It has been well over a decade since we were on our last mission with Delta squad, the infamous ragtag group of clones who took the spotlight in 2005’s Star Wars Republic Commando. A game that was praised for its rugged, challenging combat and excellent squad mechanics. Unfortunately, just as the storylines were being put together for a planned sequel, LucasArts decided on a company-wide reboot. Most of the developers left the studios and Star Wars Imperial Commando was canceled early in development. Many years later, RepCom is still popular among fans who are patiently waiting to get closure on the game’s cliffhanger ending. We thought it would be a good idea to dive deeper into the probabilities of a hypothetical sequel and give you some of our ideas and suggestions for a possible Republic Commando 2.
Thanks for joining us on another episode of GVMERS. Today we’ll be taking a look at the beloved Knights of the Old Republic series of role-playing games from LucasArts. While the first two RPGs in the acclaimed franchise provided memorable, dynamic storylines for players to enjoy, LucasArts canned the third single-player release in favor of other projects. Since then, BioWare’s massively multiplayer online spin-off “The Old Republic” seems to have eclipsed the Knights of the Old Republic games. But we at GVMERS will never forget. What would we like to see in a revival of the beloved series? A KotOR 3 would be a dream come true for any fan of the Star Wars universe, but only if it were done right.
The Battlefield franchise is going back in time with the upcoming release of Battlefield 1! So we decided to do a time travel experiment ourselves, what would Battlefield 4 look like if it was released in the '80s? We hope you like the result!
It has been more than two decades since gamers first entered the world of Warcraft. Blizzard’s fantasy real-time strategy about the bloody struggle between orcs and humans has since left the confines of not just its genre, but its medium as well. After an MMORPG and a collectible card game, fans recently got the chance to experience the story of Warcraft on the silver screen. Warcraft is a now a household name and, without a doubt, one of the biggest gaming franchises in the World. With the latest World of Warcraft expansion, “Legion” due this August, we at GVMERS wanted to look back at the evolution of the series, from its humble beginnings to its countless expansions.
Since its launch almost 14 years ago, the Battlefield series has become one of the most popular class-based first-person shooters on the market. From storming the shores of Iwo Jima, to bloody struggles over jungles surrounding the Ho Chi Minh trail, to futuristic fights with advanced tanks and mechs, Battlefield has shown its great versatility in the different eras and wartime tactics it is able to simulate. Now, EA has announced the upcoming Battlefield 1, a game that will take the franchise into the infamous, bloody struggle of World War I. We at Gamers want to take a look back at the evolution of the franchise as we look forward to the promising new release from DICE and EA games.
One game developer who always strives to make the most high-fidelity games in the industry is definitely Blizzard. Warcraft and Starcraft in particular were two franchises that transcended gaming and made their mark on the real world. World of Warcraft is known even among those who don’t play games, while Starcraft is often considered one of the biggest e-sports titles in the World. However, excellence comes at a price… Despite how long and how far into development a game may be, if Blizzard don’t feel it’s up to standard, they’ll shut it down. This was the fate of Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, Starcraft: Ghost and the ambitious project “Titan”, the biggest and most secretive of the three. Please bear in mind that Blizzard never released any footage of project Titan. We've used videos from various other games to give you a better idea of how Titan may have actually looked like.
Today, we’ll be taking a look at one of the biggest names in real-time strategy – Warcraft. We already took a detailed look at the Warcraft franchise in our “Evolution of Warcraft” video; after realizing that Warcraft went from strategy to MMO to card game, we were left wondering whether to expect a return to the roots someday? Will we ever get to see a Warcraft 4? In case we do, we have a modest wishlist for it…
Since its early days as a hardcore, semi-realistic military shooter, to its current incarnation as an intense, action-oriented online game, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon series has entertained shooter fans the world over. Now, Ubisoft has announced the upcoming Ghost Recon Wildlands, a game that will move the franchise back to the semi-realism of the early PC games while expanding the playable area into a massive open world for the first time in the series’ history. We at Gamers are going to take a look back at the history of the Ghost Recon franchise as we look forward to the future of the series.
Walk outside on a sunny day in any populated area, and it’s obvious that Pokemon Go has taken the world by storm. But before the Pokemon craze took over mobile phones, gamers the world over had already gone on many journeys collecting the virtual creatures in one of the many handheld and console iterations of the franchise over the past two decades. Let’s take a look back at the evolution of Pokemon.
Deus Ex is, without a doubt, one of the most influential gaming titles. During a time when first-person games were heavily focused on combat, Deus Ex shook the world with its seamless fusion of role-playing, shooter and adventure game genres. It also paved way to new approaches to video game storytelling, letting players tackle challenges in multiple ways and drastically changing the course of each plot. With the upcoming release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, we at GVMERS wanted to take a look back at the series and see how it evolved over the past 16 years.
Nothing garners more hype than rumors of a new Star Wars game, and the gritty action-adventure game Star Wars 1313 was no exception. Every demo reel and bit of gameplay information led to rabid speculation and anticipation from fans and critics alike, as the game appeared to represent a significant leap forward in cinematic storytelling in the expanded Star Wars universe. But all that came crashing down when Disney purchased Lucasfilm, and subsequently cancelled all Lucasarts projects in development, including Star Wars 1313. Star Wars video game fans have always wondered what these abruptly canned projects would have looked like, and we at Gamers are no exception. Today, we’ll will take a look at what might have been: this is the tragic story of Star Wars 1313.
Since Mass Effect exploded onto the RPG scene back in 2007, the series has become one of the most beloved modern examples of the sci-fi role-playing genre, as each entry takes players on a lengthy tour of the series’ intriguing narrative, unique galactic setting, and diverse cast of characters. While many were left unsatisfied with the conclusion of the trilogy’s arc at the end of Mass Effect 3, there is no question that the series remains one of the most exciting and ambitious games in the modern era. Now, BioWare is entering crunch time to complete Mass Effect Andromeda, an all-new story with a new protagonist and a vast open world for players to explore. In this video, we at Gamers look back at the storied history of the franchise in preparation for the upcoming release of Andromeda.
Before EA and Dice announced their recent Battlefront game, there seemed to be little hope for fans of the franchise that it would ever return. Since the news had come out that Free Radical Design’s ambitious Star Wars: Battlefront 3 project had been cancelled, many fans had given up hope that the series would ever be continued. While EA’s iteration of Battlefront is a solid game in its own right, we at Gamers wonder how gaming history would have been different if Battlefront 3 had seen the light of day. Join us as we investigate the origins, development, and eventual cancellation of Battlefront 3.
The Halo franchise is one that pulls in billions of dollars for Microsoft, with each release breaking records and moving Xbox hardware in ways that other game developers can only dream of. Live action shorts, toys and other merchandise, web comedy series, books and graphic novels, animated movies, and all other kinds of media have been created in celebration of the property. Whether you’re a hardcore gamer or not, there’s little doubt that you’ve heard of Halo. Let’s take a trip back through time to see where this franchise had its humble beginnings.
The Command & Conquer series is one of the most successful real-time strategy franchises of all time. From the original “Tiberium” games to the Red Alert spin-offs, the Generals entries, and beyond, the series has consistently produced some of the most exciting RTS experiences available, with a focus on intense action sequences supported by light base-building and resource-gathering elements. While the Command & Conquer games were a great addition to any real-time strategy gamer’s collection, the series was never able to successfully cross over into other genres, like the lucrative first-person shooter category of games. Command & Conquer Renegade attempted to bridge the gap in 2002, but only received a lukewarm reception, offering a mediocre single-player campaign with some fun but short-lived multiplayer The Command & Conquer franchise seems like it would translate over to the 3D action realm perfectly: it has a rich, campy backstory that would provide the perfect backdrop for an over-the-top action game akin to the Call of Duty or Battlefield franchise, and the series’ strategic roots could lead to some innovative base-building elements in a first-person shooter game, especially in the multiplayer realm. So it was heartbreaking for fans of the series to discover that a very promising, first-person take on the Command & Conquer games was cancelled shortly after its announcement in 2008, having been canned by EA Games. That game was dubbed simply “Tiberium.”
The mid-2000s were plagued with dime-a-dozen action games for the PlayStation 2, Gamecube, and Xbox consoles, with a new third-person hack-and-slash game seemingly being released every other week. Nearly all of them were forgettable experiences, best relegated to gamers’ collective memories. But one action game for the Playstation 2 captured gamer’s hearts in 2005: that game was God of War, a wild third-person action game that kicked off a franchise that has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. Join us at GVMERS as we take a look back at the evolution of God of War.
Star Wars is one of the most popular settings in all of video games, so it’s no surprise that its owners are continually looking to create new bestselling games in the galaxy far, far away. But for every smash-hit like the Jedi Knight series, Battlefront, and Knights of the Old Republic, there are several games that never see the light of day. Games are cancelled for any of a number of reasons. But whether it’s the publisher canning the game late in development or an early concept that never gets fleshed out, it’s always disappointing to see games with huge potential left on the cutting room floor. Join us now on GVMERS as we look at some of the most prominent cancelled Star Wars games.
Among games that have defined the Real-Time Strategy genre, Command & Conquer is seen as one of the most influential titles. The C&C franchise, along with Warcraft and Starcraft, shaped the identity of RTS games during the '90s and would influence the designs of countless similar strategy titles in later years. Even though the franchise ended with a whimper instead of a bang, it managed to create an indelible impact on the history of videogames. Join us as we take a look at the rise and fall of Command & Conquer.
In the early 2000s, the first-person shooter landscape was a crowded one. An overabundance of Halo rip-offs and World War 2 shooters had flooded the market, and it seemed like every other week a new generic shooter was hitting consoles or the PC platform. While there were many great action games that came out of this era, there were a dozen mediocre, forgettable first-person shooters for every great one that stood the test of time. Enter Prey, an innovative first-person shooter released in 2006 that took spectacular risks with its unique gameplay and setting. The game kicks off by dropping the player into the shoes of a Cherokee named Tommy who’s abducted off a reservation into an alien spaceship—and it only gets crazier from there. The detailed, highly interactive opening sequences of the game gave way to inventive level designs that most other shooters of the day could only dream of achieving. Letting the player use a host of bizarre weapons and powerful Spirit abilities, the game eschewed traditional shooter mechanics throughout the single-player campaign, and further let players fool around with its wild ideas in multiplayer matches. Featuring tons of unique ideas like walking on walls and ceilings, letting players warp through portals sprinkled throughout the levels, and dropping players in levels that break the laws of gravity, the game was a truly memorable experience from start to finish. While the game didn’t achieve a blockbuster level of success, sales were healthy for a brand-new IP, especially one as off-the-wall as Prey, with over one million copies sold. With positive critical reception and a solid start to the franchise, Prey went down in the history books as a standout from the usual shooter fare.
What is this Redux and why did we make it? First off, I'd like to thank Plokite_Wolf and Cypher for helping us revise and rectify some of the errors and expanding on the information of our first script. After having published our first 'version' of the video, it was brought to our attention that some of the information provided was either incorrect or needed to be elaborated on. I regret the fact that this has happened, as fans of the series we wanted to make a franchise analysis that takes the viewer through the highs and lows of the series as well as tell the stories of the developers at EALA and Westwood in detail. Making a documentary-style video about Command & Conquer has, personally, been one of my long-time goals but I didn't feel that it was fully achieved in our first video. The story of Command & Conquer is very nuanced and the Redux, or Revision or V2 (whatever you like to call it) seeks to tell this more accurately, with 10+ minutes of additional information I feel like this is a much more interesting video for fans of the series. Sorry to those of you who were waiting on a new video, our regular content schedule will resume now and I hope to have a new (exciting) video online next week! :) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Among games that have defined the Real-Time Strategy genre, Command & Conquer is seen as one of the most influential titles. The C&C franchise, along with Warcraft and Starcraft, shaped the identity of RTS games during the '90s and would influence the designs of countless similar strategy titles in later years. Even though the franchise ended with a whimper instead of a bang, it managed to create an indelible impact on the history of videogames. Join us as we take a look at the rise and fall of Command & Conquer.
