Martian Dreams: A Man, a Plan, a Canal

And Giovanni Schiaparelli is vindicated!

   

When I last wrote, I had learned that a plague had wiped out the Martian race (a plant-based life form), but they preserved their consciousnesses in their Dream Machines. Some of those Martians had taken over human hosts when the humans arrived and started using the Dream Machines. Hoping that the plague was over, the next step seemed to be growing a new Martian body and seeing if anyone could transfer into it, thus freeing the humans. I needed one human in particular--Charles Lewis Tiffany--freed so he could repair a lens I needed to melt the polar ice caps and re-activate the canals.

Growing a Martian body wasn't hard but took a lot of time and steps. Various NPCs had basically given me the needed items and recipes. First, I had to get some Martian seedlings. This involved breaking into a building with a rusted-shut door. I was happy to figure out the solution: use oil on it. Fortunately, I had a large supply for my lamps.
    

If this was Sierra's Mars Quest, there would have been like one can of oil in the whole game.

     

I wasn't sure if I could plant the seed just anywhere, so I tried just digging a patch of ground and dropping the seed into it, and it seemed to work. I suddenly realized I needed water. In the dream, I'd just found a bucket of it, but in the real world, all the planet's water was locked in the polar ice caps. I wondered if it was as easy as just walking up to one of the ice caps and using a pick on it. This worked--it broke away a chunk of ice--but I needed something to carry it in. It took me forever wandering around the various cities to find a bucket.
    

If all else fails, we can refill the canals the long way.

    

Back at my plant, it took a few tries to get the sequence right. I needed to put the shoveled dirt back on the seed, then water it, then fertilize it with phosphorous, nitrogen, and potash, all found in nearby buildings. I think that was it.
    

I suppose it was sexist to make the woman do the gardening.

    

The stupid plant took like 12 days to grow. It's not like I had a lot of other things to do during this time. I tried exploring, re-talking to everyone, and so forth, but every time I made it back to the plant, it had barely advanced. Finally, I just kept pitching a tent next to it and sleeping repeatedly until the seed eventually became a pod. Cutting open the pod revealed a Martian body.
    

I know he didn't grow up in the compost of his ancestors, but I'm not 100% sure why he still didn't have a mind and soul of his own.

    

I hauled it back to the Dream Machine and entered. I told the leader, Prektesh, about my success, and he told me he'd inhabit the body. Returning to the real world, I shoved the inert Martian body in the Dream Machine's chair. Prektesh soon entered it and thanked me for saving his people.
      

    

Then everything went to hell. He fell sick, withered, and died, realizing at the end that the plague is in the planet's very soil. As he died, he suggested that I seek out the laboratory of Kaxishek, who had been looking for a different solution. He also told me to take his body to Tekapesh in Elysium and convince him to help me, as the Elysium Martians' plans to grow new bodies must be similarly doomed.
 

Mars does, in fact, have two moons: Phobos and Deimos.

    
Tekapesh was inhabiting Percival Lowell's body. Fortunately, he saw reason. He said that if I could enter the Dream Machine and free the humans from their nightmares, he and his people would withdraw from their bodies, return to the dream world, and await the successful outcome of my quest--at least, for a while. There was an implied threat that we'd better not take too long. I'm not sure if there's a real time limit attached to the rest of the game or not. Part of me wants to find out, 'cause he was kind of a dick about it.
    

How would he "shorten my existence" from inside his little machine?

   
What followed were another series of dream-world missions that required me to solve puzzles and use inventory in interesting ways. The first was Wyatt Earp. He'd been turned into a horse in his nightmare, and I had to buy him from an auctioneer. The fun thing is that it if you buy one of the other horses instead, you find yourself talking to Smith, who--as is his custom--gives hints to solve Ultima VI and The Savage Empire rather than the current game. I'm guessing that in the game's canon, you're not really talking to Smith but rather your own subconscious projection of him. Either way, you have to buy a different horse if you want to free Earp.
    

He's a bit more verbose about those hints than in the previous game.

    

Next up: Mark Twain. He was adrift in a sea of stars with only a barge to navigate. Pages of his latest novel were strewn everywhere. I had to navigate the barge around and pick up at least 20 of the pages. It was good practice for my later barge travels in the Martian canals. It took me a long time to realize that once you set the direction on the control lever, you want to hold down SPACE to wait as the barge moves on its own.
    

Floating with Mark Twain in the firmament.

    
Georges Méliès was next, and I forgot to screenshot his puzzle, so I don't remember how it went. I think we were in a room that got smaller with every step I took on certain-colored tiles, and I had to cross the room, get an oil can, and return to the original location to oil and open a door, without the room getting so small it crushed us.

Last was Percival Lowell himself, lost within the solar system. I had to walk from planet to planet using a pair of winged shoes, fight some kind of serpent, make my way to Pluto, and signal Lowell with a mirror. It was something about finding Planet X. (I'm writing this a week later, and I took poor notes.) Whatever I did, it worked and everyone woke up.
    

    
Back in the real world, Tekapesh kept his promise, gathered his people, and returned to the Dream Machine, letting the humans reclaim their bodies.
     

     
Tiffany repaired the broken lens, and I installed both it and the motor that Edison had repaired in their respective polar stations. Back at the first station--the one where I had killed the weed overgrowth--I activated the system by entering the current time, something that Admiral Peary had told me to do even though I didn't really understand it. How is my pocketwatch even telling the correct time on Mars?

