Eye of the Beholder: Final Rating

 

  

Eye of the Beholder
Westwood Associates (developer); Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher)

Released 1991 for DOS and Amiga; 1992 for PC-98; 1994 for Sega CD and SNES; 2002 for Game Boy Advance

Date Started: 25 May 2015

Date Ended: 11 June 2015

Total Hours: 39

Reload Count: 28

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)

Final Rating: 41

Ranking at Time of Posting: 155/189 (82%)

"I think I picked the right game to start 1991," I said at the beginning of this series, and I conclude with the same sentiment. You have to be strategic about starting a year's worth of CRPGs, I've discovered. You want to start strong but not too strong; you don't want to blow your roll on the first game. But neither do you want to start with something lame that taints the whole year. Eye of the Beholder was a nice middle path--an appetizer for what I hope are better games to come, including its own sequel.

I'll say right away that Eye of the Beholder is not a better game than Dungeon Master, and if it rates higher than Dungeon Master on my GIMLET, we'll know that the GIMLET is broken or I rated the previous game too low. What Beholder gains through NPCs and better quests, it loses in fundamentally worse character development, combat, magic, and puzzles. I'm sure it's possible to blend Dungeons & Dragons rules with an action dungeon-crawler, and Beholder is an important step in that direction, but it's not the destination.

But let's not start with too many negatives: Beholder is still on the "recommended" side of the divide. From the opening animation and collapse of the corridor behind you, it promises and delivers a solid dungeon crawl that lasts just about the right amount of time for its content. The puzzles tend towards too easy (except some of the "special quests" and that Level 9 nonsense), which is regrettable, but better in my book than games where the puzzles tend towards impossible. I enjoyed the process of mapping, carefully annotating certain squares for later return and investigation, and methodically uncovering the mysteries of each level.

A new party does it right.

            
Immediately after winning, I looked up the "special quests" that I had missed. The Level 1 quest is so obscure that some spoiler sites don't even have it: you have to put a dagger in a slot that contained only a couple of scrolls before--at which point it's replaced with a +4 dagger called "Guinsoo."

On Floor 5, I was supposed to re-stock the "pantry" with 5 normal rations to get 5 iron rations. Yay. Level 7 wanted me to put three stone portal items in the three shelves in the teleporter hub, in exchange for scrolls that offer "cryptic hints about the other stone items," which I managed to find without hints. On Level 8, 12 dart trap holes had to be filled with 12 darts to return 10 +5 Adamantine darts, but I don't know where I would have found 12 darts that late in the game. I gave most of them up in the wall puzzle on Level 6. Level 10 was looking for some Kenku eggs in some niches to spawn mantis warriors with Rings of Protection. Level 11 wanted me to put a scroll in some random niche for a clue on defeating Xanathar. The lesson is clear: if I wanted to solve all the special quests, I should have spent time putting random items into every niche and hole that I found.

I got the rest. Apparently, forcing Xanathar into the spike trap was the special quest for Level 12. I don't remember getting a message to that effect, though.

I wish I'd captured the animation as Xanathar dies. I don't feel like going through the wand thing again, though.

            
The solutions to these special quests are mostly not found in the game's official cluebook, presented as a package of documents recovered from a Drow spy and sent to the party by the famed wizard Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun. The book is otherwise reasonably well done, consisting of three major sections: indexed maps, broad hints, and specific notes on areas and puzzles. In the second section, a number might be clued to a paragraph that reads, "This is a silly place for a dead end. I wonder if we are missing something here!," whereas the third section explicitly tells you, "There is a secret brick on the west wall."

One of these days, I might complete a game I don't care about by just following the directions in a hint book or walkthrough--just to report on the experience. But I wouldn't want to use the hint book for a game in which half the fun is mapping and figuring out puzzles. After the fact, it was fun to see if I'd missed any major areas (doesn't look like it).

A bit from the official cluebook. Its map of Level 12 is close enough to mine.

   
At the end of the game, I was convinced that, with my maps and notes in hand, I could win in a speed run of only a couple of hours. I Googled it, and sure enough, this guy did it in 10 minutes. He knows exactly where he's going, takes the most efficient routes possible, fights only when he has to, and maximizes the use of scrolls, wands, and potions. He kills Xanathar the long way, using weapons, instead of going through the trouble to solve the side quests and get the Wand of Slivias. I'm not sure why he deliberately killed 3 of his 4 characters, but in any event, I couldn't do it faster in 5 years of trying full-time.

