Brick Club 1.2.7 “Profoundest Despair”

There’s just so much in this section, I’m just going to pick random bits that I’ve written down and go at them. I wrote a lot of notes in my February reread and even more this time.

In this section we start to really zoom in on Valjean. We go from his distant, unformed, sort of numb characterization in 1.2.6 to this deep, intense rage and injury. Hugo makes it clear that because Valjean was ignorant, but not stupid, he is able to think more about his situation and judge it (and others). It is interesting that he says this at the beginning of the chapter, and yet later on his also says that Valjean did not consciously think of any of this stuff or know what he was feeling. I’m not entirely sure how he can think things over and not think things over at the same time?

Valjean really goes for the extremes when he‘s thinking through his internal tribunal. First, he condemns his theft as extraordinary and reprehensible, then he decides that all humans should suffer greatly, then he decides that his punishment was excessive. He reaches the right answer, I think, but the machinations to get there swing wildly in terms of moral opinions.

“He asked himself whether human society could rightfully make its members submit equally, in the one case by its unreasonable carelessness and in the other by its pitiless care; and to hold a poor man forever between a lack and an excess, a lack of work, and an excess of punishment.”

This is such a good criticism of both capitalist society and the prison system. Not only is he frustrated and outraged by the extreme nature of the punishment for a rather minor crime, it’s also a condemnation of a society that, instead of helping it’s least fortunate, forces them into a bare life and a scarcity while expecting them to bootstrap themselves and survive “honestly” without giving them the ability or chance to even do so. They punish a person who desperate for being desperate due to poverty and lack of social/economic resources, but the punishment leaves them socially marked so that when they return to society, they’re stuck in the same cycle of deprivation, unable find work because no one wants to employ a former convict, so they’re left with stealing again.

There are some things that Hugo says that I just have to disagree with. “One may be wrongly irritated, but a man never feels outraged unless in some respect he is fundamentally right.” Like???? I think people just get angry when they think they’re right, but that doesn’t mean they’re fundamentally right. I’m sure Hugo got into at least one debate where the other person was fundamentally wrong and got angry? I can’t get behind this one, Hugo, sorry. People are angry all the time for stupid and wrong reasons, that doesn’t mean they’re fundamentally right.

It’s interesting, I think, that Valjean seems to have remained rather docile and neutral and empty of emotion or thought until he reaches the prison. Hugo says, “Through suffering upon suffering he gradually came to the conclusion that life was a war and that in that war he was the vanquished. He had no weapon but his hatred.” I think it’s interesting that it’s not just the suffering of poverty and hunger that makes him angry, and he doesn’t condemn society and everything until he reaches the prison. Suffering as a poor but “honest” peasant isn’t enough to reach the depths of hatred. It’s only when he reaches the prison and finds that he’s even deeper in the pit of despair and misfortune that he clings to hatred rather than numbness as a coping mechanism. It’s also not until he reaches this point that his “thoughtful” nature appears. As far as the narration is concerned for 1.2.6, he just kind of goes unthinkingly about his life, numbly doing what he has to in order to survive and for his family to survive. But when he suffers enough for his anger and hatred to flare, so too do his thoughts.

In prison Valjean has “an incomplete nature and a vanquished intelligence,” which I think is Hugo’s way of establishing him as moldable at this point. His mind “wakes up” when he reaches this point of intense suffering, but he’s still incomplete. He’s smart, but society and suffering have smothered his mind etc to the point where, in 1.2.6, he’s just going about life without much substance. Because of his intelligence, he’s able to feel that rage about his situation, and to use it as something to cling to. Hugo says it again when he’s talking about the “spark” in each soul. He really hammers home the fact that Valjean is someone who has goodness and intelligence inside him, but it’s been intensely suppressed and oppressed and needs kindness etc for it to blossom into something true.

Also, Valjean was in his late 20s when he went to prison; he doesn’t decide to go to school until he is 40. That means he’s most of his way through his sentence and extremely mired in hate before he gets an education and learns to read, etc. I think it’s interesting that he’s so mired in hate for so long, and yet when he encounters the bishop and is affected by him, it really doesn’t take very long for him to start to change. It shows the power of kindness, and really hammers home the fact that Valjean really never had felt any sort of kindness in his adult life and that “never since infancy, since his mother, since his sister, never had he been greeted with a friendly word or a kind look,” and that the bishop’s acts really had a huge impact on him.

“At times he did not even know exactly what he felt. Jean Valjean was in the dark, suffering in the dark, hating in the dark. He lived constantly in darkness, groping blindly, like a dreamer. Except, at times, there broke over him suddenly, from inside or out, a shockwave of anger, an overflow of suffering, a sudden white flash that lit up his whole soul and showed all around him in front and behind in the glare of a hideous light the fearful precipices and dark perspectives of his fate.”

Valjean’s anger seems very different from other characters in similar situations. It seems to have more light, more perspective. It seems much more self-righteous and self-preserving. Patron Minette and Valjean’s fellow inmates seem to simply accept their lot in life; they’re desperate but not angry. They don’t feel cheated by the system, they feel cheated by individuals. They do not feel they don’t belong there; they have long since accepted this is where they are, they seem frustrated or sullen, but not white-hot with rage like Valjean. Fantine is desperate and miserable but not angry; Patron Minette etc are violent and conniving but never seem to be outraged at their situation. They are “almost unconscious,” as Hugo says in 3.7.2, due to their “ignorance and misery.” Valjean, on the other hand, is still “incomplete,” I guess?

Valjean seems uniquely aware that his situation is caused by a corrupt system. Which I think is actually really interesting because of what Hugo says about about being outraged if you’re fundamentally right. In this case, the subconscious or unconscious awareness of his intrinsic goodness and “incorruptible element” makes Valjean more angry about his circumstances than someone who is not as introspective or perhaps who has totally given up and accepted their fate.

