Castle Super Beast - CSB 257: Objective: Survive 2024

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Castle Super Beast Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/CSBshirts Xbox Announcement: We All (Not) Gonna Make It Helldivers 2: Game Full, Do Not Come Press F To Pay Respects To Group F Baby Has Now Become Little Guy Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to http://expressvpn.com/superbeast to get 3 extra months free with a 12-month plan. Microsoft bringing four games to rival platforms; Diablo IV coming to Xbox Game Pass on March 28; and future Xbox hardware teased Sony Group Corporation President Hiroki Totoki said that they aren't planning to release any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year (meaning between between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025). Embracer says it's looking out for shareholders after cutting almost 1,400 jobs"Our overruling principle is to always maximize shareholder value in any given situation" Baldurs Gate 3 Dice Acceptance Speech: Disco Elysium standalone expansion reportedly cancelled and quarter of staff facing redundancy at ZA/UM Capcom has shared a post to celebrate the eighth anniversary of Street Fighter 5, where it apologised for the game's original state at launch. The Capcom Cup X player drawing has been finalized and people are very unhappy: Group F consisting of the following players: Bandits|MenaRD, Bandits|Caba, MK|NeroTheBoxer, DRX|Leshar, Mouz|EndingWalker, and NASR|AngryBird Sega's new Crazy Taxi game "AAA" in scope Granblue Fantasy VS Rising: Feb 19  The second playable DLC character YoRHa android "2B" will join the game Elden Ring The Convergence mod offers "exhaustive overhaul" of entire game  

Music So like I guess this is gonna be the most discussion about Xbox. That has ever occurred in years on this show? Xbox. Oh, you have it right there. There it is. Xbox is here. Whoa. Hey, there it is. Yeah. Mine is back there somewhere. So to podcast viewers who are not familiar with the story of how I got this Xbox, when I did a Persona 5 royal stream they were like hey could you play it on the Xbox and went okay and I went and bought it and then did the stream and then put it on a desk over there and it has sat there unturned on the entire time. Oh do you mean the Devil May Cry 5 demo machine? The DMC5 fucking demo demo device yeah that thing booted up the

DMC five demo really good it played real good on that I really I did enjoy it and then and then dead space and then dead space later you know that was cool too yeah so I have I have it wearing headphones so it can't hear us say anything mean. Oh no. About Xbox. Well, that's okay. The hardware will continue to exist. Woolly, it's the software. That's, you're right. The same point. This hardware. Not going anywhere anytime soon. Definitely not. No matter what anyone tells you or I tell you or Phil tells you, the hardware is here to stay.

So you fucking sat and listen to it. You do you listen to the podcast? I did a two hour stream watching a 22 minute Xbox podcast. Fill me in because I got the bullet points. It was so good. I loved every second. The bullet points to me were, hey, we're going to continue making hardware, but also we're going to try to sell software on other competitor competitors platforms for games that are coming. That is pretty much if you wanted to be like I'm an investor or I'm some idiot that doesn't

have fun, uh, listening to, to, to your, your, your executives lie to you, then the takeaway would be Xbox sees future value in expanding the user base of existing games after a certain age to recoup costs or make more money. Right. Four games unannounced, totally not going to be. Totally Totally high-fi rush pentamints see if thieves and grounded absolutely definitely not Going to be those four games that everyone absolutely knows No way I think the funniest part of that is that high-fi rush is the most known To go to be coming to the switch

Rush is the most known to be coming to the switch. Like it's the most like there's the the the shirts that got data mined out and all that. And I'm and we're all sitting here. I'm like Xbox isn't telling us about Hi-Fi Rush because Nintendo gets to tell us about Hi-Fi Rush and it feels like it feels like we can't tell you. We'd love to tell you, but Nintendo like we can't tell you we'd love to tell you but Nintendo said we can't tell you so and I Guess the the sentiments also seems to be like behind this is the giant looming

Is this a starfield test? No, are we going to try to are we gonna try to make some starfield PlayStation money? so going to try to are we going to try to make some Starfield PlayStation money? So I'm going to I'm going to have to try and break this down and like a like a before the bullet points. I need to try and like give you like a holistic picture. It might have. It's like the whole thing was this massive like masturbation jerk off session. Oh boy.

Love those. The like so they're in an Xbox like studio and they're all wearing Xbox and the interviewer is wearing Xbox and her question cards have the Xbox logo on them and they're sitting in Xbox chairs with like a green background behind them. And you're like, OK, this is the media people over at Xbox doing the Xbox name but there was a part that really like broke the illusion where the lady asked him a slightly not as softball question possible and Phil kind of gave like a half chuckle and he looks down and is like wow that's a great question I'm like that's a question you told her to

ask you Phil what was that for you to answer what was the overhand ball question then oh I don't even remember okay I don't even remember. So that's the tone, that's the tone of like, oh hey man, it's slick and it's smooth. And it's just the natural step forward for our business and it doesn't mean anything else is changing. This is just the way things are gonna go and we're gonna give you some reasons the way things are going to go. And we're going to give you some reasons. And those reasons are going to be internally inconsistent.

And in some cases outright falsehoods. Please don't sell shares. Please don't sell. Please don't. So, so the gist of it is they say we're bringing four games to other platforms that are over a year old and we really feel that their community, they phrase it like their community could benefit from being on more platforms. And the underneath of this is Xbox or Phil rather being like, man, it's just great for everybody to play games wherever.

It doesn't matter what box you're on. You know, it's great for games to be played together with everybody, right? Like, isn't that, like, it's for the community. And then, like, later on in that day in a separate interview, there's like an insane quote from Phil going like, yeah, I don't know who that helps for Helldivers to only be on PlayStation and on the PC. I really don't know who that serves or what good that does. People are buying PlayStation to play Helldivers, Phil. That's why. Right. Okay. So it's the attempt to create

the platform. I'm just a little guy. I'm just a little guy. I'm just a little birthday boy. Right. Right. Right. Right. And you know, they're not big titles, but also we're never going to say never. And this is definitely not a test to see if we can make more money off of putting games on a new platform than selling the box. But also, hey, hey, you know what's really successful, Wally? What's incredibly successful? Game Pass. Game Pass is so successful. Game Pass is so successful that they saw double digit growth in Game Pass subscriptions over the last quarter. Double digit growth, that means at least 10%, right? That's huge.

OK. Now, let's ignore the fact that five minutes prior to this, Phil Spencer said that the layoffs had to happen because the industry didn't grow during the pandemic, which is like not true. It was like the most boom period ever for video games that have ever been in the history of anything. But double digit game pass growth, double digit. Now granted, they didn't tell anybody about this, but shareholders before this, but they rolled Xbox Live Gold into Game Pass numbers because they changed the name of Xbox Live Gold to Game Pass Core.

Oh, how about that? The basic online subscription. Yeah, okay. So, actually, the Game Pass that we're talking about has been seeing double-jigit losses in terms of growth But when you incorporate the renamed existing surface that has a little number go up then there you go See there's 24 million people pay for Xbox live gold, but there's only 11 million people play for game pass God shit cool, and I do Diablo Diablo four come in March right? And cool and they do Diablo Diablo for coming in March right?

What's that Diablo's coming in March Diablo's coming for March for everybody with game pass no wait not you people Sorry with good game pass they had to put out a press release afterwards with the game pass real Yeah, so it's like okay, so when you want to tell the shareholders you're getting growth, it's everybody, but when it's like anybody that would actually get anything, you're like, no, no, you stupid, you stupid babies, no. Cool. Okay. And then they said, not only are we not getting out of hardware, Willie, not only is Xbox not getting out of hardware. We've actually got some sandwiches that are also Game Pass. Everyone who buys one of our sandwiches. Game Pass. That's those are those are game pass sandwich sales.

So the full the full Game Pass family brand has gone up really every day. Multiple people every day. Yep. So not only are they not going to get out of the hardware business, Willie. But there was there was like a couple of predictions I made. So not only are they not going to get out of the hardware business, Willie, but there was there was like a couple of predictions I made. And one of them was like the Xbox is always going to be the best place to play the game pass games because they're they're major they're just made for this. And they use like power world as an example multiple times, at which point I have to point out that like,

Power World was objectively terrible on Game Pass. People were trying it on Game Pass and then buying the Steam version, because the Game Pass version was like multiple patches out of date because they had to do it like a soft compliance. And it's an early access game on Steam. Yeah. So it's incredibly, yeah.

So it was like, that was the worst version of the game you could buy. But they're like, oh man, Power World's a big success for us. But yeah, not only are they not going to stop making hardware because it's the best place to play game pass games, but the next Xbox that they're making that they're committed to, yep, is going to be the biggest technological leap between two consoles in the history of video games. And we're not going to talk about anything more than that. Okay. Even though that means that's either not true, or the fucking thing's going gonna cost like $800. So this shift then is a, well, I mean, obviously that going forward, this is probably like, how do we recoup losses on two and a half generations of failure? Well, they just spent $65 billion on Activision.

Like that, that money doesn't come from nothing. Mm-hmm. Money, like, the timing is like, money has to happen now. And it's a shame that like Activision Blizzard started to like burn down and lose a bunch of talent, like during the buying process. That sucks. How sick would it be if the next generation of Xboxes are a bunch of towers and laptops

where the like fucking logo has been stickered over over the fucking Asus or Republic of Gamers or fucking Alien wear logo just like a little like this thing is already pretty close to that. Like you're basically describing there were rumors. I don't know if you saw any of these, but there were people talking about a little while ago that the next Xbox was going to be like 800 to $1,000 and it was basically going to be like a specialty boutique console that's like a like a specialty boutique console that's like a, like a built-in alienware. Hmm. Yeah, this thin console seems to have, looks like there's a keyboard in the middle there,

but I can't open it to really confirm. It's just, I don't know, but anyway, plug your controller in. And then after that, they gave some interviews in which had like Phil Spencer, like pork begging hell divers, because that's that's their their like they're like sale to consumers is like listen man yeah we're

porting these games but it's for you man so there's more people like for you to play with that like grounded and and you know like that's got that's got like you know people playing it did you play hell numbers hell divers by the way because I have questions about it. I I Absolutely played hell. Okay, great. Whoa Do that later. I have a hell diver stream open in another window right now so I can get the twitch drop Wow Okay, um Yeah, so was there any Um, yeah. So was there any, was there any clue as to why this was dropped in the form of a

podcast? That's, I was talking to, um, I don't remember what I was talking to, but we were sitting around and was like, this shit was it was you, it was you. No, it wasn't, what, anyway, point is it's like, we had all this, this rumor shit last week, right? At the very beginning of last week or two weeks ago and their only response was we're gonna have a podcast update in in in fucking 10 days and then we got to see panic sales and doom saying and people selling their fucking boxes and it like, this could have been

like the Microsoft Twitter account posting like an image that's like, yes, we are bringing a couple of games to other consoles and then this and the reasoning and right. Like the podcast element just seemed like so self-indulgent. Yeah. I mean, like, is it a but this is a soft little like flirtatious to Sony like Multiplat multiplat tonight

Multiplat tonight king tonight though They have absolutely opened the door for just I having to endure the most intolerable like port begging ever from now on. Like Nintendo and Sony are never going to put their games on your platform. Like ever. Yeah. Never. They're never going to. That's that. Like that's they're they're crazy about it. They're never going to do it.

Well, and again, it's like it once the once the, you know, back is to the proverbial wall and it comes crashing down, then it's like, OK, a switch from Sega hardware to Sega software occurs. However, yes, starting with four soft things and then seeing where it goes from there. I mean, and they're like, hey, you know, we're not bringing Indiana Jones or whatever over, but, you know, we're not bringing Indiana Jones or whatever over but you know, we're never gonna say never And it's like it's it's a it's a financial test

It's it's hey how much money do we make on this versus how much money do we lose over here more? How much do we lose over here and how do we lose less given? Yeah, the state of affairs, you know now I'd like to point out There's somebody in the chat who said, it's weird, but that seems more anti Xbox than usual. My usual stance on Xbox is that I don't think I've talked about it for like two and a half years at all. Like I don't yet, like I have one that I don't use and it doesn't have any

exclusive games that I need to play on it. Uh, with Microsoft doing like a weirdly bad job and then doing these podcasts that are like hilarious, they're hilarious. I do suggest you watch it, Willie, because I was like sitting there like, like mouth a gate a couple of times going, what you just said isn't true. It's just not true. I mean, it's a lie. Again, at the end, it's just this is every, I don't, I don't, I'm fine with the bullet points on it, to be honest. The takeaways being simple enough that it's like, okay, everything, every single one of

these stupid flubs is completely that reaping what you sow, but at the same, but, but, but competition good, as we said last time, there. Yeah, I would like to hang out and stay. You need a Sony can't be left to its own world to just do what it wants while Nintendo is, you know, over here on the moon, colonizing. I will say, though, that. Competitively, when you say when you say competition, that doesn't necessarily just mean there are other people

in the market at all. Competition means you have to have competitors that compete. Yes, it has to actually be a race. There needs to be something to exactly. Because if it's Sony can now ignore you, Oh look, you're here. You exist. That's cool. Anyways, onto whatever the fuck we were doing then. No, that's not the same thing. It needs to be like, you know, when when we when I was talking about Xbox on my stream, I it's just like the fucking company's been so fucking badly managed. Like everybody makes fun of Sony and a shoe Yoshida for going Demon's Souls. This game's a fucking piece of shit!

Get this out of my- Atlas can publish it, whatever. That was a stupid mistake. Right? But I was going down the list of things that Microsoft has dropped the ball on and it's like Resident Evil 4 could have been an Xbox original exclusive, but their meeting with Mikami went so bad that like he just left and walked across the street and gave it to Nintendo. They passed on and he felt like disrespected too.

So like he was, he did not want to work with them ever again. They passed on Genshin Impact. Like Genshin went to them and be like, do you want us to be exclusive? And they're like, no, they passed on Spider-Man. That's the funniest one. In-sot, because remember in some, the act used to be-

The fucking flagship. And they were like, hey, you want a Spider-Man game? And they're like, Hey, you want a Spider-Man game? Yeah, I remember I remember when like what I thought, I mean, well, many people thought that like, boy, that ff seven on n64 fumble is like one of the biggest ever. I can't believe that's pretty fucking bad. That happened. I'm sure everyone will learn from this lesson. It's surely not repeated.

Um, and like just, uh, I'm not able to find it right now, but I was seeing people talking about that Halo devs are looking at some of the three, four, three Halo devs are looking at hell divers. And they're like, the three, four, three Halo devs are looking at Helldivers. And they're like, we pitched this exact game to Microsoft like six, seven years ago. Oh, oh, like, no, that's a bad idea. Don't do that. Interesting.

I see. OK. And. Just like, oh man. Yeah. Um, hey, I want to ask you a question because I've been workshopping this idea for a while and you, you genuinely know more about how the in the, not just the inner workings of the console management work, but also the people that work there and, and make decisions. So what's his name?

What was that fuck's name? Don Matric, right? Online only, get the Kinect, blah, blah, blah. And you've got a console for you, it's called the Xbox 360, right? The first nail. The architect of the The Xbox is called. The architect of the sharing flop, yes. But what was more important for that was,

they talked about how like, well, it's gonna be online only, so we're gonna try and get like a steam thing going on, where games go on sale more often because, we don't have to worry about shipping blah blah blah right and uh I remember they would say that in interviews and the response was oh cool so is that gonna happen and they're like well we're gonna try that's like but that's you know you didn't offer any you said maybe a nice thing could happen right and so And so like that doesn't have any like punch to it.

And I was wondering, because you see Epic, they gave people all the money to make the, to put the exclusive games, right? And then the second thing that Epic did is Epic's like, we're going to take our cut from 30% down to 12%. Right? And then now instead of offering direct money, They're like we'll take zero percent cut for a year Well, we'll let you put our the game on our store for free now, right? Oh, and I think about like if they had come out and said Hey, man. Yes, the Xbox one is online only. We need to check your digital purchase

You won't be able to be making used games, but we will alter the way that our cut with developers goes so that we can tell you that Xbox games will be $10 cheaper than their competing platform. Because here's the thing, that would have at least given you a carrot to go along with the stick. Yeah. There was no carrot for the online only shit.

