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Interactive Fiction Now Issue 2
"Interactive Fiction Now"
Published for the World Wide Web by Frotz Publications
Copyright 1997,1998, Frotz Publications, London.
All rights reserved.
http://www.if-now.demon.co.uk/
Editor: Matt Newsome, <editor@if-now.demon.co.uk>.
All Trademarks acknowledged.
Blade Runner, The Film, (c) 1982 The Blade Runner Partnership
Blade Runner, The Computer Game (c) 1997 Blade Runner / Westwood Partnership
Blade Runner is a Trade Mark of the Blade Runner Partnership
Tomb Raider II (c) and TM Core Design Limited,
(c) and (P) 1997 Eidos Interactive Limited. All rights reserved.
Activision and Zork are registered trademarks and Zork Grand Inquisitor
and all character names and likenesses are trademarks of Activision, Inc.
(c) 1997 Activision, Inc. All rights reserved.
This issue of IFN owes a debt of gratitude
to the following people (in alphabetical order):
Sophie Astin at The Digital Village
Simon Byron at Bastion
Charles Cecil at Revolution Software
Jamey Gottlieb at Activision
Susie Hamilton at Core Design
Laird Malamed at Activision
Danny Pample at CUC Software
Morag Pavich at Hobsbawm Macaulay Communications
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> EDITORIAL >>>
TIME marches on and Xmas has been and gone again!
Best wishes for a Happy New Year from IFN Magazine!
This issue of IFN is packed full of features for Adventure fans. Following
our exclusive interview with the director of Zork: Grand Inquisitor last
month, we review the latest journey into the Great Underground Empire.
The sequel to Tomb Raider also comes under our critical eye, as does the
long awaited officially licensed computer game version of Bladerunner.
We've a sneak look at Douglas Adams' new game, Starship Titanic and Gabriel
Knight 3 from Sierra.
Our feature this issue, however, is an exclusive interview with Charles
Cecil, industry Grand-Daddy and cutting edge game developer in equal
measure. We talk about the Broken Sword series and the future of Adventure
Gaming.
From this month onwards, IFN is also available by FTP from
ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/magazines/IFN/ (which is mirrored elsewhere - see the
site).
As always, please enjoy yourselves, and feel free to email me here at
Interactive Fiction Now with your comments and suggestions
(comments@if-now.demon.co.uk)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> PREVIEW: Gabriel Knight III >>>
Sierra On-Line's Gabriel Knight series has probably seen more dramatic
changes over the course of three games than any other series, and the
forthcoming third instalment, interestingly titled, "Blood Of The Sacred,
Blood Of The Damned," looks set to cause a stir upon its release in Summer
`98.
The first game's use of sprite animations was complemented by a Hollywood
casting including Tim Curry (Rocky Horror Picture Show), Mark Hamill (Star
Wars Trilogy) and Michael Dorn (Star Trek: The Next Generation).
The trend for radical change in the series was firmly established when,
"Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within," was released. Adopting the style of
an "Interactive Movie", GK2 used Full Motion Video sequences extensively
(six CDs' worth, to be exact) for in-game movement.
Next year's release will continue that trend, with the introduction of
Sierra's new technology "G-Engine" 3D game engine, boasting what is being
described as "ultra-realistic" game-play and featuring "unlimited
exploratory control".
According to Sierra, the plot for the new game concerns a small village in
rural Europe, home of a currently dethroned royal scion who has asked
Gabriel Knight to help uncover the answers to recent bizarre, possibly
supernatural, events taking place inside the family's close circles.
The game will be designed and produced once again by Jane Jensen. More
information on Sierra On-Line and the new Gabriel Knight game can be found
by pointing your web browser at Sierra's website
[http://www.sierra.com/titles/gk3].
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> NEWS: New Douglas Adams Game Delayed >>>
Starship Titanic, the new graphical adventure game by Douglas Adams'
company, The Digital Village, has been delayed until the first quarter of
1998.
Company CEO Robby Stamp explained in a recent press release that, "the game
engine and logic are fully realised and tested," but that the delay is due
to, "essential quality evaluation and testing procedures."
