Titanic: Adventure Out of Time

Titanic: Adventure Out of Time
Developer(s)	Cyberflix
Publisher(s)	NA GTE Entertainment UK Europress
Producer(s)	Andrew Nelson
Designer(s)	Bob Clouse
Programmer(s)	Bill Appleton Todd Appleton
Writer(s)	Andrew Nelson
Engine	DreamFactory
Platform(s)	Windows Macintosh
Release date(s)	Mac:[1] NA January 1, 1996 PC:[1] NA October 31, 1996
Genre(s)	Historical adventure game
Mode(s)	Single-player

Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is a 1996 point-and-click adventure game developed by Cyberflix. It was published in the United States and Europe by GTE Entertainment and Europress respectively, for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh. It takes place in a virtual representation of the RMS Titanic. The player assumes the role of Frank Carlson, a former British spy who, during the London Blitz, is sent back in time to the Titanic and must complete a previously-failed mission to prevent the World Wars. The gameplay involves exploring the ship and solving puzzles. There are multiple outcomes and endings to the game depending on the player's dialogue choice and use of items.

The game was created with the same engine used to develop CyberFlix's previous game Dust: A Tale of the Wired West. Extensive research was done by the development team to ensure historical accuracy and to precisely recreate the ship's interior and exterior environments. As with Dust, Titanic presents character animation done through still photos of actors superimposed with mouth and facial movements. The game was originally released in English, French, and German with later versions in Dutch, Russian, Polish and Korean. Titanic received generally positive reviews from gaming critics, who praised the game's story, atmosphere and recreation of the ship, but criticized the character animation and some of the puzzles.

Gameplay

Screenshot showing the game's HUD and the Grand Staircase of the Titanic

Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is a adventure game played from a first-person perspective with a point-and-click interface. The game's control scheme is composed of a keyboard, whose arrow keys control the player's movements, and a mouse, with which the player can interact with objects, characters, select dialogue and options from the HUD interface;^[2] these are a lifesaver (which brings the player to the options menu), an inventory bag and a pocket watch that indicates the game's progression.

The puzzles in Titanic rely on collecting and using certain items to advance the story. Dialogue is also a significant aspect of the game. Characters are programmed to remember the player's actions, and thus the choice of dialogue options deeply influences the story's outcome as to what items the player can acquire or the tasks he or she is able to complete. As a result, the game can have multiple endings, not all of which present success in the mission.

Time is another important aspect of the game. The story does not occur in real time, with time progressing only if certain tasks and puzzles are completed, as indicated by the aforementioned pocket watch; however, as soon as the player reaches the point in which the Titanic starts sinking, the game progresses in real time, and the player is thus given a time limit to complete the game. As mentioned above, there are multiple endings for the game's completion, some of which result in death.^[3][4]

Ship's tour

In addition to the main story, the game also includes a separate exploration feature which features characters in the game covering certain aspects of the ship, its crew and passengers, and the sinking. These characters can be found in different locations in the ship.^[5] Three of the character narrations were already included with the game, while others could be downloaded from the game's website; they are now available for download in fan sites of the game.

Plot

Players assume the role of Frank Carlson, a former British secret agent in April 1942, who is caught in an air raid during the London Blitz of World War II and is sent back in time to the RMS Titanic on the night it sank. Having previously failed a mission aboard the ship, Carlson is given a second chance to complete it.

Carlson's first mission is to locate and retrieve a copy of Omar Khayyam's Rubáyát, which is revealed to have been stolen earlier in the year and is now suspected of being in the possession of Zeitel, a German Colonel who is traveling on the Titanic in the manner of inspecting embassies in the United States and Central America. Traveling with the Colonel is his young protegé, Willi Von Haderlitz. It is revealed that the Colonel has made a deal with an art dealer from London named Sasha Barbicon to exchange The Rubáiyát for an apparently unimportant painting, in which there are hidden war plans stolen from the British government. They each act through an intermediary go-between, a Serbian stowaway named Vlad Demonic. In addition to The Rubáiyát and the painting, the player learns that Willi is a spy for the Russians and has a notebook with names of top Bolshevik leaders. The notebook must be handed over to the Ochrana so that Communist rebels will be executed, preventing a threat to the Czar. Barbicon is also in possession of a stolen diamond necklace that will finance a Serbian military group known as the Black Hand.

During his mission, the agent also becomes involved in certain subplots which do not pertain to the central mission or, in that case, the winning conditions of the game. One important subplot involves meeting the ship’s 'gossip hound', in the form of a wealthy middle-aged spinster named Daisy Cashmore, who hands the player a note to meet with Andrew Conkling, the owner of Conkling Steel. Conkling instructs the player to retrieve a business document that had been stolen by Shailagh Hacker, an Irish maid who had worked at his house in London. Other plots include meeting and helping the Lambeths, a wealthy couple whose marriage has deteriorated, as well as meeting with other passengers including Leyland Trask, a psychic from Boston; Reverend Edgar Troutt, a Protestant preacher from Sunapee, New Hampshire who is returning from an African mission in Nyasaland; and Max Seidelmann, an American freelance businessman from Philadelphia, who provides a back story and insight of varying value. Assisting the player from time to time is fellow agent Penny Pringle.

