Session 28

I was thinking about the hybrid nature of this game the other day. It's interesting because the dungeon sections would, if they were the whole game on their own, be perfect direct successors to the really ancient Gold Box RPG's like "pools of radience". First person exploration with grid-based turn based combat. Weirdly the combat seems almost LESS sophisticated than the older games - since in the POR engine you had quite large areas for lights to take place in that you could move around in as much as you liked. I guess maybe Albion's is more streamlined and
has a slightly different tactical angle to the D&D combat.


But then the open world wandering and talking sections pick up from Ultima 7 and that crowd - pootling around and exploring in a much freer way than in a dungeon crawl.


I was wondering if the game that Blue Byte made came out of loving Ultima 7 (or something like it) but wishing it had the older-style dungeon craws still in it.


I wonder if they might also've had Zelda in mind when they were making it - that has very distinct wandering and dungeon crawling sections and had already been around a while when Albion came along. Maybe they saw the formula working there and decided it could work with a more western-style RPG...


I'd love to be able to talk to the Dev team now and get an idea of what they were thinking when they made the game - what the context REALLY was and why they went for this crazy fusion of 4 engines (2 top down exploration modes, a first person mode and a turn-based combat mode! That's 4x the work of a regular game!)


Anyway - so maybe you think that events have been unfurling a little slowly of late, yeah? I know I'd been thinking it.

But today the game flipped personalities! It's weird - when there's lots to do (like in dungeons where there's endless puzzles, monsters to fight, paths to explore etc) the story progresses at a snail's pace. But when there's nothing much to do except wander about chatting, the story accelerates so hard that it sometimes seems to slip out from underneath you as it heads off towards the horizon!


Again, that reflects the two kinds of games Albion seems to be descended from - Dungeon Crawls traditionally had almost no plot at all, just go through the maze solving the puzzles and collecting the magical doodads or slaying the magical doodad (or one then the other). Meanwhile, Ultima 6, 7 and 8 had more plot than was strictly interesting (you spend a LOT of time walking around asking people questions and investigating which of the prostitues in Fawn - the Serpant Isle's floating sex Venice - is working their oracle like a puppet...) Then in Albion, you learn nothing in the dungeon sections but more than you can take in during the top-down sections. Had developers REALLY not worked out how to get plot development into a first person game yet?


Anyway, having opened the tiny gate outside the cave the team had a brief rest then popped back in to see if they'd missed anything important. Turns out they hadn't - just another fire ring - but in romping around with the last few rabbit monsters they discover the true nature of Hoff's new crystal axe!


"Look out! More rabbits!" shouts Dirr
"Come on then you tykes! I'll wop you now!" exclaims Hoff, charging forwards with his mighty new weapon cleaming in the torchlight as he charges!


The rabbit, transfixed by the blue-green light refracting through the pure cute crystal being waved by this wild-eyed un-skilled professor, stands momentarily stunned! Hoff pushes his advantage - capitalising on the element of surprise by careening headlong into a stalagmite and breaking his own nose.


"Oh god! My nose!" He drops his axe and the torch and clutches his busted face "Tom! My nose! Will I ever be able to wear pince nez again?!?!"


Tom, who has come to ignore the ramblings of this deranged civil servant most of the time, is distracted by Hoff's question


"But you don't ware pince nez at the mome-- OOF!" A rabbit punches him in the ear.


Hoff doesn't notice - he pulls his hands away from his face and cups them to see how much his nose is bleeding. But at that instant the crystal axe - which had skittered across the floor until this point - jumps up from the ground and returns by magic to his hand!


"OH GOD! MY NOSE AGAIN!!!" cries the scientist as the axe spins back into his unwilling grasp with such force as to pull his arm up with the inertia - causing him to club himself in the face with the back of it!


Hurling the axe angrily away again Hoff leans himself against the wall with one hand and wipes his brow with the other. The rabbit he was fighting, hardly able to believe his luck ("this guy's
beating himself up for me!") hops over and rears up in front of his victim.


Gasping for breath and dizzied beyond feeling pain, let alone fear, Hoff looks at his agressor - not even registering the axe's flight bending round behind the beast, curving back from where he chucked it, closing in on them again!


SLAM! Just as the bunny has pulled its fore-paw back to strike the axe zings under it's armpit and back into the hand Hoff was using to prop himself up with.


The hapless scientist's hand is flicked out from below him and he falls flat onto his face on the rock. With no strength left to lift himself, his fizzog slides agonisingly down the cave wall while he can only give muffled cries of "by bose! by bootifle bose!" out of the corner of his mouth.


Yes. It's a boomeranxe! Throw it and it comes back!


