Titanic: Adventure Out of Time
Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is a 1996 point-and-click adventure game developed by CyberFlix and published in the United States and United Kingdom by GTE Entertainment and Europress respectively, for Windows and Macintosh. It takes place in a virtual representation of the RMS Titanic, following a British spy who has been sent back in time to the night Titanic sank and must complete a previously failed mission to prevent World War I, the Russian Revolution, and World War II from occurring. The gameplay involves exploring the ship and solving puzzles. There are multiple outcomes and endings to the game depending on the player's interactions with characters and use of items.
The game was created with CyberFlix's proprietary engine DreamFactory, which was also used to create Dust: A Tale of the Wired West. Extensive research was done by the development team to ensure historical accuracy and to precisely recreate the ship's interior and exterior 3D environments. As with Dust, Titanic's character animation was done by overlaying multiple still photos of actors to create mouth and facial movements. With sales above 1.5 million units, Titanic was a commercial success. It received generally positive reviews from gaming critics, who praised the game's story, atmosphere and recreation of the ship, though there was some criticism towards the character animation and some of the puzzles.
Gameplay
Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is an adventure game played from a first-person perspective with a point-and-click interface in which players roam a fully rendered model of the RMS Titanic. The game's control scheme is composed of a keyboard, whose arrow keys control the player's movements, and a mouse, with which the player can interact with objects, characters, select dialogue and options from the HUD interface; these are a lifesaver (which brings the player to the options menu), an inventory bag and a pocket watch that indicates the game's progression.
The puzzles in Titanic rely on collecting and using certain items to advance the story. Dialogue is also a significant aspect of the game. Characters are programmed to remember the player's actions and react accordingly, and thus the choice of dialogue options deeply influences the story's progression as to which items the player obtains or the tasks the player is able to complete. As a result, the game can have a total of eight distinct endings, only one of which presents success in the mission. The Titanic herself cannot be saved from her fate under any circumstances.
Time is another important aspect of the game. The story does not occur in real time, with time progressing only if certain tasks and puzzles are completed, as indicated by the aforementioned pocket watch; however, as soon as the player reaches the point in which the Titanic is sinking, the game progresses in real time, and the player is thus given a time limit to complete the mission and board a lifeboat. As mentioned above, there are multiple endings for the game's completion, all but one of which result in death.
In addition to the main story, the game also includes a "ship's tour" game mode which features characters in the game narrating certain aspects of the ship, its crew and passengers, and the sinking. These characters can be found in different locations in the ship.Three of the character narrations were already included with the game, while others could be downloaded from CyberFlix's official website. Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is an adventure game played from a first-person perspective with a point-and-click interface in which players roam a fully rendered model of the RMS Titanic. The game's control scheme is composed of a keyboard, whose arrow keys control the player's movements, and a mouse, with which the player can interact with objects, characters, select dialogue and options from the HUD interface; these are a lifesaver (which brings the player to the options menu), an inventory bag and a pocket watch that indicates the game's progression.
The puzzles in Titanic rely on collecting and using certain items to advance the story. Dialogue is also a significant aspect of the game. Characters are programmed to remember the player's actions and react accordingly, and thus the choice of dialogue options deeply influences the story's progression as to which items the player obtains or the tasks the player is able to complete. As a result, the game can have a total of eight distinct endings, only one of which presents success in the mission. The Titanic herself cannot be saved from her fate under any circumstances.
Time is another important aspect of the game. The story does not occur in real time, with time progressing only if certain tasks and puzzles are completed, as indicated by the aforementioned pocket watch; however, as soon as the player reaches the point in which the Titanic is sinking, the game progresses in real time, and the player is thus given a time limit to complete the mission and board a lifeboat. As mentioned above, there are multiple endings for the game's completion, all but one of which result in death.
In addition to the main story, the game also includes Tour Mode which features characters in the game narrating certain aspects of the ship, its crew and passengers, and the sinking. These characters can be found in different locations in the ship. Three of the character narrations were already included with the game, while others could be downloaded from CyberFlix's official website.
Plot
On April 14, 1942, Frank Carlson, a former British Secret Service agent, whose career ended in disgrace after he failed a mission on the RMS Titanic, living in his apartment in 9 Stanley Crescent, London, having made a hobby of fixing old watches and clocks, surrounded by mementos of his past, while being threatened with eviction by his landlady, is caught in an air raid of the London Blitz and is sent back in time thirty years to the Titanic on April 14, 1912.
He uses the opportunity to have a second chance to complete his mission, meeting with his contact, fellow agent Penny Pringle. Carlson's first mission is to locate and retrieve a stolen copy of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, suspected of being in the possession of German Colonel Zeitel, who is traveling to New York to inspect embassies in the United States and Central America, alongside his young protégé Willi von Haderlitz. Carlson finds that the Colonel has made a deal with art dealer Sasha Barbicon to exchange the Rubaiyat for a painting in which there are hidden war plans stolen from the British government. They both act through a go-between, the Serbian stowaway Vlad Demonic.
