New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Silent Hill Origins [PSP – Beta]

Silent Hill: Origins was first announced at E3 2006: the game would not be produced by Konami’s Team Silent, who had developed all previous Silent Hill games, but by Climax Studios instead. The first previews of the game featured a radical departure from the original game style with the inclusion of a Resident Evil 4 style camera angle, although Oertel stressed that the game would not be a first-person shooter.

Travis would have access to six weapons, three of which were melee weapons and three of which were firearms, including a pistol, a revolver and a shotgun. There were also plans to introduce a laser-sight for Travis’s pistol and a new “Barricade” system which would allow the player to block access to areas from monsters with improvised objects.

In October 2006, Climax’s US based team working on Origins was sacked, with rumors circulating that the game production was becoming a disaster through mismanagement and “unrealistic deadlines”, and that the final version of the game was expected to have only “three to four hours of gameplay”. Production of the game was subsequently moved to the United Kingdom.

Later previews of the game showed that the game had changed significantly, and contained gameplay more in line with that found in the previous titles in the series, scrapping the Resident Evil 4 camera angle and some of the enemies seen in the original trailers [Infos from Wikipedia]

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Bayonetta [Beta – Xbox 360 / PS3]

Bayonetta is an action game for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, developed by Platinum Games in cooperation with Sega, who will publish the title. In April 2009, the official Platinum Games Youtube Channel released an interesting video in which we can see an early prototype version of the game, a build created in about a month of work.

Also, at Platinum Games’ blog we can find various concept arts with early designs of Bayonett’as characters and weapons. In Japanese TV special on the game we can seen even more concept arts, with a blondie and readhead protagonist. At 1UP we can read an interview with Kamiya, in which the talks about the design of the game:

“I had Mari Shimazaki, one of the designers, draw her for me,” the designer said. “She gave me a woman in a full-body black suit with her hair running through her hands. I thought that having black hair and a black outfit would make it hard for the player to see what the character was doing. But I loved that long hair; I could see it flowing in the air as she fought and I wanted to depict that. So we went through lots of minor changes; at one point she had red hair. But at the end of it, we went back to a style that had her hair around her arms, making her look really witch-like — and from there we said ‘Well, why don’t we just have her hair cover her all the way?’ That was how the current Bayonetta was born.”

More beta videos were upload to the Sega Youtube Channel. As we can read at The Silent Chief:

A lot of what’s seen in the videos never made it’s way into the final game, including the ability to ride Bayonetta’s motorcycle throughout a level and use it as a weapon. You’ll also notice that Bayonetta is a bit younger in the prototype footage.

Also, Mystie noticed that:

The models of Bayonetta and the Affinities that were used in the beta/prototype are left within the files in the final release.

In the TGS 2008 trailer, the crumbling clock tower scene takes place in modern times rather than old times, and Bayonetta has a slightly different model. Her eyes are pure blue instead of blueish-gray, the Umbran Watch looks slightly different, and the chains (as well as the belt buckles on her sleeve flaps) are silver instead of gold.

Thanks to Celine & Mystie for the contribution!

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