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In some ways, Syberia reminds me a lot of The Longest Journey. Both are "classic" third-person point-and-click games, where a 3D character moves across a pre-rendered 2D background. Both have a female lead character -- in this case, Kate Walker is a New York lawyer sent to the small town of Valadilene to purchase a local toy and automaton factory for the American corporation she's representing. The owner of the factory, Anna Voralberg, passes away shortly before Kate arrives, so Kate must travel in search of Anna's long-lost brother Hans to close the deal.
Syberia seems to have been developed with a very high attention to detail. The graphics that I've seen so far are quite sharp and beautiful, helped in part by a higher resolution than has been typical in adventures (800x600 instead of the more common 640x480) and anti-aliasing of the 3D characters. Each of the locations should have a unique personality, which is conveyed quite well in the graphics I've seen so far -- it looks as if this may be one of those games where the screenshots accurately portray the entire product, not just a few select places.
I can't say a whole lot about the puzzles or story right now, but the short demo that I was able to play after E3 does suggest there will be a fair amount of dialogue and some reading of documents to do -- although perhaps not as much as in The Longest Journey. The game is also kind enough to give you "hints" as to why certain actions may be unavailable -- Kate will tell you that she needs to talk to the notary before picking up an item, for example, so you don't just get a mystery icon that leaves you guessing what comes next. This certainly isn't a feature unique to Syberia, but it's still one that seems to make other adventures less frustrating.
Syberia has the potential to be a very good game -- perhaps even one that might spark the interest of people who aren't typically fans of the adventure genre. It's due out in June in most of the world, although the distribution deal with DreamCatcher means US audiences will have to wait a while longer.
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Microids also promises what they call "natural dialogue engine," where a character's responses may depend on how you ask the question -- assuming that character wants to answer you at all. Other adventures have promised various emotion-based conversation systems that ended up doing little more than take a traditional dialogue tree and make you be nice to the person while you're talking to them. We'll therefore have to wait to see how this system works out in practice, but it could be quite interesting if done correctly.
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