The Chronicles of Riddick: Movie Adaptations That Don't Suck

This video is sponsored in part by Skillshare. Around the turn of the Millennium there came out an inconspicuous little Sci-fi Horror thriller named Pitch Black, in which a spaceship transporting passengers in cryostasis crashlands on a deserted planet infested by a vicious species of nightstalking, carnivorous Aliens. The survivors, including the famous criminal Richard B. Riddick, have to, in good old Alien-fashion, stand their ground against a primeval threat and find a way off this barren rock if they want to live to tell the tale. The film's plot and execution itself was considered mostly derivative at the time – although I honestly unironically enjoyed it, myself, from the first viewing – but within its innocuous setting slumbered a soon-to-be-tapped, greater narrative universe. Pitch Black quickly garnered a cult-following, mostly flocking around the deep-dark-grey antihero character of Riddick, as well as the insinuations of a much grander, intricate and fascinating space-opera universe that felt different – faceted, gritty, textured and,... socio-politically interesting. But hey, a decent box-office return, as well as a sleeper-success in DVD sales eventually convinced Universal Pictures that it’s worth expanding this cinematic universe into a much bigger grand and epic sequel "The Chronicles of Riddick," which is kind of a lovable mess, in a way... and ... hoo boy ... a video game adaptation. (gunshot) Movie-IP videogamizations are a dodgy topic, ain’t they? 49 times out of 50 The resulting titles end up as mediocre-at-best cash-grabs and horrible-as-the-norm abominations that will still sell because of the name printed on the box, which... keeps signalling to - [Guillermo del Toro] The Bastards with the money... - [Ragnar] that this is good business practice and the hamster wheel of disappointing license adaptations should be kept spinning eternally. (cringy Star Wars dance version of YMCA) Riddick is #50 in this case study. One of those exceedingly rare cases where the key creative people behind its production, lead writer and director David Twohy and lead actor and writer Vin Diesel both cared a lot for the narrative universe. - [Vin Diesel] I can, you know, use all this pool of knowledge about the world and incorporate it into the video game and keep the video game consistent with the movie - [Cos Lazouras] Vin? Y'know, reeeaaally know games. Which I was really surprised about. Plays obsessively. - [Ragnar] They also understood, appreciated and respected video games as an artistic medium enough that 2004's The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay - and its 2009 sequel Assault on Dark Athena became exhibit A for how movie-license tie-ins are done the right way. Vin Diesel worked with and actively supported the Swedish developer studio Starbreeze in their ambitions to not just retell the film in video game form, but fully realize canon parts of Richard B. Riddick's backstory exclusively in video game form, because they all agreed that these story-beats were... best told interactively. - [Vin Diesel] In this huge epic, if you don't have the room, really, to explain some backstory... - [Shirah] You cannot escape your destiny. - [Riddick] I can escape anything. - [Shirah] Like Butcher Bay? - [Vin Diesel] You can then take ideas that you don't have time for in the movie and now incoroporate them into the video game in a cool way. - [Ragnar] In an era of gaming where every major release had to have a hastily-produced video game tie-in to generate extra revenue, and the average movie cast voiced their lines reluctantly and only for contractual obligation because gaming was still regarded as an inferior storytelling medium not to be taken fully seriously – Diesel went the extra mile for Butcher Bay and actively contributed to the writing and game design, himself. And at the same time, he respected their expertise and ensured that Starbreeze got the creative space they needed to develop a killer video game chapter of the Riddick-universe. So, I am seriously excited to rediscover this somewhat neglected, highly-ambitious first person shooter, stealth, immersive sim genre-hybrid together with you: - [Revas] Kill him! - [Ragnar] a piece of video game history that still stands proud as one of the prime examples for how great movie-license video games can be, if the producers see more in them than just return-on-investment. (punch) - [Riddick] In the end, everybody bleeds the same. (♫ Monsters of the Week Intro Music ♫) Alright, before we go on, I'd like to express my thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring the making of this video. So in return, let me show you what they've got to offer to you! 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Oh and... Katamari, how could I forget? God... and if all of that wasn't enough, 2004 was also the seminal year in which Doom 3 went head-to-head with Half-Life 2 and the first Far Cry; - [Dr. Betruger] Excellent! - [Ragnar] three incredibly important first person shooter releases and showcases of cutting edge game engines of the time, that shifted the technological gears towards a new era of video game history. It was a tough year to release a game and make it stand out, especially if you tried to compete in the heavily fought over first person shooter segment. And yet, Starbreeze, a fairly unknown studio from Sweden, came pretty much out of nowhere with their adaptation of Riddick and... was absolutely and totally able to go toe to toe with the juggernauts from Valve and id. - [Jimbo] My advice? Do like all the other fish. Among all these recent galaxy brain think pieces alla "Half-Life 2 Has Actually Always Been Bad" and "Doom 3 Was the True Masterpiece of 2004 All Along" and "Oh Waitaminute - what if Doom 3's shotgun is ACTUALLY Genius??" I’ll slink into the shadows and let The Chronicles of Riddick live rent-free in my head as my personal ego shooter pinnacle of 2004. (And before you get all anal, I do not count Bloodlines as an FPS in this) Like, I distinctly remember the discourse at the time about the fundamentally, revolutionarily, game-changingly new 3d technology that Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 brought to the table, which was Normal Mapping. It was the Hot Topic in the gaming press in the months preceding these games’ releases. Normal mapping, which is still common practice in realtime 3D rendering to this day, is essentially done by creating 2 versions of a 3D object; one with very few polygons that primarily create the silhouette of the object and another modeled with virtually unlimited detail and whose height information then gets "baked" into a texture that’s projected onto the low-poly model. This is used to calculate light and shadows and create the illusion of height without using actual 3D geometry and saving a lot of cycles in the process. The result is that objects consisting of very little geometry appear like they contain the detail of millions of triangles without actually having to render them. It was groundbreaking in video games and perceived with collective jaws on the floor at the time. I... hang on... I specifically remember there was this comic that kind of put Doom as a little mons... wait let me (frantic keyboard typing sounds) Ah yeah here it is, yeah the pretentious blowhard blob of Doom 3 boasting about its enormous technical achievements while the stoic giant Half-Life 2 is like, "yeah I'm so good I don't really need to shoot the bull cuz I get everyone's attention just because of how big and strong I am” And like.... See, I’m usually not a big sucker for “graphics” and tend to focus far more on aesthetics in games, because technical specifications deprecate pretty damn fast, but it *is* noteworthy that during the big arm-wrestling match of Doom 3 and HL2, Starbreeze just Toastieee’d in in with its own impressive-looking in-house engine that featured Normal Mapping, dynamic lighting with per-pixel stencil and self-shadowing among many other things, and all of it without making any big fuss, just quietly creeping there in the shadows. Very true to the game’s protagonist. I distinctly remember, at the time, being quite perplexed how the hell this game, which came seemingly out of nowhere, could just nonchalantly look so much better than the technological wunderkind the press couldn't shut about for years before its release? It looked technically almost more impressive and at the same time had this unique look and feel to it, like a prettier, more sprawling and lavish version of Doom 3 in a vast, original setting that’s aesthetically kinda new and exciting to discover in a video game. (punching and groaning) I love this game. I had played Butcher Bay start to finish twice in the past, the last time being over 10 years ago and when I just mentioned it in passing in my video on Cryostasis, not too long ago, it created this irresistible compulsion to dig out, boot up and revisit this classic again. So this is going to be the journal of my personal rediscovery of both of these excellent genre hybrids, Escape from Butcher Bay, as well as Assault on Dark Athena. They both work perfectly as individual titles on their own but at the same time, both narratively AND mechanically make up two inseparable pieces of a greater puzzle that are ideally enjoyed in direct succession. If you want to follow Riddick's story in canon chronological order, Butcher Bay is where the journey starts, followed by Dark Athena and THEN you're ready to embark on the movies and the other supplementary material. And you know what, this is exactly what we’re gonna do today. Let's transfer to the Maximum Security Prison that no one has managed to escape to this day. And change that fact. (♫ Riddick Theme Music ♫) The game starts as typical for a Riddick story as it can get- on a prison transport. The bounty hunter Johns- yep, the same bastard cop as in Pitch Black, has Riddick in chains and is delivering him to the notoriously inescapable maximum security prison, Butcher Bay. - [Johns] ... and I'll bank your bounty plus fifty. - [Riddick] PLUS FIFTY?! Now come on Johns... Greed is an ugly thing... - [Ragnar] The ship arrives at the landing platform, engulfed in heavy sandstorm clouds and because of that there doesn’t seem to be the expected welcoming committee of highly armed prison security present and after a brief interactive, multiple choice conversation with Johns - [Riddick] Today, Johns, you get *fucked* - [Johns] You don't move until I say so. - [Ragnar] one of the other prisoners distracts him, draws his attention away and since we seem to be somewhat shielded by the bad weather conditions, we take the initiative and- (cracking and choking sounds) Now that's kinda unexpected- I thought he was supposed to be... alive in Pitch Black? Anyway, we also learn that the guns here, that he just dropped, are apparently DNA coded and any inmate who touches them gets electrocuted on the spot. - [Inmate] We should get moving! I guess it’s bare knuckles for now. We quickly slip away into the ventilation system, before anyone notices us, on the way, overwhelm a technician in hand-to-hand-combat, sneak through the shadows and learn how the game’s fullscreen-version of Thief’s hidden-in-shadows-indicator works. It desaturates and tints the whole screen with a cold-blu-ish shader whenever you’re fully hidden away. So we can use this to sneak up on unsuspecting guards and crush their larynx swiftly and mercilessly... and then hide the lifeless body in a dark corner like a good taffer. The game employs an interesting hybrid of first and third person. Most of the time we see straight through the eyes, or later the welding goggles, of Riddick but, at times, the camera cuts to the outside and shows him doing smoothly animated