Castle Super Beast - CSB 262: Pawn-orrhea: Bork 1: Barf

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Second Monitor Game Problems Dragon's Dogma 2: Friction Makes Sparks Fly X-Men 97: Excellent Show, No Notes Saltburn: Evil-sexual in 4:3 Aspect Ratio Games That Saved Themselves With One Change  Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to http://shopify.com/superbeast to sign up for a $1-per-month trial period. EA cutting 5% of workforce: In its most recent annual report, the publisher gave its headcount as 13,400 as of the end of March 2023, which would put the job losses around 670 people. In a note to staff, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said the company is also "moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry." Final Fantasy XIV game director, Yoshi P says they delayed their upcoming expansion for one reason...  "We figured everyone would be playing the Elden Ring DLC... I'll give you one week." Final Fantasy XVI DLC ‘The Rising Tide’ launches April 18 GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- Season Pass 3 Playable Character #3 [A.B.A] Trailer SLAYER WAS TEASED FOR STRIVE! Dragon's Dogma 2 update plans include 30fps cap, new game option GenePark: go subscribe to SoftgroundaWrestling Uganda on youtube. every fighter must train for at least 8 months before competing. the entire production is beautiful and spectacular. much love to Mukuno, Uganda!  

["Sailor Moon Theme"] And pod start. Good afternoon, Woolly. How are you? Good, good, good. Doing good. How are you? I'm doing great. Did you have a good week playing both of the Game of the Year candidates for this year? Oh, is that how we're going?

That is how we are going. Yeah? Just getting your feet into the only two contenders for Game of the Year this year. Oh boy. What is that that is that joining rebirth and cares no okay. All right well Yeah, balutro actually game of the year incoming Through the three game of the year contenders hardcore hardcore absolutely. It's going down I Mean if not at least balutro for best fighting game

We'll see. Yeah. Would you even be mad? I'll take it. That game has gotten a piece of my soul, man. It's really addictive. But to be fair, it did scratch the itch and replace Dicey Dungeons. I was playing Dicey Dungeons.

There's like a, the Venn diagram is is like there's only two slivers on the sides Mm-hmm that are different like those those highly overlap. Yeah, there's always a place in my life for Turn based calm I can do it while doing while focusing on other things and does not require my intention or engagement game. I'm gonna call that a second monitor game. Second monitor game, second monitor game, yes. And it's actually like the pileup of stuff that is a first monitor game. It's out of control, it's never been worse.

It is and you're just like, oh god, I have to sit and really lock time in for this thing. I have to put a session into this thing and The the worst thing the last thing I want to do is turn a first monitor game into a second monitor game So that feels bad so We've had this weird refrain for many decades of guy working at EGM, let's say, and then IGN and whatnot, and you'll see the review and it's like, I really wish this game wasn't so long, I have too many games to play.

And you would go, fuck you, you fucking spoiled piece of shit. You got that shit for free, Shut up. I want Skyrim number blah blah blah. Right. But we're now at the point where this particular like last six months regular ass people are like, wouldn't have I wanted to finish the persona three and then and then FF7 and infinite wealthalth and Dragon's Dogma all dropped simultaneously. I mean to be perfectly honest, whenever the cycle quiets down on a given thing, there's often a feeling of like, oh that could have deserved more time or such. The fact that people like, the fact that there's even a slight quieting on a game as large as Baldur's Gate 3 is madness

The fact that there's any kind of oh, yeah, we've we're a little bit over talking about that is nuts. That's crazy It's it's insanely big that should like remember how long Witcher 3 got to live in the spotlight That was around for a while. Yeah, you remember that was like a four or five month period of like people just going like Yeah, you remember that was like a four or five month period of like people just going like Goddamnit Witcher 3's greatest RPG the bomb. It's like no who knew has time for this RPG RPG then RPG then RPG then RPG and then the war and the worst possible concession you can make is like To do the thing that I hate doing which is like I'm gonna just play through this and not care about what's happening, not even play something else in the background,

not fully listen to it, not really, you know what I mean? Just like mash through and then every once in a while when a cut scene starts, I'll be like, oh, I guess I'll check that out and go back to not get like, that sucks. That's the worst thing you could ever do. It's the worst way to experience shit. And as you know, I have friends that like play shit that way and I I mean I

If you're so they're like they're like I'm playing games just to like, you know kill time after work and unwind and such and Like there's a desire to not focus on any particular piece of media that much and I'm like, okay If that's the way your life is set up then so so be it. But that sucks because you're not. Everybody has their own different fucking way of going about it. Some people view their TV, their movies, their music and their video game as a filler for the other thing. I think my personal favorite is like talking. This is old. This is older than some of you listening, but talking to some of the dudes in Xbox Live chat in Halo 3 multiplayer

and guy number one was like, man, music in this game is incredible. Guy number two goes, oh yeah, I've never heard the music in Halo literally ever. I just put my system of a down CDs on in the background and just listen to that and turn all the game sound down. Yeah yeah. And I'm like that's not you're not wrong that's like a good choice. I mean it's also like it's weird. If you're on if you're on our fucking three digits of Multiplayer game and you've just decided to completely replace the sounds of that thing and you've and there's no new assets to be seen It's just you going through the motions. I completely get it, right?

I have I have friends who play ff14 and they play more FF14 than me and then you're doing like a trial with them and they go like, you know what? It's been a while. Maybe I should turn the sound back on. And you're like, what? How long have you had the sound off? And they're like, oh, like a month. Because like I just can't handle listening to it even more.

Right. But the friend I'm like, I'm thinking of friends I had in college where like all media at all times is maximum 80% immersion, no matter what it is, whether it's watching movie, watching show, playing anything, you're only your own, there's no full let's lock in and take the thing in. There's a playlist with a Winamp playlist. It really whips the llama's ass. It really does and that thing plays in the apartment and that thing's going 24 seven no matter what, whether a movie's on or off.

There's no inter, you know what I mean? There's just a little bit of a like, yeah we're gonna kill some time and then go do other shit. Yeah, it's just a little bit of a like, yeah, we're gonna kill some time and then go do other shit, you know Yeah, it's like every for every form of media is so that I don't get bored Listening to the albums that I'm going to listen to no matter what pretty much Pretty much so I I don't want to turn anything into that And so I end up I end up ironically

I suppose, like getting through less of the first monitor games and spending a lot of time on shit like Balletro where I'm just like, ah, one more, one more, one more, you know, ooh, I got a good run there, yeah, nice, all right. Or Teppen or Dicey Dungeon or fucking Slay the Spire or whatever it is, you know? And like, hey, listen, those of you who are right there with us

Going wow this RPG glut is out of control. Don't you worry? I don't know if you put it on news they're wooly about the dawn trail timing But Yoshi P walked out and said hey, hey losers So I figured you guys are gonna want to play that Elden Ring DLC So we'll release the expansion Seven days later you have seven days literally the Elden Ring DLC literally on stage just gotta go Elden Ring DLC and everyone's like ah, I'll give you one week One week is we all know that's fucking not enough right right? That's ah it's not possible

Yeah, that's that's hilarious, and you know it's also because he wants to fucking play it Because like how much like you go into the office like how many you guys are gonna be playing the Elden Ring DLC and like 40 hands go up like okay Well, we can't launch a fucking expansion if you guys are just gonna be Secretly playing the Elden Ring DLC at your desks. Yeah. No, it's just it's it's acknowledging what it is Not that a week is enough. Obviously that's it's not enough. It's not even close man It's so I am probably going to have to fucking wait on Dawn Trail because of the Elden Ring DLC fucking wait on Dawn Trail because of the Elden Ring DLC.

Which is gonna be weird. I haven't waited on one of those expansions. I haven't. That's what I'm about to say. Since, and it's like, I know I have not. Literally never. I have not done that. That is the priority. Okay.

I mean, hey, now that's pretty much the same situation as Japan and Dragon Quest, right? It's like your life is going to be shifted around the release of this game I was talking with my my raid buddies and I was talking about that like maybe you gotta wait But if you wait, you know, everybody's gonna have finished it and they'll be like just available you know, everybody's going to have finished it and they'll be like just available, right? For every time something comes up. And you know what? My decision on whether or not I'm even going to stream Dawn Trail is dependent on one thing. And it is how cool the job action trailer is that is coming out in one month. The job action trailer is the one where they show off all the classes new abilities.

And if there's a really cool one, I'll be like, well, fuck, what am I gonna fucking do? I'm not gonna, I'm stupid. But if like, sure, sure, sure. But if there's not a cool one, then. Then I can wait, then I can wait a little bit. Okay, so let me give you an example when shadow bringers came out the class that I play dark knight they go hey here's your new capstone

ability you summon a stand that fights with you that's cool for that's awesome no it's more it's that's the timeline I understand it's the one where it's not cool, where it's like, okay, well, we're going through it just as hard, but we're going to just not stream it, I guess. Okay, let me try it to you this way, all right? Let's say you're not playing Street Fighter 6 as often as you should, right? Or you think you would, right? You're like, I should get back to Street Fighter 6. Oh, Akuma's coming out! Oh, sick! I can't wait to play Akuma! And then word from on high comes down. I was like, yeah, Akuma sucks actually. He's actually no fun to play. And you're gonna go, I can't wait. Hey, Ed has challenges. I stuck by it, regardless. But yeah, okay. All right.

It's the hype factor. It's like fighting games. Sure. What's the fucking... Why am I seeing... Friends of mine are sending screenshots of Clive standing around in 14, talking about how they're dirty, dirty hackers. Oh, God.

I'm like simultaneously really excited to explain this to you and also like, ugh, I have to explain this to you. So before we continue, let's be very clear. It is against the Final Fantasy XIV TOS in order to modify your game at all Don't modify your game files. It's against the TOS. You will get banned if you get caught so don't do it that being said Tons of people do it people do it all the time Weirdly enough what they do is they give their characters disgusting big fake fat tits and asses,

and it's like a whole weird thing, and they post fucking, there was a billboard in Texas with that weird shit on it, it's a whole fucking thing. The point being is, there's going to be a Final Fantasy 16 crossover event, right? And you're like, oh, that's going to be cool. Get to meet Clive and Clive will give us his titty shirt. And also they said he's also going to get something else.

I think you're going to get a mount out of it. But the drama is that the mod people who are not supposed to be doing that are already data mining the outfit out of Clive's body and putting mods out like today, months before the event. Because it's in the files. Going like, look, you can wear modified Clive titty shirt

and people are like, don't, stop it. Okay. It's not, you're not even modding shit that's in the game yet. But it's only to their local machine. Yeah. Okay, is this similar to how the near stuff was out before it was supposed to?

Yeah. People just grab it from the files, okay. So the reason why, there was like a tacit understanding that people mod the game, but then the tipping point was when people, this is so gross, when people started to mod their character model, like they'd mod, hey, I want every bunny girl to have like, chest beefing milk freak shit on their chest. But since it was attached to the model, it would be all of the models in the game.

And then people were taking screenshots of other people's characters and writing creep ass shit about them. And people were like, don't Photoshop pictures of my character into a weird sex freak thing, please? You don't pay my sub. I can do what I want. My machine, I do what I want.

And that's when they started really putting the foot down, which is like, stop it. Just stop it. Stop all of it. All of you, shut up. Stop it. Stop all of it. All of you shut up. Stop it, it's so gross. Okay. Now if they are aggressive, I'm assuming that like this is on the basis

of you have an account that is somewhat linked to the channel you're streaming from. And like for example, if you just stream and just put some screenshots up of some of some crazy shit and it has nothing like they're not going to go find the particular account you're using necessarily and be like ah ban you oh oh yeah oh yeah dude that is exactly what happened but how do but how would they if they can't like if there's no character name is right there on screen. Well, if it's not on it is what I mean.

What if you don't have- Yeah, there is no reasonable way to play FF14 on camera for any length of time with your character name completely hidden. Oh, okay, okay, okay. No, no. I mean, eh, okay. All right. I mean more so like if you're just showing something that is if you're not actually showing gameplay if you're if you're if I were to put screenshots

up right now of some Some of that terms of something on your Twitter account right or something like that, but there's no associated account So yeah, well then you know what people do right so let's say I am a Final Fantasy 14 contact creator I've streamed the game a couple of times people see my character know my character they can go to the profile of my character and I then post on Twitter yo check out this mud I put on my my god to make his dick bigger people would recognize that character right know that character's name report that character my account gets banned for life and that character gets deleted

Okay, so the so the closest piece of information they can find to whatever you're talking about so during the world first The world first shit we talked about this briefly but people had like very very minor like briefly, but people had very, very minor quality of life mods on like, can I get numbers on the cooldown timers and stuff like that? And they were doing the world first race to say, who's going to beat the encounter first? And other teams saw that and went, oh, that motherfucker, that's not part of the base game. You can't have the numbers on the thing.

You added that in and then got those teams banned so that they would have a better chance of the base game. You can't have the numbers on the thing that you added that in and then got those teams Banned so that they would have a better chance of right right right right um So don't mod the game. Don't do it. Don't do it, but if you do mod the game Turn all that shit off before you go live on So I saw some of that, and I guess that is probably gonna go hand in hand with the DLC. Since they showed off, uh, uh, the- The 16 DLC?

Yeah, uh, the Rising Tide? Yeah, I don't know! I really don't know! Every time they ask Yoshi P about it, he says that he has to go talk to Yoshi P. You're right. The head of the project needs to go ask the head of the project. He says that every time!

And it's like, answer the fucking question! Okay, well, we'll touch on that a little bit later. The week has been filled with some things. I guess, right off the bat, yeah, the darkest, I keep saying darkest things. What is up with that? Because I'll tell you, it's simple.