We'd like to thank Nathan Cheever, the lead mission designer on Six Days in Fallujah, for assisting and advising us on this project. If you'd like to find out more about the game, he has a page dedicated to it here: http://www.curiousconstructs.com/game... After the release of the critically-acclaimed first-person shooter Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the video game market was perpetually flooded with war-themed games for a decade. Open-world levels and exotic weapons commonly seen in the likes of iconic shooters from the nineties - these including DOOM, Quake, and Duke Nukem 3D - were dropped in favor of linear levels and realistic weaponry. Game plots were no longer mere backdrops for the action, and a large cast of characters would be integral to what’s going on. The days of macho, muscle-bound, one-man-army protagonists was over. While most modern military shooters were works of fiction loosely based on contemporary events, Six Days in Fallujah, a third-person tactical shooter developed by Atomic Games, was intended to be a virtual depiction of the Iraq War’s Second Battle of Fallujah of late-2004. This was a joint-offensive comprised of US, British, and Iraqi fighters. After the first battle in April, which took place after a small private security team were killed by Iraqi insurgents, it was discovered that that an estimated 3,000 members of this militia had set up their operations within the city of 250,000 people. An emergency evacuation allowed the Coalition to fight without fear of any civilians being caught in the crossfire. Collectively, over 100 Coalition fighters were killed and 1,000 injured. According to the Red Cross, around 800 civilians also lost their lives during the conflict. Much of the city was left in ruins from the battle, leaving many men and women homeless as a result. In summary, to call it a sweeping victory for the Coalition would be painfully inaccurate. Due to the critical backlash from the mainstream press, anti-wa
The brilliance of F.E.A.R. and the lessons we can learn from it. Ever since the first-person shooter was popularized in the 1990s, several titles in the genre have attempted to do one of two things, or both, to capitalize on the kinetic feeling of immersion that comes with experiencing the game world and its going-ons through the eyes of the avatar: a) by empowering the gamer with a wide array of weapons and letting them loose on a virtual space chock-full of hostile NPCs all too happy to riddle their quarry with lead and b), by dropping the player in an environment that not only puts their navigational skills to the test, but also engrosses them with a tangible atmosphere that can prove inviting or unsettling. It’s a two-part formula that has stood the test of time for over 25 years, and it’s one that developers have been more than eager to iterate upon in sundry ways. With the advancement of technology, games have built upon the shooter template with more dramatic storylines, customization options, gameplay modes, and an emphasis on human competition. These are design choices that have embellished the template and attracted wider audiences, a development that was especially conspicuous during the last console generation with works such as Modern Warfare setting trends that defined the modern military FPS. Suffice it to say that the arcade-y and skill-based roots of the genre were gradually being diluted. For players that solely seek in shooters the raw satisfaction of blasting their virtual foes to pieces with boom-sticks while simultaneously traversing dynamic locales that captivate the senses and keep them on their toes, this sort of philosophy generally came across as a missed opportunity to distill and perfect the two halves of the formula. A few titles did, however, put an extra emphasis on the core FPS blueprint, and fewer still actually came close to perfecting it. And there is one first-person shooter in particular that stands out. One that
In 1998, following the release of the critically-acclaimed Half-Life, Valve Software assigned themselves with the difficult task of creating a sequel that would not only live up to fans' expectations, but surpass them in every way. Half-Life 2 would feature an exciting new engine capable of rendering the game-world in stunning photo-realism, an engaging story, as well as a diverse set of characters and enemies. It was one of the most ambitious projects in gaming history, sadly, it would also prove to be one of the most troubled ones. With the game having suffered a number of delays and at one point even being leaked to the public in its entirety, to say that Half-Life 2's development was a stressful challenge for its creators to overcome would be putting it mildly. Even though Valve's hard work proved to be worth the wait when Half-Life 2 was met with acclaim from fans and critics alike on release, the troubled history behind the game would foreshadow the uncertain future of the series as a whole. While fans kept themselves busy by modding the game to no end, the company decided to work on additional episodes for the game. Episode 1 and 2 were developed simultaneously, this aided the developers in streamlining the story between the two games and allowed them to create an immersive and seamless experience for the player. Episode 1 was praised on release in 2006, much like Episode 2 in 2007, which ended on an ambiguous cliffhanger. According to interviews, the third episode of Half-Life 2 was to be released sometime after The Orange Box’s release, and would consequently wrap up all of the loose ends. Yet, mysteriously, nothing came of the sort. Surprisingly, the add-ons didn’t stop at number 3. On the contrary; other companies were in fact commissioned to work on additional episodes, yet, none of them saw the light of day. Thankfully, fans of the beloved series have devoted themselves to unearth as much information as possible regarding these enigmat
Medal of Honor. A series that has forever changed the way first person shooters are made. When the franchise debuted in 1999, no other action game had managed to successfully capture the intensity of the 2nd World War for which Medal of Honor is now famous. Its cinematic scope was a breath of fresh air in a crowded market of formulaic shooters and it quickly became the design template that many other developers would base their games upon. Even if you’ve never played a Medal of Honor game, you’ve certainly felt the repercussion of the iconic series. But what happened to EA’s once-great property? The franchise that formerly saw massive, worldwide success, with games that kept raising the bar for other first person shooters, hasn’t seen a release since 2012. To answer this question, we will not only cover the story behind the series’ rise to prominence and ultimate downfall but also provide a comprehensive overview of all the Medal of Honor games that have and haven’t seen the light of day.
The nature of video game development is such that games are often developed by large teams with a collaborative approach to creativity. While certain individuals within a team might possess more experience or sway than others, development studios are often trepid to present their works as being auteur-driven – as being directed by a singular artist that controls all creative aspects of the work, and imbues it with a recognizable style associated with them alone. But Konami’s Metal Gear Solid series is a notable exception to this trend. From the release of the original Metal Gear in 1987, to the release of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain in 2015, the series and its unique brand of military escapism mixed with magical realism has been inexorably linked with its auteurist guidance by series director and writer, Hideo Kojima. However, while this auteurism enabled the series to be uncompromising in its ambitions in ways many other triple-A video game franchises cannot afford to be, many compromises were made to the Metal Gear Solid franchise all the same. Be it due to time constraints, hardware limitations, creative disagreements, or whatever other reason one could imagine, Metal Gear Solid – just like any other video game franchise – was built upon innumerable rejected concepts and ideas. With the future of the series highly uncertain following the departure of Hideo Kojima and other notable talents attached to the series from Konami, we felt that it would be worthwhile to investigate some of the series’ more fleshed-out rebuffs, to both wonder about what could have been – and show how many of these failures served as the foundation for future successes. From an ambitious iteration of Metal Gear Solid 2 featuring great white sharks and a mind-reading mask, to a subversive spin-off that went as far as to be showcased on-stage at E3 before being cancelled, and then revived under a different name and developer, the history of the Metal Gear Solid seri
When looking back at the evolution of videogame technology, the mid-2000s were, perhaps, some of the most pivotal years. Sony and Microsoft ushered in the next generation of console hardware by releasing the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 respectively, allowing developers to create far more impressive engines to power their ambitious games, and titles such as FEAR, Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 were pushing the envelope with their unparalleled graphics and physics simulations. It was during these turbulent years that a small group of indie developers teased the public with a game so impressive in both visuals and design that it managed to stand out among its substantially bigger-budgeted contemporaries and would remain relevant years after its unveiling. First showcased to the world in 2005, the fantasy-themed action game Project Offset was trapped in development for five more years, with intentions on being released on the PC, while ports for the 7th generation of consoles were considered as well. Alas, the game was canned completely in 2010, yet its publishers-to-be never officially clarified why. So, what did Project Offset bring to the table, aside from its impressive graphics? What happened during development? And, more importantly, why was it cancelled after so long?
Imagine the following scenario: you, the player, are tasked with stealing top-secret documents from a former research institute-turned-military complex swarming with enemies. You manage to slip into the main building undetected, narrowly avoiding the eyesight of your adversaries – but just as you reach the target, you are spotted, and the alarm goes off. Undeterred, you reload your previous save with the intention of making the alert go away – only to be confronted with the same relentless wailing. You load the next save in your list – and once again, the haunting sound is still there. It’s as if the ghost of your previous, inept incarnation has polluted your world with its spectral presence – and there’s nothing you can do about it. This scene epitomizes the often baffling, yet thoroughly fascinating series of first person shooter survival horror games developed by GSC Game World, Stalker. Stalker is not a series of finished products, but rather, a work-in-progress, a palimpsest whose texture inscribes the history of its troubled development. All the hardships, discarded ideas, and unrealistic ambitions that dogged the games’ development haunt them in the form of innumerable bugs and frustrating design flaws. And yet, despite – or perhaps even because of these faults, the series managed to attract a sizeable cult following, spawning an abundance of mods, fanfiction, novels, as well as films, and even inspire courageous fans to enact their fantasies in the game’s real life setting: the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The story of the Stalker series illustrates that sometimes, success is only possible if it straddles the border of disaster.
In the summer of 2006, development studio Obsidian Entertainment received a call from Sega. Impressed with Obsidian’s work designing story-based role-playing games with a strong emphasis on player choice, Sega expressed it’s interested in having Obsidian develop a role playing game based on an original IP for them. Obsidian agreed to the offer, and in 2006, this title – a third-person espionage-role-playing game which would become known as Alpha Protocol – would begin development in rigor. Sadly, much of Alpha Protocol’s development would be fraught with trouble, with Obsidian’s staff unable to define a clear direction for the game, and lacking experience designing stealth-based gameplay. However, in the midst of this, Obsidian would receive yet another offer from Sega. This time, Sega was interested in contracting the studio’s talents to develop a game based on one of the publisher’s more lucrative properties: the Alien franchise. While this game – Aliens Crucible – would ultimately end up being cancelled at Sega’s behest, what information that has emerged about the game in the years following its demise suggests that Obsidian Entertainment may have had something truly special on their hands. More than just an RPG in an Alien mold, Aliens Crucible would have featured a macabre return to the franchise’s horror roots bolstered by Obsidian’s expertise in crafting meaningful player choice, making for what could have been an enticing proposition for both fans of Obsidian Entertainment and the Alien franchise alike.
The year was 2006. The PlayStation 3 was fast approaching, and the creators of Sony’s most celebrated 3D platformers were hard at work creating experiences that would appeal to the upcoming console’s mature audience. Naughty Dog, the acclaimed creator of the kid-friendly Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter series, was busy developing Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, an action-adventure game that would follow a gun-toting daredevil’s journey into unknown territory. Sucker Punch Productions, which had recently risen to fame with its swashbuckling Sly Cooper series, was working on Infamous, a gritty action title starring an electricity-wielding superhero. And Insomniac games, which had fathered the lighthearted Spyro and Ratchet & Clank series, was on the verge of releasing a science fiction first-person shooter set in 1950s England. A shooter called Resistance: Fall of Man. With a lengthy single-player campaign and a robust multiplayer suite that mixed the realism of Activision’s Call of Duty with the fantastical of Bungie’s Halo, Resistance: Fall of Man seemed poised to become a massive franchise. And yet, despite receiving an initial groundswell of support and multiple sequels, over a decade later and the name Resistance is all but absent from the current PlayStation ecosystem. Where the Uncharted and Infamous series enjoyed acclaim well into the life of the PlayStation 4, Insomniac’s Resistance franchise would ultimately fail to escape the orbit of the PlayStation 3, collapsing almost as soon as it would peak with the release of Resistance 3 in 2011. This is the story of the rise and fall of the Resistance series.
We look back at the troubled development of Rainbow Six Patriots, as we look forward to the upcoming Operation Outbreak expansion. In December of 2015, Ubisoft released Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. The eleventh entry in the first-person shooter series about counter-terrorist unit Rainbow, Siege bucked tradition. Where past Rainbow Six titles featured both single-player and multiplayer offerings in which players battled opposing forces across sprawling environments, Siege focused exclusively on multiplayer content in which teams of players worked together to attack or defend small, yet highly destructible arenas. While Siege suffered a rough launch, marred by game-breaking bugs, server issues, and a lack of content, Ubisoft worked candidly with the game’s community to improve it following its release, and it has since grown into one of the most popular competitive shooters on the market. But while Siege’s success is familiar to many, less known are the murky circumstances in which the title first emerged. That before Ubisoft set out to redefine the Rainbow Six series as a premier multiplayer-only experience, the series was gearing up to deliver what might have been the most evocative and contemporary single-player narrative ever featured in a Ubisoft game. A dramatic tale that would have seen Team Rainbow fighting for the soul of America as they both descended into madness. This is the story of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6: Patriots.
For as long as video games have existed as consumer products, there have been games based on non-gaming franchises. Movies, television series, music, plays, and many more have all found their way into the medium of games – and while some go on to become coveted pieces of the video game industry’s landscape, most quickly recede into the background. A lack of time, talent, and creative freedom condemns them to mediocrity – or worse. The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was no exception. While far from the worst that the world of licensed games has to offer, the Pirates of the Caribbean video games, designed to quickly and cheaply cash in on the movies’ releases, consistently failed to move the needle. While the 2007 video game tie-in for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End offered surprisingly engaging voice performances and – for its time – decent graphics, its core gameplay had little to offer. But then, in 2009 a Vancouver-based development studio known as Propaganda Games would announce the development of a new Pirates of the Caribbean game, one without the star power of Johnny Depp or Keira Knightly. An ambitious project that would use the Pirates of the Caribbean universe as the canvas for an original set of characters, scenarios and mechanics unfettered by the franchises’ normal stalwarts. A swashbuckling adventure that, had it ever been released, might have stood toe-to-toe with the best that the video game industry had to offer. This is the story of Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned.
In the early 2000s, World War 2 shooters were seemingly everywhere. Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and an endless stream of clones and knock-offs pervaded both personal computers and home consoles. While fun, these experiences were often formulaic, casting players time and time again as frontline soldiers in bombastic, but heavily scripted action sequences across the war’s greatest flashpoints. Running and gunning alone into the thick of battle was the name of the game, with little in the way of realism. In the midst of this glut of homogenous experiences, one series of World War 2 shooters stood out above the rest: Brothers in Arms. Developed by Gearbox Software and published by Ubisoft, Brothers in Arms emphasized real-world tactics and teamwork over mindless gunplay, forcing players to work together with their in-game allies to overcome conflicts. While Brothers in Arms would experience a wave of popularity following its debut in 2005, bolstered by its affecting narrative and unique gameplay, its fame would gradually wane overtime. Changing market conditions, a stream of middling mobile releases, and Gearbox Software’s shifting priorities would slowly but surely drown the series out of the public conscience. And though there is reason to hope that the series may yet live again, an ill-fated attempt to revitalize the series in 2011 suggests that a new entry may still be far on the horizon. This is the rise and fall of Brothers in Arms.
Maximum strength. Maximum armor. Maximum speed. To PC gamers in the late 2000s, these words were the credo of a futuristic first-person shooter unlike anything else around it – Crysis. Developed by Frankfurt-based developer Crytek, Crysis dazzled the industry with its gorgeous graphics and open-ended gameplay, which encouraged players to make the most of both their own, innate abilities, and the environment around them. It was an uneven experience, one whose final third betrayed its strongest ideas – yet it was one that found its way into the heart of many a player. And within a year following its release, it would be complimented by Crysis Warhead, an expansion in some ways even stronger than the base game itself. But as the years passed, Crytek would gradually migrate the franchise to home consoles, reinventing the series to better suit its new platforms for Crysis 2. All the same time and effort that had gone into making the first game was there, and then some – but it lacked much of what made its predecessor special. A third entry, Crysis 3, would make an earnest effort to address players’ complaints, and bridge the two disparate directions the series had driven in – but the moment had passed, and players had moved on. This is the rise and fall of Crysis.
Following the release of Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight in March of 2010, the future of the Command & Conquer series was uncertain. The acclaimed real-time strategy series had enjoyed an incredible heyday, with a procession of critically acclaimed titles across both personal computers and consoles. But EA Los Angeles’ Tiberian Twilight, which had vastly departed from the acclaimed real-time strategy series’ tenets, proved to be immensely unpopular with long-time fans and critics alike, casting the series’ future in doubt. And yet, from its ashes, a new Command & Conquer title would emerge: Command & Conquer: Generals 2. Taking place after the events of Command & Conquer: Generals and its expansion, Zero Hour, Generals 2 – from what little information was made available of it – seemed a solid counter to Tiberian Twilight’s many mistakes; a return to the franchise’s roots powered by EA’s graphically impressive Frostbite engine. But before fans could confirm whether or not Generals 2 was truly the reversion that the series needed, it was announced that the game would be converted into a free-to-play platform simply titled Command & Conquer. And that it would launch – in an aberration for the series – without a single-player campaign. Fans would rail against the game’s abrupt change in direction, prompting Victory Games, the game’s developers, to do their best to address fans’ concerns. But try as they might, Victory struggled to make headway on the project – until it was abruptly and unceremoniously cancelled. This is the story of Command & Conquer: Generals 2.
