Whale's Voyage: From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee

This game has simply award-winning NPC interaction.

       

My crew ended the last session rich, fully equipped, and in possession of that damned heart we'd been trying to get rid of since the first mission. We had been instructed by an unknown party to return to Lapis and meet someone at a pair of coordinates.

   

For the first time in about 25 voyages, I was not attacked by pirates on the way to Lapis. Perhaps killing one of them scared the rest of them away. I launched the glider and flew to the indicated coordinates, at which point a button appeared on my toolbar that said "Beam to Mine." I'm curious what happens to your glider when you just beam off it. I guess it returns to the ship automatically. 

     

Skimming across the landscape in my glider.

      

The mine was a small map. Other than our contact, we met only one NPC, a miner named Gryx Gwyn who said he was mining for titanium, but then after barely any prompting let it slip that he was actually looking for gold. 

     

Our contact had the unfortunate name of Jenns Nippel. He was standing next to some sort of computer, which he said was a device that allowed him to bug all of the phones on Lapis. When prompted for other information, he referred us to a paragraph in the game manual. It's in an appendix, and it's the only one, so this won't become a regular thing.

          

I dare you to introduce yourself to Ben Affleck.

        

I guess I won't reprint all the dialogue--it's just a smidge too long--but in summary, Nippel said that he's an agent of a resistance group seeking to overthrow the government. "We live in a democracy," he says, "but in reality it's more like a dictatorship." His evidence for this is, alas, a bit thin. First: "Where else would you find a complete absence of political parties?" Why would anyone think that political parties are necessary to democracy? A democracy with no political parties was George Washington's dream and mine. Dictatorships have one party, not no parties. Second: opinions that differ from the government's are suppressed by the incompetence of a massive bureaucracy. Unfortunate, but not really a sign of a "dictatorship." I'd really like some more evidence. Are there elections? Is there any reason to think they're not fair? Is habeas corpus still around? That kind of thing.

      

See, it's this kind of thing I worry about in a dictatorship.

             

The heart, meanwhile, "is for an important man who has been very active in support of our organization." But the Secret Service has been trying to block the man from getting it. We gave it to Nippel for $100,000, which is pocket change to us now. "I have got another well-paid job for you," he then said. He wanted us to escort a ship to Nedax for $10,000 and some fuel, basically as much as we can make selling a single ton of perfume. But the game doesn't let you say no, so I guess we're in. Down with the bureaucrats and their paperwork in triplicate!

        

Back on the Whale, we got a phone call from Commander Tenz on the ship we were supposed to escort. We set a course for Nedax. Sure enough, on the way, the ship was attacked and Tenz put out a mayday.

        

       

The resulting battle was with six Federation ships, four coming in from the left and two from the right. I'm proud to say I won the battle on my first try, but my hits got down to 2 before I did. The trick was to make them come to me and save most of my movement points for firing. Some of them had longer ranges than I did, though, which was hard to gauge. Ultimately, I destroyed the two on the right and then zipped back and got the four on the left. I assume we're the most wanted people in the galaxy now, having committed multiple terrorist acts for $10,000.

       

Destroying the last three ships.

       

Commander Tenz called to thank us and said to meet someone named Kevin Grove on Nedax. 

    

Nedax is almost entirely covered with water. People live in small settlements built on the sea floor. The default city is called Aqua, another small enough area that there's no point mapping. We found a store and bought an infra-red scanner for no reason than I didn't already have one. The shop also sold what seemed like more advanced weapons, including a "plasmagun" and a flame thrower, but I decided to continue to see how far I could get with my machete.

        

That's not "growing up." That's just "getting bigger."

      

I found Kevin Grove wandering around somewhere, and he said that the pirates wanted to join the revolution. Their leader, Sam van Varn, wanted to meet a resistance agent, and somehow that's going to be us, despite the fact that we just heard about the organization yesterday. He gave us coordinates, which I assumed were on the same planet.

