Turok Retrospective Part 2: Seeds of Evil
No. Questions. Asked.
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The Review
Fuuuucking hell what an exercise in misery. Oh, how wrong I was. How very, very, very wrong... Oof.
Look, I say this with no disrespect meant toward anyone else who enjoyed this game growing up, and certainly not to anyone who worked on it*, but going back to it as an adult (I played through it twice just to be sure) I can confidently say that Turok 2 is one of the most obnoxious things I've ever played. The reason why is simple, and fittingly enough I think there's a Jurassic Park quote for just this occasion!
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should!"
Turok 2 is, to its credit, exactly what it always said it would be: more of the original. So much more, in fact, that it races past the point of being impressive, past the point of being indulgent, of being overindulgent, and then races some distance past that and slams headfirst into territory it was utterly unprepared for. There are some things you just have to consider when increasing the volume of content in a game, but it feels like none of them were. Staples of modern gaming that we all take for granted like map markers, item outlines, cutaways that show what happens when you press a button or pull a lever, and light and item placement being used as cues to direct players eyes just aren't there, and with a game this sprawling and complex that's a big problem.
Turok 2 is a game that wastes absolutely no time overstaying its welcome; halfway through I was desperate to get it over with.
I can honestly say with no exaggeration that I, in my most recent playthrough that just ended this week, had to retrace my steps through every inch of every single level of that game at least five times. Hours upon hours for days at a time, running back and forth between point A and point B in levels I'd already grown bored of, not wondering how to solve the problem stopping me from advancing but not even understanding how there could even be a problem because I'd already scrutinized every nook and cranny so thoroughly that it felt like I couldn't possibly be missing anything.
Just today, for example, I replayed the first level because I wanted to get that screenshot of the main hub down there. That took me two hours. I retraced my steps from beginning to end four times... and this is AFTER I just recently replayed the game and still had the general layout of things fresh in my mind.
Time and time
again the solutions to these 1-3 day long slogs ended up being frustrating things like a one of a
kind destructible wall that looked exactly the same as all the rest, or
a time sensitive door opened by an out of sight button located multiple
rooms away, or a secret passageway that opened in some random wall that
was underwater or in shadows or whatever. It wasn't challenging or engaging, it was annoying. Torturous even, sometimes. I mean as far as I'm concerned The Lair of the Blind Ones, Hive of the Mantids, and Primagen Lightship are rings of Hell.
This game should be taught in Game Design 101 as an example of how not to build levels. If you don't have a detailed strategy guide in your hand and/or have it memorized from childhood then I am ADAMANT you will learn to hate playing this game. I know that sounds harsh, but that's the way I feel, and I am begging you, for your own sake, look up the Youtube playthroughs. Read the old FAQs. Punch in the cheat codes. Do anything but play this game the way it was intended to be played.
It's not worth it.
Now mercifully, the NightDive remaster does alleviate some of this pain by implementing floating exclamation markers that draw your attention to buttons, levers, and keys. Their markers show up through walls and from a bit of a distance too, so you at least have a clear idea of what direction you're supposed to be moving in. They can, admittedly, be a little, uh... obtrusive...
...but as someone who still remembers playing this game without them, thank you so much NightDive. Some of these doodads can really blend in with their environments, especially in the dimmer, darker levels later on. Some people might say these markers are too much of a crutch, but personally I'll take every advantage I can because this game is maddening. The markers are a toggle that can be turned off in the Options menu anyway. Just don't, though... okay?
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| Look, man, I'm just saying... |
*Just because I
don't enjoy playing this game doesn't mean I think the people who made
it are talentless or in the wrong. Game development is a long,
taxing process that requires an enormous amount of technical knowledge,
patience and talent and, for as strongly as I feel about it personally,
Turok 2 is, on a purely technical level, an impressive
release. The people who worked on it cried, sweat, and bled to bring it
to life and so far as I can tell they love what they created and are
very proud of the work they did. That's awesome and I have nothing but
respect and admiration for those people. Really! So please keep that in mind as I
voice my displeasure for your entertainment. My issues are subjective
and with the game itself, not the people who created it, and on the off chance that anyone involved with Seeds of Evil ever reads this post and cares enough about it to have any sort of emotional response, I'm sorry. I say the things I say because I love this character and have a critical mind and want to speak candidly, not because I want to hurt anyone's feelings.
The Legacy
Okay... going into more objective territory for a bit, I have considerably nicer things to say about Seeds of Evil as an entry into the Turok mythos. It's not without its flaws but it definitely understood the assignment, I'll give it that. Turok 2 gives you all the important things you'll expect after playing Dinosaur Hunter: bloodthirsty dinos, a badass and overtly indigenous hero, a large arsenal of destructive and over the top weapons, and insane hijinks in the Lost Land which, as an added bonus, are now deepened by actual in-game lore complete with voice-overs and an-engine cinematics. If all you want to do is watch the cutscenes and boss battles on Youtube then you're going to have an exponentially better and shorter experience than I did, I promise; all of my real gripes have to do with gameplay mechanics and level design.
Seeds of Evil puts you in the shoes of a cocky new Turok named Joshua Fireseed, a young man who's been tasked with destroying an ancient alien badguy called the Primagen who basically wants to un-make all of reality. Joining Joshua is his new (non-playable) assistant Adon, a posh, gray-skinned "bioelectric" alien who represents an unseen council of floating robot heads. The two convene in an intergalactic realm between realms to plot out their Lost Land campaign, portal jumping between different parts of the world to fight off the races swayed by the Primagen and defending mechanisms meant to keep him in check. Chief among these meddlesome minions are the returning mantid aliens and Purr-Linn as well as a new threat called the dinosoids, essentially an army of fully sapient dinosaur people, who do the Primagen's bidding not because they like or even care about his scheme but because they just really despise humans and will side with anybody who wants to wipe them out.
