ENG: This entry in the archive doesn’t have a description yet. If you want to add some info about the beta / cancelled stuff that you see in these images, just write a comment or send us an email! We’ll add your info in this page and your name in the contributors list. Thanks a lot for your help! :)
ITA: Questa pagina dell’archivio non ha ancora una descrizione. Se vuoi aggiungere delle informazioni riguardo le differenze della beta o la descrizione di un gioco cancellato, lasciaci un commento o mandaci una email! Inseriremo le tue informazioni nella pagina ed il tuo nome nella lista dei collaboratori. Grazie per il tuo aiuto! :)
Okami in its beta version was much different from the final one. The game was originally planned to be rendered in a more photorealistic 3D style. However, Clover Studios determined that the more colorful sumi-e style allowed them to better convey Amaterasu’s association with nature and the task of restoring it. This change did not increase the game’s performance. You can play a video clip of Amaterasu in her original realistic style after beating the game. – [info from Wikipedia]
Also, on 1UP we can read an interview with Kamiya that talks about the early prototype of Okami:
“When I first started talking about it with [producer Atsushi] Inaba, the only starting point we had for Okami was a game that depicted a lot of nature,” he said. “I couldn’t say ‘I don’t know if this’ll be fun or not’ because than nobody on the dev team would be enthusiastic about it, so instead I was like ‘This is gonna be great! I know it will!’ So eventually the discussion shifted to a wolf running around, and we made this minute-long video depicting a wolf running through a field and trees sprouting up behind him and I told the team ‘See, isn’t that neat?'”
Eventually Okami made it to the prototyping stage, but Kamiya’s problems didn’t end there. “Our first test run was incredibly boring to play,” he recalled. “I was grinding my teeth at night, I was so worried. At one point, we were so far off-track that it had turned into a simulation game — you had hexes and trees sprouted on them. It was total garbage. A couple of devs said to me afterwards ‘Something was definitely wrong with you around that time, Kamiya!'”
Originally, the main character was an ostrich suffering from mental imbalance and multiple personalities. Tim Schafer killed the idea because he strongly believes in games being “wish fulfillments,” guessing that not many people fantasize about being an insane ostrich. Raz was originally named Dart and it had many different design before the final one. Even the Censors were different, with a more “green monsters” look. The HUD, the Menù, the Psi Challenge Markers and the Telekinesis style were changed too. Some “brains” were in different positions in the beta version, as the one at the top of the wall in front of the asylum. The Milla’s Lab does not exist in the final game.
Tim Schafer first conceived the idea for Psychonauts while working on Full Throttle, which originally was to have an interactive peyote trip sequence. The idea was deemed unsuitable for a family-friendly game, but it led to Schafer’s desire to do a game featuring psychological trips or interactive dream sequences. – [Info from Wikipedia]
Fear Effect 3 Inferno is the unreleased third title in the Fear Effect series of video games developed by Kronos Digital Entertainment for the original PlayStation. Inferno was originally announced as a PlayStation 2 sequel in 2001, and the first trailer was released during the 2002 E3 event. The trailer depicted some of the only known footage of the game. The game’s status changed rapidly towards the end of 2002 and was finally canceled in 2003. However, between the announcement and the cancellation, information was scarce.
Reports varied as to the status of the game between 2002 and 2003. While an early report by GameSpot in May of 2003 described the game as simply “on hold“, IGN broke the news during their “Missing in Action” series of articles that the game had been canceled. According to IGN’s report, the game “was the first of EIDOS’ victims to its more stringent quality assurance program.”
Due to the game’s poor progress, it was either given more development time or canceled. Unfortunately, only the development staff knew of the game’s status following this condemnation. According to IGN, “at some point in late 2002 or early 2003, Kronos did indeed shop it to various publishers. Nobody, however, bit”.
Images:
Only a few screen shots exist that hint at the gameplay style of Fear Effect Inferno. Based on these images, it was concluded that the gameplay would have been nearly identical to the previous two games. However, a new weapon system would have allowed players to map a firearm to the “X” (Cross) button and another to the “O” (Circle) button on the Dual Shock 2 controller. This would have allowed numerous weapon combinations.
In addition, updated diving moves could be executed to quickly evade enemy fire. The environment itself would have allowed players to hide from hazards, such as bullets, and function as a way to avoid detection. It was rumored that players could control certain actions during scripted in-game fight scenes, requiring the player to execute timed button combinations to fight certain opponents. Fear Effect Inferno would have introduced the separation of the “Health” and “Fear” Meters. However, it is not known how the “Fear” Meter would have affected gameplay since the “Health” Meter functioned as both in the previous two titles.
