[Subtitles by danielsangeo] Welcome to the Game Dungeon. Last time, things got kind of grim so I
wanted to detox with something more positive, so today we're rendezvous-ing with "Rama". Rama is a first-person
graphic adventure game. Now before we get too deep into this, I'm
making an executive decision on this episode. This came out in the 90s and
was designed for a 4:3 monitor but every single thing of interest
in this game is in widescreen. There are plenty of things
I like about old games but giant oversized HUDs isn't one of them. So here's the HUD. You
have your inventory here, a compass showing you which
direction you can go, options, and that's it; we're done touring the HUD. So I'm converting this to widescreen
for the rest of the episode. WWWWWWWWWWWWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE! So let's talk about Rama. The year is 2200 and a giant alien ship
is passing through our solar system and naturally anything
huge in space must be a god so we've named it "Rama" after the Hindu
god because of the obvious resemblance. It has an airlock so we're
flying up there to make contact. And before I show you what's inside, there's something else
to get out of the way. This game is based on a book. "Rendezvous with Rama" was written by
science fiction great Arthur C. Clarke. So, is this game an adaptation of that? No! Rama is really an adaptation of "Rama II" written by Arthur C. Clarke and
Gentry Lee sixteen years later. This game follows that book pretty closely but exists as a sort of an
alternate reality of it. Rendezvous with Rama takes
place 70 years before Rama II which is the second encounter
with the alien ship. In the game, it's still the first encounter
but almost everything else is the same. Confused yet? Well, it keeps going because there were even more books
written in this series. Rama-Rama-Rama-Rama. So we dock onto the alien ship but
you're actually a replacement crewmember so the main team is all ready set up. You're greeted by Nicole des
Jardins, the medical officer. In the book, she's French and African so
naturally she has a plain American accent. ["Hi. Bonjour. I am Nicole des
Jardins, the medical officer. ["I hope that your shuttle
ride over was uneventful."] Y'know, I don't know what's worse-- not even trying to have an accent
for your foreign character, or doing it poorly like in "Wolfenstein". I am being a little too
hard on the game, though because the casting is actually
really good for the most part; it follows the book
characters almost exactly. Anyway, she greets us and... things are kind of drab. I mean, we are inside an ALIEN SPACESHIP! And really, it looks like it
could just be some warehouse. I mean, we have the airlock, of
course, some random equipment-- lockers, nuclear bomb, a
cable lift, computers... As far as first impressions go,
it's off to a pretty mundane start. So I pick up my inventory and wrist
computer from my locker and... [chirping sound] What's
this? A new video message. Yeah. You know, I've been asked before
what's my favorite operating system. Well, it's not Windows 98. This is another one of those games that
can be hell to run on a modern system, so I tried running it emulated first. However, I got lucky and someone
created a custom installer for the game since the last
time I tried to played this. It's uh.... ...more stable. So back to the beginning. NOW let's see what my video message was. ["Hello, again."] Again! ["Nicole told me that you had
arrived. Welcome to Rama."] Thanks. ["Say, would you do me a
favor? Just a little one?"] Maybe. ["I left my cigarette lighter
up there in my locker. ["Would you bring it with you when you
come down and leave it at the tent site? ["I'd really appreciate it."] Hey, you're blonde in the book. Okay, we're going to come
back to this in a minute. For now, we need the cigarette lighter. So I find the key to break into her locker. While I'm at it, I break open another one. And because this is a 90s graphic
adventure game, I take EVERYTHING. Sure, I'll take your lighter.
I'll take everything you have! You know how Indiana Jones has that
famous line, "It belongs in a museum"? Well not here! These priceless alien
artifacts belong in my pocket! I'm sure the rest of the exploration team
will appreciate having me as a replacement. Once I'm done looting the lockers,
I take a gander at the computer where people have left a
bunch of video emails for me. I want to say almost ten minutes' worth. These are all the characters in the game. I'm going to come back to this, too, because I feel like this intro isn't
representative of the game as a whole. So, I grab my standard-issue
Shakespearean actor robot and I'm all set. ["I... I'm, in a phrase,
entirely at your service."] Let's go! We descend the lift... at
a about six frames a second and Rama lights up. Now we get to see what we've been missing. Now this is cool but I think even
THIS is still a little underwhelming. Rendezvous with Rama is a famous book and
there have been some nice artist renditions. I think the game could've
pushed things a little more. Speaking of the graphics, this is
another thing that was bugging me. I watched this intro about ten times
trying to get the game running properly and I figured out what was bothering me. Rama is huge.
