Co-founder of Avalanche Studios, the development team behind the Just Cause franchise, Christofer Sundberg reflected on the two-year development of an open-world Iron Man game which was ultimately scrapped.
Swedish-based video game developers Avalanche Studios are well-known for the creation of some of the most dynamic open-world games ever made. Credited with the Just Cause franchise, Rage 2, Mad Max, and more, the studio was slated to create an open-world Iron Man game in collaboration with Disney nearly ten years ago.
Christofer Sundberg, who departed the studio to form Liquid Swords in 2019, has reflected on the game’s potential and the reasons it was eventually pulled from development.
Disney and Marvel reportedly push Avalanche to rapidly increase staff in order to cut the development time of the game by a whole year. Sundberg stated that is decision who have devestated the studio, as it would have been nearly impossible to hire those positions and slot them into new projects that quickly.
“I was a mess by the end,” Sundberg admitted.
“It was like, shortening development time, increasing budget, we would have to hire 70 or 80 people to the team that I would have had the responsibility to find a new project for. But the development time was shortened down so much so it was impossible to do. It would have broken the studio completely if we had agreed to that.”
While fans may never know how the Iron Man inspired game would have panned out, in his interview Sundberg claimed the project had immense potential despite its messy development period. The Avalanche co-founder specifically added the flight and melee combat mechanics would have left players “impressed.”
Though certainly not Marvel’s last chance at getting a stand alone Iron Man game, the loss of Avalanche’s Iron Man project is a harsh blow to fans of the open-world genre.
