Indigo Prophecy

Indigo Prophecy is a mystery-driven action/adventure game that harkens back to the point-and-click era. The game incorporates rhythm mini-games at key points as you try to figure out why you murdered a stranger in a local diner.

PlayStation 2

Overview

Indigo Prophecy (or Fahrenheit, as it's known outside of North America) is an adventure game developed by Quantic Dream and published by Atari. Indigo Prophecy's core focus is making the gameplay feel like an interactive movie with sophisticated story. It was designed by David Cage, who portrays himself as an NPC in the tutorial and introduces the demo. The game has sold 700,000 copies worldwide.

The game was released as an Xbox Originals title to the Xbox Live Marketplace, clocking in at 1.90 gigabytes.

Story

Carla Valenti (left) and Lucas Kane (right).

The game starts off with the protagonist Lucas Kane in the bathroom of a New York diner. Lucas, in a trance state, attacks and murders a fellow customer. Confused by what has just happened, Lucas flees the scene before his crime is discovered. Soon the diner is investigated by detectives Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles. It turns out that Lucas was possessed by The Oracle looking for Indigo Child. Indigo Child is a little girl with a perfectly pure soul who has never been incarnated, and thus she carries the secrets of life within her soul.

In order to find the child, The Oracle goes around mind-controlling people and forcing them to kill other people according to an ancient ritual. While the victim is dying, The Oracle is able to peer through "The Snake" and see into the afterlife which lets him look for Indigo Child.

The Oracle is looking for her and every time he wants a peek he has to arrange for somebody to kill somebody else. Lucas was exposed to a radioactive artifact in a military base when he was growing up, which filled him with The Chroma. The Chroma was dormant in his system for most of his life, only occasionally manifesting itself in the form of clairvoyant visions. After his contact with The Oracle, The Chroma gets stronger and he begins to get super-powers (which resemble The Matrix movies). His powers include Wall-running, Kung Fu, bullet-time, super jumping, and so forth. The oracle never stops pursuing Lucas at any cost. Throughout the game, Lucas is pursued by these detectives, which leads to the discovery of something more paranormal behind the murder. The detectives begin to notice other murders in the same vein with the same patterns. The story faces Lucas with the responsibility to fight for the safety of the world.

Meanwhile, the temperature is dropping. At the start of the game, New York is in a period of unusually cold weather, but later the player becomes informed that the whole planet is freezing over in some cataclysm of ice and snow. The change is extremely abrupt.

Lucas gets a phone call from his ex-girlfriend for a meeting. He then goes to an amusement park to save the life of his girlfriend, who was apparently kidnapped by The Oracle. Turns out this was a trap and Lucas and his ex-girlfriend later fall to their death. But surprisingly, we then see Undead Lucas (dark circles under his eyes, pale, gray hair, wrapped in bandages, and without body heat) team up with Detective Carla, at which point everything we know about her character is thrown out the window as she joins up with a (dead) wanted criminal to help him look for the aforementioned Indigo Child. Carla then falls in love with Lucas.

Lucas rescues the Indigo Child, and has a huge battle against The Oracle. At the end Lucas runs away, and leaps into an apartment window at random trying to escape from The Oracle. Inside he meets yet another player in the battle for the child, the Purple Clan. The Purple Clan is a glowing yellow sentient AI who are after Indigo Child to capture the world. Lucas is led into the sewers by a new ally - The Invisibles. They're a group that has been fighting against the Orange Clan for thousands of years. Their members are all homeless people. They welcome Carla, Lucas, and the Indigo Child.

The Indigo Child doesn't speak or act of her own volition. She doesn't act like a kid and nobody ever treats her like one. The Invisibles explain that the Orange Clan is a powerful organization that controls the world banks and governments. Carla and Lucas are later seen making love to each other.

After that they get in a snowplow and drive Indigo child to the Midwest, where Lucas was originally exposed to The Chroma. Both the Purple Clan and the Orange Clan are waiting when they arrive.

At this point, based on the player's actions, the Purple Clan, Orange Clan, or human race rule the world.

Gameplay

The gameplay in Indigo Prophecy focuses on keeping a cinematic feel throughout the game. The game puts a strong focus on quick time events and in-game camera angles - notably, it uses " split screen" to play two separate scenes against one another (for example, a police car on its way to a crime scene and a character at that scene trying to get answers before the police arrive). The most notable gameplay aspect of Indigo is that the face buttons are rarely, if ever, used. Most of the game-play is focused on the right analog stick: the player moves the right analog stick in an approximation of the action to be performed (the available motions are displayed at the bottom of the screen).

The game does a good job of remembering the players' actions in later story threads. Depending on your actions and what you say in the game, you can affect how things move throughout the plot. For example, in one sequence at the start of the game you have a choice of saving a boy who is drowning in a frozen lake or fleeing from a cop that will likely recognize you. If you save the boy you are recognized by a police officer who was at the diner. If you choose to let the child drown, Lucas' depression deepens.

Indigo Prophecy has a mental health meter. This meter is affected by the actions you make in the world and the things you say when your interacting with characters. Most of the time, major events in the game will decrease your mental health - but you can raise the meter by doing normal daily activities (drinking, washing your hands, listening to music, etc.) When the mental health meter reaches zero, the player will be punished with a game-over screen and must restart from the last checkpoint. While interesting and innovative, Cage remarked that the mental health concept came into the design too late to be integrated significantly into the game's plot.

You play as four different characters: Lucas Kane, Carla Valenti, Tyler Miles and occasionally Markus Kane. The characters do not necessarily work for the same cause. This is especially present in some scenes - in one scene, the player must create a photo fit of Lucas Kane; depending on how similar the produced image is, later missions as Kane become more difficult.

The final, and arguably most important, aspect of the gameplay is the dialogue. As with all other interactions, dialogues are performed on the right analog stick where you choose what you want to say by moving it up down left or right. The dialog has many different effects on the plot. Depending on what you say to people, it affects your mental health, with the meter going down if you interact in a negative way and the meter going up if you interact in a positive way. The dialog is also used in some interrogation scenes affecting the kind of information you get from the crime scene depending on what you ask. Indigo Prophecy features three endings.

Changes to the North American version

In the United States and Canada, the game's title was changed from Fahrenheit to Indigo Prophecy to avoid confusion with the documentary movie Fahrenheit 9/11. The nude scenes featured in the game were also removed. These scenes include full frontal nudity, as well as an interactive sex scene, though the latter does not feature portrayal of reproductive organs. "Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Director's Cut" was released as a Windows-only release for North America. This version is rated Adults Only, even though the versions in other parts of the world featuring said scenes have lower age limits.