Adventure Gamers - Forums

What makes The Last Express so special, is that instead of simply standing around waiting for you to talk to them, all the npc’s are controlled by an AI and will roam freely around the train, going about their business independently on the players actions. This also means that different events will occur, regardless of whether or not you are there to witness or take part of these actions.

This AI behaviour is however not just a gimmick or something happening in the background, instead it is the main puzzle mechanics and the whole game is very much based on this. In fact you could say that the main puzzle in this game consist simply of being at the right place at the right time.

For example if you decide to go into the dining car at a specific time, then you might bump into one of the characters and have an important conversation, that will also trigger some new possibilities. If however you happen to be somewhere else at this time, then you will never have this conversation and the new possibilities will never trigger, though depending on what you were doing instead, then it might open up other possibilities.

The effect of this is some very dynamic and interesting gameplay, where two different playthroughs will never be completely identical. It also means that it is actually entirely possible to miss large and important parts of the story, and I believe that it is physical impossible to experience everything in a single playthrough.

There is unfortunately also quite a bit of flaws in this system, and it soon becomes obvious that they didn’t even attempt to keep track of what you have actually experienced and adjust the different dialogues accordingly. A more severe problem is that it also means that there are plenty of dead-ends, even though there is some leeway and you don’t have to trigger all events, then missing too many will simply leave you wandering the train for hours without any possibilities to actually make any progress. The flaw that however annoyed me the most, is that the game is not a 100% consistent in this AI behaviour, and there are a couple of events that will only happen if we are there to witness it, even though we don’t play an active part in the event.

Despise these flaws, I am still a bit surprised that no other games have picked up on this idea and made similar gameplay. There are some games like Sinking Island, where time also passes in realtime, and the npc’s will change location, but still nothing like how it works in TLE.


There is also another special feature in TLE, and that is the time-rewind.
However in reality there is nothing special about this, the auto-rewind when you die, is no different than other games that auto-loads just before death, and the manual rewind is no different than simply loading an old save game.

What however is unique about this, is that it actually encourages you to make manual rewinds, and play the same sections multiple times until you get the best possible result or at least a result you are satisfied with.

Yeah, basically, Mechner had the balls to create the “breathing” world within a classic adventure mechanics, and not flirting with RPG elements along the way. That’s rarely seen, if ever - simply because it’s hard to do right, and easy to fall into the trap and fail miserably.

Cruise for a Corpse had some of these elements previously, but had none of the “cinematic” atmosphere of TLE, and GK3 as I’ve heard had it also to a certain extent. The brilliance of TLE, as I see it, is that it manages to overcome the most annoying and hated element in an adventure game (the dead end) simply by the power of an “atmosphere”, and that it’s one of the rare games that, in every moment, you have that one, big puzzle over your head that you need to solve: “What the hell is going on?”.

Iz - don’t forget to vote on the CCPT thread unless you are on overload like everyone else. 

Becky - 17 March 2016 03:33 PM

Is the game mechanic in TLE in any way a precursor to the Telltale-style choice-based mechanic? In the sense that merely choosing to be in a certain place at a certain time changes your experience?

Not really, though different experiences per playthrough is also a part of it.
You could say that the story is always the same, but you only get to experience a subset of it on each playthrough. (At least that was the impression I got, but like Wilco I have only played it once, and is not the expert on this game)

But a better way of thinking of this, is really to consider it to be one gigantic puzzle, where you have to learn as much of the story as you possible can, while also trigger enough events to avoid dead-ends and deaths.

wilco - 17 March 2016 02:17 PM

Well, that was some rambling… Anyway I recently backed this game A Place of the Unwilling that I’m curios to see how they will play with the mechanic.

Sounds like an interesting game.

*thread necromancy*


I’m finally playing The Last Express. Well, I started it over a year ago but got a bit lost without direction after Munich and abandoned it for a while.
The same happened again now (feeling stuck after Munich), but I got further in the game eventually.

The concert (from the screenshot on top) just lead to an absolutely AWESOME moment for me: walking through the concert crowd in plain view of Kronos, with his suitcase of gold that you just stole, and him being unable to stop you because he’s performing at the piano.

Robert Cath’s got some brass balls!