- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,621
Tags: An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire; Bethesda Softworks
Last year, esteemed community member Deuce Traveler embarked upon a quest to play through and review the entire Elder Scrolls series. Having finished his reviews of Arena and Daggerfall, Deuce had originally intended to continue right on to Morrowind. However, he was persuaded by our editoress Crooked Bee (who is currently on a top secret mission deep in the heart of Europe) to take a break from the main Elder Scrolls series to give some attention to a favorite of hers, a game called An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire.
Released in 1997, Battlespire was the first of two Elder Scrolls spin-off titles released by Bethesda during their pre-Morrowind hunger years. Largely unsuccessful and nowadays semi-obscure (Bethesda didn't even deign to include it in their Elder Scrolls Anthology boxed set), Battlespire used the Daggerfall engine to create a more traditional first-person action-RPG centered around a single detailed environ - the titular Battlespire. Think of it as the Ultima Underworld to the main series' Ultima.
No big fan of Daggerfall's gameplay even in its original context, Deuce Traveler was understandably not greatly enthused with Battlespire. Still, his review gives it a fair shake. The game's contribution to the Elder Scrolls lore, for example, is singled out for praise:
Read the full article: RPG Codex Retrospective Review: An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire (1997)
Last year, esteemed community member Deuce Traveler embarked upon a quest to play through and review the entire Elder Scrolls series. Having finished his reviews of Arena and Daggerfall, Deuce had originally intended to continue right on to Morrowind. However, he was persuaded by our editoress Crooked Bee (who is currently on a top secret mission deep in the heart of Europe) to take a break from the main Elder Scrolls series to give some attention to a favorite of hers, a game called An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire.
Released in 1997, Battlespire was the first of two Elder Scrolls spin-off titles released by Bethesda during their pre-Morrowind hunger years. Largely unsuccessful and nowadays semi-obscure (Bethesda didn't even deign to include it in their Elder Scrolls Anthology boxed set), Battlespire used the Daggerfall engine to create a more traditional first-person action-RPG centered around a single detailed environ - the titular Battlespire. Think of it as the Ultima Underworld to the main series' Ultima.
No big fan of Daggerfall's gameplay even in its original context, Deuce Traveler was understandably not greatly enthused with Battlespire. Still, his review gives it a fair shake. The game's contribution to the Elder Scrolls lore, for example, is singled out for praise:
The Battlespire is a research facility and school that has been overwhelmed by attacking daedra (the demons of the Elder Scrolls setting), who seek to use it a staging point for a greater invasion of Tamriel. The attack comes as your character is visiting the installation, and you soon discover that nearly every Imperial mage and soldier inside has been killed. A friend you intended to visit is still alive and wreaking havoc upon the daedra, while the invaders themselves are split due to political rivalries. Over the course of the game, you discover that Tamriel is not the first world to have been threatened by the daedra, and you even get to visit other worlds that have suffered from such invasions. Your quest is to survive, sabotage the invasion as much as you can, and escape Battlespire (and the various planes of existence that are connected to it) so you can warn the Emperor.
The planes you explore outside of Battlespire help change up the scenery a bit, while adding to your understanding of the threat that Tamriel is under. You meet various characters and find books discussing what it was like before the daedra invaded. One particular plane is filled with lost souls that cannot easily be killed by the weapons you carry, and you must constantly flee them while trying to find clues on how to lay them to rest. Another plane is the home of an insane mage who was one of the few mortals to get one over on the daedric lords, but at a horrible price that laid waste to the surrounding land. I especially liked one level where you're chased by daedric hunting parties, a frightening charade where they acted as hounds while I was the fox. There's a lot of discussion of the plane of Oblivion - it's described as a purgatory of sorts for the daedra when they are defeated. The game hints that they can never be destroyed, only banished to that bizarre plane. This description of Oblivion does not match what we would later see in the Elder Scrolls game of the same name. It sounds much more dangerous and bizarre than that Oblivion, with odd beings that attack even the more powerful daedra trying to escape it.
Battlespire does contribute quite a bit to the lore of the Elder Scrolls series, specifically the lore of the daedra, who probably have their most in-depth representation in this game. They are shown to be highly arrogant, regarding human beings as we would regard animals. One amusing aspect of this is how often they mistake your character for another human survivor, despite age, race and gender differences. The invaders are often more concerned with jockeying for status and avenging ancient slights than they are with their invasion, and so are often willing to negotiate with you if it means you might be able to cause problems for a rival. However, the game does make it clear that the daedra are not to be trusted. Humans who have dealt with them in the past have suffered betrayals, twisted into monstrosities or tortured and killed when their usefulness ended. That adds a sense of danger to your conversations with them, and negotiations will indeed often break down into violence.
But alas, the game also insists on doing things like this:The planes you explore outside of Battlespire help change up the scenery a bit, while adding to your understanding of the threat that Tamriel is under. You meet various characters and find books discussing what it was like before the daedra invaded. One particular plane is filled with lost souls that cannot easily be killed by the weapons you carry, and you must constantly flee them while trying to find clues on how to lay them to rest. Another plane is the home of an insane mage who was one of the few mortals to get one over on the daedric lords, but at a horrible price that laid waste to the surrounding land. I especially liked one level where you're chased by daedric hunting parties, a frightening charade where they acted as hounds while I was the fox. There's a lot of discussion of the plane of Oblivion - it's described as a purgatory of sorts for the daedra when they are defeated. The game hints that they can never be destroyed, only banished to that bizarre plane. This description of Oblivion does not match what we would later see in the Elder Scrolls game of the same name. It sounds much more dangerous and bizarre than that Oblivion, with odd beings that attack even the more powerful daedra trying to escape it.
Battlespire does contribute quite a bit to the lore of the Elder Scrolls series, specifically the lore of the daedra, who probably have their most in-depth representation in this game. They are shown to be highly arrogant, regarding human beings as we would regard animals. One amusing aspect of this is how often they mistake your character for another human survivor, despite age, race and gender differences. The invaders are often more concerned with jockeying for status and avenging ancient slights than they are with their invasion, and so are often willing to negotiate with you if it means you might be able to cause problems for a rival. However, the game does make it clear that the daedra are not to be trusted. Humans who have dealt with them in the past have suffered betrayals, twisted into monstrosities or tortured and killed when their usefulness ended. That adds a sense of danger to your conversations with them, and negotiations will indeed often break down into violence.
Battlespire's interface is a very mixed bag. The standard movement and attack functionality works well enough, but everything else is quite the mess. When you access your inventory, some elements of the game pause while others do not. Enemies remain frozen in place, and attacks don't you, but time moves forward in other ways, such as the timer showing how much oxygen you have left if you're underwater. There were times when I was swimming and opened my inventory to look for a potion, only to find my character had drowned in the meantime after exiting it. Buff timers work in the same way - if you apply multiple buffs on yourself, the first one will have a reduced timeline remaining by the time you exit your inventory. Compounding the problem, the inventory screen can be difficult to navigate, although this can be mitigated with foresight. Hilariously, this flawed mechanic can also serve as an exploit, since negative status effects also wind down while you're in your inventory. A few times in the final level of the game, I went into the inventory screen, left my computer to read a page or two in a book, then returned to find that the poisoned status effect I was suffering from had expired, all without losing any health.
Read the full article: RPG Codex Retrospective Review: An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire (1997)
ed gent. 
