Playstation 3 (PS3)

Crash Bandicoot: Landed (2010) [Cancelled – Xbox 360 / PS3 / Wii / DS]

Crash Bandicoot: Landed 2010 is a cancelled game in the Crash Bandicoot series, which wasn’t even officially announced but some info leaked from the people who worked it. These info were soon removed from their websites: Crash 2010 was meant to be a 3d Adventure / Action game in developement by Radical Entertainment. It was cancelled due to layoffs by Activision in February 2010.

Many information were leaked after the cancellation but left unnoticed until August 2010, when they were found by some users in the Crash Mania Forums. There is a short gameplay / cgi footage and also some concept art. Crash Mania members made a petition to make activision continue working on the game but it was unsuccessful, partially due to abuse of the petition (ie. obvious sockpuppetry). A new petition has been started, and has so far not suffered these problems.

Recently, an fx demo was leaked by someone as a demo reel video. The owner of the reel video said that game would not be continued because of Activision. When the fans added the video to Youtube, Activision started removing them but many of these are still available.

Console Game!
Crash Bandicoot 2010 (Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii)
Design and implementation of character locomotion and weapon/combat using proprietary software
Open World Mission Design
Game Systems Design Documentation
Weapons/Tools
Interface
Game Economy
Boss design

Another video with items was found, in which we can see some interesting stuff about the canceled game!

  • Frogzooka [Suck]
  • Boombat [Blow… Away]
  • Glow Top [Stun/Light]
  • Fertilizer Gun [Shoot]
  • Bottle Rocket-Launcher [Ending/Surf]
  • Jet pack
  • Jet ski

Post by MotweraCity

Videos:

DS Footage (Developed by Renegade Kid):

Pictures video for similar visually done game (CTR 2010):

Also Effects Video in this link: http://landinkent.blogspot.com/p/game-fx.html 

Highlander [X360 PS3 PC – Cancelled]

Highlander is a canceled action-adventure game published by Eidos Interactive and developed by Widescreen Games, for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, between 2007 and 2010, based on the eponymous film franchise.

Initially, the attempt to develop a new Highlander game dated back well before this one. In September 2004, the company SCi Games managed to conclude an agreement with Davis-Panzer Productions, holder of the rights of the franchise. It was then the developer Climax Studios who was responsible for developing a prototype for the Playstation 2. However, after the takeover of SCi by Eidos Interactive in May 2005, the project was, according to former senior programmer Marc Fascia, given to Widescreen Games before being put on-hold in August of the same year. The development was relaunched around the end of 2006, aiming for hardware’s next generation, and was officially announced in August 2007 during the Game Convention, although already in February of the same year, the development was leaked. During its official revelation, several details emerged:

“It will be a third-person action adventure that spans over 2000 years, giving you a chance to explore feudal Japan, medieval Scotland, a futuristic vision of New York and Pompeii before the historical volcanic eruption.

Similarly to the film, the aim will be to journey around the world and meet other immortal warriors in battle, lopping off their heads to win. You’ll have the choice of Katana, Claymore or Double to use, and be able to use various techniques to overpower your foe – like Resurrection, Chi Balance, Fireblade, Wind Fury, Stone Armour and other powered-up special attacks.

You’ll be the newcommer Owen Macleod, but come face to face with 77 other characters along the way – some familiar from the television series or films.

Widescreen is promising around 18 missions to tackle in general, and lots of ways to get around your environment: zip wires, dagger and traverse climbing, swan dives, free falls, cannonballs and beams.”

More information arrived in January 2008 alongside what was, for a long time, the only official video of the game:

“Publisher Eidos has officially announced that it will be bringing an Unreal Engine 3 game based on the popular movie and TV series Highlander to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC later this year. Eidos notes that the title, to be developed by Widescreen Games, will be written by TV series writer David Abramowitz, and will take series star Owen MacLeod “on a journey across multiple lands from first century fiery Pompeii, to futuristic New York to discover his destiny and explore the powers of immortality.” By nature of that immortality, Eidos says players will be able to exploit the unique powers it brings and “manipulate situations that death would normally prevent” such as channeling electricity and fire, impaling himself on enemy weapons to disarm them and falling from buildings to escape. The game will also feature “an advanced combat system, gamers will master a variety of Highlander swords including the Claymore, Katana, and Twin Gladius” which will “combine exciting swordplay with the Quickening powers of an Immortal.” MacLeod’s knowledge and strength will be enhanced with each other Immortal he beheads throughout the game.”

