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)

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The Good
LucasArts was considered the king of adventure games in the nineties, and when they were able to create superb adventure games like The Dig, I can see why. The Dig was going to start off as a fantasy sci-fi movie, but for some reason, this was dropped in favor of an adventure game. Three people, Boston Low, Maggie Robbins, and Ludger Brink, have been asked to go up to the "Attila" asteroid which is on a collision course with Earth, and set explosives off its surface to make it change course. During their mission, they also have to report to their bosses, Ken Borden and Cora Miles, that the explosives are set and that they are returning to HQ. Low, Robbins, and Brink all end up being stranded on an alien planet. When Low asks Bordon for help, he finds out that he is out of range. The three of them have to make do by exploring this planet fully in order to complete their priority task: find a way home.

You control Boston, who happens to be the leader of the expedition, with both Brink and Robbins following you to see what you are doing and make sure that you are doing nothing wrong. But eventually, both of your fellow characters go their own separate ways, and it is up to you to explore the planet fully, as well as performing actions that make parts of its islands functional. And like any group of people should do when they decide to split, you can use your little PenUltimate’ walkie-talkie to contact them about your discoveries, and they may either engage in conversation or help you further based on what they find out on their own.

Don't expect the nine actions used in Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit the Road, with names like PICK UP, TALK TO, and LOOK AT, to be present here. Instead, you control a mouse cursor which can be used to walk around, as well as speaking to people and pushing/pulling objects and manipulating them. You also have an inventory icon, which you can use to access your inventory, with forty spaces used to store objects that you pick up along the way. This interface approach, similar to Full Throttle before it, makes the screen less cluttered and makes extra space for more graphics, rather than having them all squishy like Lucas's earlier adventure games. Ages ago, I saw an article about The Dig with a screenshot that included the nine-action interface, and it looked rather good. Honestly, I have no idea why Lucas decided to scrapped this in the end.

Sometimes an area is highlighted when you drag your mouse over it, meaning that you can walk to yet another scene in the game. When you click the mouse button, Low will walk there. Click it again, and you will immediately arrive there. You don't have to wait for Low to arrive there. This is a nifty feature that is not present in other adventure games.

When you strike up a conversation with someone that you come across, you will see the conversation bar which lists a series of icons, which when clicked, strike up conversations about nothing or about things that you have already discovered earlier. You can keep clicking on the same icon to get different conversations until the icon is in its "pressed down" state, meaning that the last conversation is repeated when you click the icon in this state. The graphics used for these icons are a lot more colorful than the icons used in Sam & Max

Speaking of graphics, nearly all the backgrounds used for each scene are the best that I have ever seen in a LucasArts adventure game, starting from the surface of the planet and ending with its beaches. Sometimes, it makes me wish that I was on the planet where I can do whatever I like, whenever I like, and however I like, without any dangerous objects that I would be able to pick up and manipulate.

The games uses a lot of FMV sequences, and if you look in the /DIG subdirectory on the CD, you'll find that most of them are .SAN files, that you cannot open. Occasionally, you will watch these when you perform specific actions like activating a machine or trying to communicate with an alien creature. Some of these sequences are quite interesting, and sometimes reflect the personality change of each of your colleague. For example, in some FMV sequences, the change in Brink's behavior once the lethal life crystals, found around the planet, control him is portrayed, and these are quite interesting to watch.

The music in The Dig reflects that found in many fantasy sci-fi movies, and the sound effects are much better than those used in many games that I have played long before this one. The sound effects in the game are ambient and are much more realistic. An example includes the walking sounds that can be heard while Low walks around the nexus.

The voice acting is top-notch. Robert Patrick (Terminator 2, The X-Files) provides the voice of Boston Low, your average space guy who tries to be cool toward several species that he encounters. Low is the main character who says those sort of things that the same characters in other movies talk like. The voices for Brink and Robbins are also good, with Robbins playing the innocent gal who spends a lot of time doing research, and Brink, the german professor who becomes more aggressive after those life crystals resurrected him as a clone, and doesn't even give a damn about his fellow members.

The Bad
Adventure gamers who brought The Dig, and expect it to be free of puzzles will be disappointed, as there are actually many puzzles that you have to solve in order to open some kind of door or activate a piece of machinery, and these puzzles are quite hard. I can remember trying to repair a broken light bridge for ages. And earlier, I had trouble reconstructing a creature by putting all its bones together. I thought that I did it right, but the game doesn't tell you that the task had been accomplished.

The Bottom Line
It looks like LucasArts went to a great deal at making this amazing adventure game. This is demonstrated by the great story that is carried throughout the game. The graphics are superb graphics and the sounds are excellent.

Rating: ****½

DOS · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2005

Different; and neither a masterpiece nor a bad game.

The Good
Jeez...this one is controversial isn't it? Take a look at the reviews all over the net: opinion is pretty heavily divided. It wouldn't be though, if it was made by a developing company other than Lucasarts. The public, having lapped up the 'Monkey Islands' and 'Sam & Max' like starving puppies, expected more of the same with this title. And why shouldn't they? This is what happens when you get typecasted. Sad, really.

'The Dig' is nothing like 'Sam & Max'; the aforementioned, highly revered, adventure Sean Clark also worked on, and it's to his credit that he's created something so different. The game starts brilliantly: the intro movie is good and the player's first challenge is an exciting one. It shows that this was originally intended to be a film - (it's a common rule in screen writing that the first 10 minutes of the script have to hook the audience. Often they are constructed as a small 10 minute vignette, as is the case here.) Events progress logically up until you've been on the alien planet for a bit, then it starts to go downhill. Typically, the plot starts to disappear until nearer the end. But hey - at least now you're gripped. Sort of.