This chapter also establishes Valjean’s superhuman strength and basically describes him as a parkour master that can climb walls. I wish I could draw because reading the section describing that ability made me want a little animation of a bearded older Valjean leaping around on top of buildings.

“The peculiarity of punishment of this kind, in which the pitiless or brutalizing part predominates, is to transform gradually by a slow numbing process a man into an animal, sometimes into a wild beast.” There’s something about this sentence that is so intense and so descriptive. Again, another excellent criticism of the prison system. Only this time he straight up calls out the fact that pitiless, brutalizing punishment does nothing to help a person or rehabilitate them or do anything but totally break and dehumanize them. It feels vaguely connected to the line a page or so later, in which Valjean would look around him and say to himself “This is a dream.” The ongoing and almost inconceivable trauma of prison and galleys life making it impossible for Valjean and his fellow prisoners not to react to their circumstances in ways that either shut them down completely or make them reactionary due to ptsd.

“As motives, he had habitual indignation, bitterness, a deep sense of injury, a reaction even against the good, the innocent, and the upright, in the unlikely event he encountered them. The beginning and end of all his thoughts was hatred of human law; that hatred which, if not checked in it growth by some providential event, becomes in time a hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, then hatred of creation, revealing itself by a vague, incessant desire to injure some living being, no matter who.”

This paragraph almost seems to be Hugo foreshadowing Myriel’s kindness and the effect that has on Valjean. It makes me think of Petit Gervais, and the way Valjean’s own actions towards the innocent and unsuspecting Petit Gervais clash drastically with the effects of Myriel and start to break down all the walls and instincts Valjean built in prison.

Finally, I have a question that someone more historically inclined might be able to tell me. In the Argot section (4.7.2) Hugo describes the dungeons in the Chatelet de Paris, and says that “Men condemned to the galleys were put in this cellar until the day of their departure for Toulon.” Would Valjean have been subjected to this? Hugo doesn’t mention it in reference to Valjean, so I’m going to assume that isn’t the case, and perhaps it was an ancien regime thing that disappeared with the revolution? I just figured if Valjean had gone through that, it would have been mentioned in this section somewhere.

COMPLETED: Breath of Fire IV

I did it! Though I cheated. But the point is...it’s done. I’m really torn between Breath of Fire 3 & 4. They both have strengths, and they both have weaknesses. And they both have a place in my gamer heart.

This castle. This damn castle. Why? Why make it so huge, so long, so confusing? Frodo had an easier time taking the Ring to Mordor. After reading a guide that I was supposed to pick up a blue key, I back tracked and grabbed it. But then I made the mistake of progressing forward, getting lost in more dead-ends and mazes. I checked a guide again. Apparently I was supposed to turn a 180 and go back to the elevator to lower down to the B1 floor.

Why? Why make this so confusing?

It was especially frustrating because I couldn’t call the elevator to whatever floor I was on.

ANYWAY: I went down to level B1, and while it was still confusing with branching dead ends, I made it to the throne room. There’s a brief moment where Fou Lu taunts us. Ryu doesn’t play any games and takes a swipe at the god. But Fou Lu isn’t here.

Yay.

More walking to go find him.

All the aimless wandering did allow me to level up my characters a bit. When I first played the game (back in the 90s), I was at least level 40 with all the characters. That was enough to win. This time, I think my highest character was at level 34. But I’ve been successful so far...

We follow Fou Lu to the out door area featured in the above image. He tries to convince us to say “to hell with humans”. It’s awkward. Not necessarily that he wants to kill/subjugate all humanity, but he’s so committed to it.

I remember in my first playthrough that Fou Lu has a deep connection to the woman from the village. And then she’s used as a sacrifice, which kind of breaks Fou Lu’s heart and he loses all faith in humanity. But for some reason, it didn’t feel as clear to me this time. I expected a small speech, kind of like when Sephiroth discovers the truth of his birth.

Instead, Fou Lu just keeps talking to Ryu like it’s obvious that humans suck and they should rejoin as one to knock em all out. The game then presents the player with a series of Flashbacks meant to convince that humans are terrible. In this, they showcase all the bad experiences both characters went through. It’s interesting, but not super convincing. In the end, you’re given a choice: join Fou Lu and forsake humans, or FIGHT!

Obviously we fight.

The first final boss is a dragon. Not sure where it came from, but it’s a long. I wasn’t super smart and committed too much AP and Dragon time. While there was no way I was going to lose, it took 20+ minutes to whittle down the dragon’s health and win. At this point, Fou Lu becomes a dragon. I checked a guide (cause I’m trying to save time after spending HOURS in the final dungeon). There wasn’t much useful there, just that Fou Lu casts a spell that brings all active members down to 1 hp.

Unfortunately, everyone was pretty low on AP and my dragons were basically spent. I fought this fucker for over an hour. I think he had about 65k HP, and on a good round I did about 4k damage. On a bad round, I did just around 1k. But more often than not, i was healing, raising the dead, and using AP items. Actually...while I stocked up on +30 AP items, that wasn’t enough to last several rounds. By the time I got everyone’s AP up a little, I was having to heal, and then all the AP was gone.

I barely limped along, slowly losing ground. After an hour, or longer, he took out too many of my characters. maybe one character survived enough to revive another, but then they died on the following round.

I didn’t make it. And I wasn’t going to “try again”. I WANT TO BE DONE!

So, because this is an emulator, I loaded up my recent state save, activated infinite HP, and defeated Fou Lu. After like 30 minutes. Even though I couldn’t die, it still took for ever to do 65k damage. I think at level 40 I could have pulled it off. Or even with better preparation for the fight.

