insomniac

Monster Knight [PS2 Concept – Cancelled]

Monster  Knight is a cancelled third person action-rpg developed by Insomniac that was supposed to be released for PS2. The game was never officially announced, but its design document, created in 1999 and which contained the concept arts that we can see below, was shown to IGN in august 2012.

From the few info available about it, Monster knight was probably a mix between Zelda and Pokemon: in fact, the player main’s objective was to explore a large world and capture the various creatures that he encountered.

However, in this game monsters could  be acquired also by negotiation or after pursuing and catching them, and they were used by the player not as fighters but as equipment or transport. Every creature had a particular class, growth pattern and personality.

For more information check  IGN article .

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I:5 (Insomniac) [PS2 – Cancelled]

Codename I:5 (aka “Girl with a stick”) is a cancelled game that was in development by Insomniac Games, between Spyro: Year of the Dragon (2000) and Ratchet & Clank (2002). As the name of the project suggests, it was going to be the 5th game from Insomniac studio, but after some time they decided to stop the works on it, as it was not much fun to play. I:5 was never officially announced, but  they talked about it in one of their “The Full Moon Show” video podcasts, in which they even shown some footage of the prototype. The game was meant to be an action adventure / RPG, inspired by Zelda / Tomb Raider, in wich the main character was a girl with a stick as a weapon and magic powers, exploring a fantasy /prehistoric world. Huge props to Insomniac for sharing some info on their lost game!

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Resistance 2 [PS3 – Beta]

Resistance 2 is a FPS developed for the PlayStation 3 by Insomniac Games and published by Sony in 2008. Metin has noticed a lot of differences between the old footage and the retail release (and even the private/public beta). The differences are mostly found in the multiplayer mode, as they didn’t change a whole lot in Single Player (or we did not see much from the early development so can’t accurately measure the changes). In Chicago, Hawthorne, Capelli and Warner run with you from the beginning through the alleys. These were previously Black Ops soldiers running with you and it was also a Black Ops soldier who throws a can to the other side of the street to determine where the Hellfire is.

The beta multiplayer mode:

* Objectives had a real names (go take over the gorge, go take over the lumber mill) instead of “capture the beacon” on every single beacon.

* Augers had the RFOM shield (a plate shaped shield in front of you instead of half a circle in front of you).

* Wrath was called the Minigun early on, it didn’t spin up so fast as it does now and it was less powerfull.

* Marksman was called the Sharpshooter early on, and it didn’t have the 3 bullet burst, it had a regular 1 shot with 10 bullets in a clip instead of 33.

* When you killed someone you’d see ammo boxes pop out of there bodies (might sound weird but it actually looks good).

* Grenade boxes looked like the grenade boxes in Co-op.

* Carbine had alot of recoil and a different aim.

* The water on the ground of Orick was not there in the early footage, it only had a dry ground. Also Orick was called Scotia before the private beta began.

* Also in the lumbermill there is a sort of catwalk going to the top, it’s where a Titan spawns in R2 co-op, they had large iron crates there, and wooden poles ontop of eachother there, these were removed in the final game.

* Secondary fire for the Wrath was supossed to be like this: you press R2, you drop a tripod and you get a shield up in front of you. You can’t move, just turn and aim. You could only be killed by a grenade, someone meele’ing you in the back, or a Sniper shot right where the barrel of the gun comes out. (my guess is they changed this because it would not work in a fast paced game like R2).

* Burning cars looked amazing, there was good looking fire, and thick black smoke coming from burning cars. The smoke would not go straight up in the air but it had a small twist to the right, probably due to wind.

Thanks to Metin and Robert_Kendo for the contributions! Thanks to Jason for the english corrections!

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Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time [PS3 – Beta]

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time is a platform / shooter game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony in october / november 2009. As in other R&C games, to learn more about A Crack in Time’s development and its beta differences the team added a nice bonus to unlock in the form of the “Insomniac Moon” (unlocked after collecting all the Zoni and fighting a secret boss). As we can read from an article at Press the Buttons:

[…] a 3D recreation of the Insomniac offices in the form of a museum that serves as a tribute to and exhibit of all kinds of interesting objects, enemies, levels, and basic design features that did not actually make it into the main game.

[…] From the moment players guide Ratchet into the museum, it’s apparent that something special is going on here. While the area sports a minimalistic design, the real stars are the deleted and unfinished materials. Wander around the place and it’s not long before you’ll stumble on a guided missile weapon that uses flaming birds as ammo. Then there’s a set of crates that pay out special bonuses depending on how Ratchet whacks them with his Omniwrench. Want to have a look at a flying space monster that involved animation too complex to work into the environment in which he was meant to patrol? The museum can offer that.

[…] The best surprise inside the museum is that several of the cut level elements are playable. There’s a hoverboot race that was originally planned for the Agorian Battleplex, and checking out its exhibit space leads to being able to race through the semi-completed environment. There’s also an additional Great Clock platforming puzzle originally meant for Clank and another dropped Battleplex element that involved a procedurally generated obstacle course.

Huge props to Insomniac! If more studios could share this kind of bonus in their games, it would be easier to preserve the cuts and the changes in the development.

A couple of videos of the Insomniac Moon can be found on Youtube, but if someone could be able to record more footage of the area and take some direct-feed screens of all that beta-stuff, it would be nice!

Thanks to Robert Seddon and Bowserenemy for the contributions!

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I-8 (Resistance: FoM) [PS3 – Beta]

I-8 is the codename for the game that became Resistance: Fall of Man. The project was first shown at E3 2005, but the game shown in that video is almost nothing like the game that we have today.

The only thing in this video that really resembles the final game is 35 seconds into the video you can see a early looking Chimera. The video shows  large scale battles fought with hundreds of black op soldiers which is much different then the final games humanity’s losing the war feel. It also appears that you’re fighting other humans along with the Chimera, where in the final game you’re only fighting the Chimera.

In the “Resistance Alpha Video” it’s not known whether or not the game was called Resistance, or I-8 at this point in development you can see that the game now has the look of the final game, but it still has you playing as a black ops soldier, and still has the all out war feel of the first I-8 video. Some noticeable changes are, there are large amounts of enemies onscreen at once, the Chimeras are much more aggressive, and the animations are much better.

The Black Ops soldiers can still be found in the final game, but only as dead bodies that contain hidden messages.

An interesting article about the technical development of the game can be found at Cybergooch.

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