Gamasutra analyzes Last Express

A thoughtful article by Tom Cross on Gamasutra about The Last Express and immersive game worlds:

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 6:54 am and is filed under Blog, Games, Last Express. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Adam Zanzie says:

September 4, 2009 at 1:23 pm

With this, Cross has by far written the best essay around on The Last Express. That part where he praised the film’s realistic amount of space kind of reminded me of what you, Jordan, said in the “Making Of” documentary for the game- on how the whole thing is set within an enclosed space and is, therefore, the perfect atmosphere for a computer game.

One thing Cross pointed out that I confess I never thought of before was how brilliant of an idea it was to plunge gamers into the game without much introduction to Cath or the rest of the characters. We know next to nothing about Cath upon his illegal boarding of the train (unless we’ve read the Instruction Booklet!), and we learn very little about him even as the story progresses.

But then again, Cath’s past history- the shootout in Ireland, Tyler Whitney’s revolutions in Cuba/Mexico- it’s all a “MacGuffin”, as Hitchcock might have put it. We’re led to believe that it’s important… but it really isn’t. Even after Cath finds out how Tyler died, it’s about as helpful as finding out exactly what Charles Foster Kane’s “Rosebud” was. It explains nothing, and everything.

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Larry says:

September 7, 2009 at 8:14 pm

A very thoughtful and insightful analysis. I still love this game, Jordan.

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