Game News Avernum 2: Crystal Souls Released

[Infinitron]

Tags: Avernum 2: Crystal Souls; Spiderweb Software

Avernum 2: Crystal Souls, the latest release from Jeff Vogel's Spiderweb Software, was released today. It's now available on GOG for the price of $20, plus a 15% launch discount, and will show up on Steam later today. Here's the game's description:

Avernum 2: Crystal Souls is an epic, indie fantasy role-playing adventure in a unique, massive world, full of strange caves, cunning dungeons, and the alien inhabitants of the underworld. Fight to complete up to three game-winning quests. Explore a massive nation of tunnels and caverns, seeking over 100 towns and dungeons. Master over 60 spells and battle disciplines and hunt for hundreds of magical artifacts.

The surface world is commanded by the tyrannical Empire, the eternal power that controls all known lands. Everyone who spoke out, misbehaved, or didn’t fit in was cast into the dark, volcanic pits of Avernum, far below the surface. They were meant to die. Instead, these exiles survived, gained power, and struck back. They assassinated the lord of the Empire.

Now the Empire will have revenge. They have invaded Avernum, seizing cave after cave and destroying your people. Your land needs a hero, and it needs it now. If you can’t find a way to stop them, and soon, you are all doomed.

• Epic fantasy adventure with over 40 hours of gameplay. Explore an enormous underworld, with multiple nations, alien cultures, and over 100 towns and dungeons.
• Three separate game-winning quests. There are many ways to fight the invaders. Do just one of them or all three!
• Unique races and settings make Avernum different from any adventure out there.
• Dozens of side quests and hundreds of magical artifacts.
• Rich game system with over 60 spells and battle disciplines and a multitude of beneficial character traits to choose from.

Coming up next, Avadon 3. I wonder what its inspirations will be...

 

[Dayyālu]

Coming up next, Avadon 3. I wonder what its inspirations will be...

Sweet, uncaring Gods. The man would have a stroke if I told him that any of his Geneforges had far better writing and story mechanics than Origins. This is baffling.

That said, .

Vogel is a lost cause.

 

[LusciousPear]

Is it worth investing time into any Spiderweb games? They seem a little autistic to me -- but I mostly just care about story.

 

[Scroo]

Nice, I loved Escape from the Pit (which was the first Vogel game I played), I will definitely get this!

 

[Dayyālu]

Is it worth investing time into any Spiderweb games? They seem a little autistic to me -- but I mostly just care about story.

Define "autistic".

Most Vogel games have a terrible graphical style, and he refused for years to improve them. He's getting better with the remakes (sadly I am burned out/do not care any longer after the Avadons to replay remakes again). Story and C&C are quite good in the GF series. Exile/Avernum is good for exploration, Nethergate is peculiar in its own way.

That said, they are quite solid. Refer to the countless threads the 'Dex has regarding them, from the quite positive opinions on the Exile/Geneforges/Avernum series and Nethergate to the meltdown he had when Avadon was poorly received.

For example, this one:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/my-impressions-of-geneforge-series.86415/

Sorry for the lazy reply.

 

[Johannes]

Is it worth investing time into any Spiderweb games? They seem a little autistic to me -- but I mostly just care about story.

Try Geneforge series. It's indeed a much better setting than DA, the characters don't tend to show very much personality but the overall storyline and setting is quite intelligent even. Nethergate has a p. unique setting as well. Exiles/Avernums are more about just romping through dungeons and collecting loot, story-wise I enjoyed the Blades of Avernum scenarios most of them, which were tighter with the story content I feel. Common problem though is too much trash combat across all his games.


It's really puzzling to see the creator of Geneforges drool over dreck like DA. I wonder what inspired him to create that world in the first place. Codex interview of Vogel could be p. interesting, actually.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Is it worth investing time into any Spiderweb games? They seem a little autistic to me -- but I mostly just care about story.

Try Geneforge, then. I'd start with 4 or 5, but a lot of ppl here favor 1 -- just give any of those three a try.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Codex interview of Vogel could be p. interesting, actually.

There is one. He had it coming after his praise for Fallout 3.

After the lackluster reception of Avadon, he probably won't do another one (at least for a couple of years).

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.fr/2011/05/avadon-out-for-windows-responding-to.html

RPG Codex is an interesting place. It is inhabited by people who like role-playing games, but love hating them. It's full of anger and enough raw bigotry that I would never advertise there. But, if you want to keep your self-esteem under control and read bad things about a game you wrote, go there. Just don't ever let those people get into your head.

