Director(s) Kenji Eno Mode(s) Single player Developer WARP Designer Kenji Eno Publishers Sega, WARP | Writer(s) Kenji Eno Initial release date 23 December 1999 Series D Platform Dreamcast | |
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Release date(s) JP: December 23, 1999
NA: August 22, 2000 Genre(s) Survival horror, Adventure Similar Kenji Eno games, Survival horror games, Other games | ||
D2 is a survival horror video game developed by WARP for the Dreamcast. It was published by WARP in Japan in 1999 and then by Sega in North America in 2000. D2 was written and directed by Kenji Eno, and serves as the third and final entry in the D series after D and Enemy Zero. Like the previous two games, D2 stars the digital actress Laura and serves as an independent story unrelated to either game.
Contents
Gameplay
The game has a few different kinds of gameplay. The majority of D2 involves exploring the Canadian wilderness from a third-person perspective while interior locations are encountered in a first-person perspective. While exploring the wilderness, the player will encounter random battles, much like those of a role-playing video game. When fighting monsters, the player cannot move Laura, but only aim her weapons. Defeating these creatures earns Laura experience points, which are used to level Laura up, increasing her health limit. Laura is initially equipped with a submachine gun with unlimited ammunition and a hunting rifle, which is used to hunt animals for meat which she can use to regain health.
In terms of the hunting feature, animals Laura kills for meat are totaled up during gameplay and on the Options screen, players can see how many kills she has collected as well as any medals given. Additionally, Laura has a camera that she can use to take pictures any time in the game (except during cinematics). Players can also save the pictures to a VMU and view them later on.
Plot
The game opens with Laura Parton falling asleep on an airplane trip to an undisclosed location. After being jolted awake by a tone over the airplane's PA system and a friendly conversation with a fellow passenger named David, a group of terrorists, who seem to be guided by some kind of mysterious cultist chanting to himself, suddenly and violently takes control of the plane. David, who turns out to be a special agent within the FBI, attempts to stop the terrorists, but he is thwarted when a meteorite strikes the plane, sending it crashing into the Canadian wilderness. After a series of bad dreams, Laura awakens in a small cabin being cared for by Kimberly Fox, a poet and songwriter who also survived the crash. She explains that ten days have passed since the accident, although Kimberly had only found her some distance from the crash site two days prior, leaving a strange eight-day gap where she was mysteriously taken care of. The moment of peace is broken when another survivor, one of the hijackers, staggers into the cabin before suddenly transforming into a hideous plant-like monster. Here, Laura and Kimberly meet Parker Jackson, a CETI researcher and fellow crash survivor who drives out the monster, only to be driven out himself by a distrusting Kimberly.
Laura then sets out into the wilderness in order to investigate the possibility of contacting the outside world and seeking out other survivors only to discover that more strange, hideous creatures are lurking in the area, as something is causing the crash survivors to mutate into the very same monsters she must avoid and battle while travelling through the region. She is driven deeper into the mystery when she must venture into an abandoned mining facility in order to locate Jannie, a lost little girl Kimberly had found along with Laura and one of the plane's former passengers.
Development
Development for D2 started as a premier game for the cancelled Panasonic M2 console, the successor for the 3DO console.
In this early version, a pregnant Laura was to have been attacked by a supernatural force during a passenger flight, her unborn child kidnapped from her womb, magically aged, and sent back in time. The player would have taken the role of Laura's son - now a teenager - trapped in a large, European castle, from which he had to escape while being assaulted by supernatural phenomena.
The game was "about 50 percent finished" when Panasonic officially announced that the M2 was not going to be released, leaving WARP with no way to sell the title. When given the chance to release D2 for other systems, Kenji Eno decided to abandon this concept and create an entirely new game for the Dreamcast.
Like the M2 version, D2 became the first officially announced game for a new console, the Dreamcast.
In Japan, a demonstration version of D2 was packaged with another WARP produced game, the Dreamcast remake of the Sega Saturn title Real Sound: Kaze no Regret. This early preview of the game, known as D2 Shock Demo, features modified opening credits and "heads up display" compared to the completed game. Additionally, it contains a save file that copies to the Dreamcast VMU and unlocks a "secret movie" in the retail Japanese version of D2. This movie is a preview of the shelved M2 version of D2. It was removed from the North American version but can briefly be seen as an in-flight movie during the hijacking sequence.
Reception
D2 aroused conflicting reactions in reviewers. They lauded the graphics, music, and deep storytelling. However, they criticized the actual gameplay for being repetitive, dull and buried with cut scenes. Both GameSpot and IGN gave it a score of 6.2.
In Japan, Famitsu magazine scored the game a 32 out of 40.