Resident Evil: Revelations is a survival horror developed by Capcom and published for the Nintendo 3DS in January / February 2012. It seems that the beta version of Resident Evil Revelations featured an almost completely different story line where Chris and Jill were on an unnamed ship. For some reason the two protagonists turn against each other. The original trailer shows a Chris look-alike tied down to a chair. Jill asks Chris if he has some sort of object and Chris replies “You’ll have to kill me to find out.” The characters and story in Resident Evil Revelations seem to have been heavily changed during its production.
Fun note: prior to its release, Capcom sent North American copies of Resident Evil: Revelations to reviewers, with the game’s title misspelled as “Revelaitons”.
In the second video, there’s another beta cutscene that didn’t make the final game. [Spoiler] When you first meet Rachel as Jill you just see her getting killed through the glass window in game there is no cutscene. In the Resident Evil Revelations pilot version demo in merc 3d, Rachel is not used and there is a different person that sounds like Raymond.
If you find more beta differences in the old trailers and screens, please let us know!
Deadly Premonition (aka Red Seed Profile in Japan) is a survival horror created by Access Games and released in 2010 for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Originally conceived as a PSP adventure game in the vein of “Flower, Sun and Rain”, Deadly Premonition became a next-gen title only in 2005.
Not surprisingly, Sweary65 said in a interview with Destructoid that combat sections were a publisher’s idea added only at the alpha stage of the development cycle. Probably in the earliest builds the player could only hide or escape from enemies. The “useless” garbage containers scattered around which York can use to conceal himself are likely alpha leftovers.
In 2007 a beta version of the game, tentatively called Rainy Woods, was finally showed to the public but, due to the many similarities with the TV series Twin Peaks, notably the dwarf twins and the protagonist, the publisher decided to postpone Deadly Premonition in order to change the appearance of the characters. All the voice acting was completely reworked too. We’ll probably never know how the original story would have unfolded.
York now looks like the main character of a 1970’s exploitation film.
The sheriff wasn’t changed that much.
In the released game “the red room” is located outdoor in the forest.
This pic is strange. It shows beta York without his jacket in the prologue, but in the final version this happens only at the end.
You can also read this topic at Assembler Games for more info and theories about the differences in the beta version of Deadly Premonition!
Cold Fear is a 3rd person shooter horror title developed for the PS2, Xbox, and PC. Developed by DarkWorks, published by Ubisoft and released in 2005.
Development:
Cold Fear didn’t start as a horror title, based on information and speculation, darkworks was working on several new projects with several publishing and developing houses. In 2003 when DarkWorks was working with Capcom thier project: Lost Mantis/USS Antarctica was canned. In 2004 DarkWorks worked with Namco U.S. on a new title. The game was Time Crysis Adventure. However the game, much like Lost Mantis, was canned, but not before Ubisoft stepped in and took over the project. TC: Adventure evolved into the game Cold Fear. There are several Concept Art images that remain of Time Crysis: Adventure. You can view the Concept Art below:
Alpha Stage:
Prior to the games release Cold Fear orignally looked more detailed and gritty. The enviroments showcased in these screenshots are different in the final version – similar but different. The main chracter in this build was not from the USCG (United States Coast Guard) but part of the Navy Seals and was involved in the operation that invaded the russian ship at the begining of the game. (CLICK TO ENLARGE THE SCREENSHOTS)
Tom Hansen Background
In the alpha build, Tom Hansen was a 29 year old captain of the navy seals – he wasn’t part of the USCG (United States Coast Guard). It can be assumed that – much like the final version – the navy seals was wiped out. Making Tom Hansen the last survivor on the russian ship. It’s possible that Tom was the leader of that Navy Seal group.
The Calling is a survival horror developed by Hudson Entertainment that was released for Wii in 2009. In the screens and the videos below, we can see how different were the HUDs, the cellphone and the first two locations of the game in the beta. Interestingly, the early builds depicted in these videos were probably created for internal testing and never meant to be shown to the public: they were leaked before the official presentation.
Come Midnight was a game in development at People Can Fly from 2004 to 2006 for the Xbox 360 and PS3, with an intended release date of 2007. With a genre that is hard to define, according to the developer’s former leader Adrian Chmielarz, the game would have been a mixture of Adventure, Action and Survival Horror with heavy 1940’s noir and supernatural themes, something akin to a mixture of later games such as L.A. Noire and Uncharted.
