Despite rumors to the contrary, Perfect Dark developer confirms the canceled game’s awesome, Dishonored-riffing demo was actually real

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"The parkour is all real, the hacking/deception is mostly real."

Perfect Dark screenshot showing a close-up of the new Joanna Dark character model, voiced by Alix Wilton Regan with Elissa Bibaud lending visual likeness
(Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

Perfect Dark was one of the victims of Microsoft's company-wide layoffs, but to pour salt on the wound, one former developer has confirmed that its awesome gameplay trailer was actually real.

Microsoft recently made cuts across its gaming business, reportedly slashing the Forza Motorsport studio in half and scrapping Rareware's Everwild, while also completely shuttering The Initiative and its long-in-production Perfect Dark reboot.

Perfect Dark - Gameplay Reveal - Xbox Games Showcase 2024 - YouTube Perfect Dark - Gameplay Reveal - Xbox Games Showcase 2024 - YouTube
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It's a rumor that has since been debunked by former level designer Adam McDonald, now a developer at Studio MDHR, the developer of Cuphead, who states that the vertical slice is "actually in-engine."

"I was one of three level designers that worked on it," McDonald confirmed. "It worked best if you played it the way the person playing in the video plays it, but it still worked even if you didn't hit the marks perfectly. There's some fake stuff in it, and the real gameplay systems shown off worked juuust enough to look good in this video. We were rapidly making real design decisions so as to not knowingly lie to players about what the game will be. The parkour is all real, the hacking/deception is mostly real."

Like most vertical slices, the combat is also real in the sense that someone was actually controlling the character, but "it's set up to be played exactly that way didn't play well if you played it a different way." So, there. Rumor, debunked, even though it makes the whole ordeal slightly more heartbreaking than it already is.

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Kaan Serin
Freelance contributor

Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.

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