It’s such a tease when games are scrapped as they near completion—kings and queens of delays and ill-fated cancellations. So many games are completely different than their alphas and betas; other games never even hit the shelf in one piece. There are a lot of regrets as a gamer when this happens, though who can say if it’s mourning the game or just our lack of control and input into the industry.

I can say, however, that if we had our way, we’d all have played Starcraft: Ghost four years ago and Parasite Eve 3 wouldn’t be released as a cellphone game.

So what really went wrong with Starcraft: Ghost? Delays, probably. One of keys to its downfall was its phenomenally rocky start. It had a weak and tenuous ride with Nihilistic Software before transferring to a Blizzard owned company and eventually falling off the radar after a series of delays. Maybe it started out as a simple delay then became an indefinite delay and presumed cancellation. Sort of like how you meant to write that essay for history sometime soon, but now it’s the last day of the quarter and you know you aren’t doing it. Or maybe it was going to be released until they just realized it wasn’t in their best fiscal interest. The official line was something about Blizzard wanting to put it on hold on the project while it studied the potential for a next generation console release, but it’s not being funded now and those consoles have been out for years.

But what went right with Ghost, you ask? Why does it matter if it’s gone? A lot went right. It was promising. Nova’s backstory was strong and the lust for Starcraft high. A third person shooter was designed to give the gamer a closer view of the Starcraft world and heavier interaction with its denizens. Its graphics were amazing for a 2002 video game, even if by today’s standards it’s weak. The gaming press praised the team for excellent controls and stunning sound engineering.

The facts are the game was going to be Blizzard’s next big hit and their first huge investment into the console wars. It was going to rock Playstation, sell Gamecubes, and bring fun to multiplayer on Xbox. But it didn’t and although Blizzard tells us frequently it’s not really gone, that it’s not officially canceled, we know the truth. It’s dead. And if we’ve played World of Warcraft, the cash cow that probably helped out with Starcraft: Ghost’s demise, we may have seen the tombstone in Netherstorm’s ghost town labeled “Nova” near Bessie, the ethereal cow. While I can’t promise you that girl didn’t have a stoulstone, I can say it’s highly doubtful. Chances are Nova really is a ghost.

Ghost wasn’t really the least disappointing vaporware of the century though. No, that title belongs to Resident Evil 1.5. Or maybe Resident Evil 3.5. Both featured Leon S. Kennedy, so forgive me if I’m a little confused. Something about that man equals long delays and heavy revamps—and yes, by revamps I mean complete overhauls.

Claire Redfield wasn’t originally in Resident Evil series. She didn’t exist. Elza Walker did instead in 1.5, the original sequel to the first game. Eliza was a young woman, fast paced, cute, and she loved motorcycles. She was also a college student. In other words, she was very similar to Claire, but she had one key difference aside from appearance: she wasn’t Chris Redfield’s sister. It’s kind of hard to really imagine that, because fans have been used to Claire and Chris’ bond since, well, RE:2 hit our TV screens, but the impact that alone brings is quite different. There’s no common link between Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2; they’re an entirely separate story in a separate area of Raccoon City, their common tie solely the T-Virus. RE:CVX wouldn’t have featured the same storyline or characters. Leon probably wouldn’t star in RE:4. None of those endearing (and sometimes unbearably stupid) lines from our female lead about finding Chris Redfield. Elza probably wouldn’t have left Leon and Sherry at the end either, meaning Sherry might not have been kidnapped by Wesker. Maybe Elza, not consumed with the mission to find her brother and blatantly distracted, would have stopped the pseudo-romance between Ada and Leon as well.

Well, I think I just managed to explain why Elza was canned and Claire exists today. Too many dynamics were introduced with a female lead being a former protagonist’s brother. But what about the actual game, why did that change so much? There were scenes in the police station that were removed, the station itself redesigned, and bosses taken out. The gameplay trailer for RE:1.5 shows zombie hands reaching out from a cage and later on a wall, a really impressive graphic effect for its time, but that certainly wasn’t in the game back then. Why did they have to take those out?

It’s not that I don’t like Resident Evil 2, it’s just that the potential for it to be something else is, well, there. Curiosity killed this gamer, but satisfaction will bring her back. I know they have an almost finished version somewhere in Capcom’s vaults. Why can’t they let us see it? Release it on Xbox Live with Resident Evil 5? Give us something fun to look at? Laugh at? Surely it can’t be worse than Resident Evil Survivor.

The same goes for RE:3.5, also known as RE: The Fog Version and, later, The Hooked Man Version. Great names, seriously. I’d buy it. Anyway, Resident Evil 4 had an interesting development to get to where it was—an almost unanimous game of 2005 and excellent title for both the Gamecube and PS2. And as much as I love the game, I wanted to say that its betas were pretty cool as well and often overlooked. They were, after all, why this game was delayed for so long. The first one featured Leon fighting in Umbrella headquarters with fog playing a significant role. The second one was much better and further developed, and was featured at E3. This one featured “The Hooked Man” who was an enemy that was invincible, like Nemesis of Resident Evil 3, and stalked Leon through his adventures. This version was scrapped because it was too paranormal and the trailer seems to prove it; the game looks like a version of Silent Hill, with possessed dolls flying at Leon and ghosts cackling. That’s not really Resident Evil as we know it. It was going to feature zombies, though, which is Resident Evil was we know it—and if you’ve played RE:4, you know there are sadly no zombies anywhere in its vicinity.

All and all, though, it’s a good thing we got the final product after all. It would have made the Silent Hill and Resident Evil superiority debate extend even further, as the games became one giant conglomeration of paranormal. Sarcasm aside, the final releases of both games were superior to their ill-fated betas and I’m glad that they came through, albeit delayed and greatly altered.

So far we have a complete vaporware and then two betas that are nothing like the final releases. Naturally, my next tangent would be sequels that are major letdowns. Like, say, Parasite Eve 3? For the fucking cellphone? Aya Brea deserves better, and the developers know it. They know it. Or how about The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess? You didn’t see this one coming, but it’s true. It was delayed so long and so painfully so that it became a Gamecube and Wii game at the same time, which honestly, is a big letdown. Gamers tolerate it because it was Zelda, after all, but what’s with that? Why did the graphics look identical for both ports, and why did we accept this. I would have rather had it solely on the Wii with better graphics and gameplay than played my bad Gamecube version. But given the option, I’d rather just pay sixty dollars to play the game so I did. And I hated it. I heard things later on saying the Wii-Mote made it infinitely more fun and the Wii version was better, and if that’s the case, then why even release the Gamecube version? Twilight Princess will always be the worst Zelda I’ve played. Not because it wasn’t fluid or because it wasn’t stunning—it was, on both accounts—but because the delays and the hype killed it for me.

That’s really my end point. Delays suck, cancellations suck even more, and it hurts a little to see betas nearly done only to be scrapped and redesigned from scratch. It hurts even more, however, to never see the betas and have the end product be a let down. Game developers: I know it’s hard to release a game on time, and I won’t kill you if you don’t. I’m not mad at Valve for taking Left 4 Dead and taking its pretty time with the release; I know the game will be amazing to the core, no matter how many revisions you do. I’m not also mad at Capcom for scratching several betas off their list and redoing them; their end products were worth the wait. I am mad, however, at Blizzard for canceling Ghost, Square-Enix for making PE3 a joke, and Nintendo for dishing up Twilight Princess two years too late.

What I’m saying is if you have to delay a game, and you have to delay it for over a year, make sure it’s worth the wait. Make sure you give us something that truly shines.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Gamer Culture, Game Design, Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.