The Big LucasArts Playthrough

[toblix]

This question will haunt you for as long as you live.

[SecretAsianMan]

There is another food source located within Atlantis.  Or more specifically, wandering around the halls of Atlantis.

 

Basically, you beat up a Nazi and take his lunch.

[Zeusthecat]

There is another food source located within Atlantis.  Or more specifically, wandering around the halls of Atlantis.

 

Basically, you beat up a Nazi and take his lunch.

 

Ah, I tried to avoid them because I got in one fight and realized I had no idea what the fighting controls were and died. I assumed it would be the same as Last Crusade so I kept trying to hit the number keys.

[Udvarnoky]

In Fate of Atlanits, indiscriminately pounding the number keys is a sufficient strategy to win a fight.  There's also the cheat sucker-punch key.  Forgot what it is, though.

[Twig]

It's zero.

[Zeusthecat]

Then maybe I am utterly retarded. I think I was on the right side of the screen and was trying to hit 7,4, and 1 to punch but nothing was happening. Then again I was caught off guard and wasn't expecting the fight since it let me run away the first time.

[SecretAsianMan]

You can also awkwardly click on them with the mouse to punch.

[syntheticgerbil]

It's zero.

0

 

I want some coldcuts now. I think it's lunch time.

[Zeusthecat]

I played for awhile last night and am stuck again. After getting my crab raft I found a room with a cabinet containing some kind of metal piece. I also looked at the cabinet and saw that it had a weird design on it. There wasn't much else besides that until I made my way to the other side of the circular canal and found a room with a door being held shut by a big robot. I was able to prop the ladder against the robot, climb up, and pull its chestplate off so that I could access his innards but it appears that I am missing one last piece to get it running again (I have the wheel, the gear, the weird metal piece from the cabinet, and the orichalcum bead). I tried interacting with everything else in the room in every way possible (the rings hanging off of the robot's arm, the chestplate debris, and the chain attached to a pillar in the room) but it looks like I am stuck. I also haven't found a way to rescue Sophia yet so I continue to be stuck on that front too.

 

After hitting these dead ends I wandered back through all the rooms and after some pondering I think I settled on what needs to happen for me to get through the door that the robot is holding shut. I re-examined the cabinet door in that room I found and it seems to vaguely show the necessary placement of the items in the robot's innards. I see symbols that seem to represent some of the robot items I have and I noticed that one of the other symbols shown in the center of the picture and on top of the wheel looks to be the necklace that Sophia has. That would make sense since there doesn't seem to be any place to put the bead right now, just a bunch of pegs to fit the other items. So under this assumption I believe I need to free Sophia and use her necklace and the other items I have in a configuration similar to that shown on the cabinet door. Then when I have everything placed properly in the robot's chest I'm betting the final step will be to put the bead into the necklace's mouth to open the door.

 

The only problem with all of this is that I still have no idea how to free Sophia. I find it suspicious that there are so many things you can say to her when lifting the gate but I've gone through every dialog option and there doesn't seem to be any way to convince her. I've also tried giving her every item I have, I've tried using every item I have on the gate, and I've tried interacting with the broken robot in that room in every way possible. I've also combed through every room multiple times and I'm just not seeing any other options. I plan to toil a while longer so if you give any hints, continue leaving them in spoiler tags. I just need some emotional support right now. Please tell me I'm not crazy and that I'm not missing something painfully obvious.

 

Edit: Jesus, right after posting all that I find a statue part right by the broken down robot that I can pick up. Fuck yeah and I'm stupid.

[Zeusthecat]

Yesss! The door is open now and Sophia is freed!

 

After finding that statue piece I went right back to the robot/statue guarding the door and everything just clicked. I used the cabinet diagram as a guide and figured out how to make each arm move forward and back and then found that I could attach the chain to each ring (one end on the ring stuck to the door and the other on the ring that was attached to the functioning arm) so that the arm that was still intact could pull the door down. Then the door pin fell out and I was able to give that to Sophia so she could prop the cell door open and escape. That was definitely one of my favorite puzzles!

 

I have to say the "exchange" between Indy and Sophia after I freed her was one of my favorite exchanges in the game. Man, the writing in this game is so good. I'm totally pumped after solving that.

[syntheticgerbil]

Sophia was the best girl for Indy, forget all the movie ones.

