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Game 303: Die Dunkle Dimension (1989)

           Die Dunkle Dimension "The Dark Dimension" Germany German Design Group (developer and publisher) Released in 1989 for Commodore 64 Date Started: 29 August 2018 When I decided my master list would include foreign games, as long as they were in a language I could easily type into a translator, I expected that I'd be translating a two-paragraph backstory, a one-screen ending, and a bunch of repetitive stuff like "you miss the skeleton!" in between. I wasn't counting on games that were so text-heavy, like Antares, Die Drachen von Laas, or Nippon. Now here comes another one, Die Dunkle Dimension ("The Dark Dimension"), in which I accomplished over four hours what would have taken me 35 minutes in an English title. Dunkle is a German Ultima IV clone, and unlike the author of most clones, the developer here did a good job retaining most of what makes Ultima IV so special, including the keyword-based dialogue system, the sense of exploring a large world, and the tactical combat screen. It lacks the virtue system, of course, and you control only one party member throughout the game. Still, it's a better clone than most. The setup even sounds like Ultima IV in its beginning: You, a person in the "real world," decide to take a walk on a warm summer day. You soon stumble upon a crystalline shard in the grass. Picking it up, you quickly learn that it's some kind of portkey, and within a few minutes, you're warped through time and space to another dimension. You splash down into a lake and swim to shore, just avoiding the jaws of a giant serpent. At first, you think you're in the past looking at a dinosaur, but then the dinosaur breathes fire, and you realize you're in another world. (Although: are we sure that dinosaurs didn't breathe fire? That would be pretty rad.) You set out to find out where you are and how to get home.           

Character creation sure has a lot of text to translate.

          Character creation is a simple and unnecessarily wordy process of specifying a name and then identifying a primary attribute from among four choices: strength, skill, wisdom, and charisma (I chose strength). You get to specify a difficulty level (I chose "medium"), and whether you favor attacking or defense (attacking). The game then determines your final attribute scores.

Gameplay begins where the story left off: on the shores of a lake with a serpent lurking nearby. You have to get away from the shore before he closes and attacks.       

Arriving in a new world.

         The interface is much like an Ultima title. Movement is with the bracket-semicolon-apostrophe-slash cluster (on a PC keyboard anyway; their analogues on a C64 are a little different), and actions are performed with single letters, such as (A)ttack, (K)ommunicate, (I)nventory, and (R)eady armor. The specific list varies a little depending on whether you're outside, inside, or in combat. In any event, it's relatively easy to master.            

The game came with a map. I believe the starting area is at the lake slightly southwest of center.

            Near the starting point is a cottage, so naturally I entered it. It turned out to be the home of a druid named Cerfak. Conversation with NPCs proceeds exactly as in Ultima IV except that you only type the first four letters of your keyword. All NPCs respond to NAME (same in both languages), GESUndheit (health), and BERUf (occupation). The rest of their responses are from keywords that they feed you or that other NPCs tell you to ask them. Occasionally, they ask you something that requires a (J)a or (N)ein response. Cerfak was extremely wordy, and he left me terrified that all NPCs would have as much to say. Fortunately, that isn't the case, because it took me almost an hour just to transcribe his conversation. It was important, because it includes a lot about the backstory and quest.

Name: I am Cerfak

Health: I am exhausted. Are you OK?

Yes: I'm happy for you

Job: I am a druid.

Druid: We druids are wise old magicians, but closer to nature than sorcerers. We see, we heal, and we help.

See: I see how evil conquers our world.

Heal: let me heal you (heals me)

Help: Ask what you want to know. I know a lot.

World: Evil has destroyed the balance of our world.

Balance: Are you from another world?

Yes: Once upon a time, our world was beautiful and bright. The people lived in peace and were happy. But the Evil One brought eternal darkness over us, and the creatures of darkness came out of their holes and overflowed the land. The sun will never rise again, because the crystal is broken.

Crystal: The Crystal of Light that kept the balance of our world. Carried by fire and air, it floats above the lava of the great volcano.  But the Evil One struck with all its cruel power, and the crystal shattered. A splinter broke off. The crystal turned black. With it went the sun [thus explaining the game's name]. The splinter broke out of the upper right corner of the crystal. Remember this point! The Evil One built an impregnable fortress in the form of a huge skull around the crystal. There he lurks and sends out doom. The splinter was cast into another dimension. When you touched it, a spell broke and the splinter and you were teleported here. Do you have the splinter?

