It was Christmas day, 1997. My grandmother proudly gave me a collection of PC games for the family’s woefully outdated Gateway 2000 486/66: The LucasArts Archives Volume III. Promising “6 Sensational CD-ROMs,” the box contained such classics as Dark Forces, the much-hyped The Dig, the city-sim Afterlife, and Monkey Island Madness (the first two games on one disc! Technology!). It also contained a lame demo disc, and Full Throttle.
Full Throttle was my first exposure to Tim Schafer and point-and-click adventure games. The majority of my gaming experience up to that point was trapped in MYST and blasting my way out of the pixelated corridors of DOOM and its many contemporaries. Full Throttle was completely different, transplanting my 16-year-old body into the shit-kicking boots of Ben, a tough-as-nails biker wrongly accused of murder. The crosshair-shaped cursor led me through deserts and dive bars in my quest to clear my name, and Schafer’s snappy dialogue kept me smiling all the way through. It was my first of many Tim Schafer games, from LucasArts to Double Fine and the latest, Broken Age, brings it all full circle.
After years of experimental games, from the 3D adventure title Grim Fandango (recently remastered in HD) to the odd action-strategy pastiche Brütal Legend, Schafer and the Double Fine team have brought themselves back for a truly classic adventure game in both the chronological and qualitative sense, a return to form for the genre that was sorely missed by 90’s gamers like myself, and a sterling introduction to the genre for a new generation.
The game breaks some tradition, however, in its narrative. Instead of focusing on one character, we’re given two: a boy named Shay and a girl named Vella. Shay has lived his entire life on a mysterious spaceship, coddled by a computerized Mother and Father that send him on esteem-boosting “missions” day after day that provide no danger or challenge to break up the cyclic monotony of his existence. All of that changes when he meets a stowaway by the name of Marek lurking in the ship’s hold.
On the flip side, we have Vella, a young woman who has spent her entire life “training” for The Maiden’s Feast, an event that occurs every fourteen years where the young women of her village are sacrificed to a Lovecraftian horror by the name of Mog Chothra. They do this so that Mog Chothra will spare their village, even though Vella’s grandfather declares that the once-proud warrior people should stand up to the monster. Vella decides to save herself and all of the maidens that will be sacrificed: she will kill Mog Chothra.
The two seemingly unrelated tales hint at a shared continuity in the first act before pulling back the curtain in one of the greatest twists I’ve ever seen in gaming. I won’t say any more, as Broken Age‘s story is one that needs to be experienced without any spoilers. It really is that remarkable, achieving a narrative that feels epic in scope even though its focus on characters is intimate. The writing’s peppered with Schafer’s trademark sense of humor, giving us characters like Curtis the hipster lumberjack and Harm’ny Lightbeard the new-age guru. I caught myself laughing out loud several times over the course of the game (Curtis’s running gag involving crass wordplay on “stool” was a delicious piece of low-hanging fruit) and surprisingly choked up in others.
The gameplay will be instantly familiar to old-school adventurers: a crosshair cursor’s your primary tool for interacting with characters, the environment, and the cache of items you’ll pick up along the way. It’ll be instantly familiar to veterans of the genre, and intuitive enough for newbies to pick up without any real learning curve. Even on the Playstation 4 copy I reviewed (I wanted to couch-game this one) the analog sticks and buttons were easy to operate and control was precise. The puzzles themselves were almost completely fair and logical, although a few more time-sensitive head-scratchers proved to be a little frustrating. However, the majority of the puzzles can be solved with the right combination of logic (even if it’s weird video-game logic), observation, and perseverance.
Graphically, Broken Age is simply stunning. The entire game world, from the backdrops to the characters to the tiny incidental details that make the environments feel alive, is brushed with painterly strokes. Its sumptuous colors and delightfully overstated animation set the aesthetic somewhere between retro cartoon and oil painting. Aurally, the game is a real pleaser, with vibrant, fully orchestrated music and an impressive voice cast that includes Elijah Wood, Jack Black, Wil Wheaton, and Jennifer Hale, as well as many other talented actors and actresses. Everything meshes together perfectly to create a world that is as beautiful as it is memorable.
Almost two decades after I played Full Throttle, Tim Schafer and his talented team have once again drawn me deep into a point-and-click adventure. If you’re an adventure gamer looking to have a classic itch scratched, Broken Age is the perfect game. If you’re looking for a fantastic story to keep your attention all the way to the end with only a few frustrating puzzles along the way, Broken Age is the perfect game.