Display MoreOne of my favorite things to collect information from is early articles about Privateer 2... specifically, ones from the summer 1995 press junket which showed the game as just 'The Darkening'. We didn't know to preserve these articles when they first ran and looking back at them for the first time often reveals new tidbits of information or behind the screens photos from the outlets' set visits. You can find a big collection of other The Darkening previews here. The first of the new finds is EA's Dark Forces from the September 1995 issue of UK-based Computer and Video Games (no. 166) magazine:
EA'S DARK FORCES
Origin's interactive movie game The Darkening starts to take shape at Pinewood studios.
The next interactive movie to come from the EA and Origin stable is currently being filmed at Pinewood studios. It's called The Darkening and has a working budget of approximately £5 million and stars the rather cool Christopher "Pulp Fiction" Walken, John "1984" Hurt, "Briar Gordon's Alive" Blessed and David "U.N.C.L.E." McCallum, plus about 500 extras have been employed as well as numerous stunt men. EA's press man, David Wilson, assures us that it will look much, much better than Wing Commander 3 because “...even in a year the technology has really moved on, certainly the video compression's now a ot better. In WC 3 all the actors were filmed against a green screen, whereas with The Darkening we've built 30 different sets and can now use various cinematic techniques like camera zooming and panning.
The script's been penned by a true sci-fi professional, Diane Dwayne whose previous credits include episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation and the basic plot involves your hero, played by Clive Owen, waking up in a futuristic world and suffering from amnesia with no one too happy to see you, in fact they all want to kill you. With Wing Commander 4 currently being filmed in Hollywood EA are keeping the acting population well and truly employed."Dark Future" is from the September 1995 issue of SFX (no. 4).
Dark future
There's a revolution going on in the world of computer games. Suddenly, major Hollywood stars are ultra-keen to appear in big-budget SF stories — or "interactive movies" — that their fans will never get to see on the big screen.
The Darkening is the most ambitious attempt yet, writes Matt Bielby...
Hеге a teaser for you: What SF *movie" stars genre favourites Jurgen Prochnow, Christopher Walken, David Warner, and John Hurt, is loaded with special effects, cost a fortune — and will never be seen either at the cinema or on ТV? The answer is, of course, one of the new breed of CD-ROM computer games, which use well-known actors in an "interactive movie" that's at least as ambitious as many films.
Arguably the most complicated interactive movie to date is The Darkening, recently shot by Electronic Arts at Pinewood, and featuring, alongside Hurt et al, Amanda Pays, Mary Tamm, Brian Blessed, David McCallum and Mathilda May (the naked space alien, so *impressive* in Lifeforce). Star of the thing is Clive Owen — TV's Chancer - who plays a chap who awakens from cryogenic storage, Demolition Man-style, ten years into his own future. Trouble is, he's lost his memory - and people are out to kill him! It's your job, among other things, to keep him alive...
The Darkening tells a tale spanning eight planets and assorted spaceships, and will be available on PC CD-ROM in February '96.
If EA pulls it off, this sort of thing could become a normal part of any actor or film director's repertoire — as well as provide a significant boost to the British film industry.
Mary Tamm (top), Brian Blessed and Clive Owen (above right) muck in with some even bigger stars (Hurt, Walken ef al) in the impressive CD-ROM game The Darkening.
