Crusaders of the Dark Savant: Gorn and Scumbles

As I arrive in a new dungeon, the game again tells me my own thoughts.

            
My trip to the Holy City of Munkharama didn't last very long. I mapped the small temple area, but my progress was impeded by a series of doors that had cups attached to them--they clearly want me to drop something in. There was also a group of four urns in each corner of the temple that also clearly want something.

Progress to the east was impeded by an inability to swim multiple squares at a time. There was a wishing well that had this riddle:

          

I know a thousand faces, and count the tallied heads, feasting bright upon the eyes, of the many who have died. Wielding well a mighty power, who hath but humble stature, masses fall upon their knees, to scarce behold my only side!

          

The game asked what I wanted to shout into the well, but I didn't know what it was looking for. If the text is supposed to be a riddle, I suppose the answer might be COINS, but somehow this didn't occur to me when I was there. I left the temple exploring the forest to the south, but overly-difficult combats turned me back.
              

Nothing in particular. Is shouting in a well something you typically do?

            

A few of my characters got extra levels during this process, and my alchemist finally got something I'd been waiting for: a mass-damage spell. In this case, it was "Acid Bomb," which does damage to every enemy in a group for several rounds in a row. I decided to head back to New City and try storming the jail one more time. This time, it worked. I defeated the Dark Savant's groups of guardians and troopers and got the jail key. There was a colored keypad blocking access to the jail, but I figured out the code from a "black wafer" I had previously found in the city.
                

Rescuing this prisoner set off the entire "Gorn" episode.

         

The prisoner turned out to be a Gorn captain named Boerigard, who said he had been betrayed while trying to find a secret fortress called Orkogre Castle. (The game is inconsistent and sometimes spells it "Orkorge.") Upon further questioning, he begged me to travel to the castle and warn the Gorn king that "the Dartaen Alliance is broken." He gave me a letter to show Lord Galiere--the Gorn we all have the hots for--and thus get safe passage through the forest.

I returned to where I had met Galiere and showed him the letter. He let me pass but warned me that the Gorn Empire was embroiled in a civil war and that I'd find plenty of hostile Gorn. He also mentioned that the Gorn wizard Murkatos had recently been assassinated.
           

My map of the land I've explored so far.

          

The land beyond Galiere opened up into several large branches. Orkogre Castle ended up being just a short way to the northwest, but owing to my exploration pattern, I got pretty far afield before I found it. The road split into major northeast and northwest sections, and only an increasing combat difficulty kept me from exploring in those directions indefinitely. Ultimately, the combats had the effect of funneling me to Orkogre, but it took several hours.
               

These guys were way too hard for me.

              

Orkogre Castle took up several small underground levels. I had to find a series of keys and levers to open the necessary grates to move forward. One puzzle involved a caged ape, to whom I had to give a bunch of bananas (found elsewhere in the dungeon) to get him to open the lever to his cell. There were numerous combats with hostile parties of Gorn.
             

Using keys to open a door.

          

The level culminated in an encounter with the old Gorn king, who sat feebly on his throne. I transcribed his speech to give you a sense of the game's long-winded approach to text:

         

So the gods have decided to put the old king out of his misery at last, eh? Look you now upon this soulful guise, but once it were not so. How the orchard blossoms have faded in the fields. Though my army still stands strong, their strength is but a shallow weakness, for their spirit is broken. And now they wage war upon themselves, having lost that fleeting essence which fuels the heart and makes possible all loves and desires. The vision of their destiny has been broken. Shattered by the crushing presence of you who come from the stars. What grim irony that your visage now stands so mockingly before me. Shall you be the ghosts of my tormentors to haunt my dreams in the hereafter? Or merely be you that come to put the sword in my heart and end this mortal suffering. I see it all now, so clear. Worlds within worlds continually unfolding. The boundaries of time crossed and overlapping as easily as one might step from the garden into the forests. Like simple fish in the oceans, flipping and darting, living out their days unaware of the unseen universes which lie in the sky above their heads, so near and yet so far. How likened unto every man, that all these galaxies swing and orbit around him, continually in his sight and yet never seen nor glimpsed. Save that small portion which leaks into his momentary vision and births a thousand tales of miracles and divine conception. I pray you, grant this King these ramblings. Would that I could take my mind and thrust it upon you! But instead am forced to fling only the feeble stones of words. But tell me strangers, what cause brings you this day? 

        

Finally, I had my chance to tell him that THE DARTAEN ALLIANCE IS BROKEN, only to get hit with another monologue:

        

What's this?! The Dartaen Alliance at end?! Then the prophesy is indeed come. So be it. We shall all play our part as was foretold. And meet in the infernos of the hereafter. But perhaps there be slack enough for dangerous sport with the oracles in this. For who is to say that an end is naught but a gateway to some new beginning. And the pages yet unread be but deliberately concealed! I think I see much mischief in the fates. And perhaps it not be too late to learn their game. But what say you, be you willing to take a part?

             

YES, I offered, and got a key to his treasure chamber, where I might find a "sacred piece of parchment." The king decided to rouse himself and "find sport amongst [his] troops." I later encountered him a few times in the hallways, where I amused myself by selling him the various bits of weapons and armor I'd looted from his own castle.
           

Selling the king a cuirass from his own armory.