As a bit of a sidenote I think it's only fair I bring up the comics again. A lot of the stuff I'm crediting Turok 2 for technically showed up in the Acclaim era comicbooks first, though that doesn't necessarily mean the game was based on those comics, either. Rather, it seems the comics were used like a build-up to the game's release, slowly introducing characters and creatures that would be important in Seeds of Evil. The same creative team that was working on the comics was also involved in the production of Turok 2, so all of this stuff goes hand in hand: Turok 2's lore is the comic's lore, the comic's lore is Turok 2's lore, it's all part of one shared continuity.
Mostly, anyway. The devs over at Acclaim Entertainment obviously got final say on what would make it into the finished game, so there are some things in the comics that don't show up in Seeds of Evil... and if I can be mean again for a little bit, thank goodness. I'm especially grateful Turok's nerd caricature sidekick Barry, the running gag of ogling four-breasted amazons, female dinosoids looking like pinup girls with scales and tails, and Turok's mission to assassinate Bill Clinton because he's secretly a lizardman didn't make it to the N64.
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| The 90s sure were... something. |
Now, as a creature design guy I haven't spent much time talking about the weapons in these games, and for the most part I don't plan on changing that, but it would be a sin to wrap this section up without at least mentioning some of the highlights. The standout arms in Seeds of Evil are the Flamethrower, Firestorm Cannon (a sci-fi plasma version of the minigun), War Blade and Razor Wind (essentially the wrist blades from Predator and smart disc from Predator 2), the C-37 Shredder (an energized automatic shotgun with ricochet rounds), a combination handheld sub / Torpedo Launcher for underwater areas and, of course, Turok 2's greatest gift to mankind, the Cerebral Bore. IYKYK.
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| This guy's about to have a very bad day. |
The Prehistory!
The original Turok used prehistoric creatures fairly sparingly, having only three dinosaurs and a handful of other things that were only sort of dinosaur adjacent. Turok 2 follows almost exactly that same formula but also has a much bigger roster of fantasy and sci-fi creatures, making the dino selection feel perhaps even scarcer here simply by proportion.
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Like in Dinosaur Hunter, the most common archosaur Turok tangles with is still the Jurassic Park esque "raptor". They again come in two colorations, though this time there's no difference between them. This is kind of a recurring thing in the Turok games: some creatures have random color variants for no other reason other than because it's a neat detail! The orangey, green eyed raptors with dark stripes are usually the ones you encounter most, while the paler yellow eyed ones tend to replace them as respawns when you're replaying levels and are otherwise rarer. Neither are bionosaurs, and in fact there are no bionosaurs at all in this game! They are, however, not wild Lost Land raptors and were said to have been selectively bred by the dinosoids.
Maybe that unnatural origin is why they're so grotesque and gnarly. The Turok 2 raptor is an almost demonic looking thing, with puffy, permanently exposed gums, sparse but wickedly curved teeth, and blank, pupiless eyes that remind me more of Venom than anything from Jurassic Park or Dino Crisis. Their limbs are so long they almost look humanoid from certain angles, yet in spite of their increased size they only have two fingers, like a Tyrannosaurus rex. Definitely the weirdest and most sinister looking of all the Turok dromaeosaurs.
They also act differently, too. These raptors are a bit smaller than their wild kin and have a much slighter frame, moving way faster and jumping around more often. They're very light on their feet, very graceful and bird-like. In fact they're almost comically dainty at times: they have a very light and bouncy run animation that makes it look like they're skipping!
Hot off the heels of Jurassic Park: The Lost World, the second dino enemy in the game is the little green compy. These dinos were all over video games after TLW came out, probably because they work so well as a low tier enemy that can be thrown at players in large numbers. They work about the way you'd expect and almost have to be dispatched using a melee weapon because of how jumpy and jittery they are. Once you hear those little chirps enough times you'll start switching from your gun to the War Blade without even thinking about it.
The only other full-blooded dinosaur that features in Seeds of Evil (besides some seagulls) is Styracosaurus, which delightfully enters the fray here as neither an enemy nor a boss, but as an ally! The Styracosaur appears stabled outside the city where level 2 takes place and is needed to get inside. It comes equipped with twin mounted cannons and a 20mm machine gun, giving you the power needed to break through the city walls and take down its automated defenses. The section using it is fairly brief, but in my opinion it's the best part of the game: to accommodate for the dinosaur's slower speed the entry part of this level is much simpler and less labyrinthine, and it is immensely satisfying seeing small armies of enemies who would normally be eager to eviscerate you turn tail and run screaming with their hands in the air when they see you turn the corner with a three ton dinosaur tank. I wish every level had a Styracosaurus part.
I also thought it was worth mentioning that there actually seemed to be some debate over which horned dinosaur Turok would ride here! The final model is definitely a Styracosaurus, but the file name for its weapon loadout mentions Triceratops instead, and in this promotional art we even see Joshua atop a Chasmosaurus! Very cool! The more ceratopsids the better, I always say!
The Monsters!
