This week, as part of an enormous round of cuts at Microsoft, the company closed down The Initiative and cancelled the ace-looking reboot of Perfect Dark it had been working on. The game had first been announced in 2020 but a "gameplay reveal" was shown in 2024's Xbox Games Showcase: and it blew us away.
The "eco sci-fi" shooter that's "not just about shooting" looked like the imsim we've all been pining for since Deus Ex got put on ice, with the footage showing Joanna Dark (after an intro cutscene where she wingsuits into Garden City) in search of her target, Carrington. It then shows Dark using spy gadgets like a voice recorder to bypass security, some sort of detective vision overlay, parkour and some extremely crisp combat and melee animations.
