Eye of the Beholder

[Discoalucard]

Eye of the Beholder, one of SSI's many AD&D tie-ins, a classic first person dungeon crawler:

www.hardcoregaming101.net/eyeofthebeholder/eyeofthebeholder.htm

[bladededge]

The Sega CD version of Eye of the Beholder will always be the definitive version to me. Limited color palette and loading times aside, Yuzu Koshiro's soundtrack makes the game and the Genesis-ized graphics sort of add an agreeable feel to things.

Plus it was one of the very, very few games to make use of the Sega Genesis Mega Mouse.

[Gendo Ikari]

Westwood's output was really varied in their heyday. Disney Games, Battletech, RPGs, adventures (Kyrandia), Dune II... Their games from the first half of the 1990s have also some "signature style": I cannot say precisely why but even if they were so different games, I could say the first two Kyrandias, Dune II and Lands of Lore all came from the same hands even before knowing they were all from Westwood. It was a time were development teams were smaller and less anonymous. The huge success of Command & Conquer ended up swallowing them.

HotB 1&2 were not the first D&D games developed by Westwood, there was Hillsfar back in 1989, and in the same years as HotB they made a D&D game for the Genesis. Even back when it was released I remember the disappointment around Eye of the Beholder III.

And speaking of Westwood, will we see a Lands of Lore article sometimes in the future? Once again it would be great timing, the first two episodes have been released on GOG and I'd bet the third will be eventually.

[Bobinator]

Also, is there any chance we could get an article of Dungeon Hack? It's a game that uses the same basic concept and viewpoint for more of a Roguelike style thing, which is a pretty neat idea.

[Dingo]

Glad to see that the article made it up, hope it wasn't too much of a pain since I didn't have screenshots from the Amiga or Lynx versions. I enjoyed writing it and researching the games, but I had no idea the amount of work required going into it. Hopefully I'll have time to try my hand at another article sometime down the road.

[A Winner Is You]

I see a pseudo-error in the second paragraph. "much unlike other SSI AD&D games from the famous Goldbox series, such as Pool of Radiance or Hillsfar." Hillsfar was not actually part of the Gold Box series (I think it was originally released in a white or silver box). It was more like a spin-off from the series, and while it did have some first person town/dungeon crawling sequences, it did away with the isometric tactical combat.

But anyway, yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that the Sega CD version was the best as far as the first game is concerned. The music was cool (and creepy on certain lower levels!) and the addition of maps you could find helped tremendously. I loved the dodgy voice acting inserted into the cutscenes too.

For me though, nothing beats EotB II. Like Dingo says, it did away with a lot of the annoyances of the first game (crazy layouts and URGH! the key collecting!) and delivered a much tighter, more focused dungeon crawling experience.

EDIT: It could be worth mentioning somewhere that the first Lands of Lore was originally going to be EotB III before SSI/Westwood split.

[derboo]

Dec 2, 2011 5:33:01 GMT -5 A Winner Is You said:

I see a pseudo-error in the second paragraph. "much unlike other SSI AD&D games from the famous Goldbox series, such as Pool of Radiance or Hillsfar." Hillsfar was not actually part of the Gold Box series (I think it was originally released in a white or silver box). It was more like a spin-off from the series, and while it did have some first person town/dungeon crawling sequences, it did away with the isometric tactical combat.

Ugh, I might have inserted that for clarification during editing, but didn't think to check the validity of that statement. Sorry!

[aganar]

Darkmoon was one of the first games I had on the PC growing up. Unfortunately, it was a copied disk from a friend, and we could never get past the area in the first dungeon where it asked for "The third word in the second paragraph on p.67". I was not able to play the full game until the CD compilation came out.

Also, it seems completely pointless to put anyone other than magic users in the back, because those with melee weapons will never, ever hit anything. Ever.

[Lash]

Very nice addition to the archive.

[A Winner Is You]

Dec 3, 2011 16:58:40 GMT -5 aganar said:

Also, it seems completely pointless to put anyone other than magic users in the back, because those with melee weapons will never, ever hit anything. Ever.

Um... even if you didn't have an instruction manual, isn't that kind of implied? You're marching through a dungeon in 2x2, so it makes perfect sense that only the first two characters could melee. And you could always stick a secondary fighter in the back with a bow and arrow (usually one of the NPC's you can pick up). Or you could outfit a thief with a bow and arrow back there. Thieves were mostly useless in the first game, but I felt it was almost mandatory to have one (or at the very least a multiclass thief) in Darkmoon.

[aganar]

Surprisingly, I never used a thief. I had a sibling who always insisted his character be a fighter/mage/thief, but that was as close as we ever got. And I seem to recall those bows similarly missed a great deal. Rocks seems to be the most accurate of the bunch.

While we're on the subject of D&D games, why does the cleric wield a mace? I understand they can't be having monks be pacifists in true Franciscan fashion, but couldn't he at least use something a little...cleaner? Maces, spiked ones at that, are such a barbaric and impolite weapon. It seems unbecoming for a servant of God.

[derboo]

Might have something to do with the somewhat sacral-esque looking shape of the most stereotypical model.

[A Winner Is You]

Clerics in D&D weren't originally intended to be monks per se (Monks would later develop their own class in 1st edition AD&D). Rather, clerics were originally based on real-life priests who took up arms during the Crusades. That's where Gygax and Arneson took the idea for clerics only using blunt weapons (maces, clubs, staffs, etc), because Catholic dictum required priests only use arms that didn't draw blood if they went off to fight. It's a little silly, because even if a mace or a club doesn't cut like a sword or dagger, you'll still get plenty of blood if you cave a goblin's head in, won't you?

And of course, in gaming terms, restricting their weaponry also helped keep any one class from being too powerful over the others. If they had their spellcasting abilities AND could use any weapon, then fighters and mages would have been neglected.

[zellsf]

I think the Sega CD version actually looks *better* because of it's limited color palette. I even like the voice acting, it might not be good but it is entertaining

The huge disadvantage with the Sega CD version is of course that you can't export your characters to Eye of the Beholder II.

However, the console ports did suffer from their gamepad controls. It becomes obvious rather quickly that the game was designed to be played with a mouse, and the transition to console controllers didn't go over very well.

It might be worth noting that the Sega CD version actually supports mouse control. A quick Google search tells me the SNES version does too.

Edit: and my memory tells me that either this or Dungeon Master (SNES), despite supporting mouse control, is problematic with it in emulators.

[blackdrazon]

GOG just re-released this (and something like ten other games using the same engine)!

www.gog.com/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_collection_one <- Eye of the Beholder Trilogy.
www.gog.com/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_collection_two
www.gog.com/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_collection_three