Games are incredibly hard to make, and they take very long to develop. Both of these things are truer now than they’ve ever been, and clearly, things are going to continue down this path. Even so, as fans, sometimes it’s hard not to be antsy about games that we’ve waited interminably long times to play with no end in sight. Here, we’re talking about fifteen games – from those that have been announced to those that have been rumoured to others still that are little more than the stuff of dreams at this point – that we’ve been waiting to get our hands on for what’s felt like an eternity.
METROID PRIME 4
Nearly two decades on from the launch of the last Metroid Prime game, the wait for a sequel continues. Metroid Prime 4 was originally announced seven years ago, all the way back in 2017, and after a couple years of radio silence, in 2019, Nintendo revealed that development on the title had been rebooted. And since then? Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Metroid Prime 4 continues to be in development at Retro Studios, but five years into its rebooted development cycle, we still don’t know anything about the game other than the fact that it’s being worked on.
PRAGMATA
We don’t see new IP from Capcom very often, so it’s always exciting to see one get announced. Four years ago, we got one in the form of Pragmata, a cool looking sci-fi title that turned more than a few heads. Four years on though, things haven’t really moved forward much (or at all). We still don’t have any idea what the heck this game is, we’ve seen barely anything of it since it got announced, and a while back, it got delayed indefinitely. Whether or not this is going to be another Deep Down is the question that we can’t help but keep coming back to.
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 2
Oh boy, where do we even begin with this one. The wait for Beyond Good and Evil 2 had dragged on long enough even before it was announced, and when, impossibly enough, it was announced, things somehow only got worse. We’re approaching the seventh anniversary of Beyond Good and Evil 2’s announcement, and by now, the game has become the definition of vaporware. After countless delays, development troubles, project reboots, and a total lack of communication from Ubisoft on what the state of the project is, it’s looking unlikelier by the day that this game will ever see the light of day.
DINO CRISIS
Capcom has done an incredible job remaking Resident Evil games to this point, but the one remake that fans keep asking for that ever seems to come isn’t a Resident Evil game at all (well, one of them is. More on that in a bit). Demands for a new Dino Crisis game have been growing louder by the day, as fans continue to salivate over the prospect of a full-fledged survival horror Dino Crisis reboot that’s built on the RE Engine and takes its fair share of learnings for the Resident Evil franchise. Up to this point, chances of that happening anytime soon have looked slim- but Capcom has shown a willingness to dive into its back catalog more than a few times now, so maybe the sun will shine one day on Dino Crisis.
ONIMUSHA
Here’s another classic Capcom franchise that has been dormant for too long. To be fair, Capcom did try to show Onimusha at least a little bit of love with a remastered release of the original game in 2019. But since then, the franchise has once again fallen off the face of the earth entirely. Its fusion of character action combat and Resident Evil-style design has endeared the series to a sizeable fanbase over the years, so hopefully, it won’t be too long before we get a long overdue new mainline Onimusha entry.
RESIDENT EVIL: CODE – VERONICA REMAKE
Let’s stick with Capcom a little longer, because of course, Resident Evil: Code – Veronica is another game fans have been to see back in the limelight for a while now. While there’s obviously been no shortage of Resident Evil remakes, as we continue to move down the list, with each new release, the demand for Code Veronica to return grows louder and louder. Thus far, Capcom hasn’t budged on its apparent strategy of sticking only with numbered entries for remakes, but hopefully, that won’t be the case for too long. After all, there’s only so many numbered entries they can remake, right?
SYSTEM SHOCK 3
Whether or not System Shock 3 will even ever get made is massively in doubt at this point. First officially announced all the way back in 2016, the long-anticipated sequel was in the works at OtherSide Entertainment, with the project being led by System Shock mastermind Warren Spector. As the years continued to go and details on the game remained scant, concern surrounding its development grew, before confirmation arrived from Spector a couple of years ago that OtherSide Entertainment hadn’t worked on System Shock 3 since 2019. At this point, even saying that the project is in limbo would be a charitable description.
