[typing]
You know what I really love about video games?
It's their ability to instantly teleport you away to an exotic time or place.
Like the early 2000s in the video gaming industry.
And it was a time that was really interesting to me
because, you know, it was before
things were getting, uh, too "modern," so to speak.
They were still holding on to
a lot of older school ideals in game design,
but at the same time
these games were getting really involved and these graphical engines were
letting people create worlds that we just never seen before.
It was really cool.
And one game that really personifies this idea to me is...
Rune,
developed by Human Head Studios
and published by Gathering of Developers in 2000 for Windows PCs,
and later for Linux and Macintosh.
And man, I have always liked this box
because, well, it looks like a Rune
and it's all embossed and shiny and sleek.
I had already played the demo when I first saw this back then
but even if I hadn't I would have been sold.
The fact that it used the Unreal Engine was good enough for me to want it anyway
since I was always looking for something to put my 16 MB Voodoo3 card through its paces
and the Unreal Engine was awesome for that.
I'd never heard of Human Head studios though
and that was because this was the first game they developed.
However, the team had a pedigree nonetheless from when they were employed at Raven Software,
working on games like Mage Slayer and the Hexen series.
Human Head went on to create some other games,
some of which were excellent, like Prey in 2006,
and others that didn't quite hit the mark,
like Blair Witch Volume II and Dead Man's Hand.
And today they're known for free-to-play games and stuff on Steam,
the most recent of which is Minimum.
But back to Rune, inside the box you get the game
in one of the most metal CD sleeves I have ever seen,
containing both the game itself and a publisher demo disc from Fall of 2000.
And of course you get a manual,
and though it's pretty cool-looking and useful,
I really wish they would have made it bigger.
These jewel case-sized manuals really don't do it for me like a full-sized one does,
and an epic Viking game deserves an epic Viking manual.
It's also worth noting that Rune was later ported to the PlayStation 2
under the name Rune: Viking Warlord,
but this features shortened and missing levels,
worse graphics, major framerate issues, subpar controls
and is all around pretty crappy.
So we'll just be taking a look at the PC version here.
Rune begins with a Rune logo
animated in 3D
because they licensed the crap out of that Unreal Engine,
so they're going to use it for all it's worth.
After this, you're given a main menu that could easily have come from a Flintstones game,
judging by the copious usage of rocks for everything.
It's all the typical stuff you would imagine here, as is the options menu,
if you're familiar with Unreal Engine games.
Be sure to crank everything to the max, including 32-bit color depth
since the game makes heavy use of gray, green and brown colors,
so using 16-bit makes everything look like day-old vomit.
You'll also want to crank up the brightness,
since seriously, this game is almost unplayable on the default settings
and is arguably too dark, period.
Start up a new game and, behold,
a voice actor brings forth tales of Viking lore
MAN: And it is only the power on Midgard
of Odin and his runestones
that holds Ragnarok at bay.
LGR: Mmm, Norse mythology.
Too few games take full advantage of the richness of these stories
and Rune was one of the first I remember to make me feel like I was
actually a son of Odin.
Even though you don't play a son of Odin in the game.
You're just a badass named Ragnar
that Odin happens to really like.
The beginning level of the game consists
of a tutorial of sorts where you are in your village participating in a ceremony
that means you're no longer a child and are now a fully fledged warrior.
Walk around, explore the area,
look in awe as you realize the foliage actually reacts when you move against it,
and complete your man training by slicing up a dude
and becoming a warrior of Wotenkeld.
Then, conveniently,
word that a nearby village is being attacked by cognac
and everyone is super drunk.
Er, wait, it's actually just some guy named Conrack,
but everyone is still super drunk,
because Vikings.
After this, it's on to a lengthy cutscene involving you and your buddies on a long ship,
trading words with Saturday morning cartoon villains.
MAN #1: Whisking a man across the sea faster than the falcon flies
is well within the powers of my new master.