           

It isn't just the volume of text, nor David Bradley's bardic aspirations, that make the readings a little tiresome. It's more the way the text is presented, about 10 words at a time in a huge font, every sentence ending in an ellipse. It frequently looks like you're done, because a sentence will end three words into the screen, but then it just picks up again on the next screen, as if the developers wanted to make sure every sentence started on a fresh screen. When you see it all written out above, it perhaps doesn't look so bad, but when it's being fed to you one line at a time and you don't know when it will ever--for gods' sake--just end, it's like Chinese water torture.

When you meet an NPC, you sometimes just get dialogue options. Other times, you get options to do things like steal, trade, and share lore. I haven't done much with the latter, but when I tried it with the Gorn king, he gave me several pieces of information, some of which seem like they conflict with each other:

             

• Mick the Pick has formed an alliance with King Ulgar. (Ulgar is the king giving this information to me.)
• Our party has been fighting Mick the Pick at Orkogre Castle. (Mick the Pick is a ratkin NPC who I encountered but couldn't get anything useful out of.)
• The "Legend" Map is rumored to be hidden near Old City.
• Captain Boerigard has been sighted at Lost Temple.
• Captain Boerigard has been sighted at Ukpyr.

            

The king's chest was a bust. I opened it to find it empty."Someone else has been here recently," the game noted. Some commenters warned me that this could happen. I only hope it's both possible to get the item later and obvious when the opportunity appears.

Continuing to explore the castle, I was attacked by the spirit of the wizard Murkatos. He had some powerful draining attacks and it took me a few attempts to defeat him. As he faded away, he told me (as part of a long speech) to seek the Tomb of Vilet Kanebe in the church of Nyctalinth. "There you will find a hidden part of what you seek." His rooms had a lot of magic treasure and a Bonsai tree.
             

"Borne of Gorn" would be a good name for a rock band.

            

During this process, I lost about one-quarter of the combats that I fought (meaning at least one character died, a condition I couldn't cure until the end of this session, when I found some resurrection scrolls). I'm finding the combat system a lot more frustrating than previous titles in the series. First, there's a lot of variability to the difficulty. I remember this was true of Wizardry VI as well.You wander into a square and face 4 Gorn leaders, 4 Gorn shamans, 6 Gorn rangers, and 6 Gorn lancers. Thoroughly trounced, you reload, re-enter the same square, and get 3 Gorn rangers.
             

This was one of the unlucky times.

          
But even the easy battles are never throwaway battles. The game is genre savvy. It knows you can rest after every combat if necessary, so it's not content to try to whittle down your hit points with endless parties of easy foes. And thus you can't just blow through the combat with a series of physical attacks. With every other enemy capable of poison, paralysis, blinding, itching, stamina drains, or something worse, you have to strategize almost every battle. This almost always means casting at least one spell.

There are a lot of useful spells--so many that I'm only beginning to explore them. I'll leave a longer posting about magic for later. For now, suffice to say that the mana bar is a bit misleading, because you really have separate pool of points for each spell "realm" (fire, water, air, earth, mental, and divine). Within each realm, you can only cast one or two spells (at least, at a decent power level) before needing to rest again.

In the rare case that you do just want to use physical attacks, the animations and sounds slow things down enough that you can't simply hold down the ENTER key and blow through it.
             

Three of these hateful bastards destroyed me.

            

I don't want to complain too much because so few games offer truly tactical combat. Crusaders is a bit exhausting in the number, lengths, and intensity of the combats, but I suppose that's preferable to games that offer no tactics at all. 

The final issue is that character development doesn't seem to make as much difference as I feel it should. A couple of my characters are maxed in their primary weapon skills, but it doesn't feel like they hit more often or do more damage than when they only had 25 points. Of course, it doesn't help that leveling slowed to a standstill after everyone passed Level 9.

At some point, I noticed that Gideon had enough points to change from a fighter to a lord, so I made the switch. Now I'm toying with moving my bard to a proper mage; I feel like my major weakness in combat is a lack of traditional mage power. The problem is that I'm still getting plenty of use out of his lute, but then again my alchemist has a "Sleep" spell now and plenty of points in that area. I'm also running out of reasons not to switch my thief to a ninja. I was thinking about doing both when they cross Level 10. As for the rest, I sort of like their existing classes, frankly.
          

Bix puts a bunch of T'Rang to sleep.

           

I'm not sure I put enough time into thinking about how to handle class changes strategically. When you switch, you lose a lot of attributes (to the minimums of the class you're switching to) but not your health, stamina, mana, spell points, spells, or skills. Part of me feels that the best way to "game the system" would be to keep switching at Level 2, thus keeping the number of experience points needed for the next level low and maximizing the frequency with which you earn points to put into skills as well as new spells. Then, after switching a lot at low levels early in the game, finally settle on one class for the bulk of the game and try to get a high a level as possible. Unfortunately, I didn't approach it that way and will probably have most characters switch only once and some not at all.
            

My lord has managed to gain some high attributes since switching to this class.

         

Miscellaneous notes:

          

• My characters haven't really aged much since starting the game, but I have no idea how far I am, and all the resting is giving me the heebie-jeebies. I wonder if there's any real chance of dying of old age.

• I got so sick of not being able to swim more than one square at a time that I spent a lot of time swimming and resting (since the skill goes up with use). Almost everyone is over 50 in the skill now, but I still can't swim more than a few squares without stamina running out. I'm guessing you can never build the skill to such a level that you can swim long distances with no trouble.

• The game re-uses a lot of art. At least 6 creatures use the "giant bug" animation and at least that many use the "giant black bird" animation. This makes it hard to keep track of the enemies. I always forget whether a "Dragon Rook" is worse than a "Vampire Rook" or vice versa.

