In August, I traveled to Burbank, California to visit the office of Insomniac Games. Best known for its PlayStation-exclusives ranging from Spyro to Ratchet & Clank to Resistance, Insomniac is on to different things these days, most notably Fuse, the multiplatform title previously known as Overstrike.

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The sole reason for my visit was to interview the studio’s major players for an extensive history of Insomniac, which you will be able to read in the coming days on IGN. But towards the tail end of my time with Insomniac’s founder and CEO Ted Price, something came up that’s so interesting it warrants its own article.That something is Insomniac’s original concept for what would have been its first PlayStation 2 game. When I asked if we could expect news about any other cancelled or aborted projects along the same lines of Girl With A Stick or 1080 Pinball , Price suddenly walked out of his office and came back a moment later holding a binder. It contained game concepts and preliminary art for a PlayStation 2 game called Monster Knight , a game so obscure even internally at Insomniac that long-time employees who later saw it had no idea it existed.Price handed me the binder and allowed me to comb over it for a time before our interview continued. He then let me pore over it some more once our interview concluded. As a true nerd of industry lore, I knew this was something I had to show IGN’s readers. And Insomniac gave me permission to not only tell you about it, but to show you every single page of the design bible, which you can find in the image gallery for Monster Knight . Scattered selections of the binder are also interspersed within this article.Monster Knight is a concept originally concocted back in 1999, before PlayStation 2 launched. It was meant to be Insomniac Games’ inaugural game on Sony’s new platform after four PSone games, from the FPS Disruptor to three Spyro games. It’s “a 3rd person real-time adventure/action title,” according to the opening page of the binder. “The gameplay focuses on close combat as well as environmental navigation yet integrates a strong narrative as well as emotive characters.”“What will make this title stand out among other titles in this genre is its core concept of catching, utilizing and growing intelligent monsters for use in real-time situations.” As such, Monster Knight sounds much like a game bordering on a craze in the late ‘90s: Pokemon. But Monster Knight stands out and differentiates itself by letting its main character, Madi, use monsters not as pets with which to battle, but as something else entirely. She “can use monsters as weapons, armor, items (or tools) and transport. Each of the monsters has a specific personality and a specific growth pattern.” But like Pokemon, “Monsters can transform into larger and more powerful versions as the game progresses,” thus “indirectly giving the main character more abilities.”Creatures are split into five classes in Monster Knight: Weapons, Armor, Items, Transport and Multi-Class. Monsters become more powerful and more useful to Madi “when they drink liquid magic” called Spiritwater, and can grow along one of three paths. The Radical path allows monsters to “change shape and gain new abilities.” The Progressive path allows creatures to “maintain basic shape and same abilities, but those abilities are improved.” And the None path is “for One-time use and Location-specific Monsters.”The design documents give some examples of the monsters Madi could use, as well as how those monsters might grow. One monster, called Skeelda, is a permanently-obtained, armor-class creature along the Radical path of growth. It turns from a modest shield to a larger shield and finally into something more resembling a blade. Another example, the Swordling, is a shark-like foe that, once captured, is a permanently-obtained, weapon-class sword along the Radical path of growth.But how are these monsters captured? “Catching Monsters is an essential part of the game. Once Madi has discovered a Monster, there are several ways for her to catch it and attempt to befriend it,” including chasing the creature, fighting it, or negotiating with it. Once captured, a monster’s personality will shine through based on one of four primary types: Loyal, Unpredictable, Independent and Hostile.The design documents also outline some of the “worlds” that Madi would explore in a game which seemed to want to flex an open-world structure, ala Zelda. These include the Sellen Sand Castle, King Aruman’s Cursed Castle and The Floating Island of Kenem. Other creatures Madi would encounter and capture were also expanded on, including Spitta, Tickle Bug, and Garamuth.It’s also very interesting to read the Appendix section of the design bible. It talks more about some of Insomniac’s questions, concerns and thoughts surrounding the project, including trying to appeal to an older audience than Spyro did, something the developer thought was natural considering it expected PlayStation 2’s appeal to expand to adults. It even refers to the PlayStation 2 as the PSX2, an interesting (and unsurprising) spin on PSone’s famous PSX moniker.I could go on and on about Monster Knight and what the design documents say and show, but you should just take a look for yourself. Explore everything Insomniac has to say about Monster Knight, learn more about what the game could have been if it ever got off the ground, and revel in the glory of rare moments like this, when you get to see behind the curtain of game development, even 13 years later.