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A Light in the Dark


kayos

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I feel the removal of the need for light was a mistake unlike some of the other streamlining in A4. The creepiness of being in a dark cave or having your light snuff out is good atmospheric effect. A4 has less creep-out factor and atmosphere because of no truly dark places.More convenient? Yeah. Better gaming experience? I don't think so.

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Jeff will continue making games regardless of what we say here, arghhhhhhhhh.

 

And the lack of light truly was a disappointment. Though some caves/rooms/buildings are definitely darker than others. I seemed to notice some rooms that were so dark that you couldn't see a box until you were next to it.

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Because each casting of Light adds to the total duration of your light without any limit, I'd just cast light literally a few hundred times in a row and then never think about it until a totally dark area undid all my hard work.

 

In one of his Grumpy Gamer columns (no longer available online, apparently), Jeff complained about the games that make you manage irritating little things, then cited torches as a specific example. I found it highly ironic and I'm happier without them.

 

—Alorael, who was fine with the gloom or lack thereof in A4. Pitch darkness doesn't add much of anything except irritation.

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So you don't think the light-snuffing magic of the first Spiral Crypt was adding much to the psych-out of the experience? You can achieve a lot of effect with lighting. But this all goes to show how some of us are more visually, aesthetically, or atmospherically-oriented than others, and how plot is everything to some, while others want character development or ease of use.

 

One thing that is simply true: people who don't care about about the visuals (graphics, animations, lighting effects, elevations) will never be upset by better visuals, where those of us who find it very enhancing of the gaming experience might be pretty disappointed by a lack of them.

 

One solution might be that normally your party would be assumed to be carrying torches, and there is a circle of lit area around you as you move in dark places, but in some circumstances, magic might snuff it out or diminish it, and only a powerful enough light spell could counter that effect, but not a torch.

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I also think that A4 could use its color shift technology to make some really interesting encounters by using camouflage- that is, monsters who appear randomly and *almost* look like the terrain around them... Until they attack.

 

One example I liked was the stone worms (summoned) on the cave floor that's sort of grey-ish. I barely even saw those things until they were already firing at me.

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