Per plays a game: Albion

[Per]

Per plays a game: <s>Planet of the Space Furries</s> Albion

Chapter one: "No nudity taboo"

Somewhere in a thread on RPGs, Mikael Grizzly recommended this little science fiction game. Research shows it has also been praised by people like Ratty and Roshambo, so likely it's not the ravings of a lone space furry dreaming of his distant home. That would have been silly.

In the game it is the future and the Toronto is a big huge spaceship headed from Earth towards a newly discovered planet. Their mission is to basically rip the place apart and send the pieces back home so that new interstate highways can be constructed. This planet, known as Nugget, is believed to be lifeless and barren. Yeah, that'll turn out to be true. As the game begins, the ship has just completed its hyperspace jump and is nearing its destination.

You initially control Tom Driscoll, a supposed space pilot who wakes up from prophetic dreams on the day of his important shuttle mission. He greets his girlfriend with a passionate: "Christine! It's sure good to see you, honey! I feel awful." Following a brief conversation he then goes off to explore the spaceship, read the news from the news computer thingies, and skulk through dungeons.

After a stint of stealing towels from towel racks, you start getting these intermittent (and annoying) PA messages about how Tom is supposed to report to the shuttle bay for his important mission, but you can choose not to go. In fact, you can put this off however long you like, instead going off to your girlfriend's cabin for "a nice, comfortable evening together" after which "Tom is not troubled by his dream tonight. Some time later, Tom leaves Christine's cabin." (I wonder what they're getting at there.) It stands to reason that multi-billion space operations can put their schedule on hold indefinitely at the whim of an incompetent shuttle pilot. The captain has a few choice words to say about such behaviour, though.

Maybe I shouldn't have skimped on Intelligence.

Although you can skip the whole spaceship "tutorial" when you are first asked to report for your mission, you can also go explore, talk to people and steal their belongings. In order to steal things, Tom must get within range of a container-looking thing, right-click on it, and get the proper option in the popup menu. This means perfectionists will spend a lot of time clicking on things that actually aren't of any interest and getting popup menus that lack options and must be right-clicked again to make them go away, but that's what an RPG is supposed to be like.

By the way, there are a number of things you can pick up from tables and consoles, such as "Dishes" or "Beaker". The manual pretty much comes out and says they're useless, but I fully expect making it to the fourth sacred temple of Gnii'arg and being asked for the holy soy sauce of Yargamon if I want to assemble the best magic sword in the game.

When talking to people, Tom has a few basic topics like "What's your job?" and "See ya, schmuck," and he may also have specific lines for special situations. A lot of "dialogue" is conducted through a chat mode where selecting topics from a list generates more topics as you go along. This is not as smoothly implemented as it could have been, since you don't see right away whether there are any new topics and have to click additional times in between each one; if you find out there were no new topics, you are then forced to click on an old one, which may contribute to people's impression of Tom as a bit of a dummy. Or you could select the option to enter any topic of your choice, which most often yields a reply along the lines of "Arglebargle".

Oh, yes, I mentioned dungeons. The Toronto has them and this is explained by an old friend of Tom's: "You have to understand, the service deck was set up primarily for robots. There are a number of floor switch plates and similar gadgets which control the locks."

YES IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE NOW, ROBOTS LOVE FLOOR SWITCH PLATES I KNOW THIS, THAT IS WHY YOU DESIGN SERVICE DECKS TO HAVE THEM, CLICK CLICK CLICK THE SOUND OF FLOOR SWITCH PLATES IS LIKE MUSIC TO ROBOT EARS CAN WE ALSO GET TO PUSH CRATES OR SOMEFIN PLIZ.

The reason Tom wants to go into the service deck in the first place is that apparently some guy was killed during the hyperspace jump and there's something fishy about this. Not to go into plot spoilers or anything, but the dead guy was one of two government officials sent along to make sure the corporate mining outfit doesn't go about anything inappropriate (LIKE FURRY GENOCIDE OH NO THAT WAS A SPOILER WASN'T IT OH WELL YOU'LL FIGURE IT OUT TOO). However, if anyone thought doing away with a government official was going to make much of a difference, they thought wrong, because the government was foresighted enough to send along a backup. Yes, there were TWO officials! Count 'em! You don't get to be the government unless you think about these things.

I don't know what this screenshot from Wolfenstein 3D has to do with anything.

Popping into a dungeon is very bewildering for Tom since his usual isolinear perspective is exchanged for a first person perspective which doesn't really serve any function except getting confused about which direction you're facing, getting stuck on corners and other such joys.

Again, this part is completely optional, but any self-respecting old-school RPG fan WILL step on the floor plates and follow the robots through the blast doors and figure out how to sneak their prize past the obnoxious security guards. It's just how any normal space pilot would choose to spend his time (and the time of everyone who's waiting for him to stop dicking around).

When Tom finally becomes bored with the Toronto, he saunters off to the shuttle bay where the "Kapitän" and the android body of the ship AI, Ned, are tapping their feet impatiently. (Ned? Could they have picked a more ominous name for an AI than NED? If by the end of the game he hasn't flipped out and started killing people, I'm a barrel of onions.)

By the way, the only remaining government official is going into the shuttle along with Tom, so it is probably one of the safest places to be right now. I mean, the mining corporation wouldn't risk having to go unsupervised by government officials at this critical stage of the operation. They would not do that.

Chakotay momentarily confuses Tom Driscoll with Tom Paris and hatches some crazy notion about shuttle crashes.

Tom replies to the solemn instructions of his superiors with a cheerful "Yeah, whatever," gets into the shuttle, cruises off to the planet with a stupid grin on his face, and proceeds to crash into it.

You wonder if that is somehow the reason he was chosen for the job in the first place. Anyway, perhaps it's not the first time he does this, because Tom leaps nimbly from the wreckage, strikes an acrobatic pose and goes "Ta-daa!" The next second the shuttle explodes in his face. All goes black, or whatever that colour is you're seeing when you're not conscious.

An indeterminate time later, Tom comes to. A figure steps dramatically out of the shadows... and it's a freaking furry!

The realization that he's in a game with furries causes Tom to gibber in all caps for a little bit, quite likely mirroring the actions of the player at this point. This does not cause the furry to go away, and Rainer (the government official) steps in to explain how these hippy furries have graciously helped the outworlders back from the brink of death. Tom is still outraged (I mean, furries) but eventually calms down.

