Gameplay footage from cancelled Xbox Excellent Darkish recreation leaks on-line, and it seems to be fairly good

Final 12 months, we realized that Xbox cancelled a reboot of Excellent Darkish. The sport, in growth at The Initiative, was cancelled as a part of 2025’s wave of wide-ranging cuts at Microsoft and Xbox. In 2026, after all, issues have solely gotten worse for the corporate.

Over the previous 24 hours, leaked gameplay footage of the Excellent Darkish reboot has surfaced on-line, giving us a glimpse at what may have been. The gameplay, first unearthed by MP1ST, reveals off just a few of the totally different weapons protagonist Joanna Darkish would have been ready to make use of, in addition to just a few totally different environments she’d have been sneaking and preventing her approach via. MP1ST claims the footage it uncovered – which has since unfold round numerous social media accounts – comes from a VFX artist that “has earlier expertise engaged on numerous gaming franchises”. The authenticity of the footage is tough to determine nevertheless it definitely seems to be the half.

The Excellent Darkish footage consists of the bare-bones layouts of some stage environments, slightly gunplay testing (this seems to be to be significantly early), a few skills, and even just a few items of destructible fruit. Scrumptious.

The reboot of Uncommon’s Excellent Darkish collection was first introduced again in December 2020, and was in growth at new Xbox Sport Studios developer The Initiative. The sport grew to become notorious for its sluggish and seemingly tough growth, with Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics at one level recruited to assist with it. In Could 2024, studies prompt “little significant progress” had been made for the reason that recreation’s unveiling and that the reboot was in “a really tough state”.

We received our first trailer for the Excellent Darkish recreation simply after that report, nevertheless, which appeared to reignite perception within the challenge. Alas, one 12 months later, studies of its demise started to flow into. The sport would have reportedly taken on an episodic construction, and after its cancellation, there was a suggestion that Take-Two may need snapped up the rights to the sport, however this apparently fell via.