T w e n t y S i d e d
We’re getting down to the end of the Shire now. It will be a photo-finish to see if Lulzy runs out of quests or sanity first.
We win, either way.
The Best of 2017
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2017.
Steam Summer Blues
This mess of dross, confusion, and terrible UI design is the storefront the big publishers couldn't beat? Amazing.
What is Vulkan?
There's a new graphics API in town. What does that mean, and why do we need it?
Trusting the System
How do you know the rules of the game are what the game claims? More importantly, how do the DEVELOPERS know?
Bethesda’s Launcher is Everything You Expect
From the company that brought us Fallout 76 comes a storefront / Steam competitor. It's a work of perfect awfulness. This is a monument to un-usability and anti-features.
I call foul on the photo finish. Sanity lost the race somewhere between fireworks and frog rot.
If I had a sig here, it would read “Sanity lost the race somewhere between fireworks and frog rot.”
You don’t understand.
She’s carrying the Sanity in her pocket along side the 100 buckets of water and 100 handfuls of fertilizer…
I expect she’ll toss the Sanity across the Finish Line and go home for a good smoke and a song after telling the Judges at the Line to “Sod off”. Lyrically in verse.
I take it you’re going to end the series when she finishes the Shire quests, then? That’s a shame if so; I was hoping to see what the rest of the game world looks like.
Actually, there are lots of beautiful areas in the game, and seldom are two areas alike. Moria is a beautiful place which (IMO)blows Peter Jackson’s version out of the water and the new Mirkwood is rather haunting. I think one of my favorites though is Forochel, which is supposed to be an icy, Scandinavian type of place.
Two words: Aurora…Borealis.
I think Forochel is my favorite zone, too, for the environment and for the quests. The names all have a Finnish feel, in a nod to one the languages and legends there that were one of Tolkien’s biggest areas of inspiration.
The devs apparently find bears, well, unBEARable.
Perhaps they are hoping to challenge the PCs, such that they will BAREly make it by. BEAR in mind, though, that devs are generally a silly lot, and trying to guess what they had in mind might just be an exercise in futility.
you’re saying it’s best to forbear taking a bearing on what the devs have in mind? :)
It has to be one very special stone if he managed to lodge it in a deer with nothing but a sling.So at least that one is a valid quest.
Actually, a 1 1/2 foot long sling can propel an equivalently sized stone with the same force as a .38 bullet, and in the hands of a skilled thrower, can be even more accurate (just ask Goliath).
The ridiculous part is that there is something special about this one particular stone above any other small, smooth stone that can be found along the riverbank.
And there is a reason why deers are being hunted with a rifle and not a handgun.Im not saying that slingshots arent deadly,but unless you are really lucky,they dont pierce bones.And in order to instantly kill a deer,you have to pierce bones.Either the skull,or the ribs.
Now, really, the lucky sling-stone isn’t all that silly in LOTR. Think of it as foreshadowing for the eventual mission you’ll get to retrieve some guy’s lucky Black Arrow from the chest of a fallen dragon. :)
Makes me appreciate the game I am playing. There has been a lot of improvement over time, with the writing that goes on in some games. I’m really looking forward to what Blizzard does with Cataclysm.
Good choice to leave Fogo alone, Shamus! “But sadly, you can’t keep the cloak. It doesn’t even show up in your inventory. The game just says that you have it. ” …. be thankful (in general) for the feature that quest items no longer take up bag space. In the old days you couldn’t wear the cloak AND it used an inventory slot, next to Callum’s pages, a Warg collar, half-a-dozen hops…you get the picture.
The deer corpse quest was the first quest in the game where I had to get help to find the objective. This was long before the glowy ring feature on your minimap told you exactly where to go. I probably killed 50 bears (including the black Signature one four times or so) and died numerous times before I finally asked for help on the forums. I just kept missing the little saddle that leads over into the hidden dell where the deer was.
Well, supposedly, the bone above the nose is thin, so if he pegged the deer right between the eyes he could conceivably kill him in one shot with a sling rock.
I particularly enjoyed the song this episode, Shamus. Reminds me of a comic about WoW’s Hemet Nesingwary, Bane of Beasts: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/community/comics/images/ss157.jpg
I think the Devs hate boars even more than they hate bears, given that there’s a title (Pork-Chopper) awarded for killing a boar in a certain number of different zones (7, I think)
I remember back in your guild wars review you mentioned that the dystopian landscape went on for a while too long… Is the shire dragging on longer then that?
(mentioning because I’ve just started guild wars last week)
A cave troll riding a warg riding a dragon. I’m stealing that for my game. My players are going to hate you.
Shamus’ comic reminded me of our group’s standard “worst monster encounter ever” … an Illithid (Mindflayer) piggy backing on a Githyanki riding a dragon. Classic memories. :-)
Hey Shamus,
I just noticed not all the LotR Let’s Play are in the same category, in fact they’re spread across two different categories, Video Games and now Stolen Pixels.
Was this just a slip up? Or are you planing to migrate the trials and tribulations of Lulzy over to Stolen Pixels to signify the Escapist connection?