Re: Screenshots of Popcap Vancouver's canceled action/adventure PvZ game

@shurikeninjaDoom and bloom sounds like a horde mode that could be implemented as a minigame survival mode in a shooter, also the thought of a foot soldier glory killing a sunflower in a doom style death sounds more interesting than it should.

The mechanics and abilities were changed in a way that greatly mimics overwatch such as overheal which even functions and dissipates like overwatch, shield for citron and all star mechanics that are pretty much Reinhardt and Winston even copying how awful Winston's shield was for all star lol, 3 Insta warps that function instantly like tracers blinks, scientist now spraying a heal substance in a hose like fashion like moira, snipers using a charge system with cactus even having a submachine gun mode to defend herself that ties into her ammo count alongside deadbeard having a grapple like ability to get to higher ground alongside lights that reveal their position when scoped in with a projectile trail like widowmaker, imp does the dva pose alongside no zmech deaths when destroyed just like dva, superbrainz functions more like doomfist with brainium basher and relies on a weak shield to help him get into melee range like brigette, more characters given items or powers that give then wallhacks, rose's goatify can phase through walls like hanzo's ultimate, 80s flies up into the air and delivers a missile barrage like pharah, payload moved from a gimmicky minigame into a full mode where they float in the air and move at 3fps, engineer given a turret that provides status effects and can help troops reach the front line faster, rather than having a spray animation heal zombie just uses a zone that beals over time like Lucio, focusing on trying to introduce new characters every so often, and the overall greater focus on teamwork and skins for characters.

Don't tell me they weren't going for an overwatch clone.

I feel like 3d single player PVE game could do pretty good but I wonder what a combat system would be like if there wasn't any I mean the game is called plants vs zombies so there will most likely be two campaigns which need unique styles much like the alien vs predator games having to make the creatures levels and gameplay not bleed into each other.

@stukapookaFair enough, it's hard to disagree with a lot of what you said here.

@shurikeninja is always there to share these interesting articles and leaks 👍! Thank you so much for sharing it with us, I would have never noticed it otherwise 🙂.

Update: 

Some BfN devs replied to the tweets.

They all agree that the cancelled game had a great dev team and that the game had an awesome story, unlike anything PvZ had before.

Rob Davidson, one of the producers of BfN, said he was originally hired by EA for this game, before moving over to the BfN team.

What is interesting here is the wording. Moving over to the BfN team. This means a BfN team already existed at the point of cancellation, which is said to be in 2016.

That brings up other questions:

Considering BfN´s unfinished state at launch, how could it have been in active development for 4 years?

If it had less dev time, from 2018-late 2019, what was the "BfN Team" from 2016 up to before BfN?

@Iron_Guard8 said they were working on a cancelled shooter. This seems plausible considering the tie bits. 

Is there any source for this info? I would like to read more on the topic 🙂

Another thing I'd like to bring up:

In my thread uncovering the truth behind BfNs cancellation, I shared a tweet from Shaun Laker from 2018. It said they were looking to do a community testing environment for their next game, but couldn't promise anything yet.

This suggests they were in the early conceptualization phase for BfN in 2018

(https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion/BfN-cancelled-months-before-the-official-cancellation/td-p/9648798/page/2)

My Theory:

There were 2 dev teams at PopCap Vancouver in 2016, just after GW2 launch.

GW3 & Action Adventure PvZ

AA-PvZ was cancelled in 2016 and the devs combined with the GW3 team.

GW3 was cancelled in late 2017 and reborn as BfN

Active Development for BfN started in 2018

The game was Cancelled in July 2020, as proven in my thread

September 2020: EA lied to us and said they listened to the community and might bring back BfN, as well as claiming bug fixes and balancing would continue

2021: Complete Edition of BfN wasn't cancelled in order to fulfill promises made to investors about the number of switch games that would be released by EA. The port was mainly done by an external studio with the help of the remaining BfN team members.

@benn1nat0rI highly doubt bfn actually had 4 years in development as it practically impossible to find any major plans or concept art of the game until about early 2019 when walnut hills was re-released.

This story gets weirder as the subreddit pointed that in code bfn is called gw3 but why?

The story behind bfn development gets stranger and stranger every minute, we could potentially never find the real awnser of what crapshow went down behind the scenes that resulted in bfn being well bfn.

As I said before bfn feels like a Frankenstein monster put together to try and draw in overwatch fans while also pasting over whatever they still had from garden warfare, heck you can even see gw1&2 assets and props in bfn, so why didn't the devs just make a true gw3 over an untested gamble that ultimately didn't pay off, was it because of overwatch's relative success and EA wanted to milk that cash cow just like how they created apex legends to jump on the battle royal stage?

This situation just gets stranger and stranger.

@benn1nat0r , I'm not saying they cancelled the shooter, what looks to have happened is that either they cancelled the adventure game and changed the shooter to be what BfN became, or they merged the adventure and shooter into what became BfN. If they had to change tracks mid-way while working on the game, it would explain why we have so many lingering problems in BfN, and why Founders still felt like an alpha/beta.

@stukapooka I didn't mean the current version of BfN had 4 years of dev time, but what they now refer to as BfN in that one tweet adds up to 4 years with the "new" BfN. I think they did work on a new shooter, but ended up heavily reworking it into BfN. So technically the remark "moved to the BfN team" would be correct, but it wasn't recognizable as BfN at that point.

@Iron_Guard8 Im Sorry, I got that wrong. I just understood that as "there was a cancelled shooter", as everyone online says so and I couldn't find prove of it. It could very well be that they changed direction a year or 2 into development, considering all of the statements above. Another interesting thing is that one of the devs said the cancelled adventure game screenshots were from very early build and that "you should have seen what it became". This implies the prototype was actually pretty far into development.

@benn1nat0r no worries. It was a bit murky even back then, but PopCap were looking for people to work on a AAA PvZ shooter even before we got the last updates for GW2. The GW3 rumors started early and I believe that the launch of OW (which came out after GW2), may have had an effect on the work on that game and why it may have changed tack part way through.

@stukapookayeah didn't the wording specifically say GW3? So maybe BFN's original name really was GW3. They would've made slightly more money if they kept the old name