Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - A Lot on Our Plato

Indiana Jones Journal Entry #2:  I'm now on the look out for the mythical Lost Dialogue of Plato, which supposedly leads to the mythical city of Atlantis. I'm sceptical that Atlantis or the Lost Dialogue even exists, despite having personally witnessed the magical powers of the mythical Ark of the Covenant, the mythical Sankara Stones and the mythical Holy Grail - hell, I've personally spoken to an 872 year old man!!! Anyway, I'm for some reason still sceptical of mythical historical objects and locations, and am only looking for one as an excuse to beat up some nazis. So far, my investigations at Iceland and New York have given me two clues - one that leads me to the Azores in Portugal and another that will take me to Tikal in Guatemala. And don't even ask how a journal written in 1939 contains Wikipedia weblinks???


THE AZORES

Last time, Icelandic eel chiseler, Heimdall, told me to visit Costa in the Azores. The one location that the game takes me to in the Azores is Costa's front door.

I try to talk to him with Indy, but don't get very far. So I talk to Sophia and ask her to take over. Now in charge of Sophia, I try again. I get further, with Costa actually leaving the house instead of talking to me from the crack in the door.



And now that I'm Sophia, Costa will actually answer my questions about the Lost Dialogue of Plato.

Good to know this trip was well worth the time and money

Despite seemingly knowing nothing, he does claim to have some information about the Lost Dialogue. But he won't give it to me for free - he'll only trade the information for a rare Atlantean artifact.

Sophia won't give up her necklace, so perhaps if she didn't waste an artifact on showing me a ghost earlier we could have done something. Oh well, seeing as we're using University funds to pay for our plane tickets, let's see what we can find in Tikal instead.


TIKAL

Following Heimdall's second clue, we go to Tikal looking for Professor Sternhart.

We enter Tikal outside a sort of forest maze with a jungle rodent in it. The rodent is harmless, just running away if I get too close.

The maze is a simple - enter one path – leave another - style maze. Each dark area is a path that I can enter like a door, reappearing in another dark area. It's consistent, meaning if I enter a path, then return into the path I entered from I end up where I started. This makes it easy to navigate, and I quickly end up at a tree with a giant anaconda curled around it.

I'm sure it's a contractual obligation to have this line in every Indiana Jones game

Indy won't go near the creature, so the only thing I can do is go back to the jungle maze.

Seeing as there is a rodent in the maze, and I know from various documentaries and fiction that snakes eat rodents, the solution to the puzzle is simple, I go back to the forest maze and run close to the jungle rodent, herding him towards the correct paths and directly towards to tree snake.

The snake leaps onto the rodent, who jumps off the cliff, taking the snake with him.

Does this make Indy an accessory to double murder? Perhaps we should ask Victor Sifuentes.

Now that the snake has gone (hopefully at least having a taste of the rodent before being crushed to death on the ground below) I can climb the snake's tree, which bends, forming a makeshift bridge across the chasm.

Was that really necessary? The gap looks quite jumpable to me.

In a tree on the other side of the 'bridge' is a parrot that I can talk to. He simply repeats or rhymes with whatever I say. I have a little fun saying things to the bird, then leave the screen to the right.

I am now in front of a temple, where there's a souvenir stand. When I arrive, Sophia calls out and appears from the other side of the screen. I ask her how she got there and she says simply, “I found a path.” This joke would have worked much better if I'd spent hours finding my way here instead of solving a single puzzle, but it did the job of getting us both outside the temple.

I check out the small souvenir shopfront. As soon as I touch it, a man comes running from the temple and asks what I want.

This guy works fast! Is this a new expedition? And how many customers does he get?

The man is Sternhart, and he tells us that this temple seems much too civilized to have been built by the primitive Mayans. Legends say it was built by men-who-are-not-men, and he's sure those builders were the Atlanteans who came here after Atlantis sank.

He also lets on that he's the one who translated the Lost Dialogue of Plato, but someone called “Mr. Smith” had come here and stolen his only copy at gunpoint.

That's the third time Kerner's gotten ahead of me and stolen something I wanted. Even if he wasn't a nazi, I'd still hate him at this point!

Sternhart will only let me into the temple if I prove I'm a reputable scholar and true student of Atlantis. I tell him my name but he thinks it sounds more like the name of one of my American states (he's British) or a cat.

Sophia's brought this up twice already. If I was Indy I'd call my next dog Sophia!

With my name and reputation as a scholar holding no weight, I'll need to tell him the title of the Lost Dialogue of Plato to be let in.

I take a guess, but am wrong. Who made this guy the boss of the temple? If Kerner can get what he wants at gunpoint, why can't I threaten the guy myself? When we stop talking to him Sternhart goes back to the temple.

