Castle Super Beast - CSB311: Stop Adapting Things

Starting point is 00:00:00 ["Sailor Moon Theme"] Hey man, what's up? Yo yo. I could have sworn that Genius Kajumbo was over it. I thought he put the past behind him I could have my new life now. I never think about her even I never think about her ever I'm so happy. We're thriving. I've made it to Hollywood. I've got my friend my best life I look at all my new friends Totorooro-san on the left, Jordan Peele on the right You know, Daryl. I'm fucking doing it out here, man. Everyone is succeeding and crushing it and they love me Timothy Chalamet is coming for lunch today. I have never had a better time not thinking about her

Starting point is 00:01:24 Hold on, let me just doodle something a little bit. Hold on, let me just cast an actor in my multi-shit thing. I guess never be game over. Never be game over. You can't say goodbye. Even for a little nod, even for a little moment. If you're not clear on what will he is talking about

Starting point is 00:01:46 We're talking about the deaths. So I think it's really fucking funny that a ten and a half minute like Opus trailer comes out and it's the death stranding to pre-order trailer. That's just so fucking weird. It is funny But he also loves his favorite part about making games is cutting trailers I like my favorite part. I'm gonna tell you I, I've enjoyed it. I just recently replayed all through the Metal Gear Solid, the one, two, three and all that. And I love those games. They're incredible. I did not feel a fraction of the excitement playing through them even on their release day. Then I did watching the trailers again, like a week before those fucking games came out. Hideo Kojima himself could tell me, no, you're making that up, you're lying.

Starting point is 00:02:29 And I would not believe him if he said that he enjoyed anything more than cutting the cinematic trailer. It feels too much like the whole point of the game is to release this 10 minute moment where people are having monologues and dialogues and you're having a relationship Fall apart and someone is softly beating on the other one's chest while it's a hug cry Emotional moment, you know, that is what he is making the game for so that he can sync that up to the music of Ludwig Forsell The new Death Stranding trailer. Hey, Lootie, welcome back. Very glad to see you.

Starting point is 00:03:06 Crushing it. Hey, shout out, they got Woodkid as one of the indie bands of choice. Woodkid's great. And now we just get to watch as this character who's some new cool guy that is like a character that is being introduced as I guess like a Mexican smuggler kind of thing that seems like a new. He's Italian. Italian?

Starting point is 00:03:32 Oh, he was talking about Mexico as like the border that he was crossing from the smuggling. Yeah, but the actor and his accent is Italian. Well, hey, so if you're wondering, hey, Wooly, Pat, you guys might be exaggerating. Sure, this gentleman in the New Death Stranding trailer does look the most like Solid Snake any live-action actor has ever looked like in the world and puts on the headband and is in basically snake cosplay.

Starting point is 00:04:00 I'm not even talking about, for me it's not even the face. It's just, he's just a guy. Oh, yeah No, but like sure and Dana and the fucking the look and yeah, yeah, you're overthinking it That's ridiculous. And sure there's what is essentially a Death Stranding Metal Gear X later on in the trailer and you I Put the hat on it's a coincidence But if I went to say, I don't know July 2020 to the genius cojumbo's Instagram page, I could find the following quote being translated into English. There are many actors that I follow. Luca Marinelli recently caught my eye after watching

Starting point is 00:04:38 The Old Guard and Martin Eden. He played an impressive villain in They Call Me Jig Robot, and I think he will break out soon and his popularity will increase also I think if he dawned a bandana, he'd be a spitting image of solid He can't hide it he can't hide it it's on his sleeve. Oh my god fucking sleeve man Kojima. I like that. I like that. He can't hide it. It's all right there So what this what I my interpretation of this fuck this is going to be Stop asking me about metal gear. I'm going to tell you Exactly how I feel about Metal Gear. Oh man, yeah. He literally,

Starting point is 00:05:31 he doesn't have to do it, but he puts the headband on, they flash it for a second, and then they come back to it, spend the time showing you the military bit, it's got the skulls on each side and then let's put a Rex hat on this giant god and Now we're doing our now we're initiating the drift Hartmann's back and he's fucking believing in you Can you believe all the bullshit you had to watch going down in that trailer just to think I can't wait to deliver some parcels I'm very excited for parcel delivery. Also that trailer has I think genuinely the most interesting part of that whole trailer is the most heavy-handed metaphor in the world

Starting point is 00:06:20 which is the the rope and the stick mm-hmm and whereas the first game was Obsessively about the rope and tying people together to the point where the ending broke for me because I didn't understand what the game Wanted for me out of the rope and I tried to use the stick over and over and over and over This game in bold big text goes, we should not have connected. We shouldn't have done it. It is about the stick. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:06:51 Yeah. Yeah. Check out yo servers in the breach. That's the shot where you're like, Oh, we made it to the end of the reality. And we set up a server room. Sick. Awesome. I don't know how you feel about this, but a couple fictional settings do this, and it's one of my favorite. I think I know where you're going. There's a big crazy dragon and all we don't know how to do with it. Hey, the heroes defeated

Starting point is 00:07:30 it. All right, game over. We did it. Bookend, whatever. Start of book two, game two. Okay, so you know the way that you defeated that dragon? That caused a much larger problem than the dragon ever was because Because you did it wrong. You used a bad solution to a bad problem, and now your current problem is worse than it ever was. And that's what I see in Death Stranding. It's like, we connected and we built America. Oh, that's actually way worse

Starting point is 00:08:01 than the situation we were in before. The thing that I like, which is different from what you were saying, but it's a similar context here, is we technologied our way into the eldritch, into the ethereal, into the unknowable, and oh fuck, back it up, back it up, we gotta pull back. We could go further, but we should probably

Starting point is 00:08:23 start pulling back because, you know, we event-horizoned it, you know? One of these multiple numerical configurations, we press enter and compiled, and then a portal to hell opened up, and we went, oh, shit, okay, that's what happens when you run that check. Got it. And it makes perfect sense with Death Stranding 1 because Death Stranding 1's overall thematic plot is humanity was fucking around with weird paranormal bullshit that it really shouldn't have and it totally destroyed the entirety of society. And in Death Stranding 1, the president tells you, but what if we fucked with it again?

Starting point is 00:09:04 What if we kept fucked with it again? What if we kept fucking with it though? But better this time. Yes, yes, 100%. No, the shambles of society rebuilding on top of a cataclysmic event and rebuilding using the cataclysm as it's like it's fucking Shin Megami Tensei. You know, we've like we're hitting the same. We're hitting the same energy on that.

Starting point is 00:09:31 But it's it's awesome. And now that I also know watching a trailer like this, that stop. You don't you don't have to think about what the imagery means, because it doesn't matter in the sense that it's like, it's going to have a thematic relevance. The reason why you're going to be seeing hands or certain shapes or certain things, certain imagery is relevant to Kojima's messaging. But in terms of like, why is this unknowable weird creature existing here?

Starting point is 00:10:02 The simple fact that it's like, no, we're looking at extinction space. We're looking at the beach and the concept of that means none of it ever has to make sense. It can always be terrifying. It can always be weird and it can always be new. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes that monster looks like that because it's supposed to fucking make you go, uh, uh, uh, eee.

Starting point is 00:10:26 And I fully expect a whole bunch of this to be about like, um, you know, well, the extinction, the extinction, extinction continues, but there's no MLE to, to, you know, to sit there, to govern over it, to, to, to call it when it's time. Now that being said wooly You have to remember we're talking about the genius Kojumbo. So for every deep deep thought and Hidden meaning behind any particular visual motif character name or plot point. There's also the genuine possibility That the reason why the monsters are all made out of hands is because Kojima saw the hands across America thing a while ago and was like, oh yeah, what if

Starting point is 00:11:12 it was ghosts? Maybe. Like, genuinely. Maybe. Like us. Just impressed him that much. We'll see if they start playing remixes of I Got five on it which you know five fingers, etc. I Really enjoy

Starting point is 00:11:32 But a hand has five fingers One for each of the non human extinctions each extinction event. That is there's a finger and yep That is there's a finger and yep, there you go Oh, I love then fucking and fingers While they are part of a hand and when connected individually each finger is like a stick But if you put all those sticks together you get a fist And I love and if the constant is needed to carry a big stick. I love the constant balancing act between this is so deep and this is the most hack shit ever. And it's impossible. You'll beat the game and you'll be like, I don't know if that was

Starting point is 00:12:19 hack shit. It might have been. Yeah, it's Schrodinger's depth man. You know so good open the box is it deep nah Surface is fuck okay. It was a pun. Oh man. All right close the box open it again is gonna be It's gonna be that his heart stops. Yeah, that's it Well, no his heart is gonna be now inside of the Rex which is then gonna be inside of the big Titan you know the the the Magellan. Yeah and we've got You know our low frame rate puppet Which is dope we've got doctor we've got

Starting point is 00:13:04 We've got Doctor, we've got, yeah, just, you know, what's the new? I think I saw Timothy Chalamet on the deck of the fucking submarine for like a single shot. Sure, yeah. But he was unnamed. I mean, I'm just, I wanna look at that new cast and go, okay, which one of you's getting the Oscar this time? Right?

Starting point is 00:13:21 Is it, you know, is it gonna be the new captain guy that they're hanging out with? It's gonna be George Miller. Will it be, you know, who's it gonna be? Who's getting the full on breakdown? You know, it might even be fucking, um, a turgid, uh, turgid fucking, yeah. Yeah, you're killing it here. Reptilian. Turgid reptilian? Yes, it might even be.

Starting point is 00:13:55 I think so far his scenes have been pretty solid. He's done a good job. I can see based on that relationship he's had with the lady he was talking to in the trailer that our not solid snake man could potentially have a big emotional breakdown. It's really interesting that they're going to do Cliff's story again. You think? Well, he's got the skeleton soldiers and he's a warrior and also he's the one we're getting flashbacks of to the life before the event Okay, yeah But it'll be different lost at all could be could be certainly

Starting point is 00:14:35 I'm and it'll also be like well who's gonna be the real rival is it gonna be like him or is it gonna be? Higgs again, you know who's gonna be who's j is it gonna be Higgs again? You know? Who's- It's gonna be Higgs. Who's jonkling all over and has a Harley Quinn. Yeah. Now, not only is Higgs now jonkling, but Higgs has a Harley. I-

Starting point is 00:14:56 What the fuck are the words coming out of my mouth? I- I- I- I- I- He's the maximum jonkler overdrive, okay? Higgs is jonkling overdrive. Higgs is Jonkling, but it's okay because he's got a Harley.

Starting point is 00:15:10 Yeah. What is language, man? I think there is a non-zero chance that the Red Samurai is piloted by the soul of Amelie. That is... Okay. A non-zero chance. by the soul of Amelie. Like that is what like okay. A non zero chance. Red samurai is cyborg ninja rules. Right? Absolutely. Apply apply all cyborg ninja rules to red samurai.

Starting point is 00:15:38 You know, mysterious returning character. Absolutely. Perhaps in a different form, but the spirit is there? Per absolutely. All right, dude. Anyone that is anyone from the first game that's gone could be the Red Samurai, quite frankly. I think that one of the funniest things that's ever happened is I've played through all these Metal Gear games, including the old, old ones that I didn't. And yeah, I came to the conclusion like, okay, he has just remade the same game like 10 times in a row right and it's

Starting point is 00:16:08 actually really crazy obvious and then it's like well actually fan of pain was fairly different right but then Death Stranding is actually a lot like Fan of Pain and but it's but it's different and that's like what's Death Stranding 2 again oh it's Metal Gear again. He got all of his ideas out, all of his different feelings out. And then he's like, what if there was a fucking cyborg ninja, man? But the goal overall is to drop off transportation parcels versus infiltrate and sneak to the objective and

Starting point is 00:16:48 Fulton the matter. Well, there's something really interesting that I saw in the in the footage when they were talking about the stick. Unlike Death Stranding one, which all the footage was traversal or maybe non-lethal forms of combat, you see Sam shoot up a gun a bunch in that trailer. There's a bunch of set pieces with big boss moments too going on, and then vehicle shit. The action is absolutely a part of it. And I would say, like, you know, to the same degree that like Phantom Pain as well kind of became more about that and less about the big boss fight set pieces,

Starting point is 00:17:34 which used to define Metal Gear in a way. It's not to say they didn't happen, but they just don't stand out as much, you know? I feel like the boss fight with the quiet felt like an extended, stronger, regular enemy, in an area that you go back to and fight regular enemies in by comparison to like fucking Vulcan Raven, which is just, this is a whole different video game

Starting point is 00:18:04 for this moment. I fucking love that fight with Vulcan Raven, which is just, this is a whole different video game for this moment. I fucking love that file, Vulcan Raven, it's great. Yeah. No, and to that end, I appreciate that like, the boss fights in Death Stranding do again, stand out very differently. Yeah, so very cool. That is a, that is a, that is a. That is a that is a that is a that is the over under on

Starting point is 00:18:28 Teleported Lou growing up to be time displaced L-fanning. Oh, I don't know. I don't know possible. I want to put that out there right now Because I feel like the answer is like nearly a hundred percent. Wait, what's her name? What's her name again in? The the character fanning character. Yeah, I don't think she has been given a name I think she's been explicitly unnamed Tomorrow right her name's tomorrow. Yeah that yeah, then yeah That's yeah, that's an explicit. That's a time-displaced, baby. That's that's that's future Lou. That's a that's future Lou. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay, okay That's future Lou. That's a that's future Lou. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay, okay

Starting point is 00:19:13 Also, hey don't read the wiki synopsis for the 1959 movie on the beach oh, okay if if if you care because like I Just did and I'm like man. I'm wonder how much he's gonna rip this the fuck off because he's ripping it. He's ripping it I can't wait for a line where Sam looks straight into the camera and goes Today is today But you're tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow Tomorrow Oh

Starting point is 00:19:42 No, oh no No, don't do don't put that out there. Don't manifest that tomorrow If we're if don't do it, we've already got princess Beach man It's not coming. It's I'm not doing anything that isn't in the rules the rules say that we can do tomorrow Yeah, yeah do to Malu yeah yeah according to the according to the rife rind protocol we can anything is possible but yeah no zip lining packages on the back you know and if and if package delivery ends up being a minimal part of the experience then Oh, it won't be. All these trailers are a trick. Most of that game is gonna be fucking hoofing it

Starting point is 00:20:31 That was it was it was enjoyable It was fun teeter-tottering the the giant stupid backpack and you know like oh fuck There's a corpse on top of it too and I got it really just like want a single thing from that game And that is I would like a more involved highway repair system instead of the degradation over time two roads in in Death Stranding right there was the road north through the mountains and there's the road west to the coast I want more roads I want to fucking build I want to fucking build. I want to build a fucking Like highway system. I mean the like I think Kojima is avoiding having the camera zoom out too far and then essentially just creating a

Starting point is 00:21:17 delivery strategy game where you're mousing your multiple pathways of all your robot deliveries and Sam is just like Yeah, I know this because what you're describing you know satisfactory spaghetti road you're describing that but I think he doesn't want Sam to you know I think he wants Sam boots on the ground you know I want Sam to lean his arm out the window and if you drive too far north at a certain time of day that Sam gets a one-sided tan. Oh wow yeah okay. I want I want Sam to get a fucking chiral truckin tan. Mm-hmm you can specify the details on what kind of cushion seat you have under your ass for the long hauls, because the quality of the ass cushion

Starting point is 00:22:07 is crucial to your back. Yeah, that's important. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Good stuff, good stuff on that. Do you know what's really fucking funny about Death Stranding 2? Comes out one month almost to the day before Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta.

Starting point is 00:22:24 Before, before! to the day before Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta. Before. Before. I'm not. Now that's unfortunate. I'm not thinking about her. I'm not doing anything. Fuck that past. I don't know. By the way, my party is going to be before. I know her birthday's coming up and I don't care. Anyway, do y'all want to come over to my house on the Tuesday right before her birthday party on Wednesday? I'm just happy to have having a random get-together at my place on Tuesday You know so it would be cool if everybody could come over and I could see who's really my friend Okay, okay, okay, okay, but, but, but, but. That's so fucking funny, oh my God.

Starting point is 00:23:09 The real question is what do we do with fake Snake? Do we actually beat him, and does the new protagonist defeat the old? Oh yeah, dude. Like the what's going to happen with Luca and his character is that you're going to beat him and Sam is going to give a fucking speech. So, okay, Luca Martinelli is going to be with his back to us and Sam is going to face him. So Sam will look like he's talking to you and he'll be like, you have to let go. That time is over.

Starting point is 00:23:50 Put the bandana down and move on with your life. You're gonna beat him, right? And it's gonna be a thing where you're like, okay, fair enough, his ideals are falling apart compared to yours. You have learned and the things that Sam has, what Sam has learned from Death Stranding 1, he will be able to argue that into his philosophical,

Starting point is 00:24:11 but also physical battle with Solid Snake here. And then Snake will, in his moment of clarity, do something to save Sam's life. And then a husk will take over Snake's body. And the beach will now be puppeting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Solid Snake. And you'll see little strings.

Starting point is 00:24:33 That's it. No, no, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, and you know how it's gonna manifest? It's gonna manifest in the tar crawling all over his right arm up to the elbow. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, He's gone. No, I I would sit about me absolute cinema my fucking shot and he's gonna be like Man, you have to let go It's all behind you now. You have to take everything and leave it behind

Starting point is 00:25:30 the pain the fury the joy even the sorrow. All of it. You have to leave it behind. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And then as he dies, he'll be like, keep on keeping on boss. And she'll just fade into heaven. And the tears might flow like liquid. But our future is solid. Alright, so after going through all those games, do you know what I actually want more than anything? I want any emotional fucking goodbye, whatever.

Starting point is 00:26:00 And then I want snake snake fuck. I want Sam to leave. And I want to hear from far off in the distance, We're not finished yet. It's not over yet. And for you to go back in. Because I was not- I did not remember that that was every time. But that is every game.

Starting point is 00:26:23 There is- it's not finished yet See the this is the part where like my my soul wants to pull out and be like it's too far But it's like but that's exactly where Kojima lives. Well, right Is too much and too far is never never never far enough It's never enough. It really isn't. Yep. Yep. They might, he might even throw the word Delta somewhere in there. Why not? You know? Delta has the Latin meaning that they're using for Metal Gear Delta. Did you know that the triangle is actually a symbol of lies and deceit?

Starting point is 00:27:10 Okay, cuz cuz Delta Delta is is is like a Latin thing for for like the fourth or a difference between two things But a Delta is also a type of like river tributary. It is a landform with, yes, on the river. It is absolutely. It's a landform that is triangular created by the deposition of sediments. When you look at a map, you can see deltas going inland into an ocean a hundred percent a hundred percent this delta will never flow to the beach it keeps happening oh man oh fuck god damn it this this podcast exists just to do this. This is the only point of the show Oh, yeah, no, it's been a real long time. It's been a real long time

Starting point is 00:28:13 Just stare at Kojima's bullshit fucking pull out that magnifying glass ago. I see what you're doing You fuck oh Sandy Man You fuck! Oh! Sandy! Man! Okay, alright, alright! I gotta tell you man, waiting for a Kojima game is probably more fun than playing a Kojima game. And I'm not saying they're not fun,

Starting point is 00:28:36 they're incredible, but I'm like this? This is where it's at for me. Ugh! The fact that he didn't let go, the fact that he put the headband on And you know, there's almost a part Right. There's that part of me where i'm like, hey man I can relate to that if anyone comes up to kojima and goes oh yo metal gear, right?

