#and it would feed my little completionist soul

[zjofierose]

because i am a crazy person and also procrastinating, i have begun the process of moving my WIP spreadsheet from google sheets into Notion. it's got 19 columns, hundreds of rows, and is color coded. but it's so satisfying!

[i-love-you-all]

Whumptober 2022 Day 22: Pick Your Poison

Angsty Reyna hours. This fic references the first one shot of this event I wrote.

Also, as a heads up, in case you haven’t seen my prev announcement, I’ve accepted I won’t be a completionist this year bc I don’t wanna force myself to finish all the prompts in time for tomorrow. So, gonna try to get the prompts done today on stream published, then I’ll work on the 31st one to be published on time at least :))

~1.3k words. Viper, Reyna, Mentions Brimstone, mentions Viper/Omen. Alcoholism, withdrawal, mentioned death.

“Have… Have you been alright?”

This was one of those quiet nights at the HQ. Viper sipped her coffee, studying Reyna who was sitting across from her, a drink of some sort in her hand as well, though untouched. There was rarely a feeling of peace around here. If it wasn’t the world ending events, it was the mirror group of agents driving them faster towards disaster, and if it wasn’t them, it was the agents themselves, trying to entertain themselves in the most dangerous ways possible. But hey, if it kept them focused for their next mission, it shouldn’t matter. Still, for once, there was nothing around them that would burn, or explode, or kill if they sat back for just an hour to enjoy their evening.

Their lives had been so quiet recently, that Viper was caught off guard when Reyna sought her out. She sipped again at her coffee before setting it down. The only time they met like this was when something was wrong with her sister. When the stasis machine was failing, or when there wasn’t enough energy to feed her life. But with the recent mission resulting in almost a surplus of this soul energy Reyna harnessed, her sister was doing just fine. That made this call for a meeting even stranger. Neither of them liked small talk, and there was nothing to discuss.

Nothing that they hadn’t discussed a hundred times before at least.

But this seemed new.

As she waited for some explanation, or even just a greeting, Viper caught the slightest of trembles when the glass was set on the coffee table.

“Alright? When was the last time things have been… alright?”

Viper almost rolled her eyes. Almost, because in truth, she remembered that she wanted this peace, and that meant that she just had to hold on a little longer.

“Look, I already assured you. Her vitals are stable. This is the best she’s been for some time now…” Viper crossed her legs and her arms as she waited for some other reason why Reyna was behaving this way.

“IT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH.”

Viper raised an eyebrow, just slightly at the outburst. Reyna habitually dipped into her anger and frustration for strength and renewed will, but this was still unexpected. There was no need for her borderline emotional state now – certainly not while things were just fine. They both knew that progress would be slow, but with the recent bump in energy, there were already signs of progress.

Then she heard a familiar sigh. One that showed the fatigue of sleepless nights and inescapable memories. How many times had that feeling escaped her own lips? And all at once, she read Reyna’s posture a different way. There were slumped shoulders, not a sign of bitter determination, but of exhaustion. The tremble that she caught earlier was likely not a sign of barely contained rage, there were times that a human body couldn’t keep going, and while Reyna liked to call herself a radiant, she was human first. Then, she caught the spasm, a small twitch that she didn’t seem to control in her leg. Lack of energy? Too much tensing? A sign of barely contained nausea? Viper couldn’t confirm, and she certainly wouldn’t ask.

But she remembered. In the nights after the accident, she remembered laying down on the empty bed meant for two and staring up at the ceiling just… wondering. It was the curse of the what if. The only two words that were always guaranteed to ruin a persona’s psyche, with the power only growing stronger the more they wanted it. She often begged for one of her what if thoughts to come true, so that she would wake up to his face again. She wouldn’t have had to walk past the same wing every morning and feel something that reminded her of him, only for her to press her nose to the glass window and watch as the shadows whirled and shook around a barely corporeal body that was wrapped in bandages that fell apart too quickly.

She blinked, and all of a sudden, she wasn’t staring at Omen, hoping he would be someone else, and she was looking instead at Reyna, someone who was desperately hoping, wishing for something, though she hesitated to guess what that could be. But more than her own sorrow and insomnia and fatigue, the way Reyna stared at the cup in front of her reminded Viper of Brimstone and all his vices that he struggled to give up.

