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[Nmaro Makari]

What? A thread about video games? Here? So unexpected!

So yes, time to light that cigarette (or not), swirl that drink in a dimly lit room with some blues going on and reminisce about those games we wish could have been something or something more.

So, go ahead and post about your own choice either/both;

1) game that never made it past development

2) A game that was rushed or for another reason released with bits missing that undercut the end product.

[Saikoyu]

Well, my entry for 2 would be Knights of the Old Republic 2.  According to anything I've heard, that had most of the last level hacked off along with some other parts.  I heard that someone was trying to restore it, but I got put of Star Wars for a while and didn't bother to see where they ended up. 

[Lyn Farel]

The first ones that come to mind for me :

1) StarWars 1313. For once they don't butcher the license anymore, it fails because of :disney: -_-

2) Kotor 2.


Edit : to add a bit on the kotor 2 case, I recently read an exclusive article (sorry, not in english) with the creative director and a few others like their lead programmer of the time. They explained in which situation they were when they were chosen by Lucasarts to create the sequel to Kotor 1, which was basically their first project for their company (Obsidian). They were only 7 dudes working night and day and neglecting their wives and living in something close to a basement where the (only) microwave used to cut the power everytime they used it. To finish the project in one year, as planned by Lucasarts. I'm still in awe in what they managed to do in such a small period of time with their incredible small numbers. He also said that what made them rush the game in the end was not so much that it was too much for them, but rather that they wanted to eat more than they could chew, planning settings on Alderaan and various other planets as well. They still let the already created but unfinished stuff in the game files fortunately, and apparently made everything they could to hand the legacy of the game to modders and explain them how to use it. That's mostly why we now have a fully restored game available (even if bugged, I tried it and some things do not work 100% perfectly though).

[Morwen Lagann]

Obligatory reference to Mass Effect 3 for item 2.

[Nmaro Makari]

Well, my entry for 2 would be Knights of the Old Republic 2.  According to anything I've heard, that had most of the last level hacked off along with some other parts.  I heard that someone was trying to restore it, but I got put of Star Wars for a while and didn't bother to see where they ended up.

As I understand it the project has been a veritable Moby Dick, chewing up at least 2 dedicated teams. There was, emphasis; was, a working patch, but as I understand it, it's no more.

Which is a shame because that game is a bittersweet pill of being a massive improvement on the predecessor but with a lot of good things very conspicuously missing, lore, gameplay, from every bit.

[Tiberious Thessalonia]

Anachronox is a hilarious RPG from the era of KotOR.

It was released half done.  Seriously.  The game ends in the middle of the story because the studio ran out of money, and put the game out in its hilariously written, horribly buggy state.  And then they went out of business.

[Nmaro Makari]

Brink

[spoiler][/spoiler]

A game that, while enjoyable, was in many ways an unfinished product, or at least played like one.

First, i terms of story and the game world. Yes, it gets to the end, and there's some kind of adequate conclusion. But I wouldn't call a skeleton a functioning human body. The is a rich, vibrant backstory if you do a little digging, and questions that would have been fantastic plot points are skimmed over. The personal conflicts, the actual ethical questions all went without much consideration. Just breaking down one of big ones:

1) The personality of leaders: Essentially, much of this game is a battle between two metaphorical generals, Clinton Mokoena as leader of Ark Security, and Joseph Chen as leader of the now militant Ark Workers Union. It's not just a simple case of Security; heavy-handed proto-stormtrooper nazis, and Resistance; peace loving idealists, and the leaders reflect that. Chen, while a shrewd leader and believer in his principles, is undoubtedly narcissistic and willing to withhold information that might compromise him as a leader, even though it is in everyone's best interest to know. Mokoena is ruthless, iron fisted and has no qualms over using force to maintain order in the last bastion of humanity. But on the flipside, he care deeply about his men, and the Ark's population, and is haunted by having to kit out his officers with rifles and armor like soldiers. He too withholds information, but unlike Chen his motive to do so is that the secret may well destroy the Ark if it becomes known.

