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At the 2020 Game Awards, it was announced that The Initiative, a new studio founded in 2018, was working on a reboot of the classic Rare property Perfect Dark. The studio is headed by Darrell Gallagher, former head of Square Enix's Crystal Dynamics, and the Perfect Dark reboot was to be directed by Daniel Neuburger, who had helped direct the Tomb Raider reboot in 2013, along with Rise of the Tomb Raider, for Crystal Dynamics. News has been quiet on the game since then, except for an announcement in September that Crystal Dynamics would be assisting the production.

However, in the last week, people have noticed that a large number of staff have left the studio recently. A user on ResetEra noticed that, according to his LinkedIn, Neuburger had left the studio after three years and eight months. Following up on this, VGC investigated the LinkedIn profiles of others associated with the studio, and found that 34 people had quit the studio in the last year, which is about half of the team known to be working on the Perfect Dark reboot. This includes, in addition to the game director, the design director, lead level designer, principal world builder, technical director, tech art director, lead gameplay engineer, lead animator, QA lead, two senior system designers, two senior writers, and more. Many of these departures reportedly align with the announcement of Crystal Dynamics coming on as co-developer.

VGC spoke to several former senior staff members who blamed the departures on a lack of creative freedom and slow progress, and said they believe the project's momentum to be "heavily affected" at this point. Several of VGC's sources agreed that the game has likely had a "soft reboot" and is still several years away from release.

In a statement to VGC, The Initiative head Darrell Gallagher expressed confidence in his team, and pointed to industry-wide staffing issues during the pandemic.

It’s no small task to build a studio and reinvent a beloved franchise. In creating The Initiative, we set out to leverage co-development partnerships to achieve our ambitions, and we’re really excited about all the progress we’re seeing with our relationship with Crystal Dynamics. In this journey, it’s not uncommon for there to be staffing changes, especially during a time of global upheaval over the last two years, and there’s plenty more work in front of us to deliver a fantastic Perfect Dark experience to our players. We wish all our former colleagues the very best, and I’m confident in the team we have in place, the new talent joining, and we can’t wait to share more with the fans.

Source

 

[ZeroFX]

Just cancel it, reboots and these remake that alter things are never on par with originals, only purpose of these are for the devs insert some "modern world" bs to "correct" them. Just create new games.

 

[Spider_Man]

Wasn't remade once already on the XBOX One or something?

And is this commercial about reality or a video game? Great Reset 100%

No, it was a shit prequel, a total bag of wank.

But what do you expect from microshit, they buy out studios so they can appeal to a market, then fuck it up.

Just like the recent studios, only doing it so they can push its digital only service and without their games on board then they'd have fuck all.

Microshit are just doing plan b when they tried to prevent and block gamers selling and buying games, its digital only service hits that nail in the coffin.

No more being able to buy and play pre owned games.

Welcome sheep to our consoles suckers, enjoy trying to sell or trade your console in, you'll get fuck all for it.

 

[W9qI8k5QMf]

microsoft / western devs / white people peaked in the 360/ps3 days . its all been downhill since then.

 

[Kioku]

microsoft / western devs / white people peaked in the 360/ps3 days . its all been downhill since then.

Okay

 

[zoogie]

Computers getting smarter while humans getting dumber.

Please, AI, come in and save the day

 

[BitMasterPlus]

It seems games are either made too fast or too slow. There needs to be an in between to make good games.


-snip-

 

[MikaDubbz]

Halo is a several hundreds of years into the future military effort, Perfect Dark is a 15 minutes into the future (I know some COD and battlefield efforts that nobody cares about have since gone back there) espionage type effort. Certainly both have sci fi elements (you do have things like AI and aliens involved in most of PD) but I don't know that I would particularly draw a line between them. Not really sure what we have for espionage type things either; Ghost Recon is kind of still a thing, and they will probably do something with Splinter Cell before long, Watch_dogs is maybe something there but still a fairly different property. Skew it back towards the "doesn't take itself too seriously/might as well be classic James Bond" thing but in said 15 minutes into the future setting and that gets far harder.