Because I don't have a gun in my inventory, I try the old adventure game staple of talking to a parrot to get vital information. I ask the parrot about “Title” to which he replies,

“HERMOCRATES! A friend of Socrates!"

Ted Theodore Logan?

We get Sternhart back by attempting to grab a mug from the souvenir stand, and he lets us in when we tell him "HERMOCRATES" is the title of the Lost Dialogue. Before we enter, Sophia confides that she doesn't trust him. Indy agrees, so we go in prepared to be double-crossed.

The temple has a very small explorable area. How many weeks/months/years has Sternhart been exploring this small corridor? Is this what archaeology really is?

My keen eyes sensed one of the spiral designs was different! Well, my keen eyes AND moving my mouse around the screen until writing appeared showing it was something I could click on.

Apart from Sternhart and Sophia, there are two things I can click on in the temple: a creature carving on the left that looks a little like an animal head and a spiral design that's raised beyond the others. I can't take the spiral design as years of tarnish have it all gummed up.

I had an idea involving some oily mayonnaise I'd found in New York when I'd done some previous exploring, thinking that would help me get the design. For a moment, I smiled at the adventure game logic of taking two plane trips for something I'd surely be able to find in the local area, but soon realised I wouldn't need two plane trips at all.

When talking to Sophia, I can ask her to distract Sternhart. She takes him to the back of the temple while I leave.

Wait! She's distracting him by talking archaeology instead of undoing one of her shirt buttons and pretending to be stupid? Are we SURE this is 1939?

I can now get a good look at the souvenir stand without being interrupted, and find a kerosene lamp, which I take. Knowing that kerosene will probably do the job of loosening tarnish at least as well as expired mayonnaise, I take it back to the temple.

After fiercely protecting his souvenirs earlier, he seems blasé about my theft now and lets me keep the lamp. He clearly subscribes to the finders keepers law of acquisition

With Sternhart watching closely, I open the kerosene lamp and pour the oil onto the design, which eats away all the tarnish. I can now take the design and use it with the only other usable item in the room, the statue head-thingy.

Okay. If you say so.

I pull the elephant's nose (shouldn't it be called a trunk, Indy?) which opens up the tomb of an Atlantean King.

Sternhart gets very excited and takes a worldstone.

I don't know what a worldstone does yet but soon find out I'll need it to find Atlantis.

Sternhart takes the worldstone and runs to the back of the temple, where he opens a secret door and disappears. We're unable to follow, but looking at the King's corpse, I find another bead of orichalcum, that Sternhart hadn't noticed in his excitement about finding a worldstone. Again I question his archaeological talents. What kind of achaeologist finds a unique tomb, then takes a single thing from it and runs off, leaving the rest of the tomb to anyone else who comes along?

We take the orichalcum and, after asking the parrot about orichalcum...

I HAVE THE POWER!!!

… we leave and go back to Costa in the Azores


THE AZORES II

Back at Costa's door, he won't take my new bead (or my whip or magazine for that matter) so I go back to Iceland to see how Heimdall is going.


ICELAND II

Heimdall's not going too well actually. He froze solid in a cave that, honestly, doesn't look all that cold.

Looking at the eel head suggests that a bead would fit in its mouth. If that's not a clue I don't know what is. I put the orichalcum bead in its mouth, which melts the ice, exposing the eel, which I can now see is made of bronze. I take it, then leave, wondering if perhaps I should have put my bead into Heimdall's mouth to unfreeze him instead.


THE AZORES III

Back at the Azores, Costa takes the eel figurine and in return tells me where I can find the Lost Dialogue. It's in the Sprague Collection. Indy tells Sophia that Barnett College owns the Sprague Collection.

So, after all that travelling, the Lost Dialogue of Plato is in the place I started the game. Fair enough.


SOMEWHERE IN GERMANY

Before being able to go back to New York, I get a cutscene from “a research laboratory somewhere in Germany”.

Kerner (a.k.a. Mr. Smith) arrives at the lab and shows the statue he stole from us at the beginning of the game to Dr. Uberman. The doctor isn't impressed until Kerner also shows him an orichalcum bead.

Um... that's not how fire glitters, Doctor.

Uberman attaches electrodes to the orichalcum, which does... something... to his equipment.

Um... Doctor, you seem surprised. Did you KNOW there would be no radiactivity BEFORE you experimented with me in the room?

The doctor then has the idea of putting the orichalcum bead in the statue's mouth. He does so, and the statue walks off the table like a toy robot. It circles the table before smashing through the extremely sturdy looking concrete wall.

