First, there was Omikron. And it was good. Then came Indigo Prophecy, and it was good. Thus Quantic Dream surveyed its domain, and it was good. Or so I hope. It must be pretty good, with Indigo having received more acclaim than Omikron, for they now have a PS3 title in the works, as well as a greatly anticipated sequel on my part.

This year's E3 saw Quantic Dream unveil their next gen PS3 project Heavy Rain, and the video looks impressive. That's just great. Now I'm going to have to get a PS3 eventually. Just what I need, another video game system.

Heavy Rain did get me excited. But not nearly as excited when I read this announcement by Guillaume de Fondaumiere, in which he states that they have started development on Omikron 2, now known as Karma! I couldn't believe it. First they bring us Indigo, and now we get an Omikron sequel. My excitement was somewhat curbed when I read further and found that "you shouldn't expect this title anywhere before 2009." Yikes, that's three years away!

I was still sure it would be worth the wait. So I looked through a few other articles and found another announcement, made more recently (October), indicating that Karma would be supporting Ageia's PhysX engine. What does that mean to us? Thus far, only that we need to drop between $200 and $300 for a PhysX card. The engine is so young that it's just about impossible to tell whether it's going to be worth anything. Currently titles supporting PhysX seem to have minimal differences. Not sure that it's worth the investment.

When Karma comes out, however, things could be entirely different. So I think it's a little too early to determine whether PhysX is going to be useful or not. In terms of any details about Karma, there is nothing yet. I imagine that it will probably be a lot closer graphically to the opening video in Omikron. Whatever the case, I don't think we'll be complaining about the graphics this time as much as last time.

The more interesting part of the announcement came right at the end, with a different report on Karma's release date, stating that the game is "expected to complete development sometime in 2007 when it sees release on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3." Now, 2007 sound a lot better than 2009, but whether that's a reliable date or not is unclear.

What I think is clear is that the PC version is going to be the best choice out of all these, and I am sure that it's going to absolutely rock! And you know what else rocks? Quantic Dream, for giving us a sequel to this incredible game, that's what.

Following my excursion into Indigo Prophecy, I said I would have to replay Omikron now. Well, I did. I wasn't kidding. Bet you thought I was.

Yet I have a confession to make. When I first played Omikron on the Dreamcast, I never beat it. Yes, I know you must be disappointed. Especially after me telling you how awesome it is and how much I loved it and all that. I stand by all those things, and I think I had played it enough to say all that. In fact, I had gotten very near the end and then fizzled out on my conviction to finish.

I think I've done that with a lot of games. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I loose interest in beating a game, because if I see the ending then that's really the end of it. Few games will give me a reason to come back to them. That is, unless I never finish it. So maybe it's my way of trying to trick myself into going through the whole game again.

But I digress. The point is, that I enjoyed Omikron so much, that I didn't want to finish it, so that I could play it again. That's possible. Whatever the case may be, I started from the beginning. I actually managed to pick up a PC version of the game a few years ago for cheap. Now I was able to enjoy it even more.

Since the game is about seven years old now (I can't believe it, I must be getting old), I was able to bump up the graphics settings to max, and run it at 1600 x 1200 resolution. I have to say it looked a lot better than the DC version on a TV, but that should be obvious. So in terms of graphics, I think the game has actually aged quite nicely. The only thing that betrayed it's age were the textures really. Yes, the models were certainly low on the poly count, but that didn't seem that big of a deal. I think if the textures were upgraded to nice high res versions, it would make a tremendous impact. I even tried to weed through the game directory to see if I could locate the texture files and edit them, but that proved to be impossible. The tools used for the game may have been proprietary.

It's not like the graphics bothered me. I truly enjoyed that unique flare which Quantic Dream has become known for in my mind. The scifi design of Omikron seemed somehow European to me, and was even echoed in the French film Immortal based on Enki Bilal's work. Something about the French that seems to reoccur in their science fiction maybe.

