Hey everyone, PushingUpRoses here and thank you for joining me for another adventure game
review.
Today we’re looking at Beneath a Steel Sky, a dystopian, sci fi point and click developed
by British Developer, Revolution Software.
Their first game was called Lure of the Temptress, which I personally was not a fan of because...eh,
I dunno, felt like a diluted Sierra game to me, and their magnum opus is probably Broken
Sword: The Shadow of the Templars which is beloved by many people, but in between those
games, Beneath a Steel Sky was born and many people consider it a cult classic.
I think this is a really interesting title; I am not sure how much it holds up today so
let’s take a look at it!
For the next 10 minutes were gonna be ALL ABOUT THAT BASS BOUT THAT BASS….
Or bass.
Let’s start by taking a quick look at this game’s development.
Revolution’s co-founder, Charles Cecil, had an idea for a video game that boasted
really sophisticated artwork and a more mature storyline, He asked his friend Dave Gibbons,
co-creator of highly acclaimed comic Watchmen, to join the team and help design the the art
for what they then called “Underworld.”
Most of the time spent was on the artwork; employees would spend meticulous amounts of
time perfecting each background; Gibbons designed most of it, while other artists colored and
animated the sprites.
The box came with a short comic designed by Gibbons, and the intro to the game is also
presented in comic book style.
Tonally, I’d described it as a sometimes silly, sometimes serious sci fi story with
some complex puzzle design and halfway decent dialogue; after it’s release Beneath a Steel
Sky was a huge hit, gaining both commercial and critical success.
And when I say praised, I MEAN it; I looked at several reviews from the time and they
are just absolutely GLOWING; so positive that I thought maybe I had overlooked something,
so I went back and replayed the game.
And now I have many OPINIONS.
You play Robert Foster; this character was the only survivor of a helicopter crash when
he was young; Set in Australia, he was found in a wasteland called The Gap, which represents
the Outback; he’s found and taken in by the natives who live there, where he learned
to survive the harsh conditions of this new habitat, and he learns how to build robots
and becomes very savvy with tech and is this sounding like Star Wars to you?
His new family names him Robert Foster, as they felt that they fostered him...and because
they found a can of Fosters beer when he was discovered?
How flattering.
Just as Robert reaches adulthood, armed forces invade the Gap, kill his family, and take
him back to Union City, where he was originally born.
Man, this is just the WORST day, I hope nothing bad happens on the way back.
So it turns out Robert is the most unlucky person on the planet, as he is in yet another
helicopter crash.
Apparently helicopters are the printers of the dystopian future; we have all powerful,
sentient computers but man, we STILLl can’t those pesky helicopters working.
Robert survives and and ends up on the top level of Union City in a factory, but he is
being chased by security who are under the direction of an all powerful computer named
Linc.
With you is the circuit board for your robot, Joey, who can be put into different shells.
For now he gets to be a cleaning bot.
After a few puzzles, you begin your escape from the factory, only to be met by Officer
Reich who addresses Robert as Overmann.
Reich outright wants to kill Robert, but is stopped by Linc.
And when I say stopped I mean killed.
Sick burn, bro.
Sick burn.
So as Robert, your mission is this: To find out who you are, who your real family is,
and escape the politically corrupt Union City.
Now, I played the floppy disk version of this game which did not include the intro or the
voice acting; I thought that was the only version out there until I downloaded this
one from GOG, and I gotta say, this is a MUCH different experience with the voices.
But before I get into that, I’d like to share a few things I really liked about this
game:
The world building is quite nice.
This game took two years to design and it shows; the sprites are really lovely for the
early 90s and the art is comparable to Sierra games from the same year.
This also isn’t your standard dystopian or cyber punk scene - it’s not as cliche’d
as some depictions in other media.
For example, there isn’t a SINGLE flickering Neon sign.
How can that even be, there’s ALWAYS a flickering Neon sign and a person with Goggles and dreadlocks.
Not union city, though; it’s more grounded in reality, at least...it’s as real as it
COULD be considering the whole sentient computer and post apocalyptic disaster that struck.
I’m just saying I find this depiction easier to believe than others.
Though these days it kind of feels like a conglomeration of multiple, existing stories:
It’s a little Star Wars, a little blade runner, a little bit country, a little bit
rock and roll, with a lot of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, especially with the theme
of technology becoming too powerful for civilization.
But unlike other sci fi stories, Blade Runner for example, BASS lacks a neo noir style that
you see in so many modern sci fis.
You’d think by the name of the game and everything I just told you that this game
would be pretty serious...hooowever...
Even though the plot of this game is dour, the characters and dialogue are really hokey.
During development, there was a conflict between the dialogue writer Dave Cummins and aforementioned
Charles Cecil; Cummins wanted cheeky dialogue for the characters, and Cecil wanted something
a little more earnest.
According to Cecil: “The tone of our early games was born from a tension between Dave
and I. He wanted to be more flippant with dialogue, while I wanted to be more serious.
That was always our vision, to find the middle ground between Sierra's ridiculously earnest
stories and the slapstick comedy of the LucasArts titles but I think our personalities and approaches
emphasized the tension.”
This tonal tension did nooooot work for me.
There ARE some serious parts but there’s a LOT of jokes and some of them really don’t
land.
Nnno.
The voice acting is also inconsistent, though I do chalk some of that up to the fact that
there was a MAJOR change made during recording: initially stage actors were hired, and when
I read that I thought: What a horrible idea.
Stage actors are going to embellish this to hell and back, and Cecil must have agreed
because he was unhappy with the results and there was a lengthy re-recording.