Fou Lu is absorbed by Ryu. Ryu now talks, because he isn’t exactly Ryu anymore. Nina says, “Hey, humans suck--but not everybody!” That’s a paraphrase, but clearly we already think this--which is why we chose to fight Fou Lu. Not-Ryu decides that humans don’t need gods. As an atheist, i agree. So Not-Ryu “banishes” all the gods from this world. This causes his own power to fade, but Ryu (the human part) is left behind. So now he gets to be friends with Nina forever, but he doesn’t have any of his magic. And Deis decides to live out eternity in a magical suit of armor, I guess. I kind of wish Deis had left and Ershin, the armor, was our companion.

In the “credits” things happen. Nothing too exciting, but something very frustrating: Yuna lives. WTF?! The biggest bastard in the game, most deserving of a slow and painful death LIVES! He makes a comment about the gods leaving, but that’s ok cause he can make new ones...and that’s just it. Like, WHAT?!?! The whole reason Nina and Cray went on a quest and met Ryu was because of Yuna. The most evil and cruel acts in the game, which inspire Fou Lu to destroy humanity, is because of Luna! And the end of the game is just Luna being excited to get back to work?!?!?

I did read that he was supposed to die in some sequence that got cut. I feel that was a pretty severe mistake. That’s like Final Fantasy 7 cutting out a final confrontation with Sephiroth, or in Resident Evil you find out Wesker lured the team here but then never see him again. Or, you know, every mystery in Lost.

SO, as a moderate fan of JRPGs and huge fan of story driven games, Breath of Fire IV is a solid 7/10. All the BoF games with which I’m familiar (3, 4, 5) have great personalities and world building. I feel like there’s love and care given to each zone and town. I know I said this before, but BoF3 felt more personal while BoF4 feels more epic. They both start out strong, but then lose steam by the halfway point and later. Honestly, FF7 doesn’t hold its pacing for very long. The problem is they set up feature length film-sized stories and try to stretch across a 25 episode seasonal arch. In both 3 and 4, the objective becomes too clear, too soon, and then it’s a bunch of contrived obstacles adding length.

I’m curious how they could have fixed four. Maybe don’t make it super obvious that Ryu and Fou-Lu need to rejoin. Or don’t make it the prime objective. Take Star Wars, at the end of Strikes Back, Darth reveals he’s Luke’s father. BoF4, it’s revealed that Fou Lu and Ryu are the same dragon. While Return of the Jedi operates with the truth revealed and the constant concern that Luke will have to face his father, it’s not the objective. The Objective is to blow up the Death Star 2.0. Luke and Vader’s relationship complicate that. So in BoF4--a cease fire exists between the Empire and the Alliance. Fou-Lu and the truth behind Nina are leading to a break in that cease fire. All-out war is inevitable. Nina knows that whether they beat the empire or not, the war would be devastating; so she’s against it. Fou Lu becomes so angry with humans, that by the time he takes back his seat, there’s no stopping the war machine. We decide to face Fou Lu directly. But before that decision is made, we travel the world--building alliances with other nations by solving their problems, or disrupting imperial sabotage.

This is kind of the problem with having a too direct plot. Take Game of Thrones S1. It was very direct about the main conflicts: Lanisters trying to gain power, Starks trying to up hold justice, Daenerys trying to “go home” and create the perfect nation. Then season two comes along and broadens the scope. But season 5-6, there’s so many main characters and subplots the show can barely take two steps forward. I don’t think the broader, slower moving later seasons would have bugged me if the show was presented as a “day in the life of a Westerosi” vs having established a very specific and direct set of conflicts.

Anyway. I love Breath of Fire even if it doesn’t blow me away. I’ve got other games to play, but part of me wants to grab a copy of Breath of Fire V.

Game 367: Taskmaker (1989)

This is a pretty morbid way to organize your “to do” items.

         TaskMaker

United States

Storm Impact (developer); XOR (publisher)

Released 1989 for the Macintosh Remade and re-released as shareware in 1993

Date Started: 15 May 2020

          TaskMaker is a slick little game, probably the best I’ve played so far on the Macintosh. It uses the platform’s strengths in graphic detail and sound but offers a fuller RPG experience than most Mac games of the era. While it has that inescapable “cutesy” look of most Mac games, it’s relatively long and hard, and it has enough good, new ideas to break out of the “Ultima clone” status that you might otherwise assign it at first glance.

           It’s typical of a Mac game to offer menu options for movement. At least this isn’t the only way to move.

        We owe reader LanHawk yet another appreciation pin for tracking this down, in this case writing to the original developer for the files. Because almost everything written about the game is about the 1993 version, being able to cover the original is a nice coup. I’ll have more on the development and the two versions on a subsequent entry; I’ll probably take a run through the 1993 version while I’m covering the game rather than saving it for 1993.

      The backstory is relatively short: The land was once at peace, under the direction of a wise king. When the king died, the “governing body split into three confrontational factions.” The main character is an adventurer who remembers the way things used to be. He decides to restore order by becoming Master of the Land, but lacking experience and guidance, he seeks out the TaskMaker, an advisor of the former king.

            The TaskMaker introduces himself.

       Character creation is a process of selecting a name, then selecting five personal attributes from a list of 20. Your selections calibrate your maximum totals for seven attributes: food, health, spirit, strength, agility, intellect, and stamina. Current totals for these attributes are represented with a bar, and they deplete as you walk around the kingdom and fight. You find various potions and objects to restore lost attributes. Most important are those that restore health, because it depletes fastest in combat, and food, because everything else can be restored with rest.

           Creating a character. I imagined this one something of a bard.

