Gaming history is filled with projects that were made in part but never fully released Or titles that were pitched, approved, and then suddenly canceled before real work could be done. Sadly, it happens all the time, and there are numerous examples that you can find references of. The one we will discuss today is from Cliff Bleszinski, the creator of Gears of War and one of the people who made Epic Games…well, epic. He revealed in an interview with ComicBook.com that someone at Warner Bros once asked him to make a game in a certain IP, and Cliffy B. fired back by noting there were only two franchises he’d want to work in. One of them was the Aliens franchise.
Sure enough, he got approval to make a pitch, and he did so. In it, the player would play the movie character Newt, with Ellen Ripley being the “voice in their ear” trying to guide them through a Weyland-Yutani lab, another reference to the movies, as they dodged Xenomorphs and tried to stay alive. The whole thing would be in first-person to help drive up the terror and action.
So what happened? Business happened:
“I had a whole pitch gathered together, and then of course the House of Mouse had to kick in the door and f*ck everything up, which was one of the many cascading failures that led to the failure of Boss Key. And as much as my studio failing destroyed me, I was depressed for a full year, not only for my dog, but also my studio. In the long term, if you’re going through hell, keep going. And now that I have this comic book that seems to be doing well, and I’m having meetings with people to see if it could be a TV series, or a video game, or a movie, or something like that, I think it’s always darkest before the dawn. But Aliens will always be near and dear to my heart. The first one is such a perfect movie about suspense. The second one is suspense, but also the ultimate action movie. Cameron, I’m not the biggest Avatar fan, but Cameron just is brilliant. He can do such amazing stuff.”
So yeah, that canceled project was a big blow to Cliff Bleszinski in more ways than one, but he did make it through the darkness. And while we have had multiple games with Xenomorphs recently, you have to wonder what it would’ve been like if he got his vision to happen.
