The Dig

This game I remembered watching comercials and discussion about when it came out, but it didn't interest me so now I just had to try it. It has Robert Patrick in the main role, playing a character that does it so much better than his cameo in the Stargate: Atlantis intro even though they feel rather the same, although Commander Boston Low doesn't come out as a bastard... at least in the beginning. The story is rather interesting and it was pitched by Steven Spielburg, the dialog was co-written by Orson Scott Card and noticable for a Lucasart game, feels rather different. Instead of the wacky humor that is in games like Monkey Island it's actually rather serious. The game begins with the asteroid Attila on a collision course to earth so NASA sends a five man team to blow it up. Sounds rather familiar. So Commander Boston Low, archeologist Luddgar Brinks and journalist Maggie Robbins are the once doing the job of planting the nuclear charges on the asteroid, but when they blow it open they discover that it's hollow and contains alien remnants. New orders happens and you explore the rock, but set off the asteroid that takes you and your crew back to its points of origin, a distant planet filled with ruins and relics of an ancient civilisation. Your mission is to get back home.

Fantastic setting and atmosphere as you explore this alien and rather dangerous world. Reminds me very much of Riven: The sequel to Myst, especially in the underwater tram sequences, As Riven some parts is hard as hell. Really, first puzzle that stopped me and made me look up a walkthrough is the damn fixing lens puzzle below the Nexus. The thing is that there is two consoles. One is just a rectangular button, the other has a lot more.buttons, five of them creates different colours on a board next to you, one takes away one dot and the last clears the whole board. Really, the puzzle is that the colours signifies an action to a little helper robot. Would be fine if the start button wasn't on the other console. Yes, I might be stupid, but I didn't know that and there is no hint that it works like that. I thought it was a colour combination that you had to find later. Another puzzle is the reconstruction of a turtle bone structure. You have at least a fossil on the screen prior so you get the geist on how it should look like, but every time you bring it back it gets eaten by the same monster. You should know that you have a bomb in your inventory and have seen the function in the museum and put it in, but the second time I tried it I had to redo the bone puzzle... several times. Now, if I used the bomb it tells me when it clears, but shifting around several bones and put them correct is rather bullshit.

So what happened here? Apparently the alien race created another dimension that took them into another plane off existence, unfortunately they couldn't go back. The same race created something called life crystals that returned anything dead back to life, but with the side effect of a huge addiction to them. The alien race seemed fine with the one you reanimate to get this story so I don't know, the only one that shown effects of it was Brink (who fell down a hole, led their by an apparition which I guess was the alien race in their other dimension. Brinks becomes more and more paranoid and begins to hoard the crystals and start working on a machine to creates more. Now, I know it's more logical and all that, but Boston Low really provoked Brink to his second death (this one isn't permanent either by the way). The story is that Low has the final piece to Brink machines as its also work for the machine to get the alien race back, but they need two life crystals to power it. Unfortunately Brinks takes all your's and you make a deal of 50/50 of the created crystals. It spawns two. Low takes them all and bring out the machine part so he can start his own machine. This sends Brink into a rage and in the struggle he tumbles down the cliff. Really Boston, you couldn't have been more diplomatic in that situation? I see your logic, but you are talking to a clearly deranged man who made you cut his hand to free him as he was trapped. I know your're military, but damn man.

Also the ending was a bit abrupt. Everyones back to life, the alien race returned and just by that creates a starship for you to get back home. Rather unfullfilling. Couldn't it have ended on a press conference back on earth where they reveal that there is intelligent life out there? That your other two crew members got back and so on? Otherwise a good game, no doubt, but the ending is as stated rather lacking.