[Zeusthecat]

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis completed! Not counting all the time I sat idle, my total playtime was right around 20 hours. And I never used any hints (unless you count the mini hint from toblix earlier on my rib cage comment) making this the second LucasArts game I got through without resorting to hints.

 

After freeing Sophia, I continued on through the door I had busted down earlier. The next area was a circular hallway with a few rooms coming off of it. As soon as we made it to the second screen Sophia told me to follow her into an adjacent room where she started to act really Nur Ab Sal-y. I spent some time talking to her/him and was quite entertained by all the various lines of dialog. I also happened to look at Sophia's necklace and found that putting orichalcum in the mouth caused her to take the necklace off. After that I looked around the room, picked up a scepter, and continued on through the other rooms adjacent to the hallway. Two of the rooms had nothing in them but the last room had a big tractor-like machine with a mouth for receiving orichalcum and three slots to the left of the mouth. I found that I could put the scepter I had picked up into each of the slots and use it as a lever but I couldn't get anything to happen after activating the machine so I figured I'd need something else to serve as an additional lever (or 2). As I left that room I noticed some designs on the ground and then some more designs on the wall back in the hallway. It looked like they represented different lever positions and from each picture it seemed like I would only need 2 levers to make one of the valid configurations. I wasn't sure what else I could use as a second lever so I decided to go back to Sophia to figure out what I was supposed to do when she took her necklace off.

 

Once I got back to her I made a few more attempts at making her take the necklace off and tried using various items unsuccessfully. Then I remembered how she put the necklace in the gold box in the labyrinth so we could use the orichalcum detector without interference. So I made her take it off one more time and was finally able to snatch it up with the gold box and throw it in the lava. With Nur Ab Sal's influence gone Sophia was finally free and she was able to re-join me. Unfortunately I still didn't have the second lever I needed. At this point the only thing I could think was that maybe there was some way I could get that door hinge back that I had used to prop up the cell door. I had tried picking it back up after freeing her but it was wedged in there so I assumed it wasn't something I couldn't retrieve. I figured it was worth another attempt anyways and thought maybe I could just lift the cell door again to free the hinge since Indy was obviously capable of doing so. Luckily, the game was kind to me and did a good job following my logic. When I lifted the door the hinge fell down and I was able to pick it up. With my second lever in hand I headed back to the tractor.

 

Before starting the Atlantis tractor I went back and looked at the two designs I had observed earlier. One of the configurations appeared to make the tractor go straight and the other indicated some kind of swirly left turn-y motion. With that knowledge I started up the tractor and put it into the "straight" configuration. As soon as I did so Sophia hopped on and the tractor started careening down the halls. The view switched to a sort of over-the-shoulder view and everything was going by really fast. I wasn't sure if there was some timing I was supposed to follow so I just flipped the levers over to the "swirly left turn-y" position and careened right through the inner wall. After smashing through the wall the tractor plunged into a lake of lava and I was sure that I had fucked up. To my surprise though, Indy and Sophia had jumped off at the last moment and now had a new path to follow. The final destination was near.

 

After following a short path from where the tractor crashed, I found myself in a big central lava area with lots of rooms and paths. I trial and error-ed my way through until I finally made it to the end. Luckily, by this point in my LucasArts adventure I had become trained to carefully observe all environments and made a mental note of a big mural on the wall that had three rings with a single symbol shown in each ring. I wasn't sure what it was for but figured there was a good chance it had some purpose because these games have trained me to be ultra paranoid and consider every possibility. Sure enough, the very next area had another spindle and I had already exhausted all of the configurations from the Lost Dialog. So once I saw this I went right back to the previous area and took a screenshot of the mural. It looked like the noon sun was shown at one position, the full moon in another, and the volcano in the last position. Once I had that screenshot I went back and solved the last puzzle of the game.

 

At this point I was ambushed by Nazi bastards that took advantage of my smarts to gain control of the "god machine" I had just activated. Kerner insisted on dying first and I used my cunning to have him try the machine with only one bead which turned him into some weird fucked up goat creature that jumped into the lava out of shame. The mad scientist dude decided I should be the next candidate and I went through a whole bunch of dialog options to try to get him to change his mind. I had saved the game during the conversation and got to see Indy turned into a god a few times and kill everyone before reloading my save and trying again. Eventually, I was able to trick the bastard into trying the machine on himself which resulted in him turning into Cinder from Killer Instinct and bringing everything down. Indy and Sophia were barely able to escape as the floors and walls crumbled around them and they made it to the submarine just in time. Then they had one last embrace as a new volcano emerged from the ocean and then retreated and the credits rolled.

