The Seventh Link: Summary And Rating

The game manual featured some fairly modest hand-drawn art.

           

The Seventh Link

Canada

Oblique Triad (developer and publisher)

Released 1989 for Tandy Color Computer 3
Date Started: 16 December 2018

Date Ended: 16 March 2019

Total Hours: 22

Difficulty: Medium-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

      

Summary:

Inspired graphically and thematically by the Ultima series, The Seventh Link is probably the most extensive and full-featured RPG for the TRS-80 Color Computer. A single starting character ultimately enlists a group of allies of different races and classes on a quest to save their planet from a black hole at its core, about to break its containment. Solving the quest will take the party through dozens of towns across multiple planets and through multiple large, multi-leveled dungeons. Although the game gets off to a slow, grindy start, character development is rewarding and the tactical combat system (drawn from Ultima III) is the most advanced seen on this platform. The problem is that the game's content is not up to its size, and not enough interesting stuff happens while exploring the enormous world.
          

****

       

I never like giving up on games, and I particularly don't like when I know the author is reading (I'm frankly not sure it's ever happened before). But in several months of trying, I simply haven't been able to make any decent progress in The Seventh Link. That doesn't necessarily mean I don't like it. If I was a Tandy Color Computer 3 owner, I'm sure I'd prize the game and play to the very end. The problem is that as a blogger, I have to be able to justify my playing time with material. If I spend four hours in a dungeon and all I can say is I killed a bunch of enemies (showing the same combat screens I've shown before) and gathered some gold, it's hard to countenance that time.

In some ways, The Seventh Link is the quintessential 1980s RPG. It offers a framing story with more detail than appears in the game itself, sticks the player in a large world that the player has to map if he's to make any progress, and features a lot of combat. In mechanics, it's as good as any of the early Wizardries or Ultimas.

Unfortunately, Link was the last game I encountered before leaving the 1980s, and I'd just spent a decade mapping featureless dungeon corridors. It's not its fault that it's last; that's just the way it happened. And by the time I got to Link, I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't--I can't--play a game that's just a few dozen 20 x 20 dungeon levels full of combats. The Bard's Tale and its derivatives drained that battery.
          

I never figured out anything to do with the pillars.

        
This is the 90s, and gamers are demanding more interesting content in their game worlds. We want NPCs, special encounters, puzzles, and other features in those dungeons, at regular intervals. We've decimated forests in our consumption of graph paper; we're ready for automaps. Ones that don't require us to find a spell first. 

Despite investing a fair number of hours into the game, I really didn't accomplish much. I explored the surface of Elira, visited each of its towns to assemble a party, and mapped 4 of 13 levels of one dungeon. There were at least 9 more dungeon entrances on Elira alone, some of which would have taken me to teleporters to three other planets and their own towns and dungeons. I would have found a final party member, a female ranger named Starwind, on the planet Dulfin. Others dungeons would have led me to power packs and the places where I needed to install them to save the planet. I still don't know where I was to find the other spells. From hints in an old disk magazine, I learned that the maximum character level is 25 (my main character reached 8) and that one of the planets has a store where you can buy potions that increase attributes, serving in the role of Ambrosia from Ultima III.
           

One of the few lines from an NPC. Alas, I will probably never explore Selenia.

       
My GIMLET is naturally based on an incomplete picture of the game:
         

• 4 points for the game world. The sci-fi origin story is fairly original, and well-told in epistolatory fashion, although it fails to explain a number of aspects of the world (e.g., why are there settlements on other planets). While the player's role is somewhat clear, it's less clear where he came from, how he got started on this path, and whether he understands his role.

• 3 points for character creation and development. The selection of races and classes is familiar but not entirely derivative. There's nothing special about character creation or the development and leveling process, but they're reasonably rewarding. I don't know if the level cap would have caused any issues or if you finish the game well before reaching it.

• 3 points for NPC interaction. The game has a better system than it uses. You learn a few things from NPCs, but there are hardly any NPCs that say anything to you. Expanding that number would have resulted in a richer, more engaging world. I do like the Ultima IV approach to assembling your party by finding members in the towns.

• 2 points for encounters and foes. The monsters are mostly derivative of other games (though I like the explanations for their names here: the ship that populated the planet had Tolkien fans on it), and I didn't really experience other types of encounters.

• 4 points for magic and combat. The tactical combat screen is about as good as Ultima III, but with fewer spells.