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| Come on! That guy on the left's not even a dinosaur! |
Regardless, however the Endtrails really came to be, the fact is they're all over Seeds of Evil, basically having replaced the human enemies from the last game. Of the two distinct dinosoid types encountered in-game they're the only one that ever gets to use weapons, coming equipped with grenades (that they store... somewhere?) and wrist-mounted "ion blasters" that quadruple as self-destruct buttons, cloaking devices, and an evil reflection of Turok's War Blade. Supposedly this is because they're the ones in charge of the war effort. The exact specifics are a bit up in the air since the comics and game don't seem to totally agree on every detail of the lore, but from what I've read the implication is that there's some sort of dino-racism going on and that the Endtrails get preferential treatment because they're descended from the "king" of the dinosaurs! Wow, rude!
While not seen in-game, Endtrails are apparently also some of the only dinosoids who can grow... hair? I always assumed it was because they were genetically engineer dino-human hybrids, but again, supposedly that's not the case. Perhaps they're protofeathers, then...?
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Endtrails on the other hand really do just have three toes, and of them only walk on two. They still have a hallux (dewclaw) on the back of their foot, so one of the main weight-bearing toes must've gone away for some reason during the course of their evolution. The weirdest thing though is that of those two toes one of them is at least three times the size of the other.
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| That's a hell of a hangnail! |
We're never told why this one claw is so humongous- probably because nobody but me cares what Endtrail feet look like- but it resembles the nail of an ostrich or even the game's raptors more than it does anything in the Tyrannosaurid family tree. It's not used in combat at all so I'm guessing this "big toe" must be useful for running and standing upright.
The setup of their hands is even more confusing! The total number of digits varies between the game and comics (and even between some of the comics) but there's always at least three and one of them is opposable. How the heck...?! The third digit of their T. rex ancestors was probably useless and definitely on its way out, so how could they have ever benefited from using it enough for it to turn into a full-on humanoid thumb? Again, I'm calling BS: these dinosoid fellas sure seem artificial to me!
Lastly I would be remiss not to mention that these genocidal, bloodthirsty jerks are actually funny.
Turn a corner with an impressive enough gun in hand or get their attention with a missed shot and their eyes will practically bug out of their head. Yes, the dinosoids have an "oh shit!" face. Up the ante with the Cerebral Bore or Styracosaurus mount and they'll even go running with their arms straight out in front of them like Scooby Doo villains. They also seem to get a good laugh out of that invisibility trick of theirs and stop to wave at Turok before they disappear. Adorable.
Maybe the most interesting thing about them is that they don't seem to have any concept of friend versus foe. Raptoids attack not just the player and ambient animals like compies and raptors but also all the other monsters and races in the game, including the other dinosoids. Between that and their absence from the comic books I think there are some real fun speculation opportunities here!
I mean, are the Raptoids not allowed in dinosoid society? Are they too bloodthirsty and dangerous to be welcome among their ranks? If so, where do they live and how are they treated? Do the others species view Raptoids as fellow dinosoids, or are they just weapons of war? Animals? Or could it be that Raptoids are much smarter than they let on and are simply the freedom fighters of the dinosoid world- a rebellious faction rising up against the tyranny of Endtrail classism? Could Seeds of Evil be taking place in the middle of a dinosoid civil war?!
Behaviorally the Fireborn seem to have more in common with the Raptoids than their Endtrail bretheren, at least in the sense that they're seemingly more of a a loner faction. They don't appear on the dinosoid council either (I'm not sure they can speak?) and are always by themselves when they appear in Seeds of Evil; if they have any kind of relationship with their creators, we don't get a chance to see it.
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| Who's a cute little wormie?! You are! You are!! |
Almost all of the enemies in Turok 2 are intelligent beings, but this Cave Worm is a rare wild animal type opponent. It pops up in a couple levels and will attack anything that gets too close to its invisible hiding spot. It looks like it's meant to read as something unfamiliar and uncomfortable, like what you'd expect from a bog or a cave creature, what with its gaping, drooling wound of a mouth, it's almost alien radial symmetry, and those weird squarish segments that look like a cross between alligator belly scales and the sides of a Mk.2 grenade, but oh, goodness... isn't it just cute, though? In the remaster especially. I mean just look at that little face, it's darling! I don't wanna hurt this guy, I want to hug him!
...Or, I would, at least, if he was just hanging out mindin' his own business. Unfortunately the Cave Worm is one of the simplest and most annoying enemies in the game, springing out of the ground like a stealth mode jack-in-the-box to whip you nonstop with its lightning fast, long reaching, and impossible to dodge tongue. It isn't a particularly powerful or difficult foe to dispatch, but that just makes it worse! It feels like the only reason the Cave Worm exists is to be a random minor inconvenience.
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Although you don't see them until fairly late in the game, the Leapers introduced in Turok 1 are back. Aside from some extra spikes and missing toes they're basically the same as they were before, but boy they sure do look a lot more dinosaurian now! Was that the intent from the beginning? I don't know, but I hope not. There's nothing wrong with a quadrupedal theropod (it's actually one of my favorite fictional dino tropes!), but this'll just never be a "real Leaper" to me. The original design was way too effective for something like this to ever feel right. Leapers are just monstrous amphibians for me. Always will be!
Having learned nothing from their stint with Tal'Set and the Campaigner, the envious Purr-Linn race is right back in the middle of it too, this time using borrowed alien tech to try and stop Joshua from reaching the Primagen! They're sporting a couple extra consanants this time, plus a new look that reminds me of Resident Evil's Hunters. They're a lot more humanoid in 2, still ape-ish and very exaggerated in their proportions but also fully upright and with a flattened, ogre-like face. All the main characteristics of the their old design are technically still here- the smooth skin and roughly textured backs, the "hippo teeth", the brown limbs and green bodies- but the overall feeling is something completely different. It's fascinating how two designs that have that much in common can still elicit such different emotional responses!
