A lot of video games end up in the pile of "things that never were." One such title is 1666: Amsterdam, directed by Patrice Desilets, who also directed the first two Assassin's Creed video games.
Footage from that title, though, ended up at a European presentation over the weekend, and someone took a video of that video to share the "what might have been" game with the world.
Journalist Brandon Sheffield took the video, which covers the game's title and opening sequences, along with some of the first few minutes of gameplay. Describing the game's concept as having a character that allows players to "be worse than the devil," Sheffield explained that the protagonist controls animals associated with black magic, including black cats, rats and crows.
There are only 4 minutes of footage here, but it shows a good example of a game that will probably never exist. Originally planned for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Desilets created 1666: Amsterdam for THQ Montreal. After Ubisoft bought that studio, though, it fired Desilets.
An interesting side note to this, though, is that Desilets recently regained control of the title after suing Ubisoft over it. That doesn't necessarily mean that he'll do anything with it, but that lawsuit now prevents Ubisoft from creating any new titles based on the work Desilets has done with THQ.
"It would be difficult to do 1666 as an independent studio of 12 people," said Desilets to Games Industry. "But the indie scene and all the small studios are really attractive to me these days. To be in control, and to have fun, and to not have to deal with all the politics of a huge corporation."
Desilets is also in the middle of another project for Panache Games called Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, so don't expect 1666: Amsterdam to make a comeback anytime soon if at all.
The video, though, captures what might have been rather well, and it seems that the real loss here is for gamers who got cheated out of the title. Desilets mentioned that he even considered making it episodic, at one point.
"I said yesterday that AAA won't disappear, but I should have said that maybe the AAA of 60-hours with everything on a disc will kind of disappear," he said. "Even with 1666, I was contemplating whether we do that or maybe go episodic - like The Walking Dead. So I'm giving you maybe 5 hours of it, and if there's a market it will continue, and if not we can stop. That way, you don't need $100 million."
