T w e n t y S i d e d
So after last week’s fun, painless, and intuitive teleportation process, I’m now standing in the “Shade Perilous.” So far every other place I’ve gone has been named for how much it’s going to kill me, so maybe I’m not as scurred as I ought to be.
Time for an in-game story update! Gather the wee ones and cuddle around Grandma Cahmel’s rocking chair as I regale you with another classic tale of actual rather than assumptive narrative. You can tell which is which because one’s broken and the other one’s just complicated.
As you may dimly recall, the one living humanoid still in the mix is a woman named Vatasha Trenelle. She’s left various notes indicating she’s shadowing the invading party and seeing what happens. Anyway, this is what happens.
It’ll be a bit of a shame to see her go, because she was a novice who was, like us, putting it all on the line in a desperate situation. And she probably had pants when she showed up today, so that puts her one above us on professionalism. If she was a little bit better at exploiting bugs she’d probably be the main character.
Whoop, gotta go, the level’s greeter is on fire.
When I saw this foe, and he beckoned me to speak, I was instantly seized with dread. That stern martial ensemble, those burning and/or freezing eyes, that radiant ceaselessly-churning energy. I wasn’t ready to fall in love again. But luckily for everyone involved, it turns out he just wants to trade awesome tough-guy lines.
Then we start hitting each other until he falls down.
Having dispatched Mister Tease in the foyer, I headed along to the next chamber. That’s when I saw the next enemy. Oh. Naturally. So it’s going to be one of those levels.
If really cold guys are hostile, maybe really hot guys will turn out to be bros, right? I wouldn’t mind being a bro with a really hot guy right now.
No. Never trust really hot guys. They’ll only try to hurt you.
Once I’ve doused him, I turn my attention to the other guy in the room, a frost daedra standing placidly in the corner. This one’s willing to hash things out a bit. Turns out the frost and fire daedra are a little hot-and-cold in their dealings, and while their bosses are warming up to each other, chilly attitudes and fiery tempers are dominating the okay if I keep this up I’m going to vomit all over my keyboard. Please don’t pick this up in the comments. I don’t want your family finding your post and demanding to know who’s responsible. The upshot is that two factions are occupying this area in service of the invader guy(?), nobody really likes each other, and Frosty will give me a piece of armor in exchange for going out and killing fire daedra on his envious behalf. Since I was probably going to end up doing that anyway, this works out great for me.
But it’s not all indistinct thermic brutes in this area. The developers know you haven’t seen a boob lately and they’re starting to get a little worried for you. It was worth saving up, but it’s finally time to play the “sexy female demon enemy built around sex” card.
I’m so glad RPGs finally grew up, left those behind, and graduated to sexy female aliens built around sex.
What does she want? Two guesses. Sorry, that’s not fair–this is one of them “both your guesses are wrong” situations, because she’s skipping the first two obvious Darwin Fs and heading straight for Flight.
Turns out fleeing is not some kind of next-level combat technique for Seducers. It’s just the regular kind of dumb idea. Anyway, let’s see what kind of sick loot she dropped:
NEXT WEEK: YOJIMBOHSHIT
Final Fantasy X
A game about the ghost of an underwater football player who travels through time to save the world from a tick that controls kaiju satan. Really.
Why The Christmas Shopping Season is Worse Every Year
Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?
D&D Campaign
WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.
This Scene Breaks a Character
Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
Silver Sable Sucks
This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.
Cleary they’re a pair of butt jeans, so no one who sees Cahmel will be interested in his Magically Immune rear.
Because after the spider daedra…never again.
“If I have to make *a* sacrifice ”
Is it just me or is the “a” really weird here?
Yes.
I can’t believe there was a time in its history when Bethesda would release games were dialogue trees where just futile distractions leading up to an inevitable fight every time.
Least the dialogue was to some degree amusing and kind of comes across as knowing how silly it is. Bethesda in CurrentYearâ„¢ takes their laughable writing way too seriously.
On a lot of these screenshots, I find myself forgetting whether they’re options or just one overlong thought. Like… “Who you calling brittle, ice-boy? Who is this realm for then? I’ll shatter you like an icicle!” They barely even pretend to be different!
