Eternal Darkness: An Overlooked Gem

It recently came to my attention that one of the more regular bloggers over at Destructoid has already started a regular column on "games that had merit or should have been notable for some reason along those lines, but failed to resonate with consumers for one reason or another, invariably concluding in poor sales, canceled sequels, and being condemned to the bargain bin for eternity." Although, I do recall that a much more succinct and catchier title was utilized in the end. Something epic and yet memorable like "Games Time Forgot."



*Nick quickly surfs over to Destructoid*




Actually...that's exactly what it's called. It's a regular feature by a staff member that goes by the named "Reverend Anthony." Now, you, being the concerned, attentive, and obviously masochistic reader that you are probably wonder where exactly I'm going with this idea. Which...probably makes this editorial no different than anything else by me that you've happened to read.


The intent, dear readers, is to copy such a notion.




Now, to be fair, I'm not exactly "copying" anything. I'm merely pointing out under appreciated titles/series that have suffered for exactly that reason, and encouraging readers to get out there and play them before they're dumped into a massive crevasse and then consequently bulldozed and cemented over, a la Atari's less-than-critical darling E.T. The games, not the readers. With that being said, the first title of said series is Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.


Eternal Darkness wasn't meant to be a Gamecube release in the first place, it was originally intended to make its debut on the Nintendo 64 at the tail end of the console's cycle in 2000. Like most games in this situation, the developer Silicon Knights had the choice of either dooming Eternal Darkness to an almost inevitably dim fate, as even the most defensive Nintendoite had begun to tire of "cartridge-mania," or do the impossible. By "the impossible" I'm referring to what Silicon Knights decided to do, canceling all release dates, and heading back to work, to overhaul the game for the next-gen system. Just a few weeks before release, Eternal Darkness looked like screenshot below. Now, for a Nintendo 64 game utilizing the expansion pack, and utilizing what appears to be a fully 3D rendered engine, instead of pre-rendered backgrounds like the early

Resident Evil games for the Playstation, the game is pretty impressive. However, the efforts in recreating the title for the Gamecube were equally impressive, if not even more. Only two years after having a 64 title looking like that above, gamers were looking at screens like the one below when they cracked open the game case:

























Now granted, with semi-low resolution screenshots, it might seem superficially not that big of a difference, but the character models, background paintings, the stacking of books on the desk, all are vast improvements over the previous screenshot, granted, they aren't the same room in the mansion, but, it's good enough. Sure, it isn't the nicest looking of Gamecube titles, but for an overhauled title launched no more than a half year after the console debuted, it's a fine effort on the part of Silicon Knights.






All of that background information out of the way, one probably wonders what kind of storyline would accompany screenshots like the one above. After viewing the cover artwork, as well as the screens, it'd be natural to assume that Nintendo was publishing its own Silent Hill or Resident Evil imitation. Fixed camera angles? Check. Scantily clad and heavily armed female protagonist? You betcha. Reincarnated dead running, err...aimlessly wandering, a mansion? Give or take.



Despite all of this, throw all over-used "scary game" conventions out the window. Eternal Darkness spurns B-grade horror movie plots in favor of a "Lovecraft by the books storyline, without an official endorsement." For those of you who aren't well versed in Poe's horror genre contemporaries of the 20th Century, allow me to provide a "crash course."



Lovecraft, who mostly wrote between 1918 and 1935, had most of his stories operate in what's commonly known as the self-titled "Lovecraftian universe." In this, most stories involve a first-person narrative in which the narrator is forced to recall horrific, supernatural events involving their encounters with cosmic deities attempting to turn the world back into darkness and chaos. The protagonist usually succeeds with thwarting the attempt, on a microcosmic scale, but it usually comes at the cost of severely damaging their sanity, usually to the point of being placed in an insane asylum or even committing suicide. At the end of the narrative, we are left with impression that it is only a matter of time before the ominous Overseer returns. Check out the introduction to Eternal Darkness below to see what I'm talking about.






