Eye of the Beholder - ADG Episode 289
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- Опубліковано 10 вер 2024
- An Irony: There are no Beholders in this video. :(
Today on Ancient DOS Games, Gemini's taking a look at Eye of the Beholder, a 3D dungeon crawl based on Dungeons & Dragons, created by Westwood Associates and published through SSI, Strategic Simulations Incorporated, in 1991.
This game set a number of standards as to how to do a multi-character 3D dungeon crawl, to the point where even some modern games mimic the mechanics debuted here. It's actually for that reason it took so long to get around to this one, fearing that this game would be even more deadly than the clones it spawned, but the greater irony is that of all games to use these mechanics, this is perhaps the easiest of them all!
...which doesn't actually make the game even remotely easy, just that if you're gonna die it's probably YOUR fault, not some arbitrary game mechanic or such. :P
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Additional Information and Corrections:
* Here's a link to the Eye of the Beholder trilogy (also known as the Forgotten Realms Archive Collection One) on GOG if you wanna give it a try with a digital copy: www.gog.com/ga...
* For those interested in a modern game using these same mechanics, I mentioned and showed a screenshot of Legend of Grimrock, which is ALSO available on GOG! www.gog.com/ga...
* The two NES games I showed screenshots of are Pool of Radiance on the left and Heroes of the Lance on the right. Pool of Radiance is also exceptionally well balanced from what I remember and the DOS version might show up on ADG someday, while Heroes of the Lance on the other hand was... kinda dumb... though again, I haven't played either of these games since childhood so my matured game design and playing skills might see both, either or neither of them differently now if I gave them a second look. :B
* There IS actually an option to see the HP numbers of your characters, though it's easy to miss as it's called "Bar Graphs" in the game's preferences, and it's still weird that you cannot ever see the HP numbers at all if you leave this option enabled. :P
* For some reason, UA-cam's system says this game was released in 1990, not 1991... Might have to do with the game's copyrights saying 1990, as it was probably in the works then but didn't manage to make it out until the next year. :P
* I've been made aware of a game called "Dungeon Master" which came out a few years before this one which has much the same style of gameplay, even a similar font, yet was made by entirely different people. That means Eye of the Beholder was NOT the first game to use the kind of mechanics on offer here! :O
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![Eye of the Beholder I - Speedrun [4:52] WR 13th July 2022](/img/n.gif)
There is a user made launcher for this game that adds a lot of QOL features like multiple save slots and an auto map! Highly recommended!
True, but that in turn just sort of helps exemplify why these "disorientation" style traps really just don't work that well here. :P
Hey, you got a link to that installer?
@@vaughnbellwood4605 I know its been awhile, but in case anyone else is wondering, I believe they were referring to The All-Seeing Eye. If you have two displays you can even have the game use fullscreen on the one, with the auto-map feature on the second display.
@@BriteRory Thanks! I didn't realize this at the time I posted, but youtube will insta-delete any comment with URL links in it. You can't link to anything in the comments section, unfortunately.
There was a Sega Genesis (Megadrive) game called Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun. It was top down with certain dungeon crawling segments exactly like Eye of the Beholder here. There’s even some of the same art assets.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 Yup, good ol' Westwood.
Oh great, a video on a game I've actually played, and I can't watch it yet because of thunderstorms.
This was the first PC RPG I actually beat. I remember loving how you could throw just absolutely anything, so even that useless second set of lockpicks in your inventory could be a weapon or a way to hit a distant pressure plate.
Thank you SO MUCH for doing a video about this game! I clearly remember playing this game with a childhood friend, but didn't commit the game's name to memory. And now I can play it again, relive those memories, so thanks again! ♥️
Awesome! I'm a big fan of Grimrock 2 and was looking for a video review of this game about a week ago, but couldn't find one.
Very well made review, keep it up.
There might not be any beholder in this video, but there's going to be thousands of beholders of this video! What a fantastic experience this one is. I only got to play it recently, but it was so obvious where Westwood got the chops to create some great party-based RPG goodness. While I personally enjoyed Lands of Lore a bit better, I can imagine some old-school D&D players were absolutely overjoyed when this turned up.
Oh, James. Don't pretend you like this better than Barbarian.
And my GoG wishlist grows even larger thanks to this series.
My guess for Episode 290: "Vinyl Goddess from Mars"
I concur.
It smells of demonetization.
I enjoyed my playthrough of Eye of the Beholder. It really does hold up well, aside from the whole poison situation and one section with constantly respawning Kenku. Throwing weapons are really useful.
