The Last Express: Final Destination

The Last Express:

After the absurd complexity of Act 3, Acts 4 and 5 are, an undemanding ride, though no less filled with mystery, conflict, and danger.

After Tyler pretends to be able to pay for Schmidt's weapons, appeases the Serbs, and maintains cordial relations with Anna Wolff and Kronos, he finally has the opportunity to examine the Egg. It appears as a golden globe, with colored buttons fixed on such locations as the Middle East, Denmark, India, the Galapagos Islands, and more. Will discovering the correct combination produce a result? Play it yourself to find out.

But Cath can't waste time examining his prize, or observing perils recede, before new hazards appears over the horizon. Tataina, swamped a deluge of tears, accosts Cath in his compartment. Alexei, she informs Cath, has revealed himself to be emotionally deranged. He insists they elope, threatening to blow up the train if she refuses. To Cath, she insists she loves Alexei, but societal pressures prevent her from abandoning her grandfather. Kindly, (and anxiously) Cath promises to speak to Alexei, and defuse the situation.

Before locating Alexei, Cath uses Anna's skeleton key to enter the Anarchist's compartment through their shared bathroom. Inside, Cath discovers the tools and components necessary for a bomb, including a detonator, which he pockets. Preparing to leave, he's disturbed by an intrusion, as a British gentleman enters the compartment. He seems as astonished to see Cath, and without sharing his name (it's George Abbot) says, “I believe you're in the wrong compartment,” to which Cath returns the complaint. Awkwardly they exit, but before Cath can speak, George hurries away.

Though I'd recovered the detonator, I wanted to confront Alexei, talk him out of any further rash actions. I found him in the caboose, but as usual, The Last Express doesn't allow Cath to initiate a conversation. This recurring flaw, contradicts a key theme of the game. Because the player is never offered dialogue choices The Last Express uses conversation only for exposition, never to solve a problem. While frustrating, this issue is a result of the technical difficulties of game design of 1993, and should only be softly condemned, yet it still damages any attempt to maintain a realistic atmosphere.

Wracked by anxiety, Cath sleeps, but is disturbed by a prophetic dream. He watches Alexei enter Vassili's compartment, and the old man slashes the throat of the younger. In a sweat, Cath awakes, sees the clock displays 2:30am, and runs down the silent hallway to Vassili's compartment. Inside Tatiana is weeping over Alexei's blood stained body, and Vassili stands grinning, knife in hand. Cath kneels, and Alexei whispers, “Long Live Anarchy,” and mumbles something about a clock before he dies.

What sort of genre does The Last Express undertake, which mixes political realism upon World War's threshold, and mystical fantasy in which Cath can dream events before they occur? The writers never attempt answer this question seriously, compounding the error as the game reaches its climax. But for now, they offer no time to consider this question, as Britisher George Abbot is back, escorting Cath out of Vassili's bloodstained compartment and into the neighboring Smoking Car. At a table he introduces himself as an agent of the British Government (who isn't a government official on this train?) and says he's tasked to locate an anarchist, and mistakenly believed Cath might be the culprit, as Cath was impersonating Tyler (also, who doesn't know Cath isn't Tyler?). He's a real buddy buddy type, boys club, expressed with a chummy demeanor, and offers to resolve Cath's Irish incident if Cath aids the British Empire. What it all means is he's a contemptible person, only interested in the old loyalties, not in preventing War or alleviating the suffering to follow, but ensuring the British Empire will win when war erupts.

Then, Cath shows him the detonator:
“Good job, old boy. Speaking of which, you didn't happen to find the dynamite did you?” (Abbot)

“Dynamite? What dynamite?” (Cath)

“Uh Oh.” (me)

BOOM!

Again, The Last Express errs in returning the player to a time, from which would be unable to stop the bomb. In my quest for this weapon of demolition, I returned to the night before the dream, and visited Alexei in the caboose. What would happen, I wondered, if I stayed with Alexei all night, waiting for him to move. Here, The Last Express cheats again. Though time normally progresses at six times normal speed, in this situation it refused to budge. I could have stood forever, and not a minute would have passed. Eventually I discovered the bomb's location, and resolved the Russians' difficulties.

The reward for Cath's achievemnt is the applause of those aware of their peril; George, Anna, and the conductor. Afterwards, Cath follows Anna back to her compartment, where they engage in a brief romance before a shout in the hallway interrupts. What's this? The Serbians are trying to hijack the train?!?

For future journeys, the Orient Express would be best served if it included a questionaire for anyone purchasing a ticket:

Are you (or anyone you are buying a ticket for) planning to do any harm to any passengers on the Express (or the Express itself), or foment war among the European Powers (this includes if you are a spy, selling weapons, carrying a bomb, willing to stab another passenger, or planning to hijack the train).

