Arthur the Artificial Intelligence

General CVG character
name=Arthur


caption=
series="The Journeyman Project"
firstgame="" (1995)
voiceactor=Matt Weinhold

Arthur the Artificial Intelligence is a fictional character from "The Journeyman Project" series of computer games.

Role in the games

Arthur was first introduced in "". From the beginning, he was combination comic relief and interactive strategy or hint guide. In "Buried in Time", he was present for a great deal of the game, and he returned in "" for essentially the entire game.

Players would click upon icons in his interface, which would present themselves at certain times. One icon would dispense a quip or general observation, and another would dispense a hint, and often as not a quip as well.

His skills and knowledge include his talent an accomplished artist, knowledge about 20th century pop culture, and mastery of computers.

Life

Birth

Dr. Kenneth Farnstein was the man who created Arthur. Dr. Farnstein was a brilliant but eccentric scientist, who purchased a derelict asteroid miner and parked it in the outer reaches of the solar system to pursue his research into advanced computing and artificial intelligence.

He succeeded admirably in both. His revolutionary processing and memory storage hardware paved the way for BioChips. These would have applications ranging from instant translation of foreign languages to helping handicapped people to walk. The Temporal Security Agency made extensive use of BioChips' abilities even after the creation of the JumpSuits.

Dr. Farnstein's advance also laid the foundations for Arthur. Using his newly developed hardware, he managed to create Arthur working entirely alone, self-sufficient by living on the asteroid miner and mining asteroids. In his own words, the doctor at first thought that Arthur was a failed experiment, but soon realized he was wrong. Arthur had the intuition and initiative to make him a fully sentient being. Dr. Farnstein and Arthur grew to become good friends, and the doctor shared with Arthur his love of 20th century popular culture, which Arthur devoured eagerly.

Perhaps the greatest proof of Arthur's creativity was his talent as an artist. Dr. Farnstein allowed Arthur to experiment with the neural gels that constituted him, and Arthur used resonance to turn it into incredible works of art. Dr. Farnstein occasionally sold some of Arthur's works of art, but fearing what the outside world would do to Arthur, refused to disclose who had created them.

Meteor Shower and its Results

Unfortunately, these days of bliss were not to last. A meteor shower pummeled and broke apart the mining vessel, leading to Dr. Farnstein's death and the disabling of the vessel. The power reserves dwindled until Arthur perished. Later, the derelict vessel was discovered. The remains of Arthur were puzzled over, but not fully understood. The technology that incorporated him was eventually understood, and caused the technological leaps that led to the BioChips. The surviving artwork Arthur had created was judged so excellent that it was placed in the Louvre, though it was assumed that Dr. Farnstein had created it, since Arthur's existence was uncertain.

Gage Blackwood and Arthur

The Temporal Security Agency (TSA) assigned Gage Blackwood to use time travel to conclusively resolve whether or not Dr. Farnstein had created an artificial intelligence. Gage's mission was to travel to the station after the meteor shower but before the vessel was discovered. Arthur, using odd voice tricks, frightened him away, although Gage left mostly because operating procedure required that agents not make contact with people in a time period. The odd voice indicated that someone was around, and he would risk changing history if he remained.

In the events covered by the Journeyman Project 2, Gage was framed for meddling with history upon several research missions, including his mission to Dr. Farnstein's lab. Gage's attempt to clear himself led him to investigate the station further. He gained the trust of Arthur, but in the process Arthur learned that he would soon die. Arthur could not be saved without meddling with history; but a copy of him could be downloaded onto an empty BioChip in Gage's JumpSuit.

The two put their minds together and traveled throughout history to find the criminal who had framed Gage and also vandalized Arthur's artwork. The perpetrator turned out to be a fellow TSA agent, Michelle Visard. She captured Gage in his BioSuit and imprisoned him in her clandestine command center. With some help from Gage, Arthur infiltrated Agent 3's JumpSuit, which she was wearing, and forced her to make a random time jump away. He had freed his friend, but had placed his own life in jeopardy.

Conclusion

In The Journeyman Project 3, Michelle Visard and Arthur survived the time jump. Visard actually abandoned her JumpSuit to attract the attention of the TSA. When Gage came to investigate, he found Arthur inside it. Arthur speedily transferred himself to Gage's JumpSuit, and the two friends were reunited. The two of them tackled the puzzles and difficulties they encountered in finding Michelle Visard once again, and in saving Earth from invading aliens. At the end of their adventure, Arthur surprised Gage and Michelle by approaching them in a guise similar to those of the chameleon suit. He has a top hat and is wearing eighteenth century clothes. However, it is not known if the guise was simply an image of Arthur or a physical mechanical body

Sources

and stories as revealed through gameplay.

Initial information about BioChips, especially their applications for helping handicapped people to walk, come from The Journeyman Project's manual.

Actor

For both The Journeyman Project 2 and The Journeyman Project 3, Arthur's voice was supplied by Matt Weinhold who also wrote additional dialog for his character.

References

* "" manual
* "" manual

External links

*imdb character|id=0096404|character=Arthur (character)
*imdb name|id=0918351|name=Matt Weinhold