Consortium (video game)

Consortium is a story-driven first-person shooter RPG and the first game in the planned trilogy of games related to the iDGi-1 Discoveries lore. The game is set almost entirely on a futuristic aircraft called Zenlil, manned by a crew with chess-themed ranks. It was successfully funded through Kickstarter on April 18, 2013, raising over $70,000, and released on January 8, 2014.^[2]

On July 5, 2015, Interdimensional Games released a teaser trailer for its sequel, Consortium: The Tower Prophecy, which will be powered by Unreal Engine 4, instead of the Source engine, like the first game.^[3]

Gameplay

The game features innovative conversational mechanics allowing gameplay to be uninterrupted by conversations: replies are bound to the function keys and an in game device allows for semi-telepathic communication. The other major feature is a deep and branching story, similar in execution to the Mass Effect trilogy, and a character alignment system: both of these allow for every playthrough to be significantly different, even to the point of allowing the player to reveal the meta-plot of the game. While the game is a first-person shooter, combat can be entirely avoided, non-lethal or lethal (in a similar style to Deus Ex), and is limited due to the size of the game world.

Plot and setting

The game is set in the mid-21st century, in a timeline where most world militaries have been disbanded in favour of a technologically advanced world police force called the Consortium. The player takes the role of Bishop 6, an elite Consortium soldier stationed aboard the Zenlil, a futuristic aircraft. During a flight from Bulgaria to Ireland, Bishop 6 must deal with hostile mercenaries while trying to uncover the identity of a traitor within the Zenlil’s crew.

References