Castle Super Beast - CSB 274: Backyard Furries Are On The Way

Starting point is 00:00:00 ["Sailor Moon Theme"] Alright, there we go. Countdown till Discord takes a shit, yeah I've reinstalled and prioritized everything with it to the best of my ability so we shall see well we'll see hello what is up y'all we sorry I'm just taking care of some some minor scheduling details Pat suck off those ghosts faster. No, I don't want to Go suck it. Yeah when I play fighting games, I got I got the ghost dicks in my mouth. Oh I'm kind of shocked that that you had never pointed it out like ten years ago But I guess you were focused on on on the game ghost Ghost dicks.

Starting point is 00:01:25 Okay. Yeah, it looks like I'm sucking dicks that aren't there. Oh, oh you, your habits. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah, there's a lot of that. So that was just not surprising to me. I know exactly what you're talking about because I have a cousin who was like that

Starting point is 00:01:41 and it wasn't just games, it was any activity. Whenever he's playing basketball, whenever he's playing playing games whenever he's doing anything that requires focus or concentration He's like just go his man his eyes go dead his mouth hangs open and his tongue hangs out of his mouth a little bit You know a bit of almost like that Jordan kind of mouth like uh, you know, like he's a go I'm trying to do I'm trying to do brain stuff focus is required to keep the mouth closed and the drool inside Yeah, yeah, yeah and focus is And focus is also required to not tap your nose. Yeah, like some kind of fucking oh, that's Whatever that is

Starting point is 00:02:24 That's I don't know how to I can't stop it I mean like yeah no that I think greater than any actual victory is the mid match don't tap your nose as your hand is up like the call out it's straight up it's straight up a Joseph and next you're gonna tap your fucking nose What no, but oh my god Yeah, it was a bomb on my hand Yeah Okay, so a lot going on this week

Starting point is 00:03:02 over over here Games and stuff and old stuff that I forgot to bring up last time oh god that's always like I should have done it last week it was gonna be so relevant and now it's only slightly less relevant but I feel stupid yeah so I'm doing that well it's still relevant but either way I'm just like if you've got a lot and I've got a lot then then we know What we're in for I don't think I got a lot. I can't even remember what I did yesterday Yeah, but then you're gonna look and you're gonna see it and you're gonna go oh, it was a lot.

Starting point is 00:03:38 Okay, hold on. No, I'm good. All right, folks are saying you're quiet. Let me pull you up a little bit Just no one's ever accused me of this I know right in my life Maybe with the discord reinstallation and shit this stuff is possible reset a little bit conceivable even alright, so there you go Bro fucking Nintendo direct I had a dentist appointment and like I had to reschedule the dentist appointment because I got to do that Nintendo direct Oh my god, you risk it. That's okay. You know You know you don't just go alright that one will have to take a hit you reschedule the dentist damn alright Okay, and like the worst part like I reschedule it for like to my god priorities are so different

Starting point is 00:04:18 It's just it's just a what do you call it? Cleaning check out yes like whatever but It's just a what do you call it? Cleaning check out. Yeah, like whatever but Like it's it's tomorrow morning. So this isn't 24 hours ahead of time Right. I'm cancel. I'm canceling my appointment like with 12 hours to go or something and she's like the the the receptionist is like Okay, well, yeah you confirmed earlier in the week. I just want to let you know that usually we don't. I'm like, I know, I'm sorry. But I can't tell them why because then they'll laugh and be like, you cringe fucking nerd.

Starting point is 00:04:57 I mean, I like the idea that you're burning the candle at like every possible end and then the middle of the candle at the same time methods are Turning the tide because the whole like wooly you got to go watch these shows You got to go catch up and what's going on with these things is now turning into for the love of God Pat Just watch it later. No, you don't have to do this. No I need I need to be there so that someone can complain that I wasn't excited enough later. See, I think... Why is he even watching? He's so jaded! But the problem is when you play your hand and reveal like,

Starting point is 00:05:40 I can't enjoy anything right now because I'm too excited for Elden Ring and Dodged for El. That's insane! That's insane crazy person shit! Every tat, everything that would give me enjoyment other than like hanging out with the dog, the wife, the cat, or the baby, you know, family, right? Everything that I would do to like kill time and be like, I'm enjoying myself, ha ha, is like annoying,

Starting point is 00:06:10 is like irritating. Oh my God. Because it's not the things that I actually wanna do. Oh my God, yeah. I just, like I said, that feeling of there's always too many things is not gonna go away for me anytime soon, even the things I want the most. It's so funny because I'm well aware

Starting point is 00:06:29 that I represent the absolute most extreme level of when is Santa coming, I'm not gonna eat dinner. I don't even want dinner. I'm not, I'm gonna stop breathing. I'm gonna turn red until Santa gets here. Right, I'm the farthest over there. Meanwhile, I remember you, I remember the moment that I understood

Starting point is 00:06:54 that I don't understand you on a fundamental level. And it was that goddamn Metal Gear Solid 3 Limited Edition where you wanted the one with the red tin that had the really nice box. I wanted the collector edition of that. Right. And all of us had just like didn't give a shit about that and had gotten it and were playing it. And you were like, no, but I want my red one.

Starting point is 00:07:21 I don't care. It'll be good. It'll be the same one. I'll enjoy it just as much, but I want the red one. And you were like totally happy to wait? Like it didn't bother you at all? And I was just sitting there like, how are you not going crazy? The game's out right now! Because I had ordered it and I only had the money to for one and I had

Starting point is 00:07:46 spent it and I was waiting on its arrival and I'm not gonna I don't have the money to go buy it right now to play it now so I had to wait the money was spent and it was in the mail I just had to sit and wait for it that was a fine man so there was there was a trick to that which was I did offer you my copy to play it and you're like no no, no, no, don't worry about it. And you were like nonplussed, like you were calm and chill. I guess, I mean, I definitely know that like the idea of like, there's no digital, there wasn't a time where I could get it digitally first and then like wait for the collector. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:08:17 You know, but yeah, it was just, it was in the mail. My point is, is that on the one hand, I'm as neurotic as I could be about this. is that on the one hand, I'm as neurotic as I could be about this, and it feels extra strong to you because you are the chillest person I've ever known about, well, it's live right now, well, it's out right now. Don't you wanna jump on it right now? And you're like, nah, it's fine. Yeah, it's the thing, these activities are going to be, they're like in a lot of

Starting point is 00:08:46 cases it's like the first priority is going to, it's going to be my first priority as soon as I enter the timeframe in which I'm like time to enjoy things and do these activities, right? I'm not going to stop or rearrange the activity, the things I'm doing in life necessarily to get them in earlier I'm gonna go like alright As of tomorrow when I when I do this shit I gotta do or whatever else is going on at this point The first thing I'm gonna do is go check out this thing that I want to check out, but it's still yeah

Starting point is 00:09:16 It's still over there. It's fine. It's okay, you know I mean shit man. This this career is certainly like hyper prioritized everything about this industry in a way that yeah, like I gotta do what I gotta do to keep enjoying it, you know what I mean? I can burn out way easier than I think you can when it comes to a lot of this. I've got that mental illness and obsession powering me. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like, so I hit points where Paige can see it before I do. And like, man, aw man, I could just stream more.

Starting point is 00:09:53 What if I just streamed more? And then I'm like, I'm a little tired. And Paige is like, if you do not chill the fuck out tomorrow, you're gonna pass out. I'm like, no, I'm not. Yeah. I don't know what things would look like if I were completely unrestricted in the sense that like,

Starting point is 00:10:10 you know, when Reggie comes over, there's still a limitation to how much we can sit down and do in a given timeframe, as opposed to me just hitting the button all the time. But I have a feeling that even if I were just doing it solo, I would still be like, yeah, probably, you know, like I'd pop up here and there depending on how things are going.

Starting point is 00:10:30 But I have a constraint, you know, that is another person. What if I just, you know that like work, leisure, sleep? It's like, what if I took that sleep part out? So you know what, it's funny, because that used to be the solution, right? That when I was a younger person, I was like, yeah, I just don't sleep as much. Yeah, what's going to happen? That's just no longer an option. That sleep part is like locked in and won't move because it's going to show up no matter

Starting point is 00:10:59 what happens. Like it's getting to be like 9 45 p.45pm and I'm like, oh man! I mean, yeah. No, I'm still not sleeping, but like, it's just other shit is crammed into that time, you know? And then, yeah, the word Jorksong flew by a moment ago, like for whatever the... And you can you can piece together how we get there there's there's a lot going on page right now is

Starting point is 00:11:33 working on I don't know what to call it a personal project called the Jork report okay in which she will explain to all of you why the ghoul is hot and how that's super normal and what's gonna happen with the ghoul and the ghoul's dick in the second season of Fallout. Okay, okay, okay, okay. She is doing like, she's, she's, she's,

Starting point is 00:12:03 like I thought it was Pepe Silvia. I thought that was what was happening Okay, and then she's like no, but look at this though, and she'll bring out like the document She's created and I'm like there's a lot in there. I see there's there's like there's like meat Cuz I was I was she's pulling quotes from like art like interviews with with side actors that I'd never heard of didn't realize we're in the show. This needs to be Yes, the horny must be justified. It's it's empirically. I don't think it does. I think it's going to be I was just going the other route with that and going like, oh, silk song into hype song and people that are hype for hype song are now Jork song. Enthusiasts. I just in my brain. They're Jork song enthusiasts? They're Jork song. They're all about Jork

Starting point is 00:12:57 song. That's what I assumed was going on. Anyway. Yeah, all right, so something I forgot to bring up in last week's fucking stacked cast was Furiosa. Oh, you saw fucking Furiosa and you didn't mention it? That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. Because a lot happened and there was a lot to cover and brain fog. Saw Furiosa last week and it was fucking good man. It's probably not the kind of thing that I think it's out of theaters now right and... It is shockingly out of

Starting point is 00:13:33 theaters now. I think that it's had its run and I think it's it might be or so it depends on where the Witsin them I suppose but either way you can't have a you can't bring up Furiosa without immediately going into the discussion about how theaters are dying and the box office difference between the biggest hits of the previous years going into this one. I think, you know, Barbenheimer was the last swan song

Starting point is 00:14:03 of the cinema, Dbenheimer was the last swan song of the cinema. Dune II was all right. But Furiosa is like, and I think the other one was The Fall Guy, where it's like, here's two movies that were like, you know, acclaimed and getting good reviews and people, you know, word of mouth is spreading, but just folks are pretty comfortable at home. Red Letter Media did a video on it, you know, and folks are just pretty comfortable at home. Red Letter Media did a video on it, and folks are just pretty comfortable at home. It's not just about like, okay, COVID got us used to, COVID was like, people were saying,

Starting point is 00:14:30 I don't wanna go to the theaters and risk getting sick, but now you're just like, I'm also comfortable with my TV at home, so if I can wait for something to hit streaming in a short period of time, then why not do that? So like, there's so many complicated things, because I think that the, ah, well people got used to watching it at home is like really reductive, but it's more

Starting point is 00:14:50 that like, but because there's the second part of that, right? People did get used to watching it at home, right? That watching movies at home, but like during the pandemic, if you were realized you wanted to watch movies all the time and you were a movie snob, You probably got like a pretty nice TV during that period to watch your movies at home. I could have you still have Yeah, but on top of that Pre pandemic you were like, you know, I Know like $30 is worth it for me page go see Sonic the Hedgehog, but like Yeah, you know, stuff's poppin'. Maybe we won't be able to see movies anymore.

Starting point is 00:15:29 Yeah, okay, we'll spend $30 to go see Sonic the Hedgehog. Now that we've come out the other side of it is like, do you want to pay $400 on Cheapie Tuesdays to see a movie that's going to be in theaters for, how long is it going to be there? Six weeks? I mean, yeah, the exorbitant pricing combined with it, it's more than just a, okay, you get your $30 ticket per person and then you go in and if you're getting your popcorn

Starting point is 00:15:56 or whatever else you're playing, those theater prices are always nuts and it's just becoming more and more practical compared to the online, or rather at home cost and such. In addition to that too, it's like I think what you and that one of those prices always go up, of course, as a response to business going down. I imagine you'll see a lot of smaller theaters close. I imagine you'd see probably some art art house places get that would like run old things like hey

Starting point is 00:16:25 We're gonna do you know like cinema to park for example is a place in Montreal that'll do like 2001 a space Odyssey come catch it you know if you've never have in a theater or Just play old movies or get old runs of stuff But like the big mainline ones and such like yeah I think inside out to came out this, and that seems to be doing well. But there's going to be these tent poles, and those tent poles are going to get fewer and fewer. And you're probably going to see these businesses maybe have to start merging with others and

Starting point is 00:16:52 doing other things to stay at low. I mean, I can only speak for myself on one of these things, but me and Paige wanted to go see a movie. Now the movie experience... Okay, so the movie cost... What does a ticket cost for I haven't I haven't even been what does the ticket cost? It was either give it give it to like if you're $30 I mean over over here if you're going to depends on which because you can go to like an IMAX or a not IMAX and not like a regular ass movie probably 20 then if you're going to take a basic you're going you're paying Okay, so that's ridiculous, right? Yeah, but okay's say 20, fuck it, 25, whatever, right?

Starting point is 00:17:27 So that's 50 bucks right off the bat, and plus snacks, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, plus babysitter! Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. We're now talking about like a fucking $100, $120, three hour excursion? Yeah, there's a note. You're also, you're in a frame,

Starting point is 00:17:48 you're in a window in your life where activities are just costing more because of that extra factor. It's not a permanent situation. But there's activities that we don't need to babysitter because we just take the baby. Yes, yeah. That is a temporary situation, but it is still what applies to anyone who is a new parent,

Starting point is 00:18:06 has that little modifier as well on the cost of everything. Well, the other thing is like, Furiosa's out of theaters and it's like, because it didn't do very well. And I'm like, I remember growing up and like all the way up until I was almost 30, seeing the shittiest movies ever, living on that fucking board of available films to watch for six plus months. Just like, we're gonna make the goddamn money back. We're gonna make it back.

Starting point is 00:18:40 Well, cause it was kind of like DVD sales of things where it's like, yeah, people bored will just walk in and go, what the fuck's playing? I don't know. What is that? Let's go see that. A curiosity and hell, I mean fucking bad, you go way back enough before our time where you're like, we go to the theater because they have air conditioning, right?

Starting point is 00:19:00 Was the original appeal of getting in there on a hot day. Sometimes you still go to the theater because of the air conditioning when we were younger, because the theater has the good air conditioning. But that's the boomerest fucking reason you can go see a movie. We're so far beyond that now that, yeah, there's just, you don't feel like,

Starting point is 00:19:18 hey, what are we doing today? I don't know, I got nothing, let's go see that. You have a million things you can fucking TikTok, watch stream, et cetera, yada yada. You can watch Lawrence of Arabia on your phone. Yeah, the part of it that is the wildest in some ways for me is that just from the game perspective, arcades died off one by one.

Starting point is 00:19:40 They just got shot and killed over here because it's like you're not allowed to make any new ones because there are undesirable elements in the neighborhood. But the ones that survived were as long as your arcade was inside of a theater, you could do whatever you want. And the theaters were privileged that way. So it became a real sad thing because they're like, oh man, arcade theaters suck because they always have just a bunch of

Starting point is 00:19:57 busted machines that are not the games anyone really wants to play or anything. They're just, you know, a handful of random things and then a, then an air hockey table and call it a day, but ooh, they've got the neon lights and shit. If they did get anything like a fighting game or like a rhythm game, that would be the one place you had your option to go.

Starting point is 00:20:15 And now the idea that the thing that was the safe business that arcades could like, the Noah's Ark- Attached to. Is now fucking sinking, you know, and the business that is the thing that was supposed to be the safe haven itself cannot stay afloat. There's this one thing like this. This is maybe I'm horribly extrapolating much too far beyond the scope of this conversation. But I feel like part of the issue that theaters are having is the same

Starting point is 00:20:42 issue that malls are having and the same issue many daytime businesses are having. It's a problem with the kids. Ten years ago, we all got to enjoy, me and you are millennials, we all got to enjoy every article under the sun blaming us for the destruction of the housing market and fucking all these Blaming us millennials are killing the family style restaurant markets and Fucking inside Mario's TG the kids the kids won't go to whatever the fuck and it's like I'm I can't With what money with what idiot? So when I was a child like a child right when I was 10 years old I could pay a dollar to take the bus all the way in town go fuck around the the Angriant Mall

Starting point is 00:21:29 Watch a movie Get a piece of some food And for the 20 that my dad gave me on like a Friday evening to leave on Saturday to be like get the fuck out Of here just go do kid shit. I don't care. Right. Like just whatever. Right. So I'd fuck off to like and I lived off the island. So I take like an hour and a half bus go to the hang out of the mall. Maybe see some friends go to the movie. Whatever. I'd spend the whole fucking day there. Right. Or maybe I did that once or once a month or once every two weeks right seeing a movie was like a minor Idea is like oh, what's the movie cost seven dollars?

Starting point is 00:22:10 Okay, whatever dollars or whatever right um and Now that you can't loiter in the mall If unless you're buying something I I mean, you can't do that. That's... The kids can't hang out. That hasn't changed that much. That's pretty much the same thing. They can't afford to buy anything to eat.

Starting point is 00:22:34 They can't go to the fucking... They can't go to the goddamn movie theater. I remember when it went from 25 cents to 50 cents a token at Atlas 2000 Before we hit a dollar and how that was like Outrageous that that so you look at it as I oh it's twice as expensive like no It's not because the quarters come so fast in the early thing. It's actually like three times more expensive It was the way that that your shit works out. I mean, to be honest, like it's mainly, again,

Starting point is 00:23:08 it's not just the change in like the economy and stuff. It's just habit-wise, like the idea of not having anything to do, having all these dead moments of time as a kid and just filling it with random shit is super gone, right? The idea of like, yeah, going to a mall and just finding ways to dick around or whatever. Like you could go still sit at a food court for hours or whatever and security is not going to bug you about that.

Starting point is 00:23:30 Well maybe, depends where you live. Depends where you live. It depends where you live. But- Like we got somebody in the chat who lives in the EU where they use sonic disruptors to attack teenagers. But like in general, people just don't even, like a bunch of kids don't go shopping in a particular way. You know what I mean? Again, you don't even like a bunch of kids don't go shopping in a particular way You know what? I mean again, you don't have a ton of disposable income necessarily in most cases I just think that you're looking at a time frame as well where you're like, hey

Starting point is 00:23:53 There was a time when the like the nerdiest kid on the block would still be out there Somewhat with the riding the bikes around a bit and And they'd be somewhere out of the house. But then maybe they'd be at the comic shop, or if there was an arcade or somewhere, or there's somewhere else to play a game or something. But they'd watch more games, play more movies, play more games, and do more of that than the rest of the people, right?

Starting point is 00:24:20 So like I was an introverted shut-in, and I rode my bike around town. Exactly out that was that was that was the case Exactly. And now the fucking jockeiest jock of the group of the on the block in the neighborhood is scrolling tik-tok and like posted and keeping up with whatever's going on and you know Like following UFC or whatever sport things like we it's still there. They're an inside online person with those activities dead center in the middle of the timeline of just go outside right? Yeah, yeah, I

Starting point is 00:24:56 Love my video games and so I would like pray for rainy days because on rainy days mom and dad wouldn't give me any guff For staying in to play Genesis, right? But if it was a nice day, yeah, I'd go ride my bike or go fucking, I don't know, do some bullshit, do some stupid child bullshit, right? But the thing that drove me completely nuts, it made me go crazy, which is it'd be a nice day and I'd be chilling around the house and my mom would go, why don't you go out and play baseball? I'm like a random Saturday afternoon Yeah, yeah with who's doing what?

Starting point is 00:25:33 Yeah, go down to the park and play baseball with the kids there. I'm like mom. There's no kids It's not as at the what the fuck are you talking about? What do you and so I got we got to see that, right? That era of like our parents were just like, just go outside, there's just tons of people outside, to which we respond with, no there's not. Yeah, yeah. And now we get to see the next generation

Starting point is 00:25:55 be told by people our age, like I know other parents and friends and friends who like, I don't understand why the kid's on their phone all the time. I tell them to go outside and I go, well where are they supposed to go? They go, I don't understand why the kids on their phone all the time. I tell them to go outside and I go, well where are they supposed to go? They go, I don't know, away. Like there's, and then, and here's my favorite part.

Starting point is 00:26:13 Here's my favorite part, right? The kids always on their phone and like, okay well, what else do they have to do? It's like, well they're not allowed to go here and they're not allowed to go here and they can't go too far from the house and they can't go Here and I don't know about that friend's house because I don't know about those parents and it like they start listing the fucking things And you're like you want your kid to go just play with dirt in your own backyard. I mean look

Starting point is 00:26:40 being Extroverted now means being at home popping off on war zone call of doom or Valorant being introverted means being at home popping off on ff14 that's the difference now actually both of those types of people can play ff14 sure but but you get the spirit of what I'm saying. Like, that's the world now. Yeah, absolutely. It's the same shit. So anyway, I spoke to a fellow adult with a child who was angry at their son, who is in high school, for crossing the street to go to the convenience store without permission because he could have gotten hit by a car. And I was like, mm.

