Around twenty-two years ago, the most extraordinary adventure game by Climax and Sega came out on the Sega Saturn. Behind a boxart adorned with terrible CG and released to quiet fanfare, is the absolutely fascinating
Dark Savior.
I'm using words like "extraordinary" and "fascinating" in their literal sense. The game must be studied, discussed, and dissected.
I'm not stating the game is one of the greatest ever made; there are certainly flaws though I personally hold it in very high regard . Nonetheless, there simply isn't anything like it out there, even decades since its release.
The Game
Dark Savior is an isometric adventure game released for the Sega Saturn back in 1996 (USA and Japan) / 1997 (Europe), and was never released on any system ever again.
Some have described Dark Savior as a spiritual successor to Climax's seminal
Landstalker on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, but other than some superficial similarities, the games are distinctly different.
What most adventure games do:
Action RPG or JRPG or WRPG with respective real-time or strategic combat system.
What Dark Saviour does:
The game is a 3D platforming adventure game, combining detailed sprites and colourful polygons into a luscious isometric world.
When combat is triggered, the game inexplicably turns into a barebones Street-Fighter styled brawler with the appropriate conventions (two/three rounds, health bars, special attack bar, low/high attacks, etc) COMBINED with a Pokemon-style capture system. The combat has limited depth, but is fun.
What most adventure games do:
Encourage you to explore the world, either as a plucky hero or as a band of champions.
What Dark Saviour does:
The game takes place on a single island – an ancient outpost covered in colourful ruins and castles, which of all been repurposed by an alliance of nations into an enormous prison.
You play a horrible character, surrounded by horrible characters. You are Garian, a humourless bounty hunter allied to the corrupt regime that maintains the prison. In the opening chapters, Garian gets drunk and nearly kills a small child, until a strange surreal phenomenon seemingly disrupts this.
The side characters are a range of killers, petty criminals and despots.
Jailer's Island contains towns for low-level offenders, fortified cells and blocks for the medium-level criminals, and bespoke containment facilities for political prisoners or high-value captives.
The politics of the region are highly charged. The administration engages in torture, murder, and has facilities which use the prisoners for unethical, agonising experiments. The prisoners attempt to organise some resistance, but as villains themselves, they are unable to do so effectively.
The range of environments is superb. From prison facilities to the Warden's mansion, hidden tombs to golden palaces, the interconnected island offers brilliant scope for exploration.
The Story/Stories
What most adventure games do:
One story, or a story which branches multiple-choice options, that lead to good or bad endings.
What Dark Saviour does:
The story never ends.
There are at least five distinct parallel timelines, happening both concurrently and in succession. Within each parallel, minor and major splinters can take the story in different directions – Sega Saturn Magazine (Issue 13) cited that there were at least a 100 possible story permutations and ending variants - but as we will cover later on - the game itself never technically ends.
Just to give you the scale of difference, here is one scenario:
The protagonist spends the game chasing a murderous monster known as Bilan across Jailer's Island. Throughout the pursuit, we learn from ruins and murals that this incarnation of Bilan is one of many that have appeared throughout history, and the creature's appearances always align to a particular comet that passes the planet every five centuries, suggesting a possible extraterrestrial connection. The monster's strength and ferocity grows exponentially. With support from the island's administration, the protagonist slays Bilan before the monster enters a mass breeding cycle, from which it would spread copies across the world.
Play the game again. Here is another possible scenario:
The protagonist kills a weakened Bilan at the start of the game, and spends the story carrying out a secret investigation into the administration of Jailer's Island. He infiltrates the Warden's Mansion, secret laboratories, torture facilities and mining complex to discover the prison is using slave labour to excavate alien substances sealed beneath the island – referred to as Bilanium. This mutagen is being used in unethical experiments to transform prisoners into soldiers. The protagonist allies himself with a prisoner resistance movement to topple the Warden's mad schemes.
Play the game again. Here is another possible scenario:
The protagonist arrives at Jailer's Island during a crisis. Bilan is on the loose, and foreign spies have allied themselves with the prisoner resistance movement to destabilise the administration. Events get out of hand when the rebels gain access to the carbon-freeze archive in the execution facility – from where they are able to reanimate the corpses of the worst, most violent criminals to have ever lived. The protagonist and the Warden must put an end to the madness.
Play the game again. Here is another possible scenario:
The parallel events, all happening both concurrently and in succession, are eroding the barriers between realities. Two parallel universes become linked at Jailer's Island, and the connection is causing a cataclysm that is shaking the two planets apart. The protagonist must hunt down and destroy his own parallel universe counterpart – who is a convicted murderer - in order to ensure that his reality remains dominant and survives, at the expense of the denizens of the parallel world.
