I know, I have another blog that's a supposed "part 1." Well, if you read it then you should know that I will totally own up to never going through with side-projects and high concept ideas I might have. That novel idea? Too much time. Pen and paper game? Eh, it's too much like Pathfinder so I'll go play that. Finishing that EP from forever ago? Fuck that noise.

What was my original point? Oh yes! This time I will have a finished product on the other end because of the topic at hand. That being...

Betrayal at Krondor

Betrayal at Krondor is a computer role-playing game released in 1993, based in Raymond E. Feist's world of Midkemia from his Riftwar novels. I think. I wouldn't know since I've never touched his books - mostly out of lack of knowledge about them more than anything - but it's got his seal of approval so that's good right? There is also the sometimes hilarious, often times acceptable, use of digitized actors in silly costumes throughout the story, and the game itself is structured like a book with page numbers and chapters for the major turning points of the story (of which I am on number three at the time of this blog). Obviously this has the mark of the author.

Obviously.

So it turns out that some cat named Neal Hallford is actually the one responsible for the important part of this game: the story. Yeah Feist is mentioned in the Original Story credits, but I'd bet money that's only due to it being pulled from a previous source and not to do with his actual writing credits. So why am I getting so worked up about writing credits?

For starters, the writing is superb. The flavor text, and there's a lot of it, is fantastic for world-building and developing a sense of place in a game that would otherwise be nonexistent. It's generic fantasy, and boring geometry, all around you but the descriptions of items and dialogue make the setting come alive. It was a necessity then to have things literally spelled out for you because of the lack of voice acting, and I think it manages to make the game read even better than it would have normally. It's 2013, so I need a real damn good reason to be playing a 20-year old game with okay but not spectacular combat.

The world is pretty generic fantastic schlock from what I can tell (the moredhel are Wild Elves, the undead roam, magic is misunderstood...), but it's the actual characterizations and such that always draw me into a story. In Betrayal at Krondor we are thrown into a story of oncoming "savage" hordes full pelt, being told very little about that actual plot and just given characters to work with. In them are a moredhel prisoner who we're told relatively soon is incredibly vital, a young noble-born magician whose father disapproves, and a dorky knight with the silliest mustache this side of early 90's James Hetfield. Instead of long prologues and pointless cut-scenes the game says "look, you know how this setting works, just take these characters." It's a ballsy maneuver and would likely fall flat on it's face nowadays, or at least be ridiculed for it.

Gorath - the prisoner we're toting around - immediately comes across as a stereotype, talking about how the leader of the clans of the moredhel is a total scumbag and doesn't follow the code of blah blah blah. It's Locklear, the goofy knight, that's a gem in this early portion of the game. Most of the dialogue towards him condescends him for being a straight-up bad womanizer, having stupid hair (that he apparently dyes), but also respecting him for being a great swordsman. Normally this just seems like standard characterization: flaws and strengths. Betrayal at Krondor, however, does a pretty cool thing by backing that up with it's systems.

You can say a character is awesome all you want, but if the game doesn't back this up in the gameplay then your introductory sequence is pointless and, frankly, obnoxious. When you open up the first combat sequence right after being introduced to the characters, you feel how powerful these people are. Gorath and Locklear destroy the assassins in a few hits, while puny little Owyn the Mage is stuck blinding people and hoping they don't get near him.

The combat itself is turn-based, revolving around the speed rating of your character, and relies on random dice rolls based on your stamina - a figure that represents both your easily recoverable health and the "strength" of your character. If your stamina hits 0, you lose combat efficiency and speed but can still fight. If health reaches 0 your character goes into a "Near-Death" state and must either spend a boatload of gold at a temple to recover instantaneously or rest for days and days while applying frequent healing salves and eating up precious rations. Death only occurs when the whole party falls, most likely due to every character being an integral portion of the story.

Enemies themselves are pretty damn smart, especially after just playing Borderlands 2. They won't mindlessly run into Gorath or Locklear the Meatgrinder and it's rare that they'll stay longer than they need to. Often times they'll break off from characters when support arrives and retreat or, more likely, head towards Owyn to stop him from casting spells everywhere for free. That's not to say they won't retreat. If an intelligent enemy gets low enough in stamina and health, they'll split. It's strangely satisfying, and certainly a bit more realistic, seeing the rogue run for his life while he leaves his allies to die at the hands of Guy de Mustachio, wisely choosing to get the fuck out of Dodge before he dies too. It's even better when they're run through in the middle of their escape.

Do you see where I'm going with this? The game melds the two aspects that people are arguing over The Walking Dead or even BioShock Infinite about: the use of story within the gameplay without tossing off the actual "game" portions. Everything in the game, so far, is presented with gameplay incentive or a mechanic to support it. You want to get Owyn's barding to 100 and get phat gold pieces every time you go to an inn? Well, you'll have to endure his terrible mangling of the one song he knows over and over again, replete with MIDI guitar playing off-time, key, and frequently "finding" chords, to get there. And damn is it rewarding.

How about the loot itself? Well, it ranges from poorly managed armor and shitty broadswords to daily rations. And that's pretty much it. At least on enemies, for the most part. You'll occasionally have a wizard or assassin carrying a poison, spell scroll, or very rarely a relatively powerful armor set, but that's not where the real treasures lie. You'll have to solve the insidious wordlock chests to get most of the best stuff. The chests themselves are a riddle that comes with a series of dials labeled with four static letters that, in some combination, answer the puzzle.

And man do they incentivize opening them!

