Contents:
The Intro
Title: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Release year: 1992
Developed by: LucasArts
Genre: Point-and-click adventure
Platform replayed on: PC
Here we go again…
I’ve featured Indiana Jones twice here on Present Perfect Gaming. The first time was my third ever blog, on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game. While not a great game, it does have a special place in my gaming history.
The second time was for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (from here referred to as The Last Crusade). Now, nostalgia can do funny things. Despite not quite being the game I remembered it to be, it is still a high quality point-and-click adventure from the golden era of such games.
Now, I’m not going to bury the headline here—Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is an outstanding game, and a clear favourite when I compare it to The Last Crusade. It is an original story, and has been considered by fans of the franchise as being the “fourth film” (which may or may not have gained popularity following the actual release of the polarising fourth film: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008).
Image via IMDB
This time, we join Indy as he searches for the lost sunken city of Atlantis. And he’s not the only one—it’s 1939, and the Nazis are seeking a mysterious power rumoured to be hidden within the legendary lost city…
The Game
If you’re familiar with The Last Crusade, you know what to expect from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
You have a familiar set of verbs to select from to perform actions
You also have inventory management and exploration.
The game is fairly linear, so the number of locations at any given time is quite restricted. Within these locations, you need to explore, speak to people you meet, and use (or combine) the items you’ve picked up along the way.
From my blog on The Last Crusade, I mentioned a couple of features that are not often seen in point-and-click adventures: mazes and fighting.
The mazes are all but gone in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, but the fighting definitely remains!
And speaking of fighting, it’s a great segue into the most well-known gameplay element: “the decision”.
By that I mean, you get presented with a choice of three paths to take early on in the story. You decide how Indy will tackle the challenges presented. Will Indy use his wits and go it alone? Or will he prefer to use his fists instead? Or perhaps he’ll team up and take a partner along for the journey.
It’s up to you.
This gameplay element had been explored in The Last Crusade, as there was a section where you had a choice of approach. This was during the zeppelin escape (for those familiar with the film and/or the game), where you have a choice between Indy getting on the zeppelin with his father, or stealing a biplane and bypassing the zeppelin section. If you take the zeppelin, you get to take control of Indy’s father for a short time.
This time around in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, the three paths are fully developed, and provide a different experience. The overall narrative is the same, but the locations you visit, what you do in certain locations, and the people you interact with, are different in each path.
Which path did I take?
Before we get to that, we’ll need to go back to the beginning of the story. We join Indy as he searches for a small artifact within his archives at Barnett College, at the request of a mysterious “Mr Smith”…
The Replay
Finding this artifact that Indy is looking for is shown as part of the intro credits sequence to the game. In The Last Crusade, the intro credits were handled in a similarly clever way. In that game, the circus train chase scene from the film is shown while the credits roll. Despite not being an interactive experience, I think it was an inventive way of including this part of the film in the game.
In Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, the intro credits sequence is interactive—and it’s incredibly well done. You have to help Indy explore parts of the archives as he searches for the artifact—a mysterious horned statue. What follows is a humorous, though somewhat painful, sequence of events. Let’s take a look:
Oh, did I forget to mention Indy speaks? That’s right, the CD-ROM version of the game was fully voiced. It’s not Harrison Ford, but it still sounds good in my opinion. This is the first time I’ve played the game with voice acting.
Back to the story, with the statue in hand, it’s time for Indy to find out why Mr Smith is so eager to get his hands on it.
It turns out he’s a Nazi agent (surprise), and despite Indy trying to convince him it’s a fake, he escapes with it, and a mysterious bead that came out of it.
Why would a Nazi agent want a fake statue? Well, Indy was bluffing when he said it’s not a fake. But Indy can’t place where it comes from. Fortunately, in the fight that broke out between Indy and the Nazi agent as he was trying to escape, Indy manages to grab his coat. Inside it is a vital clue.
Indy’s former archaeological partner, Sophia Hapgood, appears to be in danger, and apparently has something to do with the statue. It’s off to New York, where Sophia has given up archaeology to become a psychic.
Indy finds Sophia in New York lecturing on the Lost City of Atlantis. When he confronts her on stealing some artifacts from an expedition in Iceland they both worked on, she reveals that the mysterious bead is an energy source called “orichalcum”, used by the Atlanteans to power highly developed machines. She also gives Indy a demonstration with her necklace, one of the artifacts “acquired” from the Iceland expedition.
Sophia believes the Nazis are after this orichalcum to help power their war effort. The race is on, and Indy’s already behind.
But where to next? Well, Sophia being a psychic, can channel the spirit of Atlantean God-King Nur-Ab-Sal. Indy’s not so sure.
Sophia believes the spirit of Nur-Ab-Sal is telling them to find the Lost Dialogue of Plato, which will lead them to Atlantis. Sound far-fetched? Indy certainly thinks so, as he doesn’t believe in the existence of the Lost Dialogue in the first place.
Skeptical, Indy nonetheless agrees to return to Iceland to see if they can find any leads.
After jet-setting across the world chasing down a few leads, Indy discovers the Lost Dialogue of Plato is part of a collection owned by Barnett College. How convenient!
With the Lost Dialogue in hand, it’s now the time to make “the decision”. Did I go wits, fists, or team?
I know I’ve at least experimented with the wits and fists paths, but in my few playthroughs since first playing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in the 90s, I can never go past the team path. Particularly this playthrough, as it’s my first with the voice acting. I’ve always found the choice to cut another character out of the game difficult.
The interaction between Indy and Sophia is also very well written.
Taking the team path sees Indy and Sophia in some quite unique (and humorous) situations along the way.