In 1998, a little known company named Valve released a first-person shooter named Half-Life and changed the face of gaming. Where other shooters struggled to provide even a semblance of a story, Half-Life had brains to match its brawns; a stirring tale featuring a realistic human cast and a protagonist that was more than a hand and a gun unfolded before the player’s eyes as they progressed through each level. As Valve grew, so too did Half-Life’s reputation, with Half-Life 2 in 2004 once again revolutionizing the genre, and its episodic expansions, Half-life 2: Episode One and Episode Two, further raising the bar. The series didn’t release consistently, and occasionally suffered unexpected and painful setbacks; but when it did, it seemed as if Valve could do no wrong – until the series suddenly stopped. Shifting priorities, a lack of motivation, and other, more nebulous factors would lead Valve to put Half-Life on ice in the middle of its prime, leaving a generation of gamers adrift, and an opus unfinished. And yet – Half-Life lives on. Be it in the innumerable games and series it inspired or provided the computative bedrock for, an undying stream of mods, or other media based on the franchise, Half-Life’s DNA is permanently embedded in the fabric of the video game industry, and will likely remain so for some time. As sad as it is that a Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or a Half-Life 3 will likely never happen, and as frustrating as it is that Valve remains belligerent as to precisely why, the series, for the most part, has only really fallen… out of Valve’s hands. This is the rise and fall of Half-Life.
It had been four years since Blizzard released StarCraft, and its expansion, Brood War for the PC. The science fiction-themed real-time strategy game proved to be a critical and commercial smash upon its release in 1998, drawing in millions of players around the globe to battle for the fate of humanity – or rather, the “Terrans” – in the game’s riveting single-player campaign, and trade wits in its competitive multiplayer mode. It was a revelation for both casual and professional fans of the genre – and they wanted more. Their wishes would be answered when Blizzard and Nihilistic Software would reveal StarCraft: Ghost, an action-stealth game set in the StarCraft universe, for home consoles. Centered on Nova, a powerful and deadly psionic warrior, Ghost quickly became a highly anticipated game due to its ambitious and varied combat system, and for offering a novel new way to experience a beloved universe. However, despite a strong initial showing, Ghost would spend the next several years fighting for its life. Revisions, delays, and a change in development studio would push the game further and further into the periphery – before disappearing entirely. Ghost would become its very own namesake; always up in the air in the sea of possibility, but never tangible. And yet from its corpse, Nova would survive, slowly becoming one of the StarCraft universe’s biggest characters thanks to a litany of multimedia appearances. This is the story of StarCraft: Ghost.
In the early days of the PlayStation 2, Zipper Interactive would debut a third-person shooter called SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs. Authentic, tactical, team-based, and online at a time where few other PlayStation titles were, SOCOM took the home console by storm. It gave Sony’s exclusives a more mature face, provided multiplayer-centric shooters a new standard to compete against, and helped single-handedly move the PlayStation 2’s network adapter and headset into gamers’ homes. The debut of SOCOM 2 the following year created an immediate classic, and confirmed SOCOM as a franchise that would be with PlayStation for years to come – even as unsavoury hackers attempted to ruin players’ enjoyment. Yet try as SOCOM would, lightning never seemed to strike thrice in the eyes of the series faithful. SOCOM 3, Combined Assault, Confrontation, and many more would all proceed to be good, if not great games in their own right – but whether helmed by Zipper or Slant Six, SOCOM never found its third pillar on which it could rest. And just as it seemed as if the series finally might, SOCOM 4 would both trip over its design, and fall into a hole burrowed out of the PlayStation Network Outage of 2011. SOCOM was shattered, Zipper was shuttered, and one by one, the entire series would go offline – though the hardcore would continue to find ways to keep the series’ flame alive. This is the rise and fall of SOCOM.
In the late 1990s, horror games were on the rise. The hardware capabilities of Sony’s PlayStation enabled developers to craft immersive 3D experiences that married the atmosphere and shock of Hollywood’s most terrifying pictures with the agency of games – and players couldn’t get enough of them. Among these titles was a twisted, yet comparatively demure experience called Silent Hill. Developed by a motley crew of talented Konami employees, Silent Hill flipped contemporary horror game tropes on their head, casting the player as an everyman in search of his daughter in a fog-enshrouded town. The game would be well received, and followed up by three sequels on the PlayStation 2 that would catapult the Silent Hill name into horror gaming stardom. However, shifting interests within Konami would lead the Japanese company to disband the team that developed these early titles, and outsource all future games in the series to studios in Europe and America. While this move would produce some genuine highlights, mixed efforts and a lack of care on Konami’s part would result in Silent Hill gradually becoming a shell of its former self; a legend brimming with potential that always seemed to fall short of its glory days through some issue or another. This is the rise and fall of Silent Hill.
In the late 1990s, few video game developers were as synonymous with PC role-playing games as Black Isle Studios. Established in 1996 as a subsidiary of Interplay Entertainment, Black Isle helped create and foster an array of beloved isometric RPG series, including Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Fallout. Of all its works, Fallout set itself apart with its 50s Americana-inspired post-apocalyptic setting and open-ended design, which enabled players to craft their journey through the irradiated remains of the United States with an unprecedented level of freedom. Whether allowing them to be the scourge of all that is living, a pacifist capable of convincing their foes to surrender, or a straggler just trying to get by, both Fallout and its sequel, Fallout 2, exemplified the power of player choice in games, and served as hallmarks of Black Isle's talent. After years of false starts, development on a third mainline entry in the series for the PC materialized, one that would have seen the player embroiled in a plot involving escaped convicts, a mysterious virus, and a calamitous space station. Unfortunately, despite coming within striking distance of being completed, both this project and Black Isle as a whole would be shut down in late 2003, snuffed out by Interplay's financial woes and shifting priorities. Their ends were tragic - yet both Fallout and the talent that shepherded it would live on, with the former becoming one of the biggest names in gaming, and the latter joining a new development studio that would eventually incorporate elements of their cancelled entry into their works. This is the story of Van Buren, the original Fallout 3.
When Halo: Combat Evolved landed on the original Xbox in 2001, the video game industry changed dramatically. Master Chief and the UNSC’s battle with the pious forces of the Covenant helped legitimize the first-person shooter on consoles, established Microsoft as a contender in the industry, and launched one of the most venerated sagas in the history of video games. Since the franchise has traded hands, from its creators at Bungie, to its successors at 343 Industries, opinions of newer titles have cooled – yet the series remains a powerhouse. As with any franchise that has lasted several decades, however, an abundance of failed concepts, pitches and ideas are to be expected. Halo is no different – yet its most notable failed projects are a diverse and eclectic bunch, wandering far outside the fine shooting and vehicle mechanics that the series’ numbered entries exemplify. From a melee-focused action game, to a Mega Bloks platformer teeming with gags, the history of Halo’s cancelled games and concepts embodies the franchise’s versatility.
When a video game is cancelled, it can be difficult to judge how it would have fared if history had gone differently. Most of the time, the public is only treated to a small snapshot of the title’s content; some screenshots, a bit of canned footage or maybe even a vertical slice or two. As promising as titles like StarCraft: Ghost or Star Wars 1313 might have appeared during their brief existence, the reality is that the world only ever gleaned an idea of what these projects might have offered upon release. Even their developers have no way of knowing exactly how they would have netted out. Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro’s Silent Hills is no different. Like so many failed projects before it, Silent Hills remains little more than a concept; a dream in the minds of its fans and the people that were working on it. But on the road to its demise, it birthed one of the most celebrated horror experiences of the past decade. A Playable Teaser, or P.T., that provided a sense of terror that was absent from so many of its predecessors, and helped reinvest a generation of players in the macabre. Video game cancellations are tragic, and leave the world wondering what could have been. But they can leave behind more than just ideas – they can impart tangible experiences that are great in and of themselves, and serve as an impetus for change. This is the story of Silent Hills.
In the late 1990s, the PlayStation was abound with racing games. Gran Turismo, Need for Speed, Ridge Racer, and many more provided players with plenty of hours of breakneck entertainment behind digital steering wheels. Among these games, however, was a decidedly different experience from Newcastle-based developer Reflections Interactive. Simply titled Driver, the game focused more on emulating the thrill of Hollywood-style car chases than on pure racing, allowing players to unleash their inner Steve McQueen across the United States’ roughest roads. The game was immensely successful, and quickly spawned a lesser, yet ambitious sequel that allowed players to exit and hijack cars nearly a year before Rockstar allowed players to do the same in Grand Theft Auto III. Unfortunately, the subsequent popularity and quality of the Grand Theft Auto games would prove to be an albatross around Driver’s neck. Unable to escape the former series’ transcendental fame, Reflections would gradually inject more and more of its open-world trappings into Driver, leading to some major embarrassments, and the gradual loss of the franchise’s identity. Finally, after switching multiple publishers and coming to terms with Driver’s strengths, Reflections would transition the series back into pure, car-chasing action with 2011’s Driver: San Francisco. The cost of doing so left Reflections uninterested in doing much else with the series – but resulted in an immensely entertaining experience; one that righted its predecessors’ missteps, while offering clever new ideas that helped release it from Grand Theft Auto’s shadow. This is the rise and fall of Driver.
For a brief period of time in the early 2000s, skateboarding video games were inescapable. The countercultural sport had been adapted into bits and bytes many times in the past, but following the genre-defining release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater in 1999, it became one of the hottest commodities in gaming. Year after year, players couldn’t stop shredding elaborate digital combos, and developers couldn’t stop pumping out opportunities for players to do so. By 2007, however, the genre was getting tired. Its best games were struggling to advance beyond what had been established at the end of the preceding millennium, and its worst made it seem bloated and exploitative. It’s in this window that EA Black Box introduced the world to Skate. Where Pro Skater and most of the titles that succeeded it depicted skating as it appeared on TV – sensationalized and effortless – Skate attempted depict the sport with greater realism than ever before. Performing a trick meant moving the joystick in a way that mimicked whatever it is one wanted to perform, rather than press a button to instantly grind or ollie. Skate would go on to become a critical and commercial darling, spawning a spin-off and two equally popular sequels in less than three years – only to disappear without a trace. Despite possessing considerable goodwill, extraneous factors would lead EA to abandon the series while it was ahead, leaving players hoping for a fourth Skate title out in the cold. Yet rather than move on, Skate’s fan base would only become more voracious overtime, transforming Skate 4 from an idle fantasy, into one of the most talked about video games that has never existed; a curse of unrequited love that continues to haunt EA to this very day on social media.
Space. Cold, dark, and endless, the Earth’s final frontier has long served as the backdrop for all manner of horrifying fiction, from the heart-pounding terror of Alien, to the cerebral drama of System Shock. Where other classic horror settings require the addition of fantastical stalkers to put the lives of their characters at risk, space alone tears apart anything that dares confront it unprepared; uncaringly, unflinchingly, and in total silence. When EA Redwood Shores debuted the survival horror game Dead Space in 2008, they succeeded in both capturing the inherent wickedness of its setting, and delivering an experience that played more sublimely than any other horror game before it. Rather than attempt to generate tension with sluggish tank controls and other arcane mechanics, Dead Space made Isaac Clarke’s hellish march through a zombie-infested flagship as intuitive to control as it was scary. Players lapped it up, Redwood Shores became Visceral Games, and a small barrage of cross-media content followed, including an unexpectedly solid spin-off on the Wii, and an even greater sequel. Eventually, however, the demands that the franchise cater to a wider audience caught up with it, and Visceral Games released Dead Space 3 – a solid action title that exemplified its creators’ competency, but failed to fully capture the sense of horror that had made its predecessors so beloved. The series faded away, and its developers, despite their pedigree, would follow shortly after.
At the dawn of the PlayStation 3’s life, Sony promised that their first high-definition console would transform the video game industry. Its hardware would trounce whatever the competition had to offer. Its online capabilities would bring people together in revolutionary ways. And – most importantly of all – its games would astound players like nothing before. Eight Days was one of those titles. A third-person action game from Sony Interactive Entertainment’s London Studio, Eight Days promised prospective PlayStation 3 owners a high-octane experience, one in which an unlikely duo would take on a criminal enterprise across America. Its intensive gunplay and chest-pumping set pieces seemed like a blast, and its graphics looked good – maybe a little too good. However, before the world could judge whether the game was all Sony cracked it up to be, the company would swoop in and cancel it two years after the PlayStation 3’s launch. Like so many of the promises that were made at the console’s outset, Eight Days was pushed to the side as Sony sought to prioritize what was profitable, and what its development houses did well in the midst of the PlayStation 3’s sagging trajectory. London Studio’s ambitious shooter could have found its way into the hearts of many a gamer – but with London’s pedigree suggesting the studio would be much better suited making other types of games, it was never given the chance to do so. This is the story of Eight Days.
In the pantheon of fictional universes, few are as rife with memorable characters as Star Wars. From Admiral Ackbar to Yoda, the galaxy far, far away has served as a host to all manner of unique and iconic personas throughout its history – some so much so, that they’ve managed to carry entire video games by themselves. When the clone troopers debuted during the prequel trilogy, most assumed that they would never be given the opportunity to share the same spotlight. A genetically uniform army that served the Jedi prior to their downfall, the clones would largely function as background dressing to more important characters and conflicts in whatever fiction they made an appearance, lacking the presence or personality to carry most scenes on their own. However, it would be a squad of clones that would go on to feature in one of the most celebrated Star Wars games of the 6th console generation: Star Wars: Republic Commando. A tactical first-person shooter set between the films’ second and third episodes, Republic Commando not only provides players with an engaging gameplay experience, but gives distinct and endearing personalities to its unusual protagonists years before the Clone Wars TV show would attempt to do the same. It demonstrated that even without most of the franchise’s main stalwarts – the Jedi, the Sith, and everyone in-between – one could still create a Star Wars experience capable of reaching fans’ hearts. This is the history of Star Wars: Republic Commando.
In 1997, a video game company named Bohemia Interactive was established in Prague. The Czech Republic had historically never been a hotbed for video game development, but Bohemia’s founders – Marek Španěl, Ondřej Španěl, and Slavomír Pavlíček – were on a mission. They were determined to create a first person shooter that would capture the reality of war more accurately than any game before it; an engrossing simulation that would depict what real battlefields were like, and feature an unprecedented sense of scale and attention to detail. After a challenging and prolonged development period, Bohemia delivered on these ambitions in 2001 with Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. The game was both a triumph within the genre of tactical first-person shooters, and one of the first major successes in the history of Czech-made video games. But it was also beginning of two wars – a war between Bohemia and its publisher, which would attempt to capitalize on the game without its creators’ involvement, and a war between Bohemia and itself, as the studio struggled to balance its ambitions with its capabilities. When the dust finally settled over a decade later, Operation Flashpoint had been stripped of its appeal and future. But Bohemia had survived, and started a new series, ARMA, that picked up mechanically and spiritually where Cold War Crisis left off. Unlike its predecessor, ARMA received a more muted reaction from the industry when it debuted – yet eventually grew into an empire within the military simulation genre. In a world where abandoned video game franchises so rarely receive spiritual successors that continue in their footsteps, the story of the Operation Flashpoint and ARMA is a shining exception; a reminder that not all inactive series become lost forever.