Starting point is 00:27:34 And in my brain I'm like, that kid's gonna start doing drugs tomorrow. Yeah, that's fucked. That is not a good place to start. You are, yeah. That's that is not a good place to start you are you are yeah Anyway all this to say That Furiosa is is fucking it was it was really good man I was it worth seeing in a movie theater definitely definitely and and I'd say the reason why is similar to dune Where it's a very visual?

Starting point is 00:28:08 to Dune where it's a very visual spectacle. It's a masterpiece of just like, yes, the taking in the full breadth of a shot. Both of those movies are the type of movies you want to see in the theater because you're getting a ton of vast desert exterior, you know what I mean? Mom moments where the characters on screen are like 5% of the frame and you just take it all in. It works great in the theater. So Furiosa in particular, I will say is like, okay, you're going into this and everybody knows, it's like Mad Max Fury Road is literally,

Starting point is 00:28:44 it's just one of the goats. It's one of the all time great films. It's like that is, Mad Max, Fury Road, is literally, it's just one of the goats. It's one of the all-time great films. It's like, that is gonna be on any list of the best movies ever made going forward. It's- It's great. Unbelievable, it's fan, fucking, I can't, anyway, you know. So-

Starting point is 00:28:56 I know! Coming into this, right, it's like, okay, are you gonna get Fury Road 2? No, not necessarily. But you are getting that same setting, you're getting the same flavor, and all of that applied to, well, it's called a Mad Max saga,

Starting point is 00:29:13 and it's applied to, yeah, a saga, like a longer story. The brevity of Fury Road is really what helps a lot of it work so well, is because it's like, it's a single road war over the course of a couple days. And this is following the entire origin story of this character. So it has to stay in this world over time.

Starting point is 00:29:34 That's gonna come with like some more vulnerabilities and it's gonna come with things that it has to take chances on that are, you know, a little more risky, but like... It has... It changes the pacing from a fucking tight, solid unit to things that'll lull and then pick back up, right? So, it is not better or equal to Fury Road at all. I have to say...

Starting point is 00:30:04 This is technically related, though it's more of an annoyance with the world at large. I got spoiled on a detail of this movie. Probably doesn't matter, but yeah. Oh, it doesn't. But the manner in which I did was so annoying that I feel like I have to bring it up. So sometimes I'll be scrolling through whatever and the meme of the year or whatever will show up and like,

Starting point is 00:30:31 oh, is that FS every? Oh, not interested. Don't show me that again. Yeah. This happens to you enough and to be like that for... This has been happening to you a bunch and bunch. Every time I brought up a movie recently, you've had these moments and I'm just like, I aggressively go dark until I can get a chance at it. So I have been, well, I don't intend to go dark every day of my life. Yeah. Which I would have to do. Sure.

Starting point is 00:30:54 So, um, but I've been getting better about like nipping it in the bud by using the non-interested thing. Um, but what came up was one of the actors, TikTok accounts, the big bald guy, the very large gigantic bald man who's the son of a Morton Joe. Yeah, Rictus Erectus. Yeah. Speaking as an actor going, hey guys. I just want to let you know that movies are not real You can stop yelling at me in my inbox for the actions of my character, please That's sure what

Starting point is 00:31:44 And I'm like, oh That's sure. What? Um. And I'm like, oh. Really? This is, this, okay. I don't even fully know what that means though. So I would say you're probably still clear on whatever spoiler you think you heard.

Starting point is 00:32:00 Cause I'm like, yeah, no. That's fairly minor in any case. Like they're there and stuff But that that's not in any way impacting what I took away or what was happening there. So yeah, no, that's that's nothing That's a that's a big that's a big. Oh, no again Not the content the medium is the annoyance, right? Okay. Okay. Yes. Yes Admittedly swiping up and getting algorithm into a tick talk about something that you want to see is like definitely a

Starting point is 00:32:31 Shitty way to get exposed to the Joffrey kid the Skyler white lady the the Queen in the Game of Thrones See it's not It's make-believe you fucking idiots. Yeah, it's make believe, you fucking idiots. Yeah. It's a fucking TV show. I mean, to be fair, to be fair, fucking, to Joffrey, like he was so, so good in that role that like, even people who are like, I know you were just acting,

Starting point is 00:32:59 but oh, like it's one of those things of like, you couldn't cast it any more perfect. He's one of the things of like, you couldn't cast it any more perfect. He's one of the best casting choices of like the last fucking decade easily. And to the point where he's like, yeah, I think I'm done. He's like, he came from the theater. And then he's like, I think I'm out of acting. I'm good, you know?

Starting point is 00:33:17 It's like, yeah, I get it. Leave on a high note. Like you did such a good job making everyone hate you by being the quintessential shit kid. I don't know that there's any reinventing, changing up the image or not getting typecast for a long time. So anyway, incredible.

Starting point is 00:33:36 So yeah, Furiosa is, it's just yeah, it's going back to tell the story of Furiosa. And so I didn't see Queen's Gambit, so I wasn't too familiar with Anna Taylor Joy. But seeing obviously that you'd have to go get a younger version of her and follow her through the ages and stuff, it's interesting because she has such a distinct face compared to Charlize Theron's, like Furiosa, that you really look like a different person. Okay, so like, I've seen some bits and pieces of Anna Taylor Joy in various stuff, and she

Starting point is 00:34:13 seems rock solid. But in terms of playing a younger version of a different actress, yeah, no, she is unmistakably Anna Taylor Joy. Yes. So there you like there's no, you're not going to squish those eyes close to your nose in the flashback. Yeah, you're not pretending this person like turns into that. It's like, okay, this is just a different version of that character with a very good

Starting point is 00:34:36 get to the cloud district often. Thank you. But yeah, but she does she does a great job with it. And you know, I think first hearing about this movie as well. I was like, uh-oh is this the crimes of Grimwold? Is this the the spinoff thing that no one asked for that is just keeping the franchise? Is that even the name of that fucking shit? That's one of them, isn't it? I'm pretty sure that's one of them.

Starting point is 00:35:06 The crimes of Grimwald. Okay, okay. So I want to let you know, you said Grimwald, and that's pretty close. And I somehow misheard you and typed in Grindlewand? Which is also wrong.

Starting point is 00:35:22 Great, great, right. The crimes of Grindelwald. Wow, that just rolls right off the tongue. Grindel fuck, you know? Like, what, like, just, you know, the franchise needs to have a spin-off sequel to keep the IP relevant and make it, then keep it making money,

Starting point is 00:35:40 and maybe we can spin-off from the spin-off and keep that going as a brand new thing. I saw a lot of, I saw some talk about how the Grindle shit or whatever is actually a repurposed Doctor Who movie idea. Oh wow, no kidding. And that's why it is so tonally dissonant from all that stupid Harry Potter shit. Interesting.

Starting point is 00:36:02 Well, I mean, either way, I was kind of like hoping that that's not what we were looking at here, you know, and fortunate and especially because, you know, that like, every time something comes out, and it's the product of an entire lifetime of someone's, like, someone's been building up their story, they've been drawing on their trapper keeper in high school, and then they eventually deliver this incredible thing. And this whole time they're just like, man, I hope Kojima writes a movie review about my movie. Yeah, yeah, and doesn't just write,

Starting point is 00:36:32 like, I saw the movie, I saw Furiosa, and then that's it. I saw Madame Web. Yeah. Furiosa, wow, what a great movie. Just pages and pages of Yeah. Furiosa. Wow, what a great movie. But I don't know that pages and pages of tweets about Furiosa. But but yeah, so Fury Road took like 20 years in the making with not just George Miller and and like the plans and stuff. But like, Brendan McCarthy, the judge dread artist that was

Starting point is 00:37:02 working on reboot, who made the Bad Bob episode, which is a send-up to Mad Max, and then used that to inspire what Fury Road was doing, so there's a link between fucking Reboot and Mad Max. It's crazy. All of that ended up being a... Yeah, a large, long tale as to how this movie came out and why it was so good and how much work went into it in advance.

Starting point is 00:37:26 And now here you have the spin-off that's coming out and you're like, okay, can it have had as much work and stuff put into it? And it's like, well, it turns out that it wasn't just a spin-off out of nowhere to keep this thing going. When they were making Fury Road, they went into so much detail on every character that they wrote all of Furiosa's backstory

Starting point is 00:37:49 alongside everyone else's backstory. Oh, so it was all just right there. And it was all right there. And then they went, yo, we can just, this would make it for a great film. And so they just decided to do that. There's a book called Blood, Sweat, and Chrome that talks about the making of, yeah,

Starting point is 00:38:03 like all the Fury Road and everything in that. So this was a story that was already there, ready to go. Incredible. So in that, yeah, you just get what is not, it is not Fury Road, but it's still a very fucking awesome look into the world, into stuff that is hinted at in Fury Road. And there's moments in this where you, well, okay, for one thing, I'll just say in terms of like sound and visual effects and everything like that, just of course, fucking incredible.

Starting point is 00:38:38 It's delivering on that in the same very impressive way. There's the whole thing about Fury Road where they have a ton of love for practical effects and it's still, I thought, there's a rumor that oh, there's no special effects anywhere in it. It turned out that that's- Oh no, there absolutely is. Yeah, it turns out that's not true

Starting point is 00:38:56 because basically, in an interview, Miller said, oh, 90% of what you see is based on practical effects and so that- Yeah, because there's a practical effect underneath and they juice it a little bit. Yes, exactly. Some 2,000 of 2,400 shots, I believe, right? So in this case, similarly, there's a lot of that going on.

Starting point is 00:39:13 But with all that said, there's still a lot of love for real giant rigs, real practical effects where they can, vehicles and real props everywhere. And it's awesome to just see when they're like, okay, we can shoot this entire sequence with a truck and some stunt riders all coordinating in a really tight way and some flamethrowers and get a rad scene. And you're just like, all right, color grade that,

Starting point is 00:39:40 change the sky, make shit more orange, go. You know? There's a really fucking cool moment where a character is standing on a cliff side and in the distance, in the background, there is a truck driving down the road and a bunch of bikers are assaulting the truck and trying to hijack it.

Starting point is 00:40:02 And from one side of the frame to the other, the camera just pans as the character's looking, and it all takes place in about a minute, but you see the fight unfold in the distance. From really far away. You see all the things happen, the shots, the bikers doing all the things, as if, and you're just watching it from the distance,

Starting point is 00:40:21 from the bleachers, and then as it pulls up to the far left side of the frame, the truck comes to a stop, you know? And you're like, whoa, that's just a bunch of actors, stunts and real props doing their thing, you know? I love those moments. And you get a lot of that here where you're like, this is enhanced, but the team involved

Starting point is 00:40:39 did an incredible job with, yeah, costuming and all that great shit from, that you remember from Mad Map, from Fury Road. So I just watched the trailer, well just a little bit of the trailer, and I have to ask, I saw in the trailer that Furiosa starts that movie with ten fingers and two arms. And this is a fairly rare detail that you see in prequel stuff But how much of the movie are you sitting there going like oh is this oh is this gonna be the part?

Starting point is 00:41:14 Are they like like dude she did she walk by a bunch of buzzsaws and go like whoa that was close You know or like a car wheel just like slams down to the left Man yeah that that's incredible, but no I Mean to be perfectly honest like they spend so much time going through her life and like the arc of things You don't even get really Anna Taylor Joy until like an hour in. Oh, okay. So trust, there's a lot to cover.

Starting point is 00:41:52 And the- Here's the movie Long? Yeah, it's two and a half. Two and a bit. Is that long? I mean- Cause when I think of Long, I think of the time that I snuck in to see Inglourious Basterds and what like a horrible mistake that was

Starting point is 00:42:08 Yeah, I okay so to me I could sit and do a four-hour movie and fucking handle it But I've come to understand that for most folks two and a half is like okay That's a really long movie. You know I 90 minutes being the other end of the spectrum. I'm really torn over a film being two and a half hours long being long because the first episode of a mini series on Netflix is like an hour and 15 minutes. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's an episode and it's like that is damn near,

Starting point is 00:42:43 like I've seen movies that were like an hour and 15 minutes long. Yeah, to me I'm like, if I see three, we're getting into what I would consider long territory. But anyway, yeah, this is, and the thing is too, is don't forget that we're on a sliding scale. What used to not necessarily be long becomes longer as your audience gets more and more like

Starting point is 00:43:11 What's happening on my phone shit? I want to check the latest I got did I get an update like the the the tiktok Braining is making folks a little more antsy. You know, I want to clarify something I fucking love inglorious bastards when I say sneaking in to see it was a horrible mistake that's because I had just finished watching a different three hour movie and then just walked across and just walked into Inglorious Basterds not knowing that it was three hours and 40 fucking minutes long. Okay, that's a lot. That was that was a huge mistake. But nonetheless, you can just do that. Yeah. If you're willing to commit crimes, guys. Shh. It's theft. Nonetheless, I would say that a movie that perhaps didn't feel that long as a kid might feel longer now as attention spans have gotten shorter globally, right?

Starting point is 00:43:55 Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, two and a half is considered long. All that being said, based on what I said there, you can imagine that they take their time setting things up and doing a really good job of doing so. There's moments where, again, you feel like there's pacing moments that feel like you're kind of like, oh, that's a little stilted, why'd that happen?

Starting point is 00:44:15 And you get a little confused about that. And you don't get that in Fury Road, right? So there are those moments. But what I will say that is fucking awesome is like also like any of Chris Hemsworth Dementis, who's like yucking it up as a character in that and he's charismatic as a goofball, but he's no immorten Joe, certainly. No. And don't go in expecting something of similar ilk because he's not. He's full of charisma, but not the same kind at all, you know?

Starting point is 00:44:50 Hams it up. The things that feel like they're kind of these moments that are a little stilted or so, though, when it all comes together, there's a really awesome, like, there's a lot of stuff the movie's doing that is meant to, like for example, homage the Odyssey, right, that's a huge piece of what's happening. So things about where the characters go, like the journey she goes on, right, like there's literally chariots,

Starting point is 00:45:23 there's a Trojan horse moment, and of course you know about the fate of the place she came from based on Fury Road, you know? So, all of that is very clear that they're trying to make this like an odyssey for this character, and by following those beats, things make sense, right? She also has these great moments of like, making decisions that are like, that's a stupid decision,

Starting point is 00:45:49 why would you do that? That seems like something that someone who is not very good at survival in this land would do. And it's like, no, but these are the same decisions that are consistent with her character in Fury Road. And the things that you look at that go like, oh, that would be a dumb thing to do, would be like, yeah, but she's made these kind of impulsive decisions, you know, in the first movie you saw and it kind of explains a bit

Starting point is 00:46:11 of how she is the way she is, right? So there's a little bit of that you got to stretch your brain out to do like, oh, okay, right. Let's connect these pieces together to flesh out who this character is and why. There is an awesome subtext as well to things going on here that is like, you know this is an apocalyptic setting, and post-apocalyptic is, of course, the descriptor here. But really interesting things they do in this movie

Starting point is 00:46:38 is like there's an undercurrent that is kind of set where the four horsemen of the apocalypse are actually represented in characters in the movie. Oh cool. Right? Immortan Joe is fucking pestilence. Look at his diseased fucking ass. Oh yeah, he's gross bro.

Starting point is 00:46:55 Right? You have a people eater that is famine. You have a bullet farmer that is war, you know? And so like with all that being set up, there's a through line with her farmer that is war, you know? And so, like, with all that being set up, there's a through line with her story that is like, okay, and, like, who is the role of Death? What does that mean? And that is something that's so, like,

Starting point is 00:47:14 it's interesting, because, like, it passes on for its roles helm to helm in the movie, sometimes literally. And, again, when you're kind of following through the metaphors that it's setting up, you're like, okay, now I understand why these moments of like, again, stilted pacing are like, they're trying to heavily make the metaphor travel

Starting point is 00:47:38 and land where it's supposed to, you know? So there I'm like, I can understand that I think that's awesome because you're going for something better here. You're like, you're trying to deliver a story that has, you know, something some meat on the bones, you know, underneath the the flavoring in the surface. So yeah, that that is all just a really, really good stuff. And, you know, without getting into any spoilers or anything, it's just

Starting point is 00:48:03 a it's also a great revisit to that setting, to the characters and the motivations and the fucking Joes there, and you get to the Citadel, and you get to see your bullet farm, you get to see your gas town, you know? And all of those- I really wanted to see the bullet farm, that's cool.

Starting point is 00:48:23 Yeah, yeah, you know? And you get to see, of course, where the Vuvulani come from and why they're so good at what they're good at. And everything just really complements Fury Road excellently, so go catch that. And then, yeah, there's more fun subtext discussion in this, and they do things in a really interesting way. But you have a character that is a Max like that you see in the trailers, you know,

Starting point is 00:48:56 this very serious, all about his business type of dude. And he's a fucking awesome character as well. That is, you know, like you get your mad max standing and you're like okay Who's this fucking dude gonna be like he does a pretty good job Just being what he is while it's like this is not max, but that energy you can feel a different guy I'm fulfilling the role. Yeah, he's doing he's doing the job so anyway Go catch Furiosa, however you can If the theater run is done, and there's no way to do this justice, it's absolutely worth seeing.

Starting point is 00:49:30 And it's an incredible addition to Fury Road while not being at all better than or supplanting in any way. Just going with the expectations there. Cool. You know, I actually, I saw someone mention it. I actually did watch a movie that I never brought up on the podcast. I watched Napoleon. Oh yeah, I watched Napoleon too. On a plane. You watched it on a plane?

Starting point is 00:50:01 I watched Napoleon on a plane. Yeah, so I watched it on a plane. I watched Napoleon on a plane. Yeah, so I watched it on a plane also Oh, there you go, but I watched it in what I think to be the optimal way to watch any movie on the plane Which is over the shoulder of the guy No sound oh Okay, I was the water mittenly falling asleep. Yeah, that's how I saw the Elvis movie. I did mention

Starting point is 00:50:28 Let me tell you I don't think that movie's very good. It's got some fun bits it's honestly It's so goofy, but it's one of those things where you're like I would have been equally as entertained with Joaquin Phoenix in costume sitting on an empty stage on a stool just yucking it up Just walking about shitting and farting and yelling, you know and getting cucked out by a Josephine off-camera You know like I would have equally have been entertained I think Napoleon seemed like a massive bitch in that movie and I don't get what all the fuss is about no The great he's a great leader what all the fuss is about. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo recency bias is a massive thing for everybody, not just you and I, but also big Hollywood directors who is now besties with Kojima as seen in recent photos of them about to kiss and the fact that George Miller is in the death stranding too. But he was quoted as

Starting point is 00:51:35 like, you know, if I had to make another Mad Max game, I really wish Kojima would do it. I really didn't like that old one. And George Miller's like a massive asshole because one, that game ruled and two, that team had to fight against his production company every day of development because they wouldn't send them anything. They were terrified of spoilers for Mad Max Fury Road. So they wouldn't them what like the fucking cars look like or what the setting was like or anything. That's so insane because the main one of the main antagonists in Furiosa, the biker horde and Dementus are first referenced in the game and the game mentions the like the 40 day

Starting point is 00:52:23 gas war and shit like that and like this is all Expanding on stuff that was heard about first in the fucking video game man So so like that game is like like really good genuinely and I've seen it having to fight the studio over and over And so for him to go like I wasn't good though the one that I would work on with Kojima though. I mean, you know, I could see it being a thing where it's like not enough characters having their human moments, too much car, carring around, you know. Which admittedly, a lot of the setting is fucking awesome as the cars are car in it up

Starting point is 00:53:07 But it's the humans in the vehicles that are having their moments You got to have your your your shadow cut so that you can only see the eyes of furiosa as she's looking out the The windshield, you know, the the vehicles are just representations of their emotions manifest um I mean quite literally at certain points in that movie actually Yeah, cars or stands, you know, yeah, they just are. Mm-hmm. They're so anyway So moving on from that and let's try to keep this going finished off crow country Mm-hmm, and that is a short sweet survival horror and just like Silent Hill 2

Starting point is 00:53:47 At the last second though. Just it just goes Chunk it and everything just fits. Oh the last second you're like okay. This is great Yeah, it's amazing. It took actually it took the finale to really make it land like 25 details that all just perfectly clicked into place. I would say that I think to that end, Signolis did, I think it did a better job of like giving you enough breadcrumbs that were interesting to the finale like working out really well. I think Crow Country like it at the end

Starting point is 00:54:31 and the things the breadcrumbs make perfect sense in the end, but the breadcrumbs you get upfront are some of them are interesting, but some of them are just like, I can't do anything with this information. So it means nothing to me. You know? There's one, so I think everyone should play Croak Country.

Starting point is 00:54:48 It's short, it's cheap, it's classic, it's incredible. But there are a lot of details that are playing on you, the assumption that you have exhaustive survival horror knowledge. And I'm gonna write one of the details to Woolly. Okay. Right? Because it is like, it kept bugging me the whole game. And I'll say for the audience, if you know, you know, it's what's going on with your

Starting point is 00:55:20 health bar. Okay. Okay. Sure, he'll write that out. Yeah, I think there's an art to letting the breadcrumb that you get be a really tasty morsel, and then when you finally see what it leads to, there's a crazy payoff.

Starting point is 00:55:39 And sometimes if your breadcrumb is not particularly tasty, you'll be like, okay, this is a breadcrumb. I don't know what to do with it, so I'll just hold on to it. But I don't have any feelings one way or the other about it. And I felt like- So I sent you what I'm talking about? Ah, interesting. Okay, that is, yeah, there is a subtle piece of of fucking yeah, okay. That's a wild detail about this meant nothing to me the entire time

Starting point is 00:56:09 I noticed right away and noticed every single time I see my character and went What okay gotcha? Okay, let you want okay. Let's hit some spoilers Okay, we're gonna spoil crow country in what, 10 seconds? Five, four, three. There we go, okay, we're spoiling it. All right, so there's so much going on. So what I'm talking about the health bar is that despite the fact that it uses the classic

Starting point is 00:56:43 fine caution, orange caution, danger health bar that RE1, RE2, RE3 uses. But the heartbeat sound effect is always there. It's always there. Which is weird because the heartbeat sound effect denotes near death in nearly every survival horror game. There's no way I'm catching that man. Right? Jesus Christ. It can also denote in certain games poison. Uh huh. So you get to the end and your health bar changes

Starting point is 00:57:14 once you've taken off your fake hair to infected. Which is a reference to RE3. Is that a, oh that's a previous, that's an RE3? Okay, interesting. I did notice it, I just paused and saw that my status became infected. And I was like, oh, interesting. Yeah, I guess so she's sick, right? And then there's stuff that's like, the breadcrumbs where you can do something

Starting point is 00:57:41 with that, where you're like, oh, when she's looking through the names and the things, she's looking through the E Section as opposed to the m section right but up front the first thing in the game is of course she goes Hey, if anyone asks my name is Mara, you know So she's yeah, the beginning of the game is really funny in retrospect straight up right there to the point where I was like It wasn't even a piece of like revealing revealing information to be like, oh, the holy shit, you're gonna have that moment. Because it just, the first thing you learn is she's trying to give herself another identity slash she's trying to recap something that she needs to remember. If anybody asks, say your name is Mara, you know?

Starting point is 00:58:17 So one of the things that really stands out right away when you go get ammo in the back of your car is that in the back of your car, you can just barely make out a box of box of hair dye. Yeah, hair dye. Exactly. Exactly. But I guess the thing is, is that like hair dye still didn't mean anything except like, oh, she's got a fake hair color. Okay. Um, there must be a reason for that. Uh, then for me meeting, I met that you make the first adult and it's like a person sitting on the ground, and then you never get to stand next to them, because you carry them over to the car,

Starting point is 00:58:49 and it fades to black and fades back to him in the car. So you're like, okay, you don't get that. Then you meet the cop, Harrison. And he's huge. And he's giant, you're like, oh, he's a giant cop. And then one NPC later, the lawyer that's banging on the door, and I'm like, oh. You're like, wait a second.

Starting point is 00:59:06 These are adults. Oh, I'm a child. Oh, I'm a child. That's, yeah, okay. You're like, is this the art style? It's like, no, no, no, no, no, exactly. So that was something that comes in right away, you know? But then, yeah, as you're kind of looking at things, you're like, oh, okay, here's a number,

Starting point is 00:59:20 but we're not gonna, none of these keypads have a zero on them. I was talking to Suzie about this. It is one of the, we're not gonna, none of these keypads have a zero on them. I was talking to Suzie about this. It is one of the, we're both like marking out the whole game that there is not a single keypad or puzzle in the entire game that lets you punch in the number zero. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so smart. That's an interesting way of doing that for sure.

Starting point is 00:59:39 But definitely until that point, you're like, okay, well this is a breadcrumb that I don't have anything to do with because either I'll eventually get a keypad with a zero, or this is just nothing. Right. And then it starts being written on the wall a lot. And you're like, oh, this is more than just a secret key code to something. It's actually got its plot significance. So we'll see. But yeah, there were quite a few moments of like, just sustained. Yeah, I don't know what this is, but I guess we'll see where it lands, you know, and that final conversation, of

Starting point is 01:00:11 course, because all the characters being sketchy and the whole thing about, you know, the gold and such is all like still building up a very clear like, oh, bad things. I was so impressed. I thought the gold was going gonna be a completely separate storyline Mm about the funding of whatever nightmare bullshit you got going on down here could have been I did not expect it to be actually the core of the issue um in it certainly could have been and The way play it plays out where they connect the two quite well

Starting point is 01:00:46 together by the end of that for sure, and becomes, of course, the major problem. The characters and the sketchy people you're meeting and everyone being suspicious, again, you're like, all right. Including your own character. Yeah, suspend disbelief until further notice. The cops being sketchy, right, et cetera.

Starting point is 01:01:03 But something that was really cool was just like, okay, so what is our problem here? Take your pick whether you want to go with a climate change analogy or a fossil fuel analogy. But the future is calling and saying there is bad things you need to stop. The future's calling and saying, there is bad things you need to stop. Calling and saying, leave the future, get out of here. And one fucker is like, yeah, but what about me though? Got me mines, getting rich, getting good, everybody shut up, don't worry about it.

Starting point is 01:01:38 And it's far enough in the future that you're like, well, that's nearly, that's barely one or two kids from now, but I'll be long gone. Got my bag. The actual game actually points out that some of the people, Mara specifically, may be able to live long enough to see what is happening. Possibly.

Starting point is 01:02:02 They're just the right age. So yeah, and there's your perfect analogy for just like, oh yeah, the current generation that is willing to destroy all things to get their comfort in them now and over what, right? And you have an interesting thing, too, with the character of Edward Crowe, because you're like, he's somebody who is weirdly apologetic about some things.

Starting point is 01:02:27 Like, oh, I made this cure. Oh, I've accepted my fate. Oh, I'm going to look for what I consider to be an appropriate end because he's suffering and, you know, he's kind of writing a poetic end to things but is still the person that was willing to go this far over fucking nothing. And a nice touch that is interesting is like, they don't open up the letter he wrote to his daughter, but you can only imagine what that would say. Because what does someone who is currently destroying the future say to the person he's leaving the future to?

Starting point is 01:02:59 Right? What the fuck does that letter look like? There's something about the the timing of sick ass there's gold here to realization to fuck it gold though to oh Man, yeah, wait a second. And I think it's important to that his dad Is the one that found it he inherited it. He didn't even do any he didn't set this whole thing up He just took over the reins.

Starting point is 01:03:26 And now he's used to that. And now he's like, well we can't stop this. So it's more of the like, yeah, but we've been on this train. It's been fine. Let it continue to be. I think the game might have one of the smartest budgetary decisions tied into a narrative I've ever seen in my entire life for any game. So the game is indie, it's short, it's well made, but they're not punching big with dollars here.

Starting point is 01:03:56 And one of the smartest things they've done is that enemies don't have attack animations. Oh, they just kind of walk into you. It's exclusively contact damage. Interesting. Because none of the enemies are trying to attack you. Wait, hold on. No, big boy swings at you.

Starting point is 01:04:16 Big guy. Which one? The big guy whose head, not the skinny big guy, not the skinny one, but the big thick man. Big thick man is holding something in his hands. He does, really? He has a swing towards you everybody else just tries to touch you he's carrying he's carrying something in his hand and he definitely takes a swing at you huh because I killed a lot of the stuff beforehand off so I didn't get to see a full amount of it but that yeah that was a thing he's holding a root

Starting point is 01:04:42 piece okay you can't see a bunch of root pieces elsewhere too. Yeah. But like, yeah, they're trying to touch you. They're not trying to strangle you. And they even, the lawyer even points that out, is that when she gets trapped in the fucking, what do you call it, the pipes with like a hundred of them, and she comes out completely fine but sick.

Starting point is 01:05:04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're just you're exposed like the natives were to some future germs. You know, too fucking bad. Now, yeah, and that is definitely something too that is, of course, a proper like oof recontextualizer, which you you're expecting it the whole time, though, because they're like they're called guests. Right. So right off the the bat you're kind of like Okay

Starting point is 01:05:27 What are we gonna do to find out that none of this is as? Like this is way more horrible than it seems and none of this these fucking headshots are as justified and it's like oh, yeah Like by fucking going further and further into this process after seeing them getting tortured in the basement and shit It's like the ones that come out as just a puddle of unrecognizable goop, you know? Like they get stronger and stronger until the final form is the weakest, most nonsense pile. You know?

Starting point is 01:05:54 I'm just a pile of goop moving around. Yeah, so that's proper fucked and everything about that. And then what I really find especially strong too here is the closing lines, you know, where you're like, oh, you've been saving this entire time. Well, here, now that we're talking about the context of the future, I feel something of curious mix of hope and dread. Maybe everything will be okay.

Starting point is 01:06:17 And maybe it won't. And maybe it won't. Roll your fucking credits. That was great. That was great. I also... That final sequence right before the final boss where you lay out all your stupid items on a table.

Starting point is 01:06:30 Yep. And reminisce. I remember that. I remember that. You remember that? That stupid key? Yeah. I love that.

Starting point is 01:06:38 And I remember emptying my pockets in Silent Hill and it's like, oh no, I don't like this feeling. But like, yeah, that was another like, you know, okay, oh, this thing from the genre, losing your full inventory, that's been important to you the whole time. It is interesting, because coming at this as, again, genre outsider, catching a couple of these references,

Starting point is 01:06:57 but not to the fullest. Yeah, I think I chalk it up as just like, yeah, pretty fucking good. It's great. Short, sweet. I do have, again, things that I, there's problems there that I wish weren't. You know, the dumbness of, again, that one mushroom puzzle.

Starting point is 01:07:12 The, I had a weird bug where the final shot you take on Ed Kroh, like, it just didn't connect. So I shot a couple bullets of different kinds and none of them worked, till I just had to flame throw him. And then I got That's oh so big old tension killer right there You know and I already talked about the pull the mask in the in the well and stuff like that

Starting point is 01:07:32 so yeah, it is It is something where I do just cut I do wish that like the The flat line slow increase into, I guess it is a sign shape, right? That just shoots up. I do wish there was a bit more of a gradual incline and a couple more meaty things to chew on as you approached the finale.

Starting point is 01:08:01 But I still think it was quite enjoyable, especially once you get there. But I, yeah, I definitely feel like, just again to compare to Signals, which is the most recent survival thing. Well, Signals is like perfect. Yeah, but all that to say, learning about the profiles of the characters

Starting point is 01:08:23 and the types and the things that were happening and such, I was very invested so that by the time the finale hit and that, I was like, oh shit, you feel for the characters in the setting and why they're there and what they went through, massively so. Here you get a bit of your near one sort of thing of like recontextualize the whole game and then recontextualize what the motivations were but You're just kind of question marking everything up until that point, you know And I like when there's a few more things stabbed into the map, you know, so to speak anyway

Starting point is 01:09:01 It was good. It was good Hey How about that fucking Shin Megami Tensei V for Vengeance? The following opinions are technically sponsored. Sponsored. We both got sponsored with money to play SMT5 Vengeance. So I beat the original SMT5. Oh you did? Oh jeez, I didn't even know that. Oh yeah, no, super. And like, it is phenomenal.

Starting point is 01:09:30 And that's one of those things where, so going into this, so yeah, you didn't see it until now, right? I played it up until the first Dot. Okay. I fought the Tower Demon. Yeah. And I was just getting like, more getting more and more annoyed at the switch.

Starting point is 01:09:49 I'd run across that first big field underneath the tower and the switch would catch on fire. And I'd be like, ah. So something I noticed when, so upon completion and stuff and just kind of seeing how people felt about it, a lot of folks were saying that they, a lot of feedback I saw was people going like, yeah, they didn't like the story as much in this setting and or they had, I mean, issues with

Starting point is 01:10:11 the, the, the dry desert running through, narrative running through the desert. I could understand that not being everyone's cup of tea. Plot wise, yeah, I saw some criticism for it that I was like, oh, well, if this is coming from a point of view of like the comparison point Is nocturne and I guessed prior Entries I can't really speak to that. I vote I play the primary complaint was just there's wasn't enough story I thought but I came out the other end really enjoying it because There wasn't there certainly wasn't enough on the way It's similar to actually

Starting point is 01:10:45 what I just said about Curr Crunchy where they're like, on the journey up to that finale point you're not getting enough. I do agree with that. But from the finale, when you choose your law ending, your order ending, your neutral, and then your true neutral, that ride is awesome. And the reveals of what's happening in that setting for real real are phenomenally cool. And I played four as well and I didn't want a lot. I didn't play. I didn't play apocalypse. I just played original for so good. Four is really, really good. Apparently apocalypse is even better than four. And just to let you know, it's really, really easy to get running on Citra.

Starting point is 01:11:30 I see. You don't have to do anything. You just put it in. Four, Four was fucking phenomenal and Five, when I got to that point of like getting the full truth about the setting and your true ending and everything, I felt similarly satisfied with what I got out of that. My only caveat, I think, is, and this comes up a little bit, even in Persona as well,

Starting point is 01:11:55 and it comes up in any time we play any games where our power levels need to be checked, there's a massive, clear, awesome parallel to Christian mythology told throughout this that is metal as shit. Oh, it's super interesting. You know, I mean, it's not even, it's like, yeah, one of the intro premises that is like, oh yeah, so God is one of many gods that actually just made all the rest depowered

Starting point is 01:12:27 Like turned them in just like you guys don't know shit right the introduction to the like the beginning of the game It's just shit up like yeah God made all the other gods demons and then took that knowledge put it in the in a tree and then Lucifer attempted the humans to eat from that tree, but meanwhile humans were like yeah Like we're already starting out strong right but that But that is something that is like predicated on this, yeah, deep, awesome reinterpretation of Christian mythology. Now, if you don't happen to have a full understanding of the Japanese creation myth with Susanoo, the Amano-zakko, Naho-binos, and Magatsuhi, you might not have some of the major points hit in the same way in this game.

Starting point is 01:13:10 Yeah, no, it's like assuming that you know a lot about the theological backgrounds of two completely different cultures. Yeah. Well, a lot of people are going to have one half. Yes, and so I was able to really appreciate the Christian half of what they were doing there because It and the thing is is that the Christian half ties things together Well, okay. I mean ultimately Without trying to like a spoil of focus folks are going through it and I don't know about any of the newer ending stuff

Starting point is 01:13:43 But with SMT 5 original You're upfront getting your Christian mythology, and then it's interweaved with your main character being from Japanese mythology and That Japanese much of mythology stuff comes up more and more as you get through deeper into the story And there's things where you're like the reveal is that I don't know. I don't know who any of you guys are. I don't recognize what version of an Amatsuno Kami you are. Yeah, there's a lot of that. That's crazy, the conception? Right, there's like,

Starting point is 01:14:17 Kusanagi's and grass cutters, Orochi's, wine glasses, what are we doing over here? Wow. So yeah, there's a little bit of that, right, where you're like, it'll main a lot less when those moments occur. But what is ultimately interesting is that it's trying to sew and attach all these creation myths together in this way because they all exist. And you've got Odin hanging out over there, and you've got your Shiva's hanging out on the other side, etc.

Starting point is 01:14:46 They're all interweaves, that's the setting. And the Christian mythology is nestled in at the top of this pyramid until you zoom out. Until you zoom out. And so what the true neutral path does is that it zooms out. And you're like, oh, fuck, that's really sick what you're doing here. I like that a lot. And so yeah, SMT5 was great.

Starting point is 01:15:12 I think one of the craziest things about SMT5's endings, and this is not a spoiler to folks, is that they finally learned that playing SMT4 with that a guide open so that you knew what every single fucking? goddamn response to Walter or whoever the fucks like do you want to say yes, I'd like some peanut butter Oh, that's order is just stupid fucking bullshit And both paths just let you pick the vast majority of your endings. They just go, I would like to do this one, please. Yes, in fact I was pleasantly surprised because I was talking about like, oh, at what point will the new content enter?

Starting point is 01:15:55 And in this case, the first thing you do in video game is, I want the new content, please. And then yeah, some of that gets interwoven fairly quickly where you have a new character walking into the story, doing shit, interrupting cutscenes, and the new mechanic that is guest characters starts playing in as well. The quality of- I was surprised at how different it was right away.

Starting point is 01:16:22 Because like I said, in the original, I only played to the end of the first dot, which is the first big area. Tokyo Tower and Stop or beyond? Tokyo Tower, yeah. And then you get to the train and it's like, hey, wow, new boss fight, thumbs up. And most of the party is guests. Very interesting.

Starting point is 01:16:45 And then like a really strong guest character hangs out with you for like, I don't know how long, but for a while. Changes the beginning of the game, right? Yeah, people that were like having guest characters be a part of your party is a humongous deal. And turns this into a hybrid like, okay, so SMT, I mean, this is your main character and you're rolling with your demon crew, right? That's what you were doing in Four, that's what you do in Nocturne.

Starting point is 01:17:19 Here, I'm like, oh, you're rolling with your demon crew, but also guests that are like persona party members. Well, you're rolling with like... Other summoners. You're rolling with what would essentially be protagonists of other SMT games. That guy has the devil summoning program on his phone. That's it. That bitch just straight up does magic.

Starting point is 01:17:37 So in persona, you're rolling with a bunch of other people who summon demons themselves. And so like here, I feel like you have both, you have other summoners and the demons themselves on your team, so is that how it is in one and two? Okay, got it, human party members mixed in. Thank you for the clarification. So that makes a huge difference in how that beginning of the game plays out. Quality of life stuff that changes immediately

Starting point is 01:18:01 that's really good to the fuck. Save anywhere, save anywhere. Save anywhere is crazy. I'm so conditioned to running back to those ley lines. It's nuts to just be able to press less than Save Anywhere. Save Anywhere is also crazy. When I did the stream, I was like, wow, they want this to be like a PC games F5.

Starting point is 01:18:22 Because they put Save the Game on the left d-pad and They know that you might be playing this for the second time. So that's like we're not gonna let you skip We're not gonna let you load your old save But we're gonna try to make it as painless as possible to do the shit you already did Including the bird's-eye view button, which is so good. Because you had a map in the previous one, and you still have that. It was okay. It was okay.

Starting point is 01:18:49 But now you straight up just zoom out, because guess what, we're on platforms that can handle showing the rest of the environment from a distance that's drawn from far away. And you can just float above and go like, oh yeah, there's a dead end over here. I see a Mee-Mon over there. Go collect it, right?

Starting point is 01:19:05 Great, great stuff. And yeah, and then they added the Chao Garden to go talk to your demons. And when you- So your demons can just tell you you suck shit like 100 times in a row. Great, I mean, if people are seeing the dialogue with some of the demons in these games, it's just like-

Starting point is 01:19:24 Oh, they're great. Yeah. What the fuck was I before I was a slime. How the fuck should I know? You know talking shit to you, but uh you get a You get free levels right so once again. We know you might have done this already Let's try to speed this process up go sit on that bench and talk to your bro And he's gonna give you free levels for doing so. He's going to tell you young man and then a bunch of bullshit and then give you like three levels, bam.

Starting point is 01:19:52 Young man, disregard strumpets, acquire currency. Acquire Magatsuhi actually. Yeah, so that's great. And it is something that I was like, I usually definitely dread the replay in a lot of cases. It's like here you're getting enough new early on in that it's like, oh, this would probably be a much smoother ride and a lot of fun

Starting point is 01:20:15 to see how the changes come about. Yeah, I think that KZ is playing through Canon of Creation, which is the original campaign. And the changes to just general mechanics plus the rails which you know Teleports you to yes new areas with new things like a big difference That's yeah, the new areas on that you that you rail towards have a bunch of extra shit again making you more powerful faster Right it's all about getting you through the game quicker the other thing. I can't believe it wasn't there before I can't believe it wasn't there before. I can't believe the game didn't have any auto battle feature at all.

Starting point is 01:20:50 Auto battle was there, but it was just auto attack. No, auto skill is what you need in an SMT game. The level of smoothness that is auto skill is crazy, because it memorized your cursor position per character. So you could just mash the button and auto Zio the thing that's weak to Zio, auto Aggie the thing that's weak to Aggie and then move back around the list. But yeah, auto skill is like, Oh, you've already exposed the weakness. We know what characters can hit it.

Starting point is 01:21:20 Yeah. It only works properly if you've really beat the guys into the dirt a couple of times before. Then go. Auto skill, everything will cast what it needs to. Fast forward this fight. We know the deal. Unless the enemy's red. Don't, or you, I'm sure later on when you hit things that have absorb drain or reflect. I don't know if you saw, but there was a Twitter video going around of somebody running up to a You saw but there was a Twitter video going around if somebody running up to a red upon to Tara Okay, hitting auto battle. Oh it bought the tar. It just fast-forwarded into the game over screen. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah that fuckers

Starting point is 01:21:56 Picks the hammer up and you're done And I mean that you know hey SMT continues to be feast or famine right press turn goes both ways I Know it's not necessarily the legendary, what was it, the tutorial on hard for... Four. Four's the worst. Four's the worst ever. Where like, I mean, okay, so Minotaur just absolutely... No, that's not even it, man. So you may not have discovered this, but I remember people were talking about it on damn near every forum that was talking about SMT for if you if you went into the first room of the first dungeon in SMT for You were fighting like multi enemy fights, but it was just Flynn

Starting point is 01:22:40 Okay, and they would attack twice And if one of them crit you would just die Okay, that's not what I'm talking about though Like I've to bit I've like I heard that nocturne tutorial on hard is the hardest thing in the entire franchise Because you have nothing and it has full mechanics on your ass and there is Just a roll of the dice whether you don't get annihilated immediately. Like, it is a pure coin flip and game overing is just like, it's gonna happen half the time

Starting point is 01:23:15 at least. It's ridiculous is what I've been told, you know? But yeah, anyway, all that is to say that these games continue to be as brutal as they were. So yeah, quick save, whatever, all that, roll through it quickly, get your levels quickly, all that is to say that these games continue to be as brutal as they were. So yeah, quick save, whatever, all that, roll through it quickly, get your levels quickly, all that, it's great. And I don't know if you unlocked any of the sick

Starting point is 01:23:33 fucking Nahobino animations where he's doing the poses. I have not unlocked any of the Nahobino animations. Oh, he's doing it, he's yucking it up in these Sentai poses and it's rad shit Okay. Well anyway, yeah, that was great. I'm I'm I'm I can't believe actually that I was looking at the time I got to you know, the the the ramp up to Tokyo Tower and then I was like fuck it Let's just try to beeline it You could spend a lot of time in that area doing side quests, leveling up

Starting point is 01:24:05 and getting strong enough to... Yeah, just doing the regular gameplay loop of getting demons, fusing demons, you know, the usual. Yeah. And so I ran straight to Hydra and managed to beat it first shot. And I was like, that's crazy. Because this, running this the first time around, I would have been way incapable, underleveled, not ready to do it, and here I managed to one-shot it. And it was like, on the last hit, it was really, it was a tough fight, but still, this was unthinkable in the previous run I did.

Starting point is 01:24:38 So yeah, sponsored, SMT5B, pretty fucking cool. And also, I want to point out that it's really nice to go from playing the game on Switch that could like barely handle like 20 FPS to like 300 plus on my PC. And like how much of a big difference that makes wandering around the area now the glorious blue twink hair will never be stuttering it's really ridiculous the hair cuz like There's even a new line of dialogue with with the proto fiend Al Gami when you sit at the thing where he describes that like he doesn't have the hair. Oh, yeah No, he doesn't that's all main character But like you also don't have the hair. Oh, yeah. No, he doesn't that's all main character

Starting point is 01:25:25 But like you also don't have the hair Which apparently they like even though he had no canon name They've now found there apparently is a canon debug name if you used If you use like hacks to skip forward past the naming it automatically names him Kay. I'm a Mia I believe No, that's I'm a sir. Oh, no, sorry something else case something else. Yeah, rather whatever anyways, but um, yeah, he has he has He has also the conversations with demons that Comment on the hair too, you know and And like you've been part of the- How much conditioner you use a lot.

Starting point is 01:26:07 Yeah, like, it's great, it's great. So that's a lot of fun. If, I, the only thing now I can just, I hope though is that like the, I heard that in order to get some of the new stuff, you have, so the path of vengeance, right? And then I believe there's another ending that is like going from one path and completing the other New Game Plus style has also some content too, possibly.

Starting point is 01:26:33 I believe there is a New Game Plus path in the canon of creation. Yeah, well so the true neutral has those extra steps, but I don't know if like the second vengeance only has two okay Okay, and it's pick one or the other fair enough all right? Oh for a super boss never mind. There's a super boss that requires it both. Yeah, cool. All right, so yeah that was That was SMT VV I also played first cut samurai duel just a

Starting point is 01:27:07 Quick little little simple thing. Yeah, little pixel samurai game Bushido blade like is what I would call it because you have stances each stance counters the stance that your enemy is doing and You take one hit and you die. So you got to play perfectly. This seems like a cool Nidhogg sequel. Yep, it is Nidhoggy. It is Bushido Blade-y. It is a shame they never made a second Nidhogg game. And I was going to just go like,

Starting point is 01:27:36 oh, let me throw this on Gent to fighting games because it seems like you can duel and have some fun with that. Turns out there's a big single player thing going on with full, like you watch the trailer for, and there's more single-player progression content than there is versus mode content So it's like oh, okay. Fuck it. Let's just do that and then it turns out. There's actually like co-op content So then we do oh really yeah, so then you fucking need hog adventure together. You know Shit is hard

Starting point is 01:28:03 Because yeah, you can't anyone Yeah, any one hit kill thing has a tendency. You have to be perfect. And it has one of the most unbalanced insane climbs from level one to level two I think I've ever seen. Where like level one you get through like four areas that are like, here's five enemies, here's six, here's three and two tough ones. And then area two is kill 18 enemies of all varieties. And if you fuck up once, you're done. Go.

Starting point is 01:28:33 Also, it gets progressively darker and you can't see shit. It was insane. It was just an insane proposition. That sounds like a goddamn Super Nintendo game. But that aside It was it was fun and you know playing co-op was cool and multiplayer is cool, too So yeah, there's there's a some spotlight on that. So we're gonna we're gonna do a little bit of that on the channel as well first cut samurai duel

Starting point is 01:28:58 And then I've been curious about I mentioned it but metal slug tactics Had a demo that released so the full game not out yet but at least the first area just to play it and see what's going on was put out there. So I checked it out to see what's happening. One Metal Slug known for its glorious awesome sprite work that is fully on display here except now it's isometric tactic view. Works great, looks beautiful, all of that is awesome.

Starting point is 01:29:27 And going into this as a tactics game, I'm like okay, so is it gonna just be pretty much just replace FFtactic style gameplay or? Oh if it did, that's a game of the year. Are we gonna go for, I mean tactics is also beloved for its story and stuff too though, right? Yeah. Are we into the breaching?

Starting point is 01:29:48 What are we doing here? And it's not perfect information, it's not a puzzle game. It is a game where the enemy is going to behave in certain ways based on its type, but you can't quite predict what those are gonna be. And immediately what I will say is that, okay, it's a bit overwhelming at first to kind of...

Starting point is 01:30:06 At first it feels really vanilla with its approach, and then it introduces some mechanics that are like you build up defense by clicking on, by moving certain spaces, by moving into cover and stuff. And it's not immediately clear what these mechanics are trying to elicit until you get through... You learn about those things, you play the tutorial, and what's cool is the map will, wherever you start on the map, will eventually drop off and then the whole thing will move forward. So there's some kind of progressing along this line that you need to do. forward, right? So there's some kind of like progressing along this line that you need to do. You get into a mission and you pick all your, you know, all the metal slugs, you got Eri and Fio and Marco and Tarma you got to unlock, but he's there. And as they're

Starting point is 01:30:58 moving through these things, you're seeing a bunch of grunts that you're like, this is insane, there are way too many enemies, how the fuck am I supposed to, you know, and I got just destroyed right off the bat, right? And then I'm like, okay, hold on, let me try again, let me see what's going on here. And you play a little bit more and you kind of realize, this is a tactics game, however, it is still metal slugging. And what that means is, yeah, there are too many enemies,

Starting point is 01:31:21 make it to the high priority targets, avoid what you can't handle. Also, the level will sometimes be progressing, you have to move. Also, there will be things like a giant tank, or a, yeah, an enemy slug, an enemy tower, a boss, that will target your units for unavoidable damage. When this turn comes, no matter where you move, even if you're in cover, you're going

Starting point is 01:31:47 to take like four points of damage or more, right? The only way to avoid it or to handle it is to build up speed and dodge by moving your character far along the map. And the further you move from your origin point the more you can take of unavoidable damage because you just want to be moving your units as far and as often as possible never stop moving Hit cover points for extra armor and then shoot and take out the targets you can and that's fucking metal slug Right never stop shooting run and gun, never stop moving. If you're playing a tactics game where you stand on a square

Starting point is 01:32:29 and take out an enemy and then position two squares away from that to take out another, that's, you're doing it wrong, right? Yeah, the usual way that a lot of these tactics games is that you wanna move as little as you can. You wanna go one square past where an enemy can attack you. And so as you're doing this massive movement required setup, your characters also have a really rewarding system of synergy and syncing attacks.

Starting point is 01:32:57 So if I shoot you and my other unit is in line of fire with you, they shoot too. So you just double up your damage or triple up your damage. And there's unique buffs on each character that will be like every time Eri does a sync attack, she gets her movement back. So she can shoot and then move again. Or Marco will be able to shoot again, you know? And so you start playing this game of like,

Starting point is 01:33:27 oh, I can always have armor, I can always sync up, and like what I'm playing efficiently, it's just a squad of metal slug soldiers moving across the screen together, covering, shooting each other's backs, shooting and providing assistance, picking targets and taking them out, and like moving as a unit as the screen behind you drops out and the new part

Starting point is 01:33:49 of the area drops in. So that's a really awesome interpretation of Metal Slug gameplay in a tactical turn-based environment. That sounds really cool. Very fun, very fun. So this is the demo, right? This is the demo, yeah. And it's not immediately

Starting point is 01:34:06 obvious right away, but once you pick up what they're going for, it makes a lot of sense and it's very fun. So, and thankfully again, this is, yeah, this has nothing to do with any of the online or mobile gacha stuff that they, I'm not going to say gacha, of the auto-battler, the version of the game they released before. This was announced years ago and finally we're getting the demo available after a long time. So I played more after the stream too and got to see some of that. There's a boss fight that involves a giant boat

Starting point is 01:34:36 that shoots like a billion guns all over the map and like you're on the water and there's a couple of floating barges that are going to sink in two turns Keep running in a circle around this boat as it keeps shooting everything indiscriminately And and take pot shots while you build up momentum and armor, right? Real fun there. That seems really cool. Yeah And so yeah, those are the games and then so I guess just quickly beyond that And so yeah, those are the games. And then, so I guess just quickly beyond that,

Starting point is 01:35:05 UMed was this weekend, the church venue that I talked about last year continues to be the sickest fighting game venue I've ever been to. It is just a awesome lit, like giant pew area for your, you got your casuals and your tournament setups running. The main stage is where the priest or the preacher would be speaking from the pulpit, you know?

Starting point is 01:35:31 And then upstairs we've got arcade machines that were brought in on one side, some Third Strike and CVS2. And then on the other side some board games playing Croconol, that little old man game I was describing. Samurai Shodown was there. Yeah, I I got forth I could still fucking play Sam show and then there were more than four people in those tournaments right there were more

Starting point is 01:35:53 than four people in the bracket okay Sam show gotta call it out gotta call it out you're not wrong you're not wrong and then at the back of the upstairs area it was where the bar is and just all the drinks are there and you just go up, drink, chill, watch the tournament, have a good time. And then of course in the basement, the boxing gym, you know, so just, yeah, incredible. My favorite venue. Super cool for that. And, you know, I wasn't able to be there on Saturday. So, yes, Sermon Music had a little wedding reception going on. I was able to chill with one Foxcade and Leon Massey came to town. And that's a lad right there, you know? Both good video people.

Starting point is 01:36:41 Indeed, indeed. And yeah, I mean, so Foxcade I've been working with quite a bit recently. And Leon himself, who's made some great fighting game video essays. He has the best fighting game video on JumpArcs. Which you would think would be a really boring topic, but he makes it really fun. Yeah Just you know stand up stand up gent as they say Good hangs good times etc and Yeah, I get a yeah, just got a good chance to like hang out at this particular awesome tournament setting as well and

Starting point is 01:37:23 hang out at this particular awesome tournament setting as well. And yeah, good, good, good people that are from the other side of the pond. You know, we, we then we eventually did start discussing things like mushy peas and the nature of footy. So it was, it was, it was, it was a good hang. The England. Yeah it was also particularly fun to in this wedding out in the Quebec boonies at one point having the DJ play Not Like Us. And like me, Reggie, and one other individual just being there just being like, yo, let's go getting into it, etc. And then, you know, as of course as you hit your he a fan, he a fan, he a fan,

Starting point is 01:38:21 he a fan, he a fan, and I'm like, freaky ass what? Huh? To the whole reception, huh? Anybody? No one? What's going on? Yeah. I don't think it can be overstated just how one-sided the overall takeaway from that beef was. I was watching teachers go on TikTok and go like teachers in Ontario go like our whole school just inverted from a Drake school to a Lamar school overnight just like immediately there is a clip of a I think it's like a grade seven or eight

Starting point is 01:39:01 dance where a bunch of kids are just singing word for word the entire thing. And- The whole song? Just do a dancing and singing the whole thing word for word. And it was just, this was going around on black Twitter and just like the post just being like, yeah, the kids are gonna be okay.

Starting point is 01:39:19 Okay, I gotta stop you for a second. Why is it that every time I use Kendrick Lamar's last name everybody laughs at me? Because nobody's that not his last name. No one calls him that it's a really weird way to say it That's like it's like if you tried that's like abbreviating a Marvel versus Capcom Mar V cap That's a deep cut for anybody That might remember. It is just, it is indicative of the fact that you might not necessarily be aware of how people are referring to Kendrick

Starting point is 01:39:55 aka K-dot. Well that's the thing, I feel like calling them by their first name exclusively is so weird. I don't know Kendrick Lamar. No but like- I don't refer to Eminem as Marshall No But like when these are performers that have like stage names and acronyms are and tags that they go by he's got many again He's got count. You're a Kendrick Lamar K dot kung fu Kenny. He's got a lot of things. No one calls him Lamar It's just you know, like if I were to be like, oh, yeah, that's my favorite game third s or

Starting point is 01:40:29 Third stir you'd be like who what? Anyway, it's just it's there's these moments of like I don't know what what the yeah, it's just it's different the the The The To go a million years ago in that fucking first is Zuna drops video from a million miles back The when when going through like each game description or so at one point Matt wrote Mar V cap and I was like who the fuck writes Mar V Why not just abbreviate the whole thing? It's MVC Like what no one does yeah anyway, so you just it's that it's that no one no one says Lamar. That's all

Starting point is 01:41:13 That's the only reason why that comes out. Okay. All right, too. I mean, you know, you don't have to it's not like like like It's not like you're gonna be able to jump in on the like your favorite track of Mr. Morale. It's okay, you know But that's why I'm doing it. You know, um What was it called a butterfly something? Album you recommended to people what I started to listen to it and I was totally bored because it didn't have the hate in it. Gotcha. Okay. I needed... Fair enough.

Starting point is 01:41:47 They were fine, I guess, but I didn't feel... They didn't reach me because they weren't about hatred. At the end of the day, it's gonna be music that you're listening to. No promises that you're gonna land in anything that is particular to emulate the beef and the nature of what you encountered here. This is a moment in time. But that's okay. But what is funny too as well is that this week Kendrick actually announced to that he's

Starting point is 01:42:21 going to have a concert and like the line where Drake is like oh you rap like you're trying to free the slaves right right Kendrick not only he comes back on that line and not like us but then also he's his concert concert's gonna be this week on Juneteenth like yeah actually that's a lot of folks take issue with that line as to like what's wrong with freeing the slaves Drake That's really Like I have that's a really horribly unkind way to take that but also yeah It's a super weird thing to say so the problem is that it's not weird when you live in a world where you're like

Starting point is 01:43:02 Yo club bangers, selling out hits, and rolling the charts is what matters to me. It's in a world of surface. And I, for a long time, have been like, I like conscious hip hop is what the term was used. And people kind of make fun of it and stuff, because when you're getting too lyrical, when you're getting too heady,

Starting point is 01:43:20 when you're getting too, we can't dance that shit. Make something that we can dance to. If the meaning is all you're going for, like, that's not, we can't dance to that shit. Make something that we can dance to. If the meaning is all you're going for, then fuck that, right? There's, Lupe Fiasco has a track called Dumb It Down, and it's literally all about, like, we can't understand what you're saying, Lou, dumb it down.

Starting point is 01:43:35 You know, people are fucking, we're trying to dance, we're trying to get our, you know, get the club on. I mean, you're not playing fucking spoken word pros poetry at the club for a reason. Yeah, so, right, and then, and funny enough, enough like the first two verses of that are people going like nigga What the fuck you talking about? We just trying to get our dance on dumb it down, right? We can't we can't get into this and then the last verse is the record execs running the company the white guy That's like hey, man. Yo, you need to stop talking what you're talking. You stop

Starting point is 01:44:02 You need to stop saying speaking too much truth Dumb it down, stop saying that shit. Stop putting people on game. People are learning too much, shut the fuck up. You know, keep it dumb. Anyways, so I'm like, it's not to get pretentious or whatever, but I'm just like, the type of shit I enjoy is the shit that has like that fucking juice to it, right? So Drake comes from a world where, fuck all that,

Starting point is 01:44:21 it's all about the number one hit of the week and such. So the idea of like Man, I don't want to hear about your fucking. I don't want to hear about King Kuta I don't want to hear about slavery I don't want to hear about any of that shit like you try to free the slaves Kendrick Oh, that's what you're not trying to do you try to hold black people on your back And it's coming from that energy of just like man What the fuck be shallow make music that make clubers, make shit that people can dance to.

Starting point is 01:44:45 And funny enough, having the conversation with my cousin and some other people about how this beef shook out, people that are way more in the just like, yeah, we just kinda wanna keep it dancey and surface level and all that shit. To me, I'm like, meet the grams is where already that shit was done and done. But there's a tear you hit of like,

Starting point is 01:45:04 oh, it wasn't until Not like us was fun to dance to that He yeah, cuz not cuz meet the Grahams is miserable It's it's horrible, but the to listen to but the bullet was still fired and hit its mark You know what I mean not like us is great you yes, you listen who cares right the lyrics even it's it's just catchy And that's the part where so but that's the energy Drake is Coming with is like we want the catchy never mind what you're saying never mind the meaning who cares Why can't you do some shit that we want to dance to right and then he made that And he wins both and he wins on both sides because it is catchy and it's still fucking hitting its mark

Starting point is 01:45:44 I feel like that's a really strange thing to say as like a colleague in the same field. Like as a, as like a, as like a consumer or like a aficionado or somebody who likes music or whatever. That's one thing. Like, ah, I rather don't care for this hoity toity. Y'all don't want to hear me. You you just wanna dance. My baby don't mess around because it's love. From like, your colleague being like, why do you have to put meaning into your shit? It's such a weird fucking sentiment.

Starting point is 01:46:16 And the insanity that is taking that sentiment at the dude who has the most meaning. He's all about that. It's non-stop from top to bottom. Super fucking, you know, the cerebral is what they say. Shit, man, yeah, it's just you picked the wrong target. And furthermore, God damn it, okay,

Starting point is 01:46:36 like when you have J. Cole in there standing opposite you in fucking, you know, first person shooter, you're doing the whole bit of like, I'm the king of sales and the club, you're the king of lyrics and being deep. And we're like the same thing, but on opposite ends. And it's just like, so Drake is like comparing himself to Michael Jackson, because of all the,

Starting point is 01:46:57 because he has more number ones or whatever. And it's like, you're celebrating being king of the kiddie pool. You're celebrating being an ocean wide ankle deep puddle of water You know and then you picked a fucking well to the center of the earth to fight against essentially. It's insanity Then it's you know, anyway, whatever I

Starting point is 01:47:22 Don't even know how we got sidetracked onto that Whatever. I don't even know how we got sidetracked onto that. But oh yeah, because Not Like Us was being played at the wedding, there we go. Anyway, it was fun. So yeah, that was real dope. And yeah, I'm gonna be doing this week, looks like some Wednesday Yakuza.

Starting point is 01:47:50 I think depending on time zones if it lines up Friday Elden Ring is out right? So Elden Rings out this week on Thursday. Is it Thursday? Okay, great. So then yeah that line for Friday perfectly then so yeah It comes out early on PC Okay, so perhaps not for PS 5 where my saves and stuff are located. On PS5 it'll be coming out midnight your time. Okay. On Thursday. I'm playing on console. Yeah, so we're going to Earth Treat it up and then some Get to Fighting games on Saturday.

