Anachronox - review

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Anachronox is a strange game. Released in 2001, it was the second and last game out of Ion Storm Dallas just before it was shut down by Eidos. Designed by Tom Hall (of Wolfenstein 3D and Rise of the Triad fame), it was a console RPG in the vein of Chrono Trigger (which Hall says was his main inspiration) but designed exclusively for the PC. It uses the Quake 2 engine and is sometimes referred to as an FPS hybrid, even though it's almost purely an RPG with no trace of shooter elements. It's truly a dual game with brilliant moments and glaring flaws.


Sights & Sound

Although the game uses the Quake 2 engine it lacks the distinctive look that each of id's 3D engines usually has. The engine was heavily modified to include features like facial expression, water droplets, smoke and other special effects. Technically the game shows the age of the engine, especially in the character models. However some locales are beautifully designed and look gorgeous so that I could easily forget how old the engine is. There is a lot of variety in the look of the many locales you visit, far more so than with other games using the engine. The facial expressions are surprisingly detailed, especially considering some of the heads look like square blocks with pixellated textures. How very slight shift in eyebrows are conveyed on such crude models is strange to see.

Sound effects are well-done, but not remarkable. Footsteps are realistic and change depending on the surface your character is walking on (not as common back then as it is now I suppose). Some of the weapons used in combat, especially later in the game, sound pretty cool. Some of the other combat sounds however sound like they were taken straight out of one of the older Japanese console RPGs. Considering the inspiration for the game this isn't very surprising but it sounds out of place in the setting the game creates.

Music is excellent, and greatly contributes to the atmosphere of the game. Except for some silly tunes, most of the music feels full-bodied, almost grand, and usually fits the setting and the visuals perfectly. On more than one occasion I found myself wishing the developers had gone an extra step and recorded the music with a real orchestra, but I guess this is a totally unrealistic wish for any game.


Plot & Setting

Being a science-fiction game, the story of Anachronox takes place in a future where space travel has been made very easy due to technological artefacts called Senders. These giant, planet-sized constructions have spikes protruding from their surfaces, which can be used to send spaceships to other spikes in remote regions of the universe. One such Sender houses a small artificial planet called Anachronox, where the game begins. You play Sly Boots, a down-on-his-luck P.I. (think several notches lower than Tex Murphy at the beginning of Under a Killing Moon) desperate for a job. With the help of his dead secretary (now turned holographic and implemented into Boots's LifeCursor) he goes looking for one and finds himself involved in something much bigger. Yes, it's another save-the-world plot (though this isn't very obvious until some time in the game), but it's all in the details. I do not want to spoil anything, as some of the twists are truly surprising, so all I'll say is that the details actually make a compelling story.

The game's setting is in many ways standard SF. Spaceships, space stations, technological gadgets, high-tech weapons, odd-looking aliens that speak another language, all are present in large quantities. The game tries to distinguish itself by introducing some interesting elements. Anachronox is comprised of a large number of plaques that move around and link new parts of the city. While this is never properly exploited in the game (it just serves to open up new areas as you progress through the game) it's conceptually neat and, along many other details about Anachronox, help to establish it as a real place rather than just a level in a game. Many of the aspects of Senders and Anachronox, such as who created them and why, are as much a mystery to the player as they are to the creatures populating the game world, and many will offer their own theories to answer these questions. The game never offers the "real" answer, but this mystery helps to maintain a sense of wonder and curiosity. Exploration is encouraged, as many locales have something of interest tucked away in a corner.

Perhaps the best aspect of Anachronox is its writing. While it initially seems dark and grim, the game has a lot humour. The majority of it is verbal (and very witty most of the time), but a lot of it stems from some truly crazy situations that arise. Again it's impossible to say any more without spoiling some surprises, and the game is much more fun if go into it unprepared The sheer uniqueness of these situations is what sets Anachronox apart from other SF games. The rest of the humour comes mostly from either the characters themselves, or from their interaction with each other and with the other denizens of the game world. The game manages not to take itself too seriously either, and pokes fun at its own plot more than once. This prevents the plot from coming across as too pompous and cleverly distracts you from criticising some of its cliches (since the NPCs will happily point them out). However when the story requires things to be serious all the humour vanishes and everything is played straight. One especially poignant scene between an old fading superhero and a alien girl springs to mind, especially effective because almost no words are spoken. To its credit the game manages to balance serious and funny moments and doesn't mix them inappropriately. As far as I was concerned both aspects worked very well, something you rarely see in games that attempt such a mix.

