Modern Classics: Beyond Shadowgate (PC)
Chapters 1-3 | Chapters 4 and 5 | Chapters 6 and 7 | Chapters 8-10 | Chapter 11 | Alternate Endings and Closing Thoughts
Ending A
There are, as I said, three other endings you can earn: A, C and D. Ending A is the satisfactory ending. You trigger it by replacing the Talimar's staff with the simple pole (the one that we previously used to impale the harpy).
Belezsarr picks up the pole, not realizing that it isn't the Talimar's staff, and holds it aloft. Then he tries to summon Talimar with it. And he realizes way too late that he's not actually wielding Talimar's staff.
"No! Thisss cannot be! The magicksss cannot be contained with thisss!" he shouts as the dark energies he was attempting to tame begin to overcome him.
The magic tears his body asunder, and bolts of dark energy strike throughout the cavern. One of the unfortunate effects is that a bolt strikes us directly in the chest and knocks us to the ground.
Belezsarr explodes in a binding flash and ceases to exist.
With the spell broken, the portal vanishes and Talimar is once again imprisoned. The day is won and Kal Torlin is saved, but the victory comes at a great cost. We succumb to our wounds and collapse.
Our vision blurs, but still we recognize a familiar sight. It's our pal Colvin the dragon. As the chamber begins to collapse, he approaches us. We try to wave to him, but we can't do so because our arm won't move. Soon our breath becomes ragged and our vision fades.
After we pass, Colvin returns our body to Gwynenthell.
The people of Gwynenthell mourn us and celebrate our victory. They consider us to be their champion. We are forever recognized as a hero, and our tales of sacrifice echo through the ages.
Thus begins the legend of the bravest fenling: Del Thornburrow.
Ending C
This is the bad ending. We trigger it by replacing Talimar's staff with the unmodified Staff of Ages.
After we do this, Belezsarr turns to face us, and then he curiously grabs the staff. "Ssso it was not lossst to time," he says as he realizes that he's holding the Staff of Ages, which he recognizes as a weapon whose power rivals Talimar's staff.
"Thisss will do!" he enthusiastically shouts before thanking us for our service.
Then he moves to eliminate us. He uses the staff, which has become corrupted by his grasp, to conjure a mighty bolt of dark energy, and then he directs it toward us. The destructive magic washes over us like a tidal wave, and when it subsides, not even our bones remain.
Then Belezsarr resurrects Talimar.
As a result of our misguided tactic, Belezsarr completes his scheme. Talimar is released from his prison, and then he begins his evil march. Armies fall and cities burn as his corruption spreads across the land. No one survives his malice.
And thus Kal Torlin plunges into an era of darkness. Thanks to us, the Warlock Lord's long-awaited plan to subjugate the world is complete. So it could be said that our death was an act of mercy.
Ending D
This is the worst, most disastrous ending, and it only becomes available if you screw up in Chapter 6 and incorrectly carry out the phantom's exorcism (by not pouring salt on the phantom's corpse before burying it). As a result of our failure, the phantom lives on and retaliates by killing the imp.
This action, somehow, influences future events and how they play out.
The first thing that happens is that an item called the "censer" appears in Gwynenthell's curio shop, whose door, for whatever reason, was left open after closing time. The censer is a skull hanging from ropes. The residue near the hole at its top smells of burnt incense. And it exudes an evil presence.
We take the censer, but we do so with a sense of apprehension in our gut (note that you can obtain this item as late as Chapter 11).
The second thing that happens is that the armory's spectacularly radiant sun stone is replaced a moon stone, which, alternatively, represents a dead void (there's no explanation for how the failed exorcism causes this seemingly unrelated change).
Having the moonstone in our inventory triggers a unique event in Shadowgate: When we enter (or reenter) the old stone archway with the mirror walls (the "Reflection" room, as it's called), the image of Lakmir appears in the mirrors. He stares daggers at us. Then his voice, which sounds as though it's reaching across countless eons, booms from the mirrors and shakes the entire room.
"Foul being! Hellspawn!" he angrily shouts. "I have watched you defile this land for too long. Here you shall fall!"
