A former Microsoft employee has spilled the beans on a cancelled EA game. It was the game that was set to redefine the RPG genre and was in its development stages since 2003, when it was founded by ex-Microsoft employee, Niklas Lund Zinomins. It was said to have an immense open world, expansive content and breathtaking visuals. Unfortunately, the game was never released for the Xbox console.
The game, which was set to be released in 2005, was called “Project Paladin”. According to Zinomins, the game was intended to be a role-playing game with a “strong environmental focus”. Unfortunately, the game was plagued by technical issues and was ultimately cancelled in 2006. The team of developers was disbanded and the game’s assets were sold off to various third-party developers.
It’s no surprise that EA chose to cancel the project. The company was in a tight financial situation and had to cut back on numerous projects. According to Zinomins, the game’s development team was facing a lot of pressure from EA to move things along faster, which led to a decrease in the quality of the game. He revealed that the developers had huge ambitions and wanted to create a game that would be remembered by the gaming community for ages. However, due to the pressure of EA, this ambition remained unfulfilled.
It’s a shame that such a potentially great game was never released. Although there are still some unfinished assets floating around in the Internet, the game will remain in the realm of what could have been. Nonetheless, it serves as a lesson to EA as to the importance of giving projects the chance they deserve and not sacrificing quality in order to meet deadlines.
