10 Canceled Open-World Games You Wish They Hadn't Killed
3. Crimson Skies 3
The Crimson Skies series is one of the best-known examples of a rather niche genre: the flight sim. It was a late nineties board game first and foremost, before being adapted to the video game format in the year 2000.
The first game and its sequel, the Xbox’s Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge are still cult favorites, owing to the fact that there’s nothing quite like them out there (even in the case of this genre). It’s an early example of the dieselpunk genre (centering around sky pirates in an alternate take on 1930s history), a designation that hadn’t even been coined at the time.
We’re in the grey area of open-world titles again, but when Crimson Skies 3 was in the works in the mid 2000s, Microsoft were clearly going to be out to impress with a new Xbox 360 outing. If we were free to explore those most crimson of skies as we wished, it really would’ve showcased the system’s capabilities. Sadly, the game didn’t complete development, with Microsoft seemingly prioritizing Shadowrun instead.