These new Purr-Linn (now split up into War Club, Juggernaut, and Gunner professions and explicitly stated to be native to the Lost Land) have merits of their own, but I'll always prefer the original look.
Turok 2 marks the first (and only) time we get to visit their home turf, the dreaded Death Marshes, and they're exactly what I imagined when I first saw these enemies in TDH. In fact it's such a perfect match that sometimes I forget it's a level in Seeds of Evil and not Dinosaur Hunter!
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| Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In his lane. Focused. Flourishing. |
Thanks to some behind the scenes notes we actually know more about this cut enemy than we do a lot of the creatures that're in the game! Also known as a Mial-Kka, the Hunter is described a bit like a snapping turtle; it hides in plain sight by curling up into a boulder shape and lies motionless for long periods of time, only moving when something gets juuuust close enough to catch by surprise. Its rock-like exterior is for more than just camouflage and could apparently deflect Turok's weapons in the original game, making it a uniquely invincible enemy that could only be made vulnerable by flipping it over with the grenade launcher or mine layer.
The Mial-Kka's armored shell had an in-universe significance, too, as it was apparently so tough that even the more sci-fi esque races of the setting coveted it. The Purr-Linn were said to collect these shells and use them as bartering tokens to trade with more technologically advanced races in exchange for better weapons.
We don't know why exactly this enemy was removed from the final release, but Turok 2 was a pretty big and ambitious title for its time, so most likely it was just one of many cuts necessary to fit the game on an N64 cartridge.
An enemy that did make the cut is the Alien Infantry from TDH, now called a Mantid Drone!
They're greener than before and no longer have grabby hands on their second set of limbs, but I think it's pretty fair to assume these are the same guys! Everything else about them is the same, sans their newly revealed face, because just like with the Purr-Linn this time we get to see them in their natural habitat! I assume this Hive of the Mantids must be terraformed somehow, and Joshua is just able to survive there via nebullous Turok magic? The Hive itself is a sweeping, dark labyrinth (like most levels...) of what looks to be biomechanical architecture and machinery. We don't learn anything about how it was constructed or how it works, but we are introduced to a host of other mantid castes that all play different roles within it! Our "alien infantry" friends here are specified to be scouts who travel far and wide in search of new resources, explaining why they were the only ones Tal'Set ever saw in Dinosaur Hunter!
All the Drones are the same color in this outing, though, which raises an interesting question! Were those different colored aliens in TDH really just examples of individual variation, or was there like... an ant war type situation going on?! Were we fighting scouts from multiple Hives?
Soldiers are giant combat mantids that stand twice as tall as Turok. They're very heavily armored, with distinctly swollen limbs and thoraxes, and seem to have redundant layers of exoskeletal plates on at least some parts of their body because sometimes they splay open and fire projectiles at you! I wonder if that's natural or if mantids also practice genetic engineering? The other fun thing about them is that unlike their more familiar kin they wear their gun-gauntlets on their secondary pair of limbs, preferring to get their hands dirty and use their main arms for bashing and smashing. It's a subtle detail, but I like the visual storytelling!
The Mantid Queen is a boss and thus a one time only encounter, though we do have to murder three of her pupating sisters along the way. Out of all the alien bug people we see she is without a doubt the strangest. Basically a giant, ornate Worker, she has a gray carapace and enlarged secondary arms halfway for walking, but is locked into her "centaur mode" permanently and cannot stand on two legs. Her gargantuan body has four distinct parts, something very weird for any terran insect, but maybe on her planet that's the norm! The same must go for her head, which by our standards isn't very insectoid at all... it's armor plated, I guess, but does she even have an exoskeleton? What kind of "bug" has slit nostrils, a vertical mouth, fleshy pink gums and teeth? If she had a different number of limbs she could almost pass for a demon! And what's up with those back legs... does she have hooves?! Sooooo weird!
We don't get to hear any details about what she does on a day to day basis or how exacty she interacts with her servant castes, but as you'd expect she is solely responsible for her species' propagation. Or was, anyway... According to the the strategy guide the Queen Joshua fought was the last one in the Lost Land, meaning the mantids are now doomed to die out within a few short generations. Their presence in the multiplayer spinoff Rage Wars is explained as a final act of desperation where the last of the Mantid Drones and Soldiers throw themselves at Turok in hopes of stealing one of his magical doodads, the Light Burden, because they think it might be able to re-open a portal to their homeworld.
Unfortunately for them the sequel to this game is called Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion and not Mantid Queen's Day Out, so I have to assume they canonically failed that attempt and died out. It sounds like a pretty sad fate honestly, having to live out their remaining days trapped in an unfamiliar land with nothing but the knowledge that they have no hope of survival, that they'll never again have a Queen to follow or be able to see the splendor of their homeworld...
...but then again they're also remorseless colonizers who harvest whole galaxies for funsies, so maybe that's deserved, I dunno. They also still have their own planet, wherever that is, so the Mantids aren't extinct-extinct, just extinct in the Lost Land.
One last denizen of the Hive worth mentioning is the Mantid Mite, a small, annoying anklebiter that I only recently found out was not a caste or young Mantid, but rather was just their equivalent to a house cat! These little predators were allowed to scurry beneath the Mantids' feet at all times (the Queen had a ton of them), enjoying all the shelter and protection the Hive provided whilst ridding it of parasites and small intruders like rodents, lizards, and birds.
