Hi all,Well I finally decided to see what all the fuss was about with this Grimoire thing. After a few searches which pulled up a bunch of wicca stuff I found the official game site at: http://grimoire.blinkingdot.com/.
My first reaction is that it reminds me very much of a work experience I’ve had. I worked for a map-making company that was one tier down from the name brands like Rand McNally and ADC – it’s a local family-run business that’s low on their overhead. Our quality assurance and overall production costs were a fraction of the corporate map makers, so our products came out a little cheaper and had more of a hand-made look to them. What Grimoire seems to be (being authored by a former Sir-Tech employee) is a similar product. (Which maps do I drive around with? Rand McNally and ADC).
I must say however that I’m impressed with what I see of Grimoire. Maybe I’m just showing my generation here, but the whole influx of this 3D rendering and lighting effects is lost on me. Not only do I try to focus more on the story (Zork…) but the blockiness of today’s 3D technologies just looks really ugly to me, in their over-reaching efforts to emulate real-life they’re actually just drawing attention to their artificiality. The maze hacking and plotlines (and graphics) of say Bard’s Tale III are much more my style than the newer stuff out there today. For example, here’s a shot of some of the villains in Grimoire:
Now I would rather look at a static image of this caliber than the animated 3D but blocky effects like in this shot of Wizardry 8:
Now don’t get me wrong, the overall scenery and look of Wizardry 8 looks two generations better, and a much greater joy to navigate. There just needs to be care that at whatever level of technology you’re using, the players don’t notice it as such (as in the graphic chunks above) but rather focus on imaging whatever they’re given on the screen as being real (a movies example is the integrated special effects that George Lucas uses – although he spends millions on them, it remains clear that his movies are not about effects, but the story).
The Grimoire screen shots remind me of my favorite games, such as Bard’s Tale, Dungeon Master, and Dungeon Hack, and I especially love the idea of being able to instantly return to any point you’re previously visited. So that’s my two cents. I’m looking foreword to Grimoire, (and Wizardry 8, and Wizards & Warriors), but I don’t focus too much on games before I can see and play them, though (like I don’t like seeing movie previews for movies that I plan on seeing), so I’m not quite into the level of detailed interest shown in the Wiz 8 forum here (no biggie, though).
- John 
ps. And yes, there seems to be some personal issues with the maker of Grimoire, who is a former employee of Sir-Tech. As for all of that, I almost couldn’t care less. Wagner’s anti-semitic, but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying his compositions. Plus keep in mind, as the co-founder of Wizardry sates of the bankrupted company: “Regrettably, irreconcilable differences made it impossible to continue working with Sir-Tech Software, Inc., and the schism resulted in a lawsuit that continues to this day.” – Andrew Greenberg
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