Anyone else not "get" love for Minsk?

[factotum]

Come on, literally every article about Lord British, even non-gaming ones, mention the series, because it was that important to the medium as a whole.

Um, no, an article about Richard Garriott will mention Ultima because it's that important to *his life*, not because it's important to RPGs as a whole. It's rather less likely than an article on, say, Chris Avellone will mention Ultima, because he wasn't involved in its creation--his fame comes from the Fallout series.

[Psyren]

Um, no, an article about Richard Garriott will mention Ultima because it's that important to *his life*, not because it's important to RPGs as a whole. It's rather less likely than an article on, say, Chris Avellone will mention Ultima, because he wasn't involved in its creation--his fame comes from the Fallout series.

It's what put him on the map, because it's so iconic and sold so well. Thus the game series itself is newsworthy. "This is the guy who created Ultima, therefore we're writing an article about him" is itself proof that Ultima is a thing worth writing about.

[The_Jackal]

Quest For Glory series would like a word. Or Final Fantasy VI. Or the entire adventure game genre, depending on how you define things.

Please read my remarks in their entirety, rather than cherry-pick my conclusion and attempt to make it mean something I didn't infer.

[Rodin]

Please read my remarks in their entirety, rather than cherry-pick my conclusion and attempt to make it mean something I didn't infer.

Your entire quote:

"1998 (the year Baldur's Gate was released) was a seminal year in computer gaming. Computers were reaching levels of power, sophistication and accessibility which could support good voice acting, decent quality graphics, and offer developers the chance to not just offer gameplay, but also tell a story. Just a few years before, audio in games was limited to bleeps and squawks, with text underwritten to convey meaning. Not just coincidentally, it's also the year Half-Life came out. Thief came out introducing a now staple of the action game genre: Stealth.

That's why Minsc is remembered fondly: He's one of the first, if not THE first memorable character from a good computer RPG."

All of that is addressed in my post. Games with extremely good story-telling had existed for years prior. So had games with great gameplay. Games with both had also existed for years (see: Quest for Glory IV, with every character fully voiced and narrated by John Rhys-freaking-Davies.) Wing Commander 2 had voiced NPCs in 1991, a full seven years prior. The vast majority of Baldur's Gate itself was text.

Minsc was memorable because Minsc was a fun character in a great game. That's it. To imply that Baldur's Gate was some sort of massive leap forward technologically is to ignore the history of videogames up to that point. And I'm really not bagging on Baldur's Gate by saying that - it WAS the savior of the RPG industry in the West at the time, by being a really good RPG at a time when they were hitting a bit of a slump.

Your conclusion was that Minsc was the FIRST memorable character from an RPG, and that's simply crap. I don't begrudge Minsc his popularity, but your post came off VERY dismissive of the games I grew up with, and using bad logic to support the argument sets me off.

[danzibr]

Well... we're talking about *computer* RPG's, right? So FFVI doesn't apply. Lots of great, memorable characters come to mind from my youth, before I played Baldur's Gate (and I played it shortly after it came out), but truth be told, not a one is from a computer game. But also, to be fair, a vast majority of my games were console games.

Oh wait! Yeah, King's Quest. People in those games were memorable, and totally PC.

[T.G. Oskar]

I'd say Minsc's popularity is based on a "perfect storm" condition - key elements that made him memorable, beyond other characters of his own game. Anyone who has played BG will probably remember Imoen, Edwin, Jaheira, Viconia and Minsc than, say...what's the name of the Paladin NPC you get before going into Baldur's Gate proper?

Spoiler

Show

Ajantis, but it's meant to state a point.

However, when thinking about memorable characters, he jumps to mind, over the other three I mentioned (whiny brat that survived despite the devs trying to kill her; megalomaniac Red Wizard with a huge fit of bad luck despite being extremely competent; hot warrior-shaman who works as surrogate woman and THEN potential love interest after a certain event; hot Drow Cleric that's not a clone of Drizzt, but not a cookie-cutter Drow). All of them had memorable voice acting, great character design, great backstory (maybe save Imoen, but she eventually develops into a full-fledged character of her own), are gained relatively early (Edwin is gained after Chapter 2, Viconia if you choose a detour)...but what makes Minsc special is that little something that few other characters can attest. I mean, Minsc had a tag-along character (Dynaheir, AKA Ms. "These shoes are made for walkin', and that is what they do!"), and she isn't as fondly remembered (mostly because of what happens in BG2 that makes her unavailable; same thing for Khalid). It's the same something that made Drizzt popular enough to transcend its media (books) and be officially considered a D&D mascot character. That little something...I really can't explain, but he has it, and it makes him popular. Maybe it's his man-child attitude, his zany hijinks, his utter manliness...very few things make him unlikeable, IMO. Very few NPCs reach that level of recognition.

