I was really enjoying Indigo Prophecy up until The Grand Revelation which, in retrospect, though a rather bizarre choice as an explanation for the events of the game, seems positively sane – hell, even competent – compared to the craziness that follows. Whereas the first three quarters of the game is a smart mystery in which players take on the roles of both an innocent killer searching for answers while evading police and the pair of detectives on his trail, the remainder of the game devolves to a cliché-saturated mess of overblown action sequences. Secret wars between three ridiculous factions, world-spanning conspiracies, nippleless breasts, and more wire-fu than a Matrix movie get in the way of an admittedly supernatural plot, but one which, at least for a time, has a firm grasp of reality. And then the entire thing just sort of collapses under its own weight.
Had Indigo Prophecy been a film, a long, long, choose-your-own-adventure film, it would be a laughing stock. As a video game, it’s heavy flawed – damaged – but is still noteworthy for at least trying to do something interesting in a relatively young medium. And while the plot itself starts strong and ends pathetically weak, the story is told extremely well, through stylish split-screen cinematics that manage to out-24 24 (they 25 it hur hur hur) and clever interactive cutscenes. The narrative, up until That Point, is incredibly smart, and remains expertly presented both before and after.
You see, narrative is incredibly important to Indigo Prophecy, even more so than in recent pretentious narrative-heavy games (which I love (that really isn’t sarcasm (really))) such as Metal Gear (Solid) (3) or Killer 7. At least those games have boss fights or some sort of traditional gameplay to keep those uninterested in the story interested in the game to some degree. Gameplay in Indigo Prophecy is a sort of evolution of the mechanics used in the SCUMM adventure games of the past. Most interactive non-cinematics find players in relatively small spaces, interacting with hot spots through coordinated movements of the right analog stick/mouse/something on the XBox controller. Players will spend their time doing such exciting things as matching finger prints, creating composite sketches, reading e-mail, and getting their ex-girlfriend drunk in order to lubricate the banging process. Nearly all action sequences are relegated to nothing more than a very literal game of Simon (Says), following the movements indicated on screen while enjoying the usually ridiculous results in game.
The most interesting (and most press-released) feature of the game is the way in which choices one makes in the present affect choices, dialogue, and the narrative itself in the future. Players begin the game as Lucas Kane mere moments after he has stabbed a man to death in a diner’s restroom while in a trance. Players are free to dispose of the murder weapon, hide the body, clean up the blood on the floor, wash the blood off themselves, exit the restroom, discreetly pay their bill and exit without being noticed; to run outside covered in blood, interacting with as many people as possibly; or to choose any possible path between those two extremes. Their actions here will affect the evidence available to the detectives when they arrive on scene, determining the information available to them and having long-term consequences during the course of the game. Some decisions placed before the player are relatively small, altering little more than a line of dialogue two or three scenes down the line, while others are monumentally huge, effecting the very outcome of the game.
Though the game is relatively short – eight hours at most – it’s genuinely a lot of fun to replay chapters in the game, making different decisions and watching their outcome. There are also a few bonus features available after the fact, and though they make for a nice diversion, they’re little more than concept galleries, silly movies, and the like and don’t really add any additional replayability to the game.
Though it’s nice to see more and more video games thinking of themselves as more than just video games these days, whatever that means, Indigo Prophecy doesn’t just fall short of its goal, but powers right on through it, ending up five hundred miles away from its intended destination. What begins as a clever little mystery game with some supernatural elements absolutely eats itself alive when it takes several wrong turns for the worse, spitting in the face of reason and transforming into the bastard son of a Matrix movie and a bad episode of the X-Files. Honestly, even the ending of Metal Gears Solid 2, surreal mindfuck that it was, was a full order of magnitude less ridiculous than the 11th hour revelations of Indigo Prophecy.
But Wedge/Pfhor/Travis/Whatever you call me these days, you might say, does the last act of the game really ruin everything that came before it? Does Final Fantasy X-2 belittle Final Fantasy X? Is it a good idea to make sequels to Vin Diesel movies without Vin Diesel? No, not really. Indigo Prophecy does a lot more right than it does wrong, but, as obvious a statement as it may be, those last two hours are what sticks with you. It’s the solution to the mystery, not its solving, that folks remember. If you’ve played the game, hats off to you, and you know exactly what I’m talking about. For those of you that haven’t, enjoy the spoiler-tagged white-on-white text below, but just know that by reading it you’re effectively ruining the entire plot of the damn game.
For everyone that skipped to the bottom: Indigo Prophecy is a game that breaks a lot of new ground by retreading a lot of old ground. Its greatest flaw lies in its own ambition as its slow, thoughtful story telling gives way to a series of ridiculous 11th hour revelations that don’t just come out of left field, but from a different ballpark entirely.
So, to get you caught up to speed, you’ve just spent six hours playing as Lucas Kane. You killed a man while in a trance and are getting ever closer to The Big Mystery behind the murder. You’ve been having visions of the future, strange nightmares, and spend a large amount of your time seeing giant green mites that don’t actually exist. Your brother, a priest, recently sent you to visit an elderly woman named Agatha who deals in the paranormal. She has the answers you seek and will reveal them tonight. Meanwhile, Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles, a pair of New York City detectives, have recently IDed you as the killer they’re after. They’re going to arrest you tonight. It’s also very cold. Everywhere. And it’s getting colder. Keep in mind these are merely the events as they occurred for me. Maybe on my next playthrough I can manage to generate an even stupider outcome.
