March 15, 44 B.C. The Ides of March. We are all familiar with the fact
that on this day Gaius Julius Caesar was brutally assassinated inside the Senate
building by a group of armed conspirators who considered themselves to be Liberators.

What
may not be so well remembered is that this murderous act was motivated by fear
and rebellion against the Will of Caesar, which increasingly was evidenced in
the power and control that Caesar had imposed upon the Roman people to the extent
that the Roman Republic was threatened and was being replaced by a hated monarchy.

Caesar’s
control of politics, religion, and the military meant that he had become an absolute
ruler. Opposition now came primarily from two groups: the aristocratic ruling
class, who under Caesar could now never gain an office that could challenge him
for control of the State; and the Republicans who feared the downfall of the Republic,
which as long ago as 510 B.C. had replaced the rule of monarchs.

Were their
fears right in concluding that Caesar’s aspirations were motivated by a desire
to be king? Well, historians most often suggest that in the aftermath of a civil
war against Pompey, which had taken a severe toll on the balance of power in the
Senate, Caesar’s real intention was to make reforms to improve life in Rome by
freeing the citizens of Rome from the greed and injustices of the Senate aristocrats.

The irony of Caesar’s assassination is that the efforts of the Liberators
to save the Republic from a nonexistent threat of monarchy ultimately led Rome
into becoming an empire, ruled by one supreme sovereign. Thus, in retrospect,
their actions proved to be futile, and the waste of a powerful, well-intentioned
ruler becomes evident.

With this short history lesson in mind, it should
be made clear that Montparnasse Multimedia’s adventure game, Rome: Caesar’s
Will, is not so much about the Will of Caesar, the influence of which was
briefly described above, but actually about the aftermath of Caesar’s death, the
search for Caesar’s Will, a vital document and testament to the true desires for
succession in ruling Rome, which Will has been lost, leading to a struggle for
power that has plunged Rome into turmoil.

What a wonderful historical premise
for an adventure game …

The Story’s the Thing

It’s now
autumn in the year 44 B.C., and the Republic is on the decline. Caesar’s assassins
are no longer called Liberators, but rather Pedia law has declared them to be
public enemies. As exiles, nearly all of them have fled to the outer provinces:
Brutus to Crete, Cassius to Syria, Trebonius to Asia. The showdown between Caesar’s
supporters and the defenders of the Republic has begun, and armies are on the
move. Ambitious potential heirs present their claims of succession, even though
nobody has yet found Caesar’s Will.

In the midst of this burgeoning struggle
for power and the search for Caesar’s Will, an apparently insignificant event
takes place. The noble Titinius drinks what is supposed to be a love potionfrom
a goblet given to him by his wife, the beautiful Aurelia, when suddenly he keels
over, falls to the floor, shudders and dies. It seems that the liquid was not
exactly a love potion, but rather a poisonous concoction.

Aurelia is arrested
and convicted of murdering her husband and is thrown into the Mamertine prison,
where she is strangely passive and barely tries to protest her innocence.

Is
her impassive demeanor a signal of probable guilt, or is there some other explanation?
Perhaps a much larger political conspiracy tied to the current struggle for power
in Rome or possibly an act motivated by a need to cover up some secret knowledge
about the true forces behind the assassination of Caesar.

At this point,
you play the part of Hercules Prasinus, a valiant decurion, who has served heroically
with the armies on the eastern front, but who has now been called upon by his
old lover, Aurelia, to come to Rome to help her by uncovering the truth about
the death of Titinius.

What Hercules may not have realized at the start
of his quest for information and evidence that will prove Aurelia to be innocent
is that he will encounter dangerous traps and pitfalls that will lead him down
a path where crime, passion, and a struggle for power coexist in the events and
history of these interesting times. Will Hercules be able to determine who his
friends are and deal with his enemies in a manner that will be helpful to his
investigation and search for the truth?

As the player, Hercules, you will
come in contact with many of the real historical characters of the period, such
as Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Cicero, Octavius, and Brutus, as well as many other
imaginary characters who add spice and mystery to the unfolding of the story.
Also, you will have the opportunity to visit 16 historical locations and buildings
in Rome, including Caesar’s Gardens, the Temple of Vesta, Cicero’s House, the
Regia, the Port of Ostia, and the Rostra.

Rome: Caesar’s Will is
a historical adventure game of somewhat monumental proportions, because of the
scope of the story. In the end, once Hercules has gathered the evidence necessary
to free Aurelia, he will need to press on with the investigation, because by now
it is evident that historical events surrounding the assassination of Caesar may
not have been what they seemed to be. Along the way he will need to find Caesar’s
Will and the Capysian tablets, together with other objects and documents that
will reveal the truth.

