Eternal Darkness, Essay

Originally written 2004-09-24

In 1998, gamers flipped their lid during a certain boss battle in Konami’s Metal Gear Solid. In this fight, the villain Psycho Mantis could seemingly read the player’s mind, commenting on other video games they had previously played and almost invincibly dodge the player’s attacks. In 2003, the game development studio Silicon Knights was given the lofty task of re-envisioning the game for the new generation of graphics. What credentials did Silicon Knights have in order to be presented with this opportunity? It was their work with their previous project Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. This single game showed so much potential in its early stages that Nintendo bought out the entire company outright.

Eternal Darkness, like Konami’s Psycho Mantis battle, breaks the metaphorical fourth-wall, where the medium stops pretending it is its own world and reaches out to interact with the audience. The player is no longer merely playing the game; the game also played the player. Its innovation lays its Sanity Effects system. Every time the player makes eye-contact with an enemy, the meter fills. The fuller the meter is, the more likely the player will experience these effects. Much like the Lovecraft-ian lore by which the game’s story is influenced, the horrors lie not in obvious gore and scare tactics but subliminal, mental manipulations. Blood drips down the walls, books hover through the air in the library, screams and wails echo through the surround-sound speakers, heads on statues turn as you walk by, cockroaches walk across the TV screen. More direct effects occur, such as items disappearing from the inventory just when the player needs to use a healing potion, the game deletes the player’s saved game, the screen goes blank just as the player enters a room full of dangerous enemies! But just as the player screams in agony, the screen flashes white and the character stutters in denial, “this can’t be….happening!” It was all a trick, but it seemed so very real.

Almost as innovative is the gameplay. Where most games have its game structure serve as a point-racking series of challenges, whose story only serves as a context to explain what is occurring, Eternal Darkness places story at the forefront. Obviously influenced by the works of early horror writers Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, the story tells the tale of the centuries-long struggle between generations of unfortunate mortals and the monstrous gods responsible for all the evils perpetrated throughout history including assassination attempts on Charlemagne, the Catholic Inquisition, burial of slaves within the foundations of temples and fortresses, World War I, and oil field fires in Iraq. Quite a lot of historical research was done for this project. Some are as tame as the proper weapons available during certain time periods, or the rare lateral headdress on the helmets of Roman Centurions. Due to the particular subject matter, some revelations deal with the more occult, such as the reported near-daily planetary eclipses and comets surrounding the time of Charlemagne’s death. With this much care taken with the storyline, it would be a shame if the player were not able to experience it all. Unlike most games whose goal it is to challenge the player to conquer it, the difficulty of Eternal Darkness is lessened, so players can easily progress through the game and experience the story in full. In fact, you are enticed to complete the game three times (there are three separate branches of the storyline) in order to view the game’s “true” and complete ending.

Perhaps most telling of the game’s breaking of the fourth-wall is that after playing I had been influenced to once again voluntarily read. I had stopped reading novels (outside of assigned school work) around seventh grade, and inspired by the writing of the game, I began reading the works of H.P. Lovecraft. And though I’d been doing such before, I now enjoy playing mental games with people, subtly altering their environment or testing their mental metal. This game has touched my personal life and shown me the validity of story-driven game design.

Outside of my personal experiences, the surprising break-up of Silicon Knights from Nintendo inspired many to believe it was all a publicity stunt—a real-life Sanity Effect, if you will. Though losses of respected development studios are never good publicity, formal press releases are often produced; the only “official” evidence of the alleged break-up comes from websites with whom the President of Silicon Knights is friendly with. Also, the cited reason for separation is “differing philosophies on game design,” though it is thoroughly documented in interviews that Nintendo and Silicon Knights, in fact, have the nearly identical ideals. There was a theme in Eternal Darkness regarding the number 3:33, and hardcore conspiracy theorists noticed the news posts were created at 3:33 on April 13, 33 days before the end of the annual E3 video game expo. It was too much of a coincidence to ignore, and is one of the most logical and well-documented conspiracy theories since the supposedly-faked moon landings.