Perfect Dark is back

[Nintex]

I told you they were doing this

https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/1337190050317025283

4th attempt I think? But this one actually made it to trailer 

[EchoRin]

Feels like a total reboot tonally, eh?

[Nintex]

Feels like a total reboot tonally, eh?

It has some of the people behind it who worked on the Tomb Raider reboot.

But it seems like no one at Microsoft got the memo that Perfect Dark was a silly game with Elvis the Alien and laptop guns.
Although you could argue that the Perfect Dark 'series' never really had a tone anyway.

Perfect Dark Zero was a mismatch of different art styles and ideas and a rendering style that made everything but 1 piece of wall look like plastic in a failed attempt to replicate the look of Splinter Cell(?) and hide its weeb origins.
Perfect Dark was Rare's attempts to do a GoldenEye sequel without having to pay for the license inpsired by the show Le Femme Nikita and other pop culture things the Rare developers liked at the time like Men in Black.

This actually seems to take some bits and pieces of Perfect Dark Core that Chris Seavor was working on before he got canned. He was more or less creating Mirror's Edge before there was such a thing.
In the dev interview they talk about a 'go pro cam feeling' and they showed a piece of art of Joanna twisting the arm of an enemy.

[james]

Put it on switch

[Great Rumbler]

Coming December 2025

[Nintex]

Coming December 2025

It was first reported to be a third-person spin-off set in the Perfect Dark universe with a male lead but not a direct sequel or a game starring Joanna Dark.

Looks like they've already rebooted it since then like Fable


From what I gathered over the years

Velvet Dark - Rare - cancelled in 2001
[Let's do a prequel first!]
Perfect Dark 2 - Rare - cancelled in 2007

rebooted as...
Perfect Dark Core - Rare - cancelled in 2009 (Seavor leaked the entire script on Twitter)

Perfect Dark - cancelled in 2016
(this was started after the KI reboot was a hit and started around the same time as the new Gears trilogy but we never figured out who actually was the developer behind it but it wasn't Rare)

Perfect Dark TPS spin-off - The Coalition / Rare / The Initiative - cancelled in 2018, rebooted as...
Perfect Dark - The Initiative <- you are here

Considering Zero started out as a prequel and not a sequel around the same time they started the sequel/spin-off they've been trying to get a sequel off the ground for 20 years. 

[EchoRin]

I would expect that the cooky kind of things like the gun designs will still be there. But yeah, Perfect Dark (even PDZ) was still really goofy. Sort of like a light hearted cartoon mixed with Austin Powers except not a blatant comedy or parody of the spy genre.

That seems to be out the window though. That's all I could really get out of this preview. Maybe some Gamexplain crazies will dissect every frame and point out how much homage stuff or Perfect Dark things there are in it. A little strange seeing Perfect Dark going super serious from this preview.

[brob]

mark johnson (a roguelike developer) wrote a real good article about the level design in perfect dark 1 that I quite like

https://www.markrjohnsongames.com/2014/07/27/perfect-dark-retrospective/

All these criticisms boil down into a core statement – that the actual navigation and traversal of the physical space of these maps is unnecessarily challenging. They posit players asking “Where do I go?” whilst fumbling around the apparently obtuse level design. This piece is going to look at this claim, consider the level design of Perfect Dark in depth, the more-modern level design of some other shooters, and then consider whether these criticisms are valid, or merely a sign of the times in an age of shooters that, perhaps, demand rather less of their players. I’ll also be looking in detail at two levels and a third set of levels that illustrate some of the things I like the most about the singleplayer campaign in Perfect Dark, and that many reviewers have tended to miss in favour of criticizing some of the weaker levels in the set. Perfect Dark has seventeen main levels of the campaign. I’m going to focus on the idea that the levels are full of pointless, unused or dead-end areas, and then also talk about one other level which displays a surprisingly effective emotional effect that, many many years later, games like Mass Effect 2 and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood would repeat.

[Rahxephon91]

Coming December 2025

It was first reported to be a third-person spin-off set in the Perfect Dark universe with a male lead but not a direct sequel or a game starring Joanna Dark.

