Trivia / Eternal Darkness

Trivia Tropes

• Acclaimed Flop: Well, it was an M rated Lovecraft-inspired horror game released exclusively on the Nintendo GameCube. It received rave reviews and even won quite a few industry awards for its innovations in storytelling, but it only sold a little under 500,000 copies, not enough to recuperate its development costs.
• Acting for Two: Most of the playable characters' actors also voice major or supporting parts in the story. More specific examples however include:
  • Pious and Ulyaoth were both voiced by Richard Doyle.
  • Alex and Xel'lotath were both voiced by Jennifer Hale.
• All-Star Cast: A lot of big name voice talent is present in the game such as Jennifer Hale, Cam Clarke, Michael Bell, Greg Eagles, Paul Eiding, Kim Mai Guest, Rino Romano, Richard Doyle, Neil Ross. Even David Hayter has bit parts as a Roman Legionnaire and one of Pious' underlings.
• Creator-Driven Successor: Shadow of the Eternals was planned to be this for Eternal Darkness, but failed to get off the ground for a number of reasons, ranging from lack of Kickstarter funding (failing to meet their goals twice) to one of the devs having a Role-Ending Misdemeanor involving child pornography.
• The Danza: Paul Luther, who was voiced by Paul Eiding.
• Development Hell: Not Eternal Darkness, but the attempt to create a spiritual sequel have undergone this. After Silicon Knights went under, taking the deal with Nintendo to produce Eternal Darkness 2 along with it, Dyack created a new studio in 2013 called Precursor Games in order to crowdfund a Serial Numbers Filed Off version called Shadow of the Eternals, planned to be a 12-part episodic game for Wii U and PC. The studio launched two crowdfunding campaigns asking for around $1.5 million CAD each, only to cancel them both a month later (with only 10% of funding meet), refunding donors and aiming to relaunch their efforts after re-evaluating what they wanted the game to be. Shortly after, the studio's co-founder and Eternal Darkness co-designer Kenneth McCulloch was arrested on child pornography charges. Precursor cut ties with him and would launch a new crowdfunding campaign the following month with a smaller $750,000 goal this time, the game now billed a single, ten-hour game. This version also failed to meet it's funding goal and so the game was put on indefinite hold... only for Dyack to come back the following year with another new company (Quantum Entanglement Entertainment) with the goal of both restarting development and producing a tie-in film or television project, both of which died alongside the company in 2018. This project would ultimately be recycled into Deadhaus Sonata, an action RPG that Dyack is making with yet another new studio and has being showing its own prolonged issues with development.
• Executive Meddling: A positive example. Companies' attitude towards design and management is and was rather draconian, and it was only due to Nintendo demanding and enforcing a product that was up to the brand name's standards that the game was as good as it is.
• In Memoriam: To Ben Dyack 1920-2000.
• Inspiration for the Work: Dyack has stated that the game is influenced by the works of H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as Michael Moorcock's "Eternal Champions" concept. The idea for the sanity effects in particular was taken from Call of Cthulhu.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: While occasionally acknowledged by way of Super Smash Bros. and trademark renewals, the game has never been re-released.
• Moved to the Next Console: The game was originally developed for the Nintendo 64.
• The Other Marty: An interesting case with Maximilian, as in gameplay and the story he's voiced by an uncredited Michael Bell, but his autopsy journals are narrated by William Hootkins.
• Technology Marches On: Some of the sanity effects fake things happening with your TV, such as the volume muting or the system turning off, showing a black screen with "VIDEO" in the corner. Upon the widespread adoption of high-definition televisions a few years later, TV brands started using a wider variety of graphic interface designs and abandoned some widespread elements from previous decades (such as volume always being represented by a series of horizontal green rectangles on the bottom half of the screen), making all such effects much less convincing.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: With all the various sanity effects that really are in the game, tons of these came out for other kinds of sanity effects that certainly sounded believable.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Templar knight who Pious uses as the foundation for the Pillar of Flesh was originally a playable character, Joseph de Molay. In light of the September 11 terrorist attacks and how they influenced attitudes regarding the Templars, his chapter was hastily scrapped and reimagined as what became Karim in the final product. The person that gave Ellia Mantorok's heart was also planned to be playable.
  • Michael was originally conceived as a soldier in the Gulf War before being made into a firefighter; the dead soldier found early on is holding all of the weaponry he was supposed to start with in the first place. He was also planned to die afterward, but it was scrapped due to being too depressing.
  • Bad endings were planned that would show the consequences of you losing the final boss battle. They survive in some form via the vision Alex has after the ancient she summons defeats Pious's.
  • As originally pitched to Nintendo, the game would allow you to obtain and experience the chapter pages in any order; Nintendo mandated the final product's more linear structure.
  • Eternal Darkness 2. Throughout the 2000s, Dyack would regularly state his intentions to return to the brand, and they would begin work on the title by 2011 as a possible multiplatform release across Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii U. However, but it would ultimately be cancelled in the wake of their legal troubles with Epic Games and subsequent bankruptcy. What little work was done on the game was shared this forum thread discussing the history of the studio, in anticipation of the bankruptcy declaration.

