Discworld II: Mortality Bytes / Missing Presumed..? - IBM PC / Playstation / Saturn (1995)
American Cover
European Cover
Discworld II
The first Discworld game looked damn good, but this one kicks things up several notches. The graphics have been upgraded to SVGA, using cartoon-style cel graphics for all of the characters. While the art style has changed a bit from the last game - Rincewind isn't quite as cutesy, in particular - it still looks completely fantastic, and stands only second to The Curse of Monkey Island in regards to high quality 2D visuals. The animation isn't quite as solid, although it does fix some niggling issues found in other games. The only major problem with Curse was the way Guybrush's sprite scaled, often looking quite jagged when viewed from certain perspectives. Discworld II sidesteps that by using about half a dozen versions of Rincewind's animations that change depending on his location, rather than using sprite scaling, for an effect that's not exactly smooth but looks a bit more pleasant. All in all, it looks quite a bit better than the Channel 4 animated series. Eric Idle returns as Rincewind, and while the rest of the cast is totally new, they still do an outstanding job. Unfortunately Christopher Lee, who provided the voice of Death in the animated series and made-for-TV movies, is missing from the cast.
This sequel openly acknowledges the complaints about the previous games and fixes nearly all of them. The interface feels less fussy, and there are dozens upon dozens of comments when you misuse items, this avoiding the issue of repetitive quotes. The world of Discworld feels much more fleshed out here too. The first game set roughly 80% of the game in Ankh-Morpork, while this one spreads out its wings much more, letting you wandering through the deserts of Djelibeybi (the equivalent of Egypt), XXXX (a strange take on Australia), and Holy Wood (that one is more than obvious.)
Each act still involves hunting down a series of seemingly pointless items - quests which Rincewind will address the screen and complain about - but it's actually a lot more focused. The game world isn't nearly as expansive as its predecessor, and since double clicking on an exit allows for a quick exit, it makes traveling between areas much faster too. Although there's still a fair share of bizarre puzzles, there are plenty of clues in the dialogue to help figure out the solution, and it's not too hard to put together the ones that aren't.
One of the first objects you need to find is a stench. Well, one of the men in the Shades has such a foul smell that it's taken on a physical form. Right next to him is a store selling a genie bottle, but even that can't quite hold it. Just toss in a shoe to absorb the odor, and you're set. Similarly, another task is to find some mouse blood. It's easy enough to find a mouse, and since Rincewind's far from a murderer, you need to resort to more roundabout plans. Just walk around a bit and you'll find a miserable vampire - all you need to do is find some way to steal his fanged dentures, and you're set. All in all, they're pretty well designed, and not nearly as complicated nor as infuriating as the first game.
The opening credits feature a jazzy nightclub-esque song and dance number sung by Eric Idle (and performed by a skeleton) entitled "That's Death!", whose jocular and, quite frankly, morbid tones might elicit memories of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Live" from The Life of Brian. That's far from the only Monty Python reference, of course, with one scene elaborating on the difference between "parroting" and "parodying". The writing is still high quality and the story takes a notably silly turn around the second act, where you need to take a number of steps to help Death star in a "flickie", the Discworld version of a movie. The film that they make up...well, it's certainly about as stupidly far from The Seventh Seal as one can possibly get. The final areas feature Death's abode, complete with a snotty butler, a rather effeminate bedroom, and a particularly bratty (and inexplicable) human granddaughter.
The only major problem with Discworld II stems from its improvements - namely, the game's not nearly as huge, nor as long. It does feel rather rushed by the ending, though. For awhile, it seems like Rincewind is going to take over Death's position, which could've made for a whole interesting chapter, but instead it just tosses in an epilogue for something almost totally unrelated, and so the ending seems a bit disappointing. That doesn't overshadow the rest of the game though, which is easily everything the original game should have been, and absolutely essential adventure gaming.
In its original European release, Discworld II is subtitled "Missing Presumed...?", a play on the phrase "missing, presumed dead". Psygnosis must've felt this wouldn't work in North America, so it was changed to "Mortality Bytes!" In addition to the PC release, it was also released for the Playstation and Saturn, although the Saturn version was only available in Europe. The console versions suffer a downgrade to VGA level graphics and added load times, plus they only come on a single CD, where the PC version comes on two. This means the cinemas are more compressed, another mark against it. The Playstation version supports the mouse once again, but since SCUMMVM supports the PC version there's really no need to muck with the console ports.
