New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Microsoft, Playstation 2 (PS2), Sony, Xbox

Indiana Jones Trilogy (The Collective) [Cancelled – Xbox, PS2]

monokoma
11-02-2021
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A cancelled Indiana Jones video game based on the original trilogy was in development around 2003 – 2004 by The Collective (who also worked on the cancelled Executives / Career Criminal for Midway), after releasing “Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb”.

In 2008 a former developer shared some details about this canned project on CG Society:

“So… this image is 5 years old, low poly realtime model created for a project that could have been. No photos were used in the creation of the textures and the render was not retouched.

This was done at Collective Studios, now known as Double Helix, sometime after Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb shipped. Hoping to work on another game, we did some R & D for a possible sequel. New, polished character models were created and the Indiana Jones model completely redone.

There was an amazing prototype that was up and running with updated gameplay, but unfortunately this project never happened. Probably could have been the greatest Indy game ever. Unfortunately due to things out of the hands of the studio and surprisingly, even the publisher, nothing came about.”

In 2012 a show reel that contained footage of this canned Indiana Jones game was found online (and then taken down, but the video was preserved by Indiana Jones Brasil) showing Indy and Satipo maneuvering through environments similar to that of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with gameplay elements similar to Emperor’s Tomb. (This demo reel also contained footage of the project known as Prince of Persia: Assassins).

In 2010 now-vanished gaming website 1UP also published some information:

“Six or seven years back, I won’t say who I was working for, but we were working on an Indiana Jones trilogy game based on the first three movies,” says Rex Dickson, lead single-player level designer at Kaos Studios (Homefront). “That game ended up not coming out for whatever reason — I can go on a long diatribe about why — but it was just really cool, because we had the full Hovitos temple built out with the rolling boulder, and it was all awesome. That would’ve been Xbox/PS2 — that generation.”

If you know someone who worked on this lost game and could help preserve even more screenshots or footage, please let us know!

Thanks to Duarte and Indiana Jones Brasil for the contribution!

Microsoft, Others, PC / MAC, Playstation 3 (PS3), Sony, Xbox 360

BackSpace (Obsidian) [Cancelled – PC, Xbox 360, PS3]

monokoma
10-02-2021
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BackSpace is a cancelled sci-fi RPG that was in early development by Obsidian Entertainment from January to April 2011 (around the same time they were finishing Dungeon Siege III), to be published by Bethesda on PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The project was pitched as “Sci-Fi SKYRIM with Time Travels” and it was led by Jason Fader (who also worked on Obsidian’s cancelled Aliens RPG, Fallout: New Vegas, and the System Shock remake at Nightdive Studios).

While the game was quickly canned by the studio and it was never officially announced, Kotaku published a short article on the game in 2013, showing off remaining concept art created by Obsidian and sharing a few details on its gameplay:

“BackSpace is a single-player action-RPG set in a scifi space environment with simple elements of time travel. The combat is paced similarly to Skyrim, but slightly faster since there is no concept of blocking. The easiest way to look at it is a mix of Mass Effect, Borderlands, and System Shock 2 for gameplay and setting.”

“It was to be developed in some sort of partnership with Bethesda, I’ve heard, and it’d use the same engine as their ridiculously-successful role-playing game Skyrim. Although BackSpace wasn’t an open-world game, players would be able to travel between a number of planets as well as one large space station.”

“This station is huge,” a BackSpace design document reads. “It can be compared in size to The Citadel of Mass Effect [or] Babylon 5. The station has several locations devoted to diverse research fields which would allow us to have vegetation overgrowth, high-tech disasters, and mutations of science as visual themes.”

“[…] a technical error would fling your character ten years into the future, and you’d spend a bulk of the game hopping back and forth between the time of the attack and a dismal, alien-occupied future. Quests in the game would task you with hopping between timelines in an attempt to save humankind.”

