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Gateway (computer game)
Encyclopedia
Gateway and Gateway II (Gateway II: Homeworld, 1993), are interactive fiction
games released by Legend Entertainment
, and written by Glen Dahlgren and Mike Verdu. They are based on Frederik Pohl
's Heechee
universe.
Βoth games have virtually identical interface
s that hybridize traditional parser
s with illustration and mouse-based aids. The games (especially the second) have a number of timed events, but the possibility of player death outside them is quite rare. Unwinnable states are possible, but difficult to achieve.
's novels, but deviate significantly while still being similar enough to make both the games and the books severe spoiler
s for each other.
Gateway shares its premise with Pohl's first book, of a poor space prospector arrives on the eponymously named space station with the intent to use the dangerously poorly understood alien crafts that are based there to explore distant worlds and strike it rich. The similarities soon end as the game introduces original elements, changes (in the novel's terms: travel times are negligible, Gateway has Earth-normal gravity, all ships are ones and bastard control panels are the norm) and material from the later books. The second game is set ten years after the first, and bears less resemblance to the novels' plots while using more of their elements.
and colonize it. Below the surface, thousands of miles of artificial tunnels are discovered. They are believed to have been built thousands of years ago by an alien species known as the Heechee
, but little else is known about them until an explorer discovers a Heechee ship, intact and operational, in one of the tunnels.
Rather than report his findings, he climbs in and activate it. The ship launches and goes into "TAU Space," a faster-than-light
travel method. It arrives at a huge space station carved out of an asteroid floating halfway between Venus and Mercury, which is full of thousands of similar ships, but otherwise empty. However, the explorer is unable to figure out how to return to Venus, and faced with a lack of supplies, figures out how to detonate the fuel cell of the ship he came in. The detonation kills him, but also attracts the attention of a NASA tracking station, who send an expedition to investigate.
The discovery of the station, named Gateway, almost leads to war among the superpowers of Earth over ownership, until a compromise is finally worked out. A co-operative called the Gateway Corporation is formed, with the superpowers each holding one quarter of company stock.
The alien ships that are found still function, but their built-in destinations are a mystery. Navigation is accomplished by using 5 digit codes with the ships' computers, but there is no way to tell what codes go where. Volunteers called prospectors come to Gateway to test the codes and pilot the ships to their destination, explore and report back what they find (as well as bring anything interesting back). A large majority of the prospectors return with little or nothing, a tenth never return, but the remaining 1.5% return with artifacts or knowledge that make them incredibly rich.
The player character launches the shuttle before the terrorists arrive, and takes over the Artifact rendezvous mission to discover that it is indeed a Heechee ship; specifically a sample collector. As the narration progresses, the player realized that unfortunate Gateway prospectors had already discovered the ship until they died by an 'insane' Heechee artificial intelligence which took over the system and stored their personalities digitally.
In the third part the sect overcomes the ship and use it to travel to a place dubbed 'Kugelblitz
' and bring the Assassins to Earth, hoping to bring a Utopia
; meanwhile we are told that the main character had secretly escaped in a Heechee pod. He ends up on a planet with Heechee installations, occupied by native crystalline sentient eels dubbed as 'Kords'. The objective here is to activate the ancient Heechee center and escape with the Heeche ship, which eventually brings the player to the new Heechee homeworld hidden inside a black hole
.
In the fourth and final part, the player delves into Heechee intrigue and familiarizes with the sect of the White Hand. These help the human intending to overthrow the modern Heechee regiment and bring the Heechee back to the galaxy from their current hiding place. The player is tasked in several missions to infiltrate and steal several items that enable his ship to return to Earth in time.
The ending sequence brings the player back in the Artifact attempting to sabotage the terrorists' plans to reach Kugelblitz. The epilogue shows that the White Hand has reformed the Heechee civilization and proceeded in an alliance with humanity and an agreement to destroy the Assassins.
#205 by Sandy Petersen
in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Petersen gave the game 2 out of 5 stars.
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
games released by Legend Entertainment
Legend Entertainment
Legend Entertainment was an American developer of computer games, best known for their complex, distinctive adventure titles throughout the 1990s....
, and written by Glen Dahlgren and Mike Verdu. They are based on Frederik Pohl
Frederik Pohl
Frederik George Pohl, Jr. is an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years — from his first published work, "Elegy to a Dead Planet: Luna" , to his most recent novel, All the Lives He Led .He won the National Book Award in 1980 for his novel Jem...
's Heechee
Heechee
The Heechee are a fictional alien race from the science fiction works of Frederik Pohl. The Heechee are portrayed as an exceedingly advanced star-travelling race that explored Earth's solar system millennia ago and then disappeared without a trace before humankind began space exploration.The...
universe.
Βoth games have virtually identical interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
s that hybridize traditional parser
Parsing
In computer science and linguistics, parsing, or, more formally, syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a text, made of a sequence of tokens , to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given formal grammar...
s with illustration and mouse-based aids. The games (especially the second) have a number of timed events, but the possibility of player death outside them is quite rare. Unwinnable states are possible, but difficult to achieve.
Relationship to the novels
They are based on Frederik PohlFrederik Pohl
Frederik George Pohl, Jr. is an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years — from his first published work, "Elegy to a Dead Planet: Luna" , to his most recent novel, All the Lives He Led .He won the National Book Award in 1980 for his novel Jem...
