Necris Omega

So somehow I found myself digging through some downright ancient posts and files and found what was the oldest and very first digital rendition I ever did of Demonslayer. Demonslayer Circa 10 years ago - http://i.imgur.com/lTB1D3x.gif ... Yeah! Thankfully Spiderweb Software isn't the only one who's benefited from a decade of growth and experience. As shown here I've gotten a touch better in time. But, to the meat of the subject, I've gone back and reworked some of the pieces from my earlier attempts. I standardized the dimensions to a 1920 x 1080 resolution, and also did some retouching, redesigning, and sometimes straight up recreating of some of the originals. Alien Blade - http://i.imgur.com/xkXzAgB.jpg Black Halberd - http://i.imgur.com/m3vLJ1l.jpg Blessed Athame - http://i.imgur.com/V6zWpHn.jpg Dagger of Hate - http://i.imgur.com/d8ePr4J.jpg Fury Crossbow - http://i.imgur.com/WOZj5Rt.jpg Jade Halberd - http://i.imgur.com/v5xGn7v.jpg Justice Lance - http://i.imgur.com/y02rz7O.jpg Demonslayer - http://i.imgur.com/TgMtE3f.jpg Onyx Scepter - http://i.imgur.com/Iembrm4.jpg Pirate Blade - http://i.imgur.com/hLUmjkc.jpg Radiant Soulblade - http://i.imgur.com/1CdG17w.jpg Smite - http://i.imgur.com/yx9lNUu.jpg Spectral Falchion - http://i.imgur.com/G0aOlP9.jpg

Jeff's remaking Geneforge as well? Huh... I was not aware that was in the cards. Anyone have any links or references as to when that was mentioned as being a thing down the line?

This was a really major problem in the original game as well. Really, all the companions there also had a severe beef with Avadon/Redbeard in one way or another, making offing him the natural choice. There was really no "yay Avadon!" voice among them giving really no real personal insentive NOT to at least try to off Redbeard. Heck, even the loading tooltips pushed you in that direction. Yet, come the sequel, that's canonically not what happened. It causes a real dissonance between the games, and, well... just doesn't look good.

I'd like to see some inventory sorting options - strangely while I'm pretty slobbish in the real world, I can get some severe digital OCD going, and when your inventory is basically just a sack you stuff things in like a hamper, well... Also, I'd love it if instead of a teeny weeny corner of the screen, the junk bag expanded into it's own panel. It's an infinitely massive space, it shouldn't be squished into a tiny little pocket. Finally, I'd like it if there were a way to directly equip items from the inventory onto the character. Given that there's only a single slot for everything (as opposed to say, two ring slots) there's really no need to have to drag and drop.

If not for the desert analogy, I'd probably call Redbeard a Sandbox Tree myself. Horrendously poisonous, covered in spikes, oh, and thanks to the exploding fruit, can kill a man at 200 paces. It's basically an all natural version of a Geneforge turret if said turret was 10 stories tall.

I find even Normal can get too tedius for my tastes, but I've too much pride to turn it down any further. Since Geneforge became a thing, trash has grown increasingly obnoxious to deal with - entire rounds to crush one rat out of half a dozen, charm/fear/daze happy mooks who take the game entirely away from me because apparently outnumbering me three to one isn't good enough for it, oh, and of course arming every piece of trash with abilities equal to my own. A boss or miniboss who can match my highest tier skills is one thing, but an entire platoon of mooks that can echo my Triumphant Roar? Glad to see the best I can do is worthy of trash. I guess enough people are into that to motivate Jeff to continue down that path, but I prefer filler to be fast and engaging - a handful of bats should not merrit a chess tournament. It's okay to just let me step on the faceless mooks and get on with life. Never getting that option really, really wears on me. Honestly, as I play Avadon 2, I find myself skipping a lot of the "optional" fights. because I get so burnt out on having to grind through wave after wave of "Super Rats" or whatever other trivial fauna that gets in my way. The problem is, however, that the trash isn't "trivial" enough not to feel like it isn't arbitrarily padding out the game and needlessly drawing things out. I just don't feel that every nameless, faceless hostile NPC should bilk more of my time than is necessary. Sure, this has it's ups and downs, but more and more often I feel Avadon drifts too far into giving too much leverage for things that really shouldn't be a challenge for a "elite" warrior of Lynaeus' KGB analog.