Riddick things. It was one of the first titles where I noticed this approach working surprisingly smoothly. Best of both worlds. All of this is tutorialized with on-screen prompts and this first segment turns out to be a pretty solid vertical cut through many of the mechanics we're going to regularly encounter throughout the game. It really shoots one new mechanic after the other at you, almost like on a conveyor belt- Climb up ledges, dangle along ceiling railings. Refill and use health stations, (mechanical noises) outsmart more enemies with stealth, steal a shotgun and eventually engage in open firefights -and all of this really within the first 10-15 minutes at max. And then, after fighting through some heavily armed esistance and shooting our way through the tunnels we eventually sprint towards freedom and... - [Johns] Rise and shine... Riddick! It turns out that Riddick was actually still snoozing on the prison transport the whole time and this entire segment was just a little dream he's been having. - [Stormcloak prisoner] Hey, you... you're finally awake! You were trying to cross the border, right? - [Johns] Rise and shine, jackass. - [Ragnar] I always found this little twist at the beginning a pretty cool tongue-in-cheek introduction, because it literally does the very thing that Skyrim's opening -which I just memed here- is always criticized for not doing: It makes use of every moment to full efficiency to give you as much of an appetizer of the pretty extensive difference in kind we're going to engage in across the length of the game. Usually though not in that steep of a frequency. Now, the second time around, when landing, it's pretty clear that this time, security ain’t gonna be as lax and it's gonna take Riddick a bit longer than ten-fifteen minutes to get off this desolate rock. - [Riddick] It's already over, Johns. - [Hoxie] Secure your weapon, Johns. (Johns chuckles sardonically) - [Riddick] When we're being escorted into the facility by chief prison guard Xzibit, here, the game really takes its time in good Half-Life railway opening style to establish the air of a cinematic introduction credits rolling along, the orchestral music swelling up and the vista giving you just the tiniest glimpse of the true scope that’s awaiting you in this place. - [Abbott] So check those desires right now! Because you will not get out! No one has. No one ever will. - [Ragnar] And you know, the way real actors are integrated into this game, which starts shining through here, was definitely something really impressive at the time -I mean people are still stunned when a game like Death Stranding or some David Cage stuff enlists a Hollywood actor or two these days, but back then this was one of the paragon examples of employing a star ensemble in a video game and making it feel truly epic. Like you were actually playing a Hollywood movie and not just some cash grab license adaptation where the movie’s actors listlessly read a few contractually obligated extra lines so the IP owner could make an extra buck with a half-baked shovelware game. - [Abbott] Well let's see... Am I still mad about before? (shouts angrily, smashing) - [XZibit] I play Abbott, I'm in charge of the slam - [Abbott] Prisoner walking! - [Ragnar] It was mind blowing to be regularly watching stuff like Pimp my Ride on MTV and listen to Weapons of Mass Destruction on your Discman when cycling to school and then suddenly having X to the Z himself be in the game, felt kinda surreal. - [Xzibit] Nice! - [Ragnar] Like, Half-Life 2 might have had more advanced facial animations but Riddick had CAST. Besides Vin and Xzibit, there’s Ron Perlman.. - [Koulikov] Bam! Bam, bam!! - [Ragnar] Cole Hauser and yo- Dwight Schultz -that’s Murdock from The A-Team. (Murdock gasps in pain) - [B.A.] (laughs) Sucker! - [Ragnar] Now, one thing that definitely helps despite not having the level of facial expressiveness a Source Engine can provide is that the narrative universe is just made for stoic characters that barely have to move their facial muscles to convey the tone, - [Abbott] Name's Riddick; thinks his shit don't stink. - [Inmate] THE Riddick?! - [Ragnar] But aside from that, it’s also just damn fine modeling, texturing and animation work at play here that makes those characters come to life in Butcher Bay and even more so later in Dark Athena. - [Abbott] This... is your home! - [Ragnar] After being deloused, we're dropped off in our very own... prison cell. Our new home. Now this, you could say is when the actual game starts, and it gets rolling at a much slower pace than before. Riddick, finding the accommodations exceedingly quaint, doesn’t want to stay here one minute longer than he has to. So we start walking around and... explore, get a bit of a feel for our new home. It's almost peaceful. Nobody charges at us with knives and guns (yet) so we just... talk with the other inmates and get acquainted. - [Jack] You should see Haley! - [Ragnar] This is genuinely one of my favorite parts of this game; you regularly get into hubs that are more or less nonviolent -more like in an RPG alla, say, Gothic than an all out Stealth-Shooter where everything that moves is automatically an adversary; you engage in multiple choice conversations with people, find things to do for them and trade with them and, damn, we even keep an actual quest-log. According to the developers, this game was initially planned to place an even higher emphasis on these RPG lite segments, but it's also one of the parts where Vin Diesel himself vetoed, at some point, and objected to how Riddick was just *talking too much* in earlier drafts to do the character justice. So the team, together with Vin went and rewrote everything to make his interactions with people feel far more in line with his interpretation of the Famous Criminal, Richard B. Riddick. And although I’d have personally loved to see more “social” questing in the game, I think it was ultimately a great decision because it gives Butcher Bay this incomparable, iconic feel. Diesel, start to finish, delivers Riddick with the signature stone-cold, deadpan stoicism you’d expect from the movies, truly a man of few words, and it makes his one-liners one of the genuinely most enjoyable and memorable elements of these games. - [Red] Tell me, Riddick: How did it feel when you killed your first one? - [Riddick] That's between me and him. - [Ragnar] I also really enjoy how Butcher Bay feels like a real place? Like, there's a lot of thought put into the layout and structure, into the facilities necessary to run a prison, the way they're connected through infrastructure and the means by which the guards exert iron-fisted control over the prison population. When we step into the courtyard, for the first time, we get yet another glimpse just of how vast this facility really is. This central hub here connects to multiple wings that are under the control of different gangs. Most of these areas are still off-limits for now. So after talking with a few people here and there, immediately getting multiple requests to assassinate other inmates as a courtesy, we come to the conclusion that we might really benefit from having a concealed weapon in here –and luckily Matteson here is aware of our reputation and offers to provide us with a shiv; purely for self-defense of course- So, we make our way to meet him in his cell for our little deal and- - [Inmate] Riddick! Rust bids you welcome to Butcher Bay! (smack, shout) Yeah, that was kinda to be expected wasn't it? Of course nothing is free in Guantan- uh Butcher Bay, and since an intimidating sigma male like us is a clear and present threat to the established pecking order, the head honcho of the ruling Aquilas clan tries to snuff us out before we can even become a problem. But the thing they don’t seem to get is, you don't fuck with Riddick. These goons are barely a warm-up exercise and after knocking their lights out, we confront the guy who tricked us into the ambush and well, it looks like he was coerced into it himself. - [Riddick] Matteson set up the ambush. But he'll turn when I tighten the screws... - [Matteson] It was Rust, he forced me to! But... but I knew those goons were no match for you. I'll get you a shiv. To set things right. You have my word. - [Riddick] Cross me again, and I'll have your life. - [Ragnar] ...looks like he was coerced into it himself. Kinda feel bad for the guy. He now wants to make it up to us by actually delivering the shiv this time. When we meet him in his cell, finally, well, we do get our shiv this time, but damn, the game really doesn’t want us to keep it for long because Rust, the Aquila’s chief himself steps in and tries to T-pose to assert dominance. - [Riddick] I said: You're in my cell. - [Rust] What?! Wrong! Now you ain't paid me for that shank, so it ain't yours. - [Riddick] Come take it. - [Ragnar] Without great success. (Rust groaning) - [Riddick] See this? It belongs to me. But it turns out that Abbott, the guard captain, played by Xhibit, has his grimy fingers in the pie and profits from the internal inmate power structures. So, he steps in to protect his prime rooster before we can seriously hurt him. It looks like Rust is becoming a serious thorn in our side, so we decide to take matters into our own hands and wreak some havoc in the Aquila wing. I really love this first prison wing segment of the game because the actions that takes place always have narrative context. When the gameplay switches from RPG socializing and talking over to brawling it always feels like a smooth transition that makes sense, story wise, and it’s not just filler fights thrown at the player because the developers are afraid people get bored too easily, without having some fights here and there. The game does that with a lot of different segments that play fundamentally different from one moment to the next over the course of its playtime, and there is often no clean-cut segregation between social, melee combat, stealth elements, firefights and more. A lot of the time it flows into each other seamlessly within the dynamic mechanical ecosystem of the game. And for some reason, I still think the brawling might actually be one of my secret favorite gameplay elements. It's not super complex, you can swing and jab in four different directions, block, and parry and riposte your enemy's attack if you strike in the right moment. It takes a bit getting used to and feels pretty frenetic and hectic, with a lot of head-bob, but something about it feels satisfyingly nasty like actual real-life fisticuffs: It's fast, kinetic and kind of janky, but everything can be over in the blink of an eye when you get the drop on your opponent and you snag the shiv from his hands and slit his throat in one fell swoop. It's gnarly in a way that fits the gritty and ruthless setting perfectly. So, after punching our way through the Aquila Wing, we eventually confront Rust himself and- He's sort of the first boss fight of the game. It’s the test if we’ve really grasped the ins and outs of hand-to-hand fighting by now, because he is far more aggressive and dangerous than the regular goons we encountered so far. (slicing and stabbing) But once we do, we take him out for good. That is when Abbott again steps in and offers Riddick a promotion to become the new leader of the gang, - [Abbott] Looks like I need a new rooster. Yer Interested? - [Ragnar] But Riddick ain't no tool for anyone's agenda. - [Abbott] I take that as a no. Sayin' no to me is not the kinda mistake you wanna make. - [Ragnar] This is very often how the game plays out, it’s far more story-and-narrative heavy than you’d expect for the first person shooter that Riddick really is at its core. You talk with people, get the right ideas and find a way to execute them, -the ideas, I mean -or sometimes also the people, if