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

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OryoN

Member
Let's assume Retro is really working on an ED game...

Why is everyone so confident that Retro Studios would take the Eternal Darkness franchise and do it the kind of justice we want? Because they did it with Metroid? The main challenge with Metroid was; how do you bring that 2D world into 3D and maintain that classic atmosphere. With that under control, they had a decent amount of creative freedom.

The challenges with an ED sequel are much different, and a bit more restrictive. Of course, Retro does possess the talent required to pull off such a feat, but unless some integral Silicon Knights/ED members are onboard(outside of Dyack), I'd rather reserve such high hopes of getting the kind of sequel we had been longing for.
 

GulAtiCa

Member
Well, it coming to Wii U does make me more interested. But still unsure and weary about it. But I'll keep my eye on it and will donate/etc/get it/etc if it looks good.
 

Hiltz

Member
Iwata said the following back in June 2012:

If a third-party developer or publisher has come up with an idea of a potentially very unique use of the Wii U functionality with such a device, there is a high possibility that Nintendo will be a partner with that third party in an unprecedented manner (thereby reducing their development risk significantly). I do intend to work hard so that next year you will not criticize Nintendo’s use of its resources.

I guess this project just doesn't have enough going for it in order for Nintendo to be on board.

http://www.siliconera.com/2012/06/1...ecedented-third-party-partnerships-for-wii-u/
 

Celine

Member
I think they'll raise the money fine. They confirmed a Nintendo platform, and thus will have the Nintendo army backing them.
I'm not so sure, the Nintendo army is a Nintendo army and Silicon Knights reputation got badly damaged after they part away from Nintendo.
 

v1oz

Member
I would not trust Dyack with crowd funding money based on what we heard of his mismanagement at SK and the mis-handling of money from game publishers.
 

Porcile

Member
Wii U? Going after the one corner of the gaming populous which still has a bit of goodwill left for Denis is pretty good idea. It's an interesting sounding project and I hope it gets made.
 

Schnozberry

Member
possibly, i dread to think how much money nintendo must have given dyack over the years and for what, one game

edit - forgot about twin snakes

The first Eternal Darkness took nearly 5 years. It was nearly complete for N64 before it got canned and rebuilt for GCN. Dyack got a lot of Nintendo cash.
 
blafjcp9.jpg




It is but it isn't. They can't even reference the best parts of Eternal Darkness. The characters and the ancients are off limits.

It's like dating your high school crush after she's had three kids and gained 40 pounds. Your dreams are in there somewhere, but good luck finding them.
hahahaha


Nice.
 
I don't know how to feel about this :/.

The teaser trailer is a low blow in the nostalgia, to the point of me wanting a HD remake of Eternal Darkness. That church layout is identical to the iconic church from ED. The drum boom boom is right in-line with the musical themes. The green, the red. It looks like what you'd expect an Eternal Darkness sequel to look like.

But they don't own the IP, so how far can they go? They probably can't reference any of the three ancients outside of colour coding and symbolism. And to be honest, I was hoping any Eternal Darkness successor would recognise that the original three ancients are extinguished, shifting the focus to Mantorok and the mysterious yellow ancient. And they probably can't do that without tip toeing around an IP they don't own :/.

Plus, you know, SK's history is iffy. But this isn't SK, so...
And it's not on Kickstarter. Unless it is.

I don't know how to feel. Eternal Darkness is one of my fondest games from the GCN era. Ticked a lot of boxes for me, and I've wanted a successor for a long time now.
They are saying it is a sequel, but that just adds to the iffy-ness.
 

ArjanN

Member
Another bit of info that lends to the theory that they are trying to fund this now because Nintendo is working on Eternal Darkness 2 is that the screenshots people got of the site before it got pulled have the campaign for funding ending the week before E3.

IMO there's like 0.1% chance of Nintendo ever doing anything with Eternal Darkness again.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
They are saying it is a sequel, but that just adds to the iffy-ness.

Well, it can be, but unless they have access to the source material making a sequel is going to be tough. I guess they can pretty safely dance around some of the titles and names, but as said above it will prevent them directly referencing some of the most poignant elements of Eternal Darkness, like the characters.

Spiritual success implied to be within the same universe I can see. But I wouldn't call it a sequel. Not yet.
 
