I favor and judge by original releases, but it would seem amiss to play Magnetic Scrolls' inaugural title and skip the main feature that they're best known for; high color, 16-bit graphics, which were first featured as an addition to the Atari ST port of The Pawn.
So I'm going to replay this version, and take the opportunity to explore one of the less-obvious aspects of the game. Its cast of characters are, when given the right prompts, much chattier than in any contemporary text adventures, including Infocom's. No, this isn't enough to salvage the game, and it's not even all that useful for solving it, but it gives The Pawn a layer of personality that you might not even know was there.
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The images scroll up and down like window blinds, affording you as much screen real estate for text as you want. |
Kronos is the first person I meet, but he has no graphic, and leaves before I have time to question him on anything but my wristband. But now I'm on two errands. Time to complete the first!
There's no graphic for the toolshed, but I complete the optional PLANT PLANT IN POT WITH TROWEL action early.
Kronos' first quest is completed here for a few points. The guards won't chat.
I head west to visit the guru.
After covering my wristband, he sends me on a quest for "the essential nourishment." I go north.
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| Crossing paths with the doomed adventurer, who seems a bit thick. |
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| He does look downcast. |
The snowman has little to say. Normally this is where I'd murder the adventurer for some points, but he doesn't show up yet, so I leave and bring some snow to the guru, who has much to say on various subjects, but not all of them.
Wristband: "The only person able to remove that wristband is the most evil person in all Kerovnia."
Kronos: "Kronos is a very evil man who is running out of time and needs others to save his soul."
Devil: "If an evil person is the only one who has what you want, you must trade with him."
Snowman: "A poor, pathetic man. I feel pity for him."
Adventurer: "A brave man undertaking a noble quest to rescue his beloved princess from the clutches of Kronos the magician."
Princess: "The Princess is a beautiful maiden who spent much of her time in the palace gardens before being kidnapped."
King: "He is the present ruler of Kerovnia."
Gringo: "I do not partake in the petty politics of this country, and I have only contempt for those who do."
John: "He is a notorious salesman who travels the plains to the west of the King's palace."
Color: "It is strange that the sensation of light can provoke such deep feelings as to cause wars or jubilation. That is an interesting concept, my child, and will require lengthy meditation."
I get my pouch in the woods, and as I return to melt the snowman with the red, I run into the adventurer on the narrow track and kill him too.
Only now there's a surprise. Out of the blue, the words "The princess follows you" are printed. Did he actually rescue her? I question her.
Kronos: "Do you know, he kept me there for ages so that he could get my father's kingdom - he isn't fit to be called a member of the human race."
Snowman: "I heard Kronos tell him something when I was brought here and he seemed reluctant to obey, but for some reason he had to."
Adventurer: "He's my hero."
King: "A girl always loves her daddy and I'm no exception."
Gringo: "You're getting very boring. Can we get out of here because I'm sure Kronos will realize that I've escaped soon."
I take her home, and return to the tower to melt the snowman for points. The princess' door is still locked, so I'm not sure how she got out.
Next part is the cavern region.
We're here to retrieve the blue key, but the niche under the pedestal is empty! Did the adventurer beat us to it? I never saw that happen in QL Pawn, but I guess we're not scoring 100% this time around.
Next, I visit the tree house, and the dwarven realm beneath.
There's a few important objects down here. First, there's the loose change in the couch here, and of course the hard hat. There's the rope in the mine's lift, and the lumps of lead in the rockface.
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| And there's this, but I can't vote in this timeline. |
With my coin, I visit Honest John to buy some beverages, and chat.
Kronos: "He seems like quite a reasonable bloke to me - he's never done me any harm."
Adventurer: "Oh yes, I saw him ride past earlier on. I'm not sure where he was going but he looked very determined."
Princess: "I've heard that she's been kidnapped by Kronos, but that's only gossip - it seems to me to be a bit out of character for him to do something like that."
King: "The best ruler Kerovnia's ever had - he sold me a trading permit at half price last year."
Gringo: "I wouldn't vote for him if he paid me."
Guru: "He claims to know everything - the answer to life and all that rubbish but I think he's just a social nightmare waiting for the right time to happen."
Next, I visit the alchemists with my lunch and lead.
They do have a bit to say when pressed, but mostly they just want food.
Kronos: "He seemed a strange fellow to us - we've never met anyone quite like him."
Gold: "Gold is an extremely precious metal for which we have sacrificed many years of our lives."
Lead: "Lead is a dull, grey metal that we can turn into valuable gold."
I give them what they want and they get out of my way.
And I descend to hell.
Hell's porter will talk, but his topics (and coherence) are limited.
