It's always incredibly disappointing to see a decades-old studio with a history of strong releases suddenly and unceremoniously shut down. Monolith Productions has existed since 1994 and has released an array of fantastic titles, such as The Operative: No One Lives Forever, FEAR and, of course, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.
However, according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Monolith had been "eviscerated" long before its eventual closure. Speaking on the Kinda Funny Gamescast, Schreier revealed much of Monolith's leadership departed after WB Games pushed the studio to stop work on an original IP codenamed Legacy and begin work on a Wonder Woman adaptation. A lot of these senior developers went on to form Cliffhanger Games, and are currently working on a Black Panther game.
Predictably, with much of the leadership gone, Wonder Woman's development cycle wasn't a smooth one. According to Schreier, an internal debate on whether to use Monolith's proprietary engine or switch to Unreal Engine ensued, with the team eventually settling on Monolith's engine. Unfortunately, a lot of the developers who had the most experience with this engine left the studio to form Cliffhanger.
Monolith attempted to incorporate its procedural nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor into its...
