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Studio: |
Sierra
On-Line |
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Designer(s): |
Scott
Murphy / Josh Mandel |
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Part of series: |
Space
Quest |
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Release: |
July 11, 1995 |
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Main credits: |
Producer: Oliver Brelsford Programming: Steve Conrad Music: Dan Kehler, Neal Grandstaff |
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Useful links: |
Complete
playthrough (7 parts, 494 mins.) |
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Historical details on the
creation of Space Quest 6, the last
(or, at least, the last «canon») game in the Space Quest franchise, are rather blurry, and I am a bit lazy to
dig up old interviews and memoirs to get a proper understanding of what
happened in between 1993, when Space
Quest V was released as a Dynamix product under the supervision of Mark
Crowe, and 1995, when work on Space
Quest migrated back to Sierra proper and the final product was credited
to Scott Murphy. Apparently, most of the actual work was done by Josh Mandel,
Sierra’s multi-talented wonder kid who’d already supervised several other
projects in the name of Roberta Williams (e.g. The Dagger Of Amon Ra) and Al Lowe (Freddy Pharkas) — but after Mandel had a falling out with Sierra
officials some time in early 1995, he was promptly sacked, and finalization
of the project was entrusted to Scott Murphy. This creates the illusion that
differences between the fifth and sixth game in the series may reflect
creative differences between the Two Guys From Andromeda (since Crowe is
associated only with the fifth, and Murphy only with the sixth), but in
reality, they rather reflect differences between a slightly older and a
slightly younger generation of game designers. It is impossible to say, of
course, just how different Space Quest
6 would have turned out if, through some magic twist, the Two Guys found
themselves reunited at their home studio and asked to deliver a proper sequel
in true, classic Space Quest
spirit. By all means, Mandel was a big fan of the series as well as a
talented designer / writer with a sharp and complex sense of humor. But he
was put in charge of the Space Quest 6
project almost immediately upon completing work on Freddy Pharkas, the adventure game industry reply to Blazing Saddles, and I assume that his
creative mindset still remained rooted in the Freddy way of thinking — namely, that all of this stuff is done primarily, if not exclusively, for the
laughs. He clearly saw Space Quest
as nothing other than a comic / parodic series, and his idea for progress in
the franchise was clear and simple — to buff the game’s comedy and parody
elements to such heights and lengths that, once you’d reached the end of the
game, you would be shitting jokes, gags, puns, and sarcasm non-stop for at
least a week. This was hardly the worst
possible course of action — after all, Space
Quest never did take itself all that seriously, and Josh Mandel was one of Sierra’s best comedy
writers of all time. But in my opinion, this meant somewhat underestimating
and underselling the classic spirit of the franchise. The Two Guys were at
their best whenever they were able to find that subtle balance between
hilarious, exciting, and terrifying: Space
Quest was out there not just to make us die of laughter, but also to open
our minds to grotesquely vivid and vividly grotesque visions of the future,
and sometimes it also added suspense and terror to the mix. The volcanic
desolation and threatening lava pools of the planet Ortega had an aura of
dangerous beauty, and the giant snake on Phleebhut, swallowing you in one
bite if you were not careful, gave little me the willies. In those moments,
you could almost forget that Space
Quest was essentially supposed to be a «spoof» — above everything else,
it was an experience, and you could
very easily feel yourself in the shoes of the explorer of a pack of brand new
worlds, even if they were all notoriously more post-modern in design than
those of Star Trek. That balance was almost
shattered by the crude design of Space
Quest IV, before being somewhat restored by Mark Crowe for the fifth
game, which brought back the sense of excitement, exploration, and suspense.
With Mandel taking over the game, however, the tables had turned once again.
