Eternal Darkness 2 Demo May Have Scuttled X-Men: Destiny

[KoudelkaMorgan]

and this is why Dyack should have been sacked a long time ago. I can't call it surprising though as SK was always a mediocre developer who got lucky with one title YEARS ago and has been coasting off unearned laurels ever since.

This. I've said it at many times over the years. Blood Omen was good. Eternal Darkness was good. Neither were GREAT. For every 30 min of goodness you find in the games you have hours of suck.

Not to mention that in order to see ED's best bits you have to purposely play terribly so you never refill your sanity.

I had hoped that Too Human was just gonna be a side project that would do okay and give them another leg to stand on. In hindsight, with everything laid bare, I can only call what transpired there as complete madness and utter, singleminded, defiance of reason.

Your grand re-imagining of Norse Mythology as some kind of futuristic space opera (or whatever it was I really didn't care to find out) fails spectacularly, and instead of telling yourself "well I guess we missed the mark there, let's go make ED2, or try to make TH2 the best game we can" you instead file a law suit against the makers of the ENGINE you failed at making the game GOOD with. Its not like they are some indie code monkeys with a fresh new engine that was unproven or made just for you that failed to deliver on your specs.

It was an engine that many people somehow managed to not suck with, and a big name company behind it that proceeded to KICK YOUR ASS in court to the point that they should probably be allowed to repo all your possessions and if they extend the courtesy to let you wipe their ass for them you should jump at the chance to finally be useful again.

Obviously Denis's sanity meter ran empty years ago and much like Uwe Boll he still gets funding from parts unknown to do god knows what with as they haven't actually MADE ANY FUCKING GAMES (that weren't abortions as mentioned in this article) in years.

If anything they are lucky that they aren't sued by Marvel for the shit this article exposes of their complete lack of integrity, and how they failed completely at their obligations to produce a quality product using the license.

The knights who used to say Nee would probably be a better developer at this point, even if they coded exclusively with shrubbery. At least they would be entertaining. To anyone still employed at Silicon Knights...you should be ashamed of yourself because you obviously have zero respect for yourself or for those out there that have no jobs at all while you get paid to smile and nod at Denis as if he isn't crazy.

 

[MrCalypso]

So sad on so many levels. I'm not sure I understand SK's management but a buddy of mine told me the only reason the company has survived this long is cause there based out of Canada....

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

I keep throwing oney at them but they never listen to me...
Just make an HD remake of the Sanity's requiem and release it on as many things as possible.

[b]LISTEN NOW, you will make money.[/b]

This, HD remake for 360, PS3, Wii/WiiU and PC, even a Vita if you feel like it. That will bring in money for the sequal I so much want, and if that's not enough...kickstarter it, still powers there.

DAMMIT SILICON KNIGHTS!!!

Okay, look. If there's a Developer and/or Publisher out there that's listening: buy the IP for Eternal Darkness. Recruit the original team that Silicon Knights has now, apparently, fired. Then make Eternal Darkness 2 properly. Please.

Nintendo may still own publishing rights to the first Eternal Darkness, which may still be a massive factor in why ED2 never came. Seeing as how they funded the first one and then left it to die on the Gamecube in terms of sales, I'm not holding any breath for ED2.


Nintendo should have funded ED2 instead of Bayonetta 2 IMO.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

So sad on so many levels. I'm not sure I understand SK's management but a buddy of mine told me the only reason the company has survived this long is cause there based out of Canada....

They've been surfing horribly on taxpayer money both provincially and federally until last year, for a while. In fact X-Men Destiny was actually wholly funded by tax money. What a waste.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

and this is why Dyack should have been sacked a long time ago. I can't call it surprising though as SK was always a mediocre developer who got lucky with one title YEARS ago and has been coasting off unearned laurels ever since.

This. I've said it at many times over the years. Blood Omen was good. Eternal Darkness was good. Neither were GREAT. For every 30 min of goodness you find in the games you have hours of suck.

Not to mention that in order to see ED's best bits you have to purposely play terribly so you never refill your sanity.

I had hoped that Too Human was just gonna be a side project that would do okay and give them another leg to stand on. In hindsight, with everything laid bare, I can only call what transpired there as complete madness and utter, singleminded, defiance of reason.

Your grand re-imagining of Norse Mythology as some kind of futuristic space opera (or whatever it was I really didn't care to find out) fails spectacularly, and instead of telling yourself "well I guess we missed the mark there, let's go make ED2, or try to make TH2 the best game we can" you instead file a law suit against the makers of the ENGINE you failed at making the game GOOD with. Its not like they are some indie code monkeys with a fresh new engine that was unproven or made just for you that failed to deliver on your specs.

It was an engine that many people somehow managed to not suck with, and a big name company behind it that proceeded to KICK YOUR ASS in court to the point that they should probably be allowed to repo all your possessions and if they extend the courtesy to let you wipe their ass for them you should jump at the chance to finally be useful again.

