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AoD dex' reviews

Weasel
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Dec 14, 2012
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Wondering if this is a Codexer on Steam:

Am I alone? AoD is the greatest RPG I've ever played.
Am I alone? AoD is the greatest RPG I've ever played.
Starting with Fallout 1, I've been playing many RPGs, and AOD is no doubt the best among those.

What is a RPG about? To me it's all about immersion. A cyber experience that is realistic and plausible for me to play the role of a character, pondering over each decision and carefully navigating the world as if it were real.

There is a strong ongoing trend of casualization in RPG and qualities I seek in RPG have long disappeared for many years. Most of so called AAA RPGs have an abhorrent level of writing, flashy but shallow characters with no depth, plots that are either childish to the point of cringeworthy level or that contradicts itself within the game, an extreme hand holding and accommodations to let gamers do whatever the hell they want even if it is going for the final boss at level 1. For that reason, Mass Effect2&3, Dragon Age 2, and (especially) Skyrim didn't have an appeal to me.

I can't get much immersion from an ancient evil hellbent on world domination, prophecies of the chosen one(which always happens to be you), and a superhero main character who can do everything at his/her whim without so much as a minor setback as a consequence.

To make an analogy of these settings in real life, it would be as if there were an evil alien invasion to conquer earth, second coming of Jesus(which happens to be me, by the way), and I having an sexual intercourse with every woman I lay my eyes on and winning every lottery I purchase. Does that make sense? No, that's plain ridiculous. Then why should we be treated as such in video games? I know it's a fiction, but give me a plausible one that I can actually believe and immerse myself in.

I don't want an ancient evil without a plausible explanation. I don't want every female character to sleep with me when I click a dialogue with a heart icon on it. I don't want to be the stupid chosen one foretold by prophecy. I don't want to be a superhuman capable of miracles. I don't want characters that speak as if they were in a elementary school theatricals(go away Skyrim).

I want villains to have reasons for their actions and act smart. I want everyone with brain to have their own agenda instead of being a decoration to the grand journey of the main character. I fully expect character to deceive and backstab me should they see my vulnerability or weakness, and I don't expect a divine punishment that magically leads those who wronged me to my path so I can reclaim the stolen money. If I've been tricked and they ran away, so be it. I want factions to have more interactions without player's intervention. I want choices to matter. I want the game to smack me full in the face if I make wrong decisions and I want situations sometimes presented without obvious answers.

Where most RPGs failed to do these, AOD did all of these perfectly and more.

On top of being the ideal RPG I dreamed of, the game adds brutal and realistic combat, multiple ways to solve quests, meaningful skill checks that far surpasses what was shown in Fallout 1,2 and New Vegas, great plot variations.

AOD is the single best game in terms of plot diversity; there is not a game that comes even close; neither Alpha protocol, the Witcher, DA, or ME.

I can see how much effort has been put for the 12 years of the development and in that respect this game is unique; I don't know if I will see a game like AOD again.

The only grudge I have against this game is the long development time. I do not like dungeon crawlers so I am not really looking forward to the sequel. It may take another 10 years for the folks at the Iron Tower Studio to produce something of AOD calibre, or perhaps never if the game doesn't sell better. It makes me sad that a hidden diamond such as AOD is not recognized by broader audience. This is a game that should sell at least half a million copies since there must be millions of hardcore RPG fans around the world. Iron Tower will most likely remain indie considering the sales figure revealed in the post release update, and I am truly sad that I won't have another experience like AOD for many years even if Iron Tower keeps making great games.

For those who enjoyed the game like me, you should try Expeditions:Conquistador. It provides a similar experience to AOD although AOD is much deeper and diverse.

Is it just me or is there anyone who shares my sentiment?

I will say it one more time: Age of Decadence is the greatest RPG ever among over 100 RPGs I've played in lifetime; it's even better than games that I loved and enjoyed such as Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape:Torment, Arcanum, Vampire:Masquerade, Neverwinter Nights Mask of the Betrayer, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, The Witcher, Skyrim, Wasteland 2, Divinity Original Sin, and many more.
 

ghostdog

Arcane
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...For that reason, Mass Effect2&3, Dragon Age 2, and (especially) Skyrim didn't have an appeal to me.