DD2 is a shortcut that has already been filled in my brain. DD2 in my brain is a filled spot. Oh man, I hope you're not in the gears of war or God of War. Yeah, I'm not really that much, so it doesn't matter. But it's very hard to hit the brakes every time. Okay, so Darkest Dogma Darkest Dogma 2 yes, yeah That uh I Went back in after after the streusel stream did obviously and so I heard that your stream experience was

wild and crazy NPC relations Was it? I was told that you took a trip to the capital and most of those NPCs died along the way. Oh, yeah, I got confused. I wasn't too sure what was happening, but the two dudes that join up and say, hey, we're going to the capital. Yeah, Greg Orr and the other guy. Yeah, so at some point they were gone,

and I didn't know when or how. And then someone mentioned it might have been when I like, like, I was about to pull the water, release the dam to blow up the barricade. And then I was like, oh wait, hold on, let's not stand in front of it, obviously. That seems like a bad idea. So I moved over to the side and then blew it away.

But I guess not everybody moved over to the side. And then they got washed away. I didn't even notice it. I don't know if there was a sound or a noise or an indicator or something at the time. And that's a couple of times actually. There's been a moment where, like there's a pawn going down noise

when they're like, you can pick them back up. But the pawn just getting launched into the abyss and getting brined or something. Like that has no noise or indication and it just suddenly I pause and I'm like, I pause and I'm like, oh, they're not on the list anymore. And a couple of times I've paused and I'm like, wait, my pawn is gone.

And then it's like, wait a minute, unpause, now they're back. And I was like, oh, what? So what that is, so when they're not in the list, when you pause, that's them being like, I want to say it's like 50 feet or more away from you. It's when they're not in the range that you can hand them items through the menu. I see.

The other thing is that I tested this over and over. Pawns can get stuck. Oh yes. If you get like far enough away from them, they will teleport to you. They'll just fucking... So I've noticed because there was one time where I dropped down from a cliff and it was fine but then they dropped and died. But then another time later and then many times later on if I just move quick enough, they don't try to drop and follow, they actually just teleport instead.

So there's a lot of really fun things to do with the pawn system that people are figuring out specifically from throwing themselves off cliffs. So a lot of pawn behavior is learned player behavior. So some people have pawns that will not throw themselves off a cliff ever. And other people have pawns that will just fucking like aim for the bushes like on every opportunity. They're like, I don't think it'll kill me so I'm gonna do it. And that is learned behavior from watching players solve jumping puzzles by just throwing themselves off a cliff.

Traversal data actually matters. Interesting. I picked up a goblin and threw it at a different goblin and ever since then Big Page is grabbing enemies to throw and yeet at other enemies. So this is probably bad considering a lot of platforming puzzles are being solved with levitation which not everybody has. That's fine. There are some platforming puzzles being solved in fascinating ways that I would never have thought of. In particular, I can't get across this gap, but I can pick up a pawn and throw them across the gap.

Okay, now they're there all across the gap. Now I'm going to go all the way to the top of the cliff and throw myself so that the pawn catches me. And now we're both across. Whoa. Because ponds will catch you if you fall off a cliff near them. Wow. Okay. Huh. Yeah. I also noticed my woolly pond like, like, well, one, if a fucking ladder is nearby, holy shit, look at that. It's a ladder. Look at that, oh wow! Yeah, did you see it? And then going up to the, climbing up on little ledges and then doing the shield bounce,

you know, getting into that super jump position where it's like, I don't have anything to grab onto, this is not a good time for this. Also, Big Page doing that in the middle of fights where it's like, running up to me and then doing the shield bounce and I'm like I'm yeah man I'm a mage. It's time for uppies. I'm a mage. Uppies does nothing for me. So no hey here's the thing here's the thing uppies does do something. So I'm playing a thief right? So a thief has a lot of good climbing abilities on enemies. So when Big

Page runs up to me and gives me upies, that is the ability to go from the ground to the Cyclops's eye in one shot and then just start stabbing away. But no, there's a secondary. If you see a treasure chest that is totally unreachable, like genuinely unreachable, and they go, hey, there's a treasure chest up there. Nobody can reach it. And you hit the go command. Mage pawns will try and float over to it themselves and pick up the item and warrior and fighter pawns will try and launch you up to the edge of the fucking platform and let you grab. Oh, I've seen that too.

I'm trying to teach Big Page how to do that and she's doing a little bit better now. Oh, I've seen that too. That's not what I'm talking about as a mage in the middle of a fight against the Griffin and I'm just getting launched up and I'm like, I'm not going to grab onto that thing. I'm not trying to... You know what? You're right. That works better for other classes. And I'm like I'm not gonna grab on to that thing. I'm not trying to

Works that works better for other class. Yeah, that don't don't please don't run up to stop fighting to run up to me and launch Me I'm good over here. Thanks. That's the plan You know I'm gonna stand over here, and I'm gonna light this Griffin on fire. Yeah Oh, I should yeah, I should mention as well of course that this is hashtag sponsored opinions as oh, yeah These are spot. Well, no there. I I was not paid money. I was just given a review code. Okay, so this is hashtag I got given the game for free early. Yeah, opinions and and all the Disclaimers that come alongside that

I the disclaimers that come alongside that. I think the fact that I'm a Dragon's Dogma 1 fan is a much grander source of bias than anything Capcom could have ever given me. That, the second time, so going back in for a little bit more, well okay, so first of all I had a really like insane sequence of playing. So I got up to the Nameless Village, which is kind of just like, through the forest off to the side somewhere. No, okay. It's a location. What are you talking about?

There's a place. There's a place called Nameless Village. All right, it's a location. You meet some people there. How did you get there so fast? I don't know what you're talking about. Okay, well, when you talk to Brant and he gives you a bunch of quests to do before you can move forward in those.

Okay, yeah, all right, so that's what's happening. Because I spent 14 hours before meeting Brant At all, okay Yeah Um, and it will it's interesting because like some of that is also being Because like I'm like, well, I want to see what's next. I want to get the flow of like what you know Cuz there's wandering and and you know Kind of just like meandering

about and then there's like the missions and I kind of want to see how that's moving. So yeah, at some point got moved forward towards the forest and then check that out. And then past that got to the next point of interest was a cliffside. And I walked up to that cliffside and a golem was fighting the Griffin. Oh, fuck yeah. And I was like, oh shit, okay, golem was fighting the griffin. Oh Fuck yeah, and I was like oh shit. Okay We got one of these big battles going on and they're they're like swinging at each other and then some random archers also involved So we just I ran up got in the fight and then the griffin fucks off. So then we fight the golem And it's a full-on whopping serious fight

It's like this is pretty much the limit of where my levels are at right now But managed to do it and then there's a camp right next door, so Rat went sat at the camp woke up and the Griffin was on top of us So like hidden very deep in the tutorial for camp it says make sure to deep in the tutorial for camp it says make sure to clear the area of nearby enemies before camp because they may ambush you but specifically Griffin's and Drake's can fly around yeah may not actually be near you when you sit down so woke up with it on top of with us just under its ass going crazy time go time so

Fought that beat it down and then like with its like last little bit of like its last life bar It fucks off and flies away. You know monster hunter style. So like oh shit. Okay, so then Hey, let me ask you now Now that you've gotten your hands on Dragon's Dogma and felt the way it feels, would you believe me if I told you that somebody from Capcom USA literally said that the plan for Dragon's Dogma is to trick North Americans into liking Monster Hunter? Hunter. I can see it with the way that fight goes, right? It very much feels like a hunt. Yeah. And then I'm like, and then okay, eventually, you know, it like fight that to the point where yeah, it fucks off. Run back around to get back to town. And then on the way to town,

there it is in front of the town. Resume the fight. Oh yeah, it tries to pick up the buffalo that are out in front there. Yeah, so like resume the fight, resources still are where they are, keep that going until it's on its- But its health was still down, right? Yes, its health was still down. And then it gets into its last phase where it spends like 90% of the time flying around doing its swoops and then Trying to finish it off and then a minotaur shows up And I'm like what the fuck like and it just I might have been spawned randomly it might have been a bad location But I've minotaur rolls through and now we have no the exact spawn point of that minotaur

It's like a hundred feet to the northeast of where you're fighting that griffin. It's like okay So now both are there and we're still low on resources Like all right well now we're focusing on this and then the griffin fucks off again And I don't know where it goes for the third time as it goes back to its nest And then we focus down the Minotaur and then beat the Minotaur and then as that's done and before I can even do the like Yeah, good job a bunch of Goblin fucks are just around where the buffalo are anyway and resume. And it was like, it was an insane quadruple quintuple battle sequence to just like, what the fuck is happening? Is this like one random bad spawn moment into

another? It felt like it. Yeah, yeah. So, you're describing the quintessential Dragon's Dogma experience, and it's one of the reasons beyond why the game works the way it does. So this actually segues really nicely into the discourse about the microtransactions. I'm not going to go too deep into it. There's a bunch of completely useless Capcom-style microtransactions that I saw some people calling salary man microtransactions because they're the same kind of buy an item here that like Tales games do. Yeah. So the, well the shitty like or buys that they put into DMC as well. Yeah. It's DMC and the ones for RE4, and I looked at those in the review period

and then went, oh, that's stupid, and then ignored them and then completely forgot they existed. But a lot of the gut feeling beyond that comes from there are fast travel items called port crystals, which are fast travel points you can put down that you can buy via the microtransactions. And people look at that and they go,

hey, wait a second. This game has the most punishing fast travel system of anything I have ever played in my life. They obviously made the fast travel bad so that they could sell this stupid fast travel nonsense in the in the minibies right to which I will have to tell you as somebody who didn't play Dragon's Dogma 1 fast travel in Dragon's Dogma 1 was way worse than it is here and one of the reasons why fast travel is so limited and so bad is that they want you limping your ass around the countryside and having problems Fall out of the sky on top of you in situations where you go I don't think I can handle this and right when you're finally about to handle it

Here comes a Minotaur to make you feel like you can't handle it again Right, which is kind of what I had happen to me We're just everything's dropping on top my ass on But if you were just back to the capital if you were just like no well I gotta do a quest in in that I'm a man. Oh, I gotta do a quest in the capital Oh, I'm in the capital that said though like that's a design I can respect when it's meant to be like that level of bullshit reminder that I love Darkest Dungeon, and I also fucked my way through

reminder that I love Darkest Dungeon and I also fucked my way through Fear and Hunger one of the most bullshit games right so I'm down with that that kind of thing But it is shitty still when it's like yeah, but here's an out and you just got to spend on it, right? Yeah, that's not a shitty thing to do where you're like I we've designed it because we want you to feel this way But if you don't want to feel this way You're like I we've designed it because we want you to feel this way, but if you don't want to feel this way Even if you did spend the money you would still feel this way because the the item that you use to travel to those Fast travel points are insanely prohibitively expensive Hmm fairy stones the item that you throw into the sky to fast travel to a port crystal cost 10,000 gold.

Like they are absolutely ridiculous. Oh yeah, and I'm dying. I'm suffering for gold right now too. Yeah, you're broke. I made the mistake of switching from mage to sorcerer and then I didn't like it and switched back and I was fucking like, that was all my gold. That was everything. So like I look at the micro transactions that DD2 has the same way I look at them for RE4 the same way I look at them for DMZ5. I go, this seems like a necessary evil to keep this out of the real game.

But I would say just commit to your design. If that's what you want the game to be about, then don't give the microtransaction out to something that you think people are just going to think annoying. I have a sneaking suspicion that since we have seen this in every single Capcom game for like eight years That it is not on the dev team to decide That some of these things go in I it seems like it given the nature of DMC getting that and then yeah even it makes me think about like Streetfighter getting like like all the all the

characters are reasonable and here comes $400 nonsense Ninja Turtles costumes. Yeah. And like DMC for special edition as well where it's like, you know, like this is a game that was already fucking older. You added some new content to it, but the same the same concept applies. Yeah, I think I think it just basically makes the design of you're supposed to have struggle and I'm running back to the capital to Melv

with low resources and all that. All of that, you make the player commit to that. I think the core of it. Go ahead. I have to you, sorry. Okay, no, I have to you well just the idea of like that Slog and that suffering and all that and then having this kind of micro mini by to buy your way out of it it it helps that like that type of design is mitigated as well by the fact that this does have a save anywhere option and

I and something that has been clear over the course of the opening of this game and playing through it a bit is that, yeah, over time we've talked about how, this is a fantasy adventure game, but don't think of it as necessarily just a Souls-like because of any thing. Oh, it's fucking not. And you're like, and it's super not.

So, different fucking weird thing. just a souls like because of any thing and you're like, and it's super not, you know? And I've- So different, fucking weird thing. And like, and like, and I went into that thinking of that. I'm like, yeah, don't, don't think too hard about that being a souls like, cause it's not that. But also like I go, I'm so used to the idea of like saving being this like rare restrictive, you know what I mean? Like earned thing that like is in those games that even here

I often forget. Oh wait No, you can just pause and save the safe system in this game is so confusing and so brutal and it's so weird It lets you I love it. It's weird that you can upload things and still undo progress So, okay. Here's how it works. There's two. Okay, so before I go into the save system I want to say that like the biggest the biggest crime that the Dragon Stogma 2 DLC Commits is that I am personally of the belief that nothing in this game was changed to accommodate this DLC This seems like a must have checkbox for some kind of investor mandate or some shit. But it does, reasonably so, cause doubt in the average person that, hey, did they fudge these fucking numbers to make me more willing to buy this?

I don't personally think so, especially after I played DD1 and fast travel there was way worse and way more restrictive that they then back down on in Dark Arisen but it does it gives that that doubt of like did did was this fucked with to get more money out of me I have one in mind but yeah which one's that I'm curious the fact that I had to jump over to a different account to make start a new game to show off the beginning of the game and I couldn't find a way to resume the save I already made with the pawn that I uploaded is ridiculous. If this were a console, you'd just go to save

and erase your save. But on PC, I had to switch to a different account for an hour. So super goofy. So this is the really fun part because everyone's complaining about certain things, they're like why they do it like this? And it's like dude, in Dragon's Dogma 1 it actually worked the exact same way with one notable difference. There was a new game button on the screen that would immediately erase your singular save file entirely. This led to my favorite bug I have ever encountered in my life.

Oh, you told me about this. Yes. Yeah. Where the pawn save wouldn't actually leave. And so you would load into a brand new game and like a year and a half of pawn rental currency would slam into your new game. And I think that's why it's different.

