Avadon is here for windows (kinda)

[Nim]

Looking through the hintbook accessible really seems to be what he went for, wonder if it will get him more customers.

"Also, don’t worry too much about making a mistake. You can retrain your characters by visiting Trainer Leala in the Beraza Woods."

"For most of the game, Avadon has a very linear storyline. You will return to Avadon, receive a mission, and then go complete it."

 

[SuicideBunny]

feels like a tremendous letdown after the last avernum and geneforge.

 

[betamin]

Yeah the last Geneforge was his best IMO

 

[Mastermind]

Why is the ninja dressed like a fucking surgeon?

 

[Saxon1974]

Thought I heard Vogel was going to remake his older games in this new engine? hope so because I like the graphics improvements and walking animation but that's about it. I played the demo for about a half hour and felt pretty bored with avadon from the little I played.

 

[Xi]

Has anyone played it all the way through?

 

[sea]

I signed up to post this, because, what the hell, I've been lurking.

I'm not familiar with any of Vogel's previous work, but I realise that after hearing lots of praise for Geneforge, I probably should get familiar pretty soon (not too much time for gaming right now). I want to clarify right from the start here, so nobody chews me out for it, that I haven't played the whole thing or even the whole demo. This "review" only consists of my experience with the first hour or so of the game. I won't be playing any more of it, though, because it's just kind of painful for me.

The Avadon demo was... okay, yeah, worst qualifier ever, but "decent for a one-man project." The size and scope of the game are commendable, and again, for a single person, it's impressive work (making any game of any size is tough, so he deserves a certain amount of credit just for his perseverance), though I'm not sure what that counts for considering that apparently he's done like a hundred more of these things over the last decade. Honestly, though, if you get rid of that qualifier... it's pretty fucking bad, and hell, I'm a storyfag who only got into RPGs around 2003 with KotOR and only managed to get into better stuff a couple years ago, so my standards should be lower than the majority of Codexers. I mean, I enjoyed Dragon Age and Mass Effect for what they were, but if Vogel is trying to "BioWare up" his games, he's pretty damn short of the mark in everything but aesthetics and minor game features.

Criteria checklist time!

The writing is pretty awful. Aside from some semi-creative (as in, not at all) names for the nations and characters, it's hackneyed and cliched as hell, with exposition-laden dialogue that's both dry to read and completely and utterly uninteresting content-wise, not to mention really hurts character development as everyone is a walking info bomb. Hint to developers: if you are going to add expository dialogue to your game, at least make it vaguely interesting by giving characters real personalities, and by working it into the plot and setting of the game. "I'm new in town, herp derp, tell me everything you know about everything" just doesn't cut it for me. Having NPCs ramble for ten minutes at the slightest chance is not fun, not realistic, and doesn't make your dry, bland lore any less boring. Annoying grammar issues even in the intro movie did not set my expectations very high, and things didn't improve much afterwards.

Companions are boring, boring, boring. I understand not every character has to have some sort of Planescape-style "weirdness value" to them, but aside from the horny elf wizard or whatever she is, pretty much everyone comes across as either a Brooding Badass or "stoic", which isn't so much a character trait as it is just a synonym for boring jackass. I like the concept of working with them on different missions if it means uncovering different side-quests and options for completing those missions, maybe even new endings, but... eh, other than that, I can't see why I would want to deal with them, and the combat is so painfully easy that I don't feel I'd even need them for help with that.

The world and lore of Avadon is pretty dire. Warriors of some ancient order? Okay, haven't done that one before! Our first task as most glorious and prestigious heroes? ... clean the rats out of the cellar? What is this, a JRPG? Oh, and there's been a prison break, which means you have to go round up some prisoners that have escaped, and of course there's no way to actually be diplomatic about it. Oh god, this is starting to sound like Neverwinter Nights. Then, once we've had the inevitable "mystery" thread dangled in front of us, we go up to see Redbeard, whose generic character portrait is almost as cliched as namesake and his short temper. At this point, I almost rage-quit out of frustration. It's like, okay, if you're making a mod, you're going to be limited to what the original setting could provide you... but this is your own entirely new setting! A new world to create as you see fit! And... you go and make the most fucking generic shit. Honestly, the world here is so stale and uninteresting that it'd be easier for me to come up with something genuinely original. Yeah, it's looped around to the point where it's so awful you have to seriously wonder if it was harder just due to all the time spent researching on TV Tropes.

