The Dig

Moby ID: 354
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

A group of scientists discovers an asteroid that is on its way to a collision with the Earth. Is there any way to prevent the disaster? Boston Low, a NASA veteran, is sent to command a space expedition on the asteroid. Accompanied by the journalist Maggie Robbins and the archaeologist Brink, Boston investigates the asteroid and finds a strange structure that undoubtedly belongs to an alien civilization. During the course of investigations, the team finds itself on a seemingly deserted planet. They have no knowledge of the planet and no possibility of going back. Will they ever discover the secret of this strange world and find a way to get home?

The Dig is a point-and-click adventure game with a simple one-cursor interface. Most of the puzzles are inventory-based, tending to be somewhat more complex than in most preceding LucasArts' adventure games. There are also a few logic-based puzzles, which require understanding and manipulation of alien technology and life forms on the planet. Traditional branching dialogue system is utilized; however, the game focuses more on puzzle-solving than on conversations to advance the plot.

The game's story is influenced by science fiction literature and movies, and strives to be realistic, departing from the comedy style of LucasArts' adventures. Despite that, humorous elements are present in some of the dialogues and text descriptions. The game utilizes hand-drawn graphics with a few pre-rendered 3D images.

Spellings

  • 异星搜奇 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 디그 - Korean spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

235 People (207 developers, 28 thanks) · View all

Designed by
Directed by
Based on a Concept by
Dialogue by
Additional Story by
Additional Additional Story by
Art Style
Creature Concept
Lead Artist
Background Art
Supervising Animators
Animators
Special Effects Animators
Additional Animation
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 38 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 236 ratings with 21 reviews)

Perhaps the most underrated, misunderstood computer game.

The Good
This game is sheer brilliance. Conceived by Steven Spielberg, he handed the reins over to LucasArts when he realized it would cost an estimated 150 million to make. The acting is superb; the characters may be, at their most basic levels, the classic team of hero, girlfriend, and best friend, the little character touches and voice acting raise them above stencil cut-outs. Combining special effects by Industrial Light & Magic with the exceptional graphics established in The Secret of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, the visuals are beautiful. A great story, simple point-and-click interface, and easily manageable inventory round out one of LucasArts best, and most underrated, game.

The Bad
The game was rather short. While the average LucasArts graphic adventure takes about 20 hours to finish, this one took about 15. Also, some of the puzzles seem... well, not contrived, but overly complicated. Particularly the puzzle involving the programming of a robot to move a lens in front of a laser, thus turning on the planet's power.

The Bottom Line
Don't listen to the anti-hype. This game is not that horrible. In fact, it's not horrible at all. The only game with a soundtrack so amazing that it was released on CD and is available in record stores as we speak, The Dig is a masterpiece in gaming, and a work of art. But don't take my word for it. Try it for yourself.

DOS · by lechuck13 (296) · 2001

A beautiful game; a breathtaking adventure.

The Good
The Dig was a favorite of mine as a kid, even though I never completed it until recently (on modern hardware with the help of ScummVM). Visually, it is flush with stunning, eerie alien landscapes. The soundscape is nearly as expansive, with good sound effects and a nice ambient soundtrack that accompanies you throughout the game. The voice acting is also consistently well-done, as are the handful of in-game cutscenes.

All of these elements come together to evoke the feeling of being marooned on an alien world. You encounter wondrous and strange alien technology, and learn of its benefits and perils over the course of the game.

The plot is not without its twists and turns, and the truth about the fate of the alien species serves as a cautionary tale of hubris and pushing technology too far.

The end of the game is decent, including a compelling dilemma regarding the fate of the female lead. The ending itself will vary slightly depending upon your decision.

The Bad
I have few complaints about this game. The ending was a bit on the corny side for my taste, as were the aliens (except for "the inventor").

On a few rare occasions, the visual styles of the game clashed, such as a 3D animated monster trying to attack a cartoon-style sprite.

Also, a few of the puzzles struck me as a bit too complex, but one would expect them to be, as they are of alien craft. Namely, the "servo" puzzle was a bit tedious, and I admit to seeking help on it.

However, I did not find the "bones" puzzle to be quite as awful as most people said it was. It's much easier if you're observant enough to locate the nearby fossil, which provides valuable clues as to the shape of the animal.

