

K.M.: Outlander vagrants, biker gangs, wasteland wanderers, bandits, brigands, slavers, drug runners, cannibals and faction soldiers will be some of the main challenges you will meet. There are also many creatures, most of which are either alien in origin or the descendants of 21st century genetic engineering, which was all the rage before The Fall. One such creature is the Colossus, which is about the size of a house. Another is the Smilodon, one of several prehistoric animals recreated originally to entertain the masses but who now more often prey on the masses!

R.A.: At this point in development, what can you tell us about weapons, armor, items in general, how they” be acquired and how important they’ll be?

K.M.: Weapons and armor are very important. There will be everything from scale mail to advanced composite power armor, from crossbows to plasma weapons, as some of the survivor cultures have more tech capability than others. Most equipment will be usable halfway up the skill progression tree. Most of the advanced equipment will be rare, and it will need expensive maintenance. Equipment can be acquired many ways – through spoils of combat, scavenging in ruins, rewards for completed missions, trading with other characters – player characters and NPCs – and as a reward for faction service.

M.S.: Also, all items will degrade with use. Keeping the game world from filling up with tens of thousands of items is one of our goals, and maintaining equipment to keep it from falling apart fits with the genre. This will also help to maintain a realistic in-game economy, so there will never be a glut of something and most everything will have some value.

Unfortunately, troubles occured on January 3rd, 2006 with the closure of Smiling Gator:

Unfortunately, the end of 2005 is also the end of SGP’s development effort for Twilight War. Our committed funds have run dry and we were not successful in the hunt for additional investment. Thanks again to our fantastic forums community for all the support and contributions! We hope you find another project and give them the devotion and incisive comments we’ve enjoyed reading for the past 17 months.

Only a month later, a new developer was found to help completing Twilight War, the Chinese studio General Computers:

We are very pleased to announce that Smiling Gator has concluded an agreement to license the Twilight War concept and sub-license Valve’s Source engine to a new partner company, General Computers, to fund and continue development on our behalf.

General Computers is an independent information technology vendor with offices in Long Island, NY and Beijing, China. Founded in March 2001 to build customized IT products, it is rapidly growing and expanding into new areas. The agreement with Smiling Gator marks the company’s entry into the gaming world.

Following this announcement, Gamecloud got in touch with General Computers president Junhua Chang in order to know a bit more:

GC – How did the deal to continue work on Twilight War come about?

J.C. – After we have made the decision to enter the area of game development in early 2005, we have investigated several ways to start our new business. One of the first thoughts came to our minds was to develop a MMORPG using Valve’s Source Engine. Since Valve’s huge success with Half Life 2, a new MMORPG employing Valve’s technology would be a natural choice for Half Life 2 fans if they want to meet lots of people and play large-scale online games. We wanted to be the first company in the world to make this happen. However, after some closer investigation, we were very frustrated that somebody else (Smiling Gator Productions) already had the same idea (Twilight War: After The Fall). However, things totally changed when the year 2006 came, and SGP announced the discontinuation of Twilight War. We made the decision the same week to partner with SGP and continue the original idea.

GC – Does General Computers have plans to change the game play of Twilight War or does it intend to continue to stay the game’s course?

J.C. – Smiling Gator Productions has contributed many original ideas and content to the project, and we certainly want to continue to stay on the game’s original course. However, because of the dynamic nature of MMORPG, there will be some modifications and we will implement some new features when it’s necessary.

GC – When does General Computers plan to announce more about their plans for Twilight War?

J.C. – We are currently investigating the existing content and source code, so it will be about 1 or 2 months before we can get up to speed and contribute any original work. We plan to push a playable version monthly for internal testing purposes once we start to add more content, so there will be monthly updates and new screenshots starting from as early as April 2006.

But the game still went silent for a whole year, and it seems from this point on, that a closed beta was launched around 2007. However, Twilight War quietly vanished and was never mentionned again thereafter. We can speculate that something went wrong during the development, and General Computers had to take the decision to cancel the title. The very short gameplay sequence available below was from 2008, the beta could have been playable at least until that year.

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My Hindu Shooter (MUM) [PC – Cancelled]

Anyway, most modern games are based on cruelty and violence. The people who sat down at the beginning of 2000 for the game with the working title My Hindu Shooter came up with an original idea – to create a shooter where the main goal would be to kill as few opponents as possible.

On the one hand, most of the MUM studio employees were absolute newcomers to the gaming industry, on the other hand, several veterans from the Origin participated in the creation of the game, including Warren Spector (as a consultant and advisor).

