Second Sight Diaries Part One

Back in 2004, there were a couple of games released dealing with psychic powers, and I had to choose between them. I went with Second Sight, because of the developer — I didn’t want to miss out on another smash hit like I had with TimeSplitters. However, I haven’t played the game since the mid-00s, so while I recall some snatches of information, I’ve been looking for an excuse to replay it.

Second Sight is a stealth action-adventure game released in 2004 for PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox (then in 2005 on PC). It was originally going to be called Redemption (which, in my opinion, is a terrible name as there are currently at least three games on Steam with that title) when developer Free Radical Design first started planning it in 1999. However, it was always supposed to have psychic powers, so while things changed throughout development, not everything did.

I’m playing using the GOG version, which means that most of the fixes shown on PCGamingWiki aren’t required, unlike the Steam version. However, while I started the game in 2560x1440 resolution, I was seeing lines across the screen from the second level onwards, so I knocked it down to 1920x1080, which got rid of them. Unfortunately, I was unable to get my controller working in a way that I liked, so I used keyboard & mouse.

Now, let’s start our parapsychological adventure in Second Sight…

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This is my exploration of Second Sight, where I will chronicle my playthrough like a text-based Let’s Play. Now let’s begin…

Things began in Isolation, as I was taken through a facility laid on a gurney. The person pushing me (I’d later learn his name was Connelly) buzzed through a door and Harry let us in, commenting that I looked like a mess — though my guard said that I looked worse “before” and that I’m a “psycho killer”, but details were classified.

As we entered the Isolation Ward, according to the sign on a wall, Harry was told that I’ve been wired up to “a box all summer”. The discussion was interrupted when Harry realised that I was awake, so a doctor was called to give me some “more monkey juice”, which he soon did, and things went black.

I woke up some time later, handcuffed to the gurney, but as I struggled against my bindings, I started to levitate and the cuffs let me free. I got up and looked out of a window while my character monologed about amnesia. The facility car park was empty, and beyond the walls were open fields and hills — perhaps mountains? From this angle, at least, we were in the middle of nowhere…

Using the telekinesis that I didn’t know I had, I pressed a button to open the door to my room (such as it was), and I exited through a ward and into the corridor. Pain suddenly overtook me as an aura emanated from my feet, but in moments, I was feeling better than before!

In the next hallway, I spotted an elevator just opposite, but a short distance away, I spotted the two guards who had wheeled me in. They inexplicably couldn’t see me as they chatted about patient abuse, so I snuck through a couple of doors and found myself in an interrogation room, which my character said they felt like they remembered.

As I exited, Doctor Brock (according to the subtitles) spotted me and ran a short distance before cowering in a corner. In the glass room he’d just left, I grabbed a security pass, then somehow snuck past the guards within one metre while one was facing towards me. I healed myself completely and while I had my back against the wall looking at the guards, they somehow spotted me and attacked!

I fought back by attempting to fling a bin around, but wound up going back to the ward and killing Connelly with a monitor. I was shaken about the murder, but it allowed me peace to use the security pass on a door into a surgery observation room. Accessing a computer in the surgery room, I got a map of the floor and the elevator code 8461.

Back at the elevator, I scared Harry off by levitating a bin, then punched in the code and waited for it to arrive at the eighth floor. Inside, I noticed my hospital bracelet had my name: Vattic, John. This triggered a migraine, and I fell to the floor as I tried to remember…

Preparation began six months prior, on 19th February at 1400hrs. I was at the US Marine Base Kastein, in Bremen, Germany and introduced myself to Colonel Joshua Starke. Without giving me any details at all about why I’d been brought in, he asked if I could use a sidearm. He told me that I had two hours until the briefing, and that I should get trained up before then.

I looked around and found Anthony Cortelli, the comms expert, who took me to the assault course to ascertain my physical ability. I climbed some walls and crawled through a short tunnel to where William Robert ‘Tex’ Jackson waited. I had to climb a ladder and do a ledge dangle to get to him first, though.

Jackson had me show that I could use cover and move around a block, then sneak past him to a tunnel. I did it and he opened the grate covering the pipe entrance, so I went through to a large area with multiple guards. He contacted me on the communicator that I didn’t have, and told me to sneak past the guards to the compound gates without getting spotted.

Once again, I snuck without incident, so Jackson told me to see Juan Carlos ‘JC’ Verdes. Unlike Jackson, people did refer to JC as JC, whereas I was still unsure why Jackson’s nickname was Tex.

JC led me into the firing range and handed me a pistol, telling me to score 250 points after a brief tutorial. I scored 501, and we moved into another room to learn how to fire from cover. There were four opponents who needed shooting three times each — it took me all of my ammo, but I managed it. JC was upset that I wasted all of my ammo, but he let me pass the test.

I was then taken to the assault course and told to reach the end while shooting all of the guards now in place. There were four in Cortelli’s area, two in Jackson’s, and six in the final section. I wasn’t shot once.

JC sent me back to the firing range to see Martha Franklin, where she handed me a sniper rifle. Once again, I required 250 points to pass, and I ended with 774. With training finished, it was time for the briefing.

The cutscene started partway through, so I had to play catch-up. It was Operation Winter Ice, and we needed to find out why a scientist named Professor Victor Grienko wanted political asylum. His work history had him working in a Nazi POW camp on the Russian border, but reported as killed when the Russians liberated it. However, that clearly wasn’t the case, and rumour had it that he was linked with a laboratory in Siberia under Stalin, and more recently spotted at a US hydrocarbon pipeline under construction in Tyumen Oblast. We needed to find out what his research over the past 50 years had been about.

We were being sent to Tyumen Oblast, 30 klicks from the pipeline, and when I asked why I was there when this was about psychic research — which I fervently didn’t believe in — I was told that their advisor had requested me specifically. On cue, Jane Wilde walked in, someone who I knew as she took great pleasure in attacking my published papers. Despite our disagreements, she was certain that I would save them…