She’s seen him at the point of a mental breakdown, eyes wide, with pupils nearly completely blown out while he whispered to himself. Names. That’s what she caught the last time she had been there to witness him reach one too many times for the bottle. There were so many names, people who would never be forgotten due to the crazed mutterings of an old man at the very edge of insanity. But if it helped him come back the next morning and put a smile on his face as he addressed the agents, who was she to stop him? Still, she sometimes wondered just how many people he lost to force him to act like this when he got too in his own head. One too many ghosts perhaps, or just one that meant too much.

She sighed in return as she tried to shake these thoughts out of her head. To imagine Reyna mourning someone who wasn’t gone yet, or as another victim of the liquid in her glass would be to assume too much.

“I… I can feel the call for more.”

Viper let her head tilt to the side a little. “More?”

“It lives and breathes inside of me. A call for more. Always more.”

Viper stilled. There was only one thing Reyna ‘consumed’ regularly. Only one thing she sometimes had trouble controlling.

“It’s always the same hunger that drives me. Never satisfied.” The tremble that started in her hands, then travelled to her shoulders, was now in her voice as well.

She took a deep breath in, and when she opened them again, Viper was looking into the magenta, blood-crazed, soul-fueled hunger that made Reyna so terrifying on the field. She uncrossed her legs and shifted, now acutely aware of how careful she had to be going forward in this conversation.

“Reign it in. You kill me, your sister dies as well.”

The words had an immediate effect. The eyes dimmed and an almost inhumane sound escaped her before she curled her hand into a fist and slammed the table hard enough for the liquid in her glass to slosh out. But it still worked, and that hunger faded for just a moment longer. Viper was now certain of what was going on.

“You should go get some food. It won’t help your… hunger, but at least, it’ll keep you standing.”

Each word and thought had to be perfectly crafted. She knew how volatile Reyna’s desire could be, and with her already barely able to control her instincts…

Reyna swallowed, then quickly, lifted the glass to her lips and tipped her head back, downing the alcohol in one gulp. She bared her teeth at the empty glass for a moment while the burn faded. Then, she looked at Viper again and nodded.

“I came here to tell you to tell Brimstone to hurry up and send me somewhere. I can’t keep waiting.”

Then, Viper was in the room alone. She let out a slow, long exhale, and then she lifted her own drink to her lips again. It was always a little morally grey when they let her loose like that, but what other choice did they have other than to keep feeding her addiction, which was, in turn, feeding the only thing that truly kept Reyna on their side?

[recurring-polynya]

Bleach Sword Beasts Arc Recap: Episode 258

I debated whether to recap this episode, because to be honest, it’s pretty meh. I mean, it’s fine. I have no real complaints with it. It’s just kinda... there. However, my completionist attitude toward Renji ephemera won out, so here we go.

The episode opens with Renji and Zabimaru walking out of a senkaimon while some wokka-chikka music plays, so that’s always a strong start. The first thing that happens that a frog hops by and Hebi screams “A FROG!!”

Uhhhh, I guess they are here to chase down a Sword Beast. It’s clear that Renji and Saru are here for Business, and Hebi just wants to fuck around. He begs to be let off the chain, and they agree, which, as you might guess is a mistake.

You know, just typing this made me realize what is wrong keeps this episode from greatness-- it’s that Renji just sort of puts up with Hebi’s antics with a shrug and some tired dad vibes. How much better would this be if he responded, “Oh SHIT, I love a frog! Er, oh, yeah we got a mission.” If I had written this episode, it would just be one big metaphor for Renji’s ADHD, and that’s probably why no one lets me write anime filler episodes.

LOOK AT THIS SWEET FISH HEBI CAUGHT!!

Anyway, the Sword Beast convinces Hebi that Saru and Renji are like, the man with the exact vibes of a drug dealer in a 1980′s anti-drug PSA trying to offer a kid some goofballs. “Don’t you want to be your own man?” he intones, a phrase which Hebi goes on to echo approximately 50 times throughout this episode.

I honestly need to emphasize that Saru and Renji are not the least bit oppressive to Hebi. Snakeboy literally lets the villain get away twice in 5 minutes, and Saru is like, “I gotta put you back on the leash” and the Renji tells her to let him go after he runs away.

Now that he is his own man, the first thing Hebi wants to do is the same thing every shinigami wants to do once let loose in the World of the Living, i.e., eat a bunch of kombini riceballs.

I guess this is supposed to be funny, they’re playing wacky music an’ all, but my mind went immediately to the fact that Renji spent his childhood in food insecurity.

