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Thuryl posted:Geneforge was originally meant to be a lot more purely sci-fi than it ended up, but he added in fantasy elements because he thinks fantasy RPGs are more marketable. So whatever he makes next is probably still gonna be fantasy of some kind. sitchelin posted:I want a Nethergate sequel. If he fancies something new and not a remake amongst modernising Geneforge, I would like to see more Nethergate as well. Nethergate: Resurrection was a great idea for a setting (the original may as well not exist) and I would like to see more done with it. I don't really groove to the idea of a sequel per se because I felt that Nethergate's story resolved itself very well, but I would like to see more done in that universe. Munin posted:Jeff Vogel really is a games industry legend. Only in the last few years have new "retro" RPGs started to proliferate due to the indy boom; the genre was basically forgotten by the AAA industry. Jeff has basically kept alive a genre single-handedly. I wish that he got more kudos for it.
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Jan 4, 2016 19:07
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sitchelin posted:I want a Nethergate sequel. I would love to play one set in Judea where you use like the power of Kabbalah to kick out the Romans.
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Jan 5, 2016 08:55
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I actually liked the characterisation in the last two games. The Geneforge series in general has this very terse, prosaic feel to the dialogue, which in a purely text-based medium means the player can interpret it how they like. Like, when you ask the Mind in Sucia's customs warehouse how it feels about being abandoned, and get [timg] http://lpix.org/2327859/geneforge_153_05012016_191913.png [/timg], it's totally down to your interpretation whether it's just confused that you're asking it this, it's ashamed of the rogue thoughts it's been having, or it's actually lying to you. Because the writing is done with such broad strokes, all three are equally valid interpretations. Whybird fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Jan 8, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 13:40
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I know a lot of people are down on Geneforge 3, but I'm really enjoying it! It's obviously a lot more linear than the past two games and that isn't the greatest, but it's pretty cool to actually experience what passes as normal Shaper society for once instead of being stuck in various illegal places. It's also the first time I've been inclined to side with the Shapers, too. I also like the permanent party members a lot (and was sad that never really got revisited until Avadon) but goddamn Alwan is a prat.
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Jan 5, 2016 23:00
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Geneforge 3 is done with, and man, it actually ruled? I understand why it'd be a drag if you were mostly into the series for the non-linearity or multiple factions, but I was too busy enjoying the writing to really notice. I liked how the island-based world map allowed the environments to change up a whole lot (though actually travelling between islands was kinda handled awkwardly), and I also liked how there were actual recurring characters and villains. Greta and Alwan were cool to have around, even if they didn't really have much depth beyond "rebel sympathizer" and "shaper fanatic", and the final battle against Litalia was a hell of a lot more climatic than anything in the previous games. (...Even if it was the second time you had to kill a big scary dragon you had never met before in order to destroy the Geneforge.) It also feels like it was the first game to try and portray Shapers in a relatively sympathetic light, though I guess that's kinda inevitable when your only other option is the freaking Takers. I liked that it also still let you be pro-servile rights even as a Shaper, and had a handful of major NPCs that felt the same way.
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Jan 8, 2016 05:50
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The added linearity and fiddling with boats is a pain but I really enjoyed Geneforge 3's attempt to focus more on characterization. Vogel's characters in the last two games come off as too flat to me as Vogel distanced himself so thoroughly from the backlash.
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Jan 8, 2016 06:46
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dmboogie posted:Geneforge 3 is done with, and man, it actually ruled? I understand why it'd be a drag if you were mostly into the series for the non-linearity or multiple factions, but I was too busy enjoying the writing to really notice. I liked how the island-based world map allowed the environments to change up a whole lot (though actually travelling between islands was kinda handled awkwardly), and I also liked how there were actual recurring characters and villains. >GF2 seems non-linear, but in reality, the power jump in rogues and enemies in each area ties your hands quite a bit. For example, if you tried to go straight to Rising without visiting any of the Medab/Awakened areas first, you'd be trying to drag an army of Thahds and Artilas against Clawbugs, Battle Alphas and Vlish. >GF4 explicitly has four main "chapters" and you can't really skip any of them due to magic Plot Doors. >GF5 takes it even a step further, with basically every single major NPC not letting you leave their territory until you've advanced the main quest for them. The real problem that people hate about GF3 IMO is just the faction system. There are only two factions and the game locks you into making key decisions on who to support really early. You can't really be non-committal or play the middle while making up your mind, you're forced into supporting one side or the other almost immediately. Also, the boat system sucks. I can get why you needed to get a boat the first time to leave each island. But once I've visited, say, San Ru, I should certainly be able to return to Greenwood just by clicking my desired destination like any other travel, particularly since they're on the same map.
