{"id":31689,"date":"2016-04-20T01:03:19","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T05:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=31689"},"modified":"2016-05-18T03:35:37","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T07:35:37","slug":"ruts-vs-battlespire-ch-5-aches-and-planes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=31689","title":{"rendered":"Ruts vs. Battlespire CH5: Aches and Planes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exploring the Battlespire turns out to be deceptively troublesome. Not because the local talent is putting up much resistance; they’re doing their jim dandiest to make my stay at the ‘spire as memorably gruesome as possible, but what they make up in enthusiasm they lack in starch. I would describe their presence as “nagging,” a gentle buffeting of scamp claws when I enter a room to remind me to tip the doorman a fistful of steel. I will admit it hurt when I strained my wrist cleaving these geeks in twain.<\/p>\n

That sounds like a disaffected quip, but no–seriously, my actual<\/em> wrist sincerely <\/em>hurts. Since every time you swing a sword you need to right click, hold, <\/em>and drag the mouse in a pretty wide arc in monotonous patterns–and not every swing is a hit–clearing a room leaves you feeling like you’ve just directed runway traffic at LAX on a Friday night. Playing for extended periods makes you feel like you just transcribed your thesis on a jammed mechanical typewriter. I seriously incur less wrist strain writing these posts than I do playing for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

This helmet belonged to a scamp who attacked me. I assume it was trying to kill me so it could leave the hat on my corpse. Fun fact: the helm is magical and once I actually figure out what it does you'll be the first to know.<\/div>
This helmet belonged to a scamp who attacked me. I assume it was trying to kill me so it could leave the hat on my corpse. Fun fact: the helm is magical and once I actually figure out what it does you'll be the first to know.<\/div><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So combat might be physically punishing, but at least it’s clunky and overbearing. Perhaps it’s the luxury of more modern, liberating control schemes that makes me so impatient with how obnoxious mouselooking is during combat. You see, as long as you’re fighting one stationary target there’s no reason to take your finger off the right mouse button; in fact, there’s pressing reason not to. You’re going to need to swing your sword a lot <\/em>even against one weak foe, so you might as well clamp down down and settle into a groove. The rub comes in when there’s multiple enemies, or an enemy that’s trying to move around you, or you’re trying to move around an opponent–in all of which circumstances, you’re going to need to track targets and it is going to be a pain in the keister. Holding down the attack button, which you need to do when you’re thinking of attacking, locks mouselook. <\/em>It has to–otherwise every time you swung the sword you’d end up puking all over your keyboard–but there’s nothing smooth or pleasant about jerkily readjusting your aim between batteries of fire. I feel less like a nimble warrior and more like I’m operating a really short-range<\/em> antiaircraft gun.<\/p>\n

Who approved this mechanic for three goddamn games<\/em>? It was outdated in Arena<\/em>, sucked harder in Daggerfall<\/em>, and now it’s the main attraction of Battlespire. <\/em>Why was it that as game after game standardized one-click attacks, Bethesda held out against good sense and common decency for so long?<\/p>\n

I can confirm that allowing you to choose your angle of attack is in theory <\/em>a good mechanic, and in practice it really is necessary to tailor my approach to suit my enemy. I like swatting big guys to the opposite wall with broad attacks and then mopping up little guys with quick little jabs–and would love it if I had a control scheme that made it straightforward, convenient, and not literally agonizing to do so. I’d even rather map a bunch of keys to attack and leave the mouse out of the picture than suffer this straining tedium.<\/p>\n

Not wearing the helmet in this picture. Either I hadn't picked it up yet or it had been temporarily sucked into a Bag Hole.<\/div>
Not wearing the helmet in this picture. Either I hadn't picked it up yet or it had been temporarily sucked into a Bag Hole.<\/div><\/p>\n

Check out this room. At the back, past the Vermai Oathkin who is about to learn the importance of carefully balancing one’s point buy system, is a couple of weird-lookin’ pistons. In front of them is a sign and a button. I try to read the sign, but since this is before the heady days of being able to precisely target something with the mouse, I end up accidentally pressing the button a few times before the game figures out what I want to select and displays the posted text.<\/p>\n

Now, it is literally my job to read this, but that doesn’t mean you have to. I’m just posting this screenshot to prove that it exists. Ready? Okay.<\/p>\n

Caption? Yeah, because what this image needs is MORE TEXT.<\/div>
Caption? Yeah, because what this image needs is MORE TEXT.<\/div><\/p>\n

Short version is this: there’s five pipes pumping “mana” into the Battlespire <\/em>and keeping it from erupting into the kind of butts-up no-man’s-land that would make an ideal framing device for a first-person dungeon crawler. One can (and after a pitch like that, virtually must) press the aforementioned button to link and unlink them. I am<\/em> pretty sure the couplings were unlinked when I arrived, although, for reasons I won’t belabor, I can’t be certain. Whatever. If things weren’t screwed before I showed up and slammed my ham hocks on the dash they sure are now.<\/p>\n

If any other Elder Scrolls <\/em>game has referenced the word “mana,” I can’t bring it to mind. The franchise’s preferred term for blue magic juice is generally “magicka.” Is this usage an attempt to broaden the canon or lazy oversight? Could go either way, honestly, since this is a game that introduces both “Vermai Oathkin” and “Cogs of Flux Capacitation.”<\/p>\n

You know, I’m pretty sure I spotted one of these linkages earlier. It’s hard to remember, since this area winds up and down and through weird jumping puzzles and crosses over itself all the time. Let me try checking the map…<\/p>\n

<\/div>
<\/div><\/p>\n

Honest mistake. That is<\/em> a map, right? Somebody didn’t just screw with the layers on some Riven <\/em>fanart?<\/p>\n

Looks like I’m just going to have to backtrack and hope for the best. Or front-track. Honestly, it’s been twenty minutes and I’m not totally sure anymore.<\/p>\n

Killing everything in my way has been working out great, though.<\/div>
Killing everything in my way has been working out great, though.<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exploring the Battlespire turns out to be deceptively troublesome. Not because the local talent is putting up much resistance; they’re doing their jim dandiest to make my stay at the ‘spire as memorably gruesome as possible, but what they make up in enthusiasm they lack in starch. I would describe their presence as “nagging,” a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}