procrastinator
Arcane
- Joined
- May 10, 2011
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mobygames said:Adventure, action and a bit of role playing blend in Daemonica, a murder mystery set in 14th century medieval England in the period following the infamous Black Death.
The majority of the game is "true" point-and-click adventure, with all the elements adventure gamers have become accustomed to, with only a small amount of action (in the form of sword fighting) controlled using the mouse and keyboard. The isometric "top down" view makes it look like a traditional role player.
Imagine a Diablo clone with almost no combat and great atmosphere.
It's linear as fuck, it's short as fuck, it has a misleading manual that seems to indicate that what went to market was, like, 20% of the intended storyline. Ranged attacks are mentioned in the manual, which never happens in the game. Combat is tedious, dialogue choices boil down to zero, plus you're forced to roleplay a dimwit. And there's multiple endings! Wowza! Which are decided in the last minute of the game, though. I checked two out of (I guess) three possibilities. Only the first paragraph changes in the fucking long-winded tale which is the reward for your plodding thru this epitome of mediocrity. Which figures.
1eyedking's List of Games Full of Tasteful Art Direction
...
However, some honorary mentions (games that got a couple of things somewhat right) are:
...
Daemonica
(play it if only for the music)
Hopefully dis gon b gud.
Part I: One dead, two missing
Music is pretty good indeed.
Backgrounds are also nice.
Before starting the game let's learn about our character.
Wall of text incoming!
For a very long time sleep brings me no calm. Once I have closed my eyes and terrible exhaustion makes me fall asleep, they approach. Countless numbers of deadly pale faces, eyes full of torment and mouths open to let loose a shriek that nobody can hear. Children as well as elders, women as well as men. All bound together within the realm of death, from which there is no way back. Every time they enter my dreams, my wounds reopen. The same awakening each time. An unknown room and a strange hostile town outside the window. Hot fresh blood leaking from the wounds on my palms, silence of the night, solitude. And so I sit in the dark waiting for a new day. A day in which I may have to go among them again. That is my mission. I am Nicholas Farepoynt, the Beast Hunter. I am Haresh al-Dorem, 'the one who speaks with the dead.'
I pursue the worst human monsters. I track and kill murderers of children, poisoners of town wells, arsonists who set fire to houses in which innocent families sleep in peace. Sometimes I accept invitations, sometimes I rush on my own to places from where rumors of such atrocities come. Seldom am I welcome and everyone is happy when my mission is over and I am off. I do not care, I am used to it. I do not need gratitude, friendship or understanding. I have seen the worst the world can offer. I know only rotten and worm-infested apples from the Garden of Eden. Clarice always claimed that despite all the poisons with which we blunt our minds, most Hunters commit suicide in the end. I've never doubted her words, even though she was an exception.
In fact I am also an outcast. People would hardly understand or approve of the methods I use in my mission. As I proceed, my cellars fill with the corpses of men I have interrogated. A single wrong step and I might find my end under the axe of an executioner or being burnt alive at the stake. And thus, every case becomes a race with time. Will I manage to find the murderer before my cellar gives out its testimony?
I have left several hunted beasts and a great deal of speculation and suspicions behind me. A freak who never takes off his hood or gloves, tattooed like an enemy of the Faith - a hero and saviour for some, a prolonged mauler of hell for the others. A sorcerer.
Why do I do this? I am not the saviour of the world. I do it because I know nothing else. And because I promised Clarice I would not stop until I had the strength. And that oath means more to me than anything in this world. I have nothing to lose here, but there she will ask me how successful I was. Perhaps I'm trying to escape my past, I do not know.
When I was young, I believed that pain purified. I believed that with blood I also cleansed myself of my sins, with every wound closer to forgiveness. I was wrong. So was a priest who desperately strived to make me a better man. Pain has not made me better. It has made me stronger. More intent. I recall the moment perfectly, the moment of vision. I tore the bloody whip out of Father Gregor's hands, broke it and threw it on the floor in front of him. I could never absolve myself of my sin. I was the sin.
