Game 7: The Black Cauldron - Final Rating

Well I can’t start this post without mentioning the news that Chet from the CRPG Addict blog has decided to call it quits, at least for the time being. I won’t talk about this too much now, but I will come back to it shortly. All I’ll say for now is that I’m feeling a bit empty and disappointed (not with Chet, I totally understand and respect his decision). I obviously owe a great debt to his work and have thoroughly enjoyed every single post he's written since I started following around twelve months ago. As for The Adventure Gamer, it doesn’t change anything. It’s all systems go and I still have every intention of seeing this monumental project through to completion. It’s time to apply the PISSED rating system to The Black Cauldron.

Puzzles and Solvability:
If you’ve read my previous posts on this game, you will probably have guessed the categories I’m going to give low scores, and this is one of them. It’s not really that there’s much I can label illogical throughout the game, it’s more that the lack of explanation for what’s going on and what character’s roles are makes knowing what to do next and how to do it very difficult. When Disney told Al Lowe that the game should closely follow the movie, I don’t think anyone was aware of how isolating and confusing the result would be for players that haven’t seen it. Things happen all the time that would normally make the player restore and try again (ie. Hen Wen gets captured when your only quest is to protect her and the cauldron gets stolen away by a gwythaint as soon as you get your hands on it), but since these things happen in the movie, they had to occur. As Zenic commented on one of my posts, the better way for these events to occur would be to remove player control temporarily (therefore making it clear that you are supposed to let it happen), but that wouldn’t allow for the branching storyline to occur in many instances, so I do understand why the developers didn’t do that. I still don’t really understand what several items were supposed to be used for and I assume this is because I didn’t partake in the storyline where they would be utilised. The result of this is that I wasted ages trying to make use of items that were actually never going to be of benefit to me. I’m giving the game a P rating of 3.

This happy ending makes the whole journey and it's consequences completely meaningless

Interface and Inventory

Al Lowe deserves some credit for creating a graphic adventure computer game that doesn’t require the player to type commands into a text parser. The simplified replacement system means the player only needs to know what four function keys do (INVENTORY SELECT, USE, DO and LOOK) to make their way through the entire game. The downside of this simplification is that the player feels very limited as to what they can do. Unlike text parser based games and future point and click games that allow you to request information about pretty much anything onscreen, the system used for The Black Cauldron means you can only ask for information about (or interact with) an item you are directly next to. This is not a massive issue (there are very few instances where you can’t gain access to whatever it is you want to get info on or interact with), but there’s just something about it that distances the player from the experience. Perhaps it’s just that the amount of possibilities that are available on each screen is drastically reduced, making the game seem less open. If I weigh up the pros and cons of the changed interface (PROS – simplified, text parser flaws removed CONS – less interaction and information available, navigation flaws unchanged), it’s probably on par with the other Sierra games. As for the inventory, well it functions the same way it does in other Sierra games, with one exception. You have to SELECT an item from the inventory before you can USE it. 5.

Most screens have only one thing you can interact with or even look at due to interface restrictions

Story and Setting

Everything I’ve read suggests Lloyd Alexander’s books are really very good. Unfortunately, the nuances of that story were damaged when transferring it to cinema screen, and further damaged when put into the framework of Sierra’s AGI technology. Ignoring everything it’s based on, the story of the Black Cauldron game is bewildering and unsatisfying, no matter which branches you choose along the way. I won’t repeat the issues I’ve had with not knowing what character’s roles are and which events are part of the unravelling plot as I’ve banged on about them already. At the end of the day, the storylines of adventure games are very often set in stone, so players are not really making choices as much as they are solving puzzles to make it progress. I take issue when the choices the game has made for my path are either not the ones that I want to make or are completely unexplained. The setting of this story, Prydain, is represented well enough graphically, although it has to be said it looks and feels a heck of a lot like a King’s Quest game. It also feels very small, making Taran’s big adventure to reach the Horned King and the Fair Folk people seem a bit laughable. The Fair Folk people are around two screens away from his home and the Horned King’s castle around five. I’m going to be unsympathetic here and give the game a 2 for Story and Setting.

