Xbox’s Perfect Dark Reboot Is Still Years Away
At The Game Awards 2020, Xbox unveiled a new game from its fledgling studio The Initiative: a reboot of Perfect Dark.
The two-minute trailer was purely cinematic, showing off an “eco-futuristic” Earth as a camera soared over a massive city bedecked in greenery. After zipping through a skyscraper, we saw a woman gazing at distant pyramids amid a raging storm. “Did you find what you’re looking for, Agent Dark?” a voice asks. “Not yet,” replied Joanna Dark. “This is only the beginning.”
Three years later, developer The Initiative is still, in many ways, only at the beginning.
At the time the trailer – created by an external CG house – was shown, it was “very obviously way far ahead of anywhere the game was at,” according to one developer who was working at The Initiative at the time. “We hadn’t even figured out any of our core game mechanics. We didn’t even really know what type of game we were making.”
Teasing new games with cinematic trailers years before the game itself is ready is a common practice in the industry. But The Initiative’s radio silence since combined with reports of major attrition at the studio have sparked questions about the project, exacerbated by its recent absence from Xbox’s summer games showcase. The concern is not unfounded: according to conversations with 13 sources familiar with the game’s development, little meaningful progress has been made on Perfect Dark since that 2020 trailer.
Why? The answer isn’t glamorous, but rather wrapped up in the realities of game development. The project has seen roadblock after roadblock, with problems such as a fraught co-development partnership, a pandemic, technological challenges, an ongoing exodus of significant talent, and unclear direction from management
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