Author: Simon "EZKeel" West-Bulford From: Legacy Filenames:
Legacy-2.unr
Legacy-9.unr
The Nexus:
K'Tharn:
Courtyard Stronghold:
Video Playthrough:
Synopsis: The secret Ventar research facility was lost to the enemy, so you initiated the self-destruct sequence and wiped out a sizeable force in the process. You have now found your way to the Nexus, where the Nali resistance is located. A spirit guide, K'Tharn, contacts you...
Discuss!
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:
It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.
The Nexus does it's job as the hub, and stuff like the custom bird sounds make the town area feel safe and a break from everything around it, and the themed entrances for the main levels communicate the style of each area in a 3D platformer hub sort of way. The visuals are simple, but the huge cliffs surrounding the area do give the setting a certain style even if the texturing is awkwardly stretched for a lot of it. The shop idea works well enough, although the choices are kind of skewed because you either already have or get a lot of the weapons very quickly, so the minigun ends up the best first choice because you can't get it right away, and there's even ammo for it in the next map despite that; the flipside is that making the "wrong" choice isn't much of a problem as you still get more than enough from exploration.
The intro part with the cave and K'Tharn also introduces the general plot and progression well enough (as well as implying that even the DecyberArena map is canon here, along with Xerania/Invasion), although K'Tharn's appearance is presumably supposed to be a floating head, but his look kind of makes me see him as some stubby creature with tiny limbs instead. The blue text is also hard to read quite a bit of the time.
The Courtyard is the surprise first post-hub map before you can properly explore it, and as an intro to slightly more intense combat and the teleporter key it does the job. Visually the map looks quite good and is probably one of the more detailed areas in Legacy, and the size and dark sky fits with the void-like nature of the map story-wise. It also provides the Railgun and a very open environment to use it in, but it follows the general Legacy style of being very strong but kind of clunky, as there's a slight delay when you press the fire button, as well as some major weirdness going on with hitboxes at times. The main section is focused on the gimmick of guarding an area, but it's a little odd, as the enemies aren't very aggressive (the actual attackers also seem weaker than other enemies), but, if they do get into the center, you insta-lose if they touch the core. You can push out and explore while the timer is going, but, if you overlook an attacker, you die instantly so you have to be careful.
Beyond the defense section you just have to push some switches in the giant area to open the way out, and then a slightly odd Skaarj Berserker-based room before being introduced to the teleport key. Back in the Nexus you can then explore it properly (including the first proper choice of levels), along with using the teleport to get a bunch more supplies, and some nice foreshadowing with a view from the top of the cliffs and some things you'll clearly access later.
I like Semfry's comparison of The Nexus with archetypal 3D platformer hubs - it really tells you all you need to know, even if one can further refine this by adding a mention to Half-Life or Deus Ex for the element of persistence: in what was a first for the Unreal/UT SP community, EZKeel's magnum opus Legacy features a map which not only serves as your "base camp" from which you choose which mission to tackle next, but also allows for travelling back and forth between previous and forward maps with all changes saved (as pointed out in the review).
The way the hub works, with its evolving narrative which gradually unlocks new levels, its generous amount of exploration and even going so far as to feature a basic trading system which rewards the inquisitive player further - alongside decent visuals and sound (and excellent choice of soundtrack) - means I believe this map to be one of EZKeel's best. Legacy is one of those campaigns that starts strong and ends strong - the best outcome if you're going to have a few substantial issues besides.
And yes, the initial visit here after completing the campaign's first map (Cat and Mouse) will provide the player with a general understanding of how the rest of the game and story will play out. And it's a good story - a fairly unique way of driving the plot (at least in our scene) that I really like is K'Tharn, who helps guide the player and lends some appropriate mystique, and indeed I see its design as being inspired by pre-Columbian cultures and associated statuettes which tended to have big heads and small bodies.
Courtyard Stronghold is cool enough along with the Railgun, though I agree that the main highlight where you must defend an area (sort of a king of the hill moment) should really have been more intense, even if it is still relatively tense on a first playthrough when everything is new and you're not sure how things will play out. Being rewarded with the well-introduced teleporter key ends up being more memorable given that you get to use it outside of this level, including in the Nexus as already mentioned, which you can then enjoy at your leisure.
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:
It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.
The Nexus, this is the map where Legacy really begins, this campaign is very unique in every aspect but one of the most memorable things is definitely this map, this is the first HUB map in Unreal history that works and the level does a good job of using the HUB concept. Even if you don't like Legacy you have to admit that the HUB is one of the best things about this campaign. Courtyard Stronghold is a small map that you activate when you get close to a certain portion of the Nexus, this is like a tutorial of sorts where you get to test the new weapons and also get the "LeTeleporter" item, which is very helpful if you bother to use it.
