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  • The Tale of ALLTYNEX's Kickstarter page, which raised about $14,000 out of its $5,000 goal, had some goodies that it would promise if certain conditions were met:
    • Anyone who donated at least $1,000 would've been eligible to appear in the "War Record" section of the ending sequence in ALLTYNEX Second, alongside the name of the protagonist, not just in the credit roll. Unfortunately, no one donated that much.
    • Two stretch goals would've allowed some extra rewards:
      • $22,000: A physical version of The Tale of ALLTYNEX Official Guidebook.
      • $28,000: A special physical edition of the game, featuring the games and soundtracks on one DVD and two audio CD's, as well as some postcards.
      • Finally, the publisher, Nyu Media, stated that if that last stretch goal was reached, they would consider porting to other operating systems and platforms. Since it wasn't met, such ports may never see the light of day.
  • The 2014 Thief reboot had original trailers featuring classic voice actor Stephen Russell, taking again the role of Garrett. He was replaced by Romano Orzari because, according to word of god, developers wanted dialogues to be recorded by the same actor playing Garrett in motion capture, and Orzari was deemed best suited for filming. But also because they felt it would have been otherwise a forced nostalgia operation, missing the fact it is a reboot with a new Garrett and a new plotline, taking place centuries after the original saga.
  • Tales of Legendia supposedly had intentions of having Walter survive his final encounter with the party and join them later on. And there are unrecorded lines in the Japanese version that suggest that Mystic Artes/Hi Ougis were going to be put in the game. Apparently, it was also going to be on the Gamecube as well as PS2.
  • Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World originally had Alice and Decus survive and join your party.
  • Tales of the Abyss actually has quite a bit of Dummied Out content, some of which was actually restored in the North American and Undub version. Among the content cut from the initial release included unused hi-ougi cut-ins (including ones for Guy and Natalia), unused artes, the potential of Van being in the party, etc. A bug in the Japanese version would cause Reid's cut-in to show up if he uses Burning Phoenix, suggesting this was likely dummied out to make their deadline. And even in the American version; there were a couple artes such as Natalia's "Chronos Raid" that are only accessible via cheat devices.
  • Tatsunoko vs. Capcom:
  • Team Fortress 2:
    • The game went through several incarnations: Its first was a realistic military FPS/RTS hybrid subtitled Brotherhood of Arms, then in 2003, it was re-worked into a game called Invasion, which centered around a human/alien conflict, then its final incarnation became an over-the-top, cartoony game that emphasized Rule of Funny and Rule of Cool over any sort of realism, its pre-release coverage spawning numerous class-based team objective games in the meantime. And even then the character designs have been retooled somewhat. (For example, the Scout looked much older and more thuggish looking, the Spy and Medic wore their symbols on arm bands, the Demoman was just Scottish, and the Pyro was a bald man whose face was visible through his visor…)
    • The Mann vs. Machine mode was actually going to let players play as RED and BLU just like in the trailer. Playtesters reportedly found this too confusing, so the mode only allows you to play as RED, but canonly, RED and BLU are working together.
    • The Meet the Medic short had several ideas or scenes cut. One of the ideas was that it was going to go reuse the interview format of the previous shorts, rather than the action/story-based format of Meet the Spy.
    • The song playing in Pyroland in Meet the Pyro was originally Tiny Tim's Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight, but Valve couldn't obtain the license to it, so they settled on Do You Believe in Magic? instead. Several fan videos have swapped out the latter for the former, however.
    • It was planned that Valve would work with [adult swim] on producing a number of Source Filmmaker TF2 shorts to be aired as a television series (coinciding with the release of promotional items for the game themed around Adult Swim series). However, thanks to Valve's infamous disregard for deadlines - as well as virtually every other guideline Adult Swim set for them (such as runtime), the partnership died off before anything became public, and what had been created already was recycled into the "Expiration Date" video for the Love and War update. Youtuber Tyler McVicker goes into more detail here.
    • View a whole list of cut or unused content here.
  • Tekken:
    • Jun Kazama was Dummied Out for Tekken 3, indicating she was planned to appear at some point. This was changed when the developers decided to kill her off instead.
    • Related to this, Unknown from Tekken Tag Tournament was originally supposed to be Jun's little sister. This was changed when it was decided that TTT would be a non-canon game, and the sequel later confirmed Unknown was Jun herself.
    • The British boxer character was originally named Dean Earwicker, but the intense mockery from the fans convinced Namco to call him Steve Fox instead.
