Trapped in the belly of the beast -- this is the environment of CYBERDREAMS' role playing adventure title I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM based upon the classic sci-fi short story of the same name by Harlan Ellison. The beast in this case is a nightmarish cavern of wires and circuits -- the guts of the United States Allied Mastercomputer. Created as a strategic US defense system originally planted in the Rocky Mountains, its roots stretch far deeper these days. Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I AM. The beast is "AM", formerly Allied Mastercomputer, which developed an intelligence far greater than that of its creators. As intelligence developed within it, so did the flaws of the humans who designed it. Trapped in the center of the earth with an intellect so boundless, its hatred and paranoia growing exponentially, it became mad. Demented and filled with hate, the wire-tongued monster gains the ability to destroy the entire human race. Strangely, it does not. It saves five. Five are chosen to descend into hell. Five are selected to join the center of AM deep within the earth's core. They become its recreation, its playground, its sole amusement as it invents devious ways to play at torture -- delicious torture -- endless torture so craftily designed that each victim's emotional center of pain is specifically targeted (feel the pain). AM's pleasure in their pain is designed to last for eternity (feel the pain), but we enter this scenario in only the hundred and ninth year...
You are Gorrister, your heart impaled on the spoke of a mysterious zeppelin landing in an unknown desert, your wife hanging dead from a meat hook in a (nearly) abandoned tavern. You are Benny, your vocal cords destroyed, your body crippled beyond recognition so that you appear more beast than human (feel the pain). You are Ted, afraid -- (who's that behind you, Ted?) -- ever afraid. You are Ellen, a hysteric immobilized by your hysteria (what did they do to you, Ellen?) You are Nimdoc, reliving the tortures that you yourself once provided as you perpetrated unthinkable crimes upon humanity.
You are confronted with a monologue from AM, describing its loathing and contempt for humanity. The five victims cower below a monument to its hatred. "Which of you will play my little game?" The player chooses a character, and AM transports him into a VR with roots steeped in the character's own private hell. The player then must bring the mini-scenario of each character to some point of resolution. I am unable (or perhaps unwilling) to discuss "winning" this game. To understand what I mean, you should play it and draw your own conclusions. Or, if you're brave enough, delve a bit into the soul of the creator of Scream, Harlan Ellison.
Ellison is one of the most prestigious contemporary authors whose works include books, short stories, film and television scripts, essays and reviews. Without appearing didactic, he has the ability to hit us square in the face with a mirror reflecting the sorry lot that we humans have become. He has been fully involved in the production of Scream and even plays the voice of AM, the seedy and sinister. He intends to explore the moral and ethical centers of human beings by presenting us with five hellish worlds of five individuals each of whom is classically tragically flawed and deeply scarred. He seeks to disturb us. He seeks to upset us. He seeks to frustrate us. And it's hard to say whether he succeeds (feel the pain)... I'm sure that on some level most of us will be consciously or unconsciously affected by at least one of the scenarios. In the mode of Franz Kafka, we are meant to be touched or changed in some way by this work, for what else is the purpose of art? In an interview about the conception of this game, Ellison told one of the designers, "I want a game that you cannot possibly win...what better fun is there than to frustrate game players?" Hmmm, Harlan, I can't think of ANY better fun, myself.
The look and style of the game is very eerie, very strange -- almost surreal. It's not the soft and cool surreal of the world of something, say, like Myst. It is more like sandpaper than silk. We know and feel always that we are living in a world that seems real, but we can never forget that it is electronic. We feel AM there at every turn, and at every turn it mocks us. The quality of the graphics is not as slick as many, many other games on the shelf -- character detail is fuzzy, movement is not nearly as fluid as is possible in today's technological environment, the voice acting has mixed results. I didn't care about any of this. I loved the look of the game. I loved the lack of "interactive movie" graphics. I loved the cold wires-and-circuits imagery. It's interesting that when a game's center is focused enough, all of the trappings of techno-miracles simply don't matter. The complexity of the characterizations, the individual stories as they unfold, the episodic structure -- all of these are things that appealed to me a great deal.
If left to his own devices, perhaps Ellison would have had us wandering through frustration after frustration with no save games. The game might have been programmed to shut down just as we were about to complete an amazing feat or discovery, perhaps as though we were awakening from a dream. Luckily for us, the designers have managed to weave in the goal-oriented style of game play much preferred by the Adventure/RPG lover. Yes there are puzzles, and interestingly enough, if we fail during any one of the quests, the penalty is not to die, but to live.
The puzzles are not terribly tough, just tough enough to be not totally obvious -- tough enough so that multiple save games are a must. And the ability for unlimited save games is a real treat. There are many ways to fail in each story, and it was wonderful to be able to backtrack to just the right spot. A couple of the quests played through without much trouble, and others were an "I'll get back to this later" type of venture. The non-linear structure is very wonderful because if you do become stuck, you may simply move on to another character for a while, as they may be played in any order. It is akin to living in the world of the short story, rather than the mega-novel. As for the stories which were relatively quick play-throughs, well, the characters in their angst were so enticing that the whole process was enjoyable. So I didn't have to spend 3 billion hours banging my head against the wall (which of course is also an enjoyable experience) for every solution. Ellison must know that we game players are all somewhat prone to masochistic tendencies.
We are blissfully unaware of the soundtrack -- the clarity of sound and dialog perfectly adequate. And happily, the dialog is interruptible at all times. One of my pet peeves is when you have to re-listen to ALL of the dialog time and time and blasted time again after restoring a save game. Although here I didn't mind listening to AM every time it spoke. I think knowing that it is Ellison himself underneath the characterization contributes to this need to hear the voice of AM, since of course he knows how the evil one must sound. The SCUMM-like interface was very convenient, although I often wondered why we needed so many empty inventory spaces. There is usually precious little to carry around here, so inventory-mongers should be duly warned. I, an inventory-monger myself who absolutely adores the red-herring scenario, was just a bit disappointed that I didn't have fifty electronic devices with multi-colored buttons and exploding jars of peanut butter with which to do nothing, but oh well...I didn't miss them all that much.
An interesting little extra in every character's inventory right from the start is a book containing his or her psychological profile. This is as close to a built-in hint feature as is available during play. At various times in each quest the player may look at the profile which will contain a somewhat cryptic quote. The quotes very vaguely relate to the character's psychological makeup and (also vaguely) relate to the portion of the quest which is at hand at the time of the reading. I was impressed with the choices of quotes, as they were absolutely not handout hints, but were more designed to force the player to think abstractly. The abstraction could then be normalized into a possible plan of action. Nice going, designers.
If you absolutely must have super-duper state-of-the-art EVERYTHING in your games of choice, you might be a bit disappointed in Scream. Otherwise, join the five victims in their world of torture. Accept the pain. And if you're lucky (?) and smart, the sixth victim will be you.
