Game 517: Whale's Voyage (1993)

I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to be the Whale.

      

Whale's Voyage

Austria

Neo Software Producktions (developer); Flair Software Ltd. (European publisher); Pro One Software (U.S. publisher)

Released 1993 for DOS, Amiga, and Amiga CD32

Re-released in 1994 on same platforms on CD with extra cinematics/dialogue
Date Started: 2 June 2024

       

Whale's Voyage is an odd 3D "blobber" with horrible controls from Neo Software. It is the first game from the developer, which still exists today as Rockstar Vienna. [Edit. Apparently, Rockstar Vienna was shuttered over 15 years ago.] I knew nothing about the game before firing it up, and thus went into this session completely blind.

I believe I am playing the DOS version distributed on floppy disk to the United Kingdom in 1993. I am aware of the CD version released a year later. I had a look at it, and like most CD versions of earlier games in the mid-1990s, it seems to add nothing but unnecessary music and horrible voiced dialogue. The floppy version ran faster and with fewer emulation problems, and I decided to stick with it. Let me know if you're aware of any major differences, though. The manual is pretty awful no matter what version you use. It leaves out obvious questions from the backstory (How many alien races did we meet? What were they like?), character creation (What is that alien doing in there?) and especially combat.

         

From the CD version intro. That looks more like a whale.

        

The game is set in the late 2300s. Humanity has developed interstellar flight capabilities and has met alien races. In 2291, Earth won a war against the Iradian Empire, freeing a slave race called the Sanxons in the process, and was instrumental in the creation of a Cosmic League to regulate interstellar trade. Over time, this League has grown into a de facto interstellar government, headquartered on a planet called Z-1.

Within this universe, you play a party of four characters who recently scraped together enough money to buy an interstellar transport called SS Whale. Unfortunately, Whale is a bit of a lemon. It sucks up all the characters' time and money, until at last they find themselves broke and stranded in orbit around a planet called Castra, unable to even afford the price of fuel to get out of here. According to the manual, Castra used to have a thriving economy, but it collapsed from competition and is now a corrupt, crime-ridden slum.

The game has the weirdest character creation process that I can remember in a CRPG. It begins with a selection of the character's parents, from five male options and five female options. All you get to choose are their portraits; the game doesn't tell you anything about their relative strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, one of the male portraits is clearly alien, like a human-sized Cthulhu. The others look like digitized portraits of actual people. The manual has nothing to say about this selection process.

       

The parental options. At least one of these portraits is going to seem unfortunate a year later.

       

The game selects a sex for the baby at random. You give the baby a name, and then you're shown a baby portrait and his or her relative (eventual, I assume) levels in strength, intelligence, speed, mental energy, skilfulness, and health. A "DNA synthesizer" spins to the right, but it's non-interactive. You get a pool of bonus points ("Mutation Ratio") to allocate to the attributes, but the manual warns that actually using them leaves the character susceptible to genetic diseases.

         

My bounty hunter has no mental energy.

      

Once you accept the character, the game gives you a few lines of a backstory drawn at random from a database. Some of them are very sad ("Even in her first years of life, she changed her foster parents like clothes. She never felt the power of an intact family"), and all assume that the real parents (the ones you selected) died somehow. You then choose his or her primary school from six options: General Primary School, Space Education Camp, Basic Military Training, Streetkid Childhood (not a school at all, but life on the street without school), Cybertech Mental School, and Nagikamura Gakko (a chemistry-focused school). Most of these schools orient a player towards a particular class. Some of them aren't available to certain characters depending on attributes.

     

Choosing the character's education. Note the little story at the top.

        
Finally, you choose your character's secondary education from another six options: Battle Academy, Hoodson Medicine School, Aranian Monastic School, Psi Science Institute, Chemistry University, and Bounty Hunter Society. As you scroll among these options, the image in the upper-left changes to show the institution, which is a cute touch. We were just talking about a lot of effort put into unnecessary graphics in the context of Loremaster.

    

I started to try to analyze the effects of the different matings of men and women, but they weren't always consistent and I ultimately gave up. Relying partly on randomness, I went with the following 

• Ishmael: Fourth guy/first woman. Game tells me that he was rejected by his foster parents and grew up in a monastery, which taught him law, order, and obedience. That put a paladin sort of character in my mind, so I sent him to Basic Military Training and then the Aranian Monastic School. The game tells me he's an Aranian, whatever that is. He has a lot of health, strength, and mental energy, but he's slow and not very skillful.

