Second Sight (video game)

Second Sight
Developer(s)	Free Radical Design
Publisher(s)	Codemasters
Composer(s)	Graeme Norgate Christian Marcussen
Platform(s)	GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	GameCube,[1] PlayStation 2[2] & Xbox[3] EU 3 September 2004 NA 21 September 2004 Microsoft Windows[4] EU 4 February 2005 NA 18 February 2005
Genre(s)	Action-adventure, stealth
Mode(s)	Single-player

Second Sight is an action-adventure stealth video game developed by Free Radical Design and published by Codemasters for GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows. The storyline follows an American parapsychology researcher in his attempts to recover his memory about his past and a mission he undertook with a specialist taskforce of the U.S. Marines, all while trying to understand his new mental powers and why he has them.

Gameplay

In Second Sight, players control the protagonist, Vattic, through a series levels, moving and controlling his actions through a third-person perspective, though there are moments when they either can operate in or be switched to a first person viewpoint (such as crawling through a vent, for example). The game features gun combat with a variety of pistols, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles, featuring a lock-on ability with the flexibility of being able to manually aim a reticle to specific parts of an enemy for better accuracy. In addition to guns, players can use of cover, and can perform hand-to-hand combat if they gets close enough to an enemy to do so. However, much of the game emphasizes the use of stealth to get around enemies rather than brute force, along with minor puzzle-solving. If the player is spotted when trying to be stealthy, an alarm mode is triggered which increases the number of enemies in the section of a level they are currently in, whose goal is to search for and eliminate the player unless they can avoid and hide from them until the alarm is cancelled. Along with an array of conventional weapons to use, Vattic unlocks a variety of psionic abilities to supplement his abilities, of which the majority are meant to be used in either being defensive, avoiding detection or healing wounds.

Story

Setting

The game takes place between various locations in the United States and Siberia, Russia, including: a training base in Germany; the village of Dubrensk, the Huvat Plateau, and a secret cold-war research facility within Siberia; a medical research facility in the State of Virginia, an asylum in the State of Vermont, a tenements block in Queens, New York, and the headquarters of the NSE in the State of New Jersey.

Characters

• John Vattic (voiced by Andrew Lawson) - The main protagonist of the story, Vattic is an American parapsychology researcher, seeking to find any scientific credibility to psionic powers, with the belief that psychics are merely frauds. Co-opted by Jayne Wilde to be part of WinterICE, a special task force of the U.S. Marines, he was sent with them on a mission to Siberia, undergoing weapons training beforehand. Somewhere between then and six months later, the mission went wrong, and Vattic found himself waking in a medical research facility with no memory of his past, but with strong psychic abilities manifesting over time. Whilst escaping, he begins trying to recover pieces of his memory, experiencing flashbacks to the mission, and slowly uncovers a sinister plot to create psychic super-soldiers from stolen research.
• Jayne Wilde (voiced by Lynsey Beauchamp) - Adviser to the WinterICE team, with strong precognitive abilities that protected her team from countless dangers, Wilde was responsible for bringing in Vattic as part of the group, but conceals from him her reason for doing so. She is trusted and respected by Colonel Starke for her abilities, which were responsible for saving Southern California from destruction with a suitcase nuke, yet Vattic has no firm respect for her or her skills owing to her contesting any research work he published. Although killed on the mission in Siberia initially, Vattic's actions in a flashback prevent this, causing her to survive but end up at an asylum in Vermont following a severe mental episode that left her with extreme confusion and distraught. Rescued and helped by Vattic to recover her personality and memory, she soon assists him to figure out what happened to him between Siberia and the present.
• Colonel Joshua Starke (voiced by Tom Clarke Hill) - Leader of the WinterICE team, with a healthy respect for both Jayne's skills and parapsychology. While raised in Queens, New York, he spent much of his youth within gangs, before he eventually moved on to a career in the military, performing in several tours of duty, until deciding to take charge of a specialist taskforce within the U.S. Marines. Killed on the mission initially, Vattic's actions in a flashback change things, leading him to survive the failed mission yet going AWOL sometime after it. His disappearing in that six months was to avoid arrest on false charges, while gathering evidence to prove that another group had been in Siberia responsible for killing innocent people and stealing a dangerous research project.
• Director Silas Hanson (voiced by Doug Cockle) - The main antagonist of the game, Hanson is the director of the National Security Executive (NSE), who is highly intelligent but also ruthless and bitter, having instigated a number of advanced weapons programs but whilst ignoring all moral implications of his actions. Following the discovery by the Pentagon of the Zener project that the Russians worked on during the Cold War, he saw potential in it as a weapon and decided to acquire samples from Grienko, killing him and his subjects in Siberia, before restarting the project in the United States in the hopes of creating an advanced form of psychic super-soldiers. His intelligence and ruthlessness are met by the clean suits he wears.
• Professor Viktor Grienko (voiced by Andrew Wincott) - A brilliant scientist in the research of parapsychology, who was officially declared dead following the end of World War II, but was unofficially alive and working for Stalin on a top secret Cold-War project called Zener, attempting to unlock psychic potential in various children; the project's results were deemed unsatisfactory by his peers, that they pulled the plug on any further research. Left to continue the research on his own with little help, he eventually called out to the United States for political asylum in exchange for his research which he believes could change the world, unaware of the consequences of his actions.
• Juan Carlos 'JC' Verdes - A member of WinterICE, JC is a heavy weapons specialist and an expert in handling any weapon that is either new or old.
• William Robert 'Tex' Jackson - A member of WinterICE, Tex is an explosives expert, with wise-cracking attitude that can often rub others up the wrong way, but deep down he is a true brother-in-arms among the team.
• Anthony Cortelli - A member of WinterICE, and the team's communications officer, Anthony has capable skills of getting a signal out of any comms system he works on, even if it is outdated piece of equipment.
• Martha Franklin - A member of WinterICE, and the team's reconnaissance officer and sniper, Martha maintains an ice-cold demeanour to her work, which is purely to ensure concentration when taking precision shots.
• Dr. Patrick Ballard, MD - A member of WinterICE, and the team's field medic, Patrick is capable of patching up other with speed and efficiency, whilst maintaining an air of quietness and calm that inspires confidence from others of his skills.