12 mile diameter, 34 miles long. But look at this spotlight. It lights
everything up regardless of the distance. If they wanted to sell me on the size, they should've had the spotlight
get bigger as the ship gets closer. Even for '96, they should've known better. Anyway, we make it to base camp. There's nothing in
the fridge worth taking... ...yet. The lockers are more secure here
and I can't break into them, so off we go to explore Rama. One of the first things you
can encounter are "biots", robots that have biological components. Now you'd be tempted to call these cyborgs, but they're definitely
more robot than living. Like almost everything on
Rama, their purpose is unknown. They mostly go picking up
trash... or dropping it. My artifact now! Rama isn't particularly engaging visually. It's mostly flat metal with a bunch of
dirt mounds, but it IS quite mysterious. What does this do? What about this? Why is this on display? This looks like the Big Gun from "Quake II". Now, this one is obvious. First you take your space cucumber, insert
it into the cucumber apparatus here, then turn the dial and hit some of these
buttons and you're done. Couldn't be clearer. The gameplay is a lot like "Myst"
which is both okay and very bad. You wander around an environment
you don't understand. Sometimes there are puzzles you DO
understand, a lot of them you don't, and it's so damned easy to get disoriented. Later on, this city part is the worst. How do I get over here? Do I go left,
straight, do a 180, then go right? It's absolute madness
trying to navigate this. I missed key areas more than once. Also here, I solve a
puzzle and I hear a click? [click, whirring] [clunking] What the hell did that do? Now I have to scour the entire region
AGAIN to see if anything changed AND if I notice a difference? The
game is littered with crap like this. I like the puzzles that are direct
but the rest of this is basically everything I dislike about
old graphic adventure games. I'm pretty sure we're making this game
harder on ourselves than actual aliens would. So the graphics are so-so, the
gameplay can be a showstopper, so what's good about the game? I'll tell you what. The music. The music to this game is PHENOMENAL! It absolutely nails this mostly
benevolent but still alien feel. [ethereal music] It sets the tone for the entire game and I
think it wouldn't be half as good without it. It's in a very different tone, but this is some of the
best alien music I've heard since "Super Metroid" or "Axiom Verge"
except it's much more positive sounding. It's easily one of my all
time favorite soundtracks. Now I can understand if this
isn't to everyone's tastes since I guess it's sort of new age? I'm not exactly sure what genre this is. But if listening to this doesn't
calm you down, at least a little bit, you might need some sort medication. But there's more to the music
story than what you're hearing. This game predates MP3 so the
original quality is awful. [muffled string music] It's 22 kilohertz, mono,
compressed all to hell... considering just how nice it is, I
thought it was a crime against music putting out so low with
no soundtrack available. Well, Alistair from Sierra Music Central
managed to hunt down the composer, Chuck Barth, and wrangle the original
soundtrack from him at CD-quality. [epic string music] I'm impressed because I tried to
do the same thing several years ago but I wasn't able to find it. But I literally ended up
getting the soundtrack from a guy who knew a guy
who knew the composer. Now Sierra Music Central was planning
on having an official release of this but that was years ago
and nothing's happened. So I'm taking matters into my own hands and releasing this on my
own until further notice. This music is just too good
to be locked away forever. So if you like what you're hearing,
check out the YouTube description and you can download the original
high-quality copy for free. At the time of this video, this copy is going to sound better than any
other version you can find on the Internet. Better 20 years late than never. Does this look like the phaser from
"Star Trek: The Next Generation" to you? It does to me. Nope. It's just a spoon. So most of Rama is exploring