The idea behind Come Midnight, a “dream project” for Chmielarz, was born right after development on the First Person Shooter Painkiller ended. Painkiller had been successful, but because of contractual details it had brought little money into People Can Fly. According to Chmielarz:
“Painkiller didn’t make us rich. It was made for a flat fee, an embarrassingly low one compared to what a production of this quality usually costs. We never saw any royalties, despite the game’s success and countless sequels and remakes. But we did manage to save some money. (…) So we moved to a new place, and started working on a new project.”
He goes on to reveal some details:
“An action-adventure pulp that mixed the worlds of Raymond Chandler and H.P. Lovecraft. A story about a private detective able to communicate with the dead. (…) After a few months, we thought we had enough material to start shopping the game around.”
The game would focus on a private investigator named Mike Elroy, who had temporarily died at some point and managed to come back – this time with the ability to see into the afterlife, with a major mechanic of the game being the ability to see the last few seconds of someone’s life by touching their corpse.
In 2004 People Can Fly put together a tech demo for Come Midnight, and invited all the major publishers to their studio in Poland to take a look at what they had been working on. Most of the reactions seemed to be positive at the time but after this showing, the studio waited in vain for a call from at least one of the publishers:
“Nobody was getting back to us. We were running out of money, and it was time to panic.”
There was a deeper meaning behind this silence, as the studio learned later on that everyone seemed to expect an encore of Painkiller out of People Can Fly, and were too afraid of betting on such a unique project at that point in time. Unfortunately, Come Midnight had to be put aside in favor of the studio’s survival.
“Through the grapevine we learned that even though people liked the game, they were scared of investing into an action-adventure, and, more importantly, they expected a shooter from us. Come Midnight was dead.”
Disillusioned, and to keep afloat, People Can Fly started work on a shooter called “Ravenwolf”, another title that would end up never seeing the light of day. It was somewhat of a spiritual successor to Painkiller and with a heavier emphasis on the storyline than its predecessor. The studio put together a demo for the game in a few short months, and sent it out to publishers. People Can Fly was back in business:
“We worked our asses off on a demo for a couple of months, and sent it out. The phones started ringing. Ravenwolf was about to happen, the studio was about to be saved.”
But during the development of Ravenwolf, something unexpected happened. While the guys from People Can Fly were at a convention, they were suddenly approached by a man who introduced himself as a representative from THQ and claimed he had been wanting to contact the studio. They asked if it had something to do with their current project, but the reply was about to fill the small Polish studio with hope for a better one: THQ wanted to make Come Midnight.
The studio was reinvigorated, and for the next two years worked harder than ever. By 2006, the game was well into production, with the whole game designed on paper, and a lot of the assets completed. Chmielarz claims that in about two years’ time, Come Midnight would have been finished.
However, THQ had other plans. In 2006, the publisher simply pulled the plug on the project, and apparently cut all contact with People Can Fly. Although an official reason has never been given, Adrian Chmielarz believes that it had something to do with the company pulling out of development in Europe and wanting only one project left for release from that territory.
“Rumour was that THQ was getting out of the development in Europe and they were killing European projects left and right. Supposedly, it was between us and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. They chose the latter, and, to be fair, that was probably the right choice. Still, they acted awful throughout the whole ordeal.”
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chernobyl, developed by the Ukranian company GSC Game World, was almost completed, while Come Midnight was only a third of the way in development, and eventually saw a release in 2007 after being in development hell for over half a decade.
The cancelation of Come Midnight left People Can Fly in a bad financial situation. Now with no game left to work on and with little money left, they acquired a license to the Unreal Engine hoping to recapture their Painkiller magic with a new shooter. The prototype that followed impressed Epic Games themselves, who bought a majority share of the company in 2007 and eventually fully acquired it in 2012, and the prototype would go on to evolve into 2013’s Bulletstorm.
After being rebranded as Epic Games Poland from 2013 onwards, People Can Fly split from Epic Games and became an independent studio once again in 2015, after which they started work on Outriders, a First Person Shooter to be published by Square Enix in 2020.
Adrian Chmielarz had left Polish developer he co-founded by the time Bulletstorm was released. He formed his own studio, The Astronauts, with some of the former developers on Come Midnight and still hopes to revisit the noir stylings of their cancelled project one day.
However, the rights to the game are now owned by THQ Nordic, the new name Nordic Games adopted when they acquired most of THQ’s properties after the company’s bankrupcy, and getting the Come Midnight name back at this point in time seems unlikely.
“Realistically, it’s never gonna happen. I still want to go back to pulp noir in the future, though, but that’s a whole different story for another time.”
This website uses cookies to improve your experience, by continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to the use of cookies. Find out more about cookies.Hide
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