For the development of the game, no less than the Unreal engine was purchased. My Hindu Shooter, who professed Hindu philosophy, was set in medieval India, which was attacked by demons. One of them, for some unknown reason, saved the main character from death … and then a standard story about saving the world.

The storyline starred a young female sneak-thief, Kendi, who was as karmically low as you can get and still be human. Aided, for mysterious reasons, by a demon named Venadatta, Kendi travels from a Himalayan valley across the gigantic carcass of the fallen dragon Vritra, through the city and palace of King Vasudev, up the legendary World-Axis of Mount Meru, to the palace of the gods in the celestial city of Navagraha, and from there to the demon realm of Asat. She’s looking for the long-lost mortal hero Anagha, a Brahmin who aided the gods many years before. It turns out Anagha is dead, and, owing to a contrivance too complicated to summarize, Kendi herself is his mortal reincarnation; Venadatta the demon is another aspect of her own spirit.

Murder in My Hindu Shooter is not that forbidden, but violence, like any action in the game, invariably affected the hero’s karma. And without karma, nowhere – it affects the reincarnation of the hero. Yes, it was impossible to die completely in My Hindu Shooter – the character was reborn every time. He behaved well – he was resurrected strong and smart, and even with a special ability; led like a pig – and became a pig. Or a dog. Or even a worm. The ending of the game also depended on karma.

“During the game, you may die repeatedly, but this doesn’t end your adventure. Through reincarnation you resume play in your next life; the storyline’s mythic war is assumed to continue unabated for generations. Your karma at the time of death determines your next incarnation. If you have purified yourself and spread enlightenment, you may return as a rich merchant or Brahmin priest; if you have defiled yourself with violent actions, you may instead become a lowly peasant or even a pig, dog or worm. The game is winnable in any human form, but your current incarnation governs how much people and other beings will tell you in conversation, the price you must pay for equipment and so on.”

It was possible to lose only by bringing karma to a completely indecent state. To avoid this, it was necessary to sneak past enemies or settle the matter peacefully using a ramified system of dialogues. Work on the game was in full swing for a whole year, but in the end they decided to abandon it – according to the developers themselves, they did not have enough experience to cope with such a large-scale task.

Then MUM undertook to transform My Hindu Shooter into a quest, the main idea of which was to give the player maximum freedom of movement and interaction with the outside world. But nothing came of this venture either.

Information is taken from «Игромания» magazine, 03 (114) 2007 and https://www.escapistmagazine.com/my-hindu-shooter/ 

Rogue Warrior: Black Razor (Zombie Studios) [PC, Xbox 360, PS3 – Cancelled]

Rogue Warrior is a First-Person Shooter published by Bethesda Softworks and developed by Core Design (also known as Rebellion UK Derby, a subsidiary of Rebellion Developments), released on PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in 2009. The game take place in 1986 during the Cold War, in which Richard Marcinko, a Navy SEAL, is sent on a mission into North Korea to disrupt ballistic missile launchers.

But before being released as such, the game was known as Rogue Warrior: Black Razor and was totally different from the final product following a rather disastrous development. Initially made by Zombie Studios, from 2005 until, at least, the first quarter of 2008, this title, planned by the time for a release around 2007-2008, already on PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, took the form of a squad-based tactical First-Person Shooter/Third-Person Shooter, somewhat similar to the Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon franchise, set in present day North Korea, in which we played a team of four Navy SEALs, led by Richard Marcinko, attempting to infiltrate a submarine facility to get intelligence data on the country’s nuclear capabilities. Then, as a war between north and south is about to occur, escaping and navigating through enemy territory.

Using the Unreal Engine 3 (instead, in the end, Rebellion’s proprietary engine Asura), the team insisted a lot on the various possibilities of gameplay, whether it was the non-linearity of the level design, allowing to be able to play stealth or more run and gun, or to accomplish the different objectives in any order, as well as an emphasis on the online mode, whether doing the campaign in coop or the multiplayer mode allowing you to create different combinations of maps. Following its announcement in the end of the 2006 year, numerous media had the opportunity to see the game run. Thus, Gamespot wrote:

(…) The design team at Zombie felt that the “rails” approach favored in those games (so called because you’re basically restricted to a single path) doesn’t really capture the essence of SEAL combat. SEALs are the Navy’s elite commando units, and they’re usually dispatched in small teams to operate behind enemy lines and to capture this element of SEAL warfare Rogue Warrior will have fairly large levels for a first-person shooter. The idea is that you’ll be able to approach tactical situations in the manner that you determine.