No: (At least it's not listed in my inventory.) Go and find it; otherwise our world is lost forever. Go northeast. There you will come to the castle of the king. There, they will help you.

Splinter: The crystal and the splinter must be united!

Bye: My prayers go with you.

             The druid has a lot to say.

          The bit about the crystal, shard, lava, and mountain seem to be influenced by The Dark Eye tabletop RPG published by Schmidt Spiele in 1984 (on which the later CRPG Realms of Arkania was based). I don't know the game well enough to determine if the developer of Dunkle took any other inspiration. The character starts with no weapons or armor, and there's no obvious place nearby to obtain any. It's not long before robbers, zombies, forest demons, and goblins come wandering out of the nearby woods and start attacking. Fortunately, the character is capable of beating most of these combatants to death with his bare hands. He takes a large hit point loss doing so, but the druid heals for free.          

Attacking a forest demon in forested terrain. A zombie approaches.

          Combat is again much like Ultima IV. When it begins, the action transitions to a tactical map based on the terrain you were standing on. You can use environmental obstacles to block and funnel enemies. You and enemies exchange turns, and during your turn you can attack, cast a spell, or switch weapons (I naturally have no spells or weapons yet). When hit, enemies progress from barely scratched (kaum angekratzt) to lightly wounded (leicht verletzt), wounded (verwundet), seriously injured (schwer verletzt), fleeing (auf der flucht), and then death. If an enemy successfully flees (which happens to my weaponless character most of the time), you get his gold but no experience points. If you flee, you lose some experience points. Animals provide no experience, which echoes Ultima IV's system by which it was unvirtuous to kill them.

I made some money hanging around the druid's hut, but I noticed my food depleting (you start with 50 rations) and I figured I'd better stake out for a town or the king's castle, as recommended by Cerfak. It took me a few false starts in which I was killed by an accumulation of combats on the way. Fortunately, you can save anywhere outdoors and reload.

          Arriving at the castle.

          The king's castle was a small, one-level structure with about a dozen NPCs. Collectively, they had only about as much text as Cerfak by himself, but it still took a long time to translate. Of course, there was a Chuckles analogue (calling himself a "harlequin") waiting for me in the courtyard. This was his joke:

Q: Do you know the difference between a king and a hippopotamus?

A: The hippopotamus bathes more often!

I'm not sure how that's supposed to be any kind of an insult considering a hippopotamus basically lives in water. I mean, you could bathe twice a day and a hippo would probably still bathe more often than you.

           Chuckles somehow has the power to annoy me across universes.

           Anyway, among the NPCs the king and queen had the most dialogue. King Casiodorus said he'd heard of my exploits even though I haven't done much. After a quick pause, he encouraged me to come back when I had more experience--clearly, I go to him to level up. Between him and the distraught queen, they related that there's a terrible dragon (lindwurm) who lives in the mountains to the east. Twice a year, always at solstice, he gets hungry for human flesh. To avoid him razing the countryside, the nation made a deal with him to supply him with virgins twice a year, their names drawn by lottery from all the eligible young women in the kingdom. Unfortunately, Princess Sheila's name came up in the last drawing and she'll soon have to be sacrificed. The king implored me to find a way to defeat the dragon. Not only is this the plot of 1981's Dragonslayer (in which Peter MacNicol is weirdly miscast as the hero), but the king's name is taken from that film. The forthcoming rescue seems to be what's depicted on the title screen.

          The king introduces himself.

          Torquill, the king's sheriff, also told me to ask the king about a thieving band that lives in a lair called Mubrak. The king is eager to wipe them out. So I left the castle with two quests which may be side quests or somehow related to the main quest.

Other NPCs included Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who had nothing to say; Dakteon the bard, who told me that no one can pronounce the name of the Evil One without burning alive, but that I'd somehow need to do it; Antonius the priest, who admitted that he doesn't believe in God, but "you have to make a living somehow"; and Theodorus the geographer, who asked if I wanted maps of all the game's dungeons and towns and, when I said yes, told me to send money to the German Design Group and gave me the address.

        A random maid asks if I'm there to save the world.

          In a corner, a swordmaster named Ator (from the Italian series of Conan-inspired films) said he could train me when I was more experienced. When you level up, you must get the ability to raise your attributes.

Unfortunately, there was no place to buy weapons or armor in the castle, so I left unsure what to do next. I ultimately made my way back to the familiar territory of the druid's hut, and I'll have to explore outward from there.

