The moment of silence
| The moment of silence | |||
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| Studio | House of Tales | ||
| Publisher |
 dtp entertainment Digital Jesters The Adventure Company 
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| Senior Developer | Martin Ganteföhr | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
October 1, 2004 | ||
| platform | Windows | ||
| Game engine | Inca, cougar | ||
| genre | Point-and-click adventure | ||
| Game mode | Single player | ||
| control | Mouse , keyboard | ||
| medium | DVD-ROM , download | ||
| language | German, English, French, Italian, Russian | ||
| copy protection | StarForce | ||
| Age rating |
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The Moment of Silence is a point-and-click adventure from the game software company House of Tales from 2004. It is a science fiction thriller. The story sketches a gloomy future scenario, set in the year 2044, which is reminiscent of a surveillance state as in George Orwell's novel 1984 .
action
The New York communication designer Peter Wright lost his wife and son in a plane crash. One day he watches his neighbor, the journalist Graham Oswald, being arrested by the police in his apartment under mysterious circumstances. Wright begins to research and soon realizes that there is not an individual fate behind it, but a global conspiracy.
His explorations lead Peter to a wide variety of places such as occupied houses in New York, an orbital recreation station in space, the Arecibo Observatory , a platform in the Bermuda Triangle and a secret state prison in a bay off New York. In the course of his journey, Wright, who gradually discovers connections between his own family's fate, the disappearance of his neighbor and the machinations of the apparatus, undergoes an inner change in his search for the truth from being a citizen of the state to a bitter opponent of the system. The story, constructed in the manner of a development novel, culminates in Wright's encounter with the core of the conspiracy.
Game principle and technology
The Moment of Silence is a 3D point-and-click adventure . For polygons composite, three-dimensional figures operate in also three-dimensional, pre-rendered scenes. The game perspective is implemented as a third-person perspective , the controllable main character Wright can always be seen with a few exceptions (detailed views in the subjective). The display is implemented by the Cougar graphics engine developed by House of Tales . The player can use the mouse to move his character through the locations and use the mouse buttons to initiate actions that allow the character to interact with his environment. Peter can find objects, apply them to the environment or other objects and communicate with NPCs . As the story progresses, more locations will be unlocked. The camera shows what is happening from a frontal perspective; If the player leaves the field of vision within a room, the camera moves in the respective direction. Dialogues take place via context-related selection menus.
The Moment of Silence encompasses 17 days of narrated time: October 1, 2044 to October 17, 2044. The gameplay is structured into individual days that function as chapters. The dates and days of the week correspond to actual calendar values. The first day of the narrated time begins with the intro; between the last day of the playable action (Monday, October 10th) and the final video there is a time jump of one week.
The game contains a lot of text, mostly in long, often demanding dialogues in which the usual multiple-choice options are usually clicked through completely. A diary of missing neighbor Graham Oswald found during the game provides additional information on the background story.
The puzzles are mainly combination puzzles with items from Peter's inventory, occasionally also logic and machine puzzles such as those known from Myst .
The dialogues advance the story and often address issues such as data protection, cryptography, telecommunications monitoring and others. In spite of the exaggerated presentation, serious discussion approaches can be identified. The dialogues are also well synchronized and thus gain in expressiveness.
With one exception, the actions are not time-limited; if the player does not take any action, the game waits for input.
Production notes
Part of the game takes place in the Lower East Side of New York . For the design of the local area, motifs from the Obey campaign by the US street art artist Shepard Fairey were used.
In 2015, THQ Nordic , which had taken over the rights to the game from the insolvent Dtp Entertainment, published a version that could run on modern Windows computers via the Steam and GOG distribution platforms .
