Planet Bob

Tonight I made it through the castle into the sewers, so tomorrow I should finally get to see some different colored background graphics

 

I also got my first spells from the magick system, which seems to be simple but effective. I found me a first party member as well, a dwarf which I freed from a prison cell.

 

What's looking pretty cool (first hour impression), is that he's mostly AI controlled, so a little item management here and there and the occasional healing aside, he seems to be really helping me instead of doubling the work.

 

It'll be interesting to see how good this works with even more party memebers.

Not much to report from tonight. I made my way through the sewers level, which indeed looked different, but actually not really better

 

I started exploring the next level, an old mine, which looks slightly more interesting so far.

 

Not saying that I'm bored with the game already, tonights experience just felt mostly generic

 

One thing I noticed with the enemies, is that they're kinda locked into small areas, so when you lure them to their area borders you can attack them rather safely with ranged weapons

shades of brown and gray?

shades of brown and gray?

 

The mines indeed. The sewers were more green and brown

 

While the castle showed at least some variety in design and the sewers were just one single level, I've seen four(!) dungeon levels in a row now (Mines 1&2, Entrance & Temple), that were completely constructed using one single "wall" texture. Also, 7-8 levels down into the game I've seen only 4 or 5 different types of enemies thus far.

 

Makes you wonder what the team of at least 30 artists (from the credits) did five years long, considering that the graphics of the 10 years older Dungeon Master not only looked better, but were made by a single guy

 

Same goes for the game design. Once again I'm totally amazed by the absolute perfection of Dungeon Master. From todays point of view it feels like an out of place artifact

 

After a day off I've nothing much to report for tonight, just crawling deeper and deeper into boredom.

Okay, so I spent another 2:30 hours in the dungeons of Stonekeep and there's nothing new I can report. Basically it was just more of the same

 

I can understand now why this one failed back in the day, as opposed to e.g. Ultima Underworld

 

Let's end this entry with some more Interplay info bits:

 

- The sequel to Stonekeep never made it, but there's been a novel "The Oath of Stonekeep" written by Troy Denning that continues the story.

- There's a Stonekeep game in development for WiiWare right now, supposed to arrive in Q3/10.

 

Watch this space for "Shattered Steel", the next game I'll be Interplaying!