The Dig can be a great game but only to the most dedicated players.
The story starts with an unknown meteor discovered in collision course with Earth and a team of astronauts send to stop it with explosives. Sounds familiar? Well, The Armageddon was not out when this game was created so I don't consider it as a cliche. It's actually very nicely done with cut scenes that are so nicely done that they even outdone Broken Sword (the latter had more epic intro but the artist had a little strange style). We learn first strange fact - they take a journalist along - what? Can you really waste precious space on the space shuttle to have some untrained press member do his documentary. Regardless of the reasons it would seem that a non-technical person will bring some life to the team but it is actually you, the team leader, who jokes all the time. I actually got annoyed because he could make long senseless conversation with the team but there was no briefing before the mission.
So you start in space having no idea what to do. You go to the sector of the asteroid place explosives and go back to the ship. Nothing happens. I tried to speak to other team members about explosive and no one told me you have to arm them. Having done that you still have to talk to another off screen team member who tells you to go back. Why even so simple things are so hard to figure out? Anyway the charges blow up the meteor a bit and it stays in Earths orbit (or that is what they intended) and the team goes to survey the surface. They discover some alien made things and immediately start meddling with it. I can't understand why. I actually had to go back from the asteroids core to press some metal plates but I could not report anything I've found - like the giant lock mechanism inside. All this is, of course, nitpicking but I just want to express how vague and unbelievable that 5 first minutes is. You would expect something better and more fun to do that - drill, place charge, arm charge, repeat, drill, press plate, repeat 3 times. I bet Spielberg did not write this part
The rest of the game is spend on alien planet and your team trying to get home. You can already get a little bored at the start and for the rest of the game you only have these 2 people to talk to. The acting is not "wooden" as somebody said. Its pretty good, believable. But that is also the problem - its not that entertaining
The best aspect of the game is it's graphics. I have already stated that the intro is great. The cut scenes are very nice as well, pretty realistic and believable. Some renderings aged a bit but I would say that overall artistic achievement is an eye candy. Character have many animations other than standard "put object" and similar. I can't really say more, it has to be seen and has to be admired even today.
The difficulty is really hard to swallow. Most adventure games have some ridiculous like combine mouse and a sponge or something. Here it is even more vague. Don't get me wrong - it is definitely challenging. But is a notch above normal adventure games which are already quite hard I would say. I could not finish the game without a guide, while lets say The Longest Journey was a breeze for me. If it was just a little bit more involving - activating alien rail and opening new passages is not that great on its own.
The music is great. It is actually more involving than the plot. For a space opera I recall Homeworld to have the best music but there it was more dramatic. Despite a pretty evenly paced plot the music makes the gameplay quite enjoyable.
Overall I'm rating this game 6 out of 10 for great graphics, music and speech quality. The slow pace, useless dialog and vague explanation of what is going on take away much of the fun and can put to sleep. One could try to compare it to the film 2001: The Space Odyssey but it lacks the impact and has so much less to say. I would recommend Beneath Steel Sky instead for a good Sci-fi adventure. See The Dig if you are curious but don't waste 10 hours that give little entertainment