Despite Xbox boss Phil Spencer’s apparent fondness for the game a few months ago, it wasn’t enough to save it from being scrapped…

Microsoft laid off 9,000 people this week, affecting both the Xbox division and the games division. This resulted in more canceled projects. Among them was ZeniMax Online‘s Blackbird, the codename for an unannounced project by the creators of The Elder Scrolls Online. Despite early problems with the game’s engine, development was progressing well. It was a third-person shooter set in a sci-fi world, and one of the main aspects of the gameplay was player movement: players could double jump, leap, use the grapple, and climb walls. This was as key to the gameplay as shooting itself.

According to True Achievements, players could control a character named Revenant. Revenant is an agent working for an alien syndicate on a remote, tsunami-locked planet called Soteria. Supposedly, one side of Soteria was an ice planet, while the other side constantly glowed in oppressive sunlight, and in the middle there was an area called The Twilight Band that was actually habitable. The game featured a sentient artificial intelligence called PAN; an alien race that believed itself superior to all others; various syndicates players could align with; an aquatic alien race; a furry alien race; and another alien species capable of scouring the depths of our minds for secrets. All these elements served as solid foundations for a sci-fi world.

Up to four players could participate in missions, and some larger missions allowed up to six players to play simultaneously. Humans also fit into the story: the various alien races were understandably wary of humans after a high-ranking alien officer was killed in a human neighborhood. This was where much of Blackbird‘s alien noir theme came from, as players delved into the mystery behind the murder and climbed the ranks in this sci-fi world.

Based on all this, Blackbird would have been much larger in scale than The Elder Scrolls Online. While there’s never a guarantee that any game will be successful, based on this information, Blackbird looked promising. Its cancellation remains a stain on the legacy of Microsoft’s current management and their clear inability to manage talented developers and studios.

Source: WCCFTech, True Achievements