I have not always been Nicholas Farepoynt. I was born in France in AD 1324 as John Mortimer. The birth was kept secret. My father was none other than Roger of Mortimer. The Mortimer that defeated the English King, Edward the second, had him imprisoned and then brutally and cruelly murdered. And all that with help of the King's own wife - his lover -- the unfaithful Isabella the French. My mother. They didn't enjoy the English throne for a long time. An adolescent son of the murdered English King, Edward III, took Mortimer's blood. Blood for blood. He had his mother Isabella imprisoned. England had an honorable king on its throne again. Only the bitter taste of betrayal and murder connected with the Mortimer name was left in its memory.
And so, a king's bastard who was forgotten by history immediately after his birth, grew up in distant France with the name of Farepoynt. Almost nobody knew my true origin, I was safe. Safe from the others, but not from my conscience. I was destined to stay in a monastery as a monk to live my life, which had been tarnished even before I was born, until I died there. It was at that time that I realized I would not be forgiven within the walls of a monastery. I joined the army of the English king. Thanks to my knowledge of language and environment I quickly became indispensable during the French campaign. Before that, I had only occasionally held a sword but I mastered it very quickly and very well. I killed enemies of England during the day and at night I prayed that destiny would allow me to wash away my original sin. Although I whispered, I was heard. As a reward for my merits I was assigned as a bodyguard to the king's son, known as The Black Prince. In the terrible battle of Crecy we were attacked twice, and each time succeeded in repulsing the foe. And then, on soil that could not hold any more blood, I, with my body, stood in the way of a blow that was meant for the Prince. For almost two weeks I was on the edge between life and death. But I survived, and repaid my debt to his family.
Still not quite recovered, I left for London. I do not know now what reception I expected there. The reality was terrible. The city had been decimated by the Black Death. Under a merciful blanket of snow, there were heaps of blackened bodies. Nobody was left to bury them. People were dying everywhere: on church pews, by dinner tables, in dirty holes as well as in noble houses. The Pope granted remission of sins to all who died here, since there was nobody left who could give them absolution. All around, it was the end of the world. However, I was not afraid of death. I had repaid my debts to God and was prepared to die. What sense would there be in living on? With gloomy thoughts I entered a small wooden church near a refuge at Charing Cross to await my destiny. But I was wrong. My destiny was waiting there for me. A destiny called Clarice.
I found her more dead than alive. Her deep green eyes were slowly fading. Even then, close to death, she was beautiful. I remember carrying her in my arms along a silent path where wild dogs were fighting for dead bodies. From windows one could hear the crying of abandoned children and the muttering of prayers of those who still believed in their salvation. The whole world had gone mad, but there was something in her that soothed me. She represented order when everything around was turning to dust.
She was delirious for five days and nights, tossing wildly on the bed and at times crying out strange sounding words, upon which windows flew wide open, candles went out and at one point a large mirror on the wall cracked. When I pulled off her delicate leather gloves, I found unhealed stab wounds in her palms that were gently bleeding. I was not blind and so soon realized that I had brought home a witch.
Not a witch, a Beast Hunter. This is how she introduced herself when she finally came round. Of course, I had heard of them, but I believed them to be more of a legend, an old wives' tale. Hunters chased the worst criminals, serial killers. They found and liquidated the culprit almost every time but people said that strange things happened around them. Now I believed it.
Were we destined to meet? Then, for the first time I had a strange feeling. The feeling of a puppet that, looking at its hands, sees the threads controlling them. An odd feeling that the puppeteer had some strange plans for me. Clarice was a brilliant swordswoman, and several times she stood on the very brink of her capabilities. I, a soldier of fortune, had nowhere to go, my life was empty and meaningless. And so I became a Hunter at her side.
I soon realized how cold-hearted Clarice was. Hunters prepare their own potions from herbs that are usually poisonous. The potions can then heal or heighten the senses, but they can also kill. They have one thing in common. For everything they give, they take something away. They blunt the emotions and Clarice was a good example of this. She smiled no more than twice during the time I spent with her. Horrible scenes that made me almost vomit had no impact on her. She never wept, never got angry. Her indifference was disturbing, and the fact that the same fate awaited me was even more disturbing.
