Xbox reportedly cancelled its best attempt at competing with one of PlayStation’s best franchises. Xbox and PlayStation have been going head-to-head for over two decades, largely garnering two different audiences. Xbox has been the place to go for shooters, co-op games, and games that keep you coming back over a period of time with Halo, Gears of War, and Forza. PlayStation, however, has had a bigger focus on flashy single player experiences that rival summer blockbusters. They’ve both taken cracks at other kinds of games too, but these tend to be their respective bread and butters and had cultivated distinct identities as a result.
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With that said, over the last generation, Xbox seemed to be interested in making more single player games. Unfortunately, some of those games have been cancelled. Arguably the most notable example of this is the cancellation of Perfect Dark which would’ve been a big-budget single-player adventure. There will still be massive single player games from Xbox in the future with The Elder Scrolls 6, but there could’ve been more. With that said, a new video shines a light on a cancelled Xbox game that none of us really knew much about.
Xbox Cancelled a Spy Game That Would’ve Rivaled Uncharted
The video comes from DidYouKnowGaming and follows the story of a cancelled Xbox One game that was actually announced with a CG trailer in 2013. It was a AAA spy game from Black Tusk Studios, the team that would eventually evolve into The Coalition which would lead the charge on the recent Gears of War games. The idea was to create a new blockbuster action game that could compete with Uncharted. The game, codenamed Project Ranger, described as Uncharted meets Mission: Impossible, which sounds like a really exciting idea for a game.
The game would’ve reportedly seen you play as two characters, Cole and Jenna, and drew heavy inspiration from Mission: Impossible 3 and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, something that was apparent in the one public glimpse of the game which saw Cole rappelling down a skyscraper. Cole would’ve adopted a personality very similar to Nathan Drake and been played by Liam McIntyre, who is now playing Wolverine in Marvel’s Wolverine.
Black Tusk aimed to make something with big, spectacular set pieces with things like tsunamis that devastated cities. The studio was also tasked with making something that would utilize the Kinect, as it was a big selling point of the Xbox One at launch. The player would be able to use the Kinect to speak to a woman who worked out of a remote base and could give you tips or gameplay assists if you said the right prompts. It would’ve helped immerse the player into the spy fantasy, even if it was a bit gimmicky.
Unfortunately, as these stories typically go, the vision for Project Ranger was a bit muddled, and that lack of cohesion led to constant problems and changes. The game began as a pretty grounded spy game, but eventually writers wanted to introduce time travel which would allow them to undo major story beats. In essence, it sounded like the team was trying to lay the tracks down while the train was already going.
The project met its end when Xbox acquired the Gears of War franchise from Epic Games and began looking for an internal studio to work on the next game in the series. Black Tusk was selected because the studio had showed promise when it came to developing a third-person cover shooter. A lot of pieces would be repurposed for Gears of War 4, including actor Liam McIntyre, who would play Marcus Fenix’s son.
Microsoft also reportedly made a timed-exclusivity deal for Rise of the Tomb Raider to fill the void of not having an Uncharted-esque action game. Quantum Break also attempted to scratch itch, but clearly didn’t have the same prestige as Uncharted. Ultimately, Project Ranger sounded great, but it needed someone with a real vision to make it worth pursuing over a new Gears of War. It’s a bummer to see that Xbox has moved forward on a couple of cool spy games, but they ended up being scrapped.
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Image Courtesy of Netflix
