Conan: The Summarian

The box features artwork by the incomparable Boris Vallejo. I had two books of his paintings before my mother found them and threw them away.

      

Conan: The Cimmerian

United States

Synergistic Software (developer); Vigin Games (publisher)

Released in 1991 for Amiga and DOS

Date Started:  9 June 2017
Date Ended: 14 July 2017

Total Hours: 24

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)

Final Rating: 42

Ranking at Time of Posting: 213/255 (84%)

If nothing else, the Conan game has interested me in Conan mythology. Prior to this week, I had never read any of Robert Howard's original stories. I had seen the Arnold Schwarzenegger films, but about 30 years ago and in bit and pieces as I caught them on UHF stations. 

I was surprised to find Conan already King of Aquilonia in Howard's first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword." He is restless in the position, particularly since the populace has begun to romanticize the tyrant that Conan killed to get the throne in the first place. The plot concerns a conspiracy of nobles, an assassin, and a minstrel to sneak into Conan's chambers at nighttime and kill him. Conan is alerted to the threat by the spirit of a long-dead sage named Epemitreus, who brands Conan's sword with the symbol of the phoenix.

Thoth-Amon is long-fallen from power, ever since he lost his Serpent Ring to a thief, and now serving as the slave to the assassin Ascalante, who is working with the conspirators but secretly plans to kill them and take the throne for himself. On the fateful night, Thoth-Amon finds that a fellow servant of Ascalante's actually has his Serpent Ring. Thoth-Amon kills him, reclaims his ring and his power, and summons a demon to kill Ascalante.
      

This plot point also plays a role in the game.

     

The climax takes place in Conan's chambers, where he stands armored and waiting for the 20 assassins as they burst in. As he slays them one-by-one--reluctantly in the case of Rinaldo the Minstrel, as Conan admired his music--Thoth Amon's demon shows up and enters the fray, killing Ascalante. The story ends with the wounded-but-victorious Conan convincing the priests of Mitra that he really was visited by Epemitreus.

The text is a bit thickly-written for my tastes, although there are some memorable lines, such as this explanation for Rinaldo's involvement in the plot: "Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner, or beyond the next." Of Conan's style, we learn: "He was no defensive fighter; even in the teeth of overwhelming odds he always carried the war to the enemy." And of course the text that opens the story is wonderfully evocative:

           

KNOW, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars—Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.

         

The game's abbreviated version misses a lot of the poetry.

              

I didn't realize until looking at summaries of Howard's other stories that Conan's adventures jump around in time, and that "The Phoenix on the Sword" is one of his last tales in Conan's internal chronology. Howard wrote it at the same time as "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," one of the stories earliest in Conan's life. I read it and found it a little less compelling than "Phoenix"; it's basically about Conan chasing a woman through the tundra so he can have his way with her.

As for the movie--it wasn't what I remembered or expected. It replaces Howard's over-wrought prose with equally over-wrought music and set pieces, far more pompous and stylized than other sword-and-sorcery films of the era, like The Beastmaster or The Sword and the Sorcerer. (Oliver Stone is credited on the script and part of the directing.) The film re-writes Conan's history, turning him into a survivor of a massacred village, a slave, and a gladiator before beginning his adventures. (Side question: Why does his master free him? There's no explanation in the film for it.) He is far less intelligent and articulate than in Howard's stories--perhaps inevitable with early Schwarzenegger. Everyone's hair is ridiculous, and man has cinema come a long way in the realism of fight scenes.

      

I remembered the line about Conan being "destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia on a troubled brow," and I assumed he was "troubled" because he was too intellectually inferior to properly grasp statecraft. Howard's original stories make it clear that the trouble is more a case of wanderlust, and Conan is actually quite smart.

      

There are some highlights. I somehow remembered Sandahl Bergman as being unattractive; either I was thinking of someone else or I had really bad taste as a kid. Bergman, James Earl Jones, and a scenery-chewing Max von Sydow are the only ones who actually seem to be "acting" in the film (which must top out at less than 50 lines of actual dialogue). Schwarzenegger only seems mildly annoyed at being crucified. Mako is . . . Mako.

But it was useful, because it helped me understand how much of the game is based on the film rather than the original stories. Conan's origin story is virtually the same, with Thoth-Amon destroying Conan's village in the game, in place of the film's Thulsa Doom. (In the original stories, Thoth-Amon is a sorcerer of Set but not the leader of a horde, and he barely crosses paths with Conan. Conan is a blacksmith's son who just decides to start adventuring.) The use of giant snakes as enemies, and the importance of stealing the Eye of the Serpent, also seem to be inspired from the film, and there are a lot of stylistic similarities between the game's and film's versions of Conan's visit to the ancient king's tomb and retrieval of his sword.

I guess Bergman's character, named "Valeria" in the credits but never in the movie itself, appears in Howard's "Red Nails," but has attributes more in line with Belit, "Queen of the Black Coast."
        

I think the "riddle of steel" from the game's copy protection only appears in the film.

     
Returning to the game: I liked the wide open first chapter amidst the large city, where despite my exhaustive explorations I managed to miss several side quests. The rest of the game's episodes were a bit too linear and short, although if they'd all been as broad as the opening, I'd still be playing the game until October. Character development and combat remain weak until the end--a theme that goes all the way back to Robert Clardy's earliest titles--but the economy is quite strong. I expect it to GIMLET higher than the two Excalibur games, and slightly in "recommended" territory. Let's see.

