Darklands

[rusty_shackleford]

Boomers will cry about horse armor dlc then jack off to games that have content added specifically to make money off of 1900 tiplines and clue books.
Open up basically any manual for a game made before ~2000 and one of the first things you see is an ad for their predatory 1-900 tip service.

 

[Humbaba]

The same old NPC-Boomer rhetoric we've all heard loads of times.

Same point as before, I won't repeat myself.

 

[Humbaba]

Ok so you apparently don't get the mcguffin if you fight your way out of the crypt, that bit's a just a trap, good to know. Thing is I have the recipe for the purification potion but the alchemist isn't skilled enough to craft it. Don't know the proper saint neither. So much for that quest then! On the bright side, my party can actually earn good money in towns. Wouldn't be a Germany themed game if it didn't teach the player the value of honest work.

 

[DavidBVal]

The same old NPC-Boomer rhetoric we've all heard loads of times.

Same point as before, I won't repeat myself.

Fair enough.

 

[Humbaba]

Eres demasiado viejo para comportarte así, madrileñito.

 

[Comte_II]

Jesus this thread is making me want to fire up darklands again. Slaying robber knights, getting my shit kicked in by other vagrants in the city park where my party lives. Working odd jobs to survive. This game is the ultimate murderhobo simulator.

 

[Humbaba]

Do it then, I'm starting to get into it myself and I don't even like DOS games much. But Darklands is low key visionary and surprisingly modern. Use MT32 emulation for good music.

 

[DavidBVal]

Jesus this thread is making me want to fire up darklands again. Slaying robber knights, getting my shit kicked in by other vagrants in the city park where my party lives. Working odd jobs to survive. This game is the ultimate murderhobo simulator.

I don't think I've had more fun with an RPG except maybe with Pool of Radiance. It's been like 30 years and I still remember that storm in the overland map and then everything covered in snow. And when alchemy goes wrong at an inn.

 

[Serus]

Jesus this thread is making me want to fire up darklands again. Slaying robber knights, getting my shit kicked in by other vagrants in the city park where my party lives. Working odd jobs to survive. This game is the ultimate murderhobo simulator.

I don't think I've had more fun with an RPG except maybe with Pool of Radiance. It's been like 30 years and I still remember that storm in the overland map and then everything covered in snow. And when alchemy goes wrong at an inn.

I don't remember the last part. Sounds interesting. Was "I burnt your inn but that was a fire potion gone wrong!"

I'm not a graphic whore but a faithful(!) remake would be nice. Add high quality background images in the same style and in good quality. Add better graphics in "isometric" mode. Modernise the UI a bit, both in combat and the inventory screen. Add the ability to speed up the game when exploring. Maybe add a few additional enemies and encounters on world map but only as an optional content. And the lacking graphic for medium shield, that always annoyed me.
Is it asking for too much?

 

[Galdred]

Boomers will cry about horse armor dlc then jack off to games that have content added specifically to make money off of 1900 tiplines and clue books.
Open up basically any manual for a game made before ~2000 and one of the first things you see is an ad for their predatory 1-900 tip service.

It's not that bad. I remember having to connect to their Minitel service

to get through some clues in Silmarils games (Ishar, Robinson Requiem, ...).
You got charged something like 1 € for 2 minutes of reading...

Anyway, what I loved in Darklands was the way the cities still conveyed some atmosphere without wasting your time going from one place to another on screen.

 

[rezaf]

I'm not a graphic whore but a faithful(!) remake would be nice.

I actually think more content (a ton more) would be even more important.
You can still play the game allright, but as you do, it becomes much more appearant how litte content and how much repetition there actually is. And consulting the cluebook quickly reveals how little you missed.

I played Darklands a couple of years back, and while it's still a fantastic, pretty unique experience, realizing how thin it is on content is a little disheartening. I even achieved some things I think I missed back in the day, thanks to guides and the cluebook - I took out a coven, killed a dragon and actually finished the templar castle, but the little day to day events, I think I remembered pretty much all of them.

Many of the saints remain woefully underutilized and the setting generally has so much more untapped potential.

If only the sequel set in the levante of the crusades had been realized...

 

[DavidBVal]

Jesus this thread is making me want to fire up darklands again. Slaying robber knights, getting my shit kicked in by other vagrants in the city park where my party lives. Working odd jobs to survive. This game is the ultimate murderhobo simulator.

I don't think I've had more fun with an RPG except maybe with Pool of Radiance. It's been like 30 years and I still remember that storm in the overland map and then everything covered in snow. And when alchemy goes wrong at an inn.

I don't remember the last part. Sounds interesting. Was "I burnt your inn but that was a fire potion gone wrong!"

From memory, so I may be missing something: I remember blowing an inn to bits and being asked to pay a big sum to rebuild it, but as I didn't have enough money I had to flee town in a hurry. And I remember filling another inn with a terrible smell right after that.

It's such little things that keep surprising you when you think you have the game figured out.

