10 Video Games That Were Cancelled Despite Being Almost Finished

Designed to be a gigantic MMORPG for Xbox Live, True Fantasy Live Online was to be helmed by RPG veterans Level-5, who’d previously worked on the Dark Cloud series.

Not only did the game’s cell-shaded art style look incredible, but the title was also hugely ambitious for the time. Up to 3000 people were said to be able to play together on the same server, with each player having complete freedom on which role could occupy within this massive world.

The title was showcased at the Tokyo Game Show in 2003 and was set to launch in 2004. However, the game was delayed soon after, and news went dark. The last anyone heard about it was that it was in a fully playable state. Not long after that announcement, though, True Fantasy was cancelled in June 2004.

The story goes that Microsoft were determined that the game should have voice chat. But Level-5, who were inexperienced with developing online games (especially something of this scale), couldn’t handle everything Microsoft wanted to include. Tensions began to grow between the two companies until the plug was finally pulled.

Had it released, we could have witnessed one of the most ambitious MMORPGs of the 2000s.