Earlier this month,we ran a report that saidPioneer, a Ubisoft sci-fi game that was originally teased inWatch Dogs 2, had been canceled. This news came by way of a few former Ubisoft developers who stated that the project was essentially dead on Twitter. Now, new information has come to light that seems to clarify thatPioneerreports of the game’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
In a new report from Kotaku, it was stated from multiple anonymous sources that the project known internally asPioneeris still alive but the scope of the game has just been drastically altered. “OldPioneeris dead.Pioneer’s half-undead brother is here," said one anonymous source in the report.
According to other sources in the article who worked on the game,Pioneerwas originally supposed to be a space exploration game.Pioneerwas first conceived back in 2013 and was supposed to be a much smaller project worked on at Ubisoft Montreal. By the timeWatch Dogs 2released in 2016, Ubisoft opted to include a teaser forPioneerin the game because it was a much less-obvious thing to show to audiences rather than known quantities likeAssassin’s CreedorThe Division.
However, 2016 was also the same year whenPioneerfirst ran into a lot of trouble and many of the game’s primary devs ended up moving on to other projects. Since that time, the game has struggled to remain afloat until this month when rumors began swirling that it had finally been outright canceled.
According to internal sources though,Pioneerhas instead just been reimagined from its exploratory roots and is now trying to become a multiplayer shooter of sorts using assets from the original concept. These same internal sources also went on to say that the game is now utilizingRainbow Six’sAnvil game engine, which is incredibly interesting, to say the least.
Assuming these sources are correct, then it’s good to hear thatPioneerdidn’t get canceled entirely and is still being worked on in a new capacity. That said, if the scope ofPioneerhas been changed this much, then it may still be quite awhile until we ever see the game publicly.
