Ultima VII: Off The Beaten Path
Corvus Elrod has a post about my favorite CRPG of all time, Ultima VII: The Black Gate. More specifically, he's talking about what he refers to as "Sub-Optimal Paths." Part of what made Ultima VII such a great game was that there was a LOT to the game that was off the "optimal" path to the conclusion. Not to mention that this makes any story more interesting - a hero who never makes a mistake and takes a direct path to the end of the story is pretty boring.

Ultima VII: The Land of Sub-Optimal Paths

An excerpt:

"Britannia, the realm in which the Ultima games are set, contains more than ten cities and a great many tiny islands. Every city has a story taking place within its borders. The Avatar herself is a reflection of the virtues upon which the Britannian cities were founded and the struggles of the citizens reflect the decay of those virtues. By diverging from the central plotline, which takes you to all of the cities at one point or another, the player learns about the culture of the world and her character’s own role in the creation of that culture. Additionally, the little simulated lives you touch bring greater purpose to your grand goals. No longer are you merely saving the world simply because you’re a hero, but because you want to save all of the individuals you’ve met along the way."

Origin had a motto: "We create worlds." The extended version of it, I think, was "Others make games. We create worlds." I think this was never more true than with the "middle trilogy" of the Ultima series. Granted, it was far from perfect, and the illusion would get frayed a bit at times. But there was a lot packed into the game - even in the places where players were unlikely to see.

You don't see that so much anymore. Many games are pretty rigidly linear, making certain that every ounce of expensive development effort is enjoyed by the maximum number of players. Even in sandbox-style games, so much is randomly or procedurally generated that you don't really feel like there is anything truly interesting to be found off the beaten path.

Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:52 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Guest Post: Wizardry 8 Designer Explains Arnika Road
Charles Miles, a member of the Wizardry 8 development team, takes responsibility for the much-maligned Arnika Road section of the game (which Scorpia likes to call, "The Terrible Road."). His self-appointed title was "Monster & Item Wrangler," and besides designing Arnika Road, he set up a lot of the data for the game. And - as luck would have it - after years of working on Zoo Tycoon games, he's finally back in the RPG business, working with Turbine.

Scott MacMillan introduced us via email this week. Charles had some comments about Arnika Road, and about Wizardry 8 in general, which he has graciously allowed me to post here:

People have screamed bloody murder about the Arnika road since Wizardry 8 was originally released. This is what the Arnika road was *supposed* to teach you:

• To avoid monsters by either using spells like Chameleon or by staying out of their line of sight. You could often sneak around the monsters if you were careful.
  
  
• To be smart about where you rested. If you rested in the middle of the road, monsters are much more likely to wander by see you, and ambush you while you sleep. If you rested in a hard-to-see place like behind a rock or behind the house at the T-intersection it was much easier to get a full rest in.
  
  
• To use the disposable items--potions, bombs, wands, etc.--we constantly gave you as loot.

None of this came across very clearly in the final game. There were hints buried in the manual, but Wizardry 8 came out just after people had gotten out of the habit of reading game manuals. Also people had become accustomed to brain-dead monsters from games like Everquest that detected you using only a basic aggro radius that worked through doors, walls, etc. That meant most players never even thought of trying an "unusual" tactic like hiding from the monsters! (We had just come off of Jagged Alliance 2 so naturally we put in line-of-sight and hearing systems for the monsters.)

Last but far from least, Wizardry 8 was one of the last North American RPGs to be unapologetically hard--we wanted surviving each level to feel like an achievement. In fact one of our concerns about Wizardry 8 was that it might be too *easy, *as crazy as that sounds today. We made Wiz 8 much easier than any of the earlier installments in the series (if you don't believe me then try, say, Wizardry 4) and we were worried the long-time fans might object.

Anyway, I've always regretted that people had so much trouble with the Arnika road. If I were doing it today I'd do things differently--I might make it a bit easier and I would definitely put in a tutorial system that gave you guidance on how to survive.

It's great to see people still playing the game, by the way. It's making feel all nostalgic

Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:09 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Wizardry 8: Old-School Goes Old-School!
Continuing my play-through of 2001's Wizardry 8, a classic "old-school" RPG, I broke down and checked out a walkthrough for Wizardry 8 to find out what to do with the graveyard. As it turns out, the runes on the tombstones had absolutely nothing to do with the hanged-spirit looking thing in the mausoleum. The latter could be gotten rid of by a simple weapon traditionally employed against vampires and the undead.

My missing ingredient was a dagger. A simple dagger, not one of the fancy ones I currently possessed. What's even more astounding is - it is now impossible for me to buy a simple dagger. I even went back to the monastery, to the merchant who is on the cliff above the crash site where I began my adventure, and even he didn't have a simple dagger to sell. Poniards or a main gauche or throwing knives? No problem. But a simple dagger possessed by a 1st-level rogue? No dice.

Fortunately, some Higardi highwaymen came to my rescue. Well, not literally. They actually tried to kill me and take my stuff. I did unto others instead, and one of the bandits in the five packs that attacked me dropped a simple dagger on the ground as he died. Ka-ching!

I made my way back to the cemetery (this is no small feat - travel along the roads is always time consuming due to the frequent encounters), and went to the pillar in the corner. I jammed the dagger into the seam between blocks. It sorta-kinda pointed the way to a spot southeast of the cemetery. I went outside the cemetery walls, in the corner of the vale, and there was a little mushroom ring. Taking a deep breath and saving my game, I stepped inside.

And found myself transported into a very old-school dungeon. Mind you, this is old-school as perceived by an old-school game, which is very old-school. We're talking about a 21 x 21 grid of walls forming a dungeon level here. The walls are textured, but also bear a white outline (reminiscent of the first 4 Wizardries) so you can see the grid.

One thing that came immediately to my attention was that there was no exit. I deliberately skipped reading anything in the walk-through about the dungeon beyond what I was supposed to do to get there. I stumbled along blindly, ran into some nasty spike traps, found a whole bunch of doors that were locked with some SERIOUS lock levels, and found out that the auto-map was virtually useless.

At this point I began to wonder if I shouldn't reload that saved game from before I entered the dungeon.

I decided to stick with it. And thus committed myself to about a four-hour ordeal that involved a LOT of reloading saved games from combats gone bad, and about six points of increase in my rogue-turned-bard's lockpicking ability.

The first couple of hours involved me wandering about pretty aimlessly, trying to make sense of what was appearing on the automap, unlocking doors, and getting into fights. I'd find mushroom rings which would teleport me to other locations on the map. I kept finding myself revisiting old territory in the maze, and not finding anything resembling a way out. However, old-school training eventually kicked in. I knew what had to be done.

I pulled out the graph paper.

