The 10th Planet - Bethesda’s first Space IP

with Starfield set to release in 2023 bethesda's first new IP in 25 years is nearly here however it is not the company's first Venture into the vast emptiness of space the stars above us are fundamental to gaming from the 70s arcade games of asteroid and Space Invaders to the variety of derivatives and Evolutions That Grew From those humble beginnings Mankind's fascination with the vast universe beyond this planet knobs no bounds bethesd softworks had dipped their toes into this last frontier before with 1994's sci-fi Space Racer Delta V seeking to recreate the excitement of Star Wars Trench Run Delta V had Gamers swooping through valleys and tunnels of volume obstacles as they raced to the finish in spite of this exhilarating concept Delta V with its limited scope and suspect speed kill in design choices was left with less than Stellar reviews but this didn't dissuade the team from attempting another space game foreign ER Christopher Weaver haven't attended MIT worked as a technology advisor for the U.S government he was a master of networking with connections all the way to Hollywood indeed that is how it is relatively small developer found itself in possession of the gaming rights to determinate the franchise through these connections Bethesda entered talks with centropolis entertainment the production company behind the Sci-Fi epic Stargate founded by director Roland emmerich he and actor-turned writer Dean Devlin approached Weaver interested in creating a Sci-Fi Legend exclusively for the game in space Devlin in particular was enthusiastic at the prospect of creating an interactive experience that wasn't hamstrung by a connection to a movie or other existing media the result was the 10th planet headed by an RPG game of the year winner a sci-fi film power Duo and with a release date set for the holiday season of 1996. this was surely to be a momentous title four missed release dates and a bug release later this never came to be in 1999 the game was shelved while never officially canceled it was surely dead until that is we were introduced to a trailer from a brand new IP star field is a game that we have spent years thinking about and working on helium-3 tanks checked sales are intact what you found me to unlocking everything a round patch with 10 heavenly bodies and the words the tenth planet it's just a kind gesture to a forgotten project or is it more than that is Starfield a spiritual successor to a dead game we'll be investigating that and more as we discover what the 10th planet was and what caused it to spin out of control through development hell before Crash Landing onto the cousin room floor grab some snacks and get comfortable as we prepare to experience the story of the space epic that flew so close but never close enough [Music] what was the 10th planet from how it played to its aesthetic design and the story behind it well that is a multi-faceted question because this game wasn't just one game it morphed over time as we've seen with Arena this isn't uncommon for 90s Professor or with game development in general with a four-year development hell of Shifting priorities and a change of team members the 10th Planet evolved more than most over this four year period we can boil it down to three distinct versions the original version started production in 1995 and set to release in 96. it even has its own self-running demo this is the only footage we have of the 10th Planet actually running it was set to release shortly after Daggerfall hence the demo being supplied alongside a playable demo for that second entry into the Elder Scrolls clearly there this was bethesda's answer to Tie Fighter rather than the sweeping procedurally generated lands of bethesda's open World Games the 10th planet was explicitly a space combat simulator with a focus on action it was advertised on both centropolises and bethesda's websites where interestingly they share very similar layouts note that the Bethesda archive is younger and already has an updated release date in 1997. centropolis entertainment creators of such Hollywood hit films as Moon 44 universal Soldier and Stargate have partnered with Bethesda to create one of the most exciting science fiction Adventures ever created an original science fiction story about the discovery of a distant planet within our solar system that is determined to have been the cause of numerous natural disasters in ancient Earth history only there was nothing natural about them there isn't a lot of insight into the game here but we can Envision the overarching premise and that the name is a reference to a hidden Planet the concept of a newly discovered tenth planet is nothing new it was explored by sci-fi authors such as Edmund Cooper with 1978's titular the 10th planet and before that being the setting for the final few episodes of William hartnell's original Doctor Who Run back in 1966 known as mondas it was the home of the infamous who villain the Cyberman The Proposal of an unknown Ted Planet wasn't as unbelievable in the 20th century the ninth planet of the Soul system Pluto was discovered in 1930 as you know a certain reclassification by the international astronomical Union in 2006 turned Pluto into a dwarf planet now nullifying the 10th planet's qualification as well the 10th planet the self-running demo was presented to journalists at that Year's E3 convention the popular print publications of the time were thoroughly impressed with what they saw PC Gamer thorned over the state-of-the-art graphics made ultra realistic by some truly remarkable lighting effects a relevant observation given that the demo is equivalent to if not a bit more advanced than TIE fighter released the year before game pro UK made sure to mention that the