With the release of Quantum Gate, Greg Roach and Hyperbole Studios helped define the term "interactive movie," a phrase which had amounted to so much advertising hype until then. Sadly, the media wasn't listening, and panned Q-Gate for not having any gameplay, never realizing that it wasn't supposed to. Hopefully people are a little more open-minded now, because Mr. Roach and company have released another outstanding virtual cinema project, the sequel to Quantum Gate called The Vortex.
In the original Quantum Gate, mankind's only hope to avert impending environmental Armageddon was to use the quantum gate to gain access to the distant planet AJ2905 and mine the rare ore iridium oxide. Your character Drew Griffin, fleeing from a troubled past and feelings of personal inadequacy, found himself as a new recruit in the United Nations Army, one of the soldiers who would gate to AJ2905 and defend the mining operation from the swarms of deadly giant insects that were the planet's only inhabitants. Or so you thought. Your one and only friend, Private Michaels, was convinced that the UN was corrupt and that the data piped into the team's virtual reality suits was a lie, that you all were really performing assassinations for the UN right on earth. Michaels disappeared, and on your next mission planetside you were struck down, the damage to your VR suit irreparable. Attempting to deactivate the suit's built-in euthanasia device, you took off your VR helmet and saw that the creatures you were slaughtering weren't giant bugs, but winged humanoids. Then you passed out and the movie came to an abrupt end.
The Vortex picks up from that point. You have been nursed back to health by the Elindae, the peaceful and intelligent occupants of AJ2905. They are a tribal people, shunning technology for the spirituality of living in harmony with their planet. Naturally, they are concerned by the human intrusions, and by the many natives your kind has slaughtered. As a whole, the Elindae view your presence in their community as a potential threat, but there are a few who believe you to be honest, if a little confused. Only through cooperation can you put a stop to the killing and prevent a war that would be devastating to both sides.
Or maybe not. Although you spend most of your time among the Elindae, you are subject to violent flashbacks, leaving you wondering if you ever left the military base at all. You also have occasional visions of being in a mental hospital, undergoing treatment for combat-induced psychosis. One minute you're back on the base with your friend Michaels, the next the two of you are living among the Elindae, the next he's a doctor in the asylum. Which reality is the truth? You'll have to discover that for yourself.
Hyperbole has taken the interface from Quantum Gate û a good transparent storytelling interface û and expanded upon it. Icons appear at the top and bottom of the screen giving you questions to ask, actions to take, even showing your emotional state. These icons are never intrusive upon the artwork or the Quicktime movie windows, and allow you to interact with your environment to a greater degree than you could in the first Q-Gate movie. The graphics are good in standard 640x480x256, and are beautiful when run in Hi-Color mode.
When I "played" The Vortex I was reminded of modern multimedia adventure games. If I reviewed The Vortex as a game I would have to point out that there is no character expansion and no real problem solving, but The Vortex is not a game; it's a movie, and as such it succeeds beautifully. My only real complaint is that it is very brief. Although there are numerous plot branches I didn't see, I managed to go from start to finish in only one play session, about three to four hours. I'm looking forward to replaying the movie and selecting different plot branches to see where they lead, but someone with a conservative background in adventure and role-playing games is bound to be disturbed that this $50 product can be finished in one day. The Vortex ships on three CDs, but the storage demands for all the Quicktime movies are vast, so that 1.8 gigabytes gets eaten up awful fast.
Brevity aside, The Vortex is a fantastic example of what virtual cinema can be; it's a product Greg Roach and his team at Hyperbole should be very proud of. With the Quantum Gate series, Greg Roach has created a rich and imaginative science fiction world, one I would gladly visit again and again. The Elindae are a fascinating race, whether or not they are real. (As I said before, that's for me to know and you to find out.) The Vortex is fast-paced, absorbing, thought-provoking fiction of the quality you're more used to seeing on the big screen than on your PC. What's more, it poses some important questions: is mankind evil, or just short-sighted, and can there be any distinction? Pretty heavy stuff, guys. Congratulations on a job well done!
