By Brutoom

An old-fashioned text adventure too far ahead of its time...

Some games have the ability to transcend the bounds of entertainment and become simulated realities. Virtual experiences that lodge themselves in our brain rivaling the real formative events of our lives. I suffered the loss of my wife as James Sunderland. I was the son of legendary general Theo McDohl, forced to patricide as the leader of the Liberation Army. I saved the world, or a variation thereof, on countless occasions, calling myself Cecil, Cloud or Squall. All from the comfort of my livingroom. Most of these experiences required little effort on my part, to forgive some gaming conventions or control issues, to really get immersed and make their world my home for a while.

The game that required the most effort however is Sentient. I am Garrit Sherova. But it took me more than a year to complete the transformation. While most games I'd lump into this category also rely heavilly on atmosphere, they're usually very polished, smooth and bug-free games. Not Sentient. This is a game that nearly breaks its back under the heavy load of ambition put upon its shoulders by the dev team. Also it is a totally unforgiving game. An immersive adventure, where there is no time to let yourself get swept away by the narrative. An RPG without quests that won't let you customize anything. A free-roaming non-linear sandbox that prohibits exploration and takes away your toys before you even get to try them. A complex spacestation simulation requiring a 600 page manual, yet filled with empty pages. Surely this sounds horrible, maybe even kosuge bad, but bear with me and you'll discover why it still sits atop my adventure throne amongst fellow-kings like Beneath a Steel Sky and Grim Fandango.

The History

Sentient is a much overlooked ambitious adventure that first came to playstation owners in 1997. A result of two years of hard labour by the guys at Psygnosis' external Chester Studio, thrown unto an unsuspecting populace with little to no warning whatsoever. Gamers of old remember the name Psygnosis of course, but more as a developer of quirky and stylish, yet awkward, platformers ・nbsp;la Shadow of the Beast, in the Amiga era (all very much in the same style as their famous Roger Dean designed logo), or as the original publishers of DMA's Lemmings. Formed in 1984, the Liverpool based company was aquired by Sony during the 1995 Playstation boom, they continued their tradition, but never seemed to get the attention they deserved (apart from mildly flourishing titles like Wipeout and G-Police).

The few pre- and reviews Sentient received heralded its astonishing AI and gripping (multiple) plotlines, but it flew under the radar nonetheless. The PC version, with the aid of Visual Sciences, suffered a similar fate due to very limited graphic card support, leaving most players with a 320x200 badly rendered, washed out, glimpse of what it could've been.

The criticism lobbed at Sentient however, is also correct. When the Demo of Sentient hit defenseless Playstation owners in late '96, it equally intrigued and infuriated gamers. And the final product turned out to be even less stable and manageble. It is an unwieldy, clunky, convoluted game, with meme-worthy dialogue such as "I am poorly." and "You smell lika a deep-space pilot." Although in my opinion this last point truly adds to the setting and style of Sentient's universe, because, upon further inspection, its use is consistent, and, considering the nationality of the developers (ruling out bad translation), quite deliberate. Think of the distinctly different ways of talking the Harkonen and Fremin have in Dune, with their own quirky sayings and flow. Further evidenced by the obvious simularities between the Navigators in both IP's and the Lynchian dream sequences.

The Gameplay

Sentient's Ineraction system is very reminiscent of the old text-parser adventures, or more specific the early upgrade of this system, the "use __ on __" type sentence building style. But hyper-convoluted. And with a keyword system thrown in the mix. It even uses the old score system from the classic Sierra's (though totally hidden). This gives a wonderful sense of possibility for interacting, not only with your fellow crewmembers, but also with the huge amount of machines, panels and objectsin the station's many rooms. Once you've identified a machine, by checking it, or introduced yourself to a character, it/they get added to your list. This extends as far as instructing one character to get an item or bring a message to another character. Wich looks like this: Tell [character in room/character from list] that the [this room/room from list] has the status of [clear/locked/irradiated/on fire/destroyed]. It seems very overdone at first, but does really let you interact with the world.

The entire station workings are also interactable, you can adjust light-, oxygen-, and engine-settings, truly completing the station simulation feel. But much as the score system, the consequences are totally hidden and for the player to find out through trial and error.

Hampering the exploration severly however, is the time limit. This is where the real hurdle comes in. In the options-screen you can in- or decrease three things; Disease Spread, Respect for Player, and Ship Simulator. The first and last of which directly influence your unseen time limit. And due to different event outcomes and AI choices, the time you have before the station reaches the sun, or succumbs to radiation disease, is influenced even further. Because there is almost no way of knowing how long you have to complete one of the storylines, the 'You crashed into the Sun' game over screen could stare you in the face at any moment. Roughly you can assume you have about 45 minutes to complete the first part of your quest (stabilizing the declining orbit), with certain story events tacking on extra time. It prevents you from sightseeing and really digging into the world, but It does bring a feeling of urgency and adds a lot of atmosphere. And you can save any time you wish.

A lot of the percieved freedom, however, turns out to be merely filling. An early example of this is in conversation, you overhear a tasty tidbit, that officer Voosto is having an affair with MedTek Lollie Downle, but asking either their opinion of each other yields only one of the (many) generic blurbs. This goes for items, event strands and environment interactoin aswell to a degree. But it's such a wealth of content that it becomes Sentient's greatest strength, in creating a believable gameworld, with myriad possibilities. And even though most of them turn out to go nowhere, there are enough different ones that do.

