Mistwalker Corporation and Cavia had a third Xbox 360 RPG in development back in 2005, dubbed simply Cry On. The game was quietly cancelled three years later in 2008, but we never really saw anything regarding the game itself outside a few pieces of concept art – until now.

Featured above, Mistwalker boss Hironobu Sakaguchi revealed the first actual footage for the game on his personal Youtube channel – although it’s a mix of cinematics and what appears to be real in-engine footage. The game featured a female protagonist named Sally, who is accompanied by a magical stone golem that can physically change into different sizes. It was poised to make you cry every few minutes, provoking a consistent emotional response out of the player. We also learned with the trailer that beloved composer Nobuo Uematsu was going to do the music for the game … such a shame!

The publishing of this video is curious, however, as one of the core developers, Cavia, was disbanded in 2010, despite being a subsidiary of AQ Interactive. AQ Interactive was later absorbed into Marvelous, which later reformed into Marvelous AQL, and then more recently – Marvelous. Mistwalker Corporation carried on, despite their more recent foray into mostly only developing smartphone games. The staff of Cavia are either freelance now, or joined other studios like Marvelous, Comcept, and so on.

It’s not quite clear who now owns the rights to the game, when AQ Interactive held those rights all those years ago. It’s also worth mentioning the game was officially only confirmed for Xbox 360, while an employee’s Linkedin had it listed for Playstation 3 at a certain point.

The rumor behind the actual content of Cry On was that it would be a spinoff based off the “C ending” of the original Drakengard, much like Nier was a spinoff based on the final secret ending from Drakengard. For those who haven’t played the game, [SPOILERS] the C ending (which may have led to Cry On) featured a vengeful Caim that went out to prevent an apocalypse at the will of dragons. The E ending (which led to Nier) saw Caim and Angelus traveling through dimensions in the final battle to modern day Tokyo, only to later inadvertantly unleash a plague upon Earth. [END SPOILERS]

So while it’s really sad to see a reminder of a project that could have been amazing – it makes you wonder, could it have become a real game?