After watching someone play Starship Titanic recently, I was reminded of an adventure game I played back at the peak of my Titanic fascination as a kid, I barerly understood what was happening, but I liked walking around the ship and talking to people. I never got a good ending as a kid more often just dying.

I then decided to replay it since I had such fond memories of it and that's where it all fell apart. You start out in London in WWII as a disgraced former British intelligence officer that failed their key mission on the Titanic. You then die after having your landlady accost you of not paying the rent and then just taking a German bomb to the dome. From there you start your spy work looking into a suspicious German officer and retrieving an old Ottoman book of poetry which gets you involved with a Serbian nationalist stowaway who is looking for the book as well. You also have a weird sideplot with an old flame of yours that is seeking to get away from her abusive and soon to be destitute husband. She has a diamond necklace that she plans on selling which will come into play later. You eventually get approached by Andrew Conkling to settle a matter for him as well by finding a pair of Irish siblings in third class and strong arming them into handing over a letter that describes that the steel of the Titanic is garbage and he's knowingly just selling shit steel.

CW: SA

Also the sister was his maid and he raped and impregnated her.

Then there's the protégé of the German colonal is eventually revealed to be a spy for the Russians and has a notebook with names and locations of exiled Russian Bolsheviks. Finally you have the original deal that the German officer was going to do where he would trade the book for a painting with British military movements on the back.

Your mission is to obtain the poetry book, obtain the painting with the military plans, obtain the real diamond necklace, and finally obtain the notebook of names. The old flame of yours walks around with a fake diamond necklace, you have to steal the real one and replace it with the fake one from the art dealer to stop the Black Hand from obtaining funds and being able to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand. The Russian spy is eventually killed for stealing the painting and the list of names is taken by the German officer so you need to get that from him by trading him a lifeboat pass, this allows the Russian royalty to clean up the Bolsheviks and stop the Russian Revolution. Keeping your hands on the book will just prevent the Black Hand from finding a backup thing to sell and do their thing. Finally you'll get the painting by either going really fast and finding where it's stored, or when the ship is sinking, beating up the Serbian nationalist and taking it from him. This painting as it would turn out would become super famous for surviving the sinking of the Titanic and as it would be, was created by Hitler, thus turning him into a successful artist and not the fascist leader. To follow up on the steel baron, his wife will steal the infant from the Irish woman because she can't have her own but will give the child up for the letter where the Irish sister is magically allowed up onto deck for no reason despite them explicitly stating that they weren't allowed up on deck.

If you want the world peace ending, you need to stop the Black Hand, stop the Russian Revolution, and turn Hitler into a successful artist. Depending on your spread of items, you can have some weird alt history opportunities as well. The Nazis will be superpowered if you kill the Russian Revolution and let Hitler rise. The Nazis will have nukes if you stop WWI and kill the Revolution. If you let WWI happen but stop Hitler, the Russians will overrun all of Europe and your character will be justly be killed, but it's implied they're just murdering everyone. If you stop Hitler and let the Russian revolution happen but also let WWI happen then you have a Soviet tidalwave which is implied to just murdering everyone with your character being justly killed at the end again. Finally if you stop the Russian Revolution, let WWI happen, but stop Hitler, communists take Germany and go on another purge campaign.

The only way to get a "good ending "is to believe the lib minded both sides are bad. As an adult playing I stopped both WWI and WWII but let the revolution happen and got an earful of "they said we'd lose our chains but all we've lost are our freedoms" before a russian man breaks down the door and guns you down.

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    “they said we’d lose our chains but all we’ve lost are our freedoms”

    oh no, not our freedom to starve and our freedom to sleep in the street. don't take that away!

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      You don't have freedom to sleep in the street. It's illegal in most US cities now.

  • MorelaakIsBack [comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    i picked up the C&C: Red Alert Remaster when it came out, thinking i'd have a nice trip down memory lane. I wasn't expecting much, remembering that westwood studios didn't really get at plotting a story or using comedy and parody to caricature the allies vs soviets motif until RA2, so i went in with a healthy grain of salt, given i had last played this game seriously when i was eleven or twelve.

    the russian campaign is just straight up, unadulterated anticommunist trash. you are treated, again and again, to cutscenes in which it is revealed that while you are doing your heinous jobs (like slaughtering villagers to catch an allied spy, yes, a real mission) in the meantime stalin is gassing civilian centers and planning wholesale pogrom in berlin. it's unstomachable and does not come off as parody, it's just a hit job.

  • UlyssesT
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    edit-2
    2 months ago

    deleted by creator

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Fascist space cop fights the only enemy liberals can imagine; A foe devoid of ideology who is evil purely for the sake of evil and has no political or economic goals what so ever.

  • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Oh my god. I was suddenly zapped by a memory from the ether like 3 days ago about this very game. I was friends with a pair of brothers and they had this game.

  • FlakesBongler [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    For real, a ton of these adventure games are just plain weird

    I had that Frankenstein one, Through the Eyes of the Monster

    Only good part was Tim Curry as Dr. Frankenstein

    The puzzles were gibberish, like you had a door blocked by a pile of electric eels right?

    You probably think, I have to find a way to move them safely out of the way

    The game won't let you, because the proper answer is to melt them with a beaker of acid

    Like what the hell is that?

  • Tripbin [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    are you me? I was obsessed with titanic in kindergarten and first grade and would draw the boat and read books about it way above a kids reading level and this was all before the movie came out. When it did come out my dad joked that I couldnt watch it because it had nudity and I was 6 or 7 and I just balled until he admitted I could lol. No idea why I was obsessed with it.

  • Crowtee_Robot [he/him]
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    3 years ago

    I used to play this game all the time. The music in the aft staircase and Turkish bath creeped me the hell out. When I play now I just let the notebook sink into the ocean. Fuck that tsarist Willy Hederlitz.

    The missionary preacher onboard was creepy af too.

  • WeedReference420 [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Ahhh damn, I played the hell out of this game as a kid too, totally didn't clock how lib it was at the time although yeah, I'm definitely remembering the ending(s) where you get machine gunned by Communists now. Also played Starship Titanic a lot too, please tell me that isn't full of anti-Communist propaganda too lmao

  • MasterShakeVoice [undecided]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Almost pleasantly surprised this game doesn't go the "we live in the best of all possible worlds" route

  • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    After watching someone play Starship Titanic recently

    Takanashi Kiara?

  • Vncredleader
    ·
    3 years ago

    Jesus christ that is gross. Was this british made? It feels very much like their brainworms specifically