- The Amazon San Diego team was working on a Shadow of the Colossus-like game before 2024.
- Called Project Trident, it became a Helldivers-like roguelite with AI-powered NPCs after the mid-2024 AI mandate.
- It could not meet deadlines, eventually evolving into a single-player game, but it still got cancelled.
Amazon has had grand plans for its various gaming IPs over the years. Yet many of them have either failed, shut down, or been cancelled during development. One of these was a Shadow of the Colossus-like project that held a promising future.
Amazon’s San Diego team was working on Project Trident, a four-player co-op action game set in a Nordic setting before 2024.
However, the internal AI mandate in mid-2024 forced the team to turn the entire thing around into an almost unrecognizable experience by the end of its development cycle, only for the developers and the game to be canned anyway.
Why it matters: Project Trident could have been highly popular if generative AI had not been forced to be involved. Even faithfully following the mandate still caused the team to be laid off like the rest.
The detailed report by Eurogamer reveals that Project Trident originally featured grappling hooks, flying mounts, and scaling giant Jotuns to take them down by attacking weak points. The project was well-liked by the team and had a highly positive reception.
The AI mandate turned the game into a Helldivers-style roguelite with AI-powered NPCs who could listen to audio or text commands for combat and puzzle-solving.
Trident was a third-person action comedy in a Nordic parody setting at this stage, where players could engage in dialogues with these NPCs to convince them to join our side.
AI was only used in NPC-player interactions and lip-sync animation improvements, but the developers were still unhappy with the project’s current direction.
The game was eventually unable to meet the new 18-month tight deadline, forcing the studio to go for a single-player linear story approach with AI elements.
However, the entire team was laid off just when an E3-style demo was in development to finally reveal the game. The San Diego studio was affected along with the 14,000 other developers who were sacked in that wave.
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Shameer Sarfaraz has previously worked for eXputer as a Senior News Writer for several years. Now with Tech4Gamers, he loves to devoutly keep up with the latest gaming and entertainment industries. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and years of experience reporting on games. Besides his passion for breaking news stories, Shahmeer loves spending his leisure time farming away in Stardew Valley. VGC, IGN, GameSpot, Game Rant, TheGamer, GamingBolt, The Verge, NME, Metro, Dot Esports, GameByte, Kotaku Australia, PC Gamer, and more have cited his articles.
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