Starting point is 01:48:15 We'll figure that out a little later. So yeah, tune in, Woolly Versus on YouTube and on Twitch. Last little bit, I talked about going to Greece soon. That's going to be in about two weeks' time. I was trying to figure out a place to meet up with people and do stuff. Still ironing out some details, but if you are in Athens, it's looking like I'm going to head over to,

Starting point is 01:48:37 literally the day I land, there is a Tekken World Tour dojo event happening. Oh, well, there you go. At the hype festival in Greece. So yeah, some folks from that scene reached out and it looks like I'll be able to go check out the Greek FGC and if people are around too as well, I can probably meet some folks either outside the front

Starting point is 01:48:58 or inside because I think there's a ticket cost and I don't want to have to tell everybody, hey, you must buy a ticket or so. So either way, I'll probably be there on the 30th. More details on my Twitter and I'll mention this again next week's podcast as well. What's up? All right, well, I gotta pee.

Starting point is 01:49:17 Yeah, let's, that's what's up. I have to pee now. All right, big pees. Let's take a quick word from our sponsors. I love you sponsors. This week the podcast is sponsored by Henson Shaving. That is the family-owned aerospace parts manufacturer that has made parts for the ISS the International Space Station and they're bringing that precision engineering to shaving. Lord knows I could use a shave. Not this part though. This part has to

Starting point is 01:49:54 stay so people don't realize what's under here but I mean I mean this the neck part and the cheeks and maybe the nose soon, actually. Yeah, there's a red zone. It crawls up. On the nose is wild. That's crazy. Shaving your nose is, I can't believe that happens. But yeah. And if you're going to be doing that, especially

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Starting point is 01:52:20 Beast and use the code Super Beast. Yeah, helped trim my face up. I appreciate it good stuff. Thank you, Henson shaving. Thanks Henson saving And This week a new sponsor the show is Brought to you by a better paradise is brought to you by A Better Paradise. Better Paradise? A Better Paradise is a sci-fi thriller audio drama

Starting point is 01:52:51 and it's the first story in an expansive new universe from Absurd Ventures. So yeah, this is a show that you can listen to that is created and written by Dan Hauser, the co-founder of Rockstar Games, who was the creative director and lead writer on Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption. This visual trailer is real trippy. And Bully, as those games among others.

Starting point is 01:53:21 And it's also directed by Dan's longtime creative partner Laszlo which for me is particularly funny because I'm like I know that name like hold on a minute yeah Laszlo in the in those games is always Laszlo who is Laszlo right and I remember and I remember Laszlo as like I'm like oh he back in the Opium Anthony days used to go in and like show up and talk about Rockstar games there and like got them to voice characters in the Opium Anthony days used to go in and like show up and talk about Rockstar games there and like got them to voice characters in the game and stuff and various comedians and people were able to like get cameos in Grand Theft Auto and stuff because of Lazlo's. I was like, oh yeah, so Lazlo's got a, he's got a show here, you know, got a podcast you

Starting point is 01:53:59 can listen to that he's working on. That's something that I'm like, hey, that's a name I haven't heard in a bit. Yeah, so they got an all-star cast, including Andrew Lincoln of The Walking Dead, Shamir Anderson from John Wick 4 and Invasion, Paterson Joseph from Wonka, Rain Spencer from The Summer I Turned Pretty. So yeah, you can go listen to A Better Paradise today and follow it on the platform of your choice to not miss an episode. Yeah, fun, fun stuff from some rockstar folks over there.

Starting point is 01:54:33 There. Thank you, A Better Paradise. Thanks A Better Paradise. All right, what's going on? All right, what's going on? All right Let's talk about ff7 rebirth. Let's talk about pacing. Mm-hmm. That's that's all I want to talk about So ff7 rebirth has a wide variety of side contents, right? It has Six or seven zones. I forget how many right but

Starting point is 01:55:13 It's like an open world zone right outside of the the boutique like story dungeons, right? So, what do you got you got? Specialty fights where you're gonna try and stagger or pressure or do like a special little challenge that Chadley asks you to do. You've got find the hidden cave that lets you unlock the summon that Chadley lets you do. Then you have, oh God, climb the towers for Chadley. Then you have find the lifestream caves for Chadley and do a little mini game. Then you have find the Lifestream Caves for Chadley and do a little mini-game. Then you have the cards. Then you have the actual VR battle missions and unlocking the summons for Chadley. This is all throughout the course of the whole thing, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:56:02 Each zone has these. Okay. Because one last thing You have the proto relics which is a long running side quest chain where you're trying to find these magic relics for Chadley And then you have like side quests that are like Hey, I would like to see this bird before I die can you go get that bird you know that can you know whatever right yeah and they all line up on a you know like a completionist little map on your world map so you'll get like oh you did eight

Starting point is 01:56:39 out of 20 of the things in Coastal Sol, right? Whatever, right? You're doing like 95% of all side content in FF7 Rebirth for Chadley. What? Like, specifically for him. So he was a weird inclusion in the original where I was like what is with this weird kid this lost sassy child actually not sassy and then It's like okay, you kind of get the deal might not actually be a person Okay, but is

Starting point is 01:57:19 Everything extra that has been fleshed out just heavy dumped onto this character and so not everything But is there enough going on with Chadley to support all the things you're describing? There wasn't a whole lot in the first one thing going on with Chadley where he made he made his own Chadley named my Who is like a really like energetic, happy version of Chadley. Like if she was like she's a Japanese character, so I like if you know it, she's very Genki. Okay, okay.

Starting point is 01:57:56 And he hates her. Okay. It's really fucking weird where she'll be like great job clouds You really got that that monster and he'll be like shut up Stop talking woman, and you're like what the she's make her it's so weird. It's fucking so strange There's also a little other minigames and and whatnots Put around but basically when you get to a new area you're like there's five towers, there's six specialty battles, there's the summon caves, there's the

Starting point is 01:58:31 lifestream caves, there's using your chocobo to peck the dirt to find like item upgrades, etc. And then there's three to five side quests that run the gamut from pretty interesting to actively horrible. Like there's a side quest where you have to like drag a chicken towards a pen by dragging a fishing line with a box of chicken feed that's just fucking miserable. Okay. Um. Physics based? Yeah. Okay. Um. Physics based? Yeah. Okay.

Starting point is 01:59:07 Yeah. Um, and whatnot. And so like the side content's like, ah, it's hit or miss. Like I like the, I really like the battle content, but I thought a lot of the other stuff was like pretty weak. But I filled all of it out. I did all of it.

Starting point is 01:59:24 All the way to Nibelheim, which is near the end of the game. Yeah. I did all of it. Okay, because like last you brought up how much of a slog Gunghaga was going, and... Boy! Once you come out the end of that, do things kind of... Okay, so, this is the fun part. Gunghaga is like like a slog to navigate and then you get to Cosmo Canyon which is a lot easier to navigate and has the worst side content of any location in the game.

Starting point is 01:59:53 Oh no. Like way worse. Way worse than the rest of the game's side content, notably much worse. And then you get to Nibelheim and the Nibelheim big side quest is use your Chocopo to find 50 pieces of floating fruit scattered around the environment, and they won't get marked on your map if you get them or not. And you have to get all 50 to get the good reward. It's like it starts. The side content starts to get actively worse as you go through the game.

Starting point is 02:00:31 And you didn't mind it in one right? Just to recap. No because in one there was actually very little side content. Like a lot of it was like go to the Walmart battle or even something like that. Sector 8 had a bunch of extra stuff, you know Yeah, okay So I did all of it until I did like the story events around Shinra Mansion, right? You know you and then some stuff unlocks after that But I'm like I know I got to go to the gold saucer and do the date and go to the temple the ancients And then I'm done right? I'm out. So you know what? I'm just gonna I'm not gonna do the proto relic stuff in the behind I'm just gonna go straight to the end of the game right you get to the

Starting point is 02:01:09 gold saucer and Chadley calls you on the phone and he says hey Pat or cloud whatever by the way just to let you know now that you're at the end of the game, we have like unlocked 10 new side quests in every zone for you to do. And I'm like, I don't want to. I just want to beat the game. Please. Can I please just beat the game? Okay. And then you do the gold saucer date and then right before you're about to go to the end of the game, fucking another call from Chadley going, by the way, the last couple of ones unlocked.

Starting point is 02:01:57 Just in case, just so you know, just so you know, there's a couple more, there's a couple more that you could do. Okay, so you're just gonna ignore all that and just go, right? Yeah, I just, I, it is the, like, so I love side content in games and when I get to it, I do all of it and go on

Starting point is 02:02:15 and have never, ever played a game in which I didn't wanna do the side content and didn't just drop the game entirely. I see. But it's FF7 Rebirth and I really want to know what's going to happen at the end of the game. So I just skipped all of it. Yeah, because I think that's super valid and fine and I see that as the reasonable thing to do here because I feel like if I hit side content that I yawn at or that just feels like nothing, I mean, I'm going to like, I'll handle if it's bad,

Starting point is 02:02:50 but okay, but like, anyway, there's a point you hit where you go, that was bad, that felt like a waste of time, I'm not doing any more of these. And 16 felt like a bunch of those, where I was like, okay, you know what? Oh yeah, I did. Right? Oh yeah, I did.

Starting point is 02:03:02 Which ones do I need to get which things here? Okay, I'll go do the manual required ones to unlock this specific thing or so. But anything that's not super required, fuck that. Completionist for what? This is boring. It's taking away my enjoyment of the game. You get off the Indicosa Del Sol near the end and there's a treasure chest that has the purple on it,

Starting point is 02:03:25 which means it's a new weapon and fucking red starts telling me about one piece. He essentially starts telling me about one piece and I'm like I'm not going to do this quest right. I'm sorry. I'm not going to do it. And then I'm I'm like driving north to get to the game's final dungeon and on the way there's like purple chests in the water, and I'm like, what the fuck are these? Oh my god, was I supposed to drive around the ocean, hitting random pieces of garbage to finish this side quest? Oh my god, I'm never gonna do it.

Starting point is 02:03:56 The idea that I'm gonna come back after I beat the game, and do this shit, no, no, I'm not gonna do it. This is reminding me, because I'm having a bit of a weird one with Yakuza, which is full chock full of sub stories. Um, and so many of them are hilarious and fun and full of antics, but some of them are not. Some are not. And you never know. You know, I don't know. I never, I don't think I've hit any that I've been like,

Starting point is 02:04:24 this was garbage and a waste of my time, but I certainly do feel like, well, even if these are a chuckle at best, or a chuckle at worst, excuse me, I still do wanna get a move on just because this game is so long. So I'm basically gonna just have to be like, if this were up to me, or I rather, it is up to me,

Starting point is 02:04:44 but because this is, but because there is an audience involved in this as well, I'm just gonna have to be like, all right, I'm getting a move on now, and I'm gonna complete the major cabaret and whatever, money, real estate things, but if people tell me that, hey, this is a really funny one, go do that Michael Jackson quest, then I'll go do that. But you can probably kind of just crowd source the opinion

Starting point is 02:05:15 on what a side quest worth doing might be, maybe, if you want to use that power to just save yourself the anguish of scraping till your eyes bleed. This has led to me going like, am I nuts? I'm having massive psych content fatigue on this. Horrible. And I almost never do in almost anything. So I'm like, you know who would be a really good test?

Starting point is 02:05:41 Hey, I enjoyed Pocket Racer. I know they're saying no one told me to do it, but I enjoyed that goofy ass arc. I went back to it because I wanted to. That was me. Anyway. I would say like, who would be a really good audience for me to ask this question to get like, a reasonable response based on my tastes?

Starting point is 02:06:00 Oh, I know. I have like 15 friends who play ff14 and are By grinding out bicolor gemstones right now in prep for dawn trail or whatever like like freaks Right and most of them played ff7 rebirth What did they do when they got to that part? Oh, they also all skipped it. Ah, okay.

Starting point is 02:06:28 And I'm like, oh, that, okay. Yeah. All right. So I feel like anything FF related, I can also just tap into Minthe. And I feel like even though our tastes diverge heavily from each other in a ton of ways, he can probably be like this,

Starting point is 02:06:43 is there's nothing even remotely like FF lore related or any tags to anything interesting just throw it in the in the in the in the trash, you know Yeah, as long as you don't feel any massive FOMO from it Which I certainly hope you don't And I know it's like one of the only things that I don't, like usually that powers it. When the freaks tap out, it's time to follow suit. Yeah, so like the, and this has led to like a long

Starting point is 02:07:16 back and forth that is like, you can't complain about optional content because it's optional, which I don't personally agree with, because doing all the optional content in FF7 Rebirth massively fucks up the game's pacing. Like massively fucks it up. I mean, okay, there's an argument that like any game with a significant amount of side quests will fuck up a game's pacing. There's also like, does something like the church in fucking Disco Elysium even count as a side quest?

Starting point is 02:07:51 Like, it's so crucial. Well, not everything in Disco is side content. Whereas FF7 Rebirth has an incredibly strong dividing line between this is boutique, prestige shit and this is optional. For all the nothings that 16 does have I do Appreciate that they're like here's a plus which is a big star that is going to give you a big reward and Perhaps even have something that is an important moment for a character in case you care about that character If you want to care you want to hang out with the mid at all

Starting point is 02:08:21 You know with mid office then you can do some of, you know, with mid-dolphus, then you can do some of those, you know? But there's a different icon for like, this is really just for completion and this is actually worth your time. Yeah, so like the specifics of it is like, I think Cosmo Canyon was the part where it broke, where the Cosmo Canyon side quests are all really bad. Like, I actively resented doing them after I had completed them. And the Proto Relic minigame in there is like a minigame that's like a tower, like reverse tower defense, and it's miserable.

Starting point is 02:08:55 It's awful. It's terrible. And that was the moment like, wow, I spent like an entire evening like juggling a sleepy, baby So that I could get all this shit ready for the stream tomorrow and oh it sucked and I shouldn't have done it And I guess like any of the mini games There's a full like progression path of unlocking stuff if you well when you beat them

Starting point is 02:09:18 They're like do you want to do hard mode and you're like no yeah, okay? Okay, absolutely not yeah And I mean I and I and I get the impression too that even without all that stuff, the game still is pretty bloated, right? Like, you're not the only one that's been just like, I can't believe how much is in this. The game is like, I wonder what the game looks like

Starting point is 02:09:43 if you just beeline it. Like, I should talk to Gene about it, because I know Gene just beelined it. He skipped like every single piece of side content. When I get there, I'm going to beeline probably most. I'm going to, yeah, really selectively or do my side quests, I think. Yeah, Gene beat it in 36. When I decided to give up on the side quests, I was at 84. Okay.

Starting point is 02:10:13 So like, yeah, I don't know. If you're the kind of person who likes all that side content, good for you. I'm glad for you, because the game is definitely not like, you definitely get your money's worth. I'm glad for you because the game is definitely not like you definitely get your money's worth. I just I don't think it's of the quality. Like I think it's I think it is like filling up your plate with like like like you know you go to a nice restaurant

Starting point is 02:10:40 and like you're you get a like a nice meal and you're like, oh I could have had more but it was great. And it's the same meal but with like four pounds of fries put onto the side. And then you have some of the fries and you're just like that and somebody's response is like, well you didn't have to eat those fries. I'm like they put it on my plate. The worst fucking trend that is now I would this wasn't happening when I was younger, but now when you get souvlaki from a place and they put fries in the souvlaki to just stuff it out and make it more filling. Fuck off with that. That's not

Starting point is 02:11:16 what this is supposed to be. I hate that. Yes. I think my my my list is kind of like, okay, does this side quest have a really profound moment of characterization for someone on the main cast that completes an aspect of them we didn't know otherwise? Occasionally. Occasionally, there is a little bit of juice there. Yeah. Is there a nice little like Citadel style moment with the character that you get?

Starting point is 02:11:47 Oh, no. Not like that. That's a really that's the like one of the peak examples, for sure. But ultimately, just like even in solving this problem for this random person, there's enough there's a moment with somebody that is like, oh, that's an interesting facet of your character

Starting point is 02:12:02 that shows us something about you. Yeah, they definitely do that. The most interesting thing in the game by far Is Red side quests, but you can only appreciate that If you play the game twice, okay Whereas if you leave all of red side quests until after Cosmo Canyon He has completely different

Starting point is 02:12:25 dialogue during all of them. Okay yeah and then I'd say second is does this side quests if not the character it do something for the world or the backstory or the lore of the setting you know more like FF16 has that one where you go to the fucking the barren continent and you go to that old orphanage graveyard and just learn about, like, more about the whole bearer curse thing and you're like, oh wow, this is not a character thing, this is just a lore setting thing that is also

Starting point is 02:12:55 super interesting and worth doing. There's a couple. I would say it's a coin flip. Yeah. So those are the ones that I pretty much, know we're down for it again shout out like huge Thanks, cuz yeah solidus grabbed a list of like here's what's worth doing fuck the rest. I'm like okay sounds good. You know Yeah, I want I just want stuff that helps appreciate the world more But I don't want that at the cost of an extra 50 hours

Starting point is 02:13:20 That's not milking me so people are in the shower saying that max did Beat it at 120 and still had shit that was on the table that he hadn't finished Okay, I think like I think at best the side content in this game is like a seven and I think like 75% of the game being that is weird I think like 75% of the game being that is weird. So I can imagine, cause I kinda had in my head with remake one, there's a little meter, right?

Starting point is 02:13:54 And it's like, I'm playing fucking Final Fantasy remake, 7 remake right now. That's a little meter that's like, whoa! And then when that starts to dip, if it goes a little too low, fuck what you're doing, get back to the main. Yo, I'm playing fucking fun. You know, you can't, if you get too far in the weeds,

Starting point is 02:14:12 if you're like, I don't recognize who's here and what's going on, Chadley's making what happen with, abort, swerve, get back on the main, get off the exit, get back on the highway. Holy fuck, this is Final Fantasy VII Remake. This is crazy I can't believe this is actually happening. I you know just like it's it's dumb

Starting point is 02:14:29 But I kind of am like you could use that little thing Internally to enjoy you know yeah, so the the the remake content was actually worse like the side shit was was worse but there was like way less of it like like way less there was like way less of it. Like, way less. There were like two chapters that you would run around and do side quests. Yeah, I mean, there was a little stuff that was,

Starting point is 02:14:53 I was kind of bored a little with Aerith's orphanage adventures, but it wasn't too bad. It was just like, okay, well she's talking to me. They were objectively worse, but they were better paced. Sure, yeah. Okay, well she's yeah, it was they were like objectively worse, but they were like better paced Sure. Yeah But okay, this is this is a recurring problem though. Yeah, I I'm I I Am NOT the only person who feels this way

Starting point is 02:15:19 And it is it is Increasingly frustrating that whenever I talk about, like man, I really think doing all the side stuff brings down the pacing, the response of like, well why'd you do it then? I didn't think it was gonna do that. How was I gonna know that ahead of time? Or sometimes there's also, I guess, a side quest

Starting point is 02:15:42 where the whole point of it is like, do you wanna go fight a hellhouse? Do you want to see what that looks like? Well, that was mandatory. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. Maybe more like a bomb or whatever type of enemy that you want to see. Like, oh, do you want to see the version of that in this setting or so? You know, that might be the whole point where the quest itself doesn't matter as much as the like, oh, you can go fight a cool thing. But yeah, okay. Fair enough. So yeah, maybe maybe maybe don't focus so much. Like in hindsight, I really wish I had

Starting point is 02:16:19 only done the side content enough to unlock the summons and get the gold saucer date I wanted rather than literally all of them. But what are you going to do? Have the game creators make a list until you... Don't worry, these ones suck. So, this is the part that it gets really... Well, what I want is the ones that I feel like I wasted my time on to be removed So I didn't do them and I could go back in time and had it means like now we're in just nonsense land Like One of the things that I actually really liked about ff 16 is the quest that had blue plus signs on them to indicate that no

Starting point is 02:17:07 these are the real side quests that unlock gameplay shit. That's what I was talking about. That's what I was saying. Yeah, because they took that from 14 and it doesn't work that way in in 7 Rebirth. In fact it works in a way that seems like they want you to be able to do as much or as little or as what types as you want. Because every time you do it, you get points to cash in at Chadley for like, for like special materia that's insanely broken. Like super busted super materia. Okay. And by doing all of them, you have have all the stuff to get all of them. Yeah, I mean look, I'm gonna suffer through some bland stupid shit if I can check out Knights of the Round at the end of that. I don't think they're in this game. I think they'll be in the next one. Fuck. But yeah, no, it's one of those things like going back, like I wish I could have. I wish I had done less.

Starting point is 02:18:09 I guess. Which is like a very strange thing for me to specifically say. And you said you're almost there. I am sitting in the final dungeon right now. Okay. As... As opposed to that, I mean we talked about SMT Vengeance and that music man, going back to that SMT 5 music, god it's so good. It's so grimy, I love it.

Starting point is 02:18:38 And the new tracks as well, just fucking love that soundtrack. Oh I saw someone in the chat say, you could have bailed on Dragon's Dogma 2. And it's like, one, I did. Stop playing that game. And two, that wouldn't have made any difference. Someone at Combo Breaker accused me of having a pawn that was infecting everybody,

Starting point is 02:19:04 so I booted up to make sure that that was not the case and sure enough it wasn't so I will not accept these lies and slander I did not have to throw Willie in the water. I am NOT infecting anybody I mean I Mean somebody might have wanted to But either way if it happened it would have come back to my world and I sat down and did the refresh and he was fine so no uh what else uh you know let's go over a baby update baby's crawling around on the floor baby needs to escape from his pen he's only

Starting point is 02:19:40 happy on the floor where he can get into trouble freedom here which means we're now encountering Dog plus baby no longer Being held and like oh make nice, but just encountering each other in the wild as it were And that dog is great with that baby He does the same thing every time he walks up to the baby the baby goes goo goo Gaga The dog smells him then he licks his face two or three times and then he leaves

Starting point is 02:20:15 And that's it And the baby occasionally punches the dog in the jowls or claws of his eyes because he's dumb baby He doesn't know nothing and the dog just goes I can't even feel that shit. No, it just takes it. Okay, great. I mean you've seen Bulldogs as a whole head is based around like getting kicked by bulls so like a ten month old baby Just going goo goo Gaga with the squishing isn't gonna

Starting point is 02:20:41 But an eyeball poke might upset anybody so you think, but like the cat slashes the dog in the eyeballs all the time with his claws. Jesus fucking Christ. No, you don't, no, Wooly, you don't understand. There's nothing that anyone in the house could do to harm the dog other than like hit him with a baseball bat. Like they are bulldogs They are built to get kicked by bulls

Starting point is 02:21:10 When the cat gets annoyed and slashes the dog in the face the dog just stands there and licks the cat Yeah, I'll take your word for it that sounds nuts man Jesus, Okay, but it also makes their faces all squishy and kissable Baby yearns To escape the walls on the wings of freedom Yeah He wants to crawl around on the floor like like we have out like a big playpen where he can you know exist in a safe? Padded environment, and he hates that shit now. He wants out and about he wants to chase us around Baby needs to see the ocean. Yeah a little bit

Starting point is 02:21:48 The enemies are over there, but yeah, no Bulldogs are great with kids because they're slow. They're sweet and They're durable Okay, okay Yeah, because I'm just I'm imagining like a fucking bug-eyed Chihuahua getting poked in the eye and that thing doing back flips. No, that's no, Chihuahuas are horrible for children. Exactly, they're insane, you know? Horrible.

Starting point is 02:22:15 And just that level of- They'll bite kids for fun. Yeah. But no, I see how somebody's saying like, oh, I bet what he means is when Elmo the cat paws Zangief. No, no, no No, I have a cat that is turning 16 years old that cat gets annoyed because he's tired the dog comes over and stands and breathes on him and the cat goes and bites him and Slashes his face and the dog goes

Starting point is 02:22:39 I would be nervous every time Yeah, I think so eyeball pokes man, that's it's that's a weak spot Cat can't do nothing to that dog. Hmm can't do nothing And also the dog actually represents a really good thing Where you great you board if the baby does poke him or you know do something like he's not supposed to do, you take the baby's hand and you go no, no, no, and you have them pet the doggie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Your gentle hands and all that shit.

Starting point is 02:23:13 That's actually a really good lesson. Yeah, for sure. And it's a lot easier to do it with a dog that can't be harmed. On a training dog. Yes, yes. Well, because when I was a baby you know what we had a dog and that dog

Starting point is 02:23:29 was a fucking 11 years old and it was a great little piece of shit that didn't like me and so like if I bugged the dog and it was like haha goo goo gaga as like a two-year-old or something and the dog would nip my hand I go eee just like well you shouldn't have bothered the dog set that dog's old Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Ah, so what's going on with me this week tomorrow? I'm gonna be doing the Nintendo Direct in the morning in the a.m. At 7 a.m. Pacific time And then I'm not gonna do two streams so fuck it We'll just roll right in ff7 rebirth right after that so I hope you got I hope you people in Europe are happy You're never happy because you live in Europe

Starting point is 02:24:21 and then on Wednesday, I have two sponsored streams of a cool little game called Blood and another cool little game called Sandwalkers. And then on Thursday, it's Elden Ring. But more importantly than that, tonight, that'd be Monday, June 17th, at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern,

Starting point is 02:24:44 Paige is gonna be hopping on her show over twitch.tv Slash peach saliva not 100% sure what that show is gonna be but it's not gonna be the Jork report She has too much reporting to do to have that ready for tonight She'll probably update you on the status of the Jork report unjork Confirmed onork your Jork. Oh. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:25:07 Yeah. Okay. There's so much Jork documentation in the house. It's crazy. Okay. Let's get into it. Hey. So yeah.

Starting point is 02:25:24 Breaking news. The US government is suing Adobe. Oh, is it because they're a bunch of criminal hack fucks? It might be. It's accusing the company of harming consumers by enrolling them in the most expensive subscription plans ever without clearly disclosing the huge early termination fees. The fees can reach hundreds of dollars. Someone needs to fucking sit these assholes down and put a real uncomfortable light in their face and just fucking leave

Starting point is 02:26:00 it there for a while. So I think it's crazy. I don't know so I know a lot about how Adobe is telling you that they own all of your content if you use Adobe that's in their new. Yeah so there was there was that and then there was the actually we're just doing this because it's not about that it's about something else I forgot what the update was. It's about stealing your shit so that we can train our AI model on it. They said that it was it was me it was they when they did the update to the update and then the clarification to The clarification the final reasons were is something that was security related ish or whatever and not yeah

Starting point is 02:26:35 You know, yeah, that's that's that's that's nonsense. They want to steal your show they can they They rolled out the like the you basically have to subscribe to us You can't really buy the main thing anymore at all but planet at some point For me, I was using the just the shittier, but you can still buy it elements Versions of software and I still more or less just do because like even though it's crippled horrendously feature wise it has enough of the basics for what I need and Like is effectively almost like a student version of a program But yeah

Starting point is 02:27:09 They've been fucking people over with these subscription things for years and the idea is so in the pot like the the frog in The pot is already a green bubble goop and we're still increasing the number We're seeing if we can get it over to 17 18 on the stove so seeing if we can get it over to 17, 18 on the stove. So I'm not, I wasn't super familiar with the subscription shenanigans other than the fact that it's hard to cancel an Adobe subscription. What I was not aware of and what I saw on the comments

Starting point is 02:27:37 to the tweet of the breaking news about the lawsuit of the US versus Adobe was how bad it is to try and cancel your Adobe subscription and I saw five comments in a row of people going like yeah I was never able to cancel it so I just canceled my credit card right right that's the only way I could figure out how to cancel my Adobe subscription Yeah, fuck the lawsuit alleges that Adobe hides the terms in its of its annual paid monthly plans in Fine print behind optional text boxes and hyperlinks sounds like some dark patterns or a foot sure does and

Starting point is 02:28:25 Like there's always so it's it's it's just, there's always been that thing of like, hey, you can go grab the GIMP, you can go grab free alternative software and use that for all your needs. And- I mean, you can grab free alternative Adobe if you wanna be cheeky about it. So the thing is, I've used the GIMP back when I was in college,

Starting point is 02:28:38 and I've used it in other circumstances, and it's always been like, ah, I just, there's things about this layout that I just hate But it's it's kind of like at this level like you are already ripping people off with the subscription you are now Taking it beyond the pale with like they can't even turn it off They can't leave they can't get away from your stupid shit charging you a cancellation fee like you're a fucking phone contract or car finance Yeah, I like of all these like I've never there's

Starting point is 02:29:12 Adobe deserves the amount of high seas activities the most of like any of these fucking New recent gas updates to these to software that people use and I, the fact that, hey, I remember for the longest while, even back 20 years ago, it was like, hey, there's all these new CS versions. But the teacher that was teaching our graphic design class was just like, yeah, but then you can just stick with seven. You're fine.

Starting point is 02:29:36 Unless you really need the healing brush, you're good. And that kind of continues to be the case of there's all these bullshit new features, but none of them matter No one cares and like you're not using the fucking The AI healing tools or whatever the fuck they're implementing there. You don't need any of that shit anyways, the older versions that can be acquired are More than enough for your purposes. So fuck the new version anyway Premiers and and the video editing software think that a little more complicated.

Starting point is 02:30:09 But yeah, either way, we'll see what happens here. But the fucking government and the FTC have taken notice and are like, you know, I stopped that. That's stupid. Don't do it. Yeah, so in particular, action against two executives is being taken for pushing people onto subscriptions, making it absurdly hard to cancel. They ambushed users with hefty early termination fees and threw up obstacles every time you tried to cancel. Hey man, whatever. If Adobe says you don't own their software, then you can't steal it.

Starting point is 02:30:48 The idea of just punishing the people that are actually customers of you, the people that actually are trying to be customers, is just so bad. That's the old fashioned thing. That's been media forever. Like, hey, go to the movies and watch like a fucking video about how bad it is to pirate movies. I'm in the theater! Why are you showing it to me in the movie theater?

Starting point is 02:31:12 I'm obviously paying to see the fucking movie! Who is this fucking for? What, the person who starts watching the movie and is gonna walk out, go home, and pirate? Oh yeah, you know what, that was good. I'm gonna pay $10 to see the movie. is gonna walk out go home and pirate oh yeah you know what that was good I'm gonna pay $10 to see them but what the fuck yeah um yeah and like on some level there's these things of like okay so maybe there is a cancel button that's hidden underneath a drop-down to a hyperlink that opens up a second window.

Starting point is 02:31:45 And when you click, are you sure you not do want not cancel? Yes, no, no, yes, no. Right. And like there's all kinds of shenanigans like that or whatever the dark patterns. But for all of those, there's also just the straight up simple. If you call the customer service line and ask them to just Cancel your subscription by talking to a human being on the phone. They would just drop the calls and or disconnect Just the old-fashioned, huh? I can't hear you. I'm breaking up going through a tunnel right that like Straight-up happened. I've had that happen with Bell Tech support also. Old fashioned hangup, you know? Oh hey, I wanna hold up my hand for a second. I saw a really good statement of like,

Starting point is 02:32:30 hey Pat, the dope pirate movies thing is for the people who snuck into Inglorious Basterds, which I said that I did earlier. But here's the thing, I bought snacks at that theater. If I had gone home and pirated it, they wouldn't have gotten even snack money Oh boy. Oh boy. Here we go. Yeah Okay, all right

Starting point is 02:32:54 This snacks are fucked fucking forty five dollars for a bag of popcorn This thing better suck my dick for now cinema. Guzzo got that got that that popcorn money that wasn't necessarily Muromax Yeah, yeah get into this world anyways Adobe Needs to be fucking crowbarred up a little bit. Let's see what happens here Anyway beyond that, Boo Adobe, Boo. Miyazaki knows for a fact that other From Software devs want a Bloodborne PC port. If I say I want one, I'll get in trouble, but it's nothing I'm opposed to. Obviously, as one of the creators of Bloodborne, my personal honest opinion is I'd love more players to be able to enjoy it,

Starting point is 02:33:51 especially as a game that is now coming of age, of one of those games of the past that gets lost on older hardware. I think any game like that, it'd be nice to have an opportunity for more players to be able to experience that and relive the relic of the past. So as far as I'm concerned, that's not something I'm opposed to. I think Sony lost it. I think Sony lost Bloodborne when they shut down Japan Studio. Oh, not lost their minds. You mean we're talking like SNK level lost the Gold Master? I'm starting to believe they literally, physically lost Bloodborne. We lost the gold master, the pre-mastering department, lost the entire spool, and all

Starting point is 02:34:31 the hard drives with all the data, and every server that had it hosted. All of it gone. No, no, not retail retail or not digital copies. I mean the the source I mean the documentation the the the dev resources The things they would need to port it somewhere. Well good thing that blue point doesn't need that they'll just do it On ob's on on observation paid blue point money you do money does in fact need to exchange hands Yeah, we're running into this part of video games in which companies are going wait I have to pay them money to make it and you fire them See like

Starting point is 02:35:14 The hilarious world of they lost the code is is is a tortle and a half but the very simple hell divers recent activity son activity Sony is quite just weirdly confused and aggressive about PC in general and everything we saw as a recent concession towards PC in recent years shows that not everybody there is on the same page. Oh but here's the. This isn't just about a PC release. This is about literally anything. Of any kind whatsoever on a modern console.

Starting point is 02:35:51 Like the same company that has six Last of Us games, even though there's only two, because they remade each of them once over and then they remade one of them twice if you won't patch bloodborne if they patched it to load better and to work better on current consoles it might get people's hopes up and we like horizons getting a remaster for fuck's sake like don't let the hopes get up no but really like that Sony just keeps remastering all of their games on every console. Except for Bloodborne. To the point where I'm like, I think they lost it.

Starting point is 02:36:36 I think they pulled a Konami and fucking accidentally threw it in the trash. So it took it took enough years that eventually Miyazaki is like, hey guys, yeah, I know, I'm not insane. I would love that too, obviously. Please point your annoyance elsewhere. It'd be what it'd be. Well hey, Nightmare Cart, available now. Gianni and Susie are in it.

Starting point is 02:37:02 That has nothing to do with blood. It's a whole lot of fun. I don't know why you even bring that up. It's a whole lot of fun. Go check it out. Guilty Gear Strive, Dual Rulers, an anime adaptation has been announced. Is this about cards? It sounds like this would be a DS game back in the day. That's like a Dust Strikers slash Judgment Ass spin-off thing. No idea, but it's, yeah, it's a Strive anime. There's going to be more details in a trailer at Anime Expo 2024.

Starting point is 02:37:41 Right now, there's just a single piece of artwork that shows Sin, it shows Saul bad guy and he's got the short hair but he's in the Saul outfit. And if you've seen the story mode, you know that that doesn't make a ton of sense because those two things are mutually exclusive. Don't worry, this anime will be erased from canon at the end of its 22nd episode most certainly who I mean For all we know anything's possible in the backyard and speaking of the backyard there is out here. We go headphones are off That's okay pats not listening, but I'll talk about it because there is a catboy on display in this poster That has a big old backyard ears. you know, and you know they took...

Starting point is 02:38:26 This sucks! I can still hear you! With the headphones off. Like I can still clearly hear you over the ambient headphone on. So Catboy That Man has been was was was erased from existence to give us the one the flower face we got but a new cat boy arises with some some googles on Right, so we'll see what those are about, but maybe this is just an updated super future Google version with

Starting point is 02:39:01 Fuck shit the dude from the dude from the MOBA the dude from judgments You can't even kill. Oh fuck. What was his name? Aren't you supposed to be the guilty? I was about to say ASCA, but it was on the tip of my tongue and I just my brain just farted There's a there's a catboy in Izuna Izuna is like is a catboy in in guilty-gear judgment that is Playable and part of the story there and hasn't been seen since that spinoff game. Dr. Paradigm did show back up at the end, but we never got more Izuna.

Starting point is 02:39:32 So maybe this is Strive's version of Izuna. Or maybe it's just a brand new catboy. Who knows? We'll see. Fox, not a cat. Well, either way, we got ourselves a little backyard furry waiting for us so we might be returning to our roots. The damage on that was pretty, series of words. A backyard furry awaits you on the other side. Oh, God. Oh, shit.

Starting point is 02:40:15 Yeah, anyway, we'll see what's going on. I don't know. But at the very least, like I said, Fred the the the wrong hair for the wrong costume, so We'll see And my and yeah, it might not just be like a retelling it might just be a sequel or some other story from afterwards Because you know they left things Conclusive in some places and open in others For anyone who went through the story mode.

Starting point is 02:40:48 Then we got... Okay, so I mean, I just appreciate from time to time when we get these looks into what's happening in competitive scenes from all over. Oh yeah! We talked about Yu-Gi-Oh and those bits the other day. That was the fun stuff. And our update this week, this can't be real bro. What the hell is happening in the Pokemon TCG scene from Delty the 73rd on Twitter?

Starting point is 02:41:19 Oh man! There are two of these and I didn't know which one you were going to talk about. Someone at this cup just ate their opponents lost vacuum and called a judge for a deck check. Someone please explain to someone who doesn't play. In Pokemon the card game, there's local tournaments known as League Cups that earn you points to qualify for the World Championships. So they're held to a higher standard than normal local play. One of these standards is having a deck list submitted before the tournament.

Starting point is 02:41:52 If you have an invalid deck list, the wrong cards, missing cards, etc., you get a penalty like a game loss. This individual ate one of his opponent's cards to make their deck not match the decklist submission and then called for a judge to check it so that it looks wrong, missing one card, and they get a game loss. That's where we're at now. That's so... Just cue the gif of the arcade, walking up, grabbing the chip, and then running away. Yeah, so somebody in the chat just asked a great question.

Starting point is 02:42:31 How fast did he eat this card that no one but his opponent saw this happen? I mean, have you seen magicians? Because it's cardboard. You can't just... Oh, have you seen magicians? It's incredible. You can practice that shit at home and get right through. Two bites. Two bites. It's incredible. You can practice that shit at home and get right through two bites

Starting point is 02:42:46 Two bites straight it because cardboard a little a little harder a little harder than paper, right? But if you pre salivate with enough gusto you can create a little pocket and then bite right in Oh, I know about that. That's how I do pills. There you go, right? I always gets blown away because I I take pills with no water Yeah, I can do that too. It's not great. Yeah, and whenever I do it She she like she tells me I have like a whore's mouth. Yeah, you got a gluck gluck 2000 mm-hmm Okay nonplus, that's fair, so you gotta you gotta am I gonna do fight you on it Guilty is charged Nonplus, that's fair. So you gotta, you gotta. What am I gonna do, fight you on it? Like. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Starting point is 02:43:26 Guilty as charged. Ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah. So you know, you use that, you use that, that sloppy toppy deliverer and you, you bite in twice and then you let the cardboard just, you know, as it softens, goes right down and then you start calling for the judge immediately before your opponent even has a chance to go, what the fuck just

Starting point is 02:43:49 happened? And yeah, deck check. That's it. What are you going to do? Have him throw up? Observe his stool? What are you going to do? Yeah.

Starting point is 02:43:59 You know what? Let's bring random spot vomit checks to Pokemon card game. So, I'm reminded- How bad do you wanna win, bro? There are two other e-sports stories this week. I might not have caught them. I caught one and then Super Bro in the chat reminded me. Nintendo is not gonna be sponsoring anybody else. They fucking, they put out,

Starting point is 02:44:31 they profiled a top team called Jackpot in Splatoon and had like banners in game for them and then Jackpot came out to be just like Insanely racist, okay Just just like scrub them off off the Nintendo shit racist gotcha, okay full Yeah, full-throated yeah a big big racism So of course like one of the only things that Nintendo has ever like actually Damn guys things that Nintendo has ever like actually, look! Look, guys! See that? That sucks, cause that's a little,

Starting point is 02:45:08 jackpot could be anything. That's a little Virgil and Dante, have it a moment kind of word, you know? They weren't exactly called like Squidwaffin, I don't suppose, or anything like that. So that's a surprise. Okay. But the other one is, I would like you, Woolly, to weigh in on a recent tournament organizer

Starting point is 02:45:30 controversy. There's a recent Smash tournament, it's called EPM Smash Timber Tuesdays, in which tournament organizers are being accused of favoritism So I as you have been a tournament organizer Mm-hmm, I would like you to tell me if the TO was being unfair interesting. I have here's this here's the story This is Melvin Just had a terrible experience At EPM smash timber Tuesday where I decided to disqualify myself out of Winnerside Grands because of a biased TO. Whoa. Opponent Avion was mad

Starting point is 02:46:13 because I plugged my headphones in and he didn't have any game audio. I always bring a splitter. I can't focus with ambient sound which is why I use headphones. I said if audio mattered so much, he should have brought earbuds or headphones himself. He refused to run the set. The TO said the only fair solution would be to run the set with the monitor audio, since we both get that. Keep in mind the TO and the player are friends. They said if I didn't, I had to deque. Avion kept saying I needed to show

Starting point is 02:46:46 him a concrete rule that said I was entitled to playing with headphones. But either way he played a snake earlier in a bracket on a monitor without audio so I'm pretty sure he only cared about me because he was losing. Anyway Avion got payout for first because of the TO ruling, despite him being the one refusing to play the set unless I played the way he wants. Was the TO biased by saying you can't be the only one with game audio? There's a lot of them and I'm not sure which sides aligned with which, so I need to recap this. And I'm not sure which sides aligned with which so I need to recap this is so there's a grand final set about to happen

Starting point is 02:47:27 and player one Decides to use headphones to just plug into the headphones into the monitor, okay, and Then player guy number two says hey what I? Can I have sound please? Hey, what? I can I have sound please? Because plugging into the monitor

Starting point is 02:47:51 mutes the monitor and makes it so that both players cannot hear it anymore. Right. OK, so now player one has sound in his headphones and player two has nothing. Gotcha. And player one says, well, I brought a splitter. And player two says, I don't have headphones on me I just unplug your headphones yeah at which point the monitor the TO goes yeah unplug your headphones you can't be the only one with game audio yeah was the TO wrong and then player one with the headphones drops out. Says I would rather disqualify myself than take these headphones off.

Starting point is 02:48:29 Holy shit, that's crazy. Oh my god. Okay. Wow. I mean, yeah dude, you can leave. That's cool. Like, I thought, okay, for a second I was like I thought the setup had no sound someone then put headphones in and then it was like oh yeah yeah

Starting point is 02:48:52 his logic is that one the to and the other player are friends and earlier this guy played a set with a different guy and that monitor doesn't have sound at all it's like yeah because that was fair! Okay, okay. Player one is fucking insane and denying the ability to hear sound that is naturally playing through the monitor like for a normal setup is batshit. If the way that the rest of everything is running

Starting point is 02:49:20 is you sit in front of the TV and you can hear it normally, then that's what you should be entitled to. That's crazy. On a... But also, let's say... On another level. Go ahead. Let's say, okay, you know, I need to wear headphones

Starting point is 02:49:34 because I got some kind of sensory bullshit. I go crazy, I need headphones, the only thing I can handle. If you're gonna do that, you have to be prepared with a splitter and a set of headphones for your opponent and cleaning wipes For the set of headphones for your opponent, okay?

Starting point is 02:49:52 And so this is where it goes into I don't know what size event this is based on the name It's an 11 person event. It's a say this sounds like it could be a small local right is it perhaps it is a local sure um At a given like caliber of tournament There's also something that's become standard with if it's decent enough is your setup will have two headphones available for each player That are set there for the station if you have your own custom headphones You can plug them into the same slot but either way there's sound provided for you via those headphones or you can plug your own customs

Starting point is 02:50:28 in. And I know that like, yeah, and like using communal headphones, especially during COVID time and stuff, it's like, yeah, that's not a great, you don't want to do that. I would never. Right. I remember we were at PAX and I think we played all the the the demos without putting the headphones on because the headphones were being used by like 400 people before we got to them.

Starting point is 02:50:54 Mm hmm. And that's gross. But that is that is a that is the reasonable way to handle this. And that's how most places that's how Evo handles this. That's how a combo breaker handles it. That's how any major handles it. Don't controllers have their own headphone jack? Not something that you can use without taking over the entire device's sound output.

Starting point is 02:51:12 Yeah, that's how Mercenary Kings happened. When I plugged the headphones in so I could do it, it stole the game audio from the capture device. So that doesn't work as a solution. Sticks that have microphone jacks and stuff like that, when you plug them into your PC, they'll take over the PC sound device and become the default speaker and shit like that. That's not viable.

Starting point is 02:51:29 The way to do it is the solution we already have, which is every setup has a headphone jack. You can plug in your own, and if you didn't bring headphones, there are headphones for the setup that can be provided for you. And if the setup doesn't have that and it's just playing out the TV Then that's what's wrong play it out the TV That being said there's a lot of there's a lot of players that are very comfortable with no sounds that play to nothing And it's kind of insane to watch I mean it's incredible watching like some of the best players just be like yeah The crowd noise hypes me up. I don't need the audio cues

Starting point is 02:52:01 I've played enough of this that everything is just baked in and they can just react to what they're seeing I'm like that's nuts. I'm not that level. I've played enough of this that everything is just baked in and they can just react to what they're seeing. I'm like, that's nuts. I'm not that level. I need all the sound I can get. Especially against characters where sound cues are big, like JP I've talked about. The way he says away gives you a clue as to what's coming out.

Starting point is 02:52:18 So no, that's complete batshit. And what happened there is what should have happened. The most shocking thing, if anything, is that the perspective of that story is from the person with the headphones and not from the TO or the second player who won who went, can you believe this shit happened? Yeah, okay, wild. What the fuck? Yeah, tournament you should have a splitter at each station if possible

Starting point is 02:52:57 But if not and most smash games are running on CRTs and shit that have like, you know, there's not HDMIing, right? They're playing on old hardware and stuff. So yeah, no fuck off. Fuck right off. That's insane They were friends, man. Cool. Cool. Right? Apparently, GEEF nerfs are coming according to Broski. Eat your opponent's headphones. And then call for a judge.

Starting point is 02:53:19 You know what, man? Sure. Little pods? They're easy to swallow. If you're willing to eat a headphone that's been sitting on the person's face or inside their ears and is not food or biodegradable, like a set of cans, eat it. You know what? Win the pot. There you go. Let's do fuck it Call them have this be the new meta Who could eat the opponent's headphones first? He called the judge over and judge comes over like sorry. He ate the headphones you lose. Yeah, that's just the way he wanted it more

Starting point is 02:54:00 All right, and then yeah, I suppose in relation to that fighting game wise there is There's been some talk this week of The guest characters that can come to Tekken and In that well interestingly enough actually While Harada was answering some of these questions, I tweeted out some wild, awesome footage.

Starting point is 02:54:27 Bloody Roar 2 Vietnamese tournaments are fucking awesome and crazy. Yeah, they're crazy. I saw that shit when you retweeted it, it was bananas. They're playing on a different version of the game called APC Bloody Roar 2, which is all points cancel, which is essentially just a Bloody or two mod that makes it so that you can cancel out of anything and the end Okay, the end result is an insanely beautiful awesome

Starting point is 02:54:54 Competitive game where people can just pop in and out of beast form you just turned fucking bloody roar into DNF It looks so awesome in action. It's great And yeah that tweet was going around. Check out the high level Bloody Roar tweet I put out. It's fucking so fucking cool. But anyways, from there, Harada has been asked, hey, what about, you know, Bloody Roar characters getting in Tekken or Virtua Fighter characters

Starting point is 02:55:22 getting in Tekken since, you know, Terry's come to Street Fighter. He went on a really long-winded detailed explanation that essentially was LOL la mal. What the fuck are you talking about? What are you even on about? These games getting guest characters is essentially meant to be a mutually beneficial situation who benefits from a character showing up that everyone goes what who's Jackie? Yeah.

Starting point is 02:55:54 And then actually even echoes the sentiment which Sakurai did say it's true. When Terry and Kazuya showed up in Smash, all the kids and all the Zoomers that were like, who the fuck is this old man? What is this? Why do we care? Where's Sora? Where's Steve? So that same energy applying to Tekken with Virtua Fighter or other 3D games showing up. He's like, it just doesn't make sense. It might make sense if these games came back. And so he's kind of like Virtua Fighter coming back It's long overdue for a return if that came back It would make more sense as a is a more contemporary title

Starting point is 02:56:32 but as it stands putting a guest character from a dead franchise in Doesn't make sense for Tekken So if you had to pick a singular guest character from the fighting game Pantheon to be in the Tekken 8, who would you pick, Willy? From fighting games? Yeah, from fighting games. You know, like a geese. Or like a terrier am I, you know.

Starting point is 02:56:57 I mean, there's a lot of good possibilities. It doesn't have to be Capcom or... Nah, anything. I mean, Kiryu is still the best answer, but that doesn't really apply here, I suppose. I think, especially considering they're both Namco properties, I think it would be most interesting and easiest to include a Soul Calibur character. I think they should go back and get a one off character from Soul Calibur 2 called Heihachi Mishima and put them into Tekken 8. I think that would be a

Starting point is 02:57:31 really good guest character. I think it would fit right in. Okay what if it was just a robot called Hachikun? Fuck it I don't give a shit. And he had the little wingtip hair sticking off and Lee was in charge of him. That's possible too. It is. Hey, Hachi. It's funny, I think it was Max that was talking on Twitter about how fighting games, stories shouldn't matter

Starting point is 02:58:04 in regards to like the roster and then Harada just retweeted him with the phrase completely dead like he didn't mention Heihachi but Harada just goes he's dead he's fucking dead I don't hate it I don't I like when things can move Oh, I like it. I don't hate it. I do I am okay with Move lists being translated into other shapes and forms because we can do that with 3d characters, especially now I'm okay with spiritual successors, but I am super down with dead being dead successors, but I am super down with dead being dead, right? In a world where I grew up where the thing I loved, a Street Fighter II, was stuck forever, not being anything,

Starting point is 02:58:53 like just perpetual, everything is stuck in time forever. I fucking love it. I get so excited by that. When I first saw Rock Howard and Terry without the hat and a Costume change makes me lose my shit from I think it's really fun I think rock Howard is a really good example of Rock Howard shows up in like one game and he's like brand new and it was yeah Wow Rock Howard and then spends like 15 20 years going Like totally defeating the whole purpose of Rock Howard, and then spends like 15, 20 years going, where's Rock Howard? Like totally defeating the whole purpose

Starting point is 02:59:27 of Rock Howard in the first place. I mean, like literally, I remember when like Rick Stroud fanboy was practically a slur in certain forums online, and it's like, you just have to accept in your heart that like Rick Stroud is never coming back. And then Vanessa came back, and Vanessa was like, oh, it's the new Rick Stroud. They just gave her all the same moves.

Starting point is 02:59:48 Okay, she's a 30 year old MILF, let's go. That's fine, we can roll with that. Rock Howard never fucking showing up until CVS2. Yeah, it burns, it hurts. But either way, man, I am super duper down with dead being fucking dead. And to that end, I also, it doesn't have to just be fighting games. I also am just like, you know, like, Sigma is just an eye roll every time.

Starting point is 03:00:15 Who fucking cares what he's up to or what he's trying to do at any point in that franchise. Can you run, jump, and shoot, man? Yes, you can. Can you dash, maybe, Hadouken, or absorb cool powers and do awesome things? You sure can. But the idea of, like, yeah, who the fuck cares? It's a Mega Man story, or who the fuck cares? It's a fighting game story.

Starting point is 03:00:36 It doesn't have to be that way. It sucks that it always is that way, and so the expectations are so low that you can say who the fuck cares, it's a stupid story that never mattered, but it doesn't have to keep not mattering. We can make it matter, we can do things there. You're crazy. You're insane.

Starting point is 03:00:53 You're completely nuts. I hate it. Well, we can make good things be good and also good in other places, like just because we can make the gameplay good. And that's why Street Fighter 3 New Generation was such a massive success! The gameplay being good doesn't mean the other things have to be bad! We can have many good things! It's okay!

Starting point is 03:01:13 Well then you're never gonna convince people to not like the things they already like? I'm not trying to convince anyone to not like the things they like, I'm saying the defeatist stupid attitude of who the fuck cares, it's just a story in a type of game that story shouldn't matter in is stupid and shitty and it's a dumb take because that doesn't need to be that way. It can be good. Here's the issue. There's no reason it has to be shit. Here's the issue with that. The reason why fighting game storylines are always going to be a problem, specifically for this reason, is because most people's exposure to a fighting game storyline is explaining why the character they like to play is no longer available. Once again, you can still have a world where the playable version of the character that the person wants is there

Starting point is 03:02:07 This is these are separate arguments. Yeah, but I don't want to play as Christy. I want to play as Eddie Gordo Okay I mean that I don't know what to tell you like if there's that well I mean if there's differences between the way they play or whatever the version of the character is The the spiritual successor whatever the case is you can do that You can have your non-canon ghost character, if you wanna do that as well, selectable. You can nightmare geese it up if you need,

Starting point is 03:02:30 whatever the case is. You can make your concessions. But the point remains that the events don't have to be dumb. And the moment, any time, what I'm focusing on here, is any time you talk about anything related to the story in any of these types of games and somebody goes Yeah, but it's always shit who cares and it's like yeah, I know but I would it would be nice if it was good That's it would be but I'm not talking about that

Starting point is 03:02:53 I'm talking about characters should never be beholden to whatever fucking storyline they have I fucking like You sound just like combo fiend explaining why you don't actually need magneto Because characters are just functions No, I'm just saying that it's nice if the things I like okay the reason why I think Like if I if the reason why I enjoy like it when it's like oh, why don't you I was asked many times by many people Why don't you play Blanco dude blank is in this game? he's at his best. Why don't you fucking play Blanco? Dude, it's the right time, you should be playing Blanco.

Starting point is 03:03:27 Blah, dah, dah, dah, et cetera, and so on and so forth. And every single time I answer, because I think Marissa's cool, because I enjoy her, I think she's rad, I enjoy playing the game for that purpose, it's fun. Is she better than him? Not necessarily, will she, whatever, I don't know, I don't care.

Starting point is 03:03:40 I wanna enjoy the game because I think the thing is cool. A part of what I think is cool is these settings. Stop right there, stop right there. Yeah, I know know the character being cool. I know what you're gonna say You're gonna say that I just I don't care about the reasons I think your character being cool that I can play as should be there and that should be the end of the thought Right, that's not what I was gonna say. Okay. Okay, then sorry. What is you're saying that There are people out there that go but I like Bl Blanka. I want to play as Blanka. Blanka is cool.

Starting point is 03:04:07 And if they encountered a storyline reason, that's exactly what I just said, Pat. You just said what I said. You're saying exactly what I said. That is what I said. You're going to say that the thing being the cool thing, I don't care about the other reasons around it. I just want the thing.

Starting point is 03:04:21 I get that. And that's why I know that's the point. What I am saying though, is that like, if the game is just a dream match, there is no story, it doesn't matter, everyone's in it, who cares? Then yeah, it doesn't have to actually be

Starting point is 03:04:33 tied to anything happening in the events of whatever world we're writing up and stuff. And if you want there to be a character that's there for no reason, that's selectable, I have no issue with that too. That can be there. I'm just like, if we're going to have anything resembling a story mode or anything resembling characters like changing or things happening over time

Starting point is 03:04:52 with them, if we're going to give you a beard or whatever the case is for the people that are a part of the events of that thing, I would, it would be nice if these elements of the games that usually are ignored can be cool ones too, can, cannot just be things that you get used to ignoring because they always suck or that's the case. But people's experience with these stories is telling you that their character that they wanted to play as died or quit.

Starting point is 03:05:18 Like, think of Mortal Kombat, the game that has like the big, big story. It's like, hey, you can't play Noob Saibot in this game. Why? Oh, and the reason given is not we didn't want to include Noob Saibot. It's oh, because they're dead. And if I just want to play Mortal Kombat to play Noob Saibot, why the fuck do I give a

Starting point is 03:05:39 fuck about the story if it just tells me I can't play the character I want to play? I'm just going to end up repeating it again. Like, that's it. They can be there. The people that can get the character they want to play as that's not connected to anything and that can be there without anything. It's just if it's going to be connected to the thing, it would be cool if that part of the game was done in a way that was interesting and compelling as well. I'd like things to have as many compelling points outside of the gameplay and inside the gameplay as possible. Wait, wait, what are you talking about now? Now you're talking about just the storyline. The whole point we were talking about is you were talking about Rick Stroud becomes Vanessa.

Starting point is 03:06:21 Yeah, and ultimately, yeah, and then the move transfers and the move transfers over to this new version of the characters. And then but this was like more generally based on like Hey Hachi to Reina. Right. Well, but Hey Hachi and Reina are different characters. There are. But you said the translation of the move list like like Julia. Sorry, Michelle became Julia. Hey Hachi became Reina. every version of Jack became Jack, the next Jack. The reason I can't play Heihachi in Tekken is because the story says Heihachi's dead.

Starting point is 03:06:59 Okay, so this is getting all messy and all over the place, but the train of thought to continue down is the stories are bad and it doesn't matter who lives or dies, the characters should always be there. And my thought is I would like if the stories were good in these games, I would all and like if there is a character that is not around anymore, if there's some consequential change or something in the world that happens or whatever the case is, it's cool if you have ways to like have if you want to do a spiritual successor interpretation of a character, I think that's dope. I think it's awesome that a character like Rock Howard exists and has some of

Starting point is 03:07:39 Terry's moves and some of Geese moves. That's cool. If there is a like available character that has no part of the story whatsoever, it's flashback Kei Hachi or something, then yeah, you can do that. You can find ways, you can come up with ways to make it so that there is the character that you just wanna play as that is your favorite on the roster.

Starting point is 03:07:59 I'm not going to fight that point. There's ways you can come up with whether it's, you know, if you don't want the, if you don't like the idea of the Christy Montierra or whatever, you just want the thing to say bison and you get your dictator and that's there. We can do that. Right? I'm just saying that like I enjoy when it's not just that. I like when there are things that change and evolve in characters and things that move through time and Ryu gets a Shinshu Ryu-ken that's a part of what's going on with what he's trying to do. Like I like when these things happen and I can enjoy these aspects of the game beyond just the

Starting point is 03:08:28 kit being what it is and functions, right? It's not the combo-fiend thing. And I'm like anything that leans heavily in towards the character and their play style and what's happening on the roster representing the world and the living breathing world and things changing and stuff and all that being good, then I want that to be the priority. And then we can still, if you just want to have the, over here, go grab the thing, there's the guy you like, then yeah, we can do that. But if there's a better way to integrate that

Starting point is 03:08:54 into the story that is reflective of other changes and things that might be happening, then my preference is towards that. And that's, I don't know what else to, that's the most I can break know what else to I guess the most I can break this down as I guess I feel like I feel like a two to four hour fighting game story that most half of players won't even play is a weird like nail in the ground to like doesn't like think it doesn't have to be, but it doesn't have to be that that's my point I guess is just like though and that's not the only point that's one thing like the the type of fighting game story that comes

Starting point is 03:09:31 Out that currently sucks or is not good like I Mean all of them. Yes, the thing that you're like, oh when we first see them Yeah, I'm not gonna sit here and defend and say that oh they have the best stories I'm gonna compare it to the shit that we hit and love, right? I picked a genre that I have an affinity to that is in extreme opposite to the things that you guys got into with Final Fantasy and RPG games that are nothing but narrative

Starting point is 03:09:58 and nothing but depth and lore and characters and story and all these things that are like, feeling like you read a full book and got a full 360 of a character and their depths and their meanings and motivations. I know that I picked a thing things that are like, feeling like you read a full book and got a full 360 of a character and their depths and their meanings and motivations. I know that I picked the thing where it's like, it's chess pieces, they're dressed up chess pieces fighting. And so it's nice when you can do something

Starting point is 03:10:15 that actually is like, oh, this is more interesting than I thought, this is more satisfying, there's elements to this that I find cool because as you start to care about these chess pieces over time and they do things and we sit here and go through multiple iterations of this, it's gonna be like, it's nice when again, good things can be good, right? So I know that like, story games, stories and fighting games were always garbage

Starting point is 03:10:35 and they were just like, you get to the end of arcade mode, you see a couple like a spreadsheet, whatever, PowerPoints and then we move on. And then you're like, oh, all of a sudden, oh, Mortal Kombat tried something out, here's a cinematic thing. You're like, oh, this is interesting. The events are wacky and goofy and dumb, and over the years they've gotten sillier with each one. But it's like, oh, they tried something crazy

Starting point is 03:10:56 with this whole, you take a different character each chapter. That's kind of interesting. And then a bunch of fighting games started trying to copy that and do that thing, and some to various degrees of success. Infinite was terrible at it. But it was something they tried to do that you're like, okay, there's a thing you can try here where if the characters in a chapter to chapter story mode emulating what Mortal

Starting point is 03:11:15 Kombat 9 did the first time are still playing out, but the events occurring are not dumb and don't suck, then this could be an interesting way to present a story in a fighting game. Right? Guilty Gear goes the complete opposite way with it and says, I'm just gonna have you sit here and watch an anime. We don't even give a fuck. And I'm like, that's ridiculous. That's a complete, that's like, that's a complete like, like tap out of trying to work in the gameplay and stuff. But I can see the difficulty of that. Um, but, uh, uh, and then you, and then somewhere in between those is Melty Blood,

Starting point is 03:11:43 where you play through 20 minutes of visual novel to get one round of a fight, and then go through another 20 minutes, which is also not satisfying either. These are all different attempts at doing the same thing, and they're various degrees of success and failure, but my point remains the same, I suppose, which is that if someone writes a good, compelling story,

Starting point is 03:12:01 and it's interesting to follow along with, that can exist in any one of these games, and there can be a way to deliver a story that ends up not being shit. It's not stuck with the genre that it has to be a shit story. Okay. I have something else to say, but before we go onwards, I would like you to name a compelling fighting game story that is not Mortal Kombat 9. Pfft.

Starting point is 03:12:27 Good luck. Okay, well there's a point of agreement. Evil Zone with the Saturday morning gimmick that they run because you're watching a bunch of TV shows even though the gameplay is terrible. It's kind of a funny gimmick of watching different channels. I kind of just want to wrap it back around. The whole point is I actually just really agree with Max, that the story should not focus.