…Those were different options?
I’m sure the answers look like that purely because of Cahmel’s low speech skill…
Compared to the rancid trash gravy that is the gameplay of Battlespire, the writing seems to be not terrible? Sure, all of your dialogue options are completely meaningless in terms of actual impact on anything, but whoever’s writing it manages to cram an unexpected amount of personality into what is essentially a bunch of different ways to pick a fight with a monster. It ain’t exactly Shakespeare, but still a lot less shitty than I expected.
Wait, she had pants?
…wouldn’t that be cool if characters in RPGs always had to drop the kind of stuff they were wearing before? Cause those “pants” she wore would surely go well with your guy’s other attire.
Don’t you see? She had the pants but didn’t put them on because she was scared to wear the Pants of Withering: her outfit isn’t gratuitous pandering fanservice; it’s totally logical worldbuilding.
That makes far too much sense.
I just want to know what that massive loin cloth is hiding.
Allods and Cursed Lands did exactly that.
Hell, FALLOUT 4 did exactly that.
The weird contrast of pseudo-ye-olden-naming and dialogue and “who you callin’ brittle, ice boy” style taunts just rubs me so wrong. It feels like parody.
I know, it’s like “The daemon bids you forth to parley, and intones ‘You wot mate, I’ll smash yer ‘ead in.'”
Or like the dialog was written as one of those ‘fold the page over and pass it to the next person in the circle’ exercises, only everyone involved was genuinely excited about participating and so it avoided the usual downfall of that kind of thing where every fifth line ends up being about the scandalous adventures of someone’s mum.
And instead it encountered the entirely different downfall of having the tone and voice of the writing bounce all over the place in a glorious, chaotic spiral of puke and glitter.
That is literally flame bait…
Just as well everyone here is known for keeping their cool!
I think the joke may have gone over the heads of those of us who are Fair In Height.
And your joke deserves an absolute zero.
Ooo, burn!
Immolate yer finish, but Decius had one of the best puns of all time!!
Hardly, that pun is nowhere near the top of my Rankines.
Chill people.No need to fight over this.
Really? I thought it was 0K
Careful people, Rutskarn requested we stop and it would be cold to ignore that. So let’s put this pun chain on ice before things get too heated.
Aw. Why so celsius?
These jokes make me feel warm inside, so I’d rather keep going full steam.
Loving the Bà–C reference
I’m amused that the fire daedra is irritated that you’re intruding in their new banquet hall. “Dammit, we just redecorated and the place is already infested with adventurers.”
“Oh, god. Call Mortok the Undying, he does magic-resistant PCs. Just hope we won’t have smell the brimstone this time.”
Meanwhile, three floors and several planes of oblivion below, our intrepid heroes have stumbled across a plaque engraved with the professional details of one of the dungeon’s dark denizens!
“Mortok the Undying. Dungeon security contractor. Non-lethal imprisonment of any and all interlopers for your interrogation and/or gloating needs.
No job too small.
Adventurers apprehended – justiciars jailed – paladins impounded.
Also ask about our garbage disposal services? Huh. I guess because he lives in the pool of lava?”
“He is the pool of lava.”
“…Oh.”
I’m low on juice.
I don’t know what else I can even say.
“Grandma Cahmel, what big pauldrons you have!”
So we’re all bashing Battlespire, and boy does it deserve it, but I’d like to take a moment to applaud the fact that it just had an enemy not only recognize, but react appropriately to “Hey, you’re the dude who’s killed hundreds of my coworkers.” I can’t remember the last time a game did that. I’m not sure I’ve ever played a game that did that.
Not quite the same, but Planescape Torment’s NPCs would eventually start to comment that you’re the guy going around asking stupid questions.
Mumbles would be so
notproud.“So, are we going somewhere really dangerous?”
“Nah, don’t worry, it’s just a Shade Perilous.”
Edit: * looks at last week’s episode * DAMMIT
Heh! Great minds think alike…
I gotta say, Flow-of-Consciousness dialogue writing is an uncommon technique in RPGs these days.
Thankfully.