Even if the game still had a concise plot, it became much more of a Joke Quest than a Space Quest — with pretty much everything that you do serving one
of three purposes: (a) be funny, (b) be funnier than funny, (c) don’t stop
being funny even when you’re not funny. Worse, the primary target of Mandel’s funniness, from the very first to the
very last second, is none other than you,
i.e. Roger Wilco. In case the previous five games were not clear enough to
let you know how funny you are, this
game reminds you of the fact approximately once per every 4–5 clicks of the
mouse. You might feel uncomfortable about this, like I do, or you might
totally love it; regardless, it would be hard to argue that Space Quest 6 had swerved onto a
seriously different road. At least this time around,
unlike in the situation with Space
Quest V, the game had a sufficient budget to get the complete royal
treatment. New and improved graphics, new stylish interface, full voice
acting, and even, for the first time in Sierra history, a separate demo
version which came on its own CD, being distributed together with some issues
of gaming magazines, and contained a completely different short story, only
tangentially related to the main game. With decent sales and overall
positive, though not particularly glowing, reviews, there were hardly any
reasons for Ken Williams and his boys to shed any tears over the results — in
fact, the sequel, Space Quest VII,
went into production almost immediately, before being shelved and ultimately
cancelled in the wake of Sierra’s demise as an adventure game developer in early
1999. But time has not been too kind to the game: even if, from a technical
point, it is still perfectly playable today (at least, it looks and sounds
fairly decent on a modern PC screen), I rarely, if ever, see any serious
nostalgia for it from veteran players or excitement displayed by occasional
newcomers. Much like King’s Quest VII
and VIII ended up drowning the
Kingdom of Daventry in frustratingly unresolved ignominy, Space Quest VI did the same to Roger
Wilco, Janitor 2nd Class, leaving his fate forever undecided and his fans
forever tantalized. |
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Content evaluation |
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At least on a purely formal basis, Space Quest 6 keeps up two of the
series’ most sacred traditions. First, it fully reboots Roger Wilco’s life —
at the beginning of the game, he is stripped of his rank, separated from the
ship he commanded in Space Quest V
and its merry crew (goodbye, Droole and Flo, you won’t ever get the chance to
receive voiceovers for your friendly personalities), and re-assigned as
janitor to a completely new starcraft. Why exactly all of this is happening
is never explained: at the start of the game, a lengthy list of crimes is
listed which supposedly reflects a
dreadful minsinterpretation of Roger’s heroism in Space Quest V, but since only a galactic court populated by total
morons could generate such a misinterpretation, the real reason, of course,
is that Roger Wilco simply needed a quick and easy reboot, and one was
provided at minimal cost. Together with a bit of clumsy toilet humor (Roger’s
underwear symbolically metamorphosing into his next spaceship), this makes
for the least auspicious start to a Space
Quest game, ever. Second, like in most Space Quests, the actual plot of the
game takes its sweet time to materialize. Roger spends more than about a
quarter of the game on shore leave on the planet of Polysorbate LX, basically
just hanging around, carrying out mini-assignments for random NPCs and
ultimately getting himself into a weird drag as he gets abducted by two space
ruffians for no apparent reason at all and has to find the oddest ways
possible to escape from their clutches. Only much later on does it become
clear that Roger has been selected as a target by a rich intergalactic widow,
who apparently plans to use his body in order to transplant into it her brain
and thus achieve immortality. Fortunately, her plan backfires and Roger
manages to escape, with the aid of his good friend, Officer Stellar Santiago
— unfortunately for her, as she
gets trapped behind and now it is her
body that the nasty old lady is trying to commandeer... The fact that we are obviously heading
in some extremely silly direction
should not be bothersome all by itself, since Space Quest had always been king when it came to silly plots with
more black holes in them than contained in the Space Quest universe. What should
be bothersome is that the game mainly uses that silly plot as an excuse to
introduce its silly characters and its overwhelming stream of never-ending
gags and puns, which, apparently, is assumed to automatically justify all the
holes and inconsistencies. (We never ever get to understand, for instance,
why it was exactly Roger who was selected by Sharpei as her victim, or how
did Sharpei get away from justice with releasing nerve gas in her bedroom,
or... okay, I’m not going to fall
into this trap, so you’ll just have to take my word for the overall plot
being extremely contrived and creaky). Space
Quest 6 follows in the
steps of Space Quest V by making
the Space Quest universe much more lively and extraverted — in the first few
games, it was usually Roger on his own, winding his way through all sorts of
natural wonders, weird animals, and mute monsters; Space Quest V introduced dialog as an essential component of the
story, and Mandel’s sequel builds on that even further — most of the action
takes place either on the extremely crowded planet of Polysorbate LX or on
Roger’s even more crowded ship, the SCS DeepShip 86. Unfortunately, the
dialog is rarely as funny and entertaining as it is in the previous game; not
a single character here has a personality that could even begin to compare to
Flo and Droole, all of them being clichéd husks blasting off
predictable puns or endless references to Space
Quest history. Speaking of Space Quest history, you know your sequel is in deep trouble if
it focuses way too heavily on reintroducing historic characters just for the
sake of making the player reconnect with the past for nostalgic purposes.
