The Enchanter trilogy
Aug. 24th, 2010 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishInteractive fiction, classic Infocom.
What really impresses me about the Enchanter trilogy is how they implemented what amounts to an extra dozen verbs, in the form of the spells. Suddenly just about everything can have just about anything done to it: turning into a newt, or opening, or becoming your friend... and they put in non-default answers to enough of those combinations to keep the sense of "magic" alive. It's almost enough to make one overlook how many of those new verbs only have one real use.
Marc Blank and Dave Lebling, Enchanter
Jeez. I'd forgotten how serious and grim this game is. I mean, yeah, you're a novice enchanter tasked with defeating the Evil Warlock. Even so, for a game where you can actually summon the creators (and have them complain about "another day, another bug" before vanishing again), it's exceptionally dark. I mean, you have to get yourself killed-- and not just killed, but killed in a human sacrifice (to what is not entirely clear) to get through the game.
The prose also isn't quite as good as I remember. The oft-repeated lines "Everything you see is grey and lifeless, as though covered with a veil of ash. Sound is muted, and there is a faint acrid odor" set a pretty high bar for evocative scene-setting. Some of the set pieces live up to that: the sacrifice, everything about the Translucent Rooms. Most of the rest of it doesn't, quite. It's definitely a step above the one-sentence descriptions from ADVENT, but it's still not as amazing as I'd hoped.
As for the puzzles, the Guarded Door strikes me as somewhat unfair.
SPOILERS
This is a door that's very obviously been enchanted so that you can't get through it. Later on in the game you find a one-use spell that dispels illusions. Casting this spell on the door removes the guarded state, and you can just open the door and go on in. This is the wrong way to solve the puzzle: you need the dispel spell to get into the endgame (in a place that's also not immediately obvious). The right way is to summon the adventurer you see wandering around, make friends with him, and have him open the door, because non-wizards are automatically immune to illusions, or something. Which is almost plausible except that one way to befriend him is to cast a friendship spell on him....
END SPOILERS
Also, two-thirds of the endgame consists of the worst example of "learn by dying" that I've seen in ages. On the other hand, the Ancient Terror puzzle is a work of art.
S. Eric Meretzky, Sorcerer
The single best thing about Enchanter (I realise belatedly) is that its geography is consistent and makes sense. It's set in a castle that looks like a castle: hallways around the outer walls, towers at the four corners (plus the unpleasant late addition of a Turret of Evil in the center of the back wall), a central courtyard, a dungeon. (A village outside but that's mostly for show.)
Sorcerer, in contrast, is a mess. It sort of tries to have coherent geography, with the river that runs near about a third of the locations. That's not enough, though; it ends up feeling like a bunch of places (ruined castle, amusement park, underground highway, fortress) all stuck together with no particular plan. Probably the worst offender is the random money tree stuck in a room off to one side. Why is it there? Who knows?
On the other hand, it got rid of the irritating need to eat and drink that plagued Enchanter, and did so in a moderately clever way. (Sleep is still an annoyance.)
The glass maze is a thing of beauty. I suspect I'd feel the same about the coal mine time travel puzzle if I were solving it myself for the first time. (Although, in the tradition of time-travelly-things, it leaves out any explanation of how you learned the combination to tell to yourself so you can get through the door so you can tell yourself the combination...) I'm fond of the one-coin-for-two-things puzzle as well, despite its potential to make half the games more or less unwinnable. Apart from those, none of the puzzles really struck me as being all that interesting. Kind of like the game itself. Eh.
Dave Lebling,Mage Spellbreaker
Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to randomly have spells not work, so that you have to not just recast them but relearn them as well? This is almost as annoying as randomly dying in Sorcerer because the riverbank or drawbridge collapsed.
The fractured geometry at least has a rationale here: you're teleporting to various locations around the game world, and some of the individual locations are even linked together both geographically and by theme. Unfortunately they used the 'teleportation' mechanic to make the game incredibly narrow. At any given time there are only two or three puzzles that are actually solvable with what you've got. The others that you can get to will require an item or spell from a different puzzle first. Bleh.
The puzzles are often shockingly poorly integrated, too. The compass rose and the twelve white cubes in the vault are probably the worst offenders; the rock-chase barely gets a pass here, as does the carpet salesman. Even apart from those, Spellbreaker is a bloody difficult game. I cannot decide whether the gold box is brilliant or horrible. I would never have figured it out on my own, I know that much.
I wish there were more plot in the midgame. I wish that about Sorcerer as well. I think that's why ultimately Enchanter is my favorite of the trilogy, despite Spellbreaker having a better story in general: the plot and puzzles come together well in the game itself. Even if they're a little weak individually, they make something that's more than the sum of its parts.
What really impresses me about the Enchanter trilogy is how they implemented what amounts to an extra dozen verbs, in the form of the spells. Suddenly just about everything can have just about anything done to it: turning into a newt, or opening, or becoming your friend... and they put in non-default answers to enough of those combinations to keep the sense of "magic" alive. It's almost enough to make one overlook how many of those new verbs only have one real use.
Marc Blank and Dave Lebling, Enchanter
Jeez. I'd forgotten how serious and grim this game is. I mean, yeah, you're a novice enchanter tasked with defeating the Evil Warlock. Even so, for a game where you can actually summon the creators (and have them complain about "another day, another bug" before vanishing again), it's exceptionally dark. I mean, you have to get yourself killed-- and not just killed, but killed in a human sacrifice (to what is not entirely clear) to get through the game.
