Beneath a Steel Sky

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Beneath a Steel Sky
European DOS boxart
Developer(s) Revolution Software
Publisher(s) Virgin Interactive Entertainment
Designer(s) Charles Cecil (director)
Daniel Merchant (producer)
Dave Cummins (composer)
Dave Gibbons (designer)
Tony Warriner (designer)
Engine Virtual Theatre
Release date(s) March, 1994
Genre(s) Adventure
Mode(s) Single player
Rating(s) ESRB: T (Teen)
USK: 12+
ELSPA: 15+
Platform(s) DOS, Amiga, Amiga CD32
Media 3½-inch Floppy, CD-ROM
System requirements PC: 386, DOS 3.3+, 2 RAM
Talkie: CD-ROM & Sound card
Input Mouse

Beneath a Steel Sky is a 1994 science fiction, more specifically cyberpunk, point and click adventure game. It featured comedy elements and was developed by Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment. It was initially released for DOS and Amiga. Underworld was its working title.

The game was the second to use Revolution Software's Virtual Theatre engine, the first being Lure of the Temptress.

The game's backgrounds and introduction sequence were designed by Dave Gibbons. The introduction sequence was also included as a separate promotional comic book in some releases of the game.

Contents

[edit] Story

The game takes place at an unknown point in a dystopian future in Australia, where the Earth has been significantly damaged by pollution or nuclear fallout. The game's backstory is introduced via a comic book, drawn by well-known comic artist Dave Gibbons, that tells the story of a young boy called Robert who is the sole survivor of a plane crash in "the Gap" (the name applied to the Australian Outback at the time of the game). Too young to fend for himself, Robert is adopted by a local group of Indigenous Australians, who teach him the skills he needs to survive in this harsh new environment; they name him Robert Foster, partly due to him being fostered by them and also because of the discovery of an empty can of Foster's Lager, an Australian beer, found near him at the crash site.

After Foster has reached adulthood, he is kidnapped and his tribe annihilated by storm-troopers sent from Union City by its all-powerful computer LINC. Interestingly, Union City mentions prominent suburbs and train stations found within Australia's largest city, Sydney, leading some to speculate that Union City was once Sydney. This was confirmed in a 2005 interview with the Australian gaming magazine, PC PowerPlay.

Foster manages to escape from his captors as the helicopter transporting him back to Union City crashes just after entering the dome, leaving him and his robot friend, Joey, to find out why they were brought there and where to go next.

Joey's personality is stored on a small circuit board, which can easily be inserted and removed from many types of robot bodies. This allows Joey to change bodies as the situation requires, provided his circuit board is not damaged. Joey, however, is not always happy about Foster's choice of body for him.

[edit] Background

Screenshot of game play.
Screenshot of game play.

In the future world of Beneath a Steel Sky, the six states and two territories of Australia have been consumed by their capital city and are described as a "city states".

Union City is the second largest of the six remaining city states after the acquisition of Asio-City. Notably ASIO is Australia's national intelligence agency.

After the 'Euro-American War' all participants agreed upon a set of ideals described as the 'neo democratic principles' which removes all labour representation and social benefits. Ironically those that subscribe to these principles are called 'Unions' contrasting the real world definition of what a Union pushes for. Those that oppose the Unions ideals are called 'Corporations'.

All of the City States are described as either being Corporations or Unions.

The back-story involves a conflict between Union City and Hobart Corporation fighting over 'market' dominance by the use of sabotage which is used as a common theme throughout the story. Hobart is the capital city of the Australian state Tasmania.

[edit] Critical acclaim

The game's initial release in the UK was met with critical acclaim, reaching the number one place in the GALLUP charts and receiving;

The release in the USA was met with almost equal success with;

In May 1995 Beneath a Steel Sky was also awarded the prestigious Golden Joystick Award for 'The Best Adventure'.

