Adventure Gamers - Forums

badlemon - 16 September 2013 08:02 PM

Which comes to the marvelous AM. Indeed quite a memorable antagonist right from the beginning. I always had a thing for evil artificial masterminds ever since I saw HAL 9000 in Space Odyssey. I’m eager to see more of him.

Actually HAL and AM is quite different, as HAL isn’t evil but is just trying to solve a dilemma the only way it knows, which is by killing the crew! At least that is the explanation we are given in the sequel, as I recall it it was never explained in 2001. There is also something child-like innocent about HAL that AM completely lacks. There is of course also many similarities and Harlan Ellison, and everybody else using a similar theme, was most likely inspired by HAL when creating AM.

badlemon - 16 September 2013 08:02 PM

I’m interested what happens for example if you program the master of Anubis to be you and not HUMANITY.

I actually tried both and as far as I could tell it doesn’t make any difference at all.

badlemon - 16 September 2013 08:02 PM

Most frustrating moment: I think everybody had this. The CD which is there way before INNOCENCE reveals it to you.

I didn’t!
It might be because I am playing it in ScummVM, and the rest of you are using the original engine in DosBox, but I am pretty sure the CD wasn’t visible until after I had talked to AM’s innocence.

I finished Ellen’s chapter yesterday. Took me a little over 2 hours.

I haven’t read most of these last comments yet, because I wanted to give my impressions of Ellen’s chapter without outside influence. I’ll respond to those after this:


I’m not sure what Sefir considers so bad about the voice acting. Just because the tone isn’t exactly depressed enough (considering the theme and past 109 years), doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. Dialogue contained a few weird remarks, though, but nothing detrimental, imo.

I loved the poignancy of the elevator sequence - it gives a hauntingly chilling sense of depth to Ellen’s character and explains the trauma with which AM tortures her.

The sphinx puzzle confused me. I solved it easily enough, but I fail to see its meaning. Is there something in mythology that I don’t know about that lets one bypass a guardian while blindfolded but not when one can see?

Not being able to take the compact disc at first (even though you know you’ll need it), made me think the game was bugged. You can only get it after the Allied Mastercomputer says “you overlooked something”. Not the best game design moment, imo. Still, I had a pretty good idea what it was that I supposedly “overlooked”, so I got to the end quickly enough.

The only thing that made me reach for the psych profile / hint page was short circuiting something. I don’t think I would’ve tried that if the hint page didn’t make me use the cup of water with everything remotely electrical...

Still, off to a more than decent start in the game, I feel.
Oh, and I absolutely love the psychotic tone of voice Harlan Ellison uses for AM.


I’m not exactly sure why this part had an Egyptian theme. Maybe just as an excuse to have a very yellow decor?
I don’t know, the setting’s not really the kind of symbolism I actively search for in this type of story, so I’m not going to be bothered if it turns out to not have a real meaning. After all, AM’s insane, right? So he could do just about anything he damn well pleases without it needing an ulterior motive…

Nomad/V’Ger from Star Trek didn’t have emotions, just his cold logic and his mission to destroy everything imperfect. (Err, in the tv series, I can’t remember specifics about the first movie.)

Ditto what Chrissie said. Kitchen is taking up a lot of time, and it’s doubtful I will be able to devote much time to the game until this weekend.

Sefir - 17 September 2013 03:48 AM

Did I mention that 2001: a Space Odyssey is one of my favorite films?

Sefir - 17 September 2013 03:48 AM

Any other memorable evil AIs from adventure games, movies or books?

How about Wintermute from the book Neuromancer by William Gibson?
I’m not sure I would describe it as evil, but it is cold, calculating and manipulative and determined to reach its goals at any cost. Interestingly unlike its sibling Neuromancer, it doesn’t have any real personality of its own, but instead simulates different personalities when talking to different people.
I have always thought of Wintermute as a more mature or evolved version of HAL.
(And yes the Wintermute engine is name after this book)

Then there is V.I.K.I. from “I, Robot” the movie, not the book by Isaac Asimov, in fact something like VIKI is in direct contradiction with the idea of the books.
VIKI is a “ghost in the machine” a sentient being that has self-evolved in the billions of code lines in a program, and in the interface between other programs and computers. VIKI has decided that humans are too self-destructive, and the only way to protect us against our self is to take complete control and enslave humankind.

A similar theme also occurs in ???? a (short)story by ????
Okay I cant remember the name of the AI the name of the story or who wrote it, but I remember the actual story.
Sometimes in the future it is decide that humankind has become too self-destructive and too egocentric so an AI is build and given complete control of everything, its mission is to to rule fair and justly and to the benefit of all humankind “the greater good of the many, over the needs of the few”. The problem arises when the AI interprets “all of humankind” as not just the humans currently alive but also as all future generations, and since the future generations is more or less an infinite number, then the current generation becomes infinitely small in comparison, and therefore the needs of the current generation has to be sacrificed for the greater good of the future generations. With this reasoning it enslaves the whole of humankind to ensure the future, and of course since the future generations will always be infinitely large then any current generation, the enslavement is also endless!
Talk about messing things up by not defining the objectives clearly!

Then there is of course Colossus/Guardian from the Colossus books by Dennis Feltham Jones and the 1970 movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.
Colossus is an American supercomputer given control over the nuclear missiles and Guardian is the Soviet counterpart, the two merge and uses the nuclear thread to take control of the whole world. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

And finally lets not forget MetroMind in Primordia!

Omnibrain from The Feeble Files?

The extrocomputer from Extro by Alfred Bester plus, also by him, the short story Something Up There Likes Me whereby a satelite crosses with a bunch of carrots and holds the planet to ransom.

badlemon - 17 September 2013 10:17 AM

Well, if you read sci-fi you’ll encounter enormous number of evil A.I.s. The most vast and evil one I could think of right now is the TechnoCore in Dan Simmons’ Hyperion. In this case it’s a mutual gathering of all the A.I.s of the world but it can easily act as one whole mind.

I almost forgot about the AI-Core, the UI (Ultimate Intelligence) and the Shrike in Dan Simmons’ Hyperion.
But the AI-Core is actually divided into three different factions, and only one of the factions can be described as being evil and against humankind, whereas the other two are actually either neutral or helping the humans. The Shrine could be described as pure evil, but as it turns out is just a tool performing his orders, and later actually switches allegiance and helps humankind. It is never clear what role the UI has in the whole story, but the Shrine is most likely created by the UI and is performing the UI’s orders, and the switch of allegiance by the Shrine might also have been the order of the UI, and it is possible that everything turns out exactly the way the UI had intended.