When the game was first launched I loved it for its innovation. It tried to combine the genres of adventure game, fighting game, and FPS all in one. The result wasn't entirely spectacular as was noted by others, but being the fan of all those genres that I am, I was not deterred. When a game tries to do too many things at once, it is not likely that it will fully succeed at being any of them. Still, I thought Omikron did come really close to doing so. I actually found all of those aspects sufficiently enjoyable. Not as much on the Dreamcast, but the PC version made all modes much more playable, and especially the FPS mode.

One of the primary difficulties that the Dreamcast showed were in continually loading the large environments of Omikron. Loading pauses occurred every time you went through a door, which some drove some players nuts. After a while, I actually managed to ignore that part for the sake of my sanity and enjoyment of the game. The mind is so trainable you know. None of that was an issue on the PC though. With my recent upgrade, and my two gigs of ram, large environments were a breeze. There was rarely a pause during any portion of the game. This showed how well the Omikron engine was designed to make environment transitions as seamless as possible. A big deal for its time, when long load times were standard.

Other slight glitches did occur from time to time. A few lockups and such. The absence of a PC patch is a slight disappointment, but at the same time a testament to the diligence of Quantic Dream in putting out a finished product. Unlike so many games that are rushed out and need a patch because half the users can't even install it.

Omikron still possesses a strong story, though perhaps not quite the equal of Indigo Prophecy. I must admit that I was less enthralled by the plot this time around, but only because of knowing most of what was going to happen. The first time I played Omikron it was quite the opposite. The intrigue was high and many twists in the plot served to keep things interesting. Themes similar to Indigo Prophecy were present with a heavy focus on the occult, as well as your character's role in fulfilling a prophecy. Overall, the scope of Omikron was much greater than Indigo, and the game was also a great deal longer.

Sometimes the length of Omikron seemed to be working against it. A lot of puzzles were present, with most of them story driven. But the second half of the game did provide puzzles that seemed more arbitrary and felt only like chores to be done in order to progress. I remember the days when games like Myst had me playing with pen and paper to decipher the clues and drawing diagrams to figure out the right sequence of symbols/buttons/whatevers to align/push/whatever. I found myself back in that mode a couple of times. I think I had more patience for that back then than I do now.

So you're probably wondering whether I finished Omikron this time. The answer is definitely yes. I got to the point where I had last left off, and continued straight past it, never looking back. I was in fact surprised that I was so close to the end last time. I was glad to see a few new environments that I didn't get to before, and I made it to the final showdown with Astaroth. The big bad boss who is going to eat all of existence for breakfast. My first try to get him I had to figure out how to do it. Then I died. My second time I knew how to do it, and tried to actually pull it off. I still died. I think it wasn't until my fourth try that I finally managed to defeat the evil dude. He went down, I was the hero who saved the universe, and all thanked me for my courageous deeds.

A little trite I suppose, but it was still nice to see a proper old fashioned denouement. The interesting thing about Omikron, which its characters will tell you time and again, is that it's not really a game. They tell you that Omikron, the game, is a portal to the actual universe where Omikron is. And that you the player, or your soul, is what inhabits the bodies of the characters you go through in the game. That's actually one of the major parts in Omikron, being reincarnated into different bodies in order to progress. And you have two objectives in Omikron. To defeat Astaroth so that (1) you can save their dimension, and (2) so that you can save your own soul. At the end, the remaining characters who helped you along tell you to come back any time and visit their dimension using the game as the gateway. That part of the experience is not often seen in games, and I found it to be refreshing. I almost had a Labyrinth moment when David Bowie's character said good bye ("Yes, should you need us...").

My final thoughts about the experience are very positive. As I have said many times, I have always had a soft spot for the art of Omikron. Not to mention that David Bowie did a number of the songs for the game. Combine that with fantastic ambient music which I would listen to any time, a great story, good characters, and a very unique and diverse set of ends and means to achieve them, and you have the rich and grand world of Omikron. Few games can boast of having these elements, and this is why I look forward to whatever Quantic Dream will bring us next.