The only problem with this aspect of the game is the ending. It's not that it has a bad ending so much as it's not a real one. This was obviously meant to be the first in a series, and while the main plot and many of the threads are resolved, several are left dangling and the ending clearly leads into a potential sequel. Sadly, since Ion Storm no longer exist and the game didn't sell as well as Eidos would have liked the probability of seeing the story continued is nil.


Gameplay

Never mind the claims about this being an Action/RPG or an FPS or whatever - Anachronox is a role-playing game through and through. The party leader is seen in third person and can be moved with keyboard, while the mouse is used to control the camera angle and, as a result, the direction in which he's moving. Pressing Tab switches between party members. When you stop moving the LifeCursor appears. This is basically a mouse pointer you use to interact with objects and people in the world, though it's given a role in the game world and the story (and a very central role at that). Clicking on objects either uses them or picks them up, and clicking on people initiates conversation. Conversations are mostly monologues, but some require input from your character. Some of them play out differently depending on who is talking, which is a nice touch. Holding Ctrl and clicking lets you use the active character's special ability, something you will need to do for all characters at one point or another. It's a very simple and transparent system, and works very well.

Most of your time will be spent exploring new places and finding what needs to be done. There is a variety of puzzles that need to be solved, including pulling levers or finding keycards, talking to people to extract the information you need, activating alien machinery, sneaking into someone's room to find evidence, and so on. The most original puzzles involve the use of Boots's camera. Some of these involve collecting pictures for some collector but others involve a bit of sleuthing when investigating a murder or a kidnapping. They're quite fun, and different from the usual quests. Regardless, most quests are rather easy (all of the essential ones are), although some of the optional ones are insanely difficult. Annoyingly though, they tend to be difficult for the wrong reasons. One of the most insanely difficult side quests, taking the pictures of 8 Red Bippidri, is very frustrating not because you don't know what to do, or where to do it (the Red Bippidri's singing is very distinctive) but because even when you know this you have to be looking at exactly the right place at exactly the right time to see them. Another side "quest" involves clicking on something and then waiting four real-time hours without the ability to do anything else in the game, in order to get a powerful item. Worse yet, you can only get the item after a specific point in the game, and there is nothing to indicate this fact, or that you can get the item in this way, or even that you can get anything by doing this. While some people will feel compelled to find every single hidden thing in the game, most players will simply give up.

You start out controlling one character and find others who will join your party until it maxes out at seven people (including Boots). However you can only have 3 active characters at any time, including Boots. The 2 NPCs you pick will follow Boots while the others wait at the Lounge of Commerce, which becomes your headquarters some time into the game. If while exploring some far-off planet you stumble onto a situation that requires one of the "inactive" NPCs, you have to walk all the way back to your ship, fly to Sender Station, walk to the Lounge, switch NPCs, walk to your ship, fly to the planet and walk all the way back to where you were. This can take up to five minutes real time, and sometimes this is not even possible. While the game will force you to take specific NPCs if you need their skill, this still involves a huge amount of backtracking to solve some of the optional quests. You may be tempted to skip such quests entirely, but the rewards tend to be better weapons, better armor or new abilities, and without these you will have a very difficult time in the later stages of the game.

This is ridiculous. Why not let the party stay together and then let you pick the active characters used in combat? At the very least the NPCs could have accompanied you to the planets you visit and waited at the ship or some other convenient HQ. At it stands this draws out the game significantly without adding any fun. It's a major source of tedium, and one of the most irritating features in the game. This is especially bizarre since the party's inventory is treated as one common pool. Worse, you can unequip something from an inactive NPC and equip it on an active one even though they are at opposite ends of the universe! While this does lead to slightly less frustration it also makes the previous situation even more bizarre and nonsensical.