In the meantime, eager gamers can read the novelisation, written by ex-Monty
Python member, Terry Jones. "One of the characters in the game is a
semi-deranged workman's parrot which had been left on board the ship," says
Adams, "and Terry had agreed to play the voice part. When Terry saw all the
graphics and character animations we had been creating over the previous
months, he became very excited about the whole project."
The book was released in the UK by Pan-Macmillan on 21st November 1997, and
will be published in the US by Harmony Books (a division of Random House).
Written and designed by Douglas Adams, Starship Titanic takes its name from
a spaceship of the same name briefly mentioned in Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy" series. The game marks Adams' first work in the industry
since Bureaucracy, his second work of text-based interactive fiction with
Infocom in the early 1980s, and follow-up to the legendary Hitchhiker game.
The new game sees a departure and a return to those games. A departure
because the new game has photo-realistic graphics to depict the game
environment, with art direction by Academy Award winners Oscar Chichoni and
Isabel Molina. A return in that the game features a text parser, allowing
the player to interact with in-game characters directly using conversational
English.
The Digital Village, based in London, can be found on-line at www.tdv.com,
whilst Starship Titanic has its own dedicated website at
www.starshiptitanic.com.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> REVIEW: Bladerunner >>>
Every once in a while, a computer game is released which not only meets the
hype, but surpasses it. Blade Runner, from Westwood Studios, is such a game.
Although there are several excellent graphical adventure games on release at
the moment whose production standards are remarkable, few can actually be
said to have moved the genre in a new direction. With Blade Runner, however,
a whole new variant of immersive gaming has been produced, and adventurers
are going to love it.
The game uses a fusion of full motion video with motion capture and
breathtaking backdrops to produce an ambience entirely in keeping with
Ridley Scott's 1982 future-noir movie.
An Official License developed in conjunction with the Blade Runner
partnership, the game is rare in its ability to successfully translate from
the medium of film to that of the interactive computer game. Looking back,
very few have enjoyed similar success, either due to excessive zeal to match
the game's storyline with that of the film, or apparent low investment due
to the guaranteed sales such a license will bring.
Perhaps Blade Runner's edge is that the film version is now over fifteen
years old. This puts less emphasis on producing a game within a set period
of time. Indeed, there is an even greater likelihood that, owing to the
considerable cult success Scott's film has enjoyed to date, there is
greater pressure to push the envelope in order to make the game worthy of
its title. The Bladerunner partnership themselves are likely to have
ensured that the game quality warranted its title.
The graphics aside, Blade Runner succeeds for several reasons. First and
foremost, the graphics never obstruct the gameplay. The four CD distribution
is seamlessly integrated into the storyline, with minimal disruption caused
to the user. Beyond this technical aspect, however, Blade Runner is an
adventurer's adventure. The playing area is large enough to make you think
about your next step, yet small enough to prevent you arriving at the
point where you don't have a clue as to what to do next.
In addition to this, there are not only multiple routes to solving a puzzle,
but multiple game configurations. The plot of the game varies from one go to
the next, introducing a degree of playability previously sorely lacking in
the adventure genre.
What's more, the user can also express some control over the route the McCoy
character takes within the game. This is achieved by choosing either to
remain in the mould of the Decker character from the film (a replicant
hit-man), or to become a replicant sympathiser and aid the rebels in the
fight for longevity and legitimised sentience.
Blade Runner has many wonderful aspects which will keep all manner of
adventurers playing, but most of all, this is a visually breathtaking
gaming experience.
Verdict: A stunning film conversion which advances the adventure game genre.
Unlikely to disappoint any adventure gamer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> REVIEW: Zork: Grand Inquisitor >>>
Remember your very first adventure game? Chances are it was one of the
numerous Infocom titles. The legendary Infocom text adventure company,
based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were bought out by software giant
Activision in the late 1980s.
After a little dust had settled, Activision put together a new team and
released the first graphical Zork game. The critically acclaimed Return to
Zork clearly demonstrated that there was great potential for continuing the
massively popular Zork series in graphical adventure format.
