Castle Super Beast - CSB319: Double Styrofoam

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Expédition 33's Endless Build Possibilities As Game News Crumbles, The Castle Reluctantly Soldiers On Are We Already In The Slowest Industry Crash? The Future of Devil May Cry: Remake or Sequel? Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to http://shopify.com/superbeast to sign up for your $1-per-month trial period. - Go to http://auraframes.com/ and use code SUPERBEAST to get $35-off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carver Mat frame. - Go to http://factormeals.com/castle50off and use code castle50off to get 50% off and free shipping on your first box.  - Click this link https://sponsr.is/bootdev_BLTZZ and use my code BLTZZ to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Director Guillaume Broche: "it would've taken one "25 years" to navigate all the bureaucracy in a AAA studio just to get started on the game." Polygon sold to GameRant owner Valne, tSome staffers have been laid off or will no longer be with the publication. Fandom Blows Up Giant Bomb Microsoft Raises the Price of All Xbox Series Consoles, Xbox Games Confirmed to Hit $80 This Holiday Silksong is set to be fully playable at a museum exhibit in Australia on September 18, meaning that’s a good chance the game will release before that exhibit debuts. Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2 Gears of War: Reloaded announced for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC - Gematsu

["Sailor Moon Theme"] Yo yo, how we doin'? I'm doing well. How about you bud? Not too bad. Okey doke. Yeah. I guess, I mean, I'll, as of a couple of minutes ago, got the clear to post it, so I just did. But hey, get your fucking, get the hourglass out

Right out. Oh, yeah. Yeah, get it out immediately Yeah, what we got I'm gonna be I'm gonna be hosting. I'm gonna be run doing the Evo Japan watch party officially Oh fucking say hey good job this this weekend, so So what the fuck are they gonna show about virtue fighter you can tell me now, bro. There's no one listening So I'm gonna secretly whisper it into my ear. I am gonna be told what's I'm gonna be sent the Stuff like as it's going down and and I don't know anything in advance So I will we will you know that this hourglass can't see what a virtue fighter. That's fucking crazy. That's crazy It's like it's completely invisible Okay, so if I if I start with the words virtue fighter, we've created an exploit, you know That's fucking crazy. That's crazy. It's like... It's completely invisible. Okay.

So, if I start with the words Virtua Fighter, we've created an exploit for Hourglass Tech. Where is this? Get this out of here. We don't need that. Yeah, no. So, I'm going to jump over onto the Evo channel with Reggie and we're going to follow, well, Evil Japan basically is happening, you know, this weekend, 9th, May 9th, 10th and 11th, and the hours are Japanese hours, which means while everybody is, you know, catching Z's. And so we're going to basically wake up the next day and check out everything that was interesting that happened throughout the, you know, the sleepy time hours and then watch announcements, top eights, everything going on.

It's going to be live or is it going to be like regular human times for the West? Exactly. Exactly. so me so I'm going to be live And watching shit that happened a few hours ago during sleep time when it was okay Not human time so the so the total total freakazoid freak people Who they need it? Yeah, I'm gonna be doing it live at dead ass. Yes pan hour Yes, I am NOT. I am NOT live live at dead ass Japan hours. Yes, I am not live during insane dead Japan hours. I am live from regular Eastern noon to 5 p.m. And if you wanna catch up on what happened with Evo Japan,

you tune in to watch us going over that stuff. That's probably the good move. Yeah, and it's also like the highlights know, the highlights and the best stuff, because it's also a long, full day of a lot going on, pools and this and that and everything. So we're gonna be doing it for normal Western awake hours. Normal, this part, you know, there's the two parts, this part.

There you go. Yeah, which makes's the two parts, this part. There you go. Yeah, which makes a ton of sense, obviously, because asking people to fucking, you know, yeah, just no problem, 3 a.m. to fucking 9 or whatever. No, it's gotta be live, man! What, for who? For who? Yeah, so, you know, that should be a lot of fun.

And yeah, tune in, tune in and that'll be going down. And yes, I'll keep my hourglass by the ready. But the... It's probably going to be a while. Flip that again. I don't know what's... I don't know. I mean, I'm hoping cool shit gets announced. Certainly

There's always a monger thinks they'll be for a true fighter stuff So if you're in the country, it seems like the right time and place to be like hey people making this thing You look like you have something to say do you you know? Also VF has like a much greater presence in Japan than it ever did out here. I Think they would be fine simply revealing Costumes for Akira one by one with each trailer Here comes like Akira without the hat. I think they could just put out like one match

between Akira without the hat. I think they could just put out like one match between Akira and Stella and with no commentary and no explanation of a single thing that's going on and just be like, there. There you go. That's what you get for the next six months. Tell us about that map environment, you know?

Let's take a look at the chickens in the stall. Oh dude, that's the Japanese style presentation where they just zoom in further and further and further on the last thing you ever care about. It's so soul-crushing. It's so awful. But we have just figured out how to do it ourselves over here. But I will say that actually I'll use that as a jumping off point because when you're seeing those details rendered in engine, when it's like, yo, we just figured out in the

RE engine how to do this thing. So we're super proud of it, even though other tech figured out how to do that automatically really quickly a while ago. 35 years ago. But there is something to the charm of handcrafted, we did it ourselves feeling worlds. Oh, absolutely. Right? And this brings me to my big topic, I suppose,

of this week, which is Expedition 33. Whoa, buddy. I don't, ho. Is anybody even playing that game? Man. Oh, man. Two million. So. Already.

Okay, so I've played a lot more. I am now at act two of Claire Obscure. Oh you are now leagues beyond my ass. I have I've been taking it slow. Okay. So I got stuck in that gastro village for like two hours, bro. I will well So now we are seeing the timing of stream time versus personal time. You know? And guess what? Usually it's stream time versus other guys' stream time.

But now it's like, yeah, you're crushing this shit. Well, because this is what everybody else watching gets to do, which is sit at home and just lock in, play, enjoy, go get dinner, play a bit more, and then be like, all right, cool. And get really far and do stuff because you're just pushing through it. So yeah, obviously, I'm not going to spoil anything, but just talking around it, the excellence continues and Things escalate and yeah and then act two is is a fun turning point. I think that the story of everything That has this the way the story is presented continues to be as strong as the intro

Right. So like I feel like that intro walking through the town is great for setting up characters, motivations and establishing things. And that whole idea of being in the dark about what's happening. While not knowing what's going on, I love the characters, the conversations that the characters have with each other in regards to that, you know, the disagreements they have about like what to do, how to proceed when you don't know what the fuck is happening are extremely realistic. It's very believable. Which is crazy because it's an overtly fantastical setting. It is story story picture book shit. Yes. I also think that this is some of my favorite depictions of people being very human in a way where, how would I describe this?

So I think that like there's a lot of instances of dialogue and things that, you know, you so okay, you can feel the flavor of the writer and dialogue in different settings and you can kind of tell like, okay, if you're hearing Hades characters talking to each other, they're gonna be a little bit sardonic, they're gonna be a little bit sultry, you're gonna hear that vocal fry and they're gonna kind of be quippy, you know?

But then they'll have meaningful things they say, you know, and those moments will slow down. But for the most part, you're kind of like, there's an eyebrow raised as you're, you know, and those moments will slow down. But for the most part, you're kind of like there's an eyebrow raised as you're, you know, with the tone of the conversations type of thing. And I feel like there's moments that happen where for in order for drama to be facilitated in a story, people have to kind of like, get really like, they have to blow things out of proportion in some cases or, you know, react very extremely given circumstances and kind of like do things where you're like,

oh, God damn it, that's just gonna lead to confusions and problems and you know. Freaking out, I won't listen to you. Right, and you're kind of hoping, you're waiting on a just talk moment type of thing. And I feel like what you have here are characters that go through those moments and then like go, okay, wait, hold on, right? They second guess themselves and or like there's a

moment where things kind of calm down and they just kind of are like, yeah, okay, no, right. What you're saying makes sense. Sorry. Which is like, yeah, yeah, people do that, right? People make decisions and then they stand on them sometimes. What other times they go like, wait, no, what you just said, I completely, right, I agree with you there. Or they're convinced, you know, and conversations are not just characters with a list of things that they feel bouncing in reaction to the world around them. And then the conversations don't really, you know, move people too much one way or the other. I feel like you don't see enough moments of people being convinced by things and or having back and forth uncertainty reflected in conversation in ways.

I feel like there's a lot of times where you're like, well, I know what my game is and I know I'm going to perhaps reveal this much truth and then you know what your game is and you're like, well, I know what my game is and I know I'm going to perhaps reveal this much truth or And then you know what your game is and you're gonna be like I I want my agenda no matter No, even even very beginning. There's a real like we're all in this shit together for realsies Yeah, for sure. Regardless of our personal like ideological differences We're gonna bounce off of that in a attempt to be constructive at the very least. It's really interesting to be playing that in contrast to cyberpunk, which I also love. But cyberpunk-

It's not constructive for shit. Everybody's up to their own shit. No one can truly be trusted. In moments where trust is happening, it's hard, hard earned through either strenuous negotiation, force or, okay, god damn it, we're both gonna die if we don't work together right now, so fine. I don't care what you believe or what I believe, we have to get out of this alive, right?

Which is what cinema tends to be in action movie kind of logic in a way where it's just like, I don't agree with you, you don't like me either, but fuck it, that's a bigger problem, so let's deal with that. But and that's all fine given the setting in the world they're in. But I just, I think for this one where we're, we're especially dealing with people that are familiar with each other and, you know, also have a sense of like time is urgent and

of the essence and decisions matter, you know, I keep thinking about the idea of how something with the setting here, of course, is that people don't have a lot of time. And when you get introduced to, I forgot the name of the race and mass effect, but the ones that are- The Solarians. Yeah, the Solarians that don't have a lot of time. They live like 30 years. Exactly. So I'm like, what happens to humans with the Solarian thought process? You know what I mean?

Where you're like, oh, our metabolism hasn't changed at all, but socially, we're like old men. There's an early detail when you're talking to Mael in the very first part of the prologue where they're talking about the gammage and how she doesn't have to come because she's like 16, right? And they're going on the gommage and how she doesn't have to come because she's like 16, right and He's they're going on expedition 33 and he's like well yours isn't gonna be for another nine years And I'm like what the fuck why would it be enough? Oh because as you're going up one Yes, it's going down one so this is becoming super super fucking dire like right away

They only have like five more years to solve this before it is that you're sending over 14 year old Yes, no You have to do the math and meet in the middle on where your young age is and where time will catch up to you You know it goes up you go down Sorry, you go up it goes down and you you eventually hit that you know your your your finale point so Anyway so all that to say that, you know, there's some I just really like the conversations the characters have with each other and they feel yeah, very believable and well thought out and you know, even in brief, you know, in moments of just like mild disagreement going along with each

other and then discovering more together. The party overall is great and a whole lot of fun. Now that being said, of course, the gameplay is fucking immaculate. And you know, we have described the defensive systems which involve learning how to dodge attacks and then when you're feeling confident in the timing, go for a parry. And then you individually parry all the hits and you get a nice big counter which is a huge payoff and makes hard fights easier. But you get these-

There's a detail to that that I didn't pick up right away, which is if an enemy attacks like multiple separate characters, the last person to parry can do it by themselves and still get it. Oh, you can get an attack that hits each person like, yeah, twice or like two people twice. And if you get, let's say you have an attack that goes to rank one and then rank three and then rank one and then rank three again. If you fuck up rank one but perfectly nailed the rank three parries twice, the rank three character will do their counter regardless. So yeah, so like it doesn't matter what's happening as a whole as much as when you're

individually parrying with the characters. Hey, you got it perfect for the third party member. She's going to do her counter even if you fucked up the first That's awesome. And in terms of just like Fucking hype right when you I don't know if you have you have seen it when you parry with the whole team. I Sure have when the whole team parries together fucking gang, right? you just get you get the big sequence and then instead of like Gustav counters or whatever you get

Expedition 33 33 performs a counter and you're like oh The whole team it's nice like the game has been like so so cool About all of its like gameplay mechanics in those fights. The two that come to mind is the chromatic Nevron that is very, very, very early, right before you even go to the water place, where it's like, it will kill you in one hit. It's going to kill you in one hit every time. So there's only one thing to do and that's parry it 178 times in a row mm-hmm

Go for it The only it's the only way to do it and eventually you learn that timing and if you're if you're stubborn enough like I am You sit there and do it. You know yeah, and then it tells you hey, man Here's how many times you're paired yeah, it was your total damage. Here was the amount of total damage now mimes and chromatic nevrons are fucking tiddlywinks compared to a Real one that shows up later. Yeah, there's this okay. There's esko

There's multiple levels of super boss, right? So I love that you've got the ones we've seen then you've got your fucking I love that. You've got the ones we've seen, then you've got your fucking colossal Titans. You know what I mean? And then you've got just like the, don't even bother unless you're prepared to like, like this is just not realistic. You have the, this seems insane,

like challenge that has introduced itself so far. And I sat there, I spent a bit of time with it, and then I did a couple of things where I'm like, okay, hold on, let me test the waters a bit. You see it looks impossible, go back, change your buildup, right? And that's like, are you committing to resetting all of your abilities, all of your skills,

bringing in the right party members? Yes, I am, I'm gonna commit to it. Give it your best shot. Does it still seem impossible? Absolutely, okay, fucking hold on. Right party members. I'm gonna commit to it. Give it your best shot. Does it still seem impossible? Absolutely. Okay fucking hold on this might be endgame or never, you know but yeah, there's like unless Because the let's you just yeah bang it out but the level of deception on

Those parries and dodge timings gets so sinister. So that was my other one. Like we have delay stuff. We have stuff. But then there's also like there was a there was an attack on a fairly early boss. It was the boss of the water area. And I got like it tricked me because they give you the jump tutorial. Yeah. Okay. Where you have to jump over moves and they're like if there's a move that you can jump over it says there's a flash and then you fight that boss and the first move it does is jump it jumps anyway okay so I yeah button to jump and then it hit me five fucking times in a row you didn't because it was just an attack called jump. Simon didn't say jump, bitch.

Oh my god. Simon. You tricked me. Simon, I pas-ee, jump. I was tricked and confused. Yes. And bamboozled. No, the enemy jumped and landed and hit the ground,

but yes, there is that jumping prompt where you've gotta fuckin' time it and then you get your air counter, which is super sick. And now you're paying attention to multiple little rhythm game things, which you know what, considering I was talking about like, you know, I love the gameplay and like Everhood and stuff like that. And yeah, let's have it be one genre on offense and one genre on defense. What a simple but brilliant, elegant thing. And then yeah, QTE-ing as well, which it's interesting because some really good moves get really tricky timing with their QTEs. You'll notice that the timing for landing

overcharge, which is Gustav's big blast palm, is much tighter than some of the others. The window for landing it in the perfect zone. Yeah, they kind of do that as well in a couple of different places, stacking them to overlap with each other. They do want it to be challenging to handle everything on offense and defense aside from the RPGing that you're doing in a pick enemy and attack kind of way. The times where you're aiming your gun to shoot the weak point and the weak point is kind of obscured and covered up and you're like, ooh. Or like, you know, there's a boss that we had to beat on it for a while before the weak point was like no longer covered by a piece of armor.

Yeah. Yeah. There's that, right? And shit, what was I gonna say? Oh yeah, there's an enemy that jumps forward at one point and is just rocking you with combos, right? Lefts and rights. And you see, they actually, they do a hook and then an uppercut, and then they jump forward and they fake the hook and then come with a cross. You know?

