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PurpleXVI posted:the same reactions that I have to Brian Herbert's final Dune books finishing off his dad's series, It's not quite that bad. But then, that's an extremely low bar.
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Apr 11, 2022 23:23
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Psion posted:It's not quite that bad. But then, that's an extremely low bar. Brian Herbert's Dune books hurt so much to read about that I can't bring myself to actually try reading them. It would take a far better author than Frank Herbert himself to turn something that apparently so completely misses the point of Dune into something readable.
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Apr 11, 2022 23:37
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disposablewords posted:Brian Herbert's Dune books hurt so much to read about that I can't bring myself to actually try reading them. It would take a far better author than Frank Herbert himself to turn something that apparently so completely misses the point of Dune into something readable. If there's one thing I will say for Brian Herbert, it's that I enjoyed his Dune prequels more than some of the actual Dune books because Brian actually understands the concept of writing dialogue that human beings might actually speak and which a human reader can understand. Reading Dune Messiah and Children of Dune feels very strongly like a fever dream nine times out of ten when two characters are talking and one of them isn't Stilgar. I greatly appreciate Stilgar for being the one person who in those two books who can speak without having it be some bizarre metaphor or riddle that made sense only to Frank Herbert's LSD-riddled brain. disposablewords posted:This chapter is one of my favorite parts of this game and I do not comprehend why. It is a very weird departure from the rest of the game, wandering a tiny stretch of the countryside near Krondor (seriously, I think it's a shorter distance to cover than you go between Krondor and Sarth in BAK) and just having dumb random encounters where you'll rapidly start ignoring the loot because it turns out whoops that's right the game has encumbrance rules. If there's one thing this chapter does right it's having battles that aren't fought in the metaphorical equivalent of a phone booth, where distance and positioning actually get a chance to have some play and where Slow Casts are actually viable because your mages aren't immediately in melee range and will instantly get interrupted every time they try to wind up a spell.
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Apr 11, 2022 23:50
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That you find a piece of Valheru armor on a random mook outside of Krondor is really funny, as is the idea the party could beat someone using Valheru artifacts considering their power as the Riftwar books made abundantly clear.PurpleXVI posted:Unironically everything I hear about the later Midkemia books gives me the same reactions that I have to Brian Herbert's final Dune books finishing off his dad's series, which is that it sounds like a fanfiction parody of itself. The series is fine up until Shards of a Broken Crown and even then, that book is alright until the very end at which point it goes completely off the rails. The character I'm referring to starts off interesting too. After that it's definitely more bad than good with lots of clear attempts at interesting stuff that just doesn't pan out at all or is very badly done. There's a reveal at the end of the final book that I'll just say is mindbogglingly stupid even without its implications on the rest of the series. ...ok I guess there's actually several endgame reveals that are kinda dumb but this one in particular is especially bad.
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Apr 12, 2022 01:21
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PurpleXVI posted:Reading Dune Messiah and Children of Dune feels very strongly like a fever dream nine times out of ten when two characters are talking and one of them isn't Stilgar. I greatly appreciate Stilgar for being the one person who in those two books who can speak without having it be some bizarre metaphor or riddle that made sense only to Frank Herbert's LSD-riddled brain.
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Apr 13, 2022 18:25
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This game doesn't seem totally awful and some of the ideas seem like they'd be an improvement over Betrayal if competently implemented (though they mostly seem actively sabotaged by other elements of the design), but...man, there sure seems to be a lot less narrative and damned if I am retaining almost any of what's there. I definitely see why it's not nearly as well regarded.
malkav11 fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Apr 16, 2022 |
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Apr 16, 2022 06:56
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malkav11 posted:but...man, there sure seems to be a lot less narrative and damned if I am retaining almost any of what there.
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Apr 16, 2022 08:40
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Xander77 posted:Man, you should try parsing the dialog and character motivations in The Dossadi Experiment. Hah, someone else read that thing? That book was goddamn weird.
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Apr 16, 2022 12:35
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Night10194 posted:Hah, someone else read that thing? That book was goddamn weird.
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Apr 16, 2022 13:54
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I've never heard of the Dossadi Experiment before. Is it entertainingly bad or just bad? Also apologies for a slower pace of updates, it has certainly been a week and the state of the world in general has not been conducive to feeling happy and productive. But updates will still occur! malkav11 posted:This game doesn't seem totally awful and some of the ideas seem like they'd be an improvement over Betrayal if competently implemented (though they mostly seem actively sabotaged by other elements of the design), but...man, there sure seems to be a lot less narrative and damned if I am retaining almost any of what's there. I definitely see why it's not nearly as well regarded. Hmmm... I feel this is largely an incorrect statement. The things I would "back-port" to Betrayal are: making it more clear which enemies are archers and which are not, having more terrain on the battlefield, having more "mixed" enemy groups, the idea of having a defensive/offensive/balanced combat stance and melee characters whacking at enemies trying to move past them(though since it's a single attack that also doesn't stop the enemy, and usually only mildly inconveniences them, it's not that supremely useful in most cases). Most of the changes otherwise are objectively pretty bad, aside from standard advancement-of-time upgrades like 3D models(even if they don't look as funny as the old Ren Faire sprites) and terrain in more than two colours. Don't worry, though, we're about to get to the part of the game where they remembered to tell a story again.
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Apr 16, 2022 23:46
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Re narrative, like...one of the things that really struck me about Betrayal was that there was tons of text about all sorts of stuff in the game, be that item descriptions, party interactions, preludes to combats, all sorts of miscellaneous interactions in inns and random houses and such. In Antara, too, it was just kinda dumb a lot of the time. Return...maybe it's the move to voice acting, but it feels like there's almost none of that and what's there is mostly directly involved with the very basic main plot being told and the occasional minor sidequest.
