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 What was Legend? Legend is an old adventure game company. They started out with text parser games, like Spellcasting 101 or Eric the Unready, and then moved to graphic adventures, such as the ones we're looking at here - Death Gate, Companions of Xanth and Shannara. They were released together as part of a boxed set I owned as a kid. Aren't those books? Yep! A lot of Legend's graphical games were licensed book series. These three, their Gateway games, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, Blackstone Chronicles and Wheel of Time. Not all of these were good games. Some were. (Also they made Star Control 3.) Do you know anything about those books? Rulebook Heavily has read the Death Gate Cycle, and, to my everlasting shame, I know a good deal about Xanth. Neither of us has read Shannara, though I've played the game before. He hasn't. What about- Do not spoil any of these games. Period. That said, feel free to talk about what's gone on in the books up to wherever we are in video. We're going to be using the thread to talk about that, too. Will you be doing games other than those three? You named more than that. Maybe. What's your update schedule? I'm hoping for one video every week or two, but no promises. Both of us have rather unpredictable time commitments. Why is this a video LP and not a screenshot one? Well, firstly, ease of cocommentating. Secondly, I felt like it. There's some stuff in these games best seen in motion, even if a lot of it is static.  So what is Death Gate? I'll be letting Rulebook Heavy handle that one - he knows far more about the books than I. The game, though, is Legend's second graphical adventure, and it shows. They clearly still want to be using text parsers. Still, it's a good game, and I like it a lot. It's got a lot of opportunities it never capitalized on, but overall, I still like it. Where can I get this? The game is entirely out of print. However, it is available at the Internet Archive, as part of the IBM PC-Compatible CD-ROMs collection. I'm sure you can find it there or at abandonware websites. I won't link to this because I'm not entirely clear on the legality of it. We will, incidentally, be using the CD version, which has voice-acting. Death Gate Videos Intro Video Video #1 (Cut Commentary) Video #2 (Cut Commentary) Video #3 (Cut Commentary) Video #4 (Cut Commentary) Video #5 Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Feb 20, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2014 02:02
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About the Books What is Death Gate? Jarre, Limbeck and the Gegs In-Game Book: Tower of the Brotherhood Arianus Politics In-Game Books: Love Poetry and the Merchant's Diary Bane In-Game Books: Pryan and The Kicksey-Winsey Handbook Hugh and Bane and Music Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2014 02:09
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So all three of these games are based on novels, or novel series. The first one is the Death Gate Cycle. So what is the Death Gate Cycle? Let's check wikipedia! quote:The Death Gate Cycle is a seven-part series (heptalogy) of fantasy novels written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. The main conflict is between two powerful races, the Sartan and the Patryns, which branched off from humans following a nuclear/anti-matter holocaust. Centuries prior to the events of the series, the Sartan attempted to end the conflict by sundering the Earth into four elemental realms, and imprisoning the Patryn in a fifth prison world, the Labyrinth. The Sartan took up stewardship of the elemental realms, but soon mysteriously lost contact with each other and disappeared. Centuries later, a Patryn known as Xar escaped the Labyrinth, and started returning to the Labyrinth to rescue others. He learned how to access the other worlds and dreamed of freeing all his people from the Labyrinth and conquering the other worlds. The books follow the fiercely independent Haplo, a Patryn agent sent to scout the elemental worlds and throw them into chaos in preparation for his Lord's conquest of them. Weis and Hickman created five distinct fantasy worlds during the course of the series, along with developing the cultures of five major races: the unique Patryn and Sartan, and the common fantasy races of dwarves, elves, and humans. Yeah, uh, just politely ignore that bolded bit. The game certainly does. If the authors seem familiar, you're probably thinking of the Dragonlance series of D&D novels, role-playing game products and similar books. Dragonlance is their claim to fame, but this series is comparatively unheard of today. There are some good reasons for this. This game is based roughly on five of the seven novels, but makes some significant changes to the cast while preserving the basics of the overall plot. I personally consider it a vast improvement over the novels in a lot of ways, but I'll get more into that when it becomes relevant. We went over most of the differences that matter at this point in the series in the video; Haplo has a ship already, Sartan and Patryn (and "mensch") magic works the same way (in the novels they are totally incompatible with one another and Sartan and Patryn magic is orders of magnitude more potent and flexible), and Xar doesn't quote the Bible at Haplo (but is just about as verbose). We are also currently missing one character who we'll meet much later. Other than that, we actually know more about what is going on than someone reading the novels would. As we go through the various worlds, I'll discuss their relevant books. The first book, which takes place mostly on Arianus, is called Dragon Wing.  It is currently sold on Amazon for as little as 0.01 dollars.