If everyone truthfully answered this question, this ride on the Orient Express would be nearly devoid of passengers.

Anyways, the Serbians incapacitate Cath and Anna. But after recovering Cath maneuvers through the cars, striking down the Black Hand, desperate to reach the engine. As he advances up the train, he observes the Serbs, and realizes they have learned of Anna's plan. She's alerted the Austrian government that the Orient Express is packed with weapons for the Serbians, and they are waiting on the border to confiscate them, and arrest the conspirators.

When Cath reaches the Engine after killing (or at least seriously maiming) a pair of Serbians, Milo tells reminds him, “Tyler gave his life for freedom,” and Milo copies Tyler's example as Anna arrives and shoots him.

Anna and Milo's actions illustrate a truth vital to The Last Express: every nation desires a war, but each wants it on their terms. They want to condemn the other side as aggressors, while also retaining a strategic advantage. After this deadly confrontation, Cath encounters a puzzle, which I messed up two or three times. Even with Milo dead, Cath needs to prevent the Austrians from boarding the Express, but Anna stops him (she has the pistol after all) claiming, he can't bring all the innocent passengers along into Serbian territory. The eventual result: they abandon the passenger cars just on the Austrian side of the border, with the passengers inside, while only the Engine, Dinning Car, and Smoking Car continue, and only contains six passengers; Cath, Abbot, Wolff, Tatiana (insane with grief), Vassili, and the driver remain.

While the player might believe themselves to only be two thirds of the way through The Last Express, based on the map and the vast distance between Budapest and Constantinople, the remainder of the journey passes (until arrival in Constantinople) passes in one or two cut scenes..

During the journey Cath and Anna deepen their relationship, and he asks a piercing question. What motivates Ms. Wolff?

“At least I'm serving my country,” she replies in a huff.

“What country?” Cath retorts, “You're Jewish, you speak German, and you come from Hungary.” Fortunately this harsh, but true statement doesn't derail their relationship. Yet, it serves as a furious critique of those, both on the train and in the capitals of Europe, who seek to turn peace into conflict for their own advantage. Whether royalty, elected officials, or grunts serving their masters, they struggle in service to gung-ho nationalism, which accepts no questions, and remembers only loyalty to one's country. In this atmosphere of insanity, Cath, an American, serves as the perfect foil, with both the distance and perspective to realize Europe's absurd and abhorrent error.

In this excellent criticism of the problems of Europe and nationalism, the writer returns to the oddity, mystical magic. On the morning they arrive in Constantinople, Anna exits their shared room early. When Cath finally follows her, he discovers Kronos has rejoined the Express, and demands the Egg, while Kahina offers two bullets in exchange (or rather, the absence of them).

But, I don't have it, because I left it in compartment #1 back near the Serbian border. Fail state.

So I travel back and recover it, giving it to him this time (this game makes one feel like a time traveler, going backwards to recover objects, and then forwards to continue). Now Kronos regales the pair with long winded exposition: the Egg is some sort of mythical object capable of remaking the world and Kronos wants to rule it? He spouts some gibberish about the 13th Tribe (the lost one) in Jerusalem.

Frankly, this could have been explained a bit more before the end. But I give the Egg to him, and then the train explodes! ****!

Why? Who? What should I do with the Egg?

In the end, I have travel back in time again and recover an object or two to complete the game in a satisfactory manner. I discover who murdered Tyler (it isn't who you think it is) and see Kronos' fate. Anna and Cath escape from the train before it explodes. Poor, mad Tatiana blew it (and herself) up , hoping to prevent war by destroying the weapons on the train. But her death is fruitless, because as Cath and Anna walk away from the wreckage, they hear a boy yelling about the War which began this very day.

And Anna does what nearly everyone on the train did. She failed to learn anything from Cath. She abandons her budding relationship with him to serve her government, promising to meet him the next time the Orient Express rides the rails (won't be till 1932, eighteen years later).

The Last Express ends with credits scrolling over a map of Europe. The map is dated, and the political boundaries clearly defined. It alters as the years roll by, and surprisingly it doesn't stop at 1918, or 1945, but continues all the way to 1993.

And I think this really emphasizes the theme of the designer. That the wars which roiled Europe (and elsewhere) are the result of a petty, purposeless nationalism which we still embraced in 1993 when the game was made, and continue to do today. As Olaf Stapleton said in his book Odd John, “A nation, after all, is just a society for hating foreigners, a sort of super-hate-club.”

In Conclusion, The Last Express is a wonderful game which, successfully creates an old fashioned, classic feel, without being dated. It contains vibrant characters, trapped aboard the Orient Express, like a microcosm of Europe on the brink of war. Though I've certainly divulged quite a bit of the story, it is still worth exploring for oneself, and discovering all the mysteries both large and small which it has to uncover.

Recent:

Relevant:

Comments