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Welcome to the Obsidian FAQ. This document aims to illuminate some of the darker corners of the shadowy realm of Obsidian, as well as give some glimpses into the fascinating "behind the scenes" making of the game.
This FAQ was created and is maintained by Scott Harvey (sharvey@enteract.com). I have no commerical or personal ties to Rocket Science Inc., SegaSoft, or anyone personally involved in the project. I decided to work on this because Obsidian is a good game, pure and simple, but may get overlooked in a saturated marketplace. Also, I'm not in the business of PC game advocacy, but am I a strident supporter of quality art, creative expression, and original thought. Obsidian stands head and shoulders above the rest of its competition, and I wanted to call attention to that.
Obsidian is (c) 1996 Rocket Science Games, Inc. Rocket Science, the Rocket Science logo, Obsidian, and the Obsidian logo are trademarks of Rocket Science Games, Inc. All rights reserved.
This document is not an official publication of Rocket Science Games, Inc. or SegaSoft. This document is intended as a derivative work based on previously published material. Please do not contact Rocket Science or SegaSoft with questions about the information contained in this document.
The three documents that comprise this site are (c) 1997 by Scott P. Harvey and may not be included, in any form, into any commercial publication, product, online service, or other web site without the express written consent of the author. Due to the amount of work put into this document, and the fact that is now in three separate sections, this document may not be downloaded or copied onto another site, except for the personal use of the downloader. However, permission is granted to provide the URL of this site (http://www.enteract.com/~sharvey/obsidian/faq.htm) anywhere within the online community. Questions about the fair use of this document should be directed to the author via electronic mail at sharvey@enteract.com.
Obsidian is a fantastic exploration of a totally unique and different reality. This guide contains gentle hints, explicit clues, and finally, outright solutions to many of the puzzles in the game. Don't spoil it for yourself by using this guide as a substitute for creative thought and effort. You have been warned.
From the review I wrote and posted on Usenet:
Obsidian is a 1st-person adventure game; a format that has been used (possibly over-used) to varying degrees of success in recent years. As is to be expected, the graphics are all 3-D rendered, and the player interacts with this environment by moving a mouse cursor over an exit or "hotspot" and clicking. Anyone who's played Myst or any of it's host of "me-too" games will feel right at home.
However, that's about where the similarities to anything familiar come to a screeching halt. Obsidian is composed of four "dream realms", each of which redefines the word "bizarre". Myst claimed that it was "the surrealistic adventure that will become your world." Well, Robyn and Rand Miller (creators of Myst) have been toppled from their throne in the realm of surreal creations. If you though a huge hydraulic pine tree was weird, imagine a cube-shaped realm of bureaucratic surrealism, where the walls of one side of the cube's interior form the floor of another completely different area. Figuring out how to navigate in here is only one of the oddities you'll have to wrap your mind around in order to play Obsidian.
I've also archived the complete review, in case you'd care to read it.
Obsidian is available for systems running Windows 95, or for the Macintosh. Here are the minimum system specs for each OS:
Windows 95
Macintosh
(Thanks to Helpful Reader CJ Silverio for providing the Macintosh specs)
For the most part, Obsidian's realms are named for the major characters that exist there. Within several of the realms are smaller areas known as "balconies" - usually containing puzzle sequences, explanatory displays, or a means of transportation between areas of the realm.
The interior of a huge cube, where gravity is strictly relative and Proper Procedure is the order of the day.. The Bureau Chief has information about Max - but the bridge across the cube is jammed. If you want to find Max, you'll have to fix the bridge.
The Bureau has 6 major areas, each corresponding to one of the faces of the cube. They are: the Atlas Face, the Library or Book Chasm, the Filing Room, the Cubicle Maze, the Waiting Area, the Nexus, and the Mural Wall. Off the Atlas Face is the Musician Balcony, while the Filing Room allows the player to visit the beautiful Cloud Ring Balcony. From The Nexus, we get to visit the René Magritte-esque Balancing Rock Balcony.
The main area is reminiscent of a huge factory floor, with frighteningly huge mechanical apparatus everywhere. The centerpiece of all this is the still-under-construction robotic spider. Lilah must visit four balconies in order to provide material needed for the machine's completion:: Metal, Oil, Fire, and Air.