boys at Bethesda were keeping their cars pretty close to their chest with this one the game was said to be a shoot-emer where you have complete freedom of movement it's a kind of Star Fox beats X-Wing with some of the finest Graphics we've seen for a long while they confidently report that the game should be out in early 96 and that there were possible Saturn and Playstation versions of the 10th Planet hitting stores later in the year another piece of the puzzle the fabled console ports that Bethesda were to release yet none of them ever came to fruition until Maul went half a decade later PC Zone were the most excited for the game Conor mcnicholas's use of a goofy writing style Hawks back to a Time sorely missed from game journalism mcnicholas records his visit to Professor's office from the point of view of a nationalistic American spy including Jabs that professor's choice to hire Danish programmers and a call to action for the reader to eat this page at the end of The Briefing contained within this dramatic literature we can find extensive knowledge of this early version there are almost no restrictions you can fly away from the space station until it is only a tiny Speck in the starry backdrop or swoop into the station's own Docking Bay to launch a surprise attack while the game was an open world it was still aiming to be large in scope with flashbacks to Arena's troubled development mcnicholas notes that the game will be online allowing players to dogfight each other over a network the vastness of space possibly had something to do with procedural generation 2 not surprising given that this was their Wheelhouse in the late 90s it was bethesda's newly developed proprietary engine that excited journalists the most specifically with how it displayed 3D Graphics the textures wouldn't tear or warp based on your position a limitation often seen effect in the 3D games of the original PlayStation we can use 1994's Wing Commander free as an example of how these visual issues affected other 3D Space games on the PC a problem that the 10th planet was said to be free of the team behind this early version is not well documented past the obvious mentions of the centropolis duo alongside Bethesda president Chris Weaver Weaver is credited as an executive producer on most titles released by the studio before his departure but was admittedly rarely involved with the game design itself there is only one mention of another developer working on this earning version from a preview website the computer show an extensive game release database active from 1995 to 2006. it isn't the most trustworthy of sources with this gorgeous home screen saying as much nevertheless it names the lead programmer as core seizing seizing did work at Bethesda with credits on the Terminator titles and Delta V so this may be true however it wasn't until the later developed 1997 version where we are introduced to an actual game designer and it was one of the best xtsr creative designer Bruce Nesmith it is with this second version of the game where we can discover much more with how little press the earlier version garnered relative to this later one it seems likely that the original release date was preliminary at best especially considering that that version was a shadow of what it was developing into now at the Helm of the project noobs the higher Bruce Nesmith was a legend in the pen and paper on PG world he had worked at the then dungeon and Dragons rights holders designed in the ravenloth campaign set in Dragon strike board game and the fourth edition of DnD needless to say he was one of the most experienced writers in the role-playing community and was recruited to help with Daggerfall as well as spearhead future games at fesda a lot of the press revolved around the X engine the technology had impressed Gamers and terminate the Future Shock and Bethesda were seeking to Double Down marketing the engine extensively in our comprehensive interview with Next Generation magazine Nez Smith discussed his plans for the 10th planet now that he was at the helm he curiously mentions that the 10th Planet wasn't running the original X engine but instead a new version this appears to be a creation engine situation where fundamentally that engine is still game Rio at its core we have tons of improvements built on top of it Nesmith was likely vocalizing the distinction to help inform readers that the 10th Planet will be technologically Superior to daggerful and Future Shock despite it running on the same Tech the new version of the X engine was touted to be running a fong-based lighten model although it did later become an industry standard this type of lighten only entered General usage in 1999 with sega's Hikaru arcade system most Home Hardware was not capable of running it partially due to it rendering diffuse ambient and specular Shaden on a pixel wide pixel basis can competitor LucasArts use the less realistic but also less graphically intensive Goro Shaden it wasn't until Doom 3 that a scaled down version of thong Shaden was successfully introduced to home PC gaming to put it into perspective this version of the 10th planet was planned for a September 1997 release seven years prior Next Generation does make it clear that even with this lighting model the X engine maintains such a high frame rate through any number of resolutions about when the game was demoed the graphics adapter in the PC dropped frames well before the engine slowed the engine is impressive but there is the issue the engine may have been able to handle the Fidelity but the PC component at the time could not this is not the only reason for the delays but overconfidence is a common feature of troubled game developments and an obstacle that often leads to Greater difficulty take nesmith's