that’s necessary. We, for instance, trade some favors to buy our way into the infirmary, where we then wait for and exploit the briefest moment of inattention to overpower the guards and quickly slip away through the vent shafts. This is also where we get our first level up if you want. The game is not really all that heavy on the RPG mechanics, but over time we encounter Butcher Bay’s version of your typical post Half-Life shooter’s wall-mounted med-stations. I absolutely love the game's NanoMed health stations. They’re really easy to read, game mechanically, each station has a maximum contingency of four squares that refill a corresponding amount of health and it’s just so... (metallic stab, Riddick groaning) violently unpleasant and invasive. Throughout these two games it’s sort of like a morbid little running gag how violently nano-med medical devices invade your body to heal your organs... however they achieve that. - [Riddick] A med-station. Takes away the hurt. Leaves the pain. - [Ragnar] So you have the regular med stations that heal you, and at certain key-moments in the game these huge level-up stations that give you an extra health bar, and they amp up the invasive medical practices even another notch more. (machine sounds) (long beep) - [Nanomed voice] Resilience strengthened. Only Nanomed makes you stronger than you were. - [Ragnar] Now, the reason we broke into the infirmary to slip away like an eel in the first place is to find a covert way into the prison’s data center where the DNA imprints for the guards' firearms are being registered and stored -you remember from earlier, we as an inmate get normally electrocuted when we try to use the guards armaments against them. This all happens, as I said, smoothly flowing from open into restricted areas, from stealth to combat, which is impressive, buuut sometimes can be a bit confusing when at times it feels somewhat unclear what the game really wants from you. I’ll get into that in more detail a little bit later. Because in this first segment, it’s still rather clear-cut and easily readable. We sneak our way through the shadows and vents until we eventually get access to the data center, get the jump on the technician there and imprint our DNA into the guard database and finally take up arms -which then immediately triggers a prison-wide alarm and a squad of armed guards breaches the room; so lock and load, we got some new tools. Similar to how it went in the tutorial, the gameplay switches straight over to open firefights with very little opportunity for neck-stabbing from now on and demonstrates how fun of a purebred, fun FPS game Butcher Bay can be. It is not as hyper-fast paced as a Doom or a Quake, but more on the semi-realistic combat side, with cover and leaning around it, as well as highly responsive one-hit-headshot-kills as central mechanical components, and only having two custom assigned weapon slots from your pretty sizeable arsenal available in quick selections. All of this makes the gunplay feel far closer to something like counter-strike than a Quake, Doom or even Half-Life. So, we combat our way through multiple corridors of armed resistance and eventually encounter a near invincible guard in a mecha exoskeleton in a miniboss-showdown. This guy, we have to outsmart to get the drop on him and then eventually get back into GenPop before our disappearance is noticed. Because we're trying to make use of the confusion that our little breach of security created as it degenerated into a semi-large prison riot that’s currently going on. It’s one recurring theme that I really adore about this game that’s strongly in line with the Riddick we know from the movies. Multiple times we find ourselves as a lone wolf without allegiance in a conflict between two opposing parties; in this case guards against inmates, while we exploit the situation to our advantage. Because Riddick has a plan. He wants to get into the pit -the giant hole in the courtyard, the one that was covered by a steel grate before, but that has now been opened by the guards temporarily during the prison raid to dispose of dead inmates that got killed during the raid. So... we have to hurry to make our way back there before the raid is over. And normally this seems like a bad plan. Because this would be a fall way too deep for anyone to survive, but you know what they say... - [Inmate] It ain't the fall that gets 'ya... (loud smack) (spine cracking) - [Riddick] It's the sudden stop at the bottom. - [Ragnar] Riddick is not a perfect game, and it’s astounding how much of a just barely not perfect game it is in almost every regard. This might sound like a bad thing, but it really isn’t. Because when I say “not perfect”, I don’t mean the things it does are executed poorly, but rather that nearly every element is just that little bit rough around the edge, the odd hint of jank here and there. (fighting sounds) Never enough to break the game but enough to be noticeable. But this is yet another case where this imperfection in many different areas draws the spotlight towards the sheer abundance of notably good things. These imperfections also make it apparent just how central experimentation and versatility was to the devs, which is always a common denominator for the games that stick to my mind like glue. Consider the decision to make the player character, despite being controlled from a first person perspective, an actual physical body colliding with the world geometry and adhering to a set of animations that you rarely even see. It becomes apparent when you look down for instance: you can see Riddick’s feet and you’ll notice that when turning while standing still, the model first rotates the upper body on its own and only when passing a certain threshold starts an adaptation animation to reposition the feet. You mostly never notice this during movement, but from time to time, especially when you’re trying to smoothly move around corners, it can get in the way because sooometimes it doesn’t perform as smoothly as in a regular FPS, for example, where the player is basically just a floating camera. This at times, especially in hand-to-hand combat and during more social sequences adds a subtle level of weight and substance to the character you’re playing, making it feel more like being in control of a highly detailed 3rd person character, but from a first person POV. This can feel really impressive like when Riddick automatically tilts the gun around obstacles right in front of him to add a level of believability to the shooting, but it also creates these funny jank moments and comes at the cost of sacrificing a sliver of the controllability that you get in other FPS games of that era. It is fine though, since it makes the game feel unique enough that it’s more than worth the trade-off. These little imperfections across pretty much every facet of the game turn it into an impressive array of surprisingly well-executed individual elements that form a whole that’s far greater than the sum of its parts. Take the upcoming area of the game for example, the pit. The moment we get up from the fall, we can hear the people on the surface already write us off... - [John DiMaggio voiced guard] Holy cow! I think he survived the fall! - [Guard] Don't worry, the dwellers will take care of what gravity missed. - [Ragnar] We were just made aware that the pit is apparently everything but safe (and yeah, you heard right, one of the voice actors there was actually John DiMaggio, aka Jake the Dog and Smiling Jack from Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines) - [Smiling Jack] Aaahahaha! What a scene, man, whoowee, aaahaha! - [Ragnar] And to add insult to injury the mounted flashlight on the shotgun we snagged from the cushion-guard got damaged during the fall so that it now graciously warns us how it’s only gonna remain operable for the next... - [Flashlight voice] Six Minutes! - [Ragnar] So we soldier on double-time into the sewers and- (shotgun blast, bestial groaning) -get promptly rushed by mutated, zombie-like humanoid creatures that mindlessly charge at us with a carnal ferocity, for reasons unknown. (shotgun blasts, groaning, gurgling) This is what I mean when I say that the game constantly switches gears, shifting pacing, rhythm and core gameplay often from one instant to the next. We suddenly find ourselves in a horde-like hunter-prey shooter segment that feels similar to playing as a Marine in Monolith’s amazing Aliens versus Predator 2, which came out a good three years before Butcher Bay. It makes complete sense for the Riddick narrative universe considering how many obvious inspirations Pitch Black took from the Alien universe. And yeah, AvP2 was amazing and especially being a Marine was a pulse-pounding, adrenaline-ride, because your gun and motion sensor were the only things you had to keep those swarms of Xenomorphs at bay. It’s similar here: the deeper we get the darker it gets and once our flashlight’s battery inexorably dies, we have to exclusively rely on pyrotechnic flares to illuminate our surroundings step by step while the pit-dwellers keep attacking us from the gloom. If only we had things like night vision available, like in the Predator Campaign. Now, that would certainly give us an edge in the darkness wouldn’t it? Well, luckily, down here in the sewers, we meet possibly the most significant character that makes Butcher Bay a central piece for the Riddick canon. We meet Pope Joe, a convict who lives in the facility’s underbelly as a hermit and who surgically patches a grave wound on Riddicks’s arm. And this is the moment in which Riddick acquires his signature Eyeshine. (stabbing, bestial snarling) Like, I always believed- –and this is also what Riddick believes himself for a long time in the movies– -that it was Pope Joe who surgically implanted his Eyeshine for a couple of menthol cigarettes. But in actuality, it was more like an awakening of Furyan Destiny that later on led to the- –well, if you’ve seen The Chronicles of Riddick then you know what his ultimate fate was going to be. So, I'm not going to spoil it here. - [Riddick] These? These are a curtesy of a slam preacher. Got 'em a long time ago. Cost me 20 menthols. - [Shirah] Interesting how one chooses to remember the past. You cannot change the truth, Riddick! You cannot escape your destiny. - [Riddick] I can escape anything. - [Shirah] Like Butcher Bay? - [Ragnar] No matter what, the result of this fateful encounter is that from now on we CAN see in the dark. Riddick’s eyesight is now extremely light-sensitive which forces him to wear his signature welding goggles whenever he’s in normal lighting conditions, but once we take them off, even the darkest corners are fully illuminated to our eyes while our enemies are tapping in the dark. - [Pope Joe] What do you see? - [Riddick] Everything. - [Ragnar] This is technically when things get really good for us. This new iconic ability gives us, THEORETICALLY, a massive advantage over unexpecting guards in our way, but it turns out that it’s an advantage we really really need in the next section. See, this next segment- –you just got your new toy and are ready to become the ultimate clandestine shadow stalker– -is another one of those examples where the game shows its imperfections. We seek out an exit that gets us conveniently into the guard quarters- -Seriously, Butcher Bay has really a lot of very convenient design flaws for a supposedly inescapable prison, I gotta say. Anyway, this is the section where I’d expect the game to give the player at least a bit more of a power fantasy than usual. And you can tell that the developers definitely had this in mind, introducing light switches that turn the dressing and shower rooms pitch dark and make the blinded guards clumsily tap their way to the light switch to turn it back on. This is