Thankfully, Activision recognised this, and last year released their second
graphical Zork episode, Zork: Nemesis to great acclaim. The new Z-Vision
engine advanced the graphical adventure genre by introducing 360 degrees
horizontal panning within pre-rendered game locations.
In spite of the quality of Nemesis' assets, however, there was little doubt
that the humour of the original Zork series had been dropped in favour of a
very dark atmosphere. This worked to excellent effect in Nemesis, however,
Activision have now chosen to re-introduce the "Zorkiness" in their latest
game, Zork: Grand Inquisitor.
Witty comments and tongue-in-cheek asides abound, and there are even some
great in-jokes for veterans of the earlier Zork games (at one point you find
an ancient PC running a copy of Planetfall).
One classic example of the humour in the game is in a list of instructions
written on the side of a barrel of toxic waste early in the game. They read,
"Do not bother waste. If waste gets angry, run away. Do not eat waste. If
waste glows, alert police. Do not make waste tea. Do not use as children's
toys_", and so the list goes on.
[ZORK TRIVIA: Grand Inquisitor is the eighth game in the series after
Zorks 1,2 and 3, Zork Zero, Beyond Zork, Return to Zork and Zork: Nemesis]
The guiding force behind the new Zork game is Laird Malamed, who worked as
technical director on Nemesis and was given the big chair for this latest
project. The Director's job is not an easy one as the divide between
adventure games and Hollywood grows increasingly hazy.
For example, on this project, Malamed had input into puzzle design, technical
direction, script writing, general production and, Malamed tells me, Full
Motion Video filming direction as well. [Speaking of FMV, incidentally, it's
nice to see some British actors surfacing in these sequences!] The overall
result of Malamed's direction is a game which looks high-production, but
plays Zork - a balance which was arguably lacking in the previous graphical
Zork titles.
For music, the gothic horror feel of some parts of Nemesis has been replaced
with more ambient overtones. This is easier to listen to for prolonged
periods, which is useful as some of the puzzles require lots of thought - if
anything the puzzles in Grand Inquisitor are harder than those in its
predecessor.
The game engine itself is a modified version of Z-Vision, the ingenious twist
on pre-rendered scenery which allows the player to spin through 360 degrees
in each location. It is surprising just how much of a difference this
aspect makes to the overall gameplay, and even more so that the technique
has not been "borrowed" for other titles such as Riven: The Sequel to Myst
(this is assumedly owing to the competence of Activision's lawyers_).
Whilst Grand Inquisitor uses essentially the same engine as Nemesis, some
new aspects have been introduced to the engine, partly originating from
gamers' suggestions. The game now supports a full inventory feature
complete with spell-book and allows you to travel quickly to already
discovered locations by use of teleport points around the game area. The
fact that the facilities to zip from one location to another are part of the
game world is to the game's credit as it allows the player to remain within
the game rather than flip out to a menu.
The only minor problem we could see with the game engine relates to the
transfer of game files when playing the game after installing the minimal
version. Transfer of game files does unfortunately detract slightly from
the gameplay, although it should be stressed that this is entirely tolerable.
We recommend freeing some hard-disk space to prevent minor irritations.
One really great feature of the game is the use of a text-adventuresque
console which appears whenever you die. Rather than showing your demise,
you are given a textual account of your end, which re-introduces the power
of verbal description lost in the move from text to graphics-based gaming.
These end descriptions, in addition to the comments made by the Dungeon
Master (who accompanies you from early in the game), are the main reasons
this game feels like a Zork episode, and our hats go off to Activision for
making it happen.
Name us another game where you're led across the sulphur river to Hades by
a ferryman in a New York Cabbie's hat who plays 70s funk music. Exactly.
With firm plans for two more games to come from Activision under Malamed's
direction, Zorkers can feel free (sorry, "filfre!") to raise a smile about
the future of Zork.
Verdict: The closest a graphical Zork has ever come to the text-based
originals, and a great game in its own right. Play this game or
be totemized!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> REVIEW: Tomb Raider 2 >>>
Lara Croft is unquestionably a modern day phenomenon. Her media coverage
extends beyond the confines of computer gaming to the popular press and
television across the globe. Not surprising then that Core-Design/Eidos have
released Tomb Raider 2 in time for Christmas 1997 featuring an entirely new
plot, new locations, new enemies, vehicles, but most importantly, of course,
Lara herself.
