The Dig

released on Nov 30, 1995

In the dead of space, something is alive. A deep space adventure by Sean Clark in collaboration with filmmaker Steven Spielberg. You've saved the Earth from Total Destruction. Now, Can you save yourself? An asteroid the size of a small moon is on a crash course toward Earth, and only NASA veteran Boston Low has the expertise to stop it. Along for the ride are award-winning journalist Maggie Robbins and internationally renowned geologist Ludger Brink. Once the wayward asteroid is nuked into a safe orbit, the trio conducts a routine examination of the rocky surface. What they uncover is anything but routine. Low, Brink and Robbins unwittingly trigger a mechanism that transforms the asteroid into a crystal-like spacecraft. The team is hurled across the galaxy to a planet so desolate, Brink is moved to name it Cocytus, after the 9th circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno. The bleak landscape was obviously once home to a highly enveloped civilization, with remnants of sophisticated architecture, advanced technology and an intricate network of underground tunnels. But no Cocytans. Who were the original inhabitants of this once rich empire-turned-wasteland? What are those apparitions that mysteriously appear from time to time? Why have Low, Robbins and Brink been brought to this place? And how can Low keep his team from unraveling in the face of such uncertainly? To return to Earth, the must dig for answer, both on the planet's surface and deep within themselves. From the combined talents of LucasArts and legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg comes an epic adventure that plunges headlong into the very core of the unknown. And takes you with it.


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(This is the 114th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)

I enjoy LucasArts adventure games and I've played lots of them as part of this challenge. Loom, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Full Throttle, Indiana Jones and now The Dig, which had been recommended to me a few times when I reviewed the others. Straight off the bat, it's easy to see why. It's an incredibly atmospheric adventure with a more serious tone than usual for LucasArts, though not bereft of their trademark witty and dad joke loving characters.

It's about a 5-person group assigned to plant nuclear bombs on an asteroid that is on collision course with the earth to basically make it securely orbit around Earth. The group that is assigned for the job is an interesting mix, as you got one journalist, a technician who is also running for congress, an archeologist, a pilot and the main character, the Commander.

The Commander, Boston Low, the journalist, Maggie Robbins, and the archeologist, Ludger Brink, enter the inside of the asteroid after blowing it open, stumble upon an odd puzzle within and are teleported into deep space. When they come to, they are on an alien planet that seems to no longer have any sentient life on it. Based on what is left behind on this planet though, it seems clear that there WAS sentient life here at least. So you start solving these mysteries to figure out a way back to Earth.

Unfortunately, for such a great setup for its story, a big issue with The Dig is that its puzzles are maddening. I'm OK with a few obtuse puzzles, they are practically unavoidable in LucasArts adventures, but The Dig puts a new meaning to it. There is one puzzle in particular, where some sort of fish / turtle is eaten in front of you and its remains are spit back on land. Interacting with it opens a window where you see about 15-20 pieces of this fish in disarray. The goal is to reassemble everything into the correct order. How are you supposed to do this? Well, there are the really conveniently placed remains of the same type of fish on the next screen. So go there, remember how ALL these pieces are set up, go back to the fish in disarray, and try to place everything in the same way.

EXCEPT. You have to place it EXACTLY in one specific way and every item has to be in EXACT order, otherwise you didn't do it right. After spending way too long on this dumb puzzle, I looked up online how to set it up. After setting it up exactly that way, the game said I STILL did it wrong, meaning something was probably an inch off or something. I couldn't be bothered to find out, so I called it quits there.

There are more bad puzzles in the game up to that point, and most definitely after I'm sure, but the problem with these puzzles is that 1) they're bad, obviously but 2) they ruin an otherwise incredible atmosphere set up by a very well paced first act, the great visuals (for its time), the cinematics and the sound design.

The game feels much more big budget than prior LucasArts adventures, and it has some cool ideas, like talking to your crew members and regularly being able to ask them about clues you find as well as just engaging in optional conversation and getting to know them better, but the puzzle difficulty ruined it for me. Only play this if you're a more hardcore point & click adventure fan, because you're gonna be at some of these puzzles for a long while without a guide and even with one, some of them are just tiring.

This review contains spoilers

Kind of a profoundly bleak ending. The game sets up this vast narrative about the dangers of trying to conquer death, how it must be accepted, how we succumb to our worst impulses when trying to borrow too much from the addiction of life. And then the dead love interest is revived, dead-eyed promise that it was okay this time and we'll all return home happily. Its supposed to be a happy ending, but it feels sinister and uncanny. Upsetting. Wrong.

