Bulletstorm dev reveals canceled game that was “L.A. Noire meets Uncharted”

Start / News / Bulletstorm dev reveals canceled game that was “L.A. Noire meets Uncharted”

May 20, 2014

Prior to releasing 2011's FPS Bulletstorm, Polish developer People Can Fly spent a year working on a "moody as f**k detective thriller with a supernatural edge" called Come Midnight. Former boss Adrian Chmielarz, who left People Can Fly (now called Epic Games Poland) in 2012 to open his own studio, told Eurogamer in a new interview that this game was in development for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and "would have been absolutely incredible."

Chmielarz said the game was targeted to launch in 2007, but that would never come to be, as publisher for the game, the now-defunct THQ, canceled the game in 2006. He explained that part of the issue with Come Midnight was simply explaining what it was all about.

The game mixed genres like noire, survival horror, adventure, thriller, and love story, Chmielarz said. "The closest I can give you would be a more streamlined L.A. Noire--L.A. Noire meets Uncharted, in a way. You are a private eye and you start a normal investigation, but it turns out that there are some otherworldly powers at work, and you can communicate with the dead."

The character you would have played, a detective, died for a brief moment, but came back to life. As such, he kept his ability to see into the afterlife, Chmielarz said. "Great narration, third-person perspective like Resident Evil mixed with L.A. Noire, and full of surprises," he said.

Chmielarz said Come Midnight would have included shooting, melee combat, and adventure elements, but it was truly focused on the idea of "what it would be like to be a supernatural detective in the '40s."

So why was Come Midnight canceled? Chmielarz said THQ decided to drop the game for "reasons outside of the game itself."

"THQ seriously f***ed us over at this point," he said. "They just cancelled. 'OK we're just cancelling the game--see ya.' It's all corporate bulls***; three weeks before, they cancelled all communication--no phone calls, stopped answering emails. Absolute a**holes."

People Can Fly later teamed up with Epic Games for Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgment. Epic Games would later acquire People Can Fly, rebranding the studio Epic Games Poland. Chmielarz said he still wanted to make Come Midnight, but the powers that be deemed the game "too different."

Chmielarz went on to say that he's not sure who currently owns the rights to Come Midnight, as THQ is out of business. Come Midnight was not mentioned in the THQ bankruptcy auction last year.

Right now, Chmielarz and his team as indie studio The Astronauts are working on PC game The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, due out this summer.