Automan (video game)

Automan (labelled as Mašinvír in the domestic issue) is an  developed by  and distributed by  for the  and, as well as  for the. The game was released in Seratof on the 15th of April 1995 both for Doors and MS-DOS, and recieved an release on the 1st of July 1995. The SP1 version of the game was finally released on the 3rd of February 1996. It is the first installment of the Automan game series, and was developed after its original game concept titled Street Racers which was scrapped due to several technical and developmental issues.

The game gives players control over characters in the game which takes roles of a criminal who conducts various jobs and missions for various people, groups, syndicates, and corporations to advance to the next level and progress the story while achieving a minimal amount of points to pass the mission. However, with an setting, the player is free to do whatever missions are available at that time of play, and is able to freely roam the map.

Automan recieved mainly positive reviews by critics, especially the version. Automan would soon give birth to other similar games made by other developers, and would soon be the first game of the Automan series borne out of the success the first Automan game has shown. By 1997, the game has sold at least three million copies worldwide.

Gameplay
Set in Moon City, the story of Automan progresses through missions in which the player is free to choose. Missions are given by a variety of people or corporations, and within each mission line done for a specific person, there exists some sort of linearity to the story, however the player is always able to freely complete tasks given by others whilst not completing a specific set of missions. Players choose from 8 models of the protagonist and name the protagonist themselves, which does not affect story and mission progression in any way. Missions are initiated by directing the character in game towards where the mission giver is located in. Once a player has completed a mission, the game will return to its state where players can roam the map freely, or go to the next mission according to where the mission giver is located. The game's ultimate goal is to finally complete all of the missions in the game and become one of the most feared criminals in Moon City. Completing missions also earns the player money, which can be then used to obtain weapons and other boosts, tune cars, or repair them in select shops.

The player has the ability to get caught, or "arrested" in game, as well as the ability to die ("wasted" in game), both of which would instantly fail the mission one is currently doing. The player will respawn in either the police station if arrested or the hospital if wasted. The player will lose all weapons and armor, and 20% of their money will be deducted. The player can then reattempt the mission with no consequences or burden as the game does not acknowledge that one has completed the mission, and returns to the state where the mission has not been undertook. Players can buy armor at gun shops, or pick up armor at select locations scattered throughout the map, increasing the player's chance of survival in the upcoming game or missons. The presence of law enforcement in-game consists of several levels of severity known as a "wanted level." The wanted level adjusts itself depending on the crimes the player has committed, and also adjusts the number of law enforcement personnel which chase the player either to arrest or to kill the player.

The game is exclusively conducted in Seratofian. As the game contains minimal conversation, subtitles were enough to support the game in multiple languages.

Plot
There exists a grand total of 6 mission givers, in turn giving 6 separate mission lines in which the player is free to jump from one mission line to the other whenever the player wishes. The mission lines in total give for 43 separate missions. Due to the free nature in which the player has the ability to control which missions are done first, the stories of each mission line does not overlap and intersect with one another, although some missions may acknowledge the existence of the other mission givers. Within this article, the plot will be separated according to mission line and giver. There is no introductory scene or story canon to the series, as confirmed by Alulim Games, the successor of Árlja Games.

The game uses 2D cutscenes to narrate the story, either in the beginning, middle, or end of a mission.

Silencio crime family
After a deal gone wrong, Emmanuel Silencio instructs the protagonist to assassinate who he believes is the mole within the family who ratted to the Cagliari crime family. The protagonist manages to kill the suspected mole while dealing with the Cagliaris, but was spotted by a henchman. With the Cagliaris after the protagonist, Emmanuel Silencio introduces the protagonist to Don Salvatore Silencio, who promises protection to the protagonist on the conditions that the protagonist do some "dirty work" for the organization. After assisting the crime family do various tasks, Don Salvatore invites the protagonist to finally kill Don Santo Cagliari during a day out at the park. The protagonist finally kills Don Santo to the amazement of Don Salvatore. The protagonist is congratulated by the don, and is offered a spot in the family, which the protagonist refuses, claiming that the protagonist still has a lot sorted out in Moon City.

Jacques de Seine
As a big businessman from Insennia with even bigger enemies, Jacques de Seine thought that moving to Moon City was an appropriate choice to make. However, his past dealings in the underworld which landed him many enemies did not take it kindly of him moving to escape their presence. They send henchmen and soldiers to Moon City in an attempt to assassinate Jacques de Seine and retrieve the stolen drug money Jacques brought with him. The protagonist is then asked by Jacques to intercept a meeting of the drug underlords with the Silencio crime family in an attempt to sabotage their presence in Moon City. The protagonist then does several missions and objectives given by Jacques in order to prevent Jacque's whereabouts to be discovered. Jacques then fakes his own death, and asks the protagonist to deliver pictures of him dead on his bed to one of the henchmen sent to kill Jacques. They promptly leave, and Jacques thanks the protagonist for keeping an eye out for him.