With the graph paper and pencil in hand, I started re-exploring the map, using those friendly grid-lines on the wall texture for their natural purpose. I found a couple of unexplored doors, some interesting magical items, and the final encounter with the Big Bad Boss (Baron Englund, an undead dude) and his hench-specters. He guarded the mushroom ring that was the exit back to the graveyard.

While I can't say the Easter Egg Dungeon was any kind of wonderful game-making experience, or even a high-caliber joke. But it was really cool that somebody took the time to throw this little nod to even older-school gameplay into the world (and, I hear, there are more). And it was actually worthwhile - besides running up my lock picking ability, there were a couple of unique items to be found there (although one, I later discovered, was a cursed item you REALLY don't want to use...), and I did level up most of my characters in my wanderings. I had fun.

After my exploration into the dungeon, I went back to Trynton, and began following Marten's trail some more. This involved slogging through some swampland, and eventually coming to a castle called Marten's Bluff. It looked deserted, but after going through the entry hall, I found myself blocked off by glass walls and a big machine that looked like it was supposed to make the walls come together, squishing anything left standing in the entry chamber.

"This isn't going to end well, " I thought. But nothing happened. There was a glowing panel on the floor. I stepped on it, expecting the walls to squish me like a bug. Instead, the panel turned out to be the floor of an elevator, which took me down to the underground section of the castle.

Apparently, this underground warren had become home to the T'Rang. I was never very fond of them back in the Wizardry 7 days. However, they were treating me as some kind of hero, telling me that they are looking over me. And, by the way, they want me to join up with them as an ally. I haven't committed yet, because I really don't like them. I just want to find the stolen artifact, which as far as I know is hidden down here. Past a locked door that needs a T'Rang handprint to pass through.

This could get pretty interesting.

Taking Notes on Wizardry's Design
Rewarding player exploration is important in any kind of game, but even more so with roleplaying games, which are generally games ABOUT exploration. As a player, you know on a conscious level that the game world is limited to about what you can see. But it's delightful to step off the beaten path a little ways and discover that - instead of the world ending - there's a surprise waiting there for you. Or poking around and finding out that the designers actually thought about you doing something really weird. It's just great fun to discover that there is more to the game - and the game's world - than meets the eye.

Easter eggs are the extreme version of this. Even the hint that there is more to see that you aren't seeing helps make the game world come alive.

Fighting some pretty major threats in the dungeon was challenging. I ended up repeating several fights multiple times. Black slime, some fire-breathing monsters (I forget their names), and the Baron were all pretty nasty fights. The trick I used to win these fights were to pull a "Rainbow Six." Named for the tactic in the game series of that name, I'd stand to the side of the door - out of line-of-sight - and toss in a grenade.

In this case, a fireball or similar area-effect spell. Standard pen & paper tactics. One monster might pop out to engage us, but then they'd block the door so their compatriots couldn't come out to engage us. So we'd fight one monster at a time, except for periodic showering of area-effect spells behind them. Occasionally, the enemies wouldn't come out the door at all - confused as to why they were taking so much damage. The combat would sometimes end, because the enemies didn't think of themselves as "in combat" I guess. So I'd have to press the combat button to get things started again for a couple of rounds. Sometimes, after defeating half the enemies, I'd just close the door, sit, and rest.

Yeah. I'm cheap that way, aren't I?

As a gamer who has played tactical computer wargames, pen & paper games, miniatures games, and even been known to dress up in chain mail armor with padded sticks and duke it out with a hundred other members of a local medievalist group, I appreciate the tactical possibilities presented by doorways. They are choke points that can make battles get really interesting. A tiny force can hold off an army that way. Been there, done that. It's hard enough for human players to to resolve that tactical dilemma sometimes.

As a designer, this makes for some rich opportunities for interesting combats. As a computer programmer, I know what a pain in the butt it can be for the AI to recognize and respond correctly to these kinds of situations. Obviously, the Wizardry 8 AI wasn't quite able to pull it off. For which I am grateful. Otherwise, I'd probably still be down in that dungeon tonight.

More Wizardry 8 Play-Through Entries:
Part I: So a Samuari, a Valkyrie, and a Bishop Walk Into a Bar...
Part II: Running the Gauntlet
Part III: Vi Domina Tricks
Part IV: Arnika Bank - No Safer Than Under the Mattress
Part V: In Fear of Little Naked Winged Women

Labels: Mainstream Games, retro, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:32 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Rush Album for Rock Band Delayed For "Weeks"
Well, dang.

Rush's 1981 album, "Moving Pictures," is literally my favorite album of all time. When I heard that the entire album would be available for Rock Band, I was thrilled.

Since this coincided with my week off, I thought I'd get some extra time to pretend to be Neil Peart or Alex Lifeson. No, I do not yet have the courage to try and imitate Geddy Lee's vocals. The last time I went to a Rush concert, Geddy Lee himself had a problem belting it out like he could in the 80's. Throughout the day on Tuesday, I'd pop onto the XBox and see if the album was available for it. They had a teaser ad in the marketplace for it, but the "new content" was only the Devo and Duran Duran songs from last week (which were plenty of fun, too).

But now... Harmonix has announced that the album's release is delayed because of "technical difficulties." Probably for a couple of weeks, not days. They've had a lot of practice releasing song packs by now, so I wonder if the technical difficulties are more of a hang-up on the legal / licensing side. Or if they are just trying to figure out how to get YYZ to work, since it is an instrumental piece with no vocals. Maybe the vocalist has to beat Morse Code on the microphone?

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't exactly a world-ending disappointment. I've got plenty of jobs and pleasures vying for my time this week. But ... it is still a bummer.

Labels: Mainstream Games, rock band

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:30 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
RPG Design: Making the Tough Decisions
When I lived in the Washington DC area, I loved to go to the National Air & Space museum - it's literally my favorite place in the city. I once spent one Saturday a month for an entire summer exploring that place, and I'm still not convinced I had seen everything. Many years ago, I got to go to DC with my wife on vacation. She wanted to hit the museums - particularly the natural history museum - but I convinced her to come to the Air & Space Museum with me for a few hours.

As luck would have it, that season they had a wing devoted to a Star Trek exhibit. My wife wasn't nearly as excited about rockets and jets, but she loves Star Trek. Since the original TV show was older than either of us, we never really understood a big part of what made the show awesome. We didn't realize its history.

And we had no clue how insidiously revolutionary Star Trek really was.

