| Beneath a Steel Sky | Revolution Software / Virgin Interactive Entertainment | 1994 | |
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In futuristic England, there are giant cities owned solely by corporations, separated by a giant wasteland known as The Gap. When Robert Foster's Gap-dwelling tribe is killed by soldiers from Union City who capture him, everything changes for him. After a narrow escape from the helicopter bringing him there as it inexplicably crashes, Robert and his droid Joey must search the decaying city, attempting to befriend both the snobby rich and the frustrated poor as the two attempt to get out of the city, but in the middle of everything they uncover the dark truth about LINC, the bizarre computer which makes the city tick. Using the then revolutionary Virtual Theatre engine, BASS' characters can move freely independent of the player, allowing the game world to be much more dynamic than anything seen before (other than Virtual Theatre's debut game, the less popular Lure of the Temptress). Otherwise, the engine provides tried and true point-and-click adventure gameplay. The story is a remarkable blend of cold, sometimes chilling, science fiction with a brilliantly dry sense of humour – often topped off with a bit of genuine emotion, whether from your robotic sidekick Joey (possibly the best sidekick in the genre’s history) or from the family dynamics that play into the incredibly moving ending. The dialogue is uniformly brilliant, the voice acting is top-notch, the art is colourful and vibrant (especially the beautiful introductory comic sequence, drawn by Watchmen creator Dave Gibbons, who also drew the game’s gorgeous backgrounds), and the entire experience feels like a true genre classic. As for Aug 02, 2003, it became officially freeware. The creators of ScummVM, a gaming interface written to make old adventure games playable on modern operating systems (only when you own the original software) asked developer Revolution if they were allowed to take a look at the source code to be able to fully support the game in their interface. They got more than they expected when Revolution made the full game (cd version with music and speech) available to everyone. | ||
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