GAAAAAH, I CAN’T STOP MAKING THIS EPISODE INTO A METAPHOR. RENJI HAS SPENT HIS ENTIRE LIFE FORCING HIMSELF INTO AN EARLY ADULTHOOD, PRIORITIZING TRAINING AND LIVING UP TO THE EXPECTATIONS OF A CLASS HE ASPIRES TO THAT GIVES HIM NOTHING IN RETURN. THE HALF OF HIS ZANPAKUTOU REPRESENTING MARTIAL STRENGTH, FEROCITY, AND DISCIPLINE IS AN ADULT AND THE HALF REPRESENTING SELF-FULFILLMENT, JOY, AND WONDER IS A CHILD KEPT UNDER LOCK AND CHAIN.

Ahem. I’m fine. I’m good.

Hebi gets rice-ball-blocked by Ichigo’s sisters, chases some pigeons, tries to score some raw meat, and lovingly watches some people eat ice cream, before meeting up with Karin and Yuzu again. Karin realizes that he must be some sort of spirit, since Yuzu can’t see him (she notes that he “dressses funny” but somehow never registers the tail) Anyway, she gives him a rice-ball and he follows her home after Yuzu offers to feed him.

It’s time for a moodily lit interlude with Renji and Saru! Renji is completely chill about half his zanpakutou wandering around the Living World, wrecking things, and asks Saru if she’s worried about him. She admits that she’s more concerned about the idea of him acting like a Sword Beast, and Renji replies “Not very honest with your feelings, eh?” What does this mean??? 

LOOK, CAN YOU IMAGINE THE SORT OF DEEP SHIT THE GOTEI WOULD BE IN IF RENJI STOPPED BEING NICE AND DECIDED TO GO APESHIT? BECAUSE YOU KNOW ALL OF THE OTHER RUKONGAI VICE-CAPTAINS WOULD BE WITH HIM?? BYAKUYA WOULD HAVE TO GO PICK UP HIS OWN BURRITO AT CHIPOTLE!! HE WOULD DIE!!! WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE IF WE ALL THREW OFF THE CHAINS OF CAPITALISM??

Anyway, Ichigo wanders up and is like, “hey man, you’re missing half your zanpakutou” and Renji’s like “no big I’m sure he’ll show up” and Ichigo’s like “maybe you should get on that.”

Back to the Kurosaki Clinic! Karin tells Hebi he should hide if Ichigo or Isshin come home, and Hebi is like “Oh, you live with other people, that’s so lame, I’m my own man” and Karin is like “You can’t even feed yourself, you moron, emotional bonds are cool, get over yourself.” It is an absolutely brutal takedown, and it works immediately. NGL, I found it immensely satisfying.

Oh good, it’s time for an uncomfortable metaphor about Renji and Saru being Hebi’s parents!! Thanks, I hate it!! IS THIS A METAPHOR ABOUT SELF-CARE? DOES RENJI INTENTIONALLY PROVIDE THE EMOTIONAL SUPPORT FOR HIMSELF THAT HE NEVER RECEIVED AS A CHILD?? THIS IS VERY HEALTHY TBH, MAYBE RENJI HAS ACTUALLY BEEN TO THERAPY???

Yuzu gives Hebi Ichigo’s flan. They try to play Nintendo and board games, which proves to be an abject failure, and then end up watching some weird stand-up on tv, which Hebi finds fascinating.  Everyone falls asleep by the time Ichigo gets home, so much for hiding from Ichi-nii.

Time out to talk about the fact that someone in this scene should recognize each other. Ichigo’s sisters have met Renji at least twice in non-canon (Sealed Soul Frenzy and the Bount Arc) and it’s highly possible they met him off-panel sometime during the Advance Team Arc. Even if Karin thinks Hebi is referring to some other Renji, it is inconceivable to me that Hebi doesn’t know who Ichigo is. This entire arc seems to presume that the zanpakutou have absolutely no awareness of what goes on outside of a shinigami’s inner world, but we’ve seen Zangetsu manifest and talk to Ichigo, like during his fight with Zaraki. Ichigo and Renji trained for bankai together. Zabimaru was THERE . It’s just extremely stupid to me thta Hebi wouldn’t recognize him when he shows up a little later on.