[edit] Credits

The three different beer labels used. Top: UK Release, Middle: US Release, Bottom: Promotional Comic
The three different beer labels used. Top: UK Release, Middle: US Release, Bottom: Promotional Comic
  • Charles Cecil: Director, Design, Manual
  • Daniel Marchant: Produced, Design
  • Dave Cummins: Script, Music, Design, Manual
  • Dave Gibbons: Art, Comic, Design
  • Tony Williams: Music conversion & sound effects
  • Noirin Carmody: Manual

Assistant Producers

  • Aron Phelan
  • Peter Hickman

Programming

Computer Graphics & Animation

Voices

[edit] Trivia

Screenshot of Robert Foster being taught to hunt kangaroos.
Screenshot of Robert Foster being taught to hunt kangaroos.
  • The game came either on a set of floppy disks, or on a CD-ROM with full speech (the 'talkie' version). The dubbed version of the game uses actors sporting a variety of British accents, despite the game being set in future Australia. Robert Foster himself has an American accent, making some of his British English phrases sound incongruous.
  • Beneath a Steel Sky was one of the earliest mainstream games to include the word "shit" and drawings of a woman's breasts.
  • The first two games in the Broken Sword series, also by Revolution, features many references to the game. A similar character to Mrs. Danielle Piermont appears in Revolution Software's game Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. The two coincidentally share the same surname and voice-actress. Robert Foster appears in a comical Easter egg in Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror (though voiced by a different actor). Finally Broken Sword II includes a puzzle which involves dunking a dog.
  • In some countries (such as the USA) due to copyright issues the beer label displayed in the introduction is altered to show a generic beer brand in place of the Fosters label. One of the brands read "SS IPM (RAW)", which is "warm piss" spelled backwards.
  • Another dystopian movie influence for Beneath a Steel Sky is Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The setting is similar to that of Beneath a Steel Sky. However, in the upper class lived in the skies and poor on the ground, while in Beneath a Steel Sky it is vice versa.
  • There is an arguable reference to the works of H. P. Lovecraft. There is a locker in the police station that belongs to "Lovecraft".
  • The prosecutor that tries Howard Hobbins is named "Mr. Grieves", a possible reference to the Pixies song of the same name.
  • Joey makes reference to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, in which he states they are "only fiction". Prior to this remark he is talking about zapping people, which would be against Law number one.
  • When he first gets his welding body Joey cries "Exterminate!" a reference to the catchphrase of the Daleks from BBC show Doctor Who.
  • The game is considered to be among the true classics in the early era of graphic adventure games for the early 1990's. This, in part, is related to the mature science fiction theme that was chosen for this game as compared to other games of the same era where fantasy themes (a la King's Quest) had been dominant. Some critics have attributed this difference to the different visions of the adventure game genre between American and European (Revolution) developers.

[edit] Legal situation

In August 2003, the game was released as freeware and support for it was added to ScummVM, allowing it to be played on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows CE and other compatible operating systems and platforms. The data files for both the disk and CD version are available from the ScummVM website. The files on the ScummVM website do not include the original program executables since they are not needed by ScummVM. Though not included, these executable files are also legally distributable now.

[edit] Sequel

"Beneath a Steel Sky 2 is a project Revolution has been considering for a while, and has started to move forward on, but we are unable to comment beyond this.” company boss Charles Cecil said in 2004. On March 4, 2004, Revolution purchased the domain name steel-sky2.com, although this has now seemingly been sold.

In August 2005 Revolution announced Broken Sword: The Angel of Death, so no sequel will be published in the near future. However, in September 2005 Tony Warriner stated in Revolution’s forum that the game wasn’t cancelled, and that he would not lose hope that there would be a Steel Sky 2 at some point in the future. More recently, Charles Cecil spoke in an interview dated August 10, 2006 on Eurogamer of his admiration for the work done by Scumm VM and the resulting interest in a sequel. He also stated that if he were to make the game he "would dearly love to work with Dave Gibbons again"[1].

If released, the game will likely be in 3D, like Revolution Software’s latest installments of Broken Sword.

[edit] References

  • Revolution forum post - Tony Warriner confirming that the game is indeed set in Australia, and not in London. Login required.

[edit] External links

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