Over the last few years, there’s been a worrying trend of in-development video games being canceled. In recent months, the legendary Yoko Taro revealed he’d had multiple “weird” projects canned, reports suggested that Ubisoft canceled a new Splinter Cell game in favor of XDefiant, and both Halo and Lord of the Rings MMOs were shelved by Microsoft and Amazon, respectively.
As a consumer, it’s never nice to see, but for those working in the canceled games, it often leads to devastation.
One of this year’s biggest, most shocking cancellations came from Microsoft and The Initiative, who in June confirmed that the long-in-the-works Perfect Dark reboot wouldn’t see the light of day. Six months after its cancellation, we spoke to Joanna Dark actress, Alix Wilton Regan (also Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider revival), who shed light on just how horrific the ordeal was.
Perfect Dark Reboot “Delivered Several Milestones That The Client Was Happy With” Before It Was Cancelled
“I was as shocked, surprised, and devastated as everyone else was when the funding was pulled, and the studio was closed,” Wilton-Regan tells me. “I did not see it coming. I was absolutely blindsided when the project was defunded.” The actress, known for her roles in Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Cyberpunk 2077, says she found out the news “at the same time as everybody else.”
Of the development process, Wilton-Regan tells me, “We were basically recording bits and bobs throughout ’23. We were also doing lots of performance capture for it in ’24, and we were even recording more stuff for it in ’25. To my knowledge, we were pretty far along. I’d done entire chapters of this universe.” She adds that the game “had delivered several milestones that the client was really happy with,” but in practical terms, she didn’t know exactly how far along development was.
Take-Two Hires Perfect Dark Lead Developers After Failing To Save The Project From Xbox’s Cancellation
The pair will run a new studio under 2K Games.
While losing the role as Dark was painful for Wilton-Regan, the bigger picture was far grimmer. “It was devastating. So many people lost their jobs. An entire workforce was disbanded,” she tells me. “There was an ecosystem of creativity and collaboration that was in place that we lost overnight. It was really difficult, really difficult for everybody.”
There was an ecosystem of creativity and collaboration that was in place that we lost overnight.
A few months after Perfect Dark’s cancellation, news broke that there had been attempts to keep the project alive, with Take-Two making an offer to continue funding the title. This ultimately fell through.
“That was the day I was really sad because that was the day I lost hope,” Wilton-Regan tells me. “Initially, when it made it to the press that Perfect Dark was being defunded, a lot of people reached out for comments about it, both in the media, as well as personally, friends, and professionally, colleagues.
“I couldn’t say too much about it because I knew The Initiative was in talks to keep Perfect Dark up and running in some shape or form. Possibly a slimmed-down version, possibly something slightly different. 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.”
In a career spanning 16 years in video games, this was a first for Wilton-Regan, and it’s left potential long-term scars. “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 tells me. There was, however, one thing keeping her going — Lara Croft.
“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 says. “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.”
If you want to hear more from Wilton-Regan, we’ll have a full chat with her going live in the coming days, where she discusses in detail her new role as the iconic Lara Croft. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled at TheGamer.
