Bethesda Game Studios is an anomaly within video games. Once seen as an industry darling, the open-world RPG maker has in the eyes of many been coasting for the past decade and a half off of the universal and undying success of Skyrim. In some ways they may have earned the right to coast, with 60 million Skyrim copies sold cementing their legacy for decades to come. While their output since has certainly been slowed down heavily, BGS has still been making and releasing games – to an increasingly decreasing response. Fallout 4 was fun but flawed, with many of the game’s issues being core to its design and as such tough to fix (though modders of course have since done so). Regardless, it was a massive sales success, securing the next decade of Bethesda operations. Starfield however was different.

In not being tied to any legacy franchises or known IPs, not only was the space-exploration RPG working with a lower potential sales floor, but BGS also needed to make the world of Starfield one which players are interested in beyond its gameplay mechanics. This didn’t quite pan out, with many players lamenting its basic regurgitation of old sci-fi concepts while lacking the purposeful world design which previous BGS games managed. Combine this with seemingly slower sales and a lack of interest from modders and Starfield’s future appeared to be somewhat in jeopardy.

This seemed to be a pivotal moment for Bethesda, and so for the first time in decades they did what fans had been asking – they made the game better. Starfield is Bethesda Game Studios’ most improved title. That’s not to say that it’s their best, nor does it necessarily mean that it’s good; but it is their most improved game. Even so, I remain unsure as to whether such improvements will be enough to turn the tides on what many believe to be a failed experiment.

First thing’s first, what do I mean by most improved game? Contrary to how it may seem, all of Bethesda Game Studios’ releases from Skyrim onwards have been privy to plenty of post-launch patches. While many of these updates wound up breaking the games in one form or another, it would be false to claim that they have not fixed hundreds of various bugs and issues over the years.

When I talk about an improved game, I am referring to more substantive updates, be it technological, visual or most importantly gameplay-altering. In this regard, Starfield has been by far the most supported. Before we get to that however, it is worth looking back at how both Skyrim and Fallout 4 evolved over the years.

Skyrim in particular is a bit of an odd duck. As mentioned, the evergreen 5th entry in The Elder Scrolls series has been released and re-released countless times. While some of these were more basic ports filled with user-generated content (and others offering more comprehensive visual upgrades), those who bought the base version of the game back in 2011 were still treated to a select number of welcome additions and improvements between launch and its 1.9 update in 2013:

• Added the ability to engage in mounted combat
• More varied kill cam cinematics
• New melee weapon kill animations
• Legendary Difficulty with new mechanics
• Legendary Skills system
• Support for the Steam Workshop
• Back-end improvements to be 4GB aware
• Slight visual improvement with optional shadows added to grass
• Companions equip better weapons and armour if given to them
• Imperial Light Armor can be crafted

As can be seen, even amongst the relatively short list of notable enhancements, only a few of these are what I would call substantial. In terms of gameplay-altering additions, you’ve pretty much only got the addition of the Legendary Difficulty and the ability to engage in mounted combat – not that anyone actually uses the latter. As expected, there was also a set of DLC packs released, but I’m not counting paid content into the equation.

Of course, this would mark just the beginning of Skyrim’s long life through approximately 1000 (more like half a dozen) re-releases. Unfortunately all of these would require repurchasing the entire game and so in terms of post-launch support, we’ll be treating Skyrim: Special Edition as its own entity.

Released in 2016, this then-current-gen remaster was built upon an updated form of the Creation Engine, allowing the title to be 64-bit aware while also throwing in a bunch of Creation content and visual enhancements (including but not limited to higher-res textures; new shaders; volumetrics and more). In terms of what was added after-the-fact, Skyrim Special Edition continued to keep things relatively light:

• Creation Club added allowing for user-created mods
• Added a message of the day (used primarily for promotion)
• Support for additional player homes (mainly to allow for Creation Club content)
• Survival mode refinements
• Equipment stat adjustments
• Ammo weights were set to zero
• Support for Ultrawide monitors
• Official Steam Deck support

Outside of these minor improvements, Skyrim Special Edition’s post-launch updates comprised primarily of additions to their Creation Club mods; making the process of buying and installing these add-ons more seamless; improving the store’s UI/UX and fixing bugs which were introduced as part of the Special Edition release.

When it came to Skyrim, if you were wanting to receive any new improvements or added content of note you pretty much had to pay up for the pleasure. Be it the original release, Skyrim Special Edition or the more recent Anniversary Edition, the most you could look forward to in the way of post-launch support was limited to tenuous bug fixes and some small surprises.

Then again, the industry was in a pretty different place (especially back in 2011) and so expectations for such support were rather low.

