INTRO:
Wadjet Eye is one of those modestly successful indie outfits. Starting with a game that garnered more commercial success than its maker anticipated, the outfit grew into a publisher, with a profile that is perhaps a little lower than the likes of Daedalic Entertainment, which started out similarly but has diversified into other things, including a wider range of publication.
In hindsight, it is easy to see why this game caught a paying audience. Point-and-click adventure games with old-timey graphics and serious story-telling was a dying breed then, but those who remember them fondly are now adults with income. These customers can afford purchasing the licenses for these games, which are among the least expensive to make in the present-day.
That said, this review is based on the revisited version of Blackwell Legacy, which is included in the Blackwell Bundle compilation.
MATTER OF DUAL PROTAGONISTS:
With the entire history of point-and-click adventure games considered, pairs of protagonists are quite rare, mainly due to the difficulty of programming the gameplay to accommodate the presence of both in real-time. Although Blackwell Legacy is not the game that would establish this in the series, it set the foundation for the later.
Granted, pairs of protagonists working together are nothing new nowadays; titles like Broken Sword have established this. Protagonists with different capabilities, such as those in Sam & Max, are nothing new either.
The main appeal of Blackwell Legacy and the later games is that there is at least a strong excuse for there being two protagonists with different capabilities, though it might seem contrived at first.
Games like Broken Sword resort to tossing player characters into different circumstances to have them work with each other; sometimes, serendipity is the only veneer that is used to cover up how conveniently coincidental that they could help each other. Games like Sam & Max resort to their whimsical themes to have their dubious duos muddle through.
Blackwell Legacy binds the two protagonists close to each other, yet they are still a world away, in both gameplay and circumstantial story-telling.
PREMISE:
Anyway, the first game in the Blackwell series takes place in the mid-2000s. There is a noticeable presence of modern technology, namely the Internet, but also vestiges of old ones like antenna-using CRT TVs. Indeed, this era is very much made with the target audience in mind. (This also happens to be the time when the game debuted by the way.)
That said, Rosa Blackwell has recently lost the only family member that she had, albeit one that she barely knew. She is also a shut-in, something that would be made quite clear in the very first “puzzle” of the game (and one that caused creator Dave Gilbert to swear off ever coding ridiculously extensible dog leashes again). She is also in between jobs.
The stress of her lifestyle led to seeming headaches. After that, the physician for her late aunt revealed that she has the risk of having a hereditary problem. Not long after, things seem to worsen.
The other protagonist, Joey, appears. He is a ghost, and he knows it. He also mentions that Rosa is stuck with him for life due to some pact that has yet to be elaborated upon. Needless to say, this is quite shocking to Rosa.
On the other hand, it did not take long for Rosa to realize that Joey has been around for a long time – and had spent many decades next to increasingly ill and insane relatives of Rosa. The only thing that Joey could say to convince Rosa not to just ignore him is that ignoring him got Rosa’s relatives into their predicament in the first place.
The main reason for that – and this is even more unbelievable than ghosts existing – is that Rosa has the afterlife version of a waiting room in her head. The only way to stave off its encroachment on the rest of Rosa’s mind is to bring lost souls there, and send them off.
Thus, the first game is about Rosa learning how to work with Joey to put ghosts to rest, while also concealing the fact that she is talking to a ghost.
NOT MUCH INVENTORY MESSING:
Most other point-and-click adventure titles – especially those that follow the formulae of the Sierra or LucasArts games – have the player character picking up items and mess around with them; Deponia is a contemporary that does this a lot. Blackwell Legacy does not do much of this. Indeed, using things on other things is rare in this game, and when this does happen, they occur automatically most of the time.
Rather, items that go into the player character’s inventory are there to be examined for clues. They are disposed after certain milestones, without remark and without notice too. This was apparently a deliberate design decision, because the creator did not want Blackwell Legacy to involve much mucking around with items.
That said, left-clicking on items does nothing much. Right-clicking is what the player would be doing most of the time.
NOTES:
The main bulk of the gameplay occurs in the user interface for the player character’s notebook.
