Heartbreakers

With Feargus Urquhart and Chris Avellone of Obsidian

Two former Black Isle staffers weigh in on the cancellation of Black Isle's Torn and Fallout 3.

Torn over Torn

The turbulent final days of Black Isle Studios saw numerous casualties, including the alternate-fantasy RPG, Torn, and the highly anticipated sequel, Fallout 3.

Says Urquhart, "I don't know if we ever released an official reason on why [Torn] was canceled, but in a nutshell, the game was canceled because it was not going to be done in time to get Interplay the revenue the company needed to continue operations. That sounds like it was all Interplay's fault, but that's really not the case. The project was not going well and continued to be an ongoing challenge." The game saw its fair share of issues, including technical problems and what Urquhart describes as personnel issues. As it turned out, at the time the game was axed, it would have required at least another year or so to, as the former Black Isle president puts it, "get it out in a form that didn't suck too badly." And unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any chance to see Torn in some form in the future.

Urquhart reflects on the phenomenon of game cancellations: are they a necessary evil? "Yes and no. I think some things should be canceled, because it's better if the industry ships more quality games and less crappy ones. Consumers will be less hesitant to buy games if they feel they are generally going to have a good experience with what they buy. I would also add many cancellations would cost publishers and developers a lot less if we all looked at where we are after the early stages of development and make honest, educated decisions at that point. Many projects that shouldn't be continued at that point do, because some flashy demo exists, while others that should continue, don't, because they lack that flashy demo."

Duck and Cover

When asked about Fallout 3, many former Black Isle staffers look back on the game's cancellation with mixed feelings--especially those that also worked on another canceled Black Isle game: Baldur's Gate 3. Former Black Isle designer Chris Avellone shares his thoughts.

"I never heard an official word on why Fallout 3 was canceled," says the creative director. "It was odd to wait until after the demo was completed before the layoffs, I'm not sure what that accomplished." Avellone adds, "Baldur's Gate 3 was lost because we lost the D&D license. There wasn't much the developers could do about it, really. It was pretty demoralizing."

"For Fallout 3, I wasn't there for the last six months of the project, so I couldn't say for sure. I will say that from what I saw of the demo, a number of interface issues were working, basic combat was working (as well as some neat combat AI), and a number of props and pieces of the tilesets were done. I know a number of area overviews and concept art were completed, and some dialogue writing, but I don't know the full extent of it." Yes, Fallout 3 is being developed, but by Morrowind creator Bethesda Softworks. "I doubt it will be the same Fallout 3 we envisioned at Black Isle, but I think at least now there's a good chance it can be finished," says Avellone.

When asked for his thoughts on cancellations in general, Avellone concedes that they're needed. "One of the hardest lessons Interplay had to learn was canceling products, but sometimes you recognize the amount of resources required to finish a game is going to end up being more than the return. Other times there's [poor] team chemistry, poor team momentum, or...low morale because the title that has dragged on too long. Sometimes it may be a series of early flawed decisions that cripple the product, a lack of manpower, a lack of support from management, a change in management (or marketing assessments), and other reasons that can cause a game's development to be stalled. For Fallout 3, I doubt there was a manpower or morale issue, and the engine seemed pretty cool, so I am not certain what the decision for canceling it was. It may have been that Interplay was seeking to move into the console market on all its products, and Fallout 3 was not a game that fit into that plan."

Inevitably, the cancellation of a game is bad for someone, whether it's the involved developer or the gamers who'll never get the chance to play the potential masterpiece. Over the years, many games have been turned into vaporware, for reasons ranging from the studio's demise to nefarious legalese to disinterest in the license. Not everything qualifies as a heartbreaker, however. Some games fade off into oblivion and we never hear a peep about them, such as Team Fortress 2. Others are "vaporware"--games that everyone talks about, but never seem to actually get made, like Duke Nukem Forever. It takes a special kind of game to be shelved completely, whether it's almost done or barely conceptualized.

Because there are hundreds of games that have been canceled in the industry's history, this is by no means a definitive list. We asked some of the editors to recall what games they were looking forward to that will never see the light of day, and to share the heartbreaking moment when they discovered that their precious project had been demolished. For some there's still hope, while others redefine "dead in the water." But all of these games in one way or another have been real heartbreakers.

Black Isle's Torn

By Andrew Park

Black Isle's Torn

GameSpot's Greg Kasavin interviews former Black Isle staffer Dave Maldonado during the early years of GameSpot Live.

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When I was discussing the idea of a feature about heartbreaking game cancellations with Carrie, Black Isle's Torn was the first game I thought of, and maybe not even so much for the game itself (I'll explain why in a bit). Torn was supposed to have been an "alternate-medieval" fantasy game that used the "SPECIAL" character development system that the studio first used in its classic 1997 role-playing game, Fallout. You would have gone on an adventure through a fantastic world populated by the elves and dwarves you might expect from this kind of game, but these characters would have had different motivations and roles; in fact, an entire alternate creation theory had been devised for the world.

