No! Watching TV shows doesn't create psycho killers... cancelling TV shows does!

This time of year usually sees people look back on the year just past and to the year coming up, or at least the year coming up until things get announced at E3. Those are taken care of elsewhere so here we are going to look to the cancelled games and devs that got shuttered, possibly for no great reason. Also playing are things where the game series might have been given to or picked up by someone else, and things which radically changed between the initial announcements and earlier showcasings and final release.
Bonus internet points for those making it about 2017. Did Scalebound's promise of PlatinumGames and Hideki Kamiya taking on Bethesda raise hopes and dash them? Visceral games is no more but did they deserve it? Mass Effect: Andromeda seems to have ended the franchise, thoughts?

[prebreak]Older titles[/prebreak]
MX vs ATV, or indeed the Motocross Madness franchise that preceded it, has a rather interesting history. After THQ's demise it was purchased by a company many would have said was a distributor, there was an effort at a new one in 2016 which was not amazingly well met and apparently we get another this year some time. Similarly the Skate series seems to be not there any more, EA's black box studios being shuttered and no real further announcements on its fate, and for all EA might have done it was this that hurts the most for me. That said them selling an everything unlock DLC cheat was probably a sign of things to come. In any case those two franchises represented two of the better options for me for free roam switch off and play, replacements for them being a bit thin on the ground.

This is another entry in our new series exploring game mechanics, concepts within games and other such things. Previously we discussed story canon. We have a long list of topics already planned but guest spots and suggestions are certainly welcome.

 

[supergamer368]

Banjo-Threeie was gonna happen, then Rareware thought “how bout some cars”

 

[mightymuffy]

Scalebound, I argued back then and will still argue now, didn't look much cop anyway.... far too grand an ambition for Platinum to pull off, never looked right, and the cancellation came as no surprise whatsoever to me.

Mass Effect dead? Well yeah, the ending of 3 killed it off to be honest, and that's not [just] my continuous butthurtness of it - but THAT ending was final: the big bad, the galaxy itself, all finished one way or the other, so lets go do a totally different galaxy etc and start again? That never works. Doesn't help that most of the team that worked on the first/second game had long gone from Bioware, and took their vision with them...

 

[Spectral Blizzard]

We never did get Rouge Squadron Wii...

 

[Justinde75]

Cancelled games are very interesting to me and I sometimes spend hours looking at magazine shots, previews and interviews about cancelled games. My favourite is defenitly Agartha. Its a horror/survival game for the Dreamcast, which was developed by the Studio No-Cliche (They also made Toy Racer)

It had an amazing mysterious atmosphere and was way ahead of its time with the game being heavy on choices and having a ton of endings. The Music is something else too, it has a very scary feeling about it that is very hard to describe. Im just really really sad that it had to get cancelled because the Dreamcast got left behind by Sega.

It had so much potential and after reading interviews with the devs being extremly passionate about the game, I am even more sad it had to die. If anybody is interested, i'll leave a link to a video showing gameplay and concepts for the game. If any of you are interested in cancelled games, I really encourage you to check out unseen64. The channel has a playlist with a ton of beta footage and cancelled games.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Mass Effect dead? Well yeah, the ending of 3 killed it off to be honest, and that's not [just] my continuous butthurtness of it - but THAT ending was final: the big bad, the galaxy itself, all finished one way or the other, so lets go do a totally different galaxy etc and start again? That never works. Doesn't help that most of the team that worked on the first/second game had long gone from Bioware, and took their vision with them...

ME:A's storyline starts between ME2 and ME3, not as a "oh this galaxy is poop now so lets go somewhere else" type thing after 3's. Still not the best "excuse" for the storyline, but it's not as stupid as that.

Also, ME:A was developed by a completely separate studio than the original games, so even if the original team was still there in all their glory it would've made no difference unfortunately. The only experience they had with the ME series was just making some DLC for some of the games and that was it


As to the topic, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Silent Hills yet. While the P.T. demo had no real relation to what Silent Hills would've been, nobody can really lie and say it didn't hype everyone up for what might have been a really great Silent Hill game. Lot of promise stuffed into that little playable teaser, and eventually crushed cuz Konami and Kojima just couldn't get along. We still have Death Stranding, but it's not Silent Hill

Star Wars 1313 as well, a "gritty and mature" Star Wars game that follows younger Boba Fett was a wet dream for most Star Wars fan. Then Disney came along and said "lolno" and the rest is history

 

[Deleted User]

Half Life 2 Episode 3

that is all

 

[DinohScene]

Lamborghini on Xbox :c

 

[ken28]

Ushiro comes to mind.

 

[DRAGONBALLVINTAGE]

Half-Life 2.

Best PC game ever my ass. That cliffhanger ruined the whole experience for me. It's like eating an ice cream and then getting kicked in the balls.

While we're at it, let's also mention these:


- The Darkness. I don't see any way for the franchise to continue, even though the second game does end with a shitty (but not the worst) cliffhanger
- Solatorobo. What's ironic about this game is that, since the WFC for the Nintendo DS has shut down, you may never get to play that stupid last mission with a huge cliffhanger. Fast-forward a few years and hey, they did make another Solatorobo game! Only it's a japan-only mobile game that has no connection with the previous one. Fuck. My. Life.
- XIII. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
- Clive Barker's Jericho. While I can somewhat forgive Half-Life 2 for the overall good experience, not this one. Absolutely not. You don't play with my feelings like this.


