Death Gate

The Good
Death Gate appeared during a tumultuous epoch of game-making - the beginning of the so-called "multimedia revolution". It was also the last great era for the adventure genre. Sierra was wrapping up its famous comedy series and moving onto more mature experiments; Access Software created Under A Killing Moon; Myst conquered the masses and began to radically change the development of adventure games, for good or for (mostly) bad.

At that time, Legend had already firmly established its reputation as the leading developer of what could be considered the older sister genre of graphical adventures - interactive fiction with graphics. This sub-genre began its life as a logical descendant of text adventures. At first, some still pictures were added to the text. Then the old text input was replaced by a more user-friendly context-sensitive verb selection. This way interactive fiction became almost the same as graphical adventure; but true to the tradition, the graphics in those games were still restricted to pictures (sometimes sparsely animated) viewed from first-person perspective. And of course, text interaction was still the priority.

Text interaction is one of the strongest aspects of Death Gate. The game immerses you through the sheer wealth of interaction. Every action evokes a response from the game. You can easily lose yourself in this gameplay depth. I was amazed to see how many different responses they have written for different actions. Trying to do things was exciting; experimentation was rewarded and encouraged. Even if there were some generic messages, they were so well-written that you didn't notice they were generic. Many other adventure games of the time lazily rewarded your attempts with pitiful remarks such as "you can't do that". Well, in Death Gate, you certainly can do that. Trying different actions is so fun when you know that the game reacts to them. I don't even want to mention adventure games of later times with their lack of text and terrible "smart cursor".

Oh yes, there is plenty of text in Death Gate. That alone wouldn't count as a compliment - there is also a lot of text in Metal Gear Solid. But the text in Death Gate is good. It feels like salve on the wounds caused by the text of Japanese RPGs. From time to time you just need quality writing in games, and this one delivers. It's a pleasure to read the text descriptions. It's a pleasure to read (and hear, since they are well-voiced) the dialogues. There are emotions, there is rich vocabulary, there is humor. It's excellent writing, and it makes Death Gate similar to a book.

But it's not a book. It's an adventure game, and it shines as one. Death Gate has some of the best puzzles I've ever encountered in an adventure game, period. There is only one puzzle in the game that I found frustrating and unnecessary (rotating arrows) - but the game gives you hints for it, and even offers to solve it for you if you're stuck for too long. The rest of the puzzles follow crystal-clear logic, are given proper clues, require imagination to solve, and are perfect in difficulty. Some of the puzzles are simply brilliant and so imaginative, like for example manipulating an undead nanny who keeps reading the same children's rhyme and an undead worker who obeys every order.

One of the coolest features of Death Gate are magic spells, which you'll use to solve many of the game's puzzles. You'll usually learn those spells when somebody else uses them in front of you for his own reasons. Those spells are fascinating and guarantee a gameplay experience unlike any other adventure game around. Turning a portrait into reality, switching bodies with a dog, setting statues in motion - those are just a few examples of the interesting, creative magic of the game.

So far we have a great adventure game, but Death Gate also has something I value very much in games - it is set in a believable, rich, detailed world. In this way it reminded me of an RPG. The story comes with much background: there is plenty of historical, political, social information that you learn from dialogues with characters and from books you find in the game. I know that the world of Death Gate wasn't invented by the creators of the game (it was based on a series of novels I've never read), but the way it is shown in the game is impeccable, it's a joy to explore a world so interesting and so believable, in its own way.

The story has a certain shade of fairy tale, and is wonderful. Without any melodrama the game touches upon serious issues such as war and peace, tolerance and racism, freedom and control, and draws philosophical conclusions from them. But it never does it with annoying moralizing or overblown emotionality; it keeps the plot simple and puts all the depth into the dialogues and interaction with the characters.

The Bad
Not much. Can't say I loved the static first-person perspective. I'd certainly prefer real movement. The screens themselves are still, save for some sparse animations (like a bartender continuously wiping a glass). The graphics are good but not really "state of the art".

You can use a lot of magic spells in the game to solve its puzzles, but most of them need to be used only once or twice. Most of the time you'll have to use a spell shortly after you've learned it. The game conveniently puts you into rough spots in which the newly acquired spell is the only solution, but after the problem is eliminated, the spell in question will usually become neglected. I'd love to see more spell-based puzzles, with more creative use of those spells.

The Bottom Line
Death Gate is an exquisite game. You can fall in love with its wonderful story and its rich, detailed world, and its gameplay will intoxicate you if you like adventure games. It has marvelous interaction and some of the most delightful puzzles around. Undeniably one of the very best offerings of interactive fiction genre, Death Gate is to be savored, like a wine that only gets better with age.

