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A long and troubled production cycle is usually a death sentence for a video game. Join Jules Gill as he explores 8 incredible titles that spent years in 'development hell' but defied all expectations to become legendary.
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00:00Clearly I need more coffee. That's the problem, isn't it?
00:03Alright, you little demons, Jules here for WhatCulture.com, back again with another episode
00:07of the awesomely named and awfully hosted Choose Your Own Adventure, the weekly medieval-themed
00:12format where I, the crowned Jules of WhatCulture.com, take a list chosen by you, yes, you, the
00:16person who has unfortunately got some pretty devastating news to tell you. As of about
00:2110 minutes before I started recording this episode, my girlfriend, the lovely and wonderful
00:25Kerry informed me that a giant pigeon flew into headfirst into a window of our next-door
00:31neighbours one day and was stunned into the middle of the road. I can confirm that Big
00:35Pidge, what a Big Pidge, who now has a comical bandage over his head, is fine. He's just
00:40got the wrong house. It's why you shouldn't drink and fly. Yes, you get to decide what
00:44this idea I like to each and every week. And this one we have none other to thank, Dan.
00:51And they're an amazing suggestion of amazing video games that somehow, despite all the odds,
00:58survived development hell. And here's the thing, making video games, it's a big project.
01:04And it's not uncommon to hear stories of games that go on for years in development, sometimes
01:08even decades. And when they enter that sort of sweet spot, they go into what we call development
01:13hell, where because of issues with publishers, of funding, of just people dying, that happens
01:20quite a lot. Things change a lot around the project, meaning that it just gets delayed upon
01:25delayed upon delayed. And usually that's where they stay, just in development hell. And they're
01:30just crossed off a big spreadsheet that just says, yeah, sorry about that. However, sometimes they
01:35come through the other side. Most of them are rubbish, but these games that we're talking about
01:40today, they not only survived development hell, but were absolutely and utterly amazing.
01:45So let's talk about them, because I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are eight
01:48amazing video games that survived development hell.
01:51And you know the drill by now. Put your suggestions for next week's episode down in the comments
01:55section below. And let's get on with the list, shall we?
01:57I'm talking about number eight, Resident Evil 4.
02:02Heh heh heh heh, right that makes them possess Resident Evil.
02:06Um, that's my new vocal stim, cool.
02:09Now, Resident Evil 4 spent an entire six years in development, which back at the turn of the
02:15century was an absolute ice age, especially as the first three entries in the survival horror
02:20series were put out in half that time. But the fourth installment went through a staggering
02:25five iterations before finally hitting the stores in 2005, with one discarded prototype
02:31even going on to become Devil May Cry. You might have heard of it. Devil May Cry.
02:37Now, during this period, numerous directors were shuffled in and out of the project until the
02:40first game's director, Shinji Mikami, stepped in to deliver the final realized product. And with
02:46Capcom threatening to put the series on ice if Resident Evil 4 underperformed, Mikami took
02:52many a bold swing here, shifting the focus from pure horror to action-horror hybrid. Yeah.
02:59Introducing an over-the-shoulder camera. Yeah. And shifting the mayhem to rural Spain.
03:05See? It was a massive gamble, but Resident Evil 4 ultimately went on to become a massive critical
03:11and commercial success, remaining the series' high point to this very day and proving massively
03:16influential on the survival horror genre ever since. So yeah, in short, pretty bloody good.
03:22South Park The Fractured But Whole
03:24Now, South Park The Fractured But Whole proves beyond any doubt that even the most obvious
03:29slam-dunk sequel can run afoul of devastating unforeseen issues. Though a sequel to Obsidian's
03:352014 hit RPG South Park The Stick of Truth was quickly given the green light, things fell apart
03:40after THQ went, uh, bankrupt in 2012. Ubisoft then acquired the rights to the series and switched
03:46development from Obsidian to Ubisoft's San Francisco. The new team redesigned the original
03:50gameplay format in their bespoke snowdrop engine, and because South Park creators Matt Stone and
03:56Trey Parker were intensely involved in development, production was subjected to delays because of
04:00their busy schedules. Production was frantic enough that Trey Parker even left the hospital
04:05while still recovering from gallbladder removal surgery to record more lines of dialogue for
04:10the game. That's dedication. But even so, it was delayed almost a year beyond its original 2016
04:17December release date, but the long wait ultimately proved worth it as the fractured butthole served up
04:22a riotous superhero parody that significantly improved the gameplay from its predecessor.
