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| MS-DOS cover art by Jeff Easly (I still have my original box somewhere) |
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).
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| 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".
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Cartoonist's starting group |
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| Mous' starting group |
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| 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!
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