I honestly don't think I was ever informed of this request for assistance?! Anyone know when that supposedly happened?

Sound and Graphics

As I’ve mentioned previously, The Black Cauldron looks visually just like King’s Quest, with an added darkness to some screens achieved by nice use of blues and purples. I can’t say I noticed any increase or decrease in quality for the animations and illustrations when compared to the likes of King’s Quest III or Space Quest. Having not watched the movie in decades, I can’t say whether the sparse cases of music have any connection with it (or the visuals for that matter). I can say however that they managed to make the music particularly grating this time around, with high pitched, ear aggravating tones frequently used. It’s used so sparingly that it doesn’t really have a great effect on the enjoyment of the game, and it was probably particularly noticeable for me due to my attempts on every screen at finding a use for the lute I found early in the game. I ended up offering it to the fair folk as a gift, so the abuse my ears suffered during that process was all for nought. I’m sticking with the Sierra 5 that I’ve repeated a few times already.

King's Quest IV: The Black Cauldron

Environment and Atmosphere

The general forests and lakes of Prydain look identical to King’s Quest, so are not really worth talking about, with the exception of the darker forest screens to the west. The trees here contain ghost like faces which when combined with the dark colour tones successfully produce a foreboding atmosphere. The same can be said for the castle scenes, which also benefit from a sense of imminent capture, which as it turns out it’s completely applicable (you’re chased around on nearly every screen). Overall the atmosphere of The Black Cauldron is fairly compelling, which is probably why I continued on to the end despite struggling to understand what was going on and what I was supposed to be doing. 6.



Spooky trees! Reminds me of watching Poltergeist when I was too young to be doing so

Dialogue and Acting

I don’t have a heck of a lot to say for this category either. The simple style found in other Sierra adventure games (straightforward location and item descriptions, simplistic story narration, and very sparse NPC interaction) is used for The Black Cauldron. Apart from the one irritating bug in description I found while scaling the castle wall, I can’t say I noticed anything particularly negative or positive to announce for this category, meaning I probably should stick to the 4 I’ve given the majority of past Sierra games.

Since you've already told me the solution, I can go ahead and complete the solution.

That’s a 42 for The Black Cauldron, which appropriately makes it the lowest ranked game I’ve played so far for The Adventure Gamer. It’s a bit disappointing really as I was hoping to find a lost treasure that has been unfairly ignored over the years. Instead, it’s clearly the least successful use of the AGI system I've played to date, and a wasted opportunity to bring Alexander’s world and characters to the screen. Now...what on earth is Tass Times in Tonetown all about!?

Game 7: The Black Cauldron - Won!

Taran Wanderer Journal Entry 2: “What an emotional ride today has been. First I helped Princess Eilonwy escape the prison and found an awesome magic sword, and then I rescued a bard named Fflewddur from another part of the castle. I even managed to save Hen Wen and got her to safety right before the Horned King made her show him where the cauldron was. As if all that wasn’t exciting enough, I then visited a strange underground kingdom where King Eiddileg gave me some magic flying dust. I used it to access a witches’ house across the river and traded my magic sword for the Black Cauldron. Just when I thought I’d finally stopped the Horned King and his wicked scheme, a gwythaint stole the cauldron from me and took it back to the castle. Summoning the little courage I had left, I climbed the mountain back up to the castle, realising that the only way to stop the Horned King was to throw myself into the cauldron, sacrificing myself in the process. Just as I was about to do it, my loyal little furry friend Gurgi jumped into the cauldron instead, destroying the Horned King, his castle, and himself. My devastation at the loss of my friend was short lived, as the witches traded me his life back for the cauldron, meaning everything worked out in the end. Prydain is safe and I’ve got some great new friends!”

