The Orion Conspiracy

Moby ID: 3250
Included in

Description official descriptions

The Orion Conspiracy is a futuristic adventure game set in the year 2160, when space travel is a common thing. The player controls the Irish man Devlin McCormack as he arrives at the deep space station Cerberus following the death of his son Danny. Initially he only intends to stay for a short time, but when it is discovered he was murdered, he decides to stay and investigate the circumstances of the death.

Gameplay is typical for graphical adventures of that time, with a third-person view and a point-and-click interface. When browsing an environment the cursor can be moved over objects. Objects that can be used are highlighted. After clicking them, a number of actions becomes available through icons at the bottom of the screen, such as examining them, or picking them up. There are conversation trees when talking to other characters and both subtitles and voiced speech are supported. The game contains a large amount of profanity, with words that are generally censored or avoided in other games.

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

34 People (20 developers, 14 thanks) · View all

Creative Director
Technical Director
Visualization
  • Fangorn
3D Sequences
Background Illustrations
Animation
Additional Programming
Music
Sound Effects
  • Channel 20-20
Sound Drivers
Video Compression
  • RAD Software
Manual Layout & Design
Packaging Art
Packaging Layout
Product Manager
Thanks To
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 52% (based on 13 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 11 ratings with 1 reviews)

Promising but unsophisticated

The Good
The Orion Conspiracy (TOC) is a promising sci-fi adventure game which displays traits of its concurrent productions. There is a familiar futuristic scenery with a (somehow) rich background and story.

TOC actually begins as an investigating story concerning your son's death, and here you can see its originality and realism; I am not aware of other games in which you play a middle-aged tragic man. The themes that evolve are reminiscent of other 'detective mystery' works and gradually complicate matters; but then the game displays a richer plot with an (unrelated) alien threat which makes its appearance. Towards the end, the action becomes fast and thrilling, when the characters begin dying one after the other, leaving you with a handful of survivors trying to escape the doomed station.

The first thing that might impress you is the high-res graphics with the very well-illustrated scenery. Both the corridors, and the rocky formations of the asteroid are realistically drawn with nice shading. Some 3D objects and vessels make their appearance in the cutscenes, which were jaw-dropping back then. Keeping true to the realism, cutscenes have no sound-effects (there is no sound in vacuum); which actually shows why sci-fi movies actually choose NOT to be realistic!

You will meet about 20 characters who can give you their personal background, where the fictional world of the game unfolds. You will see that the world outside the space station you are currently in, is a cyberpunk corporatocratic universe, which just recovered from a recent Corporation War, and where people and locales are owned by Companies. Those who love reading lengthy dialogues in-game, and like discovering and living in such a fictional world, will feel like home here; although ultimately the background is not significant to the plot.

The interface is one of the simplest ever in adventure games. Each individual object has its own set of commands. Click on an object and you will see its related action icons. If you can not interact with the object, just a description will be given. This simplifies and even prevents much of fiddling, exploration and even experimentation. For example, only a couple of characters and a couple of objects display the 'give' icon, which simply gives away that you must give those characters something later in the game; and that you won't need to give anything to anyone else in the game.

Also you can not be killed in the game, and probably there are no deaths or dead ends either.

I should also hail the save game interface, which allows you to save in 34 slots, all in one screen; no need to scroll. This way you can easily bookmark the whole game, from beginning to end.

The Bad
TOCs is notorious for its dialogues containing direct references to intercourse and bovine excrement.

To be honest, the language is not much worse that the one that you may hear in a mainstream Hollywood action movie ('Scarface', anyone?). Still, at some points it was more annoying than useful and sometimes felt out of place; you really wonder why most people would use coarse language in dialogues to a guest, as if talking to their buddy; and why a woman (the Brooks character) would start narrating her sexual habits to a complete stranger, including the name of the male genitalia.

