Overview:

After Tomb Raider: the Angel Of Darkness had been considered a failure. Core Design (Core), in 2004 came up with a new Tomb Raider Project. The project known as “Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition” aimed to recreate the original Tomb Raider game released in 1996 including various enhancements and extensions to the original game. Core developed their version of Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition for approximately 9 months until it was cancelled early June 2006 by SCi. A trailer for the unfinished game emerged on the internet, later that week Eidos officially confirmed the game had been cancelled. Following these events, Crystal Dynamics developed their own Tomb Raider: Anniversary game which released in 2007.

Origin:

Interview by: PlanetLara with former Artist Richard Morton. (24th July 2007)

Richard: It was a strange time really, we’d just finished Free Running for PSP/PS2 and had developed a really good control system and camera, we started messing about with a Lara model on the PSP in the Free Running engine and the idea of 10th Anniversary was born. We suggested it to Eidos who allowed us to develop it, but when Core was sold to Rebellion it seemed like they didn’t want the franchise to go ‘out-of-house’ hence the cancellation of our project.

It is confirmed that PC/PS2 versions were also in development. However, the existing leaked footage and in-game screenshots have been confirmed to be taken from the PSP version. The trailer which leaked from an unknown source seems to show various different builds of Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition. Some sequences in the trailer are from builds later than others. Both Core Design and Crystal Dynamics were working on separate games (Core Design – Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition, Crystal – Tomb Raider Legend). Eidos (the game’s publisher at the time now Square Enix) requested Core Design to alter their Lara Croft model so it looks similar to the Lara Croft model used in Tomb Raider: Legend. This is why the Lara Croft model seen in early prototype versions of Tomb Raider Legend is very reminiscent of the one seen in Core Design’s Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition.

Various variants of the Lara Croft model and how it changed during development

The leaked trailer:

Press releases:

By Core Design (www.core-design.com) – 15th June 2006, 11:02:06.

Following speculation on the internet, we would like to offer the following clarification.
The video of Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition that appeared on certain sites was an unauthorised release of an internal presentation of a game that was being developed by Core Design until very recently. It was running on PSP and used a Core-developed engine. However, following a recent review this project has been officially cancelled by SCi.
Core is alive and well and working on some great new projects, and we are still planning to announce some exciting news very soon!

By Former Core Dsign Arist Carl released a fly through video of a level he worked on:

By Eidos – June 16th, 2006

Eidos Interactive, one of the world’s leading publishers and developers of entertainment software, confirms today that they are developing a special ’10th Anniversary Edition’ of Tomb Raider.
The new game is being developed by Crystal Dynamics, who recently launched Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend on Xbox 360, PS2, Xbox, PC and PSP, with versions on Nintendo DS, GBA and GameCube later in 2006.
“Our ’10th Anniversary Edition’ of Tomb Raider, is a one-off title to celebrate both Lara and Tomb Raider, it will appeal not only to the loyal fans of the Tomb Raider series but will also attract a totally new audience.” Said Larry Sparks, Head of Brands Management at Eidos.
Tomb Raider originally launched in 1996 and is still one of the best selling videogame franchises of all time, with over 30 million copies sold.
The special ’10th Anniversary Edition’ of Tomb Raider will be available on PlayStation 2, PSP and PC.

Core Design’s opinion:

In 2016 an interview with Gavin Rummery was published by arstechnia. It provided some details as to how the game started and speculation as to why it was cancelled:

By: Gavin Rummery (Former Core Design Studio Head) – 31/03/2016 arstechnia

He put the pieces together in his head and pitched Eidos/SCi (SCi having taken over Eidos in 2005). They loved it, so a team of Tomb Raider veterans at Core set about remaking the original game in the new engine. It was going well, Rummery recalls—both looking and playing great. But Crystal Dynamics didn’t want Core back in the picture, and the American studio built a rival demo.
“They convinced whatever the politics in SCi was like that it made more sense to just keep it all in one studio,” says Rummery. “Keep the franchise in one place. And so ours was killed, and you’d have never heard if it hadn’t been leaked by someone.”

