Ludography
Advent Shadow cover

Video game

Advent Shadow

2005 video game

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About

Advent Rising is an action-adventure third-person shooter video game developed by GlyphX Games and published by Majesco. The game was released on May 31, 2005, for Xbox and on August 9, 2005, for Microsoft Windows. Its story was created by The Mustard Brothers and featured a script written by science fiction writers Orson Scott Card and Cameron Dayton; the lead sound design was done by Joey Kuras working under Tommy Tallarico Studios.

Advent Rising was the first in a planned trilogy which also saw the development of a game that would take place alongside Advent Rising, called Advent Shadow for the PSP. Despite a large advertising campaign including promotion in cinemas, the game's retail performance fell far short of expectations. By the end of 2005, Majesco had completely revised its business plan to focus towards handheld games and canceled plans for future Advent Rising games.

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Story

In the distant future Gideon Wyeth; the game's protagonist, escorting a group of human ambassadors from a space station to a meeting with an alien race called the Aurelians. At the meeting, the Aurelians tell the humans that they view them as gods and then warn them of another race of aliens called the Seekers who intend to destroy all humanity. Shortly thereafter, the space station is attacked by the Seekers. Gideon manages to board an escape pod and lands on the planet Edumea below.

On the planet, Gideon aids the Marines in their battle against the Seekers, but soon learns that the planet will shortly be destroyed by a meteor shower. The planet is evacuated, and Gideon accepts an invitation from the Aurelians to board their ship. After learning that humans have untapped mystical powers, he begins training with the Aurelians.

Development

The game's overall story was created by Donald and Geremy Mustard. The dialog and screenplay was written by Orson Scott Card and Cameron Dayton. Card's influences are noticeable in the terminology which has been carried over from Ender's Game. The terms "vids", "Buggers", and "ansible" are all references from his critically acclaimed novels (though the term ansible was coined by Ursula K. Le Guin, and was not actually added to the script by Card himself, but by Donald Mustard).

In 2008, Novint announced they are adding Novint Falcon support to this game and will sell it as Ascension Reborn for the Novint Falcon only.

Reception

Following its Xbox release, the game received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. The most common complaints were the large number of bugs which caused a range of problems including freezing. Another common complaint regarded the difficulty in using the targeting system.

The game visual design choice was noted by several reviewers, pointing out that the characters all appear fairly elongated, although it has been said that this was a deliberate stylistic choice.

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Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.