It was the clue. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if that's enough, but I also feel I might over estimate how much people would hate that shit because the idea the the honestly like the the ten dollars you're saving on that fresh purchase is Still way more money spent than your ability to go buy it second hand Which is what you're taking away from people.

The ability to walk into the GameStop and buy it super marked down, because I wanna play that game for, you know, whatever, a 20% of what it costs, or whatever, after the fact. Like, you're still, it's still asking for more money than people are willing to spend, or more money than people have.

So I don't think it would have been enough. Like, but it would have been something. It it would have been something it would have been something it would have been something Instead of the nothing yeah, they did I but but you know the the amount of times too like you know We are friends would like walk in take a bag full of their games Throw them in yeah, and then trade those games in for new things You know and walk out having spent like five dollars or so and getting a fresh thing Like people that want to do that or people that want to go in and go like I got like 30 bucks. What do I got here? That the 60 or $50

10 less in that generation would not have been enough Also always online Yeah, like that's a begrudging thing that like online. Yeah, like that's a begrudging thing that like like people would have been could eventually accept but like I still think it just no it's not enough of a carrot. Oh, this is this is a slight diversion but it is Xbox related. I've been informed that the FF 14 beta is starting soon on the Xbox series S and X. So that's cool. Crossplay among everybody, that's great.

I've also been informed that the game requires you to have an Xbox Live Core subscription in addition to the game subscription unlike every other platform. So you gotta pay for both. Yeah. Huh. So you got to pay for both yeah, huh? Okay, so

Don't already have Xbox like game pass core or whatever most expensive way to play the game $35 did they relent on that I didn't see them relent on that Um, it's fucking cool. Uh, yeah. It just, um, you the the that that was really yeah, that was the beginning of the end on it. And, um, I don't know. Like here's the thing too, as well, like if they're going're going okay we have these four and then let's say they commit to Every exclusive is actually now gonna be not exclusive. Well cuz they said well these guys are over a year old Yeah, right sure, but even if they weren't Like how much of the needle does this move? Like that's the that's the need which needle are you describing the needle of like

being able to Being able to make money to recoup costs on taking your exclusives over to PlayStation right a lot So start so you've got you've got a star field like giant Title what comes behind that Like what would mean what comes behind that in terms of Microsoft exclusivity oh You got your your your you have your game I would you know fuck me I was about to say You have your games made by Microsoft first-party studios, but I don't What is that?

Like what fucking month what fucking month like Okay, yeah forza forza. Okay. Halo Like what that's that's that's kind of the thing is like what what is the you know, what what is the Rollout look like, you know, what's the okay? We're doing that. We're doing the the flight simulator look like, you know, once the big big star. So we're doing the flight simulator. We're doing old games that are small and have communities. The next up would be Halo Infinite because it's a live service game. And you can play it for free.

Right? The multiplayer for Halo Infinite. And I would even say like not talking about like hypothetical new unannounced games I mean like existing things that yeah, no, it'd be it'd be Halo infinite. Yeah, okay would be the next one on PlayStation and Like they're positioning like Xbox is gonna be the best place to play these games and I'm I'm really torn Because like Xbox is like already not the best place to play almost any game. It is always the personal computer or maybe the PlayStation depending.

I mean personally I've I'm just this type of person that like I don't really want to tweak settings that much when I've got I'm a bit tired of that so I kind of yeah no everyone is I go for I go for PS5 for just a hit being it simple um but but like it would be funny though to enter a world where like all these exclusives are jumping over and like K.I. is not freed and they're just like, Can you fucking let us out? Let us out, God damn it. It's just this strange situation because they've said that like,

no, we're definitely gonna have another console and it's gonna be very big and very expensive. And I'm sitting here going like, why would I buy that console when I now have the assumption that like any games that are actually exclusive to the platform will come over wherever you can put them if I wait like if you just waited out a year. I think there was so there was a weird so when we're watching the Xbox presentation and Phil's blowing smoke up our ass and all that, there was this incredibly strange subcontext underneath it,

which is like, you know, games used to be about moving hardware, but now it's about the games and, you know, exclusivity doesn't matter and I'm like sitting here and I'm like every single person I know is foaming at the mouth because Final Fantasy 7 rebirth is coming out in like a week Phil. That is like exclusives do matter there are people out there buying playstations right now to play that game and they'll probably pick up other games but more importantly because now we're talking about like Phil in that interview like two years ago was like or maybe

last year I don't remember but was like you know the digital libraries would fuck us right the fact that everybody's got a bunch of PlayStation games now rolling forward that are gonna forward compatible that fucked us. And it's like, well, FF7's right the fuck there, man. It's gonna get way worse next week,

or whatever the week afterwards. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't know that, like, that exact transition point is the one where, yeah, everyone's giant Steam libraries and everyone's giant digital things are like rolling forward. I don't know what generation will hit where they'll cut that off.

I imagine they don't want you going more. They'll probably, it'll probably be like the last two or so incorporated because after a certain point, like there's a level of like, yes, it's anti-consumer, but fuck you too bad. Just get the new thing or rebuy it or or so You know Nintendo seems to not give a fuck about that and just have it be like okay Well, it'll be the last one at best, you know But Nintendo's never gonna put a fucking Mario game on a Sony PlayStation No, no, no, no, I know I just mean the the rolling forward digital library like that everyone has that they're permanently invested in. I mean,

fuck switch to might actually start that going if it's backwards compatible. No reason to think that. But there will be but there will be a point where like there will be a cutoff that is like, yeah, too bad if the new thing will just not play this old of a thing, you know? And you've got your giant library too bad for you. Maybe, it would be the point where they have like, like it will be a concerted effort to include backwards compatibility going forward.

Like people are buying games with the assumption of forward compatibility. Well yeah so the other way is the well the Xbox One way of going okay we have certain titles that are going to be available backwards compatible and you will have access to those but it's a it's a select number of popular ones as opposed to the entire library you know because perhaps it's like software emulated or something like that. So somebody asked a great question in the chat that pairs into this. Deist cookies asks, why would I buy a PS5 when God of War, Last of Us Uncharted and

Spider-Man are all on PC? Literally every exclusive besides Bloodborne and Demon's Souls. That's a great point! Exclusives are kinda, except for Nintendo, exclusives are kinda not a big deal anymore cause everything comes to PC. Well, PCs are expensive and they fucking break and they're annoying to use. Like that's the reason. The reason is cost. You also have to keep up. You have to keep up and it's a pile of shit and sometimes the game come out and it don't work with your bullshit and it sucks, whatever.

Like there's always going to be a place for a console. But I don't understand what Microsoft is thinking long term about selling consoles at all. If one console is going to have all of the Sony games and Half of the Xbox games and the other Is gonna have the Xbox games and none of the Sony games Like the Xbox original was way stronger than the ps2, but the ps2 had like ten times as many games So you bought a fucking ps2 but the PS2 had like 10 times as many games. So you bought a fucking PS2.

Yeah. So, well, again, it's like it's the, you, your attachment rate will matter less and you're now just looking entirely at software sales and you become, I don't know, whatever, whatever percentage you become 50% less dependent on hardware sales considering it's already lagging. So I feel strange.

I feel like they are deeply committed to the hardware. And I don't know why. Because if they think that they'll make more money selling games as a third party. Then just go be a fucking third party. Then just go be a fucking third party. If it's well, if this if this new thing that they're simultaneously announcing is also the biggest step forward and we'll you know, like that's going to be something you know what it is back over. Then yeah, that business plan is in diametric opposition to the multi-platform one. You know what I think it is? I think it was, I'm not sure.

I think it was Chris Wolfhart was talking about this. So Best Buy, the electronic store that you go to because you wanna look at their TVs up before you buy them on Amazon, has decided, I don't know if you saw this, but physical media in Best Buy is on its way out. They're in the process of removing physical media from Best Buy stores because they felt that physical media is on its way out and that nobody cares about it and the digital media is all the way forward because of the information they researched

during the pandemic because physical media sales went down because people didn't walk outside their house because they didn't want to catch the plague. So they started the process of removing physical media from their stores like recently, right? Well before they even started to do it, it was like actually really obvious that like most people don't buy a digital actually most people buy things physically and that that would be like a massive mistake. But the process took so long

to get going and to become enshrined as like a fucking plan for their business and spread it out all over, that they can't stop it. Like they're gonna pull the discs off the shelves. They began the process. The decision was made like a year and a half ago. And now they can't fucking, it's done.

Right? And I'm sitting here going like, if Microsoft has decided they wanna be a fucking third party after the Activision Blizzard acquisition, why don't they just get out of the console business? Oh, because they have a console. It's already in people's hands. It's just multiple price points.

They've already sent it out. They've already committed to the money. It exists on the shelves. They also have a team working on the on the upcoming one. By the way, if you work in that department, I'm sure your job. Get your fucking CV. Good. Ready. I'm sure your job. Get your fucking CV good ready.

So did you hear about how the energy at DICE was real? Like there's two things that everyone was walking around talking about. Survive. Survive 2024 and fucking Bracer. That was that was it. People just walking around with cocktails in hand, you know, chatting it up with each other going, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,

hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, uh, like, firm that with that like cannibalizes existing businesses for their resources and talent does more than Embracer Group because Embracer Group bought all that shit for that merger that didn't go through and have just been like slashing every project that costs money

to cook. And like, they're buying a bu- it's- it's like they have- it's like they have like a- like a- uh- like a hyper fixation. And they're like, oh we- I bought all- I'm gonna be- hey listen, I'm gonna- I'm gonna start drawing. Okay, so I went out and I got a canvas, and I got my paints, and I got my brushes, and I got my fucking pencils, and I got my drawing tutorials on YouTube, and I made some friends in an art discord, and I'm gonna start drawing, and I'm gonna start drawing, and then they drop like a little thing of paint on the floor, and they go fuck it!

And they just take the whole thing, and just put it in a dumpster outside it's and a friend of those goes like you know you could have sold that that was all brand new they never used you could have just sold that to somebody who wanted it and got some of your money back they're like no no fuck it in right in the trash right in the trash it's almost as if our overruling principle is to always maximize shareholder value in any given situation Yeah, even even for it's almost a quote unquote even for like a cut throughout business it's kind of like

Strange that they would say that so bluntly because like well that's bad for your long-term business So what's here to catch them like like the wildness of that statement going alongside? the 1400 this week ring the bell Jobs that were layoffs that occurred Yeah, that statement going alongside of Larry and acceptance speech going up and... Privately owned, you should do that. We don't have shareholders, but we also don't think about them. And, you know, we're...

That's like just straight up going like, yeah, shit sucks. It's really bad. Sorry that everything is this abysmal. We're not making this, we tend to not make decisions that are just based on how much money we're gonna make off the thing, you know? So like we've moved into like more of like a, like a economic political issue, but we only know about video games because we're stupid. And to the quote being, we built,

building games that are actually fun Or what are gonna make you the most money? That's it anyway go on That Like Share I mean, okay Why do you think your company public because you need capital? Why do you need capital because shit's expensive? Right, you need a lot of money to pay people. You need a lot of people to have an office You know a lot of money to pay people. You need a lot of people to have an office. You need a lot of people for equipment, et cetera.

But it's been shown over and over and over. It's like, wow, Steam is an incredible service that has maintained its incredible lead over all of its direct competitors because all of their features and all of their rollouts and all of their focuses have been long-term focused for the health of steam The it's it's more stable. It has more features

It works better and it's cheaper than literally single all of its competitors because they don't have quarterly reports to actually deal with ever Right Larry and is the same way they had the cash They said we're gonna work on this fucking thing for six years until we think it's the best game ever. And they put out. And hey, look at that. As opposed to a system where you're basically bending and breaking everything over the whims of someone who wants to jump in, watch their shit double in a quarter

and then jump the fuck out. Yeah, the strangest thing. So they're making like dot com bubble mistakes, right? Like it's all about this quarter, it's all about this quarter. But they're a fuck it, we're talking about video games. Video games don't work on quarters.

They take two to five years to make. Not Wall Street, bro. Wall Street. Run it, run it, run it. Dude, it takes at least eight quarters to make a video game. I'm all in. You're about to release your game. Fucking all in. Double this or I'm on the roof. Go. Now. Answer. Answer my question. Yeah, it's anyway, so The I mean I suppose that well whatever there's there's there's there's further layoff news to hit when we actually get into the news But Hurray for high-five rush soon to be enjoyed by more people.

Oh, dude. So here's thing. High-fi rush pentamint grounded. And what's the fourth? See if these these are good. People will enjoy those games. So hooray. And, you know, gamers win. Game. Listen, Willie. Gamers are winning overall.

As a whole. Yeah, gamers win no matter how many layoffs occur, no matter what's going on. Now, if you're sitting there quadruple going, but Phil Spencer, I bought an Xbox Series X because you told me it was the best console to play obsidian's avowed on. And I'm sitting here watching two Obsidian games go to other platforms.

And I really wanted to play God of War. But hey man, I figured that playing Obsidian games was a better, fuck, fuck dude, what the hell? No, we all go make it. Maybe, maybe just in brackets, we all all go make it. Maybe maybe maybe just in brackets. We all not go make it. I feel like there's a there's a factor. People don't like to talk about this because it's irrational.

But like when you when you buy one of these fancy consoles, the costs two to five hundred dollars and you're like I would I'm doing it so that I can see the games that I want come out on the thing there is an emotional attachment there and there is a there is a genuine feeling of what the fuck dude I gave you the money so you put the games on the box so I can play with the Like that's not nothing that is real people are feeling that yeah, it's not entirely undeserved in the future when you throw out a range Instead of staying two to five hundred. Can you say two to six ninety nine? I can okay. I'd appreciate that. I think that's Genuinely, I think that is low-balling it I I think we are going to see a 799 US dollars Xbox in the next 18

months. Well, I mean, you just have to come out to the podium and go, guys, it's a PC. Like, what do you want from us? It's a computer. Like, it's gonna fucking, it's gonna have a Windows boot up, you know, when you when you when you start, you get do you get the feeling that you're going to see steam open and then full screen and then it's going to load a custom a custom Microsoft or or or so fucking UI. Is this just big picture? Shut up. No. A mouse is going to be in the corner with the little pixels slightly off-screen.

Every time you come out of a cutscene, there's just gonna be a mouse cursor dead center in the middle of the screen. And once you touch the controller, it'll disappear. You're like, that's fucking weird. Why would it- huh. Oh, why- why- why is it asking me about my one drive? Why does it want me to update that weird little- Oh, wow. Oh.

Do you get the feeling that the hardware guys have not gotten to sit at the table where this decision was made? Ugh. I mean. Because if you're making like a big like one of the most expensive consoles ever and you're sitting there going, OK, so what exclusive games are we going to put on it? Nothing. Well, sick.

Well, you don't want you see, while they should be dusting off their CVs, you don't want to actually give them the clue that they need to do that. Oh, I mean, told that hell divers on PS5 does do that. The mouse shows up on screen. No, terrible. That's so funny. Yeah, no, no, those people in those departments just get fucked over. The moment the public finds out they do as well. It's one of those bits, you know.

You keep it close to your chest to for the power play. But yeah, no, the Xbox podcast was incredible. I loved it. You know, Don Matric really just shit in a bucket and gave it to Phil and told them to hold it. So I feel bad for him, but I don't think that the solution was for him to continue shitting into the same bucket and then complain that it's really heavy. Well, this is this is what you inherited. You inherited the legacy. What are you gonna do? Not shit. I'm gonna poop in it That's what's for right? No, Phil god. Damn it. You just got to hold it All right, all right, all right

So hey, how about this then yeah hell divers to it lots of noise made about hell divers to and Hey seeing the announcement that they that they had at the state of play recently, taking a peek over and looking, is this like a shiny earth defense force? It is. It's a lot of things. Much like Power World is an unlicensed Pokémon, Helldivers is an unlicensed Starship Troopers game.