where you’re supposed to get the drop on them and easily dispose of them, in the first moments, with your newly acquired superhuman ability. If it weren’t for the AI and level structure fiercely working against it. This first part here, with the eye shine, I’ve had to replay over ten times until the guards were in a constellation that made it possible to get the drop on one without alerting the other and, especially coming straight from playing Splinter Cell at the time, the constant illogical detections I encountered felt surprisingly frustrating rather than empowering? A thing I’ve noticed is that Butcher Bay feels far more like a purebred stealth game, alla Splinter Cell, than it is in actuality. The developers stated in interviews that they made it a priority to ensure that every non-scripted segment of the game is completely solvable by stealth exclusively, but I find it rather impractical to achieve that in many areas. One of the reasons is that the guards have an extreeeemely sensitive detection AI without any “buffer-time” at all. You can sometimes be super far away, only half-illuminated and they still only have to peripherally spot a single pixel of you and will snap straight into full-on aggro mode in a split-second, which can feel cheap at times. What I want to say with that is basically- -hm - well - okay- a little tip I want to give that might help you avoid some confusion and frustration, if you play it. The moments where it feels like the game is clearly signposting that it wants you to play stealthy, while being sometimes ridiculously difficult to pull off, while going in guns blazing works surprisingly fine, while often not feeling contextually right. Like in this part of the game here, we traverse the guard quarters to get the drop on Abbot- –right after we got our eyeshine ability to see in the dark– -it 100% feels like “going loud” shouldn’t even be an option in the guard quarters of one of the most secure prisons in the galaxy. But, turns out that large parts of the level design and enemy placement in this area simply don’t allow for a stealthy solution without deliberately, constantly cheesing the game’s AI and engine. And that’s really not conducive for immersive play. (choking, neck cracking) Maybe it was just me, but what I’m saying is: Don’t insist too hard on Butcher Bay always pedantically having to be 100% stealth game when it seems to imply it and embrace it sometimes being a straight-up shooter when that’s the far less frustrating solution to a situation and... just... just sometimes don’t look too much at ludonarrative coherence and it’ll make the experience a lot more fluid and enjoyable in the long run! (gunshot) That's all. Because, funnily, even if you end up blastin your way loudly through the guard quarters, Abbot himself will still be completely unsuspecting when you get to his apartment’s intercom so that it leads to what, at the time, feels like the final battle of the game. - [Riddick] I got a package. - [Abbott] Finally! Must be my new rifle. Enter! - [Ragnar] But... Is this plan really going to work? Overpower and capture the guard captain to force access to a transport ship off this stinking planet? (moaning) (gun charging) Of course not – Fucking Johns here has the third eye and pops up to be the fly in the ointment again. And Prison Warden Hoxie is everything but amused at our breakout attempt not even a day after our arrival and decides that he should have put Riddick in a higher security section of the facility. Why not do it straight up, huh? - [Riddick] Just working my way to the top. - [Hoxie] Even more reason for me to bury you deep. I'm sending you to the mines, Riddick! I expect things could get ugly. - [Riddick] I'll be disappointed if they don't. - [Ragnar] A bit earlier I talked about how the tutorial section- –the little slumber Riddick had before actually landing on the planet– -served as a near perfect vertical cut for the different types of gameplay you engage in across the length of the game and you know what? I think I want to revise my statement because Riddick has a very interesting ludonarrative structure. Namely, that its progression is arranged in concentric circles, of what the tutorial segment is the first, smallest, innermost ring: Take the opening segment, which begins with an introductory cinematic, then puts you in control of a small area where you move around somewhat freely and, very briefly, engage in conversation- -until you find a loophole to slip through the security- -and use the prison’s infrastructure to your advantage. From there, the game flows into a stealth/low profile combat passage which then seamlessly transitions into all-out gunplay until we make our escape attempt. It, gets intercepted in one way or another, and we end up in a larger, more secure part of Butcher Bay- -the next, bigger concentric circle of the narrative loop. Structurally, the entire segment from the moment we arrive in our cell until the boss fight against Abbot is extremely similar. We start out in a non-combat area, engaging with people socially, until we find a way to slip through the security and into the shadows, manipulate the facilities to our advantage and eventually end up in all-out firefights with whatever the game throws at you. The biggest difference here really is that you’re facing the horror movie like segment of The Pit against the dwellers; but technically it’s really just a different flavor of “Stealth-is-not-an-option all out firefights”. And it equally ends with an unsuccessful escape attempt, followed by Hoxie throwing us into the next level: The Mines, in this case. This new overarching chapter I probably my favorite part of the entire game- –this even more hopeless underground layer of Butcher Bay– -if we look at it under the game design microscope- –once again follows exactly the same pattern as the two previous acts, only on an even grander and much more interesting scale. It begins, as always, with an introductory cinematic in which we get our first glimpse of the area: a sheer neverending vertical shaft consisting of endlessly stacked modular cube-shaped prison cells. It’s such a surreal, breathtaking construction in which people are being processed like crates in an Amazon warehouse- –forced to unpaid, hazardous de facto slave labor for some faceless government or corporation and anyone who steps out of line gets discarded without trial- - [Robotic voice] You're in violation. - [Inmate] Oh man, no! No, nononono no! (machine gun staccato) - [Ragnar] ...also like an Amazon warehouse. (inmates cheering) Yeah, the name-nod to Guantanamo Bay is not just a passing reference. This is the kind of hyperbolic dystopian science fiction version of a supermax prison that the real US Prison Industry would take admiring inspiration from in a heartbeat if the technology existed in our day and age. - [Riddick] Commerce needs transportation. So do I. - [Riddick] After arriving and getting our first feel for the new area, we ride the elevator down into the new GenPop area of this prison wing, which is a far larger open-ended area than the first one, containing multiple courtyards, an infirmary, mess-hall and even a designated pit-fight arena, which is not just silently tolerated by the guard staff. They actively profit off inmates beating the shit out of each other. Just like before, this is the “social hub” from where everything in this chapter unfolds, but with more areas, more people, and way more quests to engage in. Many of which are even entirely optional. But ultimately we’re still pursuing the exact same goal: find a way out of here, which in this case means, a way into the mines. - [Riddick] The mines. I need to get to them. - [Ragnar] The social quests in this part of the prison take a lot longer to finish, and overall, through the scope and variety in different characters among the inmates and prison guards, the place feels even more fleshed out, organic and like a real place than in the previous act. And we also get even more of a glimpse of the surrounding narrative universe of Riddick than before. For instance, one of my favorite aspects about it has always been how central a part islamic faith plays in this setting. Several of the characters in Pitch Black, for instance were on their pilgrimage to New Mecca, which plays a more weighted role in the sequel, and here in Butcher Bay, too, there are multiple inmates of muslim faith who we can observe in their routines of daily prayer in the courtyard, but because they’re not allowed prayer carpets, there are just marks on the floor as a substitute. It is details like these that make this universe feel like it has so much more potential than its pulp space opera character reveals at first glance. And this particular aspect has always struck me, because honestly, there aren’t all that many benevolent portrayals of Islam to find in western media at all, so its prominent place in the Riddick universe without any negative islamophobic or scaremongering connotations whatsoever definitely deserve an honorable mention. And because there is so much more going on, in this chapter of the game, we also engage far more in things like playing different factions against each other, social subterfuge and lateral thinking than before. And your choices also branch out more. The main goal we set after a while is to somehow get into the infirmary, after you find that this is a surveillance -free area so the guards can, umm, perform advanced information extraction techniques and extracurricular punitive measures on inmates. - [Guard] You motherfucker! (punch, grunt) - [Ragnar] How you get in there is up to you. You can either defeat all the challengers one by one in the arena until the guard in charge of the pit-fights himself challenges you- –and take him as well– -or alternatively you can get your hands on illegal narcotics and let the guards catch you carrying it on purpose. Both of these paths will draw the attention of our good old friend XZibit who’ll want a little word with us in private. I’ve been meaning to take the drug route every time I played the game. People who’ve been following me for a while know I’m usually a big sucker for any kind of social/non-violent solutions to game problems; but I’ve always had this weird obsession for arena/gladiator fights in video games, especially when they’re embedded in something like a meta-story campaign. I don’t know why, but when I play any kind of open world game and I find out there’s an arena questline somewhere, I will drop everything and won’t get back to the main story or anything else until I’ve become the champion of the Arena. (loud punch, painful screaming) Don’t judge me. Anyway, once we make our way into the infirmary and get Abbott to show up, - [Riddick] You aren't still mad about before, are you? - [Abbott] Well let's see. Am I still mad about before? (abbot shouts, loud smack) - [Riddick] You done, Abbott? Or you need more? - [Abbott] You're a hard-ass, Riddick. But we're about to soften you up. - [Riddick] You don't know what you're fucking with. - [Shirah] That is right, Riddick. They don't know. There is a fury within you, Riddick. Set it free! (deep, bestial snarling) - [Ragnar] Riddick unleashes some untapped primordial Power in him, which is another part of the greater Riddick mythology setting up central story events in the later movies. We take out the guards and, once more time, fight Abbott in a final face-to-face confrontation before we finally put his lights out for good. Riddick's goal was to steal his high-level security card, and that marks the milestone where we finally break out of the social hub and slip away into restricted areas on our path towards the mines. So from talking, scheming, and questing, we seamlessly, once again, move over to heavily interspersed sneaking and combat