Albion Retrospective Review

Richard Cobbett’s latest RPG-focused column for Rock, Paper, Shotgun is a retrospective review of Alvion, a 1995 sci-fi CRPG from developer Blue Byte Software. I admit this is one title I’m not particularly familiar with, though Cobbett’s description of the setting and writing have piqued my curiosity. Here’s a snippet:

There’s a lot to enjoy in Albion, even early on. It’s certainly not the best written RPG of its age, with a lot of clunky dialogue early on especially the characters are firmly from the exposition side of the universe. What it does have though is an interesting warmth and texture. Your character Tom for instance is a pilot for whom space is no big deal, while your partner for the mission is a pen-pushing bureaucrat having the time of his life simply being in space and one who wastes none of the time that you’re knocked out, getting to know the locals and even learning their language. Aboard ship, he’s got friends, he’s got a girlfriend, he’s got some sense as existing as something other than a vessel to hit people with. None of it’s exactly deep, but the effort is made. Likewise, once on the planet the script takes a lot of time for the characters to just marvel at what they’re looking at at being around aliens, at being on an adventure, on the strange and wonderful scenery. even if to the locals it is just a toilet and him a bit weird for getting excited.

This stretches to the mechanics as well. A particularly fun little twist is that in the opening area on board the Toronto you soon get paged to come to the shuttlebay and start the game already. You don’t have to though. You can wander around for a good while first to stock up on supplies that you just ‘˜might’ need, as well as sneak into a prohibited part of the ship via a small dungeon to steal and pocket a pistol. Pretty much unique amongst RPGs, that starter dungeon then has no space-rats, no space-spiders, nothing. Why would it? It’s a series of service tunnels. Even the floating droid is just there to do its job rather than provide a little free XP at the start of the trip.

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Albion’s certainly not the greatest game of its era or anything, but it’s a game that’s held up surprisingly well and still has no trouble justifying its devoted following. The mid-90s were a great time for this kind of RPG before the rules were quite as codified as they tend to be these days, but with technology capable of not just creating this kind of world but making them feel like magical places at the same time. Time is rarely kind to the magic, but the games that did something different and haven’t really been copied since tend to hang on to more of it than most.

In case Cobbett’s piece has made you curious, the game is currently available for purchase on GOG.