Created by Pandemic Studios, Specwarrior is a cancelled third person shooter set in the Vietnam War that was in development in 2002 / 2003. After some time the game was cancelled by its publisher, Midway. About a year later Pandemic released Full Spectrum Warrior (published by THQ), but it’s not clear if the published game used some assets from the unreleased project. Specwarrior was the reasons that lead Pandemic to file a lawsuit against Midway, because they cancelled the game to avoid payment.
The lawsuit claims Midway’s move was unwarranted, and says Midway owes money for services Pandemic completed during its months of work on the project. Pandemic is seeking damages of more than $4 million and some $750,000 in fees, according to a Reuters report.
La Femme Nikita is a cancelled action game that was in development in 2000 / 2001 at Infogrames Lyon House: the project originally started in 1999 as “Mission Impossible 2”, a sequel to the original Nintendo 64 game. It seems that Infogrames soon decided to stop the development for the N64 and port MI2 to the new-released Dreamcast.
Fabien Lacaf, a professional story boarder, worked on MI2 and created different level environment (for 3D artists) and some parallel action designs for the missions. The first concept to MI2 was based on levels that would have been completed following the progress of the main protagonists that worked in parallel at the same time. The player was going to use different characters to complete the missions divided in different parts: in every single part the actions would have affected the next parts of the mission with the following characters.
After some months of work, the studio did not have the “Mission Impossible” license anymore and so they had to change the game into “La Femme Nikita”, based on the film / TV series with the same name. The project was then moved to the Playstation 2 but after 2 years of development, the publisher (Atari) decided to cancel “La Femme Nikita” for economic reasons.
That was the end of “Mission Impossible 2” for the Nintendo 64.
Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution and to Rodolphe for his help to preserve more images from the project!
Aliens: Crucible (also know as Project Connecticut) is an RPG based on the Aliens films franchise that was in development by Obsidian Entertainment for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was going to be published by SEGA, but after some economic problems, it seems that they decided to cancel all their Aliens games. Probably Aliens: Crucible gameplay could have been similar to KOTOR II and NeverWinter Nights 2, two other RPGs developed by Obsidian.
Thanks to Dominus Elf for the contribution!
Here are some more info about Aliens Crucible by a former developer, that were shared in the RPG Codex Forum:
I’ve talked about this game before…
There is a lot of could-ofs, should-ofs, and all that.
The problem with making successful horror games with the Aliens franchise is that the Aliens have been revealed… a lot. There is no mystery with them anymore. After 4 movies, countless comics and novels, countless video games – where the Alien and Alien variants have been killed multiple times, you have to tread new ground if you want to do something original. The horror with the Aliens no longer lies in the unknown, so we were going for the environment.
For example, the second or third time you watch Alien, it is no longer scary. My second playthrough of Amnesia was easy and scare-free.
NOT COUNTING JUMP SCARES! Jump scares are not true horror, though they can be used to effectively alter the tension temporarily.
Josh did have some ideas though on how to add horror and tension, and we had several scenarios into the game. Most of us were or had played SS2, Amnesia, and Call of Cthulu, but horror was not the goal of the game, survival was.
This was a game of limited resources and perma-death. If a party member got face-hugged, your choices were to mercy kill them, put them in a sleeper and wake them sparingly if you need them, or let them pop – but the bottom line was that once they got impregnated they had an expiration date.
As for the Alien variations, there are things that are simply expected by publishers and the fan base. The xenomporph variations also have a history in the aliens universe anyway. The first thing Josh and the concept artists did was to create the lifeforms the xenos would impregnate first. We also used some insect themes for the various xeno roles, from drones and scouts, to soldiers and queens. As covered in countless comics, novels, and films, the xenos take traits from their host, the idea being it would better enable them to survive in a dangerous habitat. One of the big mysteries Josh and the writers were exploring was what the caldera and how were the engineers (space jockeys) doing with the xenos.
The goal was not to kill all the bugs, but to simply escape from the caldera where you were trapped. Don’t get me wrong, there was still a lot of killing of both xenos and humans in the game. Combat was real time – but we had a companion wheel to context system so that you could issue commands to your squadmates. For example, you could highlight a door with your reticule, and then based on what your squard could do, it would show you your options, like weld door, open door, or if you had a bomb, plant bomb on door.
As far as tech goes, we were using an earlier version of Onyx – which would later be used to create DS3. Our tech was stable, but we had pipeline issues to resolve but by milestone 25 or so were in pretty good shape.
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:
Different Level (the jungle in the pre-alpha looked more realistic)
When Player gets shot by enemies the screen turns red.
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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