The All Seeing Eye program is also really useful for mapping out the dungeon floors and sorting out the spinner traps. Though it does simplify various button/door puzzles.
I just wish there was a way to mod in the Sega CD soundtrack. This game feels lifeless without music.
Something I didn't mention is that even though there's no music mid-game, you can hear the sounds of the monsters moving around with the intensity of the sound growing the closer they are, so there's definitely some ambience going on, just a different kind of ambience compared to music! :B
@@Pixelmusement I noticed that in the quiet portions of your video. You don't expect ambient sounds on Adlib cards, that's for sure!
When you first announced this, I thought you were doing Dungeon Master (or Ultima Underworld, except you covered that one already). I'd say that one is much more influential, since EoB isn't really doing anything Dungeon Master hasn't done already.
Actually, there aren't "Beholders" in the game. Only a single Beholder, who is also the final enemy. Which makes sense, seeing as it's so prominent in the title. You're not even supposed to fight it directly (although it's possible to beat it that way), but to lure it into a trap. The sequels have more Beholders, though.
Speaking of the final boss, the game is infamous for not having an actual ending. Except for the Amiga version, making it probably the best one. Although I'd still stick with the PC version (and maybe look up the Amiga ending on UA-cam later), since I don't want to play it without the All-Seeing Eye.
You can definitely see the numeric version of your characters health. It's in the option menu. The other 2 games in the series are the same way.
That brings back so much fond memories. Thanks Chris
I loved this game back in the day. I think EOTB2 felt way more polished (did it add actual Soundblaster audio? I think it did), but that EOTB1's maps felt a little more consistently enjoyable (it was either EOB2 or EOB3 that had a few maps I just really didn't like, in spite of the great art).
I wouldn't necessarily advise people going back to play those games unless retro gaming's their thing, since Legend of Grimrock is such a great spiritual successor to the series, hitting all the same notes. I think my only critique of Grimrock is it's more puzzle-focused than I'd prefer, and by 80% through Grimrock 2 I broke down and just started looking up puzzle solutions since I was spending _most_ of my time solving puzzles and so little doing actual combat (the part of the game I enjoy a bit more). Honestly I feel like a well made combat-focused Grimrock 2 mod would've gone a long way, but I never found one.
As a long time watcher and big fan of D&D stuff, you did pretty well at explaining all of the various details. Piergeiron is pronounced Peer-GEER-on, not that it matters now. It says it's 2e AD&D on the box, but it feels more like 1e due to elements like not being able to use raise dead on elves.
I think it was Dungeon Master 2 where you couldn't resurrect Elf members of your party, clearly mocking the rules. Also I think it was Ravenloft Stone Prophet where resurrected party members would lose 1 constitution each time, making it less and less viable. I might be mistaking the two games, recalling from memory here.
@@FeelingShred losing 1 con per resurrection is pen and paper game accurate at various points, it’s one of the few ways D&D actually permanently limited a character
I never got into this game on computers but loved the GBA version.
Abandoned Places might be an interesting review as well, but I doubt that will ever be available legally in digital distribution.
Wish there were more D&D games where I can play as a kobold :
It's a matter of habit and preference, yet I really hate the gameplay in EotB and Grimrock alike. That semi-real-time combat that involves frantic clicking plus Grimrock's obligatory circle-strafing always rubbed me the wrong way. What an awkward hassle! In regards to dungeon crawlers, I loved how combat was realized in Might&Magic. The later games (rectification: 6-8, 9 and 10 don't exist for me) had two modes and none of them was as jarring as this amalgamation. That said, after watching this, I think I could've enjoyed EotB if I could get over myself. Which is the hardest of all challenges though. Except for the manual mapping. And the spiders.
M&M 6-8 mapped every action to different keys + actual 3D movement made it much more involved and intuitive than EotB style.
I certainly agree to that.
@@hemangchauhan2864 Exactly! In fact, just remembering the games made me hungry for them. Here we go again...
@@Maggerama YES!!! I even consider that kind of combat cheating, "hit the enemy and move a step back". So lame. Might&Magic games avoided that by locking you into place once combat was activated. Great games. I also enjoy how the leveling works in M&M games, addressing points in particular attributes.
My first experience with dungeon crawlers was a newer game than this, Ancients 1 The Deathwatch. But, it was way more simple and shorter. Probably easier for the young kid I once was to get into and less punishing. I remember not knowing how to light the darkness and trying to navigate the dungeon in dark. Went as well as you'd expect.