It’s not an exaggeration to claim that video games have a penchant for life in post-apocalyptic America. From the ghastly realism of The Last of Us, to the tongue-in-cheek absurdity of Rage, the industry is filled to the brim with experiences that explore what happens to the land of the free after social order collapses. In addition, games like Frostpunk, Mad Max, and a few others have featured memorable post-apocalyptic scenarios in the Anglosphere. Yet when it comes to the rest of the globe, the pickings are often slim. 4A Games’ Metro franchise is an exception to this. A survival-oriented first-person shooter series based on Dmitry Glukhovsky’s novels of the same name, the games explore the harshness of life in Moscow after the fires of nuclear war force its inhabitants to take refuge in its metro. And it does so with one of the more hardcore set of mechanics to grace its genre. For perhaps this reason, a lack of marketing, and a not-insignificant amount of technical issues that afflicted its first wave of releases, the Metro series never managed to become as beloved as some of its peers. Yet through sheer force of will, it grew into a mainstay in the first person shooter genre, thanks to the tireless work of 4A Games, and the support of its passionate fan base. But in order to fully appreciate what the series has to offer, one must first go back to the past. To the mid-2000s, when 4A’s founders had yet to leave their original outfit, and Glukhovsky’s first novel had only just been published in its home country. This is the history of Metro 2033. The History of Metro Part 1.
Developing Metro 2033 had been challenging for 4A Games. After splintering from GSC Game World in 2005, the Ukrainian studio had spent the better half of the decade building everything in their first title from the ground up, from the engine that powered its world, to the design philosophy that informed its gameplay. And while the game had managed to exceed expectations when it finally released, it also carried with it a stigma of being undercooked, on account of its many bugs, and occasionally infuriating enemy AI. With 2033’s sequel, 4A had an opportunity to enjoy a much smoother development cycle. Most of the fundamentals upon which it would be built were already in place, and THQ, which had served as the first game’s publisher, was eager to provide the studio with much more support than in the past. Unfortunately, like a journey through the tunnels of Moscow’s metro system gone awry, the game’s development would be beset by various struggles; some intrinsic to 4A, others created by events far beyond its control. Yet 4A would proceed to not only weather these issues, but release a sequel that rivaled and, in some ways, surpassed the quality of its predecessor. To onlookers within the industry, what they managed to accomplish was nothing short of incredible – but to the studio’s employees, it was just part of the job. This is the history of Metro: Last Light. The History of Metro Part 2.
In 1989, young college graduate Jordan Mechner introduced a 2D platformer called Prince of Persia to the world. Platformers were all the rage during the 80s, yet Mechner’s set itself apart from its contemporaries with its weighty, swashbuckling action, and incredibly smooth animations – a feat that Mechner had achieved by rotoscoping his family and friends into sprites. After a decade of enhanced ports and a strong sequel, the series would fall into an abyss following a misstep into the third dimension. Yet just when all seemed lost, Ubisoft’s young, Montreal-based studio would step in and transform the series into a modern classic, implementing a gameplay mechanic now as iconic as the franchise itself in the process. Prince of Persia’s new heroes would continue to nurture it for many years after – until finally, after bringing it to the silver screen, the decision was made to put it on hold. The series’ spark had seemingly vanished – but the mark it had left on the industry and gamers worldwide would still remain.
At the farthest edges of space, there exists a world unlike any other. A world where hostile alien lifeforms known as the Akrid are fought endlessly for the thermal energy that runs through their veins. Where an intergalactic syndicate and lowly snow pirates battle for supremacy using towering robots known as Vital Suits. Where the temperature and environment fluctuate constantly, as if trying to consciously expel those unable to adapt to its capriciousness. To those caught within its turmoil, this world is E.D.N. III, a hostile celestial body that welcomes only the most daring of explorers – and serves as the setting for Capcom’s Lost Planet series. Originally conceived by Mega Man maestro Keiji Inafune and a team of former Devil May Cry and Onimusha developers, the Lost Planet series provided early adopters of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 with an unusual, yet entertaining take on the third-person shooter, one that melded together Eastern and Western design values in ways unique to its genre. Yet much like E.D.N. III itself, Lost Planet would undergo many dramatic shifts, with each of its entries featuring wildly different takes on its core narrative and mechanics. While all of these games found players willing to accept these changes, this refusal to remain the same resulted in Lost Planet’s fan base gradually eroding away, and Capcom eventually moving on to pursue greener pastures. To many gamers, Lost Planet was inexorably linked with Capcom’s pursuit of Western-style games and developers during the seventh console generation, and the many disappointments that this initiative resulted in. Yet to those the forlorn series managed to touch, it was also one of the more unique and underrated experiences of its era – even though it could never quite settle on a single style.
As Rockstar Games entered the seventh generation of video game consoles, the acclaimed publisher slowly began to trim down and reinvent its catalogue. Rather than providing a wide variety of experiences that each tried to do one or two things well, Rockstar started focusing on leveraging the Grand Theft Auto series’ popularity and appeal, and offering a much smaller pool of games that featured similarly open-ended designs. And none of the company’s franchises were more primed to be reinvented in this manner than Red Dead.
When it comes to Western role-playing games, few video game developers are as renowned as Bioware. The Edmonton-based studio’s catalogue is as celebrated as it is influential, with almost all of its titles representing the peaks of their genres in the eras they debuted. Baldur’s Gate brought computer RPGs back in vogue with its sublime, high-fantasy gameplay. Neverwinter NightsKnights masterfully adapted its tenets into a multiplayer-centric experience. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic saw the former games’ narrative finesse melded with the adventurism of the galaxy far, far away. And Mass Effect made all of this Bioware’s own – while taking it to the next level. But being this renowned comes with a high heavy price. Today, gamers are well aware of the struggles the studio dealt with recently during the development of games like Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. Yet the reality is that struggles like these have persisted throughout its entire history, with nearly every major production that Bioware has successfully completed representing a triumph in the face of massive adversity. Dragon Age, Bioware’s much-beloved high-fantasy series, is perhaps most emblematic of this. While each of its mainline entries were made under vastly different circumstances from one another, they all suffered in their own, unique ways. Its third one’s design failed to fully come together until late in its production, and needed to be made in an incredibly unruly engine. Its second one’s development period was one of the most cramped its staff had ever experienced. And its first operated without a consistent team or set of tools for an immensely long – so much so, that many wondered if it was ever going to come out at all. This is the history of Dragon Age: Origins.
Few investments in the video game industry are as safe as sequels. Not only are they an easy sell to fans and publishers alike, but as direct continuations of pre-existing games, their developments are free of a lot of the heavy-lifting original concepts need to deal with; most of their core mechanics have been previously tested, the amount of assets they can use off the bat are numerous, and their creators already have plenty of feedback on how to improve both. Even if they don’t manage to eclipse their predecessors in terms of popularity, sequels are still all but guaranteed to keep their series’ spirit ablaze, and feature plenty of innovations their developers hadn’t been able to implement before. Awakening, Dragon Age: Origins’ first and only expansion, managed to do all of this and more. Dragon Age 2, which was marketed as Origins’ actual sequel, did not. Rather than feature a sprawling adventure that thrust players in Thedas’ farthest corners, the second entry in Bioware’s acclaimed role-playing series took place entirely inside a single city, following a lowly immigrant’s rise to glory within its walls over the course of a decade. While this change, and many, many others that Dragon Age 2 made to its predecessor’s core design proved popular to some, they failed to resonate with fans on a broader level, resulting in the wayward sequel gaining an infamous reputation. And yet, when one examines the circumstances in which the game was made, it’s hard not to feel a tinge of empathy for Bioware. For unlike Dragon Age’s first entry, which benefited from a development cycle that lasted nearly a decade, its second was forced to come together in just over a year, as a result of shifting circumstances within the studio and its Texan subsidiary. Viewed through this lens, it’s impressive that it got released at all – even if it isn’t exactly what one wanted out of a sequel to Origins. This is the history of Dragon Age 2.
After releasing Dragon Age 2 in 2011, Bioware was quick to follow it up with a steady stream of downloadable content, supplying fans eager to make the most out of the sequel with new scenarios and challenges to overcome in the city of Kirkwall. Yet one piece of content that would never arrive was a full-on expansion to the base game, in the vein of Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening. Many believed for a long time that this expansion, which would’ve been titled Exalted March, had been cancelled because Bioware desperately wanted to get away from the miasma of negativity surrounding 2, and move directly on to its successor. However, this wasn’t the case. As revealed by Mike Laidlaw in 2017, the real reason why the studio didn’t follow through with the expansion wasn’t because it was afraid to look back, but because it quickly realized that the engine the series’ next game was set to adopt – the Frostbite Engine – was going to be immensely difficult to get used to; if Bioware’s staff tried to acclimatize themselves to Frostbite and work on Exalted March at the same time, both projects would likely suffer severely. Thus, the decision was made to drop the latter, and focus only on the former. This is just one of the many headaches that Bioware dealt with during the creation of the Dragon Age series’ third entry. Despite enjoying a longer development period than 2, its production would prove to be one of the studio’s most grueling undertakings in its entire history, with nearly every step on the road to its release marred by dysfunction of various sorts. And even though this wouldn’t stop it from providing gamers with a stellar experience, the scars of this era would continue to haunt Bioware for years to come. This is the history of Dragon Age Inquisition.
Making open world games is far from easy. The number of assets necessary to fill them is colossal. The amount of testing required to polish them is unthinkable. And unless your name is Sam or Dan Houser, whatever you make is almost always going to live in the shadow of Grand Theft Auto’s scope and brand power – unless you find a unique way to counter its supremacy. For a brief period in the early 2010s, Sleeping Dogs was such a contender. The culmination of nearly five years of work at Vancouver-based developer United Front Games, Sleeping Dogs managed to win over players’ hearts by being modest and focused; instead of trying to be a better Rockstar game than Rockstar’s own offerings, it concentrated on nailing a setting, tone and style of combat that they had never explored before – and succeeded impressively in doing so. Yet what was perhaps most remarkable about it was the fact that it got released at all. For the penultimate year of its development was marked by a major fracas; one that would have immediately killed it had an unexpected publisher been any less kind, its team any less passionate, and the experience it had to offer any less compelling. This is the history of Sleeping Dogs.
During the early 2000s, real-time strategy games were booming. From Blizzard and Westwood’s fantastical machinations, to Creative Assembly and Ensemble Studios’ historical excursions, the genre had a game in almost every style and setting conceivable – and they were all consistently great. Yet of all these games, few offered as wide a scope as Stainless Steel Studios’ inaugural title, Empire Earth. The brainchild of Rick Goodman, who had previously helped conceive Age of Empires during Ensemble’s infancy, Empire Earth allowed players to embark on a tour of human history the likes of which had never been seen before, one that started at the dawn of human civilization, ended in the far-flung future, and offered an unparalleled level of customizability the entire way through.
The late 2000s were an evolutionary period for open world games. While the Grand Theft Auto series continued to refine the metropolitan sandbox, more and more titles were showing that the genre could work well beyond the confines of modern-day urbanity. Games like Crackdown and Infamous offered super-powered skirmishes set within near-future dystopias, while the likes of Assassin’s Creed showed that there was plenty of fun to be had parkouring through cityscapes of the ancient past. The size of their worlds rarely exceeded those of Rockstar’s opuses – but the variety of mechanics and subject matter they explored proved that this didn’t always matter. Among these experiences was The Saboteur, created by the Los Angeles-based Pandemic Studios. An open world game set in Nazi-occupied Paris, The Saboteur set itself apart from its competition with its swashbuckling tone and transformative color palette, which became increasingly vibrant the more its protagonist liberated the French capital’s streets. While not everything about it worked to perfection, few argued against its uniqueness; in an era where most games set during World War II focused on hardened soldiers cast into the conflict’s deepest trenches, and most open world games ignored the former half of the 20th century, there was simply nothing else quite like Pandemic’s work. Yet more unique than the game itself were the circumstances in which it was developed and released. For The Saboteur served as Pandemic’s sole lifeline during one of its most difficult periods – and its swansong once these difficulties forced the studio to close its doors. This is the history of The Saboteur.
In the realm of action-oriented video games, few are as zen as dungeon crawlers. Even at their most complex, demolishing and looting enemies in the likes of Diablo or Torchlight is as hypnotic as it is satisfying; their gameplay loops providing a perfect mixture of habitual repetition, and utter excitement. And to a small, yet passionate subset of PC gamers during the early 2000s, few games offered a better blend of these elements than Dungeon Siege. Created by Gas Powered Games – a Redmond-based development studio led by the legendary Chris Taylor – Dungeon Siege received significant praise upon its release in 2002 for its unique, party-based gameplay and its seamless, loadingscreen-free world, resulting in a dedicated player base quickly rallying around its design. Yet even amongst its most ardent fans, it also received significant criticism for its barebones story, as well as its tendency to play itself. As a result, its creators worked hard to ensure its sequel featured a more impressive narrative, and a deeper, more involving combat system upon its release in 2005. The end result of their efforts wouldn’t upend its genre – but it would still prove a hit among fans, and continue to inch the series closer to role-playing stardom. Unfortunately, after the release of a decent, albeit gimped spinoff on the PlayStation Portable the following year, the series would proceed to go dormant for half a decade, in addition to being adapted into one of the worst video game movies to ever reach theatres. When it would finally re-emerge, it would do so under the guidance of a different studio – and end up being utterly unlike what had come before it. This is the rise and fall of Dungeon Siege.
Video games – more so than any other form of entertainment – are a confluence of artistry and technology. While specialized hardware and software provide developers with the tools necessary to craft them, creativity and skill are necessary in order to know how to make proper use of these tools. And like in any other artistic medium, the only way to improve this creativity and skill is through experience. Perhaps no other word better describes Ninja Theory’s Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. An action-adventure game set within a fantastical post-apocalypse, Enslaved charmed many people with its exciting combat and heartfelt story, but sold well under what most games of its genre typically boast upon its release, resulting in it quickly slipping under the radar for most mainstream gamers. Yet its development – which saw several famous Hollywood figures team up with Ninja Theory – served as an invaluable learning experience for the studio, teaching its staff lifelong lessons on how to engage players using narrative and gameplay in tandem, as well as how to craft deep and emotionally fulfilling characters within the medium’s limitations. It helped its creators transition from being a good video game developer, to a great one, and set them up to eventually become even better with its subsequent endeavors. Sometimes, the destination is the most important part of video game development – while other times, the journey is paramount. With Ninja Theory’s third project, the latter proved more true than anything else. This is the history of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.