If the above rundown sounds convoluted, well you don’t know the half of it (unless you've played it of course). It took me a total of six hours to finish The Black Cauldron and I can’t say I had much idea what was going on half the time. I rescued people who never showed up again, was given items that played no part in the game, was constantly rewarded for counterintuitive decisions, and was left feeling empty during an ending that was supposed to be highly emotional. I don’t think Al Lowe had any idea how challenging it would be to take a movie plot and present it as an adventure game and I think he realised things were not going well when he bailed towards the end of the project. He managed to squeeze in a lot of the characters, items and locations from the movie into the game, but with no controlled plot or linear progression to tie them all together, you end up with a game only really enjoyable by those who already know what happens and can fill in all the gaps on the way.

In other words, the game technology won't allow me to have a companion anymore so you better go

The perfect example of this is the character Gurgi. Gurgi is the little furry creature I met at the beginning of the game. I gave him an apple and he told me he was now my friend. I assume that Gurgi becomes a companion of Taran’s in the books and movie, and that they experience many things together through the course of the story. That would make Gurgi’s presence at the finale make sense and his sacrifice understandable and emotional. In the game, his sudden appearance and sacrifice is completely absurd, and it occurred at a time where the game told me what I was about to do (throw myself into the cauldron), when in fact I had no idea. It’s confusing, forced storytelling, and his sudden reincarnation at the end makes the whole thing meaningless. I was led to believe that the Black Cauldron would be destroyed if a live being got into it, therefore committing suicide in the process. Why then would the three witches bargain his life back (they also offered all sort of other treasures) for a completely non-magical cauldron?

...there was that day I gave him an apple and...um...that other day where I gave him an apple. I miss him so much!

There is one notable positive to come out of The Black Cauldron and that is the use of a branching storyline. There are numerous ways to “complete” the game, with all of them ranging in satisfaction and points. I first completed the game by sacrificing myself into the cauldron as soon as I got it (therefore making it powerless and not allowing the grythaint to steal it), but that resulted in only 173 points, and the game hinting at the fact this was not the ultimate finish. I then restored and let the gwythaint take it (yet another example of the game rewarding me for counterintuitive actions), and was then able to go to the castle for the big finale (where I apparently just try to sacrifice myself anyway!!!). I’ve since read a walkthrough to see what other ways there are to complete the game, but most of them revolve around which of the witches’ offers you accept on the way. There’s no doubt that the branching storyline merely adds to the confusion in the case of The Black Cauldron, but it should be noted that this is the first true example of a technique that would become popular in the genre and eventually used very successfully.

Seemed like the logical thing to do, but it's not what you wanted me to do is it Mr Dungeon Master

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy The Black Cauldron at all. When I knew what my goal was and could just focus on achieving it, there was much fun to be had. But it has to be said that the game is pretty hard going for someone with no prior knowledge of the story, and the pioneering features (non text parser interface, branching storyline) are not implemented anywhere near as well as they would be down the track. Al Lowe and his crew were on a hiding to nothing with this game. Players who know the story from either the books or the movie would breeze through it. Players who don’t know the story won’t have much idea what’s going on. Either way, it’s not very satisfying, so I now know why it kind of disappeared into obscurity while so many other Sierra games have hung around. I’m happy that I got through it and can move onto something else.

One big happy family of strangers

Game 7: The Black Cauldron - Abduction is Progress

Taran Wanderer Journal Entry 1: “Today started like every other day. After a nice walk by the lake, I went back to Caer Dallben to complete my morning Assistant Pig-Keeper duties. Hen Wen started to act very strangely after I fed her and she scurried off to Dallben as soon as she finished her brew. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I went back to the old man’s place, as Hen Wen was in some sort of trance, producing a vision as though through magic! Dallben then proceeded to tell me that Hen Wen is indeed a magical pig, and that there’s some guy out there called The Horned King who’s trying to get his hands on her to use her abilities to find a cauldron. I don’t know exactly what he wants the cauldron for, but I do know that Dallben says I need to get Hen Wen to the Fair Folk to make sure he doesn’t get it. Well some hero I am! I hadn’t walked more than 100 yards before an evil gwythaint attacked us and took Hen Wen away. Since then I’ve spent ages trying to get into the Horned King’s castle to get her back. I’ve climbed a mountain, walked across twisting narrow paths, swum through an alligator infested moat and scaled the walls of the castle, but I’m finally in! Sadly, all I can think about is how hungry and thirsty I am!!!!”

