positivestress

just a regular guy like you or me

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The Skyrim rotating animal block puzzle. To summarize for anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, you're in an ancient Nord burial site and you see a bandit looking at a lever in the middle of a big room with a locked door on the opposite wall. He pulls the lever and is immediately killed by an arrow trap

At this point you're thinking, ah, the people who built this place wanted to keep out bandits. But I'm the player so I'll find a way! You enter the room and see three rotating blocks off to the side with animal symbols. Looks like you have to find the combination! Just kidding, when you walked down the stairs you immediately noticed some giant stone animals directly above the door. Clearly the solution is to match the sequence, and the fact that one of the three animals has fallen onto the ground doesn't in any way obscure that incredibly obvious fact

So, this puzzle sucks. It's testing if the player is capable of activating 0.001% of their brain to look around. It's insulting, frankly! But what I'm fixating on right now is... this moment is such pathetic design that it completely pulls you out of the world, and thank god for that because what the fuck is supposed to be going on here?

The ancient Nords wanted to keep out grave robbers, but they did want some people to be able to get in. So who are they keeping out? Babies? They've kindly designed their puzzle so it doesn't matter if you're literate or anything, just as long as you understand patterns. Apparently this bandit didn't. Maybe he was a baby? Also, the only thing that makes it almost qualify as a puzzle is that one of the signs fell down. When they built it, it would've been the equivalent of a sticky note with your computer password stuck to the monitor except five thousand times bigger

This is, of course, later followed by the door that requires a claw-shaped key to open but also has an animal puzzle where the key itself has the animals engraved into it. I don't think these are bad ideas, they're teaching the player to 1. look around the environment and 2. examine items in their inventory. Except it doesn't lead anywhere! The claw keys are all exactly the same, three animals engraved into the key that you need to open the door anyway. If there's a better version of the rotating blocks, I can't remember it

And it's all at the cost of designing something potentially interesting that could've told you something about the world and the people who lived in it. I've been thinking about these stupid puzzles since 2011. I need a prequel about the bandit who died to that arrow trap because that guy's short life must've been an absolute clown car


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in reply to @positivestress's post:

Now I want to see a game where solving the incredibly obvious tomb wall sliding block puzzle or whatever just gets you dumped into a pit because the only people who are meant be there know all know about the secret door around the back which is locked with a normal lock and key.