Part 1: Angry About Elves

Update 01: Angry About Elves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utoLvbR5P3U

When you fire up the game, this is what scrolls past and, you know, I gotta say? I fucking love it. I love the music in this game. Mind, this is from the CD version. I never played the floppy version, but I imagine it had a notably crustier soundtrack. Just try to tell me this doesn't make you feel fired up for some noble fantasy adventuring and goblin-chopping. It really has its own character, too. Mmm. Nostalgia.

Afterwards, there's a bare-bones menu with nothing much to do except starting a new game, loading the game or quitting. So obviously I choose to start a new game and we're immediately thrust into the actual introduction for the plot.






Most of the game's dialogue and cutscenes are presented in this faux-parchment style to make it look like a ye anciente tome. It's atmosphere-building, but doesn't get in the way of being able to read or see what's actually going on. I wonder what interrupted Locklear, though?








Ah, yes, BaK wastes no time in establishing that, beyond having sweet facial hair, Gorath is an absolute badass, as the first thing he does is to grab an assassin and snap his neck like it's second nature to him.




And with that, we're thrust straight into the game after a brief glance at the world map showing us where we're starting. This chapter ends when we get to the southernmost white dot, Krondor, with Gorath in tow. Before we start doing anything, perhaps we should take stock of the interface, our available characters and our our available items.



First up, Locklear!

The brave and valiant leader with the team's most fabulous moustache to boot. Go on, tell everyone how great I am.

Locklear is a solid all-rounder who isn't bad at anything, and is even the current best at some things, like, for instance, melee accuracy. We'll use him as a template to go through the skills:

Defense: Not getting hit.
Accy: Different types of Accuracy for Crossbows(no lame-o bows in this game), melee and casting(which Locklear, being a jock, has no access to).
Assessment: Spending a turn to decipher the stats of an enemy in battle. Not a very useful skill since it's usually worth more to just bonk said enemy.
Armorcraft: Repairing armor, which is pretty vital.
Weaponcraft: Likewise for fixing your armor, EVERYTHING in this game deteriorates, pretty much.
Barding: Belting our sick tunes to get paid for your trouble in inns.
Haggling: Occasionally it's possible to negotiate with merchants for lower prices, but it's risky since they may simply refuse to trade with you if you push your luck.
Lockpick: Speaks for itself, though it can be hard at first to tell which locks are pickable at all, and lockpicks are a limited resource.
Scouting: Spotting ambushes and preventing enemies from getting the drop on the party. Uses the best party member's rank.
Stealth: Once ambushes are spotted, turning the tables on the enemies and getting an initiative advantage. Uses the worst party member's rank.

Stamina and health are actually the same pool, except that as you lose stamina, there's no loss of skills, but once stamina is tapped out and health is lost, every lost point of health weakens all skills, so badly wounding an enemy is actually as important as killing him, since near-dead enemies are a lot less dangerous than fully healthy ones. Characters reduced to 0 Health are out for the fight(and all party members hitting 0 Health is a loss condition), but are restored after the fight in the Near-Death condition that makes them fragile as newborn kittens until they get a healer's attention or spend a lot of time recovering. Speed is how many squares in a fight the party member can move(and is the only stat that never improves), Strength is how hard they hit in melee.

All skills and stats are improved with use(though in the case of Health and Stamina, it's by resting rather than getting hit a lot), except for Speed, and there are also trainers around. You can also "mark" skills to give them a boost in gains at the cost of weakening the gains for all other skills. If you're a filthy powergamer(and who isn't, sometimes?) you mark skills before using trainers and skill books, and then unmark them again afterwards.



Owyn is, predictably, poor at most things that aren't casting spells, as is the classic mage, but don't underestimate him entirely. A well-placed staff bonk from a mage can sometimes be just as important as a spell, especially since spells consume stamina(and then if that's out, health) from the casting mage, so they're not for willy-nilly casting all the time.

I don't have anything to do with this quest! I just want to go home!



Gorath, lastly, is both elfy and un-elfy. He's the best crossbow archer of the three, but at the same time also the beefiest and probably capable of snapping Owyn in half with one hand. Just look at that Strength.

Thank you for acknowledging the superiority of the Moredhel.

Each of them also have a lore blurb describing them.




Locklear is the only pre-BaK canon character of these three and, I think, the only one of them to re-occur in any way. This blurb also sells his background a bit short, and I'll write up a Lore Effortpost after this one to elaborate on him.




