I said it when it was revealed, and I could end up totally wrong, but this feels like a game that gets green lighted when an exec says “we need something creative, like Zelda!” Without understanding that the games need to be way more than skin deep.
Maybe, but those kinds of projects get greenlit all the time at the start of a new console generation. The new hardware will rebalance the scales of audience share, there's new hardware to take advantage of, old franchises are looking their age as producers try to figure out how to rebuild them for another future series, and money is getting thrown around (albeit not as readily this time as in the past, one might say?) in a gambit to be part of the new cycle of relevancy. It's rightfully an exciting time, and it's a good time for developers to chase the greenlight for projects that are still swimming in the brain jelly.
Rare would have been a company enjoying this phase of the gaming lifecycle, as they've done this before and they've pushed platforms in new directions with crazy ideas while they're looking for their next hit. I don't know how well Sea of Thieves is doing, but them blueskying Everwild for a long gestation time feels like something I could understand being part of this company's creative process in the Games as Service era (with a GAS already on the market) and not some harbinger of doom...
Two problems, though. 1, we gamers see Rare as needing another hit. Sea of Thieves felt like it was a long time ago for a company that used to be prolific, and unless you're a dedicated player, it seemed to come and go already. They have had one game since they were in the kids' room making Kinect games (plus Rare Replay, an archive of old games,) and two of their franchises (Battletoads and eventually Perfect Dark) have been claimed by other studios. One Rare game every five years is not what we expect out of Rare. And 2, Microsoft showed Everwild. They showed what seemed like everything they have "in production", even though a lot of it was wishful-thinking CGI story reels. Microsoft, apparently having no games except Halo and some remasters in any kind of shape for their next-gen launch year, it put all these games out there as things to look forward to, as the games that will make Xbox Series X/S a must-have platform. Every hardware manufacturer does that, of course, but MS has yet to provide the distractions in the form of big new games that would buy those big-idea project the time they need to fully form (or to fall out of memory when the developers fail to make their dreams reality.) In the past, we were able to lose track of Milo & Kate or Eight Days or Eyedentity or Black Tusk Project other games where we were watching a real-time project pitch rather than a reveal of an actual upcoming game because we had other stuff to play. Right now, if we're going to talk about Xbox Series X's library and future (which, maybe we don't have to since GamePass is such a dominant force that you don't have to plan your game hype anymore, you'll get it free anyway whenever it's done?,) we don't have much choice but to talk about Everwild and these other projects that might possibly not have one punch of gameplay programmed yet despite not actually being off-track of development.
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