The Pandora Directive

Plot synopsis:
Like all Tex Murphy games, The Pandora Directive takes place in post-World War III San Francisco in April 2043. After the devastating events of WWIII, many major cities have been rebuilt (as is the case with New San Francisco), though certain areas still remain as they were before the war (as in Old San Francisco). WWIII also left another mark on the world: the formation of two classes of citizens. Specifically, the Mutants and the Norms. After the events of Under a Killing Moon, tensions between the two groups have begun to diminish. The end to the Crusade for Genetic Purity was a turning point in the relations between Mutants and "Norms". Tex still lives on Chandler Ave., which recently underwent a city-funded cleanup. The events of WWIII still left the planet with no ozone layer, and to protect their citizens many countries adopted a time reversal. Instead of sleeping at night, and being awake in the day, humans have become nocturnal, in a manner of speaking. Though Tex lives in what is considered a Mutant area of town, he himself is a "Norm".
In The Pandora Directive, after accidentally offending his love interest Chelsee Bando, Tex (Chris Jones) is hired by Gordon Fitzpatrick (Kevin McCarthy) to find his friend, Thomas Malloy (John Agar). He learns that Malloy stayed at the Ritz, and decides to follow up the lead after reconciling with Chelsee and agreeing to go for dinner with her at her apartment. Upon investigating Malloy's room, Tex is knocked out by a mysterious masked figure dressed in black. Tex is out through the night, inadvertently missing his date with Chelsee. After finding out that a female acquaintance of Malloy works at the Fuchsia Flamingo club, Tex offers to take Chelsee there to both apologise and hopefully to check out the lead. Regardless of whether Chelsee comes out with Tex or not, she will decide to take a vacation to Phoenix for a few days. At the club, Tex meets with the girl, Emily who agrees to trade information on Malloy if Tex can find out who is stalking her. She gives a note she received from her stalker to Tex and upon showing it to his connection in the police station Mac Malden, Tex finds out that Emily is being observed by the Black Arrow Killer. Tex is able to discover that the NSA is involved and looking for Malloy, and breaks into one of their headquarters, Autotech. He finds out that the NSA are using video surveillance to monitor the goings on in Emily's room at the Fuchsia Flamingo. Tex finds the source of this and sees a figure dresses similarly to the person who attacked him in Mallory's room waiting to confront Emily. Tex hurries over to the club and is able to get there just in time to see the Killer jump out of the window carrying a small box. (Whether Emily survives or not will depend on the storyline path.) Tex chases him down and in the ensuing fight accidentally causes the Killer to fall off the roof and die. Tex removes the Killer's mask and sees that it is NSA agent Dag Horton, who had an office in Autotech. Tex is pulled in for questioning by the police, but is allowed to leave when an unknown woman enters the station and speaks to Mac.
Tex retrieves the box that Horton stole from Emily's room, but is seized by the NSA and taken to Jackson Cross's office at Autotech. He is threatened to stay out of their affairs, and is forced to hand over the box. Returning to his office, Tex is met by the woman who talked the police into letting him go. She reveals her name is Regan Madsen, she is Thomas Malloy's daughter and that Malloy sent out several boxes like the one Tex found. Tex goes to the Fuchsia Flamingo and finds out that Emily is Malloy's wife, hence her being sent a box. using the return address on the packaging, Tex is finally able to track down Malloy in a run down warehouse in the industrial district. After establishing that Tex is not with the NSA, he reveals that he used to work at Roswell, the military base where a spacecraft allegedly crashed in 1947. Malloy asserts that the crash was legitimate and that the government covered the story up. The military began investigating then wreckage to look for weapons, and in the 1980s Malloy came into the project to attempt to decipher the hieroglyphics on the craft. After World War 3, Malloy left the project but was able to continue his research in secret. Before Malloy can continue his story, two NSA agents arrive and kill him. Tex is able to escape by blowing the building up.