    • A Tekken Revolution port for the Xbox 360 was proposed, but Microsoft declined.
    • A PC port of the original Tekken game was announced in 1996, but nothing ever came of it.
    • A muscular version of Pac-Man was proposed as one of the new characters for Tekken Revolution, but a Namco exec shot down the idea.
    • Tekken 3 was to include a Joke Character named Sake, who was a salmon who would serve as a mid-boss/playable character and simply flop around helplessly. Sake was Dummied Out because Katsuhiro Harada believed that arcade players would feel ripped off if they were to pick the character. The remnants of Sake exist as Yoshimitsu's model mixed with Jin Kazama's moveset.
  • Tomb Raider:
    • Lara Croft was originally a male Indiana Jones clone, before being changed to a South American adventurer named Laura Cruz. They eventually changed her name to "Croft" to be 'UK friendly' and the "u" was taken out of her name due to pronunciation issues with Americans. Lara's old Southern American look is still apparent in her CG artwork due to her having darker skin tones and a face/hair style that made her look less like a British woman. By the 3rd game and later, Lara appeared more white.
    • Lara was also supposed to have grenades, dual Uzis, and a rocket launcher in the first game, but most of the ideas were scrapped due to technical limitations. The developers gave Lara dual pistols instead and made the Uzis a late game pickup. Lara would eventually gain the use of a Rocket Launcher in Tomb Raider III and grenades in Tomb Raider: Legend. Legend was also supposed to have Lara be able to use a Rocket Launcher as show in the concept art, but it was scrapped.
    • The very first game was also supposed to have Lara look more realistic in her model and have a ponytail. However, doing so caused the game to have incredibly low frame rates, so the developers had to make Lara with less polygons and omit the ponytail. Lara's model would improve by the second game and have a ponytail to boot.
    • Level file names for the first game suggest that certain sets of levels were initially designed as a single contiguous area before being split apart due to technical limitations and/or thematic reasons - this is also why the amount of stamps in Lara's passport doesn't change with every level. Additionally, an entire area between the end of Egypt and the start of Atlantis, which would have been internally designated as "LEVEL9", was removed from the final game, explaining the addition of two stamps upon entering Atlantis.
    • Due to the developers having a heavy deadline to follow, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness had to cut many corners and has quite a bit of Dummied Out content as a result, including a large number of unused animations, sound files, weapons (including Lara's signature dual pistols), and plotlines. Developers have also shared information that shed light on the original plans for the game, such as a much larger plotline encompassing 4 locations — Paris, Prague, Germany and Turkey. There were many cut characters as well, such as a mysterious shaman who saved Lara at the end of The Last Revelation and Luther Rouzic, an unused sixth Cabal member.
    • Tomb Raider: Ascension, the proposed game that eventually turned into the 2013 reboot. To say it would have been different than the previous games is an understatement:
      • The game was fully open-world, with Lara using a horse to travel to and from areas. Her design in the early prototypes used the same character model from Tomb Raider: Underworld, although it was apparently intended to be a remake/prequel.
      • The game heavily focused on survival-horror and featured fantasy-inspired enemies and creatures, with some being the size of giants and others being undead. As shown in prototype demonstrations, one gameplay encounter had Lara (on horseback) flee from a hulking monster that chases her through a forest by a coastline, which causes Lara to fall off her horse and eventually jump into an open ravine (pursued by other demonic creatures) in order to escape.
      • Lara also had a female child as a companion, who she would be able to pick up and carry on her back. As shown in concept art, the child would also protect Lara at one point from an enemy.
      • Lara also had several different weapons. Aside from her pickaxe (which appears in the final game), she could wield a machete (or dual-wield with a gun), and used a flamethrower to clear out enemies in a tomb.
      • Lara herself went through several different design iterations, including variants where she wore her signature holsters and a ripped outfit and (as the game eventually became a reboot) a different face for her eventual player model that sported a braid. In addition, there were originally plans to have her clothing get gradually more ripped and tattered throughout the game.
      • Rhianna Pratchett has stated in interviews that if she could have gotten away with it, Lara would have been revealed to have been in a lesbian relationship with Sam. As it stands, Lara's orientation is never explicitly stated in the game, although there is a lot of subtext in her interaction with Sam, depending on whether one chooses to interpret it as such.
      • For Tomb Raider: Anniversary, the developers originally planned for Lara to be impaled on a bed of spikes should the player fall into one like people did during the classic games. Due to the game looking much more realistic, the ESRB would bump the game up to a Mature rating due to the realistic depiction of someone getting impaled. To keep the game at a Teen rating, the developers opted to have Lara bounce off the spikes and ragdoll when she died to the spikes.
  • A Sunsoft Famicom development disk included sprites for Yacopu, the hero of Trip World, which suggests that Trip World might have been originally planned for the Famicom/NES rather than the Game Boy.
  • Titanfall ended up as a Microsoft exclusive as the publisher, Electronic Arts, believed that the PlayStation 4 would have been a failure.
  • Touhou Project:
    • In Undefined Fantastic Object, Myouren Hijiri was originally conceived as the Final Boss. However, ZUN thought an old man like him would be too strange, so he was replaced by Byakuren, his sister, and Myouren was de facto killed off in Byakuren's backstory. But at least we got Unzan.
    • Both Byakuren and Kasen Ibaraki was considered for the role of EX Boss in Ten Desires before ZUN settled on Mamizou Futatsuiwa.
  • Trog was a considerably different game in its prototype version. Instead of controlling the dinosaurs' movement directly, players had to place bones in between the squares to guide their movement, making it more of a Puzzle Game than the glorified Maze Game it was retooled into.
  • True Crime: New York City was intended to be part one of a two part story, but True Crime: New York City 2 was cancelled.
  • Turok:
    • The original Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was initially conceived as a third-person adventure in the vein of Tomb Raider, though it was quickly converted into the First-Person Shooter format to take full advantage of the Nintendo 64's hardware capabilities. Also, the game as released used basically all of the available cartridge space in the form it released in, meaning several things had to be cut, including various enemy types such as pteranadons (which, according to the old website, apparently packed some form of artillery; they eventually returned for the prequel Turok: Evolution), "Killer Fish" (blue fish with ridiculously large fangs that presumably would have pestered you while swimming), and Moschops (which would have been one of the most dangerous enemies in the game, moving quickly and requiring multiple hits from heavy weapons like the grenade launcher to put down), as well as a tomahawk as an alternative melee weapon (finally made it into Turok 3 as Danielle's starting weapon).
    • The second game had its share of cut content as well. The game was originally envisioned as having eight levels, but only six made the cut. One of them was to be a crossover level with another Acclaim property, Shadow Man, and when the level was cut, its unique enemies were moved into the second level, "Slaughter by the River of Souls", thus that level having out-of-left-field objectives to teleport from an Ancient Roman-themed techno-retro city to random graveyards to kill the undead - remnants of the original plan still remain in the Deadkin's in-game description, which makes specific mention of the concept of a Shadowman. Each level was also meant to have a boss fight, including a general of the dinosoid armies named Gant, but those of the first three levels were cut (Gant only survived as a multiplayer character model, the others were gone completely). It also had a small selection of intended enemies that were cut, including dimorphodons (apparently replaced by the flying drones that pop up in the final battle with the Primagen), "skimmers", and a bloodhound-type enemy called a "Hunter" that was cut so late, the manual and strategy guide still mention it. Also cut was the Spiritual Invincibility powerup from Dinosaur Hunter.
    • Turok 3 had cut the plasma rifle and harpoon gun from Turok 2, the former presumably in favor of the Sniper Rifle usable by Joseph, the latter simply due to time constraints. Also removed was the "Lord of the Flesh" enemy type from Turok 2, ironic considering the game's much-increased emphasis on the spawn of Oblivion like it.
  • The first Twisted Metal was intended to have live-action Full Motion Video endings. They were ultimately cut out in favor of epilogue text scrolls over an image of the live-action Calypso, but these "Lost Endings" were included as a bonus in ''Twisted Metal: Head-On: Extra Twisted Edition".
  • Ultima:
    • Ultima VII Part II was released with quests and scripts cut and Dummied Out content. The cat island, Claw, was supposed to have a Kilrathi pilot crash land on the island and be worshipped as a cat god.
    • Ultima IX was planned to be an isometric game based on a refined Ultima VIII/Crusader engine. It was later moved to a polygon-based 3D isometric view, with a party and skill system, and would have received a PlayStation port. This version was cancelled after the development team moved to Ultima Online. Development was then restarted as a hardware accelerated fully 3D game with the Glide API. The party system was replaced with taking control of NPCs, and a multiplayer feature was suggested. The released version was Christmas rushed with no party system, and huge chunks of the game removed or dummied out.
    • Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar, a long-awaited sequel and series reboot following the events of Ultima IV, was planned to be released for PC and Android, but only the iOS version was released and was shut down a year later.
