Legend - my feelings (LONG)


21 Mar 95 20:13:34 CDT

Well, I was on Spring Break last week, but the day I left I noticed
that _The Legend Lives!_ was available, so I downloaded it and took it
home with me. Finished it this afternoon, as a matter of fact. (And
didn't use the hints, except to confirm that I still had puzzles to
work on by seeing what topics came available -- which leads me to believe
that I might have missed something!)

I assume that a lot of people have already posted reviews of the game;
I would like to say that I found the game to be very enjoyable, but a
few things confuse me. These are what I would call mild "plot
spoilers" -- no puzzle spoilers, but I assume a knowledge of the plot
of the game, and if you haven't gotten very far, you won't know what
I'm talking about. You needen't have finished the game to know
*everything* I refer to, but it wouldn't hurt. :)

(1) What is so technically difficult about this game that it requires
a '386 to run and supposedly taxes the DOS extender to the limit? Is
it the overhead of WorldClass? Surely TADS does not suffer problems
when it tries to display eight or nine pages of contiguous text! I
mean, sure, there's a large amount of prose in the game -- more than
any text adventure I've seen -- but that in and of itself should not
be a technical hurdle.

In terms of number of locations, objects, viable actions, and
puzzles, the game is *not* that mind-bogglingly big. This is not a
complaint about the game; it's just that after hearing Dave complain
for so long about how TADS couldn't handle the game, I was expecting
a larger geographic area and accompanying items. Unless there is some
underlying structure that I simply missed, or a whole section of the
game I somehow skipped, I estimate there to be in the vicinity of
eighty to 100 "rooms". This would put "Legend" in the "large"
category, sure, but certainly not large enough to blow up TADS. (And
yes, before you flame, I realize that number of rooms is not always a
good measure of the "size" of a game. One must also consider the
number of decorations, objects, ad infinitum. And I'm sure the
adaptive hint system adds a bit of load to the system.)

Is the problem strictly with the text? My old TADS 1.2 version
of "Challenge of the Czar" (read as: work in progress) had so much
text that TADS 1.2 couldn't handle it in the 640K, but when I
converted to TADS 2.X there was no problem whatsoever, so I am
assuming that the pure quantity of text is not the problem.

Anyway, like I said, this is not a complaint. I thought "Legend" was
exactly what Dave has been saying it was -- more an attempt at getting
a message across and less an exercise in puzzle-solving. I'm just
curious to know what's up with the technical side of things.

(2) Is it just me, or does the end of the game come on rather
abruptly? Without spoiling anything, (I hope), I must say that I was
really stunned when I completed the "ultimate action" on Plast and
bang, the game ends with two screens of text. Did I get to a "less
satisfactory" ending or something? I had only 60 points when I got to
Plast; I got the last 15 in one fell swoop. Perhaps I missed a chunk
of the game; this might help explain my question in (1) as well.

All in all, I thought that the most visible and important aspect of
the game was the quality of the prose. The writing was very, very
good; offhand, the only game I can think of which approaches the prose
quality is "Curses", and "Legend" has much more in the way of
characterization and "storytelling" about it. The long conversational
sequences, especially, were most effective and a pleasure to read.

However, I felt that the "message" was somewhat diluted by the fact
that 800f the storytelling is done through those long, ten-page
asides. Not that I felt they interrupted the game; not at all. In
fact, I enjoyed them a great deal. But it was very hard to swallow
the entire story being crammed into four or five long scenes. I guess
what I'm trying to say that is that too much of the storytelling was
done in too short a period of time. It's like, solvepuzzlesolvepuzzle
STORY solvepuzzlesolvepuzzle STORY solvepuzzle END. There should have
been more, smaller, interludes to develop the characters and give more
of a sense of immediacy to the actions. For example, you really get
no sense at all of the vastness of the 'net, or the magnitude of the
threat represented by the virus. There's some vague mention about the
Unnkulians establishing their own "fascist government" but there are
no visible symptoms of the virus infection and Akmi never DOES
anything except lock up your computer and screw up your credit card.
The "good guys" never do anything either, except occasionally talk
about how frustrated they are. And you don't get to really KNOW any
of the characters, because they each only appear in one long scene.

I realize that this is partially the fault of the medium; breaking long
scenes up over multiple user prompts is risky at best and fails
miserably at worst. And some of the scenes, like the one with Timon
Sketch and the one with the Watchmaker, don't need to be broken up.
But I felt that Gavin becomes a little too friendly with JC, Mare, and
Jax too fast in that one long scene in the bar. I mean, he enters
knowing none of them, and ten screens of text later everyone is
talking like lifetime friends. This may sound like a millionaire
asking for more tax breaks, but there wasn't *enough* text to really
make that scene believable. In fact, the whole thing with the virus
and JC was IMO way underused. The virus itself only "speaks" once; JC
has maybe ten or twelve paragraphs of text. You get something like
six transmissions over your crypto-watch; Jax does basically nothing
and Mare vanishes completely. I simply did not feel that there was
enough of a sense of danger about the virus; compared to the
"puzzle-solving" portion of the game, the "experimental" (ie, more
story-driven and less puzzle-driven) portion of the game was too
small. I also felt that there was not enough development of the other
characters to justify some of the player's reactions. For example,
sadness at the death of JC -- I simply didn't feel it, because JC
didn't come along until 750f the way through the game and he was not
developed enough. I hardly got to know him at all. Maybe this is why
the ending failed so badly for me.

