The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief
| The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | King Art | ||
| Publisher | The Adventure Company | ||
| Senior Developer | Jan Theysen | ||
| composer | Benny Oschmann | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
July 23, 2013 (PCs) January 14, 2014 (consoles) |
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| platform | Linux , macOS , PS3 , Windows , Xbox 360 | ||
| Game engine | Unity | ||
| genre | Point-and-click adventure | ||
| control | Mouse, gamepad | ||
| medium | DVD , download | ||
| language | German English | ||
| Age rating |
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The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief (English: The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief ) is a point-and-click adventure from the Bremen development studio King Art from 2013, which was published in three parts.
action
The Raven is set in three European and North African countries in 1964. Some time ago, the master thief "The Raven" was in the public eye: He cleverly tricked the police time and again and always left his trademark, a black raven feather, at the scene of the crime. Eventually, he was caught and shot by Inspector Nicolas Legrand during a chase and fell to his death. A few years later, a valuable ruby, one of the Sphinx's two eyes , is stolen from the British Museum in London , with the perpetrator leaving a raven's feather on the scene. Another ruby, the second eye of the Sphinx , is to be brought to Venice on the Orient Express under the supervision of Legrand and from there by ship to Cairo for an exhibition. The police fear that the perpetrator from London could also target the second diamond.
Part 1: The Eye of the Sphinx
At the beginning of the game, the player takes on the role of Jakob Anton Zellner, a Swiss police officer. The Orient Express is on its way from Paris via Venice to Istanbul. On board is Inspector Nicolas Legrand, who guards a safe that has been carried. Zellner was turned off by the Swiss police to support Legrand, who is not enthusiastic about the offer. During the journey, the train is stopped in a tunnel by a deliberately caused explosion. Zellner fears that the Sphinx's Eye has been stolen, but it turns out that Legrand wanted to set a trap for the raven on the train; the ruby was actually brought to Venice on a different route. There he is loaded onto a cruise ship destined for Cairo, and Zellner is able to smuggle himself on board despite Legrand's resistance. During the journey, a wealthy patron is murdered and Zellner is secretly investigating on his own. He gets on the track of the ship's doctor who is responsible for the death of the patron and who is now trying to kill Zellner in order to cover his tracks.
Part 2: cradle of deception
Zellner survives the ship's doctor's attack; he disappears without a trace and leaves a farewell letter in which he confesses to be the raven he is looking for. The cruise ship arrives in Cairo. The two eyes of the Sphinx should actually be exhibited in the museum there, but because of the theft that preceded the storyline, only one of the two rubies can be seen. The raven steals this eye before the exhibition opens, but Zellner is able to take up the chase, catch the thief and discover the raven's identity. Afterwards the player experiences the events from the beginning of part one again, but from the perspective of an assistant to the raven, who only appeared as a minor character in the first part.
Part 3: Murderers and Ravens
In the third part, the story, already roughly known to the player, continues on board the MS Lydia and later in the museum in Cairo from the perspective of the raven's assistant; in addition, the player also controls the assistant's girlfriend, who was also introduced as a secondary character in part one.
Game principle and technology
The Raven is a 3D point-and-click adventure . For polygons composite, three-dimensional figures to act likewise in three-dimensional scenes. 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. Zellner 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 variable perspective; If the player leaves the field of view, the camera moves and takes a new, better position. Occasionally the plot is interrupted by so-called mini - games , in which the player has to open a lock mechanism with the help of a wire, for example by trying several times.
Production notes
After the developer studio King Art had created two humorous adventures with a fantasy setting with The Book of Unwritten Tales and The Book of Unwritten Tales: Die Vieh Chroniken and published them through various publishers , the next project was an "adult story in the real world" . The Raven was divided into three parts that were released one after the other. The parts are not playable individually, but parts 2 and 3 were technically added to the first part as part of the respective publication, with the result that after the publication of the last part, a single game was available as the sum of its parts. Marketing reasons were decisive for the decision for the episode format; King Art hoped for a quantitatively increased media presence through multiple publication dates.
| part | Surname | English name | publication |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The eye of the sphinx | The Eye of the Sphinx | 23rd July 2013 |
| 2 | Cradle of deception | Ancestry of Lies | August 27, 2013 |
| 3 | Murderers and ravens | A Murder of Ravens | September 24, 2013 |
The decision to develop the game for five systems at the same time led to delays in the production process, especially since the Unity engine used turned out to be defective for the console versions. With the release of the game, King Art published a prologue to the plot as a playable graphic novel for web browsers and mobile devices with the Android and iOS operating systems . With the appearance of the third part in September 2013, Nordic Games also published a "Digital Deluxe" version of the game, which contained the soundtrack, two books with background information, a "raven" mask and a poster in digital form; A tangible version for stationary retail followed in October. In March 2018, the publisher, now trading as THQ Nordic , released a remaster version of the game. Owners of the original version received this remaster for free.
