One of 2025's grimmer themes seems to be a perennial one for the games industry: mass layoffs. One of the very worst examples came in July, when Microsoft laid off around 9,000 people in total, alongside shuttering several studios and in-development projects, perhaps most notably the Perfect Dark reboot being co-developed by The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics.
Behind the scenes, developers at The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics were desperately trying to save the project, but these efforts would come to naught: a last-ditch attempt involving publisher Take-Two collapsed when no agreement could be reached over the IP rights. There was also debate over how much of the ace-looking reveal had been smoke-and-mirrors, with one dev angrily refuting the idea there wasn't a game there.
Joanna Dark's voice actor Alix Wilton Regan was vocal about the cancellation at the time, and has now given a new interview to The Gamer in which she expands on what had been done on the game, and the "devastating" decision to cancel it.
"I was as shocked, surprised, and devastated as everyone else was when the funding was pulled, and the studio was closed," says Wilton Regan. "I did not see it coming. I was absolutely blindsided when the project was defunded."
The actor says she found out the news "at the same time as everybody else" after having worked on it for years. "We were basically recording bits and bobs throughout '23," says Wilton Regan. "We were also doing lots of performance capture for it in '24, and we were even recording more stuff for it in '25. To my knowledge, we were pretty far along. I'd done entire chapters of this universe."
Wilton Regan emphasises that it was much worse for the developers, with The Initiative closing its doors entirely while Crystal Dynamics suffered considerable job losses: "It was devastating. So many people lost their jobs. An entire workforce was disbanded. There was an ecosystem of creativity and collaboration that was in place that we lost overnight. It was really difficult, really difficult for everybody."
The actor goes on to discuss the efforts to keep Perfect Dark alive, and the realisation that the Take-Two rescue deal had fallen through.
"That was the day I was really sad because that was the day I lost hope," says Wilton Regan. "I couldn't say too much about it because I knew The Initiative was in talks to keep Perfect Dark up and running in some shape or form. Possibly a slimmed-down version, possibly something slightly different.
"But certainly, everyone was working really hard behind the scenes to bring Perfect Dark back. And then one day, I heard from the creative director that the deal hadn't gone through, and that really everything had fallen apart, and production was fully stopping."
Some good did come of the Take-Two discussions, at least: earlier this month it was announced that The Initiative's studio head Darrell Gallagher and the game's director Brian Horton have joined the publisher to start a new studio.
Meanwhile, Wilton Regan has another major role to keep her busy: she's Lara Croft in two new Tomb Raider games, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis (a "reimagining" of the first game) as well as the new adventure Tomb Raider: Catalyst.
"The saving grace for me when Perfect Dark fell apart was that I'd already been shooting Lara for about a year as well," says Wilton Regan. "I was playing Joanna over here, and I was playing Lara over here, which was wonderful and genuinely one of the most creatively exciting times of my life. And I just felt so relieved that I still had Lara, but I also felt really frightened about losing Lara. I'm still frightened of losing Lara."