         The druid heals me for free as I slowly build my gold and experience around his hut.

         Other notes:

Magic, which I haven't had any chance to investigate yet, is apparently divided into white magic (healing and protection spells) and black magic (damage spells), a division that we'll see later in the German Dragonflight (1990). Casting them requires reagents, just like Ultima IV.

Also making an appearance from Ultima IV are bridge trolls (they have a random chance of attacking when you cross bridges) and patches of swamp that poison the character. 

             Bridge trolls are a little too tough for an unarmed character.

          Enemies can move and attack on the diagonal but you can't. This makes it impossible to outrun enemies.

From the manual's descriptions, horses, ships, and aircraft are due to make appearances.

The king's castle has something you don't find in most RPGs: bathrooms.

         There's even a toilet paper roll holder and a toilet brush.

       The primary author of Die Dunkle Dimension seems to be one Hendrik Belitz, who went by the pseudonyms "Silent Shadow" and "The Dark One." Belitz had a web site dedicated to the game as recently as a few years ago, but he seems to have lost the domain. I was able to retrieve it from the Internet Archive and get the files that were offered on it, including the game manual and map. Scanning the site and the documentation, I found it more than a little irksome that the author didn't provide any credit to Ultima, from which he'd clearly taken so many of the game's concepts. I never criticize clones for being clones, but I sure do criticize them for not acknowledging that they're clones. We'll talk more about the author, company, and legacy of the game in the final entry.

I'm nowhere near having translated the entire manual yet; I'm just consulting bits and pieces as I need it. This one seems like it's going to be slow-going but perhaps enjoyable in its own way.

source http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2018/09/game-303-die-dunkle-dimension-1989.html

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Plot Continuity Across Sequels (ft. Crusaders of the Dark Savant)

Crusaders of the Dark Savant is the first game for which this import process has implications beyond character attributes and equipment.

                      If a developer allows meaningful choices in the game, how does he reflect the consequences of those choices in sequels? This question grows more and more pertinent as the years pass, and meaningful choices become a greater expectation among RPG players. Indeed, it is common on today's blogs and discussion forums for players to insist that meaningful choices--affecting the direction of the plot and the ending of the game--are an essential part of a role-playing game. Such a claim ignores most of the history of RPGs, in which the only choice most players had was whether to attack with a sword or an axe, but I'm willing to allow that true role-playing choices might become an essential characteristic of a twenty-first century RPG.

The issue becomes pertinent for essentially the first time in Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992), a sequel to a game in which the player's choices could produce one of three different endings. This isn't quite the first time this happened, but previous "alternate endings" were either just creative deaths (i.e., ways of not winning the game), such as the "bad" endings of Dungeon Master (1987), Ultima V (1988), Pool of Radiance (1988), or The Magic Candle (1989), or alternate paths that funneled to the same basic ending, as in the Quest for Glory series (1988-1992), Dragon Wars (1989), Sword of Aragon (1989), or Disciples of Steel (1991). Prior to Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990), the only game I can think of that offered true alternate ways of winning the game was the roguelike Omega (1988), and it didn't have a sequel. Slightly earlier, however, Phantasie II (1986) and III (1987) chanced some introductory dialogue depending on whether the party was created or imported, reflecting the player's choice to have finished the previous games at all.

Phantasie III his Filmon say that Nikademus would "never suspect you" if you're a new party. If you're imported, he tells you that he chose you because you'd already defeated his minions before.

           I haven't played a lot of games post-1992, but my read is that alternate endings aren't necessarily common even through the modern era. The Elder Scrolls games, excepting Daggerfall, basically just have one. The Infinity Engine games may have offered a lot of roleplaying in between the beginnings and ends, but they all ended basically the same. There are some notable exceptions--Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, the Mass Effect series, and the Dragon Age series all come to mind--but I'd be surprised if more than half of modern RPGs, no matter how many branches they offer along the way, end in more than once place.

On the other hand, even games that don't offer multiple endings tend, these days, to include significant player-influenced changes in the world state between the beginning and the end. The main quest of Skyrim might end in the same place for everyone, but along the way either the Empire or the Stormcloaks won the war, the Dark Brotherhood is either destroyed or has just assassinated the Emperor, the Thieves' Guild either revived or hiding in some sewers, the world either plunged into eternal night or not. These are not factors that will be possible to ignore in any sequel just because every player "defeated Alduin."