And you're like, you just did a fake on me and I went, ugh, and then got flattened. You straight up boxer style, huh, you know? You twitched, bitch. It's great, it's a lot of fun. But when I was starting this, I brought up the, we did it ourselves conversation with like, you know, hey, we figured out in From soft or in the RE engine,

how to make our own little hut and how that looks. The one thing I'm going to say many hours into Expedition 33 right now that I think is, so, okay, I pray it's a flaw that is like, kind of bugs me and it's not flaw that is like, kind of bugs me. And it's not fully their fault for this, but it's this. I praise how this game is understandably and reasonably AAA, sorry, AA, in that you can see,

like I said, the map limitations are all very targeted. And even when it expands and you get lost in a way, it's still not anywhere like a giant, crazy, sprawling, open thing. Even your overworld, it's all very contained, which it needs to be for this to be a reasonable, affordable thing that is not gonna suffer in quality because everything is bloated out with filler, right?

So that is great. There is a feeling that you get that is just a, it's an unfortunate byproduct of unreal engine generated like static environments. generated like static environments. Uh-huh. Where unfortunately you kind of know and you're looking at a world that is, there's nothing that really it moves

or interacts with anything in any way. So it feels like you're dropped into a just setting, you're dropped into a box that doesn't feel alive you know yeah no it feels like a 360 game and like overtly like a 360 game actually kind of looks like with the way the aliasing works on DLSS on my PC it kind of looks like a ps3 game hmm it looks like it should live alongside Lost Odyssey and Folklore, if you remember that game. I... Folklore barely, not really. It's a little more obscure, but it's got those vibes on it. Because I think what's kind of what you kind of end up with, and there's these little bits that

that suddenly make a difference, right? But like when your environment is littered with a whole lot of things that you walk by and kind of walk into and touch, but nothing moves or nothing really feels like you interact with it. It's the problem I had with mortal shell, right? Where you're like outside of a couple of things, everything is just baked into the world. No interactable objects fall over with physics. Nothing really happens there. And it's not necessary, it's not necessary,

but it adds to a feeling of like, this whole world is not alive, right? That pile of jars is just never going, doesn't move at all. That hut is a part of the ground. It's not really a hut. And the little things that happen in, you know, I don't know, like a random, not even this gen,

but like last gen games or so, like in a random, say, FromSoft thing or whatever, to just compare, or even like a, any game where you see like a building that like, I don't know, it might blow up, right? Or you might see a door that explodes some way. Or you might see jars that you run into that fall over. Rolling through jars in a Souls game even

adds a little bit of the world is here and there's objects in that world. And because here you just walk up to things and press square, it doesn't feel like the world is alive. Well, I think you're completely right on that. And I think that is absolutely a factor of like their budgetary concerns. Reasonable. Improving that would have cost like a lot.

But it's a really good thing that as you were describing that, I'm like, oh, you mean it feels like static and lifeless? Like, I don't know, a painting? Yeah. I mean, you could you could go with that part of it. But I think I think for sure, if anyone and's like I've gotten a bit here, but if you have played, I guess like asset flip Unreal games, you end up with this sort of feeling, you know? I feel that's like fairly unkind. It's not to compare the fact that they've grabbed like this is a artistic like masterwork with like

how awesome the original things they're creating are. I'm not comparing it to say that like you grabbed someone else's work and just stuck it in there. What I am saying is that like again, with Mortal Shell, that's a great comparison point, a big beautiful empty area in that game where there was nothing that moved or that you interacted with or so. And so you kind of felt like, I'm dropped as a piece into this world and let's go find all the lights and press square on them, you know?

And it's not at all an important thing in the grand scheme where you're like, you know, when we're talking about reasonable budgetary restrictions on excellent games. But I don't want you to focus on the bad part of the implication of me saying asset flip creation. It's more the part where you're like, if you grab the level,

much like if you were to have like whatever, hire this man, Sonic, Kirby, Mario, running through a beautiful field or whatever. That field is also kind of empty with nothing going on. There's a tree there, you hit it, it just kind of sits there. And there is an effect in earlier games and current games where by having little things

that move and break and exist in the world you just kind of like feel more like you're in that setting as opposed to you know I'm almost lacking the full words to describe it but that's exactly the word is on Beyonce not on Beyonce no no that's not what I said. But that's kind of it. That's kind of it. No, no. You're talking about that minor detail place in realism, right? You'll see, let's take a tree in some fucking whatever game, and just the fact that the

tree just kind of wiggles just a little bit in wind that's not really there gives it a more sense of place rather than be like being like completely static. Yeah, I would definitely say something like that. Or you know, yeah, things that react to you moving around, you know, like, there's another example of this. And I've seen it, I've seen this as a trick in other games as well, where there's a point where you have to run across some logs that are floating on water, right? And you have to balance to not fall off. And when you're running across the logs,

you very quickly notice that actually the logs are static completely. And everything is locked in the world in its exact location. The water animation is the only thing that's moving up and down to kind of make it give the impression that the logs are bouncing But they're not you know and so you see it up close, and you're like oh, okay, right This is a more affordable trick for this where you just the water dynamics will sell the idea that you're watching a log bouncing On the water, but it's it's an illusion up close. You know I feel like

so but it's an illusion up close. I feel like, so this is at its core fairly nitpick. I do believe that they made the correct decision to cut all that fluffing it up for more or just tightening it up. But there's kind of this energy energy of like guy who loads up shooter and like fires 400 bullets into the ground and goes, look, the decals are disappearing. It's fucking, oh, Sony loses or you know, so it's fucking guys. I know who you're talking about, but I'll say that like, I assure you like what, you know, you run from one environment to the other. And as you're taking in these beautiful moments, especially right that, cause that's the kind of thing is where like, when you you run from one environment to the other. As you're taking in these beautiful moments especially,

because that's the kind of thing is where when you enter a new environment and you're sold on how gorgeous the vista you're looking at is and whatever is happening that's unique to this place. So the underwater place, you see, it's not, you're not underwater, but weirdly underwater fluid dynamics are occurring which are beautiful I'd like to stop you right there and I want to give a shout out to Monster Hunter world and now this game

To be like, you know what fucking rules fake underwater environment, right? Right? Like I'm a big fan of fake underwater environments Yeah, I don't have to deal with water. I have to deal with swimming. I have to deal with breathing But like it's the aesthetic of that and shit. I love it. And then, you know, entering another area where like, yeah, the, the, the beautiful things you're seeing off this cliffside or at these rocks or this formation of, you know, elaborate construction and, and, and, um, manners and such, you know, there's all of these that are You're walking into them, and they're they're they're gorgeous to look at you can whoa god damn it stop it leave me alone What what I do? I'm sorry. I got assaulted by windows. It's okay. Oh fuck off windows Windows keeps telling me hey, you know you turned your location off. Do you want to turn it back on I'm like no

Yeah, why would I want to fucking do that you fucking bitch? But all this to say that the more beautiful these new settings you enter, the more you start to feel what I'm talking about, right? Because you come across more elaborate objects in the world and lore related locations and you're kind of like a little stiff. It's a little so you're like, like, look at this cool object that it does, you know, nothing moves, nothing's nothing's. Yeah. So that's kind of it though.

I do want to hear what my nitpick is. If I wanted to to fucking nitpick some part of this game's presentation. Sure. And it's a nitpick is if I wanted to fucking nitpick some part of this game's presentation? Sure, and it's a nitpick that I was fucking around with on my stream and I was like I kind of love this I kind of love it the absolute worst jumping animation I can remember Like jumping straight up. Yeah, just fucking weird weird shit and the wrong momentum It's super floating but it's also fast

But it's all but it's there for certain platforming challenges that you're gonna need to platform to get I've already done a couple Yeah, I can see that they're planning to escalate that. Yeah on me dramatically you learn to run and jump, you know It's not that's it's not made to be a platformer, but there will be platforming. I love it. I love it. This reminds me so much. I've talked about it on my show. I don't know if I've, I think I mentioned it on the stream, but Iron Pineapple, the fantastic YouTuber, covers tons of soul stuff. He said, you can make a good game into a great game by making it suck a little bit. And like when I read that I was like, Oh, wait a second. I think he's gone to something here.

Interesting thought. All the greatest things have just that part about it. This is like, Oh, fuck it. This part. Oh, why is it got to be like this? like, oh, fuck, I hate this fucking part. Oh, why has it got to be like this? Hmm. I get the spirit. I get the spirit. I'm trying to think there because I'm like, how many games are actually like flawless? Right? I mean, I don't know that. None. Yeah. Maybe original RE4. Maybe. Um, Chrono Trigger? Chrono Trigger is flawless.

Do I have any problems with Disco Elysium? I don't think I do. I had a minor issue with original release of Disco Elysium. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no. The director's cut, voice acted. I don't think I... It's... I don't think I have a problem with that game. Occasionally you can run into some fringe bugs that screw up your story progress, but I haven't well, um all this to say that

Yeah, it is it is there's there's that little bits of jank that you hit on you know from time to time and You know and then there's things where you're like, oh, I didn't expect this detail here but this is nice such as going to camp and like, oh, I didn't expect this detail here, but this is nice. Such as going to camp and hanging out with your friends and having nice conversations and basically having a Baldur's Gate three little sit around. Oh, very much. So, you know, absolutely. And, um, and there's, there's the NPCs to talk to and there's, you know, little, little people that can help you do stuff and you can see it's big for a reason. There's the upgrade guy which is the coolest motherfucker I've ever seen in my life.

There's your withers standing right over there. Floating skeleton, very very crimson peak fucking skeleton with no face. And then there's the little details where it's like hey you can remind yourself what you're up to, you can write in your journal, all that fun stuff, you know, and then or just or just upgrade and chill. Little little moments dedicated of like hanging out with the party, which love that there love it even in a smaller gameplay context like in darkest dungeon, you know, where, yeah, everybody just takes a moment to like breathe for a second Those are those are fun things that I hope RPGs kind of continue to do because you know They weren't really a staple of the old or older like JRPGs for example

Yeah There's a there's a little moment that I had on stream The last thing I did on my show was I got the fourth party member. Okay, cool. And upon getting the fourth party member, I was overwhelmed with the feeling of like, oh I know what games you like to play whoever designed this character. I wasn't sure. I have played this system up to level 100 twice. I see. Write it down, because I didn't recognize the system. But I was like, this seems complex.

It's a cross between Reaper and Astrologian in FF14. Oh, OK. OK. It is a cross between those two classes. Almost like verbatim is a weird word here, but like, like even down to the graphical interface looks like the same like job gauge. It's ridiculous. I will say this, that the trend of characters wearing their references on their sleeve continues, certainly. And it is awesome and obvious, like, in other ways, where they pull their inspiration from. And it's all cool shit. We like you know it doesn't have that feeling of hey you guys like video games

Cuz we do I'm a just leave it right there I'm a just leave it right there they know They 1000% get it. There's a moment I read a thing that happens, and I'm like, I read about a system, and I'm looking at the system,

and it's like halfway through the description, I'm like, okay, all right, we're done, we cooked. This is, lock it up, we're done here. The game's unbelievable. So yeah, anyway, a push on with that. That's a lot of fun. It's truly. I'll continue. And of course, yeah, we continue. But there's also the thing where, like you said, you throw the difficulty up and then you get fights that will last a little bit longer. But they're still. Oh, normal. The random battles would be like one turn.

One hit, yeah. And so this is also something I've kind of found where I was like, uh-oh, I kind of turned one of my party members into a beast god that is deleting the game. Is it Myelle? I have turned Myelle into a fight deleter. And it's a problem.

I have turned my L into a fight deleter and it's a problem. I can, I'm not there yet, but I can see the path. I mean. The character is built to kill. She's frog, dude. The stance system is just like, well, I mean, one, it's cool that she's doing all that aria shit, you know, that's all fun. Yeah, um but like you have like there's a sword I pick you pick up and it's like Start the battle in virtuous stance. I

literally Like oh you're you're giving me this This early I thought that would be the last thing if that exists so like and you gave it to me now Are you out of your mind started to do I? Started to do I got the ability she has where she just stays in place and then Keeps the stance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and what I miss a forte I would just I would just buff her Powerful and have her constantly skip her turns So she'd stay in virtuous so that and I built up all her Pictos to do more counter damage

So that whatever she would counter she would do a larger hit on her counter than anybody could do On their actual attacks. Oh, it's it's cute that you're spending turns making her powerful. That's cute I'm just saying like the possum the possibilities that come from putting pictos on and learning skills that are like no no no no no when the battle starts right, and then you have her start first and you see all of the available And then you have her start first and you see all of the available Picto skills that you've put on them just pop up in one shot and like a fucking list just goes You know where it's like oh 50% more damage on okay, just

Sorry again This this what did you do? I did nothing but Windows is trying to be as annoying as shit. Did you start the podcast with a PC that was like, hey man, you should update? No. Firefox is deciding to do for the first time ever in its life, a big loud notification. That's weird. This has never happened before. I don't hear it. I don't know if's weird. This has never happened before.

I don't hear it. I don't know if they do. They do. The people at home. Yes. Yes. So that's what's annoying. It has never done this before.

I swear it's never happened. And this is really annoying because this used to be like Windows Edge style harassment and bullshit. This is the first time I've ever seen Firefox be like, hey, hey, hey, look at me, hey. I can be like Windows Edge too. God damn it, man. Okay, well, I think I've cleared the notification,

so let's assume that that's gonna be fine. Who loves computers? Regardless, you have a billion of these abilities on and like a bunch of them are just stacking off each other. So you're like, the first thing you do is going to be brutal and you start in virtuous and you do and you and then you also have the AP extra to start off with your your final attack that you're supposed to build up to. You just start the round with it. I'm gonna start. I'm gonna start with it actually,

and then like whatever's left standing, which is like nothing, is like, okay, well, just pick off the rest, you know? Let me ask you a question. This is very important. So one of the things that I noticed when I was building up my characters is that when the item that just gives you

another slot to equip things in You could just dump them all into like one person if you fucking felt like it You could just say fuck it 99 to my L correct, right? Yes, which allows you to stack every single buff you've ever heard of the same character Yes, and and bust the game open and like that I'm going to assume that if and when you start to bust the game over your knee, the game provides you with something to test that strength. There are a couple of tests of that strength.

However, none of them so far have met up to the challenge except for the one that I'm describing which is go fuck yourself. There is an insane go fuck yourself enemy that you start and it's like, all right, I got like seven turns in a row coming at you first and each one of these in any point of this sequence, is your game over. So have fun, solo character, right? Okay.

And here's the bit. What if I told you that the game also starts going like, ah, you've put a bunch of your points all on one character, have you? Well, what if you got extra benefits from having your character stand there by themselves? What if you had Pictos that were geared around solo play? Oh, the lone wolf Picto.

The lone wolf build becomes a thing that is encouraged if you want to go for it. And you know, you've got the refilled Estus, you've got the refilled heals between saves. So you can spend a turn managing yourself if you need to, but like the ability to go in solo is very real and just have the party sit it out. And it doesn't take long you know so that's that's great yeah but then they're gonna get all the XP and then they're gonna get really big mm-hmm I thought it was really interesting when

I was fucking around my cuz you know if a character dies they are like half XP from the fight and stuff like that so my characters are getting a little little uneven okay that's like oh you know what if I wanted to even them out I could just fucking Gustav get out there by yourself. Fucking fucking do it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I, you know, in fact, I went with like the characters that were uneven. I just have them go up first and, you know, push them for, for leveling up. Yeah, it's a little bit stuff. And, and if you start messing around with the move skill tree, you can start seeing like, okay, if you buy a line to the right, that's going to be more of turning them into a healer versus going to the left. And that's

going to be more like, each direction is like an element, right? And then do you want them to be more support or more or more fire, you know, stacking damage over time and all these little things. And then so you as you're doing what you're describing, you can switch them up to be like, okay, actually, let's have you become the heavy damage dealer right now. So something great with Luna, for example, is a weapon where every time you take a gunshot,

it fills an element stain at random. Yeah. So you can just- Which means you can get her cash out super fast. Right. So you're like, fuck it, I'll waste four shots. Pop, pop, pop, pop. Fill it up, cash out. So what are you going to do?