Characters and speakers
| role | German speaker | English speaker |
|---|---|---|
| Jakob Anton Zellner | Peter Groeger | Neil McCaul |
| Nicolas Legrand | Stephan Schwartz | Andrew Wincott |
| Clive Inch | Frank Glaubrecht | Glen McCready |
| Emil Gebhardt | Ronald Nitschke | Tim Bentinck |
| Adil Jamal | Kim Hasper | Kerry Shale |
| David Kreutzer | Christian Gaul | Kevin Howarth |
| Patricia Mayers | Nana Spier | Alix Wilton Regan |
| Robert Oliver | Olaf Reichmann | Keith Wickham |
| Baroness von Trebitz | Philine Peters-Arnolds | Rula Lenska |
| Clarissa Westmacott | Gisela Fritsch | Nicolette McKenzie |
The character of Lady Clarissa Westmacott pays homage to crime writer Agatha Christie . The full name of the game character is Lady Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie Westmacott, and Mary Westmacott was a pseudonym of Christie, under whom she wrote six romance novels. The German spokeswoman for the character, Gisela Fritsch , passed away in July 2013, but had already spoken about her part by then.
reception
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The Raven achieved a score of 74 from 36 aggregated ratings on Metacritic . The specialist magazine Adventure-Treff praised the story as exciting and well told, the graphics were successful despite the low budget, as was the orchestral soundtrack and the German dialogue direction. Numerous small technical deficiencies as well as undemanding puzzles were criticized. Marc Brehme wrote down a good story for the PC Games , which is exciting and atmospheric. He criticized technically outdated cutscenes and a low density of puzzles. Jan Wöbbeking judged for 4Players that The Raven is "the right program for relaxed puzzling on mild summer evenings". He positively emphasized a "relaxed staging" and a subtle humor, but criticized the low-detail game environment and small technical inadequacies such as a wobbly interface or irritating camera work. Thorsten Wiesner found for Golem.de that the characters are "interesting and often also nicely drawn" and praised the story and atmosphere, but criticized the low level of difficulty and the outdated technology.
Web links
- The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief at MobyGames (English)
- Product page ( memento from November 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) of the publisher Nordic Games
- Product page of the remaster version of the publisher THQ Nordic
Individual evidence
- ↑ Trailer with developer comment on YouTube : The Raven Trailer. Retrieved November 8, 2016 .
- ↑ a b Adventurecorner.de. Interview with Jan Theysen (KING Art). Retrieved November 8, 2016 .
- ↑ Kingart-Games.de: The Raven released! (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 30, 2016 ; accessed on October 30, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c PCGames.de: The Raven: Legacy of a master thief in the test. Retrieved November 4, 2016 .
- ↑ thqnordic.com: The Raven Remastered is out today for PC / Mac and consoles. Retrieved November 2, 2018 .
- ↑ AgathaChristie.com: The Mary Westmacotts. Retrieved November 8, 2016 .
- ↑ a b 4Players.de: The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief - The Eye of the Sphinx. Retrieved November 4, 2016 .
- ↑ a b Adventure-Treff .de: The Raven - The Eye of the Sphinx. Retrieved November 4, 2016 .
- ↑ a b Metacritic.com: The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief. Retrieved November 4, 2016 .
- ↑ Adventure-Treff.de: The Raven - Chapter 2: Cradle of Deception. Retrieved October 30, 2016 .
- ↑ Adventure-Treff.de: The Raven - Chapter 3: Murderers and Ravens. Retrieved October 30, 2016 .
- ↑ Golem.de: Point-and-click crime thriller in the footsteps of Agatha Christie. Retrieved November 5, 2016 .