Typically Hoff is rubbish with it though. After the fight is over, Tom makes a mental note to get his friend some ranged combat training. This might finally be the thing that makes the scientist a
useful member of the team! The axe is essentially equivalent to a bow with inexhaustible arrows - and since it's inexhaustible I can have him lob it around as much as I like without any panging doubts that I'm wasting some valuable resource!


"Pfft. Not really much in there then..." says Dirr as she steps back into the sunlight having decided that the caves don't have anything much more useful in them after all.


"Let's head up the mountain path all the way and see what's the gossip in that Iskai town then..." replies Sira.


The team set off and, just past Kounos they find the Iskai shrine - surrounded by Fears (the floating demonic hand monsters). There's heaps of them, but thankfully the shrine is just next to the edge of a map divide so the team need only nip a couple of feet south after each fight to drink up healing potions and get ready for the next clash.


We clear all the monsters and move on since we're probably not meant to go into the shrine itself.


Heading north we find Srimalinar - a lovely walled town just like the one on the first island but smaller. It's got a magic guild (doesn't mention if this is the building magic or the "other" magic - maybe in this part of the world the Iskai don't make such a big deal about the distinction...) and there's plenty of folk, eager to tell me things.


"Kritahs?" One man says "Oh they're harmless! But they DO like shiny objects!" (this is presumably to explain where all the treasure comes from in the Kritah dungeon that isn't connected to Kontos's lair).


"Do you like our town?" Another enthusiast pipes up "We all came from Nakiridaani..." (which I THINK is probably the town from the first island - but I've forgotten its name so I can't be sure) "But there wasn't enough room there so we trecked across the world and isolated ourselves in these mountains where there's heaps of space. Mind you, it turns out there's not enough resources or easy hunting to allow us to build a large population here, so in retrospect stranding ourselves half-way along an mountain pass that so few people use that it's fallen into disrepair was perhaps NOT a good idea..." This guy staggers away coughing and wishing that meat for his children didn't cost so much up here...


The next bloke who turns up explains that "Oh yeah - our ancestors have always been buried here. There's a great shrine to house them just down the road! But don't
go there as it upsets us to think that you'd be disturbing their eternal rest! Bye!" (always been buries here? But how long has this town been here? That last guy talked about you lot moving here like he could remember it!)


The next is a lady who explains "You can head north from here to Kounos" (which is a lie) "east to meet the Kenget Kamuloses and don't go to the shrine. Byeee!". Why would she lie to me about where Kounos is? Stupid Iskai, Kontos was right about them!


In the pub the barman comes over and says "Come closer! I have information for you! Just give me a load of money!"


"Hmmm... unspecified information eh? That sounds EXACTLY like the kind of thing I'll happily fork over arbitrary sums of cash for!"


"Sweet! Ok - here's what I heard! Someone high up is plotting to murder the president of the council of the just! Might not be true though - you should talk to Arrim ab
out it!"


"who's Arrim?"


"Oh he lives in the harvest workers' house..."


"Yeah, but who is he that he'd be able to reliably confirm or deny that there's a murder conspiracy?"


"Oh, he's just some bloke I met in the pub this time... Byeeeee!"


Before we leave we talk to some other chap who talks breathlessly to us at surprising length - without pausing to allow us to talk back at any point!


"Oh hi there! - I think we've met before! Did I tell you about our sancturay? Don't go there, it's tabooed. The rumours that it's an evil magic workshop are nonsense though - just like the demons. Except they're real (as well as being nonsense). No one knows where they come from and no-one's seen them go in or come out of the shrine - Kontos is just spreading rumours. If you know anything about all this come tell me! Then I can tell you some sweet
information in return but make sure you've talked to everyone else first! Especially everyone important in Beloveno and Kounos byeeeeeeeeeeee!"


"HAVE we met before?" Tom finally stammers as the Iskai stops for breath, but it's too late - the guy's buggered off already.


We go talk to Arrim the farm hand but he has nothing useful to say at all. However, whatever it is they talk about reminds Mell that they could go talk to his friend Darios who we met briefly before and who lives in Kounos - maybe he'd have something useful to say?


The team agree to it and Mell discards the card he wrote this message on - tossing it casually away


"BY BLOODY BOSE! BATCH OUT BOR BY BLOODY BOSE BOU BIBIOT!!!!"


When we get to Kounos, Darios tells us


"Cor, this war between Kounos and Srimalinar's a bit of a drag isn't it? You didn't hear it from me by Kontos intends to occupy the shrine!"


War? There's a war started already?


Immediatly we overhear a conversation about how Herras has gone to Beloveno "Probably from his own rows - it's very tradgic". Eh? Wasn't he the head of the Council of the Just? Was he in Kontos? Must've been somewhere if he was going BACK to Beloveno...


We talk to Darios again but all he'll say is "Um... I dunno if you've noticed, but actually we've all left for the shrine now. Kontos has enemies on the council of the just..."


I was a bit confused now. Had I missed something important? How did war break out so abruptly while I was walking from one town to the next?!?


The team goes to Beloveno and talk to Perron from the council


"Oh well there you are then. Herras is dead, Gard and Riko are the suspects and have gone missing and I was right all along. If only you'd believed me we could've avoided all this!"


Herras is dead already? I only found out there was a conspiracy 5 minutes ago!


"Hi there! I'm Zerruma the new president of the council! I'm a bit narked off about the shrine being occupied! Byeeeeeeeeee!"


Seriously? Occupied already??! How is it that all this stuff is suddenly happening whenever I turn my back?


[at this point I take a couple of moments to bankrupt myself in order to buy Siobhan a "Danu's Light" - an awesome looking sword that pumps up her stats and does he
aps of damage too!]


Back at the shrine I find two armies lined up - one of humans and one of Iskai. As soon as I try and talk to one of the groups I trigger a full-screen static image of WAR happening!!!



Ooops! Did I trigger that by saying something at the wrong time?


Oh, no, I didn't. Turns out it's not war - it's a stand off. Kontos isn't about to give the word to charge so I decide to leave and get some dirt together on him to prove to the people of Kounos that this is a fight they don't need to start...


Turns out the barman in Srimalinar has the other half of the document from Kontos's basement but didn't think to mention it earlier. On putting the two bits together I learn there was a pact to split up some mineral deposits three ways between Kontos, Riko and Gard.


On presenting this document to the two armies they grumble and start t
o question whether they might've been being manipulated - at which point Kontos runs out of the shrine (he was in there all along and no one thought to look??)


"Oh right! So you don't believe me now eh? Ok, I'll prove they're doing black magic! I'll go in there and PROVE IT!!!"


Turning round he goes BACK in (although apparently he thinks we'll believe he's going in there for the first time) chased by a handful of Iskai.


When he pops back in everyone else works out decides for sure that Konto
s, Riko and Gard had discovered the shrine was built on rich mineral deposits and thus invented the black magic threat to convince people to go to war in order to get access to them. Only they didn't "count on mother earth" (earth? Albion surely?) who sent demons to bad up anyone who wants ore from in the ground (remember? This was mentioned earlier in the game - the gods of the planet REALLY don't like mining and send monsters to kill anyone who wants to dig them up... That's part of why we need to get to the Toronto - to prevent our friends, not to mention Tom's girlfriend, from being mashed to bits by the demons the planet will send to protect its rich ore deposits from the giant mining robot the space ship will turn into...)


"So... WERE there ever any monsters?" asks some naked guy in the crowd


"um... well yes. We saw them... Remember?"


"oh yeah... And... Where did they come from?"


"Kontos summoned them! Come on let's go home!"


"Wait! No! That can't be right! Kontos didn't summon them! We just went through this, it was mother earth who... guys? Hey guys? Come back!"


But it's too late. Everyone seems perfectly happy with their self-contradicting story of what happened here and has left already.


But Kontos is still in the shrine upsetting the spirits's eturnal rest... Better sort that out.


Wandering blasély into the shrine (seems wrong somehow having avoided defiling it up until now - but I guess at this point it's defiled already so a little more won't hurt) we find it's actually rather cosy. Reminds me of the Big Brother House off TV - communal bedrooms, well apointed kitchen, lovely sitting area and even a lavatory! Do spirits really need to poop?


Actually, the only sign of the spirits the Iskai are so keen on not being defiled is a collection of locked doors around the place. If you look at them Dirr says "I don't think we should disturb the spirits back there" suggesting that these are the spirits's private rooms that they've shut themselves up in timidly - so as not to have to meet anyone and have their rest defiled...


There's no sign of Kontos - I even have a "rest" for a few hours in there (lighting up a bonfire if the "resting" image is anything to go by) but it's a no show.


There MUST be a secret passage out of here, but I can't find it! Oh wait! No there's not! Kontos was hiding just outside the front door.


When you go back out of the shrine Kontos jumps out and attacks you!


He's very tough - VERY tough. But he's also pretty stupid. Since he's turned up on his own I can use freezing spells and sleeping spells to stop him getting a chance to zap me! As such, even though he soaks up a lot of damage, this is less a boss fight and more a book-end to the now rather abruptly concluded mystery of the monsters in the shrine. All he manages to do is kill Hoff - and to be honest that doesn't really take very much.


And that's all I had time for! I grab the booty (heaps of treasure) from Kontos's corpse but I'm just too exhausted by the rate everything's happening! I can hardly believe that in one sitting I've triggered a war, missed an assassination, resolved a war and brought a villain to justice! Seriously! It just flew by!


Is that it for this island? I've solved all their problems haven't I? But what do I do now? I don't know how to move on from here... For the firs time the game's just left me hanging...!