I didn't enjoy dealing with these things in-game, but that is a very charming piece of worldbuilding, I have to admit.
The next group of enemies I'll cover are called Deadkin. As a kid I never gave them much thought (they're just zombies, right?) but apparently their inclusion was actually kind of cheeky! They're new creations, not specifically based on anything specific from any past game or comic, but actually represent a crossover faction! The Deadkin are explicitly stated to come from Deadside, the afterlife featured in another of Valiant & Acclaim's team up projects, Shadow Man! The official strategy guide even goes so far as to claim that only a Shadow Man can stop the Deadkin for good, and I suspect it's also no coincidence who features on the back of Turok 2's instruction manual!
I'm not sure if there was ever a specific plan for this crossover or if it was just meant to be a wink at the audience, but learning of its existence was a fun surprise! I'm not particularly familiar with Shadow Man nor had I ever heard of him growing up, but just knowing Acclaim was proud enough of their work with Turok to make this kind of gesture puts a smile on my face. It would have been real neat to see these two meet up for real somehow, or at least have the Deadkin show up in the Shadow Man comics. Alas, such things were not meant to be.
Sticking to what we do know, multiple sources made a point at the time of saying these guys are not zombies and should not be confused with them. I myself would argue they're just a very specific kind of zombie, but hey, apples to oranges right? The point they're trying to make is that these are not the souless corpses of humans who have been reanimated by mad science or an infection. Deadkin in their truest form are evil spirits, something totally shapeless or at least ghostly, and while normally trapped in Deadside they can cross over into other worlds by possessing uninhabited bodies. That means the instruction manual's claim is probably true... Turok's weapons are merely destroying the Deadkin's meatsuits and sending them back to Deadside, unharmed and free to pop back up in the Lost Land or any other world any time they want.
In the original N64 release of Seeds of Evil all of the base Deadkin, called Deadmen,
looked the same, but fret not! Even so there are three iterations of
them to talk about: the original design shown in promotional material,
the model actually used in-game, and then the updated version in
NightDive's remaster. All three share the same body, and for the most
part it's the type of body you would expect from a zombie, but the fun
thing here is that whatever they were before they died and got
possessed, they definitely weren't human! There are of course certain
details we can skim over, because I imagine things like the thickness of
their bones and the absence of a fully rendered ribcage were just
graphical shortcuts for the N64, but there's no getting around the fact
that these things have three distinct fingers, hoof-like feet, and
claws.
The NightDive version makes these gore-snoots solid, restoring the rough overall shape of their pre-release heads and, at least in my personal opinion, taking away a lot of their putrid charm, but I've gotta say, the addition of that single squarish bone smack dab in the middle is deviously artful. What the fuck even is that? Just a fragment of bone that chipped off the top, maybe a piece of the lower jaw or... is it a tooth? How could it be a tooth! What kind of screwed up alien vessel was this that its elongated mouth had one tooth resting in a sea of gums with no visible jaws or esophagus?! I gotta give NightDive credit just for how much that gets my imagination going. Somebody was having fun there!
Originally there was going to be another jobber-level Deadkin called the Hellsoldier, but for unknown reasons it got scrapped. For decades we knew it only from old screenshots in magazines and strategy guides, but in a surprise twist the folks at NightDive studios were able to bring it back! It acts the same as the Deadman and is, for all intents and purposes, the same enemy, just with a newly variable appearance.
There are only two versions of these and they have much subtler differences. The NightDive ones have more of a quiet menace to them, with smaller, less luminous eyes and dark textures around them that make them seem deep set. They've got a more bifurcated look with long, exposed sections of flesh. Neither really say "this was a humanoid skull once", but the NightDive ones especially bring to mind some very odd things like exposed nasal passages, platypus bills, and dolphin skulls.
These "new" Deadkin skulls are even more helmet-like than the others, and maybe that's for a reason! The instruction manual says that Deadkin "wear shabby armor" into battle, which uh... honestly raises a whole lot of other questions! Like hold up. Does that mean this skull isn't part of the original vessel's body? Did these Deadkin take the time to pick out bigger, scarier skulls than what they got just so they could place them over top as decorations?! Or is the old head totally gone? Can Deadkin take apart the bodies they inhabit and mix and match pieces Frankenstein style? Maybe that's why they look so odd!
Speaking of odd, how about the Deadkin Lord of the Dead? These are also definitely not human. They've got the same three-clawed hands and toe-hoofs as the Deadmen, but with totally different proportions and a body more than twice the size. They have noticeably longer, beefier arms, shins with huge bone spurs that stick up over their knees, and vampire fangs (or at least what remains of them). Unlike their Deadmen underlings they've got quite a bit of their original skin still in place. It looks rubbery and leather-like, with no scales or feathers or hairs, and strikes me as kind of worm-like. It's hard to say if any of their original pigmentation is intact but I get the impression the green parts of them are decay and the gray was their main body color.
The closest thing the Deadkin have to leaders are these witches three, the Sisters of Despair, and they throw another lore curveball at us: these Deadkin were human. I don't mean that they're just inhabiting human corpses by chance, but rather that those corpses specifically were once their own! So I guess Deadkin are really just ghosts, then? Were they all human, or just these three? Supposedly they came back to their physical bodies because somehow some of the arcane knowledge they gathered in life didn't follow them to the afterlife and they went back to get it! I appreciate the dedication, but geez, what kind of spell could've been THAT important? Did they have to give up their legs for it too?!
