A young man wakes aboard a derelict space station orbiting a desolate world. He finds himself in a cryogenic sleeper pod, and is alarmed to discover that he has no memories of who or where he is. Who placed him in suspended animation? How long has he been asleep?

Sarpedon, the desolate planet below, was once a thriving, highly advanced world, enjoying the wonders of a golden age. But when an alien spaceship entered its system, two factions formed: those wanting to make contact with the alien vessel and those who didn’t.

Take on the role of Sen, and explore the new worlds with ‘Chameleon’ technology allowing you to impersonate members of the different tribes and go safely among them. Learn the history of how this new world came to be and resolve the feuding into a peaceful conclusion where your true origins will be revealed.

Save the one surviving outpost after the terrible war that has destroyed their world. Learn the history of how this new world came to be and resolve the feuding into a peaceful conclusion where your true origins will be revealed.

Key Features

• Sequel to the Best-Selling Mysterious Journey: Schizm.
• The story and dialogues are authored by the award-winning Australian science-fiction writer Terry Dowling.
• Complete freedom of movement and navigation for non-linear gameplay.
• A huge science-fiction fantasy themed game encompassing over 40 locations with 30 different puzzles.
• A fully orchestrated, original, background soundtrack with in-game ambient audio will completely immerse the player in the game experience.

GCM:

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Firstly, please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about the Mysterious Journey series.

Maciej Miasik:

My name is Maciej Miasik. I am Detalion’s co-owner and partially: game designer, producer, programmer and sound designer. I’m usually busy with doing everything or sitting idle thinking about what to do if there’s so much of work waiting. Obviously I prefer to stay in the latter state, but it inevitably leads to the former. Detalion is a relatively new development studio, but its founders had been working together for over five years before deciding to establish their own independent studio. We specialize in adventure games, but sometimes we try other genres. Mysterious Journey is currently the series of two titles, one released about two years ago and the second being in the final stages of development. We’ve already have some ideas for the third game in the series and I hope it will be released some day in the future. The games are not “strict” sequels – they don’t share the same characters or universe – they tell stories which involve exploring and traveling through strange worlds and they offer similar type of gameplay. Of course they also are the first person perspective adventures, sometimes called “myst-clones”.

GCM:

Storytelling in Mysterious Journey II seems to be a major focus of the development team. What can you tell us about the story?

Maciej Miasik:

Good stories are something the good adventures really need and with every game we develop our goal is to offer a better story. The biggest step in achieving this goal was our accidental encounter with Terry Dowling - one of Australia's most respected and internationally acclaimed writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror. He is also a dedicated adventure gamer and we quickly discovered that we have a lot in common. We needed someone who could take care of our storytelling needs and Terry was excited to try his chances in game development. Terry’s involvement in the game development is progressing with each game. He adapted our stories at first then created his story to suit our gameplay. We think that in the next game he will have a significant influence. Despite the fact that his experience comes from non-interactive entertainment, he adapts very quickly to new challenges and also understands new limits very well. With Terry on board we can try to improve the genre with more human elements, namely characters and stories. The first person perspective is a great tool in offering an enhanced feeling of immersion, but a good adventure game needs something more than breathtaking visuals and strange puzzles. It needs an absorbing story keeping the player interested. Fitting the story to the interactive game is difficult, but we try to offer the best of both worlds. MJ2 tells another story about two parties being separated. In the original MJ we had two protagonists trying to re-unite and save the world. MJ2 tells the tale of two groups of survivors after a global war living in a single valley on a distant planet. They share the same past, but have quite different ideas regarding their future. Neither party wants to give up their beliefs or ways of life, no matter what price their people may pay. The game’s protagonist has to solve the mystery of their conflict and find a satisfactory solution before all life in the valley is destroyed. There’s a single protagonist this time round, because it makes the game less confusing. He meets about 25 other characters. We definitely want to add life to what is usually called a lifeless “myst-clone”.

