AG Community Game Playthrough #1: Beneath a Steel Sky
 

OK, folks, here we go... time to commence the first ever AG Community Game Playthrough! We'll be starting off with Revolution's quirky cyberpunk adventure, Beneath a Steel Sky.

The steps for participating are as follows:

Step 1: Install the game.

I recommend going to this fan's page and downloading the installer they've cooked up... it includes the latest version of SCUMMVM as well as the BaSS files themselves.

You can also go to the SCUMMVM downloads page and get the game and SCUMMVM that way.

Or if you're like me and happen to own a commercial copy of the game, feel free to be crazy and try getting it working in DOS.

Just get some copy of the game running somehow. ;) Try to install the CD version of the game if your Net download bandwidth can handle it.

Don't forget to read the manual if you haven't played the game before! The fan installer download includes a copy of the manual, or you can download one from Replacement Docs. The interface is a little different from your average Sierra or LucasArts game.

Step 2: Watch the Intro.

Just like it says. Even if you've played the game before, watch it again to refresh your memory.

Step 3: Play and post!

Play the game up to our current playthrough point, which is:

As soon as you access the underground level.


(Stopping points so far have been:
1) Just after exiting the furnace room
2) As soon as you get the elevator down to the second level.
3) As soon as you enter LINC space)

Feel free to post in between sessions of playing the game, or wait until you've reached the stop point and then post, your choice. We'll experiment and see what works best.

You can post about anything you want... the quirky voice acting, the random CAPITAL LETTERS, the puzzles, graphics, music, plot points, characters, etc.

The current playthrough period will go until the end of Sunday, January 22nd.

Rules for this thread:

1. While nobody's going to police you to make sure you're actually playing the game instead of commenting from memory, joining in actually playing is encouraged whenever possible.

2. Explore everything! Be sure to poke through all the click events and dialogue you can. (In fact, I found something funny myself I hadn't noticed before while checking for a good stopping point.) Have fun!

3. Try to confine your comments to whatever has occured in the game up until the current stopping point. If you've played the game before, pretend you're a newbie experiencing the game just for the first time.

If you do want to post about something that's later in the game, use spoiler tags.

Of course, that only goes for *this* thread... since most of the reason for this whole experiment anyway is to generate retro game discussion, feel free to start any new threads about the game you like in the main Adventure forum. :)

Well, what are you waiting for? Go get playing! ;) :D

Peace & Luv, Liz

Ooh, what a neat idea. I've never actually finished the game, so maybe this'll be incentive enough to play through it all.

Installing..

Same here. The last time I stopped playing when I reached one of the lower levels.. somehow the game failed to really, really, really (really, really etc.etc.etc.) grab me. But.... I'm in!

Ok, for tonight I'm game. Note: I've already played, and completed it, once or twice.

Intro: The concept is good, but I can't help but finding the actual thing tedious. For one thing, my game box had the cartoon included, so it made the intro redunant in the first place, and for another, more serious thing, I thing it's cheesy. Of course, the entire point is to be a bit cheesy, but I thinks it's overdone. What I especially don't like is the inclusion of dialog. Still images go well with a narrator's voice (and Foster's voice is fine), but not with dialogs. At least in my book.
The story it tells is classic, but good, and the story telling is efficient, and to the point.
Still, overall I'm not a fan of the intro.

Beginning of the game.
Well, first of all, I'm playing with ScummVM, using the SuperEagle filter. That's the one I like best, and it suppresses the pixel problem. :)
Second; I'm using voices + subtitles. Not that I couldn't understand it without the subtitles (although it wouldn't be easy), but I found the voices a tad irritating without the text, for some reason, and in any case, the CAPITALIZED words and different colors add to the atmosphere.

The first puzzles are pretty straightforward, and easy but not too easy, and would be perfect if it weren't for the waiting that can occur while waiting for the robot.
The graphics are great, exuding atmosphere, pretty and gloomy at the same time. The characters and background animations are, as in most of this time's games, excellent, helping make this world alive.
The voice are good, if not great.
The dialogs are a bit cheesy, but that only adds to the game, and they're overall pretty funny, in a dark tongue-in-cheek way. Joey in particular is one savory sidekick.
The story is the good old amnesic thing, but it's impemented well. It's not the game's main asset, though (that would be the atmosphere, followed by the characters, and the humor).

In this part, the furnace scene is one I vividly remembered from my first playing. Its violence is very unexpected, and as such pretty remarkable.
Another screen I found striking is the second one, the "fire exit", where you get a measure of this place height.

So. The intro is "just" ok, but the beginning sets the mood for what follows really well, introducing the settings and characters in a clever way, while not overheating our puzzle solving neurones.

