Castle Super Beast - CSB 287: Making It Annoying Is Based Actually

Starting point is 00:00:00 ["Sailor Moon Theme"] Yo, yo. Good afternoon, Wolves. Hello. What's up with your lighting? You're like in shadow. Yeah, I don't want the bright in my face for a moment. I'll turn it on a little later, but my eyes need a little rest right now. Okie dokie.

Starting point is 00:00:53 It's fairly close. So what's happening with you, guy who is clearly hungover? I am not hungover. Those are untrue allegations. I am not over I Simply am just not looking for that right now Whatever. It's fine dark lighting is show we can you know villain it up a little bit Hey

Starting point is 00:01:15 How about this? Let's start here I'm a late comer to the like a dragon franchise I'm learning quite late about the the weird ins and outs and twists and jokes 23 fucking games now Am I correct in that this is not anything That anyone could have called we are all confused and flabbergasted as to why Majima is Jack Sparrow all of a sudden. this is everybody being taken by surprise, right?

Starting point is 00:01:48 This is not like, oh yeah, there was that one side quest that one time where he wrote Yardie Har Har. Okay, so there was that one side quest that one time in Yakuza Dead Souls where you could get a pirate costume. And it looks just like the pirate costume that he's wearing. It's just red instead of purple. Is this a joke? So the the game, the whole pirate yakuza in Hawaii game, the whole like, like premise and synopsis, uh, fucking leaked on a 4chan like six months ago. Oh, yeah, and Like it was completely ignored

Starting point is 00:02:36 Because it was so stupid and that's how silly guy. This is someone making bullshit up shut up get out of here idiot. Yeah, I So Majima has So okay, so let's let's go through the steps the steps are They built Hawaii as a new location. Step two is. Accurate. What excuse are we going to have to get every character in the series over to Hawaii specifically,

Starting point is 00:02:59 so that we don't have to make a new area? Right? Like, every time it happens. Like, hey, we made an Osaka area. Well, guess there's going to be lots of plots going down to Osaka. We made a Yokohama area. Well, guess there's going to be a lot of plots that just happen to go to Yokohama, et cetera. So the next game was always going to take place in Hawaii, right? as for Majima himself What it appears to be What genuinely is that Majima wakes up with amnesia because that's really convenient

Starting point is 00:03:37 and a child sees him and asks him if he's a pirate because he has an eye patch and He goes I guess I am a pirate because I have an eye patch Pirate pirate and then the world becomes pirates Yeah, and some people are wearing t-shirts like it's like it's not particularly going too strict on its Moa Joe is there and Samoa Joe is in fact there Yeah, okay, so so basically adults getting hit in the head one too many times

Starting point is 00:04:14 Creating their own realities is the is also this franchise Also gives a really good excuse to reset Majima so Majima Okay, so you played Yakuza Zero in which Majima was like way more normal, way more normal. And after Zero came out, like they had him be crazy guy, but he could just like turn it off and like have a normal conversation with you. And this represents a nice way to reset his personality to like, like a regular main character instead of the Joker. And I guess like, uh,

Starting point is 00:05:00 we've established that like this franchise can go to the moon. It doesn't matter. Oh, it can. So whatever dude. Yeah. I love, I saw a tweet about this and I think it's it's it's great Cuz we have like focus tested. I think it was like the chosen awakening dawn Like like horizon zero dawn as titles and then over the RGG guys are like, he's a pirate He's Yakuza and he's in Hawaii. That's the game. Yakuza pirates. Or pirate Yakuza, excuse me. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:32 Although, what was the Japanese name? I saw something about that. I saw, I heard that it was even more blunt. Yeah, what did... let me see... Yakuza Pirates in Hawaii. I mean... yeah. I'm not gonna be able to find it. Okay. Oh, Yakuza Like a Pirate Dragons in Hawaii? Is that real? No. That's not real. Okay. Wait hold on no. No. There's like a dragon pirate yakuza in Hawaii and Is it like a pirate no, that's not that's just another okay, all right all right well anyways anyway Whatever he's got an eye patch that makes him a pirate wild speed pirates also

Starting point is 00:06:22 There's a really wild like pre-order bonus on the page that's like hey if you pre-order the game you can get all these bonus pirates and it's like cure you and and and Ichiban and you know shit like that like non-canon things But there's an entire row of characters on that list that are dead now. Well not in this world It's like they're alive? Go nuts. That dude's been dead since the aughts, man. The fuck is Samoa Joe doing there?

Starting point is 00:06:51 That's wild. Oh, the same thing Danny Trejo was doing? Yeah. The same thing that all those Bullet Club guys were doing in Yuck as a Six? I hope they get his brass music out and bop bop bop bop bop when he shows up. That'd be great. I hope they get his brass music out and bop bop bop bop bop when he shows up. So it's one of the goofiest things about like like weirdly enough the pirate Yakuza shit is not the goofiest thing to me. Do you remember a little while ago where we read an article where the the the actors and

Starting point is 00:07:18 Netflix's live action Yakuza were like we don't we didn't play the games we want to do our own thing. Yeah they instructed us not to we booted it up and they ran over and slapped the controller out of our hands Okay One of the dudes on the character site of like guys that'll join Majima's pirate crew that kind of looks like Majima is Played by the actor who is playing Majima in oh Fucking yaks a Netflix movie Wow

Starting point is 00:07:44 Okay, so like. Wow, okay. So like, they're like, okay, don't play it. He's like, what if I played a different character inside the game? Would that be okay? Uh, you know. Would that be cool to do? I have to say that like, I'm surprised it's not as simple as, yo, Majima loves One Piece and he was reading it one day and that was it.

Starting point is 00:08:05 I mean, you could just do it. There's no reason you can't do it. If Ichiban loves Dragon Quest, why can't Majima love One Piece? Everyone does. It's that simple. You could just do that. There'd be no problem there. I mean, I'm assuming about 20% of the missions will be one piece jokes and references like Yeah, probably there there will be a fucking I don't know sake fruit of some kind and there will be yeah a million weird proportioned people showing up. So did you watch the trailer for Pirate akaza some

Starting point is 00:08:44 Okay so like one of the things that that's interesting is that or um, uh, Pyriakaza? Uh, some. Okay. So like one of the things that's interesting is that, um, like they, that, the setup of that trailer is like the end of Infinite Wealth. Like it's like, they're treating the story of this series like seasons of a TV show. Which is wow, because they're all like 100 hours long. Huh. Then I guess I might have been spared. But I mean, again, it doesn't seem like it matters that much. So I suppose the only question is like, was there any attempt with the samurai games at all to contextualize them anywhere in the story, or is it just this is literally an imaginary timeline world?

Starting point is 00:09:34 So I never, I didn't play much of the samurai games, but the samurai games were, these are historical figures in a unique story that just happened to look, act and sound just like those guys you know. And then Infinite Wealth literally says that they were a dream. Those were dreams that Kiryu had. Yeah, sure. Great. Which is why it was... So Kiryu stayed up till too late to watch fucking historical dramas and then he fell asleep and he imagined, what if Majima was that sick guy that's in Samurai Showdown?

Starting point is 00:10:16 He was watching a Kurosawa movie and then that's it. Yeah. Okay, well, you know, Sea Dog of Shimano is pretty cool. That works out. Let's see if they can put any attention towards boating and shanties. I would like to point out that this feels like the all-time proof in the pudding that good job, Johnnys. You got the Judgment Series fucking killed. Oh man. that good job Johnny's you got the judgment series fucking killed oh man

Starting point is 00:10:45 because this was Yagami's turn on the game. That thing's not coming back huh? No no it's not which is weird because you run into the judgment gang for like ten minutes in infinite wealth they're literally just sitting in a coffee shop and you're like hey Hey, it's you guys. They're like, Hey, where's Yagami? Oh, he's not here. He's doing something else. If the dinosaurs never go extinct, then there's no defeating them. Right? Like that's, yeah, that I guess you just have to ride it out. Sucks. Cause I mean, it feels like between the two versions of

Starting point is 00:11:25 it that there was a serious attempt to really push Judgment and then push it again. And Judgment was like pushed as like a more serious version of Yakuza because Ichiban was like so like so zany and it looks like both the action and the RPG games are gonna just be maximum like clown shit. I think- Did you see the gameplay trailer of Majima where he's throwing out the pirate blades and they're doing like on fire round trips through like 20 guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess- Reality is gone. Um, the moral of the story is don't cast real actors for your main protagonists because,

Starting point is 00:12:08 you know, between this and Onimusha, um, you're just not gonna, it's not gonna work out in the end. You have to like do weird roundabout things to get back to that franchise if it's all based on one person whose likeness is owned by a fucking dinosaur conglomerate? And there's also a weird like there's no effect of Majima's like like his moves in in a fight Where they showed off in that battle trailer that he can spawn for shadow Majima's That will will fight alongside him and like attack and shit like that fuck yeah and Like that was a thing that ichiban saw him do and you're like, oh it's bonds so full of shit Like it's just Maj was really fast. So it looks like it's like no actually

Starting point is 00:12:59 He is making shadow clones and they are attacking people They it is real. They are infected. He did do it in five! You're right! He told me he did it in five! No it's a real thing? Yeah he had the shadow clones back then I forgot. Oh it's been a while. And are they are they substitution clones or are they physically real? Um. Don't answer that. It's not clear. It looks like they're just there to fake you out because the moves always end with the real body stabbing you Okay God I love I was just like no shut up that did happen canonically in this one I forgot I forgot up that did happen canonically in this one. I forgot I forgot that that did happen

Starting point is 00:13:47 Great well, I mean look he he looks the part man. He's got his mouth open and again very Jack Sparrow And the attitude is already there that man is 59 fucking years old. I buy it. I buy it Who Johnny Depp yeah, probably So yes pirate yakuza in Hawaii coming out in like five months. The idea of catching up to the series is so impossible because they come out every year. They come out every year. Yeah, come out every year. But if they if the annualized releases are just complete nonsense like this, like if there's no reason to feel like you're missing out on the connected story whatsoever, then that's probably fine.

Starting point is 00:14:36 I know. You don't know that. So I can't okay. I can't tell you anything in specifics But I will say that the story very clearly deals with the fallout of the ending of Ichiban story Okay, all right, and also takes place a highly Specific amount of time after infinite wealth's ending so that you would be dealing with very specific things that happen in infinite wealth Forgive me for assuming the fucking pirate game was not connected really besides the the intro part you mentioned It looks very very connected. Yeah, okay Though it has it has become the house in the modern time. How is this a modern-day pirate? Oh, that's probably the funniest thing. What's the trailer starts? You're like, yeah, historical thing.

Starting point is 00:15:28 And it's like, no, no, there's buildings. And he's riding his bike and it's like, yeah, 2025 2025. Majma's doing Uber eats on his bicycle. And like, so you're telling me like, like a fucking a giant, like American Navy, like, you know, aircraft carrier is not pulling up going, what the fuck are you assholes doing on the on the on the seas surrounding our country? No, man, because they're all hiding over at Madlantis. Don't you know about Madlantis? It's the secret pirate cove.

Starting point is 00:16:03 Does the does the boat go underwater and lead to a fight club now It's actually a gigantic islands that looks like a theme park that is for pirates. Okay So you you haven't been okay Did you ever go to purgatory in Yakuza zero? No, huh? Which one was that purgatory would be the underground 0? No, huh? Which one was that? The purgatory would be the underground casino in the sewers. I don't think so. I'm sure in 0 you went to an underground voted... I went to an underground fight club. Okay, whatever. So in every game there is a secret underground casino of some kind of lavish wealth. Right? And as the games have gone on, the mechanics of the physical location of that casino have become

Starting point is 00:16:55 less and less real. In Gaiden, it's like 50,000 shipping containers in the middle of the Pacific have been like hashed together to make a gigantic gambling island. And in Pirate Yakuza, it's a whole island that's off the map inhabited entirely by pirates. And it looks like a fucking theme park Good to see if I can get a fucking Screenshot and it's called mad Lantus Okay, okay And If I'm picking up what you're putting down here as well, so

Starting point is 00:17:41 Majima washing up on Hawaii is Just rolling him closer to Ichiban. Yeah. And perhaps he needs to go through his own hallucination adventure so that they can both be on the same page when they maybe when they meet up. So here I got a screenshot of the pirate island of Madlantis for you. I got a screenshot of the the pirate island of mad lantis for you Is it our long park Yeah, it's our long like bigger. Okay. We're at our long park. Yes got it Like a cruise ship like that's hoisted up on top of the mountain in the background. I didn't even notice

Starting point is 00:18:25 Yeah, the holy shit. It's a a yeah true that is a modern cruise liner impossibly lifted don't worry about it dude when you did when you did the I forget the name of it but the island mini game in yeah in infinite wealth there was like a mountain of garbage that was like as big as Mount Fuji in the background of every shot of that island. And you had to clean that shit up. Well, shout outs to Team RGG. Keeping them guessing. No one can predict.

Starting point is 00:18:56 Well, they said in a recent interview, we're going to keep making games about old men doing old man shit. Right. And like, this just screams midlife crisis. Like, dad, what are you gonna do with your time? I'm gonna be a pirate! Yeah, yeah. Dad, you're too old to be a pirate.

Starting point is 00:19:21 So here's the question now. Is this wacky announcement preferable to a Judgment sequel? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, okay. No question. Because the energy is, oh man, this was replacing Judgment but how many people would have wanted the next Judgment instead of this? So Judgment and Judgment, Lost Judgment were really excellent but people like Majima better than they like Yagami. It's just... Sure. Yeah. And when you run into infinite wealth, so you run into Majima and infinite wealth and

Starting point is 00:19:51 he gives you no expectation that he's going to have a spinoff game six months from the events you meet him? I guess, well, yeah, also, the whole direction direction the franchise is leaning the dumber the better like oh The the franchise is is like leaning further and further into nonsense Which which judgment leads away from it seems right? Yeah, no judgment was a little bit more serious a little bit more crime thriller though You do beat the absolute shit out of like 25 high school kids for like 10 hours in Judgment.

Starting point is 00:20:28 And the intro, the vibe I got from the beginning definitely made me, it reminded me of watching like Infernal Affairs a bit, you know? Yeah, no, that feels like where they were going. The way he's, when he does the little trailing mini game and his eyes go, and lock on, I was like, damn, that's cool, you know? but yeah, it's a different flavor. Also, it's like, listen, if we're going to have each one be like the new, like the future,

Starting point is 00:20:52 right? And like Majima replacing Kiryu as the old guy is is the most obvious fit in the world because unlike Kiryu, he doesn't have cancer and he's not aging. He's not aging at all. In fact he looks younger in pirate yakuza than he does in infinite wealth. Great. Yeah actually he looks way younger in pirate yakuza than he does in infinite wealth. Sick. Yeah fan fan favorite, sure. So this is probably going to be the new get in here. Like this is assuming this one is really good. This will probably replace zero.

Starting point is 00:21:43 Oh, wait, get it as you mean the starting point for the game 23 Everyone start start at the pirate game because he has fucking amnesia So you new players learn about Majima as Majima learns about Majima No, but if the assets that we reuse to me to make an economic Decision on saving money for this game are all past references, then I don't know how well that works. So speaking of that, Gene Park over at Washington Post, friend of the show, an overall cool guy, went and spoke with the RGG devs about their like development style And this is me paraphrasing it but the gist of it was that they're really confused That everybody remakes their whole game every time they do a sequel right I saw that it's yeah

Starting point is 00:22:36 It's not like them going like oh, we're being super smart by reusing everything. They're like why do you guys like new levels? Just use the Do it. Yeah. What is this? I mean, shit again, you know, when waker that would wake her up Majora's mask. I'll always bring that up, you know, like fucking grab what you got. Do some cool shit with it. Save some time and money. I get it. Like they have put this will be the 23rd game in 21 years.

Starting point is 00:23:10 And like, there are like, there's one really bad one. Like, the rest are like like good to really good Well, I mean Y'all have said that like the older it gets the rougher it. Yeah Yeah, but I mean in the context of when they came out sure the only one that I could I've played all of them except For the ones that were not translated and the only one That was like, oh, when it came right out was Dead Souls.

Starting point is 00:23:52 I think if you're going to commit to annualized releases, then yeah, recycled assets is to be expected, right? It's probably, I mean, it's pick one or the other. Like I think, I think annualized releases is usually not a good idea for any franchise. I mean, you know, KOF included, like, they eventually gave up on that. But if you are committed to 12 month turnarounds,

Starting point is 00:24:18 then it has to be part of it. Or it makes sense that it is. It's, so it's not 12 month turnarounds. It's closer to like 15 months or 16, right? But that still gets it out like one a year. And then every now and then they skip a year. But like I've gone through all of these and the amount of like the amount of fat that they leave behind is so little.

Starting point is 00:24:42 Okay. How many times do you need to reinvent the Mahjong game? Yeah, that's done. You fucking don't. That's done, that's done. Okay, make new pieces for the PS4 version, you know, like stuff like that. Okay, what about all the Blackjack shit?

Starting point is 00:24:56 Okay, what about fucking Pocket Racer? There's all these fucking things that you just carried forward, just carried forward. Upris a texture here, maybe there. Okay, comparison point. How much, what's new in the average Musou game? I don't know. I could not tell.

Starting point is 00:25:16 Yeah, yeah, I would love if someone out there had the- Legitimately could not tell. Yeah, like what percentage fresh are we getting? More characters? Couple more bosses, I characters couple couple more bosses? I imagine couple more playables, but overall I'm gonna guess 85% or more kept Maps and models hmm, so um

Starting point is 00:25:40 You played zero so you remember that there's this there's all these little animations you see in the side quests to make up for the lack of voice acting. And specifically, there's a little fist pump move that some of the NPCs do when they're talking. It's like, ahhh, like fist all the way up in front of them, and like, yeah, yeah, like they pump it twice, right? Okay. That fucking thing is in Every game they have ever put out and it is from Yakuza 1 and they have never changed the animation It is the same fucking thing. I Mean well now you've got a state a series staple at this point

Starting point is 00:26:23 Especially if you move engines and you keep that same bit, then that's on purpose. Oh yeah, dude. Oh, it's a PS2 animation. And like, it's fine! It's not like a big fancy cutscene like money animation, right? It's just like a filler thing you throw onto NPC dialogue. It's like there's a part where they go, okay, well we have an emulator that we made. I don't know if you know this, but we have an emulator that we made for Sega games for the Yakuza series.

Starting point is 00:26:57 For the arcades, right? Yeah. But like the emulator isn't made to sell old retro games. It's made to include in the fucking Yakuza series. It's our own, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they go, okay, what games we got? You want, you want Virtua Fighter this time? Okay. You want, you want fucking OutRun? Yeah, hit it.

Starting point is 00:27:19 I think as well, a big benefit too is that like, if you are a franchise that the location being accurate is a part of your appeal, then that's doing a lot of the heavy lifting as well. Just walking around and going, oh shit, it's that place I know. That was one of the other things they said and the reason why they make new levels. It's like, well, we're shooting like TV seasons of like a drama that just uses real locations around the city. So like when there's a massive generational leap, yes, they'll remake. So like Yakuza, sorry, like a dragon 10? We'll go back to Kamurocho and

Starting point is 00:28:01 we'll spend the whole time in Kamurocho so that it's up to super, super double 8K HD and then begins the process of, do you think we're ever going to go back to Hawaii? Right. Well, so I mean, that's a partial answer to their question. Why do other franchises not reuse stuff more? If you're not going for location accuracy, going through a set piece level again in a different thing, you can only do that so much at doing it at

Starting point is 00:28:31 all. Any games that are linear about it, you want to be very particular about level reuse and things like that. Yeah. The more I think about it, the the more impressive it is because like, I'm sure it would be a lot easier to write like a much more, like a much grander story in most of these games. If it, if you allowed yourself to have them take place further than one block away from every other location in the story. Like Zero takes place exclusively between two city blocks.

Starting point is 00:29:06 Like you and Nishiki drive out to the country for one cutscene, right? But like 99% of that plot is taking place within the Kabukicho and Dotonbori districts. And they've had like, god, Dotonbori's had like what? Six games that have fucked with that area Just write something new that could happen there like if if if a devil may cry ladies night did come out and it was just like starting at the Clifod working backwards exact same levels in reverse order and Like I had like a couple new enemies, but it's the same otherwise.

Starting point is 00:29:45 That would not go over well, unless it were DLC or something, but as its own game. Someone in the chat pointed something out. In Yakuza 5, there are actually a bunch of different locations. It has by far the most amount of locations of any game in the series and it kind of suffers for it like You don't get to spend as long in any of them and they're not as detailed and they're not there's not as much shit going on Okay, okay So you get to go to Tokyo and Osaka

Starting point is 00:30:23 But you also get to go to Tokyo and Osaka, but you also get to go to Sapporo Sakai and Fukuoka And it's just there's not a whole lot going on in those areas and The feeling they want you to have in most cases I get is that is like there's a living city around you. You're not going to do it all. Do what you want, do what you can and move on.