Obviously Denis's sanity meter ran empty years ago and much like Uwe Boll he still gets funding from parts unknown to do god knows what with as they haven't actually MADE ANY FUCKING GAMES (that weren't abortions as mentioned in this article) in years.

If anything they are lucky that they aren't sued by Marvel for the shit this article exposes of their complete lack of integrity, and how they failed completely at their obligations to produce a quality product using the license.

The knights who used to say Nee would probably be a better developer at this point, even if they coded exclusively with shrubbery. At least they would be entertaining. To anyone still employed at Silicon Knights...you should be ashamed of yourself because you obviously have zero respect for yourself or for those out there that have no jobs at all while you get paid to smile and nod at Denis as if he isn't crazy.

Agreed. And seeing as how this company was funded by the Canadian government, and Ontario's provincial government (waste of my tax dollars) I really do not feel sorry for Denis Dwyack at all. And seeing as how this article has employees basically admitting that XMD was just a side job I have a new question. Seeing as how the Province of Ontario very heavily funded that game with tax money, I wonder if the government could give them shit for wasting the money by not taking the job seriously.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Nintendo should have funded ED2 instead of Bayonetta 2 IMO.

Hm?

Assuming equal brand recognition for those two titles (you could argue either way, but I think I'm being charitable to ED here), I think I'd take the developer with a more-or-less consistent track record than the one that has innately hostile relationships with publishers, has had harshly declining quality over their last few titles, and, according to the end of the article, might be made of no more than five people.

So... no. No, Nintendo should not have funded ED2. Not unless they could get someone else to do it.

 

[immortalfrieza]

I only just got around to playing this game last week, and you know what?

It was alright.

I'd heard it was unpopular, certainly, and was in fact pleasantly surprised to find it only mediocre. The boss fights were a right pain in the arse, what with having to restart at the first stage of a three-tier fight whenever you died, but it was an easy hurdle to overcome. I had been expecting a Conan-level shitfest, but Destiny was simply OK. Mechanics did the job, graphics were average, the powers system was interesting...why all the hate? I'm quite a fan of X-Men as a franchise and if a fanboy can't work up a decent reason to get angry then by God, the world has turned upside down.

Agreed, XMD is definitely a decent game, it gets WAAAAAY more hate than it really deserves. The concept of a customizable mutant the player creates and then drops into the X-Men universe is not only a sound concept, but also more of a *FACEPALM* "WHAT TOOK THEM SO F@#KING LONG TO MAKE AN X-MEN GAME LIKE THIS!?!" The problem is the concept is executed pretty poorly, the customization options are pathetically limited, the combat is a bit dull, and the entire game is so linear, a more open world game would work a LOT better for the concept.

 

[ScruffyMcBalls]

Wow they make 3d Realms seem well managed and focused. Talk about running your studio in to the ground, feel sorry for all the genuinely hard working folks who were with the company.

You sum it up perfectly. Having played Eternal Darkness, it's clear that the people who worked on it loved what they were doing. It's disgusting that a studio can be run so poorly that those hard working and ambitious developers weren't given the chance to give us the sequel I'm sure many of them wanted to give us and we all wanted to play.
This is 2012 people, this kind of thing simply should not be happening.

 

[Vivi22]

Nintendo should have funded ED2 instead of Bayonetta 2 IMO.

Yeah, no. Funding development on a title from a developer that has basically been gutted due to their own incompetence and inability to make a decent game, over an action game from one of the few Japanese companies making good action games, and made up of members who have a proven track record stretching back to working at Clover before it was shut down by Capcom and Platinum Games was formed would be, well, maybe not the worst business decision ever made, but it would definitely be up there.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Nintendo should have funded ED2 instead of Bayonetta 2 IMO.

Yeah, no. Funding development on a title from a developer that has basically been gutted due to their own incompetence and inability to make a decent game, over an action game from one of the few Japanese companies making good action games, and made up of members who have a proven track record stretching back to working at Clover before it was shut down by Capcom and Platinum Games was formed would be, well, maybe not the worst business decision ever made, but it would definitely be up there.

Nintendo should have funded ED2 instead of Bayonetta 2 IMO.

Hm?

Assuming equal brand recognition for those two titles (you could argue either way, but I think I'm being charitable to ED here), I think I'd take the developer with a more-or-less consistent track record than the one that has innately hostile relationships with publishers, has had harshly declining quality over their last few titles, and, according to the end of the article, might be made of no more than five people.

So... no. No, Nintendo should not have funded ED2. Not unless they could get someone else to do it.

See here's the thing with Platinum Games. They've made some great games, but to be honest I think people would have rather seen a Nintendo franchise that was mistreated cult classic given a chance as a launch title rather than a sequel to yet another Japanese spectacle action game. Bayonetta was a great game, but Eternal Darkness was a game that was one of the few great psychological horror games. Bayonetta is just another high speed action game in the vein of Devil May Cry, but smoother.