04:27Now let's talk about Metroid Dread. A sequel to 2002's much-loved Metroid Fusion was first conceived
04:33in the mid-2000s, with the intent to release on Nintendo's new handhold, at the time the Nintendo
04:38D-A-S. However, development stalled in the years that followed largely due to the technical limitations
04:44of the D-A-S itself, with producer Yoshiro Sakamoto feeling pretty unhappy with the progress there,
04:50and so Metroid Dread was effectively put on ice. It wasn't until the release of the Switch that
04:56Sakamoto was convinced that the technology was finally there to do Dread justice, and in 2021 the game's
05:02revival was officially announced. Shocking fans who'd actually long since given up on it.
05:07I mean, you're just going along your day, you've just gone to the Bureau de Changes,
05:10you've bought yourself a jelly deal on a pork pie because you're in the UK,
05:13and you're just going, what's all this then governor? Metroid Dread's back, what?
05:18This is a newspaper by the way, it's not me just like grabbing a nearby person and shaking them,
05:22although that could also be an expression of how excited you are.
05:34Now, the real triumph, of course, is that Metroid Dread received rave reviews for its ingenious level
05:40design and outstanding fluid gameplay, which managed to both pay tribute to its predecessor,
05:45but update the formula for modern tastes. As such, Dread went on to become the best-selling game in the
05:51entire Metroid franchise, and you know what? Rightly so.
05:55Now let's talk about Fez.
05:57Now, development hell isn't limited to the realms of AAA franchises. It also regularly happens to
06:02indie games created by as few as one or two people. Case in point, the iconic 2012 platformer Fez was
06:08actually announced by designer Phil Feish five years earlier in 2007. Five years. Soon,
06:15realizing that he needed a second pair of hands, he recruited Renoir Bedard to handle the programming.
06:20The years that followed soared the experienced Feish and Bedard experiment with ideas, in turn
06:25burning through a Canadian government loan provided for development, before Quebeckian
06:29developer publisher Traptor stepped in and rescued the game from cancellation.
06:34But this wasn't the end of the turmoil, though. Feish became embroiled in a legal dispute with his
06:39former business partner, causing development to further drag on and on and on until finally
06:44it released in April 2012. Fez wasn't merely a good or even great game, it was a generational puzzle
06:53platformer, which remains an extremely important fixture in the indie gaming revolution of the
06:57early 2010s. It's just a damn shame that Fez 2 was cancelled over a Twitter beef of all things.
07:04What could have been, eh? What could have been? Team Fortress 2.
07:08Now, the sheer mention of Team Fortress 2's strain development had kind of
07:12sent a psychic ripple of pain through the original FPS's entire fanbase, because my
07:18god was this painful. In 1998, Team Fortress classic developers John Cook and Robin Walker were
07:23hired by Valve to develop Team Fortress 2, which was initially intended to be an expansion to the
07:28original Half-Life. Catch up. Team Fortress 2 was originally introduced in 1999 as a modern war
07:34shooter, but in the years that followed, Valve cycled through various versions of the game,
07:38and none of which really they were satisfied with. As Walker and Cook were moved on to other Valve
07:43projects, most fans believed that the game was just vaporware, with the media often derisively
07:47comparing it to the long-delayed, at the time, Duke Nukem Forever. Valve finally re-announced Team
07:52Fortress 2 in 2006, to the shock of many, and though its cartoonish visual style definitely ruffled some
07:58feathers, ultimately the game released in 2007 to rave reviews, and became one of the most popular
08:04multiplayer shooters, and say it with me big pitch, ooh that does look sore actually, of all time!
