FPS

Lost Legion [PC – Cancelled]

Lost Legion was set to be a squad orientated first person shooter game based in a sci-fi world on a desert planet set in the year 2563, being developed by ZZICT, a studio founded by former Crytek developers that worked on the cancelled ‘Silent Space’ game. It would have marked ZZICT’s first game for PC platforms and was being developed around 2001 onwards.

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Lost Legion was intended to concentrate heavily on providing a realistic combat experience. As such, players would die very easily from enemies and would be quickly overwhelmed in close-quarters.

Players would issue commands to a squad under their command, made up of 5-10 troops. This would be handled in a similar way to Unreal Tournaments GUI, using a hot key the player would bring up a list of commands that they could then issue to all or some of their squad. There was to be several different mission objectives for the player such as reconnaissance (photographing the aliens) rescue missions, search and destroy, capturing and holding a position and capturing aliens for study. As the player could quite quickly become overwhelmed this missions were going to rely heavily on stealth and forward planning.

Lost Legion was said to be based on Starship Troopers, Aliens, Rainbow six and Counter Strike, ZZICT also wanted to tap into the current market trends of the time of outdoor scenarios, teamwork based action and a fear inducing atmosphere.

There is very little information on ZZICT and their company website is no longer available. It can be accessed using the Wayback Machine, but there is no more information about the game. This was the developers’ first and last game, as they never developed anything since.

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Black 2 [Xbox 360, PS3 – Cancelled]

Black 2 [Xbox 360, PS3 – Cancelled]

Black 2 is the cancelled sequel to Criterion Games‘ 2006 shooter, Black, which was being worked on by the same developer for publisher and IP holder, Electronic Arts. It was planned to be a co-op shooter for the Xbox 360 and PS3 with a release in late 2007/early 2008.

The Original Idea For Black 2

Despite recurring rumours of Black 2 rumbling for several years after the release of the original game, its development was, in actuality, rather short-lived and it never was able to leave pre-production. As it turns out, EA and Criterion had plans to expand Black into a franchise for some time before the first game was even released. Preliminary work on the sequel commenced as early as April 2005, a whole 10 months before Black was finished.

Artists were contracted externally to produce conceptual documents for the game, including drawings of the protagonist, Jack Kellar. According to one of the artists who spent a short period of time on the project, there was some debate over the direction the follow-up would take. One possible path, for example, would have continued the story of the first game, as Kellar continues his hunt for Lennox at the behest of the US government. 

Earth No More [Cancelled]

Earth No More is a cancelled FPS that was in development from 2007 to 2009 by Recoil Games (a studio based in Finland and founded by Remedy Entertainment co-founder Samuli Syvahuoko), using UE3 game engine, and it would have been published by 3D Realms / Radar Group for Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. Earth No More would have been set in a small New England town quarantined due to a mysterious environmental apocalypse. Sadly the development had to be stopped because Recoil Games had some financial problems. After a while, they were able to create a new game, Rochard, that was released as a digital title for PC, Mac and PS3, but it’s currently unknown if Earth No More will ever be resurrected for current-gen consoles. You can find more about Earth No More on Wikipedia, IGN and Gamasutra.

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Untitled Cavia FPS (aka “Catacombs”) [Cancelled – PS3 / X360]

Catacombs is a cancelled FPS that was being developed by Cavia for Square-Enix in 2010. The game was never officially announced and the project was shelved in 2011, but in 2012 Siliconera leaked some screenshots and informations about it.

Catacombs was basically an interesting crossover between a RPG with random-generated dungeons and a team-based shooter. The player could upgrade the guns that he found in the ruins but also use magic. Four different characters were available, each one with its own story, which according to the narrative director Brandon Sheffield had an important role in the game:

Since we’re all inherently different and our mind is the only thing we can truly know, then our reality exists only inside of our brains. So each stage was about these people destroying their own fears and doubts and also their identity. They were supposed to be overcoming their sense of self, and how that related to their identity as an American, but also their otherness.”

EDGE in 2012 played an early build of the game that ran on a heavily modifed version of Mindjack engine.

For more informations check Siliconera article and EDGE special feature.

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INCorporated [PC, Xbox 360 – Tech Demo / Cancelled]

INCorporated is a cancelled multiplayer first person shooter set in a gritty Orwellian future that was in development by Galahan Games for the PC and (maybe?) the Xbox 360. The game started out as a Far Cry (Crytek CryEngine 1) modification and Galahan Games released a tech demo using that engine in early 2005. This tech demo demonstrated some of the 3D character models they were designing for the game. As development continued, they moved the game to Artificial Studios’ Reality Engine and released a new tech demo in late 2005. This Reality Engine tech demo allowed the player to explore a small city level and experiment with the world’s physics and a small amount of weapons. It also showed off the world’s day/night cycle. Unfortunately, the game was ultimately cancelled and the Reality Engine was sold to Epic Games in 2005. You can download everything that remains from this lost game (concept art, movies, tech demos, etc.) from this link

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