EPTThe Last Express
Ok, so the Beta's down, blah blah blah, and people have even started posting gushing blogs about why this has made their life unbearable (*see blog section for past week) so I figured I'd make a blog about the greatest single player video game ever made, that only about nine people have played because, well, to be honest whenever you find yourself watching Two of a Kind and The Sleepover Club at midnight on a channel called PopGirl, the Internet doesn't seem like such a scary place after all. Anyway, ah-hem.
Ok, heres how it works. It's pre-WW1 Europe and you play this American (obviously) who's on the Orient Express in it's last journey before the outbreak of war. It's filled with characters from an implausibly large number of countries, who represent a pretty large cross section of society. You've got Princes and Anarchists and Industrialists and Women. Like an AA meeting.
![[image loading]](http://img33.imageshack.us/i/rouse6.jpg/)
Hey. Just put the glass down. Don't do anything crazy.
Now because it's fictional and set on a train, someone's just died and you've been framed for the murder. You get to do stuff like hide bodies and catch ants to solve puzzles and all that regular graphical adventure game jank, but the catch is that everything in the game happens in real time. You have a watch in your inventory which keeps time, even when you're character is sleeping.
![[image loading]](http://img199.imageshack.us/i/1199187112mwqcw0.jpg/)
It keeps time, even when you're sleeping
At any point you can rewind time and redo a section, innovatively removing the need to worry about saving your game.
![[image loading]](http://img51.imageshack.us/i/popsandsoftime.jpg/)
Guess who designed me later in his career.
There's a bunch of times this real time dynamic comes into play. You can miss important character events, see different perspectives that occur at the same time, piss people off by missing meetings, make people happy by helping them and a variety of other things that make each play through quite different. Really quite different. Not just like those games that claim every play through is unique but actually have 2 endings and linear cut scenes. I dunno how many endings there are, but I do know that it's surprisingly hard to box yourself into a corner that requires a huge amount of backtracking to get out of and holy shit are there a lot of ways for the game to end, accompanied by a sarcastic diary entry by a passenger explaining what you did wrong, with emphasis on how stupid you were to do something like, say, pull the stop chord on the train.
You will pull it anyway by the way. At least twice. And even after that you'll always want to pull it again.
Now, one of the other big things to talk about is the art design. You have never played, nor will ever play, a game that looks like this. The characters don't move fluidly, instead they are still, rotoscoped images of real actors that play in sequence. Remember, this game was made on CD in 1996, the idea of having a REAL TIME game with tens of hours of dialog where everyone moved fluidly was impossible. Besides, it's actually quite beautiful after a while.
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![[image loading]](http://img171.imageshack.us/i/220pxtlerotoscopeexampl.png/)
How the Rotoscoping Process was carried out.
I suppose the next big aspect of it is the high quality characterization, script and voice acting. The game's script is enormous, and the characters all have a distinct voice as well as complex personalities, which you uncover more of as the game progresses (or don't depending on whether you are there to witness their quirks/lies). Several languages are spoken, with some subtitled based on whether you're hero can understand them. If you find certain characters interesting, feel free to follow them, listen at their doors and drop in on conversations. The game isn't quite as open ended as this obviously, there are dead lines you have to meet or the game will end, but generally you always have 10 minutes to kill here and there, and there's always something to see or do. I like the Russian girl and the German businessman is a player.
Finally, the reason why nobody has played this game, despite it being so amazing. It cost $6 million to produce and made roughly 1/10 of that due to huge delays with it's release, minimal advertising, a basically unmarketable game engine and the lack of interest by Brøderbund , the games publisher. The game was pulled off the shelves and was actually out of print for a considerable amount of time. Definitely the biggest tragedy ever in the history of video games. Even that bit in FFVII or the release of Modern Warfare 2.
It also established a long running, quite depressing theme of INNOVATION = NICHE MARKET = COMMERCIAL UNCERTAINTY = COMMERCIAL RISK? LOL = ACTIVISION/EA = SEQUEL = ...
But lets leave it there.
Anyways, you owe it to yourself to play this game. Seriously. If you're a big fan of games like Broken Sword and Monkey Island or you like Agatha Christie novels, this game is so good. Plus you get to be more like me: a super elitist writing articles about a weird, rare out of print games on a reasonably obscure gaming website.
![[image loading]](http://img22.imageshack.us/i/1sheeple27242246ef2.jpg/)
You too can be this awesome.
I think you can find the game on their website, just do a search, since it may be difficult to track down otherwise.
There are also gameplay videos on youtube.
Why don't you make it sing?
Oh and a poll, just out of personal interest.
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