comments on the X engines ahead of its time achievements as an example he wasn't too concerned with optimization as it wasn't his responsibility it was up to the programmers to make it work and who knows how optimistic Nesmith was here in regards to the reality concerning centropolis entertainment's involvement Dean Devlin has been excited for a long time about getting his hands dirty he recognizes that he doesn't have the knowledge to create his own game but he does know how to tell stories and how to recognize good special effects the two companies had good rapport Jeff goldblum's character in Independence Day is said to have been inspired by Christopher Weaver and apparently Chris Weaver was the inspiration for the guy who like uploaded the virus devlin's expertise mostly came in writing and offering advice for the effects it's his involvement with the writing that became a problem devlin's a busy guy and some of the delays that the 10th planet have been directly related to the fact that centropolis was up to its eyeballs in work for Independence Day maybe we didn't like that but there wasn't much we could do about it these guys were going to earn a hundred million dollars on this movie Bethesda well we kind of weren't in the dry have a seat on that so we have decent confirmation for why the 1996 release date was missed on bethesda's end they seem to be doing well the game impressed at E3 and a self-running demo was released with an admirable frame rate and fair Graphics but the narrative wasn't ready Bethesda were left sitting on their hands waiting for Devlin which leads us to development hell a key aspect that results in overhyped games like Duke Nukem Forever spending an unfathomable number of years in development is feature Cree as release dates are missed technology advances and Gamers expect more what looked good one year would be dated two years down the line markedly more so in the late 90s with graphical Fidelity advancing at breaknet speeds we can compare bethesda's own Daggerfall to Red Guard the seed of Rapid progression in just two years every time Devlin was late Bethesda would have to update the engine one year it may be Fong lighten the next high poly models each delay leads to more work as the developers play catch-up in trying to release a game that journalists have already called state of the art Nesmith had used this extra time to take the game from a basic combat simulator to something more expected from such a lengthy development the 10th planet was now to be a war game combined with a space Sim where our Solar System's planetary orbits have an effect on the game's strategic elements such descriptions bring up visions of Galactic strategy games like Master of Orion or Armada 2525 instead of battles being automatic they are fought by the player in the combat Sim part of the game a kid in some regards to the much later released Star Wars Battlefront 2 and its Galactic Conquest game mode allusions to massive multiple Fleet battles within a Faithfully rendered solar system of over 80 different planets and moons conjures images of a game far grander than anything seen before the mention of 80 orbiting planets comes as unexpected before this all assumptions were that the game would cover our solar system only using scientific data from NASA the 10th Planet team were accurately modeling the planets moons and constellations with 84 points of interest representing actual locations in the Milky Way galaxy the 10th planet was now a large-scale strategy game and a flight simulator it doesn't end there though there was going to be a third key section personalized ship building now that sounds familiar with plans featuring 85 different pieces of equipment you can apply to five different ships with your ship's upgrades and gadgetry being dependent on your rank ranging from Cadet to Captain that even sounds like there was going to be some degree of a level up or promotion system as the player Advanced through the game adding a thin veneer of RPG design further alluding to my theory of the 10th Planet being a basis for Starfield is that these RPG elements could have been deeper than just a leveling system and it came from the mouth of bethesda's own lead game designer emel pagler Rulo emel once had more humble beginnings as a games journalist writing for an online publication the adrenaline vault he met Bethesda E3 subsequently writing a gushan article for the upcoming spacer according to ammo we could expect game to have the trademark Bethesda role-play and feel at this time bethesda's trademark RPG feel was tag-aful so these were not to be simplified mechanics but something closer to the intricacies of tabletop role-playing regarding the strategy elements ml Compares them to x-com with a need to research and develop Advanced alien Technologies and build and manage bases the recent Starfield direct focus on Base building seems to have its Beginnings further back than just Fallout 4. PC Gamer saw Nesmith lay out his design plan for the three major elements each included to make the game stand out in the genre the bread and butter portion is the actual 3D spaceship combat our major advantage here is that we can build far more detailed environments we will have huge space stations to fly through that include moving parts and 3D asteroids circling around we can have dozens of ships in combat simultaneously the game will include the ground terrains of all the moons and planets in the solar system the second element is the ship construction including engines thrusters Shield generators weapons computers and more we believe that Gamers really like tinkering with their ships the third and most important element of the game is the strategy portion typically space combat games have been Mission based the