Syberia - I don't get it (minor spoiler)

[GarageGothic]

Ok, so I finally, a year late, I got my hands on Syberia (and playing it, I'm very happy I didn't buy it myself). Aside from all the flaws of the game, which I'm sure have all been discussed at great length in these forums, theres one thing I just don't get: The title.

According to the professor's lecture, Syberia should be an island north of Siberia. But the two words are pronounced the same, and I'm sure these cavemen didn't have a written language. So what's with the "y", and what kind of asshole would give two nearby locations names that sound exactly alike?!?! (my guess: It looked cool on the box)

[n3tgraph]

I don't know

I thought the game was... well okay... I guess
nice made.... but not that hard and not much action....

oh well
I don't care actually

[Femme Stab Mode >:D]

Well, in Russian Siberia is pronounced Sibir so they just put it there to look good on the box as far as I can guess.

[GarageGothic]

I must admit I haven't finished it yet, but so far I'm very disappointed after all the fabulous reviews it got. The adventure community must really have been starving when they called Syberia one of the best adventures of all time.

These things have been mentioned before, but the major issues are:

1) Too much walking through empty screens. Most locations are pretty but dead.

2) Too few hotspots (or rather, too few interactive hotspots if you count all the locked doors)

3) Stupid puzzles ("Momo, go get that oar for me, it's wet and dirty". The single interesting, but apparently totally unrelated book on the library shelves. A long quest to get rid of a few small birds)

4) No "look at" function. Not much feedback from Kate.

5) Too many levers to pull, buttons to push and keys to wind. Not that they didn't fit with the plot, but they just were no-brainers. Most of them had one position and could be activated only once anyway.

But interestingly, one of the things that annoyed me most was the lack of close-ups of people speaking. Everybody began to seem very generic when you couldn't see their faces properly. And the voice acting just didn't lend the characters enough personality. Meeting the rectors at the university made me think of the peasants at the inn in QFG4 and how much better their quarreling worked.

"Syberia: It's Myst... with people"

[Las Naranjas]

In an analysis I wrote for the HSC I used Syberia as an example of how to squander the possibilities of Adventures as a narrative artform.

But if they were trying for a cool spelling by adding a y, why not make it leet.

5Yb3r|4!

[SSH]

I agree totally. I can't believe that everybody thought this was so great. However, I noticed:

All the dead hotspots are in the first Act. There aren't any more once you get to the University and beyond. It makes me think that originally they expected to do a lot more in Valadiene.

I hate those flipping Circle cursors.

Spoiler

It also finishes kinda abruptly, in a way that again points to running out of time/money or someone at the publishers saying "Split it in two and we have a sequel ready already"

[close]

[n3tgraph]

oh yeah I do SO agree.....

Spoiler

You don't even know how it ends
She joins that numbskull to a trip syberia.... and then? Just leave everything behind?
I wanted to see her slap that stupid boyfriend of hers to pieces

[close]

oh well

[GarageGothic]

About the ending:

Spoiler

I think it was planned for the game to end like that - the whole point being that the journey is more important than the destination, as was also the case with Grim Fandango. In fact, I'm a little worried that the sequel will ruin the magic by actually showing Syberia and live mammoths. As for the boyfriend, I wish we had actually met him at the start of the game, or that he had been nicer from the beginning. As it was now, I just thought "good riddance" when they broke up.

[close]

[Dave Gilbert]

Spoiler

Syberia had lots of potential.  It was gorgeous to look at and had great atmosphere, but it wasn't very interactive.  Lots of pretty screens and nothing to do in them.  And the puzzles... oh the puzzles.  They stretched rationality to its breaking point.  My personal favorite is "I'll give you this key if you send me into space!"  Er... uh?

And the ending bothered me.  I agree with "the journey being more important, etc" but STILL.  The ending didn't feel natural.  I honestly felt like there was a whole bunch more game left.  I was thinking, "Yess!  Now things are gonna get interesting!" and then wham - closing credits.  

And... the boyfriend...
Not much character progression there.  He was an annoying jerk when he called at the beginning of the game, and he was still an annoying jerk at the very end.  No sympathy generated here.  I mean... Kate was only gone for what, three days?  And he's complaining about her "neglecting" him?  Puhleeze.  Get a life, dude.  Every time that cell phone rang I groaned.

[close]

[SSH]

I did like the use of the cellphone, though.

Spoiler

It was funny that you had to remember that your mum was doing the horizontal tango with some opera singer guy who ends up being the best friend of the other opera singer that you need to get the mad factory guy to give you back the hands of your pedantic robot. And then phone her. It made a different from the normal point-and-click puzzles.

[close]

[GarageGothic]

Spoiler

Yeah, that puzzle was nice - I also liked how you had to call the bar at the hotel in Paris, except it was written as the only number on the pamphlet. It would have been much cooler if you had to pick it out from a long list

[close]

[SSH]

Spoiler

Like the passcode number to the pier, you mean? I didn't realise that another door had opened and so spent ages going through every nunber on the list once I'd used the obvious ones!

[close]

[Las Naranjas]

I think the mobile phone would have had it's effectiveness increased exponentially if more of the calls were made by you, instead of just interrupting at various parts of the plot.

That was like the 7th guest, doing stupid and unrelated puzzles to get a snippet of plot, like a film you have to do tedious tasks in to keep the projector rolling.

Which means it isn't a game, and gets annoying as a film

I think Sokal never really got it into his head that he was making a game instead of a film.

