The last express

A unique feature of the game is that almost all of it takes place in real time (accelerated by about six times) ^[1] . The game starts at 7:14 pm on July 24, 1914, and ends at 7:30 pm on July 26 (if the player goes all the way to the very end). This entire time period passes in real time, only when Kat is sleeping or lying unconscious, and in several battle scenes the game leaves the real-time mode. One of the most remarkable cases of applying this technique in a game is a concert in which two characters perform a duet for violin and piano, lasting about 20 minutes of real time, during which the hero can either sit quietly and enjoy music, or go about his own business.

All characters in the game act in accordance with their intentions, change their plans depending on the intervention of the player. Thus, the game is of interest for re-passing - because of the different scenarios, one passage of the game will not be like another. The game provides for many endings, of which fans of the game counted about thirty. However, the game has only one valid ending, after which come the final credits. The rest of the endings are false. For example, Robert Kat could be caught by Parisian policemen who enter the train for inspection, or die in a battle with the Serbs who captured the train.

July 24, evening

On July 24, 1914 at 19:15, the Orient Express departs from the Paris Station, the final destination of which is Constantinople ( Istanbul ). A few minutes before departure, a young man, Tyler Whitney, gets out of the car and looks around nervously. Policemen are walking along the platform, and this alarms him even more. Finally, the head of the train announces the departure of the train, and Tyler, spreading his hands, returns to his compartment. Some time later, the train catches up with the motorcycle. The man sitting in the back seat, Robert Kat (the main character), gets up and jumps into the carriage. Roberta is sought after by Parisian police for the murder of an Irish policeman who was actually injured in a shootout and who later died in a hospital. That is why the hero was unable to come to the station, fearing arrest.

The conductor of the 2nd class carriage, a naive and kind-hearted man, in his absent-mindedness takes Robert for Tyler and directs him to the desired compartment. But Kat is waiting for an unpleasant surprise - Tyler is dead. Kat throws out the friend’s corpse, gets rid of the bloodied jacket and decides to figure out what happened. In Tyler’s belongings, Kat finds a Slavonic manuscript about the Firebird. He also understands that Tyler was robbed. A huge chest with empty recesses is proof of this. Under the chest, Robert finds a scarf smelling of feminine perfumes.

Suddenly, the guide brings Kat a message that a certain August Schmidt is waiting for him in the dining car. Kat heads for a meeting at a restaurant. Augustus, who had never met Tyler before, also mistook Kat for him. Kat is trying not to give a glance, but the interlocutor’s questions confuse him. From the conversation, Kat understands that Tyler and Schmidt had a deal on the train: Schmidt gives Tyler “goods”, which will be loaded only in Munich, and Tyler, in turn, is gold. Robert suggests talking again after Munich. Later, Robert witnesses a quarrel between Alexei Dolnikov, a young nobleman, and Count Vasily Obolensky, traveling with his granddaughter Tatyana. Alex tried to talk with the count, but he accused the young man of disgracing his family. In turn, Alexey accused the count of having thousands of innocently killed people on his hands.

Returning to his compartment, Kat receives an invitation from Prince Kronos, riding in his personal carriage. The prince is a black, bearded man of about forty, traveling with his maid Kokhina, speaks more in riddles than gives answers to Robert's questions. The prince knows that Tyler is dead and Kat is not who he claims to be. However, he is ready to continue the deal, which Tyler could not finish to the end.

When Kat returns to her compartment again, a bearded tall man awaits him there. The bearded man asks where Tyler is, but he spots a blood stain on the floor and takes out a knife. After a little scuffle, Robert manages to knock out a knife and tell the stranger what happened. The bearded man appears to be Milos. He heard from Tyler about Kat, but he never saw him.

Tired of everything that has happened to him over the past few hours, Kat heads back to the dining car. There he notices a girl who attracts his attention. Schmidt approached her and started a conversation, and then Robert joined him. Schmidt introduces Robert Anna Wolfe, the famous Austrian violinist. Hearing the name Tyler, Anna changes her face, but tries to behave with restraint. Later, when Anna enters the smoking car, Robert shows Anna the scarf allegedly dropped by her. But Anna says he was wrong. Robert goes to his compartment and falls asleep. He has a nightmare at night: the dead Tyler lying on the bed, invites Robert to "make her sing."