's novels, but deviate significantly while still being similar enough to make both the games and the books severe spoiler
Spoiler (media)
Spoiler is slang for any element of any summary or description of any piece of fiction that reveals any plot element which will give away the outcome of a dramatic episode within the work of fiction, or the conclusion of the entire work. It can also be used to refer to any piece of information...
s for each other.
Gateway shares its premise with Pohl's first book, of a poor space prospector arrives on the eponymously named space station with the intent to use the dangerously poorly understood alien crafts that are based there to explore distant worlds and strike it rich. The similarities soon end as the game introduces original elements, changes (in the novel's terms: travel times are negligible, Gateway has Earth-normal gravity, all ships are ones and bastard control panels are the norm) and material from the later books. The second game is set ten years after the first, and bears less resemblance to the novels' plots while using more of their elements.
Backstory
A century in the future, humans land on VenusVenus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
and colonize it. Below the surface, thousands of miles of artificial tunnels are discovered. They are believed to have been built thousands of years ago by an alien species known as the Heechee
Heechee
The Heechee are a fictional alien race from the science fiction works of Frederik Pohl. The Heechee are portrayed as an exceedingly advanced star-travelling race that explored Earth's solar system millennia ago and then disappeared without a trace before humankind began space exploration.The...
, but little else is known about them until an explorer discovers a Heechee ship, intact and operational, in one of the tunnels.
Rather than report his findings, he climbs in and activate it. The ship launches and goes into "TAU Space," a faster-than-light
Faster-than-light
Faster-than-light communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light....
travel method. It arrives at a huge space station carved out of an asteroid floating halfway between Venus and Mercury, which is full of thousands of similar ships, but otherwise empty. However, the explorer is unable to figure out how to return to Venus, and faced with a lack of supplies, figures out how to detonate the fuel cell of the ship he came in. The detonation kills him, but also attracts the attention of a NASA tracking station, who send an expedition to investigate.
The discovery of the station, named Gateway, almost leads to war among the superpowers of Earth over ownership, until a compromise is finally worked out. A co-operative called the Gateway Corporation is formed, with the superpowers each holding one quarter of company stock.
The alien ships that are found still function, but their built-in destinations are a mystery. Navigation is accomplished by using 5 digit codes with the ships' computers, but there is no way to tell what codes go where. Volunteers called prospectors come to Gateway to test the codes and pilot the ships to their destination, explore and report back what they find (as well as bring anything interesting back). A large majority of the prospectors return with little or nothing, a tenth never return, but the remaining 1.5% return with artifacts or knowledge that make them incredibly rich.
Gateway
A strange, incredibly large object, dubbed "The Artifact" has been located outside the orbit of Pluto. The Artifact is assumed to be a ship, possibly of Heechee origin. The Gateway Corporation plans to send a shuttle to investigate, but a terrorist sect attempts to hijack the shuttle. Their plans are to use The Artifact to alert the Assassins, a highly destructive alien race, of Earth's presence in order to purify humanity.The player character launches the shuttle before the terrorists arrive, and takes over the Artifact rendezvous mission to discover that it is indeed a Heechee ship; specifically a sample collector. As the narration progresses, the player realized that unfortunate Gateway prospectors had already discovered the ship until they died by an 'insane' Heechee artificial intelligence which took over the system and stored their personalities digitally.
In the third part the sect overcomes the ship and use it to travel to a place dubbed 'Kugelblitz
Kugelblitz (astrophysics)
In theoretical physics, a kugelblitz is a concentration of light so intense that it forms an event horizon and becomes self-trapped: according to general relativity, if we aim enough radiation into a region, the concentration of energy can warp spacetime enough for the region to become a black...
' and bring the Assassins to Earth, hoping to bring a Utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
; meanwhile we are told that the main character had secretly escaped in a Heechee pod. He ends up on a planet with Heechee installations, occupied by native crystalline sentient eels dubbed as 'Kords'. The objective here is to activate the ancient Heechee center and escape with the Heeche ship, which eventually brings the player to the new Heechee homeworld hidden inside a black hole
Black hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...
.
In the fourth and final part, the player delves into Heechee intrigue and familiarizes with the sect of the White Hand. These help the human intending to overthrow the modern Heechee regiment and bring the Heechee back to the galaxy from their current hiding place. The player is tasked in several missions to infiltrate and steal several items that enable his ship to return to Earth in time.
The ending sequence brings the player back in the Artifact attempting to sabotage the terrorists' plans to reach Kugelblitz. The epilogue shows that the White Hand has reformed the Heechee civilization and proceeded in an alliance with humanity and an agreement to destroy the Assassins.
Reception
Gateway II: Homeworld was reviewed in 1994 in DragonDragon (magazine)
Dragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products, the other being Dungeon. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The...
#205 by Sandy Petersen
Sandy Petersen
Carl Sanford Joslyn Petersen is a game designer.Petersen was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended University of California, Berkeley, majoring in zoology....
in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Petersen gave the game 2 out of 5 stars.
External links
- Frederik Pohl's Gateway at Adventure Classic Gaming, screenshots etc.
- Gateway II: Homeworld at Adventure Classic Gaming, screenshots etc.