The creators of Just Cause came very close to releasing a game that closely resembled the formula of Crimson Desert. This was revealed by Christofer Sundberg, co-founder of Avalanche Studios, during an interview with PC Gamer.
This mysterious title was called AionGuard and was announced in 2009 via a cover story in Edge Magazine.
“It was exactly that. I haven’t played Crimson Desert enough, but we had everything that I’ve seen from Crimson Desert in the plans for that game.”
AionGuard was conceived as an open-world fantasy game in which the player took on the role of a wizard-knight tasked with purifying a kingdom from the evil consuming it. Our hero could ride a dragon and transform into a giant golem. Players also had to liberate regions and conquer fortresses by battling dark forces.
“It was signed with a big publisher that has a lot of famous IPs. And then they just changed business direction again and wanted to focus on their existing IPs instead of new ones. They broke up with us on a text message, which I will never forgive them for.”
According to previous reports, this publisher appears to be Disney Interactive. No other company was willing to back the project, which had already been officially announced. It was therefore canceled.
