Oh lordy I wonder how much that mess cost to produce? Someones been watching too much pre launch Halo vids.

It doesn't taste ha ha funny. Just the other kind.

I thought it was pretty entertaining. The only awkward part was DD introducing it like it was a real video, but I thought the video itself was pretty awesome.

I get a vague sense of anti-Too Human sentiment from Kotaku. Maybe I'm just imagining things.

"It's a gloriously awkward miss, really"
This accurately describes Too Human itself and in all likelyhood will appear on the back of the retail box.

The game looks better than before, so that's good.

What...what...what did I just watch? Sauerkraut?

Seriously though, that was interesting. I mean, the part about Too Human. Nice idea. Too bad that, judging by the delays just on the 360, it's Xbox's own HAZE.

oohhhh boy..... canadian humor.....

@Hipple2: I get that feeling, too. I think it's anti-Dyack because of the massive E3 meltdown. Also, (I think) people here happen to favor Epic/Rein over SK/Dyack.

I just hope Too Human succeeds where Mass Effect fails. And I loved Mass Effect.

Sorry, attention span got the best of me.

looks like a cross of Fable, WoW, and Mass Effect

Link is for the Goblin Man of "Normandy", not Norway. So there's another in France? Or on Shephard's ship?

weiiiiiirrrrrrdddd mocumentary.

slightly funny. but no pay off. so it wasn't nearly as funny as it could have been.

they need to work on that dry comedy a bit more. hire wes anderson. or bill murray.

Just watched the whole thing. I don't think it was meant to be a joke at all. It felt similar in tone to the Halo 3 ads with the war veterans. They are just putting the game into a flesh and blood context. I like this kind of marketing, personally.

oh! but the game looks hot. kudos.

that "documentary" was about as big a letdown as the ending to clover field, on the positive side it was 84min shorter.

@Hipple2: Me too. I guess hating on Dyack has been popular for a while and we all know how it's easy to pander to popular opinion (if everyone wants to hear something, why not tell them it?). Nonetheless, it's a little disturbing how this game has been already written off. I mean, I've seen all the videos too, and though I'm dissapointed, there have been plenty of games that looked bad and turned out to be quite good. Sometimes the videos and even playing a section of the alpha/beta still don't give an accurate impression of the quality of a game.

Lost Odyssey seemed pretty mediocre to me. I played some of that one before it came out and frankly, little snippets of gameplay just don't capture any of what's so compelling about that game. I guess you'd really just need to sit down and play a few hours to "get it." Had a similar experience with Condemned 2: I didn't think it looks much good. Sort of a nother Jericho. Turns out I love Condemned 2 and that love is born from equal parts of the story and the melee combat.

@Hipple2: I don't think it's just Kotaku. At a certain point the hype turns into anti-hype. Instead of creating excitement for something it sets a bar to judge it by. Too human is similar to duke nukem: forever. It's been so long that it's previous hype is working against it. Even if it's a "good" FPS it won't sell as much as any other merely "good" FPS. It has to be amazing.

PS: At this point no game 3d realms could make would be able to over come Duke Nukem's anti-hype. It would literally have to be the best game ever made to overcome it's anti-hype.

I don't see what was so bad about it

I thought it was pretty well-done and was an interesting video to watch. Too Human looks like its going to be a lot of fun too.

@Hipple2:

I get the same feeling

@Modus_Operandi:
And how would you know that from watching videos of the game and not actually playing it?

I actually thought that was pretty cool. It kinda reminded me of the many variations of the commercials about master chief.

Man, has Kotaku ever said a positive thing about Too Human? OK, you guys hate the game, and will spin any sort of positive about the game into a hate-filled flame-bait negative fest. Weak

Perhaps I'm an odd one, but I loved the Diary. Thought it was incredibly compelling. I don't think it was meant to be 'Har-har' funny, but thought it definately came across as beleivable to the point that it helps communicate the relative intrique of Too Humans story very well.

Really can't see Too Human turning out well with the huge mess Silicon Knights has gotten into... Though you never know...

Maybe all this will become clear when you play it? You know mebe you throw a goblin into a pond or sumthing?

Either way i'm in lurv with this game

@kingmanic: Yeah but its not like Too Human actually has been in development since 1999. It's merely been scrapped several times because of the limited hardware of previous generations.

@Hipple2: I have rather high hopes for this game.
Silicon Knights created one of my favorite games of all time "Eternal Darkness".
However there is part of me that was getting sick of the delays, and the bad impressions Too Human made on a lot of people at E3 a few years back had me worried.
At this point I hope the game comes out this year.

Hey guys... didn't you watch to the entire thing? That documentary is something Dyack came accross, and contacted the director/creator of it, to show what the team used as inspiration.

He says in the video they asked for permission to show it... it has nothing to do with Too Human.

@Hipple2: I agree, the guy introducing it should have just said, "We made some cool promotional videos to hype our new game, check it out!"

Taken like that I thought it was pretty cool. I have also seen some hate around here for it, but from the gameplay stuff I saw, it looked more like something I would want to play. I like the idea of 'kinetic' skill based third person combat in an rpg, if it's not dynasty warriors like, I will purchase.

Geomorphologist without borders! That's priceless!

If there's anything culturally obscure about the first part of this fake documentary ("mockumentary" implies it's supposed to be funny, and I don't think that this is, at all) it's that it taps into a rich history of the National Film Board of Canada (the "Norweigian Film Comission" logo is almost a carbon-copy of the NFB logo).

The films are clearly trying to set a tone and build a universe around the game which I thought worked very well, and it was nice to see someone attempting earnest sentiment instead of the almost-cliche wry-irony-worldview that's become so popular in pre-marketing.

Also, don't forget that this is clearly part one of a three part film.

This is from someone with absolutely no interest (or knowledge) about the game, but I enjoyed the piece a lot.

Anyone else here getting tired of Cyclical history popping up in sci fi stories? its getting to be as common as aliens.

I think this game actually looks pretty good. Considering SK also made Eternal Darkness and Twin Snakes, this should turn out to be a fun game.

ps: sweet, I have that same Viewtiful Joe bobblehead.

@kingmanic:
"PS: At this point no game 3d realms could make would be able to over come Duke Nukem's anti-hype. It would literally have to be the best game ever made to overcome it's anti-hype."
isnt then duke nukem forever the rehyping? XD

i agree with you completely too.the vid sucked when the documentary started >< ill be watching out for too human.

Once again, leave it to Kotaku to go against the grain and be the ones to finally call SK out for th- Hey wait

This wasn't supposed to be funny, just an 'altered reality', like some 1970's 'In Search Of'. If they were going for funny... it would look more like the "Look Around You" videos.

The documentary is viral. It is totally obvious if you look how their website is constructed.

Don't be fooled that this documentary was around before Too Human, it wasn't.

It's a shame that they used this as part of a video diary. I believe it could have been a part in a series of a very effective viral ad campaign. Finishing with the reveal of the body Baldur encased in ice.

My so much Hateraide on this game?

@Grey_Fox: Im relying on nothing but my nearly 2 decades of gaming and intuition to feel that this game is going to fail. I know peopole get a hard on for SK because they worked for Nintendo much like Rare back in the day and they made Eternal Darkness but theats the prob. They have no track record making awesome games. Eternal Darkness was ok. Dyack keeps equating and drawing comparisons between this game and some big franchises and hits that are truly epic and have succeeded. There in lies the problem. This game has to be Epic right from the start. It has to be the next big thing for it not to fail. A new IP is bad enough without that hanging over its head.
This game is not the next big thing. The vids show that.

@Tenth: Oh it all makes sense now... Our bad!

...what

No really, I'm so lost D:

They are pulling the exact same marketing strategy that halo did. It's not all that strange considering they have the same publisher and thus probably share the same marketing team. I don't really find it all that bizarre - atleast not more so then the halo 3 videos were.

It's an Errol Morris style documentary.
And it's just the first of three parts.

Dismissing this as a not-funny mockumentary is idiotic, it's not supposed to be Spinal Tap.

Wait. Wait.

So this anticipated game is. . . just grinding for items?

I thought we were going to see this Goblin Man of Norway. :/ It would be really cool if that documentary was real, it had me going until I realized it was overdone for a documentary...

I'm glad there are some people here who agree with me. I don't really mind if individuals write off the game before they play it, but every Kotaku post about Silicon Knights or Too Human seems to have some backhanded compliment or snarky comment to go along with it. I can understand the anti-hype after so many years of build-up, but I'm still looking forward to the game. I hope the people who already hate it will at least reconsider when it comes out. I'd be willing to bet they'll be surprised at the quality (but I haven't played it either).

Having said that, I think the mockumentary thing at the end isn't supposed to be laugh-out-loud funny, it's supposed to be slightly amusing, and the main point is to set up the viral marketing for the game a la Halo 3. Here's the website: [www.norwegianfilmcommittee.org]

@Tenth: yeah no I totally get what your saying! I felt the same way about the blair witch project, I mean at first I thought "oh man this is the lamest documentary ever", but then I found out that they like found these tapes in the woods, and these kids were really missing. I can not believe people stopped looking for them.
[campfirenyc.com]

@Modus_Operandi: No it doesn't have to be the next big thing. A game's value and success should be judged on the game's terms and not the terms set for it by the developer. If I was developing echochrome, for example, and said "this is the greatest game ever made and will change the face of gaming for all time," would I have doomed echochrome to failure? No, of course not. I may sound like an idiot, but if a game is fun, it's fun.

Frankly, I'm not even sure how well-marketed Too Human is, or will be or whether said marketing will be quoting Dyack.

More to the point, you and I know Dyack and SK and all that, but does the average gamer? Do they know about the infamous flameout or how much Dyack is hyping this game? I doubt it. Part of the problem with Daikatana was that it ran such a massive and intense ad campaign so that the game turned out to be a let down not just to the gamers that were into the whole "industry" side of things, but to everyone who saw the ads; it was turned into a wide-spread, massive failure.

@kingmanic:

It's too bad the requirement for that seems to be delays, and not game quality. I know the majority of you disagree with me, but after Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect, two MAJOR letdowns for me, I could care less about delays and promises if the game is at least fun or interesting to play.

@PearceShea: I know the game doesnt have to be the next big thing. I didnt mean to insinuate that was the reason it would fail. What I meant is that the expectations that Dyack has heaped on this game for out strip what it can do. Now I know that this happens often and in a way every game does this, but even Dyack realizes how public perception can be swayed by this talk because he has been everywhere trying to make up for E3 and the EGM preview. I dont think you should sell gamers and the masses short. The internet is a big place and word of mouth spreads. Sometimes its good and sometimes its bad.

Too Human still looks like a good game to me, and I hope they can iron out the early faults that plagued the game when it was first tried out. Also, I'm not sure if that documentary is real or not, but I want to see the rest of it.

I see it as viral marketing. How is it an attempt a humour? They're not trying to be funny, it's MARKETING.

It's also part one of many.

@WatershipDown:

Exactly- I don't see what was supposed to be funny about it.

Hahaha, they cut off the german dude in the middle of a sentence, and the subtitles say something different from what he actually says. Fun.

I've got to say, the pitch that this is a joke, is insulting to the team and the project. I'm interested in playing this, and there's no reason it can't be as interesting and epic as halo, where humans are actually ancient aliens that made artificial planets that can destroy all life in the universe, or star wars where a long time ago in a galaxy far far away somebody was friends with a huge teddy bear that made gurgling noises all the time, or final fantasy where mongoose beaver wax monotone plaque buildup fart.

Don't be a dick. It's one thing if the game sucks, or if something awkard and obnoxious was happening. But a sincere attempt to make a fictious documentary hinting at an ancient cycle of technology and history is fun and intriguing, and at *least* as worthy as any of the other threadbare premises that underpin some of the greatest games and scifi epics.

In a day when people scramble all over themselves to get 'spoiler alert' put everywhere, so that they don't have an experience ruined for them, why is it somehow ok to poison the well with backhanded comments so that people watch something with the wrong expectation and get no enjoyment out of it? If you'd just kept your half-assed opinion to yourself, I'd have probably watched it and had the desired reaction of being excited and interested. Instead, I'm sitting there waiting for it to go off the rails and hear yakkity sax playing in the background--which never happens.

It infuriates me that something like this gets shit on while the mindless, halfassed dead or alive/final fantasy mashup piece gets fellated by the softest mouths for page after page. Either appreciate artist's hard work on the basis of the fact that it *is* hard work, or develop a modicum of connoisseurship such that you can tell the difference between someone poorly posing dolls in a immitation of a vacuous tableaux utterly devoid of meaning or even exceptional execution, and work which, even if it misses the mark, is executed well.

Humanity is so doomed, it's beyond belief.

I've anti-SK. They've yet to put out a decent game and Denis Dyack appears to be a giant douche every time I see him speak.