Severance: Blade of Darkness

Lore & Background

The game is set in a high fantasy world where the Lord created Chaos and divided it into Light and Darkness. The Prince of Darkness attempted to supplant his Father, leading to a war that ended with the gods withdrawing from Earth. The goddess Ianna sealed the gods away, protecting Earth from the Moon, while the Spirit of Light guarded from the Sun. Mankind was left to contend with the monsters and demons left behind. A young hero once wielded the Sacred Sword of Ianna to defeat the Darkness, but was mortally wounded; his sword was buried with him in the Temple of Ianna, locked by four magical gems. Now, foul creatures are awakening, and a new hero must obtain the Sword of Ianna—empowered by six hidden runic tablets—to destroy the evil necromancer Dal Gurak and confront the Chaos Child in the Abyss.

Reader's Guide

Severance: Blade of Darkness is recognized as a pioneer within the soulslike subgenre, noted for its high difficulty, dark fantasy world, and gameplay mechanics that predate Demon's Souls by eight years. The game features four characters—a barbarian, dwarf, knight, and amazon—each starting in different locations with unique weapons and combat traits. Experience points allow players to level up and unlock special attacks executed via button and direction combinations, similar to a beat'em-up. A body slash system lets players sever and use enemy limbs as weapons. The game shipped with a level editor for custom content. Despite generally favorable reviews and praise for its real-time shadow lighting and motion-captured animation, the game failed to achieve broad popularity due to bad marketing, an unfinished code and storyline at publication, and a lack of difficulty levels. It sold below expectations in Spain and the U.S., but established a large cult following. The remastered re-release in 2021 and subsequent console ports have renewed interest.

Did You Know?

• The game's soundtrack allegedly contains non-copyrighted samples also used in many commercials and soap operas worldwide.
• The six runic tablets required to empower Ianna's sword speak about the time of creation, similar to ancient Zoroastrian myths.
• An Xbox enhanced port with the working title 'Ultimate Blade of Darkness' was in development but scrapped due to poor sales of the original Windows version.
• The game can perform water reflection wave effects using only DirectX 7.0 hardware, at a quality level comparable to DirectX 8 or higher.

Early Life and Formative Influences

Ronald N. Perlman entered the world on April 13, 1950, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. He was raised in a Jewish household where his mother, Dorothy, worked as a municipal employee and his father, Bertram "Bert" Perlman, balanced work as a jazz drummer with repairing television sets. Perlman has spoken candidly about struggling with a very low self-image during his youth, largely because he was terribly overweight as a child. That experience, he has explained, drew him toward characters who are physically unusual or deformed yet deeply endearing. His bond with his father was exceptionally close, and it was Bert who, after watching his son perform in a college production of Guys and Dolls, firmly told him he had to pursue acting as a profession. Perlman completed his secondary education at George Washington High School in 1967, earned a degree from Lehman College in 1971, and went on to receive a master's degree in theater arts from the University of Minnesota in 1973.

Breakthrough and the Road to Leading Man

Perlman's screen journey began modestly with a 1979 television debut on the soap opera Ryan's Hope, followed by his feature film debut in Jean-Jacques Annaud's 1981 epic Quest for Fire. Annaud would later reveal that when he reached out to Perlman for the role of Salvatore in The Name of the Rose (1986), the actor was seriously considering walking away from the industry entirely. After a string of smaller parts, Perlman finally landed his defining breakthrough: the lead role of Vincent on the NBC series Beauty and the Beast, running from 1987 to 1990 alongside Linda Hamilton. That performance earned him a 1989 Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s he built a formidable résumé of supporting work in films ranging from Romeo is Bleeding and The Island of Dr. Moreau to Alien Resurrection, Enemy at the Gates, and two Stephen King adaptations. His first true leading film role came in 1995 with the French-language The City of Lost Children, where he played the character known simply as "One."

The Del Toro Partnership and Sustained Relevance

One of the most distinctive threads in Perlman's career is his long-standing creative partnership with director Guillermo del Toro. Their collaboration stretches from Cronos in 1992 through Blade II (2002), the original Hellboy (2004), Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), Pacific Rim (2013), Nightmare Alley (2021), and Pinocchio (2022). The Hellboy role became a signature part, which Perlman also reprised in two animated direct-to-video features. Beyond del Toro, Perlman maintained a steady presence in both film and television, taking on Clay Morrow in the FX series Sons of Anarchy from 2008 to 2013, Nino in Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011), and Benedict Drask in Adam McKay's Don't Look Up (2021). His later film work includes the noir thriller Joe Baby (2022), the Western Cottonmouth (2024), and the horror film Succubus (2024). A 2003 Stella Artois commercial titled "Devil's Island" also earned a Silver Award at the British Advertising Awards, underscoring his reach beyond the screen.

A Voice That Defined a Generation of Characters

Perlman's voice work has left an indelible mark on animation, video games, and audio media. He is perhaps best known to gaming audiences as the narrator of the Fallout series, a role he has held since 1997 and which includes delivering the iconic line "War. War never changes." In the DC Animated Universe he brought life to Clayface across Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures, and later voiced Slade in Teen Titans. His animated credits extend to Mr. Lancer in Danny Phantom, Sozin in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sinestro in Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and the Stabbington brothers in Disney's Tangled (2010). In video games he voiced Lord Hood in Halo 2 and Halo 3, and he served as the narrator for 1000 Ways to Die from 2009 to 2012. Perhaps most enduringly, he voiced The Lich in the Adventure Time franchise from 2011 through 2023, a role that kept him in the cultural conversation for over a decade.