With the much-hyped Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake changing developers and the denial that this will lead to delays seeming very dubious, it follows a long line of Star Wars projects that but quickly ran into internal problems. That includes the gritty bounty hunter game Star Wars 1313 and the space-heist game Project Ragtag.
Fans will be hoping that Knights of the Old Republic will do what those games couldn’t and survive its problems but it would be far from the biggest title to ultimately go unreleased. Most infamously, Silent Hills and Half-Life 3 are two canceled titles that fans still haven’t gotten over, and they’re part of an impressive group.
Project Knoxville
Danish developers Press Play went from being founded to joining the Microsoft Studios family to shutting down in the space of just a decade and that’s especially tragic because it’s easy to imagine how different things could have been if they’d been able to finish and release Project Knoxville.
Not only did its premise get fans excited, it was actually the idea chosen by fans when Press Play allowed them to vote on which game they should focus on next, as reported by Gamespot at the time. An Xbox-One exclusive, it was to be a cooperative survival game that would let the players decide whether or not they could trust each other, an intriguing gimmick that many are still sad never came to light.
World Of Darkness
World of Darkness is one of the best tabletop RPGs around so it’s no surprise that fans were hotly anticipating an MMORPG set in the world of the game that would allow the player to live out the fantasy of being a vampire whilst keeping up the social and political elements at its heart.
It was to be developed by EVE Online devs CCP games and in 2012, they dropped a mesmerizing trailer and dark concept art that captured fans’ imaginations ahead of its release. According to Ian G Williams writing in The Guardian, however, it was mismanaged almost from the very beginning and the game was brutally canceled the following year amidst the lay-offs of over 50 employees.
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Armada Of The Damned
There are some amazing pirate-themed games out there, not least the addictively fun Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, so when fans were promised an open-world game based on the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, it’s no surprise everyone started to get excited. Critics praised the original storyline and it drew favorable comparisons with the gameplay of Assassin’s Creed.
Unfortunately, the game was in the hands of Turok developer Propaganda Games and fans of that title are no doubt well aware of what happened. Along with a planned Turok sequel, fans were devasted when Disney Interactive Studios announced the game was dead in 2012. The release of Black Flag the following year was both a great consolation and a sad reminder of what could have been.
Scalebound
Bayonetta 3 will likely continue PlatinumGames’ long success streak of amazing titles that have included Astral Chain and Nier: Automata but the Japanese developer’s history hasn’t always been so smooth. Scalebound was to be their ambitious collaboration with Microsoft Studios and it looked to be a beautiful action RPG that would allow the player to command their own dragon in battle.
It’s fair to say it created a buzz when more details began emerging in 2015, with IGN even sending a team out to Japan to provide extensive features on a title that cited Star Wars and Dragon Quest as inspirations. Not only were fans severely disappointed, but Microsoft even became the subject of a lot of ire for their perceived part in the game’s eventual cancellation.
Project Ragtag
The Star Wars universe has become home to some incredible video games but it also has some infamously canceled ones. One of the biggest was Project Ragtag, an action-adventure title developed by Dead Space‘s Visceral Games with Uncharted creator Amy Hennig attached as director. It was to essentially be a space-heist game, featuring a group of scoundrels that would live up to its title.
EA already suffered from a poor reputation amongst game fans but their closure of Visceral Games which also ultimately resulted in Project Ragtag being canceled only made fans more furious. Their disappointment may soon be over, however, as Star Wars recently announced Hennig would once again be directing a game that will hopefully live up to Ragtag’s promise.
Maverick Hunter
Mega Man is one of Capcom’s most recognizable games but it’s one that hasn’t transitioned into the modern era of games as smoothly as their other titles. Maverick Hunter was to change all of that in 2010, taking the franchise in a darker, grittier direction with an all-out FPS title.
Polygon reported on some of the exciting details behind the ambitious project that included a redesign for Mega Man by the artist responsible for the MCU‘s adaptation of Iron Man’s suit. The game was ultimately canceled in the fallout of producer Keiji Inafune’s departure from Capcom, as he was one of the driving forces behind the reinvention, but fans and critics still mourn an idea that finally made Mega Man exciting again.
Half-Life 2: Episode 3
If there’s one canceled game that everyone wished they could play, it’s probably Half-Life 3, which has become an internet legend at this point. Whilst many canceled games get people’s hopes up only to disappoint, it was even worse for Half-Life fans as Half-Life 2: Episode 2 ended on such a massive cliffhanger.
In the wake of the game’s release, a sequel seemed inevitable but Episode 3 just never ended up materializing and that was that for the series until Half-Life: Alyx. Level designer Dario Casali attributed this to a variety of factors in an interview with IGN that included the simple fact that they couldn’t seem to come up with that creative spark needed for a worthy successor to their critically-acclaimed classic.
Chrono Break
Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross are considered two masterpieces from a golden era of JRPGs so it’s no surprise fans would have given anything to get their hands on the planned follow-up title in the series. According to IGN, Square registered the trademark for the title Chrono Break all the way back in 2001.
Ever since then, fans have speculated wildly about what could have been the third mainline title in the series despite the fact that Square themselves hardly revealed any details. As a result, there was always a high chance fans would ultimately be disappointed and, with the trademark expiring as of 2021, that sadly seems to be the case.
Silent Hills
It’s hard to think of a more high-profile game cancellation than that of Silent Hills. What makes it a particularly sore point for Silent Hill fans and horror game fans in general is not just that it had the likes of Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro involved but also that it was far enough in development to produce a full demo.
That demo, titled P.T. caused an internet storm in its own right and fans would have given anything to see the full game. However, Polygon reported that a cancellation seemed imminent in 2015 in the wake of Kojima and Konami parting ways and it wasn’t long before it was confirmed to the sadness of fans everywhere.
Star Wars 1313
There’s only one canceled Star Wars title that left fans more disappointed than Project Ragtag and that’s Star Wars 1313. Developed by LucasArts, the game was to be set in an open-world environment and focus on bounty hunters, two things that immediately hooked fans who liked the idea of being a renegade in a gritty, fleshed-out Star Wars environment.
Along with a demo that featured Boba Fett, everything was looking extremely promising until the Disney buy-out led to the closure of LucasArts. Escapist Magazine reported the trademark had been officially abandoned in 2014, leading to despair for fans who still held out hope that the title may one day see the light of day.
