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What Could Have Been... - The thread of Beta Video Games and Cut Content


Ryannumber1gamer

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This is a thread for discussing the betas of games, and the cut content and changes from games, and even cancelled games altogether. To start off. Here's a game where a shit ton of content was cut.

 

South Park The Stick of Truth: Cut Content

 

Originally, when South Park The Stick of Truth was with THQ, the game had a massive amount of content that ended up being cut in the final game, and apart from some parts remaining in cutscenes, they remain completely missing. Since there's so much to cover, I'll just do this in parts.

 

Vampire Kids Faction:

 

Originally, as seen in several beta trailers and screenshots, The Vampire Kids from the South Park Episode - The Ungroundables was meant to be a completely new faction altogether. These screenshots and trailers show The New Kid, along with Cartman and Kyle fighting against the Vampire Kids. On Top of that, there was meant to be a whole new location and quest with them, where you'd have to go into a graveyard in order to find their base and steal a book from them. They were also seen in a massive fight scene in the trailer. 

 

In the final game, all that remains of this is during one cutscene where both Cartman and Kyle's armies go to Clyde's house and find him with the stick of truth, the vampire kids are seen as some of his army members.

 

Combat610.jpg

 

jBsKh.jpg

 

Girls Faction:

 

Unused dialogue and several beta screenshots show that originally, the girls were going to be a completely new faction altogether who'd you would have to battle and then convince to join your side. Unused dialogue from Wendy also reveals that they were meant to be found in game much faster, where in the final game, you don't do their quests until the final day, in the beta version, they were meant to join up with the boys during the siege on the school to get the stick of truth.

 

south_park_combat_concept_2-610x343.jpg

 

Hippie Faction:
 
More screenshots and unused code in the final game reveal that originally, the hippies from Season 8 of South Park was meant to be another faction, and they would be fought in Cartman's basement (In the original episode, Cartman uses his basement as a prison for hippies). Code in the game also reveals that there would be both adult and child hippies.
 
south-park-damn-hippies.jpg
 
Original Game Story, Factions, and designs:
 
The South Park wiki reveals in the cut content area that the game was meant to be very different, with such things as the Gingers being a rival faction, the fact that Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman were to all be in the same faction, rather than in two different ones, and the first story mission would be the ginger faction kidnapping Cartman's toy, leading to the others to go get it back. On top of this, a Game Informer cover reveals that there were to be much different designs for characters, and others like Santa were to appear in the game as well. 
 
cov_225_l.jpg
 
 
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Crash Twinsanity is the fucking king of cut Crash content. Story elements, levels, one of which were in the demo disc, and musical tracks that somehow made it into the OST.

 

Classroom Chaos could've had a third level featuring a funky big band track that I can't get enough of.

 

 

We could've seen Cortex get sucked into and explore Coco's mind, which is bassically Care-a-lot meets Candy Land!

 

 

The game could've had more hilarious cutscenes, which can be seen in this playlist. There also could've been a third dimension to travel to, as mentioned by Cortex before the crew headed to the tenth dimension. Too bad the development was rushed, but at least we still got a damn good game that's just a bit rough around the edges.

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I'm still salty that the 3D Kirby game was scrapped.

 

Never forgive, never forget.

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With the release of the PC version of GTAV, a lot of info about the "Nice House Heist" has been revealed. Including dialogues, misión approaches and elements.

-The Heist involved Michael & Trevor making an appointment with a real estate to ser a house for sale. This house has a safe which they hace to steal.

-M & T pose as a gay couple. Trevor sounds happy while acting...Michael...not so much.

-There were 3 approaches: Night stealth, hostage taking and clown day stealth. The 3 of the ended with the 2 plus the house owner's wife escaping with a horse.

-In one of the dialogues, Trevor calles Michael "Albert". It's unclear if it's just an alias or it's, in fact, an actual recording from when Michael was called Albert de Silva.

-All the elements point to the house being Madrazo's country house and the kidnapped wife being Patricia (although that still happens in the actual game)

-The safe room both in it's untouched and post-safe-pulling state plus the files that allow the transition are present. Though the room itself isn't present in Madrazo's house in the game

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Since NFS World is shutting down this July I figured I might air out some of that games dirty laundry of cut content or rather content that was promised but never even gave a damn about:

 

-There was a turnpike in the Rockport City section of NFS World that would have lead to Tri City from NFS Undercover that was never even opened. 

 

-There was a supposed to be a track called "Twist Track" to be implemented as a result of a track design contest but the original track designer left the studio.

 

-Canyons in NFS World were 95% done but were unfortunately "DE-prioritized" and never saw the light of day outside of teaser shots on the forums.