Steve Pritchard responded to Gavin’s claims with the following:

Steve Pritchard (Producer) via Facebook

No worries. It was a tricky time in the studio when Crystal were doing Anniversary – a lot of hard work had gone into that idea and to have it taken away and handed to Crystal was a painful thing.
Crystal Dynamics are in no way at fault for this – Eidos had become SCi at this point and that whole Eidos/Core/Tomb raider multi-brand was something that hung a little heavily around a few necks. Someone, somewhere, realised that handing a TR title back to the now-not-Core guys would have seemed like a strange commercial move, and with CD having a lot of cool tech all ready to go, it was a straightforward choice for them.
Yeah, it was a massive, massive kick in the nuts for those of us who had done a lot in a very short space of time to get Anniversary running, but from a business perspective it was understandable.

Gav was right to be angry about the way the whole thing unfolded and he’s also right in saying that SCi were up for it – Ian Livingston grinned a smile a mile wide when I described the concept as a “director’s remastering” of the original, with additional content filling out the whole TR1 game. So yes, it was a winner and yes, at the time it looked like me might claw it back. But someone, somewhere realised the media issues that might arise from the old Core lads doing another Lara game . . . and that was where the split began, not with CD.
I put more hours into the Core version of Anniversary than anyone else on the team – production tend to do that – and as we had such a small team most of what is seen in the leaked video was stuff I pulled together across a couple of evening shifts, the thing cut together by Gaz Tongue later. We were all gutted when the project went away. Projects do, all the time, but this one really felt like the last chance to grab back a bit of TR.
The last presentation to the SCi board had Gav and I demoing the Playstation version AND the PSP version, both of which had co-op gameplay in it. They were rough around the edges, still some way from alpha, but if you knew the original game well you could see where we had added real fan service, extra content and just cool stuff that expanded on the original narrative. It felt good to show off, it was received well, but that last presentation had us re-introduced to Toby Gard and some of the CD team who were there to see it. Two days later we got the news that they were going to do the Anniversary project, using their engine and tech from TR Legend. And that was that.
Horrible end to the story but I find it really difficult to lay the blame at Crystal’s door. SCi made the decision, and they really weren’t very good at decisions. They are not there for good reasons.
Not too long after that the studio was sold to Rebellion, Gav moved on and I ended up running the show for the next 18 months to two years. By then Core were a bit battered and bruised and being asked to shift their skills to “quick and dirty” work that was almost outsourcing saw all the talent start to pour away to other companies. “Corebellion” fought on for a while but the writing was on the all by then.

Images:

GameCube, Microsoft, Nintendo, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Tomb Raider Legend Beta [PS2 / PSP / PS3 / XBOX / XBOX 360 / PC / WII]

Gh0stBlade

20-11-2011

No Comments

Overview: Tomb Raider Legend is the first game developed by Crystal Dynamics. Crystal Dynamics worked along side with Toby Gard (the original Tomb Raider designer). They wanted to reboot the game after the failure of Tomb Raider Angel Of Darkness. Development of this game started in 2004 just after Eidos transferred the Tomb Raider development rights to Crystal Dynamics.

There are trailers from around the E3 2005 time which show various different levels which were not present or drastically changed for the final release. Around this stage of development it is confirmed that most of the areas were just for proof of concept and used for testing for example, Lara’s Beach House. There were weapons which were cut from the final release: Smoke Grenades, Rocket Launcher, Revolver.

Early Alpha Stage – Date, May 2005
Platform: PS2

This is the build which was shown at E3 2005.

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Alpha Stage – Date, August 2005
Platform: PS2

This is the build which was shown at GC 2005.