In March of the same year, it was an interview with producer Gilles Baril, which explained in detail new points about the game, including its story, that appeared online:

Could you please reveal the beginning of the game’s plot, just a glimpse of the story?

G.B.: “The game starts in New York – large parts of the city are being evacuated but nobody knows why. The hero, Owen McLeod, is about to leave the city when several heavily armed men burst into his loft apartment. As the story unfolds, Owen finds out that a powerful immortal is the leader behind the attacks, searching for a mysterious artefact which was broken many years before into three fragments. Owen sets off after the fragments, sensing that his destiny is closely linked to this ancient artefact, he racks his memories for clues, memories which will plunge him into three different key periods of his past.”

Can you describe the different environments on the game and where it all takes place historically?

G.B.: “The game takes place in modern day New York where Owen must sift through his memories in order to unfold the story. These memory flashbacks take place in: Pompeii in the 1st Century AD, where, as a young gladiator, Owen meets his mentor who teaches him of his true nature and of the rules to the Game; The Highlands in the 9th Century where, in search of his origins, he befriends a fellow Immortal named Ryan, with whom he fights side by side against the Viking ravagers allied to the powerful Pict sorcerer Barak; and finally, Japan in the 14th Century, where, with his ally Methos, he protects the sanctuary of Kusanagi-no-tsurugi, a legendary blade, and fights Shinu, Lord of the Tengus, who seeks to make off with this sacred artefact.”

In the game will you leap between different time periods in history? Will the game also include an RPG element as you progress?

G.B.: “The game moves between New York to Owen’s memories in past time periods so you’ll be moving between different time periods as Owen tries to discover the key to what is happening to him in New York. We’ve kept to a good balance of navigation, combat and story. Each environment varies in terms of balance of these three elements. This is a tricky balance to get right but we’re happy with the outcome. There will also be an element of RPG to the game as you will be able to upgrade Owen’s combat and Quickening techniques as you play through the game, depending on the choices you make as you play.”

Can you explain how you will be able to upgrade your character?

G.B.: “The player can upgrade their player character, weapons and immortal Quickening techniques in two ways – by spending experience points earned in the game and by finding secret bonuses hidden in the levels. The player can earn extra experience points by using more skilled combat moves to finish off their opponents and by completing secondary objectives in the levels (for example, saving all the innocent Scottish villagers from being slaughtered by the Vikings in the Highlands). Upgrades enhance the strength of the weapons, the power and scope of the Quickening effects and increase the abilities of the player character.”

We understand that you can move both on rooftops and on the ground in the New York part of the game. Can you explain how this happens?

G.B.: “The game features levels where navigating deadly heights is crucial. One of these levels features a wind effect which will blow the character off unless the player is careful. The New York levels are pretty vast and do feature gameplay on the ground and higher levels/roofs, however we also have to take care to ensure the player doesn’t get lost, so there are some limits.”

How does the combat system work?

G.B.: “Each weapon has its own set of attacks and the player can create their own combos. This evolves further when Owen is in Fury mode which gives him much stronger attacks. Using the Weapon Mastery Quickening technique each weapon can also become even more destructive. We’re very confident that the combat experience will be easy for players to pick up and play and will also provide a real unique Highlander flavor.”

Will you fight other Immortals?

G.B.: “There are boss fights with other Immortals but we wanted to keep the Immortal fights special so in many parts of the game Owen will be fighting mortals. Some of the mortals are aware that Owen is an Immortal and have been hired to kill him, like the men invading his apartment in New York at the start of the game, whereas others are just generally up to no good like the Vikings invading the Scottish highlands in later levels.”

 

However, the game, initially planned for the summer of 2008, disappeared again from the radar and was no longer mentioned. We can see that several Widescreen employees stopped working on it around the time when it was supposed to be released. In February 2009, following the economic crisis, Eidos was bought by Square Enix to become Square Enix Europe. In April of the same year, some sources declared that David Abramowitz, during a convention dedicated to Highlander told that the game was postponed indefinitely following disagreements between Eidos and Davis-Panzer. In parallel, Widescreen was already working on a new project, The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf, before filing for bankruptcy in July 2009. Oddly enough, it was not until December 2010 that Square Enix confirmed the cancellation of the game, which could imply that after the shutdown of Widescreen, the publisher planned to relaunch the development of the game with a new developer.

