Jump to content

Chzo Mythos

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by JimmmyThePiep (talk | contribs) at 01:57, 6 February 2009 (→‎7 Days a Skeptic: I rewrote this recap, tried to eliminate useless facts, but I think it's still too wordy.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Chzo Mythos
Developer(s)Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw
Designer(s)Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw
Composer(s)Mark Lovegrove
EngineAdventure Game Studio (AGS)
Platform(s)Windows
Release2003 (5 Days)
2004 (7 Days)
June 26, 2006 (Notes)
January 25, 2007 (6 Days)
Genre(s)Adventure
Mode(s)Single player

The Chzo Mythos is the collective title given to a series of four amateur adventure games created by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw using the Adventure Game Studio development tool. The games are, in order of release, 5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes and 6 Days a Sacrifice. (In chronological order of the games' events: 5 Days, Trilby's Notes, 6 Days, 7 Days).

Overview

The series is also sometimes called the DeFoe series, after one of the main characters; the Trilby series, after another main character; or the "X Days a Sauerkraut," based on Croshaw's own references to the naming scheme of three of the four games. The author commentary for 6 Days a Sacrifice confirms Chzo Mythos as Yahtzee's intended title, despite referring to it several times on the official sites as the "John Defoe Quadrilogy".

In 5 Days a Stranger, the player controls the shady cat burglar Trilby, who stumbles across a demonic force that manifests itself as a masked killer in the tradition of Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, while finding himself one of a group of strangers thrown together in an abandoned mansion and being picked off one by one. 7 Days a Skeptic emulates the claustrophobic horror of Alien, following a spaceship crew that finds artifacts from the first game floating in space, four hundred years after the events of 5 Days a Stranger. Trilby's Notes, set in a hotel which exists in both the real world and a horrific alternate dimension in the style of Silent Hill, goes back to flesh out the origin of the cursed African idol from the other games. While the first two games use the point and click interface typical of recent adventure games, Trilby's Notes requires the player to move with the keyboard and type commands with a text parser, similarly to early Sierra On-Line games like King's Quest I-IV. 6 Days a Sacrifice completes the set, sitting in the timeline exactly halfway between 5 Days and 7 Days. Yahtzee's later game, Trilby: The Art of Theft, features the character's exploits before the series, but is not connected to it thematically, story-wise or gameplay-wise.

The games have featured on various PC magazine cover disks, and were mentioned as an "excellent series" and given a brief review in an article on Adventure Game Studio in the February 2006 edition of PC Gamer. 5 Days a Stranger is mentioned as a good example of a game created with Adventure Game Studio in the book Gaming Hacks published by O'Reilly Media[1]

The author has also made available special editions of all his games. The $5 (US) deluxe editions have DVD-style author's commentary, Easter eggs, outtakes and other extras.

5 Days a Stranger

5 Days a Stranger chronicles the story of a gentleman thief known as Trilby and four others fighting an unknown terror in DeFoe Manor. The story progresses over 5 days, with more story being revealed each day. Dream sequences typically space out the transitions between the events of different days, it has an intuitive version of the AGS interface that ties in with the unique feel of the game. The game has been translated into German, Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish[2].

The game was created in 2003 with the Adventure Game Studio (AGS) engine and won awards for best game created with the AGS engine in 2003, best gameplay, best dialog scripting, best puzzles, and best scripting[3]. The game has also had many good reviews on adventure game sites[4][5][6][7].

The Special Edition includes author commentary and an easter egg scene, accessible from the menu, which shows Simone Taylor interviewing Croshaw, represented by a dog. It also includes scans of some pieces of pencil concept art and midi files of the music used in-game.

A Source engine adaptation of 5 Days a Stranger had been announced by a group of fans in 2007 and confirmed by Croshaw himself. Croshaw had stated that he would be closely involved with it: supervising design, okaying changes and possibly writing new dialog and puzzles.[8] Despite the use of an FPS engine, 5Days3D was intended to be an adventure game.

The remake, however, was canceled indefinitely by the team.[9] There are no longer any future plans for the remake and it is currently discontinued.

Story

A cat burglar named Trilby goes to a large mansion called DeFoe Manor, in hopes of an easy score of expensive loot, as the owners had died shortly beforehand. However, Trilby finds himself inexplicably sealed inside the house, along with four other people, who had come to the manor for various reasons of their own.

