There isn’t much more to Beyond a Steel Sky than that. This means you end up trying to time your scans to incorporate multiple devices within range, allowing you to chop and change bits of code between different devices – finding the right combination of code is critical to solving puzzles and as the game progresses, these hacking challenges become ever more complex. Dark pieces can be swapped around, although sometimes you’ll find an extra piece of dark code within a bigger piece of unmovable code. Hacking consists of manipulating pieces of code, which are represented as jigsaw pieces. On PC you use WASD to move, the mouse to control the camera, and left-click on things when prompted – it’s all fairly standard.Īt the end of the tutorial, you acquire a MINOS scanner, which you use to scan for terminals that you can hack. Revolution have ditched the point-and-click approach to movement and interaction and instead utilized a more traditional, over-the-shoulder system. Whilst Beyond a Steel Sky is a game that aims to make you part of a gripping story, the gameplay ain’t half bad either. However, this subtext isn’t thrust in your face as some sort of political statement – it’s merely a mundane, matter-of-fact aspect of the lives of the folk who dwell within Union City. It’s a relevant, almost all too familiar tale of an out-of-control surveillance state posing as though it has everyone’s best interests at heart. It’s little things like this that as they unravel, reveal a rulership that has crept into every aspect of their citizens’ lives and has convinced them that things couldn’t possibly get any better. Therefore, he can’t utilize the Ministry of Wellbeing’s approved filters, tags, and automatic upload to their Union City database. A wonderful example of this is when you discover that Graham Grundy (a citizen that you’re masquerading as) takes photos with an “old” camera. Whilst everything is humorous and clean, the idea of the ruling class having a “Ministry of Wellbeing” which monitors your work attendance, relationships, social life, and hobbies to make sure that you’re “happy” reeks of the saccharine corporate jargon that office HR teams use to let you know that “they’re there for you”. I adored how relevant the whole approach to utopia was in this game. I say lower, because in Union City, the uppermost levels are reserved for the poorest members of society. They trust in the Council to look after their needs and are endlessly chasing “Qdos” – a sort of social credit system that allows citizens access to lower and lower levels of the city. The tutorial section introduces you to the key mechanics very organically, from talking with NPC’s and being able to question them on a number of topics, to using the items in your inventory to solve environmental puzzles.Īs you progress deeper into the city, you become involved in something far more sinister, whereby the general populace feel as though civilization has reached its telos and things couldn’t get any better. Foster follows the trail to Union City, which is where the adventure truly begins. However, the routine trip turns tragic when Milo is kidnapped and bundled off in a strange, quadrupedal armored vehicle. One day, he takes a young child from his village, Milo, fishing. Having made a Gapland village his home (“Gapland” being the term for settlements outside of the cyberpunk utopia of Union City), things are peaceful. Whilst the gameplay is mechanically simple, Revolution’s approach to layering complex puzzle solutions with NPC interrogation reveal a narrative that is replete with engrossing characters, dry humor, and a utopia where all is not as it seems…īeyond a Steel Sky takes place around 10 years after its predecessor and you assume control of Robert Foster. Heralded as a “cyberpunk science fiction adventure game”, Beyond a Steel Sky ’s aesthetics definitely tick the boxes there. Initially released in June 2020 on PC, Beyond a Steel Sky has been ported to consoles, including a lovely physical edition on Switch that includes a sleeve. Charles Cecil, the lead writer of both the Steel Sky and Broken Sword series, is a fantastic writer and Revolution have a way of presenting a gripping, often poignant story through relatively simple mechanics. Having spent a great deal of my formative gaming years bending my head around the multilayered puzzles of the Broken Sword series (also developed by Revolution), I was looking forward to experiencing how such a game would look and feel in 2021. Revolution Software are known for their visionary approach to the puzzle adventure genre and with Beyond a Steel Sky (a spiritual successor to 1994’s Beneath a Steel Sky ), they have coated a classic formula in a new sheen of paint.
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