Zork: Grand Inquisitor is a graphic adventure game developed by Activision and released for Windows in 1997, and for Macintosh in 2001. It builds upon the Zork and Enchanter series of interactive fiction video games originally released by Infocom, and sees players attempting to restore magic to Zork, solving puzzles and using spells. The game features a notable cast of characters, with stars including Erick Avari, Michael McKean, Amy D. Jacobson, Marty Ingels, Earl Boen, Jordana Capra, Dirk Benedict, and Rip Taylor. Zork: The Undiscovered Underground was written and released as a promotional prequel to the game.
Zork: Grand Inquisitor is a first-person point-and-click adventure game that allows the player to have a 360 degree view of a majority of the pre-rendered location (dubbed "Z-Vision"). This visual freedom applies to the horizontal axis only; looking up and down is restricted, although possible in some locations, while in other locations, the view is fixed.
Like Zork Nemesis players move around by left clicking the mouse when the cursor changes to an arrow (to move to another location), golden when over an interactive item (like a door), or a hand when something can be picked or dropped in a spot (like a rope).
In addition to playing as themselves, the players also play as three other characters at specific moments in the game to recover important items. When the player dies, which can occur in certain spots through mis-timed or wrong actions, the game cuts to a computer terminal on which the player's fatal action and its consequences appear in prose form, much in the fashion of the original Zork trilogy, complete with a score and the player's rank.
Much of the game takes place within the Great Underground Empire between various locations, including the magic university of G.U.E. Tech, Hades, the Steppinthrax Monastery, a viewing point above Flood Control Dam #3, and Dalboz's house. In addition, the player visits Port Foozle at the beginning and during an excursion into its past, along with time travel trips to the famous White House of Zork, and the Great Sea, before finishing upon the Flathead Mesa. A fast travel system is provided in the form of a series of teleportation stations within the Underground, that can transport the player between them by inserting a map into the device. In addition, the player can also use the Underground's Subway System to travel between four stations for major locations.
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