Session 2

So I turn up ready for my flight down to the boring desert planet of albion. I'm not sure why I'm even going to be honest - if anyone mentioned it, I must've forgotten. I'm going to guess that, since I'm taking Hofstedt with me I'm going to make sure there's no tiny sand mites that need protecting as a species that'll hold up the mining.

We meet up in the hanger of the Toronto, everyone says they're ready, Captain Brandt wishes us luck and away we go!

Now I'm thinking that Snoopy was probably murdered. He was a government snoop who died making a phone call - everyone THINKS it was the phone exploding because if you use phones while traveling above the speed of light they're likely to do that. BUT this gun I found suggests otherwise. But why would someone do that? And if they'd offed one snoop, are they going to try and off the other while they're at it? And if they are going to try it, wouldn't the best oppertunity be when Hofstedt is off in a tiny space pod with only one other pilot with him? Am I really sure that this whole space trip is a good idea?

Well, there were no conversation options to this effect, so looks like I'm going through with the trip anyway.

The space journey is actually pretty cool. It's not done as a cut-scene, instead you've got an in-engine sequence where you're looking at your two guys sat in the podule chatting about how the planet's a funny colour. I really like this stuff - much more interesting than a FMV would've been!

Suddenly the radio breaks up, the control panels go haywire and the ship crashes. oh bum.

I'm not dead though! I have the freaky dream from the start of the game again and wake up to a full-screen image of a weird looking room.

"Where the eff am I?!?!?" I exclaim.

Only then this cat woman (don't know her name yet, but for now we'll call her Mandy Bapsout) with her boobs complety on show springs up from the bottom of the screen!

"CAT BOOBS!" - then I slump back into a coma.

Later I wake up and Mandy's there again saying

"[arbitrary alien sounding words]"

And Hofstedt's there too saying

"[further arbitrary alien stuff]"

"What's going on Hofstedt?" I ask.

"Well we crashed. And dispite the computers on the Toronto telling us that this was going to be a desert planet, it's actually incredibly lushly vegitated with an intelligent native species who live in houses that seem to grow out of the ground!"

"How come you can speak alien then?"

"Well, conveniently, you've been in a coma for just long enough for me to pick it up. I'll teach it you too while you're getting your strength up!"

"Ace"

"Brilliantly, when the Torono gets here we'll be able to make it into a study base instead of a mining base now that we've found awesome aliens!"

"That sounds like a sensible idea"

several weeks later I'm up on my feet and exploring my new bedroom.

Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if the alien words are as arbitrary as I assumed. Someone somewhere obviously had a really strong idea of what the universe of this game was like. The characters on the Toronto had loads of irrelevant back story speech about the world, and the look and reasoning behind the alien culture all seems to have been quite thought through. It's not impossible that someone had decided to come up with enough of an alien language to cope with the small amount it would be used in the game until you learned how to hear it in English. And let's keep in mind how much the Ultima games seem to have been an inspiration - and THEY had the whole runic alphabet thing in them where you had to work out how to read the language yourself (your character didn't just do it for you).

Mind you, the game was originally all in German. So maybe it's easy to imagine that the alien language in the native versions of the game wasn't totally arbitrary - but I can imagine that if I was a localiser I'd just have made up gobble-de-gook for these lines rather than do anything clever.

Anyway - The graphics for the alien house are awesome. Everything looks like it's made of moss and there are water ducts all over the place irrigating the whole building. The floor is green a squashy looking and there are huge flowers growing all over the place. It's all totally beautiful - and from the high-point of sprite-based art. These aren't baked out renders of 3D models, they're all hand-drawn images that've had a LOT of effort put into them! Even if the characters are hidious (and I suppose you could excuse that as being the style, if you were feeling charitable) the environments are just cracking.

If you were wondering about why Mandy had her baps out by the way - Hofstedt explains that it's because the planet is hot and ALL the cat people go around naked ALL the time. He's a member of my party now and I load him up with all the alien jars and cups I can snaffle. He's a level 3 scientist so should be able to use all the jars just as well as Tom.

As I leave my bedroom Mandy runs up and says

"Oi! You shouldn't be out of bed"

"Seriosly, I'm so bored of being in bed! I'm on an alien planet for crying out loud! I want to explore!"

"ok. Have it your way, but I'm telling [incomprehensible name that I forgot to write down] about this. He's the family elder!"

So she storms off across a dainty little bridge over a stream leaving me and Hofstedt thinking

"She never mentioned a family elder before... Uh oh!"