sections, worming our way through ventilation shafts and heavily guarded corridors. In this part we also find the amazingly useful stun gun that quietly shoots charged electricity bolts and stuns opponents for several seconds, which gives us a window to rush up to them and take them out for good. It is pretty satisfying but also feels a little bit OP for stealth gameplay because it gives you range without making a sound, and this pretty much completely overtakes how you play sneaky passages from that point on. It is even capable of shooting light sources out which gives you a huge advantage that you didn’t have available before, at least not without making a noise, because so far every gun that we could have done that with was so loud that it would alert all the guards immediately. But the tranquilizer gun is quiet enough that, if you’re like me, you’ll end up one by one turning every room and corridor pitch black. Pun intended. Down in the mines, our goal is to seek out Jagger Valance, who’s played by none other than Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman, - [Jagger] If you take me with ya... - [Riddick] No. Nothing slows me down. - [Ragnar] Jagger is the man every inmate agreed we should talk to if we get out or here; he’s sort of a legend among the prison population and the only one who gets into the mines without a mine-pass. And he’s also been anticipating our arrival. When we find him, it turns out he sees working together with us as his own ticket out of Butcher Bay as well. His plan is to blow a hole into the outer walls of the mines- -for which we have to backtrack all the way to the courtyards again to produce an explosive device– -and once we achieve that, our explosion breaches into the deepest, most dangerous depths of the mines where... something ancient and deadly is slumbering that we’re about to unleash. (snarling) (snarling, bestial screaming) (head snapping off, gargling) (bestial squealing) (long, deep snarling) - [Riddick] (whispering) Beautiful. - [Ragnar] So, pretty much identical to the previous narrative ring, after starting out in a social hub we discover and make use of a means to slip outside of the surveillance network, from where the gameplay divulges into a hybrid of stealth and combat if necessary. And once we get through that, we escape into a deeper, forgotten part of the prison that nobody dares to venture into because of the dangers it harbors. And that’s again where the game turns into hunter-prey mode unleashing a primal, feral entity on us; this time around, the monsters we face are even closer to the creatures Riddick and the other survivors face in Pitch Black. But ultimately the segment once again plays extremely horde-mode like. A “Hectically find a way out as fast as possible while blasting away swarms of incoming minions with your shotgun”-kinda situation. And just like the pit dwellers before, these Xenos also slightly comically explode into giblets just a little too easily to not look a bit silly. (squealing, shotgun blast) We fight our way through the dark tunnels below the mines and after a pulse-pounding chase we emerge in a different prison wing where we find that our intervention, unleashing the Xenos into Butcher Bay, has turned the prison once again into a state of high alert; xeno invaders swarm in and the security staff is completely occupied with fighting back the invading force, a situation that we shamelessly exploit to our advantage. I have compared this game to Aliens versus Predator 2 before, and when I think about it, this part of the game now, feels even more like it, but, now that we’re actually equipped with night vision, we’re finally taking the role of the dominating Predator preying on the conflict between the marines and xenomorphs for sport. (slashing, Predator howling) It’s a really cool turn of events again, observing the desperate fights between men and creatures from the distance and then regularly charging in as the third, independent party nobody expects. (chaotic fighting sounds) And, since we’re talking about the concentric parallelism of the different acts of the game, after gradually upping the ante even more, leading into tight and engaging purebred first person shooter gameplay for a good while, the chapter eventually culminates in yet another escape attempt. At this point, after a massive confrontation with a boss-enemy in a chain-gun fight, It feels *very* climactic. It feels like the end of a long and arduous journey and it certainly had me fooled not just the first time around that this might actually be the end of the game. But... (punch) - [Johns] (punch) You're always trying to ruin my paydays, Riddick. (fighting) (gunshot) - [Ragnar] It’s definitely a bit comical at this point and the game, and even Riddick himself is well aware of the irony of the situation. We once again stand in front of Hoxie and he inspects the re-captured Prestige-Inamte being like “hmm well looks like the mines weren’t secure enough for Riddick after all. hmm guess we’ll have to put him in an even more secure facility, which I just so happen to have at the ready.” Like, after destroying half the facility, killing dozens of employees, including the goddamn guard captain and also multiple inmates, hijacking prison armament and a spaceship, multiple escape attempts, and also indirectly causing the death of dozens of Butcher Bay’s personnel in just the short time we arrived- -and considering how it’s regularly shown how any other inmate gets executed on the spot without trial if they just sneeze half a decibel too loud– -you’d expect that Hoxie would just be like, “nah I’ve had it with you Riddick. Guards, shoot him!” but no, for some reason, Richard B. here always gets the special treatment. I assume there’s probably some kind of massive monetary reward in accommodating one of the galaxy’s top ten most wanted in your facility, but it... does get a bit riddicul... oh... ohhhh Anyway, I’m glad that we’re not being liquidated on the spot, because the final section genuinely puts another dollop of cream on top in terms of how incredibly inhumanely commodified the prisoners are in here. In this final cyberpunk wing of Butcher Bay, we’re being put in eternal cryosleep and are only allowed 2 minutes of daily defrosting for guild-mandated exercise time. - [Speaker] This is your right as a guild-prisoner, and your ownly right. - [Ragnar] And yes, this final chapter of the game is again structured very similarly to the previous acts- -albeit for the first time in a much smaller scope than the grand third chapter. It’s more of a shot and explosive final culmination. During our 2 minutes of daily exercise, we have to observe the regular patterns and eventually discover our loophole: By hiding away in the coffins of another inmates without being sedated ourselves, we eventually manage to arrive in the huge storage hall while awake and slip away into the facility. It’s basically Riddick’s absolute Kryptonite, because everything here is brightly illuminated into the last corner, and guarded by extremely sensitive, highly armored automated sentry bots. The high tech space station technology here always reminded me kinda of the Death Star in Star Wars. But yeah, we punch our way through droves of little police-bots and do what Riddick does best: escape through the ventilation shafts and sneak up on security personnel from behind until we eventually get our hands on Our own Exoskeleton... I mean I’ve been speaking about Aliens a lot haven’t I? (pneumatic whirring) The final Stealth/Combat section of the game culminates in this all out mechanized mayhem and we waltz through a pretty lavishly decorated section of the prison that we haven't been in before. This piloting-a-mech section is probably one of the best and final microcosms of how the kickass quality and enjoyability of Escape From Butcher Bay peacefully coexists with its trademark brand of eurojank. (♫ Manuel - Déjà Vu ♫) The moment we step into this thing really makes you go “hell yeah bring it ooooon”: you expect to go peak badass when waltzing through almost completely defenseless waves of guards- -and yeah, you do, but man does it feel janky. I get that they were trying to recreate a sort of believable feeling of how it is to really be inside the cockpit of a bipedal robotic mech, but the aggressive camera shake and wobble with every turn and step makes controlling it so cumbersome. But hell, whatever, it’s still fun even though it almost makes me vomit. I do genuinely love the Mech’s AI, getting passive aggressive when we keep ignoring the neverending onslaught of advice it keeps droning in our ears. - [Mech AI] Battle Analysis suggestion: Pilot should turn off auto-battle analysis, as pilot seems not to care (cut off by gunfire) - [Ragnar] This final eruption of Riddick’s nobody-can keep-me-locked-up crusade results in his... What now? his now 3rd? 4th? Escape attempt. But thiiis time... our old fly-in-the-ointment nemesis has finally had enough of Butcher Bay and Hoxie disrespecting him and is for once, actually temporarily on our side and helps us escape together with him. With the intention of flying our ass to another well paying maximum security penitentiary of course. Hoxie too has one more ace up his sleeve and... shoots our ship down with an anti-air missile. This, on the other hand, knocks Johns out cold, which Riddick exploits by taking over control and purposefully crash-landing the ship straight into the warden’s office. - [Riddick] I guess you wanted Johns dead, not alive. - [Hoxie] Riddick! - [Ragnar] Where Riddick, for the first time, confronts him without any shackles or guards between him and us. Hoxie tries to haggle his sorry ass out of this quagmire and cravenly presses the panic button which unleashes... two self-camouflaging mini-gundams, sort of- -who doesn’t have a mini-gundam security system installed in their office right?- -and in this final fight of the game, we’re only equipped with Riddick’s signature tank-top and a minigun that’s conveniently laying in front of us. (electrical whirring) (heavy gunfire) This feels like a much more interesting fight at first to be honest, and it really is, but it turns out to be more like a battle of attrition, patience, and just constantly seeking cover while keeping the Mechs under fire before they de-camo and unleash their gunfire on us. (short minigun burst) But after everything we’ve been through, even Hoxie’s personal guard can’t keep us from finally exacting our vengeance on him. Riddick... decides that since he's been so obsessed with him all this time, he might as well put him a Riddick-cosplay as a parting gift. (loud explosion) (muffled screaming) - [Guard] (shouting) It's Riddick! (machine gun fire) (engine whirring) - [Riddick] You know Johns, statistically, take-offs are the most dangerous. - [Johns] No shit, I thought you said landings were. - [Riddick] Yeah. I guess it depends on who you have at the control. (ship engines boosting) - [Ragnar] If you look at the length of this video; we’re way past the half-point already, and that means I’ve dedicated far more time to Butcher Bay than to its sequel Assault on Dark Athena, which... kind of reinforces the general impression I’ve always had in the past that Athena is often regarded as more of a continuation- -almost like a full-game size Story DLC expansion of the first Riddick game, and this is exactly how it felt to me when playing these games back to back. Especially since Dark Athena is delivered with Butcher Bay in one joint executable and it strongly insinuates you should start with the first game. So even Starbreeze seems to, at least in part, see it that way And this is certainly not a bad thing. When comparing these two titles directly, what struck me was that Dark Athena feels overall far more polished and less janky