Avernum:4 vs Blades Of Avernum which is the best?
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| Author | Topic: Avernum:4 vs Blades Of Avernum which is the best? |
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Apprentice
Member # 6635
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written Monday, January 2 2006 21:35
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im debating on whether i should get Avernum 4 or Blades of Avernum, i would like to hear your individual oppions of which is best. Posts: 2 | Registered: Monday, January 2 2006 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Monday, January 2 2006 21:49
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Oddly enough, this could actually be a worthwhile discussion... so I'll list the better points of each (or at least how I perceive them). Blades of Avernum: -Variety in style -Creative plotlines -Not being bound to the main Avernum plot -Better graphics -Replay value (particularly if you become a designer) Avernum 4: -Far more to explore -Good ol' Avernum, for better or worse -More well-designed combat situations -Longer -More overall game to play (until Blades designers such as myself get more work out there) -------------------- Thuryl: "Runescape: for people who are too stupid to save their games." Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Monday, January 2 2006 22:14
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With A4, you're getting one big game. With BoA, you're getting lots of tastes of little games (and the possibility of making your own). -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 2115
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written Monday, January 2 2006 22:46
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As someone who finished A4 today, I would hope my post isn't too biased. A4 has going for it a continuity of the Avernum storyline, past with our classic Exile games have to offer us. I really enjoyed it, as the storyline was fun. I think I maximized almost all of the sidequests and goodies in a single run through it and had a lot of fun doing so (save at least 13 fine leathers. You'll thank me later). Blades of Exile is a little different. It has the definate(I know I spelled that wrong) non-continuity going for it, but with that has differnt people (queue Stareye[sp?]) going with challenging, high level scenarios that really make you think how to defeat different situations. They aren't always easy, contrary to A4s (we're going to give you stuff and you have to figure it out) its more of the "there is unknown and you have to go from there" in some scenarios. I really think it is unfair to compare the two, since they are both made to supplant two distinct interests. BoA is a remake of BoE, with an editor and what not (I'll never forget running around with a lvl 45 part in BoE demolishing things). A4 is a continuation of the Avernum/Exile storyline. I had alot of fun with both, and have spent the better part of my winter break on A4. I'd like to apologize if this seems to be a long winded post, but its my honest opinion. Comparing the two games straight across is really unfair as there is no real yes or no on either two games. Posts: 46 | Registered: Saturday, October 19 2002 07:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Monday, January 2 2006 23:34
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In two words: A4: depth. BoA: breadth. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Tuesday, January 3 2006 04:53
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So far at least. I would not be surprised if someday we have something epics like the Adventurer's Club series which definitely has length. Anyway, to discuss this further: A4: If you want to continue to Avernum plot and you don't mind it being very predictable, this would be a good choice. The combat mechanics are by far the best in any Spiderweb game and it is a good distraction. It does, however, have little reply value after a couple times. BoA: Right now there are not a large number of scenarios to play. Indeed this is disappointing, but there are discussions going on to help combat this. However, with BoA you get potentially an endless variety of adventures to play. Blades of Exile has hundreds of them for better or worse. Hopefully BoA will get this many scenarios eventually, and if it is anything like BoE, in many ways they will exceed all the works of Jeff Vogel in my opinion. If you don't mind going back on the graphics, Blades of Exile is probably the best investment in terms of the amount of playtime versus money spent. [ Tuesday, January 03, 2006 04:57: Message edited by: *i ] -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Tuesday, January 3 2006 05:04
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I haven't played alot of Avernum 4, but I can say that the graphics still bother me. however, knowing what is going to happen in the rest of the game is as intruiging as playing scenario's other people made, and see different styles of designing for once. As Stareye already said, I wouldn't be surprised to one day see the release of a long scenario with an interesting plot and the like. kelandon, with his Bahssikave (I hope I spelled it correctly now) already started an interesting plot which has potential. i heard rumors (for as far as it can be a rumor when you heard it from the designer himself) that he is making a sequel. this could be the start of a longer scenario with a more sophisticated plot. I can't decide for you, but I would choose BoA. -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, January 3 2006 05:38
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About replay value: it's true your motivation to replay A4 will probably fade after 2 or 3 times through. But it's so doggone long, this still should count as an awful lot of playing. And you can actually get more motivated to try again than you expected, just because the thing is so long that by the time you finish it, you've probably forgotten most of the beginning stuff. I'm enjoying my second game because on Torment instead of Normal difficulty a lot of stuff is so much harder it ends up feeling quite different. And I have the idea of trying at least one more game, to see if I can make it with a singleton. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Tuesday, January 3 2006 12:12
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quote:Close. :P -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Tuesday, January 3 2006 13:55
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I haven't played A4, but it has to be damn good (better than A3) to reach the quality of stuff like Canopy and Bahssikava. And those are just two of the best scenarios. -------------------- Encyclopaedia • Archives • Members • RSS [Topic / Forum] • Blog • Polaris • NaNoWriMo Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. I have a love of woodwind instruments. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 01:17
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quote:Bahssikava then? I'll never learn, will I. -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 02:40
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Yes, it's spelled Bahssikava. I find it easy to remember how it's spelled, because it reminds me of baklava. Mmm, baklava. -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 6292
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 06:30
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quote:For anyone who wishes to improve English skills, here is an example of one very common error many make: using the superlative "best" when comparing only two things. In this case, the question would be, "Which is better?" "Which is best" would apply to three or more choices. Probably the most common grammar mistake in English is saying, "It's me." While, common misuse has made the correct form, "It is I" sound wrong, it is correct. Just like you would say, "I am it" and not "Me is it", which shows why this is the case just a bit better. This has been uninvited grammar police interjection number 27b. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled deprogramming. -------------------- A4 Items • A4 Singleton • G4 Items • G4 Forging • G4 Infiltrator • NR Items • The Lonely Celt Posts: 2009 | Registered: Monday, September 12 2005 07:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 07:09
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quote:Sigh. I spent the past two years studying linguistics, and this kind of prescriptivist attitude really irks me. Language is a dynamic entity, constantly changing, and you can only pin it down in a certain form so long as you freeze time at a certain moment. The correct form IS the form that is typically used. The fact is that language is essentially arbitrary, and it isn't any better or any more "correct" to use one word or another, or one syntactic structure or another, to communicate something. The only time you could really make such an argument would be in a certain word or structure is confusing or hard to use to communicate -- but in such a case, its use would never become widespread anyway. As for "It is I" versus "It's me" -- English is what syntacticians call an analytic language. Speakers of English rely heavily on word position to figure out how a word is being used. "I" and "me" and the rest of our personal pronouns are left over from the influence of other languages where inflection is used rather than word order. While "I" and "me" carry different syntactic information and are not exactly the same words, in the context of "It's __" they are pretty much identical in meaning. Therefore, it's not surprising that they have become somewhat interchangeable in that context. Syntactically, the role taken on by the pronoun in "it's __" is not exactly the same as the roles taken by subjective (I) or objective (me) pronouns. You can see this looking at other languages. In French, for example, you do not see "C'est je" (It's I) or "C'est me" (It's me) but "C'est moi" where "moi" is the disjunctive pronoun, a modified form of "me" (me). quote:And I don't agree about this at all. When you say "which is better?" you're basically saying "which is better (than the others)?" And when you say 'which is best?" you're basically saying "which is (the) best (one)?" Both make sense, and there's absolutely no reason you can't use a superlative with a set of two. It communicates just as clearly as the comparative and it doesn't hurt the use of the superlative in any other situation. They are different logical structures, but there is no good reason (or, AFIAK, any historical justification) to restrict the use of one in a situation where they both fit. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 07:40
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quote:Sorry, couldn't resist this: It is sounds, with an S. :P And I really don't understand why English can't be modified a little. that's easier for me, you see. [ Wednesday, January 04, 2006 07:41: Message edited by: Thralni, chicken god prophet ] -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 6292
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 07:46
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It bothers me that English really seems to be dumbing down due to "popular" useage. We are losing the meanings of more and more once perfectly useful words. Take for example the similar sorts of words, "fantastic", "wonderful", "awesome", "terrific". Fantastic once implied a fantastical/fantasy element to a thing. Wonderful once implied a sense of wonder. Awesome was spoken only of things which truly inspired awe. Terrific once spoke of things that induced terror. Now, through popular, sloppy, dumbed down useage, they all mean the exact same insipid, vague thing "great/cool". What word do I use now when I want to describe something that is truly awesome? What adjective do I use to discuss something that is laden with fantasy elements so as to make it unbelievable? So, popular useage argument alone doesn't convince me we're making a step in a wise or ueful direction with meaning, semantics, or grammar. English was once much more precise than it is now, and that bothers me, if for no other reason than it makes for sloppier communication and greater possibility of miscommunication—probably the number one cause of conflict in the world in general. It's me/It's I...I only pointed this out as a curiosity, since "It's I" sounds dreadfully awkward now, though still technically is the originally correct form, whatever it has become now. The Russians use it that way. The French don't. One could argue who is more correct, I suppose. If we dig a little deeper, I we will find that better is still technically to be used to compare two things, whereas best is a superlative which requires three or more comparisions. I learned this in no uncertain terms in college English, for whatever that is worth. Again, common useage with ignorance or disregard to this original rule has rendered it almost non-existent in everyday use. If this difference between better and best never existed, why do we have the two words instead of just one or the other in the first place. They are otherwise indistinguishable in meaning. -------------------- A4 Items • A4 Singleton • G4 Items • G4 Forging • G4 Infiltrator • NR Items • The Lonely Celt Posts: 2009 | Registered: Monday, September 12 2005 07:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 08:56