• It's frustrating that you can't target specific enemies. If a group has 4 enemies asleep and 1 awake, I want to target the awake one, not spread my attacks out so that everyone wakes up.

• I've learned to hit the "search" key at just about every environmental message. If there isn't something to find, there's often a supplemental message. 

                          

This is exactly the sort of place you want to hit the "S" key.

           
For my next move, I can go back to Munkharama and try the potential answer to the riddle. I still have several squares in New City for which I need keys and clues. When I was there, I wasted some more time with Professor Wunderland but still couldn't figure out how to get the key to the Old City. If this is something I should know by now, I wouldn't mind an explicit spoiler. Finally, I have at least three forest directions (two north of Munkharama and one south) left to try, in addition to the poppy fields near New City that I still have no way to navigate.
        

I really don't know how any of this stuff ties in with the backstory yet. My party seems to have gotten embroiled in local matters and lost sight of the whole Astral Dominae business.

Time so far: 23 hours

Crusaders of the Dark Savant: The Next Square

My map of New City.

          
I didn't mention this in the last entry, but I initially explored New City without mapping it. As I made my second pass through the city, to ensure I'd found everything and properly annotated locations for later exploration, I found myself enjoying the game a lot more. Again, I am reminded that the simple act of mapping makes a huge difference in my enjoyment of a game. A good map serves not only as a literal map but a comprehensive set of notes and clear delineation of where you can and cannot go next. Uncovering each new square then becomes a goal in itself, imparting a sense of progress even when the game's plot doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

The maps for Crusaders have been intriguing so far. The outdoor map twists and turns through forests, leaving huge unexplored areas--the game has no interest in the predictable n x n grids of its predecessors. It uses the "razor wall" approach for indoor areas but the "worm tunnel" approach for outdoors (in that every "wall" of trees occupies a block rather than just a wall). As you transition from the outdoors to New City, there's a clear demarcation at the "Entering New City" sign, but the same isn't true when you later reach Munkharama, and this opens the intriguing possibility that the world exists on a single scale. I haven't found anything that would give me coordinates and help me confirm this. I don't yet think we've had a large first-person game in which the entire territory could be represented on a single map page, cities and outdoor areas together, without transition between areas messing up the scale and coordinates. Perhaps Wizardry VI was like that and I just don't remember.

When I last wrote, I was back in New City, trying to figure out how to cure my fighter's disease without reloading an earlier save and losing a lot of progress. The solution turned out to be simple, if expensive. When speaking to the priest at the Thesminster Abbey, he asks if you're willing to sacrifice a little or all. If you say just a little, you get access to a healing fountain that restores your health and stamina. If you say "all," you get access to a fountain that also removes all conditions. I figured I could make back the gold easier than redo so much of the city, so I gave it all up and cured my disease.

With my stamina at maximum, I was able to swim to the statue in the middle of the temple's courtyard. It was dedicated to Phoonzang (from the back story, creator of the Astral Dominae), and searching it revealed a "moonstone." I'm not sure what's for, but I have no doubt it will turn out to be an important quest object later, perhaps the Sacred Stone from the story below.
             

I wonder if this will teleport me from place to place if I plant it.

               

Meanwhile, I took greater notice of an area whose importance I had missed earlier. In one of the southern buildings, there's a plaque with a bunch of letters missing, but it's clearly supposed to be "Old City," and there's a keyhole in the same room. In the city's library, I met a ratkin NPC named Professor Wunderland, who had a long speech telling me more about the Old City. Apparently, all races on the planet used to live there in peace, worshipping a Sacred Stone, but they eventually broke into sects with their own interpretations of what the Stone wanted. Old City was abandoned as the sects settled in other areas and began to war with each other. Eventually, some strangers called the Higardi appeared from the mountains, and they worked to re-unite the various sects by creating New City. But then the Higardi disappeared and no one knows why. Unfortunately, nothing I could think to say or do would get Professor Wunderland to give me or even talk about the key to Old City, so perhaps I have to get that somewhere else.
         

"Something called the Sacred Stone"? Was it perhaps a sacred stone?

          

I should note, in keeping with the theme of my last entry, that the story I summarized above is very long--about 25 screens of text--and several potential questions elicit the entire story from the beginning, with no way to break it. It's possible that if I'd kept at it, I would have found the keyword that would have led me to the key, but after four times cycling through the entire narrative, I was done with Professor Wunderland.

I don't know if New City's current state of depopulation is a result of the Dark Savant taking over (about a third of the buildings have a red emblem indicating his guardians are inside) or some other factor. Either way, I killed a lot of his guardians, which probably means I won't be a part of his faction.
           

The troopers have stun-lances, which are hard to counter.

            

I left New City with about half a dozen areas unexplored or tasks unfinished:

         

• In the northwest, a locked door proclaims that it is "T'Rshieche's House" and "Property of the T'Rang Empire." The door lock is too powerful for my thief to pick.

• In the southeast, a building marked "Umpani detache" also has a lock too hard to pick.

• I still can't defeat the assemblage of Dark Savant troopers and guardians who guard the jail.

• In a building across from a jail, there's a door with some kind of control panel that needs an object I don't have.

• In a southern building is a locked door too difficult to pick.

• The Curio Museum has two puzzles I haven't been able to solve. One involves a set of "twisted heads" and the other involves a glowing wand surrounded by balls of light. Either way, there seem to be too many possibilities to figure out the answers by trial and error, and I don't have any other clues that I know of.

