In the late 80s and early 90s point-and-click adventure games were one of the most popular genres of video games, especially on PC. Sierra, Lucas Arts, Virgin and many more legendary companies released dozens of wonderful titles that the oldest of us remember fondly. Now, and after 28 years of waiting, one of them returns completely renewed to modern systems.
BEYOND A STEEL SKY is available for Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.
A FRIENDSHIP OF IRON … LITERALLY
BEYOND A STEEL SKY is the direct continuation of BENEATH A STEEL SKY, a legendary cyberpunk-themed graphic adventure that came out for PC in 1994. Being a direct sequel after more than 27 (YES, TWENTY-SEVEN) years, minimally knowing what happened in the first game is necessary to understand its sequel 100 %. As I also know that it is very difficult to remember or even have played the old title, here is a brief summary: the story places us in the near future where the Earth, due to radioactive contamination, was largely transformed into a desolate wasteland. . The population was divided into two parts, the “good people”, who live in closed cities and isolated from the outside, and the “Gaplanders”, who forage for life in the desert and live together in small tribes.
In the first game we meet Robert Foster, a boy who lived in Union City and, after a helicopter accident, ends up without memory in the “Gap” and is adopted by a tribe, who give him that name because of the meaning of Foster in English, which is adoptive. Robert grows up in the tribe and becomes a genius in programming and robotics, creating an artificial intelligence called Joey, which can be stored on a chip and placed in different bodies. Joey and Robert become best friends, but one day an army sent from Union City destroys the tribe where they lived and kidnaps Robert. From that moment on, the entire kidnapping-escape route of the first game begins, where we finally discover that the person who had kidnapped Robert was his own biological father, who had merged with an AI in the city to have everything under his control but was still within reach. about to die and needed a new body, that of his son. After defeating the villain, Robert returns to the Gap to rebuild his tribe, but not before leaving his friend Joey in charge of Union City, as a just and benevolent ruler.
Some years later we come to what concerns us, the story of BEYOND. The plot begins with the kidnapping of a boy named Milo, son of a friend of Robert’s, at the hands of a group of Stalkers who are displaced in a strange vehicle with insect legs. The trail leads Robert back to Union City, where things are quite different from how they were when he released her. To enter, he manages to impersonate a certain Graham Grundy, a person he found dead on the road and who steals his identity, and soon discovers that apparently Joey has suddenly and mysteriously left his position and has left a council of 5 people in charge. supposedly democratically elected. And what’s worse, it seems that this Graham guy was also a very shady person and is directly related to the kidnapping of children at the Gap. The mission now is to try to discover Milo’s whereabouts using all the information and access that Graham’s name can open to him, in addition to finding out what really happened with Joey. Phew, I spread out more than I thought.
PASS ME THE MOUSE EVERYWHERE
As I mentioned at the beginning, it is an old-school graphic adventure, which takes advantage of the capabilities of the most modern systems to provide us with fully 3D environments and hours of dialogue, something unthinkable in the early 90s. The gameplay is, in theory, simple: we move Robert through the scenarios and direct our gaze to the objects that may be of interest to us. If any object or character around us is interactive, a small marker will appear on it, and once we press the button, a range of actions that we can perform on the highlighted object or character will open.
Examine, take, speak or open our bag of items to give / use some, to give some examples, the idea is to progress little by little solving all the “situational puzzles” that are presented to us. Chatting with other characters to obtain information, collecting and using different items or even using a hacking tool to change the action protocols of robots or machinery, little by little we are going to reveal the plot of the title. And above I put that the gameplay was simple in theory because, although almost everything is solved within a limited space and with enough logic in general, there are times when some puzzles become too far-fetched and with very hair-raising solutions, And there is also a bit of abuse precisely in the use of the hacking tool, which begins as a cool and novel option to end up being something heavy, embarrassing and that we challenge not to continue doing.
A MODERNIZED CLASSIC
The graphics of the game look very nice and have an artistic style that uses the now classic cell-shading to give the title a comic-like visual, quite similar to what we saw in other games such as the series of Borderlands. All the characters have very interesting designs that fit perfectly with their personalities, and both the multiple types of robots that swarm through the cities and the well-differentiated settings between the arid, desolate and death-filled wastelands and the highly technological cities , alive and essentially perfect is very well done. The only objectionable thing at this point is that the movements of the characters sometimes become weird. When viewing all the scenes with the game’s graphics engine in real time, more than once it happened to me that Robert had his back turned at the moment he settled down to talk to another character and the entire dialogue scene only shows his neck or the NPCs that roam the cities were constantly walking on me in some other scene. But it is something that does not get to bother and sometimes even causes grace.
The audio is also very good. Hours and hours of dialogues, with multiple options and reactions of the characters to different situations. All the voices have been chosen perfectly according to the character’s personality, and there is also a perfect lipsync that is really worth admiring in a game of this graphic style. In addition, and how could it be otherwise in a title of this genre, all the content is witty, funny and the interactions are always intelligent and fun, so the nostalgic spirit of the 90s is absolutely present at all times.
I AM YOUR FAITHFUL FRIEND
Having had the chance to test the return of a classic from my childhood, and see the result achieved, it makes me think that it would be a great idea for the genre to at least revive a little. Imagine new deliveries of MONKEY ISLAND, INDIANA JONES, a new chapter in the saga MANIAC MANSION / DAY OF THE TENTACLE, a new FULL THROTTLE, and much more. Imagine that everyone maintains the gameplay and spirit of 30 years ago but only modernized the technical aspects. Wouldn’t that be great?
BEYOND A STEEL SKY it is a very cute game. And something that caught my attention in his approach, full of humor and absurd situations, is that there is a message between the lines of what life and friendship really are. Robert would give his life for Joey without hesitation. Even though Joey is literally nothing more than an AI on a chip that is inserted into different robotic bodies. For us, for him he is his best friend. But at the same time, Robert does not seem to consider any other robotic being as someone alive, but as “something.” His pulse does not tremble if he has to start the battery of one of them to start, for example, a truck, despite the fact that the same unarmed robot tells him that this is the same as killing him and that he does not want to die. Strong.
Nice to watch and play, fun, full of witty jokes and comments, and even moments that leave you wondering, BEYOND A STEEL SKY It is a great product, especially for the older ones who grew up with the aforementioned games. Although it is not very long (the story can be finished in about 7 hours), surely at the beginning it will take us much longer than that, since there are puzzles and situations that will really make us rack our brains in search of a solution, which one more at once it is much less obvious and more elaborate than we thought. And the best thing is that certain decisions along the way change some aspects of the story, so you can even play it more than once to see all the alternatives that the argument offers us.