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quote:But when you say "originally correct" you are defining "originally" rather arbitrarily. I am guessing "originally" can't mean, say, Middle English, and I don't think you'd hold up 17th century English as a proper model for us either. At what point in time did English magically reach its "originally correct form"? quote:Aha, I see you have answered my question already. ;) Don't believe everything your teachers tell you. It's a romantic notion, and I daresay a wonderful one, to hold up a language at one particular moment and say "This is good. This I love. I want to use this as a standard." I think that's great. But it's still totally arbitrary, and if you expect all men to do the same thing, you're deluding yourself. And if you are going to nitpick language you certainly can't say "originally" to refer to such standards! Yes, English is being "dumbed down." It is also being built up. All languages are constantly being dumbed down and built up as words cycle in and out of the lexicon and as their meanings change in subtle ways. English still has a truly enormous vocabulary. I think awe-inspiring works for "truly awesome" although awesome itself still works, given proper context. As for something "so laden with fantasy elements as to make it unbelievable," what about chimerical? Phantasmagorical? There are other words with related meanings to both of those -- numinous, say. Defining words is difficult, particularly words that don't refer to concrete objects. You can often triangulate on a meaning by asking yourself "would I describe this as __? what about that?" for many things... at first this is easy, but when you get to a very precise level of definition, you may start to be iffy about some answers; and you will eventually start to get different answers from different people, even from native speakers from the same area. And these fuzzy meanings will change over time in very subtle ways, even for a single speaker. For a language which is spoken by millions of people around the world, you can imagine all the changes it goes through. Many of these balance each other out, like myriad ripples on the world's oceans. But beneath the seas, there is always some tectonic activity, and eventually we see continental drift. quote:What makes you say that? I'm interested, but looking back on the various texts I've read from Chaucer's day to ours, I can't say I've ever gotten that impression. Certainly Shakespeare is rich language, but that has as much to do with the author as the language, and I daresay he succeeds more at creating poetic multiplicity of meaning rather than at being "precise." -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 09:02
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quote:Why not continue to use awesome and fantastic for those purposes? I do on occasion. Prepending a superfluous "truly" (as in "truly awesome") might be bad style, but it does seem to get the point across. Few who use awesome, fantastic and terrific to mean the same thing would utter the word "truly". -------------------- Encyclopaedia • Archives • Members • RSS [Topic / Forum] • Blog • Polaris • NaNoWriMo Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. I have a love of woodwind instruments. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 6292
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 10:37
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Slartster, I'm in essential agreement with most of your points here about language evolution. I haven't studied linguistics as you have, so my comments come mostly from everyday observation and reading literature. When I look at the diversity and richness of language used in English in 18th and 19th century novels or whatnot, today's speech and much of its writing seems very base and colorless, here in America anyway. I understand how arbitrary and ever-evolving any language is. My greatest lament is the seeming lack of a rich vocabulary. Many concise and colorful English words are dying the death due to atrophy. I love words and what can be accomplished with them. I think the single biggest contributor to the situation is the fact that people don't read much anymore, and we watch TV and play video games instead. When I read, when I hit a word I don't know, I get the dictionary, and perhaps make a new friend. Maybe, instead of "originally," I should say "previously." I don't know when many such things actually originated. American English, as it is commonly spoken, is at present rife with slang and vagueity. If I want to use more precise words, I run the risk of communicating less clearly, because few people know the meanings of many such words any longer. The words are still in the dictionary, but they are not in the lingo, and so will soon for all practical purposes, cease to exist. I know one thing. I don't intend to replace "fantastic" with "phat". [ Wednesday, January 04, 2006 10:39: Message edited by: Synergy ] -------------------- A4 Items • A4 Singleton • G4 Items • G4 Forging • G4 Infiltrator • NR Items • The Lonely Celt Posts: 2009 | Registered: Monday, September 12 2005 07:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 10:55
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*nods* I'm not sure the situation with more specialized words (I'm going to use that rather than "precise" which seems imprecise to me) is as bleak as you suggest. At least not compared to the way it was "previously." The language relics we have from, say, the 1800s, are the things that people wrote down. Who wrote these things down? Writers, poets, newspaper reporters, editors, academics... in short, the most literate segments of the population. The most literate segments of the population today know that "awesome" can have something to do with "awe." They have a rich and a dynamic vocabulary. As a recent refugee from the scholarly life I can assure you that sesquipedalianism is alive and well. But do you really think the vernacular, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, whenever, was any LESS full of slang, or of vague words? Do you really think the vernacular had any more access to specialized vocabulary? I wish people read more, too. But if you take a little historical or geographical perspective, people in our society STILL read WAY more than they did 200 years ago... maybe even 100. And they read way more than people in many parts of the world do. I'm not supporting TV and video games over books, believe me, but I don't think you can blame the vagueness of our vernacular on them. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 5517
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 11:08
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Ummm guys, this is a topic about A4 and BoA, and which is better, not English and Grammer. I have 3 more courses of it in Highschool, and I assume the majority of the people here are either in College/University or Highschool, so we don't really need to know about it. As for which is better. I haven't played A4 yet(waiting for windows), but if it's anything like the Geneforge series, then it will have a extremley indepth storyline, with a varying plot, where BoA is more you being able to suck more fun out of the game, because of all of the new scenarios being made/released. Overall I would have to say BoA, because even if you beat all the scenarios already out, there will definatley be more, or maybe BoA2(hint, hint) Posts: 49 | Registered: Friday, February 18 2005 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 11:11
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English was never correctly spoken. No language was. The rules of English exist based on spoken usage (at any period of time) only in broad outlines. They do not come from freezing a language in any moment in time — this is a myth, no more true for being common. People used to learn the rules better than they do now, but they still had to learn them. So where do they come from? A few rules exist from comparison with Latin and the Romance languages. But the main source of grammatical rules is the attempt to make the language make sense. I study Latin and Greek, so I have to compare to them. Latin was heavily standardized from an early point in its literary history, whereas Greek was not. There was a "correct" way of speaking Latin almost as long ago as there were any literary texts (1st century B.C.). Greek had grammarians back as far as the glory days of Athens, but it wasn't really standardized until after the golden age of its literature. The end result is that Latin grammar books are small and make a lot of sense; the usage is rational. Greek grammar books are huge, and they contain an absurd number of exceptions, mostly involving "assimilation" and "vividness" and "asyndeton" and a variety of other words that basically mean "grammatical incorrectness." The Greek books probably better reflect actual usage at the time, but would you rather read 700 pages of small type or 200 pages of big type? My grammar books for Greek and Latin are the former and the latter, respectively — the results of standardization. The reason that English now seems less linguistically precise to readers of older works is that high style died over the course of the past hundred years. It is not that contemporary English is a less expressive idiom with fewer words — far from it! We have many more words than we once did. It is that we don't use high style anymore. Until fairly recently, people loved to hear other people be more eloquent than they could be (from Abe Lincoln to Cicero and Demosthenes). They flocked to speeches to hear masterful language. For whatever reason (and I haven't ever investigated this), people don't like this anymore. I do think that there has been a shift over the course of the past century or so in the register of diction that normal people can understand — not that they speak, but that they can understand. This is evident in the way in which our political speakers speak now compared to the way they spoke in the mid-19th century, even though both expected everyone in the audience to understand what they were saying. And Glafna, there will not be a BoA2. -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 5814
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 11:20
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quote:Sorry, couldn't resist this. It is "sound", without an "s". There is no popular or grammatical justification for changing that verb. -------------------- quote: Posts: 1115 | Registered: Sunday, May 15 2005 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 11:21
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On the whole I doubt the Whorf-Sapir thesis that language constrains thought. If people have good ideas, they will find ways to express them. It may be that people are becoming sloppier in their thinking, but if so, poor use of language is surely a symptom rather than a cause. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
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written Wednesday, January 4 2006 11:33
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quote:To be fair, the punctuation is so badly off that it's hard to tell, on first glance, what Synergy intended. The sentence should read: "While common misuse has made the correct form, 'It is I,' sound wrong, it is correct." SoT: I don't think so much that we've lost the ability to express thing as that we've chosen not to express them anymore. I just read Fahrenheit 451 a couple of days ago, and the most striking thing about that book is that it wasn't the government that began the censorship — it was that people (by and large, not universally) stopped reading good writing. This seems extremely realistic to me. Well, and more to the point, people today are often choosing to say things in the most simplistic ways possible. It's hard to explain why it's nice to be able to use an elevated register of diction, but I can't shake the feeling that it is nice. [ Wednesday, January 04, 2006 11:54: Message edited by: Kelandon ] -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |