StarCraft: Ghost is a cancelled military science fiction stealth-action video game previously under development by Blizzard Entertainment. Part of Blizzard's StarCraft series, the game was announced on September 20, 2002, and was to be developed by Nihilistic Software for the Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 video game consoles. Several delays in development caused Blizzard to move back the release date and the game has not yet materialized. Nihilistic Software ceded development to Swingin' Ape Studios in 2004 before Blizzard bought the company, and plans for the GameCube version were cancelled in 2005. Blizzard announced in March 2006 that the game was put on "indefinite hold" while the company investigated seventh generation video game console possibilities. Subsequent public statements from company personnel had been contradictory about whether production was to be renewed or planned story elements worked into other products. The continued delay of Ghost had caused it to be labeled as vaporware, and it was ranked fifth in Wired News' annual Vaporware Awards in 2005. In 2014, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed that Ghost was officially cancelled. Unlike its real-time strategy predecessor StarCraft, Ghost is a third-person shooter, and was intended to give players a closer and more personal view of the StarCraft universe. Following Nova, a Terran psychic espionage operative called a "ghost", the game is set four years after the conclusion of StarCraft: Brood War and covers a conspiracy about a secretive military project conducted by Nova's superiors in the imperial Terran Dominion. Very little of the game's storyline has been released; however, in November 2006 after the game's postponement, a novel was published called StarCraft Ghost: Nova, which covers the backstory of the central character.
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Fast forward 15ish years and an unfinished (understatement) version of the game leaked and I finally got to see what could have been!
You play as Nova, the "Ghost" (military with telekinetic abilities, in short) in a 3rd person stealth/action shooter.
Giving the benefit of the doubt - the version of the game we can see was a work in progress - but it really does look like it was shaping up to be a game I was not going to particularly enjoy. Did 2006 really need another Metal Gear Solid/Syphon Filter/Tom Clancy style game? I guess we'll never know, but that's definitely what it almost got.
Being able to play this thing in any capacity is mind-blowing to me. A rough, unfinished mess of a generic 6th gen action-adventure though it may be, the fact that it leaked in a state where I actually got to play it at all more or less overrides any other reaction in my mind. There are seven levels here, none of any particular quality, and one of them doesn't work on my Xbox, so I suffered through it at 10fps with missing textures and no audio on an emulator. Anything to sate my nostalgic curiosity.
I can see why this game was cancelled. The graphics are great for the time, especially Nova's character model, but everything else would be decent at best even with polish. I always imagined Ghost would play something like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid, but it seems the devs decided to make a 3rd person shooter instead. The guns don't feel good to use, the enemies aren't fun to fight, and the level design doesn't lend itself well to interesting encounters. There's a turret section, because of course there is, as well as an extended sequence where you have to call in air strikes on specific targets by holding one button and pressing another. It's all very typical stuff, which isn't inherently bad, but it's hard to live up to the innovative masterpiece kid me dreamed about.
The last two stages do incorporate stealth, and they'd fare a little better if they didn't feature the absolute worst mechanic known to man: silent takedowns that require the player to execute quick-time events. I've only ever seen this blight in one other game, and that was Secret Agent Clank, so you know, good company. The sneaking itself is janky but competent, no worse than any other non-stealth game that tries to do stealth really. I had more fun with these levels than the first five, possibly because I'm insane and actually enjoy bad stealth missions for some reason.
There's a foundation for an okay game here, and I do wish it had been finished, if only so the mysticism surrounding it could be dispelled and the developers' hard work could properly see the light of day. I'm ecstatic I got the chance to play this leaked build, even if it wasn't very good and made me feel foolish for being so excited over it back in the day.