Severance: Blade of Darkness

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Severance: Blade of Darkness
Image:Severance - Blade of Darkness Coverart.png
Developer(s) Rebel Act Studios
Publisher(s) Codemasters
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows
Release date 2001
Genre(s) Action, third-person

Severance: Blade of Darkness is a 2001 "scrolling" fighting third-person PC action game created by (the now defunct) Rebel Act Studios and published by Codemasters. The original subtitle in direct translation from Spanish is "Edge of Darkness". Unfortunately, there was a TV show with the same title in the USA so the US publisher changed the subtitle to "Blade of Darkness" and the same label was pressed on the European copies as well, even though there is no sword bearing this name anywhere in the game1.

Severance has an immediately recognizable fantasy premise with swords, sorcery, and the like. It features four playable characters: Tukaram, a barbarian; Naglfar, a dwarf; Sargon, a knight; and Zoe, an adventurer. Each character starts on a different map, has a different preferences and selection of weapons, and have different strengths and weaknesses in terms of power, agility, and defence and, most important, different sets of combos or moves. As your character progresses through the game, they earn experience points which enable them to increase in level and gain new special attacks and abilities which are executed via combinations of buttons and direction keys, much like a beat-em-up genre game. Some of these special attacks are weapon-specific and can deal out huge amounts of damage or hit multiple foes at one time.

1This "evil blade" is, in fact, the "Sword of Light" when it is possessed by the forces of darkness (as shown in the intro video). It is liberated and becomes this "Sword of light" when the hero comes and imbues it with the six magical runes.

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[edit] Setting

The individual levels of the game bear a resemblence to diverse environments from the Middle East, Europe, Africa and South America under fictitious names or names with slightly changed spelling.

[edit] Plot

The Lord created Chaos, and divided it in two parts, the Light and the Darkness. He gave to them life and thought, and so were born the Spirit of Light and the Prince of Darkness. But the Prince held the unspoken desire of supplanting his Father. He learned the secret the language of Creation and tried to create a new being. But the newborn would not accept the commands of the Prince of Darkness, and growing stronger, took part of his own essence and created terrible monsters and demons. The Lord and the Prince of Light tried to stop it, and they waged a great war. Gradually, the being was weakened and finally defeated, but after this the Father was exhausted, and withdrew into the depths of the Universe.

The younger gods, proud of the victory, completed the creations of their father, giving shape to the Sun, the Moon and the Earth. However, the Prince of Darkness attempted to corrupt the souls of the fledgling race of man, amidst the confusion of a new war incited by dark creatures of his own creation. The Earth was in a moment of extreme danger, so one of the younger daughters, Ianna, cast a powerful spell that expelled the gods from their dwelling place and kept the Earth closed to them. The Spirit of the Light went to the Sun and from there protected the Earth during the day. Ianna went to the Moon, to protect it during the night. Thus began the cycle of Day and Night, and a new age of balance was born over the Earth. But all of the gods’ creations remained, leaving mankind to contend alone against the diabolical fiends.

The struggle continued for many years, until a young hero emerged to defy the Darkness. He was chosen by Ianna to wield the Sacred Sword, and fought the Evil in its own lair. The Darkness was defeated, but the hero was mortally wounded, and his friends buried him with his Sword in the Temple of Ianna. After that, they hid four magical gems, which unlock his tomb, where the sword is kept.


But all that was long ago. Now, something strange is happening. The signals are clear. Foul creatures are awakening from their dormancy, and spreading terror and destruction… The Darkness has returned, and the end is near. A new hero is needed, a chosen one who will wield the Sword, and destroy the Enemy forever...

The four characters start their adventure at different locations but eventually go along the same route. The ultimate goal of the game is to obtain Ianna's Sword, kill the evil necromancer Dal Gurak then descend into the Abyss for the final confrontation with the Chaos Child. This is easier to win by wielding Ianna's sword empowered by the goddess' blessing. To achieve the magical sword the players have to make sure they have collected six well-hidden magical runic tablets before entering Dal Gurak's tower. The six runes speak about the time of creation (similarly to ancient Zoroastrian myths). In addition to the runes, murals and memorials also shed some light on the events preceding the main storyline. The short level-changing cutscenes also provide a brief explanation on the plot.

[edit] Reception

The game received high marks for its graphics, particularly the lighting effects of real-time shadows. Character animation was done via motion capture. The texturing was very well done, although the game does not utilize larger texture sizes (anything above 256x256, whereas other games already use 1024x1024 resolution with texture compression in 2000,2001). The soundtrack of the game allegedly contains non-copyrighted samples, which were also used in many commercials, soap operas and other media worldwide. Overall, a powerful computer (the minimum requirements were a P2 400 MHz and 64Mb of RAM) was required to fully experience all of the features.

However, the game did not raise due attention and popularity in its time, mainly because of bad marketing. Other reasons for the relatively low sales were the untimely publication (neither the code nor the storyline had been finalized) and the lack of gameplay difficulty levels - the game proved to be too difficult on "factory" defaults for many players. Nonetheless it did establish a large cult following that still exists today.

One common criticism of the game was that you could not strafe. An opponent had to be approached and locked on via the combat system before your character would be able to sidestep. Fans of the game have found that the lack of a strafe action was not a severe handicap.

Saving the game too often activates an internal counter (counting how many times it was saved since the start) which qualifies the player's performance. "Awesome" performance quickly turned to "Heroic" then "Bold", later "Overcautious" and "Lame", infuriating many players at the time (though cosmetic only). Reloading a savegame on old computers could take several minutes.

[edit] User modifications

The game was shipped with a far-from-perfect level editor, which nevertheless enabled fans to create custom levels and modifications to the game. Many users made successful attempts to patch obvious errors and imperfections in the game's scripts (thanks to the easily understandable and versatile Python scripting). What's more, with incredible individual effort, a handful of fans made custom single-player maps which, in terms of graphics/effects, scripting and playtime, surpass the original episodes (thanks to the headroom more modern computers provide for programmer and player alike).

[edit] Fans

There is an active community of Blade of Darkness fans and mod-makers here.

[edit] Features

  • New portal engine allows real time lighting, volumetric lights and shadows.
  • Real time physic and fluid system.
  • More than 16 different realistic outdoor/indoor environments: frozen landscape, desert, Arabic Palaces, Hindu Temples, volcanos, Lost Island, mines.....
  • Four characters to choose from, each one with specific skills.
  • Playing Character progression depending on your abilities.
  • Up to 100 different weapons: sword, axes, spears, bows, shields, magic weapons.....
  • Up to 25 different races of enemies: orks, trolls, golems, demons, skeletons.....
  • Up to 100 puzzles and traps combining physics, hydraulic systems, arrows, fire, stone balls....
  • Effects: water reflections, smoke, particle system, acid lakes, magic auras.
  • More than 150 FMV.
  • Up to 100 different types of objects you can take, burn, break, throw and use as a weapon (tables, glasses, stools, bones...)
  • Powerful combat system: locking on enemies (auto facing), dodging, amazing combos (more than 1700 animations based on Motion Capture System), up to 20 differents attacks per player character, shield blocking, realistic mutilations and wounds, real time blood, magic attacks, destructor attacks...
  • Advanced AI System:

Different defensive tactics for enemies depending on their intelligence level (stupid and aggressive ork, organized and efficient Dark Knights).

  • Frenetic multiplayer arena mode over LAN: 4 Characters with a total of 12 different skins.
  • Parental lock for gore (disable mutilations and blood).
  • Training level.
  • Original Soundtrack by Spanish composer Oscar Araujo

[edit] External links

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