Pilgrim: Faith as a Weapon

The Good
Pilgrim takes place just after the Crusades .. the most traumatic, bloody period in the Catholic Church's history. It is a time of superstition and controversy .. a time when church leaders confused politics with religion and zeal with faith .. an age when anyone who spoke out against the Church was put to death as a heretic. Secretive groups formed to fight against the Pope and his minions, the Knights Templar and the Inquisition.

You play Simon de Lancrois whose father, Adalard, was the leader of one such secret Order, "The Tradition". As he dies, Adalard entrusts his son with a sacred manuscript, tells him to travel to Toulouse, France, and deliver it to a man named Petrus. Simon soon learns that the precious scroll could be the last gospel of St. John, and that the Pope's Inquisition members have been dispatched to find it .. at all cost. While at first a naive and insecure young man, gradually Simon grows up as he learns about his destiny and important heritage.

It sounds like there will be fighting .. but there's not. The situations in Pilgrim are pure adventure with no "action" at all. You'll be helping other characters by way of conversations and using inventory objects with people and to solve puzzles.

I played the 2001 re-release of Pilgrim for Windows 95 and was excited that it installed and played great in Windows XP. (So many old games these days don't.) Both of the CD-Roms are necessary for installation and Disc 1 must be inserted each time you start the program. After installing, disc swapping only happens once at a specific point in the story. A handy walkthrough can be found on Disc 1, which I admit needing! In the Windows version, the game screen appears on your desktop as a 640x480 window topped with your standard program bar. Although at first I wasn't particularly fond of the small screen, after awhile it became inconsequential. As an added bonus, while playing the game you can move the whole game screen around and "multi-task" with other programs without problems.

The interface is simple and intuitive. Icons represent picked up objects in your "bag" as well as a separate area for "people" and "items", which are both used during conversations. All of the icons have a title so you know immediately what you picked up. You can access the main menu, the in-game hints, speech and encyclopedia at any time by clicking on the proper words above the iconic inventories. Keywords appear periodically to help you hop to that particular section in the encyclopedia. Saving and loading games is elementary, too, and there seems to be no limit to the number of saved game files. I liked being able to name my saved games, too, even though limited to 8 characters.

The graphics in the game depict the Middle Ages very well, although drawn in a cartoon-like fashion. Homes, markets and churches look realistic enough made of wood and stone, interiors illuminated only by lamps and candles. Characters are puffed up in layers of clothing with the stern faces of those who want to appear pompous and important.

I enjoyed most of the music which seemed to represent the period of time well. Some flutes and lyres as well as violins. Sometimes, though, the music did drown out the voices. The only option is to turn the sound completely on or off (music, sound effects as well as voices). [Sigh] At least the subtitles are always on so you can read along.

There are 2 endings and neither one is considered "bad".

The Bad
Pilgrim is linear to a fault. So much so that it can be a show-stopper. Do something in the wrong order and you may need to restore.

I didn't like the tiny interactive cursor, even though the directional arrows are easy to see. Speaking of direction, sometimes it's difficult to get yourself in just the right position. Some puzzles, for instance, can only be viewed from one angle.

Although you can ignore the encyclopedia for most of the game, you'll need it for a final question and answer trial. And, to me, that was way too much reading.

I hate chess and know very little about it, so playing it in a computer game is just not my thing. Luckily I had saved a game before starting it. Even using a walkthrough, the mechanics of the puzzle itself were weird and hard to use.

The Bottom Line
If you browse through the early adventure titles produced by Arxel Tribe, you'll realize they all have common elements, although their actual storylines are completely different. Consider Faust, Ring: Legend of Nibelungen and The Legend of the Prophet and the Assassin, for instance. All of those games explore the complexities of the human spirit, the depth of the soul, and the sins as well as virtues of man.

Pilgrim is their very first game .. and the underlying meaning in it is very similar to those that followed it. It forces players to think about themselves and their relationship to others. While this game isn't as "emotive" as some of their later releases, I found that I did have inner feelings about some of the content.