When the hallucinations hit me for the first time, I was completely unprepared. The world before me blurred and a sharp wave of heat filled my body. Then, all of a sudden, I heard voices. Screaming, pleadings, prayers, quarrels. None of it made any sense. It lasted only a moment, then all was as before. I had no clue as to how it had happened. Clarice listened, seriously as usual. She had never experienced this, but it had happened once to a Hunter she was wandering with. It usually happens in places where somebody had perished or something similar had happened. The voices could come any moment but often they lacked any sense - just snatches of conversations from different periods of time. It was most probably caused by those poisons Clarice was giving me, but even she was surprised by the intensity of the experience I had had.
After several weeks, she let me in on the Hunters' greatest secret -- the Daemonica. This is the language of demons, the language that the oldest of them used to create the world. At that time, simply whispering its words they caused mountains to grow and stars to shine. Rivers began to flow and trees were clothed in leaves. Birds were given voice and beasts their claws. The sun penetrated an eternal night; it lit up the earth for the first time and slowly set off on its journey across the sky. All the languages people have ever spoken throughout history have originated from the Daemonica itself. The language may have been our heritage, a sign of our creation. Whatever it was, the Daemonica is dead for us today. Only fragments of words have prevailed. Hunters have passed on these fragments of the language to each other, and with their help they can reach the borderland between the realms of life and death and communicate with the souls of the murdered.
When she told me how everything actually worked I refused to believe her. The whole world took on a new face. A face I had never seen before, and which was by no means pleasant.
First of all, it is necessary to prepare a potion from strange herbs. This potion is known among Hunters as Soulgreep. Then it is necessary to stay alone in a safe place with a body of the dead. The Hunter drinks the potion and shortly afterwards begins to die. At this moment, invisible Dahn-en-nyan, a demon -- bearer, is waiting for him and embraces him with its grey wings. At the moment of his death it tears the Hunter's soul out of his body and carries it to the realm of oblivion. However, the Hunter must order the demon to carry the soul only to the Temple of Sacrifices, a strange place lying between the worlds of the living and the dead. If he cannot manage it, he dies. Death, is the price a Hunter pays for most of his mistakes!
In the Temple he must determine which soul he is actually seeking, and then carries out the sacrifice. He sacrifices himself. That is where those wounds on the palms that never heal come from. The stigmata of the Hunters. If everything goes well, a demon seeks out and brings the soul. The soul is willing to communicate because it feels the presence of its dead body near the Hunter. Seldom is he so lucky that the dead can clearly identify the murderer. More often he obtains just fragments of memory without much sense, with which he returns. Weak and bleeding.
What can go wrong? Everything.
Clarice only seldom spoke of the Hunter she had been with before. He was the one who had taught her everything she knew, though her first attempts to master the Daemonica were quite poor and almost killed her. She respected him, but it seemed that she had some unresolved troubles with him. Every time she talked about how he had thrown himself from the cliffs of Dover, a certain expression of satisfaction flew over her face. Since she never lied to me, I believed that his departure was self-imposed. I have never doubted though, that to a certain extent she was the reason for his death. Together we solved two cases. And then, the third one came.
The body of twelve-year-old John Grystok was found at the end of August 1349 not far from the church of St. Helen. With his fifth victim, the Butcher of York had sent a clear message: I am back and I am not going to stop.
John's memories of the moment of his death were faint and Clarice and I had no time to spare. The smell of more blood was in the air. Clarice went to the Temple and I waited. It took her quite a long time but she finally found it. A tiny detail stuck in the darkest depths of the dead boy's memory. A detail that led us to the shop of the inconspicuous Thomas Poulse. And then Clarice made the mistake that cost her her life.
Her death was quick, however, and in an instant Dahn-en-nyan carried her on its grey wings away from our world. Now Mr. Poulse was a different story. The injuries that she had managed to inflict on him were not so serious. I had plenty of time to make his last hours very unpleasant ones.
A few months later an envoy from Cavorn stopped me on my journey. The letter he gave me was addressed to the 'Beast Hunter, honorable Mr. Nicholas Farepoynt'. And so it all began.
I pursue the worst human monsters. I track and kill murderers of children, poisoners of town wells, arsonists who set fire to houses in which innocent families sleep in peace. Sometimes I accept invitations, sometimes I rush on my own to places from where rumors of such atrocities come. Seldom am I welcome and everyone is happy when my mission is over and I am off. I do not care, I am used to it. I do not need gratitude, friendship or understanding. I have seen the worst the world can offer. I know only rotten and worm-infested apples from the Garden of Eden. Clarice always claimed that despite all the poisons with which we blunt our minds, most Hunters commit suicide in the end. I've never doubted her words, even though she was an exception.
