Castle Super Beast - CSB318: Summer Boy Takes All Your Pulls

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

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["Sailor Moon Theme"] Hello, hello. Welcome to the SuperBet castle. Yeah, SuperBet Castle. Yeah, SuperBet. It's a podcast. No, no, no. It's not a podcast. It's... Yeah, it's a... So, okay.

It's not the word. Okay. In France, it's a podcast. In France! But in Quebec, it's a balado. A balado? Balado is the word, that's the word. I've never heard the word balado. That's the worst word in the world.

I swear. Balado, that's the word. No, no, no. In Quebec, it's balado, but for real, it's going to be... Hey, I heard the podcast The podcast you know Chateau de la Superbette may way ballad or say Degas last more la bon, please tell me you have been playing expedition 33 expedition 33 Claire obscure It's so French Fucking seen in my life. It's so fucking French It's so French that I have learned that I realized that I've heard I did the word before

In art history class and I didn't quite remember it But oh my god, we've learned in art history about Claire obscure, which is Carrie scurro Right. We had a whole there's a whole part of art. Oh, that's a strong bad use back in the car. Oh squirrel Yeah, exactly. It's it's high contrast. It's it's it's the sin city a style Applied to classical painting, you know if you go Renaissance and and so it's just that so that's the bit I'm like, oh shit. that's actually a word I learned. Indeed, so I have started it. I'm not super duper far in.

I am also not super duper far. But I will just say that I've done the intro, I got a party member, and I got to a talking pot and stopped right, okay, so I I Am a little further than you like just a bit like maybe 90 minutes past you I got to the end of the of the preview Portion that they sent out a while ago. Mm-hmm

So like I when I finished my stream last night, I was finally at like new stuff, though they didn't have the prologue in the preview content. And like, I don't know where to go for this here. So it's incredible. It's highly excellent, fantastic RPG. It is insanely quality. It is shockingly good. Art design, tone, performance, theme, music? Okay, so I've been waiting a long time to say this, and I saw it with the trailers and I cut and then my the eyebrow was raised and then friends

Sent me messages about it going. This is You should take a look and I take a look and I am seeing the most Immaculately lost Odyssey shit I've seen it is it is lost Odyssey in decades and that makes me so happy because I was talking to Jean about this and He he pointed out that it has like 360 game vibes on right right right right um So in particular like lost odyssey. What's like the fact that it's like okay? You're getting a very

You're getting a realistic, butized art style, you know? The characters are fairly realistic in their portrayal and the world is fantastical and the designs of everything around you. You can't possibly turn your head in a direction that doesn't look like an artist came up with the vista. There's no normal shit anywhere. There's nothing, you There's nothing normal.

And then as you're just walking, you're generally walking and talking through a pretty limited sort of line. Even in the beginning section and then later when the game actually, when the RPG starts, you're walking in a line. But it's very just, that is the, if you're trading off whatever open-ended generic feeling for a very painterly and designed line, I'm down, I'm down, because once the fight starts,

you're just, you're playing a really simple and fun RPG. And one of the best things about Lost Odyssey is that. The line is not, so right where you're at, the line is going to start to branch a little bit. And what it is, there's a critical path. There's like an incredibly well-defined critical path that is usually highlighted by actual lanterns. Okay.

Like old-fashioned light sources. But you'll do like critical path with like a side Align a line to a challenge boss so far. It's been the mood and then a line to like an open area That's like a circle that has this or that or whatever and it's like a relatively small circle and the kicker is that at the end of every single little diversion or little open area there is a path to either a Picto which is really cool and like some kind of an upgrade material it's like your equipment or a challenge boss. There are so many way tougher than you challenge bosses hidden off the beaten path

everywhere. Like half the time you go oh wonder what's over here it's challenge bosses hidden off the beaten path. Hell yeah. Everywhere. Hell yeah. Like half the time you go, oh wonder what's over here. It's like a big motherfucking enemy that will kill everybody in a single strike. In one hit. So you better learn how to parry. But if you are good at defense, you can take on the things that are stronger than you,

even if you're not ready for it. And that feels amazing, right? And just memories of using time, running up to something and having the circle close in, right? That feeling when you're doing your abilities in this game is fantastic. The music is swelling when different levels, it feels like different phases at the very least

of like the fights are layered. I was going through like are layered though I was going through like the water area and I like there were like four different battle themes Yeah, yeah Right and and like in in one of the fights against like a stronger enemy in particular it felt like when my life got low the music changed a little bit or when its life was getting lower and That final version which is the slot, the soft slowdown explosion where you get your, your level up screen, your everything, your, your, your rewards. And then you hit the button. We continue on continue. It's

great, man. And so to anybody who doesn't know, it's a, it's a traditional RPG like an old-fashioned Final Fantasy game, turn-based combat with Mario Bros. style action commands. And the action commands are all stellar and fun and well synced up to their animations. The parrying and dodging mechanic feels great. And you get a massive, massive counter hit if you parry everything Yeah So you get like the incentive structure to dodge is to not take damage Obviously and then that relies on you learning the pattern and the anticipation of what's coming at you some of which is very stagger Elden Ring ask Right there's an enemy later on that I thought that

It shoots out to slow tracking projectiles, then goes to swing at you. And it's like swing and then wait and then projectile and projectile even though the projectiles come out way earlier. Interesting. Okay. Super, super tricky. Right.

It feels like blocking a mix up. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I love that feeling. And the fact that it's like, OK, you have a generous way to learn the timing with your dodge. However, when you do it, you feel the rhythm for when the parry would be.

And there's a little ping and there's a little vibration on the controller so that you dodge the swing with a big wide open dodge range. But you hear that exact moment and go, time you see this attack and it tells you a slow attack is coming you have the timing to actually parry it and yeah all three leads to a big crit big buff on your stuff it's super good with that. So you're not you're not far enough into it but there are more action commands than Dodge and Perry. There's at least a third one. Okay, okay.

And like I did something I never ever ever ever do when I'm playing a game on stream and I almost have never done it playing a game in my own time. I beat a couple and I got maybe 20 minutes after the part you're at where you get the third party member I think you're describing. I don't know yet.

I'm only two so far, but we just. Oh, you're only two? Okay, I got to the point where I got the third party member and went into the options and turned the difficulty from normal to expert. Okay, I was, so I was. And it's like, I want to be in the fights for longer. I was looking at the description on it

and it sounds a bit like that's the move. Yeah, I was waiting to see a little bit. Um, but that was in there. I also did something that I've never done or that I haven't done in a very long time. I switched the dialogue to French. And so, man, I don't know if I want to do that. Have you tried it yet? No, because it's Charlie Cox and Jen English and Ben Starr and Andy Serkis. So here's what's up. I did both. I did both. Right. And like, I'm setting this up.

But ultimately, I did the intro in French to hear the original, how it was done. And then I switched over to English and I did it again. And they're both great. The English voice acting is stellar. It's really strong. And I feel like if you... The one thing that's weird about the French, unfortunately, is that the lip syncing is not made for the French. It's made for the anglo. It's made for English, which is the main audience. So that makes a ton of sense. You know, for the hang loose.

But in the same way that I'm like, if I'll watch an anime in Japanese and read the subtitles, I'll watch a friend, you know what I mean? Like I'll play it in the language, you know? But yeah, like that's actually a little confusing to me as to what the real language is when the lip syncing is for English. It is for English. Yeah. Here's the thing though. There's something like, okay, if you're like this listening to it in French though, adds a little air of like, hmm, a little, a little like, um, sarcasm to the exchanges. Don't you mean sarcasm? I suppose so, you know, sarcasm.

But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, it's a little bit, there's that, there's that, that, you know, foreign film feeling to it, you know? When they, when they say things, they have little lines or whatever. And the way that Gustav says, like, Maillet says something, and she goes, he kind of says like, Maillet, you know? Like, there's a little bit of a vibe that's a little different in French, you know?

Charlie Cox is daredeveling all over Gustave. Mm. He is daredeveling it all over the place. Now, what's funny is that when I look at his face, I see Robert Pattinson So I see like you pet in some of her bad It's so strong, it's crazy like Before I get too far away from the the gameplay stuff also

I've gotten far enough to get upgrades. And the way the game handles upgrades is incredible. You upgrade weapons with what is the game's equivalent of Titanite. There's bespoke upgrade materials for levels one to three, and you get like a million. And then levels three to five is a different one. And then you'll eventually get a million of those. So I've noticed I've been picking up these weapon upgrade tools and Lumina points and

I haven't been able to use them yet because... I just last night got to the power point. You get to a place where you can use them. Okay, so yeah, there we go. We're sitting on them for now. And it's like the part I played up to is like the training wheels and then the training wheels come off and they're like, okay, you can feed. So there's a system where you equip something called a

Picto it's essentially equipment and they all have little skills on it so like you know if you shoot an enemy it can mark them or maybe you do 50% more with your regular attack. And stat buffs yeah. Yeah and stat buffs but when you've done four battles with a Picto equipped the passive ability just becomes available to slot in but you have a limited number of slots. One of the upgrades you get is how many of these upgrade slots do you want? Like right now, when I got to the upgrade, I went from 11 to 20 on every one.

That's sick. So how about this? And then you just get the upgrades to just dump as many as you want. And how about this, once you internalize the skill, your whole party can use it. Yeah. If they have the spare points to spend on them you can equip everything so like you I'm thinking of the like Ff6 like you know learning system. You know or

nine Well, I'm thinking of six when you have you when you learn magic after a while you know by equipping Magic system and like the nine ability system. Okay. But like in this case, everyone is sharing it. It's not just the one person, right? And so like I learned augmented attack, which costs seven Lumina, which is very expensive, but its basic attack is 50% stronger. 50%, yeah. Yep. Got that one. So it's going to go on everyone. And then I got one called vigilance, which is the counter

attack that you do when you do a perfect parry is 25% stronger. And that cost great. Okay. There it goes on every single person. It's just a funny team. Sorry. It's just like the mixing and matching makes it so easy to build a character out into what you want. So like Gustav, for me, I had a thing where it's like 20% to mark on free aim, 50% chance to burn on free aim, gets an AP back on free aim, and does more damage on free aim. So Gustav would start the fight and I go bang, bang, bang, bang on one on every enemy and then would be burned and marked and shit and then the other two could just clean it up. It's so easy and

so fast. I learned something Well, I already knew this about myself, but I'm glad that I can express it in this game It's like did you give me a defensive option that is skill based well I will never spend a single stat point on defense Because that is my fault for getting hit So that's the trick. You get weapons and weapons have elements, but weapons all scale with random, like different stats.

There are weapons that scale with defense. True. Right. Okay. With luck. Right. And that uses the, the, the, the souls thing. Now, luckily, re-coat, which is the full respect.

You can respect. Are plentiful nice I got one so so if you want yeah, I've gotten two and I used one But they start to show up more and more and more So if you want to just completely redo the whole character because you got the new ice sword and the ice sword scales with defense And luck mm-hmm you have now essentially and you rebuild the character towards, you have essentially created a brand new character. Like yeah, that's great. That's great.

Like I knew it was special because it's like, I'm like, I don't care what my life is. Let me learn how to do this properly. And that tutorial fight against Mael, where they're like, do it again if you want. I did it like five times just to get that feeling right. Let me give you a tip. If you're the type of person, Willy, who's going to just roll up on everything as soon as it's available, and also you're going to be like,

I'm going to parry the world, speed is the best stat. Because if enemies are going to kill you in a single hit, then all that matters is getting more troops. Go first, yeah, 100%. I went heavy on speed and might with the characters so far. Something else that is fun to take note of is just, when I see that it's a Picto that you're equipping, it's a Picto, me, Saint Picto.

And it's like people are preparing for la gommage and you know, and like the, the, the created words, right? The fictional words that would be our tetsuzankos and you know, and so on are just like these very, not just French, but French, French sounding words. I love it when you can feel the intense cultural effect of the region something was made in on the thing in question.

I like Japanese games that are like, this is a fucking game from Japan. I like Korean games that are like that. I like Polish and German and Brazilian games that are like that. But there aren't many games that are French right This one feels like it is trying to make up for that as being the Frenchest thing

I've ever seen in my life not just the the the setting in in displaced Paris not just the constant use of French, not just the fucking baguette costumes you can unlock for people with their mime outfits, not just the superbosses hiding in the wings that are all fucking mimes, but like the tone and music. Yes. music. Yes. It is the tone is starts off with the wistful embers of what could have been, but now will never be ennui. It is like French depression. There is your feeling, your hearing Amélie Poulain as lines are being dropped like you two, you look like you're in love. Oh, well, we broke up. And it's like, that has nothing to look like you're in love. Oh well, we broke up.

And it's like, that has nothing to do. But we are in love. No, no, no, no, we broke up. And the line is, I was like, that has nothing to do with matters of love. I'm like, that is the French shit. That's so sad in French about it. It's like, who cares?

That's not what I asked you. I didn't ask you if you broke up. That has nothing to do with love. Yeah, it is, no, and straight up, especially, you know, I just told you, like, I watched La Haine the other day with Vincent Cassel. And like, that is like, you're watching like rowdy French youth standing on rooftops looking down

at like town squares, you know, and the Arc de Triomphe and all that stuff. And like the game starting on rooftops looking down at the street level is also Super Paris feeling you know Yeah, man. I'm also like it's the the writing is so like succinct There's a lot of so like I'm further than you there's a lot of like world details that are just not available Okay, yeah, like why is it like this? Yeah.

Fuck off. But, but the rule of curiosity with the death game anime setups where you're like, you don't know why things are the way they are, you're gonna find out, I suppose, but the hooks are in place to be like, go discover what these other expeditions were about, right? Go find- But also the little tiny pieces you get that are a part of it, like the part that stood

out to me is when you meet the pre-orphans, you meet a batch of kids in the prologue that are going to be orphans tomorrow. Not yet. And they're being like organized Being orphans. It's it's no like within the first ten minutes of the game like Cuz like punch mom came up to ask like oh, what's this and I kind of explained it and I was like, yeah in ten minutes It's established like what's happening and like how interesting this setting is but it's yeah It's also that deep deep, again, euro ennui right away. It's like, all I can do is smoke in my cigarette and be depressed.

You know, you know, un peu de vain, you know, just a little more wine. Of course we all need wine to deal with the end, you know. The fact that like, and then yeah, you pan the camera around every corner and you're looking the fact that like, and then yeah, you pan the camera around every corner and you're looking at fucking matte paintings, like beautiful, you know, set piece, artwork things and such. I love, yeah, that bit about being unapologetic about like the cultural aspect of it or so. I know that like, you know, these days, you don't bring it up with no one brings it up a bunch. Good to say, but there's parts of Indivisible that I still

think are rad as shit. And I liked a lot of the wearing the cultures on its sleeve parts of that. The ability to like... And like, yeah, because you just... I want, if this game is being made in a particular location? Dial it up to 12. I want to taste that dial it up to 12 for me. Yeah, I love I love playing a game and be like It's just made by checks Was this made in Estonia

It's yeah, was this made in Estonia? Yeah, um so so no I'm immensely impressed with that and also of course you can see what's going on with like their In their what they're inspired by you know And I'm fucking inspired by Final Fantasyired by Final Fantasy. Inspired by RPGs, you know? And, you know, even like the little menus where you're like zipping around your character from different angles as you're putting the equipment on and stuff.

It's awesome. It's really, really cool. I think there's a single detail about the game that shows its inspiration, like not on its sleeve, like on its heart and its whole body. And I read an interview about it after the fact But when I played the preview you exit out of an area onto a fucking small chibi character

like outsized world map Like it's fucking star ocean. Okay, ff7. Okay. Okay, and like it's it's like Insanely old-school. It's like, insanely old school. It's like a PlayStation One game world map. Well, and I read an interview with some of the devs and they're like, why'd you put world maps in? Cause world maps are cool. Sick.