         The game world is a relatively small 100 x 100, dotted with castles, dungeons, towns, and caves. The TaskMaker lives in a castle to the center-east of the land, and the basic setup is that you go to him, he gives you a quest, you go out into the world to find and complete the quest, and you return to the TaskMaker for a reward and the next quest. Quests take place in towns or dungeons. The game doesn’t make a lot of distinction between dangerous areas and safe ones, as dangerous monsters can appear in towns or castles, including the TaskMaker’s, and NPCs can appear in dungeons. 

            The game opening has you sailing to the TaskMaker’s shores. Too bad you don’t get to keep the boat.

         The equipment system is pretty advanced, offering slots for helmets, armor, cloaks, amulets, belts, gauntlets, bracers, boots, rings on both hands, and an item in each hand–either a weapon and shield, a two-handed weapon, or dual-wielding two weapons (I found the latter to be much better). No matter how much money you make, the shops (which only show you items you can afford) always seem to have a better item available. 

            Buying items in the shop.

Choosing between two helms.

           Monsters are a mix of traditional (goblins, orcs, kobolds) and somewhat original, although most of the original ones are also kind of silly, like happy faces and evil computers. I haven’t met any so far with much in the way of special attacks or defenses. None of them seem capable of magic or attacks at range, for instance. They’re simply differentiated by how many hit points they can whack away in a single combat round.

            The “Evil Mac” is a goofy enemy.

            Combat is of the early Ultima type, where you hit (F)ight and hit the creature in front of you, although it has a little more complexity with spells and usable items. Combats are quite tough, even well into the game. For the first few hours, I had to repeatedly use what we might call “exit-scumming,” by which I would lead an enemy to the exit of an area, fight as long as possible, retreat to the outer area, rest, and re-enter to continue fighting. This is made possible partly by your one advantage: you can carry a huge amount of equipment–more than 60 items. That’s enough food, potions, or whatever to outlast any enemy. But I occasionally found myself in impossible situations where enemies would appear both outside and inside at the same time.

            Battling some goblins on a bridge.

        This is where we get into another of the oddities of the game: when you die, you don’t die permanently; you go to Hell. You can escape Hell by fighting your way through demons and solving a maze (if you die in Hell, you just reappear in Hell), but you then have to go find your non-equipped equipment back on the surface. You also lose your gold in the process.

              Wandering through Hell’s maze.

         This system unfortunately introduces a weird way to cheat. The game tracks the world state independently from the character state. This theoretically allows you to have multiple characters active at once, although I don’t know how this works with the TaskMaker. Thus, if you die and reload instead of escaping from Hell, you’ll still find a pile of equipment where your character last “died.” You could use this to infinitely replicate useful objects like potions or expensive objects that you can sell at the store. I didn’t deliberately cheat this way, but it’s annoying and hard to get out of Hell, and there were times that I reloaded and then picked up some of my old, duplicated items if I happened to come across them. To avoid temptation, I’ve been trying to reload before I die in times when death seems inevitable.

The separation of character from world means that you can also take advantage of commands to reset a particular map or the entire game world, keeping your character as-is. It’s a good option if you want to clear the same dungeon twice, finding double the treasure and experience. 

           Little piles of stuff mark the location of previous deaths.

          The controls are quite good, offering keyboard backups to all of the menu commands. Spells are cast with SHIFT and the first letter of the spell. There’s an “Invoke” spell that lets you type in your own spells that you might find during the game, but it apparently also a way for the developer to introduce cheat codes and interface changes. I’ve been slow to explore spells; the one I’ve used the most is the “Strike” spell which casts a bolt at enemies. I tend to use it on fleeing enemies so I don’t have to chase them.

Sound is also quite well-done. Much of it uses spoken voice recordings. (In fact, one voice they used, a deep bass, sounds eerily like my own.) When you first start the game, the voice says, “TaskMaker.” A different one says, “What is it?” when you use the (I)dentify commands. There are screams for deaths on both sides and solid attack and spellcasting effects.

The TaskMaker’s first task was to retrieve a package he left in Skysail Village. It was in an area of the village amidst a horde of monsters and required me to figure out a switch puzzle. The game is fond of puzzles involving doorways blocked by electric forcefields for which you have to find a switch to deactivate. When I returned the package, he rewarded me with five “Instant Vacation” scrolls, invaluable items that replenish all of your meters.

     His second task was to retrieve a chessboard in his own castle. It was in an area north of the bar. Getting it involved fighting a few monsters, but it was otherwise pretty easy. He gave me a double-bladed sword.

         My reward for the second quest.

       For Task 3, he wanted me to travel to some silver mines, where he owns a share, and kill some conspirators who had taken over the mines, bringing him back a golden chalice as proof. This was a tough mission; the mines were full of numerous tough monsters, but also some nice treasure rewards. By the time it was done, I had mostly magic gear and a magic sword in each hand. The TaskMaker’s reward was a suit of platemail, a huge armor upgrade from the leather I was wearing before.

          Battling a “war wizard” in the silver mine.

         I’m still working on Task 4, which is to find an unknown magic item in the “sands of Porta.” He indicated he doesn’t know where the item is buried, so I might be “in for a lot of digging.”

           The TaskMaker gives the fourth mission.

        As you quest, you amass experience and gain levels (I’m on Level 7 now) and your attributes increase. I guess they must increase proportionally to the skills you actually use because my spirit and intellect (which governs magic) have barely gone up but my strength, agility, and stamina are almost at maximum. Health and maximum food didn’t budge for a while but increased a bit during the last few hours.

      Other features of the game: 

       The game tracks your karma based on how many good, neutral, and evil creatures you’ve slain and other acts like stealing from shops and houses in town.

            Checking out my personal statistics. I’m “basically good.”

         There’s also a score. It increases every time you solve a quest or kill a creature and slowly decreases as you move around in between those moments. High scores are tracked on a scoreboard.

There’s an “identify” command that will tell you what’s in front of you. An “action” command will use it if it’s usable.

A “get info” command tells you a bit about the history of whatever area you’re in.

         The TaskMaker’s castle.

          The game has its own “runic alphabet” used for shop and city signs. It’s not translated in the game manual, so I suppose you have to figure it out by noting the runes in places where you can guess what they’re saying. I haven’t been bothering with them, but I wonder if I’m missing hints and clues because of it.

         As I’m in Skysail, I’m guessing those runes say “SKYSAIL.”

           NPCs aren’t terribly valuable in this game unless you bribe them by giving them things. Even then, they rarely tell you anything you need to know.

              The game pokes fun at Lord British. I didn’t realize his adoption of a more executive role was well known in 1989.

          If you drink alcohol, you start to go the wrong direction when moving. I think Ultima introduced this, but I don’t remember what edition. IV, probably.

There’s a fun system where you can find valuable objects like gold bars and necklaces and “cash them in” at ATMs. It feels like ATMs were pretty new in 1989. I think my Maine hometown may have only gotten one that year. 

             Finding an ATM in a dungeon. This dungeon happens to be full of treasure, so it was a relief to find it.

          There’s a set of miscellaneous game options I’ve never seen in any other place. I feel like every game could benefit from these. I don’t know what “wandering monsters” does, though. Un-checking it doesn’t seem to stop them from appearing.

            Setting various game preferences.

          A shop in the castle offers an invisibility cloak. If you put it on, the shop will no longer transact with you because you’re invisible.

          Come on! You’re the one who sold it to me!

            I rather enjoy this basic approach: offer an open game world with a variety of small missions. You don’t have to follow the TaskMaker’s quests exclusively; nothing stops you from simply exploring the towns and dungeons in a random order, or even from solving some of the quests before the TaskMaker even gives them to you. We’ve seen this approach before, going all the way back to Akalabeth, but this is perhaps the first game to use it with such a variety of lengths, difficulties, and objectives.

         But while I’m having fun, it’s tempered by an inability to ever feel like I’m getting more powerful no matter how much my statistics and inventory increase. Every time I think I’m doing well, some new enemy suddenly pops up in a familiar location and kicks my butt. Frankly, if it hadn’t been for the extra Instant Vacations I’ve been able to loot from locations where I’ve died, I’m not sure I would have been able to make it this far. I think eventually a cycle of starvation and poverty would have put me in a permanent downward spiral. I’ve watched videos of the remake, and it looks like the developers took the edge off the difficulty level between the two, although the remake still seems challenging.

     The number of entries will be determined by the number of tasks, I guess. Ten would be just about perfect. I suspect the TaskMaker is going to turn out to be evil based on the things he’s having me do and how he reacts if I happen to pop by with a task unfinished.

      Time so far: 6 hours.

                source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-367-taskmaker-1989/

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Game 32: Dunjonquest: The Temple of Apshai (1979)

The mood lighting in this dungeon is wild.

For the beginning of 1979, I opted to go with Dunjonquest: The Temple of Apshai.  It was either this or Akalabeth, and I was in the mood for something new.  I’ve punted Akalabeth further down the list, because I’m quite familiar with it, and I also wanted to give myself something to look forward to later in the list.

Besides being the first game I’m playing for 1979, Temple of Apshai feels like something of a watershed moment for the blog. It’s a game I’m vaguely familiar with (having played a little bit of Temple of Apshai Trilogy on the Commodore 64 back in the day), it’s historically significant, and it’s been on my extensive CRPG bucket list for years.  This is exactly the sort of thing that I started this blog for, and it’s exciting to finally get to this point.

Temple of Apshai was created by a trio of Dungeons & Dragons players in 1979: John Conneley, Jon Freeman, and Jeff Johnson.  Its roots began when Conneley purchased a Commodore PET to help him organise his D&D notes, but found that the computer was far from up to the task. Instead, hoping to write the computer off as a business expense, he decided to write some games. Being a better programmer than a games designer, he recruited Freeman, and the two of them formed Automated Simulations, which would eventually be known as Epyx. Their first game was a space strategy game called Starfleet Orion, and their second game was Temple of Apshai. For this they brought in fellow gamer Jeff Johnson to help, and together they created one of the first truly significant CRPGs of the home computer era. (I don’t want to say that it was the very first of significance, because I’m not sure when it came out in relation to Akalabeth. I’m pretty sure that Apshai was first, as Akalabeth is generally believed to have been released late in 1979, but I don’t know for sure.)

Not only is Temple of Apshai significant in its own right, reportedly outselling both Ultima and Wizardry in the early 1980s, but it’s the first game in the Dunjonquest series, the first series of CRPG games ever, with ten individual titles. While it lacked the staying power of its contemporaries – the last original Dunjonquest game was published in 1982, compared to Ultima and Wizardry lasting for decades – it was the first, and you have to admire the confidence of Conneley and co. for going whole hog with a series before there had even been a big CRPG hit on home computers.

The game was originally released for the PET and the TRS-80, but I wasn’t able to find a version on-line that I could get working for either platform. The earliest version that I could work with was the 1980 port for the Apple II. Just now I discovered another TRS-80 version at The Digital Antiquarian (where I got most of the historical info about this game), but I’m immersed in the Apple II port now, and I don’t like to switch versions partway through a game. Maybe I’ll tool around with the original for a bit when I’m done.

Before I start with the game proper, I should mention that it has an honest to god manual. This is a rarity in 2019 and was seemingly a rarity in 1979, especially in terms of the size and quality of Temple of Apshai‘s manual. It begins with an introduction that waxes rhapsodic about the possibilities of tabletop RPGs, and the experiences they can provide, going on to relate that to the Dunjonquest series. It runs through the rules in a fairly thorough fashion, though not so thoroughly as to lay all of the game mechanics bare. Similarly, the monsters are described in general terms without giving away their stats. It even provides a fictional backstory for the temple, from the perspective of an adventurer named Brian Hammerhand. It’s not quite up to the standards that Ultima would set later in the 1980s, but it’s still very good.

The back half of the manual is taken up by descriptions of traps, treasures, and rooms, divided up by dungeon level. These are to be referred to during play. When you enter a room, you read the relevant description in the manual. You do the same when you find a treasure, or set off a trap.  It’s an ingenious way of providing a D&D-like experience on the highly restricted memory of the earliest computers, and for me brings back fond nostalgic memories of the journal entries from SSI’s Gold Box games. Admittedly, from a modern perspective it can feel weird to be constantly consulting the manual for in-game information, but I got used to it very quickly, and it certainly does provide a higher level of immersion than previous CRPGs have done.

Temple of Apshai’s title screen

The game begins with character creation, which is done by answering questions posed to you by an innkeeper. You can have the computer roll stats for you randomly, or you can use a character from your favourite tabletop RPG. The latter choice is an interesting one, as it basically allows you to set whatever stats, experience level, and magic armaments you like. It’s a built-in cheat system, really, and one that I abused pretty mercilessly, but more on that later.

Each character has six attributes, rated from 3 to 18 because that’s the way D&D does it. These attributes are Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Intuition, and Ego. The first three function much as you’d expect. There’s no spell-casting in the game, so the main use for Intelligence is haggling with the innkeeper and talking to monsters. Intuition helps with finding secret doors and traps. Ego apparently measures mental toughness, and allows you to do better when the tide of battle turns against you, but whatever effect it has was invisible to me.

After your attributes are determined you’re given an amount of money in silver pieces. I’m not sure exactly what the range is, but I’d lay odds that it’s 3d6x10 (30-180), because that’s how D&D did it at the time. With this money you can buy armor (leather, ring mail, chain mail, partial plate or full plate), a weapon (dagger, shortsword, broadsword, hand-and-a-half sword, or great sword), a small or large shield, a bow, arrows, and healing salves. Starting gold varies, but generally I was able to start with a broadsword, leather armor, a large shield, a bow, and a decent number of arrows.  You can haggle the innkeeper’s prices down, and as mentioned above this is easier if your character’s Intelligence is high.  There are Strength requirements for some of the high-end weapons, but I never rolled a character who was unable to wield a broadsword.

You don’t want to load yourself down with too much gear, especially if your Strength is low, because encumbrance is very much a factor in this game. The more loaded down you are, the more moving and fighting adds to your fatigue, and running out of energy during a battle can be deadly.

After purchasing equipment you can enter the Temple of Apshai, which has four levels. You can choose which level to enter, with level 1 being the easiest and level 4 being the most deadly. I won’t go too deeply into the backstory from the manual, because it doesn’t affect the gameplay all that much. The Temple was founded long ago by priests of the insect god Apshai, who carved out tunnels in the ground beneath, growing strange crops and mining gold and gems. They practiced dark rites, while young people from the lands around disappeared, and insects swarmed from the nearby swamps. The people of the land prayed to their gods, and eventually the Temple of Apshai collapsed and was destroyed. Only recently was the temple excavated. Only four levels were cleared before the work parties started to disappear, and nobody would enter the place. Now the temple lies open, full of monsters and treasure as such places tend to be, and the player’s goal is to get in there and take as much of that treasure as possible.

Temple of Apshai doesn’t have an end goal, so I gave myself a simple one: map out all four levels, find every treasure, and visit every chamber described in the entries at the back of the manual. I managed all of these, but as you’ll see the legitimacy of that victory is somewhat debatable.

The first chamber of level 1.

“The smooth stonework of the passageway floor shows that advanced methods were used in its creation. A skeleton sprawls on the floor just inside the door, a bony hand still clutching a rusty dagger, outstretched toward the door to safety. A faint roaring sound can be heard from the far end of the passage.”

The dungeons are pictured from a top-down perspective, with each chamber being drawn on the screen as you visit. I’ve heard that this is excruciatingly slow on the TRS-80 (often a problem with games written in BASIC), but on Apple II the speed was tolerable. Movement takes a bit of getting used to. You need to turn by pressing R (for right) and L (for left), or V to do a 180 (I think this stands for volte face, which is the sort of tortured construction you end up with when each key on the keyboard is used for a separate command; see also Ztats from Ultima). Once you’re facing the desired direction, pressing a number key determines how far you want to move. The further the move, the more it adds to your fatigue. As usual when a game doesn’t use the arrow keys for movement it can be baffling at first, but it’s simple enough to grasp after the initial confusion.

The non-movement commands are mostly related to opening doors (regular and secret) and looking for traps. There are plenty of secret doors around, but thankfully finding them isn’t very hard; if you’re facing a wall when you hit the (E)xamine key it will search the entire wall, rather than the section directly in front of you. You can also listen (with the command (H)earken) at doors, which might tell you what monster lurks in the room beyond. Traps are similarly easy to find, as the (S)earch command works on the entire room, causing any trapped area to flicker for a second or two.

Locating a secret door in the east wall. Note that it’s in the upper right, while I’m way down near the bottom of the screen.

“A finely carved and painted mural fills the east wall of the passage, opposite the opening, depicting men tilling the soil. A ransacked backpack rests under the mural. A roaring sound can be heard from the north.”

