The Creation of The Final Explicit: Jordan Mechner’s Journey in Crafting a Legendary Classic Crawl Game
On September 7, 1993, Jordan Mechner documented his insights regarding The Last Express in his diary. What he had to contend with was incredibly striking given the backdrop of his innovative journey up to that moment: “Creating a feature film would be simple compared to this task.”
“This” referred to a train game set on the Orient Express at the dawn of World War 1 – precisely four days before Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia – and it would be an interactive experience that could cost Mechner all his savings and the next four years of his life to develop. He was embarking on a venture almost as perilous as the one faced by his main character Robert Cath in the game, and he seemed to fully comprehend the risks involved.
At this point, after developing Karateka and Prince of Persia, Mechner had taken a break from game development to attend film school and had even produced a short film of his own. However, The Last Express represented a fusion of his passions as a writer, artist, filmmaker, and game designer. So, why return to gaming? Why not share his exciting narrative through a film or graphic novel?
I recently met with Mechner to explore these inquiries, and he reflects on his shift from game creation to studying film in the early 90s: “It was the opportunity to create a different type of game that brought me back into game design at a moment when I had otherwise been taking a break from gaming and attending film school. After Prince of Persia, I left San Francisco. I returned to New York. I learned about 16-millimeter filmmaking. This was in 1991. I was also overseeing Prince of Persia 2, and then I relocated to Paris and produced a short film in Cuba that summer. That’s when the idea for The Last Express came together.”
That move to Paris is when Mechner first encountered the realm of European graphic novels, particularly the Corto Maltese series by Italian creator Hugo Pratt, which ignited his enthusiasm for cinematic storytelling in comic book form. An online game seemed like a natural intersection for both mediums—one that Mechner couldn’t resist exploring.
“I realized that technology had evolved enough for me to create a game that would truly satisfy that desire,” Mechner states, “to convey a deeper narrative with richer themes and dialogue while collaborating with actors and employing cinematic techniques. I thought: ‘Instead of making a film, why not create a cinematic game?’ And I realized that I could actually have more resources and greater creative control using a game canvas in 1993 than as a novice feature filmmaker.”
He launched Smoking Car Productions that same year and began assembling a team to bring his vision to life. He needed to recruit programmers, artists, and designers, in addition to experienced contractors and his co-writer on the project, friend, and former colleague Tomi Pierce. All of this while initiating the creative work, directing shoots for the game’s ambitious rotoscoped animation, and fundraising to keep the entire project afloat. Mechner compares it to balancing three full-time positions.
“It was completely all-consuming because I was particularly focused on the cinematic and narrative elements of the game. I wrote all the dialogue and directed the voice actors, handled the casting and directed the film shoot myself, which, of course, was a full-time gig in itself, meaning that I had to put everything else on pause for the three weeks we spent filming. It was quite intense.”
Still, if there’s one thing Mechner has demonstrated over his forty-plus years of creativity, it’s that he excels at transforming his visions into expansive realities. He pushed on and, with the support of his writing partner Pierce, dove deeply into The Last Express’ boldest ambition: to create a narrative where NPCs lead their own lives.
To execute this extraordinary feat, Mechner and Pierce plotted out the game’s intricate narrative beats. For those unfamiliar with The Last Express, the story follows the main character and American adventurer Robert Cath as he boards the Orient Express in a daring motorcycle stunt to find his friend, Tyler Whitney. However, when Cath discovers Whitney deceased in his compartment, he is forced to assume his friend’s identity and continue the journey he began, culminating in the discovery of a mysterious artifact and an investigation into its powers. Once the outline of the tale was finalized, Mechner penned dialogue for each of the thirty characters, mapping their actions to a master timeline, while collaborating with Smoking Car’s coding team to bring the narrative to life.
“We essentially had to define everything they would do on a timeline, from the moment the train leaves the station to the conclusion of the trip over three days and three nights,” he explains. “So, I kind of wrote it in a pseudo-code and then handed it to the programmers. They coded it, but they were just down the hall, so they would come back to me for clarity and so forth. It was quite detailed, as we tried to anticipate every possible interaction and then locate opportunities for brief moments of action and dialogue. Some of these were crucial to advancing the plot, others weren’t, but they still enriched the story.”
While the narrative unfolds aboard the Orient Express and focuses on the unraveling of a high-stakes mystery, Mechner does not attribute Agatha Christie’s classic work, Murder on the Orient Express, as an inspiration. In fact, he states, “the true inspirations” for The Last Express were classic Alfred Hitchcock films and Indiana Jones instead of Christie’s novel, specifically mentioning North by Northwest, The 39 Steps, and The Lady Vanishes as particular references. “The film The Third Man about an American in Europe was significant too,” he adds, alongside John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon. This is particularly revealing, given Mechner’s clear admiration for classic films and the art of filmmaking. Nevertheless, this revelation caught me somewhat off guard. Mechner laughs when I express this realization to him.
“I might have stumbled into that one,” he remarks. “I mean, I asked for it by calling it the Orient Express because that story is so well-known. But Christie’s version is essentially a locked-room murder mystery. It just happens to take place on a stationary train. In contrast, in The Last Express, the train is moving. It traverses Europe, and by the end, it transforms into a runaway train. There’s a hijacking. You’re battling against the hijackers, trying to save the train, and, naturally, a war is erupting around you.”
When he presents it in that way, it’s easy to see how the game’s true inspirations shine through. “I was also significantly influenced by European graphic novels,” Mechner continues. “This was in 1993. I was an American who adored comics but was unaware of this entire other universe. I had just discovered Hugo Pratt, and Corto Maltese was one of the primary, one-to-one influences concerning the game. Corto Maltese is the protagonist of a series of graphic novels that are highly cherished in France, not particularly known in the US, but he journeys and embarks on adventures in the early 20th century, often entangled in revolutions and historical occurrences. So, I think it might be a combination of Corto Maltese, Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, The Third Man – that was essentially the model.”
One of the more intriguing ways Mechner’s influences permeate his game is through his desire to evoke an emotional reaction from players that transcends the typical “heroes versus villains” narrative that many mainstream media were gravitating towards at that time. Once again, his dedication to storytelling and film led him toward multifaceted characters, similar to those he analyzed so thoroughly in his favorite films.
“What’s fascinating about adventure tales, like The Third Man or a Hitchcock movie, is the ambiguity, the depth, the irony,” he notes. “So, there was all the opportunity to do that in a tale about a naive American attempting to engage with this incredibly complex European situation involving espionage and various factions on the brink of World War I – and striving to do good. It’s a captivating and rich historical period. And I believe that to narrate such a story, an author must embrace complexity and diverse perspectives.”
Indeed, understanding The Last Express’ impact fully requires quite an in-depth knowledge of European politics and sentiments leading up to the war, as much of the game’s conflict is driven by the heightened tensions that existed among national interests during that time. However, when I initially completed it with my father at the age of 12, I knew very little about the era and still had an incredible time. This speaks to Mechner’s writing and vision for the game, as well as its remarkable voice acting, performances, and art style, which all hold up to this day. That’s rather astounding considering the fact that it has been nearly 25 years since The Last Express arrived on store shelves in 1997.
Nonetheless, to ensure that audiences could also immerse themselves in the narrative.