Ruts vs. Battlespire CH12: Get Me Out of Here

By Rutskarn Posted Tuesday Jun 14, 2016

Filed under: Lets Play 60 comments

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 survival and meaning. It’s called “A Man Tested.”

 

He was a moth in an empty house

His wings strove and shuddered, hungry for fresh winds

Black, feather-fringed and proud

A humble shell that burned for flame

 

Anyway, I fucked a spider daedra.

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 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.

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.

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 circumstances, probably less awkward than any alternative.

''Hey, just wanted to know where you got that outfit!  ...NO. NO OF COURSE NOT REALLY.'
''Hey, just wanted to know where you got that outfit! ...NO. NO OF COURSE NOT REALLY.'

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, 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 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. 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.

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.

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.

Unfortunately, there is a context, and that context is two straight games of stuff like this:

Ma'am, you're already looking at spinal issues. That slouch can't be helping.
Ma'am, you're already looking at spinal issues. That slouch can't be helping.

Half-naked female daedra in Daggerfall and Battlespire are pretty obvious sex candy, right up until the game trots out a half-naked female daedra who also happens to be prepubescent. 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. 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.

Sorry about this. I didn’t and don’t really want to talk about this, but it felt too weird to gloss over.

As far as masculine fanservice, the game has some shirtless ugly dudes but otherwise caters pretty exclusively to spiderfuckers.
As far as masculine fanservice, the game has some shirtless ugly dudes but otherwise caters pretty exclusively to spiderfuckers.

By this point–I guess the second level of the game, if you’re keeping score–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:

Toilets? Chefs. Pimples. Really weird people.
Toilets? Chefs. Pimples. Really weird people.

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

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.
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.

So you might be forgiven for thinking this was pretty friggin’ lame puzzle design. I don’t care. I missed riddles. They were around back in Arena, 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 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 thing they thought we’d need help figuring out.

On an unrelated note, I found this Shirt Battlespire Cape of Arcane Sight.
On an unrelated note, I found this Shirt Battlespire Cape of Arcane Sight.

THIS WEEKEND: SCHOOL’S OUT

 


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60 thoughts on “Ruts vs. Battlespire CH12: Get Me Out of Here

  1. Jsor says:

    There’s still the odd riddle in games, it’s just that they tend to take on three forms:

    1. You have three dialogue choices, in which case the answer is obvious.
    2. It’s a hint to use an ability or item on something, which you may not even have, but if you do it’s painfully obvious.
    3. The worst, your character figures it out in a cutscene. JRPGs are awful for this.

    I definitely like the idea of typing in the answer to riddles more, but it’s just so incompatible with modern systems (and also consoles). Instead, now Bioware will just put Tower of Hanoi into every game until the end times.

    1. Gnoll Queen says:

      Like this is super strange to me because having a little keyboard show up on screen like when people name their skyrim characters feels to me like a decent solution. You can even keep the answers to three to four letter words. And keep a list of solutions around just in case in game.

      1. Peter H. Coffin says:

        Like a context-free list of words presented as “Here, this will help you,” that include all the riddle answers in them someplace. If you’re really bad at riddles, you just try all of them and eventually get through. But thinking a little can eliminate a lot of wrong “guesses”, and thinking a lot can just end up using the list as a cross-check for spelling or something.

    2. Viktor says:

      I think 2 works best, at least in a Bethesda game. There’s enough clutter that you can fairly easily make the answer an item that’s found in the dungeon without it being obvious. And that keeps me from typing “warhorse”when the game wants “Horse” and then getting really pissed because that’s obviously right.

      But I can see why devs are avoiding riddles. It’s so much a test of player skill and not char skill, and some answers are so questionable, that you can easily frustrate players into a ragequit without even trying. Heck, there’s a puzzle from Pokemon gen 3 that still pisses me off because the game devs are clearly wrong, and that ones just yes/no.

      1. Incunabulum says:

        “It's so much a test of player skill and not char skill . . .”

        Hmm, maybe we can expect more riddles in the future then – they’ve pretty much abandoned the PC for the player avatar with the addition of the minigame and FO4 has almost completely repudiated the concept.

      2. Shoeboxjeddy says:

        What did the Pokemon puzzle entail? I’m curious now.

