The Upright Man

Originally Posted By: The Rev If you haven't taken out Hawthorne yet, you can provoke her by just entering her bedroom. I'd provoke her in her bedroom real good like!

I love the world, don't get me wrong, but is a re-remake of Exile really the best that can be done? Why not something new? 1. The First Expedition: lead a band of adventurers into a wild new world with lots of unknowns and enemies. Sounds cool. Of course plot-wise there is a difficulty since everybody from the FE died...or did they? 2. Found Bahssikava: lead a band of peaceful sliths through the dangers of the tunnels back to their legendary homeland! Has ample room for other games on the predictable development that as is not well when they get there. 3. Something Vahnatai: not much is known about them and a game playing as them would be cool. Not sure about plot and enemies as they seem to be the masters of the caves, and their only clear enemy, the Empire is the subject of existing games. 4. Prequel: a rebel on the surface world, fight Empire targets with subterfuge and get thrown into Avernum eventually. Maybe play as legendary characters like Erika?

The reason secret switches are fairly obvious is because of people with poor eye sight not being able to see them. As for difficulty spikes, I saw that as well. It's an artifact of the open world more than anything. Once I got the good spells to level 3 and got the great bonus effects, the game was suddenly much easier, I even cranked the difficulty up a notch because it got too easy. One problem (if it is) is that charm is a beeyoch. I built an assassin type dual wield character all strength and lethal blow and he'd get charmed while under true haste with +ap items and take out most of my party in one turn!

There is a blacked out room on the top right corner of the first floor map, is that a real room I didn't find the way to, or is it nothing?

I'm running two duel wield fighters and backstab is most excellent! It also works when next to a friendly summon, so it isn't too difficult to utilize and the rank 3 15% damage bonus helps a ton.

I am the 85%! Of people without a Mac, so don't complain to me that you got it rough, you darn 15 percenters!

I think there should be a perk for it!

Actually, I thought Fallout 3 and especially New Vegas were excellent RPGs. They require a lot of interaction with the world and characters. And they got even better in New Vegas where decisions had very significant consequences. Those games are far from FPS's. Now back to being glum, there is also the issue of MMOs. I've played my share of MMOs but they are no RPG replacement. None of them have characters or plots. Supposedly Bioware has tried to do that with the KoToR MMO, but I'm skeptical. MMOs only have the regular people behind toons, and regular people are not interesting. That is why we read books, play RPGs, and watch movies made by people more creative than us.

First off I'm 26, so I find it absurd and disturbing that I'm an old timer. But not as disturbing as the dumbing down of RPGs that has been going on since the late great CRPGs back in the day when C for computer was still a necessary distinction. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I found this picture on another board that sums my rant up nicely, so if you don't want to read my thousand words, you can look at this picture: Exile II was the first RPG I'd ever played and I was in 5th or 6th grade, I think. Still my best RPG memory is playing Baldur's Gate 2. Man that was awesome. It came on 4 CDs! It was huuuge! And the plot and character development, and it even had Drizzt and company! But I digress. There were things I love about those old games that just can't be found anymore, even in the recent labors of love like Jeff's. First is the 6 man party. You had your tank fighter, priest, mage, thief, archer, and your main character. And in BG2, they'd all interact with each other and have their own quests and it was the coolest thing ever! I mean an adventuring party was a party, not just a couple buddies out on the town! When Jeff switched to a 4 man party, I was bummed, but with the unlimited flexibility of the leveling system, I could still have all the options I wanted. But then came Avadon. 3 man party? No class flexibility? Noooooo! And like the other thread here, I also miss the library of spells the original Exile games had to offer. Now it's buff or blow up. That's pretty much it. I loved the old field spells, and even the random scatter fields. It added so much more depth of game play. And the crystal souls were the icing on the cake! I remember spending like half an hour loading/reloading to capture a copy of Sulfras' soul! Man that turned out to be an epic summon spell! It's RPG gaming you just can't find anymore. After Dragon Age Origins, I had high hopes... Then came Dragon Age II. I hate to say it, but even Spiderweb games are getting that copy pasta feel to them. They just lack the soul of the originals. So when I saw Jeff was doing a ground-up rewrite of the original Exile, I was excited. I must say the Avadon skill system and 4 man party (at least not 3) is certainly not the glorious return of the golden age of RPG I was hoping for. Jeff, I love ya and the great pastime your games have provided, but please stop the madness! Your games have been taking on the attributes of the cardboard commercial RPGs, and that is very definitely not a good thing. RPG quality/depth (d)evolution: 1 like reading a fantasy book 2 like watching a 2 hour movie 3 special effect movie Boom stuff blowing up! 4 half hour tv procedural RPG's now: Jersey Shore, I seriously expect to find a Snooki class one of these games.