ZeniMax's canceled MMORPG, which had reportedly been working under the title Project BlackBird, would have been "pretty spectacular," according to a recent statement from one of the top developers who had been working on it. It has been two months since Microsoft reportedly shut down development on Project Blackbird, and in the opinion of ZeniMax principal service engineer Eric Whelpley, potential players have lost out on what could have been a great game.
Microsoft underwent significant layoffs in early July, cutting about 9,000 employees from its roster. Releasing members from various development studios, this workforce reduction move reportedly affected about one of every 25 development workers in the corporation, and ZeniMax was one of the studios that was hit hard under the internal restructuring.
ZeniMax's Project Blackbird Could Have Been Amazing
Reports of multiple games in development being canceled accompanied news of the mass layoffs. Though it was never revealed to the public before it met its fate, the rumored cancellation of ZeniMax's MMORPG made headlines alongside games like Everwild and the Perfect Dark reboot, and Whelpley confirmed the cancellation in early September via his LinkedIn account. "It was all around pretty spectacular (technology, art, sound, movement, story, etc) and the game would have delighted many players," he stated, backing up his claims by adding that he played it every day before development ceased.
The cancellation is a particularly hard pill for Whelpley to swallow for a couple of different reasons. First, he had been with ZeniMax for seven years, and he expressed disappointment not just for himself, but for the other members of the development team who had put their passion to work in making the game. In addition, news of the cancellation came just a little over a year after Xbox gave up on Redfall, another game that he had worked on from its early days through post-launch, and shut down its development studio, Arkane Austin. The vampire FPS only lasted a year after it was met with a terrible reception by players and critics, but ZeniMax has a proven track record when it comes to MMORPGs, also serving as developer of The Elder Scrolls Online.
More recent rumors state that ZeniMax's MMORPG was cut to make room for Fallout 5. Bethesda's acquisition of the Fallout franchise in 2007 has led to the release of two mainline games and a number of spin-offs, but there has been no mainline game released in just two months shy of a decade. Jez Corden, who released the report, claims that an official at an internal Microsoft meeting had stated the game was canceled as part of a broad strategic movement, and while Fallout 5 reportedly was not mentioned in that conversation, the timing of the announcement led Corden to believe that resources are being reallocated from Project Blackbird to work on the next entry in the Fallout series.