Ruts vs. Battlespire CH6: Clothes Stanketh the Man

By Rutskarn Posted Wednesday Apr 27, 2016

Filed under: Lets Play 23 comments

Some of you may remember that I yanked from a bag fractal a golden helm of overt, yet obscure, magical property. The question was raised as to what it actually did. Well, as of a few seconds after this screenshot was taken…

According to my compass, this featureless abyss is to the NORTH.
According to my compass, this featureless abyss is to the NORTH.

…I finally have an answer. The helmet remains on my head as I leap sideways off a bridge for no reason. I’m not saying this game’s controls are mishandled, but so far one hundred percent of my deaths have involved straight, narrow bridges with zero enemies.

Anyway, I can’t find the helmet again.

Re-loading my last save brings me back to the dark days when pants were thin on the ground, even for honest, steadfast, upwardly mobile and downwardly plummeting gentlemen of fortune such as myself. Fortunately, in time, I am able to harvest from the bumper crop of mewling scamps a reasonable armory.

For example, my shoulders will never long for the coverage of brass cornflakes ever again.

A prize to anyone who can tell me what's going on with my right arm at this point, because I'm completely stumped.
A prize to anyone who can tell me what's going on with my right arm at this point, because I'm completely stumped.

For another, check out my latest trousers. Description in yellow text, center bottom:

Kind of a Catch-22 between Assuring Stalking or wandering around pantsless.
Kind of a Catch-22 between Assuring Stalking or wandering around pantsless.

Pants of Assured Stalking. For you–the modern adventurer who who just can’t settle for probable stalking. You need your stalking assured, possibly even documented and notarized, and our pants have you covered. Also, your legs and butt.

Is this button at face level? I really want to headbutt it at least once before I die from headbutting the button<em>.</em>
Is this button at face level? I really want to headbutt it at least once before I die from headbutting the button.

In the process I find a few more of those E-Z Apocalypse stations, big fat red buttons crooning like rugged radio-era sex bombs. The designer apparently felt the seductive qualities of the button should be offset by the giant mauve skeleton next to it. Or vice-versa. Anyway, whenever I find an unjoined linkage, I join them back up again. I’m helping!

I run into a few more Vermai Oathkin (that’s the big ugly studio-sci-fi nondescript monsters with a penchant for squaredancing) and at least one of them beckons me to speak. Again, it’s a pretty short and fruitless conversation and ends in violence. I can’t help but wonder if my supernaturally poor personality and pronounced lack of education have anything to do with this.

I also run into a few more of those dremora fellas I showed you last time.

Get it together, pal--I've been here for an hour and my shoulder spikes are like twice as big as yours.
Get it together, pal--I've been here for an hour and my shoulder spikes are like twice as big as yours.

They mix up swordplay with huge, rapid, multi-flavored and apparently devastating balls of magical death. I say “apparently devastating” because while I’m completely immune to all of them, they sure do a number on any Vermai who happen to be attacking me. I get the sense this isn’t a very happy neighborhood.

I dig the neo-bourbon atmosphere of this particular Buttonarium.
I dig the neo-bourbon atmosphere of this particular Buttonarium.

I’ll level with you; I am just the most lost.

It’s difficult to explain why this place is so hard to navigate. Part of it’s necessary limitations of the graphics and display; rooms tend to be grainy and nondescript, long hallways tend to be indistinguishable from last and next one you’ll use, view distance is often constrained or blurs your destination beyond recognition. Plus, having this narrower-than-human-vision aspect ratio always meant it was surprisingly easy to just miss an out-of-the-way side passage or alcove.

But that’s not the whole story, is it? Daggerfall had similar problems, but even though this game is in theory less procedurally generated and more deliberately designed I’d give Battlespire’s level design the gold cup for Achievements in Making My Brow Furrow. The tunnels are all at odd angles and run up and downhill constantly, zagging into weird dead ends, zigging through puzzle rooms that loop around to deposit you right back where you started. Every time I think I’ve explored all of an area I end up finding a nook or cranny that somehow undoes my understanding of the level’s layout. This very well may be a simulation of the Battlespire‘s magically-constructed impossible space. It is not a simulation of fun.

Let me ask this guy for directions. Whoops, accidentally chopped him in half.
Let me ask this guy for directions. Whoops, accidentally chopped him in half.

I eventually rediscover the planks that lead into total darkness. I’m pretty sure this is the only path that hasn’t looped or dead-ended on me yet. This may be because it killed me the last time I tried, but we’ll fall off that bridge when we come to it.

Literally the most imposing adversary in the entire game is connections like this.
Literally the most imposing adversary in the entire game is connections like this.

This turns out to lead to a network of plank passages and stone platforms. I think it is linear. You can’t actually see much longer than the next stone platform, and I swear plank passages appear and disappear when you’re not looking, and I ended up accidentally backtracking like six times in ten minutes, and TELL ME YOU LIKE MY HAT.

At the end of a very long, very confusing, very slow-to-navigate passage of planks I find my reward: a dremora who wants to chew the fat. This time I’m given the option of being indirectly hostile as well as just threatening. He’s exactly what I am whenever I try to cross a bridge too quickly: con descending.

You can't hear it, but rest assured this guy speaks with the best voice acting $0 can buy.
You can't hear it, but rest assured this guy speaks with the best voice acting $0 can buy.