All that fades into the background and doesn't really factor into anything other than "this is a reason why people are shooting each other". No development, no cultivation. And this is just one of the plot points that go unanswered, there's also a miracle sci-fi building material and many more ethical questions that all go without a thought.

Gameplay wise, it works. But it needed polishing. Glitches while not common, do occur noticeably, and there are some ridiculously unbalanced levels for which the only solution is to play multiplayer, and even then it's uphill.

If I had to sumarise the problem, the devs dangle everything they were thinking of, all the great ideas, tantalizingly close, but don't ever give up the goods.

[Vincent Pryce]

1) Obsidian's Aliens RPG

2) KotoR 2

[Vic Van Meter]

Ahhh, I'm not sure if it counts but....

Duke Nukem Forever.

I know I'm both showing my age and simultaneously earning the scorn of every self-respecting person on this forum, but I played Duke Nukem games since the first platforming sidescrollers were released by Apogee.  I loved everything about them.  I even enjoyed bits of Duke Nukem Forever, but trust me, the criticism it got was totally worth it.

It was ten years in development Hell and then five more years in development to get something coherent out of it.  My Horde guildmaster in World of Warcraft was one of the developers at 3d Realms when it was being developed, and he talked a lot about them suddenly throwing more random crap in, or updating the engine, scrapping whole parts of the game for little to no reason.  The game came out as a mishmash of things that were developed at various points across all fifteen years it was developed through.  It was a complete mess.  I liked parts of it, but even I wasn't going to go out on a limb for its defense.  And I had the PC version, the one with the "good" controls.  And the awesomeness and humor of Duke Nukem was sort of plumbed to stupidity in that game.

Now the franchise is in the hands of Gearbox, who said they would begin development once consensus worst-game-of-the-year Aliens: Colonial Marines was released.

Oh Duke, where hast thou gone?  You were meant to be the one shining light in FPS games that was still good but didn't take itself too seriously, and now....

[Katrina Oniseki]

1.) I can't think of any. I'll edit this post if I do.

2.) The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Radiant AI was the flagship feature of Oblivion. While many say that Oblivion was groundbreaking in its visual beauty, and it was, the AI was supposed to be the big selling point. NPCs that would have their own daily schedules, including work, play, errands, relationships, and spreading gossip. An NPC would be able to wake up and 'choose' how to spend their day off work, whether it's practicing with the bow and arrow or going to buy some fresh meat for their pet dog. NPCs would pursue their own 'mini quests' to solve problems in their daily schedule. For example, in order to go shopping, the NPC needs money. In order to get money, they have to sell something. Some NPcs might resort to thievery from other NPCs, or sell some of their belongings or profession products. For example, a fletcher by trade would sell some arrows he made himself. Or, instead of getting money to buy food, they may instead just steal the food or go forage/hunt for it directly.

Early versions of the AI actually ended up capable of many of these feats, but as soon as Bethesda started running it, they quickly found that while the NPCs were much 'smarter', they were also a lot stupider. NPCs would indeed go about their daily duties as seen in the final product, with the added ability to follow their own greed or find alternate methods of getting food or money. However, it was documented in multiple test runs that the NPCs would kill each other over the same bread roll, or would get themselves killed in some other fashion, or completely abandon their intended roles in the game in pursuit of something they wanted. This resulted in broken quests, abandoned cities, crowds of NPCs chasing a deer across the country, and all other manner of hilarity.

Without the time or resources to fix these problems inherent in the Radiant AI, Bethesda opted to scale it back severely, and what we saw in the final product is a result of that. While Radiant AI did make it to the product, it was not the stuff of legends that previews and developer blogs lead us to expect... because it was game breakingly 'intelligent'.

Oblivion also suffered from more obvious issues, like a lack of content compared to Morrowind. Many factions were omitted completely or made unplayable, the switch to use voiced acting lead to only a tiny fraction of dialogue compared to its predecessors, and mounted combat was completely missing from the game. DLC appeared later which caused a furor from the community as well, leading some to suggest that the DLC was simply content that was finished late and sold at a premium price.

P.S. - I thought about choosing Freelancer for #2, but I really think Oblivion came far far closer to what it could have been, and a lot of people don't realize it. Freelancer was an obvious step back from the design goals. Oblivion? Not so much.