a gigantic alien vessel and solving puzzles and... "puzzles". But there's more to it than that
and NOW let's get back to the intro. You're introduced to almost
every character right away while they try to give you
some of their life story. ["Did you know that if
you take the number 41, ["and add first 2, then 4, then 6, ["to obtain the sequence of
41, 43, 47, 53, et cetera, ["that the first 40 numbers are all primes ["and no other similar
sequence of that length exists? ["Ha!"] I feel this feels a little misrepresentative since the vast majority of the time
you're wandering around by yourself, solving puzzles, not talking to anyone. Every once in a while somebody
will show up, but it's brief. "Oh, I would help you
out, gotta go. Okay, bye!" "Hey, me again--Bye!" Even these small appearances
are nice though, since one of the things I never liked about
Myst-clones is they tend to be desolate and you start feeling lonely
playing games like this. ["Brown and Wakefield think we
are going to capture an alien. ["Pfft! Yes, really. Can you imagine it? ["I just hope the... Ramans or
whoever created this damned place ["don't decide to capture us instead."] Yeah, see, everybody dies after this point. Well, not really, but back to the intro. While they are extremely
faithful to the book, I think these people might be the most
implausible thing about this entire story. I'm not sure I consider
them astronaut material. In the future, we have the
International Space Agency, but getting to space is still a pretty
big deal; it's not like booking a flight. I think the book said they've been
training ten months for this mission. So in the game, not only
is this our first contact with evidence of extraterrestrial
life, but it's the HUGE first contact. Even in the book, it's still
only the second encounter and we don't know a whole lot, so you'd think we'd send the
absolute best mankind has to offer. Maybe I'm biased, but I've
always thought of astronauts as some of the most well-rounded
people on the planet. They need to be smart, brave, and be in
fantastic physical and mental condition since there's no end to the amount
of stress they may have to endure. If there are any astronauts
or cosmonauts in the audience, feel free to set the record straight. So not only do they need to survive
the trip, but we have ONE SHOT at this, so we'd better make sure these people
are the best we have to work with. So let's play a game here. I'm going to go down the
roster and give these people a passing or failing grade on whether
or not I think they have what it takes to be an astronaut for the most important
space mission in the history of humanity. First up, Richard Wakefield,
a genius engineer and in the book, he's the
smartest person on the whole team. But, hmm. I can't tell for
sure through that jumpsuit, but he looks like he might
have a few extra pounds there. Now these numbers will probably
be different in 180 years, but right now, it costs about $12,300
for every pound we send up into space. That pudge is expensive. Now money should be no object
for a mission such as this, but in the book, it's also mentioned
that he doesn't like to exercise. Well that attitude is not
going to get you into space. Sorry, Richard. I'm failing you. Next we have Dr. Shigeru Takagishi. In the book, he is THE premiere expert
on the original Rama spacecraft, except, whoops! In the
game, this IS the original. Still, he seems fit, intelligent,
works well with others, except he has a major heart condition that causes irregular beats
and even micro-heart attacks. Well that's no good. We can't have
that in space. Sorry, buddy. Fail. David Brown. This guy looks fit and his
pattern baldness would help his aerodynamics but he engages in extremely
petty power struggles, falsified some of his
academic accomplishments by stealing his colleagues' work and is just passive-aggressive all around. This guy would never pass
psychological testing. Fail. Nicole des Jardins. She's a medical
doctor, has an even temperament, is fluent in at least four
languages, maybe more, and was an Olympic finalist. Uh... Yes. Congratulations.
