Game 461: Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor (1993)

 

"Assault" seems unfair. How about "Investigation into Activity at Myth Drannor"?

     

Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor

United States

Strategic Simulations, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Released 1993 for DOS, 1994 for PC-98

Date Started: 5 July 2022

    

Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon feels recent to me, but I see now that I played it four and a half years ago. Strange to think that when I killed Dran Draggore, no one had ever heard of COVID, Joao Gilberto was still alive, January 6 was just my grandmother's birthday, and I was only vaguely aware of the university at which I now teach. It was the last year of my life that I flew more than 100,000 miles, and when I came home, I came home to two pets I no longer have. I thought I'd grown immune to any surprise at the pace at which life can change.

    

Much less time passed in the real world between the two games, only about 16 months, but it was also a period full of change. Virgin had acquired Westwood Studios and then declined to do any more development work for SSI. SSI, meanwhile, was entering what president Joel Billings would call "the most difficult year in SSI's 14-year history." It was a year that would see the company's workforce cut by more than a third, and their slipping hold on the D&D license portended more dark times ahead. In spite of, or perhaps because of, these circumstances, SSI managed to crank out some excellent titles in 1993, including two we've already experienced: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and Stronghold. 

         

The cinematic starts with the party fresh from their Darkmoon victory.

         

Eye of the Beholder III was released first, though, probably in a deliberate effort to get ahead of Westwood's Lands of Lore, which promised to take Dungeon Master-style gameplay to the next level. SSI must have been aware that they couldn't truly compete with Westwood, but that doesn't mean that they half-assed it, either. The staff for the game was full of SSI veterans, and the lead programmer, making his SSI debut, was John Miles, a veteran Origin developer (he did most of the coding on Ultima V). I mention all of this because I know Eye of the Beholder III's reputation is a bit disappointing, but to me it starts relatively strong, and I suspect I'm going to end up concluding that it was the best sequel that could have been developed under the circumstances.

       

A short story written by Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood establishes the setting. It concerns a young knight named Delmair Rallyhorn who journeys to Shadowdale to find Elminster the Sage. Delmair is the heir to Cormyr, or a land within Cormyr, and the regents who rule his land until his maturity have decided he needs to prove himself on a quest. Years ago, Delmair's father was killed somewhere near Shadowdale, reportedly by a lich, and Delmair seeks to avenge him. Delmair's mother sickened and disappeared long ago.

         

I'm calling it now: this guy is actually working for the bad guy.

       

The knight arrives in Shadowdale at the beginning of a festival called the Day of the Drawn Sword, which requires someone to spend the night in Myth Drannor, usually fatally. Elminster, who apparently sees and knows everything, orchestrates a conflation of events. First, a local ragamuffin named Alyth finds Delmair's father's broken sword, which destroys undead. After guiding Delmair safely to the city, Elminster presents him with the sword, arranges him to serve as the festival's annual sacrifice, and accompanies him to Myth Drannor. There, Delmair "calls out" the lich who supposedly killed his father, only to discover that the lich, named Malithra, is a good-aligned "archlich." She explains that while Delmair's father came to Myth Drannor to see her, he was actually killed by bandits. Delmair sheathes his sword and spends the night talking with the lonely lich, discovering at the end of the tale that she is his mother.

   

I don't know how much of that is going to be relevant to the game, but it does help to establish some of the mythology surrounding Myth Drannor, a setting that we are visiting for our third and final time in an SSI game. I had to consult the Forgotten Realms Wiki to learn that the events of this game are contemporaneous with Pool of Radiance (1988), and thus before the Pool party's visit in Curse of the Azure Bonds (1989) and Pools of Darkness (1991). In fact, it might be the party's actions in this game that lead to a power-vacuum in the ruins, allowing Tyranthraxus to set up his headquarters there.

       

Those two words mean the same thing.

   

In Forgotten Realms lore, Myth Drannor is an ancient city, founded by elves, at its height the capital of a cosmopolitan, diverse civilization. It ultimately fell to invaders, which precipitated the Retreat of elves off the main Faerûn continent. The ruins became a frequent destination of plunderers seeking artifacts and treasure, as well as assorted evil-doers looking to hide in the midst of the relatively civilized human cities in the region.