08:10You should probably go to the doctor mate, that bump looks bad. And it laid the groundwork for the
08:14hero shooter that we know today. Conker's Bad Fur Day
08:17Few games have changed more throughout their development history than Conker's Bad Fur Day,
08:22which started out as an almost totally different game altogether. Originally a cute,
08:26family-friendly game in the vein of Banjo-Kazooie called 12 Tales Conker 64, this version was
08:33ultimately scrapped after the developers felt like it was too similar to the long line of generically
08:38colourful N64 adventure games that were being churned out at the time. The team instead took a
08:43bold pivot to reinvent Conker as an edgier, more adult-skewing title packed with dark humour,
08:48profanity, and parodies of classic Hollywood films. The game was effectively rebuilt from scratch,
08:52with new level design and a darker visual style, while pushing the N64 to its
08:56absolute technical limit. This all ensured that by the time that Conker's Bad Fur Day
09:01finally released in 2001, the project had been in development for five years, and the N64
09:07was actually nearing the end of its life. As a result, Conker wasn't a commercial success,
09:13but it was one hell of a swan song for the N64. Hilarious, insanely fun to play, and basically like
09:20nothing else being made at the time. Doom 2016. 2016's fourth Doom game didn't arrive until 12
09:27years after the release of Doom 3, with id Software spending many years developing different versions
09:32of Doom 4 that were all eventually scrapped. The most famous of these is the Call of Duty-inspired
09:39first-person shooter set on Earth, with gameplay mechanics such as regenerating health, cover
09:44shooting and scripted set pieces. Gross. By 2011, after three years of development,
09:50id and Bethesda decided that they'd strayed way too far from the original vision of Doom,
09:55and so just tossed this version out completely. They then set about delivering a modern-day
10:01reinvention of Doom that stayed much more true to its frantic, fast-paced origins. But even when Doom
10:072016 was revealed, many actually tempered their expectations, which was unaided by the fact that
10:13Bethesda held back review copies until release day, which as we all know, in the business,
10:17if you get a copy on release day, it's gonna stink. For the most part. But, 2016's Doom went on
10:23to
10:24receive shocking acclaim from critics and fans alike for its face-melting action and gorgeous visuals,
10:29in turn bringing the classic FPS franchise back to serious prominence and giving us all a chance to
10:35learn the true meaning of pain slayer. And finally, let's talk about Half-Life 2.
10:44So yeah, we gotta talk about a game whose hellish development is legendary in the annals of gaming
10:49lore, and that is Half-Life 2. It sure didn't help that Valve's Gabe Newell tasked his development team
10:54with making a sequel that redefined the first-person shooter, just like, do that again, but better lads,
11:00in addition to the inherent pressure of producing a sequel worthy of one of the most beloved games ever
11:04made. In addition to all of the new technology that had to be built to realise the game's
11:08physics-defying action, Valve also suffered a catastrophic code leak, leading to an unfinished
11:14version of the game being released online. It's kind of like, you know when the Mummy film came out?
11:18Remember that? And it got leaked online? And everyone was just like,
11:21Are you sure you want to release this? I mean, everyone knows everything about it now.
11:25Oh no, no, I promise it'll be better. We'll add more visual effects in. We'll add more
11:30lens bloom, lens flare, just bloom and flare, bloom and flare.
11:33Uh, okay, okay, yeah. Yeah, I guess you could, yeah, you could do that. Yeah, sure. Yeah, okay, sure.
11:40Whatever. However, this was Half-Life 2, so it was very different in the sense that that was a good
11:45game. But unfortunately, this leak definitely crushed morale at the company and forced large portions
11:50of the game to be reworked, causing extensive delays until Half-Life 2 was finally released in
11:54late 2004 after five years of work. But Valve's hard graft paid off, as the end product is basically
12:02the textbook example of an incredibly ambitious sequel that quite arguably exceeds the achievements
12:07of its predecessor. And remember, we're talking about Half-Life that it had to beat. That ain't easy.
12:14And there we go, my friends, those were 10 amazing video games that survived development hell.
12:19Hope you enjoyed that, and let me know what you thought about it down in the comments section
12:21below. As always, I've been Jules. You can go follow me over on my socials, where I'm at
12:25RetroJay, but the O is a zero on Instagram, and blue-skining for my lovely and ever-patient
12:30editor Sai over on her social medias here, my friends. But before I go, I just want to say one
12:36thing. First off, please put your suggestions for next week's episode down in the comments
12:39section below. And also, I hope you're treating yourself well, my friend, because we spoke today a lot
12:44about games that were stuck in development hell, and sometimes we too can feel like that
12:48ourselves. We can feel like we're going through the motions and in a bit of a rut.
12:51But you know what I usually find helps me get out of that and put a bit of life back
12:55in my,
12:55well, life? It's usually just by stepping away from the things that cause me the stress and strains,
13:01to get a bit of perspective, to maybe go and do something a bit different, maybe just
13:05exercise the body, just to free up a bit of space for the mind, or do something different,
13:09plan a trip, something that I can look forward to that helps push me forward out of the doldrums a
13:14little bit. And I hope that that advice maybe helps a few of you. But just remember above all
13:18else, just be kind to yourself. If you're stuck in a rut and going through the motions a bit like
13:23that, it's not always going to be your fault, is it? Sometimes it's just the world putting pressure
13:27on us. So don't beat yourself up and things like that, all right? Be kind to yourself. Please,
13:31I implore you. It's the only thing I ever ask. Well, that, and I guess that you tune in and
13:36watch these
13:36silly videos from time to time. Deal? Deal. Okay, as always, I've been Jules. You've been awesome.
13:41Never forget that, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye.
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