I also appreciate just for my own exploration purposes that like you walk down a hallway, it branches, and you're like, one of these is hard progress, the other one isn't. And if you pick the one that's hard progress first, there'll be a thing that's like, oh, hey, progress is beyond this path, are you sure? And I go, oh, thank you, no.

And then I go the other way. Hey, so that's gonna stop happening. Instead, it'll switch up up to are the characters talking Yeah, there's progress. There's that there's that bit too. Yeah, or like or like did did the next beautiful tree sprouts? You know or so you're like, okay cool Is there is there is there a way larger than usual enemy on the horizon? This is the optional one cool great I am I'm astonished at how many optional mid bosses, and in one case, super boss that I found.

I found a legitimate super boss within the game's first three hours. The game labels the area with a giant danger symbol. Huh, okay. And I beat it during the preview. Okay. And I'm like, all right, I'll go beat it again. And then when I tried it, I discovered they made the the thing resistant to burn damage, which is how I beat it

Okay, you guys actually don't want me to be able to do this, right? I saw Jacob Geller playing it and being like yeah, this can happen and he posted of fucking Screenshot of the post battle report where it was like a 56 and a half minute fight. Wow. With like 900 parries. Wow. Okay. As long as you just don't allow yourself to get hit, you can defeat anything eventually.

Incredible, incredible. I the the the skill Tree is a proper like you can see good shit in all directions and it's a genuine Hmm, which way do I want to go right now? Because if everything exploding into fire and immediately overcharging sounds phenomenal immediately overcharging sounds phenomenal. But you know, a quick little lightning zaps over here and going down the things that that go this way seem like they're also worth it. And then healing over here is important. Resurrection, you know, resin your party. Like there's some stuff where you have to actually sit there and be like,

I don't know how I want to spend these stats. You know, I so I had a situation where I was just buying the cheapest skills available to get the most skills, but you can only equip six. So that's not actually... So I do have a pro tip. I'm saving up. Everybody has a skill that does what's called a break, which is it knocks, it stuns a monster and it, you know, renders it. You want to have one of those on every character because if you don't, you can get fucked on.

Okay. Yeah. I can see that. I feel I look looking at it too. I can see there's an early way to have characters be self-sustaining and I'm like, yeah, I want that too. I want people healing themselves. Yeah. One of the more interesting things that I had to, I didn't understand it until someone in chat explained it to me. Have you been using your Estus Flasks? Yes, there is Estus Flasks, yes. Have you been, so Estus Flasks on the open world,

you will get more of them, like you'll get upgrades to have like two or three, and it's just a full party heal, just straight up, like, all right, let's go. Have you been using your in battle Estus Flasks? Oh, they're separate. So the consumables that you have. The three?

You have three consumables, a heal, a give AP, and resurrect. That's per battle? Those are per battle. Wow! The three are per battle, I didn't realize that. And those are also upgraded. Wow. So like if you upgrade the health potion, it does more and then you can get a Picto that causes it to heal statuses. So I noticed upon dying to the super boss or to the hard enemy rather that you start out right outside of it looking at it. Right outside time. You want to just do it, do it.

That is a high, and between that and the bonfire system, a flag camps between each other where you refresh your estuses, there's a very high incentive to challenge yourself. Just fight it, just fucking fight it. What's the worst that'll happen? You'll lose like a minute. And then if you can't, you're like,

all right, fuck this, then walk away. Also sitting down at the bonfire respawns enemies, you know? So it really is, yeah, like grace, you know, essentially. I was fighting an enemy and I was trying to learn the parry timing. And I was having a really hard time. And I was like, you know, doing the resurrect item, and you only get three.

So I'd use all that up, and then my party would get down to like from from three to one. Like, all right, I'm cooked. And then what you do is you hit start and hit load game and you can load the auto save that's right in front of it. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. It doesn't seem like manual saving is a part of this game. Nope. Interesting. Interesting design saves a rotating list of saves every like 10 feet or like every time you interact with something at auto saves Every time you walk into a new area, you know, like it's like a souls game does. Yeah, okay So you just like don't even think about saving just there will be something a couple steps back from where you were

What I literally just don't worry about it I mean, it's it's weird because that's not what we're used to but no We have hit a point in games where I don't see the problem with that No, right. Um, the the okay Perhaps if you want to make a major branch from your progress and you want to go back to that point sometime way back Oh, see you don't need to do that. That's the other thing is that every once you get to the continent, like the main continent where everything is, you know, it's your RPG world, you'll be able to return to literally everywhere. Oh, yeah. No, there's fast teleport

travel on the camps as well. But I guess I'm thinking of a, you know, I guess the game doesn't have branches that are extreme then you know, like if you want to Get an item or go around or if there's anything in the game that's like, you know major left or right change But you can respect and you can travel backwards So if the game's not gonna ask you to really miss out on anything like that, then why even bother? You can miss out on things. Okay, I missed out on things So in the prologue you can unlock a red version of the maiden costume. I got it You can miss out on things. Okay. So I missed out on things. So in the prologue, you can unlock a red version

of the maiden costume. I got it. Because okay. Completely missed it. Okay, so here's what happened. I hit the end of the prologue and I went, hold on a minute, what if, cause like some people are doing stuff, like there's one person you meet that's like,

hey, can you go give this to my kid? Right? Right. And I was like, oh, maybe that, what if that happened behind me somewhere, you know? And so I just did a quick run back through the environment because the intro section is pretty big. It's a fairly large walk. I missed apparently a ton of stuff.

Yeah, I went back and I went, oh, fuck, I missed a bunch of kids over here. I found the mime. I found a, like two or three other interactions with people just standing around. So there's a solid bunch of people that you can just not walk by and miss the prompt on. Now, it's not the end of the world,

because the game is drowning you in costumes and weapons. I already have more than I want or need, yes. It's true. Did you get the baguette I sure did I have the red outfit I have the white suit I have the cool dark one for the gommage and then I have three hairstyles you know so you could yeah, switching up your hairstyle is also a bit. So which version, which, which traumatic, but I'm like, which JF that I used to work with, do I want to turn this into which dude that I used to work with back here or that I went to college with? Do I want to see, do I want the man bun?

Do I want the dude with the side, the side quaff? I know that guy. Or maybe the one who has it all just loose and shaggy. There's a whole lot of French guy haircuts that you can choose any one of them. Ha ha ha ha. Or in particular, do you want to look like Princess Carolyn's secretary from Bojack?

Oh man. You know that guy? The the the the Silicon Valley type. You know, you can go for that type of guy. You know, or the metal or the metalhead guy with the I'm on a Marth shirt. There's so many variants of French guy and this has them all and of course they would know because that's who made it. You know, of course It is it is I'm astonished in how good it is and how how fucking cool it is when like you're hanging with like like the main characters hanging with like his girlfriend and

in the beginning and I'm looking at like the two of them standing there and I'm just like I Actually know that couple Yeah, I actually know that couple. I literally know those two. And I like with that thing going on, you know? Sophie, Gustav. I'm very, very, what I can say too as well, and this is not a flaw, but I can appreciate that like all of this really good vibe I'm getting from the beginning of this game so far is also something where walking around the environment, you can feel the hard limits. You can feel the walls.

Oh, yeah, it's real clear what you can go People are blocking your path, walls and trees and path. Like it is a tiny little thing that says, this is pretty to look at. There's nothing up there, don't worry about it. And you're like, this is a small studio making a giant game, so fair enough, right? We don't need to have this big empty thing with nothing going on in it.

If I could walk around, enjoy what I'm seeing and then the game and Then I can't wait for the next fight. I'm like more fights I'm almost like fucking give me more grunts to hit to to swing at you know I turn it up to expert Yeah, yeah, because on normal the grunt fights are like like they don't get to have a turn in a lot of cases And on expert it's like it's just enough Extra health on the enemies that they don't just get alpha striked by your full turn. You know, like they get to do something. You know what it is? It's the scale and pacing of Hellblade. I have a

different example. Okay. So this is a French feeling Final Fantasy game. There is a different Final Fantasy game that's actually labeled Final Fantasy that is also obsessed with being French and is also highly linear and has a good battle system. And that game is Final Fantasy 13. Ah, the hallways. I've heard about. The difference here is that I was fighting and having a blast with the combat in this game

within like 10 minutes. And it allows me to fight up against challenges and like just play my ass off right away. And also I actually like these characters. Yeah, I does And also I actually like these characters. Yeah, I does... So the reason why I say like why Hellblade comes to mind is because like the fights are like spaced out and you enter an environment and then you're like there's the fight. And then I go up that ladder and there is another one, you know, and I certainly hope that like, you know, that thing that happens when, because like like Lost Odyssey, for example, you hit that And I certainly hope that, like, you know, that thing that happens when... Because like Lost Odyssey, for example, you hit that point where you're like, okay,

now I'm going through a dungeon and we're RPGing it and I'm fighting my way to that boss and you're going to get through a whole bunch and you're going to have a good long amount of time to get intimately familiar with the system and the way the characters interact and your magic and stuff, you know, so here like Yeah, if if well like if the difficulty going up is one way to have the fights last longer, you know That'll solve it, but they don't last that much longer. It's not that much harder. It's just Just harder enough That you're like playing more of the game. Okay. But one thing if you're going to parry the world, I

would recommend actually kicking it up to expert. Well, it's just like it feels so fun to be in combat in this game. Absolutely. It feels so fun. Yeah. Fucking like just again, this is where at the beginning, we don't know where this is going but absolutely incredible job, Sandfall Interactive so far. Love, love everything I'm seeing there. And yeah, like the characters individual,

like the two characters that I've gotten introduced to so far, they're caught like this, the whole like stain system on Lune is like complex enough to her that is like, Oh shit, if everybody has that level of system subsystem going on, fuck everybody has their own subsystem. Awesome. Awesome. So it's, it's like Gustav has his overcharge. She has her stain system. The one after that has a stance system. I don't know what the other party members have. But they all have a very in-depth gimmick

that you can build around. So there's versions of Luna that you're like, well, do I wanna build myself up to be a massive debuffer? That I'm all blue? Or do I wanna build up so that I have white, blue, green, right? Right, right. Like a huge nuke. Yeah, there's like it's and then you see the interactions where stains on certain things will also like you can like well this is where like Darkest Dungeon synergy comes into play. But what one character can mark while another character

takes advantage of that mark, you know, or like one character can mark while another character takes advantage of that mark, or one character can stack on flame and the other can take advantage, etc. So you start working together in that way. I also think that this game might have come out at a perfect time for people like you and me because there's a massive undercurrent that keeps coming up in the dialogue in which people are calling Gustav an old man. And he's like, you know, 30 years old didn't used to be old. And people are like, whatever, dude, you're so old.

And I'm like, I just turned 39 last week. Right, right, right. Yeah, you start thinking about age a whole lot differently playing this game for sure. I'm almost 40. Ah, shit, I had another point but it's slipping away. Yeah, so good. Good stuff so far. I would say this is like one of the games I played this year that is like a definite game of the year contender like even like right away just

exploding with quality Oh Yeah, I mean like we're not even really getting into it But like the story is very compelling so far the oh absolutely everything is so weird everything that's happening is so interesting and strange and like It's so weird. Everything that's happening is so interesting and strange and like, awful and like, wow, you know? And like, there's this kind of, you know that,

I guess to go French with it, it's like, you know, Nazi occupied France, we soldier on, right? That like, in the midst of the hopeless, we soldier on, right? That like in the midst of the hopeless, we keep on marching. Well yeah, cause these people never had a World War I or a World War II. It's Paris that got sucked into some dimension

in like 1905 or some shit. Some other shit's going down. And then, and then you have again, your death game anime rules that are like you okay? Let's let's figure out why the fucking the walls and the Titans and the the Gantz ball is there But also literally here's a mysterious key Between that and fucking souls giving me that mysterious key and I'm like, what the fuck? What the key? I don't know, but you know what? Between that and fucking souls, giving me a mysterious key is... Mm-hmm.

I like it. I feel like of the items I got in the prologue, that's the one that matters. I like having a mysterious key at the beginning of a video game. That is a good feeling. That is a big ol' oh, where's this gonna go? Um... Yeah. I just wanna make a quick point that the soundtrack is absolutely unbelievably incredible.

It is constantly changing. There's so many tracks. And trying to listen out for those lyrics and trying to hear, as it's switching between English, I'm hearing lyrics going heavily accented English. Yeah, I'm hearing don't give up and then dropping over to Claire Obscure. You know, like they're switching languages on you.

Would you be surprised to hear that this soundtrack is by Game Composing Amateur? Yes, that is- Their first game. And that they were found off of SoundCloud. Hey you, you look cool get in okay Literally, they just went they reached out to somebody posting on SoundCloud That was that did some good work, and they're like yo, you're awesome Official work for it want to work on a game you want to do 150 tracks for this big budget RPG amazing okay amazing

Yeah, um I would love to know, I'm very curious, because we were talking about, when we saw the trailer and saw the announcement for this, and then we saw the big old baguette trailer and stuff, I was like, yeah, who is this studio? How many people are they? What scale is this? But I-

84 people and one dog. Fantastic. Fantastique. Uh, I- 84 people and one dog. Fantastic. Fantastique. You know, I- I really do hope, um, that, like, I like the idea that this... double-A? Triple- This would be double-A.

Double-A. In today's parlance. This is a double-A feeling game, and, uh and I need more of this. This exact scale where I can feel this exact thing. This I can feel the limits. Right. And I don't know how long the game is, but you can tell that it's like, it's going to be, you know, shyer than an Atlas game. So it's 30 to 60 60 and that is dependent on how much you want to give it. Excellent. So Gene was in my stream the other night and he's beaten it and of note is that he's like, yeah, yeah, no, I'm building up my characters right now to fight, to fight

other stuff in, you know, the game or what have you. I like those numbers. I like that. That's great So 60 for us 100. Yeah, that's great. That's that's totally fine Fucking recommend go go go take it go get it and don't get it and like yeah And I specifically want this scale of game to succeed. I want double a absolutely to be a thing So I'm heavy pushing Claire Obscur Expedition 33. And I'm going to say it like that way every time. What else you get up to aside from Frenchyland RPG time? Well, so what happened there was the so mad tournament The I couldn't remember what the SO stood for

spring overture spring overture Okay, that just wanted to get so mad. Yeah, but now we've had we've had we have you mad We have we mad we have be mad There was a there was a special event to get to have someone go to a Brazilian qualifier So the Brazilian Montreal, Erdaches tournament was be bad And and then that's really good and then there was new mad as well. So yeah, SoMad is, it's great. It's great. How many of these can they do?

That's the question is every time they come up with a new one, everyone's like, wow. And I've basically explained to everybody, I'm like, yeah, no, the funnest part is waiting to hear what the new name is going to be. SoMad was, they got imprinted a cool shirt here. I'm so mad I went 0-2 and all I got was this lousy shirt. Oh, did you? You were doing commentary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And no, I got fifth in Iron Saga versus, I'll take it, that's all right. So this is going to be a really stupid question. But to those who are not paying attention

last week, So Mad is a fighting game tournament. Yes, it is. It takes place in Montreal. It's a local event over here. Me and Reggie went over, jumped on commentary for that, had some fun. I see the timer. There you go.

Don't worry, not much to it. Don't worry about that. Oh, good bit. Good bit. Is that the Mortal Kombat timer by any chance? No, it is not. Oh, OK. Yeah.

