Developer/publisher
Revolution Software
Format iOS, PC (tested)
Release Out nowBeyond A Steel Sky
Once the gates swing open, however, our doubts are
temporarily cast aside by a rather glorious reveal, set to
a sweeping score. The utopia promised by Foster’s robot
friend Joey appears to have become a reality, as Foster
stands in wide-eyed awe, gazing through his transparent
transport pod that speeds smoothly along a twisting
skyrail carrying him up, down and around a gleaming
future cityscape. It’s the first of a series of majestic
sights that showcase Dave Gibbons’ art direction at its
finest. If the animation still leaves a little to be desired,
the views are often spectacular. Inevitably, all is not as it
seems, as Foster soon discovers when returning to the
apartment home of the man whose identity he has stolen.
In a neat twist, citizens here are looking to go down in
the world; social climbers like Songbird, the dead man’s
wife, are actually aiming to descend. It’s on the upper
levels where you’ll find the rust and grime of the city’s
industrial zone and its more impoverished inhabitants.
It’s here that Beyond A Steel Sky really hits its stride.
An interrogation by a suspicious official is a set-piece
standout: though you can prepare by rummaging through
the belongings of the man whose life you now inhabit,
his widow will perform a silent game of charades behind
your interviewer should you take too long over any
answers. And while your hacking device is mostly used
to change a system’s verbs, adverbs soon come into play.
A museum exhibit of a synthetic arm can be
reprogrammed to act aggressively, letting you flick the Vs
at an unfortunate patron. Meanwhile, an optional bit of
tinkering provides one of the game’s funniest moments,
as you give another exhibit an inappropriately alluring
voice. Later, there’s a conceptually ingenious moment
where you enter a physical manifestation of a computer’s
memory, reborn as a Dr. Manhattan-like avatar. And
though it makes little narrative sense that Foster would
put a pursuit on hold to watch it play out, there’s a
delightfully cathartic scene where you get to publicly
embarrass a wealthy blowhard at a poetry recital.
Such playful invention only just makes up for the
myriad bugs, game-breaking or otherwise, which
increase in volume as the game moves into its third act.
During a party scene, we watch in bewilderment as we
direct Foster to examine an object, only to see him
calmly and slowly walk away and up two flights of stairs
before delivering his observations. We experience two
hard crashes, and another puzzle where one key element
refuses to play nicely. If that hint system weren’t present
we’re not sure we’d have reached the end, though the
payoff is worth the hassle, particularly for those who’ve
been in Foster’s shoes before. Even so, as the credits roll
to silence – which smacks less of a stylistic choice so
much as a studio running out of money or time – we’re
left to reflect on a game that only sporadically lives up
to its billing. In the end, it falls beneath our
expectations as often as it stretches beyond them.O
ld habits die hard for Charles Cecil and
Revolution Software. In many ways, that’s no
bad thing: within minutes of starting this
followup to the studio’s other best-loved game, we’ve got
the makings of a cracking mystery involving a corpse,
a kidnapping and a fearsome mechanical quadruped. By
the time it’s over, we’re reminded that Cecil knows how
to craft – and, just as importantly, pace – a three-act
story with a proper beginning, middle and end. The
witty dialogue, fondness for puns and love of regional
accents with which we associate the studio are there in
abundance. And yet despite promising an evolution of
the point-and-click adventure, too often it leaves us
grumbling about its puzzles – not least since a litany of
technical issues leaves us unsure whether it’s us or the
game that’s missing a vital piece of the solution.
For returning players, part of the early intrigue comes
from the promise of a look at how Union City has changed
since the original game. Yet protagonist Robert Foster’s
homecoming is tantalisingly withheld – the area around
its entrance amounts to both a tutorial and an extended
puzzle as he tries to figure out a way in. The place is a
microcosm of the game’s weaknesses. The rampant
screen-tearing is such a distraction that we enable v-sync
within minutes of starting. During a dialogue exchange,
the character we’re talking to sporadically disappears
from view. Another clips through a piece of playground
equipment, leaving us shuffling left and right so we can
talk to them rather than interact with the object. While
speaking to a third outsider, the subtitles vanish along
with all dialogue options, forcing a reload. Mercifully, the
game autosaves regularly, though you begin to wonder if
its frequency is partly a result of such shortcomings.Yet this extended intro highlights the game’s
strengths, too. Dialogue exchanges are brisk and funny,
such that you’ll likely exhaust most potential lines of
conversation even as the UI makes it clear which avenues
of enquiry will yield story- or puzzle-critical information.
And it’s not long before Foster is given a handheld
gadget that lets him hack into any computerised device,
static or otherwise, and change the way it operates.
Already, there’s opportunity for mischief: we use it to
summon a hapless repairman before nipping into his
office to steal a sandwich. Then, for good measure, we
use it on a vending machine so that an alarm blares when
anyone tries to use it. But even here, Cecil’s insistence
that the player should be able to figure out every
conundrum simply by studying their surroundings and
the predictable routines of the nearby NPCs proves
misleading. An electric fence hidden behind a waterfall is
merely the first example of the game’s sometimes
abstruse logic, and the process of interrupting moving
characters when you need to either talk to or use items
on them feels clumsy throughout.PLAY
Playful invention
only just makes
up for themyriad bugs,
game-breaking
or otherwise
6
STATE OF THE UNION
Six writers, including Cecil, were
involved in the game’s script.
Though it trades in ideas that
are fairly common to speculative
dystopian fiction, Beyond A
Steel Sky handles them with
care, and the inevitable
comparisons with modern
society are lightly drawn –
beyond one deserved dig at the
“see it, say it, sorted” slogan.
Though the central mystery is
the focus, you can’t fail to
notice the impact of the city’s
Qdos scheme, which gamifies
social advancement, nor the
way media is curated to
individual citizens. For some, the
final confrontation in which
Union City’s many failings are
laid bare may come across as
didactic, but while it does
ensure its themes are driven
home, it also makes perfect
sense in the context of the plot.