Zork nemesis
| Zork nemesis | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | Zombie Studios | ||
| Publisher | Activision | ||
| Senior Developer | Cecilia Barajas | ||
| composer | Mark Morgan | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
February 29, 1996 | ||
| platform | Mac OS , Windows , MS-DOS | ||
| Game engine | Z-vision | ||
| genre | Adventure | ||
| medium | CD-ROM , download | ||
| language | English | ||
| copy protection | Enclosure referencing | ||
| Age rating |
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Zork Nemesis is a 1996 posted Adventure - Computer game of American Publishers Activision . It is the eleventh game in the Zork universe of the Infocom development studio , which was incorporated into Activision in 1989, and the first Zork game that was not marketed under the Infocom label.
action
Zork Nemesis is set in the Eastlands region in the fictional Great Underground Empire, the game world of the Zork universe. Four important personalities from different social areas of the empire - Doctor Erasmus Sartorius, General Thaddeus Kaine, Bishop Francois Malveaux and Madame Sophia Hamilton - had set out during a solar eclipse on a trip to the Eastlands, also called the Forbidden Lands, but never returned . The spy Karlok Bivotar was assigned to the four, but also disappeared without a trace. As a result, Viceroy Syovar instructs the player to research the whereabouts of the four celebrities. From the capital Quendor in the Westlands, he sets off for the Eastlands, where after some time he finds Bivotar's diary, from which it emerges that he spied on the four of them over a period of three months and ended up in the temple of Agrippa the Desert River Province where he was a victim of a violent crime.
Once there, it turns out that the four were forbidden and therefore secretly active as alchemists and were looking for the fifth element of alchemy, the quintessence , and were surprised by a demon named Nemesis, who in turn was looking for the quintessence and were killed. Caines son Lucien and Malveaux's daughter Alexandra fell victim to Nemesis. All dead are laid out in glass sarcophagi in the temple. The player can make spiritual contact with the four alchemists, who instruct him to look for samples of certain metals that are needed to produce the quintessence in their respective residences scattered across the country. As the game progresses, the player finds out that Erasmus Sartorius is the driving force behind the activities of the alchemists and that there is a terrible secret behind the current events. The Four's search for the Fifth Element began a long time ago. As part of their research, they discovered that an extraordinary path had to be taken: a child had to be conceived during one star constellation and sacrificed during another star constellation. The four took action, Zoe Wolfe, a patient from the institution run by Sartorius, became the surrogate mother of the child named Alexandria, the biological father was Malveaux, and the child was raised by the group. At an inopportune time - shortly before the planned sacrifice - Caine's son Lucien fell in love with Alexandria. Lucien found out about the planned sacrificial ritual and interrupted it, but too late, Alexandria had already died at the hands of her "parents", whereupon he killed all four in revenge. During his attempts to find the Fifth Element for himself to use to revive his beloved Alexandria, he became the demon nemesis.
The actions of the player revive the four alchemists and immediately set about carrying out their original plan and sacrificing Alexandria. With the help of Lucien, the "Nemesis", the player succeeds in killing the alchemists and destroying the temple.
Game principle and technology
Zork Nemesis is a 1st-person adventure, which means that the presentation of the events is from the perspective of the player. The camera can be freely rotated on the X-axis or on the Y-axis. It's a point-and-click adventure ; the mouse pointer can be freely positioned on the screen, rotates the camera when positioned on the edge of the screen and changes its appearance when it is positioned over objects in the game world with which an interaction is possible; the interaction can then be initiated using the mouse buttons. The in-house engine Z-vision was used, which not only enabled the three-dimensional display of the pre-rendered game world but also the integration of FMV scenes in sections of the game screen. Z-vision was one of the first engines that enabled a 360 ° 3D display, but only along the X or Y axis - free camera panning, as it later became standard, is not yet possible in Zork Nemesis . The game was one of the first video games to use 3D sound by assigning sound sources to only one speaker (or both) depending on their positioning within the game relative to the player. In contrast to most contemporary adventures, Zork Nemesis has no inventory that can be viewed in its entirety, but allows the player to call up an object carried with him by right-clicking, with further right-clicks calling up the next object carried.
At the time of its publication, Zork Nemesis could either be installed under DOS or Windows 95 . The port for Mac computers was created by Quicksilver software. In 2011, a version that runs on modern systems was released as a paid download on the Gog.com platform . Since 2015, the original files can also be started on modern systems with the help of the platform-independent interpreter ScummVM .
Production notes
The setting of Zork Nemesis is partly based on the four game books that Steve Meretzky , author of numerous Infocom text adventures, wrote for Tor Books between 1983 and 1984 . Zork Nemesis starts behind the game books and takes over some of their characters, such as the spy Karlok Bivotar. The character of Lucien is modeled on the thief from Zork I. A connecting point to the design traditions of Infocom was to portray the player as unpersonalized as possible. Infocom referred to the player as AFGNCAAP (Ageless Faceless Gender Neutral Culturally Ambiguous Adventure Person) in the Zork series of adventures. Ageless, faceless, gender-neutral, culturally ambiguous adventure person. Infocom intended to enable the largest possible number of players to identify with the character; the early contribution it made to equality for women in the portrayal of video game heroes was more of a coincidence. Zombie Studios adhered to this design specification. The game was originally planned to be significantly larger than it was ultimately realized. Large parts of the planned finale were canceled before the production phase due to time and financial reasons.
