LET THERE BE LIGHT!

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AFTER THE FLOOD: ATLANTIS IN ADVENTURE GAMES
Edited by Randy Sluganski

LET THERE BE LIGHT!

Never one to let a good idea sit idle when it could be retooled, jazzed up and offered as something innovative to thirteen-year-old boys, LucasArts brought graphic images to the Atlantis myth with 1992’s classic mega-hit, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Still regarded as one of the most beloved games of the genre, FoA was fairly novel in that it seems to be the only adventure game which actually takes the source of the Atlantis myth into account. In the beginning of the game, Indy is set off in pursuit of the “Lost Dialogue” of Plato, which gives detailed clues as to the precise location of the fabled Lost Continent. Although dated by today’s standards, the VGA graphics finally allowed game designers to do some measure of justice to Atlantis. Of course, the Atlantis portrayed in FoA was a dead city of ruins, making the task easier.

For some five years, it seemed that FoA was adventure gaming’s last word on Atlantis. However, it was perhaps inevitable that the dramatic graphic revolution brought about by Myst would eventually give us a new and breathtaking view of Atlantis, not as a dead relic but as a sparkling, active city. GTE Entertainment’s Timelapse (1996) fit the bill perfectly. Those who bemoan the fact that locations such as Egypt, Atlantis, Easter Island and Chechen Itza have become cliché AG settings can point their fingers at Timelapse, as it was the original game to take us to all these places. Offering gorgeous graphics, superior puzzling and a look at a living, breathing (if abandoned) city of Atlantis, Timelapse has become a favorite of many adventure gamers and is still, remarkably, available brand new from the distributor some eight years after its release.

A different and even more engaging view of a living Atlantis was offered to gamers in Red Orb’s wonderful Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time (1998). In the beginning of the game, Heroic timecop Gage Blackwood witnesses the destruction of Atlantis by aliens whom Earthlings thought were friendly. Later in the game, Gage travels to Atlantis, as well as Shangri La and Chechen Itza in the times immediately before their destruction. Utilizing Full Motion Video against beautifully rendered backgrounds, JP3 let us glimpse Atlantis not as a crystalline and alien marvel, but as a “real” city, full of workaday people going about their daily grind.

In 2003, Jeff and Karen Tobler (Omni Creative Group) took us full circle with The Omega Stone. Once again, we visited a ruined underwater Atlantis, à la the early text adventures and FoA. In truth, the Lost City barely figures into the story. We see only two underwater chambers, which provide the setting for the game’s finale. It is perhaps the darkest, dingiest, most disappointing portrayal of Atlantis in all of graphic adventure gaming.

LET MY CRYO COME UNTO THEE

No discussion of Atlantis in adventure games would be complete without special mention of Cryo Interactive’s (in)famous series of games. Beginning with Atlantis: The Lost Tales in 1997, Cryo put out three games in their Atlantis series. These games are looked upon rather condescendingly by much of the adventure game community. While each of the three games has its small following of devoted fans, there are many who look upon them as triumphs of style over substance of how people will accept poor storytelling or illogical puzzling if the graphical style is pretty enough.

Only the first game of the series is actually set in Atlantis, and this is an Atlantis well before the cataclysm which caused it to sink beneath the waves. In fact, it might well have been ancient Greece or Rome, for all it matters to the story. Considering the mediocre sales and rather lukewarm critical reception of A:tLT, it is surprising that the franchise ever continued. Cursed with infuriating action sequences (some of which are impossible on modern computers without a slowdown utility) and the “innovation” of an invisible cursor, A:tLT somehow sold enough copies to give birth to the best offering in the series, Beyond Atlantis (AKA Atlantis II) in 1999, which featured a descendent (though there is no way to know this without reading the manual) of A:tLT’s hero. This time, our actual visit to Atlantis is quite brief. At the very end of the game, we are transported to an underground maze of ruins the remnants of post-cataclysm Atlantis. Visually stunning as it was, BA really had nothing to do with Atlantis per se. Other than the setting for the final sequence, BA focused on the mythologies of China, Tibet, Ireland and an interesting-if-poorly-researched amalgam of Aztec and Mayan folklore.

In 2001, Cryo gave us Atlantis III: The New World (AKA Beyond Atlantis II). This game actually had nothing to do with the earlier titles, nor with Atlantis. The only relationship seems to be that it featured the same graphical style as BA1. The following year, Cryo folded, selling most of its catalogue to Dreamcatcher/The Adventure Company. But not before they released Thorgal: Curse of Odin. Dreamcatcher promptly retitled Cryo’s final effort Curse of Atlantis: Throgal’s Quest. This seems to have been purely a marketing move, as the game is not part of the Atlantis series and has, in fact, nothing to do with Atlantis at all. As a side note, it is an interesting tidbit that although Cryo is no more, the original boxshot for The Adventure Company’s Atlantis Evolution featured the title in the familiar trademark font of the Cryo series. New boxshots indicate that TAC changed their mind about this.

However, if the screenshots and trailer are to be believed, Dreamcatcher has actually breathed new life into the Atlantis theme with Evolution. New modeling and rendering technologies offer us 3D characters and cutscenes completely revolutionary from Evolution’s predecessors as well as a coherent storyline for a change. AG attendees at the 2004 E3 almost universally reported real enthusiasm about the game, despite the fact that it is “yet another Atlantis game.” (And “yet another point-and-click game!”) It seems that while the rest of the world may forget about Atlantis for decades at a time, adventure gamers just aren’t willing to let go of a good thing once they’ve found it.

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