Adventure Gamers - Forums

Pyoro-2 - 06 May 2022 07:48 AM

No adventure game playthrough is completely without a “can’t see the forest for all the trees” moment In fact mine came where you are right now, if I recall correctly ...

I think my situation makes a case, if not for eliminating the auto-save feature, at least for allowing for some form of manual save.

I’m not saying I would have been smart enough to do it, but if I had manually saved a game when Kate first arrives at the cemetery, I could have loaded that save and would have immediately refreshed my memory of the gate’s location.

I think I would have done that. When playing games that allow/require manual saves, I automatically save a game when arriving at a new location. That would have eliminated at least an hour of my meaningless wandering. 

I still would have needed to find the grave, axe, shed and crank mechanism, but that’s another story.

I think I am nearing the end. I’m in old Lena’s room at the “spa.” That’s so you know what I know from all the conversations that transpired since I left the cemetery.

Some comments on various puzzles. Getting the generator started was a piece of cake. Getting the radio working? Less so. I remember having to learn Morse Code as a Boy Scout many years ago. There was always a more-pronounced pause between letters. My “brute force” solution was simply write down the dashes and dots as I heard them, and then try to see where the breaks might be. It works.

As others have mentioned, the Gunfight at the OK Corral was predictable. As was the outcome.

Now I must find Dana’s last letter. If there is one, I may need to resort to a WT for this one. This kind of puzzle angers me almost as much as the cemetery maze. Fifty steps to the solution. No real clues. Yet all steps must be done in a specific order. And, to top it off, there is no reset button.

There is another question I have. When Leni has told you all she has to tell, two objectives pop up. One is to solve the automaton puzzle. The other is to search the gorum’s room. I did that, but no new hotspots appeared. The only thing I can think of is that the room was empty, and for some unstated reason I need to search for the gorum himself.

Questions? Questions?

The automaton puzzle wasn’t “quite” as hard as I thought it would be.

I finished the game. Not sure I know what to make of the ending. The remaining puzzles, the few that existed, were very easy. It was more like watching an interactive video than anything else.

The final scene was both predictable, and disappointing. A few scenes earlier, when Kate and Oscar were on the tram, Oscar comments that Kate looked melancholy, and that it was perhaps because she had no more trains to catch. So it was predictable that she would decide to catch the train to Baltayar. Disappointing because she finally had the opportunity to make up for all her past failings, yet decided not to do so. I was good to discover that Kate and Dana did meet, although not in the way that I imagined.

While the door was certainly left open for more games, finding some plausible way to extract Kate from her current destination will not be easy. Pulling Kate out of the ending of game three into the beginning of this game was a leap. But not as big, I think, as the next leap will be.

A very good game. 4 Stars. The only thing that keeps it from 4.5 Stars is the cemetery puzzle.

There are a few other FWIW comments I should make.

The voice acting was spectacular. Some made negative comments about the fact that Oscar’s voice was different than in the first two games. I, for one, loved the current Oscar. Oscar in the first two games was personable, but mettalic. The current Oscar is much more pleasantly voiced.

The graphics in the first two games were superb. But they are even better in S4. The nuances of shadow are superb. And, as I mentioned in a reply to another comment, the water effects across the board are spectacular.

The introduction of “rotate” gives an interesting twist to the puzzles.

I’m not going to do it tomorrow. But I would love to replay this game as a CPT. It’s well worth a replay for me.

I forgot to mention the phone call. So what are Olivia et al going to do? Meet Kate at the airport gate? Only to be disappointed again when she’s a no-show? Even though the NYC crew are no angels themselves. (Particularly recalling the various telephone conversations in the first game.) But this would still be a bitter pill.

The ending was a mixed bag for me. I thought that Kate & Dana stuff was touching, but I didn’t like the bit about Kate setting off on another adventure. It felt like sequel fodder, leaving the door open just in case Microids wanted a Syberia 5.

And with that in mind it kind of undoes the rest of the game, which the whole time I understood as being the final part of Kate’s journey, and Sokal’s final contribution to his art. If that wasn’t the intention (and I don’t think it was) then I think there are better ways they could have done it.

A bit of dichotomy here. Kate’s quest is for a place called “Home” in all the games. Helping Hans find his home in games 1 and 2. Helping the Yokoul in the ill-fated game three. And now following Ludwig to his real home, and Dana to the home she hoped to find there with Leon.

And yet the easiest thing she could have done is return to her home. Which she seems emotionally unable to do.

Snatcher42 - 11 May 2022 09:24 PM

Not sure how much to spoiler tag when discussing the ending. But I loved it. It could lead to a sequel, but if it doesn’t I think it’s a perfect metaphor. It takes us full-circle back to the end of Syberia 1, and what I loved most about that game was the symbolism.

Valadilene = childhood
Barrockstadt = adolescence
Komkolzgrad = adulthood
Aralbad = old age

By extension, Syberia represented death, the afterlife, and dreams. Baltayar is a similar dream-place. One could say Benoit Sokal has left for his own Syberia/Baltayar. It’s fitting that Kate, his creation, go on a journey that we can’t follow as well. For now. Until we meet again, in Syberia.

Well, yes, it could be interpreted that way. But Kate going back to New York could represent something similar - if we view it as The End of her travels and dreams and going home, Benoît Sokal’s death could be seen as the same. We all have to go home somehow, whether it’s death or facing situations we don’t necessarily want to. Going on endless adventures is just a continuation of what Kate’s been doing for years, and it doesn’t really provide a satisfactory response to her situation. Like rtooney said, what about her relatives? Olivia? And what happens once she runs out of adventures?

Snatcher42 - 11 May 2022 10:30 PM

I remember reading a quote about that, but I’m not finding the exact one now. The closest I could dig up:

I am currently creating for Kate Walker a love story that will take place in Syberia 4. What will be her ups and downs? The directions she will be taking? it’s probably a bit early to say. But Kate Walker is an intelligent and free woman: her motto is “Adventure!”, which is included in her love choices… I can only imagine that these will never be final or stopped. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/q-a-benoit-sokal-on-i-syberia-i-and-his-comics-career

Even in the context of the whole article, I find this quote surprisingly uninformative. (Not by you, Snatcher42.) But by the thoughts of Sokol.

He obviously was planning S4 while he was creating S3. The article does not ask him what he thought of the final S3 product, or, what he thought of the, charitably, less than positive reviews. It would have been interesting to hear him say, “I screwed up. I thought this would be an important part of Kate’s life, and the whole Syberia saga. It didn’t turn out that way. Perhaps my attention was too focused on what would come next, and I failed to focus on the here and now.”

There’s a thread on Ron Gilbert and the Monkey Island series elsewhere. It’s quite fair to say the he, and others, did not produce a collection of masterpieces. There were some clunkers. Gilbert has been forgiven for some regrettable decisions. It’s fair that Sokol should be offered the same consideration as it pertains to S3.

His stated intention was to offer Kate Walker a love story, and introduce sexuality into the story line. I think we got a brief, albeit implied, glimpse of that during her first scenes in the mine. But either Sokol, or those who took over the project after his death, though better of it, and proceeded in an new direction.

There would seem to be no love story available to Kate as she travels to her next destination. So, to extend the franchise, finding her a new adventure is the only way to go.

I don’t have a clue what that adventure will be. And, unfortunately, I don’t think the current developers do either.