Finally, let's talk about the characters. The Forgotten Realms Wiki says that "Xanathar" was one of several beholders to take that name. The narrative is a bit confused, but another beholder of that name led the Xanathar Thieves' Guild in Skullport. Eventually, a powerful beholder called The Eye murdered this Xanathar and took over his guild and title. The Eye also somehow "secretly aided" the adventuring band in Eye of the Beholder, leading to the death of the game's Xanathar, but I'm confused about the specific timeline or how this aid was delivered. Information about the other Xanathars apparently comes from the City of Splendors: Waterdeep and Cloak & Dagger TSR sourcebooks.

Shindia Darkeyes, the Drow briefly encountered in the game, is an operative of the Xanathar Thieves' Guild and appears in several sourcebooks. Piergeiron, one of the Open Lords of Waterdeep (the others' identities are apparently hidden), appears in several novels and references. There are no entries on Teirgoh the dwarven king or his son, and the Wand of Slivias appears to have no eponym.

This is kind of pathetic for a Drow.

All right. Enough messing around. On to the GIMLET!

1. Game World. The back story is pretty poor, telling you only that there's a threat (left oddly vague) to Waterdeep and that the Lords want you to solve it. Into the dungeon you go. As the quest progresses, the story fleshes out a little, with the dwarf expedition, the Drow invasion, the mysterious robed NPC, and the final encounter with Xanathar himself, but none of it is terribly compelling or cohesive. Score: 4.

2. Character Creation and Development. Creation is D&D standard. Development is rapid through the first few levels and extremely slow after that, and the only tangible reward from leveling up is access to better spells. More than in other D&D games, the effects of increased hit points and spell points aren't really noticeable. Race, class, and alignment don't seem to matter at all (the lack of anything for a thief to do is particularly unforgivable), which is really too bad; it would have been fun if the encounters with the dwarves or the Drow had gone differently depending who was in the party. Dungeon Master, with its skill-based leveling, is much better. Score: 4.

The party leader's final stats.

3. NPC Interaction. It was refreshing to see some NPCs in a Dungeon Master-style game, and I liked the process of adding NPCs to the party. The dialogue was less interesting, with choices and role-playing options in only a couple of places. You do learn a bit about the setting from NPCs. While a welcome addition, there's a lot more to be done here. Score: 4.

Resurrecting each NPC and hearing their stories was a mildly fun part of the game.

4. Encounters and Foes. Here, we start to see some improvements over DM, with foes that are listed in the game manual so at least you can tell their names. Their comparative strengths and weaknesses (mantises and mind flayers can paralyze; golems are immune to magic) played a minor role in combat--not nearly as good as in the Gold Box games. I wish that there had been more "encounters" like the first meeting with the Drow party or the dialogue with the robed figure, but the few that the game offered were welcome and a slight step up from DM.

The game offers a hint I don't need to a fairly easy puzzle.

For games that are heavy on puzzles, I use this category to punish and reward the quality of those puzzles, and I'd have to call Beholder's somewhat average. I rarely felt the thrill of victory in solving the various button or pressure-plate puzzles, but neither did I feel frequent frustration. Only once did I think that the puzzle was too obscure to be solved by a reasonably intelligent player investing a reasonable amount of time. Score: 5.

5. Magic and Combat. A weak part of the game. I'd rather the game had offered a straight-up D&D-style tactical/logistics test (even if it was in real-time) rather than the uncomfortable blend of D&D statistics with DM combat. The spell system was pretty bad, making it too time-consuming and complicated to line up and cast spells, and you could quite easily complete the game without a spellcaster. In fact, all but the front two characters play such a secondary role in combat that they might as well not even be on the stage. The ability to save anywhere and often removed much of the sense of danger, and the ability to combat waltz left most of the combats too easy. Other faults include no feedback on enemy health and the stupid animation delays while spells finished casting. Score: 3.

Marina memorizes a couple of spells that she's destined to never cast.

6. Equipment. Maybe a slight step up from DM, but still suffers by not telling you anything about your stuff until very late in the game--and then only telling you a little. The variety of items and equippable slots were good, although the relative ease of the game meant that I rarely bothered with things like potions or cleric scrolls.

Frankly, the category could have been stronger with just a little extra effort. In a game that based almost everything else on DM, I don't understand why the creators removed the ability to right-click on items and see a little basic information. Moreover, the approach to finding items is just weird. You have to fight through multiple corridors, locked doors, and puzzles to get rewarded with a couple Potions of Healing, but +5 weapons and high-level armor are just sitting in the middle of corridors. Score: 4.