 

-There were also connector roads in Palmont that were almost done but like with all the other items in the list it never saw the light of day outside of teaser shots.

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There's a lot of dummied content along all the Final Fantasy franchise, and especially in Final Fantasy VII (unused enemies like the Tonberry, missing events/cutscenes like Palmer at the Honeybee Inn and similar), but i want to focus on the ones related to just the character of Dyne.

 

Dyne-ffvii-field.png

 

Poor bastard has been rewritten like 3 or 4 times before the final release of the game, and all version changed something drastically: one version had him having a knife implanted in his left hand instead of a gun (wonder of that would have worked), another that he wasn't Marlene's real father (obviously Barrett would have filled the spot on that one) and another one had him actually as a playable character (you can tell that by the fact that his attacks resembles Limit Breaks, and he has an unused animation for the Fire spell). In the end though, we got the version we got: not bad, but still lacking the potential of what could have been.

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If early screenshots are to be believed, Paper Mario: Sticker Star had a ton of beta stuff that was scrapped before the final game.

 

GoombaPM3DS.PNG

ScreenPM3DS.PNG

Papermario3dsmole.JPG

PM3DS3.png

 

Well, I say a "ton", I basically just mean stuff that would have made it more like the older Paper Mario games and not whatever the hell piece of crap it ended up being. The inclusion of party members would have been super sweet - but clearly they were scrapped due to the sheer lack of dialogue and story, can't possibly have any real character interactions or world building going on! - and there were some new unique enemies like that Monty Mole boss.

 

Of course, it's clear that the sticker gameplay was well implemented even at this point, and that's the reason why most of this stuff was cut. Party members and stickers just don't work together. Such a shame they removed the tried-and-tested portion in favour of something completely different. I don't for one second think that had this beta version stayed the same it would make Sticker Star instantly better, because fundamentally the problem is the stickers, and as long as they're there it was always doomed to suck. But even so, it's a frustrating tease at what could have been, and what everyone still hopes for from the next Paper Mario game.

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With the release of the PC version of GTAV, a lot of info about the "Nice House Heist" has been revealed. Including dialogues, misión approaches and elements.

-The Heist involved Michael & Trevor making an appointment with a real estate to ser a house for sale. This house has a safe which they hace to steal.

-M & T pose as a gay couple. Trevor sounds happy while acting...Michael...not so much.

-There were 3 approaches: Night stealth, hostage taking and clown day stealth. The 3 of the ended with the 2 plus the house owner's wife escaping with a horse.

-In one of the dialogues, Trevor calles Michael "Albert". It's unclear if it's just an alias or it's, in fact, an actual recording from when Michael was called Albert de Silva.

-All the elements point to the house being Madrazo's country house and the kidnapped wife being Patricia (although that still happens in the actual game)

-The safe room both in it's untouched and post-safe-pulling state plus the files that allow the transition are present. Though the room itself isn't present in Madrazo's house in the game

 

This sounds like it would have been an awesome heist. It'd be better if it was placed 

 

When Michael and Trevor are pissed off at each other near the end of the game, I'd say place the heist between the Bureau Raid and the final heist.

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This sounds like it would have been an awesome heist. It'd be better if it was placed 

 

When Michael and Trevor are pissed off at each other near the end of the game, I'd say place the heist between the Bureau Raid and the final heist.

 

It's mostly sure that it was replaced with the mission "Caida Libre"

 

And now, since I'm in an actual PC, I'll add videos for more details

 

 

 

I forgot to say that the Real Estate contact is in the files and can be added via save editing...though it gives you a busy when calling

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TCRF has a lot of good examples.  But since we are on a Sonic Forum, why not bring up the most notorious Sonic beta of all time?

 

 

Almost every Sonic fan knows about the Hidden Palace Zone, whose art assetts were designed by Craig Stitt.  An interview with Yuji Naka revealed that Hidden Palace Zone was originally intended to be a level where the player would be warped to after collecting the 7 Chaos Emeralds. Once there, they would receive the power to morph into Super Sonic. The idea was ultimately killed and the ability was given to the player immediately.  Craig also talked with Sonic Retro's ICEKnight, mentioning that HPZ was going to be 2 Acts, but then it was cut down to one act.

 

Of course, many hackers have reimplemented the zone as a 2-act zone, using graphics from the Simon Wai beta.  The Sonic 2 Long Version hacks uses the original level for act 1, and a new level design for act 2 ending with a fight with Drill Eggman II.  Later on, Christian Whitehead recreated the original level to be used in the smartphone version of Sonic 2, but then made his own version of the zone, this time ending with a new Eggman boss called "Brass Eggman," while changing the music to the 2P Mystic Cave Zone.  The original level can still be accessed by playing 03 03 03 0B 10 10 10 04 on the level select menu and choosing Hidden Palace.

