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)

A real horror game, in the spirit of King and Lovecraft, not just blood and gore

The Good
Wow! For the first time since the original Alone in the Dark and "Legacy: Realm of Terror", a "horror" game that is really creepy instead of just gory. The game story is interesting and well-told, and the game is not so difficult that you won't be able to finish the story. While nowhere near as complex as the two classics I mentioned, let alone a Lovecraftian novel or FtF game, the story is still a little deeper than the usual "survival horror" genre story.

The visuals are up to modern standards - the main protagonist in particular is rendered completely realistically, though some of the ancillary characters like servants and nurses in historical settings are too dark and a bit polygon-ey.

The sound, though, is extremely well-done and extremely well-used to convey the mood, especially of your character's Sanity. At full sanity, you get background music and atmospheric sounds. With a little sanity loss, you start hearing phantom noises. Then the music fades and is replaced by formless, wordless voices and whispers. By the time your sanity hits bottom you are surrounded by hallucinatory voices and screams. The voices of the Ancients are also both well scripted and well rendered - the first time I heard the Ancient of Madness speak it sent shivers up my spine, and I plan to play the game through twice more to see the variations with each of the other options for which Ancient is plotting to return, at least as much to hear their voices as to earn the final special ending.

The other main "sanity" effect, the programmed hallucinations, is also extremely effective. The game is immersive enough that some of the "player-level" hallucinations combine with the haunting sound environment to provide a sense of reality shock, instead of seeming cheap the way they might out of context. The "character level" hallucinations vary in effectiveness, from stock psychological melodrama to eerie reality warps.

The framework of the story, taking control of various historical characters as your main character "reads" their biographies in the Book, is a nice, consistent way to get some of the advantages of a time travel plot without the big problems of fitting such a high-ramification thing consistently into a GameCube mini-CD game. The way the player recognizes the locations of earlier entries as later ones encounter them centuries later - exactly like the character reading the Book would - is particularly clever. There's a great deal of care taken for internal consistency, which is something I've learned not to expect from most console RPGs, let alone "survival horror" games.

The Bad
Of course, so much quality density uses up storage space very quickly. The game is a little short, perhaps 12 hours of playtime. Even if you play through all three times, that's less than 40 hours which is very short by my standards.

And although it's disguised very well and with great consistency, the actual play is rather linear. Locks, magical force fields, magical illusions, the reasons why you are forced to go through each sub-story in a particular order, and to do things in a particular order within a substory, are well-done and don't feel arbitrary, but they are definitely there. Certainly this is the least annoyed I've ever been by linearity, and linearity is after all the norm on console games.

The Bottom Line
When I bought my GameCube, I completely expected a poor selection of games that I'd like. I wanted to play the remake of Skies of Arcadia, and to use the GBA Player, and I wasn't surprised that there was basically nothing else I wanted to play. Then I found this game. I suddenly feel that the GameCube purchase was not a waste. This is the most pleased I've been with a console game in years - I think since the original Skies of Arcadia back on the Dreamcast. Intelligent horror, well done, with a real, effective sense of creepiness instead of cheap gore. Wonderful!

GameCube · by weregamer (155) · 2004

Great game

The Good
Sanity meter, What more do I have to say? This was the first game I have ever seen with such a thing. Once it gets low, your character starts seeing things that don't exist, situations that haven't happened. Once the meter gets low enough, it starts messing with the player, popping up error messages and messing with the volume. Pure and utter genius.

The idea of 3 different plots was great, each revolving around either Ulyoth, Xelotath, or Chatturga. The plots don't change much, but the bad guys do.

The format of the game, the girl going to her fathers house, the way the game is played through in chapters was great, my favorite chapters being playing as the girl's father, and as her great-great some-odd grandfather.

The Bad
The game can get VERY repetitive when you don't know what you are doing.

The Bottom Line
I bought game-cube just to play this game.

GameCube · by Boris Stovich (26) · 2004

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

[ 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.