MegaTraveller 2: An Important Stop

And the whole "dog-person" thing gets creepier.

       

I continue to struggle with the differences between MegaTraveller 2 on paper and in reality. Part of me wants to hail it as an important stepping stone on the way to today's open-world games, with hundreds of explorable locations and an equal number of side quests. There's no denying the figures: MegaTraveller 2 has 117 planets with about 350 cities, and just about every one of those cities has something to do. There really hasn't been anything like it in CRPGs before.

       

The MegaTraveller 2 "game world."

       

The problem begins, I suppose, with the fact that the planets and cities are incredibly boring. There's one basic city map that has a few modifications for each city. Except on planets with Ancients ruins, things are rarely found outside the cities. There are only about 4 interior maps that all buildings with explorable interiors conform to. In some ways, this repetition is welcome: it would be exhausting to have to learn a brand new layout with each city you visit. But it also means that, for all the developers do trying to establish different governments, law levels, technology levels, and populations on each planet, the cities and planets are mostly undifferentiated except for their skins. There were many times, particularly when exploring the cavernous interiors of universities to find a single NPC, that I wished the developers had just used menu cities instead.

        

Pretty much all cities in this sector look exactly like this.

    

This city has different textures but otherwise has the same buildings in the same positions.

       

The more serious problem is the lack of solid RPG mechanics as you go about your galactic explorations. As much as I might love the many textures, building styles, and histories of the locations in series like The Elder Scrolls, I don't think I'd enjoy them for very long if all there was to do was walk and look. Those games offer open worlds with hundreds of locations--but in the context of the RPG mechanics to which I am addicted: fighting, leveling up, finding better equipment. MegaTraveller 2 is so weak in these areas that it strains to justify its RPG label.

But I have to give credit where it's due. Paragon was an exceedingly mediocre developer who fundamentally never understood RPGs, but against all odds, this game has managed to evoke some of the most enjoyable and addicting elements of what we'll see in the next two decades: nonlinear gameplay, long quest lists, complex plots that only slowly come together, and an inability to bring oneself to stop playing, even after a long session, because the next quest resolution is just around the corner.

      

Another quest gets added to my long list.

     

Despite having started over to ensure that my party had a ship, I ended up leaving it in the dockyard on Rhylanor for most of this session. I used commercial transportation to get around. Towards the end of the session, I found myself back on Rhylanor, and I'll probably use the ship from here, because I have to visit some interdicted worlds and the price of charter flights to those worlds is off the wall. I also can't end the game without having experienced space combat at least once. But in general, trading, piracy, and space combat will probably remain alternate approaches to the game that I'll never experience in detail, having made my fortunes on planet-based quests. I'm sure it's possible to win the game without setting foot in your own ship.

I settled into a pattern very quickly. It has basically consisted of the following steps:

1. Arrive on a planet. If it has a naval base or scout base, sneak out through their back doors rather than visiting customs and giving up my weapons. Otherwise, give up the weapons and hope for the best.

2. Check my "Locater" device (for which I eventually found batteries, as I'll describe below) to see if the planet has any Ancients ruins.

   

3. Fully explore the "Startown" of each planet. Chase down any wandering green NPCs. Visit any enter-able buildings and talk to those NPCs. If any of them give me a quest, enter the quest location in my notepad. Kill anyone who attacks me. Solve any quests self-contained to that city.

     

Chasing down NPCs in a new city.

      

4. This step didn't appear until late, but it eventually became important: if the planet has a police station, visit it and see if they want any of the IDs from any of the outlaws I've killed. It's a pain to figure out which outlaws are wanted on which planets, and you sometimes encounter them systems away from whoever has the bounty. Since about the 24-hour mark, I've had a dozen or so ID tags in my inventory at any given time, and it's always a nice surprise when a planet takes one or two and rewards me.

       

"Scars Pacino." Really strained yourself on that one, huh, developers?

      

5. Use the travel agency to visit any other cities on the planet for which I have business. Repeat Steps 3 and 4.

6. If the planet has an Ancients site, rent a grav vehicle or ATV and find it. Explore and loot whatever it has.

      

I couldn't get into this site on Regina.

