Dear fucking god.
I finished Tribunal.
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
Alright. Calm down. You've played through all of Oblivion, Knights of the Old Republic, and more, you can handle this.
So first of all, my initial comment about Tribunal being Oblivion is true. Tribunal is like an Oblivion alpha test. Every single bad element of Oblivion has its place in Tribunal. City divided into a handful of zones and where levitation is not allowed, check. Lack of decent exploration in said city despite Morrowind's biggest strength being its open world design, check. Lack of meaningful quests which run the gamut from the motherfucking Nerevarine throwing people out of bars, to getting some pathetic loser a date, check. Fucking inane main story quests which consist almost entirely of boring dungeon crawls or fetching, but lack any of the interesting context or freedom of Morrowind, check. So many plot holes and problems it makes my brain want to fucking die, check.
I mean, it's not quite as bad as Oblivion. Tribunal does build on the interesting lore in Morrowind and fleshes out stuff that was previously only talked about in books... just not in a way that is really compelling or makes me feel like I learned anything new about the world or appreciate it any more. The city is empty and barren, with no unique culture to learn and understand. The NPCs have nothing interesting to say except for dumb jokes and references. The whole conflict between the Tribunal and the throne could have been great - a real interesting conflict that rips the city apart and explores many moral dimensions, with the player needing to pick a side between the bloated and slow but ultimately beneficial Empire, and the traditional but often barbaric and hostile Tribunal. But none of this happens. The game even dangles choice and consequence in your face, only to force you to play both sides in its story anyway. Thanks for setting up multiple factions and then not giving me a choice on who to side with, jerks.
Then there's the dungeons. Jesus fuck, the dungeons. What the
fuck. So I swear I must have killed a thousand fucking copy-pasted goblins inside a thousand copy-pasted tunnels in this game. I don't mind dungeon crawling, when it is interesting and done well. In Tribunal it feels like Bethesda just churned out as many levels as possible and didn't worry about putting anything remotely worth seeing at them. Aside from being split up into pointlessly small rooms which just get confusing to navigate because they all look identical (due to copy-pasting the same room kits over and over), they often feature pointless and long paths to nowhere, and doors to areas which have nothing in them except a couple enemies to kill, not even some loot. There's the sewers. And the catacombs. And the caves. And the dwarven ruins. And the clockwork "city". It's all the same, just copy-pasted tunnels with copy-pasted monsters. In the clockwork city they even troll you by putting doors in your way that take 10 fucking seconds to open for no reason. When your game has bad combat,
you do not make combat the central focus of your game. Fuck you Bethesda.
But what really made me rage is the ending sequence. I can deal with shitty content
if there is a story or some lore worth reading/seeing/hearing/exploring keeping me going. Okay, so the entire Dark Brotherhood attacks basically just become a dropped plot thread that's eventually hand-waved by the king and you can do nothing to really follow up on it properly, but once Almalexia gets involved it feels like you're actually starting to do something worthy of the Nerevarine's power and station. Consorting with gods, not killing fucking rats in sewers
again. Except, this sense of purpose quickly shatters when your story is basically interrupted full stop by an attack by a bunch of... yes...
Robot fucking dinosaurs.
This is a real thing. They actually put robot dinosaurs in an Elder Scrolls game, and for some reason thought that these weren't fucking stupid. And then they make you kill a thousand of the fucking things while exploring a thousand fucking dwemer tunnels.
Anyway, for some reason Almalexia orders you to retreive some special ring for her as well as to reforge an old flame-enchanted blade that was held by Nerevar in times of old. Why? None of this is ever really explained, other than it's "Almalexia's divine purpose" or whatever. Fine, I can sort of buy that, but why do I have to make a sword if I am playing a pure mage? Maybe the game designers are trying to tell me I'm fucked when the boss fight comes. And it's sure awfully convenient that all the pieces of this legendary lost sword (which was never mentioned before in game lore) just so happen to all be obtainable within a five minute walk of one another. And in a mod where custom armor forging is touted as a feature, the fact that I can't choose what shape or form the blade will take on when reforged is conspicious to say the least...