Once all the evidence has been gathered, Hercules
must face the guilty parties in a public trial at the forum (the Rostra), where
he will be confronted with difficult questions from the Plebes. The game screen
will display each question with a choice of four answers that Hercules can use
to call on witnesses or to produce incriminating evidence. Each answer has a point
value, based on relevance to the story and winning the support of the people.
The greater the relevance, the more points that you will obtain.

Okay,
are you getting stimulated by the historical premise and the potential of an adventurous
romp through Roman times? Well, I know that I was starting into this game with
rapt enthusiasm in anticipation of the opportunity of being immersed into an exciting
adventure, wrapped in the glorious experience of the history of Rome at the time
of Julius Caesar.

Then came the disappointment. An opportunity was lost
when a wonderful historical backdrop and a potentially engrossing storyline started
to unfold against an inadequate and frustrating gameplay format, often with poor
graphical presentation and other inconsistencies or “bugs” in the game.

To
explain my failed expectations and frustrations …

The Gameplay

Rome:
Caesar’s Will is played principally from the third-person perspective. The
player uses the mouse to position the cursor (a lance) where he/she wants Hercules
to go. Click, and Hercules moves there. Well … sometimes he will stop along
the way and even spin around, because other people in the scene are also moving
and they just get in the way of his travel. Then, at other times, Hercules will
walk through objects: parts of buildings, barrels, trees, etc. Hercules will sometimes
walk off-screen, and when the scene eventually changes, you may not be quite sure
what direction he is now facing. All of this can be annoying!

At the start
of the game, you are told that you have 40 hours to explore the city’s locations,
gather information, and ultimately try to prove the innocence of Aurelia while
exposing those who are really responsible for the death of Titinius. The distances
between the various locations in the game each have a preassigned time period
(hours and/or minutes) such that as you travel to locations you consume time.
The game is nonlinear, so that you are free at any time to go to any location
… but you better have a good reason, because you will always be using up time
when you move about. Personally, although I didn’t run out of time, I dislike
timed games, so this was mildly annoying. The timed feature in a well-made game
like The Last Express had an obvious design that was inherent to the travel
through the game, but here in Rome: Caesar’s Will, it didn’t seem to me
to serve any useful or positive purpose.

My greatest annoyance, however,
is reserved for the feature of the game that was most highly promoted by Montparnasse:
the “innovative dialogue and artificial intelligence engine” called,
ReActiveAttitudes technology. Throughout the game, you are constantly bombarded
by the need to hold dialogue with the characters using this technology. What this
means or how this works is that, when you encounter another character, you click
on the character and you are presented with three character “masks.”
The masks represent three different attitudes that you can adopt while speaking
to the other character. For example, you might get to choose between being “friendly,”
“curious,” or “insulting.” Depending on your choice of mask,
hence attitude, the reaction of others will vary according to infinite combinations
that will result in making allies, obtaining good information, obtaining bad or
no information, or just simply being ignored.

Dialogues often continue past
the first round of attitude choices, but when they do, the opening remark by Hercules
is always the same as it was when he first started the dialogue. In other words,
Hercules doesn’t make progress in his comments or questions based on the dialogue
that has previously just occurred. He simply keeps repeating himself, even when
in so doing he will get a different or subsequent answer from the other character.
So much for AI.

Also, once the dialogue has come to an end or a particular
character doesn’t respond to his attempt to converse, Hercules will often say,
“He’s not very talkative,” even if the character is a woman. He doesn’t
seem to recognize genders very well!

All in all, the concept of AI woven
into a dialogue system might seem to have been a good idea … but after you get
hit over the head with it constantly and you get tired of making attitude choices
that don’t seem to result in very different responses, you might, as I did, become
just disappointed with the whole process of trying to talk your way through the
game based on attitudes. I know that my attitude soured pretty quickly, because
there wasn’t much else to do (i.e., exploration, inventory-gathering, or puzzle-solving),
just dialogue and attitudes.

The interface for the game is done very well.
Pressing the spacebar brings up an interface screen that includes the main menu
(new game, load, save, game parameters/options, help, and exit game), another
exit button, sound adjustment, a map of Rome that allows the player to move to
new locations, and an impressive documentary base that provides historical information
on the characters and the historical events, culture, and life of the time. Also
included on the interface screen is your player’s logbook, where major pieces
of information are automatically recorded during your progress through the game,
a sundial that tells you how much time that you have left, a money bag that keeps
track of your money (sesterces), and inventory pockets in a column that store
either documents (i.e., letters) or objects (i.e., Brutus’ dagger). The inventory
system then allows you to “look at,” “give,” “show,”
or “use” these documents or objects in the game.

