Gameplay footage from Avalanche Studios’ canceled Iron Man game has apparently been leaked on the internet.
Back in 2012, Avalanche Studios had been working on an Iron Man title for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. However, the game was ultimately canceled. Over a decade later, around 97 minutes of footage from the game has surfaced on archive.org, showing Iron Man flying freely through large environments, engaging enemies in combat and attacking various structures. The mountainous landscapes and open-world terrain bear a strong resemblance to those seen in Just Cause 2, suggesting that the footage is likely running on the Avalanche 2.0 Engine, with assets from the 2010 action-adventure game.
The project was a secret for years before Avalanche co-founder Christofer Sundberg confirmed its existence in 2022. According to Sundberg, Disney approached Avalanche in 2012 to develop a standalone Iron Man game. The studio worked on it for roughly two years, but the project ultimately collapsed because of shortened development schedules, increasing costs and what he described as “company politics.”
Sundberg explained that Avalanche Studios would have needed to rapidly expand the team by around 70 to 80 people to meet the revised schedule. He believed the compressed development period would have created serious problems for the studio once the project ended, ultimately saying the decision to accept those demands could have “broken the studio completely.”
The footage appears to support several details Sundberg had revealed about the game’s design. Rather than making flight the sole focus, Avalanche planned melee combat inspired by Batman: Arkham, with Iron Man using his fists and repulsor blasts before taking off and flying around in the open world.
Currently, Montreal-based Motive Studio is working on an Iron Man game. The team is led by Olivier Proulx, who brings experience working on past Marvel titles like Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The game is being developed using Unreal Engine 5.