You get to be an astronaut. Otto Heilmann. He looks a little on
the old side but seems relatively fit. Now John Glenn was the oldest person
ever to ever go into space at 77 but he was fit and healthy his
whole life, didn't drink or smoke. Meanwhile, Otto here has a stogie in
his mouth for half his screen time. We're not sending a heavy smoker into space when we have billions of
people to choose from, dumbass. Plus, you don't have an indispensable
skill; you're just a security adviser. Fail. Irina Turgenyev, a career
cosmonaut, highly experienced pilot, stays focused on her objective, but looks
like she could lose a few pounds for space. Tough call. ["I have no husband, no children, no
life outside the ISA. My work is my life. ["Now I'm to be part of the most important
mission humans have EVER undertaken, ["but I wouldn't trade my position
with ANY other woman in the world."] Okay, I'll let her slide. Pass. Michael O'Toole. You're a nice guy
but you're too old and fat for space. Get out of here. Reggie Wilson. Well, he's obviously
fit and seems friendly enough, although in the book, he's
actually super-belligerent because he got burned by some love triangle. However, that doesn't seem
to carry over to the game, but he IS giving me some weird vibes. ["And listen. Give me a call if
you want to share a beer or two. ["It can be pretty damned lonely up here."] I'm sorry. You're feeling
lonely on a crew of twelve on the most important
expedition EVER for mankind? If I was up there, I would be
spending every waking moment documenting everything I could. I would worry about unwinding
after the mission was over. Also, I guess the ISA is
cool with sending beer on the mission like
a bunch of space dwarves. I mean, what's the worst that can
happen if an astronaut got drunk anyway? So I'm not sure I approve but I can't
find any concrete reason to eject him. If the space agency says he's
okay, I guess he's okay. Pass. And finally, Francesca
Sabatini. You remember her? She wanted me to go
get her cigarette lighter because that's kind of the
team we're running here. We're going to an
alien interstellar spaceship with its own contained
atmosphere and ecosystem so we can smoke cigarettes inside it. Why don't we get a little drunk
and have some target practice so we can leave beer cans and bullet
casings on the ground while we're at it? Then the aliens will have a more
complete picture of mankind. Now in the book, she smuggles cigarettes
inside the lining of her spacesuit but here she's asking you, as the new
guy, to go fetch the lighter for her, leaving a video log of it
no less. She doesn't care. Now I'd say this would be more than
enough to kick her off the team, but let's keep going. Remember that love triangle I mentioned? Well, in the book, she sleeps
with both Wilson AND Brown. The game doesn't mention that,
but it definitely alludes to it. ["...accomplish than we have resources. ["In a minute."] And of course, relationship
drama is exactly what we want on a long important space mission. And, to top it all off, she's a
psychopath. Literally. She is. It's not so obvious from the game but
it couldn't be clearer in the book. So, not only do you fail my test, but you fail every single metric for
being an astronaut. What are we doing? Also, as a side note, Rama was
this actress's final performance. She's still alive but she
did this role and decided, "That's it. I'm not acting anymore." Oh, and if you're a fan of the game "Blood", you can say hello
to the voice of Caleb here. I'm sure he's about how you envisioned him. So this is our dream team of astronauts. Plus me, and my character's
obviously a kleptomaniac. I shouldn't be in allowed space either. This is really the weakness of the story, that our team is somewhere between
actual astronauts and reality television. I don't know. I just don't think
they're astronaut material. And their performance in the
story only reinforces that view. So, going by our team,
humanity is a lost cause. But hey, that's only
half the story, isn't it? This is an ALIEN ship, so are we going
to see some aliens. Hell yes we are! That's the biggest different between
Rendezvous with Rama and Rama II. In Rendezvous with Rama, the
original, more competent team encountered the biots,
but that was about it. It was just a weird ship and we're left
wondering what the hell was going on. Well here, not only do
we have close encounters, but the game takes it a step further, and we discover a museum showing artifacts
from multiple species as learning aids. Considering just how much the
Ramans seem to know about us, this is actually kind of disturbing. They not only know that rock guitars
