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Have you ever been genuinely upset at a game's cancellation?

Last posted Jul 25, 2020 at 09:49AM EDT. Added Jun 29, 2020 at 02:16PM EDT
28 posts from 27 users

I have at least two that bug me.

-Silent Hills
Yeah getting this one out of the way first since I'm sure for a lot of people this is #1. Basically Hideo Kojima's next project after Metal Gear Solid V was originally supposed to be a reboot of the Silent Hill series for the PS4, and to build hype for it a famous playable teaser (literally named "PT" as well) was released for free to give people an idea on the atmosphere of the game (IIRC it was stated somewhere there was no guarantee the final game was gonna be a combat-less first person game). Kojima even had some pretty notable names attached to the project like movie director Guillermo Del Toro was to act as a producer, horror manga artist Junji Ito was involved in some way, and the main character was to be played by and have the likeness of actor Norman Reedus, best known for his role in The Walking Dead. When the project was confirmed in late 2014 people were super hyped since thanks to Kojima's reputation for helping craft intricate but also off-the-wall narratives and the PT teaser showing the atmosphere of the game would be more in like with the older entries in the franchise, it looked like Silent Hill was gonna make a big comeback.

But then 2015 rolled around and the upper management at Konami lost interest in wanting to make more traditional games and wanted to move more into the casino business, and some of them got fed up with Kojima's perfectionist mindset that was causing MGSV to be delayed quite a bit, so Kojima was ultimately fired from Konami, MGSV was released without the ending being properly implemented, Silent Hills was cancelled, and to add insult to injury Konami removed PT from the PlayStation store and made it so that even if you had it on your account if you didn't download it before a certain date, then you can never download it ever again (at least not through "legal" means). Kojima would reform Kojima Productions as an independent studio separate from Konami and would go on to make Death Stranding for Sony, an atmospheric post-apocalyptic adventure game which does bring back some of the talent that was to be involved with Silent Hills such as Norman Reedus (playing the main character again) and Del Toro (with Del Toro allowing his likeness to be used in the game as a character), but sadly we'll never get to know what Silent Hills would have been like had the project been finished. One can only hope maybe one day a disgruntled former Konami employee at least leaks in-development footage of the game.

-Ravenholm
Around the time of Valve making the Half Life 2 episodes, they contracted Arkane Studios, who at that time were best known for working on action-RPGs like Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (and later would go on to be known for Dishonored and the 2017 Prey), to make a spin-off game set in the HL universe called "Ravenholm." The game would have been the sequel to the Opposing Force expansion to HL1 by putting players in the shoes of Adrian Shepard once again (though how he got out of the Gman's interdeminsional holding cell has never been explained). Father Gregory from HL2 would have also been a constant companion in this game due to the setting being, as you would expect from the name, the town of Ravenholm which Gregory stayed behind in even after the Combine shelled the hell out of it. In-development footage of the game was finally shown off during a documentary on Arkane produced by the YouTube channel Noclip, and what was shown and said about the game sounded super promising. Unfortunately though Arkane never got the chance to properly finalize certain elements (for example you can see in the footage they were still using Gordon's hand models as placeholders) because Valve suddenly called up Arkane one day and said they were cancelling the project. Producers at Arkane weren't happy to hear this and initially did keep working on Ravenholm for a bit longer in hopes they could show off what they had made so far to Valve and see if they'd reconsider, but ultimately Valve still said "no" and the project was shelved. Builds of the game are still on hard drives within Arkane's main studio in France. and apparently new employees are even given the opportunity to play what was made, but it seems that unless Valve gives the "okay" these builds might never see a public release.

Mega Man Legends 3 and Mega Man Universe (which was basically like a Mega Man Maker game where you could create your own character). I wasn't even a fan of Legends at the time and I was still bummed out that it got canned. That whole era was just a bad time to be a Mega Man fan, between those games (along with Rockman Online) getting canned, the poor timing of Bad Box Art Mega Man in SFxT, and Xover being a disappointing way to celebrate the franchise's 25th anniversary (to the point where they ended up promoting a Street Fighter x Mega Man fan game as the game for the 25th anniversary game instead) and being the last (non-rerelease) Mega Man game for a couple years until Mega Man 11.

Back when it was relevant, I was kind of excited for StarCraft: Ghost before it got cancelled.

On the topic of Konami's BS, I was REALLY looking forward to Zone of the Ender 3.

Chocobo Racing for the 3DS would've been nice, since I enjoyed the original.