Starting point is 00:29:01 I'm like, yeah, let him work on his new stuff come on right we know obviously it's when someone's like oh yo best friends love your shit hate your new stuff but your old stuff's great and we're like oh bummer right so I know that there's that feeling of like I can understand the art the person wanting to work on their new thing and be like yeah, but I I'm doing this too and Then just for that to be like no put the fucking headband on man How close hey lawyer, how close can I get? What can I call him? Can I call him? Can I call him shotgun caribou is that that like derivative? Is it like, come on.

Starting point is 00:29:46 Is the, is the, is the, is the chiral or is the black the goop gonna swirl around him like the snake in the water? You know, when you see it wrapping around tattoo-wise, like is it, what ehh ehh

Starting point is 00:30:02 A snake is a type of strand if you think about it. And it can be- A snake is a type of strand if you think about it, and it can be... A snake is nature's rope. It is a rope! Stupid. That's stupid what I just said. Holy shit. And it bites, and you know, when it bites it can be a type of connection and then it leaves its mark

Starting point is 00:30:26 venom I'm looking snake in other languages to see if I can see something that jumps out man Wow in Creole. It's actually a snack. That's really funny. Yeah, it can constrict can constrict you, right? It can wrap you up. It can squeeze you to death. Just like love. Don't touch me. Get your hands off of me. It can, the compressions, you know, it can rattle. Every time you hug me, it feels like a giant snake

Starting point is 00:30:58 stifling my freedom, says the ex-girlfriend. Uh. Freedom! Says the ex-girlfriend. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay, snake in Italian. It's serpente. Serpente, okay. All Latin languages it's serpent of some nature.

Starting point is 00:31:23 La bisquia. Is that a type of snake? Serper gai. Serper gai. Hmm. Okay. All right. We got to keep this fucker on a short leash.

Starting point is 00:31:43 God, I'm so excited for this. Because a leash is also a type of rope. Well, hey, I'm gonna tell you right now, you gotta clear your schedule and you gotta schedule your shit in a way that's... Cause like, I'm gonna stream it the way I usually stream it and I can't deal with like four weeks of just like vibrating in my chair. It's just... Well, yeah, well... We'll see, we'll see how things shake out, you know? in my chair. It's just.

Starting point is 00:32:07 Well, yeah, we'll see. We'll see how things shake out, you know? It's just, it's never gonna change. I said it, I think, I think the first, no, the first time we got the big cinematic release trailer with a bunch of crazy shit going on with death stranding I think is what I said. I can't believe we're gonna be doing this forever This thing they dies this is gonna be happening forever this fucking Koji lore drop bullshit. You know he's cutting trailers like he's still showing them at e3

Starting point is 00:32:44 to fuck up traffic In fact is there a hold on is There a packs or a convention or a trade show happening right now There is something. Because I saw Kojima post like a SXSW. Okay, and that is? South by Southwest. Okay. And what is that?

Starting point is 00:33:24 That's South by Southwest? It's a bunch of like... It's in Austin? Austin, yeah. It's a film culture festival. So I saw Kojima post a photo of the show floor before it opened and I didn't know what it was. And I bet you anything there is a Death Stranding 2 booth that is showing the new trailer to a floor. Oh, I'm sure. And anytime you can record, like you see the actors and you're like, oh

Starting point is 00:33:52 yeah, I know. Whoa, holy shit. I mean, for a million percent. Yes. He's got to find new Hollywood to become friends with and take fake smoking a panel yesterday fake smoking photos with you know the The connections only go so far right I Don't know he's he's I feel like he's at the place where he's I think I said it the other day He's like video games Andy Warhol Like hey, this is my friend. He's he like, he makes really avant-garde video games. Oh yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:27 And then like, they show so-and-so clips of Death Stranding on their phone and it's incomprehensible and they go, wow. Wow, that's really deep. I'll be in that. Yeah, as long as you never have to explain it too hard. Also, a sidestep from Hollywood is like we can go into Mad TV slash SNL world with Deborah Wilson on the cast. Deborah Wilson's all over the place, and that's great cuz she's awesome. She had two right hands

Starting point is 00:35:11 What is that even I didn't even she holds up her hands and like a doctor and she has two right hands Yeah, okay, all right I don't know. I don't know what that, it means something. That is a detail that you would never, ever, ever put into anything unless it was on purpose. Well, I mean, you say that in terms of like saying when someone's uncoordinated,

Starting point is 00:35:41 it's like you got two left feet or, you know. That means she's a really good doctor. That means she's a really good doctor. We got somebody in the chat saying, by the way, the new Snake actor guy says he's a big Metal Gear Solid fan. Yeah, no shit. No shit, huh? That must have been a really fast conversation. a really fast conversation. I mean, I tell you what, if he was not a fan in 2020, I imagine he quickly became one between now and then. Magellan, best known for being from Portugal and explored,

Starting point is 00:36:21 discovered the Strait of Magellan, leading to the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe. Well, of course, dude, because we're trying to expand the UCA outwards to Canada and Mexico. We need to circumnavigate the new world. And a strait is also a body of water. That's true. It is. But a stick is also a body of water. That's true it is. But a stick is also straight. So is this straight the stick to wield against the beach? A beach as a body of water can go into all kinds of paths.

Starting point is 00:37:01 It can become anything. An ocean, a fjord. You know, I feel like it's, every time I think we're pushing it too far and it's too stupid, I think about Amelie and I get super mad and like, if anything, we aren't, we aren't, we aren't being blunt enough.

Starting point is 00:37:22 That's what, but that's my point, right? When I go to Malu and you go fuck off and I go, Amelica. No, I didn't say fuck off because I thought you were wrong. I said fuck off because I feel like you're manifesting that. Like you're making it real. Right, it's just that simple. Amelica, fucking, if fucking like.

Starting point is 00:37:46 Yeah. Right. If we can figure out here's here's what it is. Elf and if we can figure out what like to ma on its own means in ancient Egyptian or so. And then the Lou part comes after then then it's all there, right? If you take the row out of tomorrow and you just get tomorrow Tomo What is it? What is Tomo is his store? Is there anything Tomo in history historically?

Starting point is 00:38:23 Apparently in Spanish friend tomodachi Tomo Lou tomorrow Toma in Spanish means to take hold on hold the fuck Tomo in Japanese can mean friend or companion or pal. Tomo Lou, Lou my companion, tomorrow! In Latin, Tomo means to have a drink or to take or get one one deserves or take We could just do it all because of course you just do it all you just go right back to the Japanese reference But you're always gonna get there

Starting point is 00:39:22 Tomo Lou But you're always gonna get there Tomo Lou tomorrow Don't I want so you know what my favorite thing about these One of the things that we have said today is going to be So on the nose that people are gonna like oh they they were playing the game. Three of them. Or else, like. Not one, three things. This is my stand at work right now. This is bring me to life.

Starting point is 00:39:53 I'm telling you, right? If Amelie Ka is the level that we're operating at, Princess Beach is the level we're operating at, take the fucking name of the mystery character? And flip some L's and R's around flip some B's and V's around no take what's left over And put it through can't be this culture put what's left through the culture filter And then tell me that there's a second meaning for Tomo, and we're in there Yeah, all right

Starting point is 00:40:24 if she if, if tomorrow or if that character has like a little cat called like Dachie or something, then like everybody can just fuck off. Right? If there's like a little something that, that, that tomorrow has that's called Dachie, something that that that tomorrow has that's called Dachi that right is there a little cat is there a cat cat okay all right BT cat well if she has a little psych side thing called man called Dachi then you have Tomo Dachi and you have tomorrow we've got somebody in the chat with another one. Kanundras says, one thing I thought of during the trailer, doll man equals durumanu equals doorman equals porter. Doorman, porter, okay, okay, all right,

Starting point is 00:41:14 durumanu, yeah, sure, sure, I'll take it. Fuck. Doraemon. That's if you want to. Yeah, all right. No bad ideas here. Everything's acceptable. We're taking it all.

Starting point is 00:41:29 Everything is just as valid as everything else. Daruma, Daruma, Daruman, Daruma. Ancient meditating monk that atrophies his limbs. Good fortune. I still can't get over. Omelie is the one that had me actually like scream at my television for the first time in like 10 years. It doesn't, the pun doesn't even work because it uses multiple languages to do the pun.

Starting point is 00:42:08 I hate it. I hate it. You absolutely take a doll, a daruma doll and put them around your shop or so as a sign of good luck. Yeah. A daruma doll. A doll man's good luck, man But like a dad umma doll is what is called so doll doll doll man

Starting point is 00:42:32 Is dad umma is doll dad umma doll? Yeah, and he'll and they'll I have to go along for luck And that's what you got to put him in his little seat. Put him in his little thing man seat belt. Yep perseverance a popular gift of encouragement good luck, man That's why you got to put him in his little seat belt. Put him in his little thing. His little doll man seat belt. Yep. Perseverance, a popular gift of encouragement. Good luck, man. I do think buckling little doll man into a seat belt is incredibly endearing. Yeah. I love that.

Starting point is 00:42:58 Got to keep him safe. I think honestly one of the coolest things we saw was like Actual baby Lou like just being a baby Yeah, you know like squatting look around there that little baby squat You know you're like fuck. That's that's a kid. I don't jump scared. I'll be honest I don't know jump scared because it's like it's not exact But I'm like man. Yeah, that looks a good deal like my white baby That's weird. I like the way the way that Lou's moving around that that you know

Starting point is 00:43:36 with that detail is like and and I think it's it's I feel like it's a harder challenge animation and detail wise, right? Because like baby in the thing can just kind of be a baby that floats around. It has to move and bump and stuff and basically look like what your brain thinks of with that. But like a kid who's like really small but can crawl around, there's a lot of like that now hits the uncanny valley. Mocap that. Yeah. There's a lot like that now hits the uncanny valley mocap that yeah that hits the uncanny valley much harder

Starting point is 00:44:06 You know then like a a the zooming in on on blue giving you the thumbs up in the womb in that sonic generation shot Which unfortunately every time I see traveling down the birthing canal wait. What did you just say? Yeah, you heard me Did you say the Sonic Generations shot? That's correct. Is that what you meant to say? I meant to say Sonic Dreams Collection. This is better, I think. Every time it shows the going through the canal, the birthing canal and zooming in on Lou, and then it it has either the chiral tears or the thumbs Up going on or whatever is happening. I get immediately ripped back to Sonic Dream collection

Starting point is 00:44:52 Going through the fucking big the cat Yeah, yeah, you're right You know else I liked about that trailer I'm looking over a little bits and pieces of it They're really selling us on the events of Death Stranding and the Chiral expansion or whatever the fuck it's called are way more cataclysmic than Death Stranding even implied because they have this shot of like space exploding in the sky. Yeah, there's a big. The moon is impossibly large.

Starting point is 00:45:30 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yes. And it's like, oh, all causality everywhere has been fucked up. Yeah, the tides must be batshit insane if the moon is that level. Again, extinction continues, but it doesn't occur. It seems to be the line, right? Extinction continues forever, right? A slow death that just keeps going. That shot of the sky and then like the nebula form thing felt very Elden Ring.

Starting point is 00:46:02 Like I feel the panning up to the sky to the sky box to see some crazy shit going down You know is what that makes me feel now I can't believe how hard Troy Baker is jonkling in this fucking shit. I can't believe it's it's so ridiculous I mean, it's I just I'm looking at this photo of him with the tears and shit They're not they're not trying too hard to make him not junko. You know, what is slow permanent extinction mean? Is it just entropy forever? Are we just floating on Isola's separating for I need to I need to.

Starting point is 00:46:38 I said this when we first saw Higgs and I'm going to say it again. On March 9th, 2015, at 7.30 p.m., Jerell posted, the judge orders me to take off my anonymous V mask and I'm wearing the Joker makeup underneath it. Everyone in the courtroom groans at my shit. What if Higgs turns to Lou and says, I'm the Joker, baby? I'll see myself out. All right.

Starting point is 00:47:26 Can we get a move on? Yeah, let's get a move on. What's been up with you, man? All right, please. We need to get a move on. Yeah, let's see what's going on with me. Did a sponsored hashtag, sponsored stream for Mecha Break. Thus, my opinions are monetized.

Starting point is 00:47:47 Yeah. How are your monetized opinions? I really like how that game feels like high speed robot action in a single player context, but it's dropped into a multiplayer context. That's the best thing it's got going, is it feels like your armored core, zone of the enders, you know, like just fast paced, insane, mecha action game, but you're fighting against

Starting point is 00:48:15 other people that can do it too. Yeah, it kind of feels like usually when you'd play a multiplayer game that has some kind of fantasy of how you would want this to control, they kind of have to tone it down for like, feasibility concerns in a multiplayer context. And in this case, not only did they not do that, but they even have like, you can take out someone and then do an execution, you know, like a flourish on them. And when you're doing that execution kill, like Titanfall style style like time slows down for you and the person being executed but not for the rest of the game. Great. That's a time dilation bubble that some of the Max, I think Max Payne 3 had for like multiplayer.

Starting point is 00:48:57 I mean I think it's just the animation more or less you know but you're locked into it. Great. Yeah. Are you invincible? I believe you are. Yeah, yeah, I believe you are. It doesn't seem like you can be touched at least while it's playing out. I'm glad we've like fallen, we've like games have made the decision that you have, if you want your players to literally ever use the cool kill animations, you have to be invincible.

Starting point is 00:49:20 Yeah, you'd have to. You have to be, or else no one's ever gonna use it ever. Well, it would be, well, it would become a liability, right? Oh, people are saying that you'd have to. You have to be, or else no one's ever gonna use it ever. Well it would become a liability, right? Oh, people are saying that you're not invincible. Oh no? Oh, okay. Well, because that's what happened with Hulk in Rivals, is Hulk super when he hulks up and goes savage and then grabs you.

Starting point is 00:49:44 You can kill him while he's doing that animation that takes too long to do all that damage to one person. So you might as well just use all the other abilities while ulting because that animation is not invincible. Okay. How was the progression stuff? So I really, this time around, How was the progression stuff? This time around, I streamlined it to just check out the new features.

Starting point is 00:50:13 It's hard to say because they give you a bunch of currency to unlock a bunch of shit right away and test it out. why is everyone confused about invincible? I have no idea. Don't look at them. They're deaf and stupid. Okay, ignoring. The main thing I noticed right off the bat here is that before you do a little onboarding tutorial, kind of like a single player mission, and it definitely felt like, again, almost like a little on-core, a little armored core bit. You're like, here's a single player part. And you go into a boss fight, and you

Starting point is 00:50:48 have this whole reentry sequence and everything. And then you get dropped this time, instead of just into your garage, essentially. You get dropped into your on foot walking around your base as your created character bit. And that was kinda like, what was it called? Deus Ex, not Machina, but what was it called? Not Deus Ex, shit.

Starting point is 00:51:21 What was the robot game on Switch called? A Demon Ex Machina. Thank you. It was a bit- Demon Ex, shit. What was the robot game on Switch called? Oh, oh, Demon X Machina. Thank you. It was a bit. Demon X Machina. It was a bit like that, where you get dropped into the base where you can look up at your robot and then walk around and do other stuff.

Starting point is 00:51:35 So it seems as if part of this beta wanted to introduce that you can do stuff on foot. And one of the devs mentioned that you can go to a training room, pick up a gun and start doing gun training as well. So they might be doing some out of robot pilot gameplay potentially in the future. By the way, I'm watching your footage. It looks a lot better and smoother than the beta that I played a couple of months ago. Yeah, I don't remember too many hiccups last time around, but it was smooth, certainly.

Starting point is 00:52:10 It kept like the test is when you do the super fast boosting, the assault boost, and your zipping is left and right and the screen is full of shit and you're picking one of those like Starscream style, you know, Macross mechs where you're flipping from jet mode into mecha mode, is it keeping up, you know? And it seemed so. I did put on V-Sync and initially at first it was off and you know, shit was ripping, but I threw it on and it stabilized.

Starting point is 00:52:43 But yeah, overall I think that's the big appeal here is like it has got mechs that are reminiscent of the styles of mechs you might like. So- I mean, I'm watching you roll around with the fucking Epion in this footage. I like- They can call it whatever the fuck they want.

Starting point is 00:53:00 That's the fucking Epion. I mean, there's two things I enjoy and I said them. I'm like, I like my arms heavy. I enjoy it when my arms happen to be very very weighty and Sure enough you unlock tricera, and you just grab your gatling guns and fucking brrrr And I'm like yeah, call me yang You know call me fucking tro a Barton. I'm I'm gatling. I'maka-ing my way through this, and then you tank up.

Starting point is 00:53:26 What if I shot more? And then it has siege mode, so that you can shoot more. Yeah. And then the transition into siege mode, the first frames of switching into siege mode are a parry. Great. So if someone's meleeing you, you go, boof, and then they get staggered as you just, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr You've got a sword in one hand that can switch to a shield with one of your shoulder buttons,

Starting point is 00:54:06 and a drill in the other. Yeah, this is the mech I'm watching you use that I'm referring to as the Epion. And you hold down the drill button, and the drill starts revving, and when you are ready to let it go, row, row, fight the power, I'm flying across the map and anything in front of me is coming with and a nice big Reinhardt pin, you know to get off the point and Bap cut cut cut takes you out What kind of a modes was available here? Cuz I think it was just TDM and deathmatch in the first beta. So the new mode

Starting point is 00:54:44 There's 6v6 is the default and there's a couple different 6v6 maps. There's some that are point capture. There's some that are escort the payload. Then there's also 3v3, which is, you know, if you wanna go smaller teams and I didn't get to try out any of the smaller 3v3 maps to see what that was like. Because the third feature is Mashmac mode.

Starting point is 00:55:11 And Mashmac is the name of the location that you're dropping into. And Mashmac is a giant map that you drop into with three people. And it's PvPVE. And so your team of three will drop onto the far side of a huge, huge map. There'll be people and other teams dropping all around as well. And all across the map are multiple levels of enemies from grunts to timed major threats to huge bosses. And each time you take them out, you pick up a bunch of scrap, some junk, some weapons, some you know loadout plans and upgrades and currency and every 10

Starting point is 00:55:49 minutes there's an escape pod that you can jump on to escape out or keep going as the circle closes. Now when you escape what do you get? You get everything that's in your pockets with you. Oh that's Tarkov. That's extraction. It's that, but also you can put down rockets to rocket away some of your resources early while you stay in the map. And you can call down weapons on a drop ship that come down and give you two extra guns or two big missiles or whatever. So you're Tarkov-ing while you Fortnite and you also explore and helldive. Right?

