In a fascinating twist of fate, the world of George Orwell’s iconic dystopian novel 1984 has resurfaced in the gaming realm, albeit in a form that many enthusiasts thought lost to time. The 1998 project, Big Brother, aimed to extend the narrative of Orwell’s universe through an officially licensed video game. Initially unveiled at E3 1998, the game promised to transport players into a reimagined world dominated by the Thought Police, featuring a new protagonist, Eric Blair, on a quest to find his missing fiancée, Emma.
However, despite the initial excitement and a demo that generated some buzz, the project ultimately fell into obscurity, never reaching full release. Recently, a demo of this ill-fated sequel has been recovered and made available on the Internet Archive, allowing a new generation to glimpse what could have been.
War is Peace
The Lost Media Wiki provides further insight into the history of Big Brother, which was heralded as the inaugural game from multimedia CD-ROM pioneer MediaX. The game’s announcement in May 1998 highlighted a shift in focus from the original novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, to Eric Blair, who finds himself embroiled in a resistance movement against the oppressive regime of the Thought Police.
Credit: Next Generation / Internet Archive
The pre-rendered introduction of the demo intriguingly sidesteps the narrative of a missing fiancée, instead thrusting Eric into the heart of a resistance effort. The stakes are high as he is tasked with creating a diversion to mislead the Thought Police:
“Eric, the Thought Police have been tracking down our brotherhood leaders in hopes of destroying our resistance movement. We have only a few hours left; we must do something to get the police off our trail. As a MiniPac soldier, you should be able to get into the ministry and create a diversion. The bigger the distraction you can create, the better.”
While the feasibility of such a diversion against the omnipresent surveillance and thought control mechanisms described in 1984 remains questionable, the allure of this lost gaming experience continues to captivate the imagination of fans and gamers alike.
