ToEE - Retrospective

Indigo Gaming looks back at The Temple of Elemental Evil. This is part 2 of a 3 part segment on Troika Games.

In the second of a 3-part Troika Games retrospective, I will take a look at Leonard Boyarsky, Jason Anderson and Tim Cain's RPG classic, The Temple of Elemental Evil: A Classic Greyhawk Adventure. This series will cover all three games they developed, how they innovated, what didn't succeed and and attempt at the age-old question: "What happened to Troika Games?" Episode two is a Temple of Elemental Evil review, where I cover the historical importance of the game, the origins of its mechanics and rules systems. What it does better than Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate, and where it fails in glitches, mechanics and its convoluted interface and commands.

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More information.

I have GOT to play this game some day - or at least start it. I've had it on GOG for eons now.

Watching this makes me wish somebody would set up a campaign for another series of 7 modules. It began with some raiding hill giants...

He's complaining about the difficulty in picking up the game, yet it came with an extensive manual. It doesn't sound like he even knew it existed. But yeah, the target audience is D&D players.

Iirc, somebody is trying to remake Icewind Dale in the ToEE engine. That would be something I'd like to play. ToEE still has the best combat engine I have seen so far. The module is crap, though.

Darkheart said:

Iirc, somebody is trying to remake Icewind Dale in the ToEE engine. That would be something I'd like to play.

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Unless they remove some of the combat encounters, that wouldn't appeal to me at all. IWD in that engine would probably take 200 hours to finish.

It's like the people I've seen over the years who say they wish Baldur's Gate was turn-based instead of RTwP. No thanks. It would take forever to get through all that combat in TB mode.

JDR13 said:

Unless they remove some of the combat encounters, that wouldn't appeal to me at all. IWD in that engine would probably take 200 hours to finish.

It's like the people I've seen over the years who say they wish Baldur's Gate was turn-based instead of RTwP. No thanks. It would take forever to get through all that combat in TB mode.

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Yeah, you'd have to scrap many encounters. Trash/filler combat is more bearable in realtime as it is over quicker. But since the whole thing would require rebalancing anyway as it is a new system (different XP rewards, etc.), I don't think it would be all too bad.

Of course, that would require even more effort and is probably way too much to ask from a mod.

One of my favorite games of all times. The best turn based combat in a crpg. The circle of 8 mods are fantastic. The Keep on the Borderlands mod they did really caught the spirit of AD&D.

I would play a 500 hour game with this combat system. But people from Ohio have a higher constitution then Michiganders that run to Florida. Ain't that right JDR13

I don't know if IWD2 is any better, but I couldn't play IWD1 past like 20 hours. It was all the same, like one big dungeon, no forests, no villages, no real story, just go there and keep going until you kill the boss. I think picking IWD to make it in the ToEE engine is the wrong choice.

By the way I played both Baldur's Gates almost turn-based, I think I set autopause very liberally.

Hastar said:

I would play a 500 hour game with this combat system. But people from Ohio have a higher constitution then Michiganders that run to Florida. Ain't that right JDR13

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I'll be sure to ponder that as I'm walking around in shorts and sandals this winter.

wolfing said:

I don't know if IWD2 is any better, but I couldn't play IWD1 past like 20 hours. It was all the same, like one big dungeon, no forests, no villages, no real story, just go there and keep going until you kill the boss. I think picking IWD to make it in the ToEE engine is the wrong choice.

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There's definitely a story there, it's just not as elaborate as BG or PS:T. IWD is about the combat, and it also has a superb soundtrack.

Darkheart said:

Iirc, somebody is trying to remake Icewind Dale in the ToEE engine. That would be something I'd like to play. ToEE still has the best combat engine I have seen so far. The module is crap, though.

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I wouldn't say "crap", but it could have been a helluva lot better. Frank Mentzer sure did his best. This review is the best I could find on the first of the megamodules, it really nails it :
http://grognardia.blogspot.ca/2009/10/retrospective-temple-of-elemental-evil.html

JDR13 said:

There's definitely a story there, it's just not as elaborate as BG or PS:T. IWD is about the combat, and it also has a superb soundtrack.

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If the soundtrack is one of the big selling points of the game, no wonder I didn't care for it. I don't care about music in games, like at all.

There is a demo for the IWD adaptation already. I helped to edit a couple of background maps, but the responsibility for this project and the guy how did almost everything by himself is Allyx. Here is a link if anyone wishes to download the game: http://www.co8.org/community/index.php?threads/iwd-toee-icewind-dale-demo-final.12072/

It's not a "wrong choice" as has been said here. This project is a ToEE mod and is incredible. The best D&D ruleset adaption with a good hack and slashing mod, how could that go wrong? Download and see for yourselves.

