The cutting room floor....

Content cut, changes in direction, media from games that were cancelled...


Half Life 2

Valve actually cut and changed quite a bit of stuff during development. Most notably the missing creatures from the first game and it' s expansions. The missing enemies are...the Alien Controller, Alien Grunt, Bullsquid, Chumtoad, Gargantua, Gonarch, Houndeye, Pit Drone, Shock Trooper, Vortigore, Pit Worm, Gene Worm and Nihilanth.

Then during the beta phase they cut the Hydra...



...the Combine Assassin, Synths and the Cremator, ...all of which can be seen in this video

They cut weapons too. There was originally going to be an AK47, a OICW (carried by the Combine Soldiers - as shown in the Hydra pic), a handheld Gauss Gun, Hopwire Grenades (which looked amazing), an ice axe, asomething called a Physgun, a submachine gun that looked more like a UMP45 than an MP7, a Heckler & Koch MP5K, player usable Stunsticks, a sniper rifle, a heavy machinegun... and more... all viewable in this video

There were also different characters, places and vehicles cut or changed, all of which can be read about HERE


What other games can you guys think of???

First that comes to mind i Resident Evil 2, otherwise now known as Resident Evil 1.5.


RE 1.5

That' s all the footage for it, so its a biggies, 15 minutes! According to all I' ve read, it seems RE 1.5 was around 80% complete with a short time before release, when the creator decided to scratch the entire thing, as he didn' t think it felt right. Amongst the changes are:

- Elza Walker, the original female lead was replaced by Claire Redfield, which brought connection to the first game
- There were weapons that did not make it into RE2, such as grenades.
- There were more human survivors, and some also had completely different roles, such as Ada being an actual Umbrella scientist and chief Irons being a good guy.
- Raccoon looked more like a modern city, rather than the one we' ve come to known.
- There were more enemy types and such, including mini-gorillas, like RE0.

I am happy with the RE2 we got, but it would have been nice to see all that cut content.

Everything that I' ve mentioned plus tons more can be read in the following link:

Read Here

The other one is Resident Evil 4.

RE4 Early Version

According to the few news released on this one, it seemed Leon would go into the heart of Umbrella itself, which means it would have been a direct continuation to the already established story. Somewhere along the lines, Leon would get infected by this sort of virus that looked like black goo or so, and he would need to find a cure. This particular aspect was kept for RE4, but was handled differently. From the video, it seems some of the mechanics from the final RE4 were gonna be a part of the early version, such as precise aiming and the quick button presses. It seems you could still aim in old RE mode though. The game also seemed to steer more towards the puzzles solving aspects of RE.

My opinion on this? I love RE4' s new mechanics and gameplay. However, I feel like the original story would have been better, as it feels more like a sequel, than a side-chapter, which is what RE4 feels like. For me, it feels as this should have been Code Veronica, and Veronica feels more like a RE4. It would have also shown more about Umbrella, and certainly the setting looks a lot creepier than the current RE4. I also would have preferred the game with more involved puzzles, like the original ones, but with the same dose of action found here in our RE4.

More about the three prior versions of RE4 can be read here

Edit: Another one that came to mind was Final Fantasy VII. I have no links for this one, but those that have Advent Children can see it in one of the documentaries. It seems Sakaguchi' s original story was that the player would play as a detective following the antics of the main characters. When Nojima took over, he completely re-wrote the story, with Nomura giving some input. This is the reason why Sakaguchi hates FFVII as it is, because they did not use his original script. Sakaguchi did establish one of the most important concepts later retained in the game though, the Lifestream, which to all those that played FFVII, know is a big deal in the game.

There were also only three characters, Cloud, Aeris and Barret and from the beginning one was supposed to die. The logic here was that they wanted death to feel completely abrupt and leaving the player with a sense of emptiness that a cliche hollywood heroic death could not give. Since Barret would have embodied this idea, he was not to be killed. And Cloud being the main character, he could not be killed either. So they went with Aeris.

I' m also one of those who would have preferred RE4 with the more ghostly setting and a real connection to the other games. Even the soundtrack seemed much better than what we eventually got. That' s why I was initially disappointed when I started playing RE4.

I am with you ys. The game is great, but the change was so abrupt that it only leads me to wonder how much better this game could have been with the new mechanics, while building up upon the established story arc.

The ghost version of RE4 would' ve killed the series to me.
Resident Evil has always had some kind of scientific explanation for the creepy stuff, like viruses. But the ghost version was too supernatural to be explained scientifically in a convincing way.
And Umbrella was starting to get old. I' m glad they let that go.

