Adventure Gamers - Forums

I’d love to have joined in with this CP - unfortunately I just don’t have the time to commit to it at the mo but have been following the thread avidly! I started the game a few times in the past but gave up because I found the interface too whizzy but tried again after the playthrough started & it now doesn’t seem so bad! When I do get time to get on with it I’m not sure I’ll be able to catch up but you never know!

I enjoyed Gold & Glory: Road to El Dorado too (on PS 1) but did find it very insubstantial in a lot of ways. 

rtrooney - 28 January 2014 08:56 PM

Winfrey - 28 January 2014 01:00 PM

Took me awhile to figure out how to get past the guard.. lol.
Afterward I kept wanting to help him down so he would not be left hanging

As I get email alerts for replies in this thread I was able to see what you wrote. But, In real time it is almost impossible to read yellow text on a white background.

Tim, if you click & drag across the yellow text in the post it highlights in blue - well, it did for me!

Finished El Dorado.

Up to now
1) We destroyed the escape plans of 4 prisoners in Atlantis
2) Probably destroyed the works of a potter in Atlantis
3) Stolen an incredibly large amount of dramoi from an Egyptian slave
4) Vandalized a windmill
5) Made an Atlantian boatman rich
6) Left a guard in El Dorado hanging from his own baloon
7) Stolen a talisman from a small boy in El Dorado
8 ) Stolen a great deal of other valuable objects/artifacts, such as gold from El Dorado or healing water from the Atlantian sacred Temple
9) Gained illegal access to both Temples and secret rooms in El Dorado and Atlantis
10) Do nothing to prevent everyone from dying the next day.

I wander what other illegal and horrible acts await us in the next act!

I’m done with this section. It was OK, but a bit short and obvious. I was expecting to have to find 3 pieces of something, but there was actually only that one puzzle. When Arthur said that we had defeated all the elemental guardians, I went “What? Was that it?” (and then spent 3 minutes trying to work out what the elemental guardians were; the flames was fire and I guess the pool was water?).

I really don’t like the whole “jumping between time periods”. It takes a while to remember what was going on where, and it just breaks the flow of the game for no clear reason. I know there’s stuff I should remember about Shangri-La, but I’ve forgotten most of it already.

I can’t say that I’m really looking forward to the next part. All the new-agey BS in my short trip there annoyed me to no end and I’m not particularly eager to go through more of it. Oh well.

Miscellaneous excerpts from my notes:

o (returning from Atlantis) What was I supposed to be doing here? -> look for paedo-shaman? (the shaman actually ended up being the most only likeable character in that period)
o WILL THAT BIRD STFU?!!? EVERY. FUCKING. SECOND!
o Fanatical balloon guard is hilarious
o Farmer about his son: “I sense a great man in that young boy.” Yeah. Too bad he’s gonna die tomorrow.
o Arthur is getting on my nerves
o Why didn’t these morons solve the pool puzzle themselves???
o I like the idea that the lazy, stupid farm boy had no special destiny and the shaman only dreamt about him because Gage was disguised as him
o (end cutscene) So Agent 3 is “Michelle” now? What have you guys been up to while I was gone?

So, it’s so hard to untie a rope in El Dorado that we have to travel in time to get a cutting object

Sefir - 29 January 2014 01:53 PM

Finished El Dorado.

Up to now
1) We destroyed the escape plans of 4 prisoners in Atlantis
2) Probably destroyed the works of a potter in Atlantis
3) Stolen an incredibly large amount of dramoi from an Egyptian slave
4) Vandalized a windmill
5) Made an Atlantian boatman rich
6) Left a guard in El Dorado hanging from his own baloon
7) Stolen a talisman from a small boy in El Dorado
8 ) Stolen a great deal of other valuable objects/artifacts, such as gold from El Dorado or healing water from the Atlantian sacred Temple
9) Gained illegal access to both Temples and secret rooms in El Dorado and Atlantis
10) Do nothing to prevent everyone from dying the next day.