in its moment-to-moment gameplay, especially when it comes to stealth sections. Most of the intended covert segments achieve that far more comfortably than in Butcher Bay, due to, for instance, better balance and overall smarter level design that ensures that each playstyle, covert or guns blazing, makes sense and feels no more or less rewarding or challenging than the other, as well as massive improvements in enemy AI. Enemies’ reaction time feels far more reasonable: I’ve encountered far less of the cheap “a bored guard on their 6th hour of patrol duty switches to hyper-aggressive rambo mode in 0.01 seconds after seeing only the tip of your elbow poking out 100 yards away” problems I kept being haunted by in the first game. All of this and a lot more quality of life improvements make playing Dark Athena the far smoother, more polished experience. It is still made from pretty much exactly the same building blocks as the predecessor- -albeit in a slightly different distribution. The developers toned down the social- hub RPG lite elements, for instance, and focused far more on adaptive immersive sim style gameplay that again seamlessly flows from quiet stealthy passages into all-out action shooter segments; and the story campaign is overall even a tad more linearly structured. The single player campaign picks up pretty much immediately after the end of Butcher Bay: Riddick and Johns are still adrift in cryosleep aboard the ship they escaped the Prison Colony with, when somewhere in the outer, unpoliced rim of the galaxy, they get intercepted by the Dark Athena, a colossal space hulk operated by a band of mercenaries-turned-pirates that captures and outright devours space traveler vessels whole, taking their passengers captive and... Lobotomizes them to turn them into man-machine hybrid drone soldiers. The entire setting exerts a strong Giger-esque horror vibe with a touch of existential dread: The borg-like drone-soldiers used to be innocent, unassuming people who’ve been violently transformed into automated or on-demand-remote-controlled cyborgs. It’s a really terrifying notion; these mindless humanoid automatons robotically patrol and stalk the dimly lit corridors of the Dark Athena following a simple algorithm, but when they spot you, a human operator in a remote surveillance room responds and manually assumes direct control of the drone, its headlights turning bright white and its movements shifting to being visibly more animate. - [Lynn] (panting) It's easier to hide from the ones with the red light on the face. Because the ones with the white light can see you with their flashlights. And they can talk, too. - [Ragnar] Switching to this high-alert-state immediately makes them far more dangerous and intimidating too. In Hunter mode, they’re suddenly able to see into the darkest corners and crevices and exit the common patrol patterns to actively stalk and hound the invader. This strooongly incentivizes players to avoid getting noticed at all costs, far more than in Butcher Bay. One of the multiple ways in which Dark Athena, much better than the predecessor, encourages players to fully - [Riddick] Embrace the darkness. - [Ragnar] Assault on Dark Athena consists of a good number of stunning and highly memorable set-pieces; like the vertical cargo shaft composed of a maze of wall-cubes we have to scale with sentry guard search lights on the opposite side scanning for intruders. It is just one of many incredibly cool segments of the game that boast stark visuals and inventive gameplay ideas and are usually over in a heartbeat before the game moves on to the next impressive scene. This is one of the big strengths of especially Dark Athena: I’ve talked about the difference in kind quite a bit in the previous chapters, and it’s really striking just how often Starbreeze switches up not just the pacing but literally the core engagement from scene to scene in order to make things never get boring. This first half - eh - maybe even two thirds of Assault on Dark Athena, where Riddick plays hide and seek with the ship’s company across the ventilation shafts (as always) and stalks the shadows of the vessel to find a way out of this predicament- -the scenario, especially with the game being a first person shooter, gave me heavy flashbacks to the wonderful classic FPS masterpiece Star Trek: Elite Force by Raven Software, in which you face an invasion of none other than the infamous Borg. (explosion) When it comes to its place within the Riddick canon, I’d say that this chapter is somewhat less mandatory(?) than Escape From Butcher Bay. Like, the first game features the seminal moment when Riddick acquires his signature eyeshine and when his prophetic spiritual connection to his ancestral Furyan lineage awaken for the first time, and it also portrays how he achieved the reputation of one of the most notorious prison breakers in the galaxy. (gunshot) Whereas the events in Dark Athena feel more low profile and personal in comparison. You don’t need them as vitally as a cornerstone of the canon mythology, but they add some genuinely nice bits of character progression. There’s this interesting duality about the character of Riddick in both movies and the games. Within the eyes of The Law, the powers that be, and of anyone who’s heard of him through hearsay, he’s clearly established as “The Bad Person”. He’s a Criminal (bad), he’s killed people (bad) and especially in Pitch Black he’s deliberately framed very close to black on the moral greyscale meter. But yet, his actions never really confirm him being a truly bad person. He’s opportunistic and clearly driven by a personal agenda, acting remorseless towards anyone who crosses him and his goals- -and those who directly act against him pretty much always turn out to be representatives of oppressive, imperialist forces in one way or another. So Riddick is pretty much an embodiment of an ACAB mentality, individualist, and clearly adhering to his own, surprisingly strict moral code for such a textbook “Chaotic Neutral” character. He never directly threatens nor harms, and even oftentimes protects those that are helpless if it won’t put him at a disadvantage. And this is where Dark Athena comes into play. He willingly joins forces with anyone who shows the will to fight in the face of overwhelming adversity. Especially when they’re at a disadvantage and innocent - i.e. kids. Similar to how he becomes a mentor figure to Jack in the movies, he meets Lynn, the escaped daughter of one of the prisoners on the Dark Athena, who has been successfully slipping away from the pirates long enough to become a ship known stowaway, and learned to successfully evade the drones- -monsters as she calls them. And Riddick, without hesitation, forms an unlikely alliance with her, working together and protecting her whenever she needs his help. - [Lynn] The monster... - [Riddick] That monster is gonna be with you until the day you die. Don't be afraid of it. In time you'll understand how to use it. Control it. Harness it. Unleash it. - [Lynn] I can be a monster, too. - [Ragnar] Which she rarely ever even needs actually it turns out. And damn, at a later point, she even manages to be a rare video game case of a non-annoying companion in an escort mission, because you can clearly tell how she fights tooth and nail and helps us out with guidance and getting things done that we’re physically incapable of. - [Lynn] I can open it from inside. Watch out! - [Ragnar] They share a symbiotic bond. - [Lynn] There's so many of them! (heavy gunfire) - [Ragnar] It also helps that just like most sections of the game, the escort missions are equally short and snappy enough to never outstay their welcome. Just a few minutes of carrying her around on the back of a mech we’re piloting until the point gets across and then the game moves on to the next change in gameplay challenge. - [Guard intercom] Riot control requires extra power for the prisoner cleanup. - [Ragnar] The first and biggest chunk of the game takes place aboard the Dark Athena, itself, and, as I said, the game heavily tones down on the social elements in comparison to Butcher Bay. The only part that plays somewhat similar to the courtyard social hubs of the previous game is when we get access to the prison cells and talk with the inmates in their cells to collect information and trade favors to gradually, Metroidvania style, unlock access to more and more areas of the ship where there’s always something we need to find or get done. - [Riddick] This place reeks of sweat and desparation. Getting info from the prisoners... not a problem. - [Ragnar] Compared to even the first, rather small chapter in the first prison wing in Butcher Bay, this is way more compact, basically just a handful of conversations with people locked in place that kick your next goals and objectives into gear from time to time. Overall, this entire huge chapter aboard the ship feels, as I said, far more like an immersive sim, with the true focus being that each new compartment of the ship we gain access to adds new and interesting alterations in challenge, scenery and gameplay to the mix. In one part we hunt down a notoriously sadistic crew member to enact revenge for one of the inmates, which makes us stalk after him straight through the crew quarters, taking on anyone who challenges us in straight up hand to hand combat- -well hand-to-ulaks combat, more like. (slicing, splattering, screaming) I guess that's one of the most important additions that Dark Athena brings to the Riddick canon, is that this is where Riddick discovers his signature dual-ulaks melee weapons. Another really fun stage has you engage in firefights within the gravity core of the ship; so it’s exceedingly hard to hold onto the floor for yourself and even tougher for your opponents, which you can and totally should use to your advantage. (shotgun reloading) And of course, you guessed it, eventually Riddick will gain access to the Control Room from where the drones can be manually controlled and uses the pirate's own medicine against them. It puts such an interesting twist on how you carry yourself because now literally don’t have to care for your life energy anymore because the drones are disposable and once you get shot down, you just switch over to the next one. It’s really energizing and satisfying to see how, after staying in the shadows for the lion’s part of the game, once you hijack the drone control, the central nervous system of the Dark Athena’s security, if you will, everyone on the ship completely panics when they’re being overrun by their own army of lobotomized automatons. And in stark parallelism to the first game, we also, of course, eventually hijack a robo-warrior exosuit again in this game, and even leave the airlock to engage in stunning fights outside of the ship’s hull. And just like with a lot of the gameplay aspects that have been drastically improved from the first game to this one, controlling the Mechs here finally feels really good, smooth, intuitive, fun- -no more over-exaggerated head-bobbing that makes movement and aiming borderline unplayable. It’s just really enjoyable and engaging, a massive improvement over the first game. (machine gun fire) But yeah, after fighting our way through the Dark Athena’s corridors for a good while, we eventually we face its Captain, Rivas, in a face to face duel, which is another one of those moments that heavily feel like the final fight- -the toughest melee encounter so far against the very leader of your adversaries. (slashing) (metallic slash, painful choked scream) Ughh... yeah that should take care of her. After disposing of our nemesis, in this game, Riddick snags the last escape pod, flees away towards the planet the ship is currently orbiting and- -oh... shoot... realized that he fucked up big time. (the price