Die Odysee: A Journey of a Thousand Miles

A classic Greek mystery: the ruins of a palace, and blood on the throne.

        

Once again, the community has come together. Author Martin Auer supplied a scanned PDF of the full game manual; Busca and LanHawk supplied OCR'd versions of it so I could copy it into a translator. LanHawk also extracted the game's text into a file that I could cut and paste from rather than having to manually transcribe it from the game screens. In the meantime, any number of commenters--Vauban, Buck, El despertando, Busca, LanHawk--translated bits of the available material. Some combination of people alerted me to a missed character creation process on the first disk. It's so heartwarming when people offer assistance like this. Otherwise, I might have been forced to abandon this game whose own author feels is so "well, bad" that he's sorry "for the kid that maybe got this as his only birthday present."

    

It took me a while to get back to it, because to play it properly I have to have half a dozen windows open on three monitors, including the game, LanHawk's text dump, the manual, my notepad, and Google Translate. Now that my computer won't be moving for the long holiday weekend, I can hopefully make some progress.

   

The Strauss-accompanied introduction that I quoted last time leads to a main menu with options for the game's backstory, manual, acknowledgements, and character creator. The backstory has another long text exposition setting up the game. "The latest inconclusive battle was only three days old when the winding paths of fate led Odysseus to a tavern, accompanied by a few loyal comrades," it begins. The tavern keeper tells them of a dungeon beneath his establishment. He has never entered it, but rumors say that it contains a lost city and an oracle. "Now Odysseus and his comrades pricked up their ears. An oracle? Could this be the end of this terrible episode? All the oracles of Greece had refused to help them for more than eight years now!" The innkeeper says that he has a key in a box in his room. He's saying something about a curse and a king's daughter when the companions, ignoring him, head into the dungeon. "None of the heroes had any idea what whirlwind of events they would find themselves in from now on."

   

The "manual" option doesn't lead you to a "how-to-play-the-game" kind of manual, but rather a 2,000-word introduction to Greek history. "Homer is considered the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey," it begins. "He probably wrote them down around 750 BC." I won't bother to summarize most of the rest, as we have Wikipedia these days, but it takes an odd turn in that it mostly focuses on Greek history post-Homer, including the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War--all interesting stuff that would be explored wonderfully in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (2018), but not the game that we have before us, unless Odysseus and his friends are going to travel through time or something.

     

It's just too bad that the modern world seems to have forgotten the Spartans and the events at Thermopylae.

           

The Atticans appear several times in the narrative. I'm reminded of our recent discussion of "Bad Attic Latin" in The Return of Werdna. It amuses me how almost every game has some thread that links it to previous games, whether intentional or not.

   

If you didn't know the author was a teenager, you would figure it out immediately from the "Acknowledgements" (this is not the literal translation of Grüße, but I think it fits the spirit). Here, one word at a time, Auer thanks about 500 people and entities. In addition to (I presume) family and friends, we get thanks to Claudia Schiffer, MTV, Pink Floyd, Monty Python, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Amazon Women on the Moon, The Longest Day, Sid Meier, Dune, Animal Farm, Larry Bird, Billy Joel, and--here's one I wouldn't have seen coming--Vera Lynn. Did "We'll Meet Again" achieve some kind of 1990s popularity in Germany that I've never heard about?

   

Finally, we get into character creation. Odysseus is, of course, a fixed member of the party. But you can replace Amphion, Ino, and Pheres with characters of your own creation and name. The number of races and classes is mind-boggling. For races, you get human, Titan, Cyclopes, Centaur, Cercopes (impish monkey-men of the forest), Laestrygonian (man-eating giants), Erinyes (Fury), Harpy, Siren, Amazon, Nymph, däumling ("thumbling"), shepherd (?), sea eagle, butterfly, and nightingale. To the extent that any of these creatures exist in Greek mythology, I don't think Odysseus is supposed to meet them until after the Trojan War.

       

Women can be whatever they want to be!

    

Class options are warrior, half-god, alchemist, seer, philosopher, mathematician, poet, cook, doctor, Olympian, herald, archer, mermaid, seaman, artist, Muse, singer, hunter, dancer, thief, merchant, tailor, and blacksmith. There are numerous sex/race/class restrictions, some of which make sense (e.g., no male Sirens, Muses, or Erinyes) and some that don't (e.g., no female alchemists, no Amazon philosophers, no Erinye doctors). The manual has no help on any of this, including the strengths and weaknesses of the various races and classes.

        

Selecting my god.