[Bob The Hun]

I didn't care for the demo, so I never played the full game.
But I do have one question:
What the heck are all those humanoid robots doing in the middle of rural Russia?

[Las Naranjas]

Wasn't the demo in France? (Since the game never enters a rural setting in Russia)

And in that case, it'd be to do with the Robot factory that's in the middle of the villiage.

I think it makes robots.

[GarageGothic]

Not robots, automatons dammit!

[Goldmund]

Ha! And here we have a countryman of the "Kingdom" series' maker complaining about ending

Thanks to some ranting by Naranjas (tm) I never bought the game, but I'm thinking about the company's second brainchild, Post Mortem.
Have any of you played it?

[Igor]

Goldmund, i played the demo... didn't like it one bit, sorry. As far as i can say from that demo (and reviews) the only correct choice between Syberia and Post Mortem is Syberia. It might be a bit on the boring side, but at least the atmosphere is nice and some touches are brilliant (without spoiling it: music box).

It's interesting to compare TLJ with Syberia- i still think TLJ is one of the best adventures around- with its amazing characterizations and story. On the other side Syberia, who tries quite hard to be similar (main character, story about personal growing, etc.) just didn't do it for me. I didn't care one bit about Kate and at the cruical points of story, i just went "ah, ok... so, now what?". As some have pointed out, that's partly because of absence of "look" mode, where you usually get to know the character, and partly because of life-less locations. And i'm not talking about absence of people to talk to (that's part of the atmosphere)- no, the problem is, there's no freaking hotspots. You walk over 10 screens with nothing to do, just to find location with one hotspot... great.

[Las Naranjas]

The absence of the look function is at the crux of the problem.

In that you never get involved with the story as a player, only doing silly peg and hole puzzles whilst the story happens without you.

[Ginny]

Oooh.. rant...  

(some spoilers below)

Spoiler

I totally agree with Igor, comparing TLJ and Syberia is like comparing.. like comparing...emmm....never mind.
An example: When playing syberia I actually found Kate annoying sometimes (and symphatised only when she got annoyed by Oscar lol), and really was rather indifferent to her most of the time, whereas in TLJ I just adored April and got very attached to her and all her friends.
Most probably this is due to the lack of the 'look at' action and comments.
Also the game felt very static. This was part of the atmosphere but jesus! NO hotspots! That's what bothered me most about this game, even more than the endless way-too-easy mechanical puzzles.

Argh, and those doors! I quite agree, I think there was something else planned there in valedilene, though it could be they just had to have SO MANY empty screens between the hotel and the notary's office...
The "No need to go down there" response wasn't exclusive to valedilene though, there was one (or two? eek) more in Barrockshtadt(sp?). I think it stopped there though..

The game is still worth a play, mainly because of the graphics, music, and incrdeible cutscenes! The opera one is awesome! Also, there are a few good things about it apart from that, like the atmesphere and some of the puzzles (the story is pretty good too, though it didn't seem to play much of a role.. we were always winding up the train and the most reference to plot was the voice cylinders and in the conversation with the scientist).
The ending wasn't that bad, but then again I wasn't stimulated by the mammoths so much, and seeing syberia, cause it was hard to remember that that was even our goal (well, actually the goal was finding Hans, but the story wouldn't be interesting if it was just about findind him. er..).

The voice acting was okay I guess, but not as I had hoped and heard. I only noticed personality in a few of the characters like kate (tho not very much) and Helena. Oscar had more personality than some, for a ro..automaton. And annoying. He was very annoying. Exactly why he was actually very good, because by Kate's reaction he was meant to be annoying. Might have overdone it a bit though..

[close]

Anyway this rant/review is getting long and when I'll think of something to add (and I will) I'll just add it. :

edit: I'd just like to add that the journey was perhaps more important than the goal, but Syberia is way out of league when it comes to Grim Fandango! Comparing the two is like... like... oh there I go again.. lol. Grim Fandango is about a completely different journey, "the 4 year journey of the soul" (to be said in Manny's voice ), and comparing syberia's ending to Grim fandango's fantastic one is blasphemy!
I worship two games : GF and TLJ. They are number one together. Syberia comes in somewhere in 5th place perhaps (I, very unfortunately, haven't played that many games worth the top ten).

[GarageGothic]

I doubt I'd even have Syberia on my top 25 - and probably not TLJ either. Maybe TLJ is slightly better, at least it's long, but it's so damn talky.

This is just to answer Goldmunds question about Post Mortem. I am considering buying the game too, but after playing the demo, I'm not so sure. I mean, they used that ancient puzzle with the key in the lock on the other side of the door. I remember rolling my eyes when I encountered that in Phantasmagoria, and that was what, 8 years ago? I like the atmosphere though, an any game that has a Hotel Orphee moves up a notch on my coolness scale. I wouldn't buy it fully priced, but if it comes on sale, I will definitely pick it up.

[n3tgraph]

You loved the music?

I thought there wasn't enough music to go by. It was empty and quiet all the time. If I am not mistaking there is only one music in the whole game :x

except for the music stand in front of the university maybe.

oh well

[Las Naranjas]

There's less than an hour of music in the entire game. That's horrifically little.

[Ginny]

But the music that is there is wonderful. Too bad there's so little. I liked the cutscene music most, especcially in the train ride from Barrockstadt (sp?) to Komkolzgrad. And of course the music in the opera cutscene was great.