A:EftP - Freaking out over this game

[Death Knight]

Well, what can i say. Since i gave avadon a second chance, i find that i like it even more than geneforge. (I will get flamed for this).

 

Being almost finished with avadon, Ive been watching Avernum: EFTP for a while. Now its the middle of november and i wish that i became a beta tester but i dont think that i wouldve made it, not yet.

 

Either way, im not sure. Im anticipating this game, but I dont know if since i liked avadon so much, if this avernum remake, will be anything like it. The main reason why i like avadon just a bit more than geneforge is because its still single player where you create a character, but you dont have to create a party like Icewind dale/avernum. I remember that avernum original you get to recruit people into your party, im hoping that jeff does that avadon style with the recruits having a personality. Either way i am quibbling over this but i will say this-in the future i want to participate in at least 1 beta from this company, just for my own satisfaction

[Lilith]

why would you get flamed in the avernum forum for liking avadon more than geneforge. why is that a thing that you would expect to happen

 

anyway i'm afraid that if the main thing you're looking forward to in Avernum is joinable NPCs with their own personalities you may be disappointed. that's not really what the series has ever been about

[Randomizer]

The Avernum remake is a blend of old Avernum and Avadon and quite a number of new things that will hopefully find their way into Avadon 2.

 

Game release is not that far off once Jeff gets past the thing he hates doing the most and write the instruction manual and hint book. So much has changed that there will be a limit on how much he can cut and paste.

[Death Knight]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

why would you get flamed in the avernum forum for liking avadon more than geneforge. why is that a thing that you would expect to happen

anyway i'm afraid that if the main thing you're looking forward to in Avernum is joinable NPCs with their own personalities you may be disappointed. that's not really what the series has ever been about

Just because there are quite a few people who didnt like avadon as much as the other games, thats all. I find the game to be just right with mostly a lot of things. I probably will like the new game regardless.

[Tyranicus]

Flaming people for saying they prefer one game to another is not something that really happens around here.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Death Knight

Just because there are quite a few people who didnt like avadon as much as the other games, thats all. I find the game to be just right with mostly a lot of things. I probably will like the new game regardless.

This is not actually true. The vast majority of people who have posted here seem to like Avadon MORE than the other SW games. There are a few people who have made very loud complaints, but they are in the minority, they are just really motivated to expound on their dislikes.

[Jerakeen]

Personally, I'm just pathetically grateful that there's anyone making these kinds of games at all. Avadon might not have been my favourite in some ways, but it was still very good, and I can see the reasoning behind the decisions that were made.

[Death Knight]

You see, thats it really. The reason why i like avadon so much is because it reminds of what bioware used to remind me of. Avadon, with all its npcs, characters and excellent villains, reminds me of a baldurs gate 1 or 2. Its not really sad to say, but jeff vogel is more or less the last remnants of that era.

 

Ive played dragon age maybe once, and from what ive seen it was more of a soap opera. My friends who had the game used to tell me that the game was more based on talking, and conversing than it was on combat.

 

So yeah im glad that jeff is making these games and i cant wait for avadon 2.

[Radix Malorum Est Cupiditas]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

The Avernum remake is a blend of old Avernum and Avadon and quite a number of new things that will hopefully find their way into Avadon 2.

Game release is not that far off once Jeff gets past the thing he hates doing the most and write the instruction manual and hint book. So much has changed that there will be a limit on how much he can cut and paste.

Really, I'm surprised you would say this. I'm pretty sure the hintbooks still have stuff from the times of Exile.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Death Knight

Ive played dragon age maybe once, and from what ive seen it was more of a soap opera. My friends who had the game used to tell me that the game was more based on talking, and conversing than it was on combat.

That's just wrong. Most of the game is combat. There is a plot, complete with talking and many NPCs, and it definitely has its melodrama, but Dragon Age is all about tactical combat, and that's what you spend the vast majority of your time doing.

Dragon Age 2 turned down the tactical a bit and pushed the melodrama a bit more, but it's still 95% you killing everything in sight.

—Alorael, who thinks Bioware is still the most dedicated provider of Bioware-style games. Jeff's games are becoming more Biowarish, which isn't a bad thing, and the niche could still comfortably fit more games, but saying Bioware is no longer making that kind of game is just false.

[Necris Omega]

You know you've done something right when the name of your company comes to define an entire subgenre.

 

That said, while I'm all for the Bioware model, I still think the classical approach of the old Avernums has its place too. Call it nostalgia-bias if you want, but I find that not all "modernization" is necessarily a good thing. To find the classic "virtues" of RPGs gone by, you have to either go back to old titles, or hope an indie company like Spiderweb puts out something like, well, this.

 

Maybe.

 

Not being of the Apple persuasion, I won't know how "classic" these re-re-releases are for sure some time. But I have my hopes.

