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Subscribe to our newsletter Just Cause developer Avalanche was dealt a blow last year when Xbox cancelled Contraband, a co-op smuggling game set in '70s Southeast Asia.

But it's not the first project in the Swedish studio's long history to be canned after years of investment and high hopes.

Avalanche co-founder and former chief creative officer Christofer Sundberg has opened up about AionGuard, a beloved project of the late noughties that "would have been Crimson Desert"."It was exactly that," he told PC Gamer.

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"I haven't played Crimson Desert enough, but we had everything that I've seen from Crimson Desert in the plans for that game." A rare screenshot of AionGuard, originally published in Edge magazine.

(Image credit: Avalanche Studios)AionGuard comes over like a fantasy open world fever dream.

You would play a sorcerer-knight, tasked with taking back the land from evil.

In the conquest-focused style that Just Cause popularised—and many other developers copied—you would need to take down an enemy stronghold in every region to make progress ## Editor's Note We'll have to wait and see how this plays out in the coming weeks. Source: [PC Gamer](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/avalanches-cancelled-aionguard-would-have-been-crimson-desert-but-the-publisher-broke-up-with-us-on-a-text-message/)