You're going to put the pictos on her that give her all these bonuses and stacking debuffs if she shoots people. Or extra AP from the jump, which allow her to then afford four bullets and the cash out. You know? Yeah, no, the system is incredible. Like just the amount. I'm not even that far, but like the amount of shit that you can

push and tweak and fuck with. And like every time I pick up a Picto, I range the gamut from, oh, that's okay. That's pretty good to, oh, that's okay. That's pretty good to That's interesting So something about that too is when you when you grab your pick toes the learning process is one where you're like It's only four fights therefore always equip it and learn it right especially because your whole party members Right and everybody gets the access to that skill, always do it. So you do learn everything.

And because you're constantly incentivized to switch things over to learn them, you're always gonna look back at like, okay, I pulled off this expensive skill to put on this one that I'm probably not gonna use as much, but I wanna learn it. And now I have some refunded points to go rearrange their skills.

And it feels really great to know like my build works with half of the points I've spent dedicated to Gustav's offense locked in place. So I have another eight points to just put wherever I want. And like that's nice cause you're kind of, it's reinforcing this thing where you're like, okay cool, I'm at, you're encouraged to play around and stuff. And so eventually you go like, all right,

what's the most expensive pickdoe that I don't want to lose points on while rotating the other two out? I'll give that to him, right? So this, it costs 10 AP in order to have him start out with his base attack be 50% stronger Lock that in place. You will always rock that and then you'll rotate the other two We'll take the refund on AP points and just be like what if we made our build about the gun, you know What if we made shooting super cool? That is the total opposite way of how I've been building my characters. Hmm

I've been building them in a completely different way. So what I've been doing is I go to them and I go, listen, what weapon do I have equipped right now? Like Gustav, your weapon is B and C on I think like VIT and like speed, whatever, right? And so I go, okay, what will give me the best bang for my buck? And I sort the Pictos by defense value. And I equip the top three defense value Pictos because that juices his stats up enormously.

Then I look at what that has given him and then I build the rest of it around whatever those happen to be. Ah, okay, okay, okay. So you're also, do you also level up your stats according to the weapon you're maining for scaling? Yeah, well, I've been, so what I've been doing is that I've switched to every new weapon as I've gotten it and then I've chased the stats that the new weapon has while keeping a baseline.

You don't reset. I don't want anyone to be... Yeah, I reset once. But I don't want anyone to have one speed. Okay, I see. So like everybody... Gotcha. One level is purely into the stats this weapon has, and then the next level is the ones that

I didn't do, and so on and so forth. So say I had a level on Maiel that was speed for a really long time, so she got a really high speed. But then I switched to a different weapon and then I started leveling those substats because I haven't gotten enough yet to really lock in on what I want, so I'm just generalizing it slightly. So what you're doing, yeah, so that makes more sense then to have your defense value go up based on your pictos and then work around your weapon. For me, this is a completely different discussion because my defense stat is zero for every

party member. So you're not going to equip any weapons that use the defense stat? I give no shits about that, right? And I saw that and I called it, I'm like, oh, well, he's going to fucking go through this game with zero defense. Zero defense, right? And I gave myself a bit of luck because I want to get my crit to 20 or so. Let's get that 20%.

But for the most part, we're going- My L has like fucking 45% crit, right? And so the interesting thing, right, the interesting thing about doing it with zero defense is of course your skill is dependent, is what determines your defense. Yeah, parry or die. Parry or die, right? And then what we also get is weapons where I look at it and I go, okay, what's the element on this weapon?

Is it like something, is it like Earth and it scales with defense or so? All right, do I want the abilities underneath here more than I care about the damage, right? So like I described with Mael, starting in virtuous stance is the most important thing. So if this scales with defense. Everything is secondary to that. Then fuck it, we rebuild for this weapon, right? The weapon has its unlockables,

those unlockables become the priority, you build your stats around that, and then you build the pictos around the existing stats, right? But in the absence of that, if I can get something that scales with health and agility, we're gonna just run that into the fucking ground and damage, damage, damage, damage all day.

And so what that has created is characters with like, I have the top three stats, like pretty front loaded, but like I did mix in heavy luck for one of the characters who has a scaling weapon with luck that also has the abilities on it that I want her to have. Tons of freedom in this system by just- Yeah, so my Gustav is based on defense right now, and what Gustav has mainly been doing is using items to resurrect the damage-dealing characters when I fuck up the parry. Ah, okay, okay. And do breaks with overcharge and shit like that.

Well, one big suggestion I certainly have is, yeah, always make sure you give your character the ability to break something, right? It's so fucking vital. That fucking boss that eats you, I was like, I was struggling on that, and I was like, oh no, everyone has to be able to- Everyone needs a break, right?

It's unbeatable. This is a hard tutorial. This is a hard-lock tutorial. You? It's unbeatable. This is a hard tutorial. This is a hard lock tutorial. You must learn how to do this. Not if you're doing enough damage. Yeah, yeah. You can play with two party members and be fine. But still, for utility purposes, give every character the ability to break something and

you'll notice on their skill tree that there's multiple things that can break. And then, you know, if the break conditions are something that, you know, is like, have the right stains, then of course, give her the ability to get those stains. If the break conditions are, it has to be a marked opponent. Give yourself the ability to create, fulfill those conditions, right?

So yeah, pick a break and pick the ability to fulfill those conditions. And then second, I would say, you know, give yourself a passive that is not, that is when you're not allowed to attack, or if you're hit with a status effect or something else going on, give yourself the ability to either, you party or buff yourself or something that's just not an attack.

Because there's going to be turns where you're like, shit, there's nothing I can do right now except manage. So those are the two things that I found have come in extreme handy. Yeah. This game is incredible. It is. It is. Those are the two things that I found have come in extreme handy. Yeah. This game is incredible. It is. It is. And I'm really like I'm scratching the surface on like, you know, these these picked out combinations and stuff.

But the feeling is definitely there that it's like, oh, if you want to play around, you can spend more time. There's more experimenting you can do than fights provided to experiment with. Well, it's like, well, basically, where do you want to spend more time. There's more experimenting you can do than fights provided to experiment with. Well, it's like, well basically where do you want to spend your time? Do you want to fight and get like really, really, really quite excellent at the timed gameplay, like the button presses? Do you want to fight your ass off and just give your characters more physical power and levels? Or do you want to go into these menus

and just fucking play logic magician and create bullshit? So something I described gameplay wise in FF7 Remake was one of my favorite moments was I was syncing up and getting really good like combination juggles with the party while going through the Shinra building and specifically Operation Rescue Aerith was playing, which is the sickest remix of Let the Battles Begin in that game in my opinion. And right as the music hit a crescendo, I had two characters in the air in slow game, in my opinion. And right as the music hit a crescendo, I had two characters in the air in slow motion, you know?

And I'm picking the next skill and I'm like, what do I want? Okay, Tifa's getting a juggle and Cloud is jumping up behind. And I was like, oh! And it's just a perfect slowdown moment with the music and the violins going. And I was like, this game is fucking incredible, right? Um, I it was a moment just for me in that fight in the gameplay that was that was bespoke and I

Feel like every single fight end in this game in expedition 33 It's trying to hit is hitting is hitting that moment where you get the you want to save up the big pop you get The overcharge or you get the big finale and you land that last hit you get the slowdown And then the music switches over to the like either hyper or like den you mom version of what it was In some cases vocals kick in on that level up screen You know and the the music the the I, the fact that they just found somebody online that went this hard and is killing it because every single theme you hear has an amazing end version as well is perfect.

I believe the lead writer is also someone they just found on Reddit. Yep. They are somebody who applied to be a voice actor and then she ended up just meshing with the team and And became the head writer like the whole thing. So there's this interview right that was that was done and we have it as a one of the the notes But Guillaume Brosh the director it basically just made this game online while being bored at Ubisoft during COVID. And like, the whole thing is like, they found a lot of people that passed the vibe check

and were on the same page with creatively what they were going for. And those people ended up just taking bigger roles because it's like, okay, yeah, you want to be a voice actor, but you clearly have the same vision and idea and get it and have these good ideas. Fuck it. Write it. Let's go. There's a real, I think that the quote from that guy is that it would have taken 25 years to make this game at Ubisoft because of the bureaucracy. Of AAA, a hundred percent. And it's like, so like this, this this person to get started on the game mind you

like an extreme eye for talent, I'm guess I'm getting from this and They can't quite sell it other than You look cool get in but they're but their eye for it is is who will get in, but their eye for it is dead on. And so by just having total control, me like, yeah, whatever, you, you, you, you, and you. And I can also- Let's do it.

And you can feel with the composer that, especially this is like the official gig coming off of being just like a random composer on SoundCloud. This is- Yo, check out my SoundCloud actually work. Yeah, and Ed, but this is like the Mick Gordon, Casey Edwards school of like, I get to work on the cool thing.

I'm gonna make more music than anyone asked for. I'm gonna be, you know, like you asked me for like 12 tracks, you're getting 150 and variants and you're getting three or four or five albums worth and like, probably here's four remixes of the battle theme for the one area. Why did you make four? You know, like I super, I get that feeling of like, Oh, they shot way above where anyone asked them to. Um, the, the what's so now they're in the clear running for soundtrack of the year already and it's fucking May.

It's ridiculous. What happens when you assemble a team of people that snuck in to make the swinging good in Spider-Man 2? What if everyone on the team is doing that? That's the thing here. think here? Well, there's a story about that that I think about quite often, which is the original development of BioWare and Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, because BioWare used to be a medical technology company, which is why it's called Bioware. And the two doctors had private practices as well as a medical technology company. So they were fucking crushing it and making dollars.

And they're like, yeah, I want to make cool ass nerd games where money was the secondary concern. Making their cool ass Dungeons and Dragons games was the secondary concern, making their cool ass Dungeons and Dragons games was the primary concern. And if we make some money along the way, so much the better. And like that focus of like, I just want to make something fucking cool. Yeah. Like I feel that coming out of Expedition 33. A bunch of people just want to make a cool thing. Passion. I mean, look, just the way that items are like rewarded in this game, where you walk through the basic level and you come across Picto's left and right.

And if you go a little bit off the beaten path, you might find a really cool rare Picto. And then when you fight some of these harder enemies that are around you get a cool weapon for beating them but if you really go out of your way and you Scrape and you find the the shops and challenges and shit on the fringes Almost always what you're getting is an awesome costume or hairstyle You know, so you scrape and work to get the cosmetics and I'm like, let's fucking play dress up. Hell yeah. You know?

Let's play silly ass dress up. Oh, I love the way my characters look. So I spent so much of the game initially with everybody like suited up in uniform, rolling as a crew. No man, get to the merits. But once I got fun stuff for everybody, I'm like yo, let's just start playing fashion here You know and yeah, the the mix and match you know is great like um fourth party member I'm like I like the default expedition uniform, but I want that uh beret on you know I like the look of that

You know you can mix the serious and goofy styles together to create some fun combinations as well. So that's been, I love that. The reward for some of the biggest challenges is exclusively cosmetic. It's thrown me for a loop that the cosmetics are all out of order. Like there's absolutely no rhyme or reason. 100%. are like all out of order. Like there's absolutely no rhyme or reason. So you get like Gustav's mime shit like right away and I was under the assumption that then you would get Lune's

mime shit and then you would get Mael's mime shit. I was like no, I have like four haircuts for one and half a mime for another and a burlap sack for one of the... Just like there's no way to plan for it or figure it out in advance Also, whoever's on your party just tap R3 to switch to them as the running around active character, you know Yeah, why not you you can stare at chrono? But you can stare at anyone else and that's a lot if you want to and you know When you talk to people the right person will do the talking as contextually, you know required Sometimes it matters. but for the most part

Do you want to just pick Luna and like fly around instead of sprint? Okay, cool. Do it, you know It's yeah, it's just it just allows you to just enjoy the style and fun of that stuff like immediately fucking fun playing as Bane of the gods my L She's so broken dude, she's so I think it's on purpose I'm playing as Bane of the Gods, Mael. She's so broken, dude. She's so broken. I think it's on purpose. I pointed it out when I got her in the party and she starts as

the strongest member in the party, which is really fun when that happens. And I'm like, she has the Frenchest weapon. Therefore, she is the strongest. Doing the fucking poses and everything. And yeah, and every time you do one of these challenges, like I said, you know, where you're like, time to learn, time to learn the defense. I'm like,

as a person who loves these mechanics, how much are you going to punish me? Okay. I dropped to the ground, Claire obscure, and I'm standing back in front of the enemy like 15 10 seconds tops Right back in love that love that you know incredible stuff incredible stuff More more updates as we get further in that game is incredible. Yeah, I'm excited to see

As you as you see more of it. There's some good shit. Some wipeouts. Oh, there's some wipeouts and there's some awesome, you know, I mean, look, you start out with, holy fuck, look at these badasses. They're so scary. They're so strong You know a classic shonen moment in any good like shonen. We love is open the door surprise It's a tachy The fuck you doing here. What are you doing?

You know The fuck you doing here? What are you? We're the exams, you know Ju ju ju kai said same thing. It's the exams. What the fuck you doing here? Oh Chaos arc begin That we establish a I don't know what to call a Sephiroth character a omnipresent mega threat to the party and when they they talk about them, it's not like, oh, I'm gonna get them for what they did to us. It's like, if you see that dude, fucking run. Don't.

Like everybody just run. That's what I'm talking about when I, okay. So that's what I mean when I'm talking about like dialogue. Right? There's a like, okay, people will have feelings that say, no, get your revenge. no, I'm gonna, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, listen to me very carefully, don't fuck around,

get out of there, I don't care how you feel, run, like there's an understanding. And then like, well, you're gonna run too, right? Oh yeah, no, I'm gonna be running. There's an understanding of the threat level, you know, in that exchange, that's what I mean, is these moments of like, movie Trump, movie Trump? Nah. You know, okay. All right, cool. As long as we're on the same

page here. I love that. I love that. Yeah, it's great. Okay. Claire Obscure continues. Hey, let me ask you a really important question about Claire obscure expedition or CO or E 33. E 33. Yeah, that's what I thought. That's what I, I, somebody in my chat the other day, I was like, Oh, I've been playing CEO and I was like, what? No, no, no.

Because I think, I think one, Expedition 33 is there for English speakers to be able to say it. You know? Yeah. Oh yeah! Oh, I didn't even think about that! Claire Obscura is extremely awkward for English speakers. It's super weird.

So Expedition 33 is there. And I did see like, you know, I saw like someone say like, oh, that name sounds really generic and whatever. And it's like, yeah, no, the whole thing isn't, but this part of it that is the brand is what you can do. And like, I don't imagine, I thought about this, but it's like, okay, the nature of the story is you go through this as you're learning about the world

and as you're learning about the other expeditions, you know, so I don't know that like expedition number can necessarily be a franchise marker. I don't know that this is a setting that calls for franchising. Yeah, somebody asked me, like, you think they're going to do sequels? I'm like, no. This feels like incredibly hostile to franchise of occasion. Doesn't seem likely, but that being said, you never know. And brand recognition is a thing. And if people know that word, then there is a monetary value to either using

the word expedition or the word Claire obscure, you know, again. And unfortunately, because of the plot being like, well, this is the number of the team and we already kind of are learning about the other teams in retrospect, it feels like the Claire obscure word might be easier to translate to bring over to the next entry if needed. But I don't know, you know? What I can say though, is that like, yeah, E 33, 100%. Yeah, absolutely. Sandfall Interactive. What a great fucking game. What a great fucking game. Please, please, please let this be

the example of how development can go, you know? For other studios and people with ambitions that are at this level, you know? I want- I saw people comparing it to Baldur's Gate and like I'm starting to understand it because it's like, it's just a team that just got to do whatever the fuck they wanted.