Plot

Following an incident involving the killings of several innocent lives, staff at the Osiris Medical Facility, a research complex in Virginia, prepare to work on John Vattic, a parapsychology researcher and the man claimed to be responsible. Unbeknown to them, Vattic awakens and breaks free from his isolation cell, discovering that he has powerful psychic abilities of unknown origin, and no recollection of his past or his identity. Seeking to find answers for what happened to him, Vattic begins searching for the facility's computer records, experiencing a flashbacks to the past upon learning his identity. Finding himself reliving events that occurred six months ago, Vattic recalls that he had been recruited by the Pentagon to assist a special taskforce of U.S. Marines, called WinterICE. Although he had been told his role was strictly to be advisory, upon arriving at a training facility in Germany and meeting with the taskforce, including their commanding officer, Colonel Joshua Starke, and their advisor, Jayne Wilde, a psychic who Vattic had clashed with over his published works, he found himself being given weapons training, before learning he was to go with them to Siberia. The WinterICE team had been assigned to find and recover a Russian scientist named Victor Grienko, a renowned scientist who was now seeking political asylum with the United States in exchange for the protection of his secret research into parapsychology, deemed dangerous if it fell into the wrongs hands.

When Vattic finds the facility's computer records, he experiences a flashback just after reading information that Wilde died during the mission, killed in an ambush by Russian soldiers at a pipeline station belonging to an American petrochemical company, whilst the team had been making for a rendezvous with Grienko. Reliving the events, Vattic protects Wilde from dying, and is shocked to find he changed history upon his return to the present, but only for Wilde to be incarcerated at the Penfold Asylum, a psychiatric hospital in Vermont, upon her return to America. After escaping from Osiris, Vattic drives to the asylum, breaks in and rescues Wilde, leading her into a series of storm drains, by which time she eventually recovers from a difficult mental period. Upon informing him that Stark died during the mission, Vattic experiences another flashback, reliving the moment in which he and Stark were ambushed by Russian snipers during a nightwatch. Whilst securing the area and searching a series of abandoned rail tunnels, Vattic encountered a psychic projection of one of Grienko's child test subjects, who helps to awaken Vattic's psychic powers within him. Using them, Vattic rescue Stark from a group of Russian soldiers, saving his life, only for the pair to find out that they were really U.S. Special Forces, prompting them to wonder what was going on. Returning to the now changed present, both Vattic and Wilde escape through the storm drains, in order to seek out Stark, fighting past several members of the National Security Executive (NSE) that were sent with orders to kill them on sight.

With the NSE in pursuit, the pair travel to a tenement block in Queens, New York that Wilde had been given the address to, whereupon Vattic finds Starke hiding in an apartment, surprised to see him alive, before revealing that the rest of WinterICE were killed in the mission upon reaching the village of Dubrensk. Another flashback kicks in, causing him to relive the events and allow him to protect the team from an ambush by more Special Forces, in which during the aftermath, the team found that the villagers had been slaughtered before they arrived, except for one survivor who is slowly dying from their wounds. Brought back to the present, Vattic learns that his actions in the past could do nothing for Stark's team, as they were used as scapegoats for the slaughter of the villagers by the director of the NSE, Silas Hanson. Stark reveals that Hanson had been in the village at the time, searching for a secret research facility under it, where he soon stole Grienko's work, dubbed the "Zener Project", before killing him, his staff and the village's children that Grienko had used as guinea pigs, to cover his tracks before reactivating the project in the United States; the troops encountered by WinterICE were merely there to stall them while Hanson got what he needed. Forced to flee and uncover the full extent of Hanson's work, Vattic travels to the NSE headquarters in New Jersey, finding evidence he has begun to start creating an army of psychic super soldiers.

