The devastating cancelation of Perfect Dark is still felt even now. News of its rebirth was glorious, which made its subsequent cancelation even worse. A former dev on the project has posted early gameplay footage of the shooter, and it could either make you happy to see what it looked like, or worse, knowing it’s no more.
Perfect Dark was canceled in 2025. The franchise was reborn at The Game Awards 2020, with news of an impending sequel. However, it wasn’t to be, and what made matters worse was hearing Perfect Dark could have been saved after its cancelation.
2-Minute Perfect Dark Gameplay Video Appears
A video obtained by MP1st shows off Perfect Dark gameplay footage, although you can clearly see it’s early-in-development footage, with the frame rate running poorly.
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It features level designs and missions, behind-the-scenes testing on weapons and enemies, and a look at the game’s physics and environment interactions.
MP1st added:
‘Unfortunately, this is as close as we’ll get to the game, which was canceled last year. In our report, the documentation revealed that The Initiative was working on the game’s Vertical Slice 1 since April 2025. For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to a playable proof-of-concept that represents the game’s quality and overall experience.
The rumor was that this Perfect Dark reboot was planned to be in episodic format, which we honestly didn’t know whether it would fly then or now.’
VFX artist Tracey Landau provided the video to MP1st, and also shared some extra bits she worked on for Perfect Dark.
This all comes after concept art for the Perfect Dark reboot leaked online as well!
Maybe Perfect Dark will be re-rebooted one day. Until then, savor all the details we’ve learned about the game, and even check out the gameplay reveal, which was as recent as 2024.
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Andy is Insider Gaming's Senior Evergreen Editor and has been in the games journalism sphere in one way or another for over 7 years. His video game taste is as…
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