I wander what other illegal and horrible acts await us in the next act!

Lol Can’t wait to see whats next for Gage - The time traveller troll! Monks beware

Kurufinwe - 30 January 2014 10:56 AM

I’m done with this section. It was OK, but a bit short and obvious. I was expecting to have to find 3 pieces of something, but there was actually only that one puzzle. When Arthur said that we had defeated all the elemental guardians, I went “What? Was that it?” (and then spent 3 minutes trying to work out what the elemental guardians were; the flames was fire and I guess the pool was water?).

I think I dozed during the shaman story, I had no idea what was going on in this time period, good thing the puzzles were not that hard… I found all the religious stuff boring…

Kurufinwe - 30 January 2014 10:56 AM

Miscellaneous excerpts from my notes:

o WILL THAT BIRD STFU?!!? EVERY. FUCKING. SECOND!

Yes!!! So annoying…

I finished Atlantis. Don’t know if I’ll have time to catch up completely though.

First thing, the acting is considerably worse than I remember. Was the commissioner really this bad in Buried in Time? I seem to remember liking him both there and in Pegasus Prime. It’s telling that when I finally met Sinclair in Atlantis (or are the spoiler tags unnecessary now that the playthtrough has moved on?), I thought his performance was one of the better ones. I still don’t really mind though. I guess I’m a sucker for live actors in video games; it really helps my immersion in the game. To a certain extent only, to be sure, but this is far from bad enough to detract from the experience. And how come there is so much dismay for the Nubian (?) ferryman? I could totally relate to his life philosophy. And for Arthur, despite because of your silly jokes:

I also think it makes sense that you need to jump a bit back and forth between the time periods. I do think it would have been too easy otherwise, and at least in the case of obtaining gold it makes sense. The puzzles are generally on the easy side in this game - with the one exception. If you’ve played the game, you know what I’m talking about (I think it’s been mentioned earlier in the thread as well). In Buried in Time, I found the challenge more to my taste - just a little bit harder than this.

diego - 27 January 2014 07:44 PM

harald - 27 January 2014 09:34 AM

I didn’t play the DVD version that GOG seems to have.

Even though there’re no major differences, you should probably give it the whirl - cutscenes are really of a high quality.

Yes, I remember the cutscenes in the CD version being at least as grainy as the gameplay environments. I’m also really enjoying Arthur’s hints. I was too stubborn to use them the first time I played. Some of his best lines are among the hints. Oh, and I can finally examine the inventory items! I could never get that to work the last time I played (even in native Windows 98), which on the other hand gave some of the puzzles a well needed difficulty increase.

Another random thought. You remember the first puzzle in Atlantis (pre-disaster)? You need to turn the windmill blades so that the broken one ends up by the window. This puzzle never really made sense to me until I heard Arthur’s hints just now. It was easy enough to solve anyway, but it still seems far-fetched that I wouldn’t be able to climb past a wing that wasn’t broken.

It’s fun to read your thoughts on the game. I will keep following the thread even if I don’t have time to play along.

I’ve been thinking about how Agent 3 managed to jump around to all these places after initially arriving in Atlantis (I realized that she couldn’t have left her time suit there the whole time), and I think I’ve figured out the answer. In the opening cutscene, she talks about being uncomfortable about landing in Atlantis, which makes me think that this is the first time she was there, right after Arthur had infected her suit. And Arthur later talks to Gage about the flux/vortex area they enter on their way to Atlantis, saying that he took Agent 3 there right after he and Agent 3 left Atlantis (a difficult place to honeymoon he says), because he thought it was safer than if he and Agent 3 remained in Atlantis. Arthur also mentions that he knows that Gage was mind-wiped, something he wouldn’t know if he had remained in Atlantis in an abandoned jumpsuit all the time.