Already on Polysorbate LX you meet two «old friends» from Space Quest III — the ScumSoft boss
Elmo Pug, now bankrupt, living on the streets, and reduced to peddling cheat
sheets for a quick fix of local alcohol (should the real Bill Gates take
warning?), and the Phleebhut merchant Fester Blatz, now dealing in semi-legal
implants in the relative security of an inconspicuous dirty basement. Always
good to meet old friends, no? Except that their only purpose here is to throw a bone to the imaginary group of loyal
old fans, who had been holding their breath since 1989, presumably flooding
the offices of Sierra On-Line with letters screaming BRING BACK ELMO PUG!! in
big bloody letters. Of course, this is not a Space Quest-specific offense, but it is still not cool watching
your favorite franchise succumb to the common curse of reviving old
characters for no other reason than nostalgia. Perhaps the least convincing angle of Space Quest 6’s plot is its clumsy
quasi-romantic angle. For some odd reason, instead of going the logical way
and trying to further develop the relationship between Roger Wilco and
Beatrice from the previous game, the latter has been scrapped and replaced by
Stellar Santiago, a well-meaning but fairly bland character with an
absolutely inexplicable crush on Roger from the start (at least Beatrice is
shown to be attracted to Roger only after getting to know his strong heroic
sides — the reasons why Stellar should be drawn to the most inept janitor in
the galaxy are left unclear, along with almost everything else). She comes
out of the blue, saves Roger’s life two times in a row, and draws him into a
contrived love triangle which remains unresolved at the end of the game —
and, consequently, forever. The «Dorky, Socially Awkward Guy vs. Strong,
Empowered, But Lonely Girl» trope, already present in Space Quest V, is thrown into our faces like a massive custard
pie here and quickly becomes unbearable — thank God at least that we only
have to endure two «deep» conversations with Stellar throughout the game, one
after the first rescue and one as our long-awaited reward for completing the
game. Several plot elements are introduced
solely as spoofs, ranging from admittedly hilarious to fairly bizarre. In one
episode, Roger is supposed to take out the security guard blocking his access
to a shuttle by using the «Vulgar Nerve Pinch» — a "tactile/aural maneuver
in which the applier pinches the bundle of nerve fibers at the base of the
neck while whispering into the victim’s ear dialogue from either Tango & Cash or Hudson Hawk". This is a beautiful
way to combine homage for Star Trek (Spock’s famous «Vulcan Nerve Pinch»)
with a mean jab at trashy pop culture, and it is funny even if you were
fortunate enough to never see either of the aforementioned movies (I was!). In another short sequence, Roger finds
himself stuck in space after an accident with his shuttle, and gets
jump-started by «Wriggley», a hot space babe with a penchant for chewing gum
and being stalked by xenomorphs — a more-than-obvious nod to Ripley from Alien, probably indicating that the
21-year old Mandel must have developed a serious crush on Sigourney Weaver
(and spent 16 years waiting for a chance to picture her as a somewhat more,
um, amenable character). This one
comes across as more of a fetish than an homage, and has nothing funny about
it regardless of whether you’re a fan of Alien
or not. Possibly the best of Mandel’s
inventions in the game is accessed closer to the finale, when Roger needs to
enter «Cyberspace» — a grotesque, but somewhat visionary caricature of the
Internet and Virtual Reality rolled in one. There, he is shoved inside the
waiting room only to discover that it looks almost exactly like... the
classic interface of Windows 3.1, with a character named «Sis Inny» (sys.ini,
get it?) as the merciless receptionist. It is unfortunate that this awesome
gag was already somewhat obsolete upon the game’s release, with Windows 95
forever eliminating the stinted look of preceding systems: to this day, it
remains as one of the most elaborate and astute parodies on a computer
interface ever created. And, for that matter, Sis Inny has more personality
to her than most of the non-virtual characters in this game ("you bet
your palette, little 32x32 pixel mama!"). On the other hand, the final part of
the game, in which you have to explore the interior of Stellar’s body to
locate and annihilate the robotized shape of Sharpei’s conscience, feels
rather out of place. The creative idea itself — a journey through the various
regions of the human body, getting a good lesson in anatomy along the way —
is not all that new in fiction, but was certainly novel for adventure games,
and it is implemented with sufficent detail and graphic precision. But what
exactly does it have to do in a Space
Quest game, with an emphasis on the
Space part? Wouldn’t we rather
prefer Roger making his way through pools of lava, bizarre alien-infested
landscapes, and asteroid fields, than through somebody’s intestines and esophagus?