          

None of these sound like good options.

          

At least some of these tasks can be solved with a stronger party, so I headed out of New City's east exit intending to return and try again after a few more levels.
           

The outdoor area between New City and Munkharama.

         

The forest east of New City served plenty of battles with giant bugs, Gorns, giant ravens, giant moths, and a whole class of plant-like creatures called "phoots," including "gumbiphoots" and "alliphoots." I'm trying not to let all the David Bradley nonsense ruin the game for me, but it's tough when practically every monster or NPC seems like it was named by a four-year-old.
           

Exhibit Z.

          
My fighter reached a skill of 100 in his primary weapon (sword) and got an extra attack per round. Eventually, so did my thief. The thief got good enough with "artifacts" that he was finally able to identify most of the stuff I've been lugging around, but disappointingly it turned out to be regular equipment. Equipment upgrades, at least from combat, have been very slow to arrive. Since the beginning, I've replaced maybe two weapons and a couple pairs of pants with slightly better versions.

Like the forest west of New City, the eastern one had a clear, marked road that broke into two branches. Forested areas that deviated from the road inevitably just led to small dead-ends with nothing important to find. The first major branch brought me to a Gorn NPC named Lord Galiere who warned me that I'd be attacked if I went any further into Gorn lands. The game didn't give me a chance to talk with him before he galloped off. Sensitive to angering a potential faction, I declined to keep exploring in that direction for now.
            

This guy really turns me on. Apparently.

        

Incidentally, upon meeting Lord Galiere, this was the description I got:

         

Soon, a part appears in the crowd of leathered men, and striding up the open channel a tall regal figure walks with the poise and stature of seasoned nobility. Although he appears like the others, deep ochre skin, round barreled body, and short tusks ascending out of his mouth a from a wild boar, there is something more concentrated about him, and despite your misgivings about the situation, you feel an unmistakable attraction.

           

As I mentioned last time, I don't really like being told what my characters are feeling, and that goes doubly true when they're being unwillingly enlisted in David Bradley's homo-bestial erotic fiction. Let's hope this doesn't continue to go anywhere.

On the other branch, I ran into a river crossing guarded by Brother Tshober. The priest at Thesminster Abbey had told me to repeat some words (SLAY NOT HE THAT CANNOT HEAR) to Tshober, but when I did, Tshober just said he didn't understand what I was getting at. After I explored the rest of the forest, I tried again, and this time he reacted. Maybe I accidentally said "WHO CANNOT HEAR" the first time. Either way, my commenters had warned me that he was long-winded, and my were they right. The gist of it was that we needed to visit the hidden temple of Munkharama, beneath the Holy City. The temple guards the Holy Work, which I assume is the Astral Dominae. He said that once I find it (which is apparently going to involve dealing with some flooding), I should take it to Master Xheng, "Lord of the 5 flowers." He finished his speech by giving us a "cable trolley" that allows crossing the river. Mercifully, he disappeared after that, so we don't have to deal with him every time we approach the river.
            

The game's text has me seeing double-entendres everywhere.

       

The path beyond the crossing led to Munkharama, where I ended this session. So far, the game has been pretty linear. I don't know if it opens up later or if it continues like this throughout, but the paths have basically funneled me from place to place, with the only alternatives blocked by a lack of swimming skill or an inability to deal with the poppies on the first map.
             

We arrive in the next map.

       

Miscellaneous notes:

       

• The door animation gets old fast. It slows down quick travel from place to place.

• This is probably an emulator issue, but the game frequently registers double-presses of movement keys and thus faces me in the wrong direction, often screwing up mapping if I don't notice it right away.

• The inn in New City sells rooms for 50 gold pieces. I'm not sure what the advantage is, since you can rest anywhere.

• A new NPC named D'Rang T'Rang keeps appearing but never wants to talk with me. I have to keep walking away from him.

          

Yes? Can I help you?

         

• The sound effects include a consistent background drone that repeats every few seconds. I have no idea what it's attempting to depict.

• There is perhaps nothing in this universe more annoying than having your character successfully score a hit in combat but then achieving "no penetration."

             
I've been at a conference all week, so my experience is a bit limited by the small fractions of time that I have to play. I should be back to a more regular schedule in October.

Time so far: 15 hours

Crusaders of the Dark Savant: Yada Yada Yada

The game is fond of text interludes. Normally I applaud this kind of thing, but Crusaders takes it a bit too far.

              

It's taken me a while to get going with this one--I've had two entries basically covering the opening minutes--but at last I feel like I'm "in" the game. I find it quite a bit harder than its predecessors, although part of that has to do with the growing length of things. In a simple game like the original Wizardry, a single combat takes far less than a minute. It may have been functionally harder than this seventh entry, but there you could grind a fighter from Level 1 to Level 10 in less time than it takes here to explore the opening wilderness.

As I previously noted, I started over with a new party, and I think it's safe to say that I spent longer analyzing, planning, and creating the new party than I have with any previous RPG. This is what I came up with:

            

• Gideon, a male human fighter. I wanted a lord, but I couldn't get quite enough bonus points, so I figured I'd dual to a lord at a later date. I've concentrated his weaponry skills on the sword and shield and his academic skills on mapping.

• Svava, a female dwarf Valkyrie. All her weapon skills go into the "pole & staff" (which includes spears), and academically I'm having her specialize in mythology.

