Earlier this year, Microsoft laid off over 9,000 employees across the company, with every wing affected — including Xbox and several developers under its Xbox Game Studios publishing division, leading to the cancelation of several titles that were a work-in-progress.
Impacted games included Rare's new IP Everwild as well as The Elder Scrolls Online-maker ZeniMax Online's new MMO, and tragically, the Perfect Dark reboot as well. Microsoft also shut down the studio it formed in 2018 to make Perfect Dark, The Initiative, at the same time.
The revival of Rare's dormant stealthy sci-fi FPS series was announced in 2020, and had just gotten a gameplay reveal trailer at the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 months before the axe came down. Thus, while it was understood the game went through development struggles, its cancelation nevertheless came as a complete shock to most — and not just to players, either.
In a new interview with TheGamer, Alix Wilton-Regan — the actress that would have starred as protagonist Joanna Dark, also known for roles in Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Cyberpunk 2077 — revealed that the news of the layoffs, cancelation, and closure of The Initiative came out of nowhere, and that she found out "at the same time as everybody else."
"I was as shocked, surprised, and devastated as everyone else was when the funding was pulled, and the studio was closed," she said. "I did not see it coming. I was absolutely blindsided when the project was defunded."
"It was devastating. So many people lost their jobs. An entire workforce was disbanded. There was an ecosystem of creativity and collaboration that was in place that we lost overnight," she continued. "It was really difficult, really difficult for everybody."
Wilton-Regan explained she'd recorded "bits and bobs throughout '23," and that The Initiative was also "doing lots of performance capture for it in '24," giving her the impression that the project had progressed a lot.
She'd "done entire chapters of this universe" and noted that the team "had delivered several milestones that the client was really happy with," but she ultimately didn't know how far Perfect Dark had come. Evidently, Microsoft didn't consider further development to be viable after seeing where it was at.
There was hope when Take-Two tried to save Perfect Dark from Microsoft's cancelation, but after that rescue attempt fell through due to disagreements about ownership of the IP, Wilton-Regan felt crushed.
"That was the day I was really sad because that was the day I lost hope," she said. "I couldn't say too much about it ... But certainly, everyone was working really hard behind the scenes to bring Perfect Dark back. And then one day, I heard from the creative director that the deal hadn't gone through, and that really everything had fallen apart, and production was fully stopping."
"I've never experienced in my career before what I experienced with Perfect Dark. And I guess now that I know that it can happen, you become really frightened that the same thing could happen again," she added.
Notably, Wilton-Regan is playing Lara Croft in the newly announced Tomb Raider: Catalyst. But while that role has helped keep her spirits afloat, she has a fear of that opportunity collapsing as well (Tomb Raider dev Crystal Dynamics has experienced three layoff waves this year).
"The saving grace for me when Perfect Dark fell apart was that I'd already been shooting Lara for about a year as well," she told TheGamer. "I was playing Joanna over here, and I was playing Lara over here, which was wonderful and genuinely one of the most creatively exciting times of my life. And I just felt so relieved that I still had Lara, but I also felt really frightened about losing Lara. I'm still frightened of losing Lara."
I wish nothing but the best for Alix Wilton-Regan and everyone else who worked on the canceled Perfect Dark reboot, and was affected by The Initiative's closure. Note that recently, two of its lead devs joined Take-Two to make a new 2K studio.
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