Several CVs from past employees at Eidos Montreal have revealed that the developer was working on a ‘Dark Fantasy ARPG’ and was focused on reviving an established vampire IP, with a design emphasis on melee combat and parkour. The details have sparked a lot of speculation online, but Insider Gaming can confirm that it was a Legacy of Kain reboot and that its cancellation is a few years old at this point.
To make it clear, the current set of cancelled projects circulating around is years old and is not a part of the current layoffs.
The project was cancelled following Embracer’s acquisition of the studio, which was known internally as P16, as it was the 16th project to start development at Eidos Montreal.
Described to Insider Gaming as a ‘Legacy of Kain soft-reboot’, the game made it only around a year into development before Embracer pulled the plug to send the IP back to Crystal Dynamics. However, it’s currently unknown whether or not Crystal Dynamics did anything with the IP after it was transferred back.
Sources tell Insider Gaming that the project was going well, and despite only around a year of development, there was already some barebones gameplay.
P17 is, unfortunately, just one of many projects cancelled at Eidos Montreal in the last few years (as many as 7-8), with the studio seemingly being forced into a direction of being an outsourcing studio for the likes of Grounded 2 and Fable. Sources tell me that the developers were also previously asked to work on Kojima’s Overdose, but the request was refused because some of its developers would have had to move to Japan.
Currently, Eidos Montreal is also working on its own massive internal project, which started development around 2019 and has seen hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into it – a cost that sources say will unlikely to be recouped – but too much investment has already been made for it to be cancelled.
As for what this eventually means for Eidos Montreal is unclear, but layoffs earlier this year and now other subsequent rounds of layoffs could mean that the future is dire for the studio.
If you’re a developer at Eidos Montreal and would like to speak further on the issues at the studio, you can email me securely and anonymously at [email protected]
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Tom Henderson is Insider Gaming's Co-Founder and Editor-In-Chief. When he's not running one of the industry's leading independent video game websites, he's probably playing an FPS like Call of Duty,…
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