ANALYSIS – VIDEO GAME: The Last Express (1997) – VERONIKA ZÝKOVÁ -
The Last Express (1997) is a video game created by Jordan Mechner and Smoking Car Productions, set on the Orient Express in 1914. This videogame was very innovative in the adventure games genre. The Last Express was the first “real-time adventure game” and until these days it remains an example of combining deep story with high artistic values, 3D environment based on detailed historical research, rotoscoped Art Nouveau stylized characters, international cast with great voice acting in multiple languages and other praised aspects I will mention further. The game has taken 4 years to develop, with budget over 5 million dollars.1
This article will balance between serious analysis and a long-time love to this video game (or interactive media). Although it has been 15 years since its release, The Last Express is undoubtedly considered a piece of art and very accomplished narrative, which was examined in The End of Books – Or Books Without End? Reading Interactive Narratives by J. Yellowlees Douglas and other studies. Just like in the time of its release, when it received rave reviews, the game still makes it to various charts and polls of the best adventure games of all times.3 Now that The Last Express is available as a digital download on various sites4 and recently [on March 16th 2012] its version for iPad and iPhone was announced,5 lets have a detailed look at what The Last Express offers to a gamer.
"So far, I have not been talking about visuals and voices of characters. It would be shame not to mention, at least briefly, that characters are rotoscoped in 2D stylized Art Nouveau look. Not only Mucha’s and Toulous-Lautrec’s paintings were inspiration, but also comic books by such authors as Hugo Pratt, François Schuiten or Enki Bilal.25 Comic book style reminds also the way creators dealt with limited 3 CDs space26 and in many cases had to use not full motion, but more slide-show style, capturing significant gestures and mimics. It works surprisingly well, partly because you just accept this style and get used to it. But full motion used for character’s walking, facing you in the corridor, looking to your eyes with emotions, this is just priceless; surely one of the greatest efforts of The Last Express. You can observe characters from different angles, their actions are little animations similar to loops; they repeat certain moves. It is not too impressive, but sufficient enough to create the illusion of action."
"The voice acting is perfect and gamer can enjoy various languages in their beauty. High level of authenticity was accomplished even in this field; Russians are speaking old Russian, you can say when Austrian is speaking German and so forth. For example, character leads conversation in German and in the middle of a sentence he/she starts to speak English with strong German accent. Richness of languages is exceptional.27 When I mentioned that The Last Express was going against some aspects of „interactive movies“, it was because of the difference between FMV used in these games and rotoscoped cartoon-style technique that creators of The Last Express used. It does exactly what they intended: player does not concentrate on acting that much, because he/she sees only key frames of characters talking, he/she rather listens to dialogues and focuses on story. But The Last Express is highly cinematic, as well as very interactive, so if we call it „interactive movie“, „interactive media“, or simply „video game“, it won’t make much difference.28"
Link to the deep and compelling article here:
http://25fps.cz/2012/the-last-express/