![]() But (philospophical bit) that's life I suppose. you can find yourself running around the road map in the hope of happening upon somewhere a bit more interesting soon. The houses look boxy and a village is a village is a village (it's like being stuck on a road that keeps taking you to Brookside Close). The non-digitised graphics are good but life on the road can get a bit samey after a while. ![]() ![]() There's no need to be a seasoned Rpcer to get your texture maps rolling - just explore, see what you find, and if you come unstuck, take another route. Krondor's greatest asset is this totally non-linear format - as the nature of your quest unfolds progressively you can follow it to the letter or think: 'Nah!, I'll go off and fight some witches in the forest for a laugh.' Naturally, you will come across gangs of rogues, ghosts and monsters that you are not strong enough to kill early in the game but you can at least try to go anywhere and everywhere. But it's worth the effort to meet the locals: it is in peeling back the layers of the storyline that brings out the depth of this game. If you want to detour from your main plan for a bit you could solve these mysteries and help a few people out along the way. As with most of the hulking rpgs of late, en route through Midkemia you unfurl sub-plots on top of super-sub-plots, getting to know the complex characters of Midkemia and their many troubles - for instance, why is the town of Eggley deserted, why are the people of Lyton so depressed about their taxes, how do you rid Silden of the seaweedy girl ghosts, and so on ad infinitum. Of course there is not only one aim to the game. Or it might be because I haven't got that far in the game yet. I can't say that is definitely, too percent, honest-to-God the ultimate scheme of things because that would be telling. The whole scheme of things is to help thwart the Moredhal forces, led by the evil Delkhan, from taking over the Kingdom of Midkemia. The gameplay is split into nine chapters each chapter presents your three-man exploring party with a new mission that is a part of the whole scheme of things. Basically, this all adds up to about 10Mb of hard disk, a lot of gameplay and a hell of a lot of walking around. You can go outside, inside, underground, upside-down (not really), by day by night, under a beating sun in the snow. 21 villages, a myriad of assorted isolated houses, farms and temples, a dirty great big forest, mountains, sewers, mines, caves, you name 'em. 1.000.000 steps (depending on the size of your steps) covering 224.000.000 square feet (depending on the size of your feet I suppose): that's 12 cities. The first thing to say about Betrayal at Krondor is 'whoa, it's so big, it's scary'. But its debut has created a compelling game that incorporates its 3Space technology (originally developed for the aforementioned flight sims) to give wrap-a-rama 3D visuals, and the estimable literary ability of one Mr Feist. It's a stranger choice, however, for Dynamix, best known for its flight sims, to indulge itself in a fantasy game. so his interest in collaborating with Dynamix is obvious. Feist is a self-confessed computer Rpcer. But now for fantasy frazzle heads everywhere, it seems the saga is set to run and run, not on the page but on the PC Feist and the Dynamix team have worked on an entirely new story for Betrayal at Krondor, one that continues where the last of the Riftwar books, A Darkness at Sethanon, left off. Feist already has five novels relating to the Riftwar in the bag as well as a good few other connected pieces. Let there be no doubt, the Riftwar is truly a saga of epic proportions.
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