TRINITY II SYNOPSIS BM 9/4/85 You begin as an American tourist, strolling through a London park. After witnessing odd events, receiving a mysterious message and solving a lighthearted puzzle or two, you find yourself nose to nose with an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile, bearing a red sickle-and-cresent and tipped with a hydrogen bomb. A convenient interdimensional duct allows you to escape microseconds before London is vaporized. This all takes place before the title screen. "Inside" the duct, you discover a bizarre fantasy world where space and time are interchanged. The magical inhabitants of this twilight zone are wringing their 4-dimensional hands because our atom bomb tests are blasting big, unsightly holes in their otherwise peaceful universe. The only way to prevent the collapse of the entire kingdom is for some foolhardy adventurer to journey backwards in time to the first A-bomb test at Trinity, and prevent it from going off. Armed only with the 3-D map of the Hole Matrix provided in the game package, the player ventures through a bewildering variety of exotic locations, solving puzzles, meeting unlikely characters and casting magic spells. But unknown forces are at work to foil your quest, and you soon find yourself caught up in a multidimensional war between two great empires who seek to control the Matrix. It all comes together during a spectacular climax in the New Mexico desert, where you must single-handedly decide the course of history in just 29 minutes of real playing time. Trinity II IS: -- definitely an EZIP game; -- a fantasy (because it has magic in it); -- "puzzle-oriented," though it's very much a story (like WISHBRINGER); -- the first Infocom game to include "real-time" sequences (at the end); -- historically correct (when applicable); -- the first installment in a vaguely-conceived fantasy trilogy, with a blanket title to be revealed later. Trinity II is NOT: -- a science fiction game (because it has magic in it); -- a solemn, thinly-disguised political diatribe against the testing and deployment of nuclear weapons; -- an excruciatingly detailed tour of the Trinity Site, with every cactus and prickly pear bush accurately placed and individually described; -- humorless (the puzzles in the opening sequence are decidedly loony); -- boring (I hope); -- behind schedule (yet).