Old Video Games: Lure of the Temptress

 

Classic point-and-click adventure games have two titans that loom large because of just how many successes they had: Sierra On-Line and LucasArts.

This isn't about them.

Other adventure game developers existed alongside those titans. Some of them, like Revolution Software, continue to exist, outliving both of the big two.

Best known for the Broken Sword series of adventure games, Revolution was founded in 1989 by British game developers Charles Cecil, Tony Warriner, David Sykes and Noirin Carmody.

Cecil and Warriner got their start in the mid-80s working at Artic Computing, an English studio active during the British microcomputer boom (think systems like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC). Artic folded in 1986 and after a few years working at other companies, Revolution was founded.

1992's Lure of the Temptress was the company's first product: a fantasy point-and-click adventure game slightly reminiscent of King's Quest and with a cheeky sense of humor reminiscent of The Secret of Monkey Island, though less wacky and more British in its comedy. Released for the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, and MS-DOS computer systems, it was a solid hit for the company and paved the way for more ambitious projects.

The game's setup is told in a gorgeous intro cinematic that explains that a good king had united the land and on a hunting trip, hired the peasant protagonist, Diermot, to flush out game for them. Suddenly, the unnamed king learns of an evil sorceress named Selena who has conquered a town and threatens the kingdom. The king's men ride to battle, only to be cut down by Selena's orc-like henchmen, the monstrous Skorl. Diermot is captured during the battle, and awakens in a prison cell, where the game begins.

Revolution developed the Virtual Theatre engine for their games, which aside from the regular pointing and clicking, also allowed the NPC characters populating the world to wander around and interact with each other for greater immersion than simply standing in one place waiting to be talked to by the protagonist.

This is good and bad because while the verisimilitude is appreciated, the game also has you track down specific NPCs to talk to in order to proceed, and it can be frustrating trying to track them down.

After escaping the dungeon with the help of a jester named Ratpouch, Diermot has to explore the village of Turnvale, its castle and a nearby cave to find a way to stop Selena from conquering the rest of the kingdom.

The interface is quite good. Left click to look at something, right click to bring up a menu of options like talking, pulling, using, etc). The game also gives you companions that can follow you around and Diermot can even give them somewhat complicated orders which are necessary for some puzzles.

Unfortunately, the character pathfinding, at least on the DOS version available on GOG.com for free, is a mess. Its very finicky getting an NPC follower to do something because you have to stand right next to them at exactly the right spot to trigger the dialogue. Not impossible, just irritating.

With the stakes of an evil sorceress with an army of monsters threatening the kingdom, the actual scope of the game is quite small. Cozy, even. Turnvale is a nice little town, which is good, because you will spend a lot of time walking back and forth across it. The townspeople all have engaging personalities, and even ones like Gwyn, the town gossip who has no direct bearing on any puzzles, provides story hints and clues if you keep talking to her.

As a protagonist, Diermot is a lunk, but a likable one. Ratpouch is funny for a little while, then his pathfinding wears out its welcome as he constantly ends up underfoot.

The GOG version uses the SCUMMVM emulator to run, which apparently has buggy audio and there's an annoying alarm bell sound that played constantly in the town as I was exploring it. Apparently the issue doesn't happen if the game is run in DOS-Box. From what I've seen online, the Amiga version seems to run the best with the best sound, but I have no experience with Amiga emulation to have a firsthand opinion on it. This being an early 90's game made by a brand new studio with hardly any budget, there is no voice dialogue in any of the versions.

The writing and artwork are solid in all the versions I've seen, and the game has a very quaint and cozy atmosphere that allows the tone to jump between flippant dialogue with a Conan the Barbarian type of adventurer in a bar to trying to save an innocent shopkeeper from being executed by the Skorl. Like Sierra games, Diermot can get game overs in many ways, but its not the parade of Save-Die-Reload Save that King's Quest has. Only a few puzzles have built in limitations like time limits you don't necessarily know about, like the wine barrel puzzle, but overall its fairly forgiving for an early 90s adventure game.

Lure of the Temptress was a hit in England and paved the way for Revolution to make bigger games, like Beneath a Steel Sky and the Broken Sword series. Its a pleasant little game with some ambitions that occasionally exceed its grasp, like the NPC pathfinding. The writing and art style are good, the music isn't great played through SCUMMVM, but it wasn't a dealbreaker. I liked it, but it wasn't mind blowing. It is freeware, so I definitely recommend it, at least for a try.

Old-ish Video Games: Two Worlds

2007's Two Worlds is a strange, buggy, unbalanced mess held together with code and Polish profanity. And yet I find it oddly compelling.

Developed by Reality Pump (a Polish company established in the 90s and more recently famous for the glitchy, broken meme factory Raven's Cry), Two Worlds comes across as a copycat of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which released a year earlier.

The similarities are strong. Both are non-linear open-world high fantasy games with a main quest that's mostly optional. Both take place in a mostly temperate forest terrain with touches of the exotic on the fringes. Both have factions you can join. Both have a magic system that can be abused if you know what you're doing (those are the best magic systems).

Whereas Oblivion casts you as a firefighter stamping out hell-portals opening up all over the country because a doomsday cult wants to summon their god, Two Worlds starts with a more personal approach.

The hero's sister is kidnapped by a doomsday cult that want to resurrect a dead god. Totally different.

