Quite often, the ambitions of developers cannot be realized due to a number of factors — some ideas are simply too ahead of the industry, others require a huge amount of money, and sometimes the team simply does not have the necessary experience and specialists. And this applies not only to small studios, but also to huge companies that, even being market mastodons, are not able to bring all their ideas to life. As a result, template projects often get to release, and revolutionary video games with breakthrough gameplay remain on the shelves in the hope of a brighter future. I will tell you a little more about ten such projects today.
Star Citizen
Although it has long been clear that Star Citizen is something of the “MMM” of our time, this does not at all prevent the project from collecting millions of dollars from gullible players. The authors of the space saga promised travel on spaceships, the ability to colonize any planet, build entire cities there, fight each other for resources, and much more. It all looked like a new generation MMORPG, but in fact, the skills of the developers were enough for a couple of demos and a site with the sale of spaceships in a game that did not even reach early access. But this is the game with the largest budget in the history of the gaming industry! By comparison, Cyberpunk 2077 was $320 million, Red Dead Redemption 2 was $370 million, and Star Citizen has already raised over $500 million.
RAW
Video games provide an opportunity to escape from reality and try yourself as a different person, and RAW has elevated this to an absolute. The developers promised gamers a huge open sandbox world in which everyone could choose a role and play it. Robbers, rescuers, military, police, construction workers, aircraft pilots – there were a sea of occupations, as well as vehicles, real estate, activities and social interactions. Some kind of metaverse, only in a game format reminiscent of GTA V design. But, of course, a small team could not cope with such a project – as a result, all fundraising campaigns were closed and the project sank into the abyss of history.
Eight Days
If Eight Days got to the release, it would now collect billions of non-GTA V, but, unfortunately, this did not happen. The authors of the project decided to create a game in which the game time of the day would coincide with the time on the gamer’s clock – an incredibly cool feature that has not been implemented by anyone to this day. Also, the action movie was supposed to provide access to dangerous chases, gunfights from helicopters and cars, various skills of the main characters, many explosions, clashes with policemen and bandits. It sounds very attractive, especially for 2006, but it was not possible to realize ambitions in practice.
Project Titan
Over the years, there have been rumors on the net that Blizzard is creating a new MMORPG that has nothing to do with World of Warcraft. The company planned to create a project in the setting of science fiction, where the players chose one of two warring factions. The main feature of the game was that during the day the factions were absolutely peaceful, and at night they could fight each other for resources and territories. At the same time, the entire economy of the virtual world completely depended on the players, and not on the developers – this is not the case in video games to this day. Only in 2014 (the first rumors about the project appeared in 2007) Blizzard confirmed the existence of Project Titan, but only to announce the closure of the project. The reason is that they could not form an integral game from the list of cool ideas.
Fallout 3
In the early 2000s, Black Isle Studios, which gave the world Fallout and Fallout 2, launched a project codenamed Van Buren into development – the project was supposed to give players a story about a character who, after an explosion, was able to get out of prison into the Wasteland, where the gamer himself would decided what to do, how to behave and stuff like that. The project was supposed to provide a turn-based combat system or real-time combat (the player would choose the format himself), and the decisions made would affect the attitude of the surrounding world to the main character. Now it sounds ordinary, but twenty years ago, such decisions were a real revolution. Unfortunately, gamers never saw Fallout 3 – the franchise was sold to Bethesda, which ruined everything.
Corsairs 4
Domestic developers had their own chic pirate franchise even before Ubisoft conceived Skull and Bones. At one time, the first “Corsairs” were insanely popular even in the foreign market, and “Corsairs 4” were supposed to bring the series to the AAA level. The developers promised a large open world, sea and land battles, a full story, pirate romance in all its glory and an advanced role-playing system. At that time, nothing like this in the setting of pirates simply did not exist, but, unfortunately, the disputes of the copyright holders nullified all chances of the release of this game. Initially, Akella was involved in the creation of the fourth numbered part, but then the project was frozen. In 2018, the BlackSun studio appeared, which decided to independently create a game about pirates based on a well-known franchise – the team even launched a fundraiser for development, but the copyright holders turned out to be against this idea.
Half Life 2: Episode 3
It’s safe to say that Half-Life turned the video game industry upside down in its time – it is one of the most iconic games in the history of mankind, deserving all the awards and titles that it has received over the years. At the same time, few people remember that initially the project developers promised a full-fledged trilogy, but no one saw Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Even Gabe Newell once said that the final episode would surprise fans and revolutionize video games, but the game ended up being shelved. And then again. Once again. And although now gamers are still waiting for the game with the coveted number 3 in the title, there is absolutely no chance of a release.
Star Wars: 1313
Nearly a decade ago, in 2013, Lucasfilm’s in-house studio showed the world an incredible video game teaser for Star Wars: 1313, which garnered a sea of awards and became the main announcement of E3 2013. Third-person action game starring Boba Fett about the amazing adventures and crimes of Coruscant The audience liked it so much that even before the release, the game was called Uncharted from the world of Star Wars. No lightsabers, no Jedi, no Force — the action-adventure was supposed to show a completely different world of the film franchise, with a focus on bounty hunters, shootouts, kidnappings, and what had not been shown in films before. Unfortunately, Disney soon bought Lucasfilm, closing the game studio, and with it, all game projects.
Command & Conquer: Generals 2
After a series of failures with the Command and Conquer franchise, the developers at EA decided to release The Generals 2, a continuation of exactly the strategy that fans loved so much that mods still do to this day. The publisher’s employees promised a fresh engine, modern graphics, even more factions, an emphasis on multiplayer battles, a lot of interesting mechanics, maps and additions in the future. Soon, however, it turned out that they wanted to make the game shareware, after which for many years the developers simply remained silent, and in 2013 they admitted that the idea was a failure – the franchise was frozen until better times, which, apparently, will never come.
- Related: Playing Command and Conquer: Generals after 20 years. So far there is nothing better
Chronicles of Elyria
Initially, Chronicles of Elyria looked like a dream for any MMORPG fan – a huge world, a sea of professions and opportunities, an incredible amount of equipment and flexible character customization, attractive graphics and absolute freedom of action. You can ride a horse in search of adventure, fight enemies for resources or just for fun, develop, make friends and stuff like that. Unfortunately, the developer videos turned out to be a complete failure in reality – the actual gameplay when launched in Early Access mode looked just awful and looked more like some kind of demo for investors than a real product. It is not entirely clear where the $7.7 million collected from enthusiasts was spent.
Source: Trash Box
Johanna Foster is an expert opinion writer with over 7 years of experience. She has a reputation for delivering insightful and thought-provoking articles on a variety of subjects. Her work can be found on some of the top online news websites, and she is currently lending her voice to the world stock market.
