Microsoft, and to some extent fans themselves, spent a long time hyping up The Initiative’s first game. Microsoft’s biggest mystery studio had spent the last year or two making high profile developer hires, with many trying to read between the lines. While at the time it was untitled, rumors were flying about what this supposed “AAAA” studio was working on. Of course, the most prevalent rumor about The Initiative’s project was the studio was working on a new Perfect Dark entry. Perfect Dark was once a Rare Ltd. third-party game released on the Nintendo 64, but since Microsoft acquired Rare way back in 2002, Perfect Dark has been an Xbox exclusive since.
Only one Xbox-exclusive Perfect Dark game, as well as a remaster of the original game, have released since Rare’s studio acquisition. Since then, Perfect Dark has been a silent-but-classic IP that Xbox Game Studios has been holding on to for quite a while. Now that The Initiative’s game has been officially announced as an entry in the Perfect Dark series, it would be interesting to look back on the numerous leaks and rumors referencing The Initiative’s inaugural game. Many were pretty spot on with Perfect Dark, not that it would’ve been a particularly hard guess, but it’s been a long time coming for this classic franchise.
The search for the Initiative’s first game began in 2018, after Xbox had announced the forming of its powerhouse first-party development studio. Alongside a few other notable studio acquisitions announced at that same E3, The Initiative would start a hiring spree of various notable triple-A developers to work on their “AAAA” game. Veteran developers from Uncharted, Destiny, Tomb Raider, God of War, Red Dead Redemption, and various other blockbuster games joined The Initiative studio in some fashion. One developer in particular, thanks to comments written on their LinkedIn page, described “various weapons, gadgets, and a camera surveillance system.”
Of course, many took those details as a surefire sign that The Initiative’s game would be a Perfect Dark entry, and they certainly weren’t wrong. With the Perfect Dark series being dormant for as long as it has, these details weren’t exactly a confirmation, but many held out hope. After the cinematic trailer for Perfect Dark premiered at the Game Awards, it was clear The Initiative’s game was some kind of sequel for the series. In a post-announcement interview with game director Dan Neuburger, he specifically describes the game as “reinventing Perfect Dark,” which matches up with the futuristic setting showcased in the trailer.
As far as rumors and leaks specifically citing Perfect Dark go, there aren’t really much to go on. It’s clearly under close wraps, with all really being known coming from the reveal at the Game Awards itself where it simply listed the game as “Perfect Dark,” so it’s clearly going to be a mainline sequel/new entry.
Outside of that, plenty of the reports on “The Initiative’s Game” cited things like the action-adventure genre, highly detailed animation work (in this case compared to Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us), and plenty of visual flair taking advantage of the Xbox Series X’s graphical power. There’s also been rumors that the game will specifically be running on the next-gen Unreal Engine 5 technology. That’s predictably where The Initiative’s “AAAA” moniker comes from, which is basically a denomination representative of how expensive it is to develop the game.
Given that Perfect Dark is an iconic shooter series that was on par with Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64, it’s fitting that Microsoft would be putting a ton of resources behind the studio’s development. Microsoft and Xbox Game Studios have been poising The Initiative’s game as its biggest new title coming to the next-gen Xbox, so big things could be in store for this entry. The “eco sci-fi” adventure seems very different from Joanna Dark’s previous alien-infused adventures. Perfect Dark also appears to be honing in on the espionage action game, a subgenre that’s long been abandoned by franchises like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid.
The Initiative’s Perfect Dark entry is in development.
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