As the player obtains clues, a screen-wide announcement about the notebook being updated occurs. This is a bit jarring, but of course the developer’s tools are limited. Anyway, this is the player’s cue to check the notebook.
The notebook is used as a separate menu of dialogue options, which otherwise appear as written lines a la how they occur during dialogue in LucasArts titles that were developed with SCUMM.
Outside of conversations, they are used to correlate relevant clues together; the player selects clues to be paired with each other. If the connection is likely, given what the protagonists know thus far, the player character makes a remark about the connection. At least one of the clues would be updated, usually for the purpose of being correlated with another or to use in a dialogue to make progress.
This is a system that would be in most Blackwell titles and, for better or worse, culminate in a later game called Resonance.
BUGGY NOTEBOOK INTERFACE:
The notebook’s user interface has been designed with the abovementioned clue-matching in mind; the player is not expected to do anything else outside of the space that is reserved for the display of the notebook. Unfortunately, the designs did not account for mis-clicks.
If the player clicks on things outside of the space of the notebook, especially on hitboxes for area exits, the game might crash.
AUTOSAVE:
Fortunately, Dave Gilbert is not so blinded by nostalgia as to forget about modern-day standards about conveniences for the player. One of the conveniences is the implementation of an auto-save function – something that is not common in present-day adventure games, unfortunately. That said, the game auto-saves whenever the player gets to the screen that has the player selecting which locale to go to next.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
When Dave Gilbert made the game, he was gunning for visuals that are similar to those in adventure games of the 1990s. Of course, the game is made using turn-of-the-millennium tech, so it is sporting things like pixels with 32-bit depth and much more diverse colour distribution.
There are also hand-drawn images, displayed as is with a little bit of desaturation and pixilation. Examples of these can be seen when the player examines photos.
When characters talk, their portraits appear on-screen. This would become a tradition in most of Wadjet Eye’s games. There are enough appropriate expressions for almost all situations, though the player should not expect frames that are varied enough for convincing lip-synching.
As for the environs, these are the most detailed artwork in the game. They make use of the impossible perspectives and angles that were seen in the LucasArts and Sierra games of yore. Many of them are based on past years of New York, which is a city with ever-changing looks (for reasons both intended and tragic).
However, this is a short game, so the player should not expect any locales beyond that of the middle-income areas of New York. Even then, the player should not expect the hustle and bustle of New York either; the roads and streets are rather deserted, even though the characters mention that there are other people around (who are presumably off-screen).
SOUND DESIGNS:
The game’s sound designs are perhaps the least satisfying part of the game.
There is very little ambient noise to be heard in the game, even though the game is set in New York. Indeed, the most that the player would hear in most scenes is the music, which sometimes break too. Speaking of which, the music is not unpleasant to listen to and is appropriate for most scenes, but it is also forgettable.
This leaves the voice-overs as the only sounds that carry appeal. There are plenty of voice-overs, but unfortunately, many of them are not well-filtered or edited – as admitted to by the creator of the game. It can be jarring to listen to people in the same room having different reverbs in their voice-overs, among other aesthetic qualities that do not match the occasion.
That said, at least most of the voice-actors and –actresses deliver convincing performances, despite their freelancing and sometimes ad-hoc work. This would be a hallmark of the series, and a notable talent of Dave Gilbert to hire or get the help of a variety of low- to mid-profile people who otherwise have some talent.
SUMMARY:
As the debut from an indie outfit, Blackwell Legacy has the kind of low quality that is to be expected of low-budget works like Daedalic’s first Edna & Harvey title. Still, titles like Blackwell Legacy had appeal due to the effort of their creators showing through, despite the lack of costly resources.
Of course, there were other low-budget indie adventure games at the time, especially on Steam. Many of them were notably awful due to their creators giving up on achieving the quality that they want and within their ability to achieve. Titles like Blackwell Legacy are gems that shine when they are among these.
As for how the game compares with other modestly successful indie adventure titles, Blackwell Legacy is not the one that would set Wadjet Eye’s reputation. Indeed, it has a lot of rough edges, and the series’ signature system of dual protagonists has yet to be fully developed. Still, it is the seminal game of the series, and deserves any attention that it would get.