Discworld II
Discworld II
Discworld II
Discworld II
Discworld II
Discworld II
Discworld Noir - IBM PC / Playstation (1999)
European Cover
Discworld Noir
Discworld Noir
The visuals, along with the story, have received a drastic overhaul. While the game is still 2D, all of the graphics are CGI. Lewton is the only polygonal model rendered in real time, as all of the secondary characters are pre-rendered, an effect that actually doesn't look as bad as it sounds. The models aren't great, but since they're usually so shadowed in darkness it's hard to complain much, and perfectly recognized hard boiled stylings overcome any technical deficiencies. The backgrounds come off much better though, and there are tons of cinematics that blend together with the action and flesh out the city. The atmosphere is heightened with an appropriately jazzy 30s era soundtrack, complete with liberal trumpet and piano. Every time you find an important clue or a new location, a few chords strike dramatically, an effect which maintains in intensity even in the final moments of the game.
It's true that Discworld Noir has some commonalities with the Tex Murphy series, as both are brooding detective mysteries with a bit of comedy bent. But Discworld Noir effortlessly weaves in elements from Pratchett's books which give it a life of its own. Despite styling itself after 1930s America, the medieval stylings of Ankh-Morpork really don't feel all that out of place. The city actually feels a bit more interesting now that it doesn't rely so much on high fantasy tropes, and the traditional noir stories are a lot more interesting when you're dealing with dim-witted trolls, obnoxious dwarves and sarcastic, piano playing vampires.
Although most of the major characters were invented for this game (and never appeared in any of Pratchett's novels), there are a couple of familiar faces, including Captain Vimes and Nobby of the City Watch, as well as the talking Gaspode the Wonderdog, the quirky inventor Leonard da Quirm, and, of course, Death. Beyond the usual Discworld references, though, is an overt love for, obviously enough, film noir. The story of Lewton and his lost love Ilsa is taken directly from Casablanca. Al Khali the dwarf and Jasper Horst the hulking troll are direct parodies of Peter Lorre's Joel Cairo and Sydney Greenstreet's Kasper Gutman, respectively, from The Maltese Falcon. Some individual lines are referenced or even quoted nearly verbatim. "Who was what girl?" Carlotta asks Lewton when referring Ilsa. "The one who gave you with such a high opinion of women? She must have been quite a gal." It's more or less what Lauren Bacall said to Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not. A lesser work might seem like a lazy rip-off, but in the context of Discworld and its strange inhabitants, it's a lovingly delicious parody. Plus, while the Discworld novels have featured numerous characters based on real life people or figures, Discworld Noir sticks in a video game parody with Laredo Cronk, an "upwardly nubile tomb evacuator" and obvious riff on Lara Croft.
Despite the change in setting and tone, this is still very much Discworld, as evidenced by the dialogue. The writing is as funny and snappy as ever, with Lewton holding his own as a main character against more well known folks like Rincewind. Despite his bad luck and generally poor situation, he's not nearly as incompetent, and he manages to make even the grittiest dialogue genially amusing. His sarcastic monologues and commentary are nearly always colorful, in that grey kind of way. Try examining the bored warehouse guard. "It was the kind of look that could only be achieved by someone whose job was so mind-numbingly tedious that their only pleasure came from being blistering unhelpful to everyone who came along." His interactions are just as droll. "Mr Lewton?" Carlotta inquires in his office. "If I'm not, I should fire the guy who painted my door." Lewton dryly responds. His one weak link, though, is his voice actor. Rob Brydon manages to pull off the lines with an appropriate amount of sarcastic gravity, but his attempt at an American accent just sounds a wee bit off. The rest of the acting is also inconsistent, but generally far more good than bad.