My fighter/thief's end-game items.

7. Economy. None, which was disappointing. There was a perfect opportunity to offer some trade with the dwarves or Drow, or to require paying the dwarven cleric for healing and resurrections. Score: 0.

8. Quests. Getting better here. The clear main quest is supplemented by a couple of side quests (to save the dwarven prince and find the healing potion for the king) and a series of "special quests" on each level. There was a basic good/evil role-playing option here, as you could kill all the dwarves for their Wand of Slivias and/or apparently make friends with the Drow. (Neither, I hasten to add, has anything to do with your character alignment.) The quests are still primitive and not nearly as good as other titles of the era, but better than most games in the DM mold. Score: 4.

Solving a side quest.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. Easily this game's best category. The graphics are state-of-the-art for the era and not bad to look at now. I appreciated the variances in wall textures and the complexity of the monster portraits and attack animations. The sound is particularly well-done, offering a palpable sense of approaching danger as well as some of the earliest uses of ambient sounds. And except for the difficulty of casting spells in combat, I had no difficulty with the mouse and keyboard controls. Score: 7, which is about as good as any game could possibly earn before the era of more complex sound effects and spoken dialogue.

10. Gameplay. Another relatively strong category. Dungeon crawlers tend to be linear, but within its confined space, this game does a good job allowing some flexibility of movement and ensuring that not all movement is relentlessly downward. I wouldn't call it "replayable" in plot terms, but like DM, there is a temptation to try things again in ways that offer fresh challenges. It's a tad too easy, but the length is just about perfect. Score: 6.

The final score of 41 puts it, as I expected, lower than Dungeon Master, although I didn't expect it to be lower by a full 6 points. Looking at my DM review, I think maybe I overdid it in a couple of the categories, and a score of 44 or 45 would be more consistent with how I've been rating things since that uneven first year. Still, it's not too far off.

When I first fired up Eye of the Beholder, I honestly expected that it would rate higher than Dungeon Master, and that I'd be spending a couple paragraphs of this GIMLET explaining how a later game can be a knock-off but still better--how a game's originality isn't necessarily equated to my enjoyment of it. I'm glad I don't have to do that now, but it is worth questioning why, 4 years later, Beholder couldn't substantially improve on the game that inspired it. The best answer I can give is that D&D rules and mechanics don't fit very well with DM-style action gameplay--or, at least, the developers haven't yet made it fit very well. To take some examples:

• The game wants to be like Dungeon Master in its approach to deterministic puzzles, so you can't have characters circumventing the order of things by picking too many locks, forcing too many doors, or disarming traps. Yet this goes against the precise rules of D&D gameplay and makes the thief class spectacularly superfluous.

• The classic list of D&D spells includes some silly entries for this game. "Flame Blade" and "Magical Vestment" are mostly useless because you're unlikely to have a cleric in the front spot. "Slow Poison" doesn't help; you absolutely have to find a way to neutralize it. "Dispel Magic," as far as I can tell, doesn't work on a single effect that you suffer from any enemies in the game. "Protection from Lightning" would require some creature with a lightning attack to be useful.

• The need to have a hand free to use the cleric's holy symbol or the mage's spellbook means that you can't equip either with missile weapons--a restriction that you don't find in, say, the Gold Box games.

• A combat system that invests so much in THAC0 and armor class clashes with the ability to dodge enemy attacks by moving out of the way.

Again, I don't want to leave the impression that the game wasn't fun. I enjoyed it. It's final score puts it in the top 20% of games I've reviewed so far.  It was a nice beginning to 1991. Every time I reached a new level and started a fresh map, I felt a small thrill. It just wasn't as good as it could have been.
      

The June 1991 Computer Gaming World has dual reviews by Dennis Owens and Scorpia. It occurs to me that it's been several games since I read a Scorpia review that wasn't paired with someone else reviewing the same game. Also, for at least a year, the editors have felt compelled to put a disclaimer in front of Scorpia's column about her "distinctive and, often, controversial perspective." I know she wouldn't be let go for another eight years, but if I were her, I think I would have seen the writing on the wall. And while I'm in the midst of some non-sequiturs, I note that the same issue has a review of B.A.T., which I played a lifetime ago. This casts into sharp relief how little progress I'm really making.

