Game 253: Conan: The Cimmerian (1991)

A gruesome opening screen foretells an equally-gruesome campaign setting.

        

Conan: The Cimmerian

United States

Synergistic Software (developer); Virgin Games (publisher)

Released in 1991 for Amiga and DOS
Date Started:  9 June 2017          

      

Until just recently, I was familiar with the character of Conan primarily through the Arnold Schwarzenegger films, where I was 100% certain he was described as a "Sumerian." Thus, the moment I saw the subtitle to this game, I said, "Where the hell was 'Cimmeria'?" and embarked on a flurry of Googling that filled in some major gaps in my pop-culture knowledge.

The character was created by pulp fiction author Robert E. Howard in 1932 for a story called "The Phoenix on the Sword," published in Weird Tales magazine (1923-1954). Howard ultimately published 17 stories featuring the titular barbarian before committing suicide in 1936 at the age of 30. Afterwards, ownership of the character passed through several hands and resulted in numerous magazine stories, books, comic books, films, television series, role-playing games, and of course video games. Today, the character is half-in, half-out of public domain depending on when and how various stories were published, and in what countries, and who you ask. In any event, it's clear from my research that we owe Howard credit for dozens of sword-and-sorcery tropes that I've always just taken for granted, or mistakenly ascribed to other authors like Tolkien. A strong argument could be made for Howard as the grandfather of all modern heroic fantasy.
      

The original version of Conan had some body-building to do.

     

Uninterested in historical research, and limited by the availability of decent libraries near his home in rural central Texas, Howard set his tales in the "Hyborian Age," which follows the destruction of Atlantis and pre-dates the rise of known historical civilizations. Various authors have given the dates of the age from 33,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE. "Cimmeria" is meant to be the ancient British Isles, before they were isles, although confusingly the word is known to history as an early name for Crimea.

(As an aside, I find this time period extremely compelling. Modern homo sapiens emerged around 100,000 years ago, and yet the first civilizations from which we have historical records emerged only about 12,000 years ago. Imagine the countless generations within those 88,000 years--people with minds as developed as yours and mine--whose thoughts and deeds have been lost to history. Imagine all the heroes and villains, geniuses and leaders, who must have existed during that time. Imagine all the societies and cities that must have risen and collapsed, the inventions tried and abandoned, the science discovered and lost, the songs and poems composed and forgotten.)
      

A fantastic manual illustration evokes the art from the 1930s pulp magazines.

     

I don't know if I'll ultimately come to like Conan, but it was clearly created by people who loved the original legends, principally Robert Clardy, whose early works--Dungeon Campaign (1978), Wilderness Campaign (1979), Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure (1980), and Apventure to Atlantis (1982) were set at the dawn of the Hyborian Age. Clardy must have been thrilled to get the rights to make a Conan RPG. In programming it, Synergistic modified the game engine that goes back to War in Middle Earth (1989) and was used in Spirit of Excalibur (1990) and Vengeance of Excalibur (1991). I didn't love those games, but I recognize Clardy's and Synergistic's attention to historical and literary detail in creating them, as well as the production values they added to their documentation.

The game opens with an overhead view of Irskuld, the village in which Conan works peacefully as a blacksmith (his father's trade) and lives with his wife. Except one day, the hordes of Thoth Amon, high priest of the snake god, Set, override the village, slay Conan's wife, and knock Conan unconscious. When he comes to, he sets out on a mission of vengeance against the evil high priest.
   

The horde arrives...

A pretty cool animated scene shows the riders thundering into the city.

Thoth-Amon lightning-bolts my wife for no reason.

     
War in Middle Earth and the two Excalibur games transitioned the player from the map (campaign) level to the individual scene level. Conan intersperses between these two a "city" level in which Conan wanders around buildings and NPCs from a quasi-oblique angle. Entering buildings or engaging in combat transitions to the "scene" level of the previous games, often with individual objects to interact with. I rather like the addition of the "city" view; it's absence in the previous games created laughably small cities of only a single screen and a single NPC.
      

Map view. Apparently, more stuff will fill in as I discover it.

      

The interface has also been considerably simplified for Conan. You could play almost the entire game with a mouse, although (thankfully) there are also redundant keyboard commands. Almost anything interactable, you simply click on. Sub-menus appear when necessary.