I think their solution to that nonsense is go, well, you can't start a new game. I had to ask Capcom, because in the review thing, they're like, hey, if you're gonna stream the game, can you please start a new game? And I had to email the're gonna stream the game, can you please start a new game? And I had to email the lady, and I was like, how do I start a new game?

And she's like, go into the Steam and delete the files. And I'm like, fucking, really? That's the fucking, what? That's so weird. Yeah, the game also has like a, well, Dragon's Dogma 1 did, and I have a sneaking suspicion the game has a very pronounced new game plus cycle thing going on that makes sense for you to use

the same character over and over and over and over. Okay, but yeah, there is a but there is a like you want like a level of fucking with saves element where you can- Oh, it's nonsense. That's coming in a patch this week. This is so stupid. New game is gonna be a patch, I saw that. Load game-

A stupid patch! But here's the level of fuckery though, is that load game also has load your last save or load from the last in, in case you wanna undo even more progress and create even more alternate realities and disparate versions of yourself that is okay so you want to hear you want to learn how the dragon stagma to fucking save games

actually work you want to hear this shit all All right, here we go. So in the files, you have two save files. There are two save files. One is your auto save. Every time you see that little circle happen in the upper right corner of the screen, that's your auto save. So that happens every time you start an encounter, fight an encounter, pick up an item, blah, blah, blah, like a souls game. It happens all the time. Auto-save's not gonna lose you very much progress. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you quit out of the game, auto-saves. If you hit start and go to menu,

and you can go save and continue, that'll do a manual auto-save right there. Bam, done, okay, great. So, that's your main save. However, that save is not your safe save. Because the save game tutorial says, hey man, autosaves? Not reliable.

Not reliable. Not reliable. It is the only game I've ever seen in my life that tells you that the autosave is not reliable. It called itself unreliable, yeah. Okay, so what is reliable? Well, your in-save is reliable. Your in-save is rock solid. It's not interacting with the world.

You can't auto-save clipped through the fucking floor. You can't, you know, all this shit. And the reason why they want you to use your in or slash checkpoint save is because that's the save game that all of your pawn rental data lives on. Yes, that's where the upload happens. Because your pawn only gets uploaded when you save the game at an end. Yes.

But they want to keep it serious. They want to make sure you're taking your save seriously. So two things happen. One, if you fucking die and straight up game over and have no wake stones at all, but you're like, last time I saved at an end was like an hour and a half ago. And if you fucking die and straight up game over and have no wake stones at all, but you're like, last time I saved at an inn was like an hour and a half ago. I don't want to lose all that progress. They go, okay, you can load your last auto save and you will take a five to 10% total

hit to your maximum life. And that will happen every single time you do that. So Pat, are you getting your ass kicked by that chimera and it took you five tries? Enjoy the fifth try at 50% life. And I did it, but goddamn getting out of that cave afterward was a fucking mess. The second thing is that you go, you know what? I've really fucked all this shit up. I would like to go back to the inn before I fucked all this shit up." And they go, okay. And you go to click on load in save and it goes, hey, wait a second. If you load this save.

Everything between now and then. It's not that it will get overwritten. It gets deleted as a function of loading the in save up. Okay, okay. I checked. I had the fucking folder open on my other monitor. When you load that in-save, it deletes your autosave. It's a backup emergency, oh fuck, okay we gotta go back,

save, yeah, okay. And so it is this, it is this like, really violently aggressive idea of Itsuno being like, listen, I want you to take this shit seriously. If you play a quest or go somewhere, for example, and Gregor the Knight, who has multiple quests associated with him afterwards, and you just wash him out with the river and fucking kill his ass, deal with it unless you want to lose two hours of progress.

Oh really? Is that the case for Gregor then? Yes. Oh. Well. Too fucking bad. Deal with it. Fucking deal.

Okay? And if you got to the Capitol, and you fucking rested at that inn. I got to the Capitol, they said you're not allowed in, and I snuck around the side, and then Brant said, hey, leave him alone, he's clearing my book. Fucking live with it. Yeah.

Okay, Willy, when we were on the stream, and I was playing my own quest in the background, right? There was a quest in which a little poor girl happens to look just like a little aristocrat boy And he's like listen I need this girl to take my place so that I can go out of town and my mom's not gonna freak out Cuz my mom freaks out when I leave the house and I go, okay And he's like, oh, I'm gonna go to Melv and I need you know, there's there cyclops is out there But you know and I need to anti poison shit. So like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get a Cyclops eye and I'm gonna get an anti sleep potion. I'm gonna get an

anti poison potion and I'm gonna fill in all three slots of your inventory and he's gonna go back and I'm gonna rest a whole day and then I'm gonna fucking wait and then he's gonna come back and then Oh look, the Oh mom caught both of them there and she is screaming, get this poor person out of my house. And the quest ends with me getting like 500 gold and everyone's just standing around kicking rocks going, I guess that sucked. Oh, I don't know. And I'm like, what the fuck? That's like the best option to the... And then I'm like, no. The best scenario of that quest would have been me failing to give him the things to protect him so that he would die on the trip. And then the poor girl would replace him.

And I probably would have gotten a better result from that quest if I had fucked it up. But then it saved. And I was like, I guess I'm just gonna have to live with that. I don't know if that's the right, I don't know what that's the fucking right quest. I don't know. Every time something comes up here where it's like,

yeah, you should have seen it back in Dragon's Dogma 1. I'm like, okay, but 12 years later, why not smooth that out though? No, because. Why not? Because the speed bumps are the point. The friction is where sparks fly. Oh, oh, that's, oh, that's good.

That's good that I thought that, that's a good one. People, okay, do you remember when Dark Souls came out and people went, oh my God, finally a game that's like going to take me seriously and it's not going to treat me like a baby with a bunch of ridiculous tutorials and they're just going to throw me in there. Do you remember that? And like it's hard.

Yay, it's hard. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But you, okay, you remember that feeling, right? Dragon's Dogma is for people where they're like, the game doesn't spit in my face enough. Okay. Like, I need more spit. Okay, okay, okay. Once again, there is something that you can applaud

when your design is like, no, you're gonna to have to, this is going to hit you. This is a wall and it's, and it forces you to, like you said, take it seriously. But that can't be, that doesn't describe uncover every little thing that is, that has weird bumps and hiccups. It absolutely does. Bully, do you want to talk about AIDS? Uh, we can get into, I mean, you can get into a Poneria if you'd like. Do you want to talk about AIDS? We can get into, I mean, you can get into a Poneria if you'd like. Do you want to talk about Dragon's Ligma? Okay, but that's another thing that's like, okay, because I caught that, like, I had the

pawns talking about how like, oh yeah, there's some kind of disease apparently we can get. And then I was like, oh, okay. And they mentioned it a couple of times now. So I was like, that's interesting. And then I got spoiled for me what the result of that is. Yeah. So hey, over the next five or 10 minutes, me and Woolly are going to talk about the disease that your pawns can catch in Dragon's Dogma 2 called Dragon's Plague. All right?

So we're going to talk about Dragon's Plague. So Dragon's Plague infects your pawns and pawns that you hire can infect your pawn with Dragon's Plague. Okay, and also fighting dragons or drakes can infect your pawn with Dragon's Plague and then your pawn can infect other pawns with Dragon's Plague if you send them out. When you get a pawn in your party that has it, you get a big old tutorial. Giant splash screen that says Dragon's Plague is a dangerous affliction that pawns can get.

It is noted by inability to listen to the arisen, and if not treated, will lead to calamity. Now Pat, the last time I got this message, I was playing Sekiro and they said that people coughing is bad. Yeah, and what actually happens in Sekiro when everyone gets sick? They just start coughing. Right, yeah, nothing happens. Do you know what happens in Dragon's Dogma 2 if you don't treat your pawns with Dragon's Plague? I've heard. I've heard.

They go crazy in the middle of the night the next time you rested in and slaughter every NPC within 200 feet By the way, if you if you scroll to certain some websites or some news websites are just putting the spoiler out there And that as a title article mind you so so people people are sitting like going to sleep in the middle of the main city It's crazy every single character in the castle in the town dead. Yeah. OK. Now that is sick.

That's awesome. Is it awesome? That is a crazy awesome calamity that could unfold and fucking and the game is going to force you to roll with that. That's nuts. That's a cool crazy thing, right? Accounting for that being a possibility in your design. And then it's reminiscent of how you guys would talk to me about old Fallout, right? Where you're forced to just roll with

the consequences of things. Agree. So, here's where it gets really fun. So, on that internet, do you remember the meme about like, oh, I gotta kill all the NPCs in town to improve my frame rate. You remember that last week, right? I, uh, not really, but now I fucking get it because yeah, Melv just Well, guess what? Like a week later, this fucking event happens to kill us all the NPCs in town and increases your frame rate. And people are going, what the fuck, how could this happen? I don't understand!

But here's my favorite part. My favorite part about Dragon's Blight is that the general consensus, people are screaming, oh, this is the worst mechanic ever, it's so ridiculous. And it's like, when you get one of these characters, you get a tutorial prompt by default like it Forces the tutorial when you encounter them second of all the pawns eyes Literally glow with evil energy the whole time. They're sick. Yeah walk around going. Oh my fucking head I'm so fucking sick, and then you tell them to do commands and bites and they go fuck off a risen. I don't give a shit.

Yeah, but again, it's but some you see it so but not every game not every game. Treats treats those consequences as things that you need to take seriously so right and then and then you don't take it seriously and it goes you will fucking take me seriously. Okay now that that's that's totally all all within the the realm of like we're trying to do some wild shit with this game And have it be different that being said the times when the frame rate drops to a like unfucking

believable It's like come on Yeah, that doesn't feel good at all and I don't care what you say about the the confrontation of that that feels bad Optimization for the CPU in this game is poor and is extremely poor It's not good right so I have like there's some moments like that and there's a couple other things too one thing Susie and chat describes it as E3 trailer framerate. Right, right, right.

So there's something in particular. When I first was playing, I was running around the first couple towns looking at... I thought the exclamation marks were side quests. Fuck no! It's your pawn going, look at this ladder! Right. So then I was running around looking for who had a side quest and it's like... Side quests are completely unmarked. Sometimes someone will walk up to you and trigger one, but a lot of the times they won't. Sometimes you only get the side quest if you've been making friends with the person and giving them gifts for an entire week. Or other times someone will walk up and be like,

hey, what do you think of that beggar's story? And I'm like, what beggar? What story? That guy! Yeah, and you're like, huh? And then it's like, oh, there's an interaction there. OK. Would you like to know what that quest entails, Willy? I'll go do it. I'll find out.

But you have to watch him and figure out where he's... My point is, when it says you have to watch him It means you will sit there for the 28 minutes it requires To have him cycle through his entire day and follow I have the whole quote I have most of the quest in Fast-forward in the video that I put up Jesus. Okay I my assumption would have been to go sit down and that I put up. Jesus. Okay. My assumption would have been to go sit down and fast forward time, get back up and see what he's doing. Guess what happens? He leaves in between two of those points.

In between two of those times. Okay. Well, so that's not even where I was going, but that's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. But like the, so it's like, okay, so those are not the sides. So I was looking for sides to do before pushing on to the main. And it's like, oh, well, sometimes you just have to like, kind of come across the right person or talk to the right person. So there's no indicator of those side quests. It's like, okay, but then when it comes to people sort of standing around and everyone in the in the living town and stuff, like 95% of them are just kind of, they don't really have anything to say anyway. Yeah, they're worthless. So then I was like encouraged to go start talking to people to try and trigger a side quest and figure out, but then I was discouraged because no one had anything to say. Hey, guess what? You know how they all have that gift button?

You know how there's an NPC log in your tutorial? That's because different NPCs have labeled as different traits, and if you give them a bunch of gifts multiple days in a row, they'll give you a book on pawn specialization. That's what most of those NPCs do. So when you meet an NPC that has no character or no drama, but you're like, I like the look at this pawn, maybe you give them flowers for four or five five days and then maybe they'll give you a present or give you an escort quest. I swear to God. Yeah. So what I've been trained to do is just ignore everyone that is not a shop in an obvious way until they come to me or until something happens because a colossal waste of time talking

to as many people as I could. I'll give you the tip. Are you ready for the tip? Here's how you can tell if somebody has a side quest. One, they walk up to you and they talk to you. That's the easy one, right? The second one is any character standing in one spot and not moving and going, Oh man! Oh! Oh, what am I going to do? That happened a couple times? But there were some people who were doing that who actually were just flavor

There were a couple people that were standing around going damn this sucks, man And they're just in a group and like they weren't any sort of trigger the other thing and boy is this unclear Every location in the game has quests that only Proc as being available based on your total travel time and game state. The game has hidden world states according to your travel distance and your progress in the main quest. So when you're in Melv, the very first time that little girl asks you for the fruit robberant, right?

Like she's there right away. And then there's that guy who's like, my brother went into the fucking forest with the wolves and all that shit. Right. But there are quests in Melv that don't show up until you've been to the capital and back to Melv. And there are quests in Melv that only show up once you've called all the monsters in that quest and the the monster calling quest, and then go back to Melv. And figuring that shit out seems impossible, at least right now. So for things like that, that's where I would feel like that's where the pawn guidance system

is supposed to be trusted, where it's like, oh, your pawn will tell you, hey, I heard a thing over here, maybe follow them towards it. You know, and I that again, I get to if you're like, we want you to rely more on your pawns and such. But overall, yeah, I guess like what what made sense to me was that that I didn't get as much in advance was the

the nature of how this is an outing based game, how you will plan for like an outing. Yeah, it's trips. Right? And like the trek to they'll be like, oh yeah, it's a stone's throw from here. And it's not. Bullshit. It is not. That cave is going to take you a goddamn minute.

And by the time you get through it and back out, it's going to be nighttime and it's going to suck. But you have an outing and you gather and you do all the things you can with that and then you have to survive your Way back and use your resources and on the way things will go wrong And then when you get back to the end you can Unload da da da da and all this shit that you got you'll make your items You'll you know do a safe loop and then plan the next one right and the concept of doing loops like that Is cool. I like that.

