[Article] Daikatana, Development and Reputation

/// Calm before the Ion Storm

The story of Daikatana begins before Ion Storm was even founded, during Quake's turbulent development at id Software. Quake's concept was originated from id's D&D sessions, and it was completely different from the final product. Unlike Doom, it would have focused on melee and magic combat with RPG elements. A legendary hero, casting spells, smiting its foes with his powerful hammer, and jumping between different dimensions.

For John Carmack, the lead programmer at id, the next logical step to push the technology further was to go full 3D. With Carmack working on the engine from scratch, all that was left to do for the rest of id was to blindly design mechanics, enemies, and levels, before the engine was even finished, and hope it could support the content created.

Due to time constraints compromises to the original design of Quake started to be made. This left John Romero, designer and co-founder of id, disillusioned with how Quake was being pivoted away from the first envisioned FPS-RPG hybrid and back to the familiar shooter formula from Doom. This also caused a large waste of design work made for the original concept.

While Carmack and Romero's styles complimented each other, that was about to change. With months of crunch work and heightened emotions, their partnership started to degrade. Leading to Romero's forced resignation for "not working hard enough".

After leaving id Romero formed his own studio, along with another former id employee, Tom Hall. This new studio would be named Ion Storm. He immediately started working on concepts for his new game. He would do the Quake game he wanted, an FPS-RPG hybrid.

And so, after a few months, the design concept for Daikatana was complete. With a large amount of content, several different weapons, and monsters. Romero estimated that Ion Storm could complete the game in seven months, running on the Quake Engine, in time for a Christmas of 1997 release.

/// New tech, new challenges

E3 1997 rolls around, with both Ion Storm and id Software having their demos displayed for the public. The Daikatana demo did not garner much attention, with a simple presentation still using Quake's aging software rendering technique.

Romero's former ally now turned rival, id Software, showcased Quake 2 running on their brand new engine, displaying impressive out-of-the-box hardware acceleration, OpenGL rendering, and dynamic lighting.

Romero was so impressed with the technology that he decided to license the engine to power Daikatana. Believing its capabilities were vital to stay ahead and impress the market.

However, due to id's licensing contract, no other game could use the engine until Quake 2 was out in December of that year, the date Ion Storm was aiming for Daikatana. And so the game got delayed until they had access to id Tech 2 source code. Most of the work done so far was to be either ported or scrapped entirely.

Work on the engine switch began in early 1998. Instead of the expected three months, the porting process missed the deadline and took a whole year instead. Complete in January of 1999. They planned for a release in February, but it was not feasible, delaying Daikatana even further.

Daikatana's first public demo was multiplayer DM only with no singleplayer content that caused some backlash. Ion Storm tried to counteract that with a full singleplayer demo for that year's E3.

They would not deliver. Running at 12 frames a second, the demo failed. Its poor performance, thanks to a recent change in the game's code.

By that point, the public goodwill towards the game was long gone.

/// A series of accumulated missteps

The infamous ad in '97, the engine switch in '98, the two failed demos in '99. Three years of constant setbacks, public drama, and mismanagement.

The truth is that Romero's team at Ion Storm didn't have enough experience to handle the project's scope. Many of the new Ion employees were only modders without prior experience in professional game design or programming.

From thinking they could make the game in seven months to missing the engine switch deadline by a year. One could speculate that Romero's continued underestimation of deadlines was due to being accustomed to working with John Carmack and Michael Abrash back at id. As two of the best programmers in the game industry at the time, they were able to do what was previously impossible.

Daikatana released in April 2000 in an incomplete and universally despised state. Critics pointed towards the unimpressive story, aged graphics, limited save system, AI issues, and poor level design.

In July 2001 Romero would leave the company and Eidos Interactive (Who now owned the majority stake of Ion Storm) would close its Dallas Studio the same month. Ion Storm Austin would be defunct in 2005, putting an end to Ion Storm for good.

Ultimately I commend Romero's ambitions with the title. While it's not the first FPS-RPG hybrid, neither it achieved its goals, we can not say that Daikatana didn't experiment and tried to push the genre forward.

The game became a guilty pleasure of mine, and going down this rabbit hole was a fun experience. I personally hope that one day we will see a flawless execution of the ''time travelling samurai'' concept of Daikatana by a talented studio.