{"id":32757,"date":"2016-06-14T23:59:17","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T03:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=32757"},"modified":"2016-06-15T02:23:46","modified_gmt":"2016-06-15T06:23:46","slug":"ruts-vs-battlespire-ch12-get-me-out-of-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=32757","title":{"rendered":"Ruts vs. Battlespire CH12: Get Me Out of Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t think anyone will contest that our adventure, a whitewater at the best of times, has taken on a particularly <\/em>lurid and tawdry character. Under the circumstances I thought it’d be nice for us all to clear our heads and settle in with a quiet verse. This piece is inspired by my struggle for survival and meaning. It’s called “A Man Tested.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He was a moth in an empty house<\/em><\/p>\n

His wings strove and shuddered, hungry for fresh winds<\/em><\/p>\n

Black, feather-fringed and proud<\/em><\/p>\n

A humble shell that burned for flame<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Anyway, I fucked a spider daedra.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A few final observations before we move on from that topic–indefinitely. Firstly, the implication of Don Drider’s come-on was that if I hadn’t <\/em>doinked him, he would have attacked and tried to kill me. Pretty creepy, but broadly pretty typical of this game’s dialog and problem-solving.<\/p>\n

Secondly, I’m pretty sure that doinking him is supposed to give me the quest item I needed to get through to the next area.<\/p>\n

Lastly, it didn’t. I had to kill him anyway. Which is a pretty awkward morning after under the best of circumstances, but under these<\/em> circumstances, probably less awkward than any alternative.<\/p>\n

''Hey, just wanted to know where you got that outfit! ...NO. NO OF COURSE NOT REALLY.'<\/div>
''Hey, just wanted to know where you got that outfit! ...NO. NO OF COURSE NOT REALLY.'<\/div><\/p>\n

I’d like to point out one thing this game does a pretty decent job with, and that’s NPC voices. No, not the voice acting<\/em>, which sounds like it was one-taked by a pair of heavy-lidded night cashiers during a slow shift at the head shop. If it wasn’t done for free we need to rethink the concept of currency. What I am <\/em>talking about how the NPCs are all characterized through their dialogue, through the voice you hear in your head if you’re smart enough to kill the audio. While it’s not exactly genius writing, it’s reasonably competent and it’s intelligently varied. Scamps came off manic and uncertain, dremora seem louche and vastly overconfident, spider daedra are okay you get the point. <\/em>Talking with NPCs is only occasionally useful or productive, but I’ve never really regretted the conversations that turned out to be meaningless no not even that one shut up.<\/em><\/p>\n

Before I can get through to the next area, and funny part, I need to find a piece of the voidguide for a daedra named Rishaal Tamir. This is unfortunate. I’m not going to sugar-coat this–she’s the first thing in the game to make me feel genuinely uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

Rishaal has the aspect of a young girl, including a childish voice and mode of speech, and her outfit is that new-agey supernatural waif thing that’s mostly just long hair and a loincloth. Out of context, she could be the logo for a coffee shop or occult bookstore.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there is <\/em>a context, and that context is two straight games of stuff like this:<\/p>\n

Ma'am, you're already looking at spinal issues. That slouch can't be helping.<\/div>
Ma'am, you're already looking at spinal issues. That slouch can't be helping.<\/div><\/p>\n

Half-naked female daedra in Daggerfall <\/em>and Battlespire <\/em>are pretty obvious sex candy, right up until the game trots out a half-naked female daedra who also happens to be prepubescent<\/a>. As a result, I got really, really grossed out when I otherwise wouldn’t have been. I don’t think the developers meant to sexualize Rishaal–if you can follow me, I don’t particularly think they meant to sexualize the women who are supposed to be sexy<\/em>. I think that by far the worst part of 90s erotic fantasy art was that it was just normal, and that nobody gave it much thought one way or the other, regardless of its appropriateness–or how it informed the rest of the work.<\/p>\n

Sorry about this. I didn’t and don’t really want to talk about this, but it felt too weird to gloss over.<\/p>\n

As far as masculine fanservice, the game has some shirtless ugly dudes but otherwise caters pretty exclusively to spiderfuckers.<\/div>
As far as masculine fanservice, the game has some shirtless ugly dudes but otherwise caters pretty exclusively to spiderfuckers.<\/div><\/p>\n

By this point–I guess the second level of the game, if you’re keeping score<\/em>–the game’s coming into its own as something like a classic Gygaxian naturalist dungeon crawl. It has established that the daedra occupying the spire are here wanting something, have fanned out according to a rough pecking order, and aren’t all strictly interested in killing you because you’re the player character and they’re the Friday night rowdies. We’re coming to rooms that look like rooms, furniture that has arguable function, and security measures that are debatably practical. On that final note, there’s about four doors and objects in this level that are warded with riddles. Take this one:<\/p>\n

Toilets? Chefs. Pimples. Really weird people.<\/div>
Toilets? Chefs. Pimples. Really weird people.<\/div><\/p>\n

See? Foolproof security so long as your opponent hasn’t read The Hobbit, <\/em>looked at a mouth, or found this note lying around that just straight-up gives you the answer.<\/p>\n

For the record, I did get stuck on one riddle. So this note was the end of me having to think or put forth an effort, which I appreciate.<\/div>
For the record, I did get stuck on one riddle. So this note was the end of me having to think or put forth an effort, which I appreciate.<\/div><\/p>\n

So you might be forgiven for thinking this was pretty friggin’ lame puzzle design. I don’t care. I missed<\/em> riddles. They were around back in Arena, <\/em>and especially in that era proved to be one of the few ways of shaking up the grind of exploring corridors, hacking apart identical monsters, and filing loot that also worked within a fantasy milieu. I can also sympathize with game developers in a pre-UESP<\/a> decade not wanting to gate players off from progression until they’d solved abstract English-language guessing games, so I’m not mad that they put in a cheat sheet. I just wonder why this is the particular<\/em> thing they thought we’d need help figuring out.<\/p>\n

On an unrelated note, I found this Shirt Battlespire Cape of Arcane Sight.<\/div>
On an unrelated note, I found this Shirt Battlespire Cape of Arcane Sight.<\/div><\/p>\n

THIS WEEKEND: SCHOOL’S OUT<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t think anyone will contest that our adventure, a whitewater at the best of times, has taken on a particularly lurid and tawdry character. Under the circumstances I thought it’d be nice for us all to clear our heads and settle in with a quiet verse. This piece is inspired by my struggle for […]<\/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-32757","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\/32757","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=32757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}