          

On Level 3 of the dungeon, I met an enemy called "Floating Stars."

       

• 3 points for equipment. You can get melee weapons, missile weapons, armor, and adventuring equipment like torches and keys. Various sites hint at more advanced items like rods and gems of seeing. The selection of stuff is a little paltry in the traditional Ultima style.

• 5 points for the economy. It lacks a certain complexity, but money is certainly valuable. You almost never have enough keys, for one thing. Healing, torches, equipment, and leveling up consume gold fast, and it sounds like the shop on Dulfan would have served as an endless money sink for any extra you could accumulate.

• 2 points for a main quest with no side-quests or quest options.

• 4 points for graphics, sound, and interface. Almost all of that is for the interface. It adopts the Ultima standard of one key per action, which ought to have been mandatory as far as I'm concerned. Graphics are functional but sound sparse.

          

I never quite got used to the perspective. That lava square is only one square in front of me.

         

• 2 points for gameplay. It gets a bit for nonlinearity and a bit more for the moderate-to-challenging difficulty. But it's not very replayable and it's way, way, way, way too big and too long.

            
That gives is a final score of 32, which is hardly awful for the era. It's actually the highest score that I've given to the platform. The only things that stop me from finishing it are the number of hours it will take and the number of other games on my list.

The Georgetown, Ontario-based Oblique Triad was a mail-order developer and publisher, co-founded by Jeff Noyle and Dave Triggerson. The name referred to the decorative bars on the top of a Color Computer. Mr. Noyle used to host a page (available now only on the Internet Archive) with links to their games, which included a pair of graphical adventures called Caladuril: Flame of Light (1987) and Caladuril 2: Weatherstone's End (1988); a strategy game called Overlord (1990); an arcade game called Those Darn Marbles! (1990); and a sound recording and editing package called Studio Works.
          

Caladuril, the company's first game, is a decent-looking graphical adventure.

         
With the Color Computer in serious decline by 1990, Oblique Triad shifted its focus to specializing in sound programming, and both Noyle and Triggerson have associated credits on Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990) and Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992). I haven't been able to trace Triggerson from there, but Noyle got a job at Microsoft in 1995 working on Direct3D, DirectX, and DirectDraw and remains (at least according to his LinkedIn profile) there today. He also has a voice credit for a Skyrim mod called Enderal: The Shards of Order (2016).

Mr. Noyle was kind enough to not only comment on one of my entries, but to take the time to create overworld maps to speed things along. I'm sorry that it wasn't quite enough, but every game that I abandon stands a chance of coming back when circumstances are different, and I'll consider trying this one again when I feel like I'm making better progress through the 1990s.

How I Do Wilderness Encounters

It's a popular question I see asked a lot on the forums and reddit - "How do you do wilderness travel/encounters?" "How do you do hex crawls?"

It's understandable, with a wide open outdoors map looking a lot more overwhelming to prepare for, compared to a dungeon map.

For me, there's three parts to the wilderness part of a campaign.

Part 1 - putting down a key. I use Welsh Piper's general approach of that each hex can have a "major" encounter/landmark and several "minor" encounters/landmarks. I do general stocking, without a lot of details. I save those for when the players are going to run into them. I don't do a random encounter table yet.

Part 2 - pre-game prep. Part of the contract I have with my tabletop players is that I need to know a week in advance of their general plans for the game. That allows me to do some in-depth prep. If they're traveling from point a to point b, this is a lot easier, than if they're at a homebase and have several options.

So once I know their general mission, I look at the map and their expected route.

I start with "day 1" of their travel for that game. For my map, the heroes have different travel rates if they're mounted, on foot, on a road or in country.

For each hex that they might travel through, I look at the key. If something is there, I see if they would encounter it. I roll a d6 for major, and a d6 for each minor. If it's a 6, they miss the major. If it's a 1-2, they run into the minor. If they are going to run into something, I'll note which day they run into something.

If it's a major/minor encounter from the map, NOW I will flesh out the details. If it's a dungeon or some sort of place requiring its own map, I'll do a level or two, depending on how strong the party is and if I anticipate they'll be strong enough to go through the whole thing.

I repeat this for the entire trip. So now I have a list of what they will hit/not hit on their journey. And I know how many hexes they run through, and I'll figure out how long this all takes.

THEN, for each day of travel, I roll a (d6 for civilized/populated lands, d8 for less populated, d10 for wild) for day and another for night. If there's a 1, then there's a random encounter with something. I note that on which day as well.