A strange realm of junkyards and surreal machines named for its central character, the robot named Bismuth. Bismuth takes Lilah to various unusual locations, where she will learn more about how Obsidian works and her place in it. Throughout, Bismuth is an enigmatic companion; lending help, offering clues, and waiting to be entertained.
Bismuth has 5 main areas: the Junkyard, the Plane, the Piazza, the Church of the Machine, and the Statue.
The Conductor Realm is where it all comes together. To say more than this would be unfair.
Lilah's partner, now somehow trapped within the world of Obsidian. Max and Lilah designed the Ceres satellite, which employed nanotechnology to restore Earth's damaged ecosystem. It was during a sabbatical in the woods when Lilah and Max discovered the Obsidian crystal growing in a clearing. Within days, it had grown to a huge structure and Max had disappeared.
The vidbots are the menial workers of The Bureau. Like most bureaucrats, they are narrow-minded and know only what they're supposed to know; no more, no less. Each vidbot provides one and only one service to The Bureau,, not all of which are necessary, relevant, or even interesting. Again, like bureaucrats in our own world, the vidbots are often petty, brash, obtuse, and often less than helpful. They are, however, wonderfully entertaining. Talk to all of them. While it may not be strictly necessary to advance the plot, you'll miss out on some truly surreal and often hilarious behavior if you don't pester them a little. Not surprisingly, many of the designers and creators "performed" as the vidbots. I'm working on the Vidbot Family Album, which will have more information.
The nanobots are the shuffling little turtle-shell guys first seen in the Spider Realm, mining strange little green rocks and operating a chemistry set. Not much is known about them, but they appear to be only semi-intelligent drones or slave workers. They perform their menial tasks without comment, save their mechanical shuffling and baleful expression.
The original working name for these little guys was "Weez". According to Rocket Science, Obsidian's designers always referred to these creatures as "Weez", no matter how many of them were around. Thanks to Howard Cushnir for this clarification.
A huge mechanical monstrosity culled from the depths of Max's nightmares, The Spider seems to have been originally designed as a massive machine, but has now apparently come under some sort of independent control. It may be semi-sentient, or it may be controlled by some unseen force. Lilah must manage to harness the four elements The Spider needs to operate: Air, Fire, Metal, and Oil.
During the development, The Spider was apparently referred to as "Abraxas", the name being borrowed from a Roman or Greek god.
Bismuth is the rusty robot, with a headlight for a face and long, pointy "ears". He appears to have almost been constructed of junk and spare parts., which is not surprising, considering he first appears as the "machine pilot" of the Plane in the Junkyard. Bismuth seems much more intelligent than either Weez or Abraxas, but no less puzzling. He appears to have some powers of communication, but it's unclear if this is internally motivated or again, controlled by some outside force. Curiously, there is really only one Bismuth - the different robots seen in various areas are in fact only multiple instances of the same creature.
Overseeing and controlling everything is the Conductor, an enigmatic figure glimpsed here and there throughout the game. You'll have to overcome the Conductor's devious plans and creations in the final realm to rescue Max and unravel the final mysteries of Obsidian.
An apparently desktop-sized mariachi, the Musician is first found in a small room off the Atlas Face. He appears here and there throughout the game, playing his guitar as a form of musical clues
I had the good fortune to correspond at length with numerous members of the Obsidian design and production teams. All were most gracious with their time and knowledge, which I have attempted to put into a semi-coherent format. It's all very fascinating stuff, and it quickly becomes clear how much creative energy and effort was put into this exceptional game.
Obsidian was in development for more than two years and boasts an impressive team of artists, designers, and special effects creators. While the term "authentic Hollywood talent" is bandied quite a bit in the gaming industry, the chief designers of Obsidian's world have quite a resume - no spaceships-on-strings here. Read on...
The original inspiration for the game came from a set of surreal artworks that Mark Sullivan and Rich Cohen created. These two designers both worked at Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas' state-of-the-art special effects house (Mark Sullivan was nominated for an Academy Award for his matte paintings in Steven Spielberg's Hook, while Rich Cohen worked on such well-known projects as Death Becomes Her, T2, and Star Trek VI). Together, they created the characters and several "strange, otherworldly places".
