The following preview was posted in early 1999 on PC Paradox. It has been archived here on TA Universe to prevent its loss. Please note that Amen has been cancelled and is not expected to ever be released.

Amen: The Awakening is more than just a first-person shooter, it is an epic tale of the future. Cavedog Entertainment, the developers of this action game, have also added many innovative features to further this game's success. Implementing their new Amengine, their visuals look absolutely astounding. Adding a great deal of features from all sorts of genres, such as puzzles and action elements, this game will attract an large group of people. Finally, Amen: The Awakening's epic story has some absolutely imaginative features which suggest that this game could be as gripping as its visuals. Amen: The Awakening has a very strong basis beginning with the story and characters, which could spell success for Cavedog.

Amen is presented with a hellish world in far into the future. The Earth's political balance and societies have nearly crumbled and terrorists have taken over a portion of the world. It all begins on Christmas Eve in 2032...

Last-minute shoppers crowd the stores, workers down eggnog at company parties, and parents put excited children to bed. There is no warning for what is about to happen.

Suddenly, before anyone has time to prepare or react, a murderous insanity awakens within a third of the world's population. In the ensuing chaos, planes crash, cities burn and millions die. It is humanity's worst hour.

To stem the rampage of the Afflicted, the European Resistance Organization is formed in Western Europe to create a "safe-zone," where those who are not afflicted with the strange condition can live in peace. Simultaneously, large numbers of Afflicted begin an organized invasion of North America by systematically taking over or destroying key military and government installations.

But what is the cause of this strange affliction? Is it some kind of biochemical agent that has been unleashed upon the world? Or is this Armageddon, as predicted in Biblical prophecy? While the debates continue, the Afflicted exert ever-increasing control in North America, and the resistance there is in dire need of help.

Enter Britain's best-kept secret, Bishop Six, an incredibly dedicated commando whose work for the SAS was legendary. After his wife and daughter were killed by the Afflicted, Robert Dwight, a long-time friend and the ERO commander, asks Bishop Six to join a military strike force. Bishop Six agrees with grim determination.

Thus begins the most dangerous adventure of Bishop Six's life, as he slowly uncovers the horrible truth behind this strange affliction � and yet the entire truth remains elusive until the very end.

Whether Amen's plot will be applied well to the game or not, this story line is very gripping. A quick introduction of the main character while set in a believable world doomed to disaster. Cavedog Entertainment has spent a great deal of time developing the fictional world for this first-person action game. Even though this is more of a teaser, this excerpt has done its job extremely well. In an interview with GuruTech, Greg MacMartin spoke about Amen's basic story line:

Could you give some background as to what Amen is, its story line, etc?

Amen is a 3D first person Action game with strong elements from RPG and adventure games woven in. One of the main design goals of Amen is to immerse the player into a believable and detail rich universe and involve him in a story of truly epic proportions. The game revolves around an event we call "The Awakening", on which 4 billion human beings suddenly become homicidal maniacs on Xmas Eve, 2032. For months after this event, the world was in complete anarchy...no government survived. Many believed this was truly Armageddon.

Amen: The Awakening's plot definitely hits a nerve that has not been touched recently in action games. And hopefully, Cavedog will develop Amen so it revolves around the story and not the weapons and enemies. Undoubtedly, Cavedog has a very interesting plot, however, the question of applying it to their upcoming action game has not yet been answered.

There are three very important characters the gamer will get acquainted with. Bishop Six is the character who the gamer controls through Amen: The Awakening. He is a big, burly, mid-aged man sent to discover the truth of The Awakening. He is a British agent in an elite division of the SAS and very witty, intelligent, and emotional at times. His warped sense of humor and foolish actions lead many to believe that he's almost insane, but his down-to-earth attitude at work shows otherwise. Bishop Six is not a particularly violent man, only when he must be. It will definitely be nice to see that a main character in a "shooter" will not be as bloodthirsty as some others.

General Robert Dwight is the Commander in Chief of the European Resistance Organization. His age shows his wisdom, and his military background shows his courage. He is a veteran of war, and sent across the globe to complete important missions. He founded the European Resistance Organization to protect the Afflicted from the Awakening. Overall, he is the Commander of Bishop Six.

The last character is General Karen Brenton, General of the NAU Army and leader of the North American Resistance (NAR). Amen would not be complete without a beautiful, young woman, of course, but her personality should not be overseen. Being the daughter of the President of the United States, her background and reputation is already set. She established the North American Resistance to save lives and do justice. She is strong-willed, hard to impress, and her charismatic presentation of herself intimidates men. She will help out Bishop Six with his missions throughout Amen: The Awakening. Monk, a designer at Cavedog, stepped up in the Official Amen Forum and spoke about the character development.