• Noctura, a female Dracon thief. I also have vague plans to dual her to something later. Damned 7-character limit on names kept me from putting the second "n" in there. She's also a sword specialist, but academically she's our item-identifier. At least, she will be when she gets good enough. I have too much unidentified stuff sitting around.

• Bix, a male hobbit bard. He's a third sword specialist (perhaps I'm going to regret not diversifying) and the party's diplomat.

• Esteban, a male elf priest. He strikes with his staff (and thus specializes in pole & staff) from the rear, and academically I pour his points into theology.

• Prenele, a female faerie alchemist. I've split her weapon skills into several categories: wand and dagger, throwing, and sling. Basically, whenever I have some cool stuff to shoot or toss, I give it to her (I try to get everyone else into melee range). Her academic points go into alchemy.

         

One of my new characters.

        

I thought this setup gave me a decent melee party but with several characters (priest, alchemist, and Valkyrie) capable of casting healing spells in early levels. The bard comes with a lute that provides essentially unlimited "Sleep" spells, which were very handy in the opening area. I'll think about changing classes for some of these characters at some point, particularly since this configuration leaves me impoverished in classic mage spells.

I've been putting physical points mostly into swimming, with the exception of Noctura, who has to build her "skullduggery" skill to disarm traps and open locks, and Bix, who has to master music. I had hoped that I could stop once I got swimming to 10, but now I realize that's just the bare minimum to avoid drowning if you have a full stamina bar. One dip into one water square cuts that bar neatly in half. Unless I want to rest after every breaststroke, I'll need to keep feeding this skill.
         

My map of the outdoor area. Later, I found that north is to the right. I need to swim and to be able to avoid poppies to explore any more.

         

With the new party, I set out to fully explore the wilderness area and then to re-do the opening dungeon. The wilderness area is a bit smaller but more irregular than I expected. It's designed to funnel a character adopting a "rightmost path" strategy to the starter dungeon and then to New City. If you follow the left "wall" instead, you end up fighting quite a few battles against forest denizens before finding a skull and a treasure chest near an entrance to the sea. The chest contains an automap. I don't know what the skull does.
           

Finding a chest can be a wordy experience in Crusaders.

          

To the north of the starting area, there's a field of poppies that put you to sleep before you have a chance to walk more than a few squares. I mapped as much as I could here, but clearly I need something to avoid the poppies' sleep effect.

The battles in the wilderness were mostly easy enough for my new party, particularly with Bix putting everyone to sleep every round. The most difficult was the rattkin ambush on the way to New City, which I probably should have saved for after the dungeon. It took me about six reloads to win that one.

The starter dungeon proceeded as the first time, greatly assisted by the healing fountain. Bix, who started with no weapon, finally got a sword, although I still don't know what kind it is. By the time I left the dungeon, my characters were only one level lower than their imported counterparts, and with a better allocation of skills.

I had expected New City to be something of a resting point, the way most cities are in most RPGs, with comfortable places like stores, inns, and temples. While it does offer a couple of "shops" (individual characters who sell things) and one quasi-temple, it's more hostile than I expected, the area having recently been conquered by the Dark Savant.

The Dark Savant's soldiers occupy a bunch of buildings and often show up as random encounters. They come in two types--savant guards and savant troopers--and both of them are tough to defeat at this level, particularly since they don't respond to the bard's sleep tunes (I suspect they're automatons). In comparison, a large number of "Gorn spearmen" were much easier to defeat, but I got the impression that they were natives and thus felt bad about killing them. There were also more rattkin.
           

Killing these guys feels wrong, but it really added to my leveling.

          
Many times, I had to annotate a building for later return after facing an undefeatable party. Sometimes, I learned, it's worth trying a couple of times, because the fixed encounter that offered three savant troopers and four savant guards the first time might only serve up two savant guards the second time. But in other places, the enemies were just consistently too hard no matter what I tried. I have to say, I'm getting a lot of use out of the "terminate game" button, which thankfully allows you to end a hopeless combat instantly instead of fighting to the bitter end.
          

This is an unwinnable combat at my level.

           
The other annoyance I found within New City was an abundance of locked doors. Lockpicking involves the same kind of mini-game as in Wizardry VI, where a series of colors rotate beneath each tumbler, and you have to click when the light is green to trip the tumbler. The proportion of green to other colors is based on the character's "skullduggery" skill. If your skill is high enough, a light might just stay a consistent green, and if it's low enough, it might stay a consistent red. Just as with Wizardry VI, the lights change too quickly to time them (unless you cheat by cranking down the emulator speed), and clicking at the right time is more like taking a chance than playing a true mini-game. Either way, if you screw up, the door can become jammed, which is no good for anyone. There's theoretically a way to force doors, but I'm having less luck with that than lockpicking. I had to annotate a lot of doors for later return.
          

Even if I could time my click, I can't tell the difference between green and red.

         
Because of both tough enemies and locked doors, I couldn't explore a lot of the city. In particular, there's a prison with some trapped NPCs (one of them calls out a rear window for us to free him), but I can't fight my way through the enemies just yet.
             

An NPC asks for help.

             
There were a few standard NPCs in the buildings, and the game adopts the convention found in Wizardry V and VI for full-text dialogues. You have to type entire sentences and end questions with question marks, or the game doesn't always understand what you mean. Here's a talk I had with Sogheim, someone living in a southern building:

Me: Hello

S: Ahoi!

M: Who are you?

S: I am Sogheim

M: What do you do?

S: I live here, by the sea

M: Why do you live here, by the sea?

