Beneath a Steel Sky
DESCRIPTION OF BENEATH A STEEL SKY
Story
The game takes place at an unknown time in the future within Australia, where the earth has presumably been devastated by pollution or nuclear radiation and the majority of mankind (that we know of) is forced to live in domed cities. The story is introduced by a comic book sequence by Dave Gibbons that depicts a young boy as a sole survivor from a crash landing in the Australian outback reffered to in this future as simply the "gap". Unable to fend for himself the comic explains how he is raised by a local group that largely consists of Australian Aboriginals whom teach him to hunt kangaroos and whom eventually name him Robert Foster after the Australian beer, Fosters. Notably in some countries (eg USA) due to copyright issues the beer label displayed in the introduction is altered to show a generic beer brand in place of the Fosters label.
As Robert Foster becomes a man he is eventully captured by stormtroopers from "Union City", which is completely administered by an all-powerful computer called LINC. Notably Union City mentions major streets found in Australia's largest city, Sydney, lending weight to the argument that Union City is actually a future version of it.
Robert Foster, manages to escape from his captors as the helicopter transporting him crashes just after entering the dome, leaving him and his robot friend, Joey, to find out why they were brought there and where to go next.
Joey has a unique survivability and adaptibility since his entire personality is stored on a removable circuit board, which can be easily inserted in many types of robots. This allows Joey to change bodies as the situation warrents, provided the circuit board isn't damaged. Joey, however, is not always happy about Robert's choice of body for him.
Background
In the future world of Beneath a Steel Sky, each of the seven states of Australia have been consumed by their capital city and are described as a "City State".
Union City is the second largest of the six remaining City States after the aquisition of Asio-City. Notably ASIO is Australia’s national security service.
After the 'Euro-American War' all particpants agreed upon a set of ideals described as the 'neo democratic principles' which removes all labour representation and social benefits. Ironically those that subscribe to these principles are called 'Unions' contrasting the real world defintion of what a Union pushes for. Those that apose the Unions ideals are called 'Corporations'.
All of the City States are descibed as either being Corporations or Unions.
The backstory involves a conflict between Union City and Hobart Corporation fighting over 'market' dominance by the use of sabotage which is used as a common theme throughout the story. Hobart is the capital city of the Australian state Tasmania.
In May 1995 Beneath a Steel Sky was awarded the prestigious Golden Joystick Award for 'The Best Adventure'
SPECIFICATIONS OF BENEATH A STEEL SKY
Genre:
Adventure,
Science FictionLanguage:
EnglishOperating System:
DOS,
Windows 9x,
Windows XP,
Windows NT,
Macintosh,
LinuxGame data:
Binary executable,
DataLicence:
Revolution Software Freeware License
TIMELINE OF BENEATH A STEEL SKY
Released: 1 January 1994
Rereleased: 2 August 2003
Added to RIP: 31 May 2005
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