From there, it was underway, according to Tom Laskawy, Obsidian's production supervisor:
"...Adam Wolff and Howard Cushnir conceived of a story and designed the puzzles (with some help from Scott Kim) that took place in these first few environments. As we went on, Adam and Howard's puzzle ideas drove the art design for the remaining environments (which constituted the bulk of the game) with Jay [Shuster], Mark [Nonnenmacher], and Honza [Konopasek] following Adam and Howard's lead. "
"Designs for the Bureau were supplied mostly by a young, brilliant designer named Jay Shuster. You'll see more of his stuff when the new Star Wars movies come out. The other main designer was Mark Nonnenmacher. Mark came out of product design and he's been at Rocket Science for several years cranking out amazing stuff. Some of Mark's designs include the doors in the Spider Realm, the Plane you fly, the factory the spider lives in, and the final realm of the game where you save Max."
"We also had contributions from a designer named Honza Konopasek. He, like Jay, is one of those people whom you hire for one reason and, after a little while, you discover jaw-dropping skills. Honza gave us the green rock factory, the beach environment, the maze of glass cubicles, the spider's church, and the painting gallery inside the giant statue."
"We also had some work done by a man named Roy Forge Smith who's an old-time Hollywood art director. Roy designed the movie-set piazza and the junkyard."
Scott Kim, one of the lead designers, has since moved on to work for SegaSoft, where his business cards have the enviable title of "Puzzle Master". Obsidian fans may be interested to know that Scott has confessed to being the creator of one of the more devious puzzles in the game:
"Yes, I designed the cubicle maze. Though I agree that it turned out very well, it proved to be a production nightmare. The cubicle maze probably took more production time than all the rest of the Bureau, which in turn might have taken more time than the rest of the game. As the game progressed we figured out better and better ways to realize our visions while keeping production time down."
If you just can't get enough Obsidian, warm up your Shockwave plug-in and head to SegaSoft's site - you'll find a dozen new puzzles Scott has created. They're all excellent. Scott is also known for his artistic lettering designs known as "inversions" - words which read the same when viewed upside-down. For more, check out his gallery - pretty cool stuff!
Howard Cushnir was one of the chief desiners for the game, and is currently doing the majority of the writing of the official strategy/hint guide, due out soon. From what Howard has told me, the book will contain "most everything we'd want the player to know." It sounds like the book will contain a generous amount of detail and background information, not simply hints and tips. In addition to designing, Howard got a chance to perform as one of the more memorable characters:
"Anyway, the truth is that I'm...the Bureau Chief! At first I was just filmed as a stand-in, then they decided to keep me. I'm also in the movie of the goodbye party from the journal, as their real boss, which makes sense since the Bureau is Lilah's dream, and am also the boss in the win animation from Max's brain at the end of the Bureau. Think about it -- As the boss in Lilah's recreated dream, I show Lilah a memory of Max's in which I also appear. Trippy, eh?"
I also talked with Adam Wolff, the creative director. Adam shared some excellent thematic notes on what some of the various elements of the game are all about. Excerpts from our conversation appear below in the "What Does It All Mean" section.
Again, Tom Laskawy:
"To build the world in 3D, we primarily used SGI workstations running Softimage. That's where we constructed the environments and did all the character animation. Many of the models were built in form-Z, Mac-based modeling software. We did all our painting (texture maps, matte paintings, and sprites) in Adobe Photoshop. The vast majority of our 2D animation (lightning, flame, smoke, particle effects, etc.) and digital compositing was done using Adobe AfterEffects, also on the Mac. We had 12 SGI workstations and an 8 processor SGI Challenge server with 2 GB of RAM to do our rendering. For a few months during our heaviest production, we got an extra 16 processor SGI server!"
This massive amount of graphic output was then compiled into a cohesive world with mTropolis, a multimedia authoring system, with sound and music added. The mTropolis player is what the end-user runs to interact with the world. Currently, mTropolis is a Mac-only platform, while players exist for both Mac and Windows platforms. Bryn Dyment works for mFactory, the company which created the mTropolis system:
"...we're especially proud of Obsidian in that it really showcases the capabilities of mTropolis. Rocket Science was one of the earlest adopters of mTropolis, and have been using it for well over two years (more than a full year prior to our 1.0 release)."
If you're interested in any aspect of multimedia authoring, mFactory's website is highly recommended.
All the sound and music for Obsidian was created by Thomas Dolby and Headspace. I asked Tom how closely the designers worked with the sound gurus at Headspace.