Visual and
Audio Impressions

The graphics are reasonably good when your character
is being manipulated from a view from above, because you can see building exteriors,
gardens, ports, beaches, interior rooms, etc., all of which are graphically rendered
as colorful 2D backgrounds, and the effect is quite nice. The graphics lose their
positive impact when the characters are brought into a close-up, which is a 3D
presentation that is often used in the game’s animated videos. Here, we see the
characters have become very angular, and their movements become uneven or jerky.
By today’s game standards, the 3D presentations are below average.

Facial
expressions and lip movements during speech are not evident, as often you are
viewing from camera angles that don’t support a feeling of your involvement in
the game.

Unforgivable is a graphical oversight during the game where Cicero’s
head and hands, which have been hacked off during his murder so that they can
be displayed on a wall at the Rostra, are hanging on the wall during the first
visit and lament of his ex-wife, Terentia, but are curiously missing during all
subsequent scenes at the Rostra, even though Terentia remains there, gazing at
the wall.

There are other times during the game that it seemed to me that
scenes were being portrayed out of sequence. Events were not in an order that
made sense. Things were happening later in the game that should have occurred
earlier. They were out of sequence from the viewpoint of the unfolding of the
story. Very curious!

The music was not memorable yet not offensive or intrusive.
There were some instances where the sound was accompanied by static and, at the
default setting, it is quite loud, so you will need to tone it down a bit.

The
voice acting was generally poor, in terms of the presentation of the English language
in a manner that conveyed feelings and emotions. The speech was pretty bland/monotone
and lifeless. This was especially surprising, since Montparnasse had gone to such
great lengths to structure so much of the game around their dialogue/attitude
technology. The lack of expression, feeling, and emotion only served to provide
me with a more tedious experience as I used their dialogue engine.

The
Puzzles

There are a few instances in which the player must find and
use inventory items, but not nearly enough in my opinion. The puzzles are even
scarcer. In fact, matching battle names with their geographic sites, decoding
letters from Cicero to Titinius and Trebonius, and the seating arrangement for
the guests at Clodia’s house are the only puzzles that I can remember.

Finding
and use of inventory items, whether documents or objects, is always seamlessly
woven into the story, and the puzzles are relatively easy and also integral to
the story, which is always a desirable thing.

Overall, with the emphasis
in this game focused on the dialogue/attitude engine, the puzzles and the exploration
associated with puzzles were given short shrift, which is unfortunate.

Conclusion

Rome:
Caesar’s Will was a historical adventure game (my favorite kind of game) that
I had looked forward to, and so the disappointment is hard for me to express.
I liked the premise and the storyline, but I didn’t like the overemphasis on the
dialogue/attitude thing and didn’t see much reason to make it a timed game.

For
me, it’s a pity that such a great opportunity went to waste. The story idea was
wonderful, but it got overwhelmed by the dialogue/attitude technology, lost even
more polish with poor graphical and aural presentations, and never really pulled
me emotionally into the game, where I cared about the characters, even though
I’m such a strong history buff.

Rome: Caesar’s Will does provide
the educational side of the “edutainment” equation, but I would encourage
Montparnasse to rethink or retool their approach to the entertainment part and
come up with a next game that will provide a little better balance between exploration,
dialogue, action, and puzzle-solving. I would also wish for a first-person perspective
game with improved graphics and more professional emoting by the English-speaking
actors.

Oh yes … with regard to the civil war that followed Caesar’s assassination,
Mark Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius formed an “uneasy” triumvirate, whose
joint armies faced off against the armies of Brutus and Cassius on the battlefield
in Philippi in 42 B.C. Brutus and Cassius were defeated, and they both committed
suicide on the battlefield.

The three victors divided up the spoils, as
represented by the main provinces of the East (Antony), Africa (Lepidus), and
the West (Octavius). Lepidus conspired against Octavius, so Octavius took Africa
from Lepidus. Antony and Octavius met in 31 B.C. at the Battle of Actium, where
the Egyptian fleet, under the control of Antony and Cleopatra, was defeated. Antony
and Cleopatra committed suicide. The Republic now had ended and the rule of the
Roman Empire began. Octavius took the name Augustus Caesar and became ruler of
the Roman Empire in 27 B.C.

Finally, even though I cannot recommend Rome:
Caesar’s Will as a game that will live up to its potential, and it should
be evident that this game did not fulfill my expectations, if you are a real edutainment
or historical adventure fan and you are not turned off by a game that is primarily
driven by dialogue, then you might enjoy Rome: Caesar’s Will more than
I did. After all, this review is only my opinion … but then I do have a track
record with reviews of historical adventure games that generally provides higher
ratings to these games.

Final Grade: C-

Minimum
System Requirements:Pentium 200 MMX
32 MB RAM
4X
CD-ROM drive
4 MB 3D accelerator card
Direct Sound-compatible card
800×600
display
Thousands of colors
Windows 95/98