Anyway, so then you reforge the blade, Almalexia tells you that it can kill a god. Wow. Uh, thanks I guess. That sounds pretty great. And now she says that these attacks by robot lizards are caused by the insane god Sotha Sil. Alright, gotcha, I mean, at least we have a villain now. So she says that you, the mighty Nerevarine, have to go and kill Sotha Sil. Kill a god? Me? Well, I have done it before... and who am I to deny the word of a god, in a world where gods can be killed and are also known to be petty, deceitful and... oh fuck it, I guess I have no choice regardless do I?
So Almalexia magically teleports you to the "clockwork city" where Sotha Sil resides. This name is an outright lie, because it's actually just a series of tunnels with a slightly different texture and the same old copy-pasted monsters that goes on for hours and hours, and also features similar paths to nowhere and absolutely no loot to justify your exploration, just like the other dungeons, but after you've already been doing such boring crap for the last 10 hours. She also says that the place is mysterious, confusing, twisted, and so on. All of these statements are fucking lies as well, except maybe if you are referring to the intent of the game developers who made this shit.
Now, I will say, out of the 20 or so rooms that make up this dungeon (yes, 20, though thankfully most are mercifully short), there are a few cool ones. The room with the large arm that rotates about in circles and you have to avoid getting creamed by is kinda neat, for one. There's also a puzzle that involves a series of doors that are kind of a pain to open and close, though it's not a very good puzzle because it sort of just relies on you randomly figuring out the solution rather than any intuitive logic. But at least they're sort of different things that are happening instead of more robot dinosaurs to kill!
And then you get to it.
This is the Dome of Udok, better known as the Dome of the Asshole Game Designer. What is this room, you ask? You might think that it's a puzzle. And that is sort of true, if you consider a cinder block and strip of leather to be an adequate birth control method. But more reasonably, this room is a giant middle finger up your ass, to you and all your family, by whatever utter dickbag concocted it.
Basically, the "trick" in this room is that there is a door at the other end of a lava pool, and the only way through is to push a lever. The problem? The lever is "rusted" and can't be pressed unless you have 100 strength.
Yes, that's right. I'm not exaggerating. You need 100 strength, the maximum value in the game, to press this particular lever which has "rusted over". This means that quite literally 2/3 of builds available in the game, that is, mages and archers, are
completely fucked and cannot complete the game unless they are capable of using a Fortify Strength spell to reach 100 points, or if they drink a potion to raise their strength that high. You can also use the console to
achieve CHIM cheat, though I don't know what the fuck those poor Xbox players are meant to do. So right at the end, the game slaps you across the face and says "grind moar, noob." Let me also point out that even though the quest before this one specifically required you to get some special oil to enchant Nerevar's blade with eternally-burning fire, you can't use it to oil a rusty hinge.
Well, that's good. Great. Sucks, but at least I can do this. I guess I'd better head back to town and... wait, what? The door's locked. The door's locked. Like, I can't leave. Yeah, see, it turns out that that previous door puzzle I mentioned above? That's a one way street. You can't go back. If you reach this point in the game and haven't saved in a while, you're fucked. Mark and Recall are restricted in this dungeon, so you can't use those to return to town either. Let me just break it down for you here. Bethesda have not only designed a scenario which heavily encourages you to cheat in order to solve it, it has also prevents you from even leaving to later return when you
can solve it, so you are basically
forced to cheat just to beat the game.
I could not make this up. Someone was literally paid to make this idea, and to put it in a videogame that did not bear the proud words "Tiger Electronics" on it. This person, presumably, is still alive and breathing.
At this point I was literally almost ready to smash my head against the computer desk until the world went dark, but I thought: the story must be finished! Almalexia's champion must save Mournhold! So I used the console, cheated my way through, and proceeded.
I could not believe that I had not even seen the worst yet.
You arrive at the end of Sotha Sil's dungeon, ready to sink your blade righteously into his metal ribcage, and to save the city of Mournhold from the bastard's robo-dinos. Except, Sotha Sil is already dead. In fact, as the game informs you, he's been dead for some time, and that it must be the work of someone else. Well, in a plot twist that could only be concocted by the mind of a five-year-old, the all-powerful goddess Almalexia appears before you and delivers a long-winded speech.