The major difference is that the nameless protagonist, is a complete idiot. His sister is kidnapped in the opening cutscene because he leaves her, wounded and bleeding next to a tree, so he can investigate the safety of an abandoned hut. When the conspirators approach him to blackmail him into working for them in order to rescue her, he takes it at face value. When he's able to contact his sister telepathically at various sites and learns of the quest to resurrect a dead god, he writes it off as hokey superstition, despite being able to be leveled up as a wizard. When it becomes obvious that collecting the artifacts the cult wants would be disastrous, he goes along anyway. One of the artifacts is actually powering the defense of an innocent city against orcish attack and when you kill the guardians and take it, the orcs invade the city and kill everyone in it before you exit the dungeon (you can apparently abuse the magic system and resurrect the cityfolk with a leveled up spell, but there's no story reason to do so).

Don't feel too attracted, that's supposed to be the player character's sister.

Blockhead protagonist aside, the combat controls are clunky, horse controls are clunkier, the map is not overly thought-out despite being rather large (there's only one river, the big one dividing up two major zones), and the English voice over acting is amazingly awkward. I went for a heavy fighter type of build and the penultimate boss was murdering me despite my high level, so I cheesed him with a low level cold spell that I beefed up thanks to the overpowered magic system. The ending glitched out on me and took me right back to the main menu without showing the cutscene, so I had to reload a save.

And yet.

And yet there's something to this video game equivalent of a B-Movie. The map is big. The environments are quite scenic, the soundtrack by Harold “the guy who wrote Axel F” Faltermeyer is kind of great, and while some of the zones are clearly undercooked (the swamp, the snowy area, the desert tucked away in one corner and so on) riding around and exploring remote corners is bound to turn up something interesting: A quest line, a dungeon to clear out without any attached quest, bandit camps, orc patrols, stone dragons that can be cheesed because you have a faster attack rate and can get them into a stagger loop as you pound on them without taking a hit. There are monsters that only exist in smaller areas. I was riding around on a skeleton horse. There was an entire city I never entered because it was locked. There were giant gates in the middle of the map I never figured out how to open.

In short, it has mysteries that reward exploration.

I wouldn't go so far as to recommend Two Worlds as a good game. There are many like it that do the same things it does with polish and balance, but I did have fun, which is the entire purpose of a video game.

Old Video Games: Torin's Passage

This one is going to take some context to explain while I wax nostalgic.

In the summer of 1996, my family went to Disney World. So did I. Long story short: great time. However, Epcot Center had a big push for technology and computers and gaming tech. I specifically remember being stoked by a Sega Saturn display because it was only a year old in North America and not a lost cause yet. One of the buildings had a bunch of PCs set up and this was a big deal for me because we didn't get a Windows PC until November (Packard Bell, if you must know and want a laugh). One of those PCs had a point-and-click adventure game set in a weird fantasy world with a crazy art style and a likable doof of a protagonist trying to rescue his family who'd been kidnapped by evil magic. Typical stuff, but it was charming, and gorgeous in a way that was above King's Quest. I spent about half an hour bumbling around clueless because Point-and-Click Adventure Game, but it left a huge impression. I never even learned the name of the game, so it remained an illusive mystery to me after we left Florida.

Well, I finally beat it. Twenty-two years later. I even know its name.

Its called Torin's Passage, from legendary adventure game developer Sierra On-Line and designed by the equally legendary Al Lowe, father of the Leisure Suit Larry series of bawdy classics.

From a gameplay standpoint, the puzzles are mostly straightforward, with a few trickier mazes and pattern things. (I used a guide because I wanted to get through it in a reasonable amount of time. I'll be honest when I'm being a filthy casul). The difficulty is very forgiving compared to King's Quest, and dying will present you with a funny message and drop you back to where you were before you did the thing that killed you.

Presentation is amazing. The backgrounds are hand drawn, while the character animations have quite a bit of Don Bluth's style to them. The voice acting is top notch for the era, with most of the cast comprised of journeyman character and voice actors who are still working today. Torin was voiced by Michael Shapiro who has done the voices for Barney and the G Man in all of the Half-Life games (which were originally published by Sierra).

The writing is solid, too. Lowe's comedy chops shine, and while its clearly family-friendly, some of his trademark bawdiness peeks through. Poop jokes are all-ages, after all. Its not quite on the Monkey Island level of comedy, but it does have some great bits, like the random black & white sitcom family, The Bitternuts.

Torin's Passage is incredibly charming, and if you like 90s-style Point-And-Click Adventure Games (specifically the Sierra-style), then its a good one of those. Sadly, it was released at the tail end of Sierra's golden age, and never got a sequel. Its available on GOG.

That's it for the gameplay review. Now for story bits. There might be spoilers.

Sometimes Torin looks all noble and heroic

The basic plot is... kind of basic. Torin's a young man looking for adventure when all of a sudden his family is kidnapped by an evil sorcerer. A cloaked man who is in no way obviously evil tells him it was the sorceress Lycentia, who lives in the World Below. Torin sets out to find her to make her free them. He takes his shapeshifting purple & green cat-thing Boogle with him (who isn't that annoying).

What really stands out are three things.

1: The worldbuilding. There isn't a whole lot of it, but what's there is great. It takes the Hollow Earth concept and turns it into a matroyshka doll. There are four worlds within the planet of Strata, each one weirder than the last. Crystals are a big part of this world, with giant blocks of them all over the planet, even on the surface. Travel between worlds is achieved through crystal portals and magic sand. And solving puzzles.

Male Gaze REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

2: The second world, Escarpa, sets up a love interest, the Princess Leenah. The locals politely refer to her as having a wonderful personality, leading Torin to think she's ugly. He meets her on the third world, Pergola, and she's a beautiful redhead. See, she's ugly by their standards. Naturally the two start falling for each other, but their duties pull them in separate directions and she goes back to her level while Torin presses on. Its a sweet little romance and played 100% straightforward. I just wish it wasn't a subplot that gets resolved halfway through the story when it would've been more effective if she turned into his Dejah Thoris.

