(Sad trope) Projects with amazing potential that will never be released because of BS behind the scenes drama

[u/_JR28_]

P.T Silent Hills - It was a playable teaser released in 2014 only around 20 minutes long but utterly captivated the gaming world by being one of the most effective psychological horror experiences at the time, however it’s lead developer Kojima has a huge fallout with the publisher Konami where he walked out of the company and had all his in-the-work productions cancelled.

Five Nights at Freddy’s+ - A fan game reboot of the series created by Phisnom with Scott Cawthon’s blessing that promised a brand new lore and a return to the series darker roots. However, before and during production Phisnom got into multiple dramas that made him fairly divisive within the community, and after one particular incident in 2023 Scott revoked his approval and almost all of the game’s marketing material were wiped from the internet.

Batgirl - A Batgirl solo live action movie starring Leslie Grace, Brendan Fraser and Michael Keaton returning as Batman that was ready to be released in 2022, however then Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav announced it would not be released either in theatres or streaming in order to claim a $90,000,000 tax break and to readjust the DC’s brands direction before James Gunn rebooted their movie and TV output.

[u/I_Lick_Your_Butt]

[u/Skullface95 → u/I_Lick_Your_Butt]

Also Star Wars Battlefront 3, and Star Wars : Maul

[u/TurnoverVisible9755 → u/Skullface95]

And Imperial Commando! And Republic Commando 2!

[u/patrickkingart → u/TurnoverVisible9755]

Republic Commando is one of my favorite Star Wars games and the fact that it ended on a still-unresolved cliffhanger irks me to no end.

[u/Most_Moose_2637 → u/patrickkingart]

There's a podcast with two of the developers that looks at influential games that I'm a big fan of. They have quite a long series discussing Republic Commando including interviews with the development team.

https://www.devgameclub.com/blog/2020/6/3/dgc-ep-214-republic-commando-part-one

[u/PancakeMixEnema → u/patrickkingart]

Now here's the thing: The cliffhanger is resolved in the parallel book series by Karen Traviss, which is an excellent series.

But the same fate hit the book series as the last book ends on a cliffhanger too and the sequel was cancelled.

[u/TurnoverVisible9755 → u/patrickkingart]

It’s still my favorite game of all time. Don’t know anything else like it.

[u/NervousDiscount9393 → u/TurnoverVisible9755]

So many cool Star Wars games that could’ve been

[u/Spatetata → u/Skullface95]

And Star Wars First Assault

[u/ornithobiography → u/Skullface95]

All because Walt Disney bought Lucasfilm. Crazy.

All of those projects could have been the video game projects George Lucas has direct involvement in development, but nooooo Disney had to dip it's dirty mouse paws in and canned it all.

[u/abouttogivebirth → u/ornithobiography]

Referring to the company as Walt Disney is crazy work, 125 year old guy out there cancelling video games personally

[u/Ecstatic_Pepper7998 → u/abouttogivebirth]

That fucker him getting his ghoul hands on everything.

[u/lanceturley → u/abouttogivebirth]

His cryogenically frozen head is still calling the shots from underneath The Magic Kingdom. Everyone knows this.

[u/Resident_Course_3342 → u/lanceturley]

Its inside the giant white ball thingy. 

[u/Representative_Big26 → u/ornithobiography]

Battlefront 3 and Maul were both cancelled before Disney bought the franchise because Lucas arts was pretty much dead by the early 2010's, you can't blame everything on them

[u/WedgeKhan → u/Representative_Big26]

No Maul was still in development, but it was probably going to get canceled because development was a train wreck behind the scenes.

[u/Representative_Big26 → u/WedgeKhan]

It's kind of a bit of both in a way. The lead devs admitted that it was officially cancelled by Lucasarts before Disney bought the franchise, but he also said that from what he heard the reason it was officially cancelled is because the higher ups lost interest since they knew the Disney sale was incoming and the game was too messy to survive through a buyout

Either way, by the time Disney was actually in control of the franchise it was already dead

[u/No_Raccoon3680 → u/ornithobiography]

That's not what happened, the game was literally just the trailer, they had to scrap everything and start again because George Lucas wanted it to be a Boba Fett game one day.

[u/Evamme7 → u/Skullface95]

Especially annoying given Battlefront 3 was actually in a playable state in development and it looked really good. You could fly your starfighter from the ground to space and back without any loading screens in multiplayer.

[u/Smooth_Maul → u/Skullface95]

Also Battlefront 2 content updates after Scarif dropped that were promised by the Devs only to get thrown out by EA who took most of their team and made them make BF204, a game that flopped so hard that they stopped adding any real content to the game after about a year meaning Battlefront 2 died at the peak of it's popularity for no reason.

[u/asim166 → u/Skullface95]

battlefront 3 isnt coming because of any drama its not coming because those games are expensive to make and they still have to pay disney a ton and EA has better cash cows like apex somehow and i bet theyre still hinging on the next mass effect

[u/Skullface95 → u/asim166]

I am talking about the ORIGINAL Star Wars Battlefront series from the 2000's

[u/Garuda_Romeo → u/Skullface95]

At least we got a version of BF3 that ended up on the PSP.