Anywho, I'm not sure it was really anyone's intent but these three have always reminded me of Ray Harryhausen's harpies from Jason and the Argonauts. That's just where my mind goes when I see flying blue women with horns!
The Sentinels in the Lair of the Blind Ones, though? ...Yeah, those are Harryhausen inspired for sure.
The Blind Ones are yet another new and unfriendly Lost Land race. They live in caverns deep beneath the ground and perish in direct sunlight, so it's easy to understand why they don't show up in every single outing. The only reason we see them this time is because they're working for the Primagen... I think?
Uh, quick aside: the Turok 2: Seeds of Evil title is actually a holdover from a period in development when "Seeds of Evil" actually meant something; according to the strategy guide there was supposed to be an alliance of seven ne'er-do-wells working for the Primagen called The Seeds of Evil. According to a word-doc created by comic artist & colorist Joe Caponsacco Turok 2 was originally set to have 8 bosses, so perhaps the 7 that weren't The Primagen were going to be these Seeds of Evil?
Anyway, we really don't know how or why the Blind Ones are colluding with the Primagen, but that just seems to be the leftover implication. Turok would probably have a bone to pick with them regardless though since they're people-eating monsters; the Blind Ones are smart enough to craft clothing and use tools and yet prefer to eat things that're as smart as they are, which is not a terribly good look for them. They apparently delight in dragging humans down into their underworld under cover of darkness and have a "lust for warm blood", so it seems like they're intended to be objectively evil. Hmm...
The other defining trait of the Blind Ones is that they are, indeed, quite blind. I always thought they were cyclopses, but it'd be more accurate to say that they used to be cyclopses millions of years ago: those sunken-in eye sockets are completely empty!
The most interesting thing about the Blind One Sentinel specifically, in my opinion, isn't anything to do with him, per say, but rather his equipment... the hilt of his sword is clearly a some kind of dinosaur jawbone, but it's transparent. I'd love to know the story behind that!
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| "Hey, I'm Bob. Sup?" |
As much as I love me a good 7th Voyage of Sinbad sendup, I'd be lying if I said I didn't think the Guardian was the superior Blind One design. It's significantly more unique and inhuman, with reptilian open ear-holes, no nose, keratinous tusks situated outside the mouth, and some really interesting skin textures. Their arms and legs have these bulging veins or ridges or something and feel borderline vegetable, like the rind on a cantaloupe or something, but their wrinkly shoulders and heads are almost an inversion of that and give off a flabby, grub-like look. They really don't look like they're the same species as the Sentinels, unless there's some crazy next-level sexual dimorphism going on here (in which case, which one is the female?!). Personally I like to think they're totally unrelated and both just happened to go blind together because they've been rooming in the same environment for so long. They're troglobite buddies!
Speaking of buddies, the Blind Ones actually have quite a few! It's a weird character trait for a bunch of deep dwelling recluses who allegedly get their jollies by eating people, but hey, it is what it is. They're not fond of Cave Worms ( and who is? Sorry guys.) but nothing else in the game really seems to bother them. They share their tunnels with Raptoids, Endtrails, Fireborns, Leapers, and even have a couple of pet species! Their favorites are giant spiders that start out crawly and hand-sized but grow over time into more web-reliant, car-sized poison spitters. The Blind Ones use them sort of like hunting dogs, springing out of trapdoors in the ground (which I have to assume are spider-made) and raiding the surface world side-by-side with their arachnid companions. They've also got a soft spot for worms, so long as they're not of the Cave variety.
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These chompy little fellas are called Fire Worms, and if you think their fleshy underbellies and armored backs look familiar then you're on the right track because they're canonically related to the Subterraneans! Hooray, they remembered my favorites! The Blind One Guardians (who usually come equipped with a crossbow) sometimes use these as their main method of attack, raising their arms and summoning packs of them to home in on you. I'm not sure how one blind creature summons another, especially when one of them is buried underground and presumably no smarter than an earthworm, but man I bet there's a fun story there. Like maybe they're psychically linked? Or the Blind Ones are practioners of the dark and wiggly art of vermimancy! Ooh ooh, or my personal favorite theory: what if the Guardians are calling the Fire Worms with infrasonic pulses from their feet, like how elephants communicate over long distances, and those hand gestures they do are purely for theatrics?!
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| Is it just me or does everything in this world have three fingers and two toes...? |
The Lair of the Blind Ones is also home to the Nala, a race of acid-spewing cycloptic goblins who we know almost nothing about. They appear only sporadically throughout their level but are always in large groups and look pretty pleased about it. I have no idea what their intended lore is but my headcanon is that they're like the Sentinel equivalent of chimpanzees. That's the best explanation I can come up with for why there's yet another distinct lineage of green one-eyed humanoids here, anyway.
My impression of these guys isn't the best. They're not very fleshed out, look a bit too cartoony for their setting, and kind of like the Cave Worms are more irritating and inconsequential than anything else.
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Delve deep enough into the Lair of the Blind Ones and you will find THE Blind One... a being I have many questions about. Let's get the obvious one out of the way first: why the heck is it called the "Blind One" if it's a gigantic and clearly functioning eyeball?! Question number two! What am I looking at?! Question three! Is this thing supposed to be the leader of the Blind Ones? One of the seven Seeds of Evil? Seriously, Acclaim! I want to know! Are y'all really implying that this sentient dungeon full of Nickelodeon slime reached out and had a conversation with the game's big bad?! Hooow?!
So far as I'm aware none of the game's supplementary material explains anything about the Blind One... not what it is, not where it came from, not what it wants or what it does, we don't even know for sure if it has anything to do with the other Blind Ones. It's a total mad lib of a monster. A blank slate with a blank stare. Use your imagination.
