Camera pans across people in a science fiction setting inside a letterbox rectangle suspended in an abstracted void
Bridge scenes a la Trek
But your vessel is a mechamorphosing Jules Verne burrowing drill tank that also has a fighter jet mode
Captain of this ship is a beautiful green haired woman named Moby
Who is, um, a pop star?
She's got a great look in any case: green hair, red knee-high boots, shiny red superhero fetish gear all around,
and Moby's got a crew of much less glamorous people all around her,
game wasn't clear who or what these people are supposed to be-scientists? explorers? musicians? college students?
I assume the instruction manual explains things,
but I didn't have access to that,
so I'm going by what's in the game.
And it's kinda vague.
I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be scientists, some kinda governmental survey team-their transforming flying drill tank is clearly an output of some kind of pricy military-industrial complex-but maybe they're some kind of private sector outfit?
I guess that's possible.
Maybe this world is one in which ultratech military-industrial-scientific complexes exist on the scale of small groups or families or teams, some kind of a post-nation state type of deal,
and/or
maybe the people are the outputs of sentient flying drill tanks who need meatspeople puttering around inside their bridges and cockpits to feel whole
-to fill hole-
some kind of posthuman longing for the creator-bipeds of yore type of deal,
some kinda whomadewho type of deal-
-the flying drill tank can alternate between a fighter jet form and a drill tank-but the drill tank can fly and drill through geological obstacles whereas the fighter jet can't drill through anything
-it's like the drill tank dreams of being a fighter jet, soaring through open skies, as opposed to burrowing deeper into the underworld, deeper into a dark past better left forgotten-
-your journey begins in the middle of things, visuals, terse dialogue, launching into side scrolling shooter action, wherein you lay waste to scores of strange, huge organisms who seemingly just happen to live there,
or maybe they were bred for war by some secret nation beneath the surface of things,
and all this alternates with first person battles with giant boss monsters which you can only defeat by increasing your POSSIBILITY to 100%
which you do by a combination of communication
and devastation
the communication part entails consulting your crew members for scientific analysis of the hulking boss beasts
the devastation part entails aligning your targeting reticle over scientifically determined weak spots on the monster's body,
and then Moby disembarks from the drill tank to wander mazelike passages until she stumbles into battles with acrobatic underworlders who flicker in and out of existence until you definitively end them with a combination of your raygun and your martial arts high kicks-
I was never sure if I was fighting high tech enemies with malfunctioning thermoptic camosuits or if they were merely half-ghost/half memories fighting one last hurrah against invading overworlders such as myself,
tedious little final stands
down here in the dark
but sometimes that's all an underworlder's got left-
but it shall all end
once you've harvested power orbs from the corpses of all the boss monsters
which allows you to unlock a final cut scene
with a spectral hologram woman of yore filling an abstracted void
with a segmented text scroll revealing a secret history of ancient vendettas sparking off into antediluvian Forever Wars-
usually you get this kind of text at the beginning of a science fantasy saga, but here you have to work for it, exposition dump as final reward-
-and then it's over.
You learn of humanity's cursed nature,
its vindinctive, bloodthirsty desires going all the way back to long vanished Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu,
our forbears constructed the Bomb within our Deepest Background,
our most subterranean selves,
source of all dreams of apocalyptic annihilation,
atomically permafucked from the jump,
only a hologram anime girl left to instill us with our most secret history,
to tell us that love is the only way,
to send us out of subterranean depths of vengeful ghosts nurturing obscure grudges with fading technologies,
maybe now
the drill tank can let go of its nagging dreams of bipedal meatspeople,
loose its supersonic self
to soar through open skies
no more shame in the posthuman
ever again
-May 2014-July 2022
