Syberia
Description official descriptions
Kate Walker is a lawyer who has been entrusted by the Universal Toy Company to negotiate the takeover of an old luxury toy and automaton factory. Over the centuries, the factory has been developing clockwork devices, specializing in perpetual mechanical movement. The factory's ambitions, however, are ill-suited to the contemporary economic climate, and the elderly Anna Voralberg, at the helm of the Valadilene factory for more than half a century, has decided to sell up.
It turns out that the takeover might not be as straightforward as expected. The day that Kate Walker arrives, Anna Voralberg is being buried. What is more is that she has left an heir – her brother Hans. But Hans had left the valley at the end of the thirties and never returned, and was actually believed to be dead. However, a letter written by Anna in the days leading up to her death reveals that Hans is well and truly alive and living somewhere in Siberia. Valadilene's elderly notary entrusted to take care of Anna's affairs suggests that Kate find Hans Voralberg as he is now the only person in a position to ratify the sale of the family business.
Syberia is a traditional puzzle-solving adventure. The player navigates a 3D model of the protagonist over pre-rendered backgrounds with fixed camera angles. Puzzles are mostly inventory-based, though some involve manipulating the environment (such as mechanical devices). The interface features a single cursor; only highlighted objects can be interacted with, and there are no verb choice commands.
Spellings
- Сибирь - Russian spelling
- シベリア 日本語版 - Nintendo product page Japanese spelling
- 西伯利亞 - Traditional Chinese spelling
- 赛伯利亚 - Simplified Chinese spelling
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Credits (Windows version)
114 People (101 developers, 13 thanks) · View all
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France-Canada Coordinator | |
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Set Design | |
3D Modeling & Texture Art - Environment | |
3D Modeling & Texture Art - Characters | |
Animation - Cutscenes | |
Animation - In-game | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 76% (based on 67 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 195 ratings with 14 reviews)
Another otherwise creative game flawed by ridiculous and unlikely "adventuring".
The Good
The graphics are beautiful. I wish there was a way I could just sit back and watch a slide show of all the scenes in the game. They are some of the best I've ever seen, and the ambient sounds that went with it were just amazing. Almost immediately I was immersed in the atmosphere of this game.
Character models look great. A real improvement over past recent adventure games.
The cutscenes are also very beautiful. You even get to go back and watch them again on the main menu, which is something I did a few times.
The Bad
Allright, the story isn't that bad, and the cutscenes and in-game graphics are beautiful, but like many other recent adventure games, this game's biggest flaw is the completely unlikely method of completing puzzles and getting anywhere in the game. The story is something like, you find out that this company that you're trying to buy (or rather, a company you represent is buying this company) belongs to an heir that everyone thinks is dead (and the reason why is so mind-baffling stupid), so you must go find him and convince him to let you buy the company.
Well, that sounds like a nice adventure detective-type game. Now, if you were a lawyer trying to track down this heir, what would you do? Would you break into churches and rummage through peoples' dressers and dig up caskets and steal a train? Well that's pretty much this lawyer's method of "puzzle-solving".
That was by far the most annoying aspect of the game. And since there's no way around it (for God's sake, she's carrying around a cell phone! USE IT, WOMAN!) that's just what you have to do. But there are other, more minor parts of the game that I found to be annoying. Like some of the voice acting. This "Mumu" kid pisses me off. Whoever voiced him (or wrote his dialogue) should be smacked.
One part of the game REQUIRES you to draw a picture of a mammoth for this Mumu kid. Now, you have paper, you have a pen, why don't you just draw it? No, apparently you've never SEEN a mammoth, so you have to go find a picture of one. Didn't see the barely-visible picture of the mammoth on the wall? Well, you can't go any farther in the game until you see it so you can sketch it. I think I spent three days just wandering around every single part of the town looking for a way to go on with the game. I finally resorted to using a walkthru and discovered that there was this picture of a mammoth on the wall of an attic...I didn't see it when I was up there.
Now, some people might have seen it. I could have just been blind. But my point is, a lot of the puzzles in the game require you to have eagle eyes, to be able to scrutinize every single inch of the game for anything that you might have to use later. I play adventure games because, to me, they're like an "interactive movie". But I don't remember seeing any movies where the main character spends the entire show on his hands and knees on the dirt road searching for any sort of pebble that might be out of place.
The Bottom Line
I'd say, pick it up just for the incredible graphics. But for God's sake, can't they make an adventure game that requires you to do realistic things and complete puzzles that don't involve such mind-numbling scrutiny?
Windows · by kbmb (415) · 2003
A wonder, a marvel, and yet I do not quite understand why
The Good
This is an exceptional game, and not for the reasons you might think. As
a game, it is abominable, completely linear, with absurd puzzles, and so
on. And yet I loved it, and I see, from other reviews, that all those
who have played it have been swept off their feet too.
