Perfect Dark’s Cancellation May Just Save the Franchise

Recently, Perfect Dark fans received terrible news: Microsoft has canceled the highly anticipated reboot of the franchise. This decision came amid massive company layoffs and the shuttering of an entire studio (The Initiative). Diehard fans were sad because we haven’t had a new game (not counting the slick, 20120 remaster of the original) in the franchise since Perfect Dark Zero, which was released as an Xbox 360 launch title way back in 2005.

As someone who loved the original Perfect Dark, I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that this franchise may never receive another title; we haven’t had a new game in decades, and it’s entirely possible we’ll never get another one. The good news is that the cancellation of another crappy Perfect Dark game might have accidentally saved the franchise.

The Original Perfect Dark Was a Masterpiece

Let’s start with the obvious: the original Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64 was a masterpiece. After the success of GoldenEye (more on this soon), developer Rare outdid itself in every way. At the heart of all of this was Joanna Dark, a femme fatale secret agent who could complete any mission with a combination of killer gunplay and next-generation technological gadgets.

Sure, the game wasn’t perfect (no pun intended). If you go play it on original hardware, you’ll immediately notice how weird it is to play a shooter with the N64’s bizarre controller. And some of the spy stuff seems a little basic, especially because you end up solving most problems by just blowing away the bad guys. At the time, though, Perfect Dark was nothing short of revolutionary, offering players an excellent campaign while ushering in a new era of console multiplayer gaming.

Better Multiplayer: Eat Your Heart Out, Goldeneye

When Rare released GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64, it did something unprecedented. This James Bond adventure proved that the console could be a viable home for multiplayer FPS gaming. This was a big deal because back then, the computer was king when it came to shooters. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised when Perfect Dark’s multiplayer was better than GoldenEye’s in almost every way.

Like GoldenEye, Perfect Dark featured splitscreen multiplayer for up to four players. But it was no problem if you didn’t have any friends over because this game also featured an array of bots whose difficulty level could be fully customized. On top of that, the multiplayer maps were better designed and balanced. All told, having a perfect multiplayer mode on top of a cool campaign cemented Perfect Dark as Gen 3’s best shooter. Sadly, the sequel would go a long way towards squandering the original game’s legacy.

Perfect Dark Zero: The Awful Redesign of a Gaming Icon

Let’s get one thing straight: Perfect Dark Zero isn’t a completely terrible game. Its serviceable story and decent gunplay made it a memorable Xbox 360 launch title, and it had some great graphics for the time period. Unfortunately, one of the game’s biggest problems is that those graphics were used for some awful designs, including the main character.

In the original Perfect Dark, Joanna Dark is a superspy wearing a cool jumpsuit. Sure, the design is a little ‘90s, but she looks perfectly believable as a futuristic secret agent. However, Perfect Dark Zero was a prequel set before she became a spy, so the designers used this as an excuse to put her in a crop top. She eventually suits up properly but spends way too much of the game running around in a short shirt and baggy pants while absolutely draped in different necklaces.

Cute? Sure. But she looked more like a scene kid than a superspy, and this redesign was a definite downgrade.

A Failed System Mascot

When the Xbox 360 first came out, Microsoft faced an interesting dilemma. By that point, Master Chief was their default mascot, someone associated with the brand as much as Mario is associated with Nintendo. However, Halo 3 wasn’t ready in time for the launch of the new system. As the flashiest of the 360 launch titles, this basically made the star of Perfect Dark the ersatz mascot for Microsoft’s next-gen game system.

Unfortunately, the game itself lacked most of Halo’s charm. The forgettable human bad guys weren’t as cool as the Covenant enemies from Halo: Combat Evolved, and Perfect Dark Zero’s multiplayer was very disappointing right out of the gate. Throw in the floaty shooting and boring level design, and it’s clear that the poorly designed Joanna Dark was set up to fail as Microsoft’s latest mascot.

