Beneath A Steel Sky at 30: how Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and a week in Wales sowed the seeds of this classic adventure game

Yorkshire-based Revolution Software, founded in 1989, released Temptation, a cutting-edge 3D point-and-click adventure game utilizing Revolution’s own virtual theater engine. “We have reached the end [on Lure of the Temptress]”That was the most intense moment, testing and checking it,” recalls Revolution co-founder Charles Cecil, along with Tony Warriner, Noirin Carmody and David Sykes. , we have to start the next one at the same time. design.

“I said, ‘Listen, go to Wales for a week and come back with a complete design,'” Cecil laughs, acknowledging the significance of the statement.

So, how does the creative process work? “I don’t know,” Warriner said, laughing. “It’s a creative zone where things flow and you don’t really know how you do it or how to get into that mode.”

Before Warriner and Cummins left for Wells, some ideas for Revolution’s next game had been brewing in the office: the main influence was Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film Braziland should be set in Australia. “So we had this design, the Australian and desert city concept,” Warriner continued. “But I thought, what is the game going to be like?” The resulting game was drafted in North Wales and became one of the most revered point-and-click games of all time.

In Under a Steel Sky, players assume the role of Robert Forster, an orphan raised by an indigenous tribe in an area known as “The Gap,” a stretch of towering space between large cities. wilderness. Foster was brought back to the city as security arrived from Union City and wreaked havoc. After escaping the guards, he stands on the steel walkway, ready to explore the dystopian city and expose the inherent corruption and exploitation at the heart of this seemingly advanced society.

Beneath a Steel Sky (then known as Underworld) went into production under the direction of Charles Cecil, using improvements to the Lure virtual theater engine and newer versions. However, the most significant change in terms of player interactivity and user interface is that Revolution moves away from the traditional point-and-click tendency of clicking on a listed phrase or command.

“I think there was a famous meeting very early on with Simon Jeffrey, a producer at Virgin,” Warriner recalls. “And, to his credit, he said, ‘Get rid of all this shit. Just click left and right.’ We were like, ‘You’re right!'” rather than choosing the right one from a series of actions Manipulating verbs and commands, players can call up commands with just a click of the mouse.

“With all these options listed, all you’re doing is wasting the player’s time because only one or two of them are possible,” Cecil noted. “By offering only two actions – interaction and viewing – we greatly reduced the number of permutations. But then we opened ourselves to criticism that the game was too simple. That’s the price you have to pay.” The interface for Revolution The next hit, Broken Sword, was further refined and now serves as a template for the point-and-click genre.

For Iron Sky’s story and visual tone, Revolution was keen to break away from the relaxed style of genre leaders LucasArts. “I mean, Monkey Island is a great game,” Wariner explains, “but we thought there was too much humor. So we always tried to have a central theme that was dark and gritty and believable. , and adding our own dry humor to it, Cecil nods, “We wanted to have more believable puzzles for people to solve because they were true to the setting, the character motivations, and the environment. We want it to be different. “

Steel Sky’s stunning visuals are also a far cry from LucasArts’ bright and vibrant game, which was inspired by Brazil and, thus, George Orwell’s 1984, which inspired the Gilliam film. Version. Cecil continued the story: “Dave knew very well that he didn’t actually own the rights. [to Watchmen];I thought DC had them, but I can’t remember why it never moved forward. It’s a shame because it could have been a great license.

The work was not in vain, however, and Cecil was reminded of Gibbons when speaking of Under a Steel Sky. “Dave was a great name and it felt like he had an opportunity to not only endorse the game but contribute to it. We sent him an Amiga because he was excited to start designing characters in DPaint.” Ultimately, Gibbons also Designed many of Iron Sky’s emotional backgrounds and the game’s overall design. And, of course, there are the comics bundled in the game’s big black box. “I think the Australian environment probably came from Dave,” Cecil mused, “where the richest and most privileged people live high up where the air is cleaner.” Revolution even tried to use London-style names such as St. James’s ( A real subway station in Sydney) to trick players into leaving Australia. “The whole Australia thing was meant to be toned down – but then Dave drew a kangaroo in the comic book, which kind of gave it away!” Warriner laughs.

As Beneath a Steel Sky developed, Warriner and Sykes continued development on the Amiga and ported their work to the PC. “By today’s standards, it’s not a big program,” Warriner said. “It would have taken me two weeks today to recreate that engine with modern platforms, libraries, etc.” Les Pace and Steve Ince helped bring Gibbons’ picture to the screen; James Long shared the responsibility with Warriner and Sykes Coding duties; Steve Oades on animation; Tony Williams wrote the script and composed the game’s futuristic score, as did Dave Cummins, who also developed Iron Sky’s futuristic score storyline.

“It’s a fairly small team,” Warriner said. “Everyone is very talented in their own particular area, although we are all different types of people, so bickering is inevitable.” The team is based in Hull. Working from the Revolution office and living in Steel Sky, developers and their games flock to bars and pubs on the weekends. “Working seven days a week, staying up late, it was very stressful,” Warriner recalled. “And there’s no money. But there’s a lot of creative stuff happening.”

In stark contrast to many video games now (and in the ’90s), there were no spreadsheets, focus groups, or publisher intervention. “Iron Sky has just been hacked,” Cecil smiled. “It’s like, let’s make this game, and every day, it’s going to be one step at a time. It ends up being more than the sum of its parts. It’s a game with a soul.” As Cecil further revealed, Revolution The strong relationship with publisher Virgin played a huge role and was severely tested towards the end of Steel Sky’s development. “Virgin has been very supportive and yes, we have been short of money. But it has found creative ways to provide more money.”

One approach was to commission an Amiga CD32 version of Under a Steel Sky to add sound to the existing game. At this point, Cecil tells the story of a die-hard Shakespearean actor who took an undue liking for lunchtime drinking and, er, other amusements that kept them fine-tuning their accents from morning to afternoon. “We’re having a hard time with this, and it’s absolutely terrifying,” Cecil said with a laugh. “In the end, we were saved by Konami. They licensed the game for the United States and said, ‘We’re so sorry, we don’t understand what these people are talking about!'” This situation led Revolution to abandon the already documented content and start from scratch.

Under a Steel Sky was released on the Commodore Amiga in early 1994 and later on the PC to generally positive reviews. “As we did with Lure, we really innovated and came up with new ideas,” Cecil said. “People seemed to forgive your weakness if you did that because things were changing so quickly. At the time, we didn’t have a direct relationship with the audience; we sold the game to publishers, publishers sold it to retailers, and retailers We’ll just have to wait with bated breath to get it to retailers – luckily the reception has been fantastic and has us excited.

The subsequent sales of Steel Sky solidified Revolution’s relationship with Virgin, leading to a three-game deal with the publisher and paving the way for the incredible success of the Broken Sword series. “[Beneath a Steel Sky] is a key game in Revolution,” Cecil mused. “Adventure game scholars recognize it for its design changes, and for many it’s a seminal game. And, you know, one of the privileges of writing adventure games is that people say those games feel like a good It changes their lives just as much as a movie or a good book. But in many ways, adventure games can be even more powerful, and it’s a huge compliment when we hear people say they were deeply influenced by Under a Steel Sky.

Today, under the steel sky rightly considered the defining game in the genreits legacy is further detailed in Tony Warriner’s excellent book, Revolution: The pursuit of greatness in game development. “Part of the reason I wrote that book was to try to understand how we did it,” he explains, “to try to capture that feeling and maybe recreate it in some way. Because it’s difficult. And it’s stressful. .