I will be in holidays next week, but you'll probably hear from me again in this or similar threads. :P

Done playing the first section. It was fresher in my memory than I'd thought.

I decided to go with the floppy version, since I had some difficulties downloading the CD version, and really wanted to just finish the first section today.

Does nobody else feel irritated that you can leave this section without the items in his cabinet? I always feel like I'm just taking some red herrings, but that if I don't I'll be missing some vital items.

And what's the deal with his laser machinery? Why am I allowed to turn it on/off, but then it serves no purpose at all to me as a player. It's weird.

But overall, I love the beginning. Sets the mood. The violent furnace scene comes so abrubtly. Can't wait to have the CD version so I can hear the voices again. Bliss.

Waiting for more comments on the first section. Get to playing everyone.

Hm. No, didn't cross my mind.

I don't think you can get stuck in this game anyway.

And (very very small spoiler)

Spoiler:

you can come back later anyway

.

I have been meaning to place this game ALL the way through at somepoint. I always start and play through the first seven screens and then quit. Is it really that classic? What makes it so good?? Must be because a lot of people seem to love this title...

Lucky you! Of the three networked PCs, only on has a floppy drive. And that one is in the kitchen so I can conduct business while waiting for the pasta water to boil. It isn't a convenient place for playing games though.

It's unfortunate because there are several classic games I have on floppy disks, Freddy Pharkus Frontier Pharmacist being one, that I think would be great to play in this environment.

Many games, including FPFP were subsequently released on CD, but finding them would be an adventure in and of itself.

Bigjko: I have to admit that I didn't really mind the cabinet stuff or the lathe machine. I don't mind red herrings... it's a bit more realistic to have manipulatable stuff that does nothing but add to the atmosphere (er, if that made any sense).

Anyhoo, some of my own thoughts...

Intro:

I agree that the intro worked better as the comic (which I also have), but I thought the dialogue part was all right.

I also agree that the story bit was a nice setup. When I first saw the intro I thought, "Oh, gee, the chopper crashed again, and he survived again, how cheesy and convenient!" Little did I realize I should have trusted the creators a bit more... (grin)

Sad note: Would you believe it never once occurred to me the first time I played the game that the story was set in future Australia? I didn't realize it until I read the Wikipedia article on the game fairly recently. A-doi! :P

Joey:

I love Joey... what a sarcastic, snippy little snot. Of course, Foster himself is pretty sarcastic, so they make a great team.

Death scenes tally:

So far I've found one, probably the most obvious one.

Spoiler:

Right at the beginning of the game, if you USE the steps while the guard is there. Zap, zap, you're dead!

Funny things to do:

Step on the elevator a bajillion times. Hee.

After the furnace scene, talk to Joey, then after you've exhausted all the conversation options, keeping re-initiating conversation with him and saying the remaning line over and over again. I totally missed that the first time I played the game.

The furnace scene:

Spoiler:

That scene definitely blew me away (pun intended) the first time I played the game. After all, you spend the very first part of the game thinking Reich is at least one of the big bad guys you'll have to worry about later, and then suddenly he gets blown away by someone spying on you... ca-reepy!

I'm gonna go replay this section again later, but these are my thoughts for the moment. :)

Incidentally, this is the first time I've gotten to hear the music and voices while playing the game. I bought the actual CD version a while ago before the SCUMMVM team did their magic, and when I first played the game I had to run it in pure DOS and just could not get the sound to work. I haven't gotten a chance to play the SCUMMVM version until now.

Finally... for those of you who haven't played the game all the way through, I hope this thread will encourage you to... the end of the game is very intriguing!

Peace & Luv, Liz

This game has got a unique tone. It looks Balde Runner-ish, but the humor is very peculiar, almost closer to Monkey Island 1 than to anything else.
Plus it's really lively, thanks to a wacked cast of ordinary looking, yet deeply disturbed characters, who "live their own life" (read: they go from location to location independantly of your actions), and intertact with you in a slightly surreal way.
Frankly, seeing as it's freeware, I'd say it's a must play. :)

The only thing that prevents this game from being a true gem in my eyes is his short length and its related feeling of unsatisfaction. But then, the fact that I would feel frustrated not to be able to explore it more in depth is also a testimony to the game's magic.

First impressions
 

First impressions

likes-

- loved the quirky description of certain objects, most notably if you click to look on the press in the first room of that factory, the guy says "it's grunting and wheezing... like an asthmatic dinosaur in mating season"

- It managed to do something really unexpected in the first ten minutes of the game. Namely killing the character you would assume is going to be chasing the main character for the game only to die at the heros hand in the end (I've played way to many adventure games and read far to much bad science fiction)

- The robot sidekick is just funny

- Exteremly user friendly controls

- the background music is highly effective

Dislikes

- the voice acting seems to be pretty poor quality to the point that it detracts from the game

- the introduction to the story, IE everything up to the first stopping point, seems to rushed and poorly exectued.... although it is only about ten minutes into the game, so that could become more complete (i certianly hope so)

I haven't started playing, so no comments on the game itself yet, but just some random ScummVM trivia:

1) If you don't like the CD intro (with the comic), you can get the shorter floppy intro by adding alt_intro=true in the [sky] section of your C:\Windows\scummvm.ini file.

