What is energy?!

[Wiz]

As for the graphics 'making sense', it probably depends on which game you started with!

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Clavicle:
Yeah, at least in A5 (don't remember if I tried it in A4): the keyboard system is pretty messed up and confusing. I mean, why do you have to press 7, for example, to move to the left, rather than 4?

Pressing 7 moves you to the left. It's just that "left" is not "west, because north is in the upper-right corner, not the top of the screen. This is not a big deal. The big deal is not remaining centered on the moving characters.

This isn't the main issue at hand, here, but I dispute the notion of "uncontrovertible success" when applied to the movement system.

[Slawbug]

Ahh... fair enough.

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by Clavicle:
Avernum seems to be an attempt to modernize, due to the times, Exile to some new notion, maybe, of what 'retro' means, and comparatively they don't 'make sense' because the 3d graphics are too primitive, they're incomplete. Not until Geneforge does the 3d gameplay begin to 'make sense'.

This is exactly my position on Exile and Avernum's graphics. I had little interest in the Avernum series until A4: for all its faults, at least it had new content, acceptable graphics and decent gameplay. (BoA had new content too, but with the worst engine SW's ever produced.)

[Kelandon]

Huh. I've always looked at it the other way around: GF-style graphics look as though they're trying to be legitimately 3D and modern, but they can't really pull it off, so they make less sense than the NG/AT or Exile graphics.

[tappie]

"is Jeff seriously going to update Avernum I-III before releasing VI? I've tried the older games, but I can't stand the interface. I feel left out! I would love to play through the original trilogy with the new engine."

 

So would I

I prefer the newer game engine.

 

"i miss mindduel...."

 

That used to be my favorite spell.

Hoping to see it again one day.

[Brock The Archmage]

Raising the topic from the dead....

 

I am of the opinion that the most Important aspect of the Exile games that still attracts me today are the options. The graphics are pleasant, but no awe-inspiring, but graphics have never been that important to me. I don't really know why they would be, but then i was raised on games like Exile, so....

 

I love having the option to create barriers as well as dispel them. I like being able to duel someone with my mind, although the spell point leaching was a little weird. I loved making quickfire, and identifying items myself, and all the other things you could do. What i really wanted to see when i picked up Avernum was Exile again without the annoying repeated clicking to get somewhere, and the ability to see farther away. This was granted, but a lot of the options were taken away. This upset me, and that is why i consider Avernum to be a different game. I play either one, but they are different to me.

[Evnissyen]

Jeff should also keep working on the graphics. Based on the screenshots for Geneforge 5, they're better... but still not as good as they could be.

 

I also hope he employs more animation in the game. At the very least have the water move!

 

EDIT: But I still say that the most important aspects are story, character, and interaction (including 'reputation', and more irrevocable choices).

 

EDIT: I still want that family in Mertis, in A4, to have sent a bounty hunter after me for having spoken with the daughter. I really was disappointed about that.

 

EDIT #3: What's the point of having a crazy family, after all, if you're not going to utilize their craziness to the greatest extent reasonable?

 

[Alorael at Large]

They can't send bounty hunters after you. You're their bounty hunters.

 

—Alorael, who also suspects that they need to let some people speak to her and live. Otherwise who would be able to speak far and wide of her elegance and beauty? And who goes farther or wider than adventurers?

[Evnissyen]

Well, a couple of her former boyfriends have gone far and wide to escape her family... and to answer the first notion: heck, both of her brothers are father-appointed bodyguards.

 

Poor girl. I wanted to kill off the family and whisk her off to freedom, but 1. they'd brainwashed her Stockholm style and 2. the game didn't allow it.

 

Also, 3. she wasn't any smarter than her two brothers. She probably would've bored me to death.