Back to the episode. Ichigo flicks Hebi in the forehead and asks “What are you doing in my house?” Ichigo tells Hebi that he’s a substitute soul reaper and Hebi feels betrayed and runs away. He immediately runs into the Sword Beast who is like “How do you like being your own man?” and Hebi is like, “it sucks actually, a cute girl I just met taught me that” and they fight. Karin shows up, gets knocked out, it’s looking pretty bad, when Renji shows up to save him and shoot him an Extremely Dad Look that is just dripping with “I’m sorry you lost the soccer game today but you did your best! Let’s stop for McDonalds on the way home!”

Anyway, Saru then heavily implies that they let Hebi wander around like this because they figured the Sword Beast would try to find him again. Wow. WOW. I also want to emphasize that Hebi fought that Sword Beast for a long time and got knocked around pretty hard, wtf were you doing, Renji and Saru?? And also Ichigo, who chased him directly out of the house and then took forever to catch up??

Anyway, Hebi doesn’t seem to care, he’s just happy to be back with his parents master and other half.

Karin wakes up later and is like “Where’s Zabimaru?” and Ichigo’s all like “I definitely do not know anyone by that name” and I wish filler arcs had any continuity at all, because I would love to see this come back to bite them later.

Renji and Zabimaru stand in the sky and stare wistfully at Ichigo’s house for a while (not weird at all, why do you ask??) and Hebi’s like, “yeah, it never would have worked out”, and Renji and Saru respectfully pretend like he had some kind of chance with Karin in the first place and then they all go back to Soul Society, to much more somber music than the wokka chi-wow-wows they entered on.

This episode could have been so much better, but it also could have been so much worse, so I will just take what I can get.

It also had the extremely precious omake where Renji and Zabimaru are Good Pals! ::sob:: why couldn’t the whole episode have just been THIS???

[ciathyzareposts]

The Two Towers: A Decent Percentage of Those Who Wander Are, in Fact, Lost

Well, that’s helpful.

             We haven’t had many games that support multiple parties adventuring at the same time, and each has handled the notion a slightly different way, depending on the reasons for the separation. For instance, some games support multiple players operating simultaneously, either cooperatively or competitively, such as the Stuart Smith titles, Swords of Glass (1986), and Bloodwych (1989). In contrast, Ultima VI‘s ability to send an individual party member off on his own was more a matter of expedience in exploration and combat. In some games, you need multiple independent parties to solve puzzles–a dynamic we saw in The Magic Candle (1989) and Fate: Gates of Dawn (1991) .

The Two Towers is the first game to require multiple parties solely for fidelity to the narrative. It is also the first in which parties, by design, can never meet. They can’t swap equipment, can’t help each other out, can’t arrange party members in the ways that makes the most sense given the nature of the area and the enemies that they face. I realize why this had to happen to preserve the link to the source material, but given the number of narrative fancies the game manages to introduce within each section, one wonders why they couldn’t have taken the same laissez-faire attitude to the story as a whole.

         Frodo’s “lore” skill comes through.

           When I started the game, I thought that the action would switch only between two parties: Aragorn’s and Frodo’s. It turns out there are three. The game actually found enough for Merry and Pippin to do in Fangorn Forest (most of it non-canonical, of course). Three parties is too much to juggle. Maybe it changes later, but playing the game in its first few sessions is like playing three separate games with the same engine, and no control over switching among them. The game’s abrupt and arbitrary movement among the parties makes it easy to forget what one party was doing before it was so rudely interrupted. I’m not enjoying that aspect.

(Note: if you’re already lost because you don’t know anything about the source material, I’m afraid this entry is going to be rough on you. It’s hard enough to explain all the deviations without explaining the original text, too. I recommend at least watching the film trilogy to get a sense of the original characters.)

The last session had ended when the action abruptly left Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas and cut to Frodo and Sam, on the other side of the river that I originally thought was the Isen but now know to be the Anduin. Knowing that I had to eventually go south into the Dead Marshes, I began exploring in east-west strips between the river to the west and some mountains to the east. 

             Gollum meekly joins the party.

           The area was quite wide. I had to climb down several tiers of cliffs (using the “Climb” skill) in the opening stages. In between two sets of cliffs, I ran into Gollum. I expected some sound and fury from the encounter, but instead a simple use of the elven rope enlisted him into the party. There were no heated words from Sam. In general, party members in this game don’t speak to each other very much, which of course is a notable change from the original story.

At the base of the cliffs, we found a small hut with a hostile man named Beredu inside. He yelled us not to enter, then yelled at us when we entered anyway, then attacked us when we didn’t leave. We killed him. He had nothing. It didn’t seem like an encounter that was supposed to go that way, but I’ve decided to just roll with everything in this game.