Starting point is 00:30:49 Yeah, but then you run into a weird problem of Sapporo. Is that the one with Saejima? Sapporo's section? It's winter. It's actually just really small and there's very few quests there. And so it feels like you're just like you're you're popping in for like an Hour and a half. Okay, and then back to the woods Okay, um

Starting point is 00:31:18 well That aside you were going to take a look at a like a dragon game. I would recommend this one Yeah, hey, I'm still I'm still intrigued by it by the the the couple hours I played of seven so But there's a yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of things out there in the world and there's not a lot of times so There's a lot of things out there in the world and there's not a lot of times. We shall see. I think every year is the year that I tell people to give up on catching up on this series. It is becoming an American comic book franchise. You got to just see the one that has the gimmick you like and grab it.

Starting point is 00:32:08 Yeah, that makes sense. I get that. I've said this on stream a couple of times, but I've pretty much decided that the approach I'm going to take to any impossible sized LPs probably from here on out will be to regulate and know in advance which side quests to do and which not to do. Yeah. And just put that on because it's just especially given I'm like once a week recording, it's just like there's no other way to do it. So you know what?

Starting point is 00:32:40 That's a great plan. And I tried that plan with Infinite Wealth and ran into a disaster, which was like, because it's Kiryu's last game, every Kiryu side quest in that whole game is, Hey, right. You remember this guy from Yakuza 2? Right, right. And so it's like, I actually had to go through all of them, which means the Kiryu side of that LP it's like larger than the Ichiban side. Yeah. You could do it with every other game except for Infinite Wealth. Infinite Wealth does not allow you.

Starting point is 00:33:13 It's a celebration, which makes sense. Yes. No, I get that. Remember this fucking loser? Oh, he's dead now. Oh, darn. And that's also the approach I would take to something like cyberpunk if I tried to tackle that. It would just be like, all right, line it up. Let's take a look and see what every session is gonna look like in terms of how many sides to do and how many mains to do it and what frequency probably as well.

Starting point is 00:33:40 Without having some sort of like rail there, it's just a humongous insurmountable task, you know? Oh yeah, by the way, just since you played Zero, Yuki's back again in Pirate in Hawaii and she looks exactly the same. Cabaret Girl? The top hostess at such a high. I saw Obatarian.

Starting point is 00:34:00 I saw Obatarian on the deck. She was on the deck. Obatarian was like in her 80s in 1985, man! Obatarian I saw but area Terian on the fucking poop deck she is 110 plus by default unstoppable Unflappable yeah, no I need her just doing her her best like Enlightenment pose she was born in that fucking leopard sweater god damn speaking of obitarians okay all right I like this I got to the silver samurai case in Phoenix Wright and so we've started that out you met Wendy then we

Starting point is 00:34:42 met old bag Wendy old bag I got it I want to get a list of like these characters started that out. You met Wendy then? We met Old Bag. Wendy Old Bag. I want to get a list of these characters' Japanese names as I meet them just to know what the pun is because I know there's puns left and right with all the main characters and everything. So her being just literally called Wendy Old Bag, that's on point. on point and I'm like like she looks like you can see between the hairstyle and the faces like she's gonna be the old gossiping fucking head with the hand gesture where she does like this and of

Starting point is 00:35:15 course she does that you know and I was just like man this is interesting because you know we're in the middle of the, I just did the investigation, right? So I didn't do the courtroom part yet. But just gathering the evidence, I'm about to start the courtroom part, but you meet her and then she loses her shit and I'm like, oh, look, look at your crazy extra angry animations that you're displaying here. That's fun. I'm like, are we looking, are we setting up a thing where the first villain is just a first case villain, just pure scumbag thief murderer. And then the second is like the height of the evil CEOs behind the criminal mastermind, like,

Starting point is 00:36:02 like like the elites, right? the ultimate untouchable I can buy my way out like people who you want to fucking get theirs and then after that the next level up some old fucking gossiping hen who doesn't want to talk to you that old battle axe down the road that's rooting your shit your angry mother-in-law. She needs to get hers, god damn it. Yeah, no, Wendy definitely fulfills a nice role as an investigative boss fight in that she just doesn't want to tell you anything, she doesn't want to let you go anywhere.

Starting point is 00:36:36 She's just completely in the way. If I'm looking at this game's set up, who are the criminals in society, the criminal archetypes that you want to use this game to be like, get justice. That of that fucking old lady. People are in the way of justice. That's talking mad shit down the down the street. And or that unbearable mother inlaw that won't just fucking give up. Yeah, that's a nice one. I could see that.

Starting point is 00:37:11 Because they, especially in situations when they have power, you know, when they get to like, when those whispers travel, and then everybody fucking bullshits when they're part of the church congregation and she's in the back kind of just fucking running the whole thing and you can't do anything about it because she's like, oh, little old me, I don't know what you're talking about. And then meanwhile, she's fucking Tony Soprano. Yeah. They need to get there as God damn it. So unexpected, but I dig it. We'll see what happens with this case Still samurai case is fucking incredible Yeah, and you know and find that we're getting like, oh it's fucking a lot like recurring character

Starting point is 00:37:53 Like oh gumshoe showing up and people kind of coming back around and stuff is fun It's not like a rotating cast the entire time And it's like oh detective gumshoe being kind of slow is is crucial because that allows Phoenix to investigate and get data from him that he otherwise won't be able to get. So that was one of those things that I like. I was like, this is fucking stupid bullshit when I was playing it because he's like, Hey, I know you're the defense attorney. I shouldn't let you have any evidence until it sprung on you in the middle of trial I'm like that's fucked up crazy

Starting point is 00:38:30 But you know you seem like a cool guy I'll let you examine the scene I guess the concept of surprise evidence much less shit walking through the crime scene and going oh Did the CSI's notice this no good? I'm gonna take this for later is So nuts it's like you do it all the time. It's crazy Oh, did the CSI's notice this? No? Good. I'ma take this for later. Is so nuts. It's like you do it all the time. It's crazy. Phoenix lifts like core, like he might as well lift the gun off the ground to dust it for Prince himself. Man, and there's no chain of evidence here.

Starting point is 00:39:00 Yeah. And just knowing how like, meanwhile in North America like fucking up which Evidence or what belongs to which case because you didn't submit it properly is the difference between fucking Cosby walking and Cosby going to jail like literally oh Evidence that was submitted to a civil case was used in a criminal case and that Rope or throw the whole thing out, you know? Like, it's so by the book and everything needs to be clearly submitted in advance. And here it's like, oh wait, did you lie on the stand?

Starting point is 00:39:32 Hold on, try again. The judge says, give it another shot. Oh, you lied a second time? Alright, well third time's a charm. You know? And depending on how this- Hey, this guy's fucking perjuring himself for like an hour on the stand can we do something about that? No, no, no, clarify what you meant by your statements,

Starting point is 00:39:51 you know? Literally saying like, and that's what I ran up to her because I attacked her. I mean, you know, your honor, this man is sweating profusely and his hair is making electricity symbols And then fucking Edgeworth. I can't believe it dude It's like what you what my client meant to say is he committed crimes just not the ones he's on He's he's witnessing on the stand right now. You know like oh you fucking asshole How did he get his own fucking piece of shit? It's crazy. It's crazy. How you got spinoffs. That's really interesting because I can't let it go I It's this really interesting thing because like it feels like you like the fact that you came to Phoenix, right?

Starting point is 00:40:43 30 years right later right is and you see that Edgeworth has two spinoffs. He's been a character for the whole time and you're like, well, how bad could he be? But you forget that when they're writing Phoenix Wright 1, they weren't planning for Edgeworth to have a fucking spinoff series 20 years later. Of course. That's what I'm assuming. But it does, yeah. And because a fucking spinoff series 20 years later. Of course, that's what I'm assuming. And because of those spinoffs, I kind of just took that as like, ah yes, the other guy who is clearly Phoenix's rival, but surely somewhere inside there's a moral compass that is, it might not be the same type of compass, it might be much more cutthroat, but he still follows his own.

Starting point is 00:41:27 Fuck that! No! I got an updated autopsy report where I squiggled in a new detail that I made up just now. No! No, though. Updated report. Ugh. Yeah, it's kind of- Can you prove I didn't falsify this report. No, I always get my verdict,

Starting point is 00:41:49 which is real attorney shit. Yeah, it absolutely is. You know, it doesn't matter whether I think he did it or not. I'm here to I'm here. It's an adversarial system, man. Yeah, so anyway, we're gonna see where that's going but Don't worry you can cheat too. You do have a magic girl with you who literally uses the magic Yeah, I saw that that is cheating that is 100% Yeah, you didn't even win in the second case against red white like you didn't win you just you summoned the ghost of fucking the dead to show up and start reading the Epstein Black Book list and Then it was over. You know so you didn't even really get your earful come up and stare I'm such a good lawyer because I have a magic person

Starting point is 00:42:41 happens there. I'm such a good lawyer because I have a magic person. It's also surprising because it's like, I kind of was like, oh, you're going to get him in a legal conundrum, but he'll probably still have to come back to be found guilty. But it's like, no, wait, you're not the prosecutor, you're the defense attorney. So he just confesses and then I guess, I don't know, we'll see what happens. You know? So like you need to do something really important with the Phoenix Wright universe is that the Phoenix Wright universe only exists in the room that your characters are currently in.

Starting point is 00:43:19 Yeah. Okay. So knock on effects or like natural consequences of the shit that you are going through Don't worry about that Like we have established and like a courtroom of people saw this bitch turn into a ghost And be like it was him And like let's ignore the whole idea that the court system would dramatically change with these types of people around, because it would be really fast to just do that over and over. Ignore that.

Starting point is 00:43:51 I mean, it would be one thing if it was like, oh, it's just Maya and like her eyes are kind of glowing a little bit, but only Phoenix notices. But she gets taller, the fucking her back straightens out the boobs grow Like it's wild. She actually transforms. Yes You know, I don't know and I'm assuming the voice changes to if that would be the case but Yeah, so it is it is a wild one though to kind of have these cases where you're like, okay You are defending an innocent person and the actual culprit is a witness who's sitting there. He's right there.

Starting point is 00:44:30 But like, this is not them on trial. This is you trying to find your client not guilty. Yeah, but the best way to do that is to convince the murderer to fucking confess right there on the stand. Or have him froth out the mouth and collapse. And then, and then they get arrested and off, off camera, like Edgeworth has a second trial where he's like, they confessed on the stand in front of a hundred people. And then you get, and you don't get to sat, you don't get to see that

Starting point is 00:44:57 part. You don't get the justice. Well, you have to remember Wooly after their confession, their soul dies. Right. And they are unable to speak. True. Yeah, no, kind of like Darby. Like they just literally, their soul escapes their body. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:45:20 In prison. So that's it. Right. In prison, so that's it right? Yeah, so anyway, I'm I'm fully I'm fully preparing myself for that too as well where it's like, you know, you're gonna get those satisfying moments But you're not gonna get the the the prosecutorial side of things, you know I mean shit that feels like it could be like another character. That's not Edgeworth. That is like the person who Whenever Phoenix sets them up you got another DA to lock him down you know basically the dude you'd need the person on representing the people to fucking

Starting point is 00:45:55 lock up whoever confesses in that last one yeah, those games are incredible Yeah, we also so yeah finished off dino crisis one and Congratulations, yeah, that's a fun little romp in a in a survival horror setting that Nix's things up and does a little differently with dinosaurs instead of Zombo's. So yeah Would you believe me now if I told you that Dino Crisis is definitely the weirdest of all of those games from that era? I believe it. I believe it. It's fucking so strange.

Starting point is 00:46:36 I mean, I can, you know, the idea of running down the hallway and putting a laser barrier up instead of like, you know, shooting is kind of like there's something to like, oh, let's board off this wall, this window, you know, instead of like just wasting bullets on things. But it does now that it's all said and done, it is in fact, a shame that the worst parts of that game are what should have been the best parts, which is the T-Rex encounters. You know, that sucks. And it's just a product of the time because the gameplay elements were worked out.

Starting point is 00:47:16 Survival horror was understood at that point, but the cinematic boss encounter, they just didn't know the best ways to go about those. And in the end, you had like, yeah, these three kind of fake boss fights, or four for that matter. And I was always hoping I'd get a real one and I never got a real one, you know? And my understanding is like even... No, no, no. Okay. Well, I was just going to say like like even with like, you know, like Tyrant and Nemesis and stuff like everything I've always, I remember hearing about and stuff and is that like you,

Starting point is 00:47:54 there is a fight, right? And you do have to, and then like even if it's like, oh, grab the rocket launcher at some point. No, you fight those dudes. You fight the fucking shit out of them. Yeah. And and it does matter what you're doing and how you're doing it and what you're shooting and what's hitting them. So, if I, that burning helicopter port fight was a perfect setup to run around and actually shoot it, but it turns out that was just a stall for time

Starting point is 00:48:22 and then afterwards you just get these little cinematic things. And they're also like based on I Yeah, I had a weird like time the myth time the grenade properly moment But like it's only when the bite is starting but then like there's I frames in between anyway So I was just like man, I just wanted a an honest big boss fight, which the game never really gave you so I just wanted a an honest big boss fight which the game never really gave you so but in any case the rest of that was pretty cool and it was fun as well to

Starting point is 00:48:53 You know you pick your paths on who you're gonna follow and then by just exploring a bit and making my way through I was Able to catch that asshole doctor and fucking hit him with the roundhouse kick. Man, I don't remember shit about that fucking game. Oh yeah, there's like an evil asshole. We call, there's literally, there's Dino Birkin, right? There's Durkin as we called him. There's Dino Wesker. You know, there's all kinds of, you know, and you're just like, yeah, okay, we got it.

Starting point is 00:49:21 You got to use this nonsense science to create the third energy. But incidental to this limitless energy source, dinosaurs happened to pop out, but they were never the goal. Isn't it awesome that it had nothing to do with Jurassic Park? We made dinosaurs in a lab. At all. Isn't it awesome that it was accidental time travel of dinosaurs?

Starting point is 00:49:49 We were going for some other shit and like they just walked through the portal and everyone's kind of ignoring it too. They're like, yeah, that's really, that sucks. Anyway, about this fucking stabilizer and initializer and the third energy, you're reading all these notes and they're talking about who the traitor scientist is and done it at a dawn It's like bitch. You're getting your guts ripped out by a Toronto dawn like like that's kind of the priority right now But yeah, it's completely incidental

Starting point is 00:50:17 They do a lot of fun stuff with third energy in dino crisis 2 cool Stuff with third energy in dino crisis 2 cool Okay, cuz like the the setup of that game is the opposite of the first one Where the island got transported back in time and they got transported back forward in time Okay So like the dinosaurs were hanging out and then the island showed up where they were Okay, and then they started to live there and then they the island went back Okay Yeah, I mean well, I guess we'll have to see you know, but um, I

Starting point is 00:50:54 Definitely am reminded of like, you know the the the parasite Eve kind of vibes with this whole thing, but Remember when sequels could be a completely different fucking game entirely. Exactly. We're like, Oh, cool. Yeah. And there was a point where the game is like, All right, we got to do this. Let's go. And I'm like, I'm going to take that as the little nod to the player. Start spending your weapons now. It's it's like you're free to start poison darting and grenade in whatever you want There's a there's a specific musical cue in all of those games. That is the open up now

Starting point is 00:51:31 Yeah, shoot anything you want. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a dramatic escape theme that just starts to play and you're like, okay It's time to turn this game into a shooting gallery Because you fucking take out two dinosaurs on the way to a save room early on and then you're out of all resources and then you're like, I am never making that mistake again. So it just conditions you into being paranoid and then you just have to play stingy as fuck until the opposite. If you play enough of these games, you get brain problems about your inventory. Well, I mean, so the whole thing changes once you know exactly what's coming and you're

Starting point is 00:52:04 on a replay. Oh no, but I mean, if you play changes once you know exactly what's coming and you've already been you're on a replay You know like that. Oh, no, but I mean like if you play enough classic survival horror games Eventually, you just become why would I ever use a health item? I'll just reload the save if I die and just do it Perfect. Yeah Yeah, especially when one of the items in taking up inventory space is just a reload from the previous room item Like you can you can see how all these inventory things happen because I'm playing these at like 11 and 12. Yeah, also mixing like, you know, you're mixing your herbs

Starting point is 00:52:36 except there's like a giant, I don't know how, I feel like. What if you wanted to make V-Jolt every time you wanted a health item? So every single thing you fucking pick up, right? There's this like chart that's not in the game that you have to refer to Of what you can and cannot mix and You know, and it doesn't show you doesn't confirm any of that and then also once you do make something

Starting point is 00:53:07 There are some times where at the best state you can no longer copy or duplicate, you know, or interact with it in the mixing. So you always have to keep weaker versions of anesthetic or healing items in order to duplicate and mix those up into the final versions. Do you want to mix an aid, a rec aid, an intensifier, a dart S, ADS+, ADS++, ADM, ADM, plus ADM++, ADL, s plus, a d, s plus plus, a d, m, a d, m plus, a d, m plus plus, a d, l, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, l plus, a d, afterwards so keep it at the lower level. You have to keep it at the lower level but with the M before you add it to the enhancer. I don't know what the fuck they were thinking because RE3 had an ammo mixing mechanic and the ammo mixing mechanic has a file that is in your inventory when you start the game and the only way to get rid of the item to get your full slots is to read it. And it goes, A powder plus B powder equals C powder. A is handgun, B is shotgun, C is grenade launcher. Yeah. So I mean, shit, years later, obviously, the fear and hunger version of this is like you have your

Starting point is 00:54:26 big inventory and then you go to the mixing tab and the mixing tab just has the recipe list and anything that you've never mixed is just question marks. But stuff that you've read about, it'll pop up and say, oh, you need this plus that. Or if you just try it randomly and get the result, that'll pop up as well. And then from then on, you can just go to the result and say, yeah, make me one of those. You know, and it'll just grab what it can of your shit to do that. So yeah, so I think it's just a time issue, of course, but it definitely lent difficulty to the game that like kind of was born born a frustration in a way, which was, you know,

Starting point is 00:55:04 the style at the time, right? If your entire tank controls movement philosophy is hindering the player, creates stress, and that creates the environment we want. Making the game annoying is based, actually. Yes, then of course we're gonna give that T-Rex iframes and not tell you how to mix things and make those dinosaurs respawn on saves and all that shit because that's the point.

Starting point is 00:55:31 Frustration is the point. It's one of those things that you see people talk about this with FF14, and I think it's a really good example because people go, it's just not the same like it was back in the Final Fantasy XI days when it felt like there was so much to discover. But nowadays, as soon as the patch comes out, people data mine it and they optimize it and whatnot. And the one that people bring up is like the way that notorious monsters or hunts work in that game is like, there's a discord and you go

Starting point is 00:56:07 to the discord and a guy will go hey the hunt train is meeting at this spot at this server time be there everyone join up into the party and then someone has pre-scouted the locations of all the notorious monsters in the entire expansion and what we're going to do is we're going to fly as a big group and we're going to just bop them all out in like an hour and everyone's going to get all the rewards and then the person who's organized it will set the timer for how long it'll take for those to respond and when they respond someone will go out and find all their locations and put them into a fucking Google Doc and then he'll put up a message on that discord and he'll say alright everybody

Starting point is 00:56:43 it's time to run the the Mateus fucking train We'll go and it's it's very like rote right it's very much like there's no the excitement Finding a notorious mob whatever right and they're you know back in ff11 back in ff11 Guys like max were the only ones who knew the spawn timers and could monopolize that shit forever, forever like the whole history of the game and just own whatever dropped off of that and just own it forever. And it's like the having sold survival horror games where they're like, man, it really felt like there was so much to discover. It's like, that's because it was obtuse and it was there to fuck with you.

Starting point is 00:57:28 And you were supposed to barely scrounge through the game, not understanding half the mechanics. It is a really tricky balance to go forward in time and keep games up with the speed of internet discussion, to design games around the idea that I'm playing this in a Discord call with the homies and they're gonna just tell me what, you know, to design games around the idea that I'm playing this in a Discord call with the homies and they're going to just tell me what, you know, or wiki things. Oh man, I can't beat this boss. He's weak to fire. He's weak to fire.

