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Shadow of the Eternals - Eternal Darkness Spiritual Sequel [Crowdfunding, Dyack, ???]

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Not sure how I feel about this... and I'm not sure if I'd donate to such a project.

The people behind Eternal Darkness deserve the support, but... :(

EDIT: I think the trailer itself looks fine, but why is the (presumably) main character not reacting to anything that happens? He almost looks like he's about to break into a grin the entire time :/
 

Alien Bob

taken advantage of my ass
My love for Eternal Darkness is about as big as my mistrust of anything Dyack, so it all cancels each other out to a nice round 'meh'
 

Neiteio

Member
Eternal Darkness stands as a greater achievement than anything by 99 percent of Dyack's critics. I really love that game. As such, I can't help but admire Dyack on some level.

That being said, I wish Dyack hadn't let his hubris destroy Silicon Knights. As for this "sequel," I don't see any reason to believe they have a proper vision for it, or the team to pull it off.
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
crowdfunding truly is just the gold-rush of out time. Beggars and failures dancing across the web with their caps strewn across the internet's floor.
 

Hiltz

Member
So since Silicon Knights is defunct, Denis forms a new game studio. He makes the game SK fans have wanted for years, but due to complications over the ownership of the IP, he makes a "spirtual successor" to Eternal Darkness under a different name and apparently without the insanity meter (among other potential things). However, he's relying on crowdfunding since there is no publisher for the project ?
 

898

Member
A Google search of Precursor Games brought this up.

The link's now dead, but the site's legit: http://precursorgames.com/

EDIT: Cached page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...adowoftheancients/+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

There's also a Twitter account and Facebook page that are about an hour old.

https://twitter.com/PrecursorGames

https://www.facebook.com/PrecursorGames

Here are some relevant snippets from the cached site.


ABOUT
When Detective Paul Becker is called to one of the bloodiest gang massacres in Louisiana state history, only two survivors remain from a brutal conflict between two rival cults. As Becker begins his interrogations of the suspects, their combined recollections will uncover the truth about the ‘Ancients’.

Shadow of the Ancients is a sequel to the critically acclaimed Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Reqiuem. Featuring an ensemble cast of heroes and villains, the game will span over 2500 years of history throughout Egypt, England, Hungary, and the United States. Players will question the perception of reality as they try to balance the mechanics of combat, magick, and sanity events to progress through the adventure.

Shadow of the Ancients will take players on a memorable journey throughout time; weaving historical fact with disturbing fiction to create an experience unlike any other.

from FAQS
How long is each episode?
Each episode will be approximately 2-4 hours of gameplay.

When do you plan to release?
Q3 2014.

What platforms will Shadow of the Ancients be on?
We will be focusing on the PC and Wii U platforms. Other platforms may be added in the future.

Why no Kickstarter Campaign?
We would love to do a Kickstarter, but currently Kickstarter is only open to companies that are in the US or UK. We hope that we can work with Kickstarter in the future to make this option a reality.

However, by integrating the community into the development of the game, we can centralize our site with our crowdfunding system to manage this properly. Upon pledging on our site, you will be granted a Forum Ribbon to our Official Development Forums, where you can share your ideas and feedback about the creation of the game. It does not matter whether you sign up for the forums before, or after pledging – our database will recognize you.


GOAL
Shadow of the Ancients will be an episodic series, and to complete the first episode and continue production on future episodes, we need approximately 1.1 million dollars. Any money raised beyond this will contribute to future episodes, additional characters, in-game perks, and additional platforms. The more money that we raise, the more we will deliver based on what our fans want.

REWARDS
BOUND SUPPORTER LE ($50) includes the following: Everything from Sane Supporter; Shadow of the Ancients Season 1 (Episode 1-12, two free episodes); Access to ‘Edward’s Secret Study’.

Receive the entire first season of Shadow of the Ancients (twelve episodes). Each episode features at least one playable character, access to a variety of new play mechanics, historically accurate weapons, locations and new magick.
 

Slermy

Member
That article from Kotaku mentioned that it was just a church, right? They sure do show a lot of that church in the trailer.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

That was my immediate thinking too. Here's the excerpt from that article:

Yet despite this reportedly split effort, the ED2 demo also failed to come together in a satisfying way, sources said. "The farthest they got with it when I left SK was, literally, one two-level church interior," says one former employee. "It was really bad, as I recall. It took the side-team a long time to even get that far. Bad tech, combined with a team composed of people who had not shipped a title since Metal Gear really hurt that demo. Other than that, I can't explain why things went so poorly for them [except that] a lot of key people responsible for the original Eternal Darkness are long gone."