That being said, Silicon Knight's title spans from the age of the Roman Empire all the way up to the above mentioned mansion in modern-day Rhode Island. Along the way, players assume the roles of twelve completely different characters including everything from an archaeologist that bears an all-too-striking likeness to one played by Harrison Ford, a Franciscan monk, a WWI field reporter, and a Venetian architect, just to name a few. You begin, however, as a modern-day college student Alexandra Roivas, called to identify the body of her recently murdered grandfather, as she is his "last of kin." While wandering around his mansion, she comes upon a book aptly titled The Tome of Eternal Darkness, which details the accounts of the twelve playable characters of the game, dividing each of their encounters into "chapters" of the book.



Here it takes from the Mario 64 or Super Metroid philosophy, in that once that player has completed one chapter, he returns to Alexandra in the mansion. From here, the player must solve some puzzle in the mansion with a new spell or object learned from the Tome of Eternal Darkness in order to gain entry to a room/secret passage in the mansion not previously accessible. It's an addictive tactic that forces the player to dwell on the abilities they've gained or the knowledge they've learned about the Tome of Eternal Darkness in the previous stage.



This is also relevant in that while there are 12 characters, all of them are set in four prime locations: the Roivas Mansion, Oubile Cathedral, (Amiens, France) a Cambodian temple, and a Forbidden City (Persia). I know, I know, the cynical gamer mindset is already thinking "RECYCLED LOCATIONS ALERT" which of course is always a baby step toward worrying that perhaps the level designer was looking at soft core pornography when he was being paid to design other locales, but hear me out. While each location is, in terms of geographical location, and, at least according to a GPS unit, the same place, that's only half true.




Like all buildings utilized over centuries, add-ons are made, a room used for one purpose is converted into another, sometimes an addition is built on TOP of the old location, forcing the player to find their way into the lower levels, and other times areas that were there before, simply aren't there at all now. In fact, relying one's past experiences with an area can often make things more frustrating than not. Sometimes it also allows for the playable character to interact with a "ghost-like" previously playable character, which makes for some interesting moments, as we get to see how things (sorry about the pun) "played out" for our previous character.



By now Eternal Darkness must sound like it's probably overstepping the capabilities of even the most adept second-party studio, even though I've only covered the basics, the plot, and background. But the details regarding gameplay will only reinforce these cynical beliefs. All, yes, all of the characters move at different speeds, display different walking patterns and the older, less rugged characters tire easily from running. One character may handle a weapon completely differently than the person before him. All of them display varying gauges of aptitude in "health," "magic," and "sanity," the three HUD measurements that the player will undoubtedly have to keep an eye on.



























The monk will naturally be better versed at magic because of his scholarly pursuits, the Canadian firefighter is unsurprisingly buff and able to take more damage than most, and the psychologist has a much more stable mind to withstand sights that would drive many of the other characters mad in an instant. With every character, the player is not allowed to get "settled in" to their own philosophy of gaming, whether it be "run and gun" or "long range master." You either cater to the character-at-hand's strengths, or face an uphill battle.




As for the actual combat, it's basic, but addictive. Players usually have both a close and long range weapon at their disposal, though the swords and knifes are much more desirable until one makes it to the characters with modern firearms, the Elephant Gun, for one. The targeting system is interestingly enough; players can have their character target different body zones of the enemy: torso, arms, head. The head leaves the enemy blind, lopping the limbs off effectively renders it harmless, but it can still box you in a corner for its friends to munch on, and going straight for the torso should kill it, it's just a bit of a longer struggle. Techmo claims that they're implementing a much more refined system in their upcoming title Ninja Gaiden II, and it probably won't give Eternal Darkness the credit it owes, but at least someone has said that someone did it before Ninja Gaiden II.