The Blind One was always my favorite boss growing up. It's just such a vibe! A gigantic glowing eyeball following your every move, flailing octopus tentacles, a lake of green slime, giant maggots inching around at your feet. It's like the eldritch gross-out god of Madballs and Creepy Crawlers. Throw a few jack-o-lanterns in there and it could be the spirit of Halloween! I still love this thing! Too bad it's not more of a fight, though. Whatever the Blind One is, it isn't strong... no special moves or shocking secrets here, plus it's the only boss in the game you can kill in one shot (if you bring the right weapon).
One of the most memorable moments in Turok 2 is the first time you find a fake warp portal. Instead of being teleported to one of your usual safe destinations you find yourself suddenly alone in a dark, dingy industrial area with hooks and bloody chains hanging from the ceiling. A rapsy disembodied voice informs you in a very forboding cutscene that you've just set foot into a trap. But who's tricked you? The dinosoids? The Mantids? The Primagen himself?
No! It's the big bad of the next game! Beware, Oblivion is at hand!
...Or his minions are, at least! Enter: the Flesh-Eaters.
Yes, not only do we have yet another evil non-human race to contend with, it's another cyclops race too! At least there's some explanation for them this time, though, at least in the supplementary material. The Flesh-Eaters are direct descendants of the Blind Ones, a more intelligent and technologically advanced race that left the comforts of caves and spiders to go join an extradimensional death cult. They're like Blind Ones in a lifelong goth phase, Edgelords with a capital E.
Flesh-Eaters come in three varieties- Sentinels (again), Death Guards, and Lords of the Flesh- which each represent different stages of forced evolution within individuals of the same species. Their name comes from their cult's most prestigious ceremony, a harrowing rite of passage where chosen warriors consume the Flesh of the Mother to either transform into something greater or die a torturous death.
What is The Mother, you ask?
This thing.
The last boss you battle before meeting up with the Primagen himself, The Mother is a grotesque, gargantuan beast that towers over everything else in the game (unless you count the Blind One, since that's kind of a whole room) and is one of Turok's toughest fights yet. She has a wide range of attacks, bouncy annoying minions, and multiple stages. Most impressively she's also the only boss you can't kill. That's right: The Mother gets away!
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| "You haven't seen the last of me, Turok!" she said before Turok saw the last of her. |
Unfortunately she wasn't actually destined to rear her ugly head again, but oh what a fun twist this was back in the day! My impressionable little mind had already been blown by its first encounter with foreshadowing and sequel bait, so when the battle with this thing ended with it giving me the stink eye and scurrying off into the dark I really took pause. "Video games can do that?! I thought bosses always died! All the others did, it's- it's like one of the rules!"
The lore behind The Mother is intriguing, but sadly very vague. Much like the Pur-Lin and their alleged alien origin, this is another resident of the Lost Land who's story got retconned going forward. We'll talk more about that in the Turok 3 review, though, so for now let's just pretend we don't know Acclaim's gonna cast this wretch into the Shadow of Oblivion. What does Turok 2's supplementary material say about her?
The Mother is, as her name implies, the mother of all Flesh-Eaters. Literally. This isn't a caste form like Mantid Queen, The Mother is the sole mother of every single member of this species ever. That alone should raise some brows because there's no way that's a natural setup! I mean if all the Flesh-Eaters come from one stagnant gene pool then there's no way they could have any kind of genetic variation or natural evolution. And how could there only be one Mother anyway? Is she a supernatural one-of-a-kind being like a god or mutant, or just the last of her kind? It also begs the question of why Flesh-Eaters reproduce this way but not Blind Ones... or could it be that they do and this is just what The Blind One looks like when it isn't buried in rock...?
We also know the lesser Flesh-Eaters worship her. She's both mother and god to them, and the consumption of her flesh is treated as a big deal. It takes dedicated service and proven badassery to earn the right to even try it, not to mention a majority vote from their cycloptic peers, and most of them are willing and eager to do so even though they know only one in four survive the process. Some undescribed property of her flesh (a mutagen? a curse?) is responsible for this risk and in Flesh-Eater society it is a great honor and accomplishment to endure it.
Success is a physical transformation as much as it is a spiritual and cultural one, though, and Flesh-Eaters who don't die unsightly deaths gain dramatically enhanced strength and arcane knowledge. The standard issue Sentinel Flesh-Eaters we fight are individuals who haven't given this rite a go yet, while Death Guards endured it and Lords of the Flesh (pictured above) passed with flying colors. There is also a fourth result we don't get to see, the Children of the Mother, which are Flesh-Eaters who somehow managed to fail the ritual without dying. They're described as dumb, weak, and deformed and you'd think the high ranking Flesh-Eaters would look down on them, but no, apparently not! Children of the Mother are still respected (or at least feared) in Flesh-Eater society, they just don't get to fight for mom.
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There's also the Mother Grubs, floppy little nuissances that look like demonic fish out of water. They don't have any lore or explanation that I know of so I'm not entirely sure where they fit into all this. They almost have to be newborn Flesh-Eaters, but why then do they have two eyes? Seems awfully weird to me, but I guess they must merge together as they grow! I wonder if the Blind Ones go through anything like this?
