The now-cancelled Perfect Dark reboot is making headlines today after new footage from the title surfaced, showing parkour and Carrington’s influence.
If you missed it, the latest entry in the Perfect Dark series was meant to be a reboot of the franchise, developed by The Initiative, a new studio formed at Xbox with one mission: to give Joanna Dark a new platform to stretch her legs on. It turns out XBOX pulled the plug pretty far into development when they cancelled the title back in July 2025, as new footage from the cancelled development has surfaced online.
The new footage appeared via a report from the gaming website MP1st, and the footage (which may have been acquired from a VFX developer’s portfolio) shows destructible environments, sci-fi weapons, and more. The gameplay leaked from the now-cancelled title can be seen in the X post below.
The two-minute gameplay video shows many short clips, which appear to be from a developmental build of the rebooted Perfect Dark. The footage includes several locations (with one futuristic location looking mighty close to the Carrington Institute in previous titles), from sci-fi labs to a city street.
The gameplay then shows clips of the controlling player (which is probably behind the visor of protagonist Joanna Dark) experimenting with a selection of weapons, including a rotary grenade launcher and her signature pistol, The Falcon. The player is shown shooting fruit, potentially showing how physics works in Perfect Dark in one scene, and is seen running along a wall like one would expect from Mirror’s Edge on next-generation consoles.
According to IGN, Joanna Dark actress Alix Wilton Regan previously stated that the Perfect Dark reboot was “pretty far along,” adding, “I’d done entire chapters of this universe,” suggesting The Initiative had been much further along in development than fans had realized. This new Perfect Dark footage proves the title was playable before cancellation, and shows that XBOX will cancel projects even that far into development.
While this reboot of Perfect Dark was cancelled and The Initiative was culled, it remains to be seen whether the franchise will come back again, if at all, in the future, considering XBOX appears to cancel development at the drop of a hat for its ongoing “reset.”
