A few days ago, I started to think back on games from the near past that looked, sounded, and were otherwise awesome ideas, that just never released, or got the axe.
Some of these i'd kill to see made again, others, woudl definitely be fodder for fanfiction or launching pads for ideas, others were just memorable, despite their non releases.
Here are some I thought of off hand:
Amen: The awkening:
Date: Christmas Eve, 2032.
This was one i salivated over for months. It was to be made by the now defunt Cavedog Entertainment. For months they posed story tidbits, mini-stories, teasers, etc, and we were hooked. Not only was the game frounting a killer storyline, it had great music, and technology that was revolutionary for the time: everything built to scale. If you could see it, it was real. There were no painted backdrops simulating environments, everything was actually built.
Unfortunatly, With the bombing of TA: Kingdoms, and the delay of other cavedog projects, GT interactive pulled the plug on it, with it at 50% completion. I beleave that was the nail in the company coffin. Had it come out, it would have reinvented the genre, something we were forced to wait several years for in games like hl2 and the like.
The Lost
This one was a downright Tragedy. Irrational Games first ps2 title was a modern retelling of Dantes Inferno.
An amazingly well thought out one at that. The games of hell was a Nazi concentration camp styled train depo, with the damned loaded onto bleak trancars by massive, uniformed demons. The layer of the violent was an endless series of wwI style trenches, where the violent fought an endless war where they charge, are shredded, and reborn the next day to fight again. The layer of the Greedy was a polluted wasteland, with distant factories pumping noxious fumes.
The story goes that your daughter was one of the lost, an innocent soul who was misplaced in the grand celestrial suffle that is the afterlife. You decend into hell after making a deal with the devil in the style of greek myth, but Satan is far less trustworthy than Hades. Your guide was a baseball caped street poet version of Virgil.
It was, in all intents, them remaking hell with things that would strike true to someone in the modern age. No stone castles, no wooden boats, things we today could actualy connect with.
The sad part is the game was finished. Ready to ship even, but legal troubles with Crave forced it to be forever shelved.
Some of these i'd kill to see made again, others, woudl definitely be fodder for fanfiction or launching pads for ideas, others were just memorable, despite their non releases.
Here are some I thought of off hand:
Amen: The awkening:
Date: Christmas Eve, 2032.
This was one i salivated over for months. It was to be made by the now defunt Cavedog Entertainment. For months they posed story tidbits, mini-stories, teasers, etc, and we were hooked. Not only was the game frounting a killer storyline, it had great music, and technology that was revolutionary for the time: everything built to scale. If you could see it, it was real. There were no painted backdrops simulating environments, everything was actually built.
Unfortunatly, With the bombing of TA: Kingdoms, and the delay of other cavedog projects, GT interactive pulled the plug on it, with it at 50% completion. I beleave that was the nail in the company coffin. Had it come out, it would have reinvented the genre, something we were forced to wait several years for in games like hl2 and the like.
The Lost
This one was a downright Tragedy. Irrational Games first ps2 title was a modern retelling of Dantes Inferno.
An amazingly well thought out one at that. The games of hell was a Nazi concentration camp styled train depo, with the damned loaded onto bleak trancars by massive, uniformed demons. The layer of the violent was an endless series of wwI style trenches, where the violent fought an endless war where they charge, are shredded, and reborn the next day to fight again. The layer of the Greedy was a polluted wasteland, with distant factories pumping noxious fumes.
The story goes that your daughter was one of the lost, an innocent soul who was misplaced in the grand celestrial suffle that is the afterlife. You decend into hell after making a deal with the devil in the style of greek myth, but Satan is far less trustworthy than Hades. Your guide was a baseball caped street poet version of Virgil.
It was, in all intents, them remaking hell with things that would strike true to someone in the modern age. No stone castles, no wooden boats, things we today could actualy connect with.
The sad part is the game was finished. Ready to ship even, but legal troubles with Crave forced it to be forever shelved.