Released in 2015, Fallout 4 was Bethesda Game Studios’ next big single-player open world RPG. Launching to high praise from the mainstream (with more particular problems by long-time fans of the franchise), Fallout 4 was an immediate success, shipping over 12 million copies in its first 24 hours and allowing Bethesda to continue being Bethesda.

Like with Skyrim, Fallout 4 received a number of paid re-releases over the years, adding little outside of DLC and creation club content, with the only free updates of note introducing the following:

• New Survival difficulty with altered mechanics
• Added ability to rotate an object you are holding 
• More than 300 new player names added to Codsworth's vocabulary
• Status menu for settlers in your settlements
• Additional art customization added to the Workshop
• New store art type for Workshop settlements
• Quality-of-life improvements to the Workshop
• Support for High Resolution Texture Pack 
• New ambient occlusion option: HBAO+
• Widescreen and Ultra-widescreen support
• Weapon debris effects (NVIDIA cards only)
• Added a message of the day (used primarily for promotion)

On a technical level, Fallout 4 received minimal improvements, with many of the ones it did introduce winding up to be double-edged swords. The weapon debris effects were fun, but no longer function and can even lead to game crashes. A high-resolution texture pack is always welcome, even if the differences did not justify the necessary SSD space for some. Official ultrawide support was a long-time coming…unfortunately its implementation left plenty to be desired.

Perhaps the most substantial tech improvement came with the next-gen update. While many 7th-8th gen upgrades/remasters were treated as separate products necessitating an entirely new purchase, by the time of Fallout 4’s next-gen patch having a paid upgrade was more likely to be the exception rather than the rule.

Thankfully Bethesda followed the shifting tides and so PS5 and Xbox Series X users were treated to a free bespoke 9th-gen upgrade:

Next-gen patch

• Native PS5 and Xbox Series applications
  • Performance mode
  • Quality mode
• Steam Deck Verified
• 9 Free Creation Club Items

Though it took a couple further updates to be stabilised, the next-gen patch was a notable upgrade over its previous console offering, allowing users to select between 30, 40 and 60fps – with unlocked framerates being available as well. Unfortunately for me, even the next-gen patch continues to be rather unplayable due to the fact that Fallout 4’s field-of-view remains woefully low with no way to adjust it. That’s not to mention the classic problems which come alongside pretty much any update by Bethesda: bringing back old bugs; introducing new ones while also breaking aspects of the game.

Content-wise, Fallout 4 received very little in the way of free stuff, with the only real additions being the expected inclusion of a Legendary-esque mode (aka. Survival difficulty); a couple extra cosmetic art pieces and a bunch of new names for Codsworth to be able to say.

Of course, Fallout 4 saw plenty in the way of new gameplay additions, but pretty much all of it required the purchase of official DLC or Bethesda’s favourite creation: Creations. That said, the next-gen patch did offer a slight taste of the Creation Club’s content with 9 free items being offered. Still, for a game with so many different issues expressed by different sides of the fandom over the years, Fallout 4’s post-launch support felt mostly like Bethesda trucking along as usual.

In not being tied to any previous IP or franchise, Starfield had a lot to prove, especially in the wake of increasing amounts of criticism thrown towards the studio over the years. Unfortunately for both Bethesda and its fans, reception towards Starfield was far from astronomical.

Now under the Microsoft umbrella, we do not know how many copies of Starfield have been sold, with the only official metric being the number of total players – a rather useless one given that it was a day-one Xbox Game Pass addition. Still, it’s safe to assume that Starfield’s performance did not match that of Fallout 4 or Skyrim. Combined with a poorer reception (mixed in with relative disinterest) and it was quite clear that for the first time modders weren’t going to fix it.

Though still a million light years away when compared to the likes of No Man’s Sky, Bethesda has shown a greater commitment to improving Starfield more so than any of their other single-player offerings. From pretty much the very first update, Starfield already received more technical improvements than perhaps Fallout 4 and Skyrim combined (not including the Special Edition), with the first set of patches adding:

• Display improvements including brightness/contrast controls; HDR adjustments; expanded ultrawide support and more
• FOV sliders
• DLSS; DLAA; Frame-generation
• AMD FSR 3
• Support for Intel XeSS
• Visual improvements:
  • Contact shadows
  • Water reflections
  • Character skin
  • More

While not as comprehensive as the enhancements introduced with Skyrim’s Special Edition, many of the technical improvements added to Starfield in its relatively early days are arguably more impactful, with the inclusion of an FOV slider allowing players more freedom in how the game and its world is presented.

Though it similarly should have been available as standard from the get-go, the much-needed additions of brightness and contrast sliders could make for drastic visual improvements, removing the washed-out grey look presented by the default settings. Of course, though not a function of Bethesda’s own making, adding support for DLSS; FSR; XeSS and the like made for an immediate uptick in visuals and performance.