Apparently they've been on the planet for a whole month, which means the main spaceship will have touched down by now. (They'll wait forever to get rid of Tom, but they won't wait a day for him to actually do anything or even report back. Maybe they're sending some sort of subtle message about his usefulness there.) Since the planet turned out to be all green and fluffy, Tom and Rainer figure that the mining operation will have to be cancelled and that the whole mission will turn into one of research. Evidently neither of them has ever been burdened by a lot of genre savvy, or they might have made room for the notion that scummy interplanetary corporations like nothing better than to build their filthy profit on a mountain of space furry bones. (Mmmm... space furry bones.) Or for that whole thing about AIs tending to go nuts a bit and starting to kill people and/or furries wholesale. (NED!?)

For now, there are the furries to be dealt with. It is an interesting aspect of furry medicine that, although he suffered mortal wounds in a shuttle explosion and was then nursed back to health over the course of a month, Tom has the exact same number of hit points as he had when he left the Toronto.

Off to a friendly start.

Space furries live in harmony with nature, in case anyone ever doubted that. Their homes are grown semi-organically from plants and stuff, and they subsist through hunting and gardening. Their civilization is divided into clans living in cities, it seems. Oh, and they have magic. Metal is precious to them, so Tom attempts to gain some favour by donating the shuttle wreckage to the clan that rescued him. Perhaps he figures he's going to rifle through all their shelves and take everything that's not nailed down anyway.

They wouldn't have put this option here if it weren't safe to click it.

The clan leader imprudently gives the hoomans the run of the clan mansion and mumbles something about the cellar. He offers them a key to the front door. The key also happens to unlock the cellar door, so naturally Tom and Rainer decide to slink down there and loot the place clean. It is dark and they are likely to be eaten by a grue, but lighting a torch takes care of that problem.

It's another dungeon! Indeed, there are the twisted sheets of metal that used to be a fully functional shuttle before someone handed Tom his pilot's license. In the flickering light he imagines they are glaring at him accusingly. Searching turns up some stuff here and there. Chests and urns full of food... heaps of junk... the occasional functioning equipment... dark corners... slavering troglodytes... slimy cave walls... wait, what?

It's what? This game is so confusing.

More specifically, these are troglodytes with the ability to sniff out players who haven't saved since BACK ON THE FRIGGING SPACESHIP since they figured they were only going to play until they'd made it out of the mansion anyway and what ills can happen in a space furry plant mansion and/or cellar?

Bloodbaths can happen. The poor hoomans stand no chance whatsoever against the troglodytes, the whole thing is over in a few turns. And no, there's no autosave.

This is what it looks like when you die, as proved by science.

The first few repeated attempts at combat meet with a very similar end; whatever these things are, they have a frightening damage output, and the game isn't playing for laughs. A more deliberate approach yields the following discoveries:

1. It is easier to go into battle with a full bar of health.
2. The default party formation is stupid.
3. Shooting one or more troglodytes with bullets from a gun, however non-renewable a resource, makes it easier to take down the remaining ones with pointy things.
4. Giving pre-emptive move orders to your people can confuse the creatures so that you end up taking them on one at a time instead of the other way around, which again helps greatly.

A funny thing is that if you rest in order to be fit for a fight, get your ass kicked to within a few hit points in that fight, and try to rest again, you can't because "Nobody is tired!"

Returning from the cellar with gold and hams sticking out of their pockets as well as blood spurting from random arteries, Tom and Rainer spot the clan leader nearby, snickering to himself: the words "suckers", "doing our dirty work for us" and "obligatory cellar rat quest" can be made out. There is a grand reward of one healing potion, though. And after that, the party heads out.

In the street, they are immediately accosted by a tall, sinister furry bearing an invitation from the community leader. What might she want? Is she going to hand them a QUEST? Does she have a rat-infested cellar? Does she collect the heads of people with prophetic dreams? Does she feel obligated to apologize for the whole furry thing? Unable to resist curiosity, Tom and Rainer follow across town to important building #13, where... the game is saved! What could possibly happen next.

 

[Mutoes]

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/428/Albion.html

It seems this is abandonware, im definetly giving it a try.

 

[Brother None]

Excellent LP so far

MOAR.

One thing though:
What the fuck fuck fuck? (NSFW)

 

[Madbringer]

I lol'd severely. Also -

;_;

 

[Tagaziel]

Ah, so I see the Lizard has found Albion...

...most excellent...

 

[fedaykin]

Great stuff, keep it coming. I tried this game years ago. I think you've just reminded me why I didn't play it for very long.

 

[The Vault Dweller]

This game looks great and Per's writing is superb. I'm ecstatic.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller

 

[GreyViper]

Superb commentary Per, it left me laughing for some time. *thumbs up*

 

[Per]

Chapter two: "Obligated to solve this murder"

When the Sebainah, or head honcho of the furries, claps eyes on Tom and Rainer her verdict is lightning fast. "Off with their heads!" she shrieks. Immediately there is running and shouting. The Earthmen swashbuckle out of a window and run the gauntlet through an action-packed sequence of labyrinthine courtyards...

Except not really. I made that stuff up because I didn't want anyone to feel disappointed. In reality the conversation is kind of brief and the Sebainah has much the same conversation topics as everyone else. Sorry about raising expectations at the end of chapter one.

She does tell them she'll help them get in touch with their fellow humans by arranging transportation to the next continent. This will have to wait a couple of days since her great-great-grandson is about to undergo a gruesome coming-of-age ritual of some sort. Until then, Tom and Rainer are on their own.

The furry city of Nakiridaani, it turns out, is a dungeon, which probably explains a lot about furry psychology. The streets are fairly empty, with the odd figure moving among the houses and arcades. For some reason none of them will turn their backs on the humans for a second, but they rarely stop moving, giving the impression that they're all constantly trying to warily back away in a kind of SWEET MERCIFUL GOD DON'T LET IT SPEAK TO ME desperation. You can get some nice close-ups of quadruple boobs, though.

Bethesda had "misgivings" about the stupid dialogue I submitted for Fallout 3.

Ducking into a nearby building at random, the party finds that it houses one of the two mage guilds of the city. You can tell because the furries you talk to have a couple of new dialogue topics about magic, after which they lapse into the same prepared speeches as everyone else. A benevolent and altruistic healer will heal the party up in exchange for hard cash. In one of the rooms the humans run into the head of the guild, who is curious about the nature of their exploding shuttle. After Tom gives a run-down on technology, the magician deduces it is neither "spiritual" nor "magical", whereupon Rainer interjects that there's no such thing as magic anyway. The magician immediately offers to perform a little magic demonstration and casts Summon Tree IV, summoning a tree. It's a real tree and there's no denying that it was summoned. However, Rainer doesn't want to give up his newfound role as token unreasonable sceptic that easily, exclaiming, "They cannot poke fun at the laws of physics!" Poor Rainer, clinging to his antiquated human ideals of "laws", "physics" and "fun".