     

7. Hopefully, by now I've solved whatever quest brought me to the planet in the first place. If not, I may have to take a second loop to find the NPC I missed the first time.

8. Return to Startown. Visit the equipment shop and sell any excess weapons and armor that I may have looted from enemies on this trip.

      

A good portion of my income comes from weapons looted from bad guys.

       

9. Occasionally, stop in the casino, play roulette, and weigh down the ENTER key on my keyboard so it keeps betting and spinning while I use the bathroom or make a snack or something. As per my previous entry on the subject, I make an average of $10,000 every 10 minutes that way. If I forget about it and leave it weighed down for hours, my party gets kicked out of the casino after earning $100,000.

10. Head back to the space terminal and check the destinations for commercial and chartered flights. Head for the nearest planet for which I have a quest on my quest list. If none of the destinations are on my list, consult the map for the closest destination that will get me closer to a quest planet. Either way, upon arrival, start over at Step 1.

       

I don't know. It looks pretty comfortable to me.

      

There's plenty to do on the planets besides whatever quest may have brought you there in the first place. About 1 in 4 cities have a wanted criminal to kill and loot. Many have fetch quests contained to a single city, or at least contained to other cities on the same planet. A few, of course, have special encounters that advance the main quest.

      

Something like this happens in about 25% of cities.

      

These side-quests, as I noted in earlier entries, are vital to help maintain your bank balance so you can keep traveling, renting vehicles, buying artifacts, and replenishing equipment and ammo. There isn't a strong correlation between the difficulty of a job and the amount it pays. I spent over an hour on a bunch of interrelated quests between Yres and Alell, helping some engineers on Yres manufacture a new sealant for the planet's domes, and earned less money than it cost me in passage. Other times, I might kill a wanted criminal with no difficulty at all and make $150,000. A lot of fetch quests that require you to travel between planets, even between systems, pay only $5,000-$10,000, while a few that don't require you to leave a single city pay as high as $40,000-$50,000. It makes no sense.

       

$5,000 will barely get me off the planet.

        

I have completely ignored those NPCs willing to pay a few thousand for generic items. Occasionally, you'll run across someone who wants a laser rifle or a vacuum suit and will pay above what the shop pays, but never by much, and I can't believe anyone makes serious money this way. There are a ton of NPCs running around who will buy Rech Fruit, but any player who actually bothers to go to the planet Rech, pick up loads of the fruit, and sell it across the galaxy for $2,000 a load wants to extend this game a lot longer than I do.

Mostly because of the casino winnings, bounties, and selling looted weapons and armor, my bank account has swiftly grown, and I probably could have shaved a few hours off the game by prioritizing the planets with main-quest stops rather than those with side-quest stops.

       

Looting a gun after a successful combat.

      

Combat remains idiotic. It's completely bi-polar. A handful of enemies have PGMPs, which are capable of killing my characters (even those in battle dress) in a single hit if they get close enough. Since my characters have a tendency to rush enemies even when wielding ranged weapons, this is almost all the time, and fighting such enemies has become a frustrating exercise in attacks and retreats. Usually, though, I can defeat them in a few reloads. Then there is the occasional enemy with an FGMP, which can kill my characters in one hit even at a distance. I've just had to learn to give up on them.

      

Fighting some random attackers on the streets of this city.

       

The vast majority of combats, though, involve not the slightest hint of danger to my characters. My vacuum suits absorb most of the damage, and if the occasional bullet or laser shot gets through, I can just use my medic's kit to heal it immediately. Thus, my characters are perfectly capable of winning 80% of the game's battles with their bare hands if my weapons have been confiscated at customs.

      

Killing someone in an office building.

      

The characters are completely uncontrollable in combat, except for the lead character, who is theoretically controllable but never seems to actually attack. He particularly won't move to attack the way the others do. Repeatedly, I'll arrive at a Startown and get attacked by some enemy agents. My lead character will stand dumbly in place while everyone else chases the enemies through the streets. I could manually move the lead guy, of course, but that's a waste of time since, while being moved, he won't shoot.

