When Microsoft announced the now-cancelled new Perfect Dark game last year, the project looked quite cool. The trailer seemingly showcased a game that knew what it was— a game that looked like it would make its way to platforms sometime down the line. However, along with laying off over 9,000 staff members, Microsoft also cancelled the project.
With the game’s cancellation came speculation whether the reveal trailer was actually fake or not. Perfect Dark level designer, Adam McDonald, has cleared the air. It seems that while the trailer did feature some fake stuff in it, there was some real content included.
In a response to the ongoing speculation, McDonald says that the reveal trailer last year wasn’t put together to lie to players. He says the footage in the video did showcase what the game would eventually look like. He claims that the video did include “some fake stuff in it” but it generally showcased real gameplay mechanics.
There was also a working demo that the trailer was based on. Some of the footage was taken right out of this demo content, for example. The parkour and hacking was “mostly” real. The combat was also real and someone had to actually play the demo to record the footage that we saw in the trailer. He says that the combat in Perfect Dark was set up to play the exact same way that it was portrayed in the footage.
Basically, Adam McDonald says that what we saw in the Perfect Dark trailer is a mixture of some fake elements and some real gameplay. However, even the fake content was intentionally created to portray what players would have experienced in the final project.
Sadly, the studio behind the game, The Initiative, was shut down as part of this week’s historic layoffs at Microsoft. Perfect Dark was cancelled along with the mass restructuring. Whether or not we’ll ever see the game is unclear.
Source: BlueSky
