Top 10 Biggest Cut Content From Video Games

At one point, "Perfect Dark" almost had a nifty feature involving the Game Boy Camera. (Yeah, remember that ancient piece of tech?) Originally, Rare would have let players use the camera to take pictures of their friends and put them over character models in the game. Unfortunately, tragedy had struck the world during the game's development - the Columbine High School Massacre. Fearing that some players would use the feature for cruel intentions, Rare opted to scrap the feature completely. Had they released "Perfect Dark" with the feature, Nintendo and Rare possibly would have found themselves in deep PR trouble.

It's hard to believe that a game as big as "Skyrim" could have any cut content, and yet, there are some things that didn't make it in the final build. The war between the Stormcloaks and Imperials, for example, was one of the biggest as the original version was going to be far more complex than the finished version. With deeper story and more missions, this was going to be a major focus in "Skyrim's" story. However, it ended up on the cutting room floor because, again, the game was already big enough. It is possible to access this part of the game, though, as modders have finished what was leftover.

For a time, this was believed to be only an April Fool's joke from EGM magazine, but as technology has progressed, the gaming community has been able to dig into files of games and discover more secrets. As it turns out, Bond Mode was actually a legitimate feature in "GoldenEye" at one point! If you never heard of this, Bond Mode would have allowed players to play as all but one of the Bond Actors; Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, and Pierce Brosnan. However, the feature had to be removed from the final game, as according to writer David Doak; Connery refused to allow his likeness to be used in the game.

Yeah, there was a point in time where Link and Samus Aran could have teamed up with the likes of Spider-Man and Wolverine! During development for the first "Marvel Ultimate Alliance", Activision requested Vicarious Visions to assemble a demo to show to Nintendo, most likely believing this could help them secure Link and Samus as guest characters for the Wii version of the game. On the contrary, Nintendo wasn't too thrilled and demanded the characters be removed. The demo was captured on a PlayStation 2, so maybe there was some miscommunication?

We could understand if players were upset over the second "Legacy of Kain's" ending. It left things open and almost felt like an advertisement for a third game (hey, just like "Halo 2"!). However, this was not the plan during development. In addition to additional powers and levels, "Soul Reaver" was going to be given a proper ending, but said ending was axed due to Crystal Dynamics running out of development time. And so, the game received one hell of an open ending. "Halo 2" actually suffered a similar fate as the game was forced to release earlier than anticipated or else development would have taken far longer than it did.

While character endings would become a series mainstay since "Twisted Metal 2", the very first "Twisted Metal" was originally planned to have live-action endings. Needless to say, these endings were...not good. Most were poorly acted, poorly written, or just plain terrible, and so, the endings were cut just before the game shipped. The funny thing is that "Twisted Metal" went on to win a few awards (including "Game of the Year" from Electronic Gaming Monthly) and saw massive success during the PS1's lifetime. So, had creators David Jaffe and Scott Campbell left the endings in, would "Twisted Metal" have garnered the same amount of praise and success?

A weird feature of the Nintendo 64 was that older models had the ability to retain data for roughly ten seconds after a cartridge was removed, and Rare found a way to give players more content by utilizing this. By swapping “Banjo-Kazooie” and “Banjo-Tooie” from the console, players could transfer secret items they found from “Kazooie” into “Tooie”. Unfortunately, before “Banjo-Tooie’s” release, Nintendo had put out a new model of the N64 that shortened the duration of the retained data to just one second, which made it impossible for Stop N’ Swop to be implemented into “Banjo-Tooie”. This wouldn’t be the only clever idea to be cut from the games; seriously, that Bottles’ Revenge Co-op mode would have been cool had it found its way into “Banjo-Tooie”.

Any artist and entertainer can tell you that a finished product does not always resemble the original idea. “BioShock” is a prime example of this, as the game once had an entire system planned revolving around atmospheric pressure. Enemies and characters would be granted different buffs and debuffs depending on the condition of the environment. While Irrational Games did get the feature working at one point, they removed the system as it caused too many design flaws and would have detracted from the moods set by the environments. In short, there were too many sacrifices for a mechanic as complex as it was.

“Destiny” wasn’t exactly an instant hit when the first game launched in 2014. While many fans and critics found its gameplay fun and exciting, many felt that the story was muddled with a vague narrative and characters with one-note personalities. Turns out that this was a result of rushed development. The higher-ups at Bungie were none too pleased with the original story’s state, claiming it was too campy and proceeded to remove and rewrite plot threads. Oh, and all of this was done less than a YEAR before the game launched!

Before we reveal our number one pick, here are a few Honorable Mentions…

Because the Level Was Too Damn Hard!

Because NBA Doesn't Like Controversial Ninjas in Their Basketball Game...Even If It's the Third Rendition

Because We TOTALLY Didn't Need Another Boss to Whoop Our Butts!

One of the biggest complaints about "MGS 5" was how the game closed the entire series while leaving a few loose ends open. With series creator Hideo Kojima and publisher Konami having a bad fallout, we'll never get a proper ending to the series, and what makes this worse is that we COULD have been provided a proper ending had Konami given Kojima more to work on the game. Those who purchased the collector's edition were given access to deleted content, and among that content was a series of unfinished cinematics for Episode 51, a segment of the game that would have answered enough questions while bringing the series to a full circle. For more on this, check out our deep dive over on MojoPlays.