I played a little bit of that Iron Saiga Versus. That's a fun, goofy little robot game that's going to be off to the side to enjoy. I would like to see that get updated with more super robots over time. I think that would be fun as a little little background thing. You know, did some Street Fighter and then yeah, there was the first City of the Wolves tournament as well. You know, not much to say beyond Hotaru and Hokuto Maru, the little kids in that game are very very strong. They're very good

Yes, those like they're great Speed kills man and the way yeah, so you're playing a old-school fighting game that feels very old-school But the way that they run feels like a Marvel game. They move so quickly at you so It gets scary, you know But uh, yeah shit was fun. Got to enjoy that with everybody. I think the weirdest thing I've seen is like, Salvatore is like turning people around on him.

Yeah. So basically it, through Max getting the Max, the Soul Transfer tracksuit, the Soul Transfer tracksuits. And then overall through the bits where Salvatore has, he's a fan of the series and is someone that is like, and the character is not a real person, that's not his real name, but it is like a fictional, Salvatore Genacci. That's not his real name? Salvatore Genacci is a fictional person. Oh. That has all these anime moments and music video things and stuff.

So people are like, okay, this is a goofy thing that fits in a little bit better than we initially thought. And that has been changing, you know, mine's a little bit. Also seeing his idle animations and his stuff where I saw it during that first exhibition and I screenshotted it, but I didn't like post it out or anything but I saw his win close against Terry Bogard is literally the, hey Terry, you ask me if I'm okay but then you hit me. What's the point of that? Lucky he's doing the bit as well. So yeah, people are warming up to it.

I think what turned me around on him is that I saw somebody doing of somebody posted a video of him sitting in a balloonless Like carriage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and the balloon people show up and say hey, man. We forgot the balloon He goes do you see any cops around no? He just floats away skittles commercial the video is F the cops skittles commercial vibes is what is what? Max called it for sure vibes is what Max called it for sure. Now, I still think that this is a character that only gets in based on who he's friends with and there is that element to it. But it is in the end, if they announced him first and then Rinaldo second, the energy probably would have been a little bit different about that. Mm-hmm.

Um, and I think to, like, the difference between somebody who gives a fuck about the game they're in and is a fan of the thing, is gonna go over better with fans of the thing than somebody who's like, I'm clearly just, you know what I mean, I'm showing up. Also all that other shit. I'm making an appearance. Yes, of course, of course, right? But I think that's part of what the perception changing has been as well as that.

But you're not gonna, can't pretend, I'll say it every time, there's a rapist in the game. It's there, don't pretend it's not. But anyway, that's basically what's been happening. Beyond that, I wanted to give a shout out as well to Black Mirror has started season seven. Uh, well, what's up? Nah, nah, nothing. I know that you can thank you can thank page for this incredible idea. That's bait.

And I'm I know what that is. I'm not taking that bait. I'm gonna be mad max up here. I'm gonna stay in the truck. Black Mirror has started. I really like Black Mirror. I enjoy that series. And I know what if your mom run on batteries,

but actually- What if? What if? But actually, what's particular and what I kind of realized about the series that I love is that it is going to age immensely poorly and has already begun doing so. And it is a moment in time show. Like this Black Mirror could not exist before it came out

and it will immediately be rotten and aged like milk in a matter of months, right? Because of the- Oh, months? Because of the way tech works in this world, right? Yeah. So I love it because it's a very of the moment. Right now is the only time this matters.

Like you have to appreciate it right when we're on the cusp of discomfort with this particular subject. What if your mom ran on batteries? And yeah, and so, you know, the whole bit where like, you know, they went with like the kind of horror theme stuff to just be like, okay, we understand some folks were like massively uncomfortable when it just straight up overlaps with reality. And let's just do some fun direction bits with the last season. But this one, they're back and they're hitting on some

shit that is of course of the moment. And you know, probably like, yeah, like, okay, maybe not a matter of months, but like definitely in a matter of years, watching these things backwards, there's gonna be like, I can see the next generation of kids watching Black Mirror and being like, what? Yeah, that's the way it's always been, I don't get it. The kids don't have time for Black Mirror, they got that skibbity shit to brain rot their asses with.

But a pretty strong start, so just watch the first episode of Common People with Rashida Jones in it so far. And it was a good one. But now that it's been, I guess the new season has come, I kind of wanted to just touch on something that happened in the last season, in season six. I mentioned it when I watched it back then,

and I didn't want to get into the details about what it was about per se. And if you don't want to hear, I'm not going to spoil the specifics, but the topic that it goes into, I'd like to mention because I loved it and I think it's really great. And I also think it's like in the process of being expired, as I describe it right now. The first episode of season six was called Lock Henry. And it wasn't clear what it was about at first. It was kind of following this crime that happened in the past,

and you're kind of piecing together the details of it through these characters going back to visit a childhood home. And it basically ends up being that the Black Mirror's take And it basically ends up being that the Black Mirror's take on something that I have been immensely uncomfortable with for a long time now, and I haven't heard anyone or anything really pointing at it. This is the first thing I've seen

like directly calling it out. Okay, what is it? True crime weirdness when the fandom around like actual murder victims becomes entertainment. As that has become more and more of a thing. I mean, it's become super weird. And really, yeah. I mean, to the bored white woman housewife, you can either get really into true crime or day drinking. Okay, well. So like, I mean.

It's one or the other. Yes, yes, right. Like what, like, you're saying that they should become alcoholics? Is that what you're saying? But I mean, from the moment I heard, I heard like my favorite murder is the name of a thing, and I was like, oh, that's what it's called.

Is it? Um, and it's like, that doesn't, does that hit on like, is it about like what's fucked up about it? And that's it? Are we kind of getting into the fandom part of it? Or are we going Jeffrey Dahmer drama fandom with it? Are we getting into that weird thing where it's like, you're not really focusing on what the fuck happened and who it happened

to, but it's like, let's get out the streamers and the cool t-shirts and the funny glasses, you know? I mean, it's obviously like, there's a, that's a hyper exaggerated straw man of it. But I do, there's a thing that you can see with certain types of Netflix depictions of it and stuff, where you kind of, and certain podcasts as well, where it goes into like, fandom entertainment around a real thing that people got super murdered by.

And it is attached to the same weird thing that led to that cannibal that ate the, from Japan, that ate the woman in France, then going back and being on TV for a while. And people are like, let's have you be a guest on a bunch of random panels until people got uncomfortable with it and eventually went, oh, maybe we shouldn't have

the murderer that got away with it be a guest star on various shows. What the fuck, right? But it took a while for that to kick in, you know? So I feel like I remember hearing about that a while ago. And then the way true crime shit has kind of progressed, there's been that like, did you hear about this insane thing that happened a while ago? No, oh my God, that's fucked up, right? And in the best cases, you will learn about something that happened and the story being told through the documentary

is not just informative, but is relevantly part of it. And I'll quote Dear Zachary as probably one of the best examples of the story being told about this thing that happened the the the documentary is important to that story and is relevant to it and it it matters and then the feeling from that is so far far from the mysterious Dahmer look how hot he is he was so elusive and the genius mastermind, you know, and I'm like, oh So black mirror touched on that and I went fucking thank you for saying it cuz it's weird So like it's always been my opinion that Some of these some of these things are just like like gendered versions of the

same compulsive human issue so like guy that just sits around and fantasy role plays with his bros about I would have stopped that that I would I would have fucking stopped those Wahlberg saying he would have stopped if it was me on that plane saying things I'm just saying just saying things would have gone a whole lot differently bro as like I'm gonna catch this killer Right and it's like similarly to how like women have had astrology forever and now boys have crypto. It's the same like I want to use my magic numbers to influence the world. You can also make sure- Just through a gendered lens. You can also make sure to seat your back towards every entrance and analyze how you would take

down the terrorist that walks into the restaurant while- Dude, listen, listen. That is actually a better example than the two that I've come up with. Because if you want to brain rot yourself on TikTok... While thinking about the Roman Empire? What you can do is you can have like Sigma male video and it's like I always keep my back in the restaurant to scan for threats and And when I walk into the room, I assume an alpha stance in order, like all that fucking nonsense. And then you scroll up and it's like 48 year old,

like probably drunk wine mom walking up to her car and saying, hey, you ever see if your car has like a zip tie tied around the handle that has marked your car has like a zip tie tied around the handle that has marked your car for human trafficking? And you need to, and it's like, it's the same exact emotional content. It's just being filtered through a different societal lens because they're crazy. But then I always have that moment at the end of this,

like Jesus Christ, I roll my eyes and then I go, okay, but also I don't live in America. Right? And so there's a moment where I'm like, I don't know, depending on where or what's up, right, how crazy shit might get in a given scenario. But at the very least, if we're talking about the like the astrology and the and the mental LARPing, you know. Yes, there is a feed that that goes down as well. And and I think that, like, unfortunately, like, I remember hearing like the quote. I remember it was like, oh, like, girls don't get into like, like girls don't get into true crime as like because it's

entertaining we study that shit to learn from it right and it's not true when you're telling me how hot you think Jeffrey Dahmer is no no I don't care serial killers because it's the closest they're going to get to dating a vampire or a werewolf oh god That's why you're so threatening your Jesus oh boy. Um, I mean I just I just I know that like we've we've been online a long time and I have been online for a bit. Yes, and I have certainly come across all kinds of dark corners out there on that internet and There's a couple times where you know you peek in on something and you go

Oh, there's a there's a there's a community over here, and you're like huh? Word that's a thing Yeah And oh god fuck I just had the perfect example, but I forgot what it was called The And, oh god, oh fuck, I just had the perfect example, but I forgot what it was called. The... Digimon are real? No, not Digimon are real, but the one where you can have Alpha, Beta, and Sigma,

furry Putin, Obama, and Biden and Trump as... Oh, like furry Hitlers? Omegaverse, Omegaverse, Omegaverse, exactly, right? The Omegaverse stuff, where you kind of peek in and you go Oh Okay, Obama is a is a Sigma Omega type and he has to rut every now and then So he's got to go find

Like a you know like a beta like Biden or so, you know, well, it's a right way. I want to say something here I often say this to Paige When I don't understand what she's talking about and it's fairly rare that it applies to you You're just saying words. Yeah, I know like you're I know what the fuck you you're just saying words in an order But the few who know what I'm talking about are freaking out right now and I'm doing it for them I'm not doing it for you. I'm not doing it for anybody who's typing question marks and Anyone who's holding the question mark key and mashing enter. I'm not doing this for you I'm doing it for the people who just spit their coffee out when they heard me say Omega verse

All right This is like me talking about the fist of the dog medicine where he sprays the dog medicine on his hands to make his hands Tougher, I understand right so so To that end you know you kind of peer in and you go. Oh shit. That's a thing, huh, okay? and then you kind of close the door and There was weird like stuff We're like yeah we talked about like the the the domer like fandom bits and things and things. And I saw where a couple groups of that

started branching off into other tragedies and then becoming fans of certain tragedies based on how attractive they think the perpetrator was. So there's fan cams, you know, like K-pop stan fan cams for like murderers and like, Listen, there are fan cams for everything. Yeah. Yeah. And you would see a couple of these just being like, okay, but look how hot he is though over here when he's in this court deposition, you know, or other heinous, like mass fucking death event footage where people are like, and I'm like, oh, there's a level of, I don't know what causes that, but something's going on there that might be, I don't know, it might be-

It's your genitals. Yes, but it's connected- That's what causes it. But it's connected to the thing that makes your hand write a pen pal letter to the murderer in jail. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, I don't know what that thing is, but I'm like, that's dark.

And it's over there. And that's a part of the internet. And what I've discovered is that there's a lot of people out there that are like, you know, like when you were younger, you're like, oh man, everybody's stupid or whatever. Now I'm old enough to be like, wow, tons of people are just crazy. Tons of people are just nuts. Tons of people are just nuts.

Yeah, I mean, just completely fucking like that's the like that's the end conclusion. And that's for gone. But it doesn't mean that the journey to discovering the specifics of how that manifests isn't fascinating and wildly like, oh, like, really? That's where we got to. OK. Anyway, so I think I think I think looking over at Oh, like really? That's where we got to. Okay. Anyway. So. I think looking over at someone in the chat saying you are being so judgmental in LaMau

is like the funniest possible takeaway from this. Yeah. No, I'm being too harsh on those murderers and those people that, you know, like I should be. Listen, I'm just got a little happy pleasure for the fan to hate those people that, you know, like, I should be... I just got a little happy pleasure for the fact I hate those people, man. No, no, the fan cams for the Columbine shooters,

we should be more open-minded towards those accounts, actually. What if I could change him? You know? What if I could fix him? The guy that, like, plowed into a family, but, like, was rich and hot and got off like yeah with his when he was drunk driving like we should be chill actually because he's not the only one who got off of my right Wow aphasia so anyway um it's crazy that's insane that's completely that is not reasonable to say that is is not a reasonable thing. You're being completely unreasonable. Fuck that.

What have we kissed in the conjugal visit trailer? I think that... Excuse me, not aphasia. Affluenza was the... Affluenza, that's the one. That's the other one. Aphasia is like a... Like a... You can't hear noises in your brain. Right, right. Excuse me. No, no. Affluenza. That's the other one where like Like a you can't hear noises in your right right excuse me no no affluenza That's the other one where you're like you're too rich, so you didn't know that like

Live other people's lives you know what the worst thing is about the affluenza thing like the the explanation that this this dipshit was so rich and coddled that he couldn't appreciate the this the Degreed which actions harm people I actually find that to be compelling I genuinely think that is extremely real I just don't care If we check the tapes you see a childhood where there was never a moment that taught the value of human life

to the kid based on the... I'm sure you've met a a child that was like eight or nine that you're like, oh, the parents fucked this kid up already. I see this kid has no like not like never. Right. So you can be diagnosed with it. It just doesn't affect the sentence whatsoever. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. No, that makes sense. I'm addicted to candy. Does that mean that if I ran over a fucking family of five

because the devil promised me candy? Okay, well not if the devil promised me candy. That might actually be a good excuse. But long-winded way to say that over the years, I've seen these moments of people online being really into like, heinous shit, and it's always been weird, but it's like, okay, whatever. That's just a small group of crazy shit going on over there.

And then- No, no, it's not, it's not a small group at all! But I'm saying it's ramped up, right? And then the version of it that we get in the form of the true crime variant now, where it's like, it's just skirting on that edge. I'm like, okay, there's an episode of Black Mirror that touched on that. And I don't

know that this is going to like, I don't know how relevant this true crime weird vibe is going to be for the next for the next couple of years. But at the moment right now, that shit hits. You know, I think that I think that I don't think this behavior has ramped up at all. I think this behavior is more visible and is more easily networked. I think the amount of people who have secret like Internalized fan cams for murderers and scumbags has actually always been the same but they thought that they were freaks Because they never met other freaks Well, yes, okay. Yes, because there's the thing where like they get to network together and become more of a community for sure

there's the thing where like they get to network together and become more of a community for sure but then there's also but there's also the part of like as that builds momentum and like lands on a streaming platform or becomes a more and more bigger bigger thing other people do kind of get into it starting with the problem with the actions through and well but also through like here's the real case here's the real murders that happened, and then here's the wrap-up show where we discuss like the latest, you know, uh, uh, uh, fan cams and memes about what's been going on in this thing, you know? Wully, there's somebody in the chat just like nailed it perfectly. It's like the armpit and feet people.

See back in the day, if you were like armpit guy or like a foot guy, you'd be too embarrassed to talk about it because it was weird and you would never meet anyone in your whole life that was like that and you'd be like, I guess I'm gonna, but now, now we have like armpitlickers.us or whatever the fuck and they're having their meetups and they're like, they're like, everybody's like, and this is like a totally wiki, wiki feet. It's just, it's just gross shit. But like now, like oh, yeah, you know what? Yeah, there are a lot of us You know, I should talk about armpit shit Yeah, probably no stop sure stop it sure stop it shh

Either way, I and I I enjoyed that that episode and that being a part of the discussion. So shoutouts the black mirror Watch it now because it's like milk. It's going off. I don't know. It's going off. Its expiry date is like every season has an expiration. Aged really well. Oh, the first episode of the first season?