Why? There is nothing special about the graphics. The scenes are a series of rendered backgrounds which you cannot pan unlike, say, Exile (Myst III). The camera is set and unmovable for each scene, only Kate Walker (that's you, gamer) and her occasional side-kick move against the background. Nothing to write home about.
The gameplay is abominably linear. Don't you dare even think of doing this until you are allowed to, after having done that.
So? So where is the magic? (It is a magical game).
So where is it? Hidden. When you play "Myst" you cannot hold back a "WOW!" of wonderment. Not so here. The "WOW!" is there, but subdued. There is nothing alien at all about those landscapes, that architecture, even those clockwork automata. But everything is... unfamiliar, yes unfamiliar enough, to wrench you out of this our world into the world of Syberia, without fully realizing how, or why.
What else? Oh, that is the one. Kate Walker (you, gamer) slowly grows in understanding and in wisdom. By the time it is time for her, her mission fulfilled, to fly back to New York, to her job as a lawyer under a perfect arsehole of a boss, back to make up, perhaps, with her perfect arsehole of a boyfriend, and back to her harebrained pain-in-the-bum of a mother, you just know that she will kiss good-bye to the "good" life for the frozen barrenness of Syberia. And that is where the story, the game, becomes a morality play. Kate takes to her heels to catch the Syberia-bound clockwork train which is leaving right now. Running like mad through the dining room of the Grand Hotel Cronsky, she slips, knocks over a chair, regains her balance, resumes running, away from New York, her boyfriend, her boss, her mother, to catch the train. That split-second incident, the slipping, the knocking over of a chair, is what turns this game into an unforgettable experience. This is no longer a game, it is life.
There are some very funny scenes too, some of them, alas, inside jokes
which most players will miss. Kate's clockwork train runs out of spring
power in Barrockstadt, a university town and a perfect spoof of Oxford
and Cambridge. She has to take her train to a winding station. To do
that, she needs to get it towed by a barge. Kate hasn't got the money
(another piece of absurdity: who would go on such an errand without $100
in her pocket?). So she tries to talk the barge owner into doing it for
free, as a favour. The barge owner replies: "Favor, favor, alors buik
not full, mooonney, ya, buik full." Unless you know French and Flemish
you won't appreciate it: "Favour, favour, then belly not full. Money,
yes, belly full". Then Kate tries idle chit-chat. There is a marvellous
aviary in the railway station. Has he been to see all those birds? Comes
the answer: "Met U, mooie girl, ya, ya, met plezier!" (with you,
beautiful girl, yes, yes, with pleasure!) Kate does not understand of
course, so the barge owner's wife translates: "We no leave boat, husband
is land sick."
The Bad
The puzzles. They bring nothing to the story, but aggravation. Some are
trivial, some absurd, some aggravating. Aggravating such as when one
puzzle requires you to have listened to Kate's mother's over-the-phone
logorrhea to solve the Russian diva's puzzle. It was all useless
garbage, along with her boyfriend's calls, and her boss's calls, and you
are expected to have written down all that crap? (it doesn't show on your
journal). Or again, you are supposed to mix a cocktail that will make
the Russian diva regain her voice. Following the instructions, you mix
the cocktail. She drinks it. No effect. So? So you think you have
stuffed up, and you try again, different ways. Wrong. What you must do
is mix it again, exactly the same way, and it will work. I object to
that. There are many more such examples of aggravating absurdities, such
as when you are told that a document must be signed, when, in fact, you
should have it stamped.
The Bottom Line
What other game could be worth playing, with such stupid, irrelevant
puzzles, with such a linear story? And yet, what other games end up
with such flying colours against such a handicap? "Syberia" just has to be
something exceptional.
Ah, if only, if only....
Windows · by Jacques Guy (52) · 2005
A very, very long movie. Or, an extremely short game.
The Good
The graphics and sound effects in this game were amazing. They combined to create imaginary, surreal, bleak environments that you could actually believe in. I found myself thinking, "Ya know, if there actually is some long-forgotten city of Barrockstadt or Komkolzgrad on an abandoned rail line, it probably would look a lot like this." Bleak. Grey. Run-down. Populated with small handfulls of slightly-eccentric inhabitants who take their unusual environments and the presence of advanced clockwork automatons for granted. As you progress towards your destination, the environment becomes more bleak and surreal.
My favorite example of this would be the Barrockstadt University. It's a massive, ancient, sprawling stone campus, yet there is a grand total of: three students, one professor, one groundskeeper/stationmaster, and three (three!) rectors.
None of them find anything weird about that, of course. Whether this lack of population is intended, or an oversight by the designers, I think it works to the game's advantage.
I also liked the plot-delivery method of Kate's cellphone. At certain points your character would receive calls from people in her life (her mom, or her boyfriend, or a coworker, or her boss.... and that's it. Not a very social girl, our Kate), and while these calls were often annoying, they do help one to understand the main character, and where she's comin' from.
