What's the thing called where articles have big quotes from the article even though your probably already reading the article anyway? Its totally dumb, i want jpegs of ninja swordsmen with guns.

But anyway enjoyable read.

Huh. How about that. I didn't even know Digital Extremes was based in London, Ontario. That's like maybe an hour away from where I live.

Dark Sector 2004 looks way more interesting than what Dark Sector actually became, though this is my first time seeing the 2004 tech-demo. I wonder how I would've felt in 2004 about Dark Sector 2004. The shots from behind the character "feel" a lot like Dead Space, too.

Great article, Patrick! I think I'll give Warframe a go when it goes into open beta. The Quicklook had me at least intrigued, and this article makes me want to give it a shot.

2008's Dark Sector was... well it wasn't great of course, but there was some heart there. Well, it was a struggling, dying heart but it was beating! Slowly... The game was trying something, and the world of the game gave me a little inkling toward Deus Ex's world so I was at least into it for that. But Warframe's world is something I can really get behind. I just want to see if the game is any good first.

I was one of those people saying wtf? when I saw Dark Sector as an actual game. I wondered why they made such an intense change in art direction and setting from the tech demo and it turns out same reason any awesome project gets shelved; asshole publishers. I really hope the industry continues to evolve in such a way that developers get to decide what their games are, not marketing execs. Oh man if I could be as excited for games now as I was in the 90s, that would be nice.

@andmm said:

@patrickklepek The icon for Warframe is the same from Dark Sector :D

It's a lotus flower. Lotus is one of the main characters in Warframe.

@kaowas: It's actually been in open beta this past weekend but unfortunately it ends tonight.

I fucking love Warframe, I've put probably over 20 hours into it and didn't get tired at all of the combat. There's something about the feel that they've gotten so right that makes it a joy to play. Gliding on your knees while spewing electricity at a room full of dudes or wall running up past a dude before slicing him in half from behind. The game just plays great, you can't go wrong with it really, especially for free.

So many thoughts fighting for attention at the same time. Digital Extremes is related to Solar Winds? Suddenly my respect for them has skyrocketed. The Civil War? Come on, Sony, the Civil War? How would any of the mechanics from that trailer have made even the faintest hint of sense if it was set before the automatic rifle was even invented, much less powered stealth armour and robot enemies? And yeah, I'm gonna back up the sentiment that the suits who were insulting the concept and trying to steal its tricks in the same breath were scumbags.

Hey Patrick, the games industry isn't "irrationally secretive" but "rationally secretive." Don't be willfully obtuse.

I've loved every second that I've spent in Warframe. It definitely feels like a beta that they are continuing to add onto, but the basic blueprint is there...and I love it. They are definitely doing the F2P model correctly as well, since you can obtain all of the general gameplay necessities through in-game currency and crafting. There is plenty of reason to re-run different areas. My sole issue is that the areas you go to begin to feel a bit repetitive, and they are not necessarily very kind when it comes to death in the game. At the same time, death truly DOES feel like it is your fault for not being careful, and the punishment for it definitely drives that home even deeper.

This article is a great look at some history, and it's nice to see these guys finally getting to make the game that they fucking wanted to make instead of some corporate shill bullshit. I love the art aesthetic of the game.

It's not mentioned here, but I'd also love to know a bit of the story behind the PC port behind the game.

The PC port is (in)famously a wreck. Basically, when displayed at widescreen resolutions it stretches vertically. That is to say, it's not like a 4:3 image stretched to widescreen, where everything is wider than it should be; rather it's so screwed up that running in widescreen actually makes things taller/thinner than they should be.

It was ported by some unnamed Russian developer (later found to be some arm of Noviy Disk), and published in the US by Aspyr - previously most well known for Mac ports of games.

There was ZERO post-release support for the port. Aspyr's support was entirely clueless and refused to acknowledge that the problem existed at first. Later they had a canned response of being in contact with the developer about the issue, but of course nothing ever materialized.

I would love to know what Digital Extremes thinks about their IP being handled in this manner. Regardless of what people thought about the gameplay itself, it certainly couldn't have done much to help Digital Extreme's image to have their name associated with such a poorly handled port.

PS Great article. I really like when Patrick does these "behind the scenes" kinds of things. Game development business and politics is typically such an iron curtain. I was hoping he would do one on the story behind System Shock 2 miraculously showing up on GoG since he had some info about the crazy situation with that game's IP before, but I saw in Worth Reading that he linked a Rock Paper Shotgun interview about it.

What a fantastic article! I've been obsessing over the similarities between these games since I started playing Warframe (thanks to the Quick Look, of course).

Super T game, by the by.

Ahh I remember Dark Sector. There was such a big deal around that game back then. And look how it ended up in the end...it was sad to see! I hope that Digital Extreme can find it's footing and that they produce a good game with Warframe!

I liked Dark Sector. It's not great, but I had fun with it and I've played much worse this gen.

This was really interesting to read. Thanks, Patrick!

More of you should play Warframe!

Pull quotes. They catch the eye and give you the gist of the article, enticing you to read it fully where you may not have before. Yay, graphic design.

I bought Dark Sector, brand new, for $8 a couple years ago. I remembered being excited by the initial trailers. Then I remembered how panned the game was, after launch. I still haven't felt compelled to actually take off the shrink-wrap and try playing it yet, though.

Also, for all these people who keep saying "we don't need new consoles" and "we don't need the new consoles to be powerful" -- just keep in mind that the graphics in this 2004 demo are almost on-par with a lot of today's console games -- in 2013 and that even the most beautiful 360 game in 2013, while much better looking than this 2004 demonstration, is not an order of magnitude better. You can refine a lot of things, but you're still running on decade old hardware.

