Messiah

Messiah from 2000 by Shiny Entertainment is an action adventure built on an unusual concept of possession – the player controls a little angel named Bob, who can float above the levels and fly into characters' bodies, subsequently taking full control of them. Each possessed character has its own abilities, weapons, and social status, from ordinary guards to prostitutes and soldiers, which pushed the game into a dark, satirical narrative about a corrupt future city full of religious motifs and social decay.

The gameplay was built on puzzles solved precisely through taking over different bodies – the player had to figure out which character needed to be controlled to progress, open a door, or convince a guard. The graphics engine, which later also served Sacrifice, brought striking, fully 3D stylized graphics with smooth character animation to Windows 9x computers, although the game's development was unusually long and was accompanied by technical and production troubles that partly showed in the final result. The atmosphere was dark and grotesque at the same time, with black humor and social satire hidden beneath a layer of violence and vulgarity, which placed the game among the most controversial action adventures of its time.

Contemporary reviews were mixed – they praised the originality of the concept and the technical side, but criticized the uneven pacing and controversial content, which in some countries led to censorship interventions and edits of localized versions. Messiah never became a mass hit, but remains an interesting example of a bold design experiment from the turn of the millennium, when developers dared to take more risks than today's big-budget productions. Today it is interesting mainly as a curiosity and proof of how boldly the action adventure of that era could approach character-control mechanics.