player runs the missions in the order the designer made them which is the traditional Adventure game setup basically the player is playing out the story written by the designer replay value is nil in contrast strategy games have very high replay value where the player goes and what he does are completely up to him from descriptions alone the 10th planet was cheap enough to be one of the most exciting Space games released at the time further extrapolated on these strategy elements with CNET Nesmith detailed them as less free form than a 4X Style game instead closer to and stay with me here Call of Duty specifically 2016's entry infinite Warfare I don't blame you if you haven't played it but if you have you will know that in a departure from the norm the campaign was played like a Choose Your Own Adventure style novel missions could be completed in any order only stories pasted and resolutions would be determined by your decisions the Cena article confirmed their strategic scenario you choose is up to you though it will affect your path through the game this approach ensures varied gameplay as players pick and choose very different scenarios ranging from all-out attacks on basil Cruisers to escort and Freighters and defendant distant outposts similar to Total War the strategy mode would be reflected within the combat in Rome Total War the location where two armies meet on the world map is reflected in the battle map with rivers mountains and more being accurately placed in the RTS part of the game allowing strategic planning around River Crossings and the like to offer a distinct advantage to the player Nesmith wanted to implement a similar feature three years prior to the first Total War Game even being released the more we read these interviews the more we can realize that the dev team were biting off more than they could chew it reminds one of Peter molyneux exaggerating his games during their marketing campaigns or more fittingly Todd Howard's all too charm and Fanfare for features that are frankly not as exciting as he was making them out to be Who's Laughing Now after all of these new features purported for the 1997 version of the game how else could Bethesda make this game even more impossible to make well how about changing the locations of the human and alien bases randomly on each new game to add endless replayability as well as altering the positions of the planet and the asteroid belts over ambition is evidently a problem with Nike's Bethesda I don't want to blame nezmeth here but my belief is that his background at TSR may be part of the issue coming from a pen and paper landscape you need not worry about technology or what can be done your imagination is the limit that isn't the case with a video game time budget technology programming knowledge and more are all limiting factors that can lead to a game missing release dates the promises of grand new features came with each new interview month after month as the deadline approached by June Nesmith had made plans or Resource Management too according to Nesmith this would create a variety of intriguing submissions the issue is that Nesmith was speaking about what he wanted the game to have not what it had work in space combat is all we have seen a lot of these other elements existed only on paper Nesmith himself was aware of this if everything turns out perfect then I'll have access to some really cool technologies that nobody else does there's a high probability that we can have fractal Landscapes which means we can have players fly over the surface of any moon or any planet and we won't have to manually create the data beforehand we also have some interesting tricks we can use to put a lot of ships in the sky and I don't know how many a lot is right now but I'm confident we can put in two to three times as many as anyone else the planets that we are supposed to have been able to fly around only existed in a design document as did the massive battles this interview was from February whereas his far more confident statements in PC Gamer came in September so it is possible that they implemented these Technologies Gamers however never saw any proof of it it is important to remember that Nesmith was marketing the game as Project Lead he was taking his interviews to Ghana hype which is why we need to take all of his statements with a grain of salt which takes us back to Nesmith coming from pen and paper it's one thing to design these features but it's an entirely different Endeavor to implement them into an interactive medium especially when Nesmith claimed in September mind you that we could expect the game to be out plenty of time before the holiday season remember that this game was last mentioned in 1999 and never released not all journalists were blind to the overhypen and wild claims of how advanced the game would be CNET LED their article with the apparent goal of common people's expectations if you think of games that have been overhyped For No Good Reason bethesdist have planet is near the top of the list this was to be the third time I had seen it since the first E3 two years ago previous unveilance amounted to a ship taking pot shots asteroids to show off bethesda's 3D X engine that's the most valid of criticism possible then and now for all these interviews and Promises of exciting features all the game and audience had seen is that original 1996 demo and screenshots that don't show much more the Articles journalist bill Mayer didn't receive the most promising and welcomes at the rockville-based studio either his pragmatism is a breath of fresh air but even he was eventually won over by Bethesda if only we had access to this 1997 demo we need to see what Maya saw to even fathom if there was a chance of this game coming to fruition if