NA: August 19, 2008
JP: August 28, 2008
AU: August 28, 2008
EU: August 29, 2008
Too Human is an action role-playing game developed by Silicon Knights and published by Microsoft Studios. It was released in August 2008 for the Xbox 360. The game's story is a science-fictional futuristic retelling of Norse mythology that portrays the Æsir, the Norse gods, as cybernetically enhanced humans, tasked with protecting mankind from the onslaught of Loki's army of machines. The player takes the role of the Norse god Baldur, who is less cybernetic than the other gods thus being "too human".
The game is notable for having remained in development hell for almost ten years. It was originally announced for release on the PlayStation in 1999, but this was abandoned and development switched to the Nintendo GameCube in 2000 after Silicon Knights and Nintendo announced an exclusivity partnership. Development restarted again in 2005 when Microsoft bought the rights to the game and announced that it would be an exclusive Xbox 360 game. It was also planned to be the first in a trilogy of games all developed by Silicon Knights.
Upon release, Too Human received mixed reviews from game critics; while the game's story and class system were generally praised, many were critical of the control scheme, graphics, level design, long respawn times, and cliffhanger ending. The game was later involved in a controversial lawsuit from 2007 to 2012 between developer Silicon Knights and Unreal Engine creators Epic Games regarding the Unreal Engine 3 engine used in the game. This resulted in the latter winning $4.45 million and the former being forced to destroy all of its products that used Unreal Engine 3, including Too Human. Plans for an eventual trilogy were later canceled because of the damage inflicted by the lawsuit, along with Silicon Knights filing for bankruptcy in May 2014.