Moebius Empire Rising Sequel
If you pine for the days of old school point and click adventures, Moebius: Empire Rising might be for you.
Moebius: Empire Rising received mixed reviews from critics. It received an average score of 60.00% on GameRankings and a weighted score of 54/100 on Metacritic.
Malachi Rector is an art appraiser who gets himself into trouble more often than he wants, but it’s earned him a reputation among art dealers the world over.
This time, however, he’s been tasked with using his encylopedic knowledge of history and photographic memory to help solve the murder of a beautiful woman named Bianca Cardolo.
With the financial backing of a mysterious United States organization, which you can just know the Knights Templar have something to do with, he sets off across the world to look for historical connections between these victims.
With his svelte figure, smarmy accent, and laissez-faire attitude, Rector’s personality is almost cookie cut from Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of the Sherlock Holmes, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
The story keeps you in the dark, the characters deal out information only in snippets and the game’s mystery is kept obscured right until the end when it hits you like Hercule Poirot on a bad day.
But to truly understand where Malachi Rector comes from, you have to understand the game’s creator Jane Jensen.
Jensen is most well-known for creating the acclaimed Gabriel Knight adventure games, but as a veteran of the industry she also had a hand in developing a number of point and click classics including Sierra On-Line’s “Quest” series.
With games like Leisure Suit Larry and King’s Quest at the fore of the company’s library, Jensen struck out with her own series featuring a private detective in some strange locales.
Inspired by writers like Stephen King and Anne Rice, Jensen’s narratives included touches of the surreal with voodoo mysticism factoring into Gabriel Knight’s first game and vampires in the final installment.
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The first game would even win Computer Gaming Monthly’s Game of the Year Award, which didn’t come as a surprise as its cast included actors like Tim Curry and Mark Hamill on top of its deep story.
Long past genre’s heyday and well into the late 90s, Sierra On-Line was one of the few companies to continue work on point and click adventure games.
In the late 90s, Sierra On-Line found itself in hot water with several reconstructions and upheavals needed to keep its teams developing. Even outside of the company’s troubles, the adventure game genre was finding itself outmatched by its 3D competitors.
We’re all familiar with games like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and other games from Lucas Arts, but after 1997 and the release of The Curse of Monkey Island the development of classic 2D adventure games started to wane.
However, this wasn’t the end. Quite the opposite, 3D adventure games like Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey, and Indigo Prophecy (sorta) brought the genre even further to life, but to the dismay of many the genre continued to fade into the background.
In 2004, Telltale Incorporated was born. After years of making games like Telltale Texas Hold’em and CSI Games, the developer would secure the rights to Sam and Max Freelance Police and revive the point and click adventure games industry.
Well, not exactly revive, but this is the climate where Moebius Empire Rising finds itself. Up against competitors like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, Broken Age and titles from Daedalic Entertainment, can Jane Jensen’s storytelling trump the other adventure games out there?
What Moebius does it does well, and that includes dialogue and storytelling. However, if you’re looking for something along the lines of The Walking Dead, kind of a pseudo point and click adventure game, the adventure you go on with Malachi Rector might disappoint.
Going back to the old school “find item, combine item, and move the story forward progression”, Moebius takes you through a series of chapters bring Malachi to far off vistas and deep into a mystery.
Though he might look a little strange, Malachi is a much deeper character than most other protagonists out there. His back story and his mother’s death at the hand of a lion might seem a little contrived, but his character develops steadily throughout the game, showing you facets few other cookie-cutter protagonists would.
Overall, Moebius: Empire Rising is a good play and a return to form for a genre engulfed in easy games that focus more on letting you click through the experience than giving you brain-bending puzzles.
Jane Jensen certainly knows how to weave a story and here’s hoping we see a sequel someday soon.