this demo was ever released publicly there is no longer any trace of it online and without it we don't have any proof that what was mentioned in these Publications was ever a reality all just a bunch of what ifs the 1997 deadline came and went there was still no 10th planet in 1998 Publications cover in Bethesda only mentioned red God the space Sim that was all the rage a year prior was nowhere to be seen after the release of that fourth Elder Scrolls game not much had changed there are only two sources for this final 1999 version of the game that I could find one of them being the tie-in Box series intended to coincide with the game the 10th Planet may not be obviously related to the game of the same name until you see that the story was by Christopher Weaver in the back of this book is an advertisement for the game proclaiming yet another winter release alongside a new 3D model five years after its first announcement Bethesda continues the claim that we are moments away from the next revolution in computer games As We join the desperate fight for Humanity with unparalleled 3D Graphics Lush cutscenes and intense action the 1999 version is said to be a fast furious action game based on this suspenseful science fiction book players will take to the skies as part of an elite Strike Force sent to save the Earth from the alien Onslaught there is no mention of these strategy elements from before nor the ability to customize this futuristic spacecraft again Bethesda boasts that they will be using the latest in 3D technology as they bring the Epic struggle to our computer screen with exceptional graphics and detail the need to be on The Cutting Edge a curse bestowed onto the game from its first E3 show-in has forced Bethesda to ensure the game never fell behind the times they were compelled to an endless development of feature creep to meet the expectations placed upon them by missing this Mark no matter how good the game was underneath its aged visuals it would never be able to escape the disappointment of the media and interested fans who were waiting for a game that was meant to be ahead of its time the advantages buffets the Hat with the X engine were no longer as impressive as they once were other developers had caught up and worse Space Games had come a long way too 1998's free space the Great War wowed audiences with its high-res 3D models and explosive special effects that were greater than what the X engine was capable of that's not to see that the X engine wasn't able to match what the competition were doing x-car experimental reason proved that it could still render cutting-edge visuals however a graphical Fidelity can only help so much when trying to sell the game x-car's harsh mechanics and 1997 release date had it competing with a myriad of famous franchises where it was unable to successfully Stand Out Bethesda may have been worried of a similar scenario hurting the 10th Planet when it was originally conceived space combat Sims were a popular Niche five years later sales and interest in the genre had fallen considerably the market was oversaturated which may explain why the game was finally canceled for its last time there was no longer any interest Book Sales and pre-order numbers could be used to conclude if a release may be worth it and the answer could have easily been no the only other source for this 1999 version of the game is a Romanian magazine level covered the game extensively at a time where no other publication were there even better there was a bunch of new imagery that cannot be found anywhere else the game still looks impressive against the competition proven that despite the problems of feature creep the team were able to keep up these are only screenshots though whether the game could run at a stable and reasonable frame rate is another issue despite the buck forgoing any mention of them we have confirmation here that the strategy and RPG elements were still involved with mentions of various locales and visuals the player could have expected the sea from planets satellites orbital bases meteors comets stars and all kinds of ships from huge battleships to small Fighters comparisons are made to Origins Wing Commander Privateer concerning the open-endedness and reap playability of the game in that game the player could choose the life of a pirate Merchant or mercenary playing as a free agent able to explore a vast Universe with countless bases and planets spread out across dozens of systems it's unclear whether this comparison is a means of explaining how the game was planned to be non-linear or an example of how once again the game had grown to now include multiple career choices questions do arise why is this the only magazine we can find mentioned in this late division of the game and how credible is this new information if it wasn't for the new screenshots I would have assumed that the article was a rehash of the previous 1997 ones but they must have had access to some form of press pack to acquire these and if there was a press pack why is this the only publication that used it is it possible that magazines chose to ignore this final push to release the game a kind of fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me scenario American Publications had already been burnt twice reporting on the 10th planet we can't blame them for not believing Bethesda on this 1999 release date they were right to think this of course there is a possibility that some covered the game but were not archived having said this though the most prominent ones the Publications that had previously clambered over the game such as PC Gamer made no mention of it whatsoever hi this is Jula and today I welcome you to my hearsay trust me bro Extravaganza in today's episode we have the claim that there was a