Belief & Betrayal
Preview
Grizzly murders cut down the agents of the Vatican secret service
by Marko Susimetsä
previewed on PC
An adventure to look forward to
It's been a long time in translation, but it seems that the English speaking world will finally see the release of Belief & Betrayal in early 2008. The developer, Artematica, and publisher, DTP Entertainment, have been practically sitting on this potential gem for about a year, since it was already released in France, Italy and Germany in early 2007. Even with my weak grasp of the German language, I know that it is a game to be looked forward to for any fan of traditional adventure games. It is very surprising, however, that the translation is taking this long, but the word is that the developers really want to make the English version as good as it can be. But, let's take a closer look at what we can expect.
Conspiracy inside the Church
I dare to presume that practically everyone reading this will know what I'm talking about when I mention the name DaVinci Code. Besides being a predictable story about a yawn-inducing idea of a certain person having living family to this very day, it also gave birth to a whole flock of similar books and stories of conspiracies inside the Christian Church. Personally, I don't rightly see what the point of making up these tragic stories is, when there are several much more exciting and much bloodier stories about the Christian church that actually took place and are recorded in our history books. But perhaps it is easier to let the readers/viewers think that “ah, but this is just a story” than to actually tell them all the awful stuff that people have done in the name of the Church and religion in real life. But I digress...
Belief & Betrayal tells a story of a conspiracy that took place sometime in 1194 A.D. but has repercussions to this very day. Or, in the case of the game, all the way to 2006 (it may well be that the English translation will come with a fresher date stamp). And the said repercussions are rather grim and bloody, which sets the story apart from a pure DaVinci Code copycat and more towards a more traditional thriller.
Our hero, Jonathan Danter lives comfortably in New York in a relatively spacious apartment and does some journalist's work as a hobby (being a full-time journalist would certainly not let him live so comfortably). Jonathan has just received a phone call from the magazine that he works for, but his departure for a regular news-finding trip is interrupted when he receives a phone call from the Great Britain and the Scotland Yard at that. He learns that his uncle, Franc Danter has just been found brutally murdered in a manner reminiscent of several other victims found in the near past: disembowelled and hung up on a wall in the posture reminiscent of someone being crucified.
There's only one slight problem to this piece of news, as far as Jon (poor Jonathan's nickname) is concerned: his uncle Franc has been already dead for 10 years. This revelation is quickly explained, though, since it turns out that Franc Danter was actually working as a special secret agent for Vatican – one of many such agents who has been murdered lately. And Jon, as one of the surviving members of the Danter family, may well be in danger as well. It is up to Jon to find out what has happened and save himself in the process. In his quest, he will visit several locations in Europe, such as London, Venice, Vatican etc.
Ah, the joys of point&click
Ever since the first graphical adventure games came to the market, we've been blessed/cursed with the simple point&click interface in our adventure games. That is, unless we play action adventure games where we get treated with the traditional WASD gameplay. In essence, you hunt for hotspots on the settings and click on everything that can be clicked on and wait for Jon to walk over to the thing clicked and say something about it. And when it turns out that you cannot do something, such as turn on a laptop since the battery has run out, it is up to you to solve this puzzle to advance in the story.