The music reminded me of Eternal Darkness very much. In a good way. If they do make a spiritual successor to ED, I'd like to some of the original game's characters return. But if they don't have the license, that may be a problem. Graphically, it's not looking so hot but hey...The original was great, I'll keep an eye on this.

The music WAS Eternal Darkness music with some other elements added to it.
 
^ I love the idea that this game will be competing, presumably, directly with the Eternal Darkness IP, but they're allegedly targeting the WiiU (and PC). Gee, I wonder if Nintendo will be cool with that.

And lol @ episodic releases. I am pretty sure that model was proven to be a failure a while ago, guys.
 

Dascu

Member
The chances that this turns out to be good, completed and finishes all twelve episodes strike me as being terribly low.

But still, goddamn!
 

SmithnCo

Member
They're apparently using sanity effects? Seems better.

Though the art style/tone of the trailer doesn't seem like it would lend itself as well.
 

Danielsan

Member
I'm not touching anything Denis Dyack has touched post the original Eternal Darkness. And even that was a mediocre game. Nintendo should have used the IP and given it to a competent developer. The IP has potential, it just needs talented people.
 

CengizMan

Member
I would love to see Nintendo come up with a sequel to Eternal Darkness at around the same time. Would make a really interesting situation. Don't expect that to happen though.

Check out Nintendo World Report very soon. We just uncovered a sizable leak regarding details on this game.

Hope y'all enjoy.

Interesting to read the sanity meter will be making a comeback. I'm not liking the information about the episodic content though.
 

JDSN

Banned
12 episodes and 1.1 million per episode from the guy that used resources from a game he was meant to make a build a game pitch that no company asked for?

Im in!
 
Wait a second... why is this a spiritual successor if they're allegedly using the sanity effects? Nintendo apparently owns the patent on that system, so they'd have to okay its use in this game... in which case they might as well allow Precursor to use the actual IP.

This is fucking weird.
 

Ridley327

Member
Wait a second... why is this a spiritual successor if they're allegedly using the sanity effects? Nintendo apparently owns the patent on that system, so they'd have to okay its use in this game... in which case they might as well allow Precursor to use the actual IP.

This is fucking weird.

They straight-up call it a sequel in the product description, too.
 
I feel like this is a misguided Dyack scheme to generate buzz so that Nintendo will capitulate and give him money to make an actual ED2. Dyack's reputation is in such tatters that this is the only way that anyone would give him the time of day.

It won't work.
 

Kifimbo

Member
ED was already episodic, so that's not surprising in the least.

They're saying it's a straight-up sequel to ED, huh.

It was still one package. Telltale already have a hard time releasing 5 episodes in five months. Valve couldn't deliver their HL2 episodes on time. We're expecting Dyack to not spend 1.1 million BEFORE episode #3 is done ?
 
They straight-up call it a sequel in the product description, too.

Yeah, this doesn't all add up. Guess we'll have to wait for the contradictions to be explained.

I feel like this is a misguided Dyack scheme to generate buzz so that Nintendo will capitulate and give him money to make an actual ED2. Dyack's reputation is in such tatters that this is the only way that anyone would give him the time of day.

It won't work.

That possibility occurred to me, too. "And if you say no and don't okay it for WiiU, we'll still release it on PC so nyah!"
 
Isn't Nintendo pretty guarded with their IP? I'm kindn of curious about how blatantly this is being pitched as a sequel (not the usual "spiritual successor from the same team" stuff) and using the patented sanity effects. Could Nintendo somehow shut this down or buy it out? (....not like I wanted to :believe Retro was secretly doing ED2 or anything...)
 
Maybe we can get a "spiritual successor" to Too Human next, eh Dyack? ;)


I'm serious, I actually want another Too Human
 

wrowa

Member
It's surprising in that we know episodic releases, generally, just don't sell very well.

Telltale's games seem to be doing just fine.

The problem is that most developers are unable to follow a strict release schedule. If episodic releases are supposed to be successful, you need to release them in a regular fashion. A TV station doesn't show a new episode of series only when they feel like it either, after all.

12 episodes sounds damn ambitious, though. Also, they need a million just for the first episode, which is going to release at the end of next year? If they need that long for a single episode, how long will it take until the series is actually finished? Sounds too long and too expensive.
 

Neiteio

Member
Best-case scenario? Nintendo sends in the ninjas and releases a news release saying, "We shut these clowns down because Retro is making ED2, word."
 
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