Perfect Dark
Image: Rare / Microsoft

Over the years, narratives in pop culture mediums have hypothesised over how the future might turn out for the human race: in James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1997 would have seen Earth decimated by Skynet's new-found sentience; Back to the Future Part II visualised a 2015 in which we'd all be cruising around on hoverboards and rocking self-drying jackets; Blade Runner went wild and thought that the year 2019 would see bioengineered replicants roaming about Earth after escaping off-world colonies.

Now, it's the turn of Perfect Dark. Released back in 2000 for the N64, Rare's first-person shooter depicted a world set in the year 2023 during which two alien races - the Maians and the Skedar - are locked in an interstellar war. On Earth, two rival corporations known as The Carrington Institute and dataDyne are both in league with the Maians and the Skedar respectively. Joanna Dark, the game's protagonist, carries out multiple missions including the elimination of a clone of the President, and the destruction of the Skedar leader on the alien homeworld.

Needless to say, the setting of Perfect Dark is quite different to the 2023 that we've all welcomed in the real world. Here, we've got absurdly rich people taking over social media platforms, $70 video games, and a rather frustratingly mediocre sequel to one of the most beloved indie titles to grace the Nintendo Switch. The world most certainly has its fair share of issues as we head into 2023, but we can at least be safe in the knowledge that there are no alien factions pulling the strings (at least, not that we're aware of...).

Perfect Dark is, of course, heading for a full-blown revival over on the Xbox family of consoles and is being headed up by Microsoft-owned studio The Initiative with support from Crystal Dynamics. Little is known of the project at this stage, but we do at least know that it won't be gracing any Nintendo platforms in the near future. That makes us sad.

What do you make of Perfect Dark's vision for 2023? Which other gaming predictions do you think are worthy of a mention? Let us know with a comment!

[source twitter.com]