And again, I legitimately enjoy it. It's similar again to Darkest Dungeon, how you go out and do a run and then push it further and see what you can do. It's also similar to fucking Monster Hunter. Yes, right? And you can keep it. And yeah, those things go wrong along the way,

but this is gonna push you to do some shit that is... That's the primary objective in a way, and then of course the quests and main line and all that stuff is kind of happening behind this concept of going out into this thing uncovering some more map. The whole game is just an excuse to throw your ass into the wilderness and force you to find your way back. And furthermore, it deliberately tries to throw you off the trail by having your pawns

all tell you to go here, go there. There's actually an uncovered camp over here. There's actually a rift stone over there. And so they want you to kind of get turned around and lost. Or maybe you're taking the fucking ox carts from Melv to the capital and maybe 200 feet in a griffin attacks it and smashes the cart to pieces, and you're just gonna have to fucking walk now.

Right, right. That I definitely get the flow of now, and that's cool. But just the things that are held together with duct tape and string are just. So like, as somebody who has beaten the original game like five times, there's parts that you can tell are like, man, I'm kind of shocked you didn't put more work into this, even after you said you were. But most of it, and I really mean most of it, was for Dragon's Dogma 1, Itsuno went, I want to make a game for

freaks. And 12 years later went, I want this game to still be for freaks, but more. Like this feels like the same kind of Eastern Ukrainian stalker energy being put into a Capcom game. And I guess I'm just like, all of that for freaks aspect to it can still be in there with more polish that makes things like, you know, not polish in the sense of make it easy

so the plague doesn't actually have a commitment. No, I wish the frame rate was higher. That's what I've, they need to have a better frame rate. That's what they need. Yeah, the, you know, like again, the pawn death without knowing what happened and the, talking to the guild master and then Wooly's gone and then it's like wait, cancel, talk to him again,

Wooly spawned back. So I made a, overall just, things are, ugh. Yeah, I called it, Dragon's Dogma's my favorite seven out of 10 game ever. And Dragon's Dogma 2 in my preview I said it feels like it's just great, it's finished, it's done. And I've spent a lot more time with it. I feel like I should have done that to's like, it's kind of the way that I describe Witcher 1 in which it is a fucking fucked up game for crazy people. A lot of

the things that people look at for this game are like why does it do it like that? Like why does this game act this way? That's so awful. And I'm just sitting there going, yeah, yeah, that's terrible. I love it. Like I can't get enough. Like I can't, I can't get enough of this game's weird jank. Okay, yeah. There's some of it is, some of it works and is very justifiable to the design and some of it I feel is like, come on, you could've. You could've. And I guess too, when I think of like a game like, the DMC5 is wild as the other, it's, you could've. And I guess too, when I think of a game like,

DMC5 is wild as the other, cause it's like that thing is- DMC5 is smooth. It is the most polished thing ever, and that game could look and feel janky and shitty, but if the combat played the same way, we would still love it, and get that level of enjoyment out of it regardless. But this and the nature of this being such a wide open large sort of setting and I guess it's just

like I guess it's just like I don't know how the size of the game towns and NPCs and all that stuff compares with like The previous game and such but oh, it's like five ten times bigger. It's so much bigger. It's crazy Okay, I've already explored in your current playthrough Approximately the amount of space the Dragon's Dogma one had in totality Like I'm not even joking like wow, genuinely, OK, holy shit. Because I guess I'm just thinking of like the kind of the kind of glow up you expect of a franchise like when it comes

out like yeah more than a decade later and such is usually like one where you take the core of those things that were the best and you hold on to those things. Yeah. So they said hey listen, listen, you remember, you remember in Dragon's Dogma? Okay, so I'll tell you right now, there's a quest in Dragon's Dogma one that the entirety of Dragon's Dogma two is based off of. To the point where the starting location of DD2 is the end point of that quest in Dragon's Dogma 1. In Dragon's Dogma 1 There is a quest where you had to chase a griffon all the way to what was called the Blue Moon Tower That is nearly a one-for-one recreation of the excavation site in DD2

Right, okay So you would leave this the capital and you would go north and you would fight a bunch of wolves and you fight a bunch of goblins then you would see a healing spring and then you'd fight some harpies and then you would go through a valley and in that valley there'd be a lot of wind and your character's weight and height would affect the amount of wind and then you would push into the valley in which you would get into a desert area which is the second area in Dragon's Dogma 2 and in that desert area you would fight a big golem which is the second area in Dragon's Dogma 2, and in that desert

area you would fight a big golem, which is a big set piece moment in Dragon's Dogma 2, and then you would push through that desert and you would be barely scraping by and then you would see the gigantic Blue Moon Tower and then at the top of Blue Moon Tower you had to fight the griffon. And then after doing that, they said, now go back. Go the whole fucking way back. Oh, geez. Yeah. OK. Right. And that quest takes an hour. So for

Dragon's Dogma 2 when you go to the capital, how long does it take to walk to the capital? It takes about an hour and you get your ass kicked the whole way there and every single outing feels like it is based off of that very specific quest because that was the highest high of that game. I said let's just make the whole game like that. That's my gut. I need to go. I'll be right back if you'll excuse me. Alright so... Dragon's Dog is a game in which you don't you didn't bring an archer with you and so you're like all these fucking Harpies are unbelievable. They're kicking my ass

and they'll know they picked me up and they threw me off a cliff and I barely survived but my pawn caught me and then oh no we got to turn around but this nighttime is get caught by Griffin at night I don't know where the Griffin is so you'd like the Griffin on fire But then the Griffin stops being on Friday, and then you're on top of the Griffin Griffin flies away You don't know where the fuck it's going so you smash it in the head until it falls Then it breaks your fall and you get a little bit of experience and you go back to home You're like oh my god. That was crazy you put all your shit away go to sleep wake up Your pawn is killed every NPC in the entire city

You don't know how to solve it and then some players are telling you maybe there is a way to solve it maybe there's a special item you can get later in the game it's a big secret you could be able to solve it but you don't know how to get it and then you go to try and get that item and then you fuck it up and you're just gonna have to live with it because the auto save happened and your last in fucking thing was four hours ago and you're not gonna redo that shit and you get out there and you're so frustrated but then you get back to town and you get the final thief ability which looks really cool and plays like a good action

game and you are actually Dragon's Dogma 2 is a game where you sit down to cook and you go holy shit that's the best-looking meat I've ever seen in my life that's meat.mp4! You almost got me. You son of a bitch. You fucking, you played a video of meat and you tried to make me think you had a good, how dare you?

This is just a video. It's fucking just a goddamn MP4. Yeah, that is, that's what that game is. And you know, in a world of fucking the FF dishes and vanilla ware and Ghibli and the bread in Yakuza, I'm like, oh my God, are they throwing down the gauntlet? They're not throwing down the gauntlet. They've admitted defeat on day one. So they did an interview with that. I heard.

That showed up and they were like, We gotta spend the money modeling it or we could have eaten it. So we cooked it up and then we ate it. Yeah, we want to eat the meat actually. Yeah. Anyway, so. Yeah, that's a fucking interesting, that's an interesting one.

I, yeah, I'm gonna keep poking it with a stick and see what happens. I wanna see what's going on. That's kinda a lot of that dogma, is you poke it with a stick and it does like a weird thing and you're like, ew. But then you poke it again and you're like, mm, mm, maybe?

I don't, ew. And then you do that enough times and you're like, yeah, that's gross. Yeah, and I might, again, class switching was, again, a very expensive mistake, but as soon as I'm abundant in cash, I might fuck around. Okay, so on the other side of things, like on the complete inverse, the least- The complete opposite end of that spectrum.

The least convoluted thing ever. Helldivers 2. It's simple. You go, you shoot, the mission is done. That's it. Those bugs hate democracy. So I saw a lot of people joking about that, but then like the official Helldivers page put up, they're putting up little things like, hey, here's some information about the Brood Commander. And the Brood Commander's description is that it's is strong and tough and fast and is absolutely determined to destroy the right to vote. Oh, fuck, that's incredible.

That's really good. And you're voting for your preferred choice. But it's it's it's these are your democracy preferences. This is not your actual democracy. It's different. And I went back into Messaround and queuing up with other people who are also new. Just everyone kind of wandering about trying to figure out what the objectives are, where they are, and how they work makes- It's really funny how hard some of the basic objectives are. It's unclear. Some of the stuff that's unclear will, I can tell, eventually become clear because you're like, I know what the asset looks like. I know what the asset looks like I know what that tower is

I know what that satellite is and I know it's gonna be looking in a different direction But ultimately it's the same minigame that I have to do once I get to this type of objective, right? You just you're gonna internalize that at a certain point But until you do when you're like, what does it mean? Where do I turn the the vat? What valve dish? Yeah, there's a beep beep for the range of the Okay, the beep beep, okay, get the, yeah. So Meanwhile, you're being attacked by bugs and robots

while you're trying to figure out this little mini Yes, and so like some of those, like we're just me and like a couple other people that are like, yeah, like anyway, as we're all learning it, you're just like, that mission takes a lot longer because people are, there's a, as we're all learning it, that mission takes a lot longer because we're all smashing our heads into different things, going is this what the objective wants?

And then eventually one of those things goes, da da da da, yeah, you did it. We, oh, fuck yeah. What the hell's a sample? What is that for? And I guess the other, and then the other bit too is like getting used to like, yeah, things like the treasure trove door that you can explode,

the different types of waves, the different types of traps and stuff like that. But it's, other than just, yeah, getting used to the swing of what's there. Fucking that can absolutely be a second monitor game. Oh yeah. If you like, I prefer my second monitor game to be turn based in general. You know, because there's a level of it where there's if I'm playing

something that is like live online and can't be paused and then like punch mom walks up to like to talk about something and is like, oh, this is live or whatever. And I go, I can't pause. Give me five minutes. That that that's usually not the type of second monitor game I'm looking for. Yeah, no, that's not going to happen. Hey, can I sit here for five minutes? You can die! If you don't move for five minutes. Also, of course, the other part of

the ropes is people not knowing the redeploy system yet or at all really, and just like oh, I'm never going to get spawneded back in I'm just going to have to oh Weird I haven't run into that myself like there were there was a couple games like where people just like I'm Not even looking at the concept at the thing that says you're dead, and I have to bring you back

I'm just gonna you just that's awful if you wait long enough It'll eventually respawn you but like boy Not every teammate is gonna even bother Mm-hmm. Well, that sucks. So it takes you it takes you a long time to get back in sometimes and that's a fucking flowkiller You see Joel's hopping into people's games and dropping them a PC's now. No, is that going down? Yeah Yeah, he's just like, before every feature shows up, it just appears at random. This past one, somebody was recording their screen

and Joel was like, hey guys, have fun. I gotta go back to work, here's a truck. Nice. Yeah, yeah, I mean, not much to say beyond, it's super basic and simple. Yeah I guess there's no, are the missions like just like kind of randomly generated like every time one gets? Yeah more or less.

Each difficulty has a variety of types of missions okay cuz like you know EDF obviously had like its progression and then there was the big boss levels that were a specific type of crazy challenge but each each planet tends to have one map it's just gigantic and they rotate it and you know but there's no big like bosses or anything like that oh yeah there is when you get the mission destroy a biotech oh okay okay or you or you play on higher harder difficulties you'll see you'll see some shit okay okay and we got the robots now we're getting the trucks soon. And the bugs are on a really intense offensive.

And people are finding what's called hive lord skeletons, which are basically dune sand worms. Oh shit. So those are probably coming within 20 days. Okay. Yeah, is there anything together when you're grabbing all those little lore pieces from all the tractors and stuff? It's the samples. The samples are what matter.

Okay. The samples are meta progression. But is there interesting lore on the tablets that are being found? Oh, there's a couple. I think the most interesting piece of lore in the entire game is when you get the mission Terminate Illegal Broadcasts on Bloodlands. I did see that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get down there and stop, shut down the broadcast. You gotta shut that broadcast down. Don't look at it though. Don't look at the broadcast. Yeah, but yeah, it's just it's just this fucking feel good like dead by daylight left for dead just Get get the gang together and go shoot some bugs or shoot some robots Don't think just shoot. It's like hey. Do you play mgs5 because the devs of hell divers clearly did

like, hey, did you play MGS5? Because the devs of Helldivers clearly did. Did you notice that the controls are exactly the same? Diving to the floor and crawling around is the most MGS thing ever. Yeah, in a way that other games are. And when you're on the ground and you aim, your character rolls around. Rolls around. Yes, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the only other thing. Yeah, people did comparisons where your movement, your crouch, the height of your crouch the dive They're all pretty much just ripped right out of MGS 5 It's crazy though because the game would be so different if that double tap resulted in a roll But it's just not that game

Yeah, yeah That helldiver is pretty good pretty. Also, me and Paige tested it. It works pretty well on Steam Deck also. Oh yeah? Okay. Paige was, because Paige gets nap-trapped, so like, she'll like feed the baby and the baby falls asleep and then the baby's asleep on her. And so she's just like, well, I'm stuck here.

So we wanted to see if we could get Helldivers working on the Steam Deck. And it does, and it works well. So while Tiny Little Pat Jr. is having his honkshoo meemee mees, Paige can be out there killing the bugs to our hearts content. Though goddamn is the battery life on the Steam Deck fucking awful like holy shit it's like an hour yeah well your other portable hell diver solution is to get the PlayStation what's it fuck the PlayStation what whatever fucking with Wi-Fi to chain like device yeah remember that thing came out I remember it sold out man like that like people want it and I'm looking at it I'm like I don't get it I just don't get it I guess it's not for me I guess it's just not for Pat yeah Yeah, hey I I beat half-life to

Congratulations, yeah so that was a An abrupt and as I but I've been I've been pretty much told to expect how abrupt that ending is gonna be The Just straight up like and thank you for your service just straight up like and thank you for your service G man pause then out you go like that's just how it go man so go I love that they they iterated on a question that you didn't know you were asking the whole game which is like man wonder what it would feel like if the gravity gun could pick up enemies yeah yeah it would feel awesome that's pretty cool that's a it's yeah

it's quite clear that you're like oh no there goes everything you don't need everything you just need this yeah that's cool it there so obviously the my own personal stomach issues and then Reggie's as well like aside was it at Reggie too I didn't know aside. Was it Reggie too? I didn't know that. Oh, absolutely. Oh my God. Even worse in fact.