• Starbuck: Third guy/first woman. Results in a strong, smart, skillful, female character with low health, alas. She had an even sadder childhood: her adoptive parents were just looking for a "kitchen maid." They threw her out when they came into some money. Nonetheless, she went to Space Education Camp and then (because it was the only option available), the Bounty Hunter Society. The game unsurprisingly made her a bounty hunter. Her education made her health a lot better, but she's a bit slow.

• Mapple: Fourth guy/fourth woman. Resulted in a strong, fast, skillful character who was really dumb. "A working class family cared for the little boy," the game tells me, "who was educated to become a miner since his adoption." I sent him to Basic Military Training and then Battle Academy, and he became a soldier. Still dumb as a box of rocks.

• Rachel: I spent some time engineering this one, as I figured I'd need someone with a good science background. A combination of General Tagge and Captain Janeway did the job. I sent her to General Primary School and Hoodson Medical School, and she became a doctor.

    

I avoided the Cthulhu option in all cases, though I assume it confers some advantages. I would just need to know more about what the alien is, and what the implications are to such inter-breeding.

I kept this group but played around with other combinations. It appears that your class depends exclusively on your secondary schooling, so the only options are soldier, doctor, Aranian, psionician, biochemist, and bounty hunter. If you've played the game and think I'll be crippled for not having a psionician or biochemist, please let me know.

 

I otherwise enjoyed the backstory and character creation process. It seems impossible that it wasn't influenced by the Traveller tabletop RPG or either of the two MegaTraveller CRPGs based on it, although it's a bit simplified. The universe feels quite similar, with the PCs making up a group that's just struggling to get by.

    

The game begins with a planetary menu. The party can buy or sell personal wares, buy equipment for the Whale, fly off to another destination, beam or glide down to the planet, or call someone on a standard nine-key telephone dial. We have no money to buy anything for ourselves or the ship, nothing to sell, no fuel to fly to another planet, and no one to call, so it seems the only option is to visit Castra and see what we can uncover.

    

Options from the ship.

        

Once on the planet, the game switches to a standard three-dimensional, tiled, "blobber" screen. The interface for this screen is odd. It seems to assume the player will be using a joystick, so inputs are minimal. You can use the arrow keys to turn, but to access character information or any of the other icons on the screen, you have to do a weird combination of the SPACE bar and the down arrow, at which point you can arrow around the various buttons and options and hit ENTER to activate them. It's one of the worst systems that I've ever encountered. No other key on the keyboard does anything, not even obvious stuff like 1-4 or F1-F4 to activate the character sheets of the characters. In times like this, I'd normally sigh and use the mouse--but the mouse isn't supported in this game, either. 

       

If there's any way to view a character sheet and the items the characters have equipped, I can't find it. You can see each character's statistics. The game tells me they're all "sleepy" and will become "more awake" with 2,048 experience points. 

      

One of the bottom buttons gives you information about the character.

       

There are no sound options, so you can't turn off the incessant music. Since there don't seem to be any other sound effects, I just turn off sound on my computer entirely. 

 

Within the bottom controls, each character can be assigned a role. There are eight potential roles: the leader, the scout (looks for traps), the closer (closes doors behind the party), the targeter (starts combat with an enemy already targeted), the joker (keeps up crew morale), the merchant (manages money), the weigher (causes each character's carry weight to be displayed), and the user (causes current temperature and oxygen content to be displayed). 

    

That sounds sarcastic.

    

I see an NPC walking around. It takes so long to get into the bottom control panel and choose the option to talk to him that he's a few steps away before I can make it work. He's apparently named "George McMil." We have nothing useful to say anyway. Other wandering NPCs mostly tell me to get lost.

    

As we explore, a small automap keeps track of our progress in the upper-left, although I don't think there's any way to expand this to see the whole area, so I eventually break down and map it manually. Castra occupies a 20 x 20 area, although at least half of it is unexplorable because of locked doors. I annotated them all, but I don't know if there's a way later to open them. I also annotate garbage bins and fire hydrants, though I can find no way to interact with them, and store counters with nobody standing behind them. Despite the planet's rough-and-ready-to-rumble reputation, we don't get attacked or hassled as we wander. There are a few wandering NPCs who have nothing to say. We find two staffed stores. They sell interesting-sounding equipment, like compasses, a "Roomscanner," and different types of traps, but we still have no money. A room in the northeast corner seems to offer free healing from a glowing orb.

    

My map of Castra.

       

On the western side of the map, tucked in an alcove created by a cloverleaf configuration of walls, we find a man named Greg Morgan brandishing a weapon. He says he's hiding from someone chasing and persecuting him, and he wants us to smuggle him off world by shrinking him using a Shrinking Device. Dialogue is with full-sentence options, but I haven't been impressed with the depth of choice so far.

       

Either people talk weirdly in the future or the translation was a little off.

