Eidos Interactive

Abraxas (Fabled Lands MMORPG) [PC – Cancelled]

Abraxas is a cancelled Massive Multiplayer RPG that was in early planning stage at Eidos. The project was originally based on the Fabled Lands series of fantasy gamebooks written by Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson, published by Pan Books in the mid 90s. Originally planned as a twelve-book series, only six books were released between 1995 and 1996 before the series was cancelled.

In 1996, the authors decided to use their experience with gamebooks to enter the computer games industry – taking the Fabled Lands series with them.

They started work at Eidos Interactive on an MMO. Eidos was skeptical as to whether an MMO would be financially successful, but was interested enough to set the authors up with a team to research the relevant technology. [Info from Wikipedia]

At Bit Tech we can read in a long article about the project:

When it came to developing the fiction and the overall settings of the MMO though, it was an entirely different story and the groundwork was quickly laid down for adapting Fabled Lands to a new medium – until legal problems reared their heads anyway. Soon, Dave and Jamie were forced to drop the Fabled Lands setting and look at new setting.

“Our publishers told us that our book contract entitled them to 50 percent of our revenue from the game,” says Dave. “They meant our salaries, as Eidos wasn’t going to pay anything to licence a fantasy world when they could just as easily pay us to create one from scratch. Then the publishers said, ‘Okay, not 50 percent, but you have to give us 2% of what you get.’ That was just going to be an irritation, but we decided we’d just come up with a new setting.”

Needing to distance their burgeoning MMO from the Fabled Lands books, Jamie and Dave set about creating a number of new world, one of which became known as Abraxas and Dave describes as being very different from most other fantasy settings […]

The team’s plans for the game were extremely ambitious for the late 90s, as the Abraxas MMO was supposed to include advanced AI that acted as a digital gamesmaster, tailoring the experience for each player.

In the end the game was never released; according to Morris and Thomson, this was because of their own, over-ambitious designs, colleagues who didn’t understand their ideas and the general poor management of game design and development at the time.

“Well, it was all pretty convoluted,” Dave says, a little sadly. “To start with, we had a project manager we’d hired who led a sort of coup! We turned up one day and he told us, ‘The team has decided not to do a fantasy role-playing game. It’s going to be about giant battling robots now.’”

The Abraxas setting is still being developed by the two authors, and may become an interactive e-book for the iPhone and iPad in the future. You can find more info about Fabled Lands and the Abraxas MMORPG at the official Fabled Lands Blog!

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the contribution! Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!

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Deathtrap Dungeon [PSX PC – Beta]

Deathtrap Dungeon is an action game developed by Eidos in 1998 and released for the PlayStation and PC.  Although originally previewed for the gaming press alongside Eidos’ own original Tomb Raider game, Deathtrap Dungeon sat through several years of delays before finally seeing release. [Info from Wikipedia]

Derboo found some early images of the game in a Korean gaming magazine (Gamepia 8/96): in these screens we can notice a character model in red armor which could be an early version of the female player character, an unknown character model and a still from a FMV described as a machine for making humans into monsters, which seems to have been removed from final game.

The female character was changed with a thong leather bikini in the beta, but due to ratings concerns, Eidos gave her some “proper” armor before the game went gold. In some other beta screens, we can see that the game  still looked incomplete, with placeholder models and different rooms layout. If someone could find more info about these or more beta shots, please let us know!

Thanks to Derboo for the contribution!

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Hitman: Blood Money [PS2 XBOX X360 – Beta]

Hitman: Blood Money is an action / stealth game developed by IO Interactive and published by Eidos Interactive in 2006 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360 and PC. Vicente noticed various differences in the beta screenshot that you can see in the gallery below:

Less persons and guards in the level “You better watch out”

Agen 47 disguised as a bartender in the same level (does not happen in the final?)

Beta 3D model for Lorne de Havilland (sitting near the fireplace)

Different concept design for Lorne de Havilland

Different concept design for Anthony Martinez

An unknown enemy

Agent 47 had a slightly different face

Beta Flatline level (different layout?)