For instance, in the example that we were shown, Marcinko’s SEAL team approached a North Korean ship-breaking yard. In this situation, there were three paths that the team could follow, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. One path might be more direct, but it also increases the odds of detection, while a safer option might offer a more roundabout path that takes longer to navigate. The idea is that you can tailor your tactics to fit your situation. The levels are big, but not gigantic, designed for tactical flexibility.

During your adventures behind enemy lines, you’ll encounter a wide variety of environments and foes. In the beginning, you’ll battle North Korean conscripts, but as you progress closer and closer to the front lines of the battlefield, you’ll encounter elite North Korean Special Forces, basically the equivalent of the SEAL team. These enemies promise to be intelligent. For instance, the bad guys will actually talk to each other on the radio, and that means if you neutralize a guard and his buddies start asking for him over the radio, you’re in trouble because they’re going to investigate why he disappeared.

The game is also going to be fairly flexible in how you play it. You can switch between first- or third-person views, depending on your preference. And you can also play the game as a team tactics game, where you give simple, context-sensitive commands to your teammates (for example, you can tell one to sneak up on a guard and knife him), or you can play it as more of a run-and-gun-style action game, where your teammates just follow you wherever you go. The really cool thing about the team mechanics is that the campaign supports cooperative gameplay, whereby other players can jump in and take over any of the other three slots in your team. And if anyone drops out, the AI will take over, so you don’t miss a beat.

As cool as this new cooperative mode sounds, the new tiling system for the competitive multiplayer is even more interesting. The developers explained that one of the problems with online action games is that the levels never change. Rogue Warrior addresses this by separating the map into three sections that can be mixed and matched to create hundreds of different maps. Up to 24 players, each side can select a map tile that it wants for its side of the map, while the middle tile is determined by the server. So if one side likes to snipe, it can choose a tile with long fields of fire for its section, but the other side can counter this by choosing a built-up tile for its section, thus negating the sniper’s fields of fire. The middle section is a bit of the wild card, as the server can randomly select it. Put it together, and you never know quite how each map will play out.

And CVG, for its part, told us:

“We wanted to do some different things in the tactical shooter space than what’s already being done. We wanted to do something more openended and less constrained,” explains Pete Hines as a vivid level swells onto the monitor, revealing a North Korean ship-breaker’s yard teeming with detail and enemy patrols.

It’s one of the campaign’s earliest levels, a recreation of the start of Richard and his team’s marathon undercover journey to get back across the border to safety after they’ve been stranded in North Korea at the start of the North/South conflict.

“We wanted to base the game on a licence that would give the game a sense of authenticity, so the things that you see are as realistic as possible,” explains Hines as Zombie producer Mark Long pans around the level. On the screen, Marcinko’s digital twin and three Spec Ops sidekicks stand knee-deep in water that looks so convincing, I’m already stripped off to my pants and inflating my arm bands: an urge quickly suppressed when Long lets off a burst from his silenced MP4 into the water. The bullets kick up spray and steam rises from the superheated silencer. “We’re also working with Richard to make sure that the weapons and equipment look and feel authentic,” continues Hines as Long leads his team out of the water towards a North Korean truck parked nearby.

In a further attempt to make Rogue Warrior look and feel as authentic as possible, Zombie are not only carefully recreating Marcinko’s exploits, but are also taking pains to ensure that the freeform battlefield you inhabit reacts as realistically as possible.

Whereas many shooters still utilise a simple vehicle damage model, Rogue Warrior’s regional approach to inflicting damage is set to infuse the game with a genuine sense of believability.

“We’ve created a destructible system that’s really interactive,” enthuses Long. “If you shoot a truck’s gas tank, it’s going to explode. If you shoot the bumper it won’t really do any damage. But if you shoot the engine enough, it’ll set alight and the fire will spread, eventually reaching the gas tank.”

Eager to prove his point, he lets off a flurry of bullets, which hammer into the truck’s front bumper causing it to shake until it falls to the ground with a clang. Moving his sights to the engine, Long lets rip again, this time igniting a small flame that licks hungrily at the truck, slowly devouring it until it reaches the petrol tank. Seconds later, the truck is blown into a thousand molten shards.

Visuals aside, perhaps Rogue Warrior’s most impressive attribute is its attempt to meld run-and-gun gameplay with open-ended squad-based combat, theoretically allowing you to approach each level as aggressively or as stealthily (or indeed, as tactically) as your cold heart desires.