Wouldn’t this particular sequence have made a better candidate for one of
Sierra’s «edutainment» titles for kids, like Surgeon Quest or something? I am not sure. It’s not that it ain’t
at all fun solving tricky puzzles while lodged inside somebody else’s innards
— it just feels like a part of a different game. In the end, what remains is a very
mixed and confused reaction. Space
Quest 6 is a pretty big game for its time; there’s lots to do here, and
it is always possible to get a satisfactory payoff if you are looking
exclusively for hilarity and nothing else. But if you are invested deep
enough in the title character to hope for a sensible, reasonable story arc, then,
I’m sorry to say, Space Quest 6 is
the second time that the franchise clearly loses the way (the first time was
with Space Quest IV); and it almost
makes me not sorry that the seventh
game never happened, because I am not sure how exactly Scott Murphy was
supposed to pull Roger out of the mess in which he was left by Josh Mandel. |
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Much like its predecessor, Space Quest 6 is not going to make the
list of either the most or the least difficult Sierra games to play; nor, to
the best of my recollection, does it feature any particularly outstanding or
particularly dumb challenges for the player. If anything, some of the puzzles
are just irritating because of the nature of the quest — for instance, the
major challenge of the first section of the game is to scoop together several
hundred buckazoids in order to pay for a hotel room on Polysorbate LX for
which you have absolutely no purpose whatsoever (in fact, you don’t even get
to set foot in it once you put up the cash). Maybe the original intention of
the designers was to have Roger set up a meeting place with one of those
creepy ladies of the night on the streets of Polysorbate LX — but then they
chickened out at the last moment. Most of the puzzles are multi-part,
making you really work for your own money: for instance, capturing a
dangerous Endodroid requires (a) freezing him in nitrogen, (b) shattering him
in a million pieces, (c) keeping the pieces separate from each other so they
do not reassemble back in one unit. Fail to perform each of these tasks
within a small time window and you die (and die you will). Likewise, the two guards standing watch over the shuttle
bay area will have to be taken out separately by very different means, and it will take you quite some time to
figure out the process. Mandel takes his job seriously — none of that weak
«pick up a hammer, smash the window, get the gold» bullshit from the days of
yore. But if you do your job diligently, look around, talk to everybody, and
remember to backtrack every once in a while, you won’t have any serious
problems. Occasionally, there are settings that
lead you into frustrating traps: for instance, the hilariously designed
arcade game of Stooge Fighter (in
which you do get the chance to set Larry, Moe, and Curly against each other)
is essentially unwinnable without a cheat sheet, but you do not know that
from the beginning, and may spend far more time than necessary trying to
figure out the right combo to beat up your opponent without realising that a
proper spoof of Street Fighter
simply cannot have you win the game
honestly (as it happens in real life with about 90% of the normal people, I’d
say). Fortunately, once you do get the cheat sheet, the game pretty much
begins to play itself, freeing you from the pesky danger of arcade sequences. In another situation, when Roger comes
across a DataCorder whose internal construction can be modified for various
reasons, you can fool around with chips and transistors for hours, but what
you really need to do is look up the manual included with the original CD. According
to Mandel, this was not at all supposed to be a form of copyright protection,
but rather another lengthy puzzle requiring Roger to read a lengthy comic
book; however, after he was sacked, the renewed team just did not have enough
time to complete his design and simply relegated the assembly instructions to
paper. At least this explains the rather puzzling presence of copy protection
on a CD-ROM game — prior to this, Sierra only included copy protection for
floppy disk versions, since CDs were considered too difficult to copy (and if
I remember right, CD burners were still a rarity in 1995). Explains, that is,
but hardly justifies. I really do enjoy the puzzle design in
the last section of the game — where, trapped inside Stellar’s body, Roger
has to learn how to combine his quasi-girlfriend’s secretions and bile
components with various little inorganic objects accidentally ingested by her
over time (paper clips!) in order to overcome various obstacles on his way to
Sharpei’s nano-robot. Even if, as I already said, this section does feel like
it belongs somewhere else, it is still a neat little combination of Incredible Machine-inspired
constructionism, detailed anatomy lesson, and sickly humor, with most of the
mini-challenges being both logical and hilarious (and Roger even gets to Ride
The Worm!). Compared to that part with its clearly defined purpose and
mechanics, everything else feels a bit disconcerted — you really spend a
large chunk of the game having vague fun, but not understanding full well
