Red Steel 2 Alpha Footage (Patreon)

See some rare footage from an undisclosed early prototype of Red Steel 2. For those unaware, Red Steel 2 originally started life as a direct follow-up to the first game. It was gritty, dark and featured the same look as the original. 

After about 6-9 months of pre-production, Ubisoft stepped in and turned the project upside down. The original director was fired, and my friend Jason Vandenburgh replaced him. From this point, they started almost from scratch. Jason was kept in the dark about much of the previous version of the game and came in to deliver a new vision for Red Steel 2.

His creation, which is Red Steel 2 as we know it today, was much more stylised, and totally unrelated to its predecessor on a story level. However, when it began, the visual style was a little darker with more greys and still a slight leaning towards the "photo-realistic" look of the original.

The footage you see here was taken from a stage in its development during its transition between the older art design and the final look, where the cel-shading was implemented, but it was still much less colourful and not as 'cartoony'.