   

We beamed back to the ship, launched the glider, went to the coordinates, and found a city called Necth. We beamed in. Almost immediately, we got attacked by a guy in a spacesuit--a federation soldier. Like all of the game's battles, it was over in about three seconds with all party members dead. Maybe one of the shops on one of the other planets sells armor. Fortunately, the city had one of those places where you can pay for healing, and I had plenty of money, so I just had to keep at least one character alive and rush there after every battle. The planet wouldn't let us beam up until all the enemies were dead.

       

Every combat in this game ends this way the first time.

        

Complicating things, I had Mapple pick up one of the soldier's dropped plasmagun just to check it out. This apparently put him over his encumbrance limit, which the game doesn't bother to tell you. The game's solution to overencumbrance is to have the character start taking damage, with no warning, until he dies. Since I was getting attacked on the planet anyway, I didn't realize that I was also taking damage from another source. I had to resurrect Mapple about eight times.

Elsewhere, an NPC named Hermes Rue told us about an alien ship seen beyond Inoid. "The ship is visible on every map but nobody realizes it." Later, on the ship, we looked at the map, and indeed, you can move the cursor past Inoid to an object called Grfdfvxlts.

        

We knew there were aliens, right? Otherwise, what are those squid things during character creation?

      

In the northern part of town was a tavern, where the bartender said he ran out of drinks.

         

You know how many Bourbon Street bartenders have tried that ruse on me?

        

He also said that an hour ago, some Federation officers had entered and tried to arrest a man sitting at the table behind us, but he had escaped. The only thing on the table was an ashtray, but it had a number etched into its surface.  

     

If there's a highlight of this game, it's examining objects.

          

Back on the Whale, we called the number. The voice on the other end, Sam van Varn, recapped that he had to flee, but he saw us fighting federation soldiers, so he knew he could trust us. A Mr. Wostock had told him to go meet Jenns Nippel on Lapis. He said he'd wait for us there.

   

We returned to Lapis to find Nippel's body crumpled in the corner where his  machine had been. Sam van Varn, complete with an eyepatch, was standing nearby with a shotgun. When we demanded answers, he said he thought Nippel was a Secret Service spy. "We have to hush up this murder," he said. "Mr. Wostock will arrive very soon. [He] should think that the Secret Service killed Jenns." I couldn't think of any way to do this. Van Varn and I just stood there staring at each other for a while and nothing happened.

     

Why did you think that?

            

Rather than look up a spoiler, I decided to see if I could pick up the next thread through open exploration. I verified that each planet has coordinates between (0,0) and (50,50). They all wrap, of course. The screen is capable of showing about 5 x 10 at a time. Findings for each planet:

     

1. Lapis. The manual describes it as hot, dry, and "extremely inhospitable." This plus a certain distance from the center of the system give it a "wild west" vibe, with lots of associated crime. The main city is Algo. I had already explored it, but I took a tour again. An NPC named G. J. Styx begged for money; Baumann said he was collecting taxes (but didn't ask me for any); John Styx said it was hard working in the mines; Krueger told us about Hypo-Coco disease. The shopkeeper, Ferdinand, said that trade is getting more restricted and controlled. I bought some explosives from him in case we needed them later. On the surface, I found a few things that looked like they could be buildings or settlements, but none of them gave me the option to beam down.

      

This looks like it should be something, but it wasn't.

        

2. Arboris: A large and lush planet, full of vegetation. The main city is called Sando, but exploring the surface led me to find a second city called Dymy. I explored Sando first, as I hadn't already. It was a large, open town with wooden buildings, meant to evoke a frontier town. Three wandering NPCs--Bimpf, Kirm Yuk, and Franz--had nothing useful to tell us, but another, Mrs. Patterson, was looking for a lost key. Julia S. said that more and more people join the revolution. The shopkeeper, Emil Cross, sold wine, an electrical staff, and a translator device (among other things). I bought them all.

