Dead! - Age of Conan

Well.

Well, well, well.

Just as I'm starting to remember what I like about Conan, and thinking that it might be fun to get stuck into it again for a while, it's all over. I'm pretty embarrassed. It wasn't a boss or anything, just some guards that I stumbled across. I'm sadder than I expected to be too.

Things started off as expected with a series of fetch quests and the unveiling of a larger plot in Tortage which I'm about to get embroiled in. I sell my loot, speak to ageing seers, and meet hookers with hearts of gold (naturally).

I'm also introduced to a new mechanic for my class - sneaking. My first sneaking quest goes well. I sneak past some guards, follow my mark and report back on his movements.
As I'm sent out on my second mission I see a message about the 'Light Meter'. This is a classic way to tell if I'm well hidden so I nip into stealth again and look for it. It's supposed to be below my minimap but I can't see anything. I wander around in stealth, in and out of shadows, trying to see this supposed light meter but nothing leaps out at me.
Well, there's no point wasting time on it, it's easy enough to see whether I'm in shadow or not by using the large screen I'm looking at, so I unstealth and head off to my rendezvous.

And then people are shooting arrows at me... I've unstealthed in the middle of a group of town guards! It's a mob of 4, the same level as me, and nothing I couldn't usually handle - an arrow or two would drop the first to half health and then it's ability spam time, but they've taken me by surprise so I just panic and run round the corner.

This is a bad idea.

They split into two groups of two and follow me, one group across a gap from me and one closing to melee range. I'm just going to have to get stuck in I think. I manage to drop the first two but I'm at a third of my health by this point and I have no health pots in my quickbar. I just left them in my inventory thinking I probably wouldn't need them. The rest of my health drains away as I try to close to melee range and that's it.

I'm dead.

My destiny goes unfulfilled, the rebellion's chances drip away and the world remains unchanged. Another random adventurer senselessly killed by a brutal regime. I actually utter an audible 'oh' and stare for a while at the 'resurrect' button. But that's not an option. My story as it stands is one of an escaped slave who helped one woman, killed some apes, got to a major city and was killed by guards while sneaking around...not really the stuff of legend.

It did make me realise how much respawning has become something I take for granted though. I've been banging on about how I didn't die in my previous Conan runthroughs for ages, but actually I did. I died a lot, but I just pressed resurrect and didn't think about it, so they didn't register in my brain as a thing that happened. So that's one thing I guess.

Right, let's see if I can do better than Ben at Age of Empires 2