Yeah, I think that aged really well. I think that's just as appropriate now as it was then. Certainly. But I think not. But I can't the same can't be said for all of them. And the what if your mom ran on batteries bit? It's like, yes, but and then you're you one day you see your mom replacing her double A's. And I think the goofiest thing about the fact that we always laugh about that is like my father does run on batteries. Oh, oh, okay Unironically my father has a pacemaker and he has to occasionally like three to five years. Yes, get the batteries change there you go Good stuff

We live in a fucking nightmare Always have always has been. Yay. Astronaut execution. Gonna be playing some more Phantom Liberty this week and getting through that cyberpunk. Going concentrated on it. So yeah, tune in Wednesday and Thursday.

We'll be doing that. And then getting to fighting games on Saturday as well over on Woolly Versus on Twitch and YouTube. All right. So I played Expedition 33. So, I mean, let's just skip past that. That game is incredible. That's fucking amazing.

I love it. It's incredible. It's great. Yeah. I'm LPing Expedition 33. And then, you know, again, we talk about how Death Stranding is on its way and all these things. Like, I think it would be a mistake to get into some stuff right now. Like, I'm trying to keep the schedule a bit more clear. Yeah. So for me, it's Expedition 33 and then Night Rain, but Night Rain's not like a, you know, sequential.

Sorry to disappoint, you know, but yeah. It'll be off camera for me. I'll play it for you. Just enjoy it and be like, la la la la la la la. So I played Expedition 33. It's great. I'm going to keep playing that. If you want to see an LP of it, you can come to my channel, it's Switch.tv slash Pat Stairsat. I also took a look at,

I screw this name up every time, so I have to read it out loud, the 100 Line Last Defense Academy. So I reached out and they sent me a code and I appreciate it because games are too expensive nowadays. So the 100 Line Last Defense academy is made by the people who made Danganronpa and the people who made Zero Escape. Danganronpa Tactics. Yes. Yes.

But also, I heard about this. The writer behind Zero Escape. I heard about this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm going to start it out right away. I haven't played that much. I did one stream of it and I haven't been back to it since, but I plan to go back to it. Also of note, I really had a very strong negative reaction to trying to play Danganronpa. Yeah, you did not like that game.

Incredibly negative reaction. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And we talked about it a bit when I brought up, like, I think 2KYO, when they released, what was it, Akudama Drive, like the anime that came out, there's a whole style to the Danganronpa, basically like Uchikoshi stuff, where you see that character art style, you see that same vibe and design and stuff. And even if it's not in the Danganronpa world, the aesthetic is there, right?

So it's still very much in a similar style. Like you can, you can, you taste the writing being the Danganronpa guy, but it's immediately much more appealing. I don't know why. I don't know why. Part of it is that the narrative setup is so much more confusing and interesting. It takes place in Tokyo that is entirely underground or in a bubble or something. Of course it does. With random attacks that no one understands.

And then you are swooped away by a magic bear to defend the world in a high school. And then you visual novel talk to people who stand around in little 2D. Yes. I mean, fuck. Yeah. And it's, it's, it, the characters very much look like Danganronpa characters and they talk like Danganronpa characters. There are, you meet a cast of, I think it's like eight or nine. Protagonist with a little hair strand sticking up.

Yep. He's normal. He's a normal guy. And then there's like the angry guy. There's the prissy girl, there's the prissy girl's sister obsessed freak brother, there's the pathetic guy, there's the gym rat girl, like they're a bunch of fucking ridiculous stereotypes. But for some reason it's charming to me, whereas Danganronpa was like, made me want to barf right away.

I really can't tell you why. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Because here's the thing is I've always found it to be charming and I did enjoy it. I feel like the way the art style and the subject matter kind of clash with each other and the way it kind of goes about everything, it feels almost like a bunch of like candy mascots had a Media story to you know, like about them like it's like it's like almost like yeah Like what if these were all like characters from various fruit snacks, you know that are now getting a game or something like that

I'm not sure like pachinko I'm not sure if what's going on here is something that was present in Danganronpa, but there is definitely a parody element here. One of the major characters is a girl that looks just like Jinx from League of Legends and is literally just being like, boy, I sure would love to be in a death game. It would be so exciting to be in a death game. I heard, yeah.

Which we all try and figure out who killed me and all that shit, and it's just outwardly saying, I wish I was in 999, I wish I was in Danganronpa, I wish I was in VLR. I heard that the word death game actually gets dropped. You know, like, yeah. And it's played for goofs. There is, I don't know what to call them,

other than the Jimmy of the group, just an outwardly, cowardly piece of fucking garbage. Always. That an early dialogue is, you kind of like, you're not super cool with him, and he yells at you, like, wait, are you ignoring me because I'm fucking poor? I hope you fucking get canceled.

And there's something about that that's just really endearing to me me because he's such a fucking shit bag It wasn't the genre that bothered you back in the day. It wasn't the no it was not the genre I love like ace attorney so I figure Dangin Rapa would be the thing but for whatever reason I think it was like the core premise of the ultimate Whatever just made me want to fucking barf. I think the pink blood also bothered you Pink blood there's barf. I think the pink blood also bothered you. A pink blood? There's pink blood.

I don't even know what that is. No? Okay. No. I can't remember when we talked about it, but all right. But then there's the loser. There's a tiny little like too small character that's like a pathetic little fat weirdo. And every single line of dialogue that

comes out of his mouth is I am a waste of life I am the worst I can't do anything right I'm so stupid like a minneta and style character uh no like self-deprecating and shamed and just like hates himself. He's going to kill himself any second. And I'm like, this is really, really intense. Like this is probably the most self-hatred that I've ever seen in a character ever. And I was then informed and provided with sources that Kotaka, the main writer of this game and the Danganronpa guy gave a shout out to Hideki Kamiya saying, Hey dude, I love the shit you say to people in your tweets. I am totally writing a character based off of these. Oh my God. Okay. Okay. Everything he says about

himself is something Hideki Kamiya has said to someone on Twitter. Oh, fuck. Okay. And now I'm turned all the way around. Yeah. All right. That's that's where it comes from. That's a deep cut. That's a pretty deep. And in addition to that of being a weird visual novel with a fascinating plot premise, it's also like a tactics RPG. The plays pretty well against what is essentially like the Earth Defense Force cast of monsters. Like running the, you know, you'll fight like little goofy mascot dudes and like little blobos that look like they're from Disneyland or Universal Studios.

And then like a gigantic 100 tall fucking death myth dragon from Dark Souls. Yeah. And like there's moments like that in Danganronpa games too, where there's these strangely like elaborate designs for beasts and monsters that would just pop out for a gag, you know? It was always, it was never to be taken seriously. Like they'd always show up and then kind of just be like, hey, look at that cool thing. Anyway, it just stands there or barely fucking works or it's a piece of shit. And it seems here like, yeah, this same kind of stylistic thing combined with the simplified

art style. Overall, I'm assuming the tone is mostly punch lines and goofy. Uh, yes and no. When violence happened, it was really violent. Yeah, that's Danganronpa as well, for sure. Like outrageously so. It's mostly Danganronpa, but it does have an element of the Zero Escape mystery to it. I'm not super familiar with Danganronpa's mystery elements, but it feels like kind of like VLR to me. So like the big thing is like what the

fuck is going on in this story at all. Like what is even happening in its own premise right off the bat. And it gives them way better first impression than Danganronpa does. And I would say it probably gives a better first impression than something like 999 does, because 999 just drops you into a fucking room escape, like instantaneously. Yeah. There's more to hook you here, right away.

We were just talking about this with Expedition 33, but the rules of the world or something about this with, you know, Expedition 33, but like the rules of the world or something about this setting is confusing and strange and or you're trapped in a setting where you don't have the answers why, who did this. I don't even know if this game takes place on earth. Right, right, exactly, yeah, yeah. And like the complete discombobulation

of your main characters as they figure out why the world is the way it is or whatever is an established thing. The choice to go tactics with this is interesting because I mean, I like tactics. Yeah. This well big improvement for me. I'm saying like, because like the previous foray with ultra despair girls went into a, you know, they swerved off into a genre that I don't think worked well for them that time. This is tactics. Games are pretty fun. They also are pretty fun. Between this and then fucking, God, Unicorn Overlord came out and I don't know if anyone finished that, so I don't know what the final

hour count is. No one finished it. But it seems like a gigantic, humongous game. I remember hearing that it was quite big, yeah. The thing with a tactic style game is I guess I'm like, it feels like those settings tend to be like world encompassing, right? Because of the nature of going from map to map

and area to area. Yeah, no, all the fights in this are taking place in front of the school. Yeah, that's strange. That's so weird for it to be like a trapped small location, you know, for that type of genre. Hmm. Interesting.

Also, I happen to know that there are 100 endings in this game. Wow. Okay. So they... And supposedly, the Danganronpa guy, Kodaka, wrote the main scenario and Uchi Koshi, the Zero Escape guy, wrote most of the alternate scenarios. Interesting. So I'm seeing people describe an hour count of somewhere between 30 to 140 hours, depending on how much you want to actually pull out of it. So when I hear a hundred endings, it has a reverse effect on me, where I'm thinking,

they can't be that significant then. I don't know. Like Chrono Trigger has a lot of endings, and that was a holy shit moment back in the day, especially, some of which are much more elaborate than others. But if it's 100, but they're all a couple screens and not much to them, that would not be great. So I'm going to pull out the call to our live chat because I know there's somebody in here just beaten at least the first day.

Not joke endings. Okay. Yeah. Because if automata is the other thing where like some automata endings are complete like you know Just gags and some of them are real obviously They're apparently apparently they're real okay Wow Wow Cool Yeah, I like to I would like to put more time into that

I yeah, I like to I would like to put more time into that The the the tokyo games bit the aesthetic and the style and Kodaka and Uchi Koshi like that that's that's cool Yeah, I'm glad that that's still a thing This is gonna sound really strange and I don't know how to say it cuz like I don't really care for the Danganronpa art style Oh, I'm not I'm not a fan. I don't really like it Similarly to how like I really like one fan. I don't really like it. Similarly to how I really like One Piece and I think One Piece looks like shit. I think One Piece looks like shit.

But I really like One Piece. I, yeah, I feel like the Danganronpa characters look at their best on a sweater or a cool hoodie with graphics and sharp colors and line art. But I like it. I like the style. This version of the Danganronpa art style is definitely a lot more palatable to me. I wish we could get to the bottom of what it is because it is. I'm looking at it. I'm like, this is what it's always been, you know? Why does it work now, but not before?

It reminds me of when I'll go out somewhere and I'll try a food and be like, oh, I don't really like it. And my wife, Paige, will be like, what don't you like about it? And my answer is nearly exclusively, I don't like that it tastes like shit when I put it into my mouth.

I put it in my mouth and I go, and I go, ehh. Similarly, when I see like a huge proportion of One Piece characters and I go, oh, that looks bad. That's it. It looks bad. Because I think like something that they kind of share from at least what I can see with like, well, I mean, for every Danganronpa character design, there's the similarities in designs. But then with One Piece characters as well, there's a choice to lean into stylized exaggeration. And the turning up whatever the theme of the character is to Eleven surpasses making them

cool, right? There will be a cool factor for some characters in moments where you see them do their special thing. There's characters like Sakura Ogami, is basically a grappler backy student who is this beefy giant muscle girl in a Sakura school uniform, Sailor Fuku, and her whole design is meant to be

a gag on the world that they're in, but then she does really cool shit, you know? While being this scarred, I look like I'm from a different world entirely character, you know? They sacrifice some of the cool factor of it from a different world entirely character, you know, they sacrifice. Yeah, like some of the cool factor to be like more slapstick about it kind of thing. And it reminds me of like mascot character design. You know, what I mentioned earlier, like like Pachinko or like candy or whatever.

I'm like, it's like they treat their characters like mascots where not every franchise does that, you know. But it's different. I think it's interesting. I think it's uniquely recognizable from other anime art style designs and I think it works for them. I think for one piece, the strangest thing is that I'll look at most of the cast and I'll be like,

I really like these characters and I think they're cool and then I'll like it so like I really love Chopper. Chopper's my favorite guy on the cast and I think Brooks a character I had not read up to who's a skeleton is really cool and then I see that the blue guy with the fucking arms the fucking arms. Frankie? Frankie, I think. I can't help you. And I'm like, oh he looks stupid. I'm sure he's cool, but I think his proportions look stupid. Allow going to sane wash you for a moment. Over time, from Danganronpa 1 through 2, and then the side things, and then the other spin-off projects and even the anime as well, the character designs and the art style has gotten better. It has improved. Yeah.

So if you are feeling good about the latest incarnations- I feel like it kicked it over the line for me on this one. You're watching, I'm looking at it. You're watching some of the best stuff they've done for sure. They've, they've certainly improved with that thing they've been doing, but it still is that same thing. You know? I need to, I need to take a second here. Hey guys, when I say, I think something you can't say someone's wrong, you know, wow, it's not,

no, no. That's why you say, think that's it is just mine in my opinion because you can't tell me that I'm not having that opinion I am I am having it how else would your career have fucking been built if not for this is my opinion yeah okay so yeah hundred line Defense Academy really. Haven't put as much time into it. I'll probably talk more about it next week. Excited to... Because the strategy RPG parts seem like pretty good. So I'm excited to see if that maintains. And aside from that... Sharon Gan, Infinite Tsukuyomiomi except you get locked in a reality where only other pats are in chat talking and typing into your chat so you could only argue that would be great we'd agree on it oh would you would you that would you

wait so you say are they are they other pats or are they other? similarly Attitude in different people They are other pats. Oh Well, then we don't agree on everything Why would why would we have any difference of opinion if they're all the same person? We well that was easy We would we would return to reality with a bloodbath All right, I'd be like man, I don't really like pickles. And then all the other paths would be like, I also don't like pickles. Friends forever.

Blood. I don't have to live in a world in which people like pickles. Blood and organs everywhere. All right. The other thing, and by far the most interesting thing that I played this week, and I've been talking to Gene and Dad Asuna about it non-stop, is the Marathon Alpha. Ah, right. So that was closed? That is very closed. You had to get a code for being an influencer or send a code out as an influencer. So, well, I talked about how the Bungie presentation was super weird last week and how it seemed like for Bungie by Bungie. Internal. Okay.

So straight off the bat, before you even got your code, you would get invited to the Bungie Discord in which you got to see the guy whose job it was to hand out the codes just having a straight up mental breakdown for like six days because the codes wouldn't work or the codes wouldn't go out or people were having trouble assigning their bungee accounts to the code, or like, you know when you get an announcement in Discord and like a muted channel all of a sudden pings up with like the little one, and there's like a three, four, five day period where every single time we're like, listen, don't DM me about the codes until you have done the following thing. And it's like, listen, don't DM me about the codes until you have

done the following thing. And just like, just really going through it. Oh, no. Okay. Everything on my Discord has a little one next to it. All of it. It's like, that's not it. All right, all right. Fair enough. Fair enough. But anyway, I get the idea, the spirit of what you're saying. And so I spoke with Gene at length and I have Gene's permission to put some of the opinions that we talked about forward. So the most interesting thing about Gene's time with Marathon is that he has been having the absolute hardest time

getting to play Marathon. For whatever reason, they sent it to his work email instead of the one that his bungee account is is table two and he spent literally the entire pre-beta and beta time up until yesterday talking with various people at bungee trying to get a code and going why is it so hard for you guys to send me a code when everyone I talked to is I will definitely send you a code right away. So from a live service perspective, all of these rollout things are not encouraging.