Soon, they begin to be murdered, one by one. Eventually, Trilby discovers who the killer is. The very first owner of the mansion, Sir Roderick DeFoe, and his son had been murdered one night, and the killer, DeFoe's deformed, regularly abused other son, whom Trilby speculates to be retarded and gives the name "John" out of convenience, later dies of wounds inflicted by Sir Roderick. The ghost of John still haunts the mansion within an African tribal idol, possessing anyone who touches the idol and murdering anyone he comes into contact with, wearing the same blacksmith's apron and welding mask he did when he killed his father and brother.

Trilby and the other two survivors perform a magic ritual to rid the house of the John's ghost; they are able to force John's spirit into his remains and kill him. During the ritual, the house catches fire; Trilby and the other two escape before the house burns down. Trilby allows the other survivors to believe he died in the fire so as to avoid the inevitable police interest and assumes that John DeFoe is finally at rest.

7 Days a Skeptic

7 Days a Skeptic takes place nearly four hundred years after the last installment, by which time mankind has begun to further explore the universe. The game chronicles the story of a veteran psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan Somerset, and five others on board the spaceship Mephistopheles as they face the same mysterious entity that haunted the protagonists of the first game. By this time the events of the original game have become an urban myth and no-one knows what really happened back at DeFoe Manor[10]. 7 Days a Skeptic draws several parallels with its predecessor, using elements such as dream sequences between each day as well as using similar plot revelations.

The game was created in 2004 with the Adventure Game Studio (AGS) engine. 7 Days has received numerous awards[11] and good reviews[12][13][14][15][16] as a whole.

The Special Edition includes author commentary, a 'blooper reel' consisting of several scenes where the characters make mistakes as if they were actors forgetting their lines, and a menu option to view the easter egg scene that normally occurs when the standard edition is played on Croshaw's birthday. A new feature not present in the normal version is that you are warned via an on-screen message if your pursuer is going to appear in a room during the chase sequences. This SE also includes the music as midi files.

Story

This game takes place 400 years after 5 Days a Stranger. The spaceship Mephistopheles finds a metallic box floating in space. A plaque explains that it is a makeshift coffin for John Defoe, with an inscription not to disturb, and signed with a symbol of a trilby hat. The crew (the Captain, the second in command, the pilot, the engineer, the doctor, and the protagonist who is the psychiatrist) decide to leave it unopened in the cargo hold.

Strange things start to happen, such as the elevator cable is severed by an unusual machete. The Captain disappears and the ship suffers an electrical failure, stranded in space. The box has been opened and is empty, but nobody claims to have done it. While trying to send a distress signal, the protagonist finds the body of the Captain skewered on the ship's radio antennae. Another ship receives the message and will arrive in 5 days.

The pilot goes missing and the protagonist finds her torso hidden in a maintenance hatch. Despite being dead, both the Captain and the pilot are seen "alive" around the ship. The second-in-command locks the protagonist in the brig, assuming he is the murderer. The Captain murders Riker and tries to murder the protagonist, who lures him to the power core and knock him down the well.

The protagonist and the engineer are desperate to use an escape pod and discover the doctor has gone mad, dissecting the deceased crew members. The engineer reveals that on the first night he opened the coffin to find the possessed tribal idol, John DeFoe's leather apron, machete and wielding mask; all artifacts from '5 Day's a Stranger'. A letter written by Trilby explains why the coffin should not be opened. The two men try to leave but the escape pod is missing and the engineer is sucked out of the airlock.

The protagonist is strapped down by the doctor, who explains that he murdered the rest of the crew in order to assemble a Frankenstein's monster for John DeFoe. The protagonist escapes and the doctor sacrifices his own eyes to complete his creation. John DeFoe takes the new body, dons his old possessions and hunts the protagonist through the ship, following him onto the ship's hull. The protagonist skewers DeFoe on the antennae and destroys the idol in the plasma-engine which destroys DeFoe's soul.

The rescue ship arrives to find the ship littered with body parts, blood, and one living crew member. It is revealed that the protagonist is not actually Jonathan Somerset, but an imposter. They assume he has murdered the crew and possibly the real Jonathan Somerset, and the protagonist is arrested. The last scene features a hand coming out of the metallic box.

Trilby's Notes

Trilby's Notes is the third game released, but second in order of game chronology. It stands as a true sequel to the events of 5 Days a Stranger, and a prequel to the events of 7 Days a Skeptic.

The story follows the gentleman thief Trilby to an isolated Welsh hotel, seeking the idol which wreaked supernatural havoc in the first game. Believing that there is more to the story of Defoe Manor than he had previously thought, Trilby wishes to destroy the idol once and for all, but is suddenly caught up in a series of strange and gruesome events at the hotel that cause him to start shifting randomly between two parallel worlds.

