| Under A Killing Moon |
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''Under a Killing Moon'' ( 1994 ) was the third installment in the Tex Murphy series of Adventure Games produced by Access Software . In ''Under a Killing Moon'' Tex again fights the forces of evil as he tries to stop a dangerous Cult from destroying the world. ''Under a Killing Moon'' combined Full Motion Video (FMV) cutscenes with a 3D virtual world to explore. ''Under a Killing Moon'' was in its day one of the largest video games ever, arriving on four CD-ROMs (although some material was duplicated among the four to reduce the amount of swapping). An ''Under a Killing Moon'' movie was in the works starring Soleil Moon Frye in a prominent role. Frye appeared on '' The Jenny Jones Show '' to plug the movie during its early production stages, but the project was ultimately scrapped. SETTING Like all Tex Murphy games, ''Under a Killing Moon'' takes place in post-s in some form. Tensions between the two groups have risen dramatically since the end of the War , and Norms and Mutants usually do not get along. The Mutants are usually forced to live in the run-down areas of cities such as Old San Francisco. Tex lives on Chandler Ave. in Old San Francisco. All his friends are Mutants, though he himself is a Norm. ''Under a Killing Moon'' takes place in December 2042. PLOT In ''Under a Killing Moon'' the player plays as Tex Murphy, Private Investigator . Tex has hit rock bottom. Recently Divorced from his wife Sylvia, out of work, low on cash, and living in a rundown part of Old San Francisco, Tex realizes that he has to get his act together. Tex sets out to hunt for work. He finds it quickly once he discovers that the Pawnshop across the street from his Apartment has been robbed. Tex quickly solves the case, and feels his luck has begun to change. Then a mysterious woman calling herself Countess Renier, having heard good things about Tex, hires him to find her missing statuette. Everything seems great at first. The Countess is promising to pay Tex more money than he's seen in his life. But everything quickly goes downhill when Tex finds himself unwittingly involved in the affairs of a dangerous cult. ''Under a Killing Moon'' has many unique characters, and stars several well-known actors such as Brian Keith ('' The Parent Trap ''), Margot Kidder ('' Superman ''), Russel Means ('' The Last Of The Mohicans '') and the voice of James Earl Jones ('' Star Wars '', '' The Lion King ''). GAMEPLAY The virtual world ''Under a Killing Moon'' was the first Tex Murphy game to fully utilize interactive 3D environments. The player controls Tex from a first person perspective. The virtual world allows full freedom of movement, and as such allows the player to look for clues in every nook and cranny. Though action games with 3D environments and first person perspectives had been popularized by '' Doom '' the previous year, it was extremely unusual at the time to see these characteristics in an Adventure Game . Conversations ''Under a Killing Moon'' was the first Tex Murphy game to stray from the traditional adventure game dialogue format of providing options that showed exactly what the player's character would say. Instead, descriptions of the dialogue choices were given, providing some mystery to what Tex would say. CAST
NOVELIZATION A novelization of the game was written by Aaron Conners (1996). Although the basic plot, characters, and setting remain mostly the same, it differs significantly from the game, providing a great deal of extra information, new characters, character deaths, and more detailed character motivations related to the main plot involving the Moonchild, while removing scenes and characters from the game that did not relate to the Moonchild plot, creating a more singular Chandler-esque mystery novel. The final ending of the game (meeting The Colonel and Eva in the bar, and dancing lessons with Delores Lightbody) is also changed to continue this style. OTHER TEX MURPHY GAMES
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