Did you like Paul Verhoeven Starship Troopers? That was a good movie. If so, you're gonna have a lot to love here. Wait, ironically or unironically? Ironically. Ironically, yes, okay. Yeah It is it's it's it's people are saying in the chat it is closer to a deep rock galactic it is

Actually, it's EDF with money. It's EDF with money and emissions to emission structure that you sit down and you play like a 20 minute or a 40 minute. Seems like, yeah, seems like a third person shooting the bugs, here comes the swarm, get your group together. Yeah, so it looks like that. It's actually much more complex at its core

than it appears to be. Um, so before I continue, I will say Helldivers 2 is currently full. Don't buy it. I don't want to wait for the server to. Game full, go home. Yeah, got it. Yeah, okay. Got it. Yeah, okay got it. Yeah cool Damn, you know I was thinking about it, but shit. I guess it's full It is it is it is full

The when you log in at the wrong time of day thus the message is the server is full Go home hell divers one the server is full. Gov'l. Helldivers 1 was like a moderate success. It had like, I don't know, 10, 20,000 people, you know, concurrent, right? This thing's 400k on Steam, literally right this second. And their server just can't, just can't. It just can't just can't it just can't So it's very successful good for them also PlayStation having a free weekend this weekend for the game that is full maybe

Not the best idea to do that That may have been a massive mistake to do That was stupid. So I definitely remember this this logo from Yeah from the first game or so, but I'd never I guess It didn't have this much ground swell.

It sure did, because it was top down. Whereas this is a third-person shooter, like your EDF, your gear's a war. So, so that, so it's full, don't play it, only me. Second, it managed to overcome, like the worst first impression I have had for a game in like a year. Like not only is it full, but when I loaded it up, it would kept skipping the, uh, opening movie like over and over and over and over. Um, and then it has a, hey man, do you wanna play cross play? And you go, yeah, cross play seems like cool.

And then it goes, hey, in order to play the game period, you must link your PlayStation account. And then you go to link your PlayStation account and the PlayStation account servers are completely fucked because of helldivers And then it has a big yellow button at the bottom right that says skip Now it says you have to link your account to play. Okay, so I was like, oh if I hit skip It's just gonna bring me to the tutorial and then kick me back to the link your account button, right? It doesn't when you hit skip it just disables cross play.

What it actually is saying on that screen is you need to link your PlayStation account to play cross play. Ah, okay. But it doesn't actually say it, it says you need to link it to play the game. Okay, okay. So that is a mistake.

That is just a mistake. So because I am the way that I am, I blew like 90 minutes trying to log in on this and got really mad. Jesus Christ. And when people were like, you can just skip it, I'm like, but it says I can't skip it Because I was it caught Doing one of my mental dilemmas. Did you try what happened if you did? No because it says you have to

You have to Anyway, anyway, I went to bed And I got up the next day okay, so played it yeah, just I will just I'll just promptly delete everything you just said Just just get just so click and drag and wait hold on I'm gonna ask you not to empty the recycling bin on that just yet because there will be something similar coming later on at the end of my week. Okay, well, it's going to sit in the recycling bin. Okay, let it sit there.

But then you get in and they give you your tutorial in which it's, oh, you're going to get those bugs, dude. You're the greatest ever. You're going to earn your cape. And then you get to the most interesting part of the game, which is the map. So it is a large scale galactic map with tons of planets and you will travel to one of those planets and then select a operation on the planet's surface. The reason why this is like the most interesting thing is because it is part of a galactic front in which all

mission results are being fed into the system. So you'll look at right now for example the Mantees system out on the western front, where the automatons are trying to take the Mantees planets. And as the automatons are beating our asses right now, you will see the liberation meter on the planet. Yeah, okay. Tick down. Server-wide, like, clan pushes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. So you're like, oh cool, we're all into this together. When I go to Fenrir III to fight the bugs and I finish my mission You finish the mission and you get to see the number go from like 70 percent to 70 dot zero zero zero zero one percent Yeah to point two percent you're doing your part. I'm doing my part and And that's like a fun little thing because the front has been moving and there's been incursions and that depends on the missions But more than that is that when you travel to a system that is like the the site of like a very heavy player

focus in orbit you can see other people's ships. And you can see other people being fired out the bottom of their ships to go onto their missions. Like actually like other people, not just like, yes, automatically. Okay. And then when you are on the ground and you look out on the horizon,

you can still see those ships. And not only can you see people starting their missions by firing off into drop pods in the far distance, you can also see the orbital bombardments coming down off those ships. OK, you can see the the the the the fucking fighters coming down. You can see the laser bombardments coming off their destroyers. Cool. OK. And people thought that that was just like a visual

background. Yeah. Until one of the days where the servers were broken and the player count was really low and there were no ships in the sky. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

OK. That's cool. That's cool. So it's just got this huge, huge energy all the time that I am doing my part. So the, we are all in this together. The marketing is very Starship Shoopers-esque in that way. Is the game itself carry that energy

or is that just kind of like- Oh, brother. Is it big old like military propaganda? Dude, as you're going down in your drop pod, you got your democracy officer. Yeah. How you're gonna be using your gun to inject liberty into the bones.

OK, perfect. Good, good, good, good, good, good. That's solid. There also appear to be non-bug enemies. There are the automatons. There's the bots. OK. And there is a third fraction from Helldivers 1,

which is not in the game Currently called the illuminate who are definitely not just literally the protoss. Oh, yeah, okay That are not they're just the protoss So I mean you you sign up and you're like I am going to use My gun to help save Super Earth, which is the name of the planet. Awesome. And we are going to spread managed democracy

to the bugs and the robots. The whole thing is very who-aw, it's constantly swelling patriotic music. The whole thing is very who-aw, it's constantly swelling patriotic music. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It feels like you're in, like a fucking recruitment ad, like the whole time. Would you like to know more?

It has a really useful and worthwhile ping system like Apex, so I've been playing with no voice and it works completely fine. Yeah, are you- From a gameplay, mm? Yeah, no, I was gonna say like are you cuz I see so as third person. Are you like Jumping into like other like vehicles or anything like that or is it mainly just like different guns? so right now classes you're on foot and You have your gun now your gun can be everything from Rifle or shotgun or flamethrower or a heavy machine gun it can also include

turret backpacks Can also include two-man weapons So you can get drops for guns that are like one guy holds the recoilless rifle And then the other guy's only job is to hold the ammo for the recoilless rifle cool interesting Currently there are no vehicles currently. There are no mechs. However helldivers one had had vehicles and mechs Okay, so I assume what's going to happen is the front will push very badly close to super earth at which point they roll out the new stuff So you have your guns and you're shooting your guns

and your grenades, but the main thing, like if this was a Starcraft faction, like what have they got? The bugs have their bug shit and the robots have their robots. What Helldivers have is air support. That's the gameplay gimmick is that you have unparalleled air support So you hold down L1 and a bunch of Konami codes show up on your screen for your strategy I'm okay, so you do like down down to the right and you'll get the beacon in your hand to call down an orbital strike

Right or you'll hit Down down left right or to get a resupply and they just work on timers. They're not consumables Right, or you'll hit down, down, left, right, or to get a resupply. And they just work on timers. They're not consumables. They're just like, did you bring down a turret? It'll be 90 seconds before you can bring down another turret. Right.

How many people on a team? Four. Okay. And so, you know, you'll be wandering around the map and you're trying to get to the objective and you'll see a patrol. And then like some guy will throw down a turret while another guy calls in a strafing run.

And then before the bugs know what hit them, you are chewing them up with air support and turrets and mines and whatnot. Okay. Because your actual character is extremely weak. Like they get killed very easy And everything has friendly fire and you can't turn the friendly fire off. Oh, okay You call in a bombing run. Well, yeah, you better not be in the way

You better not be there and your your friends better not be there. Gotcha But there's there's like plentiful Responds which creates a situation in which you're like, well, I'm going to die for sure. Like you look around and you're like, I am 100% dead. So I might as well call it a or a purple stripe, right? Oh man, that real shit. Yeah, okay. That that that that real shit that what was it? It was it? Yeah, I was I was recently reading about in World War two. There was literally like a dude who did that Like one of the one of the black officers like was kind of stranded and they had to be called in a strike on him On his position where Nazis were surrounding him. It was like I'm 100% sure they're here because they're one of those. Okay. Damn. It's it's all this plus

it's got a bunch of mission types and those mission types are varied. Interesting. It has a good progression system. People were complaining that it has a battle pass. The battle pass is forever. And the free battle Pass has enough currency in it to buy the one you can buy right now, so it's just the progression system? Like it looks like a Battle Pass, but it's literally just the level up system

because it lasts forever? So your EDF progression will go from taking out the ants to taking out the big spiders to eventually fighting a Godzilla. So right now it's, so you have your mission difficulty and it goes, I think there are like nine difficulties right now. And as you go up the difficulty the The main thing that changes is so for the bugs There's a couple harder bugs that will start to start to show up like and then at the top There's like bialtitan, which is like a Godzilla bug. Yes, which it must be dealt with with the heavy artillery or orbital bombardment

But the best thing about the game is that when the difficulty goes up, none of the stats on the enemies change, except for one. And that is number. The number, the swarm, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you are playing a higher difficulty, the bugs aren't tougher. There's just more. there are more bugs.

Way, way more bugs. OK, OK. So I remember I was describing this is a very particular thing, but I was we're talking about EDF on the Willie versus recently. I was describing how I just that game, like I had a like an issue that that is going back to like childhood memories and well, not really childhood, but like early years in gaming when I was playing descent. And I was flying the ship in descent around and as you do. And there's the spider enemies, they the giant spiders

came up. And I remember I got the ship stuck under the there's the spider enemies they the giant spiders came up And I remember I got the ship stuck under the legs of the spider and I fucking hated it. I don't yeah, that's not great Right, I'm not arachnophobic I don't have any like like a crazy freak out fear of spiders But the idea of being stuck under its legs while it's like clipping through my comfort cage is very upsetting Luckily, that will never happen to you in Helldivers because you will die instantly. OK, because it happened. It happened in that game and it made me definitely hate that in games.

And then EDF was the next time the big legs are all you're stuck underneath them moments occur. And I was like, I don't like this. I aggressively don't like this. As long as I can keep them kill them a distance away, that's fine. Oh, you can kill them a distance away, but when they run up on you and start slashing you, you're probably not gonna have to deal with this unpleasant feeling for long. Okay.

Because you will just get fucking killed. And to be fair, like, it also, it doesn't even have to be like aggro at all. When you load into PAL world, because it's so fucking janky, you go to one of your bases and then all your PAL are on the same spot and they spawn in midair in front in between your player character and the camera so they just then they all run away and I'm like gotta hate that right yeah no hell divers is so first of all it's $40 so hey hey look at these games coming out for

reasonable prices and blow it up. Isn't that nuts? It's very smooth. It performs very well. Okay. It's very clean. Okay. Just the old. I've only seen one bug. No, I've only seen one glitch. And that's when you come out of the, like when you go to another guy's ship, you come out of a, like a, like a frozen pod and like the pod moves forward, but the model like is behind him. It's not perfectly synced up, but like, yeah, no, it's very clean. It's very smooth.

It feels really good. Yeah. That's part of the thing that people aren't talking. It plays great. It's just great. Like I was I quick played with some random guy and both of our mics were off and we were just using pings and it was only the two of us and we were on a medium or I think was maybe the step above medium difficulty. And we're like sneaking around the bug

encampments or sort so the bug spawn points Like calling in airstrikes to try and get as many of the bug holes as we can before they realize we're there and then placing down turrets and setting up machine gun emplacements and just tearing them the fuck up It's awesome. Okay awesome as hell um Is there any Awesome. Awesome as hell. Is there any? Is it all outside or are there like any in? Oh, yeah, it's all outside. It's all yeah, it's all exterior.

OK. Maybe later it'll be in some but like it's it's it's like, you know, the the map is like a couple square kilometers. So you're hooping it. Okay. Uh, yeah, I, I always appreciate a good third person perspective on a game like this too. That's a, you can, you can, you can take it in a bit more and appreciate the scale difference. Um, someone in the chat asks if I've been to super Vietnam yet. So the bugs are in like space planets. I don't

know how to describe it. But you know what I mean, right? Like the moon or Mars, like, mostly like a barren looking kind of landscape. Sure. Halo one planets. Sorry. Yeah. Mass Effect one planets, right? Yeah. The the the current front With the bots is in a bunch of planets that looks suspiciously like Vietnam. Okay and You will be traipsing through the jungle and then you will see a little red glow, and go, huh? And then just like, actually hundreds,

if not thousands of red laser projectiles will just come out of the tree line from a bunch of different directions. And then you will hit your double tap on circle to dive out of the way and go, ah, fuck! And just start calling in air support and then just throwing it wherever. Hell dive, even. It's great. It's great.

Can you, can you like, can you move? Can you do stuff? Because I get the way you're describing this, it sounds like you're just a thick meat grunt with a fire button And you can sprint you can jump you get a bag you get a jetpack Okay, okay, you're not just meant to like war of attrition it no no no you're you're going cool. Okay Yeah, no, it's oh I'm sorry, you can't jump but you do have a jackpot. Okay, and you can dolphin dive in any direction and then Shoot as you're you're flying is your arm and are you is your sense of progression coming? Like are you getting like customization armor or like any sort of yeah, so

There's your standard weapon roll out and then you have your So there's your standard weapon rollout, and then you have your armor, which is not as important, and then there's your look. But then there's a set and progression system, which is your level. Like, are you a cadet? Are you a sergeant? Are you captain, et cetera?

And that is tied to your stratagems. So when you start, the only thing you have is an orbital drop and a resupply. But then you quickly unlock turrets, and then you unlock a Gatling gun turret, and then you unlock strafing runs or high ordnance or laser weaponry coming down from heaven. Or one of the more recent unlocks that I got was actually this, this makes a perfect example of what the game is like. One of the recent unlocks I got was a single shot rocket launcher that I can call in.

Right. So I would call in the single shot rocket launcher and then I would fire it once and it would strip the armor off whatever I'm fighting, be it a large bug or a large bot. The reason why I unlocked it is because I fought a mission with another guy in which the mission was kill three Chargers, which is a special kind of heavily armored bug. That guy did a great job taking out two of the Chargers, but then he disconnected,

and I was left to kill the third charger with small arms that couldn't get through its armor at all. Gotcha, okay. You can shoot it in the ass on its weak point, but it's really hard. And the way that I ended up killing it is that I let it kill me, and then I respawned and dropped the pod

on its fucking head. Okay. And killed it. And then got it. And then went, I need a goddamn strategy to call in. When someone drops. If there is armor on this mission. Interesting.

Okay, that's cool. Um... I didn't know it was gonna work, and then it worked, and I was like, Fuck yeah! It's great! Are you also- I don't know how the fuck I'm supposed to kill that thing without artillery. That thing's tough as shit.

Well, I guess the question is like, are you on a mission that is being queued up based on the highest level of the person you're with? Kill three chargers. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you were, you were already in above your depth. Yeah. Yeah. I probably should not have even gone on it. Um, uh, and one last thing is that, uh, if you complete the mission, but fail to extract and just all of you die, you still get most of the rewards. Ah. Extraction is a bonus.

It's a bonus. Cool. Titanfall. Yeah. Yeah. And around all this is because the way the game works and we're all doing our part and you can see everybody fighting in the distance. People are getting real crazy about it.

