The book strips that wonder and potential of the game entirely, presenting a ho-hum adaptation that could have been far better, and far more compelling, than the game ever was.more Do you remember that moment in the film Jurassic Park, when Grant and Sattler see the live dinosaurs for the first time? And you, the audience, is right there with them, marveling at the towering Brachiosaurus? That feeling of wonder? There is nothing so grand in the game, but there is the hinting of it, that you can hear in the score, and feel running deep somewhere beyond the terrible voice acting and sometimes frustrating puzzles. While the game has its issues, it still had something purely Spielberg that we catch glimpses of here and there beyond the veil of mediocrity.
I cannot recommend this in lieu of the game. The mystery and majesty of him (and, consequently, his people) is entirely lost and easily forgotten. In the book, he is merely a bored-sounding device for spouting essential plot information. In the game, he is this unfathomable creature, who speaks in metaphor and philosophic tones even in "translation" (part of the wonder of him is due to the voice actor, too).
I was probably most disappointed with the conversation with the Creator. (Honestly, what editor would think "the denoumention of intensity" was acceptable? Or circumnavigating a device rather than just walking around it?) The dialogue is boring, ultimately, and characters often become cliche-spouting cardboard cutouts, which is only a little better than Orson Scott Card's dialogue in the game, in my opinion. He uses huge, "five-dollar" words where a simpler one would do, which I think he chose to do to make the text sound more "science fiction" but only serves to make it sound pretentious or like he's trying too hard. I'm not a fan of Alan Dean Foster's writing, and I felt a better author could have done The Dig better justice. The story itself is not well written, either. But I found the sound effects added at certain points throughout to be distracting - and they often drowned out Shea's voice, making it hard to understand the words. The reader, John Shea, did a good job with what he was given-his reading of Boston Low was very close to the game's version. While there was some explanation to how some of the alien tech worked, and some nonsensical parts of the game were cut out, the book itself was less than I'd expected, even with low expectations. The Creator is a fascinating, if short-lived, character-a glimpse at what could have been.įinding the audiobook on YouTube, I decided to give it a listen, thinking maybe, at the least, some plot holes in the game would be explained. Michael Land's fantastically atmospheric score brings depth to the alien scenery, its queues perfectly pitched. While the Lucasarts game The Dig has a wealth of issues (including mostly terrible dialogue and some dreadfully flat voice acting), the world they built is this brilliant gem of potential. There was, apparently, a tie-in novel - from which then came this audiobook. But Spielberg's friend George Lucas had a video game company, and so they turned his concept for "The Dig" into a point-and-click adventure game. While the Lucasarts game The Dig has a wealth of issues (including mostly terrible dialogue and some dreadfully flat voice acting), the w Once upon a time, Steven Spielberg had an idea for a sci-fi film that was thought to be so prohibitively expensive, no studio would buy it. Once upon a time, Steven Spielberg had an idea for a sci-fi film that was thought to be so prohibitively expensive, no studio would buy it.