Shadow of Destiny

Shadow of Memories is set in a fictional German village called Lebensbaum (Life’s Tree) and revolves around a 22-year-old guy named Eike Kusch, who dies at the start of the game after being stabbed, leaving a tiny diner. He is resurrected, however, by Homunculus, a djinn or genie, who offers to send him back in time to prevent his death and gives him the time-traveling digipak. Eike travels between four eras—2001, 1980, 1902, and 1580—as he tries to identify his attacker and discover how to halt his murder at various moments in the present. Along the way, he encounters several characters: Dana, a modern-day waitress whom he accidentally brings back to the year 1580 and loses; the present-day fortune teller, who tells Eike the hour of his death; Eckart Brum, the curator of a private art museum who lost his wife and infant daughter in a shooting; Dr. Wolfgang Wagner, an alchemist living in 1580 with his wife, Helena, and their two children, Hugo and Margarette; and Alfred Brum, the great-grandfather of Eckart. Dana hands Eike a red stone, and he follows the Homunculus’ orders to give the stone to Wagner. Eike discovers, ten days later, that the outcome of Wagner’s experiment destroyed the lab, prompting Hugo, who was already distraught by his mother’s death due to prolonged sickness, to create a time machine and seek Eike down to kill him. Hugo keeps either Margarette or Dana hostage in the present, depending on the player’s actions, and aims to resurrect his mother with the red stone, revealed to be the Philosopher’s stone.