Articles
|
by Agustín |
What Could Have Been (unfinished adventures)… |
We adventurers are the underdogs of the gaming community. Too many times we
have seen our favorite titles delayed, released in a poor and buggy
state or even canceled, which is the focus of this article. Due to
todays gaming trends, developers have almost unlimited resources
at hand and its more profitable to make a cheap action game filled
with eye candy knowing beforehand that it will be a bestseller or,
at the very least, have relative market success. To put it another
way: creative minds need not apply and, of course, creativity isnt
cheap. Designing adventure games is no easy task. But thats another
story.
The games we’re going to discuss were cancelled for many different reasons but
they all have something in common: someone decided that the project
was no longer feasible. Obviously, there have been a lot of excellent
games that never saw daylight, but these are the ones that were the
most anticipated. Even worse, they held promise that they were going
to be great and innovative.
Try to not shed a tear.
Secret Of Vulcan Fury
by Interplay
Deceased 1999
It is still beyond all logic (Vulcan logic that is) why Interplay cancelled
this game. Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and The Judgment
Rites were arguably the best games based on the popular series
and both of them were modest hits.
For this third chapter, the designers made a job beyond comparison with the
incredibly realistic characters modeled after the real actors whom
also provided their voices (also present in the first chapters). The
graphics were the best ever seen in an adventure game up to that date
and there was even more with a truly epic story directed by John-Meredith
Lucas from the original series. It was also written by one of the
original scriptwriters, D.C. Fontana: when a Romulan ambassador is
found murdered on board the Enterprise on his way to Vulcan in a diplomatic
mission of reunification, the Enterprise crew must set things right
as this mission is endangered. Apparent connections to an ancient
Vulcan weapon called Vulcan Fury makes the mystery even more compelling.
The game was divided in six chapters each one starring a different
member of the crew: Captain Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov and Scotty.
There was no doubt that this was going to be a great game. And then, when it
was almost finished, Interplay inexplicably canceled it. Its not
very clear why; maybe it was due to the huge success of their action
games line based on the Star Trek universe. Be that as it may, they
still have a whole legion of fans dying in agony.
Star
Trek: 25th Anniversary
Secret Of Vulcan Fury
Sukiya by Lankhor
Deceased 1992
Theres nothing worse than an incomplete trilogy.
The adventures of Jérôme Lange started with Mortville Manor and continued
with Maupiti Island. The later was one of the most unjustly
forgotten adventure games and some great innovations it introduced
to the genre were overlooked at the time. First, it took place in
a “pseudo real-time” gameworld (predating The Last Express
and Blade Runner by several years) where events happened around
the player even if he stood still. The characters had their own agenda
and changed their attitude according to how they were treated. It
also had an excellent interrogation system. The gripping plot was
very well written: due to a storm, the boat in which Jérôme was traveling
must stop at Maupiti island for repairs. As pretty as the island
appears, dark secrets begin to emerge and Jérôme is asked to investigate
the disappearance of the daughter of Maguy, one of the island natives.
As the story progresses, it seems that the arrival of the boat to
the island wasnt random at all.
All of this made Maupiti Island a truly atmospheric game.
Sukiya was kind of going to continue the story: after finishing the investigation
at Maupiti Island, Jérôme is invited by a friend, Max, to spend a
few days in Japan in a great Buddha monastery for a well deserved
rest. At first, everything seems peaceful and calm in the monastery,
similar to Maupiti Island, until the uncle of Max is found
assassinated one morning. Now, its up to Jérôme to discover the identity
of the killer and find out what is really going on under the peaceful
look of the monastery.
Sukiya was canceled for the following reason: taking advantage of the modest success
Maupiti Island had in Europe, Lankhor made a very uninspired adventure
game with the same engine – Black Sect – and it was a total
failure in the market. Due to this, the company decided to not continue
with Sukiya development. The game was almost in a beta testing
stage.
Sukiya
Maupiti Island
Meantime by Interplay
Deceased 199?
Around 1988 was the Golden Age of RPG’s. Excellent titles based on AD&D
filled the shelves but one stood out from the rest: Wasteland.
It made a 180 degrees turn from other fantasy RPG games by taking
the storyline to a post-apocalyptic future. The merely functional
graphics didn’t turn away a lot of people who were captivated by this
game for months. The innovations it contributed to the genre are countless
but, in particular, the character creation system was copied in many
other games. It is to this day one of the most respected RPG games
ever. It would be a full ten years before a sequel in spirit only
was released: Fallout. But the real sequel, a very promising
one, got lost in time.
Meantime became a kind of a myth among Wasteland fans. There was lots of speculation
about how the story would continue, what new ideas it would present,
the new engine, etc. But the popular consensus was that Meantime
was going to be a great game; a great game that no one would ever
see.
Over the course of the years, small glimpses of the Meantime premise
were revealed: it would involve time travel and some exciting figures
would join the party like Cyrano de Bergerac, Werner von Braun and,
possibly, Albert Einstein. This party would then fix glitches found
through History caused by other historical bad guys.
After the project was discontinued, Electronic Arts, who owned the rights to
Wasteland, released a semi-official sequel – utilizing the
same engine – by the name of Fountain Of Dreams. It was a
complete fiasco.