In 2017 Jason replied to a few questions on Reddit, sharing even more details on what happened to BackSpace:

“I was working closely with Bethesda on BackSpace. Since there were no other projects lined up after the Old World Blues team finished their work, I took it upon myself to try to find another project for the company. I reached out to Bethesda and directly asked them what type of game they’d be most interested in publishing next. From there, I started working on a pitch based on a prior game I made, ThreadSpace: Hyperbol (story only, not gameplay). The gameplay was something designed around Bethesda’s interests at the time. No other publishers were pitched on it, to my knowledge, but there was interest from a 3rd party in creating a TV show based on it.

I actually started working on the project a bit before that by myself after hours. Probably as early as October (2010). It was an “after school project” for a very long time, and after a few months, more and more folks would join me after hours to volunteer their time to help. I don’t think we actually worked on it by day until the final month for the prototype. Then the layoffs happened. Then I stuck around for a few more years. Then the big layoffs (including me this time).”

In April 2011 Obsidian had to lay off part of their team, including many of those developers who were working on BackSpace. With financial difficulties in keeping the team active they worked on South Park: The Stick of Truth and many cancelled ventures (such as Stormlands for Microsoft), until they found success on Kickstarter with Pillars of Eternity.

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Articles, Unseen News

Some anticipated video games which may have been canceled (or not)

U64 Staff & Contributors
10-02-2021
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Probably, you know how it feels to wait for the release of your most hyped game, promising attractive plot and gameplay. Sometimes it happens that such a game was announced several years ago, but it is still yet to be released.

A long wait can prompt us to think that games like Hytale, Beyond Good and Evil 2, Dead Island 2, Wild (by Wild Sheep Studio), and Dragon Age 4 will remain at the development stage forever. Anything can be. But do not forget that many internal and external factors can affect the work of the development team.

Remember: release delay does not always equal cancellation. For example, the Last Guardian was released nine years later after it was announced on the PS3.

Here are some games that were announced many years ago and are still unreleased: could these be the next unseen games to be archived in our site?

Hytale

Hytale is an open-world sandbox game with RPG elements and the impact of randomness on game events. Work on the game was officially announced in December 2018, but in fact, work on it began even earlier.

Initially, Hypixel Studios did not announce the Hytale release date. The issue behind was a financial factor: in April 2020 Riot Games bought Hypixel Studios and announced at least an approximate Hytale release date: 2021. The question of when will Hytale be released was discussed by Insider.Games in more detail. But we can state that work on Hytale continues. The developers published a big update in December 2020.

Beyond Good and Evil 2

Beyond Good and Evil 2 is a prequel to the first game. The plot tells the story about the consequences of the program for people and animals crossing to study space.

Ubisoft Montpellier originally announced work on the game in May 2008, and that version was indeed canned. Unfortunately, commercial failure predicted the developers to wait until they could represent the game at a press conference in 2017.

In September 2020, the developer Michel Ancel left the team, which is why work on Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still ongoing. According to the financial statements of Ubisoft, the game should be released after April 2021.

Dead Island 2

Dead Island 2, like the first game, is not going to strain players with a complex plot. By genre, this is a role-playing action in which the player will have to survive in California, where infections have occurred, and zombies are threatening humanity again.

The development history of Dead Island 2 is sad and may no longer inspire confidence in many gamers. The game had changed three developers since 2012 when it was announced. 2019 is the last time a new developer (Dambuster Studios) was appointed. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the development process. We have only the vague promise “the game will not be canceled,” announced in December 2020 on Twitter by Deep Silver.

Will the game get a new developer? Will it be released in 2021? Will it be canceled? Only time will tell.

Wild

Wild from French developer Wild Sheep Studio promises to be an interesting open-world survival game. Events will unfold in the Neolithic period, and the player will be able to control the first people and animals thanks to shamanism.

Work on Wild was announced back in 2014. In 2017, journalists speculated that Wild Sheep Studio had never actually worked on the game, but in April 2020, the developers published new images.

Unfortunately, Michel Ancel’s resignation affected not only Beyond Good and Evil 2 but Wild as well. Though Ancel stated that the game is in good hands, the gaming community has never received a specific release date or updates on the work process.

Dragon Age 4

Fantasy game Dragon Age 4 continues the story of the mainland Thedas, whose habitual existence is now threatened by the Dread Wolf. The Dread Wolf is one of the first powerful elves to cause the fall of his race. He wants to fix everything, but there is no room for non-elves in the world he sees.