Perhaps it's also that he was given a lot more prominence in the sequel (a reason why veteran BG players will fondly remember Imoen, Edwin, Viconia and Jaheira a lot more) and kept that special something that made him stand out. Once he stood out, he was marketed a lot further (a comic book series where he was the spotlight-stealing character; guest appearances in a D&D adventure and in one of the D&D MMOs), and that furthered his popularity. Considering the age difference, what would be the chances that, say, someone like Viconia (a Drow, and therefore long-lived) could be marketed the same way? You know, besides one of the endings denying it so?

Going into popularity and stuff really won't mean anything - at least, the popularity of a game won't truly explain that. Being recognized as a marketing tool and then used...perhaps that's the actual reason he gets so much love. I honestly expect Wizards of the Coast to do the same to other characters in the rest of their series (I dunno; besides Elminster and Drizzt, you could get Mordenkainen from Greyhawk, King Boranel from Eberron and Raistlin Majere from Dragonlance and give them the rockstar treatment). Nothing against Minsc, but the other realms need some of that love.

[Rodin]

Well... we're talking about *computer* RPG's, right? So FFVI doesn't apply. Lots of great, memorable characters come to mind from my youth, before I played Baldur's Gate (and I played it shortly after it came out), but truth be told, not a one is from a computer game. But also, to be fair, a vast majority of my games were console games.

Oh wait! Yeah, King's Quest. People in those games were memorable, and totally PC.

SNES is in fact a computer, but terminology niggles aside (the word we should be using is probably "PC", or possibly "desktop"), it is true that the pool becomes quite a bit shallower. You can also delineate it even further, and say that the old Sierra games were "Adventure" games and not RPGs, but that's a distinction I've never really been comfortable with. Quest For Glory typically gets classed as Adventure, despite having a fully statted combat system, random encounters, and boss battles.

[GungHo]

SNES is in fact a computer, but terminology niggles aside (the word we should be using is probably "PC", or possibly "desktop"), it is true that the pool becomes quite a bit shallower. You can also delineate it even further, and say that the old Sierra games were "Adventure" games and not RPGs, but that's a distinction I've never really been comfortable with. Quest For Glory typically gets classed as Adventure, despite having a fully statted combat system, random encounters, and boss battles.

The "QFG is not an RPG" folks are hung up on the SCI interface and the Sierra logo. If folks are willing to grant RPG status to Deus Ex, they can give it to QFG.

[Triaxx]

Deus is an action RPG, at least how I define the term. I afford QfG the same status.

[Psyren]

I agree QFG is an RPG but it's easy to see why people are iffy on granting it the title. It has the "Sierra Adventure Game" problem of instakilling you for clicking on the wrong thing, entering the wrong screen, or being a nanosecond too slow to react to something - and will often do this no matter what your stats are. "Gotcha deaths" like this in an adventure game are par for the course, but in an RPG can be pretty immersion-breaking.

[Winthur]

instakilling you for clicking on the wrong thing, entering the wrong screen

Baldur's Gate: talking to Nereida Shoal with your main character; fingering Sarevok in the Duchal Palace without the evidence, which looks like a generic scroll and can be either discarded or dropped by some "I'm carrying too much, your item is on the ground" shenanigans
Baldur's Gate 2: if you go into the first battle with Jon Irenicus without enlisting the prisoners' help, you die
Fallout: going to The Glow without realizing you should take Rad-X the moment you enter the screen (goes with the "being a nanosecond too slow to react to something" point).
Fallout 2: the NCR guards insist that you holster your weapon within town, but if you decide to warp into one of the town's districts upon arrival to save some time and just happen to lose focus a bit, you can end up in the middle of the street with your gun out and turn one of the central locations in the game hostile, which will probably screw you over and might result in death
Gothic: telling Gomez you know Y'Berion even after you've had the chance of meeting the guy results in getting wrecked instantly
Age of Decadence, a game from last year: fail to learn certain skills (the devs said they don't like how, allegedly, most RPGs let you unlock all options within a single playthrough, and wanted to introduce stat variance) and you can just lock yourself out of completing the game
numerous roguelikes

by stretch of definition, literally every RPG: walking into an encounter you were not prepared for, or even just your very first "You Have Been Waylaid By Enemies, Defend Yourself!".

