Beneath a Steel Sky: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''"Marvellous! I get kidnapped, nearly killed in a 'copter crash, hunted by professional thugs... and I'm stuck with a ROBOT in a SULK!''|'''Robert Foster''', exchanging angry words with his belligerent robot Joey.}}

They are brutally set upon by a team of Security agents from Union City, a sprawling metropolis with millions of inhabitants, looking for someone named Overmann. After kidnapping Foster, destroying his robot's shell and setting off in a helicopter, the leader of the forces gives the order to detonate an explosive, wiping out both the tribe and the land on which they lived. Overcome with emotion, Foster is restrained by the guards as they make their way back to the city. Without warning, the chopper spins out of control and crashes in Union City's industrial district, killing the pilot and all the passengers but two: Foster and an over-zealous Security agent named Reich. Climbing from the wreckage, he retreats to a nearby factory amidst a hail of laser fire. Reich proceeds to hunt him down, all the while referring to him as Overmann.

 

 

''Beneath a Steel Sky'' was very well received upon release, fetching scores between 85-100% in the video game magazines of the time, with particular praise directed at the stylish graphics and darkly humourous off-kilter dialogue. Nevertheless, it failed to reach a larger audience and remains something of a forgotten gem, although Revolution Software commendably made it freeware to coincide with [http://www.scummvm.org/ ScummVM] porting the game using its custom engine, which means it can now be played on a variety of platforms. A "Remastered" edition was released for the iPhone in September 2009, which fixes some of the minor issues with the original game, features an intuitive new interface and an improved musical score.

* [[Dubtitle]]/[[Fun with Subtitles]]: Due more to lack of attention to detail than anything else, often the spoken dialogue and written dialogue are different. Sometimes these are regional variations, like changing "spanner" to "wrench", but every so often the line is completely different, although the meaning is the same. This provides an inadvertent source of humour.

* [[Easter Egg]]: On the Amiga version, the programmers hid a little information in the main executable file. It was a short note on how hard it was to get the game running with only 1MB of RAM, written in "Olde Worlde" style English.

* [[Foreshadowing]]: All over the place. Seemingly throwaway lines and scenes can give clues to what happens later, in terms of both plot and puzzle-solving.

* [[Fun with Acronyms]]: LINC, which actually stands for '''L'''ogical '''I'''nter-'''N'''eural '''C'''onnection.