Beta model of the optional target called “?” with a tattoo on her back.

Vinnie’s wife in the pool, in the level “A new life”

Thanks to Vicente for the contribution!

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Batman: Arkham Asylum [X360/PS3/PC – Beta]

Batman: Arkham Asylum is an action-adventure stealth video game based on DC Comics’ Batman for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. It was developed by Rocksteady Studios and published by Eidos Interactive in conjunction with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Comics and was released in 2009. [Info from Wikipedia]

Throughout Batman: Arkham Asylums development the developers were shooting for a hard T rating. Based on early screens it seems that they intended for the game to have blood, but it appears that they had to tone it down to get the rating that they wanted.

Also, as we can read at Game Informer, it seems that the combat system in the game was changed at least 3 times before chosing the final one:

Combat went through three distinct revisions – the first one being a full rhythm action game! The second one was prototyped in 2D, which popped up whenever you got into a fight, and involved colored circles bashing into each other. This actually formed the basis of the final system.

FMMC noticed that Batman’s gliding was impaired when his cape was torn in the beta.

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the contribution!

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Daikatana [PC – Prototype]

Daikatana is a First-Person Shooter developed by Ion Storm, led by John Romero and published by Eidos Interactive in 2000. In Daikatana, the player assumes the role of Hiro Miyamoto, a Japanese swordmaster in 2455 A.D. He had to travel through various time periods using the eponymous Daikatana, a powerful sword tied to the fate of the world.

Romero’s initial game design, completed in March 1997, called for a huge amount of content – 24 levels split into 4 distinct time periods, 26 weapons, and 64 monsters, as reported by the issue #30 of Next Generation, from June 1997:

NG: How will these four different time periods differ?

J.R.: They all have completely different graphics. There are none shared between the time periods except for some of the artifacts you pick up that are universal. There are 26 weapons — every time period has it’s entire complete set of weapons. Then there are completely new monsters for each episode and 16 monsters in each episode.

Despite this, Romero believed that development of the game could be completed in six months, just in time for Christmas 1997. The game was to license the id Tech 2, Quake‘s game engine. However, as we can read on PC Gamer, in early 1997, the Quake II engine was showcased for the first time, and Romero admitted that their own game wasn’t up to date graphically:

(…) Despite the ambitious scope, Romero estimated that by licensing the Quake engine, his team could have the project turned around in six months. But in early 1997, Romero and Hall saw Quake II in action. They were blown away by its engine, which included among its features coloured lighting and support for hardware acceleration. Their games were already behind schedule, but they figured it was worth the time investment to incorporate the Quake II source code in order to keep their games visually up to date.

At E3 of the same year, a first trailer was showed and wasn’t well received due to low framerate and being outdated.

Daikatana 1997 E3 trailer. Still using the id Tech 2.

Throughout the 1998 year, the project evolved only visually since the source code of the Quake II engine was not definitively implemented until March 1999, almost a year and a half of programming before reaching the final rendering.

The Daikatana team was left to fathom how to incorporate the code by itself. At this time, 3D graphics rendering technology was improving at an exponential rate, and the complexity was compounding with it. As a result, the code base for the Quake II engine was radically different. Ion Storm received the Quake II source code in November 1997, but it would take until March 1999 to fully implement it into Daikatana.

Differences between the 1998 version and the final one are the HUD, the sounds and the design of some weapons, items and the main menu.

Daikatana 1998 trailer

In the gallery below you can see a series of screenshots  and videos from the early build on the original Quake 1 engine (with removed and changed levels), alongside the slightly different 1998 version. In 2004 Romero released this playable pre-alpha version of Daikatana, and you should be able to download it from here.

Images:

1998 version images:

Videos:

1997 version very early build

Another trailer from the 1997 version

1997 version’s demonstration of various areas

A playlist of no less than 25 videos of the 1997 version

1998 Version’s gameplay