 

So, yeah, this game was really fucking good. The writing was excellent, I loved the voicework throughout the whole game, and it was the perfect Indiana Jones experience. One of the things that impressed me the most was the difficulty curve. It started pretty easy at the beginning and ramped up at a steady rate until it got pretty difficult at the end (but not overly difficult). In my opinion, this has game has had the best puzzle design so far and I feel like every puzzle ended up having a nice logical solution (at least for the path I took). Thank you Idle Thumbs for making me aware of this game! It was definitely a stand out experience.

[syntheticgerbil]

Glad you enjoyed it, it's definitely one of the top tier LA games. I would say it's also the most difficult of the "can't die, can't get stuck" games outside of The Dig. Also cool that you experienced the bad ending as I didn't realize you could turn Indy into an angry god until a much later playthrough.

 

You also reminded me how ridiculously creepy I originally found it when you talk to Sophia while she is possessed. So great.

[SecretAsianMan]

Glad you enjoyed it, it's definitely one of the top tier LA games. I would say it's also the most difficult of the "can't die, can't get stuck" games outside of The Dig.

 

I agree with this, although I think The Dig was harder because some of the puzzles weren't designed as well, not because they were necessarily more difficult.

 

I actually stopped playing this time at the lava room with the Scooby-doo esque doors.  I might go back and finish it, but since I've done it before and I was really only playing the game again to follow along with your playthrough, I probably won't.  Also that giant mural in the lava room was once talked about on an older cast I think.  I believe Chris discussed brute forcing the solution, then afterward noticing the giant mural.

[syntheticgerbil]

Yeah I definitely agree with you that The Dig is harder because of some design faults more than trickier puzzles themselves.

[Zeusthecat]

Also that giant mural in the lava room was once talked about on an older cast I think.  I believe Chris discussed brute forcing the solution, then afterward noticing the giant mural.

 

I do remember them talking about this game at one point and making me really want to play it. Maybe I subconsciously remembered them talking about that specific part and that made it easier for me to figure it out.

 

I'm also curious, what puzzles were considered really difficult in this game? Is the path I took considered much easier than the wits path and that is where the real difficulty is? I honestly struggled for much longer periods on MI1 and MI2 and never felt like the puzzles got quite as crazy in the path I took in this game. Then again, this is the 7th LucasArts game I've finished at this point and since I've been playing them all back to back the vocabulary of these games is becoming pretty ingrained.

[SecretAsianMan]

In terms of puzzles, the Wits path is supposed to be harder, but I don't really remember it myself.  Fate of Atlantis is different from games like Monkey Island because those games have a lot more cartoon logic in them.  FoA, while fantastical, is more real world logic.  It's "I need gears to make this robot work" instead of "I need to make a wrench out of this monkey that I hypnotized with a banana on a metronome".  Both are appropriate for their respective games, but in the case of FoA it means you don't have to think outside the box quite as much.

[Udvarnoky]

You also reminded me how ridiculously creepy I originally found it when you talk to Sophia while she is possessed. So great.

 

The scene where Indy argues with Nur-Ab-Sal in the throne room is such a nuclear reactor of great atmosphere.  The wonderfully evocative environment with the Minoan-inspired architecture and the deformed skeletons, the excellent music and the intermittently processed voicework of the possessed Sophia...it's those moments that make you completely forget how dated the tech is, and it's a perfect example of why so many people consider Fate of Atlantis to be the real fourth Indy adventure, if not the only truly worthy follow-up to Raiders.

 

I remember trying to make sense of why Crystal Skull disappointed me so much and what could have made it better, and having some kind of spookiness or stakes was definitely a big missing piece that would have improved the experience.  The movie kind of flirted with the idea of the alien skull having some sort of psychic influence on Indy, but they never really went far enough with it to make that interesting or really justify the third act at all.  They should have taken a page from Fate of Atlantis and have one of the heroes if not Indy himself get full-on possessed by the skull and the rest following him to the lost city out of concern.  Instead you have John Hurt just kind of innocuously babbling and the entourage pressing forward to the kindgom for no decent reason.