In addition to the Rubaiyat and the painting, Carlson discovers that Willi is a spy for the Russians and has a notebook with names of top Bolshevik leaders. The notebook must be handed over to the Ochrana so that Communist rebels will be executed, preventing a threat to the Czar. Barbicon is also in possession of a stolen diamond necklace intended to finance the Black Hand, a Serbian military group. Willi is killed by being electrocuted in the electric bath, in the Turkish bath, murdered by Zeitel after realizing that Willi is a spy and is not loyal to Germany.
Subplots
The player can also become involved in subplots that do not necessarily pertain to the central mission or the winning conditions of the game. One subplot involves retrieving a business document stolen by steel magnate Andrew Conkling's maid Shailagh Hacker. Other plots involve meeting with passengers such as the Lambeths, a once wealthy couple that perished in the original timeline whose marriage has deteriorated; Lady Georgia Lambeth being a former lover of Carlson. Leyland Sachem Trask, a psychic from Boston who is aware of Carlson travel from the future; Reverend Edgar Troutt, a preacher from New Hampshire who is returning from a mission in Nyasaland; and Max Seidelmann, a businessman from Philadelphia.
After the ship hits the iceberg and begins sinking, Sasha is killed by Vlad in the Turbine Room for not being loyal to Serbia and the cause of the Black Hand, while Georgia is poisoned by Zeitel and Carlson is offered the choice of trading in the painting to Zeitel for an antidote; after he saves Georgia, he retrieves the painting after he wins the Death card from Buick Riviera in a game of blackjack. The card functions as a ticket to a lifeboat and can be given to a desperate Zeitel to regain the painting after the initial trade.
Choices
The number of objects the player obtains before escaping the ship affects the ending and how history plays out. If the player manages to leave the ship with the painting and notebook while ensuring Vlad escapes with neither the diamonds nor the Rubáiyát, history is altered, with World War I, the Russian Revolution, and World War II never occurring.
- Without Vlad providing the necklace or the Rubáiyát, the Black Hand is not financed and their plan to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria never materializes, preventing World War I.
- If the painting is obtained, it becomes a popular piece because of it surviving the sinking. The painting is revealed to be Adolf Hitler's The Courtyard of the Old Residency in Munich, which causes him to become a famous artist after the painting is retrieved, leading him to devote his life to his art career and averting the rise of the Nazis and World War II.
- If Willi's notebook survives, it's delivered to the Czar, the Bolshevik leaders, Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky, are executed, and the Russian Revolution never occurs.
In the alternate 1942, Carlson retires after a successful career in a world of peace. Depending on which items the player fails to collect, history will change, but certain wars or revolutions will still occur. The only items required to complete the game successfully, as long as Zeitel and Vlad do not have the other items, are the painting and the notebook. The Rubaiyat and the necklace can go down with the ship and will not affect a successful ending. The player is then given the option of replaying the game again to get a successful ending.
Production
The concept for the game was created by writer and producer Andrew Nelson, who spent ten months working on the game's script, changing the plot and characters in accordance to the needs and demands of the project. He was inspired by a comment his wife Debi Lambert made about video games requiring too much time investment, leading him to pursue a race-against-the-clock game mechanic. Originally, the title was "A Journey out of Time" to reflect this. Nelson pitched the idea to CyberFlix as a "Steam Punk star ship suspended in a vast void", to an enthused audience, and returned with a completed script after writing it over the summer in a New York City loft in Soho.
Development
CyberFlix's team spent two years researching to ensure the game would be authentic and historically accurate. Apollo 13 screenwriter William Broyles Jr. served as a historical and photo researcher for the game, collaborating with CyberFlix in finding resources to faithfully re-create the ship and the period the game is set on. Broyles made an extensive use of the Internet and the Library of Congress's online photo department to find historical photos.
Todd Appleton served as lead programmer. The game was developed using CyberFlix's proprietary game engine and software DreamFactory, which was also used by the company to develop Dust: A Tale of the Wired West. The engine allowed the developers to create 3D environments and script the characters so that they retain memory of the player's actions and react differently each time they encounter the player. Wire-frame models of the Titanic, created by the Zygote Media Group in Utah, were textured and polished by graphical artists Michael Kennedy, Alex Tschetter and Paul Haskins. Bob Clouse and Billy Davenport were responsible for the 2D and interface design.
James Cameron contacted the company for the sinking animations. A sequel had been planned set on either the Lusitania or the zeppelin Hindenburg. Hints for both are within the original game, including Carlson having a ticket for the Hindenburg's 1937 voyage in his London flat.