Starting point is 00:57:53 Right. And, you know, obviously the fromsoft solution of like having people put tips down in the game world is a nice immersive way to do that. That's a really nice immersive way to do that. I think that's great. I found nearly every hidden wall in Elden Ring as a result of not the chat, but of a player message. Yeah. And the understanding that, hey, if you were to play offline someday, we still

Starting point is 00:58:19 should allow you to be able to complete this. So yes, there will be a dev message floating in the middle of the air over there. And you're going to go walk up to that to investigate how is there a message floating, you know? But yeah, I guess like there's still, and the goal is to still have these moments of like, you know, you're like pushing on

Starting point is 00:58:40 when you're out of resources and you're near death and everything's bad in like a Souls game, but you just make it past the shortcut and then you get back to the bonfire, right? Or you see the new one or so. And running, getting back to the save room, dragging your ass, bleeding, but barely making it is supposed to kind of like, you know, cement that feeling as well, I suppose. But yeah, it's just, there there is a there is always just a balance between like, I think, after a certain amount of time, with any of these genres, as you get familiar with them, you're like, okay, it's no longer about tension, it's just about game rules being defined. And then, if I know what those game rules are, I'm going to try to exploit them to the maximum, or I'm going

Starting point is 00:59:22 to try to break them, or I'm going to use them to the most to my advantage. You know, which is again, what like that's what what Soul Games kind of entice you to do as well with the whole like I'm going to stand back here and just fucking deal with that cheap monster shit. Because if he's cheating, I'm cheating. when when when things like that T-Rex show up though and just, you know, give you like you're robbed of the actual encounter to give to create that tension, I kind of I think I'm like, how would I have felt about that even when I was a kid back in the day? And like, I probably you would have spent more time trying it out until you eventually figured out like, oh, just run. And you would have been like, I personally, I think I would have been just annoyed, annoyed as well, you know, like I would think would have been like, God damn it, that sucks. Because it turns

Starting point is 01:00:13 out the thing I was supposed to do was not what I was supposed to do the whole time. And I would rather those moments be like, I am supposed to do what I think I'm supposed to, like, I can see the goal here is to fight this really hard thing or to get past this really hard obstacle, but it's still like within the rules that I've parsed this game to be under. Does that make it, do you know what I mean? Like when you don't just suddenly strip the whole thing out and make it like guess, but also the answer is nothing.

Starting point is 01:00:48 You know? I mean, there's hell, there's a like, there's a carpet pull moment in case two in Phoenix Wright where like, yeah, right before the spirit incarnation moment, you have to go through the, you have to go through the dude's airtight, revised third version of his story. Oh man, it's so tight here, man. You can never find a fucking clue in this.

Starting point is 01:01:15 Yeah, so you take a second and then you read through it three times and you're like, hmm, what am I going to challenge here? And then it finally shoots you forward to like actually there was nothing to do, you know, but then and so like, Hey man, sometimes there's at least one moment or I remember pressing every single fucking dialogue and you needed to press every dialogue in one of the later games for them to go, Oh, there's nothing. Okay. So good. Cause I was about to say that I did like that after reading through it I went through three times then he goes I don't know what to do and then you're like, oh we're moving forward because he doesn't know what to do

Starting point is 01:01:50 But it wasn't like try and fail and with and or click click click that that that that that Fucking walking dead empty cut empty gun, you know, like that's that's the difference. That's the difference is like, okay, without without breaking the entire rule set of what the game is, it eventually goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know we know, right? We're moving you forward here. So anyway, yeah, it is it is an interesting balance for how we've landed on that now. Anyway, though, good stuff. I enjoyed it. I think, yeah, that leaves a little more time to push into Shadow of the Urchery. So last time around... Did they nerf it in between the last podcast and this podcast? Yeah, and that's okay

Starting point is 01:02:46 I know that's gonna be the case for every hey listen that so I I went through those nerfs You know what the number one nerf is the visibility has been increased on lots of attacks that was Impossible to fucking see cool One thing that I talked about at length that was like that is out of control. That is ridiculous. Dry leaf arts are too got a little better as well. That's cool. Um, and yeah, some, and then of course some, some boss stuff, right? I have more than accepted that like, I'm not going to be there on week one for

Starting point is 01:03:24 the wild raw versions of these things. I'm just going to be there on week one for the wild raw versions of these things. I'm just going to have to get whatever FromSoft designates their final vision to be for these things. So, you know, they're really in a wonderful position development wise because they can put out a final boss that's like horribly over tuned to the point of it being like kind of nonsense. But because everyone's like from software games are so hard, my balls are so big, if I beat it, um, complaining about that is like very low compared to what it otherwise would be. And then they, they tone it down and then to what it should have been. And people go, Oh no, it should be harder. Yeah. Yeah. oh no! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, it should be harder!

Starting point is 01:04:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the most justified nerf they've ever given to any boss they've ever done. Like genuinely. No, like I, yeah, I do not feel a ways about it. I've seen a lot of discussion as to that feeling and being like, yeah, why are you ruining it? Stop doing that. But it is what it is. I'm fine by that. I think we got past Bonnie Village, went up to that cathedral where there was the,

Starting point is 01:04:48 kind of like the maester and then like the lady of night in the night armor. And yeah, some plot shit going on over there, but not much to it. But I did encounter the outside mausoleum corpse, But I did encounter the outside mausoleum corpse, which allowed me to then get the R'lyanna or R'Nalla twin swords. And those things are fucking great. I really enjoy how stylish and fun it is to like, stance in them.

Starting point is 01:05:22 People keep saying hands in the chat. Hands Yes, do you do any hand stuff? There's a lot of hands. There's the big fingers that that are in the big fingers area. You know, that was where like it seems to be where the two finger origin points. Okay, so okay, so you saw that? Okay, I didn't want to fucking Yeah, the points that I'm suspecting are where the two finger origin points. Okay, so you saw that. Okay, I didn't wanna fuckin'. Yeah, the points that I'm suspecting are where the greater will launched its comet. Just landed.

Starting point is 01:05:50 It launched its comets with fingers and then they took some fingers and went, that one is gonna tell us what to do. I love those areas because there's nothing in them other than, ugh! This, ugh, gross alien stuff. The finger should have been moving a little bit just to emphasize. But yeah. And then it really does look kind of like the Starfall Beasts or so where they're in the crater of where it landed from space.

Starting point is 01:06:25 You know, you can see that it's like, you know, just those two map spots. It seems like that's the communication points. Pretty interesting. Gross. And I, yeah, that's, yeah, I think that was pretty much it. Oh yeah, that one fucking mausoleum, not mausoleum, but the walking furnace boy that's like, ah, the rules changed. You know?

Starting point is 01:06:48 And I'm like fully, I'm reminded of like, I'm riding aggro up to the boss and then you jump off, get to the Colossus and you're like, oh, it's another humanoid Colossus. Let me jump on its ankle. What do you mean it's wearing high heel boots? I feel, I felt like my enjoyment over those guys started to rapidly fade when I found that guy. Just like, Hey, we really want you to do it's the 11th hour of the game and we really want you to use the new consumable system. So we're going to make it so that the only way you can even hurt him

Starting point is 01:07:30 make some pots, you fucking idiot. use it. I don't want to use pots shut up it's also a weird thing where like the the The tear for your flask you get the the deflecting tear From the first one. Yeah, it's like by far the best reward you get from any of them It's not a close thing comes close to that after huh? And it's like that that thing carried me through like the last third of the fucking DLC encounters man I Mean like the fact that it's like there's a description for like this is what the pot does when you throw it backwards while riding Torrent yeah, that's never going to happen.

Starting point is 01:08:05 You're like, on what fucking planet do you think I'm going to Mario Kart red shell a pot? Never. Like that sounds like an awesome cinematic moment, but that's so not going to happen in the flow of gameplay. You know? Yeah. Madness. Absolutely absurd. But, um... Yeah, I actually uninstalled Elden Ring recently. And I was like, man, what an incredible game.

Starting point is 01:08:32 I don't think I'll ever go back to it ever again after beating that DLC. Well, you did too, right? Yeah. Technically two and a half. But also, it's like six Souls games. Mm-hmm. It's so many. What I would actually really like to do is replay just the DLC.

Starting point is 01:08:54 So what's interesting? Can you? No. I'm sure somebody has like a hack save game you can just do. It'd be interesting to, yeah, because I guess once it's done, it's done, but the mods for that, okay. What happens in these games if you, oh no, it's patched, nevermind. Okay.

Starting point is 01:09:17 What you're describing is interesting because I'm like, yeah, I do feel as well like you need some space before you come back to a Souls game and then you're like, right, I'm refreshed, I'm good to go on that. But for some reason, like I feel like Bloodborne is a little immune to that because the setting is so cool and different that like I'm not getting any Yharnam scratched by Elden Ring. Well, Bloodborne is also like way shorter

Starting point is 01:09:46 Certainly. Yeah but like Transforming weapons and stuff and and overall just like that that you know fucking gothic setting is like that it's just not at all scratched So you just play lies of p then yeah, I guess that's where you go cuz that's like a very direct like man There ain't enough blood-borne is coming out So anyway, so that that continues I want to give a shout out so I went yesterday to watch okay now It's getting dark. I'm gonna turn the light on there we go. Hey Reboot Rewind is a documentary series and there was a special airing of the first two

Starting point is 01:10:32 episodes here in Montreal yesterday. For you. For me in my private theater. Yeah, I know that the people behind it, shout out Raquel. And so they are airing, there's going to be eight episodes total. They aired the first two, which were each an hour long in the, it was the same place where they do the Fantasia film fests, so like the Concordia theater buildings. Those things sold out, you know, it was pretty nuts. Like they did multiple cities and like, yeah, they sold out everywhere that they did. And it's just, yeah, this is the same, the reason why you've been hearing or seeing tweets about

Starting point is 01:11:15 reboot and stuff a bit more frequently now. Is it coming back? So they found the old D1 tapes, which was like the highest quality recordings. And then they were able to track down a machine to get those converted. I remember when they were asking people for like, does anybody have this machine? And so they did eventually find a machine. And it's like, again, these things are so old, it's just unused. And it's incredible. But like to get the best quality versions of these old tapes and these old and the old show, they were able to convert the whole thing. So they commence that process and then reboot officially mainframe officially put out like episode one, you know, in like the full quality version as well. And it's pretty awesome to see like, you know, it's like, yeah, going back, it's almost when you go back to old film reels, and you're like, yo, we can practically go to 4k with this almost, you know, if you just convert it properly. But yeah, that was all part of the same group of people that were like just doing filming a documentary, talking to the

Starting point is 01:12:14 creators of reboots and getting behind the scenes on everything. And I was expecting this to kind of be like, yeah, so you know, we got started, here's some of the sketches over the years, if you've, if you've been a reboot fan, you've kind of paid attention to some of be like, yeah, so we got started. Here's some of the sketches. Over the years, if you've been a Reboot fan, you've kind of paid attention to some of the announcements and some of the stuff, and you've been following and seeing some of the sketches. Art books, Brendan McCarthy, the guy behind Judge Dredd, who worked on it. Like, there's some fun connections there, where

Starting point is 01:12:39 I've mentioned before an episode called Bad Bob, where it's Mad Max there, basically was used as the direct precursor to Fury Road and then he went and worked on Fury Road and that's why it became what it was. That's such a one to one interaction. Usually there's like a couple more steps and did you know that the person who blah blah blah, it's like no I remade the Mad Max episode of Reboot

Starting point is 01:13:05 into Fury Road I did it. Yeah it's these weird deep cuts are like they're there and you can go see like oh yeah I know he directly sent the episode by a bad dob of Reboot to George Miller who then was like oh shit you know and then one thing became another. But anyway, so this whole process of, yeah, getting those old tapes, yeah, Linus Tech Tips was who was able to help them with the conversion process. This whole story was, it's crazy because it starts out way, way earlier before any of the like first notes we knew about it goes into such insane detail and it's one of those things where they set out to basically shoot a documentary perhaps like two hours or so and they ended up with like

Starting point is 01:13:53 just infinite hours of interviews infinite hours of sketches that were never uploaded anywhere way more material resources and wild stories about the production of this thing than they expected. What I was so happy about, because it was really, really incredible and interesting, the emphasis on that part in my reboot video where I'm like, yeah, a lot of people kind of wonder when they see reboot these days, they go, hey, Willie, why are you into this weird janky looking 3d thing the walking animations are so goofy and the lighting is weird

Starting point is 01:14:28 And it's like true, but if you compare it to its contemporary competitor nothing fucking nothing You'll notice that the lighting is actually quite nice and sophisticated You know and it really really takes that point and emphasizes how they made a 3D show out of nothing before Toy Story came out when no one even understood how to use CG in this way. Yeah, I remember sitting there and seeing the commercial, the very first commercial for Reboot, and my hair blew back like thrill house. Just like whoa. Yep. They straight up, like yeah, they just pioneered

Starting point is 01:15:12 a style that like didn't exist. And same thing, when I saw that I was like, I wanna do that, I wanna work for that company, I wanna make that, whatever that is. Like I need to know more about that. I was fucking, yeah, enthralled by it on site. That was all just coming from this computer graphics and silicon graphics at the time were just these things that were like, oh, you want your fancy commercial to

Starting point is 01:15:36 have some text in space that goes, whoa. That's crazy, dude. That's all, yeah. Then using those machines to basically slowly build a goofy looking person. And then they made the Dire Straits music video, which had 3D characters walking around in it. And that's kind of, yeah, in, when they kind of did, yeah, they did Money for Nothing and then those characters showed up as cameos later on and so on. It's just crazy to see the amount of people that are like, okay, you're telling me you

Starting point is 01:16:18 want to use this machine to do what? You want to take a typewriter and make a movie with it? How does that make any sense? You know, like how do you? That's what you're want to take a typewriter and make a movie with it? How does that make any sense? That's kind of what you're saying to me. And you're like, and I need to quit my job to believe that this is actually going to happen? Are you sure this is going to happen? Are you 100% certain? For the love of God. No. You know? And at some points, there were people at the early mainframe staff that were like, it was so

Starting point is 01:16:45 cheap and shoddy set up initially that they were in a hotel room just making the show, as you do, of course. One of the employees working at the hotel was like, oh, that looks cool. I wouldn't mind trying that out. Do you have any experience? No, not really, but it looks really cool. Then went up, did an interview, and they're like, yeah, you know what? Fuck it, get in. And then he went downstairs, quit, changed his clothes, and then went up to the same

Starting point is 01:17:13 hotel room and just started working. And his boss that he quit then brought him his lunch later that day. It's like that level of just like, oh man, they scrounged to put this thing together. You got a degree in theoretical physics, buddy. I have a theoretical degree in physics. All right, that's good enough. Good enough. Yeah. And then the process of doing all that while making deals with YTV and ABC, which is the American distributor and stuff. It took like, the first two hours of that just went by and they barely got to like, okay, now we're ready to get the first episode done.

Starting point is 01:17:55 It just started getting to the airing, the show part in all the setups. So if you want any, if you're interested in Reboot at all and you want to know anything about how it was made, this is the most definitive, insanely detailed, amazing collection of data that is important to have, literally for posterity for the history books. The other thing too is this show was made by a bunch of old British guys, you know, and like they like have these incredible like bits and details and stuff. But you know, not all of them are around anymore, you know, and there's a window of time that you that closes as like this kind of show will just eventually be like, oh yeah, that

Starting point is 01:18:38 one obscure thing that happened some time ago. So getting it now is pretty important and that's what they managed to do, you know. So yeah, huge shout out to that and just obviously exciting and fun to, you know, walk into a room with other people that fucking love Reboot and are in there, you know, proper opportunity to wear the merch. Saw Levi, saw Mike Zero dude who haven't seen in a minute rocking the reboot hoodie as well. And yeah, that was one other time than to rock that mainframe team jacket that y'all brought down with you last time. Thank you very much for that by the way.

Starting point is 01:19:21 The wife was very excited to see you wearing that jacket yeah clapping and shit it was a flex I was like ah shit everyone was like yeah got the mainframe team jacket is very very sick so I was so like shocked that it fits you so perfectly it does it just happens to. Yeah. It's great. Like, because like there's so like it was it was a it was a jacket like from somebody on the staff. So like, it could have been any size. It could have been anyone. It could have been way too small for you. Yeah, it's anyway, it is a mystery, you know, but that was very fun. So they're going to start airing it on the 24th. So literally tomorrow, if you go to the Reboot Rewind Twitter,

Starting point is 01:20:21 you can see the direct links and stuff. But it's going to be, there's a YouTube channel, and it's also gonna be airing on, yeah, a subscription service as well. Shit, I don't have the details exactly, but. Ah, post them on social media later. Yeah, but go check them out. Eight episodes covering the exhaustive history of Reboot,

Starting point is 01:20:41 and super duper interesting if you're at all, if you at all love that series're at all, if you're at all love that series like I do and you want to find out about how it was made. Yeah, TELUS Optics TV and Stream Plus is where that is. Cool. So beyond that and a bunch of people, like as we go, at one point the intro is playing and you're like, man, this is a room of people, like at one point the intro's playing, and you're like, man, this is a room of people that have been waiting 30 years to just yell,

Starting point is 01:21:09 reboot, at the same time. You know, yeah, everybody feels it. And everyone has that same story of like, I saw it and I didn't know what I was looking at, and I was blown away by it. So, lot of fun there. Speaking of having a lot of fun yo fucking astro bot Astro bot is so weird. It's so fucking game

Starting point is 01:21:36 It is a really really great video game, and it's like man Remember all your friends your friends that you love? And you're like, yeah. And then you turn it off and you're like, they're dead. Oh, like, like in the moment, you're like, yeah, I love these guys. And then as soon as you walk away, you're like, they died. Well, you know, there's like it's like, oh, look, there's like some Capcom characters and there's some characters from other

Starting point is 01:22:06 You know non specific Sony franchises, but also there's a fucking pocket station. You know what I mean like yeah It's like ten minutes to remember the name of it. I was looking at it going like Chocobo minigame yeah, it's the not VMU It's the Sony VMU, but it ain't a piece of fucking shit, and it never came out in English Oh my god the fucking pocket station It like yeah, it's a collection of all the IPs that Sony does not have lest we forget Yeah, and it also it like it's drowning itself in this thing. We're like like it's drowning itself in this thing where like Sony had such a good spot with like these weren't PlayStation characters. Yeah, these were not Sony characters. But somehow you

Starting point is 01:22:54 thought of them as such. They kind of Yeah, yeah, they kind of landed there. Right? Well, because because Metal Gear Solid is a flagship franchise that just became a PlayStation thing, you know? Like, even though they weren't fully committed to that the entire way through, Final Fantasy also for years was kind of just that. They don't own those characters. They're not theirs, but where else are you going to go for them? Yeah, it's got that association.

Starting point is 01:23:19 Like Alucard is not fucking a Sony character. No, Raizel. Yeah. But, but then you just, you just buy association, get in there. And then there's the ones who are. Obviously you see Crash and you see Jack and Daxter and, and, and, you know, and so on. Um, Ape Escape. But like, you, um... Does anyone put me remember the main character's name from Ape Escape? I don't know.

Starting point is 01:23:47 I couldn't tell you. His name's Spike. His name is Spike. Because he's got spiky hair because of polygons. He's got that OG protag hair with the two colors ready to duel. But when you get to that point, I'm like, oh, they're committing a level to this? They're putting a whole mechanic in? Let's see if they have the courage to make it so that you use the right stick to throw your net down,

Starting point is 01:24:17 R1 to jump, and the D-pad to fucking move the camera, you know, or whatever crazy shit was going on. I remember being like the analog stick for like swinging the net. I was like, whoa. And I look back on it like, man, that game changed like controlling. It was nuts. It was nuts. Yeah, before twin twin analog was just the standard. But then you get to shit like God of War level and you're like,

Starting point is 01:24:45 oh, we are lovingly spending our time advertising our God of War game, specifically Ragnarok as well. Out now. Yes. Buy it, please. Here's our remix theme. Here's our mechanic that has extra love and extra details put into it. The whole area, the level keeps going. It is quite a like, yeah, the series is alive. We're still making this. So here you go. Please go buy. If there was not a link that led me to the store page right afterwards, I would not have

Starting point is 01:25:18 been surprised. And yeah, I guess in between that that you're running into things that you're like, oh, whatever happened to this or that or stuff. And I get, it's a mixture between, hey, look, all these fun cameos, hey, remember that, and also a bit of that Deadpool and Wolverine feeling of like, and for some of these perhaps a Vikings funeral, perhaps a send off, you know, in cutesy form. But in the middle of all that, just some fucking fun platforming. Yes.

Starting point is 01:25:59 Some joy, like some classic rare style, put cute eyes on everything and have it bounce to the left and right to the music. You know? But is it as good as Concord? Well, did it cost questionable amount of money to make? Bro, those two games coming out right next to each other is like legitimately the funniest fucking thing ever. It's great.

Starting point is 01:26:33 I love it. The future of Sony is Astro Boy. The future of PlayStation is Astro Boy. And you know what? I don't think anyone was talking about it in production or leading up to its release. think it was like hey that was like two weeks before it came out the people were like oh astrobot though Yeah, cuz again. It was just like oh, yeah, the really fun platformer from the PS VR collection. That's great And then in retrospect as after release it was like oh fuck. This is a really fun platformer You know simple good to the point

Starting point is 01:27:02 It was like, oh fuck, this is a really fun platformer. You know, simple, good, to the point. And you know, you climb walls, you use your stretchy arms powers, you grab your enemy boss by the tail and spin it into the fucking distance. Like, you know, it's doing everything it's supposed to do. But yeah, I hit the, there's like an octopus boxing boss that you fight with like little punching Tentacles at you and it's incredible. It was a really fun boss fight And I'm like, yeah, this is all the fun I'd have playing a Mario Galaxy style game or so like loving that It was great. Hey, you guys should make more of these

Starting point is 01:27:39 They don't cost that much either Didn't like it cost that much either. Didn't seem like it. Yeah, I mean, if people were talking about it in advance, I definitely didn't see much wind of it until the release. The only person I knew who talked about that game at all before it came out was Gene going, yo, Astro Bot looks hot. And he was like an Astroot believer on Twitter for a couple weeks beforehand, getting excited for astrobot. It really is. It's wild though because the feeling was the best.

