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Where is the best place to sell stuff in Avadon? I'm having trouble finding any merchants who will give me full value for my items. 
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Jun 25, 2017 09:59
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StrixNebulosa posted:Where is the best place to sell stuff in Avadon? I'm having trouble finding any merchants who will give me full value for my items. As far as I know, selling prices are the same everywhere. An item's listed value is the base price it'd cost to buy it (although buying price does vary by merchant).
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Jun 25, 2017 10:31
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I have no idea what Jeff was trying to say with Avadon 3. Really feels like he was trying to say something, but... Also, in retrospect, the decision to set the third game after the main conflict is over was terribly anti-climactic.
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Jun 25, 2017 11:00
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Xander77 posted:I have no idea what Jeff was trying to say with Avadon 3. Really feels like he was trying to say something, but... I think the message was "if you have had a massively traditional fascist organisation for a long time there is no point in trying to change it too much because you will be stabbed, despite the fact someone already changed it for several years before you showed up and was doing alright" I am guessing what he was trying to go for was that applying real world morals to this world isn't going to work out but not a whole lot of games can pull that off (like King of Dragon Pass ) without coming off as stupid or arbitrary.
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Jun 25, 2017 11:09
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Two questions! First off, Avadon: I'm enjoying it! Just finished my first mission with the dragon, and I'm running around prepping for my next quest. It seems like it's another slice-of-life as a Hand quest, though, so - how many of these quests are there before the main plot gets going? Is there a main plot? Second off, is it possible to play Geneforge 2 and onwards windowed easily/with minimal setup?
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Jun 28, 2017 05:42
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StrixNebulosa posted:First off, Avadon: I'm enjoying it! Just finished my first mission with the dragon, and I'm running around prepping for my next quest. It seems like it's another slice-of-life as a Hand quest, though, so - how many of these quests are there before the main plot gets going? Is there a main plot?
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Jun 28, 2017 08:45
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Xander77 posted:There is a main plot, yes, but a lot of the main quests are basically "visit locations across the Pact / Farlands, and see if you can solve the problem without massacring everyone". Later, you'll be able to find the common thread that connects these together. Good to know, thanks! The collection of short stories will go down easier with my expectations readjusted and I'll have a better time of it! 
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Jun 28, 2017 09:51
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StrixNebulosa posted:Good to know, thanks! The collection of short stories will go down easier with my expectations readjusted and I'll have a better time of it! Yeah, Avalon is very mission-based. Also I think if you check my posts in the tech support fort in LP, there are a couple where someone responds with advice about running Geneforge in windowed mode. Should apply to GF2. The thing is that it plays even less smoothly after the necessary shenanigans, so I really recommend playing full screen and with the original resolution.
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Jun 28, 2017 16:45
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So, let's talk about Avadon 3. Spoilers ahoy. In Avadon 2, you (different you, with a different party) investigate the attack, as well as signs of a wide-reaching Farlands conspiracy. The game ends with the united Farlands attacking the Pact, while Redbeard disappears, which is a pretty good setup. Sadly, that's not where Avadon 3's story starts. I'd really have appreciated that - trying to influence major battles with assassination and spywork, trying to plant false information and break apart the Farlands alliance - it had potential. What actually ends up happening, is that the war is nearly over, and the Pact is winning handily, without any on-screen help from Avadon. You're chasing down the last gasps of the rebellion, destroying attempts to renew the coalition and go back on (a doomed) attack. Everyone feels tired and doomed. The bad guys (or "bad guys") have kinda accepted that they lost and are just fighting for the hell of it. The good guys know that another rebellion is just a matter of time. There are a lot encounters that are basically "yeah, it's another crypt full of undead along the secret path to the bad guy lair. What a twist. Oh look, you're confronting the bad guys. I wonder if THIS bunch is going to fight to the death instead of surrendering. How shocking". I seriously think Vogel may want to take a break from writing games. Then, there's bungling of the entire ending. Now - Vogel was always kinda poo poo at accounting for the effect of your actions on the ending of his games (Geoforge excluded) but here, it's more of a bungling of the allegory. Redbeard, being a paranoid psychopath, was deposed by the civilian authorities, trying to forge a new, more sane Avadon that actually accepts the authority of the Pact council. Meanwhile, Redbeard takes you under his command, and goes out to hunt down the last remains of Farlands resistance. So you're being asked - is the ostensibly more effective, yet totally unaccountable rogue operation of intelligence services worth preserving at the cost of blah blah blah. Now... there's practically no one who thinks Redbeard is worth reinstalling as the head of Avadon. Every single party member and NPC hates him, as the unsubtle, ruthless, paranoid psychopath that he