What we don't know is that he's reacting to the presence of the censer, with which he's apparently familiar.
We fail to decipher the meaning of his words, and we scream that we don't have the time nor the patience for this kind of sorcery. He responds by telling us that we're a blight and a parasite that will be destroyed.
We still don't know what he's going on about, but we get the sense that something about him is off. We've already encountered a mimic in this place, and thus we suspect that this "Lakmir" is another of its kind. His image is a "fiendish illusion," we determine.
So we decide that the best way to remove him as a threat is to deal with him directly. We do that by using our Educ Spritus to draw him to our location. "Enough of your tricky!" we say while doing so.
At that moment, an acrid smell fills the room and "Lakmir" materializes right in front of us. His eyes widen, betraying his surprise. Then a gentle, comforting voice whispers a single word within our mind: "strike."
Knowing that the real Lakmir would never threaten an innocent, we heed the voice's command. We take advantage of the fact that the imposter is still in a daze and, with great fury in our heart, we attack him with our scythe. With a powerful swing, we lop off the imposter's head and kill him.
After we do this, the music stops and a deathly silence takes hold, and resultantly we feel as though something isn't right. We've felled the imposter, but for some reason, we don't feel good about doing so.
In the following moments, the sounds of chanting echo softly through our mind. They keep getting louder. And soon we feel a weight on our shoulders. Then, suddenly, the chanting stops and all is silent. At that point, we notice that something is moving. The censer comes alive and floats above the imposter's corpse. Purple flames spread across the carcass and flow into the eerie skull's jaw.
We don't understand what any of this means, but we decide that the newly enchanted censer might be of use to us. So we retrieve it, ignoring the sense of revulsion that is growing in our gut. As we do this, the flames fade, and the body's color turns pallid as if its very essence was consumed.
Something about this event enrages our pal Odin, who flies away from us with a loud squawk. "What have you done?" he screams at us. "You've killed Lakmir."
We disagree and coldly reply that we felled "an imposter."
Odin, in his rage, shrieks, "That was no imposter! He was the last guardian, our final hope!" Then he swoops toward us with his talons ready.
Though, before he can make contact with us, we swing our scythe once more and dispatch him. Thereafter, we sigh and discard the scythe. Then we say, absentmindedly, that there's nothing left and no more tricks to stand in our way. Then we head into the great cavern. (The twist is that the person we killed was indeed the real Lakmir. It's a shocking event and one that makes this ending very disturbing. To think that an amazingly powerful, legendary wizard could be killed in such a way.)
So as Belezsarr is busy chanting his resurrection spell, we creep towards the Warlock Lord's staff and take it without him noticing. Then we come up with an idea: What we could do, we think, is use the Warlock Lord's staff against Belezsarr!
Our corrupted thoughts tell us that the best way to do so is to render the staff so highly volatile and unstable that it'll damage him if he tries to go near it. We might be able to do that, we imagine, by crafting a special attachment and placing it on the staff.
We create that attachment by combining the moon stone, which radiates a powerful dark energy, with the soul prison (which is what the censer became after it absorbed Lakmir's life force). We observe with mild confusion as the two objects join together and become the "void conduit"--a skull that pulses with a vile energy. We're a bit dazed by the event.
As we start the process of attaching the conduit, our eyelids become heavy, and we feel as though we're sinking into the depths of sleep. But we've come too far to fade in such a way, so we gather ourselves and attach the skull to the staff. It fits perfectly.
When we open our eyes, we stare at the weapon we've just created: the Void Staff. It's beautiful, we think, failing to realize that we're now doomed. We've created a weapon whose existence is an obscenity. Only a being of true corruption may wield such power.
We trigger the ending sequence by placing the Void Staff in the stone altar's hole.
When we do this, Belezsarr turns to face us. He recognizes us as the fenling from the castle. But he also senses that another being is present. He recognizes who it is, and, in a confused away, he wonders how it returned.
He's also perplexed by the Void Staff and isn't sure how it came to be. He won't stand for it, though. Talimar will return soon, he says, and he won't let the unknown being stand in his way. "You will die again!" he tells it.