In fact I am also an outcast. People would hardly understand or approve of the methods I use in my mission. As I proceed, my cellars fill with the corpses of men I have interrogated. A single wrong step and I might find my end under the axe of an executioner or being burnt alive at the stake. And thus, every case becomes a race with time. Will I manage to find the murderer before my cellar gives out its testimony?
I have left several hunted beasts and a great deal of speculation and suspicions behind me. A freak who never takes off his hood or gloves, tattooed like an enemy of the Faith - a hero and saviour for some, a prolonged mauler of hell for the others. A sorcerer.
Why do I do this? I am not the saviour of the world. I do it because I know nothing else. And because I promised Clarice I would not stop until I had the strength. And that oath means more to me than anything in this world. I have nothing to lose here, but there she will ask me how successful I was. Perhaps I'm trying to escape my past, I do not know.
When I was young, I believed that pain purified. I believed that with blood I also cleansed myself of my sins, with every wound closer to forgiveness. I was wrong. So was a priest who desperately strived to make me a better man. Pain has not made me better. It has made me stronger. More intent. I recall the moment perfectly, the moment of vision. I tore the bloody whip out of Father Gregor's hands, broke it and threw it on the floor in front of him. I could never absolve myself of my sin. I was the sin.
I have not always been Nicholas Farepoynt. I was born in France in AD 1324 as John Mortimer. The birth was kept secret. My father was none other than Roger of Mortimer. The Mortimer that defeated the English King, Edward the second, had him imprisoned and then brutally and cruelly murdered. And all that with help of the King's own wife - his lover -- the unfaithful Isabella the French. My mother. They didn't enjoy the English throne for a long time. An adolescent son of the murdered English King, Edward III, took Mortimer's blood. Blood for blood. He had his mother Isabella imprisoned. England had an honorable king on its throne again. Only the bitter taste of betrayal and murder connected with the Mortimer name was left in its memory.
And so, a king's bastard who was forgotten by history immediately after his birth, grew up in distant France with the name of Farepoynt. Almost nobody knew my true origin, I was safe. Safe from the others, but not from my conscience. I was destined to stay in a monastery as a monk to live my life, which had been tarnished even before I was born, until I died there. It was at that time that I realized I would not be forgiven within the walls of a monastery. I joined the army of the English king. Thanks to my knowledge of language and environment I quickly became indispensable during the French campaign. Before that, I had only occasionally held a sword but I mastered it very quickly and very well. I killed enemies of England during the day and at night I prayed that destiny would allow me to wash away my original sin. Although I whispered, I was heard. As a reward for my merits I was assigned as a bodyguard to the king's son, known as The Black Prince. In the terrible battle of Crecy we were attacked twice, and each time succeeded in repulsing the foe. And then, on soil that could not hold any more blood, I, with my body, stood in the way of a blow that was meant for the Prince. For almost two weeks I was on the edge between life and death. But I survived, and repaid my debt to his family.
Still not quite recovered, I left for London. I do not know now what reception I expected there. The reality was terrible. The city had been decimated by the Black Death. Under a merciful blanket of snow, there were heaps of blackened bodies. Nobody was left to bury them. People were dying everywhere: on church pews, by dinner tables, in dirty holes as well as in noble houses. The Pope granted remission of sins to all who died here, since there was nobody left who could give them absolution. All around, it was the end of the world. However, I was not afraid of death. I had repaid my debts to God and was prepared to die. What sense would there be in living on? With gloomy thoughts I entered a small wooden church near a refuge at Charing Cross to await my destiny. But I was wrong. My destiny was waiting there for me. A destiny called Clarice.
I found her more dead than alive. Her deep green eyes were slowly fading. Even then, close to death, she was beautiful. I remember carrying her in my arms along a silent path where wild dogs were fighting for dead bodies. From windows one could hear the crying of abandoned children and the muttering of prayers of those who still believed in their salvation. The whole world had gone mad, but there was something in her that soothed me. She represented order when everything around was turning to dust.