2) The ScummVM team are working on providing better voice files (re-encoded with a higher quality from the original recording provided by Revolution), but some recordings seem to be missing. See there.

3) This has created interest for an enhanced digital version of the score, which could be used in the game instead of the original MIDI files. See there.

OK, I'll start playing now.

Ah yes, I forgot to comment about those. They're friendly, for the most part, that's true, but I'm not fond of the inventory, and it's right click to use. It feels... unnatural. :crazy:

OK, done.

First, I'd like to thank Jeysie for this great idea. I hadn't played BASS in a couple of years, so I'm glad to play it again; and this thread makes me really try every possible thing, which is great. :)

A few random comments:

1) The CD intro (with the comic) is awful. And it lacks the cool intro music from the shorter version.

2) The acting is not great, but better than I remembered.

3) The game itself is great. The story's gripping, and yet it manages to be fun all the time. I guess that's the Revolution touch.

4) Exposition is hard, and BASS completely fails. I mean, Foster is supposed to be a security inspector, and then he starts asking Hobbins questions that anybody living in the city would know the answer to. Doesn't prevent me from enjoying the game, though.

5) The sound effects are *so* annoying.

6) Joey is great. One of the best sidekicks ever. The part after the furnace scene (which Jeysie mentioned) is just so fun: 'Hi, I'm Barbie and I love you!' :D

7) Of course, I love the gameplay, the fact that the gameworld slowly expands, and that you have to come back almost to the first screen much later on in the game, to solve puzzles you couldn't solve at first. That's really the way I like games to work.

More next week, I guess. :)

The creators of this game were apparently trying to emulate comicbooks. It's a complete failure in that regard, mimicking the superficial aspects of comics while completely missing all the opportunities the Form presents.

Let's start with the CAPITALIZED stuff. The emphases on particular words in comics helps give the dialogue a more natural feel. Those emphases are subtle and effective. Simply capitalizing a word is neither- all it does is distract from what is being said. If the developers had been serious about this, they would have brought in a professional letterer to modify the font system. Without the nuances of proper lettering, it doesn't work. If a comic added emphasis not by bolding or italicizing or enlarging but by capitalizing, it would look silly too.

It is interesting to learn that there was an actual comicbook released with the game- doubtless that would have made sense. This opening does not. When the reader is dragged along between frames, it's not a comicbook- it's a slideshow. In this format, it loses the good pacing, immediacy, etc. that make comicbooks worth reading.

I'm surprised to hear that the scene where Reich is killed is held in such high regard- I couldn't help but feel indifferent about it. A short freeze of the moment in which Reich is shot could have gone a long way. Or maybe a machine's-eye view on the side, or maybe a slow-motion series of frames. There are many good ways of approaching this, you see. As for the content, it didn't surprise me to see him shot because frankly, I was more surprised that the PC (What's his name, anyway? I didn't catch that.) wasn't. Learning that you're being watched even though no action is being carried out tips you off that something like that will happen.

The hybrid comic-adventure is worth pursuing, so it's a shame this game doesn't. Imagine the game used a text parser, with new comicbook panels popping up to indicate the outcome of actions. Now that could be a great game.

But since BoSS so completely ignores the possibilities, I won't hold it to my comicbook standards any longer. So as an adventure, how is it? Eh.

First of all, a word about the voice acting. It's not "quirky"- it's just bad. I could point out that it completely ignores the emphases in the text, but why bother when it manages to be so silly in its own right? After starting the game with it, I switched to all-text to preserve my ears. Okay, so they're not that bad, but they're bad.

The art style is uninspired- the sort of designs you forget about as soon as your eyes pass them by.

The game has yet to introduce a character I can care about, so the story so far feels tedious. The first thought I had at the end of the section was "He must be this Undermann guy's clone.", but then, "Nah- he's just as likely Undermann himself.". It says a lot about the story so far that I don't particularly care how it turns out. I have so little attachment to the PC that if the game were to now reveal that he is an evil zombie cyborg from Mars, I wouldn't care too much. Honestly, what kind of story gives the character a mysterious background before it even bothers to develop him as a character? (Answer: A bad one.)

Oh, and this Joey fellow is just an R2D2 rip-off. Maybe he'll develop a more interesting relationship with the PC later on, but right now I don't see it.