Owyn's high Haggling rank is explained by the fact that he's a white-collar criminal with a history of embezzlement. It explains a bit about why he's off in the west of the central Kingdom of the Isles when his father's estates are in the east of the Kingdom.




The book elaborates a good deal on Gorath's backstory, and makes him even more of a badass than he is here. I'll also explain the differences between the book and the game as we come across them(and if I remember them). For now, suffice to say that he's at least a couple of hundred years old and has been doing a good deal of fighting in that time, so I can only assume that the reason Locklear's better at hitting stuff than he is, is because old age is starting to catch up with Gorath.



Lastly let's have a look at the interface and what random junk our brave heroes are hauling around. The interface is from the era where piloting your character around was reminiscent of being a tank commander, a shitload of controls taking up 3/4's of the screen and just a little slot to look out of. Immediately below the view area featuring rolling hills, a path, distant trees and Haseth's corpse is a compass, surrounded by four movement arrows you can use instead of the keyboard, by clicking them with the mouse. The visible buttons in the lower right are Cast Spells, Camp, Map and Menu. Clicking any of our three characters also opens up their inventory.






And everything in Betrayal has descriptive text, complete with the Fantasy-requisite elaborate descriptions of anything edible/potable. Gorath and Locklear start with armor and swords, while all Owyn starts with is his staff, and the party starts with no crossbows. Also of note are the green vials in Locklear's inventory, those are healing potions(slight difference from the book where they're just fantasy meth that gets forcefed to Locklear and Jimmy so they can complete a timed mission), which heal you faster than resting and are the only non-healer way to recover from the Near Death condition.

Can we get on the road yet? We have a kingdom to save.

Patience, we're almost done.




Then there's the map. The local map is literally just a bird's eye view of the party, though without magical help it doesn't indicate most of the stuff we're actually interested in, i.e. treasure and enemies. The world map is, on the other hand, pretty useful if you don't know the game like the back of your hand. It indicates most major roads and almost every settlement. White dots are major settlements while brown dots are hamlets and villages. The little wedge on the road in the upper left is, of course, the party.



Right, now that we're on the move, we have to attend to something important. Owyn: loot that corpse.
Why me?!
I'm older than you and Gorath is in manacles. Hurry up now.




Gorath apparently killed Haseth so hard it vaporized his equipment. Goddamn. In any case, always be careful when picking rations out of old graves, chests or moldy holes in the ground. The graphic doesn't change, but if you examine them, they may read as Rations(Spoiled) or Rations(Poisoned), which your characters will happily scarf down if nothing else is available, but which will very efficiently make them sick. Haseth also has some lockpicks, which is nice, we can use those. For picking locks.




Turning around, there's an easy to miss little campground behind where the party starts. Also, the new icon that pops up as the party crosses the path(footpaths are blue lines, proper roads are sandy), is the "follow road"-icon. If selected, the party is locked to on-road movement, which is nice for when you've cleared out an area and just want to zoom through.




I meant it when I said everything short of the fucking trees has descriptive text.



This vague brown rectangle is a chest, that's where smart people put their really good, which is why the even smarter people(us) break them open to get at it.




This chest is just free stuff, but other chests can be... locked, trapped or coded. Coded chests are my favourite.





Sometimes the party will interrupt the action to have a little conversation about what's happening. I like it. There's actually a surprising amount of it, and it's good at character-building.




Since BaK has a shitload of text and I do not have a rip of the dialogue script, I'm gonna be pasting the text in this fashion. Hope it works for everyone.

























Locklear's not taking any bullshit, despite his appearance and womanizing background, he's actually a battle-hardened veteran who's seen a ton of death up close, most of it involving the Moredhel. He's clearly not eager for a repeat performance.





While cutscenes, battles and large towns have music, the open world just has ambience, in this case a few tweeting birds.




For now, I'm heading south to show off some game functionality before I start handing the reins over to you dorks so you can ruin my day completely. It's clearly the intended route, in any case, and chock full of tutorial content like, in this case, another chest!





All coded chests are of Moredhel make, so without one along, or some other way to read their language, you aren't getting them open.

Wait, this is real? Your people use this to hide valuables?
It's an ancient and honourable tradition.
...
...
...
Yes alright, one of the reasons we haven't destroyed all humans yet is that we keep getting robbed blind.

This one is pretty simple, I do appreciate that these often have some in-world or at least slightly different riddles to the usual Sphinx-brand "what is a man"-bullshit.





It might not seem like a big deal, but it kind of is. Some armor for Owyn(though this suit goes to Locklear, who passes his super-beat suit of armor to the mage) and a sword for selling. Durability for items isn't just a binary fine/broken state, an item at 1% durability will perform considerably worse than one at 99% durability.