Point is, even with Silicon Knights being as incompetent as they are with licensed games, when they make their own games(as rare as that is) they're damn good. They did start the Legacy of Kain franchise( then stupidly mishandled it).


And besides, Platinum Games is on its way to ruining Metal Gear Revengeance. Taking out the 360 cut feature and turning the game into another over the top action title make them look too good to me, among other things that people under Platinum Games have done.

All I'm saying is that ED2 should have happened a while ago, now it never will. Nintendo should have help promote the first game when they funded it, instead of letting it die in terms of sales.

 

[Frankster]

While the words "Eternal Darkness" and "sequel" in the same sentence no-doubt invokes a kind of Pavlovian drool response>

*wipes away the drool* No lie, i was actually nodding my head at the decision to ignore the xmen game and focus on that instead.
If the demo was awesome, it would have been totally worth it <3

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

I keep throwing oney at them but they never listen to me...
Just make an HD remake of the Sanity's requiem and release it on as many things as possible.

[b]LISTEN NOW, you will make money.[/b]

This, HD remake for 360, PS3, Wii/WiiU and PC, even a Vita if you feel like it. That will bring in money for the sequal I so much want, and if that's not enough...kickstarter it, still powers there.

DAMMIT SILICON KNIGHTS!!!

Okay, look. If there's a Developer and/or Publisher out there that's listening: buy the IP for Eternal Darkness. Recruit the original team that Silicon Knights has now, apparently, fired. Then make Eternal Darkness 2 properly. Please.

Nintendo may still own publishing rights to the first Eternal Darkness, which may still be a massive factor in why ED2 never came. Seeing as how they funded the first one and then left it to die on the Gamecube in terms of sales, I'm not holding any breath for ED2.


Nintendo should have funded ED2 instead of Bayonetta 2 IMO.

I would totally support this. It means that Platinum could potentially wind up back on Sony and Microsoft where it belongs. This isn't just fanboy pissing and moaning either. That game was just slightly less than porn, and proud of it. What part makes sense that a company that has repeatedly called itself a "family" company would make it and do it justice?

Platinum Games could also wind up going out of business if Bayonetta 2 flops to be honest.

Hear me out.

When was the last time that they've made a title that sold well? Bayonetta, and yet they couldn't even fund the sequel themselves. This may be in part due to the mediocre sales of Vanquish and the fact that everything else they have put out sells strong in its first week in Japan, but flops everywhere else. I honestly don't know how confident they can be about Bayonetta 2 on the Wii U considering the last time they put out a game on the Wii (MadWorld) it flopped pretty badly. And there's next to no noise around Anarchy Reigns either. Factor in the fact that they are royally ruining Metal Geat Rising with its lowered graphics and gutted gameplay, I don't think we'll be seeing Platinum Games in 5 years. Silicon Knights is no better, but ED2 would have made a lot of people stoked if it were to happen. Hell, people still somewhat care about Pikmin 3.

 

[Vivi22]

See here's the thing with Platinum Games. They've made some great games, but to be honest I think people would have rather seen a Nintendo franchise that was mistreated cult classic given a chance as a launch title rather than a sequel to yet another Japanese spectacle action game. Bayonetta was a great game, but Eternal Darkness was a game that was one of the few great psychological horror games. Bayonetta is just another high speed action game in the vein of Devil May Cry, but smoother.

Point is, even with Silicon Knights being as incompetent as they are with licensed games, when they make their own games(as rare as that is) they're damn good. They did start the Legacy of Kain franchise( then stupidly mishandled it).

Let's get real here for a moment; Silicon Knights have never made a great game. They've written some god stories for a few games, but by far the best game they made was Blood Omen (the first and only Legacy of Kain title they had anything to do with for the record) and even that was a mess of slow down and other technical issues. And while the sanity meter mechanic in ED was a cool idea and the story was well done, the rest of the game wasn't very good even by the standards at the time. As for the idea that the only titles they've ever poorly handled are licensed titles, the very existence of Too Human blows that notion out of the water (there's also the Twin Snakes which by all accounts wasn't a complete mess, but that's no real surprise when you build it on the template of two brilliant games (the story and level design of MGS1 and the engine/game mechanics of MGS2, which is also why I'm hesitant to give them much credit for that title).

Even if the company hadn't been gutted since X-Men Destiny, they were a terrible developer that could chalk up their only real successes to their ability to write competently. That's not a developer I'd want to bet on, nor would I want them making another Eternal Darkness. And I say that as someone who owns and enjoyed the original.

And besides, Platinum Games is on its way to ruining Metal Gear Revengeance. Taking out the 360 cut feature and turning the game into another over the top action title make them look too good to me, among other things that people under Platinum Games have done.