Starting point is 00:56:31 That map seems like, that mode seems like it's got fucking potential. That seems like they're, we can be the next big fucking thing if we get this going. So Tarkov you're dropping alone, right? Or do you do teams? Yeah. I believe you drop alone, but I think you might be able to do teams. So you're Tarkov-ing, but you're also hell diving

Starting point is 00:56:51 with your team of three and getting weapon drops on a timer. But you're also battle royaling because there's the... The circle closing in and, well, it's not closed, it's more like circles are expanding outward at random spots. Okay. And while there's other players and so you can go and try to take out bosses and loot their corpses or you can take out other players and loot theirs and you can get out in 10 minutes

Starting point is 00:57:17 if you find what you want or you can try to stay in and build more and overall it seems to be like the main mode for like getting a currency and plans and weapons and all the seems to be like the main mode for like getting currency and plans and weapons and all the stuff to unlock. So that'll probably be the main mode and then it's like, man, I just wanna do some fucking death match. Yeah. It's also there. Yeah, which is quite ambitious, I would say,

Starting point is 00:57:37 because that is a huge, like, that's a whole game in itself if you wanted to make a whole game designed around that, right? So it's a real interesting thing to be like, yeah, play some deathmatch when you want to, and when you wanna just unlock more shit, here's a completely different way to do it. And of course, you still unlock stuff

Starting point is 00:57:57 by doing regular deathmatches and whatnot, but like a loot-specific mode is there. And it also is something that would be more inviting to someone who was like, I'm getting crushed on all these death matches. I can't keep up with all the really good players. I wanna do me and my friends versus the computer. How about-

Starting point is 00:58:20 So I know you didn't spend a ton of time with any of the battle royales, but hey I'm not super confident in 1v1s. So I want to chill out and explore the map and gear up Before engaging in you know in shooting contests That's really satisfying as a loop. It's it's really chill But as you're doing it, maybe there's people around. Now granted, in a fucking high speed mecha robot action, I don't think many people are hiding

Starting point is 00:58:49 inside buildings with their robot. Well, but here's what I noticed is like, I was one game, you know, we ran into another team and they were like, ah, they're hostile, fuck it, they're coming for us, and so we had some big fights. And then other times it's like, they're doing their own thing, we're doing our own thing, whatever, right?

Starting point is 00:59:05 So it all depends on what your experience is like. And if someone takes you out, you can choose to extract out of the game, or your team member can Helldiver style call you back in. You know? So you have that whole loop going on its own. And what I noticed in that Mash-Mack mode was was that you also a lot of the loot I was picking up was there like paint colors and cosmetic stuff, you know, yeah, so there's weapon blueprints there was cosmetic colors and shit and then just like miscellaneous modifiers for you tweaking your stats. So again, if your main reward is, I want to paint my mechs and play a PVE version of this game.

Starting point is 00:59:49 Fucking get in there. There you go, you know? So yeah, that's a pretty cool addition as well. So overall, pretty fun game, feels good. The mechs control simply, but really well. It definitely is not the amount of refined control that an armored core game has where you are tweaking every little aspect and then the performance

Starting point is 01:00:14 changes accordingly. Nah, these mechs are pre-built. They're pre-built, you're changing the aesthetics, you're tweaking smaller percentages. You can definitely fine tune, right? You can get a little thing that says damage on your blade goes up, but your boost speed goes down a little bit down.

Starting point is 01:00:31 That goes really, really in depth, but it's definitely like, yo, you hold that sword button and then you go flying towards the nearest thing and until your stamina's out, you're slashing like a motherfucker, and it moves and looks cool. You kind of just gave it away just now. You're not like tuning your fucking, you know,

Starting point is 01:00:49 your gear shift parameters, you're hitting the sword button. Yes, yes. And the mods are, you know, slight percentages up and down, but they're the kind of mods that I don't really care that much about per se, because they can't fuck the balance up too much. It's a hero shooter. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:01:08 Yeah. You know, Armored Core is a game that's priding itself on you, customizing your robot to the nines. And this is a hero shooter. You're picking a character and slightly tweaking things. You know? But yeah, very, very cool. And the variety, I would say, as well,

Starting point is 01:01:24 of types of robots it covers lead to, you know, a good hero shooter type variety of like, fast, heavies big, you know, support. You've got like I said, the, the one type that is like, it puts the box down and traps you in the box, and then has an axe to just go in on you. box down and traps you in the box and then has an axe to just go in on you. I love the box. That's Thresh's box. So yeah, Mecha Break is coming along quite nicely and I enjoyed that quick look.

Starting point is 01:01:55 It's out now over on Woolly Versus. We played for an hour and checked out some of the new modes. Okay. Can I go with a, it's not a criticism. It's just really funny Mm-hmm. So I just went to the steam page for mecha break because I was like, well, I wonder if This has a release date yet right Does it or is it just later when it's done? Um, I mean, there's there's stuff that's not announced yet

Starting point is 01:02:22 That's currently mmm, but for now the open beta is available and anyone can go jump on that so there is a there is a you know, you scroll down there's animated gifts for the different features and You look down and it's fully customizable paint jobs on the robots and like they it is it is a animated gif of them like recreating a Gundam Down to the chin Scroll down and says become an ace pilot and it is a ass Level shot of the girl pilots in plug suits. Oh walking forward as Diva and Oscar oh, I was about to say I like you that you just said, you cut off, I was about to say,

Starting point is 01:03:10 my shout outs to my created character barely fitting into the cockpit because the plug suit was just too thick and rest assured that everyone on the map heard the sound of my ass cheeks clapping. Boy, are you just... You are... We're gonna make a robot thing. We have to appeal to the Gooner people. And it looks like they're doing a good job appealing. Yeah, your your character is like it is like a toothpaste tube

Starting point is 01:03:47 squeezed into a condom and air sealed. It is oh my god it is it is that is a repulsive description that is disgusting. There is no room for error. And you know, with that, hopefully we see some dread options and some character creation stuff that is up there. But there's some stuff that you can do that you can kind of grow and change the hairstyles. And aesthetically, I'm like, here's an outfit of like, here's your like space army outfit with a beret and then the big shoulders and the whatnot. Oh, you gotta put a little hat on.

Starting point is 01:04:33 Yeah, and then you've got the, here's your monocle and you can just, I'm like, you can just be Lady Un, right? You can just immediately, you can become Lady Un, you can become an Alliance officer, you can become Zafed if want to like it's it's there You know there and and one of the yeah I think the second the second selectable like create a character type that you customize is like Blue Asuka like it's just you know yeah

Starting point is 01:04:58 There's look there's two ways to market games like this right you can cool robot or games like this right you can cool robot or yeah well there's the city of heroes way which is please don't please don't make anything or any one stop it we will ban you if you do don't do it we know what you want to do and we're not good we're not okay with that and then there's yeah fucking go, play the fucking Char theme song as you paint this shit red. Pilly dee. You know, like they love it.

Starting point is 01:05:34 And we are legally distinct and we don't care. So that was fun. Can we? So that doesn't have a date, but how long is that beta running? Anyway, the open... Open ended for now. Open beta is open for now, and if you want to get your hands on it, play it now. I'll add it to my live RB.

Starting point is 01:05:58 At some point it will be out fully, but for now they're just saying go check out the open beta that is currently running. This feels like the kind of thing that they're just saying go check out the open beta that is currently running. This feels like the kind of thing that they would just reset everyone's progress and just roll into the final release. Anything's possible. I'm not going to assume the beta is going to stay up forever, but there was a brief window beforehand.

Starting point is 01:06:22 Now there's a much larger one. I think all that info is needed to make sure you have a good team shooter that feels good and hammer out all the clunks. But yeah, play it while it's around is what I'll say. Okay. Can we have a metaphor pseudo-spoiler cast? Yeah, I've been ready for months. Okay. I'm so ready. Okay.

Starting point is 01:06:53 Now, describe pseudo-spoiler for yourself. I am. For me, actually. I am currently in the end game, and I have not yet beaten the game, but I am certainly. I would save it. I would save it. Okay. Okay.

Starting point is 01:07:09 I would not, I would save it for one week. Okay. Fair enough. Cause I have some thoughts and observations for sure. And then I'm sure- To keep those thoughts and observations, but like so much happens that is gonna maybe recontextualize Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah, okay. There's some there's some some fun bits and then so on but okay I'll save it for next week. Yeah, right. Yeah world brands, right? Write them down. Write them down. I have I did I have a list

Starting point is 01:07:36 Have a list Here's one thing. I will say that is Not spoilers that you've been mentioning like, hey, don't worry. You've got a lot of time at the end to get it all done. By any chance were you optimizing or playing somewhat guided? No. Okay.

Starting point is 01:07:56 There was literally only one thing that I did that was guided. Okay. And that was people were telling me to, people like when you're crossing the river, sorry, when you're crossing the ocean in between the two cities, people were like, oh, you should really fish here

Starting point is 01:08:16 because this fish is actually fairly unique to this. And it takes time later. Aside from that, literally, I just did... Lord of the it takes time later. Aside from that literally I just Lord of the Lake takes a minute. Yeah I just did everything as it came up okay but I did everything in one day. Okay. Every single thing I did in one day. Yes so same here every dungeon I've done in one day and otherwise I've spent every day either pushing forward a relationship or getting my royal virtues high enough to clear the thresholds that I need to continue

Starting point is 01:08:56 leveling up the S-links. So I feel like I've had a very tight schedule, you know? Like no wasted dungeon days. And I've even gone through once or twice, when I was in the mood, when I finished a dungeon and I was like, I'm down to play more, I would switch to mage, get my MP back up and then continue the dungeoning for a bit, right?

Starting point is 01:09:17 Once or twice, I pushed it like way past, you know, where I otherwise would be able to by just, you know, hitting the spawning enemies and getting back enough resources to keep going, right? But, I- Type me a response to my questions just so we know exactly what we're talking about here. Sure thing. Spoil the chat.

Starting point is 01:09:43 Yeah, yeah, I am at this date right now and I am awaiting this. Right? Oh yeah you uh okay okay. Alright. No you you have plenty, okay yeah you have plenty of fucking time. Okay, so this thing is, I'm assuming that you kind of are, you're mentioning the amount of time you have. When I look at what the calendar is showing me, right, I'm seeing about 24 or 25 days or so, and I'm calculating every relationship left to level up

Starting point is 01:10:29 and every relationship left to level up and every one of those final dungeons that you get the ability to go do as a day. And I'm like, when I add those all up, there's like 23 of them. So I have like 23. Are you splitting the difference between night and day? Some relationships are night only I know but like not necessarily no. But I am saying that like I know that when you go to when you go to a dungeon you can't do anything else obviously whereas some days you can double up with a daytime relationship and a nighttime relationship also on the way to the dungeon you can get stuff

Starting point is 01:11:07 done too right but in general there's about 24 days left with 23 things left to do so i'm like i don't know that i'm gonna have an abundance of time but i suppose i'll have a little bit extra i i someone would have to go check for me, but I ended the game with 14 days or 15 days of just go to sleep. Interesting. Just go to sleep on both days. Interesting, okay.

Starting point is 01:11:39 Because the game won't let you skip forward. Well, here's the other bit too. I'm looking at the amount of days and I'm looking at the amount of things, and I'm also thinking about And I'm so, well here's the other bit too. I'm like, I'm looking at the amount of days and I'm looking at the amount of things. And I'm also thinking about like how I'm like, oh, for some of those, like I'm a bit mad. I'm getting to that mag starved moment where I'm like, I'm gonna need some more magla if I wanna unlock

Starting point is 01:11:57 some of these higher end bits. Oh, magla's crazy. Magla's absolutely fucking nuts as a requirement in some of those things. Yeah, and so I've been, you've been pushing forward with the builds I like, not thinking too hard about meta. And as I'm thinking like, okay, well, I suppose if I really want to do this, I'm going to need to take some time to get four merchants going and just quad merchant fucking mag suck.

Starting point is 01:12:23 I think the worst thing possible in that game is that you can turn mag into money, but you can't turn money into backwards Exactly. I wish you really could yeah, so this is this is what it is, right? I'm like so I'm looking at the amount of time left I'm like that lines up so that I don't have that much spare time actually and If I also want to go and get some of these archetypes, I'm really going to be tight on time. So for me, just going through it the way I have, winging it and having a fairly, the way I've played all Persona games,

Starting point is 01:12:53 which is never waste time, always do with the dungeons in one day and make sure that each day that you can have spent either leveling up an important stat or a relationship. That's what I find myself with. that you can't have spent either leveling up an important stat or a relationship. That's what I find myself with. There's probably one detail. I don't know if you picked up on this.

Starting point is 01:13:14 So first of all, there's relationships you can only build on the gauntlet runner. On the gauntlet runner, yeah. On the way, yeah. So there's that. That's a few days off for sure. The biggest thing for me in terms of time management was you hit walls on a lot of the relationships over the game's progression. And it's like, well, you can't progress any further.

Starting point is 01:13:37 Yeah. And that's the good time to go do all your shit. But the other thing is the number one feature is you can never level up a relationship twice in a row. time to go do all your shit. But the other thing is the number one feature is you can never level up a relationship twice in a row. No, you have to alternate a second day. You always have to have a day off in between. So the internal desire to grab your team

Starting point is 01:14:00 and just max their shit out immediately gets forced to slow down. is very high. But it makes it actually go a million times faster and way less waste of time if the whole gang builds up kind of along the same route. With, I think only Stroll was the only like, just like there was nothing to do, but hang out with Stroll for some of the mid-game stuff.

Starting point is 01:14:25 And so I maxed out Stroll super early. I also noticed that when I apply archetypes to the characters based on just what I kind of like, for some of them, I nailed it and got it where it should be. And they're like, yeah, that is how you're supposed to build that guy. Yeah. Right. But for some of them, it's like, oh, you wasted some time and we actually want you to build up a completely different thing here. Right. Yeah. Actually, remember how we said you could do anything? Well, yeah. Well, the royal archetype requires you.

Starting point is 01:15:00 Exactly. Right. So, you know, I'm like nailing it on stroll a hundred percent right nailing it on Some of the other characters, but then hulkenberg it's like oh, oh you weren't making her a mage damn. Well You know, so yeah that one that one really just was like ah fuck okay shit But I did guess correctly for quite a few of those, and I like how there are moments of like, there are hints, we'll get to it in the spoiler cast, but there are hints that are like, you have chosen the correct archetype

Starting point is 01:15:38 for the correct person, good job. There's little, little, little bits where they're like, yeah, okay, you got this one right, you nailed it, you know, so anyway, more more on that when I when I come back through the end of it, but I'm a little bit worried about the time as I as I my calendar, you know, right now in a different slot, so that if you do go to the finale... Actually, no, you know what? Hey, you want a pro tip about the game's archetypes and mag and leveling? You want to know where the best grinding spot in the entire game is? Is it the final spot? Right, right at the end. Of course it is. Right at the end. Of course it is. And you will have the ability to regenerate

Starting point is 01:16:23 your shit to full. Like no problem. Yeah. Okay. So if you like the game says, listen, you made it here, but you're not going to go any further. Here's a spot you can use to just fuck this thing up. Okay. Well, at least that means you can hit credits in the state you want to, even if there's not a lot to do with those final stated archetypes. You got them where you want to and now you just go beat it. Fair enough. All right, that's fine. Good stuff. So yeah, we'll come back with a full spoiler cast on that. But very, very cool. Yeah, so I mean, I guess it will. Yeah. So if we're not going to go into the metaphor stuff, then

Starting point is 01:17:11 you know, that's, that's pretty much it. cyberpunk is continuing. And you know, not like, again, not much to say just yet, besides, like, god damn, Johnny being flawed is the coolest thing. I love, I love the unreliable narrator that we're getting here or unreliable guide for that matter. And I think, like, like I'm giving him shit because of him being a shit but like I think some people are thinking that I'm way more hostile to that than I actually am I love it I love rules that he sucks I love awesome how self-centered he is and

Starting point is 01:18:01 you go into those memories and see him making these bad decisions and some of them are questionably like the worst, you know? And that makes it so much more interesting than just like, oh, here's a, you know, an alt, a second protagonist type of thing. It's very different. I actually have a situation extremely similar to that to talk to when we get to my week Yeah, it's just different from it from expectation on that And like yeah, I guess going into his whole backstory and a bunch of stuff about the character alt You know is is pretty cool

Starting point is 01:18:43 I I mean once we're all once we're all said and done there, you know, I'll definitely have have more to say on it. But it's it's shaping up nicely. The three characters that you get to be friends with are pretty cool. It's quite clear as well that like, they are your real friends. And then then there's the others you know the quality and the mileage may vary on them but uh no I'm enjoying that and and and yeah I guess I'll I I really do wish though that like hacking was not so cordoned off to your build. I wish that you could be, as we're RPGing,

Starting point is 01:19:28 I wish that you could be a bit of a fighter mage. I wish that you could, like at your own. You can, you could just be bad at both. At your own difficulty. Yeah, yeah, so if you wanna swing a sword around and cast low level spells and not be the strongest, but kind of be a little more tactical, you can. Okay. You can. You're just mid at both. Well, I guess what I'm not really feeling or able to distinguish right now is when

Starting point is 01:19:58 you... Okay. Okay. I guess what I'm thinking of is like because your main OS or your main choices are berserk sandy Hacking yeah, that's like yeah, I mean you can still shoot guns and do all that you just lose the incredibly super powerful These are these are two right hacks are in exchange for these other two supers Right and you can play without those supers and then get your hacks going. Yeah, I guess so, I guess so, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was thinking about it as a like, I would like to compromise those things and get like some lower hacks for some lower Sandy ability

Starting point is 01:20:36 or slower hacks for lower Berserk or something more melee focused. But perhaps the whole point is, yeah, just turn those abilities off and then get your hacks back. That is, and it would be cool as well if there were broader categories for that, I suppose. Right now it seems like those are the main three. But anyway, it's very cool.

Starting point is 01:21:07 And we are also right on the cusp of finishing A Thousand Times Resist and, phew, the closing hours of that game get really good. Super solid. We're not done yet, but the last section I did in chapters, I did chapter seven and eight of 10. Very, very, very cool stuff going on. And this is all of course, caveated with like, it is still a visual novel that

Starting point is 01:21:52 you're still just walking and talking to people, you know, if you're looking for anything besides having conversations with, you know, characters, then you're not really going to get anything else there. And some of the early game pacing with the way the map is set up is slowed down. But when it starts going hard on all that turning red automatic shit I'm talking about, it does it nicely. We had a couple moments of going back to like watch our... We had some 13 Sentinels moments.

Starting point is 01:22:22 Okay. Okay. That's what it is. Yeah, all right. There's a nice shorthand for that. Yes, yes. 13 Sentinels feelings have started to occur as of last session and I enjoyed those moments.

Starting point is 01:22:38 They're gonna be really funny to watch on YouTube and I look forward to seeing how that goes. Cause look, not every LP is going to call for a shut it down. Let's stop and talk about what is happening right now. But this had one of those moments and you know, like, if, you know, I, if you're, you can always skip forward if you need to, but like we definitely have a solid get, close the game and talk about what is going on to parse it.

Starting point is 01:23:08 You know, discussion, mid LP. And I love it, it was great, it was a lot of fun. So yeah, we're gonna be continuing with both of those as well as getting to fighting games this weekend. A new slop stream is just about ready to drop. New slop. So Woolly Versus Whatever will be coming out this week as well.

Starting point is 01:23:30 Over on Woolly Versus on Twitch and on YouTube. Yeah. That's about it. Do you mind if I take a pee pee break? Let's take a pee pee. That's about it. Do you mind if I take a pee pee break? Let's take a pee pee. Let us take a quick word from our sponsors.

Starting point is 01:23:50 A love sponsor. This week Castle Superb is brought to you by Raycon. The solution to getting the wires out of your life, getting the expensive airbud solutions out of your life. Check out the Raycon Everyday Earbuds. They've got active noise cancellation, so you can drown out whatever annoying sounds are coming out from around

Starting point is 01:24:27 you if you need to quiet down the sounds from outside and listen into what you want to focus in on. Pretty useful feature. They got the 32-hour battery life and multi-point connectivity. So you can connect to two devices at once, switch between them as needed, pretty useful. Every device I use needs to have a quick charge function, or I'm just gonna tap out.

