Alberich

I was leaving them alone for a long time...now I am collecting them for Alexie. Do I need to collect them for any other purpose?

I'm meandering through....I'll soon be on my way to the fourth clue to the PC's identity (I want to build some more Leadership first before I head that way, since I see it's required to get the full experience). So far the mod looks discreet and tasteful...and respectful to the original source material. Which I like. Also, I like that it doesn't seem designed (so far) to push you towards or against any of the factions...which is in keeping with the spirit of the original, that leaves the moral choices up to the player.

Glad to be of help. I hope your campaign goes splendidly!

The Pool of Transcendence? The Crucible of Endowments?

Considering it took about 1 and a half hours to get to the endgame once I'd committed myself to do it I don't think I had a choice about multi-episodes. Well, if you want to be reasonable, yeah… That said, I enjoyed it thoroughly, right down to the last “g’day, cat!” Though I believe you missed a thing or two that could’ve made the last fight easier. My own judgment is that you are doing well to wait a while before replaying for other endings. I’m not a huge replayer myself, but there’s a lot of combat to slog through in any replay of this. I agree wholly on your assessment of the game and the series and am glad you enjoyed it so much, and shared that with us. This is probably “it” for me and letsplays for a long time, so have a great year!

He sure is a tease...even turns the final fight into multiple cliffhangers...but still fun to watch. Btw, I got your GF5 mod installed so will be playing that at a leisurely pace. (I played far enough to check the library and see it was installed. If possible I would recommend adding some kind of sign to the very beginning of the game, so that you don’t have to play through the whole intro to figure out whether the mod was installed or not.)

Alexia is one of his best voices for sure. One advantage you have reading from further back...you don't get these dadblamed cliffhangers that he says he isn't doing on purpose.

Most likely this is it for me and let'splays, at least for a long while, once I'm done with yours. Avadon is a great game but it doesn't offer that extra fascination of seeing which of many morally challenging pathways a different player goes down. And there's a special charm in yours that just clicks with me. 102: There was a little “robotic Gollum” in that last eyebeast…and I thought it was great. Plus the bumbling guard (who’s just a little like the Vogon guard in the radio version of Hitchhiker’s Guide…”I quite like the shouting...resistance is useless!” Or was it the depressingly stupid robot who couldn't guess what Marvin was armed with?) I happen to know the next episode will have a plethora of fun voices to test and expand your talents so I am eager to see how it came out. Is it going to be “Blxz the Unbound Slayer,” or “Blxz the Venal Lobbyist for petty commercial interests”?

Glad to hear you're through....I've enjoyed the ride but it feels like about the right time to end it. That's one thing I liked about GF5 (and GF2 too)....they're big games full of fun stuff, but they end before they can get dull. One thing I liked about Avadon 2 is that the “torment” level seemed to apply most strongly to boss and major fights…the in-between battles remained pretty easy, so that the whole game didn’t become a slog, but you still got the extra challenge at key points. I hope Avadon 3 is similar. (However, when I replay any of these games I go down to normal…I treat it as a casual game at that point, something to do with my hands while I listen to something I like. But I am not a big replayer.) Btw, that guy “Alberich” is entirely correct about you being talented as a voice actor, as anyone must agree who listens to your renderings of Alexia and the Scottish drakon (“Ach, yes, I’ve been a fule!”), as well as your second encounter with Taygen (when you decide to make him sound “crafty”). (And yes I caught the pun in ep. #101 but I won't spoil it for Alhoon.) Looking forward to your posting of your last episodes!

Why, so it did. I was used to the other sites where the big green "download now" is an ad for some kind of bloatware...thanks!

Been a fabulous game so far. Agree completely...and with your assessment that this and GF2 are the best two. Alhoon – The site where your patch is located is giving me troubles; I try to register and it hangs all night; I try to log in and it gives me error messages in Russian. Is there any other site where you’re hosting it? Personally, even though I do my first play-throughs (never replays) on Torment, I don’t mind the in-between fights getting easy near the end of a game. It’s like a “victory lap” that I earned after slogging my way through the hard days. (And yes, Blxz definitely had to do some “easy listening speed-ups” in episode #99, with a few reloads.) (But if I were the responding golem and someone kept asking me, “Where shall I insert this key?” he might get a rude answer after a while.)

Just popping in after #98 to say -- great voices (even your interpretation of your own dialogue), interesting decisions! I might've called it "Omega Blxz."

Oooh, you do have a knack for cliffhangers. Your dialogue with Dragon brought to mind a bit of 70’s US TV….”Gentlemen, we can rebuild him…better, stronger, faster.” This is the A$ 6 million Drakon? If you get caught gambling in Cuba (I see the band name is right), just send home for Lawyers, Guns, and Money…

Well, the phrase "can't take my eyes off of you" is more likely to bring this to mind -- -- I don't say it's better than the great jazz standards, but it comes up a lot more on American radio stations. I enjoy an incongruously cheerful selection for sped-up fights…’course the world is full of them, everything from sleepy bossanova to the “Nyan Cat” tune up to Yakety Sax…but I’ll wait to see what variety you give us in any of the duller fights you do. I never made a drakon myself (I don’t think you can learn the skill from trainers, and I spent G5 on “canister cold turkey”) so I’ll be interested to see how your experimenting goes. Enjoying it! And may I say you do have a knack for calling the episode right when I’m keen to see what happens next…which is a good sense of timing. Keep it up!

