The whole Perfect Dark saga has been a pretty sad thing to follow since Xbox pulled funding and cancelled the game earlier this year - and now lead actor Alix Wilton Regan has given us some fresh insight into how far along the project actually was over at developers The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics.
Joanna Dark's actor for the reboot says that they were "shocked, surprised, and devastated" when they learnt about the cancellation, adding that they were "absolutely blindsided when the project was defunded". Wilton Regan then gave us some details on how far along development was in this new interview with The Gamer:
"We were basically recording bits and bobs throughout '23. We were also doing lots of performance capture for it in '24, and we were even recording more stuff for it in '25. To my knowledge, we were pretty far along. I'd done entire chapters of this universe."
The interview went on to talk a little bit about how the game's cancellation went down, with the Joanna Dark actor saying that the whole situation was "devastating" and "really difficult" for everyone involved.
"It was devastating. So many people lost their jobs. An entire workforce was disbanded, [...] There was an ecosystem of creativity and collaboration that was in place that we lost overnight. It was really difficult, really difficult for everybody.
One day, I heard from the creative director that the deal hadn't gone through, and that really everything had fallen apart, and production was fully stopping."
It's incredibly sad to read what happened here with Perfect Dark, but the full interview is definitely worth soaking in if you're curious to hear about some of what happened behind the scenes. We'll link to it down below, alongside some related Perfect Dark stories here at Pure Xbox.