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Frustrated About Series


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Hi guys.

 

I'm an old school player since Amiga and Amstrad CPC 464 era. I wanna enter Spiderweb universe with Avernum series but quite frustrated now.

 

Avernum 1

Avernum 2 (recently released)

Avernum 3

Blades of Avernum

Avernum 4

Avernum 5

Avernum 6

 

Why did they release Avernum 2 after all those games? Is there any particular reason? As i read, Avernum 2 has a completely different story. I wanna start playing it first but still frustrated :) Sorry if there is another topic or info about my question. Thanks.

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To my recollection, the full history of the series goes -

 

Exile: Escape From the Pit (Original Graphics)

Exile 2: Crystal Souls (Original Graphics)

Exile: Escape From the Pit (Improved Graphics)

Exile 2: Crystal Souls (Improved Graphics)

Exile 3: Ruined World

Blades of Exile

Avernum

Avernum II

Avernum III

Blades of Avernum

Avernum IV

Avernum V

Avernum Vi

Avernum: Escape from the Pit

Avernum II: Crystal Souls

Avernum III: Ruined World (Next Avernum to Come)

 

Whole lot of mileage out of these caves, no?

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if Exiles and 1st 3 (incls remakes) Avernums happen during same years (wishful thinking but still) then we have wandered around Avernum few 100 years.

 

BOE and BOA might not be considered in continuity.

 

It'll take several years until A4-6 need remaking (that depends what Microsoft and Apple do although).

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I think Avernum 4 and 5 will need remaking when Jeff can get to them. I don't think it's fair to lump 4 and 5 in with 6. Avernum 6 had a totally revamped GUI/graphics, and I enjoyed playing it, but when I tried 4 and 5 I didn't last more than 5-10 minutes cause of how archaic the UI was. Avernum 6 is a lot closer to A:eftp in terms of the game engine than it is to Avernum 5.

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I didn't find A4 particularly hard to play for the UI, I do not like the blending of indoors and outdoors. That said, the earliest that Jeff could remake A4 on his current schedule would be for a Spring to Summer of 2017 release. By then, windows 11 will be in a beta form and who knows what Apple will have changed, so I think that Jeff will need to do an A4 remake as either the release after A:BW or the release after the release after A:BW, leaving room for him to start remaking Geneforge.

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I didn't find A4 particularly hard to play for the UI, I do not like the blending of indoors and outdoors. That said, the earliest that Jeff could remake A4 on his current schedule would be for a Spring to Summer of 2017 release. By then, windows 11 will be in a beta form and who knows what Apple will have changed, so I think that Jeff will need to do an A4 remake as either the release after A:BW or the release after the release after A:BW, leaving room for him to start remaking Geneforge.

 

2002: Avernum 3, Geneforge 1

2003: Geneforge 2

2005: Geneforge 3

2006: Avernum 4

2007: Geneforge 4, Nethergate, Resurrection

2008: Avernum 5

2009: Geneforge 5

2010: Avernum 6

2011: Avadon 1

2012: A1: EFTP

2013: Avadon 2

2015: A2:CS (should have been late 2014 to follow the cycle)

 

With 1 game/year, if he was gonna remake the whole Geneforge series, going forward could be:

2015: Avadon 3

2016: A3:RW

2017: Geneforge 1 remake?

2018: A4 Remake

2019: Geneforge 2 remake

2020: A5 Remake

2021: Geneforge 3 remake

2022: A6 Remake

2023: Geneforge 4 remake

2024: ?

2025: Geneforge 5 remake

 

Of course, this ignores the possibility of making new games rather than remaking old ones, which he might also decide to do.

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You left out BoA.

 

I doubt SW wants to stop making entirely new games entirely. I also suspect that remakes of A4 on (and G1 on) will be simpler affairs for SW, since they had refined some of their game data organization by then. For the same reason, I suspect those games will last a bit longer before demanding remakes.

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  • 2 weeks later...

AMA from a few days back:

 

 

Interesting news from Jeff:

- he will be switching to a new engine soon, that will include a lot of more "modern niceties" like mousewheel support

- Avernum 3 and Avadon 3 are confirmed

- The Geneforge series will be getting remakes

- He'll develop an all new game, and likely use kickstarter for funding

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In all seriousness, I have a lot of questions about the Geneforge remakes that probably can't be answered at this state.

 

The biggest of them is whether the new G1 will be limited to the same creations and spells as the original. You'd want to keep that sense of escalation throughout the series, but it'd be strange to go back to Drayks at endgame.

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I really hope Vogel doesn't waste time remaking Avernums 4 and 5. I see them as Spiderweb's worst games, by about a mile. A4 isn't actively awful, but it felt inconsequential and a bit of a lazy retread to me. A5 has a new setting going for it, but it has next to no plot (it's literally just "kill the bad guy!") and is painfully linear. I found myself loathing it more and more the longer it went on, but forced myself to finish it (because I'm too OCD not to).

 

At anyrate, there'd definitely be no point in remaking A4 in 2018 as I don't think the difference in engine/interface between A4 and the current engine he's using is that great (and I doubt that will change drastically in just 3 years, although maybe the kickstarted engine/game will change that, I don't know what he has planned).

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New players didn't know better, because A4 was their first look at a Spiderweb game. If you hadn't played A3, then the plot was new. The world didn't look smaller. In A3 outside world you didn't have Silvar, Cotra, and Fort Duvno two rounds away from each other in combat mode as in A4.

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A4 was quite similar as A3

Um, no. To avoid spoilers, let's just say they have a lot of similarities as regards the ultimate villains; other than that... different combat engine, no overlap in areas, little overlap in characters, totally different terrain, different map and zone structure, different character structure.

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