Towards the end of last month, EA cancelled its single-player Black Panther game and closed the developer behind it, Cliffhanger Studios. At this time, an email seen by the media said this decision would enable the publisher to “sharpen our focus and put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities”.
Since then, a Bloomberg report has revealed a few more details from Cliffhanger Studios’ now-cancelled Marvel game, including that the project was looking to build upon ideas from Monolith’s Shadow of Mordor game, such as its Nemesis System. The Nemesis system is a clever in-game mechanic, which in Shadow of Mordor tracks a player’s actions to create enemies who remember past encounters.
Cliffhanger was going to expand on this mechanism, with playable heroes such as T’Challa, Killmonger and Shuri all competing to earn the title of Black Panther. According to the report, players would select one character to play as, with the others then becoming rivals they could build a relationship with.
Additionally, Cliffhanger’s Black Panther game would feature Marvel’s fictional race of extraterrestrial shapeshifters, the Skrulls. In the game, the Skrulls would be attempting to invade Wakanda, with some of the alien creatures posing as allies. Meanwhile, other members of the Skrulls “might have remembered the player’s behaviour and acted accordingly, sort of like in Shadow of Mordor,” the report stated, calling it an “ambitious system”.
However, despite its vision, the Black Panther developer had a hard time showcasing the game’s procedural narrative experiments, with those close to the project stating that processes were slowed due to the team building both a new game and a new studio at the same time.
Reportedly, the game had begun gaining more momentum prior to its shock cancellation, with many of those laid off only being hired within the last year. However, according to sources, EA executives had been left frustrated by the fact the game had not yet left the pre-production phase, despite it being in the works for nearly four years.
While EA may have cancelled its Black Panther Project, the company still has an Iron Man game in the pipeline. In October 2022, EA signed a multi-game deal with Marvel.
Away from EA, Amy Hennig’s own Black Panther-starring game is also still in development. Known as Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, the upcoming release is slated for next year, and will focus on four central characters: a young Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America; Azzuri, T’Challa’s grandfather and the WWII-era Black Panther; Gabriel Jones, a US soldier and member of the Howling Commandos; and Nanali, a Wakandan spy embedded in Occupied Paris.