Adolf Hitler's The Courtyard of the Old Residency in Munich appears as a key plot element

The number of objects the player obtains before escaping the ship affects the final cut scene and how history is played out. If the player manages to successfully obtain all four objects, history is altered with World War I, the Russian Revolution, and World War II never occurring — without The Rubáiyát and/or the diamonds, the Black Hand is not financed and their plan to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (which would have sparked World War I) fails. The painting Barbicon was going to trade in to Zeitel was actually "The Courtyard of the Old Residency in Munich", painted by Adolf Hitler, and its fame after it is recovered from the sinking causes Hitler to become a famous artist, averting World War II (the war plans hidden in it prove useless, and so whether or not they are found is irrelevant to history). The notebook with the names of the Bolsheviks makes its way to the Czar, and the Russian Revolution never occurs. With the world knowing peace and prosperity, the character retires after a successful career to a world of peace. Depending on which items the player fails to collect, history will change, but certain wars or revolutions will still occur: alternative endings exist where Germany conquers Russia and the United Kingdom, or the Soviet Union conquers Europe, to name some.

Development

The concept for the game was initially created by writer and producer Andrew Nelson, who spent ten months working on the game's script, changing the plot and characters in accordance to the needs and demands of the project.^[6] CyberFlix's team spent two years researching to ensure the game would be authentic and historically accurate. Apollo 13 screenwriter William Broyles, Jr. served as a historical and photo researcher for the game, collaborating with Cyberflix in finding resources to faithfully re-create the ship and the period the game is set on.^[7] Broyles made an extensive use of the Internet and the Library of Congress's online photo department to find historical photos.^[8]

Todd Appleton served as lead programmer.^[6] The game was developed using CyberFlix's proprietary game engine and software DreamFactory, which had been used by the company to develop Dust: A Tale of the Wired West; Andrew Nelson credits the game's "immersive qualities" to the engine's 3D environment creation and its scripting of characters, which retain memory of the player's actions. Wire-frame models of the Titanic, created by the Zygote Media Group in Utah, were textured and polished by graphical artists Michael Kennedy, Alex Tschetter and Paul Haskins. Bob Clouse and Billy Davenport were responsible for the 2D and interface design.^[8]

Titanic's character animation and movements was done through overlaying still photos of actors with facial and mouth movements.^[2] CyberFlix utilized the proprietary software HeadShop to combine photography and animation, as opposed to video, for the characters; according to Nelson, the team was not able to use QuickTime for the characters "as video takes up more disk space" and only a few characters could be created.^[8] The game's development took nineteen months.^[6]

Music

The soundtrack was composed by Erik Holt, with Scott Scheinbaum serving as musical director. Holt cited as inspirations Igor Stravinsky and Joe Satriani, and also studied composers that were popular in 1912, the game's time period, such as Chopin, Verdi, Rossini and Mahler, to better evoke both the splendorous and melancholic atmosphere surrounding the Titanic's disaster.^[7]

Holt worked for three months on the game's core themes, mixing classical and early 20th-century music with elements of cinematic score. Aside from its original music, the game also features Chopin's Prelude Op. 28 No. 7, which plays on the radio in the opening scene.^[7]

Reception and legacy

Reception
Aggregate score Aggregator Score GameRankings 70.20%[1] Review scores Publication Score Adventure Gamers [3] GameSpot 6.6/10[2] Just Adventure B+ [4]

Titanic: Adventure Out of Time was financially successful^[3] and sold over 100,000 copies in its first two months of release.^[6] Reviews for the game were generally positive. Review aggregator GameRankings.com gives a score of 70.20% based on five reviews.^[1] GameSpot reviewer Tim McDonald rated it a 6.6 out of 10, praising its re-creation of the ship and the story, but criticizing the dialogue sequences, calling them "lengthy", and the lack of puzzles.^[2] In a review for Just Adventure, Michal Necasek rated Titanic B+ and praised the game's story and its nonlinearity, as well as the accurate reconstruction of the Titanic, saying that it "greatly adds to the atmosphere of [the game]". He also commended the music and voice acting, but criticized the action sequences.^[4]

Adventure Gamers' Heidi Fournier rated the game a 3.5/5 and gave high praise to the exploration of the ship and the storyline, calling the subplots "engrossing", but offered minor criticism regarding some of the puzzles, calling them easy, and the characters' movements. Fournier said the game is "an authentic and fun romp with more than enough to do and see to satisfy".^[3] In a 2014 retrospective review of the game, PC Gamer's Richard Cobbett compared it to The Last Express, finding similarities between plot elements, gameplay and calling it its "spiritual cousin". Cobbett overall praised the game, stating that it is "a genuinely inspired take on the Titanic story that treats it respectfully, while still spinning off into cool new directions."^[9]

Adventure Gamers included the game in its list of the Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games, in the 100th position, stating that "the setting is the real star of the game" and that "the timed element makes the tension palpable, which is a must under the circumstances and results in a thoroughly immersive endgame."^[10] A full conversion of the game on Java was made available online by Daniel Hobi, and can be played on web browsers.^[9][11] Various television documentaries on the Titanic have used scenes from the game because of its faithful recreation of the ship.^[3]

See also

• Titanic: Honor and Glory

References

External links

• Official website (archived)
• Tour Guide Downloads
• Unofficial fanpage
• Titanic: Adventure Out of Time at the Internet Movie Database