Starting point is 01:28:15 Well, it was a really good platformer on PSVR, but the VR element to it is what made it feel so unique and fun. The fact that you're standing over one area, looking down and platforming without the camera moving, because you are the camera of God just looking at it, was a very unique feeling. But yeah, cool to see this kind of come and be, and like, yeah, you're surfing on a PlayStation controller

Starting point is 01:28:40 and pulling people into the hot tub, and then opening up a PS5 and building heat sinks and all this shit, you know? And yeah, it's a wild one. But yeah, clearly just a simple fun thing. And does not look like it would cost full price, but that it does. That is a full priced experience You you might think it would come included with PS plus or something as a big old mascot simple platformer

Starting point is 01:29:13 But regardless, it was fun. It's fun. It's it's it's good Beyond astrobot took a quick look at a game called Pokemon Close Combat. What's Pokemon Close Combat? I've never heard of that. Is that an officially licensed Pokemon game? You f- Shut the fuck up. I see.

Starting point is 01:29:37 I think actually, I think as long as you don't yell, I'm making too much money out, then we'll get to that in a second. Nintendo might be content to leave you outside of its radar. We'll get to that in a second. Yeah, but Pokemon Close Combat is an indie fighting game made on 2D Fighter Maker. So it's got that same little Enterbrain logo startup and the janky menus of if you if you've played like fucking dong dong never die or arm Joe. Oh yeah this looks like trash. That means a fighting game. You've got that. You got that Jackie kind of frame for the game inside on that engine though is pretty

Starting point is 01:30:16 good. It's pretty fun. It's a fun little indie fighter. Not trash but they're using it looks like trash. I'm not saying it is trash. The hand drawn art style is very charming of every Pokemon that basically it's like basically getting a bunch of Pokemon fighting types, you know, into yeah, and you know, they they yeah, they all have a bit of a hand drawn, you know, kind of, I want to say it's not quite Kirby 3, but it's a bit like, not Snipperclippers, what's the game I'm thinking of, maybe like Scribblenauts a little bit with the way it's kind of, you know, it's a very just light, loose pencil kind of art style but it's very fun and looks like a 14 year old

Starting point is 01:31:10 Pokemon fans fantasy of the game they wish they could make but then they make like a pile of shit that sucks but this one actually looks competently made and with like the animation that it would need yeah it's it's definitely like it's do it's better than the engine it's running on, that's for sure, because when we started, we were trying to get it running, like the first, like, perhaps 30 minutes or 45 or so just solving the can it run, can I get the controllers running will it full screen properly. I'm watching the footage, and it sounds terrible, but like in a good way.

Starting point is 01:31:46 Oh my god. Because Pokemon sound awful. So there's a game volume that is like, I'd say it's at 50 and then the screeching Gameboy noises of the Pokemon going EEEEAAAHHHHH Are at like 90, you know. Oh man, it is... Yeah. It is horrible to listen to which is great because Pokemon battle sound like garbage

Starting point is 01:32:06 And you know literally the first level that loads in is the onslaught Marvel versus Capcom one city stage You know so yeah But like but when it comes down to it It's like there's a bunch of characters in that. There's a solid cast of maybe 20, it feels like, or so. And there's a lot, yeah, there's some fun stuff going on with just getting the characters accurate with their references and having special moves in there. There's a system that revolves around, everyone has some normals But like most specials kind of require a bar and to build a bar

Starting point is 01:32:47 You got to either land a sweep or a throw and kind of get this aggressive, you know kind of mixed game going And but one of the things that like fully I remember seeing some Match footage of it a while back. So I know this has been in the works for a while what really got my attention was a video of... Obviously, you're like, it's a fighting game, it's Pokemon. Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan, Hitmontop, right? They got to be there. Yeah, the usual. But what they did here is they actually have Tyrogue, which is the pre-volution, the little scrappy fighter like Pokemon, is

Starting point is 01:33:29 who you pick. And depending on the number of punches or kicks you land in round one, it evolves into one of the three for round two. That's so stupid, but also really awesome. It's great! It's really good! And you see a little counter underneath your life bar of like how many punches or kicks you've land. If you land more one than the other, you get the respective

Starting point is 01:33:52 evolution. And if you land an even number of both, then you get hit them on top. So fucking awesome. And of course, ridiculous. And when it evolves into that for round two and three you get the the full move list for those characters You know, it's full on it's a full on different character When you're in that first round if you build up three meters and you have the right number You can just do your level three to evolve right away, you know, so you can force it out faster even But that's a super you know what? Tenki was right. Okay, well finish your thought, because-

Starting point is 01:34:29 Leveling up from base Goku all the way up to the fucking top is fucking peak as shit, and it rules. And you know what? Yeah, blue Goku is insanely broken, but you let me get there, so shut up. One slot! One slot, cow cowards put it all in one Find a way to make it work Make it fun make it so that you could do all of that with the one character Don't fucking do this shit, man It's so it's that's a touch. It's a such a great way to do it like I love that And if there's different tactical advantages or different balancing advantages to going one way or the other, Kayo Ken versus two versus Ga, then sure. But I love that this

Starting point is 01:35:12 type of a bit is how you implement those characters off of Tyrogue. That's such a fun thing to do. It's different. If you picked an Eevee and then you got to do something similar with that, this whole game is an evolution thing. It's such a fun idea, man. I love that. And quite frankly, I wish that wasn't the only character that had that mechanic, you know?

Starting point is 01:35:34 Oh, it is. Well, I mean, that's probably a lot of work. It is. It is. But it's so cool. And that got my interest, right? And the real... I mean, everybody's like, oh shit, that's really smart.

Starting point is 01:35:44 I'm like, yeah, isn't that exciting? Like, that's a fun thing to bring to this kind of game that makes it very Pokemon feeling, you know? And I just, I wish, I want more creative gameplay design like that, you know? I think Dragon Ball is a perfect place for that. Even though you've got a billion characters to drop in there, you know? This is a game about powering, even though you've got a billion characters to drop in there.

Starting point is 01:36:05 This is a game about powering up characters and having them go through their forms. If you're gonna make a split, do it for a really good reason. The fusions, of course, yeah, that makes sense. But man, how fun to just find a way to take your character through all these power levels as you go. I mean, shit, even if it was, I don't know, like, I know that any possible implementation of the idea could be something where people, some people would be like, ah, fuck that,

Starting point is 01:36:34 I hate that. But like, even if it was a game where it's like, you have seven bars of super, and each time you gain a bar, he just don't keep powers up to the next level, you know? Even if it's something like that. And there's a little something that you get out of that. Like, that's a that's, that's a very passive way to do it. But it can be it can be as simple as that. But I just I really loved how it was implemented in this case. And in the end, I was like, you know what, man? Like, yeah, I would love to play this character and like figure out a way to you know figure like basically main four in one you know um obviously

Starting point is 01:37:10 Digimon comes to mind as well for this type of thing and like yeah Digimon is all about going up and down that evolution chart you know I I love that I think that that's really fun if you find a way for the single character to just go through their versions. And then there's some other fun stuff in there too. And by the end, it got real and we're filling out the matchups and stuff. So shout outs to Pokemon Close Combat. And what was especially fun is a bit that I remember hearing about and then like, yeah, what to confirm it. There is if you beat arcade mode without losing a round, you get a secret final boss. And that's final boss is Gorochu. And Gorochu is a evolution it was supposed to be I want to say the the right you evolution. So the third Pikachu.

Starting point is 01:37:59 Oh, man, I've never seen this. Never happened. but it was supposed to be the final Pikachu evolution well that looks like shit okay so big electric fucking rejected boss you fight it it's super cheap it's super fucking dirty you beat it and the ball appears and it goes back to its master, the Baz. And fucking Zubaz appears and takes him back into his Pokeball. Right? How fucking awesome is that? The dream is complete.

Starting point is 01:38:39 You got jumpscared by your own character. I, so that was something I caught wind of before, You got jumpscared by your own character. I, so that was something I caught wind of before, but what a perfect way, like a rejected Pokemon electric boss character. That is really great. Who else would be the trainer? And Zubaz with the cloak and cape on just kind of like returns him to the ball and you got

Starting point is 01:39:05 to earn it. You got to really earn it. Storm is always there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rejected duo. It's great. So that is fantastic. That was a real fun little bit to throw it there as well. So yeah, shout outs, Pokemon Close Combat, which yeah, I mean, they run tournaments. It's updated constantly and they got stuff going on. You can find out more. I know the Mizumi Wiki, which has lots of details on a bunch of other fighting games as well, has a full breakdown on FAQs on what you need to know. Might have to do a little work on the setup part of it because that's just any time you're

Starting point is 01:39:42 running 2D Fighter Maker, there's always a bunch of hurdles and hoops to run through, unfortunately. But it's got NetPlay as well. They've figured that out with it too. So yeah, go check out Pokemon Close Combat. Had a lot of fun with that. And a second bullet point, be more courageous with your character evolution combat systems in your games. I will. I definitely will, I promise. Yeah, so that's pretty much that. We are going to be a bit busy this week, but I'm definitely going to pop the schedule up.

Starting point is 01:40:31 We'll get in some Phoenix Wright and we'll get in some Elden Ring. So stay tuned to my Twitter for more details on that. All right. Quick break? Yeah, let's take a quick break. Alright, BRB. Peace. Alrighty, what's going on?

Starting point is 01:40:51 Okay, well, I didn't do a lot of streaming this week because I had been doing weeks of two streams a day because doing streams is better than sitting around moping. And then I'm pretty sure I fell asleep with my eyes open playing the plucky squire. Hmm. My lazy eye just started to fucking drift and I just kinda like, oh. And I'm like, all right, that's enough. Is that an anti-endorsement or just a statement?

Starting point is 01:41:23 No, that has nothing to do with Plucky Squire. That's just you. It's very charming. Okay. Actually, the Plucky Squire seems really great. It just seems like the kind of game I would rather play with my boy in like two years. Because it is super charming and really simple and like easy. What a great name for this art style.

Starting point is 01:41:51 That describes exactly what it sounds like when you look at it. Absolutely. But yeah, I was like, oh, and I kind of zoomed out. And I realized that I almost fell asleep playing a notria a couple days earlier. The Italian Souls game we talked about. Yeah. As all, all right. No, no more streams for Pat this week. So Pat didn't do any streams. I played more Konnitsu Gami, which is incredible. It's really fucking great. Got even better than last time. Oh yeah. I got to...

Starting point is 01:42:27 I got to the... So about maybe a quarter through the game, they're like, okay, we feel like you have a handle on these mechanics. It is now time to start adding new weird things, like multiple paths through a stage, or, hey, did you know there were actually hidden chests and all the levels you've completed that have great materials? But you didn't have the character that you needed to do them go redo those fucking levels and go get more upgrade mats bosses that are much harder Weirder little guys to put down like a healer or like a sumo wrestler that draws aggro Multiple little guys to put down like a healer or like a sumo wrestler that draws aggro. Multiple gates that the enemies come through, like prior to like the fifth level, enemies

Starting point is 01:43:13 always come through one gate. So it's been really easy to just stack up your gang right in front of it and just beat them all when they come in. And they're like, well, no, now they're going to come through two. And later I assume they're going to come through three. So you're going to have to start placing your boys all over the place. It's really great. Okay.

Starting point is 01:43:34 Are there boss fights? Yes. Every single level has a accompanying boss fight. Okay. And the boss fights are all completely unique enemies and most of them have unique gimmicks. Does that still feel like a tower defense at that point or is that just a 1v1 with your crew in place? So yeah, it does because you always have your Shrine Maiden on the field that you have to

Starting point is 01:44:00 protect always. Okay. No matter what the level. So a boss fight will have a really gigantic guy come up and you have to divert it away. Or there's one where you have to light all the lanterns in a stage with your boys to get the boss to show it's a weak point while mobs are still trying to attack your maiden, stuff like that. Yeah, it's excellent.

Starting point is 01:44:27 It's fantastic. And so every single mission, I don't know if I talked about this last time, every single mission has like three bonus criteria. So stuff like there's a cave mission where your boys can only attack people they can see that are lit up by lanterns. Right? So you have to have all the lanterns lit so that they can hit enemies that go near them. And there's bonus conditions that'll give you upgrade materials or like new equipment. That is beat the level with every lantern lit. And then the one underneath it is beat the level with no lanterns lit

Starting point is 01:45:06 Okay, okay, and or beat it beat the level without Using X amount of currency or make sure that there's five different roles on the stage at any given time So and the rewards are for buying what they're like So we'll take the the archer right so the archer has six upgrades they all do right archer has upgrade one increases their health a little bit upgrade two is increases their attack a little bit upgrade three is their arrows are now on fire and so they stagger enemies upgrade four is increases their health by a lot. Upgrade 5 increases their attack by a lot.

Starting point is 01:45:46 Upgrade 6 is they shoot two arrows at once now. And that's where your primary upgrade stuff goes into. I like woodcutters and thieves and archers, so I'm going to buff the fuck out of them so they are much, much, much stronger units. And I've been getting like bonus equipment for the character. My favorite one is one that makes all of your boys stronger but makes your main character weaker by the same amount. Interesting. And I assume I'll get a similar one that is the opposite.

Starting point is 01:46:20 Inverted. Yeah. It's fucking great. It's it's fucking awesome. I I'm mad at it for being super good. Like I got stuck on a boss for like an hour and a half because I couldn't figure out his fucking like the timing on his lantern mechanic. And instead of just giving up and going back to Space Marine, I actually stuck through it and kept going even though it's just this goofy little tower defense game. And also it has new game plus where you do the whole game over and it is a step up in difficulty but you have every single item and unit from the beginning. Okay. Yeah, I wonder, anytime a new IP comes out and it's like, oh, that's pretty solid.

Starting point is 01:47:12 It's like, is that enough these days? Like, you know, to like, to get exit velocity, you know? Exo Primal, certainly, yeah. It did not, you you know but it was something like this when I'm hearing it's like oh shit it's pretty fun it's like okay like what what is it like what is it uh how's it performing you know where's it at what what are people so I'm in the Capcom discord and they put out like an announcement saying konnetsugami sold 500k copies yay so like it's doing fine nice, okay cool um

Starting point is 01:47:47 It's it's excellent I I I it's also like aggressively a PlayStation 2 game in that the models look like the graphics look like Uprez monster hunter ps2 games up res monster hunter ps2 games That's why that may not hit quite as hard for you But a lot of people in here are definitely gonna like know that exact what aesthetic I think that's totally fine, especially given that there's a strong art direction. That is again classic you feel a Japanese woodblock stuff and yeah strokes, you know, like that'll carry you Yeah, this game's excellent.

Starting point is 01:48:27 No notes. Even when the game was like, here they unlock the thief class on mission five and they're like jokes on you, there were hidden upgrade chests in the floor that only the thief can get in missions one, two, three, and four. Go back and do them again. I was like, well, I'll get cool upgrade stuff. And also I'm rebuilding one of the town levels and those are tracked by like stage completions as their time metric. So yeah, I'll go back and do those four levels again and then I'll have stronger characters and my little town will be built up

Starting point is 01:49:06 Hooray, let me see this this Okami crossover thing that looks bad. Let me see it like it looks bad. It's hilarious how bad it looks It's a it's an okami skin Yeah, it's an okami skin an an Okami weapon, some Okami effects. You can have like, you know, the flowers running around. Kind of thing. Oh, it's not actually Ami. It's an Ami-inspired outfit you put on.

Starting point is 01:49:36 Yeah, it's an Ami-inspired fursuit. Ah, okay. Eh, that's fine. That's fine. That's fine. It's almost like what if you Monster Hunter killed Amaterasu and then skinned it to make this outfit. That's terrible. Well, that's the vibe it gives.

Starting point is 01:49:55 It looks like Monster Hunter armor for Amaterasu. Yeah. That's fine. No, good game. Excellent. Excellent. Good game. Very good. The helmet should have been much more clearly wolfhead though like Blythe style. Mm-hmm. Yeah

Starting point is 01:50:12 What else so while I was playing my tower defense game So, I don't know if I mentioned it last week but my timelines getting all messed up But I've been playing a lot of Space Marine 2. Man, that game's incredible. That game's incredible. Like, either the campaign or the co-op stuff or the PvP. It's fucking amazing. It's fucking great. But in my streaming of Space Marine 2, I was asked, hey Pat, has your wife Paige, aka Peach Saliva, seen a Necron once? And I said, I don't think Paige has seen a Necron. Let me check. So I asked Paige, Paige, have you ever seen a Necron? To which she said, no, what's a Necron? Wully, have you seen a Necron?

Starting point is 01:51:17 I'm about to. Look up Necron. N-E-C-R-O-N on the Google images. Yeah. All right. Here's a Necron. N-E-C-R-O-N. On the Google images. Yeah. Alright, here's a Necron hierarchy. That's the picture I'm looking at. Would you describe those as robotic space skeletons? Um, they're litchy space skeletons, yes. Yes they are. So Paige streamed herself watching Bricky from Adeptus Ridiculous's lore videos for hours and hours and hours over the past week. That took me way too long.

Starting point is 01:51:53 Okay, yes, yes. The space skeletons. The house is now fully 40k-pilled. Oh my god. And some of them we have a copy of the infinite and divine audio and textbook about two Necron guys in the house. Oh my god. We spent hours the other day fucking around with Warhammer 40k rogue trader and her oh man, this is a cool character I made, and going through the lists of other 40k games. This house is 40k-pilled now.

Starting point is 01:52:31 I noticed that it's not just base skeletons, but you've got fancy dressed ones. Like the Lich Guard is a skeleton with a little hat. The Pharon is a skeleton with a big gold cape. Then there's the nemesaur which is like a centaur. So shout out to Bricky. Runs a great YouTube channel talks about 40k. I'd highly recommend if you want to learn about 40k go check out Bricky's videos. If you want to learn about 40k go check out Bricky's videos Trying to trying to get in touch with him to Do something over the next couple of weeks also was talking about Space Marine and as a result

Starting point is 01:53:19 Mandalore is gonna be on the show this week. We're gonna play Space Marine to multiplayer because Everybody loves fucking space. It's so good. It's so goddamn good Alright um is that the horde mode no it's the co-op. It's the left for dead, but with a leveling system nice But yeah, no, it's it's a 40k household now Has like page has her D&D friends and one of them I know paints minis. So like, there's a real, real threat of the home being invaded by tiny little plastic Necron dudes in the very real near future. Has Paige played Grim Fandango? No.

Starting point is 01:54:04 Does she know what it is? Yes. Okay. The last I spoke to her, she looked at Manny's design and was like, hmm, it's kind of a shrug. Not hot enough. Yeah, it's not the type of skeleton she seems to be looking for. A little too goofy. Not hot enough.

Starting point is 01:54:24 Okay. All right. More more dead more decrepit, please Gotcha proportions matter But yeah, no also this week. I'm gonna be streaming 40k darktide. That's a sponsored show. There's a lot of Noise being made about warhammer now War hamm's good. Of the coast, are we? What?

Starting point is 01:54:49 Or, no, not of the coast. What's the, Games Factory? Games Workshop? Games Workshop, there you go. Yes. That and the other one. Ah. But yeah, no, like, there was like a moment where we're

Starting point is 01:55:05 like lying in bed going to sleep and we were talking about like sanguineous and the blood angels. And then I'm like, oh, we're so we're so cooked. This house is so 40K cooked now. With the sponsorship going down as well. All right. Yeah. Well, eventually, eventually you're going to have to start painting your minis, bro

Starting point is 01:55:25 I don't have to paint no mini You say that but I am saying that no You know what I'm saying is what I'm gonna say is that the total war series made a total war warhammer game They need to hurry their fucking ass up and make that 40k game So one of the weirdest things I found when I was researching all this, Warhammer is the only property I can think of in which the space sci-fi setting is more popular than the fantasy setting. Like fantasy is nearly invariably the de facto more popular setting in damn near everything. Except for this.

Starting point is 01:56:08 Uh, hmm. Well yeah, it feels that way because I hear about 40k way more than I hear about other things, but it's also because it's basically like wild space fantasy and not just full sci-fi. Yeah, no, it's still fantasy. It's just they're wearing robots. Yeah, like if you... And they have guns.

Starting point is 01:56:28 Like, you don't... Like, being into 40K does not mean you will be into Mass Effect. No. But it does mean you might likely be into Lord of the Rings. It does mean that if you start reading a bunch of this stuff, then your TikTok algorithm thinks you want to see old bearded dudes argue about whether or not Starfleet could take on the Imperium. And I'm like, this is garbage, I say, as I watch the whole video. Yeah. No, I think it's like, yeah, the fantasy element of War of 40k is much more prevalent than

Starting point is 01:57:07 the sci-fi element. And also, besides like the blizzard, like aping it, like how many other settings are there where there's like a full-on parallel worlds of space and past fantasy? I don't know, man. Right? Because Warcraft, Starcraft are the direct analogs and then what other settings do that? I can't think of much. I was on Adeptus Ridiculous and we was hanging out with Bricky, DK, and Shy.