Combat is a little strange for someone like me who's not played console RPGs. The 3 active characters' information bars are arrayed at the bottom of the screen and display current health (plus shield if in use), NRG (or mana) and "Bouge". Combat is in real time. Each character can take one action then has to wait a certain amount of time (dictated by the Speed stat) before they can act again. The actions are either attack (called Beat), move (moving one space counts as a turn's action), cast MysTech (the equivalent of spells in the gameworld), use an inventory item or use a special ability. Special abilities can only be used when enough Bouge is available, which recharges over time. Naturally the fancier abilities require more Bouge. Combat animations are fun and each weapon has a different one, which prevents them from becoming too repetitive. The specials are sometimes impressive, though some tend to be over the top. On easy setting combat is far too easy. However playing on normal can be very frustrating because a couple of fights are far too hard. The real danger is from status ailments such as Poison, Slow, Winky (?!) and so on. The major problem with this section is that the status effects are not documented. No mention is made of them in the manual, and there is no way to know during combat the name of the status. All you get is a silly coloured icon, but with no way of checking what the colour coding means this is utterly useless.

There are several mini-games scattered throughout the game. Using a character's skill will always invoke one, and several situations also bring with them a one-time mini-game. These vary widely in quality. Lockpicking for example was an interesting way of portraying the skill, while Yammer just felt silly. The one-time mini-games are also odd, in that one of them lasts for less than a minute while another can go on for 10-15 minutes. It feels like yet another console RPG feature thrown in for this reason alone, and while some of them can be fun having so many feels disjointed.


Technical problems

Four patches have been released for the game. One is official, two appear semi-official (they were created by one of the game programmers) and the last one is unofficial. Patch 1 is already included in later ones, but the other 3 must be installed in the correct order. With all patches installed the game ran very cleanly, and loading times were very fast and painless. I ran across no serious bugs and nothing strange or bizarre happened with my game. However there are several technical issues to be aware of before starting a game.

First, the Autosave feature is useless. While the game helpfully autosaves at key points in the story, the autosaves seem to be incomplete and lack some information. They will for example not store any of the pictures you take, which means going back to one will prevent you from completing some of the quests. There are other glitches associated with them as well, such as the models of some enemies from fixed combats returning (although the combats themselves do not reset) and just standing there looking dumb. On a related note, the game keeps track of how many hours you've played, but sometimes restoring a game (whether the autosave or a manual save) will reset that clock, practically making the feature useless.

My biggest gripe with the game, however, is there by design and has to do with the game's cutscenes. Anachronox has no cinematics. Instead all of the cutscenes are in-engine. Considering there are several hours' worth of cutscenes in there (another console RPG influence?) this may have been a wise decision. The cutscenes are generally very well done, so this is not the problem. The problem is that there is no way to access the main menu or do anything while a cutscene is in progress, including skipping the cutscene. While some of the cutscenes are repeated over and over (such as Boots stepping out of an elevator) and I was getting annoyed at the repetition, I could still live with it. Then I got to a point in the game with two back-to-back fights (with a cutscene in-between of course), followed by a long cutscene, followed by yet another combat. I died in that fight, as its setup makes it pretty easy to lose. Thankfully the game had left me a usable autosave, but this was before the cutscene. So my penalty for failure was to watch that five minute long cutscene - again. All the sense of drama the cutscene had managed to create vanished. By the 4th time I was cursing. What were the designers thinking? Worse, there is no way out of combat other than victory or failure. Since all of your NPCs must survive this particular fight, should one of them fall the fight becomes unwinnable. The only way (short of letting the opposition wipe everyone out) to reload a save is to quit the game and restart it. I have not had to do this since the Gold Box games of the late 1980s. What were they thinking?


Final words

It's a shame that the party limitation was implemented in this way and that the cutscenes cannot be skipped. Combined together these irriations become a big detraction. It's a shame because Anachronox does almost everything else well. Combat is not great, but it's not bad either. Graphics and music combine with level design to create an interesting world to explore. The story is full of surprises, both humourous and dramatic. The characters are interesting and reveal interesting backstories and intricate relations as the game progresses. Becoming engrossed in the game world can be fascinating. Despite some reservation, Anachronox is highly recommended for anyone who likes science fiction RPGs. If not for the flaws, it would have been a must.