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Apr 17, 2022 01:40
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malkav11 posted:Re narrative, like...one of the things that really struck me about Betrayal was that there was tons of text about all sorts of stuff in the game, be that item descriptions, party interactions, preludes to combats, all sorts of miscellaneous interactions in inns and random houses and such. In Antara, too, it was just kinda dumb a lot of the time. Return...maybe it's the move to voice acting, but it feels like there's almost none of that and what's there is mostly directly involved with the very basic main plot being told and the occasional minor sidequest. I agree. The writing was solid and the item and world description was well done.
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Apr 17, 2022 01:53
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Update 8: Property Damage When we last left off, the party had just reached the warmth and safety of the Wayfarer Inn, something that would have been a more memorable moment if, say, the trip there had been dangerous and pressured the party's resources(but since the entire food-gold-consumables economy no longer exists, that's not an option) or even if they had just deployed some extremely basic mood-setting tricks like having a rainy and windy day drive the party towards the inn. Let's pretend they did any of those smart things and immediately set out to ruin it all.    The inn isn't heavily populated, there's the innkeeper, Royos, and his daughter, and two travellers. As a reminder, we've been informed that Arutha's agent, Alan, should be hanging around here getting drunk on Arutha's dime and should respond to the keyword "citadel." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGGO6pRMC0E Short version:    Are you a secret agent by any chance? Uhhhhhh, yeah, that's me, secret agent man. Oh thank goodness, Alan, please tell James that he has to leave me because I'm too important to risk. And perhaps he should tell me the exact route he plans to take afterwards, so I can send you to him with a big escort keeping you safe? Finally, a reasonable person! James, maybe you should stop him. This man is clearly a bandit or other miscreant. Oh fine, I was really curious to see how much Kendaric could embarrass himself.  ...don't you know how to resolve anything without violence? But if I don't use violence, how will I get to loot their bodies? Sorry about the property damage, innkeep. It's what happens, but if you break any furniture, you're paying for it. Now watch, this is how you really do it. This should be good. Greetings, good sir! Are you enjoying a nice mug of... Citadel? ... ... You're definitely the ones "Arthur" told me to watch out for. So, here's the scoop: you're heading up towards a village that's cursed as hell, half the place is dead or has run for the hills, there's also a witch. Sounds like a place that needs the grace of Ishap.Just about every time THE WITCH gets brought up, Jazhara replies with how there's no such thing as witches, just either natural mages who happen to be female or old women who know how to work with herbs. It's one of the things that feels slightly out of place in the book and in the game. In part because Midkemia's never really had the proscription against female spellcasters that Tsuranuanni had(though of course every Midkemian mage other than Jazhara is male, because being a spellcaster would mean having agency and Feist isn't going to give any of that to a woman without a fight), and in part because it feels like a very modern perspective. Like, we know there's no such thing as witches(in the sense of being able to cast spells, there are plenty of self-identifying witches on the internet), just women who made themselves unpopular in some way and ended up having a rough time of it as a result which sometimes terminated in an accusation of witchcraft. But firstly this is A) a world where magic is real. An old women could very possibly be able to curse you to piss centipedes or something, there's no reason to be skeptical about the supernatural(I mean seriously, these idiots fought a demon like a week ago) and B) scholarly skepsis of superstition just feels somewhat out of place in a medieval setting. In any case, Alan has no useful or actionable information at all. Just that Haldon Head is real cursed and that's bad and also William is still chasing Bear.  So let's send the gang to bed, something that will be totally uneventful.   Joke's on you, there's goblins and fire. In the book, the party reaches the inn first, then hears about Farmer Toth and saves the baby. This alternate sequence I've set up is a bit weird because you'd think that with all the goblins in the region cut into little pieces, there wouldn't be a bunch left to raid the inn.   A Maelstrom from Jazhara and a Fire Rain from Kendaric wipe out most of them. Note that Solon doesn't participate in this fight because he's literally too loving slow to reach the goblins in a single round of movement. Unless Jazhara gets off a Speed of Thought or enemies close in on him, he doesn't get to participate in most fights.  James, of course, stabs the survivor. Here I find that the strategy guide happens to be wrong, by the way, it insists that if you stop to loot the goblins, the inn collapses on the party, but no such thing happened to me(slightly sad, I was hoping it might have had some funny text or dialogue I could snap), so I'm not sure if it's a consequence of the fight going long or a random chance with each corpse you loot or what.   I swear, travelling with you people is the most dangerous thing I've ever done! I've never been almost stabbed so many times before! What's the matter, Kendaric? I thought you wanted a warm bed. ... Slightly funnier if my inn hadn't just burned down, rear end in a top hat.Anyway, time to continue up the coast.   The only "set" encounter along the way is that ninjas attempt to stab us. Again.  At least we're at Widow's Point, so I can raise the ship and get back to Krondor where the guards will keep me safe as long as I live somewhere sufficiently bougie.  Well, here we are... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elMoNHb31_U Short version:  ...anyone else smell something funny? I don't need to, you daft wimp, I see something funny. ...do you think maybe we should draw our weapons? Shhhhh, I'm hoping that if I glare at them enough, they'll go away. They can't see your glare through the shades, James. So, the air elementals hit pretty hard and stun pretty much guaranteed on every hit. If they take someone down, this can get pretty bad because as it is they can only stun half the party(because they get a bit of tunnel vision rather than spreading their attacks around) while everyone's alive. This is also somewhat different in the story, for one thing they attacked Stardock and not Sarth. Secondly, they're made out of electricity, and contact with "other elements," like swords, earth, fire, people, water, etc. will gently caress them up. When they attack Stardock in Darkness At Sethanon, Gardan takes out one of them in a pretty metal way by just tackling it into the ground, even though these things catch fire when they touch non-air things so it more or less explodes when he wraps his arms around it. In the book they also summon reinforcements.  "Thankfully"(in quotes because while it would be rough, it would also actually make the fight interesting), they don't have anything like that in this game, and they just show up and smash away at the party.  And then rather than actually getting killed like in the book, here they just loving run away after taking sufficient damage. It's honestly kinda weird.  That's it, I'm not raising a drat thing. What, why? Clearly some supernatural bullshit is going to try and kill me every time. I'm not raising a drat thing, until every evil ghost and ghoulie in the area has been smitten. Smote. Thank you, Solon. Well, fine! I wanted to kill another demon anyway. Now let's stride away in a cool way like we totally owned this.The chapter then promptly ends and we get...  Another William chapter.    What an exciting off-screen series of events that brought us here! Brought us here and killed off everyone on the team except for us. Let's not dwell on that. Attack! Rar! Congrats, we're now fighting Bear. Yes, it's literally this sudden.   I scored the enchanted plate off the almost-unkillable guy in the last fight and slapped it on William who now ignores almost all damage about as well as Solon while slowly smashing his way through Bear's goons. I don't attack Bear himself for... reasons.  That reason is that we can't kill him yet. William! Swords don't hurt him! It's some sort of magic! Impossible, he must just be buff enough that our swords bounce off him. ... ... Of course it's loving magic! Run for it! Jump into the river!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkGoLwhGHzU The soldiers wisely tell William that jumping into the river to save themselves is an idiotic choice, but William does it anyway, jumping off a cliff into a raging river while wearnig full platemail. A smart boy he ain't. And then the chapter ends! This is probably the shortest "chapter" I've ever seen in any videogame.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRAVbm_mfOI Short version: I bet a witch did this. Alton, you said that when you dropped a hammer on your foot, too. You never proved it wasn't her fault! You'll see, you'll all see! Greetings, good citizens. Any weird, evil things going on here? We've got a witch. You should burn her. Don't listen to Alton, don't burn the old lady, please get the hell out of Haldon Head before you die. ...care to elaborate on that? Only if you come inside and get drunk with me. I'm warming to this place already. ...could you repeat that part about a witch?  So, lots of folks have been dying around here. Horribly, at that. Wolves did it. Wolves. Yeah, you know, wolves. The kind that batter down people's doors, drag them out into the night and tear them apart. As wolves are known to do. My magic Jimmy Senses are telling me that we should have a look around Haldon Head. Do your "Jimmy Senses" say why I can't just stay at the inn while you do this? Because if you do, we'll tell your girlfriend and she'll beat you up. Come on, Kendaric, don't you feel a virtuous urge to assist the poor citizens of Haldon Head? To liberate them from the darkness choking their village? Hmmm. No.   Alright, so, the thing about Haldon Head is that it's super cursed, but it's largely only cursed at night, so now the day-night cycle actually matters somewhat beyond whether or not we can break into shops and people's rooms while they're asleep. As long as the sun is up, there are only three set combats we can get into(and one of those not quite yet). From the upper left, in a sort of clockwise pattern we have: Widow's Point, this is where we go if we think we've uncursed Haldon Head and can now raise the ship. The Witch's Hut, I'm sure she'll just be a very normal old lady. The Inn and Alton's farm, I believe the only place we can rest is the inn. The Priest's Pulpit, there's a priest of Sung in town who's sometimes preaching here. The Town Center, contains a shop and two homes. The Woodcutter's Shack, it's... a place. We shall see. The Graveyard, I'm sure that mysterious beings eating people at night and a large, looming mausoleum are in no way connected. We can easily spend a couple of in-game weeks dealing with this place because as I recall it, solving Haldon Head "right" requires hitting some triggers that I could never get right as a kid. In the book, on the other hand, they solve the place in less than a day, in part because there's a more looming and aggressive kind of cursery going on. See, in the book, there's evil magic that's literally shortening the hours of sunlight, so there are only a few hours in the middle of the day where Night Spooks(tm) can't eat your heart.  As mentioned, the pulpit is empty for now. Let's move on to the town center.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55G2yfDJhxs This guy has a lot to say. Short Version:  Ah, some new folks. Want to help me liquidate my stock so I can get the gently caress out of here? Come on, man, is there no one in this town who isn't lamenting their impending destruction at the hands of dark creatures spawned by the womb of night? Well, no. Ah, fair enough. Now who do we need to smite to stop this? If I knew that, I'd probably not be lamenting quite as hard. This whole mess started when the woodcutter and his wife disappeared, then the folks who went to check on them got mangled, and since then it's just gotten worse and worse. ...how do you know they got killed? Did any of them survive? Wow, a pertinent question rather than whining! Two, but one of them just got killed the other night, and the last one is boarded up in his house. Thanks for the help, now let's unload these cursed Valheru artifacts on you. loving adventurers.   This is the survivor's house. He doesn't want anything to do with us for the time being, he'll just tell at us to gently caress off and stop being evil monsters. Let's come back at night and TP his house to gently caress with him.    This house is easy to miss, the fella inside is one of the rare NPC's who doesn't want us to just stomp all over his loving house. His daughter's dying to death of deadliness, you see, and he's convinced the Witch is responsible, but he won't let us see her unless we can get the local priest or the mayor to say we aren't a bunch of psychopathic murder hobos. We should probably let Jazhara or Solon lead the speaking when it's time for that.    