Should everything listed above have been available at launch? Absolutely, and the fact that they weren’t is testament somewhat to Bethesda’s outdated ways. Still, they did wind up adding them in the end, and far sooner than many would have expected (although the bar in this regard is 6 feet underground).

Perhaps the most interesting example of post-launch support however came in the form of gameplay-altering updates – something which was previously primarily limited to paid DLC.

Starting off somewhat slow, Starfield’s first slew of updates kept mostly to the technical sides of things, but did still introduce some welcome changes/additions:

• New camera options when engaged in dialogue
• Adjusted stealth to be a bit more forgiving
• Photomode expressions
• You could now open doors and harvest with the scanner opened 
• New melee weapon tiers
• Ability to modify melee weapons
• Ammo crafting
• Improved surface maps
• Full difficulty customisation across the board
• Bounty scanner mechanic
• Trackers Alliance missions
• Creations

For Bethesda standards these small additions are already impressive – though as with everything Bethesda there are a number of caveats. Being able to pick a different camera option during dialogue served more as a fix for player complaints. Still, it was a fix. Fleshing out the melee system is appreciated, but still feels lesser compared to Fallout 4’s hand-to-hand weapons. Improved surface maps was one of the most requested features, again, due to the fact that Bethesda’s previous offerings were better in this regard from the get-go.

The Trackers Alliance bounty system unfortunately functioned more as a way to get players to check out the newly-launched Creations menu, giving you what feels like a free demo for the creation before needing to splash out cash for the remainder of the missions.

Even the new difficulty customisation was born from complaints that Starfield was balanced poorly, with tough enemies primarily being boring bullet sponges. In this regard, Bethesda did go above and beyond, letting you tweak pretty much any parameter you desired. Still, while certainly a solution to the problem, it very much feels like Bethesda saying “fine, you can do it yourself”. Am I glad that the option was included? Yes, but I do wish it perhaps came alongside a suite of new default difficulties tuned by Bethesda themselves.

All that said, whether it be due to the game lacking in one regard or another, or as a result of strong backlash, Starfield was already seeing more substantive improvements than anything else the studio has worked on (again, Fallout 76 not included).

Though it would take some time, the next set of updates for Starfield would end up being even more significant.

While much smaller in terms of numbered improvements/additions, Starfield’s next suite of patches would bring in some genuine surprises. Since as far back as the early days of the Gamebryo engine, Bethesda have struggled with implementing land vehicles, so much so that when Starfield launched without any such traversal options, many assumed that the Creation Engine simply could not handle it.

Yet, come the big May update and Bethesda would officially unveil the Rev-8 land vehicle. The controls are somewhat clunky and the physics may not be the best, but adding a whole new way to traverse Starfield’s planets is a feat which many fans thought to be impossible for Bethesda to achieve – especially going on to then offer it for free.

This is where they lose a whole bunch of brownie points however, with the studio later reflecting on whether they should have held the Rev-8 back to be kept as paid DLC in order to flesh out the ill-fated Shattered Space expansion. Big aura loss for Bethesda imo. Still, the update was ultimately free, and showed that Bethesda were willing to do more than the bare minimum when push came to shove.

This second set of updates was also a big deal on the technical side of things; for consoles at least. Controversially locked to just 30fps at launch, Starfield would later receive a pretty comprehensive performance update, which like the difficulty options, allowed for many different permutations.

Again, I would argue that the studio should have put more effort into curating each mode so that players don’t need to wait for Digital Foundry’s recommended toggles, but the additional choices were highly-appreciated nonetheless.

PC players weren’t left out either, with new ‘Very Low’ graphics settings allowing for those with weaker rigs to suffer slightly less. Rounding out the tech improvements was a new pass on the game’s lighting to make it slightly better.

Following another relatively lengthy bout of silence, Bethesda and Starfield would return, announcing its PlayStation 5 release alongside another major free content update – the biggest one yet. Launched in alignment with the paid Terran Armada DLC, the free ‘Free Lanes’ update seems to have done its darndest to try and make this version of Starfield as appealing as it can be.

No, it didn’t give us completely seamless traversal, nor can players fly in low-orbit. They didn’t overhaul the story and procedural generation hasn’t been removed. That said, the Free Lanes update is by far Bethesda’s most expansive yet, introducing:

• Cruise mode to travel in open space or to POI locations between planets inside a star system
• X-Tech crafting to Weapons and Armor
• Additional Quality Tiers to weapons and suits
• Rank 4 Legendary effects for weapons and suits
• Upgrade modules which can be installed to improve one attribute of a weapon or Suit
• New weapon skins
• Buildable ship optimization terminal
• Ship Equipment schematics
• Legendary Enemies with modifiers and adjustable settings
• Quantum Entanglement Device making new game plus more useful
• Quantum Essence, letting you further upgrade Starborn Powers
• New Database menu for improved tracking
• New vehicle: Moon Jumper
• New player house
• Collectible Colony Wars Action Heroes which provide benefits when found
• Anchorpoint Station POI
• New Dungeons, Space Encounters, and Points of Interest throughout the game
• Adjusted distribution and cooldown timers for placement of points of interest on planets
• Additional photomode poses for the Rev-8.

