Modern gaming has given us so many unique experiences. In truth, we’ve been completely spoiled for choice when it comes to great titles. This has led to a culture within gaming and game development where we constantly want more and we want it yesterday. This often results in crunch and extreme pressure on the developers' end, which can often lead to rushed, incomplete projects being placed in the hands of gamers, causing justified outrage.
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But you know what’s worse than a game that doesn’t quite live up to its potential? A game that promises the world, gives you something to look forward to, and then gets canceled before it even gets the chance to see the light of day. So many incredible concepts and scheduled games have fallen victim to this and we want to take a moment to look back in anger and lament what could have been. So here is our list of ten amazing games we wish weren’t canceled.
10Silent Hills
7780’s Studio
Canceled due to
The Konami/Kojima Fallout
Let’s begin with the most obvious and perhaps the most devastating entry on this list. In 2014, it had been quite some time since we had heard any genuine rumblings of a AAA horror game that would shake up the genre.Dead Spacewas as dead as the game suggests andResident Evilwas in a slump. So when P.T. came along, everyone was over the moon to play a horror game with all the trappings of a polished and terrifying AAA horror epic, albeit a tiny sample via a demo or ‘playable teaser.’
The demo was an extraordinary experience that was capped off by a big reveal that Guillermo Del Toro and Hideo Kojima would be working together to createSilent Hills, an exciting soft reboot of the iconic series. But sadly, due to a litany of disagreements between Kojima and Konami, the project was killed and Kojima would leave the company after the completion ofMGS5.
Our only consolation is that Bloober Team is currently remakingSilent Hill 2, so we will get to return to the series one way or another, but you can’t help but think about how outstanding that demo was and think about what could have been.
9Star Wars 1313
Lucasfilm Games LLC
The Disney Takeover
While it’s not as painful forStar Warsfans, thanks to the success ofThe Mandalorian, it’s still hard to process the fact that we were this close to getting a Star Wars game centered around Boba Fett during their time in Coruscant in the seedy underground sector of level 1313. This game’s gameplay was in line with the 2001Bounty Huntertitle, starring Jango Fett, and would have offered a similar experience.
This wasn’t meant to be, however, as Disney would buy the rights to the Star Wars franchise from Lucasart Studio, and in turn, decided to gut the video game department. The concept was put on hold by the new license holder in the event that it could be revived somehow, but with each passing year, this seems more and more unlikely. Games likeJedi Survivorand the upcomingStar Wars: Outlawshave been the salve to this wound, but it still hurts to this day.
Giant Sheep Studios
Founder Michel Ancel Retiring From The Gaming Industry
Neolithic survival games are a dime a dozen these days, but back in 2014, this wasn’t necessarily the case. The survival gaming boom was only really beginning and there was a game calledWildthat was set to blow everyone else out of the water with an ambitious concept. This game would have the player play as a Shaman capable of controlling and possessing different animals, each with their own unique abilities, with an end goal of exploring a procedurally-generated land and helping your tribe become the most powerful of all.
It was an ambitious game, and one plenty were dying to play, but as the months and years rolled by, we heard less and less about Wild, and in 2020, whenGiant Sheep Studios’founder Michel Ancel retired from the games industry, this was the official final nail in the coffin for this ambitious open-world title. Games such asLost EmbersandTchiawould use the soul-jumping mechanic later down the line, but even though these feel familiar, it’s still sad that we never got to see what Wild had in store for us.
Rockstar North
A Shift in focus to GTAV
Many will remember that in the late 2000s, after the frequent success ofRockstar’s GTAtitles, they were gearing up for a push to deliver some new IPs.L.A. Noirewas in the pipeline andRed Dead Redemptionwould not be too far behind, but some might not know that there was another Rockstar IP that was billed as an excitingPlaystationexclusive.Agentwas marketed as a cold-war espionage epic, but little else is known about this ill-fated game other than that it was expected to be another quintessentiallyRockstaropen-world smash-hit.
This would never come to fruition as this game was continually pushed back, however, partly due to the PlayStation exclusivity deal and partly due to the pressures of developingGTA5, which, in the end, would be whyAgentwas finally laid to rest. The portion of theRockstarteam working on this project was reallocated to theGTAteam to push the Goliath fifth iteration over the line. While it would have been nice to see what this game was all about, it’s fair to say thatRockstarmade the right choice.
Climax Studios
Perceived Lack of Interest
While many would consider theLegacy of Kainseries a bit of a forgotten relic as far as gaming IPs are concerned, with the last game being released back in 2003, it didn’t need to be that way. There were rumblings that gamers were destined to get a newLegacy of Kainouting calledDead Sun. The cancelation of this title was a huge shock to fans of the series because it only came to light after avid fans dug deep to find that the Free-to-Play title Nosgoth, produced by eventualRocket LeaguecreatorsPsyonix, was, in fact, the multiplayer component for this scrappedLegacy of Kainproject.