Not great, how is game though? It's fucking terrible. Oh no. Oh no. It looked terrible. Damn. It looked cool. It looked really cool. So this was supposed to be an embargoed alpha. This was going to be, hey man, we don't want any video. We don't want any pictures. We want impressions only. And then like two days before that, they were like, guys, you can stream it, you can do anything. So the game is coming out this year.

Oh man, that cool art style gets wasted. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, okay, okay. All right, all right, all right. The game is coming out this year. And this is an alpha. And you know how we make fun of 2XKO for having an alpha, but it's not really an alpha. You know how we make fun of this game for having a beta, and it's not really a beta. Marathon's alpha is the roughest version of a game I have ever seen sent out for this type of promotion. It is, it is Alpha. It really is. A huge proportion of the game's visual presentation is missing. The external

areas are one step above gray box. Like it's, it's, it's rough and it is ugly and it is alpha and it is like, this is supposed to come out in four or five months, bro? This, that is dire, that is worry. Man, so after, sorry to interrupt you, just. Yeah, go for it, feel free to cut in whenever. Well, after we talked about it last time and I saw the little like gameplay breakdown thing, I noticed because you were asking me what did I

watch specifically? And what I did see was the it was all just narrated narration over gameplay mechanics. Right. And I was like, wow, this looks really cool. And the idea of and like, what was happening with the art style style I thought was pretty bold and impressive and I thought that was a cool direction visually for what was going on and everything they described seemed fine I guess, team thing. I later when the conversation was done after the podcast went and watched the short film concept thing

which was fucking rad. Absolutely. That thing was incredible. I completely missed that. And I was like, oh fuck, that was the promise of what people's expectations were. Okay, so I'm gonna stop you right there. I'm gonna stop you right there, okay?

The gameplay stuff that they showed off, as of right now, the game doesn't look like that either. Mmm, mmm, mmm. Okay, I'm gonna just send you, you can turn your sound off, but I'm just gonna send you like a random, like a YouTube video from some guy where it's just in the middle of gameplay where he's moving the camera around. The game does not look good at all. It looks, it looks like profoundly unfinished.

Mmm. It, it, it, it is, profoundly unfinished. It is rough. And you know what? The game looking visually a certain way is not important. Okay? That's not the main thing. The main thing is that this does not look and feel like it is going to come out in six months. And it looks way, way worse than the stuff they have been showing. So I can see from look at look here that like the assets and the bold color choices and everything are as advertised, but I guess the lighting, especially outside, is not as dynamic as it could be. No, it is. It is not. It's not there. It's not finished and it's not there.

Right. Right. Okay. Okay I see I see I see. My first thing is like you should not have I actually disagree with the because it was a higher-up decision when that price discussion happened to put the the game out so people could see it I agree they should actually have not let people watch this version of the game I think it gives a really terrible first impression. I wonder if they were forced to after a certain amount of time for investment, quarter, whatever. Maybe. The second thing is this is an extraction game. And for some reason, I talked about this when they showed it off. They're like, you know what we're gonna do? We are gonna do a three man extraction game.

The game is gonna put you into teams of three. If you solo queue, you're gonna be up against teams of three. The way to play this game is with teams of three. So what did I do? I went and got Dead Asuna and I got Quiet Viking and I said, come on the show. And we hung out and we played it in a match made, and we hung out and we played it in a match made, pre-built, on voice chat during the stream, team of people who all know each other and all had the same goal. And started to run into like-

Were you on Discord comms? Yes we were. Okay. And you know, my stream, if you want to go watch it, it's me and DadAss9 and Quiet quiet Viking. Thank you for coming on the show You guys are great on And we did you know, we did five or six games so right off the bat is I couldn't believe how British deadass is It's outrageous. I Believe it offensive. I believe it

but more than that is that I cannot imagine how miserable playing this game in anything but that scenario is. So it's an extraction game. So if you die, you lose every single item on your person. Yes. Right. Okay. So queuing by yourself is a nightmare because it has like halo level time to kill, you know, in Halo multiplayer where like an engagement is like 10 seconds long. Okay. So if an engagement is like five to 10 seconds long, there's no chance to beat a team one on three. In like Warzone and Call of Duty where you can kill someone with like a single shot or like a burst from your gun, one very excellent player can beat a team of three if they get the drop on them. Right? Shoot them in the back, shoot them in the back, shoot them in, you know, that kind of thing. The encounter time in Marathon is really long. In the footage on my stream, Asuna dumped an entire magazine into another player and they didn die and then that other players

friend came around the corner and both of them focused her down. Ok so like shields are a big thing. Yeah so like 1 vs 2 is impossible, 2 vs 3 is impossible. So if you're playing with your by yourself or with not the maximum amount of people, combat against other players is just not available as a genuine option, which is ridiculous because this is a PvP game. If you are going to play with randoms, right, you run into a different problem, which is if you have the apex situation where they just ditch you or Are actively harmful? You can either perform badly enough that you cause them to lose all their fancy gear

Or if you came in with good stuff You vice versa cause you to lose your fancy gear and you would think that's not that big of a deal except the game's primary form of permanent progression is little contracts but the contracts can't build up. You only have one contract to come into the match and everybody's contracts are going to be different and point them to different parts of the map. So if you match make in then everyone's going to have objectives point them to different parts of the map. So if you match make in, then everyone's going to have objectives to go to different parts of the map. And how are you supposed to get randoms to actually team up

with you and go where you want? You can't. On top of that, it's an extraction game. And you remember when everybody wanted to be Destiny 2, like shooter MMOs? Oh, was that a phase? Yeah. That was a big phase. There were a bunch of games that came out like that and none of them were Destiny. The new trend is extraction.

Tarkov. Which is a genre for sicko freaks Because it's so vicious and mean and punishing? Well, I was about to ask actually, because I remember, so Azana I believe was talking about like when you go on a losing streak in these games, right? It's just, you know, start your, you know, in a fighting game terminology, everybody else gets to start with full meter and you don't. So you're going to lose again. You start with nothing constantly. And if you have stuff saved up that you're you don't you're afraid to lose

And you if or if you do end up losing everything there's just yeah, there's nothing to do. You're you're yeah It's about it's about like, you know being very careful. I call XP can be lost essentially So what happens? Okay. So here's what happens. We we did a couple matches and we had some good gear and the fur, you know you do a match and the first Most of the match is slowly crawling through an environment Scrounging through items and looking through boxes and be like do I want this gun? Do I want that gun? Do I want that? This health item no, but slow like crawling, okay

Because what happens when you die in apex? You hit rematch, right? And you just go to the next match. What happens when you die in marathon? You lose every single item on your body and start back up with the default gear. Well, teams, which is shit. Teams got to come grab you though, right? No, if you if you die, if like if your team wipes, everyone's just wiped. If you wipe, no, no, no. I mean, if you individually, if your team wipes, everyone's just wiped.

If you wipe, no, no, no. I mean, if you individually go down, you... Yeah, they can pick you back up. And so it's just slowly crawling through an environment and hopefully not encountering an enemy. And you know what happened? We found a team of three and we were a team of three and we got the drop on them and we beat them and we stole all their gear. And then we walked about a hundred feet and a different team of three got the drop on us and killed us and we lost every single thing that we got in the entire thing and we didn't actually have any fun either. Okay, well, I mean that dog eat dog moment, the fish bigger fish thing is that's the design,

right? It's the point, right? But my point is that the game's also not fun to play, which is the weirdest part. This is a bungee game. People put up with all sorts of shit in Destiny because Destiny plays like a bungee game, and bungee games are fun to shoot guns in. This game is the slowest game they've ever made,

like movement and all this stuff. It has the worst feeling guns. It has the worst movement. It just feels bad and slow. Is any of that connected to the fact that it's from Marathon or is that just? I don't think so. Okay Is there you know, cuz I'm like arts is there a part of it that's legacy or are we just looking at like?

We're not doing another destiny thing. We're doing something Yeah, so I'm sure there's people in here who've played it as well and they can fact like it the game legitimately like feels poor To control and like that was supposed to be the saving grace. The saving grace was people like, well, I don't like extraction games and I don't like this and I don't like that, but it's gonna be a bunch of games so you know it's gonna play hot, it plays bad.

And so I have a very, very, very quick impression from Gene that I think sums the whole thing up. Where he got the code last night when I was streaming and left to go play Marathon. He left my stream, sorry he put my stream on his phone or second monitor and he started to play Marathon. Then the following things Let me go find it. I asked him, hey man, how was it? And he said, it made me fall asleep, I woke up and your stream was over and then I went back to bed. And I asked him, do you mean fell asleep with your controller in your hand? And he said, yes, I woke up full on with my controller in my hand on the exfil

tree exfiltration screen. Wow. I tried to do another game, but then I died and I lost all my stuff. So now I only have a knife. Wow. OK. And the thing is, is like playing. I mean, we were talking about this a little bit earlier before when you're talking about like City of the Wolves, for example, but playing with other people is also how you maximize your chances at fun. Absolutely.

And so I played with people that I know and have known for years and I really like, and we were both sitting around going, sorry, we were all sitting around going, oh, I don't know about this. Oh, do you guys want to? And so I feel like the ultimate like opinion having moment for me was that it was an alpha of a highly exclusive game by a well generally well like company and I was doing great numbers and I had two guests on the show and I played it for 90 minutes and I went you know what we're good. My usual streams four or five hours and I did 90 minutes of

it. You know what? I'm just going to stop and turn the game off. The tipping point for me was that there's progression. There is a progression system. You do your quests, like kill this many people or get this many items, and they build up to permanent buffs. And that's cool. It's like faster sprint or stuff like that. And it has like a skill tree. That's cool. And then you mouse over it and they last for the season. So it lasts for 30 to 90 days. So your actual progression that you're doing all this for is so that you can be a little stronger for like two weeks at the end of the season. And then if you ever piece out and come back later, yeah.

Don't worry, it'll reset. It is a really, really bad alpha. It is very troubling that this game is four or five months away. Almost every single thread on the Marathon subreddit is people going into it and going, why is this game built for three players? What the fuck are they thinking?

It is acting as just the most vicious way to make it impossible to play. I wonder if they take- It is, it is, this, it's just, sorry, sorry, I feel you. Oh no, I was gonna say, like, if, it's just, sorry, sorry. Oh no, I just, I was going to say like, if I, like, I guess just thinking about the past, I remember you and other people playing Destiny used to talk about

like the shit that was terrible about those games. And then like how they, over time, I guess, they kind of buttered them up until Taken King? Yeah Taken King was great. Was really good. So yeah I kind of wonder if they take... Destiny 2 came out and didn't have any of the good stuff from Taken King and it took

until Forsaken for Destiny 2 to become good and then Destiny 2 was great. Yeah. For a while. So I kind of wonder like if this is a of, hey, maybe put it back in the oven for a bit. People got their hands on it for the first time. You got a lot of feedback. Don't spit it out in a couple months just to watch it die, just to watch it get concorded. Take the time you need to make sure that your shit's actually fixed.

I think this game is being rushed out super hard because the thing that really says it to me is one, it doesn't play well, which is weird because Bungie makes games that play well. That's always been the hallmark of the FPS. It's a sci-fi shooter. It should be just steal the Destiny shit. But the second one is the maps that are in the game right now are very small, and there is a big map coming after release that's a gigantic spaceship called the Marathon, which

will likely be the game's primary map, but it's not there at launch. And the only reason I can think of it not being there at launch is that the game is being rushed out the door. Okay. The title of the game as a map is going to be post launch. Yeah, I think my only experience playing an extraction thing has been Mash Mac mode in Mecha Break. I have on, Asuna said they had way more fun playing that with you.

It was cool. Than they did playing this with me. It was, it was cool, you know, as a, and the thing is, and here's the other bit. It was cool and it was a way to let go and get like XP and custom paints and whatever, leveling up your equipment, et cetera. But it was a side mode to a team shooter main mode, you know? You could choose to play the game in its team of six v6, or you could go do this extraction mode. It wasn't the main thing, you know? I am like genuinely very surprised at how bad this alpha is.

And obviously, hey, alpha, not final. But then it's like by the end of the year. And I'm like, no, no, that's, it's rough. It feels like we are playing internal alpha playtest builds. So, yeah, Bungie really used to be synonymous with like, yo, really fun, shoot good, FPS console game, you know. Yeah, Halo feels awesome. Destiny feels awesome So like if they don't have that like what who is this for

Just out of curiosity when halo switched hands over to the the other studios that are in control of it now Just like the do the the latest halo kept it exactly the same So right and so and how do those how do those things feel? Compared to like destinies like last You know they feel like halo the big problem with halo 4 was that the fucking I think it was the the new enemy type We're just not as fun to fight Has the covenant okay, but so like Master Chief feels foundation is of everything else is still the same I know that halo infinite feels good, but you know

Okay, okay fair enough. Yeah, I mean I I There's a there's an element of like When I you know first playing apex and I'm kind of like damn it. Why can't I run off the walls? You know you have that moment, but you're like you're going from s plus to like yeah right it's this is still fine so yeah you know I need to be really clear I am not talking about general well I'm not talking about abilities I'm talking about like firing an assault rifle in marathon feels like shit I'm talking about like the single most basic interaction you could have with a first person shooter. You're like, ehhh.

I see. Okay. What's going on? That's it for what I did this past week. This current week, I have a lot going on all of a sudden. It's one of those weeks where I didn't have a lot going on and then a bunch of shit happens So now I have tons going on to the point where I have to look at my own picture of a schedule. Okay

Today's the podcast you're listening to that On Wednesday, I'm gonna watch the Borderlands state of play and go back to beat the backlog on Thursday It's Claire Obscure again on Friday and Saturday. I'm gonna be watching the collegiate eSports Commission's Cup. Okay That's a sponsored stream and then on Saturday page and what's that? Shout out st. Cola? I believe so. Yeah and On late later in the evening on Saturday Me and Paige are gonna be trying to beat Split Fiction. So very excited for that. Okay.

And that's over at twitch.tv slash Pat Stairsat. Oh. I'll take a little lunch and then I'll be back with this walk. Okay. All right. Let's take a quick word from our sponsors. I love sponsors. Do you love sponsors, Caboose?

Of course you do. This week the podcast is sponsored by Shopify. That is your all-in-one commerce platform to help you grow your business whatever level you're at. They're behind millions of businesses across the world. 10% of e-commerce in the US in particular using Shopify. If you're at the small level, you want to figure out how to get your shop up and running. If you want to figure out how to integrate your your shop into your social media

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in-laws has been an Aura frame. They super love it. It's legit a really cool, easy to set up digital frame. You can have it hooked up to, yeah, like they're wherever they're installing it, you can have it set up so that there's a welcome message as soon as they plug it in. And once it's connected to the Wi-Fi,

you can on your own phone, upload photos from, you know, your own gallery or wherever to share on their frame at home. You can even have, even if you don't have an app, you can have an email that each frame is associated with. And like if you send a photo to that email, it'll automatically add it to the rotation of the Aura frame as well. So it's a really cool, useful thing to have. And that's why it's, yeah,

it's been awarded best digital photo frame by Wirecutter. And I can say as well, not just as a gift, but like having set one up in the house, it's, it's legit. I love it. I really like having that just kind of like play through some photos. And it's got like a cycle of things going on and you know every once in a while I see like an old picture of me and Punch Bomb or something and you know just go double tap the top and you can give it a little heart and you know they should get a notification about that and it'll pop up you know and stuff. So it's a nice cool thing to have around the place as well. It's not just even though it's perfect for the old that don't know how to use tech in your life,

the struggling boomer will love the aura frame, but so will you. So the inner struggling boomer in me enjoys it as well. And I believe I made old lady noises going, oh, would you look at that? Ooh. So, no, would you look at that. So no, it's super dope. Yeah, you can, in particular, they've

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And this week the podcast is sponsored by Boot.dev. And yeah. This is a great site. Boot.dev is the best way, the funnest way to learn programming. If you are trying to figure out career options, if you want to learn how to program and you want to learn languages like Python, Go, JavaScript, Git course, Linux courses, memory management and C, SQL databases, Docker, Kubernetes.

