For every great game we get to experience, there is always one that gets lost in development hell and never sees the light of day. What are the titles that upset you the most when they were cancelled?
For me three titles spring to mind....
Star Wars Battlefront III - I was never a big shooter fan pre-Seventh generation; the three series that were an exception to this were
Star Wars Battlefront,
Timesplitters and
Halo. So you can imagine my excitement when I heard the developer of one of my favorite series was handling development on the latest entry in another one of my favorites. Free Radical's plans for
Battlefront III were so ambitious; I mean being able to jump between battling above the planet and on its surface in the same match, with 100 players in the game. Not to mention an expansive single player campaign. Arguably this was the game to end all games for me. Yes they scaled back their ambitions on the single player front and in reducing the players to 50, however it was still going to do things that no other game had done before. I'm not sure I've ever been so devastated to hear a game had been cancelled; I cursed Lucas Arts at the time.
Star Wars 1313 - I love Star Wars games, no secret there. There's been some awful Star Wars game but there have been some amazing ones that rank among my favorites. One of the 'hidden gems' per se of the Star Wars franchise for me was Bounty Hunter; might be stretching it to give it that label, however it didn't belong to any of the big Star Wars franchises like
Jedi Knight,
Knights of the Old Republic or
Battlefront, nor was it a move tie in; so to me it's as close to a 'hidden gem' as you're going to get with a Star Wars title. So when I heard a rumor that there was a new game coming out, where you played as Boba Fett; and then seen that jaw dropping trailer that revealed
1313, my mind was blown. I was so disappointed when the title became a casualty of the take over. Rumors that Visceral's Star Wars title was an adaptation of
1313 gave false hope as it doesn't seem to be the case
Prey 2 - I'll level with you, this one didn't upset me as much as the former two, however I feel it' worth a mention as its not necessarily a title that would have registered on everyone's radar. I really enjoyed the first game; yes I could see the effects of it's long stay in limbo, it wasn't the prettiest game of the previous generation, however it was an interesting entry in what at the time was often an over-saturated genre. So to hear Human Head were working on a sequel and hear their plans for that, really excited me. it sounded like things were going to be brought to a whole new level. Its a shame as this studio had an idea for an interesting series; the first title is dated at launch due to a stalled development and the sequel gets canned; I can't help but think about what could have been.
So what are some of the cancellations that disappointed you the most?