Sure, we'd heard that the first interracial kiss on television was on Star Trek. But we didn't think about the fact that George Takei became a key cast member during the height of the Vietnam conflict, when all Asians were being stereotyped as something far different from Sulu's friendliness and professionalism. We didn't realize that in the late 60's, you just couldn't deal with topics such as racism, or the Mutual Assured Destruction policy in the cold war era, or any of these charged topics directly on television --- but Star Trek's science fiction metaphor allowed it to explore these topics indirectly.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun had an article yesterday ripping into a particular moral choice in Bioware's sci-fi RPG Mass Effect, called Morality Tales - Bioware Versus the Issues. John Walker gives props for the issue being an interesting one with real-world moral or ethical implications. he indicates that it is a step in the right direction. But he also expresses his disappointment that the issue takes place inside a vacuum - and he's not meaning outer space. Without the full means to explore the issue or any significance on the game itself, the decision does not become meaningful.

I've not yet played Mass Effect (I was waiting for the PC version, but the DRM made me hesitate...), so I can't discuss this matter specifically. But as a general statement of things, I'd have to agree with Walker.

Video games have the same power as television, movies, and books to explore important issues - and to allow players the chance to actually explore the "tough decisions" in a the safer analog of the game. This is especially true in such story-driven genres as RPGs. But we can't just toss these kinds of issues around off-handedly or in a trivial manner, and expect critical acclaim.

For all of its faults and poor design, at least Super Columbine Massacre RPG! did try to tackle these kinds of issues head-on, with no masking metaphor at all except for the shocking transposition of a real-life tragedy into the made-up gameplay of a 16-bit style RPG. But there are other, better examples. RPS also explored a little bit of darkness in a relationship and difficult decisions (with real meaning and consequences) in the article Heather And Me, about the critically acclaimed but woefully overlooked RPG Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

I guess it would be silly to suggest that the successful RPG-making powerhouse Bioware seek to emulate the dead-and-buried Troika Games. But I don't know that tough, meaningful decisions would either contribute or detract from commercial success. But the metaphors of video gaming - like Star Trek in the late 60's - can provide designers and audiences with a safer, less stressful context in which to explore real-world issues.

I'm not really suggesting that Star Trek was the high point for television as a cultural medium. But for being such a "silly" science fiction show that people tended not to take seriously, I think it probably had a greater cultural effect than we give it credit for (and I'm just not talking about the geek culture, either). I strongly believe video games could do the same thing. We just need to learn to do it in such a way that it is neither trivialized nor heavy-handed.

Labels: Game Design, Geek Life, Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:03 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Wizardry 8: In Fear of Little Naked Winged Women
So now we come to part five of my play-through of the 'classic' mainstream CRPG, Wizardry 8 - which proved to be the final chapter of one of the oldest computer RPG series. I missed the game when it was first released seven years ago, and I'm having a blast playing it today. The graphics may have aged, but the gameplay is still solid. As a designer, I'm taking notes.

Most of my party is now around 10th level. And I'm living in mortal terror of little naked winged women. Leaf Pixies, to be exact. But not all - they apparently spawn with different spell load-outs. The ones that were stalking me for hours may have finally de-popped after I spent an entire night hiding from them, huddled in a fetal position, praying they wouldn't discover me. I'd battled them about a dozen times, trying different techniques, and nothing worked. These things are FAST - once they spot you, they WILL run you down like the dog you are. And then they'll open up a can of fairie whup-ass on you.

In this case, it was a group of five pixies. They'd always go first each round. On the first round, most of them would cast Eye For An Eye on themselves, which would reflect any spells you cast on them back against yourself. Maybe one or two would sit out this round of buffing and instead web the entire party, so only about two or three party members would remain free to actually act.

Round two - the last pixies without Eye for an Eye would cast it on themselves (in case you had any funny ideas about targeting individuals with spells), while the rest would pelt the entire - usually bound - party with Armormelt, Whipping Rocks, and the occasional Crush or repeat of the Web spell.

Usually, everyone would survive round two, though occasionally I'd lose my bishop or mage if they were targeted by Crush spells. Round three was the endgame. Sometimes - if enough of my party was free of the webs by then - I could finally take out a pixie. Once, I'd even taken out two! But by the end of round three, the Whipping Rocks and Crush spells would have wiped out both of my principle spellcasters, knocked one of my valkyries unconscious, and probably taken out the bard or the gadgeteer. With maybe one character left alive, conscious, and unbound, I'd close the chapter on this sorry situation and reload.

And get clobbered again.

This was all happening in Trynton. Lo and behold, I made it to Trynton. It was nothing like I expected. I thought it would be another city, and it is. But it is not just another city.

I was in a conference once with Tracy Hickman - the co-author of the Dragonlance series (amongst many others) and creator of the legendary (and notorious) Dungeons & Dragons module, "Ravenloft." He commented on how, if you were to take the castles from most of the classic modules of the era and model them in 3D, they'd come out really "dumpy." He found that the best way to really confuse players was to make them work with the vertical. It threw off mapping, and human brains have a tougher time dealing with 3D space (even though we live in it).

The designers of Wizardry 8 may have listened to that same lecture. Trynton is a city of tree-houses. It is highly vertical. Though the 3D graphics make it easier to deal with than text-descriptions of pen & paper D&D, it can still get a bit confusing. But even with the primitive, EverQuest-era graphics of the time, it just looks cool. While it's also kinda cool fighting on a rope bridge allied with a half-dozen or more Trynnies, it makes moving into melee with some enemies almost impossible.

Really, the only things I don't like about Trynton are the marauding bands of Leaf Pixies, and the lack of shops. Although Fuzzfass's potion shop is nicely stocked. I've not completed all the quests here (and I'm not sure I can, yet), but I have managed to make it to the illusionary "seventh bough" and meet the legendary shaman who told me my destiny.

My destiny, apparently, is to die - repeatedly and awfully - at the hands of tiny naked women with wings.

Actually, no, that's not what he told me. His answer was the biggest non-surprise so far: My destiny was intertwined with that of Marten, and the Destinae Dominus. I have to follow Marten's trail. For this, I battled spiders, pixies, vampire bats, rapaxes, and blinding wasps all the way up along a giant tree? Still, redundancy is better than getting lost and confused. I accepted the quest and left a tip in the jar. Not that there was any jar, but I tell 'em that to get their hopes up.

So I am now to continue doing... well, what I was doing. Except now I think I have to head into the swamp. But FIRST, I have to head back to Arnika and sell some stuff. And I have to figure out what's up with that graveyard near Trynton. I found runes on some of the headstones, and I could press them and ... uh, turn them off or whatever. But after finding about six of them, they still didn't make the spirit running the graveyard go away. I tried asking around in Trynton to see if anybody knew about it, but they all gave me the "huh?" response. I'll see if I have any more success in Arnika.

Taking Notes
I have always been a proponent of having adventure-game style puzzles in RPGs. Maybe that's just because I'm old-school where the two genres were both far more vibrant and far more interconnected. Wizardry 8, like many of its predecessors, has this in spades.