At that moment, the Void Staff unleashes all of its dark energy unto Belezsarr. "That this fenling, of all creatures, acted as your vessel..." he shouts as the energy consumes him. "It is comedy."
He is then torn asunder by the dark magic.
With his final words, he says, defiantly, "Though not by my hand, this world is still doomed!"
Seconds later, the Warlock Lord's visage appears in the portal. His return to Kal Torlin is imminent!
"What a gift you have brought me, fenling," he says, his lilting voice carrying across the cavern. "You played your part well. Now die!"
But we don't hear his threat. All he hear, rather, is the voice in our mind. It whispers to us, "Your work is done here, fenling." We react by closing our eyes.
When we reopen them, we find that we're holding the Void Staff high and channeling its energy at the portal and into Talimar. We're no longer Del Thornburrow. Rather, we're now the embodiment of a reborn, corrupted and evil Lakmir the Timeless. And immediately we begin to attack this lesser sorcerer. We do so relentlessly (by repeatedly clicking on him).
As we do this, we repeatedly taunt him and talk down to him.
We shrug off his counterattacks and remain focused on blasting him.
Eventually we overpower him and strike him down, causing him to fade into oblivion.
We've won the battle of mighty sorcerers. We've done it, though, while watching on as a prisoner in our own body.
With this act, Lakmir, Belezsarr and Talimar have been obliterated. No "murderers" remain. We've served our purpose as a puppet, we're told by our possessor, who we learn is the phantom we failed to exorcise earlier.
This phantom was the spirit of an evil sorcerer who was destroyed long ago by the Circle of Twelve. Now he got his revenge, thanks to us. (One of the implications is that he set up the censer and the moon stone while we were off adventuring, and then he caught up with us, silently, and manipulated us into obtaining these items and using them in the aforementioned ways.)
But there is one more task, he tells us--one more act of retribution to carry out.
We turn and begin walking for hours, and eventually we arrive at Kal Torlin. A tide of death follows in our wake.
Then we return to the ever-peaceful fens, the domain of fenling-kind.
As we enter the town, the phantom speaks to us one last time and says, "All who stood idle and allowed the cowardly Twelve to slaughter my brethren will share my sorrow."
We respond by lifting the Void Staff into the air once again and heralding oblivion for the entire world.
Talk about dark and disturbing!
Closing Thoughts
You can probably guess, by looking at how much I've written and seeing how enthusiastic in tone my commentary is, how I feel about Beyond Shadowgate. I'm very pleased with it. I'm excited about what it does and what it contributes to the series. I consider it to be a great video game and a worthy sequel to my all-time-favorite point-and-click adventure.
It gave me everything that I wanted from a Shadowgate sequel: an engaging world, a compelling story, an immersive atmosphere, interesting characters, imagination-stirring imagery and object descriptions, and fun puzzles. It kept me invested the entire time. As I was playing it, my eyes remained glued to the screen and I continued to look upon the game's imagery with wonder and delight, and I was constantly in a state in which I couldn't wait to see what it would do next.
And resultantly, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Honestly, I don't have much to say about the game's visuals and music other than that they're exactly what you expect them to be and they do exactly what's required of them. That's actually a strong compliment. It tells you that they're able to successfully render an authentic-feeling 8-bit point-and-click adventure game and evoke thoughts, feelings and emotions that are very similar in complexion and spirit to the ones you experience when you play the classics. They perform their jobs well.
I don't think that it's fair for me to directly compare Beyond Shadowgate's visuals and music to Shadowgate's because I am, admittedly, strongly biased in favor of the latter's. To me, Shadowgate's visuals and music are legendary and amazingly iconic, and no other Shadowgate game's visuals and music can ever hope to surpass or even approach them. The only thing that they can do is finish a distant second.
But that won't stop me from saying that Beyond Shadowgate's visuals and music are both high-level and worthy of praise. They're not as powerfully haunting or evocative as Shadowgate's, no, but still they're pretty great, and they succeed at rendering a very enchanting and absorbing 8-bit world.
