Blizzard planned a survival revolution, but ambitious Odyssey outlived Diablo and StarCraft creators
Blizzard was trying to enter the survival game market with a bang. The project, with the working title Odyssey, had been in development for more than six years, but caused enough problems for the developers that it eventually received a red light from the studio's parent company.
It seems that by 2025, Blizzard Entertainment's best times are already behind it. The developers from Irvine are really trying to remind players of their past glory, and it must be said that they do succeed from time to time. Their last unequivocally successful venture of this type was Overwatch from 2016. The next one could be a survival game with the working title Odyssey.
Blizzard was once a company that not only set trends, but also created new genres. It's safe to say that without Diablo, hack'n'slash games might look completely different today. Although the creators somewhat "slept through" the period of greatest popularity for survival games, allowing other studios to take the lead, they still tried to catch up and leave their mark on this genre.
Beginning of the odyssey
The birth of the Odyssey project is dated to July 2017. That's when Blizzard started working on their new survival project, led by Craig Amai, a former designer for World of Warcraft. The devs drew inspiration from Minecraft and Rust, among others, and what was supposed to be the strength of their work was primarily extensive maps where hundreds of players could have fun.
Before the world officially found out that Blizzard was working on a survival game, five long years had to pass. In 2022, job postings for developers to work on the team's "unannounced survival game" were released. Although such a description is quite enigmatic, a clearer idea of this production was provided by the graphics attached to the announcements. These depicted a character clad in armor and a helmet, armed with an axe, as well as a pair of characters with their bicycle, looking as if they were taken straight from modern times.
The announcements sparked a wave of speculation about what Odyssey will actually be. PC Gamer published an article that is a kind of wishlist of its editors regarding what they believe should be included in the discussed game. On their list was, among other things, the integration of crafting with gameplay ("I don't want to create or cook things by just clicking buttons in a menu; I want to throw some meat into the pot!") and placing greater emphasis on the story ("If Blizzard has something to contribute to survival games, I hope it will be a real plot").
The authors of the article even claimed that Blizzard is capable of revolutionizing the survival game genre, due to the possibility of investing a "truckload of money" into this project, which the vast majority of developers cannot afford. So as you can see, Odyssey had considerable potential, which was seen not only by its creators.
Problematic tech
Behind the scenes, however, things didn't look so rosy. The creators started working on the project using Unreal Engine, but eventually found out that it couldn't meet their needs. For this reason, the work on the game was carried out on two levels. While one team was prototyping it on Unreal Engine, the other was creating the proprietary Synapse technology, which was ultimately intended to power it. As we can easily guess, this caused huge delays. Despite everything, by 2022 Odyssey was supposed to be playable and undergoing tests.
As it sometimes happens, proprietary technologies give way to ready-made solutions. That was the case with Synapse, so the creators were hoping that they would eventually go back to Unreal Engine anyway. The acquisition by Microsoft was a glimmer of hope for them to return to the original engine used in the project.
Nevertheless, tests conducted by Blizzard showed that the release of Odyssey is still a song of a very distant future. The year 2026 was described as "too optimistic." After looking into the matter, the big shot from Redmond decided to cancel the whole project. The news about it came out at the end of January 2024, and the red light for the title meant that many of its creators would be laid off. Those who survived this staff reduction were transferred to other projects.
Leak of screenshots from Odyssey
In September 2024, screenshots were leaked, giving us a vague picture of what the gameplay in Odyssey might look like. Unofficially, it was said that during the game, we would have the opportunity to participate in events inspired by popular fairy tales. Presumably, we would play the role of newcomers from our world.
Some players even ventured to say that Odyssey would be a kind of combination of The Wolf Among Us and EverQuest. How would such a game idea look in practice? Unfortunately, we will probably never find out.
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Author: Christian Pieniazek
Started working with Gamepressure.com in August 2016. Although the Game Encyclopedia has been his pride and joy from the beginning, he also writes for the Newsroom and the Editorial section. Gained professional experience through a now-defunct service, in which he worked for almost three years. Graduated in Cultural Studies at the AGH University of Krakow. Runs his own business, jogs, cycles, loves mountain hiking, is a fan of nu metal, is interested in space, and of course, enjoys playing games. Feels best in action games with an open world and RPGs, although won't turn down good racing or shooting games.
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