Darklands

[Parsifarka]

Nethergate, by the prestigious Vogel.

 

[Invictus]

Ah Darklands... still my favorite game more than 25 years later, there will never be something like it

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Architectural trends come and go. I think there are enough Gothic buildings in Europe, I also should remind you when Gothic architecture first came to be in France it was ridiculed and held in contempt by most of the intelligentsia of the day, they called it barbaric and tasteless hence the name Gothic.

The term 'Gothic' wasn't applied to Gothic architecture until the Renaissance, and the appelation was erroneous since this architectural style originated in Normandy & England in the late-11th century and soon spread to the Ile-de-France where it developed into a coherent style.

 

[FreeKaner]

The term 'Gothic' wasn't applied to Gothic architecture until the Renaissance, and the appelation was erroneous since this architectural style originated in Normandy & England in the late-11th century and soon spread to the Ile-de-France where it developed into a coherent style.

Gothic architecture is from Northern France and especially Ile-de-france, not England. Since you said "Normany & England" instead of France I assume you are English. Yes, the term comes from after the buildings were already being built, as is the case for terms that describe loose trends in general which are applied retroactively. However Gothic style buildings were still being built while they were being called "Gothic" in derision.

 

[hivemind]

I think he's one of (((Them))) so your agenda guess is incorrect

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Architectural trends come and go. I think there are enough Gothic buildings in Europe, I also should remind you when Gothic architecture first came to be in France it was ridiculed and held in contempt by most of the intelligentsia of the day, they called it barbaric and tasteless hence the name Gothic.

The term 'Gothic' wasn't applied to Gothic architecture until the Renaissance, and the appelation was erroneous since this architectural style originated in Normandy & England in the late-11th century and soon spread to the Ile-de-France where it developed into a coherent style.

Gothic architecture is from Northern France and especially Ile-de-france, not England. Since you said "Normany & England" instead of France I assume you are English. Yes, the term comes from after the buildings were already being built, as is the case for terms that describe loose trends in general which are applied retroactively. However Gothic style buildings were still being built while they were being called "Gothic" in derision.

Yes, Normandy is in northern France and is the location (along with post-Norman conquest England) of the earliest examples of Gothic architecture, although it only became fully developed in the mid-12th century after spreading to the region around Paris (the Ile-de-France, also in northern France). It is not true, as you claimed that "when Gothic architecture first came to be in France it was ridiculed and held in contempt by most of the intelligentsia of the day, they called it barbaric and tasteless hence the name Gothic"; this style of architecture was embraced and spread rather quickly by the standards of the pre-modern world, and the term "Gothic" was applied retroactively three centuries after its development.

 

[FreeKaner]

Yes, Normandy is in northern France and is the location (along with post-Norman conquest England) of the earliest examples of Gothic architecture, although it only became fully developed in the mid-12th century after spreading to the region around Paris (the Ile-de-France, also in northern France). It is not true, as you claimed that "when Gothic architecture first came to be in France it was ridiculed and held in contempt by most of the intelligentsia of the day, they called it barbaric and tasteless hence the name Gothic"; this style of architecture was embraced and spread rather quickly by the standards of the pre-modern world, and the term "Gothic" was applied retroactively three centuries after its development.

You said it's from Normandy and England, this is not true. It did not originate in Normandy or England, the first buildings that can be called Gothic are in Ile-de-France. They spread to Normandy and England afterwards. The architectural style was being called Gothic while they were still being build, so it was retroactive terminology but also concurrent criticism. Anything else you are saying is side information not related to my original point.

 

[Jonas]

If anyone has a shot at Darklands like game it would be the logic artists people. Jonas or Avonaeon or Atomic still around? Would you be interested in a venture of this form? Darklands needs a turn based reboot.

Sure, a Darklands reboot would be right up our alley. But ugh though, hard pass on having to figure out those IP rights. We've got more than enough on our plate right now anyway
Thanks for thinking of us though!

 

[Brancaleone]

But ugh though, hard pass on having to figure out those IP rights.

Can't you just pillage them?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Better yet, combine Aterdux Entertainment and Logic artists into one single studio to release the most Darklands game ever.

 

[Life of the Party]

the most Darklands game ever

 

[hivemind]

darklands is like arcanum

a game that by all rights(excluding combat) should have been amazing, but just wasn't

 

[Bladeract]

darklands is like arcanum

a game that by all rights(excluding combat) should have been amazing, but just wasn't

I've never wanted to smash someone's face to pieces for an internet post before this second.

 

[CaffeineConquistador]

Architectural trends come and go. I think there are enough Gothic buildings in Europe, I also should remind you when Gothic architecture first came to be in France it was ridiculed and held in contempt by most of the intelligentsia of the day, they called it barbaric and tasteless hence the name Gothic.

The term 'Gothic' wasn't applied to Gothic architecture until the Renaissance, and the appelation was erroneous since this architectural style originated in Normandy & England in the late-11th century and soon spread to the Ile-de-France where it developed into a coherent style.

