The fall of yet another Sony first party studio – Sony Liverpool -- came as a sad shock to a family of developers that had already lost two studios this year (BigBig and Zipper Interactive). But Sony still has a roster of 12 studios developing games only for PlayStation products, and one of them is known as Sony Cambridge.
Sony Cambridge is perhaps best-known for the MediEvil series. More recently, the studio helped develop LittleBigPlanet for PSP and is currently charged with bringing Killzone to the PlayStation Vita in the form of Killzone: Mercenary. But Siliconera has dug up some interesting tidbits about four pitched games for the PS3 from the studio posted on the blog of Jason Wilson.
Jason Wilson was responsible for concept art, creative direction and more at Sony Cambridge for a long time, working on everything the studio did, from Medievil through 2010’s Move game TV Superstars. And a post on his blog brings to light four pitched games from Sony Cambridge that never got past the planning stages, as “most of these pitch type ideas do not get made for various reasons.” All four pitches were designed for PlayStation 3.
The first game Wilson discusses was called Simian, and hails from 2005, a year before PS3 was to launch. The game was designed to utilize the PlayStation Eye peripheral. “In Simian,” Wilson explains, “the player would interact with a number of small alien monkey creatures. The player and the simians would play through an adventure game set on a strange alien jungle planet.”
Sony Cambridge actually created a working demo showing the game off, but “The project was canned pretty early in pre-production, possibly due to the fact that the game was too ambitious for the actual technology capabilities. The central concept was scaled down and the tech morphed into Sony London Studio’s EyePet game, which would eventually feature a similar simian-like creature.”
The second game was called Manhattan, and was pitched in 2006. “This was our attempt at pitching a survival horror game,” he notes. As the name suggests, the game was to take place in New York City, and “After the city has been quarantined from the rest of America, the player has to escape the chaos and save as many other survivors as possible from the marauding hoards, leading them through the city to safety.”
“The game was pitched as a first-person action game with elements of strategy, as the player tried to keep the survivors alive and get them to various checkpoints.” Wilson doesn’t discuss how far into planning and production the game got before it was ultimately scrapped.
The third game, also pitched in 2006, was called Revolution 4. “The central idea for this game was a first-person shooter set in the UK facing War of the World-style alien invasion. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Resistance: Fall of Man! Soon after pitching this concept we learnt that Resistance: Fall of Man (which, incredibly, had exactly the same scenario) was in development at Sony America featuring an alien invasion of the UK in a first-person shooter. Honestly!”
Revolution 4 never got green-lit for obvious reasons, discussed by Wilson above, but, as you can see, there’s still plenty of art for the game.
The final game Wilson talks about, from 2005, was called Zodiac Assassin. “Our studio director James Shepherd wanted to produce a globe-trotting, Kill Bill-esque assassin game,” Wilson explains. “The game would be set in a number of locations such as Mexico (during the “Day of the Dead” festival), Turkey and Japan. [It] was meant to feature a female lead who was heavily into disguises and assassinations.”
Wilson blamed Heavenly Sword for the game never getting the green light from Sony, but he still worked on art for it.
Every piece of art showcased in this article is courtesy of Jason Wilson. Visit his blog for much more art, as well as information on his career, the games he worked on and more.
Colin Moriarty is an IGN PlayStation editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.
Source : ign[dot]com
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