We hardly get another step down the road, though, before it's time for another tutorial to ambush us...





Just act natural until he goes away, Owyn.



















After the first bit of conversation, we're then provided with an actual dialogue choice screen of shorts.



These are mostly just for deciding what we want to ask about, but there are some actual dialogue choices in the game, even if they're mostly just of a yes/no variety. Sadly, we can't make a party of Steves here, BaK distinctly limits what degree of un-virtuous behavior we can get up to. Asking about the Inns and Nearest Town mostly just make Owyn pretend that the reason and his friends are stumbling around the wilderness is that they've been on an insane bender and have absolutely no idea where they are, which even Phillip things is kind of absurd. However, when asking about the Inns, Phillip also suggests an alternative to paying for a bed...




I thought you were meant to be minor nobles. Locklear, are all human nobles like this?
Generally most Kingdom nobles are more title than trust fund and survive on the generosity of the ones with some actual land to their names.
It's been a rough few years since my father no longer trusts me near the account books, alright?







Yeah, these two are hardened, absolutely used to scrabbling around in abandoned houses for every last little item of value.



After that, we bid Phillip goodbye and continue on our way. Most "ambush" NPC's will still be around if you come by again, and will occasionally have new dialogue.



Another type of stash are these little lumps of disturbed ground, unlike in some games they require no shovels to unbury(that's strictly for graves. okay, so we can be a LITTLE bit Steve-ish in BaK), and can't be trapped, but tend to contain less excellent stuff than chests. This one just contains a (miraculously unspoiled) pack of rations and some Aventurine, a repair item for crossbows.






My feet are killing me. Are we there yet?
Human, we're still weeks north of Krondor.

I think we'd better find a place to kick up our feet before he soaks our packs in tears. Hmmm, let's see...





While the "minor" settlements are in-world polygonal houses, the "major" settlements are all their own game screens, with their functions discovered by the cursor changing shape as you mouse-over the various parts of the painted background. Most also have at least one hidden thing, indicated by a magnifying glass. In this case, if we go fishing around the river...



We make bank! This is a small amount of money overall, but pretty big stuff for the early game.



At the back of LaMut is the local garrison...



And our first mention of the Tsurani(or rather their homeworld, Kelewan. Yeah, the Tsurani are kind of aliens)! While they're part of BaK's plot, we don't learn a lot of them during the game, but suffice to say that I would consider them a sort of mixture of feudal Japan(feuding nobles engaging in political, and sometimes literal, warfare, while paying lip service to a political figurehead they're trying to replace, some things about their architecture) and the Aztecs(some degree of blood sacrifice, a good number of ziggurats, very big on slavery), though I feel that they're nuanced enough to grow beyond their obvious inspirations.

They're their own lorepost(or more likely, series of loreposts), but suffice to say that at the end of the first two Midkemia books, a number of Tsurani settled in the northwest of the central Kingdom, generally in the area around LaMut, whose reigning noble is a Tsurani Earl.





LaMut, of course, also features a store but, whoof, everything here is well above what we can pay for. We won't be setting up a firing line of archers for a bit yet.




And what would a town be without an inn? We can annoy everyone on this screen, so let's do so, from left to right...



Some NPC's just want us to fuck off, sadly.



The barmaid is where we can buy rations though, in most cases, you'll find plenty on the road and from looting enemies. Actually needing to stop in and buy food is a rarity. The function of getting drunk is somewhat hidden, while it's a general debuff, it helps characters who are resting heal faster, so getting drunk before going to bed is the intended style of play.




The third character from the left is Dubal An Loch, this suspiciously tall dwarf. I'm not exactly sure where the "Scottish dwarves"-thing started, it sure wasn't Tolkien, but Midkemia definitely rolls with it all the way.







One of Locklear's more character-defining actions is that when he was almost at ground zero of the world ending, he got himself locked in a basement with several women. He didn't have anything crude in mind when it happened(quite the opposite), but from there on out, he seems to have had his character pretty well-defined.











In the novelization, Locklear and company drop by LaMut and have much the same conversations as they do in the game, with the exception that Locklear states in no unclear terms that they are not going to do any monster-slaying sidequesting. Of course, in the game, we're perfectly free to go fight a bunch of sentient rocks underground.

Next, there's the lute lurking ominously in the lower right, let's just-



Now, I know you can't actually get anyone lynched by playing too poorly, but the text certainly seems to imply it. You also literally get booted back to the main town screen for this, which is amusing to me. Still, we gotta duck in, because we're missing the fella behind the bar.