(14:55) Is it possible to temporarily hold a member joining a full party so you can trade equipment between characters, or once the option comes up, if you say 'yes', then you have to drop a character without adjusting their inventory first, and if you say 'no', that hireable character is gone for good?
My guess as to which game this would turn out to be was on the right track, but wrong. My primary guess that I hinted at without spoiling was from the _Might and Magic_ series.
17:46 Beholders aren't a huge threat in the grand scheme of things, they're actually pretty squishy. Though obviously, it's relative to your level and build, I can see them being a moderately tough encounter in a low level campaign like this.
There are some D&D games where they're just dungeon fodder, you fight hordes of them, with the occasional buffed up "boss" version, that may or may not be a challenge depending on the campaign.
Similar to you, I worry over games being too difficult for me to really enjoy. It's the main reason why I'm so iffy about playing certain games for my own channel, and Eye of the Beholder was definitely one of the games on that list. After hearing you talk about it in this video, I think I'm a little more open-minded about giving it a shot some day. Oh, and in regards to the "1990 vs 1991" part of the description, the title screen says that the copyrights for the game are dated 1990.
For once, I actually had a guess about what game would be featured in the next episode of Ancient DOS Games! At first, I was going to say Xargon - but a quick search revealed that you already made a video about it back in the early days of ADG. In that case, my new guess is Vinyl Goddess of Mars.
OK, that would explain some of the confusion then as games typically have their final copyright messages in place well before publishing, so if a game is mostly completed before the end of a year and published the year following, that would explain the discrepancy. :B
Your channel is great!
A classic title, and the sequel improves greatly on it. I did have the cluebook for #2, but it was fun drawing down the maps for both.
I thought the clue may be Xargon, but you've already covered that. "Vinyl goddess from Mars", perhaps?
Exploring _Alternate Reality: The City_ and making my own map, was half the fun. The hard part was determining how many sheets of graph paper I needed to tape together.
Similar guesses here: this game, _Might and Magic_ series, next game, _Vinyl._
@@Christopher-N Somewhere in storage I have my hand written notes and graph maps for Might & Magic 1. That was much slower to get down.
I made an attempt at mapping MM2, but never finished it.
@@OisEucalypt: Sadly, I don't have my map of the city of Xebec's Demise, and I haven't got around to recreating it. When we donated the 8088-1 IBM compatible to the school to make room for a 486 DX, we gave everything with it. Donating the Vendex HeadStart LX-CD made sense at the time, but I've regretted it ever since.
Really nice pixel art in this game. Would be nice to see a port of this game for mobile phones with updated controls.
If there's one genre that could work very well on mobile it would be this genre indeed
1:10 - well, Dungeon Master (1987) is the progenitor of this type of games. EOB is just another clone :) building upon what FTL did in Dungeon Master.
Playing EOB with the help of ScummVM, you can have more save slots and some other QoL improvements :)
And yes, if you know what you are doing, the overall gameplay time is around 8 hours +/-.
Dungeon Hack is really good.
I have the trilogy on GOG........don't know why cause I'm terrible at these type of dungeon crawlers.........I guess its because of JimPlaysGames let's play of them
I never played the Eye of the Beholder games. Did play a few of the D&D strategy games, but my favorite fantasy dungeon crawl, especially with the remastered version, is the Bard's Tale Trilogy
o the memories
NOOOO.... I get anxiety when I see you moving around by actually clicking the direction buttons :-D
That's what the cursor keys are for!
I wanted to see how practical it would be to not use the keyboard at all for a game like this. :B
@@Pixelmusement in preparation if you can actually play this on the Steam Deck 😊
Dunno if it's worth mentioning, but EOB1 and 2 are supported in SCUMMVM as well. o.O
There is beauty in this game.;P
At some point in the future, you should review Dungeon Master, as it was the true originator of this gameplay presentation. EOB was very well done, but it was a clone of Dungeon Master.
Yeah, I have this marked in the additional info in the video description and in my notes now as I didn't realize the two games had THAT much in common despite being made by completely different developers. Gonna try to make an effort to get to it sometime next year, though it depends on how easy the game is to acquire nowadays.
If I recall correctly, the final boss in EOTB 1 was the Beholder itself.
While that wouldn't surprise me I do find it interesting that the manual treats Beholders as just another kind of enemy. :P
@@Pixelmusement They certainly are in 2. They may even be in 1. I just remember the end boss being an Eye itself. Still, it's been 30 years since I played it, so...
