One of my favorite book series of all time is “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams. If you like British humor, I recommend checking it out. And no, don’t bother with the movie. The television series from almost three decades ago is actually much better.
Anyway, at one point in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy‘s story, there’s a race that suddenly acquires space technology and a creates a righteous ruckus throughout the galaxy as it lays an irrefutable swath of destruction in its path wherever it goes.
The characters investigating this occurrence discover that this violent race acquired their technology from a crashed spaceship they found and reverse engineered it. But after finding that actual crashed ship themselves, the character make a startling discovery. It’s not actually a crashed ship. Sure it looks like a crashed ship… smashed to bits… all of the inner workings exposed…. but upon closer examination it’s revealed that this is not a wrecked space vessel. Instead, it’s something designed to look like a crashed spaceship that was actually built from scratch to specifically allow someone to reverse engineer how a spaceship works. When I remember this story, I think of Darkfall.
Check out their website. It’s crammed with lore. Lots of it. Only problem is, there’s no game, and there hasn’t been one for years. The developers almost seem to take an elitist attitude when asked what’s going on. They don’t need that kind of publicity, because they’re product will speak for itself when it’s finally released.
Alright, but what product? Sure there have been videos, artwork, etc., etc. But where’s the actual game? Where’s the pre-alpha version for people to play at game conventions?
The reason Darkfall reminds me of that fake ship from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is because when I look at Darkfall, it’s website, videos, and articles, I don’t see a game, but something designed to look like a game that is actually just a tool to attract investors.
Don’t get me wrong. Darkfall looks amazing, and the sheer amount of lore that has already been written for it is worthy of mentioning here. And I’m not speaking for certain, this is just a feeling I get.
I hope Darkfall turns out to be real, and not “lore without a game”.
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How weird is this? I just searched for the old Darkfall lore page and ended up on your blog. I had no idea you even knew what Darkfall was, Cocles. Anyway, it’s all game and no lore now. And by all game I mean it’s a partway finished sequel of a game in seemingly endless beta mode and no lore now. They made up a bunch of far fetched and odd sequence of events in order to make all of the races be the same size for gameplay issues.
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