what it is that you are supposed to do and, most importantly, why you are supposed to do it. But
then again, that’s pretty much the way most of us get through life anyway, so
why complain? |
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No other thing distinguishes the last Space Quest game from the first five
as strongly as general atmosphere, and this — no question about it — is all
because of Josh Mandel. From the very first to the very last screen and
dialog replica, Space Quest 6 is
flat-out lightweight comedy and nothing else. The sense of mystery and
dangerous excitement, the feeling of uncovering strange new worlds, the good
old whiff of boldly going where no janitor has gone before — all these things
are no more. When Roger is dropped onto the streets of Polysorbate LX at the
beginning of the game, this happens in much the same way your character would
be dropped into the seedy back streets of Chicago or Los Angeles in a
detective game: grimly, casually, and with stone cold irony. You have come
here on shore leave — to drink, gamble, and carry out suspicious errands for
suspicious-looking characters. Even if this is your first time on this
planet, it still feels like an erratic version of home, not an amazing new
landscape with incredible new vistas to admire and new organic species to
meet and interact with. Actually, speaking of landscapes and
vistas, I do believe that the only «landscapes» you will face in the game are
virtual ones — like the green pastures used as a cemetery for Stellar, or the
imposing, but abandoned cyberterrain construction site through which Roger
has to waddle in order to acquire precious information on Sharpei’s project.
Other than that, Polysorbate LX is just a claustrophobic mess of dark alleys,
bars, and casinos; Sharpei’s quarters are located inside a small space
station; and most of the other action is spent aboard Roger’s ship, which is
no more «atmospheric» than the Enterprise. This is where you realize that, to
a certain small extent at least, Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy were visionaries
— two guys who really loved their sci-fi stuff and wanted to see their
videogame adaptation of the genre relatively true to its imaginative roots.
Mandel, on the other hand, is first and foremost a comedian, perhaps even a comic genius if you want to go that far,
who may or may not love his sci-fi, but is mostly interested in spoofing it.
His Space Quest universe,
consequently, has no need of gorgeous views or thrilling roller coaster
rides; all it needs is lots and lots of sarcasm, much like his vision of the
Wild West in Freddy Pharkas. Taken in relatively small doses, this
sarcasm nearly always works. The arcade of Polysorbate LX alone is the place
that launched a thousand laughs — with titles such as Virtual Amtrak, More Dull
Kombat 2, Beat The Crap Out Of
Urkel, MBA Toejam (where
"you have to play in a three-piece suit, barefoot, while avoiding deadly
athlete’s foot fungus growing on the court"), Secret Recipes Of The Luftwaffe (where "you have to
duplicate famous gourmet dishes while piloting vintage combat aircraft
against the Nazi Menace"), and, of course, the already mentioned Stooge Fighter, you shall wish the
team had a sufficient budget to at least animate them all, let alone allow
you to participate. The lionine character of Commander Kielbasa pokes almost
offensive, but irresistible fun at the unimaginative zoomorphic depictions of
aliens in sci-fi ("is that his command center, or his scratching
post?... wait, kids, don’t fight, it’s BOTH!"). The sight of "Major
Tom was here" scribbled on the dirty wall of Roger’s prison cell in the
bowels of the spaceship will be a blessing for all the David Bowie fans in
the audience. Ah, screw it, there’s just too many of these moments to
mention, and not enough thoughts and words to come up with any systematic
conclusions anyway. But here also lies the problem, because
soon enough — very soon, in fact — Space Quest 6 begins to deal with
hilariousness overload. With almost every single interaction yielding
something genuinely or potentially funny, the game becomes a candy store
without any overriding purpose to it. It sort of worked for Mandel in Freddy Pharkas, where most of the
jokes served a unified goal — to lambast stereotypical clichés of the
Wild West mythology; here, it is more of a randomized, chaotic smorgasboard
where you can make fun of just about anything from Star Wars to Sierra’s own ‘Girl In The Tower’ (as briefly
performed by a very Elton John-looking alien during a bout of druggy
hallucination), as long as every second joke is about Roger Wilco and how
much of a dork that guy is. And since Roger Wilco is essentially you, the player, it will hardly be a
surprise if, by the end of the game, you will feel just a tad humiliated. I suspect that it was something like
this which was the major turn-off for players. Sure, they’d come here to have
a good laugh, as usual, but that was not the only thing they expected. For a game that places so much emphasis
on meta-referencing the history of Space
Quest (Roger’s entire cabin is like a huge, sprawling tribute to the
series), it has the least Space Quest-ish
feel of them all — which would probably not be such a bad thing had it not
been the sixth game’s destiny to become the conclusion of the entire saga.
