Tag: Orion Conspiracy

Completed Orion Conspiracy.
Head of Security discovers that his Deputy is an alien, and gets paranoid, pulling a grenade. Pilot wrestles him, and both get blown, and one of the scientists gets crushed, and her husband decides to stay with her as they get sucked into space. Pure comedy.

The blast also damaged the propulsion system. We can recover another one from the probe. There’s a lengthy animation that mirrors Danny’s death at the same probe, but this time his father managed to recover what he needs.
As we return, the rival corporation tries to take over the station, killing Head of Scientists. We fly out again, place one of the mines that killed Danny on top of their lab and blow them.

Turns out, they discovered shapeshifters slumbering in the asteroid, and colluded with them.
We hunt Security Deputy, which turned feral and ate his dog for some reason, then we bobbytrap selfdestruct before turning it on, and fly away with the black Mechanic and femail Captain.

I genuinely expected a final scare in the form that she’s also a shapeshifter, but no.
On one hand, the game is quite easy. I’m bad at point’n’click adventures, but I had to look in the guide just once. Also, you never need to go through your inventory, as if you have the item, the character will use it automatically, or hint that it can be used, but not in this order.
On the other hand, there’s a surprising number of red herrings: there are communication terminals and air conditioners in almost any room that you can interact with, but never have to, the entire game, not once. Also, there are two dogs running through the station, that serve zero purpose.
But as it’s mostly logical, and the story is genuinely good, I can forgive how much you have to walk back and forth.
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You discover that at the time of the incident, sensors detected an explosion. Two crew members had access to explosives: Captain and Chief of Security. But you can’t confront either. Instead, you need to perform first “leap of faith”, which I had to look up in the guide: suggest to Lazy Technician that he’s ill, to get the doctor out of her office, to check the medical records on Chief of Security, to discover that he was under anesthesia, so it’s the doctor who took the explosives! That’s a lot of logical leaps, to be fair.
We blackmail Second in Command with the knowledge she’s pregnant and get access to letters to Danny. Turns out he was gay (I remember reading that back in the day).

You confront his lover, and the next moment he’s killed and you need to break out of a cell. Then you discover that Gates, the black intern, is in fact Internal Security, she wrote the original letter to you. She suggests to meet at shuttle bay, so I thought I need to find some clues on the lover’s body. But no, you need to go straight there to discover the shuttle is not full of alien cacoons. Doctor appears, and turns out she’s a shapeshifter, and cacoons are replicas of other crew members. She kills Gates, and we burn her, blowing station’s fuel in the process.

Well, that escalated quickly.
Lazy scientist hears the explosions, panics and attempts to flee in the shuttle with the cacoons. With blow him from a turret, so the aliens don’t reach the Earth. Then Captain confronts us. I thought that Danny was killed to cover up something. Turns out, Captain blames McCormack for his wife’s death, and just wanted revenge. So McCormack was wrong to assume it’s Doctor that killed Danny, despite her being an evil alien. Mechanic intervenes, and Captain is killed during the struggle.

Funny bug there: you can talk to the Captain corpse, and the game will hang, since he can’t answer…
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Playing Mouthwashing reminded me of another game set in space I’ve read about as a kid, but never played: Orion Conspiracy. It’s a murder mistery point’n’click. You play as a veteran, who’s sun, Danny, was working as a technician on a space station and died in an accident.

Only after the funeral he receives an anonymous note that it wasn’t an accident.

You get access to all floors of the station at once, and no idea where to go. Moreover, they all look quite the same, there is no map, and the rooms don’t even have signs of them. So I had to write down my own map to navigate.
On the positive side, all 20 characters are voiced well. And it’s a very adult game: there’s racism, sexism, all the cool words from 2020, but in a game from ’95.

The station is home to two corporations. One supposed to investigate a black hole that appeared 12 years ago, and another explores the meteorite the station is attached to. Both were at war with each other some years ago.
Most of the game is walking, there are a lot of corridors that should be in the station, but don’t serve any purpose in a adventure game sense. Some characters also walk between locations, which I haven’t seen in any other adventure game I can remember. It did bit me badly, though, when I needed to bribe a scientist with a pie, only I couldn’t find him either in the lab or in his quarters, or in cafeteria.
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