Cancelled game(s) you thought looked promising

In light of my other thread today on the revealed vertical slice of the cancelled game "Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun", it got me trying to remember other cancelled games I thought looked very promising and would have liked to have seen completed and released.

I'm sort of an "out of sight, out of mind" kind of guy, so only Pirates of the Carribbean: Armada of the Damned came to mind right away. I thought it was looking pretty interesting and I will take just about any decent pirate game I can get, so it was a bit of a downer that this one got cancelled. It was shown at an E3 and I seem to remember Jeff saying how promising it looked.

What cancelled game(s) can you duders think of that looked promising and you would have liked to see the light of day? If you have links to info/videos of the cancelled game (and why they were cancelled) I'd really like to see them. It's really fascinating to see the amount of work and effort that goes into a game being cut off at the knees, so to speak.

World of Darkness by CCP. Oh boy did that turn out to be a mess, and tons of drama.

We will never see another vampire the masquerade bloodlines ;_;

Prey 2.

@ames: WOW. I had never heard about this, so reading this Guardian article about the cancellation was pretty eye-opening.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/05/world-of-darkness-the-inside-story-mmo-ccp-white-wolf

@sterling: Oh shit, yes. That one should have come to my mind immediately.

Star Fox 2. That game was straight up complete and had a full English translation before it was canned.

Also Earthbound 64 looked fucking amazing from the trailer. Unfortunately it died with the 64 Disc Drive.

@whitegreyblack: world of darkness alpha build, gameplay videos and detailed insider info all leaked out from an ex dev, that guardian article only scratches the surface

I was really looking forward to Project H.A.M.M.E.R.

Eight Days looked pretty hype. Then London Studio transitioned to family friendly and casual games; Sing Star, PS Home, Eye Pet, Wonderbook all at the cost of Eight Days and The Getaway 3.

So there was this zombie open world game that was featured on Game Informer cover around the time when I first got the magazine, had to be around 05 or 06. It sounded absolutely amazing. I have no idea if it ever game out or if the name was changed but the article talking about the game sold me on getting the game. Then I never heard about it ever again (from my knowledge) and have no idea what ever happened to it. I'm not even sure it was open world, but I believe the premise was a fog that turned people into zombie surrounded the city or would come into the city at nights...something like that.

EDIT: I looked through all of GI and EGM covers and didn't see anything, it must not have been a cover story. Maybe I made the whole thing up...

Starcraft: Ghost

just kidding!

Even though we really didn't know what it was going to be; I was really looking forward to Blizzard's follow up to WoW; Titan. I haven't played a MMO in 5 years and I was ready to dive into something new.

Prey 2.

The cancelled Aliens RPG by Obsidian. The cancelled game about the Seven Dwarves from Snow White made by Obsidian. Look it up, homie. When Obsidian didn't get their bonus from Bethesda (thanks, Metacritic!), they had to fire 30 people and cancel a project that I know little about, but I bet it was amazing.

I have this feeling like a broken late 90s alpha demo build of Duke Nukem Forever is superior to the finished product.

@mosespippy: I had never heard of this game before - it looked like it was shaping up to be a pretty good action game/cover shooter with some great environment destruction.

As someone who was a huge fan of WoW (and still are) I was looking forward to it as well.

However, I think it was VERY similar to Overwatch - but with an overarching character. With crafting and other "fun side quests" to do during the day.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising. I still think that if they tried, and if Kojima hadn't been working on Peace Walker at the time. They could have come up with a cool blade sneaking game. Plus I wanted that part of the story to be explained in more detail.

Just remembered that "Six Days in Fallujah" looked interesting as well.

There was a strong backlash against a modern real-life skirmish being depicted in a game, and Konami dropped out as publisher. To me, the backlash seems a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction without seeing how the real-life battle would have been portrayed on the screen, but c'set la vie.

It seems the first glimpses of gameplay were on ABC News of all places:

Star Wars 1313 and 0x10c both looked promising.

Prey 2 and Star Wars 1313 comes to mind.

Also, The Last Guardian looked nice :P

Mega Man Maverick Hunter

Which sounds SO MUCH more interesting than a TF2 clone. The little we've seen so far looks great, and I'm sure it'll be a good game. But just imagining that kind of class based shooter gameplay in a more MMOish world, like a less janky Phantasy Star Online 2... just makes me sad.

I can't fault Blizzard for their model of taking an established type of game and perfecting it. Worked with StarCraft, WoW, Hearthstone, and others. But I think Overwatch could have been a big step forward if they were willing to just take a bit of a risk.

I'll play Overwatch, and I'll probably dig it, but I'll still pine for whatever "Titan" may have once been.

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And my own pick would probably be Destiny. Not cancelled, of course. But I would love to have seen Bungie's original unedited plan of a game before it was crippled by Activision's business interests. Like... the game we saw at E3, rather than the game we got.

Also, Project Copernicus. The stuff that leaked does look like a straight up WoW clone, and has none of the actiony combat that they sort of set up with Reckoning. But I really, really dig the style.

Star Wars 1313, Free Radical's Star Wars Battlefront III, Half-Life 2: Episode 3 which is never going to happen!

There's no footage of the sequels but Mega Man Maverick Hunter X was initially supposed to be the starting point in an entire remaking of all of the X games. (Except 6) The Mega Man X FPS from some of the Metroid Prime dudes looked neat. Mega Man Legends 3 was also pretty alright looking...

