I'm in hell. Both literally in fantasy knock-off hell, and figuratively in the sense that I'm miserable. I can't find the thing that lets me get on with the story. The leader of the imp village knows how to return me to the mortal world, but in return I have to find a cure for a mysterious illness afflicting the imps.
Fair enough. Except all I know is that I'm looking for an alchemist imp who is in a cave somewhere, and now I have to systematically search the whole map because I don't even know which direction to go. The thought that haunts me is that someone already told me where to go, but I forgot. Alternately, there is some minor character that I have yet to talk to.
Or maybe the game itself just doesn't want me to know.
I suppose it shouldn't matter that I'm lost. After all, what I'm really doing is just wandering from place to place killing monsters, and I don't need directions for that. Wherever I happen to be at the moment is where the gameplay is happening. Yet once more I've succumbed to the trap of meaning. I want to cure those imps of their sickness. I want to escape hell. Even though I would simply be presented with another mission to finish. Even though I would simply be trapped in another map. It would feel like accomplishment.
The key, I think, is to engage the game on a smaller scale. To start caring about individual locations and npcs, so that my wandering between them becomes a meaningful activity in its own right. That way I can systematically search and still get the feeling that I'm making something happen.
I don't know, though. Ultimately the characters aren't all that interesting. The places aren't all that interesting. The story was moderately interesting, but not so much so that it feels worth it spread out over 10 hours. I want something to happen.
What I'm going to do is try my best to exploit online guides. I figure there has to be some way to go directly to what I'm supposed to be doing without running in circles for hours at a time. Yes, it's not really taking the game at face value and sidestepping most of its actual mechanics to play an instruction-following game instead, but it's so much easier.
I may not be as cut out for old-school rpgs as I'd previously thought.
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