Except for Text adventures - imagine by the Word.
Were you trapped in a cave since 1986[?]
If you mean the added feature of the ancient style with text windows having a multiple choice response text just like what we have in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> then I do not get your point because that part is a simple and direct compliance with the scenario, which includes a script of course.
Larian Studios obviously did a lot of scripting as well as a concocted scenario in which locations were decided. Aleroth, the farmlands, River-town, Verdisitis, black forest, the Dwarven Halls, the Imps� deserted castle and all the dungeons of the major episode before divination. Then the wastelands and the final mazes came as an extension that stands alone. The choice of the scenery locations is a straight forward decision taken from the original story line events that took place before the game time period, which is quite satisfactory. It is also related to homelands of the seven races and the related teleporters, scrolls etcetera.
The story line that I did not have the honour of reading is related to the unfounded existence of your hero of choice and the development of such a character. We may all guess of course that once a healer brings in the hero into Aleroth the hero is subjected to mild quests for healing the two patients and curing Mardaneous.
But before the hero clears up her/ his small world she/ he encounters the murder of George, to which no answer could be found within Aleroth forcing our character to leave the gates. Then the hero is forced to communicate with Seth and take the order of the escort consequently.
So the concoction sets the hero to choose seeking the murder quest or assembling an escort which leads to the two famous branches of demolish and poison for Mitox.
Yet before the hero could reach the bridge, she/ he is forced once again to die and be saved by Zandalor and get acquainted. Zandalor adds two more destinations to the hero�s list of choices, the cursed abbey and the dwarven bread inn. Yet the one quest added there is finding all the teleporters leaving it quite open for other than Elfish and Human scrolls but the dwarven scroll was logically to be available at the dwarven inn.
A very simple story based on a mysterious marking of three characters is initiated here.
The minor episode of Aleroth is a stand alone story.
The hero is subjected to the knowledge of being a marked one.
Assume that the hero forgets about seeking teleporter scrolls, the murder, the plague and the abbey while seeking Zandalor to find out about being marked. The hero drops the side quests and seeks the major line.
Informed that Zandalor did not return from the Stormfist castle and trying to reach him the hero is rejected without an invitation forcing a minimum of two quests of heroism related to Mitox.
So let us follow this line.
The hero gets an invitation and enters the castle too early and loses the teleporting pyramids.
The hero then gets humiliated and kicked out.
From thence, seeking the sewers and entering the castle from below the sequence forces the hero to end up at the council and face the mission of gathering the six members.
For Kroxy, the hero must finish up the Crusade on the Orcish camp.
For Mardaneous, a skirmish at Aleroth.
For the Imp, an adventure in a magical realm.
For the lizard, a minor skirmish in Verdisitis.
For the Elves, a good quest in the south of the black forest.
For the dwarves, a rather complex quest that includes the dragon armour but mainly it is in the dwarven halls and the dwarven village.
So the whole idea was to fabricate a story line that subjects the hero to the six races after being extremely irritated by Janus.
The council members kill the hero to send him to the gods who reconstruct the divine one and send him back to the wastelands to fight the demons and save the world.
This is briefly the reticulated dependencies of the story line that has neither strong causality nor strong foundation but it works for this type of open architecture game some how.
The hero has no roots, only a destiny for no known reason else than the will of the gamer.
There is not a single sub-quest (else than mentioned) that dictates seeking for a profound relation to the simple story line.
Up to this point all is forgiven.
Now study in detail the implementation of the details and find out that too many events were illogically forced to keep that simple story line intact, and I ma very sure that most of it was modified during debugging and quality tests of the game because the crippling of spells occasionally (breaking the rules) and the inconsistency of domination of powers (unfounded events) and the forced cut scenes (very irritating out of thin air catastrophes) are all symptoms of problems related to keeping up with a very poor story line the details of which was constructed as the game was developed and never before.
Due to all of that, the dialogues and the multiple choice response texts came feeble and shallow aiming in the dark and I could never blame the editors of the text for such shallowness if they never had a high quality story to begin with and a professional scenario to work on. In fact, it reflected great talents due to the partial success achieved.
Cheers.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" />
