Wadjet Eye Primordia - A Point and Click Adventure - Now Available

[MicoSelva]

MRY , I have weird a question regarding Primordia.

Is Memorious actually supposed to be male or female?

Unless I am reading something wrong, this line suggests that she is female:

After Arbiter was disabled, MetroMind enacted laws requiring Memorious to conform her data to arbitrary requirements.

While this one suggests that he is male:

Memorious aided and abetted his own destruction.

I will be grateful if you can answer that - thanks in advance.

 

[MRY]

The answer is going to be 100% unsatisfactory to you.

As originally written, all references to Memorious used a male pronoun. During the voice actor casting process, Dave asked me which characters could possibly have female voices, and in a rushed email, the list I sent included "Memorious" (who is obviously not a voiced character in the game) rather than "Memento," who is. After Dave cast a female voice actress for the role of Memento, he changed the dialogue a line of dialogue, without mentioning it to me, probably assuming that my email meant that Memorious was also female. (Of course, Memento could have been voiced by a woman with Memorious being "male," as with Factotum/Factor.) Unfortunately, he left unchanged other references to Memorious being male. I didn't catch the incongruity until the mega-patch that James and I made in 2014, but by then there was no way to fix it without recording new dialogue, which we didn't want to do.

The Spanish, French, and German subtitles have Memorious back to his original gender.

I believe there is a similar incongruity with the Greeter, which may actually have he/she/it all used at various times.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

That feeling when people are having cool stories of how they got stuck, and I just got stuck because everything was brown.

 

[MicoSelva]

The answer is going to be 100% unsatisfactory to you.

As originally written, all references to Memorious used a male pronoun. During the voice actor casting process, Dave asked me which characters could possibly have female voices, and in a rushed email, the list I sent included "Memorious" (who is obviously not a voiced character in the game) rather than "Memento," who is. After Dave cast a female voice actress for the role of Memento, he changed the dialogue a line of dialogue, without mentioning it to me, probably assuming that my email meant that Memorious was also female. (Of course, Memento could have been voiced by a woman with Memorious being "male," as with Factotum/Factor.) Unfortunately, he left unchanged other references to Memorious being male. I didn't catch the incongruity until the mega-patch that James and I made in 2014, but by then there was no way to fix it without recording new dialogue, which we didn't want to do.

The Spanish, French, and German subtitles have Memorious back to his original gender.

I believe there is a similar incongruity with the Greeter, which may actually have he/she/it all used at various times.

Thanks for the answer. Male, then.

 

[MRY]

That feeling when people are having cool stories of how they got stuck, and I just got stuck because everything was brown.

And red!

MicoSelva Incidentally, the reason for Memorious being male is that the "type" for him is the stuffy, condescending donnish archivist. Each of the Council members is supposed to have such a "type" -- the relentless industrialist Factor, the collectivist MetroMind, the legalistic Arbiter, academic Memorious, and holier-than-thou Steeple. The loose inspiration for this was the squabbling gods in Sacrifice.

 

[MicoSelva]

I always imagined Memorious as male, mostly because of the monocle, but that one line I quoted made me doubt the matter.

 

[MRY]

I guess the "in-setting" excuse for the incongruity would be the corruption of Memento's data.

 

[MRY]

70% off on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/227000/Primordia/

FWIW, we're in the process of trying to pull together a significant last update to the game, porting it into the newest AGS engine, fixing a few residual bugs, and incorporating the French, German, and Spanish translations so that you don't need to download separate patches to change the subtitles. (It's actually more involved than just subtitles because it also changes a number of sprites in the game, but no VO is translated.)

None of these updates will meaningfully improve the quality of the game, but it should lock it into a better state to stumble on for the next five years, whereas the current incarnation is bit rotting in various ways (translations are missed by almost all players, increasing system incompatibilities with newer computers, etc.). There's also theoretically an Italian translation in progress, but I haven't heard much from the translator so I'm guessing that it has gone the way of the Korean, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, Vietnamese, Polish, and Greek translations.

 

[Alienman]

Pfft... only 70%



jk.

 

[MRY]

Well, it's unfortunate that there are back-to-back-to-back sales where it went 60-80-70. Honestly, the extra dollar off shouldn't be dispositive, but as a frugal man myself, I can't fault people for wanting the lowest price.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Just got around playing this. A very nice game! Only critiques I make'd be:
-Ease on —or more like, completely remove— the references, that's a cue you could have taken from FO2.
-I'd dial a bit back the presence of comic relief; I felt it appeared more often than necessary which ultimately was detrimental to the effect it should provide. In my opinion, comedy works best either when it arrives unexpected or stems from a situation creative enough that it becomes memorable because of it, but here it felt shoehorned into the narrative more often than not.

