Part 19

Advent Shadow was the only other Advent property under development when Majesco decided to cancel the rest of the series. Scheduled to come out on the PSP sometime in late 2005 (though it was undoubtedly going to be pushed back to 2006), the game was intended to intertwine with Advent Rising's story, offering a viewpoint from Marin while retaining and condensing the game mechanics to fit their new platform. It took Majesco half a year after Advent's release to announce Shadow's abandonment, despite their company line about focusing more on handheld games.



Unfortunately there were never any videos shown of the game in motion, but there are a handful of screenshots that show off some of the more interesting locales the developers planned for the player to visit. There were supposed to be a total of fifteen levels traversing similar yet different ground to its sister game. "Levels" is somewhat of a finicky definition when trying to imagine it alongside Rising's subdivided chapter setup, but right now in Rising we're at what it calls level ten.

Something I'm glad to see in these screenshots is that they were focusing more on indoor areas of places like Bahr Han, whereas Gideon was always on the outside or in the streets. It would've given them the opportunity to flesh out more of the city instead of it just being a besieged metropolis seemingly devoid of life. I would also have liked to see what they intended to do with sections where Marin is in a completely different location on the other side of the planet.


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According to press release, the game starts at the same time as Rising--right before the Seeker attack. But several screenshots show Marin engaged with human opponents (including spec ops), which leads me to assume that either Marin gets into some trouble while smuggling things, or that this game starts towards the end of the so-called Independence Wars against the rebels. Either that or they're just deceptive promo shots. (I'd like to know what that is on her back.)



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Some screenshots show her carrying only one weapon, so it leads me to assume that they might have been removing dual-wielding because they couldn't figure out how to work the controls out on the PSP. It's somewhat unusual because she was always pictured holding two Fausts.

There were also new vehicles as claimed in the press sheet: "heavily armed motorcycles, tanks, speeders and fighter craft." We have to take their word for it, though, because only a few screenshots have vehicles in them (and word of advice: never trust what anyone promises you about an Advent game). I assume that we would actually get to pilot Marin's ship, an OXP7 Prototype, which over the course of Rising apparently made its way from a standard human military craft, to only being Marin's ride, to being an object in the environment with no way to control it or any of its guns.

This one is particularly interesting, they have some similarities to a vehicle we'll be encountering next update yet slightly different.


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And relevant to where we are now in the game, there was a series of screenshots of Marin in a redesigned spacesuit, making her own way through the Seeker Destroyer. (She has her own spacesuit in Rising which they used for one cutscene.) There is leftover dialogue referring to Marin going off on her own, but it doesn't define what she does or what she was planning to do.

I like the idea, but Rising's viewpoint on the Destroyer assault is so narrow that anything she would do would essentially amount to nothing in the end, or would at least feel so loosely connected with the other events that you'd think it was just there to lengthen gameplay.


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Some of the earliest images are absolutely hilarious.


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The official website is still online and has no mention of the cancellation.