Visuals and level design are fine, I guess. It feels a little roguelike in terms of the buildings being endless mazes with seemingly no purpose, but whether that's an intentional callback or not I'm not quite sure about. Doors that magically lock and unlock depending on plot flags are annoying, though, as is the apparent lack of non-combat skills. The only one I could find was lockpicking (I guess there is crafting later on?), but I couldn't find any doors to unlock, and everything else had a plot condition or key anyway. Overall, nothing terrible, but nothing special. Graphically it gets the job done, so I can't complain, though the characters' super-fast movement and moonwalking animations are a bit jarring at first. Interface has some issues - no easy way to see how many AP your movement will consume without counting tiles (at least that I saw), and your AP remaining are pretty hard to read as well, being placed over the character portraits in a dark, low-contrast font.

Combat has potential, but some of the systems seem goofy. You're given points to sink into your skills on level-up, as well as attributes, but you have to pump lots of points into single skills to see any real effect. So... what's the point, other than making you waste points? If my skill needs to be level 6 to gain an additional effect, isn't it just better to wait until my character level is higher? Or is it supposed to make the player either specialise or be a generalist? Only four attributes, and it seems like there is no point at all to ever put points into your primary one. The skill trees are very linear, and only really give two or so branches per character, with the additional option of pumping more points into existing skills. Yeah, Diablo II actually has better character development and progression than Avadon, at least after glancing at the skill trees. Damn, classless systems are looking more and more tempting by the moment. Also, like I said, combat is so easy that I see little reason to bother with much planning, and right of the bat, my mage was given a massive area stun attack which made things even easier. It's the early stages of the game, but come on, the boss' special ability was to summon some more of the rats I'd already killed about a hundred of.

The sad thing is, attrition would have actually made this a decent dungeon-crawler... no real tactics, but zones of control are fun and there are hints that battles could get really large and bloody, something you don't see too often in CRPGs, and it's fast-paced enough to not get too boring. If there was a real threat of dying, that "I wonder how I'm going to approach this encounter, I'm low on resources and might not make it" train of thought that games like Icewind Dale evoke nicely, it could have been at least somewhat compelling. But what's the point if I have all the healing items in the world, my companions can't get picked off one-by-one, and I instantly regain all health and mana after every single fight? You almost have to work at it to feel even remotely challenged. A game without challenge is a game without tension, and a game without tension is a game that is not emotionally involving. That's not to say you can't have tension without combat, of course, but in a game which is clearly built around combat... yeah, I'd say your combat had damn well better be good.

I didn't play more than an hour, so maybe a lot of my comments will be invalidated later on. Maybe the game surprises by turning all that generic lore on its head and doing some sort of crazy subversion of genre expectations when you're least expecting it. Maybe the combat gets really tactically deep, with huge battlefields, tons of different ways of going about defeating enemies, who have all sorts of weaknesses, strengths, resistances, where terrain makes a difference, etc. Maybe the story is genuinely interesting once you get past all the dry, bland exposition. But one thing's for sure, I'll never see all of that, because I couldn't stand playing Avadon for more than an hour before uninstalling it.[/i]

 

[Gondolin]

Has anyone played it all the way through?

I couldn't bring myself to even finish the demo. It seems that Vogel's games are a hit and miss affair and this one is a miss. I wouldn't call it shit, but it's definitely banal and boring. Final score: 2 out of 3 Skyway Points.


@sea

Good points, dude. Welcome to the Dex.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Tried the demo...played worse...but not from Vogel.

All of the people talking about "Bioware" have got it right; this game reminds me of somebody attempting one of their games on a budget. Rage was induced successfully, if that is what Jeff was hoping for. Meanwhile, all the mainstreamers will look at the screenshots with open mouths, laugh and move back to their Bioware romances.

There...there aren't any romances in this bloody thing, are there?

Not amused Vogel. Not amused.

 

[Waterd103]

I didnt play the game, Having said that im shocked at people complaining about NO CHALLENGE, And more important about how it restores all your HP And MP after the battles.

Then come to name Avernum/geneforge and Icewind dale. Those games had challenge?