Few features are as ingrained in the fabric of modern shooters as bullet time. Whether included as a mechanic that one can use at the press of a button, or an occurrence that only happens in scripted moments, bullet time is the punctuation mark of every game it graces; an awesome, yet functional tool that gamers and developers alike can’t get enough of. And it wouldn’t be nearly as popular as it is today were it not for Max Payne. Released in 2001 by Remedy Entertainment, a video game developer based in Espoo, Finland, Max Payne put players in control of its titular protagonist on a slow-motion massacre through New York’s underground. It was dark, it was intense, and – most importantly – it was much more than just a series of reality-defying firefights, with its story spinning an intoxicating, noir-inspired yarn about Max’s descent into madness as he attempts to avenge his family’s death. Players lapped it up in droves, leading the industry at large to try and integrate its mechanics into their own products, and Remedy to produce a follow-up: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. The latter offered an even slicker rendition of Max’s twisted world and mechanics, as well as an earnest attempt to try and portray a love story at a time when the medium, let alone shooters, rarely featured them. Unfortunately, while its reception was even more impressive, its sales struggled to pass muster, and for a period of time after its release, it seemed as if the series had nothing more to offer – barring a mediocre film adaptation starring Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis. Yet like Max himself, its spirit refused to rest until it ended things on its own terms – and in 2012, Rockstar Games released Max Payne 3. Featuring a cruelly aged version of the series’ protagonist, and a setting more reminiscent of Man on Fire than The Big Sleep, the threequel offered long-time fans a rather different experience that what had come before it; one that thoroughly used the mechanics, system
What does a former MLB star, a 75 million dollar loan and the smallest state in the USA have in common? Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. When designing almost any videogame, art and business need to go hand in hand. While they can only be fashioned when developers sit down and apply their creativity and skill to them, the sheer magnitude of their worlds means that more often than not, they can only be completed when many developers apply their skills in tandem. And in order to get them to apply their skills in tandem on a regular basis, the games they make need to contribute to an economy that continuously supports all of their presences. Stories of video game studios that trip up on this reality, and are forced to lay off their entire workforce are sadly common across the industry. Yet none are as dramatic – or as unusual – as the circumstances that lead to the downfall of 38 Studios. The brainchild of former baseball star Curt Schilling, 38 Studios attracted considerable attention during its existence for the caliber of talent that was at its helm, which included a host of renowned fantasy authors and Elder Scrolls developers. But after the release of its first and only title in 2012, the studio received even more attention when it revealed that it was secretly mired in financial disorder, and had no choice but to lay off its entire staff. It’s a tragic story all around, and is made even more so by the fact that this first and only title that 38 Studios released – a high-fantasy role-playing game set within the wondrous land of Amalur – was a surprisingly good game; one that challenged genre conventions in satisfying ways, and found a place for itself in the hearts of many gamers. This is the history of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
The mid-2000s were a formative period for Ubisoft. New studios joined its repertoire and bolstered its stature as an international brand. Old studios came into their own with classic series that would define the generation. And series that would come to be classics in the next generation were slowly being cultivated for their future stardom. Yet to many gamers, nothing defined this era of Ubisoft more than Beyond Good & Evil. The culmination of nearly four years of work at Ubisoft Montpellier to craft the ultimate action-adventure game, Beyond cast players as Jade, an investigative reporter tasked with uncovering a conspiracy that threatens her homeworld’s future, and repelling the machinations of a dastardly alien threat. While parts of its varied design evoked comparisons to Zelda and Ratchet & Clank, the whole of the experience was unlike anything else before it; an epic journey that balanced eccentricity and seriousness with considerable finesse, and proved emotionally affecting like few other games in its genre. Yet when it came to sales, it was a considerable disappointment, with only a modicum of copies finding their way into people’s hands. And while this wouldn’t stop Ubisoft from producing a sequel, the company would nonetheless go on to spend more than a decade trying to get it off the ground – hardening the game’s fan base beyond all measure. This is the history of Beyond Good & Evil.
Of all the video game series that have made their mark on the industry, few have elicited as many disparate reactions as Grand Theft Auto. To some, the series is the apex of interactive media; the ultimate expression of virtual freedom, and the cathartic chaos that this freedom can result in. To others, it’s one of the biggest smoking guns behind all of the misanthropy and violence present in today’s youth, in addition to being a vile and artless product in its own right. If there’s one aspect that nearly everyone agrees on, it’s that Grand Theft Auto is among the most successful properties in the history of its medium. In the two decades that it’s graced consoles, handhelds and PCs, the open world series has remained a fixture on most sales charts, with its most recent entry, Grand Theft Auto V, having generated more revenue by itself than most franchises manage over their entire lifetime. To most gamers today, this thoroughness with which the series currently dominates the industry is as normal as Mario is Italian. Yet to those that have been paying attention to it since its inception, it’s still a mighty impressive feat. For up until the late 2000s, a day didn’t seem to go by where the series wasn’t embroiled in some sort of scandal created by its most egregious detractors – or its very own developers. This is the history of Grand Theft Auto.
During the 90s and early 2000s, few other pastimes were scrutinized more for their violence than video games. Spurred on by the bloody excesses of titles like Mortal Kombat and Doom, a generation of lawmakers, politicians, and parents took it upon themselves during this period to highlight the medium’s seeming depravity, and try to hide it from developing minds. To them, the thematic content that the video game industry explored was bad enough on its own – but its willingness to sell this subject matter to children warranted immediate action. Soldier of Fortune was one such series that came under this scrutiny. Developed by Raven Software in collaboration with the mercenary magazine of the same name, Soldier of Fortune garnered controversy around the globe for its intense level of gore, which at the time offered one of the more graphic depictions of bodily dismemberment ever seen in any first-person shooter series – a product of Raven’s custom-made GHOUL modeling system. Yet underneath the goriness of its modeling system, it also provided those that actually tried it with a polished gameplay experience; one that kept its player base thoroughly entertained well after the initial shock of seeing enemies blown to pieces wore off. It wasn’t utterly revolutionary in the way that contemporary shooters like Half-Life or Halo were, but it showed Raven to be more than capable of balancing both style and substance – and left its fans appropriately distraught when faded into nothingness. This is the rise and fall of Soldier of Fortune.
In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved. After butting heads with the United States for over four decades in proxy wars and crises around the globe, the Communist state had found itself besieged by a mixture of economic stagnation and social unrest, and decided that a brighter future awaited it as a democratic nation. It was a quiet end to a conflict many had believed for years was going to culminate in a nuclear tempest that would have torn the world asunder. But what if history had gone differently? What if the Soviet Union had refused to go quietly into the night, and made one last ditch attempt to conquer the rest of the world on the eve of its demise? This was the premise of World in Conflict. A real-time strategy game conceived by Swedish developer Massive Entertainment, World in Conflict tasked players with defending the United States and Europe from a surprise Soviet Invasion in 1989. Compared to the likes of Command & Conquer, which had depicted the Cold War turned Hot with a high degree of fantasy in years prior, Massive’s strategy title offered a largely grounded experience; one that depicted both its combatants and their battlefields with enough realism to make their plights feel genuinely sympathetic. Yet where it truly set itself apart from its competitors was its gameplay, which mixed together tried-and-true real-time strategy mechanics with some of the most distinctive elements of shooters like Battlefield to spectacular effect. So much so, that diehard fans would continue to steadfastly support it well after its creators – and its original online infrastructure – would move on. This is the history of World in Conflict.
Few video game genres instill power and satisfaction as easily as the shooter. While players can’t raise hell in titles like Call of Duty on the same scale as they can in games like Civilization, the immediacy of the former’s gameplay has proven time and time again to be far more efficient of an endorphin rush. Decades after players were first able to do so in Wolfenstein, unloading one’s clip into an unsuspecting enemy is still sublime like few other experiences in the medium; an unequivocal act of domination bereft of drawbacks or emotional trauma. But every now and then, a shooter goes against the grain, and attempts to subvert these very foundations upon which it is built. Spec Ops: The Line was one such game. Released in 2012 on consoles and PC, The Line began in an unassuming fashion, casting players as the leader of a three-man team tasked with investigating the fate of a rogue colonel in a sand-swept version of Dubai. Those who kept with it, however, quickly discovered that underneath its modest premise laid a hellish odyssey, one that forced its protagonists into disturbing predicaments at every turn, and repeatedly questioned the ethicality of how they chose to solve them. Like many subversive games before it, The Line received critical acclaim upon its release, but disappointed at retail, selling well below other, contemporaneous first-person shooters. Almost everyone who was involved in its production, however, was almost relieved that it didn’t end up becoming a massive hit – for bringing it into being had been its own personal hell, and nobody was ready to go for a second round. This is the history of Spec Ops: The Line.
Of all the video game genres, few are as taxing – or rewarding – as stealth games. Whether they involve sneaking past security cameras in a future dystopia, or hiding from bloodthirsty guards in the ancient past, stealth games are often slow and stressful affairs, lacking the pizzazz or immediate gratification that so many other experiences offer. But when everything comes together, and one squeezes through their quiet gauntlets without leaving a trace, the sense of satisfaction that they provide is unlike anything else. For a generation of gamers, few other experiences epitomized this better than Looking Glass Studios’s Thief: The Dark Project. Where competing stealth titles like Metal Gear Solid allowed players to go full Rambo at the drop of a hat, The Dark Project forced its audience to keep to the shadows, and use every affordance its mechanics and environments provided in order to avoid being caught. It was among its genre’s most formative experiences, and it was followed shortly after its release by a sequel that all but improved its greatest qualities – establishing both as being among the greatest gaming duologies of their era. Unfortunately, no sooner had the series made itself known than Looking Glass was forced to close its doors, and its ownership was passed on to Ion Storm’s Austin branch. The latter would do its best amid trying circumstances to do Thief justice, and deliver a game that, while not perfect, would have plenty of strong points. But like a curse from on high, this third entry would neither save Ion Storm from its own subsequent demise, nor prevent the series from resting afterwards in peace. Were this all that there was to Thief’s history, one wouldn’t be remiss calling it tragic. Yet in between all of its mainline titles, the series saw no shortage of support from its fans, who did their best to keep its memory alive with pro bono projects of stunning ambition. And when these fans were also triple-A developers, the games tha
When Naughty Dog released Uncharted 2: Among Thieves in 2009, the video game industry was awash with praise. After rising to prominence with the Crash Bandicoot series in the mid-90s, the Santa Monica-based studio had been delivering action title after action title for over decade. Each new release saw the studio grow and mature in some fashion – and Uncharted 2, with its blockbuster-like production values, appeared to be the culmination of this maturity. It was the apex of everything the studio had learned about how to engage players since its inception, rolled into one swashbuckling package. Few could have predicted that four years later, Naughty Dog would surpass itself yet again, and rise to a whole new tier of stardom with The Last of Us. An action-adventure game flush with supernatural horrors, The Last of Us followed survivors Joel and Ellie on a harrowing journey across a post-apocalyptic America ravaged by fungal zombies. Its world was a sight to behold, and its combat encounters left many dizzy with excitement. Yet when all was said and done, players were captivated most by Joel and Ellie, with the nuances of their relationship transfixing almost all who dared to join them on their journey. From the outside, the game seemed so masterfully constructed, that it was hard to imagine Naughty Dog had so much as broken a sweat developing it. In reality, however, shifting from Uncharted to The Last of Us had been a painstaking, difficult process – one that forced its chief visionaries to accept failure for years, and second-guess themselves on a continual basis. This is the history of The Last of Us.
In June of 2011, Gearbox Software released Duke Nukem Forever. The fourth mainline entry in the Duke Nukem series, Forever disappointed tremendously with its shoddy level design, tired tropes, and assortment of technical issues. To the industry at large, however, the fact that Forever had made it to store shelves at all was still amazing – for prior to this, the much-maligned shooter had been in development hell for over fourteen years, churning and molting through endless iterations under its original stewards at 3D Realms. What had once been one of the industry’s most infamous cases of vaporware had finally managed to see the light of day – and over course the next ten years, many more cases of vaporware would follow suit. Fumito Ueda’s The Last Guardian would emerge from obscurity and be re-unveiled as a PlayStation 4 game. Final Fantasy Versus 13 would be re-worked into Final Fantasy 15. Even Shenmue 3, which fans had long given up as a pipe dream, would manage to find its way onto store shelves after a successful Kickstarter campaign. Yet amidst all of this, a little known first-person shooter by the name of Half-Life 2: Episode 3 would continue to remain elusive. The third episodic expansion to Half Life 2, Valve had originally announced that Episode 3 would see release by 2007, and set the stakes for the series’s next mainline entry, Half-Life 3. By 2017, however, neither the expansion nor the threequel were anywhere to be seen. A consistent stream of rumors, leaks, and even teases from Valve proper suggested that the company still had every intention of returning to its landmark science-fiction series in some fashion, with a decent number of sources suggesting that it might even jump into the realm of virtual reality. But there was no timeline of when this return would happen, and no reason to believe Valve would put its money where its mouth was. While the company continued to support the likes of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 with ne
Few video game villains are as versatile as zombies. The number of settings that they can appear in are unlimited. The range of powers and attributes that they can possess are vast. And because they lack a pulse, the ramifications of killing them are nonexistent. When Nathan Drake murders hundreds of mercenaries in Uncharted, one can’t help but wonder whether he is truly a good person. But when Leon Kennedy does the same to the undead in Resident Evil, there’s no question as to Leon’s righteousness. The only major downside to zombies is that because of this versatility, there are no shortage of games that feature them – and because there are no shortage of games that feature them, their presence alone is rarely enough to make whatever they’re part of feel special. Few games from the mid-2000s were more acutely aware of this than Dead Rising. The brainchild of Capcom’s Keiji Inafune, Dead Rising cast players in the role of Frank West, a photojournalist-turned-vigilante who tasks himself with discovering the scoop of a lifetime in a zombie-infested shopping mall. While many players picked it up because of this premise alone, most stayed with it when they discovered that underneath laid a challenging, yet deeply rewarding gameplay experience; one that exacerbated the danger of its zombies with a stringent time limit, and an unforgiving save system. When the dust around its release settled, the industry had crowned it one of the most unique takes on the genre, and a solid demonstration of how the seventh console generation would be able to take the medium to new heights. Yet Capcom was dissatisfied. It felt that Dead Rising could have been better had it leaned more deeply into its Western design elements, and that its development team had been unable to do so because it was almost entirely Japanese. As a result, the company would enlist Vancouver-based developer Blue Castle Games to take over the series in its stead – a decision that helped improve it in the s
By 2010, players had their choice of heroes in action-adventure games. From space marines and treasure hunters to assassins and powerful mages, it seemed there were few adventurous professions the medium had yet to explore. But on the heels of creating two projects with a Punisher-like detective turned vigilante at the helm, Remedy Entertainment set about crafting a character whose occupation wasn’t exactly video game-friendly—a novelist. In writer Alan Wake, the Max Payne studio designed an inventive new protagonist, one whom audiences could more easily relate to. It took a long while for Remedy’s vision to fully form, though, as at the start of its production, Wake had far more in common with the company’s previous leading man. Yet, the iterative process of a lengthy development cycle saw the writer evolve into the dynamic figure many a gamer has come to know and love. To see their vision through to completion, Remedy’s developers were forced to follow the instructions they set for players in Alan Wake’s nightmarish journey through darkness—follow the light. Still, the path forward proved difficult to navigate as an open-world game took on a linear structure, all while the studio altered its managerial approach more than halfway through production. Out of this rather tumultuous period came an instant cult classic, which fans remain eager to see return in some capacity. This is the history of Alan Wake.
