BY JACK KEEFE

In print | Published October 9, 2008

Lucas slinks puppet-like out of a diner bathroom stall, creeps up behind a middle-aged man in a suit peeing in a urinal, and stabs him twenty-to-thirty times with a steak knife, spraying blood all over the bathroom as strange visions play in his head. “Where am I?” he mutters as he falls out of the trance … and realizes what he has done. Such begins the Xbox adventure game classic “Indigo Prophecy,” an (ultimately unsatisfying) tale of occult mystery, racial stereotyping, and blessed incoherence.

The primary draw of ”Indigo Prophecy” is that your decisions in-game have a significant impact on the course of events later in the plot. This freedom of choice, which later proves to be largely illusory, does make for a compelling narrative in the beginning of the story when your primary frame is the disturbing murder your protagonist has committed. In the first scene, you as Lucas are left with the task of cleaning up after the gruesome murder you have just committed. Will you spend time trying to clean up the blood? What are you touching—will that leave prints? Do you remember to pay your check on the way out?

Any clues you leave behind can then be found if (and only if) you so choose when the scene shifts to the perspective of the NYPD detectives tailing Lucas, Carla and Tyler. It becomes increasingly difficult to determine what is helping and what is hindering “yoursel[ves]” within the game world. In the first scene, my friend Chelsea failed to hide the murder weapon and to pay Lucas’ check at the diner, allowing the intrepid Carla to lift prints and proffer a forensic sketch from a waitress while Tyler harassed a bum in an alleyway. NYPD’s finest in action? I imagine one could find themselves picking one thread or the other to favor, puppeting Lucas into leaving more clues behind than he intended or having Tyler do all of the investigative work so that the case falls apart (more on this later), but that wasn’t for me.

While the game’s tit-for-tat escape and pursuit is interesting, it is in the supernatural focus of the rest of the exposition that the game fails. And, oh, does it fail, devolving into supernatural mumbo-jumbo that would be more compelling if the narrative were really suited to focusing on the exact universal metaphysics. Unfortunately, the metaphysics really just boil down to “spooky Mayan shit.” Lucas’ creepy visions (and some other powers he picks up along the way) are due to a mysterious McGuffin energy with a meaningless title. The villains eventually muster to their cause a wide variety of confusing agents, including stone angels, an entire insane asylum (whose caretakers have made the odd choice of arming them with knives and other sharp implements), and a blind old lady who may or may not actually be a cyborg (!?!).

Sadly enough, the characterization is also pretty hit-or-miss. On one hand, Lucas is pretty convincing as he delves further and further into desperation over the mind-wrending horrors he faces in his search for the truth. However, other game personalities are the victim of such absurd stereotyping that I was caught between ironic laughter and expressions of utter disbelief. (I frequently found myself wailing, “Fraaaance!” in a futile attempt to reason with the developer’s nation of origin.) Carla’s partner, Tyler, more or less no matter how you play his segments, is lazy, incompetent, and obsessed with ogling his exotified Happa girlfriend who eagerly performs coffee table strip teases for him. Developer Quantic Dream’s attempt to stereotype Tyler’s black ethnic identity includes an unexpected interlude where he plays a geeky Jewish cop in a game of “B-Ball” to settle a $100 dollar debt that Tyler was too irresponsible to pay back. Surprise, surprise, Tyler easily trounces his opponent, though after he thankfully consoles him by assuring him that he is “pretty D at B-Ball for a white guy.”

Inexplicably, the programmers included a function where you can replay and replay this stunning moment in race relations to your heart’s content.

The gameplay mechanics, in the “B-Ball” scene as much as anywhere else, are also rather painful. It’s an absolute chore to blunder through a stealth scene in an engine clearly not built for maneuvering a psychic ten year old around a military base (don’t ask). The game attempts to be innovative with its control scheme, frequently forcing you to flick the controller’s two joysticks in particular directions as per a “Simon Says”-esque array in order to succeed in a scene. The never-ending game of “Simon Says” got old fast. Keeping your characters alive is also a confusing affair. Seemingly random objects and interactions in the world will either add or subtract from a given character’s anxiety meter: jammin’ to Hendrix mellows Tyler out while lookin’ in the mirror as Lucas is evidently quite the freak show (we think you’re handsome anyway, Lucas). Becoming too anxious usually results in your character committing suicide in some fashion charmingly appropriate to the current environment (I particularly enjoyed making Lucas drown himself in a freezing Central Park lake). It’s nice that this game taught me to avoid drinking coffee for fear that it will bring me just over the border between sanity and madness, but guessing as to which random objects would help or harm vacillated between hella amusing and simply annoying.

In the end, if only for the initial thrill of the murder investigation, Indigo Prophecy may be worth a look if you’re desperate for adventure gaming on the Xbox, but the game’s steady decline at its mid-point means that you probably won’t be that interested in playing it ever again.

Jack is a junior. You can reach him at jkeefe1@swarthmore.edu.

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