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.
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