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Nov 16, 2014 02:54
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Mors, RBH, why the hell are you two doing this to yourselves? First you read some really bad books and show them to us, then you play this! Well, I say that, but I've never actually played any of theses games, so I'm pretty eager to see where this is going to go.
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Nov 16, 2014 02:59
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Are you doing the Xanth one after Death Gate? You poor bastards!
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Nov 17, 2014 04:02
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Start strong, end strong. That means, by definition, the lovely one must go in the middle.
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Nov 17, 2014 04:11
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Mors Rattus posted:Start strong, end strong. Oh god. Mors, I feel sorry for you. Still, Death Gate definitely improves on the originals somewhat... Although, when we get to them, there are definitely going to be words about certain places and characters. I still play Death Gate and Shannara once in a while (and have read all the Shannara books)... But definitely not Xanth. It's kinda funny, really, because some of Legend's best stuff is when they do tie-ins (Shannara, Death Gate, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, and the Gateway duology), but the only good game by them that wasn't a tie-in to my knowledge was Superhero League of Hoboken, and even that... Had its moments. Gonna be watching and following for sure!
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Nov 18, 2014 02:12
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I'm quite familiar with the Shannara series, be interesting to see how badly they mangled an already mangled storyline. I wonder how far the game will follow the story and if we'll get to see Castledown. It's probably just the Sword trilogy though so we'll get to see a bunch of whiny teenagers and a stupid old man all completely fail to understand how to use the macguffin.
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Nov 18, 2014 05:40
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The Shannara game is canon, as far as that goes, and takes place between Sword of Shannara and Elfstones of Shannara. No, I have no actual idea what that means, but it's true! I looked it up.
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Nov 18, 2014 05:42
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Mors Rattus posted:The Shannara game is canon, as far as that goes, and takes place between Sword of Shannara and Elfstones of Shannara.  Oh dear god I think I know what that means and if so you guys are in for a treat.
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Nov 18, 2014 05:50
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My mic isn't the best, but I'm not in a position to fix it until next month or so. When I do get it set up and we're well into the thread, I might be convinced to do something stupid with Superhero League of Hoboken!
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Nov 18, 2014 14:16
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Well, if the Xanth game is of comparable quality to the books, I can think of nicer ways of committing suicide. Gouging your brain with a blunt spoon comes to mind.
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Nov 18, 2014 14:34
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The Xanth game is significantly better than the books. It's still a really bad game.  Episode 2: DWARVES Uncut Commentary Cut Commentary You get an early update this week 'cause I'm gonna be really busy later in the week and over the weekend.