Now, the contents of this speech are so retarded that I have decided to truncate them for you, but essentially it boils down to:
Almalexia said:
Muahaha! I'm the bad girl all along! I killed Sotha Sil before you got here, so that I could frame you, the Nerevarine, as the one responsible for killing this beloved god, and claim sole rule over Mournhold! In time, Vivec will fall, and all of Morrowind will be mine! Muahahaha!
So it's betrayal, goddess? Well, a dumb twist, but one that I could almost,
almost stomach. However, there are a number of details which should be noted.
- Almalexia is a goddess, which means she is, you know, a god, but female. This is important because gods are generally very powerful beings who are immortal and no mortal should be able to best.
- Almalexia's plan makes no sense whatsoever. Her entire scheme to kill the Nerevarine could kind of make sense, but what is the point of doing this act inside Sotha Sil's domain, risking the Nerevarine being killed by robo-dinos on the way, or worse, getting stuck at the lava pit because he/she can't pull a lever? Almalexia can use the ring you gave her to teleport to Sotha Sil, and apparently bypass all his defenses, so why didn't she just teleport you to the end of the dungeon to skip all the deadly hazards? Why didn't she just teleport you to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, or a swamp, or old tomb, and kill you there, and then, if she wanted, bring your body to Sotha Sil's domain? It's not like there are any witnesses to the murder because you fight her in an otherwise uninhabited room.
- It's previously established that gods are basically immortal, but will often choose to behave in a mortal way, including accepting death for a time. Vivec specifically tells you this in Morrowind. But if Sotha Sil was really murdered and presumably incensed at Almalexia's betrayal, why didn't he reincarnate himself and explain the situation to the Nerevarine? Almalexia even calls him a "creator" so presumably Sotha Sil can do this even more easily than the other gods out there. Does Sotha Sil just not care? Is he just fucking with you?
- Earlier in the game Almalexia has the Nerevarine turn on a weather control device (??!?!?!) deep below Mournhold in order to "demonstrate her power" to the weak, fearful masses and presumably boost their faith in her. If that's the case, and her entire plan relied on having the Nerevarine reach Sotha Sil's domain, why did she even bother with this to begin with? Wouldn't it be easier to use the weather control device after the Nerevarine was dead and could no longer meddle with things? Why did she risk the Nerevarine's life to turn the weather control device on? Is she just an idiot like that?
- Last, and perhaps most egregiously, Almalexia has the Nerevarine reforge Nerevar's old blade on the quest you do immediately before the finale. She specifically states once you have done this that Nerevar's sword is capable of killing gods. Ignoring the simple question of how or why this is possible, I'd like to ask: if Almalexia was going to kill Sotha Sil herself all along, and didn't need the sword, why did she have the Nerevarine reforge it in the first place? The only purpose this act seems to even have is so that the Nerevarine can kill Almalexia.
So once your head is done reeling from the sheer fucking condensed retardation of all this, you get a long, boring and extremely hard boss fight against Almalexia. Let me remind you that you have no way of returning to town to prepare in advance for this fight, because the way home is barred. Let me also remind you that she has an absurd amount of hit points. In fact, even with a fully maxed out spellcaster with spells that hit the reasonable limit of damage output, killing her still takes dozens of tries, tons of luck, and about a billion individual attack spells that would otherwise kill most enemies in 3-4 hits (and 1-2 hits at most in the original game).
Then you can teleport back to Mournhold and Azura appears to you and says some bullshit about the gods having lived too long, and she blesses Mournhold by preventing the ash storms from ever returning to the city (even though it was your fault and they only appeared because you used the weather control devices), and we all learn a valuable lesson about responsibility, blah, blah, blah, game over, uninstall.exe.
I am left with the three simple words I began with.
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
Final score:
out of
:kwanzania::patriot:
I had no idea Tribunal was that bad. I thought the actual city of Mournhold itself was cool but I didn't bother with the main plotline because I figured it would be BSB.
