It’s been 15 years – so much since Come Midnight, the horror game of the Outriders developers was cancelled – details have now been revealed, so let’s see!

The King of Mystical Horror is undoubtedly H.P. Lovecraft, whose impact on the game world was at least as great as that of the Aliens movie. The impact of the writer’s work would have been felt in the cancelled horror game Come Midnight, if only it would have been released. The game would have taken us to the 1946 city of Boston and placed it at the center of a story full of mysteries in the style of aforementioned writer.

After releasing the now-classic Painkiller, the People Can Fly team began developing a mystical horror. That would have been Come Midnight. We didn’t know anything about the game so far because its development was stopped. One of the founders of the studio, Adrian Chmielarz, told us about the game, presenting illustrations and videos in which we could admire the game we had never seen before.

“Our biggest mistake was trying to create a multiplatform video game with our own graphics engine.” Adrian Chmielarz said.

In the game, we would have played as a private detective who was trying to solve crimes in Boston in 1946 that, which, at some level, would always have been related to Lovecraft’s stories. According to The Astronauts’ current creative director, who is now working with his team on the long-awaited Witchfire, we would have had several alternative routes available throughout the story.

People Can Fly made a demo of the game that they could present to publishers. In the end, THQ decided to release the game. If the guys have gotten this far, why was the game finally cancelled? – the question may rightly arise. Well, as the director said, they were only two years away from work just to get the game on store shelves, so he has no idea what led to the cancellation.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but hey, welcome to the triple A world.” says Chmielarz.

“THQ was rumored to be abandoning game development in Europe and they had to end European projects left and right,” he continues.

“Supposedly the decision was between us and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. They chose the latter and, to be fair, it was probably the right decision.”

Since the visuals of the game were considered good even years after the deletion, the director of The Astronauts did not hesitate to take responsibility for the cancellation of their game:

“They weren’t the only ones responsible for it [THQ]. Our biggest mistake was trying to create a multiplatform video game with our own graphics engine, we should have used an existing one like Unreal, while growing a company from 20 to 70-80 employees with this first triple A title. It was just too much, I guess.”

Yet the gentleman hopes that his former co-workers would be happy to think back to the joint work and memories of the cancelled Come Midnight.

People Can Fly then started working on the hugely entertaining Bulletstorm. A little later, Epic Games acquired People Can Fly, where they finally gave life to the rather terrible Gears of War: Judgment, but only after they lost most of their developers. The team members founded a company called The Astronauts, to which we eventually owed The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

Interestingly, from 2015, People Can Fly resumed as an independent studio, and we look forward to their next work, Outriders, ever since.

The Outriders will be available for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Google Stadia and the Xbox Series X, which will have a big event this Thursday, in late 2020.

Source: 3Djuegos

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