Character development is very good, and I'm a sucker for this type of thing, so I was most impressed. Especially since Sam & Max doesn't have any. All 3 characters grow and change by the end, furthering the feel that you're playing an epic. The score is also suitably "Wagnerian", as it claims to be, and the dialogue is good, if occasionally overblown.

Graphically, 'The Dig' is very polished. Although it does suffer from being in the period of graphical development where environments and vehicles can be animated in 3D polygonal glory, but not humans or creatures. This occasionally makes the characters look rough and flat against the backgrounds. Although, yeah, wow Ed, big deal.

The 'serious' plot, which is only really developed at the end, is actually quite interesting too.

The Bad
Adventure gamers come under a lot of stick for being notoriously stifling to the creativity of developers. That's one way of putting it. Another is that they know exactly what they want and yet the developers don't seem to share their vision. I wouldn't call myself a hardcore gamer at all, but I've often discussed the adventure sequels that Lucasarts have teased us with: Full Throttle 2, Sam & Max 2, and the next Monkey Island. We always agree on what we feel are highly important aspects; it is vital, for instance, that a sequel to Full Throttle would attempt to keep that same darkness, that same ugly brutality, that made the original so vivid. It seems obvious. Screenshots of the sequel before it was canned suggest this wasn't even taken into account.

It is also obvious that 'Myst'-style puzzles in 'The Dig' would be unwanted. The legions of people who bought Myst liked the pretty pictures the most, not the puzzles, which hark back to games like 'The Fool's Errand'. Whilst I think back fondly to the time when Lucasarts were willing to go out on a whim and try something different, it doesn't mean all their decisions have to have been good ones. Messing with polygons is alright for a bit, but it soon gets boring.

Can't blame them too much for that though, and to be honest, there isn't too much of that in the game. They deserve to hang for that infamous turtle skeleton puzzle however. I stared at a screenshot of the solution for nearly a whole hour, convinced my version had a bug which wasn't letting my complete it, before changing one imperceptible thing and then it finally worked. C'mon guys, you didn't give us this type of thing in 'Loom' and that was 6 years ago, why give us it now?

Going back to what I said about the game going downhill, the problem is that after you've been on the planet for a while, you'll end up at a central 'hub' and the other characters will suddenly go off and leave you on your own. All of a sudden, you don't have a clue what you're doing. There are some doors which are shut, maybe you can open them, somehow. There is a machine with some buttons, you can press them but they don't seem to do anything. Warren Spector, creator of one of the finest games ever, 'Deus Ex', once said in an interview how desperate he was to take players into worlds they can recognise. Players' creative imaginations are stirred in a game when they see a telephone ("Can I make a phone call"?) but not when they see an alien artifact. Whilst this game deserves no blame for being set on an alien planet, abandoning the player in such a fashion is a very foolish move when this is taken into account. Having few NPCs to interact with doesn't help either.

The situations in 'The Dig' are not humorous, and neither are the characters particularly. Not that this is a bad thing at all, but Lucasarts in the past have rightly concluded that humour equals staying power in adventures. Getting past that %#$*@! puzzle deserves a reward, and a funny sequence does the job perfectly. Ron Gilbert positioned 'rewards' like these perfectly in the first 2 Monkey Islands, and they were often genuinly funny to boot. 'The Dig' doesn't have many of these - your hard work usually just opens up a new area, which is usually empty. This isolation and the lack of cutscenes begins to frustrate after a while. It gets better near the end though.

A personal gripe is that the whole game is spent in one place. I hate it when I find central hubs in adventures - you walk into a place with loads of doors and you just know you're going to spend the rest of the game walking through them. 'Grim Fandango' and 'Full Throttle' were two of the best when it came to this: the latter had you riding all over the country, so you were never in one place for too long. And in Grim, you were journeying all over the world. You never knew where you were going to be next, but you knew it would be completely different and exciting. The first time I saw the transition from the end of Year 1, where you were in a port-side ghost town, to Year 2, where the town had been transformed into something resembling Monte Carlo or Vegas, was the best moment I've ever had with an adventure game. You won't get that in 'The Dig', you're stuck with these rocks and artifacts and you know you ain't leaving any time soon.

I like the ending, but it's implausable.



The Bottom Line
Not a typical Lucasarts adventure, but still highly polished and well worth playing. It resembles 'Myst' not just in the puzzles but also in the sense of isolation, but it's an infinitly better game. You should still buy it; all Lucasarts' adventures are worth buying (so far, and since 'Loom' at least).

You won't "feel at home" with the adventure, but why should you? You're on an alien planet.

DOS · by Shazbut (163) · 2004

Waste of time.

The Good
The art design, while not breathtaking, was actually quite good. The early segments of the game set up some suspense and hinted at a great game ahead.

The Bad
While the early portion of the game set things up well (and "killed" off one of the most annoying characters) the middle and final segments of the game were a complete letdown. With a plot that seemed to have been hacked out of mediocre pulp SF films of the mid-50's, ridiculous dialogue, and characters that seemed to have been stereotyped from the same era as the plot. Oh, and the annoying character comes back as some sort of Undead Bavarian Lingust From Hell.

The puzzles were only average, and some of them were patently absurd and/or obtuse in the extreme. The turtle-thing skeleton puzzle comes to mind.

And I just wonder why so many writers and art directors seem to think that -any- dead civilization would have built with stone in a vaguely Egyptian style, regardless of technical advances. Like they were building their cities with prior knowledge that one day they would vanish and so they should design everything to look sufficiently "ruined". Sure, whatever.

The Bottom Line
If you really like adventure games of the SCUMM variety you might want to check it out. It's not so much a bad game, as a game that isn't a fraction of what it could have been. The story would have been excusable 50 years ago, but today it is just trite and insulting.

Well, ok, it is pretty bad.

DOS · by Patrick Mills (36) · 2000

[ 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
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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.