Having worked with character artists in the past and presently, I can say that there is a LOT of energy put into making one character work well. The reason most games have only a few bodies, maybe with different skins, is that for each body you have to build the meshes onto a skeleton (assuming you're using a skeletal animation system), animate the skeleton with those meshes, texture the meshes, tweak all of the animations so they look good with the new meshes, etc., etc. That ends up being a lot of work. And building multiple characters with different skeletons multiplies the amount of work. The easiest way to add variety to game characters is to add new skins - which means you have a bunch of characters with the exact same body and different clothes/colors. Even with two or three artists working on a character, it may take a month or two just to put together one character (skeleton and meshes). Not to mention the memory requirements for loading up multiple skeletons and animations. All I really want to say is that deciding how many distinct characters go into a game is largely a factor of how big a pool of character artists/3D modelers/animators you have. Which translates to money and time. And also tends to up the system requirements.

All of the main characters in Amen: The Awakening can definitely show the game is well-developed. The background given on each of them is constructed skillfully to give more historical background of what happened prior to Christmas Eve of 2032. Cavedog Entertainment has definitely thought of the character's personalities. Hopefully their role in Amen will be permanent and the game will not drift away from a genuine story and cast of characters like this action game.

There is one more thing about Amen: The Awakening that the gamer should know, OmegaNet. After the horror the Afflicted brought upon the world after the Awakening, the non-Afflicted turned to the OmegaNet to keep the world-wide lines of communication open. Utilizing the bunker-like Omega Stations, resistance organizations gathered their forces and struck back at the Afflicted. This is the method in which people communicate through to keep the non-Afflicted tuned to the happenings. This is also the way how Bishop Six will stay informed about background information, and this is where the story line, the characters, and the environments present themselves.

With the amazing story, the in-depth characters and concepts, Amen: The Awakening will be presented in tweleve Acts. Each Act will contain a separate mission and a very realistic environment for Bishop Six to infiltrate. Here is a slight overview and the reasons why Amen's levels are called "Acts"

Amen: The Awakening is not a game where you're forced to jump in and shoot everything in sight, level after level. The action in the game is woven through an epic storyline. You won't jump from level to level to level. Instead, you'll move from act to act, discovering new sets of challenges and new revelations.

Reason 1: Every Act is created much like a D&D Module, by planning out every single location to have a purpose and a fun value to it.

Reason 2: Every Act was exhaustively researched and designed (especially Acts 10 and 4, the aircraft carrier and the Pittsburgh Airport, respectively) for WEEKS before anything was built in Eden (our editor). For instance, we took 4 rolls of film worth of pictures of the Pittsburgh Airport so that we could build it to be as authentic as possible.

Reason 3: Every Act almost plays like a mini-game in itself. There is no structure that each Act follows (like being hub-based, or mission based, or whatever), because the story dictates what the Act will be and what will occur in that Act. For instance, some Acts are like missions, where the player has a clearly defined goal...but others simply put the player into a situation where his goal is to simply survive and figure out what happened to get him in the situation that he is in.

The main reason that Acts are FAR superior to levels is that the player will really feel like they are in a real world...and they will also feel like they are part of a grand, epic story that really is an integral part of the game, instead of just a neat premise that doesn't REALLY impact the game in any way.

Amen's Acts will progressively become more difficult as the story line unfolds in front of the gamer. In addition, these Acts are very similar to missions, an objective must be completed before advancing. Instead of blowing up everything in the gamer's sight, he will be forced to think about his actions. Cavedog Entertainment has made the environments as realistic as possible which means there will be no guidance in the Acts whatsoever. Amen: The Awakening is a step in the evolutionary process to develop the first-person shooter into epic stories containing elements from all genres.

Cavedog Entertainment has mixed Amen with a massive array of elements from other genres. While maintaining the first-person perspective, this is a shooter at heart. But, overall, Cavedog has added puzzles to keep the gamer thinking through the twelve massive Acts in Amen. There are also elements reminiscent of Thief: The Dark Project, the game where killing the person brutally does not always pay off. Having Amen being separated into acts and progressive story also introduces adventure elements. Adding a mixture of genre has seems to be the path developers have taken because there are many great concepts in each genre. If they combined just the most loved features, the game will be successful, as simple as that. But also, games that restrict itself to one genre tend to be short-lived and not very exciting, Cavedog has realized that and has made a strong basis for Amen to succeed.