   

As the game opens, the party is over a thousand miles away, across the Anauroch Desert, across the Graypeak Mountains and High Forest, in the city of Waterdeep. They are deep in their cups in a tavern, relating the tale of their triumph in Darkmoon. The door flies open to admit a weird-looking robed man who tells the party that his "master" has sent him to beseech their help in ridding Myth Drannor of "a most foul lich"--a male lich, and thus not the one from the Greenwood story. The party accepts, of course, at which point the stranger manages to magically teleport them directly to the outskirts of the ruined city.

     

That is the least lich-like lich I've ever seen.

      

The teleportation is a lazy bit of writing: why would someone capable of such magic need the help of Level-10 adventurers? And why are such teleportation spells only ever available when the plot requires them, rather than when the characters want to use them? I don't see why we couldn't have just ridden on horseback. In fact, a better approach would have probably been to start the game afresh with new Moonsea-based characters. By the end of Part II of any series that allows the importing of characters, those characters are already getting a bit too powerful. I'm not sure I've ever played a Part III that offered any meaningful character development.

 

What spell is this, exactly?

        

Character creation is so boilerplate we could all recite it in our sleep. It uses the exact same program as Darkmoon. Sex: male or female. Races: human, elf, half-elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling. Classes: fighter, ranger, paladin, mage, cleric, thief, plus the usual multi-class options. Full set of alignments despite the party being referred to as "heroes" repeatedly. Standard attributes: strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, charisma, with the standard modifiers by race. As usual, the game allows the player to modify the attributes, using the fiction that players might want to do it to "match a favorite AD&D game character."

     

For the first time, I found that importing characters didn't offer any huge advantages in terms of experience. My characters ended Darkmoon with about 580,000 earned experience--except for one character who has nearly double that amount. (Was there a Potion of Level Gain or something that I don't remember?) New characters in Assault start with between 375,000 (mage) and 675,000 (cleric) experience points--essentially whatever gets them to Level 10 (paladin, ranger, and dual-classes) or 11 (everyone else). The upshot is that none of my imported characters is even a single level higher than a new counterpart (some of them, granted, are about halfway there) and one of my characters, the paladin, is actually a level lower.

   

Where imported characters really have an advantage, of course, is with gear. New characters start with mostly +1 weapons, armor, and shields, while my imported characters have a selection of +3 and +4 items. But the import process strips the items of anything interesting. My paladin's +4 "Talon" sword becomes just a long sword +4. Her golden plate mail +3 becomes just regular plate mail +3. My mage's +3 cloak "Moonshade" becomes just a robe +3. The game has also become pickier as to what weapons can be dual-wielded; it seems to be limited to smaller weapons like short swords and daggers.

        

Gameplay begins in a graveyard.

        

My imported party consists of:

      

• Starling, a Level 9 lawful good human paladin. She is dual-wielding a long sword +4 and a short sword +3 and wearing plate mail +3.

• Bugsy, a Level 9/11 chaotic good dwarf fighter/thief. He wears banded mail +3. His primary weapon is a long sword +4, but he's overloaded with reserves, including an axe +3, a halberd +5 (!), and a green crystal hammer +2, that one not losing its attributes.

• Marina, a Level 11 neutral good elf mage. I guess I never found her a decent weapon because she came with a simple dagger. But she has a robe +3 and Braces of Protection +5. For some reason, she has two spellbooks.

• Gaston, a Level 9/10 chaotic good ranger/cleric with a regular bow, 24 arrows, and a plate mail +2.

      

My best recollection is that I named them all after characters in "Best Picture" nominees for 1991, the year of the original Eye.

 

One new element to this game is that rear characters can attack with melee weapons as long as they're pole-arms. Thus, the halberd +5 in Bugsy's inventory goes immediately to Gaston. It feels weird not having my ranger use a bow, but I'm done picking up individual arrows after combat.