Gothic architecture is from Northern France and especially Ile-de-france, not England. Since you said "Normany & England" instead of France I assume you are English. Yes, the term comes from after the buildings were already being built, as is the case for terms that describe loose trends in general which are applied retroactively. However Gothic style buildings were still being built while they were being called "Gothic" in derision.

Yes, Normandy is in northern France and is the location (along with post-Norman conquest England) of the earliest examples of Gothic architecture, although it only became fully developed in the mid-12th century after spreading to the region around Paris (the Ile-de-France, also in northern France). It is not true, as you claimed that "when Gothic architecture first came to be in France it was ridiculed and held in contempt by most of the intelligentsia of the day, they called it barbaric and tasteless hence the name Gothic"; this style of architecture was embraced and spread rather quickly by the standards of the pre-modern world, and the term "Gothic" was applied retroactively three centuries after its development.

Gothic originated in the Ile-de-France region, so suck it and deal with it.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

darklands is like arcanum

a game that by all rights(excluding combat) should have been amazing, but just wasn't

I've never wanted to smash someone's face to pieces for an internet post before this second.

Let it go, he's got inferior genes due to his race.

 

[The Avatar]

I'm curious as to what a modern successor to Darklands would even look like. There is a lot in that game that was perfectly fine back in 1992, but wouldn't fly today. The combat in particular. Real-time with pause is fine, but would be quite bland without any "abilities" to activate, unless you wanted to have miracles be abilities- but that may be getting in to too much magic.

Part of the fun was just exploring, but would the overworld map + menu-driven gameplay work in a 2018 game? I guess Pillars of Eternity kind of does that, but only for small parts of the game.

 

[Nutria]

I think the menu-driven part absolutely would work today. It cuts out the tedium of walking around town trying to find shopkeepers and crap like that. If I wanted to waste my life wandering around in a 3D world, I could just leave my house and do it in real life. And it lets you tell a much richer story than you could in a 3D game because you don't need to spend an enormous amount of money on character animation and cut scenes. Just give me some words and a picture and I can imagine something better than all the artists at Ubisoft can make.

Combat would definitely need more to it. Making armor penetration be the core mechanic that everything else revolves around was a good idea, but the player would have to be given more to do.

But really, I'd accept a game as a "modern successor to Darklands" even if it was mechanically quite different. I'd just like to finally play another RPG that actually rips off its ideas from history, not Tolkien.

 

[Boleskine]

The Digital Antiquarian looks at Darklands:

https://www.filfre.net/2019/03/darklands/

Darklands
22 Mar

Darklands may well have been the most original single CRPG of the 1990s, but its box art was planted firmly in the tacky CRPG tradition. I’m not sure that anyone in Medieval Germany really looked much like these two…

Throughout the 1980s and well into the 1990s, the genres of the adventure game and the CRPG tended to blend together, in magazine columns as well as in the minds of ordinary gamers. I thus considered it an early point of order for this history project to attempt to identify the precise differences between the genres. Rather than addressing typical surface attributes — a CRPG, many a gamer has said over the years, is an adventure game where you also have to kill monsters — I tried to peek under the hood and identify what really makes the two genres tick. At bottom, I decided, the difference was one of design philosophy. The adventure game focuses on set-piece, handcrafted puzzles and other unique interactions, simulating the world that houses them only to the degree that is absolutely necessary. (This latter is especially true of the point-and-click graphic adventures that came to dominate the field after the 1980s; indeed, throughout gaming history, the trend in adventure games has been to become less rather than more ambitious in terms of simulation.) The CRPG, meanwhile, goes in much more for simulation, to a large degree replacing set-piece behaviors with systems of rules which give scope for truly emergent experiences that were never hard-coded into the design.

Another clear difference between the two genres, however, is in the scope of their fictions’ ambitions. Since the earliest days of Crowther and Woods and Scott Adams, adventure games have roamed widely across the spectrum of storytelling; Infocom alone during the 1980s hit on most of the viable modern literary genres, from the obvious (fantasy, science fiction) to the slightly less obvious (mysteries, thrillers) to the downright surprising (romance novels, social satires). CRPGs, on the other hand, have been plowing more or less the same small plot of fictional territory for decades. How many times now have groups of stalwart men and ladies set forth to conquer the evil wizard? While we do get the occasional foray into science fiction — usually awkwardly hammered into a frame of gameplay conventions more naturally suited to heroic fantasy — it’s for the most part been J.R.R. Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons, over and over and over again.

