More than 20 years ago, this video game convinced gamers that they were going crazy

Game news More than 20 years ago, this video game convinced gamers that they were going crazy

Eternal Darkness, designed to break the “children’s” image of Nintendo consoles

When the Canadian studio Silicon Knights presented its video game Blood Omen: Legacy of Cain at the second edition of E3 in 1996, it did not suspect that the vampires of its title, developed for PlayStation and PC, had become, in the shadows, one of the most important players in the industry. Nintendo, whose logo is recognizable among thousands of others by its use of bright red, is attracted by the purple blood that spills through the can. Mario’s parents actually walked the aisles of the convention center in May 1996 to find companies that could produce video games.mature“Attempting to break the image on the Nintendo 64”For children“From a Japanese brand.

His opening cinematic, Blood Omen: Legacy of Cain, immediately shows who he’s aiming for with his heroes who are killed in a splatter of blood. With its over-the-top scenery and its settings in jungles and dungeons, it’s true that Silicon Knights’ production has the wrong air of The Legend of Zelda where the violence cursor will be tilted to the max.

After a few meetings, the two groups agreed to develop a title designed to appeal to players who are generally very critical of games.Gentiles“And “Colorful“From Nintendo. Dennis Dyck, the boss of Silicon Knights, has an idea for an epic story that will be told in different eras. Since the Kyoto firm looks for horror content, he decided to make the project a survival horror. It is destined, like Resident Evil, to be the big one of this era. A success, the game would show its action with a fixed camera that would film the characters moving in real-time 3D in pre-calculated 3D settings. The studio’s developers would then spend several years consolidating their ideas until they were good. However, the Nintendo 64 The mixed success of forced the Japanese company to find a replacement sooner than expected.In the early 2000s, the two companies agreed to make Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem a GameCube game.

When the developers finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel and envisioned an imminent release on the Nintendo 64, we had to get our hands dirty and imagine new rendering engines, redo scenes, improve animations, and find new tools! Eternal Darkness is transforming and evolving: elements originally planned in the 64-bit version are removed, while new mechanics are integrated. Furthermore, to provide a proper cinematographic aspect to Resident Evil: Code Veronica, fixed cameras are forgotten in favor of cameras following invisible rails. Yes, since 1996, times may have changed, but the Capcom series remains a reference.

Silicon Knights employees can go crazy during this long, somewhat chaotic development. They chose to let the players lose their minds for them. Planned from the beginning of the project and inspired by the mental resistance of the paper role-playing game Call of Cthulhu (from Chaosium), mental health is a brilliant mechanic that all fans of the genre still remember eternal darkness. Because in all honesty, it is neither with its already outdated graphics at the time of its release, nor with its imprecise handling during collisions that the software can become essential. The release of the software is based on the ambition of its narrative as well as the small green gauge that appears at the top of the screen, which depletes when the player is spotted by a demonic creature. The more it empties, the more the directed protagonist loses his footing. And this manifests itself for the player in two different ways.

When mental health is poor, the first alarming manifestations may occur: blood dripping down the walls, screaming, children crying, knocking on the door, whispering, sudden transformation into a zombie, even an explosion while healing. Then, and above all, there are effects that break the fourth wall, such as a camera that goes crazy, a screen that just goes black and simulates video loss, a message that says to insert disc 2 to continue ( Although there apparently is.only one disk in the box) or even this dreaded warning indicating that the backup has been deleted! Do you really want to scare a player? Make him believe his machine is broken or his progress has gone up in smoke! And it works, many comments on specialized forums show that Silicon Knights’ tactics to drive users crazy have succeeded. “The first time one of these effects hit me, I literally threw myself at the console and mashed the reset button. They got me!“Writing Reddit user.

Of course, these funny effects that make you believe that the console has a problem are reminiscent of the confrontation against Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid, effects that we would later see in other games, such as the sequence in Scarecrow during Batman: Arkham Asylum. Funnily enough, the Canadian studio Nintendo doesn’t necessarily welcome the way games play with a player’s true mental health. The mustachioed plumber’s firm is concerned about the reactions that a user might suffer from one of these.Hallucination”, for example out of fear that the customer will suddenly unplug their machine, or out of fear of suddenly removing their memory card, thus damaging the GameCube. Despite everything, the Japanese giant is being assured. Finally, he found the system so ingenious that he filed A patent In 2005. This patent expired on November 5, 2021.

Panic

When Eternal Darkness was released on the GameCube in 2002, it had a little badge “M for mature“On the American Box, and”Not recommended for under 16sOn French dust jackets. Nintendo has a game designed for (young) adults that it ordered. Unfortunately, despite excellent reviews (92/100 average on Metacritic), the title sold less than 500,000 copies worldwide. For Silicon Knights and Nintendo, it’s a cold shower. So much so that the studio would never be able to convince the Kyoto firm that owns the game license to launch a sequel.

After Eternal Darkness, the Canadian group released the much-maligned (and now sought-after) Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes while developing its most ambitious project: Two Humans. Officially announced at E3 1999, the sci-fi game was originally to be released on the first PlayStation. It would take 10 years before it finally landed an Xbox exclusive. With 65/100 on Metacritic, Silicon Knights created “dusty“and”incompleteDennis Dyck then sued Epic Games for “breach of contract”, which he lost and forced the studio to destroy all unsold copies of Too Human. On May 16, 2014, Silicon Knights filed for bankruptcy and Eternal Darkness. All attempts to create a spiritual sequel failed.

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With its weapons to enchant, its system of members to target, its scenario that effectively combines fantasy/reality, and the surprising effects of mental health measures, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Request is very different from the classic survival horror of its time. And it is precisely for this reason that even today, it is considered one of the most important works of Silicon Knights, Gamecube and horror gaming in general. If you get a chance, give it a chance!