The Bottom Line
An elegant adventure with a compelling storyline, beautiful graphics (for the time), and a pleasing soundscape that come together to form an immersive experience. Pay no heed to the critics. If you enjoy science fiction at all, or want to feel the thrill of investigating the abandoned world of a lost alien civilization, pick up a copy of The Dig by all means.

DOS · by Halleck (389) · 2005

Worst game I have ever played.

The Good
The puzzles, if viewed in isolation from having been intended to be part of a broader 'game', were good. As far as logic puzzles go, they were mostly enjoyable. They were not typical find-object-to-satisfy-need point-and-click puzzles but were more along the lines of manipulating objects according to some apparent logic.

The only part of the game which was actually enjoyable was the part where you have to reassemble a turtle. Having said that, I am a huge fan of reassembling turtles generally. Turtles are funny.

The graphics were generally well-produced (though lacking any real style or cohesive direction).

The acting was adequate (assuming the characters were supposed to be that obnoxious).

The Bad
The Dig doesn't really have a story. Or rather what little it does have is fully played out during the fmv intro and subsequent semi-interactive set-piece. Now we are stranded on an alien world accompanied by three incredibly obnoxious characters, the most obnoxious of which is supposed to represent 'us' in game. He really is incredibly obnoxious and would have spoiled it for me had the game not been so awful in so many other ways.

Ok, so now the aim of the game is 'to get back home', which is fine as an aim. Unfortunately the puzzles and this aim don't really fit together. Stranded on an alien world, I wouldn't tend to reassemble turtles (I mean I would, but not in the hope that it would help me get home) or play alien games which always seem to revolve around basic geometric shapes. What I would do is try to fix my spaceship or something. What I'm getting at is that the tasks in the game are utterly abstracted from any 'storyline' - I have no idea what each puzzle is going to achieve in terms of getting me home until after I've completed it. And for that reason it may as well, for the most part, be a puzzle compendium.

On completing these puzzles, we get results. This isn't a story, there is no overarching direction to events, it just feels like a series of disjointed events following my completion of largely abstract puzzles. The connection between puzzles/actions and events/results becomes more and more disjointed as the game progresses until the point when sentient llamas appear and start resurrecting people and having beards and so forth.

I played this game to its conclusion because it made me so angry that I didn't want it to feel like it had won. I wasn't frustrated or angered by the puzzles as is often the case in these games, I was angered by the plain badness of the experience. I also harboured some vain hope that the ending might make up for the pain and tedium of the whole experience. It absolutely did not.

The different methods of illustration (rendered and hand-drawn), while all well-done in their own right, often jarred against each other and would have perhaps encroached on the immersion, had there been any.

The Bottom Line
My summary wasn't hyperbole, I've played some bad games but none worse than The Dig. If I could go to an alien world where sentient llamas would scrub my memory clean of ever having played this game, I absolutely would. I would even reassemble all their turtles in payment.

I should perhaps say that I'm not a fan of LucasArts adventures in general, so I wasn't coming at this expecting one of those pirate games or Sam and Max. I do enjoy the Broken Sword series, so perhaps that's helpful, I don't know.

I would say that if you're after this sort of thing, perhaps play Myst (which while being awful, does have some cohesion between plot and puzzles) or Nomad Soul (similar puzzle-style but far more to it). Or Broken Sword, because it does serious-point-and-click-with-humour well.

DOS · by doo (4) · 2007

[ View all 21 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Messy credits chirinea (47504) Jun 16, 2007
How did you like the voice acting in this game? LepricahnsGold (142748) Jun 8, 2007

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The Dig appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Alien and planet name

The planet and aliens are not given a name, however the credits refer to the "Cocytan leader".

In the novelization, Brink decides to name the planet "Cocytus" from Dante's Divine Comedy, Cocytus being the exterior circle of the Underworld and the only way out. The aliens thus are referred to as "Cocytans". However, these concepts are not taken into consideration in the game.

Development

The Dig is based on the original concept of Steven Spielberg who originally created the storyline to be an episode in his Amazing Stories tv series. It would have been too expensive to shoot, so Spielberg approached LucasArts in 1989 with an idea of making it a game. The game itself went through several re-writes at LucasArts, so only the main storyline and a couple of puzzles were carried out from Spielberg's original ideas.