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Editors:
1. Gh0stblade

Change log:
Gh0stblade – Added PSP info and cleanup with dates 14/01/2013
Gh0stblade – Updated basics of post, removed all old info and updated 20/03/2013

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

Deadly Premonition [Beta – PS3 / Xbox 360]

yota

15-11-2011

5 Comments

Deadly Premonition (aka Red Seed Profile in Japan) is a survival horror created by Access Games and released in 2010 for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Originally conceived as a PSP adventure game in the vein of “Flower, Sun and Rain”, Deadly Premonition became a next-gen title only in 2005.

Not surprisingly, Sweary65 said in a interview with Destructoid that combat sections were a publisher’s idea added only at the alpha stage of the development cycle. Probably in the earliest builds the player could only hide or escape from enemies. The “useless” garbage containers scattered around which York can use to conceal himself are likely alpha leftovers.

In 2007 a beta version of the game, tentatively called Rainy Woods, was finally showed to the public but, due to the many similarities with the TV series Twin Peaks, notably the dwarf twins and the protagonist, the publisher decided to postpone Deadly Premonition in order to change the appearance of the characters. All the voice acting was completely reworked too. We’ll probably never know how the original story would have unfolded.

York now looks like the main character of a 1970’s exploitation film.

The sheriff wasn’t changed that much.

In the released game “the red room” is located outdoor in the forest.

This pic is strange. It shows beta York without his jacket in the prologue, but in the final version this happens only at the end.

You can also read this topic at Assembler Games for more info and theories about the differences in the beta version of Deadly Premonition!

Images:

Videos:

Microsoft, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

The Prodigies [Xbox 360 PS3 – Concept]

U64 Staff & Contributors

13-11-2011

2 Comments

In June 2011, a new animation movie called “The Prodigies” was published in France. An unknown french developer initially worked on a corresponding videogame prototype during 2011, which found no publisher though. Only some images remain from this cancelled videogame.

Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony

Animal Wars [PS3 – Cancelled]

Liam Robertson

10-11-2011

2 Comments

[Page updated: 27/06/2015 with vidoc, images & development history]

Animal Wars was a tactical RPG for the Playstation 3 in development at Factor 5, Inc. between 2004 and 2006 with Sony Computer Entertainment on board as its publisher. It was planned to be released some time after Lair, which launched in August, 2007.

Factor 5’s Quirky War Game Made By 4 People

According to one former employee, work commenced on the title in 2004, “roughly around the time” pre-production on Lair began. It came about as a result of the multi-game contract Factor 5 signed with Sony to produce a number of games exclusive to their platforms. Until the deal expired, the company was set to have every project of theirs fully funded by the publisher, pending their approval. Every title worked on during this partnership was slated for release on PS3 only and Animal Wars was one of them.

Whereas Lair exhausted a great deal of the developer’s resources from beginning to end, Animal Wars was a considerably smaller project, ongoing in the background for a number of years. Its team was comprised of no more than 4 workers total: 2 designers, 1 dedicated artist and a single programmer. The game was so low down Factor 5’s list of priorities, that every developer assigned to it was at some point repositioned to work on Lair and/or other proposed titles.

Early concept art:

Early character exploration:

Animal Wars was set in “an alternate WWI universe with anthropomorphic animal characters”, one developer recalled. The assassination of “the Archduke Birdinand” (a parody of historical figure, Archduke Franz Ferdinand) in the game’s opening served as the catalyst for the great war its campaign would have centered on. The event would have ignited a global conflict between various nations of animals (e.g. felines, bears, foxes, etc.).

Character art:

Its developers were hoping to build a unique story-driven experience out of Animal Wars. They had envisioned a rich world with great attention to detail and even went about creating propaganda posters and vintage style newspaper covers for inspiration:

The enemy faction consisted of a coalition between ‘Boarmandy’ (boars), The Black Paw (a rogue cat organisation responsible for Birdinand’s murder), bear soldiers, and the main villains, an army of wolves lead by the evil ‘Isegrimm’. An explosive introductory level was set to portray a savage air raid on a city inspired by London, as perpetrated by boars in ‘Big Bertha’ attack blimps. Players would have then found themselves following the exploits of a canine in an aviator jacket, the planned protagonist; although, other playable characters were being explored, too.

