Footage of Canceled Perfect Dark Sequel Shuffles Into Light

[vansau]

Footage of Canceled Perfect Dark Sequel Shuffles Into Light

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The sequel to Perfect Dark Zero died a fairly ignoble death, but new media shows how it started out and where it wound up being headed.

After Perfect Dark Zero was released as one of the launch titles for the Xbox 360, developer Rare started work on a sequel. The sequel, Perfect Dark Core, was originally designed to re-invent the Joanna Dark character, but then it became something else entirely during its increasingly-troubled development. Unseen64 has managed to unearth some concept art, renders, and video footage of the game.

The original plan was to make the game "more realistic", featuring a Joanna who smoked and flirted. However, players wouldn't actually control Ms. Dark; instead, they'd handle a male character that accompanied the titular character on her missions. As you can see in the video footage, close-combat fighting was a big part of gameplay, and it looks like the development team was taking some style cues from Mirror's Edge. However, after the game's development team was cut down to only three people, the title evolved into a FPS that pitted a human soldier against giant mechs.

I was never overly-amazed with Perfect Dark Zero, but it's a little sad to see that this ambitious project never got to see the light of day. Even the mech game that it evolved into before the game was shut down looks rather interesting.

Source: Unseen64 via <a href=http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/21/perfect-dark-core-canceled/#continued>Joystiq

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[Shycte]

Well that's sounds horrible. Not just the game but the narritor too. Who seriously talks like that?

 

[Trogdor1138]

Meh, doesn't look like we missed out on much. Perfect Dark Zero was mediocore but I still had some decent entertainment from it. It just wasn't anywhere near the level of the first game (but hey, what is, right?).

 

[xyrafhoan]

An FPS brawler that has little to do with Perfect Dark other than featuring Joanna Dark, who doesn't even have a consistent personality because apparently "calm, collected, and mature" from the first game wasn't good enough? Bleh. No thanks. Things really got off track at Rare.

 

[wolf thing]

that looked pretty cool, shame nothing came from it

 

[Stavros Dimou]

I played both the piece of art that came at N64,and the piece of crap that came on xbox360.
Perfect Dark Zero was indeed dissapointing and I could write a huge list of why it was so bad.

For this reply post though I will only say 2 things:

1) Even if Perfect Dark Core would come out,once again it wouldn't feel anything like the original N64 game,but it would feel more like the crap that was Perfect Dark Zero.
The reason is that when Microsoft bought Rare a Brittish studio that during 90s was only making games for Nintendo consoles,Rare's employees felt betrayed and left the studio.All the people with the talent that brought as games like Killer Instict,Donkey Kong Country 1-2-3,Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark left Rare,and Rare had to hire new people.
Some of ex-Rare employees stayed toghether and opened up a new studio named Free Radical which then was bought by Crytek,and the real talents that brought you N64's Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are now working on Crysis 2.

2) Because of the events I wrote on point 1,every single game Rare developed since the sellout was average or less than average.Including Grabbed by the Ghoulies,(who remembers it?) Perfect Dark Zero,etc..
Because of that Microsoft isn't interested to invest on that stuido,at least for games other than quick money grabers like Kinect Sports or something.
So forget a Perfect Dark or Banjo Kazooie or any other 'core' game from Rare,at least for the near future.

 

[Rad Party God]

I played both the piece of art that came at N64,and the piece of crap that came on xbox360.
Perfect Dark Zero was indeed dissapointing and I could write a huge list of why it was so bad.

For this reply post though I will only say 2 things:

1) Even if Perfect Dark Core would come out,once again it wouldn't feel anything like the original N64 game,but it would feel more like the crap that was Perfect Dark Zero.
The reason is that when Microsoft bought Rare a Brittish studio that during 90s was only making games for Nintendo consoles,Rare's employees felt betrayed and left the studio.All the people with the talent that brought as games like Killer Instict,Donkey Kong Country 1-2-3,Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark left Rare,and Rare had to hire new people.
Some of ex-Rare employees stayed toghether and opened up a new studio named Free Radical which then was bought by Crytek,and the real talents that brought you N64's Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are now working on Crysis 2.

2) Because of the events I wrote on point 1,every single game Rare developed since the sellout was average or less than average.Including Grabbed by the Ghoulies,(who remembers it?) Perfect Dark Zero,etc..
Because of that Microsoft isn't interested to invest on that stuido,at least for games other than quick money grabers like Kinect Sports or something.
So forget a Perfect Dark or Banjo Kazooie or any other 'core' game from Rare,at least for the near future.

Sometimes I miss the good ol' days of the N64 era, when 95% of Rare's games were amazing and sometimes even groundbreaking. Now they're reduced to create new dresses for their own avatars and develop crappy Wii knockoffs.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

I played both the piece of art that came at N64,and the piece of crap that came on xbox360.
Perfect Dark Zero was indeed dissapointing and I could write a huge list of why it was so bad.

For this reply post though I will only say 2 things:

1) Even if Perfect Dark Core would come out,once again it wouldn't feel anything like the original N64 game,but it would feel more like the crap that was Perfect Dark Zero.
The reason is that when Microsoft bought Rare a Brittish studio that during 90s was only making games for Nintendo consoles,Rare's employees felt betrayed and left the studio.All the people with the talent that brought as games like Killer Instict,Donkey Kong Country 1-2-3,Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark left Rare,and Rare had to hire new people.
Some of ex-Rare employees stayed toghether and opened up a new studio named Free Radical which then was bought by Crytek,and the real talents that brought you N64's Goldeneye and Perfect Dark are now working on Crysis 2.

