Cut/Changed Content in Games

[Moonface]

Naturally, every game is going to inevitably have something changed or outright removed during its development, and sometimes we get to know or even see what that content could've been. There's even an entire website dedicated to it. So what stuff has caught your eye that falls into this?


I have a few things I know I've seen that I'd put here, but for now I'm going to share this cut content from Shadow of the Tomb Raider that I just learned about. So the game was going to receive an 8th DLC taking place in Croft Manor, but for some reason was cancelled during its development despite seemingly being pretty far along as there are voice lines for the entire DLC recorded in multiple languages. One of the cut lines addresses the size of the infamously large sink in Tomb Raider 2, and I love it finds a silly way to canonically explain something that at the time happened due to limitations with the game engine.

Miss Croft. Having now examined our original documents, versus the blueprints from which the work was executed, we have discovered that the initial designs were measured in feet, but the blueprints were drawn up in meters. This is the reason for the oversized proportions to your kitchen.

[Maniakkid25]

What immediately comes to mind is the Arwing that's in Ocarina of Time's game files. Even knowing why it's there (testing the Z-Targeting system), its still a very silly crossover.

Next thing that comes to mind is Bioware and Obsidian. Oh, my god, the stories I could tell. KotOR 2 by itself is a treasure trove of cut content, to the point that the mod restoring said content has its own Wikipedia page! The Mass Effect series as a whole has loads upon loads of unused audio and text, including stuff that alludes to the romance options all being available to both sexes (most of them are limited to just one). My favorite is Male!Shepard saying verbally "I am not screwing Garrus!" We know the context of this because Fem!Shepard can say the exact same line (If you start romancing Garrus, one of the other characters comments on the health effects it could have [long story], and she can say that), but I so wish that they had kept that as an option. Garrus and Male!Shepard is already the best bromance ever, and turning into a romance would be just perfect.

Being me, I gotta bring of Legend of Dragoon somehow, and while I don't know about anything from that game, I do know a game that was going to reference it as DLC: Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale! *Crickets chirping* Does--... Does anyone remember Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale?! That Super Smash Bros. knock-off by Sony?! No? ...Okay. Well, it was a thing, and Dart (the main character of Legend of Dragoon) was planned and basically all built up and ready to go, before all development was dropped on the game because of lagging sales numbers. Thus, we were denied any chance of Legend of Dragoon representation in a game meant to represent Sony's catalog of characters! *flips table*

[Moonface]

What immediately comes to mind is the Arwing that's in Ocarina of Time's game files. Even knowing why it's there (testing the Z-Targeting system), its still a very silly crossover.

Makes me wonder what they would've used if OoT and SF64 didn't run on the same engine to let them bring the Arwing over easily.

Being me, I gotta bring of Legend of Dragoon somehow, and while I don't know about anything from that game, I do know a game that was going to reference it as DLC: Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale! *Crickets chirping* Does--... Does anyone remember Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale?! That Super Smash Bros. knock-off by Sony?! No? ...Okay. Well, it was a thing, and Dart (the main character of Legend of Dragoon) was planned and basically all built up and ready to go, before all development was dropped on the game because of lagging sales numbers. Thus, we were denied any chance of Legend of Dragoon representation in a game meant to represent Sony's catalog of characters! *flips table*

I recall that game, and I stand by my idea that Sony would've been better off doing a kart racer using their IP's rather than a Smash clone. They clearly wanted a kart racer as seen by their attempts with ModNation Racers and LittleBigPlanet Karting, but those games were hindered by relying on user generated content with a 3D track maker that was incredibly unintuitive to use.
On the bright side, Dart did eventually get a moment to shine as one of the collectible bots in Astro Bot.

[Kyng]

LEGO Racers was famous for having quite a few of these .

For example, on the Pirate Skull Pass track, there was a structure with a skull-shaped door on the front, that looked very much like it should have been the entrance to a shortcut:



And... it turns out that there's evidence of a removed shortcut on this track  . It isn't the skull - if there ever was a shortcut there, then it was removed cleanly, and there's not a lot of evidence of it left in the released game. Rather, the more obvious removed shortcut is earlier on the track: it seems to have been removed quite late in development - and there are quite a lot of hints of where it would have been (including some out-of-bounds powerups that have been left behind!)



With that being said, it's tempting to think there might have been a shortcut starting from the skull, and the video does speculate on where it could have been. But it is all speculative: if it ever existed, it was probably removed quite early in development!