Starting point is 01:24:59 And yeah, the Raycon's got quick charge, so you pop them in for 10 minutes, and you get 90 minutes of battery off of just that time. It's pretty fast. And all of that starting at half the price as other premium audio brands. So yeah, I pop in the everyday earbuds in particular. Like I said, my use case for them is boxing, keeping them in place, not moving and staying

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Starting point is 01:26:02 This week the podcast is sponsored by Hero Forge. Hey Hero Forge. I talked to y'all about it, but Hero Forge. You did, you made yourself a little wooly man. It's awesome. Hero Forge is a very cool way to go and create your own miniatures for tabletop gaming. So you jump onto their site and just like a creative character

Starting point is 01:26:27 in any detailed game, you can put together all the details, change all the colors. There's tons of archetype classes, races, sizes, shapes, hairstyles, everything. And you can build whatever you need. You can customize or you can build it from some of the set starter places to go with as well So, you know if depending on whether you're feeling like a full artist or whether you want to just kind of build it quickly

Starting point is 01:26:51 With their templates you've got stuff to choose Here is the little wooly. Let me get the focus, right? You'll do it there it is right little Right? Little, little wooly monk. Was able to get the dreads in place, the colors in place, everything's there. Looks super rad. Throwing a punch out. I got the little blonde tips there. And even on the bottom, it says wooly versus.

Starting point is 01:27:20 So yeah. That is how you can get one of your miniatures printed and that is painted as is, you know? Like, let me get my focus back where it needs to be. There we go. Yeah, those colors were printed out with it. So, you can definitely get it and print it yourself, but if you want to print straight to color. If you're like, I don't know how to paint nothing,

Starting point is 01:27:48 then just get, didn't have that be part of the process, you know, really solid quality of the miniature as well. And they also have a kit bashing options so that you can go in, grab accessories from any of the different styles of pieces and put them together to build your own. If you want to build a six armed god with hands out Azura style, you can go grab other arms and stick them and kit bash together and each one can have its own little pieces and shrink and scale up the details as large or as small as you need to. You can change the base so that it's a different textured floor, all of that stuff. You can give yourself a jet pack. You can do whatever you need to.

Starting point is 01:28:26 So it's a pretty fun feature for tabletop. In particular, right now as well, they have a cool custom dice campaign that's going on Kickstarter. So if you want to, you can go and make your own custom dice. They have a dice maker, and the Kickstarter is going to give you or you can get in early access on it. You can print a standard sized or XL D 20. And you can print regular

Starting point is 01:28:59 mini statuette or prototype ultra HD minis. The dice in particular you can have that cool, you can have your own customized figure inside the dice. You can see the details, all the things I just described about printing your figure. That's really cool. You can have that put inside of a D20 as well. Design your own decals, handheld items, outfit for whatever you want to be added to Hero Forge. Custom custom dice, custom figures, it's a really it's a really dope service. Yeah, so the custom dice are

Starting point is 01:29:38 currently up at their Kickstarter. Go check out the options. Go to kickstarter.com slash projects slash hero forge slash custom dash dice to see all their backing tier options and you can care for your next big tabletop adventure. Don't delay the Kickstarter ends April 5th. So there's going to be a link in the description for the full place to go. But that is kickstarter.com slash projects slash hero forge slash custom dash dice. And you can see all the backing to your options. And yeah, be aware that the kickstarter is ending on April 5. Thank you hero forged. Thanks here for Forged. Super cool.

Starting point is 01:30:28 This week, the podcast is sponsored by Boot.dev. Boot.dev, please help me. I don't know how to do anything and I'm very stupid, but I like video games. I was talking to some friends that are programmers just this very week. Just this week. Talking to them about the industry and jobs and how this whole thing goes. It's tricky out there. It's rough.

Starting point is 01:30:55 If you want to get into the industry and you want to learn how to program, you've got to overcome some very difficult hurdles and your own learning might be one of them. If you want to learn Python and Go, there's a lot of good jobs you can get, including your own. You can make your own projects. You can work a lot of places learning how to program. According to Stack Overflow, the median salary for a backend developer in the US in 2023 was over $100,000. So, I mean, that is a decent wage. Now, if you are like me, however,

Starting point is 01:31:38 attempting to teach yourself to program has failed horribly, miserably, because reading a thick textbook and your attention span are just not going to gel well together. Boot.dev is a gamified way to learn how to program. Every time you jump on, your lessons are formatted like an RPG. You're going through levels, you're unlocking achievements, you're completing quests and getting experience points. There's a global leaderboard to check who's performing the best.

Starting point is 01:32:15 There's lore, there's boss fights, there's raid bosses where you all collectively are damaging the current boss of the Ark and the chapters and the story continue forward. Very cool, you know? And as you go through each coding challenge, you can program the results and then run it, see if you successfully complete the challenge

Starting point is 01:32:38 and move forward. They've also got a guest mode where all content is free to read. So yeah, if you're a student and you are on a tight budget, they want to make sure you're getting your money's worth. So you get a 30-day no questions asked, refund policy, and a free demo of every course with all its interactive features. A paid membership will then unlock interactive features like hands-on coding, progress tracking,

Starting point is 01:33:04 and game elements. So yeah, they've also got a Discord community with lots of people in there to help you if you ever get stuck. Very active. So gamify your ability to learn how to code and make it fun. I've had to find ways to gamify everything that I want to stick to in life. It works. It works pretty well if you can enjoy it when you're doing it. As you go through lessons as well, you will unlock a spell book with cheat sheets and links to other notes that you can review any time. Yeah, go check them out.

Starting point is 01:33:40 Go to boot.dev and use our code, castle super beast, to get 25% off your entire first year if you choose the annual plan So that's boot dev with the code castle super beast And you'll get 25% off your entire first year if you choose the annual plan Thank you boot dev. Thanks boot.com And this week the podcast is sponsored by Factor. Hey, Factor, I'm hungry. I never eat a decent lunch before the podcast because I'm too lazy. Could you possibly help me?

Starting point is 01:34:13 That's dumb. You should take care of your food when you need to have energy. But I'm so lazy. But to also have it be healthy and to also have it be good tasting, now you're asking too much. Or are you? A factor is chef made gourmet meals that are dietitian approved and ready to eat in two minutes so you can feel up and feel great at any time, such as right before you start a podcast. Yeah, you're talking about meals that are coming fully prepared and ready for if you've got an active, busy lifestyle. There's different dietary preferences as well, so no matter what you like to go with, you've got 40 options across all of them to pick from each week, tailored to your goals. If you can go calorie smart, if you go protein plus,

Starting point is 01:35:08 they've got keto as well. Results vary depending on diet and exercise, of course, but if you go with, yeah, factor keto, I was doing keto for a while, and certainly that's very useful, especially if you've got the betas like I do, and you gotta keep that sugar in check. Yeah, I'm serious.

Starting point is 01:35:27 Then anything that is keto-friendly is going to be overall a solid way to go. Yeah, help you feel your best all day long with smoothies, breakfasts, grab and go snacks, and more add-ons as well. So, ready to go, healthy, good tasting, get all three. It's crazy. You're supposed to usually only get two out of the three of the triangle of doom, but

Starting point is 01:35:49 in this case, you can get them all. Eat smart with Factor. Get started at factormeals.com slash factorpodcast. You use the code factorpodcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code Factor Podcast at factor meals dot com slash factor podcast and that's 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. Thank you, Factor. Thanks, Factor. Alrighty, how's it going? Alright, well a couple things have happened with me this week, but I'll start with the one that is the most unexpected by far So back to playing D&D after after a break

Starting point is 01:36:34 back with with Jimmy and the wife and the Paladin and the fighter and I was my yimby stickers up forever. It's if it's up there. So So I had a migraine a couple weeks ago, so I was not able to return to D&D because I was so like we were getting ready to go and Page Asks like hey, can you do can you read the boy? A storybook while while we get ready, right? I'm like, okay.

Starting point is 01:37:08 And so I'm reading the kid the book, like, and then the pokey puppy went over the... because anything louder would make me, like, my eyes bug out of my head and throw up on the ground, like level migraine. And then she's like, you're not going anywhere. I'm like, no. So Paige went by herself and what they did is they ballooned me in which they just assumed my character was there.

Starting point is 01:37:35 Yeah. Just wasn't talking. Yeah. And Paige is the obsessive note taker. Good DM should be able to do that. So she just, you know, brought back her obsessive note taking and got me all caught up to speed and it was no problem, right? So I went back last week and we sat down and we were having a good session and Jimmy started to do his shit, which the number one thing was talking over people and

Starting point is 01:38:09 interrupting people and constantly, constantly, constantly needing to make it about himself. Um, and this was something that like came up a long time ago. And I thought this was addressed. Yeah, I thought, yeah. And like now, now it's, now it's not just back. Now it's worse. Now it's actually worse than it was before, to the point of in character tantrums or whatever, were screaming at the table. And by screaming, I mean Paige and I are literally

Starting point is 01:38:47 putting our hands over our ears because our ears hurt. Screaming. In character. In character. So it's in character and... It sounds like perhaps when they got a talking to, they were not getting what they wanted to out of these sessions.

Starting point is 01:39:06 So here's the thing. When I wasn't there, it was actually a much better session. And the session before that, that I was there, was a much better session. So don't know what the fuck happened at this one, but it was like much worse. And so I walked away from that and I was talking to Paige, and I'm like, I have one session left in me. I have, we're coming up on what essentially is like a first major encounter, and I'm like, I'm going to tell the DM to plan that if I wanna hit

Starting point is 01:39:44 the ripcord to just fucking kill my ass in this upcoming encounter, and I am going to just leave because I am like paying a babysitter so that I can go to play D&D and get mad and come home pissed off. SIDES sidebar. Do you know if anyone else is echoing these feelings at the time?

Starting point is 01:40:12 I know pages. Okay. She's like, this is fucking motherfucker. And but we haven't spoken to the Paladin or the fighter about this. So I was like, all right, And get killed off in the early season. So ready to leave. I put up with this for multiple months. Right?

Starting point is 01:40:30 So I'll talk to the DM about setting up a possible ripcord. It's like, yeah, just kill my ass in this encounter. What if a helicopter comes and picks you up and lifts you out of the story and drops you in a new campaign? Yeah, maybe. And then this kind of puts Paige in a different, awkward position because if she also wants to pull the rip cord, that's like 40% of the group. Right. And so that would essentially kill the group. Right. But I'm like, I, I like, at the very least, I'll just watch the baby on Tuesday nights,

Starting point is 01:41:05 like whatever. Right. And we're Hemin and Han and we're discussing about like, what if we just be like, Hey, Jimmy, shut the fuck up the next time he goes off. Just like, in character waters of, Hey, can you just shut your fucking mouth? And see where we get with that. And as we are discussing this, and I'm streaming late one night, Paige texts me, Jimmy left the D&D campaign on his own. Huh. Out of nowhere, no warning, just peace out by. Huh. Out of nowhere. No warning. Just peace out by huh and

Starting point is 01:41:48 or like what the **** Turns out what happened was really unhappy with how we were running the game. So for context, let's go back to session zero, right? In session zero, the part of session zero is everybody puts forth what they want to do and what they're cool with and what they're not cool with, right? Me, the Paladin, Paige, and the fighter, and the DM all went, we're good with anything, don't give a shit. Whatever. Jimmy then makes the completely reasonable request

Starting point is 01:42:31 that he's good with almost everything, but he's not a big fan of graphic depictions of gore in D&D and graphic depictions of like sex in D&D, because you think that's like weird at the table, right? Sure. And we all went, yeah, okay. That's no problem. Absolutely no problem. And not an issue.

Starting point is 01:42:57 I'm afraid of the relevance here. Okay. So we'll get there, don't worry about it. And for context, I wanna put out that this is the same session zero in which I said my only request for this entire game is that I play a unique class. And everyone went, okay. And Jimmy lied about his class, lied about his race, and showed up with pre-rolled stats. Which is, come on. Right. Come on. So we go forth and I mentioned that the Paladin is like a really the guy playing the Paladin super chill but he's playing the

Starting point is 01:43:35 Paladin as super aggro and is hitting on every single female character that we encounter and constantly making like sex jokes. Okay. And when Jimmy brought to attention, oh, oh, I really don't like his behavior making me so uncomfortable. The DM was like, that is not a depiction of graphic sex or gore. You agreed that this was all fine and we've done like 15 sessions in which you haven't had a problem Is it just like he's like he's basically just being like a playboy kind of character like hey girl. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay Holler at me. Come on. Yeah, baby. Let's get pregnant. Yeah. Yeah, okay And so yeah, that's it. That was that was the point. All right gone poof

Starting point is 01:44:22 So yeah, that's it. That was that was the point. All right. Gone poof. So and not not an invisible detection of the fact that y'all were getting fed up. No. So you would think you would think that mean page going. At every at like being interrupted like five times in a row. I watched the ability to detect that interrupted five times in a row. I watched Paige get interrupted five times in a row on one sentence. And you know what Paige looks like when she gets interrupted. You would have to be fucking oblivious to fucking like miss that shit. But the person who's unaware of how much they're doing that does not have the detector to notice

Starting point is 01:45:03 what other people are doing. Right? The skills that cause the interruption are also the lack of detection for the room, you know? That's pretty incredible. That's ultimately very fortunate that everything wrapped itself up in a nice little bow. I'm now super excited to play D&D again. But like the idea that like everything calmed down and then came back around and you were like on that final week like yeah okay um like right before I is I do right before I probably crashed the campaign by leaving Jimmy left and everyone's like yeah let's let's keep going and I know this is I know you know but like obviously, and everyone's like, yeah, let's keep going. And I know this is, I know you know, but like obviously as someone who's like you, like you haven't really done any table topping or D&Ding before, like, you know, everyone

Starting point is 01:45:54 who has wants you to have a nice experience with this so you can see how fun it can be. Absolutely. But you definitely are aware that like this type of experience is extremely atypical and actually I totally disagree this experience is bordering universal over time I've spoken to a lot of table talk cards okay they have been like you will you will encounter this okay okay okay, let me correct. The vibes are rancid. Yes. And I played with friends and people that I knew,

Starting point is 01:46:35 or at worst were acquaintances of people that I knew. I have not done blind stranger campaigns. Yeah. Well, we know the DM, but that's mainly the only point of contact. I can't speak towards joining an anonymous group of strangers. I can only speak towards playing with people that you know

Starting point is 01:46:56 and friends of friends, you know, couple degrees of separation, and you're at the very least like, okay, you know, you pass muster, everyone here is kind of chill. the very least like, okay, you know, you're you pass muster, everyone here is kind of chill. So that just kind of like magically worked itself out though there is two points of annoyance for me. Just sorry, last thought on that is, I feel like it might be the difference between solo

Starting point is 01:47:18 queuing and queuing with friends in discord. It's kind of like that right? There's two points of annoyance here that I mean this is overall like a massive positive. Point of annoyance one is it's it's one of those things where like when the person who is driving you completely insane with their bad behavior goes, I can't handle you guys. Essentially. Like what? But, but you, but you though. Right? Self-awareness. But the other thing is that like, okay, so here's the sequence of events. I want to make a warlock and I build out my character out to five levels and I'm like I want to make a warlock and I build out my character out

Starting point is 01:48:05 to five levels and I'm like super excited to play warlock. Jimmy lies about what his class is and then does the exact same warlock with the exact same spells. I go through a massive discussion with the DM and then completely retrofit my character into being a cleric and then play the cleric for multiple months. Then Jimmy leaves and now there is a warlock-shaped hole with all of the skills that I would have had in the campaign empty because now I'm a cleric. Yeah, was there ever any kind of like, what, it's just a coincidence kind of justification or no, just never just never just never just it. Okay. Okay.

Starting point is 01:48:53 Because when I ended up changing over to cleric, I had never cast a spell. So which meant there was absolutely no continuity issues. Okay. Because, you know, you always would just you you can just, you can just imagine like if someone else did the exact same thing to you, think about the level of tantrum that you would throw. Right. Um, but we don't live in that world where the hypocrisy means anything to you. Because again, if you had any self-awareness, we wouldn't be here to begin with. Like the problems that this is,

Starting point is 01:49:22 this is many steps in to the original domino that is failing, which is your ability to just read the room, pick up, you know, your behavior. And just, you know, also, I think like, even in character, like I've seen people perform and, you know, RP like like, go all in on that. Anything that might elicit a noise complaint is, like, completely unnecessary. Just by virtue of the way you play these games. Oh, yeah. Left with a headache.

Starting point is 01:49:57 Right? So... It's, like, ridiculous. So, obviously, you're getting really upset and using the in-character to mask that because you don't have emotional regulation. But that on its own should be reason enough for the room DM or everyone to be like, yo, can we not take it to that volume level, please? That's insane.

Starting point is 01:50:19 So hey, everything just works itself out. Worked itself out in a way that was unexpected and Very excited to play D&D Which was scheduled for the night tonight except our babysitter got sick. So D&D is now postponed for multiple weeks. Okay, well But hey, which is which is the way it goes sounds like he took responsibility Interesting interesting Which is that's the most D&D shit ever. Scheduling adults is extremely difficult. It's very tough. Couldn't believe the the feeling of like, oh wow, it just... Oh, you know what? People are right. Jimmy did fix it.

Starting point is 01:51:06 Yeah, he said he was gonna fix it, he said he'd fix it, and then he did. And he fixed it. He took responsibility, he did. All right, so what else has been going on? So I have decided to embark on, I remember when I played Wilds and I came away from that conflicted,

Starting point is 01:51:21 and I was like, I fucked around with Monster Hunter GU a little bit. Yeah, you were going back to compare it to the the peak So I'm playing Monster Hunter GU like at length So that game is about ten years old give or take on what on the switch. Okay It's a it's an up port of a 3ds game and It's a it's an up port of a 3ds game and

Starting point is 01:51:46 That is the that is a culmination of all the old Monster Hunter shit Yeah, that's that's smash ultimate right? Yeah smash ultimate of old Monster Hunter and It is everything that Monster Hunter is It is everything that Monster Hunter is. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of boring ass go kill small monsters or go fucking farm mushrooms and shit. Just tedious, absolute fucking garbage. And the wild streamlining has definitely lost a lot of that stuff. So one of the things that old Monster Hunter games love to do, that new Monster Hunter games don't, because they don't bother,

Starting point is 01:52:34 is they would send you on some bullshit quest like, go get ten unique mushrooms. And it's really just an excuse to have you gathering all over the map But then the ten unique mushroom quest drops in a monster that you're absolutely not prepared for at all. Okay Like hey, can you go get ten unique mushrooms? Okay, here comes Astellos To fucking harass you and try and murder you while you try and do that and then you go. Oh fuck I don't know what that is that's an astelos Jesus but more than that I've been playing the Gathering Hub in multiplayer with with Chad I've been streaming it and I noticed something really really interesting about the division between your older games and the newer ones so the time to kill on monsters is about the same between

Starting point is 01:53:28 the old games and the new ones. It is about three to five minutes of a dedicated team beating the monster's ass for a while before they, you know, they bow out. The difference is that monsters are faster and more aggressive in GU and the older games. They don't flinch as easy. They are much, they're like much faster. They're just harder overall. They're more threatening. They're more aggressive. Now, are you describing like the onboarding beginning difficulty? Oh, yeah. So I have carded more times in low-rank multiplayer in GU than I did the entirety of playing Wilds. Okay.

Starting point is 01:54:16 Is this also one of those cases where because you're playing the final version of the final chapter that it's already tuned for experts? No, no, low rank in GU is the same as it was in Gen and is equivalent to the way it was in Four and the way it was in Try and all that. That's just how Monsters used to work. Okay. And there's something else going on

Starting point is 01:54:43 and I think I have figured out why monsters seem much less aggressive in wilds and that is you've given every weapon in Monster Hunter tons of new moves. Like your moveset in GU is significantly curtailed compared to how it is in World of Rize or Wilds, right? You would never ever, ever get a Greatsword True Charge slash out on something in GU because they move around too much and they're too fast. And I went and checked and when monsters got moved to world, their speed and their turning radius and their overall

Starting point is 01:55:28 like fastness was turned down. And I believe what's happening is you need to slow the monsters down so that people can use the whole cool moveset. Okay, you couldn't you had those moves but you just could never pull them off. If you transplanted like the rise moveset into GU, you would never finish anything because the monster would move or spin or attack or whatever. Is any part of this also like DMC4 had guard flying?