I don't want characters that speak as if they were in a elementary school theatricals(go away Skyrim).
it's even better than games that I loved and enjoyed such as Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape:Torment, Arcanum, Vampire:Masquerade, Neverwinter Nights Mask of the Betrayer, Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, The Witcher, Skyrim

He finally saw the light.
 

Johannes

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Combat is nothing to write home about. It's not completely mindless, you do get a better performance if you pay attention, but it repeats itself very fast. The importance of 1-use items makes it a bit better than simply running/feinting around and calculating whether to do Fast Attacks or Arterial Strikes, but not by that much.

Controlling just one dude is still extremely limited (when you don't have a huge spellbook to provide more options or something like that), if you had a team of people to control it would be good.


Also going through the Arena being practically mandatory for any combat PC adds to the tedium, takes a good while. When most of those fights don't really provide much in the way of challenge
 
Last edited:

Cadmus

Arcane
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Dec 28, 2013
Messages
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Combat is nothing to write home about. It's not completely mindless, you do get a better performance if you pay attention, but it repeats itself very fast. The importance of 1-use items makes it a bit better than simply running/feinting around and calculating whether to do Fast Attacks or Arterial Strikes, but not by that much.

Controlling just one dude is still extremely limited (when you don't have a huge spellbook to provide more options or something like that), if you had a team of people to control it would be good.


Also going through the Arena being practically mandatory for any combat PC adds to the tedium, takes a good while. When most of those fights don't really provide much in the way of challenge
How does it take a good while? If you're a combat character you breeze through the fights in cca 10 mins except for the last one.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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So I've written a long article about AOD, but (1) I hope to publish it somewhere that it will bring new eyes to the game and (2) most of what it contains is likely to seem superficial to Codexers. I'm happy to share it on an individual basis, but I don't want to post it. I do, however, want to share some thoughts about the game, and it seems like a worthwhile use of my 1000th post to do so. I should say that both the article and this post are in my personal capacity.

There are some spoilers below. I've hidden some larger ones.

The short and simple is that anyone on the Codex who hasn't played AOD should, provided the cost is not an insurmountable obstacle. It's an important game, and it shines in ways that other games haven't, and the Codex's own DNA is in the game. I have never seen a better retort to, "Well, if you think [X] is crap, why don't you make something better?" In more ways than one, it is like stepping into a time machine: not so much the setting as the game's spirit, which represents not just the games of old but also a particular moment in time in the Codex, which was right around when I first started reading posts here (under a different handle). Like Grimoire, AOD became a meme, and like all memes, its secondary meanings can sort of obscure the original: Downfall is a really good movie, and that scene in Downfall is really great, but nowadays it is pretty hard to take it seriously. AOD has likewise become freighted with secondary meaning about challenge and condescension and Thursday and so on, and it's worth playing it because those memes are kind of a big deal to the Codex, but if you can get past them the underlying game is even better.

It's the first RPG I've finished since MOTB, one of maybe three RPGs I've finished more than once, and the first game I've spent meaningful time on in years. As I said to VD and as I wrote in my article, Teron was the purest enjoyment I've had in an RPG ever.

One thing that stands out to me -- which is the thrust of my other article -- is that as well versed as VD is in the RPGs of yore, the game feels like something made by someone with no formal training in the craft or even informal mentors, perhaps even by someone who has never really been able to get at the underworkings of RPGs but only at certain superficial elements, and has been forced to guess and extrapolate as to what might be inside, and build from that. None of that (other than the lack of formal training) is true of VD, but it's really how the game feels, particularly in the area I feel most competent to engage with (the writing and dialogue). It does many things (little and big) differently, not just differently from modern stuff like Mass Effect but differently from old stuff like Fallout or Arcanum. Some of these differences are for the better, some are for the worse, but the difference itself is an extremely valuable point because it helps illuminate what does and doesn't work in other RPGs.

