Resurrection: Rune

Norse code…

Resurrection: Rune

Continued…

Human Head’s dedication to detail went further, the developers having gone the extra mile to make Ragnar’s world interesting and cohesive, and to ensure its audience could interact with it in interesting ways. The game’s lovingly crafted environments helped, with locations like a snowbound mountain fortress aided in their impact by the Unreal engine. There’s also real sense of relief upon discovering a new area. Just when you feel you can’t bear being underground anymore, you’re thrown into the icy mountains. Just when these threaten to become too familiar, the story pushes Ragnar to the altogether more urban and industrialised world of the Nibelung dwarves.

Less balletic

Another way of evoking relief in the player, of course, is to starve them of health and then give it to them at just the right time. Rune’s health system is an interesting one. Food and drink restore Ragnar’s health, but given the kind of places he has to explore, decent meals are – in a way reminiscent of Wolfenstein 3D – not always available. Find a lizard of the kind that inhabits almost all of Rune’s regions, and Ragnar will hungrily bite off the creature’s head, restoring some constitution before he tosses the apparently inedible body away. Find a more palatable tankard of mead, and Ragnar will down the drink in one before smashing the container on the ground. No time for manners as Ragnarok approaches, apparently. Sheer rage can also help Ragnar avoid taking damage. He has a bloodlust meter contributed to by the carnage he causes. When it fills, he enters an enraged, state during which enemies can only shorten the rage, rather than do any harm.

Rune slots in neatly with other accomplished third-person action games of its era, like similarly cult titles Oni and Urban Chaos. Comparing the three, Rune is far less balletic than those games, more overtly bloodthirsty and primal. Could it be to do with the fact that it is the only one of the games with a male protagonist? More likely, it’s connected to the kind of world in which the game is set. Rune remains compelling ten years on not only because it taps into a fascinating and rich vein of mythology that games rarely cover, but because it weaves that mythology, through crude but effective combat, into a varied and exciting world.

Wading through his bleak land on the verge of its apocalypse, Ragnar is the hero of a saga that is leant enormous momentum and gravitas by the fact that he’s wrapped up in a chain of events, with a cast of godly characters, with which we’re already somewhat familiar. What makes Rune really exciting, of course, is that we can participate. Looking back a decade on proves that a lot more can still be done with mythology in games, and that the third-person action genre remains an exciting and involving way to let us participate in these bloody, mesmerising tales.

Things have been fairly quiet for Human Head Studios since their first game was released. Halls of Valhalla, a multiplayer expansion, emerged, followed by an instalment of the Blair Witch Project game series. In 2006, they completed infamous vapourware game Prey, but since then they’ve kept their heads very much below the parapet. Indeed, the developer suffered something of a setback when their Madison, Wisconsin headquarters were damaged by a fire in 2007.

Just as runestones are symbols of Odin’s power on Earth, Rune and Prey are reminders of Human Head’s substantial development talent – in the latter case their ability to finish what others could not and to salvage a project feared dead; in the former, to create a distinctive a memorable Norse-themed game that remains one of the best of its type and era.

Intriguingly, Human Head appear to be recruiting from their refurbished base, so with any luck we’ll see another release from them before too long. While my dreams of Rune 2 don’t seem likely to be fulfilled, I think that Rune itself is reason enough to feel confident that whatever Human Head produce, it’ll be worth the wait. Whatever happens, the thrill of the clash of cold steel, Viking or otherwise, doesn’t seem likely to go out of fashion just yet.

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