July 25th, night

Waking up, Robert decides to take a train ride. He enters a 1st-class carriage and hears the sounds of a violin from Anna's compartment. He asks permission to enter. As soon as Robert enters, a huge dog pounces on him, and Anna herself takes out a gun and asks to give Robert his real name, because she knows Tyler. At this very moment, loud cries are heard from the compartment of Count Obolensky. Everyone is heading there. The count has an attack - he sees black people with bloody hands, which greatly frightened the granddaughter of Count Tatyana. By profession, a doctor, Robert helps the Count cope with an attack. Before going to bed, Robert notices how Anna gives Tatyana some big bundle.

July 25, morning

Waking up, Kat first visits Milos and his accomplices - Salko and Vesna, who immediately hated Robert. Milos says they are from the Black Hand organization, which is fighting for the liberation of the Serbs under Austro-Hungarian rule. He says that Tyler had to sell some valuable thing called the “Firebird” and get gold for it. In exchange for gold, Tyler was to get weapons from August Schmidt for them, which they should load on a train in Munich. Milos tries to convince Robert that he must finish Tyler’s case, but Kat doesn’t want to play political games and leaves. Walking out into the corridor, he hears Spring swearing at Milos. She believes that Robert killed Tyler and stole the Firebird. From the conversation between the conductor and the train chief, Kat learns that at night, due to the clutter with the graph, the conductor lost the universal key to all the doors.

Later, in the personal carriage of Prince Kronos, Kat says that he is ready to give the “Firebird” to the Prince in exchange for information about who killed Tyler. The prince doubts the veracity of his words and leaves for the bedroom. Kat overhears his conversation with Kohina, from which he learns that the prince believes that Anna has the "Firebird", and Kat is just bluffing. On the table, Kat finds a notebook that tells about a beautiful egg of amazing work that disappeared many years ago and was donated to the Turkish Sultan by the Russian Emperor Alexander. Kat now understands what the Firebird is.

The train arrives in Munich . Weapons are loaded into the luggage carriage, and a new passenger appears on the train - George Ebbat, who immediately begins to ask everyone about all the recent events. August threatens Robert to get off the train with goods in Vienna if he is not shown the gold. Anna begins to flirt with Augustus, simultaneously asking him questions about his work, but he evades the answers.

Prince Kronos appears in a smoking compartment and invites Anna to play a duet concert with him in his personal carriage. Anna agrees. Returning to his compartment, Robert learns that he, Obolensky, August and two girls from the first-class carriage are invited to the concert that Anna and Kronos will give. Before the concert starts, the conductor has to pick up Anna’s dog because of passengers complaining about barking and take him to the luggage compartment.

During the concert, Robert manages to get into Anna's compartment through the open window of the neighbor's compartment. Having searched him, he finds the missing universal key and a letter from which it becomes clear that Anna is a spy and works for intelligence of Austria-Hungary. Her task is to prevent the deal between August and Tyler. The perfume on the table smells exactly like the scarf found in Tyler’s compartment. Using a universal key, Robert gets into Tatyana’s compartment and finds a huge golden egg - “Firebird”. Since two things were missing from the chest where the egg was stored, Kat suggests that the second is a whistle, in which the boy Francois whistles, always running around the cars and annoying passengers. After talking with the child, he finds out that he found a whistle on the floor. Robert manages to trade a whistle for a living beetle in a matchbox.

Returning to the compartment, Robert studies the egg and it transforms into a giant golden bird with closed eyes. Kat blows a whistle and the bird comes to life. She sings a song to him and falls silent again. Fearing for the safety of the egg, Kat goes to the luggage compartment and hides it in the cage with Anna's dog. Using a universal key, Robert lands on the roof of the train and enters the Kronos carriage. There he finds documents - a report from a private investigator and attorney Kronos, who followed Tyler for several weeks. Tyler tried several times to make an appointment for the sale of the Firebird, but each time he either did not come or refused to show the egg. In the end, he agreed to exchange an egg for gold in a train following to Constantinople. In the safe, Robert finds a suitcase full of gold. He takes out his suitcase right during the concert in front of the distraught Kronos and Kohina.

