Get your best look ever at a game that faded to black.
YouTube channel PtoPonline recently got their hands on rarely-before seen footage from a Metallica video game that was canceled early on in development.
Damage Inc.: Metallica was the working title for this project being developed by Black Rock Studios back in 2003. As noted in the video, the most obvious influence on this car combat game was the Twisted Metal franchise. Its gameplay sees you customize a car of mass destruction and take it into a post-apocalyptic combat wasteland that was clearly modeled after the Mad Max film series.
Where this project differs greatly from traditional car combat games like Twisted Metal and Vigilante 8 is how open world the gameplay is. Levels here are not just carefully constructed arenas; they're large spaces that house a variety of paths and side quests. You can even steal cars that you come across in the world. However, it seems that the intent was for you to focus most of your customization efforts on a primary vehicle.
What exactly your grand objective is in this world is a fascinating question that we may never get a proper answer to. It's possible that there you would eventually go on to complete traditional open world missions or just compete in a few races, but the only known functional build of this game doesn't make it clear what the full intent fo the game's campaign was.
It's also surprising just how few Metallica references there are in the game. It's likely that the final build would have at least featured a soundtrack from the famous metal band, but a combination of fading publisher support and supposed licensing issues prevented Damage Inc. from making it very far past the bare-bones version seen in the video. Still, it's pretty impressive how many features were implemented into the game at this early stage. Had development of this title not been suddenly halted, it's easy to imagine Damge Inc. going on to become a semi-successful entrant into the post-GTA open world boom period.