is right horn) - [Rivas] (croaking) So you think you can escape ME?! - [Riddick] I know it. - [Computer voice] Warning. Three. Two. One. (computer beeping frantically) (rocket explosion) - [Ragnar] The latter third of the game takes place after our pod crashlands on the shores of the Colony planet of Aguerra Prime, a fall that we luckily survive, but then again the fact that all of these stories precede the movies doesn’t really make it very likely that Riddick would actually die from this, now does it? The old prequel conundrum. Now I’ve pointed out in multiple instances before how Riddick takes often heavy and unabashed artistic inspirations from the Aliens franchise, and this next setting here is another strong case in point for that to me. The atmosphere and aesthetic of Aguerra Prime have always strongly reminded me of the desaturated desolation and despair ambiance of Fury 161, the prison and mining colony planet in Alien 3. The planet has been forcefully invaded and its inhabitants are in the process of being “harvested” by the Dark Athena's crew, and we find it in the final throes of its resistance against the assimilating Drone-Pirate Mercenary force. So we use the opportunity and the fact that we’re assumed KIA from our crash landing, to once again slip into the shadows after the all-out fights of the previous final act aboard the space hulk. The streets of Aguerra Prime are probably one of my favorite sections in the game when it comes to Immersive-Sim style stealth/action hybrid gameplay because it feels the most refined and honed in the entire series, by now. The drone-soldiers here combing the alleys of the settlement for survivors can be keenly observed, outmaneuvered and overpowered from many angles from the shadows without feeling linear or forced. This is probably the part where stealth felt to me the most like an open-ended dynamic puzzle, the way it's supposed to be, incredibly rewarding when you see it through completely undetected. It gives you that good old Splinter Cell like feeling of empowerment from the shadows that are often sometimes missing in Butcher Bay. But at the same time it equally leaves it up to you to engage the occupation troops guns-blazing, or if you get caught sneaking, it lets you adapt and change strategy on the fly. And it also makes contextually more sense than the prison Butcher Bay. The encounters in the streets of Aguerra Prime reminded me just how good of a systemic first person shooter this game really is at its core, easily going toe to toe with the sheer spectacle of the resistance battles in the urban canyons of City 17 in Half-Life 2. And equally Dark Athena really doesn’t stop throwing new things at the player even late into the game. You know how especially first person shooters in the post-Half-Life 2 era had this tendency to build a huge part of their gameplay about a physics based gimmick gun, like the Gravity Gun? I talked about this recently in my Cryostasis video. Well, Dark Athena features its own gimmick-weapon, the SCAR gun: a multipurpose tool primarily developed for mining operations which fires energy projectiles that stick to any surface or adversary, that are then remotely detonated to create a kinetic pressure explosion. You can dispense up to 5 projectiles at the same time and then detonate them all at once, multiplying their explosive efficiency. This gun manages to turn the gameplay quite on its head and slightly dominates the final stretch of the campaign, because it is strong, efficient, comes with unlimited ammo and plays like a less goofy version of Half-Life 2’s Gravity Gun, where you repurpose a device primarily intended to be used as a tool in creative ways to fling your opponents across the map. It is a ton of fun, and I find it so indicative for the highly diverse and experimental nature of these games that a feature like this, which most developers would have probably given you in the early parts and built nearly their entire game around– -Starbreeze chose to drop this weapon as what it is: a gimmick and hands it to you in maybe the last 8th or so of the story campaign. (frantic slashing, deep groaning) Like most things, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and the segments featuring the SCAR gun are equally versatile enough that it never forces you to use it all the time. It’s just the suggested approach in many corners here, because it’s ultimately up to you how you fight your way back to take over the docked Dark Athena, which turns out to be your only way off this rock now, and brace yourself for the final showdown. I really like this game for what it is. There was not a single part about it that I found disappointing, padded too much or stretched to long or boring, which is astounding considering how many different types of engagement within the framework of a first person immersive shooter Dark Athena throws at you beat after beat. To quote lead producer Peter Wanat: “Most teams and groups just try to do one thing well, and we did four things really well." "That's more than most teams can hope for.“ And I totally agree with that. It is all good, some of it even stellar. The sceneries and vistas are striking and memorable, both stealth and gunplay is engaging start to finish and often leaves you seamless freedom to solve problems however you want. Characters are once again extremely well cast, acted, and motion captured, and the story it tells feels like a road movie chapter. A self-contained bump in the road on Riddick’s journey but ultimately nothing that you have to play for story reasons. Which is why I remain steadfast in my assessment that Assault on Dark Athena, despite being the more refined, better balanced and polished game of the duology, it still feels like a “feature-length” story expansion to one of my favorite First Person Shooters of the 2000s. Escape from Butcher Bay, for any lover of Dark SciFi, First Person Shooters and Immersive Sims, is in many ways the more interesting game, mechanically and historically. The must-play of the duology. But if you’ve beaten this charismatic, imperfect masterpiece, and still feel like more, Assault on Dark Athena is the perfect chow to assuage that hunger. - [Riddick] Now the monsters have something to fear. - [Ragnar] The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay received rave reviews from the gaming press at the time and is often considered one of the best games of the Xbox generation. It sold well enough that it warranted an equally excellent sequel that rounded up the duology into one complete, technically optimized package for the seventh console generation. Yet despite the critical acclaim, in recent years these games have become adrift in copyright limbo. The only straight-up way to buy the Riddick games digitally these days is getting Assault on Dark Athena, which includes the HD Remaster of Butcher Bay, in the Xbox 360 marketplace. The PC version has been removed from digital storefronts in 2017 indefinitely. And if you happen to still own it on Steam from before or acquire a physical copy of the PC version, you’re gonna have to deal with the atrocious Tagès (I don't know how it's pronounced) copyright protection system which was designed to allow users to register their game’s serial number to three different PCs and then put their license in a 30-day time-out until the three registrations are refreshed. Problem is that this disgusting piece of DRM garbage requires online servers to run a proto-Orwellian kraken-algorithm, and guess what, it has been discontinued for a good many years by now. Which means that the moment you install your legally acquired copy of the game a third time, you will be locked out of installing it again from that point on and are forced to use technically illegal means to crack it if you want to still play your own game. Another case in point for why Digital Rights Management is, and always has been rubbish that invariably ends up hurting paying customers who, like, support games by actually buying them, 100 times more than those it’s meant to counteract because who doesn’t have to deal with this crap? Yo ho ho, those who pirate it from the get-go. And well, those who bought the DRM-free GOG version, but that one’s equally been discontinued since 2017. So despite admirable efforts in making a great movie-license adaptation, the distribution side of this is sadly yet another case of profit-first corporations not caring for the preservation of the art one bit, which let it sadly become a notably difficult game to attain these days, especially for PC. It is generally considered abandonware, and at the time of release of this video it’s listed on various abandonware sites out there, so if you’re eager to sail the grey seas, mateys, then you’d be doing so under the honorable flag of video game preservation; to keep the memory of a one-of-a-kind immersive sim, first person action adventure genre mix alive. Well, two actually, two-of-a... two-of-two-kinds... two-of-one-uh... one kin- - [Gintoki] Just do it. ("do it" reverberating infinitely) - [Ragnar] which demonstrated admirably to future video game generations just how fffucking good adaptations of movie licenses can be and how much they’re capable of adding to a fascinating narrative universe bursting with potential – if only the powers that be care about more than making their shareholders happy. The Riddick games, as I’ve said, have been removed from digital shelves for quite a good while now and even if you get your hands on them, you might still run into trouble with the deprecated DRM system. So at this point the simplest way to acquire both of these games on PC is through abandonware. I am going to list some sources that host abandonware versions of the game, which you can grab and play but at your own risk of course. In case you’re wondering about the legal ramifications, I’ve also linked a document in the description with a little overview on the current situation and why game publishers are actually shit-their-pants scared to ever act on client, meaning player-side, use of abandonware use on a legal basis. In the end, it’s 100% up to you to decide how chaotic good your alignment is. For those who've discovered me with this video, hey, I'm Ragnar and on this channel I mostly cover old games, horror games, indie games or combinations thereof and I try to bring attention to videogames that have fallen into obscurity and indie games that I think deserve your attention. In today's credit segment, I’m showcasing footage of me playing Golden Light, a procedural, dark comedy horror first person shooter which is an absolute phenomenon, one of the weirdest and most surreal mind-benders I’ve ever played. A game in which you constantly question your sanity and delve into an absolutely unique kind of anxiety, because down in the bizarre meat-zone, it’s a prop-hunt where the props actually hunt you. And where all your weapons are edible. Golden Light is a horror roguelike that feels like a David Lynch meets vaporwave fever dream, while you’re OD’ing on acid. It’s available on Steam and you can find the link (and a couple of free Steam codes as long as they’re hot) in the description. The work on these videos and the financial support of everyone who partakes in making them is in big parts crowdfunded. If you’d like to help us shed light on more forgotten and overlooked titles in the future, then why not consider dropping a buck or two over on my Patreon. It gets you access to High Quality Vimeo versions of my videos one to several days early, as well as the chance to immortalize your name in the credits here. Your help really does make all the difference. So thank you for considering. Today, my special credit-shoutout goes out to these (soon to be) immortalized Patrons: www.patreon.com/ragnarroxshow/ Until next time... ta ta!