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Jan 9, 2016 01:52
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As a random question, does anyone recall which Geneforges can run windowed? Even back in the Exile days, Jeff's games feel weird to do fullscreen. Admittedly, I'm a "mIRC is always on" kinda guy.
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Jan 9, 2016 02:24
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I've been enjoying Geneforge 4's mechanical improvements a lot thus far (freaking hell not having to worry about moving slowly enough to save 5 AP for attacks is the best thing ever, along with the reworked encumbrance system), especially the shiny new character classes (new sprites, even!) but I'm honestly feeling kinda eh on the rest of things. I mean, I'm still having an enjoyable time and all, but it feels like the returning characters are the only ones who really show much, well, character. I'm super glad that Khyryk returned, he's probably my favorite shaper from the entire series. The general tone of the rebels that are underequipped, starving, and beaten down from loss after loss is really well handled, too. Some of it, though, is just inexcusable bullshit, like the entire Shaper Monarch section. I don't play Geneforge games to have to drudge my way through boring, featureless areas with constantly respawning enemies! I might have made things harder on myself with my build, not having enough leadership to recruit all the Servile Technicians nor enough mechanics to compensate for that loss, meaning it was physically impossible for me to take the stealthier route. Still a tedious black hole of fun, though. On a side note, the Trakovites are a hell of a lot more reasonable than I would have expected, given their faction's namesake. I'll probably end up siding with them.
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Jan 9, 2016 09:50
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Tylana posted:As a random question, does anyone recall which Geneforges can run windowed? Even back in the Exile days, Jeff's games feel weird to do fullscreen. Admittedly, I'm a "mIRC is always on" kinda guy. I don't recall, but I believe that 4 and 5 were in a newer engine that supports that. Have you considered doing a Windows XP Virtual Machine and just stretching that to whatever size you'd like? That's how I handle stuff like that sometimes.
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Jan 11, 2016 21:46
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Chinook posted:I don't recall, but I believe that 4 and 5 were in a newer engine that supports that. Have you considered doing a Windows XP Virtual Machine and just stretching that to whatever size you'd like? That's how I handle stuff like that sometimes. Also, on Linux or OS X with Wine, you can do a "fake desktop" where you set a resolution, the program in Wine renders to that as if it was a fullscreen display, but Wine turns it into a bordered window. This'll often get you a relatively tiny window, though, given the resolutions those games were designed for and that Wine has refused to implement any kind of pixel scaling.
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Jan 23, 2016 07:10
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Just made an attempt at the Adze-Hakai in Avernum. Decided to do a buff and charge to reduce the chance of it getting the first move...and its script broke, leaving it non-hostile and politely waiting to give its villain speech while my characters proceeded to stab it to death. It didn't attack even once. 
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Jan 24, 2016 23:38
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Finally finished with Geneforge 5, and goddamn that was a good conclusion to the series. One of my favorite things about Geneforge is how each subsequent game builds on what happened in the last, and I'm glad that by siding with Astoria I was finally able to give the world a happy ending. I really enjoyed the conclusions to Alwan and Greta's character arcs, too. I managed to completely miss the Trakovites, though, which makes me sad because they were my favorite faction in 4. (I missed my bros Khyryk and Litalia.) How much of an impact do they have in 5 if you find them? If there's one gripe I have it's that there is, essentially, 4 Shaper factions and just one rebel faction, which seems a bit unbalanced (though I guess Astoria practically counts as siding with the rebels. Would have been nice to work more closely with Greta anyway.)
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Jan 25, 2016 05:32
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dmboogie posted:Finally finished with Geneforge 5, and goddamn that was a good conclusion to the series. One of my favorite things about Geneforge is how each subsequent game builds on what happened in the last, and I'm glad that by siding with Astoria I was finally able to give the world a happy ending. I really enjoyed the conclusions to Alwan and Greta's character arcs, too. I managed to completely miss the Trakovites, though, which makes me sad because they were my favorite faction in 4. (I missed my bros Khyryk and Litalia.) How much of an impact do they have in 5 if you find them? The Trakovite ending is pretty similar to Astoria's except for a throwaway line about shaping eventually being abolished in the distant future, but some of the quests leading up to it are pretty memorable. Litalia gets a lot of opportunities to be Litalia. quote:If there's one gripe I have it's that there is, essentially, 4 Shaper factions and just one rebel faction, which seems a bit unbalanced (though I guess Astoria practically counts as siding with the rebels. Would have been nice to work more closely with Greta anyway.) More than that, I'd say my complaint is that regardless of which faction you choose, most of the endings turn out very similar to each other. Taygen's ending is probably the one that differs most from all of the other four: it's about as horrible as you'd expect but at least it's horrible because of what you did.
