10 Cancelled Video Games We Wish We Could Have Played

7. System Shock 3

System Shock 2
EA

The most recent cancellation on this list, System Shock 3 being canned comes as quite a surprise (not least because I only just included it in an article about games you won't believe are in development).

According to one anonymous insider, the entire development staff were laid off by the studio, in part thanks to the game being "critically behind" schedule. Apparently the main cause of the problems stemmed from original publisher Starbreeze, which encountered its own financial problems not long ago, and forced the scale of System Shock 3 to be massively scaled back.

The former dev went on to say:

"We were a small team and knew we couldn't compete with current immersive sims in production quality and breadth, so we had to be creative and clever and weird. And we were on our way to make something unique and possibly fun, but probably not what the audience was hungry for."

The new approach actually sounded more interesting in a way. After all, just what were these creative, clever and weird ideas? Unfortunately, we'll never know.

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Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.