Creating a piece of work can be a breeze or a trial, and neither guarantee its quality.Apocalypse Now,The Shining, andBlade Runnerare great movies, yet were infamously difficult behind the scenes. WhileThe Cannonball RunandOcean’s Twelvewere relatively comfy shoots but aren’t inBlade Runner’s league.
Related:Game Characters Inspired by Apocalypse Now
It’s the same withvideogames. There are games that were fine to make, came out on time, then passed by without much notice. Then there are others that pleased fans and critics alike but were such a strain to make that their developers likely dread recollecting their creation. Here are some great games thatbecame nightmares to make.
8Final Fantasy 15
Final Fantasy’sfrequent character, gameplay and setting changes are refreshing, but it also means even its biggest classics have vocal detractors who preferred one game’s style over the other. However, people would be hard-pressed to find fans ofFF13with its linear gameplay and dull story. Yet Square-Enix tried to make the most of it,announcing13in 2006as part of theFabula Nova Crystallissubseries withFF Versus 13andFF Agito 13.
The latter would be released asFinal Fantasy Type-0, but the former struggled under original director Tetsuya Nomura, with progress growing so slow that it was considered vaporware-software that’s announced but never made. In the end,Type-0’s Hajime Tabata and his team took over, and reworked it intoFinal Fantasy 15in 2013. They finished the game in 2016, where it was considered a big improvement over its formerCrystallispredecessors.
7Resident Evil 4
The originalResident Evil 4took 6 years, andwent through multiple conceptsbefore it reached store shelves. It began life asResident Evil 3until the “Resident 1.9” side game about Jill Valentine gained that title. So, it becameRE4,a PS2 exclusive directed by Hideki Kamiya. Except his proposal about a cocky man in red blasting bioweapons was deemed too action-based to beREand changed intoDevil May Cry.RE4would then switch to being a Gamecube-exclusive instead.
New director Hiroshi Shibata’s proposal saw Leon Kennedy investigate the Progenitor Virus with the help of a girl and her dog, which changed intoHaunting Ground.RE4pressed on to its “Hookman” demo about Leon fighting off a hook-wielding ghost, which proved too intensive for the Gamecube hardware. In the end, series creator Shinji Mikami took over, focusing more on the gameplay than the story. The result changed the gaming landscape and theResident Evilseries as a whole, and turned the “Gamecube-exclusive” into one of the most ported games ever made.
6The Last Guardian
IcoandShadow of the Colossuswere famous for their design and storytelling. Seeing how fans took to Wander’s connection with his horse Agro inSOTC, director Fumito Ueda thought of a game where the protagonist would work with an animal to solve puzzles, take on foes, and explore its world. It would be calledThe Last Guardian, and it went into production in 2007. Ueda hoped he’d “create something good ina short period of time”.
Related:Best Pets in Video Games
But it took until 2011 for Team Ico to showcase its “vertical slice” at the Game Developer’s Conference. Ueda and Team Ico ended up disbanding at the end of 2011, while their ex-parent company Sony tried to piece together what was left into a workable game. In the end, Ueda and co came back as GenDesign and finished the game off with Japan Studio (ofGravity Rushfame) for the PS4 in 2016.
5Fable
Nowadays, it might be hard to see why Peter Molyneux was a big deal in videogames, let alone one worth an honor from the British monarchy. During the 1990s he ran Bullfrog Productions, famous for creatingSyndicateandDungeon Keeper. Today, he runs 22cans, infamous for makingGodusand theNFT gameLegacy. In between those two, he ran Lionhead Studios, and extolled the fantasy action RPG seriesFable.
He always made weird, big promises to the press, which worked out for him in the Bullfrog days, but not in the Xbox era. When his developers were working crunch hours to getFablerunning, he was adding to their workload by saying it would have instantaneous multiplayer, or acorns that would grow into trees in real time. WhileFablewas a hit, people often spokeabout what it lackedinstead of what it had thanks to Molyneux’s big mouth.
4Nioh
Famous film director Akira Kurosawa had many unfinished projects, with one in particular being about a blonde, white man in Sengoku-era Japan. It was calledOni, and Koei planned to bring it to life in 2004. It would’ve been a JRPG, but all work on it was scrapped in 2008 when co-producer Kō Shibusawa felt it wasn’t particularly fun to play at that stage.
It was passed onto Omega Force to turn into aDynasty Warriors-like game, where it was scrapped again. Team Ninja gave it a shot in 2012, creating a new scenario that had nothing to do with Kurosawa’sOnibeyond the setting and protagonist. Even then, it would take them 5 more years to turn it into theNiohplayersknow and love today.
Dead Island 2didn’t have as much impact asNiohorFable, but it is an improvement over the originalDead IslandanditsRiptideadd-on. People would hope so too, given it took9 years to makebetween its original announcement in 2014 and its release in 2023. How did it go from a dead cert, to plain dead, then to living again across that time?
Related:Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do in Dead Island 2
At first, original developers Techland were set to make the sequel, but they chose to work onDying Lightinstead. Deep Silver then handed the project to Yager Development after they pitched to take it on. They worked on it for a year before leaving it in 2015, when Sumo Digital picked it up instead. But in 2019, Deep Silver decided to make it themselves via their internal studio Dambuster Studios, producing the final product people can play today.
2Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
MGS5is a divisive entry into the series. Whereas most of theMetal Geargames are heavy on story, light on gameplay,MGS5had lots of gameplay but was low on story. The other games also got made in a relatively smooth timeframe.MGS5’sdevelopment was so chaoticthat series creator Hideo Kojima was forced out of Konami, his production studio was shut down, and ex-Konami staffers blew the whistle on the company’s overall working conditions.
Put briefly, whileMetal Gearalways made profits, the games still cost a lot to make. Konami saw they were making just as much money with less investment in the mobile market, pachinko and elsewhere. WithMGS5’s high production costs, Konami took charge of its development, demoting Kojima to a consultant before firing him shortly after the game’s release. The fallout was so bad that Konami’s reputation is still in the doldrums today.
1L.A Noire
Still, it could be worse. They could’ve been working onL.A Noireunder Brendan McNamara. His company, Team Bondi, began work on the game in 2004 as a Sony exclusive. Then the publishing rights were passed onto Rockstar Games in 2006, who helped with the game’s development. But even they had trouble learning the game’s engine and the MotionScan tech thatproduced its facial mocaps.
McNamara’s managerial style also irked the company, as he accused Rockstar of trying to take creative control. In turn, ex-Bondi staff accused McNamara of verbal abuse, unpaid crunch hour overtime,and missing creditsonL.A Noire’s eventual release. Bondi was liquidated in late 2011,Noire’s successorWhore of the Orientwas canceled in 2016, and the series hasn’t had a new entry sinceThe VR Case Filesin 2017.
