Heaven’s Vault: A Linguist’s Buried Treasure

Uncover the marvels of the Ancient language and explore the Nebula and the secrets contained within this indie game.
aliya
Courtesy of Inkle Studios

I climb the stairs, my faithful robot Six warning me not to proceed. Do I heed their warning and take a step back? I can see a tall pillar-like statue up ahead, peering at me over a flight of stairs—the prospect of deciphering another fragment of glyphs is motivating me to proceed through the thinning air.

As a linguist and writer, Heaven’s Vault is the game that I’ve been waiting a very long time for. It brings together the craft of compelling narrative games and a BAFTA-nominated interactive story presented in a rich, visual novel interface, taking players on a journey of imagination and exploration within an entrancing game environment. Jon Ingold, cofounder and creative narrative director of Heaven’s Vault developer Inkle Studios, invented the unique translation mechanic, which puts the player in charge of deciphering a lost alien language called Ancient—bringing players the closest they can get to a linguistics and translation game. That’s no mean feat for an indie game studio based in Cambridge, England. Heaven’s Vault is niche, but this makes it even more appealing to people who enjoy puzzles within a game.

The Heaven’s Vault universe is set in an area of space called the Nebula, which is made up of four moons: Iox, Maersi, Renaki, and Elboreth. The in-game “hallowed” seat of learning is the University of Iox, and it is where we meet with space archaeologist Aliya Elasra and her robot companion Six for the first time. They are tracing a mysterious missing roboticist named Janniqi Renba. At the beginning of the story, it seems like you are working for the university, but as you discover more you learn who is exerting their power in the Nebula in terms of how the history is presented, and it is up to the player to decide on the journey they will take. That is what makes Heaven’s Vault so remarkable to play. Not everyone encounters the same plot points at the same time, or even at all, but your relationship with Six is important to the whole game.

On the journey, the player discovers antiquities concealed behind walls and curiosities placed amongst graves in luscious gardens—all revealing writing in the forms of glyphs running along mantelpieces above fireplaces and emblazoned on artifacts inside long-abandoned dwellings. They are the voices of citizens of the Nebula past.

Researchers who study ancient civilizations don’t just analyze text, they are also interested in how people lived. The traces people leave behind as they go about their everyday lives speak volumes about how they engaged with the world and what they thought about it. Languages change, develop, and grow. They are fluid and don’t stay fixed. They reflect the spoken and unspoken. Heaven’s Vault conveys this by utilizing a timeline that spans millions of years. The timeline documents the origin for every trinket and artifact you unearth as you navigate the Heaven’s Vault universe.

“Stories don’t have tidy beginnings. The past is always present”

In the game you don’t hear the Ancient language spoken orally, as it’s extinct and has no speakers left. Linguists call this “language death,” the process by which a language is replaced by a different one. Languages that have declining speakers are called “endangered languages.” At least 43 percent of the estimated 6,000 languages spoken in the world are endangered, according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. A consideration that linguists make is how speakers are treated and how language is used within society, which is relevant as gamers explore the world of Heaven’s Vault. How the Iox Protecorate are presented in the game reveals their true intentions through promoting their brand of culture and religion as the correct, or prestigious, one through language. The Ancient language is not given the same reverence. In fact, Ancient is not acknowledged at all. Aliya’s discoveries are always at odds with Iox, which makes players question where history belongs in this world and to whom—putting the player in a unique moral and cultural dilemma.

Aliya originally comes from the moon Elboreth, a rough-around-the-edges city contained in the walls of an imposing citadel that looms over the bustling market. Elborethan patois is spoken on Elboreth. A patois is speech or language that is considered nonstandard. Slums surround the city walls where residents live, work, and socialize in makeshift bars. To gain entry to the market and interior area, the player has to choose the correct phrase to an impressive gate, “Catkis” or “Kibenya.” Upon choosing the correct sequence of words you are transported through the gate to the other side. It is a complete contrast to the University of Iox, on the moon Iox, which is more modern and artificial in comparison—it seems fake, as if it is trying to appear older than it is.

The archaic architecture and citadel walls of Elboreth give the player the feeling that it used to be an important place and has a history. It feels more authentic than Iox. There are two huge feet at the entrance that look like they are the remnants of a dismembered giant statue. The Elborethans are poor and ridiculed by the Ioxians, suggesting that there is a systematic undermining of their history being perpetrated within the game—and Aliya is at the heart of this. Elborethan culture is associated with a lower class and the Protectorate of Iox are portraying themselves as the learned moon that is more influential and more prestigious, therefore they are correct.