The very last "race" we get to meet are the Primagen's cybernetic minions. They don't get a specific name but are split into two types, Troopers and Elite Guards, which look to be more or less the same thing in different sizes. Their description in the strategy guide says they've been so heavily altered that it's impossible to tell what they were originally, which I guess is why there's so little information on them. They are beings of flesh and blood (mostly) but exist only to maintain the inside of the Primagen's hidden lightship and are "born" on an assembly line; basically they're the big bad's version of the Worker Mantids, but through his extensive and unethical tampering he's managed to create something that is somehow even less individualistic than the eusocial hivemind bugs. I don't get the impression these things have anything approaching a personality... or thoughts. That is one blank damn stare.
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| "These Glorft are being brainwashed and held against their will! I'd bet my jorblocks on it!" |
There are also Primagen Bio-Bots, which are even more artificial:
It's hard to tell if the Bio-Bots are built from the same base creature as the Troopers and Guards or if they're "unrelated". By all accounts I guess it doesn't really matter, since they're both so heavily modified and built from scratch anyway.
These are the kinds of enemies you only see in old games. There's just no consideration for functionality at all, they run on pure, unfettered rule of cool. The kinda things you see in the demons from Doom. The people who designed this didn't give a rip if it made any sense or not and part of me truly respects that. It's so easy to get caught up in all the micro-details of what a creature's backstory is and how its biology functions, to obsess and over-plan and make everything absolutely perfect and foolproof... sometimes it's refreshing to just make something for no other reason that because it's cool.
Why is it part biological when a robot would be easier to maintain? Don't know, don't care!
Does it need a skeletal lower jaw hanging out of its helmet? Noooo, but it looks creepy!
Is dragging itself around like a kid on a scooter board effecient? Not hardly, but you'll remember it!
Fair enough, Bio-Bots, fair enough.
The final boss and head badguy in Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, the Primagen is a giant, asymmetrical, super smart psychic alien deity scientist with an army of biomechanical minions and a city-sized vessel/base called a lightship... and if you think that sounds like a lot, wait til you hear his backstory.
Originally one of an entire race of extremely evolved, supremely intelligent, god-like creatures, Primagen existed in a universe that was completely separate from our own and existed long before it. His kind lived in a state of near-perfect enlightenment but still had one of life's greatest mysteries left unanswered: how did it all begin? The individual we know as Primagen was utterly obsessed with this question and endeavored against the better judgement of his peers to personally find out. Millions if not billions of years before the events of Seeds of Evil he built an unsanctioned time machine and flung himself straight to the beginning of time.
Now, there's a real world theory that traveling any further back in time than before the point when your time machine became functional is impossible, and the Turok universe follows that line of thinking, so in order to get to ground zero the Primagen's machine needed a loophole: it wasn't going to fling him to the beginning of his universe, but rather to the beginning of some other random universe that it deemed "close enough". Despite the (artificial intelligence inside the?) machine understanding this, the Primagen himself apparently did not because he didn't plan for this at all and had no idea the machine was even capable of this. It managed to pull off its timespace jump anyway, somehow, but without the proper tools and foresight it made a hell of a mess getting there... which is apparently the origin story for Turok's setting.
Yes, the time machine went cycling between different realities like a radio on "seek" mode, trying autonomously to find a path to the birth of a universe that fit the Primagen's criteria, and along the way dragged pieces of those worlds along with it. These multiversal fragments all came crashing together when the time machine finally stopped, triggering the Big Bang and creating the Lost Land.
Instead of going back to the beginning of time in his universe, the Primagen created an entirely new one- one that was inherently super screwed up and made from bits and pieces of random, incompatible realities he didn't even know existed.
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| "WHAT YEAR IS IT?!" |
At the end of the day all the Primagen really wants is to go back home, which doesn't sound evil, but considering he'd annihilate the entire universe on a subatomic level and sew chaos across countless other realities in doing so, I can see why he's gotta go. Two things of note, though...
One is that this dispute is actually solved peacefully in the comics, with Joshua and the Primagen just sitting down and having a civil damn conversation about it! They work out an alternate travel method and just... warp the big guy out. No fight, no mess, no hard feelings, no multiversal destruction. He just... goes home. Huh. I kind of love that, to be honest. Doesn't make for as dramatic an ending, though, so in the N64 version he comes at us with robots and bombs, calls us a fat cow a few times, and we blast the heck out of him with a bunch of super rad weapons. Oh well.
The second thing is that, considering that the Primagen was canonically totally upfront and honest about this plan, I have the ask: how freaking dumb did these other bad guys have to be to agree to this?!
Cooooome on! What the hell, guys! Are the dinosoids seriously THAT petty that they'd destroy themselves, their planet, and their entire reality just so they could laugh at the humans going extinct?! Were the Mantids really okay with all this, back before they lost all their Queens and thought they were gonna colonize the Lost Land? What the hell did the Blind Ones think they were getting out of this?! I mean the Purr-Linn are morons so that checks out, okay, but nobody else thought better of this? Geezus! Maybe Turok and his peeps should've just noped out to another dimension and let y'all do all that, cuz wow, y'all deserved what was coming! Dumbest rogues gallery ever!
Anywho, that about does it for Turok 2. All things considered my relationship to this game is love-hate. It and its peripheral material did a lot to expand the Turok universe and it's got some pretty interesting world building, memorable environments, and cool looking creatures, but it's also dated, bloated, and best observed from far far away. Playing Seeds of Evil is only fun in extremely short bursts and I personally cannot recommend a full playthrough (or the comics) to anyone in 2025.
There are a zillion better things you could be doing with your time instead, so please don't waste your life walking circles in dimly lit polygonal hallways like I did.
Go touch some grass. Talk to people. Visit a museum, look at the dinosaurs. Live life.
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