The sequel to Perfect Dark Zero died a fairly ignoble death, but new media shows how it started out and where it wound up being headed.
After Perfect Dark Zero was released as one of the launch titles for the Xbox 360, developer Rare started work on a sequel. The sequel, Perfect Dark Core, was originally designed to re-invent the Joanna Dark character, but then it became something else entirely during its increasingly-troubled development. Unseen64 has managed to unearth some concept art, renders, and video footage of the game.
The original plan was to make the game “more realistic”, featuring a Joanna who smoked and flirted. However, players wouldn’t actually control Ms. Dark; instead, they’d handle a male character that accompanied the titular character on her missions. As you can see in the video footage, close-combat fighting was a big part of gameplay, and it looks like the development team was taking some style cues from Mirror’s Edge. However, after the game’s development team was cut down to only three people, the title evolved into a FPS that pitted a human soldier against giant mechs.
I was never overly-amazed with Perfect Dark Zero, but it’s a little sad to see that this ambitious project never got to see the light of day. Even the mech game that it evolved into before the game was shut down looks rather interesting.