Terrible. Yeah. Like during, I mean he actually got sick during like some of the, during like the car part and stuff. Like we had to fucking sit down and really talk about whether or not we're going to keep playing this thing. And... G buckets?

Is that where it's at? During one of the roadster episodes? Yes. You know, man, that's that's rough. But yes. And no, it's not about the TV size. It's not about this or that or the Oh, no, certain types of games, Old games, particularly, this is a known thing and this game has, yeah, basically the worst motion sickness feeling I've had since Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Does FOV factor in with it? It can, but then FOV can make it better on foot,

but makes it worse in vehicles. So the slidiness of how the camera's turning will make it worse as well. Getting into hallways will make it worse in vehicles. So the slidiness of how the cameras turning will make it worse as well. Getting into hallways will make it worse, which is why the finale area was brutal because you get into the lift. The Senadels all weird vertical vertical vertical. And that was just a like I have to walk slow and turn very slowly to just not fucking get overwhelmed by that and I That's all I can describe as it as it's just the the longer and more vertical things are the worst that feeling gets But either but no that the the progression is pretty cool and

But no, the progression is pretty cool and yeah, they had as much fun with their physics and systems and all that shit as the player is going to have seeing it for the first time, you know, squads and so on. Some of those designs that towards the end were a bit fucking weird we're like after a after training you on lasers equal explosive proxy mines don't touch them now it's like now it's like no no no do touch these lasers so that you can trigger the turret and grenade it and it's like that's not what you've been training me to do but okay you know. And yeah, the the overall flow of things to I guess, for me, because my comparison point is not necessarily the original Half Life, but it is is Black Mesa.

I enjoyed Black Mesa more. The I know that it's smoothed over. So wait, are you saying you prefer Black Mesa compared to Half-Life 2 or you prefer Black Mesa compared to original Half-Life? To Half-Life 2. Okay. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. And again, understandably it is newer and all that, but even imagining- Oh, I prefer Half-Life 1 to Half-Life 2. Okay, so that's what I was gonna say, is I think even if I took away

the things that smoothed out Black Mesa and just put them into a jankier system, I would still point to the pacing, the road trip, the vehicle. A lot of how the pacing goes in Half-Life 1, I think I liked better than Half-Life 2 so I played both of these games within six months of their release And I remember those very vividly so I can not not not black mace. I mean Half-Life 1 right I played Half-Life 1 in 1998 right and I played the Half-Life 2 in 2004

So it's not like I was playing them like way out of date the Half-Life 2 in 2004. So it's not like I was playing them like way out of date. Even at the time of its release with Half-Life 2 when there was like, check out these physics, whoa, I'm driving, it felt very much like them showing off. And it was super cool. It was super cool that they were showing off and all this tech shit was happening. But Half-life one instead had like Okay, so the military is gonna attack you and it's gonna be the most intense attack by any force that has ever been in any game ever to date and It's more intense in half-life one than it is in half-life two

Yeah, that tank man that fucking tank fight is crazy. It stands out There's one exception which is Raven home Which is like, holy shit. That's a really good sequence. That's a great level but Yeah, then things kind of came together in a way that some of the progression so I had a couple bugs where like that some of the progression, so I had a couple bugs where like the dog is supposed to come and like lift up a thing and create a progression point

and he dog just never showed up, so like Barney and dudes are just talking to themselves in a one-sided, you know, weird thing. You are just emitting some kind of fucking feed. Oh yeah, I am, but at the same time, old Jank is fucking old Jank. I literally just walked forward in the game and that's what happened. I am, but at the same time, old Jank is fucking old Jank. I literally just walked forward in the game

and that's what happened. But then a couple of moments of like, okay, wait, where to go next? And it's like, this is just age, of course, but it's like that place that you looked at actually, and while you were fighting an explosion opened up that changed the thing to a progression point, but You were being zapped from fucking stalkers and striders and missiles in there

So yeah, that was way over there and that like oh, yeah, you're kind of like oh if that was a dead end a minute ago This is the as somebody in the chat correctly points out. Oh, it's solidus solidus points out in the chat This is prior to the yellow paint epidemic But half-life 2 has I don't know if you've ever played portals a commentary track Oh, yeah, I remember the commentary and so half-life 2 has a commentary track and I think it starts at episode I think they started with episode 1 and in it And I think it starts at episode. I think they started it with episode one and In it You just get to see them go over like individual rooms and just the level of iterative

Attempts at the room because they're like we cannot figure out how to get people to look at this fucking thing like and that's when you started to see them describe rain, and rain falling down from heights gets people to look up, and the light source shit, and arrows and paint on the walls. And it's like, even though this is like, you're listening to them describe it, by today's standards, it's still like fairly primitive in terms of guiding your eye.

Half-Life 1 didn't have to guide your eye because that game's a hallway. Yeah, you just you crawl through a vent and then you get to the next room and then you crawl out the sewer and you come outside. That game's a hallway with rooms. Half-Life 1's map looks like a Devil May Cry level. Yeah, no, the amount of times I ran in big large loops during an action sequence increased drastically in the last third of that game. From the rooftop where you're fighting all the Striders to looking at where the next point is.

I was like, oh, am I supposed to drop off to one of these approach points to this building? It's like, no, you kind of tightrope walk along some struts to jump over a wall to get to the next progression point but like you're initially looking at this whole plaza from like a top view and you're kind of wondering which side leads to progress and it's unclear. The actual walker fight with Strider fight where like I'm like oh fuck okay, okay, it takes about five missiles. Looking for a source of missiles. I got some but not enough and had a save that was like, am I fucked? And it's like, no, okay, there was actually an under area.

There's usually a box that will just give missile. Yeah. But it was kind of out of the way and had to anyway like I eventually kind of found that there would well, you know, certainly with Reggie's help as well we were able to Like not bar for a way through to finding where that was and There was like one or two other moments of like

Forward is not clear right now but all things considered still yeah still super fun and like I I did like when once I and there was a definitely a feeling of like oh you got all your guns once you get to that like I guess the rebar crossbow kind of feeling it's like okay you're done getting weapons now and I fucking hate that thing. I made good use of it. Yeah, no, me too, but I hate that it's firing like a carbon rod. Like, ugh. But it's, I think that's cool because it's just a resource-like practical thing.

Like walking around to find arrows would be wild whereas rebar is everywhere. So find a way to use what you can. You know it's kind of like um it's like fucking using um it's like Mass Effect right where the original shavings were then used as ammo and then finding ways to just use ammo wherever you can for practical purposes I think that's awesome. I love it. Yeah it's like coming across arrows would be so much rarer That actually reminds me of did you ever play infamous second son? No, so infamous second son has a villain that has a power right and everybody has like elemental powers like smoke or fire

Neon or ice or whatever the fuck And they just explain like okay, so one person has a specific power that has now become the template for all anti-power law enforcement forces, and it's a lady who has the power of concrete because the power of concrete in an urban area is fucking completely unstoppable and there's fucking concrete everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can't get away from it. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can't get away from it. Okay.

Yeah, in this context I think it works. And plus you also like, it's the closest thing you're getting to a sniper rifle, but you have so little unlimited ammo for it. But then what also works as a sniper rifle is the fucking six shooter and the zoom button. Oh, the revolver is just. Right, you take the revolver, you zoom in, zoom back out, and then hit scan and it works.

That's so sick. That's really satisfying every time. But yeah, so that was cool. And the feeling of, okay, well, if you'd like to know more about where we're going from here, please play episode one and episode two and then Alex and it's like, and then if you want to know more about that die. Yes, that after which point you can then become a skeleton. But before, before that occurs, you're going to have to see if like the our stomachs can even really handle it. So I do

know there's more to unlock there, but I also know that it's behind literal, like making us feel sick pain. And we've toughed through this, but it was rough. I feel bad because like there's something really, there's something really funny about did Half-Life 1 or Black Mesa give you this level of motion sickness? So original Half-Life 1 I don't, I couldn't tell you because I only played a bit of that back in the day. Sure, but did Half-Life 1, sorry, Black Mesa make you sick?

Not as much. It did, it did, but not as much. So what we're seeing, I remember the the sequences and in In episode one and two is that every game in the Half-Life series is going to make you feel sicker than the last one Because we're heading up to Alex because that because like To has like lots of like very intense driving sequences. Yeah. And Alex is the V is this shit, but in the VR and like, even if you have the helmet on and you're doing fine,

Reggie watching somebody else in VR in second person, like that makes me feel sick. There you go. Yeah. And all of this is like with the caveat that I play Titanfall and have no problem. A lot of modern shooters have like, Oh, there's a lot of specifics to thisfall and have no problem. A lot of modern shooters have like-

Oh, there's a lot of specifics to this kind of thing. Yeah, a lot of modern shooters have figured it out and solved a lot of these problems. So yeah, anyway, it's all there. And the other thing too, as well, is kind of like, it's going to be, I guess, in both cases, I have to kind of remember that my thoughts on the amount of story advancement or discussion that'll come is extremely minimal. Expect you're just going to be running and gunning and you might get like 10 minutes of plot tops. The Half Life 2, sorry, the Half Life storyline is interesting in that it is the whole storyline is what

did Gordon see with his own eyes during the events of the game. Mm-hmm. And most of that is he traveled somewhere and shot some dudes. So the thing that is pulling my curiosity at this point primarily is not the design of FPS combat or usage of weapons or physics or any of that. It's literally what the fuck is G-Man? That's the thing, right? And I know that's not the main thing that would have pushed me forward at the time when it was about the novelty of the mechanics. But for my point of view at this point, it's kind of like, I want to know. I want to know. I'm super curious about that aspect of the setting.

Hey, you know what, Woolly? You know what, Woolly? I agree with you. Yeah. I would also love to know what the deal with G-Man is is I think that would be a fun thing to know yeah If you're telling me to forget about that then it's like well. That's what I care about so I'm No, not you not you to anyone that's telling me. Yeah, does that doesn't matter you shouldn't care about that. It's like well I do so You know but uh anyway, I'll tell you he's fucking weird Yeah, I'm telling you absolutely and I certainly I have my I have my I have my theories about what he feels like

But like yeah little little fun moments about like you seeing like him turn to you in one and then like pulling the blinds Down and shit like that's great. That's fun. That's like. Oh, what more of this? What the fuck is, what are we doing here? And then of course the, yeah, the background with Zen and the Vortigaunts and all that with the Combine is, it's fun to learn about as well. Now we've got Mossman. Did I get, is it, yeah, it's Mossman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's Mossman.

And Alex and Hedy and Lamar, Hedy Lamar, you know? Is it yeah, it's Mossman yeah, yeah, and Alex and Hedy Lamar, you know and all that But yeah, we'll see when we when we come back to this Yeah, you're probably gonna get more out of somebody in the chat says G man. Do you mean mr. Skibbity toilet skibbity toilet? Yeah, you probably you're you're probably better off just watching skibbity toilet for more information on G-Man than you are playing the Half-Life games. There's more there. It releases more consistently.

It might fry your brain though. Or go watch Freeman's Mind. Go start that out. Okay. I heard good things. All right. Just, yeah, so other quick things this week. One, watch the first episode of X-Men 97. No notes. It's fucking great.

I loved it. It's great. I have some notes. Okay, they're not negative notes, but there are some notes Someone working on that fucking show said It was wearing his Cyclops was right shirt and Was like I'm so sick of this fucking anti Scott Summers bullshit I'm going to do I'm going to fight and scream and tantrum my way in every storyboard meeting until Cyclops gets to do the coolest thing yeah every single scene well no no no he gets to do really cool things

But does this Marvel versus Capcom super? He does he does Optic blast and then he does a really cool thing, but no I'm gonna say that storm stands Get their day or their day because yeah, it cuts to a fucking Storm subitemboement. Like there might as well have been 69 bars at that. Storm gets a full fucking fight over, you know? I'm gonna say that yeah, it's fucking great

because it's just, it's the old X-Men show with a hyper-aware fan service dial that has been increased. It's so strange. So it's before I continue to say anything, it's stellar. Oh my goodness, it's fantastic. But it's also super weird because it made me start to doubt my own memories of what the original show looked and felt like.

Yeah. Because the color, not the animation, but the coloring, the design and the voices. It's like it fell out of a fucking portal. It's like it time traveled to me and watching like, wow. And like, I don't remember it looking like this. And then I'm remembering the last time you and I watched the original X-Men where we saw that like the animation cells for the mansion were synced up on top of each other and that show looks like

It is way better looking like it is yeah, you're getting exactly you're getting the color and the voice acting in the music But no and the action scenes as well the fucking gambit charge claw double tech the fucking gambit charge claw double tech, the moments of the, everything about the combat and then everything about the way they're dressing, right? The basketball court outfits, fanservice. They're super aware. And it's like, oh man, it's like 1997. I remember that shit. Shit was great in 97.

