Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

aka: ED, Eternal Darkness: Mawa Kareta 13jin
Moby ID: 6825
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Description official descriptions

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a psychological thriller epic starring the adventures of twelve characters that span across the world and two millennia. From time immemorial the forces of evil from beyond have been trying to manifest themselves in our world, and it is only through the actions of these forgotten heroes that the world has been saved from being overrun. Chapters take place in Ancient Rome, Persia, the Middle East, and modern-day Rhode Island. Throughout the game, the protagonists will have access to several weapons appropriate for their era, from bastard sword and gladius to flintlock pistol and shotgun.

The game features an involved Magick system, which allows different spells to be created through the combination of runes. These spells can attack enemies, dispel illusions, and heal both the body and items.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem also has a unique feature called Sanity. If an enemy sees a character, their Sanity meter drops. When Sanity gets low, hallucinations begin to plague the character. Walls bleed, voices whisper from nowhere, the camera gets disoriented. Sanity can be restored by dealing a finishing move on a dying enemy, or with spells or some items. Aside from this, characters also have health and mana meters.

Spellings

  • エターナルダークネス 招かれた13人 - Japanese spelling
  • 이터널 다크니스 - Korean spelling

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (GameCube version)

119 People (96 developers, 23 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 90% (based on 77 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 108 ratings with 9 reviews)

Great, now I'm scared of my TV

The Good
Things weren't going well for Alex Roivas. Her grandfather was murdered in his mansion and the police were baffled by the horrific crime. Alex was sure that the clues to her grandfather's death lay somewhere within the mansion's walls so she's checked every nook and cranny for any information. And then, in a hidden room, she found a book: the Tome of Eternal Darkness. The Tome of Eternal Darkness does two things: it gives its owner magic powers and shatters their senses.

Eternal Darkness follows the adventures of twelve playable characters who discover the Tome, the existence of otherworldly beings, and the struggle to save humanity. Taking place over a staggering 2000 years, Eternal Darkness trots the globe with the best of them and is a terrific third-person adventure just this side of survival horror. After Alex discovers the Tome, she reads the first chapter, "The Chosen One" about Roman Centurion Pious Augustus.

Pious's level introduces the Dark Gods and their minions. There are three gods vying for supremacy: Chattur'gha, Ulyaoth, and Xel'lotath. Each one has a difference color associated with them: red, blue, and green. Red is also the color of the life bar, blue of the magic, and green of the sanity. There is an important connection here. Each dark god has their own school of minions including the traditional walking dead, gigantic Horrors, somewhat innocuous Trappers, and Bonethieves who like to hide inside people.

After Pious's level, Alex finds a clue about where the next chapter page is hidden in the mansion. This model follows for each of the chapters in Eternal Darkness, with the level in the past revealing more of the story and Alex gaining new spells and gaining more hints about her grandfather's death. With this new information, Alex can uncover more of the story, and what a story!

By all rights, Eternal Darkness shouldn't work. The chapter structures are repetitive and there is a tendency to revisit the same locations over and over again. It's formulaic, but effective, with enough interesting characters, interesting spells, interesting puzzles, and interesting variations of the same area to hold the player's interest. For instance, the first time you visit a French church, it's as Anthony, a young man trying to warn Charlemagne about a cosmic conspiracy. Six hundred years later a monk is at a cathedral in the same area, during the time of the Inquisition. Four hundred years after that, a journalist is stationed at the cathedral, now converted to handle the wounded from the First World War.

The characters are also not variations of the same skin. Portly Maximillian Roivas waddles around his mansion, but doesn't have the best sanity (he can perform quick autopsies though). Karim, a Persian adventurer, is a strong fighter with good health, but isn't as fast as Ellia, a Cambodian dancer. Michael Edwards isn't the best magic user, but his firefighter physique gets put to good use. Each character has their strengths and weaknesses, their skills and abilities.

I hesitate to call this a Survival Horror game, even though it hearkens back to the original Alone in the Dark. You usually have more than a flashlight and a .45 and there's a devastating magic system to learn. Also, you usually aren't outnumbered enemy-wise. Jumping back to weapons, I found melee weapons to be much more effective than ranged weapons, so I never worried about ammo. The game does have its scares, but it has a more effective sense of foreboding.

Each dark god has their own school of magic: red, green, or blue. Runes found by the adventures can be connected together in a circle of power, under one of the dark gods' schools, to create a spell (and add it to the Tome of Eternal Darkness). You can create a spell through trial and error or uncover a scroll that lists the required runes, and experiment with the different magic schools to see what the different effects are. The colors trump each other (and there's a hidden school that trumps everything). Understanding the color system makes life much easier—since you can enchant weapons, create magical shields, and unleash magical attacks it is nice making them as effective as possible.

