I thought I'd take a look at some
recent game trailers, using a somewhat generous definition of
“recent” to mean anything for a game that hasn't actually been
released yet. (So that Final Fantasy Versus XIII trailer from 2006 is
still technically eligible.) So, without further ado, let's have a
look at one of the story trailers for:
The Darkness II
Sequel to the 2007 first-person
shooter, coming out in February. I'm surprised it took this long for
this game to appear, considering that the first one was fairly
successful and had an ending that stopped just short of having INSERT
SEQUEL TAB A INTO AMBIGUOUS ENDING SLOT B INDICATED BELOW appear
during the credits
This trailer is introduced and narrated
by a rather agitated, unhealthy-looking guy whose delivery and general demeanor
sort of strike me as what Quentin Tarantino would probably be like if
he were hopped up on meth. He fills us in about
the nature of the Darkness, the backstory of protagonist Jackie
Estacado and his girlfriend Jenny's murder at the hands of the New
York Mob, and other helpful info.
Behold!
Recap:
:20 It's explained that the game's
eponymous evil metaphysical force is the primordial darkness that
prevailed at the dawn of time. It didn't take kindly to the whole
“stuff exists now” trend that the creation of the universe
kicked off, and was even less happy about the arrival of life.
:40 Throughout history, the Darkness
has wreaked havoc on the world by using human hosts. Each host
foolishly imagined he could master the Darkness for his own ends,
only to inevitably becomes its slave. Insert joke about marriage
here.
1:32 I immediately began giggling like
a schoolgirl as our narrator tells me said that the power of the
Darkness makes Jackie “a god” “when the lights were out.” I
guess I was naïve to have assumed that Jenny was into him for his
sparkling personality.
1:50 Was the first game this violent? I
realize that sounds like a ridiculous question to as ask about an
M-rated game that prominently featured the protagonist's ability to
rip people's hearts out of their chests and the like, but the move we
see here where one of the Darkness' tentacles/mouths lifts a guy up,
plunges into his stomach, and then erupts from his chest – having
presumably torn its way through his torso en route- seemed more
extreme than I recall.
1:55 The Darkness flings a broken-off
car door at a guy with such force that it actually cuts him in
half. That sort of thing is why most automobile manufacturers
stopped building car bodies out of monomolecular-edged tungsten
carbide plates in the late 70s.
General thoughts:
One complaint, not so much about this
video specifically as for the story trailers I've seen for The
Darkness II in general: Needed some Mike Patton. They're bringing him
back as the voice of the Darkness, so I'm sort of surprised we never
hear him. Maybe there's going to be some big reveal in the game where
it turns out that the Darkness' sinister, demonic
Norwegian-black-metal-singer-vomiting-up-his-own-lungs voice voice
was really just a cunning disguise, or perhaps the result of a bout
of laryngitis, and they didn't want to spoil the surprise when it's
revealed that the Darkness actually sounds like Jeff Foxworthy or speaks with a heavy Boston
accent or has started to refer to Jackie as “broheim,” or
whatever. We'll see.
No comments:
Post a Comment