Slow and Steady Loses the Race

Again, the gunplay in Perfect Dark Zero isn’t completely terrible. Rather, it was just basic and unremarkable in a time period when other shooters (notably Halo) were rekindling gamers’ love of run-and-gun shooting. Arguably, though, what really held the new game back was the slow movement of its protagonist through each level.

“Slow” is, in fact, the chief adjective to describe Joanna Dark’s movement in this prequel. She’s supposed to be this fleet-of-foot spy, but she moves like she has lead weights in her shoes. That makes everything from basic traversal to major gunfights feel lethargic, and entire levels feel like a prolonged slog as players lumber to the finish line. “Slow and steady” doesn’t just describe the player’s movements: in this case, it describes my pulse as I try to stay awake during each slow-mo slowdown.  

Perfect Dark Zero Has Aged Terribly

At this point, Perfect Dark Zero defenders are likely pointing out that the game received decent reviews when it came out. How could it be so bad, then, if it didn’t bore critics to death? Those defenders should consider a blunt truth, though: when the Xbox 360 was released, the launch lineup was not that impressive. It was easy enough for a prequel to a beloved franchise to stand out against tired sequels like Quake 4 or bizarre first-person entries like Condemned: Criminal Origins. In short, hype for both Xbox and the return of Joanna Dark helped drive review scores higher than they otherwise would be.

If those defenders try to play the game now, though, they’ll discover that Perfect Dark Zero has aged terribly. Now that we’re playing in the golden age of shooters, it’s difficult to return to a game with such lackluster gameplay, art design, and multiplayer. This is part of why fans were so excited for the reboot: it represented a second chance to get Perfect Dark right. But based on everything we know about the reboot, it’s probably for the best that it was canceled. 

What Do We Know About the Canceled Reboot?

We don’t know much about the Perfect Dark reboot from The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics, but what we know doesn’t sound very promising. There was a teaser way back in 2020, and we didn’t get to see anything else until a gameplay trailer dropped in 2024. The trailer admittedly looked good, but the long wait between glimpses of the game hints at major behind-the-scenes production delays.

Perfect Dark was also going to be a complete reboot. While that’s an understandable way of getting new players onboard, this would likely disappoint veteran players hoping to finally continue the story of the N64 game with a proper sequel. It’s also not a good sign that the game was originally being developed by The Initiative, but they had to bring in Crystal Dynamics to help. So complex, in fact, that there were persistent rumors that The Initiative kept bleeding talented staffers, rumors that persisted until the studio was shut down entirely.

The Perfect Dark Franchise is Saved (Sort of)

At a glance, the Perfect Dark franchise looks dead in the water. Arguably, though, the franchise has been inadvertently saved thanks to the reboot being canceled. Saved creatively, that is, by preserving the memory of the original Nintendo 64 game. To this day, that game holds up as a fresh and innovative shooter with innovative mechanics that many modern shooters still lack. But Perfect Dark Zero was a major misstep, taking everything cool about the original game and watering it down to something that felt like a generic shooter reskinned into a Joanna Dark game.

What if the reboot had been just as bad as Perfect Dark Zero? First, this would ensure that we would get no other games in the franchise. Second, and more importantly, it would crystallize this as a franchise with one good game, one whose future titles were complete disappointments. It would be akin to how the creative failures of Overwatch 2 have almost completely overshadowed the goodwill fans had towards the first Overwatch.  Or Rare’s own Conker’s Bad Fur Day, a fun game that had multiple sequels scrapped before we got the crappy Conker’s Big Reunion campaign in Project Spark, effectively tarnishing the title character’s legacy.

Some will say this is pure cope on my part, but the Perfect Dark reboot’s cancellation is good for the franchise because it saves its creative legacy. The first game remains a timeless classic, and history can view Perfect Dark Zero simply as a misstep from a studio that was busy creating multiple Xbox 360 titles (including Kameo: Elements of Power and Viva Piñata) at the same time. Ultimately, this is better than another potentially botched game that would cement Perfect Dark as a completely failed franchise.