Eye of the Beholder: Sewers, sewers, sewers

Dungeon Level 1: Sewers

The way out is blocked.

After creating our party, we start the game on Level 1 of the dungeon, right in front of the rubble that crashed and sealed the only exit. If only we needed more motivation! Since the heroes do not start fully equipped, anything we find in these upper levels can be of use, from rocks to use as missile weapons, to leather boots and leather armors. Near the entrance I also found the body (represented by bones) of a long-dead adventurer, halfling in this case, along with a set of lockpicks, suggesting that the poor halfling was a thief.

Mous is fighting some kobolds.

The first level is really small and easy to navigate, and it acts as an introduction to the mechanics of the game. The enemies are fairly simple (although mous did die once here) and they do not respawn. I faced kobolds, which usually come in packs of 4, and giant leeches, which are so slow-moving that I hit them and backed down without giving them the chance to reciprocate.

Besides the enemies, the first dungeon level introduces also some easy puzzles, like finding a hidden button on a wall or placing an item on a pressure plate in order for a door to open a bit later. At some point, there is a niche in the wall containing some scrolls. If we put a specific item there, we complete the special quest of this level. And yes, every level has its own special quest, without nobody telling us so. The way I found out about this (back in 1993) was totally accidental. I completed the special quest of a level below that was very easy to do, and then retraced my steps to the upper levels to try and complete the rest. Since this is my fourth playthrough of the game, I was aware of the concept of special quests. I even remember some of them from 20 years ago, when I last played Eye of the Beholder. 

Completing the special quest for level 4
(unfortunately no screenshot for other levels)

Dungeon Level 2: Sewers

The second level of the dungeon is still a sewers level. The environment is similar, but the level is much larger than the previous one, especially if you count the "elevator" that exists and transports our party to different sublevels.

I kind of crumpled my level 2 map :)

Here was the first opportunity for my cleric to turn undead, as the enemies for this level are skeletons and zombies. The zombies are very slow, so I applied the "hit and get back" tactic. With the skeletons, I had to be more creative and "dance" around them hitting them and changing direction. Practicing this "dance of death" was really helpful, as my characters rarely got wounded.

Mous fighting some skeletons.
He seems to have a soft spot for redheads!

The puzzles in this level are a bit more advanced. I found the first door that required a key to open. I tried to open the lock using the lockpicks, but utterly failed and my set of lockpicks broke. Good thing that I had another set found in the level above. There are also spinners, teleporters, and more pressure plates than before. There are a lot of illusory walls as well and the special quest for this level has to do with daggers. Lots of them!

Throwing a stone across a pit.
Don't mind the dead dwarf.

Dungeon Level 3: Sewers

The third dungeon level is similar in size to the second one. So probably only the first level was so small and introductory. This level is filled with gnolls (although they are called "flinds" according to the manual) and kuo-toas, walking frogs that hurl spells. 

And here we had our first drop out. According to Cartoonist, the whole game seemed really old, with repetitive wall textures, that actually gave him the feeling that wherever he turned, he thought he was on the same spot. He got a feeling of depression, like not being able to escape from all this, so he decided to quit the game. He promised to return to the challenge when we moved to the next game on our list. Let's see if he'll hold that promise.

Another complaint from Spartacus was that after finding different weapons and armor, there is not an in-game way to learn how good each piece of equipment is. That is true. There is no indication as to how likely your character is to hit with a specific weapon, nor how much damage he will inflict to the enemy if he connects. Searching through the manual, there was no "weapons table", so I turned to the AD&D 2nd edition Player's Handbook and shared the weapons table from there. It seems like Westwood Studios realized this oversight since there is a weapons table in the manual for Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon.

My Player's Handbook has seen better days...

The difficulty of this level is way higher than the previous. Especially the part where you have to traverse a cluster of corridors with spinners and teleporters at the same time took me a while to figure out. But this was the only way forward since the stairs leading to level 4 are hidden somewhere inside these corridors. The special quest for this level is also difficult to imagine, so I kind of did it by accident. Well, I am 3/3 on special quests, so it doesn't matter so much.

Lots of pits. I suggest you fall into them! At least some...
(just to check what lies below.. no hard feelings)

Regarding the battle's difficulty, I am finding it very simple for now. I always use the "dance of death" approach, and I rarely get wounded, let alone dead. I hope this continues because I intend to play this in true ironman mode (never load a previous position). 

Time so far: 2.5 hours

Reloads: 0

Game 1 for 2021: Eye of the Beholder (1991)

MS-DOS cover art by Jeff Easly (I still have my original box somewhere)

The first game on our list for 2021: Eye of the Beholder (EoB in short). Funny enough, the first-ever computer RPG I have ever played back in 1992 (and it wasn't my vote that brought it to the first place). It was the game that made me love the genre and led me to learn more about the system and the setting. It also led me to start playing pen&paper role-playing games, starting of course with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and the Forgotten Realms (I am kind of predictable).

The game was developed by Westwood Associates in 1990, and published in 1991 by SSI for the MS-DOS operating system. Westwood Associates (later renamed Westwood Studios) was one of my favorite developers back in the day, along with Lucasfilm Games and Origin Systems. Besides Eye of the Beholder 1 and 2, they are responsible for a series of great adventure games (Legend of Kyrandia), the first-ever real-time strategy game of that standard (Dune 2), an excellent RTS series (Command & Conquer), and the spiritual continuation to Eye of the Beholder (Lands of Lore).

The developer studio for this great game

Eye of the Beholder is a first-person, real-time dungeon crawl game, with tiled based maps. As you can see on the photo I took from an old TSR catalog, it has a "3D 'you are there' point of view".

Interestingly, Eye of the Beholder and
Eye of the Beholder II were both released in the same year: 1991

I remember the computer magazines at the time describing EoB as based on the innovative Dungeon Master video game that was released in 1987, but since I have never played this game I cannot make any meaningful comparison. What I can tell is that Eye of the Beholder had great graphics and sound for its era, and I can still play it now without any discomfort. It may take some to get used to the user interface, especially if you are not using a mouse, but after a while, everything is clear and easy to do. In order to move you use the arrow keys and you attack by right-clicking the weapon in the hand of a character. Since the game tries to represent a turn-based tabletop RPG, there is a cool down before you can click the same weapon again. Since fighting is happening in real-time, you can hit and backtrack until your weapons are ready to be used again, or "dance around" the opponent with quick side steps and turns. It's worth noting that only the two front characters can hit with melee weapons.

I have played and finished Eye of the Beholder several times over the years, but for this challenge, I decided to replay it without using any of the maps I have already drawn. And on top of that, I decided to challenge myself a bit more: try to finish the game without reloading. I suppose this would be very difficult, and if my memory serves me right, it could be impossible as well. 

I draw maps on millimeter paper like I did back then (finger for scale) 

The first time I played it, back in 1992, I remember that I got stuck somewhere near level 5 or 6, having missed a key, and I couldn't open the door that led to the next level. Instead of restarting the game (searching online for a solution was not an option back then), I found out that the savegame file was in hexadecimal (hex) form, so I started editing the file, trying to find out at first where the inventory positions were, and then what was the hex number for the key I was missing. After several hours of trial and error, I gave myself the missing key (along with some magical weapons) and I continued with the game. Let's hope this time I won't need this, but just in case I'll have my favorite hex editor ready!

When the game launches, you see a very nice cinematic that gives a brief story for your adventure. The game takes place in the city of Waterdeep, located along the Sword Coast, in the Forgotten Realms setting. Your party is commissioned by the Lords of Waterdeep to search the sewers and tunnels below the city and destroy the source of evil that lies there. The manual extends this information by briefly describing the history of Waterdeep, how it was first established, the different wars and internal strifes that took place, and the current situation with Council of Hidden Lords, and Piergeiron Paladinson, the only open Lord of Waterdeep.

This must be Piergeiron Paladinson, the only Open
Lord of Waterdeep at the time

You start by creating your group of heroes. You must create all 4 heroes, but the game has 2 more places in your party, to recruit NPCs during your travels. The character creation process is pretty standard for AD&D games of the time. You have the option to choose between six races (human, elf, half-elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling) and six classes (fighter, ranger, paladin, mage, cleric, thief). Not every class is available for every race, and if you decide to take a demihuman race (non-human), you can also multiclass. It is interesting that you can modify every attribute (and starting hit points) of every character, and I do remember doing that when I played this as a kid (I gave everyone an 18 in each attribute).

Since four of us started the game at the same time, let's see the four parties created, which interestingly enough, have their differences. The characters start with 5000 experience points (XP), so most of them start at the 3rd level.

My starting group

In my group, I included a human female Paladin, a halfling male Fighter/Thief, a half-elf male Ranger/Cleric, and a human male Mage (named after my first ever character). I decided to go for a fighter/thief so that when I find an NPC to take the front row, I can have Wolfy throwing knives from the back, but until then, he can hold his ground. The Ranger/Cleric will mostly use a bow (when I find one) to attack, and also cast spells from behind.