That's it. Driven by passion. That's like absolutely no oversight at all. Like people who know what makes for a good game, getting together and doing it without any of the red tape and bullshit to get through. Like, red tape and like, I'm going to take a weird point of defense here. Sometimes, some teams need red tape. Like, I remember talking to people who worked at BioWare Montreal

who described that they never saw anyone from EA walk into their office once. Yeah, they made maybe they should have sent someone over there and we and figure out why they weren't making the game. Also, we are going to talk about the there is a little bit of silk song news, for example, and there is another time where hey, you might need some tape. You're right. Maybe maybe somebody cracking a little you might need. Hey, you might need some tape. However, Sandfall Interactive, this company of clearly passionate devs that got together and made a double A experience that we're all loving while understanding

what makes for good games and keeping out the chaff and having what's there be on point. They also have, I'm sure, a department that handles marketing. You know what I mean? They sure a department that handles marketing. I'm sure, you know what I mean? They have a department that they have deadlines. They have all these things. Like somebody ran and made all these decisions.

So we can't just act like, you know, it's this is it's not a studio, a H D M R, you know, that made cuphead. It's not like two brothers and the view. Have you ever read about like valves, a fucking office structure and how awful it is to make games? I remember the Valve handbook with the moving around and the... Yeah, it's the fucking... The salad unit thing. If your desks all have wheels on them and so people are just constantly reorganizing

according to their whims on various projects. So I don't think that's inherently a bad idea, especially because the main thing, like I read the handbook and we can see how the flaws of that come to fruition after over time with how many products come out and what the focus is on. Short term gains are so much higher prioritized than long term gains. But on paper, I don't think that philosophy

is inherently flawed because the other condition they had was that hiring is inherently flawed because the other condition they had was that hiring is of the utmost importance and you need to hire people that could essentially be not only your replacement, but better than you. So in theory, you're having people that are more skilled, that could be your own boss or manager, join the company, or people that are like,

if you're an artist and you're looking to work with other people, you're gonna hire above you essentially, instead of a top-down kind of dynamic. And in theory, the person that joins would be able to have a massive, massive benefit that they add being a part of the team. And that comes from, I guess, being like, well, I think this game needs this really cool thing. And then you, you know, you, you

hope that's the end goal. So on paper, right. But I think here with with at least with this team, like, no, we know that this is a team of, you know, as they said, it was like, what, like 70 people or something like that? Or? So they it's there's two numbers. One is 30 people on a dog and the other is 84 people on a dog, okay, and the the question is Are you counting outs? Yep, you didn't even have to work inside the time I guarantee you that number means QA testers versus dog is definitely a full-time

Studio member and in fact has a special Thing inside the game for it. Sweet. I don't know if you found it. Not yet. Start, start, you know, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna type it out to you. But yeah, that number makes a lot of sense when you include outsourcing. Ah, okay, okay, interesting.

Ooh, that's something I did not know. Isn't it? Ha, wow, fuck, shit. Time to go find out some shit. Ah, isn't that cool? But yeah, no, but this is a team that clearly, you can't pretend this is, yeah, it's not four people putting their own indie thing out

completely absent of any Production marketing or you know what's gonna happen decision-making I don't get it like it would be so like like straight up. It would be soft could have made this game like 15 years ago Like this this exact game. Um They just they but their structure prevents them from being able to do it So if I'm not mistaken didn't the attempt go into things like Child of Light? Yeah. Right?

But you didn't get enough time to do something like Expedition 33. Because I believe Child of Light and a couple other things they released back then were attempts at having indie style development teams work and essentially just be published as a Ubisoft thing, but hands off development. like basically a please don't quit game for developers on Assassin's Creed duty that it was like put listen you're allowed to put your passion over here six and a half years of Assassin's Creed games and you're about to walk out the door because you feel totally unfulfilling. You know what? Fine. You get a year, you can make anything you fucking want

and we'll put it out. Let's create a receptacle for your passions, yeah. And then you're gonna go right back on a fucking Assassin's Creed. I see. But obviously this is the things where when you see these standout examples of like, incredible success coming from modest beginnings, the

producer, the AAA, the quadruple A studio wants to figure out how to reproduce this under their oversight. And the answer is you fucking don't. You can't. you will not relax. And I think that the studios that have the best shot at that perhaps are maybe your New Bloods type of thing. You know, your Annapurnas where you're kind of like, you're showing up to basically like publish a thing that was moving without you. And not... Can we put our name on this? We helped.

Yeah, and not the, like, you are room 15 in the Mega Complex, you know? Anyways. I don't wanna work in the Mega Complex. My creative is... Well, do you have... My ideas... Well, do you have mouse to feed and rent to pay?

Yeah. Well, the Mega Complex offers you some security. Oh, the Mega Complex... Oh, stability! Oh, get me in that Mega Complex! Until it fucking doesn't! Oh, no! Anyway. Mega Complex was supposed to protect me.

Ha ha ha ha. How could the unfeeling Mega Complex was supposed to protect me. How could the unfeeling Mega Complex do this to me? Well, it's because it took all the predatory gropers and it protected them and then it moved them over there. Oh. Yeah. So that is that is that is going on besides that Yeah, I guess the other thing I did was played some more of that Phantom Liberty cyberpunk yeah finished off the the DLC there and

got the mid-game credits for the DLC Which are deserved because it really does like, you know, it's like yeah, this is a there and got the mid-game credits for the DLC, which are deserved because it really does, it's like, yeah, this is a tonal insertion that is like, oh, you've done this last and therefore it's some of the best content in the game for sure. But also a lot of people played that

after they beat the game. So when you beat it, it should, you know. Understandable, you know. But it should light. Understandable. But it really does feel interesting and odd to look at video games as the only medium where this happens, where you can be going through an experience and then part of it. Imagine watching a movie and then in the between act two and three, the short film that was made

after the release of the film is inserted. You know what I mean? That doesn't happen. You get a director's cut sometimes, but- That would be a director's cut, yeah. That would be. Yeah. But like a full-on short film that was made separately and afterwards dropped into in between of act two and three is just- Yeah. You don't get that, you know?

But here, it really is, it's interesting. So I go into it and because, you know, I'm aware of the fact that look, the quality is going to be through the roof on this by comparison to the base game. You know, I'm not gonna be too perturbed by that. I'm ready for dissonance, it's okay. I've played enough video games, you know.

Oh, I don't think there's anything that would have a more profound dissonance it's okay. I've played enough video games you know. Oh I don't think there's anything that would have a more profound dissonance than the Witcher 3 expansions. Like the the the end of Witcher 3 is like probably its weakest part and then both of the Witcher 3 expansions are like far and away the best parts of that game. Like it is not even close. I mean, and so there is a there is a fucking line in the sand on quality on that from like missions that are like this is pretty good, but it's like you know, it's kind of winding down to like fucking blasting off to space in terms of quality. Yeah, and so now that I've played through like Citadel and Mass Effect 3, I'm like, okay, I, yeah, there's times where the DLC is like a nice little addition.

There's times where it's some fucking cool extra shit. Like I'd say all the Souls DLC often has like, you know, some of the best fucking bosses and in a lot of those cases, maybe not the area per se, but one part of that is going to be a favorite. But yeah, with Citadel and with Phantom Liberty and these things, it's just like, oh no, this as a whole is just better. And I would say that anytime the game is one where the nuts and bolts of regular gameplay start to be, when you see the limitations and you kind of see like, okay, I've seen the variety of mission types,

I've seen the variety of NPC behaviors, we're just going through the motions now, waiting for the new assets and lines of dialogue to take us to the credits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where brand new systems and fresh feeling, to the credits. That's where brand new systems and fresh feeling mechanics are very refreshing and fun. So they flex hard with the thing they're most proud of in Phantom Liberty, which is the stage set acting where other games will have characters facing each other left and right exchanging

lines and then occasionally someone reaches out and hands someone an invisible object. Shot, reverse shot. And then you need to stick your arm out and take this invisible object I'm handing you and put it in your back pocket, you know. And here they're like, we got really cool setups where people can go from sitting to standing and two people can act out on a stage, you know, this scene with mocap detailed. So they flex off some of that and like, yeah, a big part of like, I'd say the finale of at least the path that I chose is like showing off some of the most impressive versions of that. The other thing

they do really early in the game that is very impressive, and I'm glad to see that they're still kind of using it, is the opening montage has you like, montaging in-engine in real time from location to location to moment to shot to shot. I love a good montage. It's so hard for games to do it.

It's so technically hard. In game, in engine, it's fucking, without loading, it's impossible almost. They did such a good job having it be seamless. And yeah, some of that stuff ends up being really, really cool with Phantom Liberty as well. There's these little things too where I remember when we're going through the Shadows of the Earth tree and you're like, hey, you know what's fun? What if we survival horrid for a minute?

Right? Hey, if you want to talk about quality gap, Shadows of the Earth tree is a great place to come in because, man, that thing is nuts. That thing is crazy. I mean, the hour count on it is just, again, it's obnoxious, you know? But the parts where they're... Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the parts where you're like, yeah yeah run over there and then play a little a little survival horror game You know, they they there's a there's a segment in Phantom Liberty. We're just like

Hey, yo, you know what's sick Metroid Dread even though this is not the right timeline for it, but that shit's awesome and Play a play a sequence that is very different from the rest and in tight and I'll and very very fun But for everything it did, yeah, alien isolation certainly as well. True, I think that is, because I only got a few hours into that, so like that's not as at the forefront of my mind with it.

But yeah, there's a lot of that going on for sure. You're waiting to, there's moments where you're like, I'm waiting to see a facehugger run by that computer terminal. When it's all said and done, I was so, so happy that the thing I liked most, because all the characters in that are really like compelling NPCs that are like, everyone's got their hands dirty, right?

Everyone is, it's Night City, so you can't spend too long, you know admiring anybody And if you do there's gonna be a moment that makes you go You know don't feel too good about anyone but The part that I loved the most when it was all said and done was not the actual, like, finale or sequence or any of that stuff. It was the conversation epilogue after you come back to the main game and you just sit there and have a conversation with Johnny.

And it's awesome. I really liked that. And it was a moment that was very thematically fulfilling for what I've been wanting the game to talk about the whole time I've been playing it. It scratched an itch I've been waiting on. And that is an unexpected thing because I was like, this is great. This is great DLC. Very cool. And then you hit an amazing thematic note

that I go, fuck yeah, you just crushed it. And it's similar to when I was describing what I loved about the Super Boss in Metaphor, where I'm like, oh, this is great. You nailed it. You figured it out right here. You nailed it, you figured it out right here. And, yeah, I oftentimes am waiting for like, after the setting gets introduced and we get,

and the players get introduced and the pieces are moving on the board, I want to know like what the author, so to speak, has to say about the world they've created, you know? And Night City is so hopeless, right? It is stupid. It is foolish to be optimistic. So like, why care about anything?

That's what I want to know and see more of. And you get a really nice little conversation about that as a whole, especially coming off of Edgerunners and knowing all that, where you're just like, this is a cool world to look at, but like what's, like the characters caring and having feelings about things, there's a point where you would hit

that's just like, why even bother, right? And that's what you get for beating the DLC. So fucking kudos on that. I really, really enjoy it. The bile pit David Martinez mom the the bile pit David Martinez mom in a in a fucking neat little container moment should not be forgotten. You know, that that type of thing that little just Oh, it was so official and meaningless, you know, should continue to be part of this as you yourself, the player, is like ludonarratively, like, just flattening people left and right on the average mission because the city always wins and nobody's nobody with compassion is going to last long here, you know?

So yeah, fun stuff. I hope the remaining mainline narrative has a little bit more to say about that stuff too. We'll see where it goes. And I know there's a big alternate route for Phantom Liberty and I don't intend to play through it, but I do intend to watch some highlights of that because I know there's some cool stuff. I understand that, but I

also know that it's in the interest of time and nothing I do will ever get me out of like Woolly Snail whatever, yadda yadda, but I'm going to attempt to watch- I mean, shit, look how fast you're going on Expedition 33 now that you don't have the eyeball of the world on you. So yeah, in the interest of not having things last too, too long here, I'm going to just watch the moments that are significantly different from the branching path. Because it feels like essentially halfway through Phantom Liberty, there's a switch and your decision changes the entire last half.

Sorry, my ears fell off. No worries. I just moved slightly and my whole fucking pussy fell out. I'm sorry. Better tuck that back in there. Can you give me a second? All right. We're good.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Got some matches in, played some Garo, and I continue to just really want to praise the color edit. And I think just having fun with costumes and, you know, making little like, yo, here's Kevin, here's Android 16. Here's Hokuto Maru. Here's fucking Strider, you know, is just a fun little bit. Give people the freedom to dress up and color their characters as they want. And then also like, you know, I want the freedom to dress up and color their characters as they want. And then also, I want the freedom to go online and fight against everyone else's giant color, horrible creations, just nightmare fuel eye color searing. Or a little option underneath that says turn custom colors off. And then you can just be like, yeah,, actually I just want to see the defaults

You know in case somebody figures out how to do the Hakon color 12. You can't tell when he's oiled trick You know you're working on it using using I'm sure they are God Whatever bugs might occur kind of fucking freak-ass guy would pick a purposely obscuring eyeball garish costume or color to throw their opponent off. That would be wrong to do. I mean, as much as I want to complain about that, and I will, we can't forget Samurai Showdown. Soul Calibur and, add a sphere accessory to your character that floats and scale it up to the maximum size,

which is bigger than the screen, and now when you fight the person online, you cannot see them. You cannot see your opponent because they're inside of a big sphere. I love it, I love it. Hey, it's part of the rules. It's part of the rules, it's part of the game. It's fair. So yeah. If they don't want that to happen, they should patch it. It's a it's part of the rules. It's part of the rules. It's part of the game

It's fair. So yeah, they don't want that to happen. They should patch it You need you need you need that little option for anybody that wants it Anyway, I fully believe that the Hakan thing was intentional and that that was part of the characters balance He needs it He needed it. He needed it. He needed it. Yeah. All right. So yeah, so this week, cyberpunk continues one more session tomorrow. And then as I mentioned earlier, this weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the Evo Japan watch party with me and Reggie checking it out over on twitch.tv slash Evo. So tune in from 12 to 5 as we watch all the things of those again. I'm sorry

Mon The Friday Saturday and Sunday so May 9th. So the weekend the weekend is the dear is evil, Japan That's pretty much me All right Well, what's going on over at the the the pad house? You know, hold on one second. Just hold on literally one second. Alright. A boost has been acquired. And those paws are so broken.

I want to hold this gross dog. It's nasty. I love him. All right. So, not a whole lot went on over at Pat House this week. My mother-in-law was visiting from out of town. Alright. Yep. So also, me and Paige played Split Fiction yesterday. Okay. And if you want to talk about games that had absolutely no oversight and are good because of it, Hazelight has no one from EA come and talk to them. Hazelight has no one from EA check the game at all. Joseph Ferris and his brother and the team are left completely to their own devices. And boy, holy shit, can you tell, because that game is fucking unbelievable. Like it is just so fucking peak at every respect. Is Fadass Fadass accredited on the staff?