The level geometry of both maps is decent, EZKeel is a mapper that started making maps in the golden age of Unreal mapping, where every mapper had to figure out all the rules by themselves, so you can see many oddities and technical issues with this levels. However with that being said EZKeel really did evolved and improved as a mapper, the levels in this campaign are definitely the best of EZKeel's work in UE1. both Nexus and Courtyard have decent brushes with good texture choice and alignment, the terrain of Nexus leaves a lot to be desired (especially considering that there's no texture alignment) but looking back at how EZKeel made terrain in his first maps, this brushes are soo much better. It seems that EZKeel used the 2D shape editor to make the terrain brushes, not the worst idea but it's still not the best way to make terrain in UE1 like tessellated cubes or creating the brushes in a different tool. Lighting however is below average, this maps would have looked much better with more complex and creative lighting, this issue also happens in all the rest of the maps in this campaign, at least coronas are used better, but the lighting is very subpar and it really hurts the appearance of this levels.
Sound design is ok, the levels do use plenty of Ambient Sounds and Dynamic sounds (only Nexus uses Dynamic sounds), but there's nothing remarkable except for the sounds that play when you teleport to another map, also Nexus uses new custom sound effects for birds, unfortunately they aren't loud enough so most likely you won't notice them unless you play with music turned off. Both of these maps needed more dynamic events to create more sounds to make the environments more alive. Music is ok as well, both songs use music from Unreal and they do a very good job, Nexus uses the SkyTown main theme and it fits the map perfectly, some people actually associate that song with Nexus more than the original map from Unreal. Courtyard uses the main theme of Dark Arena ("Nali Chant") and it works very well too, the music choices are very effective but considering how unique Legacy is, this campaign would have benefited a lot from custom songs.
Gameplay can be very good or very bad, depending if you understand how Legacy works. Nexus is a HUB map which means that you can return to this level with all the things you did before saved, the problem is that Legacy has new tricks up its sleeve that you can't know beforehand, one of this things is that the arsenal of Legacy is very unbalanced, you really need to get all the weapons as soon as possible because of issues with ammo, Nexus has many houses that contain new weapons and pickups that you can access every time you return to it, however you don't know which house is the most recommended to get into unless you are replaying the campaign. Another thing that Legacy doesn't tell you is that the pickup you get in Courtyard can be used to get to secret areas in any of the maps, something else is that Nexus has an entrance to a map called "Triaxia" which gives you a new weapon which is the Legacy equivalent of the dispersion pistol, unfortunately this weapon is only available in this map, so not having this weapon is very dangerous since you don't have a fallback in case you run out of ammo for all weapons.
In Nexus your main objective is to go to other maps until you get all the keys to unlock the final map, so there isn't too much to talk about when it comes to gameplay. Courtyard is more straightforward where the main gimmick is protecting the core from enemies, not that complicating since you get the Legacy sniper at the very start. The only difficult part of this map is figuring out how to use the LeTeleporter item to reach the end. Defeating the enemies in this maps depends if you understand how to use the new weapons in this campaign.
Also I have to mention the map called "K'Tharn" which appears after grabbing an ammo pickup in Nexus or going to Courtyard, this level is very simple and it's well done, especially the lighting change to add to the atmosphere. Special mention that this map uses one of the more underrated actors in Unreal (RoundRobin).
Issues I found:
General Issues :
- There's no Coop filtering or support.
Nexus :
- Sometimes the fish that are in the water pool spawn outside the pool.
- There's a house which has a door that doesn't work very well, which allows you to enter it without needing a Nali Ruby.
- The doors that take you to the White Palace sometimes don't work.
- There's a scripted event where a Manta is supposed to ambush you when you touch a wooden chest, however the manta starts falling to the floor when the map begins, so the scripted sequence never works.
- This map has two "Level Info" actors, very big mistake.
- Pathnodes are used but not everywhere, which means there are some areas where enemies cannot follow you.
- The SkyZoneInfo has bHighDetail set to True for some reason.
- Creature/Thing factories have collision turned on.
Courtyard Stronghold :
- During the first cutscene there's a Manta that can start attacking the player (attacking the camera).
- If you activate the first lift and then leave the lift immediately, you are soft-blocked.
- The skybox has the typical transparent moon issue.
- Translator messages come from books that can be moved.
- Explosion Chains/ Thing factories have collision on.
K'Tharn :
- The texture of the entity is not perfectly aligned, you can see imperfections in the borders of the texture.
