Game 73: B.A.T. (1989)

       

B.A.T.

France

Computer's Dream (Developer) / Ubi Soft (Publisher)

Released 1989 for Atari ST; 1990 for DOS

Date Started: 06 July 2012

     
A few months ago, I was musing about how role-playing games relate to the hemispheres of the brain. I suggested that pen-and-paper RPGs were curious in that they appeal to both halves: open-ended storytelling for the right side and hard statistics and probabilities for the left side. I noted that the earliest developers of computer RPGs essentially took the left-brained stuff and nothing else; all the storytelling went into adventure games--first text, then graphical. These are no less "role-playing" games than what we call CRPGs, as you definitely play a role, but they didn't get that title.

Thinking about it now, I think my reasoning was a bit flawed. While storytelling and statistical halves of tabletop RPGs definitely peeled off into two separate game genres, I'm not sure you can really call computer adventure games "right-brained," since they don't really appeal to the player's creativity. Quite the opposite: many of them require the player to progress through a series of steps in a specific order. I wouldn't necessarily call them "left-brained," either, since those steps are often nonsensical or counter-intuitive. You spend more time figuring out what the developer possibly had in mind than what your character would do in a real situation. It's probably this reason that's kept me from embracing adventure games most of my life. There have been some exceptions. I have a fondness for the Infocom text adventures because they were very well-written and had a great sense of humor. The first Myst game blew me away with its graphics, atmosphere, and complexity of the puzzles. Beyond that, though, the genre often leaves me flat. I love reading Trickster's writing at The Adventure Gamer, but I can't say I love the games.

We're entering an era now, though, in which the genres are starting to blend. Programming limitations became less of an issue in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it was possible for developers to include strong narratives along with flexible inventories and probability-based combats. B.A.T. is the first game to appear on both Wikipedia's chronology of computer role-playing games and its list of graphical adventure games. Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero? will soon follow. We'll have several per year throughout the 1990s. This game will demonstrate how well I ease into these hybrids. (Technically, Beyond Zork was the first hybrid, albeit non-graphical. But it's hard to take that game as a serious example of anything.)

Every secret agent needs a gun.

When I heard the name, I thought that B.A.T. might take place in a future where firearms are completely legal, but we still needed agents to investigate alcohol and tobacco. Instead, though, the initialism stands for the Bureau of Astral Troubleshooters--essentially the Secret Service of the 22nd century. Actually, apparently in the original French version, it stood for Bureau des Affaires Temporelles ("Bureau of Temporal Affairs"), which sounds a bit cooler, although the manual doesn't suggest anything about time travel.

The B.A.T. manual (I suddenly just thought of The Tick) is clearly translated from French by someone with a limited grasp of English, but from what I can gather, it's the twenty-second century. Humanity has colonized the stars through "artificial black holes," has met up with different alien races, and has formed a Confederation of Galaxies. As a B.A.T. agent,

You will travel around various worlds, all different from each other, meeting strange or frightening characters. You will have to achieve perilous missions but you will have the fabulous chance to visit an integral world and to discover mysteries through adventures that we offer you.

My specific mission is apparently to find a terrorist named Vrangor and "blow his brains out" (the 4th Amendment clearly didn't survive transition to galactic government) within 10 days from the start of the game. The reason for this time limit became clear after the beginning of the game.

I know there's some question as to whether this is a CRPG, but it certainly starts like one. It's got a neat character creation process in which you can raise or lower six attributes--force, intelligence, charisma, perception, energy, and reflexes--and see in real-time (via a graph at the top of the screen) the corresponding effects on a selection of 13 skills, including pick locks, firing, and psychology.

I'm suppressing the part of me that's screaming, "You can't use line graphs to represent nominal data!!"

You then select a couple of weapons. The manual warns you that your choice is "crucial for the rest of the game" but doesn't offer much help. I went with something called the Hacker 30, described as "the butcher's weapon" and "beautiful weapon for you acupuncture experts!!!" plus a little "Voktrasof," that I gather is very concealable. After giving yourself a name, you are then deposited in a spaceport with a computer embedded in your arm and not much direction.

After a few futile conversations with a couple aliens and robots, I went to the only place the game would let me go: a nearby restroom. There, I encountered another B.A.T. agent, who gave me my mission: track down an escaped prisoner named Vrangor by first finding his co-escapee, Merigo. Vrangor is exerting some influence over the ruler of Selenia, who has issued a decree that every human has to leave within 10 days or face execution.

Actually, I think it might be helpful if I heard the long story.

The agent gave me a hologram of Merigo to show people and sent me off.

Although the views in the game are first-person, you can't do anything fancy like turn or rotate. Instead, you move from screen to screen and interact with the elements on the screen the same way you do in a lot of adventure games, clicking on people to talk to them, machines to use them, and so forth. Sometimes, the places you can click are non-obvious, so you need to hover over pretty much everything.

This screen has a variety of buildings I can enter and people I can talk to.

At first, every alien just responded to me in gibberish, but then I realized I had to set my computer to translate "alien" instead of "robot." When I talk to robots, I need to set it back. This is a bit tedious.

This thing looks kind of disgusting.

So far, the NPC dialogue has been a little unproductive, but the interface isn't bad. You click on the NPC and select from a list of topics. One is to show Merigo's hologram, but so far no one has recognized him.

Indeed.

 
Thus far, I'm not seeing a lot of RPG elements, but then again, I haven't encountered any combat yet. You do have a certain number of credits, with which you can buy things like ammunition and food. (To my mind, flexible spending options are not usually a hallmark of adventure games.) This is good, because I had none of the former when I started, and my computer told me I was both hungry and thirsty.
 

At least I see the "next" arrow on this one.

 
While I was exploring and typing this entry, the game screen flashed a few times, and then showed me an image of Selenia in which humans are dead in the streets, so I guess I failed somehow. I wonder if time passes when you're just standing around. If that's the case, I probably need to adjust my CPU speed downwards in DOSBox.

I had no idea so much was on the line.

As you can see, the visuals are pretty good. Of course, this DOS version came out in 1991, two years after the original Atari ST version. We're only a couple years away from Myst at this point. On the sound, so far I haven't heard any except for a relentlessly looping techno-beat that sent me for the "mute" button on my keyboard. This is the second game in which the developers seem to have thrown up their hands and said "screw it" when adapting sound for the DOS port.

I'm not in love with the game so far, but I'm eager to finish this first RPG/adventure hybrid. One major difference between RPGs and adventure games is that you generally start RPGs only one or two times and play through with your initial party, for better or worse. With adventure games, I often restart the game numerous times to explore and try out different things, and my winning character might be my 20th (e.g., Beyond Zork, Journey: The Quest Begins). I'm curious what happens, therefore, with hybrids.

Later edit: Make sure to read the comments on this one. Helm has a brilliant bit of philosophy.