Troubled studio, Silicon Knights, has been stripped back to just five or so active employees, a report on Kotaku reveals (via VG247), including outspoken studio head, Denis Dyack.

The report, which outlines what exactly happened to a once celebrated studio and, more specifically, why their last game, X-Men Destiny, was such a flop was handled by Andrew McMillen, the same journalist who blew the lid off the scenario over at Team Bondi. It's a lengthy read, but outlines that internal direction from Dyack and other higher-ups was to spend less time and effort on their licensed project to focus on building a demo for Eternal Darkness 2 to get off the ground.

Another source recounts an anecdote from a different theater review. "The game was an unplayable disaster [in the review], but he got fixated on a static mesh of a non-interactive grey truck in the background. He gave the company a 20 minute lecture on the fact that he'd never buy a grey truck; he wanted it painted red." Accordingly, some SK employees sniggered behind their backs at Dyack: "We jokingly coined the phrase ‘paint the truck!' for other ridiculous, off-the-hip ‘executive orders' that sprang forth from Denis' mouth," says the same source. "Incidentally, I played the game after release... the truck is still grey."

The full feature outlines that Silicon Knights had an "essentially parasitic" relationship with publishers and that they split development of XMD with a demo for Eternal Darkness 2, a process that likely had a heavy impact on the final quality of X-Men Destiny. It's a fascinating read for anyone interested in how games fail at the development level, but as McMillen points out early on, it is just one side of the story and information comes from completely anonymous sources.

Activision have sent along some new screenshots for their upcoming action game X-Men Destiny, the next upcoming title to put their Marvel comics license to use. Today's images showcase a new character named Grant Alexander; here's what we know about him:

Background: Sandersville, Georgia
Ambition: To be a football superstar
Back Story: Grant is in San Francisco hoping to land a starting spot for the University of California, Berkeley, Varsity Squad. Oblivious to the world tensions, Grant doesn’t see that the peace rally and threatening protesters around him have any connection to his life. When he discovers his own mutant powers, Grant is faced with the realization that mutant/human relations are absolutely his problem.

Oddly the bio we received doesn't actually describe what his mutant abilities are, but the expectation is that they will be customisable by the player.

Check the images out on our X-men: Destiny game page.

X-Men: Destiny is in developement at Silicon Knights and is due on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS in late 2011.

Activision have sent through a handful of new screens for X-Men: Destiny, the tantalising new mutant-faring game from Canadian studio, Silicon Knights.

We get very quick glimpses of Colossus and Gambit in these, and it's good to see they appear to be close to their comic-book source material. We were also given new info regarding one of the game's new characters, Aimi Yoshida.

Balance Summary: Small in size but strong in mental focus, Aimi is the mutant ability expert. She specializes in efficient mutant power usage. Aimi’s fighting style is very acrobatic and graceful.

Back Story: Smuggled out of Japan by her mutant parents before the entire family could be rounded up and incarcerated in the new mutant camps, Aimi arrives in San Francisco hidden on a tanker ship. She is too young and frightened to appreciate her parents’ motivations for sending her away, and instead feels only the bitterness and anger of abandonment.

The verdict is very much still out on this one as Silicon Knights haven't made a good game since Eternal Darkness on GameCube and, historically, X-Men games generally aren't that good. But we're definitely hoping X-Men Destiny can deliver the goods. Check out the new screens by clicking the images below.