In the media industry, there is a special term for projects whose release is delayed over and over again – production hell. Most often, the legendary S.T.A.L.K.E.R. comes to mind, but by the standards of the gaming industry it was not created so long: it took some five years from announcement to release. In the case of Stalker, the developers were let down by their ambitions. Other projects were less fortunate: reworking the concept, changing the engine, the arrival of new leaders and the change of the team – this is not a complete list of what various titles are experiencing in the production hell. Cybersport.ru offers a look at the five games that made it to release despite all the difficulties. Some of them, perhaps, should have stayed in the limb.
->
->
Resident Evil 4 – Six Years
In the entire Resident Evil series, there is no game more long-suffering than the fourth part. Its development started in 1999: Hideki Kamiya, now known as the head of PlatinumGames, took over as Game Director of the third game in the series. Her events were supposed to unfold on a cruise ship, but progress has been slow. Kamiya eventually took up the fourth part, and the third came out in a different form from the developments of one of the spin-offs.
Resident Evil 4 in Kamia’s version was radically different from the usual games in the series: suspense finally flew into the basket, and the biologically improved Tony, who was almost impossible to defeat, took the place of ordinary operatives. The events took place in an old castle somewhere in Europe. Kamiya in his efforts deviated too far from the RE canons, and Capcom decided to cancel the project in this form. The developments became the basis for another series – the first Devil May Cry was born from them.
1/4 Early screenshots from canceled beta versions of Resident Evil 4
After Kamiya left, her father, Shinji Mikami, took up the series again. The first build pitted Leon Kennedy and Umbrella Europe, and new opponents took the place of zombies – alas, without specifying who (or what) it was about. At the same time, Leon possessed unknown mystical powers that had to be studied during the game. This version, dubbed by fans as the Fog Version, also flew to the trash because of too much distance from the original.
“‘>
Look
Resident Evil 4 Hookman Version
There was another revision in which Mikami tried to go back to the roots of the franchise and make a horror about zombies again. But the game designer was very dissatisfied with her: as the Japanese admitted later, he felt the stagnation of the franchise and wanted to “shake it up”. The bottom line is ganado instead of zombies, action instead of horror, and one of the most influential horror games of all time.
Cyberpunk 2077 – eight years old
The history of Polish long-term construction dates back to 2012. Even before the release of the third “The Witcher” CD Projekt RED announced plans to go beyond fantasy. At the same time, the actual development of the title started only in 2016, after the completion of work on additions for The Witcher 3. Moreover, at the start, all the developments that the team had managed to create in the previous four years were discarded.
“‘>
Look
Cyberpunk 2077 first public demo
There were also crunches: although the bosses formally declared that overtime, most employees ended up working 13 hours a day, which forced some of them to leave the company.
Attempts to release the game on time were met by the developers themselves with humor: after the announcement of the title’s release on April 16, 2023, many of them began to create memes about the transfer and place bets when exactly this will happen. According to forecasts, Cyberpunk 2077 could not have been released earlier than 2023 – and yet players got to it back in 2023. Despite a lot of cut content, city size reduction and other simplifications, the action still came out in a deplorable state. Console versions stand separately: the fact is that remotely most developers simply did not have access to the device dev kit, so the team had a fairly general idea of the functionality on PS4 and Xbox One. Which resulted in one of the biggest gaming scandals in recent years.
Final Fantasy XV – ten years
In 2006, Square Enix announced Final Fantasy Versus XIII, part of the global project Fabula Nova Crystallis. The sub-series was supposed to include Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Agito XIII and, in fact, Final Fantasy Versus XIII. As a result, the thirteenth part grew to three games, Agito became Final Fantasy Type-0, and Versus became Final Fantasy XV. However, this did not happen immediately.
“‘>
Look
2013 Final Fantasy XV Trailer
In 2014, Tabata continued to demonstrate to the public his developments, proudly declaring that the game was more than half ready. In the TGS trailer, he showed off the combat system and the day / night cycle. After that, information began to appear quite regularly: the developers carried out streams dedicated to FF XV, and in 2015 they even released a demo version of Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae. To warm up interest in the new product, Square Enix began to actively promote the role-playing game: this is how the series Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV about four heroes saw the light, and a little later – Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, the prequel to the main story.
“‘>
Look
One of the first Prey trailers
In 1998, Prey dropped out of the studio’s priorities, as all efforts were directed towards the development of Duke Nukem Forever. At the same time, no one was going to completely abandon the game. Only Corrin Yu worked on the engine – the only employee left on the Prey team at that time. However, she also left the company a year later.
1/2 Screenshot from Prey 1998 version
In 2001, 3D Realms announced the revival of the project. By that time, the need for a proprietary engine had completely disappeared: the key features of the title were already found everywhere, so it was much easier to buy a ready-made technology than to modify an unprepared product. The choice fell on id Tech 4 – the Doom 3 engine. Human Head Studios took over the development of the new version of Prey. There was no news until 2005, when a new teaser was shown to the public. The release version was very different from what Tom Hall intended, which, however, did not prevent it from gaining the love of players around the world. The sequel, which never saw the light of day and turned into Prey (2017), deserves a separate story, but this, as they say, is a completely different story.
“‘>
Look
1998 Duke Nukem Forever Trailer
Instead of being released in 1998, a year later, the game was still at concept level. For the most part, it all came down to the fact that Brossard continued to come up with new ideas for the shooter, many of which were borrowed from competitors.
In 2000, the team entered into complete uncertainty: Brossard insisted on switching to an updated Unreal Engine, while he did not even have a general concept of the title being created. Viewers received a new piece of information only in 2001: at E3, the developers presented a trailer that impressed the public very much both in terms of graphics and gameplay. That being said, the head of development still had a very superficial idea of what the game should be like on release. All this was accompanied by the constant transition of the studio from hand to hand: publishers went bankrupt, and 3D Realms wandered from Inforgames to Gathering of Developers and Take-Two.
“‘>
Look
2003 Duke Nukem Forever Trailer
The new trailer was only released in 2007 – still no release date. Two years later, Take-Two filed a lawsuit against 3D Realms over “broken promises to release the game.” The case was hushed up, but development officially ceased. Later, in 2009, nine former 3D Realms employees created Triptych Games, which released DNF under Gearbox Software. The title was re-announced in 2010 and released in 2011. Alas, 15 years later, old Duke did not look funny or interesting at all: the icon of past years did not appeal to either critics or players. By the way, DNF is officially considered the game that has been developed the longest in history – 14 years and 44 days.
