Starbreeze’s The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was cancelled in 2003. Obviously, as we all now know, it wasn’t cancelled for long, but Universal Games pulled the plug on the now-iconic cult-classic Xbox game.
To this day, Butcher Bay is held up as a key example of immersion in games. Released on Original Xbox and then later improved on PC, the game was originally designed to launch on Xbox, PS2, and PC at the same time. Unfortunately, during development, the game was completely cancelled, and Starbreeze developers were almost out of a job.
“The simplified story is that the game looked like shit all the way up to beta,” Andersson said. “The publisher, both Vivendi and Universal, had no faith in our ability to finish that project. And I understand why. It didn’t play well, it didn’t look well, it barely ran, and we were signed up to do both the PlayStation 2 and Xbox version.”
While the PS2 was the most popular system of its time, it was also much weaker than the Xbox. Microsoft’s console had access to more advanced rendering features, a better CPU, a hard-drive that could be used to cache assets, and a much more powerful GPU. With dynamic lighting, shaders, and other effects, Escape from Butcher Bay on PS2 was a nightmare.
“The PlayStation version was a couple of months behind,” Andersson explained. With weaker hardware requiring entirely custom solutions, the PS2 version would’ve taken significantly longer to create when the full Xbox game was finished in just 18 months. While the team wanted to bring the game to PS2, they had to make the call: cut the PS2 version or cut the game.
As Andersson explains, though, this vital decision to save the game from certain demise wasn’t really told to the game’s developers. The vast majority of Butcher Bay’s developers had no idea that Vivendi decided to scrap the project. Not just the PS2 version, but all versions of what became an iconic cult-classic of the Original Xbox and PC.
“At that point in time, the project actually got cancelled by the game publisher, but the fun part is that we were never told,” Andersson said. “And that was very intentional by the game publisher’s producer, Peter Wanat, but he basically went to the movie publisher and asked them for help. Because the game publisher was contractually obliged to deliver a game so he managed to get the game un-cancelled by going around to other powerful people.”
During the time the game was cancelled, the developers at Starbreeze had no idea and continued working on the game. While Wanat was able to convince enough high-up people at Universal to fight for the project’s release, those working on it simply believed the game’s PS2 version was the only actual cancellation.
Andersson explained that they had to “compromise” on The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Sections of the game were cut, locations were slimmed down, and the mystical PS2 port had to be axed in its entirety. “Let’s give this game the best chance of releasing something, whatever that is, and that meant cancelling the PlayStation 2 game,” he said.
“When we were told this after the fact, we were like, ‘wow, we were this close to being out of a job’,” the designer laughed. “But, you know, it did free up resources to finish the game, and we barely finished that game on time.”
With that said, while it was touted as impossible by fans at the time, Andersson believes the PlayStation 2 version would’ve been serviceable. “The PlayStation 2 version, internally, was starting to look pretty impressive,” he said. “Had that version not been cancelled, it might have ended up being the best looking PlayStation 2 game at the time. And had that happened, maybe the game would have made money and saved the studio.”
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay released in 2004 to rave reviews. Afterwards, a PC version of the game released, and a controversial remaster followed a few years later. It’s a phenomenal game, albeit a little rough around the edges, and one that deserves a high-quality remaster.
Andersson himself believes that a remaster or remake is warranted, but the game’s source code is sadly lost. However, with the rise of recompilation and decompilation, there is a hope that Riddick can return to modern gamers complete with cut ideas, and a resolution that doesn’t dip below 360p.
