Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos

About Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (1993) is Westwood's first-person dungeon crawler, made after leaving the D&D licence behind, in which a party fights to save King Richard from a shape-shifting witch, with Patrick Stewart voicing the king on CD.

Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos in Depth

King Richard of Gladstone Keep learns that the old witch Scotia has acquired the Nether Mask, a ring that lets its wearer take any form. He sends the player for the Ruby of Truth, but its guardian has been robbed and dies, and when the player returns, Scotia poisons the king and escapes. The player must find the recipe for an elixir to cure him, gather its ingredients across the realm, and combine the recovered Ruby with the king's Shard of Truth into the Whole Truth to defeat Scotia.

Like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder, it is played in real time from a first-person 3D view, through forests, caves, mines, swamps and castles full of locks, switches, chests, multi-floor levels and puzzles. Players choose one of four pre-made characters, whose main statistics, might and protection, are shaped by weapons and armour, some with special properties, including a bow that never hits anything. Fighter, Rogue and Mage skills grow with use, covering combat, bows and lockpicking, and spells such as fireballs, lightning and healing, each with four power levels. Companions join and leave the party, an automap tracks progress, and shops trade in silver crowns.

Making Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos

After Virgin acquired Westwood, the studio dropped the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons licence to build its own property, since, as artist Joseph Hewitt put it, it wanted to stop making games for other publishers to profit from. Lead programmer Philip Gorrow proposed the ideas and Bill Crum designed it, aiming to outdo Eye of the Beholder II with a deeper story while staying accessible. Virgin released it for MS-DOS in September 1993, and a 1994 CD-ROM version added 130 MB of speech, including narration by Stewart. It sold over 250,000 copies by November 1996. Reviews were generally positive: Computer Gaming World's Scorpia said it "breaks new ground in a number of pleasantly surprising ways" despite weak combat, InfoWorld said it was "destined to be a classic", and Computer and Video Games called it "everything Eye of the Beholder III should have been", while others found it repetitive or too easy. It was runner-up to Betrayal at Krondor for Computer Gaming World's RPG of the Year, Stewart won its Best Male Voice-Over award, and Guardians of Destiny followed in 1997.