{"id":33736,"date":"2016-08-17T03:48:17","date_gmt":"2016-08-17T07:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=33736"},"modified":"2016-08-17T03:52:21","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T07:52:21","slug":"ruts-vs-battlespire-ch22-touching-the-hand-is-optional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=33736","title":{"rendered":"Ruts vs. Battlespire CH22: Touching the Hand is Optional"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s safe to say that playing Battlespire <\/em>demands my full attention. When my deadlines and lukewarm professional reputation depend on figuring out why my god damn longsword won’t equip, and the documentation to assist me is a nakedly speculatory shrug of a wiki article written by third parties–who are the only other people to have played the game, very possibly the only people to have enjoyed it–I end up needing the kind of laser-focused attention that in a less wasted life might build navies or cure eczema. Battlespire, <\/em>in short, is not a game to play with a movie on in the background.<\/p>\n

Which makes it an interesting, probably even unique <\/em>experience among dungeon crawlers. There’s not much going on at the surface level–watch me go through this level and you’ll see me swimming around, killing any daedra obstinate enough to block my way, chugging potions, and searching for little levers, just like in a hundred other little RPGs nobody remembers. I’d say it even aspires <\/em>to be the average door-to-door fightfest. But when any number of factors from jumping to walking to standing overly still could mean getting stuck or taking inexplicable damage, every section is pregnant with the worst kind of tension. So it’s nice to have the occasional riddle or challenge break things up–it’s nice to know that broadly speaking, being baffled or fascinated is the intended <\/em>effect.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Somewhere in my hunt for levers and a purpose, I come across a reasonably friendly Daedra Seducer in a tunnel who lets me know I’ve got a puzzle coming my way. Evidently the thungimmy I need is protected by a four-letter password spelled out on four small multiple-choice keypads. Quite the difficult code to crack if one doesn’t know the daedric alphabet. Which, you know what the daedra call the daedric alphabet? They call it “the alphabet.” I’m not totally seeing the wisdom of this security measure.<\/p>\n

Then again, maybe the stewards of this realm foresaw that–as opposed to any immortal being who rates at least a second-grade reading level–they’d want to keep out the occasional illiterate mortal who stumbles in, drunk and figuratively if not currently literally <\/em>pantsless. In this situation, the password being a short daedric word puzzle makes a kind of sense. The only thing you’d need to do to keep out puny interlopers is refrain from spelling out said password in giant, glowing, floating characters–<\/p>\n

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–if at all possible. Now, I got to be honest. Firing from the hip strictly as an interior decorator, this room is not <\/em>justifying its use of space. If we knock out the mysterious plinth and floating four-letter word I bet we can get an exercise bike in here.<\/p>\n

There’s something missing from that screenshot, something I didn’t manage to snap a pic of in time. There used to be a big stone hand reaching up behind that text. When I went up to examine the password and take a screenshot, the stone hand vanished into nothingness. This is probably something deliberately done and just confusing, because if this game was set up so that things could accidentally vanish for no reason I genuinely believe it’d be happening all the time.<\/p>\n

The helpful puzzle-foreshadowing Daedric Seducer also leaves me a study guide to translate the runes with. So if you’ve been wondering how to write “dusk” in the daedric alphabet, man, did your wish ever come true. You spell it like this:<\/p>\n

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“Dusk” is a pretty lurid password, even for a daedra, but clearly somebody was proud of it. For one thing, it’s the password to a vital security system. For another thing, it’s another <\/em>password to another <\/em>vital security system, right after the other one. It’s also framed as the answer to a riddle:<\/p>\n

A bad play? A basement? Curtains? <\/div>
A bad play? A basement? Curtains? <\/div><\/p>\n

Is this some reverse psychology shit? You enter in a password, you get asked a riddle–no way do you think the answer to the riddle is the password you just put in. <\/em>A less cynical adventurer would probably be poised for hours, mouth half-open, racking the brain for a tricky alternate answer that wasn’t totally insipid. “Old age? Death? Dawn? …could it be dawn? But surely it could ALSO be dusk. Dusk would have to at least be a valid answer! …or IS there an answer? Is the password something totally random? Is this riddle a ploy? How deep in the lion’s throat am I?” <\/em>Thankfully, I’m far too broken to overthink it.<\/p>\n

Not long after, I find the lady I’ve been searching for. Her name is Jaciel Morgen. For her sins, she’s the daedric mistress of this realm.<\/p>\n

So this is apparently high fashion in the Shade Perilous? Way to make me feel awkward for NOT being half-undressed. I'm getting serious whiplash here.<\/div>
So this is apparently high fashion in the Shade Perilous? Way to make me feel awkward for NOT being half-undressed. I'm getting serious whiplash here.<\/div><\/p>\n

Turns out something’s happened to her emotionally. She’s not the springy bundle of joy you’d expect from the administrator of a place called the Shade Perilous. Instead she’s depressed, nihilistic, contemptuous, and uncooperative. She’s useless to me as long as she’s in this mood. Thankfully, I know just the thing <\/em>to cheer her up. Now, I bag on Bethesda for failing to include obvious and intuitive courses of action all the time, but happily that’s not the case here. The game lets you take the obvious measure of turning her servant into a really sad dead dagger that’s so sad and dead Jaciel stops being depressed. I know that’s a bit of a cliche these days, but there’s a reason the classics are the classics.<\/p>\n

Hey, me too! That's crazy. We should hang out some time.<\/div>
Hey, me too! That's crazy. We should hang out some time.<\/div><\/p>\n

And now…there’s really no more stalling. Much as I’d like to hang out with The Stranger and her new dagger BFF, a far more sinister destiny awaits. Because this is it. This is the big one. I’m about to step into the belly of the most outrageous, spine-tingling, game-ruining glitch yet.<\/p>\n

Time to enter the No Scum Zone.<\/p>\n

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NEXT WEEK: WELCOME TO HURT<\/strong><\/p>\n

The title this week paraphrases one of my favorite deadpan lines from the UESP’s walkthrough so far.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s safe to say that playing Battlespire demands my full attention. When my deadlines and lukewarm professional reputation depend on figuring out why my god damn longsword won’t equip, and the documentation to assist me is a nakedly speculatory shrug of a wiki article written by third parties–who are the only other people to have […]<\/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-33736","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\/33736","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=33736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}