Yes. What's the role? I heard his voice at least once. Okay, okay. Cool. But I... Every single... Okay, so you're going through the split fiction,

the themed areas, and each character gets a bespoke gimmick or mechanic for the area, and every 15 minutes, they twist on that mechanic, and then they run it into the ground, and then they run it into the ground and then leave it and it will never come back again and it is like that for the whole fucking game and it is unbelievable. And that's what it takes to felt like.

It felt like every stage was going to just be that one moment and you could tell because are you a bug in a bug themed world? Well, you're not going to be as soon as you're not around bugs anymore, you know? You're ice Well, you're not going to be as soon as you're not around bugs anymore You know, yeah, you're ice skating. You're doing ice things. All right, do it in the ice world. Have a lot of fun with it It's gone now And despite the the the story is extremely cliche boys at Creeley Shay

the integration with its mechanical systems is so fucking peak and dead on and perfect that it tricks you into yelling out the theme of the area's writing to the person you're playing with before you have realized that is the theme of the areas writing to the person you're playing with before you have realized that is the theme of the area. Okay. Like I have an example that I will modify for spoiler purposes, but it is the equivalent of having a very long like push and pull sequence in

which you have to move like you know an object between two places while lasers attack you and you end up yelling at someone that they have to push it or they have to pull it and then that ends up being the stated thematic emotional core of the story. Yes. Yes. Right. So like the thing you kept saying about the gameplay is what you were actually saying emotionally do it during the thing. And it is so fucking crazy. during the thing. Yes. And it is so fucking crazy. It is so perfect because you can, like, you see the characters building up during their

cliche and you're like, you know what they're going to say because you have been saying it and I mean physically, literally saying it because the game has to be played with a partner and you have to communicate. Right, right. Because the game has to be played with a partner and you have to communicate right right Okay, so if like one person had to Shrink down to a small insect size and then physically crawl on the skin of the other character for example And perhaps you know create a wound that might not heal. Yes, yes, right. Okay. It's so awesome. I'm in fucking shock. And we are right at the end. We're time limited due to the human that we take care of. And we

are at the end of all the themed areas and about to go into the final confrontation, which should take about, I don't know, like an hour. So the next time me and Paige stream, it'll be, I almost said it takes two, it'll be split fiction and then we're going to go back to double may cry 3 with the page may cry series and shout out to Viking for Completely redoing the page may cry animation by himself with no input from me I didn't ask him about it. He just saw it when I want to redo it and he redid it. So thanks, man aside from that Aside from that... Unintended side effect of the game split fiction being mentioned is every time it does my brain

also thinks about spy fiction. Yes. These PlayStation 2 2003s. Swearys foray into video games, which is absurd Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell mocking ad campaign. With the cool hair. Spy fiction. He did. That was not cool hair. Look at the hair. Look at the hair. That was not cool hair.

Look at the hair. Spy fiction. Spy fiction. What else is going on? I played split fiction. Oh, you know what? In preparation of Page going back to the page may cry series. I have recently replayed through DMC 3 for the umpteenth time. Oh, yeah

And I've recently gone through most of devil may cry 4se for the umpteenth time and I have not played devil may cry 4 since DMC 5 came out. Oh, okay. And um... Man, Devil May Cry 3 is an all-time classic. So, Devil May Cry 3 is an all-time classic and stands up as good as it did the day We've had versions of this discussion before where I know that I love what's going on in for more than you did

I know that there's stuff about for you didn't enjoy as much for sure and like I this I remember this from the from back then and I make up a big part of it came down to the fact that Dante is the least of what I want when I play yeah, I'm looking for I actually I actually have more complaints Interesting okay, I have one really big one um and that is the secret missions and four are fucking terrible Okay, the secret by comparison to three are are just god-awful. I remember all the ones for five, I remember writing a guide for the five secret missions back before the game came out,

so I could give them to you when you were going through them if you had any trouble finding them. But the secret missions in three are all great, and I know that, because I just did them two weeks ago. And the ones in four are god-awful. They are legitimately infuriating. The one where all the blades attack you and they're infected by the parasites and the only thing is don't get hit. Or the one where you have to line up Pandora to fucking shoot the two

targets simultaneously. Or the one where Nero has to hold up the Frost to get style points even though you don't unlock that for like 12 more missions. Yeah, I think, I think they're a mess. If I'm remembering correctly, I feel like the Bayonetta challenges, like, you know, alphimes and stuff were like ultimately where they got the right mixture of like combat focused in a unique area, you know, kind of limited here and not necessarily traversing back through the level map

for parts of these challenges things. Or like instead of platforming off of like weirdly placed blocks in awkward ways, it was kind of just like enemy based like in this environment stuff. And I like those a lot more. I think they kind of just like enemy based like in this environment stuff. And I like those a lot more. I think they kind of figured those out. But yeah, I think four's level stuff is worse than anyone remembers.

I think going through that jungle stage like four times in a row. It's just like fuck, god damn it. I don't mind the Dyson 4 because bustering lets you grab it and shove it down on the right number. I'm so torn on it because the Dyson 4 is fucking stupid and awful, but I go, well I don't care because I can just do it like that because there's a trick to it, right? But if my only reason I don't mind an area is because I've figured out to buy how to bypass it instantly

You know what is interesting though Going through DMC 3 and then DMC 4 back to back. Oh my god, even the neutered DMC 3 se is 10 times harder than DMC 4. Oh Interesting. Okay, it is it is crazy Dmc3 SE is 10 times harder than Dmc4. Oh, interesting, okay. It is crazy how much easier Devil May Cry 4 is compared to stock standard Devil May Cry 3. I think another thing too as well though,

like, well, time is all messed up now, but I will say that a big alleviation is the instant style switching and getting re-added back to 3 is a huge, huge value add. I didn't play it with it on. No, I know, I know. I don't believe in it. That's cool shit that I like, that 4 has you know, four has that, you know, three originally didn't or so. But yeah, look, I you know, it that's that's a we're here for we're here looking for different things. So it is what it is. You know, I'm going to be very interested

because I'm going to roll right through to DMC, DMC, DMC Devil May Cry. And I bet I'm going to come away for the way that plays in the definitive edition more favorably now than I did even back then and so not the not because I remember we had our feelings about the regular version and then I had more positive feelings about the definitive version and I'm interested in seeing what my feelings about it right now are because of like cuz like devil make DMC double may cry doesn't fucking annoy me nearly as much With don't make cry for five right over there How mad can I be?

All right, yeah Yeah, hey don't be shitheads y'all fucking anyway, it's fine what Just you're talking to me. No, but anyway, it's fine. What? Just. You talking to me? No, but it's just whatever. The, I think with four, like going back and certainly adding fucking Virgil to that was also amazing and adding extra playable characters

to that was also amazing and there is something to it where I think by playing the games later on, it was always more about like running Bloody Palace, you know, than it was about returning to the main levels. Devil May Cry games have different scores, depending on how much you care about Bloody Palace. I think if DMC4 is I think if you don't care about Bloody Palace playing Devil May Cry 4 that game is significantly worse than it otherwise would be because Bloody Palace is where I feel that game lives and dies. Like I feel like DMC3's campaign and DMC5's campaign are both extremely strong.

But and they're bloody I don't like I'm not a big fan of DMC3's Bloody Palace. I think the 10,000 floors at once shit is fucking crazy. Yeah I've only honestly like that's the thing is like that is I much prefer the four version of it even though I wish you could fight Krito more, because Krito's the best part of that game. It's dumb and it sucks. Oh, you want the one time. But I do think that in general, when I think back on going through it and everything, I'm

just like, yeah, I fucking love me the way playing as that character feels I love every moment of what it's asking me to do and I just you know, a lot of the flaws and I guess other things You're describing Became just extremely minor like in the rearview mirror for me versus how much I enjoy playing as the character So that is definitely not a rear view mirror for you, which is man blitz is the worst enemy they've ever made Yeah, you got to stand and fucking deal with that shit. Blitz is fucking terrible. I don't know what the fuck they were thinking.

And you know, I mean, there's definitely like, we spent more years talking and discussing about this franchise than the time I remember back when playing it. So the revisits give you a chance to update with things. And I think we, for example, like I've heard the discussion from folks that are able to do all that crazy guard flying shit and they're like, no, you don't understand. Inertia was what the whole game was. Can I quote friend of the show Hitchhiker about this topic? Friend of the show Hitchhiker, a Devil May Cry modder friend of the show hitchhiker, uh, devil may cry. Modder friend of the show said, uh, in one of my streams, quote that devil may cry

for is the smash bros melee of the devil may cry series. And like, I completely agree with them. Some people that are looking, what about like guard flying literally sounds like the way people talk about like melee fucking like technical nonsense. So he put it doesn't have this. Yeah. Has has fucking more characters and sin devil trick and shut up. It's better, but it's quiet. But when people are doing it, it's rad as shit and I respect it as something that I'm not capable of doing. Like, yeah, right up until they put up the fucking statement on their social media that they're gonna have to quit

playing video games because they gave themselves RSI. Okay, well don't do that. But, but no, the the the the the high level styling that comes from this unintended thing that people start fucking doing is like, oh my god, I can't do that. But I respect the shit out of it. That looks really cool. Blitzes, the funny thing about blitzes though, is that they don't actually give up on the design because they come back in the form of Furies, right? Yeah, which is like the way better version

of that exact same. Because you have the timing-based counter to it as opposed to the stop playing moments. But yeah, no. Anyway, if I remember correctly, there's somewhere in that LP back in the day where I just went, okay, I'm not here to fucking attorney for Devil May Cry fucking 4. It is what it is. If you care about different things in the game you're playing, the part the flaws are going to be more or less pronounced to you, so to speak. And for me, the enjoying the character I'm playing as and the things I can do in a given character action game are like the entire brain cell.

And then everything else you're doing and what's happening around that just get false so far into the background that it's like oh Yeah, I guess the challenges and the I guess they were bad rooms, okay, I Can I fucking? Buster that spear let me let me you know like I just you know I don't I don't remember how annoyed I was at the dice room cuz I'm like can I fucking? I don't remember how annoyed I was at the dice room because I'm like can I fucking Parry that shit back at the at the the Angelo formation, you know, I can I activate that neuron? I'm getting so excited about that shit that I'm not really you know, but that's that's we're individual people on that

So, I don't know, you know what's really fun about Restream re streaming a game like DMC for at the ass end of night Like I'm doing this at like 1 1 AM Pacific. Sorry Eastern like I've been going through the Devil May Cry games when I'm like, ah fucking I'm bored and everyone's asleep and I don't want to go to sleep. So fuck it. It's 1011 a.m. Pacific 2 in the morning. I don't give a shit. Let's go is that you get like the freaks in there. You get like the people who are like,

oh yeah, I don't sleep. I still make cry. And you get to learn all sorts of weird shit. It's like, why is the enemy list in devil may cry for have so many devil may cry one enemies. It's like, well, because for tuna is actually located really close to Malay Island, right? I didn't know that I Know that shit at all right interesting Freaks or if you pull off and Europeans I guess you pull off the hood on the lady in red you can see that it's got curiase face model with the different hairstyle

yeah, and that the and the The the naked frog women that's curious body model. Oh shit. Yeah, there you hairstyle. Yeah, and the naked frog women that's Curie's body model. Oh, oh shit. Yeah, there you go. Okay, perfect. Yeah. It's just funny because someone wrote, like, that's a you problem when describing. And I'm like, actually, I'm the one enjoying the video game, having a good time.

You- Doesn't sound like a problem to you. You are the one having the issue not liking the thing. Me enjoying the thing is good actually. It is quite fun to do the thing. And yeah, I like that no matter how many years later, the sound of Dante going, royal, just, oh! Oh, I'm so glad they did what they needed to do for five in that respect I would have been so disappointed by the return of Vontae. Yeah Yeah, no you need you need that opportunity you need that opportunity to fucking fight

The character that you shouldn't be fighting and realize how fucking impossible it is. Yeah, I'm so happy. Um, that's pretty much it for me, except for one minor detail. Ah! Many hourglass has been placed. Many hourglass has been placed. Many hourglass. So I resubbed to FF14. Gotcha. This past week. Gotcha.

Okay. Oh, this one will run out a lot faster than the one you have right there. I was wondering whether or not I should tell you to flip yours, but like, nah, nah, nah. SID So you've been away for a minute. CHUCK I have been away since October of last year. SID When the story restarted, or rather the new arc began. CHUCK Yeah. And I could talk about how they have the relic coming, and I could talk about how they have the relic coming and I could talk about how they've

got the cosmic exploration moon shit happening and all that. All the gameplay stuff that has to do with FFXIV and why you would resub. And like none of that is actually the reason I subscribed at all. Like 95% of it is so that I could have an excuse to chat about a bunch of nerd shit with my pals who play FF14 still. For social reasons. Like nearly entirely for social concerns. And that-

It's so that I can exist in a fictional space where I go, oh, hey, there's Creepy Porpoise. Oh, hey, there's Vell. And be like, what the fuck are you doing? Are you doing that stupid moon shit? Where'd you get that thing? And now you join the majority of my friends that play it, where I have a handful of folks and there's a split between those who are just social and those who are clearing world first type shit.

And I think the social players has outnumbered the gamers, the beaters. The beaters. The beaters. Well, I mean, like I'm fucking, I'm macro crafting a Moragian steel ingot like right now, because I have 15 to go. But like, so I'm still, I'm getting back into it. But there's like, I don't have like the drive to bleeding edge. The shit as it launches is gone. I mean, it's just like, I just want to be existing in this space. And hey, look, I get it. You know, I have a friend that sends me so much Viera art and has all the mods going

and is just, you know just hanging out, taking photos. Never name that friend because those are against the rules and it would be wrong to use those at risk of your account. But also an artist that's just drawing their own things and having fun. I know how much time can be spent in the social side, but I have I do have one one very important question you unsubscribed thus you stopped playing you stopped paying for The game every month did you ever uninstall it? Oh? Yeah, absolutely. Oh you deleted it completely yeah, okay, okay? I Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh, you deleted it completely.

Yeah. Okay, okay. I didn't uninstall it off of this PC because I knew that I would come back to stream it at some point, but I installed it off the home PC, yeah. Okay, it wasn't like, I'm not subscribed, but it's currently up to date. No, no, no, no, no.

Gotcha, all right. Hmm. Didn't all right. Hmm. Didn't even reach the end. Now you don't have to send me a picture of your balls. Damn. I was getting the lighting right and everything. Um, that's pretty much it for me. If you want to see the stupid shit that I'm up to this week,

they're smooth as eggs. You can go down. Nice. Yeah. Somebody to somebody break into your house to shave your balls? Yeah. Or is that just a wool? Yeah, it was. I broke in. Okay. If you wanna see the stupid crap that I'm up to this week, you can go down to twitch.tv slash Pat stares at. Uh the remainder of this week is primarily Expedition 33 as well as something on Thursday that I can't remember what the fuck I put on the

fucking schedule. I can't remember. Just look over here. What the fuck? I should have looked this up, huh? I should have looked this up. Oh, I didn't sticky it? Are you serious, Pat? Oh, you're so stupid. Oh, I'm going to take a look at some indie games called Skin Deep and White Knuckle. Hmm. On Thursday. What is that?

Skin Deep is a... It is... Who the fuck made it? We played a game that was top down that you were on a fucking spaceship. This is not helpful. Oh my god. Okay. Oh, that's two different games. It's not a game called

Skin Deep and White Knuckle. I see. Developer Blendo. Okay. So the people who made Skin Deep made Quadrilateral Cowboy and they made 30 Flights of Loving. And that is a spaceship immersive sim. That game, that genre you think is fake?