3: While the main storyline is lighthearted comedy fun, the backstory is anything but. It starts with a magical assassination of a king and queen. Their baby escapes through the quick thinking of the family nanny. Each subsequent chapter follows the fallout of that, with the nanny eventually being exiled to the Land Below. Gloomy stuff, and it connects to the main plot because A) Torin's the lost prince, which is no surprise and B) the Nanny turns out to be Lycentia, which is more of a surprise. It also makes the happy ending a touch more happy when multiple wrongs are righted.

And sometimes Torin looks like a complete doof

The story may lean heavily on cliché, but it does so wisely, which is to its credit.

Beat-Em-Up to a Pulp

So a recent Twitter conversation randomly shifted to the lost genre of Beat-Em-Up games.

Aside from nostalgia for pumping quarters into Final Fight at the Pizza Hut my Grandpa would take me to after school for a personal pan pizza, I managed to beat the arcade version of the game this year.

Its simple, even for its genre, but it still holds up. The SNES exclusive Final Fight 3 adds a ton of features, like more playable characters, combos, the ability to dash, and even a super move meter.

Then epiphany hit. Beat-em-ups are, at their core, pulp adventures.

A group of individuals numbering between one and at most six take to the streets to right a wrong. The world, or at least the city, needs saving. A lot of times, its the female love interest who gets kidnapped and its up to the hero and his friends to save her (Streets of Rage 2 remixes this by having it be one of the male protagonists of the first game be the one kidnapped).

Double Dragon establishes the hero's motivation with maximum efficiency. A woman (Marian) is surrounded on a street by a mean looking gang. One of them walks up to her, slugs her in the gut, throws her over his shoulder, and carries her off.

Mission Start. Ten seconds of backstory is all you need to know. Action, romance, and morality (because good dudes don't sucker punch women and carry them off).

Or take Final Fight. The newly-elected mayor of Metro City gets a call from the Mad Gear gang. They've kidnapped his daughter Jessica to extort his cooperation.

Since the mayor is Mike Haggar, the response is swift and decisive. He strips off his shirt and personally takes to the streets to suplex and pile driver anyone who gets in his way. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that he's a former professional wrestler. And this predates Jesse Ventura's governorship.

Sounds insane, right? Sure, but its memorable, and Haggar's design, moveset and moustache are so iconic that he's the poster boy of the franchise and the only one to be playable in every Final Fight game. He's even made it into two Marvel Vs Capcom games.

Joining him are Cody, Jessica's boyfriend and the heroic everyman-type of protagonist, as well as Guy, Cody's friend and a ninja (because 1989), who has no emotional investment in the proceedings and only joins in because its the right thing to do.

Technological limitations had an effect on storytelling back then, but even so, that works for Beat-Em-Ups, which boil the story down into the minimal background required to invest you into going from left to right across a screen and literally beating everything you meet into a pulp.

You want a deep story? There's lots of RPGs to scratch that itch.

You want to play through an action movie? Memorable character designs that fit into gameplay archetypes taking on the world? Killer soundtracks? Eating fully cooked turkey you found in wooden crate?

Don't actually do that last one.

Hell yeah, its pulp.  

“This nobility business is not the cloth we're cut from.”

Hey! Remember Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time? No, not the critically acclaimed (and damn hard) PlayStation 2 platformer, that came out in 2003 (which itself was a sort of reboot of a series going back to 1989). I'm talking about the attempted blockbuster epic adventure that was released in 2010. You don't remember it? But it had Sir Ben Kingsley in it and stuff. (Be warned, I'm going to abuse a lot parentheses today.)

Plot

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time features a bunch of tanned Caucasian “Persians” (and Ben Kingsley) conquering the holy city of Alamut and in the process of sort of looting it, one of the Princes in command of the army happens upon a magic dagger, then gets framed for his father's death and goes on the run with the Princess of Alamut. The two have a bickering will-they-won't-they (of course they will) series of mishaps and adventures, while also trying to clear the Prince's name and figuring out how to refill a time travel dagger with magic sand. (that last part is actually from the game, and not nearly as stupid as it sounds.)

A quick note about the Hollywood penchant for casting. Yes, it would be nice if actors of appropriate ethnicities would be cast for those ethnicities, but the nebulous “studio execs” are probably more interested in using familiar names and faces to ensure people go “Oh, that new Jake Gyllenhaal movie?” instead of “Oh, that weird fantasy movie with a bunch of foreigners?” It's a tale as old as cinema, and one probably based more on economic estimates than racism.

Characters

Prince Dastan: Jake Gyllenhaal is our titular Prince, only not really. In the beginning of the movie, he's a homeless streetrat with great climbing skills and a heart of gold. So basically Disney's Aladdin. Except this time his moxie is noticed by the King of Persia, who takes him in and adopts him as a third son, making his origins as a low class schlub effectively meaningless outside of a few conversations. That part of his character could have been cut without any consequence to the movie. As for the character himself, he's a decent enough guy, who has the loyalty of his men, but he's also dense as rocks, which propels the plot but gets a bunch of people killed along the way. As for Gyllenhaal himself, he looks the part, can move around well, but doesn't infuse the character with nearly enough rogueish swagger to make him memorable.

Tamina: Gemma Arterton is the princess of Alamut and charged with keeping the sacred sands (and the dagger) safe, lest very bad things happen. Then Dastan sneaks into her city, opens the gates, which leads to them being conquered and her being taken prisoner. She's understandably pissed, and gets stuck with Dastan. At first her constant paranoia and betrayals of Dastan make sense, but after a certain point, it gets old and lingers longer than her mistrust of him should. The two don't really have great chemistry together.