are a cornerstone of civilization, but they also have a model
of our future spaceships so their information is recent. It's like they're standing
behind you right now. So let's see the first alien--the Avians. I guess this isn't much of a surprise
since they're on the box cover but you could pretend you're impressed. I still don't really know
what's going on here, though, since we have male and
female genders on display. That's pretty easy to follow, but the Avians have bird
things and caterpillar things and... sentient egg things...? What? This can't be their life cycle because then we would've shown a
child or a fetus on the human display. The caterpillar things are the more
intelligent ones. Do they metamorphosize? KNEEL BEFORE YOUR NEW GOD! Also, look at Earth. It shows
obvious flight paths we use, but what's going on
with these other planets? Do they have teleporters, burrow
under ground or what is this? Hello! I will say, though, out of all the
species, we have the best video games. I mean, look at this. This is pathetic. And apparently holographic
games are more popular in 2200, but I don't know. I'm betting virtual
reality will win out over those. I don't know if you can handle
seeing the other alien race yet. Use your imagination for now. They're more intelligent than us, too,
so watch out. I'll save them for later. But what about the Ramans themselves? Well, that's one of the mysteries
of Rama. We never see them. However, seeing as how all
these robots and structures and bad dream faces have
three eyes on everything, I think it's safe to assume they have
three eyes and they're probably green but who knows beyond that? Their robots aren't very smart. In fact, we have better AI
now than these things have. The Ramans DO have robot sharks,
though, so don't underestimate them. In fact, that seems to be
the theme of the Ramans, that they are so, SO far ahead of not just
us, but all these other alien races, too. It only leaves questions
as to what's going on. Like, the most obvious explanation
is that this ship is intended as a foreign exchange program
between different sentient lifeforms, but things are so cryptic, you
can't really be sure of anything. I said it in the "Helious"
episode, I'll say it again: When you're talking about aliens,
you can't assume anything. I mean, what's going on here, huh? Never mind. You shouldn't see this. Again, the Ramans all ready
know ALL about us. In fact, they know so much, they're going
out of their way to teach us alien math. Now in the book, the Ramans
had created half-assed replicas of the equipment of the original Rama crew. But in the game, this is the first
encounter and they still know everything. Now you might think that's
just a narrative shortcut, but I'm considering this
game canon. You know why? Because Arthur C. Clarke is in it! He doesn't get a lot of screen time; he mostly just shows up to tell you you're
an idiot when you get yourself killed. ["Tut tut. I must say
I'm surprised to see you. ["I thought we made it absolutely clear
that these spider biots are dangerous."] This is a Sierra game so of course they're
going to kill you a few times playing this. Man... They give him the full treatment, though, since even though this game is only two CDs, they devoted an extra third
CD to just interview snippets recorded in a nasty, low-resolution,
half-interlaced format. You know how when a monitor says it's 1080p? Well, that "p" stands for
progressive-scan, which means not this. I'll use some editing magic
to make this more bearable. [pop] Anyway, these snippets are interesting. One of my favorite parts is that they
ask him what aliens might think of us. And he says, because we're
sending out TV signals into space, and it may not be obvious to aliens
what's fiction and what's real, that it's pretty good proof
there are no spacefaring aliens that can reach us within 50 light years because otherwise, the space cops would be here
by now to arrest all of us. ["The cops would be here all ready ["with their sirens screaming
right across the radio spectrum. ["I guess, it takes a particularly
long time to get to Mars. ["Uh..."] Yeah... ["There may have been visitors
here on Earth in the remote past, ["Unfortunately, nonsensical
books and fraudulent books ["by people I won't mention
because the lawyers might come--"] Ooh, burn! ["--have made it difficult
for serious scientists ["and researchers to look into this. ["Uh, let me make one thing perfectly clear, ["I don't believe there'd been
any contact with extraterrestrials ["in the last few hundred years. ["We'd have to go back
much further than that. ["But it may be tomorrow...
