Ruts vs. Battlespire CH21: Look Me Over, I’m Not the Cap’n

By Rutskarn Posted Wednesday Aug 10, 2016

Filed under: Lets Play 42 comments

As I’m sitting here, I’m wondering to myself–truly and sincerely–how much you care about anything in this next screenshot.

Besides the obvious.
Besides the obvious.

So rather than get mired in the level’s specifics, let me break it down for you. We’ve got to find four hidden levers in this sprawling cavernous maze, as well as an as-yet-unidentified solution to an as-yet-unidentified puzzle, to reach the egress. There’s a demiglaze of lore over all this that I don’t think anyone is reasonably expecting me to follow, except the incensed nerd who would under normal circumstances be writing a comprehensive rebuke at this very moment–although one benefit of playing this game is that there’s very few with firsthand experience of the game and perishingly few who understood what was going on. Anyway, I’ll throw a bone and say we might get into the lore a bit later–if I live long enough.

Anyway, in practical news, there’s a big fat sword hanging out in this room acting suspiciously casual. I push it into the floor, and–as you’d expect–a huge cracked table slides into two pieces. This reveals…a boiler plate? A riot shield?

A sled? A garbage chute?
A sled? A garbage chute?

For quite some time, I thought the answer was “nothing much.” One of the more pervasive nuisances in this game is that the “pick up or interact with object” field in the center of the screen is both invisible and a pixel in diameter. If they’d meant to make a game based on the classic 1990 film Ghost, wherein Patrick Swayze has to bust an undead blood vessel to nudge a shoe or lay hands on a person, they were off to a pretty good start. So I stand staring down at the handle portion of the floor platform for about a minute, making minute adjustments, until finally the grip was exactly in the center of the screen. Turns out it was a lever–arguably the most challenging lever I’ve come across in twenty years of gaming. That’s the kind of specific delight and whimsy only Battlespire can offer, provided one’s already mastered the shaped-holes-and-blocks franchise.

Having exhausted this wing, I double back around to the other half of the level. Soon after descending a staircase to a network of tunnels that form, at a guess, the true name of the Adversary, I come across this happy little pier. Turns out all those aforementioned playland tunnels are half-flooded with water. As peace offering to the lore fans, two quick theories:

1.) This is the Battlespire’s failed waterpark.

2.) I’m not the first adventurer to come through. These are tears.

Either way, I clamber into the boat and get a-canoe’in. Now, I’ve mentioned earlier that there was a brief vehicle segment where I paddled around in a very similar vessel that:

  • Didn’t allow me to attack
  • Moved at a maddening pace
  • Got stuck on everything
  • Was placed along a linear track with no enemies, making the trip boring and redundant

Well, I’m happy to report that this boating segment:

  • Doesn’t allow me to attack
  • Moves at a maddening pace
  • Gets stuck on everything
  • Is placed in a huge labyrinth full of rocks and narrow causeways and packed to the brim with ranged-attacking monsters

This is what we in the understatement biz call “an escalation.”

Since I’m immune to any kind of ranged damage I’ve discovered thus far, I’m not worried about the unfair sniping bastard enemies. I would have been perfectly happy to It’s a Small Spire merrily past their dopey, self-immolating asses. But I never get the opportunity, because about ten seconds in I get my boat lodged on a rock, figure this is the sort of thing that’s always going to not stop happening, and make me an executive decision: abandon fucking ship. I will doggie-paddle through this whole damn level if I have to, but this paddler’s gotta go. So I hop into the water.

Immediately, a few things become clear.

  • I can spot underwater items and tunnels.
  • I can swim below the surface and avoid attacks.
  • I am moving approximately twice as fast.

So if you ever play Battlespire, a sincere pro tip:

what?

no

NEXT WEEK: RUNE PUZZLES AND THE BEGINNING OF THE END

 


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42 thoughts on “Ruts vs. Battlespire CH21: Look Me Over, I’m Not the Cap’n

  1. MrGuy says:

    I have to say, that second dialogue option is the most refreshing, honest dialogue option I’ve ever seen in a videogame. Because that’s pretty much a verbatim rundown of what I’m thinking when I meet any random “you must answer me these questions three!” bullshit puzzle giving NPC in a video game.

    “Yeah, yeah, quest description, yada yada, I have to find a book and some levers, now let’s see, do you actually have anything helpful to tell me about where any of that stuff is? No? OK, later, dude – I’m not reading your life story if there’s nothing in it for me. Let’s get this quest railroad a rolling.”

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Indeed.Who wouldve thought that thered be some self awareness in this game.Well played.

      1. Presumably the player character is about as tired of this crap as Rutskarn is, hence the swimming being miles better than the boat. :P

        1. ehlijen says:

          Is it actually the real text from the game? I mean he edited the screenshot for taste already, did he not?

          And what’s with ‘stools?’ ?

          1. MichaelGC says:

            It is said that the riddle of the stools may be recorded in the Book of the Wheels of Heaven:

            http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Battlespire:Deyanira_Katrece#Reply_5

          2. Da Mage says:

            I don’t want to solve the riddle of stools, that sounds messy.

            1. MrGuy says:

              The correct answer is answer number two.

              1. Peter H. Coffin says:

                Shoo! Away with you! Scat!

                1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                  That pun stinks!

            2. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Whats important is that the riddle is pretty hard.

  2. MichaelGC says:

    Is that magenta modestytext already in the game or was it added by Rutskarn? I assume it’s the latter. It’d be pretty weird if it were already in the game … which is why I ask, as this game has plenty of previous when it comes to pretty weird.

    PS This has been posted to the Elder Scrolls category rather than the Lets Play one – which is going to briefly flummox me on my many many future readthroughs of this frickin’ awesome series.

