Goal: de-Locks

"It's hard to win, easy to lose

We play a game we cannot choose
As steady as a rocking horse, as subtle as a bruise"

 

Oi Va Voi - Waiting

After Knights of the Old Republic, I didn't want to jump straight into another oldie so I installed Low Magic Age on the assumption it would turn out to be some amateurish rip-off like Sanctus Reach or ATOM RPG which I could uninstall before the first act's finale, providing me with a couple hours' worth of entertainment mostly from bitching about it. But damnit it's a surprisingly decent dungeon-crawler in a half-implemented landscape, a lamentable case of wasted potential given it's still listed as "in development" in 2021 after a 2017 launch. Unlike some of its competitors it makes a big show of sticking to D20 combat rules... in both good and bad respects.

 

I slapped together an all-elven chaotic neutral (not that it matters) party: a barbarian and a versatile rogue/fighter as front-line beef, a squishy duel-wealding rouge (Shadow, my recurring backstabbing Jungian companion) and a cleric (the noble Bann D'Ayd) covering the flanks, plus bringing up the rear the only chaotic neutral character in the stock henchman roster and myself in my usual role as support wizard, this time specializing in necromancy.

Thus I set out on my first exciting adventure.

Thus I started my first combat of my first exciting adventure.

Thus the first enemy I encountered took its first action:

Game Over.

 

And sure, sure, I didn't have to turn perma-death on, and I could've hidden behind my barbarian or put Lobby (he lobs things) in front of myself if I were more careful, but even that would've only shaved what, 5-10% from my chance of instant death. Low Magic Age spawns your party and your enemies randomly on each randomly generated map. Bottom line: no matter what I did, that goblin shooter would still have been in range of me and there was nothing I could do to stop it from critting me.

 

Now, given my preference for playing support casters, this is not even the first time I've died in the first round of an RPG's first combat. For the sake of my already brittle self-worth, let us not keep a tally. Still, even taking into account my gluttony for punishment, I would contend there's something fundamentally wrong about a system whose first message to the customer after half an hour's worth of party creation and tutorial is: Game Over.

On a completely unrelated topic, KotOR's companion roster was more bearably written than I expected, so I took quite a shine to Canderous the stalwart warmonger and the casually biocidal HK-47... only for the last act to force me to use other, plot-centric NPCs instead.

Wrong.

In a multiple-character single-player RPG, fleshing out your adventuring group is as much an expression of the player's personality as choosing between light and dark sides. Except for companion side-quests you should never force me to use a particular NPC for any mission, especially not for the grand finale. This is supposed to be my moment of glory not your writers', and by extension it's supposed to be the moment of glory for the party I've gradually developed, the loyal minions who've bled (and leaked motor oil) for me, not for your pet diva whose existence I've barely acknowledged so far.

 

Games are not movies; conversely, games are not dice.

In an interactive medium, no matter how clever you think a feature or plot twist might be, tread exceptionally carefully if you run any chance of invalidating the player's choices.* This is not a pitfall, but a narrow middle ground between pitfalls. You can choke a player by exerting too much control, as with KotOR's narratively-integrated companions**, or fob off too much decision making via randomization as with Low Magic Age's combat maps. Properly subtle balancing of player choice against a solidly playable environment can make or break an otherwise mediocre title like Fallen Enchantress.

Try to remember you're making a product to be used by others, not just to show off your algorithms or shiny plot-rails.

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* Yes, it can occasionally work wonders, but keep in mind Faust Capital shone precisely as a calculated, dramaticaly precise counterpoint to an otherwise ironclad rule.

** Other Black Isle / Bioware / Obsidian games did a much better job of lending your companions their relevance and stature within the game world without anchoring them too fixedly into the PC's main plot. Take Durance from Pillars of Eternity as one brilliant example. Freakin' Avellone, man...