There's got to be a balance, though. In graphic adventure games, there is usually not many obstacles to moving between areas to fiddle with objects or hunt for missed clues. In a 3D game, the "hunt the pixel" problem is increased by an order of magnitude due to the third dimension, and getting between areas can be pretty tedious. And treacherous. Particularly when the game scales up the difficulty of the encounters to match your average party level, as Wizardry 8 does.

This makes backtracking pretty time-consuming. Most RPGs, including this one, compensate for this by keeping the puzzles either pretty simple or optional. Or maybe they hoped to generate additional revenue from the strategy guide back in the 90's.

I personally prefer staying in-game for finding out how to solve puzzles, and it'd be cool if the game could offer redundant hints as to solutions or the next move. As Wizardry 8 did, back in Arnika, when both the priest and the aging HLL officer suggested your next course of action. This is hardly universal - after all, nobody in Trynton will even suggest how I should start mending the broken rope bridge. I worry it'll involve inventory items I don't have and don't have a clue where to look for them.

The difficult / dangerous / time-consuming slog from area to area is a reason why I don't enjoy the concept of specialty shops in RPGs - even though they sound cool on paper. My team is accumulating a lot of useless junk I'd like to sell, but the potion shop in town won't buy my crap to help finance a potion to restore a drained comrade. More realistic? Sure. But when the guy is about the only shop in Trynton, and the Rapax back in Arnika is possibly a half-hour or so of unproductive running around and fighting, the convenience factor outweighs the realism.

As I also mentioned, I highly approve of the use of vertical space in the game. The treehouse city is just cool and quirky and alien. And awesome. It gives the game - and the Trynnies - some real character, and brings them to life.

Anti-magic zones are a staple of "old school" RPGs (I remember hating the anti-magic LEVEL in Ultima Underworld). The battle in an anti-magic zone in Trynton seems designed specifically to encourage the player to seize an unfair advantage against an otherwise nearly impossible combat. It doesn't take much, but you can position yourself just outside the anti-magic zone, but force the hordes of monsters to fight just inside the zone, incapable of bringing their spells to bear.

Fighting with allied but uncontrolled NPCs in can make for some pretty epic battles. A little slow, but a lot cool. I also like the illusion that I'm not the only guy in the world capable of and willing to battle evil.

Oh, yeah - and having the nastiest, most fearsome opponents in an area be itsy-bitsy little faeries: Definitely worth some bonus points, there. Horrible, toothy, slobbering monsters are always great, but itsy-bitsy naked winged women are just all the more terrifying.
More Wizardry 8 Play-Through Entries:
Part I: So a Samuari, a Valkyrie, and a Bishop Walk Into a Bar...
Part II: Running the Gauntlet
Part III: Vi Domina Tricks
Part IV: Arnika Bank - No Safer Than Under the Mattress
Part V: In Fear of Little Naked Winged Women
Part VI: Old-School Goes Old-School
Part VII: Ratts!
Part VIII: Dances With Rhinos
Part IX: My Duplicity Has a Price
Part X: Missing Men and Mutant Frogs
Part XI: Swimming With the Psi-Sharks

Labels: Mainstream Games, retro, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:02 PM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Eight Myths About Videogames Debunked
It looks like PBS has decided to play "Mythbuster" with eight assumptions people make about video games. They address misconceptions in two categories - the "video games are just for nerdy little boys" area, and the "video games turn kids into raving psychotic monsters"

* The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.
Flying in the face of the dramatic decrease in violent crime since the release of Doom.

* Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression.
Also linked: the alignment of the stars and planets with your likelihood of getting a traffic ticket today.

* Children are the primary market for video games.
Because the industry doesn't want all that filthy disposable income from the twenty-somethings.

* Almost no girls play computer games.
That's right - Bejeweled, The Sims, and Peggle are exclusively played by testosterone-laden boys in-between sessions of clubbing each other with tree branches in the back yard. Oh, and no girl could possibly have the mental capacity and skills necessary to pwn your newbie ass in Counterstrike.

* Because games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them.
AKA the "David Grossman has convinced enough people to repeat him that it must be true" fallacy"

* Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.
But toilet seat art is.

* Video game play is socially isolating.
Because we gamers hate playing with each other, and we would never talk to each other about what games we play.

* Video game play is desensitizing.
This one may be true. It's desensitized me to television.

Anyway, the article is much better-written than my commentary. Check it out here:

Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:53 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Quest for Glory II Remake
The Quest for Glory II: Trial By Fire remake is now available. The original is now almost old enough to vote. So I guess a remake is reasonable.

AGD is also famous for having done the remakes of King's Quest 1 and 2. According to some reports, the remake is superior to the original not only in graphics quality, but in gameplay as well. Several of the original game's rougher edges have been smoothed out, and combat is reportedly much cleaner.

Note: They do have a commercial game available, as well, entitled Al Emmo and the Lost Duchman's Mine. Now, creating a full-on remake and giving it away for free is a stupidly hard way to market one's own game (as is most of game development), but it's clear the Quest for Glory remake was more of a labor of love than a marketing strategy.

Anyway, the QFG2 remake clocks in at about 85 megs.

For interested developers out there, the remake was created using AGS - Adventure Game Studio. It's free, for those who would like to try their hand at developing old-school point & click adventure games.

Labels: Free Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:00 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Once Again, A Former Mainstream Video Game Developer
So ... I quit.

Remember how I promised last weekend (just before heading out to work over ten hours straight on a Saturday) that the severe crunch-mode thing I've been using as an excuse for months would be over soon? That's what I was talking about.

After about two-and-a-half years back in the video game business, the volatility and lifestyle and quality-of-life issues (and did I mention volatility?) got to be a bit much for my family and myself. I'd actually put this off for a couple of months so we could finish up the project (and so I could find a decent place to land). Recent events propelled me to pull the trigger a little earlier than expected, but the time had come for me to make my exit. And the position I'd accepted had already expressed the willingness to be flexible about my start date.

Anyway, I have a few days off to decompress - which are sorely needed. After all, I think I clocked in 40 hours for the week sometime Wednesday evening, not including the weekend hours. And it sounds like management is working to make things right by the rest of my team, so I am pleased with that. They are a great bunch, I wish them all the best, and I'll miss working with them.

But I'm also really excited about my new position. Besides promising more humane hours and steadier paychecks, I'll get the chance to work on some really cool simulator technology.

But in the meantime, I get a chance for some R&R, to play some Wizardry 8, pay attention to my family who needed to be re-introduced to me, and actually devote a little bit of time to Frayed Knights, which has been sadly neglected the last three months.

I started this blog as a "former" mainstream video game developer. After jumping back into the fray for a the last few years, and admittedly having some pretty good times there, I can say I'm pretty happy about returning to my "former" status. Probably for good this time (but I've learned to never say never).

Viva La Indie!