The witch has a little hut here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9kc1mywkDk The music here is kind of odd, it makes me think of like a quirky adventure game more than an RPG. We can't get into the Witch's hut for now(or possibly we can, her front door is kind of finicky since it's both a very small active area AND requires you to be very close to it, unlike 90% of the doors in the game.).  We'll be back here later.    If we visit Widow's Point, since we're in the area anyway, we can also wander around the beach below the Point itself. There's nothing of interest here for now. I have a faint memory that random combat encounters can spawn here, but I think that may be a false memory.   The graveyard is surprisingly safe(for now), and we can actually read gravestones here!      They're relatively serious and lore-friendly.   And for now we can't do anything to the mausoleum, though Kendaric comments that it's very old for the region. I don't know why Kendaric is the mausoleum loremaster, it feels like it would be more appropriate for Solon or Jazhara, or even James. But I guess they wanted to make sure he had some more dialogue. Now, let's visit the Woodcutter's Shack, where the evil began.  Wow that really is not subtle at all.  As we approach the shack, an NPC comes running in behind us and the game switches to combat mode!   Looks like we're fighting a vampire. Psh, how tough can he be?    Vampires in Krondor do not gently caress around, they hit super hard and they lifesteal which means that if they land some hits, they take longer to wear down.  Thankfully they're not immune to having their heads caved in, but I believe that the Lifedrain segment of their damage ignores armor, which means that even the chunky Brother Solon is vulnerable to their shenanigans.    Ah, good, we've all squeezed into the tiny Cursed Shack, I'm sure this will work out well. If you like, we could leave you outside alone to greet the next vampire. Would you pipe down? I'm pondering this cursed artifact.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqVDkzvLGVs  ...well? What is it? Seems like it turns off the sun in a small radius. So not a thing we want vampires to have. Good job, us, for foiling whatever their plan was.  I'm not sure why turning off the sun is supposed to be useful against the undead, it feels more like something the undead would generally employ against others. Now, full disclosure, we will end up using it against the undead, but in a very niche way that I can't really imagine being a common use case for mystic darkness.  Right, whatever happened there was an unholy travesty. I say we go interrogate the witch. You're thinking about burning her, aren't you? ...perhaps a little bit.   Oh thank goodness, she isn't home, she won't turn us into frogs.  There are two interactibles in the Witch's hut, the small table in the upper right and the cauldron. The table makes Jazhara exclaim what a wonderful herbalist the witch is, and the cauldron...  If you taste it, it turns out to be good soup and gives everyone 100 XP. In the game, Kendaric tastes it, in the book he cowers in a corner, terrified that it's some sort of horrible witch's curse brew. In any case, once it's been tasted...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEeStnmT8to If anyone is inscrutably skipping the videos for my recaps, don't skip this one. The witch's voice acting is pretty funny, though I worry that some of her dialogue might be hard to hear due to the background music. Short version:   Alright you little shits, you better be here to set me on fire or listen to my exposition. We'll take the exposition. ...are you sure? I just got done drying out the firewood and collecting some oil. James, this woman is insane, we should leave. Old and daft I may be, but insane I ain't! What about you, priesty lad? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted. I knew it! Stop trying to make us set you on fire and just exposit. Please. Fine, fine. So as you might all have noticed, Haldon Head's got itself a bit of a curse problem. That's an understatement! I suppose you know something about it? Aye, they built the town on top of Cthulhu's summer cottage. Hey! Only I'm allowed to break the fourth wall. Oh fine, fine. Mysterious things what mankind shouldn't know of and what've been here since the dawn of time. Better? Much. So will you actually tell us how to resolve anything here? Not yet! Gotta set some more flags first. Before we go... why are the villagers so intent on seeing you burned? Damned if I know, they used to come here for cures and poultices when things were less cursed. Maybe you should be asking them rather than me. That was a waste of our time. What are we going to do now? We could always smash some vampires. Why does it always end in fighting? Because the authors astutely realize that evil things don't go away from polite conversation, you have to smack them upside the head.Next: The team goes out at night during a vampire plague, like the geniuses they are.
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Apr 19, 2022 11:42
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Lifedrain absolutely goes through armor, it's one reason this section is hard.
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Apr 19, 2022 12:37
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I've read a good bit of Feist's books, but I didn't remember the vampires! What's next? Werewolves?
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Apr 19, 2022 15:32
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dervinosdoom posted:I've read a good bit of Feist's books, but I didn't remember the vampires! What's next? Werewolves? Vampires, and in general the undead, have been very rare(Black Slayers only, really) or non-existent(in the case of vampires) in Feist's previous books. The Assassins introduces the first vampire, and now in Return/Tear of the Gods there's an entire plague of them. The writing does imply that the undead generally exist, though, since the faithful of Lims-Kragma are noted as really hating them. So it's possible that the undead were previously a regular issue until a bunch of angry death cultists went out and made them just plain dead. EDIT: Oh, and The Assassins doesn't have a werewolf... but it does have a werepanther when an evil wizard assassin turns himself into one.
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Apr 19, 2022 15:41
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The witch voice acting is very good! "If you're here to burn me then I won't stand for it! Go fetch me a chair!"
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Apr 19, 2022 16:04
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PurpleXVI posted:Vampires, and in general the undead, have been very rare(Black Slayers only, really) or non-existent(in the case of vampires) in Feist's previous books. Interesting to see a death cult hate the undead, it makes sense really, but I rarely see it.