As well as where she's going.
Unfortunately.... once you set aside the game-world itself and focus on the game's mechanics, there aren't many good parts left. The story was a bit far-fetched, sure, but still enjoyable. It's unfortunate that the presentation of the story was struggling uphill against the game itself.
The Bad
Well, looking back on it, quite a lot.
First, the voice-acting. Spoken lines rarely matched up with their subtitles. That's not too bad in itself, but on some occasions, entire sentences were dropped from the spoken dialog. There were a few pieces of information I could only find out by glancing at the non-spoken text before it vanished. Luckily, none of this information was actually critical. In addition, a lot of the voice actors sounded as if they were simply reading their lines out of context -- there wasn't much emotional weight added to lines that should have been spoken angrily, or happily, or what have you. It tended to break the fiction a bit.
Granted, in some of the cellphone conversations, Kate sounded... emotionally-dead. I'm still not certain if that's due to the overall bad quality of the voice acting, or if it was intentional during those times.
And speaking of dialog, you must speak to characters using keywords. Unfortunately, your selection of keywords is always extremely limited (to subjects like "Kate", or "Train", or "Hans" and such), and more times than I can remember, Kate would stupidly ask questions that I know the answer to, but she doesn't until she solves some lengthy puzzle, or talks to some obscure character.
Frustrating, to say the least.
The other big problem I had with this game, were the puzzles. They made logical sense, for the most part, but nearly all of them felt like they were cobbled together. And a very large number of puzzles required you to run from Point A to Point B, which is all the way across the city. Then run back to point A. Then back again to Point B. And back, and forth, and back, and forth..... This is how you don't design puzzles, guys.
Also, at the risk of giving spoilers, the ending disappointed me. A couple of facets of it were enjoyable, but there was all this buildup for a question over the course of the entire game, and you never find out the answer.
The Bottom Line
I dunno, to be honest. This game would have made a far better movie or cartoon than an actual game. Some people like "interactive movies" with puzzles grafted on; I certainly used to. It only took me a couple of days to complete; I think if this were a much longer game, I could recommend it.
Windows · by Dave Schenet (134) · 2003
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
Who Was the Model for Kate Walker? | null-geodesic (106) | Dec 1, 2007 |
Trivia
Language
The words written on the control panel of the airship in Kolmkozgrad are authentic Russian. However, the name of the hotel in Aralbad is written incorrectly.
Marketing
Some German games magazine editors received a postcard from New York with a handwritten text from someone called Kate who wrote in German, that she had an Austrian uncle, some problems and so on. There was no clue that this was a PR-event for the game Syberia, even the fake-handwriting was done with some smeared ink.
PlayStation 2 version
Contrary to the Xbox release, the PS2 version did not appear in North America, as SCEA did not approve the game there.
References
- The rat from Road to India makes a cameo appearance in Syberia. It appears in the basement in Kolmkozgrad, makes exactly the same movements it did in Road to India, and disappears.
- Syberia contains some references to another game by Microids, Amerzone . In Barockstadt you can read and hear a lot about different species of Amerzone's flora and fauna.
Awards
- Computer Games Magazine
- March 2003 (Issue #148) - #10 overall in the "10 Best Games of 2002" list
- Computer Gaming World
- April 2003 (Issue #225) – Adventure Game of the Year
- Gamespot
- 2002 - PC Adventure Game of the Year
- 2002 - Best Artistic Graphics
- Gamespy
- 2002 - PC Adventure Game of the Year
- IGN
- 2002 - Best Adventure Game (Readers' Choice)
Information also contributed by Felix Knoke, Jeanne, PCGamer77 and Sciere
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Related Sites +
-
Another good walkthrough
MaGtRo's Walkthrough for Syberia -
Microids' Official Walkthrough (in English)
Original walkthrough published by the developer -
Microids' Official Walkthrough (in French)
Original walkthrough by Microids in French -
Solution in Hint Form
If you'd rather get subtle hints to help you along, this file will get you to the solutions at your own pace. -
Syberia
Official Site - Adventure Company -
Walkthrough
If you get stuck in game, use this site to help you out of trouble and continue playing. -
Walkthrough by Witchen
Witchen's Syberia solutions -
Zarf's Mini-Review
A mini-review of Syberia by Andrew Plotkin (March, 2004).
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Isdaron.
Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3 added by Charly2.0. Linux added by Plok. Android added by Ingsoc. Nintendo Switch added by Kam1Kaz3NL77. Xbox 360 added by Kennyannydenny. iPad, Blacknut, PlayStation 2, iPhone added by Sciere. Xbox added by LeChimp. Macintosh, Windows Mobile added by Kabushi.
Additional contributors: frin, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, tarmo888, Sciere, Zeppin, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Rik Hideto.
Game added June 28, 2002. Last modified April 2, 2024.