King Sharaman: Ronald Pickup plays Dastan's adoptive dad. Apparently a benevolent and standup guy, he's not happy that his sons went out of their way to attack Alamut when that wasn't part of the original plan. Dastan is given a robe to give to his father as a gift, and then said robe turns out to be poisoned and painfully burns Sharaman to death, which is something more out of Greek myth than Persian, but hey, you don't see it often so I'll let it slide. His death sets in motion the real plot of the film.

Nizam: Ben Kingsley plays the King's brother and the princes' uncle. He's a royal vizier and Ben Kingsley, so, uh, spoiler alert: he's the bad guy. Shocking, I know. Anyway, he's always fun to watch.

Tus: Richard Coyle (Jeff from Coupling) plays the eldest Prince and heir to the throne. A responsible, conscientious leader, he's kind of a standup guy. But still, he's Jeff from Coupling, so I sat there the whole time thinking about the giggle loop and the Melty Man. Bit of a dissonance.

Garsiv: Toby Kebbell plays Tus' hotheaded younger brother and head of the military. Kind of an arrogant jerk for most of the movie, but not really that bad of a guy.

Sheik Amar: Alfred Molina in glorious ham mode as a shady merchant who runs “the Valley of the Slaves” a horrible place with a deadly reputation that he cooked up so he can avoid paying taxes and run his own fantasy Persian Las Vegas, with ostrich races and hookers. The character is a collage of anachronisms and weirdness, but it doesn't matter because Molina going to town on the scenery is the best thing in the whole movie.

Seso: Steve Toussaint plays Sheik Amar's soft-spoken henchman. A member of the Ngbaka tribe famed for knife-throwing skills, he first comes off as dumb muscle but turns into Amar's conscience and a capable ally for the Prince. Actually, the friendship between Amar and Seso has more chemistry and is more convincing than Dastan and Tamina's relationship. So much so that Sheik Amar's often flippant boast “Have I told you about the Ngbaka?” speech eventually becomes the most poignant and moving line in the entire movie at a certain point.

Visuals

Directed by Mike Newell (who directed one of the better Harry Potter films along with Donnie Brasco and Four Weddings and a Funeral), the film features lots of brown and gold. And sand, obviously. Some of this is a product of post-processing and digital coloring and filters and CGI and stuff, which is understandable, but it doesn't make the color palette any less drab. This is disappointing, since the special “making-of” featurette shows more greenery and color when discussing location scouting. That made me sad.

As for the visual effects that go with this kind of movie, they're kind of forgettable. The first (and second) time Dastan uses the dagger, its an interesting effect of rewinding time that echoes how the game did it a little. There is nothing outright bad about the special effects (though the somewhat silly Hassansin squad gets pretty close with their gimmicks), but nothing I'd consider memorable. The same goes for the art direction: competent yet forgettable. There are no monster designs to speak of (disappointing considering the high fantasy tone) and the fight scenes are adequate without standing out.

Stuff happens, it looks all right, and then more all right looking stuff happens. This is a shame, considering that ancient Persia is not something usually touched upon in big Hollywood movies.

Writing

Based on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, scree story by Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner, and screenplay by Boaz Yakin and Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard. The most interesting plot bits are the ones taken from the video game. A magical dagger that can turn back time is a really neat concept, both in terms of game mechanics and narrative touches. Everything else feels like generic fantasy ADVENTURE elements. Everyman rises to a position of privileged authority, goes on ADVENTURE to clear his name and stop a coup and along the way gets to bicker with a hot princess that knows where the magic sand is that can refill the time dagger. Even so, something more could be made out of those plot elements and this movie doesn't. Instead I spent a lot of time thinking about how it was jarring that slavery was mentioned several times despite Persia being considerably less interested in keeping slaves than its neighbors like, oh, let's say Greece (Don't believe me? Read up on the helots. That's some depressing stuff.).

The rest of the movie was spent wondering why the movie went out of its way to establish Dastan as a street rat orphan with great parkour skills and a heart of gold, except instead of a monkey in a fez and a flying carpet he gets adopted by the king and elevated to the status of a prince. This serves no true narrative purpose beyond a few references here and there. It could have been cut from the movie without affecting anything except shaving off about ten minutes of runtime. Just have him be the youngest son who's a black sheep because he's a bit of wild rebel who doesn't take his position as seriously as his older brothers so he gets restless and does something stupid and then has to clean up his mess. That's motivation enough for most fairy tales, and all of those elements are in the movie. Hell, the motivation for the assassination of the king is actually quite elegant (and petty, but hey, its regicide) in its simplicity.

Instead we get some bullshit about him being some everyman commoner, except he's not. He's an orphan with exceptional climbing ability and a reckless courage. Yes, this kind of exceptionalism does show up in folklore a lot, but its perfectly fine for your protagonist to be an exceptional individual with a simple or undefined backstory. IndianaJones is a pulp archeologist who's great with a whip and a mean right hook. John McLane is an overworked, cynical cop estranged from his family but succeeds due to cunning and stubborness. Robin Hood is an altruistic nobleman and marksman who becomes outraged by injustice and decides to do something about it. These are great characters because of their exceptional deeds and outsized personalities. Dastan only gets a few chances to really be a character, like when he's trying to lie to Sheik Amar about his real identity, realizes that its not working, laughs sheepishly and then makes a run for it. If the movie was more like that scene it would have been much better.

Oh, and one more thing, in a movie where the major plot device can magically turn back time, it kind of telegraphs how the ending's going to go.