Tex fills a disheartened Fitzpatrick in on the events, but insists on following up on the details he has uncovered. Fitzpatrick tells him that he worked with Malloy in Roswell, and that after becoming close friends, Malloy confided in him that he had been deciphering the alien hieroglyphics and had discovered that a second spacecraft had crashed somewhere on Earth. He then reveals that he received one of Malloy's boxes and there are probably about 6 in circulation. Tex meets with Regan to tell her about her father, and she agrees to give him her box despite reservations that Tex will open it and sell off the information for himself. After stealing Horton's personal effects from the morgue where his body is being held, Tex is able to get into Autotech's evidence room to recover Emily's box. Tex travels to the Cosmic Connection shop and speaks to Archie Ellis, an eccentric comic book nerd and ufologist who recently interviewed Malloy. Archie tells him that the famous author Elijah Witt set up the interview between them, during which Malloy made several cryptic references to something called 'The Pandora Device'. He also reveals that during their research into the alien crafts at Roswell, the scientists accidentally released something into the facility that proceeded to kill off practically everyone in the complex before the military moved in and quarantined the entire base. Archie tells Tex that Malloy sent him one of the boxes but it was stolen, and that the alien power cell in a picture from one of the other boxes is still stored in the Roswell complex.
Tex travels to Roswell and enters the deserted site, but whilst moving around the facility becomes increasingly aware that he is being stalked. It is revealed that the alien entity released by the researchers many years before is still lurking in the complex, but Tex is able to seal it off in a containment pod before he suffers that same fate and is then able to secure the power cell from the security room. Tex is able to break the code on a disc Malloy sent to Elijah Witt on which Malloy reveals that each of the boxes sent out contains a piece of the Pandora Device and that assembling the parts will reveal the information Malloy had discovered. After obtaining all the relevant pieces, Tex summons Fitzpatrick, Regan and Witt to his office where he assembles the Pandora Device. A hologram of Malloy appears and tells the group that there was indeed another spacecraft that landed on Earth and that Malloy discovered its location. He hypothesises that the ship contains large amounts of anti-hydrogen on board, and that if this gets into the wrong hands it could result in the destruction of life on Earth. Witt immediately decides that the ship must be destroyed, but Regan is adamant that they could sell the technology off for big money. Regardless, the four decide that they must find the craft so they each take a separate route to the location Malloy specified.
Tex arrives and manages to navigate his way through a dense jungle and an ancient Mayan labyrinth in which he comes across Regan who set off earlier in hope she might get there first. Tex and Regan find the ship, but Jackson Cross arrives and it revealed that Regan and Cross had been working together all along. Before Cross is able to kill Tex, Fitzpatrick emerges from the ship and invites the three on board. Fitzpatrick shows them around and offers to show them the central power core before locking Regan and Cross inside, but not before Cross fires his gun and hits Fitzpatrick. As he is dying, Fitzpatrick reveals that he knows how to work the controls of the ship as his father was one of the aliens from the ship; his mother was a human woman from Nebraska, hence Fitzpatrick's human appearance. After urging Tex to type in the correct controls, he dies from his wound and Tex quickly exits the ship just in time for it to ascend into space and self-destruct. Tex is picked up by a late arriving Elijah Witt and taken home.
=== Possible Endings ===
From this point several endings are possible depending on how you choose to make Tex behave throughout the game:
Mission Street:
1. Chelsee returns from Phoenix and invites Tex round for dinner, during which he recounts his tale though she remains skeptical. Afterwards she reveals she is dressed in a square dance outfit and rewards Tex with a striptease.
2. Chelsee and Tex go for a drink at the Brew 'n' Stew. Chelsee reveals that she feels she isn't ready to commit to a relationship so and Tex should just remain good friends. Having signed up to the new 'holodate' service, a hologram of Clark Gable arrives to take Chelsee on a date. A deflated Tex returns to his office and calls the holodate service himself. He speaks to the manager (a hologram of Humphrey Bogart) and requests a two for one special date with Jayne Mansfield and Anna Nicole Smith.
Lombard Street:
1. Same as Mission Street Ending 2.
2. On the space craft when Cross shoots he hits Tex instead of Fitzpatrick. He is able to limp off the ship and sees it explode. Having ruined his chances with Chelsee he decides to give up his career as a P.I. and join the circus as a clown. We see him backstage putting on his makeup before going on, glancing briefly at photograph of Chelsee before sadly leaving the room to perform.
Boulevard of Broken Dreams:
1. Same as Lombard Street Ending 2
2. On the space craft Tex is shot in the leg, but is unable to get off before itself destructs and dies.
3. Before boarding the ship, Cross will give his gun to Tex and ask him to shoot Fitzpatrick. If the player opts to shoot Cross instead, the gun will be empty and Cross will pull out a loaded gun and shoot Tex dead.
4. If the player chooses to shoot Fitzpatrick, the gun will be empty. Before Cross can shoot Fitzpatrick himself, Tex suggests they go to look on the ship. Fitzpatrick will lock all three of them in the ship's core. Tex is able to unlock the door, but Fitzpatrick will have already begun flying the ship into space. The ship self-destructs and all four characters die.

