Vicarious Vision could have created the most anticipated sequels in the industry, but Activision has preferred for them to make Call of Duty

Activision Blizzard is not among the most beloved and appreciated companies in the world. Even if it’s not EA. That’s because, even before the acquisition plans by Microsoft, they had already taken numerous missteps. Many buried franchises. Many questionable decisions. Not to mention all the accusations that it is a less than ideal work environment. Something that doesn’t seem to have improved particularly even after its acquisition by Microsoft was approved.

This does not mean that all the suspicions raised by Activision Blizzard have highly recognized studios within their ranks. Blizzard, until a few years ago, was one of them. And one that has recently demonstrated its ability to create works that resonate with the public is Vicarious Visions.

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If you don’t know Vicarious Visions by name, that doesn’t mean you don’t know their games. Active since 1991, they were acquired by Activision in 2005. They have numerous versions of games for handheld consoles, especially Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. In addition, they are perhaps best known by some of their recent works. They were responsible for the absolutely fabulous remake of the first two Tony Hawk games, called Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, and the remasters of the first three Crash Bandicoot games in Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.

Just for that, Vicarious Visions already deserves all our respect. But in the last few days, several pieces of information have come to light that give us a small perspective of what the studio has done so far. Including why we haven’t seen more of their extraordinary work.

Now, thanks to DK Vine, a fan website dedicated to the Donkey Kong universe, we have discovered that Vicarious Visions has been working on a 3D Donkey Kong game for Nintendo Switch.

The game, codenamed Freedom, was a 3D platformer focused on movement, where one of its key mechanics was jumping between vines. One of the reasons why the project got the green light was because of Vicarious Visions’ extraordinary work on Nintendo characters in Skylanders SuperChargers, a platformer developed by the studio with the support of Beenox. With the active participation of Shigeru Miyamoto in the project, suggesting mechanics and providing perspective, Nintendo was heavily involved in the development.

In 2016, however, Freedom was cancelled. Although it never progressed beyond its early stages, with about 6 months of active development, it was not cancelled because it was performing poorly, but for something much worse: Activision lost interest in the project. Or to be fair, they lost interest in all their projects. Because since then, at Activision Blizzard they decided to focus almost exclusively on the development of Call of Duty.

Of course, Vicarious Visions has worked on more than just Call of Duty since then. Although they were part of Activision, they had not been absorbed at that time. Not completely. And that’s why they were able to make the fantastic Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 and Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.

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What we didn’t know is that’s not all the Tony Hawk we could have had. According to Liam Robertson, a video game historian who has also revealed everything about Freedom, Vicarious Visions had planned to make Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4. Initially, they wanted to include it in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, introducing mechanics from the third installment into the first two, but due to lack of time, they decided to discard it for a future release.

What happened is that, despite Vicarious Visions proposing to Activision to make Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, they refused. Despite the excellent sales and reviews, Activision made them collaborate on the development of Call of Duty and the remake of Diablo 2. Leaving the possibility of making this second part of the remake on hold until they were fully absorbed by Activision in 2022, becoming a support team under the name of Blizzard Albany.

With Activision focused exclusively on Call of Duty and Blizzard on Diablo and World of Warcraft, it seems doubtful that we will see the former Vicarious Visions offering us one of their excellent remakes. Much less a new game. This makes it even more frustrating that they have canceled such promising projects that they had in progress. Thus, further reducing the landscape of video games.

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