HN Books @HNBooksMonth

Great game, although it does suffer from some of the same obtuse puzzle solutions that plagued other adventure games of the time. I went through it with a guide, and I still have no idea why I did some of the things in the order that I did in order to get the "best" ending.

Anyone who buys the game on Steam or GOG will get the short story as a downloadable bonus, so that's pretty cool.

EDIT: This passage suggests that Harlan's original script for the famous Star Trek episode is somehow lost to the annals of history:

> As good as the produced version of the episode is, Ellison insisted until his death that the undoctored script he first submitted was far, far better — and it must be acknowledged that at least some of the people who worked on Star Trek agreed with him. In a contemporaneous memo, producer Bob Justman lamented that, following several rounds of editing and rewriting, “there is hardly anything left of the beauty and mystery that was inherent in the screenplay as Harlan originally wrote it.”

It's not. It has long been published and available for people to read:

https://www.amazon.com/Harlan-Ellisons-City-Edge-Forever/dp/...

It was even adapted into a graphic novel that followed the original screenplay:

https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-City-Edge-Forever/dp/163140...

Having read both, and watched the episode, I can confidently say that the original script was miles better than what we got.

⬐ MrLeap

"In pre-release publicity for I have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Ellison said that it would be a game "you cannot possibly win". Though the gaming media found that the finished game backed away from this controversial promise,[5] and Sears said that he had convinced Ellison that having a game with only negative endings was a bad idea,[2] "

I wonder if the arcane method to get the good ending was a compromise on this point.

⬐ inopinatus

Years later, Yoko Taro did it anyway and sold millions of copies.

⬐ dudeman13

Oh come on now, it was at least somewhat bittersweet and hopeful in the end.

"Wish for them to survive?"

"Do you have any interest in helping the weak?"

"Do you still wish to rescue someone - a total stranger - in spite of this?"

⬐ inopinatus

At which point the entirety of humanity is dead, the project to ostensibly reseed it is destroyed, any emergent alternative lifeforms have been eliminated (by you), and then the game literally deletes your save file.

It's closure, I guess, but it's no happy ending

⬐ k__

Yes, I liked the story and it's a trope by now. But never got along with the game.

⬐ sumtechguy

Yes the original was better. But the one we got was easier/cheaper to film and his had many special effects shots which would have put them over time budget as well. Remember at the time ST was not the money machine it is now and was one of the more costly shows on air, and they tried to turn them around in about 2-3 weeks (when at the time the average was less than 1-4 days for most shows). Money was one of the reasons we saw a good amount of vasquez rocks in the show. It is in the movie zone and the pay was cheaper.

⬐ arp242

Before Star Trek Ellison also did two episodes of The Outer Limits; actually, IIRC this is how he ended up writing for Star Trek, because Bob Justman worked with him before on The Outer Limits. In one of them a soldier accidentally travels back in time to the then-present day (aptly named "Soldier").

In the first draft script Ellison wrote the time-travel scene had the soldier "flying through time" with spaceships and dinosaurs and what-have-you. They explained it was a great script but far too expensive to film due to all the required special effects, and told him to rewrite it to be cheaper. "Okay!", and so he went away to rewrite it. He came back and ... time-travel scene was still there! They again explained that filming the time-travel scene alone would cost several episodes worth of budget, and was simply an impossibility. He did not seem to understand; in his mind that scene was simply essential.

Needless to say, that episode was also not shot the way Ellison wrote it.

(This episode, together with the Demon with a Glass Hand episode he did for The Outer Limits, were allegedly plagiarized by James Cameron in the Terminator film – I have never seen any strong resemblances myself beyond some very superficial details; I guess the studio settled to avoid trouble, but it just seemed like Ellison being his difficult self more than anything else. He was a funny man, but also a difficult one with something of a vicious mean streak at times.)

⬐ washadjeffmad

There's a somewhat hilarious audiobook about this by Ellison (titled the same as the episode, I believe), which is mostly a well produced rant burying Roddenberry's versions of events (your justifications included) in 37 tons of molten lead and firing them into the heart of a nearby dying star.

When I started listening, I didn't know what it was and kept wondering when the story would start. By something like 30-40 minutes in, I was laughing so hard I decided I didn't even care if I ever heard the script. It's a masterpiece of pettiness only Harlan could have crafted.