Looks like they've already rebooted it since then like Fable


From what I gathered over the years

Velvet Dark - Rare - cancelled in 2001
[Let's do a prequel first!]
Perfect Dark 2 - Rare - cancelled in 2007

rebooted as...
Perfect Dark Core - Rare - cancelled in 2009 (Seavor leaked the entire script on Twitter)

Perfect Dark - cancelled in 2016
(this was started after the KI reboot was a hit and started around the same time as the new Gears trilogy but we never figured out who actually was the developer behind it but it wasn't Rare)

Perfect Dark TPS spin-off - The Coalition / Rare / The Initiative - cancelled in 2018, rebooted as...
Perfect Dark - The Initiative <- you are here

Considering Zero started out as a prequel and not a sequel around the same time they started the sequel/spin-off they've been trying to get a sequel off the ground for 20 years. 

Do you have an article, forum post or something that digs deeper into this stuff? There's an entire script leaked? I'd like to know more about these attempts.

[Himu]

looks good

[Don Rumata]

Itsfuckingnothing.jpg
Could literally be anything and its opposite.

[Coax]

I hope they do justice to the customization options, weapon functions and UI.

[MMaRsu]

Why cant they just give me goldeneye remastered XBLA release

Fucking nintendo cucks

[Nintex]

Coming December 2025

It was first reported to be a third-person spin-off set in the Perfect Dark universe with a male lead but not a direct sequel or a game starring Joanna Dark.

Looks like they've already rebooted it since then like Fable


From what I gathered over the years

Velvet Dark - Rare - cancelled in 2001
[Let's do a prequel first!]
Perfect Dark 2 - Rare - cancelled in 2007

rebooted as...
Perfect Dark Core - Rare - cancelled in 2009 (Seavor leaked the entire script on Twitter)

Perfect Dark - cancelled in 2016
(this was started after the KI reboot was a hit and started around the same time as the new Gears trilogy but we never figured out who actually was the developer behind it but it wasn't Rare)

Perfect Dark TPS spin-off - The Coalition / Rare / The Initiative - cancelled in 2018, rebooted as...
Perfect Dark - The Initiative <- you are here

Considering Zero started out as a prequel and not a sequel around the same time they started the sequel/spin-off they've been trying to get a sequel off the ground for 20 years. 

Do you have an article, forum post or something that digs deeper into this stuff? There's an entire script leaked? I'd like to know more about these attempts.

I don't think anyone cares enough to write an article but googling the project names should give some results

https://twitter.com/conkerhimself/status/1132708395524481029

[Let's Cyber]

Is this the project rumored to be episodic?

I have fond memories of the N64 game but that feels like 3 lifetimes ago.

[tiesto]

Never really got into the N64 game (it bit off wayyyy more than it could chew, technically, lowering the framerate to the point of unplayability) but the soundtrack definitely had some bangers on it...

[Nintex]

Is this the project rumored to be episodic?

I have fond memories of the N64 game but that feels like 3 lifetimes ago.

I think the episodic thing was the TPS that evolved into this.
PD2016 was probably a Kinect project?

[Pissy F Benny]

I like how they’ve gone for the retro feel of a piss filtered generic 2edgy4u shooter from the 360 era

[chronovore]

Feels like a total reboot tonally, eh?

It has some of the people behind it who worked on the Tomb Raider reboot.

But it seems like no one at Microsoft got the memo that Perfect Dark was a silly game with Elvis the Alien and laptop guns.
Although you could argue that the Perfect Dark 'series' never really had a tone anyway.

Perfect Dark Zero was a mismatch of different art styles and ideas and a rendering style that made everything but 1 piece of wall look like plastic in a failed attempt to replicate the look of Splinter Cell(?) and hide its weeb origins.
Perfect Dark was Rare's attempts to do a GoldenEye sequel without having to pay for the license inpsired by the show Le Femme Nikita and other pop culture things the Rare developers liked at the time like Men in Black.

This actually seems to take some bits and pieces of Perfect Dark Core that Chris Seavor was working on before he got canned. He was more or less creating Mirror's Edge before there was such a thing.
In the dev interview they talk about a 'go pro cam feeling' and they showed a piece of art of Joanna twisting the arm of an enemy.

 Darrell Gallagher has a few people from Crystal in The Initiative, but saying it’s that team would be inaccurate.

[G The Resurrected]

Sounds like they are making Perfect Dark into a IO game. Which I’m all for if they can nail it right. It also sounds like this is not coming soon at all. They could do quarterly releases which was the rumored release path for the game which is very similar to Hitman. Game pass influencing design and release from my perspective.