Former Rockstar dev's promising AAA GTA 6 rival is canned after 6 years in development

GTA VI hardly has much in the way of competition, but yet another AAA rival has fallen - following in the footsteps of MindsEye from former Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies.

Benzies’ successor to his Rockstar Games days was a critical flop; for former Rockstar San Diego studio manager Steve Martin, it looks as if his attempted rival will never see the light of day.

After six years in development, Martin’s upcoming Last Sentinel from studio Lightspeed LA appears to have reached a significant roadblock.

According to a report by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, the project - which is backed by Tencent - has burned through “hundreds of millions of dollars” without having anything resembling a launch-ready product.

It was at 2023’s The Game Awards that Last Sentinel was first announced, with another round of promotional marketing dropping last year featuring actor (and gaming fan-favourite) Troy Baker. He was set to serve as performance director.

Despite its continued presence in the spotlight in recent years, Bloomberg’s report claims that Last Sentinel has never been close to releasing.

In fact, Last Sentinel has never released any gameplay, instead focusing on cinematics and behind-the-scenes interviews.

Well, Last Sentinel’s lack of progress appears to have sadly caught up with it.

READ MORE: GTA 6 first glimpse of gameplay finally dropping this month

Last Sentinel developer Lightspeed LA is set to lay off 80 devs from its GTA rival

Schreier has reported that Lightspeed will lay off 80 employees, revealing that it plans to “shift the creative and development direction” of Last Sentinel in a hope “to meet player expectations”.

“Lightspeed LA remains open and continues to build games,” a spokesperson told Bloomberg News.

As such, Last Sentinel hasn’t technically been permanently scrapped, but it’s perhaps safer to assume that this one will never go gold.

Lightspeed’s declaration that they’ll ‘remain open and continue to build games’ is incredibly vague, almost as if it’s being considered internally whether there may be better opportunities away from Last Sentinel.

Last Sentinel was set to offer a cyberpunk spin on the GTA formula

Last Sentinel isn’t a GTA VI rival in the obvious sense. It wouldn’t have seen you cruising around a US city, avoiding the cops and committing crimes.

But what we’ve now seen several former Rockstar developers do is bring their expertise and experience of creating open-world games to new worlds.

Last Sentinel was set to be a sci-fi open-world action game, but one that had the same quality, scale, and sandbox formula as GTA VI.

Tencent

“In a near-future Tokyo reshaped by catastrophe, you are Hiromi Shoda, a feared operative of the elite DMNS unit tasked to enforce order across the city’s neon-lit streets,” the synopsis begins.

“Last Sentinel delivers a dynamic, science-fiction open world and fast-paced combat, immersing you in a dystopian future where humanity’s survival hangs by a thread.”

Previously speaking on the game, Troy Baker added: “This story is a middle finger to tropes. This takes everything you’re expecting from a typical action-adventure story and says, ‘No. This one’s different.’”

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As Schreier points out, Last Sentinel was being worked on by a team of a few hundred devs, whereas Rockstar relies on the talents of thousands of devs across its network of studios.

It’s perhaps why former Rockstar big wigs have failed to really make an impact with their new projects after breaking away from the gaming behemoth.

All eyes now turn to Dan Houser who is set to create a video game adaptation of his novel A Better Paradise.