Ross's Game Dungeon: Rama

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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.

👍︎︎ 7 👤︎︎ u/MrMarbles77 📅︎︎ Apr 14 2016 🗫︎ replies

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.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/Two-Tone- 📅︎︎ Apr 15 2016 🗫︎ replies

Who likes short shorts?

Arthur C Clarke likes short shorts

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/Aranha-UK 📅︎︎ Apr 14 2016 🗫︎ replies
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[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.
Info
Channel: Accursed Farms
Views: 518,200
Rating: 4.9493723 out of 5
Keywords: Rama, Videogame, Rendezvous With Rama, Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction
Id: Pu4n5YXPaMQ
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 32min 41sec (1961 seconds)
Published: Thu Apr 14 2016
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