Starting point is 01:56:05 You know, type of thing? Oh yes, it absolutely is. So in GU they added all these styles. And one of those styles is called Valor Style and it is the basis for all of the world movesets. So like it has lots of parrying and lots of like shrug off type of mechanics and um that game those monsters cannot deal with it.

Starting point is 01:56:33 Like you can you can see like the prototype world moveset and you can see how certain monsters just can't handle it. Like originally there were only four styles in Generations, which was Guild, Striker, Aerial and Adept, and then Ultimate-Added, Alchemy and Valor. And Valor is just one of those things that just like a lot of them just can't deal with it. This is a modifier independent of your weapon choice? Yeah, so you pick your weapon and then you pick one of six styles and then in on top

Starting point is 01:57:06 of that you pick Hunter Arts which are little super moves. So even though you're going back to a smaller move set overall, you have like six grooves essentially from CVS2 to fuck around with. So you can play Greatsword the whole game and just every hunt move the fucking style around and it's a very, very, very different gameplay experience. Is it like the same core moves but then the attributes change? No, no.

Starting point is 01:57:33 Guild style is normal, is your normal move set. Then you have Striker style, which is a diminished move set but more super moves. Then you have aerial, which changes your roll into a jump and so you're constantly jumping straight up into the air to do aerial attacks. Then adept is a, if you dodge and an enemy hitbox hits you while your body is off the ground, you go into like a roadie run and you get moves out of the roadie run. And then Valor is Royal Guard. OK. And if you're Royal Guard enough, you get a second better move set

Starting point is 01:58:12 that drains over time for every weapon. Wow. And then Alchemy has the smallest move set of all. But you are constantly building a ticker in the background that just lets you make free items as like a support role. OK. And so was this one of those features that was like okay as of try they introduced a couple styles? No it was just for Generations and Ultimate. Huh okay. And you play through them and I'm playing through with a bunch of different weapons and trying about a bunch of different styles and I go okay Valor style became the world longsword

Starting point is 01:58:47 style and Valor style became the wilds dual swords and then striker style became world sword and shield and you can basically see that these are all like prototypes and what moves were popular and what moves felt good going forward. Yeah that's a that's a lot. So if you were... It's a lot. Fourteen weapons times six. Yeah yeah because I was about to say like you know the weapon counts have seemed to always been around the however many like low teen numbers right but then you have modifiers like that where, well, I mean, I guess a lot of this does really sound like,

Starting point is 01:59:28 hey, Alpha 3 double upper. That is exactly what G is. You know, like every single character in a history fighter, Alpha history, and then they all have four isms to pick from. And yeah, this is what this mode is getting, but we're never gonna bring all this forward it's Ultimate has 14 weapons with six styles each and has a returning monster cast of 93 large monsters

Starting point is 01:59:55 Which is by far the large largest roster So if one weapon had one style that was particularly garbage and didn't work well for it. Pick another one. Yeah, and you didn't get to ever use this move set, no big deal because whatever, there's a ton. But now when we have one weapon having one move set, it becomes much more streamlined, but also you have to make sure that each of those move sets feels useful to the player. Yeah, so they pick and choose all the little parts that they liked to carry forward into the base moveset.

Starting point is 02:00:31 And they did the same thing with Rise. Rise had wire bug moves, and then they picked and chose the ones that people really liked and carried those forward into Wild. So for an example, Sword and Shield in GU as normal, it has some slashes and then has like the horizontal splashes and has the shield bash and you can jump backwards and jump forward and do a big slash and that's it. That's the total move set. But the Hunter Arts which are essentially supers have the Shoryuken, which got added to the moveset later.

Starting point is 02:01:09 It has the series of powerful slashes, which got added to the core moveset later. Yeah, I think no matter what genre you're describing, the core principles are going to be the same where the less content and options the player has the tighter everything has to be The more rigid it has to be and the more like ultimately like, you know balanced against itself versus is Wildly versus exactly right and it doesn't matter if it's unbalanced because there's so much so it's just they'd say buffet It's not a it's unbalanced because there's so much. So it's just, it's a buffet. It's not a curated plate. You can go grab any weapon and then pick a style and then go fight one of a billion monsters.

Starting point is 02:01:51 And it's like, again, a smorgasbord of content. So unbalanced is fine. You're never gonna get bored with the permutations. And so GU also has the, so by the way, GU's on sale right now. It's like 75% off on Switch, so that's cool. But since GU is an old-style Monster Hunter game and doesn't give a fuck about onboarding you, low rank is a real game.

Starting point is 02:02:17 And high rank is more real game, and G-rank is more real game. So it's 93 monsters across three difficulty modes for something like 250 ish Like fights of value plus all the event quests like turning your Palico and Isabelle and all sorts of stupid shit It is it is the Marvel versus Capcom 2 of Monster Hunter.

Starting point is 02:02:48 It is just bursting with shit. It's ridiculous. And it's great. I thought going back would be tougher. I thought going back to the old pre-convenience stuff would be much harder than it is. There's only one thing that is brutal, and I mean brutal going back. There are no weapon trees when you go to Forge Weapons in GU. The way that it works is you pick a weapon and you go to upgrade and it goes, you can upgrade it into this or this. And there's no way to like plan out where it would go at all.

Starting point is 02:03:35 So you have to load up Kira Niko. I don't think I remember what you're describing about worlds. Well, no, because you never saw it. Oh, so that I don't know what you're talking about. So then I don't know what you're talking about. You would go to like you what you use talking about. So then I don't know what you're talking about. You would go to like, you use Chargeblade? I use Chargeblade, yeah.

Starting point is 02:03:49 So Monster Hunter World, you'd go to Forge Chargeblade, and it would show you this massive list. It'd go Barathe Chargeblade, Puke Chargeblade, and it would show the list, and then it would show little branching trees, and most of them would be question marks, right? Because you didn't get the parts. But you'd be like, oh, if I want to get a water charge blade, I should fight Jura Totus. And because that's the start of this tree, right? And or, oh, I want the Tigrex charge blade. The Tigrex one is here and then I can work backwards. But but but but oh, I should make the Golem one. then I should make this one, then I should make this one,

Starting point is 02:04:25 and then I can make a T-Grex one, right? G.U. doesn't have that. G.U. has, do you wanna make the weapon? Okay, you made the weapon. Do you wanna know what it goes into? Fucking make every single one, every permutation of every single thing, because the trees are all hidden.

Starting point is 02:04:41 Oh, you cannot see what goes into what. You can't see it. So what you do is go to KiraNeko.com and click on Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate and click on Chargeblade. Yeah, okay, okay, okay. And then you look at the tree that KiraNeko has made for you. It's old Demon Fusion. Because everything before World was, well you're gonna go buy this at the Yodobashi camera and you're gonna pick up the guide right next to it as part of your purchase, because you need the guide to play Monster Hunter.

Starting point is 02:05:16 And World, one of the things they westernized was like to decrease the necessity of using a guide by actually putting some of that information in the game. I'm curious what the on board kind of looks like, you know, going backwards to the pre-GU games and stuff because... What on board? Well, that's the question, right? Because there's a clear reset in the franchise, NA here. We're starting over. Everybody, great time to get into this new thing that is a completely different direction. And yeah, what does the onboarding

Starting point is 02:05:58 look like for Ultra Street Fighter 4, as opposed to now with 6, World Tour, mode, etc. You know There's always these generations. You is really built like you know what to do get in there. Mm-hmm You know how it works. Mm-hmm fucking do it It's not surprising how things turned out the way they did, you know ultimately like companies do always kind of have this not always always, but tend to have this like the franchise has become like highly specialized for experts and people that are that want to get in either already have or have a buddy that can explain it to them. But somebody who wants to jump into the party with no guidance has no hips to

Starting point is 02:06:42 but somebody who wants to jump into the party with no guidance has no hips to grab onto. So, 4U had onboarding. 4U had a tutorial quest and like an introduction and an opening cutscene and all sorts of shit. When you start Generations Ultimate, you hit start and you finish your character creator and it just drops you into the village and says go fucking do a quest now.

Starting point is 02:07:08 It has the least setup of any game ever in the Monster Hunter franchise. Has no setup at all. And then you walk over to the quest counter and the first seven quests are pick berries and capture bugs. Okay. And you fight the first monster in your two star quest

Starting point is 02:07:32 after like five hours of learning how to fucking pick berries. So the onboarding in that game is get materials, get items, figure out the controls, now maybe fight something. And that was like, that was the era of, dude, just power through. Just power through once you get to 10 hours and you're fighting lots of monsters every time. It's fucking peak. and that's true. That is true but I It took me just as long to fight a low-rank Rathalos in Gu from nothing as it did for me to beat the final boss in

Starting point is 02:08:19 wilds's campaign It took you just as long. It took about 15 hours to go from nothing to Rathalos as it did for me to beat the entirety of Wilds's campaign. Okay, but when you did start the fights, you're also saying the fight lengths themselves in multiplayer lasted about the same. About the same.

Starting point is 02:08:42 Yeah. But they were just harder. Yeah, the thing with, yeah, they're the monsters are much more aggressive the other thing is that I Spent like an entire stream with chat trying to get parts for narco-cook armor whole fucking stream Just like you wouldn't drop any cut wings We wouldn't drop a goddamn fucking cut wing over and over and over and over and over. Wouldn't drop it. So just kept doing it. Took, I don't know, like 10 hunts. Meanwhile,

Starting point is 02:09:12 when I was playing Wilds, I was making full sets out of like three hunts. So like part of the whole reason people play Monster Hunter is I would like to fight a bunch of monsters and grind out a set and get really good at fighting Narcacuga or Yungaruga or Rathalos or Diabolos or whatever. And when I was playing through the low rank in Wilds, I just didn't have to do that because I got all the materials so fast. have to do that because I got all the materials so fast. I guess the whole time comparison thing was like the the new monsters are easier, but they have more life.

Starting point is 02:09:56 I guess they do have more life. I don't think they have enough because it feels like in in the older games, it felt like there's a back and forth between the monster and you. Like the monster is going to do its things and you have to dodge them and you have to sneak in like your bullshit on it. And then if it flinches, you get free reign to do what you want for five seconds. And when the monster lands, you have to be careful of wind pressure and when the monster stomps, you have to be careful of tremor pressure and all these things. Whereas in Wilds, I

Starting point is 02:10:29 felt like I'm bullying the monster and the monster is fighting back against me. But you also, right. And so, but at high rank in the new game, it gets hard again and the challenges comes back. But like I would say people in chat were noticing that I fought something called a yank Aruga no a Yan a Yan Kaku I remember and it was more aggressive in the low rank two-star quest in GU than it is in high rank in Wilds. Like the monsters are just more aggressive. And they're a little less aggressive in World,

Starting point is 02:11:10 and they're a little more aggressive in Rise, and they're much less aggressive in Wilds. It's kind of a ping pong between the hyper games. Okay. Different chicken, nevermind. What's the one that holds the egg? That's uh, that's uh... Kulu-yaku? Kulu-yaku, that's it. He's cool.

Starting point is 02:11:33 You said yankaku? Yeah. Okay. Uh, he's cool, I like him. I tried. It's tough. But uh... Gojo fights JoGo. The long and short of it is that GU is fucking awesome and it's totally viable to play now. You just need like a couple of tips and for early quests you need to know the key quests so you don't waste your time. Absolutely still incredible game.

Starting point is 02:12:06 Still great. I still miss the sound effects you get when you pick up items. Like all the new games don't have it. I love it. It's a great sound effect. And I also found out doing this that there is a community patch for Iceborne. I did not know that people were so unhappy with parts of World's Iceborne expansion that

Starting point is 02:12:29 they decided to rebalance it themselves. That thing is called the Iceborne Community Enhancement Patch, and I'm going to try that out when I'm done with this because that looks great. Okay, cool. Now the most important question to me is how cool is that game's version of Proof of a Hero? Oh, they're all cool, man. Okay. They're all great.

Starting point is 02:12:58 Because as someone who's not into the franchise, I've grown to really like that song because of Marvel. I'll tell you what though, when you fight the final boss in Wilds, Proof of a Hero doesn't play. And I disagree with that. I see. I don't think that's good. I think that's wrong to do. I got it, I mean I feel like if I, I think that's wrong to do. Hmm.

Starting point is 02:13:28 I got it, I mean I feel like if I, my interest point still strongest is drawn probably towards rise just cause of the dogs, you know, if I ever wanted to see what was up. But yeah, interesting little experiment there. Also, I beat Kingdom Come Deliverance one last week. Um, that game is great. That game is absolutely excellent. What an incredible game. However, you start to notice around the 60, 70% mark in KCD1

Starting point is 02:14:12 that it looks like that picture of a horse that is super detailed on one side and then starts to get more stick figurey as you go. Oh, Game of Thrones season five, no! So, the game's main quest is really quite excellent. And then you get to the monastery, and there's a quest you have to infiltrate a Benedictine monastery and assassinate somebody inside it so you can ingratiate yourself to some thieves.

Starting point is 02:14:51 The game starts to rapidly fall to pieces as soon as you start this quest. You go through a lengthy initiate thing where you become a novice at the monastery, and then you're trying to find out which of the other novices is the guy you're looking for. Then you have a guy show you off to every single room and be like, this is where we pray, this is where we eat, and you can't talk while we're eating. Then a bunch of quests about monastery life start to pop up about like, hey, you got to go do the gardening at this time. And you're supposed to be living the monastery life and doing all these little quests while talking to everybody and trying to figure out who's the new novice that who's actually

Starting point is 02:15:40 a thief in his prior life and what are you going to do with them? Are you going to kill them or try and get them out? And then they finished the tour and the first dialogue option is, hey, I have to confess, I'm not here to be a monk, I'm actually looking for a thief. And the guy goes, wow, that's crazy. And then on the following dialogue prompt is you going, I know it's you. And you click on it. He goes, you got me. And you, you auto fail like 15 quests. Oh yeah. Wow. And I was like I

Starting point is 02:16:27 Yeah, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't fucking believe it is that nothing isn't that no information? Oh, that's the Skyrim game design principle. Isn't it? Oh my god. Really just how the the trees like built out like built out. So what you're supposed to do is leave that conversation and then go through everybody and then eventually figure out it's him and then use that dialogue. But it's there right away. And it's right there right away in the first conversation. And it's the guy who you're who's teaching you. Wow. Jesus. And you I saw I killed him. And then I walked out the door next to him, which leads to the courtyard, and I left and I did the quest. Okay.

Starting point is 02:17:11 And then- Okay, okay. Wait, wait, wait. And then for multiple hours after it, I was getting quest updates for the monastery life quests that failed running in the background according to the time of day they were happening. Okay, okay. So this is a really interesting case where game design can fail or rule based on perspective and how you make the player feel about the same thing. If what you just described came across the same way as Yo Saren, blow your fucking brains out you piece of shit. Right. That would have been awesome.

Starting point is 02:17:53 Right. If you made it feel like you cut through the bullshit because your character has all the right info and you built up to this amazing foil and then you got rewarded for crushing it that hard. And yes, you didn't get to do all these, but instead we made it feel real good because you've earned this awesome instant shutdown of a mission. Totally. You can make that moment great.

Starting point is 02:18:18 You can make it feel super good. I walked into a room, I walked into a locked room murder mystery and walked up to the first guy and said, is it you? Anyway, yeah. You know, like that's you make the player feel like they earn something there and get rewarded for it while everything else gets set down and you you bypass it because essentially you're you're you're skipping. You're doing a **** a level skip and you think oh, is that because I snuck around

Starting point is 02:18:46 the monastery and read this or learned that or whatever? No, no. It is a, it's not even a bug, it is a design oversight in allowing the player to accuse them on the first conversation. Okay, okay, yeah. Yeah, just plan for that shit, make it feel good, you know? them on the first conversation. Okay, okay. Yeah. Just plan for that shit. Make it feel good, you know?

Starting point is 02:19:10 So from that moment on, the game's seams started to really show themselves. Ever since that happened, characters would load it, every character would load into a cut scene a posing but then snap into the correct place okay pop in across the game got much worse overall yep yep yep slow times became longer just like the light you could feel the game going oh they didn't work as hard on the last

Starting point is 02:19:44 third of the game. The directors are chasing a carrot with a Star Wars movie contract over here. They can't be too busy focused on finishing off what they've got in front of them. Now to be fair, this is a Kickstarter game that was made by a group of complete amateurs. So it's actually astonishing that it is the way it is. Was there a Starbucks cup anywhere in the final chapter? No. But here's what happened.

Starting point is 02:20:06 I got to the end of the game. Best season ever! I got through all the A-posing and I got through the seams and I got to the end. I beat the game and the ending started to play. In the ending, you have a dream sequence in which you talk to a character that's passed away and it's a very you know emotional thing after you've gone through this whole journey and The subtitles completely broke and Instead started to play the subtitles for

Starting point is 02:20:43 the opening DLC scene of a DLC that never activated on my file. So if anybody knows the Yohanka part of Woman's Lot where they're trying to burn her at the stake, that was the subtitle stuff that was popping off in the game's final dream sequence. Oh, somebody else got that bug also. And I was not able to unlock that DLC. So I guess it just, oh my God, fun, dumb QA funsies are not fun when it's the ending. And then I, then I, my character woke up from that dream. I walked outside and was immediately arrested for no crime. Okay. For being asleep. Okay, okay. Hoo boy, all right, so we kickstarted

Starting point is 02:21:37 and then we sputtered across the finish line. We had to meet those deadlines. The pressure was after six years of patches. Yeah. Yeah. Damn. Okay. So I got out of jail and then went to do the epilogue. Um, and this game has the weirdest, coolest epilogue I have ever seen in a game. You go, hey, you beat the game and you did it. You solved all the problems here. Alright, I want you to go attend a meeting and in this meeting, you're going to sit there as historical figures, because these are all based on historical figures, sit around and discuss the geopolitics of 1403 Bohemian, fucking monarchists, like Ascension for like 20 minutes.

Starting point is 02:22:40 Okay, real shit. Like straight up, like this is what's going on with the king, this is what's going on with the army, this is how the League of Lords is handling it. Just like straight up like history textbook geopolitics lecture. Interesting, okay. And then they go, hey Henry, would you like to play Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? And Henry goes, I would love to do that. And they go, Okay, Henry, we need you to go to this other location that is not on this map

Starting point is 02:23:17 so you can have a sequel to this game. Can you go do that? And Henry goes, Absolutely. I would love to have a sequel to this game. Can you go do that? And Henry goes, absolutely. I would love to have a sequel to this game. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Get on the boat to the sequel. You say that. And so you and your boy, Hans, walk down to the stables and get on your horses and slow walk like five kilometers to the edge of the map while they shoot the shit the whole time. And I don't mean like a cut scene. I mean, you literally get on your horse and slow walk the entire breadth of the map to the edge.

Starting point is 02:24:03 As you guys gab about where you're going and what's up with you guys and how things turned out. Does it hit like the God of War climb down the mountain? Oh, it's super long. It's super long. Is it good? Yeah, it's great. Okay.

