Website Bug & New Articles (Shared Here) (Patreon)

The "fun" part of keeping a website online since 2001 is when something randomly break and you don't even know why ;P At the moment the U64 website has a strange bug and we cannot add new articles or images (and some parts of the template just vanished): our technical support is looking into it and we hope they could fix it soon.

In the meantime we just share today's articles in here, so you can still read them :) As soon as the site will be back to normal, we'll add them in the U64 archive. As always thanks for your support!

Indiana Jones Trilogy (The Collective) [Cancelled - Xbox, PS2]

A cancelled Indiana Jones video game based on the original trilogy was in development around 2003 - 2004 by The Collective (who also worked on the cancelled Executives / Career Criminal for Midway), after releasing “Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb”.

In 2008 a former developer shared some details about this canned projet on CG Society:

“So… this image is 5 years old, low poly realtime model created for a project that could have been. No photos were used in the creation of the textures and the render was not retouched.

This was done at Collective Studios, now known as Double Helix, sometime after Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb shipped. Hoping to work on another game, we did some R & D for a possible sequel. New, polished character models were created and the Indiana Jones model completely redone.

There was an amazing prototype that was up and running with updated gameplay, but unfortunately this project never happened. Probably could have been the greatest Indy game ever. Unfortunately due to things out of the hands of the studio and surprisingly, even the publisher, nothing came about.”

In 2012 a show reel that contained footage of this canned Indiana Jones game was found online (and then taken down, but the video was preserved by Indiana Jones Brasil) showing Indy and Satipo manoeuvring through environments similar to that of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with gameplay elements similar to Emperor's Tomb. (This demo reel also contained footage of the project known as Prince of Persia: Assassins).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EYJZIXqZ0M (footage)

In 2010 now-vanished gaming website 1UP also published some information:

“Six or seven years back, I won't say who I was working for, but we were working on an Indiana Jones trilogy game based on the first three movies," says Rex Dickson, lead single-player level designer at Kaos Studios (Homefront). "That game ended up not coming out for whatever reason -- I can go on a long diatribe about why -- but it was just really cool, because we had the full Hovitos temple built out with the rolling boulder, and it was all awesome. That would've been Xbox/PS2 -- that generation."

BackSpace (Obsidian) [Cancelled - PC, Xbox 360, PS3]

BackSpace is a cancelled sci-fi RPG that was in early development by Obsidian Entertainment from January to April 2011 (around the same time they were finishing Dungeon Siege III), to be published by Bethesda on PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The project was pitched as “Sci-Fi SKYRIM with Time Travels” and it was led by Jason Fader (who also worked on Obsidian’s cancelled Aliens RPG, Fallout: New Vegas, and the System Shock remake at Nightdive Studios).

While the game was quickly canned by the studio and it was never officially announced, Kotaku published a short article on the game in 2013, showing off remaining concept art created by Obsidian and sharing a few details on its gameplay:

“BackSpace is a single-player action-RPG set in a scifi space environment with simple elements of time travel. The combat is paced similarly to Skyrim, but slightly faster since there is no concept of blocking. The easiest way to look at it is a mix of Mass Effect, Borderlands, and System Shock 2 for gameplay and setting.”

“It was to be developed in some sort of partnership with Bethesda, I've heard, and it'd use the same engine as their ridiculously-successful role-playing game Skyrim. Although BackSpace wasn't an open-world game, players would be able to travel between a number of planets as well as one large space station.”

“This station is huge," a BackSpace design document reads. "It can be compared in size to The Citadel of Mass Effect [or] Babylon 5. The station has several locations devoted to diverse research fields which would allow us to have vegetation overgrowth, high-tech disasters, and mutations of science as visual themes."

“[...] a technical error would fling your character ten years into the future, and you'd spend a bulk of the game hopping back and forth between the time of the attack and a dismal, alien-occupied future. Quests in the game would task you with hopping between timelines in an attempt to save humankind.”

In 2017 Jason replied to a few questions on Reddit, sharing even more details on what happened to BackSpace:

"I was working closely with Bethesda on BackSpace. Since there were no other projects lined up after the Old World Blues team finished their work, I took it upon myself to try to find another project for the company. I reached out to Bethesda and directly asked them what type of game they'd be most interested in publishing next. From there, I started working on a pitch based on a prior game I made, ThreadSpace: Hyperbol (story only, not gameplay). The gameplay was something designed around Bethesda's interests at the time. No other publishers were pitched on it, to my knowledge, but there was interest from a 3rd party in creating a TV show based on it.

I actually started working on the project a bit before that by myself after hours. Probably as early as October (2010). It was an "after school project" for a very long time, and after a few months, more and more folks would join me after hours to volunteer their time to help. I don't think we actually worked on it by day until the final month for the prototype. Then the layoffs happened. Then I stuck around for a few more years. Then the big layoffs (including me this time).”

In April 2011 Obsidian had to lay off part of their team, including many of those developers who were working on BackSpace. With financial difficulties in keeping the team active they worked on South Park: The Stick of Truth and many cancelled ventures (such as Stormlands for Microsoft), until they found success on Kickstarter with Pillars of Eternity.