There's a reason why the subtitle is "Sanity's Requiem". If your health bar drops, you die. If your magic bar drops, you can't cast spells. If your sanity bar drops, you go nuts—gloriously, ravingly bonkers! Not only does your character hallucinates, seeing blood dripping from walls, monsters which aren't there, shooting themselves while reloading, and more, but <u>you</u> hallucinate, too! Your TV turns off or switches video modes, the controller stops working, saved games are erased… psyche. Talk about a game playing you.

The Bad
Just two complaints: let me replay levels and let me skip cutscenes (one section has a long cinematic coupled with a tough battle).

The Bottom Line
Eternal Darkness is as Lovecraftian as they come, but it opens with a Edgar Allan Poe quote. Either the Cthulhu cultists are holding on the copyright or this is Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe's The Haunted Palace all over again. Anyway, this is one of the great games buried on an iffy platform. This is horror gaming at its best with twenty hours of fresh gameplay compared to the scant handful of hours you can spend in Silent Hill or Raccoon City. I highly recommend borrowing a GameCube to play this game.

GameCube · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2004

An enjoyable 3rd-person adventure with a twist, but not going to become a classic.

The Good
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem features gameplay spanning two thousand years of history, from the year 2 B.C. to 2000 A.D. You start as Alex Roivas, and your objective is to find who or what murdered your grandfather in the family mansion in Rhode Island. Along the way you will discover the dark secrets of the family and save the world. The game is divided into chapters, which are part of the Tome of Eternal Darkness, a chronicle of the saviors the world has never known about. During a chapter you will play as the chapter's character. Between chapters you play as Alex, and attempt to find the next chapter page.

The variety of characters and locations is enjoyable, as are the various weapons that each character uses. The magick system is truly unique and suprisingly intricate, while the game also introduces the concept of sanity. Each monster you face subtracts from your sanity, and as you gradually go insane your character begins to hallucinate. Walls begin to drip blood, ammunition appears on the floor, bugs crawl on your screen, and perhaps you even turn into a zombie. The music adds perfectly to the tense atmosphere, which builds to the final confrontation of good versus evil.

The Bad
Unfortunately, while a figure of sixty hours of gameplay has been lobbed about, that is far from the truth. The first time through the game may take you about twenty hours, but the puzzles do not change from game to game, only the cutscenes. Also, the puzzles are the weakest chain in the game. Most consist of countering one magick type with another, and once you've figured out the basic idea all the rest are ridiculously simple. However, the most egregious example of the puzzles takes place late in the game where the player is forced to repeat a puzzle that was completed in a previous chapter. There is no change, simply the same half-hour long repetition. Additionally, some players will find the total lack of extra ammunition for the guns irritating in the extreme. Finally, while it doesn't particularly effect gameplay, by the time you watch your fortieth bone and paper zombie spurt several gallons of blood you'll be thoroughly sick of the whole thing.

The Bottom Line
If you want an H.P. Lovecraft style romp through history, slashing monsters at every turn, this game is for you. If you'd prefer a more straight forward hack and slash, or a Tomb Raider style blaster, you're better off steering clear of this game.

GameCube · by Shadowcaster (252) · 2002

A Tribute To All Things Macabre

The Good
Eternal Darkness, from Silicon Knights, was originally intended for the N64 console. After years of lingering in developers hell, the game was finally released for the Gamecube. It was the very first game I got for my Gamecube, and it is one of the best for the console, and also one of the reasons that I wanted one.

In Eternal Darkness, you play as Alex Rovias, as well as 11 others, whom all play a role in defeating the Eternal Darkness. Which is an ancient evil deity, not unlike Lovecraft’s “Great Old Ones”. The game spans the world, from Ancient Persia, Medieval France, and Modern New England. And has a good 15 hours. The game also has pretty good replay value. There are also some unlockables. As in the beginning, you choose which rune to take red, green, blue. Each changes the game slightly. Red makes monsters harder, blue drains magicka, and green drains sanity.

Each playable character has there own weapons and quest. Weapons include melee and ranged. Each also has varying stats. But you must find the magicka. Which transfer to each new character. Runes come in three powers. Three, five and seven point spells. Spells have a wide variety of effects from healing to shields.

In Eternal Darkness you have to watch your health and magicka, and well as your sanity. The Sanity effects are one of the coolest features of Eternal Darkness. It does not have the subtitle of Sanity’s Requiem for no reason. The effect occur when your sanity gets to low. Effects range from grisly ones like characters accidentally shooting themselves, and goofy ones like the display of the volume being lowered. It does not actually lower. One of the coolest is when the game shows a screen saying Thanks for playing the demo!

The Graphics are pretty good. But not Gamecube power. But then again it was designed for the N64. And it was a launch title. It is the character models that suffer the most here. The spells and environments look fantastic.

