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[Virtz]

Here's something I ran across on a different forum. A successor to Eternal Darkness, made by (at least some of) the same people, including Dennis Dyack.

Eternal Darkness was this action-adventure horror game with a history-spanning story that went through about 10 different time periods and people of those times, following events related to the Tome of Eternal Darkness. It featured a rune-based spell system, with different power levels for each spell, and a rock-paper-scissors sort of mechanic for use of different gods to power the spells against minions of other gods.

Spoiler: Read this if you've played it already or you're a hundred percent sure you won't play it (even though the gamecube is totally emulatable by now) (click to show/hide)

Mostly the game is now known for its "sanity effects", where the game would break the fourth wall to mess with you when your character's sanity was low. This included a variety of things, from the character suddenly glitching into the floor to the game pretending to delete your save files. My personal favourite was a screen that thanked for playing and teased at the continuation being in a sequel (one I knew never came).

You might also know the creators for having made Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen, and there were certainly visible similarities in places in Eternal Darkness, particularly the artwork.

So anyway, now they're aiming at doing a crowd-funded successor. It's going to be episodic, 12 episodes for the first season, with an estimated 2-4 hours per episode. The initial target is to be 1.11.5 million, release date aimed at Q3 2014. The $50 tier is to buy the entire package. They're not going to be doing it via Kickstarter, cause they're not in the US nor UK. Here's their own description:

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.

Teaser trailer, featuring places you might recognize from the first game

Main site, with countdown to crowd-funding campaign

Crowd-funding begins on Monday (06.05.2013)

EDIT: According to this, it's apparently coming to PC and Wii U. Also, the crowd-funding campaign is supposed to use flexible funding (meaning funds go to developer regardless of goal achievement), but I'd be really dissapointed if it even mattered.

EDIT2: Crowd-funding campaign is up

EDIT3: Now also on Kickstarter.

UPDATE: Second attempt at crowd-funding now on-going, now with a lower goal and non-episodic game in mind (although shorter, 8-10 hours).

[Sirus]

Holy crap. HOLY CRAP. Make is happen!

[Neonivek]

To me the sanity effects wasn't even what made the game great (and once you are REALLY good at the game, sanity will never drop)

Its story telling, pace, and how it handled combat all worked to its advantage. It actually made melee weapons something you wanted to use without making them overpowered.

[Virtz]

To me the sanity effects wasn't even what made the game great (and once you are REALLY good at the game, sanity will never drop)

Its story telling, pace, and how it handled combat all worked to its advantage. It actually made melee weapons something you wanted to use without making them overpowered.

Assuming you weren't fighting Xel'lotath, at least.

Though yeah, the game had so much more going for it, but that's what everyone seems to remember most and use to promote it. And honestly it kinda lowered my expectations when I first approached it, cause I was expecting gimmickiness aplenty in a plain haunted mansion based on that alone.

[Ozyton]

Eternal Darkness

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Successor

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[tryrar]

.....I thought Silicon Knights was effectively defunct due to Denis Dyack's utter hubris in suing Epic Games. If he's a part of this project, pass

[Iceblaster]

One moment, I have to check my pulse to see if I'm dead... Yep I'm alive... Holy flipping Jesus on a pogo stick with Princess Molestia, I have wanted a sequel for a while

[Neonivek]

To me the sanity effects wasn't even what made the game great (and once you are REALLY good at the game, sanity will never drop)

Its story telling, pace, and how it handled combat all worked to its advantage. It actually made melee weapons something you wanted to use without making them overpowered.

Assuming you weren't fighting Xel'lotath, at least.

Though yeah, the game had so much more going for it, but that's what everyone seems to remember most and use to promote it. And honestly it kinda lowered my expectations when I first approached it, cause I was expecting gimmickiness aplenty in a plain haunted mansion based on that alone.

It is why people need to try to tell of a game honestly instead of just outright hyping it. People know what hype is, when you tell what a game is based entirely on hype people only have salespitch to work off of.

[thegoatgod_pan]

Very exciting. I rarely finish games, but I finished that one. I fought the sanity intensive Old One and the effects were the best. I was completely fooled by the "roach infestation" since my apartment at the time had a roach problem, and the "disk error" one was also not far off from the truth. Take my money!

[Sirus]

My favorite sanity effect was the one where I entered a room and was greeted with an error message stating that my controller had been disconnected. Of course, there were several enemies nearby and they proceeded to maul me as I frantically tried to get the controller to work again

[Markus]

Anyone think we'll be seeing some more Mantorok monsters besides the emaciated purple zombies that randomly decided to help or attack zombies under the other ancients?

[Virtz]

Anyone think we'll be seeing some more Mantorok monsters besides the emaciated purple zombies that randomly decided to help or attack zombies under the other ancients?

With how the 4th ending went, it's quite possible we'll be seeing more of Mantorok and his monster equivalents. Though I'm not even sure how they'll go about weaving events with those of Eternal Darkness.


On a different note, I just remembered there was Eternal Darkness 2 concept artwork and models released after that got cancelled. Considering the 13th picture contains the things from the teaser, the others could be hints at what we'll be seeing. Or at least some of them, since it's apparently not confirmed what they were for.

[Virtz]

Crowd-funding campaign has begun!

[Sirus]

Crow-funding campaign has begun!

Always knew those birds were good for something

[Virtz]

This is like the third time in this topic I've made that very same typo. :|

Anyway, there's a short demo among the videos, mostly giving context to the scenes from the teaser. And they've announced that they're using Cryengine.

Also, it seems to be a spiritual successor, yet feature reimaginings of events that happened in Eternal Darkness. Like the demonstrated "dream" sequence features one of the periods from ED, except with a different looking protagonist and extra crazy stuff happening.

There's a section with revealed characters and character silhouettes in the "Cast" section, the last two of which could possibly be Pious and Alex Roivas. Also, one of the characters I noticed on-screen in their pitch video looked a lot like Paul Luther.
Since there seems to be a sorta grey area regarding the rights to make a sequel, I wonder if they'll all look different and have different names, but essentially the same events surrounding them, like how Anthony looks totally different in the demo?