In a massive news break to fans of the shooter who have waited years patiently, the much-anticipated Perfect Dark reboot has been officially canceled. This comes as developer The Initiative, a 2018-founded studio dedicated only to producing this game, has been shut down as part of Microsoft’s recent mass layoff of its gaming department.
Perfect Dark remake, first revealed at The Game Awards 2020, recently caused controversy following its gameplay reveal at the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase. The three-minute “vertical slice” of in-engine footage revealed stunning visuals, diverse stealth mechanics, and a glimpse of the reimagined narrative. Yet it was news that soon emerged that this preview was “essentially fake” and not indicative of the game’s true development progress.
These charges, former Perfect Dark level designer Adam McDonald put straight the story of how the trailer was created, via Kotaku. The demo itself was real, McDonald maintained, but the functionality hinged on being performed in a strictly precise, controlled way, according to the presentation used on the video. He verified that fundamental gameplay systems such as parkour, hacking, lying, and combat were all working, but under these strict parameters. McDonald also indicated that the development team made deliberate choices not to specifically mislead players regarding where the game was located and that the footage presented was a “pretty typical vertical slice.”
A vertical slice is, in game development, a cut trailer footage meant to showcase a game’s best production elements within a contained environment. McDonald admitted that “some fake stuff” had been added to the trailer, but maintained that much of the alleged in-game action, such as stealth play, hacking, parkour, and shooting, had been done in-game under simulated, if controlled, conditions.
With The Initiative now closed down, this tailored look at the Perfect Dark remake is now the sole publicly viewable video clip online of what was once hyped as a big comeback for the iconic series.