"We worked incredibly closely with them. There was constant back and forth. As you can imagine, designing truly interactive sound involves a deep understanding of the puzzles and intentions of the designers. That only happens when the sound team and design team work hand in hand..."
It sounds like some further adventures are in the works; here's some preliminary information. Please keep in mind that this is all unofficial, off-the-record, tentative information, so don't bother the nice people at Rocket Science or SegaSoft with questions.
A tasty rumor from Tom, just in case you can't get enough...
"Rumor has it that there's a lost realm of Obsidian. Something that didn't make it into Obsidian, but might come out as a low-priced game on its own and continue the Obsidian story. This is just a rumor, mind you, but we'll see..."
More foreshadowing, this time from Gary Griffiths, president of SegaSoft:
"...We've started work with Rocket Science on a sequel - much of the work in fact was done as part of the original game, but was left out due to the size. Nothing official yet, but we'd like to release "the lost levels" before Christmas."
It's unclear to me if they're both talking about the same thing; a smaller game, or if Mr. Griffiths was referring to a full-blown sequel.
That's a good question, I suppose, and one worth asking. To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure myself. Surrealism isn't really supposed to mean anything, except to the artist who created it. This is the thought that drove the Surrealism movement in the 1920's and 30's, inspiring artists like Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali. Anyone else who derives any sense of meaning from a surrealist work is doing so only according to their own senses and sensibilities, not from anything the artist intended for you to feel.
Obsidian draws very heavily upon one of the key tenents of surrealism: the dream. In fact, Magritte was said to have envisioned many of his most famous works based either on dreams or from what he saw in the "hypnagogic state" - the curious realm of half-asleep and half-awake. As such, it's very fitting that Obsidian is comprised of realms based on the dreams of the two main characters, Max and Lilah. At an even deeper level (the deepest I'm descending to in this FAQ), note that the realms based on their dreams can be taken both literally and figuratively - what their minds showed them while asleep, and also what they aspired to in their lives.
If you're interested in further reading about surrealism and the surrealist movment, Yahoo has a good list of surrealism-related sites on the web.
Adam Wolff, the game director of Obsidian, shares some detail about the "meaning" behind the Church of the Machine puzzle...
"To solve this puzzle you have to make the spider modify its own code. Since this is something of a recap of the Abraxas [Spider] realm and since it's accordingly about "the power of the machine" this solution seemed appropriate. Most AI theorists assume that self-modifying code will be a key facet of future AI systems."
"The symbols on the chip have an intended meaning that is relatively obscure. The three symbols represent (as you can see in the movies) an ant hill, a cell and a city. Each of these things has the property of having a kind of "collective intelligence" or "hive mind." For more on this, I suggest Douglas Hofstadter's excellent article "Conversation With An Ant Hill." It's about how the intelligence of an anthill supercedes the intelligence of any individual ant, and it's really cool. It's written from the perspective of an anteater. . . "
Also, Adam points out how the three realms each have a specific theme. The Bureau, based on Lilah's dream of an oppressive bureaucracy, is about opposing authority. Max's dream of the mechanical spider is all about the "power of the machine". Bismuth combines elements of the first two in an interesting way: the piazza puzzle is reminiscent of The Bureau, and disobeying the automated instructions to initate non-standard flight is an opposition of authorty. The Church of the Machine puzzle is again all about the power of machines. The Statue is, according to Adam, all about inspiration and the power of imagination.
If anyone has clarifications or corrections (hopefully no corrections!) for the information provided, please email me at sharvey@enteract.com and I'll find a place for your information.
Most of all, thanks to everyone who worked on Obsidian for a truly original and magnificent game. Special thanks to Tom Laskawy at Rocket Science Games for answering my numerous questions; Adam Wolff, also from Rocket Science for clarifications on the chemistry lab puzzle and the interpretations of the Church puzzle; Howard Cushnir, one of the chief designers, for clarifications, insights, and creative criticism; Scott Kim, puzzle master extraordinare, for his insights into the creation of the puzzles; Gary Griffiths and Drew Dunlevie from SegaSoft for their appreciation and offers of assistance; Bryn Dyment and John Dunning from mFactory for details on the mTropolis system; lastly, Pete Hill, who played Obsidian with me on a parallel course, trading hints and tips. Thanks, everyone - it was a lot of fun!