Then there's the pacing. Just ridiculous. The intro goes so fast that it squeezes in a flashback! The intro goes so fast that it inserts the death of everyone he knows as "just another slide"! The intro goes so fast that the player isn't given any time at all to care, or to even form an opinion other than "This is so clichéd."!

And then, suddenly, it stops. It doesn't screech to a halt so much as just suddenly stops right in the middle of the highway. No deceleration, no nothing. Straight from chaos to- a pixel hunt. Riiiight....

That music restoration project is pretty neat. Check this rendition of the factory theme.

Anyway, downloading CD version now. I need to see that intro.

Moriarty:

The only part of the game that's comic-book-y is the Intro itself, which is essentially a video of the comic book's panels with voice over. You can download a PDF copy of the actual comic.

(The alternate floppy intro is... interesting. It gives the very start of the game a different feeling, but I'm not sure it works that well for me.)

I dunno... while I enjoy most games' full-bore fancy cutscenes, I find the fact that, IIRC, all of BaSS's cutscenes happen scripted in-game to be kind of neat. But you obviously have to deal with the limits of the playing engine that way.

That's exactly what made it work, at least for me. As Duckman said, Reich is the guy you expect to have to chase (or be chased by) through the game... and then you enter the furnace room and see the camera and you're so sure that Reich's watching you. And sure enough, when you open the door there he is. And you're so certain that you screwed up and it's time to die... except that *Reich* gets shot instead?

It's obvious that whoever's behind the camera isn't on Reich's side after all. Does that mean they're on *your* side? Why did they save your life?

(The PC's name is Robert Foster, BTW.)

The art style:

Don't worry, it gets more interesting later. We're just stuck in the middle of a pipe factory right now. ;)

Both Sanitarium (an adventure) and Planescape: Torment (an RPG) did this, and they're two of the best game stories I've played.

I'm not entirely sure why it's a bad thing... a game character's personality is generally developed while actually playing the game (by listening to the way he talks to people and comments on things).

So, if the point of a story like this one is that the character doesn't remember his past and now he's stuck in a situation where that past seems to be coming back to haunt him, well... you kind of have to give the character a mysterious background before you can show his character. ;)

Joey:

I don't personally see Joey as an R2D2 clone... (after all, I don't remember R2D2 as being that snarky, for one...)

The pacing:

Hmm. Well, don't forget that BaSS doesn't really have built-in chapters/sections... I just picked the first likeliest-looking stopping point for our discussion. Perhaps I didn't choose very well. (sheepish look)

Peace & Luv, Liz

Does Lure of the Temptress have anything to do with this game? Apart from having the same developers, of course.

No. LotT is set in a fantasy world, BaSS is SciFi, so there's little chance of the latter being a sequel to the former, or anything like that. ;)

The only real similarity between the games that I can see is the Virtual Theatre engine. And that was scaled down quite a lot for BASS (probably because it didn't work as might have been hoped when the idea was first thought of).

LoT is also a worse game than BASS, but that's reasonably excusable. It was Revolution's first game, after all ;).

After playing the CD version now, and seeing the intro, I have to say that the intro didn't exactly impress me. Overly cheesy, and overly explanatory in too little time. It's like "Yeah, hey, dude. I was in this helicopter crash when I was young and then this weird dude came and adopted me and then I made this robot and then, incidentally, twenty-or-so years later, bad guys came with guns and bombs, and off I am, on another helicopter ride. Man, I hope I survive another crash."

I prefer the floppy intro (which isn't so much and intro, just starts off with a helicopter crashing). Much more mysterious. Still cliché. But it just feels less tacky. The only thing that's weird in the floppy version is his need to repair Joey, since you've never, ever seen Joey or know at all what he is.

Granted, I don't know much about the plot as a whole, but that intro doesn't feel so important.

Wow, that sounds pretty cool. The only reason I can't relate is that what was going through my mind was nothing like that. My thoughts went something like this:
"Hey, why's no alarm going off? Isn't anyone watching the camera? Huh, I guess not, or maybe it's being watched by someone on my side I haven't heard of yet. Either way, obviously there's nothing to worry about, or else I'd be dead by now."
"Joey unlocking the door like that is straight out of Empire Strikes Back! Is this the extent of his function in the game- opening a door, fixing a robot?"
"Hey, who's this guy? Oh, he's dead now. OK."

Oh, sure, that's fine. Any kind of premise is fine by me. But when the first plot point in the story is a hint of a future plot twist, it tells me they've got no story to tell. I understood the amnesia; I accepted the amnesia. But then, before we're given any reason to think of Foster as anything more than a generic avatar, already the writers expect us to care so much about his past that we'll start wondering about it. That talk about Undermann is pushing the player's willingness to accept a contrived plot too far.



