We first glimpsed the canceled Pandemic Studios project Legends earlier this year, when a few pieces of its concept art leaked out of a staffer’s portfolio. Nothing was said on the seemingly dark fantasy title, other than it was in development and axed in 2008.

A brief explanation of Legends was discovered on the website of Edward J. Moore this weekend, former lead level designer at the developer prior to them being dissolved and folded into EALA. In addition to designing gameplay spaces, Moore also contributed to the property’s fiction, which judging by the concept art, would have been interesting.

An original IP, “This project, known internally as Legends, was a cover-based 3rd Person Shooter intended to fuse the  gameplay mechanics of Battlefront, with the randomized dungeon and loot generation of Diablo, along with the quest structure and conventions of World of Warcraft,” he says.

Pandemic “went through many evolutionary and streamlining phases” on the game, however it ended up collapsing before becoming a finished product. Moore says that Gearbox’s Borderlands represents a lot of what was concepted, though, including the “intended tone, style, and gameplay.”

Moore says he was also working on Mercenaries 3 during his time at Pandemic, but whether that will ever release is unknown. The studio’s next entry in the franchise, the multiplayer-centric Mercs, Inc., was announced after an early gameplay video leaked, and is currently underway at EA’s Los Angeles studio. It, like any future games based on Pandemic properties (such as another Saboteur), will carry the closed developer’s branding.


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