    1. Bubble181 says:

      Added by Ruts, presumably to keep this blog SFW. Those four-pixel nipples, man, you just haven’t lived if you haven’t seen them!

  3. “So if you ever play Battlespire, a sincere pro tip: ”

    After reading every one of these so far, I’d rather try an Unarmed/Unarmored no-level playthrough of Morrowind before I even thought about spending money on this game.

    1. Decius says:

      No equipped items/no levels is already a speedrun category. If you add “no spells/potions”, you have to allow Wraithguard, and all categories require Keening and Sunder for the Heart.

      For extra fun, try a no equipment/no level/no alchemy all guild grandmaster run. (Spells and potions will be required for guild promotion requirements, and imperial legion armor may be worn to talk to imperial legion quest givers if needed)

  4. Da Mage says:

    That dialogue in the first picture makes my head hurt.

    It feels like 4 different paragraphs were stuffed together to make less sense.

    “On the condition that you promise to help me persuade her to help me escape this place.”
    What? I don’t even sentence.

    1. Abnaxis says:

      You missed the “I will seek out your mistress and free her,” clause. The whole sentence is “I will seek out your mistress and free her, on the condition that you promise to help me persuade her to help me escape this place.”

      That’s still kind of a mess of a sentence, but at least it’s syntactically correct.

      1. Syal says:

        “Help me help you help her help me help myself.”

    2. Echo Tango says:

      Ugh. The green text is just as bad – maybe worse. It reads like a mix of bullet-point and run-on sentence. ^^;

    3. Guile says:

      Sentence harder, nerd.

  5. Aitch says:

    You say this game’s a joke,
    but I don’t see you laughing..

    Well, now I’ll have that song stuck in my head for the next day and a half, minimum. So at least there’s that.

    1. MichaelGC says:

      For anyone as confused as I was by Aitch’s comment and the chapter title!

  6. LCF says:

    “how much you care about anything in this next screenshot”
    Texts! Walls and walls of text! With words and stuff! Tons of things to read!

    Also, Elves.

    “Immediately, a few things become clear”
    Swimming is OP.
    Up next: broken Ancient Language/Literature build, imba Crafting:Pottery and Crafting:Leather character.

    1. MichaelGC says:

      In fairness to the game balance, swimming is one of his major skills!

      Although I guess it’s not one of his primary skills (Primary > Major).

      And I suppose he did reduce the swimming bonus as low as it would go so as to sock all the points into Immunity to [ALLthethings] …

      Swimming is OP!

      1. LCF says:

        Now, now, I kid, but I actually like a role-playing game with useful non-combat skills. Swimming, climbing, lockpicking/hacking and so on are nice and relatively easy. Crafting depends on relatively advanced concepts (at least for Battlespire’s year) but is well understood now.
        What’s the next step? I say we get more active Diplomacy and more Infiltration Diplomacy skills.

    1. Sunshine says:

      “Talking To Plants Skill Increased.”

      1. Just when you thought no one could out-wooden Keanu Reeves…

      2. Nixitur says:

        On a barely related note, that’s why I love Pen & Paper RPGs. It’s not only that there is a “Talk To Plants” skill, but also that it could be incredibly useful, depending on the adventure.
        Unlikely in a video game, though.

  7. potatoejenkins says:

    “Ok, I’m looking for the boobs … “

    Well, I tried.

    Is beeing able to skip the boat section and beeing much more efficient doing just that a bug or a feature?

  8. sheer_falacy says:

    This entry is filed under Elder Scrolls while the other ones are filed under Lets Play so they don’t show up together, FYI.

    1. Zagzag says:

      I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who was bothered by this.

  9. Benjamin Hilton says:

    Ok Ruts, I don’t know where else to ask this so I’ll ask it here.
    Recently I watched a video on weird Elder Scrolls facts and I’m still not sure if I was being trolled. They guy said….he said…. Did Vivec actually bone a Deadric lord? Like is that actually cannon? I just…I have lost my ability to even.

    1. There’s a book in Morrowind that says that, and from what I barely remember, he was in a questionably-rapey relationship with Molag Bal (iirc) for a little bit.

      From Molag Bal’s UESP page: “…is also the god of rape and is said to be the parent (along with Vivec) of a population of mutant degenerates living in the Molag Amur region of Morrowind.”

      Flipping over to Mehrunes Dagon’s page gave me a bit of info on Battlespire’s story, funnily enough. :P

      1. Izicata says:

        Specifically the book is Sermon Twelve of the 36 Lessons of Vivec, written by Vivec. The problem is that the Sermons are a pack of lies except for when they’re the complete, objective, unvarnished truth, so it’s hard to tell if the whole “married Molag Bal” thing actually happened.

    2. Rutskarn says:

      Vivec was introduced during a period of TES lore where concrete, objective backstory was eschewed in place of ambiguous and hotly-contested-in-universe mythology–a shift I was personally very fond of.

      In consequence, your question doesn’t have a concrete answer. He may or may not have done. The text of the series is just that somebody says he did.

      1. stratigo says:

        Daddy Rutskarn, Can you explain CHIM to us again?

      2. Benjamin Hilton says:

        See that makes sense to me

    3. Syal says:

      I’m pretty sure the story was Vivec slept with Molag Bal, had several children, and then hunted down and killed the children one by one.

      That’s Vivec’s canon. Morrowind has like a dozen contradictory backstories espoused by various factions. But Vivec says he did it.

      1. To be fair, it’s not like that kind of thing doesn’t happen with real-world religions. :P

        1. Fred B-C says:

          It’s funny that the gods themselves are disputing each other’s stories, just like mortal people.

    4. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Is this the video you are talking about?Because the two banging is NOT the weirdest thing.Shocking,I know.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M-7RNyqefM

      1. Benjamin Hilton says:

        Yes, Yes that is the video.

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