Ceiling Durkheim

Heh. That reminds me of a good friend of mine, who refuses to use the 'rest' option in any game with an in-game clock/calendar. This wasn't so bad in Fallout, but it played havoc with him in Planescape: Torment. As for me, I find the G5 timer frustrating for the opposite reason. In a standard play, doing most of the sidequests, it seems to take somewhere around 150 days. Even on my do-everything run on torment, in which I meandered around a lot in order to get artifacts as quickly as possible, I killed Ghaldring around day 270. This just doesn't seem long enough, given the apparent distances traveled (apparently all on foot), and the scope of the events that take place. If this were a novel, I could see the story taking somewhere between one and three years (though that does run up against the problem of the yearly council meeting). This isn't as much an issue in G3, where the distances covered are dramatically smaller. G4 is somewhere in between. The distances involved aren't that much smaller than in G5, but G4 also felt more like a mad rush to Northforge, which made the small amount of time involved seem more plausible.

I think the point here is that there's a sweet spot in terms of enemy health. Nobody here seems to deny that there's such a thing as too much, or too little, and talking about the extremes at either end isn't likely to lead us to much of interest. Perhaps a more constructive question would be: which game had the closest to ideal enemy health? My answer is Geneforge 4. On normal and hard, I didn't see many ordinary enemies that took more than a turn to kill or boss fights that turned into real slogs, like one finds in the more recent Avernum games (or to a lesser extent G5). On the other hand, there weren't many instances in which I slaughtered hordes of enemies in a turn or took out bosses in a couple, like in Exile or the early parts of the Geneforge series.

It's certainly nice to play a side other than Taygen's and not have Zephyr Oasis end up hating you. That was pretty frustrating on my first playthrough, as I hadn't completed all the stuff I wanted to do there yet.

Yes, she does. And the fact that she says things like "[benerii-Eo] is the successor of Benerii-Uss, the mighty fortress far from here" reinforces my point. Of the 6 locations with "-uss" at the ends of their names, 4 are fortresses, and so it seems plausible that Alwan could have simply gotten the term wrong. Further, the two he would likely spend the most time thinking about (Quessa-Uss and Gazaki-Uss) are clearly such.

Five shapers on the council? Perhaps you would benefit from a replay of G5. The seven council members are as follows: Guardian (Alwan, Nawaz), Agent (Astoria, Sharissa), Shaper (Rawal, Taygen, Shema). This is abundantly clear from the in-game graphics and descriptions. I can't see how a replay of G3 would relieve me of my ignorance, given that there are no locations in G3 with the "-uss" ending. As for G2: Zhass-Uss doesn't seem much of a fortress, that's true. Benerii-Uss and Gazak-Uss are certainly fortified complexes. They're not free-standing, constructed buildings like Gorash-Kel and the forts of the line, but neither are Haria-Kel or Isenwood's Spire, and the game refers to the former as "Haria-Kel, ancient fortress."

Also, he was around 68 at the time, which is pretty old now, and was positively ancient back in the twelfth century.

Yeah, I was gonna say regarding the time between 2 and 3. 35 years seems a bit much (I had expected 15 to 25, but it's hard to say), but 5 is unequivocally far too little for some of the stuff Litalia and company describe happening between 2 and 3. Agreed, the aging of drayks and drakons is handled in weird ways, not to say badly. Several of the G1 drayks have been alive since Sucia Island was barred, and other games occasionally mention that drayks live longer than humans, but then there's Iss-Ta, who is described as young in G2, old in G3, and ancient in G4. Regarding the council: this one has an easy answer, and I'm surprised no one has mentioned it. Nine shaper councilors corresponds to eight provinces and one high councilor. By G5, two provinces (Illya and Burwood) are apparently under complete rebel control. The councilors for these provinces may have been killed in the fighting (I think Alwan mentions something like this for Illya in G4 by way of explaining how he became commander of the Shaper forces there). Even if they weren't, the shaper government wouldn't have much use for governors of provinces that are no longer in shaper hands. That leaves seven, for the six remaining provinces & high councilor. As for the suffix "-uss," does anyone besides Alwan say that it means "fortress?" He could just be mistranslating, based on the fact that the most prominent places with that suffix are fortresses.

"i mean cmon it makes the game WAY more interesting and longer" More interesting? Why? Why is 20 turns of fighting an enemy necessarily more interesting than 10 turns of doing so?

Heh. True enough. Of course, that still rules out the G2 PC as the G5 PC, unless the thing that drove him/her insane was a controversial experiment in cryonics that both brought the G2 PC back to life and sent them ~25 years into the future.

As has been pointed out before, the canon in subsequent games never quite matches the endings of previous games. Litalia mentions "The previous Shaper sent to deal with the situation had not succeeded." On the one hand, this suggests that said shaper might have been the G2 PC. If it was, however, this line and Litalia's other dialogue in G5 imply that this other shaper (if it was the G2 PC) didn't do anything worthy of note. And of course, that certainly doesn't accord with the G2 endings either.