Off the top of my head, I remember looking forward to those three games before they were canceled.

There's probably way more if I really sat down and thought about, not to mention games that were supposedly planned but never entered production (the unproduced Xenogears and Xenosaga episodes, for example.)

Silent Hills is definetly the biggest one for me, being a silent hill fan.

also not technically cancelled but no way in fuck is Dennis Dyak actually working on it, I was kinda hyped for Shadow of the Eternals.

Dinosaur Planet.
Not really cancelled, but reworked into completely different Starfox game. The original footage looked fantastic, but that game never came out.

Prey 2 (aka sequel to Prey from 2006)

Hell Raid
Teasers looked good, but the game got indefinitely shelved and is as good as dead at this point.

This one Star Wars game announced years ago, and right before Disney bought Star Wars. You would've played as a bounty hunter on/in, basically, a bounty hunter planet/space station/city. But it was canceled by Disney when they bought the franchise.

As Chole already said, seeing Mega Man Universe cancelled pretty much sucks. While I'm not too upset, it's a shame we would never get the chance to create our own custom Mega Man levels as that feature was what I was excited the most. That and making your own Robot Mater and seeing Ryu in the game, wondering how he would work.

And yes, Powered Up does have a level editor but from what I heard, it seems pretty limited in what it can do. At least fan game Mega Man Maker satisfied my itch for designing Mega Man levels.

๐“ข๐–Ž๐–“๐–†๐–Š๐–‘ ๐“ฒ๐“ผ ๐“ฝ๐“ฑ๐“ฎ ๐“’๐“”๐“ž ๐“ธ๐“ฏ ๐“—๐“ธ๐“ป๐“ท๐”‚ wrote:

Dinosaur Planet.
Not really cancelled, but reworked into completely different Starfox game. The original footage looked fantastic, but that game never came out.

Prey 2 (aka sequel to Prey from 2006)

Hell Raid
Teasers looked good, but the game got indefinitely shelved and is as good as dead at this point.

Prey 2 would of been a really interesting game but it was a shame it got cancelled. Same for Hell Raid due to its setting and what the teasers gave for an idea though it does exist in the form of some upcoming DLC they are making for Dying Light but I'm not gonna be surprised at that one being different since that one will be in a game about parkour and fighting zombies.

๐“ข๐–Ž๐–“๐–†๐–Š๐–‘ ๐“ฒ๐“ผ ๐“ฝ๐“ฑ๐“ฎ ๐“’๐“”๐“ž ๐“ธ๐“ฏ ๐“—๐“ธ๐“ป๐“ท๐”‚ wrote:

Dinosaur Planet.
Not really cancelled, but reworked into completely different Starfox game. The original footage looked fantastic, but that game never came out.

Prey 2 (aka sequel to Prey from 2006)

Hell Raid
Teasers looked good, but the game got indefinitely shelved and is as good as dead at this point.

Aw crap! i have forgotten Hellraid, i really wanted to see something reminisce with something similar like hexen/heretic with a gameplay like mordhau/chivalry for melee combat

The Switch port of Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale series.

I was originally going to get it on PC since this would be the one Telltale game that I would have interest in, but after hearing about it getting a Switch port I decided to wait for it to release on there since I make that my primary source of gaming. However, Telltale folded under, and not only did the port get postponed indefinitely, but it got removed from Steam. Now I have no way to play it.

The closest thing I could think of would be Half Life series. I resigned myself long ago that the series was dead in the decade+ wait and Valve would never be bothered to do anything about it. I was happy to be proven wrong with this year's HL:Alyx.

Another "dead" franchise is the appropriately named Dead Space which I adored. I remember how aggressively EA use to push this IP with not only spin off games, but also films and novels (which were actually pretty good imo). After DS3 failed sales-wise, EA chucked DS under the bus and forgot about it completely. Unlike Half Life which was an in-house development, Visceral studios is gone forever and likely so is Dead Space.

Star Wars Battlefront III. Loved the original Battlefront I & II so I was excited for the next instalment of the series, which unfortunately never came.

Something more obscure I looked forward to was Landstalker for the PSP. Landstalker was one of the first video games I ever played, so the idea of replaying one of my childhood classics on a new console in 3D seemed really amazing.

VentingPaladin wrote:

This one Star Wars game announced years ago, and right before Disney bought Star Wars. You would've played as a bounty hunter on/in, basically, a bounty hunter planet/space station/city. But it was canceled by Disney when they bought the franchise.

