Dark (stylized as DARK) is a stealth action role-playing video game developed by German team Realmforge Studios and published by Kalypso Media in 2013. Players control Eric Bane, a vampire suffering from amnesia who seeks to recover his memories.
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Part 0: The Setup
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of vampire media. Naturally this interest has led me to seek out video games that appeal to this particular niche. One game that you might see mentioned after scrolling through 900 articles about Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is DARK. On paper it sounds like the perfect match for someone who has played Troika's 2004 masterpiece to death and wants something to scratch that itch. However playing DARK (no the insistence of capitalizing the name doesn't make it any less generic or easy to search up) for more Bloodlines is like wanting more BloodRayne so you watch Uwe Boll's BloodRayne film. Both are pale (heh) imitations made by clueless untalented germans.
DARK is one of those perfect marriages of a developer who doesn't know how to make an RPG and also REALLY doesn't know how to make a stealth game deciding they are going to make a stealth focused RPG. For the sake of satiating my morbid curiosity (and making up for missing the refund window) I want to finally beat this thing and add a check next to another vampire game I've completed. I figured I might as well write down my trite observations here like the apocalyptic log of a recently turned vampire slowly succumbing to the madness.
Last edited by Vergil on June 6th, 2024, 06:08, edited 1 time in total.
The first of many premonitions our protagonist will have about our experience
This game does very little to hide it's obvious inspiration. The world and plot are essentially a "legally distinct" copy of Vampire: The Masquerade. If you're at all familiar with that franchise you will pretty much immediately be able to guess every bit of dialog and multiple plot points before they happen. Vampires exist and have a secret society dedicated to keeping their existence a secret. Of course it's run by immoral immortal elders and the ones who aren't devilishly scheming at the top like to spend their nights doing poorly animated dances in nightclubs.
Our (alleged) hero
I had a similar reaction to seeing this much 7th generation bloom eye rape
Immediately we are introduced to our protagonist Eric Bane. A completely unremarkable amnesiac except that he shares a voice actor with the protagonist of another obscure European series of indie RPGs. However this isn't Geralt, or Commander Shepherd or even the Sole Survivor from Fallout 4. I personally don't care for the Witcher series but Doug Cockle's voice in the role has become iconic enough to have immediately picked up on it when I started playing.
You might think this is a good sign that they at least got a voice actor with a proven track record for this sort of voiced protagonist in a non-traditional RPG thing, however... If you listen close you can hear all of Oblivion's NPCs collectively shout "Apologize!"
He couldn't be phoning it in any harder here and makes an already bland character sound almost like he's voiced by an AI trained on Geralt's voice. The totally lifeless and plastic (micro) expressions and lip sync don't help matters either. Not the only questionable decision the developers will make but the decision to make the protagonist a complete blank slate but also voice all of that robotic dialog will be a recurring nightmare as the game goes on.
A Very 7th Gen Introduction
I've heard this sort of lighting described in a lot of ways. Soothing was not one of them
Opening with the ubiquitous slow walking while listening to exposition (totally different than just making it a cutscene) this game immediately shows how much of a cross section of what gaming was like in 2013 it is going to be. All the hallmarks are here. The forced slow walking while a voice plays in your ear, the barebones skill tree "RPG elements", and the the pointless dialog options just to name a few.
Really flavorful text here guys.
We learn that our protagonist knows his name and not much else. Not only has he been stricken with the same highly specific form of amnesia that was already beyond played out by that point, we also get treated to flashbacks of his mysterious and DARK backstory. Our first flashback comes after Eric spots a bodyguard's gun and presumably spaces out while staring longingly at it like the quiet kid in school. It appears Eric is having flashbacks of playing Redfall. Our first sign at his troubled and twisted background.
Making our way through not!Asylum we eventually get pointed towards the owner. As shown earlier Eric Coolname remains as steely faced as ever to the revelation that vampires are real and he is a half-vampire now. Likewise he shows little angst over the knowledge he needs to hunt full vampires and eventually his unknown sire or he will become a mindless ghoul. After being forced to stare at these mannequins while asking them questions that feel like an uncomfortable job interview we are moved to the tutorial where we finally see what the actual gameplay in this game is all about.
The "Game" Part
It's okay, I wouldn't want to actually put my mouth on a black person either.
As expected it's painfully generic. Press a button to snap to cover and press another to move to the next piece of waist high cover until you get close enough to do a stealth takedown. The first issue with the game becomes apparent pretty fast. The game wants you to be limited to using only your vampiric powers to isolate and takedown enemies up close (with the ability to do ranged takedowns being locked behind that skill tree). However this begs the question of why if already spotted does your character not just, you know, pick up one of the numerous guns the enemies drop?
DARK takes an innovative approach by not addressing this problem at all! Despite ranged attacks and teleports (at first) already being a noisy and ill advised pursuit Eric decides to forfeit the use of firearms entirely no matter the situation. Direct combat being a bad idea in a stealth game is not a new phenomenon and is even ideal in some cases as to not make blasting your way through like a shooter an easy option. However the sight of our protagonist deciding it's best to run head first into enemies and try to punch them to death if spotted while getting ventilated instead of picking up a gun and attacking at range is just silly.
It doesn't help that your vampire abilities rely entirely on quickly depleted "blood points" that act more like mark & execute tokens from a ubisoft game than the blood pool of VTMB. Everything uses these points from ranged takedowns to distractions. Which leads to a lot of scenarios of having to rely on the extremely rudimentary stealth mechanics and finicky enemy AI instead of using your precious few blood points to do basic things like distracting enemies.
Not the worst frustrations in the world when fighting some homeless crackheads but next time when we infiltrate a museum (sound familiar?) these issues will only compound with some new arrivals...
► Extra Observations and Misc
I waited 5 minutes and didn't even get humanity points
This was the closest thing approaching the SOVL of the VTMB dance in the club by far
This is actually a sly reference to the VA's previous work voicing the protagonist of a sex sim with RPG elements called The Witcher
Oh, come now, it seems a bit clunky, but I would play anything for how lacking I am as well for good vampire games that come anywhere close to Masquerade!
This was the closest thing approaching the SOVL of the VTMB dance in the club by far
