Page 61 of Level Up
“Of course.” I relax into my seat a bit more, pulling my feet up and crossing my legs as I hold my tea mug close, feeling the warmth of the steam on my face.
“So…do you wanna do it, then?” His question makes my face heat up more than the steam does as I try to work out what he could mean by that. “The speedrun, I mean.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“No, I just mean—” I pause to gather my thoughts. “Maybe. But how would that work? Do we just each do a run and compare times?”
“I thought we could do it as a joint stream. That waypeople can watch both of our runs at the same time,” he explains. “And you and I can talk while we play, like this.”
I hadn’t noticed the faint clicking sounds in the background; he’s playing a game now while I’m just sitting here. I feel a bit foolish, so I set my tea down and openThe Stones of Ayor 4. I’ve already nearly finished the main quest, but I’ve been trying to finish up all the companion quests I haven’t done yet before I go to the final boss.
“I figure that might make it less stressful,” he adds. “For me, anyway. It would be kind of silly and fun.”
“I’m not sure I know the game well enough to speedrun it yet,” I say hesitantly. “This is still my first play-through.”
“Obviously I’ve only played it once, too. It’d be a level playing field,” he says. “And I know other people have done it already, so we can watch some of those runs to get pointers.”
“Okay,” I reply after hesitating for a moment. I know this isn’t the sort of thing I should be doing on my channel, but his idea of a joint stream does sound kind of cool. “But a glitchless run, no cheats or anything. It’s no fun if we just no-clip up to the top of the mountain.”
“That actually sounds incredibly fun, but I see your point.” He goes quiet and I can hear his keyboard clacking away, like he’s typing something now. “Okay, then…” he says with a sharp intake of breath. “Most of these glitchless runs take about six or seven hours. One of them is almost nine.”
“Yikes.” My run ofSOA3took just over four hours, and that was about my maximum. I can’t imagine doing a seven-hour run without a break—probably longer, since I’m not that good. “Maybe we just do a speedrun of the first half? Up until we face Nurendoth for the first time.”
“That sounds more reasonable,” he says with a laugh. “And next weekend is one month after the release. So, it would be a good time to do it.”
“Doesn’t give me a lot of time to study,” I say, laughing as well.
“What are you doing for the next three or four hours?”
I glance at the time in the corner of my screen. Almost nine. “The usual, probably.”
A new message appears in our chat log, a link to someone’s archive.
“This run looks promising,” he says. “It’s the full game, but we could stop after the first Nurendoth fight. Might get some good ideas.”
“You mean we should watch this now?” I ask. “Together?”
“Unless you’re busy,” he says, and I snort involuntarily. “Yeah, didn’t think so.”
“Why are you so interested, anyway?”
“What?”
“I didn’t think you were that big on speedruns. But you seem really into this idea.”
“Because,” he says, with a tone that suggests the answer should be obvious to me, “we’ll be doing it together.”
My stomach flutters like a cliché at his words. I am completely screwed.
After 10 years, I wasn’t sure it was possible for this game to live up to the expectations I’d built in my head, and maybe there are some areas where it falls a bit short, but in general I think it’s a great game and definitely worth the wait.
It takes some of my favourite aspects of the third game and makes them even better. The level design is so detailed, and every dungeon feels unique. Most of the quests have a good story in them, too, although there are still way too many random fetch quests that get tiring pretty quickly, but it’s what’s to be expected in SOA.
The companions are so much fun, and the AI is improved in this game, so they actually are useful in combat, which is a nice change of pace. If you take Cartwright and Treagan with you everywhere, you are pretty much unstoppable, although I’d recommend spending time with all of them because some of the dialogue in this game is hilarious.
My only real complaint is that there’s no Hadley.