People getting real crazy. I'm seeing like fucking Vietnam music fan cams on TikTok. I got people. We got people doing propaganda posters, vowing to take back Dropnir, cause the fucking bots took Dropnir from us, and I'm pretty sure they're taking Mantees right now. Okay. Um, and it's just got this good fucking vibe to it, and whenever people talk about it, they talk about it like it's a video game, but then they also talk about it like,, what are you doing out on the east with the bugs? We don't that's not the problem

We got the bots coming down on the west we need people because you can see how many people are split between the two fronts and Most people are on the Eastern Front right now dealing with the bugs because they're easier to deal with um is there well is the Outcome of the I saw someone say like you lost a planet does the the meta the the server faction game have like She has consequences. Yeah, okay, so the the main thing is like a location can no longer be gone to so Super Earth is in the center Right, and then there are concentric rings Basically the go out in sectors Contested sectors are the only ones you can play at but if you fully lose a contested center sector

the whole line moves forward one of the concentric rings and Super Earth itself has a liberation meter on it so if If it gets bad enough and they push hard enough, you're going to super to the center of the fucking map. Okay. Cool setup. Yeah. All right. Um, I, my assumption is that they will have, you know, in the lead up to a big feature drop, they will have, you know, the bugs have, the bugs have never been worse. And then they push all the way to Super Earth, and then when Super Earth hits like 50% overtaken by the bugs,

they'll hit the button and go, hey, new, new, new development rollout, here's your tanks. And then people will be able to upgrade to tanks at which point They won't have to change the difficulty But now people will have fucking tanks To push that shit back Sounds like the years early video ass video game sounds like just video fucking games happening. You know what? Yes last year with hi-fi. It, wow, yo, that's a video game.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, this is a goddamn video game. Okay, cool. And we're all doing our part. Are you? Don't. It's full. It's full, it's full.

It's really fucked up because the servers exist It's full. It's really fucked up because the servers exist in some flux right now where, yeah, I'm playing Helldivers, but the matchmaking's broken, so I'm having to go into some of these missions by myself, and let me tell you, that game wants you to have at least one other person. You can do it by yourself. If you want to play Helld to we say do not come do not do not come what else did you do well as you know there's a tie there's a

smaller version of me that lives in my home so it's a it's a pat jr. if you would and he's been in his bassinet and he's been sleeping good, and one day he decided, fuck this, this bassinet is bullshit. Every single time I go to bed, I'm gonna put my arms straight out in T-Pose and grab the sides of it and try and claw my way out and get mad and wake myself up multiple times a night.

Uh-huh. So, we got in the car and we went and we got a crib and we brought the crib home and yesterday was my task for the day was to build my boy a gay baby jail Mm-hmm, and man it really a crib really is a jail like the bars and all that like they make it look nice with the wood And all of it's a jail. It is a jail and so I take apart all the shit on the crib and I I am hit with my first challenge,

which is no fucking instructions. It shipped without any goddamn instructions. Well, that's okay, because you're your dad and you've got that inner, like, you know, handiness that then kicks in. You've got that stat cover. Yeah, that's right. And that handiness is spend a half hour finding the company website and downloading the PDF.

Crying, crying, crying as you search for a PDF. So, Woolly, Woolly, guess what? You're not wrong. I, yesterday was rough on dad, okay? I was crying because the only piece of paper that was in the crib was if you cannot assemble this crib following every instruction as denoted on the paper and use every part, it is not safe for an infant to sleep in. Oh. Which planted the idea that, oh my god,

if I get a screw out of place, the baby's head's gonna fall off. Or he'll explode. And in the meantime, the current containment in the background is your baby's dropping domain expansion as it goes full power and gets the fuck out of it. So yes. So like on and off all day, I'm in the bedroom like putting this thing together with instructions off my phone and page keeps like like like not yelling but like you know hey What the fuck is going on up there because I'm like sweating and sometimes I'm crying a little bit and I'm going up

Where is I just had to screw I just had the screw. I just had the screw. I just what? And I got it built and it's it's all done and the little baby has his little baby mattress. And you know, there's a mattress. There's like a bed spring that you put in it. And the the bed spring has like a paper pouch on it and it says for regulatory purposes do not remove this pouch from the bed spring. Like okay I won't. And then I finally did all of it and then I read the last part of the instructions off my phone and it says place the instructions back into the pouch on the bedspring. And I went no, no. So I went to the bedspring and I opened up the pouch and sure enough the instructions had been in there the whole time. But I had not opened it because the text on the bed spring said, do not remove this pouch.

Because it can convert into a smaller or a taller bed. And then I was like, so the worst, you know what the worst part is? Paige had like come to hang out in the bedroom with the baby and they're like, haha. So like she saw it. She saw me discover that I had just not been able to find the instructions because the box told me not to. And then like if she hadn't been in the room yet never came with the instructions just like not I did it all by myself it never came with it but she was like right there to just see

me pull the fucking instructions out of this pouch and go and she goes why didn't you look in there I'm like it told me not to remove the pouch how How did it? It says right here, don't remove it! How did you make it out of prison and meddle your solid one? How did you get out? I had a tips and tricks guy. Did you? Okay, I was like, I was like, I was like. Because you just to sit there, so like, what did you do?

How did you? Yeah, Yeah. OK. All right. All right. So the crib is all made, but the baby did not sleep in the crib last night. Did you?

No. And Paige was like, oh, why? We can just put the mattress cover on. And we put the blanket, not the blanket, the fitted sheet in the mattress cover and blah blah blah and I'm like no No, and then I held the baby and I held his his little sleep sack and then I balled my fucking eyes out like I had a family member who died Because like I had a family member who died because, because him going from the bassinet to the crib

means he's not just a little baby anymore. It means he's now just baby. He's a guy, he's a little guy. He has gone from like infant to baby, like conclusively. Little baby is now a little guy has gone from like little infants. Yeah. To to baby like conclusively. Little baby is now a little guy. Yeah. And it's it's stupid. It's stupid.

And you dude. And you I'm going to tell you right now in like three or four years that kids going to go to school and I'm going to lose my fucking mind. I'm gonna lose it. You will also need to design and reinforce further and further entrapment tools as he continues to bend the bars. Well, this one's gonna be good for all in break. What they do now is they give you a crib for like six month old,

so the mattress is like most of the way up. Okay. And then as they get the ability to stand, crawl and try and escape, you drop the mattress down farther and farther and farther until they can. Now you're going to walk back in and you're going to see him like, like, uh, at the beginning of Stardust Crusaders with like a surfboard, like a mini fridge and a radio, just chilling. Okay. There's also a secondary part

The boy has a chance woolly we got a measured when he got his shots The boys right now in the 41st percentile for baby height for heights for height okay almost at the middle almost at the middle almost at the middle How like no like a normal person how aggressively are we tracking these stats? Every single time he gets a shot. Yeah, okay, okay, they they go percent off or height weights a head size, etc unfortunately me mentioning this last night on my stream and me mentioning that I'm five foot two inches

led to the statistical discovery that I am in fact in the first percentile for male adult height in Canada. First. I am in the first percent. I am at the bottom. Wow. Like, woolly. Yeah. Okay. So for a long time. Yeah. Page doing all the heavy lifting. Yeah. Okay. Got it. I'm a short guy, but I never had the stats to be like, oh, you know what? You're right, Statistics Canada. I can't think of another adult man that I don't have to look up to at least a little bit. Not even one. Not even one. I can't remember

the last adult man. I didn't have to tilt my head up a little bit. Did you track your height on a wall? Me? Back at home? We did not do that. You didn't do that? Okay.

Cause you could then kind of, if you want to get real granular nuts, go well at 12 you were here and what was that percentile and did it did it did that you know I'm gonna be blunt it was not gonna be a fun topic in my house not a thought okay Hey congrats Like like like the goal you know what the goal of my house was to be taller than my dad who was like five two and a half And I didn't do it. I didn't even do it

who was like five two and a half and I didn't do it! I didn't even do it! So it's now this child's house to bear and how all he's gotta do is hit the second percentile. Well that's something like how quickly will this occur because you know it's fun to imagine the side of the Siman Kamino moment somewhere in your 20s or so but that shit might happen at like 10. moment somewhere in your 20s or so but that shit might happen at like 10. If he's gonna be 5'6 or 5'7, by the time he's a teenager, it's about the same height. Okay. Like there was the neighbor's kid that was playing music too low out in his car and I had to be like, dude, my baby's asleep. Can you just turn the subwoofer off? That kid's like 14 and he's,

off. That gets like 14 and he's no he's 16 and he's taller than me. I'm small. I've also watched as like we have a you know fairly tall family but I've watched you whatever dice roll but no I just wanted to to say it I've watched like some of the nephews grow up to be like like instantly taller than the average height adults in the family as well Just shoot the fuck up So yeah, I don't know something's in the water Okay The water was smoking for my the water was smoking from my

The I think my boy is like the first person in my family to not have like Multiple years of secondhand smoke in his crib Directly blown in like like 150 years or something. Yeah, okay. That's a that's a that's a good how come you're so short was it because your mom smoked when she was pregnant or did she smoke into your crib or maybe it was those bottles of hot water she gave you when you were hungry. Did I even tell you about that? No, what's that? Did Paige check her percentile? Just out of curiosity? Oh, she's average. She's five four. Okay. Um, I tell you, I told you that when I cried as an infant, my mom told me that she was

that she was told by the nurse. She was, oh god damn it. The nurse told her that you have to feed the baby every three hours and not before. So if I got really hungry, but it wasn't time, she would just whip up a full bottle of hot water to fill my stomach. It's like an infant. As a treat. A little hot water as a treat and in the same conversation I have with my mom she's like and you had terrible colic we couldn't figure out oh no

oh god damn it man shit alright alright God damn it man. Shit. All right. All right. It'll be OK. What's going on this week? For me, Infinite Wealth, I'm not going to play the second part of the FF7 demo because I'll just do that again when I play the real game.

So it's Infinite Wealth Pacific Drive is out this week. I'll try and sneak in a hell divers. If it's like I'm streaming and I'm like I would love to play a streaming game of hell divers and every time I try it it goes fuck off pad you can't stream this you would you stupid. So I'll try and sneak in some hell divers in there if it lets me but it's mainly yakuza. Sorry like a dragon 8 infinite wealth Pacific Drive and we'll also do a backlog on Friday. Okay hell dive is if you're allowed All right, I got over at twitch.tv slash pastures it bathroom gotta go All right

Let's see. Over on... What's up with you, man? My side of things. Excuse me? Um, yeah. How many times did you cry this week? Ah, fairly, fairly minimal amount. just the usual once per night. Um, no. That's a good answer.

Hey, I hit the credits in AC6, Armour Core, New Game, run. Complete. Which one? Just, I guess guess the new game. Who'd you fight feed the fire and a choice? I guess so I hire. OK, that so for context, bro, that was the fight that I was like, oh, if I don't hit the stick, the lock on will,

so like just put that, like all the shit you've done so far. That's crazy, because the one right before that, especially, is nuts to not have the lock for. Fuck it. Yeah, it was rough. not have the lock for fucking. That was rough. Man. Um, so yeah, weird how that turns into Sekiro right at there at the end.

Yeah, there's a you have that they have that big old branch. And no, the honestly, like that, the talk about a final sequence, man, like ever, so like basically right where I had picked it back up was immediately going into the Limiter's release. You know, like you say, OK, like I do. I did the Michigan fight. Yeah. Fucking awesome, which is such a good one. That's a really fun one. And then, yeah, you go go you go into the full aerial.

We're fighting in the clouds, so don't worry about your boost, which is like, yes, please, give me that full mobility mission. And you know, and before that as well, going into that, that No, and before that as well going into that that the heart of the coral, right? The where archivist is basically like, you know, racing to the to the to the point. You you hit the most from soft ass level ever. Where it's weird, like the style of the game changes to like, oh, there is a fucking pit with bone wheel skeletons rolling around in it.

It is bizarre, isn't it? It's like it's from a different game series entirely. And if it were not like, like overstated enough, at the other end of that giant arena of bone wheels is a treasure chest and a bunch of enemies looking at it Waiting for you to make a move in the class at treasure chest It's the fucking moonlight right in the most from soft way ever. It's it's yeah It's wild how very much that is a oh we dropped another game into this one

Yeah, you get there and you're like, oh right, yeah, from software makes these. Mm-hmm, we got a swamp, we got a bone wheel, and we got a moonlight great sword waiting for you. If you dare. And then you get to the end and you're like, hey listen, I know you've been doing a great job fighting these armored cores. Would you like to fight an orbital frame?

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So yeah, you get the, and not just any orbital frame, but it's fucking rusty, right? So like, such a fucking hype mission. Everyone rightfully being like, hey, can you turn up the music? I was like, I guess, I mean, it's been pretty, you know, it's been already in the background so far. And it's like, oh no, we got some themes kicking in. By the way, I guess. I mean, it's been pretty, you know, it's our it's been alright in the background so far

And it's like, oh no, we got some themes kicking in by the way. I want to point out. Well, I did not I wasn't talking about rusty I was talking about Ibis. Oh, oh Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah that that there's I mean there's fiddles popping off There's like because that thing doesn't exist on the same rule set as your Mac It's from a different Mac show than the one you like Rusty is incredibly incredibly. He's incredibly I love Rusty. So yeah, I guess is just like a fucking so my brain. Okay for the IBIS I my brain went Gundam on that not not oh, yeah, yeah, because it's quibble you're fighting fucking. I'm on calm I'm not as familiar right like you. So, yeah, but yes, you can go zone at the end as far as you.

But you see the shoulder pads and the fucking fiddles coming out at you. And it's just like, oh, where we're doing a Gundam fight sick. It is that's a real one. And you're you're you know, you're learning to fucking navigate the slashes and leave get the pressure going. It was a really. But and then, yeah, you have your first phase of like it's the whole fight is the first phase and then we just do it again.

But yeah, and then from that point on, you know, you get your your your your Walter Carla bitch, you get all that shit. Like it's just a really nice, strong escalation of events going through to the to the. Oh, it's great. Every every bit. And then like, yeah, taking the time to just adjust the build, getting in the moonlight and working that in more like like it's it's a fun ass plate to have. Like that's.

That I don't know. Like I kind of I wasn't sure if it was going to be just a melee in the end and it but it was just I actually know it's a beam weapon it's a projectile you know with so that works I have no complaints about that I oh yeah you might not be as familiar that's what it always is in Armored Corps it always is that okay cool Yeah, the the moonlight like gimmick in nearly every game that it has is that it shoots like a Zelda style Like beam projectile okay out of the end of it Yeah, and and the The the the bit with the with rusty just like

What a fucking sick-ass duel man the the the bit with the with Rusty just like what a fucking sick ass duel man the level of it's it's I don't know what the other route like brings but like this feels like a nice conclusive one well given the choices i'll i'll just say in One routes where you have one goal you have to fight Rusty so that the other route where you have the other goal might be something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a good like decision point as well. You know, there's there's factors that we don't know of that I suppose I would discover on, you know, the new game plus runs where you get more information. But in terms of just like the proposition you're making and the

choice between, you know, the like threat of coral versus the life of coral. Yeah. It's a that's a real like that's a real you got to stop and think for a second, you know, what do we know about this? What are the outcomes? But yeah, so I'm probably going to come back around to that probably off camera. And then that's what I did. Yeah. And you know, if I do come if I do do a final point or some of I'll make up my mind later.

But so like so I went through the whole thing and I decided to do it off camera. And it's it's a little frustrating because like some missions are are Completely different when you're going through them new game plus or new game plus plus like The you know that you remember the mission where you had to go to the power plant and you were getting attacked by invisible enemies with like yeah Lightning whips so like in one of the, you get to play that from the other direction. Oh, interesting. You get to take out the guy, investigate English.

Interesting, okay. And that happens, but most of the missions are the same. Okay. And the missions that are exactly the same, they'll occasionally replace one armored core with like a much tougher armored core. The big shit is the third route. The the last batch of things in the final route

are cool as hell. OK, it also feels like at least for that one mission where Roku Ma gets introduced, how there's like almost like a third potential That is the only branch in the game that I was like that. Okay. So weird. Okay. Yeah, it's so weird a secret third branch for you But yeah, they all have different final bosses, which is really where the the meat of it is Yeah, which is a great excuse to then have a different vocal theme kick in. You know, so the deal. Sorry, I have to know.

