Darklands (computer game)
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| Darklands | |
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| Developer(s) | MicroProse |
| Publisher(s) | MicroProse |
| Designer(s) | Arnold Hendrick |
| Release date(s) | 1992 |
| Genre(s) | RPG |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Platform(s) | PC |
| Media | Floppy disk, compact disc |
Darklands is a role-playing game produced by MicroProse. Released in 1992 for the PC/DOS platform, Darklands is set in the Holy Roman Empire (roughly medieval Germany) during the 15th century. While the geographic setting of the game is historically accurate, the game recreated this time period using elements that were popular features of storytelling at the time, including witches, alchemy, miracles, and dragons as well as other supernatural elements.
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[edit] Creation and game style
Designed by Arnold Hendrick, Darklands' unique geographic and historic groundings set it apart from role-playing games inspired by fantasy literature, such as the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. For example, there are no alternate species available in character creation — all players are human and are differentiated by occupation. Any party member is capable of performing what are known as class-based feats in many other role playing games, but skillful players usually improve the party member's skills only in the appropriate area. Thus, the equivalent of a cleric in this game would be someone who specialized in religious studies as well as healing skills. Because the character specialized in the above, however, does not preclude him or her from learning artifice skills (lock picking, etc) that are often forbidden in other RPGs.
Rumors of sequels to the original Darklands were common in the years following its release. These rumors were spurred by the manual itself which says the designers were planning a number of sequels to expand the game into new regions, including other areas of Europe, Russia and other locations. These projects never materialized. Fans frequently called upon Spectrum Holobyte/MicroProse to release the source code to the Darklands community when it became clear there were no further plans for the software, but these requests were not granted.
While never a large commercial success, Darklands' unique game play won it acclaim from role-playing game fans of the time. While the majority of the game uses text-based menus – enhanced with hand-painted illustrations – describing the player party's available actions, the party's movement between cities and during battle utilized a graphical user interface.
[edit] Notable features
Notable features that set Darklands apart from other games of the era include:
- The game does not end. However, there are a limited number of quest types available, causing the game to become repetitive after extensive play. This type of gameplay is sometimes called sandbox mode. (Similar to the more recent The Elder Scrolls game series.)
- A non-linear plotline: there is no set path for a player to follow. However, there is a main quest to follow, which involves preventing the apocalypse.
- The player is free to complete quests that will give them a positive reputation, or to pursue a negative reputation by performing evil deeds. (Similar to the more recent games Fable or Mount & Blade, or to the implementation of alignment and reputation in Baldur's Gate.) In Darklands your reputation is limited geographically, allowing the player to be simultaneously hated in one region and exalted in another.
- Age is a factor in this game. Characters will begin to lose physical prowess (most notably, agility) as they age. However, the older the player is when the character is generated, the more skills and better equipment he or she starts with. A common tactic would be to create very old alchemists / physicians (that came with many nice potions and other equipment) and strip them of their wares, handing them off to younger characters, before casting the aged ones aside.
- Combat was dependent not only on the characters' skills, but also the type and quality of weapons used against the enemy and its armor. For example, using swords against plate armored foes would be less effective than using flails, maces, or even guns, against them.
[edit] Criticism
Darklands was released by MicroProse with a number of bugs, ranging from minor to major. These included many instances of what would now be called crash-to-desktop (CTD) errors. Additionally, the "character colors bug" results in on-screen characters colors being replaced with random (often bright) colorings. The official readme said:
"We very much regret that an extremely rare problem may cause a battlefield character to suffer some color changes in battle. However, you as a player won't notice the change until the next battle. The bad part is the change is stored in the saved game file. You can fix up your characters by returning to an old saved game. For example, in battle #3 you notice Gretch has green hair (yuck). If you return to a saved game prior to battle #2, Gretch will be fine again. We apologize for this work-around. We've tried all sorts of tools and traps for this condition, and spent hundreds of hours testing for it. We'd be delighted to publicize the name of the first person who can tell us how to make it occur upon demand."
While most of these bugs were corrected by subsequent patches, in the early 1990s before ubiquitous internet access the vast majority of gamers were only able to play the release version of games. This gave Darklands an unfortunate reputation as a very buggy game, sometimes overshadowing the excellent gaming experience it had to offer.
However, this did not stop GameSpot from adding it to their list of "The Greatest Games of All Time".[1]