THE ELDER SCROLLS 6
It’s been thirteen years since the last mainline Elder Scrolls game released, and it’s going to be several more before the next one arrives. What’s insane is that we have known in an official capacity that The Elder Scrolls 6 is a thing for as long as six years at this point. Back in 2018, Bethesda announced the fantasy RPG with essentially a logo reveal, but it was only a few months ago that the game entered full production, with the studio having been occupied with Starfield for the last several years. At this point, development is presumably going to take around 4-5 years (at best), which means we still have a long wait ahead of us.
HOLLOW KNIGHT: SILKSONG
Team Cherry, for all that’s good in this world, please tell us when Hollow Knight: Silksong is coming. The expansion-turned-sequel was officially announced five years ago, and at one point, when the game had a launch window for some time before July 2023, it looked like we were this close to the game actually coming out. That, of course, didn’t pan out, and once again, we currently have no idea when Hollow Knight: Silksong will come out. Surely it’s gotta be this year, right? Right?
MEGA MAN LEGENDS 3
Capcom’s handling of the Mega Man franchise has been all over the place, in that even though we do keep getting new collections and re-releases, actual new instalments have been few and far between for a while now. But as starved as Mega Man fans might be for a new mainline entry, Mega Man Legends fans have been starved for even longer. It’s been close to two and a half decades since the launch of the last Legends game, and at this point, Mega Man Legends 3 is nothing short of the unlikeliest of pie-in-the-sky scenarios. But hey, we can always dream, right?
GEARS 6
That there will be a Gears 6 is pretty much a guarantee, but it’s taking an unusually long time to rear its head. Gears 5 launched nearly five years ago, which means this is now the longest we’ve ever gone without a new mainline Gears of War game. Leaks have claimed that that’s going to be The Coalition’s next title, but how long it’ll be before we it releases (or we see it) is anyone’s guess right now.
BLOODBORNE REMASTER
Sony absolutely loves its remakes and remasters, but for some strange reason, that doesn’t seem to apply to Bloodborne. FromSoftware’s seminal action RPG is an absolute fan-favourite and widely regarded as one of the best PlayStation games to date, but demands for a remake or a remaster, even though they’ve grown consistently louder, have gone unheard. Hell, we haven’t even seen a 60 FPS patch for the game on PS5.
JAK AND DAXTER
In Sony’s treasure trove of dormant legacy IP, Jak and Daxter is probably the one that fans are most wistful about to this day. Naughty Dog is, of course, unlikely to ever work on a new Jak game again (hell, they’re probably not even going back to Uncharted, let alone Jak), but might we perhaps see another studio be given the responsibility of making a new instalment in the action platforming franchise? It seems incredibly unlikely right now, but there’s no denying how popular Jak and Daxter is, so maybe that will end up counting for something in the future.
BANJO-KAZOOIE
Speaking of dormant franchises that have been slumbering for far too long, Banjo-Kazooie is another one that just refuses to come back. You have to go back to 2008 for the series’ last mainline game, and the last mainline game was Nuts and Bolts, which was… not great. Xbox boss Phil Spencer has suggested a few times that Microsoft is well aware of the level of demand for Banjo-Kazooie, but with Rare having its hands full and even Toys for Bob having bought back its independence, it’s hard to see which studio is going to take on such a project, if it ever even gets greenlit.
SPLINTER CELL REMAKE
To be fair, it hasn’t been that long since Ubisoft announced that it was remaking Splinter Cell. seeing as the project was confirmed to be in the works in 2021. But of course, not only have we seen nothing of the game since then, there’s also the fact that Splinter Cell as a whole has been MIA for far too long. Its last mainline entry, Splinter Cell Blacklist, is over a decade old at this point, and in the time since then, fans of the series have had little more than cancelled VR games and Ghost Recon DLC to go on. Hopefully, it won’t be much longer before the remake sees the light of day.