Sounds

Music by Harry Gregson-Williams. He's done much better work. Like so much else in the movie, it is serviceable but ultimately forgettable.

Verdict

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a functional piece of movie that does what it intends to. It looks fine and holds together reasonably well, much like a solid chair. Also like a solid chair, you don't really think about it unless you are making a deliberate effort to analyze it for its strengths and weaknesses and so you can judge it by its merits, but only lunatics do that sort of thing.

…

...ahem...

What I mean to say is that Prince of Persia feels like it was made with a checklist in hand and then a bunch of competent people were told to go make what was on the checklist. That makes it merely average and forgettable, which is a miracle for video game based movies.

Skyrim Interlude

(HA HA! YOU THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DISCUSS THAT OTHER GAME  WITH A ROMAN V IN THE TITLE THAT HAPPENS TO BE IMPORTANT THIS WEEK.)

Like pretty much all Bethesda games, I was late to the party for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Not that I didn't want to play the game when it was brand new, but because I knew that Bethesda is consistent about putting out “game of the year” editions with their expansions bundled in, and at a considerably cheaper price.

So anyway, Skyrim. It's got pretty mountains. Killing dragons has a nice feeling of accomplishment to it. Jeremy Soule's soundtrack is amazing. It's an entire province populated by Not-Vikings. Combat isn't quite as janky as in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. These are all good things.

Like Oblivion before it, the story is fairly bog standard and...not really engaging. Oblivion had the hilarious but kind of odd trait of casting you as the highly competent sidekick of the actual hero and sent around the kingdom to help him get ready to save the world. Here, you turn out to be a pretty big deal, a dragonborn capable of learning magical shouts when you kill dragons by absorbing their souls. And yes, the first shout you learn is how to yell so hard it knocks people over.

But the plot itself of Skyrim is standard fare. There's a civil war between two factions and you get to throw in with one of them. Worse, ancient dragons, not seen for centuries, begin flying around and tearing shit up. You see this firsthand at the beginning of the game as a prisoner caught up in this civil war on your way to execution in a fortified town when BOOM! DRAGON. You escape in the confusion and the town gets destroyed and from there the world opens up for you to explore as you wish. Ancient evil, need to find a way to stop it, need to level up by finding people to give you quests. Not my first rodeo, but one I still enjoy paying the price of admission for.

The main quest might not be amazing overall, but this and the hundreds of side quests propel you into what the series is amazingly good at: exploration. It gives you a big map with undiscovered locations and begs the question “What's over that hill?” “What's in that ruin?” Sometimes it's bandits. Sometimes it's an impressive view. Sometimes its just a mudcrab. But then there's the next hill, and what looks like a fort over to the left, and a dirt road running through a dense forest to the right.... That right there is where the “actual” story of an Elder Scrolls game is: the emergent personal story of you the player deciding to go explore something.

Case in point, this weekend I finally had my first real “whoa” moment. Playing for maybe an hour, I end up wandering back to the town from the prologue just to see what's there. Not much, it turns out. Some bandits, a few chests to open with some minor loot, and the burned out ruins of a small town. Following dirt road outside the town, I get attacked by a wolf. At level 9, a lone wolf is no problem and swiftly dispatched. Around the bend is a smear of blood and what's left of a campsite. There are two corpses labeled “refugee.” The location does not show up on the map as something discovered.

I think “man that sucks,” and proceed to loot their corpses. As sociopathic as it sounds, that's just one of the things that you do in these types of games. Its not like you've got the option to give them a proper burial. Beyond their pittance of gold there's nothing else of interest and I move on down the trail. A quartet of bandits is easily dispatched, then a small hill campsite with two bandits that got hostile as I approached.

On guard, I keep on truckin' and see a canine shape ahead that doesn't run away like a fox. “Probably another wolf” I think and get my axe ready. It does not run. It does not attack, either. I get close and its a stray dog.

Huh. I've been attacked by dogs in the game before, so I'm still on guard, but if he doesn't attack, then I've got no beef.

He doesn't attack. The game gives me the option to “talk” to him. I do, and all that happens is that he sits down and whines a little then wags his tail. I thank the game for a random encounter that doesn't want to kill me, and proceed into a nearby cave with my AI companion because CURIOSITY!

Inside the cave is an ice cavern with a bunch of skeletons (human and mammoth), an ice bridge, and a saber toothed cat.

Before you can say “Fighty Time!” I hear a bark and see a dog run at the cat along with my companion.

“Wait, is that the stray dog from... Shit, better kill that monster.”

The cat goes down and I look at the dog. Yep. Stray Dog. He sits down and wags his tail.

“Well damn. Thanks little buddy. Guess you're following me around. That's cool.”

And then I remembered the campsite, the wolf, and the dead refugees. Putting the pieces together into an entirely assumed conclusion, I decided that this poor mutt was the last survivor of that wolf attack.

At which point I made myself a promise that I'd get this dog to a settlement. Maybe a town. Maybe a farm. Maybe let him follow me around some more.

I exit through the other side of the cave with two companions in tow and see some ruins and one of the shrines that unlocks Dragonborn shouts. “Cool. New stuff!”

Then the music ramps up and a dragon soars overhead. I pause the game and weigh my options, and then I exited out. Not because I was worried I couldn't take it down, but because I was certain that dog was going to turn into literal toast. Plus, I had other stuff I had to do.

Right then and there was where I got onboard with Skyrim. It had just given me a Moment. No dialogue, not even text or any kind of exposition whatsoever, just context cues pulled from possibly unconnected incidents. The campfire ruin was coded for that spot, obviously, and apparently stray dogs appear at various places on the map to be rescued from immediate peril, yet I had no confirmation that these two were related. I made that connection in my head, and I'm not even much of a pet person.

