And we’ll start the feature by taking a look at the promotional trailer for Eight Days released as part of E3 2006. It’s tense, but dynamic, full of action and noise, punctuated by real stakes of danger. While this trailer, amongst other footage shown to promote the potential of the PlayStation 3, was cited as media that seemed not to directly reflect the system’s capabilities, what was shown displayed potential as a concept – particularly for a mainstream Western consuming audience.

Commentary from a developer from who worked on the game – Richard Bunn’s whose comments are sourced from a Eurogamer interview in 2011 – reveal some interesting background about the game’s development background. While commentary from 2008 from Shuhei Yoshida, the president of Sony Worldwide Studio, talked about how Sony was wanting to emphasize online gaming and that Eight Days as a game was outside of that, it turns out that this wasn’t the reason for the game’s cancellation. Bunn has stated that the game was going to have online co-operative play, and that the whole concept behind the game was a sort of what he called “buddy gameplay”.

“Imagine Uncharted, where you have two Nathan Drakes, and you can cover swap between each other and chuck ammo between each other. That was pretty much the game.”

Online co-op was part of the plan from the beginning, though not multiplayer play. Once work on Eight Days was completed, a large part of the amassed team of a few dozen staff was to be directed towards the other major project in Sony’s wheelhouse – the third entry in the Getaway series. Bunn, in the same interview, would corroborate the suggestion that Eight Days was further in development than the third Getaway game. The tech demo shown at E3 2005 was representative of much of the work done on for game. But unfortunately, as we all know, neither title was to be completed.

The cancellation of both of these major projects from Sony London both came at around the time that Phil Harrison, the previous holder of Shuhei Yoshida’s position, left Sony – with him resigning in February 2008, and Shuhei Yoshida, formerly senior vice president at Sony Worldwide Studios USA, taking on Harrison’s position officially in May of the same year. The third The Getaway game and Eight Days were officially cancelled in June 2008. Bunn said that Yoshida evaluated the divisions within Sony and concluded that the Sony London studio should move towards making games for a social or casual audience. Besides The Getaway games, a sizeable portion of Sony London’s portfolio is made up of sports games – and the portfolio of Sony London during the time of the PlayStation 3 and the PSP is significantly comprised of SingStar and EyeToy.

That said, word from the company to the developers working on Eight Days was that it was just “on hold” – sentiments produced in 2009 after the word initially spread in 2008 that the The Getaway 3 and Eight Days were completely cancelled. It was reportedly a sore experience for the developers within Sony who worked on the game, with Bunn stating that the suggestion of even using assets from the game felt difficult. Eight Days itself was still in pre-production though it was further along in development than The Getaway 3, per comments from Yoshida in 2008. Bunn mentions that there were those in development who spent years working on the title (with Bunn only spending six months).

Yoshida mentioned in a separate interview that The Getaway 3 and Eight Days were at a point where they would be evaluated and it would be determined how much resources would be assigned to the titles – a regular process. Bunn says that when the games were placed on hold, Sony determined that resources within the company should be allocated more to enhancing other major first party titles that were near completion or releasing in the following year of 2009. The first Uncharted game had just released in late 2007, and that game would lead into a major Sony franchise. However, the first Uncharted’s existence was such that Sony “already had a third-person action game in the stable.”

Much like the first The Getaway game, Eight Days was a title that Sony had been assigning development resources to for years, so it had already cost Sony a lot of money. At the time of the Eight Days’ being placed on hold, Sony had already calculated a figure for how much it would take to finish making the game – about one more year’s worth, per Bunn. And in their calculations, Sony had factored in their expectations for how large the PlayStation 3’s userbase would be a year after release – likely affected by the high initial cost of the system.

“At the time tie-in for a very good game was about ten per cent of the user base. They said we needed to be two or three times above that to be able to make a profit.”

It is clearly an exceedingly tall order for the game to land that well, even if the developers had the ambition to match the demand. Bunn, who designed the game’s opening level, said that his goal was to make it “as good as something you would see”, and he was incredibly happy and proud of both his work and the efforts of his co-workers.

As for other elements of planned game design, it would take place in eight US states – with the promo trailer taking place in Arizona, and the player’s experience would reflect the time in the real world – midnight in-game when the player is playing at midnight, for example. A key part of the narrative design of the game is that there are two storylines – one belonging to a “good” character and the other belonging to a “bad” character. The good character is pursuing a mob group after they kidnap his son, while the bad character seeks revenge on that same mob group. The two characters’ targeting of that group eventually leads to them working together later on. Bunn, in his interview, stated that the game was supposed to have “big cinematic scenes”, “driviing sections,” “duck and cover style gameplay” – an involved action game, and says that there would be much to impress game players if they had ever seen what was worked on.

