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Usually when cancelled games are leaked, they're shown off at the later/latest stage of development, so I'm just going to assume that this game never got far unfortunately. But it does seem like maybe it got cancelled after EA saw the success of OW, and told the team to make another multiplayer hero game? Obviously the devs probably liked OW too at the time but that narrative makes sense to me.
But BFN never felt like a blatant overwatch clone chasing it's trendiness, even with the old TTK. But seeing how blatant the inspiration is, I do wonder if BFN was originally going to be more of an overwatch clone.
I do agree with you on wanting to see this game through to release. While there is room for a Garden Warfare 5 and 6 and so on, I wish that they would try different genre. I can come up with a lot of ideas.
Plants vs Zombies Doom and Bloom: Doom clone but with Foot Soldier facing off the plants. Instead of hell, it's a fun pvz garden setting.
Zombies Vs Plants: Borderlands clone with Foot Soldier and his mech, Super Brainz and Engineer. Semi-open world hubs, some vehicular gameplay, lots of loot, interesting enemy types, more in depth upgrade and customisation systems etc. Although EA would probably change it to a Destiny clone instead (ahem Anthem)
Plants vs Zombies "Legion": Open-world watchdogs legion clone, play as any plant and zombie in the city, freeform mission design. BFN PvE I guess, kinda contradicts my statements but it could work. Or you could just do an open world game with only 3 characters on each side.
Birds eye view action-adventure game with up to 4-player co-op. Puzzles, combat, platforming, etc.
I know they're clones but I don't care goddamit!
@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.
- 5 years ago
@stukapookaFair enough, it's hard to disagree with a lot of what you said here.
- 5 years ago
@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
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.
- stukapooka5 years agoLegend
@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.
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