When Silicon Knights announced Too Human for the Playstation at E3 1996, it was runnning on 6 demo disks and was an intense, semi-futuristic action game that resembled resident evil. You played a man who investigated high tech murders, weird huh? The game was regreatbly put on permanent hold for other projects which included Metal GEar Solid: Twin Snakes and Eternal Darkness, and Legacy of Kain for Playstation and Playstation 2. In 2001 Too Human resurfaced as a Gamecube game in non playable form. No info was given at the time other than that the game did exist.
Things have changed, and here a decade later, we stand about 6 months from the estimated launch of Silicon Knights first "major" project. Too Human is an endeavour in several ways, the most important and shocking of which is finacially. According to various sources, the budget for the first Too Human game is 80 million dollars, making it the most expensive viedogame ever created, passing Shenmue, the 73 million dollar dreamcast. Silicon Knights is also planning a trilogy for Too Human, and in the event that the game should fail to sell, only 2 will be produced. Silicon Knights have never made the size, caliber or expense of Too Human before, but they plan to do so with grace and skill. With experience and expertise from Hideo Kojima and Nintendo in their past, the "guild" that makes up Silicon Knights are well qualified to embark on the quest that is creating the ultimate action game. After seeing more than anyone's fair share of this game, I think SK has struck gold and pulled off exactly what they set out to do. So here we move into Too Human, the next great action franchise.
1. What is Too Human - Too Human is an action game with RPG and adventure elements created by Silicon Knights, the developers behind Eternal Darkness, the Legacy of Kain and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (GC). Like God of War (PS2), the game takes its inspiration, theme, style and story from mythology, or in this case Norse Mythology. The game is in its tenth year of production and third console, it is slated for release in winter 2006.
2. Who is Too Human - You play through Too Human as Baldur, a cybernetically enchanced god. Baldur is a god, but he is inferior to the other gods because he is "too human", thus the games title. By this, we mean that he is enhanced with technology, but his cybernetic and mechanical upgrades are inferior to the other gods while still being superior to mortal human beings. Baldur has the abilit to change his cybernetic enchancements in the game which will offer new powers, combos, attacks and weapons with trade offs for teh equipment you must sacrifice for the new parts. His appearence changes depending on what enchancements he has. Although he is not the ultimate god, Baldur is very very powerful and trained in combat with blades, guns and a assortment of melee weapons. His duty is simple, to preserve mankind and protect humanity from the onslaught of robots and mechanical creatures that are called to destroy humanity. While his story follows norse mythology, Baldur is not actually a specific character in the real mythos. The Too Human trilogy takes place before, durring and after the battle of RAGNAROK, which in Norse myth is the last war between men and gods, or in this case, gods/man and machines.
3. Where is Too Human - Too human takes place in a fictional setting that is derived from ancient Norse mythology and ancient architecture. The game takes place in the future (no exact date), and because of it has mechanical, cybernetic and advanced ideas integrated. These themes are molded and meshed together with organic material to give a firmilliar, but almost Matrix like setting where trees look like trees and act like trees, but are composed of electrical wires, and where data streams flow with water and where ice contains stored information. The game takes place both in this real world, and in the cyber world of information (martix-esque) and in what is called cyberspace, a peaceful zone between the cyber wars and the real world environments.
4. Why is Too Human Different? What Makes It So Great? - Glad you asked that question. Too Human is great because its the pinnacle of Action games at this point in time. Too Human is the great story and action of God of War, in a futuristic sci fi setting with a completely revanmped and intuitive combat system that allows for more actiona nf cinematic power than any game has ever offered before. The way to best explain this is to start at the basic level, something everyone understands: The camera. Too Humans camera is not user controlled, which opens up more buttons for combat. The camera has over 20 locations it can be in at any time, and it will change to adjust to oncomming enemies, objects of intrest, character location and objectives. The camera system was likened to the superbowl, where there is always a camera to give the best shot of whats going on, and Too Human does that for the action. The game is also a bit out of the ordinary because it uses the right thumbstick to attack. Although it sounds a bit crazy, it works perfectly. The thumbstick works well because it adjusts automatically to the enemies location, character direction is not an obstacle, and it means that unlike button, attacks directed away from the enemy with the control stick, but aimed with Baldurs facing direction can create new attack, meaning there are approximately 4 times the amount of possible maunvers adn combos and basic attacks than in your average game like DMC or God of War. On top of it, the 4 face buttons are used for special attacks and the triggers for guns, and unlike games like DMC, special attacks, regual attacks and ranged attacks can be strung together into combos instead of being used separately. Too Human has every weapon imaginable like maces, staffs, sheilds, guns, swords, sabres, pikes and so on. Also, your characters response to the weapons changes based on your orientation and configuration with your cybernetic enchancements, which means there are virtually unlimmited methods of attack. Too Human stages over 60 enemies onscreen at once, dozens of boss fights, awesome god powers and every attack and manuver by Baldur is executed based on professional motion capture, much like DMC, but used for everything, not just select actions.
5. So what was up with E3? Why such a bad showing? - Too Human is close to being completed, over 60% right now, but at E3 the game had undergone serious changes which included multiplying the onscreen enemies, adding in the codecs for new motion capture animations, voice acting and dialogue, new special effects and new weapons. Simply put, SK did not have enough time to iron the wrinkles out of the demo, and while the gameplay was excellent, the framerate was completely unstable. However, these problems have since been fixed and Too Human is back on track. The final release of the game is predicted to have over 100 onscreen enemies running at 30FPS with full motion capture in 1080pi with no loading times whatsoever.
6. So why is Too Human the next great action franchise? - Too Human has the most innovative, intuitive and natural combat control system of any action game in years. Because of that, and the camera and the ability to change Baldur with cybernetic parts, the potential for combos and combat are nearly unlimmited. Games like DMC and God of War offer alot of combat variety and cinematic quality, but Too Human offers about 10 times as much as either game, and has every other benefit. It looks great, plays like nothing else has ever dared to, includes Online Co-op and leaderboards, achievements and a campaign of 15+ hours in length, but best of all, its just the first game in a planned Xbox 360 exclusive trilogy.
If you have any questions regarding any of this, feel free to ask (and how do I shrink the pics?)
Look out world, Too Human is comming this winter, and its going to shake things up.