[Elmund Egivand]

Ahhh, I'm not sure if it counts but....

Duke Nukem Forever.

I know I'm both showing my age and simultaneously earning the scorn of every self-respecting person on this forum, but I played Duke Nukem games since the first platforming sidescrollers were released by Apogee.  I loved everything about them.  I even enjoyed bits of Duke Nukem Forever, but trust me, the criticism it got was totally worth it.

It was ten years in development Hell and then five more years in development to get something coherent out of it.  My Horde guildmaster in World of Warcraft was one of the developers at 3d Realms when it was being developed, and he talked a lot about them suddenly throwing more random crap in, or updating the engine, scrapping whole parts of the game for little to no reason.  The game came out as a mishmash of things that were developed at various points across all fifteen years it was developed through.  It was a complete mess.  I liked parts of it, but even I wasn't going to go out on a limb for its defense.  And I had the PC version, the one with the "good" controls.  And the awesomeness and humor of Duke Nukem was sort of plumbed to stupidity in that game.

Now the franchise is in the hands of Gearbox, who said they would begin development once consensus worst-game-of-the-year Aliens: Colonial Marines was released.

Oh Duke, where hast thou gone?  You were meant to be the one shining light in FPS games that was still good but didn't take itself too seriously, and now....

At least we still had Shadow Warrior to ease the pain.

For me, if online games are eligible, it's Warhammer Online. A game of bloodshed and butchery in the grimdark world of Warhammer. Sounds pretty good right? Impossible to fail? However, the game has issues like server crashes during fortress sieges, which was one of the first things that made the players cry bloody murder during year 1. Then there really isn't any compelling reasons to return to tier 1 to 3 zones once you reach tier 4. And tier 4 had an invisible divide going as well because of goddamn gear levels. Just like World of Warcraft, it is really easy to twink and become goddamned impossible to dislodged once you form teams with other twinks. And this is despite the developer promising that the gear, while a factor, won't be an overpowering factor and strategies are far more important.

Not to mention instead of the three-faction system present in DAOC, Mythic went for the two-faction one. This means that instead of one faction not being able to dominate for extended periods of time, now, one faction can. And once one faction dominates, all the new players flock to the dominating faction and all the old players get new accounts to play that other faction. Not to mention there really isn't all that many compelling reasons or initiative to fight like your life depends on it. Risk-reward was practically a non-consideration. No, being locked out of your main city is not a compelling reason when you have NPCs outside who can fulfill the same purposes of the city NPCs. And no, losing city levels isn't painful enough when you can get it back up within a week or two. And Mythic decided to make it even less compelling by not letting the winning side raid the city dungeons a year or two later (can't remember).

And let's not forget the undelivered promises such as pillaging fallen cities being less fun and more chore, the other four cities being axed from release, and the fluffy things like higher level orcs being beefy-huge and only growing bigger. In fact, it used to be that there aren't character levels at all, but it got in anyway.

Warhammer Online was a puddle of undelivered promises and poorly executed innovative mechanics.

[Saede Riordan]

Half Life 3

[Ché Biko]

The Godfather.

Was released, and the first moments were promising, but it failed to live up to the quality the movies had. When the wife/girlfriend/fiancee/whatever died before I was able to connect with her character, I no longer felt compelled to play a game with little variety, clunky controls, and a superfluous need to inject my character into as many Godfather movie storylines as possible.

The best thing about it was that it made me want to watch the trilogy again.

[Vic Van Meter]

Ahhh, I'm not sure if it counts but....

Duke Nukem Forever.

I know I'm both showing my age and simultaneously earning the scorn of every self-respecting person on this forum, but I played Duke Nukem games since the first platforming sidescrollers were released by Apogee.  I loved everything about them.  I even enjoyed bits of Duke Nukem Forever, but trust me, the criticism it got was totally worth it.