Why guard a rock
when I can stand at the front of an army set to rule the world–
MAN #2: I have 40 men within an axethrow of your hearts!
Prepare to visit Hel.
[men yelling]
LGR: Turns out that some people have betrayed some people
and they've pledged allegiance to the evil trickster god Loki,
which is kind of a bummer, since he
then strikes everyone down with lightning, sinking your boat.
But just before you're killed by an oddly-placed credit sequence,
Odin says, "Relax, dude, you're cool."
And the cutscene ends and the game finally
relinquishes control to you once again.
And from here it's up to you to make your way through 40 plus levels of
action and puzzle-solving
to stop Conrack and Loki and save your
beloved Viking world from destruction.
And I've got to warn you, this game starts off slow,
especially in the PC versions with longer and more numeral levels.
At first, all you've got are dark caves, dark ruins and dark dungeons to walk through
with the occasional evil hermit crab or undead warrior to contend with
and that's about it.
And these continue for the first couple hours,
so just hold on, it gets better.
This is an action game with a heavy emphasis on satisfying gory combat.
It just holds its most enjoyable naughty bits until later into the affair.
Before long you'll be decking yourself out in some sweet gear
by scavenging corpses and weapon racks.
And the combat is straightforward and super easy to get into,
as this was before the days of locking onto enemies
or performing button combinations for moves.
You aim with the mouse, attack with the left mouse button,
block with the right button and you have a key for throwing weapons.
Combine this with jump attacks for extra damage
and some circle-strafing and dodging,
and you pretty much have your entire combat strategy right there.
It is not exactly elegant and it can even fall into slightly cumbersome territory,
but it works well, and I never found it dissatisfying.
Much of that has to do with the copious amount of visceral on-screen happenings,
like frequent decapitations,
dismemberment
and the fact that you and your weapon can
both end up covered in blood and guts the more you fight.
Enemies are freaking brain dead, though,
and will just run for you as soon as you're in their line of sight.
So while the AI is kind of disappointing,
it's also predictable enough to make up for the combat's sometimes clunky shortcomings.
Another aspect of combat is the rune system
and this plays directly into the weapons themselves.
You've got shields, swords, maces, hammers
and axes at your disposal,
and Ragnar can carry all 15 of them at once
because he's a total beast.
Activate the rune power and,
depending on your weapon, you'll have some fantastic abilities
at your blood-soaked fingertips.
Fire, lightning, vampiric health sucking
and the ability to turn enemies into ice or stone are just a few of them.
And while most of the runes you'll find around
will simply act as ammo for refilling your power meter,
others will increase your max health or send you
into a berserk rage.
Thus explains the reason the game is called Rune.
Although really a more accurate name would have been "Find the Hidden Passage"
because, holy crap, you'll be doing a lot of it!
Puzzle solving is a huge aspect of the game,
although I hesitate to call them puzzles
because they're not exactly of the mentally-taxing variety.
You know, it's stuff like press this thing to reveal that tomb
to defeat that creature to open the door to the next corridor, etc.
Most of the time the puzzles are in the form of levers or switches
and they'll do things like reveal a passageway or disable machine.
But the rest of the time the puzzles are
finding your way through a series of confounding corridors
designed by the most sadistic of Norse architects.
You know how a lot of games back then featured secret places?
You know, like a ledge you have to make a weird jump to reach,
or a bonus room lurking behind a wall,
or a rope that's hiding around the very last
corner you'd expect to look?
Yeah, Rune's core level design revolves around these things.
You absolutely have to think like a secret-finding walkthrough author
to even complete the main levels here.
Now, part of me loves this because while it's a linear game,
finding out what you have to do or where you have to go remains a challenge
all the way to the end.
Seems like there's always another secret passage to find behind another wall
you have to break down or something hanging around a corner that you didn't expect.
But, alas, the other part of me hates this
because the solutions to some of these levels can be lavishly obscure
and even downright unfriendly.
