''D2'' is a

survival horror Survival horror is a subgenre of survival of the players as the game tries to frighten them with either horror graphics or scary ambience. Although combat can be part of the gameplay, the player is made to feel less in control than in typical ac ...

video game developed by

Warp Warp, warped or warping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Books and comics * WaRP Graphics, an alternative comics publisher * ''Warp'' (First Comics), comic book series published by First Comics based on the play ''Warp!'' * Warp (comics), a ...

for the

Dreamcast The is a home video game console released by Sega on November 27, 1998, in Japan; September 9, 1999, in North America; and October 14, 1999, in Europe. It was the first sixth-generation video game console, preceding Sony's PlayStation 2, N ...

. Directed and written by

Kenji Eno was a Japanese musician and video game designer. He gained a reputation as a maverick during the mid-1990s for creating unorthodox games like '' Real Sound'' and is perhaps best remembered today for his rebellious marketing techniques. Outside o ...

, it was published by Warp in Japan in 1999 and by

Sega is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...

in North America in 2000. ''D2'' stars the "digital actress" Laura but has an independent story unrelated to the original '' D'', and uses action-oriented gameplay in contrast to the puzzle-driven ''D''.

Gameplay

The game has a few different kinds of gameplay. The majority of ''D2'' involves exploring the

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

wilderness from a third-person perspective while interior locations are encountered in a first-person perspective. While exploring the wilderness, the player encounters random battles, much like those of a

role-playing video game A role-playing video game (commonly referred to as simply a role-playing game or RPG, as well as a computer role-playing game or CRPG) is a video game genre where the player controls the actions of a character (or several party members) immers ...

. When fighting monsters, the player cannot move Laura, but only aim her

weapon A weapon, arm or armament is any implement or device that can be used to deter, threaten, inflict physical damage, harm, or kill. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of activities such as hunting, crime, law enforcement, s ...

s. Defeating these creatures earns Laura

experience points An experience point (often abbreviated as exp or XP) is a unit of measurement used in some tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) and role-playing video games to quantify a player character's life experience and progression through the game. Experien ...

, 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 A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves (rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with bo ...

, 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, and 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 Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

, 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 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

, attempts to stop the terrorists, but he is thwarted when a

meteorite A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or Natural satellite, moon. When the ...

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 traveling 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 The Panasonic M2 is a video game console platform developed by 3DO and then sold to Matsushita, a company known outside Japan by the brand Panasonic. Initially announced as a peripheral chip for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, it was later un ...

console, the successor to the 3DO console.

The 3DO Company The 3DO Company (formerly THDO on the NASDAQ stock exchange), also known as 3DO, was an American video game company. It was founded in 1991 by Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins, in a partnership with seven other companies. After 3DO's flagshi ...

, with which Warp had a good working relationship, had suggested Warp create a sequel to ''D'' for their new console. In this early version, a pregnant Laura is on a passenger flight to

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

which is attacked by a supernatural force. The plane crashes and her unborn child is spirited away by the Devil to

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

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, to be the child of a widowed duke who sold his soul for a son. The player would have taken the role of Laura's son as he enters adulthood, and must escape a large castle and fight the Devil to save his father. Unlike the original ''D'', but like the ''D2'' that was released for Dreamcast, the game was to feature

full-motion video Full-motion video (FMV) is a video game narration technique that relies upon pre-recorded video files (rather than sprites, vectors, or 3D models) to display action in the game. While many games feature FMVs as a way to present information duri ...

cutscenes but gameplay entirely played out with real-time graphics, and consisting of both puzzle solving and combat. ''D2'' was the first M2 game for which screenshots from a playable version were released to the public. Warp employed their usual unorthodox promotional tactics during development. For the first two days of the April 1997

Tokyo Game Show , commonly known as TGS, is a video game expo / convention held annually in September in the Makuhari Messe, in Chiba, Japan. It is presented by the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA) and Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. The ...

, Warp did not show any games, instead holding a celebration of the arrival of the

cherry blossom A cherry blossom, also known as Japanese cherry or sakura, is a flower of many trees of genus ''Prunus'' or ''Prunus'' subg. ''Cerasus''. They are common species in East Asia, including China, Korea and especially in Japan. They generally ...

season at their booth, before finally showing a demo of ''D2'' on the third (and final) day of the show. Though at the time it was believed that ''D2'' was nearly complete when

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Osaka P ...

officially announced that the M2 was not going to be released, Eno later revealed the game was "about 50 percent finished". Following the abandonment of the M2, Warp began work on porting the game to the

Sega Saturn The is a home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994, in Japan, May 11, 1995, in North America, and July 8, 1995, in Europe. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it was the successor to the succ ...

. However, eventually Kenji Eno decided to abandon the original concept and create an entirely new game for the

. In Japan, a demonstration version of ''D2'' was packaged with another Warp-produced game, the Dreamcast remake of the

title '' Real Sound: Kaze no Regret''. This early preview of the game, known as ''D2 Shock Demo'', features modified opening credits and a "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. A playable animation demo of the M2 version of D2 was found and coded to run on M2 kiosk hardware in December 2019. It features the main character of the M2 version, Taren, executing the backflip sword slash seen in the alpha version of D2 previews from 1997.

Reception

''D2'' received "mixed or average" reviews according to the

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website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

. ''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. Jeff Lundrigan of '' NextGen'' said of the game, "If you've got a lot of patience, it's well worth your time, but ''D2'' desperately needs a better sense of pace." In Japan, ''

Famitsu formerly ''Famicom Tsūshin'', is a line of Japanese video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly formats as well as in the fo ...

'' gave it a score of 32 out of 40.

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:D2 (Video Game) 1999 video games Adventure games Cancelled Panasonic M2 games Cancelled Sega Saturn games Dreamcast games Dreamcast-only games Horror video games Sega video games Survival video games Video games about nightmares Video games scored by Kenji Eno Video games set in Canada Video games featuring female protagonists Video games about zombies Single-player video games Video games directed by Kenji Eno Video games developed in Japan