From the moment that Precursor Games announced their crowdfunding campaign for Shadow of the Eternals the project has been derailed somewhat by the studio’s decision to have Denis Dyack act as the game’s creative lead.
Dyack’s involvement with Shadow of the Eternals brings with it a ton of questions and baggage that basically stems from two related sources. The first is the fact that his last two titles (Too Human and X-Men: Destiny) dramatically failed to meet consumer expectations. The second, and more troubling, issue comes from an October 2012 Kotaku article titled “What went wrong with Silicon Knights’ X-Men: Destiny?”
The Kotaku article is based on accounts from several anonymous former-Silicon Knights employees, and paints a pretty grim picture of exactly how the studio fell apart after releasing Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for the Nintendo GameCube. The article contains several allegations against Denis Dyack and how he reportedly ran Silicon Knights — with the most damaging being claims that he redirected resources away from the Activision funded X-Men game in a failed attempt to pitch Eternal Darkness 2 to Nintendo.
With the Shadow of the Eternals Kickstarter clearly not on track to hit its goal, Precursor Games CEO Paul Cappricci has decided to tackle the Silicon Knights allegations head-on. Cappricci has updated the game’s website with a video asking anyone with questions about the Kotaku article to post them on their forums, and Denis Dyack will answer them in a future video.
Cappricci’s statement in the new video reads:
“Hi everyone. I’m Paul Cappricci, CEO of Precursor Games. It’d been great interacting with all of you on our forums, and Kickstarter comment page, and I just wanted to address one thing that keeps coming up.”
“You’ve just seen Denis Dyack in his creative role, and I think he’s been doing an amazing job, and is a real asset to this company. Despite us being a totally, brand-new company, and us trying to move forward with Shadow of the Eternals, the allegations from the Kotaku article keep coming up. Despite Denis’s reservations, I have asked him to address this article head-on.”
“So what we thought, the best way to do this, was to create a thread on our forum, for you, the community to ask questions that he will respond to in a later video. Thanks for much your support, and I look forward to interacting with you more in the future.”
It is not yet known when Denis Dyack will post his response to the many questions that potential Shadow of the Eternals backers have about the Silicon Knights connection to Precursor Games, but this is certainly a development to keep an eye on. The decision to personally address the Kotaku allegations is the right choice, hopefully the answers that Dyack provides will be as direct as possible and clear the air.