Generally speaking, I think the writing ranges from good to very good, and here and there it is great (both in plotting and style/delivery). The game quickly sets high expectations, and to the extent I found stuff disappointing, that's mostly because I had adjusted my standards upward by several notches. This is no news to anyone, but one thing that's great about the game is that it has an unending succession of "Wow, I can really do that?" moments. Bioware games usually have one or two of those moments; even Fallout and Planescape didn't have that many; MOTB had a lot, but not as many as AOD. In AOD, it's one thing after another, large and small: audacious cons, world-changing feats, little cruelties, grand gestures. Some of the reactivity isn't quite there for these moves, but typically it is, and even while the game mocks a certain kind of power-gaming aspiration, it empowers the player in other, more meaningful ways. It's true you can't both out-talk and out-fight the last boss while charming every woman out of her stola, but so what? You can level villages and cities, change the course of wars, topple thrones, sow heresies, etc., etc. Much more interesting. Unique, even.

I think the setting is a strength and a weakness. My first interaction with VD on AOD, a decade ago, involved criticizing his word-substituted use of an ancient text, where I felt he hadn't really gotten the meaning of the original words right and the result was that his new version was nonsensical. (That text is in the Library of Saross, but I believe he fixed some of the issues I had.) That problem is still present in the setting, which reminds me of the misuse of Christian imagery in Japanese games: stuff is there, even obscure stuff, but it always is deployed in a way that seems just a bit askew.

So, the setting is Rome, after the Empire has crumbled and Rome has been sacked. The current major city had seven not-hills, the ranks and positions and many names are Roman-ish, as is some of the garb and gear, they use Roman punishments and enjoy Roman sports and build Roman triumphal arches. Even though there's no evidence of Greco-Roman religion, the assassins are called Boatmen of Styx. But notwithstanding how it appears now, the civilization that collapsed was not Roman and not even not-Roman: it's quite clearly the Near Eastern Bronze Age civilizations, complete with Sea People attacking and cuneiform writing and gods with names appropriate to the fertile crescent, that existed thousands of years before Rome rose let alone fell. And yet that same pre-collapse civilization decorated not-Rome with minarets, which would make not-Rome actually not-Byzantium sometime after the Ottoman conquest (hundreds of years after the fall of the Western Empire, which seems the principal inspiration in AOD). That would fit with the First Magi having a Muslim name and with a major site named al-Akia, except that Magi are Zoroatrian priests, not Muslims, and there's no indication of monotheism. Also, not-Rome (or not-Istanbul) had airships and teleporters and computers and fusion reactors
apparently even before ancient aliens hooked them up with high technology
. And so on. Coming across the Lance of Longinus as a giant ancient weapon just sealed the impression of this as Japanese-ish mishmashery.

The result is that none of it quite hangs together as a credible setting. All of the historical hooks the game uses to grab hold of you, to which the player in turn grabs hold as reference points, pull in different directions. Figuring out the game's complex history -- a history that is cleverly concealed in a way that shows how truth is transformed by stages into myth -- is made unreasonably difficult because the time scale and cultural reference points are all messy and are mostly red herrings. It's true that, say, Fallout's world never made much sense as a "real place" but Fallout asked for a different sort of suspension of disbelief: it's campy retrofuturism, not grittily realistic historical fantasy.

For the most part, each geographic location in the game is interesting and evocative (Inferiae and the dead river felt pretty flat); the historical incidents are nuanced and complex; the institutions are generally better developed than in most RPGs, and the leaders show more realism. But all put together, the way they interact feels off. There are too many high-tech sites that are too easy to find, the ratio of towns to villages is off, the major actors are at once too static and hyperactive in a way that makes things feel a bit like a staged production put on in an amusement park for the player's enjoyment. This wouldn't be so bad except that it feels like a broken promise: AOD presents as a robust, serious setting with a complicated and familiar history (like, say, Westeros), but ultimately it seems more like a grab bag of neat stuff.

