5. The Outsider
The Outsider was set to be an ambitious espionage game that prided itself on recreating a vibrant, authentic Washington D.C. for players to traverse, with the protagonist being a secret agent who is hunted down by the authorities. What really set the game aside wasn't just its scale, but the fact that it gave players so much choice; rather than the arbitrary binary morality of something like Mass Effect, there was grand moral ambiguity, and players had a multitude of options to go about finishing missions. Development ceased in 2011 after Codemasters dropped the title and the developer, Frontier Developments, had to lay off much of its staff. Though beyond that we know little of why it fell apart, this might be a case of a game simply being too ambitious for its own good, and creating unexpected complexities or maybe just spooking the publisher.