This is why some of the text doesn’t match up with the spoken dialogue, and also why
some of the words were americanized.
Uh, I don’t know what happened there.
I think that was just a bug.
The music was also driving me NUTS because the jaunty beats against these harsh, industrial
backgrounds just kind of confused my brain and I didn’t get the atmosphere I was hoping
for.
That is something other adventure games EXCELLED at; matching the music to the settings, to
the visuals, to the characters.
The world and story of this game is so sophisticated and mature and I really wanted music AND the
voice acting to enhance the atmosphere.
Not drag it down or make it silly.
Bass is a very political game for the time it was developed; it touches on social injustices,
social class, propaganda, and the misuse of technology and power.
It presents a totalitarian regime, where characters of lower social class can’t even use the
elevators to get to the much nicer, lowest level of union city, and I can tell it was
really trying to communicate these weighty themes to the player.
I respect it for going the more serious route, because look at all the other adventure games
of that time; they were mostly fun fantasy and light-hearted.
The problem is we go from these more serious moments to whacky, slapstick moments.
Why yes, I did just fling that dog into the air and into a fountain of water.
PC Gamer summed it up very well in their review from 2016: “It’s a politically charged
game, informed by the era in which it was made.
But they don’t do enough with this aspect of the story, focusing mainly on Foster’s
immediate predicament.
It feels like a missed opportunity, because dystopian fiction is often a great way to
say something meaningful about our own society.
“
I think the characters also suffer from a lack of development; Robert is okay, but his
personality is a little hard to pin down.
He seems to like puns, robots, and women.
Oh god.
And because I didn’t really get too attached to any of the characters, I found it hard
to care about them.
Later on in the game, we actually find a character we’d talked to previously dead in a locker;
I won’t say who it is because it’s supposed to be an emotional moment, but it just didn’t
affect me at all.
I know it SHOULD have, but I didn’t really establish a connection with that character,
so my immediate thought was just.
“Oh.
Sad.”
I find that the tone and dialogue makes more sense with the voice acting turned off, because
a lot of it just sounds a little too exaggerated; it reads better when I can assign my own voices
to the characters, and even the jokes land better when I’m reciting them in my head;
the whole game really plays better that way, but it still took me about mid game to become
really engrossed.
When I hit that point, I DID enjoy it.
I especially liked this little courtroom scene where we suddenly have to play the role of
a lawyer, defending a factory working against false charges of assault.
I think this was easily the funniest section in the game and I liked the interaction.
I do question a few of these design choices, a few of them are just odd.
I’m not sure why the buttons on the options menu aren’t labeled.
There’s a mouseover and a few images beside them that represent what they do, but I feel
like when I go to save or restore my game, the buttons should be CLEAR, with easy to
read text labels.
A lot of games from the 90s did this and I have NO idea why.
Label your buttons!
The text is also strangely formatted with random words being emphasized; there’s no
reason for it as far as I can see, just...some words are capitalized.
I thought maybe it was too show importance to certain things the characters said, as
though they were hints about the puzzles, but nope.
And honestly, when are follow mechanics great?
Seriously, name a game where the follow mechanics were just awesome.
Sometimes Robert’s robot, (wow that’s really hard to say) Robert’s Robot, Joey,
gets in the way, or can’t keep up; it wouldn’t be too much of an issue had he not stalled
several times while trying to him to do something because something else got in the way.
He even yelled at Robert for getting in the way.
I do like having a little robot buddy, though - and I like the fact that you need to use
him to figure out puzzles.
Revolution had their own engine called “Virtual Theater”, which was proposed in 1989 and
allowed characters to wander around autonomously.
That probably sounds like it’s not a big deal, but in the early 90s it was very impressive
that characters could walk around the world, going about their life, as you play the game.
This was both awesome and annoying.
It gave the world more personality and made it seem busy, but at the same time I didn’t
like waiting or trying to find a character I needed to talk to.
I also think it’s funny that characters will just hang around me while I am having
this very hushed dialogue with someone; this guy has been watching me for nearly the duration
of this seeeecret conversation, Just like “This is fine.
The following is by far my favorite moment in the game.
I had to find another body for Joey’s circuit board, but there wasn’t a shell around so
I put him in this weird, rubbery body.
Robert thinks he no longer looks like a Joey and decides to name him Ken.
And then THIS conversation ensues.
OOOooooooo, is
it a little dark in here the SHADE, is intense!
I took this as a dig at Sierra Co-Founder Ken Williams, because who the hell else are
they talking about?
This name change is completely random, there really isn’t a reason for it, other than
to say people named Ken are DORKS, and that “memorable Kens in history” line seals
it.
Overall, I do recommend this game.
It works perfectly on ScummVM, and it’s been freeware for a very long time so it’s
very accessible and easy to play.
Even though it didn’t age as well as other adventure games from the same time, I can
see why it was praised and I appreciate revolutions valiant attempt to make something with a modern
and relevant story and not giving in to some of the more cliched tropes in the sci-fi genre.
I maintain that it’s more enjoyable without the voices, but you’ll have to let me know
what you think.
What do you guys think of the characters and the dialogue, and that weird Ken Williams
reference.
Leave your thoughts in the comments, and remember: Stay Vigilant.
Hey everyone, thanks for watching my video on Beneath and Steel Sky, if you want to see
more videos about adventure games I linked some on the screen.
If you want to bug me about sci fi, my social media info is blatantly plugged in the descriptions;
I look forward to hearing your experience with this game and other games that has a
strong dystopian setting.
As always, I’ll see you guys in the next one.