I remember thinking in 1998 and seeing the fashion of the time and going man it's so weird how stuff from the 90s doesn't look old and weird like stuff from the 80s does like I remember saying that out loud with my mouth and then Jubilee stands there yeah no it is it is what is cool as well as the fact that it's like literally from the finale of the last of the original show in 96 straight into this one. Yeah, that's a fucking, it's great. Like I said, no notes. It's also, it's really interesting because they got everybody back except for Cyclops's

actor who I believe is dead. Okay So he's not coming back, but everybody's obviously there right and You're listening like gambit or you're listening to rogue or you're listening to Wolverine. You're like that is Absolutely the exact same person But they are obviously very old now Wolverine for sure Wolverines is the most, yeah And then Gene walks out and your lifetime stops for Jennifer Hale She's crazy Not a day has gone by

Incredible yeah yeah that's a professional that just has found a way to Jennifer Hale is out every time everywhere Man crazy. I mean I like you have to Like I'm sure like everything that she drinks everything that there must be just a routine You know for like throat preservation. Yeah, alternatively, sometimes you run into people and you say, hey, what do you do? And they like there's, um, oh, fuck, I forget the name of it. There was like a 31 year old cat that was

interviewed something like in the deep south. Like, hey, what do you wow, he's so old. What you know, what's his? How do you keep him young? And his owner who's like an old man's like he likes to drink shower water What the fuck and it's like it's like yeah sometimes People just don't age Sometimes people just live forever Like have you seen have you seen the world's oldest dog? You expect a really tiny chihuahua or something? No, it's like a big fat Labrador piece of shit that looks like it's going

to die any second, and apparently it's looked like that for fifteen years! Some people are built different. I bet Jen Hale is just built different. I bet Jen Hale is just built different. What do you do to safeguard your voice, Jen? I don't know. I mean, you hear that I've heard like, like R&B singers like that would be like, oh, you got to drink like mixtures of honey and certain kinds of like things for before before show routines to do big sing stuff but

it's definitely better than what Hader was doing when he was doing yeah yeah it's like I'm gonna take shot of whiskey between each take and it's like you should not do that that's awful to do David so yeah that was really good and speaking you should watch that second episode as fast as you possibly can I'm gonna get there people are gonna talk about it they're gonna fuck you up speaking of drinking bathwater alright this is where we're going all right, okay? I watched a movie salt burn. Oh I heard about this I Highly recommend it. It's very good. It's a lot of fun

Go check that out. I'm going to Not spoil because it's a it's a fucking movie, so you know take take a minute and check it out. But uh Yeah, if you if you want of gen alpha Gen Z people's first Crazy movie. What's so crazy? Yeah It's a fun watch the yeah, you're getting a Talented mr. Ripley cross-american psycho style thing. Yeah, but um, well for starters starters what's wild about it is that it's shot in 4.3. So now that's interesting. Yeah. Deliberately shot in 4.3 to feel old but it's not, it's to feel older than it actually is. And the, something that I do like is whenever,

like you can see sometimes a movie like Knives Out for example is one where they're like, hey, we have a mansion and that mansion is gonna be a main character, right? Like we have, we're gonna shoot every corner of this giant place and do, and that's gonna be the majority of what this is about here. This is similar where it's like, there's Oxford and there's a giant mansion

and this is gonna be the main character of this kind of story. While you're following just a bunch of assholes and the fish out of water in the upper crust story, steeped in a brine, if that's the way. and the fish out of water in the upper crust story, steeped in a brine, if that's the way, yeah, just cooked in the sauce of bisexual evil. If you wanna just deep fry it in that for a minute. There's something, like, so I haven't seen that movie,

but the most interesting thing to me about its release was it created a fucking reviled trend that like like went up in a flash and burned out immediately Where the film has a sequence of running through the halls to music has a sequence of running through the halls to music that a lot of people really like, and it led to this very short TikTok trend where a bunch of rich people in their mansions started to reenact the scene and going, look how big my house is! And people just going fucking die you fucking asshole Yeah, yeah, there's a little bit of a point to be missed Jesus Christ And considering the context if you actually

The context of the film is like really If you know what the actual movie is about that's fucking crazy and hilarious actually if you know what the actual movie is about, that's fucking crazy and hilarious actually, if you know what it is, yeah, that's really good. God damn, of course they did that. Of course they did that. It's like, it's like, it's like they're agreeing with the movie in a way they don't understand. But either way though, it's a fun one for sure. Saltburns is worth it, that's the name of the vid, but either way though. It's a it's a it's a fun one for sure saltburns is worth it

That's the name of the bit go check that out and Yeah, enjoy the The yeah evil sexual there you go enjoy there. Yeah that Dio shit You know I don't care what it is if it's gonna further my ambitions. I'm gonna fuck it I don't care What if it doesn gonna further my ambitions, I'm gonna fuck it. I don't care What if it doesn't further your ambitions, okay, but it might feel really good though. Yeah, there you go. Yeah That's pretty much me

This week coming back with Some of that yakakuza Zero, we will surely defeat the Cabaret Club Gaiden. Surely. I don't know if- Where are you at in the Cabaret Club? I mean we're working our way through what the, which one was it? The Old Man, the Old Man.

Okay. So I don't remember any of the specifics. Oh the second to last of the five stars, okay? Yeah, yeah You're getting there. You'll you'll get there one day. Oh my god. It's so big and long, but it's so fun It's it's like I remember doing that and doing like the first batch And they're like and then you'll have to defeat the four queens of the camera whatever the fuck it was and just being like oh Jesus Lord It helps you to have a little map of like where the business are to go talk to and everything Gotta go watch porn to to unlock the maximum business potential. It's really important if you're gonna have a

to unlock the maximum business potential. It's really important if you're gonna have a business about having girls talk to sad boys that you go watch some pornography in order to really get in the mindset. But yeah, and then there's of course, that's all with the actual main side stories and then the main story too in terms of priority. So, coming back around to it. And, yeah.

Zero, I had a really bad time in terms of like doing all that shit and then getting back to the main story and be like, what? What's happening? What is even going the fuck on? Yeah. It was probably the worst ever. Yeah, and some other fun stuff coming your way this week.

So check it out. Schedule is gonna be posted on woolywools on Twitter. And yeah, that's wooly versus on YouTube and Twitch. The empty lot, man. What's going on? Dragostogma is a prize. Was that everything? It easily can be.

But that game is as long as you want it to be, clearly. I'm playing the game off camera and recording my footage in case cool shit happens. Yeah, I remember that. I remember that. That's me playing Elden Ring off camera and just being like, oh man, record that. Fair. I'm fair. I can't stop playing Dragzomb. off-camera and just being like, oh man record that! Fair. I can't stop playing Dragzomb. It's my favorite thing ever was. I played the Sand Land demo. That was a sponsored stream. The Sand Land demo is cool and it looks good but it's very basic. It is very much just like, hey do

you want to figure out how Sand Land controls and moves? What genre is it? That is a vehicular combat adventure game. Okay. It's a very short demo. It is a very short demo that I was very surprised that I played for exactly two hours It's very very short demo a car PG yeah, yeah, maybe It seems very promising but the yeah the demo like

It's one of those things where you would like ride around in your tank or your or your bike that are obviously Toriyama as fuck like the bike is just Bulma's bike And you're you know fighting things in the desert and you know They all have levels, but they don't drop any gear and you don't get any experience because it's a demo And it's just like hey, do you want to know how the game feels? Someone says mid max is that? Okay, all right gotcha gotcha gotcha I would wait for impressions on the full release because that demo is so limited

Though I was very confused when I'm like hey how old sand it's Sanlan I hear there's an anime coming out and people are like 20 years old and it's only a single volume I hear there's an anime coming out and people are like 20 years old and it's only a single volume Yeah, and like I just literally never heard of it even once prior to the anime getting announced back during my Anime Club days. I remember the big holy shit. Toriyama's putting out another one And he's not it's not dr. Slump what and and then it was Little kid that's basically Dabura's son it's not apparently the king of devils it's Dabura it's Dabura it's not but it's Dabura like we're not what the fuck like shut up fuck you

Dabura needed needed more time he didn't get his his moment he didn't get his moment in Dragon Ball I mean fuck it man Goku and Piccolo learning how to drive a car are like more... Yeah, that's great. We can spend time with that. I'm trying to think. I watched that X-Men. Yeah, I watched that X-Men. I played that Dragon's Dogma.

I played that Helldivers. Oh, so fucking Morph getting in there now? Right? I don't remember Morph coming back to life. No! This one's for you, Morph! And that's it! And that's it!

And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it!

And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! And that's it! He did come back? People are saying he came back in the last couple of episodes. I didn't know Morph was back, because yeah, how spotty that final season was to watch for us. Oh, that's why-

Mr. Sinister, true, true, true, Mr. Sinister, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. But Morph being there also just like adds a lot of like bits and like, oh, he's gonna turn into the blob for a second. Oh, there's Archangel You know like he that adds a little bit of a cameo factor. There's a morph morph is like Ridiculous in this new version because he's gaining the physical properties of the people see he's turning into yeah Like in the first episode he turns into Archangel and can fly. He flies,

yeah. And like later on in the second episode he turns into Colossus and bullets bounce off his skin. Okay. And it's like wait, what? Okay. What? He comes back at the start of season two everyone says. So does he just hang, is he just off camera for a whole lot of that show then? Cause I don't really remember him Being a part of the team doing shit for a little for most of the stuff. I watched I Don't remember more. I remember more of getting fucking shot and dying and that's it And that's it. That's all I remember about more. I remember what this one's for you more. Yeah And that's the end of it. That's all I remember about more. I remember what this one's for you more. Yeah And that's the end of it. Yeah

cool Yeah, that's pretty much it I want to see more dragons dogma to go to Twitch.tv slash Pat stairs at and mean Paige are gonna be playing hell divers on Friday. Whoo hell dives All right, let's get a quick break and we'll be right back. I gotta pee All right quick word for my sponsors. I love our sponsors This week castle super beast is sponsored by Shopify Cha-ching is the sound of a sail when you use Shopify. And that is the all-in-one commerce platform that's going to help you with every stage

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in. Shopify.com slash Superbeast now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in shopify.com slash superbeast. Thanks Shopify. Thank you Shopify. Okay. So yeah, just right off the top, not much to it. EA is cutting 5% of their workforce, you know, the usual. Oh yeah.

This particular reveal was discovered in a note to staff where they were talking about how they're moving away from the development of future licensed IP as they do not believe it'll be successful to our changing industry. And then they listed their publisher, the publisher headcount at 13,400, which was shy 670 people from the last time they gave out a headcount. So there you go.

I would like to quote someone as response to this. Are you familiar with Sven, the CEO over at Larian? He's the man who wore the armor. Tweets out some shit sometimes. Yeah, so the Baldur's Gate won everything at GDC, because of course they did, right? And he had a little speech about layoffs. Yes, we talked about that. Yep. Oh, we talked about that? That was the 21st. We talked about his speech where he spoke about like their, yeah, no, we talked about his speech

and how in response to all the layoffs and stuff, he was just like, yeah, we're not, we're independent. And although they're like 40 or 50 or so there's a percentage of them that is that is significantly owned by I think it was oh I think I was pushing like parts of my brain out wait it was a different speech at a different event where are you talking about the GDC acceptance speech about greed are you talking about a different or talking about the Game Awards speech okay let me I'm talking about the different- or talking about the Game Awards speech? Uhhhh, okay, let me-

Because I'm talking about the one that happened on Thursday. Okay, uh, then no, that's not what I'm talking about. Oh man, I thought I was losing my fucking mind! Anyway, okay, so, Sven Vink- I probably said that wrong- went up to accept his GDC award and said that greed has been fucking the whole thing up for so long since I started while collecting GDC a best narrative. I've been fighting publishers my entire life and I keep seeing the same same mistakes over and over and over. It's always quarterly profits.

The only thing that matters is the numbers and then you fire everybody and next year you say shit I'm out of. And then you hire people again. Then you do acquisitions and you put them in the same loop again. It's just broken. He goes on and on to say, slow down the greed, be resilient, take care of people. Don't lose the institutional knowledge that's been built up in the people you lose every single time so you don't have to go through the same cycle over and over and over. It really pisses me off. I remember when Elden Ring came out, there was a very strange take on people going like this is the fucking greatest game ever made and I saw people going

It's not fair to compliment them for how good Elden Ring is because they've just made the same game five times in a row And it's like yeah, they got really good at making this kind of game. Hey, man Words words words blah blah blah. That's all cool and all, but you know what? Counterpoint, infinite growth. Oh, infinite growth! Now what? Now what? Infinite growth though.

Dude, like, there it. In infinite wealth, infinite wealth is like, like one of the themes of the game is inflation is out of control Okay, and there is a scene early on in the game in which people in Hawaii are explaining to Ichiban How fucked up rent in Hawaii is? And how it's out of control and then they pop some numbers and like the numbers aren't that far off from what they are right now So they kind of ballparked it and the cast just stands around going how the fuck you supposed to get a decent apartment in this place In this economy, that's crazy. The Reds nuts out here

Nah, man, we can we can we can we can weather the storm. I got a billion dollar Zimbabwe bill that says otherwise. So there's a side angle, I don't know if it's part of the news in regards to Larian and GDC In which Larian came out and announced very directly We are not working on Baldur's Gate for we are not working on DLC for Baldur's Gate 3 We are not going to work with withers Wizards of the coast again We are going to work Exclusively on our own stuff. Interesting.

Moving forward. Interesting. And if you kind of read between the lines a little bit, they, like when the game was coming out and being hot, they talked up the people at Wizards of the Coast like crazy. They were like, oh my God, every time we asked for information or documentation or support, there was always somebody right there and they always helped us out and it was amazing. And then like a week after that interview, every single person they worked with got fired. Every single one because it was viewed as like non-essential when Wizards of the Coast did their layoffs.

Funny enough, I mean that's basically the other part of the statement that the EACO made where they're like, yeah we're going to move away from working with licensed IPs as well. So same conclusion from a completely different angle. Yeah. Uh, yeah, man. You want to talk about a non layoff but budget cut nightmare that's very similar. You want to talk about Overwatch fucking too. Deciding to just axe all PvVE plans making that game completely pointless! So I forget, it's been so long that I legitimately forget, but was PVE not the entire point?

It was the reason. It was the reason. I just... like... It was the explicit And then they cut it and then they cut it and then they cut it and now it's canceled and interviews from the team basically say that the budget for overwatch 2 PvE Was getting cut was the last thing Bobby did on the way out was getting cut was the last thing Bobby did on the way out. Wow. He said, well Overwatch 2 is underperforming,

so you know the best product should get the most money. And so he slashed the budget on the PVE stuff right on the way out, which conveniently probably had something to do with his 400 shit zillion gold bonus or whatever the fuck it was. You know, the PVE getting cancelled was also the impetus for Overwatch 1. It was. There are people, there are probably a couple of dozen people that have worked on every version of Overwatch that exists on PVE

and just seeing it get cancelled for like what like two years in a row? I want to say 20 years but I might that's probably crazy like but whenever Titan started right? Like oh yeah you oh cool you worked on Overwatch and Overwatch 2 cool what part did you work on Overwatch and Overwatch 2? Cool. What part did you work on? Oh, they cancelled every single thing I ever did before it came out. You saw nothing of it.