Capcom sucks okay.

Duke Nukem Forever. By that I mean the original builds, not what actually got released. They would have been different enough to be considered their own games. I often wonder what DNF '98 or '01 would have been like. Same with the original Mortal Kombat 8, which was supposed to be "inspired by Gears of War" and be all grimdark, I imagine. I'd love to see how THAT would have turned out. Oh, and Borderlands before it got overhauled.

I think I'm more interested in early versions of games than actual cancelled projects, for the most part. I love seeing what a game was originally supposed to be.

Man, I would've played Starcraft Ghost. I know the press who played early versions of it said it was nothing special, but especially back then when they hadn't made all Starcraft characters and lore insufferably stupid yet (thanks Starcraft 2!), I would've liked to give it a look. Instead all we got was Nova as kind of an asshole in Starcraft 2 and expansions, and she's also one of the cheapest characters in Heart of the Swarm because that game doesn't have proper detection or wards or anything.

Also Warcraft Adventures.

This game looked so sweet

@bucklebutt: That's my exact same answer every time one of these threads pops up! To say I was excited for that game would be the understatement of the year.Goddammit, now I'm sad.

Runemaster

That Pirates of the Caribbean game did look pretty cool. Another game I was quite disappointed got canceled was the Darth Maul game by Red Fly Studio. It was only in the demo build phase but it still looked pretty promising. The combat seemed pretty fluid. It looked like it had potential. Too bad we'll never know what it was going to be.

Robotech: Crystal Dreams. I wanted this game real bad when I was young. The footage that did get out is real hard to look at now though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotech:_Crystal_Dreams

Other than LoK Dead Sun ( which the OP already mentioned) I think it would have to be Stan Winston's Four Horsemen. the best way to describe it would be Darksiders meets Max Payne.

TBH, while one could say Prey 2 was cancelled. You could go further and say it was sabotaged.

The Last Guardian

Half-life 3

Every time Prey 2 is brought up somewhere I always think "... Damn it, if only."

Metal Gear Solid: Rising looked amazing. As did Earthbound 64. They were both revived eventually in two still amazing games, but it's a real shame the originals never saw the light of day.

@joshwent: Man, I wish I hadn't seen that video. I loved Reckoning, and even if Copernicus didn't have the combat, I enjoyed the world they had constructed. I really appreciated their take on Irish/Celtic mythology.

I wish we could have seen what a sequel to Reckoning would've been like.

There was supposed to be a Daredevil game along with the godawful movie, it looked pretty interesting from the footage I saw.

Star Wars 1313 of course.

And that Avengers game that was supposed to come out. That had potential!

Completely agree with you.

I can only imagine they wanted to get away from the grandioso playground that is World of Warcraft, and instead laser focus on one (or two) things, instead of having to cater to everyone.

This is exactly what they did in Hearthstone and it has worked like gangbusters for them.

Either way, very excited to see something thats NOT Starcraft/Warcraft/Diablo (although I'd love a Rock n Roll racing remake or a Lost Vikings remaster).

Bulletstorm 2 probably would have been a fun game. I really liked Bulletstorm, the dialogue was a little too much at times, but the mechanics and story were pretty neat.

Also, a Darksiders multiplayer game where you can have all four horsemen in the game at once would be awesome.

@bucklebutt: I was actually really excited for that game. I even made a guild with a bunch of people beforehand, then it got cancelled.

Shattered Steel 2, the sequel to Bioware's best game which they advertised in the end credits for the first Shattered Steel.

It would've been interesting to see the real Fallout 3 (Van Buren) and X-COM: Alliance.

If I recall correctly, there also was a Descent 4 in development which was canned around 2002-2003.

Other than that, I guess I'll agree with those who mentioned Prey 2 and Six Days In Fallujah.

I'm also bummed slightly there was not a BioForge Plus purely because it would be more Vinny with BioForge action.

BC!

That Darth maul game sounded fun, I was always disappointed we didn't get any more directional lightsaber games like that terrible OBI-Wan game for XBOX. Even if that game sucked, the combat was actually very interesting and flashy, made you feel like a Jedi more than any other game. You got to use the right stick for the lightsaber and enemies would block from certain directions so you had to respond by slicing in different directions and if you pulled the stick back it would activate a counter mode which deflects blasters and some melee attacks. I don't remember it being a problem but thinking back I imagine there were camera issues(due to the left stick being saber and not camera).

edit: adding video of BC

B.C. Or something or other.

It was supposed to be a simulation of a prehistoric tribe surviving while battling dinosaurs. It is bullshit but for some reason that just sounds appealing to me.

@fisk0: The story for Van Buren made it into New Vegas and the DLC with some changes.

Well, when it comes to the Fallout games I prefer the isometric perspective and turn based battles, so even if the story threads made it to the later games, the genre change isn't doing a lot for me.

@fisk0: Fair enough. I was never that attached to the gameplay of the old Fallout games and mainly played them for the world and the writing so I really loved New Vegas.

Prey 2, I enjoyed the first game quite a bit and what little was released from the sequel looked very promising.

Yah I don't know what kind of a game it would have made, but those videos made it look really awesome.

Prey 2 would probably be the one I was most interested in, although I thought that Pirates of the Caribbean game and Star Wars 1313 looked like they could be pretty good too.