2) Because of the events I wrote on point 1,every single game Rare developed since the sellout was average or less than average.Including Grabbed by the Ghoulies,(who remembers it?) Perfect Dark Zero,etc..
Because of that Microsoft isn't interested to invest on that stuido,at least for games other than quick money grabers like Kinect Sports or something.
So forget a Perfect Dark or Banjo Kazooie or any other 'core' game from Rare,at least for the near future.

Sometimes I miss the good ol' days of the N64 era, when 95% of Rare's games were amazing and sometimes even groundbreaking. Now they're reduced to create new dresses for their own avatars and develop crappy Wii knockoffs.

You played that era ?
Man,I believe that the era of n64 and ps1 was one of the best gaming eras ever!
So many awesome games,so many innovations in both hardware and gameplay,even new genres appeared!
I miss those years too :'(
Regarding Rare,well I think you can get some special feeling if you play Crysis 2.
I played the demo and I noticed that every time a deathmatch ends the game awards you with the classic goldeneye+perfect dark awards like "most cowardly" or "most bullets shot" etc.
When I finished my first match of its multiplayer I had a weird nostalgia feeling.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Shows how much Rare messed up Zero if for the third game they felt the need to 'reinvent' Joanna Dark again.

Especially as there was nothing wrong with the Agent Dark in the first game. Microsoft's desire to leave it's stamp on everything has been immensely damaging to Rare, from shunting out the top creative staff to soundly and systematically killing each franchise's sales potential. I'm pretty happy this got canned early, it's immensely frustrating to see something that started out so well deteriorate so thoroughly.

 

[Rad Party God]

You played that era ?
Man,I believe that the era of n64 and ps1 was one of the best gaming eras ever!
So many awesome games,so many innovations in both hardware and gameplay,even new genres appeared!
I miss those years too :'(
Regarding Rare,well I think you can get some special feeling if you play Crysis 2.
I played the demo and I noticed that every time a deathmatch ends the game awards you with the classic goldeneye+perfect dark awards like "most cowardly" or "most bullets shot" etc.
When I finished my first match of its multiplayer I had a weird nostalgia feeling.

Yeah, those days Rare was a big enough reason to own an N64, sometimes, as I no longer have an N64, I replay some of their games via emulation, games like Conker's Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Kazooie, even the rather obscure Jet Force Jemini, those were great games.

The only decent game Rare developed this generation is Nuts & Bolts, but even I didn't liked that game, I never finished it. I felt that building your car and all that stuff felt more like a chore rather than a feature. Also the long loading times turned me off a bit.

As for Crysis 2, well, out of laziness / stubborness, I didn't felt like to download the demo, but now that you mention that Free Radical is taking part of the development, now I'm slightly excited for that game.

 

[internetzealot1]

Hmmm...honestly it reminds me of the Riddick games. Also, the narrator trying to do a Sean Connery impersonation?

 

[CrystalShadow]

It really saddens me to know that about half of the games in my N64 collection were made by rare, and ever since Microsoft got a hold of them, they have barely managed a decent game, and now don't seem to do anything at all.

Whatever the reason, Rare is worthless now that Microsoft has it.

And that's a sad end to a company that was responsible for so many interesting games.

 

[2fish]

Hell at least let us play as velvet dark. I still have my poster from my perfect dark walkthrough book.... ah the days before the internet; how did we live?

Rare go sit in the naughty corner!

 

[Trevor Burch]

Hm, that's too bad. I had a lot of fun with PDZ even though it was completely ridden with flaws.

 

[Sean Strife]

Please, fucking PLEASE let Gearbox resurrect Joanna Dark next! She's one of the better female characters in gaming for balance and the universe of it is great! There's a damn good reason that Perfect Dark got a re-skin for XBLA, so let's see what happens when Joanna and Elvis return from planet asshole to cheering and creepy cross-species fan faction

Either that or, even better, let Crytek get a hold of the old Rare IPs, since most of the staff that worked on the glory days of Rare games are on board with them.

 

[xyrafhoan]

to be fair though, had they just made the un-named male lead as another agent in the Perfect Dark Universe then it could be upgraded form a "horrible idea for a game" to a "cash in sequel".


But the idea of a foot soldier in a mech war sounds pretty decent, if judging by the short cinematic it looked like mechs would be mini-bosses and bosses of levels, or they could be a tyrant like character where you should just run away from them.

Shame Perfect Dark never got a sequel, from the video it looks like the crew tried hard, but with only one original person on-board its difficult to keep things how they should.

Oh well, a game never released isn't much to mourn over, but they should look into getting the game back into development, I know I would at least try it.

I wouldn't have minded if the game wasn't branded "Perfect Dark", because as a stand-alone idea, I think what they had looked quite good, if not leaving me with questions on how they would pull off encounters to make them less repetitive. The problem is that they were essentially making Perfect Dark without Perfect Dark, trying to cash in on an established brand name instead of trying to promote a new idea. Also, I hate the idea of making the hero "generic mid-20's/30's white guy" again, when Joanna was already breaking the mold (and subsequently was squeezed back into the mold for female heroines in Perfect Dark: Zero).

If they do revive the project, I would just drop the Perfect Dark label, because it's clearly got nothing to do with it once you get into a man wrestling mechs with his bare hands.

 

[dthree]

The original plan was to make the game "more realistic", featuring a Joanna who smoked and flirted. However, players wouldn't actually control Ms. Dark; instead, they'd handle a male character that accompanied the titular character on her missions.

I didn't see Joanna Dark at all in the test scenes so I don't know if its true that she wouldn't have been the playable character. It could be that the modeling for Joanna wasn't done yet so they did these combat mechanics tests with a male model. Was there some other source for this info other than this video?