What do you guys think of the puzzles? I'm hardly qualified to judge them, since I hate the typical adventure puzzles and these are as typical as they come.

So far, I like them. They've been non-idiotic. I.e., no "use sandwich on pipe to create marionette to use in puppet show to distract recycling plant worker." It's been pretty much logical all the way.

Heh. I never wondered why an alarm wasn't going off because... well, we don't know how this game's universe works yet. (As well we shouldn't, since we've barely gotten started.) Maybe an alarm *wouldn't* be going off in this universe.

I assumed Reich himself had been watching the camera somehow, or perhaps one of Reich's flunkies. Either way, why set off an alarm? He's just going to go down there and shoot/apprehend Foster, after all, and Foster's unarmed.

Heh! I guess this is where being familiar with adventures gives one a different mindset. I thought I had stumbled upon a death scene at the time. :P

I'm not much of a Star Wars fan, so the first part didn't strike me in any way.

As for the latter, that's another thing I like about Joey... he's useful for solving puzzles, unlike some near-useless sidekicks in other games (*cough*King's Quest V*cough*).

Well, they explained who the dead guy was - at least the basics, that is - in the intro... and in the dialogue between the guard and Hobbins at the start... and in Foster's furnace room dialogue with the guy... and you'll find out even more about Reich later.

Well, the setup so far is... you came from the city as a boy, were stranded in the Gap in a crash, and were rescued by the tribes living there. You don't remember much about who you were in the city.

Now that you're a full-grown man, someone who seemingly does know who you were (or thinks he does, anyway) thinks you're important enough to come out to the Gap, and kidnap you to his city.

So... I'm at a loss as to why you wouldn't be curious about your past, seeing as how it's seemingly the entire reason you're now stranded in the city. The Overmann bit is just a new clue in the puzzle. (I.E. you now know who they were looking for, although it doesn't mean anything to you right at the moment.)

Of course, there's lots of other things to be curious about as well up until this point. These are some of the questions I can come with for even just this small first part of the game:

Why were you on that helicopter? Where was it going? Why was only your mother with you (what about your father)? Why did the helicopter crash?

Why did Reich kidnap you? Who is this Overmann person he thinks you are?

Why did Reich's helicopter crash? What messed with/jammed the guidance system?

What city are you now in? Is it the same city you originally came from? How does the city differ from the Gap?

Why did LINC save your life? Does it consider you important for some reason?

Reich obviously wasn't the "head honcho", so who was he working for? Who wanted you kidnapped?

I mean, I'm not entirely sure what else you'd want said about Foster this early on, without burdening the player with lots more exposition and ruining some of the surprise and story exploration. I mean, how many full-length stories do you know of that tell the audience everything that's going on in the first 10 pages? :P

Well... they *are* typical adventure game puzzles. I think I remember this game's puzzles being mostly logical, though, in the sense that you generally have a reason for doing them and the solutions generally involve logical uses of items. Memory's fuzzy though... I'll have to wait for the next stopping points to make sure.

Peace & Luv, Liz

Well, I just made it out of the furnace. There is so much dialogue. How do you all keep up with it? I already have 2 pages of notes, and I missed a lot. :crazy:

Interesting questions. Not one of these occurred to me, because I was still stuck on the more important unanswered question: "Why should I care?".

Oh, you misunderstand me. I'm saying there should have been less exposition and more characterization. Clues for a plot twist later on are only effective if the player is willing to think about them. But why would anyone (other than the most hardcore detail-obsessed adventure fans :P ) want to worry about a character who they have no connection to? The writer should first make him a likeable character, or show what his earlier life was like, or something, before he can demand of the player to wonder about him.

At this point, we know nothing about Foster's personality, nothing about his feelings for his current predicament, nothing at all. So far all we know about him are little clues- forgotten past, unknown importance, prophecies, blah blah blah. He's not a character- he's a plot device!



That's it? So far, we've:

• Escaped from a guard
• Broke open and unlocked doors
• Repaired two robots
• Interrogated an innocent man for commonly known information
• Stole his lunch

In all this, was there nothing noteworthy? If not, then what is it doing here? Is there nothing here which is more than cookie-cutter design? Is there nothing here which is creative or unique, or worthy of our time? Is the play experience no more satisfying then it would have been had these puzzles been cut out? Or can we read deeper into these puzzles, and learn something about the characters, or the story, or the developer's artistic intentions, from the design of the puzzles?

After all these criticisms, I would be remiss not to mention the excellent interface. Very functional, without getting in the way. Only thing missing is a double-click for exiting scenes.

