This Week In Retro: The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (Patreon)

June 1, 2004: "I live my life one supermax at a time."

by Diamond Feit

When compared to any of his contemporaries, Vin Diesel is quite an enigma. He suddenly materialized in the late 1990s, first with a small but memorable role in Saving Private Ryan before taking much larger parts in Pitch Black and Boiler Room. His deep, gravelly baritone also landed him the lead in The Iron Giant, as his voice made perfect sense coming out of a giant robot. By the time he co-starred in The Fast & the Furious, Vin Diesel's very distinctive screen moniker became a household name around the world.

This might sound like an ordinary, if accelerated, rise to Hollywood stardom but Vin Diesel's public persona doesn't align with that of other macho actors. In contrast to his imposing physique and the tough-guy characters he brought to life on screen, Vin Diesel openly embraces nerd-friendly hobbies like Dungeons & Dragons. He also played an active role behind the scenes in shaping many of his early projects, injecting them with more fantastic elements because they appealed to him. While most action stars seemed perfectly happy to show up on set, say their lines, and collect a check, Vin Diesel stood out for his hands-on approach.

Even with this view of Vin Diesel, I felt genuine surprise when I first heard about a big-budget summer popcorn flick called The Chronicles of Riddick. I knew he had appeared in Pitch Black but that's all I knew; I certainly didn't remember his character's name, nor did I have a burning desire to see him reprise that role. An announced video game tied to the release of the new film only added to my sense of disbelief, especially once I learned that Vin Diesel would lend both his likeness and voice to The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

20 years ago, no one thought much about licensed video games because they generally came off as a cheap imitation. Either the stars of the original property wouldn't show up or they would phone in their lines. Developers necessarily padded out the gameplay with repetitive, meaningless action scenes because a $50 video game had to last a lot longer than a 120-minute film. There were exceptions, of course, but for every Die Hard Trilogy or GoldenEye 007, my friends and I rented dozens of forgettable also-rans like Mission: Impossible and Die Hard Trilogy 2.

Escape from Butcher Bay dodges many of these pitfalls because, despite bearing a title linked to The Chronicles of Riddick, the game actually takes place before Pitch Black, the first film in the series. This prequel setting gave the developers great leeway to come up with an original story and characters for Riddick to encounter, rather than regurgitating anything the players might have already seen on the big screen. It also helps that the title contains a built-in mystery, one that forces players to ask "what is Butcher Bay, and how does Riddick escape from it?"

Befitting his criminal status, Riddick begins the game in the custody of Johns, a bounty hunter also introduced in Pitch Black. Johns seeks to collect his fee by checking the already-famous murderer into Butcher Bay, a prison purposefully built on an isolated planet that promises inmates no hope of escape. Riddick opts to grant himself a suspended sentence by making a break for it on the landing pad. This sends players hustling through a series of tight passages; this doubles as a tutorial to let them adjust to the game's controls.

Players operate as Riddick via a first-person perspective, carefully stalking their way through the bowels of Butcher Bay. Since the guards carry firearms and Riddick only has his fists, stealth is a must. The game uses subtle visual changes, rather than UI elements, to indicate Riddick's status to players; whenever he successfully hides in the shadows, the display shifts to a desaturated color palette.

Just as players escort Riddick into the light of freedom, Escape from Butcher Bay has Johns awaken Riddick on board their transport, revealing this brief introductory sequence as a dream. A rugpull like that doesn't satisfy from a storytelling standpoint, but since this short set piece lets players learn the ropes and lasts just a few minutes, there's no sting of disappointment. Rather, it builds anticipation for the adventure that follows, reassuring players that Riddick will eventually make his promised escape—but not yet.

Instead, Riddick must meet and size up the long-term residents of Butcher Bay on both sides of the bars. Finding out who's who in the existing power structure of the prison takes time, and it's not without its own risks. Within minutes of Riddick checking in and chatting up a few wandering cons, a pair of thugs will ambush him under orders from one of the local gang leaders. This offers players their first real taste of unarmed combat as they punch, block, and dodge until only Riddick remains standing.

The words "prison" and "open world" don't mesh well, but The Chronicles of Riddick offers players a reasonable amount of freedom as they plan their escape. There's no mini-map or glowing arrows directing you towards an exit; Riddick's only hope for discerning a way out is to look around, keeping both his eyes and ears open. Speaking of perception, Riddick eventually acquires his famous "eyeshine" in Escape from Butcher Bay which allows him to see in the dark, an ability that makes navigating unlit ventilation shafts and drainage chutes much easier.

While players will slug, shiv, and shoot scores of people during their stay in Butcher Bay, I wouldn't describe The Chronicles of Riddick as an action game per se. Getting to know your new neighbors matters just as much as landing a combo, as some of the other inmates will ask for favors that can reap rewards once fulfilled. Granted, most of these favors require violence, but Butcher Bay is a penitentiary, not an idyllic RPG town. No one needs help painting a fence or retrieving lost livestock inside these walls.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, like the movie it sought to promote, truly came out of nowhere in the summer of 2004. Vin Diesel had earned his spot at the top of the marquee by that point, but Pitch Black didn't light up the box office when it opened in third place back in February of the year 2000. Yet Diesel went all in on building a universe for Riddick to occupy, founding Tigon Studios in 2002 who co-developed Escape from Butcher Bay with Sweden's Starbreeze Studios. Diesel didn't settle for merely scanning in his visage and recording his lines for the game, either, as both he and film director David Twohy participated in crafting the story and other design decisions.

The Chronicles of Riddick also stood out at the time as an Xbox exclusive once publisher Vivendi Games canceled a proposed PlayStation 2 version. This decision did grant the developers more resources to dedicate to the sole remaining release, but years later Starbreeze's Jens Andersson did wonder what might have happened if the much-larger PlayStation audience had gotten a chance to visit Butcher Bay. The game found retail success, landing in the NPD top ten for the month of June; meanwhile its big-screen counterpart flopped and Riddick slunk back from the spotlight into obscurity.

However, Vin Diesel never gave up on his favorite futuristic fugitive. Once The Fast & the Furious blew up into a full-throttle franchise and Diesel's profile reached an all-time high, he and Twohy managed to get a third Riddick film into theaters; as of this writing, the pair have entered pre-production for a fourth picture. Riddick also returned with a second video game, Assault on Dark Athena, an HD remake of Escape from Butcher Bay with added material. Despite going multiplatform, this version didn't sell as well as its original incarnation and has since disappeared from online stores like Steam and GOG.com.

Revisiting The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay for its 20th anniversary, it struck me as a very grounded game. In a medium that often depicts heroes as superheroes and dangers as cataclysms, Riddick and his problems come off as refreshingly down-to-earth. He's sent to the slammer and he doesn't want to stay there, so he puts his mind towards discovering a means to leave. The stakes are high, but they're entirely personal; many of the low-lives inside Butcher Bay want Riddick dead but none of them have designs on interstellar conquest or armageddon.

These days, it's hard to see or hear Vin Diesel and not think about muscle cars, "family," and a film franchise that increasingly paints him as indestructible. Given his larger-than-life persona, I find his loving stewardship of Richard B. Riddick, a character he refuses to let fade away, charming. At this point I don't know if anyone in the world truly wants or needs more Riddick in their lives, but Vin Diesel clearly does, and I respect his insistence that we do too.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.