“So you’re saying we have a Gou’ald loose in the timeline?”
- Release Date: 7th July 2000
- Set: Season 4, After “Divide and Conquer”
- Developer: Arkalis Interactive
- Publisher: Arkalis Interactive
- Writers: Sally Malcolm
In 2013, Arkalis Interactive attempted to make an ambitious mobile game based on Stargate SG-1. It wasn’t a typical microtransaction-heavy game, but instead an episodic action game. It even featured Richard Dean Anderson, Michael Shanks, Amanda Tapping and Christopher Judge, and it’s great to hear them back in their roles, especially considering this is after all the shows were finished. Other voice roles aren’t great, with Hammond and Walter. The game was not a success, though, and didn’t even get finished. I was able to play episode 1, however Episode 2 never got an Android version (delisted iOS games are much more difficult to play), but you can watch it on YouTube and episode 3 never got released.
Episode 1 kicks off with people in an unspecified lab looking at a Gou’ald, with absolutely zero precautions, the Gou’ald infects one of the scientists and introduces herself as Sekhmet. We cut to Daniel and Jack in the SGC – with Daniel having a pair of smart glasses. The SGC is under attack and you need to get to the gate. You get to control the action here, moving Jack around with an on-screen analogue stick and moving the camera by moving on the right side of the screen.
After a few steps, you meet some Jaffa. Jack automatically takes cover. For combat, you tap a button to go in and out of cover, then tap the screen to shoot (your character doesn’t change their aim so it looks like the bullet shoots sideways). It pops up with icons like “headshot” and “killer” which feels completely out of place. Taking cover reloads and heals you, so this first encounter (which is under a timer) is the most difficult. Especially if it bugs out and infinitely spawns Jaffa.
Round the corner and you’re introduced to the third main gameplay mechanic: quick time events. These are as annoying as expected, where you tap and slide quickly Most action scenes use quick time events and they’re always obnoxious. Daniel manages to dial out but gets shot before he can get through the gate, and Jack picks up the glasses and gets shot as he makes it through the gate.
We cut to the main timeframe for this game, with Hammond and SG-1 (minus Jack, who is offworld) discussing the events of the season 5 episode “Divide and Conquer”. There’s an incoming wormhole, and it’s the Jack from the future, who dies as he comes in. Here you can select different conversation options, but these are just alternative dialogue options that don’t change anything (some result in a swift change in tone when the game cuts to regular dialogue). Jack dies and, once the current Jack returns, they look at the information from the future. It points to some mythical arrows and a planet.
Heading to the “lightly guarded” temple gateroom on planet, you control Jack, Sam and Daniel (you never play as Teal’c in Ep 1) in lightgun shooting segments, you then get a short exploration/puzzle section as Jack where he has to find some weak explosives (the puzzle/game mechanic dialogue is quite bad) and open some doors. They find a strange Gou’ald device and discover that it belongs to Sekhmet, daughter of Ra, who was locked away for trying to rebel and that it can control solar flares – allowing for time travel through the Stargate.
While Jack and Sam look into the temple, Teal’c and Daniel bluff their way into a nearby slave camp (you’d think they’d be miffed at his Apophis gold seal), with Daniel trying to find someone who knows what is going on (and Teal’c just looking for something but he essentially stops existing until the end of this segment). This long segment is an utterly horrendous stealth focused segment, and takes up half the time. It feels like an early 2000s mandatory stealth section and is extremely annoying. Eventually, you’ll encounter a mad old man preaching about the return of Sekhmet, who wants to use seven arrows (each on in the hands of a different System Lord) and to enact revenge on the Tau’ri for completely eliminating the rest of the Gou’ald in her timeline.
This section also shows how off the dialogue choices can be. You can have Daniel be aggressive, tell him the Gou’ald are false gods and all sorts and once the next part starts, he calls you “friend” and tells you what you need to know. Teal’c turns up to tell Daniel that Jack and Sam are in trouble. You need them outside the temple, more Jaffa are there, so it’s time to head back. You fight your way back and then have to dial the gate, having to input all the symbols onto a texture that is far too blurry. As they leave, Sam and Jack get hit by a stun grenade, with Jack falling through the gate.
Back on Earth, Hammond says that Senator Kinsey won’t allow a rescue mission, but Hammond will help Jack ignore protocol to save Carter. Daniel and Teal’c join him and it’s the end of the episode. It’s a pretty atrocious game, but the story is actually interesting. I can’t play the next episode, but I can do a synopsis (apologies for the lower quality screenshots).
It starts off with Carter being imprisoned then taken to the Gou’ald Amun, who is in orbit. He demands respect from Sekhmet, which she fakes while planting seeds of betrayal into his First Prime. She questions Carter before sending her back to prison, happy that SG-1 has returned to save her. Jack wants to rush off to save Carter, so Teal’c and Daniel have to calm him down, with Daniel saying there’s a map with a secret route to the slave camp, where prisoners are usually taken.
Sam is in a cell next to two people from the village that Daniel helped, she manages to escape and (after another stealth segment), overhears Sekhmet and Amun talking about the gate to the underworld, she wants to open it, Amun does not. Sekhmet gets the piece of spear off Amun and stabs him. While she goes off, Carter helps him escape, as he has information that can prevent this.
They get back to the surface, where they encounter enemies of Sekhmet that have essentially been turned into zombies. During the escape, Sam gets hit by some gas and Amun drags her out of the caverns, and they bump into Jack, Daniel and Teal’c. Amun asks for asylum in exchange for helping them and Jack reluctantly agrees. They head back to the gate to find Sekhmet leaving, so they fight their way through (the gate waiting patiently). Teal’c gets overrun by zombies, but as they need to get though the gate, they have to abandon him (even though the symbols should still be on the DHD).
Through the stargate, they all get captured (again) and taken to Sekhmet. She has human remains in large tanks, each with symbols of system lords (suggesting she dug up their corpses). She kills Amun and orders SG-1 to be tortured. She gets nothing from Jack so she asks him to pick Carter or Daniel to be safe from torture, with the other one getting tortured. You can choose, but if you let the timer end, Jack will choose to save Carter. Daniel gets tortured but Sekhmet gets bored when Jack still doesn’t give her anything. She orders their death, but they’re saved by an armoured guard – it’s Teal’c. He kills her first prime and they try to find a way off the ship. They make it to the Death Glider bay. Sam says that have no way of knowing where they are, but Jack points out – they can see Earth, and Sekhmet’s base is currently fighting ships in orbit – Earth ships (which means they’re in the future, as they haven’t been built yet). A Death Glider is shot and it crashes right where SG-1 are – the episode ends there.
The third part was never released. It’s a shame as, while the gameplay was dreadful, the main story (outside of the videogamey lines) was interesting. Everything was likely already written and recorded. The rest of the game was cancelled due to the developer shutting down, so all that is just gone now. It could have been turned into a good audiobook.