Following last year's outing with the buxom young lady, in which Lara is
contracted to recover the fragmented remains of an ancient artefact known as
the Scion, Tomb Raider 2 introduces an entirely new storyline. The dagger
of Xian, we are told, is an ancient Chinese dagger believed to hold immense
power.
The power of the Xian is apparently bestowed upon the person who is able to
recover the dagger (the easier bit) and gather the courage to plunge it
into their own heart (the harder bit). For only in this way can the power
be inherited. The Xian is believed to have once been used by an unnamed
tyrannical emperor before its seizure by Tibetan warrior monks and
subsequent restoration to a legendary resting-place within The Great Wall.
From the Great Wall of China to Venice, and onwards (we don't want to spoil
the story too much for you!), by speedboat, by skidoo, wearing all manner of
costumes, Tomb Raider II is as extensive and new as it is familiar to Tomb
Raider players. For example, Lara herself has different outfits for
different locations, dynamic hair (including swinging ponytail) and,
seemingly, an even larger chest!
She also has an array of additional moves and actions such as hand-over-hand
climbing and underwater combat with her new harpoon gun. The new game is
Windows 95-Native and features excellent use of dynamic lighting effects to
add to the realism with flares and gunfire flashes newly introduced.
The music in Tomb Raider 2 was produced in-house at Core-Design by Nathan
McCree, and seems to be better integrated with the gameplay. Different
musical cues are played: some positive music whenever Lara makes progress or
a tense phrase when she's in trouble. This adds wonderfully to the sense
of Lara being in the middle of a movie-style production.
All things considered, Tomb Raider 2 offers some great new levels - the heart
of the game, after all is the exploration and adventure - and they will be
lapped up by Lara-fans everywhere. It is to Core's credit that they have
also managed to improve the game engine in so short a time with more new
features (many of them subtle but contributing to the whole gameplay
experience).
For those adventures who are interested in action-adventures, this game
will delight, but more traditional adventurers should definitely take the
plunge or risk missing out on a great adventure!
Verdict: More Lara Croft, more levels, more realism, more graphics, more
weapons, more costumes. The perfect Xmas present for
action-adventure players!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> FEATURE: Interview with Charles Cecil, Revolution Software >>>
>>> "Viva La Revolution!" >>>
Revolution Software, based in Northern England, are responsible for four
smash hit adventure games: Lure of the Temptress, Beneath a Steel Sky,
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars (Circle of Blood in the US), and
Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror. IFN Editor, Matt Newsome, spoke to
Revolution's Managing Director, Charles Cecil [third from left, standing].
Charles Cecil is a founding father of our industry, having worked on text
adventure games for the Sinclair ZX81 with Arctic Computing back in the
early eighties and other games ever since. After a period with US Gold, and
subsequently with Activision, however, he launched Revolution with Noirin
Carmody and two former colleagues, Tony Warriner and David Sykes with whom
he had worked at Artic.
I asked Charles what aspects he felt gave Revolution their edge.
Charles Cecil: We looked very hard at all the aspects that collectively come
together to make the gameplay experience. We have a very experienced team
of writers, sprite animators, and programmers, but people outside the
industry understand wider presentational aspects. Part of our strength comes
from the combination of this external and internal expertise.
We really wanted to get the very best gameplay because ultimately what we're
doing is competing against Hollywood for people's leisure time. People have
limited leisure time, so the experience has really got to be good. If you
want to break away from a very niche market, you've got to create something
that really competes with television and other forms of mass entertainment,
which hopefully our games do.
IFN: There is extensive use of animation in Broken Sword II. How did you
produce the "cartoon" appearance?