To create Titanic's character animation and movements, the developers cyberscaned multiple still photos of actors and overlaid them on the character's faces to create accurate facial and mouth movements. CyberFlix used the proprietary software HeadShop to combine photography and animation, as opposed to video, for the characters; according to Nelson, the team was not able to use QuickTime for the characters "as video takes up more disk space" and only a few characters could be created. The game's development took nineteen months, with CyberFlix finishing the game in November 1996. GTE Entertainment picked the game for release after Viacom turned it down; it was released on November 20. Due to mention in the game of Adolf Hitler (specifically "The Courtyard of the Old Residency in Munich"), the German version of the game omitted certain references to Nazism in conformant with Germany's censorship laws: "I recall that in the localization efforts, we had to omit references to Hitler. That was a difficulty to achieve as that was a central part of the game. I can’t remember which parts were particularly irksome to the German censors, but I do remember we made some complicated maneuvers to fulfill the requests of the censors".
Music
The soundtrack was composed by Erik Holt, with Scott Scheinbaum serving as musical director. Holt cited as inspirations Igor Stravinsky and Joe Satriani, and also studied composers who were popular in 1912, the game's time period, such as Chopin, Verdi, Rossini, and Mahler, to better evoke both the splendorous and melancholic atmosphere surrounding the Titanic's disaster.
Holt worked for three months on the game's core themes, mixing classical and early 20th-century music with elements of cinematic score. Aside from its original music, the game also features Chopin's Prelude Op. 28 No. 7, which plays on the radio in the opening scene.
Reception
In a review for Just Adventure, Michal Necasek rated Titanic B+ and praised the game's story and its nonlinearity, as well as the accurate reconstruction of the Titanic, saying that it "greatly adds to the atmosphere of the game". He also commended the music and voice acting, but criticized the action sequences. Tony Seideman of Computer Shopper overall praised the game but criticized some of the game's fictional elements and the lacking historical background provided by the Tour guide mode. GameSpot's Tim McDonald rated the game 6.6 /10, praising its re-creation of the ship and the story, but criticizing the long dialogue sequences and the lack of puzzles.The reviewer for Next Generation praised it as "easily one of the best adventure titles of the year".
The editors of MacHome Journal named Titanic the best overall game of the year, and noted its "luscious graphics, great interactivity and repeatable gameplay". It was also declared 1996's best adventure game by Inside Mac Games, whose editors wrote that it "bucked the trends and did something truly unusual." Titanic was nominated by the Computer Game Developers Conference for the "Best Prerendered Art" and "Best Adventure Game/RPG" Spotlight Awards, although these went respectively to Zork Nemesis and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.
Website Description
Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is an open-ended first-person adventure game set on the doomed maiden voyage of the HMS Titanic. The player takes the role of Frank Carlson, a disgraced British secret service agent. His career having ended after he failed in a mission on board the HMS Titanic, he now lives in a small apartment, surrounded by mementos of his past. Somehow, however, Carlson is thrown backward into his past to April of 1912, giving the player an opportunity to change the events on board the doomed ship. While the player is not able to avert the sinking of the Titanic, they are able to influence not only Frank's timeline but that of the other passengers on board the ship and, indeed, the progression of subsequent human history. As a result, details of the game's plot are affected by the player's actions, which can result in one of any number of significant or minutely different endings.
The game is a puzzle-solving adventure game which utilizes a simple, point-and-click system in order for the player to interact with the world. While the game is played in the form of a traditional adventure game, it expands on this established system by constructing its game play around the idea of a continuous, transitory world. While the player still progresses through the game primarily through solving puzzles and interacting with other characters it presents these interactions as taking place within an active, malleable world. Characters, for instance, periodically move about the ship, and can be found in different portions of the ship during different times of day as they pursue their lives apart from the player.
Puzzles are similarly tied to this progression of time, and players may choose to pursue plot lines how ever they think is best, influencing both the plot and other puzzles within the game, allowing them to completely overlook or pass over entire puzzles and story points. Early in the game, for instance, the player is asked to locate an item hidden by another character. If they're able to discover its location early enough, they can take the item from its hiding spot before someone else does. If they're sidetracked by other characters within the world, or in some other way too slow in locating the object, the hiding spot will be empty and the plot will accommodate this development. It is important to note, however, that the game does not progress in real-time as other adventures, such as The Last Express, do. Rather, time progresses due to the player solving a puzzle or in some other way advancing the game.
In addition to the traditional puzzles within the game, there are also mini-games which the player can participate in either for fun or to influence the plot, such as poker and fencing.
The game is presented using 3D graphics, although the player still moves through the game by shifting from screen to screen, similar in style to the movement found in other adventure titles such as Riven. The bottom of the screen features a nautically-themed interface featuring a life preserver (the menu), a pocket watch (which represents the in-game time), a rolled piece of parchment (a map of the ship), and a leather case (the inventory).
Behind the scenes
- The Making of Titanic: Adventure Out of Time documentary was published on YouTube on April 17, 2021 by Rotoscopester and features an in-depth look into the game's development. Also included is an interview with the company's co-founder and sound director Scott Scheinbaum.
- Metro Pulse Online's Zine featured a behind the scenes article entitled CyberFlix Game Over by Jack Neely that covered the development of Titanic as well as the history of CyberFlix itself.
Gallery
PC Gamer, Issue 28, September 1996
