I feel I need to say something as a reasonably experienced roleplayer: alignment is underrated and underused. You AD&Ders know what I mean. Sure . . . your guy has an alignment of Neutral Good. You meet an NPC with an alignment of Chaotic Evil. So what? Many gamemasters would let you talk to or even trade with this guy if you wanted to. Others would automatically have the NPC attack your party. Neither are realistic situations. I have friends who don't even assign alignments to their characters anymore because they know they'll never have to deal with them.
The first game, RPG or otherwise, that I've seen utilize an alignment system WELL is Dragon Lore from Mindscape. You've probably seen the ads for this one . . . screen shots that bring back fond memories of Myst on the right, and a jillion snippets of praise for those shots on the. Since printing those oh-so-quotable words, I've gotten a chance to play the final release of Dragon Lore, and my opinion stands. It certainly is a great-looking game. But . . .
. . . after closely examining Dragon Lore, I got the feeling that everybody who worked on the game quit right before their job was done. There's a lot to like, but everything could've been just a little better. Let's start right from the beginning. The introductory cinematic portrays your character's story from infancy to young adulthood. Werner, who you control, is the son of a famous Dragon Knight and is destined to carry on his dead father's legacy. To do this, he needs to find Phlogiston, his father's Fire Dragon, who disappeared after the murder. The story comes across very clearly via the animation, which is excellent throughout the game. There are some odd graphic quirks, though, which prompt me to question the tenacity of the designers. While the backgrounds are simply gorgeous, the animated characters and creatures don't really look like what they're supposed to. People move more like robots and the family dog resembles a cross between a lion and a wild boar. You'd think they could get a DOG right, but no.
Not surprisingly, the entire game is played using a first-person perspective. You can move in the four cardinal directions, but not freely. Everything is step-based, which is quicker, but not as pleasing to the eye. Items that can be picked up are indicated as such by the animated dragon cursor, which is your handy-dandy do-everything interface. Moving and clicking the dragon on different parts of the screen will cause Werner to move, talk, fight, and manage inventory and spells. There's no text to be found ANYWHERE in Dragon Lore, unless you turn on subtitled speech during the setup program. Like Myst, which was wonderfully complex but not at all difficult to play, Dragon Lore stresses ease of use and pictures over words.
That's the good news. The bad news is that there's not much more to say. Dragon Lore's gameplay is very shallow . . . somebody asks you to get something or fight something or trade something for something else or whatever. Yeah, the one-view point-and-click interface is simple and makes for pretty fast play, but also contributes to the overall monotony of the game. Also, have you ever tried one-on-one combat using only a mouse? Timing and aiming your attacks is difficult, or at least awkward. After an hour or so of progressing through several different locations, I began to wonder, "Is this all there is?" Then I stopped wondering. You know a game is boring when you get the biggest thrill out of the cinematic sequences . . .
Before I wrap up, let me touch on the alignment thing again. The only thing I saw in this game that I'd never seen before (aside from the "dog") was the way that certain encounters played differently depending on Werner's level of aggression. Many puzzles can be solved in more than one way, with the violent method often being the easiest. However, should you choose to resort to violence too often, later events in the game may be altered. This method of building your alignment as you go is a neat innovation . . . far superior to just choosing one and forgetting about it.
Perhaps Dragon Lore will find a dedicated audience with the younger crowd, who (last I checked) are more drawn to games that look nice and can be played and won by people of their age. It may also appeal to adults who aren't familiar with computer gaming and would like to see a sample of what their high-end video card and CD-ROM drive can do together. Dragon Lore is THIS close to being a really fun game. What it really needed was a little more time in development and an entire design team as talented as the guys responsible for the background graphics. Sequel, anyone?
