DOS

The Dig

Trivia

According to the game's demo, the ship that carries out the Attila mission in the first part of the game is Space Shuttle Atlantis. However this reference was cut from the final game.

After finishing the game, you might start to wonder if the game's title is in any way connected to the over-usage of the shovel item in the game (main character digs holes every now and then, and rather often), because there is definitely no dig site to explore (not assuming half-blasted asteroid).

Contributed by MAT (35305) on May 23, 2005.

Go to the Control Room (the room with five sliding blue crystals)
Type SWAN and watch Low taking a little swim outside the window :)

Move the cursor over Boston (you) and press CTRL-B.
Surprised? :)

The Dig went through three phases of development while in production, each with different project leaders.

The first phase was led by Noah Falstein (of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis). In this version, the game was set upon a jungle planet, very unlike the final version. One major part of this version apparently was that you had to collect and consume food and water to keep your character alive.

The second phase was led by Brian Moriarty (of Loom and the text adventure Trinity). Moriarty tossed out all of the old art from the first version, as well as the "collecting resources" RPG-style elements.

In this version, there were four characters: Boston Low, Ludger Brink, Judith Robbins, and Toshi Olema, a Japanese physicist. As in the final game, this crew was transported to an alien planet via a ship disguised as an asteroid.

This version was controlled via a standard LucasArts-style interface at the bottom of the screen containing visual icons for the functions Examine, Pick up, Use, Move, and Talk, as well as inventory items. Strangely, the game was not programmed in LucasArts' standard SCUMM engine, but instead something called StoryDroid Development System.

After a long series of internal conflicts, Brian Moriarty left the company and Sean Clark took over the project. Clark was the one who actually got the game finished. He changed Judith's name to Maggie and removed Toshi Olema from the plot.

In early betas of Sean Clark's version, the characters looked the same as they did in Brian Moriarty's version (with Low and Robbins both having blond hair). These sprites were later changed and made more visually striking.

In addition, though early betas of this new version used an interface at the bottom of the screen with the same icons for interaction as in Moriarty's game, this was later rejected for the final "one-click-does-it-all" interface which the public saw.

Also, the voices in the final game were not the same as those heard in early betas of Clark's The Dig. Those unused voices lasted long enough to be present in the official demo of The Dig.

Steven Spielberg proposed the initial game idea to LucasArts in 1989, but the game only saw release in 1995.

Even though Michael Land's score for the game was released on CD (albeit in a very low amount), it suffered from the worst 'disease' of all official soundtracks, painfully well known to collectors of film scores - it was cut, and not all the music appearing in the game was included. However, there is hope for fans of the music, as the full score, as appearing in the game, can be extracted with utilities such as DigPlayer or ScummRevisited. The tracks are stored in the file DIGMUSIC.BUN in the DIG directory of the game's CD. The extracted files will have clipped names (6 characters, tilde, number, extension) - for those interested, these are their full names, and the order in which they appear in the game:

The Asteroid: Asteroid (Amb-Close).wav Asteroid (Amb-Ship).wav Asteroid (Core).wav Asteroid (Inside).wav Seq (Ast Tunnel 1A).wav Seq (Ast Tunnel 3A).wav

The Surface of Cocytus: Canyon (Close).wav Canyon (Close-M).wav Canyon (Over).wav Canyon (Wreck).wav Seq (Ghost-Canyon).wav Seq (Ghost-Wreck).wav Seq (Pan Up Canyon).wav

The Nexus: Nexus (Airlock).wav Nexus (Cath).wav Nexus (Map).wav Nexus (Museum).wav Nexus (Plan).wav Nexus (Power).wav Nexus (Ramp).wav Nexus (Tomb).wav

The Swim: Seq (Descent).wav Seq (Plunge).wav

The Museum: Museum (Amb-Mu).wav Museum (Amb-Pool).wav Museum (Amb-Spire).wav Museum (Cavern).wav Museum (Library).wav Museum (Lockup).wav World (Museum).wav