Now I have a "script" of sorts of what the players will run into and when that will happen.

I then flesh out the encounters, whether with a major/minor from the key, or as the result of a random encounter. With random encounters, I know what is logical for that area. I also look to several tables and books for ideas/inspiration. Sometimes previous keys I've made. What am I in the mood for and what have I already done in this area?

I plan out for the entire trip or mission that they've laid out. It might take them a few sessions to do this, but it's easier for me to do it as much as once.

So here's an example:
The players are going to travel from the Town of Golden Gate to the ruined Fort Dawn. They have to travel through the Wild Woods and across orc-held Plains of Woe.

So let's make this easy - it takes 1 day to cross 2 hexes of grasslands, farmlands (mounted). 1 day to cross 1 hex of light woods/hills (mounted). 2 days to cross 1 hex of deep woods.

The "mission" that the players tell me is that they will head east/southeast towards the ruins. They want to avoid the Orcs. They have a ranger with them.

So the most likely path is 00.01 -> 01.01 ->02.01 -> 03.01 ->04.02 ->05.02-> 06.02.

They might run into the "Ancient Stones" in 03.01. That is a major encounter in my key. So I roll a d6 and I come up with ... surprisingly, a 6! So they will miss the major encounter. OK, what about the ruins themselves? That's another major encounter. I roll a 4, they'll find it.

So with that in mind, it will take 6.5 days to go from Golden Gate to Fort Dawn. They will encounter Fort Dawn on day 6.5

So my random checks - day 1, morning is in civilized, evening is in light woods. That's a d6 and d8 to check for encounters. 2 and 6, no encounters. Day 2 is in light woods. 3 and 3, no encounter. Day 3 and 4 are in the deep woods. That's a d10. 7 and 5. No encounter. Day 5 is in light woods, d8 check. 8 and 7, no encounter. Day 6 morning is grasslands, evening is enter the hills. d8 and d10. 1 and 8, aha, finally an encounter! Day 7, morning check only as by afternoon, they'll be at the fort. 4, no encounter.

Jeeze, these guys have it EASY this trip!

Here's the script:
Day 1 - 00.01 (grasslands) to 01.01 (woods) - no encounters
Day 2 - 01.01 (woods) to 02.01 (woods) - no encounters
Day 3 - 02.01 (woods) to 03.01 (heavy woods) - no encounter
Day 4 - 03.01 (heavy woods) - no encounter
Day 5 - 03.01 (heavy woods) to 04.02 (woods) -no encounter
Day 6 - 04.02 (woods) to 05.02 (grasslands) - ENCOUNTER
Day 7 - 05.02 (exit grasslands into hilled grasslands) - no encounter, MAJOR: Fort Dawn

For the grasslands, I roll on a small table and figure out it will be a humanoid encounter. It makes sense that this is a hunting party of mounted orcs. So I come up with the encounter parameters and write it out.

Part 3 - at the table.  OK, so we're playing the game.

Me: It's the 8th day of Autumn and you've loaded up your supplies and are ready to leave town. Do you do anything else or do you head out?

Players: We go! Off to the fort!

Me: Well, (reading notes) Fortune smiles upon you, as with the help of the ranger, you have a fairly unventful journey for the first 5 days of your trip. You navigate the Dark Woods without incident, with only the gloom of the heavy canopy marking anything of note during the two days it takes you to get through them. However, on the sixth day, as your horses range through the grasslands... (rattle of dice as I figure out who has surprise)...

Me: Ranger, as you are out ahead of the group a-ways, scouting, you come upon the rear vanguard of what appears to be a group of orcs, riding, unaware that you're behind them! What do you do?

Ranger: I quietly make the "stop/danger" sign, hoping that my friends behind me see it. I then jump off my horse and get it to lie down.

Me: OK - the elves and halfling in the party, roll a d6. If you get a 1 or 2, you see that sign and can warn everyone. Otherwise... this will be interesting!

(The encounter is resolved... so now we continue)

Me: OK, after cleaning from the messy orc encounter, there is still time to travel. Do you wish to continue?

Players: Yes!

Me: OK, the remainder of the day and the following day are uneventful. The tall grasses lead into hill country, mostly covered in the grasses that are tall and fragrant in the autum sun. By midday of the 15th day of Autumn, you see the ruined towers of Fort Dawn on the horizon, sitting on top of the largest of the rolling hills...

