14 DAY TRIAL // Many gamers were surprised when the development team at BioWare announced that its Austin team was working on a new title called Shadow Realms, which was designed to introduce a mix of action and role playing which would pit a team of four players against a human-controlled powerful opponent.
Since then, no information on the title has been offered via official channels and many suspected that the title was deep in development and more details would be delivered closer to launch date.
Now Kotaku is quoting two sources from the video game industry who are claiming that the Shadow Realms concept was entirely canceled, while a third one inside BioWare is saying that the game has undergone a full re-design in October and is now set to be launched on the PC, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 in 2017.
Apparently, the developers have decided to reboot the game in order to make sure that it fully integrated the Origin digital distribution service on the PC, which would increase the budget that would be available to the title.
The decision was prompted by the failure of Dawngate and by the problems that led to the cancelation of the Command & Conquer reboot effort.
It's unclear how exactly Shadow Realms will use Origin and whether the core mechanics of the game are affected in any way by the recent shift in business model.
BioWare initially said that it was planning to launch an alpha test for the game this year, but the testing was delayed indefinitely and will probably only take place in late 2015 or in early 2016.
Electronic Arts has not offered any sort of comment on the leaked info about Shadow Realms.
Shadow Realms was supposed to use an episodic structure
The BioWare game takes place in two worlds, Earth and Embra, and allows gamers to use one of six classes.
All of them are useful in the combat sequences, which pit teams of four that need to collaborate as well as possible in order to take out a Shadowlord who is able to control the environment and to summon a number of monsters.
The initial concept for the game also talked about in-depth customization for characters and was supposed to get frequent story updates via episodes designed to force players to make important decisions that affect the state of both Earth and Embra.