This game absolutely whips. I don't think about it often, but its one of my top five point and clicks whenever I remember it exists.

Na década de 90 eu me apaixonei por adventure por mérito de alguns ícones como as aventuras de Putt-Putt, da Humongous, e Maldição da Ilha dos Macacos e Full Throttle.

O misto de uma bela história com uma progressão dependente da realização de quebra-cabeças me fascinou tanto que quando criança eu me sentia às vezes dentro de um point’n’click, chegando a brincar sozinho em situações oportunas que eu estaria progredindo em uma “cena”. Saudades de brincar sozinho com a imaginação.

Isso porque o acesso não era tão simples a esses jogos, tanto em questão financeira, como também linguística, já que eu não sabia tanto de inglês. E por isso diversos jogos que eu via sendo elogiados na época ficaram “para depois”. Pois chegou a hora de The Dig, um jogo que um dos meus melhores amigos é apaixonado.

Como todo adventure das LucasArts, The Dig tem seus momentos infâmes de quebra-cabeças com lógica fora da caixa e solução obtusa. Se houver uma necessidade de ilustrar, imagine um determinado item que ao ser utilizado retorna sempre a mesma mensagem de descrição EXCETO se você o utilizar em um determinado local, o que provoca a ativação de um evento que revela um item que você já rodou o mapa inteiro pra encontrar e ele estava literalmente invisível.

Esse naipe de puzzle sempre foi algo apontado por críticos, uma vez que a necessidade de tais soluções mirabolantes era vender guias, serviço de dicas ao jogador ou mesmo provocar trocas de experiências entre jogadores, algo que se fosse na era da Internet não teria razão de existir, exceto a troca de experiência, já que é o que mais fazemos em fóruns e redes sociais.

É algo que encaro um pouco como negativo, apesar de entender o motivo pelo qual existem, especialmente porque jogos adventure tem duração média de poucas horas quando o jogador sabe exatamente o que fazer. Algo que poderia durar meses e meses de experimentação e troca entre jogadores é factível em 2 horas, por exemplo, que é o que levo eu pra terminar Full Throttle do começo ao fim, o que o torna muito mais próximo da duração de um filme.

Tais puzzles foram feitos com o intuito notório de alongar a duração dos jogos. Imagine como jogador ou mesmo como desenvolvedor passar meses e meses sem lançar/jogar um jogo enquanto ele é desenvolvido para no fim ele durar 2-3 horas. Talvez fosse frustrante financeiramente também na década de 90 investir um alto valor em um jogo, após meses de espera, e ele durar pouquinhas horas porque seus quebra-cabeças são muito fáceis.
Penso que com isso em mente os devs de adventure da época se esforçavam para esticar a baladeira e pensar em quebra-cabeças dificílimos de serem resolvidos, o que hoje facilmente os criticamos pelo seu caráter altamente obtuso.

Este então é o único ponto relevante de se destacar em The Dig que possa diminuir sua magia. Trata-se de um roteiro hollywoodiano onde uma equipe de astronautas ao realizar uma missão para salvar a Terra acabando descobrindo muito mais do que imaginavam e são envolvidos em um mistério alienígena altamente estimulante, com muito sabor de ficção científica fantasiosa.

The Dig tem uma trilha sonora deliciosa, acompanhada de diálogos com atuação de voz completa, com direito a um mix de terror, suspense, humor e aventura em um só pacote.

Pra todos os efeitos, é o que tínhamos na época de mais cinemático em matéria de jogos e ainda fazem muito bonito hoje em dia com suas animações 2D em pixel art.

Well, it was really cool! I still remember that play. Interesting dialogues, black humor, awesome pixelart and the atmosphere of good old 90's SF story. The game looks wonderful! I like that puzzles was made in the way like you're really got to another planet and have no idea how all these things work. And you have to randomly explore it with protagonist.

I admit I'm a sucker for old-school point 'n' click adventures, and, surprise, surprise, I absolutely enjoyed this one, as well. Sure, it's very short, but in exchange it's extremely difficult. I believe even experienced, veteran gamers will find some of its puzzles nerve-wrackingly challenging, especially because there's almost zero hand-holding, you have to figure everything out by yourself. But it's definitely worth putting in all the effort!