Perfect Dark - Microsoft Studios, The Initiative

[Mavrick]

Just announced at the game awards.

Perfect Dark - Official Announce Trailer - The Game Awards 2020 - YouTube

The Initiative - Perfect Dark Developer Interview - The Game Awards 2020 - YouTube

[Steelmaker]

Was hoping for a new IP honestly, but we'll see.

[KilloWertz]

It'll be intriguing to see what the talent they put together there can do with this regardless. As a fan of Perfect Dark Zero, I'll still admit that it was far from what I hoped it would be, so another really good Perfect Dark game would be a great thing.

[Donl1282]

Any chance this will be released in 2021?

[Hatter]

So they kept the red hair. Thought they would stay away from that train wreck of a sequel.

Still, I am a huge fan of the original. Enough that I choose a 360 over a PS3 just to play the remastered version. This throws the next gen console to choose on its head again for me.

[Talal86]

Pointless trailer tbh

[gundamcero]

Originally Posted by Donl1282

Any chance this will be released in 2021?

Not a chance. They won't even get Halo out in 2021.

[Hatter]

Originally Posted by Talal86

Pointless trailer tbh

Even it it was it still a fluff trailer got me excited at which point I wrote that comment. Then I watched the developer interview and suddenly most of my interest went away. They don't sound like they have a concrete vision at all.

[TecmoZack]

Oh yes.

[SlaughterX]

Hope they do it justice... can't be worse than Zero, but that's not saying much.

[KilloWertz]

Originally Posted by SlaughterX

Hope they do it justice... can't be worse than Zero, but that's not saying much.

Same here. I actually didn't mind the campaign for Perfect Dark Zero, but there's obviously no denying that the game was a major disappointment overall.

[Cremildo]

The N64 one was one of the coolest FPS I've ever played.

Here's hope this one will make me forget Perfect Dark Zero, which was so half-assed I couldn't bring myself to finish it.

[dyne]

Surprising absolutely nobody. Still "years away."

https://www.ign.com/articles/xboxs-p...ill-years-away

At The Game Awards 2020, Xbox unveiled a new game from its fledgling studio The Initiative: a reboot of Perfect Dark.

The two-minute trailer was purely cinematic, showing off an “eco-futuristic” Earth as a camera soared over a massive city bedecked in greenery. After zipping through a skyscraper, we saw a woman gazing at distant pyramids amid a raging storm. “Did you find what you’re looking for, Agent Dark?” a voice asks. “Not yet,” replied Joanna Dark. “This is only the beginning.”

Three years later, developer The Initiative is still, in many ways, only at the beginning.

The project has seen roadblock after roadblock, with problems such as a fraught co-development partnership, a pandemic, technological challenges, an ongoing exodus of significant talent, and unclear direction from management keeping the game in development limbo. And while a new partnership with Crystal Dynamics appears to finally be bearing fruit, multiple sources who have worked on the game recently say that Perfect Dark is still “in the earliest stages” of development, estimating that it is still roughly two to three years away from being ready for release.

Gallagher imagined a spy thriller with big, memorable set pieces, lots of physicality, and plenty of gadgets, all amid a hopeful eco-futurist setting masking a corrupt underworld. Several employees from the early days of the studio recalled the designation “AAAA” being thrown around as a way to emphasize the sheer size and scale of what they should be building (it was also used in at least one public job listing). Everyone I spoke to who recalled hearing the term said there was never a clear explanation of what it practically meant.

AAAA or otherwise, Perfect Dark was a big vision for what Gallagher expected would ultimately be a fairly small studio, even one that was packed with experienced, senior talent. His plan, sources say, was to have The Initiative work closely with other partners to become effectively a franchise steward of the Perfect Dark IP that would eventually become a long-running Xbox tentpole. And while The Initiative did eventually make a public announcement that it would be bringing on Crystal Dynamics to fill the partner role, it actually had a different co-development partner for the first several years of Perfect Dark’s life: Halo co-development studio Certain Affinity.

These repeated struggles over creative vision resulted, sources said, in build after build being thrown out, and internal frustration growing with each new reset.

