Stuck in Development Purgatory
There is no tale in video game history full of more woe and brutal disappointment than that of Silicon Knights, and perhaps their biggest flop, Too Human. As though the Norse Gods themselves were looking down upon it and sneering, Too Human was unfortunately condemned from its conception.
When it was first announced in 1999, the action-RPG was going to be released on the original PlayStation, spread over four discs in Final Fantasy style. Hell, the game even got a trailer at E3 the very same year. But alas, Silicon Knights were, only a few months later, signed to an exclusive deal with Nintendo, meaning that Too Human, in its early stages, when it wasn’t in any way based on Norse mythology, and was simply set in the distant future, was transferred to the Nintendo GameCube.
It took almost ten years for Too Human to make it to a console.
But of course, things didn’t go swimmingly for the game’s development from there, either. As Silicon Knights were living it up, developing Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, among other titles, Too Human was shunned by those who had once loved it.
Once again, however, a new light appeared on the horizon, and in 2005, Silicon Knights struck up a partnership with Microsoft, which included the intention to fund further development of Too Human and even expand it into a trilogy. And the rest, they say, is history. Obviously, from there, Too Human made it to the Xbox 360, and in 2008, as a mere lad, I picked it up at my local game store.
By the Hammer of Thor!
Honestly, and I’m not ashamed to be honest here, I was blown away. I hadn’t followed Too Human‘s development process, and had actually never heard of it until I saw it on shelves, but there was something about it that appealed to the younger me. Perhaps it was something as simple as the combination of action and role-playing (both of which I adore), or maybe it was something less superficial like the story, the depth, or the interpretation of Norse mythology (which, I should point out, I knew nothing of until playing the game).
Not all the Gods are good guys...
As Baldur, one of the Aesir, and son of ODIN (I can’t even begin to explain all the mythological references…) you come to Earth in order to protect humanity from extinction at the hands of the evil machine race that has prospered over the course of a nuclear winter. With your brothers and sisters, you fight the machines and protect the few million remaining humans on the planet, also taking on Loki and Hel, two rebellious and blasphemous Norse Gods.
But whatever made me pick it up, it wasn’t what made me stay. Oh no, it’s safe to say that the gameplay took care of that.
The combat has got to be the first thing I cover here – I owe it to myself. The sometimes mindless dungeon-crawling, the rarely tactical charge into a rabble of enemies, and the simplicity of it all. For those who haven’t had the pleasure of playing, the combat is controlled using only the analog sticks – the left to move Baldur, the right to lock onto targets and rip them apart.
This was complemented by the RPG element, which, as you would expect, allowed players to upgrade their skills, choose various perks and alignments with Gods, and generally make the game an even more enjoyable experience.
Of course, it wasn’t without its flaws: that unskippable cutscene whenever you died, in which some kind of robotic angel would come and rescue you, only to plunge you right back where you left off like it never happened; the odd boring or out-of-place difficult quest; but these factors in no way outweighed the pros of Too Human.
Fight on, Baldur…
I don’t think Too Human deserved the onslaught of bad luck that it encountered in its long lifespan. Apart from the constant change of platform, Silicon Knights kind of denying it ever happened, and Microsoft’s hollow promise to make it a series of games, Too Human also had problems during development.
If only Silicon Knights would put up as much of a fight as Baldur.
When it was finally put into production by Microsoft and Silicon Knights, it was announced that the game would run on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine – Silicon Knights had struck yet another deal, and this time with Epic, stating that all their games would be running on the engine. But when the game was shown off to the industry, it was laughed at. Due to the Xbox 360 still being a relatively new platform at this time, the engine was unfinished, unpolished, and not suitable for Too Human. The team behind the game had to do something, and they did. Although they could not use another engine due to their contract, they were able to rewrite and tweak the Unreal Engine they were provided with, allowing Too Human to run to its full potential. Silicon Knights went on to sue Epic Games, but that’s not important… read: it didn’t pay off.
It’s clear to see from Too Human‘s history why a second game hasn’t been confirmed, much less thought about by developers or gamers alike. Its road to creation was painful, humiliating, and probably doomed from the start. But what came out of a pit of hell actually did pretty well, in my opinion. Silicon Knights, you’ve come this far, lost this much, worked this hard… Why not try and cash in on Too Human by at least attempting a sequel?
I don’t want to spoil the end for you, if this article has in any way convinced you to go out and buy a copy, but it’s totally set up for a sequel. And probably a third game (because, let’s face it, they said it was to be a trilogy). I don’t want to give myself false hope, but I believe that, someday in the future, we may once again be visited by Baldur and the other Norse Gods, in all their cybernetic glory. But until then… we wait.
Unlike my friend and colleague Sebastian Force, I can’t help but think that the world is a little bit emptier for having lost the short-lived Too Human franchise.
