Beyond a steel sky is a return to Cyberpunk dystopia for 25 years

The barren and terrifying lands of devastated Australia are home to one of the most remarkable journeys of nostalgia in recent history: 2015 Mad Mad: Fury Road. Building on the legacy of a series that began several decades ago, original director George Miller fused traditional physical cinema with modern techniques to create one of the most memorable blockbusters of the decade. But Mad Max is not the only Australian dystopia to stay dormant for years. waiting for alarm. Beneath a Steel Sky, released in 1994, is a favorite cult adventure game. Fans have hoped and dreamed of a second match for over two decades. And now, in 2019, the original developers have created a sequel – Beyond a Steel Sky – combining adventure game design with old-fashioned modern techniques.

Beyond a Steel Sky (at least as far as the demo demonstration I've witnessed) has a flamethrower guitar. But like Fury Road, it's an ambitious sequel designed to satisfy the most fervent fans of the original and a great first step for those who may not even not heard of Beneath at Steel Sky.

"It's an adventure game," says Charles Cecil, CEO of Revolution and creator of Beneath and Beyond a Steel Sky. This means that fans of the original are well taken care of; You play Robert Foster again, explore Union City's cyberpunk metropolis, and even encounter riddles on verbs. But the way players interact with the world, although rooted in the classic adventure games of the 1990s, has much more modern influences.

It starts with the idea of ​​"Virtual Theater", a concept that was first used in the first Revolution game, Lure of the Temptress, but is probably better suited to a modern 3D game engine capable of convey a sense of reality. "Virtual theater is the idea that characters walk around the world, talk to each other, have their own motivations and it's possible to turn the world around," says Cecil.

This may seem like a basic principle for games in general, but it's a noticeable advance for classic adventure games, where characters are usually anchored in space and exist only for the player. The ambitions of Virtual Theater are also against the modern adventure game. Where companies such as Telltale evolved into interactive films, Revolution added simulation rather than scripting to the world from Beneath to Steel Sky. The result is a less predictable world and a world that opens multiple solutions to riddles.

It's almost as if Revolution had added a touch of immersive simulation to the adventure game, which is made even more evident in one of Beyond a Steel Sky's main puzzle mechanics: piracy. The city of Utopia is littered with ports of access to the CLIC's artificial intelligence system, which Foster can penetrate into them and rearrange the code. Just outside Union City, you'll find a very simple example of a drinks vending machine. Citizens who approach with the right identity are offered a drink, while those without authorization are refused. The machine also has an anti-sabotage sensor that triggers an alarm and requests a security backup. The LINC hacking interface allows you to reverse these results, so that the machine can be configured to dispense beverages when tampered with or to call security when an authorized customer requests a drink.

As Foster explores Union City, hacking systems become more complex. "We can complicate things with what we call" nuggets, "which allow you to change verbs," says Cecil. "Then we link them to the behavior of characters and objects. And we build and superimpose puzzles based on these two premises of virtual theater and CLIC hacking. "

Virtual theater and piracy are a complement and not a replacement for the traditional mechanism of adventure play. You will continue to fill your inventory with objects and navigate in deep dialogue trees. The story is still in the foreground and always created in partnership with Cecil and Dave Gibbons. the co-creator of Watchmen and the original Beneath Steel Sky.

"When we built the Revolution 25th Anniversary collection a few years ago, we got back in touch with Dave and it turned out that he had a large amount of artwork available. Original art, "said Cecil. "There were elements [of a new story]. Even a few years after writing the original, there were storyboard ideas. So, I guess it's been 20 years since we're getting ready, because we've been talking about it since and after. It's just great to finally be able to move forward. "

This story finally begins in an animated comic book that is actually the introductory cinematic of the game. The comic explains how the kidnapping of a child forced Foster to leave Gap (a desolate region of Australia) and return to Union City, the cyberpunk monstrosity he had left at the end of the original game. Transformed into utopia by Foster's old friend, the robot, Joey, the city's artificial intelligence has strived to improve the lives of all who reside there. The kidnapped child, however, is the first sign that things may not be as bright as they seem, and Foster's return to Union City will gradually reveal problems beneath the surface.

However, in the tradition of adventure games, these problems are not significant: at the opening of the game, in the suburbs of Union City, a truck driver found himself stuck in the exhaustion of his battery following a excessive use of the air conditioning of his van. On the other side of the road, a child carrying a strainer on his head lost his best friend. And, faithful to the Revolution lineage, a group of very angry animals (parrots replacing a goat this time) prevents Foster from breaking into a stock of sausages. Although it is not clear at first, all these problems are added to help Foster to enter Union City and learn more about what may have happened to the kidnapped child.

Although these riddles sound extremely traditional. Revolution did not completely avoid the popular developments of the modern adventure game. The last decade of the genre has been defined by moral issues and Beyond a Steel Sky does not miss the opportunity to make big decisions. "We have important choices," says Cecil. "But rather than what a lot of adventure games have, it's that you have a choice and very quickly you come back [to see the repercussions]we have some key characters and the way you respond to them will have a profound effect on the unfolding of the end. As such, your decisions will have a much slower impact, rather than having the narrative branch out in every conversation. It is also important to note that Beyond a Steel Sky has only one end, your choices adding "flavor" to the conclusion, rather than defining it.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Mad Max: Fury Road is the way she feels simultaneously, both exactly like in an 80s Mad Max movie and something completely new. These spiky cars, hideous warriors and erupting dust plumes are clearly part of this universe, but the thrill of this long movie chase was unlike anything the show had ever done before. Beyond a Steel Sky seems to be doing something similar; the rhythms and interactions are purely nostalgic of the 1990s, but the puzzle-based design of virtual theater and the 3D world of comic style exceed all that can be seen in Beneath a Steel Sky. 25 years later, actually.

Matt Purslow is the UK News and Entertainment Editor for IGN and his George Stobbart look-alike. You can follow him on Twitter.