Games That Were Originally Meant To Be Something Else

Game development can be an arduous process, with games like Black Myth Wukong going through many years of development before finally releasing to the public. In some cases, a game can start as one project and evolve into a radically different one in terms of genre, style, and even intellectual property.

Many would be surprised to find out that some of their favorite games were going to be almost completely unlike the final product. It's an example of how, sometimes, a setback or simply having second thoughts can be beneficial to a project's final release, resulting in something that is a success or becomes part of gaming history.

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10 Resident Evil 4

Leon Was Supposed To Be Busting Ghosts

After Resident Evil 3 and a few spin-off titles, Capcom wanted to break into new ground with Resident Evil 4. The project underwent many revisions and concepts before landing on the over-the-shoulder third-person game that changed games forever.

One of the concepts made it so far into production that gameplay footage can be found online. It showcased that Resident Evil 4 was going to embrace a more supernatural angle. Not only was Leon Kennedy going to be in a castle akin to something in a Dracula movie fighting zombies, but the footage showcased Leon fighting a ghost.

9 Devil May Cry

Leon Kennedy Was The Original Dante

The high-octane action and slasher gameplay of Devil May Cry is so over-the-top, it makes it hard to believe that, at one point, it was going to be Resident Evil 4. Another one of many ideas for Resident Evil 4 was to possibly drift away from survival horror and lean toward action and adventure.

Thankfully, the idea would drift so far away from Resident Evil and end up becoming Devil May Cry and start one of Capcom's most famous franchises. From Dante to Nero, the gameplay worked well for Devil May Cry games, but considering how much fans disliked it when Resident Evil 6 became an action game, the outrage would be even worse if Resident Evil 4 played like Devil May Cry.

8 Halo: Combat Evolved

The Franchise Almost Started As A StarCraft Clone

When it comes to the first-person shooter genre, Halo: Combat Evolved is often in the conversation for being a pinnacle, which makes it ironic that it was never meant to be a shooter in the first place. The original concept for Halo began as a real-time strategy in the same vein as StarCraft, with armored humans going up against alien threats.

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Then Halo evolved into a third-person shooter, but due to budgetary constraints, Bungie needed to make changes to finish by the deadline. This resulted in the change to a revolutionary first-person shooter, and the rest was history, with the Halo franchise still going strong today. Thankfully, the franchise was able to retain its roots by later introducing the RTS spin-off: Halo Wars.

7 BioShock

Rapture Was Almost In Space And An Island

The setting of BioShock being an underwater city seems like that would have been the concept from the beginning. That is not the case, with BioShock originally intended to be set on a derelict space station with genetically mutated monsters roaming the facility along with a dangerous cult, which became the concept for the developers' newest game: Judas.

Perhaps since EA was about to release Dead Space to the masses, which had a nearly identical concept, BioShock changed to a zombie-infested island setting and then, one more redesign later, the underwater city of Rapture came to fruition. As a result, BioShock became cemented as one of the most iconic games of the 2000s.

6 Croc: Legend Of The Gobbos

What Could Have Been The First 3D Yoshi Game

In the mid-90s and early 2000s, studios were trying their hardest to create mascots to lead new gaming franchises, such as Croc: Legend Of The Gobbos, in an attempt to compete with juggernauts like Mario. Ironically, Croc began as a prototype for a 3D Yoshi game, but when Nintendo rejected the idea, the developers at Argonaut repurposed the prototype to develop a new game.

In 1997, Croc: Legend Of The Gobbos was released on the PlayStation 1, Sega Saturn, and PC, taking the gameplay of Super Mario 64 and mixing it with Tomb Raider mechanics. While critics were harsh on Croc's first outing, it was successful enough to warrant a sequel and a 2024 remaster.

5 Splinter Cell

Before He Was Sam Fisher, He Was Almost James Bond

Mixing spy thriller and stealth gameplay, Splinter Cell quickly became a hit that was intended to be UbiSoft's answer to Metal Gear Solid. However, in its early production phase, Splinter Cell was going to be a first-person shooter by Red Storm and, at another point, there was an attempt to make it into the next James Bond game.

All previous plans went out the window when the developers got the chance to license Tom Clancy's novels. So, Splinter Cell became what it is today as a third-person action-stealth game with Sam Fisher going down in history as an iconic protagonist.

4 Donkey Kong

Mario Would Not Exist Without Popeye The Sailor Man

Replace Donkey Kong with Bluto and Pauline with Olive Oyl, and finally swap Mario with Popeye and the result is what the original idea for Donkey Kong was going to be. Shigeru Miyamoto's job was originally meant to be a game based on the famous Popeye cartoon, but the limitations at the time forced him and his team to change the character designs.

Popeye became Mario and without that change, the world's most famous video game franchise would not exist today. Donkey Kong would remain an iconic piece of gaming history as well, becoming his own franchise and appearing in many Nintendo games. Later, a Popeye game would launch on the original NES that would borrow from Donkey Kong's structure and gameplay.

3 GoldenEye 007

From On The Rails To Revolutionary FPS

Another famous first-person shooter, GoldenEye 007, paved the way for how many shooters would come to play and that historical part of gaming history likely would have been delayed if Rare had gone in their original direction. Before it was the first-person shooter as fans know it, it was originally built to be an on-rail shooter in the same vein as Virtua Cop or The House Of The Dead.

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The developers at Rare were even sent to the sets of the GoldenEye movie to get reference photos for the authentic replication in GoldenEye 007. However, one thing led to another and, instead of a simultaneous release with the movie, GoldenEye 007 was released two years after the movie and became a beloved classic.

2 Mortal Kombat

Ed Boon And John Tobias Almost Made The Jean-Claude Van Damme Game

Fantastical realms, gods, monsters, magic, robots, and the signature bloody fatalities are what turned Mortal Kombat into a household name, and it's all because Jean-Claude Van Damme turned down the chance to be in the original game. Initially, Mortal Kombat was pitched as a fighting game starring the famous actor that would have been like Bloodsport.

However, when Jean-Claude turned down the opportunity, Ed Boon and John Tobias reworked their idea to include elements of Big Trouble In Little China and Enter The Dragon, turning Jean-Claude into the character of Johnny Cage, and Mortal Kombat came to be. Jean-Claude Van Damme would later become the face and voice of a skin for Johnny Cage.

1 Doom

Fox Denied The Chance To Make An Aliens Game

In an ironic twist, some of the best Alien games made in the 90s took inspiration from Doom, when the grandfather of first-person shooters was going to be an Aliens adaptation. It's a space marine stuck on a barren planet gunning down scary monsters; the similarities to Aliens have always been there, only they have been replaced with demons from Hell.

The simplest reason why Doom never became an Aliens game was purely because negotiations with 20th Century Fox fell through. This led to Id Software coming up with their own game using what they previously did with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom was the greatest of results.

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