This isn't a review or anything even close to that, nor is it weighing in on the “games are totally art, man” argument. It's just highlighting a brief yet oddly profound storytelling moment in a game that I been enjoying from a more...I guess “academic perspective” is the right phrase. Ironically for a game that prides itself on an epic story and scale, the best moment so far has been the exact opposite on the scale of intimacy.

So yeah. Skyrim's pretty neat. The main storyline is kind of blah, but that's not why I come to Elder Scrolls games. It's for the moments of exploration/discovery, the emergent narrative that the player is encouraged to build up around their blank slate of a character, and for the weird exploits possible that let you break the game. (For instance, by the time I finished Oblivion, I was a sword and board warrior with boots that let me run on water, an amulet that let me breathe underwater, and a unique unbreakable lockpick that essentially meant that I could go pretty much anywhere and take anything.)

Combat's still pretty janky though.

“Nothing is impossible. Anything is possible.”

Throwing another video game onto the flaming wreckage that is my credibility, the royal we here at Castle RMWC are a sucker for medieval related things, and Ubisoft’s 2007 release Assassin’s Creed drops you into the middle of the Third Crusade as one of the mysterious and feared Hashashin/Assassins, but then it also promises a crazy twist!!

Plot
So, uh, its not really a twist if it takes place before anything else. Turns out, the main character is just some guy in a white hoodie in a fairly generic near-future setting that gets kidnapped by a fairly generic sinister corporation. The reason for this is that he’s a descendant of an actual assassin from a time period that is very interesting for EvilCo. and they plug him into a machine called the Animus which can apparently let you access “genetic memories” and live through them for something like “genericsciencefictionbullshitpsychobabblerubbishmillenniumhandandshrimp.” Anyway, its at this point that you’re seriously considering returning the game because you wanted to stab medieval peasants in the throat when it turns out that this Animus device is going to be the excuse to plop you down into the Crusades as one of your ancestors AND THEN you get to stab people.* Though its with a purpose. EvilCo.’s looking for some kind of MacGuffin that your great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddad was involved in finding and losing.

Characters
Desmond Miles: Nolan North voices our “Hero,” a bartender in a white hoodie that looks suspiciously similar to the uniform of his ancestor. Subtle. Anyway, he spends his time in the stark white apartment/lab getting yelled at by one of EvilCo.’s scientists and encouraged by one of their other, cuter, techs. He spends the entire game half-heartedly denying any connection to the Assassins and playing video games reliving his ancestor’s life, so he’s a blank slate of a character.

Altaïr: Philip Shahbaz voices Desmond’s much more physically active ancestor, they do share the trait of not having a backstory worth notice. A high ranking member of the Assassins, he’s pretty proud of himself and lets that get in the way when a mission goes pear-shaped and some of his buddies get killed. Demoted and nearly killed by his boss for his failure, Altaïr doesn’t exactly come across as a contrite or apologetic guy. Actually, he’s kind of a dick. Anyway, in exchange for not killing him outright, his boss assigns him to kill nine high profile targets (Christians and Muslims) who are “needlessly extending the crusade.” And if that sounds like a flimsy reasoning to you, give yourself a cookie. Our boy Altaïr does become the badass of the game as you pick up new skills and weapons for him (like his signature hidden blade: a nasty little wrist mounted switchblade), and he’s got some impressive le parkour moves that help him get around town. And when you can get around town by climbing up the Dome of the Rock AND the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, walking on the ground seems so passé.

Warren Vidic: Phil Proctor voices the Scientist of Abstergent Asbestos Asberger’s Sbarro Abstergo (you know, I’ll stick with EvilCo.) Industries who passively, then aggressively shoves Desmond into the Animus to get that information. If he had a moustache, he’d be twirling it.

Lucy Stillman: Kristen Bell voices the EvilCo. tech who gets friendly with Desmond, ostensibly because you’ll catch more flies with honey, but, well, there’s a pretty obvious twist involving her.

Al-Mualim: The awesome-voiced Peter Renaday voices Altaïr’s black-robed boss, the highly intelligent and dangerous “Old Man in the Mountain.” Based in the mountain fortress of Masyaf, Al-Mualim talks quite a bit about peace and freedom, but the facility itself is run much like a cult, and he does send people out to murder other people through a vast network of bureaus, so, you know, he's totally trustworthy and wouldn't possibly be lying to you.

Robert de Sable: Jean-Phillipe Dandenaud voices Altaïr’s archenemy in the game, the Templar Grandmaster and the last of the nine guys he’s sent to extinguish. On the surface, Robert’s a bigger dick than Altaïr, but there’s more to what the Templars are trying to do than simple crusading.

There are also the 8 other targets and Richard the Lionheart makes an appearance, but its not worth going into them.

Visuals/Effects
Simon Peacock and Amanda Wyatt were the voice over directors and Jade Raymond was overall project producer. And there’s way too many people and departments to go any further into who did what. Visually, the game is impressive when you’re running around the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The world is beautiful and character animations are solid. Facial details are less interesting, which I guess is a strike against it, but if you’re spending all your time zooming in on your character’s face, then you’re doing it wrong. The game does get a bit repetitive in its structure.

Writing
Written by Corey May and M. Dooma Wendschuh the story is…not what I’d call good. The whole storyline about an assassin who screws up royally and becomes an expendable tool against high profile targets as punishment is a pretty decent, standard story, but then the sci-fi story feels badly developed and shoehorned into what was otherwise an interesting tale of dirty intrigue and politics. The other issue I had is that Altaïr is held up as a tortured but ultimately righteous good guy, but he’s really not that likable of a guy, or heroic. He’s really more of a self-righteous, arrogant ass who’s convinced he’s doing the right thing and bringing peace back to the Holy Land, when ultimately, he’s just another agent of discord. I mean, one of his targets only becomes a paranoid, would-be tyrant only after Altaïr has killed several of his other targets before him.