While the health bar has long been a perquisite in RPG/Adventure/Action/insert genre games, the addition of "magick" in the Adventure/Horror genre, was not only a welcome "genre shift," but an unconventional one at that. Instead of "buying" spells, or simply learning them out of nowhere, Eternal Darkness forced the player to collect runes (alignment, effect, target) scattered through the chapters. Spells are, effectively, constructed...not bought. First you select the alignment (basically "element," for those used to RPG standards) then the "effect" followed by the "target." If you selected "absorb" as the effect and "self" as the target, you would perform a healing spell. None of the spells are effectively "spelled out" so a fair amount of experimentation will have be done by the gamer to discover what qualifies as a spell and what isn't.






Of course, what would a summary of Eternal Darkness be without mentioning its "sanity" feature? Usually when the playable character is seen by enemies (although there are other scenarios in when the sanity bar will lower) the green sanity bar will drop, and unless the player quickly dispatches of the monsters, it will hit the bottom. When this happens, two things happen: inevitably the character's health bar drops as well but the roles of "player" and "played" are reversed. When sanity bottoms out, the player might find themselves walking on the ceiling in the next room, sink into the floor, find the walls bleeding, or that the enemies are an unusually large or miniature size.

What has gained much more attention, and led Nintendo to patent the "sanity bar" are the sanity effects that break the "fourth wall."





Some unlucky players, including myself, encountered the sanity effect that, when trying to save, asks if you want to overwrite all save data, says "yes" and continues without saving. Of course, it's all with the natural interface, and is completely believable. It had me cursing and running up and down the hall, until it finally admitted the ruse a few seconds later. There are more like this, and I feel like, to do potential gamers justice, I won't reveal any more of them. Just know if something seems a little too...awful...to be true, it just might be.







In conclusion, Eternal Darkness, as I've shown above, clearly didn't have to set themselves up for the tall order that they did, but when they committed to it, they delivered in spades. The story is top-notch, if not the best that I've encountered. The way that the narratives are interwoven into one large struggle on the part of humanity is inspiring. The voice acting is excellent, but unlike most titles, the entire cast is such. While many studios are bringing in some B-lister from Hollywood and touting said person while the rest of the cast isn't anything to talk about, Silicon Knights didn't bring in any "big guns" so to speak, but instead opted for solid voice actors like Jennifer Hale, who played Bastila in Knights of the Old Republic.


The graphics are, like I said earlier, not the nicest to come from the Gamecube, but for the variety of characters, and locales, it's very easy to overlook.






It's just this simple, if you want to be scared, but are sick of "scary" qualifying as zombie dogs leaping through windows, and desire something truly terrifying to ponder, Eternal Darkness is exactly that. The terror isn't a temporary, transitory moment, it builds..and builds...and builds. There is almost a constant feeling of unease that one develops as the game progresses. And with that, allow me to leave you with a final excellent clip from Eternal Darkness.

Back In The 'States

Now that I look back into my log, and notice that I haven't even bothered to write one single post since returning to the states, I'm understandably embarrassed, but...and believe me on this one...I have a good amount of excuses for my lack of posting. I don't intend, at least not yet, to turn this wonderful web address into another abandoned 'blogger ghost town.'

Let's go over the basics, shall we? I returned Michigan on February 9th, 2008, two weeks from the coming Saturday, getting into O'Hare Airport in Chicago, Illinois at about noon. A few hours later, after stopping for lunch at Bob Evans (I REALLY wanted to go to Taco Bell, but there were some people with us that shall remain unnamed that really aren't big into spicy food, so I kept silent) and to visit my grandfather in Grand Haven.

I spent that night doing some of the key things I hadn't done in a long time: I went to Taco Bell, I got my hands on a new video game, The Orange Box, and I played Xbox 360 for the first time in close to six months. Granted, I felt like I should have paced out all of these wonderful benchmarks on my fast-track back into American society. Molly came back for the weekend, I'd like to think to see me come back, which was nice. Had it been a couple years back, I have a feeling she wouldn't have, but I'd like to think she's matured.