It was ten years in development Hell and then five more years in development to get something coherent out of it.  My Horde guildmaster in World of Warcraft was one of the developers at 3d Realms when it was being developed, and he talked a lot about them suddenly throwing more random crap in, or updating the engine, scrapping whole parts of the game for little to no reason.  The game came out as a mishmash of things that were developed at various points across all fifteen years it was developed through.  It was a complete mess.  I liked parts of it, but even I wasn't going to go out on a limb for its defense.  And I had the PC version, the one with the "good" controls.  And the awesomeness and humor of Duke Nukem was sort of plumbed to stupidity in that game.

Now the franchise is in the hands of Gearbox, who said they would begin development once consensus worst-game-of-the-year Aliens: Colonial Marines was released.

Oh Duke, where hast thou gone?  You were meant to be the one shining light in FPS games that was still good but didn't take itself too seriously, and now....

At least we still had Shadow Warrior to ease the pain.

For me, if online games are eligible, it's Warhammer Online. A game of bloodshed and butchery in the grimdark world of Warhammer. Sounds pretty good right? Impossible to fail? However, the game has issues like server crashes during fortress sieges, which was one of the first things that made the players cry bloody murder during year 1. Then there really isn't any compelling reasons to return to tier 1 to 3 zones once you reach tier 4. And tier 4 had an invisible divide going as well because of goddamn gear levels. Just like World of Warcraft, it is really easy to twink and become goddamned impossible to dislodged once you form teams with other twinks. And this is despite the developer promising that the gear, while a factor, won't be an overpowering factor and strategies are far more important.

Not to mention instead of the three-faction system present in DAOC, Mythic went for the two-faction one. This means that instead of one faction not being able to dominate for extended periods of time, now, one faction can. And once one faction dominates, all the new players flock to the dominating faction and all the old players get new accounts to play that other faction. Not to mention there really isn't all that many compelling reasons or initiative to fight like your life depends on it. Risk-reward was practically a non-consideration. No, being locked out of your main city is not a compelling reason when you have NPCs outside who can fulfill the same purposes of the city NPCs. And no, losing city levels isn't painful enough when you can get it back up within a week or two. And Mythic decided to make it even less compelling by not letting the winning side raid the city dungeons a year or two later (can't remember).

And let's not forget the undelivered promises such as pillaging fallen cities being less fun and more chore, the other four cities being axed from release, and the fluffy things like higher level orcs being beefy-huge and only growing bigger. In fact, it used to be that there aren't character levels at all, but it got in anyway.

Warhammer Online was a puddle of undelivered promises and poorly executed innovative mechanics.

Online games?  Warhammer Online was a pretty well put together game compared to Age of Conan.  I mean, Conan has to be the absolute most promising franchise in fantasy.  It's mature, brutal, violent, and it's EXPECTED to be!  It would have to be awesome, considering the great, subtle, idiosyncratic magic of the Conan universe and its dark stories.  Should have been amazing.  Instead, they screwed it up.  Buggy from the start, missed opportunities, the breaker for me personally was that the only RP server was FFA PVP.

But nothing holds a candle to the absolute, crushing disappointment of Final Fantasy XIV.  I played FFXI before I went to World of Warcraft, and they were promising some of the most amazing things.  Everyone would be a tank, since you couldn't want through anyone, so the best tactical formation would be a ring of melee around the spellcasters.  Terrain and location would be critical, so it would be incredibly skill-based.  They were promising a ton of things they didn't deliver on, but man did they screw the gameplay on it.

I heard the re-release of FFXIV was actually decent, but it's absolutely unbelievable that a company as large and tenured as SquareEnix would screw up an MMO like that, especially after having released one of the best early ones.

Best MMO game that never was?  Monster Hunter.  Best franchise on the planet, no joke.  I've loved every game of that series I've been fortunate enough to play... with the caveat that they don't normally release them in the U.S.   If they ever released a real MMO, a persistent world with, hopefully, a persistent ecosystem you inhabit, you'd all never see me again.  I'd disappear off the face of the planet to play that game endlessly.  Killing dragons with ten foot long swords that actually handle like ten foot long swords?  Brilliant.

[Lyn Farel]

I would be tempted to add SWG for 2) as far as goes MMOs, but at least its embryonic sandboxy gameplay (housing, crafting, entertaining, etc) saved it from being the utter crap its gamedesign and art direction was.