Over
at Enter The
Story, Chris Tolworthy has embarked on a truly ambitious project.
He is building a network of interactive graphic novels with strong
adventure game elements, based on a plethora of classical literature.
Currently he has finished such titles as Dante’s Divine
Comedy, Hesiod’s
Theogony, (called “Genesis of the Gods” in the series)
and Charles Dickensens’s A
Tale of Two Cities. Upcoming soon, is the exciting Alexandre
Dumas (of Three
Musketeers fame) novel: The
Count of Monte Cristo.

Say, a network? Yes, interestingly,
Chris is building a huge ‘game’ in which all of the stories (once
purchased) interact with one another.

I had a look at the first
title in the ‘Enter The Story‘ series, being a rendition of
Les Misérables,
the well-known and beloved novel by the 19th century human rights
activist Victor
Hugo.

The
graphics have been done in a muted minimalist style, with backgrounds
that look like watercolor washes. The characters themselves are done
in simplistic black and white lines that felt to me reminiscent of
looking through a rather elegant comic book. I found the animations
natural, pleasant, and effective. In Les Misérables,
the characters are often rendered a bit too indistinctly, though,
so much so that I sometimes lost them in a crowd. (This seems to have
been improved in later titles in the series).

Luckily there is an interface
function where one can access recent characters via a very useful
interactive list of the most recent object/characters interacted with,
accessed by pressing ‘R’. There is also a map (‘M’) with most recent
places visited, and a hint system (‘F1’).

The hint system and interface
are introduced in a rather unusual way. At the start of the game,
you die as a baby, and suddenly you incongruously find yourself as
a grown-up woman, an angel in heaven, where you meet the author, Victor
Hugo, who will guide you on your way whenever you ask his help via
pressing the F1 key.

The
‘angel’ aspect and unusual interface and gameplay jarred a bit at
first, but one soon grows used to it, and it can be rather fun because
of the novelty. Another novelty is that gameplay takes place in both
first- and third-person viewpoint. It works like this: gameplay consists
mainly of you (as the angel Peri), causing people to act by suggesting
ideas to them. (This takes place by right-clicking on the chosen person
and then right-clicking on the object you want them to think of.)
However, some of the gameplay (or ‘puzzles,’ if you will) also take
place by controlling the hero of the game, Jean Valjean, from a third
person viewpoint where you can make him move or interact with other
characters, all via point-and-click. This might be a little confusing
until you get the hang of it, but it does make for a bit of welcome
variety in the gameplay.

As might be expected from
a game attempting to precis such a voluminous novel as Les Misérables,
there is no voice-acting, but plenty of text. Since one would expect
people interested in classical literature to enjoy reading, this shouldn’t
be too much of a problem. In fact, a lot of the text from the novel
was cleverly worked into the gameworld via the thoughts of the people
populating it. By double-clicking on people you can access their thoughts,
which are very often a reflection of Victor Hugo’s commentary in the
novel.

The musical score consists
of a variety of orchestral and choral works, most of it quite enjoyable,
especially the pieces that provide a suspenseful background to the
bits of the game where an atmosphere of tension is required; I think
it does the job very well.

The
game follows the novel quite faithfully, with a smallish exception
perhaps, of the actions required of you regarding Napoleon
Bonaparte. That might just be me nitpicking, however. All in all,
imagine what Les Misérables would be like as a comic
or interactive novel. Now imagine the latter with adventure game elements
in addition, and what you have is: Enter the Story: Les Misérables.

Sadly the game can feel
like a chore at times, and the gameplay can become a tad tedious.
Although difficulty-wise it is sometimes hard to work out what to
do next in the game, I felt a lack of some nice “sink-your-teeth-into-it”
puzzles, (there are no inventory or mechanical puzzles), but otherwise
it was an enjoyable enough experience for me to consider trying out
some further titles in the series at a later date.

A Tale of Two Cities
(already available) and especially The Count of Monte Cristo
(available soon) promise to be of particular interest.

Les Misérables
is being offered entirely for free at the Enter
The Story site, so
if you are interested in classical literature or in events/stories
surrounding the French Revolution, or simply curious about the Enter
The Story project, it certainly cannot do any harm to give it
a try.

System Requirements
(PC):

• Windows 98 and up
• 50 free RAM (i.e. not
  including your operating system)
• 1.2 GHz CPU (1.6 GHz
  recommended); 1.7 GHz for Vista
• 150 MB free hard disk
  space
• 16 bit color or higher
• No special graphics
  card is needed