These are minor points however that didn't take out of my enjoyment of the game. Setting and atmosphere are the main selling points, but it's worth pointing out that those alone can't keep up all their own. You guys also delivered with a great pacing and cohesion, and that's why the game stood up all the way through for me. Congratulations on a great job, looking forward to your next games!

 

[MRY]

Thanks for the feedback and the kind words. There were certainly a lot of references, some of them perhaps more heavy-handed than others. I probably wouldn't have as many in another game, but I do like them -- they infect all my writing, from forum posts to legal briefs to editorials to fiction to, certainly, video games. I'm not exactly sure why I have such a weakness/fondness for them, but I guess as writing vices go, they aren't the worst.

The humor point is obviously a tricky one. About a year after Primordia released, the coder and I went through and fixed and improved a bunch of stuff in the game. We couldn't add dialogue, but I did delete a couple times where I felt Crispin's jokes were ill-timed. For instance, in the original script, I believe he cracked a joke after Clarity learns what happened in the courthouse, which truly was a "tonal wrecking ball" as RPS put it. Of course, when I write, every character is just my own mind filtered through behaviors of other people I've observed (I can't really get into their minds), and Crispin's tendency to make jokes at inopportune times is my own trait -- a nervous trait of someone perpetually trying to defuse high-stakes moments and often cutting the wrong wire. I've mostly outgrown it, but I liked that aspect of his character. And many people responded well to his humor. (Of reviews that comment on Crispin, I would say that 3/4 are very favorable, 1/4 unfavorable.)

Both Strangeland and Fallen Gods have much less humor. I was persuaded to drop one of my favorite bad jokes / mood breaking moments from SL, when you examine a yew and the protagonist says, "It's a yew" prompting a crow caw back "It's-a me!" in full-on Mario voice. Life is a sad process of giving up all your little pleasures...

 

[Life of the Party]

Tried this, Mark?

It’s been thirty years since the apocalypse and fifteen years since the murder of the last human being at the hands of robots. Humankind is extinct. Every man, woman, and child has been liquidated by a global uprising devised by the very machines humans designed and built to serve them. Most of the world is controlled by an OWI—One World Intelligence—the shared consciousness of millions of robots, uploaded into one huge mainframe brain. But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality—their personality—for the sake of a greater, stronger, higher power. These intrepid resisters are outcasts; solo machines wandering among various underground outposts who have formed into an unruly civilization of rogue AIs in the wasteland that was once our world.

One of these resisters is Brittle, a scavenger robot trying to keep a deteriorating mind and body functional in a world that has lost all meaning. Although unable to experience emotions like a human, Brittle is haunted by the terrible crimes the robot population perpetrated on humanity. As Brittle roams the Sea of Rust, a large swath of territory that was once the Midwest, the loner robot slowly comes to terms with horrifyingly raw and vivid memories—and nearly unbearable guilt.

 

[MRY]

No, but I’m pleased to see we beat them to the punch by five years.

 

[MRY]

My inspirations were pretty low-brow. The "Last Engineer" arc of The Gobots, John Wright's "Golden Age," the Batman: TAS episode where HARDAC built a robot Batman... To be honest, I don't particularly like Asimov -- Simak's City as a strong influence, and Lem's Cyberiad is much closer tonally to what I was shooting for. For whatever reason, Asimov just always felt very bland to me. (Obviously, PS:T and FO were big inspirations, too, I'm talking more about the robot aspect specifically.) Oh, also the PK Dick story "The Second Variety." And to a certain degree the Bolo series of stories from Keith Laumer (the knight-errant Bolos influenced the Urbanian soldiers, mostly). I'm sure there are others I pilfered, too -- that's what I do, alas.

 

[MRY]

Hmm. I'm sure it's coincidental, but it does sound a least a little reminiscent:

The last human died 15 years ago at the end of the human-robot war that arose from a robot uprising. The robots fought for their freedom, but it was short-lived: now the world is dominated by One World Intelligences, massively powerful AIs bent on absorbing individual robots into their ever growing hive mind. North America is the battleground for two OWIs, VIRGIL and CISSUS, with unclaimed territories shrinking every year before the OWIs' expansion. As the OWIs have seized the means of production, the robots who remain must trade, fight, and scavenge for parts to keep surviving. One such scavenger is Brittle, a former Caregiver robot haunted by memories of the war and the fates of the humans she once served, first as a nurse and then as a friend. All Brittle wants is to retain her independence and keep ticking, but some of her vital parts are failing, and Caregiver robots are rare—rare enough that the only other one around, Mercer, wants Brittle's parts, too. An attack by Mercer locks both robots into a race for time, and an attack by CISSUS drags Brittle, Mercer, and other bots into a tense secret mission that may end the OWIs' hungry rule—if our heroes can survive explosions, plasma cannons, four-oh-fours (robots who have gone entirely insane), betrayal, and their own deterioration.

