The video game industry is often unforgiving. Behind the colorful characters and tantalizing narratives lay a path of blood, sweat, and tears on the part of developers. Indie developers work their butts off to make a name for themselves while some larger ones continue to sap the life out of their own fanbases with useless microtransactions. Either they endure the pain to eventually succeed or fall off the edge.
While there have been massively successful titles that have graced the shelves, there are also quite a few unlucky projects. Projects that got stuck in development hell or died away in the hands of some developer and/or publisher for one reason or another.
Silent Hills
In pretty much every way, Silent Hills was amazing. The production team seemed eager to finalize the spiritual successor of the beloved franchise and fans were even treated to a playable teaser or "P.T." as everyone called it. The hype train was massive and promotion was running full steam.
Not long after, Konami announced its cancellation. The main reasons were the departure of Hideo Kojima, and Konami restructuring and its board of directors deciding to shift focus to the mobile market.
Legacy Of Kain: Dead Sun
For three years, Square-Enix and Climax Studios secretly worked on a title under the codename "Black Cloth," later revealed to be a new installment in the Legacy of Kain franchise. Expectations were high, but the budget wasn't enough to sustain production. Nevertheless, the title received AAA classification and was to be released as for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.
Dead Sun, which was to be the game's final title, was going to be ambitious. Different developers were commissioned to build single player and multiplayer. The higher ups soon placed more demands and the back-and-forth caused frustration from both parties. The board of directors soon realized that they had killed their own game and all that remained of Legacy of Kain: Dead Sun were small demo clips.
Fable Legends
One of the most expensive MMOs ever designed was Fable Legends, valued at over $75M when development ended in 2016. It was backed by Microsoft and the developer's (Lionhead Studios) primary fault was to venture into something it never had tried before: an ambitious online game that focused on microtransactions.
This led to the downfall of the gams as well as the studio. Coupled with Peter Molyneux's untimely departure and the unfinished Unreal Engine 4 that led to countless bugs, it was a ticking time bomb of development hell. Microsoft finally shut down the project and the studio.
FEZ II
FEZ II's cancellation is a reminder that the video game industry is one brutal landscape. The first title was a monumental hit, garnering massive critical acclaim and strong sales. The five year development cycle was worth it, and a sequel was inevitable.
During the E3 2013 press conference, FEZ II was revealed. The celebration didn't last long when after a month, creator Phil Fish took to Twitter and got into a spat with journalist Marcus Beer. After a very heated exchange, Fish reached his boiling point and finally tweeted "im done. FEZ II is canceled. goodbye". His own company was shocked, and to this day, he holds his ground and hasn't revived the project.
Super Mario Spikers
This Nintendo title was secretly developed in the mid-2ooos but wasn't talked about publicly until 2014, years after its cancellation. Super Mario Spikers was supposed to be a volleyball game in the overall style of their previous sports title, the soccer-based Mario Strikers Charged. Developer Next Level Games was commissioned by Nintendo to create the title.
Spikers was to feature a game show mechanic where Mario and the gang would play volleyball, with fighting/wrestling elements added into the mix. Nintendo ultimately deemed the creative direction too violent and edgy for a Mario game, and scrapped the title completely, before it even got to the point of being announced. Only concept art and some unfinished animations remain, released by Next Level Games.
Resident Evil 3.5
Before Resident Evil 4 took the game industry by storm, Capcom went through multiple iterations of the game before landing on the perfect formula. One of those iterations, now known as "Resident Evil 3.5," was the exact opposite of Resident Evil 4's final version. The action-oriented, zombie killing, one-man-army video game fans love used to be a gloomy, isometric puzzle dungeon à la Silent Hill.
Resident Evil 3.5 was revamped and became the basis for Devil May Cry. It was revealed that Dante is a reskin of Leon Kennedy, and that makes sense when you consider the ways the two characters look similar. Capcom went with their gut feeling, and hit two birds with one stone. Resident Evil 4 went on to be an award-winning title while Devil May Cry was one of the pioneers of hack-and-slash.
Sonic X-Treme
Had Sonic X-treme been released in the mid-'90s, it would've been one of the earliest fully-3D, free roaming video games ever released. Unfortunately, the project was doomed from the start. The studio was plagued with bad luck and internal battles forced the team to scrap the project.
According to an interview with Gamasutra, there were two teams who developed the title. The PC version ran great, but when they tried to port it to the Saturn, that's when they encountered problems. The game ran at a mind blowing three frames per second and they worked day and night to find a solution. To make matters worse, the game's lead programmer, Chris Coffin, contracted severe pneumonia and was told that she only had months left to live. She survived, but Sonic X-Treme did not.
Doom 4
Originally announced in 2007, Doom 4 was to be something of a reboot of the original title in the series. Despite countless setbacks, the team managed to push through development hell and redesigned a completely different game, which was eventually released as Doom (2016).
According to director Kevin Cloud, Doom 4 just wasn't up to par. "It wasn’t one thing, it wasn’t like the art was bad, or the programming was bad. Every game has a soul. Every game has a spirit… and Doom 4 did not have the spirit."
Rainbow Six: Patriots
The sixth canonical installment of Ubisoft's ultra-realistic strategy FPS had gone through development for 4 years until they decided to jump back to square one. Pre-orders had already been made but in a swift move, Ubisoft ordered retailers to stop promoting the game. According to staff, all directors and the lead designer were removed from the development team and Ubisoft revealed that they would push through with the game and that it would be released for next-gen consoles (PlayStation 4 & Xbox One).
In 2014, the whole project was scrapped because of internal crises and a change in the game engine. Thus, Rainbow Six: Siege was developed instead.
Titan
Perhaps the biggest "what if" was Halo developer 343 Industries' most ambitious project. Titan was way ahead of its time as seen on early prototypes. The title was set to compete against World of Warcraft. In 2004, developers were given the green light and a $90M paycheck to start the development cycle.
Suddenly, the title was cancelled in 2007 for one silly reason: to promote more casual-friendly projects. The whole staff was taken aback with the announcement since it looked like Titan was set to be the face of Microsoft's gaming lineup. By most accounts, Titan was already in a playable state and servers were already being deployed. It was a terrible waste.