So, to begin the next paragraph with the same word as the last, Lucas arrives at Agatha’s home to find her murdered. The phone’s off the hook and the cops are on their way. Lucas escapes and heads towards his apartment, but the police are already there. So, having gained some newfound physical abilities since the murder, like being able to jump over all the giant imaginary mites that keep getting in his way, Lucas runs up a nearby wall and wire-fus the three arresting officers into submission. Then he dodges some bullets, wire-fus some more cops, and runs through oncoming traffic before jumping onto a helicopter and then onto a train track where he leaps atop a moving train. Ok. Sure.
Then Lucas wakes up in his brother’s church where Agatha, now a ghost or something, tells him some Mayan word before a pair of angel statues come to life and try to kill him. Then Lucas wakes up in his brother’s church again. He heads to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment where he watches TV and learns about some Mayan expert at NYU. He pretends to a be a journalist and sets up a meeting with this professor of Mayanology, who tells Lucas all about two headed snakes, Indigo children, Oracles, human sacrifices, etc. Then killer SUVs show up and kill the professor.
Lucas once again wakes up, this time in the jungle, where a Mayan priest fills Lucas in on The Plot. It turns out that the Orange Clan, a group of immortal Mayans that secretly control the world, have been sacrificing people – using Oracles to control one person to kill another – in order to see into The Other World and search for the Indigo Child who will bestow upon them the secret of life which will allow them to rule the world better. Seriously. And this isn’t even the dumb part yet.
So then Lucas runs through the jungles of Guatemala trying to evade a killer spirit panther until Agatha shows up and kills it. Then he once again wakes up, this time in a hotel, and once again the police are right outside his door. He has a vision of the Oracle in his brother’s church, so he calls his brother and tells him this and then listens over the phone while his brother dies. Even though we’ve been told Oracles don’t directly kill people. Lucas, having no reaction to this event whatsoever, hangs from the fire escape like Spider-Man, evading the police yet again.
He gets a telephone call from the Oracle, rather than a vision or something, who tells him that he’s kidnapped Lucas’ ex-girlfriend and is holding her at the old abandoned amusement part. Apparently immortal, world-controlling Mayans aren’t the most clever dudes in the world. So Lucas heads on down there to save her, but gets killed along with her instead. Oops.
BUT IT’S OK!
Because Lucas, now very much dead, contacts Carla, who’s 100% down with helping the murderer she was chasing recover the Indigo Child and Mayan prophecies and blah blah blah blah blah. Then they’re both in their underwear in her apartment. Then Lucas has a vision and we all decide to drive down to some school and get us some Indigo children, which we do, but as luck would have it those pesky immortal Mayans had the same idea. Naturally, the Oracle and Lucas, still dead, have a super wire-fu Matrix/Dragonball fight on top of this school, jumping around on top of antennae and throwing water towers at each other before police helicopters arrive and Lucas, holding our purple little girl, runs along the side of building for a while and hides in a window that nobody saw him enter or something.
And Agatha’s there! And it turns out she’s not dead. In fact, she was never actually alive. She reanimated dead Lucas, you see, because she’s a cyborg. From the Internet. Really. And she wants the Indigo Child too for some damn reason, so she tries to suck Lucas into a portal o’ death, but through his L1/R1 mashing skills, he escapes to the streets below where combine-esque soldiers now wait for him. Luckily Carla and a band of homeless people are there waiting for him and they escape into the sewers.
The homeless folk, it turns out, are actually The Invisibles, who wander around and be homeless and look at things. They don’t really seem too interested in the Indigo Child, but they’re here just the same. And Lucas, still dead, knows one of their names, even though he’s never met the man before over the course of the game. But Carla has. Oops. It turns out that some alien artifact or something on the military base where Lucas grew up irradiated his mother while she was pregnant with him, allowing him to resist the Oracle and become Neo. The Invisibles know lots of things.
And now Carla’s in love with Lucas, because she’s a woman in a video game so she has to fall in love with the male lead. So they fuck, even though Lucas is dead and Carla can’t stand to touch him. She has no nipples.
The Invisibles, homeless though they may be, manage to give Lucas a car so he can drive to the military base where he grew up. Apparently it’s in the New York desert. So he goes there. Also, the world’s going to become completely frozen and all life’s going to die tomorrow or something. Of course, the Orange Clan is waiting for Lucas at the alien artifact, so Lucas flies around a lot and shoots energy at the Oracle until he’s good and dead. Then the Internet Cyborg shows up and Lucas shoots some more energy at him. Then he lays the Indigo Child on the artifact, listens to the meaning of life, and watches her die. Carla shows up for no good reason.
Three months later! Now the world is no longer frozen. The Orange Clan still controls the world, but that seems to be okay. Carla is pregnant, meaning that the child was also irradiated by the alien artifact while in the womb, just like Lucas. Because the two of them have never had sex in the last three months, so she was obviously impregnated the night before The Final Showdown. Lucas still has super powers and presumably still sees giant, green imaginary mites everywhere, a plot point which was never explained at all. He is still dead.
The end?
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