fourth version of the tenth planet developed outside of Bethesda softworks by UK game developer simis later rebranded to kuju this small team is speculated to have been working on their own version of the 10th planet in 1998. Bethesda was to publish the title before this uk-led game was also canceled why would Bethesda choose this small UK based company then because they were already working on their own game xenocracy for which they had a working engine indeed xenocracy's free-flowing gameplay strategic solar system map and first-person space Sim combat is very reminiscent of the planned 1997 version of the 10th Planet it even had a PlayStation 1 Port is this a possible Rebrand of what could have been that game coming from a tertiary source they should be taken with the biggest grain of salt possible all of this speculation is based on a random comment found on a Blog discussing the 10th planet's cancellation I did reach out to the commenter but the chances of them logging into this blog site seven years later is Slim up to this point the involvement from centropolis hasn't been too obvious that is because Dean devlin's importance to the development came mostly with writing while there were three confirmed versions of the game there were only two plot lines the original Devlin pengued one and another by Professor president Christopher Weaver centropolis's version or lack thereof is the reason behind the original delay of the 1996 version of the game they did have a good reason for the distraction the story began as you would expect based on the premise that we are not alone in our solar system Beyond Pluto there exists a hidden planet on which lives a civilization of beans more advanced and warlike than that of Earth they have Lane dormant for a thousand years but in the near future of the 2100s it is time for them to awaken our new neighbors aren't too happy to find humanity extending our reach throughout the solar system the tenth planet has already laid claim to the other planets and are preparing to retaliate against this perceived aggression they expressed their immense displeasure by obliterating Earth's defenseless research base on Pluto yesterday we were alone in the Galaxy today we are at War the original intention behind the collaboration was to combine the game and expertise of Bethesda with the Cinematic vision of centropolis based on this plot outline it's difficult to see what the experienced Hollywood duo will bring into the project it isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff Bruce Nesmith explained how the story would play out within the game starting with the beans from the 10th Planet invading our solar system destroying the plutonian research base leaving the player character as the only Survivor as the game progresses the aliens would spread throughout the solar system attack in human bases and stations and setting up their own the player would need to fight them in hopes of saving Earth with the simultaneous goal of discovering the alien's mysterious motive to the dismay of the designers at Bethesda Devlin wanted to be more involved in a simple scriptwriter too he wanted to supply design ideas and more can you talk about how that came to be slash how it came not to be in such a clown show um Dean Devlin was probably the one who was most out of offices they had come to Chris Weaver and said hey we are geniuses about making up worlds and we will help you out and do these things so they were working on Stargate at the time and Stargate came out and did very well and they said look we're really smart and we will make games with our genius according to Peterson devlin's main idea was repurposed from Stargate the Egyptian pyramids of that Universe are made by aliens in the 10th Planet it was to be the Aztec Pyramids of Central and Southern America built by the little green men they had like Aztec alien spacecrafts that they designed what did they look like like a Lego they were not they were now fabulous disparity between business partners is never a good thing if Bethesda were reluctant to use devlin's ideas as is implied here it helps explain the rocky development of the game quite well despite these woes from bethesda's design team Devlin was enthusiastic for the game and did show an understanding of how to approach an interactive medium differently to that of a motion picture centropolis's involvement may not be necessary from a design standpoint their ideas are derivative at best but the partnership does seem to have been sincere it's difficult to boil down exactly when the partnership broke down we can confirm that it was before 1999 as Chris Weaver took the basic story outline and warped it into his own Creation in the form of a book release her theory behind this book is that after centropolis departed a project if Bethesda still plan to release the game they would need to remove devlin's ideas else risked the threat of copyright infringement to save this sinking ship Weaver took the basic non-copyrightable ideas a hidden Planet an alien invasion and approached prolific sci-fi writer Dean Wesley Smith to write a new storyline releasing the story as a book the copyright now belonged to Weaver it's also likely that the book itself was an attempt to recoup a small portion of the financial losses that the lengthy game development had incurred that said sales of the book weren't particularly high in preparation for this video I purchased and read a copy of this obscure novel The Book itself is a fun quick read very pulpy and not particularly memorable certainly not groundbreaking stuff but it was enjoyable enough instead of a advanced future where mankind has spread across the solar system the story starts in 2017 then 18 years in the future Humanity's advancements align