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Nov 19, 2014 01:55
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Mors was too early for me, but here's a little insight into the novel! Jarre, Limbeck and the Gegs Jarre had a lot of roles to play in the novel. She was an agitator, a terrorist, a leader, supportive of Limbeck and his call to reform, distrustful of any "tall" authorities like the Welfs and Haplo and not given to nonsense. Here's how she got trimmed for the game: quote:
But like I said, even here I'm inclined to forgive that because ultimately the entire subplot which she's part of got cut. Novel version: Haplo arrives on the islands below Drevlin and is discovered by chance by Limbeck, who has at that point just survived his execution-by-kite and is waiting for Jarre to manipulate the Kicksey-Winsey to bring down a mining claw and get him to safety. Limbeck impulsively rescues Haplo, and Haplo in turn helps organize and galvanize the Dwarves, or Gegs, into a force against the Welfs. In the Novel, it's partly driven by Haplo's mission - which there includes "sewing chaos" because apparently Tracy Hickman thinks people are literally Chaotic Evil in real life and just do chaotic poo poo for its own sake - and also by how he feels a kind of kinship with the Gegs' struggle, having been placed on Drevlin by the Sartan to essentially be permanent slaves. Jarre serves as a kind of counter to Haplo: they're seemingly working towards the same goals, and are both pressuring Limbeck into acting in certain ways, but Haplo is pushing further than even Jarre - whom I noted already is a terrorist - is willing to go. Limbeck is basically accurate to the novel, except he doesn't misplace his glasses as much in the game and isn't being dragged along by Jarre into actually turning his speeches into action. Sometimes the characters really are just that thin. Now, "Gegs". Dwarves don't remember the original name for their race on Arianus, so they call themselves Gegs, a corruption of Cogs, a very fitting description for their society. They're also the first major sign of how the Sartan view the universe and how they applied it to these new worlds they created: An orderly system where everyone has a place and will drat well stay there. The "Kicksey-Winsey" has a very obscure purpose even there, but mostly it's designed to manufacture finished goods using materials provided to it, materials which are in scant supply on Arianus. Producing fresh water was basically a side effect, or a temporary measure. In the novel, it's quite a bit scarier: sections of it are named after human organs (the place of judgment is the Heart, there's Kidneys and so on) and it's heavily implied that it's long since grown past the boundaries set for it by the Sartan. It also doesn't really care about its inhabitants, and has often collapsed passages while Gegs are still in them. The Welf subplot is similar, although the elves don't go so far as to make them glow in the novels. They don't really show themselves at all, and they certainly don't care about how the Kicksey-Winsey functions at all. All they do is fetch the produced water (so precious on Arianus that the currency is called the "Barl", or Barrel of Water; Elves control almost all the major sources) and dump random broken trash as "gifts" from the gods to sate the slaves. And the Elves do see them as slaves: they are a society of slavers, and an empire runs on its slaves. I'll say more on them in an after-the-fact post on Arianus.
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Nov 22, 2014 14:36
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I would assume that the reason part of Haplo's mission is to 'sow chaos' is so that Xar can take advantage of the chaos to allow him to upset and replace any existing leadership systems.
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Nov 22, 2014 14:55
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Oh yeah, in the novel Xar's motives are much less about reforming the world and far more about usurping the leadership in these new ones. He's overall a far less sympathetic and ambiguous character there, which is remarkable given that his characterization here is "sits at a desk and reads a book and tells you a bunch of exposition".
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Nov 22, 2014 15:17
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I dunno he was a bit laid back maybe but I still distinctly got the impression from his conversation that he's planning to take over right after (or possibly before) finding and exterminating every last Sartan.
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Nov 22, 2014 15:26
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That's how unambiguous he is in the novel.  But yeah, make no mistake; the Sartan ultimately want a peaceful and organized society for everyone and see it as their duty to guide and protect other races. Patryns don't. There's a reason the Labyrinth was conceived at all, let alone constructed. The game just doesn't go "and the Patryns are innately eeeeevil" or anything.
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Nov 22, 2014 15:32
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Oh yeah, in the novel Xar's motives are much less about reforming the world and far more about usurping the leadership in these new ones. He's overall a far less sympathetic and ambiguous character there, which is remarkable given that his characterization here is "sits at a desk and reads a book and tells you a bunch of exposition". Isn't that because at the point of the first novel, he doesn't yet actually know that the worlds can be put back together again? Also, Xar has three motives. 1) KILL SARTAN BECAUSE GRR SARTAN (ALSO REASONS) 2) Take over other worlds (FOR THEIR OWN GOOD) ... No, really, he uses a lot of that "Lesser species needing care" we all know and... Er, know. 3) The Patryn will survive... Under my leadership... He hasn't changed that much. EDIT: ^^^ "Guide and protect." Yeah, Sartan sound just as enlightened, don't they? 