Nipping down into the basement to take revenge for their humiliation, the humans meet a furry telling them there's nothing there of interest. "I'll be the judge of that," says Tom and eventually makes away with three healing potions and a handful of coins that someone had forgotten to lock away.

Here's another of those things that snuck past the playtesting department. Time moves at an accelerated rate as Tom and Rainer ramble about the city, so before long the game tells you they're getting tired. If you don't react to this message in a timely manner, the party portraits will be covered up by smiley faces with X-ed out eyes (I kid you not), and eventually the PCs will stop dead, complaining about their heavy load. There is no "Rest" option in the streets, but there is a "Wait" option. What is the difference? Well, if you "wait", evidently you do not "rest". Ever. You can wait for a day, two days, a week, rooted to the spot, and the party does not become more or less tired, they do not gain or lose hit points, they do not eat for that matter. We must now imagine that Tom and Rainer are unable to haul their bags of loot twenty metres in the direction of the nearest inn at whichever sluggish pace; that either of them is unable to stay behind and watch the surplus inventory while the other skips over to the inn in order to rest and return with newfound vitality; that the city watch are unable to let anyone lie down in the street for ten minutes without helpfully poking them to wakefulness with a stick (loiter all you want, but you better not try to recuperate); that the Sebainah, whose great-great-grandson's coming-of-age ritual has been delayed for days and days for a reason which it will probably be of little use to explain to him, is unable or unwilling to send out a henchman to help Tom and Rainer get off the street, or even to tear them away from the giant mountain of stolen ham that's keeping them there. In conclusion, if there's one art that Tom has chosen to master, it's the art of dicking around.

It should be said, though, that after I loaded a save made just before my guys collapsed, rushing straight for the inn and booking a room for the night (which took two attempts; in the first they didn't know where the desk was and the ham pulled them under in the lounge), the first thing that happened as I returned out into the street was that Tom piped up, "Oh, it's time. We should go to the festival the Sebainah invited us to," followed by an instant teleportation to the city hall. The heck, Tom. Think of your reputation.

What follows next can only be described as a rather long cutscene. The meeting has just begun when the Sebainah introduces the humans to one of the chief magicians (the one that didn't summon a tree before). At that very moment someone rushes from the shadows... it's a ninja! And not any ninja, but a HUMAN ninja! The ninja kills the magician with a dart and scoots off, jumping out a window. Like vampires, furries must abide by certain rules and they cannot follow anyone through a window.

At first, Tom and Rainer are (like the player) rather confused as to why the crew of the Toronto would send a ninja to kill a magician on a planet they've just landed on. That's so far from standard protocol on mining operations it's not even funny. The explanation is not quite that far-fetched, though no less bewildering: there have been lots of OTHER humans on the planet ALL ALONG! For hundreds and hundreds of years! That's right! During all the time the party spent among the furries, with all the "Ha ha, you hoo-mans are so amoo-singly different" cooing, no one saw a reason to bring up that they were NOT the first humans EVER on the planet, which, you know, might have MADE A DIFFERENCE and COME UP IN CONVERSATION. Tom asks how science guy Rainer could have managed to suppress his scientific curiosity for a month in order to not only avoid learning about the existence of magic but this as well, and Rainer mumbles something about "dcknn rrndmmnbmn".

The Sebainah explains to the humans that although she doesn't believe they were involved in the assassination, that doesn't mean they get off scot-free. This is because furry law states that if someone commits a crime and cannot be punished, that person's family is held responsible instead, and by virtue of being humans, Tom and Rainer default to being the family of the unknown ninja. Oooh-kaayyy. I suppose whenever a clanless furry gets away with a crime, they pull in a couple of random people from the street and behead them. "Psst, you!" "Yes?" *yank* "Wah!"

One down, quite a lot to go.

Of course, this is also a plot device, as Tom and Rainer are not locked up but are instead allowed to run around playing detectives so they can solve the crime and bring the ninja to justice. After the caption "obligatory murder quest" has blinked on and off for a few seconds, the cutscene continues. A golden-haired, well-muscled, velvet-nosed male warrior furry shows up and joins the party to assist the humans in their investigation. Everyone heads over to have a chat with the resident furry historian on the historical role of humans on the planet, after which a cop runs in with news of a ninja sighting at the mage academy.

(As an aside, I see what the game did there. For now it'll be just the one odd furry in the party. Then there'll be more of them. Sooner or later, one of the humans will be tragically killed off. Then the next one. There'll be just furries in the party. Before you know it, you'll have gone from navigating the world of the furries to actively playing the part of them. YOU'LL BE THE ENEMY. It's subtle and fiendish. Just remember I called it. And Ned. I called Ned.)

Still in cutscene mode, everyone goes to the academy in time to see the ninja consorting with a furry. Before anyone can do anything (like establish a perimeter), the ninja jumps out a window. Foiled again. However, the furry is nabbed and fingers the other magician leader (the one with the tree) before he is taken away. Apparently there's some old enmity there, probably related to trees. Tree guy denies involvement but is taken away as well for good measure. And so the player again receives control.

Upon leaving the mage guild, another cop comes running to say there's been a second ninja sighting at the old ghost house outside of town. Furry cops must have expert training at running around with news of ninja sightings, since that's the only thing they actually ever accomplish. Tom and Rainer have heard of this ghost house before. Apparently once upon a time there was a furry magician who wanted to extend his life in the traditional Iskai way of transferring your mind into the body of a newborn child, the original soul of which is shunted screaming down to the bowels of hell. Except the furry magician wasn't allowed to, so instead he transferred his mind to the guildhouse, giving a new meaning to the term "furry plant mansion". The ghost house has been deserted since because no one really liked to hang around that guy in the first place. The cops have had a guy posted outside for the last hundred years though and now that this pays off with a ninja sighting, they're all like, "WIN!"

In preparation for the outdoors excursion, the party runs around the city one final time to map out unseen corners and sneak into unvisited shops. The good stuff is too expensive at this point, but I have previously been pondering the fact that Tom's inventory wasn't purged in any way before leaving the Toronto, and how this might be exploited. I can imagine the conversation:

Kapitän Brandt: Driscoll, what is that you're carrying?