The Dig went through three phases of development while in production, each with different project leaders.

The first phase was led by Noah Falstein. In this version, the game was set upon a jungle planet, very unlike the final version. One major part of this version apparently was that you had to collect and consume food and water to keep your character alive.

The second phase was led by Brian Moriarty. Moriarty tossed out all of the old art from the first version, as well as the "collecting resources" RPG-style elements.

In this version, there were four characters: Boston Low, Ludger Brink, Judith Robbins, and Toshi Olema, a Japanese physicist. As in the final game, this crew was transported to an alien planet via a ship disguised as an asteroid.

This version was controlled via a standard LucasArts-style interface at the bottom of the screen containing visual icons for the functions Examine, Pick up, Use, Move, and Talk, as well as inventory items. Strangely, the game was not programmed in LucasArts' standard SCUMM engine, but instead something called StoryDroid Development System.

After a long series of internal conflicts, Brian Moriarty left the company and Sean Clark took over the project. Clark was the one who actually got the game finished. He changed Judith's name to Maggie and removed Toshi Olema from the plot.

In early betas of Sean Clark's version, the characters looked the same as they did in Brian Moriarty's version (with Low and Robbins both having blond hair). These sprites were later changed and made more visually striking.

In addition, though early betas of this new version used an interface at the bottom of the screen with the same icons for interaction as in Moriarty's game, this was later rejected for the final "one-click-does-it-all" interface which the public saw.

Also, the voices in the final game were not the same as those heard in early betas of Clark's The Dig. Those unused voices lasted long enough to be present in the official demo of The Dig.

Extras

Some copies of The Dig came with a free copy of the Trade Paperback version of Alan Dean Foster's game novelization (a $12.95 value according to the box sticker).

Novel

Although there's no movie based on it, there is a book based on the game, also called The Dig, written by science fiction writer Alan Dean Foster.

References

  • Main character Boston Low is voiced by Robert Patrick, who incarnated the evil liquid terminator in the movie Terminator 2. At one point in the game, Boston shows Maggie a photo of lost comrade Brink, and asks her "Have you seen this boy?", paraphrasing the evil terminator's trademark question in that popular movie. Also, when the player looks at his PenUltimate he's gonna say that it's the "T-1000 Model".
  • According to the game's demo, the ship that carries out the Attila mission in the first part of the game is Space Shuttle Atlantis. However this reference was cut from the final game.

Shapes

Take a look at the PenUltimate communicator and you will notice that there is a geometric shape on it. It is what the plates inside Atilla look like when they are put together.

Soundtrack

Even though Michael Land's score for the game was released on CD (albeit in a very low amount), it suffered from the worst 'disease' of all official soundtracks, painfully well known to collectors of film scores - it was cut, and not all the music appearing in the game was included. However, the tracks can be extracted with external utilities. Details can be found in the tips & tricks section.

Title

After finishing the game, you might start to wonder if the game's title is in any way connected to the over-usage of the shovel item in the game (main character digs holes every now and then, and rather often), because there is definitely no dig site to explore (not assuming half-blasted asteroid).

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #3 Top Vaporware Title in Computer Game History

Information also contributed by ATMachine, Boston Low, ClydeFrog, Daniel Albu, Dirk Struan, G J, Jaromir Krol, MAT, Swordmaster and Trixter

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Related Sites +

  • GJ's Dig Site
    Character profiles, images including ads, screenshots, backgrounds, etc, humour.
  • Hints for The Dig
    These won't spoil the game, but will give you just what you need to solve the game. Final solutions are included.
  • ScummVM
    Get "The Dig", as well as many other adventure games, to run on modern systems by using ScummVM, a legal and free program.
  • The Dig - FAQs & Guides
    Several walkthroughs and other files on GameFaqs.com
  • The Dig Museum
    Includes interviews with creators, creation information, and "Ask Yoda" section.
  • The Dig Soundtrack
    Music from the game
  • The Dig Walkthrough
    Start to finish solution for The Dig

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 354
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

Linux added by click here to win an iPhone9SSSS. Windows added by MAT. Macintosh added by Jason Savage.

Additional contributors: Mickey Gabel, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Apogee IV, G J, CubbyKatz, CaesarZX, Picard, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added November 1, 1999. Last modified February 16, 2024.