Pilgrim: Faith as a Weapon

The Good
This is Arxel Tribe's first game, and displays the company's roots in creating static CAD products. To help them establish themselves they involved the French graphic artist Moebius to create the characters, and the author Paulo Coelho to write the storyline.

The graphics look passable for the age of the game, though a little dated. Arxel tribe created all the scenes in 3D and then rendered them out, like Myst. To their credit some of the scenes do look magnificent and overcome the game small screen size. Toward the end of the game the graphic tend to look more rushed, and show the developers had some difficulty creating other-worldy landscape in 3D.

The landscape is well populated with many characters who in the time honoured adventure tradition you will need to help in order to progress. The characters are based upon sketches drawn by Moebius, though the final renderings bear little resemblance to the sketches (which are available on a extra disc in the Wanadoo edition).

Above all it is the storyline that lifts this game up, and makes it worthwhile playing. Borrowing the philosophy of Coelho's own beliefs this game casts the player in the classic role of a fool at the start of his journey, with a mysterious quest given by his dying father. In order to complete his quest he must interact with the people around him, and collect items in his inventory. So far so usual. What pushes this game is the clear set of moral choices you have to make as the character. Whilst they take the form of the standard give x to y style challenges the solution often lies in applying a certain moral thought to the challenge. This increase as the game progress, and leaves behind your original mission, as you yourself become the pilgrim and have to adopt (or at least understand) the story's philosophy.

The Bad
If the above 'epiphany' happened in a natural and smooth way this game would be fantastic. Unfortunately it's execution lacks the lofty ideals of the concept. Without spoiling the game's story the task you are set only have one conclusion, making no room for moral 'error', this leads you to distance yourself from Simon, instead making you develop Simon's philosophy, not your own. It would have been nice to at least have some alternative routes for different playing styles to reflect your morals.

The whole game feels like the first game for a company. The background renderings are good, but become notably worse as the game progresses. Appreciating the graphics is difficult though the game uses a slideshow system for navigating, that places you in some odd positions, and doesn't allow you to explore your surroundings very much, leading to a slightly claustrophobic feeling in wide open areas.

The characters are fairly primitive, and appear untextured, leaving some of the without discernible eyes. As a result they all appear as if they are made of plastic. There is no attempt at lip-synching and only a nod toward animating the characters (they often bob along the screen rather than walk). As soon as a character is finished with they simply freeze, and no longer respond to you.

Much of the game also anachronistic, given the 13th century setting, you are transported to places which have impossibly complex contraptions using advanced optics, which given the context of the latter part of the game, may fit in, but feels odd.

On a technical level, there are many flaws in the programming, which can be seen in having to start the game each time before loading your game, and having to watch the game actually skip forward to your save point.

The Bottom Line
It is an interesting game, and given that it is the company's first attempt at making a game, they did well to employ someone to write a decent storyline which has scope far beyond most games.

Unfortunately Arxel Tribe look like they've tried to copy elements from other games, and haven't quite managed to pull it off. The interface is clunky, and can hinder progress in the game.

Beyond these faults you get a quaint first game, that does a rare thing for a computer game, it makes you actually think.