During the early 2000s, Star Wars video games could be found in nearly every genre under the sun. Kart racers, flight simulators, real-time strategy games, and all manner of other titles burst out of LucasArts and its licensees at light speed, bombarding fans with exotic new ways to experience the world of George Lucas’s famed space western. Some of these titles managed to carve out a place for themselves in players’s hearts. Others were forgotten by the wayside. Only a few, however, went on to stand the test of time as classics, and had a substantial influence on the industry as a whole. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was one of these titles. The masterwork of Canadian developer Bioware, Knights of the Republic sent players on a role-playing themed journey into the space western’s distant past to uncover a dastardly conspiracy. Its wealth of intriguing characters and gameplay scenarios proved immediately popular with fans, as well as provided Star Wars loremasters with prime material to incorporate into future stories. Yet perhaps most importantly, its development enabled Bioware to hone its talent as a master storyteller, and become an industry rockstar. A direct sequel helmed by Obsidian Entertainment would see release a short while later, as would an MMO from Bioware set three hundred years after the sequel’s events. The former came out less-than-ideal due to the rushed timeline in which it was crafted, while the latter – for better and for worse – offered a very different experience than either title before it. But in the end, these grievances would do little to dampen its popularity or legitimacy within the Star Wars universe – even after its events were declared non-canon. This is the history of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
After announcing its acquisition of the licensing rights for 20th Century Fox’s Aliens franchise, Sega teased two projects based on the property—a role-playing game and a first-person shooter. Within a few short years, Sega unceremoniously cancelled the RPG, which had been helmed by Fallout: New Vegas developer Obsidian Entertainment. Many would later contend the FPS from Borderlands studio Gearbox Software should’ve suffered a similar fate. Instead, it arguably endured far worse, and not at all for the better. Gearbox’s Aliens: Colonial Marines was intended as a showcase of what’s possible when a licensed brand and a skilled group of developers meet in perfect harmony. Fox and Sega additionally envisioned Colonial Marines as a stepping stone to narrow the divide between gaming and film. The shooter’s canonical narrative exemplified this intention tenfold. Gearbox’s efforts failed spectacularly, though, culminating in a mess of broken promises that long tarnished its reputation. According to a host of accusations leveled against Gearbox, mishandled resources, professional dishonesty, and a lack of passion beset the game’s lengthy and tumultuous development cycle. While studio representatives have denied these claims, the word of former staff members paints an entirely different picture, one that suggests Colonial Marines was never in a position to fulfill its promise of faithfully expanding upon the beloved sci-fi universe. This is the tragedy of Aliens: Colonial Marines.
In the decade following the turn of the century, first-person shooters had become a dime a dozen, especially those of the military variety. The likes of Battlefield and Call of Duty dominated with minimal competition, inspiring copy cats that rarely innovated the genre. Before long, the market grew oversaturated with experiences created by developers and publishers desperate to obtain a modicum of success achieved by EA’s and Activision’s flagship shooters. There did exist a fair few outliers, though, shooters whose creators, for the most part, chose to buck the trend instead of following the herd. Raven Software’s oft-forgotten 2010 title Singularity counted as one such project. As Raven’s final original game before its conversion into a Call of Duty support role, Singularity constituted the last bastion of originality during a transitory period for publisher Activision. All told, it did not seem an unworthy attempt, either. Despite a development cycle beset by mismanagement, Raven cobbled together a competent temporal shooter, one laden with inventive ideas that were hamstrung by formulaic game design choices. Dismal sales further handcuffed the franchise, since Singularity failed to gain traction in a marketplace flooded with other by-the-numbers shooters. Thus, Raven spent much of the decade following Singularity’s release beholden to someone else’s vision, its potential absorbed into the gears of Activision’s well-oiled Call of Duty machine. Yet, Singularity shouldn’t be remembered as a failure, per se; signs of triumph lingered within its faults, remnants of what could have been under different circumstances. This is the history of Singularity.
After shipping Mass Effect 3 in 2012, Mass Effect Co-Creator Casey Hudson and a small group of BioWare developers embarked on a new journey, laying the foundation for an original IP codenamed Project Dylan. The Hudson-led crew at BioWare’s Edmonton headquarters hoped to craft the video game equivalent of Bob Dylan, a title the industry would reference and revere for many years. Project Dylan, later dubbed Anthem, got off to a promising start, thanks to an ideation phase brimming with ambitious possibilities. The team’s high hopes and equally high morale eventually faded, though, replaced by stress and deep confusion about the end goal. Mismanagement and numerous staff departures left Anthem in limbo for years. While fans and media were being wowed at trade shows with impressive concept art and vertical slices of gameplay, BioWare developers were navigating a production cycle beset by indecision and an undefined vision. It didn’t help that similar games, such as Destiny and The Division, had already set the bar for what players expected from live-service experiences. Anthem failed to meet that bar. And while a series of post-launch updates improved surface-level issues, Anthem’s core gameplay loop and other fundamental systems demanded an overhaul—the likes of which BioWare had never previously produced. This is the tragedy of Anthem. As Raven’s final original game before its conversion into a Call of Duty support role, Singularity constituted the last bastion of originality during a transitory period for publisher Activision. All told, it did not seem an unworthy attempt, either. Despite a development cycle beset by mismanagement, Raven cobbled together a competent temporal shooter, one laden with inventive ideas that were hamstrung by formulaic game design choices. Dismal sales further handcuffed the franchise, since Singularity failed to gain traction in a marketplace flooded with other by-the-numbers shooters. Thus, Raven spent much of the decade
When Resident Evil 4 launched in 2005, it redefined both the third-person shooter and survival horror genres with inventive camerawork and visceral gameplay mechanics. For years after its advent, countless developers followed the game’s lead, emulating Shinji Mikami, who was the franchise’s co-creator, and his techniques for their own endeavors. However, barring the likes of Gears of War, hardly any of these titles managed to further innovate the genre. It would take another Mikami-directed adventure to reinvigorate third-person shooters with something completely fresh. The game in question is none other than the still highly-regarded Vanquish. In essence, Vanquish was a product of Mikami’s desire to reject the then standard characteristics of first and third-person shooters alike, especially those of the cover-based variety. As a result, speed-infused gameplay took precedence during Vanquish’s creation, as the team at PlatinumGames approached the project as though it were a melee-oriented action game—a genre in which everyone involved was much more familiar. This strategy yielded a genuinely unique experience that many believe remains unparalleled. It’s noteworthy that such esteem is held for a lesser-known, 7th console generation one-off with seemingly no hope for a sequel in sight. But perhaps the varying qualities that make Vanquish so distinctive constitute the reason for its continued relevance in the minds of all who have ventured through Mikami’s sci-fi world. This is the history of Vanquish. As Raven’s final original game before its conversion into a Call of Duty support role, Singularity constituted the last bastion of originality during a transitory period for publisher Activision. All told, it did not seem an unworthy attempt, either. Despite a development cycle beset by mismanagement, Raven cobbled together a competent temporal shooter, one laden with inventive ideas that were hamstrung by formulaic game design choices. Dismal sales furthe
As of the early 2010s first-person survival horror games were a rarity, a space most notably occupied by the likes of indie hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Triple-A games in the genre, the Resident Evils, Silent Hills, and Dead Spaces of the world, had yet to move beyond the tried-and-true third-person perspective. Change peeked over the horizon by the middle of the decade, though, with another indie success, Outlast, and Hideo Kojima’s P.T. demo laying the foundation for a new wave of survival horror. Little did anyone know, an Alien project based on Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic would also move the needle. The ambitions powering Creative Assembly’s vision for Alien: Isolation were grounded by far more than a shift in perspective. In using the original film as a stepping stone, Isolation tread ground that no other Alien-based video game had dared traverse. Previous interactive adventures through the sci-fi universe placed special emphasis on the action-oriented qualities of James Cameron’s 1986 sequel. Such titles supplied players with advanced firearms and assigned the arduous task of killing Xenomorphs—Alien: Isolation did neither. Creative Assembly instead encouraged players to avoid the creature, hide from and fear it, even distract it when necessary. But fully understanding the core of the experience they wanted to create proved a formidable undertaking for the team. Four years of production were devoted to the project. A new engine and major gameplay changes imposed several challenges on a studio that lacked a survival horror pedigree. To the delight of many an Alien fan, however, those obstacles culminated in a one of a kind exploration of the seminal franchise. This is the history of Alien: Isolation.
At the height of their popularity throughout the 2000s, military shooters typically emphasized the plight of enlisted soldiers. Most were shooting galleries, wherein players gunned down faceless foes with abandon across many historical or fictional battlefields. Little attention was paid to the human cost of war, including the destruction of civilian life and the emotional turmoil that comes with being on the receiving end of a foreign enemy’s hostility. There were occasional outliers like the controversial No Russian mission in 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 . Yet, a mainstream first-person military shooter wouldn’t centralize the human cost of war on the civilian level until Kaos Studios and publisher THQ unleashed Homefront in the spring of 2011. Carefully nestled within the core of the original Homefront was a hard-hitting shooter that immersed players in action and occasionally elicited emotional investment. Arguably, for the first time, players felt unbridled hate for their virtual enemies on the battlefield, a field of war that to a lot of gamers, specifically those in the United States, looked a little too much like home. While Kaos succeeded on this front, and in spades some would argue, a sequel from Dambuster Studios failed to similarly hit the mark. In many respects, 2016’s Homefront: The Revolution neglected to adhere to the framework that outlined its predecessor’s various victories. As a result, this once promising series about a troubling, though implausible, near-future conflict fell flat before it could truly leave a lasting impact on the genre it was designed to reinvigorate. This is the Rise and Fall of Homefront.
For years, Konami’s Metal Gear Solid counted among the few gaming franchises that withstood the test of time across several console generations. Its 1998 debut introduced players to the wonders of stealth-action gameplay and subsequent entries elevated the genre further, laying the groundwork for the advent of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and the like. Unfortunately, turmoil within the company meant the Konami-published saga didn’t have the opportunity to conclude as strong as it started. And its last entry, the universally panned Metal Gear Survive, managed to leave somewhat of a blemish on Metal Gear’s otherwise immaculate legacy. Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, the last mainline instalment, launched in 2015 with a less than satisfactory ending, effectively leaving a bad taste in the mouths of countless MGS faithful. As a spinoff adventure that took the series in a completely different direction, Metal Gear Survive hardly had a chance to succeed on even the basest level. The survival action title wasn’t what fans wanted, especially given the absence of series creator Hideo Kojima. Still, the experience offered a fair share of intrigue and fun; yet, by virtue of the alternate universe and zombie-centric premise, Survive struggled to retain the winning charms of its namesake. If anything, Survive’s drastic departure from its progenitors proved that slapping the title of a beloved brand on a new idea wasn’t enough to revive said brand. In this particular case, such a move may have led to the stealth property’s premature demise. This is the tragedy of Metal Gear Survive.
Fallout 4 hit stores in the fall of 2015, five years after the spinoff Fallout: New Vegas launched to widespread acclaim. In the years between the two releases, the video game landscape, specifically western role-playing titles, underwent a noticeable shift. The likes of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt raised the bar in many respects, especially with regards to content quality, storytelling, and presentation. While Fallout 4 couldn’t quite rise to the occasion, it still boasted the core tenets of the franchise’s modern adventures, offering a deep role-playing experience replete with choices, compelling characters, and a swath of customization options. To the dismay of fans, these pillars took a backseat in Bethesda Game Studios’ 2018 spinoff, Fallout 76. An online-only installment in a traditionally single-player series, Fallout 76 failed to garner the excitement afforded to its predecessors. However, despite the skepticism in the months leading up to release, Fallout faithful gave the new endeavor a chance. Few redeeming qualities accompanied the game’s arrival, though. In addition to a launch beset by game-affecting glitches and a dearth of engaging content, myriad other controversies cast dark clouds over what should’ve been a strong outing for Bethesda in late 2018. The controversy included poor quality collector items, overpriced rum, and a security breach, all of which contributed to a comedy of errors that many people will not soon forget. Bethesda slowly corrected course, deploying free updates that optimized performance and introduced meaningful content in the form of dedicated story quests and NPCs. But regardless of the steps taken, Fallout 76’s path to redemption proved long and arduous, as the lingering effects of countless missteps marred this particular venture through the wasteland. This is the tragedy of Fallout 76.
From Dead Rising’s zany antics to the bleakness of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, gaming had become oversaturated with all manner of zombie titles by the mid-2010s. As with anything, however, the market willingly made extra room for the right project at the right time. Such was the case in 2014 when Skybound Entertainment and Payday publisher Starbreeze partnered to create Overkill’s The Walking Dead—a first-person cooperative shooter with Payday-esque qualities set in the same universe as the acclaimed comic book series.
More often than not, western role-playing games emphasize two genres—fantasy and science fiction. Developer Obsidian Entertainment and publisher Sega dared to pursue a different path with their self-proclaimed espionage RPG Alpha Protocol. Yet, in its ambitious attempt to forge a new style of role-playing title, Obsidian faced myriad challenges that ultimately diminished the overall quality of the final product. In turn, Alpha Protocol garnered lukewarm reviews upon release and, consequently, failed to move the needle on the sales charts.
