Canceled AAA Game Was Supposed to Be Xbox’s Uncharted Rival (So What Went Wrong?)

Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series is wildly popular for a reason. It lets players step into the role of a treasure hunter, taking on action-packed adventures to uncover mysterious artifacts. The games are published by Sony, meaning that the games tend to be PlayStation console exclusives. At one point, Xbox was working on a rival to match this popular action-adventure series, but the project was later abandoned. Thanks to a new report, we now have more insight into what happened to Xbox’s canned Project Ranger.

Project Ranger was announced back in 2013 with a quick teaser trailer showing a brief look at a spy rappelling down a building. The game-in-progress would’ve been an Xbox console exclusive, the studio’s answer to Sony’s Uncharted. But following that teaser, little more about the project was revealed, and the Uncharted rival never came to fruition. It’s been over 10 years, but thanks to a video from Liam Robertson at Did You Know Gaming, we have some more insight into what might have happened to Project Ranger.

Why Xbox Abandoned Its Uncharted Rival, Project Ranger

When the teaser for Project Ranger, aka Shangheist, first aired, Xbox touted it as a brand-new Xbox exclusive. But in later conversations, Phil Spencer referred to it as a “concept piece” rather than a major gaming project. This has led fans to wonder what the project was and why it never saw the light of day. Robertson spoke with former members of Black Tusk Studios, formerly Zipline Studios, to discuss what happened.

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The project began as an attempt to fill a gap in the Xbox exclusive library. While Sony had its big action-adventure franchise in Uncharted, Xbox didn’t have a similar rival game for its fanbase. And it wanted one. The basic idea was “Uncharted with spies,” a sort of Mission Impossible meets Uncharted hybrid that would bring in the action-adventure goodness Xbox was looking for.

The game was originally intended to use a blend of controller and Xbox Kinect controls to help sell customers on the Xbox motion tracking device. Project Ranger started pre-development in earnest in early 2012, and the team involved with the game expanded pretty quickly. The size of the team, along with the vague nature of the direction given to those involved, led to some challenges right from the start.

Even so, the game’s early development brought in some pretty cool ideas, including using voice commands and Kinect controls to use specific spy tools in the game. Alas, after feedback from Microsoft, the team ultimately nixed its ideas for Kinect and multiplayer and focused on a more traditional AAA title. Robertson’s deep dive reveals that Project Ranger was further along than you might expect, given how little of the game fans actually saw. Key roles were cast, and actors performed motion capture and voice lines. A playable game demo was even created and shared with Microsoft execs. So, why did the game never see the light of day?

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After playing the demo, Microsoft leads wanted to see major changes in the direction of Project Ranger. Many of the more creative gadget elements were reigned in, trying to align the game more with Uncharted. Along with this, the project had already been struggling to find clear direction. Elements of the game kept shifting, making it tough to truly make progress. These stumbles led to a lot of money spent and little to show for it, but that wasn’t the biggest issue.

What ultimately stopped the project short was Microsoft’s acquisition of the Gears of War IP. Microsoft felt that Black Tusk’s work on Project Ranger made the studio ideally positioned to take over the Gears of War franchise. That meant that Project Ranger, an untested IP, would be shuttered in favor of building on the well-known brand. In early 2014, Project Ranger was officially shelved, and Black Tusk moved on to create the next Gears of War instead.

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