Starting point is 01:57:38 Check that out this week, by the way. The topic was what makes warhammer so good and one of the things that we talked about is that like Let's say you saw a skeleton that looked like a robot and you went that's cool as fuck Like the path of what do you want to get into slash? What are you into is do you like? Miniatures do you like board games? Do you like painting? Do you like books? Do you like video games? What kind of video games do you like? How would you like to express your interest in this cool looking thing that you saw? Like there is a weirdly enormous amount of spread on it.

Starting point is 01:58:25 Which is smart for, yeah, that's how you use your IP and market properly. Like, Henry Cavill needs to hurry his ass up and get that TV show out there, because that will be the easiest way for anyone to point at, be like, hey, do you think my little toy space marine looks cool? You know there's a TV show, It's got Superman in it. You

Starting point is 01:58:45 should go check that out. And being into the miniatures and books doesn't mean you're into the games. These are all very separate things I imagine. On the previous point I was just thinking that I remember in elementary school and such when I remember when friends of mine and stuff were into Warcraft, Warcraft II specifically was what was blowing up. Warcraft, yeah, Warcraft I was like, it was good, but the heat came at tides of darkness. Warcraft II was what my friends all talked about. And then when Starcraft dropped, that eclipsed Warcraft.

Starting point is 01:59:24 And Starcraft, I would say, was way more popular with everybody I knew. StarCraft was like my high school, just every single person I knew played StarCraft. Yeah, to the point where Warcraft was like, oh yeah, that's the throwback thing, but now it's all about StarCraft, was the vibe for most of high school. And that didn't start turning again until they made the MMO. Warcraft 3 even came but like- Man Warcraft 3 is awesome. It sucks you can't play it anymore. But it still felt like Starcraft was the thing that everyone I knew cared about. So I'm gonna

Starting point is 02:00:01 so I feel like the fantasy setting being more popular is because they made the MMO first and pushed it hard and never way made World of Starcraft. So like, do you remember like 2006 when people were like, Oh, so when's World of Starcraft, man? Yeah. Well, when are they going to do that? They got to do that. Oh my God. It's that it's that's that. And when is at CEO going or when is Assassin's

Starting point is 02:00:28 Creed going to Japan? Oh my God. It actually was that far back. That's it. It was those two things like World of StarCraft and Assassin's Creed Japan. We got it. We got to get them. Yeah. Holy shit. It's crazy. It never happened, but the thought was like, oh, but it's obvious that's what comes next. Everyone's waiting on it, you know? But no. And so WoW just existing and being the main MMO, no matter what the setting was, it had enough time to just be the fucking basin that everyone collected into,

Starting point is 02:01:05 that fantasy world, now Warcraft, has a way bigger following because it's collected people for an active longer period of time. I remember when I saw a headline that was like Warhammer MMO incoming and I went, and it showed it was Age of Reckoning, which meant it was the fantasy one, and I could have flipped my fucking desk. I like, like just.

Starting point is 02:01:29 Like, oh, my God. And I mean, yeah, I guess like that was the thought was that Project Titan was was that going to be, you know, I think Starcraft thing. That's what it was going to be, because there were rumors about World of Warcraft two and Project Titan and Titan is the name of a fancy moon in our solar system. So I thought that meant it was going to be World of Starcraft. But Starcraft Ghost struggled for years, right? I would have marked out so hard.

Starting point is 02:01:58 So the interesting part is like even like there's an idea that like, oh, wow, and World of Starcraft together, there's a little bit of like, oh, would you be eating your own lunch? You know, would you be taking no from your plate with that? And MMOs are like now these massive container games. I think Blizzard ideally if they wanted to do something like that, if Overwatch as a different genre entirely, but still blowing up the StarCraft brand was a thing, they would have been, I'm pretty sure,

Starting point is 02:02:31 very happy with that as like, oh, here's another way we can push the same IP, but then expand it outward from where its original RTS-like bones came from. And then yeah, of course Overwatch turned into something else entirely. But World of StarCraft or anything like that came from. And then yeah, of course, Overwatch turned into something else entirely. But World of Starcraft or anything like that never came. When we did get Starcraft 2, I remember very quickly like kind of hearing people go, ehhhh.

Starting point is 02:02:54 There were a lot of problems with Starcraft 2. The biggest problem right away was like, I don't like to play as the Terrans. I want to play as the fucking Protoss please. And it was very odd as an outsider because I was like this did not take the world by storm the way it was supposed to. You know, a StarCraft release should be a nuclear event in the game industry. Yeah. And it wasn't. But the MOBAs were already here. They were already here, hidden within one of their own games.

Starting point is 02:03:32 Yeah. I think the 40k situation, it would have happened with StarCraft if they made another big StarCraft thing that people cared about. You know, it's funny that you mentioned StarCraft Ghosts because Space Marine 1 and 2 are StarCraft Ghosts. Like, that's the literal concept. It's like, if you're one Space Marine, you get to see what it's like to stand next to an orc, and a big orc, and a tank tank and a dreadnought and a Lord of Change and you know. And all we would get hype about back when the game when StarCraft Ghost was announced

Starting point is 02:04:12 like four times was like, oh, how cool is it going to be to be on the ground and point the laser and call for the nuke while you're seeing it from eye level, you know? There was a fucking screenshot of Starcraft Ghost The Zealot? Which completely stole the, sold the game to me because what it was is a ghost, what is it? Nova Nova Was walking down a trench and the trench was

Starting point is 02:04:41 on either side of a walking path was siege engine, a siege tanks as far as the eye could see, like firing off in both directions at Zerg. And I was like, Oh, so fucking cool. God damn it. I mean, make no mistake. Like the, it's still inside of me, the thing to... I want to see the scene of walking on a... Going through a battlefield where a battle cruiser the size of the skybox is flying overhead

Starting point is 02:05:14 and a Protoss... What the fuck is the giant carrier? Carrier? The carrier, yeah. Like shooting its drones out, having a crazy thing happen above you while you're on foot That is still a fucking incredible moment. Yeah, that's that's that's space marine one and two. Ah, there you go. There you go Yeah, okay. So, you know and then like you like after taking out a bunch of Zerglings or whatever It's like oh fuck. It's a Dragoon

Starting point is 02:05:44 or whatever, it's like, oh fuck, it's a dragoon. It is a singular like, oh no, what are we gonna do? I'm fucking dead. Oh god, run, run, run. Never mind the fucking ultra-lisk ruining the landscape. All of that was what your fucking over-excited teenage brain wanted to see. I don't know if I talked about it when I was talking about Space Marine 2, but there is a boss fight in that game that is an enemy that your squad would never be able to defeat ever. It is the equivalent of an ultra-lisk, specifically. What they do is that you drop a building on it and grievously injure it. Okay.

Starting point is 02:06:25 So that the missing limbs, like concrete rebar pillar straight through its chest version is still a ridiculous boss fight for your characters, but is technically feasible. Okay. Okay. feasible. Okay, okay. I see what you're describing what you want is Space Marine 2. And yeah, that's definitely what it sounds like. In front of what I've seen the screenshots and things and the videos, it seems like it's pretty fucking dope. Although what I'm also describing, just to clarify, is what child me want is seeing the things of the units I know, you know, so in this world, it would just be like, oh, big cool shit that I don't know. You know, but at the time it

Starting point is 02:07:11 was like I specifically with the familiarity of the world, seeing it from a different perspective carried that novelty. But I suppose that's why it's like, well, then time to get into Warhammer is how I would say that it's like a really one to one where it's like Warhammer Warhammer Starcraft without any restraint what's that whatsoever. Right? Like just like we were listening to metal when we when we made these designs. Right. What if the robot was actually a coffin for dead soldiers and they're in horrible pain? Ah Album cover shit. Yeah. Yeah

Starting point is 02:07:49 Um, it's it's well what I call warhammer 40k is too much is never enough What if someone what what if someone invested what if someone took an album cover of like a metal band But then said let's turn this into a full ip and put millions and millions of millions of dollars into it. Yeah I like Warhammer. I'm probably, I have been told by the subreddit moderators not to say this, I am probably going to start reading Warhammer books this week. I'm sorry. You're gonna paint a fucking figure, dude. I don't care what you say. I don't want to paint a figure. You're gonna paint a fucking figure before we're done here.

Starting point is 02:08:35 So hey, let me tell you, I genuinely mean this. If there was ever a game announcement I would ever be more upset by, if Creative Assembly comes out and says, here comes the fourth Warhammer game and it's Age of Sigmar, which is the other Warhammer fantasy setting, instead of 40k, I'm going to trash this room. I'm going to throw a adult sized tantrum. Oh, you care. Oh man. Here's what will happen. You're going to get your, you might not paint it, but you're going to get your first figure

Starting point is 02:09:18 when it has a little amiibo type thing that you put to the next game. Oh no, I hate that shit. I don't know if you remember, but I hate amiibos. Yeah. I can't stand them. But when the game is rad and it's a part of it, then you're gonna get in there and we'll see what happens. Okay, listen. People in the chat are saying that Age of Sigmar is cool. That is true. Age of Ligma is cool. But I want the fucking

Starting point is 02:09:49 robots and guns. I want the spaceships. What do you want from me? Also, I just really like to say Age of Ligma. I think it's funny. I'm like a child giggling. Wait, okay, wait, which is funny, age of Ligma or age of Sugmar? Yeah, okay, it's Sugmar. Yeah, all right. You're going to discover that you don't have to go down to the Games Workshop to get your fix. I think you should never go down to the games workshop. I think that is a real piece of advice that I'm giving you right now. And you're going to discover that you can just have it delivered straight to you, pre-painted almost even, and then you'll be like, oh.

Starting point is 02:10:34 No, okay, come on. Listen, I'm not a fucking Neanderthal, okay? I'm not a painting or artistic guy, but the idea of getting pre-painted miniatures, why don't I just fucking have... I was about to say have a machine breathe for me and then I use a CPAP machine because I'm stupid. See? So that's a bad example.

Starting point is 02:10:55 Well, that's a terrible example, yeah. But Paige is going to be painting her Necron and then the mood in the house will change. And suddenly you'll be like, oh, well, if she's putting her thing up there, then I feel like I should have one to put up too. Okay. This is kind of incredible timing for this Warhammer discussion. I am being informed that at 6 PM Pacific tonight, Peach Saliva will be streaming Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader. Uh huh. That's 6pm Pacific on Monday, the 23rd of September. I'm calling it out.

Starting point is 02:11:32 Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader. Mark it. It's going down. That's today. I like Warhammer a lot now. There should be more. There should be more. I say about maybe the most overdone setting ever. See, the moment you describe, oh, I might consider opening the book, it's like, oh, I might read a book. You've switched mediums. It's over. It's done. Well, I mean, I watched a Stardee's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:12:06 A Stardee's is hot. Ah. That's pretty much it. Big week. I took the week off, so now this week can be big. I'm gonna cover the PlayStation State of Play tomorrow, and Terry Bogard's. Terry Bogard tomorrow! Terry Day.

Starting point is 02:12:24 And yeah, State of play. Which whatever. I have to watch it to complain. It's the law. Hold on. It is also Mortal Kombat 1 DLC day. Audio listeners can't tell that my face has no expression at all. Almost as if I didn't hear Wooly even speak the words. Story expansion, multiple characters, and the full next round, next season of content versus one pizza delivery boy. Oh shit, it's incredible. Yeah, okay.

Starting point is 02:13:06 Cover and state of play, Terry Bogard. Wednesday, I'm streaming something at 2pm, but I can't tell you what it is yet. But it's cool. So go to it at that time that I told you to go, which is 2pm Pacific on Wednesday over at twitch.tv slash bad stairs ad. It's cool. Trust me. Then I got a 40k Darktide sponsored stream and probably some more Terry. Then on Friday I'll be playing Space Marine 2 with Mandalore over at Mandalore Gaming. And then on Saturday I'm going to try out Frostpunk 2 and Age of Mythology Retold because I feel like I want to play an RTS game.

Starting point is 02:13:54 And also they sent me some copies so I'll play them. Why not? That's it for Pat. You can also check out Peach Saliva tonight, Monday. The Rogue Trader. That's it for Pat you can also check out peach saliva tonight Monday the rogue trader That's 6 p.m. Pacific It's happening it is Someone in the chat asked why not play the dawn of war 2 update cuz that fucking game is so busted

Starting point is 02:14:22 They released an anniversary edition of dawn of War 2 to like be like, hey, Warhammer. And like, it doesn't work on multi-core PC and CPUs. What? Yeah. Just won't load. Won't turn on. And the interface is like, doesn't scale for 4K. So you have to like mod it extensively Man, it's so weird to hear all this like shit about like dawn of war problems and stuff because again I first I spent so many years working next to like a competitive top player of that game That was super in and was go and like we all about how great it was it is great it's a shame it doesn't turn on is a shame it does not turn on mmm okay so at what's going on. Well, we hinted at it earlier, but Nintendo bided its time, as you

Starting point is 02:15:33 do in Pokemon, and then eventually unleashed its attack, waiting quite a bit of time to throw its lawsuit out at pocket pair and it is a patent lawsuit notably and they're gonna be they've decided to sue them for infant patent infringement specific this is a weird lawsuit! Very odd, but here we are and the one is inclined to go now, huh, what about every other Pokemon-like game that has been coming out ever since the Game Boy Advance? What about your cassette beasts of yesteryear and your, what was the other one? Temu? Tem one? Tem-to-something? So that's what the T. Temu.

Starting point is 02:16:28 Temu? Temu. Wait, no, wait, no. No, no. That's the fucking Amazon ripoff. Tevo? It was not Temu, Temtem. Temtem.

Starting point is 02:16:38 Right, and what about your countless others? There's tons of things over the years. And I'm like, is it because PocketPair was so callous with its energy about it? Or is it the part where they went, we're making too much money. We don't know what to do with it. I don't know what to do with this shit. There's a lot of people speculating on how and why and what. I mean, like some people were saying like, Oh, it's because

Starting point is 02:17:05 the switch to details like leaked, which is like, I don't what does that have to do with that? I don't see that. But a couple of people legally have taken a look and they're thinking that in particular, while we don't have a ton of details, and while pocket bearers basically gone like, Yeah, we don't know where the fuck this came from. They are thinking that this is going to be specifically about the catching mechanics and how you throw a pokeball out is a speculated possibility. The fact that they are, specifically just targeting like this one and not any of the many others, nor have they over the years targeted like, you know, once a kart racing game comes out or a platform fighter comes out, like it's just this one.

Starting point is 02:17:58 Very very odd. And another detail that might give some insight here is there was a leak list of games that are going to be announced at the Tokyo Game Show 2024 release from CESA and the thought is that perhaps Pal World coming to consoles that are competitors is a reason why they're trying to get on this. Hey, wait a second. You can do all that Pokemon ripoff shit on the godless personal computer. But if it's on Xbox or on PlayStation, well, now it's a much more direct issue. But again, Power World is not the first Pokemon like. Real, real odd one. And it's already on Xbox. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So anyway, so there's PocketPair might...

Starting point is 02:19:00 So yeah, one of the... a lawyer talking about this is saying that like pocket pair might have to make gameplay changes to pal world to circumvent this it's uh you know we don't know if like they're looking to have it but Mike modified slash removed from storefronts all together but they are saying that the lawsuit appears to be in Nintendo's favor, likely. Oh, Nintendo wouldn't sue at all if they didn't think they were going to win. So is the thought process then that it's like they could have pulled the trigger on any of these games at any point, but like, this is the one, you know? What if they were like, we want to make sure they make a lot of money so that we can say

Starting point is 02:19:46 that that money's actually our money? Well, the fact that there's a news story going, we don't know what to do with all this money is the crazy part. Like, that's the straight up fucking shot and chaser here. Like, what do we do? And Nintendo's like, I got a few ideas, you know? And so yeah. What if that was our money? Is it our money? No.

Starting point is 02:20:08 But what if it was though? And so it's gonna have to come down to, I suppose, like exactly what the terms are. You know? Is it the act of throwing out a fucking pokeball and catching a pal? You know? Do they just mod- what if they modify that to a Ghostbuster fucking vacuum suck? You know like what what is the specific thing is that the mechanics of having your buddy monsters and fighting with them? Well, I saw the only guess that I thought was like kind of legit is that it was like the pokeball animation

Starting point is 02:20:42 It really does. Yeah, it certainly does. But then is it like, is it as simple as like, okay, so yeah, replace it with a laser gun that you shoot and call your buddy back, you know? And again, it's not copyright infringement, it's patent infringement. Yeah, which is way more interesting. And patents are specific, specific things.

Starting point is 02:21:04 A copyright can be the overall, it can be the trademark, the name, there's a lot of elements too that you can come at it from, but a patent will be like we'll put up, we'll file a diagram for this exact ball hitting a monster, absorbing it, shaking on the ground, you know, and then it clashing inside and that is specifically what we own so very very odd yeah and you know does this mean like are any other Pokemon clones that exist gonna gonna start sweating about this because I want to say that for a long time you you know, Nintendo has basically like

Starting point is 02:21:50 Innovated a new idea invented a new thing and then kind of create a genre and then leave it alone you know, that's what mascot kart racing platform fighters and Party games kind of were I remember years ago There's an article that was basically describing like here is the thing Nintendo started with they made a big thing And then people were fans of that they wanted it to be Pushed further and Nintendo eventually moves on and ignores the thing and so people start making their own version of it And it's becomes a whole genre it's happened many times over the years, you know, we're talking about fucking Pokemons, dude Yeah like

Starting point is 02:22:30 And not the Pokemon company but Nintendo here you know so like obviously the patent is gonna be really specific it's gonna be like we don't like the way that this character comes out of a loading screen or some bullshit that doesn't know who goes fuck about but like the reason they're going after them is because it's a fucking Pokemon ripoff. Yeah. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They remember when they were like, we have no plans to whatever at this time,

Starting point is 02:22:52 like a couple months ago. That was actually, we are telling lawyers to dig through that game until they find something rock solid we can fuck them on. At the same time, as I'm the like why now I'm wondering it's like yeah why Yuzu instead of Visual Boy Advance and SNES 9x and Project 64 and you know what I mean like Well Yuzu showed up in that fucking Steam trailer On the Steam screenshot

Starting point is 02:23:21 Which was like that was the that's what killed it for sure. So is it always like, yeah, we know this is in the background and as long as you are not hitting a Patreon subscription thing to a fan thing and you're small, in which case we can just scare you with the- If you're making money making you're playing with fire Mm-hmm is the is like it's not like not making money. It's not protection, but making money is If the bonfire look at me if temtem or Cassette beasts blew the fuck up like way bigger

Starting point is 02:24:03 You know would we be having this discussion? Or is the part where it's like- No, because they're not like outrageous. Yeah, yeah. The thing is, yeah, no. Pal World is like, no, you can look at these and confuse them for living Pokemon. You might not, with the art style, the full,

Starting point is 02:24:22 the design cues, the ball, of that It's it is outrageous But it's doing that in order to make it like hit that much harder when you pull out the fucking a k-47 Like now I love to the fucking I love that that fucking power world is so outrageous. It's that's the whole point It's the whole point. Yeah, um You know, but like obviously Nintendo doesn't like that. Mm-hmm It's it's screams scared suing scary movie Anyway Yeah, we'll have to see clearly pocket pair has the cash to defend themselves. So

Starting point is 02:25:01 We will see what happens So we will see what happens. But yeah, the fact that this is also, again, a patent lawsuit is very different from the way these things usually go. Patent law has its own rules and things. It's like maritime law or sky crimes. We barely understand these things. I don't understand copyright law, and I definitely don't understand patent law Instead I'm just thinking about how like Sega owns the patent for the arrow at the top of the screen from crazy taxi

Starting point is 02:25:36 And then when they made a crazy taxi tribute game inside like a dragon they didn't use the arrow of man And I'm like but what the fuck is the fucking point so vindictive dude or just or namco who's like we own the rights to a mini game on your loading screen and we're gonna use it once so that you can play space invaders when you're more out Tekken 5 Yeah, and never a feature in Tekken 5. Oh, oh, it's to stop that feature from existing in hundreds of other games? Oh, lit. Oh wait, wait, hold on, in Budokai 3 you can spin the stick to grow your cybernet. But that's not a game though!

Starting point is 02:26:12 It's not a game. So no, we never used it again. But more importantly, nobody else can have it. Yeah. So, it's nice to know that eventually that stuff did lapse and it no longer is the case, but- I think video game patents are fucking poison. People in the chat are saying the Nemesis system.