Tom: Just a few beakers, sir.

Kapitän Brandt: Those are 18 beakers spilling out of your pants, Driscoll.

Tom: If you say so, sir, I haven't had the time to count them properly. You see, I work for a living.

Kapitän Brandt: Why the blistering devil are you bringing 18 beakers on a shuttle mission, Driscoll?

Tom: I might get thirsty.

Kapitän Brandt: THEY'RE EMPTY, DRISCOLL.

Tom: Well, I would hardly be able to carry 18 full beakers, now would I? See, this is why I'm a shuttle pilot and you're just a captain.

So why would I be thinking about filling Tom's overalls up with dirty dishes before he crashes on the planet? You remember how the furries were crazy about metal? Turns out they don't have so much of it because most who attempt to mine it get their heads exploded by the curse of the Goddess (hence the furry expression of reverence, "Thanks a bunch, Goddess"). Why, a simple tool like a screwdriver would be invaluable to them not just because of the amazing utility value but simply because of the material! Business opportunity ahoy! Excitedly trying to hawk the futuristic jars and boxes he DID manage to sneak on board the shuttle, Tom is told repeatedly that "This is a useless item." MAKE UP YOUR GOD DAMN MINDS.

Leaving the city through the only exit (besides the harbour, which so far appears to be mythical), the party discovers the world map to be a place of mystery and plants. It's not a dungeon, but kind of a really large building drawn to a different scale and furnished with trees, rocks (non-collectable) and vermin. Some of these creatures immediately close in and try to beat the party up, including a ferocious flying thing. A more peaceful herder in the vicinity knows how to get to the ghost house. In spite of these helpful directions, the party manage to go on a pointless trip around a mountain because it's night-time, the screen is really dark and "Nobody is tired!" All in a day's dicking around for Tom and Rainer.

Just one of the many diplomatic side quests on the world map.

The ghost house, when finally found, turns out to be a dungeon... and more of a cave-y dungeon than a house-y dungeon. There are plants and mushrooms about, and rather a bunch of hostile predators. Having neglected to train their skills before leaving town (because the manual says you have to think hard about how you assign training points), the party often find it a bit difficult fighting off the hordes and Tom has to pull out his gun to take out the big guys. The problem with ranged weapons is that if you fire at a fast creature that's going to move before you in that turn, the shot is still aimed at the original square and automatically misses. This means Tom basically has to wait until a creature has moved up to him and started to rake him with its razor claws before he can even take aim and fire. Along the way damage is inflicted and the party spends some time simply waiting to get "tired" in order to be able to make camp.

There are also some "traps" in the form of tentacles and snapping mouths that will eat up all your people if you stray too close. Mostly they can be avoided, or you could pacify them using fruit and meat, respectively. Of course, the party didn't happen to meet the fruit guy in town before leaving, but there's an alternative way of bypassing the tentacles: tossing away the torch that's exciting them into dangerousness. The amazing technology called "sticking the torch in a wall somewhere and coming back for it later" has not been invented in the future, meaning new ones will have to be lit if you go about it this way (still cheaper than going with the fruit, as it turns out). However, a nice touch is that furries have slightly better night vision than humans, which can be seen if you switch party leaders.

At their wit's end, the party tries to impale the monster's groin on a blue arrow.

As you can see from the above screenshot I've finally figured out that the clock retrieved from the shuttle remains in the root cellar wasn't some crazy save-it-for-the-boss item but in fact a display feature that is "eaten" in order to (permanently) turn it on. Usually in games if a resource does not need managing in any way, the player is also spared the formality of activating it, since it is assumed that characters would know about such things and not let them go unused for long periods of time for no particular reason. It is also a bit odd how turning on the clock transforms it from a concrete, bulky item in your inventory to an abstract, weightless blob on your display. A compass will later be added to the collection of hovering accessories, and I hold out hopes for a "tiredometer" showing how long the game will force me to wait in real time before I can select the rest option.

Near the end of the dungeon, the organic walls are pulsating strangely and the background chirps are exchanged for a dramatic arpeggio! A boss fight is coming up! Full of trepidation, the party enters a chamber with a floating brainy jellyfish plant thing and a few wandering cylinders of bright plasma. There's something psionic going on here! Dodging the cylinders and touching the jellyfish, Tom is rendered "intoxicated" and "irritated" as well as damaged, so that's probably not a good thing. It turns out that getting run over by hot burning plasma only has any adverse effect on the humans, so I try bringing the furry to the fore, which works wonders: a telepathic link is established. Drirr is astounded to deduce that the brainy thing is actually the old furry magician who transferred his mind to the building! No shit, Furlock. Maybe if you'd actually talked to the people in your own city and tried out their dialogue options at some point in your life they'd have told you all about this already. Heck, YOU have that dialogue option.

By popular demand, here is an excerpt from the future Albion fan patch readme:

* If you ask him about "history", Frill will no longer tell you to "find Sebai-Giz Frill".
* You can no longer rob stores by running into the counter.
* If a human character goes unconscious from touching Argim, the new party leader will not suffer the secondary harmful effects.

This encounter can also be solved using barrels of explosives.

Once you've talked to the jellyfish guy he moves over to allow you to find what's left of the ninja, who apparently got eaten by nasties. So much for having a boss fight. In the remains there's a special dagger with the words "quest item" stamped on it, and that's pretty much it for the dungeon except for some stashes and secrets.

The conclusion to the murder quest is, like the beginning, not so complicated. The dagger is shown to the furry historian who declares it to belong to the person who advanced to become guild leader after the magician got whacked. The party heads on over to the guild in question and shows the dagger to the guy, causing him to freak out. After everyone gets together at the town hall for a spot of random snuggling, the whole mystery is worked out (I don't remember the specifics, but it had something to do with penguins) and the humans are declared free of ninja-based guilt. Wooo! Celebration is cut short however as the warrior furry states that he wants to remain in the party and follow the humans on their further quest, and also the daughter of the murdered magician, who had previously almost seemed like she was intended to join the party but didn't, now does. The player has very little say-so in the matter.

It is dangerous to go alone. Here, take this furry.

