StarCraft: Ghost

Game limbo is that mystical realm in the video game industry where none but the bravest and best-equipped titles escape, like these 10 Most Anticipated Games Stuck in Development Hell. It is a place where rumor and uncertainty run rampant, but hope still remains. Many titles that are stuck in this limbo are hotly anticipated, but most likely will never find a place on GameStop shelves or cozy corners in Amazon's warehouses. But still, we must have faith that they will be published someday. Without further ado, here is a list of the 10 Most Anticipated Games Stuck in Development Hell that have been straight-up canceled are still yearning to be free.

  • 10

    Star Wars: Battlefront 3

    LucasArts/Free Radical Design and Rebellion Developments (Rumored Developers)

    The popular third-person shooter series seemed like it would go on to become a bigger series, but as of now it's one of our 10 Most Anticipated Games Stuck in Development Hell. There's no denying home immense the Star Wars franchise is, and with the growth of online shooters in the mid-to-late Aughts, the Battlefront series would have probably boomed and become as annualized as the Call of Duty series or Madden. Perhaps if Free Radical had met their development milestones a few years ago, back when they said they'd be ready, we'd all be enjoying Battlefront 3 right now. An article on Geek says that Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis revealed that the game was "99% complete" and all that was left to do was fix some bugs. It was then rumored that Rebellion Developments had taken over the project but ended up releasing Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron instead. But maybe now that the House of Mouse owns LucasArts, there might be a slim chance of the game being finished.

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  • 9

    The Lord of the Rings: The White Council

    Electronic Arts/EA Redwood Shores

    An open world game set in Middle Earth? One in which you can go anywhere and interact with characters to accept quests and join the White Council? Why is this not a thing? What a travesty it is that we can't run around the Shire and Rivendell while completing fetch quests and slaying beasties. The Lord of the Rings: The White Council sounds like it could have been an excellent next-gen console version of the currently free-to-play The Lord of the Rings Online MMO. Players would have been able to take on the role of a Man, Dwarf, Elf, or Hobbit, in order to travel the lands and fight back evil. We won't care about second breakfasts or even elevensies anymore unless this game comes out!

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  • 8

    Final Fantasy Versus XIII

    Square Enix

    Final Fantasy Versus XIII is an action RPG that's had a lot of fans drooling since 2006. Well, six years later and it's still a no-show. The game is supposed to be part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis series, which is supposed to be a kind of spin-off to the Final Fantasy series proper. We were promised seamless transitions into battle and protagonists with even more fabulous hair. The coolest part was that the setting for Versus XIII would be very close to the world, with some areas based on actual locations like Tokyo's Shibuya district. But we're better off actually going to Shibuya after drowning our hair in some mousse, because that's the closest we'll come to playing the game.

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  • 7

    Prey 2

    Bethesda Softworks/Human Head Studios

    Prey 2 is an FPS that features the continued adventures of Killian Samuels. The dude's an alien-fighting machine and his name even has the word "kill" in it, so right off the bat you'd think that publishing the game would be a no-brainer. The announcement for the game came out in March 2011, but it has since been delayed and didn't meet its originally-planned release in 2012. Aliens, ex-U.S. Marshalls, bounty hunting, and time skips? Yeah, this sounds like it'd be amazing, so hurry up, Human Head Studios!

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  • 6

    Agent

    Rockstar Games/Rockstar North

    Anytime Rockstar wants to release a new IP, we can't help but get giddy. Tell us that it's going to be a stealth action game and we'll positively start drooling all over our controllers. But it seems like Agent is a little too good at being covert, because we haven't heard anything substantial about it since it was announced in 2009. The game is supposed to feature Cold War-era espionage action and that's something we can get behind, right comrades? Er--- we mean 'buddies'?

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  • 5

    Beyond Good & Evil 2

    Ubisoft/Ubisoft Montpelier

    The original Beyond Good & Evil was something of a sleeper hit, even if it had nothing to do with Neitzche. It didn't really rake in the cash, but it gained a cult following that is surely aching with all of the waiting it has to do in order to see Jade and Pey'j in action again. The follow-up to the action/stealth/puzzler hybrid was announced in 2008. Like the other Most Anticipated Games Stuck in Development Hell, not much as been heard since then about the state of Beyond Good & Evil 2. But be patient, friends. Jade and the pigman will be here soon. Hopefully.

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  • 4

    The Last Guardian

    Sony Computer Entertainment/Team Ico

    Oh man, The Last Guardian looks like such a beautiful game that it threatens to give us a bad case of "the feels". Team Ico has made two of the most visually-stunning and emotionally-engaging titles under its belt, so it's easy to see why we'd be excited over any new project of theirs. We're sure that the protagonist will be the strong, silent type, but we'd love to see more of the game and maybe even a release date. But mostly, we just want to ride that giant bat-dog-bird... thing. And the music? Talk about whimsical and adventurous. C'mon, Team Ico, let us feel again.

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  • 3

    StarCraft: Ghost

    Blizzard Entertainment

    StarCraft: Ghost reached a milestone this year when it officially spent 10 years in development hell in September. The spin-off to the popular real-time strategy game was originally supposed to be released on the previous generation of consoles as a stealth-action game starring a character named Nova. Though she has yet to see the release of her own flagship game, Nova has made appearances in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and a series of novels. We look forward to the day we can sneak around with her, perhaps on the PS4 or Xbox One.

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  • 2

    Half-Life 3

    Valve

    This one speaks for itself, even if its hero, Gordon Freeman, doesn't. Half-Life 3 is probably the biggest title with the most rumors circulating the internet. The project hasn't even been confirmed to be in development, but there is no shortage of talk about it. There's got to be something we can do convince Gaben to give us any scrap of hope that we'll see our crowbar-wielding, silent protagonist again soon.

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  • 1

    Alpha Colony

    Dream Quest Games

    Of all the games on this list, Alpha Colony by DreamQuest Games breaks our hearts the most. It was meant to be a "family-friendly exploration, building, and trading sim game for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android," but it just couldn't get the funding it needed on its Kickstarter page. The worst part? They missed their goal by only $28. Ouch. It's rough when a goal is just within reach only to have everything snatched away. But Kickstarter's rules are strict and not meeting the $50,000 goal meant that none of the promised pledge money would go to them, making this the saddest soul swirling around the bowels of our 10 Most Anticipated Games Stuck in Development Hell.

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