Shadow of the Eternals, the upcoming crowd-funded “spiritual successor” to Eternal Darkness, features assets recycled from a cancelled Silicon Knights project, which some fans have theorized might have been the oft-rumored Eternal Darkness 2.
When Shadow of the Eternals was first unveiled a few days ago, hardcore Eternal Darkness fans noticed that one of the monsters in the trailer looked exactly like some concept art that was leaked from a cancelled Silicon Knights project. Last year, Kotaku spoke to several former Silicon Knights employees, who admitted that the company was working on Eternal Darkness 2, but the project had to be cancelled when Silicon Knights couldn’t find a publisher to work with and hit some financial and legal troubles that resulted in the company laying off most of its staff.
Shadow of the Eternals is being developed by a new company called Precursor Games, which is made up of former Silicon Knights employees. Today, the company’s CEO, Paul Caporicci, told Wired’s Game|Life blog that Shadow of the Eternals is indeed being made with assets that were originally created for Silicon Knights’ cancelled project. ““We did purchase some art assets from Silicon Knights, and we were very happy to be able to put those assets created by the talented past employees to use.” Caporicci said.
While the game isn’t called “Eternal Darkness 2,” Caporicci says his new game will still feature a lot of the original game’s trademark features, such as hallucinations brought on by your character’s loss of sanity. Caporicci says they didn’t call their new game “Eternal Darkness” because Nintendo still owns the rights to the original IP, but despite Nintendo not allowing them to use the name, Caporicci insists that the relationship between the two companies remains friendly. ““We’ve been in constant communication with [Nintendo], and they’ve been supporting in working with us to put the game on [Wii U].”
While most of Silicon Knights’ current gen games were made using the Unreal Engine, Shadow of the Eternals is being made with CryTek’s CryEngine 3.
Last year Silicon Knights lost a highly-publicized legal battle against Gears of War developer Epic Games. Silicon Knights initially sued Epic for supposedly sabotaging the development of Too Human, as Silicon Knights blamed the Unreal Engine for the game’s technical problems and poor reception from critics and gamers alike. Epic counter-sued, saying Silicon Knights had stolen Epic’s technology by using copyrighted code without permission. The courts agreed with Epic, and Silicon Knights was ordered to pay Epic $90 million dollars and destroy any unsold copies of Too Human and X-Men Destiny.
Eternal Darkness is one of my favorite games, and it’s generally considered to be one of the most underrated survival horror games ever made. But despite that, I’m still apprehensive about Shadow of the Eternals — the games that Silicon Knights made this generation were pretty abysmal, and the team at Precursor Games is largely comprised of the same people. It’s not like I want Shadow of the Eternals to fail — I want a good Eternal Darkness sequel as much as anybody — but it’s hard to have confidence in this team after playing shovelware like Too Human and X-Men Destiny. Apparently I’m not the only one who feels that way: the game’s crowd-funding campaign is off to a slow start, having only raised $118,000 of the $1.5 million they need. Caporicci says Precursor Games will seek private funding if the campaign fails to raise the necessary amount of funds.
Shadow of the Eternals is currently planned to be released as 12 episodic downloads for the PC and Wii U.
Source: Wired Game|Life
