After more than 2 years of work and a full reboot that resulted in a whole new code name, Remedy announced that Project Kestrel, which is being developed in partnership with Tencent, has been canceled.The studio "allows us to focus more on other games in our portfolio.Originally known as the code name Vanguard, the game will be announced in 2021-12 as a "free-to-play cooperative adventure" and "Remedy is a Game Bi as a service".We are pleased to announce that in addition to Remedy's strengths, we are excited to bring something new and exciting for the cooperative multiplayer space. We are building it."

Despite Tencent's support, which was a co-funding of Vanguard and intended to be localized and publicized in Asia, the project never really got off the ground. In 2023/10, Virala said that Remedy hopes to complete the proof-of-concept phase of the game by the end of the year, but after just 2 weeks, the studio has decided to completely reboot the whole thing as a premium game codenamed Kestrel.

But it also obviously didn't work. In an announcement made last week, Virala said that Kestrel had not yet gone beyond the "early concept phase" and prioritized its work because Remedy's other projects are gaining momentum.

"Talented Kestrel developers can be reassigned to these other game projects, and many of the support features will be available to them." We are more focused on the operation," says Virtala. "This is another way to ensure that our game project is going well.1"Remedy chose to cancel Kestrel, but our team did a good job and provided us with valuable learning."

We're a bit disappointed that Remedy won't be able to see what it was cooking for its first live game, but the studio has so many things on the go, including a remake of Max Payne, a spinoff of Control2, multiplayer Control, and an extension of Alan Wake2.