Developer : Microïds
Release date : 2017
Synopsis :
Syberia is a graphic adventure game, developed and published by Microïds, and released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, and Xbox on 9 January 2002, with the game later ported for Windows Mobile, Nintendo DS, Android, OS X, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, iOS, and Nintendo Switch in later years. Created and designed by Belgian artist Benoît Sokal, Syberia is set in the same world as Sokal’s 1999 video game Amerzone. It follows Kate Walker, an American lawyer tasked with overseeing the major sale of a company and her subsequent journey across Europe and Russia to find the brother of the recently deceased owner.[2][3] Alongside the main plot, the story also consists of a subplot involving Kate’s personal life.
Syberia was a commercial success, with sales above 500,000 units worldwide by 2005. It was acclaimed by critics for its intelligent script and use of graphic design that encompassed elements of art nouveau and clockpunk fiction. Its success spawned a franchise that incorporates several sequels and comic book adaptations.
The game begins when American lawyer Kate Walker is sent by her law firm to the fictional French village of Valadilène to oversee the corporate takeover of a family-owned spring-automaton toy factory. When Kate arrives, she finds that the recently deceased owner, Anna Voralberg, had informed the village notary before her death that her brother Hans is alive, despite her father claiming he was dead and buried. Realising that Hans is now the owner of the factory, Kate learns she must get his approval in order to allow the takeover to proceed. Investigating the Voralberg estate, she learns that Hans not only exists, but was also injured in a cave outside the village during his youth, while attempting to retrieve a prehistoric doll of a man riding a mammoth. The resulting accident stunted his development, leaving him mentally handicapped and causing him to develop an obsession to find mammoths to ride as the doll depicts. Despite proving extremely creative with making automatons, his father disapproved of his obsession, and disowned him as a direct result.
Learning that Hans lies somewhere further east across the continent, Kate discovers that the only way to reach him is via a specially designed clockwork locomotive, built by Anna at her brother’s request, and manning it with a special animatronic man named Oscar. Before leaving, Kate is tasked with retrieving items important to Hans, that Oscar requires before he can allow them to depart – the mammoth doll and two clockwork music boxes. Acquiring all of them, the pair eventually begin their journey eastwards, stopping at Barrockstadt, a failing university. While Kate seeks a means for them to continue, she explores the establishment and soon learns more about Hans’s interests in a mysterious tribe of people known as the Youkol, who lived with and domesticated mammoths that reside on the titular island of Syberia (inspired by the real-life location of Wrangel Island in Siberia, the last place on earth where mammoths survived).
Upon moving on, Kate’s journey brings her to Komkolzgrad, a dusty Communist-era industrial mining complex run by the eccentric and somewhat crazy Serguei Borodine. Finding that he stole Oscar’s hands for his automaton organist work, she agrees to help him bring Helena Romanski, a washed-up opera singer who he is obsessed with, back to the complex to sing for him in order to get back the hands. Helping out a drunk test pilot named Boris to fix one of Hans inventions – a clockwork flying machine – Kate gains his assistance in operating an airship that takes her to the Aralbad spa, only to discover that Helena has become disillusioned in believing she is too old to sing, prompting Kate to help her recover.
Returning to the mining complex with Kate, Helena performs for Borodine, only to be imprisoned by him in his desire to keep her at his side as his personal opera singer. Refusing to allow this to happen, Kate rescues Helena, recovers Oscar’s hands, and attempts to leave with both via the train. Although Borodine attempts to stop them, Kate makes use of some dynamite to thwart his efforts, killing him in the process, and allowing the train to continue onwards, reaching Aralbad. Upon arriving, Kate finds Hans waiting at the spa, delighted that she has brought him the train and Oscar. Showing little concern for his sister’s death, Hans signs the factory release papers without reading them. Before Kate boards a plane that will bring her back to New York, she quickly changes her mind and rushes to rejoin Hans on the train, offering to help him realise his dream, abandoning her job and her unfaithful fiancé back home.
Source : Wikipedia