It's not that bad, is it? Well, there's a lot of exposition in the beginning, but no vital clue, really. And the important plot points are usually repeated at various occasions. But it's true that there's a lot of conversation; just enjoy it for itself, without worrying about missing something. :)


And, MoriartyL, I'm not even going to try and answer your various remarks. Because I'm too busy putting the finishing touch to another awfully long post. And, more importantly, because we've basically already been through all that, haven't we? ;)

Well, I dunno. Why should we care about a random programmer being chased for some unknown reason by a suit-wearing agent and a leather-clad vixen? (The Matrix) Why should we care about some random farm boy finding a message from a random princess in some equally random robot? (Star Wars) How about wondering why we should care about some random British guy about to get his house bulldozed? (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

So here we find some random city boy raised by wilderness tribes being kidnapped back to the city by bad guys. No worse than the examples noted above, IMHO.

Although I can see some of your point, I'm still not sure what you're looking for, exactly. I mean, do you honestly want a lengthy intro detailing the entire childhood of some character we've never met before? Aside from the fact that such a thing could be a game all on its own, you'd run even more into the "So, why do I care about all this?" problem.

And, for what it's worth, this is all more of a science-fiction story matter than an adventure game matter. I don't think about plot details like that because I'm an adventure game veteran (I haven't been playing adventures for all that long, relatively speaking, especially back when I first played BaSS) but because I'm used to the conventions of SF.

As I said, characterization in a game IMHO should come while actually playing the game. But you have to get into the plot right away in order to *have* a game to play!

I mean, I honestly can't think of any game off the top of my head where you have more than just basic information about the player character anyway, except for sequels.

We know he's intelligent, cynical, sarcastic, and a bit of a smart-aleck from his various comments on objects and dialogue. We know he's somehow good with electronics despite growing up in the wilderness (another thing to be curious about). We know he's fairly athletic (from dodging lasers, sliding down poles, and hanging off doors). We know he's pissed at Reich killing his tribe (since he says so a few times), and confused and worried about being trapped in the city and being a (apparently) hunted fugitive (from some of his comments to Joey).

We escaped from a guard because, well, when somebody's chasing after you with apparently malevolent intent, escaping from them is usually a good idea.

Breaking open the doors is related to the escaping.

You repaired one robot so you could have a new home for the personality board of your friend Joey.

You repaired the second robot so you could have a way to escape some more.

We interrogated the innocent man for information that is commonly known to *him*, but not to *Foster*. (After all, if you didn't know where you were or what the heck was going on, wouldn't you try to weasel info out of the first person you spotted that wasn't going to shoot you?)

You technically don't have to take the guy's lunch right now. (Though you could construe that as meaning Foster's a bit of a jerk. ;) )

I don't see what's so wrong with the puzzles. Foster's in a predicament, and all of the puzzles were getting out of his current predicament and start to figure out what's going on.

The puzzles aren't incredibly unique so far, but then, why should they be? At the current moment our immediate goals are basic, so the IMHO realistic solutions are fairly simple.

Heh! That *is* a side-effect with character-heavy games. I personally keep up with it partly also by taking notes, and partly that I tend to be good at remembering things I read (which is off-set by the fact that I tend to be very bad at remembering things I hear :P ).

Edit: Sorry, missed this while posting:

IIRC, Esc will skip scenes, while . (period) or clicking the mouse button will skip dialogue lines.

Peace & Luv, Liz

Because we've seen that he's looking for the answer, and because we can relate to this. Who among us has not asked himself, "I wonder if there's some other reality beyond what I see?"?
Because we can sympathize with his feelings of being repressed and wanting to do his part. We can also relate to C3P0's cynicism, and admire R2D2's bravery.
Because we can relate to how the bureaucracy has mistreated them, and because we can sympathize with his inadequacy as an ordinary person to deal with the bigger issues.

We can't relate to what he's going through, because his situation is so alien. We can't sympathize, because the details of his past are glossed over. We can't even understand him! This is nothing like the earlier examples.

I'm looking for some humanity. I'm looking for something I can relate to or sympathize with. I'm looking for a believable character. A good story is not built upon obscure plot points, it's built on a good character. If we take Grim Fandango, for instance, we can relate to Manny's aspirations; we can sympathize with him for the work he has to do to get there; we can understand his relationships with the other characters. We don't understand the story until later, but it doesn't matter because the character is likable.

I love good sci-fi. Good sci-fi is about people, either literally or as a metaphor.

No more so than any other generic AG hero. It's no more a measure of his personality than the theft.

How do we know this? I certainly didn't. Maybe I just missed those lines.




I'll keep writing later- I have to go out.

Wow. As someone said... I've got a bad feeling about this (thread).

Anyway...

Colpet, you don't really need to take notes or take track of everything. At worst, you'll miss some small story part (but you should remember them if you don't stop playing for days), but never (or maybe almost never :) ) some puzzle clues.