People can say what they want about MG: Revengeance, but honestly, the game as demoed by Kojima Productions a couple of years back looked pretty terrible. If all Platinum Games does is turn it into another over the top Platinum Games action title, at least I can count on it probably being fun (and let's be honest here, MGS has been kind of over the top since MGS2 at least, if not from the very beginning).

 

[Vivi22]

I hadn't heard about the gameplay being much different in MGR than in Bayonetta, though I know they're keeping graphics down to keep FPS in the 45-60 range, which is good. What gameplay changes did they make?

The only gameplay change anyone really knows about is the loss of the whole 360 degree cut mechanic. Frankly, I hardly consider this a loss since that was pretty much all Kojima Productions had really done with it and in the demos they showed it just looked slow and cumbersome with no real purpose to it at all. They were supposed to be making an action game, but instead seemed to be making a cutting simulation. Mind you, they've already admitted they had no idea where they wanted to go with the game and that were it not for Platinum Games taking the reigns it would have been cancelled by now. So if anything, the idea that Platinum is ruining the game is a complete load of bull considering they're the only reason it's coming out at all.

 

[Vivi22]

Ah. I ask because this is a day one purchase for me at this point. I'd like as much information on the game as possible for that kind of risk.

In that case, I'd be willing to bet if you liked Platinum's other action titles like Bayonetta, you'll probably enjoy it from what they showed last year. They seem to have a good handle on making that type of over the top action title.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Hopes... so cruelly raised, only to be shattered once again.

Why do you taunt me so, Mr. Carter? Why?!

**runs away weeping for the Eternal Darkness 2 that shall never be**

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

I keep throwing oney at them but they never listen to me...
Just make an HD remake of the Sanity's requiem and release it on as many things as possible.

[b]LISTEN NOW, you will make money.[/b]

This, HD remake for 360, PS3, Wii/WiiU and PC, even a Vita if you feel like it. That will bring in money for the sequal I so much want, and if that's not enough...kickstarter it, still powers there.

DAMMIT SILICON KNIGHTS!!!

Okay, look. If there's a Developer and/or Publisher out there that's listening: buy the IP for Eternal Darkness. Recruit the original team that Silicon Knights has now, apparently, fired. Then make Eternal Darkness 2 properly. Please.

Nintendo may still own publishing rights to the first Eternal Darkness, which may still be a massive factor in why ED2 never came. Seeing as how they funded the first one and then left it to die on the Gamecube in terms of sales, I'm not holding any breath for ED2.


Nintendo should have funded ED2 instead of Bayonetta 2 IMO.

I would totally support this. It means that Platinum could potentially wind up back on Sony and Microsoft where it belongs. This isn't just fanboy pissing and moaning either. That game was just slightly less than porn, and proud of it. What part makes sense that a company that has repeatedly called itself a "family" company would make it and do it justice?

Platinum Games could also wind up going out of business if Bayonetta 2 flops to be honest.

Hear me out.

When was the last time that they've made a title that sold well? Bayonetta, and yet they couldn't even fund the sequel themselves. This may be in part due to the mediocre sales of Vanquish and the fact that everything else they have put out sells strong in its first week in Japan, but flops everywhere else. I honestly don't know how confident they can be about Bayonetta 2 on the Wii U considering the last time they put out a game on the Wii (MadWorld) it flopped pretty badly. And there's next to no noise around Anarchy Reigns either. Factor in the fact that they are royally ruining Metal Geat Rising with its lowered graphics and gutted gameplay, I don't think we'll be seeing Platinum Games in 5 years. Silicon Knights is no better, but ED2 would have made a lot of people stoked if it were to happen. Hell, people still somewhat care about Pikmin 3.

I hadn't heard about the gameplay being much different in MGR than in Bayonetta, though I know they're keeping graphics down to keep FPS in the 45-60 range, which is good. What gameplay changes did they make?

Let me list the changes:

-The took out the 360 cutting feature. Similar to the 360 cutting feature of Afro Samurai but more refined.

-Instead of killing people in the way shown in the original trailer (slicing through regular fleshy soldiers kills them instantly with well done dismemberment, cutting the environment on top of enemies to crush them. The entire removal of stealth) they're making the game more like old school action titles where you face a swarm of enemies that take a ridiculous number of hits to die and then proceed to the next area. Turning it from an MG game to Devil May Cry 1.

-They've added lots of QTE for boss fights. In the newer trailer it shows Raiden running up the wing of a Metal Gear Ray, grabbing it in mid air, and judo throwing it to the ground...


They're adding the ridiculousness of Bayonetta that made Bayonetta awesome and taking out the Metal Gear feel of the game's universe. And it just looks bad. Even compared to their other games graphically.

It's also been years since the original trailer with no release date in sight. Its just not too promising.