spoiler about Tor in tower

[trinko]

i don't know if this goes anywhere but when i deliver a message written in invisible ink to someone working in a top secret facility as we do with Tor i'd sure either confront him or report to the head of the facility. unfortunetly neither option is available.

[Alorael at Large]

You're surprised that a secret projects receives secret messages? Tor is loyal to Fort Avernum. Don't worry about it.

 

—Alorael, who at least assumes Tor is loyal. Maybe he'll be the villain in A5!

[*i]

You would think he would have been dead by now, along with just about every other recurring NPC.

[Alorael at Large]

The NPCs haven't aged uniformly. Time flows strangely in Avernum.

 

Commander Johnson's still there, though, and so is Tor's wife, who changed her name. Some old wizards are hanging around. Crisper is surprisingly stable, and Kelner is surprisingly still practicing magic despite all the disasters he lives through. There are a few others scattered here and there, but those are the memorable ones.

 

—Alorael, who wanted to know what happened to Aimee, Chevyn, and Anaximander. No such luck.

[Delicious Vlish]

Chevyn was going to be king someday.

 

Where did Starrus come from?

[Kelandon]

Starrus is such a cop-out. Jeff had an interesting thing going with the incompetent heir.

[*i]

Anaximander is probably still disrobing on the surface if I had to guess. Chevyn vanished so we could have a more competent Bob personna. Aimee is probably still floating in the now inaccessable northern waters. Also, what is the name of that wizard that was hiding from the Empire up there?

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by *i:
Chevyn vanished so we could have a more competent Bob personna.

But... but... we had Houghton for that! Chevyn being cloistered because he's incompetent works just as well as Starrus being cloistered because he's young. All Jeff had to do was not kill off Houghton (or, hey, it might have been interesting to kill off Houghton anyway and leave the party to deal with Chevyn from that point onwards).

[the horned slayer]

whos's tor?????

[Alorael at Large]

Tor was in charge of handing out supplies in Fort Avernum in A1, a farmer near Fort Draco in A2, and is now once again working for the mages in Fort Avernum in A4.

 

You should really just register the game and play for yourself, you know. It's rather frustrating to explain everything that comes up in every thread.

 

—Alorael, who can't say it helps that the explanations seem to go entirely ignored.

[*i]

Quote:

Originally written by Thuryl:

Quote:

Originally written by *i:
Chevyn vanished so we could have a more competent Bob personna.

But... but... we had Houghton for that! Chevyn being cloistered because he's incompetent works just as well as Starrus being cloistered because he's young. All Jeff had to do was not kill off Houghton (or, hey, it might have been interesting to kill off Houghton anyway and leave the party to deal with Chevyn from that point onwards).

Would have been, but come on now, do you think Jeff would ever deviate from his style of a powerful Bob type versus a mentally deficient one?

[Lover of GIFTS]

Given that we're all here because we worship Jeff and All His Works, he comes in for a surprising amount of personal criticism...

[Kelandon]

Quote:

Originally written by Lover of GIFTS:
Given that we're all here because we worship Jeff and All His Works

Flawed assumption.

We're mostly here because originally we wanted to talk about Jeff's games, one way or another. Most of the old crowd wanted to talk about BoE, which had little to do with Jeff at all.

[*i]

Kel is correct, of course, but there are two main things that annoy some of the people who have been around for a while.

 

1) Complete disregard for the people who design the scenarios that made BoE such a successful venture. I understand not giving us everything we want, but failure to fix simple bugs is weak. There are arguments about forcing people to update, but honestly, you make one stock e-mail and use it as a reply for anyone with that need.

 

BoA, although powerful, was made in such a way that it is extremely cumbersome to use. BoE was compact and just about anyone could make a decent scenario, BoA is much more so. Had Jeff interacted more with the community on the project, rather than the "I am going to make it the way I want to and if you don't like it too bad", I believe we would have had a much more user friendly tool. As it is, I doubt more than 30 decent BoA scenarios will EVER be made.

 

2) Lack of innovation since Nethergate/GF1 is the other big one. Exile was great because it was all new and so was Nethergate. Avernum 1-3 were just remakes is psuedo-3D with less graphical detail and maybe a few extra things here and there. Geneforge had a lot of new qualities, but quickly became more of the same.

 

After a while, it becomes clear that Jeff does not really have much in the way of new ideas, he just recycles old ones ad nausium. He might change names and graphics, but otherwise everything is pretty much the same and utterly predictable.

 

***

 

I hope this gives more of an explanation of the older community's feelings.

[RAmpaGE]

Indeed. My favorite Spiderweb game is Nethergate. All fresh, and self-contained. The Geneforges felt like sating an addiction - not a lot of pleasure, just a desire to finish it -, and Avernums weren't much different. Except that Avernum 2 left a good taste in the mouth, but that's probably because my second favorite game is Exile 2.

 

RAmpaGE.

 

Edit: typos.

[Alorael at Large]

Be fair. Geneforge 1 is new and even fairly original. It's certainly more original than Exile/Avernum, which is really just generic fantasy set mostly underground. From my understanding, though, the Geneforge sequels just recycle the first game painfully.

 

Nethergate is wonderful.

 

—Alorael, who can enjoy the Avernums (A3 less so, but it's still fun) without trying to say that they're original. He prefers Avernum to Exile, but he'd really prefer a new plot. A4 is not a new plot because it's not really a plot at all.

[Dikiyoba]

A2 was the first game I got my hands on, and the first of the epic-roleplaying-adventure game I'd ever played. As such, I enjoyed (and still enjoy) it immensely. I didn't try any Exile games. I didn't like Nethergate because it felt clunky (to me), I was disappointed that you could only be human in A1 and there was no "quest" button. I loved G1 and came to love G2. BoA is only worth it for the scenario editor, if I ever get around to finishing one. I didn't like A3 or G3 enough to buy them. I am also disappointed that the A4 environment is more like Geneforge than the other Avernum games.

 

Dikiyoba