And that's really about it.

I used to do a "day by day" blow of moving across the map, and it just wasn't really fun for anyone? I started doing this approach after seeing it suggested online. The players like it, because it focuses on the important stuff.

They do have to track resources, of course and I'll remind them of that when they hit points where they stop.

Questions that I anticipate
What if the players change their mission or go off the script? What if they get lost?
Well, they understand that if they change the plan, I may need to "take a break" in order to figure out what happens when instead of going to Fort Dawn, they decide to stay in the Dark Woods and seek out the Ancient Stones. So at the table, I'll pretty much follow the same approach, figure out the day to day until they reach their new destination.

If that's not appropriate, or they get lost and they're wandering off course, then we drop into a "day by day" mode, which I cover in the next question.

What if they're truly "crawling" around a wilderness to explore?
Then I do the same exact thing, but on a hex by hex, day by day basis. It does slow things down a bit more, because I'm repeating this for each day, but that's pretty much what wilderness exploring is... it's become a different type of game. It's no longer a "travel and destination" game, it's truly seeing what is in each nook and cranny.

Because I've done this enough, I can roll it out pretty fast and get to the jist of things quickly.

What about weather?
Ah, I didn't want to muddy the waters with weather, but yes, weather can be an encounter. I use weather charts that lay out each day's weather - it's the 7 Years of Fantasy Weather almanac that I've podcasted about before. On days where there is weather that seriously affects their travel, that's an appropriate event to call out as a waypoint or encounter. Or I let them know how the weather affects their travel (usually to slow them down).

What other questions did I not think of? What do you think of this approach?

The Last Of Us Part 2 | Trailer, Gameplay, Story Characters & All The Latest News.

The Last of Us Part 2 wards off blowing us with rough and clashing trailers, yet despite everything we're holding up to hear when we'll really observe PlayStation's most foreseen continuation on the racks. What is Ellie's opinion about the decision Joel made to spare her toward the finish of the last diversion? Where is Joel, and for what reason hasn't he showed up in any of the trailers yet? Who are the unusual religion that have established such a connection in the recording we've seen up until this point? Here's all that we think about The Last of Us Part 2.

  Quick Facts :

• The Last of Us Part 2 release date: TBC
• Formats: PS4, PS4 Pro
• Developer: Naughty Dog

The Last of Us Part 2 release date – When is it coming out?

The Last of Us Part 2 was uncovered with a secret trailer at PlayStation Experience 2016, yet Naughty Dog caveated the uncover with the reality the amusement is still from the get-go being developed, so it'll be a while until the point when we can get our hands on it. 

In an ongoing meeting with Argentinian radio station Vorterix, The Last of Us Part 2 arranger Gustavo Santaolalla said the title is intended to dispatch only for PS4 in 2019. Take this with a spot of salt, yet it appears to be a conceivable dispatch window to us.

The Last of Us Part 2 story will focus on Joel and Ellie. But Joel is still (mostly) missing.

We haven't seen Joel yet, however we (most likely) know he's still near, as the most recent E3 ongoing interaction demo makes express reference to Ellie's "father". All things considered, that doesn't name Joel expressly, so there's as yet a shot his quality will be a mental one instead of an exacting one. Naughty Dog loves misleading its group of onlookers before its defining moments discharge. 

While talking about the likelihood that the amusement may pursue another cast, chief Neil Druckmann has expressed that "The Last of Us is about these two characters particularly," finally year's PlayStation Experience. "'Part 2' is stating this will be a bigger story; it will be a reciprocal story to the primary amusement, yet together, the two joined will tell this substantially bigger story." So indeed, Joel will be a noteworthy piece of the story. We simply don't yet know in what limit. Joel's little girl, Sarah, was the main impetus of the primary amusement, and, well...

In any case, based on Druckmann's remarks, this follow-up will be significantly more firmly connected to its forerunner than numerous other triple-A continuations. Seeing as the keep going diversion finished on such a superbly equivocal, semi-cliffhanger, we expect The Last of Us 2 to manage the lie Joel told Ellie amid that passionate epilog.

The Last of Us Part 2 Story – What's it about?

Naughty Dog has uncovered that The Last of Us Part 2 happens five years after the first left off, with a 19-year-old Ellie going about as the diversion's fundamental character. Joel likewise makes an arrival, viewing over Ellie as a gradually maturing old man. The principle drive of the account is indistinct, however we know Ellie is, extremely irate about something. 

