Spiderweb Software remakes Avernum

[Panzersharkcat]

For those of you who actually give a shit, screen shots in link! The Exile/Avernum series has been one of my favorite RPG series for a long time. I even made a NationStates nation based on it. The gist of the background is that the Empire, which rules the entire surface world, discovers a series of underground caverns and decides it would make a wonderful place to stick their political dissidents and anybody who's slightly weird. (It's hardly the worst thing they've done. One of their policies calls for the extermination of all non-humans.) I always preferred the original Exile games. I don't particularly care for the isometric view and the fact that my party is reduced from six people to only four. Oh, and that Exile can't be played in any system more recent than Windows XP. That bugs me, too.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I played the shit out of Exile 3 and Blades. I don't know if I can wrap my brain around the third version of the same game, though.

I also picked up Spiderweb's recent Avadon, and just wasn't very impressed. I like supporting the guy, but I'm left scratching my head over the direction the games have been taking lately.

[Panzersharkcat]

What was Avadon like? I may pick up the remake of Avernum out of nostalgia but Avernum past the third installation kind of killed it for me.

[Stark]

Yeah, those 'newer' ones are pretty bad. If he charged iPad price on PC it might be ok, but at $20 it's a joke.

[Panzersharkcat]

I wonder how well this would play on an iPad, come to think of it. It is a pretty big game, after all, though made a bit more tedious by the lack of fast travel outside of certain teleportation spells and amulets (and those only take you to one place). Makes a certain gold farming side quest in Exile III a pain in the ass.

[Stark]

Why would the size of the ugly, tile-based map make any difference? It's less than half price on mobile devices; that g clearly knows who will pay what for crappy Ultima games.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, Avernum was already a remake of Exile, so this is now a remake of a remake. Which to me stinks of a lack of creativity, but I'll give it a shot. I did love the originals.

Edit: I think I prefer the artwork of the remake though: it has a more realistic, less cartoony look to me. Since this was probably my number one complaint about Avernum, I'm pleased.

[Panzersharkcat]

That definitely does. It was a good story and all but he probably should come up with something else. My biggest complaint will still be the reduction of party size to only four.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well to be fair, its not like Spiderweb hasn't produced other games. But it seems a bit odd to be doing a remake of a remake.

Then again, I guess since the original isn't playable on new computers...

[Panzersharkcat]

True. He says in the FAQ for it that it's because he doesn't want the Exile/Avernum series to disappear due to new operating systems not running the games. And I suppose the price tag isn't too unreasonable for a full-sized RPG. Fallout and Fallout 2 sell for about ten dollars each and they're more than a decade old. I remember a comment in his blog where he said he won't sell any of his games for below 15 dollars. From the FAQ, if you have the first Exile or Avernum games, you can get it for half off.