Trilby's Notes also provides a link from 7 Days a Skeptic as most of the featured characters share last names with those on the spaceship, suggesting a shared bloodline.

Trilby's Notes was nominated for 9 AGS Awards and won 4 (Best Game, Best Story, Best Animation and Best Non-player character).[17]

Trilby's Notes is superficially similar to Croshaw's previous efforts, but instead of the previous games' point-and-click interfaces it instead relies on a text parser and keyboard directional control, in the style of early Sierra Entertainment games such as Police Quest and Quest for Glory.

Like the two previous entries in the series, Trilby's Notes is available for free download from Croshaw's website, while an extended special edition has been made available for a small fee.[18]. The extras include the usual author commentary and an extended version of the ending scenes. The SE also comes with the soundtrack in midi and mp3 formats, and a Word file containing the complete text of two of the Books of Chzo, fictional religious texts within the series.

Croshaw has stated that the game was intended as both a form of continued high-level experimentation with the AGS engine and a complete product within itself. Trilby's Notes is the most graphically violent of the four games, an effect achieved with an extremely modest pixel-palette. Croshaw said of his main character's rather basic graphical representation: "[He] is not shaded at all because he was drawn after the GFW period when I realized that most people didn't give a toss and just wanted a fun game." [19]

Story

The game takes place four years after 5 Days a Stranger. Trilby, although confident John DeFoe is at rest, has become paranoid nonetheless and is eventually apprehended by the police, who offer him a job as a paranormal investigator as part of the Special Talent Project, a secret government agency. An author is encouraged to fictionalize Trilby, to make people forget he was ever real. Trilby later hears that Simone Taylor, a fellow survivor from the DeFoe Manor incident has fallen into depression and alcoholism, prompting a visit, but he instead discovers her murdered corpse. Deciding her death is related to the DeFoe incident, Trilby decides to do research on John to find a way to stop him once and for all.

He discovers that the wooden idol containing John DeFoe's soul has been passing through the hands of various dealers and is about to be put up for sale at the Clanbronwyn Hotel in Wales. He travels there in the guise of an antique scout looking for good deals for a rich client; when he arrives though, he discoveres that another STP operative, Agent Lenkmann, has been dispatched there to monitor him. He begins to inexplicably shift between this world and a nightmarish “dark world,” where a demon initially known only as the Tall Man keeps trying to kill him. Graffiti written in blood on the walls seems to refer to the strange figure, while a diary found next to a dead body suggests that the Tall Man is controlled by a higher power.

Over time, Trilby learns about the nature of the “dark world.” It is an alternate dimension called the World of Magick, ruled by a pain elemental named Chzo. A cult called the Order of the Blessed Agonies worships Chzo as a god, and seeks to bring him to this world. The Order knows the Tall Man as the "Prince", Chzo's highest servant: he was originally a 1st century B.C.E. druid named Cabadath who attempted to summon Chzo to defeat the Roman forces that were invading the area. Instead, Chzo drew Cabadath into the World Of Magick. To punish him for his arrogance, Chzo imprisoned his soul in a tree and subjected it to slow agonies, driving him insane and turning him into the Prince. On the 28th of July each year, the day when the boundary between the worlds is weakened and Chzo can look upon the Scientific Realm, the Prince is given leave to roam free and take his revenge on all those who abuse the wood of his soul tree.

To bring Chzo into this world (the "World of Technology"), the Order must destroy all three aspects of John DeFoe (referred to the Order as the "Bridgekeeper"), his mind, body and soul; Trilby had already destroyed his body in 5 Days a Stranger and his soul is contained within the African idol from DeFoe Manor. Trilby is able to see the history behind the idol through flashbacks; the wood used for it came from Cabadath's soul tree, which was first felled by a Norseman, and centuries later used to build "The Unicorn Inn" and all its furnishings. The wood used to build the Unicorn was later used as material for keys for a harpsichord. Jack Frehorn, a man obsessed with the occult later purchased this harpsichord and out of fear of the Prince formed the Order of Blessed Agonies; a masochistic cult devoted to fulfil the prophecies of Chzo. The harpsichord was then destroyed and made into a crate for the O'Malley Shipping Company. An African man eventually creates an Idol out of wood from this crate, only to be killed by the Prince. Sir DeFoe then found the idol on one of his trips to Africa.