The Planetarium: Plan (Amb-Base).wav Plan (Amb-Spire).wav Plan (Dome).wav World (Plan).wav

The Map: Map (Amb-Canyon).wav Map (Amb-Exposed).wav Map (Amb-Nest).wav Map (Klein).wav Map (Monster).wav Seq (Maggie Res 2A).wav World (Map).wav

The Tomb: Seq (Creator 1.1A).wav Seq (Creator 2.1A).wav Seq (Creator 2.3A).wav Tomb (Amb-Base).wav Tomb (Amb-Cave).wav Tomb (Amb-Spire).wav Tomb (Creator 1).wav Tomb (Creator 2).wav Tomb (Crypt).wav Tomb (Crypt-Guards).wav Tomb (Inner).wav World (Tomb).wav

The Cathedral: Cath (Amb-Inside).wav Cath (Amb-Outside).wav Seq (Cath Access 2A).wav World (Cath).wav

The Trams: Tram (Cath-Far).wav Tram (Cath-Near).wav Tram (Map-Far).wav Tram (Map-Near).wav Tram (Mu-Far).wav Tram (Mu-Near).wav Tram (Plan-Far).wav Tram (Plan-Near).wav Tram (Tomb-Near).wav

Brink's Crevice: Seq (Brinkcrevice1A).wav Seq (Brinkcrevice2A).wav

The Fatal Argument: Seq (Arg Begin).wav Seq (Arg End).wav Seq (Brink's Madness).wav

The Eye: Eye 1.wav Eye 2.wav Eye 3.wav Eye 4.wav Eye 5.wav Eye 6.wav Eye 7.wav

The Finale: Seq (Finale 2A).wav Seq (Finale 4A).wav Seq (Finale 5A).wav Seq (Finale 6A).wav Seq (Finale 7A).wav Seq (Finale 9A).wav

Originally intended to be an episode of Steven Spielberg's TV series "Amazing Stories," but the production costs would have been too high.

Main character Boston Low is voiced by Robert Patrick, who played the evil terminator T-1000 in "Terminator 2" ... if you look at his PenUltimate he's gonna say that it's the "T-1000 Model"

Take a look at the PenUltimate communicator and you will notice that there is a geometric shape on it. It is what the plates inside Atilla look like when they are put together.

There are some urban legends relating to The Dig. One was that there was to be a fourth main character following you to Cocytus, a female Japanese Physicist. Another is that Maggie was originally called Judith.

Alternate ending:

When Maggie dies, try reviving her with one of the crystals. you'll get a bonus cutscene and slightly different ending sequences.

Some copies of "The Dig" came with a free copy of the Trade Paperback version of Alan Dean Foster's game novelization (a $12.95 value according to the box sticker).

The Dig's celebrated Wagnerian score, composed by Michael Land, was available on a soundtrack album on Angel Records label, but has now been sold out and is a very rare find.

The Dig is based on the original concept of Steven Spielberg who originally created the storyline to be an episode in his Amazing Stories tv series. It would have been too expensive to shoot, so Spielberg approached LucasArts in 1989 with an idea of making it a game. The game itself went through several re-writes at LucasArts, so only the main storyline and a couple of puzzles were carried out from Spielberg's original ideas.

Main character Boston Low is voiced by Robert Patrick, who incarnated the evil liquid terminator in the movie "Terminator 2". At one point in the game, Boston shows Maggie a photo of lost comrade Brink, and asks her "Have you seen this boy?", paraphrasing the evil terminator's trademark question in that popular movie. Nice wink to film buffs. -- contributed by Dirk Struan

Contributed by Trixter (8865) on Jun 10, 2000.

Although there's no movie based on it, there is a book based on the game, also called "The Dig", written by famed science fiction writer Alan Dean Foster.

Contributed by Mickey Gabel (347) on Apr 20, 2000.