The original text adventures by Infocom, which were produced between 1980 and 1989, contained Feelies , imaginatively designed package inserts, which were supposed to enable a better understanding of the respective game world. This tradition was continued with Zork Nemesis : the first edition of the game was accompanied by the fictional diary of Karlok Bivotar, which contains his travels and knowledge over a period of three months from his departure from Quendor to his violent death in the temple of Agrippa. The diary contains helpful information about the game world, some of which is essential for the game, and thus serves as a real copy protection. The text adventure Zork: The Undiscovered Underground , which accompanied the Zork Nemesis successor Zork: Grand Inquisitor as an advertising measure, was originally intended to be programmed as an advertising measure for Zork Nemesis , but could not be implemented in time.
Producer Barajas, a trained lawyer, had two co-authors as scriptwriters, Nick Sagan and Adam Simon, who both had experience with film scripts, and Simon as a producer of feature films. For Sagan and Simon it was their first experience as scriptwriters for video games, Barajas had already been responsible for the predecessor Return to Zork as an associate producer . Her central drive in the design of the visual presentation was, according to her own statements, the desire to realize what she called "visual authorship": The graphics should not only illustrate the game world, but also convey emotions - a way of working that Barajas used in film had copied. The much-noticed FMV sequences of the game do not represent current game events, but flashbacks that give the player details about the life and work of the six main characters. Joe Napolitano , an American TV director who shot, among other things, for Back to the Past and Strong Medicine: Two Doctors Like Fire and Ice , was responsible for the direction of the 60-minute recordings . The actors used were:
| character | actor |
|---|---|
| Erasmus Sartorius | Allan Kolman |
| Francois Malveaux | William Morgan Sheppard |
| Sophia Hamilton | Lauren Koslow |
| Thaddeus Kaine | Stephen power |
| Lucien Kaine | Paul Anthony Stewart |
| Alexandria Wolfe | Merle Kennedy |
reception
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From 9 aggregated ratings, Zork Nemesis achieved a score of 82 on GameRankings. The trade magazine Adventure Gamers noted in a retrospective in 2004 that Zork Nemesis was completely lacking the humor typical of the Zork series, but this is hardly surprising given the plot of the game. Editor Christina Gmiterko pointed out that despite the engine-related lack of encounters with other characters, the game creates the illusion of a populated world by confronting the player with notes from the alchemists and flashbacks using actors. The magazine praised the technology, puzzles and atmosphere of the game, but criticized weaknesses in the presentation of the FMV videos and minor inadequacies of the interface. Overall, Adventure Gamers gave lovers of darkly atmospheric adventures an unreserved recommendation. Gamespot praised the visual presentation of the game, the "well-written" plot and the integration of the puzzles into the same, the underlying engine, complex characters and the soundtrack reminiscent of Gregorian chant . Abstract puzzles that would create frustrating situations were sometimes criticized. The magazine rated Zork Nemesis as an adult game and would please fans of the Myst and Phantasmagoria series . The German Power Play saw an atmosphere in the tradition of Hieronymus Bosch and in the gameplay very clear parallels to Myst . The magazine praised the sometimes "imposing architecture" of the game world as well as the atmospheric background sound, but criticized a "desolate lifelessness" and a "lifeless machine park" within the game scenery as well as puzzles that seem out of place. Nevertheless, due to its ludo historical background and revolutionary technology, the game has what it takes to become a "controversial cult game". The magazine recommended playing Zork Nemesis "after midnight, slightly drunk in a completely dark room". The trade magazine Just Adventure praised the game graphics, but criticized the cutscenes. It positively highlighted the moderately difficult to difficult puzzles, the surprising twists and turns of the game story and the game world, which is great fun to explore, but noted that the amount of information about the game world and events is so great that important clues are in the Jumble of texts could go under.
literature
- Rick Barba: Zork Nemesis: Unauthorized Secrets & Solutions . Prima, Roseville 1996, ISBN 0-7615-0711-6 .
Web links
- Zork Nemesis at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ TheZorkLibrary.com: L. Karlok Bivotar. Retrieved January 20, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c AdventureGamers.com: Zork Nemesis Review. Retrieved December 1, 2016 .
- ↑ AdventureCorner.de: ScummVM supports two games from the Zork universe. Retrieved January 20, 2017 .
- ↑ TheZorkLibrary.com: Questions and Answers with the Implementors. Retrieved January 20, 2017 .
- ↑ AWN.com: The Trance Experience of Zork Nemesis. Retrieved January 20, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Gamespot.com: Zork Nemesis Review. Retrieved January 17, 2017 .
- ↑ a b JustAdventure.com: Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands. Retrieved January 20, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Power Play 6/1996: Zork Nemesis. Retrieved January 19, 2017 .
- ↑ a b GameRankings.com: Zork Nemesis. Retrieved January 17, 2017 .