I'm quite prepared--"] This was '96, people. ["--but I think it's perfectly possible, ["but it's more likely it'd
be in ten, hundred years."] Oh. Speaking of Rama extras, there have been efforts to make
Rama into a movie since the 70s, but it keeps ending up in development hell. One studio even modeled the
exterior of the ship for filming, but it never went anywhere. But hey, if you've ever seen "Star Trek IV", they reused that same prop as the
probe that comes from deep space. That was supposed to be Rama. I guess they decided better to repurpose
it for Star Trek than have it go to waste. ["We're all bloody worthless--"] [click] Okay, it's alien time! The first aliens you really
encounter are the Avians. They welcome you into their lair and share psychedelic melons with
you so you can all trip out together. As you may have guessed, this species
is less intelligent than humans. Even though the navigation
continues to be god-awful, I do like going into deeper and
deeper into their lair here. That's the thing about Rama. It keeps going and you start to feel
like you're entering another world. And now we get to the serious
aliens, the Octospiders. I don't know why they're called this since
they don't really resemble spiders at all. They're completely deaf and communicate
entirely through color transmissions. You ready for this?! BEHOLD! Now THESE are some aliens, huh? Remember, these things are smarter
than you so no sudden movements. These things are just so bizarre
but believable at the same time. If we ever have first contact and
they're not here to exterminate us, it might be something like this. This could shatter your
worldview a little bit. He-Man lied! We are not the
masters of the universe! We were just side attractions to the glorious nightmare-like
octopede-being empire. These things are sort of the
climax for the story for me since you're so deep into the game
when you finally encounter them. They have a creepy museum room also where they have photos of
other Raman attractions. They've been watching us. Here they have an Avian on display. They have a now dead
astronaut stuffed and mounted. And, oh my God! What are they doing?! There are many secrets here
we may not want to know. And once again, I want emphasize the
Octospiders are just passengers like us. They didn't build this. We are SO
not special in the universe, guys. So after the Octospiders, there's not much
left, but the gameplay twists the knife by not only having multiple
random puzzle generators that you have to solve EVERY SINGLE
TIME you pass through various rooms, but hey, you're now timed on
all this, because guess what? Humanity has decided Rama needs to be
nuked because we don't understand it. This timer is a pain in the ass. Sometimes the clock moves in
real time, which would be fine but if you wander down some hallways,
you may lose hours in just a few seconds. Now if you go the easy route and you rely on the rest of your
crew to take care of the situation, this is what happens: Yeah, I'm really not surprised. Thanks for getting my back there, guys, especially since you caused
all this in the first place. But if you essentially cheat
and follow a walkthrough, because seriously this gameplay
at the end is terrible, then you defuse the bomb and... Yep. Okay, how about we try that again? You defuse the bomb and... Ta-da! Triumphant music, Rama
puts on a light show for us, and Arthur C. Clarke stops by
again to put us back in our place to make sure our success
doesn't go to our heads. ["Not bad... for a couple hours work."] It was more than a couple hours! Okay, awards time. Game of Enlightenment-- Between the music and the
puzzles that don't suck, your mind feels expanded
after playing this game. Rama is the future we
should be striving towards. In Buddhism, they have the
path to enlightenment-- I don't pretend to know how that works-- but I imagine you come a little
closer after playing a game like this. Reality TV Astronauts-- I can't get over how dysfunctional
these astronauts are. You can probably thank
co-author Gentry Lee for that. And finally, an FMV Game That Doesn't Suck-- Full-motion video games are notorious
for being cheesy and stupid, and this game is anything but that. While the gameplay does NOT hold up, the performances were all fine and it
leaves a positive lasting impression. This is not "Plumbers Don't Wear Ties". And that's Rama. This is a very flawed game but it
accomplishes some great things, too, and the music helps save it. The game honestly feels
incomplete without reading Rama II but that also feels incomplete
without playing the game. Rama is a unique experience. A lot of games are science fantasy
which are designed just to look cool. Rama is science fiction and is one of the most plausible
scenarios for extraterrestrial contact. It's not custom tailored for your
amusement. Its mysteries feel real. One of my favorite games is Super Metroid and what I love about it is that it feels like you're going deeper and
deeper into a completely alien world. Rama does the same thing
just in a very different way and it's rare for a game to provoke
genuine wonder in me the way this one does. I think the story is actually a little dry but some of the ideas that come
out of it are just amazing. Okay, that's about it. Oh wait. I'm sorry. Morgan Freeman
wanted to say something. Here he is. ["I know a good script when I read it. I
certainly know a good story when I read it. ["And Rendezvous with Rama is one of
the best science-fiction books ever."] Well there you go. I guess I should've let him talk first
and saved us all 30 minutes. Oops. [music] ["And as my friend Larry Niven once said,
the reason why the dinosaurs became extinct ["was because they didn't
have a space program."] Damn straight.
I really enjoyed the whole Rama series when I was growing up, but never got to play this game, so this is a real thrill. I know some people don't like the sequel novels since they seem to be mostly written by the more "pulpy" Gentry Lee, in consultation with Clarke, but I thought they were fascinating in their own way.
Is it me or is the actor at 12:05 the same person who voice acted Jaheira in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2? They sound awfully alike.
Who likes short shorts?
Arthur C Clarke likes short shorts