 

[DavidBVal]

I'm not a graphic whore but a faithful(!) remake would be nice.

I actually think more content (a ton more) would be even more important.
You can still play the game allright, but as you do, it becomes much more appearant how litte content and how much repetition there actually is. And consulting the cluebook quickly reveals how little you missed.

I played Darklands a couple of years back, and while it's still a fantastic, pretty unique experience, realizing how thin it is on content is a little disheartening. I even achieved some things I think I missed back in the day, thanks to guides and the cluebook - I took out a coven, killed a dragon and actually finished the templar castle, but the little day to day events, I think I remembered pretty much all of them.

Many of the saints remain woefully underutilized and the setting generally has so much more untapped potential.

If only the sequel set in the levante of the crusades had been realized...

I think developers back then were masters at creating the illusion of big, complex worlds. They had huge constrains on what could actually be added to the game, so they realized the mind of the player should play a role in perceiving the world as full with things to discover. Of course their "magic" is not omnipotent, and 30 years later, replaying after reading cluebooks and internet guides, you get to see how the trick is performed and then the magic loses some of its shine. I wouldn't blame the game or its creators, they went as far as they could and in fact they botched the release probably because they made it too complex and ambitious, and couldn't wrap it up correctly.

 

[Humbaba]

Got a mine quest to purge the mine of undesirables. Sadly, dwarfs be tough, so it'll be the Kobolds who'll have to perish. Didn't bring a lockpick sadly but those things cost a fortune.

I actually think more content (a ton more) would be even more important.

Tbf they couldn't fit that much more content on the disk back in the day. Ultima VII was revolutionary when it came out and most towns consist of like 6 houses and provide maybe 2 quests. And Darklands apparently was itself a huge project for its time.

Remaking it is tough, because it features so many modern concepts that a potential "Darklands 2k20" would ironically seem derivative of other modern titles. Journos would call it "Baldur's Gate meets Skyrim meets Bannerlord WOW!". The profession and combat system are pretty unique but idk if that's enough to sell a game on.

 

[Serus]

Got a mine quest to purge the mine of undesirables. Sadly, dwarfs be tough, so it'll be the Kobolds who'll have to perish. Didn't bring a lockpick sadly but those things cost a fortune.

I actually think more content (a ton more) would be even more important.

Tbf they couldn't fit that much more content on the disk back in the day. Ultima VII was revolutionary when it came out and most towns consist of like 6 houses and provide maybe 2 quests. And Darklands apparently was itself a huge project for its time.

Remaking it is tough, because it features so many modern concepts that a potential "Darklands 2k20" would ironically seem derivative of other modern titles. Journos would call it "Baldur's Gate meets Skyrim meets Bannerlord WOW!". The profession and combat system are pretty unique but idk if that's enough to sell a game on.

IMO it's less about about space on disk as much as how harder was to develop stuff back in the day, ergo lack of time / manpower / money. There were no ready engines or utilities to be used, you had to program almost everything yourself. Look at Wizardry 8, the world isn't bigger than Wizardry 7 or Ultimas VII despite it being sold on 2x CD-rom (iirc) compared to ~10 floppy disks. The "6 houses" rule applies to games no matter the time, it seems to me, even today if you think about it.
In Darklands you could have added more content just by adding a few additional pictures (they are low res and individually they're not big) and a lot of writing + balancing + testing but they didn't. Darklands came on 11 floppy disks afaik, which is a lot BUT this not a record, there were up to ~15 floppy disks games released in the early 90s. And if the devs had time and manpower they could probably try to shrink the size of files a bit as well. All in all, I don't think size was the main issue - costs were, as usual.
In general, size considerations are overstated when it comes to the floppy disk era - for computers with HDDs. The real issue existed in the 80s or for Amiga 500 when no HDD was available. Then you have to play swapping the disks which is not doable if you have more than couple of disks unless the game is very linear. Which means a few MB off size at most, which in turn might have been limiting the size of games.

I don't think that uniqueness would be the main problem. One of things that makes it unique is the historical(ish) setting and that, apart from KCD, is still very rare in case of proper crpgs. Second, open world crpgs are today very popular but few aren't single character FPP/TPP or some kind of crpg/tactical hybrid. Third, Darklands has some interesting game mechanics also rarely seen in games. I think being derivative wouldn't be a problem at all. Selling it would. Also not making it shit - especially if an AAA studio did it - would border a miracle. I doubt that the are many developers who even understand what makes Darklands good, at least for me. If I were to bet on someone to remake it well, it woulds be an indie studio, probably Battle Brothers devs. They seem to have a good approach to history + fantasy mixing in game despite their game not being historical. And they are German, that would help keep the local historical climate right although the original was made mostly by Americans so it's not necessary. And they seem to be talented.

