Polk said:
Were they even announced? If not how can they be hyped?
They weren't announced as Fallout 3 and Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound, but the projects were announced under their code names Jefferson and Van Buren, yes, and it became commonly known which was which. Also, in the years since Black Isle's closure, we've learned a great number of details about the projects, and Fallout 3 in particular. A test demo of Fallout 3 was let out a year or two ago, in fact -- you can play through one town and fight a few guys. It's got real-time combat only, as they hadn't implemented the turn-based option yet, but still, you can play it and see what it could have been...
Unfortunately BGIII doesn't seem to have gotten even that far, or at least less has leaked. We know that it was going to be unrelated in plot to the previous BG titles, only really using the name for the recognition and because that's what Interplay had as far as D&D, BG and IWD. Still, it was a D&D RPG from Black Isle, so I'm sure it would have been spectacular like all of their (and Obsidian's) RPGs have been.
Polk said:
But it was year(s) after cancelation. I don't think there was "proper" hype when thos projects were alive (other then typical - give us sequels to our beloved games asap).
We knew the codenames of the projects and there was lots of speculation, and some leaks, about what they were. They weren't fully announced as Torn had been, but they were at least as far along when they were cancelled... so no, I would say that there definitely was hype, plenty of it, among fans of the studio (as I was).
You're right that many of the leaks were years later, but it's not like we knew nothing in Interplay's last days. We knew they cancelled both of them, and we knew that they did not cancel Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, the bad PS2/Xbox action-RPG... and it was really, really sad to watch a great developer fall apart like that.
m3k said:
if im not mistaken the source code for fallout 3 was released in unfinished form... and throne of bhaal was made from a scrapped baldurs gate 3 or something along those lines
ToB was made well before BGIII, and that was from Bioware, not Black Isle... you're probably thinking of a Neverwinter Nights 2 mod that BGIII designer Chris Sawyer said he was going to make a couple of years ago, telling the story of The Black Hound and using that title. Unfortunately we haven't heard much of anything of it since, so I have no idea if it's ever actually going to be finished.
Also the full Fallout 3 source wasn't released, just that one playable test demo area I mentioned.
AdrianWerner said:
I'm not mentioning stuff like Fallout 3, Troika's PA RPG or Priveteer Online and Wing Commander online as they were never properly announced
I thought about mentioning Torn, but I didn't really follow that one all that closely at the time, while their last projects interested me a lot... still, Torn is definitely worth mentioning as well, for sure.
CamHostage said:
Another one that I guess doesn't qualify as vaporware (PC version shipped, I think other systems got it in Europe?) but I remember Hype: The Time Quest looking really cool in its N64 hype.
No, it ended up PC only. And yeah, it's definitely too bad that the N64 version didn't come out... but since the PC one did, it doesn't count. Decent game, I think.