I'm especially fond of the designer's re-renderings of the classic MacVenture areas. They're very respectful and authentic-feeling, and their newly added details give us additional insight into how those places look and give us new way to visualize them.
You could, if you wanted to, levy the criticism that some characters and objects are crudely drawn, but if you did that, you'd be missing the point; they are, of course, drawn that way for authenticity's sake, which is to say that they're very much in line with NES Shadowgate's character and object graphics. They're what they're supposed to be.
The sound effects, too, are also 8-bit-style and made to sound as though they were ripped directly from NES Shadowgate. And they, as much as any other game aspect, help the experience to feel authentic. I especially like the new spell sound effect. It has a striking energy to it, and it makes you feel as though your spells are really impactful and forceful in execution.
From a technical perspective, the game is flawless. It has no observable performance issues. It's not actually an 8-bit game, of course--it only looks and sounds like one--so it doesn't have to deal with the limitations of 8-bit hardware. There's no slowdown or sprite-flickering. The game always runs smoothly and quickly, and it's completely free of graphical glitches.
One of the most important elements of a great Shadowgate game is writing that has the ability to stir the imagination and build an interesting world, and I'm happy to say that Beyond Shadowgate's writing meets that standard. It's very similar to the original Shadowgate's writing: It uses a lot of expressive and evocative language. It hits you with a lot of interesting words and phrases. And it constantly provides vivid descriptions--the type that (a) imbue every object and item with character, (b) help you to visualize what they actually look like, and (c) make you think and wonder about their origins.
There are a couple of noticeable typos (all of which will probably be cleaned up with an update) and some questionable sentence structure, but overall the game is really strong in this area.
I regret to say, though, that Beyond Shadowgate's difficulty doesn't rise to the expected level. It's simply not as challenging as you'd like this type of game to be, and certainly it's nowhere near as challenging as the original Shadowgate. It has some tricky puzzles, sure, and it'll stump you a few times, but it'll never put you in a position in which you have to stop for hours (or even days) to think about a puzzle or figure out how to solve it.
In my play-through, I never felt as though I was being truly challenged. If I got stuck, it was only because I was unobservant or I forgot about one of my items or its actual purpose. Mostly, I was quick to find solutions.
So, to my disappointment, I had no real trouble getting through the game.
I say this, of course, as someone who is accustomed to these types games and their unique brand of logic and arcanity. So your experience may differ.
It doesn't help that the game is hand-holdy as hell. It simply doesn't trust you to solve puzzles on your own. It's always making inferences and allusions, and sometimes it's so explicit in its descriptions that it makes puzzle solutions completely obvious. After a while, the casual intimations start to feel intrusive.
As a veteran of these games, I would obviously prefer to be left to my own devices.
I've since learned that the designer made it a point to tone down the difficulty. I saw him in a Twitch chat. There he explained that the development team, knowing that there was spectrum of puzzle-solving ability, decided to aim toward the median and make the game easier and more accessible. It wanted more people to be able to play through the game and beat it.
And I get it. The more people you reach, the more money you make, and the more likely it becomes that you can create more games of this type. It's an understandable approach. But still I wish that the game contained at least a few sections in which the difficulty spiked and made me feel as though I was overcoming truly big obstacles by solving puzzles. Because that's one of the ways in which I draw satisfaction from point-and-click adventures.
If you're the type who's intimidated by large game worlds and fearful that your failing to notice or pick up obtainable items will cost you later on in the game, you'll be comforted to know that it's usually the case that the items you currently require are in the area you're currently exploring (and in the isolated portal areas, this is the rule). There's only a limited amount of potentiality for situations in which you have to return to earlier areas to find items that you need.
And make no mistake: This is a large game. It's four- or five-times larger than the original Shadowgate. It'll take you nine to ten hours to complete it and probably more if you're not fully accustomed to these types of games.
Keep in mind, though, that I played the game meticulously and took the time to listen to the music, examine every item, and generally savor the experience, so it's probably the case that the game is a bit shorter than I say. But even if that's true, you'll still find that it's far longer than any of the previous four MacVenture games.