We tried to bring Molly to the bus station in Grand Rapids on Sunday to get her a bus back to MSU, but it was flat-out unbelievable outside: visibility was next to nothing, snow was blowing and drifting, etc. Basically imagine all of the awful things that come with snow, that could come with such. That's what we encountered. We knew we were truly in trouble when they wouldn't allow us on the highway at the outskirts of Spring Lake Township, there was a fireman blocking off the on-ramp with his pickup and he informed us that we were going to have to take the back roads through Coopersville. Having done such for another half hour, we stumbled upon quite the scene when it came time to segue back into the highway. There were a handful of cars thrown into the ditches on both the left and right sides of the highway, a lengthy amount of cars simply stopped where they stood, and two that were actually flipped over on their hoods.

It goes without saying that we turned back home, only to find out that there was a Winter Advisory in effect until 10 PM. Molly, of course, was freaking out because she had to get back to MSU by early Monday morning for a mathematics examination. We tried again that night, but it wasn't any better, and by the time my parents had driven her to Grand Rapids, Molly was so frightened by the weather conditions, that my parents put her up in a hotel for the night, and had her get a taxi to the bus station the next morning.

Let's see, in the week and a half since then, I've been fairly busy. I started work on the Monday immediately after returning, working as a mail room assistant in the production department of the Grand Haven Tribune. Basically, I'm in charge of making sure that the proper inserts/advertisements get into the right shifts on the right days, unpackage them, run the printing press, as well as a fair amount of other things. It's only about half time, and the pay is a little more than minimum wage, but, I have a job...in February...in Michigan. I figure that in its own right should qualify as a divine miracle. Somebody call up Pope Benedict.

With the work taking up a fair amount of my afternoons, my mornings are spent conveniently allowing me to sleep in, play video games, or other semi-fun activities of that sort. Then work. And then, usually dinner, followed by working on some freelance articles for the Tribune, reading, chatting with friends, something like that. That's just the general structure of my day. I know...'general'...'structure'...words one would not expect to hear coming out of my mouth. The freelance is a nice addition to my schedule though. It simply feels nice being published again, and getting a twenty-dollar bill that won't be taxed for each one doesn't hurt.

Other than that I've been clearing up some issues with the University of Aberdeen because they decided to refund my housing deposit...in Sterling Pounds. That's right, I have a check for 200 pounds on my nightstand. And, obviously, my bank doesn't want much to do with a check written by a non-American bank (Royal Bank of Scotland) for a non-American currency (Pounds). Thankfully, Aberdeen's accounts department sounds like they'll be refunding the amount to my credit card, instead of having my bank back home take a 10% cut to cash it. Hopefully they will. Otherwise, Aberdeen University, you now have my credit card number, and a 400 dollar check to get you started. Don't spend it all in one place.

As usual, the Tribune mail room has continued to provide me with more and more wonderful incidents to report. For starters, let me discuss Lisa. Lisa, I would venture to guess, is probably about 37 years old...with her maturity level sinking somewhere into the single digits. Lisa somehow thinks that, by some divine authority that is beyond everyone else, she can randomly abandon her post on the printing press to go do whatever menial task she determines is necessary to herself. For those of you not accustomed to how a printing press works, the papers are pneumatically fueled through, while the 'feeders' must continue to keep stacks of ads 'feeding' into the machine, because if they don't, the papers must be fixed by hand.

Yesterday, over the course of two hours, Lisa left her station eight times. That's about five times more than the remainder of the six-person staff combined. All in all, she went to the bathroom twice, took two smoke breaks outside of the official half-way smoke break, took the time to peel an entire orange, applied eye-liner, and went to the opposite side of the building to get coffee. What's amazing is that for Lisa's seemingly apathetic nature regarding work ethic, she always dresses up for work...and by that, I mean that she has a serious pathological condition that forces her to relive her 1985 high school prom every time she goes to work. Lisa shows up with over sized neon hair scrunchies, those awful bead necklaces, and over sized sweaters.