It's real! And it came out. And Knuckle, what's it called? White Knuckle. White Knuckle is a ro-like climbing game. First person. I see. Okay. Oh this thing! Yes! I'm all over the place today. I remember this looked cool with the with the hands grabbing and then the yeah yeah yeah right right right. But that that's what's going on with me.

So go on down to switch.tv slash pat stares at. I'm also like throwing in random streams like late at night, like 10, 11 p.m. Pacific. If the baby goes down and I got nothing else going on and I just feel like it, I just wander over to the office and turn it on with no fanfare. Okay. so who the fuck knows all right, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Let's do it All right quick word from our sponsors, I love you sponsors This week the podcast is sponsored by Raycon. What is going on? What's going on is that if I was using Raycon earlier, I wouldn't have just moved and unplugged

myself and not heard what you have to say and look stupid. That's embarrassing. You had wires in your life that you shouldn't have had. And I had warnings. I was told. I was warned. Hmm. Okay. So is Father's Day coming up? Is that what this is? No. No, that seems like- Mommy Day is coming up. It seems like Father's Day is still perhaps some ways away You know, I mean it's coming up eventually yeah, yeah, I know but it's that's why I'm surprised to see

Some discussion of Father's Day up ahead in front of me here see some discussion of Father's Day up ahead in front of me here. Nonetheless, regardless, none of that matters to me. What does matter is that, hey, if you are somebody who wants to enjoy the freedom of not having wires in your life, check out the everyday AirBuds from Raycon. It's nice to not have the tethering to a location or to figure out how to hide them or do all sorts of gymnastics to work around them. Wires suck. Mad Fientist You remember when we used to carry the wires in our pockets and you'd pull them out to

use them for your iPhone and it was just the absolute most screwed up tangle that could ever be built by a human. I mean, I know that you always used to like creating a cat-o-nine tails out of them and flail it around basically. It's fun, dude. It was fun. Treating them like a... But then people would get mad at me and say I was weird, so I shouldn't have done that.

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This week our sponsor is Shopify and that is the number one checkout on the planet. That is the commerce platform behind Mattel and Gymshark and another, a ton of brands out there online. And yeah, when you are trying to figure out how to get your business started, when you are trying to get into, you know, I've often talked about the t-shirt game from podcasting, but you know, whatever the case might be, there's a lot of different ways to approach

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the- Oh, Aura Frames. We were just talking about these the other day. They're the best. They're the best. They're incredible. My biggest problem right now is the fact that I got my mom an aura frame for Mother's Day last year, which means that I don't have the slam dunk that was last year's gift again. Well, you could just get a different one. You certainly could, but that first time,

she didn't know what it was and the like unbelievable like, holy crap, what you can do what is is is only going to work that first time. It's one of those internet magic devices. But now certainly she's like super on board for like, yeah, maybe setting another one up and you know, and again, I know other people as well that can be just as floored by it. So yeah, Mother's Day is coming up. And if you have not done so, I highly recommend an Aura digital picture frame. It was named the best digital photo frame by Wirecutter. And it's pretty honestly, it's a straightforward, just great thing to have.

It's pretty cool. Just good idea all the way around. Unlimited storage, so you can add as many photos, videos, and memes even, whatever you want. You can set it up very simply. You can plug it in and share away. You can set it up to be connected to your... It can have a message for whoever you're giving the gift to, so when they plug it in right away,

they can see some preloaded photos that you have already uploaded, and then yeah, it's as simple as just grabbing the app and you can upload them right away. You can choose to like cycle to certain photos if you want on the list. You can even, if you don't have any other way available to you, you can email your photos to an email address and it'll even download from that to the frame as well.

So wait, do you still have the email access to the one you gave your mom? Yeah, there's a private email address specifically for that frame. Would you be able to say, I don't know, Photoshop pictures of yourself in things that didn't happen and just send them to your mom's picture frame? You can do anything. You can do anything, anytime, anywhere. No one can stop you, you know? Be like, remember when I did this, mom?

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Thank you, Aura Frames. Thanks, Aura Frames. Alright, and this week the podcast is sponsored by Rocket Money. And that is a crucial service in today's landscape where they help you find forgotten things you've subscribed to and cancel unwanted subscriptions. If you lost track of stuff, if there's anything you've signed up for but forgot, or even if it's got a difficult or unclear cancellation process, they can help you get canceled on those services very easily as well. So I recently, somebody cloned my card or whatever. And fraudulent charges showed up and we fixed it, right?

But you got to cancel the card and get a new one. And in the interim period I discovered that I had a Netflix subscription that I had completely forgotten about on one of my old wow Okay, that failed out because the car didn't exist anymore, and I was like wow I've been paying for that for I don't even know How long I? who stole my credit card Wow from crime until finding out what you needed. Saving me money in the future.

Incredible, look at that. It's so easy to forget. So yeah, no, that's a super useful thing. I think we've seen different examples of it. I've seen things I've tried to unsubscribe from that loading up rocket money. I just saw that I was like, wait, what is the name? What is that? And I didn't recognize it. And then I've also seen stuff where the price has changed. It'll give you an alert for that as well

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Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash superbeast. That's rocketmoney.com slash superbeast. R-O-C-K-E-T-M-O-N-E-Y.com slash superbeast. Thank you Rocket Money. Thanks Rocket Money. Alrighty. So, we have already discussed the simple but powerful quote. It would have taken 25 years to navigate all the bureaucracy to get a triple-a studio started on the game Claire obscure it's crazy how fast you can make a game if you don't have to bring them into the

touchy room for your boss oh yeah I got you with that one. That's not. Oh, yeah. That's a bad one. Or if you just find really sick, talented people online and subscribe to crazy taxi development, you know, which is you're okay, get in. Yeah, it's nice to be able to do that. I think. I hope there was a point during talking to the musician, like the composer, where they're like, do you need my name? No. I don't even want to know your name. I don't even want

to know. I don't want to know what you look like. Just keep sending music. I clicked play. You're hired. Give your name to the person making the credits. You know? Yeah. I'm just going to call you music man. But yes, no, of course this this is all from an interview that Guillaume broche had about sandfall and it's, cause like, yeah, through Reddit conversations and the whole, the trail of this game can, is all online too. So, very cool to see this game currently just experiencing all the success from going about it in a way that, you know,

we need more Breath of Fresh Air games like this that are awesome, that are practical, that are being made by people that fucking just have the passion for it. Why don't we just skipped all the steps and just started doing it? And doing so while working board at Ubi. And it's interesting too because there's know, there's always certain studios have like the practices in place where it's like any ideas you have while working for us are our ideas actually and

Yeah, but that's a super super strict about that is a tricky water to navigate You know, I'm glad that he was able to do so successfully in this instance I have friends who have had uncomfortable conversations about their own indie projects. And this is something that so many people working right now are all trying to figure out. How do I do this, especially when you're surrounded by other people that you're friends with that are also

talented, that are interested in indie work as well. But you know, they're very strict about like, hey, you can't basically make a cool group of talented people and fuck out of here to go make a cool thing. But I also know that I've spoken to people who have had managers and bosses that are like overall like, okay, look, it's real simple. I don't want to see or hear it. And I won't ask about it. And that'll be that. Yeah, you know, don't tell me you're working on it. Don't show it

off. Just when you eventually leave, work on it really hard and get an 18 month build out in two weeks. Maybe don't use the emails accounts associated with your work account to discuss it. Don't work on it on this computer. You know, but there's a very clear just like we get it, just don't be stupid. And it's like, okay, got it, respectable energy from people who know the deal. Because yeah, hey, guess what?

People who are creative and talented that get jobs in the industry, oftentimes have dreams of doing bigger, cooler things. So. Or when you work on your big indie game, do so as a completely anonymous fake person like Toby Fox or whatever is Toby Fox Toby Fox I don't know only Sakurai knows Toby Fox could be like ten different people

I don't know does Sakurai know that he even knows I can confirm that Sakurai played him in person but I don't know that Temmie even knows. I don't know that anyone working on Deltarune has met Toby Fox in person. So who the exact, that's the mystery. But yes, yeah, just, you know, cue up the fucking wooly gif if you need to. Don't be an idiot. Just shut the fuck up. So that's, that's cool.

I look forward to more from this team and for what they're doing. And in general as well, the fact that this first interview addressed exactly the whole thing about the bloat of AAA Studios. And I'm reminded of the conversation not too long ago when I was talking about the big Twitter thread about how every game challenging the free to play, of the conversation not too long ago when we I was talking about the big Twitter thread about

you know how every game challenging the free to play you know Fortnite or whatever other free to play monolith is going to struggle to convince people to stop playing their game temporarily. Stop playing the free to play game to temporarily spend what's now going to be $80 on this full service thing for a couple of weeks. If your friends are down, then maybe you'll do it together. But otherwise, it's a mild distraction, which then leads back to the free, full time, full service game. It's not healthy for the industry, right?

So you need the ability to do this. And I think I don't know what their margins are for success, but obviously two million is something worth celebrating and is awesome. And it's good. And I think they've succeeded. Yes. And I would, but like, I would love to know that like,

what, like, I would like to know that like a fraction of that would have been. Yeah. What was their magic? What's the magic number, right? Was it 400K? Was it 200K? I hope low six figures, you know? I hope low six figures was what they needed.

Cause that's great. I think it's fairly clear that they've crushed their own magic number and it's been like 10 days. I just saw like a thing that I saw a message that was like, Ye's new album sold like 2.4 thousand copies or some shit like that, and it's like all of that just to go double styrofoam. It's quite incredible. So numbers, putting up numbers, big, big numbers.

Good stuff. Anyways, what else is going on? Hold that thought, I am required elsewhere. I will be back in five minutes. Perfect. Alrighty, so other things happening. Yeah, let's see well Some some video game news. Oh Fuck no. I hate video games

Shits for nerds the video game news is that video game news appears to be going through it and This was the wrong joke to use on this fuck by simply standing still by Twiddling my thumbs and Flicking these these smooth as eggs balls around pouring ketchup on my stomach and going We have now become even more

Bro what? We have become even more solidified as games journalism simply because the other things around us now begin to cease existing

I hate it I hate it. I hate it. I really, really. You're like one of those leading figures in big man news. So what's going on? Well, Polygon has been sold to game rant over owner Val net. Some staffers have been laid off and will no longer be with the publication. What does that smell? Is that? Is that union employees? Oh, get those motherfuckers out of here. Oh, I see. I see.

And then simultaneous to this fandom appears to be detonating the giant bomb. And that's a really weird one because the giant bomb is obviously, it's like the, it's Gerstmann-less, but now this version is also like strangely there's whatever disagreements are happening, whatever is going on internally, people are leaving. I have a little bit more detail on that if you want. Yeah, so I mean there's whatever is public or known or whatever's coming out, the end result appears to be that, yeah, people are leaving and things are changing. And I know that speculation towards the idea that, hey, people click on AI-generated Wiki

sites a whole lot more than they click on things that human beings wrote. So swerving in that direction for profit feels like a very believable outcome. Yeah. So the gist of what I've been hearing about Giant Bomb is that fandom went to the Giant Bomb people and said, hey, we really need you to like family friendly this shit up for like brand safety guidelines. For, you know, safety of the brand to which Giant Bomb was like, this is Giant Bomb.

Are you fucking, are you dumb? And then they put out a podcast that was like literally multiple hours of them just shitting on brand safety guidelines. And then fandom took the podcast down and then they put the podcast back up and then fandom took the podcast back down and then they all just started going all right fuck y'all I'm out. Bye. Quit. Quit time. Yeah. Okay. That's that's yeah, that makes that make sense. Well, you can no longer make veiled abortion jokes in the podcast title.

Can't do it. Man. We're cooked. It just having to having to fucking answer to some some stupid shit must really suck. Yeah, it's I dare if I could not title these podcasts the way I have been for the last 13 years. Oh man, so much of the fun. What would even be this career? What would be what would it be?

You know, this is my legacy. This is this is this is my mark on the world. These titles. I want one day when we're dead, somebody go, what was this podcast about? And for someone to go, video games? Immensely, immensely fireable podcast titles. Just for all for all time, you know? And you know what? Maybe maybe it's like a just maybe it's a reminder if we ever get a little too big for our britches, you know what I mean? If'm ever if I'm being all like hey guys you can catch me on the Evo channel

It's gonna be really fun. We'll be talking about those fighting games, and then someone just posts my fucking titles It's like hey remember where you came from that's all You're not you think you think you're leaving the hood you think you're leaving us behind you ain't making it out son No one makes it out Right like not yours is gonna be on the Evo main channel I plead the fifth That's where that shows gonna be right when you're gonna be co-hosting the costream of That's where that shows gonna be right when you're gonna be co-hosting the co-stream of That is correct that is correct does that mean like do you think the evo automod is set up to

Automatically flag your own podcast title I mean look there are human beings that I have spoken to that will be moderating so it is not an automod There will be people themselves there. So, you know, we're gonna we're gonna have a good time I think it'll be fine, but just you know, we're gonna we're gonna have a good time. I think it'll be fine. But just, you know, it's just, yeah, just in case you ever need a reminder of where you came from, you know, before I before that, that that. Anyway, you know, you know that like scrub that that's done before you run for office Right oh man, I just it's like yeah senator. They've they've gotten your They've gotten your Xbox Live account.

They have the T.E.A.B.s, they have. Oh no. Yeah. Oh good God. You know, it's like, hey, these titles are out of control and need to stop, or instead, did you just explode it into subsequent titles and named clips that just quintuple down on the un-hired, what I don't even know what you describe it as, but the un-awardable

titles, you know? Anyways, listen. The Academy refuses consideration of these titles. Whatever is happening over with Polygon and Giant Bomb and everything else, one thing stands true is you can tune in over here for the latest and most accurate games, journalism and news at your most trusted source. Also considering the history of Giant Bomb and birth to itself and is the exact same goddamn thing with all the same people.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Nope. Keep it dialed over here. Now watch as I forget to talk about GTA 6's second trailer. And we end the podcast without it. I think GTA 6's second trailer doesn't actually have a whole lot to talk about. No. I think GTA 6 being delayed has stuff to talk about because everyone shat their ass to get out of the way of the game that is now coming out next fucking year it it it looks pretty we saw the couple hanging out we saw the shadow the hedgehog was there I saw him the the the vi6 is like vice and then what we have? What's that? What's that number? What's that date we saw? May 26th

of 26. 2026. There you go. So guess what? You know how fucking so game prices are up. That's a difference. I feel like game prices are up is part of the Grand Theft Auto story. Hmm. That is right. Because like everyone was expecting Grand Theft Auto story. Because everyone was expecting, well Grand Theft Auto's gonna come out and it's gonna be 10, $20 more, so fuck it. We'll just get there. Oh no way, Grand Theft Auto's next year? That shit, oh no!

Now, you know how we've just, that is an adjacent story here, but the Sonic the Hedgehog account has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever and they're two cowards to do it. They're two coward to do it. They're not, they're not, you don't know, but if they just, if they just congratulated GTA six on its announcement and perhaps the tone of the person writing the tweet was a little more edgy. person writing the tweet was a little more edgy. Yeah.