Tags: neo noir, murder, sci-fi

Review:
An exemplary interactive movie from the highly-acclaimed Access Software team..
The Tex Murphy series of interactive movies has become one of the most prestigious and respected in the business of computer games.
Access are always keen to reach a new paradigm in gaming technology (they were the first to release a game on DVD), but the most important thing is that they deliver a solid, strong and entertaining game.
Out of the three 'Tex' games made, The Pandora Directive is the best.Tex Murphy (played by producer Chris Jones) is possibly one of the most legendary characters in the gaming world.
He is a bourbon drinking, stereotypical private-dick, right down to the cigarette stubs and the five o'clock shadows.
Slowly, he is drawn into a web of bizarre, corrupt characters, and the plot establishes itself to be quite complex and convoluted.
After some game time, a mysterious 'Pandora' device emerges, and it becomes known that it has the answers to the Roswell mystery of 1954 (or is it 1952?).The game is set in San Fransisco, 2043, and from what we gather in the introduction, there has been a schism between the humans and the 'mutants,' a character class that emerged after a nuclear bomb was dropped on the town.
Tex lives with the mutants, though he isn't one himself, and tries extremely hard to court the elusive and beautiful Chelsea Bando, the mutant newspaper stand salesgirl.
Access Software have done a good job of establishing a believable, likeable protagonist and landing him in a compelling, intriguing plot/sub-plot line.But all in all, the Pandora Directive is a very entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable experience that can be played multiple times as it has seven different endings.Nine out of ten..
A landmark.
Seven years after the release, a game which stands so well, despite of the 6 discs swapping needs, must be a really great one.
I've played -and finished- TPD last week for the very first although not the last time (considering the game features seven different endings).
Recent adventure hits like Syberia or Runaway never reached TPD overall quality level for me, and the explanation is pretty simple.First, we find well crafted movie sequences which are not fillers at all, but necessary links within the story.
Virtually interacting with Kevin McCarthy or Tanya Roberts is a divine pleasure for cinema freaks (and what about that gorgeous mutant beauty played by Suzanne Barnes?).Second, the 3-D engine works pretty well; you can walk, run, tilt, slide freely in any angle, like in modern first-person shooters; objects are pixel-level detailed and characters look alive even when they are in the background.
Back in 1996, this may have seemed a true miracle.Third, the plot is superb, suspenseful and addictive, not just the average last-minute excuse; talking about Roswell, NSA and Mayan heritage, mentioning Eco's Foucault's Pendulum or Majestic-12...
one even wonders if this game is actually revealing something which finally drove it into commercial deletion - not to talk about Big Brother Microsoft having the rights of the Tex Murphy whole series.Fourth and last, the playability is great; the things to do are pretty logical, you don't ever need to figure out absurd combinations of actions and objects since you never get stuck in too absurd situations, which otherwise is the handicap in most adventure games.This game well deserves a re-release, a good chance to implement MPEG-4 video, environmental sound, cast, shooting and bibliographical extras and full language support in one or two discs (DVD).
Best Adventure Game Ever.
I think that this is the best computer game ever made.
It was very hard to stop playing this game when once started.
Really liked this game because of the great story.
This is absolutly a game for people who like mystery and adventure.
A lot of great puzzles also, so you have to use your brain very much.You play as a P.I named Tex Murphy in the year 2042(or something like that).
You're hired to find a man named Thomas Malloy...
but that is just the beginning...everything becomes more complicated than that....
I think the changes in settings were amazing..
Sometimes this gave me and my friend Andrea a real scare (it 's VERY suspenseful), it's always pitch black outside and you never know when someone might pop out at  you!
There are many puzzles and they're pretty tough but so I found the built in hints VERY useful!
I fully recommend the Pandora Directive, but don't think that it's something quick and easy!
It has 6 CD's for a good reason...
It's long!
best of the series!.
I have to rate this one as the best of the three rather unconvincingly monikered "interactive movies" for the PC.
"Under a Killing Moon" looked terribly cheap, and "Overseer" was just plain dull.
"Pandora Directive" just about gets it right for me - fun (if hackneyed) plot, interesting characters (though sadly no Inspector Burns this time) and by the looks of it a pretty high budget all go toward making this pretty good fun, but still really nowhere near a true movie in any way, interactive or otherwise!
Also bear in mind I played this game about 4 years ago, so by now the graphics etc.
are probably absolutely laughable by today's standards!