I recently played The Dig for the first time, which passed me by when I was younger. I had heard of it I didn’t realise it was another Lucas/Spielberg game. I’d just come off a couple of other Lucasarts games and it was quite different.
Looking back it seems quite divisive, I think because it was so different to the comedy Lucasarts adventures, but there’s still a lot of love for it floating around the internet, and now I’ve added to it here if you fancy a long read: https://p7uen.neocities.org/posts/2023-06-23-The-Dig
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I really loved this game but having played it again not too many years ago, it does have several “sins” of the genre like overly cryptic puzzles and pixel hunting.
But the atmosphere is really top notch.
I don’t think the sins were that bad (I’ve played far worse), I thought it was one of the easier games of the genre. I didn’t quite like the ending though, it felt a bit anticlimactic and that the heroes didn’t really earn it. It was like they decided to rush the ending and just wrapped it up.
They literally did have to rush the ending. It’s why the German guy looks like an old man in one of the last cinematics. There was supposed to be more with him going into the weird dimension and something about that caused him to age a lot.
I don’t recall exactly what but I believe there was an final act that got cut.
Damn! So it was indeed rushed. That explains so much. Do you have a source link on hand? If not I’ll just go search it up later.
Sorry, I took a look and unfortunately I couldn’t find anything so it is possible I’m misremembering things. In fact, the stuff about Brink becoming an old man might have been something to do with eliminating his addiction to the life crystals - I think that is a detail that was in the novelization?
It did have a chaotic development that had to be restarted a few times. There’s info about that in the IMDB page for the game. There’s a neat tidbit in that there was originally supposed to be a fourth astronaut who had cofunded the mission but they were ultimately cut from the game (though supposedly early artwork still featured 4 sets of footprints)
Yes, I recall Brian Moriatry was attached to the project at the start. No worries, I’ll go… dig up the Internet on this. :P
Sure, had plenty worse but I feel by modern standards it can be quite frustrating at times.
Maybe years of playing adventure games has warped my mind. XD
That was a nice piece. I remember becoming hooked on this game from the moment I heard about it. I think that was due to its history of being a Spielberg project that was deemed too expensive to make our something like that.
The first time I played the game was a demo version from a magazine CD and I knew I wanted the full game, I love a bit of good sci-fi.
Once The Dig was released, I went all in. Bought the game on day of release and ordered the novel as well. I also remember finding the soundtrack CD at a record fair.
You probably have to use the way back machine to find it, there was a website called The Dig Museum. It had information about earlier versions of the game and some of the unused graphics that hide in the released code.
Finally, the one puzzle that used to drive me crazy was the rebuilding of the skeleton. I’m sure those nights had to be arranged pixel perfect!
I had trouble with the skeleton even after looking at pictures of the solution! I save my sanity and spare time by very happily using walkthroughs when I’m playing old games, I used to think it was cheating but I’m over it now.
One of my favourite games from that era. Nice to see I’m not alone :)
You got slapped on the face, didn’t you? She told you! You should’ve listened to her!
(I agree that it’s a great game.)
You mind cross-posting this to !dosgaming@retrolemmy.com ?
Sure go for it, I’ve subscribed, looks great.
Done. Thanks!
The music was particularly amazing in this game. I just think the biggest drawback were the very cryptic puzzles especially in the later half. It all makes sense retrospectively once you understand what you are doing but in the moment it can be very frustrating.
It reminds me lot of Myst like puzzles - you end up interacting with a bunch of weird technology and it isn’t always clear on what you are doing.
I’ve played it several times back then and kept a hand-written cheat sheet for that one puzzle where you had to get that crystal out. It was so hard without a quick walkthrough on the internet ;)
Watched a video of it recently cause I had remembered it. Thought I would watch 10 mins or so, kept watching till the end :D
When I was a kid I drew an A3-sized map of Jurassic Park on the SNES, still couldn’t complete the game until I was an adult!
Haha that reminds me of Bard’s Tale where we were drawing maps as we went.
I read the novelization as a kid and had no idea it was based on a game. It was a solid book. I never played the game until much later but it was cool seeing the developers’ take on the same stuff.