Sophia informs Indy that certain circular stones must be located in order to gain access to Atlantis. Acquiring the circular sun, moon, and world stones is the key to progressing the adventure. They allow you to interpret the Lost Dialogue to work out the positioning of the stones at certain locations.
Figuring out the puzzle on Crete allows you access to an Atlantean labyrinth, and eventually Atlantis itself.
Somewhat predictably, but nonetheless enjoyable and funny, the tension is building between Indy and Sophia…
Unfortunately, just as things are heating up between the pair, Sophia is kidnapped!
Indy is forced to give up the sun, moon, and world stones at gunpoint. It’s time for a daring rescue on a U-boat, as the Nazis race to reach Atlantis!
Up until this point, everything had come back to me. I can’t remember exactly, but I believe it’s been about ten years since I’ve last played Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. As such, it’s hard to comment on the difficulty of the puzzles, as most of the solutions came back to me pretty quickly as I played through this again.
I will say though that Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis feels a lot more narratively tighter compared with The Last Crusade, and there are no unwinnable states. By this I mean that you are usually restricted to a couple of locations maximum, and usually it’s only one; and it’s impossible to get yourself into a situation where you cannot progress.
Further, once inside Atlantis, Indy has the opportunity to get into fights with Nazis. However, these are always escapable, unlike in The Last Crusade where managing the amount of fighting you did and maintaining Indy’s health was a minigame in itself (and quite challenging).
In saying all that about difficulty, I did get stuck for about an hour or two in Atlantis.
Getting back to the action, we rejoin Indy aboard the Nazi U-boat, where there’s just enough time to rescue Sophia and navigate the submarine to Atlantis before Sophia gets kidnapped again.
Atlantis is crawling with Nazis, but the prize is close if Indy can work out the Atlantean machines and get to the centre of the city.
I found the maze section a bit tedious. There are quite a number of rooms to explore before you can rescue Sophia and enter the inner chambers. It was this rescue that had me stuck for a while, and brought back the memories of a certain frustration that only a point-and-click can provide…
It was worth it in the end, as the tension between the pair finally spills over.
The joy is short-lived, as Sophia becomes possessed by the spirit of Nur-Ab-Sal when she enters the inner circle of Atlantis.
Now while a lot of the story is on rails, aside from getting to choose which path you take, there is a real choice here: rescue Sophia (yes, again), or leave her possessed. You can finish the game with either choice. Rescuing Sophia requires solving how, and is not a dialogue or story choice.
Initially, I left Sophia behind without realising. Thankfully, Indy gives you a reminder.
And so for the third time, I managed to save Sophia.
Returning to the central chamber, Indy inadvertently activates another Atlantean machine. This one, it turns out, was used in experiments aimed at achieving godhood.
And the Nazis intend to use it.
I won’t completely spoil the ending here, but there are three possible endings from this point, and only one of them is good.
If you manage to achieve the good ending, you join Indy and Sophia following their escape from Atlantis. Indy’s initial hope of some evidence (he is an academic after all) is quickly dashed…
…but he does get another kiss.
Roll credits!
The Verdict
Now I say “roll credits”, as getting to the end of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, it felt like an interactive fiction experience, and therefore closer perhaps to a film than a game. The reason I say this (as I know this is, quite obviously, a game) is because I largely played the game on autopilot—I have memorised most of what to do. As such, I was able to keep the story moving at a steady pace, and most importantly, enjoy it.
Anyone who’s played a few point-and-clicks will likely be familiar with the experience of getting hopelessly stuck on a puzzle for hours (or even indefinitely). I liken this to reading a novel or watching a film where you get to a certain point in the story, and then suddenly have to stop or pause for a few hours before you can continue. Now, you might say that we do this with novels all the time (unless it’s a marathon one-sitting read), we put them down and come back to them later. But imagine having to backtrack through the novel or film multiple times, or perhaps even starting them again before you can continue. That’s the classic point-and-click frustration.
My point here is that I believe Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is an experience best enjoyed as a story. I’ve had my time with it when I first played it or replayed it, where I had to take my time and figure out the puzzles. But now that’s done, I can settle in and enjoy the ride. I can do this with other games too, like Sam & Max Hit the Road. But Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis feels different based on the fact it comes from an action film series—it has that fast-paced, epic feel, where Indy is in a race against time to save the world. Playing the game should feel like the films.
In addition, playing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis with voice acting for the first time further enhanced the experience to that film-like level.
From a gameplay perspective, the choice of pathway was novel and well executed for its time. Even if the overall narrative is unchanged, there are three different ways of getting to Atlantis, and three different endings.
Looking at the team pathway specifically, I feel like this was the intended pathway—if this were a film, Indy would definitely have a sidekick, and most likely a love interest.
One criticism I have of the team pathway is that apart from some clever set pieces, like the knife-throwing in Algiers and the seance in Monte Carlo, Sophia actually felt like a bit of a passenger. There wasn’t really a lot of teamwork, and after choosing the team path, you never actually gain control of Sophia.
Overall though, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis deserves its place as a classic adventure game. I recommend it to fans of the franchise who can handle a 90s point-and-click (no unwinnable states, remember!). For those that have played it, but without the voice acting like I hadn’t, I highly recommend a replay to enjoy the full cinematic experience.
And a final thought from me, now that I’ve replayed three Indiana Jones games here on Present Perfect Gaming. It’s possible the early games were my entry point into the franchise, as I’m not sure when I first watched the films. All three games were early entries in my gaming history, so there’s high nostalgia value for me. I’ve gone on to enjoy the Lego Indiana Jones games as well, and they were definitely my son’s entry into the franchise, as he has yet to see the films.
If I’m honest, I just might prefer the Indiana Jones video games over the films. Hmm, maybe it’s time to dust off the DVDs…
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