Here's a name and IP you may not have heard in a long time: "Eternal Darkness" and "Denis Dyack"

From YouTube channel Kiwi Talkz (not to be confused with... that other "Kiwi" site)

Bulletpoints from GoNintendo:

• Eternal Darkness sold around a million copies on the GameCube

• Dyack would like to see Eternal Darkness remastered

• Miyamoto didn’t want to read the pitch for Eternal Darkness, but instead wanted to play a prototype

• Satoru Iwata, before he was president of Nintendo, suggested that Nintendo buy Dyack’s Silicon Knights

• Miyamoto was the one who suggested Silicon Knights work on Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes

Where did he get that sales number from? Because even Eurogamer calls BS from 2014. It sold so bad, it never hit Player's Choice unlike say, F-Zero GX (and even then Toshihiro Nagoshi's sales numbers for that game are questionable). Not even Todd Howard could make up sales numbers like that.

And while I wouldn't mind an Eternal Darkness remaster... would the gaming public even care? In an era where Resident Evil is dominant again and we're sure to see it with Silent Hill 2 Remake?

There was this, but it didn't meet its goals.

Loved Eternal Darkness... I can't believe Nintendo has never revisited it.

Eternal Darkness was a pretty interesting game back then. Would I be interested in a remaster of it though? Maybe but not entirely sure either. Probably not at the full retail price currently though.

Eternal Darkness was a gimmicky and mediocre. Yes, I have played the game to completion.

Ah yes, Eternal Darkness, a game that was released when Nintendo wasn't on autopilot releasing nothing but shovelware.

He also directed Blood Omen: Legacy Of Kain, one of the greatest games ever made. Eternal Darkness is also good but man it hasn't aged well. Story is as good as ever but the gameplay and level design is meh. It needs a full on remake rather than a remaster. Just as long as they don't touch the music, you can't recapture the original OSTs soul

I was a backer on that one. Shame that it didn't go through. Anyway, I have respect for Denis Dyack and his work. He is an interesting guy.

Gamecube is that strange little experiment box where nintendo:

• Made a mario platformer that isn't about Mario but instead about his fludd cannon
• Made a mario kart that had two racers on each card
• Made a Zelda game in a style that defied fans' expectations
• Published a mature game like Eternal Darkness
• Published another mature game, an FPS game called Gheist

No wonder it's my favourite console bar none

@R4gn4r0k: Geist is a game that should be rebooted/remade. Loose controls and a choppy framerate, but the core concept was so good. There is a lot more that could be done with the idea of possessing people, animals, and objects. I had always kinda hoped they would let Retro take a shot at the franchise, but it's just wishful thinking. The game tanked hard, Nintendo will never bring it back.

I played it for the first time a couple years ago. I really liked the overlapping timeline/story, and the magic experimentation was neat-ish, but the actual gameplay was pretty weak. There's potential for something really cool there, but I don't trust this world to not squander that potential.

Right? That little cube was something truly special.. Doubt we'll ever see Nintendo that original again.

On topic, Nintendo doesn't give any form of shit about Eternal Darkness, except for owning the IP. So I see no reason why we should give a shit. Fans have been wanting a sequel to it for how long now? Ain't gonna happen. Nintendo will surely see to it that a remake or remaster ain't gonna happen either. Just forget about it. Remaster it yourself on PC.

Maybe they would, actually. Survival horror games have been going up in popularity quite a bit lately. Many streamers are playing such games, which helps making them more popular. I could imagine a new Eternal Darkness to be played and bought enough to be profitable.

@Litchie: It’s been remastered on PC for ages, no body cares. Streamers don’t make anything more popular. Streamers play what’s already popular so they can get clicks. If it ain’t popular, they aren’t playing it. Just look at Fatal Frame, so streamers tried to hype that turd up, yet it did worst then it did back in the day with zero Streamers.

Good thing the only Remakes in Film are the Star Wars movies.

@nintendoboy16: I don't think he knows what the truth is, anymore. The guy burned so many bridges; including:

1. Milking MS for Too Human, taking their money for a Too Human 2 that never actually had code written for it.
2. taking money from Activision to develop X-Men: Destiny, only to use that money to secretly fund Eternal Darkness 2.
3. Suing Epic over Unreal
4. Milking Canada for over $10 million.

And that is just the stuff I remember. The guy is a serious douchebag.

I played the game from start to finish around 5 years ago and I did not like it much :/

About 99% sure that's wrong. Sea of Thieves, for example, was helped greatly by streamers. Escape From Tarkov as well.

@dabear: lol. The guy couldn't get away with what Randy Pitchford did.

I still want the rest of the Too Human Trilogy... 😕

I've owned Eternal Darkness twice and never finished it. The controls were pretty stiff if I remember right.

Silicon Knights isn't around anymore, and my guess is Nintendo doesn't work with non-existent companies to get rights to publish or re-release old games.

Tetrisphere 64 for instance is a game that Nintendo didn't own, the company H20 Entertainment went defunct and its assets put into a liquidation holding company. I would assume it would be difficult for them to find a solid legally tight way to re-release or remake that game given the company isn't around to sign off any contracts to re-release in some capacity. I imagine if Nintendo had the capacity to unilaterally re-release the game, they would have done it by now, so I have to assume that despite being the publisher, the original third party owns a stake in the IP and they can't publish the title without unanimous consent. I think it's likely the same thing here regarding Eternal Darkness, and Nintendo can't/won't do anything regarding the IP mostly because Silicon Knights isn't around anymore to sign off on any kind of licensing arrangement.

Nintendo doesn't even have enough internal staff to devote to keeping their own prominent IPs going. They rely on bringing in third parties to work on their own signature IPs. They're not going to devote vital internal resources on a niche passion project.

If remakes and re-releases of this type are going to happen, it will be up to a third party to wrangle the licensing agreement or IP acquisition, develop some prototype game designs, go to Nintendo and pitch for an agreement and funding.

At the end of the day, it's likely much easier for a gaming company to avoid the legal hassle. Eternal Darkness a revered HP Lovecraft inspired horror game, and it would be far easier just to make another one of those from scratch. Many developers and publishers have. They still do.

Worth noting too if anybody should be mostly blamed for the lack of Eternal Darkness sequels or remakes or re-releases, it's Silicon Knights. A name once revered for their work on Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.

If one wants to wonders why this company isn't around anymore, let's start with the game that put them on the map. The game was stuck in development unable to get out the door. Crystal Dynamics had to send their own staff out to Silicon Knights to spend months finishing the game for Silicon Knights because they couldn't do it themselves. Same thing that years later happened with Team Bondi and we saw what happened to them shortly after.

After that, their history is rather spotty. They tweaked MGS for GameCube. Then, Too Human happened, and it was all downhill from there. They did X-Men game, and that was it, company was done. It would have failed much sooner but the Canadian government supplemented their life support longer, delayed the inevitable.

- - - - -

Off topic reflection, the Silicon Knights legal dispute with Epic Games, part of it had to do with not getting proper support from Epic regarding Unreal Engine 3. For years I thought it just a sign if their ineptitude. Now to the present. Three years after the unveiling of Unreal Engine 5, nobody has done any notable work with it. I see constant reassurances that stuff is in the works and it looks amazing, trust them, it's coming. Is it really? I still see updates are happening to the engine that makes me wonder if a lot of this gen's potential game output is being held back due to lack of progress on getting EU5. Just a couple months I saw a video detailing updates to foliage now had nanite support which meant the memory budgeted overhead could be substantially reduced no longer needing a rendering budget those close-mid-far range assets and I am asking myself - shouldn't this stuff been ready to go by now? Are devs unable to finish their games waiting for Epic to update their UE5 tools?

Redfall for instance was supposed to be a UE5 title, before reverting back to UE4. I would be curious if that hasn't played a part in why the game is in the shape it's in, having developed it for a more capable engine but unable to finish it, instead reverting an older game engine mid-development and having less time to tailor the game to running in UE4.

I'm also rather baffled we haven't seen major movement from The Coalition toward a new Gears game. With Gears Of War being one of Microsoft's big signature IPs, and Coalition being a very capable studio, this baffles me even more.

There was some murmerings too around Coalition working with Undead Labs to aid them in State Of Decay 3 being updated to use UE5. Still no progress there either.

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 is another UE5 game that's in perpetual delay, and again, I have to wonder if it's the developer or the issue that UE5 isn't ready for developers to finish their titles.

What notable Unreal Engine 5 games have been released 3 years after its unveiling? The Matrix Awakening tech demo slash Matrix film promotional material? Or the UE5 Fortnite update that still looks like Fortnite? Both made by Epic. It's looking like when Crytek wanted to promote their CryEngine but they were the only ones who seemed to do anything substantial with it because their engine wasn't fit for mass third party adoption.

I dunno, now, upon reflection, perhaps I was too harsh on Silicon Knights for being no talent ass clowns when it came to Too Human. Maybe Epic was indeed a problematic entity for developers for years and maybe I'm only now seeing that.

@lamprey263: Can you provide a link to Redfall being reverted to UE4 from UE5?

EDIT

"Halfway through the project, Epic came up with Unreal Engine 5, but the game is based on Unreal Engine 4.26. If we had more time, we would have probably gone with UE5, but it was a lot of work just upgrading to 4.26." IGN

@Pedro: thanks for clarification on Redfall. Funny, I am sure I ran across a ton of coverage saying it was an upcoming UE5 title. Even GameSpot listed it as an upcoming UE5 title last year. Nonetheless, I'm still feel inclined to speculate what the state of UE5 might have on other ongoing projects and whether their ability to complete them is tied to Epic's work updating EU5.

Just feels like 3 years since Epic debuted their initial tech demo, that we just haven't seen results reflected in developers capable of utilizing it yet. This year supposedly more UE5 games will drop, so perhaps time will tell.

This is true. There was initial "confirmation" of it using UE5 but all the articles I have seen never cited the sources of this confirmation.

UE5 is like the Series X then.😎