at the parallel's conclusion, Garian ponders how things might have turned out differently. Parallel II: A Hunt for the Heart Reaching the cabin between three and four minutes, Garian finds Bilan threatening the captain. After defeating the monster, it goes through a surprising transformation. With Bilan no longer a threat, the game's plot comes to focus on the conflict between an organization of rebellious prisoners, the corrupt warden Kurtliegen, and a ninja woman, Kay. The longest scenario; it runs roughly twice as long as Parallels III, IV, and V combined. Parallel III: A Hunt for the Lies Accessed by reaching the captain within three minutes. Garian gets to the cabin before Bilan and locks the creature out. Bilan again makes its way to the island and Garian pursues it. While quite similar to the first scenario, parallel 3 is not quite as bleak. It does, however, make a major divergence at its conclusion, where Garian makes a startling discovery. Parallel IV: A Hunt for the Truth. Parallel 4 begins when parallel 3 ends. This scenario has a stronger science fiction element to it, as it revolves around the conflict between parallel universes. Conflicting realities cause the island to become unstable, and leave Garian in poor condition. In this scenario, Garian must rescue his friends to affirm his existence, escape the island and confront the source of the chaos, though he must do it within a time limit and without the aid of save points. This is also the only scenario where the source of the game's name, Dark Savior, becomes apparent. Parallel V: Marathon of Death This scenario splits off from II. If the player encounters Bilan at the captain's cabin, but is defeated by him, then Parallel 5 begins. Garian is put through a sort of purgatory, where he must fight through a tournament, the competitors consisting of his allies and enemies from the other scenarios. Unlike the other parallels, this one has no quest components, only battles. Completing this parallel once and re-entering it unlocks a two-player mode (the second player can take control of Garian's opponents). Development Work on Dark Savior started in December 1994. Though the characters were all represented with 2-dimensional bitmaps, they were placed within a 3-dimensional environment built of texture mapped polygons. The game took what was then considered an unusually long time in development because none of the Climax team had any