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The game was claimed to be an open-world Zelda-like, which drew most comparisons with theSoul Reaveriteration in the series, but the developers decided that it was not the game for the moment. Which is madness, because I know I speak for pretty much all gamers of the sixth generation when I say we want moreLegacy of Kain,and sadly, this may have been our only shot at a revival.
5X7 (Disco Elysium 2)
Internal Legal Disputes Within the Studio
To say that there have been issues atZa/Umstudios lately would be a bit of an understatement. I won’t even begin to attempt to break down the politics around this fallout, but a good way to educate yourself isPeople Make Games’ excellent investigative documentary.But the big takeaway for Disco Elysium fans is that there was a new project in the works known as X7, which was planned to expandDisco Elysiumas we know it.
Despite only two writers bearing the brunt of the work for this project and many others working basically for free to get the project off the ground out of love for the IP, the mess that is the studio in its current state was just too big of a cross to bear, and X7 was canceled before it could even begin. The sad reality is that we may need to accept that it’s a miracle thatDisco Elysiumeven exists at all and a sequel is just a bridge too far.
4Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3+4 Remake
Vicarious Visions
Activision Choosing to Prioritize Call of Duty
As a huge fan of skating games, I was over the moon whenTony Hawks Pro Skateras a franchise restored its reputation with remakes of the first two games in the series, offering refined arcade skating of old with a modern coat of polish. These games were so well received that it seemed inevitable thatActivisionwould greenlight remakes of the successful third and fourth game in the series, and maybe even push on to remake theTHUGtitles too.
This seemed like a no-brainer, but when the plans for the remakes were pitched, Activision scrapped plans for more THPS in favor of focusing their efforts onCall of Duty, and sadly, Vicarious Visions was absorbed intoBlizzard, effectively putting any plans for more games starring the Birdman on ice indefinitely. Yet another brilliant decision fromActivision-Blizzardunder the reign of Bobby Kotick.
3Unreal Tournament 4
Epic Games
Shift In focus toFortniteBattle Royale
Unreal Tournamentwas badly hurt by its ill-fated move to console in 2007, asUT3was a huge letdown by all accounts. Before this outing, however, the series was an FPS stalwart, withUnreal Tournament 2004providing some of the best FPS gameplay you could ask for. You would think that these successful titles of old would have earned them enough good favor forUnreal Tournament 4to see the light of day, but sadly, we haveFortniteto blame for this one being canned.
You see, the Unreal Tournament IP was owned byEpic Gamesand was set to be their way into the Free to Play scene, with a big-name FPS title to compete with games of the era likeTom Clancy’s Ghost Recon. WhenFortniteBattle Royale blew up, however, Epic decided to pivot all resources to focus onFortnite, and despiteUT4being in alpha, the game was dropped completely. The game was available to play in its alpha build until 2023, when the servers were then shut down for good, and the game is no longer available at all. So no headshots, no rampages and no monster kills.
2MegaMan Legends 3
Perceived lack of fan interest/participation
Our penultimate entry is one for theMega Manfanbase.Mega Man Legends 3was a game that was set to directly follow the amazing work of the Mega Man Legends series to this point, and was planned for release on Nintendo 3DS. After about a year of development and a prototype build featuring ten complete levels was all but done, however,Capcomdecided to drop the project and seemingly blamed a lack of fan participation and interest as the reason.
This naturally led to outrage as the Mega Man collective was nothing but supportive of this endeavor, and Capcom quickly reversed their statement, claiming a misunderstanding, but confirmed that they would not be continuing development. Since, there have been open offers fromKejii Inafuneto finish the game with his own team, and petitions of over 100,000 fans to resume development of this game. Yet despite this,Mega Man Legends 3remains another title tragically killed before it’s time.
1Scalebound
Platinum Games
Cancelled due to
Poor Management + Lack of Experience within the genre
Then finally, we haveScalebound, a game that I often lament and refer to as ‘Devil May Dragon.’ This game was an ambitious title with the might ofPlatinumGames, the creators ofBayonettabehind it, and would see you play as Drew, a character bonded with a dragon named Thuban and tasked with exploring the world of Draconis. It was an ambitious game that blended typical 3rd person RPG tropes of the time withPlatinumGame’ssignature blend of cheesy one-liners and high-octane action.
The game looked visually striking, offered unique systems aplenty, and seemed like a smash hit waiting to happen, but due to admitted inexperience from the studio concerning creating a game that focused heavily on online functionality, as well asMicrosoft’sshortcomings in managing the project and nurturing development, the game was scrapped in 2017, which essentially ended any hopes of an Xbox One exclusive that would define that console’s lifespan.
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