In 1979, George Miller’s Mad Max introduced movie-going audiences to a post-apocalyptic anti-hero, the titular Mad Max, who went on to inspire generations of other morally ambiguous pop culture figures across multiple mediums of entertainment. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome hit theaters in 1985, marking the third entry in the wildly successful series. It unwittingly denoted the start of a decades-long drought, too, which wouldn’t end until Mad Max: Fury Road and Avalanche Studios’ Mad Max released in May and September of 2015, respectively.
Widely considered the grandfather of first-person shooters, Wolfenstein and its lengthy history know both the thrill of victory and the agony of failure. The franchise’s 2009 entry, the Raven Software-developed Wolfenstein, marked a particularly low point for the series, leaving many to ponder whether protagonist B.J. Blazkowicz’ Nazi-killing days had finally come to an end. MachineGames, however, a Swedish studio founded by former Starbreeze developers, proved approximately five years later that B.J. still had plenty of fight left in him. The team successfully pitched a new direction for the IP to series creator id Software and publisher Bethesda Softworks, proposing an alternate history, post-World War 2 narrative wherein the Nazis claimed victory. MachineGames’ ensuing partnership with the companies culminated in 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order, 2017’s Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, and The Old Blood expansion in between. These adventures cast a darker, more serious tone over the franchise that ultimately led to B.J.’s transition into a family man. And killing Nazis, inherently, became integral to the proverbial family business.
During the 80s and 90s, most video game genres tended to stay squarely in their lanes. First person shooters like Doom focused exclusively on gunning down monsters. Role-playing games like Ultima epitomized inventories and statistics. And stealth games like Thief prioritized sneaking through the shadows above all else. Every now and then, an experience like System Shock or Strife would come along, and challenge the medium’s self-imposed rigidness by melding multiple genres together. Yet many would argue that it was only after the release of Deus Ex that the idea of a genre-bending game became truly popular. The brainchild of Warren Spector, Deus Ex allowed players to make their way through a cyberpunk rendition of the year 2052 using a wide variety of different mechanics and playstyles, allowing for an uncountable number of solutions to its life-like quagmires. The experience that it provided was as stupendous in its execution as it was difficult to quantify – so much so, that it would single-handedly usher in the term “Immersive Sim” to describe all prior and future games that would be included in its lineage.
Microsoft changed console gaming by launching the original Xbox with a built-in Ethernet jack in November 2001, a move Sony wouldn’t follow until the PlayStation 2 Slim received an embedded Ethernet port in 2004. The American-based console manufacturer also shifted the state of things with the introduction of Xbox Live and Halo: Combat Evolved’s robust online offering. But Sony took its share of unique multiplayer-related strides upon investing heavily in Zipper Interactive and the genre-defining SOCOM franchise. Thus, though it lagged behind in terms of network services, the PlayStation brand doubled down on innovating in the software department. Nowhere was this more apparent than in 2010’s MAG. The Zipper-developed Massive Action Game once held the Guinness World Record for most players online in a console FPS, courtesy of its ability to simultaneously host a then-unprecedented 256 users. Above all else, MAG emphasized teamwork, which Zipper underscored with an inventive command structure that brought a sense of order to the expansive online conflicts. The intricate leveling system additionally proved impressive for the time, as did the relatively minimal server hiccups.
Today, countless of the industry’s most seminal video games were produced by dozens, often hundreds of developers. These teams are typically replete with animators, artists, designers, programmers, and other integral members, all working in tandem to guarantee a product reaches the market as planned. 60 developers were responsible for Batman: Arkham Asylum. Roughly 450 Ubisoft personnel took part in Assassin’s Creed II’s production. And a whopping 2,000 people contributed to Red Dead Redemption 2. Sometimes, though, making a splash in the gaming industry doesn’t necessitate an extensive amount of manpower, considering a group of only eight made Portal. A Cinderella story of sorts, Portal is the brainchild of seven students who happened to produce a demo quirky and ambitious enough to pique Valve’s interest. The central conceit behind the series involves navigating obstacles with the skillful positioning of portals. Yet, so much more depth pervades every facet of these games, from the intricate physics that power the myriad puzzles to the compelling antagonist whose antics quickly became iconic. As the story goes, such incredible feats of game design may not have come to fruition had the original game’s small development team been given access to an abundance of resources.
When Pitch Black released in the year 2000, moviegoers were treated to a flawed, yet entertaining slice of science fiction. Its plot – which saw a crew of interstellar travelers band together to survive a hostile planet – was formulaic, but its setting and cast captured the imagination. And no other character on its cast did so better than Richard B. Riddick. An enigmatic antihero portrayed by Vin Diesel, Riddick’s mixture of smarts and physical abilities proved decently popular, and all but guaranteed that audiences would be seeing him once more on the silver screen. Few could have predicted that on the eve of his next cinematic appearance, a little-known Swedish game developer called Starbreeze would release a expertly-crafted video game starring the anti-hero – and that it would prove more popular than the movie it released alongside. This game was Escape from Butcher Bay, a stealth-centric action title that followed Riddick’s numerous attempts to escape from a maximum security prison using whatever means necessary.
A passion project that snowballed into an industry-wide phenomenon, No Man’s Sky’s very premise as a space-exploration game vowed to deliver so much more than the moon. Developer Hello Games established the parameters for an interactive universe replete with star systems, unique lifeforms, and 18 quintillion planets, all made possible through the power of procedural generation. Optimists bought into the fanfare; skeptics thought it too good to be true. Ultimately, Hello Games would have the final say.
Radical Entertainment and publisher Activision Blizzard believed they had an instant success on their hands. Both parties needed it to succeed at least, especially given the risk involved in developing a new intellectual property—not to mention its arrival at the tail end of America’s Great Recession. In an effort to mitigate said risk, Prototype’s protagonist Alex Mercer and the conspiratorial world of intrigue in which he operated were designed with sequels in mind. And one sequel it did indeed receive in the form of Prototype 2, which launched in April of 2012. Interestingly, a fleeting comic book series published by DC’s WildStorm imprint spawned from Radical’s brainchild, too.
A number of Criterion Games’ early projects put players in the driver’s seat of racing titles, high-octane adventures that helped the Guildford, UK-based studio slowly build a reputation for itself. However, it was 2001’s Burnout that launched the development group into true stardom. Burnout most notably served as a response to the simulation racers that dominated the genre at the time, such as Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo series on PlayStation. Instead of simulating refined driving experiences, Criterion focused on delivering an action-based thrill ride from start to finish, complete with the seminal Crash Mode that boasted over-the-top crashing sequences. The studio later decided to inject a similar level of extravagant action into the then PC-oriented first-person shooter genre, introducing console players on PS2 and the original Xbox to Hollywood-style shootouts in the often overlooked yet transformative Black.
When first-person shooters were introduced in the early 90s, most of the studios making them were content with keeping their protagonists silent. They believed that doing so would allow players to step into their shoes with far greater ease, and that the worlds their shooters explored already had plenty to say in their place. Any additional dialogue would be novel – yet wholly unnecessary.
Founded in 1999 by former Rare developers who served as creative forces on GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, developer Free Radical Design built what many consider among the most inventive first-person shooters of the 2000s. The TimeSplitters series especially set the world on fire with exciting time travel elements. Free Radical’s subsequent project, Second Sight, brought its own unique brand of thrilling gameplay to the table as well, courtesy of various psychic mechanics. The Nottingham-based group tried pushing the envelope further when designing Haze, a PlayStation 3 exclusive primarily remembered for playing a role in the studio’s collapse.
To achieve its ambitions, 3D Realms set about developing a new game engine to run Prey and future endeavors. These goals, and countless others, strained the workload, resulting in a series of unmet expectations. For years, the genre evolved without its influence; the likes of Battlefield and Call of Duty rose to the top, establishing a new norm while Prey endured development hell. But Prey, when it finally emerged from the depths, offered an experience unlike any other. While there’s little to suggest it marked the seminal release 3D Realms had dreamt of, Prey’s 2006 adventure merited applause for at least attempting to reinvent the wheel.
After shipping Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic on PC in 2004, a team led by Casey Hudson entered pre-production on Mass Effect, the project that would allow BioWare to explore its own space opera across a three-part epic. Mass Effect’s groundbreaking choice-based systems and role-playing elements set the bar for many RPGs that followed, and solidified BioWare as one of gaming’s most pioneering studios. An innovative save system capable of carrying user progress across each entry further elevated the experience. But the characters, the stories, the carefully crafted lore both pronounced and subtle, along with the player’s intimate role in it all, encouraged millions to flock aboard the Normandy in every form it took. The perceived belittlement of the player’s role at the trilogy’s end tainted the journey for some, however, leaving whatever came next with a decidedly tall order to fill.
Military shooters have come and gone in droves over the last two decades, the genre long proving a tough area of the market to crack and even tougher to maintain a semblance of success in. Thus, developers and publishers looking to make an impact typically push gimmicks the likes of Battlefield and Call of Duty can’t offer, be it Haze’s Nectar enhancements, the Time Manipulation Device in Singularity, or the Hollywood-inspired firefights of Black. For EA Montréal’s Army of Two, the fresh, new gimmick relied on something players were already well-versed in—cooperative gameplay.
Interactive Star Wars adventures ranging from the abysmal to the superb have permeated arcade, console, and PC gaming since the early 1980s. From side-scrolling platformers to demolition racers, there were no shortage of games based on a galaxy far, far away by the turn of the century. LucasArts, to little success, even dabbled in a fair few real-time strategy endeavors, none of which held a candle to 2006’s acclaimed Star Wars: Empire at War.
With 2005’s Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, developer Pandemic Studios delivered a GTA clone that bucked the common trend, sidestepping crime-ridden urban environments to instead use a politically unstable Korea as its setting. The end result offered a revolutionary experience whose main rival made it to market in the 2008 sequel, World in Flames.
Carving out a niche in an oversaturated market has never been easy, yet developer Volition managed to do so with its open-world series Saints Row, even while in direct competition with the juggernaut that is Grand Theft Auto. The success of Saints Row very much counts as an underdog story, one wherein the power of unique branding proved instrumental to a product’s ability to defeat the odds. Though the franchise’s last few outings made it seem as though the 3rd Street Saints regularly battled identity crises, that level of chaos, which in turn fostered variety, is what endeared fans the most. Unfortunately, whatever identity crisis beset Agents of Mayhem did it absolutely no favors.
Once the seventh console generation arrived, licensing agreements constituted the pillar upon which countless superhero video games materialized, many of them manifesting as movie and TV adaptations. From Batman and X-Men to Spider-Man and the Justice League, comic book enthusiasts had their fill of interactive heroes-in-tights shenanigans. Since few experiences featured original characters built from the ground up with interactivity in mind, Sly Cooper developer Sucker Punch Productions attempted to break new ground in the superhero space upon entering development on InFamous around 2006.
Like Counter-Strike before it, Valve’s and Turtle Rock Studios’s Left 4 Dead altered the course of multiplayer video games. Its advent in the late 2000s laid the foundation for modern cooperative shooters, placing teamwork at the forefront of a zombie-centric experience that penalized individualistic thinking. Notably, four unique Survivors acted as player avatars teaming up in a world overrun with infected humans, a welcome change of pace at a time when friends had become accustomed to fighting against one another in online shooters.
Left 4 Dead’s 2008 release redefined multiplayer, injecting new life into the first-person shooter genre by emphasizing cooperative gameplay above all else. Series creator Turtle Rock Studios began tinkering with early versions of the concept on a whim, a bit of after-work fun not initially intended for public consumption. But even before the crew started toiling away on the genre-defining zombie game, creative leads had another grand idea lingering in the back of their minds, one that would later do for asymmetrical multiplayer what Left 4 Dead did for co-op.
Earth’s Mightiest Heroes have starred in dozens upon dozens of video games in the last four decades. The iconic web-slinger’s first interactive adventure dates back to the Spider-Man action game released on the Atari 2600 in 1982, for example. That same decade also saw The Hulk and Captain America migrate to the world of gaming. However, an actual Avengers game would not hit the market until Data East shipped its arcade beat ‘em up Captain America and the Avengers in 1991. A range of mobile games, crossover titles, and LEGO-branded experiences have since allowed players to assemble their favorite heroes, yet no title was expected to capture the weight of being an Avenger quite like 2020’s Marvel’s Avengers.
Historically, Nizari Ismailis, the much-feared hashashins known to modernity as assassins, constituted a Shia Islam sect that employed political murder as a chief means of dismantling their political and religious enemies. The 11th Century Muslim missionary Hassan-i-Sabbah founded the religio-political movement in support of Nizār, the Fatimid Caliph heir-designate who led an ineffective revolt following the denial of his succession. Interestingly, details about this Order of Assassins relayed in Arkon Daraul’s A History of Secret Societies, as well as development on a sequel to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, inspired Patrice Désilets to spearhead the creation of Ubisoft’s multimillion dollar Assassin’s Creed property.
Grand Theft Auto Co-Creator David Jones founded developer Realtime Worlds in 2002, then set out to produce an experience that could venture beyond the confines of GTA. The studio placed such a weight on itself with its first project, Crackdown, an action-packed, sandbox adventure that provided players with free-form styles of play, intuitive game controls, and a true feeling of empowerment. While a super-cop tasked with ridding their city of the criminal element represented the lens through which users explored Crackdown’s Pacific City setting, narrative storytelling took a backseat in favor of building a world that revolved primarily around gameplay and exploration.
Credited as the original creator of Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, programmer David Jones founded Realtime Worlds in 2002. The Dundee, Scotland-based studio produced Crackdown first, an open-world experience wherein players portrayed a biologically enhanced Agent tasked with dismantling crime syndicates in a dystopian metropolis. Its incredible success propelled Realtime Worlds to greater heights, providing the cache necessary to recruit additional staff and focus on the pursuit of a far more ambitious project—the MMO that initially hit the ground running as APB: All Points Bulletin.
Video games have replicated myriad historical periods, recreating the likes of ancient military conflicts in strategy games and both world wars in third and first-person shooters. World War II, in particular, has long remained a favorite backdrop for first-person military shooters, and by the mid-aughts, such titles dominated the genre in nearly every conceivable way. Battlefield, Call of Duty, and Medal of Honor enjoyed great success on this front, effectively laying the foundation for all manner of copycats. But Polish developer Techland adopted a different approach when devising plans for its second stab at an FPS property.
The graphical leap between the seventh and eighth console generations proved momentous. Though titles such as The Last of Us pushed the older hardware to its limits, the first showing of something like Killzone: Shadow Fall running on PlayStation 4 demonstrated how the boost in memory and raw processing power could enhance interactive entertainment. From environments replete with higher-quality details to real-time lighting effects that dynamically elevated the digital world, the PS4 and Xbox One bridged the gap to realism that had long eluded video games. Early in the generation, no game came quite as close to bordering the line of authenticity as Ready at Dawn’s The Order: 1886.