 

Genocidecityhack.png

Sonic 2 also had a level known as Genocide City that was cut from the game. It later become the basis of the Metropolis Zone.  It is listed in the level select menu in the Simon Wai prototype but selecting it simply brings the player to a empty level. Chemical Plant Zone music plays with Emerald Hill's palette (discovered in Esrael Sonic Editor), and the player will simply fall to their death at the bottom of the stage. Enabling debug reveals that the only objects in this level are the two default objects, a ring and a teleport monitor.

According to Sonic 2 level designer Tom Payne, the name "Genocide City" being chosen was due to the development team's "not quite complete grasp of the English language." During an interview with Payne, he went on to say that the team "may have been looking for a name that sounded dangerous," which resulted in the name "Genocide City" appearing in one of the Sonic 2 betas. It is now believed that Cyber City was the name conceptualized later on in order to remedy the zone's former name.

According to ICEknight, Tom Payne used the theme of the level to create some graphics for an unreleased game called B-Bomb. He then used them in the Sonic Spinball level, The Machine.  The image that you see of the zone is from the Sonic 2 Long Version hack which uses graphics from Bare Knuckle (?) and Sonic and Knuckles.  The music used is of Casino Night 2P.

 

DesertlevelCorrectColor.JPG

The 1992 Sears catalogue has used this mockup image of Sonic in a desert to promote Sonic 2.  It was also going to be its own zone, known as Dust Hill, created by Brenda Ross of STI from a note by Yuji Naka that translates to Desert Zone.  The layout of the Zone was finished before it was axed, and its slot given to Mystic Cave Zone on the Simon Wai level select.  It did make it into the same hack as before, this time using the Mystic Cave 2P theme.  When Dust Hill was scrapped, Brenda Ross sought to repurpose the desert-themed graphics into a tundra, creating the Winter Zone, which was also scrapped.  Dust Hill also served as inspiration for the cut Desert Dazzle Round from Whitehead's Sonic CD Remake (as the equally infamous R2).  The pencil tests and the Mega Collection version of Sonic CD's ending have this scene which shows what R2 might have been.

SCD_R2GIF.gif

In fact, Whitehead even reused this doodlebug enemy from the ending and gave it some companion Badniks, including a sandworm and a new Burrobot.  Eggman was going to have his own machine for this zone too, which looks like the precursor to the Sunset Hill Zone boss in Sonic Advance 3.

 

and finally there is the Wood Zone:

Woodzone.png

*cue beta version of Metropolis Zone's theme*

 

As for why Metropolis Zone played during this zone, originally Sonic 2 was going to have a Time Travel mechanic similar to Sonic CD.  To this day, the music connection makes people question if this zone was a supposed "past" version of Metropolis Zone, like Rock Zone was a past version of Dust Hill Zone (with a single planned enemy called "Bumper"). If that was true, when the time travel gimmick in S2 was dropped, this zone would have been too.

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  • 1 year later...

So this is really interesting. A video on how 9/11 personally effected the lives of the Rockstar Developers when they were making GTA 3, how it felt being at ground zero for them and how it almost led GTA 3 getting cancelled, before both they and Sony agreed to making some changes to the game rather than outright cancellation. 

 

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A lot was discovered within the GTA V files. There's like 177 pages in the GTA Forums where they were shown (If you want to check yourself here)

But to recap some stuff:

-According to game files, Franklin was also involved in the Sharmoota job

-There's an animation that suggests that Franklin was able to climb the vines in Michael's house in the mission "Complications"

-Also some walking/Idle animations from Sharmoota Job

Aaand...let's not forget that there are audio files that suggests that Amethyst was going to appear in GTA V Michaela Dietz was supposed to play the role of a pedestrian (A fat woman type that apparently appeared at East LS)

 

 

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1 minute ago, Ice Vec said:

A lot was discovered within the GTA V files. There's like 177 pages in the GTA Forums where they were shown (If you want to check yourself here)

But to recap some stuff:

-According to game files, Franklin was also involved in the Sharmoota job

-There's an animation that suggests that Franklin was able to climb the vines in Michael's house in the mission "Complications"

-Also some walking/Idle animations from Sharmoota Job

Aaand...let's not forget that there are audio files that suggests that Amethyst was going to appear in GTA V Michaela Dietz was supposed to play the role of a pedestrian (A fat woman type that apparently appeared at East LS)

 

 

Holy shit, I thought that this job lost a lot of it's files and Part 2 of the video was the last we'd see of it. I'm really happy that modders managed to track down a lot more assets relating since this is my most interested piece of lost content. I wonder if this means we might be able to see a potential recreation of the heist at some point. 

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