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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[ 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)
Steampunk style point-and-click with really nice graphics
The Good
Steampunk style point-and-click with really nice graphics (just remember it was made in 2002) and fantastic voice acting (one of best I've ever heard in an adventure game).
Village mysteries, steampunk factories, amazing airships and intricate automatons - all this explored by young New York lawyer, Kate Walker.
The Bad
"Syberia" has some shortcomings, namely some annoying unskippable animations (like stair or ladder climbing) and it is quite linear, but the story is so great I would definitely recommend it anyway!
The Bottom Line
GRAPHICS: 8/10
AUDIO: 9/10
GAMEPLAY: 7/10
STORY: 10/10
Windows · by Marcos Slusarczyk (1) · 2015
The Good
By now, Syberia has become one of the classics of an almost dead genre. Yet at its time, it was anything but that; it was a mad attempt to breathe life into a corpse. The problem, however, is that this breath of life was, in fact, terribly stale. While the game may be appealing to the newcomer, for seasoned adventure players, it's almost embarrassing. Consider this a rant on why Syberia is not a classic, or even a good game.
First things first, though: the game is gorgeous. The graphics have aged gracefully; the combination of 3D characters and prerendered backgrounds still looks very good (compared to Grim Fandango or The Longest Journey), while the backgrounds themselves are stunning. It's clear the prerendered images were meticulously touched up by hand, with a consistent art style, looking almost like a pencil drawing inked over. FMVs are a different kettle of fish, with wooden animations and a few ugly effects (oh, the explosions!), but the rest of it? Beautiful; and one of the best-looking games I have ever seen.
I also rather like the interface, which is a logical conclusion of the trend adventure games have been following for years: single button point and click. It's barebones, and gives an extremely limited control, but it is a clear, reasonable design decision and as such, I can get behind it.
Sadly, however, it is now time to move to the next section.
The Bad
Unusually for video games, Benoît Sokal has something of an auteur thing going on in Syberia. He's the lead designer of the game, but also a comic book artist, which explains a lot. As I have said, he certainly can draw, and he has an artistic vision. But he can't really write, and, worst of all, can't design games.
The soul of any adventure game is the writing. None of the true classics became a classic because of its puzzles, or its graphics, or anything else: it was always writing. And this is where Syberia fails tragically; and comic books are perhaps to blame. First of all, the story is simple. The whole thing can be retold in one paragraph, with nothing significant being omitted. American lawyer tries to find a missing, eccentric old man, whose eccentricity is an excuse for populating the world with all sorts of mechanical contraptions. That's pretty much it. It's a story worthy of speech bubbles, but certainly not branching adventure game dialogue. It also doesn't end; and I mean at all. Imagine listening to a story where the narrator suddenly pulls out a watch, looks at it, and says "Alright, so she went outside and there he was, sitting on a bench. Now go home." The ending gives a clear "to be continued in the next issue" vibe; and suddenly we learn the rather large amounts of backstory were just window dressing. Just an excuse to show more pretty pictures.
And regarding dialogue - there's nothing to write home about. There are characters in the game, and they talk. Everything about them is completely forgettable. There is just one exception of a dialogue that stands out: an old sailor who is talking in a hodgepodge of about five languages, curiously interpreted into English by his wife. The more of the languages you recognise, the more hilarious the exchange is. That's all, though, really. The dialogue system is simplistic, with a handful of the same, universal topics for every character, which certainly doesn't add any spice to it. It does the job. Full stop.
This single-purpose writing is actually one of the tell-tale aspects that reveal the true nature of Syberia's game design: things were put in just because adventure games, a genre Sokal has chosen for Syberia, usually have them. Their implementation is entirely superficial and often plain wrong. They are there just because a pure comic book videogame, where you would just keep clicking Next, would be too boring.