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Nov 22, 2014 15:39
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Xar pretty obviously just wants to get his rulership on so he can retire to a nice little empire after he's finished genociding the Sartans. He probably wouldn't actually be a bad ruler all things considered, he seems smart and apart from the huge hate-boner for the Sartans hes an okay power-hungry maniac.
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Nov 22, 2014 16:05
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JamieTheD posted:EDIT: ^^^ "Guide and protect." Yeah, Sartan sound just as enlightened, don't they? Well, their ideal order on Arianus was to racially segregate elves, humans and dwarves onto separate continents. And they also killed billions of people when they sundered the world. To serve and to protect.
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Nov 22, 2014 16:09
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Because who'd expect the people dressing up like Klansmen to be racist? 
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Nov 22, 2014 16:14
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Well, their ideal order on Arianus was to racially segregate elves, humans and dwarves onto separate continents. And they also killed billions of people when they sundered the world. Yeah, this was my main problem with the Death Gate Cycle, apart from a thing I can't talk about yet: Nearly everybody we're meant to follow the adventures of is an rear end in a top hat. The Patryn are assholes. The Sartan are assholes. The elves are assholes (Although, to be fair, that's elves all over), the dwarves are stagnant assholes... It's bad enough that I'm struggling to remember anyone who isn't an rear end in a top hat. This is, funnily enough, half the problem with most of Weis and Hickman's work. Star of the Guardians? Everyone's an rear end in a top hat. Dragons of Seasons Insert Diurnal Period Here? The two folks who aren't quite assholes die. They conflate "Everyone is an rear end in a top hat" with "Everyone is flawed", and the end result isn't so much tragic or epic (Which are, I'm assuming, what they're aiming for) so much as "Why do I care about these folks again?" Haplo, to be fair, doesn't stay an rear end in a top hat. But it takes at least one book for him to stop, and since that's the first book... It's kind of hard to keep going. JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Nov 22, 2014 |
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Nov 22, 2014 17:06
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I've made the case before that if the first chapter were entirely missing from the first novel (the entire expository bullshit one with Xar's monologue), Haplo would have been a much more interesting character to follow. The series strives so hard for greatness and trips over itself at every turn, which is sad because these ideas are pretty grand and unlike so many other things you see in bog standard fantasy.
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Nov 22, 2014 17:28
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JamieTheD posted:Yeah, this was my main problem with the Death Gate Cycle, apart from a thing I can't talk about yet: Nearly everybody we're meant to follow the adventures of is an rear end in a top hat. The Patryn are assholes. The Sartan are assholes. The elves are assholes (Although, to be fair, that's elves all over), the dwarves are stagnant assholes... It's bad enough that I'm struggling to remember anyone who isn't an rear end in a top hat. Oh, there's a number of nonjerks that show in the second book. Frankly, in my mind, the parts that focus on the world from that book are my favorites. Anyways, I never knew about these games. This should be interesting.