GCM:

How will the story be told throughout the MJ:2 (FMV, NPC interaction, etc.) and how much freedom will the player have in exploring the story?

Maciej Miasik:

The story is told through non-interactive cutscenes, sort of FMV, but with real-time rendered models instead of actors. The scenes are triggered at specific places of the gameplay and the player is merely a spectator during them. There is no character interaction in more classic sense – no endless browsing through questions menus in order to make sure that we asked that critical question. It seems that we are not very patient players and we want to hear or see what’s important right away instead of searching through menus. The game is about exploring strange worlds and solving puzzles, not about the user interface. The drawback of such approach is that we decide how the story develops and player has no influence on this. This is the point when the interactivity and storytelling clashes and interactivity has to retreat a bit.

GCM:

What types of environments will the player be exploring and how will navigation be handled?

Maciej Miasik:

Sarpedon, the planet where MJ2’s action takes place, is a rather desolate world with a single valley where the survivors of a great war struggle to stay alive. This valley is divided into two main areas, one mainly biological, and the other mostly industrial, with a “neutral zone” in-between. The protagonist covers most of the ground on his feet, occasionally riding elevators and cableways. There are flying sailboats, subway trains, cableway cars to cover larger distances, but we do not control them directly. The view is controlled with the mouse movements, in pretty a straightforward way, allowing the player to see in any direction. The movement is handled by keys, which can be re-defined to suit player’s preferences. The action is activated with the left mouse button if the cursor visible in the center of the screen indicates the action is possible. The type of action is always chosen automatically based on context – if we are facing the door which can be opened, then it opens, if we point at a machine which requires an item in our inventory, that item is used. It is also possible to assign forward movement to right mouse button and control movements, view and action with mouse alone – great for those who don’t play FPS a lot. The indicator in the center shows where the active objects are located, saving player trouble with pixel hunting and endless trying everything on the level. This is another effect of our principle of simplifying the user interface in order to allow players immersing themselves in the environment instead of fiddling with controls and complicated interface.

GCM:	What can you tell us about the “Chameleon” technology?
Maciej Miasik:	Chameleon is a special technology the protagonist is equipped with. That’s all I can reveal at the moment. Wouldn’t want to spoil it ;)

GCM:

Please tell us a bit about the obstacles and puzzles that the player will be encountering.

Maciej Miasik:

We will offer the same variety of puzzles the original MJ did. There are mechanical, logical and even math puzzles (though less of those than in the first MJ) and they will be well integrated with the environments. Thanks to the real-time rendering, we have more freedom in tweaking and improving the puzzles. It’s much easier to balance them and control their difficulty. The change means re-rendering can now be done in a matter of hours. The game will be slightly easier then the previous one, which has a reputation of being one of the hardest adventures available.

GCM:

How long to you expect that it will take the average gamer to complete MJ:2, and is the game’s nonlinear nature done in such as to add increased replay value?

Maciej Miasik:

As far as the nonlinearity is concerned, MJ2 is going to be pretty linear. “Nonlinear” is a nice marketing buzzword, but it usually means something completely different to each person. Our attempt to offer non-linear gameplay didn’t work very well in MJ. People were confused by the two protagonist gameplay. Players often became stuck in the game because they didn’t realize that they were supposed to switch to the other protagonist to advance the story. Also nonlinear gameplay makes storytelling extremely difficult, diluting the story and making it harder to comprehend. Creating a game which is loaded with stunning visuals and challenging puzzles is a serious effort for us and we simply want people to enjoy it entirely. We don’t want them miss even a bit of the experience and that’s why there are no multiple story paths, multiple endings, secret areas, etc. We understand that a real patience is rare even among adventure gamers, thus we don’t expect many players to replay the game – if they are patient enough to finish it, they will also see everything. Actually, I don’t believe in replay value of any new game. With so many new games coming each month, many players don’t have enough time to play most of them even once. I haven’t replayed any game since “DOOM II” came out. It’s hard to predict the time the average gamer is going to spend with the game. I don’t expect anyone finishing the game in one evening, though. There’s a lot of exploring - about 40 locations spread on about 25 levels. There’s a lot puzzle solving – about 25 puzzles raging from extremely easy ones, to a few quite challenging.

