Concept art leaks for cancelled Avalanche game ‘Contraband’

While Contraband was announced in 2021 with a planned 2022 release date, the game continued to face delays and as a result, Microsoft ultimately pulled the publishing deal for the title. It is still unclear whether or not Avalanche will be able to revive the project, but in the meantime, newly leaked screenshots have given us a good look at what could have been. 

Contraband was going to be an open-world co-op shooter set in a fictional Southeast Asia inspired country, with a mix of 1970s flavour. The game would have seen players teaming up to smuggle contraband across borders, engage in black market trading and go on heists. The game was described officially as a “smuggler's paradise”.

In the gallery above, you can see some of the screenshots discovered by MP1st. These screenshots are primarily concept art, rather than a look at the final product, but it shows some of the UI menus and character portraits. Notably though, the character portraits in particular were not final and were merely in place for prototyping purposes.

It is unclear what Avalanche Studios will move on to next. Contraband is seemingly not coming out and recently, it came to light that the studio doesn't have full control over the Just Cause IP, and with the previous instalment not achieving high commercial success, along with the fact that many of the Just Cause creators are no longer with Avalanche, it is unlikely that we'll see Just Cause 5 instead.

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KitGuru Says: Due to the Just Cause 2 multiplayer mod, Avalanche spent a lot of effort transforming into a multiplayer-first studio. Unfortunately, projects like Generation Zero failed to catch on and without some extra backing, Contraband may never see the light of day. 

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