The Sound department excels. The voice acting is excellent. Particularly the voice of the Ancients. The sound effects are all creepy as they should be. The music takes a backseat here but is still well done.



The Bad
Why do you have to create the spell every time you get a new rune? Like the five and seven point runes, once acquired you must re-make the more powerful spell. Which is a real pain in the arse. The game also suffers from many horror game flaws, such as constant back tracking. And having to use and item like a key instead of it being automatically used.

The Bottom Line
Along with Call Of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth, Eternal Darkness is one of the best horror games of recent years. And the references to Lovecraft and Poe are cool.

GameCube · by MasterMegid (723) · 2006

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Eternal Darkness appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Ancients

Each of the Ancients is represented by a colour, which is the colour of their alignment as well as their Magick and their creatures.* Ulyaoth, God of the dimensional planes, is Blue. * Xel'lotath, Goddess of the Mind and Madness is Green. * Chattur'gha, God of physical strength and matter is Red. * Mantorok the Corpse God or God of Order and Chaos is Purple (though sometimes Black).

However, there is also"neutral" Yellow Magick present in the game. According to Denis Dyack, a designer of the game, this actually represents a fifth, unrevealed Ancient.The fact that yellow is the complementary colour of purple may also indicate that this Ancient is diametrically opposed to Mantorok.

Canada

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is the first game to be developed fully by a Canadian developer, inside Canada, and published by Nintendo Of Canada (NoC). As a result, it was released in Canada two days before the U.S.

Development

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem was originally planned to be one of the last games released for the N64. Once it slipped that release, it was scheduled to be a GameCube launch title and be shipped in October 2001. It didn't make that date and was once again rescheduled for release in February 2002. It still didn't make that date and was finally released in June 2002. Because it was in testing for so long, the in-house testers at Nintendo began calling it "Everlasting Darkness."

Fourth wall

Silicon Knights co-developed the remake The Twin Snakes of Metal Gear Solid with Konami. Given that series' fondness for breaking the fourth wall, Silicon Knights reused some of the Eternal Darkness sanity effects, such as the tilting floor effect, during the player's battle with Psycho Mantis. Eternal Darkness is also one of the games recognised when the character attempts to "read the player's mind" (which consists of reading the contents of the system's memory card). Breaking the fourth wall in such a manner is a notable stylistic similarity between games developed by Silicon Knights and those developed by Hideo Kojima.

Inaccuracies

In the manual when describing Dr. Maximillian Roivas, they put the date and setting of "A.D. 1760 - Rhode Island, USA." Not only is it glaringly obvious that the United States not even exist at that point, but Rhode Island didn't even join the Union until 1790! Oops! The developers, Silicon Knights, are Canadian.

Names

Alexandra's family name, Roivas, is savior spelled backwards.

Ratings

This was the first Nintendo only published game ever to receive a ESRB Mature rating. Conker's Bad Fur Day and Perfect Dark are older Nintendo games that also carry a Mature rating but it can be argued that they were co-published by Rare.

References

  • This game has several homages to classic horror and fiction writers. As if the Edgar Allen Poe quote on the intro wasn't enough, the guy who speaks to you on the beginning of the game introduces himself as Inspector Legrasse... and there is an Inspector Legrasse on H.P. Lovecraft's tale The Call of Cthulhu. The setting being on Rhode Island is another tip of the hat to Lovecraft's place of birth.
  • Mantarok, the creature encountered by Ellia, is the keeper of "The Ancients". An obvious reference to Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth, who is the keeper of The Great Old Ones. Also they both coexist in multiple planes of reality.
  • While playing as Alex, check the stack of books in the study, to find another reference to classic horror tales, including Poe and Lovecraft.
  • One of the sanity effects has the character's head falling off and quoting Shakespeare, more specifically Scene I, Act III of Hamlet, the famous "To Be Or Not To Be" speech.

References to the game

In Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, magazines called ED Magazine can be used to distract guards. The magazines show Ellia on the cover and a centerfold of Alex Roivas when used, two characters from Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.

Title translation

The translation of the Japanese title in English is "Eternal Darkness: Call of 13 People".

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2002– Best GameCube Game of the Year
    • 2002– Best GameCube Action Game of the Year
    • 2002 – #2 Best GameCube Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
  • GameSpy
    • 2002 – Day of the Tentacle (Cthulhu) Award (GameCube)

Information also contributed by CaptainCanuck, Jiguryo, lasse, Mark Ennis, MasterMegid, Mike Turner, Sciere and Shadowcaster

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by JPaterson.

Additional contributors: Apogee IV, Sciere, Alaka, gamewarrior, Patrick Bregger, Rik Hideto, FatherJack.

Game added June 27, 2002. Last modified January 17, 2024.