On November 19, 1998, Sierra released Half-Life. In the time it took to install 300MB of exquisitely poised shooter off its CD-ROM, everything from the genre prior became part of a bygone era. And perhaps the unluckiest of the lot was Ritual’s SiN, which released just ten days before it.
Here was a game that, like , wanted to bring a bit more storytelling back to the genre after a long period of dominance from dialogue-averse id Software and similarly laconic newcomers Epic Games. It had a spectacularly named hero in John Blade, and in its antagonist Elexis Sinclaire a typically salacious depiction of a woman – though to give Ritual some credit, both black player-characters and female CEOs were wildly progressive ideas for the era. It had voice actors. It was set in a recognisable near-future. There wasn’t an inverted cross, alien landscape, or power-up in sight. If John Romero wasn’t already turning in the grave he was slowly digging for himself’s walls hilariously stating ‘Lex to make Romero her bitch’ on them would have sealed it.