Finally, I'll note that there remains almost no character development during this entire process. Skills don't increase as you use them, nor do they ever seem to appear in the training ceters. Only once in the entire game has a training center offered me the ability to increase a skill, and that skill was "ATV," which I maybe used once. The whole system is enormously frustrating, and even this late in the game, I don't understand the connection between, say, combat skills and success in combat, particularly since you can't see the damage that individual characters are doing. Does it make sense to equip a powerful weapon for which you have no skill? What about wearing a powerful suit of armor? Are my characters without "laser weapons" skills hitting anything when I equip them with laser weapons? How have I been able to kill so many enemies with my fists despite no "brawling" skill? Why am I never offered the opportunity to increase that skill despite using it repeately? I fear I'll reach the end of the game still not understanding any of this.

      

The one time I was able to level up, with a skill I rarely used, assigned to a random party member.

     

A couple of notable side-quests have included:

    

• On Ohian, King Klem wanted my help routing out an underground rebellion. I only found out about this by wandering into his house by accident. But since he said in the same breath that his primary motivation was to "corner the oxygen market on Ohian," I declined to help him. He and his palace guards immediately attacked. I only had fists for weapons because his customs service had impounded everything else, but we still killed the king and his guards easily. I stole some "oxygen factory blueprints" from his house and later sold them to the leader of the rebellion.

• On Efate, I went the other way. A guy named Viddi was raising a rebellion, but it was clear that he and his followers were full of hot air. For killing him in a fairly easy combat, I made $150,000.

     

The game could have perhaps been more subtle in this characterization.

            

• I wasted a lot of time on the planet Alell, searching the mountains for the ruins of a crashed ship. Unable to find it, I re-consulted my screenshots and saw that, according to the NPC who told me about the supposed crash, the name of the ship was Blatant Lie. I guess maybe that should have been a sign. 

• On Regina, a woman named "Marilyn Monrope" wanted my help putting her demo cassette in the hands of a talent agent. I took it to a guy in another city who listened to it and told me to give her an appointment slip. When I returned to her, the game called us "naughty, naughty travellers" and said that Monrope "showed her appreciation in a most special way." In case that wasn't clear, it also noted that the experience was "most . . . aaahhmmmm . . . satisfying.

           

Okay, gross. There are 5 of us.

           

• On Alell, a woman gave me a "birthday present" to deliver to her brother in another city. It turned out to be a drug shipment, and her brother had been replaced by an undercover police officer, who arrested one of my characters for trafficking narcotics. I had to bail her out of jail for $3,000. That seems to be the end of it, though--there's no word on having to return for a court appearance or anything.

          

I get arrested for no reason whatsoever.

            

• The Vargr planet of Vreibefger was suffering a rabies epidemic. I don't even remember where I got hold of a vaccine, but I brought it to a scientist there, and he gave me a "bronze star" signifying the planet's gratitude.

           

The Ancients sites are all accompanied by textual cut scenes.

      

As for the main quest, there are three basic "avenues" that I've been exploring:

     

1. Visit the Ancients sites and see what I find.
2. Visit the Ancients experts and see what they can tell me.
3. Visit the agents for the various mega-corporations and interrogate them about the corporate conspiracy that caused the disaster on Rhylanor in the first place.

     

On the first topic, I've explored three sites, on Inthe, Fulacin, and Victoria, and I found a fourth site on Regina that won't let me in. On Inthe, just as with the first party, I only found a single "coyn." I suppose I'm destined to eventually collect the entire group of 36.

      

Finding batteries to power Ancients devices.

     

The Fulacin site was a big yellow cube that seemed to have no entrance until I prodded at its circumference and was eventually teleported inside. It had a small maze in the interior that led me to 2 more coyns and a pile of 10 batteries. One of the batteries inserted in the "locater" I received from Trow Backett causes the device to emit a green light if we're on a planet with an Ancients site, and an orange light otherwise.