I think this problem is compounded by the fact that the two strands of the game's action -- the political and the supernatural -- never quite twine together. The conflicts among the major factions are only very slightly tied to the supernatural
insofar as Meru's defection from his alliance with Antidas was caused by Balzaar
. Basically they would unfold more or less the same way independently of what is going on supernaturally. And the supernatural elements aren't really be affected by the political ones. The map that incites the game turns out to be irrelevant to the site (al-Akia) that actually causes the major military conflict, and the site to which the map leads* cannot bear on that military conflict, either. This seems like a major, obvious flaw, which suggests either I'm missing something or VD stumbled significantly. The early game teases the temple as an apple of discord, but that pretty much fizzles. None of the factions actually lifts a finger to help or hinder your progress and they end up fighting over something else entirely. (* Does the map actually lead to the site? As I think back, I don't remember ever actually using it. I just followed the trail set by the last expedition, making the map meaningless in that regard as well.) If nothing else, it seems like
the siege of Ganezzar
and the temple should tie together: that weapons (which would need to be added) or the person in the temple might help or hinder the siege. As it was, the siege sort of came out of nowhere, then amounted to nothing (it had no meaningful consequences that I could see, either while unfolding or afterwards).

This was most evident to me as a talking character: even though I was basically the man behind the men behind every faction in the game, there was literally no way I could use that power to help reach the temple or resolve the issues inside it. (Per VD there is one narrow path in which the politics can affect the temple; its writing is fantastic, but it's too limited a connection.) I reached a challenge that "any idiot" could resolve, but I can't find an idiot to help me; en route, I faced an enemy that a random zealot could dispatch, but I can't hire any of the bazillion mercenaries in the world to fight that enemy. This seemed ridiculous in two respects. First, after the resolution of the siege, if you're not playing as a lore-based character, there's no real reason why the temple should matter. Yet you can't end the game till you find the temple. So you're put in this kind of weak denouement that neither engages your skills and resources nor ties to the main struggle you've been engaged in. Second, it makes it feel like an otherwise extraordinarily robust and interesting path through the game is actually a blind alley when your only options for the ultimate choice in the game are to surrender or to do nothing.

In fact, one overarching problem I felt on my second playthrough was that the lore/crafting-gated content was much more interesting and much more important than other gated content. It's true that each build is locked out of some content, but only some of that locked content ties to the game's main mysteries and end-game resolution, and almost all of the content that does tie to those things is gated through lore/crafting. It would be one thing if the lore/crafting stuff felt like a series of easter eggs that unlocked a secret ending, but it feels more like that content is the "correct" path and all others are misses. This problem is compounded by the fact that the lore/crafting content calls for the most metagaming: many of the things you need are tucked away in places that are easy to miss (a random NPC in an off-the-way location, a random hotspot that looks no different from others), and making sure you have enough lore/crafting requires skill-point-hoarding in a way that other builds did not (in my experience). When I played to get the lore, I felt very purposeful, but my purpose was totally disengaged from my character or the drama of the setting: I was stockpiling things I knew were important, though my character wouldn't know that, and searching in places precisely because I had no reason to do so and figured there'd be something good squirelled away there.

Another form of disengagement from the game came from the way dialogue skill-checks worked. At least for me, it was often the case that the strategy I took in dialogue was not my choice, but VD's: the necessary high-skill options were pretty purpose-specific, and once I took one, I'd often go down multi-round dialogues where I had only one option. Because these skill-check options tended to be long and wordy, it basically felt like: "[Persuasion] See a clever way VD would role-play a persuasive character here, and learn what VD would want to persuade the NPC to do." This was one way in which things felt very "untrained": shorter, less value-laden choices, coupled with always giving the player a choice at each node, seems to have been the norm back in the day, and is the rule on TTON. Getting rail-roaded into a particular "voice" is unusual in this kind of RPG. In any case, I really enjoyed VD's writing and his ideas, but it felt kind of off at the same time. It would've been nice to see the same skills usable to more than one purpose at a given branch.

This is a lot of grievances, but the fact is, AOD jettisons so much miserable makeweight that otherwise drags down cRPGs (ping-ponging and FedExing, dumpster diving for loot and arranging inventory space, trash mobs and endless rambling dialogues, pandering to every NPC and companion as the only way to find out the story, constantly adjusting one's gear and prebuffing for every challenge) that it becomes easier to focus on the narrative and branching.