... Okay, so I'm a bit further than this and I've found explicitly corrupted pools of water, complete with sippy cups and crazy straws nearby (not really, but it is a direct "say, want a taste?" option). You'd think seeing blue would be a better sign, but seeing as I'm in a cave, and a pink reflection of the stone above would actually be less disconcerting, I'm justifyaby hesistent. The corrupted spiders nesting nearby are also a sign that perhaps drinking what looks like windex is a bad idea. Having already seen what this water does to at least that poor gent in Avadon, I'm really, really, really not as thirsty as the dialog suggests. But I do have to ask, dear Hands, what really DOES happen when you drink the unspeakably evil, explictly poisonous water, potentially soul stealing water?

Keep in mind, the Jeff's been doing this since 1994 - that's almost 20 years of new cow jokes. One way or another, he has earned the right to a little snark on this front. ... and yes, I too find the cow's amusing.

All I can say then is that he really shouldn't have slanted the entire game in that direction

Eh, I generally try not to consider pre-Alpha incarnations of these things.

The Corruption is really interesting, but I'm kinda annoyed at the Anti-Avadon/Redbeard slant everything is given again. No, I'm not going to bother to try and assassinate him no matter how many bags of puppies he drowns in the name of the Pact. If it comes down to my decision, he'll just be back in Av3, and I'll be left wondering why I wasted so much time and frustration. If I do, I'll probably crank the difficulty down to minimum and make liberal use of the console because that much pain isn't worth a non-canon fight. It's one thing to have non-canon challenge fights on the side like the Avernum Dragons, but to build the entire game up to them then completely throw them out in the next game? Fool me once...

While I'm completely in agreement that Melee really, really needs some love... like, three legged, orphaned kitten strength love, I gotta say that the Tinkermage is easily one of the most powerful things Jeff has given a player. Turrents are INSANE. A massive damage, AoE Cone attack every round? A radiating AoE attack every few rounds? Extremely health? Casual Healing and haste buffs? AoE damage and slow effect? All within the first few levels? ... Come Avadon 3 (I'm assuming there'll be an Av 3, unless of course if Av2 ends with "and then absolutely everyone died") I expect the Tinkermages to be nerfed harder than a small pox once vaccines were a thing. I love my Shadowwalker, but held up against the Tinkermage he... really serves no purpose. The sheer discrepancy in power is... in a min-max world, anything else is not even worth discussing. If I wasn't already well past the Corruption, I'd probably start over with one.

I'm fine with just the ambient sound myself - really, unless you can go all out with music, I'd rather it be left out. Spiderweb makes really, really huge games, and if all it offers is 1-2 tracks for a handful of situations, I'd rather just fire up my own music library. I'd rather not see five hours of content stretched over dozens.

If Violence isn't solving all your problems, you're just not using enough of it. Ah for the days of Quickfire, when all you needed to teach an entire town a valuable lesson on not blowing raspberries at the PCs was a mage with 7th level spells, a room with a door, and the wait comand...

Nostalgia bias says Exile. Overall I have to say the original Avernum Trilogy. The remake? ... while I like the overall gameplay and design, some of the new story choices really, really rub me the wrong way.