So now that The Elder Scrolls VI is at least partly announced, what is Bethesda going to do? Based on previous games, there are several options:

1. Adopt one set of possibilities as canon. This option renders many players' choices meaningless, but it's easiest on the developers. It also tends to fit with what most players did by default anyway. So although you can end Baldur's Gate with any of about 20 NPCs in your party, the developers figure at least 50% of us are going to have played with Imoen, Minsc, Jaheira, Khalid, and Dynaheir, and Baldur's Gate II begins accordingly. In a less-obvious use of this option, most sequels assume that the players finished all the side quests and expansions in the course of winning the previous game, and thus have no problem introducing NPCs, enemies, and objects that some players may never have encountered (e.g., the player of Ultima VII Part Two starts with the Black Sword even if he never played the Forge of Virtue expansion to the first part). The developers basically have to choose this option if they want to include the game as part of a larger universe along with films and books.

             A line in Skyrim assumes the player finished the Shivering Isles expansion.

            2. Set the sequel so far away in time and space that it doesn't matter. Based on player choices, the world state at the end of Oblivion might look quite different from one Hero of Kvatch to the next, but 200 years later, during the events of Skyrim, no one cares who was head of the Fighter's Guild in a different province at the end of the Third Era. Similarly, Fallout IV makes no references to the choices made by the protagonist of Fallout: New Vegas because there's no communication between Nevada and Massachusetts, and both places have their own problems.

3. Account for all the possibilities. This one is pretty rare, and insane when it happens, but it's featured quite notably in Oblivion and Skyrim to explain the events in Daggerfall. Depending on player choices in that game--the only Elder Scrolls game so far to offer multiple endings--the giant golem Numidium is activated in support of one faction (or not) and political boundaries are reconfigured to the favor of one or more factions. To deal with all possibilities, future games feature a book called The Warp in the West that basically says at the end of Daggerfall, time "broke," Numidium was seen at multiple places, all possibilities occurred, and a trio of gods had to intervene to untangle the mess, resulting in a stable political state among four new kingdoms. 

In a less dramatic option, games after Morrowind don't take a stand on whether the Nerevarine killed the gods of the Tribunal. They're gone, sure, but maybe they disappeared on their own.

(As an aside, one of the things I love about the Elder Scrolls lore is how many distant past events can be interpreted as if they were the results of multiple player choices retconned into the same kind of a "warp" that the developers used to explain the end of Daggerfall. Take, for example, the many conflicting characterizations of Tiber Septim. Who was he originally? Where was he from? Was he the noble hero who united an empire or the lecherous villain who seduced Barenziah and then forced her to abort their love child? Did he become a god? What about the events at Red Mountain? Did Vivec kill Nerevar? What happened to the dwarves? The implication is that major characters of Tamriel's past, like Tiber Septim and Vivec, were player characters whose stories could have gone multiple ways. Their games just haven't been developed.)

4. Dynamically adapt the plot and world state of the sequel to reflect the player's choices. This is the rarest and most admirable option, and I can't think of any series that does it better than Dragon Age. The games certainly have their flaws, but attention to player choice isn't one of them. Inquisition is particularly well done. Choices both major and minor in the two previous games determined everything from the leaders of nations to the specific NPCs the player encounters, and where. (If you didn't play the previous games, you just got defaults.) The effects on the world state, the available NPCs in the game, and the direction of the plot are significant enough that players who made different choices in Origins and Dragon Age II face very different games when they get to Inquisition. (I should also note that this dedication to adapting the world state extends to the minor expansions as well as the major titles; both Awakening and Witch Hunt for Origins start very differently depending on choices made during the main campaign.) I understand that the Mass Effect series offers the same attention to this kind of detail.

               The "Dragon Age Keep" web site lets you set the world state from the first two games, greatly enhancing continuity as you begin Dragon Age: Inquisition.

                      While I characterize Option 4 as the most "admirable," it's also somewhat understandable when developers don't take it. It greatly expands the amount of content that they have to create, much of which will never be seen by most players. It's probably unsustainable across more than three games; certainly, it's hard to imagine Bioware accounting for all choices in Inquisition plus the two previous games if they make a fourth one. On the other hand, it's horribly disappointing for the player to start a sequel and find that his choices in the previous game are ignored. Some games adopt a compromise between Option 1 and Option 4, using player choices in previous games to tweak a few variables (which might affect dialogue options) but otherwise offer the same gameplay experience. I seem to remember Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II going this route, changing a few scenes based on the result of some (clumsy) dialogue options at the beginning, but otherwise making some assumptions about how the first game progressed.