So just like each the the vocal theme, the the the the music, yeah, towards that final sequence is all like absolutely stellar, like the best tracks coming in for sure. And. And I do appreciate it, too,, like the best tracks coming in for sure. And I do appreciate it too how like the... The Iyer fight, like the way her shields work is different. And you... Yeah, cause they're coral shields. So you, yeah, so you have to kind of like,

you stagger her completely differently, you know? Mm-hmm. I get a you stagger her completely differently, you know. Mm hmm. I fortunately was. Yeah, I was messing around with a bill that was again working with the moonlight at that point. But like there were some of the missions where I was just trying to get link through it. The the tower defense one, like there were moments where like the snipers come through where I'm like, oh my God, like it was it was getting rough with the the pressure on that. And I I know

that like because I know there's a thing where it's like every time you fail, you go like, is it me or is it my build? You know, and then it's like it that is a that is a 50-50 chance in that game. You know, it's a rough question each time where you're like, do I suck or is it the wrong loadout? So, fortunately. There are some fights you can go into with the wrong loadout and they become very difficult. Yeah, Michigan was me

Running out of ammo by the time I had to take that that's the main thing for Michigan that that mission has so many goddamn enemies that like Depending on what you come in with like you could easily run out of a bay a melee Definitely is way better suited for the grunts up front so you can just go heavy at the end and Yeah, I still, and the thing is too, is like each time I came back in as well, like there's been, you know, weapon updates and changes and a couple of things got patched here and there and new stuff dropped in. So I had a bit more to play with,

but there were some where I'm looking at this and I just, I'm like, what is the particular utility of this type of missile? And it's like, oh, this is for PVP. This is for when people are trying to break locks. Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, and then some of the delayed, some of the split stuff, staggered lock on, you know, et cetera. It's like, oh yeah, this is going to.

Well, some of that is that also other cores, even multi, like single player cores will react to a weapon firing off, but not necessarily to boosting or locking on. So like it's the it's the Elden Ring AI thing where the like you fire off the missile and they go dodge. And like the missiles not there yet, man. Right. Right. Yeah, there's a like I don't know what like I guess it's I call it the double beeps, but whenever you get the heavy double beep, like, you know, they're they're about to fire Like they're they're big attack or so like there's there's that like that be be that pause and then Check to see what it's gonna be because the rhythm of when to dodge the thing changes per depending on what you're fighting there

No, I Fucking strong strong finish very very fun through the end, but like that escalation to the through the finale was fucking awesome. You know, yeah. It's good that you're going to be playing this off camera because you can do it on your own time scale because I don't know if you remember, but I talked about it when I did that. So you've beaten the game and I. Are is quite a challenge and I this and Rusty, they're there for real. And Freud, I think also you fight.

Yes, yeah, yeah, last mission. Like they're all they're all like, OK, and you probably went through all of the arena fights as well. Yes, I did. So you go into the new game plus and you're going to go back to this mostly the same missions but with your current mech and it's not that your current core is stronger. It's that you have optimized it to your tastes and you have probably been using like more or less the same core for like the last five or so missions. Like more or less the same core for like the last five or so missions.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I find my favorite two builds and I load up. Yeah. Yeah. Like for me, when I beat Rusty, I integrated his new parts into into my existing setup because his part, the the the the the core he comes at you with at the end, it's incredible. It's really good and really balanced. OK. And yeah. Sorry. It's incredible. It's really good and really balanced. Okay

Yeah, sorry. No also critical to my style at this point is the fucking burst, right? Yeah. Hey, yes I think yeah, yeah, it's just like that is a Restagger at points when you're in on somebody and they're about to break out and like you they haven't quite left your range yet You can pop that and get them like right back. I love that more than the like magic pixel, more than the shield, any other option. Like no, no, this, everything I do is gonna be with that burst for sure. So you're gonna hop in at the beginning

and you're gonna fucking fly through those solutions. You are, you, by the end of new game, a new game, you're going into new game plus as if you are the fucking guy in the cut scene of the armored core intro movie. Right, right. Because you know exactly how your core controls. You're comfortable with the distances you set yourself.

You're comfortable with all your weapons. RIP 617. And then you'll be running into like certain duels, like certain, there's a good mission where you have to go to, you know that mission where you have to invade a government facility and at the end there's like a big dome and then as you walk out of the dome after blowing it up,

there's two of the government, like, HC's that show up, and that's a real fight. Yeah, it's not gonna be a real fight the second time around. Even though they're exactly the same and your parts aren't necessarily stronger by blowing through rusty and ire, those guys ain't shit. Some of those fights are gonna go from multiple minutes down to like 45 seconds. Is there a scaling that occurs? No. Oh wow, okay.

And you're not even really numerically stronger. You just know what you're doing. Okay. Yeah, no, like I can imagine fucking, what's his name? Quick, quick, slow, quick, quick, slow, flamethrower asshole, like, yeah, coming up to you and just like unleashing everything, uh, and then re bursting. So you never get a chance to run.

Call that a day. Uh, milk tooth. Yeah. No, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm very curious to see so you get these branch decisions you The final set go you go the opposite route with it and then Do you immediately then get access to the new stuff or do you have to come back a third time? So you do new game plus and in new game plus there were a couple branch points just do whatever one you didn't do. Yeah, like the whole way through.

And then when you do new game plus plus you will see you start to see brand new missions that are completely different. Yeah, okay. So the first one that shows up like really, really early. I don't know if you're, I don't remember what it's called, but you remember that goddamn gigantic like, behemoth like walking mesh? Strider. The Strider?

Strider. Yeah, defend the Strider. We'll show up. Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. Okay. Right. And you and you'll be like, okay, no, that's, that's the third right there, that because that's, that's way outside. Gotcha. The context of the other ones. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

Okay. Cool. So it's just straightforward to see the boat, see both in the third routes, like way harder though, like the route and two as it should they're the same but the third route is like new enemy types and it's it's whoa it goes interesting okay yeah I guess I'll go through and decide how to proceed if we come back around or don't but But either way, I'm going to I want to see what's up with that. But for for a soft first new game ending, I fucking absolutely love how that came together. It also makes me wonder because as somebody who's like, you know, the the I have it again, I'm new to armored core. But fortunately, the from soft, I know is based on, you know, the, the, I haven't, again, I'm, I'm new to Armored Core, unfortunately. Uh, the FromSoft I know is based on, you know, the Soul Series stuff.

The, um, do, have, have all the previous Armored Cores have, have they had a similar approach to story mode branches and then like, up an escalation to narrative pop off point? Like, I don't know. I'm curious if that, if this point. Like- I don't know. I'm curious if that, if this- I also don't know. I have played every armored core game to about the halfway point.

Okay. Ha ha ha ha. Some of them do. I don't know. Okay, okay, not all of them, fair enough. Cause yeah, that's, it's very strong and it's, I like seeing them take their approach into, you know, this kind of like sci-fi version of the escalation in the same way you see it in fantasy and then you see it in, you know, Gothic style.

There's only like, I really genuinely only have one problem with the game at all. And that is the new game plus plus route is significantly harder. Like it is, they really give you the business. But once you've done it, there's nothing in the game that can touch you. Like even like completely deleting your file and starting over, like the game is now a joke.

Well, the answer is now a joke. Well, like the answer is now PVP. Yeah, except I don't. Like I wish the game had like a legitimate like hard mode. Fair enough. People always like people have talked a lot about PVP while I've been going through this. So like, I'm assuming there's enough meat to dive into there though. There's some I wouldn't, I don't know how much.

Yeah, I also, you know, continued with some Half Life 2. The section after getting the snipers, fairly, you know, it's, it's, it basic. It was just the rest of the driving. I got fucked up by that train so many times it was wild. And then the desert fucking traversal. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like the bugs with the bugs and and I fucking I cured my way through that shit They want to play physics games. I got physics answers So I like I I took two planks and you stand on one and I cut I stuck the other one at an angle and then Grip it and he pulled it towards me and leaned back, then creating a little

sale, a sand sale, which took me across, you know, the unintended way. But fuck you, physics works, it works. That's the puzzle, that's how I solve it. You know, it's weird. I haven't played Half-Life 2 in like 15, maybe 20 years. And every time you mention one of these sections, it pops into my brain, fully formed, incredibly clear. But it was not thought about since the last time you've seen it. All these sequences were like the first time

those sequences existed, right? Now to be fair, when I think of Half-Life 1, for me, like, you know, way back when, I mean, besides the, like, watching it as my brother play it, like, you know, as a kid or so, I'm thinking back to basically like, one warehouse full of army people and then an outside tank, and then I think of Zen. You know. Oh man, I know the exact fucking rooms you're talking about when you say that. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean? I feel like I put the fucking Zen,

but I put the crystal in, I crawled through a hallway, saved the dude, and then went right into a warehouse, immediately outside to a tank, and then through a teleporter. It's compressed in my brain, you know? But no, that's where I'm at so far. And man, yeah, I just, I know it's just old and we know at this point, but the fucking shoot your missile out and then guide it later is gone.

Oh, it's great, dude. It's so much fun. It's great. So much fun to it later. Oh, it's great. It's so much fun. It's great so much fun to do that really enjoying it Then yeah, we I also took a look just for one session at Grand Blue relink Okay, great. What is that fucking game? I don't understand All right So relink wasink was the other thing

that they teased a while ago, which is like, this is a Grand Blue fantasy setting and Platinum is involved. And then you saw the trailer where they were doing a bunch of like combat that like fairly Platinum. You're like, oh, that's interesting. Okay.

And then at some point Platinum's name was removed and they stopped working on it or they completed their we don't know what happened. But if it was amicable, their logo probably would have continued to exist on the the product. Apparently they are using like some like absolute nightmare amalgamation of the near engine. Yes. So shout out to Wistful Hopes, the modder who put Goku into Strive and a bunch of other wild Marvel mods and stuff going on. But I believe so she was able to recognize there's a Nier automatic code in Grand Blue Relink that there's something going on there that's similar enough. So it was built on something they brought.

And yeah, I just, again, no name in the credits, whatever the case is, must imply something probably was bad, but they continued and the combat continued to look the way it did from the initial footage of it. So I was like, okay, character action, let's see how this goes. Yeah, it's pretty fun. The main thing is like,

you, it ends up feeling, I'd say like medium tight, right? Okay. If that makes, if you can make sense of that. I know exactly what you mean by that. Yes. It hits that halfway point. It's not loose.

It's not loose. It hit me. But it's not super tight. It hits that halfway point between like, you know, say a Platinum game and like a bit of a mooso. You know, like a Hyrule Warriors or so. There's moments when you're fighting and like you definitely have, you know, a good a bunch of abilities and you can unlock fairly quickly, perfect dodge and perfect

block and a couple of other, you know, minor defensive stats or whatever, but you're looking up for the key ones. And you do your shit and then you've got three other party members out there doing their shit as well. And there's moments where you pop your shit and then you've got three other party members out there doing their shit as well and There's moments where they you pop your super or they pop theirs or even their specials and the screen just becomes flashing bullshit Yeah, yeah, you just enemies are just in here swinging away at it and then and then there's a there's a nice little sink ratio which or percentage which as you fight you build up your team sink and when it gets to a hundred percent and then you do your your skybound you know your big super they have a window of time where they can lock in and do theirs.

And if you do all four, you get a perfect 100 percent sync moment. And it's OK. It's, you know, delayed hypercombo finish kind of thing, you know, with and because they all four do their super. And then at the end, there is a fifth one of all the teammates together doing one big elemental attack on the thing. Yeah, it's a nice little like group limit break type of type of bit and that's very fun. It's rewarding.

You can kind of like plan whether they should save up their meter or just use it as you want to as needed. The thing you get to as well in terms of variety, which is pretty cool, is the, instead of unlocking, let's say like different weapons and like, you know, character action, it's just a full character, right? It's just a full character, right?

It's the roster that a bunch of characters I recognize from the fighting game and such, you're like, oh, you want, yeah, here's Lancelot, that's your different weapon, you know? You want to pick the gun guy, you're like, oh, you want, yeah, here's Lancelot, that's your different weapon. You wanna pick the gun guy, you want Rackham, here's Rackham, that's your different weapon entirely, and each of them have their skill tree. The skill tree peppered with 4% increase on damage here,

5% increase on damage there. But big new players like that. Big new defensive move that lets you Akuma teleport slide around the map. Five percent damage increase. Duh! You know, I'm like, ah! So it's got that kind of like, you can just

like, you see the big diamonds and the big circles and the things to pay attention to and just the rest are just complete filler, you know. But like, when you go to look at the list of unlockable characters right off the bat, it's just like, hey, pick your faves. It's a humongous one. So right off the, you could just, yeah, it's a really big list of playable characters that you, and knowing that each of them has, you know, the ability to then go in and again unlock more, flesh it out, pick the four moves you want and stuff. It's

like, okay, I like how much variety you're given the choice to play with and then you can use a ticket to unlock a character that you want right away or not right away, but like, you know, after I think like the fourth or so mission, you can pick your first of those, you know. So think like the fourth or so mission you can pick your first of those, you know So yeah, there's a there's a oh, yeah You get it wait you get a ticket to unlock your character you get a ticket and then you can go You can go unlock the one that you love and there it is But

Like when you do that full sink burst and you see the art all pop up in the screen and the text explode, you feel like you hit the lever. You really do. Like the music is going and everything is shining and the font is bursting off the screen and you're like, wow, you can win things by playing. You know, Grandblue and League actually have something like really closely in common, which I actually have to kind of applaud where like, okay, infinite growth isn't possible, but we want to grow the thing anyway.

Um, and they look at League of Legends and then they look at Grandblue Fantasy and they're like, I think we might have gotten everybody we can get on this shit. They've both been around for a while. What about people who like animated movies or action games? I mean, like, this is like, it feels like this is the good way

to, hey, how do we do more growth? It's like, oh, what if we did a new thing or a fighting game or a fighting game? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What are you? How do we how do we how do we grow this out? Yeah, no, it's true. And yeah, no, I get like taking taking the like it's like taking the approach of like, what do you do with this IP full of characters that everyone loves and yeah making you fucking want yeah well getting a high-pass arxist fighter or getting a platinum grounded character action thing are two very good ways

to go about it. I mean if your if your if your property is character focused then the sky is the fucking limit. And the sky is the limit. Oh because there's no ground, I see what you're talking about. That's what it is. Is there a ground? I don't. It's hell. Apparently. Hey, Grandblue people, is there a ground?

I hear that it's hell. That's what I hear. Um, so the ground is hell. Oh, okay. People are just saying that. Oh yeah. Okay. It's just hell.

Okay. Anyway, fly your airship. Um, and do you, I mean, Oh, okay, people are just saying that, oh yeah, okay, it's just hell. Anyway, fly your airship and, I mean, like 30 seconds into the starting of the game, you summon your big dragon and, oh no, it stops listening to you. And you go, now, now, bad Gomorrah. And then you go, I gotta go get my eight Grandblue badges in order to make Charid Bahamut listen to me. Um, and, and well, no, well, to be fair, you actually just, you have the damsel list of damsels hanging out with you.

And, uh, and, and she gives you half her power and she has one job, which she immediately fucks up. Hey, is it called Grandblue because you play as Grand and then that lady is blue? She should be blue. Her hair is blue after all, but her name is not blue. That's why the other... We're gonna do it again.

Yes, yes, G-Tub. Fucking... Fantaji. G-T-T-Buru. Yeah, anyway, um It's it's it should have made a character called brew. It's gone for her name should have been brew It really should have it should have been grand hanging out with brew and here comes Gita and naf

Anyway It's so funny because like as you're walking around in this happy-go-lucky sort of fantasy setting and everything, also just as a note, very like Granblue Fantasy 2D art has a very distinct look to it, like the portrait art and everything is I guess it's like one artist style or so. Yeah, really good job converting that into 3D this time around. The texture is doing a lot of work on top of the models. I would have to look at them side by side, but I'd say like even better than the fighting game.

