Silverheart

Silverheart is an unrealeased third person action-adventure video game planned by Chris Roberts at Origin Systems,^[1]^[2] set in a universe created by English fantasy author Michael Moorcock.^[3]^[4]^[5] It was trademarked in August 1995.^[6]^[7]

Plot

Set in a fantasy world, the game focuses on Max Silverskin, a thief who must discover the secrets of his heritage. He has a few days to uncover the mystery of the Silverheart, the witch mark which is slowly killing him. He and Lady Rose, daughter of the leader of the powerful Clan Iron, are thrown into an alliance as they search for the secrets that could save the city’s future.^[8]

Silverheart would have featured an entirely new universe with which the team hoped to start a new franchise.^[9]

Gameplay

Silverheart would feature a combination of first-person action for exploration, and third-person action for solving puzzles, with a seamless interface that wouldn't interfere with the player's enjoyment. The spellcasting used an interface that required player skill, using the mouse to trace the different spelIs in the air.^[9] Silverheart was meant to combine live-action interactive movie elements with first-person shooter elements in a high-fantasy setting.^[10]

Development

Michael Moorcock was originally asked to provide a scenario for the game. His condition, in writing the game, which at the time was going to be a live action movie/game as some of Chris Roberts's other games, was to dump genre conventions and not to have villains with booming voices but people with different interests, different moral notions of how to order the world. Once they agreed on the basic idea Michael Moorcock sat down and began a scenario so detailed that it became a short novel of some 45,000 words.^[11] By this time they also had the script he had produced for the movie and for the game, re-done from the original ideas.^[12]

Silverheart was going to be Chris Roberts project right after Wing Commander III.

Electronic Arts came knocking for a fourth Wing Commander game immediately after the third title in the series, however, which ended up pushing back Silverheart’s development.

Silverheart was in early pre-production while Wing Commander IV was made. About $2m worth of work had been done on it when Electronic Arts pulled the plug.^[13]^[12]

Oscar Chichoni was the game's conceptual designer.^[14]^[15]^[16]

in 1996 the game was on hold, but the rights were expected to be bought by Microsoft or Digital Anvil. Chris Roberts negotiated to get the rights to Silverheart back from Electronic Arts while doing the deal for the Wing Commander movie, and planned to produce the fantasy game after Freelancer’s completion.

Chris Roberts said that they could never get the tech to work. They needed a living breathing city - something Assasin's Creed does so well nowadays^[17]

Having sold Digital Anvil to Microsoft and going off to do movies, Chris Roberts never got around to make the game.

A fair amount of Silverheart musical themes were written by George Oldziey, and following the project cancellation they were to be added to a proposed Ultima Underworld 3 with a minimum of alterations.^[18] His Wing Commander Orchestral Project Volume 2 includes a Bonus Track Action Music from Silverheart.^[19]

A promotional Origin Systems shirt intended to be distributed at promotional events shows characters from all of Origin's active projects at the time including Silverheart.^[20]

Michael Moorcock eventually published Silverheart as a book written with Storm Constantine based on the game he had initially written for Chris Roberts^[12]. A critique of it was that it seemed to be written for a game's format, which it was.^[21]