Second Sight, Timesplitter's Neglected Little Brother

Forgotten Gem #2: Second Sight

It's only natural that one tends to associate a studio with their most well known work. If I say Nintendo, you say "Mario." If I say Konami, you say "Metal Gear Solid." If I say Free Radical, you say... Well, perhaps Free Radical doesn't bring anything to mind for those of you less versed in the gaming industry, though that doesn't make the ignorance forgivable. Allow me to provide a quick lecture in "History of Game Development 102."



Remember back in 1997 when the Nintendo 64 got a much needed "shot in the arm" in the form of GoldenEye? The fact that the game was a success was a downright oddity in the first place, as it was developed by the studio Rare, whose previous work mostly consisted of the Donkey Kong Country series on the Super Nintendo, and the BattleToads franchise on the NES. That being said, I personally would have trusted Rare with another sidescrolling platformer/beat-em-up consisting of anthropomorphic amphibians/mammals attired in hipster sunglasses or sideways baseball caps. Talk about being pigeonholed.



Even odder, the game launched almost two years after the movie, and only a few months before Tomorrow Never Dies, the next Brosnan-helmed Bond film came out. The fact that anybody remembered the movie, as the game wasn't a tie-in, was nothing short of amazing, considering the transitory nature of the human mind.

Okay, so I'm not a HUGE Bond fan, but I can say this movie made me a Famke Janssen fan.

The bottom line is this: the game was a hit, sold over eight million copies, and became the title by which all future FPS games would be compared. A lofty goal that would only be surpassed by Rare themselves with Perfect Dark. However, after Perfect Dark several of the "head honchos" that helmed the N64 FPS revolution, decided that, in keeping with this cheesy boat analogy that I've started, that they would "jump ship." Lead by David Doak, the screenplayer writer of both games, and followed by the head composer and art director, a new studio was formed, going by the name "Free Radical Design."

While they might not have the history Nintendo does, or the money that Microsoft wades in, Free Radical is largely responsible for the success of the Playstation 2 launch, predominantly in Europe, in my opinion. While the Playstation 2 launch titles were less anemic than several other console's debuts, Free Radical's title Timesplitters was a surprise hit. The premise in the first game was quite simple, an evil race, unsurprisingly and aptly named the Timesplitters have "ripped the fabric of time" and are now bent on destroying humanity, a fairly common item on the "to do" list of extra-terrestial species. Except for E.T., who just wanted to chill, eat Reece's Pieces and molest small children with that throbbingly bright finger of his. You are charged with portraying different characters from varying locales and time eras and fending off the Timesplitters with weaponry of the age. Sounds simple? It was...but the multiplayer was undeniably a next-gen GoldenEye, and that was a legitimate selling factor in its own right.

If you weren't convinced you were playing something made by the creators of GoldenEye, take a look at the "life" and "shield" bars in the screenshot.

Not having a contract to exclusively develop for a specific publisher or console, the Timesplitters series branched out to the Xbox and Gamecube for the second and third volumes in the series, and even attracted enough attention to have EA publish the latter. Free Radical was turning heads, and decided that they could afford to fund a non-Timesplitter IP (Intellectual Product). Something that wasn't first-person, that was story-focused, and wasn't related to the Timesplitters series at all. That game would be Second Sight.

Generally when a staple of the gameplay involves "out of body" experiences, you know you're not dealing with your average action game.

Ghost Story

Explaining the story of Second Sight is a difficult one, mainly because not only is it complicated and time-consuming, but knowing such might keep one from playing the game, it's just that amazing. Especially the twist at the end. Don't you just hate it when people tell you "just wait for the twist at the end" and it's like "Oh great, this must be an M. Night Shamalayn movie." Well, the twist in Second Sight isn't anywhere as stupid as, say, The Village. We're talking a Signs or The Sixth Sense quality twist here. It's still no KOTOR twist, but...what is? The basic premise begins with this, you wake up in a medical facility, as shown below.

Wouldn't this just make a great "Best Part of Waking Up" Folgers commercial?

Oh, a minor sidenote, if you like the soundtrack from the clip, the entire Second Sight soundtrack is available here. It's by the same guy that did the music for GoldenEye, if it sounds familiar. Like the clip shows, you wake up in a medical facility with some rather...unique...abilities. The two demonstrated in the first level are a rather handy healing ability, as well as the telekenesis used against the guards. While the clip cuts off right as the character realizes that his name is John Vattic, it causes him to "flash back" to his military training, before being sent on a mission to Russia as an expert in paranormal incidents to investigate a man named Dr. Grienko. Vattic, however, seeks to disprove those who believe in paranormal occurences. Why exactly he was chosen to accompany the military mission is more or less a mystery until near the end of the game. Again, it's so difficult to present a complicated and intricate story without giving too much of it away.

The structure of the game continues to switch between the "modern" bandaged and bald Vattic, and the flashbacks of his "past" missions in Russia. Apparently this Grienko fellow has been conducting some, well, appropriately paranormal experimentation on children out in the middle of some arctic tundra, and the US military thinks he might be building a psychic army, has weapons of mass destruction, looked at us funny, something along these lines. What's interesting is that, because you are sans psychic powers, playing as "past" Vattic is more of a conventional 3rd person action/adventure with gunplay. Obviously, as the game's made by the people of Timesplitters it was basically impossible to drop the ball here.

While I hope this doesn't give too much away, so allow me to throw in a massive SPOILERS warning here...what's truly amazing about the story is that your actions in the past can completely alter the storyline when you return to another "future" mission. While not an entirely surprising concept, it's always fascinating to see just what changes you have wrought when you return to the present.

And this still isn't the biggest twist in the game.

I know, right?

All in all, Second Sight is by no means a perfect game. Some of the gameplay is too easy, due to your healing ability, especially when strengthened, and some it is too trial and error. Regardless, you have an amazing visual aesthetic, great storyline, as well as great voice overs and moody music. It was just hampered by being an under-publicized IP that was sadly released at the same time as Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, causing those on the fence to opt for the seemingly hipper Psi-Ops.