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Beneath a Steel Sky is a science fiction, more specifically cyberpunk, point and click adventure game with comedy elements, created by Revolution Software published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment, and initially released in 1994 for DOS and Amiga. "Underworld" was its working title.

The game is made using Revolution Software's Virtual Theatre engine and is the second game to be made using it, with 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.

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 isn't 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, each of the seven states of Australia have been consumed by their capital city and are described as a "City State".

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

Assistant Producers

Programming

Computer Graphics & Animation

Voices

Trivia

  • The game came either on a set of floppy disks, or on a CD-ROM with full speech (the 'talkie' version). The dubbed version of the game uses actors sporting a variety of British accents, despite the game being set in future Australia. Robert Foster himself has an American accent, making some of his British English phrases sound incongruous.

  • Beneath a Steel Sky was one of the earliest mainstream games to include the word "shit" and drawings of a woman's breasts.

  • The character Mrs. Danielle Piermont appears in Revolution Software's game Broken Sword as the character Lady Piermont (and is even voiced by the same actor).

  • In some countries (such as the USA) due to copyright issues the beer label displayed in the introduction is altered to show a generic beer brand in place of the Fosters label. One of the brands read "SS IPM (RAW)", which is "warm piss" spelled backwards.

  • Another dystopian movie influence for Beneath a Steel Sky is Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The setting is similar to that of Beneath a Steel Sky. However, in the upper class lived in the skies and poor on the ground, while in Beneath the Steel Sky it is vice versa.

  • There is an arguable reference to the works of H. P. Lovecraft. In the subway, Robert could be killed by a horrible tentacled monster waiting the darkness, somewhat like one would expect Lovecraft to write about. Earlier in the game, there's a locker in the police station that belongs to "Lovecraft".

  • The prosecutor that tries Howard Hobbins is named "Mr. Grieves", a possible reference to the Pixies song of the same name.

  • In the St. James club, a request to talk with the band will make Foster shout, "Play some Joy Division!"

  • Joey makes reference to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, in which he states they are "only fiction". Prior to this remark he is talking about zapping people, which would be against Law number one.

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. On March 4 2004, Revolution purchased the domain name steel-sky2.com.

If released, the game will likely be in 3D, like Revolution Software’s latest release Broken Sword — The Sleeping Dragon.

Revolution announced Broken Sword 4 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.

References

  • Revolution forum post - Tony Warriner confirming that the game is indeed set in Australia, and not in London. Login required.

External links

1994 computer and video games | Adventure games | Freeware games | Amiga games | DOS games | CD32 games | cyberpunk | ScummVM supported games

Beneath a Steel Sky | Beneath a Steel Sky | Beneath a Steel Sky | Beneath a Steel Sky

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Beneath a Steel Sky".

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