Combat has never been a strength of this engine, and here it is relatively pathetic. You have three attack styles with your sword: thrust, swing (or side-swipe), and overhand (or chop). Each enemy has a weakness for a particular style, which you must figure out through trial and error. You start the game with no skill in anything but "swing," so a key early goal is to find a weapon master to train you in the other styles. But aside from the three choices, there are no tactics at all in combat. You just click on the enemy and keep swinging until someone is dead. Enemies don't seem to drop any loot, and so far my skill hasn't increased from fighting them, and there's no experience meter in the game, so I'm not sure there's any point to combat if you don't absolutely have to fight.
     

In combat, Conan looks appropriately barbarianish.

    
The VGA graphics at the "scene" level are very well-composed. Unfortunately, there's no sound except music, which offers syncopated rhythms that make it feel almost jazzy. (You can hear it in this video). It varies from location to location, almost mirroring Quest for Glory in the use of leitmotifs for various character types. But alas, I don't like constant game music even when it's good and have thus been playing in silence.
    

Conan's starting attributes.

     
Conan starts with 30 stamina, 50 defense, 50 "swing" skill, 60 stealth, a sword, and 30 bezants, standing on the world map just outside the city of Shadizar, for which the game box helpfully supplies a map.
     

Supposedly the largest city in the kingdom. Almost all of those buildings can be entered.

     
There are dozens of houses to enter and steal from, and I found that every successful theft raises my "stealth" skill by 1 point. Some of the buildings are locked; keys to these locks can apparently be found or purchased.
     

Conan is, canonically, a thief.

    
There are several stores buying and selling things like jewels, maps, keys, magic items, scrolls, and adventuring goods. I purchased a rope, flint and steel, and a torch, all of which sound like they will eventually be necessary. Inns sell rooms for the night for 20 bezants.
    

Stocking up on adventuring staples.

   
NPCs wander the map and tell you things about the city, Thoth Amon, or other topics, or occasionally just attack you.
      

An NPC fails to really "represent" his city.

    
Prompted by a hint in the manual, I searched the thieves' quarter until I found Master Quan Yo. He wanted 150 bezants for each training session, far more than I had, so I headed out to commit some thievery. There were times I found thieves already plundering the houses I entered, and they invariably attacked me. If I wasn't lucky enough to face a thief who responded to "swing," I invariably died.
      

Moments later, his head was next to his body.

     
The major chapters of the game are narrated by an old guy sitting around a campfire, and whenever Conan dies, there's a funny screen of him saying, "Wait, that can't be right...." before the game reloads from the last save. Sometimes these screens offer some hint as to why you died and how could survive next time ("Surely, Conan would have known to thrust against that enemy").
      

My inept playing confuses the framing storyteller.

     
Occasionally, guards catch you burglarizing a house (your sneak skill must have something to do with this), and you don't even get an option to fight. You just spend 3 months in jail and lose all your money. I'll suck that up later in the game, but at this point, when I'm trying to learn things, I'm reloading.
    

Don't do the crime if you can't reload an infinite number of times.

     
I wasted a lot of time in houses "finding" gold in urns and such, not realizing that you separately have to pick up items after you find them. Houses also occasionally delivered gems that I could sell at the gem shop.
     

Conan pawns his way to victory.

    
A few houses had rugs that, when activated, slid aside to reveal ladders going down to some tunnels beneath the city. I suspect these tunnels are key to accessing a section of the city called "Snake Alley" that appears on the map but seems to have no street access.
     

That must be a hell of a thick rug.

    
I didn't last very long in the tunnels, though. They're patrolled by some kind of lion whose weakness is definitely not "swing."
      

This encounter ended poorly for Conan.

     
At one point, a thief NPC told me to see his friend Jambal at the Shadizar Inn. Jambal might have a job for me. Unfortunately, when I visited Jambal, he just seemed insulted by my chosen sobriquet.
     

I suppose I could stand to put on some clothes.

    
Eventually, I amassed 300 bezants, returned to Master Quan Yo, and developed 50 points in both "thrust" and "chop." Now what I really need to do is systematically explore the map, particularly the labeled buildings like the Temple of Crom (my god), the Temple of Set (my enemy), and the Governor's Palace.
      

Conan engages in some of the game's limited character development.

    
Also, apparently a Master Thief wants to meet me:
    

     

So far, the game has a pleasantly simple feeling. The two Excalibur titles always had some army bearing down on you or some other kind of time limit, plus a baffling array of possibilities when it came to interacting with NPCs and the environment. Conan makes me feel like I have a lot more freedom to explore, and makes me less fearful that I'm missing something. On the other hand, I can already tell that this simplicity--particularly in combat--is going to hurt my assessment of the game as it wears on. This will be a fun 12-hour game. It will be an infuriating 40-hour game. By next entry, I should have a sense of which is shaping up to be more likely.