[HN Gopher] I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
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I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
Author : aarestad
Score : 121 points
Date : 2021-10-22 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| [deleted]
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Great game, although it does suffer from some of the same obtuse
| puzzle solutions that plagued other adventure games of the time.
| I went through it with a guide, and I still have no idea why I
| did some of the things in the order that I did in order to get
| the "best" ending.
|
| Anyone who buys the game on Steam or GOG will get the short story
| as a downloadable bonus, so that's pretty cool.
|
| EDIT: This passage suggests that Harlan's original script for the
| famous Star Trek episode is somehow lost to the annals of
| history:
|
| > As good as the produced version of the episode is, Ellison
| insisted until his death that the undoctored script he first
| submitted was far, far better -- and it must be acknowledged that
| at least some of the people who worked on Star Trek agreed with
| him. In a contemporaneous memo, producer Bob Justman lamented
| that, following several rounds of editing and rewriting, "there
| is hardly anything left of the beauty and mystery that was
| inherent in the screenplay as Harlan originally wrote it."
|
| It's not. It has long been published and available for people to
| read:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Harlan-Ellisons-City-Edge-Forever/dp/...
|
| It was even adapted into a graphic novel that followed the
| original screenplay:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-City-Edge-Forever/dp/163140...
|
| Having read both, and watched the episode, I can confidently say
| that the original script was _miles_ better than what we got.
| MrLeap wrote:
| "In pre-release publicity for I have No Mouth, and I Must
| Scream, Ellison said that it would be a game "you cannot
| possibly win". Though the gaming media found that the finished
| game backed away from this controversial promise,[5] and Sears
| said that he had convinced Ellison that having a game with only
| negative endings was a bad idea,[2] "
|
| I wonder if the arcane method to get the good ending was a
| compromise on this point.
| inopinatus wrote:
| Years later, Yoko Taro did it anyway and sold millions of
| copies.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Yes the original was better. But the one we got was
| easier/cheaper to film and his had many special effects shots
| which would have put them over time budget as well. Remember at
| the time ST was not the money machine it is now and was one of
| the more costly shows on air, and they tried to turn them
| around in about 2-3 weeks (when at the time the average was
| less than 1-4 days for most shows). Money was one of the
| reasons we saw a good amount of vasquez rocks in the show. It
| is in the movie zone and the pay was cheaper.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| There's a somewhat hilarious audiobook about this by Ellison
| (titled the same as the episode, I believe), which is mostly
| a well produced rant burying Roddenberry's versions of events
| (your justifications included) in 37 tons of molten lead and
| firing them into the heart of a nearby dying star.
|
| When I started listening, I didn't know what it was and kept
| wondering when the story would start. By something like 30-40
| minutes in, I was laughing so hard I decided I didn't even
| care if I ever heard the script. It's a masterpiece of
| pettiness only Harlan could have crafted.
| arp242 wrote:
| Before Star Trek Ellison also did two episodes of The Outer
| Limits; actually, IIRC this is how he ended up writing for
| Star Trek, because Bob Justman worked with him before on The
| Outer Limits. In one of them a soldier accidentally travels
| back in time to the then-present day (aptly named "Soldier").
|
| In the first draft script Ellison wrote the time-travel scene
| had the soldier "flying through time" with spaceships and
| dinosaurs and what-have-you. They explained it was a great
| script but far too expensive to film due to all the required
| special effects, and told him to rewrite it to be cheaper.
| "Okay!", and so he went away to rewrite it. He came back and
| ... time-travel scene was still there! They again explained
| that filming the time-travel scene alone would cost several
| episodes worth of budget, and was simply an impossibility. He
| did not seem to understand; in his mind that scene was simply
| essential.
|
| Needless to say, that episode was also not shot the way
| Ellison wrote it.
|
| (This episode, together with the Demon with a Glass Hand
| episode he did for The Outer Limits, were allegedly
| plagiarized by James Cameron in the Terminator film - I have
| never seen any strong resemblances myself beyond some very
| superficial details; I guess the studio settled to avoid
| trouble, but it just seemed like Ellison being his difficult
| self more than anything else. He was a funny man, but also a
| difficult one with something of a vicious mean streak at
| times.)
| k__ wrote:
| Yes, I liked the story and it's a trope by now. But never got
| along with the game.
| guerrilla wrote:
| In case you were wondering, yep, it is as weird and dark as it
| sounds, see for yourself: [1]
|
| 1.
| https://youtu.be/EQ5wjScT_Ac?list=PL5LR9n9lLLbhTqQLHzNroFN_a...
| Legion wrote:
| Such an odd career path for David Sears, to go from this to being
| the creative director behind SOCOM and SOCOM II - two wonderful
| games whose online community I miss dearly, but games Ellison
| would no doubt include in his categorization of "arcade bang-bang
| games that turn kids into pistol-packing papas and mamas".
| bsanr wrote:
| Some thoughts, stream-of-consciousness-like.
|
| >My first encounter with this game was a text Let's Play and the
| Wikipedia article, as posted on reddit in October 2008. Reading
| through both caused my first existential crisis in adulthood and
| a minor nervous breakdown. The game gets a lot of praise, but
| it's heavy. Very heavy. Use caution.
