Description
Ladies and gentlemen, please pay attention - the Orient Express is about to depart from Paris! Do I hear somebody playing a violin? As the train slowly starts moving away from the station, a young, courageously looking man jumps on it from his motorcycle and makes his way inside. This is Robert Cath, an American about whom we don't know much as we begin the game. In the train, he finds the dead body of the person he was supposed to meet. Now he has to act quickly. The only way not to arise the suspicions of the police is to disguise himself as the murdered man. A very dangerous investigation begins, and the hero soon finds himself involved in a deep net of personal intrigues and political conspiracies.
The Last Express is a true real-time adventure set in 1914, just before the First World War, in a concrete historical and geographical environment. As you gain control of Robert Cath, time begins to flow. If you fail to solve a part of the mystery until the train arrives at the next station, certain events might follow which will lead to a premature and disappointing ending. You cannot die or get stuck in the game, as you can always rewind the clock and try playing any period of time again. Along with some detective work to do and a couple of inventory puzzles, your main task in the game will be to listen to people's conversations, to talk to them, and to solve the mystery by finding out more information about the bizarre case. There are also some action fighting sequences in the game.
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Developer
Smoking Car Productions went to great pains to digitally replicate the Orient Express accurately. When they tried to find an authentic train car from the period before World War I, they soon learned that there were two versions: Teakwood wagons that were in service just up to 1914, and the steel cars that replaced them since. Unfortunately, few of the fragile wooden cars had survived World War I, even less the chaos of WW II.
Through a network of train buffs, however, the production team was able to track down a sleeping car. A man in France gave the team the name of a man in Italy who knew of a car in Athens, Greece. It had lain there abandoned for some 50 years.
Lead 3D artist
Donald Grahame and his crew took hundreds of photos of the car and complemented them with contemporary pictures. The design staff also rummaged through archives and dug out original blueprints, train schedules and logbooks, read pre-war newspapers and magazines, traveled and dined in trains, and watched any Orient Express movie they could lay their hands on – all this to ensure that they would be able to recreate the Orient Express and the atmosphere on board in detail.
