IT'S ALMOST HERE AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I’ve been waiting for Eternal Darkness for a long time. I first read about the game during E3 ’99, when it was first shown running on N64. The premise of traveling through time and taking control of various characters in spooky environments sounded pretty novel, and I thought it was pretty cool that a Canadian company was making the game, since back then not too many Canadian developers were well known. (Now we have Black Box, many others.)
In the next year, not much was said about Eternal Darkness. It was usually lumped with Riqa, another mysterious project that debuted at E3 ’99. As the 2000 show approached, which would be my first to attend in person, Riqa was quietly canceled and people started talking about Eternal Darkness a lot more... Just prior to the show, Nintendo announced that Silicon Knights would be a second-party developer, and Eternal Darkness was looking to be one of the huge, blockbuster N64 titles published by Nintendo. It was set to be released on Halloween of that year.
I guess I’ve already told most of this story in my gigantic E3 feature, but suffice it to say that I loved the game’s demo at the show, and I ended up talking to Denis Dyack and other SK employees pretty extensively. Eternal Darkness went from being a promising game in the back of my mind to being at the very forefront of my every gaming thought. I started telling all my friends about this amazing game where you could go insane and stop trusting your senses.
Obviously, Halloween 2000 came and went with no Eternal Darkness in sight. By then the game was beginning its new life on GameCube, which had me depressed for a long time because it was such a remarkable N64 title. Eventually I overcame that attitude and went into E3 2001 with high hopes for the game’s rebirth on a new system.
Believe it or not, I was disappointed. I still held the dream of Eternal Darkness aloft on a very high pedestal, but the demo at the show was buggy and highly repetitive of what I played the year before on N64. Thus began the separation of playable game and idealized game, and only now are they merging back into one palpable entity. Everything pointed to the actual game, as it would eventually be released, being far more impressive and compelling that the heavily stripped-down E3 demo. That assurance was my lifeline for the next year or so.
Cube Clubs came and went with an equally uninteresting demo. I could see that other people were really enjoying even that butchered, fabricated burn, but I just couldn’t even bring myself to play it. I didn’t want to risk harming the ideal in my head. The same thing happened at E3 2002...and this time, I didn’t go anywhere near the demo. Too scary.
But now I had new information. The uncut game was displayed at a Gamers Summit in Seattle, and our own Rick Powers said it was awesome. Lived up to every expectation. Blew him away. Made him almost sad that he couldn’t play the game fresh from start to finish on its release day. You can’t imagine how much those words comforted me. This ideal in my head wasn’t so crazy after all...the game really is amazing! The demo really is a sad little shell that I can ignore!
Now Eternal Darkness is two, maybe three days away, and I’m going insane trying to wait for it. At this point, it’s been so long since I played the game that I don’t even know what to expect anymore...and that’s a good thing. As a gaming journalist, I have a lot of anticlimactic experiences with games when I know too much about them prior to release. Eternal Darkness will be the first time in a while that I’ll get to experience a major game with very little previous knowledge to go on. For that, a big thanks to Denis and everyone else at SK and Nintendo who helped keep the game a secret. Those who once cursed you for it will now love you for it.
Right now I’m trying to finish throwing away my concrete playing experiences with the game and permanently latch onto the ideal, because every impression and review of the game so far indicates that my ideal really does match the final game. I can’t tell you how relieving that is. I’m still a wreck, but my anxiety has become pure anticipation. I’m no longer concerned about whether the game will live up to my ultra-high expectations...I just want it to hurry the hell up and get here.
It’s going to be a long weekend for me, and probably for many of you. Just try to do anything that will take your mind off of ED, and the time will go by faster. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to wash the dishes and finish reading a book.