After the concert, Kat shows gold to Augustus, and he calms down. Kokhin, threatening with a gun, tells Kat that a prince is waiting for him. Kat returns the gold to the prince. Kronos says he is disappointed and would gladly give gold in exchange for the Firebird. Kat asks again who killed Tyler, and again Kronos evades the answer. Before expelling Robert, Kronos forcibly takes Anna's scarf from him.

Robert heads for the luggage compartment to the weapon drawers. There he meets Anna, who threatens him with a gun. Robert manages to knock him out. Robert is sure that she killed his friend in order to break the deal with the weapon, but Anna assures that when she went into the compartment, Tyler was already dead. And the egg lay on the table and, frightened, she took it. At this moment, Spring with a knife is attacking Anna from behind. Kat manages to push Anna away and gets a wound in the shoulder. Spring is running away. The train arrives in Vienna. The private carriage of the prince is uncoupled, Kronos gets off and leaves with nothing.

July 25, evening

Before going to bed, Tatyana comes to Robert and says that Alex persuades her to get off with him in Budapest - otherwise he will blow up the train. Kat searches Alexey’s compartment and finds the detonator. In a restaurant car, a drunk August pours out Robert's soul - he does not understand the sudden change in Anna's mood. Kat goes to bed and has a new nightmare - Alexei, in the eyes of Tatiana, is killed by her grandfather, stabbing him several times with a knife in the chest.

July 26, night

Waking up, Kat goes to the 1st class carriage and realizes that it was not a dream. Dying, Alexei asks to save Tatyana. Kat finds the bomb and defuses it. Then George Abbath starts a conversation with him. He admits that he is an English agent sent here to find out who wanted to kill Vasily Obolensky. George invites Robert to solve all his problems, drop the charges in exchange for a small service - Robert should work for them. Robert says he will think, and follows Anna passing by. He comes after her in her compartment, where they begin to make love. Suddenly, instead of stopping in Budapest, the train accelerates and passes by. This Milos with his people captured the train. Kat tries to fight back and gets hit in the head.

July 26, early morning

Kat comes to life in the luggage compartment. Anna is also located there. Freed, they defeat all the Serbs, except Milos, who himself leads the train. All passengers and train personnel assembled in the dining car depart at the compartment. Only Vasily and Tatyana, who are completely crazy, and George Ebbat do not leave. Robert unhooks the cars with passengers, trying to reduce the number of possible victims to a minimum. Seeing Augustus, Robert tells him the truth about Anna and admits that he is not Tyler Whitney.

July 26, morning

Anna and Kat manage to neutralize Milos before the train crosses the Serbian border. However, when the train almost stopped, Kat forced the stoker to step up, explaining that he was obliged to get to Constantinople. A steam locomotive crosses the border and ends up on the territory of Serbia. The heroes manage to drive along the old tracks and break away from the train pursuing them with the Serbian general. Later, in the train chief’s compartment, Anna invites Robert to find out who killed Tyler after all. But Kat says it doesn't matter — many of the suspects are dead. He invites Anna to leave with him, and she agrees.

July 28 evening

The train stops at the station. Constantinople is an hour away. Anna notices a ring with an old castle on Robert's neck. She is sure that somewhere already saw a similar symbol and leaves. The train is moving. Robert notices a carriage standing on one of the tracks. It looks very much like a Kronos carriage. Robert runs after Anna to the restaurant car. He turns out to be right - Kronos and Kokhina are sitting in the car with Anna. Holding the gun to Anna's stomach, Kronos demands from Kat a "Firebird". He goes to the luggage compartment and picks it up from the cage with the dog. Returning, Kronos demands to open it. Robert, who has already seen what the bird is capable of, feels that something has changed - both in her gaze and in her plumage. The bird began to look more evil. And also noise, tapping noise. Kronos says this is the beating of her living heart. He hands Anna the violin and makes her play. Anna plays the violin, and then the bird performs her own. And again, Kat feels something is not right. The bird plays a completely different melody.