A little mopping up remains to be done. The party go to the trainer and beef up their combat skills, then leave to the world map and investigate it properly for no logical reason at all, thrashing a bunch of monsters in the process. Some aspects of the combat interface are strange and cumbersome. For instance, the party cannot set foot in the upper three fifths of the combat grid, even though monsters move everywhere freely, often leaving PCs to stand and stare glumly at someone's back when they could have just taken one step forward and to the side in order to come to the help of a dear companion. This gives the player the absurd choice between putting strong characters in the front row and relinquishing the possibility of moving them to attack an enemy on the other side, or putting everyone in a line in the back row, allowing them to step diagonally forward if they need to but at the same time allowing monsters to reach and invariably knock out your weaker characters (which means the weaker characters get no experience, no matter how much they contribute before falling unconscious). After a while it also gets tedious to issue the same orders when fighting the same monster line-ups. One might have thought that clicking and dragging to an empty square could have defaulted to a move command and clicking and dragging to a monster could have defaulted to an attack command.

Sira the furry magician levels up a few times, allowing her to acquire free spells in the city. I'm not sure if this does any good, considering at least one of the spells she already had (the Light spell) turned out to not really do anything. As in all games ever, walking around and butchering wandering monsters rapidly teaches you more than you ever learned during years of diligent study and practice.

Visiting the site of their shuttle crash, Tom and Rainer pull some Stimpaks and another clock out of the ground. But since they already have one hovering watch and the new one can neither be used nor sold, they have to throw it away. Such senseless waste. Also, still no tiredometer.

Finally, the party pay a return visit to Argim the talking plant house, having previously promised to bring him a "music crystal". Argim sadly cannot hear the dramatic arpeggio that plays around him, possibly because plants have no ears, but music crystals evidently come fully equipped with a crystal-to-plant interface and five different network adapters. Presented with the crystal he is "thankful" but there's seemingly no additional reward. What's more, it would have been beneficial not to receive the first reward until now. Luckily for jellyfish guy, the option to initiate combat is no longer there.

When they are done dicking around the party once again go see the Sebainah, who handles all the shipping arrangements personally. Sailing off on a toy boat borrowed from Warcraft II, the party and crew narrowly vote down a motion from Tom to go on an arctic expedition for a lark, then travel on for some time until they reach the next continent. From the ship, the party have their first look at this new land and its inhabitants.

Rainer: "These huts look like Celtic round huts!"

The furry mariners dump the party on the shore and then hightail it out of there without so much as making sure there's no rampaging horde of flesh-eating ants bearing down on them from the treeline. Thanks for the ride, assholes. The ants have taken the day off, but what's up with those people in Celtic outfits romping about their Celtic huts, as foreshadowed by the "Celtic" entry in Drirr's language selection? Is it a live re-enactment promoting the re-release of Enya's album The Celts? Is it the ultimate proof that Merlin was in actuality a spacefaring alien from space? Is it a loopy hallucination brought on by a weeklong diet of bad shrimps? Unable to resist curiosity, Tom, Rainer, Drirr and Sira bumble across the village to the chieftain's hut, where... the game is saved! What could possibly happen next.

 

[Sander]

This thread is most definitely not getting enough love.

 

[The Vault Dweller]

I love Per.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller

 

[Madbringer]

I think what we have, here, is a very rare case of someone breaking past the boundary of awesome, and entering that weird, uncharted territory, where naked women battle ambulatory dildoes in mud and jelly while having sex with each other, and, at the same time, humongous rubber Godzillas throw 1000$ bills and pure golden nuggets everywhere, and all of this is accompanied by live music provided by a sentient rainbow.

 

[killap]

This thread is pure awesomeness!

 

[PlanHex]

It is dangerous to go alone. Here, take this furry.

Jesus christ that made my night. I can now go die of alchohol poisoning as a happy man.

 

[Tagaziel]

Holy hell, this is absolutely the best Let's Play I've ever read.

Per: Thou are awesome!

 

[SuAside]

wow, i'm out of it for a few days and then this happens? shit, i should stay away longer and see what happens!

 

[Per]

Chapter three: "Her alien body"

The moment one of the watchful warriors of the tribe spots the intruders, the alarm is raised. Grabbing axes and swords, the village men quickly surround the party, tie them up and carry them to the Pit of Mournful Agony where an elaborate contraption of ropes, platforms and poisoned spikes is suspended over a cauldron of bubbling lava...

Except not really. None of that is in the game. The villagers are just walking around offering you random comments and nothing worth mentioning happens at all. Sorry about raising expectations at the end of chapter two.

This screenshot has not been doctored in any way.

Pretty much the only thing going on in the village is that the chieftain hasn't heard of giant spaceships falling from the sky, meaning the search must continue on the next continent. (Hey, would have been useful with a furry ship right about now, wouldn't it. You could have waited for the FIVE BLOODY MINUTES it took to determine this was not the right place, you scurvy posers.) There's a guy who can take the party there but before that can happen, a fetch quest must be undertaken. Woo?

In the next village there's a couple of shops but nothing very interesting. After wandering aimlessly across the wilderness for a while collecting shimmering metal rings from bushes (I don't know what's up with that), the party finds the headquarters of the local druid circle. The druids would love to help with the fetch quest, but... you see, just this week, the guy on fetch quest duty happened to wander into the huge trap-filled dungeon beneath the druid grove and was lost. Quite the coincidence, what?

Tom: Well, we'll be happy to wait for your guy to show up.

Druid: You would, huh.

Tom: Yep. Got our stolen ham right here. We'll make ourselves comfortable, steal your healing potions, grab some sleep.

Druid: We kind of had another proposal you might want to think about.

Tom: What's that? Oooh, this potion's blue.

Druid: We figured you might follow our fetch quest guy down into the endless dungeon, spring all the traps, open all the hidden doors and clean out all the monsters. After which you get your little fetch quest thingy and we get a huge trap-free, monster-free dungeon to put our pool table and wine cellar in. Yup, that sounds about right from where I'm standing.

Tom: That's ridiculous. Look. I'm a shuttle pilot. The guy next to me is a goddamn government official. We don't DO dungeons. In any case, cleaning out an endless dungeon is like a million-gold piece job for a whole crew of trained dungeoneers. And you expect us to just hand it to you on a platter in order to get some dumb amulet requested by some dumb chieftain? It's just absurd! No one would ever agree to something that monumentally stupid.

Voice From Above: YOU SHALL DO IT.

Tom: Who said that!?

Druid: I'll be waiting for your triumphant return, then.

Joining the party to enter the dungeon is Mellthas of the druids. He's dumb and also a bit stupid, so no wonder the other druids want him out of the way. At least he shifts the furry to non-furry ratio in the right direction.

It is at this point it becomes clear that Albion does not shy from including horror elements. The first time the rest option is selected after Mellthas has joined the party, he and Sira undergo a mind meld, mentally scarring both of them forever and leaving them in a state of codependent wretchedness. Tom interrogates them separately about the ordeal. Mellthas blathers that "Her entire being is enchanting" while Sira croons that "His spirit is clear and honest". At least Mellthas has the decency to be put out of his stride by the experience, while Sira starts spouting cheap sexual innuendo like a furry crack whore on wheels. LOOK, YOU TWO. SHE IS A FURRY. A DAMN FURRY. IT IS NOT TO BE. GET THE FUCK OVER IT OR TASTE SHOVEL-TO-FACE. Will that be the end of it? We shall see.

Jesus has no regard for personal space.

The dungeon is - besides endless, trap-filled and monster-filled - not very entertaining. The first level isn't so bad because you explore it in 2D mode and everything is clearly visible. Beyond that, you go into murky 3D getting-stuck-on-corners mode even though you're basically doing the same things. You have a choice between using up a million torches that go out every two minutes because you spend a lot of time waiting to rest WHY WOULD A GAME EVEN FORCE YOU TO DO THAT IT IS CALLED A GAME BECAUSE YOU PLAY IT NOT BECAUSE YOU WAIT IT or navigating the dungeon using furryvision that lets you see some two or three squares ahead meaning every monster attack will come out of the blue and you rely on the automap a lot. There are step-on-the-right-pressure-plates puzzles and there are find-the-hidden-button puzzles and there are avoid-the-fireballs-in-the-corridor puzzles and there are release-the-monsters-using-switches puzzles and there are spot-the-crumbling-wall-section puzzles and there are step-between-the-pitfalls puzzles and it's just as exciting as it sounds and I refuse to take any screenshots of this part. At the bottom of the dungeon the fetch quest guy is found cowering in a closet (how did he even get there without setting off the traps and opening the blocked passages?), after which everyone teleports back to the surface. It is decided that Mellthas must leave with the party, since if the Celts found out about him and the furry they'd string them both up at the city gates, being decent and non-decadent folks. Tom is confused because he thought stringing them up at the city gates was HIS idea.

Ever been in a spot where you see something bad coming but you can't do a damn thing?

On realism in games: If you have no food, you can't regain hit points when resting. However, extracting yourself from a murderous dungeon and hiking across half a continent to one of the only two people on it selling provisions, dragging along two comatose party members who still somehow contribute to the overall carrying capacity, all without having no food, is perfectly all right.

Before the show can get on the proverbial road there's mopping up to do, as ever. Another village on the south side of the continent has a shopful of needed items, but to gather money for them the party needs to go back into the dungeon and kill some beasts that were too tough to handle before. They're too tough to handle NOW! The game doesn't really have much in- or out-of-game presentation of spell and monster properties, but a tome of information (i.e. a walkthrough) reveals that enemies that are impossible to defeat in mêlée can be vanquished with the Banish Demon spell. Great, but Mellthas is too low a level to even learn it. Taking yet another break from saving the world and everyone on it, the party romps around the valleys and fields of Gratogel looking for wandering monsters to learn life's wisdom from. Eventually Mellthas levels up and gains the spell. Now all he has to do is increase his skill with it, which is done by casting it repeatedly on things. Those things have to be hostile, but they don't actually have to be banishable. This means running around some more harassing strictly non-demonic wildlife and performing utterly non-productive incantations while onlooking farmers sigh and shake their heads. There is probably a term for this kind of behaviour.

Even with the preparation, it is tedious work to actually root out the nasties. At first, Mellthas has not reached the point where he can banish the most powerful monster type involved, and there seems to be no random element here: either a spell will always work on a specific monster or it will never work on it. More oddities about the combat interface are revealed. Some monster groups have a very predictable initial line-up. This means you can change your own combat positions ever so slightly just before combat to ensure that your close combat fighters will be able to gang up on an enemy in the first round instead of being helplessly flanked. It feels a bit silly to be working the arbitrary rules and restrictions laid out for the combat grid in this way, but the disadvantage you incur if you opt not to do it is really no less silly or artificial. Another issue is that you can't give movement commands into squares that will be vacated during the combat round. This is annoying mostly when you would like to shuffle all your people sideways, but it may also stop your fighters from retreating properly: if a character in the front row has no room to step diagonally backwards they'll have to stand and wait for an empty tile. Meanwhile, of course, fast-moving demons will be feeding off their flesh. Anyway, the reward for all this hard work is money, gems and the legendary Lugh's Dagger! Wooo! The Dagger of Lugh! The one and only pointy implement of that guy! It shall rend monster flesh across the globe.

Hauling their newfound riches through the mountain pass to the southern village, the PCs are beset by bandits and have to run away a lot. Maybe this explains why those pastoral villages lie so serenely atop an infestation of infernal abominations. If anyone ever tries to invade Gratogel they'll be clobbered by the bandits.

Having now run back, forth and around the entire continent several times (is anyone keeping track of the total time spent dicking around? Do the people on the Toronto just happen to dick around in equal measure?), the party arrive panting at the village where they first went ashore. They have the fetch quest thingy and trade it for a travel permit. FINALLY. They take the travel permit to the local toy boat owner... he wants 200 gold for his services. The PCs don't have 200 gold because they just spent 1250 gold on a flaming sword. There's nowhere in the village to convert gems into cash. There's no option to just chuck a few gems at the toy boat owner and call it even. There's no option to TORCH THE HUTS WITH THE FLAMING SWORD, JUMP INTO THE DAMN BOAT AND SAIL OFF LAUGHING. Shoulders sagging, fur drooping, the party travel back and forth across the continent one final time in order to sell gems.

Fast forward and the party is standing in the harbour of the bustling town of Beloveno. (The intervening time has been spent making voodoo dolls of furry mariners.) It's the first dungeon city since Nakiridaani, so there's bound to be all kinds of shops and stuff. Talking to a random citizen convinces the party that this isn't the right continent either, but that in order to "get some reliable transportation" they must "get to know Beloveno and its immediate surroundings thoroughly". Why? Why would they think that? The whole thing sounds worryingly similar to the situation on the last continent. OK, COME ON, GAME. THROW YOUR BEST FETCH QUEST AT ME.

What is wrong with you, Tom.