Hardware manufacturers typically position racing games as the premier showpiece of a new console’s graphical and performance capabilities. The original PlayStation had Ridge Racer; the first Xbox hit the scene several years later with Project Gotham Racing in tow. While Microsoft managed to ship Xbox One with a first-party racer—Forza Motorsport 5—the PlayStation 4 had to rely on third-party fare such as Need for Speed: Rivals. Notably, Driveclub from Evolution Studios initially constituted the must-have racing experience on PS4, but issues with the game's core conceit postponed it well beyond the console launch window.
A fully-fledged MOBA, the project bore many names and assumed multiple forms throughout its relatively brief lifecycle. It first appeared manifested as Blizzard DOTA, then adopted the title of Blizzard All-Stars due to a legal dispute, before the developer settled on Heroes of the Storm. But the name arguably mattered little overall, especially since players had made their preferences known by the time Blizzard tried cutting itself a piece of the battle arena pie.
After a lengthy period of silence, the marketing blitz for Cyberpunk 2077 got off to an incredible start in June 2018, courtesy of an E3 presentation that would fuel years of hype and millions of pre-order purchases. Not even multiple delays and an eventually admitted lack of transparency could curtail interest, not when the neon-drenched streets of Night City and a Keanu Reeves-starring narrative seemed so enticing.
Rockstar Games had only explored relatively rudimentary modes of multiplayer in its games before the advent of Red Dead Redemption in 2010. The American West-set adventure, with its cooperative and competitive offerings, engendered the development studio’s first step into the wild west of expansive online gameplay. It made sense, then, that Grand Theft Auto 5’s multiplayer suite, GTA Online, allowed the team to unfurl its wings and do so in a way that generated multimillion-dollar earnings via in-game purchasing. But GTA Online didn’t achieve incredible success overnight. Several years and various post-launch updates would land before the experience hit its stride with 2015’s Heists update. The hope was that Rockstar would afford Red Dead Redemption 2’s online component the same room to grow.
Capcom published the Shinji Mikami and Tokuro Fujiwara-created Resident Evil for the original PlayStation in 1996, lighting the way for survival horror as a genre and reinvigorating interest in zombies across popular culture. Several sequels and spinoffs followed in the wake of its meteoric success, and though Mikami produced each one, his hands-on involvement in the franchise’s day-to-day development significantly reduced after the release of Resident Evil 2 in 1998. Such a pivot gave the visionary room to lead production on Dino Crisis, another tension-filled adventure that shook survival horror to its core.
The use of computer-run industrial control systems has grown exponentially over the last decade and change. Such infrastructures help cities and nations around the world manage power plants, surveillance, and countless other integral functions. But as sci-fi media has long predicted, interconnected supercomputers can facilitate just as many problems as they solve. In 2010, 100,000 Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, or SCADA, networks were discovered to have been targeted with the sophisticated Stuxnet virus, a digital weapon allegedly co-engineered by U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies to debilitate the Iranian nuclear program. Developer Ubisoft Montréal studied such headline news when formulating its cautionary tale about the horrors of an interconnected world in Watch Dogs.
Released in 2003 on the PlayStation 2, and then on PC and Xbox in 2004, the first Manhunt captivated players with its premise of a former death row inmate who’s coerced into killing at the behest of a mystifying figure. Obscene violence steeped in dizzying levels of gore made for what some consider a murder simulator. Yet, others, especially in retrospect, perceive a semblance of depth that’s long gone unappreciated.
Capcom veterans Atsushi Inaba, Hideki Kamiya, and Shinji Mikami joined forces in 2007 to found PlatinumGames. The company developed an impressive stable of IP within a matter of years, operating out of Capcom’s backyard in Osaka, Japan, while producing critically acclaimed games such as Bayonetta and Vanquish for Sega. These titles and several others set a cadence for Platinum, mixing combo-based action with over-the-top visuals for incomparable interactive experiences. All the while, however, Hideki Kamiya had another idea brewing in the back of his mind, a concept that would finally give respect to the larger-than-life creatures he’d long adored.
The 2007 release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare significantly altered the trajectory of the first-person shooter genre, revolutionizing multiplayer games by introducing now irrevocable standards such as perk and progression systems. In unleashing the groundbreaking experience, developer Infinity Ward turned Call of Duty into a household name, effectively setting the stage for its transition into one of entertainment’s most lucrative brands. But while publisher Activision’s golden goose reached for the stratosphere, a behind-the-scenes falling-out slowly begat a very public legal dispute. Infinity Ward’s ousted co-founders Jason West and Vince Zampella refused to sit idly by after their split from Activision, however, instead striking out on their own with dozens of Call of Duty veterans tagging along.
NOTE: This is a compilation of our three-part video documentary series about Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition that aired in 2019. When it comes to Western role-playing games, few video game developers are as renowned as Bioware. The Edmonton-based studio’s catalogue is as celebrated as it is influential, with almost all of its titles representing the peaks of their genres in the eras they debuted. Baldur’s Gate brought computer RPGs back in vogue with its sublime, high-fantasy gameplay. Neverwinter NightsKnights masterfully adapted its tenets into a multiplayer-centric experience. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic saw the former games’ narrative finesse melded with the adventurism of the galaxy far, far away. And Mass Effect made all of this Bioware’s own – while taking it to the next level.
The representation of horror in gaming wore many faces by the advent of the seventh console generation. Developers equipped with a knack for guiding players through terror-laden adventures had covered everything from zombie narratives and psychological horror to tales of suspense and the supernatural. For its Xbox 360 launch title, Monolith Productions endeavored to explore interactive horror from a different angle, a more brutal, in-your-face point of view teeming with themes about violence and the nuances of human nature. It accomplished as much with 2005’s Condemned: Criminal Origins, then pushed the envelope further upon delivering Condemned 2: Bloodshot in 2008.
In four decades, gaming has evolved from a niche hobby to a multibillion dollar industry. Sony and Microsoft gained ground 20-plus years ago, cementing themselves as integral parts of the business. Recent years have seen other non-gaming enterprises enter the race, too, hoping to cut themselves a slice of the very lucrative pie. But unfamiliarity with game development’s myriad idiosyncrasies placed the likes of Amazon in a difficult position, thus resulting in canceled projects and layoffs. When Google threw its hat into the ring with Stadia, the expectation was that the conglomerate had learned from its competitor’s mistakes. However, Google’s penchant for abandoning risky ventures left many to believe Stadia would constitute a yet another short-lived experiment. The company wasted no time proving the skeptics right.
Tumultuous development cycles have long plagued video games from conception to release. In some cases, the turmoil stems from poor management. Funding-related issues stifle progress on several occasions, as well. And projects that hop from one studio to another in a precarious game of hot potato rarely arrive at the finish line in a respectable state. But what of the titles whose protracted development rested on the back of one vision, fueled by previously well-managed teams with funding from publishers boasting an excess of wealth? The critically panned Too Human from Legacy of Kain and Eternal Darkness creator Silicon Knights fit perfectly into this strange stew of circumstance.
Triple-A game publishers have always chased the success of the industry’s latest trends, a phenomenon that inspired the creation of an exorbitant number of Grand Theft Auto clones throughout the sixth and seventh console generations. On occasion, such thinking has born good fruit, evidenced in PUBG’s quick claim to fame influencing everything from Fortnite Battle Royale to Call of Duty: Warzone. But on the flip side, pursuing popular trends runs the risk of stifling creativity and alienating players, a recipe for disaster that has taken many once-ambitious endeavors to an early grave. This Square Enix learned the hard way upon publishing Babylon’s Fall.
The summer of 2003 abounded with talk of Ford’s supposed “Ferrari Killer,” the 2004 GT40. A faster, quicker-to-brake counterpart to the Ferrari 360 Modena, the Ford’s high-performance race car certainly dressed to impress. But a Ford was still a Ford matched against Ferrari. At the same time, another killer of a premiere brand lurked in the shadows, awaiting its chance to pounce on the competition. Sony’s Killzone played terminator in this scenario, its prey the game-changing Halo: Combat Evolved from Bungie and Microsoft.
The trailblazing Left 4 Dead and its 2009 sequel redefined cooperative shooters, carving out a new path in the genre that later paved the way for countless co-op-centric experiences. Despite their best efforts, though, no development team could recapture the unique thrill of zombie killing in the Valve-owned franchise; as such, the company’s decision to cease regular support on Left 4 Dead 2 marked the end of an era. A much-coveted Left 4 Dead 3 wouldn’t reinvigorate things either, leaving other studios with the task of carrying the torch. But the likes of Killing Floor 2 and World War Z, while admirable in their own right, arguably paled in comparison to that which came before. With the industry still itching for a comparable zombie experience, Left 4 Dead’s original creators took it upon themselves to revisit the genre through the lens of a new IP—Back 4 Blood.
After a long hiatus, which intersected with the canceled Patriots game, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six returned to market with Rainbow Six: Siege in 2015. The online tactical shooter launched to positive critical reception but little fanfare, its early days beset by game-breaking bugs and frustrating server errors. Ubisoft Montréal navigated the maelstrom of issues over time, elevating the title to a standard of quality where it could competently dominate in the oversaturated games-as-a-service space. With Siege’s PvP multiplayer on lock, Ubisoft tried its hand at PvE by building upon the alien-infested Outbreak mode that debuted in Siege. The publisher originally subtitled the endeavor Quarantine, then rebranded as Extraction because of the coronavirus pandemic. Regardless of its naming conventions, many would argue the PvE experience hardly stood a chance.
Akin to the great musical artists and films of our time, certain video game releases have instituted a culture shift, establishing a clear demarcation line dividing the art created before its existence and after. Wolfenstein 3D earned its place among such a prestigious list, having fathered the modern first-person shooter in 1992. The 2001 launch of Grand Theft Auto 3 similarly shifted popular culture, birthing the open-world genre whose potential knows no limits. BioShock from Boston-based developer Irrational Games drew yet another indelible line in August 2007, its immersive gameplay, gripping atmosphere, and pioneering use of inventive storytelling devices elevating first-person shooters on countless fronts.
Few companies have revolutionized video games in more ways than Nintendo. The practice of literally stamping cartridges with the Nintendo Seal of Quality, introduced to circumvent Atari’s failures at quality control, marked the first step towards hardware makers profiting from software developed by third-party studios. And it need not be stated how effectively the Wii appealed to multiple generations, from children enjoying their first video game to nursing home residents in need of a convenient and fun tool for bolstering their motor skills. For decades, Nintendo constituted the entry point for many a gamer and easily vacillated between catering to casual and hardcore audiences. But after the Wii prioritized the casual with motion controls, which came at the cost of third-party support, Nintendo used its successor—the Wii U—to regain a foothold in the market dominated by PlayStation and Xbox.
Not too dissimilar from a B-tier action movie franchise, Avalanche Studios’ Just Cause series never rose far above its station. It earned varying degrees of success across four entries, thereby enjoying a comfortable status quo that many of its Double-A counterparts would aspire to. However, such comforts came and went liberally, especially with the launch of a fourth installment in December 2018.
The release of Borderlands in 2009 marked the first step towards Gearbox Software cementing itself as a master of developing hybrid experiences, games capable of artfully blending together otherwise disparate genres. For the cel-shaded, vault-hunting romp, such a blend consisted primarily of first-person shooter mechanics and elements consistent with role-playing games. Borderlands went on to enjoy success beyond Gearbox and its publishing partner’s wildest imaginations. It made sense, then, that the studio similarly combined genres when trying to break ground in the hero shooter space with a brand-new IP, Battleborn.
Halo 5: Guardians proved divisive amongst longtime fans who were disappointed that series protagonist Master Chief didn’t serve as the sole playable hero. Out of the backlash came a lesson for developer 343 Industries, resulting in the team establishing a new pillar for the brand going forward, which centered on paying homage to the Halo that Xbox gamers fell in love with years prior. Thus, the shooter that later bore the name Infinite returned Chief to the forefront. The studio acted upon a few other ambitions as well, chiefly exploring a more open-ended gameplay structure and free-to-play multiplayer. It all manifested courtesy of engineers dedicating a good chunk of development to building a new set of proprietary tools, the SlipSpace Engine. However, admittedly insufficient management and a rash of technical shortcomings nearly prevented Halo Infinite from reaching its true potential, evidenced by the ill-fated Ascension demo that debuted during Xbox’s 2020 Games Showcase. As opp
Even when stacked against the large and looming shadow of Activision’s Call of Duty, Electronic Arts and developer DICE always positioned Battlefield as the cream of the crop for first-person military shooters. Few would disagree the franchise’s penchant for hosting massive battles and dropping players into hectic vehicle-involved encounters set a precedent hardly rivaled. However, Battlefield 5 tested such thinking, launching in November 2018 to reviews that labeled it messy, unpolished, and technically unsound. The World War 2-set experience found better footing years later, but by that time, series faithful had cast their gaze toward the next major outing—Battlefield 2042.
Initially conceived during a period of great competition in the first-person shooter space, Red Faction had its work cut out for it long before entering the spotlight. Developer Volition Inc. harbored dreams that ventured far beyond simply adding another Quake-like shooter to the pile, though. Advanced destructible environments and intense vehicular combat were positioned as the differentiating factors between Red Faction and nearly everything else available for PC and console. And despite launching in 2001 to tepid reception, the Volition-developed FPS title set quite the precedent.
What began as a quirky role-playing game created in part by one of the industry’s most notable auteurs would go on to count among Xbox’s most important properties. Fable from Lionhead Studios always boasted a certain charm that meshed well with its fascinating characters and awe-inspiring fantastical world. The 2008 sequel Fable 2 arguably represented the series at its best, considering it took home a BAFTA and a slew of well-deserved Game of the Year awards. This momentum wouldn’t culminate in similar praise for Fable 3; yet no one could have anticipated the third number title marking the end of Fable as fans had known it for the better part of a decade.
Star Wars video games date back several decades, its first interactive adventure hitting arcades in 1983. Dozens of other experiences followed in subsequent years, with the space-faring IP delving into the FPS genre for the first time in 1995’s Dark Forces. Titles of this nature more or less fulfilled the fantasy of adventuring through George Lucas’s spectacular universe; however, one group of developers in the early 2000s made building the “ultimate Star Wars fan’s dream” their mission statement. The mission itself revolved around the production of Star Wars: Battlefront, a single-player and multiplayer hybrid where players could join the factions, pilot the vehicles, and battle across the stunning locales that had long impacted popular culture.
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