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Apr 19, 2022 16:19
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dervinosdoom posted:Interesting to see a death cult hate the undead, it makes sense really, but I rarely see it. You have the same thing in Warhammer Fantasy with the Cult of Morr, their worship of Death is Death as a natural thing that happens, not as a wonderful thing to be encouraged or caused everywhere, or something to be gloried in. But something to prevent the perversion of(via Undeath, for instance), something to ease the passing of and something to see a quiet beauty in. With Lims-Kragma in particular, seeing as how she's the bureaucrat who oversees the wheel of reincarnation, it makes a lot of sense for her cult to hate someone who tries to skip their turn to ride.
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Apr 19, 2022 16:22
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I wish seemingly out of place undead was the worst thing in the later Riftwar books. The Black Slayers at least make a particular kind of sense, given their special nature. PurpleXVI posted:Just about every time THE WITCH gets brought up, Jazhara replies with how there's no such thing as witches, just either natural mages who happen to be female or old women who know how to work with herbs. It's one of the things that feels slightly out of place in the book and in the game. In part because Midkemia's never really had the proscription against female spellcasters that Tsuranuanni had(though of course every Midkemian mage other than Jazhara is male, because being a spellcaster would mean having agency and Feist isn't going to give any of that to a woman without a fight), I think the number of women with any sort of agency in the series is... 4? Maybe 5? And that's being very generous. I can only imagine his initial thoughts about Mara of the Acoma when Wurst wrote her books. e: From what I've seen of his new series (Firemane) he's gotten a bit better in that regard. Evil Fluffy fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Apr 19, 2022 |
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Apr 19, 2022 16:41
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Evil Fluffy posted:I think the number of women with any sort of agency in the series is... 4? Maybe 5? And that's being very generous. I can only imagine his initial thoughts about Mara of the Acoma when Wurst wrote her books. I honestly don't even think Feist is coming from a "bad" place in the way he writes women, more an ignorant place. Like, yeah, they have sort of stereotypical, superficial female interests but at the same time none of them are evil, treacherous or manipulative. So it just feels like a subconscious bias rather than actively thinking "women can't do these things" or "women don't care about these things."
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Apr 19, 2022 16:53
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Fun thing that only really comes up with the crossing-the-countryside chapter if you are a complete loot goblin and determined grinder like me! Money has weight in this game. When you go to a store, the characters automatically change up their coins to gems, so you're never going to notice the weight of gold coins while still in Krondor. But if you grab everything you can for no real reason, you get to discover that not only is loot heavy, so are your giant piles of accumulated coinage. And there are no stores to change gold for gems at until you reach Haldon Head. It's something you will not notice for like 90% of the game and only even potentially comes up if you have specific packrat habits in a specific stretch of the game, but they went with it for... some reason! It's part of what makes me think they wanted to do a lot more with wandering the countryside and not just one odd chapter.
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Apr 19, 2022 19:47
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Feist does eventually write a woman magician with a great deal of power. You'll never guess who her dad is. you will hahadervinosdoom posted:Interesting to see a death cult hate the undead, it makes sense really, but I rarely see it. Yeah, it's pretty good really. There's a god of the dead and that's something that's just inevitable. They're in no hurry to make you dead, since it'll happen eventually, which leads to the reasonable outcome of getting pretty pissed with anyone messing with that cycle. most of the Midkemian gods are not (to the point I stopped reading) really well defined, which is probably for the best, but at least the ones which get some definition have reasonably good ones. and I like how even deities have history and some have died and that changes things. It's pretty good setting background because it gives the world some depth, and it doesn't need to be overly explained in crushingly long and boring passages that have no relevance to the characters current situation. not that i'm trying to call out an entire segment of fantasy authors here no Evil Fluffy posted:I can only imagine his initial thoughts about Mara of the Acoma when Wurst wrote her books. Here's an interviewer asking Janny Wurts about it: quote:Q: Can you tell us a bit about the experience of coauthoring the Empire Trilogy with Raymond E. Feist? seems significantly above-average for a dude writing fantasy in the late 80s, so credit where it's due? and if he's trying to improve on his blindspots in newer works, that's even better. Psion fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Apr 19, 2022 |
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Apr 19, 2022 20:48
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In terms of the coinage weight, I appreciate that if it's going to be a thing, the game automatically changes to lighter stuff at stores, as an actual set of adventurers would do at least. I really did want to listen to the witch's dialogue, but you were right. The audio-balancing in that scene is HORRENDOUS, I can't hear poo poo of what she's saying. It doesn't help that her voice is a decent bit softer than everyone else's. Edit: That story about him collaborating with that other author does him a lot of credit. Not only does he realize that he wouldn't write a woman main character all that well, he's actively taking steps to address the problem. Keldulas fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Apr 19, 2022 |
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Apr 19, 2022 23:07
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Keldulas posted:In terms of the coinage weight, I appreciate that if it's going to be a thing, the game automatically changes to lighter stuff at stores, as an actual set of adventurers would do at least. Yeah, it's a solid QOL feature if you're going to include money in your encumbrance rules. It just... feels so weird to have it at all when it's going to be a relatively minor point of the game that can only possibly matter if you're an obsessive looter well after it actually still matters. Even in BAK where limited inventory space mattered a lot more, they decided not to care one bit about where you stored thousands of gold coins.
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Apr 19, 2022 23:45
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quote:
Oh don't get so high and mighty James. We all know this power comes from the sunglasses and not you
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Apr 20, 2022 00:22
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I remember really liking this chapter, the witch was great, the woodcutter's shack was nice and creepy, and there was a good variety of batshit crazy among the peasantry.
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Apr 20, 2022 02:24
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This is a fun part, pity for me that I didn't know the game well enough to avoid dying at this point.