Like they look they look the models look really good. Matching the 3D artwork. look, the models look really good, matching the 3D artwork. None of that fucking Amorant problem, you know. Anyway, so the we're being told it is the Final Fantasy Tactics artist. Oh, nice. There you go. Well, that explains a lot.

So the you're you're having this very bright fantasy setting that's easy going, and you're getting introduced to your evil crew, which they've got their own guts alike, and they've got their big boys. And all that stuff is fine and dandy but it's all fairly like light-hearted and and and you know kind of yeah fluffy and it's very and it's it's kind of wild to imagine that like somewhere else somewhere in the same universe is a dude who's waiting to ask about whose holes should get used. In what order? Who he is or yours or whoever.

And I'm like, what? Like, it's just like, how is that character? How is Belial a part of this with his quotes and everything at the same time as the rest of this setting being as fluffy as it is? It's crazy. You know, the energy coming off of that is, yeah, it's crashing and with no transition in between smoothly. Is he like the devil? Or such? He just, I don't know, but some dude rubbing his nipples

just walks on camera and starts asking about which way we were doing this. Top or bottom or something in between. You know? It's a very, it's a very, yeah. Like that is a out of setting, or so far at the very least. I admittedly, you know, being introduced to it in this way. But to imagine him in this world

that we've been introduced so far is nuts. I don't know if the actual Gacha game has more characters that are equally or comparatively hornier. Oh, I assume the Gacha has like 10 times as many characters. He appears to be peak horny, as far as I can tell. There's more going on. Okay, all right. As far as I can tell. There's more going on. Okay. Alright. But yeah, that's about the gist of it as well. Wait, does this game have the goat Virgil with the big ass?

Yep, yep. She's in there with her Aido slashes. Okay, well then there's at least one other horny character in there literally Don't all these horny characters actually have physical horns on their heads Not all of them But many do also random Random Zaddy's hanging out

On your on your ship and or piloting your ship as well. Something for everybody, really. But yeah, no, yo, yo, you can. Yo, this B'lyal guy's got fucking side ball on his official art. You ever wanted ball cleavage? I saw people talking about it in the channel. I'm gonna look this up. I'm like, yeah, that is a little, do a quick search for GrandblueNicholas and click images. Oh, okay. You want to talk about appealing and finding an audience you want to appeal to. Look at this character.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who they try to win over. What's going on with that? You? When you just oh wow yeah, yeah, yeah who they who they try to win over What's going on with that? Scrolls you yeah scroll down a little bit to the one where the common writer Super Sentai fucking Oh the kick in the art Jesus not the scroll past the writer kick to where he's got a super robot behind him With the Gorin lagann glasses on his chest. Oh, so weebs. Yeah, they're like, we're going to get everybody,

is what we're going to do. Oh, he's got one with the fucking scarf. He's just a Gorin writer. That's it. Straight up. Complete with a robot. Anyway, so yeah, you know, there's a little something for everybody. Not that I... Although this is... That's not in Relink. That's just a character from

the Gacha, which I think what, you gotta pay... You gotta get your 20 bucks in there, I think someone said, about 22 for to get your guaranteed pull. Some something, some such. Anyway, hopefully it does make it into this, though. So yeah, but if you're if you're that's kind of what to expect, I'd say is just like a little bit of that that medium tightness and nice variety to when you switch over to like, you know, a character with a different style and like a different flow to things. I had a couple of like dumb moments of taking on a challenge and then wandering too far back and then disengaging the challenge from the arena.

And other things about just kind of like kiting enemies in a certain way that were wonky. And in particular, I will say the most negative thing I felt about it was its lock on was rough at times. It had a tendency to break itself instead of forcing the camera into another location. It would just switch to you targeting another enemy instead. Great. Which is really frustrating at times

when you need it to be on point. Hey, so is it Monster Hunter? So there are Monster Hunter elements going on as well. Yeah. So upfront, like I said, you got your character action and your kind of Musou feeling to your taking on as well. Yeah. So up front, like I said, you got your character action and you're kind of Musou feeling to you're taking on the groups. When you jump online, it feels like Monster Hunter as well because you're doing a quest board, you're joining a group of four that are all going out together and you are fighting whatever giant monster

or waves together to complete your quest board stuff. So it definitely feels like a bit of that going on as well. Yeah, I'd say like, you know, like it's its own, it's doing its thing, but like there's an aggressive, the online reminded me a lot of what I played Monster Hunter World. But yeah, that seems about it. I also like, so I immediately when I got my ticket

unlocked Siegfried and just dumped all the points you get, which are fairly generous for unlocking offensive and defensive skills. And when you get a character with all their shit available and you can set it all up, it feels good. There's a lot going on, especially with him where he's got the whole high-fi rush system to him. So you time your sequence of attacks on the rhythm and there's a sweet spot to do the

next one and you can keep that going. And then you can unlock extra supers that also integrate sweet spots on the special attacks and guard points off of certain things. It's like it's a nice little flow for that character. If that is replicated. I assume everybody has their fancy gimmick. Yeah, that's the that's what the yeah. I mean, it certainly felt lighter on some than others. Like for him, he had that whole system going going which felt really good for one of the dudes who was You're shooting with you're just kind of hanging back and shooting and then you can toss up

Like a skeet shoot Grenade and then blow it up, you know But it did I didn't really see much else to him besides that kind of basic mechanic Someone else could like plant flowers and then like those kind of attacked for you and then you could level up the flowers on the field. So yeah, you know, decent amount of variety, but you know, some are much more engaging than others because you're like in there with a bunch of different moves and, you know, things that you have to sequence to go out there versus more just kind of like managing the field from a distance, you know.

And overall, yeah, overall, like, OK, I like what they're doing here. Just as long as you're willing to accept that there will be a moment in every fight where can't see shit, captain, just mash the button. You're doing damage, you know. I feel like this is the kind of game that I would be all into and playing like a ton of it Except for the fact that hell divers and persona and infinite well, there's stuff going on for sure. Yeah and FF7 Are all here. Oh, yeah, Vassarite again There's yes, there's no there's a there's a there's certainly a lot

But here's the thing though if this is the type of game that's gonna be supported with more over time, the idea of like a new content drop with another fucking 10 characters or so is would be pretty good, you know? So I mean, that's if they do, I don't know what they're gonna do with this, but that's the type of thing that you can,

I can easily see them being like, yeah, we grabbed more of the favorites. So I don't know if it's a game at all. We grabbed some of the Gacha favorites I feel like they're gonna support it. I mean, shit. Just like just like a gut. Just like, it feels like they were. It's almost as if there's like a fucking list of popular characters you can directly refer to and to for who to pull into this. You know, that's got to be like really just

like just really like uplifting and relaxing where you you're like, all right. Ah, what do we do? Oh, I just don't know. All right. Well, how many of the characters did we get in? Oh, we got in 5% of the total roster cool Get your dartboard. Yeah. Yeah No, I mean the the project L roster, right like what like half. Oh my god that one's so vicious How many right yet? How much time is spent on those meetings just deciding I Feel like so, you know, I dabbled in league, right? And I dabbled in Runeterra, but I feel like leagues got like, I don't know how many,

like a hundred characters, 200 characters, whatever. There's like a bunch of absolute no brainers for the league roster. And I'm sure it was like that for Grandblue, right? Because like in league, like there are characters that just directly fit direct fighting game archetypes and are also old and popular, right? I would be shocked if Fiddlesticks is not in Project L. I can imagine a final boss that is like,

okay, who's guaranteed never showing up? All right, this final boss can summon that character to do one move as like a little ghost or, you know, zombie version, and then you just get a little bit of like, ah, there they are. Just as someone that is like, they would never show up otherwise. Just to get them on the list a little bit.

Though, you know, they'd be awful if you're the number one fan of that character, but yes, the Deconformation move. Or them standing in the background, you know? Yeah. Um, who's gimmick it? Like if they, if they made like a Dota fighting game, that freak that turns into five characters is not going to get in.

Oh, is that, is that a thing? Yeah. Yeah. There's a Dota character that is, is five controllable units. Hmm. Okay. Stances. I controllable units. Hmm. Okay. Stances. I don't know. Anyway, meepo, meepo.

Cool. So anyway, um, this week on the channel, gonna be continuing off with some of that half life, too. And. The return of your clapping. Oh, you're clapping. Yakuza Zero. We're coming back. Yay! Let's go on down.

So tune in to Wally vs. on Twitch and on YouTube for more of that. I hope you read back up on what the fuck you were up to there's there is fortunately There's there's notes and there is the the best of to like you know catch back up on it. So yeah Yeah, it is like I'll be honest. I could not tell you What most of yakuza zero spot was about right now like I like there's the empty lot empty lot And then there's there's that empty lot. The empty lot, and then there's... There's that blind girl. There's the girl.

Kuzae's a bitch. Kuzae. And it's Friday night. The walking erection is there. Yes, and Mr. Shakedown, and bring on all the fights. Don't worry about it. Yeah. It'll be fine

Yeah, so we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna do that Okay, I'm gonna Take a quick break again, and then we'll be our B All right, oh And I also forgot to mention as well the coming weekend this Saturday, so the 20, 24th and 25th, let me just make sure I got this correct. winter edition Montreal air dashers is going down here in Montreal and, uh, yeah, 24th and 25th. So Saturday and, uh, Sunday, if you are, uh, looking to come check out the scene, we are going to have the tournament streamed on Willy versus as well. So. So, yeah, we mad is going down, it's gonna be a good time.

And over on the weekend, if you pop over to Woolly versus, you might be like, what is happening? This doesn't look like normal. We're gonna be running the brackets for like SF6, Tekken, as well as a couple other things. Like we've got a bracket for iron saga versus Which is the super robot wars fighting game?

That is that is like yeah finally happening after all this time. So I It's you can check out more info at start.gg slash we mad But that is going down there as well. Um, yeah. Oh, and, uh, versus wolves episode two, if you happened to, uh, want to catch that, that's life. Let's take a quick word for, oh yes. Sponsors.

Just before we jump in This week we have an error message what the fuck oh man Hey Hey. Oh, no. Okay, there we are. This week, the podcast is sponsored by ExpressVPN. And using the internet without ExpressVPN is like driving a car without insurance. Why take that risk?

Oh, don't do that. That's since, yeah, that's really stupid. You should not do that. That's a very bad idea. Don't let anyone else drive your car unless you have fans like the insurance for that either. You're in trouble. Yeah, like unless you're like on your own farm and you're like driving a tractor down the road

or some shit. I heard I remember's people who like lived out in boonies where they could like, so like, something drove their tractor to their prom or some crazy shit. Anyway, whatever. Don't do it. That's terrible.

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Sorry, I didn't mean to just I just wanted to thank them so much They have yep. Yep. I love them. There you go Yeah, so we pretty much already cracked open the Microsoft story Hey, willy mm-hmm. So this weekend you're gonna be running brackets My might run a bracket might might might might no not running it, but I'll put there's a participate certainly you'll help Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. I'm not gonna run brackets in the past. I have run brackets in the past. Yes. It's hard, right? It's tricky. There's a lot of things to consider. There's some some tricks to consider F's in the chat if that's your group. If you're in group F.

So like so if you were making a bracket, right, you wouldn't want to put every killer into the same pool and then put people from the same sponsor in the same pool and then put all the people from one region into the same pool, would you? So this is a weird one, right? Because what you're doing at all times is balancing against location, seating against location and seating against,

you know, certainly performance in many cases. So the story here is Capcom Cup X, the big one with the million dollar prize. The drawing for the different pools have been finalized and of the 48 players that are going to be competing, they've all been grouped up into, you know, different smaller groups. Group F in particular, there's always to talk of like, you know, pools of death or the, you know, the hell, the hell groups and stuff. But Group F in particular has. Yeah, it has menna, it has cabba, it has near the boxer, Lashar, ending walker and angry bird.

And that is people that are easily projected to potentially take the whole thing. That could have been the quarterfinals. An insane amount of people to have in one group. By comparison, a lot of the other groups tend to have, you know, two or so names that you would think that would be expected or projected to go particularly far. So, yeah, that's a really, really rough situation.

How it got here is, I mean, there's a series of multiple events it takes to qualify to get to these points, and then, like, essentially, the short version of it is that there's The placement for each Spot was more about the region being represented than the actual Best players period across the yeah, they wanted they wanted a regional like everyone play Street Fighter around the world kind of situation So you were qualifying online for your region as number one. So areas like the US and Japan and Korea who would probably flood the fucking top 16 got to send two people each. So there's a discussion that goes into this, which is what are you aiming for? are you looking for the best player?

Are you looking for the best? representation of a region right and it seems with this and this is a you know Yeah, because of the way it's it's set up. They're looking for the best region representation not necessarily the best player period It would be insanely stacked in the a certain areas that are like heavily if it was Japan Japan would need to get region representation, not necessarily the best player period. It would be insanely stacked in certain areas that are like heavily. If it was Japan, Japan would need to get, you know, more or you'd expect to see more entrance there. And the thing as well that they want to avoid is in the past when you'd have, well, if you'd have a regional, but it was still open to the anyone outside the region, if

someone was a sponsored player or just like a highly experienced person that had the ability to travel, they could travel to any region globally, win that because the competition was much lower compared to what was going on in the region and then pretty much be shoot in a slot, right? Yeah. So like if you were a pro player who are getting paid to fly around, you could get a lot of seed points, whereas some guy who lives in Thailand who doesn't have a passport.

Yeah. So you can just exactly go to South America, you know, take it, take the, take the dub, get in there. Furthermore, not only is that something that like, you know, is one of the considerations and you have to kind of decide from the jump, are you okay with that or not? Right? If you are you okay with it just being like, you know, open regardless and the region is mainly about making it somewhat more accessible for people there, but there's still people

that can come in and snipe it. The second thing that becomes a possibility is if the rules support people coming in and essentially like blocking. So if you know that you're like you've already gotten your spot, but you want to increase your chances later, you can enter if and potentially deny someone else that would make it to the to the finals, a chance by getting in if you beat them here at the regional level instead. Right. So there's a whole lot of like sub considerations that go into like

how and why this is kind of set up. If you want your goal to just be like, yeah, to the wolves, it is at the end of the day. Let it let chaos reign, let them make chaos take the world. You can do it that way. And but Capcom was trying to not have that happen. The result, though, is you get this plus the seating which it seems like was done by bingo wheel.

It seems like it was. So in a lot of cases you they'll be random. You just you go random with it and then if you want the randomizer to consider flags so that people from the same regions don't end up being together if possible and if you want them to take the heaviest by performance in a given season and spread those apart as well, you get the, you know, best distribution of skill while also avoiding team kills and people who travel around the world to land back here sit down and fight against each other, which, you know, has like that that happens to me constantly, that's a thing. But...

So, like, isn't the reason that Mena and Kaba are right next to each other, despite being good pals and on the same team, because one of them moved? Um, yeah. So Mena's in the States, right? That's the, uh, that's, that's... Um, and Kaba's representing the DR.'s, that's, um, and, and, and Cabba's representing the DR. Uh, well, I mean, they, they both represent the DR, but like, yeah, he's coming from a different, uh, region. That's hilarious. So being in, being in US East means you're gonna, exactly this, this is gonna occur as well as a possibility. Um, so yeah, it's, it, when you look at it, like, especially for them,

anyone who's looking at who's here in that that like that seems. That seems really shitty because like it also results in so you get one pool that looks like it could be easily the semi the semi or, you know, a quarter finals. And then there's also things where it's like there's an LC. There's a last chance qualifier and I LC, there's a last chance qualifier and I saw the bracket for that last chance qualifier. That bracket is fucked up.

Problem X won, right? Uh, yesterday, but like, punk didn't make it in, um, there were, and there were a number of other, like people that were expected as well to like make it that, that were not. So it is basically a, and you have to look and go like, OK, Capcom is not looking for the best player. They're looking for, and Kakarou as well, that's it, yeah. Tokido, it's not, but they're not looking for the best player.