Šmarak Brothers
Rian and Jusuf Šmarak, engaged in the business, is losing big when their competitors sabotaged their dealings and convinced the city department for planning to intentionally make all their properties worthless. In a spirit of retaliation, the Šmarak brothers insisted the protagonist to torch a few properties belonging to J.N real estate and cause material loss. The Šmarak brothers then ask the protagonist to bring in forged documents into the city department for planning in an attempt to illegally claim and take property which once belonged to J.N real estate. The Šmarak brothers agreed to take a customer for a tour the next day only to see a confused Jan Nastari, the leader of the J.N real estate already there. The Šmarak brothers explained to Nastari that the property had in fact belonged to the Šmarak brothers, and implied that J.N real estate bribed a government official to overturn the property. A gun fight ensues, and the protagonist spends the next couple of missions defending the Šmarak brothers, eventually killing Jan Nastari himself. The protagonist managed to escape the bloodbath, but the Šmarak brothers were caught and were sentenced to life in prison.

Moon City Times
With a worsening reputation among readers, the Moon City Times had to turn to desperate measures to save their business. The MCT instructss the protagonist to create mayhem for the writers at MCT to write about. The protagonist helps MCT by wrecking havoc across the city, including crashing vehicles, lighting pedestrians on fire, and even crushing both pedestrians and vehicles with a tank obtained from the military base. As the approval rating of the MCT rises, the MCT plans for one more act to be conducted by the protagonist. The protagonist is asked to assassinate the mayor for tomorrow's hot news, but the player refuses so. An argument between the director and protagonist ensues, and the protagonist ends up killing the director instead in a car chase, proving to be a very hot topic for the MCT and ultimately saving them from declining ratings.

Ralf Mirković
Ralf Mirković, a corrupt government agent at an undisclosed agency, instructs the protagonist to perform several tasks that aide the underground drug operation run by him. The protagonist is instructed to retrieve several packages around the city and bring them back to Ralf in order to avoid suspicion by other government agents and law enforcement. Ralf Mirković then instructs the protagonist to assassinate several targets which hinder the drug operations from running smoothly, eventually trusting the protagonist to perform drug deals on behalf of Ralf Mirković. The protagonist then deals drugs on behalf of Ralf Mirković throughout the streets of Moon City, earning the drug operation tremendous amounts of money. One day, after a successful drug run, Ralf Mirković gives the protagonist a hefty amount of cash and instructs the protagonist to never speak of the organization anymore. Ralf Mirković then escapes the country as is never seen again.

Goodman Auto Repair Shop
Horni, the owner of Goodman Auto Repair Shop, has a thirst for exotic and expensive automobiles. He instructs he protagonist to perform various heists and carjackings to obtain the latest and hottest automobiles. The protagonist then completes several scenarios in order to obtain these vehicles, such as chasing the vehicles accross moon city, setting up elaborate schemes to fool the owners, as well as sneaking into the home of the owner to steal car keys. After a series of successful carjackings, Horni congratulates the protagonist, and gives the protagonist an exclusive car.

Development
The game was developed by a team of 17 people at Árlja games in Azxara begnning in the summer of 1993. It was originally funded by Árlja corporation to serve as the pilot project for the newly-found, a subsidiary of Árlja corporation. In line with themes common at the time, lead developer Árimjal Kžeščírnji decided on creating a titled Street Racers in, and planned release on multiple ports such as , , , and. The final release of the game however lacked a port for the Selene II.

The project was almost scrapped in spring of 1994 due to various technical issues. The developers were not able to contain the player to the bounded areas, therefore creating a proto form of an "open world." Kžeščírnji noticed that most of his team enjoyed driving over the pedestrians and crashing into other cars while testing the game instead of the game's inital objective. Rather than scrap eight months worth of development, Kžeščírnji decided to experiment with the idea and pushed the open world system to further levels, eventually creating a map, various assortment of vehicles, a plot, and several other gameplay elements.

Open world design
A team of 8 people at Árlja games once responsible for the creation of street circuits and environment in the original Street Racers title became the game's open world designers and creators. The team conducted several tours of Azxara, examining and studying the street patterns found within the city, but deemed it "too complex and clustered" for an open world game at the time. The world builders settled on creating their own version of a map, code named "Moon City", to be the setting of the first Automan game. According to a 2014 interview with Lázman, lead world developer for Automan, the team did not specifically choose one location or city to be the game's primary source of inspiration, and was filled and created purely by the developers' own creativity and ideas.

The game map, which measured 2.9 km², was considered sizeable during the era. With a dense and action-packed map filled with NPC pedestrians, vehicles, objects, and assets, the game environment was already pushing the technical boundaries bounded by computers and processors at the time. A beta map which was uploaded into an internet forum in 2006 showed that Moon City was meant to be at least three times bigger, including more scattered mission givers as well as two additional story lines. Simjon Kupra, a member of the Automan world development team, noted while the map may have been bigger, the amount of detail and environment put into the map remained the same, meaning that the current map was made more dense in order to give players the impression of a bigger and more 'lively' map.

