I am of two minds regarding Byzantine: The Betrayal. Initially, the fuzzy photographs, lousy acting, and mediocre writing turned me off. And the game's gimmick - in which you must tour virtual reconstructions of historical locations - seemed a bit weak. But as I continued my way through this murder mystery with its hi-tech angle and foreign intrigue, it began to grow on me. Not enough to get an unqualified endorsement, but enough to recommend it to those looking for a challenging and informative adventure.
You play a journalist who travels to Istanbul to help a college buddy solve a potentially dangerous mystery. You arrive only to be met by local police who say your friend is not as innocent as you think and that by implication you are under suspicion of smuggling valuable archaeological artifacts out of Turkey. The cops let you off with an admonition to keep your nose clean and out of their business which, of course, you ignore by immediately rummaging through your friend's apartment.
Gameplay takes place in a collection of connected 360-degree photographic panoramas. You navigate using the mouse - a la Zork Nemesis - but the image quality is not up to the high standards seen in other games of the kind. Typically there are a few hot spots and inventory items in each location. Most are simple to find and apply, but there are a few truly convoluted, illogical, and marginally unfair problems in Byzantine, like a door keypad combination, an ordered arrangement of artifacts on a collection of circles, and the final escape from secret ancient underground passageways.
That virtual reality element is critical to the gameplay and storyline. Within the storyline, the VR program analyzes ancient objects and "extrapolates" information from them to create virtual versions of ancient monuments, temples, and other significant locations. It also predicts where undiscovered artifacts, believed by archaeologists to exist, can be found in unexplored areas of these ancient locations. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent someone is using that information to unearth those objects to sell on the black market. They then erase them from the computer's memory so no one knows of their existence.
As a gameplay gimmick, you get to move through renderings of several fascinating ancient structures. As you wander you find objects which you use to solve problems and open more unexplored areas. This is where the puzzling gets problematic. For instance, it's clear you need to create a virtual version of an ancient hoist to lift a heavy block, but assembling the hoist parts in the proper order is darn near impossible.
Between your virtual journeys, you encounter many Turks played by, we're told in the news release, "professional famous actors." They may be famous in Turkey or, more likely, in their own minds but, in reality they're substandard. And the dialogues follow the standard interactive adventure game click-on-question-listen-to-answer process with virtually no interactivity or true branching.
To complete Byzantine you'll need to travel to multiple locations within Istanbul and speak with several dozen characters. Knowing where to go or to whom to speak would be a problem were it not for all the built-in coincidences. Just going to locations as they open on the map usually means you'll encounter people critical to gameplay who are having loud conversations in English that you happen to overhear.
Istanbul's clash and blending of Muslim and Christian religions with modern and conservative cultures is fascinating, and the game captures some of that, though it could have gone a bit further to develop the atmosphere. While it suffers many problems of its genre, the story is fascinating and it holds numerous challenges - and you can't help but come away from Byzantine with an appreciation for Turkey's critical role in the growth of civilization and its unique place in modern society.