Combat is simple, although managing your fatigue gives it an added dimension. There are three basic melee attacks: (A)ttack, (T)hrust and (P)arry. Thrusting does more damage but uses more fatigue, while parrying does less damage than a regular attack but lowers your fatigue. Arrows can be used to attack from a distance, but you have to be lined up with the enemy to have a chance of hitting.  There’s no shooting on diagonals, unfortunately. You can also talk to monsters (using the ! key for some inexplicable reason), and occasionally they will allow you to pass without harm. As I mentioned above, the likelihood of success here is based on your character’s Intelligence.

Your “Wounds” are measured as a percentage, and when you’re reduced to 0% you’re dead. It’s pretty hard to die permanently in this game though: usually you’ll be found by another adventurer who takes your body back to town to be resurrected. There are three such NPCs, each of whom demands a different price. Olias the Dwarf takes all of your treasure and magic items, while Lowenthal the Wizard is satisfied with taking just your items. Benedic the Cleric does it for free; the manual says that he asks for a small donation to his church, but as far as I can tell the game doesn’t take away any of your treasure. Very rarely, the monsters will eat your corpse, and in that case your character is dead and gone.

Fighting a swamp rat, with the combat messages displayed under my stats.

“The room is well lighted by the phosphorescent glow emanating from the greenish- yellow algae covering the high ceilings of native rock and well worked stone walls to the north and south. A broken bow lies in two pieces near the east wall.”

You can get stronger by earning experience points, which is done by killing monsters and exiting the dungeon. I don’t think you get experience for finding treasure, but I’m not entirely sure about that. As is usual with such things, gaining experience allows you to hit more easily in combat, and sustain more damage.  The Apple port that I was playing keeps track of your character’s experience, but from the manual I gather that the TRS-80 version didn’t. You had to note it down yourself, and type in the total every time you wanted to use that character. It sounds like something from the neolithic era.

Treasure is represented on the screen by a brown square, and it’s nature is usually indicated in the room description from the manual. For example, the opening chamber has a treasure that is described as a skeleton sprawling on the floor with a rusty dagger in its outstretched hand. When you (G)rab a treasure, you’re referred to the manual to find out exactly what it is and how much it’s worth. This ranges from items that are worthless (an all too common result) up to emerald bracelets worth 5000 silver pieces. As with experience in the TRS-80 version, the game doesn’t actually keep track of how much treasure you have (this goes for the Apple II port as well). Whenever you end a dungeon expedition you’re given a list of the treasures you found, and it’s up to you to record their values and add them to your current total. There’s nothing stopping you from giving yourself loads of treasure aside from your own honesty.

There are also magic swords and armor, books, boots, cloaks, rings, talismans and potions. The magic items weren’t something I really got to explore, because by the time I started finding some I was using a horribly overpowered character that was effectively invincible. More on that later.

My first character, who I named Nathan because my creativity has been atrophied by the rigors of adulthood, was far from stellar. His scores were all low to average, with only Intelligence rating above 12. Nevertheless, with no reroll function I was convinced to buy this guy some weapons and armor and take him into the temple.

The first level seems to be some sort of garden. It features a number of streams and pools, and many of the rooms are covered with moss and fungus. My initial foray ended when I tried to take a wooden box containing a shimmering cloak; the box was trapped with a needle that killed my character. Luckily, I was taken back to the surface by Benedic the Priest, and after being resurrected I was ready to go back in. Exploration of the level was slow going. The Swamp Rats weren’t too difficult to kill, but the Antmen were much tougher, as were the various giant creatures such as Spiders, Beetles, Wasps and Leeches. Things got much easier once I was able to afford a suit of full plate, and I was able to clear out the level except for a section to the southeast. This area was infested with Giant Ants, which were incredibly tough. I found them to be almost impervious to arrows, and melee combat with one was about a 50/50 proposition. I eventually cleared them out with sheer persistence and a reliance on being resurrected by NPCs, and by this time I had a few thousand silver pieces and little to worry about financially speaking.

A rough map of level 1, with room descriptions from the manual noted

The second level was where things fell apart for this character. There was an Antman in the entry corridor, but I was pretty confident that I’d be able to beat him. After all, I’d killed a dozen or so on level 1. This guy was much harder though. I swear I fought him twenty times, seemingly with little effect. I had the best armour in the game, and the best weapon that my Strength would allow, but it seemed that nothing I did would be enough to kill it. Still, I kept going back in and trying to whittle him down (the game can save the state of the level, which it stores in a different file to the original level; I’m pretty sure that monsters retain any wounds you inflict on them between forays). He killed me every time, and eventually I copped a death where my character was eaten. It was time for a new guy.

(Having reread the manual, it does note that certain monsters will be stronger on higher levels of the temple. The only one I noticed this with was the Antmen, but from memory that’s the only monster that is found in any significant number across dungeon levels.)

At this point I didn’t want to start fresh though, so I decided to abuse the character creation system. Calling him Cheatus, I gave him an 18 in every stat, around a million experience, +5 weapons and armor, and a hefty supply of healing salves and magic arrows.

With my new, over-powered character I was able to get my revenge on the Antman and get to the business of exploring the second level. What I found were mostly living quarters for the ancient priests of Apshai, various storerooms, and a prison section to the east. My memory is a little hazy, as I’m writing this some time after finishing up with the game, but I remember fighting a lot of Antmen, and Ghouls in the prison cells. The Ghouls didn’t have a paralysing touch, but they did receive multiple attacks per round. Even with the over-powered Cheatus I still died a few times (mostly to Antmen) but the level was not too difficult.