     

Consistent with a backstory that saw the characters yanked from their revelry before they had a chance to sleep, no one has any spells memorized as the game begins. There are a bunch of new ones in Assault that I've never seen in a previous D&D-based CRPG, including (thank the gods) "Improved Identify" (Level 2 mage), "Water Breathing" (Level 3 mage), "Mordenkainen's Sword" (Level 7 mage), "Negative Plane Protection" (Level 3 cleric), "Blessed Warmth" (Level 4 cleric), and "Heroes' Feast" (Level 6 cleric). [Ed. I guess "Improved Identify" was in Darkmoon and I forgot.]

      

Marina memorizes some mage spells.

    

The lack of memorized spells is unfortunate, as the game drops us right into the middle of combat. The party appears in a graveyard, stones thrust into the ground every two or three squares. "Grave mists" (a monster appearing for the first time in a CRPG, I believe) start swarming us almost immediately. According to the manual, they require magical weapons to hit, they drain constitution (I trust not permanently), and they're healed by cold-based attacks. Fortunately, they don't take very long to kill with our existing magical melee weapons.

      

A large pack of grave mists attacked at one point. I hit them with a "Fireball."

      

The interface is largely identical to Darkmoon. Other than color, there are only three changes. The first is a minor cosmetic one: the position of the GTFO panel and the compass have been swapped. The second is more significant: the addition of an "All Attack" button just below the movement arrows. Clicking it (or hitting the SPACE bar) has all the characters execute all their available melee attacks simultaneously.

   

If you had asked me, while playing any previous Dungeon Master clone, what I most wanted added to the interface, this would be it. No more furious clicking around on small icons of hands and swords. For most of them, I would have gladly taken those attacks mapped to keys. For those that had that, I would have said, yes, absolutely, I'd love a button that executes them all at once.

   

All I can say now is: I was wrong. While it sounds like a good idea, it turns combat into an incredibly boring affair of hitting the spacebar, waiting for the cool down period to end, and hitting it again. There might as well be a drool tray in front of you. It encourages laziness. You're more likely to engage in true tactics--including switching up weapons and casting some spells--when you're already clicking around anyway. I'm sorry I didn't get it before.

                                                  

"All Attack" isn't as fun as you might think.

        

The third change also has the effect of making things a bit too easy: You can now access each character's inventory while in the "Camp" menu, which pauses the action. Nothing stops you from entering "Camp" at any time. You can't rest if enemies are near, but you can swap inventory to your heart's content without taking a hit from a foe.

   

A couple steps south of where we entered the graveyard, we encountered a contingent of the Knights of Myth Drannor, led by Florian Falconhand, a character in Forgotten Realms novels. He warned us that looting would not be tolerated. We explained that we were the Heroes of Waterdeep, here to fight a great evil. He claimed that Elminster had foretold our arrival and wished us well but didn't offer to help us fight the grave mists or anything.

      

"Maybe we could join f--- . . . okay, see you later."

       

The graveyard was 30 x 30, with between 15 and 20 percent of the squares blocked off by trees. As we sidled up to one set of trees, Gaston remarked that some of them didn't "look all that sturdy." This was a clue to hack away at them. When we tried with normal weapons, Gaston remarked, "A stout axe might well do the job." Fortunately, I had a couple of axes, and we were able to clear away a large portion of the trees (marked on the map in lighter green). Some of the cleared areas led to treasures, and one in the northeast led to a new map area. 

       

The opening graveyard.

        

Hacking at some trees to access the treasure beyond.

       

There were a few piles of treasure in the graveyard, plenty of grave mists, and some evenly-placed gravestones that we couldn't do anything with. I stopped clicking on them after Gaston told us to leave them alone the first three or four times. There seem to be two exits from the opening area: a mausoleum and "deeper into the forest." I'll probably try the mausoleum next.

      

An introductory screen for the mausoleum.

        

There's a little ambient sound in the graveyard, mostly birds chirping, but still welcome as it's unusual for the era. Regular sound effects are fine--I'll talk more about them later. There is no regular exploration music, which is also unusual for the era.

  

The outdoor area wasn't terribly exciting, but it's an introductory area, much like the same area in Darkmoon. I expect the real fun to start once we get inside. I wonder if there will be levers, buttons, and pressure plates.   

Time so far: 2 hours