Bigjko, I agree about the puzzles; they're really straighforward.

And MoriartyL... sometimes it's better to let go. If you don't care about the story, or the art style, or the atmosphere, or the puzzles, at that point, you won't care for them after 10 hours.

We don't find that out until *after* the beginning of the movie, when he's talking with Trinity in the bar, IIRC. During the very beginning of things he's just Joe-Schmo tinkering with computers, as far as we know, who people are after for some unknown reason.

We don't find out the former until after he's already spent the beginning of the story doing nothing puttering around his house. I'll concede the latter, however.

He's an ordinary guy now far away from home in an unfamiliar place, forced to deal with things he doesn't yet understand.

I can understand some of the feelings that sort of thing might generate. True, the specific details are alien, but then, I've never had my house bulldozed to create a bypass or had people running around thinking I'm the technological Messiah, either.

Unless they've made an adventure game story involving a D&D and computer geek who spends her days pushing paper around in an office and her nights surfing the web and playing games, I'm never going to play a story that isn't at least partially alien to me. ;)

Well, when I played the beginning of Grim Fandango, I don't remember knowing much about Manny either, other than that he was a sarcastic, cynical (dead) guy forced for some unknown reason to have a job helping the souls of the recently dead on their journey to the afterlife because he's unable to make that journey himself for some other also unknown reason.

True, it's an artifact of the game being comedic, but still, you need the right sort of characters for a comedic game to work. For instance, in the game King's Quest 6 the main character there is very polite and comments on and to people with eloquent language and a noble bearing, yet at the same time a bit shyly and uncertainly in parts. There's not a lot of snarky comments floating around (not from him, anyway). As such, the game has a more serious bent.

While I admittedly can't be entirely sure my perception isn't colored, I have tried to be careful and make sure I didn't say anything specific that hasn't been mentioned or implied in some bit of dialogue or message during the first bit we've played.

Since you don't seem willing to pend judgement, I was trying to not have to spoil you, but if you want a little of the truth about the plot, feel free to read...

Spoiler:

Finding out more about Foster's past and Foster himself *is* the point of the game, essentially. The game is one big character and universe exploration.

At any rate, I think I'm going to have to agree to disagree from my end. It is probably at least partially a side effect of the fact that you dislike adventure game tropes and I enjoy them, but while I do have some of my own issues with this game, I admittedly either don't see the things you're mentioning as being problems, or find it odd to single this game out for having them (when I think there are plenty of other stories/games that also have them).

Plus we're starting to get a bit off-topic.

As Ninth said, if you honestly don't like the game, it's OK, nobody's going to force you to keep playing. :) This is supposed to be fun, so if you're not having fun there's not much point.

Peace & Luv, Liz

Wow.

This is so not what I intended. Let me try again.


It seems to me that the AGCP has the potential to be much more than just an excuse to replay old games. I think we can and should use it as an opportunity to learn from the past: To analyze developers' intentions as one might analyze a painting or piece of music, so as to better appreciate the end result. To look for what can be learned from, and more importantly what can be improved upon. To consider alternatives to what was done, to broaden horizons. To improve our own perceptions by differentiating the good from the bad. In short, to look at these games with an open mind.

I fully intend to play BaSS from start to finish along with you. I do not wish to know what lies ahead until we get there. As far as we should be concerned at this point, there is nothing to know about Foster except for the little clues given so far. All I have said so far is a simple reaction to what I have played so far, not an indictment of the game at large. Just now, I tried (and failed) to push the conversation into deeper territory, to recognize the language being used, but by that point I had come off as sounding so negative that I think you must have mistaken what I was saying for rhetorical questions.

Those questions regarded the game's puzzles. It is easy to be critical of this type of puzzle, but I was actually looking for a more positive analysis. When we say the puzzles are good only because they aren't unfair, I think we're taking the wrong approach. I was hoping that someone with more experience and familiarity with adventure puzzles could analyze these and determine what works and why. The question is what these puzzles tell us about the characters, what their dramatic purpose is, why the game would not have been as good without them. The closest thing to an answer so far was:
Searching for an object to pry open the door creates (at least in theory) a sense of desparation. It would probably have been more effective if it were time-based, but still there is a lot of meaning in this puzzle. The rung you pull off the wall is hardly a suitable crowbar- it's a measure taken in panic. This is a good puzzle. Still, we can see how it can be improved upon. A time limit (and putting the rung in clearer view) could have enhanced this feeling.

I must CONCUR with the random CAPITALISATION issue. SOMETIMES it seemed to WORK, but most of THE time it just seemed to be any old word, and goodness me, was it ANNOYING.