Yes, that's correct. I remember seeing someone play through the game. Was it the AVGN? Or was it some TAS, or other speedrun? In any case, they showed that final boss.
@@poeterritory Specifically, it's a beholder called the Eye!
You can actually see your HPs instead pf the bars
Yeah... I didn't realize that's what the "Bar Graphs" option was for. Gonna add a note about it in the video description momentarily. Thanks! :B
A great classic!
its good game i bought all 3 of them on gog for few years ago
So next time we will see either Xargon or Vinyl Goddess from Mars?
go into menu you can change hp to numbers in preferences option.
...OK... so... I checked again and yeah, that's what that "Bar Graphs" option is. No wonder I missed that with a name like that! :P
@@Pixelmusement did you see my other comment about the all seeing eye app. it adds map functionality with other tweaks for eob 1 i think eob 2 also. i know 3rd eob game has its own version of the app.
Said comment doesn't exist, though if you included a link it may simply not have reached my comment review filters yet, in which case, be patient and I will check it when it goes through. :B
The EOB trilogy is one of the best ever! A lot of time was spent playing long time ago...
There is an menu option to switch between health bars and numerical display of HP. Not sure if it was only in the Amiga version, which I played.
I still prefer the Amiga version of the game, because of it's better music and sound effects. There actually is a fan made enhanced version that adds 256 color mode (for AGA machines) and an automap.
What’s the best version dos, amiga or sega cd?
I've only played the DOS version so I'm not sure. From a gameplay perspective and from looking at screenshots I believe they're all nearly identical, though I believe the Sega CD version may have background music.
GBA has a different style of combat (turn based 3rd person) which I prefer and it maybe had an automap too, anyway after trying several different versions it was the one for me. Almost completed it but it got too complicated towards the end. But it was a real nice surprise and could have been great with a little more assets/upgrades (combats look too similar etc).
I knew this game would show up.
Great review can I recommend Dungeon master if you like this one.
The hint for the next game, "kind of reminiscent of Jill of the Jungle but otherwise has nothing to do with it"
Does the game share the same publisher and/or developer as Jill of the Jungle? If so, I think I know what game you're talking about.
I look forward for it.
I reckon it's Xargon!
@@andrewsmee5320 Yup.
From Epic MegaGames.
im only a few minutes into the video but figured i'd comment before i forget. Awesome video! Loved it
"I am not well versed on the deep lore of the Dungeons and Dragons universe..."
This is one of those tricky self-evident statements. There is no singular Dungeons & Dragons universe, there are multiple officially endorsed ones, and there were more at the time this game was released than there are now.
Also, you never need to be. None of it ever matters.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force. As if millions of d&d fans cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
While it is more a sidestory but it is still part of the universe of d&d.
@@eng3d It's more of a multiverse, is what I think Jay was getting at.
7:18 the irony is lost on me tho; i dont get it O_O. game looks dope tho
yeah.. I don't get that comment either
I assume it's a reference to Civvie 11. 🤷
The majority of 80s and 90s games which feature sewer levels are not that good, so it's ironic that a game where an entire 1/4 of it is effectively a massive sewer level actually turned out decent. ;)
Also, just in general, sewer levels tend to be hated by players due to their ubiquity and how boring they are 99% of the time.
eye of the beholder 2 is even better while eye of the beholder 3 is much worse
Isn't that the way many (but not all) game series are?
Sonic, Mario, Metroid, Castlevania, Mega Man, Kirby, Duke Nukem, Quake, none of those game series followed that pattern. I would say it's not a very common pattern for games popular enough to get two sequels and that it's pretty random and sometimes subjective how well each entry in a series stacks up. For instance, Final Fantasy and Zelda both follow the pattern 2 worse than 1 with 3 better than 1, and even THAT is subjective because Zelda 2 isn't even really the same style of game as Zelda 1. :P
OTOH, the Star Control series definitely fits that pattern. 1 was good, 2 was a GOAT, 3 was... sigh.
@@Pixelmusement: I only partially disagree. I would put the _Streets of Rage_ series in the same basket as the _Sonic_ series. I wouldn't necessarily say the 3rd installment is bad, but it's like the designers tries to put too much into it (how do you top your series hit?). I don't think the _Mario_ series counts, as what we got in NA was a different game reskinned with Mario assets (I rather like _Mario 2_ because it's different). Tried playing _Zelda 2,_ can't stand it.