[EDIT: Sigh. Another massive wall of text followed this, but I took so long writing it that things timed out and it disappeared ("And nothing of value was lost"). Here goes a forlorn attempt to summarize what once was there.]

Put otherwise, in the absence of dross, it's easier to assay the game's core elements, and find where they might be wanting. But despite my many criticisms, those core elements are valuable and precious. It is beyond refreshing to be doing things all the time in an RPG. Not preparing to do things or roleplaying a quartermaster. Actually making choices that matter, fighting battles that are hard, discovering information that has real import. When you first play the game, it may seem thin at points, but that thinness is simply the result of the material being spread over an incredibly broad framework of options. Not since QFG have I felt like my choice of class had so much hand-crafted customization. Indeed, one of the best aspects of the game is not just discovering the areas that were previously closed off, but going to the same areas and realizing how differently they play out with different goals and different skills to pursue those goals. Most of the time I have no interest in replaying an RPG because I assume I'll be doing the same stuff for 98% of the time, even though I'll get access to different Cool Moments and Revelations. In AOD, you get different Cool Moments and Revelations but the path to get there -- even if it hits the same few landmarks -- is also really different. And since the moment-to-moment interaction with AOD is so much better than the ordinary RPG (meaningful choices, whether inside or outside battle), replaying doesn't feel like running on a boring treadmill.

The implicit meaning of, "If you don't like it, make something better!" is, "It is impossible to make something better, and you will humiliate yourself even trying." Though no one ever actually threw down the gauntlet to VD, I feel like AOD nevertheless rebuts a dangerous line of thought: that the best days are behind us, and that criticizing beloved classics is foolish because they will never be outdone. AOD doesn't solve all the insoluble problems of RPG design, but (in my opinion) it puts many of them back in play, proving that people should expect and demand better from their RPGs, even if they won't always get what they want.

Anyway, I had lots more to say, but I've lost my will to type it out again.

The tl;dr of this far too long post is: You need to play AOD, and delight in all the things it contains that you never thought would exist outside of a bickersome discussion of what makes an RPG. Then you must mercilessly attack the game, until VD either rises to meet the criticisms or, in his decadence and pride, gives way to a new VD to push the art forward again. I can't wait till 2025 and the generation-ship RPG. "But wait he did."
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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I had to stop at Westeros. But I didn't likr where it was going anyway so
I don't like Game of Thrones, but it seemed like the fastest shorthand for a fantasy setting clearly based on a real-world time and place. I worried Tigana would make me seem too effete. :/
 

Shadenuat

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Russia
the game feels like something made by someone with no formal training in the craft or even informal mentors, perhaps even by someone who has never really been able to get at the underworkings of RPGs but only at certain superficial elements, and has been forced to guess and extrapolate as to what might be inside, and build from that
Uh, isn't that exactly the case? ( http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/making-a-game.3707/ ) Game began as just a random idea and then for years was slowly built up little by little. Everything in it's design, from mishmash setting to strong beginning area and weaker later areas point to that.
The setting also doesn't seem like it ever got a proper design document or was edited by someone who had a taste in ancient history and would have at least replaced ancient "Roman" magi islamic names with Ambrosius Aurelius Merlins or whatever.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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Uh, isn't that exactly the case?
VD had several informal mentors along the way, including Avellone (who gave him feedback on Teron) and the Double Bear folks, if nothing else. And I'm quite confindent that he has been "able to get at the underworkings of RPGs." The threads leading up to the Making a Game one (compiled in Project Monkey, right?) showed quite a bit of preplanning and deep analysis of RPG systems, usually with lots of specific examples from classic games. Although it's been, what, 11 years since I read any of that stuff, so I'm sure I'm embellishing things.

Still, he's indisputably an outsider, which is in fact the focal point of my unpublished article about AOD, and I think it's his outsiderness that makes AOD so interesting.

-EDIT-
Probably the ancient magi should have Greek names.
 

