Our Heroine
Here she is: the woman, the myth, the legend, the incomparable....
Xurdtwos
...d'you get it? Xurdtwos? Cause my main is Xurdones? Ah, nevermind.
In case anyone wants to know, the reason I created a female character is because I played all of these on my main as a male character (I swapped his gender just last month, on a whim), in the long long ago, and I'm curious if there are any noticeable changes. The only one I'm anticipating is having to romance Brand during the Miscellenia series, which in itself will be a bit of a change. I'm also mildly curious what happens if you swap genders between Blood Runs Deep and Nomad's Elegy, so I might try that too.
The Backstory
I'm not much of a roleplayer, so I'm not going to invent a whole convoluted backstory for Xurdtwos (Guthix's horn, that name is annoying to type; I may change it after all). I'm going to say that she was born and raised in Ashdale, in deference to the now-removed tutorial set there, and that her entire family is still alive, contrary to expectations. Why did she choose to become an adventurer, then? Because it seemed like fun.
I hope Joseph Campbell is rolling in his grave.
First Session: Tutorialization
I really wanted to do Tutorial Island again, to see how it had changed, but I picked the wrong choice early on so I don't get to. The more fool I, for not looking it up ahead of time. Anyway, we start at the Burthorpe lodestone with the task system to guide us through the actual mechanics of gameplay. Having played through it now, I have to say I agree with that Mod Stu has been saying in his Stutorial streams: it really is more effective to teach in-world, with snack-sized tasks, than in one massive infodump on Tutorial Island. I remember back when I started playing, I must have created a dozen alternate accounts just so I could replay Tutorial Island. I really liked the game, I just couldn't figure out what to do after the tutorial, so I kept replaying the thing that I had learned how to do.
Anyway, following the path leads us to...
Foreshadowing
Good old Turael, haven't seen you in a while. And who do I see next?
Foreshadowing intensifies
What a fun trip down memory lane this has been.
I'm not going to go through the whole tutorial in detail, but I will note three things:
- I'm pretty sure Turael tried to get me killed?
YOU TOLD ME TO FIGHT HIM YOU BERK!
- You get introduced to four of the Signature Heroes during this tutorial (though only two of them force you to interact), but only Ariane is voiced. That feels odd to me; I understand why The Raptor and Linza aren't (the technical reasons, anyway), but Ozan was voiced in a few quests, so why not here?
- I don't remember the wizards robe showing this much leg:
Va-voom
Off to Lumbridge next, first up: Cook's Assistant!