S: It is rumored a great monster guards the secret of the seas!
(I tried several questions related to the monster but couldn't get him to add anything.)

M: Do you know the Dark Savant?

S: Dread ruler of Galaxies!

M: What's happening in New City?

S: New City is where everyone eventually ends up!
         

I didn't cover all his conversation options. 50 gold pieces is a lot.

        

I met a couple of NPCs that I didn't know what to do with. One, on the road, was named "Ratsputin." Another, in town, was an Umpani whose name I neglected to write down. Neither responded to my requests for a "truce," and I ultimately just avoided them by hitting "leave" at the initial encounter screen. I hope I wasn't supposed to do something more productive with them.
            

In case you keep forgetting who the lead developer was, moments like this repeatedly remind you.

           
A few other encounters worth noting:

• A copper penny found in an abandoned bank vault bought my way into the "Curio Museum of Amazing Oddities," where I found a chest containing a magic cloak and "deadman's hair." More on this chest in a bit.

           

The tradition of putting a question mark in front of unknown items goes back to the first Wizardry.

          

• A weaponry shop was guarded by a large Umpani who insisted that he was closed, "PERMANENTLY!" However, I later heard that he ran a black market, and when I returned and said "black market" to him, he relented and let me see a selection of weapons.

             

I think that's supposed to be some kind of gun, not a horn.

             

• A statue in the center of a courtyard surrounded by water. My skill isn't good enough to swim to the statue.

           

More blah-blah-blah.

           

• "Thesminster Abbey" held a priest who, with the right dialogue choices, let me go downstairs to a healing fountain. It would have been more useful if it didn't mean passing through so many messages and dialogues to get to it (see below).

           

These are always handy.

        

• Because of my exploration pattern, I reached "Paluke's Armory," the putative reason I was in the city, quite late. It was underwhelming. He had a few armor upgrades to offer, but nothing extraordinary. 

              

I've made very little money since the game began.

            
Throughout the gameplay, I began to get annoyed with its unavoidable wordiness. Normally, I like textual encounters and lore, but somehow the way Crusaders presents them gets on my nerves. The first problem is that the text says simple things as if they're profound. Here's a message that you get when you step near New City's docks, for instance:

        

The great Sea of Sorrows spans before you like a vast and dense space flattened unto the sky, spreading into the far distant horizon as a desolate plain of shimmering ether. Its deep waters chant a thousand silent tales, and its unseen borders but hint of far distant lands. How universal such a compelling motion, as if behind every veil of boundless unknown lay cloaked an invisible beacon, endlessly calling. Such solace these sights bring, as if a reminder that though the trappings of mortal man be forever enshrouded in a sea of passing discords, he has but to open his eyes that he may bear witness to some greater existence of which he is only a momentary traveler.

     
Beyond the sophomoric wordiness are a couple of problems: Not only that the game is putting sentiments into my own character's minds, but also that they're a bit misplaced. Romanticizing the sea and the boundless lands beyond its horizon is something that you do on your own world, when the sea is a true frontier, not something that you're likely to do after you've just arrived on this planet, having crossed the galaxy in a starship.

Anyway, the game feeds you this text one screen at a time, using a font far larger than necessary, and often not using the entire screen, so that you have to acknowledge six screens of text before you can move on. And if you accidentally return to the square, you have to go through all of the text again. Oh, and there's an annoying delay after the text appears but before you can hit ENTER to move on. I could suffer this rarely, but about a dozen times in New City, the developers felt they needed to hijack my gameplay with some unnecessary twaddle that did more to confuse the plot than to enhance it.
              

Part of another long description that I have to suffer every time I want to use the healing fountain.

                 
As I finished my first loop through the city, my big problem became the need to cure the disease that my fighter incurred when we opened the chest in the "Curio Museum." The healing fountain in the temple doesn't cure it, and the priest doesn't seem to offer other services. None of the potions I've found are "cure disease" potions. I was hoping that one of the shops might sell them, but no luck there. The game manual warns of an increasing horrible fate, and ultimately death, suffered by a diseased character, and it warns you not to rest if anyone is diseased, so it's affecting my entire party. My best hope is that the "Cure Disease" spell pops up as an option the next time my alchemist or priest level up, but I hate to put all my eggs in that basket. I wonder if the healing fountain in the dungeon will take care of it.

Either way, I feel like I need to grind for a couple more levels before taking on the city again, hopefully exploring more buildings this time. One point in Crusaders' favor is that leveling up feels extremely rewarding. You watch your attributes increase--sometimes three or four per level--and then you can put a bunch of skill points into your chosen skills. So far, each level has a had palpable effect on the next few combats.
           

I have some misgivings about the game, but leveling is as addictive as ever.

          
I hope to have some more momentum going by the time of the next entry. I've got a lot of work and travel this month, so my posting schedule might continue to be erratic for a few more weeks.

Plot Continuity Across Sequels (ft. Crusaders of the Dark Savant)

Crusaders of the Dark Savant is the first game for which this import process has implications beyond character attributes and equipment.

                     

If a developer allows meaningful choices in the game, how does he reflect the consequences of those choices in sequels? This question grows more and more pertinent as the years pass, and meaningful choices become a greater expectation among RPG players. Indeed, it is common on today's blogs and discussion forums for players to insist that meaningful choices--affecting the direction of the plot and the ending of the game--are an essential part of a role-playing game. Such a claim ignores most of the history of RPGs, in which the only choice most players had was whether to attack with a sword or an axe, but I'm willing to allow that true role-playing choices might become an essential characteristic of a twenty-first century RPG.