German language version
The German localization was carried out by Translocacell in Düsseldorf. The author of the game Martin Ganteföhr was responsible for the script and direction .
| role | German speakers |
|---|---|
| Peter Wright | Manfred Lehmann |
| Deborah Oswald | Daniela Hoffmann |
| Brian | Norman Matt |
| Mrs. Winter | Ilya Welter |
| board | Jochen Kolenda |
| Big Mike | Frank Bahrenberg |
| Juan | Vittorio Alfieri |
| Charlie | Alexander Schottky |
| Dr. Price | Hans Bayer |
| Bill | Axel Ludwig |
| Cypher | Gregor Höppner |
| Mr. Huntington | Hans-Gerd Kilbinger |
| Mrs. Evans | Petra Glunz-Grosch |
| Agent 1 | Jochen Kolenda |
| Officer Smith | Frank Bahrenberg |
| Musician | Vittorio Alfieri |
| Lou | Alexander Schottky |
| Crazy preacher | Hans Bayer |
| bob | Gregor Höppner |
| Homeless man | Gregor Höppner |
Other speakers: Rolf Berg, Josef Tratnik, Nicole Engeln, Markus Küster, Patrick Feiter, Heinz Ostermann, Chiarra Ferraú, Susanne Reuter, Tobias Klausmann and Martin Ruiz Torreblanca.
reception
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The Moment of Silence received rather positive reviews. The Metacritic review database aggregates 36 reviews to a mean of 70.
In The Moment of Silence designed dystopia of an electronic surveillance state draws its persuasive power primarily from the positive culmination of known, planned or possible developments of informational control. Obligation to digitize books and records, the prohibition of encryption techniques, the abolition of handwriting and cash as well as the amalgamation of identification, communication, navigation and payment functions in a device ("messenger") that can be located at any time and must be carried with you, make monitoring seamless.
Many of the technologies mentioned in the game exist in reality or in slightly modified form, such as the Echelon spy network . The inclusion of popular conspiracy theories and myths ( UFO appearances turn out to be state surveillance drones, research programs and eavesdropping facilities such as the SETI Institute are a secret part of the eavesdropping apparatus) condenses the fiction of an omnipresent state. Numerous other depicted in the play technical developments, such as the discussion of the NASA space elevator (Space Elevator) or SATCAR, a driverless transport vehicle for public private transport are borrowed from real concept studies.
The overall socially critical, technology-skeptical and political subtext of the game is expressed in many, sometimes humorous, (popular) cultural set pieces, quotes and allusions, but also in deep, serious dialogues and numerous dramatic film sequences.
A direct reference to and reference to historical, technology-critical or anti-technology movements is provided by the game with the thematization of "Neo-Luddites", a fictitious futuristic development of the Luddite movement in Great Britain ( Luddism ), whose subversive activity against the surveillance state is one of the pivotal points the backstory is.
The Moment of Silence is an important German adventure game with international relevance and impact.
Awards
- The game has been named Adventure of the Year 2004 by the readers of the computer games magazine PC Games . Across all genres, it was the only German production to take first place in the international field of applicants for the award.
- When German Developer Award 2004 is placed The Moment of Silence in three categories:
- Best story / game world (2nd place)
- Best Main Character (3rd Place)
- Best Soundtrack (3rd Place)
- The price Adventure of 2004 won The Moment of Silence on the important German adventure specific websites Adventure-Treff .com and Adventure-Archiv.de
- The North American version of the game was nominated by the video game websites gamespy and ign for the readers' award Best Adventure Game 2005 .
Trivia
- The name “Central Services” for the central building supply service in futuristic New York is apparently a quote from Terry Gilliam's dystopian film “ Brazil ”.
- The son of the arrested Graham Oswald claims to have an alien figure who says “Atatata” and “Nice planet, we'll take it” at the push of a button. These sayings are quotes from the film “ Mars Attacks! ".
Web links
- The Moment of Silence at MobyGames (English)
- Review Rheinische Post Online
- Detailed portrait of Martin Ganteföhr, one of the creators of the game ( Memento from February 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ AdventureGamers.com: Martin Ganteföhr Interview. Retrieved January 30, 2016 .
- ^ A b Metacritic.com: The Moment of Silence. Retrieved June 18, 2018 .