What also helps is the expansive backstory, from the manual, but even more so from the extremely long and eventful FMV intro to the game.

The Backstory

Welcome to the New Hegemony. This is our future. Mankind is struggling to expand to stars unknown, as not only the Earth's, but our entire system's natural resources have all but dried up.

On the verges of stable space the universe continues to form, rolling out to fill the void like a liquid. A thin black frozen liquid carrying on its tides the promise of new worlds and the possibility for minds, which in aeons to come, may think as we think. And yet out here where nothing should yet exist, beyond the faint hopes of potential, we found Xexor.

The mystery of Xexor痴 existence had been a short lived debate. Xexor is here, it is bright and it is healthy and (according to all stellar surveillance reports) it is teeming with the Kenyon fields which have become the Hegemony痴 main power resource since the depletion of all other fuels. In a matter of mere decades, scientists had stopped asking each other why the star was here and had begun asking instead how best to mine this most valuable and sought after energy. These kenyons however work two-fold, not only do they posses immense energy, they also seem to have the ability to store data in a way mimicking the human brain. Scientist's have recently discovered these properties and have since been analyzing and speculating on its use as microprocessors. Some strains however seem to already contain strings of data, yet to be encoded.

The abillity to feel, perceive and be conscious. The abillity to suffer...

You are Garrit Sherova, a Medic sent to the Icarus Station to help treat and diagnose the recent outburst of Radiation Sickness. However this is not the only problem befalling the 'corona raking' station; its orbit seems to be steadily declining and as a result is heading into the Xexor Sun. The ship's Captain has just been murdered. And tensions between the various crewmembers (much like the temperature onboard) are heating up. Not onlythat, the Senator visiting the station has become the target of an intergalactic political assassin known only as Shatterjack, who is believed to be on board. And to make matters worse a level 5 solar flare erupts, just as you are boarding the Station and your ship crashes on landing, destroying the docking bay in the process.

Thus begins an adventure that can lead you from being suspected to be Shatterjack, the political assassin, to being heralded as the messiah, sent to save the station. From this point out it's up to you. Do you use the self contained micro-environment within a lightweight suit you just found yourself, or do you give it to the gasping engineer laying on the floor?

For completionists this game is a real nightmare. The compulsion for many adventure and RPG players (those being the most OCD-ish of genres) to find and see everything the game has to offer, will prove deadly in this game. There are 12 different endings to see, some with extremely varying events. Due to these intertwining plots, with their key events often happening simultaneously, and the constant time-constraint, there is absolutely no way to experience the whole of Sentient in one sitting. Neither is there in ten. Often times the AI of the characters will wander between several key locations, making running into them or their plot events differ on every playthrough. To add to the frustration, the many unused items and half-finished plotlines to be found, often function as red herrings. Pluspoint again is that it really fleshes Sentient's world out even further, making it seem grander in scope and way more complex than it actually is.

Another good example of this is the ship-simulation part. Nearly every room on every ring has its own terminals, that regulate the different functions of the ship. From oxygen supply and light levels on the Bio-deck, to propulsion and orbital control in the engine rooms. Not only is there a need for them during certain moments in the different storylines, you can also tamper with them to try and elongate your available time. Lowering the ship's use of power on lights and environmental maintenance, and using that surplus to improve engine thrust for example will speed up the ship, thus making it drift faster towards the sun, and your end. But if If you've corrected the orbit in the 'Into the Sun' storyline, the same action will stabelize the ship's trajectory, increasing your timelimit. Although, again, many of these functions and possibilities feel only half-implemeted and it's almost impossible to fully grasp their effect and purpose, if there even is one at all.

Even more so for the countless machines that fill every room. In room 214 of the 3rd Medical-deck, you may find a smoking Data-interpretation unit, that, when not fixed, changes the outcome of some radiated crewmember's medical scan, thus releasing him from quarantine and making the rate of disease spread double. Some characters wander around fixing things, but again their routes and actions seem to alternate per playthrough. I've spent an entire playthrough following singular individuals, sometimes ordering them to fix or obtain things, and found many different possibilities to influence ship or disease spread behaviour, amongst other things. When you finally meet the ship's own AI, S.U.S.I.E., again the possibilities seem endless.

And with the 62 individually operating characters running around the station, with whom you can all build friendships or dislikes, you feel like you can truly shape Garret's fate aboard the station. Forming bonds and learning the in-and-out's of the different plastered faces of the Icarus. But remember there's no time for all this, this space-debris-to-be is hurtling into Xexor! So what started as a point and clickish adventure, became a social simulation, but ultimately turned out to be more of a spacestation survival game. And so the first true social spacestation survival simulation adventure was born.

The Conclusion

After more than 20 playthroughs and pages of notes and every walkthrough I could find, I still don't think I've seen all this game has to offer. That makes Garrit Sherova a character I keep coming back to. Just to check if maybe by making some crewmember repair that broken fuel-pump flow inhibitor in room 323 I'll stumble into something new. By playing sentient as the adventure simulator it tries to be, you'll find it to be a very liveable game.

Manual: Download here