Courtesy of Inkle Studios

“The ghosts are still here, cooking, cleaning, doing whatever ghosts do”

In Heaven’s Vault, Ancient is a conveniently unusual language. There are no variations in spellings or grammatical mistakes. The nuances of mispronunciation and usage do not exist within the game. As a game language, it has to function within predefined parameters that have to make sense logically in order for players to deduce the meanings behind the glyphs. Unlike real life, a game language has to have the functions and meanings of the words set in stone. In real life, languages are more fluid, and meanings and usage change day to day.

The Ancient language dictionary contains an impressive 3,000 words, but it is still fundamentally the English language in terms of its grammar, albeit written through a variety of glyphs. It allows players to lean on their grammatical knowledge of English and the context of the game, such as their surroundings, to derive the meaning of the glyphs as they progress. Ancient is what linguists call a logographic writing system, the oldest type of writing system, which uses a symbol or picture to convey a word or a part of a word that has meaning.

The most obvious real-world comparisons to Ancient in terms of script and the way a language is written and portrayed are Mayan and Egyptian. That is as far as the similarities between our world and Ancient go, however. It is an unknown alien language within the Heaven’s Vault universe, after all. The language is static, there is no slang or spelling discrepancies, and it is a “scripta continua”—a style of writing that doesn’t use spaces or punctuation, reminiscent of classical Greek and late classical Latin.

The symbols are quite intuitive in Ancient, with two wavy lines denoting water (think of toothpaste packaging!). Fire, in comparison, has a more jagged line at the top but is very similar to water. Like all good historical linguists, pay attention to where the fragment or artifact was found. Is it by a fireplace or at the foot of a fountain beneath a glowing water goddess? "Mountain" is also shaped like a mountain, and there is a stylized human shape denoting, me, you, and they. The translation game mechanic is one of the most compelling aspects of Heaven’s Vault. It has a drag-and-drop glyph shape interface that makes it accessible and enjoyable to all, and the game agrees and politely points you in the right direction at times to ensure the most accurate translations. This would not happen in real life—and as a game convention that would be useful in the future real world, this gets my vote.

“History is a science. It’s a reconstruction of the past”

Philosophy and ethics are a large part of the game, as the conversational rapport between Aliya and Six verges between unsettling and friendly banter. Aliya regularly taunts her robotic companion about her questionable track record—as she has a reputation for destroying her robots on her archaeological expeditions and putting them in precarious situations. Aliya’s friend Oroi often mentions this, and it comes up often during conversations.

I spent most of the game pondering who Six is. Why do they have to be here? Why can’t Aliyah go off on her own? Is Six an entity or a machine? Or even a few entities in a machine? One of the most enjoyable parts of the game was the Withering Palace, where you begin to learn about how robots were treated in the early-Empire world. From the start, you are deliberating whether their relationship is equal, and as the story unfolds we realize this was not the case. I am reminded of British philosopher Gilbert Ryle’s theory of the ghost in the machine, which feels very apt for this mind-body dualist dilemma. Is the mind distinct from the body in the world of Heaven’s Vault? You uncover evidence at the Withering Palace that indicates an execution or sacrifice ritual was taking place, and minds of gods and goddesses were indeed being transported into robot shells.

Heaven’s Vault is certainly a game that pushes you into uncomfortable and unethical situations. There is an abhorrent slavery market on Elboreth, and at one point, on another moon, you meet robots that have been robbed of their cores and are simply domestic slaves, the property of the market owner. The question of free will and consciousness makes you ponder your choices throughout the game—even how you treat your robot.

To say Heaven’s Vault is a highly engaging and beautiful game is an understatement. The sublime musical score by composer Laurence Chapman is particularly atmospheric as you journey through the nebula and marvel at newly discovered and eerily empty sites. You are literally in the driver’s seat of Aliya’s ship, whimsically called The Nightingale. You make all the decisions, from where to go and who to speak to, adding depth and color to your interactive onscreen dialog choices.

Aliya’s character as a female explorer and archaeologist is what drew me to the game in the first place. Jon Ingold revealed that he based Aliya’s character on a real Egyptologist, Monica Hanna. Today she is actively involved in protecting Egypt’s archaeological sites, and she created the Heritage task force, which documents the loss of cultural heritage around Egypt and brings it to the world’s attention—a reassuring and inspirational role model for budding young linguists and archaeologists. Why not uncover your own buried treasure in the archaeo-linguistic masterpiece that is Heaven’s Vault?

The unique game mechanic and linguistic wonders of Heaven’s Vault will be available for a whole new audience when the game releases on the Nintendo Switch tomorrow, January 28.


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