            Gollum, you may be strong and crafty, but don’t go up against the completionist tendencies of the computer RPG player. You’ll lose every time.

          Moving on, we came to a three-story structure that turned out to be owned by a vampire. The attic offered combat with some bats and nothing else. The main floor had a room with a bubbling cauldron where we freed some souls and got a casting of ELBERETH in return. The basement had four sarcophaguses, one of which held a spirit that asked me for the Star Ruby of Gondor, which he said I’d find in a sinkhole out in the marshes.

             I have a bad feeling about this.

         In the middle of the room was an obelisk that sucked us in to an area of darkness, and the vampire attacked. I wouldn’t have thought two hobbits and Gollum would be very effective against a vampire, but we killed him in a few rounds.

           Does Frodo canonically kill anything in the books? I don’t think he does in the films.

         Afterward, we found an elf named Gilglin lurking around the corner of the basement, overcome with ennui. I can’t remember exactly what I did to rouse him–I remember running through all my skills–but he eventually livened up and joined the party. I assume he’s original to the game. The newly-bolstered party had just wandered out the front door of the vampire’s keep and started wading through the marshes when action suddenly shifted to Merry and Pippin in Fangorn Forest.

              A momentous choice.

           Fangorn was a large maze. We soon encountered an Ent named Longroot who offered to take us around. When we asked about Treebeard (which I guess was a bit of a cheat), Longroot offered to take us to him, and we accepted. Treebeard had a bit of introductory dialogue before he took us to some part of the forest called Wellinghall. When we spoke to him about Saruman, he agreed that the wizard must be stopped and summoned the Entmoot.

             Part of the maze of Fangorn.

        The game gave us the option to wait around for the Ents to come to their decision or explore the forest. I decided to explore. Treebeard warned us about evil living trees called “huorns,” but he said they’d leave us alone if we had an Ent in the party, and he gave us one of the “hastier” Ents, called Quickbeam. (The adorable little icon looks more like Baby Groot than the Ents from the flms.) As we explored the forest, we had repeated notes that Quickbeam’s presence kept huorns and perhaps other creatures from attacking.

             What do you want? A cookie?

          It didn’t stop anything else from attacking, though. For a fairly weak party, Merry and Pippin were assailed far more than the two previous groups, mostly by orcs and uruks, and soon their health was at the minimum. Fortunately, Quickbeam had strong attacks and a lot of hit points, and I was able to use him as a tank in most encounters.

The health system hasn’t changed since Vol. I, and it’s a bit weird. While there are some items that provide minor amounts of healing (e.g., eating rations restores a couple of hit points), healing occurs more often by plot point than by player choice. The initial pool of hit points is expected to last for long intervals.

Characters get knocked unconscious if their hit points drop below 6, after which they lose 1 hit point per round until they die or combat is over. But if they don’t die, they “wake up” with 6 hit points and are good to go. For a lot of Merry and Pippin’s session, they remained on the edge like this, lasting only a couple of rounds at the beginnings of combats, but waking up slightly healed after Quickbeam had wrapped things up.

             In battle with some orcs.

         There were a lot of side areas and side-quests in Fangorn. One confusing questline seemed to ask the party to find the source of the “Entwash,” a river that runs to the south of Fangorn and feeds into the Anduin. Some of the Ents I found were inert, and I needed water from the Entwash to revive them. I also needed Entwash water to hydrate a small seed that an elven ghost (Linandel, if that means anything to you fans) wanted me to plant somewhere. In any event, while exploring I ran into an Ent guarding a cache of Entwash water, so I think the whole business about finding the source turned moot.

The forest was full of (I suspect) non-canonical Ents–Greenroot, Longroot, Skinbark, Leaflock–who provided a variety of hints. I rescued some of them from orcs, who had apparently been tasked by Sarumon to chop down as many trees as possible. Eventually, one of them joined us–a young Ent named Twiglate who we saved from a forest fire. That was late in the session, though; I could have used him a lot earlier.

               And the two hobbits will survive a few more battles.

           On the west side of Fangorn, we found an orc encampment of several buildings and multiple battles. Merry and Pippin got some chainmail and shields (they had started with just barrow daggers), so that helped a bit. On the north side of the camp, a tunnel went into the mountains and we found ourselves in a fairly large dungeon. I probably need to cover it more next time because I don’t think I fully finished it this time. The opening room had some large trees, “parched husks,” that we’re clearly meant to do something with, but the obvious solutions (such as giving them water) don’t work. There’s also a large obelisk that I can’t figure out anything to do with and a silver door that I can’t open.