This game is entertaining and I would recommend it to all adventure lovers .. especially those of you who like games with history or religious backgrounds. It will take you about a week to finish (even using a walkthrough) and it plays well on computers with operating systems much faster than the one it was created for.

The Good
This is Arxel Tribe's first game, and displays the company's roots in creating static CAD products. To help them establish themselves they involved the French graphic artist Moebius to create the characters, and the author Paulo Coelho to write the storyline.

The graphics look passable for the age of the game, though a little dated. Arxel tribe created all the scenes in 3D and then rendered them out, like Myst. To their credit some of the scenes do look magnificent and overcome the game small screen size. Toward the end of the game the graphic tend to look more rushed, and show the developers had some difficulty creating other-worldy landscape in 3D.

The landscape is well populated with many characters who in the time honoured adventure tradition you will need to help in order to progress. The characters are based upon sketches drawn by Moebius, though the final renderings bear little resemblance to the sketches (which are available on a extra disc in the Wanadoo edition).

Above all it is the storyline that lifts this game up, and makes it worthwhile playing. Borrowing the philosophy of Coelho's own beliefs this game casts the player in the classic role of a fool at the start of his journey, with a mysterious quest given by his dying father. In order to complete his quest he must interact with the people around him, and collect items in his inventory. So far so usual. What pushes this game is the clear set of moral choices you have to make as the character. Whilst they take the form of the standard give x to y style challenges the solution often lies in applying a certain moral thought to the challenge. This increase as the game progress, and leaves behind your original mission, as you yourself become the pilgrim and have to adopt (or at least understand) the story's philosophy.

The Bad
If the above 'epiphany' happened in a natural and smooth way this game would be fantastic. Unfortunately it's execution lacks the lofty ideals of the concept. Without spoiling the game's story the task you are set only have one conclusion, making no room for moral 'error', this leads you to distance yourself from Simon, instead making you develop Simon's philosophy, not your own. It would have been nice to at least have some alternative routes for different playing styles to reflect your morals.

The whole game feels like the first game for a company. The background renderings are good, but become notably worse as the game progresses. Appreciating the graphics is difficult though the game uses a slideshow system for navigating, that places you in some odd positions, and doesn't allow you to explore your surroundings very much, leading to a slightly claustrophobic feeling in wide open areas.

The characters are fairly primitive, and appear untextured, leaving some of the without discernible eyes. As a result they all appear as if they are made of plastic. There is no attempt at lip-synching and only a nod toward animating the characters (they often bob along the screen rather than walk). As soon as a character is finished with they simply freeze, and no longer respond to you.

Much of the game also anachronistic, given the 13th century setting, you are transported to places which have impossibly complex contraptions using advanced optics, which given the context of the latter part of the game, may fit in, but feels odd.

On a technical level, there are many flaws in the programming, which can be seen in having to start the game each time before loading your game, and having to watch the game actually skip forward to your save point.

The Bottom Line
It is an interesting game, and given that it is the company's first attempt at making a game, they did well to employ someone to write a decent storyline which has scope far beyond most games.

Unfortunately Arxel Tribe look like they've tried to copy elements from other games, and haven't quite managed to pull it off. The interface is clunky, and can hinder progress in the game.

Beyond these faults you get a quaint first game, that does a rare thing for a computer game, it makes you actually think.

The Good
A haunting soundtrack, and some really thought-provoking content. Best of all, unlikely to attract the usual collection of halfwits and nerds, since it requires a modicum of original thought.

The Bad
Unable to run in full screen mode and rather dark.

The Bottom Line
Draw the curtains, open a bottle or two, turn out the lights and enjoy the pure atmosphere of it all. Not for the kiddies.

The Good
It was cheap to buy.

The Bad
Everything!

The graphics were terrible! The engine is similiar to myst (Im a fan of 3rd person myself). The people looked like they were made from balloons(Actually , more like the diplomats in Civilisation 2).

The voice acting was Awful! I wanted to hit the main charachter because he sounded like a pansy.

Its just one of those games were finishing the puzzles is no fun. Everytime you finish one annoying puzzle , you are rewarded with a more irratating puzzle.

The Bottom Line
Go buy Kings Quest 5!

Buying this game would be punishing yourself.