Starting point is 02:24:23 It's fucking great. I like that. I like a good denouement. it's great. OK. It's fucking great. I like that. I like a good denouement. That's cool. OK. And then you make a little camp. And he goes, are you ready to go? And you go, yeah.

Starting point is 02:24:33 And then credits roll. And you literally crest a hill into the sunset. And then the devs went on social media and went, we're going to make a second one one So I started playing the second one which literally cuts to you cresting that hill Fucking sunset. Okay. Okay. Okay, and then in seconds later like It is a it's not even a different scene. It is a cut. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, it is a cut within the same thing. It is taking place one second that after the end of KCD one That doesn't happen. That doesn't happen often, but that's really cool. Hell. Yeah

Starting point is 02:25:12 What what's on playing KCD to you what they and? This is a quantum leap forward. This is a Devil May Cry to Devil May Cry 3 level sequel jump. Someone in the chat called it Oblivion 3, and that's exactly how it feels. It looks better. It runs better. It looks and runs better than the first game in which it looks and runs incredibly. Every interface is adorned with gorgeous moving physical objects

Starting point is 02:25:53 as well as historical period piece arts from the 15th century. It is gorgeous top to bottom. The controls have been dramatically improved, etc. And it's just like, it's just screaming fucking quality. We fixed it. We fixed it. Like, we know how to make a video game now. And we put it all into this. This is what I hear about things like fear and hunger and these things where you experience their first foibles and to like, well, can't we release it?

Starting point is 02:26:25 But we barely got out the door and now we know what to do. Yeah. Okay. It has a proper fighting tutorial very beginning. It has a proper sneaking tutorial. And like the first little while of that game is you and your boy Hans just getting into fucking mishaps and you know losing all of your shit and being metroided. Like you start that game at level 15 of 30 and then Henry gets so dramatically injured that it kicks your ass back down to peasantry and century and you get full on metroided. Like you lose your fucking abilities.

Starting point is 02:27:10 Same engine and asset quality of... No, it's the same engine. It is CryEngine. It is a dramatically higher asset quality. When I say it looks better, I mean it's a next-gen leap up from the first game that also runs like 30% faster. How many years later did it come out? Six and a half. Okay. It looks incredible and it feels way better and because they knew that almost nobody was going to go back and play the first game, the beginning hours result in Henry getting injured horribly to get metroided. But also as you're injured and stumbling around, you have vivid, vivid hallucinations of every

Starting point is 02:28:01 major event from Kingdom Come Deliverance 1. And then you sit down with your boy Hans and go, hey, remember all that shit that happened in Kingdom Come Deliverance 1? And he goes, yeah, this is what happened in Kingdom Come Deliverance 1. In case you're starting at 2. So yeah, you can totally start at 2. It's not a problem. It's no issue. Okay. Well, and right away, the game is just bleeding quality all over the place.

Starting point is 02:28:34 It teaches you how to do alchemy, which is important because that's the only way to create save points. You have to make yourself potions. The alchemy minigame in this is improved but it's also super involved. It is in first person so you are like grabbing like you're grabbing herbs and throwing them into a cauldron via player action and then having to force the boil and then you're using an hourglass to time how long you're boiling it. Like it's a super in-depth really cool alchemy system Were those visions you're describing like straight up meant to be like Watch these don't play the first one. Yes, absolutely

Starting point is 02:29:12 Okay, so even show you like cutscenes from the first game with a really strong like blood Filter on them to obfuscate the fact they look terrible. Okay, so literally hey zone of the enders who the fuck is Leo? Shut up and watch this. Okay. So literally, hey, Zone of the Enders, who the fuck is Leo? Shut up and watch this. Okay, cool. Got it. Like, if you're playing KCD 1 and you're enjoying KCD 1 by absolutely all measure, just keep playing KCD 1, but there's absolutely no reason for you to feel like you have to play the first one to play the second one.

Starting point is 02:29:38 Well, I think what they should do... They catch you right up. They should fix all the problems with Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 and then... They did. They released the solution to those problems in KCD 2. No, no. They should do it in the first game and then they should do it specifically in the first game so that it feels good the whole way through and they should call it Extreme Kingdom Come

Starting point is 02:29:58 Deliverance. Yeah, except then they would introduce new problems like... Kiwami. Well, no, because then the game could be called XKCD. Thank you. There's a little math joke in there for you. That's good, Willy. That's high quality stuff. That's why they paid me the big bucks.

Starting point is 02:30:26 So you start KCD2 like broke and peasant once again. And you start off losing literally every single piece of gear other than like a burlap sack. And then the game goes, well, fucking figure it out go so I ended up picking a lot of flowers and learning how to make chamomile tea that I could sell for cash and then I used that cash to buy enough food to travel north in order to get a job as a blacksmith at which point I encountered a super in-depth blacksmithing minigame that requires you to heat up pieces of metal evenly and then put it on an anvil and then use right trigger to essentially attack the different parts

Starting point is 02:31:16 of the blade that you're making and go along like the whole edge and then flip it to go along the whole edge again and reheat it if necessary. Now it sounds like the first game, you know, despite the fact that like it was there was jank and stuff improved, you were enjoying up until a point and then it fell apart. I was still enjoying it. I was just worried that it was gonna actually fall apart and die before I got to the end. So there's no guarantees that this new version will keep it up all the way through either, even though it is a market improvement over... You're totally right, which is why I checked and people were telling me that, oh yeah,

Starting point is 02:31:54 definitely the same thing happens. It starts the further you get in. The more it's... Okay, because I'm like, nothing you're describing is a guarantee against that. It's a better game so far, but... Hold on. Wait, wait, wait. Uh, it definitely has like a fucking stability trajectory. That's the same as the first game, but it starts off more stable and it stays more stable. Okay.

Starting point is 02:32:19 Like the basic thing is drop isn't as hard by the end of the game, it never gets as unstable as the first game was when you started. The whole graph is so far above that even at its worst, it's not as bad as KCD was at its best. Also, one of the reasons that I waited to beat KCD one and start playing now is that the game is really Receiving it's gigantic We we are cleaning the fucking game up and adding a bunch of features in to it on Thursday I say okay, so I played about five hours of it

Starting point is 02:33:01 Which is not enough for anything untoward or fucky to happen. And the cleanup patch is coming on Thursday. Are you planning to back to back it or was it just to see? No, no, no, I'm going. OK, I'm fucking going. It's. It's wild. It's really like almost heartwarming to see how much this game improved over the first one.

Starting point is 02:33:33 I'm shocked as a Kickstarter game that the first one managed to maintain its stability at all considering how large of a game it is. Like we're talking about games the size of like Oblivion and Skyrim made by a small team who just right up didn't know what they were doing Did you hit the the accidental thing that I I showed you or is that No, no, okay. That's that's later. Okay But yeah, no you get to have a lot of fun little interactions right at the beginning of the game where you try and convince your your boy Hans who's a noble for like 10 minutes.

Starting point is 02:34:10 Hey, can you help me work because we're poor and he's like no. No, I'm not going to fucking do that. Hans is very much like a Johnny character. Like you described like it's so awesome that Johnny sucks. Hans Cape on sucks. He is a drunk womanizing do nothing shit head noble, but he's also your best bro. Right. So he's like constantly nagging you and talking down to you because you're not a noble and just not helping you. But he does have your back when it actually, actually really matters.

Starting point is 02:34:53 And you can have long walks to the edge of the map having a good conversation with him. Basically, yeah. Okay. Like you're like, hey man, we're broke and we can't pay for our food. Can you help me drag these sacks from the cart over to the seller so they don't beat us? Oh, and he starts going off about the three states of man according to the Catholic church in 15th century. And now he is a protector and he doesn't do low, he doesn't do labor because that would decrease the value of the nobility in the peasants' eyes and social order would collapse.

Starting point is 02:35:27 And you're like, fucking help me carry the fucking sacks, Hans! Are we going to start talking about the four humors? Yes. Yes, we are. Blood, bile, phlegm. Like, absolutely. Oh man, Okay. All right. So yeah, this this game is it's it's super cool. It's it's so slick and it's so fucking interesting. And it's so dedicated to its time period and like like. like trying to render that accurately.

Starting point is 02:36:05 It's so, so fucking cool. And as I'm playing it, I'm like, Oh man, Elder Scrolls is so fucking cooked. I don't know. Like, but as these games have been getting worse, but your Skyrim, but like the comparison is like Kickstarter project to like big following versus case, KCD2 is not a Kickstarter project. Okay. KCD2 is a proper game made with proper resources. But I guess my impression from the outside has been that like a Elder Scrolls release

Starting point is 02:36:37 is an industry event. Absolutely. I don't know that Kingdom Come is that. I, it sold a couple million copies within a day. It is that game. It is absolutely like big money deal. And it feels like, it's history as the first game being a Kickstarter game is immaterial. This is a proper, big, gigantic, super,

Starting point is 02:37:07 wide RPG with tons of mechanical depth. I think, so this is going to sound hyperbolic, I think its most direct comparison in terms of scope and shocking quality is probably Baldur's Gate. That's what I was kind of imagining as the most recent Western RPG. Like, not from a team that you expected to do the biggest, coolest RPG, but it's like gorgeous, plays well, super super interesting mechanically fascinating etc Okay, cool

Starting point is 02:37:51 Pardon me So if you want to try it you try it well So actually I was gonna say is like this is also with like having just talked about avowed right? Oh what? You just took a look at Avowed not too long ago. I did. And I mean. Man, who even cares? I was gonna say that, are we even holding a candle anymore?

Starting point is 02:38:18 No, absolutely not. Like KCD2 has absolutely eaten Avowed's lunch 100 times over. Yeah, okay. And it's interesting because like, Kingdom Come is so mundane and what you would call boring because it takes place in a realistic, like old setting and Avowed takes place in a fantastical one, but the actual mechanical interaction with the game is so much more interesting in KCD2 than it is in About.

Starting point is 02:38:51 Wait a minute, when did Kingdom Come 2 come out? Two? It was a couple weeks ago. Okay, okay, so they're in their- In February 4th. Yeah, okay, so they're released into the same competing space. It's okay, so they're released into the same competing space, it's not,

Starting point is 02:39:06 because I was just like, oh, has it been a minute and, anyway, yeah, the lunch eating is apt as they're both being released in the same window. Yeah, I would like to point out, hold on a second, I see somebody who really likes a vow to say, that's a terrible take. My take is that I don't care anymore. My take is not that avowed is bad.

Starting point is 02:39:30 My take is that I am much more interested in this other thing than I am in that other thing. That's it. My interest does not denote quality, which is, I wish it would, because that'd be awesome as fuck. denote quality which is I wish it would because that'd be awesome as fuck Maybe if they've rolled out like furry Rex

Starting point is 02:39:57 Then you know maybe about can get us back on Maybe Maybe you're right. Maybe you're fucking right. Well, as a comparison point, I have spent more time smithing horseshoes in KCD2 than I have playing about. Nice mushroom, shepherd. Wait. Oh, right. Because I thought you meant like cock. I thought you were, I thought... No, just the mushrooms growing out of your head in a vowed.

Starting point is 02:40:36 Because that might also appeal to a lot of people. Well anyway. Cool. Okay. All right. Right on. Right on. That's been it for me this week. If you want to go check out more Monster Hunter GU and Kingdom Come Deliverance, too, go down to twitch.tv slash Pat Stairs.

Starting point is 02:40:58 Okey doke. While you have been talking, hot off the presses, they have been screaming. And so I did double eyeball, but yes, yes, a Devil May Cry 3, a Devil May Cry, a Netflix trailer has dropped. You were correct. And so I took a look and hey, there's some cool stuff happening in that trailer. Looks pretty cool. And you know what?

Starting point is 02:41:20 I need to get some water and piss. I'm just going to go piss and get some water and then watch that trailer and then we'll come back and talk about that trailer Sure. All right. I see some I see some good shit. Yep, there be Yeah, I am. Yeah, it looks like shit. Nah, I'm fine. I'm on board. I'm down. I'm down First of all last resort. Okay, the music is still the music is still doing it They there's a very clear era that we're locking into place and chaining to the franchise. I'm very down Yeah, I don't know Let's see. No, I don't hate I don't hate what I saw there. Let's see what happens

Starting point is 02:42:01 I though what the what I what's gonna be weird are fighting in the comments. They're split down the middle. I don't hate anything I saw there. I'm curious to see how it plays out. The weird part is always just going to be Johnny Young Bosch and I guess the new not Dan Southworth. On the ear, that's a Kiefer Sutherland snake moment. You're just gonna be like, ah, I'm so used to this. Why do Agni and Rudra have heads? Yeah, that's true too. But this could be one of those things where,

Starting point is 02:42:41 kinda like Castlevania, you watch it through and you're like, yo, that was fun. That was charming. I enjoyed it. That's a fun take on the franchise, you know. Admittedly, I went into Castlevania with not a ton of, you know, I guess brand loyalty there. But I did. Castlevania fucking killed it right off the bat. But I did gas of any fucking killed it right off the bat But

Starting point is 02:43:15 Again we're just going off of trailer there. I'm like, yeah that could still end up being a cool a cool series I could end up being fine. Let's see I'm gonna watch it, but I don't have strong hopes I think I don't have strong hopes. I think there's always worry about an adaptation for sure. When the thing like devil may cry where you're like, it's, it's so the, the, you know, there's so loose and people are here for it. Like the depth and the shallowness are forever an argument as to like what it should be or what it ought to be, how seriously to take

Starting point is 02:43:45 filling your dark soul with light. So I'm not too sure, but if it was a dumpster fire, I feel like I would have seen a much clearer dumpster fire indication up to this point, but so far I'm like, okay, everything I've seen is like. For me, Agni and Rudra looking at Dante and going he's so cool while they then cut to a terrible 3d model of Echidna just sitting on a truck bed was like... Maybe he rips their heads off and then the swords are there and then they're headless and they fight for a minute.

Starting point is 02:44:23 I just spilled water all over my pants. Maybe he has to decapitate them and hold their sword heads before they become headless versions of themselves. Who knows? I don't know. Anyway, yeah, I'm optimistic. We'll see. I didn't piss my pants. I dropped water on them. That's different. I just want everyone to know. It's very different.

Starting point is 02:44:57 The water came from this bee cup. The cup with the bee on it. Foolishness, Pat. Foolishness. Pat, foolishness. Yeah, maybe. Speaking of pissing and shitting and rancid vibes. Yeah, what's going on with Ubisoft? What's going, well, let's detour

Starting point is 02:45:24 past the thing I forgot to mention at the end of your Monster Hunter chat. But yo, the Monster Hunter modding community needs to chill the fuck out. Oh, you don't even know, dude. You don't even know. They need to chill the fuck out. You don't even know.

Starting point is 02:45:42 Nah, bro. Oh boy, Oh boy. Oh boy. I just saw one bit and I'm like, word? You saw the Kongalala thing, huh? What's Kongalala? Is that the monkey? Yeah.

Starting point is 02:45:57 Yeah, I saw the monkey with the replaced model. And, oh. That's what people want. Oh man. If the people want to see it, they're're gonna do it can we pump the brakes until we figure out what the fuck is going on no man they know exactly what's going on you don't know what's going on maybe the PC release was a mistake maybe we needed to stay on the switch actually I think I think Nintendo had a point turns out you can mod human

Starting point is 02:46:28 beings into the monkey animation and replace the giant monkey with a person so yeah this was always a thing it's just I guess so associated with a gross cutscene yeah so was it Gemma? Is that her name? Yeah, it's Gemma or Little Miss Forge. Yeah. Uh, seems to be the replacement of choice for the cutscene where the big monkey attacks you by turning around and just fart shitting all over. Yeah, that's Conga Lala, man. That's the stench all over the party. If it were like a hazy green, like. Nah, it's poop man, he's pooping.

Starting point is 02:47:11 If it were a hazy green effect, that would certainly get the point across. Nah. And all the Harley Quinn comic collectors out there could get what they needed. Nah, he's pooping on you, man. Konga-Lala's always pooped on you. See, you don't know, because you didn't play G.U.

Starting point is 02:47:30 No, you're right, I don't, I don't know, I don't know. But I do know that whatever's happening right now, I don't want a part of it at all. I don't want any piece of this. And you know, if you're drawing lines in the sand you can you can stay on the the brown Gross side over the dog does it too man ball Dunda doesn't do it out of his ass though He does that of his fucking skin. It's even weirder there See yeah, but like you can't have that be a one-to-one like

Starting point is 02:48:03 anyway anyway monster hunter But like you can't have that be a one-to-one like anyway anyway monster hunter Monsters that inflict stench because it's just like there's a long Galala volvodon Elmer old conga Lala in photo kudu kudu, which I don't know what the fuck that is What are you from? G genuine go fuck yourself. That's not real. I just, I'm imagining, I imagine that there are some snoopers out there who saw that and went, that's further than even I wanted it to go.

Starting point is 02:48:35 No, you know that's not true. Because there are- Here's the key art for emerald kongalala, by the way. Because, because, let's see, what are we talking about here? Okay, yeah? Yeah, yeah for sure big farts big farts blast and shits mm-hmm cuz cuz There are there are snoopers Who are like you know in the realm of? Feet and armpits and all of that every all green gases You know you're playing with the fire here man

Starting point is 02:49:05 And then there are those who are looking for the the solids and that is a cut above And listen and you can't pretend that it's not a cut above that's a don't fuck on the doo-doo gang They got no shame No, none none whatsoever Right you want fucking ultimate Extreme GU you want the ultimate generations? That's that's your fucking that's your g-rank right there. That's that's your oh All right

Starting point is 02:49:39 Yeah damn What happened to just green green are you kidding me what happened to just green, green- Are you kidding me? What happened to just- whoa! It's not the same, dude. Dude, Kongolala is from fucking Monster Hunter 2. He's been shitting in your mouth for years.

Starting point is 02:49:59 Yeah, no, I just- it's the modding, you see. It's the modding. Yeah, that, I just, it's the modding, you see. It's the modding. Yeah, that's your problem. Well, what they ought to do, how about this? Maybe instead of modding in GEMA, they should mod in some former Ubisoft executives. Oh yeah? So that it can be a little bit more accurate, given what we're discovering,

Starting point is 02:50:35 which is it really discovering or is it just waiting on the reveal? Is it not just like, are we not just playing a game of Family Feud going, and what are Ubisoft up to today? And then behind- They're sex crimes. The answer is sex crimes. Ding! Behind the fucking thing. 100 out of 100 recipients survey said that Ubisoft is guilty of sex crimes. Allegedly. So I kind of expected, I suppose, that on the way out here, we would mostly be covering

Starting point is 02:51:11 just the company issues as it possibly gets sold, as license and ownership shit is happening, and as the state of various projects is in disarray. But what we have here today is, what's the headline from France 24? Three former Ubisoft executives will be tried for sexist and sexual harassment, racism, homophobia. They tied up an employee, sexually assaulted several others, posted bacon on a Muslim employee's computer, and broadcast porn. So.