Kerner wonders about the possibilities of trucks, tanks or airplanes powered by these beads, but Uberman says he's thinking too small.

A big gulp and super sized fries?

You know, you'd sound a lot more menacing if you didn't sound exactly like Dr. Fred from Day of the Tentacle

NEW YORK II

Sophia and Indy arrive at Barnett College looking for the Lost Dialogue of Plato, which Indy doesn't believe exists.

After seeing the professionalism of Sternhart, who supposedly translated Plato's Dialogue, I choose the dialogue options that keep Indy sceptical.

I explore the college, which includes many of the areas I went to during the introduction sequence I raved about in the last post. In the cellar, I find a dirty rag and some coal.

Indy pronounces it by-tue-men. I always thought it was pronounced bit-u-men. Maybe it's an American/Australian thing.

On the exposed back surface of the upturned bookcase which toppled onto me in the intro, I find some screws.

I go to my office, where Sophia waits for me to find the Dialogue. I can look at various items, which often are references to Indy's previous adventures...

...or previous Lucasarts games

I take the mayo that I'd previously considered coming back from Central America for.

The ONLY reason to take this is that I know I'm a character in an adventure game.

I think about things I've seen that will help me unscrew the back of the bookcase. The most appropriate thing I can think of is Heimdall's chisel that he used in Iceland to dig out the eel figurine. Once again smiling at the ridiculousness of taking a plane to Iceland and back rather than simply driving to a hardware store, I get in the car to leave. But to my surprise I don't leave - Sophia comes to the car and tells me off.

I like that the game forces me to stay here if everything I need is here instead of letting me waste my time.

That's the second time the game hasn't let me go somewhere unnecessarily, and given me an in-game reason to keep me here. I like it!

I go back to the room with the screwed bookcase and climb the rope up to the previous floor. I couldn't get upstairs by any normal means due to renovations on the stairway, which somewhat explains why I heroically swung through a window in the intro. On the upper level I found an obviously different coloured object on the shelf. It was an arrowhead. I took it, then had the idea of wrapping the arrowhead in my cloth rag to protect my hand. I'm not sure, but I suspect this idea coming so quickly is related to me having played the game before.

I unscrew the screws with my makeshift screwdriver, open the bookcase and find what I'm looking for, the Lost Dialogue of Plato!

Perhaps Sternhart does know what he's talking about, after all

The Lost Dialogue is simple to use. In the screenshot you'll notice five paperclips, which I can click on to take me to the five sections of the book that will end up being useful or interesting.

Here is the rest of the text we can read.

Socrates reminds me of Dana Scully 

I can now take my find back to the office and talk to Sophia.

I was hoping to keep Indy sceptical for the whole game, but all the options suggest he's starting to believe.

The Dialogue doesn't give us enough information to find Atlantis, so Sophia tries another method.

Joey Mallone?

Nur-Ab-Sal doesn't answer her, so we have a conversation about how to find Atlantis.

In the Dialogue, Plato had mentioned that there was a tenfold error in the calculations, which would put Atlantis in the Mediterranean Sea instead of the Atlantic Ocean. Sophia adds that Nur-Ab-Sal had told her he's from the middle of the world, which is apparently what Mediterranean means.

Glad I can be sceptical again

Sophia tells us that one of the artifacts Kerner stole from her was a stone disk with a hole in it, which she bought from someone called Alain Trottier in Monte Carlo...

She's doing this on purpose just so I always have to travel to two different locations, isn't she?

And now is the time we make a choice of path: WITS, FISTS or TEAM.

Choose wisely

I was surprised to notice that the game does have a defacto 'default' path. When I choose either WITS or FISTS I get a chance to back out with Sophia asking me if I'm sure that's how I want to do it. If I choose TEAM I don't get that chance and we move on to with the story. So the default path is TEAM.

As another aside, am I the only one who thinks they originally wanted the three paths to rhyme with each other but couldn't find anything appropriate for the TEAM path. Perhaps the original paths were WITS, FISTS and TITS but that name was already copyrighted by a bikini boxing club in a library?

As I mentioned in the introduction, I'll be playing all three paths, but I'll be starting that next time.

I'll travel to a Casino and a Desert. (Las Vegas has both in one place!)

Seems like an appropriate time to take a break. Tune in next time, when I hopefully get to keep an Atlantean artifact I find, will almost definitely use up more University funds to travel to far off countries and with a bit of luck, I'll find a Nazi to punch!

Session time: 1 hour
Total time: 1 hour 55 minutes
IQ Points: 76 of 88 (still only 12 points difference so I didn't find any alternate puzzle solutions in this post)