Amen's gameplay is very similar to any other first-person shooter mainly because of the first-person perspective, however, this action game boasts a little more than being an average first-person shooter. Taking place thirty-three years in the future, there must be some futuristic, but realistic, weapons. In all, there will be an array of firepower to pack this game with a great deal of fun, but Cavedog wants to drift away from having unique weapons in Amen.

Well, as I have hinted earlier, this game is much more than just a shooter, so we definitely don't have the fixation on weaponry that others have. HOWEVER, all of our weaponry has been designed, and we have a total of 16 different damage types that all the weapons in the game can utilize. This topic kind of brings up our combat and inventory systems, both of which could have essays written about them. ;) We'll reveal more about this stuff when we get closer to release.

All sixteen weapons in Amen: The Awakening have not been released yet, however, one has been revealed, the M800 Assault Rifle. The M-800 is the standard military assault rifle in 2032. It was first used by the U.S Military in 2002, but major improvements of this weapons has brought it back. It is very well rounded, with both a multi-purpose assault rifle, a high-powered explosive projectile launcher and a bayonet all in one. It is one of the most commonly used assault weapons of the SAS Special Division. There will also be other weapons ranging from Bishop Six's two fists to a rocket launcher.

Amen: The Awakening's gameplay is tuned to be extremely interactive. Gamers have always loved the ability to flush toilet, pop cans out of vending machines, and break windows because it is something extra. Cavedog Entertainment has taken that into account and applied that into Amen's gameplay. Programmers and designers have claimed that Amen will allow the gamer to cause massive destruction to the environments Bishop Six lands in.

Can you explain the type of interactivity?

I don't want to go into too many specifics on this one, but we have an awesome keyframing system that allows unprecedented freedom in creating dynamic parts of the world. (trains, planes and automobiles, you know). There is also a lot of things blowing up in Amen. Destruction is cool. :)

Can you pump innocent bystanders full of lead?

We want the player to have as much freedom to do as he pleases within the Acts...but we also want to make sure that Bishop Six does not grossly act out of character. He is not a murderer. So, I'm afraid you will not be given the opportunity to kill innocent people, sorry. :)

The enemies in Amen: The Awakening are the Afflicted. The Afflicted are the people who suddenly turned from normal to murderously insane killing millions of people on the spot. Specific names have not been given out concerning the enemies, but all of the foes in Amen: The Awakening are people of the Afflicted.

Amen: The Awakening will also boast a variety of difficulty levels for those lazy people. Obviously having the easy, medium, and hard levels, plus more, the gamer can choose exactly what type of game he is up for.

Will there be difficulty settings?

Yes, there will be difficulty settings, and they will be done in a cool and somewhat unique way (the specifics of which I shall remain silent about, sorry) :)

How the difficulty setting will affect the game through enemy placement, puzzles, length of missions, or even the health handicap has not been determined, but this feature will impose any type of gamer, lazy or not, to buy this beautiful looking game.

Amen: The Awakening is driven by an absolutely astonishing graphics engine deftly named the "Amengine." Cavedog Entertainment's action game's visual appearance is absolutely gorgeous, and reading from many E3 reports, Amen's fluidity is uncanny. Greg McMartin commented about this brilliant Amengine:

What is most unique about the Amengine? What aspects of it make it a true competitor in the FPS market?

Really, it's the engine as a whole that is going to truly distinguish it above the rest. We spent most of our initial development on just the editor (Eden) to ensure that it was the best it could be. We have editing features that would make ANY level designer drool with anticipation. We are actually keeping quiet about most of those features, however. As far as overall Amengine features, here is a list of some: We've got a portal based renderer, a full dynamic radiosity lighting model, an integrated terrain editor, curved surfaces, a kick-ass event system that allows an awesome level of interactivity with the environments, a full skeletal animation system with true vertex weighting and animation mixing....just to name a few features. Really, though, if I had to name the one thing that will make the Amengine truly compete with the Unreal and Quake engines...it's Eden. You simply can't go back to using UnrealEd or Worldcraft after creating stuff with Eden.