Devil: "Auld Nick equivocates with everything, even me - you don't think I do this out of choice you?"
Whisky: "Drink sir, is a great provoker of three things - nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes: it provides the desire but takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him and it mars him; it sets him on and it takes him off; it persuades him and it disheartens him, makes him stand to and not to stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in sleep and giving him the lie, leaves him."
Hell: "Tis a place for the damned, fit for no mortal or any who has ever done good. The rewards are few here and the punishments many."
I can't get Jerry to talk about anything, so I move on.
The devil has quite a lot to say!
Kronos: "Kronos, yes, I think I would make him the Himmler of Hell."
Snowman: "Kronos did well with that one - imprisoning him in the body of a snowman - I would have been proud of myself if I had thought of that."
Adventurer: "His philosophy makes a mockery of a fine physique - I could do great things for him."
Princess: "I would like her to meet me some day, but I fear she will not have the pleasure."
King: "A foolish man who thinks that people will bow to his good-nature and let him be their master."
Gringo: "He's in an election in Kerovnia if my memory serves me correctly. I never vote in elections, they just aren't important - it's the philosophies and the souls that count."
John: "Is one of my proudest creations - though he has strayed from his teaching somewhat."
Guru: "He is a neutral observer in this game of life. His advice could be well heeded by both sides."
Asking him about inanimate objects just causes him to think I'm asking about the wristband and cast me out, so I don't get the opportunity to inquire on any others.
I kill Kronos and bring his soul to the devil, effectively ending the game. Turns out, though, I can still visit the programmers and unlock debug mode, despite missing 50 points.
Then while wandering, it occurred to me, I forgot to talk to the horse!
Adventurer: "He's my rider, punk."
Princess: "I'm very sorry, I would love to talk some more but I must get back to my family. Goodbye. She then runs off towards the palace."
Gringo: "I'm definitely going to vote for him."
You know I don't think I've ever seen a performance of Macbeth that leaves in the "Nose-painting, sleep and urine" scene. It is, admittedly, a bit at odds with the tone of the whole rest of the play.
ReplyDeleteThe Polanski film leaves it in. Apart from that I don't think I have either.
DeleteI have to say, at least in my opinion, that the scenes aren't really good at all to me. I do have to acknowledge that it's likely 16-color drawing software in 1986 was slow and unwieldy, but I still don't like the net result. Firstly, a lot of them have untextured floors and walls, including the iconic castle bridge and the castle path and grass. It creates a lifeless effect where you would expect cracks, bumps, or flowers. Secondly, a lot of them have a really lousy color palette in my opinion, being generally too beige, camo, gray, et al. It creates this bizarre, uncanny/unnatural effect. A lot of these colors are even reused for disparate scenes, such as the cave and the large tree, which really shouldn't be the case in order to set a discrete mood for each of the locations. Thirdly, a lot of locations don't use color in an effective way - for example, the dragon's hoard should have some nice yellows, oranges, and browns to drive home how valuable the treasure is, but it just looks like an oatmeal-colored mess. Or, for example, the alchemists' lab has this yucky beige flame when it should use vibrant orange colors to draw your eye to it. There's generally this really weird use of using similarly-saturated gray, yellow, and blue to dither each other. I think this is a waste of the limited 16 colors and generally looks yucky, because the grey steals the vibrancy from the colors, and the yellow and blue clash hard next to each other.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to be too harsh on the character graphics, because I understand that's an entire talent in and of itself and I can understand if the artist was more comfortable doing landscapes since that's probably what they were hired for to do when creating graphics for a text adventure, you know... but the eyes are too beady (compare the guru and snowman to the traced Jerry Lee Lewis image) and the snowman's face is the stuff of nightmares. I get that this isn't a "kiddy" game, but fantasy is allowed to be a little whimsical. Old Scratch also, while having a good color palette, is kind of framed in a small way, looking like he's on a high chair, and doesn't really steal the scene like he does on the cover.
If you look at the grassy path image, I find its vibrancy to be so much better than most of the other pictures. The saturated green grass looks fantastic. And if you look at the Honest John picture, the rock has this really yummy red-brown that's warmer than a lot of the rest of the game, even for places that should be really brown like the large tree or the wooden staircase. (I mean, I know the staircase should be faded! But not to this degree.)
Maybe I'm just projecting because I really like the 16-color aesthetic when done well (besides other Atari ST games, it also appears on PC-98 games.) I think the C64 tends to be a little desaturated and gray (for example, the grassy path has a really lovely and lively green that the C64 doesn't have), so it's both really exciting to go to a computer where you can pick your favorite palette and disappointing that this game doesn't make use of them well, even compared to a good C64 game.