Trivia / Black (2006)

• Creator's Oddball: This was a bit of an anomaly for Criterion Games; the Guildford-based studio is known almost exclusively for their racing games, while Black is a boots-on-the-ground first-person shooter with no vehicles the player can pilot. While they have since provided assistance with Battlefield Hardline, Star Wars Battlefront (2015) and Star Wars Battlefront II (2017), Black continues to be the only shooter developed by Criterion.
• Executive Meddling: The story was tacked onto the game at the end of development at the insistence of Electronic Arts, hence why it is told through cutscenes and scripted dialogue that have little relevance to the actual gameplay.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Early screenshots show that the game originally averted One Bullet Clips with a magazine-based ammo system. It was removed from the final game, likely because it ran against the game's embracing of Hollywood gunplay tropes.
  • Before deciding on the "Symphony of Gunfire" sound design, the developers experimented with, among other things, using animal roars as the basis of the gunfire sounds.
  • A sequel to the game was planned, but stalled out due to alleged Creative Differences between Criterion and EA before being cancelled completely.