Both games have the same problem, you can rest/Bombard through all the game.
In those games after a battle you dont restore your HP and MP or spells, why? Yeah I wonder why because you can still REST and restore all the HP and spells.

So having to press the rest button (or making the char walk all the way to the safe place, wich is annoying but not harder than just clicking a button) to regain all the hp and Spell and then walk again to the last place, is the difference between no challenge and a challenge? Is suddenly challenging to press the rest button?

In all bioware games (old , new and you choose), Toee, Avernum, you technically just get all the HP and spells back after every fight (with few irrelevant exceptions that represent around 5-10% of the time you play).
But you have to press a few buttons, (walk to the safe place, press the rest button), to do it. Now a designer decided to make things easier and just remove the need to press rest, and suddenly a game went from challenge , strategic or whatever to not?

It doesnt make sense. No spiderweb game ever presented any challenge, nor did any bioware games, you could just Bombard/Rest through the games without ever being in a real danger.

So if you want to say games need to be challenging, I agree, If you think this game is bland , ok whatever. But dont say this game is not challenging because you get autorest and resurrect and the call on games that do THE EXACT SAME THING.

 

[Fowyr]

"Rest" button is always better than automatic restore. Because sometimes you fucking can't rest and can't leave dungeon. Play Exile 3 for example. Also with sooo innovative mechanic you will never have things like lava fields in Exile, where you can travel it without Firewalk spell, but relying on clever use of healing spells and Luck skill.

 

[sea]

...

I agree in some senses, though I feel you're oversimplifying the issue. You can't rest everywhere without mods installed, and even when resting you risk getting caught with your pants down in a random encounter (which can actually be quite dangerous sometimes). While arguably running back and forth between safe spots is a bit of an artificial barrier since it relies less on real challenge and more on exploiting the player's (im)patience, I'd still prefer manual resting with some risk to it over being at 100% strength every single fight, with no chance of ever really losing.

Also, most Infinity Engine games have pretty challenging combat (Planescape being the major exception). The first encounter in Icewind Dale will outright murder you if you don't know what you're doing and don't have a near-perfect party, and it only really goes uphill for most of the game. Baldur's Gate largely does the same although it's a bit more open-ended so the challenge is kind of up to the player's own actions. Good encounter design also helps a lot, and you have to be smart in prioritising targets, using choke points intelligently, etc. Avadon has... pretty much none of that, from all I saw, not even a hint of it.

Let's put your argument in another context. In a first-person shooter, you might say that running back to get a respawning health kit in the first level every time you take damage removes all challenge from the game, because you can just keep running backwards to the first level over and over. But that's not fun, and it's not how the game is intended to be played, and you'd frankly have to be kind of a masochist to do it.

Short version: you want challenge, maybe you should stop abusing the rest feature after every fight. That's not how the game is meant to be played, but Avadon assumes you want to do it that way and forces you to even though it means the game is horrendously easy and, as a consequence, more boring/less involving.

 

[Severian Silk]

Meh. If he remakes the Geneforges/Avernums using this engine at least we'll have that to look forward to.

(Assuming he retains or improves upon the combat mechanics of the last Geneforge/Avernum title.)

 

[Waterd103]

I agree in some senses, though I feel you're oversimplifying the issue. You can't rest everywhere without mods installed, and even when resting you risk getting caught with your pants down in a random encounter (which can actually be quite dangerous sometimes).

In none of the games I mentioned you need any mod to have access to a resting place during 90-95% of the game. So im not sure what we are talking about here.

While arguably running back and forth between safe spots is a bit of an artificial barrier since it relies less on real challenge and more on exploiting the player's (im)patience, I'd still prefer manual resting with some risk to it over being at 100% strength every single fight, with no chance of ever really losing.

Same here, but thats the situation on most of these games.

Also, most Infinity Engine games have pretty challenging combat (Planescape being the major exception).

I cant agree here, infinity engine games , you can just bombard/rest through the whole game without ever a chance of losing unless you never pause (which is the most powerful weapon in the game and basically the reason the games are not challenging at all).

But again, the whole point is that infinite games do not have challenging fights, you just bombard/rest through all the game.