Shadenuat

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The threads leading up to the Making a Game one (compiled in Project Monkey, right?) showed quite a bit of preplanning and deep analysis of RPG systems.
Sure, you can know systems. You just have to play lots of games. But it's not the same as understanding the process behind implementing them in the game to create a narrative. Or to understand how to implement proper narrative in the game or to build a setting.

Game of Thrones actually has some examples of a long development cycle and the garbage it leaves after itself - biology behind long winters, or Starks fighting Boltons for 8 thousand years (when in just a few years when books take place a few Houses got completely destroyed). Like Martin began with something epic, but then catched on the politicking and books became about that.

AoD has that. I still remember breaking the wall in a tower with beggars and getting out jellyfish artifact in 2011. Back then nobody knew why would you need it later, and even now the purpose of a key to ancient machine of war remains a side distraction, not something that any Lord would wish in his collection.
In it's story too. I am not saying it's aliens, but **aliens**.

Anyway, there is some great criticism in your post, and I'd love to read the article, even if you seem to touch on the issues that most people explained or could explain in twice less amount of paragraphs.
 

AwesomeButton

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Game of Thrones actually has some examples of a long development cycle and the garbage it leaves after itself - biology behind long winters, or Starks fighting Boltons for 8 thousand years (when in just a few years when books take place a few Houses got completely destroyed). Like Martin began with something epic, but then catched on the politicking and books became about that.
No, in fact Martin's characters have a contaminated and twisted knowledge of historical facts and the history they "know" and tell is not necessarily what the author knows to be the real history of the world. The biology of long winters is also explained.

I read about this in an essay called "An Unreliable World" in this book. I really advise you to look at this book if you're interested in serious analysis of the ASOIAF world. Basically the essays are worth the read, except only the last couple of them which are feminist bullshit.
 

Cadmus

Arcane
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VD had several informal mentors along the way, including Avellone (who gave him feedback on Teron) and the Double Bear folks, if nothing else. And I'm quite confindent that he has been "able to get at the underworkings of RPGs." The threads leading up to the Making a Game one (compiled in Project Monkey, right?) showed quite a bit of preplanning and deep analysis of RPG systems, usually with lots of specific examples from classic games. Although it's been, what, 11 years since I read any of that stuff, so I'm sure I'm embellishing things.

Still, he's indisputably an outsider, which is in fact the focal point of my unpublished article about AOD, and I think it's his outsiderness that makes AOD so interesting.

-EDIT-
Probably the ancient magi should have Greek names.
I agree with the game feeling like the author (that's another thing, you can feel a strong direction and vision in the game) is not an RPG developer but I chalked it up to a strong personality not caring about the bullshit conventions and doing everything by yourself from a complete scratch instead of a collection of previous game ideas and conventions.
 

axedice

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So, the setting is Rome, after the Empire has crumbled and Rome has been sacked. The current major city had seven not-hills, the ranks and positions and many names are Roman-ish, as is some of the garb and gear, they use Roman punishments and enjoy Roman sports and build Roman triumphal arches. Even though there's no evidence of Greco-Roman religion, the assassins are called Boatmen of Styx. But notwithstanding how it appears now, the civilization that collapsed was not Roman and not even not-Roman: it's quite clearly the Near Eastern Bronze Age civilizations, complete with Sea People attacking and cuneiform writing and gods with names appropriate to the fertile crescent, that existed thousands of years before Rome rose let alone fell. And yet that same pre-collapse civilization decorated not-Rome with minarets, which would make not-Rome actually not-Byzantium sometime after the Ottoman conquest (hundreds of years after the fall of the Western Empire, which seems the principal inspiration in AOD). That would fit with the First Magi having a Muslim name and with a major site named al-Akia, except that Magi are Zoroatrian priests, not Muslims, and there's no indication of monotheism. Also, not-Rome (or not-Istanbul) had airships and teleporters and computers and fusion reactors
apparently even before ancient aliens hooked them up with high technology
. And so on. Coming across the Lance of Longinus as a giant ancient weapon just sealed the impression of this as Japanese-ish mishmashery.