When you look at it from that angle, it almost makes me wish it never
existed: Space Quest V would have
made a far more satisfying, if still inconclusive, wrap-up to the life story
of Roger Wilco. |
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Technical features |
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Of all the games released
by Sierra in 1994–96 (its last properly productive years, a.k.a. the «Seattle
period»), Space Quest 6 does
somewhat stand out in terms of graphics. Pretty much every Sierra adventure
title from that period followed one of two models — cartoon-style animation
(e.g. King’s Quest VII or Larry VII), or full-motion video (the
two Phantasmagorias, Gabriel Knight 2) with live actors. Space Quest 6 is certainly closer to
the first model, yet it does not fully abandon a realistic approach to
digital imagery in favor of all-out Disney. Fortunately, graphic resolution
had improved to the point that the game does not look horrendously pixelated
on a modern display, which makes it a fairly unique representative of the
company’s legacy — a pleasant result of the natural evolution of Sierra’s
digital artistry from way back when up until the mid-1990s without any
revolutionary modifications. Michael Hutchison, a Sierra veteran whose
previous project was Gabriel Knight,
must have been really proud of this one (at least, he would not get the
chance to become even prouder of another one). Considering, however, that
approximately 95% of the game takes place strictly indoors or in highly
confined environments (such as the mini-maze of Polysorbate LX’s narrow
alleys, tightly boxed in by huddling, drab buildings), these advances in
graphic technology do not get to be enjoyed in all their potential glory.
When you do wander out in space, it is but for a bunch of fleeting,
teensy-weensy moments; most of the time is spent cowering and pixel-hunting
inside all sorts of tiny cubicles, which are indeed packed with all sorts of
stuff but still have a highly pragmatic look to them. In other words, there
are hardly any chances to look at a particular backdrop and go all wowsers! on it. The only exception is
Stellar’s anatomy section — where the artists clearly had fun with their
colorful representations of bile ponds, islands of Langerhans, and various
areas of the duodenum. Like I already said, I am not sure what all that stuff
does in a Space Quest game, but
it’s still perfectly lovely and artistically disgusting to travel through. Where the improved capacities of the
graphics engine do make a serious
difference is in the quality of character sprites and their animations. Even
relatively small-sized characters now get a chance at actual facial
expressions, while walking and interacting with objects feels smooth and
natural. During the holographic burial ceremony for Stellar, after the
gravedigger (who, by the way, bears an uncanny resemblance to the New
Orleanian cemetery watcher Toussaint Gervais in Gabriel Knight) turns on his vacuum shovel (or whatever it is
supposed to be called), you see all the onlookers desperately clinging on to
surrounding trees or to each other in order to avoid being sucked into the
grave — just for a couple of seconds, but each has an individual pose and
even facial expression while hanging on for dear life. Then, once the digging
stops, they come down smoothly and realistically, through a small set of
different character poses. This is something that not only would have been
technically impossible even two years before, but looks funny and realistic
even today, and the game is full of these mini-animations which make it
lively and relatable. I am not so sure, however, that I would
call myself a fan of the close-ups in this game. While our good old friend
Fester Blatz has been portrayed quite faithfully to his looks in Space Quest III (with the added caveat
that "he has aged somewhat, looks like he’s grown a few more neck
rings"), our good friend Roger Wilco, too, has not been immune to
ravages of time — with added wrinkles, weird-looking bushy blond eyebrows,
and a permanently depressed look as opposed to the far cockier and livelier
appearance in Space Quest V. That,
of course, can be attributed to life (or, more accurately, lazy game
designers) treating our hero in an unfriendly manner — but then it would seem
that life is cruel to the Space Quest
universe in general, since his new passion, Stellar Santiago, is also
depicted as somebody on whom life has taken a heavy toll (with graying hair,
deep wrinkles, and a tired look in her yellow eyes). Perhaps it is a good
thing that the game refuses to sexualize its characters, and there’s nothing
wrong with aging, but we still can’t help it if we prefer our James Bond of Dr. No and Goldfinger to the James Bond of Diamonds Are Forever, can we? This particular Roger Wilco just...
