The Escape Artist

The Escape Artist is a canceled reboot of Steven Spielberg's LMNO which intended to turn it into more of a traditional action game, heavily inspired by Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. The Escape Artist, named for the fact that its protagonist would be a "MacGyver"-type character who would only use weapons as a last resort, inherited some of the same plot, but made major changes. Although the premise still involved a protagonist named Lincoln being on the run with an alien named Eve, the story was changed to revolve around the fact that Eve was carrying a virus, which was deadly to humans but nothing more than a common cold to her. Since the virus had the potential to create a pandemic within the human population, Eve and Lincoln had to find a cure while evading capture. The gameplay was streamlined into being a more traditional action game, changing the perspective to third-person and having less of the AI/relationship mechanics that defined LMNO. Eve was also redesigned to be more conventionally attractive, eventually resembling "an alien version of Megan Fox". The game was canceled in late 2009 after approximately six months of development due to several factors. One factor was that The Escape Artist didn't fit into EA's online-focused goals, with the company beginning to focus more on multiplayer experiences. Another was that the game would have needed to sell millions of copies to turn a profit due to EALA's high costs of operating and a rumored high backend royalty deal with Spielberg, and EA were not confident that the game could reach that target.