the dig

align=center colspan=2\|The Dig'
align=center colspan=2\|
style=width:80px\|Developer:	Lucas Arts
a href="/encyclopedia/Video-game-publisher" title="Video game publisher">Publisher:	Lucas Arts
style=width:80px\|Designer:	Sean Clark
elease date:	1995
a href="/encyclopedia/Computer-and-video-game-genres" title="Computer and video game genres">Genre:	Adventure game
ame modes:	Single player
a href="/encyclopedia/ESRB" title="ESRB">ESRB rating:	Everyone
latform:	IBM PC
edia:	1 CD Rom

The Dig is a graphical adventure game, originally released in 1995, published by LucasArts. It was the eleventh game to use the SCUMM engine. Like LOOM and Full Throttle, The Dig is a more serious game, lacking the outright slapstick humor to be found in most of the LucasArts adventures (even, to some extent, the Indiana Jones games). It is also the only one of the LucasArts adventures that fits in the science fiction genre. The plot begins with the standard science fiction clich of an asteroid on collision course with Earth, and a team sent to place nuclear explosives in order to drive it off its collision path. After the explosion, however, the team finds an alien artifact which beams them to an alien planet. Unfortunately, the spaceport they arrive to seems to be utterly dead and in a state of advanced decay... The story is well-conceived and strongly developed, and widely considered its best component; complaints are levelled at its serious atmosphere, occasionally frustrating puzzles, and over-reliance on dialogue. The game features heavy stress on interaction and occasional conflict between the three stranded crew members, the commanding astronaut Boston Low determined to find the way to go home, the precocious and stubborn linguist Maggie Robbins, and the geologist Ludger Brink who seems to be sliding into a strange obsession. The game art is hand-drawn, with some 3D and hand-drawn movie clips, and presents a rich, compelling environment of the disappeared civilization site. The game was released only on CD-ROM, with a full voiceover soundtrack and recorded music. It has a surprisingly heavy-hitting credit list for a computer game; the project leader was Sean Clark, but it is based on a story idea by Steven Spielberg and has writing credits for Spielberg, the noted author Orson Scott Card who wrote the dialogues, and the well-known Infocom interactive fiction author Brian Moriarty. Alan Dean Foster also wrote a novel based on the game. This novel is not 100% consistent to the game but it is interesting in the fact that it presents the point of view of the aliens, which is completely nonexistent in the game.

The Dig

See also