{"id":335,"date":"2015-06-06T18:05:39","date_gmt":"2015-06-06T16:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/?p=335"},"modified":"2015-06-06T18:07:13","modified_gmt":"2015-06-06T16:07:13","slug":"the-dig-review-in-another-galaxy-far-far-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/the-dig-review-in-another-galaxy-far-far-away\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dig Review: In Another Galaxy Far, Far Away…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every once in a while, an experience comes along that\u2019s so completely sublime that it totally subverts everything around it. And it only happens once every generation or so. Gaming generations are pretty short, so the game before this that did anything remotely like it was Ultima 4, a game that took the idea of what it was you were supposed to be doing in an RPG and flipped it upside-down.<\/p>\n

The game that came after this that did more-or-less the same thing was Planescape: Torment. A game about what it actually means to be alive. At the time, though, these games were both kind of underground sleepers. Ultima fans didn\u2019t really understand what was happening in their series and people picking up Planescape: Torment figured they were getting another good RPG by the team that had delivered Baldur\u2019s Gate.<\/p>\n

In this way, The Dig is a completely unassuming LucasArts adventure. You boot it up and get a guy out in Borneo, looking at Asteroid data while he\u2019s talking to his sweetheart. The next thing you know, you\u2019re in control of an away team that\u2019s set to blow up what seems like a hostile asteroid known as Atilla, the idea being that you\u2019ll turn it into Earth\u2019s second Moon.<\/p>\n

Of course \u2013 as per the game \u2013 Atilla turns out to be \u201ca real Hun.\u201d Which is shorthand for \u201cOH MY GOD! THE ALIENS HAVE ARRIVED.\u201d A puzzle or two later and \u2013 without warning \u2013 the aliens abduct you. You end up in a galaxy far, far away. But without the droids or the light sabres. And there are certainly no Wookies.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
So mysterious. What is this place even for?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What you get with The Dig is a surprise. It\u2019s completely out-of-character for LucasArts [for the most part] in the sense that it\u2019s not particularly funny. This is a story about aliens and earthlings stuck on an alien planet and the themes are pretty dense and thought provoking. There\u2019s none of Sam and Max\u2019s zany banter, no Monkey Island sword fighting and certainly no crazy Purple Tentacle.<\/p>\n

Instead, The Dig is slow and so incredibly gentle that it is light as a feather. The landscapes are warm and beautiful, the soundtrack is ambient bliss. In short, it\u2019s a marvel of computer gaming.<\/p>\n

It does have flaws, however. One of the flaws is that a lot of the puzzles are all mechanical in nature. Sometimes, working out what the machines do \u2013 or how they operate \u2013 can be a little bit of a chore. Especially if you\u2019re not paying attention to either the dialogue or the outcomes of your experiments.<\/p>\n

One very early puzzle sees you writing a \u201ccomputer program\u201d to collect a part from the floor of a cavern and \u2013 until you start experimenting with the machine the arm is connected to, it\u2019s very difficult to figure out how this all works \u2013 how the program is supposed to be input and what all of the little programming stubs do.<\/p>\n

\"Worst.<\/a>
Worst. Puzzle. Ever.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, sometimes, the puzzles are a little impenetrable. The worst puzzle is easily the \u201cput this dead creature\u2019s bones back together again\u201d bit. This relies on you seeing a clue that\u2019s easy to miss. Not only is the clue easy to miss, but it\u2019s also immensely frustrating to make sense of.<\/p>\n

Moreover, The Dig is really two separate games. One game is all about interrogating everyone all the time about everything. And some people might not have the patience for that. There\u2019s a lot<\/em> of exposition under the hood, and you can only really get that by talking to the people around you.<\/p>\n

The other game is the machine-puzzles game. That part is a little like Myst. If you don\u2019t mind paying attention to your surroundings, writing down a couple of notes and thinking about the game while you\u2019re away from it, then you will love<\/em> this half of The Dig.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
My God. It’s so beautiful.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019ve already mentioned the graphics, but I\u2019d like to pause and talk about that in a little more detail, because the designers on this game had a clear-cut vision, and it\u2019s obvious in absolutely every frame of every animation and every background that they throw onto the screen. The palette for this game is a collection of sunset colours that I completely love. Everything is so serene that it\u2019s difficult to take the actual situation very seriously. Yeah, Boston and friends might be on a scary clock, but MY GOD have you seen the calm way the water laps at the shore-line? Or those beautiful colours you see when you first encounter the Light Bridges? Every screen of The Dig is incredibly beautiful. Even if<\/em> the game is in 320×200.<\/p>\n

There are occasional problems with the animations \u2013 most of these come from solving puzzles \u2013 and for the most part, these are quite beautiful, too, but they suffer from a little bit of jaggedness which is \u2013 sadly \u2013 par for the course as a result of the resolution the game is in.<\/p>\n

And again, while the sound is absolutely gorgeous \u2013 if you like ambient music \u2013 unfortunately, the actors aren\u2019t always up to the task of imbuing the characters with the kinds of emotion they should be feeling. There are rare occasions where the situation demands anger! And the actors give us a shruggy line that doesn\u2019t seem angry at all. It is a little thing, but it detracts from how truly wonderful this game really is.<\/p>\n

So, should you play this game? Absolutely. If you want a game that will steal you away \u2013 a game that\u2019s serene and calm and doesn\u2019t require any guns blazing and you don\u2019t mind that there will be challenging puzzles and a thought provoking story about what constitutes life, then you should play this game. It was worth $60 when it was new, it is absolutely worth the $6 you can snag it for at most online store-fronts like GOG.<\/p>\n

I did a let\u2019s play of The Dig here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every once in a while, an experience comes along that\u2019s so completely sublime that it totally subverts everything around it. And it only happens once every generation or so. Gaming generations are pretty short, so the game before this that did anything remotely like it was Ultima 4, a game<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[18,3,19,44,45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}