Great story. I had no idea about any of this. I knew there was ambiguous trouble behind 2008 Dark Sector by not what or why.

Now I wish I had a Windows machine to check out Warframe. LOVE the art direction; love that it's a third-person shooter.

Maybe if I wish really hard for a console port...

Fascinating! Thanks for the article Patrick, I love me some sci-fi! :D

Kind of wish I could check out Warframe now,

That's cool. Great read.

The old Dark Sector concept art reminds me of various PS1 RPGs, like Brave Fencer Mushashi and the like. Very cool.

Yeah, me too. I knew who he was because I watched Smallville... for the first 5 seasons. Then it got both insane and inane, somehow. However, I'd be willing to slowly watch it again... if Netflix got some effing CW shows! Come on!

Really cool article. I had no idea Warframe had the Dark Sector lineage.

really cool article, thanks

@dark_lord_spam: Jeff seems fatigued about everything that isn't Saints Row.

Great article. Last time I played Warframe was around the time of the Quick Look, but it was lacking variety back then. I'll probably jump back in when they have on open beta. The wall running also sounds awesome. Jeff didn't show off the acrobatics in the QL, but that stuff along with the powers is what really separates this from other shooters for me. Really fun to just combo that stuff together.

Very cool story. Always been fascinated by Dark Sector as the first peek into next gen gaming that eventually got left behind. Great formatting too, articles looking slick on the new site so far.

I thought this was a really well-written story. Its always great to get a bit of a deep dive on the game industry where things don't come together or ever see the light of day.

Nicely done sir.

This was an interesting read, good job! Hope we get more inside baseball stuff like this.

This kind of features digging into the bizarre bits of gaming like this are Patrick's best. Keep em coming please!

@assinass said:

@m_shini said:

What's the thing called where articles have big quotes from the article even though your probably already reading the article anyway? Its totally dumb, i want jpegs of ninja swordsmen with guns.

But anyway enjoyable read.

Needs a bigger cod piece.

Fascinating read, @patrickklepek, this is just the sort of dimension you bring to the site that I love.

The dogged persistance of the crew at Digital Extremes seems commendable and I can't say as I blame them, as it seems like they've got the seed of an awesome story and game there, but as a sucker for hard sci-fi, I'm the target audience and an easy mark for this sort of stuff. I'd recommend they get it shipped before Destiny drops, though.

Hell yes, Solar Winds. I spent SOO much time with the shareware version of that game. Never got around to playing the full game. Oh man, I gotta see if I can get it on gog.com or through some other means.

I always love articles like this one since they show that even bigger developers can, as a team, have a 'dream game' they strive to create even if they need to bend to the whims of publishers and executives along the way. It's also always fascinating to me to learn the history behind the development of a game since there almost always seems to be far more going on than one would realize.

@patrickklepek Also, I noticed a few typos while reading this article: "the ability for players run along walls" should be 'to run', "sailed passed the original design" should be 'sailed past', and one of Sinclair's quotes is "Can you set in present day?" and I think it's meant to be 'Can you set it in the present day?' (though I can't be sure if this last one is actually a typo since it's a quote).

Wow, I had no idea how much of Warframe was already in that Dark Sector concept video! I never saw it back in the day. This history of Digital Extremes is something I've been wondering about lately.

I got into the Warframe beta right after watching the quicklook here, and I've put 60 hours into it since then. I liked it enough to put $50 into the game, to support the development. I can see myself playing it regularly throughout 2013. The opponents are varied enough to create quite different challenges, and the warframes are a lot of fun to develop and learn how it's best to use each one.

In addition to the wall-running they recently added a whole new environment set, a Grineer meteor base. It's different from the spaceships and with some routes that require wall running, so it's very fun to play through.

Great article!

I have a couple of keys for the closed beta left, if anyone here is interested. Just PM me!

Great piece @patrickklepek, more like this please!

Strange seeing this after playing Warframe, pretty amazing how much of it survived into Warframe after all that time though!

Good on them for sticking with what they believed in and actually getting it all the way there. What little i have played of warframe showed great promise, but as someone else mentioned the exceedingly high cost of new frames and weapons makes it somewhat booring to grind through. Was a bit since i played it now though so it might have gotten a bit more exciting... I really did love the concept and the feel of it, it just lacked some substance to keep me coming back.

Interesting read as always Patrick.

@assinass said:

@m_shini said:

What's the thing called where articles have big quotes from the article even though your probably already reading the article anyway? Its totally dumb, i want jpegs of ninja swordsmen with guns.

But anyway enjoyable read.

These guys should form a club.

Apostrophe placement!

This article piqued my interest in Warframe, a game that I originally didn't give a second thought. Now I'm actually looking forward to the finished product.

@patrickklepek: This article showed up in the Giant Bomb RSS feed February 14, but the link in the feed always throws a 404 error. Maybe you could "repost" it? I hope no one misses this article due to that glitch!

You would be VERY surprised. It was not the sum of it's parts. huge let down for the industry, it was supposed to be the "next gen" game of it's time. However, the stuff that they showed was end game content.

Colarbone dog. #Colarbonebroken

That's pretty much how I feel about it. It was a decent but very forgettable game. 3 stars.

Okay, I want THAT version of the Gorgon.

I found this article online and I remember the original Dark Sector video vividly. It blew my mind. So when I saw Dark Sector, I knew it was that game, before it got butchered. Warframe is a ton of fun, and I am having great time playing it on xbox one with my friends. Th community is pretty solid too, and have met some cool folks on there. Although I am late in reading this article, I enjoyed it very much and thanks for writing it @patrickklepek.