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So as we were live, it seems like breaking news. EA has found another Titanfall game that nobody had canceled and found a way to cancel it. Yeah, it was the Titanfall extraction game. Laying off several hundred employees in the process So here we thought that they had already Killed all of it, but there was a secret extra Titanfall Unfired uncancelled game that could have been cancelled for more cancellation of Titanfall So yep there goes that whoopsie-doodle, what little hope

you might have had is now gone, and time to focus more on Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi. Listen, I would really like to apologize because I think what happened here is someone at EA with Perce Decision Power saw me playing the marathon and went, oh God, we got to get out of this fucking shit and canceled the game when they came in Monday morning. So realistically, there's a larger team adjustment, quote unquote, which was reported at EA were 400 or so people got fired. And hundred of those were respawn employees in particular leading to the cancellation of an unannounced Titanfall game codenamed R7, apparently an extraction shooter project that was being worked on.

And extraction shooters are getting killed before they even come out. That's crazy. Uh... Does this make three Titanfall cancellations? There's three Titan... There are more cancelled Titanfall games than existing ones. That's crazy. Why'd they even make Titanfall if they didn't want to make Titanfall though? It was so good and that's the curse. It was just, it was too pure for this world and, and, you know, and it was right on that

timeframe where like, well, you know, again, the I think the decision with apex was where the fracture began, right? It was like we're leaning heavily into the the genre of the moment. And, you know, they successfully made a thing that that like, it certainly worked. But if there's any part of you that has an attachment to the thing that came before or wants to just run on a wall and jump into a robot. Go fuck yourself. Oh man. The weird part too is in a lot of this stuff is like of all these different projects, you know, you kind of look at like how as much as we love the multiplayer and everything in Titanfall 2, that single player is a tight, short, awesome experience that I think a lot of people would have enjoyed if they were

to just make things like that. I guess the respawn is always perpetually on the chopping block. And I feel like EA wants them to kind of be the apex Star Wars company. And that pesky little cool thing that they made, you know, just can't, it keeps popping back up like Tom and Jerry. So you just gotta, is that a BT sticking its head out of a rat hole over there?

BT sticking its head out of a rat hole over there. How many more employees can we fire? Let's hire a bunch of people to put them. How many do we got? How many got? Okay, whatever that number is, shave a little bit off there. Where's my bonus? Yeah, or the announcement is actually,

you tell everyone that like, hey, you're working on a Titanfall project and then they immediately know that they've been laid off. That fucking sucks. Time to start looking for work. What a pile of shit. What a pile of fucking garbage. In the meantime, what else is happening in France game development?

Well, on the one side is Expedition 33. On the other side, Ubisoft is facing a $100 million fine as hidden data harvesting accusations are discovered by privacy experts. It turns out that Far Cry Primal and Assassin's Creed Shadows, which require internet connections despite being offline experiences, are also siphoning players' gaming habits and doing so without permission. One with Far Cry Primal, in particular,

noticed that the game was constantly pinging external servers of Amazon and Google 150 times in just 10 minutes. And the wildest part about this is I'm like, don't most games always just make you agree to a EULA that basically gives away everything at this point anyway? And despite that being the way things are now, where you more or less click, yes, I accept all of that,

they're still finding a way to do shit without your permission. Without, you know, it's baffling. Anyway, you know, it's barely a bit, but either there's legal action coming against them for doing so and obviously Fuck anytime an offline get off an offline game forces you to be online for no reason Stan like it's just it's just like it's just fucking incompetence in the course of their evil. They could have been competently evil and it would have been fine.

The trend has been to be competently evil about things. Then you just, yeah. It's not like Ursula ran up on you and just took your voice. What, no contract? Are you fucking serious? Come on. Hope my boyfriend hits you with a ship, you dumb octopus bitch. Um.

Lil Mermaid. No, I know, I know. Yes, that's not what I was thinking of. And scene. I was trying to remember Divine, where it's like you wanna talk about stealing a voice, how about Ursula stealing Divine? Where it's like, basically like that is the, that's the real person, but anyway.

Yeah, no, the whole thing with that. So anyway, speaking of competence, I suppose, and me not understanding things, did you see this punishing grey raven cross devil may cry promotion that has been announced? People sent it to me en masse. Yes. To which I responded with, I don't play gacha games, man. I can't.

That may be an untruth. There is video evidence. No, no, no. Like I do the same thing every time I go, maybe I'll play this one and then I get sick. I'm like, no, can't play it. Okay, there we go. The illness has occurred. I'm currently on the wagon.

Okay. Well, I yeah, I got sent in a bunch too and I was like, okay, what's going on? And then I saw like, Oh, someone must have been wrong or lying, because they were like, Now is the time because it's when it goes away, it's gone forever. And I was like, Oh, okay. So I downloaded and installed punishing gray ra Raven. And then I booted it up. And I was looking at it on my phone. And then I went, actually, let me do this on my computer. And then I did.

And then I did the tutorial. And I was like, fuck me. This is one of them good, stylish, mobile feeling things that is like what Zenlis was doing where I'm like, oh yeah, oh no, you got it. You did a cool dodge. You did a combo. That's, yeah, you're doing it. Got it. And then there was a title screen where I'm scrolling through a million things and I'm like, okay, where's Dante? Where is it?

Where is Dante? The events that I see no Dante in any of the, okay, which one of these buttons leads to the, and I couldn't, and then I was like, something's wrong here, and I went back online, and it has been announced, but it's not out. It will be coming out in China later this month, and then, or in May, and then it'll be

coming out internationally at some time after that. So it was just a preview of that content. And I was like, oh, okay. So I bring it up because the integration of Dante and Virgil into that game is phenomenal. Yeah. The arts.

I noticed that it's specifically built around Sun High Legend Gifts. Yeah. So the Virgil Sun High Legend Gif of the combo was recreated in the game in Punishing Grey Raven.

And I'm like, that's a flex. That's a pretty impressive flex to show off everything down to the taut juggle, you know, when S-ranking as Virgil. I'm like, that's cool. And then they show a really slow detailed render of like the in-game characters in, you know, like cel-shaded anime art style. And it's insane how faithful they were about it.

Like they basically went, we're gonna have the game, the characters look shaded the way everything else does, but the models are going to look as if they were lifted from DMC5, but they're not. Very, very impressive. I would say the best integration I've seen of Dante and Virgil as guests in anything. And other details of their combat styles are like, they just look fully accurate. There seems to be a Virgil boss fight that looks like as it should, like a DMC 5 level boss fight.

And there's even a style meter that kicks in for that. So you can see basically an insane attention to detail put into this where you're like, oh, they're fans of the thing. And I mean, it makes sense given that like, this is one of the action games that's coming posts. Like a lot of action games that are coming post Devil May Cry that are inspired by it are going to have reference for that.

So, looking at the like loving amount of detail put into this or so reminds me of how shovel knight was integrated into rivals of Aether where you're like you really cared about that and wanted it to be just right. I would say that, not that they have to, because I'm sure these gacha games are fucking making bank and you can live in their own world, but Kuro games, I look at this and go, there is no reason why Capcom should not have or ask them to work on a Devil May Cry mobile thing if they wanted to instead

of Pinnacle of Combat, right? There's a direct previous Devil May Cry live service mobile thing that just shut itself down and everyone applauded. And then you have this, which is an incredible integration of these two characters, extremelyfully exhaustively so and it's like oh, yeah They could 100% do it if they wanted to Yeah, but when they're guest characters in punishing great Raven They only need to make fucking Dante and Virgil. They don't have to do the nonsense the peak of combat did which was like Dante with a shotgun! Split every style and weapon into a different character?

Yeah, into its own character. Or give Nevin a really weird human skin recolor? Don't do that. I think the weirdest thing is when you play Punishing Gray Raven, I hop in, oh man, you also still have to play the beginning of Punishing Gray Raven, which is like 35 years old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what I was doing. I realized I was like, I'm going to have to do the tutorial to get to the thing.

And I'm like, all right, let's see it. Did the dialogue. Kind of had that Nikkei sort of intro where I'm like, oh, the robot girl is talking to the human commander and is going to destroy herself to do the limiter release. OK, cool. Get to the fight. And then after that, I saw the conversation kind of kept going.

And I'm not going to lie, I just hit skip. And I was like, yeah, take me to Dante. And he wasn't there yet. And I went, all right, there you go. We're done, until it comes back. But boy, I will always feel like especially booting one of these games up on a desktop PC, which is not, of course, the intended platform. But no, but that you do that front end like Gacha, like button

HUD thing is I know I'm old. It's been the thing for a while, but I will never enjoy it. I will hate it and I will hate it as it becomes normal in other genres, too. He'll hate it so much. It is awful. I just I don't mind the character up front as a like, you know, a part of your like showing off, you know, part of your game design or your characters or your heroes, your champions, your heroes are, you know, that's all fine. I have no issue with that. I just, I hate the fucking everything around it that is not a menu that is meant for humans.

These are the new humans. Yeah. I like I like I used to hear like I remember when it was like there's fucking GDC talks and like it's an SIGGRAPH speeches about like UX and game user interface and you you know design and the whole thing that goes into like coming up with a very like relatable and understandable way to present information to people. And it just, you throw all that out to show the latest events and make sure that you can see the dick jiggle on the new hot boy for the summer season.

This is the summer boy. Oh boy, summer boy. All right. I don't like that term Yeah, you do you love it summer boy summer boys here, and he's and he's fucking he's gonna take all your pulls Okay, all right, okay Whatever you say, buddy. Um... Hey, Breath of Fire 4 is suddenly on GOG.

Fucking great. That game's been... That's a good game, but boys have been hard to get a hold of. GOG's great. Sick! They're doing good stuff over there. Unexpected, out of nowhere. And you know, there's a bunch of quality of life, like obviously, like since PS1, you know, things they've done.

But the surprise Capcom classic release showing up out of nowhere is pretty cool. And it's 10 bucks. Alongside that, Expedition 33 sold a million. Congrats to them. Very cool. And so the Oblivion remaster came out and folks have been looking into it. And I'm probably going to get some of this wrong, so bear with me as I try to relay. I played Oblivion 20 years ago.

I'm going to try to relay this information as best as I understand it. It takes place in a location, however- Yes, that is true. However, Morrowind and Skyrim take place in other locations that Willie Wow, okay So the region's doing it the regions on the map For oblivion show you the other continents that are parts of the other games that don't even Have to be there north Morrowind to east. And you can actually go to those locations,

though unintended, and see that the geography is there. It's pretty empty, but you can walk around the entire landmass of where Skyrim takes place, for example, and they've essentially created what is a giant map that can be used for future reference for further things. In Oblivion, there was a quest way back in the day where you would get up really high

and you could see into Skyrim. Okay. Huh. That was a... I don't remember if you could do that for Morrowind as well. And it was just looking at the land mass from a distance. Yeah, you can see the Throat of the World, which is the big mountain. Okay, so it's not being rendered for no reason.

It's a part of something. No, there is a quest that brings you up there. Okay. And Boundary Breakers have also found what they believe the location for The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be Hammerfall Really and that is something that is also A landmass that stretches beyond render distance, but is a part of where you can get to? Or?

I don't know, I thought it wasn't gonna be, I was under the impression that it wasn't gonna be Hammerfell, it'd be the Black Marsh. Well, I. Maybe that's just Cope, maybe that's just where I want it to go. This appears to be people speculating on shit, and I'm just like

Going off of what they're saying but boundary breaker showing off the different places that go further beyond the where you're supposed to be able to see and some of the screenshots include Hammer fell home of the Red Guards and the rumors. That's right rumored setting of Elder Scrolls 6. I Don't know if that's 6. I don't know if that's... I just hope we don't go to Elfland. I would hate that shit. I fucking hate the elves in the fucking Elder Scrolls setting.

They're fucking awful. Apparently the reason why people believe that is because there were some tweets that included an image detailed map of Skyrim telling people to transcribe the past and the map of the future and the candles point towards a location and people have kind of, I guess, ARG'd it. Bro, I'm going to tell you this. No matter what new region they throw the new Elder Scrolls game at, people are going to be mad as fuck. And it really depends on what people you want to be mad. Because Skyrim, so Morrowind was like the dark elf capital. So a lot of fucking drow looking freaks. And then Oblivion and Skyrim are basically like Roman whites and fucking Nordic whites. And so the remaining

options are the horrible goddamn elves. The Hammerfell is like Arabian, like African, or the fucking Black Marsh, which is all lizard people. Okay. Well, so like, I just kind of wonder if this is a, hey, look at us rendering out all of these demons from our demon catalog. I sure don't expect you're gonna see these new versions of everything popping up for the next 10 years, you know

Are you are you looking at a thing for this remaster that is like? Oh, yeah, and we just built out our plans for the future as well. No, I don't think that at all. No Okay, I don't think that at all And I think the reason that I don't think that is that I think that elder scroll 6 is so fucking far away that they Haven't even Picked where they're gonna put the goddamn thing. I see My job will be in high school before elder elder scroll six comes out Does the does the part where they're talking about the Skyrim landmass to have anything or no that doesn't shock me I remember there being a quest for the thieves guild where you go way up north

Gotcha, okay So we have kingdom come deliverance now we don't need elder scrolls anymore We have peasant simulators What else is going on? Oh, okay. So you know. Okay, so let's start backwards here. Okay, let's go backwards.

A new story has broken where Russia is seeking to seize assets from World of Tanks bosses amidst claims of extremist activities due to Ukraine support. And so this is a story and looking at it, it's like, the history of war gaming is surprisingly complicated because it's located in Cyprus, but it was also in Belarus. When the climate changed, when war fucking broke out, the company split into two companies, one of which is Wargaming and the other which was Lesta, which remained in Minsk in Belarus. And they basically were like, yeah, we have nothing to do with each other. And they were like, we're two separate things or whatever. Then their businesses are no longer involved. So they continued existing. And then Wargaming in Cyprus had some events that were fundraising for ambulances in the Ukraine, in Ukraine. And that has led to basically Russia seeking to seize assets and basically shut down Lesta, the side company, or the other company,

which is now completely separate from when that split happened. So some crazy shit's going on with that. And they're saying, we have nothing to do with the original war gaming, because since that split happened, we're our own thing, and we have nothing to do with that. And Russia's like, we don't believe you.

And so that's what's happening with them. And as I'm looking at this, all I'm thinking is, no wonder weapons and machines and plans and shit were being shared on those forums. There absolutely must have been like some sort of wild security exchange of sorts through being happening through people arguing on World of Tanks forums because you fool me once you don't know that shame on me that fool me eight times

Where we you don't know for sure Z's when when we Also that you're thinking of war thunder right now. Oh my god. I'm You're thinking of war thunder right now. Oh my god. I'm Have that problem. I'm stupid. I'm stupid. I'm sorry I thought I thought that okay was war thunder not world of tanks my mistake world of tanks Sponsored this podcast that means they're cool. I Mean was it that was a long time ago? Yeah, I'm thinking of like that was the one with Arnold sticking his head out of the Tank with the with the with the cigar that one time

Believe so, okay Well, never mind All right, want to talk about Elena Heal me man, uh can I just say that they showed off the Elena trailer and she's coming June 5th and people are gonna get their hands on her at cap at Evo Japan and What they Understood the assignment and did almost everything right

Because who the fuck she looks great. Who is she fighting in that trailer? Akuma her only their friends and that is their best friend that one little joke moment is Super canon the only friend the only contact Akuma has is Elena and she's really good at talking to wild beasts So she's friends with everybody and Akuma's likes down for it, and they're gonna have this great like a Lucky and wild relationship, and I can't wait to see what they do with that. That's a whole lot of fun Especially now that Akuma is a friendly fruit seller and

He's just chilling like that one piece of art way back in the day indeed um, so that's a lot of fun and uh, i'm Looking at that costume, too And I think the classic costume is the best model capcom has ever made It's It's pretty great. I prefer the new costume.

