{"id":33419,"date":"2016-07-22T05:01:56","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T09:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=33419"},"modified":"2016-07-22T05:01:56","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T09:01:56","slug":"ruts-vs-battlespire-ch18-voyage-of-the-yawn-treader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=33419","title":{"rendered":"Ruts vs. Battlespire CH18: Voyage of the Yawn Treader"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re about to quit the Soul Cairn for good, and I’m very happy to say we’re going to miss a few chunks of it. There’s several things in this level novel enough to talk about without really being compelling enough to do. <\/em>Apart from being stitched up with dental floss, I’d say the defining characteristic of Battlespire <\/em>is that it never ruins an interesting idea by thinking it through.<\/p>\n

For example: remember those annoying, immortal, ceaselessly pestering “wraths”? According to the wiki, there’s a scroll somewhere in the level that teaches you a phrase to kill them instantly. I was surprised to learn this. I was even more surprised to learn that I’d found <\/em>that scroll and apparently made no note of any magic wrathtaking incantations. It could be that the information in the scroll was poorly presented, it could be that I noticed it but didn’t get a chance to apply it, or maybe it’s related to how after several hours exposure to Battlespire <\/em>I lose the ability to read or perform simple math and must be jump-started with a season of Sesame Street.<\/em><\/p>\n

Anyway, I didn’t miss much by not figuring out the killphrase. The same strategy that worked on the wraths in the first half of the level–running away from anything ghost-shaped–remains applicable. Sometimes it’s pleasant for an RPG to reward lazy gormless cowardice.<\/p>\n

I like these more composed, busy rooms quite a bit. They give the dungeon crawl some much-needed texture and context. It's also fun to play guess-what-the-furniture's-supposed-to-be.<\/div>
I like these more composed, busy rooms quite a bit. They give the dungeon crawl some much-needed texture and context. It's also fun to play guess-what-the-furniture's-supposed-to-be.<\/div><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We’re past the most trying parts of the level anyhow. After the thrilling jumping puzzle in the last chamber, most of this area’s real estate is dedicated to semioptional loot nooks. These rooms are stuffed with treasure-coffins you need to answer riddles to get into. So, you know, in case you were wondering why there was a placard that was full of coffin numbers and ominous nouns earlier…actually, if you’re ever “wondering” about something in this game, please distract yourself as soon as possible. Wondering about this game is always a bad call. Worst case scenario, you might find yourself playing it.<\/p>\n

I like riddles. I even mildly chided the game for having such easy riddles earlier. Well, depending on how you see it, now’s either the time for me to eat crow or for me to start throwing fistfuls of hot cripsy-breaded crow at the developers. This slate of riddles are such that I am genuinely glad the answers are available. Here’s a little sample for you:<\/p>\n

Alive I smell awful.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dead I smell wonderful.<\/em><\/p>\n

What am I?<\/em><\/p>\n

This seems less like a riddle and more like a Cards Against Humanity <\/em>prompt, but after ten minutes of guessing I finally went back and checked my screenshot of the answer key. So what about you? Can you guess the solution?<\/p>\n

Give up?<\/p>\n

It’s “a pig.”<\/p>\n

E’en now, when each day I fill my cup of lonesomeness and drink greedily, my lover’s ghost abides<\/em>. I remember her lips, crisp and heavy as plums in season; I remember her voice, a crystal goblet that would tinkle and beautifully crash, an instrument in the hands of a master. Her touch was warm as nostalgia and she smelled like a dead pig.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fuck off, Bethesda.<\/p>\n

Oh, and there’s an honest-to-goodness vehicle section in this game. At some point you come to a boat moored at a dock that needs to be rowed down a tunnel, docked at a small island with a treasure chest and an important scroll, and then rowed back again. It’s not a cutscene or an on-rails aside, either; you get into the boat and can point it in any direction. It’s a critical freedom for anyone roleplaying a character that gets stuck in walls a lot.<\/p>\n

You can’t attack, shift around, or (as far as I can tell) disembark prematurely while riding the boat, so it’s really just a gondola from one room to the other. You might say it’s a slower water-based form of door, and I don’t really have a counterargument to that. I think it’s interesting that somebody apparently insisted on putting it in anyway.<\/p>\n

You might technically argue that (with the flimsy exception of the cart in Daggerfall<\/em>) the rowboat is the only pilotable vehicle in Bethesda’s catalog. I mean, I don’t know for sure–there could be a little red wagon in the next level–but I’m certainly drawing a blank on examples from other games. Even Daggerfall, <\/em>which introduced purchasable sailing ships, constrained its nautical content to the pulse-pounding thrill of standing on a bare silent deck alone while going nowhere in particular.<\/p>\n

(Remember, kids: the primary difference between early access titles and old-school boxed releases is that something in early access might get updated.)<\/p>\n

Now this is just silly. Whatever's going on here, stop it now.<\/div>
Now this is just silly. Whatever's going on here, stop it now.<\/div><\/p>\n

It’s soon pretty clear where the exit is. In this room are a couple of energy-blasting crooked crystal pillars which can be individually triggered to shoot at each other. Also, there’s an underwater sigil you can jump onto which teleports you to the roof of a shack where there’s several unlabeled slots that it turns out fit some tubes secreted hidden-object style above head height in some remote crannies of the level. Once the hidden objects are put into their hidden holes all you need to do is use the door of the shack and type in the correct proper name for the next level, learned by reading an unlabeled scroll, and you’re away. Type in the wrong name and you die. Obviously.<\/p>\n

And then we’re off! Next stop, the Shade Perilous. How perilous is it? Just a shade.<\/em><\/p>\n

NEXT WEEK: ACTUALLY THAT MIGHT BE AN OVERSTATEMENT<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re about to quit the Soul Cairn for good, and I’m very happy to say we’re going to miss a few chunks of it. There’s several things in this level novel enough to talk about without really being compelling enough to do. Apart from being stitched up with dental floss, I’d say the defining characteristic […]<\/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-33419","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\/33419","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=33419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}