“We wanted to go with something that was a departure from the genre’s current nondescript, over-stylised direction,” explains Long as he moves his team towards a cluster of nearby North Korean patrolmen with a single mouse click.

With the option to command each individual team member (each of which has the same set of abilities that you have), or to issue orders to your entire team, Rogue Warrior’s gameplay is looking flexible, clearly leaning towards the more open-ended approach adopted by the likes of Splinter Cell: Double Agent than more conventional, linear shooters.

But there’s little time for contemplation right now as Long’s eager to showcase both of these playing styles. First, he chooses a tactical, stealthy approach to the conundrum of taking out the guards. Leaving the rest of his squad behind cover, he slowly flanks a lone guard before slashing his throat.

Next he cycles through his collection of booby traps – remote, time and pressure bombs -and plants one on his victim’s uniformed corpse. The dead man’s radio crackles briefly as one of his fellow guards checks in on his status, but the enquiry is met by silence.

Alerted by their comrade’s lack of response, three nearby guards rush to check on him, kneeling low in apparent concern as they search for a pulse. Big mistake. Grasping the remote detonator switch, Long takes out all three men with a single press of a button without having to fire a single shot.

“This is a system that we’re calling ‘Lure Behaviour’,” beams Long. “Guards communicate with each other via radio and they’re going to be checking on each other so they’ll know if something bad has happened to someone on patrol. You can also place a booby trap on an alarm in order to take out any enemies that try to activate it.”

With the presentation coming to a close, it’s clear that Long is determined to go out with a bang by showcasing the game’s all-out action features. Selecting one of the many routes through the level, he leads his team towards a group of gargantuan rusting hulls, surrounded by pockets of enemies.

“There are a lot of different routes that you and your team can take through the levels,” says Long as he waits for a pair of North Korean soldiers to pass his hiding place. “The Artificial Intelligence is integral to this setup. It’s designed to react to you and your team regardless of where you are on the map. The A.I.’s communicate to each other, call for alarms and reinforcements, see you and hear you. Sometimes they’ll fight you, sometimes flank you, other times they might flee and regroup.”

As the ship-breaker’s yard is engulfed in a hail of lead, Long sends two of his men to flank the enemy soldiers, who instantly seek out cover. Short bursts of gunfire are exchanged, as each side preserves its limited supply of ammo. Enemies duck out from their hiding places, before diving back, but they’re soon overpowered with a few wellplaced grenades and a cunning flanking manoeuvre that they never see coming.

“We’re trying to give you a tactical shooter with tons of potential to play the way you want to play and we’re going to throw tons of curve-balls at you along the way,” says Long as the end of level cut-scene kicks in. In it, Marcinko and his team are left contemplating their predicament as the sheer extent of their task is revealed – the camera panning for miles over the North Korean countryside, over countless battlefields, all the way to the South Korean border and safety.

However, after its presentation, Rogue Warrior: Black Razor felt into obscurity and was briefly mentionned in the beginning of 2007. In 2008, Pete Hines told FiringSquad that the game was still in development without much more information, and on spring 2009, Big Download wrote:

Big Download contacted Bethesda Softworks’ PR head Pete Hines who told us that a status report on Rogue Warrior will be made “in the next month or so.”

Currently up in the air is whether or not the game’s originally announced developer Zombie Studios is still working on the game

Few days later, Bethesda revealed the new version of the project, simply known as Rogue Warrior, with Rebellion Developments (Core Design, in fact) in charge. While interrogating by Shacknews about what happened during all those years, Pete Hines simply answered:

“Suffice it to say, we were not happy with what the direction of that project was. (…) We felt it needed a change in scope and a change in focus. And we felt that that was the focus that it needed. That the sort of squad-based, tactical–in a sense I guess it was turning into a bit of a Navy SEAL game, and it was less of a Richard Marcinko game.”

Without really knowing what was the development time for this new version, it should be noted that Core Design had just released Shellshock 2: Blood Trails in February 2009, less than 10 months before the release of Rogue Warrior. Unsurprisingly, Rogue Warrior was met with extremely negative reviews by the press, appeared to be one of the worst game ever made for the Xbox 360/Playstation 3 generation and was the last game of Core Design, which will close permanently on March 17, 2010.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t the first game based on Richard Marcinko’s exploits to be created. Around 1998-1999, Yosemite Entertainment had also a similar game, named Navy SEALs, which was cancelled with the closure of the studio.

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