I found the site on Victoria because of the locater; I was otherwise only there to talk to a professor at the university. The site took the form of a huge checkerboard that had two piles of 5 coynes each.

      

19 down, 17 to go.

       

The Ancients experts have offered varying degrees of help. On Zivje, Karim Flored sold me an Ancients shield with an inscription on it. On Moughas, a guy named Rahjel Dramahern translated it to say, "Grandfather's proving ground of intelligence, wisdom, and cunning," with a map pointing to the Regina sector. Deghrra Szan on Efate just expressed confusion that the Ancients would build a device to destroy a world. Beckett Senchur spoke of the importance of finding all the coyns and suggested some might be found in a cave-in, in which his grandfather was nearly killed, on Gerome.

      

An early "collection quest."

     

The last Ancients expert I visited, Sawert Weston, attacked me when I introduced myself. On his corpse was a note directing him to kill "anyone who comes looking for information on the Ancients." It was unsigned, but noted that the author works for a megacorporation and that his "plans to destroy Rhylanor can't be ruined by any meddlesome fools on a hero's quest."

 

The incriminating note.

    

This ties, then, to the murky corporate conspiracy. I noted earlier that I've been attacked upon arrival on a lot of planets. Upon interrogation, one of the attacking thugs told me they'd been hired by Vemene, the special security service of Tukera Corp. But this made little sense, as Tukera has a headquarters on Rhylanor and stands to be destroyed by the slime. On Ohian, I spoke to Aran Ashkashur, head of Vemene, who claimed that someone hacked his computer to issue the orders to kill me. A Tukera agent named Lorn Denveldt suggested that Sharushid or Imperiallines might be responsible.

Chabon Art, representing Sharushid on Efate, said his company had nothing to do with the disaster and suggested something might be going on internally at Tukera. In the game's only callback (so far) to the first MegaTraveller, he recalled Konrad Kiefer's betrayal-from-within at Sharushid a few years prior. "Dont rule out an internal traitor," he said. "I can attest to the fact that it can easily happen."

     

Until now, I wasn't even sure that the first game took place in the same continuity.

     

A few NPCs opined that another corporation, Oberlindes, was behaving suspiciously, and one of my side quests involved stealing some of their client files for who I think was a Tukera agent. But on Regina, the Oberlindes representatives, even under interrogation, called their company "honorable" and its founder "a man of unwavering honesty and fairness." Later, on Extolay, Marc Oberlindes himself claimed innocence. "I'm a competitor of Tukera," he admitted. "But I'm certainly not out to ruin them."

      

Oberlindes resents my interrogation.

     

On Ruie, the thuggish representatives of Naasirka also denied involvement. Amusingly, they offered that the slot machines at the casino on Garrincski are programmed to pay off, as if all slot machines don't do that in this game.

I did get some traction on Enope with some Imperiallines agents. One of them told me that the company is up to "no good" and gave me an antique pistol to give to another agent as a sign. He, in turn, gave me a message for "Axl Rows" on Menorb. For his part, Rows directed me to a Vargr named Gryfythh, "head of Imperiallines' Aramis subsector" and suggested I search his office on Junidy. That remains outstanding on my list.

The "interrogate" skill has been invaluable in these discussions. I don't see how you'd get far without it, although I'm not sure that solving the corporate conspiracy is necessary to winning the game. I should also note that a lot of the NPCs remained green even after I interrogated them, meaning there's still something they have to offer. 

     

Before using the "interrogate" skill...

...and after.

       

There are still lots of places to visit, including Ancients sites on Gerome and Lablon, Ancients experts on Heroni and Treece, and more corporation representatives on Junidy and Treece. Most of my other "to do" items involve visiting salesmen who sell passes to interdicted worlds. As yet, I don't have any particular reason to go to those worlds, but there might come a time when I'm out of clues and just have to start visiting random planets looking for Ancients sites.

If you can ignore the goofy NPC names, the story isn't bad. It just takes a little too much wandering through nondescript cities and corridors to find these individual pieces of the puzzle. Here's hoping I can push through and win it for the next entry.

Time so far: 30 hours