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Jan 25, 2016 07:40
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What's good in Geneforge 2? Is it early enough in the series that Daze is still the #1 thing I want to be doing and I just want an army of idiot summons to back me up?
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Feb 21, 2016 21:14
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DACK FAYDEN posted:What's good in Geneforge 2? Is it early enough in the series that Daze is still the #1 thing I want to be doing and I just want an army of idiot summons to back me up?
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Feb 21, 2016 21:38
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DACK FAYDEN posted:What's good in Geneforge 2? Is it early enough in the series that Daze is still the #1 thing I want to be doing and I just want an army of idiot summons to back me up? Geneforge 2 is the height of the Agent's power.
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Feb 21, 2016 21:40
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DACK FAYDEN posted:What's good in Geneforge 2? Is it early enough in the series that Daze is still the #1 thing I want to be doing and I just want an army of idiot summons to back me up? Well, it's still worth putting the 2 points into summon INT because otherwise they seem to have an irritating tendency to each attack a different target and ruin your Daze, but yeah, it's basically mental magic + summons =awesomeness.
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Feb 21, 2016 23:57
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Roadie posted:Also, on Linux or OS X with Wine, you can do a "fake desktop" where you set a resolution, the program in Wine renders to that as if it was a fullscreen display, but Wine turns it into a bordered window. This'll often get you a relatively tiny window, though, given the resolutions those games were designed for and that Wine has refused to implement any kind of pixel scaling. Also, Wine has a bug that causes most of the text not to display in GF1 and 2 (at least, I haven't tried the others), which is...a problem.
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Feb 22, 2016 14:04
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MagusofStars posted:Well, it's still worth putting the 2 points into summon INT because otherwise they seem to have an irritating tendency to each attack a different target and ruin your Daze, but yeah, it's basically mental magic + summons =awesomeness.
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Feb 22, 2016 18:06
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Low intelligence summons are a feature, not a bug. Just pack on all the other stats you can and let them run amok, less of a chore.
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Feb 23, 2016 02:46
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Avernum 2 spoiler: Garzahd just went down like a total bitch, way easier than in the original, haha. 
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Feb 27, 2016 04:02
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Parts Kit posted:Avernum 2 spoiler: Garzahd just went down like a total bitch, way easier than in the original, haha. Yeah, I remember finding that fight to be incredibly anticlimactic. The boss just kind of folded under the massive damage I was sending its way, and its gimmicks were largely rendered irrelevant because they simply didn't have time to kick in.
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Feb 27, 2016 05:44
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The original on the other hand was quite a gauntlet since he could spam summons and you had to get his SP down from 1500 to 0 before killing him. Hawthorne's battle was a huge pain in the remake though. Ended up having to cheat that one since I went in apparently grossly underleveled or unoptimized or whatever.
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Feb 27, 2016 18:45
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The original Garzahd was easy too, just spam Mind-Duel.
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Feb 28, 2016 01:07
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Parts Kit posted:The original on the other hand was quite a gauntlet since he could spam summons and you had to get his SP down from 1500 to 0 before killing him. If you didn't have a ring of will or enough smoky crystals or otherwise weren't confident about your mind-duelling ability, you could also just drop an antimagic field on him and beat him up, although he had enough HP and armour that it'd probably take even longer to do it that way. quote:Hawthorne's battle was a huge pain in the remake though. Ended up having to cheat that one since I went in apparently grossly underleveled or unoptimized or whatever. Yeah, that was pretty rough. I just kept drinking invulnerability potions throughout the second half of that fight since it was the last quest I did and hey, what else am I going to do with them. That one was a lot easier in the original, since you really just had to run over to the end of the room and hit the guy a few times.
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Feb 28, 2016 01:28
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Thuryl posted:If you didn't have a ring of will or enough smoky crystals or otherwise weren't confident about your mind-duelling ability, you could also just drop an antimagic field on him and beat him up, although he had enough HP and armour that it'd probably take even longer to do it that way. Dumb teenaged me did it this way because he didn't pick up on the fact that Garzahd was supposedly "weak" to Mindduel. I mean, I used Mindduel all over the place, but mostly just as an amusement and a way to keep my mage overflowing with spellpoints. Kill everything except one spellcaster, then drain that spellcaster until their brain is a shriveled-up old husk.
