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.

System Shock 3 was confirmed to be in development at series creator Warren Spector-led OtherSide Entertainment years ago, but after facing prolonged development issues, the project’s rights were sold in full to Tencent, with Spector and his team no longer involved. The current status of the project, meanwhile, remains unknown, and as you’d expect, whether or not it ever ends up getting made is up to Tencent.

That’s according to Stephen Kick, CEO of Nightdive Studios – the owner of the System Shock IP – who recently told the same to VGC.

“When we originally acquired the rights to the franchise, we licensed the rights for the third game to Warren and Paul [Neurath] at Otherside,” Kick said. “They then subsequently sold their rights to Tencent.

“So Tencent currently has the rights to the third game, and we have the rights to do the remake of the first game and potentially a remake of the second game. That’s pretty much where it stands right now.”

Interestingly, Kick also mentioned that Tencent could also make further sequels in the series if they did decide to end up developing System Shock 3. “I think they technically could do 4 and 5 as well, but they’d have to do 3 first. So, we’ll see,” he said.

Earlier this year, OtherSide Entertainment announced that it had started development of a new immersive sim with Warren Spector leading the team.

Meanwhile, Nightdive Studio’s System Shock remake is due out sometime in 2022 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Speaking in an interview with GamesBeat, Spector referred to the announcement a couple of years ago that Tencent had taken control of System Shock 3, and said that there was nothing more to add about the project. “We released a statement last year,” he said. “There’s not much more to say at this point. Tencent is taking the franchise forward. It’ll be up to them to say what they want to say. There’s not much clarification I can give you.”

When asked about how long exactly OtherSide Entertainment worked on System Shock 3, Spector said, “We worked on it in 2018 and 2019. That was it.”

Of course, when the development of System Shock 3 stalled, OtherSide ended up having to downsize, after which, according to Spector, the studio went into a state of recovery. “There was certainly a period of personal recovery,” he said. “I’m not sure how to say it. I take this personally, you know? Game development is not just a job to me. It took me a while to get my creative juices flowing again. And then COVID hit. The world got crazy.”

Incredibly enough, these aren’t the only hurdles System Shock 3’s development has faced. In 2019, its publishing rights were reverted back from Starbreeze to OtherSide Entertainment, with the former struggling with financial issues at the time. What exactly Tencent plans to do with the project now – if anything – remains to be seen.

Everwild

Everwild is the latest game in development from Rare, one of the most prestigious studios around the globe. Announced way back in 2019, Everwild will see players taking control of Eternals on a quest to save the flora and fauna of the game’s magnificent world. We don’t know what the gameplay will look like, but Rare has said that it wants to explore peaceful interactions with the game’s world which is definitely one of the more exciting parts of the game. Everwild‘s development has been far from smooth, as after a prolonged period of silence – rumors have indicated that it restarted development last year. Furthermore, it’s been claimed that the team is still figuring things out, so it doesn’t seem likely that the game would reappear anytime this year. That said, one can surely hope for the best.

As a long-awaited sequel to one of the most beloved gaming franchises of all time, millions of people are deeply invested in System Shock 3 already. The game, however, has had a tumultuous development cycle, especially over the last year as it has struggled to secure financial backing since developers OtherSide Entertainment ended their partnership with Starbeeze.

Recently though, the rights to System Shock 3 were picked up by Chinese media giant Tencent- but while that may have secured the future for the game itself, something that’s remained unclear since then is how this affects OtherSide Entertainment, and whether or not they are still involved with the game and its development.

To answer some of those questions, OtherSide’s community manager Alyssa Marshall recently took to the developer’s official forums, saying that the studio is “still involved.” She did not, however, go into many details about what that involvement entails, saying that this is all OtherSide can say on the matter for now.

“We are still involved, but we can’t speak on it much further than that at this point in time,” she wrote. “As we are allowed to make more information public, we will do so.”

Whether or not OtherSide are going to be leading the game’s development with backing from Tencent, or if they’re going to function in a purely supporting capacity remains unclear for now, but at least we know for sure that one way or another, they are still attached to the project. We’ll keep you updated as more information becomes available on the matter, so stay tuned.