Honorable mentions for the most boring/wtf endings that are almost as bad as a cliffhanger and they didn't get any sequel:


- Pokémon Conquest. Oh cool I beat everyone. Wait, is that Arceus? K.
- Super Smash Bros. 4. You can say anything you want about the broken mechanics of Brawl, but the story was cool. The "arcade" mode of this new game... wow... a ball? Really guys? There were rumors about letting the ball do something for the Wii U version but that never happened.
- Rayman 3. ARE YOU SERIOUSLY SUGGESTING THAT WHATEVER CAUSED THE CONFLICT THE FIRST TIME IS GOING TO APPEAR AGAIN? IN THE STUPIDEST WAY POSSIBLE, TOO?
- Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. I know, it's an old arcade game. The ending still pissed me off though.

Yep the death

 

[Pluupy]

At this point, it feels like Star Citizen is going to happen but it's going to be such a simple, empty game. Most of the community is done with the developer, Cloud Imperium, and their unprofessionalism. The game has been feature creeped into unholy hell and they only just implemented handing of ship cargo, which is just moving boxes around.

 

[Justin20020]

Fahrenheit - It was in the past a very great game and the story is really nice but the story never comes to an end. It ends with a cliffhanger

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

At this point, it feels like Star Citizen is going to happen but it's going to be such a simple, empty game. Most of the community is done with the developer, Cloud Imperium, and their unprofessionalism. The game has been feature creeped into unholy hell and they only just implemented handing of ship cargo, which is just moving boxes around.

Glad someone mentioned Star Citizen. The game got so much crowdfunding and hype over the years, but it seems the project is dragging on longer and longer by the years. At this point, you would expect them to have gotten the core of the game down pat. If they're just now implementing so many features, I don't know how they're gonna have time to test 'em all and iterate. Their money pool can't last forever. It may still be too early to say, but I'm expecting an impending No Man's Sky situation.

 

[Kioku]

Mega Man Legends 3. There's no valid reason to cancel it. The fans all want it.

Scalebound looked extremely promising. Was disappointed with the announcement.

 

[KevinLSX]

Earthbound 64
and
A starfox arcade game

 

[mightymuffy]

ME:A's storyline starts between ME2 and ME3, not as a "oh this galaxy is poop now so lets go somewhere else" type thing after 3's. Still not the best "excuse" for the storyline, but it's not as stupid as that.

Also, ME:A was developed by a completely separate studio than the original games, so even if the original team was still there in all their glory it would've made no difference unfortunately. The only experience they had with the ME series was just making some DLC for some of the games and that was it

Separate studio altogether? Well you learn something new every day, so cheers...... I'm not getting your other comment though - of course they had to start ME:A's storyline in between 2 & 3, necessary as the finality of 3's [different] endings meant we wouldn't have a continuation otherwise: my point still stands, you can't 'start again' like they tried with ME:A, they should've just left it at 3 and gave us a current gen trilogy remake instead, wouldn't have lost nearly as much money. Andromeda is a mistake best forgotten altogether, and I only mentioned it due to its prominence in the OP.

 

[orangy57]

there's tons of tech demos and games from solo developers that never see the light of day due to the lack of passion or just time. I can't think of any right now but I remember going on gamejolt a lot a few years back and watching so many cool projects that were still in development and watching them slowly stop posting news updates until they'd eventually stop development and die

 

[kingtut]

For me the one that is still brutal is the cancellation of silent hills as I was really looking forward to it

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Separate studio altogether? Well you learn something new every day, so cheers...... I'm not getting your other comment though - of course they had to start ME:A's storyline in between 2 & 3, necessary as the finality of 3's [different] endings meant we wouldn't have a continuation otherwise: my point still stands, you can't 'start again' like they tried with ME:A, they should've just left it at 3 and gave us a current gen trilogy remake instead, wouldn't have lost nearly as much money. Andromeda is a mistake best forgotten altogether, and I only mentioned it due to its prominence in the OP.

Yep, it was done by BioWare Montreal instead of BioWare Edmonton, who developed the original trilogy. That's part of the reason ME:A is so...off from the original trilogy, the studio had no real connection to OG ME developers. Pair that with a lot of leadership on that particular production team leaving halfway through development, having to scrap major game design features that were mostly finished in 2014/2015, and using a completely new engine for the series and you were bound to get a game that just wasn't that great in the series.

ME:A should've had like 5 years worth of production and development put into it (since they started production in 2012), but thanks to all those fuckups and having major features scrapped super late into production, the studio only had like 18 months to put together a majority of the game.

 

[zero2exe]

Surprised no one's mentioned Golden Sun series yet. 3 games, 3 massive cliffhangers (Dark Dawn being obviously the biggest offender).
I loved both GS1 and 2, and while the DS version had a nice graphics upgrade the story was just really weak and clearly butchered, it's like they ran out of budget before finishing the story which was pretty sad.

I'm not really sure what to expect from an eventual "conclusion" if it ever happens.

 

[Axmand]

Command & Conquer where are you?