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Nov 22, 2014 18:18
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 Episode 3: The Best Character Uncut Commentary Cut Commentary Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 00:03
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Tower of the Brotherhood- The Mysteriarchs - posted:At the risk of sounding immodest, no society of wizards since the ancient Sartan has gathered more knowledge or commanded such power. We are unequalled. Indeed, other wizards have begun to view us as a threat. Because of this, and for other reasons as well, we have decided to move into the high realm. There, we will be able to focus our attention on learning. We will be free from the petty concerns that dominate the minds of those who have enslaved themselves to war. - The Brotherhood - posted:The Brotherhood is a guild of assassins. But its membership wields enormous political power through their connections to people placed at the highest level of government. Their reputation is spotless. I have never known of a contract that wasn't, eventually, executed (so to speak). Given this, it's understandable that their services don't come cheap. Over the course of thousands of years, the Brotherhood has amassed a fortune, sufficient in size to buy and sell most kingdoms a few times over. - The Tower - posted:From the beginning, many of us viewed the task as an intellectual challenge. The magicks required to build such a fortress would involve spell merges and constructs heretofore unknown. We see it as a way to increase our knowledge and enhance our abilities. It was a deal with the devil, of course, but never before had we been able to concentrate so many diverse talents on a single goal. The potential for unparalleled growth was enormous. - The Otherwhere - posted:The Otherwhere is a place between realities, a place of possibilities only. Every possibility exists there, however remote. That's what a wizard draws upon when he casts a spell. Say, for example, that he wants to create light in a dark room. In the Otherwhere, the possibility exists that the room is already lit. With a spell, he bends this possibility into this reality until the room IS lit. All magic is merely the changing of reality by capitalizing on a possibility that already exists. - The Vault - posted:We constructed a special chamber in the Tower called the Vault. Most of the room - all except a platform in the center - was intended to house the Brotherhood's treasure. The platform was to serve as the room's "safe" area, the place where the complex spells were going to be cast and, eventually, from where the treasure would be summoned and banished.
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Nov 27, 2014 00:04
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Your audio is incomprehensible in this episode guys.
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Nov 27, 2014 07:44
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drat, really? I thought I used the fixed audio...must have hosed up somewhere. I'll see about getting that fixed and re-uploaded by the weekend.
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Nov 27, 2014 15:27
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Okay, the audio should be at least a little better now on the uncut. (The cut, well, that's not why you're watching the cut audio one.) It's not perfect - our source audio for the commentary was a little subpar this time, and we're going to try to avoid that in later videos. But it's better.
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Nov 27, 2014 19:26
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So, uh. I read the Death Gate Cycle books like 5 years ago or so, back in my late teens, and I remember enjoying them for the most part. I guess I just have bad taste. I'm surprised that they apparently had games, and I'm interested to see what they're like. I'll definitely say I think the books that focused on the individual worlds and their inhabitants were the better ones. And that maybe it's just age dulling my memories but I don't remember nearly as many assholes as there's being said. And, well. I mean if some people took me and all the people of my race and trapped us in a death labyrinth, I'd want revenge too. So I'm not sure why that's so bad of Xar? Anyway, Death Gate apologism over now, time to watch the videos!
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Nov 28, 2014 03:59
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Mors Rattus posted:Okay, the audio should be at least a little better now on the uncut. (The cut, well, that's not why you're watching the cut audio one.) Thanks guys.
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Nov 28, 2014 06:36
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Honestly, I largely found that the Death Gate books were reasonable for the first four books, when it focused on a world each time. Where it got particularly bad was from book five onwards, where it got preachy and more and more Bible-y. Like, would it be a spoiler to say just how Bible-preachy it gets if the game doesn't get into it at all? Literally everything would have worked out for the Sartan and their plans except that lacking humility before God means all your works will fall and crumble. I particularly enjoyed a good bit of the first two and fourth books since they focus a lot on Haplo trying to work as a subtle agent. Unlike in the game, where he's basically a human with two lovely spells, in the book he's a literal demigod compared to the three "normal" races, but supposed to stay subtle so no one can trace anything he does back to the Patryns(so they'll be beloved liberators when they eventually arrive) and so any remaining Sartan won't be aware that their ancient enemies have escaped yet. Generally I also found the QUANTUM MAGIC idea kind of decent, except it sometimes lead to some odd questions of why some things could be magiced up and why some other things could not be, and I liked a lot of stuff about the world designs.