General Trivia

The game is well noted for its sanity effects. These include:

• Visual, Screen, Environment Effects
  • Blue screen of death.
  • Blood will drip from the walls or ceiling.
  • Paintings will change appearance.
  • Heads of statues will follow your movements.
  • The game will appear to delete your saved game.
  • Bugs will crawl across the screen.
  • Nails will scratch across the screen.
  • A fly will buzz around the screen.
  • The television will appear to turn off.
  • The television will appear to mute itself in one of two ways (see below).
  • Room-specific objects will float in the air.
  • Entire sequences of play turn out to be hallucination, reverting to a prior point in play (side note: corridors, doors, windows, and environmental objects will often be located in different places or not at all the second time through these sequences) Usually in conjunction with another effect, including these:
    • Casting a Recover spell and it severing the character's torso, complete with a death sting.
    • Limbs falling off one at a time.
    • Entering a room full of tiny monsters
    • Sinking into the floor.
    • A room full of monsters that all die and disappear with a single hit.
    • A room full of it pickups, usually ammunition.
• Control/Character Effects
  • A message appears alerting you that controller one is not connected. This will conveniently happen while a bunch of zombies are nearby.
  • Your character will grow larger or smaller during movement
  • The environment will be upside down and you will walk on the ceiling
  • The character's head will break apart as you walk (you can pick it up by the way).
  • Casting spells will cause you to explode.
  • Character will turn into a zombie in the next room.
  • Controls will become inverted.
  • Character will shoot himself when reloading (only as Max).
• Audio Effects
  • The audio will mute, complete with either a fake "MUTE" sign in the top right hand corner of the screen or a fake volume meter on the bottom, which naturally doesn't work if you don't have the correct kind of television.
  • Crying and whispers can be heard in the background.
  • Knocking and creaking floor can be heard in the background.
  • You may hear chapter-specific sounds in the background, like a maid being drained by the vampire beast just before doing Edward's chapter.
• Forced Effects
  • "Psycho Worm" (only as Edward).
  • The game will appear to have a cliffhanger ending, saying "To be continued" in a game entitled "Sanity's Redemption", or that it thanks you for playing the demo.
  • "Blood Bath" (only as Alex).
  • "Hanging Man" (only as Alex).
  • "Asylum" (only as Max).
  • There are four sanity effects where an image of Edward or, as revealed in the fourth, Pious using his form peers over Alex's shoulder and whispers to her as she's reading the Tome of Eternal Darkness, and while they can be triggered at any point in the game prior to the following points, they will inevitably be triggered at those points if they weren't already, regardless of your sanity level at the time:
    • 1. "I will keep the darkness away." Karim's chapter, just before he gets the Ram Dao.
    • 2. "You've been my little girl..." Edwin's chapter, as he starts going down the second large flight of stairs.
    • 3. "I just wanted you to grow up, to grow up and leave me alone!" Roberto's chapter, after he gets the key to the Forgotten Corridor.
    • 4. "You don't even know your own destiny..." Michael's chapter, a few rooms before his escape from the Forbidden City.

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