Yet this half-hearted implementation of the staples of the genre makes Syberia exactly that: boring. The game world is almost entirely dead. As I have said, visuals triumph here, which means the game is full of gorgeous, yet absolutely empty screens. My conservative estimate is that in about 70% of the game's screens, perhaps even more, absolutely no "gaming" is going on. They are there just to walk through. Every once in a while, a minor character is inserted into such a screen for local colour (and I do mean once in a while; there are about half a dozen of them altogether) who repeats the same mechanical response over and over again. The whole game is incredibly, mind-numbingly static.
And this brings me to the other major point, this one caused by something else than comic book design mentality. It takes a while before the penny drops, but the secret is that while the game pretends to be a classic third-person title, it is, in fact, a Myst clone. Gorgeous, yet empty and dull, fascinated by mechanical contraptions and puzzles that are not a part of the game world, but that exist only to be solved. It's quite obvious, really.
To put it simply, the puzzle design in Syberia is atrocious. It's an almost completely linear sequence of events, some of which are not connected at all yet have to be performed in the prescribed order, with copious amounts of backtracking through dead scenery. The train won't start because you haven't retrieved the MacGuffin yet. The train won't start because you have the MacGuffin in your inventory, but haven't put it in its proper place on the train (and after the train stops again, you'd better pick it up again, because you'll need it). Follow the numbers. Of course it makes no sense for your heroine to waste time doing this or that, but the story can't continue if you don't. The puzzles are not a part of the plot, they are added in, as an afterthought. The consequence, naturally, is that Kate is sometimes forced, by the twisted "there ought to be a puzzle here" logic, to do things in a needlessly complicated manner. There's a puzzle arising from the fact that she isn't willing to jump over a small brook, and another, involving running all over the place and talking to everyone who will listen, just because shooing away three cuckoos is apparently too difficult. The logic of the puzzles is twisted, yet the over-convoluted solutions are usually very apparent, because the extremely linear nature of the game means there simply is nothing else to do. And if the solutions aren't apparent, it's probably because you overlooked a hotspot in one of the screens which there was a good reason to consider useless. It's maddening; and I often caught myself wishing there was actually a "next" button to turn the pages of the comic book, skip a puzzle or two and view some more pretty imagery.
And that, to sum it up, is the sole reason why I can't consider Syberia a classic, its most peculiar characteristic: gameplay for gameplay's sake. It shouldn't have been a video game in the first place, that's what's wrong with it.
The Bottom Line
If writing is the soul of an adventure game, and puzzles are its flesh and bones, the only thing Syberia has going for it is a beautiful skin. Thinking back, there is nothing memorable about the game at all, except that it is gorgeous. And that's not even remotely enough.
Windows · by plumifrons (95) · 2010
The Good
Syberia begins a fascinating tale of a young lawyer Kate Walker, who must locate a heir for Voralberg automaton factory. The heir, Hans Voralberg has left his home village decades earlier to find the fabled island of Syberia, where mammoths roam the land covered with blue grass.
The graphics in this game are in one world beautiful. The whole game is made with pre-rendered graphics, while the characters are 3d-models themselves. The music and the voice acting are good as well.
Most of the puzzles are pretty logical and in places the game is almost far too easy. From this reason the game doesn't give out much of clues, as if it would, even the not so seasoned adventure gamers would run through the game in a day or two.
From time to time the story goes forward with stunning CGI-animations, which range from the train leaving from the platform to an aging opera singer doing her last appearance in a dying mining town. You can watch these animations later, if you so wish, as they appear in the cinematics menu of the game.
The Bad
Despite the fascinating story some of the dialog is pretty awful. There also is a fair amount of running between places, because the game is full of screens, that are there just to, well, amaze the player of how much time was put in to making those stunning surroundings.
The surroundings of the game, despite are animated, feel rather static, as there really isn't much you can operate. There isn't even your standard look-command, which would allow you to examine the area you are in. The game is very limited in that area, and that is a shame, as it would be nice to get some other stuff out of the surroundings despite just the pretty looks.
The Bottom Line
all in all, Syberia is solid, good adventure with a good storyline behind it. Benoit Sokal has managed to create an atmospheric little gem, which provides good, yet rather solid experience.
Windows · by tomimt (397) · 2008
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 +
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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.