The backlash continues to this day for a game that most of us have seen very little of. Perhaps it’s the extended wait fans have had, growing expectations to an unreasonably high level. But when Denis Dyack finally showed off Too Human at E3 2006, it was met with at first a bit of a shrug. So what? That doesn’t look all that impressive. This attitude has swelled into a growing cry of “lamezors!!!!” With so little known about the storyline we judge the game on the appearance of simplistic looking hack n slash gameplay. It’s fine to prejudge a game, that’s why God invented Previews.

But a preview for any title doesn’t give you any truth into how it will end up when you sit at home and play. Does Too Human suck? Perhaps some of the demos shown up until now have sucked, I haven’t actually played the game to find out. This is a work in progress, and it often is a crapshoot on which games get panned before their release. Silicon Knights is now fighting an uphill battle, and the team has taken a turn that looks promising from my vantage point.

Dyack and the team have boarded up the doors to SK and gone to work on the damn game. A year of reading about how your game sucks probably doesn’t boost confidence. I’d be crying like a little bitch in the corner – to hell with putting my arm in an ice bucket – if it were me. Instead, we’ve seen very little from the game in 2007. Too Human might as well have not even been at E3, and any news has been minor at best during the overload of conventions in the past few months.



Perhaps the problem with this particular game is that the dream is too big. Maybe even a bit too smug and pompous for gamers to be willing to swallow. Too Human is billed as a huge 3 part epic story that could change the world. At least the gaming world. Of course, with rhetoric like that you have to back it up with something monumental. Instead we got the same treatment for your average game, a little announcement and a look at progress so far. The delivery wasn’t consistent with the hype, and I think Dyack knows that. But we’ve moved past that point, so when is it time to start wondering if the team at SK is going to pull this epic journey off, rather than dismiss Too Human as the lackluster game previewed in 2006?

I’d say it’s now OK to begin to at least build your excitement for the game. There’s no difference between Too Human’s mediocre first showing and that of Naughty Dog’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. That game was extremely wonky when demoed at E3 2007, and while the gaming press noted it, most of us understood. Here’s a new title, and the demo isn’t a final look at the game. Sure, the characters looked out of place and the damage was beyond FUBAR. But the idea of the game is still intriguing. The same can be said of Too Human.

Too Human is based on Norse mythology, a history I have little personal knowledge of. Dyack chose to go with what I at first thought was an original main character in this world, but it turns out that Baldur is one of the Norse gods. He is the son of Odin (think Zeus on that one) and is often depicted as the god of innocence or goodness. Not exactly the first choice in badassery that we can find, but in the game he wields a sword and guns like a champ. From what we can tell, the game plays like a deep God of War. Sure, the action is based on twitch gameplay. But you also have melee combat being done with the right analog stick (which has us slightly worried), and hopefully a much improved camera. Call us elitist pricks, but we’re far more interested in the story here. Third person action gaming isn’t all that innovative, but we rarely see a company try and elevate that style of title to something special. Too Human could end up being the BioShock of this genre.

While Silicon Knights is tight lipped about the story, what little we can glean has us crossing our fingers that it can be pulled off. In the world of Too Human the Norse gods of the past were real, except they were enhanced cybernetic entities. The question Too Human poses is classic sci-fi, “What if?” For me, that’s a great place to start.



As these gods and machines seek to become more powerful in their war against each other, many have to be careful that they don’t become the monster they are fighting. We’re not sure exactly why the fighting is going on, but it seems clear that the enemies in the first game are mostly machines, which represent the classic Norse monsters. But we also know that Baldur and other warriors in the Aesir Corp have cybernetic enhancements. The choice eventually becomes how far are you willing to alter yourself before you finally have to give up humanity? Or as Sara Corbis puts it in Bionic Woman, “I’m cutting away the pieces of me that are weak.” If this is the direction Too Human’s story is going, then we say bring it the hell on.

There’s no simple way to quantify the backlash the game has received. As stated prieviously, there’s often little rhyme or reason to gamer reaction to a title. Too Human did not impress me at E3 2006, that I can get behind. But the caveat is that it is a work in progress and that was a build fraught with problems. We live in an industry that thrives on the hype a game can generate, and while Peter Molyneaux can sell you a rancid piece of meat as the greatest innovation ever other developers just don’t have that power. Of course, Molyneaux is the most amicable speaker you’ll probably ever hear.

In the end all of the previews, problems, and defense of Too Human will become moot. The game will have to prove itself when it finally releases. Below is the trailer from Gametrailers which shows more of the same gameplay. Nothing about our past fears are addressed, and it looks like Silicon Knights is moving forward with the project as they should. Here’s our game guys, we hope you like it. I hope so too.