Starting point is 02:26:28 Yeah, no. That's fucking stupid. The Nemesis system gets used for two games and then thrown away, but it's still patented. God, man. And it's like the Nemesis system was used in a stealth and action know, Lord of the Rings game, right? And like, what if, like, third-person camera movement and what if stealth mechanics and what if Assassin's Creed bits and what if, you know, all these bits were patented beforehand, then the game you are making that you're patenting the idea on couldn't fucking exist idiot. You know, like you're like so many video games are are historically

Starting point is 02:27:10 built on the established thing of the genre that was you know, developed before it. Video games are rip offs and video games are a product of like and you're improving ideas over time to get to a point where we're like, oh yeah, lock on makes sense when we click on this button over here. Moving the stick on your right side is the most comfortable way to go. Aiming down the sights should be over here

Starting point is 02:27:35 and so on and so forth. You iterate the whole genre. You iterate the entire fucking industry and you're gonna lock down things so that other people can't fucking build off this. How about this one? Decades later, Terry Bogard and Street Fighter are going to be hanging out and hugging and kissing and being good friends. Even though if you go back to 1993, Terry Bogard and his friends are outrageous-offs of Street Fighter. Oh yeah.

Starting point is 02:28:06 Absolutely insane. But they do get grandfathered in to some degree in that the team that designed them came from Capcom and worked on Street Fighter 1. When Final Fight was developed and they're like, wait wait you said you wanted another street fighting game, right? Is this what you meant and they're like no and they're like, oh you forgot about the game you made a couple years back They went on to they when they worked at Ed to Ed when they moved to SNK the same team made that you know And I will say that like Fatal Fury Gets it was an, there was outrageous rip offs

Starting point is 02:28:45 going on, but nowhere near as bad as art of fighting, right? And art of fighting was to the point where Capcom made fun of it in their own game, you know, and back and forth. But wasn't that a better way to handle this? Making Dan as a goofy like, ha ha, fuck your stupid character bit. And then they're like, oh yeah, well, Yuri is going to do all of Dan's moves, shut up. And they're throwing shade at each other over the years is one thing, but lest we forget, that same Capcom also looked at like Super Fighter and went,

Starting point is 02:29:16 you're chasing our sprites, we're taking you to court. Like, you know, like there's the goofy like, oh, look at that karate man doing his nose You know how do I don't can't know how show co-cat you okay? Whatever that company is just tracing our shit You're going to jail like there was a limit for them even at the time of World Warrior. You know So like I don't know how other people, because some people are getting emotionally involved in like, oh, Nintendo, like, Nintendo half-assing a bunch of Pokemon games and then

Starting point is 02:29:51 suing a really interesting Pokemon ripoff is obviously a really bad look. But obviously the core of it is that this lawsuit is hilarious. I think that's the main takeaway is that no matter what happens, it's going to be bad for everyone because any legal decision in Japan that affects this is somehow going to suck. Like if Power World gets completely away with it, it sucks. And if Nintendo wins, they're going to be even crazier in the future. But also, the Power World is so fucking outrageous that them getting sued by Nintendo is going to be really funny.

Starting point is 02:30:26 Yeah, and again, the fact that they're like, oh, they seem to have a strong case here by patent law, then we'll see what the ramifications are. So yeah, okay, Capcom sued Data East specifically, which was Fighters history. I want to say, they, then they, I think they sent a cease and desist, or like, Super Fighter in particular got hit by something back in the day, and I remember that was part of why that game was so difficult to track down for a while.

Starting point is 02:30:57 But yeah, the main lawsuit was Data East, just to crack. Can't we just solve this the old fashioned way and hire guys like Kiryu to go over and fucking shake Pal World down in the street and threaten their family? Can't we just go back to those good old days? Kidnap someone's sister to make sure they fucking pay their cut. Yeah. And the answer is we're talking about Nintendo and not Sega so

Starting point is 02:31:34 Yeah, it's it is it is I think the the absolute blatantness of pocket pair is What crossed that line this time around but I? Really want to point out and I'm sure I pointed out every time, it is beyond the funniest thing ever that Sega of Japan has a fucking 23-part game series about how cool the Yakuza are are considering their historical behavior. That is like the most obvious possible progression of the way Sega acted in the 90s. Yeah, well, they would appreciate it if you stopped talking about that, bro. How about you stop bringing it up? Okay, that developer's sister is fine.

Starting point is 02:32:27 I'm sure she's living a happy life. Everything's okay. And pachinko is a game of skill. And you can't even win real prizes. It's a you go collect little you collect little collectibles You're a skill game, and it's not gambling It's just for it's just for collectors. What's the problem with that? Anyway um Yeah, we'll see well hey if you though there is one final thing to say about this If you think power world might get super fucked on this, you should probably buy it because

Starting point is 02:33:11 it may be delisted. Might be a thing. In like a couple years. Getting delisted due to Nintendo's wild lawsuit is probably better than getting delisted due to toxic positivity. What a term. I love that toxic positivity. What a term. I've heard that term. I've used that term on this show before. heard that term. I've used that term on this show before. I don't recall. But when I talked about toxic positivity, I was complaining about FF14 pub crawls where people were like, don't tell me how to play my job. I know what I'm doing. You don't pay my sub. There's your toxic positivity. So for anybody who has not heard about toxic positivity this week, Concord popped up and

Starting point is 02:34:06 there's a couple steps to this story but the of course people are still we're still trying to dissect what the fuck happened and and how did it go so wrong and so part of that post-mortem led to Colin Moriarty spoke on his podcast and described that he spoke to somebody who worked on Concord and got some verification on some details and initially reported that internally it was so much more worse than you think according to the Concord dev because it was referred to as the future of PlayStation it was treated as something like Star Wars it had Star Wars like potential a dev culture of quote-unquote toxic positivity halted any negative feedback making it cost $400 million.

Starting point is 02:35:05 Now, I am seeing a lot of people, both here and in regards to that, saying that Colin Moriarty is a hack and makes shit up. And that may be true. I don't actually know who Colin Moriarty is. It's from the Last Stand gaming podcast. I don't really know. I'm just describing where the story went.

Starting point is 02:35:26 So step one was this part of it here. But the idea of Concord costing that much money is so funny to me. Let's explore this further for funsies. So after that, there was a further elaboration that the initial cost was 200. And then after, basically there was an initial 200 budget, and it was not shaping up. It was in a rough shape after all these years of development. And then Sony came along when they bought out the team

Starting point is 02:36:04 and then put another 200 in they bought out the team and then put another 200 in to get it to the finish line. So in total, while games like Spider-Man and God of War and other major AAAs or quadruple A's have had these insanely huge budgets, this one doubled down on its initial budget to get it to the finish line because of the rough shit it was in. I'm looking at everybody argue about the veracity of the source. I'm going to get to that part right after this. Which is fun. But the toxic positivity part was apparently corroborated by others.

Starting point is 02:36:36 So let me walk through this if you don't mind. So that was the initial clip. You can go check it up from the podcast describing those bits. And so immediately after that, a number of reporters from Kotaku, game industry dot biz, and other game and journalists, publications basically came out and said, we're saying, yeah, that number seems inaccurate, because the people that I've heard or I've spoke to did not said they gave a number but it was not 400. That's a lot of cash. Right. Or millions a lot. Yeah. For 200 in original development and then 200 and outsourcing after the fact. I for a fact

Starting point is 02:37:17 like just going back to QA days I know that when a when a game is on fire they will take that thing and throw it to third party outsourcing to just get more eyes on it. And sometimes they'll do it in secret, and sometimes they'll be like ghost money where they don't want certain people on the, on the, you know, certain event. They don't want people to know the full scope of things,

Starting point is 02:37:38 but when something's on fire. Cut all those dudes out of the credits, man. Right, we hired a private Fucking firefighter to come out this fire So that is something that has that happens in the industry But regardless multiple people are or came out after this to say that the 400 million number is not accurate However Yes, there was corroboration that the toxic positivity line in particular was backed up and that internally there was overall a such a there was a

Starting point is 02:38:11 glow and a feeling that this game was going to be destined for greatness and that you couldn't really speak up against it or point out any of the problems and that people who did were kind of like shunned and or you know, pushed aside and not encouraged to speak up about things like the character designs being fucking whack. This is the most believable thing ever. I think back to I'm sure yeah, you watched a Plankets episode one review of Star Wars episode one. There's a bit in that where everyone is like visibly afraid of George Lucas walking around talking and the only thing people keep saying at each other every time something comes up is going, it's going to be great. It's going to be great. It's

Starting point is 02:38:57 got to be great. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. No, I mean, your job is tied to your being a yes man here, you know, and so as something rolls out and they go, this is the direction we're going, someone makes that initial decision. So everyone else is like, yeah, okay, I want to keep working here. Let's go. Regardless of the truth. I look down and I see somebody go best season ever. Right.

Starting point is 02:39:23 Oh, man. go best season ever right now now the thing is that was press for the you know the the actor talking about that to the public internally if you can't be honest and have real talks about shit that's fucking your you that's the worst thing ever yeah it's poison you roll around You run all the way around to me talking to Gene and go hey you play Concord, right? Is it like Good is this sad and he's like no Like this isn't even like a tragedy like oh it's gone forever and you'll never get to play that it's like actually that's fine that's fine that you didn't play it and at no point internally was this ever like pulled back to be it wasn't canceled before release it was released and then immediately killed right the the thought

Starting point is 02:40:19 is whatever that number ends up being if it's not 400 million because that's like fucking insane by any video game standards and stuff, it's still high enough that the ramifications are very likely to be felt by Sony for a while. Well, those 12 live service games they were planning? Yeah, right. I mean, like even I don't know if like any of this effects or has any bearing on something like how the pro drops and what that skew announcement is, you know, but it does certainly feel that the damage this does is going to last because you know that this had enough of a budget for them to go and also get a bunch of CG animations done that we're never gonna see. And an entire episode of the secret level thing that's coming as well. So like the marketing cash was fronted aggressively upfront, which you don't do to a thing that you're spending light money on. Hey, I have a question for you, somebody who's worked on video games for realsies. So there's the,

Starting point is 02:41:28 we got to throw money at this because it's on fire, right? That's very clear. I think everybody can understand that. Is there also a, hey dude, this shit sucks, with the response being and what the fuck do you expect me to actually do about that? It's too late, or that's too much, or I have no ability to change that? So I mean, admittedly, I've been out of the industry for a while, so there's things that I'm sure are different, but for the most part, shit never changes, right? There is definitely people that are like, yeah, we are resigned to our fate. Just ship it. And that attitude I've seen on major releases that are sequels

Starting point is 02:42:14 to beloved franchises. Oh, yeah, that one got it. Right? Where like, the there is an energy of like, yeah, you can go back a number of builds and see when this was, this was originally something special, but that's gone now. Are you ever going to be able to talk about that ever? Just ship it. Right. And just ship it becomes a bit of a mantra amongst people. And to the point where literally we are sending each other emails with just a picture of a boat. Just like, Just like, okay, how's that bug? Did you fix it? How's it on the new bug?

Starting point is 02:42:47 Did you do your regression? Yeah, yeah, what's going on? Just JPEG of boat in the email. You know? And you're like, is what it is, man. We got a lot of shit to work on. I got multiple things. My desk is busy.

Starting point is 02:43:02 We can only, yeah. What do you want me to do here? Right? We're beyond that. What makes this, I think, unique is the just ship it mentality never goes hand in hand with, we're sorry for taking your money. Here's your money back. I thought they were going to ride this out for a while. That's the crazy part, which is yeah, we're sorry refunds for everybody Undo control Z. Never mind back into the bushes. We go, you know that doesn't go hand in hand so I Was under the assumption and maybe I was right or maybe I was wrong. I don't know

Starting point is 02:43:43 I'd need somebody to confirm to wrong, I don't know, I need somebody to confirm to me, and I don't know who could. Thus, Concord's big deal was supposed to be these very well animated shorts that would happen with the weekly story. And two of those, or three of those came out, and I watched them, and they are technically immaculate. Oh, they're really good. Yeah. They are feature film, CG quality immaculate between the most boring characters talking about nothing.

Starting point is 02:44:17 It is like astonishing. I have been curious to see, I'm like, are these, is that Secret Level episode or would these shorts make those characters seem like better designs in the way they're used? You know, like is there something about them that'll like convince or sell it in a way that the in-game models do not? I don't know because like the the CG stuff stuff is like it's a plus it looks great And it's they're just talking about nothing like that's got no Sold with it all and I was under the impression that they would have had to build like

Starting point is 02:44:58 fucking 50 of those things for launch Right to you know get ahead of, because it's supposed to be weekly. But what if they didn't have like 50? What if they had like eight? And so if they decided to keep the game going, they would have to have the team making those super expensive, super high quality CG cutscenes week after week after week so that the total weekly cost of keeping the game up was actually really high. But that's okay because we're it's going to be doing gangbusters. And it's not free to play.

Starting point is 02:45:35 So everyone's going to be buying it, you know, so that's where the money's directly coming from. Like yeah, yeah. I don't know. Who knows, man. Yeah, you should track down a couple of those Concord shorts because they are like They are The technical team

Starting point is 02:45:56 made them without input from like a writer is how they feel like just I feel like just... Hmm. It has been... So we talked about how Rumbleverse came and had a goofy art style that people couldn't get behind and that was a big hit. Do you think that's what killed it? Just straight up? Just the art style?

Starting point is 02:46:16 It's part of it. It's not just... No, it can't be the entirety of it. I can't... That doesn't make sense to me. There would be too much blame to lay at like one person's feet. But it's a huge part of it because everyone's like god that shit's ugly It's the first thing you say when you see you go. Why is it so ugly? It's a part of it man a big part of it It's also like the again the fact that like you said it's like wait. It's out wait

Starting point is 02:46:40 It's free the cost the the I'm gonna say something like Marvel Rivals dropping and being another thing around the corner, all these other things being around the corner. Deadlock ain't even the same genre, but it is still, it's a shooter thing that's happening. And again, free, it's a combination of a lot of effects, but in particular, the art style being rough, just guarantees that there's no, the sticky paper on the backside of that thing has no chance to he's it's not adhesive

Starting point is 02:47:10 It's not gonna land any what's sliding off of everybody. I loved playing rumble verse Yes, and and so this is where I'm like, it's been a minute since there's been a thing where you're like Oh They were there was an art style design here in concept and like, they just failed to realize that in game. Because I feel like the last time I saw that large of a failure one to the other was like the Castlevania like conversion of Kojima artwork, right? On the PS2, which is like, yeah, you made some fine PS2 models, but holy fuck at the source, you know? And then I guess going the other way with the like, we, you made some fine PS2 models, but holy fuck, at the source.

Starting point is 02:47:45 And then I guess going the other way with the, like, we're going to remove Kojima art entirely and just strip it down to super basic stuff. Oh, people in the chat are saying Marvel Infinite's a good example of this. I think that new mod that cleans up the shading and makes that game look incredible. Infinite and Beyond, shoutouts Max. It's like, yeah, you know what, if that game hadn't looked like it was made out of string, people would have been into it. Yeah, I get, but like, well, the distinction I'm making here is that like there was some

Starting point is 02:48:16 concept art at some point that looked like it made sense. And then it failed in translation. Infinite, I think, looked ugly through and through. But yeah, anyway, so the conversion process failing is a huge part of why this probably fucking bounced off of everybody. But it's certainly not the only thing. I think as well, the eight years of dev and then the extra money buildup internally creates a pressure cooker situation.

Starting point is 02:48:49 It's going to be great, man. Where they're like, this needs to perform immediately. And then what were the numbers? Less than 60 people or whatever? It was absurd lows on launch there that you're like the server cost every day. SIDDHARTHA 600 people peak. SIDDHARTHA Yeah. SIDDHARTHA At some point, you're like, fuck this, right? Keeping it online is a problem. This makes no sense. We're going to be studying it for a while, but the ramifications will

Starting point is 02:49:21 be felt and I'm sure somewhere else internally,'s gonna, you know have to diffuse that damage It's gonna be really interesting to see if like a Sony big wig decides that he's moving on to better things Huh in like six months falling on a sword over this. Hmm. I don't know. I Do would fucking hope, you would fucking hope whoever kept giving this thing the green light. I mean, C-suite immunity though. Come on. Oh yeah, the head of Concord's team just quit. Well. Well, anyway, speaking of things not selling well, Square has come out and said that, yeah,

Starting point is 02:50:17 Final Fantasy XVI and VII Rebirth heavily underperformed according to reports of disappointing profits. Can we take a quick break? Yeah. I have a lot to say about this, but I don't want to say it with a full bladder. Okay, BRB. All right. So yes, we are seeing Final Fantasy 16 and 7 rebirth heavily underperformed Square Enix reports disappointing profits

Starting point is 02:50:46 Do we have the numbers on how much they actually sold? So in Q4 of the current fiscal year Let's see if we can pull these out here. There's a there's a big old chart and a Lot of places to look on it. Here well here's the- Okay I got the numbers. You got it? Okay.

Starting point is 02:51:13 These aren't from the same source. These are from closer to the game's launches. But it looks like FF16 sold around 3 million and FF7 Rebirth sold around to two and a half as of a couple months ago. So usually when these types of stories come out, there's often a like, and how insane was the unreasonable expectation that Square set on these things. However, I'm seeing that folks are pointing out that in this instance, the inflated expectations might not be the case because looking at the receipts with both FF15 and 7Remake, they did-

Starting point is 02:51:59 They did numbers. ... it flips those sales. So in particular, FF15 was 5 million day one, 6 million after one month, 7.7 million after a year, and 10 million as of the last update publicly. Yeah, FF7 remake may have sold around 7 million. 3.5 million after three days, 5 million after six months, and yeah, more beyond. But like again, this is a point where they stop up there. So they are like less than half of their last contemporaries. Right.

Starting point is 02:52:35 Each of these. Which is like wild because you know they're way more expensive than the last games that came out. Yeah. expensive than the last games that came out. Yeah, they're both iterative improvements over the last thing directly. 16 feeling like a sequel to what they were trying to do with 15's engine and stuff. So yeah, this might be one of those instances where they're just kind of saying the unusual or the sky high expectations in this instance might not be applicable. This is like straight up, there is less money being made on the things that one entry ago almost doubled these numbers.

Starting point is 02:53:18 Yeah. So there's a lot to go into here. There's a lot of reasons in every direction that would account for these the base of the sin I was I mean after you at the most simple level sequels always underperformed but compared to the original yes but Final Fantasy doesn't go by the typical sequel rules because Final Fantasy is usually a complete you know usually and off whatever but these are X equals have always sold less. Yeah, and there is a direct sequel in Rebirth from Remake, right? Yeah. So, FF15 took forever to come out and got hyped up to shit. Like,

Starting point is 02:53:56 you remember FF13? Versus Thurses? Versus Thurses? Becomes? Versus Thirteen? Yeah. And all that. And F ff7 remake was something people had been asking for since 1999 most anticipated remake in the video game industry ever but there's like more than that so like I can speak like I was talking to my my friends about this last night about Rebirth. Rebirth is a direct sequel to FF7 Remake and I think that if they wanted to make their monies, I think that maybe making these games not quite remakes may not have been the best idea because the remake series for Final Fantasy 7 now caters like nearly exclusively to like, I hope you played the original FF7 in the mid 90s for you to really get all of this in your chest because we expect you to have. There's part of that though that is also like when the brand new remake is coming out, everyone

Starting point is 02:55:13 doesn't know what they're getting and everyone who wants one or the other wants a remake or wants a pseudo sequel are going to buy in to see what that's about. And then, yeah, with the with the actual committed direction, after the fact, there are people who surely bought remake and were like, I'm not happy with this decision. I wouldn't have bought it if I knew. So and then there are those who are like, Oh, I love this, right. But you still divide that number. And then word of mouth has to do its thing once the next entry comes out Even if there are these other improvements, so I'm playing a final fantasy 14 with my friends last night and we're doing a fucking

Starting point is 02:55:53 you know trial two and we're talking about rebirth and I have three There's there's like four types of people in there people who didn't bother with There's like four types of people in there. People who didn't bother with the remake series at all. So pick them out. There's a friend of mine who's like, I fucking hate the ending of FF7 remake so much I wish I never played it. I have no interest in the future of the series.

