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Beneath a Steel Sky is a 1994 science fiction, more specifically cyberpunk, point and click adventure game. It featured comedy elements and was developed by Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment. It was initially released in for DOS and Amiga. Underworld was its working title. The game was the second to use Revolution Software's Virtual Theatre engine, the first being Lure of the Temptress. The game's backgrounds and introduction sequence were designed by Dave Gibbons. The introduction sequence was also included as a separate promotional comic book in some releases of the game.
Story The game takes place at an unknown point in a dystopian future in Australia, where the Earth has been significantly damaged by pollution or nuclear fallout. The game's backstory is introduced via a comic book, drawn by well-known comic artist Dave Gibbons, that tells the story of a young boy called Robert who is the sole survivor of a plane crash in "the Gap" (the name applied to the Australian Outback at the time of the game). Too young to fend for himself, Robert is adopted by a local group of Indigenous Australians, who teach him the skills he needs to survive in this harsh new environment; they name him Robert Foster, partly due to him being fostered by them and also because of the discovery of an empty can of Foster's Lager, the Australian beer, found near him at the crash site. After Foster has reached adulthood, he is kidnapped and his tribe annihilated by storm-troopers sent from Union City by its all-powerful computer LINC. Interestingly, Union City mentions prominent suburbs and train stations found within Australia's largest city, Sydney, leading some to speculate that Union City was once Sydney. This was confirmed in a 2005 interview with the Australian gaming magazine, PC PowerPlay. Foster manages to escape from his captors as the helicopter transporting him back to Union City crashes just after entering the dome, leaving him and his robot friend, Joey, to find out why they were brought there and where to go next. Joey's personality is stored on a small circuit board, which can easily be inserted and removed from many types of robot bodies. This allows Joey to change bodies as the situation requires, provided his circuit board is not damaged. Joey, however, is not always happy about Foster's choice of body for him. Background In the future world of Beneath a Steel Sky, the six states and two territories of Australia have been consumed by their capital city and are described as a "city states". Union City is the second largest of the six remaining city states after the acquisition of Asio-City. Notably ASIO is Australia's national intelligence agency. After the 'Euro-American War' all participants agreed upon a set of ideals described as the 'neo democratic principles' which removes all labour representation and social benefits. Ironically those that subscribe to these principles are called 'Unions' contrasting the real world definition of what a Union pushes for. Those that oppose the Unions ideals are called 'Corporations'. All of the City States are described as either being Corporations or Unions. The back-story involves a conflict between Union City and Hobart Corporation fighting over 'market' dominance by the use of sabotage which is used as a common theme throughout the story. Hobart is the capital city of the Australian state Tasmania. Critical acclaim The game's initial release in the UK was met with critical acclaim, reaching the number one place in the GALLUP charts and receiving; The release in the USA was met with almost equal success with; In May 1995 Beneath a Steel Sky was also awarded the prestigious Golden Joystick Award for 'The Best Adventure'. Credits
Trivia Legal situation In August 2003, the game was released as freeware and support for it was added to ScummVM, allowing it to be played on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows CE and other compatible operating systems and platforms. The data files for both the disk and CD version are available from the ScummVM website. The files on the ScummVM website do not include the original program executables since they are not needed by ScummVM. Though not included, these executable files are also legally distributable now. Sequel "Beneath a Steel Sky 2 is a project Revolution has been considering for a while, and has started to move forward on, but we are unable to comment beyond this.” company boss Charles Cecil said in 2004. More recently Cecil has commented in an interview dated August 10, 2006 on Eurogamer on his admiration for the work done by Scumm VM and the subsequent interest in a sequel. He also stated that if he were to make the game he "would dearly love to work with Dave Gibbons again"*. On March 4 2004, Revolution purchased the domain name steel-sky2.com, although this has now seemingly been sold. If released, the game will likely be in 3D, like Revolution Software’s latest release Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon. Revolution announced Broken Sword: The Angel of Death in August 2005, so the sequel won’t be published soon. But in September 2005 Tony Warriner stated in Revolution’s forum that the game wasn’t cancelled, and that he would not lose hope that there would be a Steel Sky 2 at some point in the future. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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