I see the latest episode is called “Sliding In Through the Backdoor.” There’s a website I like sometimes, popular with comix geeks, which highlights funny moments (intentional or not) from twentieth-century comic books. Your title brought this Western-themed one to mind: http://www.superdick...-gay-desperado/ Oh, and you said we might thank you for speeding up some of the fights. Yes, thank you. (What is the music you use? Sounds a little bit Hawaiian…is it Aussie easy listening?)

Why, thank you! (Mind you, I was a dedicated Drayk maker right down to the end, but as Drayks are suppressed creations, no doubt those pages have been suppressed.) And congratulations on a tough project....when I replay that game someday I'll try it with your mod.

That's an exaggeration of what the game is like....in fact, in my first play-through, I changed factions pretty quick, and I found there was a lot of flexibility (especially in whom to support, but also how). It was helpful to save skill points for when I needed them, but important…much more so than in a standard CRPG…to accept that there were certain pathways that were simply not meant for this play-through. (e.g., a hard fight when I’m not specializing in combat.) It was also very strong on replay value.

As am I by the latest episode. I liked the muffled voice effects (and the additional dialogue by your cat) and am keen to see which way you jumped after this. Sorry to hear you didn’t like Age of Decadence much…I grant it has that “puzzle” aspect (modified by the fact that there are so many ways to win it, and so many endings to go for, that even a successful game is tailored to what kind of personality you’re playing). As I mentioned, I’m not a big let’s-play listener, but I’m enjoying your trip through G5 partly because the dialogue-to-combat ratio is high for a CRPG, and you have real choices to make…sometimes hard and ugly ones as you have just demonstrated. Arcanum is a good (though now old) one, but there’s way too much combat to make it interesting to see someone else doing it (and the game does its own voices anyway).

Glad to see you're getting new inspirations for voices....there was a little Peter Lorre in that last eyebeast. Looking forward to the next episode, as I suspect things will get more “political.” You asked for recommendations for next games. At Good Old Games (gog.com), there’s a newish RPG called Age of Decadence that I greatly enjoyed last year. (No, it’s not a naughty game; “decadent” in the sense of a collapsed Roman-style empire.) It’s a CRPG but runs much lighter on combat than most of them…I think you might enjoy it and maybe your viewers would enjoy seeing you play it.

Then I'll hope things work out for the best for your country, and look forward to some good videos!

Re: Litalia The way I read them, the Drakons were at least as ruthless and were quite prepared to eat anyone who stood in their way. (I believe there was a captive Drakon in G3 who was quite clear about this.) The Awakened just wanted to secure their own independence, but the Taker-type rebels…the only ones I remember from G3 and G4…were oriented towards killing, revenge, and domination rather than freedom. Don’t forget the virus in G2…the Drakons had the cure, but they were only going to share it with Awakened who submitted to them.

I explained my pro-Redbeard views in this old thread -- http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/15219-fighting-redbeard-a-poll-spoilers-within/#entry194696 – now, mind you, I prefer an arrangement where Hanvar’s Council performs its duties of oversight, but in light of the constant dangers the Pact faces, throwing Redbeard away looks crazy to me. So in a way it would be an Avadon-like arrangement, with the Shapers in the role of Avadon itself, and the non-shaper sovereigns in the role of Hanvar’s Council…though exercising lots of oversight. I could get behind an arrangement like that. But mind you, I think they key to a safer future is the enforcement of the laws you’re talking about…regardless of whether the sovereign power is in the hands of shapers or civilians. I wholly agree on the power of those shaping pools. If I remember, that’s how I beat the “trials” in G3…kept running back to the pools to make more roamers while the golems beat up the ones I left behind. It took a while but supplies were unlimited.

"Then wonder on, 'til truth make all things plain." And keep those fun episodes coming!

I was referring to her GF5 mentality only...in the earlier games, I killed her every chance I got. Abolish the damn magocracy and half the problems will be gone with it. But if they’ve still got the power…especially if they can self-shape to make an individual super-powerful…what’s to prevent a coup d'etat? Especially if they could use canisters and geneforges to make their “civilian” masters into instant shapers themselves…the Emperor Bennhold (shudder shudder). You’re lucky if the other Shapers have a strong ethic of not taking power....but inducing them to think that way is tricky. If they’re self-shaping or simply a hell of a lot more powerful than their ostensible masters…then they start as Redbeard and get worse from there. (And I say this as a Redbeard supporter.)

Alhoon -- I agree totally with your last sentence. Jeff’s games have moral depth, even though their design is fundamentally simple. It’s why I’m looking forward to Avadon 3 so much. Great discussion!