So I’ve arrived at the (shocking) theory (not sure if this is a spoiler or not):

Arthur has been in cahoots with Agent 3 from the beginning of the game. He helped her find all the instances of aliens destroying highly developed Earth civilizations, took her to Vega Thalon to wait for a TSA agent to show up, and then went with the time jumpsuit back to Atlantis to be there for whichever TSA agent showed up (Arthur mentions that simply sending the jumpsuit back to the TSA will end the time distortions that got Gage to Atlantis in the first place). So the whole time Gage was discovering all the newly destroyed areas in Atlantis, Shangri La and El Dorado, Arthur was merely letting Gage connect the dots—he knew exactly where they were heading at each step, and he knew exactly where Agent 3 was.

Does this make sense?

Now I have finished El Dorado too. I forgot how short that was. The first time I played, I spent HOURS trying to work out how to get the main city. Felt like a real cheat that we never got over there. You’d have thought at least the Shaman’s balloon would have had that option.

I don’t know why people don’t like Arthur either. He’s not my very favorite sidekick [spoiler][That’d be Wizards Dalboz or Trembyle, but Arthur is fun too.][/spoiler] I set him to “chatty” because I just about remember the answers anyway, and I wanted as much fun and interaction as possible. I agree, some of Arthur’s funniest lines are in “chatty” mode.

I liked the Ferryman in Atlantis. I found myself smiling back at him fairly often. I think I liked about everybody there, to one degree or another. Too bad we were just about a disaster for everyone we met…

I like your poem, Diego

Have to agree about that bird too…

As for El Dorado, I liked the inhabitants even better [spoiler][ - aside from the second guard. Can we send that pompous so-and-so out to meet the aliens by himself?][/spoiler] Its sad we don’t have a way to save the likable people we meet. My favorite was the guy doing the murals.

The balloon guard was actually amusing. Agreed that simply loosening the rope would have made more sense. You know what else would make sense? Gage actually having a few supplies with him when leaving TSA each time. Honestly, if they would just issue the guy a Swiss Army knife, a sturdy lighter, and maybe some of that jet-fuelled cheese whiz, Gage would be so much more efficient.

I also agree that the game seemed to be hinting that the Shaman’s vision of the boy hero was really Gage, but I decided to be a buzzard and wear the old Shaman’s face for most of the chapter. Buahaha! Take that, Destiny! I like the think that maybe the boy and the others I liked were among the survivors. Maybe the boy lived up to their hopes by helping the survivors rebuild. After all, he was probably sleeping behind the well again when the aliens attacked the next day, so all he had to do was climb down into the well and he would likely have been safe enough.

Becky - 30 January 2014 07:57 PM

So I’ve arrived at the (shocking) theory (not sure if this is a spoiler or not):
Arthur has been in cahoots with Agent 3 from the beginning of the game.

Does this make sense?

[spoiler]This makes perfect sense to me. How else was Agent 3 able to set all those messages up? Arthur might have ‘fessed up had Gage remembered him, because Gage had been a very good friend, but he knows Gage is mind-wiped, so he plays it smart and tries to win him over anew - and jog Gage’s memory at every opportunity. From Agent 3’s & Arthur’s perspective, Gage is a great guy who is being duped by the establishment. He has to be enlightened as to what it is really going on before he can completely trusted again. Gage thinks of himself as a friend to the Cyrollans. I feel sure that Arthur would want to hear Gage expressing some intelligent doubts about the Cyrollans AND the Commissioner’s..er..compliant attitude before he did more than spoon-feed Gage hints on where to go next.[/spoiler]

diego - 31 January 2014 08:08 AM

If a playthrough participant finishes the first playthrough chapter and then abandons the playthrough - he’s to pay $1 million, take rotten tomatoes thrown by other players, and of course, write on the chalkboard:

The tomatoes are in my fridge for over a year, since you abandoned the CCS playthrough (you heartless b*****d). You still owe me some money though!!