T w e n t y S i d e d
For your next weekend getaway, consider the Chimera of Desolation.
From its charming villas, kept exclusive by a thoughtful plague infestation, to the cozy view distance maintained by a romantic fog, the Chimera of Desolation can be described with one word: exclusive. Get ready for star treatment, because no matter where you roam helpful attendants will be there to personally murder you.
There’s too much in the Chimera to experience in one lifetime–trust us, we’ve tried!–so you better start planning your vacation now. Let’s count down our Top Things to Do While You’re Briefly Surviving Level 5.
Go for a swim.
Can’t decide between a relaxing trip to the ocean or an exciting night of fashion? Why choose?
The developers of the Chimera have thoughtfully left some of the Savior’s Hide underwater. Just hop under the pier near the starting area and help yourself to a charming handmade possibly-plot-critical-who-knows-at-this-point little number.
Your friends will be transfixed by its mystique. Why doesn’t it look like hide? Why doesn’t it look like silver? What does the enchantment do, exactly? It’ll be our little secret.
Explore delightful local architecture.
There’s a hundred different happening spots in the Chimera, and your vacation won’t be complete until you’ve checked out as many as possible. Or until you’re murdered! Either way, waste no time in visiting the following places.
First on everyone’s itinerary should be the Chapel of the Innocent Quarry. With a name like that you might think it’d be tediously bereft of hostiles. Never fear, though–this place is hopping 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is the Chimera, where the party never, ever stops. We must unfortunately acknowledge there is some element of danger, as due to the capacity crowds of fire daedra visitors are at serious risk of getting stuck in the wall geometry.
You might also visit A Tower With an Elevator with a Key at the Top. For people who know exactly what they want, and it’s a tower with an elevator with a key at the top. The tower’s pretty high up and there’s no guard rail on the shaft, so please watch your step and make sure you don’t get stuck in the elevator geometry.
If you haven’t had enough of keys, towers, elevators, and life in general, head on up to the fortress. There’s four towers in this building–that’s four times the elevators, four times the densely-packed enemies, and four times the breathtaking view!
Climbing all four towers, physically pressing your way past the throngs of hostiles, and pressing the buttons will yield your very own souvenir key. The novel mechanisms and quiet grace of this tower will leave you wanting to stay here forever. Please fight that urge and do not get yourself stuck irretrievably in the tower geometry.
This is just the beginning. We don’t even have time to go into the waterfall full of enemies that get through your damage resistance for some reason, the maze that you can only enter once that turns out to have an important quest item hidden in it, and the house with the quaint too-small-to-go-up stairwell. Wherever you go, fun and level geometry are waiting with open arms.
Swear.
Need to let off a little steam? Why not swear? Why not swear a lot? Your neighbors haven’t complained since August.
Reinvent yourself.
The Chimera offers an unmissable opportunity to really get in touch with the Real You. Every time you set foot on the island you’ll get to redo your fifth Level Up. It’s all the fun of navigating a Battlespire‘s interface, plus the novelty of trying new things–do you want to add a shade of Unarmed this time? A dash of Luck? A drop of Restoration? Nothing’s off-limits–and it’ll all be reset soon enough.
My secret recipe? Dump every single point into Speed. You’ve got some legwork ahead of you.
NEXT WEEK: STOP ME IF YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE
Civilization VI
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
Object-Disoriented Programming
C++ is a wonderful language for making horrible code.
The Dumbest Cutscene
This is it. This is the dumbest cutscene ever created for a AAA game. It's so bad it's simultaneously hilarious and painful. This is "The Room" of video game cutscenes.
Spider-Man
A game I love. It has a solid main story and a couple of really obnoxious, cringy, incoherent side-plots in it. What happened here?
Pixel City Dev Blog
An attempt to make a good looking cityscape with nothing but simple tricks and a few rectangles of light.
If I didn’t already know what Ruts ‘tour guide’ voice sounded like, I’d be reading this in Stan’s voice instead.
You know, every concept about this level actually at least sounds interesting. Like if you cut out the slog and put it in a game that’s not Battlespire this would be a really good dungeon area. Heck I’m impressed the developers even managed to hack it into their engine. Because it’s clearer every post they never should have been allowed to design it.
“Your neighbors haven’t complained since August.” I’m trying to decide if this joke is better or worse for being told the first week of September.
I thought that was the joke, like a post on Tuesday saying they haven’t complained since the weekend.
It occurred to me that a ‘chimera’ is a miffo-logical creature, like a gryphon or a hippogriff or a cockatrice.
So why is this one a place?
A-ha.
PS Is he wearing only part of the Saviour’s Hide or is the Cuirass whole?