I actually engage him pleasantly enough. He indicates that if I give him a gift, hunting down and killing that Trenelle person everyone’s talking about, he’ll let me into some kind of special club. I accept his quest as a way of putting a pin into this whole thing scratch-my-back-murder racket until I’ve got a handle on the local politics. Then I look for another way forward.

I don’t find any.

Anyone know if EB still carries the Battlespire Strategy Guide?

 


From The Archives:
 

23 thoughts on “Ruts vs. Battlespire CH6: Clothes Stanketh the Man

  1. The Rocketeer says:

    We’ve found it! The worst threat ever!

    “I just happen to have a little gift for you. How about a little – – FIST, FLAME, STEEL, AND STARFIRE!?”

    With the right combination of flexing, posing, and zazz, that could make a great boast, if you were playing the airheaded, overconfident villain in a play for young children, but as a threat? To someone you actually intend to harm, physically? Well, gosh, you better hope you kill them after that. The alternative is that someone, somewhere out there knows that you said that shit, out loud. It’s great motivation to leave no survivors. It’s such a bad threat, it’s a functional anti-threat, alarming the speaker into frenzied, nothing-left-to-lose bloodlust. It’s Cortez burning his ships.

    1. ehlijen says:

      I think a 40k space marine could pull it off. The PC game Chaos gate had plasma gunners regularly shout:
      “STARFIRE SHALL DEVOUR YOUR BLACK SOUL!”
      and
      “THE HEAT OF A THOUSAND SUNS SHALL DESTROY YOU!”

      1. The Rocketeer says:

        That may be, but if someone’s taking literally anything about WH40k seriously, well… that’s an entirely different conversation.

        1. ehlijen says:

          Some voice actors seemed to have managed…

          1. Mersadeon says:

            “Look! Rhinos! RHINOS! Our enemies hide in METAL BOXES, the cowards! THE FOOLS! We… We should take away their METAL BOXES!”

            1. ehlijen says:

              “The Emperor orders you to die!” *bang*
              -“I die f-” *urgh* *fall over*

          2. Sunshine says:

            And bless them for it. Warhammer is best when completely ludicrous but appearing to be unaware of it.

      2. Alex says:

        Yes, but Space Marines are also people for whom grabbing two parts of an Ork’s skull and pulling them in opposite directions until it dies is considered a refreshing bit of entertainment.

  2. Mersadeon says:

    Fashionspire. There. I said it!

    I do chuckle whenever I see the characters face. It’s so perfect.

  3. Majikkani_Hand says:

    I think the arm is a turtle shell, sprouting a giagantic, misshapen turtle arm, from the palm of which comes another, stubbier turtle arm, dangling limply past your hand. It’s hollow, but isn’t worn as a sleeve–it’s just half-assedly attached to the side of your arm with double-sided tape. The gauntlet-and-sword combination, of course, is a large cardboard cutout stapled to the back of your hand. That, or they’re real, but the gauntlet has a handy slot in it for dangly turtle-arm purposes. Everyone knows it’s a major faux-pas for your secondary turtle-arm to obscure your pommel.

    In short, what it is is Haute Couture.

    1. More like Hate Couture, amirite?

  4. Brian says:

    In the “completely stumped” picture, it looks like your arm is wearing an arm-cape of two monster’s hands sewn end to end, but is just your normal blue shirt holding a gauntlet holding a sword.

    *Why* you feel compelled to wear an arm-cape is… um… left as an exercise to other readers?

    1. MichaelGC says:

      I think it’s actually an arm cape and a leg cape, with the second paw clutching, as it were, our intrepid plummeter’s knee. Although now we need to also work out why anyone would wear a leg cape, so I guess I’m not really helping matters claritywise.

      1. Chauzuvoy says:

        Obviously you put one over the right arm and leg, get a second one to put over the left arm and leg, and then you can glide around like a flying squirrel. Doing so is necessary to reach the next area, push the last button, and bring about the end of the world (and more importantly: the game.)

  5. Bryan Bridges says:

    I love reading your lets plays Rutskarn. Hope you get hired for a AAA game eventually.

    1. MichaelGC says:

      Aye right – I don’t know that ‘genius’ is an especially useful concept, but it is certainly an applicable one.

  6. Cuthalion says:

    I love this series.

  7. MichaelGC says:

    IT IS A VERY NICE HAT WELL DONE

    1. ehlijen says:

      Argh, there’s helmet eating the protagonist! He’s almost been devoured already, painfully groaning for help and struggling to break free.

  8. Nidokoenig says:

    The demon arms motif on that armour is pretty snazzy. Last time I saw something like that it was on a breastplate in a Japanese game.

  9. Bubble181 says:

    To those of us following along at home, I want to point out that
    A) you can actually talk some creatures out of combat (though it’s rarely useful) and even (at later stages) get quests from them
    B) While I doubt we’ll get the whole game this way (as it would probably get tiresome), the quest for those five anchors is literally *half* the quest to get out of level *one*. Of, erm, I can’t be bothered to look it up, but…ten-ish levels all in all? We’ll be here for a while longer.

    To Ruts, I want to say I do enjoy and love this playthrough :-) Certainly different from anything I’ve ever tried.

  10. Not sure if this will work but… Very Fine Hat.

    I had to go trawling through both my ij and lj accounts to find that one, but I also got reminded of how many other userpics I have and how many make me laugh, so that was fun!

  11. Droid says:

    Rutskarn, are you not familiar with the term “headbuttoning”? I thought it was common knowledge by now.

    Great series, enjoying the madness and bags a lot so far.

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.