Primal was a PS2 game developed by SCEE Cambridge. Despite a prominent advertising campaign, it went largely unnoticed upon release, failing commercially. However, development on a sequel had already began shortly after the first game launched. As early preliminary work was underway, Sony acquired the license to develop an offical tie-in game for the TV show, 24. The development of Primal 2 was thus cancelled in favour of doing that game, as stated by Paul Donovan:
Any hints that there might be a Primal sequel in the pipeline? Pleeeease! :)
Sorry, afraid not. We were playing around with ideas for a Primal 2 and did some prototypes of some new features but then we got the 24 license so we did that instead :-) – Paul Donovan, Senior Programmer, SCEE Cambridge
In 2012, the game was re-released as a PS2 classic for PS3. This is when Chris Sorrell, creative director of Primal, wrote an article on the official PS blog where he and the concept artist of the game, Mark Gibbons, revealed some bits and pieces of the possible plots that were considered for the sequel:
Mark Gibbons – Lead Artist, Primal:
Once the game was completed, preliminary work on a sequel was begun that featured Jen’s lover Lewis as the central character. Primal II would’ve told the story of his journey through Oblivion’s Hell, back to Mortalis, the real world.Chris Sorrell on February 28th, 2012 at 10:39 am said:
[and finally] – If there were to be a Primal 2 it should feature Jen. …Well I do agree with that one. Further to the comments by Mark, yes we did explore a Primal 2 with Lewis as a lead character. We also explored another take that had Jen as lead and centred on the notion that the demons of Oblivion had found a way through into our world. That one had some cool imagery that I recall – Jen in a flowing leather coat riding a spike-wheeled moto-X bike, Prince Jared driving to Jen’s rescue in an ice-cream truck (garbled music blaring) and sub-way tunnels teeming with spider-like Wraith mutants. Ah, if only..
In addition, Mark Gibbons once published some of the concept art he made for this sequel via his old portfolio. His website is no longer online, but part of the concept artwork was retrieved and posted by fans after the original site went offline.
Thanks to Erameris for the contribution!
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