Revolution hasn’t shied completely away from the popular developments in modern day adventure gaming. While these puzzles sound extremely traditional. While not clear to begin with, all of these problems combine to help Foster break into Union City and learn more about what may have happened to the kidnapped child. And, true to Revolution’s lineage, a group of very angry animals (parrots replacing a goat this time) prevent Foster from breaking into a supply of sausages. Across the road, a child wearing a colander on his head has lost his best friend. In adventure game tradition, though, those problems start small: in the game’s opening location on the outskirts of Union City, a trucker has found himself stranded due to depleting his battery thanks to overzealous use of his van’s air-conditioning. The kidnapped child, however, is the first sign that things may not be as bright as they may seem, and Foster’s return to Union City will gradually reveal the problems beneath the surface. Transformed into a utopia by Foster’s old robot friend Joey, the city’s artificial intelligence has strived to make life better for everyone who resides there. The comic explains how the abduction of a child has forced Foster to journey from the Gap (Australia’s desolate outback regions) and return to Union City, the cyberpunk monstrosity he left behind at the end of the original game. It's just great that we can finally go ahead with it.” That story finally begins in an animated comic book that effectively acts as the game’s introductory cutscene. So I guess this has been 20 years in the making, because we've been talking about it on and off since then. Even within a couple of years of writing the original, there was storyboards or ideas. ““When we put together the Revolution 25th Anniversary collection a few years ago, we got back in touch with Dave and it turned out that he had vast quantities of original artwork,” said Cecil. Story is still front and centre, and still created in partnership between Cecil and Dave Gibbons the co-creator of both Watchmen and the original Beneath a Steel Sky. You’ll still be stuffing your inventory full of items and navigating deep dialogue trees. And we build and layer up puzzles, based on these two premises of Virtual Theater and the LINC hacking.” Virtual Theatre and hacking are complementary to, rather than replacements for, traditional adventure gaming mechanics. “Then we tie them into the behavior of characters and objects. “We can complicate it through what we call ‘nuggets’, which allow you to change the verbs,” explains Cecil. As Foster further explores Union City, the hacking systems become more complex. The LINC hacking interface allows to you switch these outcomes, so the machine can be set to dispense drinks when tampered with, or call security when an authorised customer requests a drink. The machine also has an anti-tamper sensor that sounds an alarm and requests security backup. Citizens who approach with the correct ID are served a drink, while those lacking permissions are declined. Just outside of Union City there’s one very simple example in a drinks vending machine. Utopia City is littered with access ports to the governing LINC artificial intelligence system, and Foster can break into these and rearrange the code. It’s almost as if Revolution have added a little dash of the immersive sim to adventure gaming, something that’s made far more apparent in one of Beyond a Steel Sky’s core puzzle mechanics: hacking. The result is a less predictable world, and one that opens up multiple solutions to puzzles. Where companies like Telltale evolved point-and-clicks into interactive movies, Revolution is adding simulation rather than scripting to the world of Beneath a Steel Sky. The ambitions of Virtual Theatre also go against the grain of the modern adventure game. “That may sound like a rather basic premise for gaming at large, but it’s a notable step forward for classic adventure games, where characters are typically rooted to the spot and exist purely for the player to talk to.
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