Highlights
- Nightdive Studios' remastered versions of Turok 1 and 2 are well-received due to improved gameplay and modern features such as maps and objective markers.
- Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion, the lesser-known third game in the series, deviated from its predecessors by adopting a more linear approach.
- Turok 3 suffered from bland UI, linear level designs, and a lack of depth compared to the previous games. However, Nightdive's remaster is expected to improve on these aspects and potentially restore cut and modified content.
The decision by Nightdive Studios to remaster classic N64 shooters Turok 1 and 2 was unexpected, but welcome. Particularly with Turok 2, it’s surprising how well the time-travelling dino blaster plays when not stammering along at 20fps on an N64 trident controller, and with basic modern conveniences like maps and objective markers.
But while the first two Turok games are regarded as N64 classics, with Turok 2 selling an impressive 1.4 million copies, it’s quite possible that you never even knew there was a third game in that generation. Well, there was (and it was technically the fourth game because it came out after Turok: Rage Wars in 1999).
Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion was released in 2000, and kinda gave up the somewhat non-linear exploration of its predecessors in favour of a tighter, more classic corridor-shooter approach. Half-Life cast a long shadow at that time, as indicated not only by Turok 3’s overall design but by the fact that it actually had a level where you’re trying to escape a science facility overrun by aliens, with some kind of special forces unit sent in to clean up the mess.
Turok 3 was an infamously half-baked game. It lacked the delicious gore of earlier games, and enemies did this weird thing upon death where after falling they’d instantly turn into translucent wireframes, float up a couple of feet, and disappear; I guess it could represent the fallen soldier’s soul leaving the body, but the body’s not supposed to go with the soul! Compare that to Turok 1 and 2, where you could hang out with the bodies for a good little while and even get reactions when shooting them (don’t look at me like that, interactable 3D corpses were very groundbreaking and exciting for us kids back then!), and it just felt kind of cheap by comparison. Even the effect for the beloved Cerebral Bore—a homing projectile that drilled into enemy brains, causing them to squirt everywhere before blowing up inside the enemy’s head—was toned down.
Also, why would you kill off the well liked hero of the first two games, Mr. Josh Turok, in a bizarre alien home invasion scene in the intro, just to replace him with his derpy teenage siblings? The fact that you could play as two different characters with unique weapons and unique abilities was definitely a plus point, but at the expense of the character that made the series iconic? Really? It was scant consolation that you could finally play as Joshua after completing the game as the other two. It’d be great if Nightdive made him playable from the get-go in the remaster, canon be damned.
It seems that much of the game’s budget went into the sometimes overlapping combo of boobs and graphics. Seriously, this game had undercleavage and overcleavage, and all the busty heroines of the game had a solid jiggle to their jugs. So there’s that. The game had some pretty pioneering mo-cap in facial animations for the time too. Coming in the year 2000 with the N64’s prime years behind it, developer Acclaim was a veteran with the console’s tech by this point, and while overall the game looks worse than its predecessor, that facial mo-cop may be among the best of its era.
Turok 3 had a bit of a rushed development, and in true 90s fashion its Director David Dienstbier bragged about that in an interview from the time with Nintendo Power, when he told the magazine that the 21-person team worked 24-hour days in the weeks leading up to the game’s release (hear that, kids? Crunch is cool!). Even though those numbers are probably just bullshit bravado, it has to be said that the latter stages of the game do have an air of sleep deprivation about them.
You could feel the game’s squeezed development in everything from the bland UI to the flat, linear level designs. Some maybe would’ve appreciated the simplicity of Turok 3’s levels compared to the previous games’ sometimes obtuse designs, but for me there was something magical about getting genuinely stuck in Turok 1 or 2, hunting around for save points, keys, and other items to unlock the next part of the level. They felt like tough, hostile, and mysterious environments, whereas in Turok 3 they just felt like sequential rooms in which to shoot things.
So yeah, Turok 3 wasn’t great, but kudos to Nightdive for sticking to its guns and completing the N64 trilogy. I’ve no doubt that the simple technical matter of unlocked frame rates and keyboard-and-mouse controls will make the game infinitely more fun, and judging by the trailer they’re actually changing and restoring a few other things too.
Credit goes to Reddit user Janus_Prospero here, who clearly knows a lot about Turok 3’s development and pointed out several parts of the trailer that apparently show restored or changed content. Prospero points out that the game’s cut original opening has been restored, and there’s also a shot of a police mech thing in the streets, which apparently hasn’t been seen since the game’s beta. And, joy of joys, it looks like the corpses of enemies will actually stay for good this time instead of instantly dissolving into the aether.
I’m sure we’ll hear about more tweaks and restorations closer to launch. Whether they’re enough to salvage this flawed oddity from Oblivion remains to be seen, but if anyone can pull it off, then it’s Nightdive.