The Infinity Engine lacks a really important feature: please let me know immediately when I bork myself out of a quest.

I didn't notice where the entrance to the Drow City was right away. So after Adalon gave me the disguise I decided to check out the West/South/East tunnels in that order. I went into the Western Tunnels and found some Drow. They were fooled by my disguise and allowed me to "bribe" them. I head into the next area and I'm immediately attacked by a bunch of Drow.

"Weird," I think. "Oh well." So I kill them all, but quickly realize I'm headed toward the surface.

Turning around, I check out the other tunnels and finish the monsters/quests in those areas.

Finally, taking a closer look at the map, I realize that I can head past Adalon's cave and that must be where the Drow city is. Yup... only since I killed all those Drow past the Western Tunnels area, now I can't get in.

Ugh.

So I missed out on a series of quests and who knows what else because the game's writing combined with the engine's inability to say "You just failed this quest" let me do hours of ignorant exploring. Very lame.

Whatever... I'm past it all now and not looking back, but I'm not happy.

EDIT: clarifications...

Welcome to choice. So you are annoyed that the game doesn't babysit you through it? Not the game (or engine) fault. Did you even read and/or take notice of your journal?

Thank you for all your kind posts and moderated tone.

There is no 'tone' in written communication, and there was none intended in any of my replies. What you perceive is what you perceive.

Except for the part where your choice of words and the ultimate message you send do convey a tone of sorts. Granted, it is not the type of tone one would receive from the facial expressions and the sound of the voice of someone delivering a verbal communication, but the underlying subtext of the written word carries weight all the same. Your post only addresses the OP with sarcasm, patronizes him for not doing something you think to be obvious, and reeks of an appeal to ridicule by comparing his problem to wanting to be babysat. If you didn't intend to convey any of that, then next time I suggest you pick your words and phrasing a little more carefully. Sorry about him. As for your problem, I haven't played as far as you have, but from what I have been able to gather from LPs and the like, I can't imagine why the drow started attacking you. I'm guessing that you either made it to the surface or tried to leave the city, and that broke the disguising enchantment according to what Aladon said. If that is the case, then I think the problem lies less with the game telling you when a quest has failed and more with the face that the game did a poor job of telling you which way the city was. From what I can gather, Aladon does not give directions as to which way the city is, and the IE games have given location markers for only one of their games, and it's not this one. Given that the game already seems to have given no indication of which direction your goal is in, I can sympathize with not reading the journal, since how could you have written something down in it you were never told? My best advice is to reload a previous save if you want another crack at it, but it sounds like that's not an option for you.

What an arrogant bastard you must be. Is that enough 'tone' for you?

You say "arrogant bastard", I say "trying to sympathize with the person who made a post regarding a problem and earned nothing but unhelpful, insulting and inflammatory posts from other posters". Man, I thought I had it bad when I tried to bring up the idea of controlling torchlight with WASD, but the worst I got was a dismissive post and a few people telling me I was wrong, whereas you proceeded to ignore any discussion of the problem and insult OP. Now that that's done and you have finished insulting me in turn, I suggest that you leave this thread alone. Goodness knows that the mods are likely still enjoying the holidays, and I'd hate to have to bother them with a request to shut this thread down.

You do not speak for me; you are not my parent or guardian; you do not even know my gender; you dare to speak about me as though I am insignificant; you dare to suggest I leave a public forum; yes, I say 'arrogant bastard', and I meant it.

I must have done something wrong, that's for sure. It's just not clear what. For the record, I did read my journal, but it doesn't say, "BTW, Ust Natha is in the NE," at least not that I recall.

I certainly like choice in RPGs, and I certainly don't want to be babysat by the engine, but it would be nice if, like some other games, it gave you some kind of message that said, "This quest has been failed." Then you could reload immediately without doing a bunch of other adventuring first and losing your progress.

Ultimately, it's a game. If some people think it's fun to only learn hours later that they failed a quest, good for them. I don't find that so fun, but I can live with it. :^)