My modem problem yesterday set me back a little, but I finished the game earlier this evening. It was something of a chore.
Of course, I expected that. After all, this was the finale, not just of GF5, but the series itself. Naturally, there has to be a big finish, and the fighting was intense.
Since I had joined Astoria’s moderate faction, Morgana and company were summoned to a grand Shaper council to decide on what course to follow. Someone - I never found out who - arranged for an assassination attempt along the way. It didn’t succeed ;)
Astoria got her way, and a big assault was launched on the citadel of the Drakons, extremist leaders of the rebellion. “Compromise” wasn’t in their vocabulary.
Fighting began just outside the place. Not too tough for starters. It continued inside, as we pushed our way through, with help from Loyalist forces, to the big showdown with Ghaldring, the leader.
That one took quite awhile. With Morgana and her bunch of critters, the loyalists with theirs, and the Drakons making creations of their own, combat did not go swiftly.
Eventually, we whittled down the enemy until just about only Ghaldring was left. He preferred seppuku to falling to the Shapers. Amazingly, the only Loyalist casualties were some creations, as far as I could tell. Plenty of damage taken, though.
After that, the long ending came rolling along. Peace was finally assured, the war between Shapers and rebels ended forever. Morgana eventually ended up living happily ever after. Well, almost happily.
Remember she started out as a total amnesiac? Sorry to say, her past remained a mystery. She never learned who she was before. I have my own surmises on that one, though.
Anyway, the review should be up sometime later this week.
Did you ever get to kill the Dr. Mengele who put the control tool in the PC? If I later register the game, I think I’ll set aside some time for that. Smarmy little worm.
No, I never bothered to go back and kill him after the tool was removed (quite painful; cost 1 pt endurance, but I had enough in reserve to add it back in). Might restore the game and give it a try, just for fun.
Could be a bad idea in regular play, though. Rawal is a council member, and it might have an effect late in the game.
Even in the demo, it’s plain that Rawal’s not well-liked on the Council, nor is his fence-sitting AWOL approach to the war likely to succeed. I suspect I could whack Doc Feelbad, Rawal, and his entire citadel without significant bad consequence to the ending.
In other Spiderweb news, Jeff’s blog has a financially oriented piece on Geneforge 4.
Interesting to see that Geneforge 4 roughly broke even at around 4,000 sales. I guessed it would get 5,000 sales before reading more than the intro.
I see that art reuse plays a major role in keeping Spiderweb running, cutting a full third off of GF4’s budget. The move to 10×7 tiles and sprites in GF4 presumably paid similar dividends for GF5, new engine or not.
Also interesting to see the hint that as I guessed, he has come to believe his former demos are too long. I don’t think he’ll have many people agreeing with him there. At least not the potential customer people whose opinions tend to matter most. Short demos suck, and the new “one plot qwest, handful of piddling sideqwests” Spiderweb demos are knocking on the door of being short demos. If he really thinks that his games’ graphics suck and their writing and gameplay are the real attractions, why skimp on demo length?
The piece is as interesting for what gets left out, at least for this week, as for what’s in it. What made him decide to avoid third-party distribution for GF4 when he’d plainly been doing it for some time with his other games (see his GF1 sales anecdote) with good success, at least in terms of getting an audience? Despite the rationalization about GF4 being profitable in the long run, it seems that he’s more interested in maximizing short-term revenue at the expense of getting more people to play his games. The wider audience might buy his current game today (or tomorrow) for larger total revenue despite the lower per-copy profit, and it might buy his other games down the road. In any event, the apparent short-term focused decision on GF4 distribution seems to have backfired.
I’ll give Jeff this. He’s already got the hang of the typical intentionally brief blogging style that forces people to keep coming back for more.
That’s my post for today. Sigh.