🚀 go-pugleaf

Enrico.Horn wrote:
> I actually thought I am the only living Darklands fan .I absolutely agree
> with you .Darkland is wonderful game although I am not very far in the game
> (I just play for 2 game years and have about 300 fame points)but perhabs
> one of you can tell me if I found a bug in V7:I was in Bamberg
> and mayor told I should kill a robber knight but when I did and came back
> they didn't want to give me money they want to give me a new task!

This is just one of the aspects of the game where it shows that a great concept
wasn't carried all the way through. You will never get your money, i.e. you 
waited too long to kill the guy or you went too far away or something, your
"task" was cancelled somewhere along the way.

Darklands could, as far as game play goes, be the best role-playing computer
game of all time, if Microprose would have stuffed another year of development
and another 10 meg of AI in there. Its basic concept is the only way to go for
RPG's, if we don't want to end up in the dead ends of manipulative plot devices 
of the "interactive fiction" type, or graphics-and-sound smoke screens.
But it has to be done well if it's done at all. The mayor has to give you the money
or tell you why you don't get it. The god-damned robber knight has to remember
the second time you meet him, that you tried to kick his ass the first time 'round.
The golden key for the fountain of youth cannot be found under a vase in 
Mr. Dumbhead's bedroom; it has to be in the pocket of the guy who stole it, and 
the latter ought to put up a fight to prevent you from getting it. Remember
Ultima 8 ? - I steal the key from the Queen out of her personal chamber (yessir, 
I did that), she stands by and comments: "Can't I get anything decent to eat 
around here". Folks, that's role-playing.

My idea of a perfect RPG is: An artificial world, where people live
some sort of independent live, and you walk around and interfere. Depending
on your actions, things develop. You make mistakes, you die and they don't even care; 
you figure it out, and you become the hero of these "folks". If that is guaranteed, 
I don't even care if I have to read off the screen what happens, or if the only 
sound I hear is the beep of the PC-speaker when I hit the wrong button. 
My wet dream is Nethack-type ASCII graphics and Infocom-like text on 4 CD's, 
one of which is taken up by a parser that is smarter than Dan Quayle; 
the other three are filled with a world that is so big that I have to use my 
annual holidays to travel on the other side of it, and so dense that the travel 
is worth it. Most newer RPG's have gone down the wrong road: they look nice, 
but even if they are difficult to figure out, they are predictable and shallow. 

Darklands was different. If not some company has mercy and develops that type 
of game to make it playable, we'll all end up playing "King Quest MMXDIV" and 
won't know it because it has changed its name.

Hartmut "Who was that Maud person anyway..." Schmider
--
Hartmut Schmider, Kemisk Lab. B  |  Nein, der Seele bleibt keine Narbe 
DTU - 301, 2800 Lyngby, Denmark  |  zurueck. Der Menschheit wird die Kugel
                                 |  beim einen Ohr hinein und beim andern
e-mail ha...@tkemi.klb.dth.dk    |  herausgegangen sein.     K. Kraus