Rare have started over on Everwild, rumours say
Not that we ever knew what it was
Rare were at Microsoft's E3 pressblast this weekend, but only to show off a Sea Of Thieves crossover with Pirates Of The Carribean. Certainly no sign of Everwild, the beautiful and mysterious game they announced back in 2019. Which was a shame. Rumours say that the English studio best known for the NES version of Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat have gone back to the drawing board for a big old rethink of Everwild. According to rumours, anyway.
VGC say they've been told by their shadowy sources that the game is several years away, possibly looking at 2024. Supposedly the departure of creative director Simon Woodroffe led to a big ol' overhaul of its direction, and the design has basically been "restarted from scratch".
And as VGC noted, VentureBeat's Jeff Grub relayed similar gossip in a video podcast over the weekend. Grubb said "they restarted production on that game, they rebooted it" and he'd heard it would come in 2023.
Video games are often reworked and shift direction during development, but usually (ideally, even) that happens before they're announced live on stage before hundreds of thousands of viewers from around the world.
I would not take any if this as authorative statements on the precise state of the game or exactly what happened. It's rumour and paraphrasing at best, and 'design restarted from scratch' and 'production rebooted' could mean different things, and... yeah, broad strokes might be right but I wouldn't necessarily trust the specifics. But you know that. You've heard rumours before. I've certainly heard that you've heard rumours before. And now you've heard that I've heard that you've heard rumours before.
I'm not fussed when we never even knew what Everwild was. It's ssssomething to do with the balance of relationships between lifeforms in nature? Playing as an 'Eternal' doing something? In some way? To some end? Whatever it ends up as, I'm going to guess Rare's plans will include making it pretty, which is about all we knew in the first place.
As for what MS actually did show, Alice Bee has rounded up every game from the Xbox and Bethesda showcase at E3 2021.
E3 2021 may be over but our memories live on - see everything on our E3 hub. Many more big game showcases and streams are still to come this summer, leading up to Gamescom, so see our summer games stream schedule to stay up to date.