Starting point is 02:51:56 Classy, classy. That is, that's where we're at. That's where we're at. So yeah, perhaps modding those folks into the monkey's place, seeing as that was what's the difference between the level of treatment. I think these things are actually all related because did

Starting point is 02:52:14 you know that it's actually like fairly hard to do a good job at work if you're worried about your boss sexually assaulting you or harassing you religiously or broadcasting porn on your fucking workspace when you're trying to fucking code something? Yeah, if your boss is cartoonishly evil, it might be difficult to get shit done, perhaps. Hey, can you not touch me? I'm trying to make this game not shit. I'd prefer if you didn't tie me up and draw on my face while I'm trying to work actually. Hey, do you want to know? one of the factors that I'm

Starting point is 02:52:50 I'm using to figure out whether or not a game is something you should be excited for Mm-hmm. So, you know the thing that like, you know, maybe you've heard something that's exciting about a game or maybe you've had heard nothing Exciting about a game. Let's assume you've heard nothing about a game at all. And you're scrolling on your TikTok because you need dank memes. And in between the guy who's working out just the one lat and creating like a William Birkin style shoulder deformity and you can't look away. And the guy who's spraying dog medicine on his hands to make them tougher. And he's on day 400 and he's tearing concrete apart with his hands. This is the dog medicine one of my favorite channels You're losing me but in between those two things that there's nothing to lose. It's exactly as I described

Starting point is 02:53:37 I'm just waiting for the comma in between those you scroll up and you see a targeted ad for Assassin's Creed shadows, which is Video footage of influencers you've never heard of going. Whoa, the kills are so amazing. I can't believe this game It's so cool. And I'm like, oh shadows is cooked Oh shadows so fucking cook when I see a video game ad on tick-tock my brain goes. Oh, it's fucked. It's done It's fucking done. So I didn't see that, but I was, my tattoo artist told me about that, that seeing that campaign you're describing actually and how that was going. That's fucking hilarious.

Starting point is 02:54:18 Yeah. All right. Well, I mean, we're basically just in, and again, Vince McMahon territory at this point, there's not much to say here. But like, yeah, I look forward to hearing about where these executives get moved to, perhaps, as the known punishment for any of these things. Well, usually you would hope they get moved to jail. Right, but according to company policy, they're typically to be moved to another studio location. I don't know, Indonesia?

Starting point is 02:55:00 Yeah, there's a couple different offices they can move to, but the full-on Vatican effect is in play here. Let's see what happens. The company will investigate itself. We don't really need legal to step in here. By the way, shout out to what's really important, which is Fist of the Dog Medicines on day 400. His recent thing is he's punching ballistic dummies' heads off.

Starting point is 02:55:33 I love that channel so much. I love it. Speaking of punching heads off. TikTok is like a dead society, but it's our society and I don't know what that means, but I'm here for it. I'm not. Speaking of punching heads off, you know what? Here's a weird one. That really dead, flat, kind of non-dynamic Netherrealm animation style Yeah?

Starting point is 02:56:06 actually works perfectly for the T-1000 Oh absolutely Because it's not a real person It's pretending to animate like a real person The T-1000 trailer dropped and it's, you know It's exactly what that specific character needs is to not look like a human being. Robert Patrick looking, and they got his voice too, right?

Starting point is 02:56:38 Yeah. Yeah, it's like, you know what? Sure, like the way, it's very bland and boring when you take a lot of other characters with dynamic things and translate it here. But the way the liquid metal works, the way he kind of stiffly throws his limbs out and blobs and then blades at you. All of that I'm like, yeah, that's actually the T-1000. And more than anything, watching that trailer, I'm like, damn, Terminator 2 is fucking good. Yeah, it's a good movie.

Starting point is 02:57:09 What a good movie, holy shit. Yeah, I'm like, alright, I got no complaints here. This is the kind of character that works for the limitations. Not much else to it. They and really only remember Mortal Kombat exists when they show off a DLC character. And then I immediately go back to forgetting that it exists.

Starting point is 02:57:34 It's interesting because like I saw some comments where people were like, you have a character that can turn into anything and you have them just doing these boring blob and spike moves. Why not do something more dynamic and interesting? I'm like, because the just doing these boring blob and spike moves. Why not do something more dynamic and interesting? I'm like, because the thousand does boring blob and that's not what the thousand thousand is actually incredibly uncreative. Yeah, he just makes makes knives and stabbing weapons for all the infinity things it could do. It doesn't do it. Just shape shifts,, and hook hands you

Starting point is 02:58:08 and then occasionally blobs it up. You know, that's it. Anything too complex is, yeah, it's not gonna work, right? Yeah, I'm just, what's there is exactly the way it is. Anything historically that animates weirdly, I feel like they would pull off a fine ED-209. I don't know if- Oh, absolutely.

Starting point is 02:58:33 Right, you saw it cause he- And then they would have it animate at a correct frame rate and you'd be like, oh, this is dog shit. Well, cause doesn't it come in for Robocop's fatalities? I believe he has- I'm not certain. I believe it comes in for Robocop's Fatality and Fatal Blow, right?

Starting point is 02:58:47 Like, it feels like those are the things that work best with Netherrealm's limitations. So, yeah, Glacius from KI, way too dynamic. You know, for doing the exact same moveset. Yep, solid. there you go. Speaking of stiff things that have been forgotten, I imagine you've watched the canceled live action Powerpuff adaptation. Yeah, they were right to cancel that shit.

Starting point is 02:59:27 Throw that in the garbage, man. Yeah. Looks pretty bad, looks pretty cringe. Not great. Just as bad as that script leak said it would be. One thing that I haven't seen anyone bring up because it's like, yeah, it's rough and poor Donald Vezon Turk is, you know, you're meant for better things. It's unfortunate.

Starting point is 02:59:51 I mean, he signed the papers. He did. He did. Nobody held a gun to his head. And I don't know how work is going otherwise. So you know, eh. But something that I see not being mentioned there is this is one of those cases where I think 99 times out of 100, this live action Powerpuff Girls adaptation is just a terrible idea.

Starting point is 03:00:18 I would say, yeah, that's accurate. I say that's the case. A lot of the time you're imagining various versions, anything from a Dragon Ball evolution, like what the fuck is that, to a we tried to make it accurate, but it just got weirder the more on point it was because it was never meant to be like this. You get to that Jump Force style attempt.

Starting point is 03:00:44 But this in particular, like Riverdale, you get to that jump force style attempt. But this in particular, like Riverdale has taken off as a big WB Archie show and whatnot. And some of that I think works because there's, there's, Archie is much older and less connected to the current generation than I would say Powerpuff is, but even then Powerpuff is still like pretty old by standards, just not anywhere near as old as Archie.

Starting point is 03:01:04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fact that it says written by Diablo Cody but even then Powerpuff is still pretty old by standard, just not anywhere near as old as Archie. The fact that it says written by Diablo Cody is something that I think not a lot of people necessarily registered what that is. But what that- I don't know who that is, so register with me. And for me, I'm like, this explains the whole thing. Because Diablo Cody is scriptwriter of Juno,

Starting point is 03:01:23 which is that sort of edge, that like, you know. Hamburger phone. Hamburger phone, teenager, edgy, edgy, goth girl, oh not goth girl, edgy mall girl attitude. Dude, that was like 20 years ago though. Yeah, and here's the thing, I love Judo, right? I'm a fan of Judo, I enjoyed that movie,

Starting point is 03:01:40 but that, the person who wrote that, when they're taking on a script, it's because somebody is giving them the IP I enjoyed that movie, but the person who wrote that, when they're taking on a script, it's because somebody is giving them the IP to turn it into their version of things, right? It's like handing Genndy the keys to your thing. What happened with that Velma show? Mindy Kaling? Yeah. Right?

Starting point is 03:02:01 Yeah, so she was given the Scooby-Doo license and she just turned it in her own weird thing. So some people are going to grab the thing and adapt it into whatever based on them trying to be like, hey, let's keep it faithful or whatever. So Robert Rodriguez gets the keys to Sin City and says, I want to make this a frame for frame, panel by panel shot of the book, but just with people.

Starting point is 03:02:24 OK, cool. Right? Can I but just with people. Okay. Cool. Right. Um, I get the right people. Yes. Yeah. All right. Good. But here you don't get a name like Diablo Cody attached unless you're doing what Diablo Cody does and getting her version of any IP, you know? So it never stood a chance, because there was never gonna be that one out of 100 potential possibility. And knowing what the name means, when it's attached to a script, it explains exactly why that trailer

Starting point is 03:02:56 plays out the way it does. I'm gonna have an, I don't know, you ever like, you start building a take in your head and you're like, you can't figure out if it's a hot take or a cold take Well, you like I've like I have no idea where is you have a top adapting things Just period cook cook Just stop. Yeah cook the failure rate. Yes out of control. Okay. No, it's like

Starting point is 03:03:24 99 times out of a hundred. It's like 99 times out of 100. It's a disaster. I'm following you. I'm following you because my version of this was a long time ago. We had a thing on the podcast when we were talking about like, oh, but who should adapt Vagabond and how best would it work as an animated? And maybe there could be a, and then, oh, video games need to become movies because there's a hierarchy of important mediums

Starting point is 03:03:50 and these ones are down here, but these ones are the big ones. And your medium doesn't matter until you're on the big screen and everyone can see it, right? It doesn't matter if you're a book or a manga or a movie or a comic or a fucking stage play. It doesn't matter because it has to become a movie that Hollywood sees for it to matter, right? The messages have to, no, no, no, absolutely not. Things can just be what they are. A hundred

Starting point is 03:04:09 percent. I am, I am super, I get it. Right. It can work sometimes. It often doesn't, but I think that like in many cases, like even when it does work out, even when you get the weird cases, you get your one piece, which, you know, I enjoyed that live action Wow slam dunk on that right but I feel like there the fact that there's a hierarchy of adaptation in media means that there's a weird like disrespect for source material that often happens that sucks and I mean it's clear really clear why One Piece is good. It's because Oda had the kill switch on it, and he could kibosh the whole project if he was like,

Starting point is 03:04:51 I don't like it. Versus Shinichi Watanabe walking away from Cowboy Bebop, right? Or who knows what's going on with the Avatar bits, but we know that the original team were like, yeah, we're not involved on this anymore. Creative differences. There's always that moment. And were like, yeah, we're not involved on this anymore, creative differences. There's always that moment. And here's the thing too, right?

Starting point is 03:05:08 I can understand what is the Steel Man argument here. Okay, well, not everybody is going to go back and check out the original War of the Worlds. Not everybody- Can I respond to that? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure.

Starting point is 03:05:27 But who gives a shit what you're gonna go check out or not? So there's that feeling of like, oh, there's gold in this source material that needs to be brought to everyone. And if it's done really well, then there can be a whole new market for this thing and a whole new audience, and it can be relevant again. Let's see Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson brings that from

Starting point is 03:05:49 this legendary book series into a legendary film series. Absolutely. And boy, that could have been terrible. Oh my God, that could have been the worst. It could have been the Hobbit series, you know? But like after an extremely insanely high effort and budget and everything over the years, one of these massive projects, it's like, oh yeah, okay, they brought Lord of the Rings into the forefront and now it's this massive thing. So if you're the license holder, IP holder,

Starting point is 03:06:19 franchise holder, then you want that to happen, right? You want to turn your, you know, million dollar franchise into a billion dollar franchise. So that's always gonna be the driving factor here. But aside from that, I guess, just as people who are like fans of the things or consumers of it in a way, that miss rate is so high.

Starting point is 03:06:42 And- It's real fucking high. And again, the weird disrespect that comes from like Oh, this thing doesn't matter until it becomes that fucking sucks, and I wish that would go away So I want to raise up my hand here as something really clear Somebody pointed out fallout which I actually really like the fall TV show and we all know page loves the fall TV show Stuff like the fallout TV show is not an adaptation. It's a TV show that takes place in an existing fiction. Right. When I say stop adapting things, I mean shit like fucking Game of Thrones. Is everyone

Starting point is 03:07:18 happy how that fucking turned out? Is everyone having a great fucking time with how Game of Thrones turned out? And ultimately, here's the thing, it works out sometimes and sometimes it works out great. The... How many berserk fucking shows do we need? A... Woof. Arf barf.

Starting point is 03:07:38 What, you know, bark. However, then there's that one episode of Last of Us that fucking won every award because it's incredible. That can happen sometimes too. It's not that- See, Last of Us is such a great example because like, hey, these games that want to be movies became movies. They did it.

Starting point is 03:07:59 The stepping stone to what you actually wanted to do in the first place is complete. Congrats. And you know, if Game of Thrones didn't fucking get shit up by D&D and if they didn't get distracted by riding high on their own supply, getting famous and your headphone plugged out, I'm going to, there we go, you're back. If they didn't get all like, oh, we got- Those darn plugs. We got Disney waiting to give us a bunch of Star Wars trilogies to work on. If they didn't get all like, oh, we got- Darn plugs, oh. We got Disney waiting to give us

Starting point is 03:08:27 a bunch of Star Wars trilogies to work on. We barely care about Game of Thrones anymore. And we have, what the fuck was it called? Confederate to work on. Then, you know, perhaps if they gave it their fullest and they had the same process going through the end of that series, it would have been good to the end. Adaptations don't always suck, certainly,

Starting point is 03:08:47 and there are great examples of when it can go well. No, it's just like the worst fail rate of anything I've ever seen in my life. If I went to a restaurant that made me food with the quality hit rate that adapting a comic or TV show to a different media or whatever, I would never fucking eat there again. I would get sick and fucking die. Yeah, I think there's just times and places

Starting point is 03:09:10 where you gotta just re-examine that. You don't have to always fucking turn it into some, like the attempt to reintroduce, to remarket is always shitty. We know as well, I remember there was a large, Comic Book Girl, 19, a while ago, had a video where she was describing how like, there's extremely minimal,

Starting point is 03:09:32 the way new movies get made and stuff is like, I think like, three on 30 major blockbusters are new. And then the, yeah, the remaining 27 are all previous proven properties and all that right the risks are high etc Fuck me I had a point I was about to make and then I like you find that point I need to go for a second to help oh shit. Okay, BRB Okay, I remember my point. Yeah. Okay, so your take was stop making adaptations and mine was adaptations aren't necessary.

Starting point is 03:10:16 And I think you're absolutely cooking there because I'm thinking of the times where in a best case scenario, I talk to somebody, anytime I talk to somebody about The Departed, we go, damn, that was a really good movie. He killed it. What a good job. And then the end of the conversation is, hey, you know what else is good? Infernal Affairs. That's a good movie. You should go watch it. Go watch it. There's a whole trilogy. They're fucking solid, right? And then in the worst case scenario, you have the shit that pisses me the fuck off. Watch it. Go watch it. There's a whole trilogy. They're fucking solid, right?

Starting point is 03:10:45 And then, in the worst case scenario, you have the shit that pisses me the fuck off, which is Spike Lee Presents Oldboy, where it's the same medium, it's the exact same thing that already exists, and the only reason it's being adapted is because audiences are being weird about subtitles, and too many Korean people, I guess.

Starting point is 03:11:06 It's just fucking, you know, like it's a completely, completely unnecessary re-release. I can do you one better as worst case scenario. Worst case scenario is going to the movie and watching your movie and going, Oh my God, that's terrible. Why do people even like the last airbender? Oh my God. I guess there's that. This is, this is, this is the thing. You look down on the original. This is, this is the thing that everyone's been telling me has been so great all this time. Holy shit. This is fucking terrible. Yeah It's just fucking annoying man. Yeah, I saw Death Note. Oh that movies god-awful I mean, I'm still more annoyed by my example because it's one-to-one. It's not even a different medium

Starting point is 03:12:01 You just made it for no reason You know, I like whatever time has moved on and we've hit a point where, you know, things like Parasite and shit have blown up and the audiences are much more like Netflix oriented. So people aren't afraid of subtitles and they're not diving for cover when words pop up at the bottom of the screen. But that fucking Spike Lee shit is just the stupidest, man. Anyway, so yeah, I understand and I completely have had that thought adjacent and I'm right there. You know, I always wondered what the deal with Americans and subtitles is, genuinely.

Starting point is 03:12:41 I was like, why are subtitles and foreign films so wildly hated? What the fuck is up with that? Reading a lot and not looking at the thing is- No, it's that 50% of Americans can't read. That's what I'm saying, reading. Yes. Just can't. Reading's hard.

Starting point is 03:13:00 It's distracting. It's taking away from the talking and the easier things going on. No, no, no, no can't I Don't mean distracting. I don't mean is not good. I mean like can't I've heard this before and I've heard this before and it's like it it's it is just it's a struggle to Take the time to quickly go through that you can but you don't have the time to by the time the next line That's not what I'm telling you to quickly go through that. You can, but you don't have the time to by the time the next line pops up. That's not what I'm telling you.

Starting point is 03:13:27 This is a dogs can't talk situation. I'm like, I'm talking functional illiteracy is like 45%. I don't believe you. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. In 2023, approximately 28% of US adults are scored at the lowest levels of literacy. 54% of adults have literacy skills below a sixth grade level. Yeah, so 54% are functionally illiterate.

Starting point is 03:14:06 Below sixth grade. It's it's it's a level, right? It's not the same as jumped over the fence. But yes. It's it's bad. It's it's it's not. It's not a good. How am I supposed to read those old boys subtitles? They don't even have a cute dog in there Thank you Spike Lee, thank you for allowing me to watch old boy Anyway boy. Anyway. What is going on? Okay.

Starting point is 03:14:50 Well, a couple other things. Let's touch on before we dip out of here. I don't really know what's going on. We don't really have all the details. But wherever you go, there you are. Skullgirls is in trouble because Hidden Variable and Autumn Games are having a legal dispute of some kind. I don't know what this one's about.

Starting point is 03:15:21 No one does. I can't figure it out. I don't think there's anything to figure out. I just think the two companies are having a legal dispute over finances or other details. I think Skullgirls should stop adapting itself to being alive. To existing? It seems so cursed. What I'll say at the very least is like, hey, that game's had a long lifecycle. It's had a lot of content come out unexpectedly. It continued when Autumn Games and Hidden Variable pushed past the

Starting point is 03:15:53 natural lifecycle end and resurrected it, working on a bunch of stuff for the mobile game, and then retroactively making that content new for the main game was more than anyone that's a fan of Skullgirls expected. So I think they also likely were aware, they're like, there's not really going to be a Skullgirls too. So if we have any ideas or anything we want to do, we've got to do it here and now while it exists, because this is a one-time thing.

Starting point is 03:16:31 So that's likely how that continued for a bit there. But in any case, Hidden Variable put out a statement saying that they're not working on Skullgirls anymore. It seemed like they had more plans for more stuff, and they have to sort out legal troubles with Autumn Games. And we see what's going on. We see someone in the chat saying that Hidden Variable was essentially working for free for months and they're owed money. They're owed money, okay.

Starting point is 03:16:53 Yeah, there's again, I don't know if there's any other sources or people inside either company that have spoken out or given details, but if that's that's what it is then Rip Skullgirls once again Long live Skullgirls rip Skullgirls Launch party every day even as we lower you into the grave You know That thing that thing lasted man, I don't think anyone can complain, you know that thing lasted longer than anyone it's games like this just come out and then they're out and

Starting point is 03:17:31 they don't have like fucking years of Legal nonsense true, but they also don't have tail ends of development that last this long either They literally they wrap the fuck up in year one, maybe two, and they call it a day. This has been insanely long development and content updates by comparison. I'm going to ask you a stupid question because I can't remember. Is Skullgirls battle for the airport or whatever? Is that real? Skullgirls deadly airport is very- Is that real. I can't remember if it's real or not. It is real. And I don't know that it's it's real anymore.

Starting point is 03:18:08 But it was real for a period of time. Skull Girls 2 Deadly Airport was available for download on the Google Play Store. Real real or is that like bullshit? I mean, someone tried to make it real. OK, thank you. That's what I want to thank you. Someone uploaded a build of something to the eye of the fucking Google Play Store,

Starting point is 03:18:29 and it was, never forget the deadly airport. And you know what the deadly airport was? What? It was the airport from KOF 99. Of course it was. Because the screenshot had them fighting in the background from 99, it's, yeah. I'm gonna look at that right now. Skullgirl's deadly airport. Oh, there it is. Because the screenshot had them fighting in the background from 99. It's yeah

Starting point is 03:18:48 Look at that right now skull girls deadly airport. Oh, there it is never forget The first time you met Kdash All right, well That's not the only legal trouble that we can talk about today because we can't talk about Long Do's new trailer for Hopetown without also talking about what's going on behind the scenes. Any chance you took a look at the new Kickstarter trailer for the... So, someone sent me the trailer for Long Hope.

Starting point is 03:19:26 Long Do's Hopetown? Hopetown. And I clicked on it with the sound off. And scrolled through the whole thing. And you can see a single moment of gameplay. And went, why would I give a fuck about this? Oh! Okay, okay.

Starting point is 03:19:44 Okay. Did you turn the sound on after? No, there was no it's a Kickstarter pitch for a game with no gameplay. Why would I pay a second of time to it even at all? Because there's some bad feelings to be had a little bit if you turn the sound on. Okay. I'm going to turn it on now. Okay what about it? It's just that Lenvol Brown is over there working on the project. Oh, he's the disco narrator. Man, he looks exactly what I thought he was going to look like. That is exactly who I thought the disco narrator would look like.

Starting point is 03:20:26 So it's just one of those bits where I'm like, damn, I really liked the disco narrator. Len Valbron did a really awesome job. If there's weirdness about this project that we need to keep an eye on, that's one of those things where I'm like, I really like him and the job he did. And I, you know, yeah, that's it. So. Okay, well, if it's gonna be a Kickstarter, show me a prototype.

Starting point is 03:20:52 Yeah, no, none of those are. Isn't that like a mandatory requirement of Kickstarter now? It's not. It's not, but look. Okay, it's my mandatory requirement. I'm saying because you said I started it muted, I was like, oh, that's funny. That means you didn't hear the narrator, which when I heard it, I was like, oh, fuck, he's so good.

Starting point is 03:21:13 Damn. You know? That's it. That's all I'm trying to say. So it's not much to that. But anyway, so yeah, there's a whole lot of up in the air with a lot of the Disco Elysium successors and quite frankly We've only seen gameplay off of Night Shift's triple X. I believe right? Yeah, that's the only one the rest have just been Ranging from ideas to concepts to manifestos

Starting point is 03:21:41 Burning on fire Festos burning on fire hammer and sickle. No kickstarters will ever get a single second look from Pat until Silksong releases. Interesting. That is a line in the sand to draw. That is a line in the sand I am drawing now. That is not unreasonable, however, And that is this light in the sand. I am drawing now that is that is That is not unreasonable however. I would stipulate it to video games

Starting point is 03:22:18 Yeah, because there are non unrelated kickstarters for other unrelated things, but sure you know that's that's fair. That's fair I wish wish we threw that in place back in the Ghost Song era. Wouldn't that have been nice? It would have been nice. But yes, so no, it's just that if we always, for your reference point, always go back to the Disco Elysium successor meme where everything exploded from Za'um into the five various factions, the Kender revivalists, the Za'um extants, the Disco Apostles, the Kervitz loyalists, and the New Elysians. Mad Fientist I mean, I got to be blunt. If we're going

Starting point is 03:23:00 to continue on the schism of Marxism fucking political analogy here, none of these games are going to come out and people are just going to go, man, disco was so great, wasn't it? It's a special thing. It went out the way it lived. It went out disco, blaze of glory. I don't think we'll ever get anything like it, but I think we're going to see stuff that attempts. And I think something will release,

Starting point is 03:23:29 but I think it's not gonna be five things. And I think what we do get won't hold that full torch. I think one of these five will release, and it'll be as you describe. It'll be like, wow, that was pretty good. What's interesting is that the speed of prototyping is perhaps up to like, well, did the programmers go over to dark math? Well, then they have their night shift build up and running faster than the writers at Summer Eternal or the money lenders at Za'um. But in any case though,

Starting point is 03:24:09 all that to say that, yeah, there's the Kickstarter project. And I remember that because I do remember when I was also hearing similar a little bit before this about how Argo Tulik was one of the writers on the original Disco Elysium and was being sued because there were legal threats coming from Za'um and Longdoo about stopping him from working at all on anything due to non-compete, overreaching contracts and shit like that. There's a whole complex thing to it. I know that at some point it seemed like shit was getting pretty dire, but the explosion into all these different companies

Starting point is 03:24:54 and projects has led to a very hard to follow series of factions. My understanding is that Za'um is basically anyone that was creative that was instrumental on what Disco became is no longer there. It's just the license holder of the Disco franchise, which will then be given out to whatever Amazon shows or whatever they want to do with that IP because they have it. That's where it goes. And then one of the, I guess what they would describe as the money lenders, one of the producer financial folks that came in

Starting point is 03:25:34 that weren't involved creatively, I believe is from Long Do, that is then trying to shut down legally the writers and some of the folks that are working over at Dark Math and let me get the other and Summer Eternal. Do you know how I feel right now. I feel like that guy sitting underneath that person's wall of text going, man, I'm not going to read all that. So good for you. And, or I'm sorry that happened. I totally. That's where I'm at with the division of the Zau legal shenanigans. I'm just like, I'm fucking great or not?

Starting point is 03:26:25 But here also, I am hyper glossing and summarizing from the farthest zoom out ever on this. I am not going nitty gritty on it because I've seen the people going into the nitty gritty and I'm like, oh my God, I can't follow. It's so fucking ridiculous. It's so ridiculous. But I'm just bringing this up because the trailer dropped before we started recording today. And all I know is there's the five, there's Za'um, no one that's left there is anyone

Starting point is 03:26:57 that was creative on Disco. There's Triple X Night Shift from DarkMath. Part of these Za'um team involved there, not 100% sure on the creative involvement side or so. Long Du, as I just explained, currently suing some former disco staff. Fucking sucks. Then Summer Eternal are the ones who wrote that insane, burning, powerful manifesto

Starting point is 03:27:24 that is words on a screen. And I think that as long as what they put out is words on a screen, then they are ready. All I can, like, my fucking, the feeling in my fucking chest every time this comes up is like, wow, that's crazy. Yeah. I mean, listen, as someone who has over these decade plus

Starting point is 03:27:52 years working, doing the shit we do, I've talked about it with every time we watch an award show, I've talked about it with reacting to trailers and with anything. I don't wanna be cynical irony-pilled. I don't wanna be cynical, irony-pilled. I don't wanna be just fucking dead inside. No, it sucks out here. It's not great, and I refuse to live my life that way.

Starting point is 03:28:12 So until proven otherwise, hey man, I hope Devil May Cry is cool. But also the problem with cynical irony-pilled is that the way I became cynical irony-pilled is that I used to be actively hopeful all the time Which leads to getting burned constantly that's bad. That's bad. No, don't do that And I think I think they're you know, is there a difference between being optimistic and huffing copium? Events will later bear out whether or not you are optimistic or coping.

Starting point is 03:28:47 I suppose so. And you know what? Someone who's irony poisoned can can say that you're huffing copium, right? But I just an irony pill shithead over here. I can have copium too. Sometimes I want the cope. Yeah, for sure. You know, Virtua Fighter six game of the year all year.

Starting point is 03:29:04 Hey, shut up. That's not COPE, that's reality. I don't need to have COPE on VF6. But here's what I do know, right? I just have opinions on things that happen, but if I have to look at everything and have that fucking just cynical, irony, poisoned energy about it in everything in this industry. I don't wanna do this job anymore.

Starting point is 03:29:28 I literally don't wanna record. It's like, I don't wanna. That's the point. Yeah, I don't want to sit here and talk about video games. I will leave. So. You will look at video games, you will go goodbye. At the very least in front of a microphone, you know?

Starting point is 03:29:45 So like, I keep my attitude that allows me to keep doing this. It's literally on or off for me in that regard. Oh, totally. I think this situation's somewhat different though, because this situation is five separate teams going, I'm gonna do it, and you go, okay, so do it then. And they go, I'm gonna.

Starting point is 03:30:03 Oh yeah, no, no, no. I'm starting zoomed out on my own brain here to say that. I know that I could be super wrong on what I'm calling out. And do what exactly? Look to the skies, look for my fucking drone shows. But no, the point is, the point is that in looking at that Disco Elysium, which is to me one of the most important games

Starting point is 03:30:23 I've ever played. Agreed. that Disco Elysium, which is to me one of the most important games I've ever played. The energy by all of this mess, the only thing that I look at in all of this that I go, I'm interested there, that I raise an eyebrow, is the way the Summer Eternal Manifesto reads. That reads like real passion. But as we all know, passion on its own doesn't lead to anything and even Kervitz and Zaum the original fortress oxidant people Couldn't put anything out because they didn't have anyone practical to be like fucking ship it assholes

Starting point is 03:30:59 Takes a bunch of people to put a game together, right? If you need in if you need information on how troublesome game development can be need I remind you of Fortress Occident the entire storyline within Disco Elysium about how they almost bankrupted their entire lives trying to put out a game that was too big to make. Having an Estonian Estonian cultural revolution and then realizing you can't put bread on your table and getting fucking depressed about it while writing shit like Sacred and Terrible Air and designing this whole tabletop campaign that's incredible but now what? What do we do with it?

Starting point is 03:31:38 And at one point your grandkid or one of your son goes like, have you looked at video games? one of your, so it goes like, have you looked at video games? You know, like it's just, it's this whole insane. Go ahead. I think there's like kind of a perfect encapsulation of how silly and perfect the whole situation is genuinely because in the decrying of like, like, like this goes to like an overtly capitalist and communist and like left-leaning like piece of work, right? And it has incredible critiques of like pretty much everything, right? And they these are guys that made huge mistakes with their business prior and didn't ship

Starting point is 03:32:17 a game and then they barely ship disco and then it took the success of disco to put out a final version of disco. And then everybody splits up to do their own thing and there's like a real Marxist energy to like a lot of disco there and What is by far the funniest thing is? light bending rich guy is playing the direct one to one role of angles Being hey you guys are doing that crazy game about the politics.

Starting point is 03:32:47 Ha ha. That's cool, man. Here's all the money you need to make it. Cause I think that'd be cool just like it was for fucking marks. And now that they don't have that guy to just bank roll their shit. What do we get is manifesto after manifesto after pitch after pitch after pitch. And like we're the true successors of the fucking legacy. And it's like, well, fucking do it. There is, yeah, there's a sacred and terrible error has an even more on point angles character reference. And I would also argue through him, they bring out the thesis statement of the entire, like, disco universe, really. It's quite interesting. And if you ever get a chance at

Starting point is 03:33:39 sacred and terrible air, it's that it's fucking cool. Though, you know, that might come across as impenetrable at times. But all this to say, I feel as if, this is a case with Disco Elysium where you get to just say, don't be sad because it's gone, be happy that it happened, right? Yeah. It was, in and of itself, too real to exist

Starting point is 03:34:03 into the future. It had to implode. It couldn't ever continue as it was. And when you get that real, and especially in the conditions it was made in, there's no way that anyone who has never seen success like that gets a whiff of that and then doesn't just let it go to their brains. It's always going gonna get corrupted and destroyed

Starting point is 03:34:26 but while the summer eternal words are The only things here that like inspire some some real passion you can tell that they were typed with single-digit fingers You can tell that they were all capsed right they were forcefully Writing and bleeding as I write None of that means it's gonna exist But the energy and passion is there and it seems to be coming from the place that When disco was at its most angry and I'd one could argue self-righteous

Starting point is 03:35:03 It sounded like the summer Eternal Manifesto. Yeah, absolutely. And to that end, if that manifests into anything, I will be most interested in seeing what and how. You know what it's going to manifest into? A visual novel with no graphics whatsoever. It's going to manifest into a series of dev updates, each containing a manifesto

Starting point is 03:35:29 that will eventually not come out. And then someone on the team will then give an interview about, man, it was gonna be something really special. You can really feel how special it was gonna be if you go and read our manifestos. And maybe we'll find out how someone else on the team felt about race. And then things would start to get muddled and, oh no. No, man. This fucking mess is just, it had to go down this way. It just had to happen. Disco was once, disco was, it's forever, its own thing.

Starting point is 03:36:09 And nothing in time, hopefully, can take that away as long as our digital ownership doesn't get revoked and all traces don't get deleted. Oh, even if it does, I'm sure that that'll be fine. But for that time and place for this game for that moment, it's eternal. It will always be what it was and I don't know that it could ever be anything but. Furthermore, even in the best, not best case scenario, but even in the case scenario, I suppose, where you have a RPG come out with some stats and some cool narration and stories and everything

Starting point is 03:36:53 kind of lines up and does well. I mean, it's not just the clicking on people's conversations with good voice acting and rolling a die to find out if you read check or not that makes a disco. It's not just the idea of stats that talk to you and it certainly isn't just the gags and the picking up of items and internalizing thought cabinets. It's a tone. It's a whole... It's a gassant elsewhere. It's a total work of art where every single piece of the puzzle

Starting point is 03:37:32 forms a greater whole. Firing on all cylinders at all times. 100%. Yep. That's a new word for me, but that sounds pretty apt. That sounds like what I want to get at. I will continue to have this energy as we find out more about the Disco Elysium succession. And optimism, I suppose. Let's see what happens. I don't even think it's necessarily a case for optimism or cynicism. They just keep saying that it's going to be great and it's going to happen, but no one's shown anything other than the XXX one.

Starting point is 03:38:14 XXX Night Shift, yeah. Yeah, that one showed off something. I'm interested in that on the pure basis that it currently exists in some form. Yeah. I'm like, it's probably going to be pretty cool, but like, you know. All we know is people who made a really good thing are interested in making other things and they also are aware of making those other things can lead to them making some money and also getting their stories out there and hopefully reality can come together

Starting point is 03:38:46 and we can find out what some of those things are. I think they should stop fighting and kiss. Everyone comes back together, Zaum 2, Disco Elysium 2. I think I would fucking vomit in my mouth and just die. If it was like, now it's actually no everything and it's just disco Elysium 2 It's literally called that and now it's in 3d coming dude, and now it's got a cut out right now. It's a cover shooter So which do you think is which doing it on here and every time Harry is waiting for someone to finish talking He does a little like lean to the side and flexes his hands and has a little idle waiting for conversation moment.

Starting point is 03:39:30 Which do you think is funnier? And I know it's Za'um 2 and Disco Elysium 2. I think that's way funnier, but I'd still want to put it out there. That or Hasbro after they fired everyone that worked with Larian going, guys, we're going to make Baldur's Gate 4 and it's going be just as good and we're gonna hire a brand new team to do it And you'll see Do you remember that? Do you remember that fucking thing? They put out how fucking funny that was no But I certainly do know that energy because I will always forever ever reference Bobby Kotick

Starting point is 03:40:04 because I will always forever, ever reference Bobby Kotick talking about how Guitar Hero, the original franchise, is being encroached upon by these imposters making a game called Rock Band, but they can't hold a candle to the original franchise. You do it, Moneylender, you do it. That's so funny. Bend that light! That's so fucking funny.

Starting point is 03:40:21 Bend that light, Bobby! Bend it! All right, let's read an email, I gotta get out of here. All right, all right light Bobby bend it all right let's read an email I gotta get out of here all right all right all right all right um by the way the Xbox handheld is coming in 2025 potentially later this year and 2027 for a new Xbox thing and it's gonna be a game pass box probably whatever man the Nintendo switch to is gonna come out this year. I Don't know who the fucking did Microsoft thinks they're competing with they're gonna beat Nintendo at a fucking handheld are they insane

Starting point is 03:40:54 Also Western Digital is getting out of the SSD market and handing it all off to SanDisk. I oh Yeah, weird, right? I I, oh. Yeah, weird, right? That. I have, that Western Digital has been around for our entire lives as far as a fucking. That's crazy. As a brand name goes for hard drives.

Starting point is 03:41:12 Yeah, very, very unexpected, surprising change. SanDisk is. That's the most shocking piece of news today. Yep, SanDisk is taking over all NAND operations and Western Digital, the brand on SSDs, is probably gonna start disappearing, but they're gonna still make regular hard drives, certainly.

Starting point is 03:41:32 I need hard drives. Yep. All right, let's take a letter over here. You sent in an email, castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com, Woolly might read it, and he might judge you harshly. Hello, Paton Wooly. My son is six and sooner or later, wrestling is going to cross his path. My question is, do I let him believe it's 100% real until he figures it out for himself or do I peel the curtain back and let the kayfabe in a little bit? Oh, no. You have to get him in

Starting point is 03:42:02 yourself and you have to teach him that it's real. Okay. Okay. Okay Problem What about the moments where you hurt yourself and others by try to do that shit? Those are trained professionals. Yeah, okay. Okay. Okay. So hey little Billy You're not an undead wizard. Yes. You can't shrug off four stone cold stunners. Yes, there you go. Okay, all right, right.

Starting point is 03:42:31 It's real, believe the magic, but don't try it at home. WWE. Like Billy, do you think you could take the Fiend in a fight? The problem is- Or Batista here's the you know, but here's layer two of the problem. It only gets really fun when you learn it's fake because then you can start doing the fake moves, but you can do them in real life because you know how to do them without hurting anybody. So the reason I say you have to get the kid in and believing it now is six is pretty

Starting point is 03:43:05 close to the age where the kids are going to start to figure it out by themselves. Because around six, seven, eight, nine, they're going to see somebody just no sell some bullshit or get hit by a car and die and be fine next week. And they're going to be like, what the fuck? That's weird. Hopefully. Kid might be a little slow, but I know that if I didn't know wrestling was fake early on in,

Starting point is 03:43:30 I wouldn't have known how to sell that pool choke slam or do the power bomb or do a lot of that shit where you know how to make it work, you know? A good super kick, a good super kick is perfection. The quack. Were you told that wrestling was fake or did you figure it out? I don't remember.

Starting point is 03:43:47 I think I figured it out, but it was so long ago that I probably can't nail the moment. I think I just, I think I figured it out. I think you see a couple botches and I think you also, yeah, yeah, because I'm having like memories. You see some botches around six, seven, eight

Starting point is 03:44:01 and you're like, what the fuck? Yeah, but also the whole bit where it's like a slow story being told over people getting tired in about five seconds Like the match starts we start doing punches and then after about a minute. We're like Because we have to slowly move from place to place and tell the story you know being gassed is crucial just to wrestling Yeah, all right. And last one over here. Hello, Doohickey and Thingamabob. Hey, man.

Starting point is 03:44:32 Do you guys have media that you never actually played, watched, or read, but think is neat, however, from a distance? For example, I think a lot of Simpsons memes are super funny, but you'll never catch me watching an episode. Not really, if I think it's neat, I'll probably aim towards it at some point. I have no qualms about getting into something eventually, but I can say from a distance

Starting point is 03:44:55 I admire Warhammer's cool shit, knowing that it's going to take some time before I can penetrate the impenetrable. I think I enjoy city management games and large scale RTS games more in my mind than I do in actuality of playing them. Okay. Yeah. And while we're on the way out here, allow me to set the record straight. I have heard the word doohickey before. I had never heard it in that context. And that's the problem.

Starting point is 03:45:31 It's the combination of silly, silly word with hyper serious historical event that just kicks it right down the road. I was unable to breathe and I couldn't finish properly saying, I have never heard that word used to refer to the assassination weapon that murdered a man. That's fucking crazy. That's what it was. He's coming at you with the contraption, Wolves.

Starting point is 03:45:59 Yes, so there we go. So there we go

Castle Super Beast - CSB311: Stop Adapting Things

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