We've sure come a long way since King's Quest haven't we!

I have to admit that I assumed The Black Cauldron would be a fairly leisurely adventure game, especially given it was targeted at children and so much effort went into making sure the interface was clean and simple. Well, either I’ve just got used to ripping through games I’ve already played before, or this game is really quite challenging. I’ve played for two hours and have racked up 70 points out of the possible 230, but it certainly hasn’t been easy going. I’m actually beginning to wonder whether reading the books or watching the movie prior to playing would result in the game making more sense. There are a few unexplained things happening and I’m being forced to take options that I otherwise wouldn’t, just to fit in with the way the game wants me to play. Linearity is fine for story driven adventure games, but The Black Cauldron is confusing in that the at times counterintuitive path it wants you to take is not forced, and certainly not very clear. I’ll give you a rundown of my first session of play to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

I would be such a Great Hero that it would demand capital letters

The beginning is all pretty straight forward. Talk to Dallben, pick up all the food and water and feed Hen Wen. From there I was given the quest and sent on my way with Hen Wen in tow. I was then attacked by flying creatures called gwythaint’s on almost every screen. If I let one catch us, it takes Hen Wen away, leaving me wondering whether or not I was supposed to let that happen. If I leave the screen and come back, as I was required to do in numerous similar instances during all the other Sierra games, the creature would no longer be there, and I’d be free to explore with Hen Wen safe next to me. I decided to hang on to Hen Wen as long as I could, in case there was something I was supposed to do with her, staying close to the edge of screens for safety. Pretty quickly I’d covered every screen I could get to and had very little to show for it. I’d pulled a dagger out of a tree and a lute out of a hole, but was already at the point where there wasn’t much else to try. It didn’t help that the game doesn’t seem to award you for finding items the way Sierra games normally do, so I was stuck on a very depressing 5 points which I got for feeding Hen Wen.

Oh wow! It's an evil gwythaint! Hey there, the pig is over here! Come fetch! I didn't want her anyway!

At this point there were three things I was left wondering about. Firstly, it appeared that I could climb up the mountains, but kept being told that Hen Wen wasn’t able to. Secondly, on a particular screen I was continually informed that there was something small moving around just out of view, but no matter what I did I couldn’t find anything. Finally, I could see on the map that there was a house in the south west, but I could not find any way of getting to it. I had no choice but to let Hen Wen be captured to see whether that opened up any further game options to me, despite how counter-intuitive that seemed to my quest of protecting the pig. Well waddaya know, as soon as Hen Wen was out of the way, the small creature that had been scurrying about came into view demanding food. I gave him an apple and was informed that “Gurgi now Taran’s friend for life”. Unfortunately, as nice as it is to have Gurgi’s friendship, I don’t seem to be able to get any information out of him and he doesn’t follow me when I leave the screen. He does appear from time to time on other screens, but I’ve not yet found a use for him. As an aside, I’ve been playing a tune on the lute on every screen I enter to see whether that does anything, but so far it’s achieved nothing.

I'll be your friend to the end!

So, with nothing else to do and still not being able to find a way to get to the hidden house, I set about trying to climb the mountain, which I was eventually able to do after struggling to find a path through the rocks. I have to tell you I was pretty shocked to find the Horned King’s castle perched at the top of the mountain. I figured I was setting off on some big adventure that would take me through various locations before I reached the big bad dude, but he was in actuality around six screens away from my house! There I was confronted with a moat filled with alligators and no option but to try to cross it. I eventually made it but not before dying around half a dozen times as they all made a rapid beeline towards me. It’s at this point that I found a bug in the game that hindered my progress. While scaling the wall I was told that “since you’ve removed the vines covering the window, you could climb in the window.” After spending a few minutes attempting to enter the window that I’d apparently made accessible, I tried using my knife on it and was told “this dagger easily cuts through these vines”. It was only then that I was able to enter, so I can only think this is a bug.

