While little was known about Cliffhanger Studios’ work on EA’s Black Panther prior to both the game’s recent cancellation and the studio’s simultaneous shuttering, a new post-mortem report has revealed not only actual details about the scrapped Marvel video game’s Wakanda-centric premise, but also that its axing was due to an apparent ‘lack of progress’ on its development.
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First announced in July 2023, EA’s Black Panther was set to be the debut effort from Cliffhanger Games, whose team of veteran devs – their collective credits including such outings as Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Halo Infinite, and various Call of Duty entries – were specifically assembled to develop the title.
But after almost two-years of radio silence regarding Black Panther, EA announced on May 29th that, in service of “sharpen[ing] our focus and put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities”, they had chosen to shutter the doors on both the game’s development, as well as Cliffhanger Games itself.
“Looking ahead over the next couple of years, we’re focusing on what we believe will have the biggest impact — Battlefield, The Sims, Skate, and Apex Legends — and continuing to invest in blockbuster storytelling with Iron Man and the third installment of the Jedi series,” wrote President of EA Entertainment and Technology Laura Miele in an internal email sent to employees, as obtained and reviewed by Bloomberg‘s Jason Schreier. “Our mobile business also remains a meaningful part of our future.”
Though EA’s Black Panther will ultimately never see the light of day, thanks to a number of insider sources who allegedly spoke to the aforementioned Schreier, players now have a broad overview of just what the game would have offered – as well as the behind-the-scenes fallout that led to its cancellation.
According to said insiders, with a number of Cliffhanger Games’ team members having previously worked on Monolith Productions’ Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War, the Marvel title was being built around an evolved version of The Lord of the Rings video game duology’s Nemesis System.
Having only ever been used for those two games thanks to Warner Bros. Games simultaneously holding an iron grip on the mechanic’s copyright and refusing to do anything with it, the Nemesis System allowed for any Uruk who survived a clash with the player character, Talion, to not only remember the specific details of their prior encounters, but also adapt their combat styles to better defeat the Gondorian Ranger should they ever meet again.
To this end, rather than Sauron and his minions, Black Panther would have expanded on the original Nemesis System by applying its continual relationship memory to both the titular hero’s allies and enemies, thus requiring players to engage with Wakanda’s ‘castle politics’ in order to save the day.
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Speaking of which, in terms of its story, the need for such political navigation would have been necessitated by both the Black Panther mantle being up for grabs, as well as Wakanda’s simultaneous stealth-invasion by the shape-shifting Skrulls.
Choosing between “various playable heroes from the comic-book universe”, with confirmed options including T’Challa, Killmonger, and Shuri, as their avatar, players would have to not only play nice with their fellow Wakandans in order to earn the right to serve as the country’s signature defender, but also carefully root out the various Skrulls who sought to bring the African utopia to its knees.
This system bringing with it an admirably ambitious development scope, it was sadly this very same ambition that led to the end of Cliffhanger Games’ operations.
“The team had been moving slowly due to an elongated ideation period and also the struggles of simultaneously building a game and a studio, said people familiar with the title’s challenges,” wrote Schreier. “It didn’t help, the people said, that Cliffhanger was based in Kirkland, Washington, an expensive city that would need to pay top salaries, especially now that EA has put an end to remote hiring.”
And though Black Panther had reportedly passed their most recent milestone gate (essentially a the video game dev equivalent of a ‘progress update’, whereupon studio higher-ups can determine the viability of a given build) and its development was beginning to pick up speed, EA ultimately decided that the game was not “far enough along” for their tastes, with Schreier noting that “[Those] familiar with the project told me that EA executives were frustrated that the game had not yet left the pre-production phase after nearly four years in development.”
These frustrations thus apparently led to the events of May 9th, where following a surprise 30-minute meeting, EA officially pulled the vibranium-coated plug on Cliffhanger Games and Black Panther.
Sadly, it seems like Black Panther would have been the last chance for players to experience the Nemesis System in the foreseeable future, especially as the only other studio versed in using it (or even allowed to legally use the original system itself), Monolith Productions, was shut down by Warner Bros. earlier this year.
NEXT: EA’s ‘Marvel’s Black Panther’ Narrative Designer Responds After Video Resurfaces Of Her Bragging That Previous Title ‘ValiDate’ Had “No White People” On Dev Team: “I Had Fears Of Certain Treatment Towards My Marginalized Workers”
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