Introduction
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a horror adventure game developed by Silicon Knights and published by Nintendo in 2002. It is best known for having popularized the "sanity meter" game mechanic that has since become troublingly ubiquitous in horror games. It wasn't a great commercial success, but it was a critical one, and has since earned its place in the classic video game canon.
The story starts in a Rhode Island mansion in the year 2000, where college student Alexandra Roivas is investigating the mysterious death of her grandfather. However, the secrets she uncovers about the events behind his demise take us on a journey across the globe, jumping back and forth amidst two-thousand years of human history, behind the scenes of which ancient evils have been working.
This Let's Play will be undertaken in two different manners. First will be a subtitled run: The audio component of this game is an integral part of the experience, with sound design and music adding enormously to the atmosphere of horror. So in order to preserve that atmosphere somewhat (I'll still be jackassing around a little in the subtitles but not too much), I figured an appropriate approach to this tale of terror would be to stick with subtitles. However, it's easier to say more in a shorter amount of time when I'm actually speaking aloud, and I myself personally enjoy audio-commentary LPs that can double as podcasts; so after I'm done with the subtitled run, I'll be doing voice commentary over the same footage alongside a friend new to the material, in order to cover more ground and in a slightly more whimsical and (hopefully) verbose fashion than is possible for me with subtitles.
In this run-through, I will be aligning Pious with Xel'lotath in order to better show off the sanity effects that are this game's bread and butter. The core gameplay doesn't change enough depending on which Ancient you align Pious with for me to bother running through the full game all three times, but I will include footage of the notable differences (like the Guardian boss fight), as well as the unique cutscenes from the other Ancient runs.
Videos
| Prologue: "A Death in the Family" + Chapter 1: "The Chosen One" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| Chapter 2: "The Binding of the Corpse God" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| Chapter 3: "Suspicions of Conspiracy" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| Chapter 4: "The Gift of Forever" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| Chapter 5: "The Lurking Horror" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| Chapter 6: "A Journey Into Darkness" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| Chapter 7: "Heresy!" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| Chapter 8: "The Forbidden City" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| Chapter 9: "The War To End All Wars" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| Chapter 10: "A Legacy of Darkness" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| Chapter 11: "Ashes to Ashes" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| Chapter 12: "Gateway to Destiny" | Text | Cut | Uncut |
| New Game+: Ulyaoth | Text | Voice | |
| New Game+: Chattur'gha | Text | Voice | |
| Epilogue | Text | Voice |
(The LP is now officially complete, but keep an eye on my YouTube channel in the coming months for a complete sanity effects compilation!)