You're kidding! The Horned King is my nextdoor neighbour!?

I’ve only spent five minutes in the castle, but already I’ve run into the same confusing counterintuitive plot progression. I entered a room, only to be chased by some sort of guard. Instead of running out of the room the way I normally would, I decided to let him catch me to see what would happen. He dumped me in a cell where I uncovered “a beautiful young girl” called Princess Eilonwy. So once again the game rewards me for doing what in every other Sierra game would result in instant death and the plot progresses only after I choose to be captured. Going back to my comment about the game making more sense to a fan of the books or movie, I assume Hen Wen gets stolen away by a gwythaint and Taran finds Princess Eilonwy in the castle prison cell in the actual story, so these decisions would most likely seem pretty obvious. To me, they go against my instincts and adventure game experience, making the game feel very forced and unsatisfying at this point. Oh, and I haven’t yet mentioned the thing that has really frustrated me about The Black Cauldron.

If you show me your magic bauble, I'll show you mine.

Just as I had to do for my character in Below the Root, I have to manage Taran’s consumption throughout The Black Cauldron. Every time he’s thirsty, I have to give him water and every time he’s hungry, I have to give him food. You pick up a loaf of bread and a bottle of water when you set off on your journey and this is probably enough to get you by long enough to find more, but given I’ve been spending a lot of time exploring screens and trying to figure out what to do next, I’m running out pretty quickly, resulting in death. I’m now at the point where I’m in the Horned King’s castle with Princess Eilonwy, trying to find a way out of the tunnels beneath the prison cell, but I keep dying of starvation. I don’t think I have any choice but to start the game again and get back to where I am as quickly as possible now I know what to do. Food management in Below the Root wasn’t that bad because there were stacks of places you could procure more, but that doesn’t appear to be the case in The Black Cauldron unless I’m missing something (which is very possible). I still have a bad taste in my mouth after having to restart Déjà Vu over and over again (hence the name I guess) due to the harsh time limit (and nearly had to do the same thing for money management reasons), so I’d hate to think that I’ll be doing that again for The Black Cauldron.

Thanks for the tip. Maybe next time you can let me drink the water that I'm standing next to!

I guess the final thing to mention before I start over and get back into it is the interface. As I’ve mentioned previously, The Black Cauldron does away with the text parser found in games like King’s Quest and Space Quest. Instead the player uses function keys to USE something (F4), DO something (F6) or LOOK at something (F8). To USE something, you first need to select it from the inventory by pressing F3 and then ENTER on the specific item. As an example, you fill the water flask by pressing F3, scrolling down to Water Flask and pressing ENTER, then pressing F4 to use it. You drink from the Water Flask by pressing F3, scrolling down to Water and pressing ENTER, then pressing F4. That probably makes it seem confusing but it’s really quite simple. I guess there are positives and negatives to having such a limited interface. On the positive side, you don’t have to figure out what command you’re supposed to type or what it actually is you’re looking at. You simply enter a screen, walk around to anything that looks notable and press F8 to look at it or F6 to do something with it. On the negative side, if there’s something on the other side of the screen that you can’t get to, you have no way of requesting information about it. You just can’t say “look at candle”, so you just have to trust that the candle is not relevant. I wish I could trust the game that much!

You want me to do what?! After what happened to King Graham?

Game 7: The Black Cauldron - Introduction

Writing black in pink makes it so much more menacing don't you think?

Settle down by the fire fellow adventurers and make yourself comfortable. I have a tale to tell that will undoubtedly bore a lot of you to tears, but there’s always the hope that one or two of you might indulge The Adventure Gamer’s tendency for overmeticulousness, not to mention his talent for using words that don’t exist. This tale begins way back in 1964, when an author by the name of Lloyd Alexander wrote the first novel in a fantasy series targeted at children. The series would eventually be known as The Chronicles of Prydain, and would be made up of five novels that can be considered a bildungsroman (that means they follow the protagonist from youth to maturity over their course for anyone quite reasonably assuming that was another case of me making a word up). The books would go on to win a few awards, and are often spoken about in the same sentence as C.S. Lewis’ similarly titled The Chronicles of Narnia.