There are also other good mods for ToEE in this same community (Circle of Eight). So if anyone wishes to start playing ToEE download the modpack first. It fixes a lot of bugs.

By the way, this argument of "if you add a turn-based system the game will take forever and you won't enjoy the story" is fallacious and flawed. For starters, if the game has too much combat, you can have fewer encounters. You don't need to have an encounter in every time the player takes a step, like some games that fill the void of the game with encounters. And second, turn-based games show that it's possible for the player to enjoy a story and have a TB system. There is nothing on ToEE that prevents players enjoy the narrative - the only problem is that ToEE is a narrative that doesn't have too much depth in itself.

Ps. Great video btw, thanks for sharing it!

gabrielarantest said:

It's not a "wrong choice" as has been said here. This project is a ToEE mod and is incredible. The best D&D ruleset adaption with a good hack and slashing mod, how could that go wrong? Download and see for yourselves.

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By 'wrong choice' I mean IWD is just combat after combat after combat, and besides the game is already out there and there's even an Enhanced Edition version of it if I'm not mistaken. My point is that it would have been more attractive if they had implemented one of the many other D&D modules out there that have more 'meat'.

wolfing said:

By 'wrong choice' I mean IWD is just combat after combat after combat, and besides the game is already out there and there's even an Enhanced Edition version of it if I'm not mistaken. My point is that it would have been more attractive if they had implemented one of the many other D&D modules out there that have more 'meat'.

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There is more than just combat in IWD even though you do spend the majority of time fighting. I'd say it's actually very similar to ToEE in that way.

wolfing said:

By 'wrong choice' I mean IWD is just combat after combat after combat, and besides the game is already out there and there's even an Enhanced Edition version of it if I'm not mistaken. My point is that it would have been more attractive if they had implemented one of the many other D&D modules out there that have more 'meat'.

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I understand. Still, this enhanced edition is the same game slightly improved. IWD in ToEE engine is another game. Anyone that is looking to play this mod wants something different from the original experience of IWD, like turn-based combat and a better D&D ruleset implementation.

I would agree with you about changing to other modules. However, the creator of this mod said it would be easier to implement IWD than BG for instance. The idea was to see how well could an infinity game translate to ToEE. If I'm remembering this right - it has been some time ago.

The best part of crappy TOEE was the giant hunt for me.

Combat in ToEE is excellent, but IMO it's too combat focused. I quickly lost interest in the game once arriving at the Temple. My dream CRPG would be something with a more compelling story, and good amount of dialogue with choices that matter with (mandatory) combat being relatively infrequent, but challenging. I have no interest in an IWD mod but would love for someone to attempt a roleplay heavy module.. I'm not really familiar with official D&D modules so I have no idea which ones.

Alas, my tastes are a niche within a niche. And these days the closest we get to turn-based D&D CRPG is a board game adaptation

daveyd said:

Combat in ToEE is excellent, but IMO it's too combat focused. I quickly lost interest in the game once arriving at the Temple. My dream CRPG would be something with a more compelling story, and good amount of dialogue with choices that matter with (mandatory) combat being relatively infrequent, but challenging. I have no interest in an IWD mod but would love for someone to attempt a roleplay heavy module.. I'm not really familiar with official D&D modules so I have no idea which ones.

Alas, my tastes are a niche within a niche. And these days the closest we get to turn-based D&D CRPG is a board game adaptation

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I wouldn't say those tastes are niche. Quite the opposite actually. Niche IMO is enjoying ToEE or IWD and games that are combat-heavy without an emphasis on the things you mentioned (story, dialogue, choices, etc..) I would say the modern RPG is much more about those things and the niche RPGs are the one that focus more on combat and exploration. IMO.

daveyd said:

Combat in ToEE is excellent, but IMO it's too combat focused. I quickly lost interest in the game once arriving at the Temple. My dream CRPG would be something with a more compelling story, and good amount of dialogue with choices that matter with (mandatory) combat being relatively infrequent, but challenging.

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I don't see those things as mutually exclusive. You can have a good storytelling and good turn-based and tactical combat. The problem with ToEE was not its system, but the story of ToEE in itself is not quite good. If we had a BG or a Witcher 3 quality-like story in a ToEE system, that would be perfect for me.

Although newer cRPG sell them-selfs as story-driven, I haven't seen any outstanding narrative, and I have finished most of the more famous ones - but that is my opinion anyway.