It’s the year 2000, the millennium bug hasn’t brought down western civilization, and Sony just released the best-selling console of all time, the Playstation 2. Previous generation, I was all aboard the Sony console hype train (even if my little teenage mind didn’t understand the meaning of those David Lynch PS2 ads), and ready to take on any selection of mediocre launch titles that would be available for it.
Another thing I couldn’t wrap my still-forming teenage mind around was why “RPGs” were so different on consoles than they were on PC. I was fascinated by the great D&D-inspired PC adventures of Fallout, Baldur’s Gate and Daggerfall, and never understood why consoles were seemingly unable to offer similar extended adventures, or why ‘RPG’ on Sony consoles Final Fantasy, Vagrant Story, Chrono meant Cross and other games that seemed so strange to how I understood the genre. It was my only problem with being a console gamer in this era.
But that all changed with the launch of the PS2 in 2000 and the release of an unheard of console launch title called Summoner.
Developed by Volition, Summoner was unlike anything that had come to consoles before. It was an RPG in the western tradition, set on a vast medieval fantasy continent that you explored through an overworld map, just like the classic Bioware and Black Isle RPGs (and just like in those games, you could be ambushed in random encounters). as you cross the continent). The game also featured an enchanting soundtrack – evoking a fantasy world soundscape through a mix of classic instruments such as distinctly electronic sounds such as synths and overlapping choral elements.
Just listen to the tune of the overworld map (uploaded along with the rest of the soundtrack by the original composer. The subtle harpsichord, the dreamy chants – it all invites adventure in that slightly compressed hypnotic way that only soundtracks from this time could.
The story of Summoner was a classic rags-to-riches manifesto-fate, in which he follows commoner farmer Joseph as he flees his home village after accidentally summoning a demon to try and save him from invading armies. Along with three other companions – each with their well-crafted backstories, grudges and side missions – he sets out into the world to understand his powers and use them to save his land of Medeva from an invasion by the neighboring kingdom of Orenia.
Joseph – whose high cheekbones and curtain hair look like a particularly provincial twist on a late 90s boy band member – is a summoner and during the game he buys rings that allow him to summon various demonic creatures to the rescue. During battles, you could freely switch between controlling the various party members (including your demon), while the others continued to auto-fight. The chain-based combat, where you had to time each attack perfectly when an icon appeared above your head, was an elegant console-friendly alternative to the more complex combat of cRPGs. In fact, the first Witcher game in 2007 used a similar combat system.
It was Summoner’s scale that felt unprecedented on consoles. The world stretching across two adjacent kingdoms and cities felt huge – the capital Lenele was a bustling center of sidequests and traders, while the island of Iona was a tropical island with an ancient monastery towering over the sea. Each major new area would be introduced with a cutscene where a narrator introduced the history of the area, while beautiful hand-drawn sketches of it appeared on the screen.
Even the random encounters, which essentially took place in small arenas, were great at evoking a sense of scale; in the wooded one you could see the landscape undulate in the distance before mixing with skybox trees in the foreground that then mixed with another layer of skybox trees in the background. Of course, Summoner’s scale often clashed with the PS2’s limited technical resources, and graphically it wasn’t much to look at, but several of Volition’s clever tricks really made it feel like a world with a huge, complex history that you can imagine. wrote only a small part of it.
Oddly enough, the game itself probably isn’t as famous as a certain “Summoner Geeks,” an early viral video created by Volition (using audio from a skit by a comedy troupe called the Dead Alewives) that featured several of the studio’s characters, including Joseph, in a silly D&D session. Released in 2000, it may well be one of the first viral video game videos ever made (don’t quote me on that).
Summoner wasn’t your typical RPG by any means, but it touched on many of the tones that were missing from consoles up until that point. It may very well have been the first to transfer some of that cRPG-esque magic to a console series that until then was defined by its strong cultural ties to Japan and JRPGs.
It was a bold move by Volition and publisher THQ to try and conquer this new frontier, and they clearly did it well, as a few years later came a sequel to PS2 and GameCube (which I never got around to watching myself). to play). Morrowind in 2002 for Xbox was probably the first real ‘landmark’ PC RPG to come to consoles, showing that this kind of game very much had a place on a gamepad and big screen, but it was the farmer and his moody group of followers. who showed the way.
0 Comments