Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV Pre-Release Thread [RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Tell that to the Black Mountain Clan.

 

While I recently threw away five books of graph paper full of maps from the games I've played the past couple of years.

 

Fuck graph paper and spinner traps. I'm too old for that nonsense!

 

Sometimes one needs to take a break from interactive movies and dating simulations and grab that graph paper.

 

There are games that feature amazing yet believable dungeon design, e.g. the RoA series. The dwarven mine near Riva, for instance, is really just an abandoned dwarven mine that is now occupied by orcs, with bedrooms, a dining hall, and so on. The threats you face make sense: lethal gas in an abandoned shaft, a spider nest that the orcs use as a mass grave, some kind of eel in an underground river, and so on. There's some concessions to fantasy tropes such as a human skeleton guarding a magic sword, but they do not ruin the mood. The more ludicrous dungeons are given proper context (e.g. the insane Phex temple dungeon in Star Trail was deliberately designed as a testing chamber by the priests).

As a result the dungeons feel a lot more natural than what you get in, say, Arena or MM6 (which doesn't mean that those dungeons aren't amazing in their own right). Wizardry 8's starter dungeon also feels very organic, too bad the rest of the game never quite reaches that level of dungeon design again until one gets to Rapax castle. Albion also has some nice designs. One could even include Deus Ex or Thief here.

In sum: could somebody please make a modern blobber with dungeons that feel like they're actually meant to be inhabited? Pwetty pweeaase? It's not impossible, it's been done before.

 

I'd rather grab cock and watch some noninteractive movies instead. At least time would not be wasted.

 

I am okay with dungeons that make no sense, depending on the game. Sheep's stupid spaghetti villain can be OK in some settings. I have no special attachment to Bard's Tale dungeons making sense.

 

I'd love to have the best of both worlds, but if I were to choose between realistic dungeons that feature only combat and nonsensical dungeons with puzzles and other environment interactions, I'd go with the latter without a second though.
Although to be honest I don't really trust Fargo & Co to do either.

 

Bard's Tale already took a turn towards casual with Batchspell.

 

This got me thinking, what game had the best blobber dungeons? I would have to say that Wizardry 7 was devilishly great, too bad the limitations of the time had every type of dungeon (cave, forest, etc) looking the same but they had some pretty nifty puzzles and enounter design. I just loived how any battle could possibly turn dangerous if you didnt pay attention or if the enemy hit you will a well placed fear spell.
Another game that had some pretty good design and is woefuly unheralded is Black Crypt.
Lastly the dungeons in the Man Date of Hevan were pretty well designed and probably the best of the series as a whole

 

Wizards&Warriors hands down.
It's quite possibly the only game, that has both environmental challenges, that are only possible in RT, and TB combat. Plus the way highly interactive environments are woven into puzzle design is simply ingenious.

 

I really liked Legend of Fearghail, and many recent japanese blobbers are rather good.
But being able to interact with environment would be indeed much better.

 

DM+CSB, why are we even having this discussion?

 

Chaos Strikes Back

Really? After CSB Black Crypt's level design was rather disappointing to me, with each level being self contained. What I really liked about CSB was that it was a three dimensional dungeon, with all the levels being interconnected with numerous stairways and pits.
Still, I must rate BC as my third favourite real time blobber after CSB and Dungeon Master.

 

I never met anyone who used graph paper and hated it. They either liked it or gave up. Using real world objects to interact with a virtual world made games more immersive. My brother and I use to play Steel thunder on C64, and we'd set the room up like we were inside of a tank using blankets and chairs. This made the game twice as fun. It's the same reason the old guard still likes boxed copies and real maps and manuals. Fuck the haters.

 

Gotta say, I'm pretty excited about this. Never played the originals, but they look pretty awesome on you tube (I think that is a re-release, not the originals?) Combat is pretty similar to Wasteland 1, which I played for the first time just before W2 came out. Might have to do the same here.

Anyway, forums are up.

 

Can't brofist enough. Startropics is still my favorite NES game because at some point it asks you for a code that is nowhere in the game. Instead, you have to deduce from a clue that you should take the letter that came with the game and dip it in water to reveal a secret message with the code. Never again has my mind been this blown by a game.

Edit: Oh, and it also forces you to play as a m2f transgender at some point.

 

Are you sure the game doesn't just put you in a dress at some point like Gabriel Knight:SotF does?

 

As far as I remember you have to give a special item to a witch, who then performs some kind of spell and you suddenly have long hair and you're wearing a red dress. But you're right that the game is a little vague about what exactly is happening.

 

If I recall, that kind of thing has been done in games quite a lot, BG did it too with the gender girdle. The thing is though, it has always been done as a laugh, not as some kind of empowerment statement for the minorities. It's the fact that you're no longer supposed to laugh at such absurdities incase you hurt some poor flower's feelings, and the fact that we now just have to nod and say stuff like "how insightful"

Absurd has now become the watch word.

EDITED for spolling.

 

Yeah, these are ancient story tropes. The earliest one I can think of is the Þrymskviða, the Norse equivalent of a fluffy sitcom episode where both Thor and Loki appear in drag (makes you wonder why that hasn't made it into the Marvel movies yet, the Tom Hiddleston fangirls would love it). I'm sure monocled codexers can think of similar stories with comedic intent from Greek mythology, possibly even Egyptian or Babylonian.

 

Well, Marvel Thor is a woman now, although instead of actually changing the character, this is one (and probably the only) case where I would have advocated having the real Thor undergo some kind of transfiguration and actually turn into a woman.. then we could have the jokes AND the social commentary. Instead of it just being a case of sidelining a popular character in favour of cynically pandering to a presently popluarist feminist outlook, which was the only reason they did it.

 

So Fargo can only recycle old games. Milk the nostalgia button.
Well it work$.

 

In the new Marvel universe, Wolverine is a statue, The X-Men and Fantastic Four are gone, Cpt. America and Spiderman are black, and Thor is a woman. The only thing left at this point is to make Tony Stark gay .