Channel: RagnarRox

Views: 256,110

Keywords: The Chronicles of Riddick, Escape from Butcher Bay, Assault on Dark Athena, Pitch Black, Starbreeze, Tigon Studios, Movie Adaptation, Movie Tie-In, Vin Diesel, Cole Hauser, XZibit, First Person Shooter, Stealth, Action Adventure, RPG Mix, Review, Analysis, Interpretation, Game Design, Video Essay, RangarRox, Ragnarox, Monsters of the Week, Forgotten Gems, A Journey Through, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Aliens vs Predator 2, Alien

Id: yVZ8_sxnhhM

Length: 84min 30sec (5070 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/GelgoogGuy]

Even today I'm honestly shocked how good that game was. While I don't think it appealed to everyone it was certainly a blast for those of us who enjoy that sort of thing. I never did play Assault on Dark Athena though. I seem to recall that by the time I went to play it something screwy was happening with the PC version and I couldn't get it running.

[u/ESTLR]

2004 was a monumental year for FPS games ,graphics engines and gaming as a whole

We really went from games looking like this to this,almost overnight.

Static lighting ,no weapon bob,blobs as shadows,limited use of colors,flat textures with no dept... was a thing of the past.

[u/kimmychair]

It seems the first game has been classified abandonware so it can be distributed like No One Lives Forever. This was one of the best and most impressive FPS games of its era and doesn't deserve to be forgotten to unsold box copies hiding under Walmart warehouse racks.

Now to wait for Dark Athena I suppose.

[u/moal09]

Wasn't it done right largely because Vin Diesel was a massive nerd who personally helped fund the games and vetted the studio who made them?

[u/angry_centipede]

Butcher Bay was an amazing game. So much better than it had any right to be. I played through that game so many times when it came out.

[u/swordclash117]

I purchased a used copy of Dark Athena recently for the Xbox 360 on Amazon. Can’t wait to play it when it arrives!

[u/pdp10]

This title is one that I never completed because I couldn't progress past a certain point. That was the Xbox version. I should replay it with mouse and keyboard.

[u/Officer_McNutty]

Dark Athena was a fantastic little game, I remember being in awe at how fluid and varied the kill animations were. Would love a re-release.

[u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage]

One of the very few cases where the time-in game is definitively better than the movie. I absolutely loves that game when it came out.