Rune's Lost Head

Rune Classic Screenshot. Taken from Steam.

A few months after Raven Software was purchased by Activision, a group of developers decided to leave and form their own company known as Human Head Studios. Their first release ended up being a game called Rune: an interesting third person action-adventure title based on Norse mythology. They definitely had a lot of experience with fantasy genre as all six original members of Human Head worked on so-called "Serpent Rider Trilogy": Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders, Hexen: Beyond Heretic & Hexen 2.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Shane Gurno, Human Head's artist and part of its founding group, talked about the interesting origins of the game. Even though they had ideas for the Rune as they thought about leaving Raven Software, at first Human Head had other project in mind. Their first release was initially going to be a sequel to Daikatana on Unreal Engine after they contacted John Romero, but that was never meant to be. Despite this, Epic Games allowed Human Head to keep using their engine while they were searching for the publisher. They still had to pay Epic for it, obviously.

For a new studio full of talented people, Human Head Studios seemed to have a perfect start with Rune. This is one of many games that peaked my interest in recent years, so I figured that it's finally time to take a proper look at it.

Odynsblade.

I believe I got my first glimpse of Rune kind of accidentally. Honestly, I can't recall how exactly this happened: whenever it was probably the most popular story related to the franchise (slightly more on that at the end), some random order of events or my interest in Hecatomb: a third game in Heretic/Hexen franchise that was ultimately replaced by Hexen 2. Some aspects of this concept might've also carried over to Heretic 2. Perhaps Hecatomb had its role in inspiring Ted Halsted and other founding members of Human Head Studios, but I think it's better to treat Rune as its own thing instead. Because it is.

The actual story of Rune revolves around magical runestones that keep Loki imprisoned, but he wants to escape to conjure Midgard and kick off Ragnarok. Ragnar, the protagonist of the game, joins the ranks of Odynsblade (the order that guards the aforementioned runestones) and then get on longship with his father and brethren to defend another village from evil vikings that work for Loki or something along those lines. Our hero survives and gets a message from Odyn, who will contact him throughout the game. It's worth noting that there're two endings in Rune. Soundtrack is pretty atmospheric and decent. Although, to be fair, I don't think I ever typed something negative about music from specific game in posts like this, and maybe I'm just too easy to please on this front.

Rune Classic Screenshot. Taken from Steam.

As for the gameplay, it's all about good hack and slash experience here. No ranged weapons for players in Rune at all, unless you throw it. It's only hammers, sword and/or axes for you when it comes to conventional weapons with five tiers. There's also shields (that can be used with tier 1-3 weapons; 4-5 are two-handled) and player can also pick up various objects, using them as a weapon of choice in specific situations. These object include the severed body parts of your enemies, and I'm sure that's the exact type of thing people would want to have in a game like Rune. Speaking of runes, each weapon has a special "rune power" that require player to gather enough game title things. Player's movement also has a direct impact of his attacks and Shane specifically mention fighting games like Soul Calibur as inspiration for this system. And don't forget about your typical Berserk that can be activated only after killing a certain amount of enemies.

Worthy of Valhalla.

Even before the release of Rune, Human Head Studios counted on multiplayer and community's interest in creating all sorts of mods for the game. It uses original Unreal Engine and Unreal Tournament in particular has already been out for almost a year by the time of Rune's release, so this bet definitely made a lot of sense. Although I have to admit that, unlike before, I wasn't really able to find many traces of that. There's probably some niche multiplayer communities, but nothing much in terms of mods or community sites. All I have is Rune's section in ModDB and OldUnreal forums.

Either way, Rune's only expansion by the name of Halls of Valhalla was focused entirely on multiplayer with two new modes (such as Head Ball, which serves as Rune's take on Capture The Flag that uses body parts instead of a flag), music, character models and more. By "more" I mean nearly forty new maps, some of which were created by players that participated in official map making competition. Besides the Rune Gold release that combined the original game with this expansion, PlayStation 2 version of the game with subtitle Viking Warlord and some additional enemies and maps was released in 2001.

Conclusion.

Clearly, the plans for Rune's sequel were floating around Human Head Studios even before the release of the original. For example, in previously linked interview Shane says that "Personally I think it would suck if we didn't do Rune 2". They even had an agreement with a certain publisher for it somewhere in early-to-mid 2000s before it was acquired by another company that let's just say wasn't interested in the genre. In 2012, Human Head publicly expressed their interest in creating Rune 2 and was looking for player's feedback. Five years later, it got official announcement and... Well, let's just leave it at that.

While I currently tend to stay away from negative topics, the story of Rune 2 simply doesn't seem to be finished for me. It's pretty bizarre already, and you can argue that there's enough information to get the full picture, my gut feeling tells me that this is one of those things that just wait for the right moment to erupt. Alas, the fate of Human Head Studios is really unfortunate. I know that the entire team immediately went over to Zenimax and formed Roundhouse Studios, but as far as it goes the Human Head has fallen. There's some messed up irony to it, if you know how things went with Prey 2... I don't want to put it all on "the curse of 3D Realms" as Bethesda clearly had its role in the ultimate fate of this company. This story deserves its own post. I'm not sure I would go on to write one, but there has to be enough solid material that goes over it if you're curious.

The abrupt demise of Human Head Studios left Rune in unclear situation. If all the rights to IP and the first game are in the hands of Roundhouse Studios (and, ultimately, Microsoft) now, they clearly didn't pay basically any attention to it. A re-release titled Rune Classic was released on Steam and GOG in 2012 that not only combines both original game and Halls of Valhalla, but also adds in enemies from Viking Warlord and changes to campaign. Some levels were tweaked or just cut and not everyone enjoyed these alterations. If you would like to experience the single player in all its glory, Rune Extended modification should help you with that. While the game appears to be abandoned, it is still available on both platforms. Rune Classic didn't have a discount on Steam (1.11) for a long time, so keep that in mind. GOG (1.10) might be more generous on that front, but it never received the latest patch.