[Death Knight]

That maybe true. I have played it once. However, i still feel that bioware's golden age was 1998-2003. From then on, it takes a big change into mainstream and didnt make as many good games. Jade empire was a different case though. I would say what really made me lose heart with them was mass effect. I dont understand what the thing was with the game but i found it to be one of the worst games i ever played. First Person Shooting games and 3rd person shooting games just dont mesh as well with rpg. The reason being is that guns are always overpowered as usual, and games like fallout 3 (which is another one), try and balnance melee with guns, and it never works.

 

Now, if you make the game a tactical game with overtop view, even if the game is realtime, it is easier to sift through the chaos. In a way this is probably just my rant, and it is. But i favor the topdown view with isometric characters.

[Death Knight]

Originally Posted By: Necris Omega

I still think the classical approach of the old Avernums has its place too. Call it nostalgia-bias if you want, but I find that not all "modernization" is necessarily a good thing. To find the classic "virtues" of RPGs gone by, you have to either go back to old titles, or hope an indie company like Spiderweb puts out something like, well, this.

 

 

I agree with what you are saying. The only thing that jeff has to fear, if anything, is getting rid of the isometric top down view that he has. If jeff keeps making games the way he is doing right now, he will mostlikely never go out of business. I dont think jeff will ever change that because the demand is so high for the series and the oldschool feel, and because he has no reason to change what keeps his company working.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

That's just wrong. Most of the game is combat. There is a plot, complete with talking and many NPCs, and it definitely has its melodrama, but Dragon Age is all about tactical combat, and that's what you spend the vast majority of your time doing.

Indeed. Has there ever been an RPG with more talking than combat? If there is, I haven't played it. It's fair enough to feel that some games have too much dialogue relative to combat (where puzzles, sneaking, and exploration fit into this is rarely clear), but to say that there's literally more of the former is factually wrong.

[Death Knight]

Planescape torment has more than 500,000 words in game. I got up to the half way point and couldnt play anymore as it was way too much dialogue.

[Randomizer]

Myst although since you are alone there isn't much talking,

[Earth]

Originally Posted By: Radix Malorum Est Cupiditas

Really, I'm surprised you would say this. I'm pretty sure the hintbooks still have stuff from the times of Exile.

Possible since Avernums didn't change things that much from Exiles.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Torment may actually come close. Even then, there are long stretches that are basically just combat (Catacombs, Modron Cube, Undersigil, nearly everything between Curst and the return to Sigil), so it's hard to say for certain.

 

Also, if memory serves the "500,000 words" thing refers to the total amount of text in the game. Since Torment features many branching dialogue paths, one will probably see substantially fewer words than that, even in a very thorough playthrough.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Death Knight

First Person Shooting games and 3rd person shooting games just dont mesh as well with rpg. The reason being is that guns are always overpowered as usual, and games like fallout 3 (which is another one), try and balnance melee with guns, and it never works.

implicitly defining an RPG as a game in which you get to make balanced choices about what kind of weapon to use strikes me as missing the point a bit, but maybe that's just me

[Alorael at Large]

And you may have noticed that Mass Effect's approach to that balance is to basically not give you melee as an option. Guns can't be overpowered. They're the only weapon available to you. (Yes, there's melee for emergencies, but it's not exactly a recommended form of attack. Neither are grenades, for that matter.)

 

You don't have to like Mass Effect, but it isn't a terrible, unbalanced game. And by equipment management, experience/level/stat building, and use of commands, it's a pretty standard action-RPG, if such a beast exists.

 

—Alorael, who isn't sure about time in PS:T. Planescape does have a lot of filler combat, much of which could be excised with no loss to the game, but it also spends a lot of time on dialogue. The climax of the game can be a conversation! By time, non-combat may actually predominate.

[Lilith]

It's possible to win Fallout 1 without ever killing anything in combat, although that's a very nonstandard way to play it.

[Alorael at Large]

I can think of three absolutely mandatory combats in Planescape, and one of them is basically the combat tutorial. It doesn't make the game less combative, really.

 

—Alorael, who will lump time spend hiding, sneaking, cowering, and fleeing in with fighting under the "dealing with people who will beat you up" category.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

I can think of three absolutely mandatory combats in Planescape, and one of them is basically the combat tutorial. It doesn't make the game less combative, really.

Good point. There's a meaningful difference between minimum and average amounts of combat. As Jeff likes to point out, it's possible to go through the Geneforge games engaging in (almost) no combat. It's not a very good strategy, and very few people actually go that far, but it is an option. My concern was more with the average amount than the minimum.