It's easy to think of Option 4 as the most advanced option, and thus the one we expect to see later in the development of RPGs. In fact, if it was going to be commonplace, its best chance was in the 1990s, just as meaningful choices became more common, but before reacting to those choices meant significant chances to graphics and voiced dialogue. A developer can afford to be generous with simple text adaptations.

And thus we begin Crusaders of the Dark Savant with three separate sets of opening scenes, each with different text, but sharing many of the same graphics.

              All opening narratives show this scene, but they all use different text depending on whom the party is with.

         If the party ended Bane of the Cosmic Forge having rejected the queen, overseeing the suicide of the vampire king, and heading off into space with a friendly dragon named Bela, they soon find that Bela has made friends (over the radio) with the Umpani, a race of intelligent pachyderms. He relates the story of Guardia and the Astral Dominae and warns the party of the other factions seeking to possess it, including the Dark Savant and his T'Rang allies. They arrive at Guardia at the same time as the Dark Savant. Bela drops the party off in the forest to start looking for the Astral Dominae while he himself chases after the Dark Savant to find out what he's up to.

            Bela talks about his new friends.

           If the party ended Bane by trying to take the Cosmic Forge only to be intercepted by the android Aletheides, Savant begins by having Aletheides explain that he's been sent to retrieve the pen by the Lords of the Cosmic Circle. He relates the threat to the universe now that Guardia has been discovered, and he enlists the party to accompany him so they can find the Astral Dominae before the Dark Savant. Since he has to return to the Lords with the Forge, he drops off the party in the woods on Guardia and then takes off.

           Aletheides lays out his plan.

          If the party ended Forge by killing everyone and boarding Bela's ship on their own, they're soon swallowed up by the Dark Savant's frigate. The Savant clearly states his intention to challenge the Lords of the Cosmic Circle and "end their stranglehold on the Destiny of the Stars." He demands that the party assist in his search for the Astral Dominae and has them fly to Guardia on a T'Rang ship, where again they land in the woods to begin their adventure.

             The Dark Savant offers no chance to object.

            Finally, if the player didn't complete Bane at all--or didn't play it--the game assumes that they're treasure-seekers who found the Cosmic Forge in a temple on a random world. Just as in the second option, Aletheides reaches them just before they take the pen and enlists them in his mission. As with everyone else, the party begins in the woods.

Although all parties start in a forest, they're different forests, on different maps, and thus begin the game with quite different experiences. And because my understanding is that Savant is quite nonlinear, they probably continue with different experiences as well. What I don't yet know is whether choices made in Bane affect anything in Savant other than the backstory and starting location. Do the various factions begin predisposed to like or dislike you? Does Bela show up again if you didn't kill him? Those types of adaptations would be admirable, but perhaps a little too much to expect this early in the era.

I was able to download other players' saved games to experience the different beginnings above, but in 1992, I would have been out of luck. Knowing that there were different beginnings to Savant would have made me eager to re-play Bane, independently of what I thought of its replayability as a stand-alone game, the same way that Inquisition has made me want to replay the previous games in the Dragon Age series. Thus, we see that good attention to continuity can increase the replayability of not only the current game but previous ones in the series.

Continuity of character is, of course, a separate consideration from continuity of plot. It is also far more common. We saw it as early as 1979, with the ability to move the same character among multiple Dunjonquest modules, and most classic game series--Wizardry, Ultima, Phantasie, The Bard's Tale, the Gold Box games--have allowed you to continue the same character or party across at least one sequel. There was even a period in the mid-1980s when you could move the same characters between franchises. As a kid, this was far more important to me than it is now. Today, I find that such games either reduce imported characters to the point that they're hardly better than new characters or they're so overpowered that they ruin the game. A few franchises--the Gold Box and Baldur's Gate come to mind--have done a good job achieving balance, but on the whole I like that the modern inclination is to retain the universe but start each game with a new hero.

In that spirit, for my "real" Savant party, I'll be starting over from scratch with a new set of characters, partly because I enjoy the early levels the most, and partly because the game assumed I did that anyway (I must have screwed up something with my saved game in Bane). We'll pick up with the adventures of the new party in New City after a detour to investigate the German Die Dunkle Dimension.

In the meantime, which continuity options do you prefer? What games best exemplify them? What other methods have you seen for reflecting player choices across the game's universe?

        source http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2018/08/plot-continuity-across-sequels-ft.html