BioForge

About BioForge

BioForge (1995) is Origin's motion-captured interactive movie in which an amnesiac cyborg tries to escape the alien moon where mad scientists rebuilt him as a weapon.

BioForge in Depth

In writer Jack Herman's distant future, scientists called the Mondites plot to overthrow the galactic government, the Reticulum, by blending man and machine into assassins. On Daedalus, a moon once home to the long-vanished Phyxx, the base commander Dr. Mastaba mutilates abducted prisoners for his ABA Project, and with technology borrowed from the Phyxx he finally succeeds. Then an alien is accidentally revived from its tomb, damaging the reactor and killing half the base. The player is Experimental Unit AP-127, a cyborg who wakes in a cell with no memories and must uncover the truth about himself, the station and the alien race, learning much of the backstory from diaries left by the crew.

Play mixes exploration, item puzzles, fighting and conversation, with full control over a character whose identity depends on the player's actions. Tank controls let him turn, walk, run, sidestep and enter a combat stance with punches, kicks and hand-to-hand weapons, in a system compared to Alone in the Dark. A replaceable, depletable battery inside his body powers a regeneration system that heals all damage and a built-in projectile weapon, the PFD Prototype, and upgrading or swapping it is key at certain points. An armoured suit lets him survive the harsh atmosphere outside and explore an archaeological dig.

Making BioForge

A core team of ten under Ken Demarest developed it at Origin from February 1993 to March 1995, in C++ and assembly, with a custom script language for the world and an HTML-style language for the interface. Models built in 3D Studio were animated from actors captured with the Flock of Birds system, using an in-house pose editor called S.A.L.S.A., and John Tipton created the music and effects. Richard Garriott, helping launch the interactive movie theme, argued that FMV alone did not make a game an interactive movie. Reviews were mixed: its "first-class" graphics, detail and interactivity were praised, and Next Generation found its characters moved in "a smooth, utterly convincing manner", but its system requirements, combat and controls drew criticism, and Edge called it "enjoyable, but ultimately uninvolving". GOG.com re-released it in 2012.