I think the biggest barrier between fullscale BoE styled modding and big name/production games like say Skyrim is actually the issue of voice acting. Sure, good environment design can be a lot harder than it seems, but it can still a one man show. Music is an art unto itself, but again, one guy with talent and a few digital tools can solo that. Art? 3D modeling? Animation? Same thing. Writing? Dialog? Scripting? No problem. Sound FX? Tools, creativity, and devotion can get this done without an entire gaming studio. Every one of these aspects can be handled by a single person, made publicly available, and conglomerated into a work of gaming art. The facets can be made indepentently, and made well. However, once you throw voice acting into the works, you're talking a level of complexity that can't simply be done as a one man show. Suddenly you need vast amounts of coordination between multiple parties, and in my experience the technial equipment to make voice acting as professional as some of the other aspects of gaming is more miss than hit. While I've seen weapons and armor and monster design and environments and sounds and writing in custom mods for various sources that make the original game look like the developers weren't even trying, I've yet to encounter such content that was voiced to such an extent.

I generally hold off on the Slith Castle until I've pretty much killed every other barbaric slith in the game, and honestly done a load of other stuff as well. By the time I get Sss-thss, I basically put him in a headlock a noogie him into dust with my main warrior while my back up and casters vaporize every hapless minion that tries to stop me. . Sometimes anti-climactic can be very satisfying.

I always did think it would make more sense if you were tasked with bringing back proof - Howthornes' crown, the ashes of Grah-hoth, a flower from the surface. I mean, it's one thing to say you killed Sss-thss, it's another to attatch his severed head to a stick and poke the king with it until he gives you your reward. ... What? I figured if my characters were "normal" they wouldn't have been exiled to begin with.

Don't forget the classic case of Patrick's wife. ... and yes, I only remembered that because I've been playing through Avernum 1 again. But... to the question at hand... The problem with this scenario is "with no special advantages"... honesty, devoid of modern technology, I'm basically doomed in every respect of these worlds. I'm a fat, geeky computer programmer - unless one of these world's magic translates over well (and I doubt that - the first apprentic to inadvertently cast an infinite loop would probably destroy all creation or something), I wouldn't really have much of a basis to go off of in any of these. I'd either be the raving, strangely dressed lunatic with nothing to offer, or immediately siezed as a magical anomaly and given the Alf treatment. Then again, the whole "raving madman" thing might actually work out given the meta-knowledge I would have if the time period was right. Hm... Occupation: Prophet.

Hm... well, almost a generation ago my first introduction to... heck, the RPG genre was Exile 2: Crystal Souls. In this case... Hm. Avernum: Escape from the Pit would be the best indicator of what Spiderweb puts out now adays, but if you'd rather just jump into a version of the story that won't potentially take another half decade to complete, the original trilogy is your best bet.

Given the rev-up time it took to even make it to the announcement, I can't help but think some very dramatic improvements are in store for this series. Not that Avadon was by any means bad, but now instead of having to build a story world and game engine from scratch, all that time can be leveraged into refinement and improvement. Plus each time Jeff has the benefit of past experience. A larger game firm may swap out developers on a whim, but Spiderweb never loses experience - it only gains.

While Geneforge has the most unique concept out of anything Spiderweb has to offer, their later games are more balanced and perhaps a better introduction to what this company has to offer. That said, you will likely appreciate the later games all the more if you start out from the beginning, and not merely from a story perspective, but from the perspective of seeing how far each game comes with every subsequent installment - game developers level up too you know.

The Justice Lance is indeed an Avernum 3 thing like the Dagger of Hate. Anti-undead thing. Eh... Honestly, there was a severe lack of enthusiasm for either of these on my part overall. The Justice Lance started out exciting, but went down hill fast, and the Onyx Scepter? Even though this is a very signature item for Avernum and Exile, I just never felt particularly inspired while working on it. If I go back and redo these at any point, that one will definitely be on my list.

Before near bladder exploding doses of coffee, I'm basically patient 0 of a zombie outbreak.

http://i.imgur.com/8Ws8pQN.jpg - The Justice Lance http://i.imgur.com/uJZL6Aq.jpg - The Onyx Scepter