Let's put your argument in another context. In a first-person shooter, you might say that running back to get a respawning health kit in the first level every time you take damage removes all challenge from the game, because you can just keep running backwards to the first level over and over. But that's not fun, and it's not how the game is intended to be played, and you'd frankly have to be kind of a masochist to do it.

"thats not how the game is intended to be played" is a statement that as far as i know it has no backup (if there is I would like to see it). There is no mechanic for you to stop doing it, nor there is any implication in the manual that you in fact you shouldnt. And im talking about looking for a safe spot to rest, so you can bombard again.
If the game wasnt intended to be played in X way, then there should be mechanics to prevent the player doing so. If there arent, and its not like bioware or spiderweb software did just one game. We can assume that is in the designer intention to be used and be part of the game.

Also I dont find one need to be masochist for just looking a place to rest in the game.
What is true is that If one party ends dying because it didnt look for a place to rest when it had access to it, It just made me a very bad decision maker and I can only blame my stupidity to not use a powerfull available resource that as far as i know its intended by the game designer to be used.

I want a challenge , I want to see if me taking the best decisions to my knowledge can put my party through the dangers the game presents, both as a gamer and as someone watching a story where the members have to take decisions of life and death. If the best decision is to go rest for survival, that option is a available and I dont use it and my party dies because of it, Im just fail on my own incompetence.

Short version: you want challenge, maybe you should stop abusing the rest feature after every fight. That's not how the game is meant to be played, but Avadon assumes you want to do it that way and forces you to even though it means the game is horrendously easy and, as a consequence, more boring/less involving.

How do I stop abusing the rest feature? there is no indication in the manual or in the game help files or mechanics, How much i should rest. How much is "abusing".
We could at least blame the game designers of those games, If they didnt intend me to rest after every fight to give me an indication of it.
But since it seems you are claiming THere is an indication, since you claim "thats not how the game was intent to be played" I would like to know at least , how I determine how much rest Is abuse, and Lets say in icewind dale 2, how much rest "is too much rest" , So next time I play a spiderweb software game or bioware game, I dont rest too much and can have any kind of challenge in those games.

 

[7hm]

Meh. If he remakes the Geneforges/Avernums using this engine at least we'll have that to look forward to.

(Assuming he retains or improves upon the combat mechanics of the last Geneforge/Avernum title.)

Avernum was dumbed down Exile.

The way he's going his remake of Avernum will be a very poor graphic action rpg.

 

[Gondolin]

Then come to name Avernum/geneforge and Icewind dale. Those games had challenge?

Yea, they did. My low level character from Geneforge 5 was killed by a rogue augmented thad in the Promenade, by poisoning fucking worms in the Shaper test area and, IIRC, by roamers in the same area. That taught me to be more careful, especially about the goddamn poison.

 

[pocahaunted]

I'm not sure, but, wow, is this the first time the 'dex is in complete and utter agreement?

I was interested in at least checking this game out eventually but seeing as everyone's pretty unanimously bashing it I'm not so sure anymore. Might try the demo a few months down the road, but I probably won't bother as time is scarce enough as is. Oh well, a pity, really.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Having to walk somewhere safe to rest is a good thing because it gives a good moment to save game and stop playing instead of getting continuously thrown into more and more action.

RPGs could use some consequences of rest, though.

 

[visions]

RPGs could use some consequences of rest, though.

More quests with time limits perhaps, or something else that would make the advancement of time not particularly desirable, to encourage the player to try to accomplish as much as possible in little game time. Properly implemented food mechanics could help to do this as well.

 

[Mortmal]

Previous avernum and geneforge definitively had challenging fights, some rather well thought tactical encounters, especially in geneforge where i wiped a few times. Now off course you can argue its still not especially hard but what would you say of kotor or dragon age 2 fights then?
Nope after playing the last avernum and geneforge i am disapointed by avadon, its still enjoyable i suppose we have seen much much worse lately , its not a train wreck like DA2 or arcania.Still theres almost no rpg released anymore and none of them was good .
Not much we can do about it, you dont buy it he goes down and dont produce anything anymore, you buy it , it may send the wrong message and the next game will be even more streamlined . Hope he gets out of his bioware dream soon.

 

[Archibald]

Challenging fights usually happen because that encounter is well designed. Rarely they happen because you were almost wasted in previous fight and couldn`t rest.