This seeming lack of adventurousness (excuse the pun!) among CRPG designers raises some interesting questions. Can the simulation-oriented approach only be made to work within a strictly circumscribed subset of possible virtual worlds? Or is the lack of variety in CRPGs down to a simple lack of trying? An affirmative case for the latter question might be made by Origin Systems’s two rather wonderful Worlds of Ultima games of the early 1990s, which retained the game engine from the more traditional fantasy CRPG Ultima VI but moved it into settings inspired by the classic adventure tales of Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells. Sadly, though, Origin’s customers seemed not to know what to make of Ultima games not taking place in a Renaissance Faire world, and both were dismal commercial failures — thus providing CRPG makers with a strong external motivation to stick with high fantasy, whatever the abstract limits of the applicability of the CRPG formula to fiction might be.

Our subject for today — Darklands, the first CRPG ever released by MicroProse Software — might be described as the rebuttal to the case made by the Worlds of Ultima games, in that its failings point to some of the intrinsic limits of the simulation-oriented approach. Then again, maybe not; today, perhaps even more so than when it was new, this is a game with a hardcore fan base who love it with a passion, even as other players, like the one who happens to be writing this article, see it as rather collapsing under the weight of its ambition and complexity. Whatever your final verdict on it, it’s undeniable that Darklands is overflowing with original ideas for a genre which, even by the game’s release year of 1992, had long since settled into a set of established expectations. By upending so many of them, it became one of the most intriguing CRPGs ever made.

Visit the link for the full article.

 

[Nutria]

Exactly what I expected from him. If he thinks the mechanics of Darklands are complex, he'd better shut down the PC and pick up a phone with Candy Crush on it. It's the world you play in that's complex, and that confuses and frightens our poor reviewer. While he calls himself an "Antiquarian" he shits his pants whenever he runs into people or ideas from even 1-2 generations ago. When he found himself left on a side street of a medieval German city he must have been utterly terrified. And while he only mentions it in an oblique way...

he thus went to great pains to praise the modern “vigorous, healthy, and far more spiritual [Catholic] Church whose quiet role around the globe is more altruistic and beneficial than many imagine.” Likewise, he attempted to separate modern conceptions of Satanism and witchcraft from those of Medieval times. Still, the attempt to build a wall between the Christianity of the 15th century and that of today cannot be entirely successful; at the end of the day, we are dealing with the same religion, albeit in two very different historical contexts.

...his paranoid fear of Christianity made this game unpalatable for him. Even 600 years and a semi-fictional setting doesn't give him enough emotional distance to keep from being butthurt. He's got an extremely narrow range of beliefs that he's willing to engage with and he can't be comfortable with any content that strays from it.

It only pisses me off this much because he puts a lot of effort into research and he's not stupid. I read every post he made for a long time. But I'm sick of seeing where time after time he tears down the work of someone better than him because their politics 30 years ago didn't agree exactly with his politics today.

 

[Grauken]

I dunno, he seems pretty stupid to me

 

[octavius]

I gave up reading her a long time ago.

 

[Tweed]

Wow, and people pay money for this?

 

[Latro]

Exactly what I expected from him. If he thinks the mechanics of Darklands are complex, he'd better shut down the PC and pick up a phone with Candy Crush on it. It's the world you play in that's complex, and that confuses and frightens our poor reviewer. While he calls himself an "Antiquarian" he shits his pants whenever he runs into people or ideas from even 1-2 generations ago. When he found himself left on a side street of a medieval German city he must have been utterly terrified. And while he only mentions it in an oblique way...

he thus went to great pains to praise the modern “vigorous, healthy, and far more spiritual [Catholic] Church whose quiet role around the globe is more altruistic and beneficial than many imagine.” Likewise, he attempted to separate modern conceptions of Satanism and witchcraft from those of Medieval times. Still, the attempt to build a wall between the Christianity of the 15th century and that of today cannot be entirely successful; at the end of the day, we are dealing with the same religion, albeit in two very different historical contexts.

...his paranoid fear of Christianity made this game unpalatable for him. Even 600 years and a semi-fictional setting doesn't give him enough emotional distance to keep from being butthurt. He's got an extremely narrow range of beliefs that he's willing to engage with and he can't be comfortable with any content that strays from it.

It only pisses me off this much because he puts a lot of effort into research and he's not stupid. I read every post he made for a long time. But I'm sick of seeing where time after time he tears down the work of someone better than him because their politics 30 years ago didn't agree exactly with his politics today.

dunno, on the flip-side you have Sawyer who loves the game but is a complete douchebag when it comes to religion and quite obviously dislikes anything even vaguely Catholic. I can respect Sawyer's love for the game but I won't pretend to respect the guy himself.

 

[Dorateen]

This Digital Aquarium guy is like a fish out of water when writing about computer role-playing games.

 

[FreeKaner]

dunno, on the flip-side you have Sawyer who loves the game but is a complete douchebag when it comes to religion and quite obviously dislikes anything even vaguely Catholic. I can respect Sawyer's love for the game but I won't pretend to respect the guy himself.

Where do you get this idea that Sawyer dislikes anything even vaguely catholic? Is that your meme intuition because he is supposed to be a "leftie"? Stop inventing your own reality based on your preconceptions, don't be dumb.