In terms of free-yet-tangible updates, Free Lanes is genuinely quite impressive. Unlike the land vehicles, I don't think Bethesda is going to find a way to figure out interplanetary travel in Starfield. Yet, the newly added Cruise Mode goes a decent way into helping create such an illusion.

As expected, it is far from perfect (with the invisible bubble around planets being a bit jarring), but there’s no denying that Cruise Mode is a great deal more preferable when compared to its launch state.

I will always lament the fact that an enemy’s loot is no longer defined by what they’re wearing in Starfield. Still, the introduction of X-tech does allow for greater satisfaction in the act of looting. Again, its gameplay loop remains fundamentally different to that of Skyrim or Fallout, but adding to the overall sandbox that is Starfield with new quality tiers, customisation options and upgrade paths does make for a much more fleshed out-feeling world.

The same can apply to legendary modifiers, giving the universe of 1000 planets a  somewhat greater feeling of variety.

Likewise, the Quantum Essence mechanic offers new and alternative ways to upgrade your character while giving the new game plus mode more of a reason to exist. Throwing in another land vehicle was nice too, making it feel a bit more grounded in the world and less like a post-launch add-on.

Topping it all off is the addition of loads of new points-of-interest / dungeons. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect to Starfield at launch, its woeful lack of variety when it came to POIs and dungeons would have felt underserved in even a small open world – let alone one consisting of 1000 planets.

At the scale which they chose to present the game in, Starfield will never truly be able to match the density and variety seen with the likes of Skyrim. Still, taking the time to introduce new POIs and dungeons, while tweaking the algorithm of how they’re discovered again helps to mask the illusion of Starfield’s cell-based nature. It’ll never be Skyrim or Fallout 4, but it is a much better imitation.

How many more updates Starfield will receive, and how substantive they will be remains to be seen. It isn’t lost on me that the most significant updates came alongside new ways to give Bethesda money – with the arrivals of Shattered Space and Terran Armada / the PS5 launch coinciding with some of the most impactful patches.

With the two promised DLCs now being delivered, and the game available on PS5, does Bethesda still have motivation to continue to improve starfield? I hope so.

Even with these many updates and improvements however, I still have little interest in returning to Starfield. After checking it out at launch and deciding that its core changes were not for me, these many additions to Starfield have yet to give me what I want from a Bethesda game. That said, Starfield is Starfield, and so in that regard, Bethesda have made it the best version of itself that it can be. Starfield in 2026 is Bethesda’s most improved game, but when it comes to Bethesda you always have to grade on a curve.

KitGuru says: What do you think of Bethesda’s post-launch support for Starfield? Have your opinions on the game shifted with time? Can Starfield ever break the ceiling set by its core design decisions? Let us know your thoughts down below.

The post KitGuru Games: Starfield is Bethesda’s Most Improved Game* first appeared on KitGuru.

It would be hard to argue that NVIDIA’s DLSS technologies haven’t been a net positive to the PC space, with the machine-learning based upscaler successfully translating lower resolution inputs into a final image which is perceivably sharper while hogging fewer resources. Though somewhat more contentious, the next evolution of DLSS came in the form of Frame Generation, using ML in order to generate additional frames for high-refresh rate gaming. Both techniques can have their issues, but generally speaking they’ve allowed for more people to experience higher-end titles at increased frame rates. DLSS 5, however, takes a sharp pivot, with a very different end goal in mind than the performance-boosting versions that came before.

Described as “the company’s most significant breakthrough in computer graphics since the debut of real-time ray tracing in 2018,” this lighting-focused technique is attempting to go beyond a game’s peak, “bridging the divide between rendering and reality”. The thing is, unlike all other forms of DLSS, this 5th iteration seems to be missing the point of why we appreciate this ever-evolving technology – trying to give us what it thinks we want instead of what is actually desired.

First and foremost I wish to acknowledge a couple things. As per NVIDIA themselves, this technology is still in a pre-release state and so the final product could wind up being different. Secondly, lighting can have a huge impact, especially on faces. One needs to go no further back than with the announcement of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 in which fans protested against MJ’s new face model – only for the devs to claim that her design had not changed but an alteration to the lighting is what led to the disparity.