And I’m not going to go into all the historical…liberties taken. Not gonna do it. Just….........no. Its not worth it.

Sound
Jespery Kyd does a great job with a moody, sometimes electronic, sometimes more orchestral sound. It is quite awesome.

Conclusion
There are a lot of flaws with Assassin’s Creed. A lot of flaws. At its worst, the game’s plot feels like it belongs in a Sci-Fi Original Movie. At its best, it’s a fluid, largely open world city crawler that encourages you to freerun across anything you can, not because you get a lot of rewards for it, but because its awesome. The sequel apparently fixes a lot of the flaws of the first one while playing up the great stuff. Still, the core appeal of the first game, to run around committing shenanigans in lushly designed medieval cities, is a solid one.

*Note, we here at RMWC do not actually advocate stabbing peasants, or any other kind of people in the throat, even if it is in a lushly designed Medieval city, and even if you do so by means of a flying leap from a belltower. Just don’t.

“We are legion. The time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the sky of every world.”

I’m throwing a wrench into things for this update. Call it experimentation, call it whimsy, call it an excuse for me to nerd out, call it jumping the shark, but I’m going to, on occasion, discuss video games as well here.



No, wait! Come back!

Look, there are perfectly good reasons to look at video games, particularly modern ones, as a legitimate medium of visual storytelling. Graphics have increased to a level where they can almost compete with top level CGI productions (and completely blow away bottom level ones) and the medium can simulate decisions and consequences in ways that a 90 minute film can’t. As video gaming in general emerges from the basement of the antisocial (everybody’s heard of Mario and Halo's a pretty cool guy who kills aleins and doesn't afraid of anybody), developers, particularly ones interested in interactive fiction have made some absolutely fantastic games that blur the lines between simply killing the hell out of things and “choose your own adventure” style storytelling. Officially it’s a “role-playing game” but here, interactive story is more appropriate. An interactive story where you can kill bad guys and level up. Canadian developer Bioware has been making these kinds of games since the early 90s, and their 2007 opus, Mass Effect definitely counts. Originally released for the Xbox 360, its also available on PC, and it’s a big story.

Plot
Okay, so in 2148, humanity discovered ancient ruins on Mars left behind by an extinct civilization called the Protheans, who used advanced technology based around mass accelerators and a fictional substance called “element zero.” This discovery jumped human tech forward 200 years and facilitated rapid colonization across the stars, eventually leading to contact (and a brief war) with other alien species. Eventually making peace with them and joining up with these so called “Council Races” humanity is now the new kid on the galactic block, looking to earn its place among the rest of the aliens who run civilized space. And that’s all backstory.

The main character is a human marine in the Earth Systems Alliance Navy and a candidate to be the first human being allowed into the Spectres, a group of elite, independent agents who are “the right hand of the Council” (basically commandos, diplomats and wetwork agents rolled into one). An evaluation mission to a human colony to recover a Prothean artifact goes sour when another Spectre, an alien named Saren shows up with an army of sentient robots and blitzes the colony to get access to the beacon. You survive, but the beacon gets destroyed and a lot of people die in the raid. The Council is not happy with you, but they’re also not happy that one of their most decorated Spectres might’ve gone rogue. What follows is a big, big storyline where you have to earn your way into the Spectres, prove Saren’s a traitor, chase his trail across several alien worlds and discover that what he’s trying to accomplish threatens all organic life in the galaxy. No pressure, Commander.

Characters
Commander Shepard: This is you. You is a very flexible concept. You can be male or female, have access to multiple character backgrounds and military records you can be and have six combat classes to choose from. For instance, you can be an orphan from Earth who’s an infiltrator (sniper) with a ruthless reputation, or you can be a space-born engineer who single-handedly held off an enemy invasion on a colony world. These aren’t just for flavor, they affect side quests and how some characters talk to you. Even more capable of shaping your character are your decisions during the game. Sometimes you get access to “Paragon” or “Renegade” dialog options where you can affect outcomes. Taken to their purest forms, you can either build yourself into a full paragon “Captain America in space” character or a completely ruthless asshole. Either way, you still have to save the universe. Voiced by Mark Meer (male) or Jennifer Hale (female)

Captain David Anderson: The ever awesome Keith David is the badass human captain of the SSV Normandy an experimental, high performance frigate that is your vehicle of choice for hopping around the galaxy. He’s a respected veteran in the Alliance Navy and has some history with Saren.

Jeff “Joker” Moreau: Seth Green is the snarky, smartassed hotshot pilot of the Normandy. You eventually find out why he’s never seen outside of his pilot’s seat.

Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko: Raphael Sbarge voices a human biotic in the Alliance military. Biotics are people with modified genetics that can affect mass fields using their minds. Essentially a telekinetic engineer, Kaiden’s a quiet fellow who’s mentally stable as far as early biotics go, he only gets migraines instead of “the crazy.”

Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams: Kimberly Brooks voices a human marine that your squad rescues/picks up on Eden Prime, the site of the mission where the beacon gets blowed up. A career soldier with a long family history of service to the Alliance, she’s not exactly trusting of the aliens, but later reveals a surprising amount of depth for a “run and gun ooh-rah” soldier. A great, solid, ass kicking female character. (and yes, her name is a shout out to Evil Dead)

Garrus Vakarian: Brandon Keener voices the Turian (one of the major alien races) you recruit on the Citadel (basically the Capital of Space), he’s a cowboy cop who knows Saren’s crooked and tags along with you to dispense some justice. Depending on how you play, you can either help him decide to be renegade or paragon himself. He’s also a crack shot with a sniper rifle if you level him up right.

