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:
Warhawk [PS3 – Tech Demo/Beta]
Warhawk was first announced to the public in May 2005, with a working build shown at E3 in 2006. This version was the first PlayStation 3 title to be shown with the newly announced SIXAXIS motion sensing technology. In February 2007 it was announced that the single player element of the game was to be pulled. This was due to concerns Incognito had over the quality of the single-player campaign, particularly when compared to the multi-player modes. Dylan Jobe, the games director said “if we were to continue down our single-player/multiplayer approach, it would have resulted in not as good single player or not as good multiplayer”. The extra development of the multiplayer mode was used to
Assassin’s Creed [Beta – Xbox 360 / PS3]
The first Assassin’s Creed was meant to be a new game in the Prince of Persia series, titled “Prince of Persia: Assassins“. The project was later changed for some reasons, but we can see a trailer of the beta / prototype “Prince of Persia: Assassin’s Creed” below.
Also, a target-render video from 2004:
Thanks a lot to trainer15side for the contribution!
Looking through the Assassin’s Creed beta videos and screens, i found out some differences. Here is what i have noticed:
Video:
1. They go into a first person view that does not put you into,”eagle vision” or what they call intuition in the video. The eagle vision has also had some changes in detecting targets. In the final people are kinda,”color coded”.
2. Weird interface icon appears at 3:25 and 4:14.
3. What she calls,” the key moment of assassination” is different, and quicker. In the final once you’ve assassinated someone you go into a scene and the one you assassinated speaks to Altair. I think the beta is cooler personally.
4. The very end it shows the Animus main screen, which is very much different from the final screen.
5. The entrance to the town,”Acre” is much different, and more vast.
There is also a video shown at e3 06 I believe that shows the crossbow cut from the game. Though, the video is in the final game, unchanged. Here are some screenshots of that:
A closer image of where he keeps his arrows for the crossbow, which is replaced for a throwing knife holder in the final.
His short blade is in the front of his clothing, rather than his back like in the final. The crossbow rests on his back instead.
In others beta-screens we can see better the different entrance to the city of Acre and the old HUD. In the beta Animus Interface, the woman in the backround is probably Lucy Stillman, but she appears to be different looking. In the beta picture she looks to be a brunette, in the final she is blonde. It’s hard to say because she is hard to see though.
This area is not in the final game:
Thanks to Eaglevision for the contribution!
Images: