Eternal Darkness Spiritual Successor 'Shadow of the Eternals' Announced

In the annals of video games, one of the few truly memorable games to arrive on Nintendo's lackluster Gamecube system in the first half of the previous decade was Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.  Developed by the then-stellar Silicon Knights, the psychological horrorfest that was Eternal Darkness was widely lauded for both its incredibly creepy vibe as well as its passion for absolutely messing with the player.  Alas, however, the franchise's future simply wasn't to be as the developer entered this past generation in a terrible way, releasing the rather unsuccessful Too Human, losing a major lawsuit against Epic Games regarding that game's engine and delivering the rather abysmal X-Men Destiny.  Since then, any and all info to come out of Silicon Knights has been that of yet another brushstroke on a masterpiece of sadness and, as of this past October, was rumored to only have five staff members.  So ends the tale of a storied second party developer, but from death, apparently, comes new life.

Announced today, Shadow of the Eternals, a spiritual successor to the beloved 2002 horror game, has commenced crowdfunding.  The developer, Precursor Games, has none other than Dennis Dydak, the outspoken former leader of Silicon Knights, as their creative lead.  Built up primarily of experienced veterans from the pretty much now defunct SK, Precursor is seen to be essentially Silicon Knights 2.0, free of the platform exclusivity that a second party developer is committed to.  This new title would essentially be a full-fledged sequel to Eternal Darkness but, since Nintendo owns the rights to the franchise and its name, this new title will have to do.

Shadow of the Eternals will be an episodic game series focused on detective Paul Baker who is called to the scene of a grisly massacre at a Louisiana asylum.  There he encounters two survivors: a well-dressed business man and a biker gang member.  Both have lost their memories and claim to tell two opposing accounts of the Eternals.  It is up to Baker to tell truth from fiction and discover the real story behind the Eternals in a series that plans to explore 2500 years of world history.

Precursor Games' first major project will be, as stated before, a crowdsourced one run through ShadowOfTheEternals.com.  For the pilot episode of the series, Precursor is asking for $1.5 million.  This is to developed most of the CryEngine 3 assets and lay the foundation for the rest of the Eternals episodes.  Though the language of the site is a tad confusing, Precursor seems to indicate that they will be crowdsourcing each individual episode, the ones following the pilot however being significantly less expensive for the potential backer.

As incentive for backing, those who choose to support the project will be given access to The Order of the Unseen, a community that will have direct input into the final product.  In truth, it's simply a forum by which Precursor can share development updates and source feedback from the community.  Despite that, depending on the level of input Precursor asks for the community, it might turn out to be a rather critical part of Eternals' development.

The pilot episode of Precursor Games' Shadow of the Eternals is expected to arrive on the Wii U and PC in the third quarter of 2014.  Depending on the level of funding brought by players, SotE may also arrive on other platforms.