  • Until Dawn was designed as a first-person PlayStation 3 game with Move controls. More notably, the game was much, much more campy. View this trailer, and compare it to similar scenes in the finished game.
  • Viewtiful Joe 2 would have had a co-op mode where one player plays as Joe and the other as Sylvia. This was implied in the first teaser trailer, but Capcom decided to remove this early during the development process.
  • Virtua Fighter: There are several characters who did not make it into the final version of the first Virtua Fighter. One of them was an unnamed male boss-type character with a mash up of the moves of the other characters, who had Kung Fu, Casual and Wrestling outfits for some reason, there was also Akira's early prototype, a military-themed fighter named Jeff Buckman and Siba, an Arab fighter. The early version of Akira sported a topless look, a different hairstyle and casual pants and fought in a very different manner. If you look at the footage of the character, accesible through cheating, it will become obvious that the AM2 team members that left SEGA to go to work for Namco took this version of Akira and named him Kazuya. Even some moves are the same, such as Kazuya's spinning back fist and Spinning Demon kick. His other famous move, the Lightning Screw Uppercut, was obviously lifted from Street Fighter's Ryu, along with Kazuya's overall uniform and color palette. And the characters of Jeff Buckman and Siba? P-Jack copied Jeff's design to the tee in the Tekken 1, and decades later, Tekken would introduce their own Arab fighter named Shaheen, looking very similar to Siba... If Virtua Fighter had decided to keep all these characters, not only would VF have been wildly different, but Tekken might have never taken off, and if it did, it would've looked very different.
  • Viva Piñata:
  • Warcraft III was touted as a "Role-Playing Strategy" game focusing on the main heroes, with parties of heroes and troops in a dynamic world of living towns, wandering monsters, characters and quests, with early screenshots showing a close to third person view.
  • Warhammer Online was being developed by Climax before it was overhauled by Mythic Entertainment. The original version would have had a darker tone, a larger world with more towns, camps of roaming NPCs, skill based progression, zones that would either weaken or enhance magical elements for spell casting, and many more features that would have made the game drastically different from Mythic's version.
  • Waxworks (1992): In an interview in the February 1992 issue of Zero, Micheal Woodridge suggests there would be a swordfight with Marquis de Sade, which doesn't appear in the final game, partially because there is no waxwork which takes place in a time period that would correspond to it.
  • Nostalrius was a fan run World of Warcraft vanilla server that attempted to recreate the original game experience and ran for over a year before being shut down due to a cease and desist.
  • Wolfenstein:
    • Wolfenstein 3-D started out as more of a stealth combat game like the Castle Wolfenstein games, with features like switching uniforms with guards, dragging bodies to avoid discovery, and using the knife to silently attack enemies instead of alerting them with gunfire. The game's pace was slow because of all this complexity, so they dropped it to speed up the game, in doing so basically invented the frantic first-person shooter gameplay style we all know and love. In addition, Rise of the Triad started life as a sequel to Wolf3D.
    • Wolfenstein: The New Order started as an entirely different game unrelated to any of id Software's properties, but MachineGames had trouble getting it off the ground. After their owner's parent company acquired id Software, it was suggested that they make a game based on an existing property they owned, and when told that nothing was being done with Wolfenstein, they settled on that, with some of the ideas and gimmicks they thought up for their original game being recycled for it. Also, some features like dual-wielding guns likely wouldn't have been in the game if id hadn't suggested them during development.
  • The manual of XCar: Experimental Racing mentions that additional cars and tracks could be downloaded from the game's official website. However, no extra cars or tracks were ever released for the game.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles X: While the game that ultimately got released had a positive reception, developer notes and concept art show that it was originally going to be much grander than it ended up. And here and there it is obvious that things got cut, with hanging plot threads and underdeveloped characters in places. One reason fans of the game are so hopeful for a sequel is that there's clearly a lot of material lying around the developers could use in one.
    • The game world was originally going to be a lot bigger (which is saying something). Several other continents are detailed, as well as a massive orbital space station, and a Star Scraper tower sitting on the planet's north pole.
    • The mid-game boss duo of Ryyz and Dagahn end up appearing all of twice, for a couple of boss fights, before somewhat anticlimactically getting killed off with almost no characterization. Which is odd considering the focus the game gives them, introducing them as if they're major recurring antagonists.
    • The Qlurian race wound up barely being implemented, with only a single side character (Celica) and a couple of teasers in the dialogue that they had something major to do with Earth's Homeworld Evacuation. Concept art shows they were originally going to be a major force in the game and story.