Shortly after the Dreamcast launch in 1999 I became a huge fan of Quantic Dream. They released Omikron, which was not especially liked. It had its flaws, and people always focus on those first it seems. Still, I loved the game and spent a ton of time on it. The lack of Omikron sales put a damper on the success of Quantic Dream however, and it seemed as though the just went out of the game developing business for good.

I didn't hear anything about Quantic Dream for a long time. One day I was checking in the shipment of games at Gamestop, during the days when I was one of their minions, and pulled out the interesting looking PC box of Indigo Prophecy. Being always intrigued by interesting cover art, I flipped the box over, and was impressed by the design and screens of the back cover. But when my eye wandered lower down and saw the Quantic Dream logo on the bottom I just about flipped out! I think I must have gotten a little too excited and gotten some weird looks from my coworkers at the time.

My wife bought me Indigo Prophecy just a few days later. I can't remember, but I guess I must have really annoyed her with my jubilations. I installed it in a flurry of disc swapping and started playing it. I was hooked right off the bat. Unfortunately, we were getting ready to move right around that time, and then the holidays came. And then I left for CA. So, that means I didn't get a chance to actually enjoy it much, and not for very long.

But, now that I was back and things are somewhat settled down with us, I figured it was about time to whip out the good old Indigo Prophecy again. This time I was determined to keep at it. And I did.

Once more, I was hooked pretty quick. That's just one of the wonderful things about this game. The story is excellent and the pace is right. It gets you in there and it keeps you in there. The shorter chapters keep the story moving well, and it has been a long time since a game had me hankering for more plot. The developers really wanted to create a game that had a more cinematic feel, with high emphasis on developing good characters and a strong visual style. Indigo Prophecy was even awarded an honorable mention for Gamasutra's Quantum Leap in storytelling.

The musical score was created for this game as if it were created for a film, and that is exactly what David Cage requested of the composer Angelo Badalamenti. Each main character has their own musical theme, and their motifs come up time an again to create a vibrant and emotional auditory experience. The music contributed to the great atmosphere that the art maintained, and further had me wanting to keep on keeping on.

The animation was very well done, with all the moves having been motion captured. That's probably more than most games get for character animations. Combine that with smooth character controls, and Indigo Prophecy has a well polished package. What made the control scheme even more interesting, however, was the Shenmue inspired on screen interface. This control method is adaptable to every action taken by the characters, with makes it very flexible. The developers tried to minimize its intrusiveness in terms of visual impact as well, allowing for the experiencing of the action sequence in question.

To be sure, I loved the game. I loved the art, and unique style, the music, and the interactive elements. After finishing Indigo Prophecy I did realize one thing though. Not all is well in the land of Lucas Kane. [SPOILER WARNING -->] As most games, this one too has its short-comings. The primary negative aspect that I believe should have been done differently is the final set of chapters in the game. David Cage himself agrees that he "made the mistake of not devoting enough time to the last hour of the game," as quoted from an article on Gamasutra.

During one of the latter chapters, a strange turn of events takes place between the two main characters, Lucas and Carla. One minute Carla is chasing after Lucas to get him behind bars, while Lucas is trying to save the life of his girlfriend Tiffany. Next thing you know, Tiffany is dead, Lucas is undead, and Carla is in love with Lucas. They have a child and live happily ever after. Now, that would in fact not be entirely unbelievable if it weren't for the very limited amount of scenes devoted to these events. This plot could certainly be weaved into the game, but only if adequate time was devoted in developing the characters motivations towards these ends. As it stands, however, it was a little too sudden to be plausible, which created a slight anti-climatic feelings at the completion of the game. Though it does set things up nicely for a sequel.

Overall, Indigo Prophecy is still a ground-breaking game. I still loved it. And I would still recommend it to anyone who hasn't had the good fortune to play it. Often times when I play a great game, I am inspired to create some artwork for it. This time I made a wall for it which you can view here, via Minitokyo.

And now that I am on this adventure game kick, I think I'll have to replay Omikron...