What cut content from video games would you have liked to see?

[indigoasis]

Over the course of development, there's a lot of concepts and unique ideas that end up being cut from the final game, like a 3rd generation in Genealogy of the Holy War for example. So my question to everyone is what cut content would you like to have seen make the cut in any video game? If there's any concept art or videos talking about the cut idea, feel free to share it.

Something I would've liked to see is the aging mechanic in The Wind Waker. Link would age slowly as the game progresses, and I think that it's a really neat idea that I hope is revisted and implemented for a future Zelda game.

Spoiler

 

Edited December 15, 2018 by indigoceans

[Armagon]

All of the cut content from Xenogears Disc 2. While the story itself is complete, the storytelling suffered because Disc 2 was forced to be rushed thanks to Square Enix cutting the budget so it could go to Final Fantasy 8 instead. As a result, the storytelling quality was reduced and some dungeons, Omnigears and subplots were also cut.

You can look at it in Xenogears Perfect Works, which details the full plans but i would've liked to see it in the actual game.

I also would've liked to see what role the Bionis' Left Shoulder in Xenoblade Chronicles would've played. You actually can visit it by hacking but there's nothing there. I imagine it was supposed to be the link between Makna Forest and Eryth Sea (since in the final game, you kinda just teleport from Makna to Eryth) but time constraints likely led that area of the game to be cut.

[ChefGuevara]

All the stuff that got cut from fallout new vegas 

like, as much as I enjoy the game, the rushed nature it's production is pretty obvious throughout the experience, and the amount of interesting locations and characters that were cut practically warrant an entire remake. It's a real shame.

[Acacia Sgt]

The planned appearance of Gundam Sentinel in the Super Robot Wars Alpha games.

Apparently, there were plans to incorcoparte Gundam Sentinel into the Alphaverse, as both Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 has unused sprites, though nothing else, from what I recall. I don't know why they didn't made the cut for Alpha 2, but for Alpha 3 they got pushed out in favor of Gundam SEED, as apparently SEED was requested to be added in. I think it was quite a shame this happened and was a bit of a poor choice, for various reasons.

First of all, Gundam Sentinel has only ever appeared once in SRW, in SRW 4. However, only the titular Gundam appears. No actual characters, no plot points, nothing else. However, it seems their planned appearance in the Alpha games was gonna be a proper debut. Or at least, it would include more than just the titular Gundam. Since they got cut, however, Sentinel has yet to properly debut.

Next, is that adding SEED so late in the Alphaverse, at the final game, is a bit jarring for continuity. Despite being numbered 3, Alpha 3 is actually the fourth game (there's an Alpha Gaiden that happens between 1 and 2). This opens a whole lot of questions as to why nothing of SEED ever showed up after ALL the stuff that happened in the previous three games. While SEED wasn't the only series added to Alpha 3, it's the one where it becomes too noticeable. The other series the game added at least have good or sensible explanations for showing up so late into the series, or are sequel entries to previously added series.

Finally, the abrupt change of focus. Through the previous Alpha games, the stories of Gundam's Universal Century had been the main one. To be fair, outside of the UC and SEED, the only other Gundam series that shows up in the Alpha games is Gundam Wing, though their story wraps up quite early, with the events of Endless Waltz happening early in Gaiden. While most plot points of UC Gundam wrapped up by the time Alpha 2 ended, the plan to add Sentinel, specially in 3, meant they had not yet exhausted everything and were planning to give the UC an actual final closure and plot relevancy in 3. However, due to the push to add SEED in and it's focus for being a debuting series in SRW, it means that the UC cast suddenly drop in focus and relevancy in favor of the SEED cast. Then again, I have yet to play 3 or read up its story to see what's exactly the case, but it's still a sudden big change so late into the verse.

Personally, they should've held back SEED's debut, preferibly to one of the stand-alone games, and kept Sentinel for Alpha 3.

Edited December 15, 2018 by Acacia Sgt

[Tryhard]

Giant/Sixth Archstone from Demon's Souls. If for no other reason than I am curious.

[Etrurian emperor]

The ending to Metal Gear Solid V would have been nice. 

There's also some artwork for scrapped Wind Waker Dungeon. As a pretty short Zelda I think Wind Waker would have benefited if they had been in the remake. 

[Slumber]

Yeah, I'll say the ending to Metal Gear Solid 5.

With other notable examples like Xenogears and Wind Waker, I still get the feeling that most of what the developers wanted from the final product was in the game, maybe just not presented in the way they wanted. They managed to mitigate the compromises they had to make.

With MGS5, it just straight up feels like 1/3 of the game is missing, and the game just kind of ends. For the game that was meant to bring the franchise full-circle, that's really unfortunate.

Edited December 15, 2018 by Slumber

[Jingle Jangle]

• The previous builds of Bioshock Infinite where is was less of a shooting galley and more of a city.
• Tons of ideas in Destiny, just see all of the concept art that never made it into the game. Mothmen and ride-able space frogs could have been a thing damn it.
• Spore, the original idea is less of an alien version of Sims and more of a creation game.
• Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic II: The Sith Lords used to be on the list but thankfully there is a mod to restore some of the cut content.

 

[Dragoncat]

4 hours ago, Armagon said:

I also would've liked to see what role the Bionis' Left Shoulder in Xenoblade Chronicles would've played. You actually can visit it by hacking but there's nothing there. I imagine it was supposed to be the link between Makna Forest and Eryth Sea (since in the final game, you kinda just teleport from Makna to Eryth) but time constraints likely led that area of the game to be cut.