Well, it can be, but unless they have access to the source material making a sequel is going to be tough. I guess they can pretty safely dance around some of the titles and names, but as said above it will prevent them directly referencing some of the most poignant elements of Eternal Darkness, like the characters.

Spiritual success implied to be within the same universe I can see. But I wouldn't call it a sequel. Not yet.
"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."

Sounds like they want everyone to know/think it is a sequel. I really hope Nintendo makes a statement.
I'm pretty sure them calling it a sequel without having the license would result in a law suit. Definitely gonna keep an eye on this.
 
I hope that we'll see a Wii U retail compilation of all seasons, I don't want to spend loads of all seasons when I can have it all in a nice box, likely for less. :p

Maybe Nintendo themselves will pick it up (especially if this does infringe on anything), maybe it'll be a case of "we publish it and it's exclusive or it doesn't happen at all" sort of thing, as many are saying, this is WAY too close to ED to be easily stepped around.
 

King_Moc

Banned
So, no word on formats? I normally like stuff to be multiformat, but this is a game that would be better being solely on Wii U. They wouldn't be able to use the sanity system otherwise and, lets be honest, that's what made that game.
 

Mifune

Mehmber
Why are people blaming Silicon Knights for moving ED from N64 to Gamecube? You can bet your ass that was Nintendo's call.
 

Cuburt

Member
Let's assume Retro is really working on an ED game...

Why is everyone so confident that Retro Studios would take the Eternal Darkness franchise and do it the kind of justice we want? Because they did it with Metroid? The main challenge with Metroid was; how do you bring that 2D world into 3D and maintain that classic atmosphere. With that under control, they had a decent amount of creative freedom.

The challenges with an ED sequel are much different, and a bit more restrictive. Of course, Retro does possess the talent required to pull off such a feat, but unless some integral Silicon Knights/ED members are onboard(outside of Dyack), I'd rather reserve such high hopes of getting the kind of sequel we had been longing for.

Retro has done a good job working on franchises it didn't create itself (Metroid Prime, Donkey Kong Country Returns), and yet Silicon Knights has not had such a great track record after not working with Nintendo.

I think people trust Nintendo overseeing a product would more likely lead to a quality game than Dyack overseeing a game, given all the bad info leaking surrounding SK and the original prototype, even though him and some of the original team may be involved. That also brings up the point of how many people from the original ED team even have stuck around to this point and how many of them made it to this 8 person team that exists now? Also how involved was Nintendo with the original game?
 
So, no word on formats? I normally like stuff to be multiformat, but this is a game that would be better being solely on Wii U. They wouldn't be able to use the sanity system otherwise and, lets be honest, that's what made that game.

Wii U and PC for now. IGN even confirmed it 100% with Precursor.
 

scitek

Member
They are saying it is a sequel, but that just adds to the iffy-ness.

Those quotes ate taken from the site that had the game named as Shadow of the Ancients. It's since been changed, so who knows if it was actually a fully backed sequel or not at some point, but they're now calling it a "spiritual" successor via IGN.
 
I hope that we'll see a Wii U retail compilation of all seasons, I don't want to spend loads of all seasons when I can have it all in a nice box, likely for less. :p

Maybe Nintendo themselves will pick it up (especially if this does infringe on anything), maybe it'll be a case of "we publish it and it's exclusive or it doesn't happen at all" sort of thing, as many are saying, this is WAY too close to ED to be easily stepped around.
Especially since the devs themselves are calling it a sequel.
Those quotes ate taken from the site that had the game named as Shadow of the Ancients. It's since been changed, so who knows if it was actually a fully backed sequel or not at some point, but they're now calling it a "spiritual" successor via IGN.
So much weirdness around this game.
 

Schnozberry

Member
I may back this if it can be proven that the trailer wasn't the product of Dyack's alleged misappropriation of Sega's money. I don't want to support fraud.
 
Well, that makes it awkward. Would Nintendo let them use the sanity system? I'd hope so...

It's simultaneously great and offputting that there's a PC version. Usually, it's just great.

On the other hand, Nintendo's had a presence on PC before, nothing major, but games like Mario is Missing and Mario's Game Gallery were on PC.
 
On another hand, if for some reason this never comes out as is, at least we actually got to see ED2 that was long rumored, there's no other explanation about this, has to be ED2 but with a new name. Nice that this didn't stay a rumored canned game you know?
 

Cuburt

Member
IMO there's like 0.1% chance of Nintendo ever doing anything with Eternal Darkness again.

Well as has been mentioned previously, Nintendo recently renewed the trademark.

It was unlikely Nintendo ever revisited Mother/Earthbound and yet now Earthbound is coming to the VC worldwide.

Nintendo's involvement with the Fatal Frame series shows that they still think their consumer base has interest in horror games and therefore they have interest in making them.

I don't think it's quite that unlikely.
 

popeutlal

Member
Let's move away from fantasy and back to reality, Nintendo would never develop a game like this internally. And Nintendo is probably is having Retro work on a game that no one is asking for...a Donkey Kong sequel.

This is the closest Wii U will get to a Eternal Darkness sequel. So be thankful.
 

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
its not so much people wanting to see dyack in ruin (though there is that too) but more his well known terrible track record of keeping to schedule and his recent legal catastrophe, just seems like throwing good money after bad

*ding ding ding*

Even if you're a fan, you should seriously have reservations about throwing them money in advance.
 

Imbarkus

As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Screw it I'm willing to throw a little faith money at the project. Trailer showed familiar locales, and a lot of other qualities that speak to a more direct sequel to the first one than we would get in any other way.

After all, INSANE doesn't look like it's happening anymore...

If there's one thing about this industry, it's that it's fans AND press can forgive a lot once you release a kick-ass game. No reason to deny Dyack a shot at a make-good.
 
Screw it I'm willing to throw a little faith money at the project. Trailer showed familiar locales, and a lot of other qualities that speak to a more direct sequel to the first one than we would get in any other way.

After all, INSANE doesn't look like it's happening anymore...

If there's one thing about this industry, it's that it's fans AND press can forgive a lot once you release a kick-ass game. No reason to deny Dyack a shot at a make-good.
All of the assets in the trailer were taken from the forever in development hell ED2. Do not take it as a sign of quality or that they will even be able to get this out when they say.
 

Mifune

Mehmber
All of the assets in the trailer were taken from the forever in development hell ED2. Do not take it as a sign of quality or that they will even be able to get this out when they say.

How do you know this? Because one creature that appears here was leaked earlier? According to the ex-employees they worked on a church level. I see a lot more than a church level here.
 
How do you know this? Because one creature that appears here was leaked earlier? According to the ex-employees they worked on a church level. I see a lot more than a church level here.
You really think 8 dudes put all that together with no money after the SK fallout?
 

Cuburt

Member
Let's move away from fantasy and back to reality, Nintendo would never develop a game like this internally. And Nintendo is probably is having Retro work on a game that no one is asking for...a Donkey Kong sequel.

This is the closest Wii U will get to a Eternal Darkness sequel. So be thankful.

I remember over a year ago that Retro was trying to hire artists that have experience drawing dragons.

I never played the original ED so I don't know if there are dragons in that game but I can't think of any dragons in Donkey Kong.
 

Discomurf

Member
I remember over a year ago that Retro was trying to hire artists that have experience drawing dragons.

I never played the original ED so I don't know if there are dragons in that game but I can't think of any dragons in Donkey Kong.

Maybe they went back to Raven Blade? :p
 

Celine

Member
On the other hand, Nintendo's had a presence on PC before, nothing major, but games like Mario is Missing and Mario's Game Gallery were on PC.
Those "games" were brought on PC by a different company (mindscape).
Same for the CDi games (Philips).

Sega had a PC offspring.
 

Mifune

Mehmber
You really think 8 dudes put all that together with no money after the SK fallout?

Multiple sources said that all they had to show for ED2 was a church level. There is more than a church level on display in this teaser. So it stands to reason that more work has been done on the game in the many months since the Epic ruling.
 

Ridley327

Member
I remember over a year ago that Retro was trying to hire artists that have experience drawing dragons.

I never played the original ED so I don't know if there are dragons in that game but I can't think of any dragons in Donkey Kong.
There are no dragons in ED.
 
I remember over a year ago that Retro was trying to hire artists that have experience drawing dragons.

I never played the original ED so I don't know if there are dragons in that game but I can't think of any dragons in Donkey Kong.
They were trying to get people that would draw dragons specifically or just someone with experience for those sort of fantasy elements?

If its draw dragons maybe retro is making zelda, thats not zelda. You guys get what Im saying?
 
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