Wow, you're the only one. I do. Yeah. I don't like her new hair at all. I really don't like that bang cut, flat look. But old hair on the new costume would be great. But the old costume is... impeccable. And like, they did such a good job with Mai,

that you can see, like, I was like, oh, they want to make sure the guest character gets as much love and, you know, like, gravitas to make sure that they're done justice. And it's like, no, no, no, our own characters, and we're just leveling it up. There's a screenshot, there's the moment of her putting her head up and looking at the camera. And I saw it side by side with the third strike artwork

of Elena. And it looks insanely accurate. The most impressive thing I've seen. So she looks great. Move wise, yeah, we're seeing all the crazy shit you're expecting to see. They took her overhead mallet smash kick and put it into this new like rolling links song move.

You can go to the steam blog to kind of read about like how they've changed the moves and stuff and it is it is it is interesting to see like how they've adapted her to this system because no matter what she has really long limbs. She's got tons. She was insanely strong in Street Fighter IV in particular. But they teased healing because they knew, everyone's wondering, what's it going to be? Say the line, Bart.

Healing. It's a jump scare at the end, right? It's cut like a horror movie. Now luckily, healing is part of a move that needs to hit. Yes. And more importantly, like healing could be strong in Third Strike, but it was a massive, insanely powerful broken thing in Street Fighter IV because the way you built up your ability to heal your ultra was by getting hit. So take damage to earn the ability to heal your life back and then do it again.

And do it again. And do it again. Do it again. And do it again. And do it again. Whereas beforehand, you had to attack and hit and do damage to build up your meter or whiff buttons. And it was based on like you're fighting, not based on how much you're getting punched in the face. So that's a big difference, right? The resource that you built was way too free in that game. Now you have to land that super and then you forgo

a little bit of extra damage on her level 2 to do the healing. So yeah. I think that's cool. Seems fine. Seems fair. I imagine there's not going to heal too much either way, right? They're going to forgo a little bit. Yeah, focus meter. You could also just focus in back dash to build up ultra as well in Street Fighter 4 So, you know, but I the point the point strike characters should be able to punch to get meter Stand back and go with buttons Yeah and

The this new stage looks excellent looks really cool. Like the new stage looks excellent, looks really cool, like the new music is in everything as well. I think the new stage looks absolutely incredible. I'm probably gonna play nearly exclusively on it. The art team is improving. We're watching them get better over time with each thing. And that happened in the last game too. The characters towards season three

and then ending off in Gill and stuff were all way more impressive than the first seasons were. So it looks great. That's always so weird because when you see it happen, it can't happen too much. Because if it happens too much, it gets super strange when the new guy looks way better than the old guy.

Yeah, but they kind of committed, right? Because it was around the time of Cody and Blanka joining Street Fighter V that we saw them adding those extra little animation flourishes to their moves. So Blanka does the lightning and then stands up and kind of like, rarr, puts his hands up and down. Or like Cody lands like a zonk knuckle and then tightens up his tie. And it's a skippable animation, stands up and kind of like, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, then so be it. But I don't think the early characters look bad. They look great.

It's just very, it's great. It's going from great to fucking amazing, you know, great to excellent. So that was great too. And yeah, instead of just taking the supers that she always had, which were spinning beat, the brave dance and then healing. She's now got just a straight up anti-air, and combo afterwards, super dupey, essentially.

Revival dance is the level two, and then song of the grasslands, where she just fucking juggles your ass up and down into the camera. More than any of her new moves, I think the fact that they start that trailer with her heavy kick just blowing up DJ in his drive rush is the part that like, yes. Because that's an amazing, lovable heavy kick. I love that heavy kick.

Seeing her roll under fireballs always gets me excited because I'm like, that's a new thing and anything that says, fuck your fucking zoning feels like, ooh, nice. Well, I mean, she's a third strike character, right? So she should have something to ignore fireballs. I don't care. I don't care. I'm rolling under it. And if you let me roll twice, the next thing that happens is going to be really strong.

But it's also now the only way to do her overhead, mallet smash, the kind of like rainbow arc kick is out of the roll. So you can't just... All right, that's fine. It used to be super fast and hard to deal with how fast the EX version was, but now it's like, yeah, you have to earn it with that. I saw her level three juggling you off the ground being compared to Fist of the North Star when you start reverse bouncing people. Oh man, I don't know about that.

That seems... No, it really was though, because if... So for anyone who hasn't seen it, there's the Fist of the North Star, um, ArcSys fighting game and it was programmed in such a way where every time you... The longer your combo lasted, the heavier characters would get until they tried to slam themselves into the ground faster and faster so you couldn't keep comboing them. But they fucked up the coding and they made it so that the variable that made you heavy

could go into the negatives. And what that means is you eventually hit the ground and bounce back up into the air to go combo, to get combo for longer So you would start basketball ducking? Over and over and over. It's so cool It's the craziest shit you've ever seen all based on a bug and it's and it makes watching that game at high level Insane and fun. So it looks like she's kind of doing that to you, you know I So it looks like she's kind of doing that to you, you know? I love that her win quote has the element of her doing acrobatics and nearly falling over, just like her old taunt version.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then she balances and she sees a flower. So no, that looks great. I think the, you know, one of the problems is people are waiting a bit too long for her. They're wondering what was going on. So she had to be there for the Nintendo Switch to clearly. I think the you know one of the problems is people were waiting a bit too long for her They were wondering what was going on so She had to be there for the Nintendo switch to clearly It took a minute some characters are and you know they're not evenly spaced out each time they a new character comes out and with six, but I Really like what they're doing with her. I just don't take that haircut. That's it I don't understand why they didn't show off

costumes three and four that are gonna come out alongside her. Why did they not do that? Pat, you seem to be confused because what you're not seeing is the panic as they canceled all the world tour costumes to quickly try and convert all the assets over into costumes for Fighting Ground

for the real versus mode, you know? That thing, dude, World Tour must be making insane money. They're not telling us, but it must be. It must be making some money. It's the only reason why, you know, it must be, it has to explain why they're spending so much time on that. But, um, and I do see too as well that, uh, people do reflect on the fact that there's a lot of, there's a lot of people that really casually enjoy like playing in battle hub

instead of having to go to ranked or even looking for casual matches online. Cause just walking around the arcade, sitting down, getting some good games in with people, showing off your costume, etc. is like a fun thing to jump in and do every now and then. You can feel when that is like a part that other games are not really able to hit on. City of the Wolves, for example, its story mode is fucking whatever. There's nothing going on with that EOST mode. And yeah, there's a level of like, the Battle Hub does scratch that itch for someone that's like, I want to jump back in, but I don't just want to hit find a random casual.

I kind of want to, that little walk around the arcade experience is worth something. So they were smart to design it that way and to have World Tour be as in depth as it was. It says a lot that the only major complaint I have about Street Fighter VI is that there aren't enough of costumes for me to buy. There you go. As complaints go, that's okay. Yeah. I could like it is a moment that I had. I was talking to Reggie about it this weekend.

But I was like, oh, take note of when you're in the good times with at least with a game, right? Don't forget what the dark ages are like. And don't take for granted that you know No guest characters that make you feel horrible Have shown up as well and that the game is just pretty fun and solid right now You know peace is easy to take for granted until you have Whatever the fuck else is going on with these fighting games

Yeah, you know what peace is easy to take for granted until Tekken 8 season 2 comes out Yeah, until your top until your top players are like I'm gonna go do parkour until this gets better You know There you go, so what happens when the timer runs out Pat? I don't know Okay, hasn't run out yet, okay That is, that is malicious. That is it? It feels bad. No. Why? It feels, it feels threatening. It's, it's, it's just a visual aid. I know. I know. It's just a nice little visual aid. Cause we might've over. We might've overdone it last week.

So I structure might be helpful. I don't want to get it for our eyes. I don't want to get into it, but, um, all right. What else is going on? Oh, and by the way, if you do feel it's malicious, I would like to point out that once again, yes, this was Paige's idea and I fully support it. Okay. Alright. Alright. Maybe that's where you're getting like the evil from.

I wish I fucking thought of it. Okay. Well, um, and I got this one for emergencies. Oh, what's that? That is one third the time of the other one. Did you go out and buy those? Yes. No, these are Stan, these are Stan. I see. And when little wooly shows up, I'm probably

gonna super glue his ass to the top of the- oh no, that wouldn't work. It's an hourglass. I see. I see. Okay. All right. Well, I will I will either internally feel a pressure to quell my passions or I will ignore I don't know we'll see but you could get a gigantic sign behind you that says wrap it up when I'm talking About an MMO. I could but I don't just click the button. I don't want to I mean, I think You know People have feelings sometimes Yeah, sometimes it's a bit exaggerated but anyway, it's fine I

Think oh to those of the audio listeners, I'm holding up a a 30 minute Anyway, it's fine. I think- Oh, to the audio listeners, I'm holding up a 15-minute hourglass. Yeah, that's why I was taking a moment to elaborate a little bit more on that, just in case people were just listening and not watching. Yeah. Casey had fun. I think she enjoyed herself. I think- Oh, dude, I'm busting your balls. Um, yeah, Casey had fun. I think she enjoyed herself. I think, Oh dude, I'm busting your balls. No, I know. I mean the people that

freaked the fuck out were kind of, they were overdoing it. And I'm like, Oh, we can relax. We talked to Casey about it. She was like, I don't give a shit. I think we can relax. It's not that big a deal. But if whatever, I can't, you know, I can't tell people how to feel. The only other thing I was gonna bring up was- Wait, yeah you can! What? You totally can!

Can what? You can tell people how to feel, just do it! If you're like, I hate this, it feels, and I hate when they talk about this shit, and it felt uncomfortable, and I was cringing, and I had to turn it off or whatever All right, then I guess you turn it off. There's nothing I can do about that Just stay and search for your emotions and definitely stay for the sponsor. Um

Yeah, I think I think people overreacted and I'm just I'm just leaving it. Are you telling me that somebody on the internet overreacted? I Think that we just said is stupid and it makes me really upset couldn't be me Alrighty I Was going to talk about the time when Baldur's Gate 3 considered making DLC but then went why? And then they didn't. I don't understand this story because they did make DLC. They made tons of it.

But it was all just in the main game. It was just called updates. I guess. Yeah. I guess. They put out 12 classes and then epilogue for free. Like they didn't have to do that. Yeah. Um, no, it's, it's officially just a weird, unfair. Nothing can be compared to this type of story because it would be great if any other game was able to pull off what Larian did here. But it's just, like what? What does? What can?

The closest thing I ever think of is when Bayo went, oh, we were thinking of adding extra weapons as DLC, and then we said, nah, put them all into the base game. That was sick, you know? But it's got two years. So for sick, you know, but I it's like it's got 2 years like so for context, my baby got born and then Baldur's Gate 3 came out like a week later like my baby is Baldur's Gate 3 years old and Baldur's Gate 3 is just

finished its DLC rollout now. That's one Patrick's babies worth of DLC for free. Um, I'm hoping that even though the conversation of like, like just do it like Baldur's Gate three is one of those like, right. But I think I think what will hopefully happen optimistically is that it's like, OK, maybe do the like you'll see people just start doing the part that they can do with the time scale budget and team size they have. If they are like, yeah, maybe we could do this thing or that thing more to the point. I'm gonna wait till I beat the game, but assuming that no balls are dropped and everything continues to be tight, I would tell people, I'd be like, yo, aim for that fucking Expedition 33 type shit.

Hit that double A pocket if you're considering going. I mean, I think you should obviously aim for whatever you can actually hit. Yes, yes, but the scale back, the scale back is so acceptable when the pieces are fantastic, you know So it's like Larry and did something really strange where they they had a certain scale in the first act of the game Which is the largest act and then they just started to like scale up

Infinitely because the early access did so well and then the full game did so well. So they just kept scaling up. But I think that that's weird. It is. And I mean, like, it's a bit of that Hades kind of philosophy in a way. But like, yeah, they were they were prepared to just expand outward. But I think the important thing that kind of might get lost sometimes in talking about how solid BG3 is as a product is that you don't want to mistake scaling for quality, just because you did more, built more, doesn't mean it was all good.

Every time we talk about the amount of things you can do in Baldur's Gate, they're good things, right? They're all good things. It's like because we had empty calories. We had like an Ubisoft generation of what if we put more things on the map? Right? And it's like, are they the same thing? Yeah, more nothing, you know, fucking filler. The problem is, is that the scope, like the pencil pusher nerd at wherever he can understand there's 800 quests in the game, he can't understand, but are they good though? Because you can't

put that on a spreadsheet. Man, but you know, and you, but you certainly can be like, hey, junior game designer, take five quest types and expand it into 800 of them, right? Change the assets a little bit here and there, but overall, you know, assassino! Okay, go catch the thief. You know, like, you just, you know. Kill 12 wolves and get their asses. Like the idea that Baldur's Gate 3 is this new giant insane standard for an RPG, you

know, in terms of the amount of freedom you have and what you can do. But it's not just big for the sake of being big. It's fucking good in what it is. That's what matters, man. So just, yeah, that's what the conversation should be every time it gets compared to. I remember there was an article a while back when Baldur's Gate 3 came out that was like, hey, don't look at this as the new standard. Please, please. This is like a once in a lifetime

fucking game made by the most talented people with infinite time and infinite budget and infinite talent. You can't expect this. And everyone's like, ah, that's so fucking cope. That's such pussy shit. No, you know what? Maybe those people had had something there because, um, like try, I can imagine a team attempting to do, we're gonna do Baldur's Gate three, but us, and just hitting a wall and dying. Okay, well.

Like driving their race car directly into a brick wall. Well, we completed the entire cycle of like, is this the Dark Souls of blank, right? Becoming like the punchline? And then, once we got past that point, you're now still seeing Souls-likes in Ja- and a ton of things that are just, like, forever carrying over. Like, it changed its genre,

and then a bunch of other adjacent ones as well. So, I feel like that's a slightly different situation because one of the reasons Dark Souls became like this incredible template was that Dark Souls doesn't have any fucking cutscenes and voice acting and like it's so fun. It's like bare ass bones. Like raw assets. It's pretty bare bones. Yeah.

The most exciting things that happen are the boss fights Right and it took to Elden Ring till we got like big money Souls game Right. Whereas like Baldur's Gate 3 is just taking old old like our CRPG stuff from like the 90s and being like well What if we just brought every single part of this up to modern standard? Oh, that would be expensive and hard to do as hell, wouldn't it? And it was. Yeah, no, the Baldur's Gate version of this is also like a ridiculous amount of asset set work, you know, by comparison as well. But speaking of Souls, Souls likes and.