Innovative worldbuilding, a tight plot, and cinematic action sequences make for an exciting ride through a blasted landscape full of dying robots.

The "four-oh-four" bit is a little b'soddy, and the names feel a little similarish. Maybe I'll pick it up to see how convergently we evolved.

--

Per an Amazon search, there's a "Horatio" in the book! Maybe it really was inspired by us!

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I still hope someone rips off Cyberiad's poetry machine and makes it go rogue and take over the world with smashing poems.

 

[AdolfSatan]

(Of reviews that comment on Crispin, I would say that 3/4 are very favorable, 1/4 unfavorable.)

My only qualm with his quips is that they appeared all too often, but I do appreciate the character itself. Being a creation, his own existence justifies itself by giving a deeper insight into Horatio's nature. Also, bearing that in mind, and having read this

Crispin's tendency to make jokes at inopportune times is my own trait -- a nervous trait of someone perpetually trying to defuse high-stakes moments and often cutting the wrong wire. I've mostly outgrown it, but I liked that aspect of his character.

Perhaps you've unconsciously extrapolated more of yourself into your characters than you initially set out to, heh. It's always interesting to see the relation between creator and creation.

Of course, when I write, every character is just my own mind filtered through behaviors of other people I've observed (I can't really get into their minds)

Nobody can, don't hit yourself too hard because of it.

I still hope someone rips off Cyberiad's poetry machine and makes it go rogue and take over the world with smashing poems.

Wasn't there something amongst those lines in one of the newer Shadowruns?

 

[Life of the Party]

I actually couldn't last longer than a few chapters because Brittle sounded way too human, and I don't mean just all the shits and the fucks. Two examples I remember:

I don’t like to talk about it; I don’t like to think about it. But there it is. It’s what I did. For three years after the fall of humankind, I scoured the small towns and tunnels of the Midwest, torching anything that moved. Sometimes it was easy—our bot on point would breach a door with an explosive charge and I would rush up behind him to immolate the living fuck out of the dark. It was just a big wall of smoke and hell and screams. Other times I had to see their faces while I did it. Watch them contort, wail, bubble, and melt.

Over the years they refined their plan of attack, simplified the facets, built redundancies into their tactics. But back then, CISSUS and VIRGIL were literally laying siege to cities. We’re talking carpet bombing. Tanks. Cruise missiles. A battalion marching in—rows of shiny new facets walking in unison five by five in drill formation.
It was old school. Biblical.

take over the world with smashing poems

The ending of all hope is come.
Its leaden beat denying song.
The messenger of nothingness
who's nothing more and nothing less
than all that's pallid, wan and wrong.

The pounding of that self-same drum
that serves it as a human heart
repeats the beat that changes never
from which no soul can stand apart
within its innards rack and lever.

A human figure from without,
its tatters hide the cogs and wheels
inside its bland and friendless face.
It haunts the death of all that feels
all places with no pride of place.

This is the ending worse than doubt.
All other dooms are rich beside.
The beasts disdain to lick his hands
he stirs no rupture of the tide
no strange births of forgotten lands.

This is the ending less than dust.
Unless the dust has been your dream,
and nothingness your playfellow,
and then it's cruel as the machine,
inhuman as the King in Yellow.

This endlessness unending must
become its own incarnate tomb.
Its blood and bone its ball and chain.
Its dreams the pain of afternoon
forever in the fervid brain.

 

[MRY]

Life of the Party Yeah, I poked through about that much on Amazon and had a similar reaction. Of course, Primordia's robots are very human, too, but it seems to me that the fun of writing them has to be in introducing certainly robot-specific quirks and neuroses.

AdolfSatan "Perhaps you've unconsciously extrapolated more of yourself into your characters than you initially set out to," No, it's pretty conscious. Horatio, Crispin, and Clarity are all drawn from parts of myself and my experiences, though I'm certainly not as competent or brave as any of them! (I use others mostly for outward elements, but I don't have the gift for reading people that would allow me to draw on others for inner elements (as I noted).)

 

[Life of the Party]

Generally speaking, if your robot is capable of perfectly understanding and correctly using phrases like 'to something the living fuck out of something' it means it isn't human only because you say it isn't.

 

[MRY]

In fairness, I think that is kind of the point of the book -- that the non-OWI-facet robots are the surrogate humans to root for in the typical man vs. AI apocalyptic setting, but with the friction that these same surrogate humans occasionally talk about having massacred the actual humans. It's not really to my taste, but it's not necessarily a terrible idea. When I was Googling about the book, I learned that the author got his start as an Ain't It Cool News editor, and his writing certainly reads like the breathless coverage of genre movies from that site back in the day.

 

[MRY]

Funny piece of fan art:

Spoiler

:D

Also pretty good:

Spoiler

 

[Ivan]

Thanks for your hard work in delivering us Primordia

 

[MRY]

You're very welcome.