Seeing completed book series always makes me want to read them. Am I alone?

The series is thematically tied to Welsh mythology, in particular the tales of the Mabinogion. Based in the magical land of Prydain, the books focus on Taran Wanderer, the Assistant Pig-Keeper at Caer Dallben. Taran and his companions, Eilonwy (a princess), Fflewddur (a bard), Gurgi (a beast-like creature) and Doli (a dwarf that can go invisible), become involved in a battle to save Prydain from evil sorcerers. Unusually dark considering its audience, the Prydain Chronicles series is generally considered a classic in fantasy literature that contains many valuable lessons for children, while satisfying their hunger for heroism. The success of the novels didn’t go unnoticed by film producers and in 1985, Walt Disney Productions created an animated film based on the series called The Black Cauldron (the name of the second book).

You know you're getting old when they're releasing 25th anniversary additions of movies you saw at the cinema!

The movie, which was directed by Ted Berman and Richard Rich, and included voice acting by the likes of Grant Bardsley, Susan Sheridan, Freddie Jones, Nigel Hawthorne and John Hurt, covered the first two novels in the series while taking other bits and pieces from the remainder. The production ran into trouble when company executives (and censors) found the content of the film to be much too violent and dark for children, so Disney was forced to make significant changes just prior to release. The chopped up finished product was heavily criticised on release for being confusing and for lacking the humour and wit of Alexander’s work. Costing $40 million to make and only recouping $21 million, Black Cauldron was an unmitigated failure, and almost bankrupted Disney in the process. This didn’t stop them from approaching Sierra, requesting that they make a game to accompany the film, or perhaps the wheels were put in motion long before the extent of the damage was known.

Disney understood that there's nothing little innocent children love more than skeleton hordes!

Either way, the man they wanted for the job was Al Lowe, and it wasn’t for the good work he’d done for games like King’s Quest II and III. Instead, Disney had been impressed by one of Al’s early games called Troll’s Tale, as it showed that it was possible to make an adventure game with no need for a text parser. Given the Black Cauldron game was going to be targeted mostly at children, it was important that the interface was as simple to use as possible. They gave Al complete access to the original hand painted backgrounds, the animation cells and the original Elmer Bernstein score, and asked that the game follow the movie closely with slight variations here and there to make it interesting for fans. While Al was certainly instrumental in the design and development of the game, he didn’t actually stick around until its completion. He and Ken Williams (co-owner of Sierra and husband to Roberta) bailed towards the end of the project, leaving Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe (this is where the Two Guys from Andromeda first worked together) to get it across the line. Perhaps they simply lost interest after the movie’s failure?

The original box artwork of a game based on a film based on books based on Welsh mythology

The game was released in 1986 on various platforms including DOS. I’ve downloaded a DOSBox version and managed to source a PDF game manual, reference sheet and a nice looking map, so I’m pretty much ready to go. Personally, I’ve never read The Chronicles of Prydain, and while I’m sure I saw the movie as a child, I can’t remember a single thing about it. I'm therefore relying on the game manual to give me the back-story of which the following is a summary (the actual backstory is eight pages long):

Dallben, a powerful enchanter, began searching for the prophesized hero that would eventually free Prydain from enslavement. One day he came across a battlefield where many lay dead, including women and children. He heard a cry from the trees where he found an infant whose parents must have been killed. He took the boy in and named him Taran. Like most boys, Taran longed for adventure, but Dallben instead gave him the title of Assistant Pig-Keeper, with his main responsibility being to look after the pig Hen Wen. As it turns out, Hen Wen has special powers that if used by the evil Horned King will assist him in finding the Black Cauldron, which will in turn give him the power to rule or destroy the world. As Taran, the player needs to make sure the Horned King doesn’t find Hen-Wen and ultimately, to destroy the Black Cauldron so he can never use it.

OK, I think I’ve got it...save the pig, save the world!

This is definitely the nicest map to come with an adventure game thus far