CC: We thought about the background screens and decided that we could gain
considerable expertise from working with cartoon layout artists. So we
teamed up with a layout artist, Eoghan Cahill, who used to work for the Don
Bluth studios. They produced "All Dogs Go To Heaven" and a number of
similar cartoons. What was really exciting was working with someone who
really understood the opportunities and limitations of layout. We would
provide a clear specification from which Eoghan would draw out a rough
layout to make the scene as exciting as possible. We would then make sure
that the layout actually fitted the specification and then he'd draw the
final layout. The quality of a layout had to be better, actually, than it
would be in a cartoon, because in a cartoon, you're looking primarily at the
animation on the screen whereas in an adventure game you spend so much time
examining the background for clues.
We worked with classical cartoon animators for sections of our animation.
And that was great fun again because the best animators have a great feeling
for how to depict expression and emotion, how to portray the excitement. And
that was of great use to our animators whose expertise lay in animation for
games. A lot of the in-game sprite animation was done in-house - our guys
are very, very experienced now. But the volume of animation was far too
great to exclusively handle in-house. A lot of animation was sent out of
house to a huge studio where they've got thirty or forty animators working
in parallel.
So in the project, we were very much looking for the best people in each
field. We understand gameplay, and hopefully we understand interactive
story-telling. We also understand sprite animations and the limitations.
Other people better understood other presentational aspects.
IFN: Are the story-lines for your games written in-house?
CC: Yes, we have in house writers. I got very heavily involved with the
story. We loved the Templar story and we loved the Mayans as well. There
are only so many really fascinating historical conspiracies. In Indiana
Jones/Raiders of the Lost Ark, the analogy that they used with the biblical
story gave it such an edge, and that's certainly what we tried to do.
Interactive storytelling is very different from writing movies or books.
This is an aspect that we kept very much under our control.
IFN: The music for Revolution games is of a high quality relative to other
games in the genre - how do you achieve this?
CC: Often developers just phone up a musician who bangs out some music, and
we really didn't feel that was good enough. We looked around for musicians
and teamed up with an old friend of mine called Barrington Pheloung.
Barrington wrote the music for Inspector Morse. He also wrote the music for
Truly, Madly, Deeply. Normally he'd write about three-quarters of an hour's
music for a full length feature film. For Broken Sword II, he's written over
three hour's worth of music, the majority of which is recorded with a live
orchestra.
And he really, really put his soul into it. In the end, he wrote many, many
hundreds of cues. And that means that if you do something one way then one
bit of music will play, if you do it another, then a different bit will
play. There is music triggered if the player does nothing. Barrington
treated the game as he would do a film. He played the game and really got to
understand the emotion that needed to be conveyed through the music.
IFN: Douglas Adams' company is working on a game called Starship Titanic
which will use text consoles to interact with in-game characters. Is this a
future for the parser in Revolution games?
CC: I used to write adventures back in the early eighties, and they were
pure text. And certainly the text parser is the very pure way of getting
across the feeling that you're really talking to a character and saying what
you want to say. There are two drawbacks. The first is that the parser
almost inevitably doesn't understand what it is you want to say, and
secondly, commercially people won't buy games with this sort of interface,
not the mass market.
Some die-harders love text parsers. If you look at MUD2 on Wireplay, it's
all text input, so it's just like a text adventure but with a few icons, but
primarily it is a text adventure. And the die-hard people absolutely love
it. I suspect that Mr.Average who goes on and plays will not play it for
long because graphically, it doesn't have the production values, to use a
horrible American expression, that people are expecting in games today. So I
think it's very brave, but I would not copy him on that.
IFN: What are your plans for furthering the Revolution?
CC: The adventure market is declining, so we do need to appeal to a wider
audience with our future games. It's great to get nice reviews, but
ultimately, the final test is whether people who actually paid the money
feel it's worthwhile, and we get some great feedback on that, and that's
really, really nice.
But we now have people who have certain expectations of the games that we've
written and certainly the plot is very important. Whatever happens,
whatever new project we do, it has to be primarily plot driven. I think that
that's the future for the mass market.
IFN: The Broken Sword series features a highly cosmopolitan philosophy, most
notably an American lead role, which is rare for a British produced game.
Did you particularly target the US audience?
CC: To appeal to the American market, we decided to make our main character
American - but without prostituting ourselves by pretending that we were
American developers. So the game features an American in Paris. We wrote the
game in English, American, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian,
Portuguese and Finnish (there might well be further languages -, we're
talking about a Taiwanese version presently). As a European developer, we
are very geared to producing translations.