Um, lit. Can you, can you, can your boss tell me that you worked on it? No, he's in jail. scale. So shot, PvE is cancelled, and I guess chaser, all characters are now free. All crazy? What? Just like Overwatch 1? So what's the difference? Now it's a five person game instead of a six person game?

Now you don't spend the currency to... You know what? I'm not sure. I'm not even going to pretend I can... What is the difference between Overwatch 1 and Overwatch 2 right now? There's like what? Three new characters? Like...

Well, one of the stages is evening instead of daytime. You know, I said this like, so by the way, it's the 10th anniversary of the three B's right now. I don't know if you're aware of that. Oh, of that email? Of that email. Right. Yeah, coming in. Okay.

Bethesda, Bioware, and Blizzard. Always trustworthy. And I think back to what I said about Overwatch when I stopped playing it, maybe a year after it came out. I don't know, how long ago was that? Was that four years ago, five years ago, something like that? I remember saying Overwatch is the only game I've ever played in which every single patch they have ever made to that game made the game worse and made me want to play it less and

for that Cycle to continue all the way through its own sequel is so crazy So crazy Yeah, I Had some fun with overwatch when it came out. I was Yeah, I had some fun with overwatch when it came out. I was in for a minute That's the question. Did you have the most fun with the overwatch that came out? Right when it came out

Yeah, yeah, I guess I guess so Yeah, well, I see. Um, like that is a game they should just release like Overwatch classic, like just straight up just like like like like Warcraft. Holy shit. Alright, so yeah, we, we touched on the Alright, so yeah, we touched on the Yoshi-P, I'll give you one week bit. You fucking asshole. And with that, there's a trailer for the Rising Tide DLC. So yeah, the FF16 Leviathan section.

Seems like from the trailer, like they're kind of talking about the idea of a mother crystal being born from one suffering child. And that immediately makes me think of like the minority report slash the ones who walk away from OmeLass. You know, what if you could build a utopia around one child suffering forever? Right. Don't worry about it. It's fine. Just enjoy yourselves. It's just the one. It's just the one kid. Don't worry about it.

23 hours a day and 59 minutes you're having the greatest time ever and then every one you just You think about it and then you go back to having a good time hmm yeah, there's a So new Leviathan powers and shit like that. Anyway, they announced it so it's coming out April 18th or so and I wonder I wonder how much of the game you'll actually be able to use those Leviathan powers. Oh, as in going back to the main? Yeah.

Like, you're gonna get them at the end of the DLC, right? So like, what are you gonna use it on? New game plus? I guess. Also, how weird is this going to feel jumping back to it while having completed an FF7 remake in between? Very strange. That's the weirdest part of the timing.

Yeah, so anyway, there's that bit. We touched on as well the Dragon's Dogma update announcement with a 30 FPS cap. Hey! That's great. Thank you for doing that. So I don't know how close you were following the game, but when the game was like six months ago, they were like, no it wasn't six, it was like three months ago, they were like, hey it's going to run uncapped on consoles.

And people were like, oh I guess that means. It was like three months ago. They were like hey It's gonna run uncapped on consoles and people like oh, I guess that means the frame rates gonna be pretty high You know like close 50s. No No, as soon as the game came out people were playing it in review They're like why the fuck doesn't this have a 30 FPS cap? I mean you are shooting from fucking 20 to 50 and random you crazy you can set it to 120 And it's that's a that's a suggestion yeah that's that's the idea that we all have goals you know and you can say hey what are your frame rate goals is gonna get added to the main menu this probably

this week oh man oh I want hard mode that's what I want I mode. That's what I want. I haven't even beaten the game yet. I want hard mode. You gotta give me that hard mode man And then yeah look out of nowhere we got a strive ABBA trailer and Character kit dropped have you seen a happy for ABBA fans? character kit dropped. Have you seen that? I'm happy for Abba fans. Finally. Abba fans are many. There are many people that have been asking for Abba. And they are tired and they have not been served well. And here you go.

Pretty cool. Really fun element of her character as well as the, her hair color has changed. And it used to be like orange, you know, like copper, but it's oxidized. So now it's like faded green, like the Statue of Liberty, you know, that's a, that's a pretty cool reason for, for the hair change as well. Incredible voice acting too. She seems unwell. Yeah. The Yandere vibe is really, really strong.

Is the hair thing not real? Well, then I got lied to. Damn. OK, she just died it. Fair enough. That was fake news. Was she Yandere in Accent Corp? She's always been, yeah, the Yandere,

like get the fuck away from Paracelsus, you know big murder jealous energy and That is Her deal here as well and like yeah really good Yeah, again, the the performance in the trailer is fucking phenomenal really awesome same that same voice actor as Viola in Bayonetta 3 actually Awesome the thing about Abba looking at her Awesome. Same voice actor as Viola in Bayonetta 3, actually. Awesome. The thing about Abba looking at her... So the trailer, she has the character go...

And she goes on like a crazy ramble and it's great. Let me get the proper credit because I forgot her name. So I didn't see, I'm not super familiar with Abba from Accent Corps, but in the new trailer, I'm kind of in love with the amount of expression on how the key doesn't want to be there. Oh yeah, so Paracelsus is like one of these, Paraselcis is ancient and powerful and like is absolutely an unwilling participant, you know, to her affection, recipient of her affection. My, my, my thing, I guess, is just that like the, the style of gameplay that Abba's always had to is like, it used to be about you pop a blood pack or you do her key grab and then you activate her

more powerful mode, like double-edged sword mode. Right? That kind of sounds like Nago. Yeah, very much like Nago, exactly. She hurts herself while doing damage to you as well. I guess the main thing is just like, I kind of wish that like with the overhaul to kits that we saw,

you know, Bikan got a pretty significant one and then like Elphelt even more so, Sin too. They still have the, yeah, Mohoro mode is still there now in form of jealous rage mode and she gets, she switches over and becomes like she gets better attacks, everything improves about her. But it's not as like defining of a trait that I and I wish they had more fun with her like her moves and her kit you know. She kind of has like a very basic move set and then you switch to this other mode that makes those moves all kind of hit, they're better,

they have better properties to them. But it's a pretty subtle thing. I was telling Reggie about this, but I'm like, I kind of feel like there's sometimes there's characters where you get a special move that like, it looks like it could have been a normal, but it's just, you did a motion to do it instead. And I really prefer when someone has like a big,

clear defining special trait about them, you know? So, yeah, it's, you know, like a rework of her original kit, but it would have been fun to have something like, and I kind of was just randomly workshopping. I'm like, if she's all about being jealous about Paracelsus, it'd be cool to have something like, oh, she could like put the key down or like, or like stick you to it. And then she gets more upset because you're near her lover, get away from him. He's mine, you know, or something like that, I guess. Like, just anything that's like a

little more like, it doesn't have to be about chores. It doesn't have to be about complexity, but something that's a little more dynamic to her, to the way she plays, I think. I would have, I was kind of hoping for that, but it's all right. She's a, and it doesn't have to be complicated, certainly. I think the simplification of Elphelt is a pretty good idea too. So but something that definitely takes that aspect of her personality, the extreme fucking Yandere bit, and the fact that she's got a giant key with her

and uses that more, you know, as a part of her, what she's doing. And again, it doesn't have to be the specifics. It can just be like a little more dynamic aspects to her movement and her swings and stuff she does that's not like slightly better normals, you know? The comparison point I made was like when Gold Lewis presses one of his buttons, you know,

and when Gold Lewis does a special, you know the clear difference. Nothing Gold Lewis does as a special can be mistaken for a normal. He's swinging the fucking coffin, he's shooting the gun, or dropping a drone at you. Because you hear somebody fucking in the way in the back say, in this behemoth typhoon. So that's about it. It's a fairly tame kit, but otherwise, but I think she's always been real fucking popular

just on the incredible design of the character You know and the energy she exudes But biking is another one of those two where it's like like this is a super cool character design that gameplay wise is super weird But that weirdness is real distinct for her. So I like I feel like it works out really well But yeah, that's that's it And then they they teased alongside that is another season of Strive characters is coming. Shocker.

And right off the bat, hey look, there's a bat. What could that mean? Right? Hmm. They know, they know they're gonna sell you Bikan. They're gonna sell you. You wanna talk about Akuma attacks, they're gonna sell you Slayer.

They're gonna sell you Abba, and now they're gonna sell you Slayer. And you want Akuma attacks. They're gonna sell you Abba and now they're gonna sell you Slayer and you want Slayer so you're here for it. He's coming. Hopefully right before Slayer comes Gabriel. Hopefully. That'd be great. Why don't we get in a DLC character for Leo Paldong? Oh man, reimagined for for like actual play I'm down the corpse with the puppy and the fucking yeah I'm super down that thing is awful thing it's so awful I hate it find the way to make a giant heaving bloated corpse actually playable? Yeah. Pretty cool. Usually within the month, I think, too, after they announce a character, you end up being,

she becomes playable, so I assume she's gonna drop pretty quickly. Yeah, I'm watching her footage now. She seems like, kind of normal. Yeah. Like, not as weird as I would have expected. And I mean, competitively, she could do a bunch of really cool shit because the specifics of how the properties that her normal buttons and things change make a difference and she

has like hit grabs and stuff. But in terms of just overall, it's yeah, it's not super, you know, it's a little bit of that like Giovanna was a bit like that too, where you're like, oh, it's a girl and her dog, and it's like, yeah, and she just kinda, she kinda, she kicks you. Just kicks. The dog's there a little bit, but it doesn't really

do anything to separate or so. I expected more meters. So, you know. Oh, she's out tomorrow, great, sick. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. So that's pretty much it I wish I'm looking at this character and

I'm having like a stupid thought in my brain and it's like I'm looking at ABBA and it makes me think of Was the Sadako character in Killer Instinct? Hisako. Hisako. She reminds me of Hisako. And seeing that makes me go, I wish Killer Instinct didn't exist and then came out now so that it was new so that like a bunch of people would be hold on and they would be hold on game hold on yes you are correct this is this is an aggressive but correct take.

If KI should have come out now. Bro, you can just still play it. I'm like, no, no, no, I want it to be filled with people who don't know what they're doing because I don't know what I'm doing. But also because if it came out now, it would be multi-platform. Yeah.

I think they did combine the Xbox, the Microsoft Store and Steam versions recently PlayStation PlayStation that's But yes, yes, that's that's it. Mm-hmm Yeah, no, you're out of line, but you are correct If that came out now, it would be better for it and the law that you would have been absolutely But it would have taken just as long for it to get revved up to be as good though Mind you yeah, cuz you're talking about the final state of a game after multiple seasons and... That is true.

I remember playing some Gargos and being like, wow, this is... once Gargos came out, everything I ever said about Killer Instinct completely inverted. And I went, wow, this is the coolest fucking fighting game character I've ever seen in my life. Um, and that game was like kind of over by that point for me because I was way too good to play with my friends who are all MMO players. And then I hopped online and like, Oh cool. Cinder is just infinite compo-ing me into the sky. I don't know what the fuck is happening It's interesting because as the as people got better at the game, and it got more and more like Difficult to overcome these like fucking expert like walls

If they also did things to make it so that you could see breakers more easily But but it's but it's not enough breakers more easily, but it's not enough. Nothing's going to be old head institutional knowledge. I mean, a lot of it is just going to be exposure. You're just going to have to learn to see it. But speaking of some of the late season characters, something that's interesting is remember Fulgor? I do. Right and the the the rev engine and such so have you seen the breakdown of like how city of the wolves actually functions? I have not seen any breakdown of how city of the warves actually

functions. So Fatal Fury city of the wolves we got some full gameplay matches from Justin Wong and Maximilian dude the Wolves, we got some full gameplay matches from Justin Wong and Maximillian Dude over on their channels. They got some extended match footage and it's pretty cool because the way this game is set up is like the main unique draw is the rev system. What that is is a little straight up car fucking miles per hour gauge. And when you use an EX move, it goes up by a bit.

And then when you cancel an EX move into another EX, it goes up more. And you have a limited number of free EX moves you can do until you burn the fuck out. But once you do, you are, yeah, you're unable to do any more of those cancels and such. And then you do your big level three super and it resets it to zero. You know, City of the Wharves, like, sorry, Mark of the Wharves like sorry mark of the wharves had just offend was like the anti-parry Yeah, and now city of the wharves is like reverse ex moves like oh, yeah, I know they're free They're free until until you run out instead of just do them instead of build meter to use them

And you know it's taking a bit of that drive mechanic philosophy into mind, right? It also has a drive impact style move in the form of the top. But we talked about it a bit last week where it's like, but now you can do it in the air. You can use it anywhere. It's pretty nuts. But yeah, the idea of free meter is just like that's in the zeitgeist of current fighting games now. But what's cool is like aside from that and there's like a red parry system into the Just Defend as well where you can at the last second block and then you can press forward and then

like get like a better counter, better frame advantage in that situation. Aside of that really, that new setup, the game is the most pure, simple fighting game. It's just a fighting game otherwise. There's nothing else going on about it that's like, too nuts, it's just like, this is how Garo played, this is Fatal Fury, and even the way you're getting round one fight

It just says round one fight. You know like it's just it's it's surprising the destinies here. Mm-hmm fighting ass game and Should say like warf bark bark now or something I'm Okay with every once because you have to you have to have a round one fight every once in a while as a palate cleanser. Yeah, because otherwise you don't even know what they're riffing on. Yeah, we can't start yelling about vanishing voids every single time, you know? We gotta come back to it before we then launch from here, so... You saw it too?

Okay. All right. Yeah, no, that was simultaneous. Oh shit! Scrumbo time. Good job. That's the first time in a couple years that a chat comment simultaneously got us. Bork one.

Barf! Barf. Barf. Hahaha. Well done. Good stuff. Strong. Strong. Strong.