One explanation I can think of is perhaps a hope to make a breakthrough of sorts in the video game market, but I doubt if the coarse dialogues helped spread the game's popularity. It could also be an attempt to border with the movie-genre, an ambition common in the mid-90s games; the ambition is also apparent in the movie-like title screen, crediting the (completely unknown) voice actors.

Now for the REAL problems of the game: TOC actually belongs to the particular adventure sub-sub-genre which is based on exploration. Yes, you've got to visit and re-visit the rooms, going back and forth over and over again, in order to see if a character or any object has appeared, and talk to the same characters again and again, to see if new dialogue options have been made available.

And no, there is no zip-mode or a map interface that would facilitate your wanderings! Each time you don't know what to do next, you HAVE to re-explore the whole station to see what's new or what changed. As mentioned earlier, the interface is very simple, to the point that it sometimes gives the solutions away, so the main challenge of the game is actually the 'exploration' part, and guessing the correct time and place. In my opinion it is a cheap way to create a challenge. I resolved to walkthroughs not because the riddles were frustrating, but simply because I was bored of exploring the station and fiddle in each room again. The option to augment the game speed partially remedies this problem.

Another annoying part is some animations. As mentioned, the movements are smooth and well drawn, but sometimes the characters look standing in awkward positions, especially while talking, when they unrealistically change between 'talking' and 'about-to-walk' stances.

Some quite serious bugs are also there. For example a certain character dies but the interface responds as if he is alive. If you try to talk to him, the game simply freezes and you can only restore to a previous position. Also, there are times that the characters don't seem to be 'updated' to events that have happened, or they seem to know things that they shouldn't.

I should add that sometimes the voice acting is mediocre. Some times you can actually imagine the actors simply reading their lines to the microphone, without really acting. In some reviews the players have made fun of the protagonist's poor inflection. I didn't notice such thing and actually I liked his deep, low voice.

Finally, the ending is quite disappointing. Yeah, the last few survivors leave the station in a shuttle, and then the end credits fall.

As a final note I should add that many gamers complained about TOC's strange memory requirements and its inability to play both music and dialogues on those systems. Although this counts as a 'con', today you can play the game perfectly under DosBox.

The Bottom Line
The first thing that everyone might hear about TOC is its notorious dialogues, and themes, which remain uncanny for a sci-fi video game. The dialogues gave TOC a 18+ rating.

TOC is a promising game with technical traits above-the-average. While the first impression is good, with a rich roster of characters, rich and intriguing background and plot, the lack of sophistication, makes the game a hollow and lacking experience.

There is no room for exploration and experimentation, there are no 'secrets' such as missed dialogues or alternative solutions to discover. The interface is simple but also prevents much gameplay. The player's only challenge is ultimately to consume his time in the corridors, going back and forth between the rooms simply to see if something has changed to advance the plot.

There are games which you finish and then you plan to play again sometime in the future. TOC was not one such game. Although there were scenes I would like to see again, I don't feel the urge to waste more time crossing huge distances and switching elevators of a space station.

DOS · by Boston Low (85) · 2011

Trivia

The Orion Conspiracy was billed as one of the first adventure games to contain adult language as a theme. It was also one of the first games to subtly deal with homosexuality as a theme in a game. Previously the subject was taboo altogether or was only featured in Japan's yaoi (boys love) titles in the 1980s.

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Orion
Released 1988 on Acorn 32-bit
Orion
Released 1988 on Commodore 64
Orion
Released 1995 on Windows 3.x
Orion
Released 1989 on Commodore 64
Orion
Released 2015 on Windows, Macintosh, Linux
Conspiracy
Released 2011 on PlayStation 3
Conspiracy!
Released 2020 on Windows
Orion Trail
Released 2015 on Macintosh, Linux, Windows
Invasion Orion
Released 1979 on Apple II, TRS-80, Atari 8-bit

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 3250
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by William Shawn McDonie.

DOS added by tbuteler.

Additional contributors: Sciere.

Game added February 7, 2001. Last modified January 29, 2024.