News of the cancellation did not come to fans until 2004, years after the game’s initial announcement and quiet absence. Even Sandy Abe, Chief Operating Officer of Kronos, hinted that EIDOS might give the series a second chance under a new developer, such as Crystal Dynamics, but this was only true for the Tomb Raider franchise. According to an e-mail by Sandy Abe, “Unfortunately Fear Effect probably will not get picked up.“
Many fans continued to go to Kronos’, GameSpot’s, and related message boards to keep the memory alive until interest in a resurrection finally waned in late 2005. The announcement of the movie, has given hope to a new game from an existing EIDOS subsidiary. This potential title would be a video game-adaptation of the movie’s plot. Rumors of a “true sequel” involving any of the original development staff members have been dissolved.
Opinions of the thought of a sequel from one of EIDOS’ remaining studios have been mixed. Devoted fans of the first two PlayStation titles predict that, if a new game is developed, it will not follow Kronos’ storyline for Fear Effect Inferno. Early reports suggest that, if a game is released, it will follow the movie plot, which has already promised to have little relation plot-wise to the situations introduced by the video games. Therefore, only the first two games, which were developed by Kronos, are considered “canon” among fans. [Info from Wikipedia]
Thanks a lot to Takashi Morishima and to Wei Wiharjo for the help in preserving more video and screens from this lost project!
In 2002 Team ICO began to work on Shadow of the Colossus, initially with the WIP name of “NICO“. The NICO concept can be seen as an early design of the final game, were some of it’s core gameplay ideas were already exposed. You can read more about the NICO Concept in here. After Shadow of the Colossus was officially announced, various trailers and screens were shown during the development of the game, and in these media we can still notice many differences from the final version.
In the gallery below you can see some of these screens and videos with early versions of the colossi that you can fight in the final game. Also, you can notice some colossi that were never used in the game, probably because Team ICO did not had enough time to finish them all.
Thanks to Team Ico Gamer Blog we found out the “official reasons” why some of these colossi were removed:
Unused “Bird” Colossus: it was too similar to Colossus #5 and Colossus #13, also the team encountered difficulties with collision detection.
Unused “Phoenix / Ostrich” Colossus: it turned to be way overpowered and it had to be fight in an huge arena, because of its attacks.
Unused “Spider” Colossus: Team ICO was not able to implement a good way to let the player to hit the legs of the Colossus with the sword while guide the horse between them.
The “Bird Colossus” was seen in the desert, maybe it was an early version of the one that we can fight in the lake in the final game. Another unused colossus had a “worm-alike-mouth” that maybe we had to enter into to find the sigil. In a screen we can see a beta version of the flying colossus (the 13th), with red stripes on his wings, that are not in the final design. There was also a removed “spider-alike” colossus, somehow similar to the aliens from “War of the Worlds” or some enemies in Half Life 2. Other colossi that were never used in the final game looked like a “dragon”, a “boar”, a “bull” and an “ostrich”. We can feel that Team ICO spent a lot of time to design the colossi and created many versions of them before to chose the final ones.
The video of the “Secret Garden” was taken from a beta demo: you can notice that the garden design is different from the one in the released game. Also, Pikol was able to pass across the broken bridges and closed passages in the same PSU demo, to find more interesting differences! Check the 5th video to see all his finds! Also, umjammerlammy and wwwarea modded Wander in this version to see if the temple was solid and had a nice trip at the top of the beta “Secret Garden” (check the 6th video).
Even Wander / Wanda, the protagonist of the game was changed through the development: in the original NICO concept, it looked more like the character from ICO, but while the game evolved in SotC, Wander became more and more like the final design. Some beta designs of Wander show him with horns, yellow pants and a blue shirt. This beta model was still a WIP, probably used just to test the gameplay before the final design was chosen.
In February 2009, Pikol from the Team ICO Gamers Blog was able to find an unused area in the Eastern section of the world that is still hidden in the final game. This area remains hidden by clouds on the game map and usually it’s not possible to reach the place without any GameShark codes. This zone was probably meant to be used as the “arena” for one of the removed colossi.
Also, originally there was meant to be a “secret alternate ending” in the game, that would play if an Ico save was on the memory card. This alternate ending was scrapped because Team ICO felt it would be unfair on those who never played ICO to never be able to see this different epilogue. You can read what happened in the removed ending at Team Ico Gamers Blog!
Thanks a lot to Robert Seddon and CoalarDrake for the contributions and props to TIGB for all their researches on the game! HUGE props to Unclejun for sharing various demos of the game, that were an awesome way to explore its early versions and learn more about their differences!
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