Black Isle had already made a name for itself with Fallout and Planescape: Torment, two games I consider to be among the greatest RPGs of all time (and among the greatest games of any kind, for that matter). So, I was looking forward to another great, and somewhat offbeat, role-playing game that tweaked the traditional fantasy role-playing offered by the likes of (also great) games such as Baldur's Gate II and Might and Magic VII. Also, Torn would have been the first 3D polygonal graphics game that Black Isle had ever created. The studio licensed new technology to make it happen.

This would have been Black Isle's Torn. Maybe it's for the best that the game was canceled.

But it didn't happen. In fact, trying to use the new engine was just one of the problems in the game's troubled development history. GameSpot contributor Desslock helped chronicle the gory details in our previous Gaming Graveyard feature. But then sometime later, Black Isle worked with developer Reflexive Entertainment to produce another role-playing game called Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader, which also took place in an alternate-fantasy universe (this one was a revised version of Renaissance Europe where sorcery actually existed), which also used the SPECIAL system. Problem solved, right? As it turns out, that game didn't quite live up to its legacy. But more importantly, the cancellation of Torn was really the first open, public sign of the trouble that had been brewing at Black Isle for some time--trouble that would lead to the studio's eventual closure, which was the real heartbreaker for RPG fans.

Like I mentioned, Black Isle was part of parent company Interplay, a publisher that had some very serious problems around that time, including takeover bids from now-bankrupt French publisher Titus, a lawsuit with longtime collaborator BioWare, and later, problems with its more-recent publishing partner, VU Games. As it turns out, the developer's devoted fans kept close watch over Black Isle and Interplay's day-to-day goings-on and speculated daily on both companies' well-being and future on the developer's now-defunct message boards. I was one of them (and if this actually means anything, those were the first, and only, message boards on the Web, other than GameSpot's official forums, on which I've posted regularly as an actual GameSpot editor).

Yes, I was there with the fans, so I watched Interplay tumble into oblivion (or at least, become the shambling zombie that barely continues to exist today, at least in name) and drag Black Isle down with it. And I watched this happen from both the perspective of a member of the fan community, and also as a writer in the game industry who covered major news developments, something I'm not sure many others did. I watched as the development team gave sporadic and weary status reports on the forums about the studio's last game, Icewind Dale II, while news reports identified the continuing departures of the company's key talent. (To be fair, three of the key creative forces behind Fallout and Fallout 2 had already left the studio years before its worst troubles and went on to found Troika Games, another sadly deceased developer.) Finally, everyone was gone and had jumped ship to create a new studio, Obsidian Entertainment.

Fortunately, the team has moved on and has been able to leave this happy fellow behind.

The Bright Side

They say every cloud has a silver lining, and Obsidian's was its first project: the fairly successful RPG sequel Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II--an intriguing game with some issues. Though to be fair, most of those issues seemed technical in nature and suggested that not enough time had been allotted for the project. The studio is also working on the sequel to Neverwinter Nights, and hopefully this one will work out better than the last. Thankfully, it seems like neither of the studio's projects will be another harbinger of doom like Torn. The team is now free from the shadow of Interplay and is working on a game with familiar technology, as well as with the Dungeons & Dragons universe, which the developers know like the backs of their hands by now. All it took was a few years, a lot of pain and suffering on the part of the developers, and more than a few canceled projects...one of which you'll read about elsewhere in this feature, if you haven't already.

Grand Prix 4 (Xbox)

By Brian Ekberg

Grand Prix 4 Trailer

Xbox owners despair.

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Throughout the mid- to late-1990s, the name "Geoff Crammond" gave the hardcore PC racing set chills. It was Crammond and his singular line of Grand Prix racing games that, in many ways, set the standard for an entire generation of virtual gearheads. Grand Prix II, released in 1996, is still regarded as one of the finest Formula One games of all time, with outstanding feel and realistic physics matched only by Papyrus' Grand Prix Legends, released two years after GP2. The next two Crammond-helmed racing games that followed, Grand Prix 3 and Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix 4, continued the series' solid tradition, even if each game successively bent under the weight of fan expectations and Crammond's own high standards.

Unfortunately, MicroProse ended up performing about as well as perennial F1 backmarker Minardi.

Infogrames' 2002 announcement of a North American version of Grand Prix 4 was great news. The notice of a concurrently developed Xbox version was even better. By releasing the long-standing PC game on the fledgling Xbox console, it seemed like the ideal opportunity for console racing buffs to finally get their hands on what had been, at least in America, an underground hit. Grand Prix 4 for the Xbox was set to be a precise re-creation of the 2001 Formula One season, including accurate models of all 17 tracks that included motion-capture animations, five gameplay modes, and, of course, the same Crammond-helmed focus on realism and artificial intelligence. It was a bit too early for Xbox Live play, unfortunately, as the Xbox version was only set to allow a two-player split-screen multiplayer mode, while PC players could enjoy racing against up to seven other racers on a LAN.

