A look back at The Dig
Wed Nov 02, 2011 10:16 pm
Courtesy of Total Recall over on Kotaku.
I was a big fan of the LucasArts adventure games growing up (particularly the Monkey Island series, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit the Road). However, I also happened to get The Dig as part of a six game collection and enjoyed it immensely. While part of the concept of those point and click adventure games was that they kind of played out like an interactive movie with the story being paramount, The Dig arguably took it to another level. If they'd been able to make a movie or TV series out of it, it probably would've been pretty cool.
There's one puzzle I'll never forget. You've got to reassemble the skeleton of an alien turtle-like creature, so that it can be properly resurrected. There are clues in game but it's very easy to almost get it right, try to resurrect it only to see it melt into a skeleton again and have to start all over. On the whole, it's a pretty good game if you're a fan of the genre.
The game I'm talking about is of course The Dig, one of the strangest and most interesting games to ever come out of 1990's PC powerhouse Lucasarts. Arriving at the vanguard of the late-90s fascination with giant asteroids, seen in movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact, The Dig was a game that flaunted starpower and marketing like no other adventure game before or since.
The basic premise of The Dig, involving a team of astronauts exploring an alien planet, was conceived by Steven Spielberg, who had intended to first use it as the basis of an episode for his Amazing Stories TV series, and then later as a motion picture. He ended up doing neither, as the budget and technology required to do it justice simple weren't available at the time.
I was a big fan of the LucasArts adventure games growing up (particularly the Monkey Island series, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit the Road). However, I also happened to get The Dig as part of a six game collection and enjoyed it immensely. While part of the concept of those point and click adventure games was that they kind of played out like an interactive movie with the story being paramount, The Dig arguably took it to another level. If they'd been able to make a movie or TV series out of it, it probably would've been pretty cool.
There's one puzzle I'll never forget. You've got to reassemble the skeleton of an alien turtle-like creature, so that it can be properly resurrected. There are clues in game but it's very easy to almost get it right, try to resurrect it only to see it melt into a skeleton again and have to start all over. On the whole, it's a pretty good game if you're a fan of the genre.