I see a brilliant marketing opportunity. So I have not seen the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 film. We keep waiting to watch them while the baby's asleep and then we fall asleep because we're old and we're parents now. But I have been told that Shadow just straight up watches his telenovelas in that fucking movie. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like, like, like, Shadow the Hedgehog loves Latinas is like enshrined in canon. To which I ask and return, who doesn't? Who amongst, whomst amongst us does not appreciate a big booty Latina you know yeah so I don't see any of

those people in this room right now well in any case I did also see announced alongside this announcement Microsoft has announced the price of their games is going up as predicted We saw the Nintendo and then Sony versions of this story in previous weeks. In fact one to another week It's been three weeks in a row of each company stepping up to be like, yeah You know You're gonna pay more so like I How much did we talk about that? I don't remember I can't

keep track of what there was. The first version. So first we talked about Nintendo and their price announcement for the Switch 2 which then was like is this tariffs is it not and then it got muddled and then it was like okay sort of but we're waiting to see what that's gonna be afterwards so it sort of is but yes and no. They're all kind of just chasing Nintendo. And then and then Sony came out and said, Yep, it's getting cranked up. And now Xbox is saying $60 to $70 games will now be $80. These are USD, of

course. I mean, for Canadian prices were already over the moon. We're getting fucked on it. And the consoles going up by, depends on which, but like yeah the various different versions. PS5 costs more than it did when it came out. Not only has it not received a price drop, it is now more expensive than it was when it came out. Yeah the consoles, the Xbox series consoles are all about 80 to 100 dollars more across the board. Controllers are going up as well and yeah games by 15 to 20. So here's the thing right I spoke to when this was happening with the Switch stuff and then

I have a Sony stuff I spoke to a bunch of people about this that were in positions to know things and What I got back was that everybody's spending too much money Building games and they're freaking out because the numbers don't work So they need to kick it up a notch to make it work And I said what about spending less money and I was told that's stupid They're never gonna do that up go home And I was like that this was a great two separate conversations that went exactly the same way out out the window You go business meeting man. Yeah, and At the end of the day like I on my stream

I went through like minimum wages in different countries in terms of purchasing power for a new game or new console or I went, you know, you could argue about like turning into a luxury product blah blah blah all this shit. It's like Sony put out a statement to their investors like two years ago that when they charged extra for God of war and I think there was something else, that sales went down by a bunch because people aren't willing to pay the extra $10. And that's like the only thing that matters. Sales are going to go down more than the money

you will make off of the extra money. And it doesn't matter if it's fair and it doesn't matter if the game is full of value and it doesn't matter this or doesn't matter that all that matters is people go fuck you I'm not paying that. Yeah. So I feel like there's a slight update to the takes we've been having for the last 10 years in regards to all of this because it's been pretty much the same every time. The only little thing to add to it is just these things you should be doing, it would be pretty good and healthy for the industry if you started doing them. If you don't, they're going to happen anyway, it's just going to hurt more.

The unsustainable will, guess what, explode? Things will not sell Productions will fail fall apart people will get fired These can these will end in in in fires everywhere and the industry will continue to burn and people's jobs will continue to go away you can correct course somewhat in advance if you steer to away from the the quadruple A production or you can just hit the wall on it and suffer the hard way, you know, but it doesn't matter because in the end, whether you do or don't, it's going to change because it has to. So like the wall in this respect is Grand Theft Auto VI. Because Grand Theft Auto VI will sell 800 million shizzillion copies, and it will cost

more than other games, and once people own Grand Theft Auto VI and they paid $110 for the collectors or whatever the fuck, you're going to come along with Assassin's Creed whatever or Gears of War who cares and go This is worth the same amount you paid for Grand Theft Auto and people are gonna go. No, it's not And and that's it that's like the whole thing so it is it's interesting to imagine the You know how like there was the the gate the the crash of the first video game crash, right? Yeah, the Atari shit.

And then you have the Nintendo from the ashes resurrection. And then we talk about like, what another crash might look like. It's interesting to imagine one where everything unsustainable, insanely expensive and just that we've been screaming about for such a long time implodes. You have companies like Ubi and companies like EA and massive publishers and everyone that is in that echelon. You have those, a world where those things explode and the IPs end up in every possible direction, and then people that are just at their computers making indie games just kind of look around and go, huh, damn, that sucks anyway.

Man, dude, I remember 20 years of the phrase, who even owns System Shock? Do you remember that? Just like, oh, whatever happened to that game series? I don't know. No one can find who owns it. I just find it so fascinating that we could easily head for a crash that detonates the entire top floor, and then people in small teams working on passion projects, publishing themselves straight to Steam, will continue to be able to do so in the ashes. I have a brave thing to say. Be brave, be brave. Can I say something brave?

Say something brave. I think we've been in a video game crash for multiple years. Hmm. Like the differences that has been slow. It hasn't been a catastrophic everybody goes bankrupt all at once but for like five years we have seen bankrupt, bankrupt, bankrupt, absorbed but like absorbed in a bad situation. We have talked about layoffs almost every week for like 18 months. Yo, bars, like a hundred thousand percent.

Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting because like, it's almost like there's a lot of things in life that you go through that you expect are going to be these massive Insane explosive historic events and it turns out no you can live through them quietly in a weird way where nothing really explodes It just kind of persists There's no you know and you're like, oh we're in it. We're in it. Are we in it? We're still waking up and it's all. Yeah. Yeah. No. 100%. You're waiting for there's no

one day cataclysm. You're waiting for the cataclysm because that's what the history books kind of taught you about. You know, and there is none. You're just in it day to day. It's crazy. You're 100% right. And I think a lot of things in life are going to be like that now. It's a weird feeling. People are, there's going to be a crash. I think it's fairly inevitable, like a proper crash and the, the date on it, like, Oh, this was the start of the crash. Like Rome or some shit is going to be like when Ubisoft gets bought in by 10 cent,

or it goes bankrupt, or when EA has to fucking cut and run, or, you know, that like some mega company, right, has to be like, oh, can't make any fucking money. And then the stock people all go fucking nuts because all video games don't make any money, and they sell, and then a bunch of capital gets lost, and It's a whole fucking thing. But like that's just like part 25 but you but then of the thing we're watching happening in slow motion right now, but future Historian goes but that makes no sense teacher You're saying there was a crash while Nintendo Sony and Microsoft continued to make hardware and release them Well, I Microsoft continue to make hardware and release them to shelves.

I have a new brave thing to say. I think that if Sony and Microsoft are raising the prices of their fucking boxes by $100, I'm going to look up something right now. I'm gonna go to Amazon dot ca and I'm gonna click in Sony PlayStation 5 and the Sony PlayStation 5 fucking disk edition cost 744 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm with tax. Mm-hmm. That is 744 times one pointhmm that is seven forty four times one point fourteen that is

$850 for a playstation 5 that is six years old Okay, I Do not think There is going to be a playstation 6 or an Xbox next Unless for a fucking while unless something insanely drastic changes perhaps I do not there's not oh you want a thousand dollar PlayStation. I don't think anybody wants a fucking thousand dollar PlayStation Ever in the history of anything It Christ I didn't buy a PS5 Pro cuz it was too expensive. You and me are in the

fucking freak 1% of video game obsessions. And we were like, Oh, that's way too much. That's ridiculous. And how much should consoles cost back in the well, okay. And the cost of consoles and the cost of games and all this stuff relative to the wages that people were being paid at the time. Yeah. Yeah, one of those one of those numbers increases and the other one stays in the exact same place. So the pain, you dial that pain up. I if I was the Xbox and the Sony I would I would be like well We should just keep making games for this fucking thing for a while. I had So and so I just got asked that question the other day on stream where someone was like hey

What do you want to see in the new generation of consoles or do you or do you would you like to see things go back? To the I don't for your turnaround or whatever that it used to be and I'm like are you like fuck no let it sit let it cook we're here people can develop what they want to currently on these existing things there's no reason to put another box out to crank the price up on something that's going to marginally get slightly better I don't need a niche 8K feature, you know, to be possible with some games. I don't need... The best game of this year so far might as well be a 360 game. You know, yeah, it just, I could not be...

And it cost 50 bucks! It didn't cost the same as other games either I could not be any further against the idea of starting a new generation for no fucking reason, you know and it's and and each one and it on top of that to like the jump from Snet from SNES to to and 64 to GameCube, etc from you know 16 to 32 bit to fucking every like that jump doesn't happen anymore, right? It's not you don't even you don't even get to argue on behalf of the insane tech jump

because it's become such a subtle background thing. You know, games and certainly on PC, you have these in between steps where like shit looks prettier, shit does look better, you know but like is it worth it is it worth the fucking pain and cost and Restarting of the development cycle where also everyone has to learn the ropes again from scratch and fucking it gets expensive again Because no one knows how to develop for this new thing You know dude someone in someone in chat just pointed out so I was talking about expedition 33 But I accidentally also described Oblivion, the best selling game of this year is a fucking cleaned up

360 game. Yeah. No, there is something to be said about the weird soft crash, the passive crash, the thing that is like, we're still here, the market is making them, they're going out on shelves, games are being made, things are being sold, but it's becoming more and more impossible for people to continue participating in the industry as creators and as consumers on both sides. Production habits don't seem to be preserving the future in any way, shape, or form. You can just watch it slowly atrophy, I guess, in a weird, quiet, long-tailed way.

We're getting into a strange place where people are gonna go there's no money in video games anymore and that won't be true. What's true because everybody still has their consoles and PCs and it'll just be like if the economy is tough and blah blah blah then there's actually plenty of money for video games below a very specific list threshold. Right. Or otherwise you go and you just you know the simple mechanics of that other discussion of like, okay, is your company worth go investing in versus the S&P 500 period? Right? Like just basics? No, then what are we doing here? Right. So when the Xbox price increase happened, my I think about what I post on Blue Sky was like Microsoft, you are fucking crazy.

You are not Nintendo. Nintendo isn't even the Nintendo that Nintendo thinks they are. But they're still Nintendo. Right? Like, I'm like Mario Kart and fucking Donkey Kong and shit, it might as well be a Disney property in terms of obsessive belovedness. Right? Like I'm going to play Mario Kart with my small child. That's the end of that discussion as far as purchasing goes, right? Microsoft and Sony don't make Nintendo games. So those discussions are like different by default.

It will be it'll be interesting to see an industry where you know the type of person that let's say Call of Duty and GTA and every other mainline thing, let's say those things go away, right? Yeah, they're gonna go away. The type of person who is like, oh, I guess video games are over. Yeah. Right?

That's a lot of people. There's a lot of people who are like, oh, this entire genre is over then. You know? I have discovered in my mind the day that the video game crash will be recorded. It will be the day that EA says, we are not going to put out Madden or FIFA. No more sports. No more sports.

Yeah. Yeah, that, I mean. And people will go, literally 800 million people will go, well, I guess I'm never playing a video game ever again. You know, and it's like, meanwhile we're gonna be over here talking about like, yo, you see what fucking Blueprints has got going on? That shit's crazy. Hell yeah, bro.

Yo, for the Deltarune is wow, thing looks like fucking trash and it sounds amazing and it plays amazing. There's a new indie game on Steam where you have a baby to cast spells and shoot come Wow look at this MS pain here garbage that cost four cents It's I can't wait to go back and play it you know and it's just like yeah, that's just oh Did you finally get around a hundred line last survival Defense Academy? Yeah, dude

God bro. There's there's a character in that game that asks you you might have to play a hundred line defense Academy sir I've been informed that there is a character who asks that you make them a carryable bag that they can vomit in ah yes yes I've I have heard about the lore of the emergency vacuum sealed vomit bag. Yes, I've heard about this. And I'm like, this is this is very, very on brand for us. That is weirdly pointed. Yeah. No, I mean, you will look around and you will see thumbnails

about how, like, literally the it is all over, it's done. There is no FIFA, there is no Madden, there is no Warzone, it's cooked. And then I'll go like, yo, I didn't even know this game on UFO 50 cooked so hard. This shit's just crazy, I never booted it up, look at that. A lot of those people will just stop playing games entirely. Yeah, but that's the weirdness of the industry

we're looking at right now. Once upon a time, those people would have been right. And now it's just like, I don't know what any of this means. But if AAA dies, that is a gigantic, humongous, massive face of the industry. Oh, absolutely. But games are here? Existing...

So like, yeah, the crash is gonna happen. The crash is gonna happen. Regardless. And people know there's no money in video games and mass audiences will desert because of the no football or whatever. But like, the people listening to this podcast are not those people. The people that spend like 99% of the money on Steam are not those people. Right? Games will continue to be made and sell and some will sell very well. And if games like Expedition 33, Clare Obscure, can be made in those conditions conditions then why should I give a fuck?

Yeah, and also fate will live on forever and Grandblue fantasy I Mean the 11 more hoyo verse well if you can fucking cash in on your phone then so be it and Yeah, and if I have to keep hearing about Virgil's daughters ways. Yeah. And if I have to keep hearing about Virgil's daughters in all these mobile games, then I...

It's really funny. It's really funny that they're all girls. It's really funny. Then I guess that's what my future has in store. That I suppose so be it. Judgment cuts from all these anime girls and all the fan art that comes from it where it's like, oh, there's Virgil hanging out with, I don't know their names, whatever,

this one or that one or the other. And, you know, if you're, yeah, it's all right, cool. Punishing Grey Raven, show me what you got. Anyways, Gears of War Reloaded. Why are they, this is one of those fucking things where they just keep redoing the first one instead of moving on to the later one. We're doing it again. So I had to check, but it was like it was 2003 and then 2015. And now, you know, 10 years later. So. To just release Gears of War three multiplayer by itself. So there's a whole list of features, including multiplayer suites and yada yada and stuff

that's coming with it, whatever. None of that is even whatever. Like the only thing I could just, I want to say about this is just, do you feel the weirdness that comes alongside an announcement where Gears of War is being announced for PS5? Is that not the weirdest shit? It says to me that when Microsoft says that we're definitely making another console, I sit there and I go, but why? They've been publicly talking about the desire to play along with everybody else, you know? They've made it the most open that they're like, hey guys, why even go to war?

Why not console love? Why not console peace? I agree. But also, like, why are you saying you're also going back to war? Like, I don't get it, it's fucking weird. I mean, the, again, the closest thing to agreement we have is the stalemate that is PC is neutral ground that we can use to promote our existing exclusives.

And if somebody plays nicely, cross-play is a possibility for certain games if we sign particular contracts for, you know, game by game basis things. But that's the middle ground we can reach for now. I just, I'm down, but I just can't help but be like, man, that's so weird that we're here now. It's so weird. It's like fucking Banjo-Kazooie Xbox stuff from back in the day. It's just like, whoa. Absolutely.

Whoa, that's weird. Anyway. Gears of War isn't just like an iconic Microsoft property. It's also an iconic 360 dude bro Mountain Dew Doritos property alongside Halo. It's fucking green and orange. It's not even. It's like dark gray for most of the game, but like the game bleeds green. Limited edition special package Doritos in the briefcase. Yeah, so if you happen to be in Australia on September 18th, there's a museum and at

that museum, they are claiming that they will have a fully playable exhibit with silk song In its entirety people have actually confirmed that that yes, it will be there so Instead of a release date of any kind we have a story about a museum in Australia that is claiming that they're going to have the full game at least out by that date and That's the closest we have to it. So Hypothetically the game will be out before September 18th exhibit in Australia's National Museum of Screen Culture and this is what we'll take I suppose for a date announcement Do you think there's some kind of legal thing?

Hmm. Hmm. Because I know Microsoft owns the marketing rights for Silksong. If there is, then why not just, then why frame things as if it's like, no, it's just, it's common, don't worry, right? Why not just be like, oh, stuff's being, like, I don't know.

I feel like you phrase and talk about it and the team and everything that's been happening in the background with that, at least, but what was public facing, would have been handled very differently if it was like, oh no, it's done. There's legal problems we're figuring out. You know what? You know?

I'm gonna fucking, I'm gonna take back every negative thing I've ever said about Team Cherry and Silksong and everything about this on one condition. If I beat Silksong and then I watch the credits and it kicks me back to the fucking title screen And I was like that was pretty amazing and then there's a new option on the title screen that says Hollow Knight 2 And I click on it yeah, and I play Hollow Knight 2 Yeah, then I will shut my mouth. Yeah, that's funny. That's funny, but no, I don't care actually.