Cartoonist's starting group

Mous' starting group

Spartacus' starting group

All the available classes are represented in total, but only two are represented in each party. Both are not a surprise to anyone having the smallest familiarity with AD&D: the cleric and the mage. You can never go wrong with having these two classes in your party.

As a last observation, you can see that there is a big variety of character portraits in Eye of the Beholder. There is hardly any duplication in our four parties!

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how everyone fares!

How it all started

During the challenging days of 2020, when the covid19 pandemic struck humanity and strict lockdown rules were enforced by many governments around the globe, I was trying to think of a way to keep the necessary social distancing, but still enjoy the things I love with my friends.

Since the early 90s, I loved playing role-playing games, both CRPGs (mostly single-player) and pen&paper RPGs, and this is a habit that never got old. During my entire life I was playing (at first) and GMing (since fairly early) several different roleplaying systems and worlds, ranging from heroic fantasy AD&D (the first game I ever played) to cosmic horror Call of Cthulhu, and every shade in between. So trying to play a pen&paper RPG using some of the online platforms, as I did in the past when I had moved far away from my gaming group, was a natural choice, under the circumstances. Unfortunately, it seems like playing RPG using Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds does have significant drawbacks, the most important one being the distractions you have sitting in front of a computer instead of gathering with friends around a table. Don't get me wrong, I am still using Fantasy Grounds to roleplay, mostly with friends from the university, that live in different parts of the world. But this wasn't the answer I was looking for.

So I turned to computer role-playing games and tried to think of a way to blend playing CRPGs with socializing. MMOs would be a solution, but scheduling frequent MMO sessions with friends is not as easy as it once was. Now everyone has a job, a wife, kids, etc. But what if we played a single-player CRPG at roughly the same time, and then convene virtually to discuss it? That sounded right! Before presenting this idea I wanted to flesh it out a bit. How would we choose the games to play? What kind of games are eligible? Do we need to finish a game or just play it for a while? Why call this "CRPG Challenge"? 

THE PROCESS

After some thinking, I came up with the following process:

Step 1. Each participant creates a shortlist of games he thinks we should play. There is no restriction as to what kind of game we can play, but it must be available on PC (not all of us have consoles).

Step 2. We have a meeting and go over these shortlists to decide the final game list, containing 12 games. We try to include several different genres and several different themes. Also, we set an order for the games on the list.

Step 3. Everyone plays the games on the list in the exact order, so we can discuss between us, give hints and suggestions, and in general socialize.

Step 4. We try to finish every game on the list within one year.

Step 5. At the end of the year: GOTO Step 1

I presented the idea to several of my friends, and I got mixed responses. Some of them found this whole idea too restricting, and more of a chore than actually enjoying playing CRPGs. But three of them got excited with the idea, and the moment I presented it to them, they started creating shortlists in their heads. So including myself, we had a group of four. The ideal group for a role-playing game, as we all know!

We all had 2 days to create our shortlists, and after some initial discussions, we had a fairly long meeting going over every game on every list. My shortlist was the biggest of all, having 189 games in it! After lengthy negotiations, and several backs and forths, we managed to narrow it down to a list of 51 games. And then things became tough. We decided that each of us will rank the 51 games, and we will use the average ranking as a guiding tool for the creation of the final list. But everyone had a different order in his mind. And everyone had one or two games that he absolutely wanted to play. We tried the "3 out of 4 average" (discarding the lowest ranking for each game before taking the average), the "all four of us have this in our top 15", and at some points, I thought to try the "I had the idea so I should decide" approach. In the end, we used a combination of all the above and finalized the list. And the filler games list. And the epic games list. Yes, we ended up with three lists instead of one.

THE RULES

In order to bring some order to this chaos, we set some rules that could make our lives easier (or harder, depending on the point of view).

1. We will play every game on the master list in the exact order.

2. We don't have to finish every game, but we must at least make a decent effort to play it. So each one of us must devote at least 10 hours to every game, and if after these hours someone is not having fun, he can skip it and continue with the next game on the list.

3. No walkthroughs and cheats. The only hints we can use, are hints that we give each other while playing the games.

4. At any point we can play any game from the filler games list. This list contains shorter games in duration, that could provide a fine distraction when we are stuck somewhere.

5. We can always start a game from the epic games list, and play it in parallel with the games from the master list. This list contains longer games, that are more epic in scale, and would probably take forever to finish (more than 150 hours).

6. If the game is commercially available, we need to buy it. I am a huge advocate of rewarding game developers for their hard work. But if we decide to play an older game that we can't find anywhere, it's OK to download it from some abandonware site.

7. The challenge will be a success if all of us manage to finish every game on the master list.

And so it begins!