Let's start off by going into people's houses and robbing them blind. An odd detail is that the barking of seals is a prominent part of the background noises in Beloveno, and even when you're down in someone's basement hacking up giant flying monsters you will hear loud honking every few seconds. (Tom: "I... I feel like I'm going crazy. They're in the walls. Can't you hear them? They're laughing at me! Honk! Honk! AAAAAAHHH!") There are two additional NPCs among the citizenry to choose from. Since I already have two mages, one of whom is frankly not pulling his weight when there are no demons to banish, I opt for the warrior woman, Siobhan. The weapon shop carries eight Lugh's Daggers. What the heck?

The continent of Maini is enormous, by which I mean really freaking big and huge. Most of it is covered in plants, though. Walking around the various world maps, killing some monsters and gathering some shimmering metal rings from bushes, it is easy to wonder why more of it hasn't been settled and cultivated instead of left for the packs of roving monsters. Maybe it's one of those Goddess-head-explody things.

It's slightly curious that these packs of monsters feature lots of different monster types working as a team. There was at least one instance of mixed teams on the first continent as well, but here you often get up to three different species working together. Sira's Frost Avalanche spell is invaluable in teaching them to stand still and take sword points to the belly. The shimmering metal rings she uses for casting look like big shimmering coffee beans when she throws them to the ground.

In case you thought I was running out of things to complain about in the combat interface, I'd like to waffle some more on the impossibility in the world of Albion of leading your shots. The root of the problem is that your characters are targeting tiles, not enemies, and you can't target an empty tile where you know or think an enemy will be. Since the points in time when you are required to target a square, when monsters move, and when shots are fired are all locked in a strict sequence, slow characters will find themselves in a nightmare world where everyone can effortlessly dodge bullets. Usually people don't design combat simulations to grant supernatural abilities without an in-world rationale, but that one would do so incidentally is apparently of lesser concern. And of course you can't say, "Well, I'll just shift my action from being last in this turn to being first in the next." Nope. You are ALWAYS last and can NEVER take anything that happens into account. You are, in short, a bit of a dummy. The problem is especially noticeable when trying to pursue fleeing opponents. Although as usual you are restricted to the first two rows, you have the option to freely shift your entire party forward one row - in effect, shifting the monsters back - if there is no monster at all in the first three rows. If a monster moves at no more than one square per round, that means they can never actually leave the combat grid if you don't let them. But this is still no help unless one or more of your characters act before them in each turn. Conversely, when a monster is slower, they have no hope of getting away: you can just trot after them in a straight line towards infinity, wearing them down with mêlée attacks (if they are in the third row) or ranged weapons (if they are in the fourth). "Fleeing" then translates to "standing still", except that the player must issue new attack commands every round.

Going to the world map north of Beloveno, looking for the two other settlements on the continent, I find an alluring cave entrance and go in. Creatures called kritahs wait for me there. The caves turn out to be fairly extensive: not with endlessly branching pathways, thankfully, but with holes in the floor and ceiling forming a maze in three dimensions. It takes a while to follow all the possible routes, the reward being some treasure as well as two special finds: a crystal room full of jewels and a plant room full of herbs. Maybe these will turn out to be of some importance. Maybe they won't. But I'll hold on to them forever in case they go into assembling that magic sword.

Kritah 2 discovers a flaw in its cunning plan.

As for the plot? Screw the plot! Now begins one of the most vague and perplexing quests in a history of vague and perplexing quests. Basically it puts the "dick" in "dicking around".

When I'm done with the cave I enter the nearby mountain village of Kounos. There isn't a lot there, but in one of the houses we meet an old friend of Mellthas' (on a different continent? OK, never mind) who has some vague apprehensions. On leaving, Sira pipes up that she senses something is wrong and the party should investigate. Investigate what and why? Good questions.

I walk around the map and notice a bunch of demons hanging around a furry shrine. I've previously heard that humans aren't allowed to enter the shrine, so I beat up just a few of the demons and walk on.

I find the Iskai village of Srimalinar where nothing of any import is happening either. A couple of furries express vague apprehensions and tell me to talk to the leader in Kounos.

I go to Kounos. Mellthas' friend Darios has new text and there is some reference to a dispute over the shrine. I might have been fascinated if anyone had actually told me how the whole thing fits together and why I should care. I go to the leader's hut and now figure out that I can get past the door guard by picking a very specific path through dialogue using trial and error. Visiting the leader, Kontos, is done in a dungeon which is not too extensive (phew). He doesn't actually tell me much, though, except that some conflict is coming but I'm probably intelligent enough to pick the right side. Why, thank you, Kontos. I go through the rest of his dungeon and steal all his stuff, among which is half a document. Well, that might be important. Normally when you have half a document you should be able to get a pretty clear picture of what it's about, but no such luck here. I can show it to Kontos, who just scoffs and says I can't prove anything. I would like to tell him that he's got nothing to fear since I have no idea what I'm supposed to be proving, but I can't. I show him the rest of the prize items from his dungeon and he doesn't care.

I go to Srimalinar. The furries have new text and relate rumours about assassination plans against council president Herras in Beloveno, then urge me to talk to Kontos again. Oddly, they want me to pay for the information, even though it's in THEIR interest that I look into the matter, and not at all in mine (except, you know, that I'm "doing a quest"). This also prompts Mellthas to write a message (he's dumb, remember) that I should go talk to Darios. Brilliant idea! We only did that two or three times.

I go to Kounos. Darios apparently has something to say but due to bad scripting he doesn't actually say it; instead I overhear a snippet of conversation with the news that "Herras has gone to Beloveno" and something is "very tragic". Why would Herras go to Beloveno? Herras IS in Beloveno. When I talk to Darios again, he says that the people of Kounos are leaving for the shrine. But everyone is still right there. Kontos in his dungeon is also talking about taking over the shrine but at least he doesn't expect me to believe he's already on his way over.

(By the way, movement on the world map is far from instantaneous, and these locations are not right next to each other. I have to spend a good two minutes going between them, weaving between respawning random monsters on the world map, navigating around trees and cliffs, and lining up with bridges and stuff.)

I go to the shrine and beat up the rest of the demons guarding it, but there's no one else around. Maybe they're all inside already. Trying to enter the shrine I'm told that I'd be violating the taboo and I don't want to do that.

I go to Srimalinar. Everyone is angry with me for having humans in the party and speaks of trouble at the shrine but nothing else happens. Well, by now surely something should be going down at the shrine.

I go to the shrine. No signs of trouble at all.

I go to Kounos. Nothing new. Darios still says everyone has gone to the shrine. There is no option to tell him he's a gibbering fool or anything else.