 

[DraQ]

Wait, I never got into previous Vogel's games, but didn't they at least have an advantage of being somewhat original and thus interesting?

What's the point in making generic, low-budget, buggy borefest when the market is already overflowing with generic, high-budget, buggy borefests?

 

[sea]

RPGs could use some consequences of rest, though.

More quests with time limits perhaps, or something else that would make the advancement of time not particularly desirable, to encourage the player to try to accomplish as much as possible in little game time. Properly implemented food mechanics could help to do this as well.

I was thinking about this too, and I actually looked to the STALKER series, especially the first game.

The big hallmark of the first one, at least for me, was that it was less a shooter and more a game about resource management. The biggest rewards in terms of both story and gameplay were always farther and farther away from the nearest safe point (the Bar), and you usually had to fight through lots of tough enemies to get to them. Once you actually explored the area, though, you often had no health items, food etc. left over to get you back home, and so it became a delicate balancing game of trying to bring as much valuable loot back to sell, while at the same time having enough inventory space and healing items left over to actually survive the trip. That tension of "I've been through X18, but I have 3 bullets for my pistol left and am slowly bleeding out, now what" was where I really "got" the game.

Implemented in an RPG, I think this would work really well. It wouldn't even be that hard... get rid of healing magic, instant-heal items, etc., and nerf resting so that, while you will heal some, it gives diminishing returns until you, say, get back to an inn, chapel etc. That way you would encourage the player to go "just a little more" for the reward at the end of the dungeon, without allowing for spamming rest, since its effects would become more and more useless the more you used it. There are some wounds you just can't sleep off, right? Another way to do this is link the amount healed to food supplies, so each party member would consume X amount of food per rest, maybe more if they were injured previously (can justify it as them needing to regain their strength). That way you would maintain the ability to rest and continue forward while also tying a reasonable limitation to it, and one which would be balanced - smaller party might be able to rest more, but would be weaker in combat.

Sorry, kind of went off-topic there. I'll go away now.

 

[Johannes]

I agree with water103 that easy resting/returning to town made a lot of fights in Vogels games, and IE games if you want to talk about them too, pretty trivial. Even if there was some parts where you couldn't rest, or a single battle was hard even with full preparation, those were the good parts of course. And in BG1 (and some rare areas in Spiderweb games iirc) for example, you had respawning mobs that discouraged it a bit.
And naturally I'd like to see more of the good, challenging elements replace the meaningless trash mobs.

Health regen after every fight might be a good design choice, IF every fight was a dangerous life-threatening affair in itself. But that quite doesn't seem to be the case in Avadon, it's the same as ever, only the boss fights require thinking, no matter what difficulty. It's not really worse than Avernum/Geneforge besides how you cannot design an area that doesn't allow resting (though having some of the plentiful energy/essence potions gave the same function as resting in Avernum/Geneforge even in the no-rest areas), but it's definitely the wrong direction to take to fix this issue for me.

He should do a game where every dungeon is similar to the final and challenge areas in his games, instead of this. Those show he's capable of designing nice and tough battles, he just chooses not to :/

 

[Excidium]

How do I stop abusing the rest feature? there is no indication in the manual or in the game help files or mechanics, How much i should rest. How much is "abusing".
We could at least blame the game designers of those games, If they didnt intend me to rest after every fight to give me an indication of it.
But since it seems you are claiming THere is an indication, since you claim "thats not how the game was intent to be played" I would like to know at least , how I determine how much rest Is abuse, and Lets say in icewind dale 2, how much rest "is too much rest" , So next time I play a spiderweb software game or bioware game, I dont rest too much and can have any kind of challenge in those games.

You know you're abusing the resting feature when you sleep after almost every battle, just to heal everyone from the minor wounds you had and get your most powerful magic spells back, instead of just using all tools in your arsenal and sleeping only when it's needed. Because of the way magic is handled in D&D it should be very easy to notice when you're abusing the rest feature in IWD2.

Designers should counter resting abuse by making it leave the party open to ambush by nearby creatures while they're sleeping...IE games had that happen in the wilderness if I recall correctly but in dungeons you could sleep all day and the skeletons on the next room would just patiently wait. In older RPG's you could not only get ambushed but some of your party members would still be sleeping, making the fight a lot more dangerous.