Playstation 3 (PS3)

Prodigal [X360/PS3 – Cancelled]

Prodigal is a cancelled adventure / action game that was in development at Pseudo Interactive in 2007 / 2008 for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.  The player was going to became Noah Caglionosi, heir of a demon bloodline,  whose mission was to kill his brothers and sisters demons, both on foot and while riding on his car.

From the screenshots and concept arts preserved in the gallery below, it looks like we could have been able to  freely explore Prodigal’s world jumping on buildings and churches with Noah’s psych powers (as it happens in inFamous and Prototype), to  cling to flying demons to reach higher areas and to destroy parts of the city to use the rubbles to kill huge enemies. A friend spirit / demon was going to help Noah in his mission.

The project was promising, but unfortunaly in April 2008 Pseudo Interactive was closed and Prodigal vanished with them. Only an early prototype was completed before the cancellation.

Thanks a lot to Roberto Robert, David Wu, Kay Huang, Heidi Klinck, Albert Alejandro, Bronwen Grimes and all the former Pseudo Interactive artists that helped us to preserve info and media from their lost project!

Images:

Videos:

 

Divided City [X360/PS3 – Cancelled]

Divided City is a cancelled car combat game that was in development at Pseudo Interactive in 2007 / 2008, for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. After Full Auto 2, the team decided to create a new IP to build a different combat game on wheels, this time in a post apocalyptic scenario which involved a plot of “political unrest.” The player would have been able to use various armored vehicles, to fight against huge combat tanks and other mechanical enemies.

The team completed a playable demo of Divided City that looked really good, but sadly in April 2008 it was announced that the company was shutting down. The project was canned with the closure of the studio.

Thanks a lot to Roberto Robert, David Wu, Kay Huang, Heidi Klinck, Albert Alejandro, Bronwen Grimes, Frank Trzcinski and all the former Pseudo Interactive artists that helped us to preserve info and media from their lost project!

Images:

Videos:

 

The Crucible: Evil Within (The Box/The Ritualyst) [Cancelled – PS3/Xbox 360]

The Crucible: Evil Within, AKA “The Box” or “The Ritualyst” originally was a Silicon Knights-developed (developer of Eternal Darkness and Too Human) open-world horror pitch for PS3 started in 2004, which was accepted for full production by Sega in March 2005.

“Silicon Knights has a rich history of developing great games that push hardware technology, so we expect this relationship will result in a powerful, new, and highly commercial franchise.”
Simon Jeffery, President and COO, SEGA of America

In 2006, Sega revealed some game details in an online survey. Until then, the game was internally known as “The Box”. The survey however led to “The Crucible: Evil Within”. Later, however, it was renamed to “The Ritualist” instead.

“An open free-roaming action horror game where the player undertakes a terrorizing journey of suspense, fear, power and discovery, and where every decision has multiple consequences… Uncover an ancient chest with unimaginable power that seduces you into evil, sin and corruption.”

Court documents from Silicon Knights’ legal battle with Epic Games reveal that The Box was initially planned to be finished by February 27th, 2007. It was later amended to extend the delivery date to November 4th, 2008. In August 2008, Sega decided to cancel various external projects, including Aliens RPG: Crucible, Aliens: Colonial Marines (later restarted), Cipher Complex, and The Box. However, Silicon Knights was able to find a new publisher with THQ, which also dropped the project in early 2009. As a kind of compensation, team members of The Box were asked to help on Vigil Games’/THQ’s Darksiders.

Images: 

Grand Raid Offroad (Fuel) [X360/PS3/PC – Tech Demo]

Fuel is a racing game developed by Asobi Studio for Playstaion 3 and Xbox 360, published by Codemasters in 2009. The project originally started in 2005 as a different game known as “Grand Raid Offroad”, which was used as a tech demo to build on the final version. We are not sure about the general differences between “Grand Raid Offroad” and “Fuel”, if you played the game and can notice some changes in this early screens, please let us know!

Thanks to Userdante for the contribution!

Images:

Videos:

 

Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time [PS3 – Beta]

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time is a platform / shooter game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony in october / november 2009. As in other R&C games, to learn more about A Crack in Time’s development and its beta differences the team added a nice bonus to unlock in the form of the “Insomniac Moon” (unlocked after collecting all the Zoni and fighting a secret boss). As we can read from an article at Press the Buttons:

[…] a 3D recreation of the Insomniac offices in the form of a museum that serves as a tribute to and exhibit of all kinds of interesting objects, enemies, levels, and basic design features that did not actually make it into the main game.

[…] From the moment players guide Ratchet into the museum, it’s apparent that something special is going on here. While the area sports a minimalistic design, the real stars are the deleted and unfinished materials. Wander around the place and it’s not long before you’ll stumble on a guided missile weapon that uses flaming birds as ammo. Then there’s a set of crates that pay out special bonuses depending on how Ratchet whacks them with his Omniwrench. Want to have a look at a flying space monster that involved animation too complex to work into the environment in which he was meant to patrol? The museum can offer that.

[…] The best surprise inside the museum is that several of the cut level elements are playable. There’s a hoverboot race that was originally planned for the Agorian Battleplex, and checking out its exhibit space leads to being able to race through the semi-completed environment. There’s also an additional Great Clock platforming puzzle originally meant for Clank and another dropped Battleplex element that involved a procedurally generated obstacle course.

Huge props to Insomniac! If more studios could share this kind of bonus in their games, it would be easier to preserve the cuts and the changes in the development.

A couple of videos of the Insomniac Moon can be found on Youtube, but if someone could be able to record more footage of the area and take some direct-feed screens of all that beta-stuff, it would be nice!

Thanks to Robert Seddon and Bowserenemy for the contributions!

Videos: