Castle Super Beast - CSB 270: Charles III, Blood Monarch of Scarlet Rot

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

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["Sailor Moon Theme"] Let's start here. um whenever you Set up one of your insane corner traps The way that the best way to defeat your shit is to just lean into it and not oppose it And then there's nothing then there's nothing you can do because I'm on your my mental prisons Yes, because suddenly you look and I'm standing next to you and we're both attacking me and now you can't do shit because oops Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay so That tech I just want to give a shoutouts to Buckingham Palace

for embracing The narrative and leaning in to them being supervillains because you- Prince Charles of the Scarlet Rock! What can you do when they unveil a painting and the Crimson King with his butterfly is posed already waiting for you, you know in with the evil aura Emanating from the official portrait, and it's this badass full-sized painting What else can you say right looks like a nightmare?

It looks like a blood-borne it looks like if you touch it you will get sucked into it It looks like a Vigo's painting from Ghostbusters. The horrific realm of Charles. Oh my god. It's kind of unbelievable. I'm well aware that they tapped a fancy artist who has a specific style to do it. And he's done everyone else on the world He apparently does like a lot of blues and greens and has like a very different feeling to it. But like fucking crimson

Man pink and red and blood and it's only the head like in the background's red and his his coat is red And so the only thing that pops out of the sea of rot is his fucking face You just like again you you imagine getting pulled into this world where you're stuck inside his psyche and Giant Camilla monsters are roaming about and perhaps even a horrendous like, you know, it's um it's a, what's the fucking game with Dante, but it's like Dante Alighieri with the,

it's Dantes Inferno. Dantes Inferno, right, with the penis monster, it's like that, but it's like Doty Alphayette, the dude who took Prince Di from him, and all that shit, you know, like it's just that level of horrendous nightmare the dude who took Prince Di from him and all that shit. It's just that level of horrendous nightmare coming at you and then of course a queen's jubilee with her and her scepter sitting in an empty room

and she starts walking towards you slowly. As God save the queen starts playing. I don't think they got what they wanted. Is what I think. I don't think. They seem to love it. And I mean, I think if they didn't get what they wanted, they wouldn't have unveiled it.

But the big reel, they pull down the sheet and they're like, well, look at that. It's Prince Charles and all his scarlet rod, his domain, his everything. Like, it's just great. They lean into the bit, you know? Can you truly stand there and, you know, attack them if they're like, yes, we are evil?

Oh, oh, oh, oh. That looks like the kind of painting that a man who is currently quaffing potions would wanna see. I love it, I love it. And I love the little touch too that is again, like the butterfly, you know, the little, the little, the little, the little philemon on the shoulder. Upon his death, the Charles will metamorphose into a cocoon and we'll see what new form of life he will take.

Oh, you already know the portrait from the side. You know the shot of him opening the mouth and, the monarch butterfly. God damn. Yep. So Paige's mom has been visiting, right? She just left yesterday and we were talking and I was like, I don't think Charles is going to make it a year. She's like, oh, he's not that old.

He could probably make it a year." She's, oh, he's not that old. He could probably make it. I'm like, while he's taking potions for his cancer, she's like, oh, he's not gonna make a year. Also, look at this, mother-in-law. And she's like, oh no. Why does it look like that? Why does it look like that? And yeah, and in the meantime, not Harry. What's the eldest one's name? Oh, who gives a fuck? Yeah. He's slowly turning into Charles and his transformation will be complete. So by the time it's his turn, he'll already have, you know, fully degraded as well, because that's what this shit does to you, man. Anyway, um, That's what this shit does to you, man.

Anyway, William, there you go. You just get, yeah, I wanna see that lineup of portraits in the hallway. Just get- Oh, they're all like normal. But they're all like normal until this one. Until up until now. And I hope that this is a turn. I hope that we can now see the timeline change.

You know? The energy coming from the rest of them needs to be, yeah, absolutely, critically evil. Good shit. All right, man. What's been going on with you aside from laughing at the British once again? Yeah, again, I just, I unironically love the evil turn. You know what? This kind of, is this like the monarchy

from like the point of view of like an Irish? Perhaps. Is that what they see? Perhaps. When they turn on the telly? It might be, it might just be the, yes, because I mean they've had nothing but cause for celebration over and over again recently, you know?

I can only hope that like instead of just ignoring it with the family portraits, they need to have an actual empty frame for where Andrew once would have been. Just have an empty black, the forgotten one, you know? Lean in. Which is more like empty, the black frame or like a completely empty chair? So the frame- Like a vacant space. The vacant space is powerful, but it also could be for anyone to sit at that's there. I feel like the empty frame implies we have dedicated the space to something and it's clearly still marked out, but you will never know what that was.

It's much more insult to injury to have your frame still in place, but nothing in it. We are calling attention to the fact that you are an embarrassment. And no, I will not sully the name of the Nameless King by making that comparison. The Nameless King is so much more fucking badass. Yeah. Anyways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

So- Yeah, what's up over in Woolly Town? A couple things, I guess. Just a quick one, but yeah, I'm trying to get started on Fallout with Punch Bomb. That's good! Me and Paige re-watched it. So in order to do so, I went to go, we got to finish off some of our homework,

which was Last of Us. So I finished off Last of Us. Late to the party on that, of course. But just, just a quick, just quick ending note to say that, yeah, as far as the finale of that goes, the absence of the water scene that knocks out Ellie is a big- It's like it screws up the whole- It doesn't screw it up. I won't say it, so I'm thinking about it and I'm like, it doesn't screw it up, but it just makes it that much less ambiguous, right?

You don't... Yeah, no, Joel made the right decision. You don't get to argue as cleanly as you would have where it was like, oh, but what if she wouldn't have made it? You know, what if now that you've now you've finished it, have you seen it? Do you remember me talking about how like for 50% of that show, the war, the infected just all disappear? Oh, yeah, yeah, they just kind of become like that final thing is like we have to scoop

out this kid's brain for a cure. And you're like, wow, you guys are just going to do it. No problem. scoop out this kid's brain for a cure. And you're like, wow, you guys are just gonna do it, no problem, huh? And also, we haven't seen an infected in like a year in the story for like a year. Yeah, well, cause it feels kind of like, okay, gameplay was the first half, and now the gameplay is more or less left behind.

And they elaborated on some good shit in the meantime, but then it comes back in that like, you know, five minutes leading up to the hospital room right, so Yeah, all things considered it just really you already had all the questions before about like would they even be capable of You know creating inoculation with the tech they currently have is there any signs that this would have worked? You know what I mean?

Like everything is dubious. It's all up in the air. If any, like the fact that they've got a working hospital, electricity and a sterile room with actual surgery perhaps means that your leagues and far beyond anyone else's efforts, but that doesn't mean that you could still deliver it, right? So yeah, it just, just forces the hand of the viewer in a way

to just be like, oh yeah, that's the move. But it still doesn't take away the proper stinger that is like, yo, you fucking lied, you know? And that's the main emotional crux of both the game and the show are that like, you didn't give her the choice to make to say whether or not she would have agreed with it. Yeah, both parties remove her agency. Yeah, you don't know to say that for sure

she would have went with it or not, but she doesn't have enough information and no one gives her an opportunity to even consider it. So that maintains and that's the most important through line and they did a good job with that. Yeah, anyway. So you haven't started Fallout yet? No, no, just wrapping that up.

And then similarly wrapped up some X-Men 97. Paige, what the fuck? Stop, stop typing. Stop typing. Just stop typing. Okay, listen. I listen I hey, I'm just trying to be respectful I'm just trying to be respectful and in the in the in the spirit of being respectful to you and your family We do not have to go into the discourse that is happening in the DLC right now So I was like I was like fallouts really great. You should watch it page She's like, but then she spoke to a friend of hers and the friend of hers was like, yo, this zombie man is hot as hell. And Paige is like, when can we watch Fallout? Yeah. And so we watched Fallout. Yeah. And she she's just being consistently banished. Yeah, to skeleton slash zombie horny jail. Yeah. Daily. Yeah. Just like skeletons to vampire man to zombie man. Mm hmm. I fear for my safety. I fear for my living safety. It's just when somebody hits, when somebody hits you with the hear me out, it's like, I'm

listening. Where are we going? Where are we going? Hear you out, all right, I'm listening, all ears, what's up? But yeah, no, Fallout is very good. It is very good. I would love to talk to you about that next week. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, but yeah. In the meantime though, so finish that off,

and then some other homework was X-Men 97 did you uh did you oh yeah I finished it okay within an hour of it releasing you so that finale was ten minutes longer holy shit it was a 40 minute episode it felt like it too like we're gonna get two episodes in here, god damn it. They got the, you know what they're doing with that extra 10 minutes. Absolutely. God, God bless that like, that slow build up off the Marvel logo into the beat, into the main intro, that little like, you know, crescent, crescent was amazing.

Yeah, so I guess, I mean, we talked pretty much about most of X-Men 97 stuff last week and covered all the big back half of that first season. I guess just to discuss a little bit and some spoilers for the season finale of X-Men 97, tune out now if you don't want to catch them. So there's something important here that I think Magneto specifies where last time when we were like, oh, he just grabbed the asteroid em and fucked off, we were like, what exactly did he do to the Earth? And turned off electricity.

He turned off the power. But then there was a sense of urgency because there was also the fact that the polarity of the earth could be fucked up forever if they don't repair it. Yeah, the basic deal is that he fucked it up so badly that if it doesn't get fixed within a certain time period, the earth will never be able to have electricity again. Is the idea, right? And then, yes, and that's the whole like, you know, shut down the future bit. And there was a sense of like, I guess I was, I was trying to interpret whether or

not there was a like, and thus everyone is doomed. Well, yeah, to it. But it's like modern society would just fall to pieces without electricity. Right, but I guess it's the difference between a cataclysmic extinction event versus a cataclysmic apocalyptic event where people survive but life becomes shit. Yeah, so the basic idea here as I took it is that there's the ticking clock to fix it, right? And they keep saying millions of people will die. Yeah, just food transit alone? Yeah, no, millions of people would die right away. But also, without the equalizing force of technological advancement, mutants would like rise up immediately to like a higher class. Exactly, so what I thought based on episode nine

was that I thought he was like destroying life. And the clarification here is he's destroying civilization. That's kind of it. And you know, I mean, it's still pretty fucking bad, but it's a difference where he specifies, oh, the mutants will be able to thrive in the darkness, you know, and so on. And that kind of lends itself to feeling like,

oh, right, because they're oppressed, so if you take away the structure, then their natural- That will make a new society out of our God-given gifts. Because exactly, like nature will let us reign and they'll take over on their own by a given time. Exactly, right. Which- Like Magneto actually sat there and said in his angry moment, like, we live in a society

and decided that the answer to that was enough, enough of society. The problem is that we live in a society- Yeah, so we're going to start this whole, enough of society. The problem is that we live in a society. Yeah, so we're gonna start this whole thing over. Right. And that makes more sense with this philosophy than the like, yo, everyone's gonna get fucking killed thing, which, mutants are gonna get killed

in that process too, of course, but it is a anger-driven, extreme measure solution. So then, yeah, and then the, you know, that that all, again, manages the magneto kissed. Yep. And they do they do their bits. Shout outs to the taking the time to go inside his head, have the moments have the conversations that matter. Looking out on the boat, you get to see a rogue in the boat, but then standing next to her is

You get to see a rogue in the boat, but then standing next to her is Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Polaris. But their faces are in shadow. So that was pretty cool. I like that touch. And then, yeah, I guess the stinger here. Well, it's interesting, because the stinger, when they show you what they're setting up,

is on one side, you've got them in the future young Nate, age of Apocalypse. And then on the other side, you've got them in ancient Egypt and Sabaner. And so I was like- Little baby Apocalypse. Yeah. And it's like, this is also, since this is the X-Men 92 timeline, they've already fought Apocalypse and they know who he is.

Like a bunch. Yeah. So age of Apocalypse is the hard swerve that they're definitely heading into with onslaught of course being probably residual inside of Charles's mind after that connection. There's a great line that I can't remember the specific words but the paraphrase that exists in my head of is like yeah Charles if you go into my brain and make me do the magnetic shit we might both be like become vegetables and Charles like yeah whatever yeah gotta do it yeah but then he's gonna then he's gonna pop out and make a sick-ass giant fusion dance version of them that's

gonna look awesome. I mean if anything, I don't know if they're gonna fast forward to it, but if the next season brings this Age of Apocalypse and Onslaught and they work in X-Men like young Nate Summers in there, that'd be fucking sick. I really like how the finale of the X-Men 97 puts forth the idea that like, Charles is really, he's a good guy and he wants the best, but like the nature of the way that he interacts with the world is so disgusting and manipulative

and awful. Like when Magneto realizes they're inside his own mind prison, he's just like, this is disgusting. Get out of here. Yes. But Charles' bit on that is, I'm not going to invade your privacy unless I think you're going to kill everybody, in which case then I'm going to violate your rights. Right?

And so the idea of the body count being the reason why he's going to go about that is like, yeah, that's still consistent with who he is. What I really like about how the season plays out is, you know, they've always had their moments of, again, what did we ever do to you? were born that made love it that line lives rent free in everybody's heads for our entire lives Right now is so strong for like what? 1995 or 94 93 Unbelievable I'm never a kid and be like oh Oh

Yeah, that hit, that hit. Oh, that hit, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and that just, that resonates. That resonates really well. So every time here, you get one of those moments where they cut back to like, and what is society at large saying? Well, Bastion has that quote, right, where he says,

yeah, Genosha went down and all that shit went down, but really, if you don't have skin in the game, then we just resort to apathy, you know? And it's that like, until the asteroid is looming over, threatening to blow everything up, then yeah, who gives a fuck, it's stupid mutant shit. Get away from us, threatening to blow everything up, then who gives a fuck? It's stupid mutant shit. Get away from us.

We don't trust you. You're dangerous and scary. And the idea of the fallout of, yeah, the entire Genosha incident being more or less forgettable until it's at your doorstep is like, that's a really, again, realistic way to play how that would work out. So fucking great. Very cool. Looking forward to more.

And I'm really glad that they took the time. They took two seconds of a cut to be like, listen, we all loved that old Spider-Man show too. And it is massively fucked up how that show ended with absolutely no payoff at all. So here we're just gonna cut to Pete and Mary Jane over here and she's gonna be wearing that yellow with the purple thing. They already showed Spider-Man doing stuff but here is the actual character designs from radioactive Spider-Blood Spider-Man doing stuff, but here is the actual character designs from

radioactive Spider-Blood Spider-Man with MJ and Pete standing there watching the TV. That was... He's like, hey, listen, no, he found her and they're fine now and they're looking at this stupid mutant shit on TV. Mm-hmm. I didn't... Yeah, is... Yeah, no, was there a madam web in the background or

There was a there was a cut of like hey Zemo doom and all the doll the shitheads are Forming their evil conference call. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm and and Wakanda was there too. Mm-hmm But yeah, no That's that's that's solid really happy with that and let's see how much they can cram into one more season. Which I mean, I'm saying it, but it's like, not only they're probably going to get like Nate in there, but I can imagine them getting Legion in there. Like they have so much room. Thinking of all the shit they went through in these 10 episodes, there's so much room to fucking cram all of it into the next one.

Yeah, the first season, despite how all over the place it goes like this is the normal Season of X-Men now we're gonna do the alternate setting Zany ass comic book shit setting of X-Men. We're in Egypt Wow Yeah, crazy. I just hope that they don't fall into the trap of like when a successful show that they don't fall into the trap of like when a successful show decides to like double up its length you know like Adventure Time when it went from like what was it like 10 episode seasons into like 52 you know and and like you just keep it keep it keep it tight Adventure Time came out made it impossible for me to keep watching it I think I fell off because it would always be a double episode and it would be unclear as to whether or not the new

double episode would have a new half episode or two old double episodes I'm saying would be Recombined at random. That's what I so yet It wasn't only the doubling and then doubling of the of the of the episode of the season length It was also the episode length doubling as well. Yeah, it was a lot. I don't know anybody that didn't fall off at some point,

to be honest. It was rough. Anyway, yeah, fucking awesome on that. While taking care of, uh, yeah, said homework as well, I finally got through and hit the credits on Hades one. Okay, just credits on it. Yeah, just to heard the song. Heard the song. God damn, man. Oh, I mean, I mean, so first off, like, yeah, every single time you you swerve over to your

it is see, I'm sitting there and listening to that play out. Oh, it's great. Right. And then around run seven or so you get back to Hades, you get back to the palace and you just hear don't look back. And Orpheus is fucking going at it. And you're like, oh, this is the good shit. Amazing. And yeah, you're reminded whenever that musical element is brought into play that you're like, right, transistor music was a thing that the studio was

doing a couple of games ago. It's the same- Oh a couple games ago. It's the same- Oh, Bastion even. Exactly, right? Like incredible. So just that powerful delayed reminder of the fucking incredible soundtrack there. And then, yeah, then you get the combination of both

for that finale. It was so good. I guess I was kind of like, the clarifying nature of how the credits play out. And then the little I did like a post game runner to just to see like what would change, you know? And I think so. Um, yeah, I guess, you know, spoilers for end of Hades 1 into the beginning of Hades 2. I went, I saw that portrait, and I was like, oh, shit. They're together. Oh, wait, there's a baby.

Oh, god, they're all dead. Right? And I was like, how much of that is revealed prior to now? And like, assuming that it ended on some sort of horribly tragic note, you know, I'm like, okay, well, this game is picking up where that left off, but No, ends on a very kind happy note. Yes. Now, at the same time, I don't know the difference between credits run and 100% completion.

Okay, I'll tell you right now. It's really easy. So the the the postgame a quest is Hey, we gotta explain to the the people on Olympus what the fuck's going on the gods are catching on, right? Right. So what we're gonna do is you're gonna become really good friends And then you're gonna invite them all to a big banquet and we're gonna explain to them that we're married But blah blah blah blah, right when you do that and say I'm gonna go ahead with the banquet It fades out and then fades back in and goes wow that banquet was crazy Good thing everyone understands now oh Really like it's a massive massive fucking disappointment Okay, oh, I'm sorry. There's a picture. There's a picture of a handshake, my mistake.

I see. But yeah, no, it's nothing. It's really nothing. It's just a little final attaboy. Great, great. So that means that, yes, the proper feeling you're supposed to get starting Hades II is what the fuck happened?

Yeah, everything was cool. Yeah, right, and then it wasn't. All right, great. So, yeah, that, but otherwise, yeah, no, that's a solid replay, and everything leading up to that is great. I'm just, I can't remember the last time, though, I felt like, perhaps Baldur's Gate III, if anything,

I've just felt, you feel like, for every line of dialogue you hear that's contextual to the last boon you picked up or the last major event that occurred, you're like, how much was recorded and how much am I missing? A crazy amount. And will anyone ever actually catch it all?

You know, like. Like, there's dialogue from Hypnos of you getting killed by every single day in the game and some of them triggered multiple times. Right and then there's like oh did you like um in some cases the next line of dialogue that should have happened when you spoke to this person you interrupted it because you gave them a gift first and so now deuces floating away So I didn't actually talk to you properly. Yeah, there's a there's a bunch of dialogue in Hades, too For example, I'm a hundred percent certain that I missed because I got certain upgrades too fast or I progressed to a new stage too quickly

Yeah Man, it's just so crazy how much they recorded for everybody for every circumstance for every possible thing you do or don't do you know fucking like even just like Whatever was queued up for chaos when I went to go speak to them was changed because I caught a fish And as you know oh you caught a fish here. Oh, okay. Well crazy now. We're gonna talk about that. You know your fish out here So yeah, no clip confirms over thirty thousand That's a lot of dialogue and it's high quality Insanely well done dialogue at that

Great great great stuff Yeah, so anyways just just wrapped up those. And lastly, went back to DNF Duel to try out the new characters. So mainly Monk, the badass punching version of the Crusader. I was about to say, that's the alternate crusader, right? So it's crusader except yeah, he cuts his hair puts the hammer down as a blessed Creates a blessed arena and then fights you with the fists of God And everyone basically just says he becomes young Garp is what it is what? Okay, right and I guess looking at it. It's like yeah

Garp is what is what. Okay. Right. And I guess looking at it, it's like, yeah, I know old man Garp from the thing, but like, yeah, jacket over the shoulders. He's got the little wing tips and he's just going in and it's beautiful. It's beautiful because yes, he's a bad ass boxer, but he's also got the things I love in particular. He's got the sways. He's got the Akihiko style kill rush. He's got the Dudley ducking backwards or swaying in. He's got the ability to, yeah, do strings point blank to you and then pressure you and then on the block string dash up and then get a mix up going or make you whiff something while he's dashing back and then counter hitting you.

So, so sick, you know? A lot of style and swag in that character, a lot of fun. And it just kind of was like, yeah, I remember that, you know, this is one of the games that is like, like the fact that it came out and it became this insane busted Kosugei two-touch madness was too much for a lot of people and that kind of led to the whole like That already bit with it feels like a fake fighting game Like a not real fighting game in what way like Like something that you would see a mock-up of in the background of a TV show

right like just like as in my brain a a street fighter is a real fighting game and you're like well every time you talk about DNF the things you're saying are stupid okay you're saying are stupid. Okay. Not that you're stupid for saying them. I'm gonna play along. I'm imagining if someone's playing the original Dungeon and Fighters, and they're like, yo, they should make a real fighting game out of this someday.

And then someone mocks up some screenshots, and then you just see this thing. And then it doesn't go much further than those screenshots and life bars and maybe a win quote or two perhaps perhaps but in the end what they created was something that I just I fucking again I love that everything is kind of insane and busted right and oppressive but I bring this up to say so they brought in three other characters besides monk as well there was a braw, who is like another kind of badass dude with coat on the jacket swag. And he's throwing Final Fight barrels and doing Larry, it's at you and chains. So he's just a Final Fight character dropped in. He's a beat him up character, it seems to be the deal. There's a Spectre who is just basically a femme version of Troublemaker.

So you know, big, big aido slash sword and guns and flips and all the stuff that the rest of the gun sword characters do in that game. And then there's Battle Mage who's a little girl doing her spells and whatever. The system changes they made that I didn't know about were actually really smart ones that kind of actually helped with some of that insane oppressiveness going on and made a huge difference to like how nuts the game, like how much you had like like the game was always, is still oppressively nuts, but you have some tools to deal with it now. So they, one thing they did, they made it so that you have

two grooves per character and you can make it so that beforehand you had to get to 30% and then you would awaken to be able to do your super and you get like a buff on your character. Now you can choose a version that activates at 50% and it's not as good of a buff, but it lets you do your super earlier. So that like kind of puts you in a situation

where in this game, if you're at 30% and you get touched by somebody, you're gonna die. If they know what they're doing, you should die. You're just gonna die. But if you get to 50%, you have a better chance of like maybe using what you have to come back and or survive. So changes things up there a little bit.

They added push blocking. And that's essentially like Marvel style. Like you knock the person back as you're blocking from them or whatever. So that creates a situation where what would happen where a lot of characters like Stryker would put you in the corner, pressure the fuck out of you until you get opened up,

and then have a really nice reset ready to go. Now you can kind of push them back, force them to whiff, and then punish that, right? So that's a great thing. Similar to how Street Fighter VI introduced wake up V-reversal, right? You know, it's interesting, we live in a new world of like balanced stuff,

and like you used to like hope and fucking Pray that the next version would like tone down so God's fucking knee Right and like maybe fucking mate maybe maybe and now we're like, yeah, you know You can you can wake up doing this universal mechanic now and yeah, no the games got push block now. Yeah or doing this universal mechanic now and yeah, no, the games got push block now. Yeah, or Perry timing is different. Yes, completely different now. Absolutely. New world. And it's the it's a world that I liked when I saw how universal persona for arena played. Right. I love how that game manages to be really fun and have a really solid character depth and expression that you can dive into with each character.

But there's still the basic systems for everybody can carry you so far. And not just in the sense of, here's an auto combo. Because a lot of games like Marvel Infinite is like, here's an auto combo and we'll leave it there. But actually taking it a step beyond and going like, here is some things that you have to still think about, but there's a, there's a wake up DP, here's a universal role, here's like all these, all these things that are just like a universal overhead, right?

That leads to a launcher that everyone can capitalize on. Love that. So yeah, that's coming to Street Fighter 6 with the new update But in DNF dual they added that as well with the push block But then another aspect of it as well that was really interesting is the push block that I'm describing Not only does it get you out of these insane locked at lockdown moments but it creates a little bit of gray life on your character and gray life on your character. And gray life in DNF Duel is humongous because it lets you cancel out of anything at any time.

Wait, what? That was already in the game before, right? But gray life lets you cancel things? Yes, and you needed a little bit of gray life in order to do all your best combos, in order to do your like, you know, like your focus attack dash cancel, like Street Fighter 4 style cancels and stuff.

Anything stylish, anything extended, anything that was a real full length combo. You needed a little bit of gray life. Baroque from Tatsunoko versus Capcom is the other comparison point, but I don't think that's gonna reach, I'm making, who's gonna know what the fuck a Tatsunoko system is, right? So, but all that to say, so when you got hit in DNF

Duel, you could fight and let your gray life heal back, or you could cancel, lose all that gray life and then extend whatever combo you're doing or interrupt whatever your whiff was so that you get back to being safe. It's a yeah, it's a particularly like,'s it's it can be costly or it can be Inexpensive depending on how much gray life you've built up, you know But that's how it worked But you couldn't do it if you were doing really well and you were not getting hit you did not have access to That's a really smart way to do a comeback mechanic, right? You have you have the ability to do more when you're taking damage. You need to burn a resource you don't have unless you're getting hit.

Exactly. So with this push block thing though, they've allowed you to now get a little bit of gray life on demand because push blocking costs you a little bit of life. That is a weird, that's strange. So now you- I dig it. Yeah, so you have the freedom to initiate that at a cost and it gives you more opportunities to do shit with your character

But it doesn't last particularly long as well because it's a very small amount You can keep push blocking but now you're just taking life off, you know So it's it's a more you have to think a little bit more about how you want to balance the two things and you get Out of that kind of full lockdown state in addition to the fact that they kind of touched and made sure that you can't do like as they balanced it so that you can't do as much insane shit. You still can, but you have ways out of it now. So, yeah, I didn't realize that it got adjusted in such in such a way. And I'm like, that's good stuff, you know, similar to how similar to how Street

Fighter 6 like still has throw loops, but you have a way out. I like when it's like you give people the opportunity to make a decision that's costly but gets you out of the situation, you know? Yeah, how long has DNF been out? It came out last year before Street Fighter, right? It's got to be more than... It's got to be two years now?

Okay. It's got to be more than it's got to be two years now. Okay, I feel like I feel like I feel like fighting games are updating themselves at the right pace Like a street fight like because we used to go like like multiple years without any update and the update was super. Yep Right and now we're like capcom seems to be doing it like because akuma's coming out tomorrow or tonight rather actually depending on your time zone like a year seems like Or just under a year seems like the right amount of time Because like I just double went and double-checked and it's the example I always use League of Legends releases a fucking patch that changes balances every two weeks Mm-hmm

That's too fast. How could you ever, how could you ever keep up with that? I mean, it's, you know, not to fucking put on the boomer hat, but it really is, like, when you hear someone go dead game after like six months of something, it's like, okay, well, how bad is it? Because like, first of all, if it's not that bad, then we're looking at a history of fighting games

where they would come out and sit there for years, stagnant, you know, before other things, before updates happened. At the same time, Mortal Kombat 1, safe to say that is the fastest fucking Dead on Arrival release I think we've seen recently of all major titles. Oh my god, I just... You forgot about it. Oh, that game's so dead.

You forgot about it. You know how, you know what, so what's your basis basis for that because mine's mostly gut. Okay, it is gut. But here's what it comes down to to me. There's a real thing because there's a there's the one there's always two things. There's one the casual interest fades and and then there's problems with the game. You can see what ends up happening is there will be a hardcore group of people left over that play it and they can keep that shit alive.

And as someone who's participated in the samurai showdown community, I've, you know, and I just talked about persona for arena. I'm no stranger to going and find super turbo came out in the nineties. If you tried, you could find somebody to play super turbo with you right now I mean, I'm yeah fight cage always healthy. I am no stranger to the scene of Hardcore players is keeping this game alive and they're having regular things and people they're meeting up and or having tournaments and brackets and stuff And there's a healthy community online even though

Casually, it's been dropped. When the scene of competitive players also turn on your game, that's when I would say it's a wrap. That's what happened. So mine is gut-based, but it's a little bit algorithm-y. So the TikTok algorithm likes to infect your phone if you look at anything. So I made the mistake of letting a Korean music video

play on my phone in near full at one point, at which point my phone became infected with K-pop. And I would just be scrolling, it would be like nothing but K-pop, like nothing, nothing but. You're a stand now, time to make your fan cams. So about fan cams, before Mortal Kombat 1 came out, there would be all these injustice fan cams

that would show up of just the dialogue of characters talking to each other before fights, right? And then Mortal Kombat 1 comes out, and then that continued and then just stopped. Like Mortal Kombat 1's shit just disappeared off of all my feeds all of a sudden, like a month after the game came out. Okay. Nothing.

Nothing broke through. I will stand corrected. The game, Mortal Kombat, yeah, saying dead on arrival implies it comes out and it's a failure to sell. That is the wrong term. No, Mortal Kombat always sells really good. No, so I was wrong to say that. That was incorrect of me.

It sold, yeah, three million, right? And we know that Mortal Kombat is always the most popular in terms of how it hits compared to Street Fighter and stuff. So yes, that is incorrect of me to say. I guess more so there's the level of where the interest is at competitively and where the interest is at casually when people are kind of looking at how the cost of shit has like, DLC has been really, really high and like unaddressed and stuff like that was a problem.

A lot of the missing features that didn't really get addressed, a lot of the balance issues and stuff people were complaining about. I felt like everywhere I turned, both casually and competitively, people were not happy with the state of the game. And that has led to hearing about it less on both fronts. But I'm sure there's still, yeah, there's still active players currently on Steam right now. Oh, there's always active players for anything.

That, like, the phrase, there's active players on it, is getting close to, well, it's fun to play with your friends. And so, to that end, Mortal Kombat 1's state would make something like DNF look, it looks way healthy by comparison, but I'm comparing Mortal Kombat to its predecessors, right? To compare it to other Mortal Kombat games

where it would be in the life cycle of MK9, 10, or 11. I'm also gonna use a different metric here for whether or not a game is dead. I looked over into the chat and I saw someone refer to the game's title in a really funny but mean way They called it MK one out of ten When I see something like that and it makes me have a little chuckle I'm like the game's dead That's that's that's that's your metric, yeah. So no, that's it.

But no, fair to say that yes, there's always a level of popularity and commercial success to that, but you just have to look at how it tracks and how things are going for it, historical to prior releases in the franchise outside. Anyway, yeah, there's going to be anO, a Ford, of course, and there's gonna be, I mean, at CB, we'll see how things go. Just have, just hand the trophy to Sonic Fox and just let the rest of the show time go to the Street Fighter pools. Just make it asymmetrical and like, yeah, sure. I mean, I don't know that. I don't know who's

currently on top and but like it might be some other names there. But yeah, anyway, I just, I don't like and I've never liked that the what determines the the EVO mainstage slots is like a mixture of business fan votes and or shut up though with us because we say so I mean, of course it is but that's that's that's what yeah Yeah, what's the solution? They have to they want they want to do it in the big in the big casino in the in the Vegas it costs money I I wouldn't have felt this way if not for that skull girl shit from years ago right of course that was bullshit yeah and then the they cross tag battle as comparison points right six months versus two months versus two weeks etc

anyway that's before we move on I'd like to say hi to a friend of the show Susie a voice of Trish Sphere hunter in the chat Congratulations Susie hey congrats That that was one of the one of the one of the project of voicing Trish and peak of combat, okay? Congratulations awesome Stack that stack that paper get that bread Stack that stack that paper get that bread. Hell yeah, I feel like it's way more than getting your foot into Devil May Cry and be like I am part of this get in there get in there however you can. Absolutely good shit.

Anyway, yeah, that's that's pretty much it. So this week not much besides just this pod so Gonna be like I said heading over to combo breaker Yeah, if you're in Chicago and you're coming down to the tournament me and Reggie will be there and hanging out so Say what's up? How's it going all right, uh So I just spent four days With my mother-in-law she came to visit. So this is actually the first time we've met

So it was very important. It was very nice I made a really good first impression which was important because you know, we have the baby now It's too late for you to disapprove mom, but you know Right bad first impression while child Here's here's the weirdest thing right because I've talked to page's mom on the phone You know, right? Bad first impression while child exists. Here's here's the weirdest thing, right? Because I've talked to Paige's mom on the phone and briefly her dad, but her dad's hearing isn't so good. And so I know like her mom by acquaintance, like, oh, you know, talk, talk on the phone

now and then. But my mother-in-law watches my show, like semi-regularly. Uh-oh. Which means that there's no surprises here, which is a strange way to go into that situation. Oh no. The parasocial realm. Yeah.

Is now IRL. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh no. So now IRL. Yeah. Yeah. Oh no. So, so that was great. Uh she came by. She did the very typical older person thing. If she gets to the house and the first thing she does is like, hey, let me uh let hey, you want me to start gardening out in your garden? I can play. I'm like, no. No. Just relax. You're on a little vacation let us take

you out to a nice restaurant just like well I can I could I could just get this garden all like talking my ear off about plants and such mm-hmm hang out with the baby baby loves his his Mimi is that is that generally is that terminology okay that's the terminology. Okay, because you could go a lot of ways you can go with Nana, you can go with Graham Graham, you can go both grandmas were like really specific about what they wanted to be called and both grandpas are like, whatever. Huh? Baby in our family was call me whatever in our family was mama, right? Mama. Mama was just, that was everyone, everyone called her Mama.

Doesn't matter where you lined up on the chart. So probably the strangest thing, by far the strangest thing, was that it felt to me like I had been living my life with Shadow the Hedgehog, and now I finally got to meet Sonic It's like at the start They're both very fast

but Like they're both headhawks, and they're both very fast. But. But there was a point in their lives where one decided to go this way and the other decided to go that way, and it just all spread out from there. You have only met Negaduck. You did not meet Darkwing until now.

You can see the opposite definition of yes. Okay. Got it. Got it. And it's just so strange because you see Mother-in-law and this is the original, right? And you didn't realize that the situation you're dealing with is the remix? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah. And you're like, huh, this is like this over here and that's why it's like this over here, but opposite. Yes, this, correct.

I had this Fascinating yes, no so some years ago. I had this moment of like Putting together the like oh look at that you got Zagreus's hair and Persephone's hair But the color is of the Hades look It's like a little bit of the two and so you do that with the personality traits, and you're like oh I recognize a little bit of that two. And so you do that with the personality traits and you're like, oh, I recognize a little bit of that nervousness right there. You know, and like, oh, there's that like, super like, hard work, gotta, gotta get your, you know, nose to the grindstone. There's a little bit of that and you're like, oh, these are the ingredients and all the

little pieces. And then it's, it's fascinating. But every once in a while you also see a trait that's like oh this is Why is this so different and it's like because it's the mirror right because it's the opposite It's exactly in opposition to this one 100% a hundred and and I kept seeing that over and over like Mannerisms and just like little tiny things so I can say like I can fully admit if you if anyone ever met my brother right I will yeah like though the one that is that I grew up with I met your brother for 30 minutes once 20 years ago a long time right he seemed nice yeah pleasant guy that's all I got

I think if you if you get to think if you get to know my brother or talk to him over time or so, you will start to see where it's like, oh, here's all the similarities that we have, and then here's the things that I have in opposition to what he is. Yeah, yeah. And when you are lagging two years behind somebody,

but you're kind of still following, you're the tails walking around behind everything that's happening, they're determining the activity, you're kind of still following, you're the tails walking around behind everything that's happening. They're determining the activity, you're getting pulled into that, and they're picking first. So, they're choosing, there's two things on the table, they take the first one, you get what's second. Right?

A lot of what I am is absolutely in opposition to or what I was left with, you know, as well. You can totally see that in people that make the people you know. It's really interesting. So like, here's a really good example that's very obvious. Paige's mom is a practiced consummate green thumb. She knew every flower type of grass, tree that we ran by. Couldn't stop talking about gardening and tips about what kind of clay and soil is good for whatever. Mm-hmm.

And then there's my darling wife, who, as we've established, much like your own wife, not super great with plants? Black thumb. The black thumb. The thumb of death. On the other hand, whenever me and Paige travel, Paige is the one who handles all of the actual arrangements because I get nervous about traveling, and Paige was hopping back and forth from America to Canada when we first started dating. about traveling and Paige was, you know, hopping back and forth from America to Canada when

we first started dating. So she is practiced. She could do all of it. No problem, right? Paige's mom just fell to pieces on the flight over because her flight got bumped. And just every part of actually getting to us just completely fell apart. And we had like, picking up the phone being like, Hi, yeah, get on the plane. Right? No, get we'll pick you up. Just get get on the plane. I know it's the wrong plane. This is a sequence. Get on the plane. That has played out many times in the past. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is very interesting. And like, when you... It's fun, like when you...

I don't know, like, did you call that shit out immediately? Or... On occasion. Okay. Yeah, on occasion. And we also got to have the the fun moments of meeting somebody who's damn near 70 for the first time and they say something and

You literally cannot help it but blurred out what? What Really? Have you lost your mind? It's like it's my house. So I have a little bit of a little bit of thing. But I'm like, I realized that like, that sense of incredulity that I feel when Paige is typing in this fucking chat that she might have to drink that zombies piss if he told her to.

That emotion is also coming off her mom just about different shit. They're cringe. Wully, they're cringe. I mean, I wasn't going to elaborate, but like... I married into cringe and that works out fine because I'm only if only if instructed to right yes I'm being I'm being messaged and there's Chad only if he said only if instructed to oh yeah oh yeah I'm listening I'm listening there is a minor cultural exchange upon the Oh, yeah There is a minor cultural exchange upon the arrival of pages mom, okay, which we had to

Listen This is just one of those things. Mm-hmm. You have to take your shoes off. Mm-hmm Mm-hmm, and she's like, oh, oh like she didn't fight it. She's like, Oh, okay. Like, weird. It's like, no, you have no you have to, you have to, you have to take your shoes off. It is, it is against the law for you to not take your shoes off. Yeah. I mean, it's weird. I mean, so that I've seen very depending on the house to house and person to person. I've pretty much always grown up in a take your shoes off house. And then upon, I guess, making white friends,

I realized that there were houses where you didn't take your shoes off. Those people are insane. upon, I guess, making white friends, I realized that there were houses where you didn't take your shoes off. Those people are insane. Those people are insane. You just kinda rolled through and I was like, damn, okay. Madness, absolutely crazy. And I guess that depends on if you have wood floors or carpeting and stuff as well.

But yeah, and then there was also, I remember my old roommate who you knew from Back in the Sal days who was like the one guy no Asian not only shoes off, but like like Their kid like you can't ever Get close to the bed with feet like there is a what like you couldn't Feet can't touch the bed at any way in any way shape or form

What about when you're in the bed? Yeah, you they had to figure some stuff out I don't like it was like just okay, but after there was a whole thing with Like feet on never heard of that ever. There was a whole thing with like feet on or near the bed, dirtiness, cleanliness. How am I supposed to jump up on the bed? Yeah, it was more than I had ever seen. So it was a lot. And I was like, okay, that's the,

there's a dial up beyond just take your shoes off, you know? Socks or things like that. I think Paige's mom was here and just, I think we might have explained it to her like 15 times And just it never once sank in or she like bought a pack of smokes She's like wow, that's expensive. It's in Canadian dollars. Yeah, it's in Canadian money Okay, but to be fair that, I don't blame anyone for that because when I look at American things,

I go, oh my God, it's cheap. No, it's not. So cheap, whoa. But that initial response to the number being lower is just, it's baked in. It's hard to, yeah, you have to stop and go, wait, no, it's not. But it feels that way whenever I see American prices.

We also ran into a really goofy situation where no one smokes in our life other than Paige's mom. So we had to find a spot in the yard for her to go smoke. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so that's just as a whole, like on the downturn, like most, yeah, a lot of cigarette smoking is just dead now. There's vaping around, and that's the thing. In a lot of cases too, some people are just like, if they're going to smoke, they mostly smoke weed or if anything. But it's become extremely minimal. Yeah. There's been once or twice where it's like, oh yeah, I guess let me go put like a Coke can or ashtray out, you know, or something. But I just didn't think of that

at any point. And then I got to have the conversation where she had to buy a pack of smokes in Canada. I'm like, oh, which one did you get? She's like, oh, it's dumb. The collector's pictures. I got the lip cancer one. I'm like, oh, that's a good one. The lung cancer one is the best I'm like so you you know you you've never been to Canada before Back when these came in there were the good Cigarette warnings and the bad ones and the ones everybody wanted was like hard like cancerous tumor ones

Oh, yeah, but he wanted the dead baby one Well, so I was gonna say right you can get the gross, right, you could get the gross teeth, the tar, you could get the gross teeth and the tar lungs, which are pretty standard contenders, right? But then if you found yourself in the, um, smoking effects, your pregnancy as your collectible, that is the woman with the gray dress. That is the right arm of the forbidden one. You get four more of those and you just win.

100%. I remember back when I worked at the grocery store, people would come in and they would ask for the specific labels and no one ever wanted the fucking dead baby pregnancy one to the point where there was a moment where it's like all we have is these and people would walk away

to buy cigarettes somewhere else. Yes, and that's when, I don't know if you ever saw them, but a couple of corner stores and Couch Tards started selling cigarette cover boxes. They did, I remember that. And they have, and you buy a little sticker that goes on the front over the gross photo And it just says surgeon generals warning blah blah blah

It's in the same box and font and it's just a picture of whatever normal like nature or so It's just literally surgeon general blah fuck off man. That's so nuts. Oh shit. Yeah that's wild. That's a particular Canadian cigarette thing that y'all didn't see. Australia I think has the same thing. Do they? Okay. Yeah. I mean that you know people also you just like you can transfer out of the box into

some holders But that's more work than people are willing to do and there's a whole Ritual of opening and ripping out and you know thinking and pulling one out etc So if people are used to that they don't really want to deal with the transfer Okay, so hung out with my mother-in-law. That was nice this morning. I had way too much drama Like legitimately way too much drama I'm like I'm like holding the baby and the baby falls asleep But I give the baby to page and then I look out and there's a cop walking up to my fucking door

Hmm. I don't want that Yeah He was trying to return the ID of the people who lived here last Okay, trying to return their their driver's license and the driver's license had. I'm like, okay. All right. Okay. And then I think lightning hit my neighbor's house.

Oh, Jesus. Like a half hour after that because the power went out and Paige looked out the window and she's like, there's sparks shooting off the neighbor's house. Jesus. You're not the kind of person who if like suddenly a cop starts walking up to you, you just start sweating and shaking and panicking and-

No, but what I am doing is I don't want whatever is about to happen. Whatever is about to happen, yeah. I don't want any of this. There's no possible good situation This was like the most minor things like oh my neighbor was sorry the people who lived here before us They lost their wallet. Mm-hmm. That doesn't actually affect me and I reached out to them and they're like, oh, yeah Yeah, no, they actually found us. We got we got the wallet back. Oh, okay. Great. But I don't want what oh, yeah

What do I want out of the situation? Yeah. No, I wish you could see the EXE that runs in my head. Like cop.exe just creates an outer body experience. Nice A-pose. My ghost, like my Xavier astral plane leaves my body and I watch from a third person as I am in cop.exe mode running a script. Every blink, every head turn, every movement. Good afternoon, officer. I am running an NPC script. It is a feeling. Anyway.

Well, here's the thing for me, right? Is that I came to a conclusion very quickly, is that there was one police officer walking up to my door. One police officer? It's probably going to be annoying, but if there's two, I don't want to. So yeah, he leaves, and then literally like a half hour later, we hear the loudest buzzing noise I've ever heard in my entire life all the lights go out and we see sparks shooting out the fucking window yeah and it was bad enough that I I put on my coat and ran over to the neighbor's house and be like is your house on fire that's important and my neighbor comes down and goes, no,

but like we were in the living room, we just saw a gigantic, the whole living room just filled up with blue light. We're like, okay. Then we went across the street, me and my neighbor, and we think we figured out what happened. We think that one of the trees in the neighbor across from us is too close to the power line. Yeah, okay. Okay, yeah. So I just actually learned, like, yesterday that when something like that happens, when a huge spark occurs and, like, damage is done, or, sorry like a fire starts or something you can tell by the sound of the boom

whether it was a lightning strike or a power or a wire popping or something like a tower like hitting something so it was it was a horrible buzz, but it was so loud that we were like, oh my what the Right We have power back. So obviously, so, uh, the transformer or the converter couldn't blow up. Uh, but what, like I have to remember to, um, I have to remember to, uh, yeah, page says it shook the house. I don't know. Cause I was so freaked out by the noise. Um,

get that power company and be like, Hey, some some fucking shit happened across the street. I want to go like talk to my neighbors across but they're at work. So no one's there. Yeah, you got to trim branches and shit. Like there's a whole thing. I mean, I was taught I remember us to like, when they had the mini ice storm the other day, like there's drooping trees and drooping power lines and it's just like a recipe for absolute death.

Yeah. Yeah, okay. So that was fun. Didn't care for that this morning. Like the good thing, like Paige's mom was gone because this isn't the kind of thing you want to deal with when you're trying to get into an airport. Right as it's happening. Right.

I hope the house doesn't burn, as it's happening. Right. I hope the house doesn't burn down while we're gone. What else did I play this week? I played some more FF7. It's great. What do you want from me? Me and Paige did a sponsored stream of Cassette Beasts yesterday morning. How'd that go?

Cassette Beasts is great. We all knew this. We talked about it last year the online multiplayer is Well you you press start and hit do you I like some online multiplayer And then they join your game, and then you're just hanging out and you can trade and it's like you're playing by yourself But you can see the other person and there's a link cable attaching your game boys permanently Okay, it works really well No complaints. It's eight players. It's like sponsored. Yeah

That's funny cuz like I was actually like thinking of like just going to check that out recently at some point Personally, but like obviously yeah schedule commitments and let me do yeah, it's good with that, but that's cool I also like how the the people behind cassette piece gave me money to tell you that the game I already told you was good is still good Yes, I will Yeah And now at some point when I just check that out on my own. I will do it for free and feel like a sucker But it's cool anyway. So, you know, yeah. What else? The only other thing I don't know if this is news or

not. But I was insane. And we discussed this last week that I am a crazy person. I stayed up until sorry, no, I woke up at 330am to sit down and watch the 4 a.m. live as a 14 live letter and that motherfucking thing was nearly five hours long. What are they usually? Three and a half to five hours long Jesus but the the danger that I ran into Was there like here's the generalized class changes, right? And I'm like, okay. All right. All right

How we're gonna do it and then they pull up a graphic and I'm like, oh my god They're gonna go through every single job one by one and on one hand. I'm like, hell yeah And then on the other hand I'm like, god damn it. And then they went through every single class one by one and like, here's the kinds of things that'll change. And I'm like, a lot of these are really good changes and I'm really happy about that. I'm tired. Also, Final Fantasy XIV has made it. It is now partnering with KFC and Mountain Dew. Wait, did it not already partner up with KFC was that but it's back the chocobo chicken

Yeah, it's back now and Mountain Dew. Okay, but this time Perhaps they're not encouraging people to eat till they get sick No, this is a different type of promotion, okay No, this is a different type of promotion. Okay. Oh, the Thatch Okuma thing was in China. Now the KFC thing is for Japan. Okay, okay. Yeah, it looks good.

I like the new buttons my class will be getting. Want more details. The only thing of note that would rate here is that you're doing this thing where you're looking at the changes that are going to be coming to all the jobs and you go, oh boy, they're going to make the next one much harder, aren't they? Because all the defensive abilities are getting upgraded and classes that weren't able to move before will now be able to move which says there will be a lot more damage and a lot more movement which is great I'm looking forward to I thought you're gonna say things are gonna get harder because people have gotten good at the hardest things already no that's always been the case that's always been the case man I gotta say whoever is working

at the the KFC tie-in promotional department is Fucking up because the number one most downloaded mod for for guilty gear strive gold. Louis is the Colonel outfit Yeah, and the fact that they're not getting on that is Money they don't know guilty gear exists shame. They don't know They don't know Guilty Gear exists. Shame. They don't know. They don't know. He's got a fucking, the coffin, he's got a big chicken bucket, fucking multi-piece meal,

so he's swinging at you. It's great. Anyway. So we'll talk about Fallout next week, Willy, once you get your foot into that. Uh, yeah, if I, if we get a chance. I mean, I brought- If so, okay. Yeah, because, again, travel I if I if we get a chance, I mean if so, okay Yeah, because again travel we can bullshit but like I have a strong suspicion that the state of

Ghoul time in my household will will remain for Multiple years so I'm not really worried about that that going away before our discussion. So just maybe you can perhaps, you know, you've been closest to this, so you can probably fill it out. But like, all right, so you on the skeleton boner chart, you've got full on skeletor, scullomania, not scullomania, skullmageddon, just it is bones bones and maximum turn on is occurring, right? Just Niagara Falls, right? Okay. When we drag it over towards like Cryptkeeper, we get a little bit of flesh hanging, but

we start to get a little bit less skeleton, right? Then you get to ghouls and then you get somewhere over towards like red skull but like how much flesh hanging on still constitutes the hotness. So it doesn't appear to actually be any level of decay because Astarion is undead and is actually just a pretty looking man right there's some kind of like conceptual like monsterism going on that I am not personally privy to gotcha okay so it doesn't it's because like if it's just if it's a meat layer that is just muscle and tendon that's not. I don't know but okay You're asking me to explain if it's the arches or the or the space between the toes that are what gets you

It's at the bottom of the foot or is yeah, like I don't know. I Okay, I I could tell you what I vividly vividly remember watching fallout because Paige watched it We watched together afterwards and I was watching a whole lot fallout and I'm like this ghouls gonna be a problem Because Walt and Goggins is a handsome guy and ghoul makeup and he's full-on Act like southern accenting his way through shit and just being a violent murderous sociopath But girls like that. Mm-hmm So, you know, yeah yeah I yeah it's just the it's just the like does a little does the extra flesh increase or

decrease the appeal yeah I don't know I don't know okay I don't fucking know okay okay page jumps in to help us understand with the phrase. He's so hot in the chat. Thanks Paige He has no nose that'll work. I see I don't I don't know I don't get it. Mmm Okay, okay Right, right. It's that yeah with the two holes and the okay. I don't Well now that's pretty much it. It's been a it's been a two holes and the, okay. I don't, I don't get it. Well now we're. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

It's been a short week media or whatnot wise because much of it was family time. It was well spent family time. Because radioactive spider blood Morbius is full on man but then the nose bones look like they have the skeleton nose but the rest of the features are not skeletal. So you know. Morb.

All right. I'm being sent a screenshot of something. That's funny. Okay. Was the Senua sacrifice how long to beat chart? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, we're just going to talk about that a little later, but it just seems as if the, I guess as far as Gene and then some other reviews are concerned. I just saw Gene call it, it's like the order 1886. Yeah, that sounds rough. The mixed reviews are there. Overall on the Metacritic, it seems like it's still mostly in the positive in the greens, upper 80s to 90s in some cases. But I've seen some cherry picked other reviews saying that, yeah, it's not quite, it feels good. It's not as good as the first one.

That's not as good as the first one and doesn't really need to happen, which is true that the first game is a complete story arc that I definitely felt I'm like, yeah, you don't have to revisit this. But I'm like, but if you find a good reason to tell more of this story, then so be it. Sure. Right. Because it kind of ends on that note of like, okay, I accept who I am now onward to other things, right? But no, it's the same things, but less complicated and better graphics. Okay, so I will say though, what raises the eyebrow is the sentence, quote unquote, Hellblade 2 actively harms the franchise's standing as a well-researched and sympathetic portrayal of mental health.

I was like, what the fuck does that mean? I laughed really hard because I posted, oh yeah, and then I saw Hattuck go, oh no. Cause that's right, like that sounds like you're actively going from this is a really good depiction of it to David Caging it. But, but upon further reading, it seems like that is not the case.

That is, it's more actually just the first game does a really good job of, like, introducing the... introducing the issues she has, and then, like, while they're tormenting her, the actual coming to terms of who she is involves embracing that. And, like, when she does complete her character arc, they're still a part of who she is involves embracing that. And when she does complete her character arc, they're still a part of who she is, right? As opposed to defeating the inner voices

and making them go away and that'll make you better or something, that's not what the game does. You know, it does a really good job of that. So in the absence of anything like that, of her embracing it, it doesn't have that same message and that's kind of the difference. It's like the first game had a good message about that and this game, I guess, doesn't have that same message and that's kind of the difference. It's like the first game had a good message about that and this game, I guess, doesn't.

So it's not anti-mental health, right? It's more just lacking that really good depiction, you know? But yeah, I was just saying, man, that's a bummer to hear. I'm still going to go into it with open mind and see where this goes cuz I'm you know, I did like the simple but like Simple and limited but ultimately, you know good combat that that the game had in the first one And of course the visuals then the the narrative effects and the character and what she's going through and everything is like Yeah, it's a it's a it's a nice short, tight, compelling journey. If it feels like it doesn't need to exist and nothing the character's going through

adds to what was built on, then that sucks because it's like you could have taken the same like effort and kind of told a different story you know with a different way that I'm trying to have a message to it but I'm trying to figure this out either way how much did Senua's sacrifice cost when it came out I was it 49.99 I don't remember at all I could could say it's cuz cuz the hell blade to 30 Definitely costs $70 30 bucks 30 bucks So Okay, so it's shorter and

has worse combat and It costs twice as much is the combat worse Combat and it costs twice as much is the combat worse Yeah, it's a gene in his review talks about how you have less moves and you don't fight multi-group enemies So like I'm talking Canadian dollars guys Everyone in chat again just like my mother-in-law. I'm in Canada.

So the 30 was 30 US and now it's 50 US for the firefighter. That seems like a pile of shit. That seems like a pile of fuck. If the length is the exact same, then that sucks. I don't think video games should have a worse metric than $10 an hour. I think we can all argue about value to ratio or whatever, but I think $10 an hour is a breaking point. I think that if I had to do a full shift at work to buy it and then I beat it before I go to bed, that's a fucking waste. I feel like I remember having this discussion before and I remember just kind of like, I'm

more willing if I depending on how the experience goes and so well, you know what here how much was sayonara wildhearts? $6 and a bag of acorns Because I adore that game and it was 1749 and I Happily I And I happily would have paid even more for, okay, $12.99. I would have paid more for that. And it was an hour and five minutes, perhaps. It's an hour long game.

I would have been willing to even, it's how much I enjoyed it, but I'm just speaking for me, you know? But yeah, that works. That's works that that's that's what yeah That's about thirteen dollars for an hour long game or so and then I guess the question too is like are you gonna factor in? Is there a replay new game plus are there things that are so there is a new game plus, but right? You know, it's not one of the complaints that really just put me off is somebody complaining that Senua moves too slow. Yeah. Gene told them to make sure the dog sprint is on and I'm like, oh no, I know exactly what that feels like.

Mm-hmm. That feels like, look at all this shit. It's so pretty. Oh God, I'm also just being reminded of the whole ground zeros discussion. I'm like, I didn't have fun with that. But yeah, I don't necessarily, I don't know, I don't agree with the hard limiter of $10 an hour per se because to me that really depends on what the experience is and what I'm getting out of it. cases like what is a game with a new game plus with some new features but not that many still a one hour game or is that a two hour game? That depends on how good the actual game is. Right.

And then you're talking to somebody who I play fighting games that last 90 seconds but you know- No they don't! But your own journey is completely open ended, right? The amount that you get for going through a game like that, anything that is a competitive, like, you know, chess pieces on a chess board, how much should that call,

like the length of time is up to you and how far you're gonna go of your own volition. It gets hard to take a game like Balletro, you can say, if you're going to go of your own volition. It gets hard to take a game like balotro you can say if you're trying to unlock every deck and unlock every blind then yeah, you're going to spend a whole lot of fucking time, you know, probably outlasting the amount of money you've paid for that. But by the way, if you were playing a fighting game, and in and you

used a quarter to play, and you lost every every time it would cost you about $37 an hour If you use the quarter to play yeah, mm-hmm So fighting we shut the fuck up. No, they do not. Okay. All right. Well, I then you know, all right You should stop my opinion. I should just shut the fuck up. That's it. Yeah, I don't all right Anyway, I'm I'm not too sure about about the costs per hour Thing I don't know. I don't have any clean Clear cut answers there, but I as a feeling I feel like I'm willing to Pay more for a short experience depending on if that experience is wrong.

I felt worth it to me. I don't know. I don't feel like every hour in every game feels the same to me and the monetary value associated feels hard to put a hard line on that is gonna be like consistent thing. Oh I don't I don't think that a hard line in the sand is important but I think that a metric like $10 an hour or whatever is a really good example of where you can kind of start to understand that weird feel bad part. Yeah, well, what? Where you're like, I paid $80 for this game and I beat it in an afternoon.

This feels like bullshit. When Hellblade 2 is coming out and we're hearing these things about it that are like not great And that it's disappointing compared to the first game then you start looking at like wait How long is this thing? How much did it cost? But like you don't Necessarily ask those questions when you're just enjoying the the journey and when you're fully engaged in what it's doing Hey, here's a here's a good example. I just saw us. Well sometimes you do that's not that's not completely true. I love Resident Evil so much I love it so much I sat down to stream Resident Evil 3 and accidentally beat it before standing up. Damn. That's fucking stupid

that was bullshit. Especially if your expectations from the other games are for something that's significantly longer for sure that yeah, that's that's goofy I don't want this to at the same time like we don't live in a black-and-white world. I'm not defending bullshit prices I'm not defending the the way that the cost of games has increased and the fact that over here in Canada as well They jack it up ten bucks every time the dollar Doesn't get parity, and then it never comes back down. I am not defending how bullshit costs have gotten. And I especially am someone who doesn't enjoy the idea of paying monthly for something and

then feeling that I have to go play even that, you know what I mean? Like all that is a very clear thing to me. The DLC costs are bullshit. of the time. I'm not gonna sit here and defend garbage economic practices in video games. But when it comes to length to hour, I can just think of short experiences I've cherished that I'm super willing to give more to. And I don't know how to quantify that easily. And that's the end of the thought.

Oh yeah, no, I completely understand and agree with you. I think when we come to, cause what's probably the most, I paid $94 for Zone of the Inders too. Right? I feel like that's maybe the best game to ever use for this example because Like I bought it and then I went wow Yeah, that games incredible, and then I sold it

And then I sold it and there are only so there are many examples of that right there are many examples also of the game that is Underwhelming after you spent but and there are not as many when it comes to the Hollow Knight problem of that game is way too cheap for how much they gave you that's actually very uncommon Yeah, the Hollow Knight is stupid in how cheap it is. You should have taken more money. That's ridiculous, right? That doesn't happen as much, per se.

I would say you get it from Hollow Knight, you get it from Sakurai Games. Sakurai Games give you too much game for the amount you pay for, in a lot of cases. And yeah, there's not many examples throughout the industry of that, you know? I'd say Vampire Survivors feels like you're getting exactly what your money is worth.

Exactly what you paid for. And also considering the gameplay, quoteunquote as well too, so yeah I feel like vampire survivors is maybe like the best example of what I'm actually getting at and which I'm like yeah No, you know what less graphics. Yeah, it's just you want to knock $30 off the price of this and give me some fucking nest sprites Let's do it, but it's just it's not it's never perfect because it's like okay Was this made by one person over the course of 10 years,

or was this a team of people in one short circumstance in one year, and was that team located in Estonia? That is a great academic discussion to have as Billy's parents, as he's standing in the Best Buy with the $50 bill, looking at what game he wants to buy. Of course, of course, no. Right, which brings us to the age old

consumer buying purchase guide versus art critique and review. To which I then say, hey, Billy, Kingdom Hearts is coming to fucking Steam and you can get like three games for $40. That's the kingdom, you go, Kingdom Hearts is light, you little shit. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah, and then there's always the like, hey, last gen awesome game plus collection for $10. What the fuck, Go get that. You know, there's a whole lot of those. Speaking of which, by the way, Kingdom Hearts announced for Steam, the all-in-one collection from a couple years ago was just, was only consoles, right?

Wully, I had like an entire conversation ready to make fun of something and you just sailed all the way past it in the funniest way possible because I was getting ready to talk about how fucked up it is that the Epic Games store is so disliked. People don't even pretend games aren't even real if they release there And you didn't even know the Kingdom Hearts has been on PC for three years It's been on the EG on the epic store. Well, there you go It has been out for three years all of these games all of the Kingdom Hearts games have been on epic for three I asked an honest question

All of the Kingdom Hearts games have been on Epic for three years. I asked an honest question. Because that's what I'm just I'm remembering that there was an all-in-one collection that came out some years ago. Yeah, it came out on consoles and then two or three years later came out on Epic and everyone went wow It'll be great when this comes to PC. Okay, and it's gonna come to PC on June 13th That is that is wild that people don't even view the store as not even legitimate, but existing at all. I just I didn't internalize that. I mean, I'm not paying a ton of attention as I'm not following, but yeah, totally. You're the host of a video game podcast. How like how how buried is this shit

that it doesn't at least trickle up to you in some, it's so, oh my God, it's so embarrassing. Dude, I mean, look, I had a, I had a realization not too long ago of like, I'm barely able to keep up with a couple, like I just, I do what I can. No, no, no, no, no, Wooly, I'm not making fun of you. I do what I can.

I'm saying you are in the- I can't play or know everything. No, no, no, Wooly, you misunderstood my tone here. You are in the top 0.1% of game knowers. There's too much. You could never possibly know all of this. But the fact that you are aware that the collection came out on console But you weren't aware that it came out on epic. I is what I really funny. Sorry. Okay misunderstood misunderstood

Because as I said that and I'm seeing and I'm seeing like wooly dot dot dot. Oh, you should know this And I'm like, what the fuck? All right, gotcha. My bad epic game store functionally doesn't even exist. It's not really this Relatively popular video game. It's not it's not considered PC. It's good. It's considered something else. Yeah, okay Gene did a really good he tweeted about it and he's like, yeah One of the reasons that the the store just died in his eyes is he plays all his games on his Steam Deck now. You can't play Epic games on your Steam Deck. Did all of them make it to EGS? All of them. It was the same day. They all came out on day one and everyone went Fuck. So it's just it's just a Steam announcement and it's like yay, it's coming to PC. Bro!

It's like yeah it's coming to pc bro it's it's like the announcement is kingdom hearts is coming to steam and all day i've seen people oh my god have been waiting for years to play these on pc i will say um so shout outs to uh the games that do the migration save that do the migration save, Darkest Dungeon and Hades, I believe, had a, were you playing this on the Epic Games Store? You can do a one-time upload and migration of your save over to Steam when you play it over here. And it actually gives you that option, you know? That's great. That's a super cool feature. Good shit. I'd like to give a shout out to one particular gentleman on the internet, on twitter.com. This is Derek at dynamite underscore Derek on Twitter,

also X, who said on May 16th, five days ago, I give up, I can't take it anymore. I'm buying Kingdom Hearts on EGS. You owe me when they confirm it for steam in like three days. Oh, damn. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. I love it. Know that um.

Oh he got his refund? Oh that's awesome. Nice. Nice. Good. Oh the Epic Game Store version of Kingdom Hearts isn't playable offline. Oh that's just awesome. Oh this is all just good stuff today.

Yeah I put my early access hours in on the Epic Games Store when there was no other choice, but wild. All right. All right. What? The Epic what? Epic, I can't remember. And I remember, yeah, that was when,

I wanna say like the first time I booted it, I just got a black window that had invisible everything, like all the, none of the images loaded, but like I still had to navigate the invisible store to get to it. Oh man, I got, I remember, it was crazy. I mean a couple weeks, a couple months ago I was playing Alan Wake 2

and I lost an internet connection and Epic decided that that meant I didn't own Alan Wake 2 anymore. lost an internet connection and epic decided that that meant I didn't own Alan Wake 2 anymore So that was the middle of a stream and just it just ruined the whole stream. Just kicked me right off Okay For all I'm thinking like if you had to rank absolute dogshit

PC game platforms proprietary. Okay, let's do it. You ready? You play. Wait, wait, wait. What's our ranking system here? Oh wait, wait, are we going top, bottom? I was going top down.

Top down, top down, top down. You play. You play is the worst, the worst, the Ubisoft garbage thing. You play? No, top down means the best one on top. Oh, okay, I said which is the worst. The question was which is the worst. Oh, okay.

I'm sorry. Yeah. I asked which was the worst. Yeah, you play the worst. You play the worst. We can all agree. The Ubisoft one is the absolute worst. It's the worst.

It's the worst. Second worst, probably Origin. No, no, it's like, it's Rockstar. Okay, I haven't used Rockstar's. It's really bad. Yeah, okay. It's really bad. Okay.

Like, is it like, when I boot it up, it doesn't always show up bad? Every single time I launch L.A. Noire Rockstar Social Club crashes and I have to force quit it. And then I have to do it again and hope it doesn't crash. Ooh, that's a good stuff. Every single time. Okay.

Like 100% of the time. Okay, all right, all right. Ubisoft, Rockstar. I mean, games for Windows Live, like is it even gonna call? That doesn't really exist. That's not even. But I will give a shout out to everything Xbox I mean, games for Windows Live, like, is it even gonna call? That doesn't really exist. That's not even... I will give a shout out to everything Xbox on my computer.

Just fucking hates working. It just hates it. It just doesn't want to live. Like I can never manage to make sure that the right account is associated with whatever because of the age old Microsoft accounts that got migrated through and how the old Gmail accounts are fuck you with it. Or the Windows store will lock out your app access and leave like holes on your computer. Origin is a steaming pile of dog shit. However, they updated their community page

with our Mirror's Edge playthrough back in the day. So hey, you got a point for that. I would say Origin. In which we started shit talking. Origin. In the LP. I think origin is Of the horrible ones it's the only one I'm willing to use even begrudgingly I

Mean when you don't have a choice, you don't have a choice, right? But yeah, but like it can work some time. It can work I only have overwatch experience using like modern battle net. Modern blizzards thing was fine. Yeah, it it it I don't remember that it was annoying that it existed back in the day or now. The one but like yeah and every time you when you really get to feel the the absolute wrench slowing down the machine is whenever you're booting a steam game up And then it has to go pop a third party. Yeah, that's when you get to really get put through the fucking ringer

GoG is fine. I Wouldn't call bad either. It's fine. Yeah, I just but I think I've only used it for like one or two things Well, it's just it's just like a download manager. It's a container. It's just a container. Well, it's just like a download manager kind of. It's a container, it's just a container. It's just like, hey, do you own Witcher 3? Yeah, of course I do, everyone owns fucking Witcher 3. Well, do you want to patch it? No, maybe. You ever use 2Ks for anything?

I have never used 2Ks for anything. Okay. I have not heard good things. Couldn't report on that, yeah. Play online somewhere down there don't know yeah okay yeah and then yeah and then power gap power gap power gap power gap steam a launcher so good I import the other launchers into it. Hold on this might sound really stupid. Does itch.io have its own launcher software?

I genuinely don't know. To me itch.io is a website where I go and I download zip files. Oh my god, oh my god that's so funny. Somebody pointed out that we forgot to even talk about Epic. In this list. Somebody pointed out that we forgot to even talk about epic Okay Yeah, yeah, there you go. All right was the start of this conversation. I mean it was like

For me my first epic game experience for a while was, it does not work. It just doesn't. It is barely functional. And it's in a state where it'll boot now and you can do your thing. So yeah, I guess throw it in there under Ubisoft and fucking whatever came there.

Okay, hey, you wanna have the ultimate, you wanna have the ultimate truth that the Epic Game Store is a piece of shit. On the rare times that I do actually play a game on the Epic Game Store, because somebody sends me a code as usual, the only way I can get controller support for this wireless PlayStation five controller to work on the Epic Game Store is to run it as its own application through Steam. in the Epic Games Store is to run it as its own application through Steam.

Oh my God. Yeah, that pretty much says it because Steam has such good controller support that you can go in and create profiles and do. Then a little map to Epic's shit. Oh my God, that is fucking crazy. That is crazy. Wow, yeah, yeah. And it lets you import your shit and do that too if you need to, so fair enough. That is fucking crazy. That is crazy. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. And it lets you import your shit and do that too if you need to. So fair enough. Now Solidus points out that you plug your stuff on and it works natively on some games, but also this is a wireless PlayStation 5 controller. So work. It doesn't want to? Okay.

I guess I'll run you through Steam then. Yeah. And I guess those'll run you through steam then Yeah, and I guess those though I mean those are the those are the ones like anything beyond that that's super dead is just super dead regardless, but God all right Okay, let's uh, let's take a quick break and then oh before we do I guess we should tell people where to go this week Yeah Well, are you streaming this week? No, I'm just doing this and then I'm gonna go combo breaker

so okay go to combo breaker if you want to hang out with wooly and see him and Reggie and Reggie also and tell them that they're cool and that they smell nice. I don't think I've ever been to Chicago. So I Mean, I know you've been to the airport. Oh hair isn't it pretty nice. Oh hair constantly. Yeah, the airport's not real. So I'm gonna be streaming Street Fighter 6 and FF 7 rebirth. It'll be the re debut of the get out of fighting games of the Get Out of Fighting games, a fucking segment. Shout out to Quiet Viking for making an excellent animation,

which I should mention you to, Woolly, I did not tell him to put you in that animation. Oh, that just played out the way it did. I didn't tell him anything. I said, here's the name, and he just made the whole thing by himself. See, I can't tell if the energy is I'm inviting you in earnestly, and then it just goes bad down the hallway

Setting you up Interpretation is is is so I think quite Viking understood my My heart in this in that get out of fighting games is actively sabotaging get into fighting games. I see. So I have snuck into your temple. I see. To break people's legs and throw them out. I have earnestly invited you in but you have shown up at the end of the hallway. Yes. Okay. Got it. I did go to Frosty Fostings and that isn't Chicago. That's true. All right. Okay. All right You don't see that at twitch.tv slash Pat stares at Akuma's out this week. That'll probably be good And now let's take a quick break all right beer be

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and selling it. Selling it for money. Okay, I need to stop you right here. Because ExpressVPN, occasionally, they go hard on these. Is this the copy or is this you? Okay, I am elaborating. Okay, okay, okay. Because for a second there, I was going to like send a high five in the mail to express VPNs copywriter. I am using my own words to say

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Thanks ExpressVPN. Thanks ExpressVPN. All right. Love it when we get a big old cinematic fucking what is going on, who the fuck knows, shut up Elden Ring ass trailer. Who's fired this week? No. Oh no. No one. Actually.

So we can actually get to talk about Elden Ring. You know what? I think Miquela actually might have self-fired or quit. No you don't understand! Mikkela divested themselves of their flesh! Don't you get it? Mesmer seems to be pretty... seems like a jerk. Seems like a fucking... he came down with the with the snakes

That was bad. So I'm actually replaying through Elden Ring right now to get a save ready on PC for the DLC So I'm in it. I got my whole foot in it So as a result, I'm actually like way more up-to-date on what's going on in that trailer than I think I otherwise would Have been oh, okay. Interesting. So you were going to say something. Yeah. Oh, no. I was going to say that the impression, it's cryptic and all that, but without having the story fresh in my brain, I'm thinking that Mesmer rolled through with a bunch of... I'm not going to say it's... There's got to be some connection between the God-devouring serpent and the Rikard shit and every snake...

He's snaking up. He's snaking up real hard. So he rolls through with a bunch of snake assholes and they do their big old snake crusade. And if this God-devouring serpent is trying to devour gods, then fine, that's what he's doing but these are little tiny baby snakes and then Mikel is like fuck this I'm out and Then I guess yeah jumps in a Halleke tree and leaves but that's okay So his sigils everywhere so this is great This is great because I know enough about the events of Elden Ring to actually tell you that what you have is the events backwards

So Okay, do you remember we're gonna talk about some Elden Ring spoilers in the following? 10 to 15 minutes, so if you don't want to have the game's shit All fucked up for you. Just close your ears. All right Do you remember in the very very initial trailer where we saw a The truth to be a woman the truth about something on a hammer the flash the truth about About Radegon. Yeah, and then what looked to be a man Smashing something on a hammer. Yeah, and it was it's not clear until the fucking last five seconds of the game

What that original image actually was? So Mickela is like a beautiful young blonde boy who never got to grow up because he was cursed Because him and millennia got born wrong because their mom committed self-cessed and that's what happened yeah so millennia gets all fucking rotted out from as a little baby and Mickela gets to be the god of dreams but he's like I'm never gonna grow up I'm never gonna be a real adult right everybody gets sleepy yeah it's got to sleep and dreams and all that shit. What was the other name again for the? the the sleep

The Saints Saints arena Trina there you go. Yes. Yeah, so everybody's got double names all that shit Right so Godwin gets fucking murdered horribly Right like he gets he turns into that fucking fish man. He's fucked, right? Mikala's whole deal was that Mikala wanted to fix Godwin from being a fucked up dead-ass fish man and in all the item descriptions about Mikala's stuff they're always about like oh maybe you could save the true death and all that crap. So that doesn't work. So Mikala goes and builds a second urn tree called the Hallig Tree and cocoons himself for some reason. And then Mog is a creepy incest

freakazoid and steals the cocoon. And then you see Mikala's gross arm come out. And then that's the entrance to the DLC. For sure. So the Land of Shadow, which is probably gonna fill in that whole middle part of the sea, is supposedly the spot that Merika showed up before all of the shit in the game back when she was a normal person. Oh, so the whole stepping foot into the lance between.

That was the origin point, okay. Yeah, and in the fancy CG trailer, you see a blonde figure grabbing some gold out of a gigantic flesh monstrosity and holding it up. I don't think that's Mykola, I think that's Marika. I think that is the creation of the golden order. It looks like, it actually looks like the sigil being made.

But it's made out of thread. Exactly, yeah. And then the actual The Mickela hold your circle up gesture is like the missing part of the rune That all the other siblings make up the full thing So this is where the remainder of it falls apart But one of the things you remember Ronnie was like I want to get rid of this flesh because this flesh ties me to the two fingers Yeah, yeah, so she did all that so Mickela

Divests himself as his flesh so that cocoon freakazoid. He doesn't even live in that anymore He's just a spirit because he's a dream God So we're still gonna run into little baby Mickela that's normal, but he can be elsewhere He can be anything at this point like she jumped into a doll, so yeah, who knows. And the other thing is that Mickela, all of the backstory was that Mickela hated and wanted to ward off the influence of what's called the Outer Gods,

which is the Bleed God, the Poison God, the Rot God. All the deities that are associated with the freak ass status effects in the game that certain people worship. They're all weird space beings. Like interacting with the fucking story. Love that space shit. Yeah. Okay. Now, I guess that then leaves a billion questions. But one is, so the actual big old tree that you fight millennia in that has the fucking face in it on the bark, what is that?

That's probably a big old giant cocoon so he can go to Dreamworld. That happens to be in a different location. Yeah, because the Hallock Tree is a new tree. Yes. It's the sequel because the Hallig Tree is a new tree. Yes. It's the sequel to the Erd Tree. And you see a different tree in the actual trailer where it's like, oh, that's a full on thing. So the new tree in the Shadow Realm

is actually two trees entwined around each other. Right, so if that's the Hallig Tree, and at the time when playing the original game, not seeing that image, we're like, oh, is this tree with his face in it the Hallig tree and like at the time when playing the original game not seeing that image were like Oh is this tree with his face in it the Hallig tree? And it's like well now we know it's not so then this is some other tree that she's chilling in front of That being said I don't know what the hell mesmer's deal is. He just seems like a jerk Yeah, it's like a jerk flame right and like and I'm sure it's like he either Like a jerk flame right and like and I'm sure it's like he either

Hates the fuck out of ryckhard or thinks ryckhard was the coolest shit right it'll be one or the other What's interesting is that? So one of the things that was interesting about Dark Souls is that it was so obsessed with the imagery of flame Like every single fucking thing in Dark Souls had some kind of flame analog, right? And so you ran it. You remember Priscilla, the dragon lady that hung out in the Painted World? Yes. So she was cool, right?

But she was thrown in there because she was like the most dangerous thing, the anathema to all life, you know, kind kind of nonsense but it was not clear Zulik put out a video recently that broke down how the what's probably what the deal with that is is that she has elemental affinity to ice which in a world defined by flame is the anathema to all life that's that's pretty cool if that's intentional That's yeah in Elden Ring flame is like disgusting Like flame is like gross like because it's what kills the tree Right Right and then and then the Giants and had to go mm-hmm chaos

Like flame is madness yeah, yeah, etc. Mm-hmm chaos like the flame of like flame is madness. Yeah, yeah, etc trees hate it and Now you get to like even Rikert's flame attacks are actually all lava attacks Mm-hmm, and now we have a demigod that is part of the the the what do you call it? The the fucking hierarchy the the pantheon the family tree but he's a flame guy he's actually flame which is like the last thing any of them would ever have so bad bad for tree like even you remember Godric the freak that was grafting things on top of him yeah like his most unnatural act is to graph the fucking,

a being that can project flame into his body. By putting the dragon on, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, right, right, okay. Flame is always accursed, horrible, how dare you, fucking disgusted you. Yeah, also people point out, there's also blood flame, which is from Moog and all his stuff,

but that's from an outer deity. Ehh yeah. That hates the greater will. But it is but his blood does light up on fire as well too. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I guess then the other thing is like Mesmer is not just all snaked up but he's also distinctly

a redhead. Yeah. Which means he's gotta be Ronnie. Of the blood. Or he's gotta be Ronnie. Of the blood. Or Ronnie's brother, like one of those. Yeah, and the whole deal with Rykart at the time was like, he sacrificed himself to find, he tried to get eaten

so that he would find his own immortality route via snake power. Yeah, and he wants to burn down the tree himself. Right, but everyone that followed him fucking hated that, right? As soon as he did it, it said everyone hated that. And so he never quite got it going, because no one was down with that shit. Well, also his plan was also, everybody who's really cool,

I'm going to eat and become a bigger snake. So if that Mesmer stuff is not future but like past tense flashback it wouldn't have been anything to do with post-Rikard swallowing. I know there's a lot they could do here like the way the lands of shadow are described it's almost like the lands of shadow are the real world and the lands between are like the fake one that came afterwards Because that's what Radegon did yeah I didn't expect it to be a CG trailer today They said story trailer. I didn't expect it. It's also really weird

If you go back and watch like the old Elden Ring CG trailer There's like a lot of really important shit in there that is not in the game anywhere Like kind of like Dawn and millennia fighting or like the assault on the wall on the city's walls There's gonna be a moment where you're gonna have to go back and watch these CG trailers for stuff that the actual DLC won't tell you Yeah trailers for stuff that the actual DLC won't tell you. Yeah. It's funny seeing this stuff and remembering how it goes in these Souls games,

while also having an Armored Core other FromSoft example of, like, what if they just told a story straightforward and then had a couple of mysteries? But for the most part, it's like, I mean, this is me not even getting the full roundabout on it, but I feel like it's just a different way of being direct but minimal. You're getting a little bit of dialogue in between the missions, but a conversation through a briefing, and then in game, you're getting a direct moment to moment explanation of what's going on So armored core three is a sort of six is is less straightforward than it appears. Mm-hmm

But it's still pretty straightforward and then Sekiro, of course is the is another Example of them being much more explicit about them. Yeah, Sekiro is is both like directly straightforward And also I don't understand the ending I got. But so the thing with Sekiro is that while it's being more straightforward, it's like a bunch of the shit that the kid is talking about, for example. You're like, yes, you're saying the proper nouns. You're naming the objects that are involved in this process, but I don't know what they do are or what

that means anyway. I'm going to turn into a baby now, who bye. Just because someone stood there and said the sentence instead of not saying it, instead of having to read it off an item description, doesn't mean the sentence makes any more sense in the present tense. I think the core of Elden Ring Ring story is actually really straightforward and actually really Understandable there was a big fight over the succession of deities Give it a shot

Everybody you you run through is Somebody who is attempting to get to the throne first Yeah, oh the broad strokes are clear which I would say they are for the Souls games too, right? But the whole bit that everyone gets... I violently disagree. Most people beat Dark Souls one and caught on fire and went, what? Okay, I'm coming at it after everybody kind of did crowdsource and discuss and everything with that. But what I mean to say is that there's the thing the game tells you who you are and what your job is, and then you can go through it and encounter people.

And even in just the most literal sense, you're getting a sense of why all these Mega Man bosses are who they are, why they're in the place they are, and then you get to your end location to either, you know, whatever, take over in a way that creates or destroys the world. It's a very basic linear thing, but where you get lost in the weeds

is trying to figure out who is whose family, what that person did to this person, when that took place, and then- When that took place is the fucked question. That is the one you can never answer in any of these games. Right, and then to add the extra wrinkle in Elden Ring, it's like, and then sometimes two names

are not even two names. Sometimes they're four or one or whatever, you know? And then also, what does this big dead thing in the environment mean for this area? Why is this area so poisonous? You know what's a really good example? So, Azuli did a great video on those skulls in the Kaleid, those giant skulls in K-Lid, and she's like, are those giants? She's like, they're way too big to be giants. Like, she scaled them up according to their body size. They would be like skyscraper tall. They'd be able to

cross the whole map in like five steps. They're too big. Yeah, it's it's that's the stuff that takes everybody forever to piece together and dive deep on. But if you just want the broad strokes in these games, you can take those, you know? I mean, you you I feel like the whenever there's like a giant looming question that goes unanswered in each of those games, the DLC will come out and then the name of the fucking DLC or the boss you fight in it will just fill in that whole missing gap and you'd be like, Oh, okay, there we go. Got it. You know? Um, but no, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's the, it's the, it's the details, right? So, yeah, you fight Estell and it's a style natural-born of the void and You're like oh, this is a fucking alien

Yeah, yeah, oh we're dealing with those falling star beasts. Oh those are that that's what that means actually space actual space Yeah, yeah You know and then then and then of course, this is also in a situation where you can't possibly get all the answers in one run, in one route. You have to quest lines that you can't solve that are choice-based or time-based and stuff. There's all that shit, right? So Yeah from what you piece together there I guess I Mean, they want to fight the formless mother, dude

I'm just like what kind of cool fucking flippy snake moves are we gonna get is Mesmer gonna? Is it is it are we gonna get? Is Mesmer gonna, is it, are we gonna get to pull out the special spear again or? Is this gonna be the new? I think what's most fun is not thinking about Mesmer. I think what's most fun is realizing that much like every time we have ever seen a From DLC, and they've shown us the cool boss That's not the final boss That's always the one you deal with Second to last or like in the middle like they regard or Tori lady Maria is

Yeah, she's sitting on that chair, but that's not it. Yeah, it the title guy. True. The last thing is always some fucking thing that makes you go, oh, like the orphan. Which I don't think the orphan is cooler than Lady Maria but it is more confusing. I don't think the orphan is cooler. I think the orphan is way more interesting. It's more confusing and weird and like what oh god. There's the birthing sack Okay, I think manas the the primeval man is more interesting than than Artorias, but I don't think he's cooler than Artorias Yeah, I guess the I mean the implications and then the whole was this the pygmy was it not yada yada But right yeah, yeah, okay. But the cool one is the one that's gonna fuckin' do the flips and be really sick, so.

Yeah, anyway, we'll see. You know what's interesting, because I was talking to Paige about this, because I was playing Elden Ring and I was fighting Placida Sax, who is massively fucked by the time you get there. And Elden Ring is like the first game, like I think out of all of them that lets you fight some characters at their actual peak, like they're

not ruined, they're not universally ruined husks. There's a couple of them that are doing just fine. It's not centuries later after failure. I mean, there's a bunch of them that are, but... Like Melania is as strong as she's ever gonna get. Yeah, okay, okay. And, uh, and, um... And what's his name? Godwin's all fucked up, but, like, Radon is... Radon's fucked. He's not himself anymore.

Ryckhardt is not himself anymore. Malekath is doing great. Rykhar is not himself anymore. Mog is peak. Mog's in peak form. Yeah, Mog's doing great. Horalu is... Oh man, he's ripped! And I mean, there is the ghost of... Well, before Horalu, the other name, when you fight him in the Godfrey Godfrey in the throne room, like it's yeah, it's flashback.

But yeah, it depends. Some of them are in peak form. Some of them are not. Yeah. But usually you're fighting like decrepit elderly of the prior age. elderly of the prior age, back in my day. If I could just, just like, if I could just like, just a version of this DLC that ends where you beat fucking Mesmer and you walk up to the final room and you push through and you see a life bar and the music swells and it just says, ulcerated tree spirit.

Oh man. I fought two this morning. I'm cleaning up the hero's graves to get all the death root and I fought two this morning. Like, and it plays with a cut scene and everything. There's new music, a whole platform play dead serious, and it's like, oh, it's Riven. It's coming at you.

Shit. The primal, ulcerated tree. All right Yeah, that's so that's a fun little secret drop, and I guess we're one month away then very close Which is and and the marker is that it's a week before Ff14 right on trail. Yeah, yeah, I'm Juiced up my character to where I'm happy with them. They're at level 248 for the DLC.

They've hit the soft caps on everything except for intelligence because that's for nerds. I mean, I don't want this. So this is a big long game and the DLC is going to have a lot of fancy toys in it. I don't want to have the situation where I'm like, hey, guess what? You want to use this weapon? Yeah. Respec every time.

The trade off is that you're going to blow through every challenge. I'm not too worried about that with the fact that this has its own leveling system. So nothing of your prior strength is going to make a difference? So it's not clear, but they've said that the DLC has its own leveling system that they compare to Sekiro. I have a feeling what they're going to do is stat squish your damage down. Is like basically cap how much damage you can do you remember giant souls in dark souls, too? Yeah, yeah, yeah, every soul you had would multiply your damage, right? Okay, like something like that. Yeah, okay. Yeah

Cool I'm not too worried about it And if it's too bad, I'll just respec and put all the extra points into int, which I will then not use. Well, what would suck is if that system meant that like not being insanely huge meant that you did a fucking pittance to whatever you were swinging at. So here's the thing. Even though you beat the game.

So I play 14, so I'm familiar with a stat squish. The stat squish would basically be to normalize damage values up and down so that the DLC is running its own system based off of its drops instead of your level. It's funny because it feels like it's a really long level. It's funny because it feels like it's a really long, long road to get to what is ultimately it scales with you. Oh yeah. But it's not, it's, you're not actually making the world scale with you, but you're doing a really long route to get the similar, the same result. Also, I don't know if, so we're,

we're in this weird situation where Miyazaki will do an interview and he'll explain something. And then you have to sit there And wonder how much of that you believe Not because he lies but because he is he doesn't understand how people play his games So remember let's all remember I should take the average player about 30 hours to be at Elden ring Let's all remember that 30 hours to be at Elden Ring. Let's all remember that.

Do you remember that? Because I do. I do not. That is the most insane thing I've heard all year. Oh yeah, no, that is like, that is for real. Not even 60, not even the like conservative 60, you know? Right? Oh my god. And so about the DLC, he says, maybe it's a little bigger than Limgrave.

And I'm like, I think it's gonna be that whole interior of that map. And the scale doesn't equal the density, man. No, it doesn't. You can't fucking use that as a metric And the other thing is that he says well, we've made the system so that you know, it's like securo So you come in and you're doing very little damage, but then you can seek out things to make you stronger So I think everyone is gonna go into that no matter what their stats are doing basically nothing And then something within that will find some roaming boss. Yeah, and the roaming boss will will juice you up

Or make everything weaker or do some sort of a fit. Yeah, whatever the math works out on it But here's the thing. Here's the here's the weird thing is that like it. But here's the thing. Here's the weird thing is that like, so I had a new file and I'm like, okay, there's two things you need to do to beat the DLC. Beat Ridon and Moog. That is a real task. That is not, I'm going to beeline to the DLC. If you if you went if you ignored the optionals that is. Yeah. Right. That is that is a non insignificant task. You can't you have to do Radon to get to it's not just getting to Moog. So yeah that's the weird thing is that Radon has nothing to do with getting to Moog but you have to do Radon also. Huh. I have a seeking suspicion it'll have to do with getting to Moog, but you have to do Radon also. I have a seeking suspicion it'll have to do with space or some shit. I don't know. Because

once you beat him the stars fall and he's no longer holding it back. It might have to do with the eclipse because Mikko has also got it with the eclipse. I mean obviously like again like the egg is right there, so that makes more sense directly, but mm-hmm But yeah, no just start. I'm gonna start. I'm gonna unlock the DLC like beatward on and moag is is a significant task Cuz like you remember moag's blood move that just kills you unless you have the tear for it Oh, yeah, knee-heel knee-heel knee-heel So that means you have to get to to Atlas. Sorry altus minimum Yeah, again, I did moat to before moat one. Yeah, so that was I also did moat to before moat one. Yeah, yeah

so Like this means that they before going into the, they expect you to do K-Lid and Altus, which is like 60-70% of the game. So I don't know what they're, I don't know if I should believe them about, oh don't worry we're going to have the stats and the thing will go, I don't know. I mean I think I'll just egg up and respect if there's something I super duper want, but just some not within range of, you know?

But it's gonna have to be like a fucking, I have to fall in love with whatever that thing is. So, though it'd be great if there was a way to like, temporarily just test out a move set and sort of see what something was like and stuff without going through the. There was a way to like temporarily just test out a move set and sort of see what something was like and stuff without going through the there is a way to do that and that is to Acquire millions of souls

And then you saw your status where you want them to go so that you can use everything and ruin everything yes I'd say that last part I didn't say ruin nothing mm-hmm hey would you believe it that even at level 248 the amount of damage that enemies do is so high this doesn't even matter unless like a fucking bug is happening like one of those dog bites where it's like oh, this is not about your level. This is just the calculation on how the fucking the thing bites you Anyway, so that's cool. We'll see you. We'll see more soon We already talked about some of that hellblade stuff, so That is fine as well. Hey!

Look at, look at, there's, there's Yasuke! He's a- he's- Black people! He's, he's doing it! Run! He's a samurai! He's in Japan! Run!

I- You know it's so sad I I don't look I'm just I don't have the energy to Get into this every single time a black character shows up at anything. So I have an idea I Have an idea. I want to say like two things and then let's just not What about that, Huh? It's exhausting. Yes. What? Go go go go. When I saw yasuke, I'm like, Oh, it's yasuke. Oh, that's cool. Me. Well, we talk about yasuke all the time. And then I went, Ah, ah, it's gonna be this again. And then I clicked on the button that sent me and I went,

Oh, it's happening again. And then I went, the button that sent me and I went oh, it's happening again Mm-hmm, and then I went oh, it's gonna keep happening all the goddamn way up until release isn't it? It's gonna happen any time a black character exists in anything and perhaps is playable It's just it's it's forever now. That's where we live all I can say is that I live. All I can say is that I think about two tweets that I saw, one of which was a picture of William in Neo. Yeah, going, I don't remember anybody making a fuss about this. And then another tweet that was like, the bads who complain about this aren't even good enough to know that Yaskay is

Already a samurai in neo 2 Yes, he's a major character, but it's later in the game. He's got the spirit of the bear at his giant axe It's so like that's just Okay, it's to be ignored. Yeah. Oh, he's in one too? Yeah, no. He's a boss in one? I didn't know that. They're an X. But the in one.

But the- That's cool. It's just, yeah, it's like, okay, you know, if you're gonna like, if you're gonna, you want to pull out your fucking magnifying glass and be like, well, I'm actually historically and then it's like, okay, right. We get it. This is how you feel about the historical accuracy. And then over here in a fucking AU den chronicles, is it where we're just fictional world of magic and bullshit. It's still a problem. Okay, we get it. Right. It's just seeing anything. Got it. Cool.

See, see like, why going about whether or not the or not Yasuke is blah blah blah is so boring. What's way more interesting to me is to talk about the guys making Assassin's Creed saying nothing interesting has ever happened in Japan. Going, oh, but we found a non-Japanese main character! Yeah! I mean the uh, yeah I way more fun. That's insane What I'm curious about is I guess is we'll see here is how much the uh, how much of the Nobunaga recap is this gonna be versus-

A bunch, because Nobunaga, like, Natsuke was underneath Nobunaga. Sen Goku were doing it, of course, but then does that just kind of give way to, and then the Templars were behind Mitsuhide. Nobunaga was an assassin and Hideyoshi was a Templar. And that's how we- Oh my god, that's totally what it's gonna be. Oh my god. But then, but then you have to say that Nobunaga was a big assassin for justice and hero and

all like, because Nobunaga is always depicted as a Neutral historical figure that is just full of ambition Because loves ambition you can go like wow look at this dude who united and brought all these people and murdered everyone forever Everybody all of them, you know I can see I just saw somebody say something and I'm like, oh man, that would be a big misstep. I just saw somebody say it was the Templars behind the invasion of Korea. And I think that would be a bad move. I think that would be a not great move to go with.

I think Yasuke being like, being the like, okay, this is your assassin and then there's the other figures and they're behind history. The mysterious figures that you don't know as much about you can play that a lot easier than you can play fucking Oda nobunaga was actually at Trying to stop the Templars the whole time all there were millions of Templars in that village go get them Oh, I don't know. I mean they can flip it all like there is a 100% chance that Oda Nobunaga is gonna stand up in front of a crowd of people and hold up some fucking ancient Isu piece of technology and do a big magic. Right. Do one big fucking magic and be a magic man again and Mitsuhide with the piece of Eden walking into the burning fucking room and You know it's like oh, did he did he actually? Commit seppuku well no there was a sick-ass assassin fight that played out Beforehand and then it went down differently. I don't know if the new games still care at all about

Assassins and Templars that much? Do they? They do. They pretend. Okay, Desmond and all that shit is gone, but the overall... They've actually turned back into the magic shit again. With the aliens? Yeah, with the aliens.

Oh, jeez. Okay, all right. So that's still... Okay, because I was kind of... I feel like, okay, they got rid of all that and then they still kept the whole like yeah the Minerva the this that whatever He sue man. He sue come on But get it together, but all but this this many Entries in it could have easily just been there are vaguely two teams fighting against each other and that's it

But yeah, I think there's something really funny But yeah, I think there's something really funny about complaining about the woke infiltration of Ubisoft because they have a black guy and a Japanese lady when The Assassin's Creed games are canonically in-universe video games made by the in-universe Ubisoft Right, right, right Like Right, right, right. Like the actual company. Like you could even write that the Templars have gotten wokepilled and shit. And like, you remember in one of them you read like these articles about how like we can't put cars in the Animus because people disassociate when they get into cars and it breaks the system.

Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and but also um um girl bones are hard right? Yeah. So you know but yeah I know I I look forward to uh bumping into a little child um named Tokugawa on the street and then being like, oh, one day I'm going to be the best. And we're like, yeah, sure thing, kid. You know what's really sad is that Assassin's Creed wanted to go for this game spanning big major plot that was interesting at the beginning. And I can't think of anything in this game that could be anything as interesting as the historical fiction that is Ghost of Tsushima

that has no game external fantasy elements of any kind and it's just like a period game that took place around a very specific point in history. I mean, like I've, so the whole thing is, I've been very just like down and out on Assassin's Creed. I told, we talked about this every time it came out, including the one from six months ago? Mirage? Yeah. Oh.

Who knows? I don't know. From, from literally a couple months back. Do you know how sad it is? Matt and I used to be like obsessed with those games. We used to play them to 100% completion. Every Machinima, every time it came out, Machinima video was made for each. I was all in on fucking before Ezio and Altair into Ezio. I was super on board, man. Just chopped it. I was super on board, man. Just chopped it.

I was so in. No, for sure. The American Revolution and Desmond dies? Who gives a shit? You know? I was, again, and I was the, again, still the person that was like, okay, but the American Revolution setting and Connor,

let's see what you're doing here. What are you, oh the boats, there's boats in it. The boats are fun. The boats are good. The boats fun. And then Black Flag happened. Raton hageton. Oh, boats. Yeah, so all this to say that like, yay, you're doing it.

It's something that we've been waiting for forever and here it is now. You now have the pleasure of competing with contemporary samurai games. Sekiro, fucking Tsushima, fucking Rise of the Ronin. Like, you have to make samurai play that is going to be as compelling or at least hold a candle to these last few

that have been excellent while also having Speaking of by the way, Ghost of Tsushima is on the PC now and boy it looks shiny Looks shiny And you have two characters so you have the assassin girl who's gonna do the assassinating but he's gonna be just samurai man right? Yeah he's gonna be the fighter yeah So like that comparison has never been more direct to his gameplay style and like whether or not this combat can hold up at all. I have been informed of some historical data on Assassin's Creed's storyline that's of note to bring up here. I'm going to quote this, in 1933, Hitler was under the influence of the Templar order,

obtaining an Apple of Eden from Templar industrialist Henry Ford to utilize as a catalyst for World War II. That's right, Ford and Hitler were mind controlled. Templars, man. By the Templars. Oh, God. All right. Okay.

For a second, I thought you were going to link that to like the Meiji restoration, which would somehow link back to this one. It says a lot that in Assassin's Creed, the blame for World War II and the Holocaust lies at Henry Ford's feet, primarily. Before you get to Hitler, even. Yeah, okay. So that's like, it's just, is Nobunaga gonna actually have a side, or is he just gonna be? Oh, he's gonna be a templar unification

Is is all templar shit, but he might just be ambitious It might just be big eyebrows And lots of ambition do you know what it is you're gonna be we need a unified nation to fight the Templars That's that's what it's gonna be We have to bring it all together. That's why that's why we unify the warring states because we're on our own we stand no chance. Yeah yeah yeah I can see it I can see it and then almost on the way through when he's giving when he's when he's giving, when he's almost there, he gets betrayed because a side switch. Anyways, I just, the one thing I'm curious about is given,

so did you, you touched Odyssey and, did you touch Valhalla? I played a shocking amount of Odyssey and didn't get anywhere. I, the, the, okay, you know what, let's pull it up. Origins, 41.4 hours. Odyssey, 38.7 hours. And Valhalla, no, I don't have Valhalla on this. I have it on PlayStation. But that was about 30 hours. All of them have the same problem. They're so bloated. They're so fucking

bloated. Given the updates to, and this is the improved formula from the old one that got tired out, right? Origin was the the redo of that turning point. Yeah What is the combat system gonna be like compared to the fucking awesome recent samurai game combats games that well Origins had decent combat and Odyssey had worse combat and Valhalla had worse combat than that So I don't know. Because essentially if the only thing you really are going to do is Yaskay is sword, the sword should be fucking good. Yeah, okay. That's a bummer. So only Origin was the one

though that was the only time it was. It's the best one. It's the best one, okay? And we couldn't really speak it to mirage and both and all of those are like half as good as ghosts of Tsushima Okay, fuck. I want to play ghosts of Tsushima right now. God damn it. It's fucking sick, man. I just I don't know in what ways the new ACS are better than the old in terms of combat But it depends on on depends on which game They're like 45 So is it still Arkham?

No, I don't like bad Dark Souls. Oh Okay, yeah, yeah, it's like not nearly as responsive or good feeling Dark Souls with power moves But everything you do is not like punch lasers and crowd control. No, no, no, it's actually like lock on and deal Yeah, people are all saying like bad Witcher Okay, okay, um they're they're not there yet man, let me tell you holy shit All right, well I guess we'll uh I don't know we'll see you see what see what you ask is up to it would be real

I'm buying gosu shima shima right now this conversation has led me to buy go the wrong game the third time yeah I was saying it before, but I don't imagine they will depict Yaskay coming to town and there being a crowd crush of people. You don't know that. They could actually. That could be his tutorial. Where just people die in the rush to see this dark skin because they can't believe it's real, and it becomes an insane mob. It's one of those wild historical events in which they just didn't even know enough

to have the racism yet. There wasn't enough information. There was not no new shit, no, literally nothing. It was oh wow, look at that dude. What is that? I don't understand what I'm looking at. That dude's crazy, whoa. Well, here's one thing I'll call for him now.

And it's a long shot, but it'd be pretty interesting. His final armor is the actual statue, the famous one with the leather. That'd be great. That one that everyone has seen. That'd be a really dope final thing to unlock for him. I'd like that. Yeah. Okay. So there we go. They're doing it while the iron is frozen cold. That's my style. Okay. I need to say one more thing. When we talked about Assassin's Creed and they did the Middle East, then they did Italy, then they did Italy, then they did Italy, then

they did Constantinople, which is kind of like Italy, and then- Oh yeah, Ottoman Empire, and then North America, and then- The Caribbean. Caribbean, and then North America and the Caribbean Caribbean and then France France then after unity England and then I think yeah oh wait there was also another we missed the the fucking there's a plantation one and then there was the other PSP year We know one yeah, London night, and then Rogue was Canada, but nobody played that one which sucks. This is the Arctic rogue. Yeah

Greece Egypt and they did Egypt when it was kind of Greek Like during that period they did modern ancient Egypt when it was on a Greek China and Russia in the side scrolling Ah, that doesn't count shit And then the whole time since like 2005 People are going like can we get a Asia, please? Can we get one a Asia and they're like, no. And there

were, we went through a list of reasons. The first reason is that buildings in feudal or medieval Asia are not tall enough on average to support the parkour. And then they did a game in the fucking revolutionary Americas. Also, I was just describing flying over Japan in Rise of the Ronin, grappling hooking onto pagoda tops. Like the fuck are we talking about? Right. Yeah. And on and on.

And it's like they had literally 20 years to make a game in China or Japan or Philippines or Korea. I was screaming as loud as possible for them back in the one day, but they did the 2D ones. And they waited until after a game they can't compete with came out. And one might argue it's because they couldn't reuse enough assets at the time. I don't believe that. I genuinely believe it was the staff over there who whenever they were asked, they're like, we just don't think there's anything interesting enough. I don't believe that.

I just believe that the amount of work to overhaul to make it I'm gonna find these quotes. Oh, I'm sure they said them I just don't believe the words that are said is that if anything I You know like we're like we're choosing to believe separate elements here. I don't believe the cover story You don't believe the under the under You know the the covered one. When I typed in Assassin's Creed can't be Japan, I have so many results from every smattering of years.

And again, and then the 2D one was also like, okay, we're finally doing it, but also it's not good and nobody's going to fucking look twice in this direction. They did Russia in the comic, which then made it seem like a really cool idea to do Russia in the games as well, because you're looking at the fucking the style of the architecture and running on long bat and how cool that would be. And yeah, same thing. They just they threw it off to the side to the side scroller 2D ones.

It's just one of those things where you start the Ubisoft and it says we're made by a collection of faiths and beliefs and geographies and then every single game in the entire franchise is what if we went to Western Europe or one of Western Europe's colonies Yeah, it, but you know, it's the nothing interesting happened in Japan is, to me, is as believable as girl bones are hard to animate. They're hard. You gotta get those vagina bones just right or else people get mad at you.

It's a lot of work. Trust me, I've rigged before. Um, alright. So we talked about Kingdom Hearts a little bit as well You know I was sitting there watching the trailer with Paige Mm-hmm, and she looks at me. She says oh my god Kingdom Hearts really is the friends we made along the way and I'm like Yeah, Paige. That's the theme of every single game

What do you mean, and I go that's literally the theme of every single game. She goes, what do you mean? And I go, that's literally the theme of every single game. And she went, whatever, that's just stupid. I mean, I don't know shit all about Kingdom Hearts, and I swear to God, I feel like the final attack must be

Sora and the ghosts of all his friends saying kind words to him powering up his keyblade Every single one To cut down the big bad Yeah Right? Yeah

What the fuck else would it be? Congrats, you don't need to play it anymore I've never seen anything, I just made that up, but of course that's how it ends What are we talking about? Anyway, they're now on PC. For the first time ever, you can get a HD 1.5, 2.5 remix, 2.8 final chapter prologue, and 3 plus Remind. You didn't say point 2 a fragmentary passage, but it's in there.

On June 13th How are these gonna get sold? What are they what okay? How what are they selling for on the epic store? Let's go find that out, huh? It's not a pack No, no, no. No. Yeah, you can make more there. They're in bond. You can make more money breaking it up. Yeah Yeah, they're they're they're in bundles. It's it's um Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're in bundles. It's, um... Because the bundles are in a weird mix. So, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 plus 2.5 is one game. Okay, the one collection, the two collection, the three collection, is that...? No, it's one and two, and all their spinoffs. Then HD...

Oh my god, HD 2.8 final chapter prologue is a separate thing. That is an $80 game and includes Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, Back Cover Movie, and O2 Birth By Sleep sleep a fragmentary passage For $80 can you that one is a fucking ripoff by the way? Can you can you just can you give me give me just give me one just can you tell please just tell me that? one of these insane titles Actually has a good reason for why it's that insane that you learn in game. A chain of memories. There's a good reason for why it's called that.

Chain of memories is about losing your memories and then putting them back together to figure out where you're at. Okay. All right. Okay. Just like, is it all just crazy ass nonsense all the way down? Are you talking, if you want to talk about crazy nonsense, do you want to talk about Kingdom Hearts 352 over two days?

So that's obviously like... It's 350 days with two characters, idiot! Duh! I Mean getting into the getting into the fractions is already just like Okay, I guess it's a goofy, but you're trying to be stylish album esque Time indicator of when this takes place. Oh, you know Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 final chapter prologue. Yeah, well that's because bully it takes place between 2.5 and 3 chapter prologue. Well that's because, Wooly. It takes place between 2.5 and 3? Yeah. Yeah. And Kingdom Hearts 02 Birth by Sleep a fragmentary passage is the last step between 2.5 and 3 because 2.8 plus 0.2 is 3. See again I'm

fully accepting of the fact that these are just Toho game naming conventions You know missing an immaterial power fucking like just it's just whatever it would words throw them out there who cares But we had to regarding whatever like kill myself. Oh god. Yeah visual novel naming conventions conventions. Ah, Chunie English. Chunie English, man! That's what it is. Anytime you have to fucking go off into your Nasu verse titling, your Touhou titling, you're

not even in the short stories that are Dragon Quest based. But just, yeah, I assume that Kingdom Hearts is all peak Toonie titling. But if there's a reason, then sure. Kingdom Hearts is light, dude. That's the reason. Cool. Cool.

Sounds good. And yes, no, don't sit there and think for a second I'm going to stand here and try to explain to you what a chrono phantasma is or a sharp reload. So get the fuck out of here. It's all, it's all the same thing. I think it's really daughter that it took me a second to even know what game you were referencing there Blaze blue that's the one You played calamity trigger you didn't play Fantasma or central fiction I didn't play Central Fiction. Didn't see. See. See. See. See. It's got a C.

I see. Do you? Um, anyways, alright. So, um, we talk about, hey, so yeah, no, we don't have a layoff story, but acquisitions always, always going down. Just before we started today. Oh, acquisitions, you mean the prequel to every layoff story? Acquisitions.

Not just the industry itself in terms of developers, the press as well. So as of a couple hours ago, IGN has acquired Euro gamer gaming GI game informer, I guess VG 24 7 rock-paper-shotgun and more so Mandates not knowing how to play games anymore Yeah, all the allindustry.biz, Dicebreaker,

outside Xbox, Digital Foundry, Nintendo Life, Push Square, Pure Xbox, Time Extension, pretty much all the game use websites that you currently might check every now and then minus, I guess like, you know Silicon era or gimatsu and stuff like that The castle superbeast your primary source for video game information going forward Go under IGN and IGN goes under Ziff Davis and

You know that also includes How long to beat? Oh there were layoffs alongside the acquisitions. Well, there you go. No kidding. No kidding. Oh, you're. Yeah. As a result of the acquisition, some redundancies have been made across the UK based organization. There you go. Yeah. All right. All right.

Yeah. You know, the funny funny part the funny part about that is I'm reading this story off of game industry dot biz Hey Shout out to and all the support for the incoming twitch streams from these people I Wish you all the best of luck It may feel like we are all technically in direct competition, but all boats rise with the tide and I hope you all find your feet

and land on your feet and do well. Survive 2024. Don't watch them though, watch me. That being said, X out on those windows and click over here Yeah, best of luck. I I won't I won't I'll feel bad about pushing you over So so while that's your take on it. I do not want to even remotely compare ourselves to news and

Reporting for the industry because that's not the way this... So Wally, I have really bad news for you. I know that it de facto becomes the way people take it, but it doesn't change the fact that regardless, that responsibility slash that onus, you can put that shit elsewhere. Wally, we haven't gotten better at our jobs. Everybody else just got way worse. Stupid fucking farty stupid dumb dick bullshit while covering anything that has to do with what's going on in a given week that may or may not include other stories

that may be important or might not be important. There are things that come up that are sometimes like, yeah, there's something that might have happened that is not on that list, or there might be something that is not in our purview. We talk about a lot of shit that is from Japan. We talk about a lot of shit that is from the Western studios and things, games that we care about,

and Indies that we follow. There's a whole plethora of shit about sports, about first-person shooters, about genres that we just don't follow, pay attention to, eethora of shit about sports, about first person shooters, about genres that we just don't follow, pay attention to, eSports, etc. That it's like, that's not this. This is not that. You are genuinely giving more thought, responsibility, and due diligence to the responsibilities that have fallen into your lap than literally every single person involved with the decision to make these acquisitions. You don't have to be perfect and you don't have to be unbiased.

We definitely wear our biases on our sleeve. And that's fine. You do your best and you do do a good job. That doesn't mean you have to cover everything. But with the fact that everything kind of sucks and we might suck a little bit less. That's just kind of how it fell down. I just don't want I just don't even want to be in the room while you're you're while you're you're putting us in the folder. You know, You're putting us in the room and I'm like, we're not in the room.

So here's the thing, you, and take this, wait for me to explain it before you have a reaction. You sound like my dad right now. Because when my dad worked at a General Electric factory, he got put up for the Union rep despite never putting his name in For the Union rep they said To my dad all the guys trust you you're a good guy So we voted for you even though you weren't on the docket for the union election.

And he went, I don't want to fucking be the union rep. And they're like, it's too late. You're the union rep. And he's like, I don't want to do the union shit. And they went, sorry, you're gonna have to do it. You're the only guy we can all agree on to handle this. So my dad had to go to all the fucking meetings and handle the renegotiation of his plants contract with corporate and he hated it. And everyone who came to a bribe

to him with a bribe, which was like a lot of people He was like, oh, I thought you were cool. I hate you and I hate this and They went through and they did the contract well and he didn't take the bribes and then he fucking threatened all of his friends and so you ever put me up for that shit again I'll kill you. And everything worked out great. The person who doesn't want to do a job that bears significant responsibility is often pretty decent at it.

So chill. Okay. You explaining how you don't think you're responsible enough to handle the news only makes you look more trustworthy. Listen, listen, I get, I, okay. First of all, that's hilarious. That's wild. And shout outs to your dad. That's the, that's, that's fucking, um, if you're just a fan of a thing and you're just,

and you're talking and you're talking about it as a fan and then people, uh, listen, and then it, that it as a fan, and then people listen, and then that becomes something, then like, yeah, I can see how one way or another you can become that. It's almost like Jon Stewart talking about shit and making gag jokes about it. But then suddenly it's like, sorry, this is how people are getting their news, Jon. And he's like, oh no, that's not what I intended or whatever. There's that, there is that element of it that I am aware of. I just know that like, if I ever am to like, think of myself or call what we do that, I'm like, there is a super high bar for doing this properly, that I don't even remotely approach or think about for doing this properly that I don't even remotely approach or think about in anything I do,

nor do I think of that as a path for what I was trying to do. So I will never hold myself to that standard and if anyone else does, my reply will be a giant loud wet fart. So it reminds me, I don't know where I picked this up. I saw somebody talk about this recently, and I can't remember where. But you're familiar with the idiom, anything worth doing is worth doing well? Sure. It was the idiom, anything worth doing is also worth doing badly. Rather than not at all.

It is better for you good person to do games news badly Than it is for other not good person to do game news well Yeah, yeah if again if you happen to be overlapping with interests that we have for things and are content to ignore whatever doesn't apply. Like you know I was like should I even talk about the fact that there's Gundam in Call of Duty now? Eh, not really.

No, who gives a shit. You can't pilot them, you're just putting the costume on. It's weird. You know, but there's a whole world out there that's very relevant to... Here's what I'm trying to say. Here's what I'm trying to say. Here's what I'm trying to say. Okay? To call us that while there is an episode where Vinny has to tell us what PUBG is. Hey, nobody's perfect, man. Is crazy.

Nobody's perfect, come on. The fact that a dude, our friend has to show up and explain what PUBG is. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. And you're going to call and you're going to say we're in that room is batshit to me. Yeah, Wooly, you think that's crazy. You want to go hang out with guy who can't figure out the cuphead tutorial and have this But I'm not gonna fight there people are like yo G mod. I'm like yeah, I don't know about no G mod the fuck What you know yeah, that's it. That's it. You know that you

Yeah, that's it. That's it. You know, that you. All right, Willie, your constant assertions of of anxiety over responsibility and the the worries of not measuring up to this onerous task is only making you look more responsible. It's just it's just it's just the Jon Stewart thing. That's it's just that that fucking thing again All right, remember when he gave up you remember when he was like fuck it. I guess I'm the news now Well, I know before that when he left and he's like I'm gonna do this my way

I'm gonna do this story on AI and then like Apple was like, how about you stop talking about that? And he's like, okay, I quit Back to the news once a week, here we go. Fuck this. All right, so here you go. Here is a super biased selected indie game announcement because it happens to overlap with things that we are interested in.

There is a demo you can go play for Big Boy Boxing, which is a Punch-Out and Cuphead inspired boss rush boxing game, which looks really cool because it's exactly up the alley of us. Wow, that, you know what man, that sounds like news I can trust. Check it out. Big Boy Boxing. It looks very cool. and the animation style is yeah truly that that beautiful like that's great it's that hand animation that you

like from from Cuphead but it's also also reminiscent of us the animation style from pizza tower as well that looks great I have I have one more thing from the last conversation I'm like listenly, people know that this is the podcast where the phrasing if you don't support Mighty Number nine, you're fucking stupid came from. Right? Nobody's perfect. Nobody's perfect! Yes, but it's all, but like that expectation, I guess it's just, you know, the expectation is also the same place that comes to, oh god, another fucking fighting game talk thing, where it's like, yeah, I'm not your news source, I'm not your newspaper, I'm talking about the shit I care about? That's it. So here's the fun thing. That thought comes from that place of,

I'm opening my newspaper and this week the newspaper is nothing but fighting games. Fooey. We can compare this, cause you are a tall, you're a tall, you dress well, you're a stylish, cool looking black guy, right? Well. Well, no

No, you like I was actually just talking about this on stream the other day how you always look really nice and how you always Dress yourself really good and mean page we're talking up your house and how well it's put together and how everything is in its proper place Thank you, right, but you don't get the feeling that's unique to tiny white me when I explain to people feeling that's unique to tiny white me when I explained to people, yeah, I do a podcast and they look at me with that fucking look of another white guy with trying to tell me about his fucking podcast. Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Paige always comes in with the assist to go, quote, no, it's a real podcast. Right, right, right, right, okay, okay?

Yes It's a real podcast a murder of crows a podcast of white guys Exactly like a pandemic podcast white And I have to spend like ten minutes being like, no, I make a money and make a money on the pot. Why did I? Why? Why Italian? That was not a purpose. I'm a YouTuber. I'm a YouTuber too. I'm a YouTuber too. Oh. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yes. But just that, you know, I just, that's it. That's it. That's what it is every time. So fucking whatever.

Fucking, I sort of like, just going up to a microphone, accepting some sort of industry journalism award for truth in reporting and just farting as loud as possible. Hey, guess what, Woolly? And just talking about frame data. I bet you, if you looked at all the video game podcasts, we have one of the highest percentages of layoff coverages of all of them. So, okay.

We have tried to cover it every single time we've seen it. So one thing I will say de facto is when it comes to unionization stories, that is 100% the case. And it just turns out that. It just goes right on. More layoffs, here we go here we go every week yeah it that turns out to actually that actually does turn out to be the case yeah and I don't I don't know if that's always based on like well the company that's putting this out has some

feelings that they don't want to say whatever whatever the fuck whatever the reasons are that that is that is a thing that does come out. People say that Giga Boots also covers it all the time. Good for them. Okay. The only thing you have to lose is your chains! Anyway. It's just, it's not, there is no rigorous, like I'm thinking, like, I just, I think of, like, you know, I don't know, I'm thinking of of when Gene sits down to write up his review, right?

And then the Aaron Sorkin episode that it's taking place within. You know what I mean? It's not what's happening. The writing up and then the sending to the editor and then the scoop that's occurring at the last second and oh my god, we got to get our boots on the ground and go talk to somebody and get the full story. Well, like, Gene is the only guy left in the department that got destroyed. second and oh my god we got to get our boots on the ground and go talk to somebody and get the full story. Well AG is the only guy left in the department that got destroyed.

I know I know I know I'm I am hyperbolically describing what it means to be a gum shoes game journalist reporter with your with your microphone and press hat you know going to get the big scoop. Here's what it's like over at IGN or GameSpot or whatever. Hey Games radar just posted a story. Okay copy it and say we got it from games radar get it out Find a screenshot of Elton ring Okay, change the words a little bit. I mean depending on done depending on the website It might even just be like dump it in a generator Change it a little bit with the what was it the scrum bows and World of Warcraft? Depending on the website it might even just be like dump it in a generator, change it

up a little bit. Scrape it. What was it, the scrumbos in World of Warcraft? Scrumblows or yeah. Whatever the fuck it was. Glupshido. So excited. Yeah.

Well, alright. Check that out. Big Boy Boxing looks very cool. Well, alright. Check that out. Big Boy Boxing looks very cool. Glorbo, Glorbo is coming. Yo, yo, Glorbo is so sick. I love Glorbo. Glorbo rules. Can't wait for Glorbo.

And then, yeah, beyond that. She's Glorbo's my scrimblow until I scrunko. She's glorified my scrim blow until I scrunk oh And then beyond that With the kuma around the corner and the season 2 DLC about to drop and you know We're starting to you're seeing a lot of the balance changes and everything they did an interview with Takayuki Nakayama on He's the director of six on Street Fighter 6 of what's coming up for season two and you know, obviously can't really say much You know yada yada, you know the deal. We're gonna keep it tight Fuck up the press cycle, etc. However

unexpected characters Are coming so That can either mean more final fight is gonna be scraped, but I don't think so I know that a whole lot of the end of five ended up being that I'm thinking that is Hakan I'm like that's not like shit. I think I think unexpected characters returning is the Hakann signal, loud and clear. Alright, so there's two other pieces of Street Fighter 6 news that come alongside with Akuma. One of which is, hey, are you like me, Pat, who doesn't particularly care for Street Fighter 6's music?

Oh yes! Well, we've got a way to fix that shit! You can use your collected music from the BGM player now in actual matches Or just buy it I think the the phrasing implies that you could just go and buy it So before you could play all those songs while running around a world tour or the battle hub And yeah, I guess now you can just do it right in match as well So perfect and if you go and you unlock a lot of that music again If you don't buy it then you can unlock it by just, you know, playing modes and doing

shit and for the bonus extras in a world tour and arcade. So every single character to the third strike soundtrack. I'm gonna play that Cammie theme, man. That fucking old Cammie theme is so good. Also, sending you this, this just happened. New versus screen pieces of art. Oh, whoa. Okay, so challenge screen customization. So yeah, when you go online, you can change your portraits. Yeah, they threw a couple of those in.

There was the ones that looked kind of like Gendi inspired a little bit, and then there's the Other kind of cartoonish stylized ones. So cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's dope. I think anytime Why does Jamie's look like he's fucking coughing up a bunch of cum? The liquid he's pouring it into his mouth yes, okay They should have perhaps colored it a little bit differently there yeah that's on purpose that's on purpose um it feels as if anytime there's a piece of there's an update or DLC or new stuff that's like for the main roster and not for the the the world tour custom shit

like that's actually the thing that people spread and share and talk about because Yeah, it's been asymmetrical people want more shit. They can do with the actual Proper so I'm gonna hop into Street Fighter 6 Probably tonight when Akuma drops and I'm probably gonna spend a good deal of money because I never bought a costume. And I definitely want Jamie and oh man, Aki's new costume? People that don't like that are insane! The costume threes are godlike and I love them. Her Aki's costume with the glasses? Oh my god! She looks really cool. They all look great. They really do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The four that didn't get it are great. And I mean, even Ed with the retro one as well, I'm like, yeah. Why does it look so much better than the same outfit in Five? I think it's because of the body proportions. And I'm not, I suspect it's because of that. But it looks clean.

And just like, yeah, proper with the jacket on. The jacket and the sleeves add to it too, right? The coat over it is a level of just like fucking proper formality that was kind of missing from the Young Commander look. It's great. I'm so glad that Akuma's third costume is Mr. Karate. Yeah, yeah. Fully like just fully embraced. That's great. Mm-hmm. Yeah and then Rashid is just sporting it up. I think Rashid's is great. I don't know what people don't like about it. You know, I again I haven't seen a ton of negativity but yeah, I've seen the guy that Rashid is trying to be in real life

He's jogging and he he's too close to the middle of the road And in most of the cases even if you're like if there if the look is By the if the default look is off. There's usually a color in there that makes it fucking work, right? Like there's usually enough really, really good one. So yeah, no, good shit on those. All right, let's take some letters. Hey, if you wanna send in a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com.

That's castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. Make it a good email also. I know some of you tend to want to throw in bad emails. Oh man, we didn't even talk about multiverses. It's got Jason and Agent Smith in it. And Joker. And Joker. I honestly, I'm not really...

When it comes back out, I'll probably talk about and cover some of what that's like. For the new, yeah, It's kind of background for now. But if I were reporting and in a trustworthy manner, then I would have to give an equal amount of time. I don't think you even remember how game journalism works, Wully. Oh no, trust me, I know. Trust me, I know. Oh, no, trust me. I know trust me. I know I also remember

Anyway, I remember like the time where it's like yes being in the industry itself while also like there'd be times when you guys back in the day would be rattling off with like Various studios and devs and like what their timelines have been. And I'm like, I've never played a game from that studio, much less know anything about what they became or where they branched off to have some employees go this way and that way. And I'm just like, I didn't pay attention to any of that shit.

I just love that shit. I'm just totally fascinated by all that that that Sure behind the scenes. Where's this going shit? I didn't and I didn't have any of that fire in me and everything that I've learned has been because of doing this You know, but for the longest while there'd be like, oh you mentioned like yes, you'd say like, um You know, I forgot like what but you'd say the name of a studio in particular and I'd be like, yes, you'd say like, you know, I forgot like, what, but you'd say the name of a studio in particular, and I'd be like, yeah, I don't have a studio. Oh, no, I've heard of them. But I just don't know what the timeline is, because I've

never played any of the games from them, for example. And that happened a lot. So. All right. So anyways, we've got one coming in here from me, me simply says not me, but he just wrote me. Yeah, dearest, Willie and beloved Pat. How's it going? I hope this email finds you well question is for Pat. Hey Pat. How's it going? I just started ff14 for the first time on a whim last week And I'm loving it wondering what you would say is the number one do and the number one do not for a new player Like myself and any others who might be listening the number one do is read all your tooltips

player like myself and any others who might be listening. The number one do is read all your tooltips. Read all of them and then read them again. It's astonishing how much easier the game gets if you actually just read what all your buttons do. The second thing, the thing to not do, the worst thing anyone could ever possibly do is you're starting now. So Dawn Trail is in literally exactly one month. Don't rush it so you can be at Dawn Trail on launch day.

Don't. We are talking about nine years of MMO to burn through in fucking what six weeks? Don't do that. I have seen people ruin the game for themselves By going I got to get to the new stuff right now. Don't stop stop Play it at the pace that you enjoy. That's it That is it that That's it. That is crazy coming from you.

That means a lot because you do that to yourself. I absolutely do. All the time. All the time, yeah. It's too big. It's too much. There's too much for you to go, yeah, I'm gonna just rush through. And like it is a stop and smell the roses kind of thing. Attempting to just burn all through it as hard as you can is overwhelming and impossible

and it will ruin it for you. It will absolutely ruin it for you. Number two, don't do it and do it. Hey, you're thinking about leveling a second class, right? Because the game supports that. Okay, step one, don't look at your character and go, wow, this character that I made only suits the aesthetic for this job.

I'll make a new character. Don't do that, do it all in one character. Don't be insane. I know somebody who's insane, and I think they're the dumbest person ever for doing this. Just play it all on your first character. Just play it all on your first character, okay? And second of all, get one character,

we'll get one job to cap first because you will get massive experience bonuses on all jobs you do after that, once one character is a cap. So play it at your own pace, stick to one job, don't make a new character. Read your tool tips. That's it, that's the, there, you asked for two, there's four, do that. You would have to be the dumbest motherfucker in the world to start new characters for every job you are gonna play.

You would have to basically be a brain dead idiot whose brain is rotted out for practicing too many Luke combos. Specific person. Target acquired? Yeah, you fucking idiot. It's funny to hear this response be smell the roses because not just of how much I am always by default trying to play games that way in general, but by how much I know that every time

a new big update comes out, there is a, is it now to join, to keep, to get in with everybody while they're doing the can I, now? And it's like, you have so much to do behind you. But like the can I jump in now feeling is so overwhelming and strong for some people that like the desire to blow past all that to just be in the moment.

I wanna get to the new stuff, I wanna get to the good part. But I wanna get to the good part while everybody else is doing the good part right now. Yeah, no, just fucking. But that doesn't work, right? Yeah, the people who are chomping at the bit and frothing at the mouth for brand new content like Dawn Trail are people like me and my friends.

So like I was looking at my character last night, no not on Sunday, and I was like, huh, you know, I have the baby now, there's no way I can get all classes to cap. And then I looked at it, like, oh, I only have Black Mage and Paladin to get to cap. I could do that, I could do that. There's 19 fucking jobs in the game. Okay. When we're talking about thousands of

days played and I don't mean I don't mean like like I played yesterday and I played today I mean like batches of 24 hours like don't don't don't rush it you will ruin it for yourself ignore Ignore FOMO. I like that. It's still gonna be there. It'll be there. It's not going away. It's not destiny.

But everyone else is doing it now. See, that's, so here's the best part. That's not true. And you can tell, you can, as a regular player, you can tell it's not true by running like a roulette, which goes through all the different possible things. And you'll go, wow, a lot of people are doing this Stormblood dungeon. Wow, a lot of people are doing this Shadowbringers trial.

And you can see, by doing that, you see like waves of groups of people coming in on certain dates. Okay. And you go in the math and you go, okay, Dawn Trail trailer was this many months ago. It has taken the average person who saw that and got in X amount of weeks to get to the middle of Stormblood. And here they are. Only wrinkle I ask is that is there a time limited?

Crossover events that cannot be enjoyed if you don't get to them right now Not right now. They're not but are there are times when it's like you got to do you got to get to You know rarely Okay, but those all of those quests All of those quests are built for like level 15 characters So like I've been playing for two days Yeah, okay, okay Low the quests that exist the the the crossover shit that exists like the monster hunter one

Which is like at the end of one of the expansions. That's forever That is forever. Great, okay. Slow down. And let's take one here. No name given, hello Deputy Director Wools and Special Agent Pat. I was recently replaying Red Dead 2 and came across a drunken father berating his son and threatening

to beat him in the hopes to help the kid and stop the dead from beating him I came in and beat it beat up the dad however when I tried to talk to the kid the only prompt I had was to ask him where the money was stored. That's really funny. What's your most memorable moment of accidentally being evil in a game? Well I know that yours is Glassom. Glassom. Glassom is, that's the one. Wolf Among Us, sitting there having a good old chat, you know, with the woodsman.

And yeah, I don't know what Glassom meant men neither did a whole lot of other people apparently when I watched glass him is is clink glasses or But I said poor I thought it was pouring the glass right and no it turns out It's take the fucking glass and fucking just smash it over his head and start the fight So you know I I can't think of anything that comes to mind right away because I'm so paranoid about getting the evil Evil like Outcomes to quests when I don't want to do the evil one

Yeah, I tend to I tend to play it super safe So I know I know what you mean. But whatever I hit that, it gets frustrating when it's like, I wish the game could read my intention here. You know? Well, I mean. If it's an open, if it's a fairly open game, is what I mean.

Like if it's a little super linear, then no, you're not going to expect that. But if there are things where other times, the game logic is one where this would be considered something that would affect a situation but here it doesn't. Oh right it's that it's like it's a microcosm of that moment of like that moment in the Mass Effect 2 party DLC where you have to shoot the window and it's like nowhere in the entire franchise is glass breaking a thing but now in this one moment it is and you just have to think outside the limitations that the last

15 hours have conditioned you to you know, so I'm being reminded that when I was playing Dishonored I Knocked a guy out because I was trying to go non-lethal and then I dropped his body like five feet and he died And that was like dropped his body like five feet and he died. Oh. And I was like, fuck, god damn it. Okay, okay. Yeah. Didn't mean to do that. I would argue that every ThinGland disco Elysium

is unintentionally intentional. You know, the best parts are failing forward. Yeah. There's a lot of people in Baldur's Gate 3, You know the best parts are failing forward Yeah There's a lot of there's a lot of people in Baldur's Gate 3 you can tell to kill themselves But you're not 100% certain in some of those situations that you're telling them to kill themselves I Forget in heavy rain what I thought r1 was at the time. I forget what that Yeah, I don't know what you thought r1 was but I definitely hit it

Was it aiming at him or was the gun already out? I don't know what you thought R1 was, but you definitely hit it. Was it aiming at him, or was the gun already out? I don't remember the deal. The gun's already out. Yeah, I don't remember what it was, but I thought it was something else. I think the funniest thing is that we made fun of you for that, but the scene is a lot of you loud yelling and tense shit, and the whole idea is to make you frazzled enough to just go, ah ah and hit the button Right

To steady the hands was that what it was okay? Yeah? There you go That'll that'll do yeah, I just anyway page also shoot that guy. Oh, yeah, I don't remember If so then a let's go Page also shot that guy. Yeah wait on purpose or I don't know probably by accident Okay, because then yes, then there yeah, absolutely. It's it's the intention of the scene Totally totally thought other things would happen there. I don't know What's funny is I wonder how different that would have been if it was r2. Yeah, yeah, no

Because r2 is a trigger on all those things Great so I say I say that like yay another person wait. Oh wait That's the company that I have to keep now for these types of moments. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is! Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.