Good & Evil (lost build of cancelled PC game; 1999)
Screenshot from the cancelled game.
Status: Lost
Good & Evil was a planned video game by Ron Gilbert and the company Cavedog Entertainment that was intended as a hybrid between an adventure game, an RPG, and a strategy. However, Cavedog's main company, GT Interactive, cancelled the project in 1999, and Cavedog eventually went bankrupt in 2000.
The game was largely inspired by The Legend of Zelda, and some developments from it have been used in Ron Gilbert's 2010 game DeathSpank. As of now (2024), Gilbert and his studio Terrible Toybox are working on a 2D pixel game described as "Classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park", so it's possible that this game will be using concepts from Good & Evil as well.
Another unreleased game by Gilbert from the 1990s is Bobo and Fletcher Go Deep Into The Congo.
Storyline & Setting
The story would have started with a warrior who "arrives in town, trips over a drainage ditch, impales himself on his own sword, and dies. Now they need a new hero". It would have been set in a traditional Medieval fantasy world, but also with some more exotic settings like the Wild West, Ancient Rome, Kung-Fu fights, and space with aliens.
Accordingly, with the title, the game would have also dealt with the complex issues of morality: a few of the quests would have been the traditional "good guys vs. bad guys" trope, but one storyline would have involved a confrontation between the adepts of two religions, each of whom think that the other one is evil.
"Good & Evil" would have featured fully 3D graphics and nonlinear gameplay; as Ron Gilbert put it:
If you collect a mushroom here, you can use it long time later with something and reveal a completely different world. If you forgot to take it, the game continues with a different way. You still can go back to get the mushroom.
Gallery
The "Wild West" setting.
