25th May 2013, 10:20 AM
ABF, usually you stand up for the little guy here, but you really need to take a step back and listen to yourself. You are bending over backwards to give Dennis every last shred of credit you can muster, and frankly, he doesn't deserve that credit.
Everything I've been reading has shown that Dennis Dyack simply isn't fit to run a business and that he treated his employees like garbage. Silikon Knights is a ghost town now. Ask yourself. Why exactly is Dennis making a startup company? He could have stayed with SK and made the game there.
Further, I watched those trailers. Interesting, but shady. It fits with what everyone was saying happened during the X-Men game development. I highly suspect this is the exact "pitch trailer" that Dennis put all his developers on during XMen's development. It's just an asset, naked in the dark, at this point. The vast majority of people responsible for Eternal Darkness are GONE ABF. You're trusting that a small handful that stuck with Dennis, along with Dennis himself, can somehow pull a miracle and deliver something on par with the first Eternal Darkness.
Listen, I'm with you. I have wanted SK to deliver a sequel to the first game for YEARS, but I think it's about time we all just gave up on that dream. Heck, this wouldn't even be a true sequel, just a "spiritual successor". Silicon Knights' best games were during the Nintendo years (Eternal Darkness and Twin Snakes), and those games were HEAVILY shepherded by Nintendo (and Konami in the latter's case). Fact is, while both games were really good, they did still have their flaws. Eternal Darkness' combat was "revolutionary" at the time, but the industry has moved on, and frankly their dismembering combat doesn't hold a candle to Dead Space's dismembering combat. I want to see some sign that the game uses a MODERN combat engine instead of the awkward tank controls we were all forced to accept during the early days of survival horror games. Twin Snakes was all around amazing, but I still can't get over the unrealistic way soldiers just "popped in" to rooms instead of coming in through the doors (it made using room layout in your strategy much less feasible, and frankly Metal Gear Solid 2, which came before this remake, already had mastered how to get soldiers properly and realistically entering a room before this game came out), and how they didn't bother sticking any of the VR missions in that version. Were they both good games? Yes, I loved the hell out of them when they came out, but they weren't perfect and seams showed around the edges. (Granted, both were far more "complete" than Star Fox Adventures, the game that feels like everyone sort of left the building midway through.)
Kotaku isn't the best source of journalism, but when they have sources, you can rely on them. You really think they'd want to name themselves? You of all people should understand why someone spilling the dirt on a former employee might not want to reveal their name. Heck, were pro little guy LONG before we all made the switch.
I hate having to put down Dennis like this. His name was huge and prominently displayed across both those Gamecube games, and it made us all fall in love with the guy. Now, it seems that was part of an ego trip and an attempt to make sure HE alone got the credit. In the end, I really don't know how much of the main scenario Dennis was actually responsible for in Eternal Darkness. I know for a fact he wasn't responsible for ANY part of Twin Snake's narrative, aside from getting his painting stuck in Psycho Mantis' room.
I will say this though, Eternal Darkness' story could have used improvement. (This is an aside not related to the quality of the man in question here.) The biggest problem with the game's scare tactics was the lack of subtlety. You should remember me explaining my point of view years ago, long before Dennis was exposed. Having read a large number of Lovecraft's stories since then, I can safely say that their homage to those stories is a cliff notes interpretation. To this day, my favorite Lovecraft story is "The Rats in the Walls". Narry an elder god in sight in that story, but it perfectly captured what I think the TRUE Lovecraft horror was all about. You never knew if the person narrating that story was telling the truth or had gone mad, and frankly, if the latter, you didn't know which parts of that tale were confused maddened interpretation or actual fact. Eternal Darkness is a great game, and the story is certainly engaging, but it lacks that angle entirely. For all its use of "sanity effects", you never really question the main narrative at all. You may question if your character actually exploded or your system "froze" or your memory card got deleted, but if they want the story to really capture Lovecraft, you need to wonder just how much of the main story itself is a complete fabrication or delusion. I want to question if I actually stopped a cosmic horror, or if I just broke down and lashed out at people on the street or had a fever dream and woke up and it was all in my head. The tome of eternal darkness could have been perfect for this, if used right. Since every single era is actually a story the main character is reading, they COULD have set it up so you question if anything in those tales is actually true or not. Maybe it was all just fanciful fiction put together by your crazed uncle, and it turns out, as they say up at Miscatonic University, that certain mental maladies are genetic. You've just inherited a family predisposition towards delusional thought. Or maybe not, you found another note saying your uncle isn't a perfect fit for his perhaps hasty diagnoses of delusion, but how well can you trust this other doctor's note? Maybe you actually inherited a vision of the truth most mortals can't even glimpse, and shouldn't! Little hints could be dropped through the stories read in the book. Little plot holes that, while not outright contradictions, leave unanswered questions that leave the overall narrative in a confused state, a confused state that makes sense if all those stories were just written by your uncle as mad ravings, or perhaps just because those elder things are outside of mortal comprehension. In some ways, Too Human was also too simplistic and sophomoric an interpretation of Norse mythology. I mean, the nords believed, HAD UTTER FAITH, in the notion that their gods and all the world were going to end horribly in ice, that the gods KNEW when this was going to happen, knew HOW it was going to happen, and still played their roles perfectly making all the foolish and stupid mistakes that allowed the world to come to that end, an end that the gods didn't seem to actually WANT at all. The nordic gods are a story of hubris and pettiness on a universal scale, and frankly, while Too Human gets the encyclopedic details of all the characters more or less "right" in their interpretation, the theme is completely different. I wanted Too Human to end with my character and the ultimate baddy locked in a struggle both of them knew would destroy everything they had worked to build, but they both did it anyway because they couldn't fight their monstrous natures and their hatred of each other. God of War did a better job, until the 4th game where the developers forgot that Kratos is supposed to be WRONG.
