Turns out one of gaming's most infamous cases of vaporware was finally granted some form of closure recently as we saw the fruits of labours from 16 years ago. That's right, I'm talking about Blizzard's first foray into diversifying their brands into different genres, the much anticipated: 'StarCraft: Ghost'. But no, as far as I'm aware the studio still haven't done us the common courtesy of coming out and admitting that it's cancelled. (So maybe there's still hope for this title to come back to life and steal the throne of the single most delayed game of all time.) There's a lot of history to go over in covering this title as well as some gameplay if you care enough to look, so this is going to be something of a roller-coaster story we're shifting through.
In the early 2000's Blizzard got it into their heads that they should start bridging out their core franchises to newer audiences (That's right, the concept wasn't invented last year by 'Wizards of the Coast' and 'Riot Games'.) This meant two separate projects that would expand upon their fantasy series 'WarCraft' and their sci-fi series 'StarCraft'. The former of these projects would turn into a rather elaborate affair that would slowly start to drain more and more resources as it's scope grew, but StarCraft was no less as ambitious, just in a vastly different way. Whereas with WarCraft they would end up with a massively multiplayer title, StarCraft's first new title would be a single player game that would take cues from popular action adventure titles from around the time, with the added boon of the meaty StarCraft lore to fall back on.
This title, dubbed 'StarCraft: Ghost' would follow a highly-elite tactical 'Ghost' unit called 'Nova' as she fought against the encroaching Zerg menace. Those familiar with 'Ghost' units at the time knew them as infiltration specialists that were capable of completing entire missions without any back-up, making the prospect of being put in their shoes rather compelling. In order to make this title a reality Blizzard hired on a company that would come to be know as 'Nihilistic Software', future creators of the 'Black Ops' port, Conan and- A 'Vampire: The Masquerade' title that I haven't previously heard of?! (I may have to go buy something immediately after this blog.)
As far as anyone can tell Nihilistic were very excited to work on this title and dove into fleshing it out with abandon. The arrangement would start to become trying, however, as the team found themselves constantly answering to the producer heads at Blizzard which changed often, each one bringing their own ideas about what the game should be. Then there was the release of other high-profile games such as Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell which would be reflected upon the teams in meetings. Feature Creep allowed for the scope of the product to shift and mold to a point where no one quite knew what the game they were making would be. One day it was an on-the-ground perspective of the massive RTS fights that you'd have in traditional StarCraft games, another day it would be a stealth-action experience with the focus on handling single enemies at a time.
This influx of new features that were constantly being ordered ended up hurting the balance of the game and Nihilistic's team. They would find themselves working around the clock to ensure the game wouldn't be too stealthy, or too action-y before then finding themselves working on a multiplayer mode. As far as I can tell it was them, rather than Blizzard, that decided to walk away from the project, due to significant friction that the project had caused. From there development was handed off to Swingin' Ape Entertainment for them to put together all the pieces that Nihilistic had left behind. The fruits of their labour would be that infamous demo that was shown to the public in 2005 and which managed to drum up a ludicrous amount of attention amidst those who heeded the gaming world.
Of course, something else would inevitably get in the way of this product coming to fruition, and in the case of 'StarCraft: Ghost' is was merely a case of wrong place, wrong time. You see, Blizzard ended up acquiring Swingin' Ape in 2005, clearly impressed with their work, and probably expected to take the development of Ghost at their own pace. However, 2004 had just seen the release of Blizzard's other diversification project, World of Warcraft, and the scope of that title had eclipsed anything the studio had ever worked on before. By 2005 they were devoting more and more resources to the growing phenomenon to the point where soon the entire company was dedicated to WOW, including the former workers of Swingin' Ape. 'StarCraft: Ghost' would be left at the benchmark of having debuted an impressive trailer whilst everyone else worked on changing gaming history forever with one of the world's most popular titles. What followed next for 'Ghost' was a series of delay after delay until they just stopped coming back to the game and allowed it to fade from the public consciousness.
That was the whole story of 'StarCraft: Ghost', until today. Due to the magic of message boards, someone recently leaked a playable build of the game out to the public via an old console dev kit. The game obviously isn't finished and lacked polish in a lot of places, but anyone with the means of running it can dive into the old showcase build for this game and get an idea for the sort of game this was shaping up to be. (Or you could just look at the bevy of footage now online.) One thing that's immediately obvious is the way in which the game was torn between identities, there's a turret section and a stealth scene in the same mission. At some point I would love to go more in-depth, (maybe even get my hands on it myself) but for now we can at least put to bed the mystery of one of the original vaporware titles. Was 'StarCraft: Ghost' ever a real game? Yes, and it's likely never going to see the light of day. (At least not the legit way.)
For my part, I will say that I am very interested in how this game was turning out, the demo footage my not look like much in today's world but for the time it would have been pretty cool. Don't get me wrong, however, this game would have been bought into a world in which 'Snake Eater' and 'Chaos Theory' already existed, so it likely wouldn't have revolutionised the industry, but it still seemed like it might have been a fun title. Of course, that would also be a reality wherein World of Warcraft didn't get as big as it did, and who knows where gaming would be without that! So it might be fun to speculate, but honestly I feel this game just might be more popular as a ghost than as a tangible game. (Pun intended.)
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