I love the increased population in towns, but it's a bit weird that everyone just kind of stares at you.
I head up the nearby mountain, looking for the cave, but stumble across the ruins of Forelhost on the way. A captain outside tells me he's trying to retrieve a powerful dragon priest mask from within, so I volunteer to help.
Battling through Forelhost is incredible. It's full of Draugr Scourge and Deathlords, and I die frequently. Every fight feels tactical and even. The Draugr are slow and go down to a few savage strikes from my mace and Illia's ice spikes, but if one good swing of a double handed axe connects with me and I'm not blocking, I'm toast. Conversely, when blocking I take almost no damage. Sometimes I'm annihilated straight away by powerful magic, but by trying different angles of attack and ordering Illia to different locations, I can always scrape through by the skin of my teeth eventually.
Illia takes to summoning an Atronach to even up our odds:
At one point, one of the Draugr summons their own Atronach and the two beasts do battle! We gradually fight our way to the Dragon Priest's chamber, and the final battle is mighty indeed. Illia targets the Dragon Priest while I desperately fend off several Scourge. I consume an unhealthy amount of healing potions - easily 20+, and we eventually prevail.
On returning to the captain with the mask, he turns out to be an 'imposter' and attacks me. I find this to be an odd and unnecessary twist. I find a lot of the quests have these kind of silly twists at the end, and I think I noted the same in my Oblivion blog too.
I feel the follower system could be massively improved too. Firstly, I don't like how many of them can't die. I don't know if it applies to all of them, but Illia for one cannot. Yes it would be annoying to lose one, but it would also up the stakes considerably. Secondly, the whole way it works seems a bit odd. If it's not a directory hired follower, they take no share of your spoils, and just loyally follow you into every dark dungeon. You should have to pay them a sizeable stipend at the very least, and sellsword should cost a lot more - thousands, rather than 500...
The journey to and through Forelhost ate up a good couple of hours alltold. While I'm on the mountain I may as well head to the cave before returning to Riften. Here's the view from the mountain:
No comments:
Post a Comment