On the whole, Beyond Shadowgate moves at an ideal pace and continues to be enchanting and engaging. It starts out nicely--with a uniquely structured, gripping prison-escape sequence--and then it keeps getting better from there. The only slow part of the game is Chapter 2, which is comprised of a series of fetch-quests and basically amounts to an exercise in busywork (and it's even more tedious in subsequent play-throughs, in which you're more inclined to want to quickly get to the good parts).
But thereafter, the action picks up and works to establish and maintain a consistently solid pace.
The only annoying aspect of the game is its endings system. As I've explained: You can't get all four of the endings in a single play-through file, and if you incorrectly solve the Themeire Mansion exorcism puzzle, you lock yourself out of the best ending, and you have to replay the entire game if you want to get the chance to see it.
It's not that replaying Beyond Shadowgate is a bad thing, no. It's that you're likely to miss out on the best ending in your first play-through and then feel the need to start a new file and speed through game, in a disengaged and irritated manner, just so you can see the last of the endings. And you're left feeling sour by that part of the experience. (And if you incorrectly solve the exorcism puzzle, you'll also have to carry a dispiriting burden of guilt for getting the imp killed.)
I'd be fine with endings unlocking under certain conditions if the processes entailed traveling different paths along the way. That type of design choice would add some great replay value and make you want to play through the game multiple times and unlock all of the different endings. The chosen design decision, though, doesn't inspire that kind of enthusiasm. It misses the mark.
But still, there are plenty of other good reasons to want to replay Beyond Shadowgate. You can do it because you want to (a) read all of the item and object descriptions and learn more about Shadowgate's world and its rich lore, (b) read the insightful developer commentary (which unlocks after you earn any of the four endings) and learn about the game's development and the MacVenture series' fascinating history, or (c) try to experience all of the possible deaths (and there are a huge number of fun deaths to discover in this game!).
To me, it's always worth the effort to learn more about a point-and-click game's world and get a greater sense of its history. It is, I say, one of the most fun things you can do if you're a fan of the genre!
One of the most exciting parts of the game is the dimension-hopping. It's especially thrilling that you get to revisit the familiar worlds of Uninvited and Deja Vu and interact with them in new ways. Their presence can really make the game for you if you're a long-time fan of the MacVenture series.
I just wish that there was a little more to them. Sadly, they're condensed versions of the original Uninvited and Deja Vu worlds, and you don't really spend much time in them. I would have liked for them to be more expansive and have more than two or three puzzles connected to them.
Still, though, it's great that we get the chance to see them again and find out more about how they're incorporated into the larger MacVenture universe. Their presence means a lot to the game.
And then there's the most exciting part of the game: the return to Shadowgate! It was my favorite part of the play-through. There was nothing better than revisiting the familiar castle and getting the chance to re-explore it, find out how it changed, and see even more of it.
I was riveted and completely enchanted as I roamed the familiar halls and closely examined all of the visual details to see if they matched up to Shadowgate's. I was intrigued to find out what had changed in the intervening 35-year period. I was eager to see what was waiting for me in each location. I made sure to take my time--to move along slowly and examine every item and object that I could--and savor each moment of the experience.
And along the way, I finally got some answers to questions I've been wondering about since 1990. I was, in the most exhilarating fashion, able to discover what was behind the arrow room's high-up doorway, where the waterfall room's obstructed stairway led, and what was waiting beyond the well room's door. I was thrilled to see, also, that the designer found away to include and reintroduce the hobgoblin room that was originally cut from the NES version of Shadowgate. (seeing it in what was essentially the NES version of Castle Shadowgate was surreal)!
And thanks to the Discitea Mort spell, I now know how certain beings (the skeleton in the lake, the cyclops, and King Dugan) died! Theirs amount to a cool, rewarding lore dump that'll surely help to inform all of my future play-throughs of the original Shadowgate.
So one big thing Beyond Shadowgate did was help me to further develop my visualizations of Castle Shadowgate and its habitants and make the even more glorious!
But I realize, as I think about how excited I am for Beyond Shadowgate's nostalgic elements, that it's also my duty to honestly evaluate my feelings and ask myself some tough questions.