Millios have been looking forward to the release of the long-awaited System Shock 3 for a while now, but the last few months have been tough for the game, developers OtherSide Entertainment, and series fans. Reports emerged earlier this year that the game was facing severe issues in development, and that as a result, OtherSide were in trouble as well, with the game’s development team having reportedly let go.

Recently though, an employee at OtherSide, marketing and business development VP Walter Somol, posted an update on the studio’s forums, saying that the studio is working remotely, and working on a new concept using Unreal Engine 4 that is apparently “coming along nicely.”

“We’re still here,” Somol wrote. “We’re all working remotely right now, probably like most of you. Our new concept is coming along nicely and we are really excited about it. We have cool and we think distinctive art style for it and we have that and gameplay coming together in UE4. I know it’s a tease, but I just can’t really say anything about it at this point.”

It’s worth noting that Somol doesn’t mention System Shock 3 in his update, nor does he say how the game is coming along, so it’s still unclear where exactly the game is in its development process. Of course, it’s also worth pointing out that given the current situation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s uncertainty to varying extents about nearly every game currently in development.

Either way, we’ll keep you updated as this situation develops, so stay tuned.

It wasn’t too long ago that we got our first look at alpha gameplay footage of the upcoming System Shock 3, so you might have been under the impression that development was progressing smoothly. However, as per a new report by VGC, it seems that development of the sequel at OtherSide Entertainment has hit a major roadblock.

As the report points out, various key members from the game’s team have left the studio, including the game’s writer, director, design director, and lead programmer, which is confirmed by their LinkedIn pages. Meanwhile, recently, a member of the development team anonymously posted an update on the situation over at RPG Codex. Wanting to avoid “confusion about the state of the company and the project”, the developer revealed that though the core systems of the game had progressed quite a bit, the studio was “critically behind” in developing content for the game.

Discussing whether the “failure of the project” was right, they talked about how System Shock 3 had to be “creative and weird” because it know it couldn’t compete with the scale of AAA immersive sims in the market.

“We were a small team and knew we couldn’t compete with current immersive sims in production quality and breadth, so we had to be creative and clever and weird,” they said. “And we were on our way to make something unique and possibly fun, but probably not what the audience was hungry for.”

The developer also wrote that if Starbreeze – who, due to their financial issues last year, had to sell the game’s publishing rights back to OtherSide Entertainment – had not “gone into crisis”, that would have allowed the developers to make something interesting.

“If Starbreeze hadn’t gone into crisis I think we would’ve delivered something interesting with some fresh and innovative gameplay, but a much smaller game than what people were expecting and inevitably disappointing for a sequel to such a beloved franchise,” they wrote.

Saying that they did not want to give too many details to avoid violating their NDA, they did say that “the team is no longer employed” at OtherSide Entertainment.

No official statement has yet been made about this by the studio, so right now, there’s no knowing what the status of the project or its development team is. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more updates.

RESIDENT EVIL 3

Everyone’s confidence in both, Capcom and Resident Evil is sky high right now, and for very good reason. Given how good Resident Evil 2 was, the prospect of a similar remake of Resident Evil 3 sounds incredibly exciting, and from all that we’ve seen of it, there’s every reason to suspect that it will live up to expectations.

Cyberpunk 2077

CD Projekt RED’s next big title eschews the medieval fantasy and third person action of The Witcher for a first person sci-fi romp in Night City. Developed on REDengine 4, Cyberpunk 2077 boasts screen space reflections, dynamic lighting effects, global illumination and realistic textures. The detail of the world adds further to its fidelity, and that’s without ray-tracing thrown in. Cyberpunk 2077 is out on April 16^th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC with a release later for Google Stadia.

Yakuza: Like A Dragon

The next Yakuza is out in Japan next month and it’s a…turn-based role-playing game? The protagonist this time is Ichiban Kasuga, who’s out of jail after 18 years to find the Arakawa Family upended and no one remembering him. Gathering various allies and taking on bizarre foes like street thugs and military personnel, Kasuga will also run into Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima at some point. Despite its RPG leanings, Yakuza: Like A Dragon is still very much befitting of the franchise especially wacky minigames (like trying not to sleep during a movie) and hard-hitting action. It’s out in 2020 for the West on PS4.