he was taken there as a child. The
aim was to help Foster, with a bit
of puzzle-solving, alongside some
pointing and clicking of your mouse, to
escape to the outside world.
Revolution became better known for
its Broken Sword series in the decade
that followed. Cyberpunk themes are
as big, if not bigger than ever, andso Revolution has decided the time
is ripe for a Steel Sky sequel 25 years
on. Much of this is down to popular
demand, with Revolution’s Kickstarter
campaign to get Broken Sword 5 made
listing this sequel as a stretch goal
that it‘s now able to deliver on.
Once again the action takes place
in Union City, the prison-metropolis
from the first game, with Gibbons’
creative vision able to take on a more
beautifully realised graphic novel style
than the first game’s ’90s pixellated
graphics could manage.
In a trailer, we see our likely main
protagonist (we’re guessing Foster)
walking across a red Oz-style desert
back to Union City to a suitably
synth-y soundtrack. Inside the city
there are monorails and all the neon-
tinged technological trappings of a
cyberpunk future. It certainly looks
as though the sequel will remain
faithful to the spirit of the original
game. Revolution Software founder
and CEO Charles Cecil told PC Gamer,
“Our approach has been to write an
intelligent, witty adventure game that
is wholly intuitive to play and assumes
no prior knowledge of the original
game or its universe. We aspire to
write a modern day 1984 told through
the medium of the adventure game.”
The game will be out first on
Apple Arcade for mobile devices,
but Revolution promises “a dynamic
game world that will respond to and
be subverted by the player’s actions”.
While the game hasn’t yet been
confirmed for Xbox, with Revolution
stating PC and ‘other formats’, we’ve
got all fingers and toes crossed
that we’ll be able to revisit Gibbons
and Cecil’s cyberpunk world on our
platform of choice. QFew gamers will remember Beneath
A Steel Sky, a 1994 point-and-click
adventure for PC that was developed
by British company Revolution
Software, but those who do will get
teary-eyed with nostalgia for the
hours spent in its cyberpunk world.
At the time it was both commercially
and critically well received. Watchmen
artist Dave Gibbons wrote the story
for the game, and provided its
background art, after a planned
Watchmen game being mooted by
Revolution didn’t quite come off.
Set in a post-apocalyptic Australia,
the game’s hero was envisaged as a
cross between Mad Max and Crocodile
Dundee (he was even called Foster),
who has never seen the outside of
a prison-like cyberpunk city sinceRoyal Shakespeare Company actors recorded the original’s dialogue but it didn’t really work, so was re-recorded using traditional voice actorsBELOW Beyond A
Steel Sky looks
to be taking us
back inside
the dystopian
Union City.
Beyond A
Steel Sky
Steel yourselves for a sequel to
a 25-year-old classic
Chris Burke
PUBLISHER REVOLUTION DEVELOPER REVOLUTION
ETA TBC“Our approach
has been to
write an
intelligent, witty
adventure game”
PREVIEW
More Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 035