In 2000, Pandemic Studios developed a game concept called “OSS”. It was set in World War II and the player was involved in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a United States intelligence agency, as the game’s title reveals. OSS never entered production at Pandemic Studios for unknown reasons. The platform of the game was probably not decided yet, but we can speculate at least a PC version.
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Far Cry 2 is an open-ended FPS developed for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC by Ubisoft Montreal and published in 2008 by Ubisoft. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2. A pre-alpha video of the game, showcasing the visuals and 13 minutes of gameplay with developer commentary, was presented in Leipzig in August 2007. [Info from Wikipedia]
In the Pre-Alpha demo Slayermaggot81 noticed various differences:
Thanks to Slayermaggot81 for the contribution!
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Far Cry is a FPS developed by Crytek Studios from Germany and published by Ubisoft in 2004 for Microsoft Windows. The codename of the project was “X-Isle”, a tech demo with dinosaurs on a jungle island. Crytek history starts with the ECTS 2000. It was there that they impressed all the big publishers with their tech demos at the NVIDIA booth. They continued releasing various tech demos over the years and the X-Isle one evolved into Far Cry.
From the original X-Isle: Dinosaur Island the plot of the game was changed many times before the final one, and once there were aliens too. As we can read from an old Gamespot preview:
In the game, players will be pitted against an ancient alien life-form closely related to the dinosaurs. The aliens have re-created a colony of dinosaurs in an attempt to take back control of the globe. The player must overcome the advanced alien technology in addition to the brute strength and power of the dinosaurs in order to succeed.
In the pre-alpha version of the game, there were some differences as noticed by Slayermaggot81:
A Far Cry demo from E3 2002 was found and preserved online, you can read more on the “BRP: Beta Restoration Project” ModDB page!
Thanks to Slayermaggot81 for the contribution!
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Necessary Force is a cancelled action game that was in development at Midway Newcastle. The game was supposed to be open-ended, with the player that would have been able to choose how to approach the mission. Unfortunately, Midway Newcastle shut down in august 2009 and the project had to be shelved. A preview of an early playable demo can be found on the EDGE website and, as we can read, the game sounded promising:
[…] the developer’s demo room is the result of only three months’ work, yet there is plenty to see, and in remarkably stable, consistent form. […]
As a police officer assigned to this beat, you’re looking at a clean-up operation, which due to the game’s construction will play out literally. As you eliminate criminal activity to make these streets safer, we’re told, they will transform. The ubiquitous graffiti will be scrubbed away. Boards will be removed from windows. Entire buildings will be replaced with shiny new constructions, putting a shop, say, were once there was a tumbling-down tenement.
Thanks a lot to Sam Chester for the help in preserving some screens of the models that he created for the game!
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Doom 3 is a science fiction horror videogame developed by id Software and published by Activision. The game was first shown in Febuary 2001, as a tech demo showing of id’s newest graphics engine. The game has had many cuts and changes during its long development cycle. One of the most noticeable differences is the changes the demons went through, throughout the games development. In this screenshot you can see the original model for the Hell Knight, because of it bird shaped head it is often reffered to in the doom community as the Birdman.
Here you can see the 2001 Doom 3 macworld video showing off the Birdman in 2001: skip to 4:50 for Doom 3.