StarCraft: Ghost



StarCraft Ghost is a cancelled PS2, Xbox, and GameCube game from Nihilistic Software. The game was to be a third-person shooter set in the Starcraft universe.

Plot
You play as Annabella Terra, aka Nova. She is a Terran espionage agent. Your job is to investigate some chemical called Terrazine Gas. The Terrans, Zergs, and Protoss are interested in it.

Gameplay
Gameplay was to be a stealthy affair. You have a cloaking device. Some enemies have devices to uncloak you however. You also have thermal goggles and an EMP for disabling electronics.

Nova is an agile girl, capable of manoeuvring around her environment like a ninja. You can shimmy up pipes and then hang upside from them to snipe Zergs.

Being a Ghost soldier, you have some abilities of your own. You can cloak, see heat signatures through walls, and make yourself faster. There would also be door lock puzzles, unlocked by matching your PSI energy using colour wave patterns.

You have plenty of weapons, like the assault rifle and the sniper rifle. You also had laser weapons, grenades, shotguns, flamethrowers, and more.

Nova is also well-versed in close-combat melee. You can sneak up behind enemies and stealth instakill them. You also had a QTE where different button combinations do different combos.

Development
Nihilistic Software stopped developing Starcraft: Ghost in Q4 2004 for some reason. Swingin' Ape Studios swung in to take over.

Blizzard Entertainment purchased Swingin' Ape Studios in December 2005. A consequence of this was that the GameCube version was canned. The GameCube was cancelled due to lack of online support.

At Blizzcon 2005, Starcraft: Ghost was playable in multiplayer form. A 16 player tournament was held. It gained positive feedback.

StarCraft: Ghost was to be set 4 years after StarCraft: Brood War. Backstory behind Nova and this game were novelized in the book StarCraft Ghost: Nova. The book was released in November 2006. By then the game was at a standstill.

In March 2006, Blizzard postponed the game to consider the PS3 and Xbox 360. The game was held in limbo for ages, not officially cancelled just yet.

Cancellation
The success of World of Warcraft and development of Starcraft II kept resources away from Starcraft: Ghost. Starcraft: Ghost was cancelled just six months away from completion. It would not be until 2014 when Blizzard officially declared the game cancelled.

That wouldn't be the last time we heard of Nova. Aside from the StarCraft Ghost: Nova novel, she also starred in the Starcraft II DLC, StarCraft II: Nova Covert Ops. Nova would also make an appearance as a Mercy skin for Overwatch.

Timeline:
 * early 2002: development starts
 * September 2002: game is announced
 * late 2004: developer switches from Nihilistic Software to Swingin' Ape Studios
 * 2005: multiplayer demo is showcased at Blizzcon 2005
 * March 2006: development put on hold
 * 2014: game is officially declared cancelled by Blizzard

Videos
Trailer from 2005.

Opening cinematic.

Gameplay footage.

Prototype
A prototype of this game was found on an Xbox dev kit in 2020. The build is from late 2004, around the time Swingin' Ape Studios took over development. https://archive.org/details/starcraft-ghost-original-xbox