well with our own there aren't any smartphones instead we all use smart watches complete with video calls and online capabilities in search of Greater knowledge NASA is sending probes to photograph our galaxy and deep space one of these innocent machines ismb6 is orbiting Uranus I maintaining its standard protocol when it suddenly stops reporting to Earth it was perfectly functional just moments before but in a flash of light it was gone in an attempt to investigate what has happened astronomers repositioned the Hubble telescopes to take a closer look it picks up a startling image a planet-sized foreign body traveling towards Earth on a curved trajectory they don't know what the strange object is only that by their calculations it orbits near Earth every two Millennia meanwhile an archaeologist has discovered peculiar layers of black residue at dig sites across the globe stranger still these thin bands occur every 2006 years coinciding with some of the world's darkest moments in history the maths are done in approximately six months the 10th Planet will orbit past Earth and we must prepare for its arrival one can't help but notice the ironic similarities to Independence Day Weaver's attempt to remove correlations with Stargate and other remaining centropolis copyright issues has resulted in a recreation of their most infamous release there are two more books in the series that tie up the story the result is a peric victory for Earth as the tenth planet is all but destroyed as it continues on its broad orbit Book 2 ironically titled Oblivion has Earth sent in its intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles directly at the 10th Planet surface their air defenses successfully prevent an Armageddon but the aliens are badly wounded the third book sees Earth mount a final assault using all of the capable space-bound technology at our disposal including even the iconic space shuttle the trilogy's relation to the game seems to be mostly in the broad sense The Invasion is an uncomplicated premise for which the player character has a season two dog fight aliens the 1999 level article confirmed that these strategy elements still existed but it's tough to Envision how they could with this altered plotline mankind is an advanced in this story there is no human presence on other planets only our moon the only space-based Humanity possesses is the ISS and we are woefully behind the enemy technologically and all the conflicts occur near the surface of our two planets there is no mention of the 80 planets and locales planned for the 1997 version if the strategy elements did exist perhaps they were akin to those in XCOM cities could be attacked and the player must Rush their team of Pilots there to defend the invasion another possibility is that the level magazine was wrong the advertisement in the back of the 10th Planet book alludes to a game focused on high G dogfighting above the Earth's surface again closer to independent since the event of Star Wars the plot outlined in that article does not align well with Weaver's books either rehashing the old Dean Devlin premise instead if the 1999 version of the game was to be a generic flight combat Sim I can't blame Bethesda for canceling the game outright after all of the hype made for a frankly Superior idea in 1997 there is no way Gamers would have been happy with the final lackluster product a game that had the promise of being one of the most exciting Space games of the late 90s Ended as a whimper in the back of a mediocre science fiction novel it's time to ask what went wrong as is often the case with these stories there isn't one single reason for the delays and eventual cancellation it was a multitude of smaller problems now when combined together would kill the 10th Planet the first being the partnership between a growing video game developer and a Hollywood production film on the verge of massive breakout success they went off to work on Independence Day I don't blame them for like hey let's not work this with this Mom and Pop shop and let's go do this huge movie because they were small and they got big very quickly with the release of Independence Day it was only a matter of time until this small side project was abandoned by centropolis as they moved on to Godzilla for their next project they could no longer invest the time needed to work on a relatively insignificant video game this split was on good terms to the point that Bethesda swore that it wouldn't impact the development of the game claiming that they had reached the home stretch they will definitely get the game out before Christmas Bethesda had been going from strength to strength leading into 1997. only up and up Bethesda reinvested into itself higher and staff and green lightened a number of ambitious projects battle Spire red God ex-car and the 10th Planet all entered production simultaneously to accompany this bright future a new slogan championed by the then director of marketing stated the more you play with us the bigger we get unfortunately the premise of exciting High selling games didn't happen Bethesda was too big the unsustainable growth became just that the Reliance on their new games being a success left the company floundering as each one flopped harder than the next combined with the rapid growth Bethesda had become Reckless with their cash reserves blowing capital on unnecessary expenditure one such purchase be in the 3D Motion Graphics agency XL transland they were originally hired to create high quality cinematic cutscenes for the 10th planet story before being purchased outright it was the XL trans lab team who created the cutscenes seen in red God a former Bethesda employee recalled the cinematics being beautiful for their time with the high expense behind their