A recent episode of the popular YouTube series, Did You Know Gaming, has revealed a wealth of previously unknown information on a cancelled sequel to the original Perfect Dark called Perfect Dark: Core. Planned for the Xbox 360, the game’s narrative would have been split across two games with the first game already planned out with a basic script written by Chris Seavor, the writer and director of Conker’s Bad Fur Day as well as animations, concept art and more.
The game planned to show a darker tone with the series protagonist, Joanna Dark, was “tougher, colder, a killer”. The game also returned more to the science fiction roots of the original game, removing the mythical elements that were present in the Xbox 360 title Perfect Dark: Zero and would even see the return of Elvis, an extra-terrestrial who was a very important character to the first game.
The team even had gone as far to create new technology for the game, some of which was later implemented into Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. Rare had created an “ultra-first-person” perspective designed to make parkour, takedowns, as well as gun and melee combat, feel more visceral than games such as Call of Duty.
The title was sadly cancelled with Microsoft using the excuse that Perfect Dark: Zero didn’t sell very well and there was already a pretty substantial amount of first-person shooters and the like on the platform already.
If you want to find out more about Perfect Dark: Core and even plans for a sequel to that called Perfect Dark: Vengeance, check out the video below. The video covers a lot of small, interesting details about the game and even shows off a lot of what was planned for the sadly cancelled title.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.