is. Also, he keeps giving very "subtle" hints that he's going to execute you out of sheer paranoia once you're done. However - you can't actually side with the civil authorities. You can't pre-emptively assassinate Redbeard. No matter what happens, he ends the game about to grasp his old position, and the only thing in his way are you, and your party. At this point, you can just say "yeah, I guess he's pretty cool", and that's the end of that. Apparently the council doesn't have the resources for another coup or assassination, and all your friends (some of them actively plotting against Redbeard / tortured on his orders) are just like "k". Conversely, you could fight and kill him, and an entire audience hall of people whose lives hang in the balance will just stand there (wasting turns moving around), not doing poo poo. Regardless of which you choose, and your reasoning for doing so, ranging from "I wanted to dismantle Avadon entirely" to "you think you've seen paranoid psychopaths before? Well, wait until you get a load of me!", you'll get basically the exact same ending, with only the tiniest of changes. Of all the times to spare a bit of effort... this probably wasn't it. "You don't learn any of the answers to the big mysteries of the series, never grasp Redbeard's power, and in time all this is forgotten" seems almost spiteful. Combine that with the way you never learn anything of interest about the two main characters of the story, such as they are - the main instigator of the Farlands uprising is apparently just a random dude who managed to withstand the combined power of three different protagonists. His conversations with you apparently had no particular goal, and he eventually just gives up because it's time for the series to end. And our big insight into Redbeard is "I've become paranoia incarnate in service of the pact, and that's all you need to know". Fascinating. The only other Vogel series I've seen ended is Avernum, and that also had a fairly poo poo "more stories will surely be told" ending, though the problem there was more with the final bit of the game as a whole. ... Ok, but let's forget about the story. Let's assume that I'm here for the innumerable rats, bats, skeletons and wretches my party gets to kill. And, let's be fair - though I rag on Vogel for his love of trash encounters, they're fairly toned down in this entry. Generally only there if they have a reason to be there, and not just scattered as random obstacles in your path. I played on Normal with the full party mod. So you might think my stupid rear end complaint is "with more than twice the recommended party members, I found the game way too easy". Nope. poo poo was still annoyingly sloggy, and I certainly would have quit the game if I had to play it with only three characters. I don't know if I had more tolerance for previous Spiderweb games or if there were some major combat changes in this one, but: My squishy mages were forced to constantly run right into enemy faces, because apparently the range of a spell is shorter than a javelin throw. You can't really control the battlefield or affect it in a meaningful sense. You don't have a lot of counterspells. Got slowed down or entangled? Suck it up. Boss characters outright reflecting magic damage back at your squishies? Better hit them with the warriors then. Boss characters had a lot of HP (ok), summoned minions (fair), had random resistances to various damage types that changed throughout the fight with no warning (um), healed themselves (gently caress that), and would act 4 times for every time your party acted, sometimes just focusing down a specific chracter with no recourse (jfc).
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Jul 1, 2017 05:23
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I know the story isn't that good in the avadon series but I quite enjoyed the combat, especially boss battles. Did something change in avadon 3 that screwed that up? Cause I was used to buffing before battles in geneforge and owning the enemy/bosses before they had their second turn.
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Jul 1, 2017 05:30
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I enjoyed the heck out of the first Avernum game back when it came out and am delighted to see that he's put some of his games on steam finally. Which of the steam games are the more modern ones? I know he remade some of them but I'm not clear on which ones or when. Are all the games in the steam bundle still fun? I gave the first geneforge game a try last year and could not stand the inventory management. LLSix fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Jul 2, 2017 |
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Jul 2, 2017 22:03
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LLSix posted:I enjoyed the heck out of the first Avernum game back when it came out and am delighted to see that he's put some of his games on steam finally. Which of the steam games are the more modern ones? I know he remade some of them but I'm not clear on which ones or when. The Geneforge Saga is 5 games bundled into one market listing! Most modern Spiderweb games: Avadon series, Avernum 1+2 remakes. Then you work backwards into more and more 90s UI design. I personally think the Geneforge stuff has the most interesting setting/writing but the clunk, hoo boy. Avadon is the most modern/recently written game, but the writing isn't as interesting as the other series. (I'm enjoying it but you can see from Xander's posts that it starts going places. ... Yes I know I know don't read spoiler posts but I can't stop myself sometimes.)
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Jul 2, 2017 22:07
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As a guy who only got a decent ways through the first Avadon, I really enjoyed the writing. There's no denying that the setting of Avernum is far more interesting, but I've been reading every kind of fantasy and sci-fi since I was a kid, so the unique setting only stands out in my mind so much. I think the actual prose itself in Avadon is better than Avernum's, and the NPCs seem better realized, although the latter is only to be expected in a game with a hub and recurring characters as opposed to a huge map-hopping adventure.