Same. I think it may have been a highland area, or more of an evergreen forest where as Makna is a jungle.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

The 8 missing colossi in Shadow of the Colossus is often brought up. Though personally I think that game's length is just fine and that its gameplay is not engaging enough to warrant the missing third of content. The recent remake was certainly the last, best opportunity to bring those visions to life.

Windwaker is an excellent answer. A lot of the game's padding was done to make up for the lack of additional dungeons post Master Sword, and I'm very interested in how they might have had us traversing the submerged Hyrule. And Fallout New Vegas is definitely a horror story of rushed game development and how poorly Bethesda's engine runs on consoles to a point where major areas of the game had to be reshaped into something easier to load. Though it's more than passable with the aid of mods, or in Windwaker's case, an HD remaster.

Dark Souls 1 is another one that comes to mind. The area of Lost Izalith has almost no thought put into its enemy encounters and the Bed of Chaos is an insufferable nightmare that warrants no skill from the player. That fight is so terrible it's the only one in which your progress is saved upon death because even the game developers knew they screwed this one up. 

[Dandy Druid]

From what I remember, Fates had a TON of cut content for the story.

It probably had a lot of things cut that would've helped build the world better and explain why things were happening.

[indigoasis]

2 hours ago, Dragoncat said:

Same. I think it may have been a highland area, or more of an evergreen forest where as Makna is a jungle.

Wait, wasn't there another cut area of Xenoblade where it was like a tiny-ish village of sorts? I know Breath of the Wild had a cut village of tiny people, but I recall Xenoblade having a cut town as well.

[Dragoncat]

28 minutes ago, indigoceans said:

Wait, wasn't there another cut area of Xenoblade where it was like a tiny-ish village of sorts? I know Breath of the Wild had a cut village of tiny people, but I recall Xenoblade having a cut town as well.

I have never heard of this.

[Armagon]

41 minutes ago, indigoceans said:

Wait, wasn't there another cut area of Xenoblade where it was like a tiny-ish village of sorts? I know Breath of the Wild had a cut village of tiny people, but I recall Xenoblade having a cut town as well.

 

13 minutes ago, Dragoncat said:

I have never heard of this.

That's in the Bionis' Left Shoulder.

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥]

14 hours ago, indigoceans said:

Over the course of development, there's a lot of concepts and unique ideas that end up being cut from the final game, like a 3rd generation in Genealogy of the Holy War for example. So my question to everyone is what cut content would you like to have seen make the cut in any video game? If there's any concept art or videos talking about the cut idea, feel free to share it.

sometimes, i still wonder how Final Fantasy XV could have turned out if SquareEnix had left it in the hands of Nomura.

the trailer with the battle against the soldiers in front of the palace was what got me interested the most. especially because it was a brutal fight, wich is kind of rare to see from SE( with few exceptions ).

[indigoasis]

15 hours ago, Dragoncat said:

I have never heard of this.

My bad, it wasn't a small village. It was a walled city, which is on the Bionis' left shoulder. The video I linked goes into a bit more detail, and it also has a lot of other cut content in there, too.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Besides everything already said here, I wouldn't mind if they gave us The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Retold. A modern mashup of all the scrapped ideas for OoT, like the Medallions being usable items, the Unicorn Fountain, the entire game taking place in Ganondorf's Castle, no Young Link.

Zelda games on the whole have had some interesting cut content. Unspoken so far has been Mystical Seed of Courage- an entire game that got scrapped because interlinking three games was too much work, hence the three Mystical Seeds were shrunk to the two Oracles. Give me an Oracle Farore of plot importance, and add both the canceled focus on colors for MSoW and the Morning-Day-Evening-Night time system meant for MSoC.

Also, a Skyward Sword mod where every time Fi popped out, she randomly used one of her many:

Spoiler

unused designs.

[Perkilator]

Whichever of the unused fighters for Smash Bros. (who aren’t fighters yet) that can be made work within reason (Ayumi Tachibana, Rhythm Heaven character, Banjo-Kazooie, Plusle and Minun, etc). This makes me wonder what fighters Sakurai considered and/or are discovered in the coding for Ultimate.

[Strullemia]

Fallout New Vegas had a lot of cut content that they didn't manage to put into the game like being able to visit a Legion controlled region to show you how the people live there and some more Legion related side quests.

I would have loved to have that in the game so we have some more depth to the Legion faction.

[Arcphoenix]

Sonic 06. Everything the developers could have put in but didn't. This game had a lot of potential and could have been one of the greatest in the series had it not been put out too early. There's a lot of information about plans the development team had and stuff that can be found in the game's data suggesting that the game could have been so much more than it came to be. On the topic of Sonic, the classic games have a lot of unfinished levels in the data with names and basic concepts. It could have been interesting to see many of the concepts they had as full levels.

I wish I could think of more, but that's all that comes to mind...

In general though, many games that radically changed in concept from their start would have been interesting to see developed. Space Fire Emblem (that one concept art of Chrom in a space suit), Mother 64, and Fire Emblem 64 to name a few. There was also early Guardian concept art for BotW. Geez I hope those designs get used in something someday.

Edited December 23, 2018 by Arcphoenix