A rough map of level 2

Again, the difficulty ramped up on the third level. This was a series of mines and natural caverns, infested with Vampire Bats and deadly cave-ins. I explored it a little with Cheatus before stumbling into a secret room where I fought a Wraith. Every blow the Wraith struck drained my Strength score, until eventually I was forced to flee and v e r y  s l o w l y inch my way out of the dungeon. With a Strength of 1, pretty much anything other than moving at minimal speed dropped my Fatigue below 0. I was able to escape from the temple, but with no way to restore my Strength, Cheatus was hopeless as an adventurer, and I had to retire him.

Thus arose Cheatus Jr. He was a genetic chip off the ol’  block, with an 18 in every stat. This time I gave him the most experience I possibly could, a total of 9,999,999. Going out on a limb, I tried to give him weapons and armour with a +100 bonus. Much to my surprise, the game accepted this as perfectly fine. D&D tops out at +5 generally, and I expected that Apshai would follow suit, but the power scale is much higher here. I did some experimentation, and it accepted bonuses up to 200, but anything of 300 or more would cause the game to crash.

I took Cheatus Jr. into level 3 and stomped that wraith in a single hit. To be honest, I stomped pretty much everything in a single hit, and I barely took any damage from monsters or traps. This time, I had broken the game pretty thoroughly, but I was too fired up with the spirit of progress to feel bad about it. I have a lot of games on my list, you know, and if a game provides the systems for me to legitimately cheat I’m going to take them if things become too frustrating.

A rough map of level 3. The Wraith was in Room 60.

Leaving a lot of dead Vampire Bats and Amoebas in my wake, and loaded down with gold nuggets, I took on the final level of the temple. This was the temple proper, where the priests conducted their worship. The barracks were seemingly here as well, because there are two rooms in the west where I fought 40 Antmen in a row. Luckily they fought me one at a time or I’d never have stood a chance (the game never has you encounter more than one monster at a time, but some rooms will have monsters appear one after another until you’ve killed them all). What seems to be the main chamber of the temple has an altar with a statue of a praying mantis that has rubies for eyes. Of course the mantis comes to life when you try to take the rubies, but I have no idea how difficult the battle really is because I obliterated it in a single blow. The rubies are worth 3,000 silver pieces each, which is a hefty sum, although somewhat meaningless by this stage of the game.

A rough map of level 4. Room 25 had the praying mantis statue.

So, my Temple of Apshai experience was somewhat marred. I was keen to move on, and rather than take the time to grind and become stronger, I took a shortcut and made a powerful character from scratch. When even that wasn’t enough, I caved even further and created an invincible character. I still had fun mapping the place out, and exploring all of the chambers, but I don’t really feel like I experience the game as intended, at least after the first level or two of the temple.

FINAL RATING Story & Setting: In terms of backstory, setting, and the integration of the two, Temple of Apshai is unparalleled in the CRPG field at this point. The use of the manual to flesh out the temple might seem odd from a modern perspective, but it provides an atmosphere and the sense of a lived-in world that would be impossible using just the computer hardware available. Of all the CRPGs I’ve played for the blog, this is the one that comes closest to recreating the feel of a D&D game. Rating: 3 out of 7. NPCs & Monsters: The only NPCs in this game are the innkeeper, who is simply there to facilitate character creation, and the three characters that are there to bring you back from the dead. Interaction with them is nonexistent, and they count more as game mechanics than characters. As for monsters, there are a good variety, but most of them boil down to sacks of hit points. Only the Wraith presented any obvious special ability with it’s Strength drain. Rating: 2 out of 7. Aesthetics: The game has no sound effects or music, but the graphics are pleasant enough, and more colourful than anything else seen on the blog so far. Most importantly of all, they’re functional. The writing of the room descriptions is also quite evocative, and should definitely be a factor here; they’re as much a part of the game as anything else. Rating: 2 out of 7. Mechanics: This one is a little hard for me to judge, because I broke the game in the second half with my rampant cheating. The movement system is a little odd and unwieldy, but searching is quite streamlined; the creators anticipated how irritating it would be to have to search every section of wall, and made the player’s search area very generous. There are also other nice little touches, like the ability to talk your way past monsters, and listen at doors. The fatigue system is the major mechanic of the game, and managing it is your main concern in combat. It’s not much to go on, but it’s a step above hitting A repeatedly until somebody dies. Mostly, I would say that everything in the game works well enough without anything in particular standing out. Rating: 4 out of 7. Challenge: This is another tricky category for me. After level 1 of the dungeon I might have scored this higher, as I found it challenging with only moments of frustration (the giant ants, mostly). The difficulty ramps up too quickly on level 2, though. After clearing out the first level I would have thought I’d have a chance against the first enemy of level 2, but I got murdered over and over again. Even with a weak character, the difficulty curve felt much too steep. Rating: 3 out of 7. Innovation: As the first game in the first CRPG series this deserves to rate highly, but it should also be noted that Dunjonquest in itself was not all that significant or influential in the long term. Temple of Apshai is much better known than the series that it was a part of, and even it didn’t provide an obvious influence for a lot of games that came afterwards. Rating: 5 out of 7. Fun: I enjoyed mapping and exploring this game more than I enjoyed playing it, if that makes sense. The atmosphere and evocative writing is good, but the game itself can be a bit of a slog, full of frequent combats and frequent deaths that necessitate starting back at the dungeon entrance. Rating: 3 out of 7. I’ll give Apshai the bonus point, because I’d like to go back to it some day and try to play it properly. This above scores total 23, which doubled gives a Final Rating of 46. That puts it on a level with Orthanc and pedit5, the earliest top-down mainframe CRPGs, which feels about right. It’s not as good as those games mechanically, but it makes up for it with evocative descriptions and atmosphere.

NEXT: It’s time for Secret Mission, the third of Scott Adams’ text adventures.

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