Labels: Biz, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:00 PM (Permalink) 11 comments links to this post

 
Wizardry 8: Arnika Bank - No Safer Than Under the Matress
I am continuing my play-through of 2001's Wizardry 8, one of the last of the mainstream "old-school" style RPGs. Here's Part 4.

Since my last report, I have acquired a couple of tools to help me out. The first is... a manual! The used copy of the game I bought from E-Bay came with nothing but the discs (those with the full packaging are often selling for as high as three digits). I have found that I was able to figure out most of the game without the documentation just fine. I wouldn't call Wizardry 8 intuitive in its gameplay, necessarily, but for fans of the series and the genre, things aren't too hard to figure out. It would have been handier when creating race / class combinations, but familiarity with Wizardry 7 helped in that. You can find a PDF version of the Wizardry 8 manual at replacementdocs.com.

The second nifty tool is a utility called WizFast which was recommended by several people. I was able to download it from wolfie.wiz8.de. It speeds up monster movement beyond the 5x maximum for the in-game option. I'm actually pretty happy with it at around 5x, but for those really big wilderness encounters that turn into chase scenes, this could really be a time-saver.

Scorpia also contacted me, and offered me some semi-cryptic hints and tips. She always tried hard to do this without giving too much away when she was writing for Computer Gaming World (man, I miss those days). But she did warn me point-blank about the tower, saying, "The Arnika bomb is for real. The DS is not someone who bluffs."

Ah. Good point. Important safety tip.

Anyway, I'm still in Arnika and the nearby areas. There have been plenty of things to do in the city, although most of those things involve that noble goal of adventurers everywhere: To loot anything not nailed to the floor, and to break into any place that is sealed against you. And the locals often don't seem to mind. Hey, these are desperate times, right?

I recovered a diamond for the Arnika bank - stolen, somehow, under their tight security measures. I wasn't pleased enough with the reward. So I made some withdrawals of my own. I was able to... uh, "find" several security cards that gave me access to the vaults in the basement. And the emotionless bank teller apparently didn't seem to notice that I didn't look much like Antone the Rapax. And she complains that these things (like the diamond theft) always seem to occur on her watch!

I found the nearby jail to be abandoned by its guards, who I guess were busy patrolling the streets to aid me in frequent battles against the minions of the Dark Savant. I found their security less than adequate. I ended up releasing some bandits, who I imagine must have been half-starved, as they attacked me immediately rather than expressing their gratitude. I unfortunately had to put them out of their misery. At the bottom of one cell, however, I found a secret entrance to a tunnel that went under the street and into one of the bank vaults. With more loot.

I had one other offer to interact with the bank. Some Ratkin named Rattus Rattus asked me to cash a check for him. And he gave me a zip gun in payment. I agreed, and even made it all the way back to the bank. Before handing Rattus's note to the teller, I decided to read it first. Good thing I did. It bas a hold-up note. That prankster! I quietly folded the note and put it away and left the bank. I later found a gullible merchant who was willing to buy the note for 1 gold piece. I have no idea why.

I hope the Arnika Community Bank is insured. Because I don't think they are going to be in business very long.

In true Gygaxian style, the same exploration that can reward you so handsomely can also bring you a great deal of trouble. While locked doors may be there to protect valuables inside from people like me, that can also be used to keep bad things locked IN. I discovered this exploring one too many locked doors inside the temple of Phoonzang. Who knew there were all those deadly ghosts inside? However, I prevailed, and I'll consider it a service rendered to the temple. With the ghosts gone, maybe they can renovate the chambers and turn them into dining areas or guest rooms or something.

One of the treasures in the bank - the sword Bloodlust - turned out to have a curse attached to it. I wasn't paying attention when I gave it to my samurai-turned-gadgeteer. I figured it'd make a good close-quarters weapon when we got flanked. Then I discovered he was incapable of switching back to his gun - or any other weapon. Fortunately, selling the sword back to its original owner, Antone the Rapax (who assumed it had been made by his brother - I'm not making this up!), almost made up for the cost of the "remove curse" scroll we had to use to free our gadgeteer-swordsman from its powerful compulsion.

Greed has its drawbacks.

I am now on the trail of the big artifact that the Dark Savant is after - the Destinae Dominus. The introductory movie made it sound like someone had just absconded with the thing moments before the Dark Savant arrived. But, according to certain townspeople, the theft took place a hundred years ago. I guess when you are dealing with ancient prophecies, a mere century is still a current event. Anyway, the thief was a former cop (well, HLL guardsman) named Marten. While he's being painted as a villain by some, I wonder if he didn't have a heads-up that the Big Bad would be coming one day and decided to keep it safe. Or maybe he was an adventurer like me, and had that problem with looting everything that wasn't nailed down.

He apparently fled to the nearby town of Trynton, and the "Trynnies" hid him and the Destinae Dominus for some time. When the HLL came after him, he managed to give them the slip.

Since I think I've exhausted most of the currently-available quest opportunities in Arnika (I think), it looks like my trail now leads to Trynton. I wonder if there is anybody alive there who knows about Marten, or where he might have taken the Destinae Dominus...

And besides, it might be best to get out of town before people start discovering that their private vaults are empty and start putting two and two together. Maybe after I've saved the entire universe, they'll cut me some slack.

More Wizardry 8 Play-Through Entries:
Part I: So a Samuari, a Valkyrie, and a Bishop Walk Into a Bar...
Part II: Running the Gauntlet
Part III: Vi Domina Tricks
Part IV: Arnika Bank - No Safer Than Under the Mattress
Part V: In Fear of Little Naked Winged Women
Part VI: Old-School Goes Old-School
Part VII: Ratts!
Part VIII: Dances With Rhinos
Part IX: My Duplicity Has a Price
Part X: Missing Men and Mutant Frogs
Part XI: Swimming With the Psi-Sharks

Labels: retro, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:18 AM (Permalink) 9 comments links to this post

 
Interview with Nick Tipping of Moonpod
Here's the last of the semi-formal interviews I had with mainstream game developers who had "gone rogue" to become full-time indie game developers. This time, it's with Nick Tipping of Moonpod. Nick is another indie who is both a driven game developer and a great supporter of the indie game development community. If you have played Moonpod's games, in particular their latest RPG-esque Mr. Robot, you already know that they quality sets the bar pretty high for indie games. Darn them.

Rampant Coyote: So where did you work and what did you work on prior to going indie?

Nick Tipping: Mark and I were both at Gremlin Interactive, Infogrammes and Rage Games Ltd. We worked on a number of PC and Playstation projects: N2O and the Actua sports series mainly. The last mainstream game we worked on was Gun Metal for the Xbox.

Rampant Coyote: What propelled you out of the door of that cushy mainstream game development job to join the ranks of the self-employed?