She was delirious for five days and nights, tossing wildly on the bed and at times crying out strange sounding words, upon which windows flew wide open, candles went out and at one point a large mirror on the wall cracked. When I pulled off her delicate leather gloves, I found unhealed stab wounds in her palms that were gently bleeding. I was not blind and so soon realized that I had brought home a witch.
Not a witch, a Beast Hunter. This is how she introduced herself when she finally came round. Of course, I had heard of them, but I believed them to be more of a legend, an old wives' tale. Hunters chased the worst criminals, serial killers. They found and liquidated the culprit almost every time but people said that strange things happened around them. Now I believed it.
Were we destined to meet? Then, for the first time I had a strange feeling. The feeling of a puppet that, looking at its hands, sees the threads controlling them. An odd feeling that the puppeteer had some strange plans for me. Clarice was a brilliant swordswoman, and several times she stood on the very brink of her capabilities. I, a soldier of fortune, had nowhere to go, my life was empty and meaningless. And so I became a Hunter at her side.
I soon realized how cold-hearted Clarice was. Hunters prepare their own potions from herbs that are usually poisonous. The potions can then heal or heighten the senses, but they can also kill. They have one thing in common. For everything they give, they take something away. They blunt the emotions and Clarice was a good example of this. She smiled no more than twice during the time I spent with her. Horrible scenes that made me almost vomit had no impact on her. She never wept, never got angry. Her indifference was disturbing, and the fact that the same fate awaited me was even more disturbing.
When the hallucinations hit me for the first time, I was completely unprepared. The world before me blurred and a sharp wave of heat filled my body. Then, all of a sudden, I heard voices. Screaming, pleadings, prayers, quarrels. None of it made any sense. It lasted only a moment, then all was as before. I had no clue as to how it had happened. Clarice listened, seriously as usual. She had never experienced this, but it had happened once to a Hunter she was wandering with. It usually happens in places where somebody had perished or something similar had happened. The voices could come any moment but often they lacked any sense - just snatches of conversations from different periods of time. It was most probably caused by those poisons Clarice was giving me, but even she was surprised by the intensity of the experience I had had.
After several weeks, she let me in on the Hunters' greatest secret -- the Daemonica. This is the language of demons, the language that the oldest of them used to create the world. At that time, simply whispering its words they caused mountains to grow and stars to shine. Rivers began to flow and trees were clothed in leaves. Birds were given voice and beasts their claws. The sun penetrated an eternal night; it lit up the earth for the first time and slowly set off on its journey across the sky. All the languages people have ever spoken throughout history have originated from the Daemonica itself. The language may have been our heritage, a sign of our creation. Whatever it was, the Daemonica is dead for us today. Only fragments of words have prevailed. Hunters have passed on these fragments of the language to each other, and with their help they can reach the borderland between the realms of life and death and communicate with the souls of the murdered.
When she told me how everything actually worked I refused to believe her. The whole world took on a new face. A face I had never seen before, and which was by no means pleasant.
First of all, it is necessary to prepare a potion from strange herbs. This potion is known among Hunters as Soulgreep. Then it is necessary to stay alone in a safe place with a body of the dead. The Hunter drinks the potion and shortly afterwards begins to die. At this moment, invisible Dahn-en-nyan, a demon -- bearer, is waiting for him and embraces him with its grey wings. At the moment of his death it tears the Hunter's soul out of his body and carries it to the realm of oblivion. However, the Hunter must order the demon to carry the soul only to the Temple of Sacrifices, a strange place lying between the worlds of the living and the dead. If he cannot manage it, he dies. Death, is the price a Hunter pays for most of his mistakes!
In the Temple he must determine which soul he is actually seeking, and then carries out the sacrifice. He sacrifices himself. That is where those wounds on the palms that never heal come from. The stigmata of the Hunters. If everything goes well, a demon seeks out and brings the soul. The soul is willing to communicate because it feels the presence of its dead body near the Hunter. Seldom is he so lucky that the dead can clearly identify the murderer. More often he obtains just fragments of memory without much sense, with which he returns. Weak and bleeding.
What can go wrong? Everything.