Developers focused on visual and AI supremacy rather than audio and ambience quality, as confirmed by the lead developer himself. The game contained no spoken dialogues at all, and speech was conveyed through subtitles or texts. When characters in cutscenes talk, a sound imitating speech is played while the subtitles promptly appear as if they are conveying what the speaker is saying. There exists only one radio station in game playing a set loop of songs, mainly Seratofian pop from the 1970s.

The code name was never changed, and the final city known to players as "Moon City."

Story and Characters
Kžeščírnji was said to have led the story design process, along with two other people in the team. Kžeščírnji wanted to show and highlight the open world and the freedom to do whichever mission (and subsequently story line) the player intends. The team originally wanted to make one linear story progression with multiple missions needed to unlock the next mission, but Kžeščírnji felt that this strategy takes away from the original free and open world nature of the game. Instead, he argued that the game should have different story lines happening in the same universe in which the player can freely move from mission to mission whenever the player wishes so. Eventually, the team agreed on having different story lines disguised in the form of different mission givers in game, in which each mission giver will give out a series of missons which still have tobe done in order for the story to progress, but the player is free to not do the next set of missions instantly. To deviate players from the notion that missions were the only thing to do in game, Kžeščírnji, through an in-game info box, told players that they are free to roam the city whenever they wished to, and doing missions is not mandatory in game if one doesn't wish to progress any of the story lines.

The missions and subsequently stories featured in game are taken from various points of inspiration and point of views, highlighting the Borgosesian Mafia, the, business competition, and carjackings. The team took inspiration from real world occasions and events, modified them to be suitable in game, and designed a story around these points of inspiration. With a scattered plot, no mission and story line conflicts with one another in plot and in-game objective. When writing each of the story lines, Kžeščírnji and two other people evidently had their work desks filled with sticky notes containing ideas and timelines of the missions within a story line, constantly changing, shifting, deleting, and even scrapping the entire story line some times.

Developers did not emphasize on the protagonist as much as the later Automan games. The developers simply created a model for eight different protagonists, and promptly left the player to name the character themselves with no implications or consequences later in-game. Mission givers often depict and portray real-life people, corporations, or businesses, and their designs are drawn from the real life counterpart in which they portray. Cutscenes were static 2D scenes, where the talking character is highlighted and wiggled when talking, emitting an imitation of speech too. It has been speculated that the company did not have enough time and resources to fully incorporate dialogues into the game. Technical limitations may have also played a part.

Sound
The sound team consisted solely of a music and audio director for Árlja games. Automan featured forty two minutes of songs played by the game's only radio when in a vehicle that supports radio. As no dialogues are present in the game, developers had to resort to imitations of speech and human sound for virtually every occasion. The team sometimes recorded their own sounds to be put in game to be used or ambient or the said imitations. Ambient noises in the game were far more fleshed out than the dialogues. The developers used 200 different ambient sounds ranging from the sound of screeching tires to the sound of an exploding barrel in-game.

The game's main theme was composed by Seratofian musician Äran Vjilkana.

Critical reception
The game was an instant best-seller in Seratof, selling 70,000 copies on its launch day and averaging 10,000 every day for the next few weeks. International sales accounted for more than 70% of the game's total copies, with more than 3 million copies shipped and sold worlwide by early 1997. The game was a commercial success, even though some commentators rank the game poorly for its bad controls and "unorganized" story and plot. The game won the 1996 Seratof game award, attaining at least 2 million Zakkas in the process, most of which would go into the funding of Automan II.

noted the freedom in which players were exposed to, and gave the game good marks in flexibility and game environment. IGN noted that the graphics were slightly outdated for the time, and said that "it could be done better." ING noted that overall, the game is "enjoyable" and "fun", but with several issues which could have been improved and revamped on.

Controversies
Several Members of Parliament at the time voiced their concern on the possible dangers of the game, highlighting violence and other criminal acts which are depicted very clearly and are an integral part of the game. The ultra-conservative faction of the SPP tried to block the game from being ever published, but the proposal went nowhere as the President of Seratof, who also happened to be the party leader of the SPP, endorsed the game, citing it as a "fun getaway" from the hardships and set rules of the real world, and it is fun to sometimes break the law in game so that such actions are not repeated or done in the real world. Ironically, this controversy is what brought the game into the national spotlight. Several commentators argued that the action takena against Automan brought it "free advertising" and attention to the release of said game.

A number of countries have also tried to take legal action from the game to be published, most notably XXX and XXX. Arguments against the publication of the game include the unnessecary amounts of violence and gore present in the game, as well as being a bad influence on the nation's youth. These attempts were mostly unsuccessful, and gamers in those countries were still able to obtain a copy after the official international launch date.