All this is to say that I am not an expert on lighting, nor have I studied the structure of the human face and how it reacts to different lighting scenarios. Even so, my initial reaction to NVIDIA's latest DLSS 5 was immediate and visceral.

Unlike all other forms of DLSS, it was clear that this new technique was operating with a different goal to the rest. In trying to “deliver a new level of photoreal computer graphics previously only achieved in Hollywood visual effects” DLSS 5 does give each shot a certain level of added perceived depth and realism – but it does so (in my opinion) in a way which can take away from the game’s intended art design and aesthetics.

While an oversimplification, this new “AI-Powered Breakthrough“ is trying to do something which none of the other forms of DLSS have. With DLSS Super Resolution, machine learning was used in order to take a lower-res frame and make it appear higher resolution. Luckily, NVIDIA already knows what a higher-res version of the frame would look like, because resolution is scalable and so the model can be trained on the exact game running at 4K or greater.

The same applies to DLSS Frame Generation. Outside of the odd outlier, we already know what a game running at 120fps and beyond should look like, so the inserted frames don't look out of place. 

DLSS 5 on the other hand reaches outside of the confines of the game, and uses an external model in order to approximate what a game with more evolved lighting could look like. This desire to go beyond can be seen throughout NVIDIA’s press release, claiming that the technology “infuses pixels with photoreal lighting and materials. Bridging the divide between rendering and reality.”

The company states that the tools are able to be tweaked by developers in order to create a final result which aligns with their own vision, utilising “a game’s color and motion vectors for each frame as input, and uses an AI model to infuse the scene with photoreal lighting and materials that are anchored to source 3D content and consistent from frame to frame”. Assuming this to be the case, and that developers do go in and personalise the variables, DLSS 5 is still attempting to operate in an entirely different ballpark than prior DLSS features.

A game’s internal lighting model could have its own issues with fidelity and consistency, but at the very least it is weaved into the game itself and as such has an understanding of its role within the engine pipeline. In the examples shown so far, DLSS 5's guesswork approach here seems to deliver an uncanny end result and to me, it does look jarring. 

A majority of the shots shared so far focus on close-ups of faces and slowly panning camera sweeps; two relatively static experiences and yet even at its best the end result feels somewhat uninviting. All this is without going into the whole yass-ification of each character, looking to me like they’ve just come fresh out of a beauty salon.

As mentioned, this is all relatively early technology and so I can’t judge too much but, as a layman, the opening quote from NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told me pretty much all I needed to know: “DLSS 5 is the GPT moment for graphics”. Whether I agree or not with its intentions, DLSS 5 is going in a different direction to the rest of NVIDIA’s efforts.

If nothing else, perhaps a move away from the ‘DLSS’ framework of branding could make for greater clarity in what this new technology is and how it differs on a fundamental level. We will have to wait and see as and when NVIDIA’s DLSS 5 DLSL (Deep Learning Super Lighting) gets closer to a public release.

KitGuru says: What was your initial reaction to DLSS 5? Do you see any benefits to the technology?

The post KitGuru Games: DLSS 5 misses the point first appeared on KitGuru.

Sony’s recent push towards live-service games has yielded few successes so far, but equally as few failures. That’s not for lack of trying however, with the console manufacturer previously stating that they had greenlit the development of a dozen different ‘games as a service’ titles across its suite of PlayStation studios – most of which were eventually cancelled. While there is no arguing that a game which was clearly on the path towards failure shouldn’t be canned before it’s allowed to release, many of the projects which Sony would later cancel came alongside lay-offs and studio closures.

Such is the case with the ill-fated BluePoint Games, whose flawless reputation and repertoire could not save it from being shut down following the cancellation of its years-in-development multiplayer live-service God of War game. But what if the project was able to come together and be released? What if most of Sony’s cancelled PS5 games found their way past the finish line? This is an ode to some of the games we never got.

Back in 2022 during Sony’s Business Segment Briefing, the then-President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment ‘Jim Ryan’ revealed that the console maker was planning to have launched a total of 12 live-service titles by the end of the 2025 Fiscal Year.

Cut to what is pretty much the end of the 2025 Fiscal year and very few of those dozen games have been released, with a majority of them ultimately winding up cancelled.

As mentioned, a few titles have made it past the finish line, with the annual MLB The Show continuing to truck along; Helldivers II taking everyone by surprise and the world by storm; and of course Concord – doing pretty much the opposite of Helldivers in becoming one of the most infamous failed launches in perhaps decades. That said, at the very least Concord was able to be released and judged by the world (and boy did they judge).

For better or for worse, most of the promised dozen live-service offerings will never come to be and as such won’t have the opportunity to succeed or fail. Monetarily, this likely made the most sense for Sony, but as a fan, it’s hard not to imagine what could have been had the seeds been allowed to fully fruit. From Firesprite Studio’s ‘Project Copper’ to The Last of Us Online; Spider-Man: The Great Web and of course BluePoint’s live-service God of War game, let's speculate and pontificate about some of the games we never got.