The mainland Europeans are used to dubbing English speaking films. For the
major stars, like Clint Eastwood or Sharon Stone they will often use the
same voice over actor to play their counterpart American / English actor.
That European voice then becomes the voice of the American face. In Germany
they used the voice of the voice over actress of Sharon Stone to play Nico,
so that when people played Broken Sword they associated Nico with Sharon Stone!
The European territories take the translation process very seriously. So
what this means is that the game comes across as a French game in France, or
a German game in Germany.
IFN: Will there be a Broken Sword III?
CC: There will certainly be a Broken Sword 3, but we're not working on it at
the moment. We're thinking about it, but we're not going to rush it out.
The adventure market needs to change to appeal to a wider audience without
losing the gameplay and without losing the plot, development, the narrative,
and we're currently thinking very hard how to do that. We want to innovate
enormously on the gameplay front. So, yes there will be, but I don't know when!
IFN: What are your thoughts on the current state of the Adventure market?
CC: Let's be honest. One of the reasons that the adventure genre has
declined is that there are so many bad adventures being published. Too many
developers think to themselves, "I can write an adventure, I can tell a
story,". And if they find a publisher who finances them, then another
adventure comes onto the market. It may not sell many units, but those that
do buy the game will be disappointed. And since games are not cheap, the
consumer doesn't need to buy many games before he is put off!
People ask me, "are we going to write a different type of game," and the
answer is, "no," because hopefully we've got to grips with a particular
genre of game which we understand. I wouldn't write a Warcraft 2-type game.
Warcraft 2 is one of my favourite games. I know why I love it, but I
wouldn't be complacent enough to turn around and say, "well actually I could
write something that's better".
Lots of people think that they can write an adventure, but very few of them
succeed. In the UK last year, Broken Sword was the only adventure to sell
well across Europe. Consider those that were released but didn't sell well -
"The Last Express,", "The Orion Burger,", "Toon Struck,". This year, of
course, Broken Sword 2 has had very stiff competition, including "Monkey
Island 3" and "Blade Runner".
IFN: Which companies have inspired you at Revolution?
CC: Well, the companies that I really admire are those that innovate and
change. Ultimate wrote excellent Spectrum games like "Jet Pac" and then,
from a position of strength, turned around and decided that there was a
better future in writing Nintendo games, and became Rare. Rare write
excellent games - I am currently hooked on "GoldenEye". I admire Nintendo
for the Mario series, particularly Mario 64 which is so well crafted. And I
admire Blizzard for coming from no where are writing a string of games that
have such well balanced gameplay.
I'd like to think that what Revolution is doing, from a position of
strength, is that we're turning around and saying, "we really feel
confident, we're really proud of what we've produced, but things need to
change, where is the way forward?"
IFN: Interactive Fiction Now would like to thank Charles Cecil for talking
with us.
CC: That's a great pleasure!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> NEXT ISSUE >>>
And so we conclude another issue of IFN!
...but we'll be back in February with coverage of all the new adventure
games in the pipeline. Monkey Island 3 will be scrutinised and we'll have
a sneak peek at the forthcoming Warcraft Adventures from Sierra. Coverage
will also be given to Temujin, Dark Earth and the budget release of Simon
the Sorceror episodes 1 and 2. Depending on the project's progress, we'll
also have more coverage of Starship Titanic (including the novelisation).
As a feature for the New Year, our new sister magazine, IFN Plus! will be
looking at the gaming market on a slightly broader scale with a peek at the
major new games in other genres, such as Quake 2, Dark Reign and Heavy Gear.
Coverage will also be given to non-game software and peripherals. IFN Plus!
will be accessible in March 1998 from the main IFN homepage.
Timescales permitting we'll also be looking at the vast array of Star Trek
games available at the moment. Issue#3 will be published around February
28th 1998 (but check the IFN homepage nearer the time for confirmation).
And, as always, there's plenty more unconfirmed material, so keep an eye
out!
>>> END >>>