[Mr. Blonde]

Im on the same boat with the op, this game will rock! I already am a fan of the avernum series originals and the seconds series is cool too. The only game i never tried was the nethergate games. Ive come to place them under the same category as the avernum originals, so thats a good thing when I get the time

[Valdain the King]

Im not sure what to think of this remake. I like the geneforge series and avadon is awesome too. I never could get into any avernum 1-3 or 4-6 mostly because the tactics/strategies were imo much more diverse in avadon. I still like the story though from the original avernums and the music is epic.

[Venatrix Avia]

Originally Posted By: Valdain the King

I still like the story though from the original avernums and the music is epic.

Hee! Was this a joke, or do you just mean those brief musical bits you get on the "Load Game/Start New Game" screen?

Joking aside, one of my favorite things about the Avernum games *is* the music -- specifically, the lack thereof. I've always detested that awful, droning, repetitive background score that most CRPGs inflict upon their players, and I love the fact that the Avernum games don't do that to me.

[Enraged Slith]

Originally Posted By: Venatrix Avia

Originally Posted By: Valdain the King

I still like the story though from the original avernums and the music is epic.

Hee! Was this a joke, or do you just mean those brief musical bits you get on the "Load Game/Start New Game" screen?

Joking aside, one of my favorite things about the Avernum games *is* the music -- specifically, the lack thereof. I've always detested that awful, droning, repetitive background score that most CRPGs inflict upon their players, and I love the fact that the Avernum games don't do that to me.

Seriously?

[Alorael at Large]

Seriously. There are a lot of games that are improved by turning the music off, and that's one reason Jeff has given for not putting music in his games. I have to say I agree. There are games with good music, but most just have acceptable background noise, and some have truly grating background noise.

 

—Alorael, who thinks the same of most movies, for what it's worth. A really good score is unusual and impressive. A mediocre score is just unobtrusive.

[Venatrix Avia]

Yes, seriously. The Fallout 2 theme you linked is certainly one of the nicer ones -- but it's *still* not something I want to hear over and over and over again while playing a game. For a few minutes, it is indeed lovely. But I tend to play games in long marathon sessions. No piece of music can bear that much repetition without causing me, in time, to despise it.

[MHaensel]

The problem with background music in an RPG is how long the game is.

 

How long does it take to go through an Avernum game? 100 hours? More? ANY fixed background music would get horribly repetitive in that time. Even if Jeff went nuts and created an hour of background music, you'd hear it a hundred times before the end of the game. That's just too much. The no-background-music decision is fundamentally right.

 

I like to put on podcasts while I play Geneforge: there's zero repetition and I can pause/resume as desired.

 

P.S. What music Jeff makes is good; I do wish he made more. If we wanted to, I'm sure he could create a good CD/set of downloadable tracks.

[Slawbug]

The other problem with background music is that people have different taste in music.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: MHaensel

P.S. What music Jeff makes is good; I do wish he made more. If we wanted to, I'm sure he could create a good CD/set of downloadable tracks.

Jeff doesn't actually make the music himself, as far as we're aware: we know that the Avernum 4 (and N:R menu) theme is by Bjorn Lynne, for instance, and it's far to assume that the other longer pieces are also by other artists.

[Enraged Slith]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

The other problem with background music is that people have different taste in music.

I don't get what you mean. Background music isn't just music that you listen to while playing, it sets the atmosphere.

You might not want to listen to something like

in your spare time, but it's an important component of delivering a specific experience to the player. I'd argue that it's as important as the gameplay itself.

[Alorael at Large]

Music can be very important. Film scores, for example, tend to get loved regardless of taste in music. Maybe not everyone wants to buy the soundtrack, but if it works for the sceneTo get that to work, you generally need quite a lot of music.

 

—Alorael, who wouldn't say that good, atmospheric music with enough variety is beyond Jeff's reach. There are plenty of other indie games that have managed it. His games don't terribly suffer for the lack, though, and they could suffer from subpar musical choices.

[Slawbug]

Well, as an example, look at the Exile 2 music. It was a pretty perfect choice for the atmosphere of that game. Nonetheless, some people love it; some people like it but don't want to listen to it for the entirity of the game, as it's set; and some people hate it.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

Even if Jeff went nuts and created an hour of background music, you'd hear it a hundred times before the end of the game.

By the standards of video game music, one hour is hardly "going nuts." It's a lot more than Jeff has ever used, but it's really not a lot for an RPG soundtrack. I'mma look up the lengths of various soundtracks for RPGs I've played, in order to illustrate this:

-Xenosaga Episode 3: 4.5 hours of music
-Knights of the Old Republic: 1.2 hours
-Planescape: Torment: 0.8 hours
-Mardek Series: 3.2 hours
-Final Fantasy Tactics: 1.7 hours
-Dragon Age 2: 1.2 hours
-Valkyria Chronicles: 2.4 hours

Note that for all of these games other than Xenosaga and KotOR, these are soundtracks, not game rips, meaning that they generally only include around 50-90% of the actual music tracks in the game. Even so, the average equals about 2.15 hours. Note also that none of these games are 100 hours long. I've never spent 100 hours on one of Jeff's games, either...I think the longest I've ever spent was around 70 hours on a really thorough run-through of A6. The average game on this list is more like 40-45 hours long for a standard play.