        1. Viktor says:

          Blaine’s gym, it asks how many evolutions Poliwag has. The puzzle was written for gen 1, when the answer was 2. Politoed makes it 3, but they didn’t change the answer for the FR/LG remakes.

          1. Warclam says:

            Teeeeechnically, the question is “Poliwag evolves 3 times?”, to which the answer is no: it can evolve to Poliwhirl and then Poliwrath, OR Poliwhirl then Politoed. Only two evolutions for any given Poliwag.

            That’s needlessly confusing though, they should have just changed it. Not to mention that if they ever decide to make Mega-Poliwrath or Mega-Politoed, it will be just plain wrong.

      3. Tom says:

        That, at least, seems an easy-enough fix. Don’t ask the player the riddle in the first place unless they make an appropriate intelligence check; it seems realistic enough that if the person you’re talking to can tell from prior conversation that your character isn’t very bright, they wouldn’t bother asking. No problem as long as there’s some other means for low INT characters to progress, or the riddle is an optional bonus.

    3. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I dont really like riddles for which you can type an answer in games where you are supposed to make a character,especially if one of the stats is intelligence,or if there is a “lore” ability.Because whats the point of playing a character if I can find answers out of it?Having a riddle checked by your stats and abilities that you can solve in other ways(finding a note,getting it from a conversation)is preferable to me.

      1. Jsor says:

        They could always use Lore/Knowledge/Skill checks as an “insight” ability, where the higher it is the more hints you get.

        1. WJS says:

          I’ve seen that done. The riddles were multiple choice, and the higher your INT, the less choices you had to choose from. Add that to the standard multiple choice question model of “one right, one that sounds right, and two that are obviously wrong”, so only low-INT characters even consider the obviously wrong answers, and it works surprisingly well.

      2. Ravens Cry says:

        Hmm, here’s an idea, the check, if successful, gives you some extra hints and context, but does not solve the riddle outright.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Why not though?A bard with lore 30 shouldnt be struggling with a riddle,unless its an obscure riddle exclusive to the baatezu,or something like that.A 3 int barbarian who can barely speak should not be able to solve a riddle at all.Just because you as a player struggle with a riddle does not mean your character should,and vice versa.

          And this is especially true for crpgs,where not only can a riddle be in a language you are not that good in,but where the answer may be oddly specific(its not a wardrobe,but an armoire).

          1. Humanoid says:

            Guess it with a 10 in luck!

            1. Incunabulum says:

              Fallout 3 had a quest where you could guess a password if your luck was high enough.

              1. Da Mage says:

                I dunno about Fallout 3, but New Vegas had the REPCONN headquarters where with a high luck, you could guess the level 3 password to disable the robots….the password was ‘ice cream’.

                1. IFS says:

                  Hilariously you could also guess the password with a low int character, the line implying that your character shouted out “Ice Cream” because the Mr. Handy looks a bit like an Ice Cream cone.

                2. guy says:

                  The best luck-related thing you can do in New Vegas is perform brain surgery successfully.

                  Caesar: That was incredible. How did you do it?
                  Courier: I have no idea.

          2. Matt Downie says:

            If you, as a player, like solving riddles, then a check to see if your Lore stat exceeds X takes away that fun.

            RPGs exist on a spectrum from ‘ProgressQuest’, where your character does everything and the player does nothing (which makes a certain kind of sense – why should I get to decide whether my PC goes off to kill the dragon when it’s my character that’s supposed to be making that decision?) to, say, Dark Souls, where player skill decides combat far more than your stats do.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Theres a difference between beating a game because of your skill with that game and because of your skill with something unrelated.You dont get good at dark souls by playing lots of need for speed.So riddles that include your skill in that game(improving your stats in a certain fashion,talking to certain npcs,picking certain dialogue options,….)are far superior than ones that can simply be beaten because you read it in a book 10 years ago.

              1. Matt Downie says:

                It depends on what you consider ‘unrelated’. Are block-pushing puzzles unrelated to Legend of Zelda? If riddles were a major part of the game, then being good at riddles would mean you were better at the game, in the same way that having fast reactions and good aim makes you better at fighting in Skyrim, even if the character you’re playing has low archery skill.

                I think the real problem is that riddles are too culturally specific, too all-or-nothing, too open to debate.

                “If you know what I am, I am nothing.”