Platforming is a big part of this,
which is probably why even though the game allows you to play in first person,
it defaults to third-person every time you boot it up.
Thankfully, the platforming never gets any more complicated than grabbing onto
ledges to pull yourself higher,
but sometimes finding the freaking ledge or
making the jump to the next one
is an absolute trial and error approach,
with a hard emphasis on the "error" part
Just take this area, for example.
The only place it appears you can go is across this ravine but there's no way to do it.
Other levels featured jump pads for crossing these areas,
or a hidden thing underneath or something, but none of that's around.
So what do you do?
Oh, you just have to make a leap of faith
when the wind is blowing in the right direction at the right speed
and hope it catches you.
Seriously.
Wind is not a factor anywhere else in the game.
This is the only time this happens.
And half the time it doesn't even work and you just fall to your death.
Thank goodness for quick saving because otherwise
I'd have been tempted to just quit right here.
But once you get past stuff like this,
oh, man, what a game this turns out to be.
To me, Rune is a game about atmosphere
and an unnerving sense of doom
that comes from exploring this weird world.
Ninety percent of the time there's no music,
just the ambient sounds of death and horror,
and I freaking love that!
[screams echoing]
[distant screaming]
Roaming through the realms of Hell with its torture devices and lakes of fire,
exploring ancient tombs of plague-spewing undead warriors,
rummaging through goblin-run factories filled with ugly machinery
and performing a one-man siege on a snow-covered Viking fortification.
These are all just highly memorable
The fact that you're also able to do all this uber-macho stereotypical Viking stuff is great,
like wielding axes bigger than your torso,
hacking off arms and legs only to pick them up and beat things to death with them
and drinking mead while smashing the tankard down to the floor afterward.
Oh, yeah, and you largely get health by eating lizards.
Whole lizards!
Just grab them off the wall and chomp into them,
tossing their corpse over your shoulder when you're done.
Ha ha!
Yeah, I love this game.
It's all this stuff that makes Rune rise above the
typical action-adventure-platformer fare and turns it into something that
continues to stand out to me all these years later.
And it just gets better and better as the game goes on.
The enemies become more varied and more challenging,
the puzzles get more creative,
your rune powers continue to increase as you find more weapons and armor,
and eventually, you become a freaking immortal stone beast
that feeds on slime that can jump twice as high,
and strike twice as hard.
Holy crap, yes! Gimme more!
And they did.
Once you're done with the 10-hour-ish campaign,
there is more in the form of multiplayer.
And if you're familiar with Unreal Tournament, then you know pretty much what to expect.
Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, mods, mutators, etc.,
all through LAN or online through the server browser.
And you can still play online today since they patched out the GameSpy requirement,
even though there aren't exactly too many people playing.
And the multiplayer was popular enough at one point that it got its own expansion,
Halls of Valhalla,
which added tons of levels, character skins and two new multiplayer modes.
This was later released with the main game as Rune Gold,
making this the ultimate version to seek out.
There was even a series of pen and paper RPGs by Atlas games
that used the Rune universe as a starting point for its own adventures.
Not only that but the PC games were re-released as Rune Classic in 2012,
and is available on GOG.com and Steam
in a package that's still being updated and works great on modern systems.
In somewhat of a controversial move, however,
it features some changes to the original game in the form of additional enemies,
an autosave feature and some cut and redesigned levels.
It's still awesome, though,
and if you enjoy Norse mythology, foreboding fantasy atmosphere,
lopping off heads and eating lizards,
definitely give Rune a shot.
It's engaging, challenging, still holds up today and I recommend it to pieces.
Gory, dismembered pieces.
[heavy electric guitar]
And if you enjoyed this video and would like to see more on video games from
this time period and all over the place, really,
then you're in the right place.
I'd made a ton more and a lot more are coming as well,
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as well as some other perks, so go check it out.
And as always, thank you very much for Odin–
wa-watching. For watching.
I wasn't looking at my script.
I'm gonna leave that slip in there.