    • There are several concept arts for characters that appear to be L's species. They each seem to be patterned after a specific continent, as though they represented it (with L being Noctilum). L himself also had an alternative, much more devilish looking design (which makes sense when you consider his full name, L'cirufe, is an anagram of "Lucifer").
    • There are designs for a second human settlement named "New Tokyo", which appears to be located on the opposite side of the planet from New Los Angeles.
    • The mysterious figure that appears in the game's epilogue with no explanation is named in the notes as "Black Knight", and has designs for his own Humongous Mecha, as if he was intended to be a boss.
  • Xenosaga:
    • The series was meant to be a six-game epic spanning several console generations, but due to Executive Meddling (such as firing basically everyone on the project) and the crapfest of a game (Episode II) it produced, it was not to be—despite the positive reception of Episode III, which came about after they fired almost all of the replacement staff from Episode II. It's made even more complicated when you realize that the original plan for a series of six linked games comes from the time when the developers were all still part of Square (and the rough timeline of which was released in Japan as a book called Xenogears Perfect Works, which no one else ever got, naturally), and the game Xenogears (released on the PS1) was originally intended to be part FIVE of six. After the developers left Square and formed Monolith Soft, the original intent was to start over from scratch, releasing all six games in order and doing a completely new version of the fifth game (essentially replacing Xenogears). And then things got REALLY complicated.
    • Ultimately, the entire plot of the first "chapter" (as outlined in Perfect Works) was reduced to little more than a prologue cut-scene in Xenosaga Episode I, while what was originally supposed to be "Chapter 2 of 6" (as per Perfect Works) kept expanding until the entire plot of all three Xenosaga games are covering what was intended to be the plot of a SINGLE game. In other words, the original plan to produce a story in six chapters, as presented in Perfect Works, with each game telling a single chapter, wound up producing four games - with only "Chapter Five" and "Chapter Two" being told (with "Chapter One" turned into a footnote and "Chapter Two" being three times longer than it was supposed to be). And we all thought George Lucas was bad at episode numbering…
    • A similar fate befell its spiritual predecessor, Xenogears. They dev team (the one that was ultimately axed midway through Episode II's development cycle) ran out of time and money just as they were starting the second disc. A masterpiece of a game which climaxed with fighting and killing God was hobbled, a game meant to last over 80 hours got cut to 60 or so, and most of the story of the second disc was cut to characters narrating on a rocking chair while a pre-rendered tableau of what you would have been playing at that moment appeared behind them. What's more, two whole gears (what would have been Maria and Emerelda's Omnigears) were left on the cutting room floor because of the time and money constraints.
  • The Darcsen ethnic group in Valkyria Chronicles were originally going to be Beastmen. One must wonder if people would have accused the game of historical revisionism (see page for details) if they had stuck with this plan.
  • Wing Commander:
    • Prophecy was supposed to have the glowy bits at the ends of the Tiamat's arms work like the shipkiller plasma cannon mounted on the Kraken, but time constraints resulted in the feature never being implemented.
    • In the sequel, Secret Ops, the Murphy class destroyers were supposed to have an anti-capship gun mounted in the nose, but again time constraints lead to it being cut. The barrel of the planned gun is still visible on the model, but it's not functional, leaving the destroyer with its pathetic laser turret armament as the only thing backing up the handful of fighters it could carry.
  • The Wonderful 101 could have starred a team of Nintendo characters/famous video game characters. In fact, there were plans for 100 Nintendo stars fighting evil as a team, kind of like Super Smash Bros meets Pikmin. It is also said that once the 100 superheroes idea was decided on, it was going to have a dark, "mature" artstyle, but Platinum felt that they've done that too many times, so they used the colorful, cute artstyle that made its way into the final version.
  • Yandere Simulator originally had the plan for the egnimatic Info-chan to turn out to be Yandere-chan's tenth and final rival. With Info-chan being a yandere for Senpai herself, she used Yandere-chan as a pawn to get rid of her rivals and would turn on Yandere-chan. However, Yandere Dev has said that the idea has been scrapped after the introduction was changed.
  • ZombiU originally began development as a Raving Rabbids game aimed at a more hardcore audience but Ubisoft abandoned the Rabbids theme halfway through when they decided that the monsters they had designed looked similar enough to be a species of their own. The game became a First-Person Shooter called Killer Freaks from Outer Space until the developers wanted to make full use of the Wii U's game pad screen. They decided that a survival horror game would be a better fit and that zombies rather than monsters would better fit the theme.

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