          3. IFS says:

            Granted you could assume in a party based crpg that your party might confer with each other to figure out the solution. BG2 had a few dialogues where with sufficient wis/cha/int you could talk past things and it was entirely possible to have a party member smarter than your PC do the talking for you.

    4. Joe Informatico says:

      Has BioWare used the Tower of Hanoi since Mass Effect 1? It doesn’t seem like it still fits with their current action-RPG design philosophy. I can’t even remember if there’s one in Dragon Age: Origins.

      1. Jsor says:

        I think you’re right. I just like taking potshots at their old love for that stupid puzzle.

      2. ehlijen says:

        Dragon Age Origins has an easteregg where you find a grave marked T.O.H. ‘Mourned by no one.’

        But the in Dragon Age Inquisition, in one of the DLCs you can play it again to open an optional loot box. (Next to a note proclaiming it is the maddest security measure ever.)

      3. Shoeboxjeddy says:

        In ME3 Citadel DLC, there’s a Tower of Hanoi arcade game. Shepard pointedly refuses to play it, even when offered.

      4. Taellosse says:

        It’s become such a point of mockery for them that I think they’ve learned not to use it for anything important since then. Others have already mentioned the 3 most recent references/uses of it in their games, though. I suspect that’s the most prominent role it will play from now on – as a reference to their past, or as something entirely optional.

        1. krellen says:

          I think it’s more likely that EA just hates the Towers of Hanoi.

      5. djw says:

        There is a tower of hanoi in one of the DLC for Inquisition.

        And… upon reading the rest of the comments, I see that this was already mentioned.

    5. Incunabulum says:

      Or, like Skyrim, they just put the answer right above the clicky you’re supposed to select.

      ‘eh, Howard says we have to put riddles in because its what the other games did.’

      ‘But won’t players just go straight to the wiki’

      ‘Yeah, so don’t put too much effort into it.’

    6. IFS says:

      The last time I remember seeing a good case of riddles in a game was Dragon Age Origins, which had the sequence leading to the Urn of Sacred Ashes where you had to answer several riddles. They gave you something like 8 choices some of which seemed like they could be the right answer so it wasn’t too obvious (though still pretty easy to figure out) and since all the questions were based on the life of an important figure in the lore if you’d been paying attention to that they were much easier. Plus for those with no patience for riddles you could just answer wrong and fight a shade.

      1. ehlijen says:

        And then there was the bridge combination puzzle following straight after, which was ok in my book but I can see it being a chore, unvoidable too, if you’re not into it.

    7. Muspel says:

      There was actually a riddle in Tales of Vesperia which you entered using the Xbox 360 keyboard screen thing. Granted, the riddle was very simple (it had the clues “Light”, “Sky”, and “Sphere”), but still.

    8. Some of the puzzles in Skyrim with the rotating animal things are decent, since you have to look around the area to find clues to solve it, like one I was doing the other day where there were 4 of them and in order to get them I had to stand on a pressure plate which rotated 4 nearby doors so I could see them. Not that tough to solve, but it requires some actual work figuring out where to go to solve it. :P

  2. Gnoll Queen says:

    “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.”

    That is a very very good explanation of something i have seen in far to many places. Mostly rpgs and video game art and i would extend that it happens nowadays two. see Mad Max Fury Road where the cinematographer kept on caching himself wanting to get all of the women’s cleavage in the shots because that is just how you film women.

    1. Rutskarn says:

      This is still my “favorite” example.

      http://m.imgur.com/UhtCtFU

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Ugh,that one…

        If you want a sexy lich,then make homura akemi.Copy from the best.And hey,that way you get to kill two birds with one stone,since homura is also a lesbian.

        1. Fizban says:

          Well she doesn’t look like a lich. Which begs the question: why do all these liches look like rotting zombies? People who are defined by phenomenal cosmic power look like whatever they want to look like. A sexy lich is any lich that feels like being sexy that day. Just put the magic on the boob window shirt and save yourself an extra step.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Precisely.I get why xykon does it,because it looks cool and badass.But a lich can illusion themselves into anything they want.Just as dragons.It shouldnt be odd to meet a dragon in human form(or rabit form).Just take a lesson from greek mythology,and all the crazy things zeus turned into in the name of boninglove.