     

We start taking another lap around the area, and to the south of Morgan, in a dead-end alleyway, we find two people accosting George McMil. I try talking to them, and him, but they have nothing to say. One does briefly wander off, but he returns, and they both continue to block my access to George.

      

Talking to these guys does nothing.

         

I fiddle with the controls and finally find a way for one character to attack the targeted person. I can also "Hypnotize" him, which I try first, to no avail. They both die with a few hits from my fist, however. The hardest part is switching the targeted opponent in the middle of battle, as you have to back out of the combat menu to reselect someone. I guess that's where having a "targeter" comes in handy. Several of my characters are wounded in the battle, but their health regenerates afterwards.

   

After the battle, we help George McMil to his feet. He gives us $1,500 and in subsequent dialogue, his phone number. He says he's a trader in "high-tech tools." Unfortunately, the game doesn't give us any way to ask him about a shrink ray right now. I note with some amusement that his number has only nine digits and seems to have a Medford, Massachusetts exchange.

       

I included this screenshot so I didn't have to write down the number elsewhere.

     

We head to one merchant, then the other, looking for a shrinking device. One has high-tech stuff, but nothing that sounds like it shrinks. The other, named Walter Wim, has weapons, but my $1,500 won't go far. The cheapest weapon, a hunting knife, is $201. A 9mm pistol costs $10,500.

       

We need to go save another six guys from mugging, I guess.

      

While talking to him, he happens to mention: "I am so in sorrow. I cannot find my daughter Winnie!" We do another loop around the city and find the girl huddling in an eastern corner. While trying to help her, we accidentally beam up to the Whale, but that's not a bad thing, as you can only save the game on the ship, and as we're about to see, it's good that we saved.

       

That looks like it could be a lost girl.

     

Returning to the surface, we find the girl and pick her up. On the way back to her father, an NPC blocks our way, and I incorrectly assume that he's hostile. We attack him, and moments later, a squad of soldiers shows up and kills us instantly.

       

I guess the planet isn't as lawless as the manual portrays it.

     

Reloading, we pick up Winnie again and return her to Walter Wimm. He thanks us and gives us some weapons. We apparently also gained experience points because the game says we leveled up, and it asks us to choose a skill for each character. (Again, the manual had nothing to say about this.) I do my best. The options vary per character, but some common ones are "Heal Wounds of Member," "Disarm Selected Opponent," "Check Honesty of Selected Opponent," and "Automatic Reload." I quit and reload at this point because it's the only way I can check what skills the characters already have. It turns out the characters already have "Hypnotize Opponent," "Take Up Trail," "Identify Weapon," and "Heal Wounds of Member," in that order. So after I return Winnie again, I pick different options: "Check Honesty of Selected Opponent," "Manipulate Computer," "Search for Traps," and "Identify Essence." Afterwards, all of my characters are wounded--I guess the game doesn't raise current health with maximum health--but they begin slowly healing.

      

What's the worst possible word that could come next?

     

Walter left us a shotgun, a 9mm ceramics pistol, an Apollo grenade, and two generic magazines of "ammunition." I hope they're universal. I give the shotgun and one magazine to my bounty hunter, the pistol and one magazine to my soldier, and the grenade to my Aranian. I figure out how to equip the two guns. 

   

It turns out that the guns came unloaded, as I discover moments later, as I walk outside the shop and am immediately attacked by a mugger. Fortunately, he only brought his fists to a gunfight. Unfortunately, my guns are unloaded, so I have to figure out how to do that while getting punched. Eventually, I have my soldier fumble the magazine into his 9mm and kill the mugger in a couple of shots. "The police scanned us $3000 for killing a thief," the game says. I hope that means that the police gave it to us.

    

This guy looks a little like Hitler.

     

If it's not clear from my description, it appears that only one character can fight at a time. I don't see any way to involve multiple characters in battles, although this interface is such a nightmare that it's possible I'm missing something.

   

It takes me a while to find anything after that. Eventually, I return to the other merchant, Max Flesh, who says that he heard we killed a thief. He offers us a job: take a heart to Lapis, to his contact Jack Nock. He will pay $100,000 for it. That sounds like enough to get us out of hock. 

       

Are we talking about an actual heart here?

     

We go to pick up the item, which indeed looks like a heart. It's called an "instant heart." The moment we have our hands on it, three guys appear and start blasting us, saying "Give us the heart!" I try to return fire, but they blast me to death in seconds. I'm going to have to reload and do everything again from the missing child quest. In the meantime, I'm going to check if the Amiga version does anything better with the interface, because this borders on absolutely unusable.

    

Time so far: 3 hours

Playing out of: Duty, with a little curiosity.