This line always puzzled me a bit. Like, what tipped you off, Locklear? The barmaid trying to sell you mugs of ale and brandy?




I'm not sure if "Chocha" is meant to be coffee or cocoa, since the descriptions in the books seem to combine a bit of both, but it helps add to that Aztec flavour for the Tsurani by tying them to some "new world" plants.










And the ritual suicide feels like a very "inspired by surface reading of feudal Japan"-thing.






"Rift Gates" and "Grey Warriors" are lore options while "Combat" allows us to ask Sumani for some training in hitting stuff, it's pretty decent training, but also pretty expensive, at 75 gold, which is almost three times what the party actually has, and thus not even an option. So let's just milk Sumani for info before we leave LaMut. Asking about the Grey Warriors wouldn't be an option if we hadn't visited the garrison first, either.



























Why would he assume we'd pursue this theft? It has nothing to do with us.
Just think of all those poor gems, Gorath, suffering in some thief's pocket.

In the books, Locklear does, in fact, pursue this mystery, simply because he figures that even if Gorath is a red herring, returning Makala's gems will prevent Prince Arutha from throwing him in the dungeons for abandoning his post. Also, the garrison is out on maneuvers and can't spare them troops for an escort, but a few garrison regulars help them try to throw the Moredhel off their track(though it doesn't help much).

In any case, that's all of LaMut's content tapped for now, unless we need to pick up some high-caliber crossbows, so we can head back to the road.





If you can see that little clump of blue pixels among the trees, then good job! You can play Betrayal at Krondor! That there's our very first ambusher, and if he had friends, we'd be able to see those, too, as we got closer, but this brave fellow has decided to walk out on to the pitch and challenge us on his own. Now, the trick is, which the game tells you in the manual but not in-game, to examine this guy like you would anything else in the gameworld.




Now we've triggered AMBUSH MODE, which means that if our Stealth rating wins out, we'll get a first-round advantage against this guy.





Just as planned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfgDeyjb4os

I recorded the fight as a short video just so you can hear the music, since there certainly isn't any particularly tactical content in this and like half of it is me trying to remember what the three spells Owyn has do.

Back in the image dimension... Owyn is up first, and early on, Owyn has one job, and one job only.



Despair Thy Eyes is a spell that always hits(but under rare situations seems able to fail or get resisted), and which causes the opponent to lose the next couple of turns while they're blinded. Owyn's other two combat spells at this stage are Invitation(pull an enemy closer to him, good for getting enemy casters or archers out of their back rows. enemies pulled adjacent to a player character can only move and melee attack, they cannot cast spells or fire crossbows) and Gift of Sung(sacrifices some of Owyn's Stamina/Health to replenish an ally's).



The screen(and the enemy) flash and that's how you know it's stuck. Now this guy is gonna wobble in place for two rounds, even if, say, someone walks over and starts hitting him with a sword. The other options down on the bar are to retreat(must be in the backmost row with no dead allies), defend(increases chance of not getting hit), assessing an enemy(try to figure out their stats), resting(passes the round recovering stamina) or setting the team to auto-battle. You'll rarely want to set fights to auto-battle.




Melee attacks can't be done horizontally, and if you're already in position, i.e. don't need to move to make the attack, you also get access to a Swing. In general the Swing is less accurate but does more damage, but the exact details vary a bit from weapon to weapon.




Gorath and Locklear make short work of him, though. Individual blue-cloaked Moredhel are just about the weakest enemy in the game.





Dead enemies roughly have the same positions in the overworld as they had on the battlefield, which can sometimes make searching them annoying if they died on the same tile, this guy just carried some spare change, another sword and another suit of armor, which is what most humanoid enemies will have. They'll generally drop the same stuff they use in combat if it's of a category that player characters can use(monstrous enemies will not, for instance, drop their clubs).



This is crazy! We're going to end up being killed before we get to Krondor!
Cowardly as he is, the boy has a point. Going directly south to Krondor will be the path of most opposition.
Hmmm... perhaps there's a smarter way.

VOTE

Which path will the crew attempt to take to Krondor?

If you refer back to the OP post, the only blocked paths are across the Grey Towers, the Teeth of the World and the Grey Range. Making Tyr-Sog, Northwarden and Highcastle the northern most areas the party can reach for the time being.

Alternately, if the party doesn't actually head for Krondor right away, should they...

Investigate the Brak-Nurr or look into the gem-smuggling?