Here are the specifications for the Amengine:

-Portal based rendering architecture including mirrors and other tricks
-Full dynamic radiosity lighting model
-Curved surface support
-Integrated terrain renderer
-An amazing full featured editor (EDEN)
-Full DX6 support
-Full skeletal animation system with vertex weighting and animation mixing/prioritization
-Polygon shader system for multipass rendering
-Detail and macro textures
-Full keyframing system
-DLL extension mechanism
-Full billboard/ribbon system
-PlayerFX system including wind and water
-WeatherFX system including snow and rain
-Procedural texturing system
-Powerful event system for easily creating interactivity

Looking at the media images, Amen: The Awakening has some truly magnificent graphics and graphics engine that will make any gamer drool. This Amengine, made in-house, was skilfully made to suit the exact demands Amen made. This 3D-accelerated action game has striven to take the gamer into a completely realistic world from the lighting to the enemies' movements. Definitely, they have come very close to acheiving this objective, and Amen has been proven to be extremely smooth. The Amengine supports lighting radii and shading, simulated earthquakes, rain, and snow, a great physics model adapted to real life, and whole loads of ambience to create a great mood. The environments are astounding ranging from subways to airports to aircraft carriers. The Amengine packs a full load to drive Amen: The Awakening's extraordinary graphics efficiently and smoothly.

In-game cinematics are another thing Cavedog has added to their long list of features. According to the programmers, the cinematic presentations will always fall between the Acts, and will be short and sweet. Movies and animations have always been a great feature to have to give the gamer a break, support the story, and reveal some necessary background to fully immerse the player. Cinematics will always help a game, and with Amen's story, characters, and graphics, these quick clips will be a great show to see.

The music of Amen: The Awakening places a great touch of emotion on this already-beautiful game. Jeremy Soule is the composer of Amen's music. Simply using a symphony orchestra, Amen's music is meant to powerful, gripping, and upbeat. Using a 19th century style, like in other action titles, Amen's music makes a great impact on the gamer's emotions.

What makes Amen so powerful is the sheer depth of its experience, which begins with the saga. Because the story in Amen is colossal in its implications, the music within the game should be composed using the most powerfully emotional palette that a symphony orchestra can deliver. Players experiencing the game deserve nothing less.

The score in Amen is closely related to music of the late 19th century. I've spent a great deal of time studying the Great Masters from that era to give the Amen soundtrack a "timeless" feel. The music also draws from elements heard in the earlier part of this century, as I feel that the complex experimental harmonies developed by such masters as Ligetti often convey truly dark and sinister moods.

A sample MP3 is posted on the Official Amen Site, and when one would listen to the music, he would get drowsy and tired because of the quiet and smooth opening. When the piece progresses, the music become more upbeat and strikes the person immediately with a shock. Jeremy Soule skilfully created the music in three segments, first came a dreary tone, then a lower-toned approaching a climax, and then a truimphant segment which installs action and suspense in Amen. Cavedog's action has a very talented music composer who has added action and suspense into Amen: The Awakening through the audio.

Amen: The Awakening also comes with their very user-friendly map editor, EDEN. This map editor will allow gamers to create their own maps for the single player and multiplayer options. WorldCraft has been the main map editor around these days, but EDEN is being released with a great deal of anticipation. Map editors have always been something level designing gamers have loved, but there has not yet been an exceptionally easy map editor where someone can just create and play in a couple hours or so. Cavedog has kept EDEN's development very quiet, however, a great map editor, which is easy to use and simplistic, can be expected.

Cavedog's action game will also support multiplayer games. One of the major points a game should always have is multplayer support over a network. Most likely, Cavedog will support Amen: The Awakening over their online service called Boneyards. However, the team developing Amen have not completely focused on the multiplayer aspect:

As I mentioned earlier, we are HEAVILY focusing on the single player aspect of the game (even more so, I suspect, than most others are) but we will not forget the multiplayer part of Amen. We have conceived of a bunch of cool ideas that take multiplayer 3D action gaming well beyond the standard deathmatch, but I can't discuss them right now.

A multiplayer option is always a great thing, however the evil problem of latency is still an issue. Whether Boneyards is a quick, latency-free online service or not, Amen: The Awakening's strong point most likely will not be the multiplayer option. But, that is very understandable because of the twelve acts that Cavedog is inserting into Amen has largely shown there has been an emphasis on the single player. It will be very refreshing to see a game that will be played for the single player mode, not just the multiplayer.

Being released in the summer of this year, Amen: The Awakening definitely seems to be ahead of its time. Taking a story and characters quite similar to a James Bond movie, putting it far into the future, and giving the plot a twist, Amen will be a great game to play. The large levels, or Acts, and the Amengine will definitely provide all the eye candy one will need to see for a long time. The music is great, and Cavedog has shown its integrity by focusing on a genuine single player mode which many people will admire. The EDEN map editor for Amen has high expectations to ascend the throne of map editors, and the multiplayer will definitely be a kick to experience. Overall, Amen: The Awakening will be an invigorating, exhilarating game that definitely will be refresh in all aspects.