The truth is, in 1935, the Nazis created the Ahnenerbe, a secret division of scientists assigned to study certain occult acts and magic practices very closely. Remember how interested they were in the Ark of the Covenant in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark? Well, that didn't just come out of nowhere.
The truth is, H.P. Lovecraft used the Ahnenerbe as the focus for his novel of espionage and the occult, "The Mountains of Madness."
The truth is this novel is being adapted for the second of I-Motion's series of Call of Cthulhu games, based on the pen and paper role-playing game from Chaosium Games. This sequel to Shadow of the Comet will be called Prisoner of Ice.
That's the truth. Now what's the story?
In 1937, a celebrated explorer named Peter Hamsun and his son Bjorn are sledding across the icy terrain of the South Pole. With the help of a Royal Navy commando named O'Leary, they have just escaped from a secret Nazi base, an outpost of the Ahnenerbe. They are carrying three crates they have stolen from the base. Three crates with the words "Streng Geheim" stenciled across them. This is German for Top Secret.
As they race the dogs onward, one of the crates slides free of its bonds, falls onto the ice and partially opens. O'Leary stops the team and goes to pick it up. Suddenly a hideous tentacled monster wriggles from the carton and wraps its slimy arms around O'Leary. The creature disappears into the ice in seconds, leaving behind a huge star-shaped hole. When the elder Hamsun, horrified but fascinated, cautiously approaches the hole, he finds himself face to face with the man who used to be named O'Leary, a terrifying glare in his eyes. O'Leary tackles Peter Hamsun and drags him back down into the ice.
Young Bjorn is not possessed of his father's scientific curiosity. He drives the dogs at top speed away from the hole. Fortunately, it is not long before he encounters his rescue vehicle, the submarine H.M.S. Victoria. With the younger Hamsun and the two unopened crates aboard, the submarine pulls away from the South Pole.
Several hours later, at the exact place where O'Leary and Hamsun disappeared into the ice, a man wearing the white uniform of the German army recites an evil incantation as he lifts his arms toward the sky. The water bubbles up from below and the elder Hamsun reappears, unconscious.
Thus begins this harrowing adventure. The player takes on the role of Bruce Ryan, an American ONI agent. He is traveling on the H.M.S. Victoria when Bjorn Hamsun and his curious cargo are brought aboard. Ryan's division, in cooperation with naval high command, has sent him along as an observer, and he has already observed much. The story will take him around the world, from the South Pole to the Falkland Islands, Buenos Aires, Tihuanaco, and finally to the New England port town of Ilsmouth, a location well known to players of Shadow of the Comet.
Shadow's trademark visual technique of a character close-up superimposed over the distant background will be used again frequently in Prisoner, but the graphics will also be considerably more organic, thanks to the contributions of French comic-book artist Joel Mouclier. He also lent his talents to I-Motion's Alone in the Dark 3 to excellent effect. Another major improvement in the game's visual style will be the addition of 3-D rendered segments in the introduction and at different points throughout the narrative. There will be an awful lot of ground to cover: Prisoner will contain 1500 animations and more than 150 settings. But don't worry, I-Motion wants to make sure you get to see it all. Like Alone 3, the game will contain several pre-set saved games.
A more practical advantage in Prisoner of Ice will be a brand new, fully overhauled mouse click based engine that will control the characters and menus. One of the frequent complaints about Shadow was awkward character movement. This difficulty will hopefully be eliminated.
In dialog, the player will choose between subjects instead of sentences, so that the character can still offer some surprise in his exact wording. The player will ultimately get to choose between a happy or a tragic ending.
If the measure of a game is in the story, Prisoner of Ice has a lot to offer. There's evil incarnate, espionage, Cthulhian black magic, even a bit of time-travel. So brace yourself for this summer . . . when the ice is broken.