From what I' ve read, the whole deal was about Leon not knowing what was real and what was just a part of his imagination due to the virus he got infected by.
It' s also a bit strange that they scrapped those ideas. I mean, they said several times that they wanted to get rid of the zombies. Then they come up with ghostly things. Ok, I thought, makes sense. But then they decide to scrap the idea and go for humans infected by some virus which to me are very zombie-like enemies. More than the ghosts, dolls, etc. at least so I couldn' t see the logic in it really.

And yes, they maybe wanted to get rid of Umbrella. But why not let the player do that? It' s so lame to see a little intro I think where they just quickly say : Oh by the way, Umbrella is gone.
Besides that, the creator himself has admitted in an interview that RE4 isn' t really a game for the RE-fans. More like an action game to attract the non-fans.

in that case, f*** the fans!

Good effort Chimura!

RE2 is a no-brainer. They went back and re-worked it because it wasn' t as good as it should have been. It sucks that there was content created that we never got to play through, but i was more than happy with the retail version. It' s the best traditional RE game and if they remade it on Wii like they did with the original on Gamecube i' d be there in a flash.

RE4 i' m torn on, because while i would really liked to have played the game in it' s alpha stages, i think the change was necessary to not only reach a new audience but to keep the series from becoming stale.

THIS is an early (but very complete looking) build of RE4 (RE3.5) that shows how the game was originally planned to be. I' d probably say that it looks graphically superior to RE4, ...maybe because it' s not rendering the larger environments.

Leons coat looks cooler too...

ORIGINAL: ginjirou

in that case, f*** the fans!

:P

And yeah Nitro. I' ve always thought that those early RE4 video' s looked better than the eventual game. It has more of a " feel" somehow graphically. More moody.

The lighting and models even look better.

If the backgrounds were static like in the traditional games (sans Veronica ofcourse) then you wouldn' t think about it twice as it' d only really be rendering the character and enemy models. I mean, the RE-make on Gamecube was gorgeous, but not technically demanding. 3.5 on the othehand looks just as nice, and fully 3D. It looks better than RE4 because (and i' m guessing) it' s only rendering very small enclosed spaces and very few models on screen at a given time.

I love RE4, but i still can' t help but want to play 3.5

I wouldn' t say no to playing 3.5 because it looked really cool. But if I had to choose one then the final version of RE4 is the one I' d pick.
What I really liked was how different it was. The setting, a rural spanish village and castles, that was genius! The pacing was much more exciting than ever before. And they got rid of the cheap jump-scares and placed it with a very addictive sense of constant panic. I prefer running from a hoard of mad and intelligent villagers, because they feel real somehow.
But running from ghosts... I dunno, it doesn' t get me as excited because it feels dumb. Ghost.... I mean c' mon! And the slow-pokes in the previous games weren' t scary. They were just irritating.
RE4 FTW!

Leon does look a lot more detailed. And the jacket has a really " leatherly" feel to it that the one in 4 didn' t completely had. I agree that changes needed to be made, and like I said, I am happy with what we got, but like you nitro, I can only wonder " what if" had they kept it as 3.5 you know?

It' s the best traditional RE game and if they remade it on Wii like they did with the original on Gamecube i' d be there in a flash.

This is the best RE game. I' ve wanting this for years, but to Capcom, this like the one game they don' t love. Other than Leon, Claire and Ada being in other games, RE2 always gets the shaft, most recently Umbrella Chronicles (sans the Ada missions, but still the shaft it got)

Look, if I' m a nazi I have really good reasons for it so just let it go, okay?

ORIGINAL: Nitro

The lighting and models even look better.

If the backgrounds were static like in the traditional games (sans Veronica ofcourse) then you wouldn' t think about it twice as it' d only really be rendering the character and enemy models. I mean, the RE-make on Gamecube was gorgeous, but not technically demanding. 3.5 on the othehand looks just as nice, and fully 3D. It looks better than RE4 because (and i' m guessing) it' s only rendering very small enclosed spaces and very few models on screen at a given time.

I love RE4, but i still can' t help but want to play 3.5

It' s probably because of the smaller spaces as you said. Nonetheless, I liked it and the whole concept (unlike Ginjirou :P ).

I' ve also played RE4 MANY times and do like the great flow/pace of it. But this would' ve gotten my preference without a doubt. Maybe because I' m more into " traditional" horror? I prefer atmosphere over action. RE4 didn' t feel scary or horror-like really. Partly due to some weird AI here and there I assume. Like when a chainsaw freak just ran around in circles even after I attacked him, hehe).