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Frontier Developments’ ambitious open-world action game The Outsider remains in limbo but has not been cancelled, the studio’s founder has said.
In an upcoming opinion piece written for Develop, David Braben denied growing rumours that The Outsider project had been abandoned after six years.
He said Frontier is shipping four games this year; “two on Kinect and two on touch screens”.
His clarification comes after an anonymous source leaked key details of the project’s development.
The alleged insider said that, by 2008, the project had been signed by Codemasters.
“Codemasters decided they didn’t want to fund it any more, they were being bank-rolled by a new Indian firm and focused their attention on core brands,” the person told Joystiq.
Then Frontier made “a big push to get the project as complete as possible while looking for publishers or distributors for the game", the source said.
But in mid-2010, it is believed a proposed publishing deal with EA had been under consideration.
In March 2010 it was announced that EA had cancelled a project with Starbreeze. The Swedish studio was commissioned to build a game based on the Bourne Conspiracy franchise.
Now it is claimed that EA was at one stage keen on repackaging The Outsider as a game based on the Bourne spy franchise.
“EA wanted a Bourne game because they own the franchise, and they didn’t want to set up a new brand with The Outsider, it would be a safer bet to do another Bourne game."
The source continued: "The game was almost complete, save for final recorded dialogue and cut scenes. The actual game is fully playable from start to finish, and though not fully polished gameplay-wise, it was still looking good and close to being a damn fine cover-based shooter.”
A video of The Outsider project can be found below.
