Beneath A Steel Sky: Old PC Adventure Games and My New Friend GOG
By owl_of_minerva 21 Comments
So for those who haven't heard of it, Beneath a Steel Sky is an old adventure game (1994) created by the guy who would later go on to create the Broken Sword series. Released as freeware, it is now widely available on the internet, but I downloaded it from GoG in order to test out the service and as an excuse to open an account. I won't talk too much about the site, as you check it out here, but it's a great service, the money goes to Polish company CD-Projeckt and thus The Witcher 2, and it is a nostalgia trip to the games I would see on shelves everywhere as a PC-gaming lad. I largely missed out on the great adventure games of the 90s, so I plan to start off playing through some of the many classics I never played because I was too busy shooting stuff or hitting it with a sword.
Anyway, BASS is set in an alternate-historical postwar Australia. The protagonist Robert Foster (the last name a reference to the shoddy imported beer) has grown up in "The Gap", or the Australian outback, a place for "tribals" living free of the the dystopian, computer-controlled and well-policed "Union City". Basically, Union City is a satire of post-war consumer capitalism, with its increasing class divisions, materialism, and rapid technological advances. Through a series of unfortunate events, Robert Foster finds himself taken to "Union City" where he must subvert it from the inside. Totally counter-cultural, dude. I'm not surprised that the artist who worked on The Watchmen lends his hand to some of the art on display. It is a little weird that Australian characters all have accents from the UK, but it still has a charm to it regardless.
Three Approaches to Storytelling
One of the main reasons I'm finding PC adventure games so enjoyable is that they have an approach to narrative that is increasingly hard to find these days. We tend to have games based on two approaches, one 'realism' and another self-referential and fun titles that make little to no reference to the outside world. An example of the former would be GTA IV. Although I don't really like the term realism, as very few games even attempt to pass themselves off as 'real', what I'm getting at is that the storytelling is constrained by believability. Or at least believability in setting and character, as this illusion is broken instantly by game mechanics such as being able to mow down well-armed foes in their dozens. Anyway, Liberty City is meant to be taken as a microcosm of New York City, and the characters are presented as 'typical' (even if exaggerated or extreme). On the other extreme there's the obvious example of Nintendo franchises such as Mario and Zelda, with their ever-increasing cast of characters and stories that refer to past games in the series; they are creative games with an emphasis on fun and imagination, not the recreation in style or detail of an often depressing urban reality.
Beneath A Steel Sky doesn't really fall into either camp . It satirically makes reference to our reality in the guise of science fiction, but because it is science-fictional it is not constrained to simply emulating the details of that reality. Instead it focuses on specific aspects of our societies in the guise of presenting us a different one. The trope of a "stranger in a strange land" so often used in satire allows us to view the game world, and perhaps by extension our own world, critically. Adventure also tell stories of human drama and thus often have a deeper approach to characterisation and the emotions the player experiences. And more importantly, they can approach serious subject matter whilst retaining a sense of humour and playfulness. I'm not sure what to call this third approach, but it is closer in style to literature or perhaps graphic novels than the games we have now. That we have games being marketed as "human dramas", a grand new revelation never seen before, highlights how far this genre and its narrative approach have fallen out of fashion.
For instance I love the digs at insurance, factory work, and plastic surgery in the game as well as the character Gilbert Lamb. Although it isn't high comedy, the effete, perverted factory owner Gilbert is a memorable and amusingly awful character. His riches have allowed him to buy a coat made from the fur of the last ten beavers in the world, and yes, I suspect that this a metaphor laden with unfortunate meaning. At least, this is confirmed when you get to enter his home. He lives in squalour with his cat, and his prize possesion is a pussy video...involving cats, not pornography, but I think you get the point. Something tells me this character has never heard of psychoanalysis. Or of getting laid.
Adventure Gaming: Dead for a Reason?
Unfortunately, the game mechanics highlight one of the reasons adventure games have collapsed in some markets and cling to life in Europe, although the retro revival to some extent goes against this trend. The approach to gameplay mechanics, flailing interactions with the environment and inventory (at least with the more illogical puzzles), can be numbingly functional, providing little joussaince for the player, leaving the dialogue and narrative as the points of interest that give meaning to the activity. This is understandable given the limitations of the time, as something to artificially increase length and difficulty, but I don't see why the gameplay mechanics couldn't have been improved by making the puzzles more logical. Still, I'm enjoying the game so far and look forward to playing through to the end, as well as experiencing more of a genre that I have foolishly neglected for too long.
If anyone has put up with this to the end, I thank you, and what do you think of PC adventure games? Do they still have a place in the present gaming environment, or what should be done to make them viable again?