Simply one of the greatest games ever made.
The Pandora Directive was released at a time when the adventure game was more popular than it was today. But while many were sticking with the tried and true 3rd person point-and-click adventure, Access Software tried something completely different, first with Under a Killing Moon, and then with The Pandora Directive and its sequel, Overseer. The Pandora Directive is described as an "interactive movie". It uses FMV for its cutscenes, and the gameplay takes place in a fully 3D environment.
Don't let the FMV scare you. The level of acting in The Pandora Directive is probably some of, if not the best in video games. Whether its the well-known actors like Barry Corbin, Kevin McCarthy, or Tanya Roberts, some of the lesser-known actors like Suzanne Barnes or John Agar, or even those whose acting experience is limited to this game and its predecessor like Chris Jones or Doug Vandegrift there are few moments when the characters are anything less than believable. Chris Jones is especially amazing as the main character Tex Murphy. Co-creator of Tex Murphy, and former president of the now non-existent Access Software, he had no real acting experience prior to Under a Killing Moon. Despite that he brings a personality to Tex that makes him one of the best video game characters ever conceived.
The Pandora Directive's story is inspired by the supposed Roswell incident of 1947. With The X-Files at the peak of its popularity in 1996, Roswell and aliens were common themes at the time. Though the story sounds a bit too cliche, its actually so much more than just Roswell. The game starts with Tex hired by Gordon Fitzpatrick (played by Kevin McCarthy) to find a missing friend (Thomas Malloy, played by the late John Agar). Through the game, Tex crosses paths with a dangerous serial killer, a deranged NSA agent (played by Barry Corbin), and even a quirky conspiracy theorist. If you're worried that the game sounds too much like so many other Roswell stories, without giving too much away, I have to say its not. The game deals more with the morality and danger of using the alien technology and involves trying to discover the secret that Thomas Malloy went into hiding to protect. No time is really devoted to attempting to uncover the truth about Roswell. In fact, when it's first mentioned its truth is fully revealed.
Finally, we come to the gameplay. Like most adventure games, The Pandora Directive uses inventory-based and conversation-based puzzles to move the game forward. However, unlike some games where many of these puzzles are contrived, The Pandora Directive succeeds at tying the majority of them in nicely with the actual story. Many involve the search for clues that will help you progress through the game. Some clues are items, like a scarf with a unique perfume or an address found on a piece of paper. Others are found by questioning the characters in the game. One of the great things about the game, is that even though some characters don't have anything important to say about certain people or objects you can still question them about it and their responses are frequently worth hearing.
The game also uses some logic-based puzzles. While some are challenging, the game has a full hint system which lists every necessary action in the game. The logic-based puzzles are even skippable by entering a secret by-pass code found in the hint system. The game gives you points for completing most necessary, and many optional actions, however using the hint system will deduct from your overall score.
Where The Pandora Directive really shines in the gameplay department is its replayability. It was one of the first games to have multiple endings. You can play through the game as the good-guy and finally get together with the series main love interest, Chelsee Bando, be an immoral man who burns his bridges and sides with the enemy, or be something somewhere in between. The choice is yours. Because it was an early attempt at multiple paths through the game, the actions you need to take to go down the good or bad path are a bit restrictive, but if you're having difficulty, a quick look at a walkthrough should help. Each of the different paths not only yield up to 7 different endings, but many of the cutscenes throughout the rest of the game will differ as well making each path unique in its own way. Even some segments of gameplay will differ between the different paths. This really adds a rare type of replayability not seen in many adventure games.
To add to the replayability are the two difficulty modes. Entertainment allows you to use hints and has fewer challenging puzzles. Game Players doesn't allow hints, but adds some more puzzles and locations for you to play. Both levels have points, with a total of 1500 on Entertainment, and 4000 on Game Players. Many of these extra points are rewards for finishing logic-based puzzles within certain constraints (either time limits or number of moves). Its important to note that these constraints are not strict. If you fail to finish the puzzle within them, its not game over, you just don't get the bonus points. Getting all the points in the game doesn't mean just finishing the game by completing all the necessary actions. There are plenty of optional elements to the gameplay which further enhance the replayability. Some puzzles and locations are entirely optional and you could technically go through the whole game without bothering with them.
As a final note, I want to say that many of the cutscenes in the game are extraordinarily well-done. Some are action-packed, some emotional, and others downright funny, and they really add to the experience that is The Pandora Directive. The score composed for the game is great, and the song written for the end credits by Blues musician Richie Havens fits the tone of the game perfectly.
Though The Pandora Directive is a DOS-based game, it can be run well on modern machines using DOSBox. With a total of six discs, I recommend using one of the many free programs out there to make disc images and have DOSBox mount them to six separate drives. The Pandora Directive can be fully configured so that it looks for each disc in a different drive. Probably the biggest problem with the game is the cumbersome disc-swapping, but thankfully modern PCs have ways to eliminate it.
If you can still find this game, I highly recommend getting it. If you already own it and haven't played it in years, then isn't it about time you give it another go?