It is a regrettable, but very much existing state of affairs that some games, despite the best intentions of its creators, would never see the light of day – a myriad of things could be the cause of the premature fall of a title, whether it be financial troubles, poor sales or the ever-shifting expectations of the market itself. In the following list, we hand-pick a select few games that shared this fate, and offer a brief look into their potential future as well.
Legacy of Kain: Dark Prophecy and Dead Sun
The ill-fated Legacy of Kain series is our first example: and although Psyonix has recently unveiled Nosgoth, which – who knows – could turn out really well, it shares little with the original DNA of the franchise, so to speak. This also means that 2003 would mark the release of the last “traditional” Kain game – and yet, the 11-year silence did not necessarily mean that attempts have not been made to bring the series back into the limelight. Legacy of Kain: Dark Prophecy would have been a sequel to Defiance, but the project was canned in 2004 after six months of work by Crystal Dynamics.
The game would have starred Kain, showing his exploits in both past and present, while bringing back certain gameplay elements from the original Legacy of Kain, such as the ability to transform into other creatures (a wolf, for instance). This, however, is hardly the end of the misfortunes that befell the franchise: Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun, was yet another victim of development hell. The latest pieces of information regarding the title emerged in 2013, when publisher Square-Enix had officially acknowledged the existence of the game, claiming that it was indeed in development for three years until its cancellation in 2012. Dead Sun was to feature both a single player and multiplayer component – and while the game itself was scrapped, parts of it – primarily the multiplayer – went on to become Nosgoth, the recently announced online title by Psyonix. Things could be worse, but all in all, it is still difficult to predict what the future holds for the franchise – for one can only match, move by move, the machinations of the industry, and thus defy the tyrannous stars.
Outcast 2: The Lost Paradise
Our next promising, yet ultimately unfinished project on the list is a sequel to the 1999 hit Outcast, originally planned for the PS2 platform by Belgian developer Appeal. In the end, the most we got out of the whole affair was a couple of concept arts and – more recently – a work-in-progress demo showing parts the game in motion. The original Outcast became a critical success due to its freely explorable open world, sprawling cities and overall near-revolutionary gameplay, at least back in its day. Unfortunately for us, the sequel could not manage to find a publisher willing to support it, and thus the project was soon gone and forgotten. Until recently, that is: in the summer of 2013, three core members of Appeal announced that the company had successfully bought the rights of the game from Atari, and are currently considering a reboot of the franchise. In an ironic twist of fate, not much has been heard from them since, so we cannot yet know for sure whether the dream will come true or not – all we can do at this point is to wait.
Fortress
Fortress was in the works within the offices of Swedish developer Grin, who had previously fought their ways into the center of gaming attention through their excellent reimagining titled Bionic Commando: Rearmed, as well as the noticeably less successful 2009 TPS remake of the same name, sans Rearmed. Fortress was designed to be primarily an action-adventure game set in the world of the massively successful Final Fantasy XII, taking place after the events of the main game and consequently featuring a number of returning characters from the original. While the project aimed to explore a new and different side to the Final Fantasy world, Square-Enix was less than pleased with Grin’s ideas. The downfall of the project, as we understand it, can mainly be chalked up to financial troubles, with former leaders of Grin claiming that the Japanese company-giant refused to make payments for the project for several months straight. As such, Fortress and a handful of other in-progress projects at Grin had to be shut down when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009.
Resident Evil 4 prototype
This one is somewhat of a black sheep on our list considering the fact that the game was indeed released without a hitch – it is, however, notable because the initial prototype developed by Capcom was considerably different from the Resident Evil 4 that eventually hit store shelves. The prototype appeared to preserve the tense and gloomy atmosphere of its similarly horror-centric predecessors – a video, first shown in 2003, showed the title in action and even today, it is easy to conclude that the prototype was very much keeping in line with the series’ traditions (up to that point), and would have included both the T-virus and traditional zombies. Naturally, the final product that was released in 2005 ended up being one of the finest games of its generation – and yet, most fans would most likely still agree that a game made in the spirit of the originals, where Leon explores a dark, abandoned mansion would have been well-received by long-time fans of the franchise. However, not all of the work on the prototype was lost when the project was cancelled: its assets were partially re-used in games such as the PS2 haunted house adventure „Haunting Ground”, as well as a DLC mission of Resident Evil 5 (Lost in Nightmares) that featured Chris and Jill exploring the Spencer mansion.