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Jul 2, 2017 22:15
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:Yeah, Avalon is very mission-based. I did this, found DxWnd, and did the technical wrestling to get it working, and - so far Geneforge 2 is working perfectly in a window on my Win10 laptop! No lag, no weird business so far. Fingers crossed it stays like this!Thank you! e: Actual helpful information: I'm using DxWnd "v2_04_34_build"     + I turned off Vsync in one of the DirectX settings, but didn't take a cap of it. The cursor is a little laggy on the title screen due to the magical visual effect, but in-game it's working just fine so far as I poke through the tutorial area. StrixNebulosa fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jul 4, 2017 |
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Jul 4, 2017 11:54
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I sincerely hope that my impressions are true, and the combat in Avadon 3 is an aberration that will not be repeated in Avernum 3. Not particularly worried about the story though.
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Jul 4, 2017 12:04
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Man, there's no big reveal about Redbeard's weird immortality pool things that murder you if you try to drink them? That's kinda sad, that was one of the more interesting plot points.
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Jul 4, 2017 12:19
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Man, there's no big reveal about Redbeard's weird immortality pool things that murder you if you try to drink them? That's kinda sad, that was one of the more interesting plot points.
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Jul 4, 2017 12:34
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Avernum 2 is a really compelling game. I would love it if there was a hardcore mode where you had to eat rations and food because the long trip down is incredibly thematically interesting to me.
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Jul 4, 2017 13:11
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VanSandman posted:Avernum 2 is a really compelling game. I would love it if there was a hardcore mode where you had to eat rations and food because the long trip down is incredibly thematically interesting to me. Yeah, Exile 2's version of Dark Waters was a lot harsher thanks to the need for food and the fact that the trip down the rapids will take nearly all of it away from you, while the latest remake takes most of the sting out of it (although if you run out of food you can't restore your party at the rest points in that chapter, so there's still some value in paying attention to your food supply).
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Jul 4, 2017 13:28
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Man, there's no big reveal about Redbeard's weird immortality pool things that murder you if you try to drink them? That's kinda sad, that was one of the more interesting plot points.
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Jul 4, 2017 13:48
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Zereth posted:"Weird immortality pool things that murder you if you try to drink them"? That sounds a lot like a Geneforge to me. You're not supposed to drink the mutagenic slime, sheesh. What are they teaching rogues these days?
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Jul 4, 2017 14:32
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:You're not supposed to drink the mutagenic slime, sheesh. What are they teaching rogues these days?
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Jul 4, 2017 15:02
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I don't remember any of the resolution in Geneforge: did we ever find out why the canisters/geneforge/etc always 100% make people over-dramatically evil?
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Jul 4, 2017 15:35
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Zereth posted:Exactly. Drinking it is not how you use a geneforge. Although if those things are geneforges I'm surprised you could survive long enough when improperly using it to get to the point of drinking. The Hands might be made of sterner stuff. Who knows!
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Jul 4, 2017 15:36
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mossyfisk posted:I don't remember any of the resolution in Geneforge: did we ever find out why the canisters/geneforge/etc always 100% make people over-dramatically evil? I mean, the actual reason is that they're a metaphor for how power corrupts. There isn't any specific in-universe reason beyond that, really.
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Jul 4, 2017 15:38
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mossyfisk posted:I don't remember any of the resolution in Geneforge: did we ever find out why the canisters/geneforge/etc always 100% make people over-dramatically evil? Sometimes they wreck you and give you amnesia and dissociation instead.
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Jul 4, 2017 15:41
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mossyfisk posted:I don't remember any of the resolution in Geneforge: did we ever find out why the canisters/geneforge/etc always 100% make people over-dramatically evil? It's basically a superiority complex stepped up to eleven.
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Jul 4, 2017 16:17
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They're magical cocaine vats.
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Jul 4, 2017 16:37
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I feel like the biggest problem the Avadon series had is it kept rehashing the same conflicts. I feel like it'd have been better served by going further afield than it did, and maybe having a game where you didn't just serve directly under Redbeard. Instead we basically just got the same stuff 3 games in a row.
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Jul 4, 2017 16:43
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I didn't realize this was a thread! I've been thinking about getting back into some Spiderweb games. I've only ever played Avernum...and then the remake of Avernum. Both of which I enjoyed (Avernum was given to me by my uncle on a floppy disk full of pirated agmes because, as a young kid, I had come up with this weird story about prisoners being sent to an underground world that was actually a fully fledged world because a long time ago the prisoners escaped and just made their lives down there. I mean, I guess it's not the most original story, but...in any case, I only say this because when I played this game and it turned out to be a variation of this fantasy I had, I thought God had created this game so that I could play "my" game on the PC instead of my head. Okay, this is a weird tangent, but I want to express what an impact this game had on me at age, I don't know, 12? Anyway, if anyone is concerned about my pre-teen piracy, I did later buy their entire catalog) but I've heard Geneforge is especially good. However, it runs like garbage. I can't resize the window; fullscreen just adds a bunch of nothing to the rest of the screen. The controls are terrible. I know these games are all a little anachronistic in their interfaces, but maybe a third party has done something to make Geneforge more playable?