Perhaps this is because Dave did not want to go too far off
the "beaten path". Perhaps it's because your character never actually
gets into the 'net and confronts the virus directly. Perhaps it's
because this massive super-virus is defeated comparatively easily with
no repercussions. Perhaps it's because I don't know what I'm talking
about. Anything is possible. ;)

As for the puzzles themselves, they were by and large very clever. I
must say that I wouldn't give the game a difficulty rating of "10",
however -- "Curses" was *much* more difficult than "Legend". This is
a completely meaningless observation, of course, but I thought I would
go ahead and make it. I like the fact that the game had a lot of
objects that were not related to solving any puzzles but could
logically be expected to be in the game world; the extra food in the
fridge in the farmhouse, for example, and all the seed packets, and
the various "toys" and items produced by the Transmogrifyer (with a
few notable exceptions). This helps disguise the "truly useful"
objects while adding flavor to the game, and I applaud it
wholeheartedly.

However, the placement of some of the objects was illogical. The ary
ung, for example. Such an important item should be more sensibly
placed, not just left lying around. Also, in several cases you get
points for actions that you didn't know you were undertaking. The two
points you get upon returning from the future, and the vending
machine/scientist "puzzle" come to mind. While players sometimes get
points simply by good luck, in general having puzzles that players can
unknowingly solve is dubious design. (Magnus Olsson and I have had a few
discussions about this issue, haven't we Magnus? ;)

I thought the puzzle with Squirt was fair; the correct verbs were not
hard to figure out. The whole sequence involved in solving Unnkulian
Unventure III was great -- definitely the highlight of the puzzles.
The "creature" puzzles were cute, as was the grabber-game. The best
unrelated scene was the old man and the EV on Froon. I thought the
hardest puzzle was getting into the flower warehouse/laboratory,
and the dumbest (most illogical) was surviving the security
system on Plast. The Terminal Velocity mosaic puzzle, and indeed the
whole "colorspace" concept, was IMO one of the most original ideas to
appear in an IF game in a very long time. And the converstion of the
Akmi "mythos" to the future was handled nicely; the Unnkulian spirit
was well preserved. (Not surprising, since the game's author is a
major contributor to that spirit). I would rate "Legend" as maybe six
out of ten on difficulty and eight out of ten on puzzle composition.
Ten out of ten for originality and twelve out of ten for writing, but
the abrupt end really hurts.

All in all, my hat is off to David Baggett for trying something that
few people have tried. "Legend" reminds me of "A Mind Forever
Voyaging" in that the game attempts to pass along a message wrapped up
in the author's own personal visions and fears of the future. I would
not say that "Legend" is nearly as good a game as "AMFV", however, but
then again "AMFV" disdained puzzles basically altogether and was only
about the message, while "Legend" tries to do both.

In the end, the "success" or "failure" of "Legend" as a game is unimportant.
It's the success of the author in conveying that message, and I think
"Legend" works on a level that few other games have tried to approach.
"Legend" is not the best IF game I've played in my life, or even this
year. It is the best one I've *read*, however, since "AMFV".

Now the question becomes: can we take the next step? "Legend" tries
to provide puzzle-solving and traditional IF paradigms sort of
"attached" to the story-telling and message, which are clearly what
the author thinks are more important. On this front, the game
*doesn't* succeed, for the reasons I've given above. In my opinion
the puzzles and the story don't mesh cleanly. Some of them seem to be
almost reluctantly placed in the game at all, as if Dave was afraid no
one would play the game if it didn't have *gasp* puzzles. Not all of
them, mind you; the Terminal Velocity sequence meshes puzzle and story
beautifully. But the puzzles dealing with combatting the virus don't
work for me at all. The stationary bicycle, the Watchmaker area, and
*especially* the endgame on Plast strike very discordant notes with
the work as a whole. Again, this is not meant to insult the game; but
I think Dave knows that by now. And since he's got two more games
than me out there, he can certainly take the criticism! :)

*whew* I'm about out of gas for tonight. This post has taken me over
an hour to construct and edit. Hmm, I'd better add one more level on
which "Legend" succeeds -- I think the game will spawn more
constructive discussion about the future directions of IF than any
game we've seen in a long time. For that alone, David Baggett
deserves our thanks. (And for making the game freeware, which
considering the amount of development time blows my mind completely!)

So there you have it. I don't know if this is a "review", and if it
is, whether it's a "good" or a "bad" review. I liked a lot of things
about the game; the things I didn't like were primarily things that I
thought contrasted too sharply with the things I *did* like. But I
must close by saying, for what it's worth, damn fine job. Keep on
writing, Mr. Baggett, you certainly have the knack for making us
think. Comments and opinions, both of the game and of my own
comments, would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to see a good
discussion of the game on this newsgroup; we need it. Bad.

Sean

--
M. Sean Molley, CS Department, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY
Internet: mollems@wkuvx1.wku.edu | That is not dead which can eternal lie....
--
    "Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris."  -- Thomas G. Appleton
      "Bad Americans, when *they* die, go to America."  -- Oscar Wilde