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I have an absolute adoration of the unknown. There is a narrative tool that some video games use that I like to call, “The Over There.” It is the temptation of showing the potential of a location or idea off in the distance that you never really get a good look at, but it entices you unlike any other. You desperately want to see those things in action, but never get the satisfaction and you are forever left thinking about what is, “Over There.”

We see this sort of tactic used heavily in games like the Myst franchise, including my all-time favorite game, Myst Online:Uru Live. This constant tease of the potential a game has is what keeps me locked in and engaged with the software and this concept can even be carried over to the realm of unreleased games. What was this game going to be like that we never got? What was the end product intended to be for a game I saw dozens of screenshots and previews of in video game magazines? This last question here is the crux of this article. Today we talk about a recently released development build of a canceled FMV Adventure developed by SegaSoft for the Sega Saturn called Sacred Pools.

One of the many dangers on the space station

In the far future, humanity escapes a cataclysmic event on Earth by propelling themselves off into space. Some of the population decided to take the flora from the amazon rainforest with them in hopes of reclaiming some semblance of life from home. Those people set up a space station on an asteroid that formed unique crystals that provide magical powers. With those crystals are also the mystical sacred pools which are vital to the stabilization of the asteroid. Now, as civil war breaks out within the station, the amazonian defenders of the sacred pools are combating an evil sorceress, an embittered capitalist and various other mysterious forces.

Don't let their looks fool you. These ladies are dangerous.

You play as an agent sent to the station to help retrieve the sacred crystals from the evil forces working within the station and restore balance to the asteroid before it inevitably explodes, all in glorious full motion video. This game was the work of a large production crew, with the director James W. Riley who worked with the infamous Tom Zito game studio, Digital Pictures as producer. The game intended to allow players to explore a massive space, solve puzzles and interact with actors freely within a seemingly freeform FMV environment. The idea was to take the work done by Digital Pictures and build upon it into a far more interactive experience as a full fledged adventure game that wasn’t bound by the stationary cameras we saw from predecessors.

Sadly, a year after the game was announced and shown off at E3, Sacred Pools was quietly canceled. It wasn’t until late in 2022 that the folks at Gaming Alexandria were given development builds of the game by associate producer of the project, David Gray. These builds show an almost complete look of the game and its vision, albeit lacking in a lot of ways. Players could move along preset paths through the space station and follow live action actors as they moved through the space. It feels very alive and real, surprisingly, keeping in line with the DNA of other FMV projects done by Digital Pictures. You would gather crystals which you could use for defense, solve puzzles to acquire the various sacred crystals and complete a variety of narrative quests that give insight into the world.

A top down view of the asteroid space station

The problem is, the builds that we have access to are not final and the game, as of right now, is incompletable and riddled with bugs. Scenes may play out of order, repeat and break the narrative of the game and in a lot of instances, forget that you completed certain tasks. What narrative there is, seems fragmented, as if we are only catching glimpses of some bigger story intended to be woven. We will look at computer screens to see characters battling and the civil war raging within the station. We will be tasked to find characters we have never met and never will meet as they are not present in the game that we know of.

The computer systems within the space station

While it is an absolutely alluring game to experience, what with its implementation of FMV to create an ambitious extension of the technology, that feeling of what is happening, “Over There,” is still so very strong. What will happen to Sacred Pools? Will they ever be restored? What of the evil amazonian tribes that time and time again blocked your path? Will they ever be thwarted? Maybe one day, but not today sadly. Today we will still look out into the vast expanse of space and wonder if the true vision of the Sacred Pools will ever be achieved.

Because of the nature of the game being unfinished, we can’t give it a proper ranking within the Video Game Obscura. If you know of any unreleased games you wanted to play but never could, let me know in the comments!

To Humor,
Jonathan