Anyway, the reviews. Owens liked the game best: "A stunning, brilliantly graphic and agonizingly tricky foray into the world of 3-D perspective CRPGs." Hyperbolic, but no disagreement so far. But take: "The sense that a real world called Waterdeep exists beyond the confines of the game's limits is strong." Apparently, the half-assed intro and ending did more for him than me. We do agree on the quality and ease of the controls but the needless difficulty of casting spells in combat. Given how he describes combat ("a desperate fight to the death"), plus the hint he gives solely for the battle against Xanathar ("try moving around the beholder, striking it from the sides and behind it"), he didn't discover the combat waltz until late in his session.

Like me, Owens craved even more NPC interaction and side quests. Unlike me, he considered these concerns "niggling." He concludes by saying: "At long last, IBM owners need no longer complain. They now have a game like Dungeon Master--a magnificent game that promises to be only the first in a long (we hope very long) line of releases." I'm pretty sure PC users had Dungeon Master as early as 1989. [Later edit: I guess both I and MobyGames were wrong about that. The PC version didn't come out until 1992 or 1993.]

Scorpia was both more positive and more negative. She extensively praises the use of sound (quotes like, "best results are obtained with a sound card" make me remember how glad I am it's not still 1991). On the negative side, she agrees with me that having a thief "is like dragging around useless baggage." She complains about a combat system that only allows front-on attacks (Dungeon Master allowed characters to turn to the side and rear), the single save slot, the awkwardness of the spellcasting system, and that spellcasters have to hold their spellbooks ("why would you need to memorize them, then?").

Her worst venom is reserved for the ending, which she calls "abrupt and unrewarding," "outrageous," and "cheap." I feel like I'm often sensitive to such things myself, but in this case I didn't think it was that bad. I mean, at least you got a few paragraphs of text to wrap things up. The Amiga version, with its forced drama of the party hurling Xanathar's eyestalk onto the Lords' conference table, didn't really serve any better.

Both Owens and Scorpia repeatedly mention the game as the beginning of the Legend series of D&D games from SSI. The box does say, "a LEGEND series fantasy role-playing saga, Vol. I." I don't know what SSI saw as the unifying theme of the "series," but it didn't last long. Eye of the Beholder II is listed as "Vol. II," but that seems to be the last time we hear the term. The box of Eye of the Beholder III doesn't mention a series name, and the whole thing is pretty much known as the Eye of the Beholder series today.

MobyGames's round-up of other reviews shows considerable range. Given that it was a playable game that existed in some kind of computerized format, Dragon of course gave it 5/5. Other reviews range from 79/100 (Power Play) to 96/100 (CVG), with some reviewers comparing it favorably against Dungeon Master (Amiga Points of View: "There have been many pretenders to the Dungeon Master throne, but this is the first game that has taken the genre to a whole new level") and others lamenting that it doesn't improve much on the earlier game (Amiga Action: "Even though it is almost identical to Dungeon Master, it hasn't quite got the same zest").

This is the first game I've actually enjoyed from Westwood, so it doesn't surprise me that most of the names are new. Game design is credited to Joseph Bostic, Phillip W. Gorrow, Eydie Laramore, and Paul S. Mudra, none of whom worked on Westwood's previous inadequate offerings like BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception or Mars Saga/Mines of Titan. Many of them went on to the well-received Lands of Lore series, as well as the Eye of the Beholder sequel.

I've heard mixed opinions as to whether Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon is better or worse. I hear it has a better ending and a larger game world (which includes outdoor exploration), but much more difficult gameplay. No matter what your position, I think we can all agree that it's amazing that Westwood and SSI were able to release both titles in the same year. I won't save it for the end of the year--bookending the year with two games of the same series seems a bit unimaginative--but I'll probably save it until I have a lot of other 1991 games behind me.

*****

In list news, I can't find a working version of ICON: The Quest for the Ring. The only version I've been able to download won't work past the first level; it comes up with a message demanding that one put the "original game disk" in drive A or B. I tried copying the game files to a folder and mounting it as A:, but it won't read them. Until I get a solution, it's going to have to come off the list, which is too bad, because it seemed to have an interesting theme.

The next game is the first to test my resolve to play all "Latin alphabet" RPGs. I previously played Saga, which was in French, but that wasn't a problem because I can read French. For German, on the other hand, the entirety of my vocabulary consists of guten, tag, strasse, ich, bin, ein, Berliner, kleine, nacht, and musik. I'll be making a lot of use of Google Translate.