Shooting through the tight confines of Monaco would have been an Xbox owner's dream.

As money is the ultimate decision-maker in the video game business, however, the Xbox version of Grand Prix 4 was not to be. Just four months after its announcement, MicroProse, the UK-based development studio responsible for both games, was shuttered by Infogrames. Just a few days later, when word of the official cancellation of Grand Prix 4 for the Xbox came, few were surprised. But for the handful of folks in America that care about Formula One and its games, it was sad news indeed.

The Bright Side

The Formula One scene on the Xbox has been virtually nonexistent since GP4's cancellation, but fortunately for fans of Bill Gates' console, it was just a small bump in the road. Since 2002, the Xbox has become arguably the best racing platform in gaming today. The TOCA and Colin McRae series have been going strong over a couple of iterations; THQ's MotoGP franchise continues to astound; EA's Burnout series is bolstered by blistering Xbox Live play; and Microsoft's own Forza Motosport should be a major player for the best driving game of 2005. With the next version of Project Gotham Racing set to debut on the Xbox 360, the future is bright indeed for console speed freaks.

Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge

By Matthew Rorie

When you look back on the history of Mythos Games, the number of titles that it has published isn't particularly impressive--only four or five games ever came out under its byline. However, two of these titles are especially notable, as they are from the X-Com family of isometric, turn-based strategy games. X-Com: UFO Defense caused many computer gamers, including me, to pull more than one all-nighter in front of a monitor as we attempted to blast alien ships from the skies and prevent the martians from taking over our cities. X-Com: Apocalypse was a somewhat less-successful venture, but it managed to update the feel of the X-Com universe by adapting a retro, sci-fi '50s look while leaving most of the addictive gameplay intact.

X-Com is rightfully included in GameSpot's Greatest Games of All Time feature.

All of the X-Com strategy games were pretty addictive, in fact, leaving aside the progressively more embarrassing attempts by Microprose and Atari to cash in on the franchise with such ill-advised titles as X-Com: Interceptor, X-Com: Enforcer, and X-Com: First Alien Invasion. After cutting its ties with its former publishers, however, Mythos decided to follow up its classic games with a spiritual successor to X-Com, in the form of Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge.

Like the X-Com games, Dreamland Chronicles was set to be a turn-based strategy game, but one that would appear on both the PC and PS2. Set after a 70-day war with alien invaders, humans would find themselves on the brink of extinction, having to change their tactics to guerilla warfare in an attempt to survive, let alone repel the aliens. The early screenshots looked very nice, although in retrospect they were likely artist's conceptions and renders rather than representations of how the game would have actually wound up looking. Unfortunately, after being announced in 2000 for a holiday 2000 release date, then slipping to February 2001, the game was canceled by Mythos Games themselves.

Admittedly, the disappointment this cancellation engendered was, at least to me, a result mostly of Mythos' track record. The prospect of a new turn-based strategy game from the designers of X-Com was enough to get any PC gamer's blood flowing. The story got worse, though, as the Dreamland Chronicles assets were purchased by another publisher, and were eventually reworked by Altar Interactive into the decidedly mediocre UFO: Aftermath, which wasn't even turn-based, although it did have a really pretty 3D model of the earth.

The Bright Side

Whether or not Dreamland Chronicles would've been a good game or not is up in the air, but based on their track record, and the long-standing drought of decent turn-based strategy titles, I was hoping for something special from Mythos. Regardless, the turn-based strategy genre isn't completely dead, and people who played X-Com back in the day do have some games to check out or look forward to. First up, you may want to check out Laser Squad Nemesis from Codo Games, which was cofounded by Julian Gollop, one of the original creators of X-Com. While it has a bit more of a cartoonish look than X-Com did, it still retains the spirit of the original game and is a worthy substitute, even if it doesn't pack the graphical punch of many current PC games (because it's exclusively 2D in nature).

Silent Storm retains much of the fun of X-Com, at least up until you hit the Panzerkleins.

If you're looking for something that'll stress your new gaming rig, though, then we heartily recommend that you track down a copy of Silent Storm, an alternate historical look at WWII. With a superb graphical engine that includes fully destructible buildings, Silent Storm and its expansion pack, Sentinels, should let you relive some of the tense, "do-I-have-enough-action-points?" moments that came from the original X-Com. What's more, Hammer and Sickle, an RPG-based mod for Silent Storm that has been adapted into a retail product, looks like it may be another successful entry into the turn-based strategy genre.

If you happen to have a GBA, then you might also want to check out Rebelstar: Tactical Command, which is also by Codo Games. This simplified strategy game definitely relies heavily on the familiar X-Com mechanics, although the gray alien enemies are rather more cute than menacing. Still, it looks like it'll be a great way to get your tactical combat kicks when you're on the road. It hits store shelves in early September.

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