Note that early QfG entries have some of those moments where a player might want to have a list of "moments where you should be wary of needing to start the game all over again", but by QfG4 they basically don't exist, and even in the earlier games they weren't nearly as blatant as in the other Sierra titles. Heroine's Quest, the modern inheritor of the formula, does not let you screw yourself over that easily either.

being a nanosecond too slow to react to something

Dark Souls

"Gotcha deaths" like this in an adventure game are par for the course, but in an RPG can be pretty immersion-breaking.

It's all about knowing what's gonna happen ahead of you and learning, so most oldschool roguelikes (which contain pretty much most computer RPG elements) or particularly some more sadistic dungeon crawlers.

This thread has run its course if it became a "what is an RPG" discussion; these are never very fruitful, and lead to some of those "San Andreas is more of an RPG than Divine Divinity" conclusions. I'd say QfG is definitely an RPG hybrid at the very least.

[wumpus]

Your entire quote:
Minsc was memorable because Minsc was a fun character in a great game. That's it. To imply that Baldur's Gate was some sort of massive leap forward technologically is to ignore the history of videogames up to that point. And I'm really not bagging on Baldur's Gate by saying that - it WAS the savior of the RPG industry in the West at the time, by being a really good RPG at a time when they were hitting a bit of a slump.

[tl;dr] here I argue that it really was technologically impressive. Not that such was the point, it really overwhelmed you with the story and how well it stuck with the AD&D ruleset (and Minsc. Don't forget Minsc). But it did require a certain amount of technology that didn't exist a few years earlier.

I'm really not sure you could do Baldur's Gate much earlier than they did. Wasn't it built for 640x480 and went to 800x600 in stock (BG2 could do more)? The 3d rendering of all the graphics was done offline *slowly*, but I suspect it used Intel-based workstations running NT or OS/2 (or possibly Linux), go any earlier and they would need to spend SGI money. Compact Discs had to be cheap enough to include 5 discs, and common enough that you could afford to *not* sell it on floppy (Yes, MS shipped windows 95 on floppy as well as disc. A *lot* of floppies).

Just because Baldur's Gate wasn't Neverwinter Nights (which replaced BG's simple pre-rendering and sprites with full direct-x rendering doesn't mean you could ship much earlier. I suspect they started assuming that it would ship when it was ground breaking, but that a project like that is going to slip a lot*. In the end, it still was technologically impressive for the day.

Yes, today's tablet friendly game was yesterday's "bring your beast to it's knees". Mostly by filling the entire hard drive with all 5 of those discs [to speed things up**] and not in any CPU-limited way, but it did use a ton of resources. A common tale I've heard for decades is that "in the old days gameplay trumped graphics". False: nearly all the old "great" games pushed the graphics as far as they could go. The difference is that a small programming team *could* push them as far as they could go. Nowadays, you can't ship a game such that you couldn't find a way to pay the artist team ten times the budget to keep creating textures, new meshes and whatnot. In BG's time, the limit was pretty much 5 compact discs (which is still huge, but I suspect a lot of it was pre-rendered bitmaps, video, and sound bites).

* even so it had bugs. After playing through BG2 and starting again, I couldn't believe how many bugs there were (and fixed in BG2).
** I doubt I had the room for BG1, and this is remembered from BG2. I'm not sure Minsc would be remembered if there was only BG1.

[The_Jackal]

Your conclusion was that Minsc was the FIRST memorable character from an RPG, and that's simply crap. I don't begrudge Minsc his popularity, but your post came off VERY dismissive of the games I grew up with, and using bad logic to support the argument sets me off.

Any dismissiveness is a matter of interpretation, not intent. My point about technology is about accessibility and articulation. You might have a very memorable character who expresses themselves via written text, but that's simply not as compelling as fully voiced dialogue, at least not to the masses of gamers who remember BG/BGII fondly. There are certainly no lack of great science fiction novels that predate Star Wars, yet Star Wars' revolutionary technical achievements vaulted it to a new plateau of popularity and recognition. That's the analogue I'm trying to make about Baldur's Gate. If anything, I'd say the accomplishments of prior RPGs are even greater, as they had to do more with less, to make a compelling story work with only pixelated sprites, bleeps and squawks, and text descriptions, at least in terms of telling a good story with compelling characters. I just didn't feel the impulse to explicitly indemnify my remarks in that manner in my first post.