Nick Tipping: We'd toyed with the idea for some months but when almost every major studio in Sheffield closed at the same time we decided it was time to give it a go. Severance pay and racking up huge debt on multiple credit cards saw us to the end of out first project at Moonpod. :)


Rampant Coyote: Were there any aspects of indie game development took you by surprise when you worked on your first game(s)? Any lessons you had to learn quickly?

Nick Tipping: Only really having to learn open source libraries because we couldn't afford any of the middleware we'd been using in mainstream development. With our first game we made a lot of design mistakes because we'd been developing console-centric titles for so long. Starscape didn't even have mouse support for the menus when we first released it although we added that in an update.


Rampant Coyote: What have been your your biggest struggles / challenges / disappointments as an indie?

Nick Tipping: Marketing and running our company was something we had to jump in at the deep end with. We're still learning things now, after 5 years of being in business. Things we thought would be invaluable turned out to be useless; Mr. Robot and Starscape got incredible reviews in magazines, but even the smallest website review has a much bigger impact than a magazine.


Rampant Coyote: Do you still prefer being an indie over your mainstream game job?If so, why? If not, why haven't you returned to mainstream, big-budget, big-studio development? At the end of the day, why are you an indie?

Nick Tipping: At Moonpod it was more about artistic expression than money but sadly there's always a base level of income you need to maintain to support that ideal. We essentially love making games so if we had to return to mainstream development we'd be fine with that. Ideally we'll keep Moonpod going though and maybe even get to the point where we can hire some staff. We'd love to respond to some of the ideas our customers have sent our way. Essentially we want to keep doing what we've been doing but always reaching to create a better, more fulfilling experience for those who play our games.


Rampant Coyote: What other differences between mainstream and indie game development have you noticed?

Nick Tipping: There's a surprising amount of freedom available to you as an indie developer but time is still your greatest asset and with indie dev there's little time available and more tasks biting into it. Like maintaining a website and running a business. Not to mention customer support.

Rampant Coyote: Okay, that's about all I had. Is there anything else you want to add?

Nick Tipping: Only to add that indies live and die by word of mouth so if you find an indie game you like then tell everyone you know!!!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Interviews

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:30 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
McCain Supports 4th Edition D&D: Polls Drop
Man, first Goldfarb makes a crack about D&D players living in their parents' basement and supporting Obama, and now this:



Dude, come on! 4th edition? Sheesh. Yer just diggin' yourself a deeper hole, here!

(Picture taken from here. Warning - highly political website!)

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:20 PM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Bejeweled Franchise Sells 25 Million Copies
In a press release Tuesday, PopCap announced that their flagship casual games Bejeweled and and Bejeweled 2 have now collectively sold over 25 million units across all platforms, generating over $300 million in consumer sales, and generating tens of millions of dollars of ad-based income.

Jason Kapalka mentions that they originally tried to sell the game outright to game publishers when they started around eight years ago. Even after lowering the price to a mere $60,000, they had no takers.

There are so many interesting points here it's hard to know where to begin. First of all, the $300 million in consumer spending doesn't equate to take-home profits by PopCap, as there were a lot of retail copies sold, portals taking their share, and bundle deals. Still, even if you assume only an average of $6 per copy, that's pretty impressive.

This is also across an immense number of platforms - including PDAs, cell phones, consoles, and computers. I don't know if any game besides Tetris has been ported as extensively as Bejeweled. Or cloned as extensively.

And though they have been really kicking butt lately with Peggle (after spending a ton on marketing), the success of Bejeweled has proven very difficult to match. For a while, Bejeweled's popularity was seen as a signal that casual gaming was a license to print money, but the market is now getting pretty saturated and challenging - even for PopCap themselves.

Still - the best take-away I see from this story, as an indie game developer, is how important it is not to underestimate the value of owning the rights to your game. They tried to sell that, lock, stock, and barrel, for probably far less than 1/1000th of its true value. They had to work their butts off porting, promoting, and building sequels to squeeze that value out of it, and this is a truly exceptional case. But the truth is that developers (not just indies - or I should say, especially non-indies) do not generally know how to exploit the value of their properties, and therefore greatly undervalue the IP rights to their games. And publishers are often just too happy to take ownership of those rights for the pittance the developers think it is worth.

(On the flip side - aspiring developers seem to greatly over-value their ideas for games. But that's a whole 'nother problem. Rule of thumb: If it's something you could sell almost immediately with very little effort, it's worth several orders of magnitude more than something you couldn't.)

Ultimately, with all the stories of failed game studios and the woes involved in the videogame business, it's always nice to hear success stories like this one. Congrats to PopCap on a job well done.

Labels: Biz, casual games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:45 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Wizardry 8: Vi Domina Tricks
eAfter running the gauntlet along Arnika Road (and finding another bolted-door building along the easier Arnika-Trynton Road that may or may not be capable of being entered at some point), I am now in civilized territory: The formerly thriving town of Arnika.

I'm still not exactly sure how it is pronounced. The residents all pronounce it a little differently. Most seem to pronounce it ar-NEE-ka, but I've also heard AR-nee-ka and AR-ne-ka. While it's a small thing, it's noticeable. We've got a town west of Salt Lake City called "Tooele." Everyone in the region pronounces it correctly - at least after being corrected once after trying to call it "Tool" or "TOOL-ee". It's pronounced, by the way, "Too-ILL-a." Don't ask. We also have a town called "Hurricane" which is pronounced "HURR-i-cun." Actors might screw this up, but residents never would.

Arnika is a lot more fun than my last session. There are people to talk to. There are abandoned houses to clear out. There's a rogue named Myles whom I found myself grouped with. Since I already had a rogue, it enabled me to turn my rogue into a bard. I'm not positive how long Myles will stay with our group, but for now, he's with us.

The big quest Myles had for us (though he's talked about robbing the bank) was to rescue some girl by a crashed space ship. We had to fight off a group of Savant Guards - robots with blades on their hands. Definitely challenging, and they don't scare easily. There were also some bandits - Higardi raiders - monkeying around outside the ship that we had to fight our way through. Fortunately, they do scare fairly easily. We had to use every bit of tactics I could come up with to defeat them without losing anyone in our group (I actually took them on before bringing Myles on board).

One bummer about fights in Wizardry 8 is that the enemy can flank and surround you, but you can't really do the same to them. You can, however, dictate a lot of the terms of the fight - maneuvering with your back to a wall (or better, a corner) to limit their frontage, force them to come to you while you pelt them with ranged attacks (especially magical area-effect attacks), and use temporarily disabling spells like fear spells or sleep spells to disrupt them from attacking.

You can also make sure you have your fights within earshot of the friendly guards or monks in the area. They are quick to rush into a fight, draw off a little heat off of your beleagered party members if you need it, and add their own firepower to assist you. If there is an XP hit to receiving their aid, it's not been that noticable.