           Saruman has parties of orcs everywhere trying to find us, and we’re in his basement stealing his tobacco.

            Past the obelisk, a tunnel took us to an adjacent cellar full of storerooms with rations and pipeweed and other supplies. Emerging up from this cellar, we were surprised to find ourselves on the main level of Isengard, and two difficult battles with uruks and Dunlendings. Clearly, we were extremely far afield at this point, so it was a slight mercy when, while exploring the edges of the area, the game intervened to tell us we’d gone too far, and warped us back to Fangorn. 

           So “free will” isn’t much of a thing in this setting, huh?

          Merry and Pippin’s session ended when we returned to the Entmoot. Treebeard told us that a couple of Ents hadn’t shown up and asked us to go rouse them. I suspect they both need Entwash water, and I’m pretty sure I already hydrated one of them. Treebeard also gave us a “spell” of sorts that would summon Ents to help us in combat, something we really could have used for the bulk of this session. (Perhaps I was meant to wait out the Entmoot rather than explore while it was deliberating.) Anyway, the game didn’t give me a chance to find the Ents or try out the new spell. It abruptly returned the focus to Aragorn’s party instead.

My time with Aragorn his group–which included the recovered Gandalf–was mostly spent cleaning up quests discovered in the first session. The primary one was to satisfy the “weregild” set by the survivors of the ruined town of Estemnet. The leader of the town had wanted me to find her husband’s sword, her son, and a bag of gold stolen from the town.

The latter two were both found on the edges of Fangorn on the north side of the map. In one clearing, I found the “youth” (although he’s depicted as a middle-aged man with a mustache), Harding, fighting orcs alongside a woman named Folwyn. We helped them out and they joined the party. The bag of gold was in another clearing.

            I suppose that if we were role-playing an “evil” fellowship, we could have just watched him die.

            The main orc encampment was in the middle of a burned section of forest. Every time I entered, the game told me that there were too many of them and gave me a chance to take about one action before they attacked and we met a scripted ending. I attempted various skills during that brief pause and finally hit the solution with “Sneak.” This caused the main body of orcs to drain away, and we were able to set an ambush for the remaining ones. When the dust cleared, we found the sword on the leader’s body.

           I just don’t understand why one character���s “Sneak” skill can hide the entire party.

             Harding and Folwyn left us when we returned to Estemnet and delivered the items. The leader, Leofyn, promised that the survivors would try to clear orcs from the land. I’m not sure what that does for me, but perhaps it results in fewer random encounters.

               You’re  glass-half-empty sort of woman, aren’t you?

          Next, we solved the puzzle of the corrupted mearas pool by attacking the orcs’ altar at night, releasing a bunch of barrow wights, and killing them. Nearby, a local resident named Heof told us that to finish purifying the pool, we would need to get one of the mearas to drink from it. I don’t know why Gandalf is incapable of summoning Shadowfax at the moment, but our solution was to find one to the southeast of the pool and lead him to the pool. 

              “…which, admittedly, wasn’t that long ago.”

             At that point, before we could even take steps towards Edoras and the next stage of our quest, the game yanked us back to Frodo, Sam, Gollum, and Gilglin, who I hope is non-canonical because his name sounds a lot like “Gilligan.”

                 We’re back with the Ringbearer. But for how long?

            Aside from all the chain-jerking between parties, the one thing that really annoys me about this game is that despite decent graphics, it fails to visually depict important environmental features. It tells us about a tunnel into the mountains rather than showing us. We wander into what looks like an empty building but suddenly get a message that there are orcs all around us (and then, of course, they visually appear just in time for combat). The evil altar on the north side of the mearas pond doesn’t appear until we first get a message telling us about it. NPCs show up suddenly in the middle of blank grassland. Too much, in short, depends on the party deciding to walk into what otherwise looks like empty areas, rather than seeing something interesting graphically and saying, “Hey, let’s go check that out.”

             How did we get this far into the building before noticing a “group of angry orcs”?

Neither that shrine nor those wights were visible until we walked upon the right set of pixels.

             But it’s early, and the game may yet have some surprises. I look forward to seeing how it handles certain plot elements while also wondering how it justifies, say, the ability to freely explore Isengard.

          Time so far: 7 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-two-towers-a-decent-percentage-of-those-who-wander-are-in-fact-lost/