Could it be, I have to consider, that Beyond Shadowgate is too heavily reliant on fan-service? Is it overly referential and esoteric? Is it the case that I've been blinded by nostalgia? Did I really need to know where the arrow room's high-up doorway led or what was behind the well room's door? Wouldn't most of this stuff have been better left to my imagination?
The answer, my heart tells me, is that yes--it does go overboard at times. It does tend to lean too heavily into nostalgia. And in some instances, it fills in gaps that really didn't need to be filled.
In all honesty, I'm not completely comfortable with the idea of Del being the "shadowy figure" whose actions caused the events of Uninvited (I prefer for the figure's identity to be a thought-provoking mystery), and I have to admit that Castle Shadowgate's "find the 12 memories" puzzle is, for as much as I like it, so overly referential that it comes off like pandering (and contextually it'll be lost on people who haven't played the original Shadowgate).
I can't ignore that the fan-service is sometimes excessive.
But after thinking about it for a while, I've come to the conclusion that I'm fine with the majority of the fan-service. I can't deny that I get enjoyment from the game's nostalgia-driven elements (especially its powerfully engrossing final chapter) and that I like what they do for the MacVenture universe. They have great appeal to me, and I can't pretend otherwise.
And I wouldn't say that they feel like fan fiction, either, because they come, partly, from the minds of two of the original Shadowgate's creators: Dave Marsh and Karl Roelofs. In fact, a lot of them were based on notes that these guys made back in the 80s! So they have an air of authenticity to them.
And I have to temper my criticisms a bit because I know, also, that the game was designed to be this way. It was intentioned to be a heavily-fan-service-driven project aimed at longtime fans of the MacVenture series (the developers make this very clear in their developer commentary). It was meant to appeal to a very specific audience. So it would be kinda silly for me to criticize it for doing what it was designed to do. (Actual criticism would entail asking whether or not it's a good idea to make games whose referential, esoteric design qualities might potentially limit the amount of people who are interested in playing them; but honestly, I'm not particularly interested in exploring that subject.)
And I should add that the familiar worlds and spaces represent only about 35% of the game (which has a massive 250 screens in total). They're not the central focus, no. They're more or less bonus content--a special gift to those of us who cherish the MacVenture games. The other 65% of the game is perfectly capable of standing on its own. It provides a satisfying amount of content.
So yeah--I'm very pleased with Beyond Shadowgate. I've had a blast playing it and spending time with it. It has provided me one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had.
Beyond Shadowgate is an inspiring game, and this pieces is proof of that. I was, as you can see, really excited to write about the game and tell you how much I enjoy what it does. I've gone way overboard, admittedly, but hey--that's what I genuinely wanted to do. It's what I felt the game deserved.
The true measure of a great game is its ability to make a lasting impression, and I'm happy to say that Beyond Shadowgate has more than proven its power to leave an indelible mark. It still strongly resonates with me months later, and I'm sure that it'll likely continue to resonate with me for decades.
I probably won't return to it as often as I do to the older MacVenture games-- mainly because it's so lengthy and I prefer for my point-and-click-adventure replays to instead hit the ideal 1- to 2-hour sweet spot--but I'm certain that I'll be returning to it with some degree of regularity. Because it's a game that's definitely worth revisiting again and again.
All I can say in closing is that I hope that Beyond Shadowgate represents the start of a resurgence for MacVenture-style games. It's a sad thing that their run ended so abruptly in the 1990s. It shouldn't have. And that's not nostalgia talking, no. These games are really that good! They're really that magical. So I want to see them come back.
I hope that Beyond Shadowgate succeeds and that its creators are so pleased by the sales-total that they feel encouraged to make more MacVenture-style games.
I especially hope that the game comes to other platforms and gets more attention, because, sadly, it seems as though its release has gone largely unnoticed. I'm sure that the old fans (most of whom are likely console players) would gobble it up if they knew that it existed. And their interest would ensure that the series lives on.
And it has to live on because there are, as the game so rightly states, more stories to tell.
The second story's end.
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