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152: Eternal Suicide Chapter Zero: Wasted Life Author: Nitronic Release Date: May 15, 2003
"You don't have a clue 'bout what's going on here, do you???
No I don't but you are going to explain it to me, right?"
This DMOD may hold the distinction of having spent a shorter time as a "lost DMOD" than any other. The author, upset about an associated MIDI pack being pulled from the site, had it taken down on May 23, but it was put back up on May 25. You can read about it here.
Now, this DMOD... this DMOD....
Damn it, this could have been so badass.
"Eternal Suicide" is probably the most ambitious DMOD project ever planned. This mod, which took me over an hour to beat, was such a small part of Nitronic's grand vision that it was intended as a "small prologue," not even worthy of being called chapter one. It must have been shocking to see any release at all after Nitronic talked as big of a game as he did. That kind of grand plan by a first-timer is usually pretty effective at preventing anything from getting done.
You can see it in what's here, too. Enough vague references are made that I can tell the author really did have a much larger story planned of which this was just a small part. The tone of "Wasted Life" is similar to projects that really do deserve the term 'saga.'
Furthermore, "Wasted Life" is packed with content. It takes the unusual approach of eschewing Dink's usual RPG world-building in favor of a linear series of action setpieces and puzzles. While this can be a bit of a letdown for an RPG fan (there isn't even any such thing as experience points in this DMOD), it succeeds in feeling very different, and more exciting, than most DMODs. Each sequence feels almost totally distinct from the one before it and quite memorable in its own way. The mod escapes the drab similarity that so pervades Dink games, and you don't spend long enough at one task to get used to it, either. This feeling is even stronger than it was in "Stone of Balance." This model of gameplay provides a stark contrast to the last DMOD I played, "World of DinkC," where the action felt quite similar throughout and sections often lacked a clear sense of identity or purpose.
At the very start, I was impressed. The intro, while confusing, had more life to it than the stiff bits of walking about that make up the usual Dink cutscenes due to the difficulty of scripting. There was a fight scene that felt like a proper fight!
It's more of a slaughter than a fight, really. But it looks cool for a Dink cutscene.
After that, the first gameplay segment is a crazy action sequence where you have to flee from ever-rising lava as you pick up items that give you a short burst of speed and Quake logos that function as strength potions. It's ridiculously difficult for being the first thing in the DMOD, but at least it's interesting and well-scripted.
Dink and I said this pretty much in unison as we simultaneously realized what was going on.
I admit I got kind of frustrated with the lava section, which offers little room for error and features powerups that have iffy hardboxes, so it's hard to know when you're actually picking them up. Still, I was impressed. I thought, for a minute or so, that this might be the best DMOD of the year so far.
And yet, "World of DinkC" is a far better DMOD than this one. It isn't close. "Eternal Suicide Chapter Zero: Wasted Life" is a tragic failure. It's a sad mess.
There are two major ways in which this DMOD fails. The first is that its "epic saga" storyline, with all its clear intentions of greatness, is an incomprehensible, awful wreck. At its best moments, it is unintentionally (?) hilarious, but most of the time it's just confusing and mind-numbing. Many characters are presented in such a way as to suggest we should know or care who they are. Who is Rahne, and how does Dink know him? What does it mean to "commit the Eternal Suicide?" Who is Lana, what's her relationship with Dink, and why is she such a bitch? Who's the guy who gets fatally poisoned in the opening cutscene, and what does that have to do with anything? Who's the guy that Dink meets and recognizes in the graveyard, and why should we care that he promises Dink they'll meet again in five years? The game certainly isn't going to tell us any of these things. It's just going to ramble on about "destiny" until it's blue in the face. The only thing I ever really picked up on is that Dink's quest is to kill the very last Slayer to prevent a whole new army of them from being bred and unleashed upon the world with evil intent. He fails.
This thing is supposed to be the father of all slayers. Okay.
Nitronic sees no reason to clue the player in on what's going on; it just happens, and it's up to you to try to understand it. The very first time you meet antagonist Lana, she tells Dink that killing the Ancients (of whom Seth was apparently the last) will have dire consequences. The dialogue is a real mess. And then we get this exchange:
Dink: You know of my destiny this time, don't you?
Lana: If you call:'Slaying the last slayer on this planet', a destiny?
In that case, Yes I heard of it!
I'm pretty sure this is the first time we learn about the last-slayer plot. These lines actually make a lot more sense than the rest of the conversation. And then there's this:
Dink: Your love is bothering me, Lana!
Everyone knows you've got a crush on me,
Just like everyone knows I don't care about you!
You're just a pain in the ass,
that's all you are to me!!
Lana: I do not understand, but I shall teleport you to the Avalon Heights!
She's not the only one who doesn't understand. Just what in the Hell is the history between these two? Your guess is as good as mine. And believe me, this is one of the most well-defined elements in the plot. There's a character named "Rahne" who is brought up repeatedly in an even vaguer way. Tal has it right. His review spews truth about this DMOD.
Dink didn't kill this guy, he killed himself. It's anybody's guess what the text might be talking about.
If the muddled, poorly-told story were the only problem, I would probably still be telling you this DMOD is awesome. After all, it's kind of funny to see these bizarre exchanges set to serious music. The other downfall of "Wasted Life" is much worse: it's almost unbelievably sloppy, buggy and broken. I can't understand how this game, which is full of impressive bits of scripting that would probably be beyond my abilities, is so riddled with errors that would have been easy to fix. Almost everything that ought to be a one-time event will occur again and again every time you return to a screen. If you aren't careful, it's possible to badly mess up the game in this way. Walls that are opened by some kind of switch will have to re-open every time you return to the screen, making you wait around. I couldn't even have beaten this game without cheating due to some very sloppy scripting. A certain cutscene would never come up for me because a couple of scripts use the same variable name for their local variables as an important global variable. Later, I had to warp past a couple of screens where invisible bits of hardness blocking the way to the next screen failed to disappear after boss fights.
While attempting to make sense of this quit dialog, recall that in 2003, GNU FreeDink didn't exist yet.
Even ignoring the bugs, some design decisions in this mod are really frustrating. The cutscene that would never trigger takes place in a graveyard scene. You can examine all of the graves to get a name and an age. You then have to answer a question at a door: which dead person was the youngest? One of them was just 1 year old, but this isn't the right answer, and you're killed for answering incorrectly. Instead, the way you were supposed to proceed was to examine a certain grave that has no name and then wander around until a cutscene triggers to tell you the name of the baby in that grave. This is poor, misleading puzzle design. It's a slap in the face to the player.
Saving takes some unusual forms here...
Finding the secrets is kind of fun, even if they're just more confusing cutscenes. And you're welcome!
I'll admit that I cheated at the final boss, which constantly bombards you with explosions while frequently spawning other targets and making the actual boss invincible until you destroy them. Unlike some other bosses, I think I probably could have beaten this one eventually it I'd kept at it for long enough, but by that point I was excruciatingly ready for the DMOD to be over.
I was more frustrated by this than any other DMOD so far, because there are glimpses of rarely-seen levels of potential. There are loads of cutscenes, and they're all impressively-staged. They seem almost cinematic, with cool tricks like a sudden white flash. I hate to be so negative as I feel like I've been being with these lately, but I left this one feeling dissatisfied.
"You don't have a clue 'bout what's going on here, do you???
No I don't but you are going to explain it to me, right?"
This DMOD may hold the distinction of having spent a shorter time as a "lost DMOD" than any other. The author, upset about an associated MIDI pack being pulled from the site, had it taken down on May 23, but it was put back up on May 25. You can read about it here.
Now, this DMOD... this DMOD....
Damn it, this could have been so badass.
"Eternal Suicide" is probably the most ambitious DMOD project ever planned. This mod, which took me over an hour to beat, was such a small part of Nitronic's grand vision that it was intended as a "small prologue," not even worthy of being called chapter one. It must have been shocking to see any release at all after Nitronic talked as big of a game as he did. That kind of grand plan by a first-timer is usually pretty effective at preventing anything from getting done.
You can see it in what's here, too. Enough vague references are made that I can tell the author really did have a much larger story planned of which this was just a small part. The tone of "Wasted Life" is similar to projects that really do deserve the term 'saga.'
Furthermore, "Wasted Life" is packed with content. It takes the unusual approach of eschewing Dink's usual RPG world-building in favor of a linear series of action setpieces and puzzles. While this can be a bit of a letdown for an RPG fan (there isn't even any such thing as experience points in this DMOD), it succeeds in feeling very different, and more exciting, than most DMODs. Each sequence feels almost totally distinct from the one before it and quite memorable in its own way. The mod escapes the drab similarity that so pervades Dink games, and you don't spend long enough at one task to get used to it, either. This feeling is even stronger than it was in "Stone of Balance." This model of gameplay provides a stark contrast to the last DMOD I played, "World of DinkC," where the action felt quite similar throughout and sections often lacked a clear sense of identity or purpose.
At the very start, I was impressed. The intro, while confusing, had more life to it than the stiff bits of walking about that make up the usual Dink cutscenes due to the difficulty of scripting. There was a fight scene that felt like a proper fight!
It's more of a slaughter than a fight, really. But it looks cool for a Dink cutscene.
After that, the first gameplay segment is a crazy action sequence where you have to flee from ever-rising lava as you pick up items that give you a short burst of speed and Quake logos that function as strength potions. It's ridiculously difficult for being the first thing in the DMOD, but at least it's interesting and well-scripted.
Dink and I said this pretty much in unison as we simultaneously realized what was going on.
I admit I got kind of frustrated with the lava section, which offers little room for error and features powerups that have iffy hardboxes, so it's hard to know when you're actually picking them up. Still, I was impressed. I thought, for a minute or so, that this might be the best DMOD of the year so far.
And yet, "World of DinkC" is a far better DMOD than this one. It isn't close. "Eternal Suicide Chapter Zero: Wasted Life" is a tragic failure. It's a sad mess.
There are two major ways in which this DMOD fails. The first is that its "epic saga" storyline, with all its clear intentions of greatness, is an incomprehensible, awful wreck. At its best moments, it is unintentionally (?) hilarious, but most of the time it's just confusing and mind-numbing. Many characters are presented in such a way as to suggest we should know or care who they are. Who is Rahne, and how does Dink know him? What does it mean to "commit the Eternal Suicide?" Who is Lana, what's her relationship with Dink, and why is she such a bitch? Who's the guy who gets fatally poisoned in the opening cutscene, and what does that have to do with anything? Who's the guy that Dink meets and recognizes in the graveyard, and why should we care that he promises Dink they'll meet again in five years? The game certainly isn't going to tell us any of these things. It's just going to ramble on about "destiny" until it's blue in the face. The only thing I ever really picked up on is that Dink's quest is to kill the very last Slayer to prevent a whole new army of them from being bred and unleashed upon the world with evil intent. He fails.
This thing is supposed to be the father of all slayers. Okay.
Nitronic sees no reason to clue the player in on what's going on; it just happens, and it's up to you to try to understand it. The very first time you meet antagonist Lana, she tells Dink that killing the Ancients (of whom Seth was apparently the last) will have dire consequences. The dialogue is a real mess. And then we get this exchange:
Dink: You know of my destiny this time, don't you?
Lana: If you call:'Slaying the last slayer on this planet', a destiny?
In that case, Yes I heard of it!
I'm pretty sure this is the first time we learn about the last-slayer plot. These lines actually make a lot more sense than the rest of the conversation. And then there's this:
Dink: Your love is bothering me, Lana!
Everyone knows you've got a crush on me,
Just like everyone knows I don't care about you!
You're just a pain in the ass,
that's all you are to me!!
Lana: I do not understand, but I shall teleport you to the Avalon Heights!
She's not the only one who doesn't understand. Just what in the Hell is the history between these two? Your guess is as good as mine. And believe me, this is one of the most well-defined elements in the plot. There's a character named "Rahne" who is brought up repeatedly in an even vaguer way. Tal has it right. His review spews truth about this DMOD.
Dink didn't kill this guy, he killed himself. It's anybody's guess what the text might be talking about.
If the muddled, poorly-told story were the only problem, I would probably still be telling you this DMOD is awesome. After all, it's kind of funny to see these bizarre exchanges set to serious music. The other downfall of "Wasted Life" is much worse: it's almost unbelievably sloppy, buggy and broken. I can't understand how this game, which is full of impressive bits of scripting that would probably be beyond my abilities, is so riddled with errors that would have been easy to fix. Almost everything that ought to be a one-time event will occur again and again every time you return to a screen. If you aren't careful, it's possible to badly mess up the game in this way. Walls that are opened by some kind of switch will have to re-open every time you return to the screen, making you wait around. I couldn't even have beaten this game without cheating due to some very sloppy scripting. A certain cutscene would never come up for me because a couple of scripts use the same variable name for their local variables as an important global variable. Later, I had to warp past a couple of screens where invisible bits of hardness blocking the way to the next screen failed to disappear after boss fights.
While attempting to make sense of this quit dialog, recall that in 2003, GNU FreeDink didn't exist yet.
Even ignoring the bugs, some design decisions in this mod are really frustrating. The cutscene that would never trigger takes place in a graveyard scene. You can examine all of the graves to get a name and an age. You then have to answer a question at a door: which dead person was the youngest? One of them was just 1 year old, but this isn't the right answer, and you're killed for answering incorrectly. Instead, the way you were supposed to proceed was to examine a certain grave that has no name and then wander around until a cutscene triggers to tell you the name of the baby in that grave. This is poor, misleading puzzle design. It's a slap in the face to the player.
Saving takes some unusual forms here...
Finding the secrets is kind of fun, even if they're just more confusing cutscenes. And you're welcome!
I'll admit that I cheated at the final boss, which constantly bombards you with explosions while frequently spawning other targets and making the actual boss invincible until you destroy them. Unlike some other bosses, I think I probably could have beaten this one eventually it I'd kept at it for long enough, but by that point I was excruciatingly ready for the DMOD to be over.
I was more frustrated by this than any other DMOD so far, because there are glimpses of rarely-seen levels of potential. There are loads of cutscenes, and they're all impressively-staged. They seem almost cinematic, with cool tricks like a sudden white flash. I hate to be so negative as I feel like I've been being with these lately, but I left this one feeling dissatisfied.