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Nov 30, 2014 10:39
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King Stephen and Arianus Politics I can only imagine that the writers for this game were gleeful when they inserted that line about Stephen having no kids. Holy poo poo what a bullet they dodged there. In the game he's just this king, y'know? Ruler of awesome snarky humans. In the novel, he is actually the first king of a united Human empire, formed after centuries of strife and a political marriage (and, joyfully, a loving one) with his kingdom's biggest rival. It's the first kingdom to present a serious threat to the great Tribus Empire of the Elves, and it's been allowed to form because the Elves have fallen into civil war. His kingdom hangs in the balance between not being noticed too soon as a threat by the Elves, not falling into internal squabbling yet again as the humans fight each other, and on his heir. Stephen's heir in the book is named Bane. He is a young kid. He is also not Stephen's son, having been exchanged in the cradle by a Mysteriarch, one of those wizards who vacated the lower realms to live in the uppermost reaches of the sky in Arianus and who are mentioned in the book of the Tower in the game and play no further role in it. Bane is essentially the fulcrum around which the novel's plot turns, the nexus that gathers all of the principal cast together, and is also an annoying "evil psycho kid" stereotype. Stephen's first act in the novel, after we are introduced to him, is to hire an assassin to kill the kid. Yeah, his smile in the game just got creepier didn't it? More on that entire mess later. The Tribus Empire The Empire of the Elves, maintained by their unique command over and ability to construct Dragonships, fuelled on the backs of enslaved dwarves and humans, dominated all politics on Arianus for a very, very long time. Essentially, the Elves quickly rose to prominence and have remained there since the Sundering. Even the Mysteriarchs, who are by all accounts way more powerful wizards than the wizards of the elves, essentially fled rather than be considered a threat by the Tribus Empire and destroyed. They never fully conquered every petty Human realm, but they never really felt the need to either; human wizards can control Dragons which make them frightening opponents in the air, but ultimately the skies belong to the Elves and the humans have never united before. The Elves are of course somewhat decadent at the upper levels, but they've never been seriously threatened either. In the novel, in a subplot so remote from the game that most of the characters involved are just mentioned in footnotes or in conversation, the Elves have fallen to civil war thanks to a human bard named Ravenlark who discovered a Sartan song. The Sartan, in their desire for order among all the mensch races, apparently manipulated the elven genome of Arianus so that a specific song would trigger a kind of fugue state in any Elf who heard it, even triggering a kind of genetic memory with flashes to their race's past. The exact contents of this memory flashback remain unclear. Almost all elves who hear it immediately renounce their imperialistic ways and join the resistance movement of a renegade Elven prince who seeks to reform the Empire after hearing the song himself. In fact, the rebellion was triggered in the aftermath of a battle called The Battle of Seven Fields, the first major battle of King Stephen's uprising against the Tribus Empire. A Battle which, in fact, the humans soundly lost and would never have escaped if not for this sudden bardic reversal. The Elves are kind of a big deal in the Arianus setting, but as far as the game is concerned we won't see much more of them after this point. It's also hard to write this bit around a character who hasn't shown up yet (and one who won't show up at all), but we'll see him soon enough.
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Dec 1, 2014 18:30
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The more I hear about the novel the more I feel they should have just adapted the first book as its own game rather than trying to cram 4 books into a single one.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:11
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You're not mistaken. To me, the biggest strength of the Death Gate novels is the world building and described scenery. The biggest weakness, sadly, are usually the characters.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:22
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Yeah. The game improves heavily, from what RBH tells me, on a bunch of characters, but it definitely could've been improved by slowing down to smell the flowers in some of the worlds.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:23
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Especially since from what it sounds like in the books the islands of Arianus are actually bigger than a large house.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:27
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Mors Rattus posted:Yeah. The game improves heavily, from what RBH tells me, on a bunch of characters, but it definitely could've been improved by slowing down to smell the flowers in some of the worlds. Mostly what the game does is remove detail from characters, or remove them entirely, which largely isn't an improvement. Flawed as the books are, they're not so bad that just cutting chunks out is ALWAYS better. I can think of only one character who's truly aggravating both in concept and execution, and sadly I think he's still in the game, but my memories are vague. Is Zifnab still in?
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Dec 2, 2014 04:12
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 Episode 4: Welcome to Skurvash! Uncut Commentary Cut Commentary Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 02:58
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