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Just in case anyone is wondering why they didn't go for the obvious joke with Welda's cats - they did. You need to use an inventory item on them.
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Jul 28, 2022 12:55
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 22:24 |
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No, "Examine" is a solution to a lot of puzzles. Usually, Quickthorpe is cleaning something that's covered in something else, like snow or dirt. He probably moved something in the ship that released the spirit. It's clearly by design.
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Jul 30, 2022 04:23
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Honestly, I find most of the backstory in this game pretty fascinating. It's just almost all in easily missed scenes or dialogue, and the stuff you can't miss is not quite done with suggesting that people jump naked into lakes. And some of the puzzles are still difficult when you know how important Examine is. I'm going to disagree with RBD as to which ending is better, but I think I just have a very different perspective on the game, having played it a few times myself. We'll discuss that when we get to it, I'm sure.
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Jul 30, 2022 04:58
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This secret third ending is even better than either of the other two.
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Aug 1, 2022 10:24
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A couple of possibly fun bits of trivia: While only the least likely line of dialogue gets you kelp from the seahorses, and there are many ways to miss it, if they leave without giving it to you, you can wait around for a while or leave the screen and return later, and they'll come back. At that point, anything you say that doesn't immediately offend them will give them an opening to give you the kelp. This was a particularly frustrating puzzle for me back in the day because I'd read a review that said that if you didn't get the kelp, you were screwed, and there was no chance to save between being on the boat and that conversation. I reloaded so many times searching for the correct option, afraid to end the conversation (the correct option) because the review had warned me not to do that. I have no idea how I ever figured out that there was a second chance, easier than the first. The music loop that plays in Kouppa's house is a very short phrase from Simon & Garfunkel's "59th Street Bridge" song, reversed. Specifically, the line and a half "You move too fast, you've got to make the morning last." As far as I know, the only item you can leave behind in the Land of Mists that you'll need later is the blanket. Every other item that you need from there is required to leave the area in the first place. You can't even go back into the city at that point. You can just go back down the mountain. Interestingly, the lever for the elevator is there the first time you enter, and if you're so inclined, you can ride it down, but Quickthorpe will take one look around and nope himself back up. It's one of those things that gives me the feeling that this game was scoped something like Torin's Passage - originally developed to be part of a longer series, setting up sequel hooks as it goes and ultimately having even some of the originally planned content cut. Some of the useless items are too elaborate to have been thrown in there just to take up inventory space. It reminds me of parts of Kingdom O' Magic where you could do things that were irrelevant to the active quest, only there's no other quest in this game for them to be part of. And the parts of the story that are relevant are often skippable. You can bypass Ishmael's room entirely, go straight to the gorgon's room, and whip out your spear without even talking to her, and proceed with the quest that way. These are just some of the complaints that led me to hate this game so much when I played it the first time, but what kind of design makes the action you want to take always the last one in the cycle? Walk should be the first option for a path, not the last. If you're holding an item, using it should be the default option. Taking things out of the inventory will be the reason you opened the inventory almost every time. The earliest implementations I'm aware of featuring selectable actions for a cursor either had lists of actions or icons representing the actions, with the right-click cycle being a convenience feature rather than the only way to interact with things. The game's content is serviceable if you choose to interact with it in the ways it wants you to, but it makes that interaction inherently painful every step of the way.
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Aug 12, 2022 16:47
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:Who discovered the Simon & Garfunkel loop? When I LPed this game years ago, I got curious and reversed the audio just to see if it made any sense. I made a gimmick of ham-handing the lyrics of the song into the commentary for that part just to spring the surprise at the end. Looking back, through both your LP and mine, the game definitely has its charm. I suppose I was predisposed not to think much of the humor when one of the front and center dialogue options for the first two people he meets is "Let's get naked and go swimming." It left a bad first impression that made lines like Mickey Dee's and Chernobyl stand out a lot more than the really good ones like "Remember who?" I still don't particularly like it all that much, but I guess I don't hate it as much as I used to. Still, there's a chapter left and at least one ending before you form a final opinion.
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Aug 13, 2022 00:57
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 22:24 |
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The real problem I have is that the revised ending doesn't really add anything. Nothing really gets resolved either way, unless there was a lot more between-the-lines reading that I was meant to do. The whole quest comes across as completely pointless, in the traditional "Why are we collecting the Sacred Thingies from the places where they're protected, when if we just don't do that, the bad guys can't possibly get what they want, because the Sacred Thingies are protected?" way. If Quickthorpe really suspects what's going on, he has to have done so long before the end of the quest, so it really seems like he could just toss the stuff he's got into the lava, go back home, and rest secure that nobody will be happy. While the original ending doesn't make any of that any less true, it does come out and say that there was never a quest anyway, so it ultimately doesn't matter. I feel like if that comes too out of left field for you, it means you haven't been paying attention to the game up to that point. The whole thing's been pretty mean-spirited, with plenty of crude humor, so the idea that actually, Quickthorpe's been paying for it the whole time, just fits. Maybe I'm just too used to other stories where you turn the page and the narrator pretty literally says "Welp, I'm done telling this story. Buy more of my books!" to be too fazed by how irreverent it all is.
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Aug 14, 2022 21:20
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