       

In addition to the primary class (beruf), you also pick from the same list for the character's "hobby." You then pick from the character's "faith": elements, colors, symbols, and gods. That choice leads to a particular sub-menu choice for "circle"; for instance, those with an elemental faith choose from water, fire, metal, diamond, wood, and blood. Finally, you have to answer the character's perspective on two yes/no questions from among several possibilities. These include:

      

• Is the fate of man predetermined?
• Is war a means of resolving conflict?
• Can a mortal reach the world of the dead?
• Can the forces of nature be harnessed? 
• Is health the greatest source of happiness in life?

      

When you're all done, you get a character with various values for health, magic, morality, strength, intelligence, endurance, dexterity, charisma, skill, reaction, and what I assume is "cold sensitivity" (kälteempf,). Each character also gets certain skills, like spellcasting, group formation, calming the pulse, tracking, stealing, and playing the lyre.

        

A final character sheet.

     

It was a bit too much for me. I let randomness guide the way. I ended up with:

   

• Tisiphone, a female Erinye mermaid/seer color-based faith (white circle) who believes in fate and war.

• Tommaso, a male thumbling thief/half-god with a god-based faith (worshiping Pan) who believes mortals can reach the world of the dead but not harness the forces of nature.

• Ligeia, a female Siren mathematician/dancer with a symbol-based religion (wave circle) who believes one cannot enter the world of the dead and that health is not the greatest source of happiness.

        

I can't tell if that's Grace Kelly or Cybil Shepherd, but either way, it's an appropriate image for a "siren."

       

Odysseus himself is a male half-god/warrior with an elemental faith (water circle)

After creation, you can change the character's photo, but there's only one option for each race, so the default makes the most sense. 

     

The graphic for the däumling is a riot. I guess it's going to be tough to equip him.

        

As recounted last time, the game begins in the tavern, really in the middle of the backstory, as the party has not yet descended to the dungeon, and if you talk to the tavern keeper, he tells you about the dungeon and the Oracle as if for the first time. The first step is thus to get the key from his box. I first talk to him a bit and repeat the dialogue from my first attempt. I now know that asking a character of himself (via his own name) will open up some options. In addition to what I got last time, I get:

 

Antoklos: "That is my name. I've been the landlord here for about 12 years. But if you ask me, I'd rather be in another city. The war ruins the whole business. Earlier . . . yes, earlier. Many years ago, this place was famous: Tymen, the market town; Tymen, the trading center. There came traders and merchants from east and west. There was a lot going on here in Tymen in the past, a hundred years ago or so. But I'm getting excited. Those rosy days are long gone, and the war drives away even the last customers."

       

"Das ist mein Name. Achten Sie darauf, es nicht durch übermäßigen Gebrauch zu erodieren."

       

War: "Troy is also quite rundown, but you will never conquer this city. I'll bet you wine and amphora! They only have to hole up in their town. The siege has been going on for so long now, and what did it bring? And in confidence: until you free Helena, she will look like my wife." [I didn't really understand that last bit.]

     

Wife: "My wife?  I traded six cows for her. They were six really good cows. Now I have sixteen cows. Not bad either for someone who has worked his way up from the bottom. But milk prices aren't what they used to be either. Now you have to count every liter to stay afloat. In the past, yes, you could buy a whole acre of land with one cow. Now it's just enough for a few strides. What else should I tell you about my wife?"

     

Troy: "Well, this city is a fortress, and an indomitable one at that. Of course the Trojans cannot win the war, but they can always avoid defeat. You've already bitten your teeth on the walls. They're just too tall and too thick. And your mission is only over when you take the city and free this woman. What was her name? Helena . . . yes. Priam makes a fuss about this woman if you ask me. There is only one way to finally end this war. You must find the oracle."

     

Priam: "He is by no means popular here in town. He reigns in Troy as if he were the great ruler. I think he's quite cocky, you know what I mean? But nothing seems to grow against him and his city. Maybe if you are lucky you can make it."

      

Tymen: "This area was once famous for its trade and wealth. There was prosperity and order. That was many years ago. Then came the curse of the gods that sowed destruction. Now this region has been ruled by Troy for several generations. A poor village that can just support an inn. But if you want to know something about the past of this place, you should read about it yourself in the collection of tales in my room." 

      

I'm prepared to do just that, but the collection of tales in his room is gone! Actually, as I look around the tavern, a lot of the stuff I picked up last time is gone, including shirts, hats, and food. I guess creating a new character doesn't reset the game. To do that, I suppose I'll have to extract the disk files from the archive again.

        

There's a lot missing, but the key I need is there.

    

But there is a metal key on his desk, which I had somehow missed last time. It opens a door south of the main tavern room. I grab a rose from a small alcove along the way, having read a spoiler from Mr. Auer. The door leads to a long corridor, which opens into a large room with two thrones and a gold chest. This must be the remains of the palace that Antoklos talked about.