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Jul 4, 2017 16:53
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The later Geneforge games are a bit better, but 1 and to a lesser extent 2 are real rough.
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Jul 4, 2017 16:58
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mossyfisk posted:I don't remember any of the resolution in Geneforge: did we ever find out why the canisters/geneforge/etc always 100% make people over-dramatically evil? It's because the canisters / Geneforge were still in development when the project was cancelled. They might have been able to work the bugs out, but the QA process would have involved creating large numbers of psychotic demigod mages, so yeah. Not the best idea.
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Jul 4, 2017 20:20
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Trajikov can potentially survive the process without going nuts, right?
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Jul 4, 2017 20:23
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Fangz posted:Trajikov can potentially survive the process without going nuts, right? Trajkov remains sane(-ish) and relatively humane. Goettsch and your player character go buck wild, though.
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Jul 4, 2017 20:54
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There's also the Geneforge 5 MC who is more broken by canister use than psychotic.
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Jul 4, 2017 20:56
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Litalia goes completely nuts from canisters in 3, but iirc she's actually recovering when you see her in 4 and 5, too.
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Jul 4, 2017 21:01
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Fangz posted:Trajikov can potentially survive the process without going nuts, right? If you talk to Trajkov after he uses the Geneforge, he says that he feels the Geneforge-induced madness, but can fight it off. It's never quite explained why, but I've always assumed it's because (a) he has incredible discipline, (b) he's spent months planning and mentally preparing himself, and (c) he's used to having power and command thanks to his years as commander of the Sholai fleet. dmboogie posted:Litalia goes completely nuts from canisters in 3, but iirc she's actually recovering when you see her in 4 and 5, too.
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Jul 4, 2017 21:28
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Sounds like Linda the archmage from the Exile/Avernum series, who's addicted to summoning demons. Except that she doesn't get better until you cut her apart with a ritual knife.
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Jul 4, 2017 21:33
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Sounds like Linda the archmage from the Exile/Avernum series, who's addicted to summoning demons. Except that she doesn't get better until you cut her apart with a ritual knife. A lot of the NPCs can be improved with some skillful butchery, honestly.
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Jul 4, 2017 22:05
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Gorelab posted:I feel like the biggest problem the Avadon series had is it kept rehashing the same conflicts. I feel like it'd have been better served by going further afield than it did, and maybe having a game where you didn't just serve directly under Redbeard. Instead we basically just got the same stuff 3 games in a row. DACK FAYDEN posted:Man, there's no big reveal about Redbeard's weird immortality pool things that murder you if you try to drink them? That's kinda sad, that was one of the more interesting plot points. This is what got me to kinda stop playing Avadon 2 and sorta give up on the series. Avadon 1 raises a bunch of questions, and they just sorta...don't get answered, at all, because every game is just the last game all over again, with nothing really new revealed. Basically, the Avadon games are mostly about the setting, not the characters...except the setting isn't actually all that interesting, and a lot of the supposed dangerous and political "you have to do this bad thing!" choices ended up feeling forced (the Avadon 2 NPC quests are TERRIBLE). In the end, I just ended up finding that "vaguely Bioware-ian politics" just aren't interesting in of themselves, and that ends up being all the game offers. Characters like Linda work because the game isn't about them. Even in Geneforge, the game isn't about the characters, and the characters never really steal that much spotlight. Exile/Avernum is pretty solidly about the various adventures your party has, with the characters and setting serving to create the situations for those adventures. And Geneforge actually is about political morality and the choices you make, but with a setting interesting enough to make those questions and choices feel a lot more important and interesting. In those games, the characters are largely a joke or a gimmick or a single character trait - and it works because you interact with them so rarely. But Avadon is trying to be about political morality and choices, but the NPCs keep getting in the way with how dull they are, and I just don't care about the setting enough to care about the choices I make. The NPCs are still largely a gimmick or single character trait, but you interact with them so much that it wears thin fast. Sometimes the gimmick or trait is fun - Nathalie in Avadon 1 is a blast (until like, the very end), and the tinkermage in Avadon 2 works more often then not, but usually, their gimmick is just kinda...tired. And they repeat! Like, can you honestly tell ANY of the Wyldrylm NPCs apart? "I'm a shaman/hunter who is very loyal to their people but gosh I'm also supposed to help Avadon, which does things my people don't always like!"
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Jul 4, 2017 23:18
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