“We’d do it over and over again. The…levels we had when I left weren’t the same ones we’d had three months prior, or three months prior [to that]. I don’t know why people just kept hitting the reset button. That was definitely contributing to that feeling that we weren’t making any progress. People kept starting over.”

Some of this may have come down to a challenging relationship between The Initiative and Certain Affinity. Both Certain Affinity and The Initiative employees told me there was a seeming mismatch between Certain Affinity’s experience building focused, specific elements of clearly defined games as instructed, and The Initiative’s desire to have a creative partner to bounce ideas off of. What’s more, The Initiative was a very small studio still hiring up, and Certain Affinity was a large, established studio whose team vastly outnumbered The Initiative’s. As The Initiative began to staff up, the two studios found themselves with numerous senior staff roles duplicated across both offices whose visions often clashed, causing further tension on both sides and a general feeling of mistreatment across Certain Affinity in particular.

Despite all these setbacks, in the spring of 2021, a few months after The Game Awards trailer announcement was shown, the two studios had put together a fairly polished proof of concept of Perfect Dark. It included a handful of unfinished, prototype levels, a loose narrative, and showcased some basic traversal, gadgets, and combat. It was a major milestone for the team, but hardly anyone was happy in its wake. Not long after, the news came that Certain Affinity and The Initiative would not renew their contract for another year.

A tally of those who list their work at The Initiative on LinkedIn reveals 35 total departures in 2021 alone. The Initiative lost another 12 in the first three months of 2022, and LinkedIn numbers indicate the studio did not hire nearly as many new employees in the same period or even since.

Entire departments were hollowed out, and progress on Perfect Dark halted as people waited for key decision-making roles to be filled. One developer there at the time recalled "literally" doing "almost nothing for nine months,” waiting for positions to be filled and decisions on key game elements to be made.

In the middle of 2021, with Certain Affinity gone and the studio bleeding talent, leadership at The Initiative had to figure out who, exactly, would be doing the bulk of the development work on the project going forward. And in September, a savior arrived in Gallagher’s old studio: Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics. According to one former Crystal Dynamics employee, the plan was for their studio to supplement and support The Initiative’s vision – not to fully take over. But rather quickly it became apparent to Crystal Dynamics that Perfect Dark and The Initiative were going to need a lot more help than they had realized.

Which is how in 2022, nearly four years after the studio was formed, Perfect Dark was essentially started over from scratch in Unreal 5.

Developers from all three studios involved with Perfect Dark told me that throughout development, Xbox has been remarkably hands-off with the project – not unlike its reported attitude toward Arkane’s Redfall. One described the parent company’s involvement as simply “giving us money and letting us decide how to move forward and requesting milestone updates.”

Amid all this, though, he affirms that The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics have “hit their rhythm” on Perfect Dark, saying he had a “full review” of the game in May. He adds that they’re continuing to try and build a leadership team at The Initiative and grow the studio.

:facepalm

I'm sure a post mortem on Metroid Prime 4 will sound very close to this. Also this reporter is on Twitter spouting the usual "game development is hard" line. No shit. That's why they started a company with veterans to try and avoid this. It's a new studio but the people in charge weren't new.

[heyadol]

Look forward to playing this launch title for the next Xbox in 2028...

[Cremildo]

This has the potential to be another major misfire, what with its troubled production process. I'll be hoping for the best, though.

[Modren]

I cannot imagine this ever selling well enough to make up for its development costs. I have to question the sanity of whoever greenlit this project, but then again that goes for a lot of Microsoft's games over the past decade.

[dyne]

Originally Posted by Modren

I cannot imagine this ever selling well enough to make up for its development costs. I have to question the sanity of whoever greenlit this project, but then again that goes for a lot of Microsoft's games over the past decade.

Making a straightforward fps with objectives should have been the idea from the start. Not this Cyberpunk'ish idea they came up with.

[tcripe]

Probz holiday 2025 at the earliest if i had to guess.

[dyne]

New gameplay trailer looks like Mirrors Edge and Deus Ex had a baby. Doesn’t look bad at all considering its development hell.

[Cremildo]

Perfect Dark - Gameplay Reveal - Xbox Games Showcase 2024 - YouTube