Wizardry 8 - My Duplicity Has a Price

Another entry in the Rampant Coyote's discovery of Wizardry 8 as Jay engages the T'Rang. Some quick design comments:

First off, it spite of my compaining - having NPCs note that I'm playing both sides or pulling fast ones in my quests is way cool. Any time NPCs can show recognition of the player's actions - particularly their more free-form, optional actions (not that these were - I'm convinced I'm taking the "preferred" approach) - it really helps the world come alive. This simple thing is probably a bigger deal than tons of advanced AI programming with neural networking or whatnot.

More information.

Keep on chugging. A quick note:
- There's an advantage to using the room at Heli's. The chest in that room maintains its inventory forever and ever, AND you can put quest items (supposed un-drop-ables) in them. Your inventory is probably getting cluttered with misc crap, and the chest is a great way to get some of that junk out of your encumberance calculation. It's also a convenient place to store things that you're sure will be useful some day (gadgy parts). Finally, you might find it useful to stockpile high-quality ranged ammo when you find a merchant selling it. You can avoid lots of merchant/rest slogs.

These articles are bloody entertaining!

The link currently doesn't work for me.

Is there anyone that did not try playing both sides? It seems like that was the main way to play it out.

Wiz 7 was well known for its faction system and it seemed to be streamlined in Wiz 8.

What happens if you only favour one faction? What happens if you don't pay her off when you are blackmailed?

Well I can tell you what happens when you don't pay her off, but I'll leave that a mystery for now, till he is past this part. I tried to pay but couldn't figure out how since she didn't ask for money.

Also can tell you about favoring the T'rang Faction only, but lets leave that a mystery as well until he is wayy beyond that part of the game.

Originally Posted by Lucky Day
Is there anyone that did not try playing both sides? It seems like that was the main way to play it out.

Wiz 7 was well known for its faction system and it seemed to be streamlined in Wiz 8.

What happens if you only favour one faction? What happens if you don't pay her off when you are blackmailed?

For Rampant's benefit, I'll spoiler the answer:

Thank you all doing your part to preserve the mystery as best as you can. Although I wouldn't blame you if you didn't - the statute of limitations on spoilers for a seven-year-old game must have expired by now.

Yeah, but we like you, so we're nice to you!!

Hey Rampant, have you gotten into the potion mixing business yet? That will ease your money woes without screwing up the balance (unless you start camping merchants). I believe it was an intended part of the design, rather than an exploit.

I'm sorry to admit that I'm a bit of a graphics whore, so I'm not sure how I'd do on this. It reads well, but I'm afraid the outdated graphics might be unbearable to me.

Can someone give me a point of reference? For instance, on recent recommendation of "Return to Krondor" I loaded it up but could not get past the graphics (even though I was a HUGE Sierra fan back in the day). On the other hand, I recently reinstalled Unreal and was impressed by how well the visuals held up for me.

I know Krondor and Unreal are not the same vintage, but if someone could rank Wizardry 8 for me in terms of either of those games, that would be great. Thanks!

You can compare them for yourself:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/unreal/screenshots
http://www.mobygames.com/game/window…-8/screenshots

For me, the biggest hurdle when going back to older titles is generally the screen resolution, but Wizardry 8 lets me play it in 1280*1024 and I had no problems getting into it on account of the graphics.

Originally Posted by KazikluBey
You can compare them for yourself:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/unreal/screenshots
http://www.mobygames.com/game/window…-8/screenshots

For me, the biggest hurdle when going back to older titles is generally the screen resolution, but Wizardry 8 lets me play it in 1280*1024 and I had no problems getting into it on account of the graphics.

Thanks for that!

Anybody know a place to buy Wizardry 8 for less than the $60+ on ebay or Amazon? I realize it's an old title.

Originally Posted by rbtroj
Thanks for that!

Anybody know a place to buy Wizardry 8 for less than the $60+ on ebay or Amazon? I realize it's an old title.

It seems to run up and down between $2 and $100 for some reason. It's been very overpriced recently for some unknown reason. Give it a month or so, if you've got the patience, and the price will probably come back down. Rampant's articles are probably pushing the price up right now--I expect you're not the only one reading his tale and deciding to give the game a chance.

Recently ? Maybe due to some unknown blog ?

Readers might've felt to give it a try again …