Why was Meantime cancelled? It was being developed in Apple II and a
beta was in progress when the 8-bit game market started to decline
rapidly. The official excuse was that there weren’t enough resources
to port the game to DOS. This is actually the only information available
for this game and there aren’t existing screenshots. We’ll probably
never know anything else.
Wasteland
Fallout
Leisure Suit Larry 4
by Sierra
Deceased 199?
LSL4 was done with its beta stage when the US Government confiscated the disks because
it showed some of its employees doing nasty things.
No, wait, thats not entirely true. Actually, there are more theories surrounding
LSL4 than there are the true identity of Jack The Ripper. The
truth is that Al Lowe was so tired after LSL3 that he said
that there wasnt going to be a LSL4. And he meant it!
Eventually the series was continued, but with Leisure Suit Larry 5.
20,000 Leagues
Under The Sea by Southpeak Interactive
Deceased 2000
Sometimes, a game isnt cancelled due to the whims of the market but the incompetence
of some people.
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea wasnt an adaptation of Jules Vernes book, instead,
it would take place many years later: hunger in the world has become
a major problem so research teams are studying sites on the sea floor
for potential undersea farming. One of these groups stumbles upon
what seems to be the long lost captain Nemos vessel: the Nautilus.
Suddenly, they become stuck in it as theyre being chased by pirates
interested in some very valuable technology contained onboard.
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea was designed and written by critically acclaimed
Lee Sheldon who was the mastermind behind the classic Ripleys
Believe It Or Not! The Riddle Of Master Lu and was actively involved
in Temüjin and Dark Side Of The Moon, both also from
Southpeak Interactive. It would make use of Southpeaks proprietary
engine, Virtual Reality, mixing real actors with rendered scenes.
Beginning as a Sanctuary Woods project, Lee putted a lot of effort into 20,000
Leagues devising a fascinating storyline filled with terrifying
monsters, secrets and complicated puzzles. When Sanctuary Woods went
out of business, Lee offered the design to Southpeak to begin its
development.
This was probably going to be Lees masterpiece but, sadly, all his efforts
were torn apart by Southpeak. It seems that the original design was
completely rewritten and Lees vision of his game was turned upside
down. At the end, the final product was in a very poor state and unmarketable.
After this episode, Lee left Southpeak and has not worked on an adventure
game since.
There were rumors that another company was interested in picking up the scrapped
project and turning it into a marketable game, but it was in such
a shambles that it would have been like starting a new game and was
not financially feasible.
Dark
Side Of The Moon 20,000 Leagues
Under The Sea
Warcraft Adventures by Blizzard
Deceased 1998
There was huge rejoice among adventure fans when they heard the news that the
next installment of Warcraft was to be an adventure game. Could
it be? The Adventure genre was going to win a battle against the ever
popular RTS genre? No, it wasnt.
The Wacraft series had become very popular and still to this day is considered
too some of the best RTS games ever released, but Blizzard wanted
to tell a story of the Warcraft universe in a different way
and they chose the best vehicle to tell it: an adventure game. As
the developers were die-hard adventures fans, Warcraft Adventures
was designed as a pure traditional, point-n-click adventure with compelling
story and characters. At first, it might have seemed a bit odd that
a firm that usually specialized in RTS suddenly tried their luck at
another genre and fans were surely reluctant but, as the development
slowly progressed, the looks of this new Blizzard game made several
gamers drool in anxiety.
The story would start where Warcraft II ended: after the Human victory
in the long battle against the Orcs, the portal that was the passageway
between Azeroth, the Human world, and Draenor, the Orc world, is permanently
shut leaving several Orcs stranded in Azeroth. One of these Orcs,
Thrall, learns over the course of the game that his race has been
enslaved by the humans and he must free them and reunite the clan
so the Orcs may have a worthy life.
The scope of Warcraft Adventures was truly epic and it was the high quality
demanded by Blizzard that lead to its demise. Although it was announced
later than Warcraft Adventures, the third chapter of the Monkey
Island series that Lucasarts was developing was already looking
better than Blizzards project. Because at the moment there actually
werent other mainstream adventure games in the market, The Curse
Of Monkey Island was the direct competitor of Warcraft Adventures
and, put simply, it was more polished than the latter. The designers
felt that their masterpiece didnt have the quality they expected
and it would pale in comparison to the new adventures of Guybrush
so they grudgingly stopped development. Warcraft Adventures
was nearly finished; only some new puzzles and areas were needed for
completion.
Warcraft
II Warcraft
Adventures
These games are among a plethora of unfinished adventures, to name a few: Dark
Crystal, Leisure Suit Larry 8, Planetfall (the remake),
Space Quest 7 and the list goes on and on.
You might be asking yourself by now “Why did I read this? Its too depressing!”
But you can use this to your advantage: most of the cancelled adventures
named here were either sequels or they continued a design structure
or idea and in all cases (with the exception of Warcraft Adventures)
were preceded by great games that have yet to played by many newer
gamers. So, as you can see, this article wasn’t that useless after
all. Grab one of those old titles, enjoy it and you’ll have a glimpse
of what could have been.
Now, let’s have a moment of silence.