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Apr 21, 2022 03:25
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disposablewords posted:Fun thing that only really comes up with the crossing-the-countryside chapter if you are a complete loot goblin and determined grinder like me! Money has weight in this game. When you go to a store, the characters automatically change up their coins to gems, so you're never going to notice the weight of gold coins while still in Krondor. But if you grab everything you can for no real reason, you get to discover that not only is loot heavy, so are your giant piles of accumulated coinage. And there are no stores to change gold for gems at until you reach Haldon Head. It's something you will not notice for like 90% of the game and only even potentially comes up if you have specific packrat habits in a specific stretch of the game, but they went with it for... some reason! It's part of what makes me think they wanted to do a lot more with wandering the countryside and not just one odd chapter. I ran into the coins have weight problem while still in Krondor. In my first game I ran into one of the magic mail for William. In my second game, knowing what to do, I didn't spend much time in Krondor, and didn't find one, then I got to the solo William levels and didn't do well. I decided the easiest way to deal with it would be to just go back find another mail. So I did a ton of wandering in Krondor looking for one. I didn't pick up stuff to sell, cause I wasn't really going to be buying anything, but apparently I was picking up the coins, because cash.(?) So without going to the shops selling things eventually I just had too many coins. I don't even recall how it actually caused me a problem, but I hope it was at the point that I couldn't even pick up any more coins.
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Apr 22, 2022 04:01
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It's kind of sad they spent so much time on the currency without, uh, giving you anything really worth buying. Ostensibly there's a way to seed the shops with worthwhile items because supposedly whatever you sell on the first time around pops up for purchase in the shops you sold it in if you do a second playthrough(why would you ever?), but otherwise the stores tend to sell unworthwhile things, as I feel I've already mentioned.
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Apr 22, 2022 08:16
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Aurium posted:I ran into the coins have weight problem while still in Krondor. I symapthise. I played EverQuest in the early days when there were copper/silver/gold/platinum coins, and few people had large sums of money. Coins had weight, the only place to exchange them was at city banks, and naturally it was a stupid mechanic that was removed.
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Apr 22, 2022 15:19
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Update 9: The Spooky Chapter Thank goodness this game is soon to be over. Between the unengaging combat and the kludgy UI, I'm really remembering why I've replayed Betrayal some ten times but this... two. Including this one. Last update, the party did pretty much everything that could be done in Haldon Head village during the day, so despite everyone telling us it's a bad idea, it's time to turn things over to night-time.  I later find out there's actually one other place to rest than the inn, but for now I think that's the only option.   There's not a lot of effort put into making Haldon Head at night feel... nighty, literally there's just spooky music playing and the lights are off. Cows and such are still milling around outside in their pasture.  First destination is the graveyard, where the mausoleum is actually open at night.   All it contains, though, is two low-level vampires. Once they've been beaten to ash, the party agrees that they should return here during the day even though... the place is closed during the day and there's seemingly no way to open it.   Next, there's the priest's pulpit. He's not out here preaching at night either, but we're treated to the devs doing their damndest to have enemies move on to the battlefield in a way that doesn't just involve spawning them out of thin air or having them run over from a mile away.  Once again, two ordinary vampires on their own are not a great threat and they get bashed into the dirt in seconds. Anyway, enough screwing around, it's time to do the one(1) thing that Haldon Head's night cycle exists for.   We're going to visit Nathan at night, which is clearly where he's going to be most stable and the least likely to panic and put a crossbow bolt through our heads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy0Ur0yH_To Short Version:  Naaaathaaaaaan, we wish to talk to you about your mule's extended warranty. So why aren't they just beating down his front door and dragging him out? Haven't you ever read a vampire story, James? They can't enter your home without an invitation. Oh, so you're saying someone just transplanted vampires into Midkemia without adjusting them to the local cosmology and context? Pretty much, yes. They eventually turn around and start attacking us when they realize we've been mocking them behind their backs.  Something important to remember when fighting vampires is the little subnote on the simplest Fire magic spell, Sunray, which says it does damage to the undead. You'll never flub casting it because it's so simple, it blinds enemies which can both lose them turns and if they don't lose their turn makes it harder for them to hit(and makes them easier to hit, it seems) and it does almost as much damage as Fire Lance.   The funny thing happens when we kill them all. Because all the backgrounds are pre-rendered and thus things like "doors opening" can't actually happen, Nathan can't actually emerge from his house to greet the party, instead he runs in from off-screen which is just. I don't feel I need to explain why that's funny and janky.  Next to the witch, Nathan is the big lore dump, though I think he's technically completely skippable. In the book, this is pretty much the first thing the characters do in Haldon Head after talking to the innkeeper, though it's a notably different scenario since the vampires there are very hard to kill, they convince Nathan to open the door and hide in there with him during the night. Sorry for telling you to gently caress off during the day, I guess you aren't vampires. Do you have any important plot information for us? Well, this all started at the woodcutter's shack- Been there. -and the vampires got my friend while he was staking them out at the graveyard. That's about it, sorry. I'm not sure if certain dialogue choices trigger it, or just enough dialogue, but eventually Nathan scampers off into the vampire-filled night which is surely a good survival choice. We now need to get back to daytime, and since the innkeeper is true to his word and doesn't open the door at night, we need to find another place to sleep.  It turns out that the beach next to all the haunted sunken ships which gets attacked by air elementals semi-regularly is the one safe place I could find to sleep at night.   