It was never officially revealed why Highlander was canceled. In this comment section, an anonymous source claiming to have worked on the game indicate that it was finished but was of poor quality and would justify the delay announced by Abramowitz in April 2009, but this remains to this day only pure speculation. On the other hand, Alexis Madinier, one of the former developer on the game wrote on his LinkedIn profile that it was:

“canceled due to clash between publisher and IP Owner. At 2 months of the release…”

Which could confirm the words of David Abramowitz during the convention. No further attempts to develop a new game based on the Highlander franchise have materialized after that one, at least, for now.

Article by Daniel Nicaise

Images:

Videos:

Video showing various iterations, whether at the beginning of development or towards the end, including a different prototype from October 2006.

Various characters animations and a glimpse of gameplay showing the beginning of the final version chosen by the developers. Video originally provided by Josselin Authelet.

Another video showing characters animations. Video originally provided by Jean-Christophe Serme.

Small French documentary, from 2007, showing a bit of Highlander, video originally provided by Timothée Letourneux.

Highlander final trailer by Dominique Peyronnet.

  

Portal 2 [Beta & Unused Content]

Portal 2 is a first-person-shooter-type-puzzle game. Developed for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC and released by Valve sometime in April 2011. Some beta information were shared thanks to interviews and by fans of the game, but sadly no screenshots are currently available.

At some point during the development, the player would have been allowed to use a type of gel that could give the ability to walk on walls. The gel was cut due to the fact it could have cause motion sickness.

Quoting the article from www.escapistmagazine.com:

Portal 2 writer Erik Wolpaw has revealed that Valve originally planned to include a gel that let you walk on walls in Portal 2, but dropped it after it made people queasy.

Wolpaw said that the gel had added a nice gameplay twist, but that it was incredibly disorientating. He added that nausea was a constant concern when developing first person games, so the decision was made to drop the gel. He added that Valve was so concerned about the possibility of Portal 2 making people nauseous in general – a very real threat in a game that has so many rapid changes in position and perspective – that it adjusted the frame rate and movement to try and minimize the effects. Wolpaw said that this action on Valve’s part should help even people who normally do suffer from FPS motion sickness to enjoy the game

Source: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi … als-Writer

Another piece of information comes from an interview with Chet Faliszek and Jay Pinkerton about portal 2’s early story scripts.  Originally portal 2 was to be a prequel rather than a sequel and Cave Johnson was amuch more important character in the game originally. GLaDOS wasn’t in the early scripts of the game.

Quoting the article from www.escapistmagazine.com:

Portal 2 writers Chet Faliszek and Jay Pinkerton revealed in a recent interview that the game nearly included nothing that we knew and loved from the original Portal, because none of it existed yet.

Speaking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Pinkerton said that Cave Johnson, founder of Aperture Science featured in Portal 2, was once a much more important character in the game. “At one point two years ago some Cave Johnson dialogue got leaked – so I can now tell you, two years ago Cave was the bad guy in Portal 2 and GLaDOS wasn’t in the game,” he said. “It was a prequel. We liked the character enough that we snuck him into this.”

Source: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi … -a-Prequel

Also, as linked to us by Robert Seddon, kotaku published a story about a removed competitive multiplayer more:

“Along with co-op, [we had] the idea of sort of a competitive Portal multiplayer,” Valve’s Erik “Old Man Murray” Wolpaw told 1UP.

“We went down that path, actually, for a little while and had something up and running — the best way to describe it is sort of Speedball meets Portal. You know, a sports analogy. And it quickly became apparent that while it’s fun for about two seconds to drop portals under people and things like that, it quickly just devolves into pure chaos. It lost a lot of the stuff that was really entertaining about Portal, which was puzzle-solving. Cooperative puzzle-solving was just a much more rewarding path.”

As noticed by user caseyfam, wheatley has a different voice in the E3 demo. It was also noticed that wheatley says something different in comparison to the final, same context, just different wording.

From Shacknews we can read some more beta differences:

a rare look at the game’s canned competitive multiplayer mode. “While it’s fun for about two seconds to drop portals under people and things like that,” Wolpaw explained. “It quickly just devolves into pure chaos.”