And that concludes this look back on Eight Days. Shuhei Yoshida said in his aforementioned interview that there are many projects that are started and not finished – a clear reality of the gaming world. Nevertheless, Eight Days was, and is, a title with a lot of potential. Tell us what you think of Eight Days’ promotional trailer, and what we’ve shown about its development circumstances. With the newest God of War game releasing to great reception, and the Uncharted series still continuing, though with Nathan Drake’s story concluded – where does something like Eight Days fit in today’s gaming landscape? With Sony London’s portfolio during the PlayStation 4 generation much quieter than it had been in the past, it would be great to see them return to more active development.

The game is being developed by SCE London Studio and published by Sony. The project is being led by George Andreas and while most of his recent work has been on PlayStation VR games like The Deep and The London Heist he has a long history in the video game business. Andreas has credits on games like Goldeneye and Donkey Kong 64, and was a joint creator of Banjo Kazooie. He also went on to creatively direct the award winning Kinect Sports series.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Characters

Development

The London Heist was officially unveiled as a PlayStation VR (then known as Morpheus in the spring of 2015 with a trailer and a short playable demo. The game was then better introduced to the world at E3 2015. Along with a new trailer, the developers made a playable demo available that allows for users to play three different scenes in the game. The Heist, The Getaway and The Interrogation were unveiled as a way to show users three very distinct aspects of the VR experience in the game. The game brought more videos and screenshots alongside an appearance at Paris Games Week in October of 2015.

The company has announced the game will be released at some point in 2016, though it hasn’t set an official release date. Industry analysts estimate The London Heist will be a launch title alongside the PlayStation VR.

Story

The specifics of the story behind The London Heist aren’t known, though there are some details that can be taken from the various demos and videos that have been making the rounds. The player takes the role of one of a number members of a robbery crew. We know there are a couple of scenes that take part in the game, including one where the user is inside an abandoned back street garage. You’re not alone in this garage as you are sitting and  facing a mysterious character who is reaching for a blow torch as he is asking you questions. The player must find a way to get out of this situation safe and sound, going through a number of motions and interactions.

In The Heist, the player finds themselves in a rather ornate study, and you soon discover that you are behind the scenes at a very lavish party. The goal of this scene is to have the player search the desk in front of them to find a rather large and obviously expensive diamond. Eventually the player does find the diamond and that is when the real action begins as several goons descend upon you all trying to stop you from getting out of the den alive.

The third scene we have managed to get a good look at is called the getaway and players find themselves waking up in a van driving through the outskirts of London just as the light of dawn begins to sweep across the city. The player will need to both check out and interact with their environment in order to get a feel for the crew they are working with and foe, all the while the player is being talked to by a revved up partner. During the conversation between the player’s cohort, users will be able to explore their environment, as well as take a drink, turn on the radio and listen to some music, and have a real conversation before your car is quickly and rather brutally attacked by a private army of well-armed Russian mobsters who appear to want to exact revenge on your and your crew for a so far, unknown wrong committed.

Gameplay

The movements and reactions to the virtual reality environment is largely handled using two Playstation Move controllers while you see everything that is going on around you wearing the PlayStation VR helmet. The game doesn’t actually show the player’s character but when there is a need to interact with something in the environment, the player is represented by a pair of disembodied gloves or hands. The game is presented in a first person point of view.

When it comes to the action in the game, players are able to reach forward and grab the handgun in the shootout scene, and they have to manually pick up clips and slide them into the bottom of the gun to reload. by tapping the bottom of one Move wand to the top of the other. When it comes to getting through the interrogation scene, the man who is asking the player questions will actually follow your eyes and look at what the player is looking at. The way the player interacts with the person who is interrogating you will also change the way the interrogation goes to some degree.

Characters

While there have been a number of characters introduced in the game, there isn’t a great deal known about any of the characters or any kind of backstory for the main character beyond being part of some sort of criminal enterprise. There is the partner the player talks to during the car chase scene who talks about other people you are supposed to work with and the people who are chasing you. The car chase partner actually talks about the Russians being on your tale, but there isn’t an explanation as to why or if there is a main boss the player will eventually meet.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game

Eight Days was a PS3 game that was being developed by SCE London Studio and was expected to be an action-adventure title that, predictably took place over eight days. The map was also expected to be one of, if not the biggest in a PS3 game, as it was supposed to span eight different states. The title was also said to have a true to life internal clock, which means that if you played the game at night, it would also be night in the game world, if it was dawn, it would be dawn in the game.

In 2008, Sony put what appears to be as close to a permanent hold on the game as there is, saying the fact that it didn’t have an online mode was a big part of the lack of interest in finishing it, according to PressA2Join. While Sony has said it likes the concept of the game, and the title hasn’t actually been cancelled, this is the first we’ve seen of Eight Days for several years.

Via, Neogaf.