OXM Staff:
Speak to any developer for long enough and they'll all end up using the same stock phrase: making games is really hard. And they're right, of course. Hundreds of staff working on dozens of interconnecting systems while publishers yell deadlines, point at budget spreadsheets and say things like 'we love it, but can we have more flying tanks?'. It's no wonder that, from time to time, the whole thing spins wildly out of control and a game emerges from development limbo looking very different from the one that fell in.
Well, here are nine games that changed massively during construction. Some were last minute changes in direction, others lost key licenses or swapped publishers. What they all prove is that while making games is hard, retaining that glorious initial vision is, well, more-or-less impossible.
VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "All in all, it’s not hard to see why Alan Wake has received a bit of a cult following (there’s that famous foreshadowing again). It’s a title that blends themes and gameplay, while pushing the limits of storytelling by putting stories within stories and letting you read those stories before you get to that part in… the story. It has flaws, to be sure - the gameplay side can’t quite keep up with the rest of its ambitions - but overall it’s a great game that stands out among its peers and is undeniably… one for the books."
The developers behind the original Borderlands discuss their last-second Hail Mary to change the course of the franchise.
ever since XIII came out I really loved the cell shaded artstyle in games. I probably wouldn't have tried it if it didn't have such a style like that
Development footage of the canceled sequel to Bethesda Softworks and Human Head Studios' Prey has leaked online.
The last best Splinter Cell game they made was Chaos Theory.