Video games - Darklands

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	Video games - Darklands

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.

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 RPG's.

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 to Spectrum Holobyte/MicroProse to release the source code to the Darklands community when it became clear there were no further plans for the software, however 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 your party’s available actions, the party’s movement between cities and during battle utilized a graphical user interface.

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.
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.)
Age is a factor in this game. Characters will begin to lose physical prowess 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. Some clever players would create very old alchemists / physicians (that came with many nice potions and other equipment) and would 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, or even guns, against them.

Criticism

Darklands was released by MicroProse with a number of bugs, from minor to quite large. For example, 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."

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Darklands ]

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