When we last left our intrepid hero, he had vaulted over
lava, acquired a mighty blade, slain enemies and dodged giant lasers, all
before taking a magical portal to some unknown location. Coming up next in our
engaging tale of heroics, we have…something completely unrelated.
Seems this kid just
woke up! Presumably from dreaming he was in a segment with better gameplay
Fashion and Faffing About
The next scene we see in the game after Sphinx is sucked
into the creepy portal gods gaping maw is that of a Prince being awoken by his
maid and told it’s his birthday. Bit of a tonal shift. Anyway, he’s told that
everyone is preparing a party for him and that he should go see how things are
going. You can actually don yourself in one of two pieces of attire in your
room before leaving, one the blue get-up seen above and the other a garish pink
affair. This serves no purpose gameplay wise other than to keep you from being
able to progress and having people make fun of you until you choose blue. This was
presumably left over from the fashion
diva portion of the game that was later cut.
Anyway, as you leave your room you see a clearly charming
and innocent fellow coercing, er, persuading
some girl that it might be wise to take interest in the prince’s brother rather
than him. Captain Clearly-Not-Evil then stomps off and leaves a piece of paper
behind him. Meanwhile back with the Prince, you’re told to go meet
aforementioned girl, whose name is Nefertiti, out in the courtyard, as she was
asking about you. When you get out there she greets you but mentions before you
talk she needs you to get the piece of paper Captain CNE left behind, as it was
blown up to a balcony she can’t reach.
After a sequence chasing a crow all around a courtyard
that really takes longer than it should, you manage to obtain the piece of
paper. Now that you have that, you can finally have a nice long chat with…oh, never
mind. It seems that Nefertiti isn’t actually going to tell us what was on the paper, why she wanted it, or…anything at
all, really. She just says that you need to talk later (without specifying why
you can’t now) and says to watch your
back. Gee, thanks a lot, that’s so specific and helpful. Guess I’ll just go
wander around the palace like an idiot.
The Grand Hall. For a
game that came out in 2003, Sphinx actually looks pretty decent
You can wander around talking to your brother and other
people, but they don’t have much interesting to say. Apart from your brother alluding
to being a bit jealous of you everyone is pretty much preparing and waiting for
the party to start. However, there is one person who has something for you to
do, and given that it’s literally the only thing for you to do there isn’t much
choice in the matter. Seems some lady who looks suspiciously like the wife or
sister of Captain CNE wants you to collect some old amulets for her. Not for
any reason in particular, just to store them in the treasure room.
Suspicious old lady
wants me to collect a bunch of ancient hidden artifacts for no purpose at all?
Seems legit, I’ll take the case!
And with that, we are once again given purpose. Now we’ve
upgraded from wandering around the palace like a moron with nothing to do to
wandering around the palace like a moron on a fetch quest! Progress!
The Most Circuitous Route to Accomplishing Nothing
There are a mighty 8
amulets to collect in the palace, and whoever had them last was apparently part
magpie. They’re found in places they have absolutely no reason being, like
behind statues, in wardrobes, and littered around secret passages. Did I mention
there are secret passages?
As it turns out, something like half the bloody palace is
comprised entirely of secret passages. You wander around them collecting
amulets and solving puzzles for a bit. Then one of the secret passages happens
to let out in a room where your brother and Captain CNE are talking. Hiding out
of sight, you overhear them discussing some plans for today’s ceremony; talking
about how the Sarcophagi are in place, and how they should hurry because
Nefertiti is getting suspicious. They then mention how they have a surprise for
the Prince today that he won’t soon forget, and walk away laughing manically
happily.
“A surprise? I love
surprises! Oh that wacky Captain CNE, always looking out for me!”
So after your two kind and caring friends leave the room,
you find that they’ve left a key on the table. Labeled the Sarcophagus Key, you
can probably guess what it opens. Now you had previously seen some Sarcophagi
suspiciously located in the Grand Hall. Or maybe it’s the Great Hall, or
something else, I don’t recall. Anyway, when you head over to the Grandiose
Hall and open one of the Sarcophagi you discover they have the mysterious power
to warp you to another Sarcophagus. This can be used to both reach some
previously inaccessible places in the Gargantuan Hall, as well as (sigh) more
secret passages.
You wander around these various passages collecting the
remainder of the amulets. They really do weave all around the palace. Hell, one
of the passages comes out inside a wardrobe in your own room! And that passage
has a key that lets you open another wardrobe to discover the second secret passage into the prince’s bedroom.
Leaving out what a ridiculous gap in palace security this
is, are you telling me I’ve gone my entire life without ever opening literally half of my wardrobes?
We’re almost done with this fetch quest, but let me say that
the last room in these secret passages is bloody enormous. It’s a giant room with a bottomless pit that you have to
shimmy and carefully navigate above of. I have to say that the prince has got to
be really damn devoted to this lady
to openly risk his life multiple times just to do her a favor. Or he could just
be a simpleton. Take your pick. The other thing that bothers me about this room
is that it has several gigantic windows along the walls. Now, this certainly
makes the scenery look nicer but think about that for a second. We are in a
secret, undiscovered part of the palace which just happens to have what must be
at least 20 foot tall windows clearly
exposing it to the outside world. So how exactly has it remained a secret?
So anyway, we finally finish collecting all 8 of the
amulets and bring them back to the totally unsuspicious lady (I would call her
something else, but I can’t remember if she’s given a name). She is very
grateful for your assistance, but also wants you to take the amulets to the
treasure room for her. She asks this because she is reportedly, and I quote, “too
tired” to take them herself. Lady, I have been searching all around this bloody
palace, pulling statues, solving puzzles, crawling through hidden passageways
and dangling over freaking bottomless
pits, all to get these amulets for you. In the meantime, you have been
handling the extremely strenuous activity of standing in place chatting. Remind me again why you’re the one that’s
tired?
Of course we’re not given a choice in the matter, so off
to the treasure room we go. When we arrive, we find the treasure room empty and
your head of security waiting inside. He tells you that somehow, the contents
of the treasure have been stolen! It seems that the only thing the thieves left
was some strange Sarcophagus in the back of the room…
A puzzle of this caliber
would absolutely stupefy Horus
Now, you’re probably thinking several things at the
moment, but if you’re like me one of them is not “It’d be a swell idea to blindly wander into that Sarcophagus
without telling anyone”. This is a point that has been bothering me for a
while. The whole time you’ve been cavorting around hidden passages several
times your head of security has noticed and expressed concern for your safety.
He’s cautioned you about wandering around and generally seemed like a good guy.
And yet, at absolutely no point are you allowed to talk to him about anything.
You can’t tell him about the mysterious note, or collecting the amulets, or the
sinister conversation you overheard, or even about the Sarcophagus you’re about
to blunder into.
I understand why this has to happen from a gameplay
perspective. You need the narrative to go a certain way and can’t have the
player just sit back and wait for the game to make the next move. However, I
certainly feel that this whole segment with the prince, though a nice sentiment
as a break from combat and so forth, is a bit contrived. If they could just
come up with a better reason behind
why you’re doing these things (and perhaps shorten the fetch quest a bit), then
it would help things a lot. But due to your protagonists mute status and the
overall structure of events it feels like the only motivation for doing any of
these things is because the game is telling you to and it’s the only way to
progress, which is never a good thing.
At any rate, we don’t have a choice in the matter, so
into the Sarcophagus we go. On the other side we see our brother and Captain CNE
rallying a bunch of troops. Could it be that they are not, in fact, of entirely
of noble intentions? Not Captain CNE! Clearly his completely unexpected betrayal
will cut deep into our hearts. Apparently
they are planning on using this Sarcophagus to storm the palace and take the
throne, and it is at the opportune time of just after they announce this that
you walk straight out of it. Your brother yells for the guards to seize you and
the screen fades to black.
When next we return to this series, we’ll switch
perspective to a random palace maid who has to collect a dozen sacred lost
feather dusters to…nah I’m just kidding, we’re going to get back to the interesting part.
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