1. Game World. Given the richness of the setting, you can't possibly go wrong with an RPG set in the Hyborian Age. The backstory and ongoing narrative are both quite fun, and the map of Shadizar with its temples and quarters evinces much of the compelling nature of Howard's introduction. How do you look at a map with labels like "Thieves' Quarter" and "Bazaar" and "Inn of the Veils" and not get a tingle? I talked in an earlier post about how there are almost too many buildings in the city to visit every one, which is nice. It's just too bad that the game world didn't adapt much to the plot. NPCs still dismiss Conan with, "You insult me, barbarian!" long after Conan should have been famous. Score: 6.
      

The final game world consisted of 6 locations.

      
2. Character Creation and Development. A low point. Conan starts the same for everyone. There is no reward for combat, only for completing each stage, and even then it's just a measly +5 to his "defense" score. The only way you really develop is by spending money on training, and you can only afford to do that a couple of times during the game. Why the developers didn't award a point or two of combat skill for each victory is anyone's guess, but it would have made several aspects of the game much better. Score: 1.

3. NPC Interaction. You learn a lot about the backstory and about available quests by speaking to and bribing the various NPCs, and I like that NPCs can shift between NPCs and enemies depending on their dispositions. There are no real role-playing or dialogue options, but no one is really offering those yet. Score: 4.

4. Encounters and Foes. The game has a simple but effective stable of enemies, many with special attacks or defenses that need a particular approach to defeat. Non-combat encounters are frequent and informative although lacking in any choices or role-playing. The few puzzles are on the easy side, but still offer some welcome variety instead of making everything about raw combat. Score: 4.

5. Magic and Combat. There's no magic system, and the combat system--when it works at all--involves selecting a combat style and swinging away until you or the enemy is dead. It's boring and predictable. Score: 1.
       

Only the visuals redeem the game's approach to combat.

       
6. Equipment. A strong point. You can find and buy a nice variety of items, including sword upgrades, magic items, potions, and typical adventuring gear like ropes and torches. A generous but not-infinite number of inventory slots makes prioritization important. It's too bad there isn't any armor, but I guess maybe it would go against Conan's raison d'etre to wear any. I like that most of the items you can buy, you can also find, and most useful quest items (like the Gem of Sight) have duplicates elsewhere. Score: 4.

7. Economy. Another strong point. There's a real incentive to burgle as much wealth as possible, because even after you've purchased all the required equipment, you can always sink money into training. Conan is explicitly named as a thief, and thus plundering treasure chambers is both rewarding and keeping with Conan's mythos. I just wish slain enemies had offered a few gold pieces. Score: 7.
      

Spending money on some late-game character development.

      
8. Quests. A clear main quest paired with rewarding side quests and optional areas. There are no choices (except, I suppose, whether to keep some of the quest items or turn them in) nor role-playing, but in general this game does as well in this category as any game in the era. Score: 5.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. No complaints. To me, the graphics are excellent, with each of the interior "scenes" well-composed and detailed. Sounds are sparse but realistic. The game supports redundant mouse and keyboard controls, which is all I ask for. Score: 5.

10. Gameplay. It starts nonlinear and becomes linear, but even in the later chapters, you can break off and spend some time exploring the city. I just chose to do most of my wandering during the first chapter. Unfortunately, I don't see it as very replayable, but the level of difficulty was moderate, and the overall length of the game was perfect for its content. Score: 5.

Our final score is 42, making Conan a rare game that manages to top 40 (which marks roughly the top 20% of the list) while scoring miserably in the two categories I prize the most in RPGs. Nonetheless, it reflects the overall fun I had with the game despite its flaws, and it out-performs Spirit of Excalibur (33) and Vengeance of Excalibur (34).
        

          
Charles Ardai's review in the February 1992 Computer Gaming World is oddly fixated on the fact that you're role-playing Conan's origin story, instead of a mature, skilled Conan. He has the same complaints that I do about limited character development and lame combat. "It is perhaps the most rudimentary role-playing game ever made," he says, a sentiment that echoes my scores of 1 in the two most vital RPG categories. But like me, he praises the game's aesthetics and concludes that it's relatively uncomplicated, undemanding, and fun.

The aesthetic attention, I should add, goes beyond the game. The manual has 7 full-page illustrations of Conan rescuing maidens and fighting monsters and whatnot. Since they're uncredited, I assume they're original to the manual rather than adapted from classic sources.
          

Conan must still be Level 1 in this image.

     
I'm a little jazzed about Conan now, which is too bad, since we won't encounter him again on my blog until Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (2008), an MMORPG which I guess has a single-player campaign. A handful of other licensed titles from 2004-2017 are action-only. Maybe I'll honor him by being better-predisposed to playing a barbarian in other games.

This won't be our last experience with this engine, which Synergistic called "World Builder." They adapted it for multiple characters in Warriors of Legend (1993), as well as for the non-RPG The Beverly Hillbillies (1993). I love the fact that Lancelot, Conan, and Jethro can all go on adventures in the same game engine.

Going all the way back to the "Campaign" series, Synergistic doesn't do things quite the same way as any other RPG developer. This has produced both bad and good results, and Conan fortunately balanced on the "good" side.

****

Further Reading: Check out the other games made with Synergistic's "World Builder" engine: War in Middle Earth (1988),  Spirit of Excalibur (1990), and Vengeance of Excalibur (1991).