Among the various mission types mulled over during pre-production was one which would have flipped the scale of battle on its head and saw the player taking up the role of a mouse. From this perspective, regular soldiers would appear as humongous titans by comparison, as the mice performed daring espionage operations. Ultimately, this ambitious stage idea never got as far as being prototyped.

One source likened its gameplay, of which very little was completed, to Valkyria Chronicles. It was intended to be a strategy RPG with a turn-based battle system and a unique oil painted art style.

“The graphics were like Valiant Hearts but in 3D” – former Factor 5 developer.

Its concept of anthropomorphic warfare was deceptively innocent on the surface. Early sketches, for instance, depicted a number of particularly violent scenes, including a dog soldier posed atop a decapitated pig. Its artistic direction leaned dark in this respect, though it had yet to be determined how explicit the final product would be.

In what was said to have been a big contributing factor towards Sony’s willingness to fund it, the title was leveraging the work Factor 5’s people had previously done on the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron games. It called upon their experiences moulding that game’s blend of ground and air vehicular combat, which the publisher was very keen to capitalise on. Boats and amphibious tanks would have featured, too.

As explained by one of our sources, a central part of its concept was that each of the vehicles would have, in some form, integrated attributes associated with different animals into their design and functionality:

“For example, I worked on making a jeep that would always land upright no matter how crazy you drove it (cat landing on all fours).”

Why Sony Pulled The Plug On F5, Inc.’s Pet Project

Among the few that contributed to Animal Wars throughout its lifespan, the enthusiasm for it was in abundance. One ex member of Factor 5 even took to NeoGAF some years later to exclaim:

“It was fucking amazing looking and was way better than Lair so it made all of us sad it got cancelled.”

One of our sources echoed these sentiments, saying that its apparent independence from Factor 5’s higher ups was much to its benefit:

“I was more excited about Animal Wars than Lair because it was a smaller team and upper management left it alone (upper management interference greatly contributed to Lair’s failure).”

Despite this, none of the excitement held internally for the project could ultimately prevent its demise, as the relationship between Sony and Factor 5 began to sour.

Pre-vis. character models:

In the beginning, the deal between them was forged primarily so that the San Rafael studio would reinforce the PS3’s launch line-up with an original IP, which would later turn out to be Lair. Any other projects they were behind, Animal Wars included, were largely a show of good faith on Sony’s behalf.

Crucially, Lair was first scheduled to be available for the PS3 within its first few months on the North American market in fall 2006. However, its development encountered many hurdles; chief among which was the higher ups demanding the addition of motion controls and the team simply struggling to get to grips with the console’s then perplexing development environment. Factor 5 was already a company of limited resources, but Lair’s troubled life cycle lead to a number of departures mid-development. This left them unable to fulfill their end of the contract and thus, requested the game be delayed into 2007.

The publisher’s response was less than understanding. They promptly cut off all funding to Animal Wars and redistributed any monetary assets designated for it into Lair. The developers weren’t willing or able to self-finance the remainder of the project, resulting in its subsequent cancellation. The move also put an end to a number of other propositions, including a shoot ’em up called Virus and a reboot of Turrican.

One developer we spoke with detailed how the game had reached the prototyping phase when it was shelved, but never left pre-production:

“At the time, we had a working biplane, tank, jeep and 3rd person character working… We had a vertical slice of a damaged town that the lead character (a greyhound in WWI aviator outfit) and the tank was able to run around. We also had a pretty massive terrain for the biplane to fly around (similar in size to what ended up in Lair).”

Prototype character models:

The former employee admitted that the prototype build suffered visibility issues, which they had not yet been able to resolve when development came to a close. These were caused by the dark colour palette employed by both its character models and environments, which would blend together unintentionally.

Animal Wars was never officially announced and its prototype materials were locked away by the management of Factor 5, Inc. during the company’s closure in late 2008.

Prototype models: