The delicate balance of resources maintained by the goddess (who limits how much metal the people of the planet have access to by sending monsters to eat people if they try to mine too much) will be exploded. Firstly because I gave the secret of safe mining to a shadowy figure in the item-maker's basements (not to mention the Dji Cantos) as part of my quest - which will allow him to start mining metals himself to sell in competition for the millenia-established miner's guild. This will prompt a pricing war between these two groups where they will each try and under-cut each other so that there'll not only be twice as much metal available to people, but it'll be half as expensive.
Secondly, because there is now an entire city's worth of metal (the carcass of the Toronto) just sitting around in the desert, ripe for the thieving.
This second factor could take things in one of a few different routes:
The Earthicans might use the Toronto's wreckage as currency with the locals to get supplies etc. (Which will provide people a much cheaper way to get metal than from mines and thus put half of Umajo Kenta out of work).
The Earthicans might use the Toronto's wreckage to build themselves a high-technology home on the planet. This would lead them to be the economic leaders of the planet, advancing the available technology of everyone around them and subsequently becoming the Americans of Albion (effectively dictating the culture of the planet even if they don't do it aggressively through force)
The Earthicans might use their weapons to take over Umajo by force.
The Earthicans might be overwhelmed by Albionians who want the metal from the Toronto for themselves (since it's extremely valuable on the planet - after all, the people of Nakiridani stripped down Tom and Hoff's podule at the start of the game almost instantly since it was so useful and they were the most scruple laden people you meet). This would lead to Umajo being armed enough for conquest.
So that's my thoughts on the economic impact of the events of the game.
How about the social impact?
Well there's no thousands of Earthicans who are trapped on the planet forever. There's no reason to expect another Toronto - it's established early on that DDT corp sunk all it's money into this mission (hence why they wanted it to pay for itself irrespective of how many cat people they have to kill). With no supply of minerals going back to earth, the company will go bust - hence no follow up ship from them. (As a side note - the outlook for earth looks pretty bleak as a result of this too. DDT is talked about as being the biggest corporation on earth - its collapse is likely to be a heavy blow to the earth economy that won't be recovered from for quite some time).
There's no reason to expect that other corporations will try and sneak in where DDT failed on Albion either. The planet is significantly further away from earth than has been standard for mining ships to attempt to reach - most likely people will say things like "Going that far out into space seems like a really bad idea - it's obviously a much bigger risk than DDT expected and we don't want to be the next mega-corp to over-reach ourselves to death".
So here's all these Earthicans trapped on a strange new world. They're not going to be happy and - despite having seen the introduction of a documentary on their vid screens about how nice the planet is - there's no reason to assume they'll be friendly with the locals. Indeed, within the Earthican group there's likely to be a lot of factioning and division. Since there's no reason for people to obey the chain of command any more, there'll probably be something of an anarchic period before leaders rise to the surface.
It's very likely that the Earthicans will fight with and kill each other over the Toronto's scrap metal as soon as a few different people notice how valuable it is to the natives.
Most of the Earthicans won't be happy to have given up the ultra-future-luxury of their space-ship life for the rustic discomfort of a planet still at 200ad technology levels.
Most Earthicans will react badly to the presence of magic.
The sudden inject of scientifically minded people into Albion's culture will degrade the don't-ask-don't-demystify culture secretly maintained by the Dji Cantos.
One of Tom, Joe or Hoff will end up telling the Earthicans about the mystical portals that can carry you around the planet. This information will then get back to the native Albionians and completly change their culture of living in one place for their whole lives and there will be a societal upheaval. Additionally - once people have learned about the portals, they'll learn about the Dji Cantos and they will DEFINITLY be un-happy. Most people, when they find out that there's a secret society governing the planet, will be resentful. Why should these people live in a luxury palace on a secret island when I have to make my living as a pig farmer on Maini? Why should be submit to being "ruled" by them (even from the shadows) instead of someone we trust (since all the places in Albion have been democratic, it's obvious that people on this world aren't keen on the idea of self appointed monarchs).
The Kenget Kamulos will have a new leader who (knowing that their deity is actually much less infalable than he expected) will want to re-exert the sect's strength (not to mention get revenge on Khunag who's killed 2 of its leaders in a row). The assassins will almost certainly take on some new venture like conquering the local Iskai and/or Human towns.