 

Anachronox is actually an Adventure/RPG hybrid. The only time when your actions have an effect on the consequences is in one of the character-specific solo quests (where you should choose honesty over trying to accomplish the objectives no matter the cost).
Yeah that "waiting" game is incredibly annoying (especially since you kinda need that item, if you want to properly use that character in the final part of the game). Then again, I've heard of people who, whilst playing Morrowind, got their character in a pool, put fishing weights on the 'run' and 'jump' keys, then went to bed. The next day that character could jump over a Balmoran house.
The Autosave is useless. That's why I had it disabled and relied on my OCD fanatical save addiction to keep me out of trouble.

Edit: IIRC, it was one of the first polygon-based games to offer facial expressions and lip-synch.

 

I was tempted to classify it as an Adenture/RPG, but the adventure element seemed sparse. None of the quests require any object manipulation (if you've got the object then you can proceed) and most of the puzzles are pretty simple. I would still say it's fully an RPG because, while your actions have almost no effect on the main plot, in many of the side quests they do influence the outcome. I think the lack of influence on the main plot is a design necessity considering how heavily story-oriented the game is. The sheer volume of optional stuff as well really doesn't fit with the idea we have of adventure games.

The only time I actually was glad I left autosave on was regarding those back-to-back-to-back battles I mentioned in the review. With autosave off losing in the third battle would mean going back to before the first - so a 5-minute cutscene, 2 battles, another 5-minute cutscene, and then back to the fight. At least with the autosave you only have to put up with the last two items.

 

I thought puzzle-heavy Adventures were called Quests... Or was that only back in the old days?

I could make the same argument about the complexity (or lack thereof) of the RPG elements (we are, afterall, on a board dedicated primarily to what a great many consider archetypal RPGs). My view is that, generally, hybrids are less than the sum of their parts, yet than shouldn't be regarded as a negative. The proportion between the constituting elements is more important, and it is in this aspect that Anachronox can be considered quite well-balanced.

Oh, and most of the stuff can't really be considered optional, not if you want good shielding, decent NRG level, or the ability to perform the Hec... erm, most powah-ful Mystech ability. (Edit Also, your wielded weapon's damage is used to calculate special attack damage.

 

First of all, sorry for thread resurrection, but this seemed like the best place to post this.


It is possible to speed through the cutscenes in Anachronox (this feature was added by one of the patches - build 44, IIRC). You speed through the cutscenes by pressing and holding the backslash key. ( \ )


As for the game, it's quite fun and has very interesting camera solutions for cutscenes. Too bad the team didn't get to finish it the way they planned.

 

Now I feel really stupid... I should have read the patch readme more carefully...

I'm usually not a great fan of in-game cutscenes, but Anachronox really surprised me. The dream sequences are masterfully done and the way the triangle between Boots, Sarah and Fatima gets revealed was gripping. The only emotions that games usually evolve in me are frustration or boredom, but the writing in Anachronox was very powerful. Some of the best fleshed out characters I've seen in a CRPG.

 

Don't feel bad Z. I nearly missed the backslash thing too.
Oh, and you have a really good review there.

One of the things that I really like in Anachronox is the mouse cursor solution. I've never seen it so cleverly implemented as part of the game world, while still keeping it extremely simple.

The game is dangerously good as it is, but imagine it with today's graphic, expanded story and some minor tweaks... IMO, it would rival the best of them.

 

Thanks

Whenever someone asks me what the most original feature of the game is my answer is always "your mouse cursor is one of the main characters". This never fails to surprise! It's not only a clever way of doing it but I admire the designers' ability to turn what could have been a gimmick into one of the fundamental points of the game's story.

I don't mind the graphics, what they lack technologically they make up in design. The only shame is the ending and the fact we'll never see the sequel.

 

I don't mind the graphics either, especially on the party character models, but sometimes I look at the sharp corners and simple textures of environment stuff (like MysTech tunnels) and find myself thinking: "It would look better with some smoothing over".

Also "Can't we just pretend I've beaten it?" option after failing the boat ride was priceless. Out of curiosity, I tried it - and it works. You continue the game as if you had passed the boat ride.

 

That was one of the strangest things about the game's graphics for me and I said this in the interview. The faces are blocky, pixellated and crude, yet the facial animations are so well done and convey so much expression that they really bring the characters to life. It helps that the voice acting is excellent.