The pitch for Resistance: Burning Skies has leaked, leading to some fascinating info. For example, it was pitched on October 19, 2009 as Resistance: Homefront, 2.5 years before it was released on the PS Vita.
Let's get this out of the way first: Resistance: Burning Skies was bad. It wasn't good, it wasn't mediocre, it was a bad game. It was one of Nihilistic Software's last games--the other being Call of Duty: Black Ops – Declassified, which was even worse. They sold poorly too, which quickly led to the studio's closure later in 2012 even after they tried to rebrand to nStigate and focus on mobile games.
With that history lesson out of the way, the leaked documents for Resistance: Homefront is fascinating. It's a snapshot of a different time, and it shows. The most important file is the video, where it shows the presentation that presumably won Nihilistic the rights to develop a Resistance game, which was a pretty big deal back then.
It's actually fairly impressive. The presentation begins with the proposed schedule for developing the game, which was slightly off (the game released in March 2012) but it shows what they wanted to do, with the goal of being a launch title for Vita.
The presentation then moves onto the story pitch, which is essentially the same as the released game: a New Jersey firefighter inspires and ignites the Resistance through his heroism and bravery. His name is Tom Reilly, and he's a "tough and resourceful "guy next door" with fears and flaws like the rest of us."
The core gameplay loop would have players rescuing survivors and inspiring the beginnings of the Resistance, and based on your "heroism", civilians would either run, cower, or hide. If the player risks their own life to rescue others, you would be rewarded with both assistance and intelligence on the enemy.
Features added into the game (courtesy of the Vita) include sweeping your finger across the back screen to lock onto targets, tapping the screen to use grenades, and using the console to lean and simulate peeking out of cover. They also show off physically moving the console around to use a turret. Perhaps most interesting about all of this is how they got it to work originally, as it looks like a Vita prototype essentially ducktaped to a PS3 controller.
There are lots of cool things to be found in the .zip file. For instance, Facebook (remember when that was the biggest platform in the world?) functionality is shown. A video shows (presumably a developer) taking a picture of himself using the Vita's camera and posting it on Facebook because he completed an achievement/trophy.
It's actually pretty interesting, because from what I remember most of this made its way into the game in some form or another. There was tapping the screen for grenades and there were motion controls. The main character was a firefighter, and there was 8-player online upon its release.
If you'd like to check out the leak on archive.org, be sure to go here.
