In 2019, Rare stirred up excitement by announcing it was working on a new IP. Rare revealed a trailer for its fantasy action-adventure gameEverwild, which enchanted fans. From the looks of things,Everwildtakes place in a vibrant world where people called Eternals use magic to preserve the nature’s balance and project animals from harm. That’s a compelling concept, but Rare hasn’t provided much insight onEverwildbeyond that. The main news to come out ofEverwild’s development in recent months is that the game isn’t progressing smoothly.
Everwild’s creative director Simon Woodroffe left Rare in late 2020. While that in itself isn’t disastrous, all signs indicate Rare has struggled to deal with it. The game’s development was reportedly restarted from scratch in mid-2021, and new leaks claimEverwildis apparently a mess right now, with developers unsure where to take it next. Hopefully Rare perseveres and seesEverwildthrough, rather than abandoning the game before it sees the light of day. Rare has a long list of abandoned games, and it’d be a shame to seeEverwildjoin them considering how much interest there is in this fantasy title.
RELATED:What Everwild’s Multiplayer Can Learn from Journey
Everwild’s Risk of Abandonment
Many studios have had to cancel a game; all kinds of projects go awry or fail to find approval from publishers.Rare has had to cancel plenty of gamesin the past, even if many of its cancellations had nothing to do with the state of the games themselves. Many Rare projects didn’t make it to release because Nintendo or Microsoft turned down Rare’s ideas or asked the studio to rework the concept into something else, like howDinosaur Planetwent on to beStar Fox Adventures.Regardless of each cancellation’s cause, Rare has a high number of abandoned projects, from a long-lostPerfect Darksequel to a horror fantasy game calledUrchin.
Rare may not always have control over its cancellations, but its long history of letting games go still doesn’t bode well forEverwild.IfEverwildreally is struggling so much after more than two years in development, it seems likely Rare has at least considered canceling it by now.Sea of Thievescontinues to thrive, after all, so Rare could focus on that game publicly while starting work on something new behind closed doors. Practical as that may be, cancelingEverwildwould be a huge loss.
RELATED:Everwild Can Learn a Lot From Sea of Thieves
Why Everwild Should Persevere
From the moment it was announced,Everwildhad a community of fans. Rare may not have revealed gameplay for the action-adventure title, but the game’s colorful art style and sound design struck a chord.Everwilddevelopers have promised the game is unlike anything else in the industry, and based on the Eternals' druidic approach to magic, this promise doesn’t seem unfounded.Everwildcould be a refreshing additionto the Xbox Series X’s game catalog, and to the action-adventure genre as a whole.
Even if it’s unclear whatEverwild’s main objectives are, it already presents fans with a world that looks compelling to explore.Everwildfeatures a wide variety of fantastical animals that the playable Eternals can interact with, and the spirits that Eternals sometimes call upon hint at a lore that Rare fans haven’t seen as of yet. For the time being, there’s hope that Rare still wants to makeEverwildwork. If Rare reportedly decided toreboot its development rather than scrapEverwildas soon as it hit a snag, that’s a good sign.Everwildmay be struggling now, but it could become something beautiful.
Everwildis in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
MORE:All the Rare-Developed Nintendo 64 Games That Could Come to Switch Online
