Silicon Knights Was Working on Eternal Darkness 2.

[Gahars]

Was being the key word here.

First, though, let's back up a bit. Silicon Knights had a great track record on the GameCube, creating the much beloved Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. At the same time, they had been slaving away for years on a little title called "Too Human", a game surely destined to be their masterpiece.

Let's just say it didn't work out that way. Too Human was released to mediocre reviews and apathy from consumers. Their next project was X-Men Destiny, and the reception of that game was even worse. Now the company has five staff members to its name, including founder Denis Dyack.

According to a new report, though, it seems that Silicon Knights was trying to create a demo for Eternal Darkness 2 during development of X-Men Destiny.

Up to 40 per cent of Silicon Knights staff worked on an Eternal Darkness 2 demo while under contract to develop the X-Men title for Activision, sources told Kotaku.

The demo was designed to attract publisher attention while the remainder of the studio plugged away at the superhero adventure, according to the report. It's unclear if Activision was aware of all this.

The report draws on comments from eight anonymous ex-Silicon Knights staff, all of whom painted a damning picture of conditions at the developer.

..."The farthest they got with it when I left SK was, literally, one two-level church interior," another former employee stated. "It was really bad, as I recall. It took the side team a long time to even get that far. Bad tech, combined with a team composed of people who had not shipped a title since Metal Gear [Twin Snakes], really hurt that demo."

Eurogamer

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

The report goes on to describe how the developer cared little for the X Men title, and repeatedly siphoned resources from the title for this demo. It even appears that Silicon Knights kept Activision, its publisher at the time, in the dark about all this.

Needless to say, X Men Destiny flopped hard, and Silicon Knights was hit with serious layoffs. They've gone from being a respected name in the industry to becoming a mockery of itself (Silly-con Knights, if you will).

As for the sequel to Sanity's Requiem, don't get your hopes up. It looks like the franchise may just be stuck in Eternal Darkness.

 

[emigre]

Once they were great knights but now they are mere peasants.

 

[Gahars]

Once they were great knights but now there are mere peasants.

If to err is human, then they were certainly too human.

 

[emigre]

Silicon's problems illustrated that they weren't perfect machines but rather fallible humans. Perhaps too human for their own good.

 

[Taleweaver]

When will the requiem be held for this?


...but pun aside: the first time I heard about Silicon knights wasn't on Eternal Darkness or any of their other titles...it was when they tried to sue Epic games for not giving enough info on how to use the tools for the unreal engine (the Unreal Engine 3 was still new or in heavy development back then).
I don't think they won that case.

 

[Clarky]

it seems amazing as soon as Nintendo lets these developers go, they always end up in the shit. Shame too, I enjoyed there stuff on the GC too

 

[Hadrian]

Played Eternal Darkness recently for the first time in years...it wasn't actually as good as I thought it was, it was kinda meh+. What with Silicon Knights losing most of their key staff and being a lot worse everyone knows that this is for the best. Besides, they may have been working on it but Nintendo probably would have rejected it what with it likely to have sucked massive balls and the first game not selling too well.

 

[The Catboy]

The Catboy is extremely sadden by this news!
I freaking love Eternal Darkness and was so pumped for a 2! I hope one day someone picks back up on the project.

 

[Hyro-Sama]

it seems amazing as soon as Nintendo lets these developers go, they always end up in the shit. Shame too, I enjoyed there stuff on the GC too

It's a Nintendo conspiracy. HATERS UNITE!

 

[Hadrian]

it seems amazing as soon as Nintendo lets these developers go, they always end up in the shit. Shame too, I enjoyed there stuff on the GC too

Well Nintendo did get to see their "work in progress" stuff while these devs are with them and think "seriously, you spent all that time on *insert game* and this is the best you can do? Nah, we're not publishing it...YO MICROSOFT? THIS IS FOR YOU BROS!"

You can be damn sure that they're more than happy that they sold Rare and didn't want to take Too Human.

 

[Clarky]

Well Nintendo did get to see their "work in progress" stuff while these devs are with them and think "seriously, you spent all that time on *insert game* and this is the best you can do? Nah, we're not publishing it...YO MICROSOFT? THIS IS FOR YOU BROS!"

You can be damn sure that they're more than happy that they sold Rare and didn't want to take Too Human.

Too Human was kind of doomed to rubbish I feel, I mean SK starting working on it as a PSOne game to GC to where it ended up, kind of tells you through 3 console generations that thing was never going to be saved, yet alone have a trilogy.

As for Rare, if the Stamper Bros didn't sell there 51% shares of RareWare to Microsoft, I would imagine they would still be with Nintendo now

 

[chyyran]

I haven't played Eternal Darkness yet, but from what I can gather, it's good. And totally appropriate for Halloween, it's to bad that there won't be a sequel..

 

[Gahars]

I don't think they won that case.

It got dismissed, and Epic actually won a counter-suit against them for $4.5 million.

So yeah, that backfired on them a bit.