At the crash site, we rescued the girl from a bunch of savant guard robots, though she was kicking butt pretty well. Once we rescued her, she turned out to be Vi Domina, formerly appearing in Wizardry 7. She joined the party - and turned out to be merely my own average party level (6 at the point she joined us). Somehow I thought she was a much bigger bad-ass than that. I guess skills atrophy over time.

She joined the party, gave us gold, scads of experience points (taking some party members to level 7), and asked us to escort her to visit friends. Free XP for a milk run, plus a chance to get introduced to characters who can use less-than-generic dialog with other NPCs. This was a cute design trick, actually. It gives the NPCs a bit more personality, and helped turn them into "characters" rather than "information and quest dispensing machines."

Except they keep treating us as "junior adventurers." Smirking a little about how we "rescued" Vi. Like we're the kid brothers playing pretend adventurers, and couldn't really handle any real danger on our own. Okay, granted, they probably have a point. We are wusses compared to just about everything else around us (except rats and green slime). I wonder if that will change later? It seems like our quest involves ascending to godhood. I'll bet people won't smirk and be all condescending THEN!

We had to pay off Myles's bartab, which wasn't so fun, but it was a lot cheaper than pair of leather boots purchased from the rapax arms-dealer in town. And we also went to visit the tower of the Dark Savant. It was naturally guarded by his robot troopers. They repeated a warning Vi Domina gave us earlier about there being a bomb in the tower that would blow up the entire world if we tried to enter it.

I think they're bluffing. But... after dispatching the guards, I couldn't find an obvious way in, so I didn't try to call them on it.

Now, given the era that this game was released - just shortly after Baldur's Gate II - I can see how some players might be dissatisfied with the simplicity of the quests thus far, and the necessity of hunting them down a bit.

There is a large menu of options to interact with every NPC, from topics of conversation to trading and even recruiting them to join your party. Morrowind players would have felt right at home. Granted, the majority of NPCs you can talk to in this town are nameless, disposable guards and priests. But I do like the depth of interaction of named NPCs. As the game progresses, the number of things you can talk about increases. They may have nothing but bored "blow you off" responses to the new topics of conversation, but the impression it gives is that these NPCs might grow more interesting as the game advances - rather than the opposite, as is usually the case in RPGs once you've "used up" the NPC's conversation tree.

An artifact of the technology is that the city is pretty sparse. Buildings are spaced far apart, and it is difficult to make out more than four of them at a time through the fog. To be honest, this wasn't very different from Wizardry 7, with the rectangular walls of the city forming odd-shaped buildings that were only visible to a range of about five squares.

All-in-all, Arnika has been pretty fun so far. I'll have to take Myles up on his bank-robbing idea and see what other trouble I can scare up. There's plenty of surrounding countryside and stuff to explore, yet, so I have not yet run out of things to do. At this point, I am having a little bit of trouble figuring out the next direction to take, so I'm gonna have to play adventurer and beat some bushes a little to find something.

Other Wizardry 8 Play-Through Entries:
Part I: So a Samuari, a Valkyrie, and a Bishop Walk Into a Bar...
Part II: Running the Gauntlet
Part IV: Arnika Bank - No Safer Than Under the Matress
Part V: In Fear of Little Naked Winged Women
Part VI: Old-School Goes Old-School!

Labels: retro, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:19 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Wizardry 8: Running the Gauntlet
Since I got started on this discussion over the weekend on my recent acquisition of Wizardry 8, I figured I'd continue this "retrospective." Though it's really more of a first-time play-through for me, as I never played it when it was initially released in 2001. But frankly, this game was a last hurrah (from mainstream developers, at least) of a very fine tradition and style of computer role-playing games that I feel met a premature demise.

Now, if you've been following this blog for a while, you may remember how I complain about how games these days hold your hand and expect you to "brute force" your way through every encounter, never requiring you (or even allowing you) to considering alternatives that don't require killing everything in sight?

This ain't one of 'em.


Yeah, that's 27 enemies, each roughly equal to any of my characters. Nine-to-two odds. The gods of butt-kicking can be capricious and cruel. Or maybe that's the game designers?

Scorpia refers to Arnika Road in Wizardry 8 as the "Terrible Road," and I now understand what she was talking about.

The previous location, the monastery. had a lot going for it. It was full of interesting features (including computers and an elevator), clues as to the "big picture" of what was going on and as to the history - ancient and recent - of the order that dwelt there and the world itself. While it had its share of empty tunnels (I guess the contractors thought they could ad lib a bit and get paid extra for making long corridors that didn't really go anywhere), it was worthy of exploration. And while it had a couple of challenging encounters, it had nothing truly punishing. It was a solid, exciting intro dungeon with lots of promise for the rest of the game.

Arnika Road was something of a let-down after that. And not just because I had my kiester stomped on the second encounter. And the third. And the fourth. That pretty much defined my experience on Arnika Road, and that part isn't all bad. It's just unfortunate that it was pretty much the most interesting part of the journey. But more on that in a minute. Let's talk kiester-stompage.

I tried to be far more tactical and clever after that first defeat, and started using tactical maneuvering on the third. What eventually worked was me "pulling" enemies (just as in an MMO) to a location where I could limit their ability to flank me, and then take them out well away from other enemies who could join them. I did that a couple of times, and then made a run for Arnika. Literally. I stayed to the edges of the canyon to avoid detection as long as possible, and then when combat was joined, I ran like the coward I am. It took me a couple of tries to even do that successfully.

But it worked, eventually. Which, all-in-all, represented a little under two hours of somewhat tedious play. The tedium was particularly pronounced when it came to waiting for massive groups of monsters to move, one-by-one, into position. I found myself thumbing through a book. When I talk about how cool turn-based RPGs are, this sort of thing undermines my arguments. I didn't mind it so much when I was fighting three or even four monsters at a time. But eight... twelve... twenty-seven... that took things to an annoying extreme.

Now, it could be that Arnika Road was designed to teach players the importance of fleeing from bad odds. And it may be that they had some flaw in their encounter-scaling logic that overdid it at level 5. And it could be that the designers deliberately made Arnika Road a speed-bump in the game.

While I couldn't see much of it in my flight to the nearly abandoned city, I really only noticed one "interesting" feature of this area (besides some items sprinkled across the landscape): a building with an impenetrable barred door. I can totally understand the reason why the door was barred, considering the threat level of the creatures roaming the road. And now I'm very curious as to what is inside. That's exploration for you. You get teased by seeing something you can't quite reach, and wonder what lay beyond.