In the morning, then, it's time to go cause some property damage at the graveyard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88wkNtcrIL4  Using the Nightstone opens the tomb during the day. It's hard to explain just how different this is from the book, but in the book the Nightstone has an entirely different purpose, actually shortening the days around Haldon's Head so there's more night for the vampires to operate under, the party arrives during the false night after talking to the witch and being told they need the vampire's hand. They then realize they can't kill him during the night, leading Kendaric and Solon to bar the mausoleum doors while Jazhara and James race for the Woodcutter's Shack and break open the Nightstone, and then they all face off against the vampires at the mausoleum while the party has the sun at their backs.   This leads to the biggest vampire fight we've had so far. The four at the front are the same kind we've been beating up all along, but the master vampire at the back is tougher and hits slightly harder.    As evidenced when he fucks up James in a single round thanks to Life Drain damage completely ignoring armor.    It even blows right through Solon's enchanted plate, as predicted.  Thankfully he's a chunky boy and has enough total health that he can take about 50% more damage than James before he's face down in the dirt. If Solon hadn't one-turned one of the vampires, allowing both the master and one of the flock to team up on him, I could've been in some deep poo poo, but as it is the tomb gets cleared out. The main advantage of this is that we can continue the plot, and a fringe benefit is that vampires no longer spawn at night. However, we also no longer need to do anything at night, so we don't really care about it.  The vampire drops enough jewelry to make a glitzy rapper jealous.    A fake charm of Sung, eh? Also some sweet boosters for Jazhare and Kendaric.   Perhaps we should go see the only priest of Sung in the area. I'm sure he's on the up and up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51yzcOage70 Short Version:  You know who's responsible? The witch! High taxes? Blame the witch! Bad beer? Blame the witch! Do you have any evidence that the witch has done any of this? Of course. Children have been sickening and dying, and after Farmer Alton spoke up against her at a town meeting, his cows started dying, too. ...and is there any evidence tying the witch to any of this? Yes. Can we see it? No.For now, there's nothing to be gained here except learning that Father Rowland is really eager for someone to kill the witch. In the book, Solon points out how weird it is that a priest of Sung the Pure, a god of healing and health, is so desperate to see someone killed. Let's maybe go have a poke at Alton and see if he'll spill the beans on anything.   Upon returning to the inn section, we find a flayed, blood-drained corpse on the ground. I think this is just meant to spawn here the first time you arrive after passing a night at Haldon Head, and does so regardless of whether or not we've already killed the master vampire, which we could technically do on the very first morning.    These are some of the worst cow models and textures I've ever seen. They look like Quake 1 enemies.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgcQmSNcb80 Short version:  Alright, Alton, going to reveal anything important to us? Not really, I'm just going to yell "My cows! My cows!" and insist the witch done it. It'll probably set a flag of some sort, though.  The next step is actually to head back to the innkeeper/mayor, who vouches for us as not-assholes after we killed the master vampire, and thus gives us access to the little girl that's dying over by the general store.  As we leave, though, I notice some movement on this screen. Do you see it? That vague black shape in the far background? Turns out that's actually an interactible NPC sprite! Until this time playing through the game, I never even realized that it was possible to move "up" on this screen or that there was anyone back there. The death of pre-rendered backgrounds in 3D games was a blessing.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot-RcbrduKQ Some of the other NPC's have mentioned another kid who died, which was attributed to the witch, this woman was his mom and she wholeheartedly supports the idea of setting the witch on fire. Sometimes I get a feeling like this entire sequence was supposed to be wider, broader and with options for the player to accuse the wrong person or otherwise "gently caress up." As it is, it's incredibly obvious who the badguy is, kind of like with Jorath back in Krondor, and there isn't even an option to screw up, so if you're too dim to realize it, it doesn't have any effects, it just traps you. With her listened to, it's time to go save a little girl.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r7O-XJSp2Y Short Version:  So let me make sure I understand this properly. First, you go to the witch, and your child gets better. Then you go to the priest, and your child gets worse, and you're still chattering about how the witch needs to burn? ...I'm getting the impression the good people of Haldon Head may not be very bright.Then Solon picks up the charm of Sung that Father Rowland left with their daughter, and it turns into an evil symbol of the Nameless One ooooo spooky ooooo.  This bit confused the hell out of me, originally. Because obviously, of course, you're going to hoof it over to the general store to pick up the saucy goss.   Yet the storeowner has no new dialogue at all. Nothing, nada and zip. However, it turns out the shelf to the right of the party when they're facing the counter is interactible and, in fact, each tier of the shelving has its own associated dialogue...    Finding this seems to be what sets the flag that lets us go back and harass Farmer Alton again.   This time the party is able to use their eyes to see that Farmer Alton's cow feed is full of rat poison, thus explaining in a non-witchy way why his cows are sickly and dying. Let's confront him with it.   Yeah, that's right, Alton just loving dies when we try to talk to him about it.   He makes a sort of choking sound and topples over, and in the book it's explained by this amulet he's wearing suddenly constricting, choking him and practically taking off his head. Also as a note, in the print of the book I have, a couple of times they typo "Black Pearl" as "Black Pear" which is pretty hilarious. It's pretty clear that there's something shady about all these people who want the witch dead, so maybe we should go tell Rowland that his buddy died.    But uh oh, when we do, it turns out he's magically compelled all the followers to attack us. Jazhara yells at us that we shouldn't stab all the civilians, but I don't actually think there's a penalty for doing so. Now imagine if this was some sort of tense fight with a mob of enemies that we had to waylay with Jazhara's less-than-lethal magic and a powerful boss enemy harassing us from range with some sort of evil magic. Cool, right?  Instead, Rowland is literally just an unarmed civilian and you can stab him in the first round. This does not immediately break the spell, though, and you need to weather one whole round of some random peasants trying to brain Kendaric. I mean we could do two rounds of that. Eventually the citizens tire of trying to kill us and sheathe their weapons, though. Once again, in the book, all this happens before the Nightstone gets busted and the master vampire killed, and thus there's a sense of urgency to it.  