Wanting to prevent this, Vattic forces himself back to where he left off in the past, returning as the dying survivor informs him that he is the only one to save the project's children because he would be accepted by them due to his similar psychic abilities, while the WinterICE team would be killed if they approached them instead. Making his way down into the Zener Research Facility on his own, he soon finds Grienko in the process of transferring his work and test subjects to a new facility in the United States. Believing he is part of Hanson's team, Grienko explains to him the success he had with his project, believing he could unlock the children's psychic potential as a weapon that could change the world, revealing he contacted the Americans merely to be able continue his work. Brought back to the present, Vattic quickly confronts Hanson in his office with what he knows, only to learn his escape from Osiris was part of an experiment to determine how effective psychic abilities would be in combat, with samples of the project having been spread across the country. Angered at Hanson's lack of morals and his contempt of the lives he took, Vattic attempts to kill him, but is placed in a no-win situation when Hanson reveals that Wilde was taken hostage. Seeking to change the past, Vattic forces himself back to the past and use his current knowledge to warn Grienko that he and everyone else will be killed once Hanson gets tissue samples of his test subject. Grienko suddenly realises his mistake and tells him the children were taken to the lower levels, just before one of Hansen's men kills him.

Whilst making his way lower, Vattic suddenly finds himself experiencing a series of flash-forwards to the future, in which Wilde reveals in a telepathic message the reason he was on the mission with WinterICE and the truth behind his ability to flashback to the past and change history. What Vattic had thought was the present was in reality a possible future that he was experiencing, one of many that were manifesting from the use of one of his most important psychic abilities he hadn't realised was active the whole time - precognition. In truth, everything he thought had happened six months ago, is still ongoing with the mission yet to be completed. Wilde further reveals in her message that the children had been the reason for him being in Siberia in the first place, as they had helped him throughout the mission to stop Hanson's plan. Now knowing the truth of his situation, Vattic confronts Hanson in research lab to stop the future he experienced from happening, but is once again placed in a seemingly unwinnable situation due to Hanson securing himself behind a window impervious to both bullets and psionic powers. As Hanson's men come to deal with him, Vattic releases Grienko's original test subjects, referred to as the "Zener children", to aid him with their psychic powers and defeat them. After a long shootout, the children eventually use their powerful telekinesis abilities to pull away the frame of the glass, the only part of the window that was not impervious to psychic abilities, before attacking and killing Hanson. Vattic eventually returns to the surface, exhausted, as WinterICE and American troops arrive to secure the facility, while Starke and Wilde help Vattic into a helicopter as it takes them away.

Soundtrack

In 2006, Free Radical Design made the Second Sight soundtrack available for download on the company website, including printable album artwork.^[5]

Track listing

Music by Graeme Norgate and Christian Marcussen^[6]

1. Isolation – (1:52)
2. Experimentation – (4:12)
3. Fieldwork – (5:42)
4. Escape – (4:24)
5. Madness – (5:16)
6. Rescue – (4:51)
7. Reliance – (3:49)
8. Entrapped – (5:18)
9. Street Life – (4:53)
10. Teamwork – (4:53)
11. Breakout – (3:33)
12. Conspiracy – (5:37)
13. Infiltration – (5:21)
14. Childcare – (4:47)
15. Confrontation – (3:11)
16. Redemption – (6:03)
17. Credits – (5:35)

Reception

Reception

Review scores Publication Score GC PC PS2 Xbox Edge 7/10[7] N/A 7/10[7] 7/10[7] EGM 6.5/10[8] N/A 6.5/10[8] 6.5/10[8] Eurogamer N/A 6/10[9] N/A 8/10[10] Game Informer 8.5/10[11] N/A 8.5/10[11] 8.5/10[11] Game Revolution N/A N/A C[12] N/A GameSpot 7.5/10[13] 7.3/10[14] 7.5/10[13] 7.5/10[13] GameSpy [15] [16] [17] [18] GameZone N/A 7.5/10[19] 8.6/10[20] N/A IGN 7.9/10[21] 7.5/10[22] 7.9/10[21] 7.9/10[21] Nintendo Power 4.7/5[23] N/A N/A N/A OPM (US) N/A N/A [24] N/A OXM N/A N/A N/A 8/10[25] PC Gamer (US) N/A 65%[26] N/A N/A Detroit Free Press N/A [27] N/A N/A The Sydney Morning Herald N/A N/A [28] N/A Aggregate score Metacritic 77/100[29] 73/100[30] 76/100[31] 75/100[32]

Second Sight received "favorable" reviews on all platforms except the PC version, which received "average" reviews, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.^{[29][31][32][30]}

In 2010, the game was included as one of the titles in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.^[33]

References

External links

• Second Sight at MobyGames