The result is that none of it quite hangs together as a credible setting. All of the historical hooks the game uses to grab hold of you, to which the player in turn grabs hold as reference points, pull in different directions. Figuring out the game's complex history -- a history that is cleverly concealed in a way that shows how truth is transformed by stages into myth -- is made unreasonably difficult because the time scale and cultural reference points are all messy and are mostly red herrings.

This part I disagree. The setting of AoD always felt like what would've happened had Rome not fell and continue to expand steadily. Magic and House Crassus' ability to keep the Magus in check countered the main reasons of the fall such as diseases, religious uprisings and civil disorder. Thus, the "Greco-Roman" empire successfully integrated most of the ancient civilizations in its natural reach under control; the Persians, Arabians, Indians, Africans etc. of the AoD world became citizens of the empire, even rising to positions such as First of the Magi, as there wasn't any basis for racism within the empire (but there was racism against the Qantari, obviously a form of Xenophobia). These cultures also brought their elements such as language and architecture to the empire, forming Roman cities with minarets as seen in Maadoran (the Game's not-Istanbul I believe, not-Rome was nuked and dusted by Balzaar's forces).

I don't know how much of the tech in AoD world is pre-Alien, but the tech used after the fall indicates at least fusion engines and teleportation devices were "gifts" from the Artificer. We can clearly see an internal combustion engine in the Library of Saross, so that's as far as the empire was advanced AFAIK. Maybe flying ships like Pax-Imperium and computer interfaces were present too, since magic substituted for transistors.

The most important part of all this historical info was learning about the lies of Agatoth's followers (mind-slaves?), especially the Celestial Gods of the Empire vs Infernal Demons of the Qantari part and making your endgame decisions accordingly. What you call red herrings, while not contributing to making an informed choice in the end, makes the world of AoD more lively and unique.
 

Vault Dweller

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I agree with the game feeling like the author (that's another thing, you can feel a strong direction and vision in the game) is not an RPG developer but I chalked it up to a strong personality not caring about the bullshit conventions and doing everything by yourself from a complete scratch instead of a collection of previous game ideas and conventions.
More like, I want to experiment and try different things (that might rub some people the wrong way), which means abandoning the established conventions and going off the beaten path.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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The setting also doesn't seem like it ever got a proper design document or was edited by someone who had a taste in ancient history and would have at least replaced ancient "Roman" magi islamic names with Ambrosius Aurelius Merlins or whatever.
First, it's a matter of preference as we're talking fantasy-ish alternative history. Persian scholars rising to prominence is as possible as any other alternative (Romans, Greeks, etc). It is by no means a grave error. Second, in general, the Romans were known for their military machine, the Greeks for their philosophies, and the Arabs for their knowledge (Baghdad's House of Wisdom, ibn-Sina aka Avicenna, Al-Khwārizmī, etc).
 

Cholo

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Val Verde
VD had several informal mentors along the way, including Avellone (who gave him feedback on Teron) and the Double Bear folks, if nothing else.

This sounds fascinating. Vault Dweller , any chance you could share this stuff if you ever do a lessons learned write-up? Was it written about elsewhere?
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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So, the setting is Rome, after the Empire has crumbled and Rome has been sacked. The current major city had seven not-hills, the ranks and positions and many names are Roman-ish, as is some of the garb and gear, they use Roman punishments and enjoy Roman sports and build Roman triumphal arches. Even though there's no evidence of Greco-Roman religion, the assassins are called Boatmen of Styx. But notwithstanding how it appears now, the civilization that collapsed was not Roman and not even not-Roman: it's quite clearly the Near Eastern Bronze Age civilizations, complete with Sea People attacking and cuneiform writing and gods with names appropriate to the fertile crescent, that existed thousands of years before Rome rose let alone fell. And yet that same pre-collapse civilization decorated not-Rome with minarets, which would make not-Rome actually not-Byzantium sometime after the Ottoman conquest (hundreds of years after the fall of the Western Empire, which seems the principal inspiration in AOD). That would fit with the First Magi having a Muslim name and with a major site named al-Akia, except that Magi are Zoroatrian priests, not Muslims, and there's no indication of monotheism. Also, not-Rome (or not-Istanbul) had airships and teleporters and computers and fusion reactors
apparently even before ancient aliens hooked them up with high technology
. And so on. Coming across the Lance of Longinus as a giant ancient weapon just sealed the impression of this as Japanese-ish mishmashery.
Quick comment:

I think that you interpret the setting a certain way and it is this interpretation, not the setting itself, that you don't like. For example, there is absolutely nothing that suggests that the divine spear is the Lance of Longinus (it's not a giant weapon either). They didn't have the advanced technology before the contact with the aliens either. It's hinted in some conversations and explained in others. I didn't want the NPCs explaining everything to you and creating a crystal clear picture on your first playthrough. So guessing what really happened even after 2-3 playthroughs is normal, but you must separate what you know for a fact from what you assume or interpret.

You're told that the continent was torn apart and the capital sunk beneath the waves. The game takes place in the former eastern colonies and only few Noble Houses managed to retreat there, which explains why the not-Rome has the not-Persian flavor. The Magi aren't Zoroatian priests, the cuneiform is referred to as a dead language, deciphered by the Magi and used to communicate without fear of the non-initiated understanding the message, etc.

I'm not saying that everything makes perfect sense but generally there is a good explanation for every item you mentioned.
 

Cadmus

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This sounds fascinating. Vault Dweller , any chance you could share this stuff if you ever do a lessons learned write-up? Was it written about elsewhere?
Yeah well if you read Avallone's "feedback" you would know it amounted to 4-5 sentences of common sense stuff, like usual, so while maybe not totally useless, the comment about VD "having mentors" is ridiculous and to me it seems like a sad attempt at adding something glorious and interesting to the story when there's no need.
Some guys said a few words about the game, that's it.
More like, I want to experiment and try different things (that might rub some people the wrong way), which means abandoning the established conventions and going off the beaten path.

I guess that's what I meant. I have a strong feeling with the game that since the very start, everything is turned upside down, or something. Like the game is not a Fallout + new quests and features, it's innovative in almost every aspect and when it's not innovative, it's pushing the boundaries.
 

hivemind

Guest
imo the only thing that was kinda nonsensical in AoD lore was
benny knowing how to perform the warding ritual

maybe I'm stupid but his explanation that The First of the Magi taught it to him in a dream just didn't make any sense to me

edit:

like he says that he came from the east(months of travel) and he knew about the position of the nuke

does that mean that there is some society left in the eastern parts of the world that has detailed knowledge of pre-war stuff ?

guess something like the people in the mountain monastery could work but how come they haven't degenerated in the same vein as the doctors did ?

and there is no other mention of an outpost of learned men or anything in the east
 
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Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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benny knowing how to perform the warding ritual
As a rule, the PC is never the only one who can do something. If you know something, there are other people who have that knowledge. Even the temple - Azra was there before you. The cartographer could have found it if he cared enough and told Antidas what he knows, etc.

Bennie says that his father was a lord and that he had good tutors, which is a sufficient explanation (and it's more than you can say).

maybe I'm stupid but his explanation that The First of the Magi taught it to him in a dream just didn't make any sense to me
He says he dreamt of the First of the Magi not that he taught him anything.

like he says that he came from the east(months of travel) and he knew about the position of the nuke

does that mean that there is some society left in the eastern parts of the world that has detailed knowledge of pre-war stuff ?
Not detailed knowledge but stories of powerful weapons (which isn't unrealistic considering that soldiers who were stationed there were ordered to leave). Bennie doesn't know what it is. All he knows (all he was told) that a man armed with that spear won't be denied. He can probably figure out how to use it eventually and nuke his father's town.

In a sense it's no different from Antidas trying to find a pre-war temple to solve his own problems without having a clue what the temple contains.
 

Cadmus

Arcane
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Dec 28, 2013
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VD what's the story with IG. I don't understand it, it seems to me like they're a professional army so how do they get any money, food or anything? I get the houses because they look like normal lords with peasants and stuff but IG look like soldiers only.
 

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