Keeping all of this in mind, you have to understand how I almost snorted Mountain Dew out of my nostrils yesterday when Lisa told me that apparently she can't wait to get a job that she isn't just 'really overqualified for.'

"Look no further," I muttered.

That's right, apparently Lisa is convinced that she's too good for the very job that she holds. Maybe at some point, later in her life, and, at the rate that her brain processes things, I'd give it at least a decade, she'll realize how lucky she is that the Tribune doesn't pay her by the paper. Or, more interestingly, they detracted, for every paper that we had to fix by hand. At said point, I can say that Lisa would be paying the Tribune.

There's more, but I've got another forty minutes before having to head off to the Trib for the night shift. It should be interesting.

Half Life 2, Part 2

Since I've got a bit of extra time on my hands, and only a few more errands to run before leaving Aberdeen, I figured I'd take the time to finish up my work on my experiences with the title Half Life 2, as I know all of you are waiting with baited breath to find out the conclusion of this article. Or...not really. If anything else, I'm still managing to get a bit of a grasp of how the many faceted functions of the Blogger engine work. Anyway...

When I began playing Half Life 2 on that late Thursday night, mostly everyone well asleep, except for the semi-conscious Adam, who was mostly likely unwillingly kept awake by my almost constant interjections to admire the dystopian atmosphere reminescent of a Warsaw ghetto, or remarks about how this odd suit of mine had taken to injecting my character with pain-dampening morphine, or simply how awesome it was that the starting weapon was not a gun, or one's fists, but a crowbar!!! The simple fact that I couldn't put down a 'shooter' was an entirely new experience in itself, especially considering that 'not picking them up in the first place' was my previously held tactic in regards to the genre.

But one quickly discovers in the first couple minutes that this isn't your ordinary shooter, either. Consider the fact that for the first five-six minutes, you don't kill anything, let alone have the proper means and armament to do such with. Instead you are ushered around what is known as City 17, the collection point for the remaining human forces defeated by The Combine. And I know what you're thinking--plot, storyline, and dialogue in a shooter are thought to be as useful as Stevie Wonder's sunglasses--after all, the genre is aptly termed 'shooter,' not 'intensive dialogue conversational session.' But it works. You genuinely sympathize with the fellow prisoners locked inside this overly crowded and drab barracks.

This really has a lot to do with Valve's aptitude for locating excellent voice talent, as well as having some of the most impressive motion capture technology known to man, which really says a lot for the all encompassing amazingness of the Source engine. (PS, I just attempted to make one those links to the info page on Source, as my new learning experiment for the day, I'll pull it if it doesn't work. Otherwise, be proud of my baby steps). If you want proof, take a look at this screenshot of Alyx Vance, your assistant (and possible love interest?) in Half Life 2. Now remember that this screenshot is at least THREE YEARS OLD. Perhaps that makes it clear how unbelievable the Source engine was when it debuted.

Even this doesn't do the animation of Half Life 2 enough justice. This requires a fluid video sequence, and not static screens. If you want to see this in action, check it out right here on Youtube.

In addition to breaking many of the less-than-appealing conventions of the FPS genre shown above, you might have noticed that there are frequent references to 'you' in regards to the actions of the game, with few, if any to Gordon Freeman, the protagionist of the game. This isn't an accident. You are Gordon, frequently to an extent that you forget that Gordon, your modus operandi of entering the world of Half Life 2, actually exists, and this functions to draw you further into the game than few other titles can. I was first puzzled, and downright frustrated that my character was obsessively mute, even when other characters interacted with him. Not that being mute is a bad thing (for those mute readers out there) but, at least for a video game...it's unexpected.

Yet the script is so first-rate, largly assisted by the fact that the game did not need any localization efforts on the part of Valve. Unlike games that are imported from Japan, Valve (situated in Bellevue, Washington) did not need to hire half-rate translators, which usually results in an overly corny or downright unbearable game (see the voicework in any of the first three Resident Evil titles to clearly see what I'm talking about).