Starting point is 03:12:55 Any concessions to the story they want to tell should not affect the roster. That's it. Like even the game that Heihachi died in, he was selectable after like six months. In Tekken 5. Yeah, I guess I'm like, I think it can affect the roster in the sense that a character can get a move list that reflects something different based on something in the story happening to them or whatever the case may be. The characters can get updated in ways over time if there's reasons for that to be a thing.

Starting point is 03:13:33 And those changes or things based on those story-based reasonings, I think it would be cool if those existed as a priority over just an X copy of the existing character, I suppose. But there is also like a, I'll actually put it out there. There is an agree to disagree here. Because you and I are on the opposite ends. I mean, I literally, by the way, have not said that in over 10 years since that I got shit on for doing that a decade ago. No, but I am offering it out there because our

Starting point is 03:14:11 personalities are so different on this and it makes me think because I'm I'm I can I can occasionally be stuck in my ways and You're much more open-minded to these kinds of things and it makes me think because like you look at Hugo, right? And Hugo is the grappler archetype of third strike. Mm-hmm, and I really like Hugo, but I would have preferred to play GEEF Strike. And I really like Hugo, but I would have preferred to play Gif. Right? I would have just preferred Gif, because I like Gif better than Hugo, right? But Hugo's cool, and he was my only option, right? And you generally want to see like new characters, or even remixes of existing characters, right? And I think back to me playing bloodstained and being like perpetually annoyed for the entirety of the time I played bloodstained that the villain was not Dracula. Like the whole time I was just like, I want to go fight Dracula. I'm well aware that this is like Now mechanically doesn't matter could it be surely presentation now here's now now

Starting point is 03:15:13 Whatever the villain was in that game. I assume it was not come as compelling or as interesting as a Dracula from Castle some guy sure I don't even write his name But if we were to take a second back in the other topic that came up earlier, a game like a Bloodborne comes along and this fits into a version of a Souls franchise game that you've been playing a couple different versions of that's a knight in a fantasy setting going around dealing with dragons and lords and such. But here's a completely different setting with a different time and different things reflecting that. And everything in Bloodborne, despite being somewhat mechanically similar to what you

Starting point is 03:15:50 already knew, is a new setting that is interesting enough that you don't for a second go, damn, I wish I was seeing anything like Artorias or anything from a previous thing, because this setting itself just happened to be fucking cool. If Bloodstained offered you an awesome not Dracula to fight at the end of that, that you probably wouldn't even be thinking about Dracula, but whatever it did made you go, damn, I wish this was Dracula,

Starting point is 03:16:15 but it just wasn't good enough. But that's why I think Street Fighter III with a completely new cast was a big mistake, because if they had called that Fight in Street or whatever, I wouldn't go in with the expectation of like, where's the characters that I want to play as? Just calling it 3. And it's just the wild hilarious world we live in is the one where on the same time

Starting point is 03:16:38 that that is the case, we now live in a world where we will not stop seeing people outcry for Makoto to return. Yeah. But Makoto that never existed if we were just to return to the old had to exist out of the void at some point. There was a time- This is where it gets complicated. There was a time before the new character became the favorite. They had to exist first in the world to then show up as a new idea to then Become the favorite this is where it gets really complicated

Starting point is 03:17:09 Because some of the people asking for Makoto back Were not alive When Makoto was the new character? The character predates their birth some and any character that existed before you were alive is obviously well they always existed but are always there but others there are others that are adamant fervent fans and favorites of characters that come out in the game that they love the most and they want those characters to return in the future and like as we move through time, it's a really hard problem to solve,

Starting point is 03:17:46 but it's like when you give a new character an opportunity to show up, they have the chance to become your new favorite. And it's easy to not to lose, I guess, sight of or lose track of the fact that you might never ask for something new, even though that new thing might be your favorite because you're just looking at what you're already familiar with.

Starting point is 03:18:10 It's instinctual I think to some degree, but I think about it a lot. I think Street Fighter 6 is like a really good example of all three of the versions of this argument. So you have the main cast, right, but people are asking for Makoto. They're asking for Makoto from Third Strike to come back as Makoto from Third Strike, right? Like a Street Fighter II character. Please come back the way you were. Then you have Aki, who is a character that no one liked.

Starting point is 03:18:38 Reimagined in a weird, yeah, yeah, yeah. Turned into a character that people do like, and people go, yeah, yeah, Aki, right? And then you have Bison, a character that I like, and I really like in the old games, that people are like, boo, get him out of here. He's old, I wish it was a new Bison. And so I think what we have is ultimately a really hard problem to solve for these rosters

Starting point is 03:19:04 that these games have to figure out is ultimately a really hard problem to solve for these rosters that like these games have to figure out what the best approach is to make as many people happy right you need to make new things that appeal to new people but new things that appeal to old people and old things that appeal to old people and old things that appeal to new people it's tricky to balance how you're offering what up to your multi varied fan base that all have different demands I think what we're currently getting is a riff it reflects that the people that have thought about the things that we're talking about here kind of conclude, yeah, we need to give people

Starting point is 03:19:34 some of like some shit that they really want that are staples that they're like attached and remembered strongly. We need to bring some shit that is like remixes of old things that are with a new interpretation and some things that are brand new. I think you kind of realize you need to run the gamut and appeal to as many people as possible with different versions of these things because the whole appeal of the toy box genre

Starting point is 03:19:56 that is fighting games is which of these toys do you think is dope and has your attention, you know? So they need to cover all those bases and that's what they're currently doing. I think that Capcom is really brave to have Bison come back and be exactly the same. I think the brave move was to have him come back as the same guy. It is definitely the wildest because of all the people that, like Abison is the one who died the most

Starting point is 03:20:29 and is the most. Died every game. Like of all the characters, you know? It's like, no one's gonna really think about, hey, what's Vega up to or whatever, but the guy who keeps dying, the Sigma, the Palpatine. Yes, exactly. The other thing, I think that BlazBlue's story, despite it being incomprehensible and I hate it, gets a lot of props for like just keeping every character going forever.

Starting point is 03:20:56 Like forever. Like the Blaze Blue series gets big props from me for just adding more characters every time, never removing. Yeah, BlazBlue and Smash, for a lot of folks, represent the madness of a roster that is insurmountable. You cannot play, you cannot learn. It's just, you want to talk about the feeling of, I stopped playing this fighting game, I came back to it a little bit later and now I can't handle anything that's going on because i've been left in the dust

Starting point is 03:21:28 Fucking games that have ever long rosters of just 60 plus characters are the ultimate version of this is impenetrable. I can't come back in Like it's what you describe the feeling of jumping back into a game of like multiplied exponent fucking 10, you know I think the league of legends fighter might have that problem also. The 2XKO. Yeah, I get it. Because like that has a roster laid out for it. And just keep it going until you hit the whole gang. The whole gang.

Starting point is 03:22:05 Everybody. Christ, is that even possible? I think that they're making new league characters faster than you can make new fighting game characters. I mean, I would say just based on the size of the teams and budget of those games respectively, like 2XKO is, the Radiant team is not able to output the level of league's team.

Starting point is 03:22:23 Like, you know, that's the main project. It's the flagship. It's gonna be able to do like we're expecting like 52 characters in to XK. All right League of Legends probably has Three times its roster in the garbage bin unreleased Then what's playable right now? I imagine for every character you can play there might be two that never came out Okay, there's a hundred and sixty seven currently That's a lot mm-hmm, so let's let's be let's be kind and say a quarter of that

Starting point is 03:22:58 So like we're looking at like what 45 50 Does that seem No, that game is people are gonna be so mad when that shit is anything less Folks are gonna be happy about theirs coming back and if they make that cut they'll make the cut but that game's not gonna be in its final shape with Any number that'll make people happy it'll always be shy of that A sequel might add more and that'll be cool because you'll get, hey, a burst of everything you knew plus here's another 12 or whatever. Oh, do you think 2XK would have a sequel? I just figured they'd keep working on it forever like League.

Starting point is 03:23:35 I mean, if they, like, yeah, they could. I don't know that any other Riot game has ever done that, but a fighting game always could, always could decide to stop, add some wild new mechanics, and then put a new version out if they wanted to make some money on that. But I don't know that Riot's, yeah, I don't know that Riot's method is to ever take a free thing and then put gameplay behind a charge. Yeah, I don't know, you can look at their other games,

Starting point is 03:24:02 I suppose, I have no experience with Riot's marketing tactics and stuff. Hey, I gotta be right back. Alright, be right back. Before we continue, I've been informed by my wife that we should just kiss already after our argument about fighting games. So, hey buddy, I love you buddy. There you go. Mwah, mwah, mwah. Mwah. Chu. Yeah, I had a vision. I had a vision of myself with fully gray dreads at staring at my phone when they announced Street Fighter 12 and there's just a silhouette of a big round guy next to

Starting point is 03:24:33 A bowl of Chanko stew and there's a big question mark in the in the silhouette and I'm just squinting at my phone I just I just, I just, I had a flash of that. You'll have to forgive me for feeling slightly nonplussed. So like, and the last thing I want to say is like, yeah, new characters are great. I think Akki's great. I liked Fung, honestly. I really like Abigail, right? But at the same time we get fuck asses like like 12 and rufus And you look at them you're like wow I missed out on in Characters, I would have had so that they could try some new bullshit that sucks ass 12 and rufus sorry at first I thought you said Necro and I was about to go Necro

Starting point is 03:25:27 Tattooed white fucking awesome just weird freak like that's the great season a straight fighter is like sure bets only Like oldies plus like the guests right Well, yeah, we'll see. And then maybe they'll take a chance here and there. I think, again, I feel a Hakann in the bones. But anyways, all right. I wish there was more characters than four a season. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 03:25:54 All right, all right, all right. So beyond that, talking about being accurate and talking about the story mattering, this is actually pretty apt. Nanny Impact Hunter x Hunter developers will not shy away from overpowering characters' moves if it means being faithful to Hunter x Hunter. That's so funny in a game with a small roster.

Starting point is 03:26:17 We will not allow the cast's Nanny abilities to feel lackluster. Bro fucking clown rapist Hisoka is gonna be so busted in that game. Him and Kulua are gonna be fucked. The gum gum whatever attached thing is stronger than it looks. Oh it's so stupid busted. I uh I mean look if you find creative ways, God bless the way Phoenix works in Marvel 3, and both of them for that matter, both Phoenixes are awesome.

Starting point is 03:26:54 I love the idea that this stupid lawyer man plays a different game, and if he can find the evidence, you're fucking cooked. I always interpreted that he is working outside the rules of the Marvel fighting game. Yeah. And in the meantime, Phoenix, as in Jean Grey, is just like, yeah, I can't wait for you to kill me, idiot.

Starting point is 03:27:16 And then you've got to get the bars to sacrifice to build it, you know? And I will say, as much as I I don't I don't acknowledge Jojo all-star battle there is something to the like go collect the fucking green baby words if you want to ascend heaven with poochie you know and a little bit of that Story shit taking over the actual gameplay, so I don't know if you if you picked it up, but the DBZ sparking devs Came out and said the exact same thing about DBZ sparking okay They said of course ssj4 gojita is gonna be way Stronger than base Goku why wouldn't we're making a Dragon Ball game? Yeah? Yeah, yeah

Starting point is 03:28:03 So whenever you play against your friends just pick the strongest character and that's that's it or pick pick characters that are appropriate or be like hey could could peak on beat blue Goku or don't pick your favorites and expect to lose there you go that's fine too I they showed off mr. Satan and how mr. Satan can't fly awesome well about just runs around on the ground that that rules I love that They showed off Mr. Satan and how Mr. Satan can't fly. Awesome. Like he just runs around on the ground. That rules, I love that. Use the weapons.

Starting point is 03:28:30 He was playable with weapons in Ultimate Battle 22, I wanna say. My fucking dick mouth is happening again. Yep, you're about to crash and Discord's about to blow up any second now, so. Well, we did better today. We certainly got as far as we could. All right, there's not much left,

Starting point is 03:28:44 so let me try to accelerate this process. I'm gonna do my part over here. Blah, blah, blah. You're gonna get kicked out of the call. I don't want that. Forthwith, and then we'll try to make it work over here. All right, what is happening? All right, give me a second folks.

Starting point is 03:29:09 I really don't understand that in discords where, because it forces itself to update, so it's like you can't really have an unupdated discord. Nor can you really have one that, you know, it's not like, oh you're installing the 64 bit versus 32 bit. Like it's always going to be, you you know what it's supposed to be there But alright here we go you're now back in bro. That's crazy cuz for me my end. It looks like you dropped the call. Oh, whoa I will I did I did but oh you did okay. Where's your video? I don't know Huh, oh, it's not on Why is your video not on that's so weird that's never happened before okay? Hold on dropping the call again and try

Starting point is 03:29:54 Cool cool cool shutting it down Joining the video call there you are turned it off by accident you turned it off by accident. I'm stupid That's what happened what happened was that I was stupid okay perfect nailed it got it oh man you know what's great you know what's awesome mm-hmm like lowering your standards and expectations sometimes like I agree hey why'd you do that it's cuz I'm stupid ha like not cuz ah, cause I'm so stupid. Like, you know, self-damaging, like your dad yelled at you shit.

Starting point is 03:30:30 Just like, guess I'm dumb. I mean, there really is power in promising nothing and delivering less. Like, that is truth. All right. Beyond that shit, the Alone in the Dark reboot, the developers pieces interactive shut down the Embracer. Dead. Everybody go home. And Jason Shrier confirms that Final Fantasy Tactics remaster is real and is in fact happening.

Starting point is 03:31:07 That's good, I'm happy about that. Yeah, was there a London the Dark reboot anything that just dropped in March? So let me check. There's a way that I check if these types of games are of value. And the answer is I type in Casey explosion than the name of the game. On Steam it said mixed user reviews, but overwhelmingly positive.

Starting point is 03:31:30 It's good. Casey streamed it. That means it's good. I see. I see. That's the system! Okay. I have positive memories of the first one of a million years ago on fucking 3. half floppies, but I don't remember anything about the story of it or what happened in it. I was way too young. It's Lovecraft. That's what it was. It was Lovecraft. So another Tactics remaster. Well, that game's always been in a weird hell where there's no way to get the good version

Starting point is 03:32:05 of the game on anything other than your phone. But then the phone version has been deprecated and replicated multiple times. Well is there anything to pull from the PSP one that happened that would be worth it? Like some of the art stuff or cut scenes? I feel like there's some features. The cut scenes, the translation. But that's all in the Android and iOS ports. Ah.

Starting point is 03:32:26 But those versions have lived on phones for like 15, 16 years. Like there's no way to buy it on your PC or your Xbox or your PlayStation, which is weird. But then also when they made the Chrono Trigger fucking phone port over to Steam, it was the worst dogshit ever. Yeah, and then it took them like a year and a half to fix it.

Starting point is 03:32:50 Hey, do you want to hear something? I was recently reached out to by a small bird who wanted to tell me about Square Enix and the Epic Game Store. Square Enix is not happy with the deal they made with the Epic Games store. They were not aware that the Kingdom Hearts games would basically sell almost nothing, which is why they're pretending internally that this is the game's launch on PC. Launch, yeah. Okay, okay. What are you talking about? This was never anywhere for the first time ever.

Starting point is 03:33:31 That's why they got Hikaru Tada to put out the statement. That's why they did the AI upscaling on the textures. Wow, look at these trailers. Remember guys, remember, let's go back. We can finally revisit it here on PC. Because they did that deal with like ff7 and also kingdom hearts and they are very unhappy and the gist that what I can acquire is the reason why epic keeps offering these deals even though they lose money on them all of them is that they can go look look at all the can go, look, look at all the games, look at all the publishers

Starting point is 03:34:07 that work with us in order to try and get investors and shareholders happy. Look, Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy and all this stuff, don't look at the numbers, don't look at the numbers. Well, what's Epic gonna do, get mad at them for bringing the birthday cake and party and streamers over to the Steam birthday. They're allowed to market the game however they want.

Starting point is 03:34:31 The launch on Steam is the game's launch on PC. Incredible. You're probably going to never see Square Enix put out another epic deal out. If you've got an email, you can send us it at castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. It's castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. I recently had somebody DM me on Twitter asking me what the right email was,

Starting point is 03:34:56 and I can only wonder that writing me was somehow faster than listening to the podcast. Were we talking about emails again? To be fair to everyone on planet earth, you have to listen to the end of what might be four and a half hours to hear the email spoken out loud. Yeah, but I mean, you can skip. You can skip. I guess.

Starting point is 03:35:17 Elena says, Dear Pat and Woolly, did you know about the Silent Hill Wiki circumcision incident? Yes, not only that, but I can direct you to Justin Wang, who made a fantastic video documentary on this very subject. If you do, then take it away, Pat. It's a fun story. Oh no, I'm going to tell you to go watch Justin Wang's video. He goes into exhaustive detail. He has all the notes.

Starting point is 03:35:41 He has all the screenshots. As someone in the dark, I'll let Elena take it away. The Silent Hill Wiki once had a problem involving its admin being really into circumcision talk. Really into it. He'd insist that some parts of the games are obvious references to circumcision trauma, inserted into unrelated statistics and rants about circumcisions and random articles on the Wiki. related statistics and rants about circumcisions and random articles on the wiki. As more and more people caught on and started arguing with him, wiki editors were eventually

Starting point is 03:36:10 forced to turn to fandom staff to get the guy removed as an admin once he started banning everyone. Eventually he was kicked out and briefly tried to do the same to Xenogears wiki pages before it got ripped and nipped in the butt as well. It lasted a whole week and has several highlights worth looking into if you want to check out the many articles written about it at that time He was absolutely silent hills fandom will never fully recover. Holy shit He was absolutely convinced that the entire plot of Silent Hill 4 was based off of Walter Sullivan going crazy because he was circumcised. And all the bio-horror was actually thematically related

Starting point is 03:36:52 to his long lost foreskin. Jesus fucking Christ, man. Yo, you never know what you're getting when it comes to a wiki, right? You're looking for that balance of folks that are like, I'm really into this and I can write a whole lot About it and you need folks that are like I am down to police this and I have fun actually Keeping these things up to date. It's pretty menial work, but I enjoy it and then there's that guy But yeah, the first one if you want if you want a deep dive on this by all means go to Justin Wang's YouTube

Starting point is 03:37:26 That's Wang Whang Justin's been doing great content forever. He has a band. He's handsome. He's kind of doing it all honestly Man the movement of people that are just obsessed with the regrowth and putting weights on their shit. And try, I just. Wully. Oh. I know that you know that we went to a school that had at least one of those guys walking around

Starting point is 03:37:56 pointing at people going feel bad. And like, I don't feel bad. No, feel bad though. Oh my god, man. Cause I feel bad! And it only makes me feel better when you feel bad! But I don't. Nooooo! This is...

Starting point is 03:38:20 Do I even broach? Do I even broach? Do I even broach do I do it's it's do I even broach mmm? Okay, all right, okay Talk about nothing here. We're not talking about nothing This is a private discussion The only part that matters here Listen it's the only part that matters here Listen The only part that matters here

Starting point is 03:38:46 That guy in my story was an asshole Okay, okay Look I underwent changes in life at a later age than most people do And as a result of that

Starting point is 03:39:02 I'm one of the few people on this planet that was old enough to be able to tell you what it's like with and without. And I can speak to anyone who is obsessed with growing it back and all that shit and tell you that as someone who has actually a perspective of both sides, because most of the time you're like, I was a baby, I didn't whatever. It's not worth it. It's not a big deal. It's infinitely better without it.

Starting point is 03:39:30 You're obsessing over a nothing. You're chasing a ghost. It's not real. It's way better without. You need to stop. This isn't my story. Just being real. With the unique perspective I have. This isn't my story. Just being real with this isn't this isn't my story. But I do have a different person that I've known

Starting point is 03:39:52 that had this had had it done in his 20s. OK, so after he had had sex with girls, OK, which is like a point of of interest. And he was like, yeah, I miss it. But it's basically the same. with girls, which is like a point of interest. And he was like, yeah, I miss it, but it's basically the same. Yeah, so again, I have insight of both sides. Under most circumstances, I can tell you, it's better without, you're fine.

Starting point is 03:40:25 It's just, that's better without. You're fine. It's just, that's the situation. I'm just being real. Now hold on, Woolly. Are you telling everyone to run out and get things done? I am not telling anyone to run out and get things done. I am saying that if you are without and you are obsessed with getting it back and what was taken from you you need to stop

Starting point is 03:40:47 because you don't understand you don't know you're looking at the grass being greener on the other side you are fine if not better you are fine chill the fuck out if you aren't and you're the way you are that's fine too you it is what it is but looking at both enjoying both vistas living and work walking as a day walker and the creature of the night as blade you're you're fine without man all right all right there we go we're out here. Goodbye everybody What the fuck are we doing don't feel bad about your dicks

Castle Super Beast - CSB 274: Backyard Furries Are On The Way

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