Severance: Blade of Darkness

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1…e_of_Darkness/

now on steam

RE-RELEASE OF A TRUE GENRE-DEFINING GAME
We are happy to bring Blade of Darkness back to life, an enduring classic that, at the time of its release, inspired many games in the action-adventure genre through its approach to combat. With this edition we've re-engineered the game to work on modern PC hardware, added widescreen support up to 4K resolution, introduced new display settings, and improved its overall stability. At the same time, the gameplay, content, and the story are untouched — featuring all the game’s quirks and charm.

Holy shit, I was just talking about this game, hoping for a proper release. Gog has a version, but that still requires some fiddling and using various graphics API that don't really work perfectly.

If they do this properly, I'll be so happy. Thanks for sharing!

Hm, I am a little bit worried about the publisher. SNEG? Who are they? I hope to god they got the rights properly, and we'll have a situation where a copyright fight will ensue over this.

The games they currently have listed under their name is not really inspiring confidence.
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=SNEG

I cannot find anything for a SNEG company on the internet. There was an entry in some UK company registry, but it says it was disolved. Hope to god this is not some scam.

Hm, ignoring the publisher, the developers listed seem to be a small outfit handling ports and remasters. Weird that they don't even have their own domain, and just work off of the github developer pages.

https://firefalcom.github.io/website/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/fire-falcom/

If this is even them.

This will be a nice benefit of Steam's Proton - old games can be configured to run well as if they were on old Windows versions.

I believe I still have the original CD case/game somewhere in my closet.

Seems this is the latest trend to release old games on Steam.

I find it interesting that they didn't also list it on GOG. You'd think this sort of small release would really benefit from releasing it on as many platforms as possible. Maybe later.

I never played this one, since it released back when I was mired in Everquest. I'll check out what people think once it's finished.

Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
The games they currently have listed under their name is not really inspiring confidence.
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=SNEG

Siege of Avalon, thanks for reminding me of that game. I played the first chapter, long, long time ago and it was quite enjoyable. I can't remember all the details but I remember I really loved how the UI looked. Anyone else remember that game?

Seems it's official. We also got a press release. Nice. It mentions widescreen support. And I suppose that doesn't also mean ultra-widescreen. But I'll take it.

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/press…ease_on_PC.php

Today, video game publisher SNEG Ltd. is thrilled to announce that the timeless action-adventure classic, Blade of Darkness, will make its way to PC via Steam and GOG.com this October. Updated for the modern generation of gaming PCs, the re-release of Blade of Darkness will give players the chance to experience the relentless gameplay with unique and vicious combat mechanics and role-playing elements that helped to pioneer the “soulsborne” genre and influence so many modern, beloved games. With its original 2001 release, Blade of Darkness earned kudos for its unrelenting and varied gameplay and unique combat mechanics.

“Since its initial launch, Blade of Darkness continues to build a dedicated following — mods, ‘Let's Plays’, and community patches are found throughout the gaming community even today. This only signals how undeserving was the game's fate,” said Elena Roor, Managing Director at SNEG. “I'm glad that we've managed to sort out everything legal and, to our luck, unearthed the source code with the help of the original dev team. Altogether this brings us to the upcoming October release.”

Great news all around. So it's also coming to GOG.

Ivanwah, I played Siege of Avalon, I think maybe I stumbled across it one summer right around the release date of the entire collection. I keep meaning to grab this via great old games yet seem to forget it often. And I agree, it had nice clean look to it, also was fun to play from what I recall. I think there was supposed to be a sequel at some point, not sure if I missed it or if it just never happened.

steam://install/1752170 they released a demo

This has to be the first time I've seen a demo released for a 20 year-old game.

Nice find. I only downloaded and played for about 5 mins. I'm waiting for the full release.

But it's looking pretty great. Running at 3440x1440 beautifully. And no issues with decompressing the intro movie. So it seems they've done a nice job. I'm getting it the moment it arrives.

I wonder why they didn't put the demo separately, to be able to review the demo to spread the word.

I remember buying this on or near its release back in early 2001. I played it for a couple hours but wasn't too impressed.