They're looking for the best region representative. And that's not the same thing, you know? You once you announce your bracket like this and it's public and it's out there and this is what you've clicked and sent out, you can't go and read. You can't do changes. You can't change it. If you so like, you know, I think I eyes the only zangief player in the entire thing You're just gonna have to live in the bracket with three DJ mains. You're just gonna have to

Just gonna have to make it work The Yeah, I saw I saw the clip. Yeah, there's a clip. There's some great clothes It's funny clip of gachi couldn't freaking the fuck out watching on stream. Yeah, punk like made the right response to blocking a blank a ball. But he was in burnout and he misjudged the distance to the corner of the screen. And thus it ended up getting blocked when he did his little mistake, little little things, you know, but you're when you're playing when each of these decisions is for a fucking million dollars.

God, so it's it's tricky because like they don't want the best player. They want it to be a more global phenomenon because everybody loves Street Fighter all over the world. But the scrutiny on this is so much higher than usual because it's a million fucking dollars. It is. It is. Right. It's the it's going to put it's going to pull the million fucking dollars! It is, it is, right? It's the, it's gonna pull the eyeballs.

That's exactly what the goal is, right? And it's also a bit weird, because they announced to as well, as they've been showing off some of the new edge stuff as well, they did say in advance that, hey, Capcom Cup's gonna be focused on the gameplay, so we're not going to be making any new announcements there. Although it's like- That's weird!

But that's the place that everyone's gonna look! That everyone's gonna be looking at! That's the time! Why would you not show anything like, that's weird. But that's the place that everyone's going to look. That everyone's going to be looking at. That's the time. Why would you not show anything that's weird? I guess they just weren't ready. Instead of holding the ad stuff back, they decided to pop it up now, and then they just said, yeah, we're going to not have anything there.

But yeah, that's where a lot of attention is going to be paid. Anyway, I think, yeah, for most people that are used to, again, the usual competitive circuit you're like you want the the best players up against each other certainly and and It is true that there are And say John made a good point of how When you have more qualifiers that are

offline That's kind of the excitement that people are looking for, that's those are the most hyped things. When you have more online qualifiers, you do get a bracket that resembles the actual top list of players, but that's kind of what most online qualifiers look like anyway, and it is true that the Capcom Cup and all the events leading up to it

would not look any particularly different than most of the other kinds of online qualifiers that you see on a regular basis anyway or like stuff for kumite For Red Bull that goes on as well with that they have these events building up and there there is sort of a like at a big event Online you're gonna see a lot of the same matchups occurring over the time over the course of you know What is essentially a season? There's only so many of the best players in the world So you do get something unique about this approach plus again Defeat like empowering the region over the the performance of the player, but yeah, it's As long as everybody watching understands that part of it, you know, there's a it's

not necessarily going to be a fair like it's not going to be a fair representation of the strongest, you know, that's that's where your your your other majors come into play. There's a great video on this subject by friend of the show Gerald over at Coray Gaming Called finding out who's the best who and he goes into The the realities of running single elimination or double elimination and why you would do that And if I remember correctly part of that video is like hey Do you want a completely fair tournament in which you find out who is the absolute best? You have to run a round robin tournament

in which every single person plays every single person and then tally up the points. Yeah, once that takes forever. Yes, two, it's called God's Garden, right? You can do that. Japan has their long running series where you sit and do a first to ten with fucking everybody And there is no definitive

Stone left unturned. We know you're the best So the there's two problems one that takes forever like that takes an insane length of time and two you don't have Like your your your grand finals are tallying up their golf scores at the end of the day on a fucking piece of paper. And it's not dramatic. Yeah, it's not it's not the the pyramid to the top, certainly. There's an there's an a spectacle and an excitement aspect to it. So like the purity of the.

Well, did you ever watch golf back when Tiger Woods showed up? Probably not. Not really. Just highlights and stuff, you know. So watching golf when Tiger Woods showed up took an already boring sport and made it completely unwatchable. Because golf tournaments are like four rounds over four days. And you would get into the situation where Tiger would be so many strokes ahead by day two that you could just turn it off.

Because it would be numerically impossible for anyone to catch up. There's no tension. There's no journey to go on. It was awful. It was awful. It was awful. Yeah, I saw a couple of videos of him actually showing off like not just how good he is at like his swing and shit, but how good he is at stopping mid swing and like getting halfway down and cancelling. And it's like that is an impressive skill in and of itself.

Anyway, though, so yeah, there's an understanding that you kind of have to trade off the idea, the pure ideal of the best and the most competitively untainted environment, but then along the way, you have to, you go, okay, what concessions do we make that are more exciting, that are more spectator friendly, that are fun to watch, et cetera, and that accomplish the secondary goals of what this tournament is supposed

to be. Like we already make a massive concession with double elimination, right? Double elimination is objectively more fair than single elimination. But single elimination tournaments are crazy! They are so exciting! It's batshit and bullshit. But yes, you you want and done you get random. Now there's no chance to learn. You roll the dice. It is what it is, right? A lot of the concept of these games too, as well, is the evolution of the matchup. Things what we learned, things that I conditioned early on in, how I can counterplay

you in the long term, you know, if you sit down and play a game of poker with everybody over the course of hours, that's different from getting up and sitting at a different table every round, you know, it's just it's just not the same thing. There's also, I mean, over the course of this podcast, there's been tons of discussions about like, OK, where you balance the moments where the spectator and what the audience wants to see is in direct opposition to what the participant wants to see and or the players would want. Bullshit like training stage, right? Things like, you know, the and some of the longer formats as well and so on are these moments where you have to kind of choose what to do.

But I think I think in general, the the feeling of not having people block and travel to to nuke the region seems pretty understandable. Like, I like that. Yeah, no, that's that's like I appreciate the the level of fucking pure hater that it takes to travel to a different country to knock someone out of a tournament and then leave. But you have to like like while putting that in place, you probably have to find a system of like point qualification or an extra way

to like stack the not stack, but to have the regions that are stronger, have more representation based on the number of players that you would expect to show up there, you know, you would have to find ways to when you're doing your seating, actually go wait the region, wait the and then wait the points by performance as you go through everything, you know? And then I don't know that I mean there's different challenge. There's different tournament bracket makers So there's challenge and smashed. I'll start dodgy gene all these things have their own way of doing it the tournament Bracket makers we used to use back in the day were kind of simplified and like you could honestly like look at it and just kind of like In advance looking at the player pool, just go, okay, these ones here,

put these people should not be in the same pools. Okay, these people here are like traveling from this place or whatever, even though, well, these two have like similar or relatively close performance or so, and they're from the same region, they should be on opposite ends of the bracket, et cetera, et cetera.

And like then run it that way, you know? But once, but as I was saying, once you once you're out and you publicize this, the moment you go, actually, we're going to fix it and change it. You now have fucked with the thing that somebody already, the chance of someone already had. And that's, yeah, you can't do it. Can't put it back in the bottle, you know, like, you know, let's say next week, they're like, oh, we're going to move the bracket around.

It's like some people are already just watching hours and hours and hours and hours of their new opponents' matches. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. For somebody that if you switched it, they wouldn't even encounter. In the end, I understand when you have a goal that's not the, that's more about the region representation.

You could, that's, if you want to do that, you can have those, and in the same way, you can have like invitations that are more about the region representation. You could that's you could if you want to do that you can have those and in the same way you can have like invitations that are not about the open bracket thing. Those there's a place for that too as well for whatever you're trying to market. But the thing where the most money the most prize money money is on the line. It certainly feels weird to have it be like one where you're not getting the people that you expect are gonna win EVO in a couple months time, you know?

Like that is strange, yeah. Anyway, so I guess that's one of those FGC stories that cracked into... Shout out to Group F. It cracked into the mainstream there. Okay. That aside, and I remember when I was initially talking with Reggie about this too, I didn't quite understand some of the details about what was off with it in the sense that you do, well anyway, there is something where if you look at a person that you're expecting

is gonna make it in and they had a number of chances but then ultimately didn't perform and then that's the way it shook out, you gotta hold that, right? There's a part of this that is like you had opportunities and then you didn't make it to that point. Yeah, sorry, too bad. That doesn't occur. But yeah, but then there's the element of like, but would this person have then trounced

every single other like bracket winner here, you know, in the other regions and then ultimately to the top 16? If so, then we gotta consider more slots, yeah. All right, so talking about the Microsoft bit earlier on the flip side, Sony had their own announcement, which was actually just that, hey, the next year from April till 2025, they're not going to be making any major franchise releases. They don't need to. They got Helldivers now. So, yeah, any, like, I guess, FF7?

I mean, they don't make that. No, well, first party releases. So, yeah, they showed off. So, the picture here includes God of War, but was there anything that was slated and then got bumped or moved along? No, there just wasn't anything. No, we've gone through all of our big budget Sony thingies, and now they're working on PlayStation 6, big budget Sony things. God of War, Spider-Man,

Alloy, you know. What? Alloy, Alloy, what's her? You know, Horizon. The game that will tell us when Elden Ring DLC is ready. The litmus test. Well, in the meantime,

you can just go get the fucking convergence mod, which is available now, by the way. The Elden Ring convergence mod. Oh, right. Sorry. My brain just... I don't know why I couldn't understand what the fuck you just said. It just failed me. It's up on Nexus mods. It's got. Twenty seven classes now, and each one has its own progression path. Yeah, Elton. So like Dark Souls games had like total mod overhauls and I played a bunch of them. I was shocked to see ones come out for Elton Ring relatively quickly, because like that's a big fucking game.

Well, this but if I'm not mistaken, these were the same team that did it for like DS3 and stuff, right? Like it's just they kind of rolled a lot of that forward. I'm pretty sure I played the convergence or something very similar in Dark Souls 3. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess this is the proper release that has... Is it at 1.0?

I think so, let me just... Let me just actually pull it up. Yeah, it's the one with the... Oh, it's been at 1.0 for a while. Oh, I see. Yeah, I played Cinders, that's what I played. Okay. As well as, yeah, the boss resurrection

or tree network, et cetera, cool. I'll make my own goddamn DLC, they said. Yeah, we touched on Embracer, we talked about the Baldur's Gate bit already. So layoffs abound, what we didn't touch on and the timing of this couldn't be any more fucking odd with me going into the Sacred and Terrible air shit. But Za'um, the day that I put out the epilogue talking about what happened on that, announced that they basically had their latest round of layoffs that included the last original

member of the team. Oh, cool. So the studio is gutted now. They canceled a quarter of their staff and a standalone expansion that was apparently in the works that has also been completely canceled so Yep, all someone described this as now that we have ownership of the of the eggs

Sorry now that we have ownership of the golden eggs and we've kicked out that pesky goose It's time to sit back and let the money roll in. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha No one wants you taking up space. Got to feed you. Fuck off. Oh, my God. Yeah. So Argo Tullik, the last remaining writer who contributed to Disco Elysium, is is gone and welcome, Shadows Aum. Not nothing remotely resembling that. It's never going to ship another thing again.

It's done. It's done. You're you're the if the lawsuit with the cancellation of the like movies and all the other whatever that were played. Yeah, just that. Wrap it up. Call it a day. It's it's it's it's over. All right. Go make a new company and look zeezy. Um, I you know, um, I heard that like there's been or yeah, like anything can happen. You can go do your Kojima production style bit where you just, you know, make your, um,

you make your own, your own version of Black Checkin' Hookers. The way that the industry, after sticking their toes in, kinda hit those folks, especially the ones who are not from the industry at all beforehand, I wouldn't be surprised if some were just like, fuck this, I'm going back to what I used to do. Like this is just- Yeah, which is smoke and drink.

And be really fucking and yell at the government in Estonia, you know, like, absolutely. But if that's not the case, I would love to see more. The, all I could say is if you are a fan of this world, read that short story, Sacred and terrible air, and appreciate what we got. That's it. That's a wrap. Yeah. And, you know, like them. They got fucked over worse in real life than the game studio that went bankrupt. Storyline in the game for fortress accidents fortress accident So I didn't watch the people make games documentary, but apparently that thing has aged like complete bullshit

Yeah, I didn't I didn't I had started it, but I didn't I didn't get very far in the end of the Staffer who was let go was apparently featured prominently in that documentary as well so Yeah, I feel like the the the general the general breakdown I saw was that the documentary Makers were not happy with how rude Robert was with them. And he was like, you are here to like placate the wider world

while these capitalists steal our company. Okay. Like they like to both sides it kind of thing. I see. But one side was pissed off and like fuck off. And then the capitalists stole the company. So like... I did see some folks in the discussion about the

body of book thing that we're talking. I saw it mentioned that it kind of felt like a, some of them described it as a hit piece against the Curvits or so, but like, I get I haven't I haven't seen it. So I don't know. But the other thing was that the idea that it's like in this we are going to catalog how bad the workplace treatment is here for everybody. And in

response to this documentary coming out, the bosses decided to triple down on the awful workplace treatment actually. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It just, though, has it was already dead and then it got like double deaded with the with the lawsuits and shit. And now this is just triple dead, right? Yeah. So wrap it up, call it a day.

I have a naive question, like a genuinely naive question. So you get in and you steal the management of the company and you fire everybody and then you cancel everything. How does this process get you any money? Well, the problem. How does burning the factory down put money in your pocket? Well, the problem was that you were supposed to get in and take over while it continued to do the thing that it was doing when you took it But you stopped it you you broke it and burned it Well, because people got upset and responded to the things that were you were doing you see like you you kicked that pesky goose out

I just Yeah, yeah, um I Mean I think I don't I don't know like Embracer group like hey we bought Eidos. We've now fired everyone at Eidos Where do you get money out of that? I don't know who are what the investors besides the stories we heard about the fucking, you know, mega rich, light bending gangsters that rolled in or whatever, however that went. I don't know what world they knew

and what they were used to investing in, but it would be reasonable to assume that that stronger approach worked in other businesses, in other ventures, where they would walk into a factory that was making something less complicated. Yeah, but not in creative endeavors. Well, that's my point. You need the same people. No, we're here, like this factory makes chairs.

I'm gonna fucking hang some people out a couple of windows. I'm gonna kick, you know, hang some people out a couple windows. I'm gonna like kick a couple doors down, you know, threaten some lawyer. There's a there's a great video by a YouTuber who doesn't make videos anymore called Mr. B Tong who talked about like Mass Effect a lot back in the day, like 12 years ago. And he talks about when Bioware got bought by EA, it was an EA's best interest to leave Bioware alone. And to, because Bioware made games

that made a lot of money. So leave Bioware alone, and then you'll just get some of that money, et cetera. And the EA like specifically tried, like actually stayed mostly out of it, right, like no big corporate mandates, but because of the very nature of them being owned, what used to be the number one guy at Bioware now has a boss.