War will probably break out across the planet as the Kengets swarm out of their cave city, bad Earthicans (not all of them - just the ones who are disgruntled as a result of being trapped here and are untrusting of the locals) who want to carge a place for themselves on the planet where they live in the manner to which they are accustomed and the regular Albion people whose way of life will have been completly smashed to bits (suddenly they've got loads of machines, instant transport around the world and a secret ruling body).
Add to this the degrading of magic since the goddess's magic is diminished by scientific inquiry (as established in the story of her followers on earth - magic was real but the urge to study the world and disprove it actually stopped it working). The influx of Earthicans from a science based background will spread the ideas of studying and scepticism across the planet, diminishing or irradicating magic in the long run.
Also there will be a whole raft of plagues as the Albionians and the Earthicans give each other their diseases.
I would suggest that the story of Albion is cyclical. Just as the druids fled earth a long time ago to escape the goddess's brother, a similarly small bunch of loyal people will be driven to fleeing Albion eventually - heading to ANOTHER different planet (I'm going to all this new one Bevbeyond)
Another 2000 years later, people from Albion will probably discover space travel again. Then they'll accidentally find Bevbeyond just like the Toronto did and they'll meet the Bevbeyondians - 8-boobed dog people. Then they'll find Iskai and Humans living on this new planet too and have no idea how they got there!
My suggestion for the next game would be a straight up RPG set at this point in time, but one in which you can switch between three parties of characters - each uncovering a section of the plot in different locations.
Team 1 would be the people who go to Bevbeyond and go on a journey roughly equivalent to the one Tom & Hoff went on in Albion.
Team 2 would be another group who leave Albion and discover Earth (now no-longer capable of space travel and populated by just a few hundred people living in a ruined landscape of deserted crumbling sky-scrapers). They must discover what happened to this world (the locals probably don't even know since it will've been several generations since anyone was alive who knew what a skyscraper was for).
Team 3 will be a group who stay on Albion - now a super-technological world of wonders ruled over by a small number of mega corporations.
During the course of the game, players would explore (with their three groups of characters) how and why things ended up the way they did on Earth and Albion and then their actions would decide the fate of Bevbeyond - will you end up stranding a load of Albionians on Bevbeyond and start the whole cycle again? Will you sacrefice the lives of all the Albionians on Bevbeyond in order to safe-guard it against becomming corrupted? Will you agressivly ensure that Bevbeyond is used to feed Albion's resource needs?
I think it'd be really very exciting to play because the plot will be pretty incredibly epic PLUS you'll get to see three totally different but exciting settings.
Albion - still recognisable from the first game but only just since it is now a hustling bustling metropolis world of Iskai and Humans.
Earth - representing a horrible, crumbled glimpse of Albion's potential future if it doesn't sort itself out.
Bevbeyond - representing the lush and happy past of Albion, unspoiled and beautifully alien and exotic.
Well I'd buy it anyway...
I think the possible direct impact of the Earth people would be low because there were only 80 in the first place and of these several were killed (by your team)*. Those trained with weapons (about a dozen) would (we agree on that) go to the Kenget and cause severe trouble by instigating a war. But I would bet on the Iskai to be able to hold the line unless completely surprised. Sira was able to take on any group of humans single-handedly despite being just a student of magic and there is a qualified magic guild in the Iskai town on Maini.
ReplyDeleteGiven how long it takes to complete the game there should have been significant loads of resources already sent back to Earth together with reports about local conditions. That might be enough for a second expedition (I know of some historical examples similar to this situation). But it would take at least a generation.
I do not share the worries about the transport caves. The Dji cantos are the only ones with the keys (try to get Harriet to part with her's!). Also the leadership of the different groups on Albion already knows about the Dji Cantos (in hindsight you can find the hints and in two cases it is explicitly stated), so blabbering humans are less of a danger.
I think a lot depends on how the factions in Umajo Kenta react. I think they would keep their monopoly as far as the outside world is concerned realizing that a trade war would hurt them all. Early in the game Frill gives some hints about the way how they dealt with similar situations in the past. Tom got only a tiny part of the knowledge, so he could not sell it to other groups even if he wanted to.
So I think there will be a war (the third in Albion's history) that imo will end with the destruction of the Kenget (at great cost) then going back to more or less the status quo. The greatest danger will come from space about 30-40 years later. Then all bets are off.
Almost at the start of the game Rainer and Tom talk about 2 earlier contacts with alien civilizations that led to the annihilation of same. For certain reasons the Toronto cannot have been the ship involved in those events => there might be other working space ships.
*and Rainer was the only scientist. The rest of the crew were mechanics, miners and service personnel.
