EndlessWaves: After putting maybe five hours into Avernum: Escape from the pit, doing the quests in the north, retrieving the mayor's necklace and being told to head south west to the castle, I'm starting to find it hard going.
There seems to be nothing worth playing for. No interesting characters, no urgent story line, no exciting and visceral combat effects, no unusual character development mechanics. Most of those aren't likely to change but does the game get a gripping storyline or other improvement later on? Or am I not likely to get much out of it going further if it doesn't appeal at this point?
I haven't played Escape From the Pit, only the original Avernum (which is itself a remake of Exile: Escape From the Pit), but assuming the plot hasn't changed completely, there will be no less than three "main" quests to complete, of which you can do as many as you like. But these are not long involved stories with twists and surprises. The game is designed more as a world for you to explore and find your way in, with some epic challenges to tackle as a crowning achievement. To me, the strength of the game was in the writing, if not exactly the story: it was the detailed and well-thought-out setting that kept me interested. There's a lot to find in one's explorations and I was constantly stumbling on interesting places and intriguing mysteries.
So I guess I would say that the strength of Avernum is not in characters, story line, combat or character development, but its world. It's so much more than just a backdrop for your adventures. It contains more than one believable society, with its own ways of surviving the dark caverns, and its own interactions with the other denizens of the caves. Individual characters may not be that memorable, but their roles in the world are important.
If that sounds interesting to you, then I'd encourage you to continue a little farther at least. There's a lot left for you to find. But if the parts of the world you've encountered so far haven't interested you at all, then you may not enjoy the rest of the game either.