[Psyren]

*snip*

Your analogies don't hold water. Look at some of the gotcha deaths in QFG. You can walk into an alleyway and two random thugs - not Irenicus, not Drizz't, not bloody Sarevok himself etc - just two no-name footpads, will insta-kill you without a combat sequence if you don't have your license, regardless of your combat skill or HP. Or standing in front of a dart board too long gets you killed even if your HP is high enough to get hacked with an axe. Immersion-breaking things like that.

Instakills themselves in RPGs are okay if the foe is obviously much more powerful than you. In QFG, many aren't. Sierra was just doing what they always do - padding gameplay and using difficulty as a form of copy-protection.

[GloatingSwine]

Your analogies don't hold water. Look at some of the gotcha deaths in QFG. You can walk into an alleyway and two random thugs - not Irenicus, not Drizz't, not bloody Sarevok himself etc - just two no-name footpads, will insta-kill you without a combat sequence if you don't have your license, regardless of your combat skill or HP. Or standing in front of a dart board too long gets you killed even if your HP is high enough to get hacked with an axe. Immersion-breaking things like that.

Instakills themselves in RPGs are okay if the foe is obviously much more powerful than you. In QFG, many aren't. Sierra was just doing what they always do - padding gameplay and using difficulty as a form of copy-protection.

The one with Nereida was about that.

You talk to the wrong NPC with your main character, game over. In dialogue. No way out.

[Psyren]

The one with Nereida was about that.

You talk to the wrong NPC with your main character, game over. In dialogue. No way out.

Was Nereida a random, no-name thug, the likes of which you could beat the hell out of in random encounters by the dozen?

[GloatingSwine]

Was Nereida a random, no-name thug, the likes of which you could beat the hell out of in random encounters by the dozen?

She's a Sirine, a reasonably common monster in the zone she's in that your party would otherwise chunk handily.

Except you can talk to her.

The character that talks to her dies instantly.

If the main character does it, it's game over.

[Winthur]

Your analogies don't hold water. Look at some of the gotcha deaths in QFG. You can walk into an alleyway and two random thugs - not Irenicus, not Drizz't, not bloody Sarevok himself etc - just two no-name footpads, will insta-kill you without a combat sequence if you don't have your license, regardless of your combat skill or HP.

The Nereida Shoal example is a straight-up example of a gotcha death, but let's go further.

What if I am playing a solo Sorcerer or Cleric and took my sweet ass time finding Imoen, instead solving all of Chapter 2, getting up to the highest echelons of spellcasting and easily being able to match Irenicus himself at that time? Or what if I was simply an all-immune Mustard Jelly with some defensive spell layers on top? How to justify the fact that no defensive spell can prevent me from getting instantly erased out of existence if I approach him without the prisoners?

Even in the Duchal Palace case, no matter if I imbued myself with all the rare potions in the game and raised my spell/fire resistance into tha stratosphere, I could very well just be cast into a fight with a ton of pissed off nobles and a 17th level spell resistant demigod himself - but no, instead I get snuffed out with an instant Flamestrike.

For all the other examples on my list, they would work under your "gotcha death" criteria.

In an adventure game, you primarily progress by solving the game's puzzles. Failure to do so will result in death (the Sierra way) or just lots and lots of trying-to-combine-jello-with-Portable-Statue-of-Theodore-Roosevelt (LucasArts et al.).

You meet the bandits in an alley - you have the right item to pass by them - you defeat the puzzle. It's just how this particular piece of gameplay works, that's the convention; both the BG examples ruin immersion, but are unlikely to be achieved in normal play or bothered with much. "Oh, I've done something wrong here in this video game, better reload and see what's there to do."

In an RPG, you progress by solving the game's encounters. Which are puzzles in and of themselves, only more open; in case of QfG, people finding its deaths iffy are missing the forest for the trees - QfG series specifically has the three different characters to introduce some variety to the usual, linear progress of the genre. A Fighter takes on enemies head-on and climbs steep walls; a Mage takes them out with spells and teleports on the other side; a Thief sneaks out and finds a different passage.

But, in any case: if you get waylaid by enemies early on, you might not even have a chance to react before you get shot in the gut thrice and die. You'll probably reload, consider your options and figure that it's a good idea to put those Invisibility Potions on every character's quick slot. You've solved this particular encounter.