Let’s start with Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Online, not only due to the fact that it was at one point my most anticipated title, but also because of the fact that in many ways it spawned from ideas created prior to Sony’s live-service push. For the uninitiated, the original TLOU launched back in 2013 alongside a multiplayer mode known as Factions. While The Last of Us is first and foremost a single-player narrative driven experience, the Factions mode felt like more than just a slapdash PvP mode intended to fill out the package.

Of course, in today’s day and age, Factions is lacking somewhat in its depth and so when The Last of Us Part II was announced to be getting its own multiplayer mode, my mind raced with the potential. This then became doubly so when Naughty Dog revealed later on that TLOU Part II would not include any multiplayer elements, instead spinning the PvP mode off into its own bespoke experience.

Between The Last of Us Online’s announcement and cancellation, we did not get too much in the way of details. That said, based on the few bits of concept art released and statements from the team, it appeared as though TLOU Online would be set in San Francisco while focusing on a new suite of characters.

Unfortunately, this is pretty much all we learned officially regarding the game, with Naughty Dog / Sony ultimately canning the project in order to focus on what the team does best – story focused single player games.

That said, when I think about what could have been, I am met with a sense of sadness. The Last of Us Part II’s gameplay was peak and is in many ways the cleanest, smoothest and most satisfying 3rd person shooting / combat I’ve experienced. When compared to the first game, Part II feels infinitely more freeing in what you as your character can do and perform – a benefit not only to the moment-to-moment gameplay but also the overall ability to strategise and plan. This worked great in the context of Part II’s narrative and would have been transformative for TLOU Online.

Even more interesting however would have been to see what Naughty Dog’s plan for the overall gameplay loop was. In case you didn’t play it back in the day, The Last of Us Factions was essentially a standard map-based PvP shooter in which the main goal was simply to kill the enemy team (while also occasionally picking up some necessary resources). Your progress in these matches would then feed into the game’s camp system, which was just a menu showing how many people are present in your ‘base’ and their current status. Performing well in matches would allow your base to expand and improve – though the impact of this was minimal and served primarily as a fail state which you hope to avoid.

Though its actual gameplay did little to reflect it, much of the ‘narrative’ of the Factions game mode functioned somewhat like a proto-extraction shooter. Now, imagine Naughty Dog took TLOU’s Factions mode as a baseline to then expand upon, what could have been? Well, in my mind, The Last of Us Online could have been ARC Raiders before ARC Raiders.

In a perfect world, The Last of Us Online would have had you create a character and set up a basic base/campsite which you would operate in. Depending on how ambitious the team wanted to be, the camp system itself could have been a fully explorable and customisable base, the evolution and progress of which you could experience in real-time.

Of course, you need resources to keep your camp alive, and so players would then pick a spot on the open-world map to explore and scavenge for materials. Like any good extraction shooter, the different areas would offer different resources of varying rarities, and so players have to keep their wits about them when deciding where to go next.

Where The Last of Us Online could truly have shined however was in its combat. As mentioned, TLOU Part II’s gameplay is peak and needs little in the way of change, but it’s the setup surrounding the combat which could have made for a dynamic and evolving experience.

The world of The Last of Us consists of two primary enemy types: infected and humans. This already offered a strong degree of variety, with the former being primarily melee focused foes with somewhat of a predictable level of reactivity. Humans on the other hand are more cunning, sneaky and of course, strapped; necessitating a whole different approach. Combine these two elements while introducing a 3rd – multiplayer PvP – and you have a recipe for a potentially deep and dynamic world.

Alongside NPC factions such as the Fireflies; WLF; Seraphites and rattlers, players would have to contend with other real-world players and their own self-made factions. Much of what was relegated to a menu in the original TLOU Factions could be realised in a fully explorable space, making for a survival crafter extraction shooter hybrid which could have been unmatched.

All of this, alongside the typical Naughty Dog level of care and polish across every aspect (visuals; audio; animation; music; voice acting etc…) would have made for my dream game. Alas, it will forever remain a dream.

Another cancelled title (one which actually resulted in the closure of the studio) was Project Camden. This game, appropriately being developed by PlayStation’s London Studio, was to be a co-op title set in a fictionalised London. While little was shared regarding the project at the time, we did get at least one piece of concept art which showed off the game’s intended visual aesthetic of vibrant colours and a blend of fantasy crossed with contemporary elements.

While far from PlayStation’s most prestigious team, London Studio filled a particular gap in the console maker’s repertoire and, as they were allowed more budget and freedom, were beginning to present a great deal of potential. Plus they’ll always have a place in my heart thanks to the EyeToy games and of course PlayStation Home (R.I.P.)