Unlike previous games, we can be sure that Dragon Age 4 will be released. Since 2018, when the developers announced work on the new game, the gaming community has received several videos covering the main plot, locations, and characters. However, due to the volume of work on the game and the resignation of some key developers, fans of the series and the genre will not be able to play Dragon Age 4 until 2022 or 2023.

Others, PC / MAC

A Ghost in the Machine (Presage Software) [PC – Cancelled]

monokoma
10-02-2021
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A Ghost in the Machine is a cancelled text / visual adventure game that was in development in the mid ‘90s by Presage Software, planned to be published by Dreamworks Interactive in collaboration with Steven Spielberg. The game was quite ambitious for its time, mixing a faux operating system, AI-dialogues, free-form investigation and multi-paths storyline. You could imagine its gameplay as a mix between Hypnospace Outlaw and Her Story: by using this “game software” players would be able to find emails, photos, videos and chat with the AI, to unveil the plot.

The game was never officially announced but the team worked on the project for about 2 years investing a million dollars. The only remaining proof of its existence are some details shared by former Presage Software developer Todd Daggert on his old website (now offline unfortunately):

“It is a real-time interactive story in which you, the user, assist events that transpire within your very screen. […] The point of this program is that it is just that — a PROGRAM (the “Ghost”), nothing more, nothing less. […] But unlike other software, this program will become self-aware and know its capabilities. It will communicate as your computer would, should it ever come to life and develop a personality. […] They will remain themselves, reacting naturally to unnatural behavior from their once-familiar computer.

The strength and beauty of this program will be in its creative use of the medium’s shortcomings to further the authenticity of the events. […] The “Ghost” will have a totally dimensional personality, with character traits derived from a huge database of events and memories that will soon be shared with the user.”

“This diagram illustrates the player’s progression and flow of information as they work their way through the game. It was the first, highest-level pass of the interactive story.”

A Ghost in the Machine was originally conceived by Mike Kennedy at Presage Software, but after he left the company things became quite difficult for the remaining staff, with Dreamworks asking to make the game more similar to classic point & click adventures:

“[…] after the principal members of the first design team (including Mike Kennedy) departed from Presage I was brought in as the primary designer on a new team of designers and artists, to fuel it with new direction and “make something happen”. I flew down to Amblin in Hollywood and hung out in Spielberg’s office, played with his 3 foot high T-Rex model, and talked with Bryce Zabel, the Hollywood writer who was to go on to make “Dark Skies”. Shifts in Dreamwork’s staff had convinced them that our new direction needed more Hollywood involvement, so it fell to me to integrate the new story provided by Bryce, the new interface and elements desired by the Dreamworks producers, and the desires of management at Presage. “

The game’s story would be built around the possibility of re-program one’s mind artificially:

“Five enlisted soldiers were volunteered for the Bravo test sequence using the Legion Device.  The Langley research indicated that implanted programs could not be generically applied with any degree of accuracy, as each person’s memory patterns were too unique for any single solution.  The BLV-50’s Guido routine was modified appropriately.  The Device now would take a reading of the person’s mind under a standard series of conditions elicited by a series of sequential stimuli involving color patterns, pictures and music.  The routine would adjust the recorded patterns by applying the desired program and then return the adjusted pattern back to the brain, now enhanced with the subconscious program.”

“A total of nineteen soldiers comprising both enlisted men and NCO’s were taken to a subtropical test reserve in Florida and given explicit orders which contradicted the commands they were secretly programmed with.  These soldiers were broken into two teams, a “hunter” team and a “hunted” team.  The hunters were fully equipped and provisioned, though unarmed. The orders were for the hunted group to evade the hunters for a period of twenty-four hours.  If the two sides came into contact, the game was over, and the hunters had won.  Halfway through the game the commanders of both groups triggered the soldiers’ programming, with encouraging results.  Fourteen of the nineteen soldiers (including all members of the hunted team) followed their programming over their orders, plunging through the dense forest with nearly superhuman speed and control to find a member of the opposite team to beat into unconsciousness.  Of the fourteen who followed this programming, twelve of them had no memory of disobeying orders, and only one suffered any injury from vaulting through the treacherous undergrowth.”