The locals do at least apologize to us and tell us that the witch probably isn't all bad, our heavy-handed clue that we should go tell her she's off the hook.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsEXW6Qhjjg Short version:  Took you long enough! I just got done drying out the firewood! Look, no one's going to burn you. What, really? The vampire and Father Rowland are dead, oh and Farmer Alton, and a few other citizens we didn't manage to save in time. Well, I suppose I owe you all some more exposition, then. Behold! I have brought you... fire! Yes, we saw you fetch the firewood and the oil. Was somewhat expecting you'd throw yourself on it. No, no, this is a special fire! A magic fire! A fire... of visions! Very nice, I love what you've done with the place. I am a skeleton! I am evil!  ...is that me as a blood sacrifice? Looks that way. This is absolutely the worst road trip. Well, there you go. No charge for the mystic wisdom. What wisdom? All you showed us was skeletons and me as a corpse! Fine, fine, you're supposed to go to the beach, find the mystic temple and kill the bad guys, that better? Notably less vague.And then the chapter ends.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSvOfF6pzfo This one I recorded in full because it's A) short and B) contains a lot of dialogue. Short version:     William gets dropped in a mystic arena where Talia's ghost yells for help.  Before he can help her, demons manifest, three waves of them, which he cuts apart with zero effort. It's just... I hate these sorts of cutscene battles, honestly. In some very rare cases they can feel powerful, but not in as... slow a combat system as Return to Krondor's. The slowness makes the cutscenes fail to whip up any emotions.    Demons dead, William pleads with Talia to stay with him, but Kahooli interrupts and says that Talia will remain dead, but William has freed her soul which Bear had apparently collected(?). It's mentioned sort of in passing but Bear's amulet collecting souls doesn't really feature meaningfully into the narrative in either the book or game. Oh and also Kahooli promises his personal assistance once William gets around to fighting Bear.    William wakes up in a swamp and... it's hilarious. After his first few weak croaks he just springs to his feet and sounds like he's had a nice night's sleep, not like he's just been battered by rocks while being smashed downriver and been battered by demons in hell(?).  He's interrupted by... Sidi. In the game, we just saw Sidi cooperating with the Forces of Darkness(tm) and know he's a bad seed. In the books... Sidi first appears in the middle of The Assassins, the guy who trades with the goblins and is slightly shady but seems to help out. Then he re-appears at the end of the book to complain to a lich about how the vampire demon wizard that James helped kill at the end of the book was crazy and also a nerd. So at this point, when he pops up in Tear of the Gods, we know that he's into some shady poo poo, which William doesn't. He provides a lame excuse as to why he's gotta get his revenge on Bear, which William accepts, then, he heals William up and then the chapter ends. In the book it's faintly implied that Sidi clouds William's thoughts with magic to get him to cooperate.   We're shipped immediately to the beach as the chapter starts and this is where the update stops for now. Next time: we're going to fight some skeletons and explore a dungeon.
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Apr 28, 2022 14:06
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Is this a short game? The chapter seems to be flying by! Also 0/10 game, no james or owen.
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Apr 28, 2022 15:16
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I warned you! I warned you about RTK being terrible.
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Apr 28, 2022 15:16
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dervinosdoom posted:Is this a short game? The chapter seems to be flying by! Also 0/10 game, no james or owen. It's actually a really short game if you know where to go, especially if you don't engage with any of the optional content or do any grinding. Not doing any grinding makes the game slightly harder since James really likes having a good weapon like Woundlord available to him(it seems like a lot of the special weapons in the game are restricted to random encounter drops), but at the same time if you know what to do and aren't a bungling doofus like me, you also avoid some of the hard-mode versions of encounters like fighting all the Nighthawks and their pet demon in the Bitten Dog at once.
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Apr 28, 2022 15:52
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 I like Return better than Antara
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Apr 28, 2022 16:36
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I don't recall Tear of the Gods being a particularly good book but drat the writing in this game is noticeably worse than BaK's was.sb hermit posted:
A bar so low you need a shovel to find it. (shovel is only available in one shop, 3 chapters earlier)
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Apr 28, 2022 16:39
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Evil Fluffy posted:I don't recall Tear of the Gods being a particularly good book but drat the writing in this game is noticeably worse than BaK's was. Hey, I largely liked the writing in Betrayal at Krondor. That said, the narrative hangs together notably better in the book than in the game. I still find it a charming choice to have them have Kendaric be a wizard who's good at one specific spell and completely dogshit useless for anything else except perhaps as a doorstop. He's a great foil to the pragmatic James and the principled Solon and Jazhara in that sense. But yes, I would still rather replay Return than Antara. Return could be largely salvaged with 3D rather than pre-rendered backgrounds(if only for a free camera's sake and making it more obvious where you could and could not go) and better encounter planning. The story, such as it is, largely still works in its broad strokes and it doesn't waste 80% of the game on getting to where it actually should have started.
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Apr 28, 2022 17:41
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PurpleXVI posted:Next, there's the priest's pulpit. He's not out here preaching at night either, but we're treated to the devs doing their damndest to have enemies move on to the battlefield in a way that doesn't just involve spawning them out of thin air or having them run over from a mile away. Majestic. 
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Apr 28, 2022 18:42
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Yeah, the guy barricaded in his house somehow running in from offscreen has nothing on "descends from the skies" but really, all of this is some great comedy 100% unintended, but so what
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Apr 28, 2022 20:07
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