Back to Project Camden, we fortunately don’t need to speculate too much on what the game would have been, as a number of the former developers at London Studio would go on to found Twisted Works. This newly created team’s first project is titled Casts Outs and borrows from many of the elements which they were working on previously.

Of course, the game is an entirely different product operating on a presumably smaller budget, but here’s to hoping that Casts Outs proves to have a fun and replayable formula; giving a bit of a silver lining to the end of London Studio and Project Camden. We will have to wait and see.

Though never officially announced, we would learn that following the release of Days Gone, Sony’s Bend Studio began working on an open-world live-service title built upon the gameplay systems developed for the aforementioned Days Gone. Later leaked to have been titled Project Mirror Pond, what little was discovered regarding the game indicated that it would have been a 3rd-person shooter featuring military-grade weaponry.

So, what could have been had Mirror Pond not been cancelled and a 3rd of Bend Studio’s developers weren’t laid off? Well, Days Gone seems like a good place to start.

While critiqued somewhat upon its initial release for being a bit of a jack-of-all-trades (while suffering from a number of bugs), Days Gone is looked back upon more fondly nowadays.

Though the story was whatever, Days Gone’s emphasis on its motorbike, how it factored into the open world and its exploration did make for a compelling gameplay loop. Needing to manage your fuel efficiently while navigating towards your destination made the moments in between the action feel more purposeful and intentional, where each detour needed to be considered.

I could imagine a shooter from Bend Studio in which you and your squad can group up to complete missions together. One could be the designated driver while the others keep watch for enemies as you try to navigate some harsh lands.

Narrative-wise and thematically, the game could have gone anywhere. With all we have to go off of being some early models of military weaponry, Mirror Pond could have been a modern military shooter; it could be a period piece set one of the world’s many historical wars; it could be set 10,000 years in the future but just so happen to feature real-world styled guns – we don’t know. But that is part of what makes its cancellation so frustrating to see.

Bend Studio was a team on the rise, coming off of their first proper big budget game in generations; one which showcased their potential. While a live-service title might not have been my dream game from the team, the core of Days Gone could have served as an excellent base for Project Mirror Pond. I guess we’ll never know.

One cancelled title which we know far more about however (even if by unfortunate circumstances) is Spider-Man: The Great Web. Low-key teased in one of Spider-Man 2’s side missions, this live-service title would have pretty much been Spider-Man 2 but in multiplayer while also featuring multiversal portals. It sounds perfect, and based on the leaked internal footage, it looked perfect.

Unlike some, I did genuinely enjoy the story of Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2. Even so, across 2018’s entry, Miles Morales and Spider-Man 2, by far the best aspect of these titles are their gameplay. I’ve 100% all three of the games and would happily do it all over again, simply due to the fact that controlling Spider-Man (be it during combat or when swinging around New York) was nothing less than an absolute pleasure. Each successive entry managed to refine the formula while giving players even more control over the Spider-Men, culminating in gameplay mechanics which I could play forever.

Spider-Man: The Great Web would have provided all this and more. While the notion of a multiplayer Spider-Man game does little to ignite excitement from me, a live-service Spider-Verse title would have been stellar. Keeping watch over a New York City which actually evolves over time in real-time would have been the closest we would ever get to actually becoming Spider-Man.

Thanks to its live-service nature, the game could see different gangs take hold over different boroughs, perhaps even being altered based on what activities players have engaged in (Helldivers style).

Each Season a different villain could rise up and try to take over the city, necessitating you to power up and prepare in order to take them down. There is almost a century worth of Spider-Man stories which could be pulled from, offering near-endless potential for what could be added in an update. There could even be a mini game where you have to race your Spider-Car around the city all the while smashing into the iconic arch villain ‘The Wall’. The opportunities are endless.

That’s not even accounting for the Spider-Verse side of things, which not only makes for even more creative potential, but opens the floodgates for character customisation. Being able to create your own Spider-Man, obtaining different multiversal powers while customising your suit based on 100s of different outfits the Spider-People have worn over the decades would not only have been peak fantasy fulfilment – but if Sony wanted to go this route – would have made absolute BANK if these suits were released as paid cosmetics.

The blueprint was already there. Across the three Spider-Man games developed by Insomniac, we’ve gotten a cavalcade of different combat styles; moves; animations; activities; swinging mechanics; finishers; enemies; villains and so much more. Put all of this into a boiling pot, stir it just the right amount, sprinkle in a couple more different variations of the above and you’ve got yourself the perfect live-service Spider-Man game.

This one especially hurts as we’ve seen exactly what Insomniac Games were planning, and in my opinion it looked perfect. I guess I’ll go replay Spider-Man 2 for now.