In the uncovered trailer, she is seen playing guitar, slathered in blood among a heap of carcasses. In the wake of completing her melody, she says to Joel: "I will slaughter each and every one of them." We've no thought who Ellie is so pissed at, however, it's unmistakable annoyance will go about as a center topic in The Last of Us Part 2. Neil Druckmann has affirmed that Westworld's Shannon Woodward will assume a job in the continuation, in spite of the fact that we right now know nothing about her character.

The Last of Us Part 2 gameplay shows Ellie meting out a whole another level  of bloody violence.

As of Sony's E3 2018 introduction, we've now, at long last, had a serious take a gander at some The Last of Us Part 2 interactivity. Furthermore, "concentrated" is in fact the world. Especially taking its signals from the principal diversion's substantial, improvisational, avoidance driven guerrilla battle, The Last of Us Part 2 hopes to take a to some degree snappier, more agile methodology with Ellie as its hero - she can get containers and fling them consistently at assailants without breaking a dash, for example, and her changes between different kinds of cover and battle look significantly slicker than Joel's. All things considered, the level of realistic brutality has unmistakably gone up. 

The Last of Us was an expert when it came to the awkward gut, yet the Last of Us Part 2 ongoing interaction demo is on an entirely another level. Following a delicate scene of kinship and sentiment, we obviously slice to Ellie, cut as of now in a man's throat, gutting him like a fish. It just remains untidy from that point on out, the viciousness delineated as drifting somewhere close to lavishly realistic phlebotomy and dirty, anatomically reasonable repulsiveness. It's terrible, crunchy, stifling, sputtering, and wheezing stuff all through.

Ideally, there's a purpose behind that. The principal diversion was, all things considered, a savage amusement about savagery, in which the unglamourous delineation of executing with repercussions framed a lot of the points. With so little setting for Ellie's activities up until now, it's difficult to know whether The Last of Us Part 2 is accomplishing something astute here, or merely endeavoring to win a 'development' weapons contest with itself. We'll most likely know for beyond any doubt when we get hold of the last amusement.

The Last of Us Part 2 takes place in Seattle (partly)

Fans had just worked this one out quite well, yet The Last of Us Part 2 executive Neil Druckmann affirmed it at PlayStation Experience 2017: an "expansive part" of the diversion will occur in Seattle. 

The first started in Boston at that point went on a voyage over the United States as far west as Salt Lake City. When we last observed Joel and Ellie, they'd headed back east far to Jackson County in Wyoming, wanting to remain at the settlement driven by Joel's sibling Tommy. We don't know to what extent that game plan endured, yet Ellie's unmistakably accomplished all the more going from that point forward. 

In any case, that is only a "huge part". It appears to be improbable that The Last of Us Part 2 will remain established in the Pacific Northwest after how much meandering the principal diversion did. Perhaps Ellie will advance down the drift? We don't know whether things are as awful on the western seaboard as far as disease and military persecution. Be that as it may, it wouldn't be quite a bit of a survival story if Ellie just gallivanted down to Portland and lived joyfully ever after.

Expected To See Greater focus on the multiplayer.

To the shock of many, 'The Last of Us' multiplayer was brilliant. It deciphered the creating and survival mechanics of its single-player into the domain of online clashes impeccably. You could gather fixings and specialty devices mid-coordinate, getting the drop on your foe through a scope of fierce strategies. The collection of instruments was upheld up by a profound determination of matchmaking alternatives, as well. 

One of my most loved parts of the multiplayer was its usage of informal organizations into online movement. A triumph would net you supplies for your group, the individuals from which are named after a horde of Facebook companions. Obviously, they weren't generally stuck in an invaded hellhole, yet the unimportant consideration of their essence gave your activities a swoon yet ground-breaking setting. The Last of Us 2 should twofold down on this thought, making each fight an individual undertaking driving a level as well as a will to survive.

The Last of Us 2 soundtrack will feature the original game's composer.

Gustavo Santaolalla is the man. In particular, a man who is, VERY great at composing music. The Argentine arranger won consecutive Best Original Score Oscars for his work on Brokeback Mountain and Babel, before proceeding to direct The Last of Us' breathtakingly melancholic soundtrack. Druckmann as of late affirmed Santaolalla is coming back to form the music for the Last of Us Part 2, particularly prominent as it's the first run through he's returned for a spin-off.