Former Perfect Dark Reboot developer breaks silence on "Fakery" claims

Rumors regarding the Perfect Dark reboot’s gameplay trailer at the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase sparked controversy thanks to recent allegations being made public.

The issue first came to light when Kotaku Editor Ethan Gach put forward claims from an unknown source, describing the trailer to be “basically fake”. This has since moved former developer Adam McDonald to step forward and elaborate that “There’s some fake stuff in it.”

Adam McDonald, former level designer for Perfect Dark and senior game designer at Studio MDHR, took to Bluesky to address the circulating rumors. McDonald stated that the footage was “actually in-engine.” According to McDonald, the demo was a real, playable build, and he was straightforward about the demo’s partially fabricated nature, calling it “a pretty vertical slice.” In McDonald’s own words:

“I was one of the three level designers who worked on it. It worked best if you played it the way the person playing in the video plays it, but it would still work if you didn’t hit the marks perfectly.”

According to Adam, the gameplay systems worked well enough to look good in the video, and the team was actively making design decisions that would be implemented in the final product. McDonald further clarified:

“We were figuring out stuff on the fly in time to include it in the demo, doing our best not to lie to the players. There’s some fakery, but quite a lot of it was legit.”

Game studio The Initiative was leading the development of the reboot in collaboration with Crystal Dynamics. The game had been in development before its official announcement in 2020. Recently, the project was scrapped as part of Microsoft's extensive cuts to the Xbox Staff, along with the dissolution of the Santa Monica-based game studio.

The reboot of the critically acclaimed first-person shooter from 2000 is no more, and the 2024 gameplay trailer is the only sneak peek of what a remake of Perfect Dark could have been.