A cut scene showed the system coming to life and starting to melt the ice caps into cisterns. Of course, it couldn't be that easy. The canals remained dry. Sherman piped up that we should check a pumping station. He gave me the coordinates, and we went there. I couldn't figure out anything to do, but I also couldn't explore the entire station because there were deadly steam vents that I couldn't find any way to circumvent.
    

Job half done, at least.

    
In the meantime, I decided to search the polar region for the laboratory of Kaxishek. It only took a little walking before I found the entrance. I assume it wasn't available until I melted some of the ice. Inside, it became clear that Kaxishek's plan for new Martian bodies was mechanical. A robot in the lair, calling himself "Cutter," said that to activate the already-created mechanical body, I'd need a "heartstone," which is "capable of housing sentience," from a chunk of Azurite.
    

     
I had no idea where to find it, but I thought I'd check Buffalo Bill's trading post. Since I also needed ammunition, I returned to the power station and loaded up on Oxium first. The bins really do hold an infinite supply. Until you get access to these bins, Oxium is too precious to spend (you need it to breathe); afterwards, there is functionally no economy because you can gain an infinite amount for no effort. It's even worse because there's a bug by which Calamity Jane doesn't even take your Oxium when you use it to buy ammunition.
     

Dipping into an unlimited supply of Oxium.

     
Anyway, I loaded up on rifle and revolver cartridges. Bill and Jane didn't have anything to say about Azurite, but they reminded me that at his own trading post, William Randolph Hearst had more esoteric Martian artifacts. I headed to his shop at the base of Olympus Mons. I had previously visited him before exploring the Olympus caves but forgot to mention it.

In exchange for the Azurite, Hearst wanted me to retrieve a camera from the top of Olympus. He'd sent a man up there to photograph "the new cannon being built," which isn't on the top of Olympus at all but rather in the caves. But whatever. I got his camera. I had to fight a bunch of "proto-Martians" on the top of the mountain.
   

     
Bringing the camera back to Hearst wasn't enough. Next, he wanted the film developed. It would have been a better quest if the game had let me figure out which NPC to ask myself--who has experience with cameras and film?--but Hearst himself told me to simply seek out Georges Méliès. I trekked back to Olympus, took the transport tube to Elysium, and spoke to Méliès. He developed the film immediately and gave it back to me. I returned to Hearst.

That paragraph encompasses everything I can't stand about this game that isn't plot-related. To solve that little side-quest, I had to walk from Olympus to Olympus Mons, speak to Hearst, walk from Olympus Mons to Olympus, transport to Elysium, talk to Méliès, transport back to Olympus, and walk back to Olympus Mons. If anything had happened along the way, if there had been any kind of puzzle to solve related to the camera, if there had been any other reason to go to Elysium--any of those things might have redeemed this little quest step. As it is, the developers are just wasting my time.

Not that the walking was done there. Having received the Azurite from Hearst, I then had to walk back to Olympus and take the transport tube to Elysium again to walk back to the laboratory.
    

I'm not sure how the android is distinguished as a "woman," or why plant-based life would even recognize genders.

    
Inside the lab, I had Cutter turn the Azurite into a heartstone, then put the heartstone in the android. I figured I needed to get the android to the Dream Machine in Elysium, so I had Dibbs pick it up, which involved clearing out almost all his inventory first. Back we went to Elysium. The Avatar entered the dream world and spoke to the Martians until one of them, Chsheket, seemed interested in entering the metal body. I exited the dream, placed the body in the machine in my place, and watched as Chsheket entered and animated it.
   

    
Immediately, Sherman said that his services were no longer needed, dumped his equipment on the ground, and bolted. I don't know why he felt he had to do that given that the party formation clearly accommodates 6 members. Meanwhile, Spector and Chsheket opined that we should stress-test the body a bit before downloading more Martians. That was fine with me, since I didn't have any more metal bodies or heartstones. I mean, that wasn't even on the table.
    

That's good, since I wasn't looking forward to repeating the process 18 times.

    
I figured an android could get past the steam vents in the pumping station, and I was right. Chsheket simply had to walk past them, turn a valve, and once again the Martian canali flooded with water.
     

Turning a wheel counter-clockwise definitely requires a Martian's touch.

    
Other notes:

• Asking Mark Twain about Tom Sawyer caused his dialogue to crash.

    

This game is full of logical errors.

   

• In a game that usually wastes such opportunities, Hearst did have a response to an obvious keyword, although I think the creators could have tried a bit harder.

     

     

• Hearst said that the man he'd sent to photograph the cannon was named "Boringstoke." I thought he was making fun of my name before I remembered that the game doesn't know my name.

• Chsheket joined the party at Level 2 but already had 240 hit points. She leveled up a few times, quite rapidly, but never got more hit points from leveling.

    
During this session, Martian Dreams firmly cemented itself as an adventure game with incidental combats. As I look over my past entries, I see that there's been only one quest sequence in the entire game, and all my attempts to circumvent it by, say, investigating the cities before restoring power, or re-flooding the canals before solving the "Martian bodies" problem, have been met with the equivalent of impassable steam vents, forcing me along a predetermined route. This is an unwelcome change from the relative nonlinearity of the previous Ultima titles, including The Savage Empire. At least it will come to an end soon.

Time so far: 28 hours
Reload count: 5