Clarice only seldom spoke of the Hunter she had been with before. He was the one who had taught her everything she knew, though her first attempts to master the Daemonica were quite poor and almost killed her. She respected him, but it seemed that she had some unresolved troubles with him. Every time she talked about how he had thrown himself from the cliffs of Dover, a certain expression of satisfaction flew over her face. Since she never lied to me, I believed that his departure was self-imposed. I have never doubted though, that to a certain extent she was the reason for his death. Together we solved two cases. And then, the third one came.
The body of twelve-year-old John Grystok was found at the end of August 1349 not far from the church of St. Helen. With his fifth victim, the Butcher of York had sent a clear message: I am back and I am not going to stop.
John's memories of the moment of his death were faint and Clarice and I had no time to spare. The smell of more blood was in the air. Clarice went to the Temple and I waited. It took her quite a long time but she finally found it. A tiny detail stuck in the darkest depths of the dead boy's memory. A detail that led us to the shop of the inconspicuous Thomas Poulse. And then Clarice made the mistake that cost her her life.
Her death was quick, however, and in an instant Dahn-en-nyan carried her on its grey wings away from our world. Now Mr. Poulse was a different story. The injuries that she had managed to inflict on him were not so serious. I had plenty of time to make his last hours very unpleasant ones.
A few months later an envoy from Cavorn stopped me on my journey. The letter he gave me was addressed to the 'Beast Hunter, honorable Mr. Nicholas Farepoynt'. And so it all began.
tl;dr Nicholas Farepoynt is a Beast Hunter that can speak with the dead via special potion. Also demons.
Now we're all set!
The game starts with a monologue. We'll see quite a few of those.
Seems reasonable. Let's read that letter.
Dear Mr. Farepoynt,
Firstly, please accept my greetings and let me pay
tribute to you. I am addressing you as the Mayor of a small
town that desperately needs your help. I have learnt from my
friends in York of your successful investigation there.
The fact that you have not received the thanks that you fully
deserved for your service is extremely reprehensible. I myself
am fully aware of how many innocent lives you helped spare,
Mr. Farepoynt. For this reason, I believe that you are fully
capable of solving the unpleasant situation that has afflicted
our unfortunate town.
Several days ago, two of our newest citizens, aged Angus
Greer and his wife, disappeared. A short while later, we found
some blood-soaked and torn pieces of their clothing at the edge
of a swamp beyond the town. Despite not having found their
bodies, it is beyond any doubt that a formidable crime has been
committed in our town.
I am sure you are aware of how difficult a time it is. In
spite of the fact that we have succeeded in ridding our district
of the Black Death, its horrible presence has left a state of
joyless havoc.
An unresolved double murder is the last thing I need in
my town at this moment. One can feel the fear among the
citizens as it increases day by day. I dare not even think
about the possibility that the old couple are not the last
of the victims!
Therefore I beseech you, sir, to come to us and take charge
of the investigation of this case yourself. I can assure you
that my own gratitude and that of the local people
will be far beyond the usual limits.
Yours sincerely,
Philip Saintjohn
Mayor of Cavorn
In addition to this letter we also have a dagger (that looks more like a sword to me), bag with herbs and a potion preparation set. Oh, and let's not forget about the diary.
It contains all sorts of useful information.
The Greers
The vanishing of the old couple brought me here. A blood soaked piece of their clothing was found beyond the town and one could therefore expect that they are dead. But where are their bodies?
A few entries about alchemy:
Preparation of potions
A Hunter can prepare various potions that improve and strengthen his abilities, influence other persons or are useful in other ways. However, to be able to make any potion, two conditions must be met. The Hunter must place his potion preparation set somewhere, preferably in a publicly inaccessible place. Obviously, he also must have collected enough herbs required for the preparation of the potion. Then he can use the set and try to make the required potion.
We'll read the other entries later though.
We'll need a lot of herbs for our potions.
Bloodstone Weed herb
Bloodstone weed obtained its name due to its red violet color. It is probably the most common of the herbs used by Hunters. It grows practically everywhere.
We could go east, to the mines, but there is nothing to do there right now.
Here we could've clashed with the guard, but combat is by far the worst part of the game, so diplomacy it is.
There is no reason to explore the village now, so we'll just fast-travel to our new home.
Cozy.