G2 is especially unlikely because conversations with Litalia in G5 indicate that she's been pretty thoroughly retconned into the G2 PC. Also, I'm not sure if people have mentioned the following before, but if they have, I haven't seen it. I think there's a pretty strong argument against the G5 PC being the G4 PC. It just doesn't work with the timeline the games give us. G4 takes place ~7 years into the war, while G5 takes place ~10 years in. Vener in Stormhold says: "When I saw you. It was about ... three years ago. I was patrolling a road in the Mera-Tev. South of Mera." In Rawal's journal, it says: "Subject was found wandering at base of Drypeak Mountains. Complete memory loss. Showed signs of long travel and exposure to wilderness, so dementia may not have struck at that location." If G5 starts exactly 3 years after G4, then Vener encountered the G5 protagonist as an animalistic amnesiac at around the same time the G4 protagonist arrived at Southforge Citadel. Even if we assume that G4 starts in early year 7 and G5 in late year 10, the G4 protagonist would still have to go through all the events of G4, then go insane somehow, then get to the Drypeak area (while insane, and thus probably tending to meander), get captured by some shaper, and taken to the Mera-Tev where Vener sees him/her, all in less than a year. I submit that if we take the timeline laid out in G4 and G5 as canonical, it is extremely unlikely that the G5 PC is the G4 PC.

I think the idea was more along the lines of bonus content that didn't actually make the game substantially easier, but provided bragging rights/interesting tidbits. As for experience scaling with difficulty, I agree that this doesn't work well, and Realmz was pretty ridiculous in that respect. On the other hand, I also find it frustrating in the Geneforge games (not so much in Avernum) that on higher difficulty settings monsters can be both 1) able to hurt my party in serious ways, and 2) not give me any experience. Offhand, it seems like the solution would be to have low-level enemies give out really small amounts of experience, rather than none at all. If a player really wants to spend hours grinding rats for 1 experience a pop, I can't see the harm in that. Perhaps an automatic rat-grinder is in order. Or even a rat-blender? Then again, the average low-level adventuring party already qualifies as something of a rat-blender.

There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a dragon in the depths of a helium binge.

I'm pretty sure that's not Shema, unless he shaved the beard and reverse-aged about thirty years. This guy looks somewhere around 30-40. Also, his robes are red, whereas Shema's are purple with gold trim. On the other hand, I am pretty sure Shema is the seated figure in the image that shows up right after the Spiderweb logo when you start up the game, based on the clothing visible. Hadn't picked up on that until recently. The human female rebel could be Greta, but I find that unlikely, since: 1) this screen appears whether or not you kill Greta, though I guess it's possible that could just be carelessness on Jeff's part. 2) She's blond...upon reflection, I have no really good reason to think Greta wasn't. I guess I just assumed since Greta has the default agent graphic, which has dark brown hair. Jeff's descriptions of characters tend to be heavy on mien and light on physical details. The Akhari Blaze idea has merit. We know he's alive in all the endings, and even though he only appears in the game if you play for Ghaldring, he gets mentioned in other endings (as the leader of the new nation of Sucia if Greta dies).

For some reason, I only just realized that the pictures from the various 'cutscenes' (the intro, meeting with the council and the various endings) and load screen art are available in easy to open format in the games graphics folders. Looking them over again, I found one particular image piqued my interest: the one from the ending of the shapers and rebels negotiating a peace settlement. (Well, two images really, since there's one with the shapers looking happy and the rebels unhappy, and vice versa*.) I was trying to identify the characters shown there. One of them is clearly Nawaz of the shaper council. The others are harder, and it's possible they're not named characters at all. The shaper in the center appears to be the same character from the intro art (seen shaping a wingbolt), but whether that means he's anyone in particular, I don't know. The agent, rebel human female, two serviles, and drakon I don't recognize from elsewhere in the game. The images are listed as G404 and G405 in the 'Graphics Core' folder. *I think it's a nice subtle touch that while everyone else's pose/facial expression changes between the two images, as does the sorceress protagonist's position in the background, the drakon looks equally furious in each image.

The 'class-only accessory' idea is an interesting one. Guess we'll have to wait and see. I doubt they work in the way they do in the Mardek games, but shout outs (shouts out?) accrue for mentioning said series. Now if only it wasn't going to be another 2-3 years before chapter 4 came out...

I would be all about Giant Intelligent Friendly Talking Dragons. Each the size of a small city, with a voice like Alvin and the Chipmunks in the depths of a helium binge.

Good adventurers, on the other hand, reincarnate as pieces of property with little "NY" marks on them, and live behind inexpertly-locked doors.

I'm intrigued by what Jeff has said about Avadon's gameplay, especially the bit about making healing a less crucial part of combat. The lack of divine restoration spammage in Geneforge (I found mass restore useful, but only a staple for shapers/lifecrafters, and maybe sorceresses) was one of the main reasons I preferred combat in recent Geneforge games to that in recent Avernum games.

To bring you up to speed: the discussion so far has mostly been about enemy HP numbers, rather than across-the-board difficulty. I don't think many on here are that concerned with the latter, since there are several difficulty settings. At least, I can't recall anyone saying that casual is too hard or torment is too easy. On the subject of HP, I mostly agree with the first few posters on here. Enemies in Avernum 5 and 6, especially bosses, take for-effing-ever to kill on higher difficulty levels. On lower difficulties, they don't do enough damage to present a credible threat to my party. And contra what Alorael said early on, I think there's a meaningful distinction between challenge and tedium, and the recent Avernum games have often fallen on the latter side. On the other hand, I think that the earlier Geneforge games are too far in the opposite direction. I find in Geneforge 2 and 3 that on normal and hard even bosses die within a couple turns, while on torment they're a bit hardier, but can too often kill me in one hit. For my money, the games with the best balance between enemies as glass cannons and enemies as punching bags are Geneforge 4 and 5.