 

[Lim-Dûl]

The game looks very good if you get used to the old graphics. The crystals and the blue stuff on the walls of the mines for example, or the creepy giant spiders, or the grim atheltic gargoyles, they wouldn't be able to reproduce that feel now. The only remake/remaster I would be okay with would be one that increases the pixel count and doesn't touch anything else.

 

[Nutria]

Got a mine quest to purge the mine of undesirables. Sadly, dwarfs be tough

That's a mid-game quest that you're not prepared for yet. You want to be well-equipped with a good stockpile of potions before you tackle the mine quests. The game offers a lot of quests to you whether you're prepared or not. For example, don't go trying to slay a dragon until you look at your party and think "these guys have a shot against a dragon". There's a wise woman who lives west of Magdeburg iirc who will give you some cryptic hints about how you're supposed to be progressing through the game and how powerful you are.

IMO it's less about about space on disk as much as how harder was to develop stuff back in the day, ergo lack of time / manpower / money.

Yeah, this is something Arnold Hendrick always talked about later, that he'd gotten in way over his head. It was an incredibly ambitious project for the time and they didn't realize just how ambitious they were being. On the other hand...

It was a fucking behemoth, I may be telling a tall tale here but I swear I remember when I was not allowed to touch my dad's disks but I broke in to install it before he came home from work it was on 19 disks. And disk space definitely is a limitation all over the place. It's a very text-heavy game but they still had to be extremely frugal with their words, which was a good thing. Like Betrayal at Krondor, the writing is far superior to the self-indulgent pages of WORDS WORDS WORDS you get from recent games like PoE. On the other hand...

You look at the data files installed from those disks and it's incredible how much is content that was deleted from the game. Load up some of that shit in a text editor and it's wild. The raubritter quest that did make it into the game is incredibly elaborate with all kinds of ways you can go to war with the guy that branch and intersect. It's possibly the most complex RPG quest ever. Darklands was supposed to have a quest like that where you could overthrow entire cities, interacting with 20+ factions inside, and they weren't able to cut that out before they started printing disks. So project management was a nightmare.

Hendrick was really very open about all of this, I regret deeply that I only kissed his ass a little bit before his untimely death. Somewhere on the 'dex is a link to a Steam thread where he discussed some of this. And I've seen an interview of him by some youtuber, I don't know if there's more.

 

[Aemar]

Somewhere on the 'dex is a link to a Steam thread where he discussed some of this. And I've seen an interview of him by some youtuber, I don't know if there's more.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/327930/discussions/0/343788552550787364/

 

[wishbonetail]

The game looks very good if you get used to the old graphics. The crystals and the blue stuff on the walls of the mines for example, or the creepy giant spiders, or the grim atheltic gargoyles, they wouldn't be able to reproduce that feel now. The only remake/remaster I would be okay with would be one that increases the pixel count and doesn't touch anything else.

I wouldn't mind the remake with readable fonts.

 

[rezaf]

I agree with everything that's been said, of course I'm not blaming the devs for the limited amount of content, they did a tremendous job based on what they had to work with. That doesn't change the fact that more content is the thing I end up missing the most when I replay Darklands. To me, the engine, the graphics, even the sound, that stuff is fine once you get used to it.

It's really one of those games where there wasn't anything quite like it since. Weirdly enough, the events in Paradox' grand strategy games, especially CK, strike some of the same chords, so do the infinity engine games and their successors, even Battle Brothers reminded me of Darklands sometimes. But nothing comes REALLY close. Maybe one day, an indie will pick up the mantle... not holding my breath, though.

 

[Aemar]

Speaking of graphics, what's the optimum DOSbox configuration - graphic mode, scaling, etc, that would allow smoother settings (mainly the text)?

Haven't played this game in ages.

 

[Humbaba]

That's a mid-game quest that you're not prepared for yet. You want to be well-equipped with a good stockpile of potions before you tackle the mine quests.

Well, I had nothing else to do. I'll see about killing the Kobolds instead before I back off I think.

There's a wise woman who lives west of Magdeburg iirc who will give you some cryptic hints about how you're supposed to be progressing through the game and how powerful you are.

Agh fuck and I'm all the way at Kufstein

 

[Gamezor]

I just put I'd guess about 8 hours into this and have had my fill. I like the setting and the general idea of it, but the combat is pretty boring and repetitive, and there is a lot of it. The basic gameplay of traveling around, learning stuff and leveling up skills, is not very engaging after you realize it's the same text and general flow everywhere. I also cannot be bothered to go half way across the map for this quest involving a mine that is popping up now.

If you just remade this with more content, more stuff to find in each city, and a bit more art, it'd be great. Maybe reduce the combat volume as well or somehow make it more interesting.

Edit: I can tell there is cooler stuff later on, but the grind to get there just isn't worth it for me with so many other games out there to play.

 

[tentanz]

Too much rat catching.

 

[Funposter]

Maybe reduce the combat volume

Did you play it with PC speaker audio or did you go to the effort of emulating the MT-32 sound module? Playing the game with proper audio and music makes it considerably more enjoyable.