Star Wars 1313?

This was suppossed to be the most realistic and accurate depiction of war to be released at its time. The game was even supported by the soldiers themselves who experienced the battles in Fallujah firsthand. However, it garnered controversy from moral busybodies and the media, saying that the game trivializes the sacrifices made in that battle when it actually just wants to tell the story of what happened there and educate people about it, much like how COD is originally made to educate people about WW2. I find it ironic how those who've never been to war don't want this game to be released but those who actually did gave their full support and advice in its creation.
This is the game Spec Ops: The Line wanted to be but couldn't.

Conker's Other Bad Fur Day and Perfect Dark 2. Two of my favorite games during the N64 era, only to be cancelled because Microsoft couldn't let Rare be Rare when it came to developing them.

VentingPaladin wrote:

This one Star Wars game announced years ago, and right before Disney bought Star Wars. You would've played as a bounty hunter on/in, basically, a bounty hunter planet/space station/city. But it was canceled by Disney when they bought the franchise.

That game was called Star Wars 1313, because it was meant to take place on the 1313rd level of Coruscant, and for reference, the "surface" level of Coruscant was around 5000.

On the subject of cancelled Star Wars games, for me it was definitely Battlefront 3 from pandemic, so much wasted potential, and in the end "Galaxy in Turmoil" which was meant to be what Battlefront 3 should have been didn't delivered as expected.

End of Nations.

Looked like a very interesting RTS on a massive scale. However, due to poor testing polices, and trying to change trends of the time, they first turned the game into MOBA (already-oversaturated genre) game and then cancelled it outright.

Last edited Jul 19, 2020 at 07:59PM EDT

Epic Mickey 3.

The second game ended on a cliffhanger and then Disney shuts down the game studio and throws the whole franchise in the trash. The worst part is that head desinger, Warren Spector of Deus Ex fame, had a third game planned out. The worst part is that Epic Mickey 2 despite it's flaws, improved the combat system with more complex enemies in my opinion and introduced the ability to return to previously explored locations as opposed to being somewhere once and never again, improving replayability in my opinion. A third game would have most likely improved upon these aspects while also fixing the second game's flaws. It's a shame we'll almost assuredly never see it happen.

Silent Hills getting cancelled pissed me off. I was kinda getting excited for the franchise, but that pretty much diedโ€ฆ

Other than that, I've gotten pretty much what I've wanted.

-Star Wars Battlefront 3

The EA versions of battlefront looked fun enough, but they never seemed like battlefront to me. Just another 3rd person shooter using the battlefront name. They look like good star wars games, but not good battlefront games.

-Dark Cloud 3
This is less cancelled and more "can't do anything about it." The Dark cloud series isn't entirely owned by Level 5, so they need to talk to Sony. I've heard them say they've entered negotiations, but clearly nothing has come from it so far.

- Don't know if this counts, but Star Wars Galaxies.
Galaxies fans basically traded SWG for SWTOR considering SWTOR is the reason it was shut down. That was not a good trade.

Clevergirl98 wrote:

Conker's Other Bad Fur Day and Perfect Dark 2. Two of my favorite games during the N64 era, only to be cancelled because Microsoft couldn't let Rare be Rare when it came to developing them.

Isn't there a rumor that Rare actually had all the freedom at its disposal to do exactly what they wanted? I can offer my two cents on that, perhaps what I'm going to say it's all bullshit but hear me out: suppose that nobody forced them to do anything, suppose that it was their choice to do the games that came out during that era. Yes, perhaps Microsoft slipped in some influences here and there but not that much, almost next to nothing as the matter of fact. Rare chose to look into a different direction and I guess they only have themselves to blame.

Here's the important thing: the key figures that made the games as they were, during their golden ages, they had been long gone even before the acquisition. Could things have been different if they had stayed with Nintendo? I do not know, but one thing's for sure: the mastermind behind Conker's Bad Fur Day, Christopher Seavor, said that the game they had crafted happened at the right time, at the right place. If he were given the choice to do the sequel, which at one point they did, with concepts and everything, with Conker close to kill himself during the opening cutscene and being replaced with an ongoing tediz war, he would've have rather not move forward, for how tragic that might sound. He said that his ideas have changed, his personality had changed, he wouldn't have made the game but something more, something different. Something that I'm sure would've pissed everyone off. Perhaps that's why Conker Live and Reloaded came the way it did, for the suppposed, "times are changing".

Skeletor-sm

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