The prose also isn't quite as good as I remember. The oft-repeated lines "Everything you see is grey and lifeless, as though covered with a veil of ash. Sound is muted, and there is a faint acrid odor" set a pretty high bar for evocative scene-setting. Some of the set pieces live up to that: the sacrifice, everything about the Translucent Rooms. Most of the rest of it doesn't, quite. It's definitely a step above the one-sentence descriptions from ADVENT, but it's still not as amazing as I'd hoped.
As for the puzzles, the Guarded Door strikes me as somewhat unfair.
SPOILERS
This is a door that's very obviously been enchanted so that you can't get through it. Later on in the game you find a one-use spell that dispels illusions. Casting this spell on the door removes the guarded state, and you can just open the door and go on in. This is the wrong way to solve the puzzle: you need the dispel spell to get into the endgame (in a place that's also not immediately obvious). The right way is to summon the adventurer you see wandering around, make friends with him, and have him open the door, because non-wizards are automatically immune to illusions, or something. Which is almost plausible except that one way to befriend him is to cast a friendship spell on him....
END SPOILERS
Also, two-thirds of the endgame consists of the worst example of "learn by dying" that I've seen in ages. On the other hand, the Ancient Terror puzzle is a work of art.
S. Eric Meretzky, Sorcerer
The single best thing about Enchanter (I realise belatedly) is that its geography is consistent and makes sense. It's set in a castle that looks like a castle: hallways around the outer walls, towers at the four corners (plus the unpleasant late addition of a Turret of Evil in the center of the back wall), a central courtyard, a dungeon. (A village outside but that's mostly for show.)
Sorcerer, in contrast, is a mess. It sort of tries to have coherent geography, with the river that runs near about a third of the locations. That's not enough, though; it ends up feeling like a bunch of places (ruined castle, amusement park, underground highway, fortress) all stuck together with no particular plan. Probably the worst offender is the random money tree stuck in a room off to one side. Why is it there? Who knows?
On the other hand, it got rid of the irritating need to eat and drink that plagued Enchanter, and did so in a moderately clever way. (Sleep is still an annoyance.)
The glass maze is a thing of beauty. I suspect I'd feel the same about the coal mine time travel puzzle if I were solving it myself for the first time. (Although, in the tradition of time-travelly-things, it leaves out any explanation of how you learned the combination to tell to yourself so you can get through the door so you can tell yourself the combination...) I'm fond of the one-coin-for-two-things puzzle as well, despite its potential to make half the games more or less unwinnable. Apart from those, none of the puzzles really struck me as being all that interesting. Kind of like the game itself. Eh.
Dave Lebling,
Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to randomly have spells not work, so that you have to not just recast them but relearn them as well? This is almost as annoying as randomly dying in Sorcerer because the riverbank or drawbridge collapsed.
The fractured geometry at least has a rationale here: you're teleporting to various locations around the game world, and some of the individual locations are even linked together both geographically and by theme. Unfortunately they used the 'teleportation' mechanic to make the game incredibly narrow. At any given time there are only two or three puzzles that are actually solvable with what you've got. The others that you can get to will require an item or spell from a different puzzle first. Bleh.
The puzzles are often shockingly poorly integrated, too. The compass rose and the twelve white cubes in the vault are probably the worst offenders; the rock-chase barely gets a pass here, as does the carpet salesman. Even apart from those, Spellbreaker is a bloody difficult game. I cannot decide whether the gold box is brilliant or horrible. I would never have figured it out on my own, I know that much.
I wish there were more plot in the midgame. I wish that about Sorcerer as well. I think that's why ultimately Enchanter is my favorite of the trilogy, despite Spellbreaker having a better story in general: the plot and puzzles come together well in the game itself. Even if they're a little weak individually, they make something that's more than the sum of its parts.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-24 08:04 pm (UTC)Your review tempts me to go back and try them again, and also makes me think I might be happier keeping them as fond memories...
no subject
Date: 2010-08-25 02:56 am (UTC)Yeah. It's hard to say whether I actually recommend them or not. As puzzle-fests they're decent (except for the omnipresent threat of death); as naratives, I'm not so sure.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-24 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-24 10:41 pm (UTC)Coming from the ancient tradition of people who map infocom games longhand on a clipboard while playing, I always felt like Sorcerer was pretty much linear, as opposed to Enchanter's contained space that you go around in. Some bits of it were good, and some disappointing.
As for Spellbreaker, it comes in the same category as children's books that I think of as repositories for bits of my brain (the snake, the zipper...) and I'm always slightly disappointed when I play it that it's not as cool as I remember. I'm always horribly disappointed by the ending, too; it works as a narrative, but doesn't go the direction I'd like.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-25 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-25 03:05 am (UTC)Enchanter is an enclosed space. Sorcerer... hm. I was going to say "it's a loop" but it's not, really. There's the underground crater and there are I guess three or four long linear arms stretching off of it. (Spellbreaker is a fragmented mess.)
And, yeah. I'm not even wholly convinced it works as a narrative, because there's no middle to the story. The narrative arc is "Magic is dying... collect white cubes!... here's why magic is dying, bwa-ha-ha!"
no subject
Date: 2010-08-25 03:43 am (UTC)While these games include an early form of the click-to-solve puzzles that would be seen in Myst, they owe a great deal more to the Infocom games, and have some great puzzles (and some cheesy writing). Getting some of the Void mechanisms working in either "Another Fine Mess" or "A Mess O’Trouble" is the sort of puzzle which is perfectly logical - AFTER you've done it.
The games are old enough that getting them to run on a modern system is a challenge, but they are worth the effort... and free!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-25 04:53 am (UTC)