You could just look at the combinations possible, since the chests I've encountered clearly require a noun or verb specifically, but the real fun is actually solving the riddle. I don't care what's in the chest - unless it's another one of those Blessed Rapiers - and I love ditching the main quest objective right in front of me just to find these boxes and break the code. It's probably due to me being a, y'know, person and liking positive reinforcement.

I like it that the game rewards my "intelligence" and that noticing a pattern totally irrelevant to the actual riddle will save me five or so minutes. It feels good, and it definitely is one of the best parts of the game so far. Like I've said though, the story and flavor text is some of the best I've ever read. I could just troll through my inventory if it meant getting to read new information about the world and the items. And that means getting around this inventory.

So I'm going to keep playing this game. Hopefully the titular betrayal isn't as obvious as I've predicted, but at this point it's not even about that and wouldn't lessen the experience at all. This story and it's characters stick with the concept of the journey over the destination. If I didn't spend four or five hours wandering the north of the map I wouldn't have found as many of those awesome wordlocks, gotten more characterization about Seigneur Dweeb, or learned a few choice damage-dealing spells. Yeah, I don't see myself disliking where this is going.

I've meant to play more of this game, if for nothing more than its terribad digitized character portraits and (as you've said) well-written expository dialogue. Maybe I will, some day.

Ah, Betrayal at Krondor. This is my favorite RPG of all time. It keeps me coming back every couple of years, and each time I play it through, I find something I've missed. The world is so big and filled with great stuff that you can spend 100 hours in the first chapter alone. Also throughout its nine chapters it never gets dull.

Btw, Neal Hallford is about to start a Kickstarter campaign for his first fantasy novel, The Thief of Dreams. http://facebook.com/thethiefofdreams

@rhuantavan said:

He's also thinking about starting a team to work on a spiritual successor to BaK.

Aw man, I love me some BaK.

My favorite part about the game is that the world is HUGE and there are very few gates to hamper exploration. You can explore 90% of the map from the word "go" and completely ignore making it to the titular Krondor for tens of hours. And those goddamn wordlock chests! Man, now I want to play BaK again.

@siroptimusprime:

DId you encounter any trouble running BaK on modern hardware? I recall trying to get it going with DoSBox and Windows 7 a couple years ago and gave up in frustration.

@ravenlight: Nope. Bought it off GOG and it's worked fine so far, haven't had to configure any speeds in DOSBox or anything either. $6 for BaK and BaA (which I've heard is worse and will have to look into after BaK) is probably worth looking into. Plus you get .pdf's of the manuals and reference cards, which are rad.

Ah, Betrayal at Krondor, I was absolutely entranced by it back when it came out, glad hear it still holds up. I'd be interested to read more about how your playthrough goes, especially chapter 3 - I actually ended up having to abandon the game for a while first time I through, because I couldn't solve a specific puzzle towards the end of it. Lots of great twists, turns and characters ahead of you, and I dare say Owyn becomes a much more powerful mage as the game goes on.

And, yes, Feist didn't have much to do with the game. He did like it a lot though, and ended up adding the plot to the series canon by turning it into a novel (Krondor: The Betrayal).

Kickass. The last time I tried to play it, it wasn't on GOG yet. Thanks for the info!

Yup, that is a thing to really look out for. I am wondering if he will change his mind on the steampunk setting and maybe go with this book's world and story. That would be really cool in my opinion and much more in line with BaK then where he is headed now.

I got a copy of this game with a Soundblaster card back in the day and liked it quite a bit. Unfortunately, I never got very far. Is the game as hard as I remember? Kinda tempted to try it again now.

@rhuantavan: I'm of two minds about it. One is that I think he'd be better off using his original universe he's already constructing and the other is that I really don't care what the backdrop is so long as the characters and dialogue are as good as they are here.

@svenzon: It can be a little iffy with the totally unexplained (in-game at least) traps and one specific encounter I've had but I'm a diehard savescummer, so I usually have a save just a few steps before I lose an encounter. Sometimes the RNG is an absolute dick though, with me missing every single attack/spell and the enemy constantly poisoning and fireballing me.

@svenzon: As I recall, it gets substantially easier if you make sure to look everywhere for loot, skill trainers, and sidequests instead of just going for the main plot. Keep your weapons and armor in good shape, bless them in temples if you can afford to, and apply oils and other enhancements to them before major battles. Also some enemies can be countered by the right tactics - the Brak Nur(?), a optional boss in chapter 1, can utterly wreck your party, but becomes very easy if you have Owyn constantly casting Despair Thy Eyes on him.

And the Kickstarter is live now. I was going to back it, but it seems like all the tiers with physical rewards are only available for those in the US, and that includes the audiobook one. Sent him a message about this, hopefully he can add a digital only tier with the audiobook for us non-Americans.

I'm playing through the game again for the first time in years, it's every bit as engrossing as when I was 13, you just can't put it down. Here's a great interview with Neal about the making of BaK and the writing process; it's not really an interview, mostly just Neal talking, but anyway... I remember playing the floppy version, then when I was at the public library I saw that Feist had written a novelization of the game, so hell yeah of course I go to check it out, and BAM! There's the CD-ROM version tucked in a sleeve on the back cover and I flipped the eff out. BaK with CD audio and digital speech! Holy cow! I had to play it all over again from the beginning just for that.

@siroptimusprime Did you ever finish the game? Well, Midkemia may be a tad high-fantasy schlock, it's still wonderfully good 80's high-fantasy schlock. Feist and his college buddies actually invented Midkemia for their Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, and later Feist based his novels on that world. Moredhel are actually Dark Elves, but they don't have dark skin, and they live in exile in the snowy north not by choice. It also has space vikings that rode dragons between planets became so powerful they waged a war with the gods and lost. The elves are actually a servant race created by them.