As we can read on Wikipedia, a Getaway 3 tech demo featuring Piccadilly Circus was demonstrated in May 2005 at E3, but this was not directly from the game. It was confirmed that the game would again be set in London but rumours had been circulating that the game could also feature Amsterdam, which was later confirmed by a video shown at the E3 convention in 2006. Information regarding The Getaway was released on 7 March 2008 by screenplay writer Katie Ellwood, who affirmed the action title was
Eight Days [PS3 – Cancelled]
Eight Days (codenamed HEIST) was to be a PlayStation 3 game from Sony’s London Studio. It was shown for the first time at Sony’s E3 2006 press conference. It was a hybrid of a third-person shooter and driving action that shared similarities with the PlayStation Portable game, Pursuit Force. The title was cancelled on 4 June 2008.
Certain parts of the sequence shown at E3 included a full heads up display, and crosshair, implying true interactive in-game footage. However, opinions were divided about the sequence, some suspected it to be pre-rendered, while others believed it was non-interactive using the game engine which would mean while it was indeed the PlayStation 3 hardware doing the rendering, it may or may not have been indicative of the final gameplay experience. [Info from Wikipedia]
Eight Days was to be set in eight days over eight states across the United States of America, the largest game map to date, with a real internal clock that would change from day to night as the game progressed. In the game you could choose between two players one that was “good” and the other “bad”. The “bad” character story line would have him/her get revenge on a mob syndicate, the other story line would follow the “good” character who was a detective who was coincidentally looking for the same mob syndicate who had kidnapped his son. The two characters would eventually cross paths and work together.
On June 4, 2008 Sony Computer Entertainment released a statement on the cancellation: “This decision was made following an internal review of all games and it was deemed that with the incredibly strong list of exclusive First Party titles coming up both this year and in the near future, resource should be reallocated to enhance those projects closer to completion”. Two weeks after the cancellation of Eight Days, President of Sony Computer Entertainment Shuhei Yoshida stated that the lack of an Online mode in Eight Days was “part of the consideration” to cancel the game. He also stated that the cancellation of Eight Days was not because it was not failing in production, but becauseSony is increasingly moving towards online-supported games and Eight Days did not fit that overall strategy. A weird explanation for sure.
Thanks to Max Max, Iven and Yoshida for their contributions!
Images:
E3 trailer and pre-visualisation
Gameplay footage:
Tech demos:
Prince Of Persia: Prodigy [Beta – Xbox 360 PS3]
Prince of Persia Prodigy (also know as Prince of Persia Zero in its early beta days) is an action-adventure and platforming game developed by Ubisoft Montreal. It was released on December 2, 2008 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Proof of conception for this new title was found in September 2006, when a file that was leaked to the internet was found to contain concept art for the game, although Ubisoft didn’t announce the game until May 2008. [Infos from Wikipedia]
In january 2008, Surfer Girl released some screenshots from an early prototype of this new Prince Of Persia, in which the main character was followed by a mysterious flying girl. As you know, the final game has not flying-girls that follow the prince. As we can read over at GameSetWatch, thanks to “David Pettitt” we learn that this version was “a target render that the team pitched the game with”. It seems that Ubisoft showed the full Target Render at a Vancouver SIGGRAPH event. Below you can see the full video!
Some other rumors even say that originally Assassin’s Creed was meant to be part of the Prince of Persia series. Probably Ubisoft created a lot of different ideas for the project, before choosing the final one.
Even the released game has some differences from the official beta screens that we can find online. As noticed by FullMetalMC:
- Different colors for the Hunter
- Elika’s clothing is a bit different
- A removed enemy
- Prince’s sword has a alternate design
- Different Tree
- Elikas magic has less detail
In an interview with Prince of Persia Producer Ben Mattes, we can read more about Elika’s development:
To further answer your initial question of how her design evolved, at the beginning of the game, one of the things we were thinking about was — should she have more of an autonomous personality? Should she have a little bit more autonomy as a gameplay mechanic?
So we developed ideas of her sometimes taking the lead, or her sometimes wandering off and looking at key game points, or her basically just taking initiative. Some of them only got as far as concepts and brainstorms, some of them actually got as far as prototypes, but what we quickly realised was there was a lot of design that had to be done in terms of simplifying Elika’s involvement to make sure we delivered on that promise that she never gets in the way and she’s never a negative.
We had instances where we had interest points in the world — little objects that would attract her attention, and if you idled for a few minutes she would wander over to one of those objects to look at it, but then the player would, y’know, haul ass to the left and Elika’s wandering over there looking at that thing and then he has to stop and wait and go and get her and bring her back, and it was these things that detracted from that overall core message, which is more important than anything else.
[…] initially we kicked around the ideas of Elika being a young girl, but that brought up the whole babysitting thing, and then we toyed very briefly with the idea of Elika being a partner like a brother or a father figure or something, but it didn’t have the kind of sexual tension that’s fun to play with. And then within a couple of months we had the design of Elika almost fully fleshed out as it exists now.
Thanks to Surfer Girl & Grahamx227 for the contribution!
Images (Prototype):
Images (Beta):
Video:
Spyro The Dragon [PSX – Beta]
In the screen below we can see a beta version of Spyro The Dragon: the statue has another appearance in the final game and is not made of gold. The red gem inside the “return home portal” is not in there anymore. In the final game when the player touches a dragon statue, the dragon that is captured inside there will come out: the first dragon that Spyro rescues was called Silvus in the beta.
Also, Dirty Harry found some more differences in this beta demo:
- Alternate music before rescuing Nestor.
- Vortex looked more like the Dragon Pads.
- Alternate dialogue from rescued dragons. Completely different voice from Nestor.
- 1-ups are gold instead of silver.
Spyro was originally going to be a “traditional” green dragon but the developers chosed purple instead because it was more original. In the artworks, we can even see some different character designs for Spyro.
Thanks a lot to Lord Deathsaur, Dudaw and Dirty Harry for the contributions!
Images:
June 1998 Beta:
June 1998 Beta:
July 1998 Beta:
Change Log:
Gh0stBlade – Added June 1998 vids recorded by LXShadow/July 1998 beta video! 08/12/14
Time Splitters 2 [XBOX/PS2/GC – Beta]
TimeSplitters 2 is a first-person shooter available for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube. The game was published by Eidos and developed by Free Radical Design, a company founded by some ex-Rare members. In February of 1999, 20 months before the release of Perfect Dark, several members of Rare who had worked on GoldenEye 007, including Steve Ellis, Karl Hilton, Graeme Norgate, and David Doak, left to form their own company called Free Radical Design. After they developed the first TimeSplitters, Free Radical Design began work on TimeSplitters 2, with the goal of creating a more fulfilling story mode alongside the Arcade and MapMaker modes. [Info from Wikipedia] In the beta version of the game, there was a different HUD and different design for some of the weapons. You can see a comparison below:
Thanks to Danny33 for the contributions & to Jay for the english corrections!
Beta Electro Tool:
Final Electro Tool (beta HUD):
Beta Laser Gun:
Final Laser Gun (beta HUD):
Beta Plasma Autorifle?:
Final Plasma Autorifle (beta HUD):
Beta Tactical 12-Gauge:
Final Tactical 12-Gauge (beta HUD):
Beta Soviet S47:
Final Soviet S47 (with beta HUD):
More beta images: