COMPUTE!'s Gazette March 1987 Page 73|
Transcribed by: Patrick Kellum |
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*Trinity*
Trinity is the latest in a long line of successful and high-quality text
adventures from Infocom. Infocom has earned an excellent reputation for
"interactive fiction," where the program user becomes the central character in a
fictional story that unfolds as the user reacts to circumstances presented in
the story. _Trinity_ follows the Infocom tradition of high quality and
excellence, but is unique to Commodore users in that it is exclusively for the
128 mode of the Commodore 128 and requires an 80-column monitor. The depth,
complexity, and flexibility of _Trinity_ apparently made the program's memory
requirements too large for the Commodore 64. As a 128 owner, I was glad to see
Infocom's support of the 128, but _Trinity_'s inability to run on a 40-column
monitor will exclude many 128 owners who have not acquired or upgraded to a
monitor capable of displaying 80 colurnns.
The program comes on a single two-sided disk that will load on a 1541, 1571, or
compatible disk drive. Side 1 of the disk is loaded first; you are then prompted
to "flip" the disk over to finish loading the program. Because _Trinity_ does
not take advantage of the double-sided storage capacity of the 1571 disk drive,
Commodore 128 owners who have single-sided 1541s will be able to run the
program.
Once the program is loaded, you are thrust into a world where fantasy and
reality coexist. _Trinity_ provides you with two objectives. Your preliminary
objective is to survive a nuclear holocaust. _Trinity_'s story begins with your
character on vacation in England. While you're minding your own business and
touring London's Kensington Gardens, World War II breaks out and world
destruction is imminent. Your only hope of survival is to not be there when it
happens. But how does one escape world destruction? In _Trinity_, you escape by
entering a new time, place, and dimension.
Once you've succeeded in discovering the escape route from Kensington Gardens,
you are thrust into a strange new place reminiscent of Alice's Wonderland, with
giant toadstools filling the landscape. From this strange new land you embark on
a quest. With no explanation of how to accomplish the goal, the primary
objective in _Trinity_ is to alter the history of the development of the atomic
bomb. As you work to accomplish your goal, your intelligence and ingenuity will
be put to the test with the curious new universe in which you are placed and its
challenging and perplexing puzzles. I found the most unique aspect to the
_Trinity_ universe was that its shape is what is known as "Klein bottle" or
"Mobius strip," which is one of those curious solid shapes that has no sides. In
a universe with a "Klein bottle" shape, if you moved in one direction long
enough, you would end up where you began. In _Trinity_, this results in some
very confusing navigation, as you instruct the program to go east, but actually
end up going west.
As you work to accomplish your goal, your intelligence and ingenuity will be put
to the test with the curious new universe in which you are placed and its
challenging and perplexing puzzles.
The quest to obtain your goal reaches truly epic proportions, as you travel
through time and space to certain times and locations key to the development of
the atomic weapon. If you are cunning enough, you'll wind up in the New Mexico
desert, minutes before the culmination of the greatest scientific experiment of
all time: the world's first atomic explosion, code-named Trinity.
The program comes with several "props" to both add to the atmosphere and realism
of the story, and to provide hints and clues to help you on your quest. The
props include _The Illustrated Story of the Atomic Bomb_, a somewhat amusing and
satirical comic book on the A-bomb; a map of the Trinity site; a cardboard
sundial; and instructions on how to make a paper bird (a crane). The instruction
manual is well written and provides many helpful examples and explanations,
particularly to text-adventure novices. _Trinity_'s parser is complex and
flexible, permitting a much smoother and friendlier approach to communicating
your commands. The program boasts a vocabulary of over 2000 words and permits
fairly complex sentence syntax. The user can put several objects with certain
verbs in a single command by separating the objects with the word _and_ or by a
comma. Further, you can put several sentences on one command input line if you
separate each sentence by a period or the word _then_. I found communicating my
commands to _Trinity_ easier and less intrusive to playing the game than with
any other text adventure I have played before, including previous Infocom
titles.
Since _Trinity_ will take several hours to complete, and even longer to fully
explore all of its universe, the program allows you to save your position and
restore to that position at a later time. You are allowed to save up to four
different game positions per data disk. Saving your position can be strategic in
the game, particularly when you are about to embark on a dangerous action which
may threaten your life and continued involvement in the story. By saving your
position just prior to taking such action, you can return to the place just
prior to that action without having to start from scratch.
_Trinity_ has several special commands, permitting you to vary the length and
detail of descriptions and dialogue the story provides. Also, if you
accidentally mistype a word, you can use the Oops command to correct the
mistyped word without having to completely reenter the previous command.
Finally, the Script and Unscript commands permit you to make a hardcopy of the
story as it unfolds with your printer. _Trinity_ will work with Commodore
printers or printers that can emulate Commodore printers.
Bryan Moriarty, author of _Trinity_ and the previous Infocom title
_Wishbringer_, did an excellent job of making such a curious blend of fantasy
and reality meld into an intriguing new universe. The dialogue in _Trinity_ is
well written and often very amusing. The only time the dialogue is puzzling or
confusing is when it is intended to be so. Prior to seeing _Trinity_, I was
somewhat disappointed to hear that Infocom had not added graphics to its text
adventure, particularly since it was utilizing the larger memory of the
Commodore 128. However, Infocom stuck to what it knows best, a pure text
adventure, and the program does not lack for excitement. The descriptive
dialogue in _Trinity_ invokes one's imagination to visualize the _Trinity_
universe, similar to the way a good book does for its readers. Therefore, after
having explored _Trinity_, I believe Infocom made the correct choice to leave
graphics up to the user's imagination.
All in all, _Trinity_ is a first-quality text adventure that will entertain and
challenge its users. The program, as with all good interactive fiction, was more
addicting to me than arcade-style games, as I discovered myself spending much
more time engrossed in _Trinity_ than intended. Both newcomers to interactive
fiction and experienced players will find _Trinity_ enjoyable and well worth the
purchase price.
-Scott Thomas
Infocom
125 Cambridge Park Dr
Cambridge, MA 02240
$39.95