[Zeusthecat]

The scene where Indy argues with Nur-Ab-Sal in the throne room is such a nuclear reactor of great atmosphere.  The wonderfully evocative environment with the Minoan-inspired architecture and the deformed skeletons, the excellent music and the intermittently processed voicework of the possessed Sophia...it's those moments that make you completely forget how dated the tech is, and it's a perfect example of why so many people consider Fate of Atlantis to be the real fourth Indy adventure, if not the only truly worthy follow-up to Raiders.

 

On top of the great atmosphere, they did such a good job of capturing all of the small little details of Indiana Jones' personality. I think that is one of the things that impressed me the most about this game. From beginning to end everything he said and did was just so consistent and true to character. This was especially noticeable at the end for me. I just absolutely loved that he continued to be snarky and sarcastic through the romance scenes, the segment with Sophia being possessed, and right up until he was about to be turned into a "god". I'm so used to most games turning the main character into some kind of cheeseball during these kinds of sequences and getting super self serious but in this game they just nailed it.

 

And I really liked the voice actor for Indy. He was the perfect complement to the excellent writing in this game.

[Udvarnoky]

Yeah, he's also a really cool guy.  Apparently the team of Fate of Atlantis 2 (one of those ambitious fan game projects that are twenty-five years in the making and never get released) contacted him about the possibility of doing the voicework when the time came, and he apparently got back to them.

 

It would be interesting to glimpse the alternate universe where any of the intended follow-up Indy games would have happened.  Brian Moriarty (Loom) began heading up a Young Indiana Jones game, as implied by FOA's end credits, but it got cancelled when the TV show did, and also because there were apparently quality concerns.  It was also allegedly more Myst-like than the studio's previous adventure games. 

 

The next attempt was the more well-known Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, which would have been a proper, graphic adventure sequel to the game.  It got far enough along in development to get shown off at a tradeshow, but LEC gave it the axe when it found out that the game couldn't be sold in Germany, which was apparently a country heavy relied on to put their adventure games in the black, due to the use of Nazis in the storyline.  (Other games, like Last Crusade, could work around this rule simply by swapping swastikas for some generic emblem and never actually using the word "Nazi," but Iron Phoenix's plot revolved around an attempt to raise Hitler from the dead, so there was no loophole to exploit there.)  There were also problems with the art production.  All that's available to see related to the game are some lovely Bill Stoneham backgrounds and Anson Jew's famous zombie Hitler test animation, which can be seen at 0:43

.

 

After that there was supposedly a second attempt at a graphic adventure called Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny that collapsed before really getting anywhere.  By this time 3D was in vogue and Hal Barwood responded with the actually-released Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine.  What's interesting about that is Barwood came up with a storyline involving Indy going after UFOs during the Cold War with Soviets as the villains before being told "from on high" not to go there, the reasons for which are obvious in retorspect, so he swapped UFOs for a technology beneath the Tower of Babel.

[Zeusthecat]

Thanks Udvarnoky, that's some really interesting stuff. A part of me is sad that none of that stuff came to fruition but in the end maybe it was for the best that they ended on such a high note with FOA. 

[BigJKO]

What's interesting about that is Barwood came up with a storyline involving Indy going after UFOs during the Cold War with Soviets as the villains before being told "from on high" not to go there, the reasons for which are obvious in retorspect, so he swapped UFOs for a technology beneath the Tower of Babel.

Hah! That's great. Also, I always thought it was a great Indy idea and a logical next step for him, even though the film executed it poorly. Amazing trivia dump, Udvarnoky!

So, what game's next, Zeus?!

[Zeusthecat]

So, what game's next, Zeus?!

 

Day of the Tentacle. And I'm really excited for it. This is the game I've been looking forward to most besides Grim Fandango just because of all the things I've heard about it from the cast and people here. I already obtained the game and loaded it into Scummvm so I'll be starting it by Friday most likely (hopefully sooner).

[BigJKO]

Awwww hells yeah! Wife and kid are away this weekend so I'll play some Day of the Tentacle along with you. One of my absolute favorites. Hope you're not disappointed after all the hype.

[syntheticgerbil]

Anson Jew's famous zombie Hitler test animation, which can be seen at 0:43

.

Holy shit, I've never seen that. I always thought that Sam and Max scene added to the CD version was complete ass, but the rest of his reel is full of awesome scenes. Looks like everything he animated for The Dig didn't make the cut.