As for the gameplay, (and I'm actually referring to the single player campaign, not some online multi-player mode) I can attest that those interested in playing would be best to first go out and purchase a heart monitor before beginning. If Dick Cheney was left alone with this game for perhaps 15 minutes, there'd likely be dire consequences. While all sorts of titles have attempted to perfect the 'run and gun' mantra for the past decade or so, most have ended up in the unexpected and understandably mundane 'stand still and mow down' category.

Too many times have we been handed a character that is a bona-fide, muscle-bulging, one man armory arsenal in his own right, who could easily take several nation's militarys at once. Never before have we had to run for cover into a small concrete tube from an assault helicoptor, armed only with a small semi-automatic rifle and a crowbar. This is a game in which not only is there no shame in 'running to fight another day,' but it's a full-fledged adrenaline rush in itself, quickly attempting to judge gaps before leaping past an excessively large amount of enemy fire, scrambling for any sort of cover before the assault helicopter makes another strafing run, making a beeline for the dune buggy when being chased by a horde of ant lions.




























You are the last hope for mankind, but that doesn't mean you're immortal, or anything close. And when you begin to understand just how much the other characters are depending upon you. I know. Depending upon you. It sounds stupid, right? Well, as embarassing as it sounds, that's just how engrossing Half Life 2 can be. Not like 'forget the wife and neglect the children' engrossing...but it's only a little bit off from being such.

5 Days And Counting...

This is normally where I would absentmindedly look at the last time I posted, remark that it's been a long time since the last one, and then still proceed to go on about one thing or another. But...it's only been about a half of a week, so I guess I can't do that. Sadly.

As it stands, it's Monday of my final week in Europe. On Friday night/Saturday morning, I will depart on a connecting flight for Amsterdam, and then the long haul to Chicago, and as it stands, should be getting into Chicago around one or two in the afternoon, their time. From there I've got about a day and half to myself before heading back to the daily grind. It's not a lot of time, and who only knows that influence that jetlag will have on my work ethic, but it really doesn't matter.

I'm more than aware that going back to the States will be an overwhelming process, regardless of what I may do to thwart such. It's like putting one's life on hold for five months, and then returning to see all the decisions, obligations, promises, and responsibilities that you've accumulated over that time. Compare it to when you return from a holiday, and main thing that clearly brings you back into jarring reality, is when you open up the mailbox and it's filled with the brim with reminders of a non-stop world.

For starters, there's the relatives I have to visit. Most I haven't seen for five months, and for certain people, even longer. I haven't seen most of the people from K since early to mid June. That's been...8 months. two-thirds of a year. I also have to get in contact with my Grandpa on my father's side. I guess he's now starting his second set of chemotherapy, and he's in his late eighties, and it has put him under de-facto house arrest. Apparently his immune system is now so weak that they don't want to expose him to being outdoors. It's kinda scary, but that really goes without saying.

Then there's the academic side of things: signing up for classes again, locking down housing for the spring, trying to get back into the fast-paced academic swing that Kalamazoo College is so wonderfully awful at.

The list goes on, so on and whatnot...

I've questioned working when I get back several times, but, as my mom pointed out, I'm probably going to end up being bored otherwise. Most other friends will be at school, my parents will be at work, and I'll just be sitting around. She's probably right...disturbingly enough...she usually is. It won't be much fun to have to put up with the American form of mass transportation when I get back, but I'll make do. The likely plan? Work until it's about a week before school starts again, and then start to figure out this housing thing in Kalamazoo. Like I said...a lot of catching up to be done.

As for the rest of my time, its still going to be low-key. You find when you're buying overpriced gifts for everyone that one's budget becomes strapped quicker than...well, at least quicker than you planned. I suppose that's a decent enough analogy.

Anyway, I've got a few more gifts to buy today, an errand or two to run, and laundry to do. Expect another update relatively soon.