The Good
We hear it all the time: "The book was better than the movie." Some works of fiction don't cross mediums very well, as in the case of video game inspired movies, or novelizations of video games. Not so with Death Gate which has a great story featuring vivid, likable characters. Considering the source material spans 7 full length novels, the developers of Legend Entertainment did a good job of presenting it on the PC platform.

There are many reasons that Death Gate succeeds as a classic piece of interactive fiction; competent voice acting, beautiful music, and hand-painted scenery are just a few. I really miss the days of lovingly handcrafted graphics like that which can be found during the early to middle 1990's. Maybe it's just a perception of increased effort that's impressing me, but I am impressed by the painted scenes found in Death Gate. It reminds of the same kind of effort that went into the Indie game King of Dragon Pass.

One thing I really appreciated about Death Gate was to discover that reading the novels is not required to enjoy or understand the game. I've resisted playing other titles such as Companions of Xanth, and Shannara for this reason.

What a great story this game tells. You play Haplo, an apprentice called by your master Xar to investigate four worlds (realms of air, fire, earth, and water), and retrieve their respective world seal piece. You are given a magical ship that transports you between the Nexus and the other four worlds. As things progress you learn about the history of the worlds, and why they're in the state they are. One thing that was clear to me as I journeyed was a definite sense of tension about my role as a Patryn envoy in relation to the many people encountered. Between the races of Sartan, Patryn, Elf and Dwarf there is a social order and you must make unusual friends in order to progress. This allows the story to become real and nearly personal in a way I've not experienced with adventures like Space Quest, even if they're equally fun.

You'll acquire plenty of objects as you explore the four worlds. You'll learn magic and casts spells to survive. The characters, objects, and magic spells all work together to make coherent and sensible puzzles. The puzzles are not overly difficult and you probably won't need a walkthrough. In fact I recommend against using a walkthrough; if I can complete the game without one, so can most everyone else. Games like this are always worth that extra effort because when you figure out the tougher spots it makes you smile.

The game developers didn't take cheap shots; you never walk onto a screen and just die suddenly. Every death was anticipated because I knew I was trying a stupid, dangerous move. "Of course I can't pick up that snake". Reload. When a game has a save/restore system as perfect as Death Gate's one tends to feel free to experiment more.

The Bad
How fortunate it is that there is almost nothing to complain about in Death Gate. Not surprising since the game mechanics are simple enough with it's point and click interface, but a few things did occur to me while playing.

A screen resolution of 640x480 is used through out most of the game, but switches to a VGA resolution of 320x200 for the spell creation screen and some animations. I found that very strange. The game looks nice in SVGA, but the switch to a lower resolution made the blockiness of its graphics stand out. Presumably this was to ease the code developed for animation. Not really a big deal, I was able to get used it.

Also, but only occasionally, it was possible to trigger a GUI glitch by clicking too soon near the bottom of the screen while waiting for a book to flip open. In this state the game seems unresponsive, but was easily escaped by right-clicking the mouse. The obvious work around being, don't click anywhere until the mouse cursor is showing, and preferably in the correct context.

The Bottom Line
Overall the game had a nice pace to it, one that allowed me to play as I felt without having a ridiculously gripping addictiveness to it, but being far from boring at any point. Even if you don't care much for interactive fiction, don't miss this game, it's worth playing just for the story.

The Good
Unlike other adventure game (the classic quests, especially those from the house of Sierra) this game is not so "heavy". Dying is very difficult, and you'll have to do something completely absurd to die. Most of the riddles are straight forward and require logical thinking, and you'll manage to solve them without having to resort to walkthroughs. There are a couple of nice puzzles in the game, and they're challenging, yet not too difficult.
Two things caught my attention most. One, the voice acting. All of the dialogues in the game are voice acted, and it adds a new level of depth to the game- the player actually wants to hear all of the dialogues, rather than scrolling further.
The second thing is the magic system. Although you have a list of the spells, it's fun to build them yourself from the "runes" your character can use.

The Bad
The fans of the series will be disappointed from the transition. While the original characters remained, they have completely different roles, including the main character...
Somewhere in the middle of the game, one of the characters will reveal the entire plot to you. It's not very difficult to figure it out yourself, but silly to see the designers unfold the complete story in a couple of minutes.

The Bottom Line
Get it, play it. It's fun, easy and not frustrating like other adventure games.