Whether they are fair or not, both genres are fully capable of dishing out cheap shots.

In Baldur's Gate, you might insert a location and before you understand what's going on, you might have gotten backstabbed in the ass by (as in the fight in Neb's headquarters in BG2) the Rune Assassins with their high backstab modifiers and going invisible the moment the dialogue plays out. In Final Fantasy 1, after a long, grueling dungeon crawl in the Marsh Cave, you might be unlucky to roll a 6 Sorcerers combo, which might just cast their sole spell (which just happens to be an instant erase with a high chance of succeeding) and you'll die with your stats having no say on the matter; this guy lost an Ironman playthrough of the game simply by rolling a combo of Sorcerers that got Monsters strike first and completely eviscerated him. In Wizardry 1, the same can and will happen to you, except they're called Ninjas this time and are way more numerous and common in the lower levels. In ADOM, where you have to be a cannibal to survive the early game, eating a kobold will make you Sick, which is extremely dangerous and will result in death in a few turns later - mind you, your diet up to this point did include goblins or giant spiders to no ill effect.

In most of these cases, those annoyances are solved by simply loading the game, noting in your brain, in the meta-gaming slot, that this is how you respond to those encounters, and moving on. The bandits punched you out and you didn't get to take control - okay, the narration wants me to deal with this encounter elsewise.

Sure, it's not perfect, but gaming evolved since then, and there are some genre trappings that games upheld for a reason. I was pissed off when in 2012's Hitman Absolution, a series about figuring out solutions to open-ended puzzles and stealthily assassinating characters in your favourite simulation, you couldn't fiber wire a particularly annoying jerk because the game would immediately put you in cutscene land even if you'd have managed to sneak up on him, and instead forces you to do some inane puzzles. But in games with this kind of background, and in that day and age (the late 90s), it's obviously more passable.

QfG series, notably, is way less intensive on unwinnable situations - you know, the kind that lock you out of victory because you screwed up 10 hours of gameplay earlier - than other Sierra games (I don't think QfG4 has any), and honestly, otherwise death in an adventure game is really only an alternative to standing there for 15 minutes and wondering if you can pair tofu with mustache to create a petrol bomb.

And if we're talking solely immersion issues, re: the dartboard example is obviously supposed to be humorous, HP isn't necessarily a measure of how strong and invigorating is your blood (feel free to handwave it as "fighting spirit", inner strength, resolve or w/e), the thugs might have surprised you/simply overpowered you/been more savvy than you. If immersion is primary for an RPG to work, I would question that statement in a genre where 90% of casual playthroughs like to do things like resting for 20 days in one spot to heal by natural rest, or how most RPGs have a non-existent sense of urgency, letting you screw around when literal hell is spilling into the world.

[LibraryOgre]

Eh, I figure it's somewhat generational... if you were playing games at a certain time, you're a lot more likely to love Minsc than if you encountered him later. Kinda like how I just don't get Pokemon... doesn't mean there's something wrong with Pokemon, it just didn't hit at a point where I'd be interested in it.

He's a big, lovable, galoot... and very useful. Compare him with the other ranger, Kivan. He's quiet, withdrawn, with little overt character. Kivan's "player" (i.e. under the idea that the game is being played around the table) no doubt thought he was making a great character... tragic backstory, cool, quiet loner type. But, really, he's the kind of character who is boring to play with, because he thinks grunting and quiet coolness are awesome, but really gives you nothing but a stat block to react to. Minsc, comparitively, is the sort of character who's either fun or annoying.

[Psyren]

She's a Sirine, a reasonably common monster in the zone she's in that your party would otherwise chunk handily.

Except you can talk to her.

The character that talks to her dies instantly.

If the main character does it, it's game over.

She's still a powerful being, not a random human crook. Moreover, you CAN fight and kill her, even on sight if you want. Against the guys in QFG, if you can't solve the "puzzle" then you have no option but to avoid their alley regardless of your strength, and god forbid you ever go back there after your business is concluded. It's not at all comparable.

[Keltest]

She's still a powerful being, not a random human crook. Moreover, you CAN fight and kill her, even on sight if you want. Against the guys in QFG, if you can't solve the "puzzle" then you have no option but to avoid their alley regardless of your strength, and god forbid you ever go back there after your business is concluded. It's not at all comparable.

I would also suggest that the unavoidable game over is probably more of a "Devs didn't think things through" problem rather than a "devs are cruel and sadistic" problem, given that you get any other party member back should you allow the quest to proceed as intended.

