Anachronox Preview

After more than three years of work, Tom Hall and the rest of his development team at Ion Storm are putting the finishing touches on the company's upcoming console-style role-playing game, Anachronox. This epic science-fiction RPG begins with the introduction of detective Sly Boots, whose turn of bad luck has led him into a confrontation with one of the local thugs. After watching him take a few stiff punches to his face, you learn that Sly owes a large sum of money to one of the area mob bosses, and if he fails to repay his debts in a timely manner, he has to deal with the consequences. But fortunately for Sly, the situation starts to look a little less bleak after a trip to the local bar known as Rowdy's--a hangout where you gather information on different events occurring around Anachronox. It's here that Sly learns of several possible job opportunities, but none is more interesting than one involving an old man named Grumpos, who promises to pay Sly as soon as he recovers the valuable MysTech-related artifacts from the Anachronox mines. MysTech is a source of magic in the game.

Moving Sly from point A, to point B, back to point A, is what you'll spend most of your time doing in the early moments of Anachronox. You get started by getting to know the locals around Rowdy's, and if a character asks you to undertake an assignment, your personal assistant, Fatima--who is actually the spirit of Sly's dead assistant trapped inside of a technological device--will store all the pertinent information about the job, including whom you're supposed to find and where they might be, in a helpful menu screen. This feature is really helpful not only for deciphering ambiguous messages, but also for reminding you of any remaining quests you need to finish, in case you've been away from the game for an extended period of time. But there are times when even Fatima is useless because it's not clear what your objectives are or how you're supposed to achieve them. This serious flaw, caused by either bugs or a lack of clues, may be dealt with before the game's final release.

The manner in which you interact with other characters is similar to any other RPG in that you can occasionally choose what you want to say to get an appropriate reaction from another character, and if you bother a character multiple times, he or she tends to give you more information or even new items. Other basic aspects of Anachronox are typical of what you'd find in a console RPG. Sly and other party members can upgrade weapons by purchasing new ones at a weapon shop; they can buy healing items by going to healing shops; they can also rest at local hotels to replenish energy.

But there's one feature that gives Anachronox an adventure-game feel, and that's the individual character skills. Each character in Anachronox has a special skill he or she can use while just walking around the cities. For example, Sly Boots has a lock-pick skill that he can use to open locked chests or doors, but it's not just as simple as clicking on the object. For Sly's particular skill, a small combination icon appears with a series of numbers displayed on the screen--all you have to do is guess the correct number for each slot within the given time limit and you can open whatever object you're trying to get into.

Square of Influence

Though there are some other obvious indications that Tom Hall and the rest of his team are enormous fans of console RPG developer SquareSoft, none is more obvious than the combat system. Like Final Fantasy VII and subsequent Square RPGs, Anachronox's combat system uses both real-time and turn-based methods of execution. When you tell Sly or any other party member to perform an action, that character does so according to the turn in which the action is ordered, much like a turn-based strategy game. However, before a party member can perform another action, you have to wait for a small circle--located just underneath individual character portraits--to recharge, and as it's doing so, your party members are left completely open to numerous enemy attacks. This system is incredibly monotonous for the first few battles that take place on Anachronox, as most of your time is spent just trying to figure out its intricacies. But as the game progresses, the battles become much more complex, interesting, and entertaining because the number of strategic options available to your party increases substantially.

In one of the earlier battles, Sly encounters two members of the local police force near a small market area, and for some inexplicable reason, they attack Sly. There isn't much you can do here other than maneuver Sly around to different positions in the battle area and hope that he hits the target with his weak pistol fire. After a few minutes of trading blows and misses, you eventually win the battle as well as any items that the two officers leave behind for Sly. If anything, this first battle teaches you the value of strategically positioning party members within the battle area. When Sly is farther away from his target, his chances of successfully making contact are significantly diminished, but if you move Sly closer, his chances increase. Understanding this strategy is important for certain situations, but it's not always the best alternative to just trading blows with the enemy in the default position in the area. When you move a party member closer to an enemy, you increase an enemy's ability to hit you, so characters with long-range weapons can stay near the back of the battle, farther away from the enemies--though characters with only short-range attacks have no choice but to move next to an enemy, or they can't attack at all.

Battles that occur later in Anachronox, particularly boss battles, are much more complex and dynamic than those found early in the game. For example, there's one battle where Sly and Grumpos must defeat an enormous rock monster, known as the stone sentinel, to advance further into the mines and to get the ultimate prize of MysTech. The stone sentinel takes a stationary position within a circle of stone platforms that Sly and Grumps must move across during the course of the battle. At random points during the battle, the sentinel focuses its attacks on a single stone platform, so if either Sly or Grumpos is standing there at the time, he will receive massive amounts of damage. Learning when it's a good time to attack, when it's a good time to move, or even when there's an opportunity to use items becomes quite valuable in the more difficult battles. Occasionally, you may come across a battlefield that you can physically manipulate, like an area with a retractable bridge. Again, whether you use such a feature depends on your strategy because while you may prevent the enemy from using certain types of attacks, you may also limit your character's abilities in the process.

Final Thoughts

To some degree Anachronox imitates console RPGs like Final Fantasy VII by using minigames, which range in length from two or three minutes to nearly 10 minutes. One of the less challenging minigames has you piloting a small shuttle off a planet, avoiding asteroids, ships, and any other debris that get in your way. It's incredibly simple and easy to get through, and it's a nice diversion from the usual passive cinema sequences. However, there are moments when Anachronox somewhat overuses the minigames concept. An example of this is when Sly and Grumpos head toward a colony of insect people: The entire first portion of this area takes place in a Rebel Assault-like environment where you shoot at enemies with the onscreen cursor as they fly toward the screen, and when it's time to move into a new area, you simply fire at the door. This minigame takes some time to get through--especially if your aim isn't spectacular--because it's actually possible to stray from the main path that weaves in and out of the structure. However, this particular minigame isn't annoying to the extent that it completely disrupts the rest of the game, but it's easy to briefly forget that you're indeed playing an RPG.

Though Tom Hall's development team claims that it has basically reworked most of its features, Anachronox pushes the Quake II engine to the absolute limit. And while some parts of the game look solid, the engine definitely shows its age in other areas. Many character models, particularly those of people walking around towns, are blocky and tend to have some rather muddy-looking body and facial textures. General character animation has its problems as well, with some stuttering animations that take place during cinemas, but some battle animations are impressive like the one of the special tornado attacks. It is somewhat surprising that many of the environments look quite good. One example is the area near Boots' office known as the fountain, where a pillar of blue light splashes up from the top of a large structure and reaches toward the ceiling. In addition, the city just outside Boots' office is filled with people, huge neon signs, and animated advertisements. But perhaps the most impressive sight is the launching area, where there are plenty of small ships flying around the area as well as a few flying screens telling them when to stop and go.

Judging from the current build, the Anachronox development team still has some work ahead. For example, the voice acting, which starts in some of the early scenes but completely disappears afterward, still needs to be perfected. There are also plenty of bugs to fix--some of them are fairly major as they prevent you from advancing through the game, and there are others that simply cause onscreen characters to disappear. Also in the preview build, there are some sequences missing like the one where you're supposed to train inside a small wrestling ring--there you'll find only a placeholder saying that it's unavailable in the current build. Aside from these problems, Anachronox could shape up to be a nice surprise for those looking for a console-style RPG along the lines of Final Fantasy VII on the PC. It's currently scheduled for a June release.