The issue becomes pertinent for essentially the first time in Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992), a sequel to a game in which the player's choices could produce one of three different endings. This isn't quite the first time this happened, but previous "alternate endings" were either just creative deaths (i.e., ways of not winning the game), such as the "bad" endings of Dungeon Master (1987), Ultima V (1988), Pool of Radiance (1988), or The Magic Candle (1989), or alternate paths that funneled to the same basic ending, as in the Quest for Glory series (1988-1992), Dragon Wars (1989), Sword of Aragon (1989), or Disciples of Steel (1991). Prior to Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990), the only game I can think of that offered true alternate ways of winning the game was the roguelike Omega (1988), and it didn't have a sequel. Slightly earlier, however, Phantasie II (1986) and III (1987) chanced some introductory dialogue depending on whether the party was created or imported, reflecting the player's choice to have finished the previous games at all.

Phantasie III has Filmon say that Nikademus would "never suspect you" if you're a new party. If you're imported, he tells you that he chose you because you'd already defeated his minions before.

          

I haven't played a lot of games post-1992, but my read is that alternate endings aren't necessarily common even through the modern era. The Elder Scrolls games, excepting Daggerfall, basically just have one. The Infinity Engine games may have offered a lot of roleplaying in between the beginnings and ends, but they all ended basically the same. There are some notable exceptions--Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, the Mass Effect series, and the Dragon Age series all come to mind--but I'd be surprised if more than half of modern RPGs, no matter how many branches they offer along the way, end in more than one place.

On the other hand, even games that don't offer multiple endings tend, these days, to include significant player-influenced changes in the world state between the beginning and the end. The main quest of Skyrim might end in the same place for everyone, but along the way either the Empire or the Stormcloaks won the war, the Dark Brotherhood is either destroyed or has just assassinated the Emperor, the Thieves' Guild either revived or hiding in some sewers, the world either plunged into eternal night or not. These are not factors that will be possible to ignore in any sequel just because every player "defeated Alduin."

So now that The Elder Scrolls VI is at least partly announced, what is Bethesda going to do? Based on previous games, there are several options:

1. Adopt one set of possibilities as canon. This option renders many players' choices meaningless, but it's easiest on the developers. It also tends to fit with what most players did by default anyway. So although you can end Baldur's Gate with any of about 20 NPCs in your party, the developers figure at least 50% of us are going to have played with Imoen, Minsc, Jaheira, Khalid, and Dynaheir, and Baldur's Gate II begins accordingly. In a less-obvious use of this option, most sequels assume that the players finished all the side quests and expansions in the course of winning the previous game, and thus have no problem introducing NPCs, enemies, and objects that some players may never have encountered (e.g., the player of Ultima VII Part Two starts with the Black Sword even if he never played the Forge of Virtue expansion to the first part). The developers basically have to choose this option if they want to include the game as part of a larger universe along with films and books.

            

A line in Skyrim assumes the player finished the Shivering Isles expansion.

           

2. Set the sequel so far away in time and space that it doesn't matter. Based on player choices, the world state at the end of Oblivion might look quite different from one Hero of Kvatch to the next, but 200 years later, during the events of Skyrim, no one cares who was head of the Fighter's Guild in a different province at the end of the Third Era. Similarly, Fallout IV makes no references to the choices made by the protagonist of Fallout: New Vegas because there's no communication between Nevada and Massachusetts, and both places have their own problems.

3. Account for all the possibilities. This one is pretty rare, and insane when it happens, but it's featured quite notably in Oblivion and Skyrim to explain the events in Daggerfall. Depending on player choices in that game--the only Elder Scrolls game so far to offer multiple endings--the giant golem Numidium is activated in support of one faction (or not) and political boundaries are reconfigured to the favor of one or more factions. To deal with all possibilities, future games feature a book called The Warp in the West that basically says at the end of Daggerfall, time "broke," Numidium was seen at multiple places, all possibilities occurred, and a trio of gods had to intervene to untangle the mess, resulting in a stable political state among four new kingdoms. 

In a less dramatic option, games after Morrowind don't take a stand on whether the Nerevarine killed the gods of the Tribunal. They're gone, sure, but maybe they disappeared on their own.

(As an aside, one of the things I love about the Elder Scrolls lore is how many distant past events can be interpreted as if they were the results of multiple player choices retconned into the same kind of a "warp" that the developers used to explain the end of Daggerfall. Take, for example, the many conflicting characterizations of Tiber Septim. Who was he originally? Where was he from? Was he the noble hero who united an empire or the lecherous villain who seduced Barenziah and then forced her to abort their love child? Did he become a god? What about the events at Red Mountain? Did Vivec kill Nerevar? What happened to the dwarves? The implication is that major characters of Tamriel's past, like Tiber Septim and Vivec, were player characters whose stories could have gone multiple ways. Their games just haven't been developed.)

4. Dynamically adapt the plot and world state of the sequel to reflect the player's choices. This is the rarest and most admirable option, and I can't think of any series that does it better than Dragon Age. The games certainly have their flaws, but attention to player choice isn't one of them. Inquisition is particularly well done. Choices both major and minor in the two previous games determined everything from the leaders of nations to the specific NPCs the player encounters, and where. (If you didn't play the previous games, you just got defaults.) The effects on the world state, the available NPCs in the game, and the direction of the plot are significant enough that players who made different choices in Origins and Dragon Age II face very different games when they get to Inquisition. (I should also note that this dedication to adapting the world state extends to the minor expansions as well as the major titles; both Awakening and Witch Hunt for Origins start very differently depending on choices made during the main campaign.) I understand that the Mass Effect series offers the same attention to this kind of detail.