As far as story wise then I can't say I am gagging to have a continuation of it or anything but it was fun enough that I could stand to revisit it, and done well then most things can drag people back in (people seem very excited about the new Halo despite nobody really caring since 3/ODST or indeed just before 4 disappointed everybody). If they want to give me 4 player local co-op of a similar customisability to the N64/XBLA effort then I am there day 1 -- Halo, COD, battlefield and battle royale do get so very tedious.

Honestly the differences in year makes little difference to me, a futuristic shooter is a futuristic shooter, and I've played enough to know that even though I enjoyed Perfect Dark, I have no longing for more of it in today's current gaming landscape.

 

[FAST6191]

I will give that most ? hundred years into the future stuff does not really do much to justify it* compared to someone maybe accurately simulating volley fire ball and musket vs unit equipped with 60 round drum on modern full auto rifle with scope and ability to shoot wings off a fly further than most people can see unaided, which may even be a step above what we see in Halo (magazine sizes and loadouts and accuracy/rate of fire in that probably being less than what a modern police weapons unit or special forces outfit might be rocking), all this being made worse by not really having to worry about carry weight or anything at a mechanical level in games.

*at best you get it handwaved along the lines of "your super soldier's super rifle might look proportionally like a stubby assault rifle of today but because armour and toughness of alien bug monsters and such it is actually firing 50 cal bullets".

Comparing them much beyond that though... can't get there.

 

[UltraDolphinRevolution]

Damn you, Putin!
Those fine men must have quit because of him.

 

[MikaDubbz]

I will give that most ? hundred years into the future stuff does not really do much to justify it* compared to someone maybe accurately simulating volley fire ball and musket vs unit equipped with 60 round drum on modern full auto rifle with scope and ability to shoot wings off a fly further than most people can see unaided, which may even be a step above what we see in Halo (magazine sizes and loadouts and accuracy/rate of fire in that probably being less than what a modern police weapons unit or special forces outfit might be rocking), all this being made worse by not really having to worry about carry weight or anything at a mechanical level in games.

*at best you get it handwaved along the lines of "your super soldier's super rifle might look proportionally like a stubby assault rifle of today but because armour and toughness of alien bug monsters and such it is actually firing 50 cal bullets".

Comparing them much beyond that though... can't get there.

Perhaps you can't, but I've played enough different sci fi shooters to recognize that they compare enough for me, to not merit more of them in today's gaming landscape. Especially when few to none of them are gonna best the heavy hitters, certainly not Perfect Dark

 

[Jayro]

Just get the old rareware devs on it, and it won't be shit.

 

[SG854]

Damn you, Putin!
Those fine men must have quit because of him.

Thanks Obama

 

[CeeDee]

Do you see the world in 10fps? I put countless hours into it until well after the N64 was old but these days I can't play that version at all. XBLA version, and by extension I guess Rare Replay, all day long though.

The XBLA version is excellent. Still a shame Perfect Dark is severely overshadowed by GoldenEye, it's absolutely the better of the two.

 

[stanleyopar2000]

consider this cancelled like Skull & Bones, Beyond Good and Evil 2 and *Deep Down (*LOFL)

We'll likely have an expose on the development years later of how management screwed up along with some unseen64 leaks with maybe alpha footage or concept screenshots.

send it to the crossroads

 

[urbanman2004]

I wasn't checking for this reboot, but this should be of no surprise when you take into account the failed efforts released after the original game.

 

[scoobydude51]

Thanks Obama

No, it’s definitely Hillary’s fault

/s

 

[Xzi]

That's unfortunate. Guess it's solely up to TimeSplitters Rewind to bring this type of shooter into the modern era and hopefully revive the multiplayer community.

 

[BitMasterPlus]

No, it’s definitely Hillary’s fault

/s

You fools. The true mastermind behind all of this is clearly the most dangerous and evil man on the planet: Donald Trump.

 

[Viri]

It's always amusing how they brag about x studio being so great, and full of x employees, and stuff like this happens. This game is gonna end up like Crackdown 3. lol

 

[Cris1997XX]

You fools. The true mastermind behind all of this is clearly the most dangerous and evil man on the planet: Donald Trump.

I thought CatBoy was even more evil than that