Also, notice that when I say, \u201cI immediately noticed,\u201d I mean, \u201cI noticed thirty hours into the last playthrough and proceeded to think about it way too goddamned much.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Anyway, the guards stopped outside my cell door and kindly asked me to get the hell over by the window. Not wanting to cause a scene, I did so, at which point\u2014in true Bethesda fashion\u2014my feet and the floor entered into a smothering relationship and I found myself unable to budge. The bodyguards brushed past me, then opened up a secret tunnel in the wall by pressing a stone. From their none-too-discreet dialogue, I inferred that somebody was trying to kill the Emperor and that the escape tunnel is in my cell, for some reason. On the surface that makes no goddamned sense, because it\u2019s a prison cell\u2014typical facilities will include a bed, a toilet, and a place to sit, while typical facilities will not include\u2014for example\u2014a Thompson submachine gun, a jackhammer, or an easily-opened secret tunnel to freedom. This is made slightly less absurd by the bodyguard captain\u2019s insistence that there shouldn\u2019t<\/em> be a prisoner inside, and that the cell is supposed to be \u201coff limits\u201d to preserve the integrity of their jail-based escape tunnel. Yeah, that\u2019s real discreet. \u201cNo matter how crowded we get, nobody put anybody in that prison cell, okay? Why? Cos it\u2019s, see, the window is placed right above the foul bucket-toilet. That\u2019s real bad feng shui, and I won\u2019t have a prisoner\u2019s low chi on my hands. What? Hell, if we get too crowded, just ship them to some crappy island or something.\u201d<\/p>\n But before the Emperor can get into the secret tunnel, he turned to me and says, \u201cYou! I\u2019ve seen you!\u201d<\/p>\n Before I can trot out my usual excuse about how I was robbed by a witch that day and didn\u2019t even realize what the Imperial Laws regarding public exposure were, he said, \u201cLet me see your face,\u201d and the first proper conversation of this game begins.<\/p>\n Conversations in Bethesda\u2019s recent games (Oblivion and Fallout 3) take a little getting used to. Let\u2019s say you, John-Boy McRadish, want to ask Poin\u2019tles Apos\u2019t\u2019rophe if he has the time. You begin by getting within talking range of him, at which point he\u2019ll turn to you and ask something like, \u201cIs there something you need?\u201d<\/p>\n At this point, as soon as you hit the Use key to initiate a conversation, your vision is yanked forward until you\u2019re staring him dead in the eyes. All considerations of setting, relationship, or context are pushed aside as the two of you lock gazes like old lovers, peering into one another\u2019s souls from an apparent distance of eight inches away.<\/p>\n He will then say something like, \u201cIs there something you need?\u201d He\u2019s terrified you didn\u2019t hear him the first time, and that you\u2019d otherwise just stand there all day waiting for him to invite you to share the reason why you just initiated a conversation with him. NPCs are neuotic like that.<\/p>\n At this point, unlike the WikiConversation system of the last game in which you\u2019d click on terms to get the NPC to explain them, you have numbered conversation options. Some of these are simple terms, like in Morrowind, but others are full sentences. These are similar to the dialogue options in Bioware games, save for two important distinctions:<\/p>\n 1.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They\u2019re intentionally more generic, serving less as a way to define your character and more as a way to move the conversation along certain broad trajectories (i.e, \u201cI\u2019d like to know more about that,\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s all for now,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m ready to go,\u201d \u201cAs soon as you turn around I\u2019m going to rob you blind and sell all of your things to the tinkers.\u201d<\/p>\n 2.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They\u2019re all way more stupid.<\/p>\n (I\u2019ll get into the Speechcraft system later. That practically deserves its own chapter.)<\/p>\n The conversation with the Emperor, for example, gives you about three conversation options in total, and you\u2019re forced to use all <\/em>of them\u2014you just get to pick which order you ask your plot-driving questions in. I think Escape from Monkey Island did this as a joke; again, though, you can\u2019t complain too much since dialogue in Elder Scrolls games has never been a big deal. I\u2019m guessing that once Bethesda had the wherewithal to hire a ton of voice actors (well, okay, hire two voice actors and get them to record a novel\u2019s worth of dialogue apiece), they felt obliged to stick in a conversation system that used real voices and was (the tiniest fraction) more immersive than opening up a big Talking Window. Once they had that system, and the obligation to include honest to goodness dialogue options, they didn\u2019t really seem to know what to do with it. That may or may not explain the restrictive, draconian mess that is Fallout 3\u2019s railroading conversation system.<\/p>\n Oh, crap, am I seriously still only thirty seconds into this game? I really gotta stop going into James Burke hyper-explanatory mode every time I encounter a new concept, or this series will be over around the time I hit the lockpicking tutorial.<\/p>\n The Emperor started talking about the fact that assassins are coming after him, and he saw me in a dream, blah blah blah okay the bodyguard dudes are escorting him through the tunnel. One of them said something like, \u201cGuess it\u2019s your lucky day,\u201d which I took to mean as long as I remain real <\/em>patriotic for the next twelve minutes, I get to escape as well. To be on the safe side, I waited until they\u2019re a little ahead before I follow down the tunnel.<\/p>\n Of course, I didn\u2019t count on the fact that\u2014being NPCs\u2014they\u2019re slower than a legless grandma swimming through pizza dough. I end up catching up with them anyway, just in time for a bunch of guys in armor to come out of nowhere and ambush us.<\/p>\n Can I just go ahead and give you Imperial guys a round of applause? Seriously, this is the best secret royal escape tunnel I think I\u2019ve ever seen. Am I to understand that there are no <\/em>spells that can prevent people from teleporting into unwanted areas of the palace, like, for example, the top-secret tunnel you use for securing your most important officials, which just happens to be connected to the wing where you keep your most loathsome and powerful criminals locked up?<\/em> Because if there aren\u2019t, how do you guys not get an assassination attempt and prison break every lazy Sunday? And it\u2019s well-known enough that these assassin dues knew it was here? Or did they just randomly teleport under the city and gamble on getting splinched?<\/p>\n Either way, the assassins took out the captain lady in one hit, then began engaging in more reasonably-prolonged swordplay with the other two. Not being armed, I contribute by providing color commentary.<\/p>\n
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