doesn’t inspire me all that much. Though, admittedly, this is all a question
of style and taste rather than lack of quality or imagination on the part of
the artists. |
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Sound I honestly do not remember much about
the soundtrack of Space Quest 6
other than it being sufficiently spacy. Most of the themes are just
diligently crafted chunks of MIDI sci-fi elevator muzak. The only theme,
other than the classic main Space Quest
theme, which is marginally distinctive and memorable, is the lively jazz
music playing in Polysorbate LX’s barroom — like a piece of 1920s swing
futuristically arranged for the Space Age, heavily contributing to the
merry-and-seedy atmosphere of the place. (It is particularly fun to have
yourself turned inside out by the Endodroid in the bar’s basement to those
happy sounds). Other than that, the individual themes are mostly appropriate
for their locations, and that’s that. Voice acting in the game is generally
okay — not great, not awful. The key component, of course, is the return of
Gary Owens as Narrator, bringing back all of his deadpan cool from Space Quest IV. Provided you do not
get tired of his mock-meta-pomp by the end of the game (which is a
possibility, given the enormous number of dialog lines he has to provide for
all the options), he remains the main star of the show throughout and the #1
reason why you should click on everything in sight with as many options as
possible (if you miss out on Gary Owens pronouncing "oops, wrong
endearing little furry purring creatures!...", you have pretty much
wasted your money on this game). On the other hand, Roger Wilco, voiced here
by William Hall (a voice actor just as unknown as Jeff Bender who voiced
Roger for Space Quest IV), is
somewhat disappointing — pictured as a permanently clueless wimp with few, if
any, additional personality aspects. Pretty much all female roles in the game are voiced by Carol Bach y Rita, who
had previously voiced Valanice in King’s
Quest VII, and while she shows herself to be impressively versatile
(voicing the straightforward military lady Stellar Santiago, the deviously
evil Sharpei, and the bimbo-fashion
oversexed «Wriggley»), none of these performances truly transgress
«perfunctory». The talented Denny Delk (Day
Of The Tentacle’s one and only Hoagie!) is wasted on the episodic role of
«Jebba the Hop» in the medbay, and the other bit players are even less
memorable. Overall, as you can see, sound is
definitely not a major forte of this game. It kind of looks as if most of
Sierra’s audio-related resources in those years were allocated to composition
and voice acting (or, rather, just general acting) for the FMV games, while
the cartoon-style ones mostly got leftovers — which is, of course, ironic,
considering the quick and utter demise of FMV in just a few years, but who
really knows where the future goes when trying out a fresh, allegedly
revolutionary approach? Not Sierra On-Line, that’s for sure. |
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One thing that Sierra
really liked experimenting on in those years was the overall look of the game
interface — in sharp contrast with the AGI / SCI years of 1984–1990, when
most of the titles were getting the exact same standardized interface,
visually differing only through the actual art. Space Quest 6 is no exception: it gets its own unique makeover,
although the screen layout follows the pattern previously tested on King’s Quest VII — with a large chunk
of the screen permanently given away to accommodate the menu and the dialog
window. The chunk itself, however, gets a minimalistic design, with
oh-so-sci-fi green lettering on a black screen and, in a novel move, actual
words replacing menu icons («FEET», «EYES», «HANDS», «MOUTH», etc.). Maybe
they thought such a shift would make your screen look more like an actual
command center (than a scratching post). I can’t really say if this is good
design or bad design, but it is
different. At least, unlike King’s Quest VII, the game did not
retain the abominable one-for-everything cursor. There is not all that much
Roger can do, but he can at least LOOK, TALK to, and OPERATE on everything,
and there are enough dialog options included to make you want to do all that
to everything on the screen. Okay, so TALK will most often give you a generic
result ("Your words are so unspectacular, nature doesn’t even see fit to
grant it an echo"), but every once in a while, Gary Owens will still
contribute a minor gem (e.g. TALK to PLANT yielding "Mother Teresa, the
Pope, and Jimmy Carter could all talk to this plant until they were blue in
the face and beating on each other, and it would still do no good"), so