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Feb 28, 2016 02:27
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I just filled the entire room with antimagic to neuter his allys and slaughtered them all fairly easily.
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Feb 28, 2016 02:37
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GodFish posted:I just filled the entire room with antimagic to neuter his allys and slaughtered them all fairly easily. Since I just beat 2 today I'm starting up Nethergate: Resurrection since I never beat that as a kid.
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Feb 28, 2016 04:31
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Parts Kit posted:Yeah this was an essential part of how I did it, fortunately while mind dueling his rear end constantly I had plenty of spell points to drop that poo poo all over. Nethergate is right up there with some of the later Geneforges on my list of favorite Spiderweb games. The setting is very interesting and the fact that the game is completely different based on which side you are on helps too.
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Feb 28, 2016 05:32
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Yeah, I played the hell out of the demo as a teen but never got around to buying it so this is a long time coming. E3 is the reigning champ for me though, it was my first of Spiderweb game and got me into the others.
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Feb 28, 2016 18:19
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I know Avernum 1 was remade and released on steam. I vaguely recall hearing about plans to do the same thing for the rest of the series. Is Avernum 2: Crystal Souls on steam a recent remake or is it one of the older versions?
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Mar 4, 2016 05:01
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LLSix posted:I know Avernum 1 was remade and released on steam. I vaguely recall hearing about plans to do the same thing for the rest of the series. The original original games made in the early/mid-90's had the naming convention "Exile N: Subtitle" (e.g. "Exile: Escape from the Pit" and "Exile 2: Crystal Souls"). The first set of remakes had the naming convention "Avernum N" (Avernum, Avernum II, etc.). The reremakes have the convention "Avernum N: Subtitle", e.g. "Avernum: Escape from the Pit". In other words, yes, the one on Steam is the reremake, not the first remake.
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Mar 4, 2016 05:09
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:The original original games made in the early/mid-90's had the naming convention "Exile N: Subtitle" (e.g. "Exile: Escape from the Pit" and "Exile 2: Crystal Souls"). The first set of remakes had the naming convention "Avernum N" (Avernum, Avernum II, etc.). The reremakes have the convention "Avernum N: Subtitle", e.g. "Avernum: Escape from the Pit". Thank you. That is excellent. I know what I'll be playing this weekend then. Anything I should know before I start? Especially character build wise?
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Mar 4, 2016 05:22
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LLSix posted:Thank you. That is excellent. I know what I'll be playing this weekend then. Anything I should know before I start? Especially character build wise? Vogel neutered the character training system enough that it's fairly hard to make a useless character, at least on Normal. These are the only "traps" I can think of: * Each character only really needs to put points into a single stat (STR for frontliners, DEX for archers, INT for casters). END gives an extra level's worth of hitpoints and some resistances, and that's it. * Throwing is a useless skill as ammo is limited -- bows don't have this problem though, and thus are decent. * Riposte is useless as it does awful damage when it triggers and doesn't reduce the damage you take. * The Taunt trait just flat-out doesn't work. Finally, if you really want to break things, get your casters 15 ranks in basic combat skills (swords, polearms, archery, and/or throwing) so they can use the Adrenaline Rush combat discipline. Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory.
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Mar 4, 2016 05:34
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Also, note that healing and buffing spells don't depend on any of your stats, so it's possible to make a tanky frontliner priest that puts all their stat gains in Endurance if you don't care about that character ever doing damage to anything. I personally don't recommend doing it as it's kind of gimmicky and boring, but it's a viable option.
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Mar 4, 2016 06:19
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Is it just me or is Nethergate a serious jump in difficulty over the other games? I didn't do a lot of side stuff outside what I stumbled upon while exploring so that might be it, but drat enemies move fast and hit hard in that game and sure like to focus on the target they spot first, which unfortunately tends to end up being PC#1 in a dog pile.
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Mar 20, 2016 13:33
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Finally, if you really want to break things, get your casters 15 ranks in basic combat skills (swords, polearms, archery, and/or throwing) so they can use the Adrenaline Rush combat discipline. Everything else should be pretty self-explanatory.
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Mar 20, 2016 15:49
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Man Crystal Souls was really freakin' good.
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Apr 20, 2016 04:12
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The most recent Groupees bundle has steam codes for Geneforge 1-5 for $0.50 minimum buy. ...and since I already had them, one such code is QD0IT-RJ8IE-TJY0J
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Apr 27, 2016 12:24
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