[Psyren]

I would also suggest that the unavoidable game over is probably more of a "Devs didn't think things through" problem rather than a "devs are cruel and sadistic" problem, given that you get any other party member back should you allow the quest to proceed as intended.

This too. In reality they should have disabled the "Instant Bhaal Resurrection" trigger that comes from the main character's death for that sequence, at least unless you choose not to have her rez the main character immediately. But it's a far cry from what the Sierra devs are notorious for.

[Rodin]

Still finding this entire discussion bizarre, since none of it even remotely talks about what it means to be an RPG, nevermind the original topic of the thread.

[Winthur]

Still finding this entire discussion bizarre, since none of it even remotely talks about what it means to be an RPG, nevermind the original topic of the thread.

I pointed it out before: "what is an RPG" threads are just giant pile-ups of different positions with nobody being able to come up with a clear consensus, and this thread devolving into one [especially since good answers to the original question have already been given, and I don't even disagree that much with Psyren; I find it kinda funny how we somehow always end up at least having some argument in any debate threads] is honestly grounds for abandonment.

With that in mind, I'd rather not continue the "is QfG an RPG" threadline - especially since Psyren actually agrees it is, so we're just arguing about details - although I could argue my case further.

But yeah, tl;dr: Minsc is a memorable character from a highly popular RPG series: take your pick whether Baldur's Gate is a genre-revolutionizing phenomenon, a classic RPG from a golden age or, as some harsh people [that I don't belong to] could say, an aged game with lots of shortcomings carried mostly on a great engine, colourful graphics and voice actor support; Minsc has easy mascot qualities [the voice of Jim Cummings, a quirky hamster pet, highly quotable sayings]; Minsc is also fleshed out in both BG1 and BG2, and it's safe to say that due to extensive writing and focus on banter and interparty relations, BG2 characters stand out more, Minsc in particular as you are almost certain to have him in the party for a while due to how Irenicus Chateau works.

I don't think there's that much more to say.

[Forum Explorer]

Really Winthur? You didn't mention the most 'gotcha' death of them all in BG2? Those damn lightning bolt traps. Narrow corridor, set one off, get hit 3-4 times and just watch your health bars melt. Usually killing your MC if they are in front. Reload, and set on 'look for traps' is the answer to that 'puzzle', but it seems to be just as much of a gotcha death then not having license to not get gibbed by thieves.

[Keltest]

Really Winthur? You didn't mention the most 'gotcha' death of them all in BG2? Those damn lightning bolt traps. Narrow corridor, set one off, get hit 3-4 times and just watch your health bars melt. Usually killing your MC if they are in front. Reload, and set on 'look for traps' is the answer to that 'puzzle', but it seems to be just as much of a gotcha death then not having license to not get gibbed by thieves.

If you made it far enough to encounter the lightning bolt traps and you haven't figured out that you need a rogue to look for traps before going anywhere, I'm pretty sure that's your own fault. The first dungeon is filled with kobolds and their traps, and it only gets worse from there.

[Kish]

"Keep Find Traps on and have your thief always go first when in dungeons" is the answer to that "puzzle," and it's less a "gotcha" and more something the game expects you to know because duh (and explicitly tells you on one of the loading screens, too).

[danzibr]

This too. In reality they should have disabled the "Instant Bhaal Resurrection" trigger that comes from the main character's death for that sequence, at least unless you choose not to have her rez the main character immediately. But it's a far cry from what the Sierra devs are notorious for.

I always disliked that.

Really Winthur? You didn't mention the most 'gotcha' death of them all in BG2? Those damn lightning bolt traps. Narrow corridor, set one off, get hit 3-4 times and just watch your health bars melt. Usually killing your MC if they are in front. Reload, and set on 'look for traps' is the answer to that 'puzzle', but it seems to be just as much of a gotcha death then not having license to not get gibbed by thieves.

As others have mentioned, of course Find Traps should always be on.

Also, I'm suddenly reminded of the great many ways to die in King's Quest games.

[LibraryOgre]

Also, I'm suddenly reminded of the great many ways to die in King's Quest games.

The Night Gaunts will get you if you don't watch out!

[Psyren]

Also, I'm suddenly reminded of the great many ways to die in King's Quest games.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...anyDeathsOfYou

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anoD...27B6BE2B64BC9D

Hope you didn't have anything you needed to get done today