Urdnott Wrex: Steven Barr voices the game’s biggest badass, a Krogan “Battlemaster” who’s a tough mother of an alien that can destroy people with biotics and is a tank with a shotgun. Krogans are a reptillian/amphibian like race of warriors and mercenaries (think Battletoads with shotguns and the ability to affect mass fields with their minds and you’re on the right track) who are dying out thanks to a genophage they’ve been infected with that has lowered their birth rate to almost nil. Wrex’s real charm is in his old soldier attitude and general willingness to do very bad things to get the job done.

Tali’Zorah nar Rayya: Liz Sroka voices Tali, a Quarian engineer that you pick up along the way who has evidence implicating Saren. Quarians are a mysterious species that aren’t trusted much after they created a race of machine servants called the Geth that developed sentience and went murderously rogue. Tali herself is on a pilgrimage, a coming of age journey away from her people to bring back something interesting/useful. Sort of like traveling to Europe to find yourself after college. She’s also the only female member of your party that you can’t romance, leaving many fans…frustrated (think of it this way, she’s got the personality of Kaylee from Firefly but has to wear a hermetically sealed sterile suit at all times in the rest of the galaxy because Quarians have basically no immune systems).

Dr. Liara T’Soni: Ali Hillis voices an Asari scientist that you recruit. She’s young for one of her race (blue skinned, human-like mono-gendered alien space babes that can live for thousands of years). She’s not really skilled in social interaction, and she’s also somewhat naïve, but damn are her biotics powerful.

Admiral Steven Hackett: Lance Henriksen is the commander of the Alliance Fifth Fleet and exists only as a faceless voice. Most of the game you think he’s a minor character, just calling you up from time to time to give you side missions, but even this minor character’s important, because by the end, **Spoilers**the entire goddamn Fifth Fleet is the cavalry that comes screaming in to give Sheppard a hand in wrecking the bad guys’ shit. As far as cutscenes go in video games, its one of the rare moments where I’ve jump off my couch and shouted “Fuck Yeah!” at the TV. **End Spoilers** Not bad for a character who exists only as a voice.

Saren Arterius: Fred Tatasciore voices the Bad Guy that you chase across the galaxy. He’s a Turian Spectre that doesn’t like humans, but he’s also planning something. Something big. Something bad. Something that threatens the entire galaxy and all civilization in it. To help him, he’s got an army of Geth, synthetic life forms (genuine artificial intelligences in the Mass Effect universe are illegal because they always tend to take the “kill all organics” approach to politics: case in point, the Geth) that worship him as a kind of prophet. He’s also got an Asari Matriarch (a very, very powerful biotic) named Benezia (Marina Sirtis) as his lieutenant (she’s also Liara’s mother). Saren’s a bad, bad dude and a great villain.

Visuals/Effects
Well, uh, there are a lot of people involved in the production of a video game, but the project director was Casey Hudson. The visual style of the game is simply incredible. Enormously cinematic with fantastically well thought out technology, aliens and structures, the visual immersion is staggering in its quality. Gameplay is also quite fun (its an over-the-shoulder shooter in real-time, itself an exception to standard RPG conventions) though not quite perfect. Elevator rides are notoriously long loading screens and a lot of the exploration of less important planets can feel a little redundant visually as you drive the Mako over rocky expanses over and over (the Mako itself is a love-it-or-hate-it vehicle. Its either a ungainly truck that handles like a lobster trying to ice skate or it’s a tenacious mountain goat that can conquer the tallest mountain). But overall, the experience of playing the game is addictively satisfying.

Writing
Lots of writers for this one. Drew Karpyshyn, Lukas Kristjanson, Mike Laidlaw, Chris L’Etoile, Mac Walters and Patrick Weekes have collectively created a sprawling, insanely detailed and well-thought out universe. There is an in-game codex you can look up and find explanations for every race, group and technology you can encounter. They even explain why you never run out of ammo. And it makes sense in context. Every single planet you can scan in your travels has a paragraph written up about it, even the ones you can’t land on and provide nothing more than story flavor. The way they explain space travel is also fantastic. Instead of something like a warp drive or light speed, the spacecraft in the game use Mass Relays to travel across the galaxy. Mass Relays are basically giant rail guns that fire ships to other Mass Relays. Let me repeat: the game has Rail Guns. That fire. Space ships.

Dialog in the game is also fantastic, which is a good thing, because there is A LOT of it. Many of the conversations you can have provide options for renegade answers, which can be hilariously sociopathic. For example, you can make Shepard call one of the floating, alien Hanar a “big, stupid jellyfish.” (which is exactly what it looks like). Consequences of your actions are also fantastically well thought out, but I’m not going to mention any of those because they’re all spoilers.

Sound
The original music by Jack Wall & Sam Hulick is of an equivalent quality level as the rest of the game, which is good. Sweeping and action oriented, the score mixes real instruments with electronic touches and works brilliantly for the genre.

Conclusion
Now, I haven’t exactly gone on about gameplay and so on because that’s not how we roll here at RMWC. However, based solely on the merits of the story and presentation alone, the game is absolutely fantastic and a brilliant example of the “gaming as storytelling” medium at its finest. Mass Effect is unquestionably recommended if in-depth video games are your thing, especially since the sequel is coming out in early 2010.




Oh Wrex, you card.