The song wakes Tatyana, who, with her grandfather, fell asleep in the compartment of the train chief. She gets up and heads for the luggage compartment. After listening to the end of the song, Kronos looks out the window - the sun has set. He nervously asks Robert to close the egg. He's clearly scared of something. Kat takes a whistle from her pocket and whistles. The bird comes to life again and pounces on Kronos, it begins to tear its claws to his face. The mystery of Tyler’s death is revealed, he was killed by the Firebird. The whistle turns into a bug and runs away. Kohina is trying to save her master, but the bird defeats her too. The train slows down, it arrives in Constantinople. Robert and Anna understand that they can become the next victim and jump out the window. Behind them jumps out of nowhere come from Max, the dog of Anna. Suddenly, Kat remembers Tatyana and runs after the train. And Tatyana, meanwhile, found dynamite and set it on fire. An explosion destroys the entire composition and part of the platform. George Ebbat, Vasily Obolensky, Tatyana and the fireman die. Bloodied "Firebird" soars into the air and disappears into the clouds.

Kat and Anna are horrified at the burning remains. Suddenly, Robert was attracted to the soldiers, scurrying back and forth and getting into the train. Kat stops the boy passing by, and he says that the war has begun. Anna is forced to return home. Она говорит, что война не продлится больше года, и как только она закончится, то сразу же вернётся в Константинополь на первом послевоенном экспрессе. Она просит позаботиться о Максе и исчезает в толпе. Кэт смотрит ей вслед, а Макс жалобно воет, пытаясь прорваться к своей хозяйке. Игра завершается сообщением, что маршрут «Восточного экспресса» Париж-Константинополь был восстановлен только в мае 1932 года (через 18 лет).

• Роберт Кэт , американский врач и авантюрист (персонаж игрока) — Дэвид Свенсон (голос — К. В. Морган)

• Анна Вольф , скрипачка и австрийская агентесса — Дуня Джорджевич (голос — Ингеборг Вьенманн)

• Татьяна Оболенская , русская аристократка — Коринна Блюм (голос — Елена Данова)
• Василий Оболенский , граф, политический деятель — Дик Мэллон (голос — Анатолий Турмов)
• Август Шмидт , немецкий оружейный промышленник — Йозеф Шольц
• Алексей Дольников , русский анархист — Михаил Дунаев
• Кронос , персидский принц — Муджахид Абдул-Рашид
• Кохина , служанка Кроноса — Нкечи Эмерува (голос — Луми Мулиро)
• Джордж Эббот , английский детектив — Крис Мюррей
• Милош Йованович , сербский борец за свободу — Дермот Робинсон (голос — Зоран Данилович)
• Весна Савин , его помощница — Эйлин Вайсингер (голос — Даница Милошевич)
• Tyler Whitney , Kat's friend, killed at the beginning of the game - David Burkson (voice - Tim Wiggins)

In 1993, Jordan Mechner founded the Smoking Car Production company in San Francisco specifically for the development of The Last Express . In total, the development of the game took 5 years, and the final budget amounted to 5-6 million dollars ^{[1] [3]} .

In developing the game, rotoscoping technology was used, which Jordan Mechner already used in his early games, for example, Prince of Persia . For 22 days, video was filmed with live actors who played out every movement of each character in the game. A special make-up was imposed on the actors, and they were dressed in exactly the same costumes that their characters wore. All this was shot on a blue background on a 16 mm film and subsequently digitized. Then selected frames were processed using proprietary proprietary technology. First, color was removed from the frames, then a powerful computer program created black and white drawings of frames that were painted manually. The final product included a total of 40 000 frames.