production made the X engine based gameplay look ugly in comparison how on Earth would the game artists supposed to recreate the world they were selling too much time and money was wasted on that trailer the expectations were too great The Game could never match these rendered visuals high expectations weren't just from that trailer Nesmith had already hyped the product to insurmountable levels with his ill-fated press run in 1996 they only had space combat working now they were expected to have a strategy game ship customization battles between hundreds of Fighters and rendered Planet services to fly past it was too much to ask for in a single year heck it's taken Starfield eight years you are never judged by the actual work you do you are judged against the expectation managing expectations if I make a game the expectation is here if my 10 year old cousin makes a game the expectation is here if he meets that expectation he is praised if I fail this expectation but I make here I am vilify but my game is objectively better than his but I failed to make expectations had the 10th Planet released it would have possibly been a Fallout 76 scenario for Bethesda only 20 years prior releasing a buggy game that didn't match what was promised patches May fix the bugs but the Goodwill would already have been lost these events would have resulted in another commercial disaster amidst bethesda's bad run in the late 90s knowing that then perhaps canceling the game was for the best you wouldn't think a forgotten game that was never released would have much influence yet the 10th Planet continues through surprise of course we have the direct consequence of this chance partnership between Bethesda and centropolis if you had to pick someone to save the planet Chris Weaver likely wouldn't be your first choice yet the multiple PhD holder did just that as a consultant for Independence Day Jeff goldblum's David Levinson whose technical Wizardry miraculously managed to save the world was apparently based on Weaver's knowledge of futuristic technology what which part then there are those tenuous links to bethesda's new IP 25 years in the making is this trailer referencing the 10th planet with bases ship customization space Sim elements and of course dog fighting the links are there Starfield May indeed have been 25 years in the making albeit in a more poetic sense told how it has said that his team knew they wanted to make a space-oriented science fiction game eventually they even had the opportunity on multiple occasions Believe It or Not Bethesda long ago had the rights to traveler when I first started in 1994. there's a game we put out called Delta V that was part of this traveler game it ended up not really going anywhere there was going to be a space game called the 10th planet in 1997. we actually had the Star Trek rights at one point and made some games in the 2000s it's a throwaway line among other space titles but it is confirmation that at least to some minor degree the 10th planet did play a part in starfield's design it's the non-linear style of gameplay where the player is free to choose what they want to do where the two shall share the most in common with its costly development and poor sales hurt in every Professor game after 1996 the longest lasted influence of the 10th planet is how it played a factor in a pivotal point in Bethesda softworks history in financial trouble Christopher Weaver was forced to raise funds he made a deal with Robert a Altman who would buy a lead in share in Bethesda through Noob parent company xender Max Media most projects at Bethesda were canceled the 10th planets being among them what staff and resources remained were funneled into Morrowind their last ditch effort to save the company Howard recall that time as not just being about getting more when done it was the recreation of Bethesda itself they were rebuilding from the bottom with a key question what kind of development team do we want to be despite all that had happened between them the 10th planet's troubled development didn't sour Gene devlin's partnership with Bethesda he became an advisor for Cinemax media from 1999 to 2004 possibly alluding to an attempt to save the game for Weaverville xenomax spelled his end in 2002 he was pushed out of a leading role at the company relinquishing all control on the company he had founded over a decade earlier Duke Nukem Forever alien colonial Marines pray Dead Island 2 development hell doesn't guarantee a bad game but at least those examples saw the light of day The Tenth Planet remains lost to time it may have been a groundbreaking release years ahead of its time or a disaster that sacked a developer now heading its spiritual successor if there is one lesson to take away it's not expectations or the roots of disappointment whether that be a game never come into fruition or with releasing below the perceived hype around it when we look to Starfield knowing the history of this abandoned project from 25 years prior it may be wise to enter that new universe with a level head and our feet firmly on the ground thank you very much for watching and as always I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Jwlar

Views: 21,059

Keywords: the 10th planet, tenth planet, jwlar, the tenth planet, 10th planet, starfield, 25 years in the making, bethesda 10th planet, bethesda, bethesda softworks, the 10th planet retrospective, the 10th planet cancelled, bethesda cancelled, starfield beta, original starfield, cancelled video game retrospective, cancelled video game documentary, 90s bethesda, 90s bethesda documentary, Elder scrolls, Skyrim, TES, Bethesda’s Forgotten Space Game | Starfield’s Origins

Id: oaLeoxm60ZE

Length: 53min 21sec (3201 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 23 2023