The ill-starred Excellent Darkish reboot had 'complete chapters' accomplished earlier than cancellation, says Joanna Darkish's voice actor, who 'didn’t see it coming… it was devastating'
Considered one of 2025’s grimmer themes appears to be a perennial one for the video games trade: mass layoffs. One of many very worst examples got here in July, when Microsoft laid off round 9,000 individuals in whole, alongside shuttering a number of studios and in-development tasks, maybe most notably the Excellent Darkish reboot being co-developed by The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics.
Behind the scenes, builders at The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics had been desperately making an attempt to avoid wasting the challenge, however these efforts would come to naught: a last-ditch try involving writer Take-Two collapsed when no settlement might be reached over the IP rights. There was additionally debate over how a lot of the ace-looking reveal had been smoke-and-mirrors, with one dev angrily refuting the concept there wasn’t a recreation there.
The actor goes on to debate the efforts to maintain Excellent Darkish alive, and the realisation that the Take-Two rescue deal had fallen via.
“That was the day I used to be actually unhappy as a result of that was the day I misplaced hope,” says Wilton Regan. “I could not say an excessive amount of about it as a result of I knew The Initiative was in talks to maintain Excellent Darkish up and operating in some form or type. Probably a slimmed-down model, probably one thing barely totally different.
“However actually, everybody was working actually exhausting behind the scenes to carry Excellent Darkish again. After which at some point, I heard from the inventive director that the deal hadn’t gone via, and that actually every little thing had fallen aside, and manufacturing was absolutely stopping.”
Some good did come of the Take-Two discussions, a minimum of: earlier this month it was introduced that The Initiative’s studio head Darrell Gallagher and the sport’s director Brian Horton have joined the writer to start out a brand new studio.
In the meantime, Wilton Regan has one other main position to maintain her busy: she’s Lara Croft in two new Tomb Raider video games, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis (a “reimagining” of the primary recreation) in addition to the brand new journey Tomb Raider: Catalyst.
“The saving grace for me when Excellent Darkish fell aside was that I would already been capturing Lara for a couple of yr as nicely,” says Wilton Regan. “I used to be enjoying Joanna over right here, and I used to be enjoying Lara over right here, which was great and genuinely one of the vital creatively thrilling instances of my life. And I simply felt so relieved that I nonetheless had Lara, however I additionally felt actually frightened about shedding Lara. I am nonetheless fearful of shedding Lara.”