Okay. And you wanna make your boss happy. Right, right, right. What makes boss happy? More number. How more number? This shit. And like, there's no way to avoid it changing. And well, that's, that's the exact switch from the Larry and speech to the Embracer one from earlier. It's literally the, the difference

in who you answer to and why. Yeah, I could easily envision a setting where, again, just completely outside of this, don't understand anything about how this industry works or whatever. Suddenly, Disco is unbelievably popular and incredible and I don't know why, but, ah, money opportunity, grab it, go, I don't know what I'm doing, ah, but, you know, just a, it's making money, grab it, control it. I don't know what to do now that I'm holding it, but go do more thing of what that was I don't know how you made that thing. Oh, you're you're being difficult. Okay. You're out new guy. You you do it I can't do it. Everyone. No shut up. Everyone loves disco. It doesn't matter make a deal for TV series Go everyone loves it just an unexpected

Holy fuck everyone loves this thing and I don't understand why but go grab it now it's just that it's it's it's you know yes eat the goose fucking you know it's it's interesting because we've been we've had all this AI talk and everybody you know the AI bros are in their bullshit and there's a weird undercurrent that like people And there's a weird undercurrent that like people who write or direct or draw or paint or act or voice act whatever right? The creative arts people have like are like getting by off of their natural talents and that it's not fair and Like like should be replaced. Right? Like it's less than like even like, like they don't deserve it. But it's like, it's like this, this mass insecurity of like, oh, well,

they think they're better than me because they can do something that I don't know how to do. Like, no, you're saying that you're saying they're better than me because they can do something that I don't know how to do. Like, no. You're saying that. You're saying they're better than you because they can do something that you don't know how to do. So you have to get rid of them because it makes you feel insecure. Or you can just go and start complaining about the amount of engagement that your generated art gets versus the other person who reposted it. Oh man, it's the best. And then when someone shows up and says,

you'll never learn how to draw, you'll never learn how to fucking, you'll never learn how to create art with these characters properly and you try to shout them down, they turn out to be the fucking one-piece artist. Hahaha. Working on the goddamn show. Oh. Like, oh. piece artist working on the goddamn show

like Who the fuck are you I draw one piece who are you visual artists? Scamming us your skills. Are Who the fuck are you? Oh, man. Yeah, that was a good bit. I saw a separate one where somebody was making fun of AI bros using the invincible meme where the dads look what they need to mock and get an even fraction of our power. And dumb ass AI guy goes, it's funny you're not even using your own art except that it's the guy who animated that scene in Invincible.

Oh, okay. Who's deriding that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is his art. Like, fucking, like save yourself the ass blast and just click on the profile of the person you're trying to throw rocks at and see what's going on there.

So do you know why I'm keeping the Xbox behind me and why I held the Xbox during Moat? I held it like a child for most of the Xbox thing so that when somebody grabs a thumbnail from my video or today's podcast and goes, oh so mad at the Xbox he doesn't even there's an Xbox right here Oh, oh you you bought you bought your opinion and with the purchase. Yes. Yeah, there you go No fur for those of you who didn't catch it there's just there was a tweet with someone who was mad because they made some they made some AI art that was not getting as much engagement as someone else who made some AI art.

Their prompts were getting stolen or whatever the fuck. And the person who came in and someone came in and basically was like, yeah, you'll never learn how to actually animate a one piece. And they're like, oh yeah, and who the fuck are you? And it's like, I'm the guy whose name is in the credits a one piece and like they're like oh yeah and who the fuck are you and it's like I'm the guy whose name is in the credits and one piece O P I like what the yeah and then then then there it continued down in a really sad way after the fact by and you know I bet it was I just had this moment I'm not old like I'm not old shriveling Anita in the short message looking on Twitter

be like my prompts don't get as good as Maya's prompts and then you get to the end and you just push her off the fucking edge yourself. The first thing you check with blood on the goddamn phone is yeah, how many how many engagements not even likes retweets or fucking literally just the number of engagements mind you anyways wonderful stuff good stuff love that love love a good main character so the with the Capcom Cup group F stuff,

just in relation, there was also a anniversary tweet from the Capcom Japanese account, where it was the eighth anniversary of Street Fighter V, and they just straight up apologized for the state of Street Fighter V. It's just, it's not much of a... Really? Yeah, it's just a little, just a small little story here,

but it was just like Capcom shared a post on the eighth anniversary of SFV, where they apologized for the game's original state at launch. From the beginning to the middle of release, there were network issues, lack of content, et cetera. We're truly sorry for the content that did not meet the expectations of many of you.

And then basically goes on to be like, you know, but there's a lot of people that are really enjoying Six and so thank you for that. Does it end with like, please buy Street Fighter 6? Yeah, basically. It's like, no, there's a lot of, now there's a lot of people playing Six and they're having a great time. So thank you for doing so. But like, it's just a, sorry, you know, moshawake ar for the for the state of five. So I mean, hey, at the very least,

it's like if you have anybody who's living in their fantasy world where they like to pretend that like, oh man, five was the best simply because I got they got good at it and they just will the roast tinted glasses in their way through the past. I understand that feeling. You now like those people are fucking clowns and they exist in every generation. You now have called melee players. You now have the official you now have the official company tweeting out their apology for what you what you consider fine. So on that note, fighting... Fighting game related, as of today... 2B is now in Grand Blue Fantasy vs. Rising. 2B from near! From near-automata! Not to be confused with near! Near! Not to be confused with from Grand Blue! Not to be confused with near from near!

near from near The actual near as opposed to the IP near as opposed to the character near yes correct But yeah, she's out today, so go get yourself that and I think Isn't there like a skin or something? There's some sort of like crossover. I think there's a little Avatar you can play Grand Bruce. Okay. Yeah, I only other little bit here. It was just there was an interview with Sega over some of the new stuff they announced, and in particular, Crazy Taxi is not just gonna be a Crazy crazy taxi arcade thing, but it's actually triple A in scope, they say. It's gonna be a big, full-sized game that involves a fusion of

nature and city, innovative and fresh driving action, and a cheerful feeling of freedom. So, um... What the fuck? I don't know. I just want to... Just let me pick people up. Let me drive them around and let me... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got advice for you. If you want to play Crazy Taxi, you can play crazy eats in like a dragon eight infinite well mother fuck I was about to say Sega you already have a city you could just use as a map that exists in assets just drop the car it and it's like wait no oh

it's already there bro I got I got a little further into the Donko Island and in like a dragon eight and That thing is so in-depth and I found out why They just imported every asset they have ever made in the series Into that fucking mode Okay, so like they're pulling in like like you can recreate the champion district with the buildings. It's a model viewer. It's a Starcraft level editor.

Okay, sure, sure. All the way down to the part where I was looking and it was like ominous blood splatter was like a decoration you could get. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, is that the fucking blood splatter from Yaka So one when they shot Dojima? Yeah, yeah, it is.

Wow. OK. They must have ripped it from Kewami. That's that's amazing. I don't know what the fuck this means, but... The idea- like, okay. I'm not against the idea of a world where we're like, Hey, did you get- did you do your new game plus plus run on crazy crazy mode? Like, I'm- I'm- like, I can be- I can be wooed into a world. No, it's live service. It's not gonna be like that It's like did you see the new skin for the taxi?

But it's just like man Can we just it's gonna be like did you do all of your crazy taxi dailies today? Can we just make like we're coming back from the dead? We're whizing from our grave. Can we just touch? Ground can we just know just touch ground a little bit first before you annihilate the dream? Just, please, please, let it exist. We're gonna see just a huge proportion. Get greedy the second time.

Just reestablish the, just let it hit the first time and just let it start running. Then get stupid and greedy. Please. I know you can't help yourself. Just, oh. Yeah. No.

AAA, AAA, crazy taxi. I don't know. I don't fucking know, dude. The studio as well. What did they say? So I think it's a new studio at Sega that's handling it as well. Sapporo Studio. Yeah. So no word on anything else relating to the other stuff. So Shinobi Streets of Rage and Golden Axe. But you see, like Streets of Rage, though, let's say it comes in flops or whatever. Like Streets of Rage just hit the other day, though. So four came out and like at least that had a chance.

Bomb Rush exists, too. So there is there is that if you do if they drop it if they drop the ball. But yeah, let's just give crazy taxi a minute to just just exist without the bullshit. Anyway, hopefully this is just all not doesn't mean much anyway. So let's take some letters. You want to send a letter, send to castle superbeastmail.com That's castle super beast mail at gmail.com streets of rage for was four years ago But when was the last crazy taxi my friend? Oh

When was the last shinobi? Like, these are not even remotely comparable. It's done a bit. We got one coming in from the dev that ensures your favorite character gets a klussy skin. Dear Pat and Woolly, please stop Z- me. I am only one man. Please cease and desist this targeting attack on my person and livelihood. I'm a game dev whose company has been brought up recently with the layoffs you've been discussing and someone who spends all their

spare time cloning to Clussie. Alright, I do in fact have a question for you though. Who are the top characters that you believe have alternate skins that should have been the default? Okay, a whole lot of premise there, but there is fact, a question. I think I think right off the bat, that the the recent costume three for Kimberly is an absolute winner. Lily, I think Ed's first costume is wrong. I think it should be as hoodie. Ed, Kimberly, Marissa

and Lily are all the strongest contenders for holy fuck. The alt is infinitely better. Go for that, please. All the new all the new street fighter like, you know, character. I'll tell you right now, Paul and Tekken eight. His default doesn't have the right hair. You can put that's bullshit.

You can put it on, though. You can. Yeah, but it's but fuck you. OK, most to be his fucking hair goes straight up the problem if anything is that when you do his rage dry his rage art his sleeve doesn't bust oh unless it's the default costume so his jacket rips open when he flexes and it stays for the rest of the match but only on the default outfit which is a huge bummer that that should that should be on all of it, if there are sleeves. I'll even, you know what?

I'll go against my own interest and bias and say that despite my complete lovin' of it Spencer with the mustache should have been the default from Rearmed to and from instead of hot dog man going back into the into the other ones. Yeah, I totally agree Everyone's super down for mustache Spencer. I would rather a character that is I I love my dreadlocks Spencer I know that's just me, but I also I love my dreadlocks, Spencer. I know that's just me, but I also, I think the mustache look, it gets a completely different dad energy about it. That's fun, and most people kind of like dig that,

especially for the retro characters. So they're both fine in my opinion, but that could have been the default for sure. It would have been really weird though to then have the alt be weird hippie dreadman. Like, for what reason is this energy coming here now? You know, um, but I think they wanted the breakout of prison, like, like look versus the, um, again, dad mustache energy.

Um, yeah, I'd say a bunch of those characters. I'd say the stop, stop cloning. Stop it. You'll you'd me If he has the word cloning It's already too late, man It's it's it's probably been too late for this guy for a while Okay, and hey woolly pat and hypothetical

Um, okay. And, uh, hey, Willie Pat and Hypothetical. Uh, Willie's current Half-Life 2 playthrough reminded me of how I would often play the game of what feature will they miss when watching blind playthroughs, uh, which I've done a lot since the game was a big staple during the early days of Let's Plays in 2010 to 2014. The buggy section is especially fun because there,'s never mentioned or needed charging, excuse me, because there is never the needed mention or needed charging of the buggy gun. That's true. I only kind of accidentally hit a came across that or briefly mentioned infinite assault ammo case on the back of the buggy and the gimmick of having to curve the missiles around the gunship. That's not to rag on you, Willie, by the

way. I've seen many people miss a lot of things over the years due to quote-unquote LP tax, but this instance reminded me of a thought experiment I made up because of them. If you made a generic 3D action adventure game with a decent amount of platforming and put a grappling hook on L1 from the very beginning, but never mentioned it's there and never have a tutorial and it's never required to progress and has or there's no icons anywhere. Will they find it and how long will it take them to find it? Some people will never find it. Ever. I postulate that a young child's bad with bad-ish reading ability will find it faster

than 80% of adults that have been gaming for 10 plus years. Oh yeah. Yeah. So conditioning absolutely makes you play the latest game in a genre you kind of know the way that you did the last time. You're not as open to the idea of discovering a brand-new concept as opposed to when you were younger. For sure. I feel that heavily. I also can feel myself and I don't like this. This is like, I don't like this about myself, but I can feel, especially under streaming or LP-ing new experience of a game,

I can feel moments where I want, like where the discovery is like, I want it a little bit more streamlined in some cases, even though me in the past would have preferred it the other way. You know, like, Can you give me an example here? Um, so not I like discovering things and there's times where I hit something that is a discovery, but it's also there's I guess the line between where like you hit an obtuse point, right? Like there's moments in there's okay, there's there's there's there's there's mechanics and things that occur in, there's secrets you find in Half-Life that are like,

oh, if you go into this event, there's like a cool scene. There's the fact that there's like, yeah, moves in Symphony of the Night that you never really know about until you kind of discover it. And a lot of that stuff ends up being like sort of bonuses that increase how fun the experience is if you, when you find out about them and so on. So there's the game fear and hunger, right, which has mechanics in it where like they're not explained.

And the whole point is how mean and brutal the game is. And if you don't know what they are, you might actually not progress at all in some cases, you know? And it's kind of like, you know, when there's things you, or you play an assault, where you play a Souls game and you're like, okay, are you playing this by yourself actually, or are you playing this on the internet with other people to talk to and cross-reference your notes? Yeah, no, those are two very different things. Mm-hmm.

So I get like less patient towards the latter half of that, you know? Oh, yeah. A little bit. But I do know that like I would have been super down to just like throw myself in a fucking void, but younger and just like hit a wall and scrape up against it until this opening here, this tile is loose. What's over in there? You know? Yeah, it's also horribly modified by the fact

that we play games with a huge audience much of the time of people going, hey, you missed that fucking thing. And actually, a lot of time, that's very helpful. Because I was playing Infinite Wealth the the other day somebody pointed out like hey Pat Your weapons look like shit and I'm like oh right I for completely forgot There's a massive weapon upgrading system in that game that I had just not Interacted with in like 11 or 12 days hmm

Just just forgot just completely fucking forgot. Now how much worse is your experience without it? I was having a time, I was having a time of it. Okay. I was a little, I had a boss fight that was pretty rough. Yeah, okay, things got needlessly harder than- But the difference is like that weapon upgrade system had like a lengthy tutorial that they forced me to do.

It's just because it was so many days ago, I had forgotten. Okay. Yeah. Um, I also though, like, well, anyway, I, I, when I know, whenever there's a game where you have like an extensive move list and then there's just one more cool secret thing you can do. That's always great to just, you know, to discover, you know, accidentally or just or did you know that you could make these two things interact in this way with each other like the synergy between two things that it's not going to hurt you if you don't know, but it's fucking sick if you do. Ultra kill has a bunch of that, right? Like weapon synergies and Things that play off of putting the magnet down and then the nail gun

like I was talking a friend of mine yesterday and he Explained to me that he's like did you know that if you hit a robot drop ship in hell divers with artillery? And it falls and it lands on a robot factory. It'll blow up the robot factory. Mmm. Like it on a robot factory, it'll blow up the robot factory. Like it, like- Cancellating that wave, I guess, or- Like it's too rare to be tutorialized. It's just like, oh, that's a cool thing to look out for if it ever comes up.

Yeah. And I don't know if there's like, there's things too where like you don't necessarily, like there's sometimes where you, like so in, to Titanfall too, like you don't know that when you ride on a mech and then it detonates and you both go flying into the air, right? Like the idea of having that aerial gun battle thing immediately comes to mind, but then like,

if you grapple and fucking grapple melee someone in midair to have the hype as possible, but whatever. Then you can kiss. Yeah, you and you're just you're taking these sequences that you've just found yourself in and like going, oh, maybe if I and then it totally does work that that's always great to you know, it's it's it's like a total dichotomy. It's like if you want people to have the fun of finding things for themselves. You can't tell them that they're there Like you don't get excited finding a treasure chest behind a waterfall if a fucking prompt came up and said by the way man

You should check behind waterfall sometimes. Maybe there's stuff there. Yes But there definitely is as well a like walking out of the room and then like chats like hey there's a chest back there and you're like oh shit okay and it's like that's a dude that's just a and it's like oh okay cool like I'm your your your you you you're saving time uh that you otherwise would have wasted going back and doing it but also if this were just you on a Sunday afternoon and you're 12 years old, like that extra run doesn't matter as much, you know? Like you don't care about time being wasted per se.

You're not worried about how long you're taking to do things and so anyway, anyway, it's a whole bit. Cool. Yeah, that is kind of interesting though. Because yeah, like going back you certainly don't You're not gonna get your your yellow paint everywhere, right or are you? Sounds like it's a good argument for yellow paint everywhere all the time forever the hell divers Interface is overwhelmingly yellow by design as that's just the theme of the game's logo. Yeah, but also it helps you know where to look. That's good. That's good.

Before we finish, I, uh, Paige messaged me earlier. She wanted you to know that the pouch that I refused to open was in fact yellow. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha and look inside. So if the yellow paint is on the wall but there's a side that says do not climb. We're fucked. We're fucked. You can't be fucked. I'm basically stuck there forever.