Illhaven Saga, 8.6 out of 10 based on 13 ratings

A classic from the early days of Unreal SP maps. For those who played it with awe at the time, Tim “Kew” Jervis’ Illhaven Saga is no doubt worth remembering. Although it has since been criticized by numerous recognized mappers from the community, perhaps not entirely without reason, rest assured that for those who don’t mind going with the narrator’s guidance, Illhaven’s medieval world will still very likely be a captivating experience thanks to the atmosphere of its narrow streets, gloomy castles and dungeons, and a hoard of translator messages often telling small stories that are not part of the main plot, but add depth and character to the scenes.

If you dont mind spoilers, I higly recommend to watch Uberterris‘ excellent review of this the map. I couldn’t agree more with everything that’s said in his video.

For those who are interested we quote some background information on the history of Illhaven, written by Kew himself:

Illhaven Harbor was originally created for the opening level in “Rise of the Phoenix”, a TC from Fantasy Quake […]; it was later revised into a winter setting and became Illhaven Winter. The opening level in Heretic II, “Silverspring Docks”, was inspired by and modelled after Illhaven Harbor. The Unreal version of Illhaven (and Illhaven II) was recently declared by PC Gamer, in their publication, Online Arena, as the Winning single play map in the Unreal category.

This download is the original Unreal version of the Illhaven Saga from 2000. In 2012, more than a decade after its original release, Kew re-appeared on the scene with an extended version called Illhaven Anthology (or, Illhaven 2012). However, we wish to keep this version in our database as an important relic of Unreal history. If you are one of those whom Illhaven manages to convince, you may also be interested in Illhaven WoT, a reduxed version of Illhaven’s first map for The Wheel of Time, another Unreal Engine based game.

The campaign plays on Unreal 224 or higher. Unfortunately there is a bug with the TorchFlame actors from version 226 onwards, causing the flames to display in twice the original size and higher up than its original bases. We at Unreal Archives created a patch that fixes this bug so be sure to download it after the map pack and patch the original maps. It will not change any other game content, simply restores the maps to the state in which the author originally released them. Once patched, you should have Unreal version 227+.

Alternatively, there is a newer version called Illhaven Coop, a version optimized for cooperative game. The modifications were made by a fan called Drake Crowind. This one addresses the TorchFlame bug and perhaps various other bugs as well. The TorchFlame issue is also no longer present in Illhaven 2012.

Also important to mention that unless you play it in Unreal Tournament using Oldskool Amp’d, you will need the texture package UTtech1 from Unreal Tournament and copy it into your Unreal textures folder.

Enjoy!

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