Moriarty:

(laughs a bit) Ah, as an old friend of mine once quipped, "The great part about the Internet is that we can all completely misunderstand each other faster than ever before!" :P

Now that I know what you're going for, I had been considering a similar thing myself. Maybe we can start this all over again, and going from the intro, proceed through the dialogue and puzzles bit by bit looking at things closely. We have a whole week, after all, and even after that we can still talk about early parts of the game.

Though I probably totally didn't come off that way, I do appreciate your ideas... they take approaches I hadn't considered before (since you're new to the genre).

Peace & Luv, Liz

I finally got the elevator working, and am down to another level (where the cable is). Is this where we're stopping? And for how long?

So far I'm not minding the game too much; I do find all the dialogue and multiple characters confusing and a bit tiresome, especially when I'm stuck. I really do much better with true puzzles, rather than inventory usage ones, even though most of these are pretty straight forward. Since I've found out you can die, I'm saving quite a bit in case I make a wrong move.
I've also eased up on my note taking, which makes things go a bit quicker.

Spoiler:

I'm really ticked that I lost my WD40 and that key. Other than long spiky objects used for poking out keys from keyholes, lubricant is the next most useful inventory item I've come across in games :) .

Heh! You went a fair bit too far actually... In fact, I think you might have actually played all the way through to what I'd have picked for the second stopping point. ;) The first stopping point was essentially right after the scene in the furnace room with Reich, right after you exit the door.

Heh, I have to admit that we're just opposite then, and that explains why I'm not big on Myst-type games... I don't mind "true puzzles", but I like inventory and dialogue puzzles as well, and the more characters and dialogue the happier I am. I'm a complete character nut.

And yes, you can die, I should have mentioned that before. (sheepish look) That is part of the reason why I wanted to replay the game, so I could find all of them (they don't call me the Diva of Death for nothin'! ;) )

Peace & Luv, Liz

You should try Secret of the Luxor sometime. Each death is via a different method, and I think the developers made an effort for each demise to be as unique as possible :devil: .

Funny, that's where I stopped playing too. :)

Thank you for the pointer, Colpet... I'll have to check that out. :D

At any rate, I thought I might be all official about trying to start this analysis stuff over. We could start with picking apart the intro for a day or two. :)

CD Intro:

Since the CD intro is essentially the comic book, I managed to find the following two websites we can use as references for the text and dialogue:

Scans of the comic

Gallery of differences between the CD intro and the comic (It's a Flash website, sorry)

For the floppy and in-game stuff, I made the following notes:

Floppy intro:

We start with a wide view of the city, with cars driving past in various directions.

We then see a huge fade-in of the game's title in large letters, which then changes to a slow pan up to the very top of all the steel city towers. It then picks up right at the comic scene with Foster, Reich, and the pilot in the helicopter as the helicopter is about to crash, but with this dialogue instead:

Pilot: I'm picking up a JAMMING signal, sir!

Reich: Switch to OVER-RIDE, you MORON!

Pilot: Too LATE!!

The helicopter then crashes and Foster escapes as in the CD intro, but with the differences:

When Reich starts trying to shoot and the pilot runs in and ducks out of the way:

Reich: OUT of the WAY, you bungling IDIOT!

They both fire at the retreating Foster unsuccessfully.

Reich: What are you WAITING for?

Reich: FIND him - NOW!

It then progresses to the dialogue inside the first location as the CD intro.

In-game dialogue:

Foster runs in and heads up to the walkway. Moments later, a guard comes in from the outside door, and a worker (Hobbins) comes in from the right. They stand on the lower level talking.

Hobbins: What YOU want?

Guard: Looking for a SABOTEUR from the GAP.

Guard: He CRASHED a CHOPPER and ESCAPED!

Hobbins: Sounds DANGEROUS to me...

Guard: Don't WORRY. He's not going ANYWHERE.

Guard: We've cut POWER to the ELEVATOR...

Guard: ...and the crash has BLOCKED the WALKWAY.

Hobbins: What if he comes in HERE?

Guard: You'll be FINE. We've posted GUARDS.

Guard: ...and REICH wants to hunt him down PERSONALLY.

Hobbins: REICH, eh? This guy must be IMPORTANT.

Guard: Yeah - we've got ORDERS direct from LINC...

Guard: Take him ALIVE - before he does any MORE damage!

Hobbins: Best of LUCK to you.

Foster: These guys are out to GET me... but WHY?

Foster: They already DESTROYED my HOME and my PEOPLE.

Foster: Well, Reich - whoever you are - it's RETRIBUTION TIME!

Foster: Got to be CLEVER - play them at their own GAME...

Foster: FIRST thing is to get JOEY running again...

The game then starts proper.

Let's chew on this for a while, maybe? :)

Peace & Luv, Liz