I typically end up TALKing to everything until I am blue in the face. It is
still a nice improvement over the nonsense icons of Space Quest IV (SMELL and LICK, which yielded generic results in
about 90% of all cases). Space Quest 6 also does a good job in stomping out pixel hunting. For one
thing, higher graphic resolution helps all separate objects be very clearly
defined on screen (this is particularly helpful in Roger’s quarters, littered
with tiny souvenirs from his previous journeys). For another, all cursor
icons are shaped as triangles, with the sharp upper angle ideally clickable
over even the tiniest object (something that was more of a problem, e.g., in Gabriel Knight, with its bubble-shaped
icons that could easily miss the hotspot). This still does not help much in a
few odd situations when the object is completely hidden away (e.g. the
«Churlish Moddie» you need to find in order to neutralize your kidnapper),
but on the whole, technical problems while interacting with stuff in Space Quest 6 are few and far between. The game is also notably
free from any type of arcade sequences, other than the Stooge Fighter sequence which is unwinnable anyway (and
practically unlosable once you get the cheat sheet). The only tedious moment
occurs during Roger’s adventure in Cyberspace, when you are supposed to look
for clues while navigating a giant alphabetic file system — not so much
because you have to think of all the proper topics to look them up under
their respective letters, but because you have to climb your way to the top
shelves by opening the lower drawers and forming makeshift stairways, which
is a drag (it is very easy to miss here and start opening or closing drawers
instead of picking up files, or vice versa), and kind of an anti-climactic
development right after the magnificently designed parody on the Windows 3.1
interface. Overall, the gameplay is
quite smooth, though, as usual, running the game on more modern PCs may lead
to speed-related issues (one notable bug occurs during Roger’s first
encounter with the tapeworm in Stellar’s intestines, where you have to use
special timer fixes to reach the bugger). |
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When all is said and done, Space
Quest 6 is a pretty good game. The graphics are good, the voice acting is decent,
the jokes are funny, the plot is engaging, the puzzles are nicely designed.
Wherever you look, you won’t find serious reason to complain, and most of
your complaints will be easily beaten in court anyway. I even had fun
replaying the game for this review, and I even think that Stooge Fighter might be the single
best idea for an arcade game to ever appear in the twisted minds of Sierra
On-Line employees. Yet
when placed in the overall context of Sierra’s history, Space Quest 6 still ultimately leaves me cold. It feels
artificial and contrived, a diligent, but forced attempt to prolong the life
of a franchise which finally ran out of ideas on how to evolve and expand,
and now had to resort to endless self-references in order to survive. Perhaps
it would have been better to present it as a completely different game —
leave in all the jokes if you will, but take away the monikers of Space Quest and Roger Wilco, and let
Josh Mandel exercise his sense of humor on his own franchise, rather than one
taken away from its original creators. (Note that a very similar fortune was
destined, around the same time, for Guybrush Threepwood, whose deprivation
from his father Ron Gilbert also resulted in a personality change). Then
again, such a separation would still have hardly succeeded in making this
proverbially good game into a great one. It
might not have been inevitable. The Golden Age of Comedy Adventure Games was
largely over by the mid-Nineties: games could not possibly get any funnier
than Day Of The Tentacle, and not
even Al Lowe could continue to mine the well of jokes at the same rate he did
during the formative period of Sierra. Steering Space Quest into the nearly drained pool of pure comedy was not a
wise decision. Had the game retained its earlier balance between
impressionist sci-fi and quirky satire, it might have significantly benefited
from evolving technology — improved graphics, interface, voice acting — and
taken Roger Wilco to new evolutionary heights, if only for a brief while at
least. Instead, it reduced a multi-dimensional (okay, at least two-dimensional) character to laughing
stock, and condensed a formerly multi-layered portrayal of the sci-fi
universe to the level of National Lampoon. This is regrettable — though it
goes without saying that there have frequently been much less dignified fates suffered by beloved franchises and
characters in the history of videogames. |
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