I can't even tell you why that activated like every laugh neuron in my fucking head and I have no idea how to explain this to you. Bork what? bar bar You got to think of the Garo announcer saying it, too Yeah All right, oh and I guess one last little bit here, but you see fucking Uganda soft ground wrestling

Uganda soft ground wrestling? I've seen some good shit about Uganda soft ground wrestling, so I don't think I knew just how like high level this shit is until I saw Lord White. So yeah, Washington Post just put out an article with some photos describing the Uganda wrestling league SGW. It's soft ground wrestling, where basically they've set up a league of a lot of orphans in Uganda go and join this this this, uh, wrestling league they have set up. It's a pretty, pretty cool thing. And they have a, uh, patch of ground where they turn over the top soil to soften it as much as possible. And it's, you're able to then do wrestling moves on it. Then they put up turns buckle turnbuckles and, and the ropes and they do a full fucking wrestling show.

You got dudes flying off the top, you got moonsaults and crazy shit going down. And it's pretty good. Yeah, they're wrestling, they're training, they're doing eight months of intense training before they get into the production and stuff. It's just absolute background, background, background, backyard wrestling

The literal grassroots there are grassroots on the ground, you know, but it's a cool thing that's getting some recognition and One of those things in particular is one of the promos has Lord White's The white man this is one of the all all time best heel angles I could even imagine. Just he's the, your Vince McMahon, your evil owner, you know, of the promotion who's running, he's doing running mic work and he's basically like, I think, I think it's like, yeah, white people, we all pulled, we all, yeah, we took over various nations in Africa, but we gave Uganda back because we didn't want it anymore. It was the British colonized nations

fought for their freedom, but you guys didn't. We had to give it back to you because we didn't want right right yeah It's it's it's Violent and intense and so awful and apparently the guy sucks also for real oh awesome like great, so they're just they're just they're running that bit and they've got the Yeah, and then they're getting they got a retweeted by like Rickish I think Osprey or ricochet or I think retweeted it pretty cool it's like soft drought wrestling and

The the ladder match having having like a tree he'll be a British Asshole white guy who you gonda is like oh my god. It's so it's amazing. Yeah, no, it's a shoot It's not even a work There is there is that you worked yourself into a shoe that's it. It's just history congratulations Now if you don't understand what will be said because you don't speak carny, good for you. Genuinely. Genuinely good for you. It's still real to them damn it. Yeah. All right. Let's take some letters. Hey, if you want to send in a letter, send in a good one. First of all, also make it brief so that we're more likely to read it and be able to give you

a concise and good answer. Send it to castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com that's castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. All right we got one coming in from... Um, ah, wrestling so fucking evil. I, oh man, what a, what a horrible fucking profession. I love it. Um, I remember, uh, just earlier was, I was talking to Yipes. I got it, we got it, got it, and Tasty Steve with the, um, the way, the way that, that, the way that the N-word rolls off of Hulk Hogan's tongue hits with the same R as brother. Now let me tell you something. Are you telling me that Hulk Hogan's brother affectation is like a form of practice?

He had lots of practice on that ER. He sure did. Alright, we got one coming in from Jackal ZXA. How you doing? Says hey, WolfSquid and Pat Lyon. What's up? A couple of weeks ago, Willie was wondering what the point of the menu weapon scrolling was in Half-Life 2 and didn't really get an answer to it. So basically, it's a setup for your quick swap pairings for two active weapons to focus

on during a fight. You assess what the combat scenario is going to be, find some distance or cover, scroll to one weapon, click it, and then scroll to the other, click that, and now you have two active weapons you can quick swap through with a single input. And this lets you prime an AR-2 and a grenade easily instead of having to scroll through your entire arsenal during a firefight. Bro, I just learned to scroll really fast. That answer makes a lot more sense though, for, cause I was like, I don't, I don't get

how having to create folders is better than just having the number or even a quick input for the thing. But yeah, cause there's, it's, it's, again, it's putting three steps where there used to be one or or two, you know. But now but play Day of Defeat, man, I just scroll real fast. But setting it up to have the swap between like, here's the two I'm going to use. And we're going to cook slot like that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I get that now. Four clicks for the SMG Jesus. Well, yeah, there you go. If it's if

it's just priming for the actual fight, then then that's good. That makes sense. All right, let's take one from Lightning Rod says dear Pat and Wooly helldivers one has sick trailers awesome music a cool style and interesting mechanics Unfortunately for me it was a twin stick. So with Helldivers 2, I now love the franchise. What are some of your miracle changes that one fix changed something that you disliked into something you loved? Yeah, so Helldivers for me, right off the bat, I remember looking at Helldivers 1 and going, oh, the twins, fuck it.

And just completely ignore, I just, I saw it and saw that it was this person, and just went, oh fuck it, I don't give a shit about that. Not a single shit. I have one that's like, it's not about something I hated, but it's more about something that presented a problem, and I've said it many times, the voice acting to Disco Elysium.

Yeah, that was a- Hum, that was humongous. That was a wildly specific scenario that was very interesting because it's the only time you, me, and Paige as streamers have had the exact same problem, which is this is too good for me to responsibly enjoy without putting it on camera. Also, I can't. I will die if I have to read this. Therefore, we all just sat in fucking limbo for like a year until they announced that final cut. That first hour of just no voice acting and how good it was just it hit me so hard. I'm like, this is amazing. Fuck, you know? Yeah. That's the bit. That's the biggest one. Oh, crazy. Like me and Paige, like I've we've done like,

ace attorney streams and we'll like, you know, we'll like pass off like, hey, I'll handle all these and she's like, I'll handle all these and we get to like the 90 minute mark and we're like, fuck this. We're not continuing this. Yeah, that's the biggest one that comes to mind. I'm sure there must have been. If they had voice acting in those Ace Attorney games, I would play absolutely every single one of them on stream and I would be so excited and but I can't do it. It hurts my throat. Still thinking about trying to figure that out. I'm also like there's something I can't pull

right now but it's like in my brain there was a game perhaps maybe more than once from a long time ago where there was a very stubborn thing that everyone wanted that they never did in the first game and then they just gave up and said fine and then it made it super playable the second time around. It was like 360 era and there was something, I don't remember what it was, but it was like all anyone would ask is why was this made this way and then they finally just went they were like they gave it up. I mean this might not be the best example but I vividly remember people playing Zone of the Enders and going why the fuck is up with that

Hmm Shit I just saw one that's so perfect Metal Gear Solid 3 camera It washy 94 says Monster Hunter ones use of the right analog stick for attacks Oh analog stick for attacks Playable trash even in Japan that series only got popular at two Because they quit that shit cuz it's stupid Jesus Yeah You know you know what I have one that might be might be a little stranger, but it did represent a massive shift in my brain. And one of the things that made Demon's Souls so hard for me to get into

was that the first two attempts at Demon's Souls that made me go crazy was that crystal lizard in 2-1 that you would see and it would run off the cliff and die. And then it did that a couple times and then it would permanently be gone forever. And I would ask my friend, hey, why isn't that crystal lizard back? And they're like, oh, they permanently despawn. And it went, fuck that! And I would quit. And like, I eventually powered through, but like, Dark Souls just going, like yeah, no, just it'll respawn at the bonfire,

just try it again later, is this massive Massive change that made that game so much more approachable for me Yeah, there's like The even that oh oh my god, there's good answers in here Yeah, cuz I'm T demon skills I was gonna say demon skills and party control are big Yeah, cuz I'm T demon skills. I was gonna say demon skills and party control are big

But it was but like again, but it's not like it will but it wasn't hatred of the like I'm not gonna play this into okay. I'll play it. It was this is great, but this is stupid You know like you're playing persona 3 original and just like every 10 minutes. You're like fuck Yeah, Maren Karen, whatever God Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Fuck! Yeah, Maren, Karen, whatever. God. All right. There you go. There's a ton of those. Does rollback count?

Dragon's Dogma 1 wasn't punishing enough. Rollback for me was like, I wanted, of course like online to just be something fucking people could play But I also remember at the time I was like for me fighting games are local. I'm playing with my friends I'm going out to play against people. I'm play I'm going to a meetup. I'm going to tournaments so like the online aspect was a secondary to the immediacy of being in the live environment at the time. All right, and let's take one more from Dahl says, dare stairs at Ron and verse Ms. Prime as reading a conversation earlier today about how people read LMAO and it occurred

to me that my brain treats this word in a strange way. Normally when reading text, it happens in four steps. I see the letters, the letters form a word in my brain, my internal monologue says the word and then it connects it to a concept. Based on how people were talking, this appears to be the normal way it works But with LMAO I go straight from letters to concept without forming or a word or hearing a monologue for the acronym I don't know why for sure It could be because common parlance has lost the original acronyms meaning or it's not what I commonly use Are there any words or acronyms for you the two of you where your brain skips those steps and jumps straight to the concept?

LMAO. Yeah, that's an interesting one. I know exactly what you mean, because it's like anything that is said often enough, like LOL is used so frequently that I'm like, no, no, I still go through the checks of each step before I get to the concept. But something like SMH, right?

Like that one goes straight to concept, but it's also confusing because there's two different versions of that. When I first learned about SMH, it wasn't shaking my head, it was smack my head. Oh really? Shit, I've never heard that one. Yeah, it was, like SMH, like when I learned it

like fucking 15 to 18 years ago, it was this, smack my head. And that was like what I connected it to. And then after that, people were using it for shaking my head. So that one just goes, it goes straight. They're somewhat similar in meaning, regardless of the actual.

Exactly. So there was never a point where one worked, but the other didn't. They're both the same thing of just like, what the fuck? I'll be honest, TBH doesn't go into my fucking, did I just say I'll be honest TBH? You did. So I assumed'll be honest, TBH? You did. So I assumed you were talking about TBH.

That's the exact fucking premise that I was about to say, which is TBH doesn't correctly enter into my fucking brain. I see it and I have to go, what does that fucking mean, every single time. Huh. To be TB, like. I just. Jesus fuck. Well, it was the correct, you, I mean, What does that fucking every single time huh? It's a btb like I Just fuck well it was the correct you I mean it was fine until you stopped it went What the fuck because I assumed tbh was what you're about to talk about

Yeah Yeah Yeah, a lot a lot of these We're I'm we're gonna start seeing the ones that are just like I don't know what this means with the zoomer the zoomer alphas Kids these days with their new with their new acronyms. I don't see I am a show as much anymore But yeah, I Feel like I see Like I learned about I am HO like really recently. Oh

It's like old. Yeah, no old like a couple a couple months ago I was like what and I actually typed it in to find out what I mean I just like I just looked at it and I don't know what that means Like I can tell you what mewing is but I didn't know what the fuck I am HO is I could I can tell you what mewing is, but I didn't know what the fuck I am HO is I could I can tell you there was a particular awakening moment when I first learned about YT people and not being YouTube people Oh is that me yeah, yeah, it's me you are you are why a whitey person

That took a second Wow this whole conversation is making me feel really old. I think I might unalive myself. Oh no really old, I think I might unalive myself. Oh no. Oh, in Roblox. In Roblox though. In Roblox though. Oof. Yeah, in Minecraft.

Unalive yourself, Sudoku even. See that sucks because that's just born from like platform censorship. Like there's like, the platform says no, so that means you sidestep it, and then the sidestep becomes the meaning. I fell down like an insane rabbit hole like yesterday as a result of a TikTok that I saw, which was unalive is the is the way that you can try and get around perceived algorithmic problems by saying the

word murder, kill, or kill yourself, or suicide, or whatever the fuck happens to be the algorithmic thing on your platform. So people think that you say, unalive, or oh, they unalive themselves, blah, and then it doesn't do it. And I have never seen any single instance of proof that that has even a fucking effect at all other than people think it does, which make people do it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it made me think of the history of calling people stupid and all the interim steps that we have seen over our life,

over what calling somebody by a name that means mentally handicapped means and its level of acceptability in high school in the 90s and so on and so forth. The treadmill? And I'm scrolling, what's that? The treadmill? No, oh yeah, the treadmill.

The euphemism treadmill. It hit me again as I'm scrolling up and I see a neurosurgeon Describing so there's a disease called Lithomania or whatever That's smooth brain disease, huh? And it cuts to some profoundly disabled children who have smooth brain, like unironic smooth brain, and they are like have no quality of life

profoundly mentally handicapped. And I'm like, I did not know that existed. That's an actual thing. No, I thought people were making fun of Fooly Cooly, where they're the fucking the the the ironer smoothing out the wrinkles in your brain so the for medica mechanic and all that shit. You were thinking that was FLCL? Well yeah.

Oh Jesus. Because they literally say in FLCL that the iron is to smooth out the wrinkles in your brain. Yeah, no I mean I just because wrinkles like the the the concept wrinkles in the brain are like are correlated with Synapse activity yeah, but the first time I ever saw the phrase smooth brain was in FLCL like 98 or 2000 or was Huh? Interesting, okay. Wow, that's wild, I had no idea either.

And so now everyone's running around calling each other Smooth Brain, but I now know that that's a real medical disability! Huh. And so I'm like, that's gonna catch on, and we're gonna move So what's extra wild and crazy is Especially from like talking with punch mom like

so she will like often like work in French and like has Different things not even get into your teacher telling you you're late for class often like work in French and like has different things. Let's not even get into your teacher telling you you're late for class. Well, so in general, like French is like, there's a delay, like French is still in the 90s. Yeah, it's like different languages are at different places with that. It's like, and it's also based on like usage popularity and stuff

But like you will you will jump you'll see the translation jump one over to the other and then someone who's more francophone will like just Hit you with some of that 1920s sounding shit If I wanted to make I wanted to make a judgment, it feels like the reason it happens to English so often is because the American populace would rather focus on the presentation of an issue rather than its actual- Than the actual issue itself, of course. Instead of actually dealing with the portrayal or treatment of people who are mentally handicapped,

you'd rather like, oh, let's make the language nice so that we feel like we're doing something even though we're not actually doing anything. Because if we can performatively make it about the surface of the thing but not actually fix the real thing, then everybody can stay over here and not worry about it. I can get my brownie points and feel really good.

Real easy to just chill out on top, don't worry about actually okay We're getting it. You know you yes As a YT person this speaks to me Never forget Bernie versus the moderates Never forget all of them. The Moderates. Never forget, all of them together, Marvel vs. Capcom! Alright, that's a podcast. Have a good week everybody, stay safe out there. Thanks for watching!