The original concept for Portal 2 featured a different main character, but the concept behind how the game would start was largely the same. Here, the player is waking up in a gorgeous environment designed to look like paradise–but it quickly falls apart in The Truman Show-fashion, revealing that the player has been trapped in a relaxation chamber for an unknown period of time.

Beta images:

E3 Beta Demo:

E3: Hey, hey lady! Over here. Aw good, you’re back. I thought maybe you’d tried to escape without me. Pop a portal over there. Oh thanks. Now they told me, I’m never never ever to disengage myself from this rail or I’ll die. But, we’re out of options here, so get ready to catch me on the off chance that I’m not dead the moment I pop off these things. On 3 ready? 1,2,3…

Final: Hey, Oi oi! I’m up here! Oh brilliant. You did find a portal gun! Aw, you know what? It just goes to show: people with brain damage are the real heroes in the end aren’t they? At the end of the day. Brave. Pop a portal on that wall behind me there and I’ll meet you on the other side of the room. Okay, listen, let me lay something on you here. It’s pretty heavy. They told me NEVER NEVER EVER to disengage myself from my Management Rail, or I would die. But we’re out of options here. So get ready to catch me, alright, on the off change that I’m not dead the moment I pop off this thing. On 3 ready? 1,2,3…

Finally we have a cut character from Portal 2. The characters name is MEL (as seen to the right of this paragraph). Mel can be found in games files and she was originally meant to be used/controlled by the PC in co-op. Instead the co-op mode featured two robots (ATLAS & P-Body) and the human test subjects were cut from the co-op mode entirely. The player can only control the human test subject, Chell, in the single player campaign.

Source of the image and info: http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Mel

Update: May 23, 2011:

Thanks to user Eris, it has been discovered that within the games files there is unused dialog of GLaDOS. The video below mentions garfield the comic book cat and how GLaDOS tweaked it to help make the robots more “human” (which was the co-op plot before it was changed to just finding humans). You can view the unused dialog in the video below:

The other video of GLaDOS unused dialog mainly consists of garbled messages, gibberish really. You can video the below:

Additionally, there are several functional prop items that didn’t make the final cut but remained in the code, including a set of collapsible furniture and several light-up indicators.

As pointed out by: bari, In one of the video, as posted on VALVe’S youtube channel, there were going to be a diversity vent. The vent would suck objects up into tubes. The diversity tubes were cut from the game. You can watch the diversity vent in action in the video below:

In addition, unused dialogue for Caroline can be found in the game’s files. Some of the lines were removed; Ellen McLain cried while recording them, and J.K. Simmons refused to record his lines because it “seemed too much like rape to him.” You can view the video below:

Thanks to Eris & bari for their additions to this article.

 

Steambot Chronicles 2 (Bumpy Trot 2) [PS3 – Cancelled]

Steambot Chronicles 2 (AKA Poncotsu Roman Daikatsugeki: Bumpy Trot 2 in Japan) is a cancelled steampunk sandbox / action mech game that was in development for the Playstation 3 by Irem, originally announced on September 2006, at the Tokyo Game Show. Steambot Chronicles 2 was officially canceled along with several other Irem games following the Japanese tsunami / earthquake in march 2011. It’s possible that Irem had already some problems with the development of Steambot Chronicles 2 and the natural disaster in Japan was just the nail in the coffin for this interesting project.

As wrote by Tollmaster on Mecha Damacy:

it seems that the original Steambot Chronicles is doomed to remain a one-off work of genius, an inexplicably deep and mold-breaking PlayStation 2 game where players finally got to see the civilian side of mecha. There was a living, breathing world outside the game’s mechanical boss battles and pitched tournaments; loading up lumber on your clunky steam-powered robot’s flatbed to help construct a bridge in-between playing the harmonica in a touring band and helping root out vast conspiracies seeking to control the world’s oil supply immersed you into something deeper than any other game has ever hoped to.

Images:

Videos:

 

The Deep [XBOX 360 / PS3 – Prototype]

The Deep was a prototype developed by French development studio Darkworks during 2009 for Xbox 360 and PS3. Started after finishing their contract with Ubisoft for I Am Alive, The Deep was pitched to various publishers. In 2010 it was used to present Darkworks’ stereoscopic 3D technology for next-generation consoles.

After The Deep, Darkworks worked on other prototypes including Black Death and Prodigies.

Thanks to Derok for the contribution!

Images:

Video: