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Oh, the trials and tribulations of being a teenager.
The Obscure series consisted of a pair of games created by French developer Hydravision Entertainment.
(That game was known as Obscure: The Aftermath when it arrived in North America in 2008.)
Obscure was Hydravision’s first video game.
So it seemed like doing a teen slasher movie-style video game was a good idea."
Not surprisingly, Obscure takes liberal inspiration from the horror movies it emulates.
The first game follows five students from Leafmore High, each one conforming to a horror archetype.
Having said that, intentionally bad dialogue is still bad dialogue.
Combat is a simple matter of auto-aiming and pressing a button to attack, although with a slight twist.
It’s creepy hearing a monster growling off-screen and watching the mould spreading closer.
“From the beginning we thought it would be cool to let players live this experience.
There was also a sort of joke hidden in the mechanic.
You used to have games with lives-systems, usually depicted as hearts in the corner of the screen.
When designing Obscure, we liked the idea that a life is actually… a life.”
Fade to darkness
Obscure sold well enough to merit a sequel.
History repeats itself and a new batch of horrors starts turning the student body into students' bodies.
Obscure 2 is much the same affair as its predecessor, although some elements were pared back.
The biggest change was the removal of the permadeath feature, resulting in a much more fixed narrative.
“We couldn’t go into as much depth to explore the relationships between the characters.
What the encounters lack in complexity, however, they make up for in grotesquery.
The Obscure series failed to make the leap to the next generation of consoles.
But nowadays both Obscure games largely live up to their names.
It’s hard to call them forgotten masterpieces.
If that sounds like you, consider playing Obscure your homework.
