The Wii U may be struggling to bulk up its content library, but it might be getting a bit of help in the form of a 12-part episodic Eternal Darkness successor by Precursor Games.
As revealed on IGN today, the game - titled Shadow of the Eternals - will be heading for Wii U and PC, with Eternal Darkness lead Denis Dyack attached as chief creative officer. The game is designed to be released in 12 installments with potential for more should Precursor's Kickstarter effort exceed its $1.5 million target.
"The more money that we raise, the more we can deliver, which is a win for everyone," Precursor told IGN.
Dyack, whose most recent directorial effort, Too Human, shipped for the Xbox 360 in 2008, is the founder of Silicon Knights and was lead designer, writer and producer on Eternal Darkness. Shadow of the Eternals' thematic elements will seem familiar to fans of that title, beginning with a murder mystery and quickly spiraling into explorations of perception and personal sanity.
Precursor will be following up with an official unveiling together with the launch of its Kickstarter on May 6th. Until then, there's a teaser trailer.
Very exciting. Eternal Darkness was a really neat game. I loved having a sanity meter for my character. I personally liked even the gimmicky elements, but just how they start moving erratically and mumbling as they go insane was really cool!
I loved how Eternal Darkness broke the fourth wall based upon the in-game sanity meter. Graphics showing emulating the TV's audio changing or a blue screen of death or even save errors showed up the more insane the character became. Even quick in-game cinematics of the player dying to hordes of bad guys.
No game has really played with the player as much since then, Metal Gear Solid gets close but it's always in very specific scenarios and situations whereas Eternal Darkness would randomly do that almost everywhere.
This might work out if Nintendo is heavily involved in quality control and design again. Otherwise there's no way I'd risk my money on Silicon Knights 2.0 up front.
While I thoroughly enjoyed Eternal Darkness, I have to question the merits of this project, especially after so many unsavory aspects of Dyack's leadership style and lack of business acumen came to light.
@Christian: The article in isolation could certainly be a vindictive hit piece. However, if you look at the games Silicon Knights has released, they certainly strongly seem to support the article. Correlation does not prove causation blah blah blah, but it can certainly imply it when given a lack of other reasonable hypotheses.
I have never wanted a Kickstarted to fail before...but I really hope this does.
Dyack is a blight on the industry. He's wasted Canadian tax payers money (Silicon Knights had several million in Canadian video grants which did not expand the Canadian video game industry). He holds no respect for the gaming community (see why he got banned from NeoGAF). He has no respect for his publisher partners (See Xmen: Destiny). He uses third party middleware as a scapegoat to explain this own company's lack of technical proficiency and then proceeds to steal the tech anyway and claim it as their own (see Silicon Knights vs Epic).
This man is poison. Don't give him money. He'll just blame Kickstarter for why his game failed, and I don't want Kickstarter to go down with him. He does not deserve any benefit of a doubt anymore. He is setting off a lot of redflags.
Precursor is not kickstarting. From what I can see Precursor games will be using a pay portal to act as a funnel for crowd-source funds.
This does two things that are very important.
Firstly it separates Precursor games from any entity that might slice off a chunk of the funds for the sake of being a facilitator. Although PayPal will become a gatekeeper for the funds if Precursor uses them as their primary agent fro the transfer of electronic crowd sourced funds.
This can be a problem as well, since PayPal has frozen funds before ~ specifically as a consumer advocate preventing the transfer of funds to recipients that may not be able to deliver product.
Secondly by using their own portal, Precursor gains the freedom to run the crowd-source effort for as long as they deem fit, and to promote it in a fashion they choose.
Personally, I expect Precursor will reach a successful funding level in anywhere from three to six weeks. What happens after they are successfully funded, well, that's up to Precursor Games.
This company is using the Cryteck 3 engine. I wonder if the kickstarter is just to cover the license fee. The demo showed on IGN had the context buttons A, Y, (maybe X too) and RS (right stick?) in white, which could indicate that I was being demoed off of a Wii U kit. However a Steambox kit would not be out of the question. No question though, It was a realtime demo. http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/05/06/9-minutes-of-shadow-of-the-eternals
According to the developer Crysis 3 was up and running on Wii U before EA canned it. He claimed that there was one other title in development for Wii U that used it. Lots of people think it some sniper game that has yet to see the light of day. All I know is that Dayack is on IGN's video unvealing and he says that the game is an early build on the engine. At the end of the demo the engine's logo is shown.
Now DICE claims that Frosbyte 3 does not support the Wii U. A developer claims they tried getting 2 to work and it failed so they stopped trying. This was all said in a twitter convo with a disgruntle fan unhappy that EA got exclusive rights to develop Starwar games.
No game has really played with the player as much since then, Metal Gear Solid gets close but it's always in very specific scenarios and situations whereas Eternal Darkness would randomly do that almost everywhere.
Dyack is a blight on the industry. He's wasted Canadian tax payers money (Silicon Knights had several million in Canadian video grants which did not expand the Canadian video game industry). He holds no respect for the gaming community (see why he got banned from NeoGAF). He has no respect for his publisher partners (See Xmen: Destiny). He uses third party middleware as a scapegoat to explain this own company's lack of technical proficiency and then proceeds to steal the tech anyway and claim it as their own (see Silicon Knights vs Epic).
This man is poison. Don't give him money. He'll just blame Kickstarter for why his game failed, and I don't want Kickstarter to go down with him. He does not deserve any benefit of a doubt anymore. He is setting off a lot of redflags.
This does two things that are very important.
Firstly it separates Precursor games from any entity that might slice off a chunk of the funds for the sake of being a facilitator. Although PayPal will become a gatekeeper for the funds if Precursor uses them as their primary agent fro the transfer of electronic crowd sourced funds.
This can be a problem as well, since PayPal has frozen funds before ~ specifically as a consumer advocate preventing the transfer of funds to recipients that may not be able to deliver product.
Secondly by using their own portal, Precursor gains the freedom to run the crowd-source effort for as long as they deem fit, and to promote it in a fashion they choose.
Personally, I expect Precursor will reach a successful funding level in anywhere from three to six weeks. What happens after they are successfully funded, well, that's up to Precursor Games.
Now DICE claims that Frosbyte 3 does not support the Wii U. A developer claims they tried getting 2 to work and it failed so they stopped trying. This was all said in a twitter convo with a disgruntle fan unhappy that EA got exclusive rights to develop Starwar games.