GCM:

Please tell us a bit about Mysterious Journey II’s visuals.

Maciej Miasik:

Because a picture is worth thousand words, I suggest seeing the screenshots. The action, well… adventure rather, takes place on over 25 levels, each being a slightly different environment. We have: technology oriented Transai locations, organic structures in Ansala locations, the orbiting space station and even crashed spaceship partially buried in the artic glacier. There are a lot interesting places to explore. The entire game is powered by Touchdown Entertainment’s (formerly LithTech) Jupiter System. This is a very impressive engine, especially where polygon counts are concerned and it allows for really impressive graphical results, sometimes comparable with our early pre-rendered games. Obviously, the move to real-time rendering technology significantly changed the visual part of the game, but I think that it is the best way to keep the genre alive. This is just the acceptance of the inevitable. Gaming, no matter what genre, is becoming real-time 3D and will stay that way. There won’t be a return to pre-rendered games. We could do another pre-rendered game, but we simply wanted to help revive the genre and move it ahead. The quality is not on par with pre-rendered games, but this is constantly changing thanks to the advancements in hardware and game engines. But there are numerous advantages which compensates for this presumed “quality loss”, most notably the full freedom of movement and view, high resolution display, real-time animations and special effects. We also want to remove a sort of “outdated technology” stigma in the eyes of many game players. Thanks to the fact we are using the same technology other “mainstream” titles use, it hopefully won’t be perceived as a weird, niche genre game, destined for extinction. When I play the parts of MJ2, I’m glad that we decided to make such move, because the game really looks gorgeous, even in the eyes of someone who is used to the quality of the pre-rendered titles. And it can be played in 1600x1200 pixels on large monitor, with full freedom of view and movement.

GCM:

Lastly, what would you say to those gamers who still view modern adventure games as “Myst clones”?

Maciej Miasik:

Yes, there is a pretty clear influence of Myst in our games, but mostly in terms of gameplay, not visuals. We feel that those first-person perspective games with stunning visuals, where the player explores and solves various puzzles, are the best way of enjoying an adventure. Although the puzzles can sometimes seem artificial, such games offer a much better feeling of “being” in different worlds than more traditional, third-person point and click adventures. But as we see it we are not just “Myst cloners”. We simply want to expand this gaming subgenre with as many new elements as possible. This is still a very interesting subgenre which definitely doesn’t end with “Myst” games. There are plenty of stories to be told, adventures to experience and puzzles to solve besides those seen in the Myst series. We like the way such games are played and we prefer the experience they offer – they are much better than text adventures previously considered as “classical” and then quickly replaced with many great graphical adventures. I don’t imply that “Myst-clones” are the future of adventure gaming – I feel there’s a lot of room for other types of adventure games – but now, as none of the first person shooters (FPS) is automatically classified as a “DOOM clone”, we don’t want first person adventures classified in the same fashion. Actually MJ2 has many elements in common with modern FPS games – it uses the same technology offering a similar visual quality, the character movement and interaction with the environment is similar, less shooting and killing of course. So is it still a “Myst-clone” or maybe “FPS-clone” without shooting? Anyway, the constant bashing of games which are similar to “Myst” in some aspects doesn’t serve any purpose. I think that we need more interesting adventures, no matter if they are first or third person based. We want to prove that the genre is alive and kicking, and it still offers a lot of fun for those who want more sophisticated entertainment than simply blowing things to pieces, (which is also fun, by the way).

GCM:	Thanks again for you time. Do you have any final thoughts that you’d like to leave our readers with.
Maciej Miasik:	Adventure games are alive and well!

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