Being out of options on this part of the world map, I go to Beloveno. There must have been some truth to those assassination rumours since council president Herras has in fact been assassinated. That is mildly tragic, I guess, if you're a fan of his. I don't know how he fit into the picture anyway. However, the two supposed guilty parties, councilmen believed to be in league with Kontos, have already taken off for some reason (what did they expect to gain, then?) and replacements have been appointed, so there isn't anything for me to do. I could proceed on the conspiracy theory that the supposed guilty parties actually aren't, but at this point I'm really past caring. There's nothing to do but follow these rails to the end.

I go to Kounos. Everyone is gone, so maybe they have FINALLY got off their asses and made it to the shrine. And all it took was an arbitrary dialogue trigger on the other side of the mountains.

I go to the shrine. Human and Iskai forces are now squaring off. However, they won't actually DO anything, and the game tells me to look for further clues. Well, I have one half of a document. The game seems to be telling me the other half is in Srimalinar. Did I not loot people's underwear drawers thoroughly enough?

I go to Srimalinar. One of the two furries I've been talking to now waves the other half of the document in my face. Did he have it all along? Did he blow it out of his nose this morning? I have absolutely no idea. He gives it to me. I put the documents together. They reveal a plan of some sort. Sarcastic yay.

I go to the shrine and show the document to the assembled forces. There is a bit of a shouting match, but eventually a furry steps up and explains the whole plot (something about penguins, I don't know). I guess it's nice to finally learn roughly what the whole thing was about, but as I said, I'm past caring. The only active thing I did was loot the dungeon, and I did that for my own purposes, not because I had any moral and/or rational cause to do so. Everything else happened offscreen as the result of walking, walking and further walking.

tl; dr

His plan thwarted, Kontos dodges into the shrine. I go in after him (wait, the taboo?), but he has escaped somehow. Oh well. At least the shrine isn't a dungeon (phew again). Taking pointers from Tom, Drirr helps himself to some spare change tucked away among the relics of his dead kin. But when I go back up from the shrine, Kontos is waiting to have his revenge! Oh, Kontos, you scoundrel. The Purvis gambit from Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter. How could you know, back in 1996, that it doesn't actually make a difference.

Here's a boiled-down list of points that arguably go into good quest design, as in the opposite of rubbish quest design:

1. Provide the player with a quest hook.
1a. If the quest is mandatory, the hook should be bigger.
1b. If the quest goes counter to previous mission statements, the hook should be bigger still.
2. The execution of a quest should serve to include the player and PCs.
2a. More often than not, significant events should play out in the presence of the PCs.
2b. More often than not, events should be impelled or influenced by PC involvement.
3. A rewarding resolution results from active input.
3a. Interaction is active when a revelation, proposition or assertion presented by the PCs serves as a catalyst for events.
3b. Interaction is passive when the player merely receives knowledge of what others are planning or doing.
4. Do not turn logistics into a chore.
4a. The extent to which the player is expected to act on hints and hunches should be inversely proportional to the amount of hurdles separating each possible lead.
4b. Do not arbitrarily suspend contingencies.
5. If you fail point 1 by providing only a vague array of background information and meta-nudges, fail point 2 by having everything happen when the PCs turn their backs, fail point 3 by reducing player input to guessing which character holds the latest piece of exposition, and fail point 4 by placing everyone that the PCs need to talk to on opposite sides of a continent, you will end up with a detached player who DOES NOT WANT TO DO YOUR DAMN QUEST.
5a. You suck.
5b. Your dog, if you have one, SUCKS.

Further selected notes from the future Albion fan patch readme:

* Villagers will not lie down in unmade beds, making it look like they've been cut in half.
* Drirr will no longer have a conversation with himself about the nature of green pressure plates.
* The man with a lisp in Beloveno will no longer respond to verbose generic (non-lisping) topics.
* You will not get revealing messages if you try to put a cursed item on a character who is unable to equip it.
* Kontos will not repeatedly cast Steal Magic on your non-casters.
* The guardian of the shrine will acknowledge that Kontos has been killed.
* You are no longer able to pick Triifalai seeds from the top of a plateau by running into the cliff wall below. Also, southeast of Beloveno there is a Triifalai bush present on only one part of a world map overlap. In a previous version of the patch it was removed, but following complaints it has been reinstated.
* The whole Kounos/Srimalinar/shrine quest structure has been ripped out and replaced with a pop-up message saying: "Anyway, much later".

Some time after that business is all cleared up, the party run into their old acquaintance, furry historian Frill, at the tavern in Beloveno. He mysteriously offers to convey them by sea to an unspecified location. This is the "reliable transportation", huh? Before that can be settled, however, Sira breaks off the conversation saying that the feud between humans and Iskai on Maini must first be averted. Poor Sira is still dizzy from all that walking back and forth. They talk to Frill again and agree to go. Sira interrupts once more, declaring that she and Mellthas are heading off on their own to Srimalinar for "some time together". Tom draws a dagger and stabs her in the midriff. In his imagination. In reality, he smiles congenially and wishes them "a beautiful time".

On the way over to the harbour everyone seems oddly quiet. Rainer speaks up awkwardly: "Hey, did you guys also..." He gestures vaguely at his sun dagger. "Yes," acknowledges Tom. "Yup," says Drirr. Siobhan catches up a little late, whistling and wiping her blade clean.

And so commences yet another voyage with a furry crew, the nights punctuated by random screams as the party sit huddled in their cabin, giggling and trying out their voodoo dolls. Then one day, an island appears out of the fog...

I swear I have no idea what this game is up to sometimes.

What place can this be? Is it the fabled island of Avalon? Is it a cigar convention? Is it John Carpenter's The Fog? Is it that land where you wander forever and ever and never get out? Unable to resist curiosity, Tom, Rainer, Drirr and Siobhan walk... and walk... and WALK... and walk across the island to the palace of the Enlightened Ones, where... the game is saved! What could possibly happen next.

 

[I_eat_supermutants]

Per is officially the sexiest man deity of NMA.

I tried to play this game sometime back but couldn't get it to work on my machine.

 

[Pablosdog]

I bought a copy of this game a whille back for about 10 dollers, still have it. Is it still worth ten dollers? Never got to play the damn thing.

 

[Tagaziel]

Oh god, Per you are the LORD OF AWESOME.

One thing though: you would've understood more if you talked to everyone, after all, that's what everyone and their mother tell you to do.