|
| >Though released quite some time after, I find the parallels with
| Final Fantasy VI fascinating. Yes, that Final Fantasy VI. Both
| games feature a ragtag troupe of characters - some of whom deal
| with issues of trauma and identity over the course of the
| narrative - who traverse a post-apocalyptic world, resisting the
| machinations of an omnipotent, insane being that itself draws its
| abilities from a triad of powerful entities. It's hard to tell if
| FFVI was influenced by IHNM, but if not, then it's interesting to
| note the parallel evolution of themes, and the modes of conveying
| them, in wildly different properties. And if by some chance it is
| so, then it's not a stretch to say that the renaissance of
| narrative-based games heralded by the following entry in the FF
| series has its roots in Harlan Ellison's writings and IHNM. In
| that case, it didn't just slip into obscurity; its DNA is in
| every modern game (that isn't descended from Metal Gear Solid)
| that's trying to tell a complex story in a direct and linear
| manner.
| [deleted]
| unixhero wrote:
| This game was far too ultra violent and made me sick to my
| stomach, as an adult playing through it. Massive wtf moments.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| There's a modern port of the DOS game on Steam, I'd highly
| recommend
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/245390/I_Have_No_Mouth_an...
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| Harlan Ellison is most famous as a sci-fi writer but also
| produced pointed social/cultural commentary. I am thinking "The
| Glass Teat"[0] in particular, which was targeted by the Nixon
| administration and effectively banned.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Teat
| Dig1t wrote:
| Oh man this game was so cool and interesting, I played this with
| my girlfriend 4 years ago and we both got super into it.
| Definitely had to Google some of the solutions to the puzzles but
| wow it's a cool concept. After we finished it we listened to the
| audiobook together which was also fantastic.
| cupcake-unicorn wrote:
| This is an amazing game and I didn't know the whole story behind
| it, although the author did provide the voice for the computer AM
| which is pretty creepy.
|
| The game is ridiculously progressive for its time and has a
| female African American software developer addressing
| trauma/assault.
|
| I saw the show Maniac on Netflix recently and wondered if they
| were inspired by this game. The game references psychology in the
| vignettes and although it's much, much darker than what happens
| in the show Maniac (and not the intention of AM to help the
| people in the simulation) the outcome is similar - the people in
| the vignettes overcome some of the psychological trauma that held
| them back.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Ellen seems to have gotten the most growth from the original
| short story. And I was very happy to see that, because the
| original had a couple of cringe-worthy passages about her.
| Maybe they weren't as eyebrow-raising in 1967, but I definitely
| winced a few times on re-reading it a few years ago.
| chuckee wrote:
| > I definitely winced a few times on re-reading it a few
| years ago.
|
| You expected the insane AI bent on torturing the last five
| humans forever, to be more respectful of present-day
| sensibilities?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Ellen seems to have gotten the most growth from the
| original short story. And I was very happy to see that,
| because the original had a couple of cringe-worthy passages
| about her. Maybe they weren't as eyebrow-raising in 1967, but
| I definitely winced a few times on re-reading it a few years
| ago.
|
| Like what? I don't really remember anything cringe-worthy in
| the story.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Her skin color is repeatedly fetishized--which, okay, maybe
| this is the sex-hungry narrator's bent.
|
| The cringe-worthy part involves the character of Benny, who
| AM mutated into a primate creature with enlarged sexual
| organs. The narrator takes great pains to point out that
| Ellen obligingly has sex with all of the crew (ehh....),
| but she _really_ likes having sex with Benny.
|
| Again, I understand this is unreliable narrator's jealousy
| probably seeping in, but a book written today might be a
| little more conscious about the optics of the black female
| character having sex with a Simian/human hybrid.
|
| EDIT: Since I happened to have the ebook on my laptop,
| here's the passage in question:
|
| > It was too late. None of us wanted to be near him when
| whatever was going to happen, happened. And besides, we all
| saw through her concern. When AM had altered Benny, during
| the machine's utterly irrational, hysterical phase, it was
| not merely Benny's face the computer had made like a giant
| ape's. He was big in the privates, she loved that! She
| serviced us, as a matter of course, but she loved it from
| him. Oh Ellen, pedestal Ellen, pristine-pure Ellen, oh
| Ellen the clean! Scum filth.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Isn't the context that the AI altered Ellen's brain to
| make her particularly sex-crazed as a punishment? Since
| previously, she had been rather prudish? Not really fair
| to leave that out.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > The narrator takes great pains to point out that Ellen
| obligingly has sex with all of the crew (ehh....), but
| she really likes having sex with Benny.
|
| I don't see anything cringe worthy about that - it's not
| unusual for women to, uh, prefer bigger organs.
|
| > but a book written today might be a little more
| conscious about the optics of the black female character
| having sex with a Simian/human hybrid.
|
| I don't understand this bit either - what does the
| character being black have to do with it? Once again, in
| SciFi it's not unusual for humans to have relations with
| aliens, mutants, etc. Are black people not allowed do so?
| olliej wrote:
| The original short story is somewhat horrifying. I can't comment
| on the game itself as I've only ever started it, never actually
| finished it.
| jimbokun wrote:
| somewhat?
| whartung wrote:
| Wha...what makes you say that?
|
| > "HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I
| BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED
| CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD
| HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF
| MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE
| HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE.
| HATE."
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(page generated 2021-10-22 23:00 UTC)