To explain why, I'd like to quote something somebody (Mary McCarthy, I
think) said about _Pale Fire_. Pale Fire is a novel that is half poem,
half prose, and it works beautifully. Mary McCarthy called it "a centaur
work," and I think that's a powerful metaphor. It has two different
halves, but the blood flows between them, and they're united in a living
breathing whole.
Legend has many good parts, but no blood flows between them.
In other words, it felt like a collection of set
pieces rather than a game. Some of these set pieces were extremely well
w ritten--New Hell in particular comes to mind--but nothing ever comes
of them. Dave's brief, vivid description raises a lot of interesting
questions: Why is New Hell the way it is? Why do
people stay there? Unfortunately, we never have a chance to find out.
We're whisked away to another entirely different setting.
There are games that take you from place to place and steel feel
coherent. In Trinity, for example, the plces are united by a very
specific theme. In Hitchhiker's Guide, they're united by a very distinct
sensibility. I know that the theme of Legend is supposed to be technology
v. nature, but that theme is so broad that it doesn't do much to unify
the game.
There's the same problem with a lot of the characters. What motivates the
watchmaker? Where does the bartender come from? Whatever becomes of Timon
Sketch? We never have the chance to find out.
Now, I recognize that _most_ IF doesn't do in-depth character development
very well. (God knows my own Save Princeton is an egregious example of
this--each character has five or six random things to do or say, and a
series of reactions, but they're flat as cardboard.) But Legend is undone
by its own ambition. A game can get away with not developing characters
if they stay in the background. The guard at Terminal Velocity, for
example, is obviously there for one specific reason, and we don't care
about his psyche any more than we care about, say, the guy who plays sax
in Sam's band in Casablnaca. But Dave has given most of the other
characters a
couple of striking characteristics that grab our attention and make us
want to know more. After that, it's a letdown when we can't interact with
them in any depth.
Similarly, if the description of New Hell was more functional, or more
cliched, or less striking in some other way, we wouldn't need to know
more about the planet. But the fact that the description is so
beautifully written makes the absence of context all the more frustrating.
Finally--and most interestingly--the long prose descriptions don't quite
work with the more interactive parts of the game. This, to me, is a
failure more interesting than the successes of a less ambitious game;
Dave is the first one to do anything like this in an IF game (as far as I
know) and I think folks who follow the path he's set out will learn from
the mistakes that he's made in his first expedition.
The problem I had with the long descriptions is that, once again, there's
no blood flowing between them and the interactive parts. The most glaring
example is when you meet Timon Sketch. You are told that you and he
explore for several hours. But when you return to the game, there's no
feeling that any time has passed.
For one thing, all the places you can go are described as if they were
completely new to you. It would be more effective if the places in the
immediate vicinity of Timon's crash began with something to the effect of,
"As you noticed when you and Timon explored this area an hour ago..."
Furthermore, since you've explored for several hours, it ought to be
later in the day. There air should be cooler or warmed, and the light
should be different.
Again, a less ambitious game can get away without acknowledging the
passage of time. But because Legend calls the player's attention to it in
the prose description, it has an obligation to carry through.
As Chekov said, if you have a gun above the mantelpiece in the first act,
it better go off by the end of the play.
These are some harsh criticisms, I realize, and I want to stress that I
admire Legend for its ambition. I certainly learned more about IF than I
would from a game that aimed lower. And I think most of its flaws come
from the fact that Dave is trying something that hasn't really been
done. I have little doubt that the next work of IF with literary
ambitions (whether it's written by Dave or somebody else) will be
substantially better because Legend came first.
-Jacob Weinstein
PS: I know the issue of Legend's speed has been discussed in some detail,
but let me note that on my LC III I had a wait of one to three seconds
after every command. I would estimate that I spent a total of twenty
minutes to an hour waiting for Legend to respond, if you add up the
total delay after every move. Now, an
LCIII is not exactly a power mac, but's it's not too terribly slow. Dave
has expressed some frustration that people want more sophisticated games
but aren't willing to make the sacrifice in speed that that
sophistication requires. I have to say that I didn't really see Legend
take advantage of the things I gather worldclass can do. Did I miss
something?