When it comes to cult classics of the Xbox 360 era, there’s no game more cult than Starbreeze’s brilliantly underrated 2007 shooter The Darkness. Based on the Image Comics story of the same name, although it debuted in Witchblade, the thoroughly unique first-person shooter is a gorgeous chaotic game that came just after the unforgettable Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.
While it’s easy to revel in the pandemonium of The Darkness’ slick combat and unique aesthetic, there’s one scene that has always fascinated me. Early on in the game, you as protagonist Jackie Estacado sit on the sofa with your girlfriend Jenny in a moment of tenderness. The TV is on sitting five feet away on top of a cardboard box in a sparse apartment playing To Kill A Mockingbird.
As you sit and watch, you quickly realise that you’re still in control and the movie is still playing. Jenny falls asleep and the entire film, all two-hours-and-nine-minutes of it. You can look around, peak at Jenny snoozing on your arm, watch the film, or leave. Watching the entire film even earns you an achievement, but why was this added at all?
“That was a pet project almost by [art director] Jens Matthies,” lead designer Jens Andersson told us. “He and I collaborated on to make it happen. Basically, he realised this public domain archive of stuff, and he’s very good at asking questions like: ‘why can’t we do this?’ Until no one… he just wears people down, but I love that.”
“It was a very fun and tedious feature in many ways.”
The Darkness designer Jens Andersson
Andersson expained that they were looking for ways to “make the world feel alive”. The Darkness’ hook is tied to the supernatural occurring alongside the extremely natural. The people have TVs, the people watch TV, the people fall asleep to TV. “We were’t going to produce all this hours and hours of content of video on our own, so what’s out there?”
The Darkness released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. While the latter two platforms could deal with quite large install sizes, most Xbox 360 titles were shipped on a single dual-layer DVD. This meant that developers had a maximum size of just 8.5GB to work with, and Starbreeze managed to include not just To Kill A Mockingbird, but also The Man with the Golden Arm, a full episode of Flash Gordon, PopEye shorts and more.
“It was a question of how much can we get onto the disc through compression and all that sort of stuff, and then script it,” Andersson said. “It was a very fun and tedious feature in many ways, and all the work with legal and all that stuff made it extra hard. But at the same time we felt it was such a unique flair, and you know you’re here talking about it 20 years later.”
In 2007, this was a mind-blowing addition. Just the concept of a feature-length movie existing alongside a game was jaw-dropping. Now, with games taking up install sizes of over 200GB (GTA 6, we’re talking about you), developers can just drop a full uncompressed movie into a game without issue. However, as Andersson explains, the movie’s inclusion was more than just a show-off moment for Starbreeze.
“I think the brilliant part of especially that scene is how it uses that feature to build something. This birthday scene where you sit down on the couch with Jenny and watch this movie,” Andersson explained. “It’s totally up to the player, and we make it hard for the player to leave. You need to push Jenny off and leave, and you have a reason to stay because there’s this movie going on.”
Andersson continued: “We knew it was special. We didn’t know how special it would be when we released the game, but it was a very key moment and we realised. We talked a lot during development of The Darkness of how we build a relationship between Jackie and Jenny, or more importantlythe player and Jenny. Because the story is all about her being murdered and the vengeance that comes after that. So it’s very important for the player to care that this happens and align the player with the protagonist. So you don’t have so many moments in video games to do that?”
Of course, as video games have advanced and budgets have increased, there’s a lot more you can do with companions in games. For example, Andersson also worked on Indiana Jones and The Great Circle which features a companion called Gina. This companion not only exists throughout the story, but through missions as well, helping you complete puzzles and further the story. But in 2007, this really wasn’t commonplace.
“Today, we can do more with companions but that wasn’t on the map for us to do a companion AI. That would’ve been way over-scoped and we over-scoped way too much anyway on that game. It turned out really well, I’m really happy about that one.”