Well, and then Gothic happened because it was released less than a month after Severance came out… and I never took a second look at Severance because it was simply impossible to go back to it after the super-awesome Gothic experience.
So, now I finally returned to it yesterday, 20 years later, to check out that demo…

I was once again not impressed at all. The visuals have aged very badly and the controls are extremely clunky. I wasn't even finished with the tutorial when the game crashed to desktop already. I uninstalled the demo right then and there. This is one of those games where I guess I'll just have to accept that I will never understand why some gamers consider it a classic.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
I remember buying this on or near its release back in early 2001. I played it for a couple hours but wasn't too impressed.

Well, and then Gothic happened because it was released less than a month after Severance came out… and I never took a second look at Severance because it was simply impossible to go back to it after the super-awesome Gothic experience.
So, now I finally returned to it yesterday, 20 years later, to check out that demo…

I was once again not impressed at all. The visuals have aged very badly and the controls are extremely clunky. I wasn't even finished with the tutorial when the game crashed to desktop already. I uninstalled the demo right then and there. This is one of those games where I guess I'll just have to accept that I will never understand why some gamers consider it a classic.

Yeah, I'm not sure why some never gel with it. I played it initially, and it creeped the hell out of me. The music and atmosphere is fantastics.

Gameplay and combat is basically Dark Souls 10 years earlier. It's great. Intense and merciless. And the AI, omg. So good. It's relentless. Actually, scratch that. The combat is 100x better than Dark Soul 1/2. DS3 fixed the clunky combat. But the idea behind the combat of DS (you commit to an attack and cannot cancel mid-animation) is still there.

I am a bit worried if you say it crashed during the tutorial. Might not be a big problem since I tend to save every minute or so.

I replayed it recently all the way close to the end, but the got blocked because I forgot to pack a bow. It's that kind of game. You have puzzles that you need specific weapons for, but it doesn't make sure you have one accessible when you reach that point.

Anyway, it's very different to Gothic. BoD's main focus is action/combat, which is pretty basic in Gothic. But that's fine, since Gothic's main strength is very different.

I also played the tutorial and the first level for the barbarian (until my first death to an orc). Didn't crash, but I did notice some artifacts sometimes. But 95% it seems to run as good as the GoG version. But this one also runs in ultra-wide, so that's a big deal for me. I am excited to play it when it comes out. It's obviously not gonna be a remaster (as they publicly disclosed when this was revealed), but that's good enough for me. As long as it's stable and runs at ultrawide I'm satisfied.

About the graphics, I might have rose-tinted glasses on, but I'd say it looks pretty great for the time it came out, around 2001. The lighting is great, having real time shadows. And also the water is beautiful. It came around the same time as Gothic 1, and looks quite a bit better imo. The models are pretty low-poly and low-textured.

I just tried the demo and wasn't impressed. It's the same game except with higher resolutions. The lighting might be a little better, but otherwise it seems unchanged. They didn't even implement Alt-tabbing or the ability to use your mouse in the options menus.

Moriendor is right, it's clunky as hell. I remember it being kind of clunky back in the day, but it's exponentially worse now when you compare it to modern games. Also, the sound FX are janky or at least they are on my setup. Sometimes it sounds like an enemy is behind me or off to the side when it's in front of me.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I just tried the demo and wasn't impressed. It's the same game except with higher resolutions. The lighting might be a little better, but otherwise it seems unchanged. They didn't even implement Alt-tabbing or the ability to use your mouse in the options menus.

Moriendor is right, it's clunky as hell. I remember it being kind of clunky back in the day, but it's exponentially worse now when you compare it to modern games. Also, the sound FX are janky or at least they are on my setup. Sometimes it sounds like an enemy is behind me or off to the side when it's in front of me.

I will not look a gift-horse in the mouth. For me it is perfect. Runs exactly the same as the old one, with quicks and all, and runs at an ultra-wide resolutions. Which is pretty much what the steam page says. I would not say no to some other improvements, but I will also not be greedy. I'm still shocked it is actually being fixed and released. Every now and then, for the past few years, I kept returning to it, dealing with all the running issues on modern systems, and hoping one day a proper fix will be done. And here it is. I will be picking it up and playing as soon as it releases in october.

Now if we could have the same thing for Bloodborne on PC, I could die happy.