In the end the project was managed by so many different people that it lost its focus:

“Despite my best efforts, there was no effective way to fuse the widely disparate visions of the three groups. Presage continued to hire and lose staff, as did Dreamworks, every new player bringing a new vision to the table. Design by committee is never a good thing, sadly, all of us would walk away unsatisfied by what Ghost became.”

“After a two-year-long journey through the height of Siliwood that consumed a million dollars, two full design teams and three producers, Ghost was to end its rough-and-tumble life with a final cancellation. […] Halfway through 1996, Ghost’s funding was cut off, Dreamworks walked away, and the project that we had known as Ghost came to an end. “

We would like to remember this cancelled project on this page, preserving what remains from a fascinating and ambitious video game we’ll never play.

Others, PC / MAC

Rage Hard [PC, MAC – Cancelled]

U64 Staff & Contributors
10-02-2021
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Rage Hard was a First Person Shooter in development from 2002 to possibly 2007, planned to be released on MAC first, then possibly also on Windows PCs. German company Titan Computer GbR were the main driving force behind the game, although they seemed to have been joined later by the fellow german DnS Development. Both companies had experience bringing Windows games to Macintosh, having ports such as Jagged Alliance 2, SiN, Heretic II and Shogo: Mobile Armor Division under their belts, and Rage Hard was being made as a Mac OS title first and foremost.

Rage Hard’s basic concept was something commonly seen around the time of its development: a multiplayer-focused shooter set in a gritty urban environment, backed up by a large arsenal of weapons and a tactical coat of paint. However, it wanted to set itself apart from the competition by not having the central conflict be what Titan saw as the generic Military good guys vs. Terrorist bad guys, and instead creating a world in which the playable characters all belonged to villainous factions.

Rage Hard was set in the not too distant future, in which the police itself grew to be corrupt enough to become one of the reigning crime syndicates. They becomes engaged in skirmishes which pit all manner of other criminals and deranged gunmen against each other. These would range from common street thugs to cartel and mafia members, paramilitaries and religious fanatics, offering a large selection of characters with wildly different looks. The CLAWS engine allowed for every detail of their appearance (like eyes, clothing and hair) to animate in real time.

Combat would take place in either close-quarters locations, such as nightclubs and other building interiors, to expansive and open environments like gang-ridden city blocks. Powered by an experience-based class system, the gameplay would require players to adapt to the environment, choosing between chaotic gunfights or a more tactical approach, as well as picking the right skills for the job.

Rage Hard would apparently do away with restrictive classes seen in games such as Battlefield by allowing the player to pick a base skill they wanted to excel at (for example Accuracy) and then utilizing experience gained by defeating enemies to develop others in whatever way they saw fit in between rounds. In theory, this could mean that creating a Sniper character that also had the ability to be a damage sponge was possible. But, of course, the utility of such a class to the team would be questionable, and it was up to the player to decide what worked in what context.

Despite the clear multiplayer focus, Rage Hard would also feature a single player campaign said to be 12 levels long and entirely team-based, although this aspect of the game seems to only have been added later on during development.

What ultimately became of Rage Hard is unclear. First announced in 2002, the game seemed to stay in development hell for quite a long time. Although the official website remained up until mid-2009, the last update on it dated back to late 2007. The Titan Computer website was accessible until at least late 2016, but it similarly stopped updating in 2009, with the last three announcements being completely unrelated to Rage Hard’s development. It’s likely they were ultimately unable to secure a publishing deal: whatever the case may be, Rage Hard would never end up seeing the light of day.

It seems Titan were never able to recover from the years they put into its development. Regarding DnS Development, their fate also seems to have become a mystery. They went on to release several games in the years after their unreleased project, which are available on Steam, and their website is still up as of 2021. However, their last project, Primal Fears, was released in 2013 and there has been no news from them since then.

Article by thecursebearer, thanks to Daniel Nicaise for the contribution!

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