Trilby eventually finds the stump of Cabadath's soul tree near the hotel and identifies it as the center of the world-shifts; Lenkmann arrives and reveals himself as a member of the Order. He then proceeds to stab Trilby to subdue him and attempts to use him as a sacrifice to the Prince to allow him to manifest in the World of Technology, but Trilby wills himself to death before the demon can be summoned; the Prince mortally wounds the agent in anger, and drags his soul into the Ethereal Realm.

Shortly after, Trilby is revived through mysterious means (not explained until 6 Days a Sacrifice), and takes the idol. Knowing he cannot merely destroy it, he closes the game pondering how to dispose of it safely. In the post-credits epilogue, the Prince and Lenkmann, now Chzo's faceless "Puppet", present the waistcoat of Trilby, with his blood, to the Order of Blessed Agonies, thus continuing the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Chzo.

6 Days a Sacrifice

6 Days a Sacrifice is the fourth and final game in order of release, and 3rd in order of the game series' timeline, placed 196 years after 5 Days and Notes and 196 years before 7 Days. You play Theo DaCabe, a council surveyor who is trying to run a health and safety assessment on the headquarters of a fictional fad religion called Optimology (a not-too-subtle dig at Scientology) and gets embroiled in the machinations of the overarching series plot.

The Special Edition includes author commentary, an "expanded, slightly less ambiguous ending", the soundtrack in midi format, and character profiles on most of the characters in the series, in the guise of dossiers from the Ministry of Occultism.

The game also has a series of accompanying interactive fiction games, called the Countdown Trilogy, which were used as teaser trailers for the release of the point-and-click graphical adventure itself. They used the Z-machine language for implementation and need an interpreter such as WinFrotz to run. These games were developed using the Inform7 development system. Each of the three text adventures is named after and represents one of the three Blessed Agonies, an important plot element in the second half of the main series, and the three aspects of being, important throughout the series.

6 Days a Sacrifice won Best Story and Best Non-player Character (Trilby) in the 2007 AGS Awards, having received a total of 7 nominations. This brings the total number of AGS Awards for the series to 13 and nominations to 36, although The Art of Theft, not strictly part of the series, received a further 2 awards.[20]

Story

The game takes place 196 years after 5 Days a Stranger and 196 years before 7 Days a Skeptic. Theo DaCabe, a building inspector, is sent to inspect the headquarters of a new "religion," Optimology, after the police receive an anonymous tip about an unauthorized extension of the Optimology building. Once inside, a Mr. Garriott shoves him down an elevator shaft to imprison him. He is rescued by two escaped prisoners of the Optimologists, a shady biochemist, Dr. Samantha Harty, and an overenthusiastic journalist, Janine Orzechowski. Samantha soon informs Theo that Optimology is a cover up and money-making operation for the secretly operated Order of the Blessed Agonies, which seeks to bring Chzo into the Scientific Realm, the World of Technology. The building was built around the ruins of DeFoe Manor, which still houses John DeFoe's mind, even though his body is destroyed 196 years earlier and his soul is destroyed 196 years later.

With the help of a mysterious figure known only as the Caretaker, a barefooted bald man clothed in tattered blood-red robes, they are able to repeatedly escape capture by the Order. The three eventually open the "Hub," the chamber that contains the ruins of the DeFoe Manor, but, while exploring John DeFoe's mind, Samantha dies from a mysterious slit throat incurred when she goes to explore the hub. Theo later deduces that Samantha once worked for the Order to help restrain John DeFoe's mind by perpetually cloning Trilby; DeFoe had become so fearful of Trilby that his mere presence was enough to keep the house stable and contained within the Hub. Theo, Janine, and a Trilby clone venture into the Hub, but Trilby is once again killed by the Prince, allowing for the entrance of John DeFoe. Theo and Janine escape to the sleeping quarters, where Janine, even more distressed by the recent events, makes love to Theo to receive comfort. She is possessed by DeFoe the next day, prompting her murder by the Prince. The Caretaker soon explains her dark possession: Theo's love for her tainted her with the darkness of his fate. Theo, now desperate to uncover the truth behind the madness, explores the Hub with a number of Trilby clone escorts who are continually killed by the Prince. He dons the apron, welding mask, and machete of John Defoe and enters a portal in the manor's kitchen. Theo explores strange visions (including one of the spaceship Mephistopheles explaining the hand reaching out of the locker in Dr. Somerset's dream in 7 Days a Skeptic). After these visions he finds himself in the DeFoe basement, where he discovers a "nanoexplosive" bomb powerful enough to destroy the entire Optimology building. Theo discovers that the bomb is disarmed; however, the manor is set ablaze by the last remaining Trilby clone when the Caretaker suggests that the manor is not burned down as it should be. The flaming petrol reaches and detonates the bomb, destroying the Hub, the manor containing DeFoe's mind, and allowing Chzo to bridge the Realms of Technology and Magick. In this incident, Theo suffers through terrible visions before his death.

However, instead of sending his own minions to the Scientific Realm, Chzo only brings Theo and the last surviving Trilby clone into the Ethereal Realm, the World of Magick, before the bridge closes once again. He transforms Theo, who has inadvertently become his acolyte as a result of the Blessed Agonies he has suffered: the Blessed Agony of the Body, due to his fall down the elevator shaft; the Blessed Agony of the Soul, due to the loss of Janine, whom he loved; and the Blessed Agony of the Mind, due to his traumatic visions before his apparent death. Theo becomes the New Prince and proceeds to kill the Prince (or the "Arrogant Man", as his true title is revealed at the end) and replace him as Chzo's foremost servant. The Trilby clone is imprisoned and tortured by Chzo, who feeds on his agony.

In a cutaway segment, the Caretaker is revealed to be Malcolm Somerset, the protagonist of 7 Days a Skeptic, who murdered and impersonated his father Jonathan, and who has been convicted for the murders of all the people killed by DeFoe's spirit aboard the starship Mephistopheles. Somerset has been committed to an asylum for the criminally insane; however, he is given by the Caretaker—now revealed to have instructed Somerset to kill his father—a magical knife-key once belonging to the Order's founder. This key opens a fleshy door in his cell, allowing him to descend an increasingly bloodied staircase, invoking flashbacks to the Mephistopheles where he sees the crew members deaths through John DeFoe's eyes; this is perhaps a metaphor for Somerset's suicide (his guards later find him dead in his cell). The mind and soul of an individual killed with Frehorn's Blade remain together after death, making the person's spirit immensely powerful but subject to the will of whoever wielded the Blade; Somerset has exploited a loophole in these rules by committing suicide with it and therefore remaining fully under his own control. He is transformed into a being of pure will, able to travel across time and between both realms. He enters Chzo's body to find the deteriorating clone of Trilby, captured after the explosion, who asks Somerset to kill him with Frehorn's Blade. Somerset does so and the Trilby-clone's life force is transferred to the real Trilby, who is about to die at the Clanbronwyn Hotel (this comes from the end of Trilby's Notes, where his survival was not explained). Travelling back to the complex, Somerset finally prompts the Trilby clone to set fire to the DeFoe Manor. Watching the destruction of the Optimology building, Somerset discloses in a final monologue that he is destiny's servant, and that his duty is only to make sure that time plays out as he foresees—now preparing to yet again prompt his young self to kill his father, setting forth the events occurring in 7 Days A Skeptic.

References

  1. ^ O Reilly's Gaming Hacks index: 5 Days a Stranger cited 15 December 2006
  2. ^ 5 Days a stranger site cited 15 December 2006
  3. ^ AGS Games page for 5 Days a Stranger, showing that it won 5 AGS Awards cited 15 December 2006
  4. ^ adventurelantern.com review of 5DAS cited 15 December 2006
  5. ^ adventuregamers.com review of 5DAS cited 15 December 2006
  6. ^ popmatters.com review of 5DAS cited 15 December 2006
  7. ^ Game Hippo 5DAS review cited 15 December 2006
  8. ^ fullyramblomatic.com: 25/1/07: Icey Sacrificey Nicey cited 23. November 2007
  9. ^ fivedaysastranger.com: 5/26/08: So, the project has ended. What's the future of this forum? Cited June 2008
  10. ^ fullyramblomatic.com: 7 Days a Skeptic (cited 13 December 2006)
  11. ^ AGS Games page, showing the 2 AGS Awards the game won (cited 13 December 2006)
  12. ^ 7DAS Review at adventuregamers.com (cited 13 December 2006)
  13. ^ acid-play.com 7DAS review (cited 13 December 2006)
  14. ^ A-for-adventure 7DAS review (cited 13 December 2006)
  15. ^ 7DAS Adventure Lantern review (cited 13 December 2006)
  16. ^ Osiris Games Freeforall 7DAS review (cited 13 December 2006)
  17. ^ AGS Awards for 2006 winners (cited 13 February 2007)
  18. ^ fullyramblomatic.com: 5/7/06: Special School cited 23. November 2007
  19. ^ fullyramblomatic.com 3/7/06: The Two-Faced Thief cited on 23. November 2007
  20. ^ AGS Awards 2007 cited 26 February 2008

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chzo_Mythos&oldid=268825832"