I am Dragonkin Skywalker - telekinetic Mystic Spearhand, oxcart patron and an extremely bad thief.
They didn’t even let me keep my trousers!
I’m wearing a sack!
And in the game, etc.
The important thing to do in these situations is to calmly assess your options and form a plan.
Immersive-simmingDragon’s Dogma 2got me into prison; now, immersive-simming will get me out.
In the cell there are some boxes and barrels plus a straw bed.
At one end, there is an iron door (closed).
Contents of my inventory: zilch.
Magic at my disposal: nada.
Messages from long-departed convicts in videogames are supposed to be a source of both loreandjail-breaking tips.
The local criminal element have been slacking off.
Hey, there’s a small ledge right beneath my cell!
Can I climb down to freedom?
I gaze hopefully at my PR demo handlers.
My character Dragonkin Skywalker seems equally unconvinced, stumbling backwards from the edge when I get too close.
I sadistically nudge him over, and yep, that lower ledge can’t be walked on after all.
Still, I can always just fall into the river, surely?
It’s time to get serious.
I am a professional.
I’m not going to spend the last 45 minutes of a preview session in jail.
I throw all the boxes in the room at the door.
One of them glitches right through it and smashes against the wall outside.
Hey, there’s a key beneath that box!
That long-departed convict had my back after all.
“Lost your way, have you?”
Why has the screen gone all flickery?
I’m being eaten alive by bats!
My entire inventory has reappeared!
Nothing good ever happens in those.
The facility is home to a sinister population of men and women in robes.
This is one of the more peaceful occult hideaways, it seems.
Perhaps they’re keeping all the chained sorcerous abominations in the other dormitory?
- and hey, I can see daylight!
As if remembering that arcane labs are supposed to be accursed and dangerous places, the music spikes.
I linger, hoping for some drama, but the ominous orchestral refrain soon dies away.
I regard her waspishly.
I’ve got 30 minutes left.
Finally, the games journalism can begin in earnest.
Here there be griffons!
Here also there be my pawns, who join my party inconspicuously as I’m running up a hill.
What exactly have you been doing, pray tell, while I’ve been rotting in prison?
Given our performance thus far, I guess I should be thankful they’ve come back at all.
Oh hang on, we are missing one David Blaine.
I guess he got murdered by the Beastren back at Checkpoint Rest Town?
Now, the question of the name.
Do I know of any magic celebrity cats?
Do I have time to think of an alternative?
Jonesy it is, then.
“Methinks it is where you will find that which you seek,” he simpers.
But look, I can see the griffon in the distance there, soaring over an outcrop.
And look here, there’s a rope elevator that leads directly to that outcrop!
We hasten to the elevator and leap aboard.
I imperiously order Donald Duck to take over.
Then, we are mobbed by harpies.
Donald Duck commiserates, commenting that “this is what befalls one who lets down their guard”.
Thus far, I’ve found it reasonably easygoing.
That was my verdict before fighting the Golem, anyway.
The thing about rocks, I soon learn, is that they are very spell-resistant.
Donald Duck gets stamped on and KO’d before he’s even loosed a single thunderbolt.
The Golem punches him in the face.
The PRs look grave.
“This is supposed to be an easy fight,” they say.
“Why did you get rid of your Warrior?”
The fight drags on for so long that day turns into night.
My pawns are looking decidedly worn and torn, or rather, rocked and pebbled.
Their spangly robes and wizardly tiaras aren’t much use against boulders.
More importantly, I only have five minutes left, and that Golem isn’t going anywhere fast.
The Golem bellows its contempt, but doesn’t pursue us.
I look down the hillside beyond.
I’ve got three minutes to spare.
What better way to spend them than by battling a fellow master of the eldritch arts?
I teleport-stab the wraith, and oh heck, it’s got three health bars too.
It’s also got a lot of skeleton friends.
Donald Duck gets KO’d again.
Jonesy rushes to revive him and gets KO’d too.
“Is anyone else available?”
I take a stab at intervene and am deluged in lichfire, forcing me to self-revive with a Wakestone.
Will the goblins unite with their fellow mortals against the necromantic Powers?
Well, what doyouthink?
Woe unto Dragonkin Skywalker, bane of Battahl jail.
Woe unto Donald Duck, Ogre incinerator and punchbag for Golems.
A dead one, yes.