    

In Dymy, shopkeeper Samuel Brown had some even more advanced-sounding weapons that I didn't buy. There was a whole locked complex in the southern part of the city that I couldn't access. Otherwise, I found nothing useful here.

       

The aesthetics of Sando.

      

3. Castra: The slum planet, where of course the game had started. From the glider, the map showed a reasonably accurate depiction of urban sprawl. There were some interesting physical features on the planet's surface, but nothing that gave us beam-down options. I took another loop around Penthe, the default city, and found nothing new.

4. Sky Boulevard, the central planet in the system, was originally called Decadence IV. Overpopulation and lax environmental laws caused an ecological collapse, and now the population lives in a huge space station orbiting the planet. Since you can't visit the planet itself, there's no glider option. Instead, you beam directly to the colorful metal corridors of the orbiting space station.

Again, I find virtually nothing. A shopkeeper, Reginald, sells a Sonic Absorber and a better electrical staff. Three guys named Wellsgoff, Spanjersberg, and Mr. Stocker stand behind counters but have nothing to say to me.

         

I'm definitely starting to get on board with the anti-bureaucrat movement.

     

5. Nedax. The water planet, which I just recently visited, has nothing new. I find no cities other than Aqua and Necth. In Necth, I do find a federation soldier that I somehow missed the first time, but he's not hostile anymore. When I try to kill him, a bunch of planetary guards show up and kill me instantly, the same way they do if you attack any innocent NPC.

    

6. Inoid, the frozen planet. The capital city is Glace, and I find no other cities by flying around the surface. While trying to talk to the NPCs, who have a tendency of walking away while you're trying to target them, I remember similar problems with MegaTraveller and wonder if the Paragon titles had more influence than I thought. A bunch of ski-mask clad denizens who yell at me to get out of the way. Two wandering NPCs named Ben Zock and Krycencov have nothing to contribute. There's nothing new in the hospital.

    

I already am.

       

7. Grfdfvxtls. The game treats the so-called alien spaceship as a planet, but it has no trade goods and no ship services. We beam down to alien corridors and, well, actual aliens. They speak gibberish but we have a translation device! With it, we learn that they have become "stuck in a time zone because of an engine trouble." They need a special "essence" for their engine called X-109-E. But they thank us for offering to help and say we can use their cargo bay for storage. 

       

40 aliens on the ship, and I meet the drunk one.

        

The ship is quite large, with many of the aliens, but they all seem to have the same dialogue, and I don't find anything else on the ship. When I leave, I discover I don't have enough fuel to get back to Inoid. Good thing I didn't save out here. I reload from the last place I saved, on Nedax.

        

My readers should know by now that I like to be challenged by games. I like it less when the challenge is purely physical (i.e., controller dexterity) and more when it's intellectual. There are a lot of intellectual challenges in games, from the logic puzzles of Dungeon Master to the observational challenges of adventure games to the statistical challenges inherent in every RPG. But there's also a kind of meta-challenge present when your sanity, patience, and credulity are up against a patently ridiculous game. Even when the game lacks anything else, there's always a bit of a thrill when I force myself through an absurd wreck of a game like Ultima: Escape from Mount Drash (1983), Kayden Garth (1989), or The Rescue of Lorri in Lorrintron (1991) and pull off an unlikely win. But I don't want that type of challenge to be my exclusive experience with RPGs, and boy does it seem like 1993 is serving up a lot of them.

     

In this case, I finally give in and look up spoilers. The solution to falsifying evidence in the death of Nippel is to take a damaged gun and armor we should have looted from the Federation soldiers on Nedax and put them on Nippel's body. I never saw the damaged items--not that I would have thought to take them if I did--because I didn't kill the last soldier. He's wandering around Nedax even now, but I can't kill him because he's not hostile. I thought about swearing a lot at the game at this point, but I think the sentiment I put in the subtitle is more thematically appropriate.

        

Time so far: 10 hours