None of this is to say that there would be no repetition of tracks, or that it would be impossible to get bored of them. Nonetheless, your math is way, way off. A 1:100 ratio of music time to play time is not "going nuts" on a soundtrack, if anything it's abnormally low for games that have soundtracks. The norm is probably closer to the 1:20 to 1:15 range, and it can get up to 1:10 or even further on games with particularly long soundtracks.

[Alorael at Large]

But how many of those games have soundtracks that are considered particularly good?

 

—Alorael, who would guess that the most highly-regarded sountracks, and there aren't many, tend more towards the 2+ hours. It's not necessary for your game, but it can't hurt.

[Enraged Slith]

I don't know if those soundtracks are considered particularly noteworthy, but they were composed by very big names in the business.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Well, not all of them, but most. I don't think Fig Hunter is a very big name in the biz, but Mark Morgan, Yuki Kajiura, and Hitoshi Sakimoto certainly are.

 

And while many soundtracks are relatively short, so are many games. Shadow of the Colossus, which does have a soundtrack that's broadly considered noteworthy, only has about 1.5 hours worth, but the game itself is only 15-20 hours long. That's a pretty high ratio of soundtracks to play time. Likewise Silent Hill 2, which is about 1.75 hours for ~15 hours of game.

[Death Knight]

Of the many music soundtracks he did for the main screens, I found that avernum 4/nethergate was the most catchy. Avadon's was the most epic, avernum 5 was really cool and very dark/foreboding, and avernum 1 was the best.

 

When i listen to the first avernum's intro music, i can actually feel the dreadfulness of being down there. I really hope he keeps that music for the remake of avernum. It was truly awesome!

[Micawber]

I usually click to skip the splash screen and soundtrack.

[Venatrix Avia]

Originally Posted By: FnordCola

And while many soundtracks are relatively short, so are many games. Shadow of the Colossus, which does have a soundtrack that's broadly considered noteworthy, only has about 1.5 hours worth, but the game itself is only 15-20 hours long. That's a pretty high ratio of soundtracks to play time.

It is, I guess, and yet... My housemate played that game back when we only had one TV, in the one public room in the house. Eventually I told him that he had three choices. He could: (a) turn the volume off, ( figure out a way to listen only through headphones, or © accept that fact that I was going to go to prison for violently murdering him. That was a truly gorgeous game. But it had a very repetitive soundtrack.

It's somehow even worse when you're the one playing. Valkyria Chronicles was a game that I really loved, but the soundtrack made me want to put a bullet in my brain. It's not that it's a bad soundtrack -- on the contrary, I quite liked it -- but you hear the same damn themes repeating over and over and over and over and over again. For hours on end. It reaches the point where you get all excited whenever you hear a new theme -- not so much because it represents having moved on to a new stage of the game as because you're finally hearing something new, something of which you are not yet sick unto death. Well. Not yet, anyway.

Apparently other people somehow manage not to be driven insane by this sort of thing, but I honestly don't know how they do it. I think that they must have been born with a "tune out music" switch in their brains somewhere or something. Since I didn't get one of those, the repetition of game soundtracks drives me around the bend.

Thank heavens for Avernum, where all I hear is the pitter-patter of tiny feet as my little guys wander through the caves...

[Rowen]

Three words to make Avernum the best game ever.

 

Avernum: The Musical.

[Walker White]

Originally Posted By: Better living through shaping!

But how many of those games have soundtracks that are considered particularly good?

—Alorael, who would guess that the most highly-regarded sountracks, and there aren't many, tend more towards the 2+ hours. It's not necessary for your game, but it can't hurt.

The Mass Effect soundtrack is very highly regarded. So much so that the BioWare forums have a lot of handwringing over the change in composer for ME3. However, there are quite a bit of debates between those who prefer the 80ish electronic soundtrack in ME1 and those who like the orchestral, cinematic soundtrack of ME2. It is a big deal to ME fans.

Inon Zur (Dragon Age) is a highly respected composer, but I find those soundtracks to be meh.

The soundtracks for the Assassin's Creed series are very well respected. And as my wife says, while that game may not be (classically considered) an RPG, it is certainly becoming more of an "RPG trainer" every release.

[Trenton.]

Why do we need music for avernum? Nobody liked the dripping of water and the screeching of bats in caves? Or the tweeting of birds on the surface?