 

[Dayyālu]

It's really puzzling to see the creator of Geneforges drool over dreck like DA. I wonder what inspired him to create that world in the first place. Codex interview of Vogel could be p. interesting, actually.

Eh.

http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/misc/interviews/rpgcodex.txt

http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/misc/interviews/rpgcodex2.txt

He did a lot of interviews in ages past. But I doubt that he would have any interests in the 'Dex today. "We" are no longer in any way his target, as Steam and digital services have given him a lot of excellent ways to sell stuff without too much effort. Plus he pretty much admitted that he's burned out and lacks any further creativity and he will keep remaking his games as long as he can.

 

[MRY]

Of all his stuff, I think I enjoyed the first remakes of Exile 1 and 2 (at this point, I can't remember WTF he named them) the most. But all of his games, except to a slight degree Exile 3 and is remake, suffer from the flaw of rewarding tedious player behavior -- in other words, the "check" on boring, repetitive tasks is (I suppose) that they are boring and repetitive, but there is no in-game reason not to pursue them. Thus, if you're compulsive (like me), you wind up spending a huge amount of time ferrying kind of junky items back and forth to town in order to get enough gold to buy stats on level up. And even non-compulsive players are expected to rest, buff, fight, rest, buff, fight, etc., casting the same five spells over and over again because the battles are balanced with the expectation of casting them. It's also hard to figure out how to allocate your non-combat stats (and to some extent, your combat stats) given that after a certain point, upgrading them is useless, but there's no way of knowing that point without metagaming/cheating.

Despite these flaws, the remakes of Exile 1 and 2 have some much going for them -- in particular, the pace at which the game moves (notwithstanding grinding silliness). They're huge but you can move quickly through the maps, which are rich with detail. The plot is conveyed concisely, and while it has more than a little bit of lameness (wasn't there some boss named Limoncello or something?), it works well with the open-world structure. The variety of areas, quests, etc. is all very nice.

Geneforge has a more interesting world and better writing, but for all that, I found it worse because a combination of factors made it feel much slower to me, and the "zone" system of world building was much less interesting. People hate on his graphics, but aside from terrible portraits, I think they're quite good, and Geneforge has more than a few amazing sprites (the living minds, for example).

 

[Infinitron]

Of all his stuff, I think I enjoyed the first remakes of Exile 1 and 2 (at this point, I can't remember WTF he named them)

The remakes were called Avernum (without subtitles). The remakes of the remakes are also Avernum, but with the subtitles of the corresponding Exile games.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

I actually liked Avernum 3 and Blades of Avernum... but felt like it dropped in quality after that, especially when Avernum got "geneforgized" for the lack of a better word. Vogel has been in decline for liike 5 years now.

 

[Vilos Cohaagen]

I enjoyed the Exile series a lot, Exile III being the best of those. Just by reducing the party from 6 to 4 and revamping the magic system, Vogel spoiled the Avernums for me.

Only played one of the Geneforges (can't remember which one) for a short time and got pretty bored. It was extremely linear, with some small islands or something.

 

[MurkyShadow]

I don't recall which Spiderweb games I played. I got the feeling I could have just kept on, but it left me feeling
completely indifferent to the story, the characters, the world or the choices that presented themselves to me.
Would I start them up again I might remember why I didn't remember anything memorable. I think it was one
of the Avernums, maybe be even Avadon.

 

[granit]

Vogel is a hero. Exile I and II are really great, played those so much in my teens. Exile III I never got into, so much slime? Because of my nostalgia reasons or just fine taste I can't play with the modern tilesets, and the oldest tilesets seem to be lost in time and space.

 

[mindx2]

Vogel is a hero. Exile I and II are really great, played those so much in my teens. Exile III I never got into, so much slime? Because of my nostalgia reasons or just fine taste I can't play with the modern tilesets, and the oldest tilesets seem to be lost in time and space.

You know that Exile I, II, and III are free downloads on his sight...

 

[OSK]

Vogel is a hero. Exile I and II are really great, played those so much in my teens. Exile III I never got into, so much slime? Because of my nostalgia reasons or just fine taste I can't play with the modern tilesets, and the oldest tilesets seem to be lost in time and space.

http://www.truesite4blades.com/Home/Others/Exile1-Version1.0.3.zip
http://www.truesite4blades.com/Home/Others/Exile2-Version1.0.2.zip

From here: http://truesite4blades.com/Home/listofalldownloads.html

 

[Kem0sabe]

His codex interview, reading him shiting on ToEE combat and turn based combat in general (because he can only suffer to play his own tb crap), what an insufferable prick.