The interface works much like the first two games, with some additions. In addition to the usual inventory, Lewton keeps tracks of various clues in his notebook. These clues are obviously used for interrogation, but they also function as useable "items". When used appropriately, they provoke Lewton to make some logical connection and gain more insight. Additionally, as the lunar symbolism (and cover artwork) suggests, Lewton gets turned into a werewolf about halfway through the game. Here, he can change into wolf form and gather various scents, which appear as colors amidst the grey backgrounds. You can use these colors to follow various trails, or match up identical colors in different situations to uncover their source. While using all of these clues requires a slightly different mode of thinking, the actual puzzles are, for the most part, much easier than the first two games. Indeed, the whole first act consists mostly of interrogating people and gathering clues, rather than actually solving much of anything. When you actually do get to uncovering mysteries, it's much less obtuse than it used to be, completely doing away with the usual multi-layered fetch quests.
While moving around the city is quick and easy, the interrogation sequences are more complicated than they should be. There's an icon to introduce yourself, and several context sensitive topics that pop up as you converse. You can also talk about any of the items in your inventory, or about any of the clues in your notebook. Each of the topics are classified under the various cases you happen into, and uncovering new bits of data will scribble out old ones. Actually finding relevant things to inquire about requires flipping through several sheets of paper, which grow more useless as you progress through the game. Wouldn't it have been easier to just have a single list of topics like the Gabriel Knight games?
This itself is a minor complaint. The story is remarkably compelling, full of all of the twists and turns as expected of a story like this, and the writing is top notch throughout. The only issues comes from the seams in its programming. The game was developed for Windows 95 and 98, but is pretty buggy. It doesn't even officially support Windows XP, much less Vista or Windows 7, although with some tweaking it will run, albeit with some glitchiness and random crashes. (It won't let you pick the "Resume Game" option from the main menu either - you have to start a New Game each time, skip through the intro, and load your game from there.) Perfect Entertainment went belly up shortly after Discworld Noir was published, leaving them unable to patch it properly.
The company briefly reformed under the old Teeny Weeny Games label to port Discworld Noir to the Playstation. While the PC version runs in a 640x480 resolution, the console port shrinks it down to 320x240, much like the port of Discworld II. Lewton's character model was downgraded too, although visually it still looks pretty similar. Due to this version being released on a single CD rather than three like the PC release, both the sound and full motion videos are heavily compressed, and various animations and sounds are cut here and there. But the game still supports the Playstation mouse, and will run under Playstation emulators like ePSXe, so it might actually be easier to get working than the actual PC version. It's a shame that none of the versions were officially released in North America, since publisher GT Interactive had gone under, leaving it as a Europe only release.
Discworld Noir
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Discworld Noir
Discworld Noir
Discworld Noir
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Comparison Screenshots
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Playstation
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Discworld II
This sequel finds the Discworld in an unfortunate situation. Death has apparently taken a vacation, leaving the residents of Discworld unable to properly die. Immortality might seem enticing, but here, it doesn't quite work as expected - instead of simply living forever, the dead shamble onward as either zombies or ghosts, and none of them are too happy about it. And so, once again, Rincewind is tasked with saving the day. The basic concept is (very) loosely based on the novels The Reaper Man and Mort, with various subquests consisting of a mishmash of a variety of books, including Lords and Ladies, Moving Pictures, and Pyramids.
The third (and final) Discworld graphic adventure is a marked departure from the first two. While those were at least partially based on elements of the novels, Discworld Noir is a completely original work, one which reimagines the city of Ankh-Morpork as something out of a Raymond Chandler novel. The protagonist is a new character named Lewton, the city's first private investigator and former member of the City Watch. He's the typical noir hero - clad in stylish hat and overcoat, he's a down-on-his-luck cynic with a penchant for eloquently depressing metaphors. The game begins as he's chased through the streets, and eventually murdered by an unseen assailant. He's not quite dead, obviously, as he begins relating the events that lead to his apparent demise. It started a week ago in his office, as he's approached by a luxurious dame named Carlotta who asks him to investigate a murder. Things can never be that simple, though, as Lewton finds himself entangled in a wider webs of killings, conspiracies, and mysterious artifacts. It's much darker and far less wackier than the other Discworld games, that's for sure.
Like many licensed games, the rights for Discworld are in limbo, making it difficult for any re-relases. Hopefully something can be ironed out in the future, to make the first two graphic adventures more easily available, or make Discworld Noir run more readily on modern systems.