Where that expands to. Yeah, so I saw a trailer for Wu Chang Fallen Feathers, which is Wu Chang, which is a new Wuxia, you knowia kind of action game, which is kind of becoming more and more of a thing. And I would say that, especially after Wukong, we're seeing a ton of these Wuxia action. I'm going to just assume this is a Chinese game. Yes, yes. And particularly this looks like yes, and Chinese martial arts, big China vibes, big China vibes, big China martial arts, big China swordplay, and explosions and characters with drapery, spinning and

talking to each other. There's like a really specific series of hit sparks that come off Chinese games. It's so specific. So I bring it up because I wanted to talk about exactly this. Because there was a time, I would say, because at this point, it's now becoming an identity. But there was a time where at first you're like, oh, OK, there's a Souls-like thing, but remixed with their own take

on it, their own flavor. But then you're kind of like, oh, but now you're styling a bit more in a way that is like, OK, you know how a Souls game will have like its slow, whatever, boss fight, spectacular kind of moment? But then stylish character action shit will be more high octane, more over the top and

all of that. And then there's these moments where you kind of hit that in between. I would say when Sekiro was at its last boss and shit like that, at its hypest moments, it's kind of doing that in between thing where you're like, this is almost style souls a little bit. You know? And so it kind of feels like this is that as well. But they're constantly sort of hitting that in between space. You know, I was kind of thinking, I'm like, I don't know what criteria

you're going with here, but do you have more moves than the boss? You know, do you have stamina or do you just go do kind of whatever? Yeah. But like, they all are landing exactly in that space and so this one's there and then neo lives in this Neo absolutely neo for sure, but like but neo moment to moment outside of like one of those boss fights you still are running around an environment and kind of soul sing as opposed to Hitting a verse, you know, or a style room. And I guess that, you know, we'll have to see from one to the other.

But yeah, I guess Wusha action is kind of the way to go with it. It's going to take a sec. But there are some four or so I think that are also supposed to like. I feel like there's about five of these things or so that are kind of on the way. And shit looks it looks cool. It looks cool. I kind of just. I'm trying to remember because I think we saw Phantom Blade zero.

Right. For it was like it was like a part of the PlayStation, it was like a state of play trailer. Is that the one made by one guy? No, that is Lost Soul Aside. Oh my God. And China's coming at us with these action games, man. And then there's Where Winds Meet, which is the other crazy traditional stylish one.

And then there's the one with the kid on your back. You know? I know that one. There's one where you have a kid on your back. And like you're doing the wusha. I don't even know. Hold on. Battle of Antara?

What the fuck? Yeah, okay. The Perceiver. Wow, there it is. Yep. There's there's there's a bunch. There's a bunch and then and you know, they're they're upcoming or or about to drop or so. But this is fascinating that China has decided that Wu Xia action game is the fucking way

to go. They've they've they've locked into it. And well, it does make sense when you consider the movies and like the the you know spect to spec spectacle of like high octane fights. Where's like or is like Confucius's gate three Or Here's the question. Where's modern-day? You know, where's modern-day walking around town and like getting into some shit true crime streets of Shanghai

I don't know. I wonder would it be like hey, we don't want to show off our city having crime and bad things I don't know. I don't know, you know, but I kind of wonder that would be that I'm curious if we if we get there eventually At the very least Yeah, well, hey sleeping dogs is not is that, Sleeping Dogs is not, that's a western ass, that's a western ass western game, y'all. If my name is in the credits, that is not a thing. That game takes place in New York City, Hong Kong. That game is not from China. But no, yeah, the flowing cool sword play sparks and make sure that when you do a big

energy explosion and you twist, that you create a yin yang. With a yin yang pattern with the petals of the flowers, you know? I'm like, yeah, yeah yeah there it is so yeah this one is Wu Chang fallen feathers all right let's take some letters okay Word oh no damn looks like that I Just wanted to do it I Have you want to send in a letter send it to castle super beast mail at gmail.com. That's castle super beast mail at gmail.com You start fucking talking about ff14 and I'll bust this bad boy out on you Oh my god, you have the same one!

Get the fuck out! I don't You have the same hourglass? I don't, it's not, it's not, but that's why I asked It's highly similar! But you know what the difference is? What is it? What's that say?

Well that's more combat? No, this is the same hourglass. Okay, well this is the Mortal Kombat- I just have the generic- I have the Mortal Kombat branded hourglass. Well how long is that one? I don't know, maybe like 15 minutes or something? This one's 15 but it fits in my hand hand yours is fitting in your hand that might be 30 No, this is definitely less than 20. It's definitely less. I remember. Okay. We both have the same

Yeah, I remember when I got it from 100% because this so your hourglass your hourglass is to limit fighting games, but mine is to promote them Because this is from what's his name, Garrus. Is that hey, listen, let me ask you, is that the is that the hourglass that you use to tell you to stop playing Mortal Kombat after you started? This is you start when you stop at it. You flip it over.

No. 15 minutes later. I have I have combo broken your anti fighting game hourglass with a fighting game Promoting hourglass with a mortal kombat logo can see how this works out because gear is that's why fighting games You can't stop me try That's my guy I'll die before I stop Take all y'all with me You can tell people I actually had it right there. Wait, when you're looking at your monitor and you saw me pull this out, you were looking

past your monitor to the same hourglass? Yes! Going, you have the MK hourglass? Okay. No, I would never have an MK hourglass. Damn. I'm glad that it's MK2. Specifically, it's like, yeah, that's the one. That's the fucking fighting MK hourglass. Damn. I'm glad that it's MK2. Specifically, it's like, yeah,

that's the one. That's the fucking fighting game hourglass. That's technically a fighting game. Make it hurt. We got one coming in. Let's see. Dear Red Grave Woolly and Seed of Sparta Pat. Howdy. my name's Jamie and long time fan who owes two of you something, owes two of you for getting me into DMC. Writing for the first time after listening to CSB, talking about Netflix's Devil May Cry and the rug pull it ended up being.

So I wanted to ask, what are your worst experiences with Trojan horse adaptations and why do you think these damn things keep getting made? I'm specifically talking about stuff that looked recognizable from the outside, but were only masquerading as the material it claimed to be. For as awful as Ninja Theory's DMC is, I don't count it because it had the decency to not wear the skin as the rest of the franchise for the most part. All right, I'm going to just tell you right now, every, every, I don't think, I think every version of every story that Wishbone told was the best version.

Oh my God, let's go. Rip Van Winkle, Wishbone style, let's go. Yes. Hell yeah. The Odyssey with Wishbone. The Odyssey with Wishbone. The Wishbone style? Let's go! Yes! Hell yeah. The Odyssey with Wishbone? The Wishbone Odyssey. He's got his little puppet hands shooting the arrow? Through all the different fucking arrowheads. Oh man! Yo, Boris. 100.

Yes, okay. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Fucking Rip though, cause that dog's super dead for sure. What's the story, Wishbone? What's the fucking story? It was a good one. I think Wishbone was like a legitimately fantastic fucking way to get kids to like read about, like, not read, but hear about the fucking Odyssey. Yeah. And Cyrano de Bergerac and shit.

I paid attention. Also, it was on in the morning before the school bus. So it was right on time to eat the cereal and watch, you know, morning stuff before school. So yeah, you caught that. 100%. Like what elementary school situation is going to encounter Cyrano de Bergerac? What's a Wishbone? Remember the dog from Frasier? Oh my fucking God, you fucking Gen Z piece of shit. Wishbone was the dog from Frasier? Oh my fucking god, you fucking Gen Z piece of shit. Wishbone was the dog from Frasier

going on adventures through history. And- It was not the dog from Frasier. No, but it was like that kind of dog. And- It was Jack Russell Terrier. And, and, was it not the exact same one? No, man. Okay. Well, it was also going through history and teaching you, and at some point,

he had to make a really high jump. Yeah. And he could do it every time, and you're like, oh, look at him go. I just thought one of the best things about Wishbone is that whenever they had to have the dog handle like a human object, it would just cut away, and you would see these off screen dog puppet hands.

Come on, it's so fucking funny, dude. Triumph the Comic Dog Pause, a million percent. There we go. As far as Trojan Horse media goes, I mean, so yeah, okay, you got that. Cats, can I say cats? I saw someone say Netflix cowboy bebop, but it is like, you see live action outside. We knew, we knew. Yeah, I mean, okay, I saw someone say Netflix cowboy bebop, but it is like you see live-action outside and we knew you know

Yeah, I mean, okay. I was like the death note live-action movies not the Netflix one, but the actual the Japanese ones were Like doing death note until they swerved hard towards the end and just did their own thing until they swerved hard towards the end and just did their own thing. But like, I don't, I'm trying to think of something where it's like, it appeared to be what you thought it was and then it just turned out to not be that at all. Oh, you know, I'm seeing people in the chat say

the Halo TV show. Oh, yeah? Okay. Where he starts to take his helmet off and have sex with women and people are like, what the fuck? The suit should be doing that yeah man I have I have not even bothered to watch the Yakuza live-action adaptation which says a lot about it oh

Scott Pilgrim takes off is a Trojan horse adaptation in a great way. In a good way. So there's that. All right, let's see here. Here's one coming in. Isaac from Texas. Says, dear Mr. DEI and Mr. Also DEI. Wait, what? Don't think about it.

I'm not that short. There's other stuff in there. Is there? Probably. I'm big into cooking and down to eat just about anything. Plenty of vegan fiends and have plenty of vegan friends and recently started making vegan meals and to my surprise, it slaps pretty hard. I feel like I've unlocked a new skill tree and I've ignored my whole life because of the tasty meta. I'm on a cut to drop weight so far by vegan dishes have been pretty effective. So your vegan friend jumps you and ties you and

your meat loving ass up and says, pick your poison, a carnist trash. What's your last meal going to be? And it has to be vegan. I don't know, something Indian. Any- Yeah, yeah. Dan Dan sack Corma Like literally literally anything vindaloo that shit all that shit is fantastic Pishwari Nan Apple I don't know fucking like I have no issue with vegan cuisine at all until They put the word chicken or beef into the name of the fucking

food and then I lose my mind. The thing where instead of finding your own path, you have to imitate a fraction of our power, right? This is the problem. Stop imitating and making fake chicken and tofurkey and, impossible meat and just go your own path, go your own way. I can go for like a pizza. Sure.

And like, it's funny because we were just, I was just talking to Punch, Rob and Reggie about this, but so there's a kind of roti called like doubles where it's essentially like chickpeas and like a curry. And I'm usually in the in roti for the meat. I will say I was a hater initially, but then giving it a chance, I was like, nah, this is pretty good. And I usually am not a fan of chickpeas at all, but the curry sauce was pretty solid. So I could go with- I mean, curry sauce will carry a lot. Yeah. Yeah

But I'm just like but if it's that good already, how good would it be with that curry and meat though? And that's kind of where I'm And you're describing like the Indian food and I'm like, yeah Dan sack is great But you know what's even better chicken Dan sack or you know lamb vindaloo or Korma. It's like, just throw that fucking, you know? It's not gonna make it worse. So yeah, there you go. All right, last one.

Can I just have the sauce from a Korma dish? Okay. Like just a gigantic bowl of the sauce? So if you do the right thing when you have Indian and you save that and you use it on food later on, right? I mean, I save it inside my stomach. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Fair enough.

Because you bet your ass that I like you get a little bit of extra Nan and you take that butter chicken And then you just you know you keep that and next day you got some some Continuing fucking great food. Yeah, no I'm gonna save it inside of my body sure 10 to 15 hours Or if you got some rice that needs a you know need some life Is rice vegan? Yeah, it doesn't involve the animal I guess or I don't know Ask fucking Justin Timberlake on the Simpsons. I'm not gonna I'm not you know, I'm not gonna call up JT. Okay. Early on, because the difference between vegetarian and vegan

from learning that stuff at church was like, I was like, you know what? In both cases, I'll be out. I'll be over there, so you do your thing, y'all. Okay, here, one more. It's corn vegan? It's not animal, so yes. Yeah, but animals get killed in the harvesting.

Yes, true, but I think it has to be direct byproduct for it to count. It's not animal so yes, you have an animals get killed in the harvesting yes true But I think it has to be direct byproduct for it to count Like oh, okay. You can't enjoy the blood you have to know no if if if suffering baby Chickens were used to like feed the ground that the corn grew out of Okay, that would still be fine because it in of itself is still corn. Hey, how is honey not vegan? The bees want you to take the honey. We're working together.

We have a system with the bees. Milk is coming out of the other animal is involved. another animals is involved I don't know the rules are confusing and I could learn them with a single Google search but I don't want to hey I have a question for vegans I have a legit question this is so this is a real question I'm not even joking what put this out of the why do you exist okay you're growing you're growing like you're growing carrots right and you're growing all organic, like fucking no pesticide carrots and shit, right? And you're like, it's the most vegan, it's a carrot. It's not complicated as well as all, right? But then a groundhog breaks into your fucking, your field and starts

eating your carrot and then you beat it to death with a hammer. Is the carrot still vegan? I would say no. Yeah, so, remember in metaphor when you're arguing against that one politician You're arguing Against that one politician who's like The fact that we eat meat is horrendous and this is the problem with the world today

And you actually have to sit there and go Okay sure and go, okay, sure, but what are we supposed to do overnight for people that survive on this? I just saw somebody in the chat just say, no, you have to let him eat the carrot. I don't know why, but that's just completely fucking... Are you familiar with the Lone Star Tick? I am familiar with the Lone Star Tick. Keep that shit away from me.

Okay, good. For those who don't know, it's a tick that bites you and once you're bitten, you develop an aversion and basically a phobia of meat. Yeah, it makes you very sick if you eat red meat. Like violently ill, like you barf. It's a jerk ass tick. Can't believe that exists.

Nature is fucking crazy. Nature's crazy. I would say that a nature so violent and apathetic as to create an animal such as the Lone Star Tick has, you know, some animals that deserve to be eaten. Not the ticks though, that'd be gross. All right. Last one over here. Dear Vanguard and Duelist, I've been a fan for 14 years. Thank you. When I was a kid, I used to draw different fantasy jobs and classes on my notebook and my classmates took notice. So we started to play a paper and pen RPG during our breaks.

Each of them chose a different class. So I drew them and made them go on different adventures. I wasn't familiar with the concept of tabletop games. So instead of fairly rolling dice, I just randomly generated numbers in my head Sure, this all went on for a couple weeks and then one classmate wanted to join in but since he started late his stats were All low compared to everyone else's he didn't want to feel so weak And so he and left out so he offered me his lunch money to give him a boost Naturally as a dumb greedy kid I accepted and gave him a boost to catch up a bit.

However, he still wasn't the most powerful, so he kept offering me money and to keep making his character stronger. This kept going for a month where he became way too overpowered and everyone else lost interest in the game, so naturally they just kinda of stopped playing come on I didn't give any of his money back

hustle or scam You gave him what he wanted did you here's my I have one clarifying question Did you promise a live service for ten months or so for the cost of his lunch money? If not, you know he didn't. If not, that is a clean, pristine hustle. Yeah, absolutely. 100% unadulterated, not an ounce of scam anywhere in that. You provided the goods and services for which you were paid. That is distilled. Distilled hustle. That is a genuine transaction. And furthermore, it was not your fault or his when the player base dried up. In fact, I would go further as to say it was the other

players' fault for not coming to you and asking for similar deals. That's possible as well, but maybe they couldn't afford them. They could have done that. But if they couldn't afford them then they just stopped playing and when you check Steam Spy and the player count goes to zero well Whose fault is that? Right you gave the boosts that were paid for there was nothing there was nothing about that That was misrepresented whatsoever. Everyone got exactly what they wanted. I Think the wildest thing about the story is that it would have been very different if the new player hadn't like offered as like the very first option.

Like they probably would have juiced their stats if they just said, hey man, I'm really behind. Can you just juice my stats? Because I know they went right to I'll give you money. Yeah. Again, like like not knowing what D&D was we're just all in your head Anyways, it's kind of incredible But I'm kind of just imagining them then going up to like the friends that don't want to play the game anymore and be like Hey, don't you guys want to play and they're just like lol dead game?

Brilliant perfect fantastic you should feel no guilt. Take care everybody. Have a good week everybody.