            1. ehlijen says:

              As long as you don’t overdo it and end up with the all mimic dungeon inside the adventurer eating house monster.
              Ie, unless it’s dramatically appropriate, it’s often best to just let the players know what something is and see its real form.

              If magical disguises are used, the unmasking also becomes a dramatic moment that you shouldn’t deny the players (though by all means make it difficult) if they are intent on it, at which point the real face should be revealed.

          2. Steve C says:

            Because undead are immune to illusions.

            1. krellen says:

              No they aren’t.

              Some mindless undead are immune to mind-affecting illusions, but no one is “immune” to phantasms (some creatures do have inherent True Seeing and see through them , but they still perceive the phantasm, they just know it’s not the truth.)

                1. krellen says:

                  And proud of it. Make better jokes!

              1. Decius says:

                Plus immunity to illusions doesn’t mean that illusions cast to alter your appearance don’t work, it means that illusions cast to alter the appearance of things don’t change how you perceive them.

                CrossTheLineTwice

  3. Da Mage says:

    There are few things that Cahmel won’t hit, but that Daedra women is one of them.

    1. silver Harloe says:

      Not so sure about him not doing daedra women.
      Look at the dialog from last episode again, about making the PC “receptive” – the PC was clearly the bottom…
      And in about a month, he’ll figure out that the daedra spider dude he did was actually a daedra spider chick, and the donger in his posterior was actually her ovipositor – a realization he’ll come to as he bursts open from the 2000 little daedra spider hatchlings growing in his intestines getting a little too big and hungry to be contained by him anymore.

  4. Ninety-Three says:

    I don't think the developers meant to sexualize Rishaal““f you can follow me

    There is at least one letter missing here. I hope.

  5. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Lastly, it didn't. I had to kill him anyway.

    So you were the female after all.

  6. MichaelGC says:

    Scamps came off manic and uncertain, dremora seem louche and overconfident, spider daedra are […]

    Seductive? Tempting? Alluring?

    1. evileeyore says:

      Dominant?

  7. Will says:

    I’m seeing a whole new genre.

    That Ruts is one smooth spiderf…

    SHUT YO’ MOUTH!

    Just talkin’ ’bout Ruts.

    We’ll call it Arachsploitation.

  8. Neko says:

    I quite liked the riddles in Betrayal at Krondor. Mostly optional, but potentially helpful, and it at least gave you how many letters were in the answer they were looking for. And if it was one of the short ones… eh, you could always just brute-force it, there were only 4 options for each letter.

    1. Decius says:

      I got good at brute forcing even the longer ones.

      Plus Glamredhel was given away if you read the books, and not subtly in a way that the player might forget.

  9. Mersadeon says:

    I agree, good on them to include “cheat sheets” for the riddles. Playing Legend of Grimrock, I could have used them. Especially since tons of people (like me) don’t have English as their native language, meaning either we have problems “getting” the riddle or we have to deal with a translation – and these riddles rarely translate well.

    I’m playing the first Dark Souls right now, and the German translation is horrendous. Sometimes, the item descriptions outright lie. I can’t stand it. We really, as an industry, need to work on providing ways for indies to get better approaches to localization. I think much could be done, specifically in the area of using fans/early access users to translate.

    1. WJS says:

      The English version also lies about some of the items. I presume it’s intentional? I don’t know. I really need to get Dark Souls II at some point – you’d think that now Dark Souls III is out, II would come down in price, but no.

  10. Lachlan the Mad says:

    There’s a moment in The Last Hero, by Terry Pratchett, where the extremely ancient barbarian heroes of the Silver Horde are talking about how they need to go through a tomb with an ancient riddle guardian at the end, and they’re quite confident that the answer will be “teeth”, because “it’s always ‘teeth’ in poxy old riddles”.

    Later in the book, one of them is rubbing a bruise, and tells the other one off for saying “teeth”, and he’s forced to admit “alright, sometimes it’s ‘tongue'”.

    1. Paul says:

      My exact thought process was:
      1. Read riddle
      2. Wonder for a second
      3. Realise I don’t care and read the answer
      4. Kick myself for not remembering that the Last Hero has already told me that the answer to poxy old riddles is always teeth

  11. RCN says:

    The recent Might and Magic X had some riddles, but only one had its answer given to you because it was both a) kinda plot-relevant and b) a really unusual subject that only archeologists would be likely to know about.

    But in any case it was a fun break of pace.

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