I could list a lot more too. Some stories broach life after death, while others deal with romance, families and secret lineages.
Each scenario contains overlapping environments visited in different contexts, and unique environments that are only visited in that story permutation.
This "parallel system" is a phenomenal achievement. Knowing that upon completion, another story, and another story, and another story await you, is an incredible enticement to return to the game.
Your allies will die, only to be your allies, enemies or utterly ambivalent next time round.
I can't think of a game where I have truly known such a range of characters in such a range of scenarios, with so many potential endgames.
Parallel Six
What most adventure games do:
The player plays the game.
What Dark Saviour does:
The game plays the player
"LETS. MEET. IN. OUR. DREAMS."
There is a very mysterious, subversive, manipulative aspect to Dark Savior, which only really makes sense if you take all the above into consideration. We are going to enter deep spoiler territory here.
"It appeared as if the battle would continue for eternity"
I've told you about the world of Dark Savior, of its colourful realms and interesting characters, of its incredibly varied interactions and plot developments. Of the freedom our character has to dabble in the fascinating world of Jailer's Island.
"Do you think Garian is still tormented over the incident?"
But, in a sense, none of it is true. The game plays the player.
When a story is completed, there is no "game over". The protagonist awakens in his bunk on the Prisoner Transport, his memories of his previous adventure fading away into nothing. This is how the game starts, and ends, and starts, and ends, forever.
Throughout the stories, there are very subtle hints that the events we think are happening aren't real. There are careful, repeated references to the worlds of dreams, and of being trapped in an unseen way. Prisoners are tormented by nightmares, and cite fragmented memories from other parallel adventures.
"DID... YOU... EVER... THINK... I... MIGHT... HAVE... A... MIND... I... LOVE... I... LOVE..."
We learn that Jailer's Island has one punishment for the most severe of crimes – Carbon Freeze – in which prisoners are frozen as living corpses, forced into a prison of their own minds, forever.
"Bounty Hunter! You are being arrested for murder!"
Do you recall what I wrote at the top of this piece, about our character:
If you play enough story scenarios, enough clues become apparent to reveal what is truly going on. The protagonist
did kill the child at the start of the game. He was sentenced to Carbon Freeze, where he is forced to live out every imagined outcome that could have happened had he not killed the child.
"You neglected your duty and killed an innocent child."
He is forced to endure every Jailer's Island scenario that his own mind can conjure. Sometimes, there are the briefest of clues to this, his own mind recalling the true horror of where he is.
"They say that once you are frozen in carbon, you'll have endless nightmares… I wonder if that's true."
He has been a prisoner for a very, very long time. This is why the scenarios are so wild, from aliens, ancient conspiracies, world domination, magical weapons, political conspiracies , parallel universes, and more – the protagonist has been trapped for so long that the events he is imagining on the island have become impossibly surreal – to the point where scenarios occasionally bleed into each other.
"Torment yourself over the life you've wasted and regret it until your soul burns to ashes."
None of this is made explicit – there is no big reveal at any point – just a very slow, very gradual series of small revelations that a build a picture of the futility of Dark Savior.
"IF... ONLY... I... CAN... LIVE... AGAIN... I'M... SUFFERING... HELP... ME..."
When you realise this, you never get to play the game again, as for every subsequent adventure, you now realise that it is the game that is playing you.
Every time you complete a playthrough, Garian wakes up in his bed, for his next round of self-conceived purgatory.
None of the scenario conclusions are happy, there is always loss or sacrifice. They are all, in that sense, nightmares.
In Conclusion
I revere Dark Saviour. I love the world, the graphics, the music, the unique isometric style and the one-of-a-kind battle and capture system. I adore its magnificent range of stories and surprises. I like the controls and the challenge (though I appreciate these elements are divisive for some). I am still, as ever, in awe of how the game manipulated me as a gamer.
Dark Savior was a Sega Saturn exclusive, and like so many experimental and ambitious titles that graced that system, it was never released anywhere, ever again. There was no sequel, no ports, no spiritual successors, and it didn't inspire similar games or make any blip on the industry at all. It received around 80% - 90% in reviews, and having re-read some of the reviews from the era, I don't see much acknowledgement of the game's extraordinary attempt to contribute to the medium.
It almost certainly sold appallingly too.
But I want you to know that it exists, as there is nothing else out there like it.
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