Starting point is 02:56:24 So they're out. Then there's generally liked it. And then there's me who I'm like, I'm super mad that it's not weirder and further away from being a remake because I feel that I was like explicitly promised that it would be more different. And like, I think both of those positions are just as valid, and that they tried to split the difference and they fail to appeal to either of those groups. It's not the same enough to be the same. And it's

Starting point is 02:57:02 not different enough to be different. Yeah, I mean Creatively we've discussed this already with like Resident Evil remake and such how it's like you can do a faithful but loving Detailed remake of a thing and keep it 100% to what it is and then make it a thousand percent of what it was or you can go wild and Change it up completely and make it so that it's compelling enough with what it's doing That's new to make it worth it Like I feel like I was playing through Final Fantasy 7 the force awakens

Starting point is 02:57:33 Now as to how that converts into lower sales for the next one though I think another part of this that is worth mentioning is the this that is worth mentioning is the multi-platform versus exclusivity deals. Oh yeah, so like FF7 Rebirth and FF16 have been locked to that PlayStation 5 for a while. 15 came out all over the place? All over the place, yeah. 13 came out all over the place? All over the place. Yeah. 13 came out all over the place very famously. So even with all this anticipation

Starting point is 02:58:12 and going into the first entry of a thing as well, I think you have these compounding effects that are just like, you also don't have as much of a choice to get it where you want it now. That's like, okay, it's a PS five exclusive. Well, PS fives have been hard to get up until relatively recently. A lot of people who might've had PS fives don't. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:58:33 I mean, I do remember the era of the podcast where it was like, yo, can people even get this thing? No, not really. No, the only people who can get it is people like us who can call people and go, do you have one? And they'll, they'll mail it to our house. Well, eventually I, uh, one time I, when I said it, people were like, actually, Willie, that's not the case anymore. It's actually fine now. And I was like, oh, okay, cool.

Starting point is 02:58:53 That's good. It took a couple, it took a couple of years, but here we are. Um, but yeah. So in a case where you're like, all right, so if, if some people are out on the idea or the concept and word of mouth is not doing what it should and all these things, like you need everything you can get. And yeah, the sequel drop and the exclusivity drop are also weighing against it. And this is the premier video game fucking franchise, right? It's like it's the biggest shit ever. And it doesn't seem like, you know, given that they're going to take this, the FF7 ARP in particular in like these bigger directions and try to like fix or improve where they

Starting point is 02:59:30 were what they made last time and so on. Like these games are going to get more expensive as time goes on. Oh yeah. So like, and they're promising that like, oh yeah, they've said that like FF7 R3 is going to be like fucking bombastic, incredible blow it on. So when you play FF7 Rebirth, you can, you Rebirth, you've been plunking away at it in the background, right? I stopped. I was working on Integrate and I stopped. Okay, so FF7 Rebirth is just fucking money dripping.

Starting point is 03:00:01 Yeah, play the demo. So it's it's wet with cash. Like it is. It's disgusting with cash. And I came away from like a lot of sequences going for what, though? You know, like, like I would like I look back at the first I look back at the very first trailer for ever crisis where it looked like ever crisis wasn't gonna be a mobile nightmare That ever crisis was just gonna be a very flat Ff7 remake with pre-rendered backgrounds and the higher res characters and I was like, oh, that's what I want That's that looks cheap, that's what I want. That's that looks cheap. But it's what I want. Yeah, and and it is like, you're the things you're describing, you have to buy the game to find out you have these problems with it, right. But now that it's like two games in,

Starting point is 03:01:06 you know, all these compounding effects kind of just spell out that like, yeah, even Final Fantasy fucking seven is not immune. You know? It's too old. It would be immune to this if this shit came out 10 years ago. You think it was, it just, they just took too long with it?

Starting point is 03:01:23 If FF7 Remake was on the fucking PS2 or PS3, this conversation would be evaporating away because those people who played FF7 would be, one, alive, and two, itching for more FF7. They, like. Hmm, now hold on though. Okay. Let's entertain this for a second. The sequel you would have gotten slash remake you would have gotten would have been from the Advent Children era into yes, right. It would have been that it would have been that

Starting point is 03:01:57 mode. Um, and probably would have been bolder with its choices and probably more terrible. So some boulder worse choices would probably have been made. You're right. Mid-aughts. Or maybe not actually. I think maybe. But there's another thing that happens and I try and talk about this all the time because I love it. Okay. Wully, Mass Effect 1, 2, 3, what was that? 2006, 2008, 2000... Back to back.

Starting point is 03:02:31 Like... Were 2 and 3 back to back? It felt like it was. Trilogy, release dates. Like I'll just use this, right? Yeah. So Mass Effect Trilogy came out on November 2012. Was it was it? Okay was 2006 2008 2010 I Think for Mass Effect. Oh, no wait. It was 2002 2012 for Mass Effect 3. Okay, so 2007 to 2012, right? That's five years From hey that Mass Effect game looks good. I'm gonna pick up that Mass Effect game, right?

Starting point is 03:03:02 Yeah, fucking Final Fantasy Remake was announced in 2015. That's nine years ago and the second of three games just came out. That's too long! Mass Effect 2 felt like a glorified DLC campaign. It was super tiny and streamlined. Yeah, and it fucking ruled! I think, um... Yeah, I don't know whether or not the full game kind of coming out the full thing the full excuse me the full ff7 remake

Starting point is 03:03:49 coming out and that time that's been nine years and that means if let's add three more let's be really generous and add three more it It'd be 2015 to 2027. That is 12 years. That is a trilogy that is fucking grade one to 12 of school. That's too long. That's too long. And we're talking about a game that's a remake of a game from the 90s. The scale of time is wrong. If FF7R was the last release of that trilogy. A rebirth, you mean? Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 03:04:38 Then it would be, it fit a lot better. No, no, no, remake, like coming this late, right? Alternatively, if remake was the entire game and there's no further waiting afterwards and it was just a faithful one-to-one but prettier I I don't know if the money would ever make sense But if f7 remake was like the whole game, but done cheaper in one shot We would be looking at like a 20 million copy fucking probably in one shot once like just get it and go and like it's it's it's exactly what you're expecting and we and you know with with some bells and whistles but like all in that that one release

Starting point is 03:05:16 yeah I think so do you want do you want to engage in the least fair comparison possible. Sure. I would love to engage in that. Okay. So in the time in between the release date of FF, sorry, the announcement of Final Fantasy VII Remake, and today we have received Yakuza Zero, Kiwami, Six, Kiwami 2, Fist of the North Star, Judgment, Like a Dragon, Lost Judgment, Isshin, Gaiden, Infinite Wealth.

Starting point is 03:06:00 Not that Final Fantasy VII is going to hold itself to that standard, but yes, now we're in the Duke Nukem forever times, right? Wars have started and ended. Every Harry Potter movie, every Lord of the Rings movie, every Lakey. But it's like, hey, like- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're still- and here's the- no, no, no. R1 came out, and we are actually still waiting for the third thing.

Starting point is 03:06:26 The people who like love Final Fantasy deep in their hearts, love Final Fantasy deep in their hearts because when they were kids, they fucking played like 12 of them because they just kept coming out. Like FF13 to now is like an adult. You're an adult. That game came out in 2016. I can see the thought though, in the discussions here where it's like,

Starting point is 03:06:55 this is the most anticipated video game of all time. Why would you just make it one and done? Why would you not make this a full process, a full thing? Well, the reason is, make it the most visually immaculate expansive game ever made. Make a cinematic universe instead of making a movie, right? You see that this is where industry trends go, you know? And so now we have to, like, yeah, get this update that we're like, oh shit, FF7 remake is not making enough money. It's just like, that's an absurd sentence to say.

Starting point is 03:07:34 I feel like maybe the graph, the chase for graphics and money is maybe starting to fall apart right now because like, how much softer can you make Cloud's lips look? Not much. Not much. I love the side story to that one where just a side note, Nomura was interviewed as to like, hey, why does everyone look so pretty? And he said, because when he was in high school, a friend of his was playing a game with an ugly character and he said, so I have to be ugly in games too? You know what?

Starting point is 03:08:17 And you know what game that guy didn't play? Concord. Yeah. Didn't, did not preorder a copy. Incredible. That's so funny. Man. Anyway, so yeah, this is a this is this is fucking rough news for them. Obviously. I mean, they're committed certainly to the path with with our three but who knows what like an ff-17 or 18 would have to fucking bro just face with this make smaller games that will make ps2 games just make high-res PS2 games.

Starting point is 03:09:05 As Final Fantasy as this big quintuple A franchise? Yeah! Fuck it! Why not? You know? I mean they should, but it's like, is there a casual pushback to that type of thing of scaling down? I don't know.

Starting point is 03:09:20 How's Dragon Quest doing? Did Dragon Quest XI sell a lot of copies? I think it sold four billion I mean Japan will ensure that forever, right? Yeah, yeah, I I I'd wonder if like, you know, you you hit this tier where you're in the like this is whatever Call of Duty fucking you know, like, video game fucking plateau tier, where it's like, can you step backwards? Are you allowed, or do you just burn?

Starting point is 03:09:56 I think the funniest thing about this discussion is like, so Spider-Man 2 came out, and there was interviews with the dev, no, it was not interviews, it was anonymous comments by interviews with the devs. No, it was not interviews. It was anonymous comments by some of the devs because Spider-Man 2 cost five times as much as Spider-Man 1 did. Cost like $250 instead of like $50 or I think it was $65. And devs are like, why are we even spending it? You can barely tell the difference difference and Spider-Man 3 has an

Starting point is 03:10:28 estimated budget of even higher than that and it's like even the people making it going I don't know if you can even tell are you know having to make it bigger and bigger and bigger yeah you know I'll answer my own question and say that like when we factor in that talk the other day about the whole investing in game companies and having to answer to investors and trying to beat the S&P, trying to beat the attention economy over free games that you can play with your friends, your Fortnites and your Roblox and your fucking everything in your war zones and asking people for a full price game for two weeks to a month of

Starting point is 03:11:05 their attention. Yeah, they can continue. If something doesn't change, then we just go under, right? Everything just drops. Adjustments have to come. So did you play Ratchet and Clank or Rift Apart? No. So it's incredible. It's fantastic. It's a really great game. It also barely broke even because it was very expensive. So Ratchet and Clank, Rift Apart came out in 21.

Starting point is 03:11:33 The prior game came out in 2016, so that was a five-year wait. Ratchet and Clank games, there are fucking 13 that came out between 2002 and 2012 and Ratchet and Clank did great over and over and over. There were PS2 and PSP games. They were fucking cheap and they made them and they were good. Just make a bunch of them. Just make a bunch of them. Just make them cheap. Dude, it used to be there were like three Final Fantasy games

Starting point is 03:12:04 coming out like every year between the spin-offs and the main games and the spin-off spin-offs. Final Fantasies are supposed to be console sellers, right? They're supposed to be instant attachment, instant attach rate growth. Supposed to be. But yeah, anyway, so that's the surprising bit with this story is the idea that it's like by the numbers, it's not just inflated expectation. It is literally lower returns from their direct. Yeah. And also I want to talk about Rebirth. Rebirth, despite my complaints, is an incredible

Starting point is 03:12:43 game. It is an incredible game. It is like the peak of AAA in terms of presentation and sound and music and all that, particularly music. Holy fuck. And it has the prestige. It has the most prestige of anything. It's a fucking FF7 remake, man. And for it to like, do like, okay, good. It's like, oh man, this industry is gonna fucking crash soon. FF7 remake a commercial failure. I'll tell you one thing, those exclusivity deals are probably going to be renegotiated. I imagine that- It couldn't possibly have been worth it.

Starting point is 03:13:30 I imagine they're looking on the back end and we don't, again, they don't publicize all the numbers. So we don't know just how much they lost and or were given, right? Because a lot of the time these deals are essentially the exclusivity company buying copies, you know, in a way. That's kind of like how the EGS works. Man, I played Rebirth. That shit's not going into the next second generation, man. I don't see it. I played Rebirth and like you feel the money and then you keep going like, you didn't even need this whole section.

Starting point is 03:14:07 You just didn't even need the whole thing. That is true. No layoff announcements just yet. We will see. Meh. Well, look. I think I know how they can get more copies sold. How's that? I think the missing ingredient from Final Fantasy is to get Cristiano Ronaldo in the

Starting point is 03:14:48 game. I think if you just get Ronaldo to be a playable character, nevermind act. So this could save Final Fantasy. I'm not up to date with sports and I'm not Latin American. So I don't know Ronaldo this is the other Ronaldo by the so I got super confused This was the guy from Ronald Dino soccer This was the guy from Ronald Dino soccer. No no no no no because there's Ronaldo, but then there's Cristiano Ronaldo, and then there's Ronald Dino. I Always Portuguese my mistake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you didn't know I thought it was about I thought they were they're putting in the Ronald Dino soccer guy

Starting point is 03:15:46 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no cuz that's a that's that's these are these are different people These are different people. Um, I think there's a real genius to saying he's coming to city of the wharves and not explaining that at all Like he just so ron Cristiano Ronaldo tweeted out SNK fucking Fatal Fury a legend is joining a legendary game, but there's no details of what the fuck that means What does that fucking mean? that means that Ronald Dino is coming to Tekken and The class and Ronaldo classic

Starting point is 03:16:23 Louise Nazaro de Lima is coming to Street Fighter, clearly. But like, is he voicing a character? Is he going to be in the background of a stage? Is the man himself a fighter? I think the man himself will be a fighter. That's wild as fuck. It is wild wolf crazy. Yes, it is completely insane

Starting point is 03:16:45 But I think that's what's happening and the reason why I think this is happening is because I'm pretty sure I love me I might need to Google to verify this but I'm pretty sure Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia owns his ass. I think I think he Signed a deal and he's over there for the soccer reasons and I think part of that is why this is so one-to-one.

Starting point is 03:17:13 Why now? This noise? Probably Kasaudi. I think so. He joined the league. He's getting paid. He got an insane contract over there, and yeah. I'm gonna guess that's directly how you get pushed from one straight to the other.

Starting point is 03:17:31 You know? I fucking... I have no idea, like, I guess this is how you get an insanely huge mainstream audience to hear about your game. This is the kind of thing that you would expect to go, I guess, just unknown, unmarketed, unannounced samurai showdown in the background style. But Ronaldo is, like, one of the most popular human beings on planet Earth. I feel dumb that I don't know about him, but I'm I'm a video game man not a sports man

Starting point is 03:18:08 Well again, it's like it's like imagine if I told you remember Michael Jordan. Well, what if there's another Michael Jordan? Also, I live in one of the two countries that doesn't really care about soccer slash football Right, so yeah Yeah Man, we need a third Jordan actually just to fully round this. I thought we already had like multiple new Jordans We need we need we have be you know, so we've got to There are two Will Smith's confirmed Right, there's the giant bomb one and then there's

Starting point is 03:18:46 the Will Smith we know from Big Willie. Yeah, we can get a third Jordan in there. Jordan Blanco. Sure. We've already got LeBron James and now Brawny James, right? So that's a thing. I mean it's his kid, but yeah. Let's get the third one now. Anyways, no idea what the fuck this means. More news at 11 I suppose I want to see what it is and I want it to be the man as like Roberto in from rival schools in in fucking yes mark of the wharves and I want him to be like wildly dissonant like horribly out of place kick go yeah he's gonna be it's gonna be a soccer man in the fighting game

Starting point is 03:19:47 And it'll do the most for marketing Than anything else they were planning. We were talking about. Oh, yeah, Luke from streets. Nah The fucking current God of The soccer world. Like, you might as well just add Goku to the fucking game. People like that Goku. Like, so I know you didn't know about him, but here's what you need to know is like, randomly walking around, people will just try to tackle him.

Starting point is 03:20:23 Like, just full on run run up like like out of control passing out Elvis style reaction to him showing up in places I seen him and I'm crazed with fans fan juice yeah I want to say what was it it was like there was like a thing where it's like how is it possible for him to just to walk in and get a cup of tea And then walk out of a place and like they kind of like recorded how and it's like it's impossible It is it is not yeah, so anyway That is an unexpected Casting choice we will see what the fuck that means in a minute

Starting point is 03:21:06 Not the only unexpected casting choice, however. How about we put a Nero in your Dante so you can Dante while you Nero? Bro. I actually said last week, yo, we should see a trailer for this soon. And so it manifested. Bam. Devil May Cry anime trailer dropped this week. That trailer's really confusing if you're a fan of the Devil May Cry series. It is. It is.

Starting point is 03:21:37 It is. Yeah, so Dathi's doing his thing. He's looking cocky and cool and doing stuff. I'm wondering if they're like, are they hiding the demon plot stuff so that he's gonna beat up a bunch of scrubs? I mean there's demons in there. You see Agni and Ruger on the fucking highway. Yeah, yeah true. And then you see the bunny dude as well. Arkham's in the trailer for fuck's sake. But you see Dante flopping around and stuff

Starting point is 03:22:00 and then doing his thing and then he starts talking and you're like what the fuck? Why is it Nero? And then it's like Johnny Young Bosch as Dante in Devil May Cry. And so that's coming out in April of next year to which everyone's like, whaaat? Is there a reason for this? And Johnny Young Bosch is like, there is a reason. And everyone is like, that's really strange, huh? Is this some sort of twist set up? And it's like, no, no, no. I don't think that would be the case. I don't think you'd have a weird series of like, it's really Nero the whole time wearing a red jacket. It's just why not Dante? Why not Rubin? And so over, I mean, Ken is no longer Ruben as well Ken got replaced in Street Fighter

Starting point is 03:22:46 You know he Ruben has come up recent years going off the deep end and stuff and so the thought was like oh is he being? It's possible the the cove it based on that finally got him Right between that and the then all these from space and shit Yeah So is that the reason why he's not being cast in these previous roles and stuff? And then there's the, like, he also almost got shot in that one video going down. I didn't know that. I think so.

Starting point is 03:23:13 It was crazy. But there's then a further, so I think Johnny Young Bosch and is like properly speaking and they're communicating publicly because he's probably going like dude please you gotta like people are coming at me. Everything I've ever heard about Ruben Langdon is that he's a really nice kind guy and then you get onto certain topics and off he goes. He's whoa whoa whoa, look at him go. So anyway, obviously fans that are like outraged by this and confused as to what's going on are going to be going nuts. And so I can just see them being like, Hey, we know what's going

Starting point is 03:23:54 on, but can we let's talk about this? Like at least in a place where the most upset people can get the full picture. And so he goes, so Ruben then goes, hey, happy to see Johnny get this. Congrats to him, that's awesome. So to just kind of be like, no anger, I'm not mad. This is not a, I wasn't still, stolen from me type situation type thing. And then Johnny also then basically in, yeah,

Starting point is 03:24:24 some further posts elaborates to say that like Ruben Langdon has quit acting period and We want him to any we want to drag him back in and he wants to convince him to come back at some point But straight up like he's out of the game. So that's that There's nothing else to say like the guy who played the voice that you've known forever is no longer acting. So, they got another really good voice actor to do the job. And that's like, fair enough, man. It doesn't have to be a conspiracy, even though there's a lot of conspiracy talk.

Starting point is 03:24:59 It doesn't have to be any sort of wild cutthroat thing. It's just like, yeah, he's literally out and you know who that You know who they should have gotten for it They should have gotten Tim Phillips Devil May Cry 1 Tim Phillips no Devil May Cry DMC reboot Not in a million years they should have gotten that dude. They should have gotten Dino in here

Starting point is 03:25:26 Well shit Who's who's Dante Devil May Cry 1? I fucking used to know it off the top my yeah Yeah And that's why I remember it because you used to know it and I know that you know it I assumed That's what it was just waiting for someone in the chat to say it so that I can stay at drew coo coo comes coom coom to say it so that I can say it. Drew Coombs. Coombs. Coombs. Drew! They should have gotten Drew to do it. To fill our dark souls with light.

Starting point is 03:25:50 Listen man, the reasons make sense. This is certainly, this doesn't feel like a, hey here comes Kiefer Sutherland. Get the fuck out of here, asshole! Yeah, it's like Dante passing the torch to Nero in five. I don't think it was supposed to be this literal Where Nero just became Dante like I was so confused watching that trailer that I thought it was like a secret sequel And then it was Nero pretending to be Dante Yeah, immediately. I'm like we're not doing, that's not, that's insane. That's not happening. This is not gonna go that well.

Starting point is 03:26:28 It's just a simple, like, what's the reason? Oh, he's recast. Okay. You know what they should do, right? If we had a David Hader, like, it makes me kind of sick to my stomach tweet or something, that would be one thing. You know? But if they need to have season two have Virgil show up voiced by Johnny Young Bosch, but he's doing his Adachi voice instead.

Starting point is 03:26:58 Hey man. Yeah, just changing it. These bitches don't know about power. He's that talented. He's bad. Just don't know about power. He's that talented He's that good I Do not I am not bothered by this because Johnny Young Bosch is so fucking good. He's he's great. He's incredible I really am NOT bothered by this at all So we'll see what comes of I think the only person that I would have been like, hey, you know what, that's a great

Starting point is 03:27:27 pick that wouldn't have been Ruben or Johnny, would have been Alex, Alex Lee. To do an impression. Yeah. Well, I'd say this. Suno's gone and we don't know how long it's going to take before the next major entry comes out, but clearly, if it were happening sooner rather than later, we would have found that about this much sooner and Rubin would have been recast in that as well. Because there's radio silence on this franchise, the next thing that's coming is this. But they

Starting point is 03:28:03 might even get the guy currently doing Ken for all we know. Oh man. Someone in the chat just said they should get Ruben Langdon back to voice Nero. Oh my God, that'd be so fucking confusing. Just throw it all out. Start from scratch burn it. Oh That'd be so weird. Oh Anyway, um yeah, that's uh

Starting point is 03:28:39 Yeah, please look forward to V voiced by Kiefer Sutherland. Oh that would See that Speaking of Recasting actors. Yeah You know, I know that you thought you might be interested in Oswald Cobble pot but how about Oz Cobb? Who gives a shit? Who gives a fuck if his name is Oz? You can call him Oz Cobb, but it's his fucking name, like whatever. So it wasn't so much, so that was the first story where they're like, hey, the Penguin

Starting point is 03:29:25 movie, they're calling him Oz Cobb as his name officially. It's not Oswald Cobblepot. Okay. But then there was a second story that came out where the showrunner was like, also, we, even though he's the Penguin, he's not really, he doesn't gonna be called that and he doesn't like it. And it's really because we're not going, we're not, this is not a comic book show. This is a crime drama. It just happens to have fucking Batman in the background. And so it's like or does or doesn't for that matter. The

Starting point is 03:29:53 trailer doesn't have Batman. It's very yeah but no Batman exists in the background of the setting. And so you're like okay so just say you want to make the Sopranos in the DC universe. It's so cowardly. Because they call the show the Penguin, but they're like, but we don't call them the Penguin because it's serious though. And now we're back to we're ashamed of making a comic book thing. All the way back around. Do you remember that era?

Starting point is 03:30:21 All the way back around. The beginning of the comic book movie era, when we were ashamed of it. No bright colors, everyone's wearing dark leather, shut the fuck up, you don't know what the source material was. And then MCU and so on, it's a big hit. Yes, we love it, everyone's excited. We're proud to be part of this franchise.

Starting point is 03:30:43 Actors are clawing their way in, they wanna get get in on that paycheck, it's going to last a fucking lifetime. And now, bombs later, we're back to being embarrassed of the movies we're making. So, did you ever see? Oh, man. So what's way more interesting to me about the Penguin? So you know that Colin Farrell was originally hired for the penguin role in the Batman as Colin Farrell. They're like, can you do like an American accent and just be Colin Farrell? And he's like, I don't want to do that. I want you to prosthetic me up and be

Starting point is 03:31:18 like a gross weird guy. Oh, he asked for that. Yes. Wow they were like okay, and that's why he looks like that in the Batman Well, do you know the I think you should leave skit where Tim Robinson dresses up in old man makeup? But he gets stuck in the mall and starts screaming get this shit off me. It's too hot. It's too hot in here It just starts to freak out like completely loses mind so Colin Farrell I was watching interviews is way more interesting to me than the show where Colin Farrell is like I regret that decision very badly uh-huh because we're film we're not filming a movie.

Starting point is 03:32:05 We're filming a whole season of TV. It's a TV show. And the suit, he's full top to body prosthetics because nothing in his body looks like that. He doesn't look like that at all. Yeah. So the suit that he was in was so hot. We could film scenes for tops four minutes long, because I would start to sweat so badly, the prosthetics would start to fall off.

Starting point is 03:32:30 So they had a tent next to every shot filled with three industrial grade AC units that I would go sit in between every take and people had to wear like winter clothing to like bring me my coffee. And it was like that for the whole production I was just like dying and sweating and like you're an idiot Kelsey Grammer beast or Lou Ferrigno Hulk except he asked for this and then signed up for the spinoff Like you could have just hired a guy that looks like me already and not have any of these problems What the fuck is? Get what's Danny Devito up to grab that fucker back from always sunny There are actors that are schlubby fat dudes that you could have just cast instead.

Starting point is 03:33:25 Danny is still around! You don't have to take a handsome man and put him under a hundred pounds of nonsense so that he can play an ugly guy. You could just hire an ugly guy! How fucking great was Danny DeVito? He rules! He was incredible. Danny DeVito is incredible in literally everything he has ever done Batman returns come on

Starting point is 03:33:47 Just do it again Fuck it. Yeah, um Danny DeVito is a saint and a wonderful guy and he is small He is so much smaller than you think he is you think he's about my size No, he's actually way smaller than me and like the whole like oh we want it to be a grounded crime drama, or we want to make The Sopranos without saying that. Okay, yeah! But with Danny DeVito as the penguin though, they're doing the penguin thing as Tony then.

Starting point is 03:34:15 Go! There's nothing to stop you from doing it. You can still do that show with him going, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. You know what? They should have just gotten fucking Burgess Meredith's coffin out of the earth and propped him up on the fucking set and had him do it. Oh, man.

Starting point is 03:34:37 It's so, maybe this is me expanding a little bit beyond, but it's so disrespectful to guys like Caesar Romero and Burgess Meredith. I was about to say Caesar Romero. Who did fucking great shit with the 60s. And Adam West, who did that goofy ass silly shit to go, well, we're going to take it serious. Not like who? Burgess Meredith, one of the fucking best actors of all time? Oh what, is the penguin's quacking affectation

Starting point is 03:35:11 too goofy for you? Joke's on you, idiot. That's Burgess Meredith's fucked up lungs from smoking because he's a freak and he wouldn't stop and he still lived to like 90 something. Yeah, that's a regular noise that the man happened to make. It is it is wild to to live for the full horseshoe to come complete and see like, now we're embarrassed of what we're doing again.

Starting point is 03:35:37 Get away from it. Cape shit is back to being Cape shit. Oh, yeah. I saw a discussion as well that- You know how exciting it would be to have Robert Pattinson Batman going up against like 1966 The Penguin? That would be a great movie. I mean, you'd have to use dead CG actor tech, you know, to commit to that. I don't mean that I mean like the fucking purple hat and the fucking machine gun fucking umbrella. I saw some discussion as well about the fact that like

Starting point is 03:36:15 the The whole like the the names of the villains gal of the rogues gallery, right? Like as you go as you have like if you're kind of like, oh he's embarrassed of the name He doesn't want to use it and stuff. Like the idea that Batman like basically is it, whenever you have these characters, with the exception of like the Joker or Bane or so, he always calls them by their real name, like Cobble Pot or, you know, or Nigma and stuff, because it's like'm not buying into your stupid character bull. Yeah I'm not gonna like feed your I'm saying you're an ego and Edward right

Starting point is 03:36:50 Everyone else does and you love that everyone else leans into it so you're like oh shit. It's two-faced fuck Ah and Batman is like no you're dent And I'm gonna call you that because I don't respect your stupid games, you know, and you're sick Right. So having that be a thing where like you're the characters leaning away from it takes away from that entire motivation You know because they're supposed to be all about wanting to lean into that identity Sometimes yeah, anyway, it's interesting like the penguin is one of Batman's villains because unlike 99% of them, he's not crazy, he's just an asshole. Like there's no feasibility for him going to Arkham, like he's a criminal. He loves crime.

Starting point is 03:37:38 So yeah. I heartily look forward to, I guess James Gunn's Superman is up next and whatever else is coming down the pipe, but you know, I want to see a return to just like shame and hiding that we're superheroes. How come like all this nostalgia shit never goes to the shit that I want to see? I want to see a fucking super dickery movie. Can I not see that? Am I not allowed?

Starting point is 03:38:10 You could probably see an animated super dickery cartoon. No. But you can't see it in a theater. I want a fucking $400 million budget feature film about fucking Superman blocking out the sun because he wants to ruin people's days at the beach. Yeah, see, the problem is that there's a lot of people that want to see that, but not enough to warrant a theatrical release. But certainly enough to release it straight to Netflix and or DVD. Or Blu-ray, rather.

Starting point is 03:38:34 So, yeah, it's a... Time is a flash. And Lex Luthor's the hero. Maybe Amazon would fun and hey you got a bright yellow Wolverine a minute ago like oh dude it's so funny that his fucking his his mask just exists yeah in non-space yeah yeah yeah yeah also I I mean, while this is a little colder, but not just Yellow Wolverine, you got fucking Patch and One-Armed Age of Apocalypse and every other comic cover variant in quick succession as well.

Starting point is 03:39:20 That looks stupid. Yeah, it looks awesome. Shut up. All the dumb costumes you know all of them anyway beyond that a lot of goku's in that goku game about Goku. Yeah, okay. I mean, we pretty much touched on all of it. The only other thing I was going to mention is odd, but I suppose like Platinum Games has regained the wonderful 101 trademark

Starting point is 03:40:00 from Nintendo. Awesome. Which is like, but they released the remastered version to Steam and it turns out that they didn't have the original. They just had that separately. So anyway, they filed for that. So I don't know if this... We got the trademark back for our least popular thing we've ever made that you don't care about. Kamiya's gone and they had already started on Project GG. Is there any kind of like, you know, did those things just get scrapped or are they going to return to?

Starting point is 03:40:33 Like, who knows? Dude, Capcom was right to yell at those dudes. Project Clover seems... Like, we are like super far away and like I can say with confidence like yeah No, whoever like screamed at those dudes to make games that made money like 20 years ago. Yeah, they were fucking dead, right? They made cool shit, but cool shit doesn't always sell I'm like resentful of Bayonetta 3. I am like carrying that in my heart.

Starting point is 03:41:08 I can hear that. I can hear that. I still believe that good things should be good. That's controversial. I have not yet let go of the thought that good games ought to be good. I also think this. So you know, hmm, we might have to fight that out. Let's take some letters.

Starting point is 03:41:30 Hey, if you want to send in a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail.com. That's castlesuperbeastmail.com. Please keep it brief. Please, please, please, please. Um, all right. I got one coming in. Dear Castle Super Beast Males, I'm a researcher in Canada who studies attraction to and relationships with fictional characters. Fuck yeah! You turned your goon into a nerd information. I'm researching!

Starting point is 03:42:13 Someone posted on the reddit a quote by Tetsuo Nomura about how he makes his characters attractive because of an experience with a classmate that said they wouldn't play a game with unattractive characters. That's right. I'm curious what your beliefs are about attractive characters in games. Do you enjoy them more? Are they attractive for you specifically, or do you consider them attractive broadly?

Starting point is 03:42:32 Last but not least, do you agree with Tetsuya Nomura that unattractive characters are not worth playing as? From Connor Lashner. Okay, that's not what Nomura said. That is not what he said. That is not what he said. Yeah, however, I'll say this. I sometimes feel like I would like that to be the character I'm playing as, but sometimes I don't. I want games where you do and don't get that. Cloud is one thing, but I don't

Starting point is 03:43:02 want every single game I play to have every single character being like an 11 on 10. That gets kind of boring. It gets kind of stale. And if it's not an art style thing, anime-wise, I do appreciate when someone puts the effort in like Monster and 20th Century Boys and Pluto to having characters that look like they're not necessarily all be shown in and be seen in. Alright.

Starting point is 03:43:31 Counterpoint. Now go tell a random amount of developers that they are the ones that should be making the ugly characters. Square Enix can make the pretty characters, but you guys make some Uggos. I think if you're out there making Uggos though, you're probably somebody who enjoys Uggos, and you're like, I'm gonna lovingly craft this Uggo, right? I think the Disco Elysium is full of really goofy looking people, because you have an artist that loves making these character story faces, you know, old lines lines and bullshit and like that's all awesome too.

Starting point is 03:44:09 I think you can also, you can go a Hades route where everyone's hot in a wildly different way, but whatever you choose, I just don't want it to always be the same thing. So the halo effect is real. People don't know about the halo effect. The halo effect is your propensity to overvalue the morality of somebody you find personally attractive.

Starting point is 03:44:32 It is one of the most easily demonstrated effects. If you see a pretty girl do something morally questionable, you are more likely to give her the benefit of the doubt than if like a 95 year old ugly grandma did it. It's just the way people work. Stab me, Steffi Bishisoba. People tend to like more attractive things, not even people or characters. Aesthetics is important to human taste. People like it. The run you run into like will your point out is that like well Everything on the menu should be a cake because everybody likes cakes, right? Yes. What if I want a pie?

Starting point is 03:45:16 Well go fuck yourself. This is a cake house. Yeah I think at the end of the day the average person can appreciate interesting even if it's not like Like pretty aesthetic but like attractive like is so often like boiled down to like I would like to fuck on them right like There's two things that people ignore. One is people have weird tastes. Need I remind you that my wife is streaming a Warhammer 40k computer role playing game tonight because she saw a picture of a robotic skeleton. You can't like a co you can't possibly know what everybody's tastes are.

Starting point is 03:46:06 Go talk to a girl who has Beauty and the Beast shit all over her backpack and see what she thinks about the human form of the beast at the end of that movie. And there's always a through line here. There's always a little tightrope walk between the art style's expression and like what the characters actually look like. If the art style is simplified enough, you're like, oh, these are barely human beings. Like the blobs in Azumanga Daioh are all just like these little cute girls in high school that are just, they're shapes. You know what I mean? There's the short one and then the tall one and the long one and the one with the spikes. And you're like, yeah, you're just kind

Starting point is 03:46:41 of shapes with emotions, you know? So like, like the taste thing is so like wild because like you'll see these, these fucking she's in the chat. How did that summon you? Anyway, um, um, like you'll see these dudes that are like, Oh, I've got to de woke a five this bullshit. And it's always the same girl with the same body type in a fucking plain bikini and it's like it's the most narrow prescriptive teenage boy idea of that's hot bro.

Starting point is 03:47:16 I have not seen enough Kingdom Hearts designs to see enough diversity like not diverse like literally just different types of characters amongst the groups of young kids with the hairs and stuff. But I do like that, yeah, whenever you kind of have a moment where by having people look different enough, when someone like Pluto, I've mentioned this before, when an actual Bishonen walks into this into the show everyone's like oh my god the glory of this angel because look at this dude because the contrast is so stark and strong right i and and and in those in those shows in particular if you have someone that's meant to like exude charisma if it's supposed to be johan in fucking monster if you're supposed to have a dio that

Starting point is 03:48:03 just looks at you and you're like, oh my god We'll populate the fucking set right regular looking people whatever you want I immediately am on my knees like you need like that to have a really good example that you bring that up because you always See the main characters and they're always like incredible, but then like everyone around them is like normal looking people. Yep Yep, Griffith needs to look through your fucking soul and you have to go. Oh When he stares at you if everyone is just doing that all over the place You don't feel special. They don't feel any special but also like attractiveness doesn't necessarily attractiveness is not necessarily sexual attraction

Starting point is 03:48:43 It's like often like aesthetic appeal. So like, let's take grandmas, for example. Well, if I showed you a picture of a random grandma on the street that's 95 years old, your dick probably isn't going to get hard. I don't know that, but I'm going to go with probably. Okay? Fair. But if you see a nice old lady who's a little hunched and is wearing like the nice grandma outfit with pearls and big thick glasses and her hair's in a bun and she's cooking something and she looks like an adorable little grandma, that's a form of aesthetic beauty because she's exemplifying like the typical archetype of like attractiveness for that role.

Starting point is 03:49:27 The Obatarian, for example, is not that. The Obatarian is the annoying shitty old lady that's yelling at you at your fucking retail job. By the way, the answer to the question you didn't ask is Helen Mirren. Oh yeah, well that's not fair. That's not fair. Shut up. Shut up. The answer to the question you didn't ask is Helen Mirren. Oh, yeah Right like think think of like think of like dudes that walk around that are like big tall versions of me with bigger beards and Like for I know there's at least one person. I follow on Twitter That's obsessed with type. But like, I know a guy who looks like Santa Claus, right? He's where I live. He's adorable. He looks like Santa Claus. Yeah. There's another facet of this as well, where it's like, when it comes to playing

Starting point is 03:50:18 a video game, I know I have this, it's a dead horse topic for me, but I want to be a character in a living world if possible. I don't want to just have a like power fantasy or a full like reflection of just, I want to be hot in this. I love to be somebody that I'm like, oh, you're as interesting as the people around you. You're not self-, oh, you're as interesting as the people around you. You're not like self inserts, you know, I you have your own, you know, traits and personality bits and quirks and weird things. And all of that, I think I also imagine like you people are very willing to make the supporting cast look weird and different because there's this supporting

Starting point is 03:51:00 cast, you know, but like there's a kind of vanilla nist that often kind of has to be relatable on the main guy. And I'm like, yeah, I love when you don't lean into that. But I also know that marketing-wise, big soldier shaved head man sold copies. Oh yeah, I can imagine myself. Yeah, so I'm like, I'm not going to like blast you over the fact that you're like, hey, I want to sell this so we're putting Booker on the cover, you know? But it certainly sucks when it's the same boring shit over and over again, and I think it's more courageous

Starting point is 03:51:32 and awesome to lean into the art of it, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think One Piece is a pretty solid example of like, yeah, everything is fucking nuts and exaggerated and crazy and bad. One Piece is both example It actually lives and dies One was lies is actually both examples of we're talking about because you have characters that are like big mom It was like a fat gigantic piece of shit

Starting point is 03:51:58 Who's exaggerated out to the end and then there's like Oda. Can you draw a sexy lady for us? end and then there's like, Oda, can you draw a sexy lady for us? Now draw a second sexy lady that looks different in any way from the first one. Oh, you changed her hair color. Okay. Like Oda's idea of what a hot lady looks like is like an hourglass with a head popped on top wearing a bikini. Like he just, it's the same fucking thing every time it's hilarious there's an interesting effect in in Vagabond where both the main characters you know Musashi both Musashi and Kojiro are they look like real gorgeous people they are statuesque models of men. And in Slam Dunk as well, there's a lot of characters that are kind of similar to that thing. But while that is what they are when they're like, everything is fine, they get disgusting over time as they degrade,

Starting point is 03:53:04 as shit gets fucked up, as things whatever when they're in when they're in rough battlefield Situations and they're getting haggard and they get more and more gross and stinky, you know And I appreciate that grime. I appreciate that grit and fucking slime and dirt Shoved in their faces because war sucks But yeah, I just I just I don't think it always needs to be a fucking super pretty character. I think it's interesting. There's two examples that came to mind while we're talking about this. One is Grappler Backe in which you look at you, Jero, who's standing there. He's a very cool aesthetic character.

Starting point is 03:53:45 And then you cut to that shot of him pushing his face through the glass. And it's the most deformed fucking nightmare freak shit ever. Like, just, we're taking aesthetic characters and we're making them repulsive. Like, ugh, fucking gross. Kengan Asherah, just the obsession with muscles. It's just, yeah. One thing you cannot fucking do though, is you cannot take a character who is simple anime

Starting point is 03:54:19 like pretty guy face or pretty girl face and then make them realistic and ugly or people will riot terry bogard's nose was a bit big on those those screenshots initially and it was fucking the apocalypse had come you know ugly ugly chun li face from marvel and ugly ken face from five those things were like you're like god damn it it's because i'm thinking of the sprites and the acckerman art. You know? You've got to be careful with that. I think that FF7 remake and rebirth are actually the perfect games to cycle around to this

Starting point is 03:54:54 at the end because everybody in there is like the fucking peak. I remember President Shinra is like a hot old dude. He's Barra, this is ridiculous. He's Barra. Even Corneo, if you're into that shit, he's the peak of that shit with one exception. And that's Hojo. Hojo is sitting around at the fucking supermodel office building,

Starting point is 03:55:27 just being like a grimy, sweaty, ugly piece of shit, to denote that he is the worst person in the whole game. Like... Yeah, no, like, Barret is the hottest Mr. T on Infinite Earths. Oh yeah. Like, like, eat like free. If that's what you want, you're getting the best version. Yeah, anyway, that's kind of where it lands, you know, and like, I don't know. I also know when I look at like, some anime and stuff, they'll like, they'll go out of

Starting point is 03:56:02 their way to, you know, kind of have some... Like, Jujutsu Kaisen has this fucking silver-haired guy with the most glorious blue eyes, and the moment his eyes come out, it's like, oh god, just exuding the fuck... I bet that guy'd be really good in a wizard battle, or sorcerer battle, whatever the fuck the name of that thing is. But the moment his eyes are covered he's just like a fucking he's a circle with spikes he's a radish you know and it's like so you can put that emphasis in there but yeah I don't know I just think it's more interesting you know it's more interesting to have the different types of characters so you know what I'd even say? I would say I'm also interested in like, imagine a cast of a setting where you go, here's your

Starting point is 03:56:50 main character, here's your supporting character, et cetera. Now take control away from the person who's supposed to be the main character and put it in this person over here. And just see how that feels. See what that does to the setting you know you know like I Play FF 14 and like some of the things that make me annoyed in that game is like you know what I would like to Play as a fucking monster man like when I played World of Warcraft I could play a troll or a fucking cow dude the tauren or an undead freak

Starting point is 03:57:22 But every character in FF14 must be attractive. There are no non-attractive options except for that one, um, that one Aura face that's fucked up. But still. Yeah. I mean, shit, like even a little moment like fighting what is clearly a anime protagonist in Armored Corps, right? You're like, oh, that's the spiky haired, like spunky black haired kid that's like,

Starting point is 03:57:57 he's who's running on his own OP music, you know, and you're like, you just fucking target eliminated. You know, even that moment, you know, without even seeing anyone's faces. Yeah, it's great. Good question. Hope that answers it. That's a great question. All right.

Starting point is 03:58:12 And on that note, that'll do. All right. Have a good week, everybody. Be safe out there. Thanks for watching!

Castle Super Beast - CSB 287: Making It Annoying Is Based Actually

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