Articles
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 1992s 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 todays
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 gamings 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 Entertainments Timelapse (1996)
fit the bill perfectly. Those who bemoan the fact that locations
such as
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 Orbs 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 games 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 Interactives (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
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:tLTs 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
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 Cryos final
effort Curse
of Atlantis: Throgals 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 Companys 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 Evolutions 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 arent willing to let go of a good thing
once theyve found it.