Everything I've been reading has shown that Dennis Dyack simply isn't fit to run a business and that he treated his employees like garbage. Silikon Knights is a ghost town now. Ask yourself. Why exactly is Dennis making a startup company? He could have stayed with SK and made the game there.
Further, I watched those trailers. Interesting, but shady. It fits with what everyone was saying happened during the X-Men game development. I highly suspect this is the exact "pitch trailer" that Dennis put all his developers on during XMen's development. It's just an asset, naked in the dark, at this point. The vast majority of people responsible for Eternal Darkness are GONE ABF. You're trusting that a small handful that stuck with Dennis, along with Dennis himself, can somehow pull a miracle and deliver something on par with the first Eternal Darkness.
Listen, I'm with you. I have wanted SK to deliver a sequel to the first game for YEARS, but I think it's about time we all just gave up on that dream. Heck, this wouldn't even be a true sequel, just a "spiritual successor". Silicon Knights' best games were during the Nintendo years (Eternal Darkness and Twin Snakes), and those games were HEAVILY shepherded by Nintendo (and Konami in the latter's case). Fact is, while both games were really good, they did still have their flaws. Eternal Darkness' combat was "revolutionary" at the time, but the industry has moved on, and frankly their dismembering combat doesn't hold a candle to Dead Space's dismembering combat. I want to see some sign that the game uses a MODERN combat engine instead of the awkward tank controls we were all forced to accept during the early days of survival horror games. Twin Snakes was all around amazing, but I still can't get over the unrealistic way soldiers just "popped in" to rooms instead of coming in through the doors (it made using room layout in your strategy much less feasible, and frankly Metal Gear Solid 2, which came before this remake, already had mastered how to get soldiers properly and realistically entering a room before this game came out), and how they didn't bother sticking any of the VR missions in that version. Were they both good games? Yes, I loved the hell out of them when they came out, but they weren't perfect and seams showed around the edges. (Granted, both were far more "complete" than Star Fox Adventures, the game that feels like everyone sort of left the building midway through.)
Kotaku isn't the best source of journalism, but when they have sources, you can rely on them. You really think they'd want to name themselves? You of all people should understand why someone spilling the dirt on a former employee might not want to reveal their name. Heck, were pro little guy LONG before we all made the switch.
I hate having to put down Dennis like this. His name was huge and prominently displayed across both those Gamecube games, and it made us all fall in love with the guy. Now, it seems that was part of an ego trip and an attempt to make sure HE alone got the credit. In the end, I really don't know how much of the main scenario Dennis was actually responsible for in Eternal Darkness. I know for a fact he wasn't responsible for ANY part of Twin Snake's narrative, aside from getting his painting stuck in Psycho Mantis' room.
I will say this though, Eternal Darkness' story could have used improvement. (This is an aside not related to the quality of the man in question here.) The biggest problem with the game's scare tactics was the lack of subtlety. You should remember me explaining my point of view years ago, long before Dennis was exposed. Having read a large number of Lovecraft's stories since then, I can safely say that their homage to those stories is a cliff notes interpretation. To this day, my favorite Lovecraft story is "The Rats in the Walls". Narry an elder god in sight in that story, but it perfectly captured what I think the TRUE Lovecraft horror was all about. You never knew if the person narrating that story was telling the truth or had gone mad, and frankly, if the latter, you didn't know which parts of that tale were confused maddened interpretation or actual fact. Eternal Darkness is a great game, and the story is certainly engaging, but it lacks that angle entirely. For all its use of "sanity effects", you never really question the main narrative at all. You may question if your character actually exploded or your system "froze" or your memory card got deleted, but if they want the story to really capture Lovecraft, you need to wonder just how much of the main story itself is a complete fabrication or delusion. I want to question if I actually stopped a cosmic horror, or if I just broke down and lashed out at people on the street or had a fever dream and woke up and it was all in my head. The tome of eternal darkness could have been perfect for this, if used right. Since every single era is actually a story the main character is reading, they COULD have set it up so you question if anything in those tales is actually true or not. Maybe it was all just fanciful fiction put together by your crazed uncle, and it turns out, as they say up at Miscatonic University, that certain mental maladies are genetic. You've just inherited a family predisposition towards delusional thought. Or maybe not, you found another note saying your uncle isn't a perfect fit for his perhaps hasty diagnoses of delusion, but how well can you trust this other doctor's note? Maybe you actually inherited a vision of the truth most mortals can't even glimpse, and shouldn't! Little hints could be dropped through the stories read in the book. Little plot holes that, while not outright contradictions, leave unanswered questions that leave the overall narrative in a confused state, a confused state that makes sense if all those stories were just written by your uncle as mad ravings, or perhaps just because those elder things are outside of mortal comprehension. In some ways, Too Human was also too simplistic and sophomoric an interpretation of Norse mythology. I mean, the nords believed, HAD UTTER FAITH, in the notion that their gods and all the world were going to end horribly in ice, that the gods KNEW when this was going to happen, knew HOW it was going to happen, and still played their roles perfectly making all the foolish and stupid mistakes that allowed the world to come to that end, an end that the gods didn't seem to actually WANT at all. The nordic gods are a story of hubris and pettiness on a universal scale, and frankly, while Too Human gets the encyclopedic details of all the characters more or less "right" in their interpretation, the theme is completely different. I wanted Too Human to end with my character and the ultimate baddy locked in a struggle both of them knew would destroy everything they had worked to build, but they both did it anyway because they couldn't fight their monstrous natures and their hatred of each other. God of War did a better job, until the 4th game where the developers forgot that Kratos is supposed to be WRONG.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)