Project Copper suffered from quite a few setbacks during its in-development existence. Originally being helmed by Lucid Games – the team behind the failed-yet-pretty-fun destruction derby PS5 exclusive Destruction All-Stars – this title would have seen the iconic PlayStation series Twisted Metal return in live-service form. Said to have been centred around Battle Royale mechanics, the project would later get taken over by Firesprite studios before ultimately being cancelled.

So, what would this new incarnation of Twisted Metal have been had it come to fruition? Well, the aforementioned Destruction All-Stars would be a good place to start. Though the PS5 launch-window title failed to capture an audience and was left to die in obscurity, the game itself was a pretty solid time.

The diving mechanics were fun, the feedback was satisfying and the parkour additions offered a nice twist to the formula. Though I had no issues with it, the primary complaint I saw from the game was in its visual style. Going for that Fortnite-esque character design tied in with Hero Shooter attitude led to a game which felt somewhat generic.

Twisted Metal on the other has its own distinct and unique aesthetic – one which it crafted decades ago. Thus, combine the overall set-up and gameplay of Destruction All-Stars with the visual identity and iconography of Twisted Metal and you’ve already got yourself a strong start.

In terms of its live-service-ness, the game could have been kept fresh with new vehicles; characters; weapons; arenas; customisation parts; takedown animations alongside all the live-service battle pass fluff. Hell, we could have even gotten Anthony Mackie and Stephanie Beatriz skins based on the show.

While I’m not too mad that it never came to be, I do see the potential, especially as I feel like this would have been the only way we would get a new Twisted Metal.

Last but not least, we come to the cancellation and studio closure which spawned this discussion. Hot off the heels of the excellent Demon’s Souls Remake, BluePoint Games would be acquired by Sony in a move which many celebrated, as it marked the logical conclusion to over a decade worth of collaborations. Unfortunately, nothing has come from this acquisition (aside from their assisted development on God of War Ragnarök).

Speaking of God of War, we would later learn through leaks that prior to the studio’s closure BluePoint Games were working on a live-service multiplayer God of War title. To be honest, I initially struggled to think of a formula which would work with such a concept. God of War is very much a single-player experience and one which could not easily be translated. After all, it's called God of War not Gods of Wars.

Still, based on the few leaked screenshots which seemed to showcase Hades’ armoury alongside a bunch of different weapons, an idea did spring to mind.

Similar to the recently-released God of War Sons of Sparta, this ill-fated project from BluePoint Games – assuming it wanted to fit into the rest of the God of War canon – would have been set in the past, possibly before any of the original trilogy took place. The game could see you taking on different missions for the gods, selecting your weapon and then going out to battle with and against armies of enemies.

The concept could work regardless of whether they went for the OG trilogy perspective or the Norse Era style; or even something else new. Irrespective of perspective, I picture a somewhat musou-styled game in which you are tearing through hundreds of enemies in the name of Ares or Hades or whoever they need to fit the story.

The main thing that stumps me is how Kratos would factor into all of it. Of course, initially you would assume that we would get to play as Kratos. But how would that work in the context of a live-service multiplayer title? Will they go the Dying Light route of having all players look the same, would Kratos be one of multiple named characters to choose from? After all, Ragnarök did flirt with the idea of playing as other characters. Or, would Kratos have been the general for an army which you and all other players are a part of; working under his leadership, rising the ranks, learning new abilities and gaining his respect. I doubt it.

Despite The Last of Us being the more narrative-focused franchise, God of War – amongst all these above projects – makes the least sense to me to be turned into a live-service multiplayer title. To be frank, I understand why Sony cancelled the game, in fact it likely should never have been greenlit in the first place. Even so, BluePoint Games did not deserve to be shut down, and the industry is worse off without them.

Of course, I am but a single person with my own opinions. Across all the cancelled projects we covered, the only ones which I was disappointed in hearing about their ultimate fates were The Last of Us Online and Spider-Man: The Great Web. Well, that’s not quite true, as each of these cancellations stung in their own way.

Like I said at the start, I am not denying that most of these games probably should have been cancelled. However, Sony (who greenlit the projects) contributed to years worth of wasted work and effort which could have been going towards something else, only to then lay-off a large number of developers or entire studios – causing significant brain drain in the games industry.

For some developers, this situation could be seen as a lesson learned, while for others these cancelled titles might represent their final projects as part of game development. Regardless, I’d argue that this whole live-service roller coaster which Sony has been riding for the past half a decade has been a net negative to video games; and while I will always yearn for some of the projects which never came to be, at this point I just want to get off of the coaster.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of Sony’s whole live-service push? Which of the cancelled projects do you think had the most potential to succeed long-term? Which of the games were you actually looking forward to / hoping would release? Let us know down below.

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