    

The chest won't open, so I continue to the room south of it, a large storeroom full of equipment such as shields, gold, a dagger, and a pile of metal. The gold key opens the chest in the previous room, and gold pieces come spilling out. I collect about 500.

     

I don't know where I'm going to spend this gold, but I'm getting rich.

    

At this point, both Odysseus and Tommaso are exhausted. I check the manual for instructions on how to sleep, and it says to click on the clock. While this does cause time to pass, it doesn't seem to do anything for the characters. Doing so while standing on a bed doesn't help. Fortunately, being exhausted doesn't seem to stop me from moving, talking, or doing anything that I need to do for the rest of this session.

   

In another room off the throne room, I encounter my second NPC, sitting on a sofa. She introduces herself as Daphne. Like Antoklos, she has a ton of dialogue--almost 1,500 words of it. Copying it from LanHawk's text dump, I unfortunately can't help but notice some of the keyword prompts. One of them is schleier ("veil"), which Daphne never speaks. It thus appears that you have to try keywords based on the character's appearance as well as the dialogue. Another of her prompts is götter ("gods"), but I can't figure out how to type the umlaut on the Amiga keyboard. ALT-o gives me an Ø, but no other combination of ALT, SHIFT, and CTRL does anything special.

     

You don't find scenes like this in the usual high-fantasy game.

        

Daphne tells me that she has been here for decades because of a curse. She is the daughter of a king, Jason, who also had two sons, Pheres and Leiodes. Her brother Pheres was "insatiable," wanting literally everything. Jason tried to appease him by giving him half his lands and half the treasury, but it wasn't enough. Pheres killed Jason, then waged war on his brother when Leoides inherited the throne. After a siege, Leoides was forced to flee the castle through a secret passage. Pheres conquered it and imprisoned Daphne. At some point, at least according to Daphne, the gods cursed the family, and as part of the curse, Daphne has to exist forever in this room. The Oracle, which has lived in the castle for centuries, is also sealed away as part of the curse. Daphne quickly falls in love with Odysseus, who seems smitten with her as well.

      

Remember Penelope, Odysseus.

     

In her dialogue, Daphne makes reference several times to particularly loving flowers and not having seen one in decades. I have Odysseus give her the rose, which completely seals her affections. Then, in a series of text screens, she leads the party to a secret door and says that's the way to the Oracle. She begs Odysseus to come back to her, and he promises he will. I get a brief view of the party in a rough-hewn corridor, and then the game dumps me to the Amiga workbench. Mr. Auer also mentioned having a crash around this point.

   

Thus, my homework is:

   

• Re-extract the game disks and start over, so I can properly fill up my inventory.
• Go through the manual and figure out how exhaustion and resting work.
• Figure out how to get past this point that the game is crashing.

   

I'll keep working at it and let you know what I come up with. 

         

A cut scene as Daphne escorts us to the basement.

      

"You'd better," I hear you say. "My life is not complete unless I know the CRPG Addict is working his way through reams of expository narrative written in German." Well, good news: SOTE is on the horizon, and I can use some help with the very long, scrolling backstory that begins the game. If you speak German fluently and wouldn't mind taking a look at this video to give me a summary (the part I'm having trouble with starts at 02:25), I would appreciate it. You'll probably need to watch it at half speed.

   

As for Die Odyssee, if I were that kid who got this as his only game for his birthday, I wouldn't be disappointed . . . yet. Overwhelmed and confused, maybe, but not disappointed. It's certainly one of the more original experiences of 1993.

 

*****

 

Addendum from 3 January 2023:

 

I put some more time into Die Odyssee in November. I did manage to get past the crash I experienced above and even managed to trigger a combat. Combat seems to resolve on a tactical grid, with squares representing the different characters and enemies.

 

The party is attacked by sodium, flerovium, and belarium.

      

The problem is that when combat starts, my characters are already nearly dead because of the problems described above. Busca did some research in the manual to help me out, but it came at the wrong time. A combination of dense translation, impenatrable mechanics (particularly the spell system), and the fact that the game crashes to the workbench with every errant mouse click has killed my enthusiasm for it despite some interesting elements. It's not a game to have on my active board while I'm trying to get some momentum back on my blog. I'm giving it a best-guess GIMLET of 37, which is pretty good. It has an interesting backstory, an unusual character creation system with a huge variety of options, verbose NPCs and encounters, and an intriguing tactical combat system. I'll hold open the possibility of returning to it over the summer break when I have more time.
       

Time so far: 6 hours