              

The "Dragon Age Keep" web site lets you set the world state from the first two games, greatly enhancing continuity as you begin Dragon Age: Inquisition.

                     

While I characterize Option 4 as the most "admirable," it's also somewhat understandable when developers don't take it. It greatly expands the amount of content that they have to create, much of which will never be seen by most players. It's probably unsustainable across more than three games; certainly, it's hard to imagine Bioware accounting for all choices in Inquisition plus the two previous games if they make a fourth one.

On the other hand, it's horribly disappointing for the player to start a sequel and find that his choices in the previous game are ignored. Some games adopt a compromise between Option 1 and Option 4, using player choices in previous games to tweak a few variables (which might affect dialogue options) but otherwise offer the same gameplay experience. I seem to remember Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II going this route, changing a few scenes based on the result of some (clumsy) dialogue options at the beginning, but otherwise making some assumptions about how the first game progressed.

It's easy to think of Option 4 as the most advanced option, and thus the one we expect to see later in the development of RPGs. In fact, if it was going to be commonplace, its best chance was in the 1990s, just as meaningful choices became more common, but before reacting to those choices meant significant chances to graphics and voiced dialogue. A developer can afford to be generous with simple text adaptations.

And thus we begin Crusaders of the Dark Savant with three separate sets of opening scenes, each with different text, but sharing many of the same graphics.

             

All opening narratives show this scene, but they all use different text depending on whom the party is with.

        

If the party ended Bane of the Cosmic Forge having rejected the queen, overseeing the suicide of the vampire king, and heading off into space with a friendly dragon named Bela, they soon find that Bela has made friends (over the radio) with the Umpani, a race of intelligent pachyderms. He relates the story of Guardia and the Astral Dominae and warns the party of the other factions seeking to possess it, including the Dark Savant and his T'Rang allies. They arrive at Guardia at the same time as the Dark Savant. Bela drops the party off in the forest to start looking for the Astral Dominae while he himself chases after the Dark Savant to find out what he's up to.

           

Bela talks about his new friends.

          

If the party ended Bane by trying to take the Cosmic Forge only to be intercepted by the android Aletheides, Savant begins by having Aletheides explain that he's been sent to retrieve the pen by the Lords of the Cosmic Circle. He relates the threat to the universe now that Guardia has been discovered, and he enlists the party to accompany him so they can find the Astral Dominae before the Dark Savant. Since he has to return to the Lords with the Forge, he drops off the party in the woods on Guardia and then takes off.

          

Aletheides lays out his plan.

         

If the party ended Forge by killing everyone and boarding Bela's ship on their own, they're soon swallowed up by the Dark Savant's frigate. The Savant clearly states his intention to challenge the Lords of the Cosmic Circle and "end their stranglehold on the Destiny of the Stars." He demands that the party assist in his search for the Astral Dominae and has them fly to Guardia on a T'Rang ship, where again they land in the woods to begin their adventure.

            

The Dark Savant offers no chance to object.

           

Finally, if the player didn't complete Bane at all--or didn't play it--the game assumes that they're treasure-seekers who found the Cosmic Forge in a temple on a random world. Just as in the second option, Aletheides reaches them just before they take the pen and enlists them in his mission. As with everyone else, the party begins in the woods.

Although all parties start in a forest, they're different forests, on different maps, and thus begin the game with quite different experiences. And because my understanding is that Savant is quite nonlinear, they probably continue with different experiences as well. What I don't yet know is whether choices made in Bane affect anything in Savant other than the backstory and starting location. Do the various factions begin predisposed to like or dislike you? Does Bela show up again if you didn't kill him? Those types of adaptations would be admirable, but perhaps a little too much to expect this early in the era.

I was able to download other players' saved games to experience the different beginnings above, but in 1992, I would have been out of luck. Knowing that there were different beginnings to Savant would have made me eager to re-play Bane, independently of what I thought of its replayability as a stand-alone game, the same way that Inquisition has made me want to replay the previous games in the Dragon Age series. Thus, we see that good attention to continuity can increase the replayability of not only the current game but previous ones in the series.

Continuity of character is, of course, a separate consideration from continuity of plot. It is also far more common. We saw it as early as 1979, with the ability to move the same character among multiple Dunjonquest modules, and most classic game series--Wizardry, Ultima, Phantasie, The Bard's Tale, the Gold Box games--have allowed you to continue the same character or party across at least one sequel. There was even a period in the mid-1980s when you could move the same characters between franchises. As a kid, this was far more important to me than it is now. Today, I find that such games either reduce imported characters to the point that they're hardly better than new characters or they're so overpowered that they ruin the game. A few franchises--the Gold Box and Baldur's Gate come to mind--have done a good job achieving balance, but on the whole I like that the modern inclination is to retain the universe but start each game with a new hero.

In that spirit, for my "real" Savant party, I'll be starting over from scratch with a new set of characters, partly because I enjoy the early levels the most, and partly because the game assumed I did that anyway (I must have screwed up something with my saved game in Bane). We'll pick up with the adventures of the new party in New City after a detour to investigate the German Die Dunkle Dimension.

In the meantime, which continuity options do you prefer? What games best exemplify them? What other methods have you seen for reflecting player choices across the game's universe?