Blizzard's Survival Game on First Screenshots. It Was Canceled After 6 Years in Development Hell
Blizzard has no luck in developing new brands. One of the studio's deleted games was the project we came to know as Odyssey.
So far, we've only known Odyssey from the early announcements of the developer and one concept art shared by Carmen Lights. It was supposed to be Blizzard's survival game, which was canceled due to layoffs ordered by Microsoft and problems with the graphics engine. However, as we wrote in January – the team was very attached to the game and had a very positive attitude towards it.
What was Blizzard's Odyssey?
The title most likely aimed to compete with such games as Valheim, although inspirations from Minecraft and Rust were also visible. A user of the Russian social network VK shared a package of nine screenshots supposedly from the game.
Odyssey's footage, which leaked
The images depict the potential appearance of the player's character, various landscapes, a resource screen, and the genre's characteristic round menu. The quest name "Fallen Star" visible in one photo implies that the game developed by the division known as Team Survival may have focused heavily - for this genre - on narrative elements. Below we present the most interesting screenshots, all of them come from the post of the mentioned user.
VK.com user BlizzardMC
VK.com user BlizzardMC
VK.com user BlizzardMC
VK.com user BlizzardMC
VK.com user BlizzardMC
As you can see - and as the concept art indicated - the game was supposed to radiate a fairy-tale atmosphere. As Games Radar notes, the materials include references to British folklore and legends, as well as the Cheshire Cat.
Odyssey - reasons for cancelling the project
The game was canceled because of the extended development process and issues with the graphics engine, as we mentioned in January based on a report from Bloomberg. Initially, Team Survival worked on the Unreal Engine, but the higher-ups pushed for the use of Blizzard's Synapse engine (because such technology-forcing always ends well...). Well, that's a shame. This is another interesting title that lands in the giant's graveyard next to projects such as Warcraft Adventures.