Jordan Mechner also took casting seriously - German actor August Schmidt was played by German actor Karl-Heinz Toiber, and Russian anarchist Alexei Dolnikov was played by Russian actor Mikhail Dunaev. True, Russian aristocrat Tatyana Obolenskaya is played by actress Korina Blum, but voiced by Russian actress Elena Danova. As a result, in the game, Russians speak Russian to each other, the French, Germans and others also prefer their native languages.

A variant of the Russian fairy tale about the Firebird (also the plot is known as “Ivan Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf”) is actually a literary translation from the English text, which was adapted to the plot ^[4] .

March 31, 1997 the game was released on three CDs for several platforms - Windows , DOS and Macintosh . As a result of bidding between several major game publishers, the distribution rights of the game were shared by Brøderbund Software , SoftBank and GameBank . Released versions of the game with French, German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese dubbing. The official Russian dubbing did not appear then, but the full translation and dubbing of the game into Russian was commissioned by Fargus , which was involved in the illegal distribution of computer games ^[5] .

In 2000, the game publisher Interplay Entertainment acquired the rights to the game and began selling it in an inexpensive format. Some time later, Interplay went bankrupt, and the game again was left without a publisher. However, the game can still be purchased through some online stores.

In 2006, the US-based GameTap subscription distribution service began selling The Last Express through its network.

In 2011, the game became available for sale on the GOG.com store through the publisher Phoenix Licensing .

In 2012, the game appeared on the iOS and Android platforms . The game has acquired new features - it has pop-up tips and achievement system ^[6] . Adaptation and publication was carried out by DotEmu .

On November 22, 2013, a gold reissue of the game appeared on Steam . Achievements, character biographies, and a slightly modified interface were added to the game. The adaptation and publication, similar to the version for iOS and Android, was carried out by DotEmu.

A thirty-minute album of soundtracks for the game was released by Intrada in 2000, and currently the entire print run is discontinued. The author of music and orchestration is the Czech composer Elia Tsmiral , who later wrote the music for the film " Ronin ." The music was performed primarily on synthesizers, but there is also a fragment of solo on the violin. The recording was made at Forte Muzika Studios in Los Angeles. The only exception is the sonata for violin and piano in C major of the nineteenth-century Belgian composer Cesar Franca , who sounds in the concert scene of the game.

The game received rave reviews both in print and online. Newsweek called the game exquisite and exciting. MSNBC said that "riddles and characters are charming" and "everyone will definitely like this game." The Russian Game.exe magazine rated 99% in all respects; the game received the Editors' Choice Award from PC Gamer , Computer Gaming World , Next Generation and dozens of websites. The overall rating of the game on the Game Rankings website, based on eight different reviews, is 85.57% ^[7] .

Despite the good reviews from critics, the game was not sold out for several months. The marketing department of Brøderbund Software quit a few weeks before the release of the game, which led to an almost complete lack of advertising. SoftBank left the game market, ceasing to support its subsidiary GameBank project and closing several dozen developments, including the almost complete version of The Last Express , ported to the PlayStation . Everything went wrong after Brøderbund Software acquired The Learning Company , which was interested only in its educational and home programs. The Last Express was released long before the Christmas sales season, and only to cover costs it was necessary to sell half a million copies of the game. As a result of the commercial failure of the game, Jordan Mechner had to close Smoking Car Production . Disappointed in games, he even for some time disappeared from the gaming industry; He returned only in 2003 with the release of the game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time , in the development of which he took part as a chief consultant and game designer.

On April 13, 2010, MTV posted an excerpt from an interview with director Paul Verhoeven in his movie blog. Verhoeven said in an interview that he was working on a film whose plot takes place in 1914, and the plot of a video game was taken as the source. At the same time, he indicated that the author of the game asked to keep its name a secret until there is a script ^[8] .

It was only in October 2011 that Verhoeven admitted that together with Jordan Mechner he was working on the adaptation of The Last Express ^[9] . Since then, there has been no news of the production of the film.

• lastexpress.markmoran.net - The Last Express official website
• The fate of the hit on the site of the magazine " Best Computer Games "
• An article about the game in the encyclopedia LCI