Chimera is also a genetic term where, for example, an animal is formed by several fertilised eggs merging. If I was feeling generous, I could say the Chimera is meant to be several small worlds smashed together.
Chimera can be used in a more general figurative sense of “several disparate parts mashed together into a whole.” From Rutskarn’s disjointed depiction of the place it sounds like a very appropriate name!
Edit: At least I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it used that way, I couldn’t find that specific definition when I had a quick look.
Indeed, a chimera is also a term for any two separate things that have been somehow fused together without blending the parts. So, if you tape the final page of one book with the first page of another, you’ll have created a chimera of a book.
That said, it doesn’t really seem to make sense in this context, especially as “chimera” used in that context is an adjective, whereas here it’s being used as a noun, for some reason.
“Chimera”‘s a noun, in the same way as “flock” is a noun in “flock of seagulls”. The adjective form I’ve seen used is “chimeric”.
Seems better than last week!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_3kQLiMTpY
I decided I had to see this game for myself(from a far distance, obviously) so I googled a video just now. When he first started jumping, in the sandy area, I thought he was getting hurt by some bizarre sandworm.
It’s really weird looking at these daedra characters and recognizing vaguely the names from Skyrim, but absolutely nothing else.
Aaargh! Not the Vogon poetry again!!
Oh god it’s voiced
“The nasty winged woman with the really big – you know – the floppy things – wings!”
Okay, I’ve got to give it to this game; that bit of dialog was actually genuinely funny.
I liked the Claymore of Note Hewing. Like a giant novelty pen.
The stills from this game are pixel vomit. I thought the animated monsters would be easier to parse, but no. What is that Dark Seducer doing with her legs? Perhaps that is how she speaks, by rubbing her legs together like a cricket (dislocating her hip repeatedly in the process). With this “art” style it is impossible to tell if she has a face, much less a mouth.
Oh my word, her hip is literally moving up and down several inches. There’s one for the Escher Girls blog.
Sorry to spoil, I realized after posting that this is pretty much what you were talking about on the Diecast with the developers occasionally being funny, but that’s not what this series is about.
Maybe I’m out of line here, but why not just cheat your way through this level? Or is that not possible? You’ve obviously experienced everything it has to offer already (sometimes multiple times), so take the easy way out, I say (well, OK, not THE easy way out, since that’d be to uninstall the game, but you know what I mean).
You’re WAY OUT OF LINE! Turn in your badge, sword and bags of bags of bags of bags!
*Detective sullenly pulls out a bag from his cloak. He sets this on the Chief’s desk and then pulls a bag out of that bag. He does this for 3 more hours, submerging the entire office in bags.*
Then tries to leave but gets stuck in the door.
Well, introducing unpredictable elements into an unstable equilibrium that can apparently destroy your saves as well is maybe a risk Ruts doesn’t want to take.
But “destroys your saves” is only a mild inconvenience when you know you’re about to do something that could do that and back them up accordingly. And from the looks of it, “mild inconvenience” is a step waaay up from the baseline state of Battlespire.
I had a witty, insightful comment to make, but it got stuck in my mental geometry.
<witty reply stuck in the comment geometry>
Fifth level up?So you level up only once per level?
Sort of. The level up process happens when transitioning from one level to another.
Fill in your own “level”-joke here.
We’ve been talking about how the alleged save-destroying properties work in the comments on the last post, so maybe give that a shot? If I’m correct, it would mean that you could save safely, as long as you don’t do it too often. Even a single save somewhere in the middle of this nonsense would make it far less annoying, I reckon.
Or are these posts mostly a backlog so far and by the time you post these, you’re actually already through this monstrosity of a level?
There’s a backlog. From episode 23:
“Technically, I haven't made any progress since the last session. Which is not the same as saying I haven't played the game; I've played it for hours. I just haven't progressed.
I haven't saved my game in two weeks. And there's a damn good reason for that, as I'm about to share. It just so happens I've entered the No Scum Zone.”
I’m not sure Ruts is reading these comments. Oh well, it will be amusing seeing him try to beat it in 1 save.
I am reading them, but always figure he’s moved on by the time I see it.
For the record–it’s hard to explain, except that I don’t trust the game enough to take the chance. Not that I’m worried about losing my saves–I have backups–but that I’m worried something will go wrong and I won’t notice until later, or something.
Ruh-roh.
https://youtu.be/RlB-PN3M1vQ?t=3m39s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9IfHDi-2EA
Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around
I read this in Rutskarn’s voice.
I got the bitterness. All of it.
This post alone is enough reason to support Ruts on Patreon :)