Pariah is a first-person shooter video game developed by Digital Extremes. It was released in May 2005 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox. It uses a modified version of the Unreal Engine and the Havok physics engine. A PlayStation 2 version was also in development but cancelled.
Gameplay
Pariah features standard first-person shooter gameplay, largely influenced by the Unreal franchise, particularly Unreal 2 (whose game engine Pariah is based on). The single-player and multi-player game feature drivable vehicles that may be used in combat. The most remarkable feature is the use of collectible weapon energy cores with which to upgrade the player's weapons, giving them additional features and greater power. Each weapon in the game can be upgraded a total of three times.
Synopsis
Pariah notably omits to explain key background information about the plot and the in-game universe from the player, and thus much of the story progresses without any context or background for the player to identify with. Even at the end of the game, many key plot points remain largely unexplained, leaving it up to the player to conjecture as to what really happened.
Setting
The game takes place 30 years after mankind fought a devastating war against an enemy known as "The Shroud". Exactly who or what the Shroud are is never actually explained. At the end of the game they are shown to be hairless humans with corpse-white skin and highly advanced technology, although whether they are aliens, terrorists, mutants, or something else is never clearly revealed. Supposedly, the Shroud were vanquished 30 years ago, but their reappearance towards the end of the game shows that this is not true.
In the wake of the war, a large portion of the Earth is now an uncivilized wasteland known as "the Zone", inhabited by Scavengers, the violent descendants of prisoners and convicts who were released by the Shroud during the war. Human civilization is now controlled by a government known as the Alliance. According to the game manual, the Alliance mostly live in off-world colonies on other planets, but this is never shown or mentioned in the game.
Main plot
Jack Mason is a medic for the Alliance, tasked with transporting a cryogenically frozen woman named Karina from the maximum security prison "the Anvil" to Alliance headquarters. While flying over "the Zone", Mason's ship is shot down by a surface-to-air missile, crash-landing to Earth. Mason is accidentally infected with the mysterious transgenic virus Karina is carrying, who escapes in the chaos that follows as Scavengers arrive at the crash site attempting to capture her; the pilot, Stubbs, is killed in the fracas but Mason manages to outfight them. Mason suspects an unusual nature behind the Scavenger attack, as they were not known to possess surface-to-air missiles.
Although Karina is highly distrustful of Mason, her former captor, the two of them team up to evade the Scavengers. Mason observes that Karina possesses bizarre powers granted to her by the virus; when experiencing strong emotions, she involuntarily produces an explosive effect that creates mass destruction while leaving her unharmed. Mason and Karina eventually succeed in radioing the Alliance for help, only to learn that Colonel Stockton, the Warden of "the Anvil", has ordered the Alliance to nuke the area and kill everything that moves, supposedly to contain the infection and prevent the spread of the virus. Karina is soon captured by Alliance Security, and Mason finds himself fighting against the very organization he works for.
As Mason infiltrates "the Anvil" to retake Karina from Stockton, he finds the Scavengers have also launched a massive assault against the Anvil for revenge; Stockton masterminded the attack on Mason's transport, and that he has paid off the Scavengers to capture Karina for him but he turned out to have used them since he instead had The Alliance capture Karina for himself and refuses to pay them. Stockton is obsessed with battling the Shroud, and wants to use the virus Karina carries as a weapon against them. The Alliance had deemed Stockton's research dangerous, which led him to continue his project in secret.
Karina is a weapon created by the Shroud 30 years ago, but she was captured by the Alliance (specifically, Stockton's father) and cryogenically frozen. The virus she carries allows its host to generate massive amounts of energy from their bodies. This energy can be used to power Shroud weaponry and even to create a natural energy shield around the host's body. However, the virus and the energy it produces are also unstable, and hosts have a tendency to explode.