Aside from that, Arnika Road strikes me as "filler." There's another path I can take when I'm no longer required to run for my life. Maybe there's a lot more that way. I look forward to checking it out. But from what I've seen - it's just filler. Not that I mind a little filler in my games. I can get kinda zen-like about wandering off into these kinds of areas and just doing some XP-harvesting. But the difficulty level seemed to get frustratingly difficult at this point, a feature which might not earn maximum gratitude from players in a game's design. Unless, of course, the point was to learn to run like hell, in which case a suggestion that this might be the way to go at the beginning of the gauntlet might be an appropriate way to help train players for future fleeing-like-a-little-girl later in the game.

Upon reaching Arnika, I've found that most of the citizens have fled from the city, fearing attacks by minions of the Dark Savant. As a total meta-meta-gaming aside, I have to admit - it's cool and strange hearing about the Dark Savant in a game. The last time I *really* played Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant was back in '92 or so. It's almost like running into an old friend from high school. Only then, you remember that this acquaintance wasn't actually a friend, but was a total jerk whom you always wanted to punch in the mouth. But while the desire for mouth-punching remains, it temporarily takes a backseat to savoring the reunion out of nostalgia.

So now that I'm off the road (for now), there are once again places to explore, people to talk to, and of course more butts to kick. I'm excited and ready to go!

More Wizardry 8 Play-Through Entries:
Part I: So a Samuari, a Valkyrie, and a Bishop Walk Into a Bar...
Part II: Running the Gauntlet
Part III: Vi Domina Tricks
Part IV: Arnika Bank - No Safer Than Under the Mattress
Part V: In Fear of Little Naked Winged Women
Part VI: Old-School Goes Old-School
Part VII: Ratts!
Part VIII: Dances With Rhinos
Part IX: My Duplicity Has a Price
Part X: Missing Men and Mutant Frogs
Part XI: Swimming With the Psi-Sharks

Labels: retro, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:36 AM (Permalink) 9 comments links to this post

 
Wizardry 8: So a Samurai, a Valkyrie, and a Bishop Walk Into a Bar...
That's either the start of a really lame joke, or a regular play session of one of the definitely non-lame Wizardry games. Although I don't remember if Valkyries were an available class in the earlier Wiz games.

Ye Olde Day (and Night) Job gave me Sunday off, so I managed to pour about three hours into playing my new acquisition, Wizardry 8. Yes, all this talk of new RPGs hitting the store shelves, and I'm thrilled about getting my hands on a seven-year-old game. Well, let me tell you - I haven't been as delighted about an RPG since... oh, Depths of Peril, which was only last year.

But still, just three hours into it, I'm mighty pleased. Why?

#1 - The world and storyline are intriguing. I was never a huge fan of the mega-epic plot-line of the power to create and destroy the entire universe and all that, but I'm not minding it so much here. The game starts you out with a trite imperative (you are the sole survivors of a crashed space ship, and have to survive and save the universe), but the monastery section felt a little like unfolding a mystery, full of hints and clues to a bigger picture. I love that.

#2 - TACTICS! Holy cow, this game is reminding me of how fun turn-based, party-based RPGs can be. Granted, Wizardry 8 probably takes it a little overboard, with party movement and positioning, party formations, and everything. But still, I'm having a great time with it. I got clobbered in a combat on the road to Arnika last night, and found myself considering all the things I could have done differently to have won. Too often, in RPGs these days, it really comes down to having been too unlucky, too slow on the healing-potion button, or not having saved during the middle of the battle often enough. Here, it was a case of me encountering a new monster type and underestimating their capabilities.

#3 - The monastery - the first "dungeon" - was not a run-of-the-mill miniature bunny-slope dungeon. I spent three hours of playtime in there, and dealt with multiple "boss monsters" and lots of exploration. Maybe I'll get sick of similar dungeons with the same graphics set in the future, and I did play through some of this in the demo, but for now, I enjoyed it. I'm really a dungeon-crawler at heart, I guess.

#4 - I'm also a sucker for first-person perspective RPGs. Chalk it over to being more "immersive" or whatever - I've always preferred it. Not that I don't love other perspectives, too (Ultima VII remains, to this day, my favorite RPG), but I love seeing the world through the eyes of my character(s).

#5 - STATS! Lots of juicy, geeky numbers. This might be a detriment for many players, but I really like the customization opportunities and being able to numerically compare my characters and my improvements as I level. Seriously, I get bugged by RPGs that seem to say, "Don't worry your pretty little head about these big, scary statistics... just look at the eye-candy and you can see your character get cooler special effects!" Give me crunchy numbers, please. As much as I get into story and roleplaying and all that jazz, I've got repressed power-gamer tendencies that need to be exercised.

I wish we would see more games like this. But alas, the game was, from what I have heard, something of a failure. Sir-Tech, from what I understand, was in dire straits even before the game was completed. The game was reportedly rushed near the end (update: a rumor disputed by someone who should know), and I don't remember the marketing being all that hot for it. It was kinda sandwiched between some much higher-profile releases.

I mean, I didn't even get a copy when it was new. But I think it was because of a review that claimed the game was buggy. (Though I possibly got that confused with a review of Wizards & Warriors or Dungeon Lords. Those were designed by David W. Bradley, who worked on at least two previous Wizardry titles but - to my knowledge, had nothing to do with Wiz 8).

So I guess I was Part of the Problem. It's all my fault! *SOB*.

And maybe it's just the case that my tastes are now horribly divergent from that of the common gamer. I'm just a weirdo. Maybe there's no market for the potential Wizardry 8s of the world anymore. If so, that's truly a shame.

But maybe there's enough of a market left for indies to keep stepping up and filling the void. I can only hope.

More Wizardry 8 Play-Through Entries:
Part I: So a Samuari, a Valkyrie, and a Bishop Walk Into a Bar...
Part II: Running the Gauntlet
Part III: Vi Domina Tricks
Part IV: Arnika Bank - No Safer Than Under the Mattress
Part V: In Fear of Little Naked Winged Women
Part VI: Old-School Goes Old-School
Part VII: Ratts!
Part VIII: Dances With Rhinos
Part IX: My Duplicity Has a Price
Part X: Missing Men and Mutant Frogs
Part XI: Swimming With the Psi-Sharks

Labels: Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:32 AM (Permalink) 10 comments links to this post

 
Scored Wizardry 8!
I got it!

I finally managed to score a "legit" copy of Wizardry 8 for a reasonable price from E-Bay. I'm so used to games getting cheap as they get old, but I guess that doesn't apply for rare games. Or even uncommon ones like Wiz 8.

Now, ordinarily, I'd be wasting most of this day playing my new acquisition. But once again, I'm working for the weekend (insert strains of the 80's tune by Loverboy here, if you want to share my pain). The extendo-crunch days are coming to an end soon, however, so I may actually have time to... you know... work on my indie game project again. What a concept!

Labels: retro, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:25 AM (Permalink) 9 comments links to this post