![]() The lore of the game positions Valheim as a sort of purgatory where warriors prove their worth to Odin so he’ll let them enter Valhalla, and yet his little buddy is popping up every time I sneeze to make sure my progress towards this elysium is as smooth as possible. I want to run around my little slice of Valheim and figure out for myself what to do with this weird Wishbone thingy that I harvested from the belly of my enemy, but instead the ever-present raven is there to tell me - spoiler alert - that it’s specifically designed to help me find buried silver veins. Repeatedly trying to murder a cluster of pixels on my computer via any weapon at my disposal rather than engage with him one more time crazy. Stubbornly running around for four in-game days trying to ignore the bird that only I can see because everyone else talked to him and moved on with their lives crazy. Not normal crazy, or slightly crazy, but aging ballerina crazy. And to be perfectly blunt, it drives me crazy. Unskippable content, particularly tutorials, is one of those persisting features that has been around for so long that many developers feel like it has to be included. ![]() So trust me when I tell you that the seething, blinding hatred I’m feeling for its bird is coming from a place of affection. I’ve even taken to lying to my family, telling them I’m playing so frequently because I have to “for work.” And bless their sweet credulous hearts, they believe me, or at least they did until now. You cannot ignore, kill, or toggle him off - he is just there, ready to hold your hand through the game so you don’t have to exhaust yourself trying to figure it out by actually playing.Īs my playtime with the game clearly indicates, I have enjoyed Valheim. Ignoring him isn’t an option, because he will continue to spawn in front of you every 10 steps or so, assailing you with his “hails” and “tidings” with the unabashed zeal of a Rajneeshee disciple determined to lure you to their remote Oregonian compound. He spawns regularly with a bold highlighter yellow exclamation point to inform you of some sort of in-game piece of information he believes to be so critical that you must immediately stop playing in order to… well, to learn how to play. If you can forgive my breathless hyperbole, I’d like to talk more about why forced tutorials are the interminable bane of my virtual existence. I’m talking about unskippable tutorials, the “mandatory fun” features that serve the sole purpose of taking you out of an adventure to tell you something that you may want to figure out on your own. But I’m also talking about much more than that. Waiting with his freaking “tidings” to tell me what to do and where to go next. But in every success and failure, and on the occasional mundane Tuesday, just for funsies, one half of Odin’s mythological Wonder Twins, Hugin, has been there. And I would love nothing more than to say that I have uncovered her secrets all on my own. He appears like a whisper punctuating the fog-drenched air of the pestilential swamp.įor 146 hours and hundreds of in-game days, I have called this land “home.” I have explored her caves, climbed her mountains, and crossed her seas. But I know another creature is about to reveal itself to me, a creature more wickedly clever than any other I’ve encountered on this rock I’ve settled on. ![]() The warped, ancient trees surround me, piercing the gunmetal sky like the serpentine monuments of a long-forgotten maritime necropolis. I have completed my mission and slain my foe with two of the fiercest warriors I’ve ever known by my side.
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