Lamenting the loss of Visceral Games and their proposed Dead Space 4 is one thing, but did you know that Visceral was also working on a game involving Jack The Ripper fighting vampires?
Not to be confused with the 1996 FMV DOS game of the same name, the cancelled game was called The Ripper (insert Judas Priest reference here), and was meant to present the infamous murderer in a dualistic sense. Jack would still kill women, but he’d have been killing vampires that were disguised as prostitutes. On top of that, Jack would experience bouts of PTSD and hallucinations, including having the world itself transform at certain points to further connect the player to Jack (and to mess with them).
Obviously, the topic of presenting Jack the Ripper in a sympathetic light wasn’t exactly the most pleasant idea in the world. EA, however, didn’t cancel the game because of that. Rather, Visceral themselves decided to can the game after constant shifts in direction and vision. The game wasn’t entirely dead, though.
The fighting vampires concept and multiplayer components were salvaged, and used to create a new game called Blood Dust, which was meant to be an online-only, downloadable multiplayer game. This too was eventually cancelled (and Visceral’s Melbourne studio closed down), but not before a video leaked online back in 2011 that contained gameplay footage, as well as concept art from Blood Dust and The Ripper.
In an even more interesting tidbit, the multiplayer component of The Ripper, and its themes of questioning reality were eventually incorporated into Dead Space 2. But given how the multiplayer component turned out for that game, it probably wasn’t the wisest choice.
To read the in-depth story about the game’s development, including seeing more of the concept art, you can read the piece by Polygon here.
