Betrayal at Krondor - Matt Chat 293: John Cutter

Anyone old-school enough for Betrayal at Krondor? Matt Barton has posted the third part of a long interview with John Cutter, the creator of the game. Part One and Part Two were posted earlier this month.



A snippet I transcribed:

I had originally wanted to do more of a 2D game, but everybody thought we should use the flight-sim engine and do something in 3D, and Ultima Underworld came out during the development of our game, which helped support the idea that, yeah, 3D was the right choice.

But we digitized a lot of the actors, and we assumed when we were taking the pictures and digitizing them that they were going to be so pixelated that the makeup and the costumes didn’t really have to look that great—they just kinda had to be close. But I think before we launched the game technology improved, and you could see the elastic bands on the fake beards. It was pretty bad.

More information.

Stopped at the puzzles of the chests of the northern mountains, gone over a bit into the east then went to the south, solved a couple of missions, but the game somehow lost its appeal.

I loved this game back in the day. From what I recall, it was one of the first (if not the very first) game where I was truly absorbed with the story of the game, a story that felt like reading an engaing fantasy-novel.

The gameworld felt large and interesting, magic & combat was pretty nice, the music was great and it also felt novel in that you played different characters with different skills at different parts of the game.

After playing through it the first time, I went out and bought the "Riftwar-Trilogy" of books and I kept buying the Midkemia books until only a few years ago (eventually the books started to span centuries & move on to a new generation of characters, something I don´t care much for)

I bought it new back in the day, somehow I could never get into it. It seemed rather boring

LOL
You may say it's this and that, but was not boring at all.

It's only problem today is that it didn't age well. If someone would pass it into a modern engine, not just gfx but sound too, it'd be a hit again. We had a thread about games we'd want to get remakes, my choice was Anachronox, but Betrayal at Krondor (and it's sequel Return to Krondor) definetly deserve the same treatment.

Just not another disastrous RoA reboot, please.

Loved this game when I played it, loved everything about it. The story, the combat system, the switching to new characters, the riddle chests, the magic. One of my favorites!

I read the books before playing this when it was released, and I enjoyed it enough to finish it at the time but it was not one of my favorites. I don't know (and didn't know at the time) why it didn't wow me but it was still enjoyable. I played the two sequels but those were worse.

I tried replaying this just a couple of years ago and enjoyed it for a while but stopped after maybe 10 hours.

The perfect RPG of 90s. Turn based combat, big map, good story, wonderful music, and good first person engine for 1993 standards. I have too the original box with the pretty manual. A true jewel IMO.
Thanks for the transcription. I´m very bad with spoken english.

I have played all three games in the series, and ejoyed them very much back in the day.

Gosh darn it, how'd I mess up the YouTube code?

Played it to finish maybe 5 times in total, last time was about 2 years ago. It might be time to fire it up again, such an awesome game.

Originally Posted by max killen
It seemed rather boring

Boring ?! Are you kidding ? This game was fantastic even with its rather subpar graphics (even for the time being it was underwhelming at best) but I guess it's to each its taste. I think calling this series boring is somewhat intriguing because the story by itself was unusual and interresting and the gameplay was so different from the rest of the production ! I absolutely fell in love with this series and still own this one plus Bertrayal in Antara and Return to Krondor in their original cardboard boxes glory ! Apart from Wizardry, I think BaK still has one of the best lock picking system to date

Amazing Memories! One of the best RPGs

awesome game!

All three games are full of awesome. I bought boxed cd versions few years back of all of them. Started to replay the original just few weeks ago. Originally played it in the 90s.

This reminds me of ultima 7 which I havent played for over a decade. And of course ultima 6 and maybe 5…this is why I dont play old games anymore. Its a downward spiral. Im overcome by nostalgia and cannot decide what to play.

My only issue with old games is the keyboard/mouse-driven user-interface. Its not user-friendly and it hurts my back to play games that way. So better stick with witcher 1 which can be played with pinnacle gamepad emulation.

One of those titles that I never really played until many years later - and it didn't grab me.

I feel like I've missed out on something big.

It came out right around the time of my switch to PC from Amiga, and there were a ton of other great games I needed to play first. I guess I missed this one in the glorious mess of deep RPGs that didn't exist on my Amiga.

I think I tried this game only later after Baldur's Gate was out and could not play much with its ugly 3d graphics. I would love a more modern remake or at least a Enhanced Edition.

Originally Posted by Archangel
I think I tried this game only later after Baldur's Gate was out and could not play much with its ugly 3d graphics. I would love a more modern remake or at least a Enhanced Edition.

Yep, I've said this many times.. BAK is a perfect candidate for a remake.

It's just too hard to play now without the nostalgia of having played it back then.

Fired it up sometimes because of the hype, but didn't find it enticing enough to keep playing. That goes for the whole trilogy.

I am entitled to my opinion and I thought the game sucked then and now. Number 3 was probably the worst