Let me first share a short story (and yes, this will eventually lead to suggestions for the upcoming Riftrunner)
I just recently managed to get a used copy of the 1999 game Revenant. When I started to play this game, it felt promising at first. There was a combat system that required some strategy (as opposed to the typical point-and-click/kill Diablo clones). Learning new martial arts maneuvers as your character level up removed the mundane apathy I felt from staring at mere stat/skill increases that is prevalent to almost all RPGs.
The feeling that I might enjoy this dated software was soon ended, after my character entered the game area the NPCs aptly referred to as "the caverns". For those who have never played or heard of Revenant, "the caverns" is a vast sprawling complex of swammpland mazes and...well....caverns, that connects two opposite side of the game world (which is really just an island. However, the develpers of "Gothic" has proven that "size" does not matter as much as how you use "it"...). It (apparently) consumes a significant portion of the game. In fact, since starting the game a few days ago, I have spent more time there than anywhere else, even though there were many quests to perform and areas to explore prior to entering "the caverns" (in which there was only one objective for me...get the hell out of "the caverns" ASAP). Additionally, "the caverns" seems to support more life than the rest of the island, since a cornicopia of monsters and ninjas (yes, ninjas) spawn and respawn in just about every corridor.
Navigating "the caverns" has become such a painful endeavour, I have come to the conclusion that I have no intention of finishing "Revenant". Why?
1) The game is dark. I do not mean the social ambiance of the game world. I mean when night falls, my monitor screen literally turns black. Coupled with an accelerated day/night cycle, this becomes tiresome. Apparently, while the developers of "Revenant" put some effort into making sure that "the caverns" is as dark as the outdoor areas at night, they never bothered to script in neat little items like "torches", "lanterns", or any kind of portable light sources. Congrats on their attention to realism.
2) Combat, while interesting at first because of the martial arts element, has now become tedious. One of the major grieviances I have with many games that bill themselves as "RPGs" is that despite promises of a social interactive environment in which the players can emerse themselves in, ultimately, these games degenerate into a series of bloodfests, where my character is hacking apart nameless, faceless compositions of sprites that seem to exist independant of time and space (ninjas and druids in "the caverns"? Oh yes, that requires absolutely no explaination....*sarcasm*). When I play these "Diabloisque" games, I can't help but feel like everytime my character leaves town, she is embarked on a campaign of GENOCIDE.
Kudos to the developers for their predictability.
I began this thread with a rant, because shortly after I decided I would not finish "Revenant", I realized the two things that I hated about this game were also the two things that I didn't like about Divine Divinity. So amidst the accumulating requests for "multiplayer", new and "kewler" spells, opportunity to "play evil" (whatever that means....considering my character massacred everything that moved outside of the boundaries of Rivertown and Verdis (sp?), and some inside, I thought my character was pretty badass....), and other epic game defining features, I would just like to make two tiny, minor suggestions that I would like to see remedied in Riftrunners.
1) Overt darkness in an isometric hack-slash/RPG is just annoying. As much as some people may feel it adds "atmosphere", "ambiance", or "realism" to the game, I usually just scratch it up to "annoyance" and turn up the gamma if the game does not let me internally adjust the brightness (luckily, DD did allower gamma adjustment in the game options...but no torches...). What can I say? Players like me simply do not enjoy squinting at a dark screen. This also means it would be nice to see more brightly coloured settings, as opposed to the perpetual dark and gothic environment that is endemic to soooo many games produced since the mid 1990's (and really, it's just down right passe...)
2) And this is the important one....less random massacres and more plot-driven battles. For me, this was the one thing that made combat in Baldur's Gate II less tedius than most mundane RPGs--that the villains were actually allowed to dialogue with my characters and party members before their intestines were spilled all over the screen. More duels, recurring villains, and the like, less squirrel hunting ("kill it!", "why?", "because it's moving"...).
That's all for now. Thanks for reading.
