Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem/Sanity effects

Sanity Meter

Eternal Darkness offers a unique status meter called the sanity meter. When fantastic and scary events happen in the game (mainly the appearance of evil enemies), your sanity meter will decrease. If your sanity meter reaches empty, you will go insane and begin to experience disturbing events as you play the game (If you experienced the situations the characters in the game do, you would probably go crazy too!) The "sanity meter" feature definitely sets Eternal Darkness apart from other games of the genre.

Your sanity meter bar is located in the top left corner of the screen and appears if it becomes depleted or if it is dangerously low. When enemies appear, their glare will initially drain your sanity. If your sanity meter gets too low, you will begin to experience sanity effects. You can replenish your sanity meter by using the Xel'lotath Alignment (green) recover spell or by performing a finishing move on a downed enemy. The Xel'lotath creatures drain more sanity than other creatures, but also give back more sanity when destroyed with a finishing move.

Sanity Effects

During gameplay, if your sanity meter gets low, you'll experience some audio, visual and control effects that will mess with your mind. Do not panic. These "glitches" are actually effects designers have added to drive the player crazy. As your sanity level lowers, the camera will tilt a bit and you will hear disturbing sounds. But sometimes, usually when entering a new room, you will experience these sanity effects.

Here is a list of the sanity effects you may experience in the game. (Each effect is experienced separately.)

Spoilers!

Spoiler warning! This section of the article contains spoilers, or hints about the game's storyline or progression.

You might want to skip down to the next heading if you do not want facts about the game's storyline or plot revealed to you.

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"Blood Bath" (00:16)
Alex's Blood Bath

Visual/Screen/Environment Effects

• Blue screen of death
• Blood will drip from the walls or ceiling
• Paintings will change appearance
• Heads of statues will follow your movements
• The game will appear to delete your saved game
• Bugs will crawl across the screen
• Nails will scratch across the screen
• A fly will buzz around the screen
• The television will appear to turn off
• Room-specific objects will float in the air
• Entire sequences of play turn out to be hallucination, reverting to a prior point in play (side note: corridors, doors, windows, and environmental objects will often be located in different places or not at all the second time through these sequences)
• The game will appear to have a cliffhanger ending, saying "To be continued".

Control/Character Effects

• A message appears alerting you that controller one is not connected
• Your character will grow larger or smaller during movement
• The environment will be upside down and you will walk on the ceiling
• The character's body will break apart as you walk (you can pick up your body bits)
• Casting spells will cause you to explode
• Character will turn into a zombie in the next room
• Controls will become inverted
• Character will shoot himself when reloading (happpens with people that have or use smaller guns)

• Character will shoot the screen. (Happens with any gun.)

Audio Effects

• The audio will mute
• Crying and whispers can be heard in the background.
• Knocking and creaking floor can be heard in the background.
• You may hear chapter-specific sounds in the background, like a maid being drained by the vampire beast just before doing Edward's chapter.
• The phone will ring; if you answer the phone you will hear Edward's voice saying "Remember me, Alex?" (only as Alex)
• The volume will appear to slowly decrease

Miscellaneous Effects

• "Blood Bath" (Only as Alex)
• "Hanging Man" (Only as Alex)
• "Asylum" (Only as Max)

Forced Effects

• "Psycho Worm" (Only as Edward)