Like we get it, more game than anyone has ever asked for, but that I feel like that has long wore off. The idea is we know that there's more game that you're than anybody wants with what Team Cherry is doing. That's not a thing. That doesn't matter after a certain point. Too much is not, it doesn't matter when you're holding nothing like

It I get it, but I don't care. I just don't care. Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay four five six seven Okami, you know, whatever you Know commies is always gonna be the peak You know 20 years from now it'll also say three and Silksong two and that like it's like what no it doesn't like it just because there's more it doesn't it doesn't mean that like this is reasonable. I like more. I like more. I like less actually. Anyway, all right let's take some letters. There was something else I wanted to talk to you about.

What's going on? So they did the Borderlands 4 state of play thing where they showed off a 20 minute presentation of Borderlands. I know I have been quite hard on Marathon so I don't really want to dogpile on Marathon because it's only broadly comparable. But I remember complaining very adamantly that I did not like the style of the Marathon presentation because it was like a bunch of dudes sitting around on a stage talking about it for most of it and was very light on stuff. They showed off Borderlands 4 and it was 19 and a half minutes of

gameplay. Just straight up like a trailer followed by an extremely long presentation. And in a context in which like I see people complaining that Marathon should be like a single- thing, or should be more like Destiny. Gearbox has decided to make their next Borderlands game into a Destiny clone. You have a floating robot that solves things for you. You have vehicles that control looks like identically to Destiny vehicles. But it has the very classic style like Borderlands schluder stuff. Like it's that that part no one ever complains about. But is this a

predominantly online experience? No, it is a single player game that you can play in four player co-op at all times. Oh, okay. It's like it's closer to Diablo than anything. But it's Destiny styled in that single player experience. Okay. The movement abilities, the movement abilities, the vehicles, the little robot that helps you.

It looks, it really looks like they took inspiration from Destiny. Okay. And the gameplay stuff for looks like they took inspiration from Destiny. Okay. And the gameplay stuff for Borderlands games have always been fantastic. The problem is the absolute nightmare, god-awful, cringe-fuck writing and voice acting and delivery has been horrible. Borderlands 1 is played like mostly straight, but it's in a goofy setting. So a lot of the humor comes from the clash between absurdity and seriousness. And then after that, everything just became memery and fucking nonsense clown shit from two onwards. They did a 20-minute presentation that contained no jokes.

Not a one. The only thing I could label as a joke is that a gigantic, horrific monstrosity came out as a boss fight, to which the characters exclaim, Oh my God, what the fuck is that thing? And the name card says Tim. Okay. And I went, ah, it's pretty funny. So are you about to say that by abandoning its identity as a game and through its writing and through its script, this is the most excited you've been for a Borderlands game? No, what I'm about to say is that the thing that I have been asking for

since, you know, let me, when did Borderlands 2 come out? Borderlands 2. Borderlands 2 came out in 2012. So for 13 years, I've been like, man, I really wish Borderlands was written more like one. Like the first one. I see. That I really, really liked.

Okay. And they say we are going back to, like verbatim, we are going back to the style of Borderlands 1. And I'm like, yes, this, please. And then the narrative lead posted a fucking thing on Blue Sky saying that they made sure to emulate the, what was it? The famous cinematography from Shadow of the H the hedgehog three which was the Akira slide okay but crediting it to shadow and I was like that's actually pretty funny okay so like um so the franchise has been around long enough and had enough spinoffs and things going with it that like why not try everything we have have Borderlands 1, 2, 3, Tales. The sequel, Tales, and then the Tiny Tina Tiny Tina.

Fantasy game. There's been, you know. And like every single one but the first one has just been like, God, awful dialogue and narrative. See, I didn't. Just fucking terrible. If we've talked about you, the first one not having that issue, I feel like this hasn't come up enough for me to

remember that so I didn't know that. Well, yeah, the first one was like 2009. Mm-hmm. And like Dude, I fucking love Borderlands. Interesting. Has a great tone, has great music. I thought I thought the I thought the whole bit was that the entire franchise was that you know? No, that's why people get mad at it because there's one that isn't like that And it has the best tone and it's like it's not like fucking Oscar or even Sony like prestige game writing but like one is like Played straight that is kind of funny and it worked really really well And two is memed out to shit, but the villain is very charismatic

Hmm. I liked the the telltale One that's pretty much what I played but I'm seeing some people say that in well Yeah, cuz handsome Jack is the funny is handsome Jack a feature in the yes Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Well, yeah, and a lot handsome Jack Which is why a lot you fucking deal with all of that shit cuz he's awesome a lot of people here like to you know, so I Would say I'm gonna put this out there and I'll see if the the live audience agrees Two is just as cringe as three but but Handsome Jack is there, so fuck

it, it gets a pass. Interesting. Like, that's how I feel about that. Hmm. It's one element that is being remembered fondly. Handsome Jack's great. Okay. Yeah, that was funny. Anyway, yeah, Borderlands 4 looks great, and now it comes out before Marathon, so that'll be interesting.

Interesting. Hey, well, single player. There you go. That's the thing that you like. It's nice to have games that you can play by yourself. You can just play them by yourself. No one can force you. Isn't that cool? Isn't that a cool feature you can play by yourself. You can just play them by yourself. No one can force you. Isn't that cool?

Isn't that a cool feature you can do sometimes? Yeah. I saw someone mention, hey, you all are going to talk about Echo the Dolphin. And I'm like- What about them? So look, to be perfectly honest, like Sega announcing a bunch of old franchises returning, like I'm going to put these all in the same boat where until one of these comes out and we see what's going on, you know, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, Golden

Axe, Shinobi. This is another one. And if something comes out and it's good, then I will pay more attention to the rest of these. But until then, I am cautiously pessimistic, especially given what I've been hearing about behind the scenes a little bit. Doesn't sound like too excited about it So I hear echoes coming back along these other things. I got nothing to say about it Let me see one of these new Sega things come out and be good then I'll care about the rest. I Think that's fair Hey, if 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

to castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com, that's castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. Yeah, I don't think Streets of Rage 4 was a part of that group. I think Streets of Rage 4 was. No, it wasn't. No, that was way above. That was a.mu thing on its own that it was completely separate

from this development push, right? This is a particular one that we're seeing that's looking like Micro for some games is coming out. And anyway, it's not the same thing. Let's take one over here. All right. Hello, flashbang through the door and climb up the ladder if you want another go. Games have been my hobby ever since I was five because dad was a park ranger and I lived miles from civilization. Weren't any other kids around, lots of dangerous animals outside,

so I stuck to my Genesis and played consoles up to the PS4 era. Having rental games mailed to you was at its peak in the late 2000s. Mad Fientist The idea of like, oh, I got to play my video games inside or else I'll be attacked by bears is fucking cool. Mad Fientist I was beating one game every week during the 360 PS3 era. That was the golden age for me. As a result, I played a lot of garbage to completion just from being a bored teenager. Worst game I've ever rolled credits on was 2009 third person Western shooter Damnation. If you don't

remember it, you can look it up and see. It's completely unremarkable. It was so bad, solid three out of 10 or worse even for the time. It's completely unremarkable. It was so bad solid three out of ten or worse even for the time It's not played that at your house. Didn't we I don't remember this game. No Still not my least favorite game of all time that I've beaten but that word that award goes to Mass Effect Andromeda Which is the nail in the coffin for my excitement on that franchise? But what is the worst game that you have? beaten in terms of quality and follow-up that you most resent?

Oh, we did not play this. Holy crap. What the fuck is this? From SKBN. So yeah, there's a lot of games that are terrible that you don't roll credits on. I think the worst game I've rolled credits on is Probably Omicron the Nomad soul Well shit now I gotta think of a different one Yeah, cuz it just there's shit that's less competent this shit that are no the shit that is no, that's not true

Like there's things that are simpler in why then how bad they are but this thing being 3d and having like David Bowie and like... You know what, we should make this more interesting. Yeah, I get it. No cage rule. We should say the worst game that you finished prior to playing games for the internet. Because that is closer to the heart of the question. True. When nobody is forcing you the heart of the question. True.

When nobody is forcing you with a gun to your head. When nobody was forcing you to do it and you went through it. For me, it's probably DMC 2. I beat that game seven times back to back for hoping it was gonna get good. I mean, we did bond over hatred of... No, wait, there was indigo prophecies demo that we that we saw that we loved that we loved but then playing it was

the completion was on the channel as well. No, no indigo prophecy we played the completion on the channel but we all played it to completion first before the channel existed. Yeah okay so I was trying to remember if that was the case. Yes. So then that is technically a David Cage game that happened. Oh, can't be Omicron. Let's just pick this next game from the same developer. Yep.

Yep. There was that. There was that one. I'm like hitting credits. There's a lot of games I fucking just before LPing where you stick with it all the way through. That's fucking crazy. I never had like a vicious, I had a very short time in my life where I had like a desperate

need to finish games that I picked up because from the, from the, from, for the NES, the PlayStation 1 and the PlayStation 2, for most of those systems life cycles, I had methods of playing many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many games on the cheap. So if something was like straight dog water, I'd be like, ah, fuck it. I just need to go buy more CDs. Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna, it's gonna have to listen to music on it's gonna have to be David Cage then because I mean look what? What am I gonna say like Evil Zone fucking our guys, you know? I think it's so funny that our hatred for Evil Zone was so strong. It actually got all the way out to Paul Iding What do you know I what happened with Paul Iding

What did you know? What happened with Paul lighting? Paul Iding at some point was said Colonel Evil Zone video. Yeah. And remarked on a different interview years later saying, Yeah, I really liked working on Evil Zone. And I saw these guys talking about poor Colonel Campbell working on this dog shit. And I was like, poor Colonel Campbell working on this dog shit. And I was like, I really like working on that dog shit.

It was great. All right. Well. Because I think he plays Danziver. Yeah, Danziver's cool. It's a fucking Toku hero. And it's cool as long as you don't actually have to touch the game.

As long as you admire it as a thing to look at, which working on it, I'm sure you can do. You know? And the same for anybody who showed up and got really upset. It's like, yes, it's really cool to admire this thing without actually touching it. In fact, this has happened a couple of times throughout our career where you were, you know, a thing that's really cool to look at, but feels like shit when you actually play it upsets a lot of people that are unable to necessarily feel the shit because it's just cool to look at. So I absolutely would love to die on the hill of every character is a Saturday morning cartoon

show with voice acting. Oh, the concept for Evil Zone. With unique voice acting and from episode to episode, you get these unique chapter things that feels like a fun story is being told as you watch a show. That's a great idea for a fighting game. What isn't is two buttons and an inability to do more than three things, you know.

Anyway, yeah, there you go. more than three things you know anyway yeah there you go let's see here doll says hello grave-born Willie and beast tamer Pat you've been you've been granted the ability to resurrect two cancelled video game projects and bring them to completion no strings attached what do you revive oh my god yeah I need like a second. That's because Think because this is interesting because think about stuff that has been like I wanted this but then it came back in another form Spiritually anyways, right? I got my two That was faster than I thought it was going to be

Okay, um Nova And uh and silent hills Okay Nova and And Silent Hills If you're not familiar with Nova it was the idos final fantasy game That would have been cool. I dose was supposedly Working on that according to my butt

That would have been cool. I supposedly working on that according to my butt. That would have been cool. I think that might have been cool, wooly. And Silent Hills, I don't think I have to explain. Yeah, yeah. PT is a pretty good one to bring back. That's an industry changer right there. But then what takes top slot on that? You know? It's funny, because I remember a time where like there once upon a time there I would have said Starcraft

Ghost. There was a definitely a time I was absolutely 100% I guess I gotta say Titanfall three. I guess so. What about Titanfall 5 and 4? 5 and 4. What about those? Titanfall 6 was where it was really gonna come together. Dude, I remember... I remember when I first moved to Vancouver.

I was running... you know, we're doing the neighbor thing and I ran into somebody who I was like, what do you do? Like I work in games. He's like, Oh really? I'm like, Oh, I just covered them. He's like, Oh, well I work at such and such company. And I was like, wow, really? You think you could tell me about Titanfall? And he's like, he just gave me a little smile.

He was like, maybe. And I was like, oh yeah, that was like three years ago. That shit he was winking at me over is dead. Can I say something brave? That, that, that, that shit he was winking at me over is dead. Can I say something brave? Yeah, you know what? Yes. I don't know that scale bound would have been as good as we were hoping it would be.

Can I say something brave? Mm-hmm yeah I don't know man I feel I feel so strongly in agreement with you in a post bail three world brah I don't know I can't I don't know I can't stand I can't stand on business on that one. You know? What was Microsoft cooking? Did someone just walk into the room and go, man, this ain't it? No.

Yeah, I just... I'm so told because there's Bayo 3 so time there's there's bail three But there's astral chain and it's like time man what a swirly on basically the same game Time has fucked this entire thing up. What's upon a time scale? Now it's like and and and also we have we have Nero we have five Nero he He's right there. He is right there five Nero is fine. You know I love five. I love him I love him. He's great. I love him. I would kiss him. You know other what I love him more than other Nero other for Nero

dragon Nero dragon yeah I think I would love five Nero more I don't know dinosaur control Gamora I that was okay I don't know that was okay I don't know I was okay. I don't know. All right Can I can I throw an honorable mention to pray to? Yeah, you'd resurrect Yeah that that game seemed like it would be really cool Bethesda killed it so they could try and eat the studio and it didn't work. Okay hmm you know what and while we're on just Okay. Hmm.

You know what? And while we're on just the, let's get some fucking McDonald's fries questions going on here. Just the basics here, the bottom of the fucking the barrel. We got one coming in here that says, with DMC on everyone's mind because of the anime and so on and Oblivion Remastered's success. How would you feel about Capcom remaking DMC3 instead of making DMC6? They could remake three instead of a probable remake of RE5 or Code Veronica or something. And to that I say, I'm in the camp that is like,

yo, I think if the effort were being made to redo devil may cry stuff that I would want it to be one or two I Okay, so like we're gonna go on different paths on this me I'm like man I just beat DMC 3 like last week. It doesn't need it Like it's just there you go. That's shit, they could clean it up a little bit more. I mean. Right? Because the HD collection is not a super great one. Well, that's that switch.

How about picking that switch port and putting it everywhere and just making everything fucking sick, you know? But like fucking, fucking, yeah, redo two. Yeah, save two. Fucking do that. Save two. Or if you feel like it, start with one to learn the ropes and then save two even more. That's fine. I want to see the level of complexity on display from five, though.

As somebody who is... Well, of course, that's what we mean by save it. Take it even further. As someone who's always championing the new, the wrinkle in the works here is this. I always am in favor of, yes, we know about the thing, the old thing, but the new thing is priority. It's Suno has left the company, someone else is taking the reins. We need them to have training time on one of those older games before committing them to six.

You want to make sure they can cut their teeth on something safer before making the future of the franchise without him. Now, granted, I'm sure there's a lot of people who worked on five that still work at Capcom. Of course, of course. But still, there is confidence in taking a crack at it and going, oh, they nailed it with that remake, which was needed anyway. Now we can go forward into the future with confidence. All right, I'll leave it there.

Can you not use that photo of Prince Charles at the end? It scares my baby because page watches us do the podcast I was doesn't get to it in time it scares the shit out of I was about to say no and go right back to uno Until you gave me the reason why? Okay, all right. I got I got over there the other day Yes time and he saw Prince Charles's blood thing come up a sir Okay, well, I mean good instincts kid good instincts number one Yes, he needs to know yes, all right. No I Was about to shut that shit down But that is yes all right so with that everyone the bit is dead

Take care. I'm sorry You