Ha ha ha - well I guess we can't all agree! Seems unlikely to me that there can be much status quo now that there's a dirty great space ship sticking out of the planet and a bunch of earth folk swabbing abot. Still, that's the beauty of sequils we'll never see - everyone can imagine them however they like :D
ReplyDeleteSorry for being this late, I've been pretty busy. But there's not much I have to say at this point anyway :)
ReplyDeleteBetween the two of you you've probably covered the most plausible future developments.
> the Bevbeyondians - 8-boobed dog people.
You know, maybe we don't need a sequel after all!
> because there were only 80 [Earth people] in the first place
Seriously, that few? That would indeed make your status-quo scenario more likely.
> Well I'd buy it anyway...
It does sound pretty epic - now we just need someone to develop it. Maybe someone with contacts to game developers should lobby for your ideas. You wouldn't happen to know such a person, would you, Peter? ;)
By the way, do you already have plans which game you're going to blog about next?
I suppose really it'd be better if the new aliens were just completely impossible to identify with. So they were maybe just some poisonous gas or something. I really much prefer aliens that are properly alien.
ReplyDeleteAlso - I was surprised by the 80 humans thing too. I'd imagined (mis-understood) that there were more. But then again - keep in mind that there is no-where on Albion where an influx of 80 people won't be a very very significant impact on the population. I mean Nakiridani can't have much more than 80 people living in it.
In my opinion it doesn't even matter if it's a small group of people - think of the impact that even 1 sentient Alien arriving on earth would have! Especially the alien arrived in a giant satanmobile and it turned out that it was the same species as us and that our planet is actually just a colony world that what-we-consider-to-be-God had run away to with us. And that the planet our race fled from is now entirely ruled by what-we-consider-to-be-anti-god (I think it's not unreasonable to suggest that the Albionians think of Amoeka as basically equivalent to Satan).
Anyway - as I say, this is all only my opinion. I'm certainly not going to argue the point since my understanding of the game and game-world is naturally imperfect (since that's the point of this whole blog - celebrating the degree to which every different player will find something a little bit different in the game!)
As for the next game - I'm currently thinking I'll start to blog through the Ishar trilogy later in the year. They're another one I bought way way back in the day but have never actually played. They're French instead of German and are fully swords-and-sorcery - are you familiar with them?
At least the Elders of the humans on Albion (not all of them belonging to the Dji Cantos) know that they came from a different world originally and everyone seems to at least have heard stories, so the surprise would not be that big.
ReplyDeleteAs for the size of the population, there are many houses in all the towns and cities you cannot enter (and the game is too old to have actually crowded streets), so you see only a tiny part. If the number of people one sees would represent the real number then more than 90% must be members of the Kenget Khamulos since I have slain a huge number (I really cleaned out the inner sanctum and never leave anyone alive in the 3D dungeon).
Btw, the towns are much smaller on the outside than on the inside and the landmasses you can cross in a few hours(in-game time) are supposed to be whole continents. There are maps and Umajo has a similar size to the other landmasses but, as you found out, Umajo takes several times the time to walk fully across. Consistency would kill the game.
In theory my party should have had a real impact since I hunted Krondiir on Nakiridaani to gain experience and gold. To get to the top level means several thousand of them killed. I usually stop when the trader near the weapon merchant runs out of space in his inventory. That means 2772 Krondir trii equaling more than 20000 gold (I fill the chests in the Clan house with that since it's too heavy to carry around). This kind of vandalism should have an impact on the wildlife ;-)
Just read through your entire archive, and loved it. I played the game myself, although only up to the desert city. Really need to finish it sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI don't think revealing the dji cantos to the public will have such a huge impact. Remember that of the members we know, one is already the leader of the druid's guild, while another is the most influential person in nakaridaami. While their working together is secret, everyone knows they are the most influential people in the world.
The company probably won't be bankrupt. Sure, huge losses of money, but they did completely mine two planets in the space of two years, and they couldn't possible have used all the metal in that amount of time, when previously there was none available. I think of the Toronto a bit smaller than you do, certainly not a ship that would take a generation to build, especially concidering the timeline.
For a sequel I was thinking something much less distant. How about humans trying to find their into this world and establish relations with the rest of the world. The dji cantos have a major fallout, regarding whether to accept these servants of 'order' in their midst. And when a second spaceship from Earth arrives, all hell breakes loose.
As the player, You start out near the new toronto oasis (possibly being Tom Driscoll, possibly a new character) and have to investigate the disappearance of Rayner, who has been abducted/brutally murdered by one faction of the dji cantos. During your investigation, you discover that several dji cantos members are preparing for war against the humans, but when you get back, you discover that a new ship from earth has already arrived, with a faction that still wants to mine the crap outta this world. From here on out, it becomes much more freer than the first game, with you travelling around the world and trying to find a peaceful resolution, while the bad dji cantos and bad toronto humans both vie for power, while the remnants of the kenget kamulos try to poison the heart of the world itself.
p.s. When I first saw avatar, I actually checked the ticket after the first 20 mins if the title was actually avatar and not albion
Although I have played Albion several times, I somehow did not make the connection between the game and Avatar until long afterwards.
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One problem I would see with Dji Cantos going rogue is that they are simply too powerful. Wrath of Goddess would be a sure gamebreaker. Even the less powerful Gaze of Khamulos (essentially the same spell but working only on one opponent) would qualify, which I think is the reason why the Kenget never use it against your party. Since it not just kills but eliminates the victim(s) including all possessions, it would immediately end the game.
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I agree that a Toronto 2 (or one of the ships that mined the other planets) would be available rather quickly. But the company would have to learn first that something bad happened. Since the AI blew up the only faster-than-light communication* right at the start of the game, the news would have to travel at sub-light speed (messages sent with the resource packages the expedition sends to Earth). That would buy quite some time (1-2 generations). That the company can work with these timeframes in mind is another reason why the loss of the Toronto alone could not possibly kill it. My guess would be that a single package of resources would be enough to pass the break-even point. A historical example would be the German trade submarines of WW1. The successful return of the Deutschland from her first trip to the US brought more profit than the whole flotilla plus cargo had cost.
*there can't be a secret back-up or certain things in connection with the AI would not make sense.
I think Earth would get worried that Toronto lost communications, and they might have a smaller vessel around somewhere (a vessel for shipping employees to and from nugget seems like something handy to build).
ReplyDeleteMaybe the dji cantos wouldn't be able to use it on the Earth human settlement due to the power of NAMING SCIENCE! *science kountos does a flip-flop through an alternate dimension, pulls three clones out of his vest pocket and swallows a black hole*, so they actually need guys with swords.
Or it is something only Harriet can do, and she doesn't go rogue.
Wow! Hello!
ReplyDeleteI'm very pleased to have had a new reader AFTER finishing the whole blog! :D And I'm very impressed that you've gone all the way through it! Thankyou for loving it! :D
As for the sequil - I love the idea of it picking up from the moment Tom and co walk out of the toronto looking for whatever-her-name-was that Tom was going out with at the start.
"I really ought to look for my girlfriend..."
Only then she's been kidnapped and that's what draws you into the plot of the next game (which could then spiral outwards to encompass a political upheaval, clash of cultures and war etc etc).
From my perspective I think it would be much more interesting for something really devisating to the status quo to occur. So maybe it turns out the Dji Cantos ARE evil after all (like I think they are anyway with their supression of knolage, secret cabal pleasure island and private teleportation network) and they weren't expecting the gang to be able to kill the Toronto.
OR maybe there turns out to have been an equally secret EVIL organisation who've been working with Amoeka to get the Toronto to Albion who're annoyed when Tom beat it and now kick up a thermonuclear stink on the planet as a backup plan. These people could be a new alien species - or possibly people people from the future (so the Dji Cantos have mastery over teleportation and the Evil Cantos have mastery over TIME TRAVEL!!!)
I fear a lot of what was expressly stated inside the game would have to be discarded. For example that the transportation caves are controlled by the the Dji Cantos only in the sense that they have the keys but that the network itself only exists as a gift from Animebona that could be withdrawn anytime. The hypothesis can even be tested with the columns of light in the Old Former Building. If you use force on Argim, they get switched off (deprving you of the potential bonus). The developers have left surprisingy few loopholes if one takes all the info together (and the original handbook adds some more). You avoided chatting people up. It's amazing how much background is provided even with little or no connection to the game plot itself (celtic music, cultural influences on agriculture, the deeper meaning of polishing gems etc. Hey, even who does the laundry for the Dji Cantos and how they pay for the maintenance of their palatial house).
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading the whole blog. Thank you so much for putting this together, it was a great read! Good to see that Albion still gets some love today. :)
ReplyDeleteWell, only five years late to the party... I recently finished playing through Albion for a second time, many years after the first time. I found your blog while looking for some more information. Thanks for writing it! Reading through the whole thing cracked me up more than once :)
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