Triforce! - Triforce! #266: Starfield vs Baldur's Gate 3

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Triforce! Episode 266! It's been a while since our last game chat and with two huge game releases the three of us want to know which to play going forward! Baldur's Gate 3 or Starfield?! Go to http://expressvpn.com/triforce today and get an extra 3 months free on a 1-year package! Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pickaxe It's been a while. So the first thing I wanted to talk about was Starfield came out today. Oh, yes. Well, yesterday, officially. Yeah. You've been playing it for a week, Sips, already. I don't know why. I haven't got any interest really in playing it. I know that, Sips, you played a lot of Fallout and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, I wonder if, is that one of the reasons you sort of were drawn? Joking aside, I have enjoyed it, but... Well, it's the other way, isn't it? Like, not everyone there's some crazy lunatics who've been complaining that it's too woke really and yeah and all the it's got pronouns and it's got you know

yeah sorry I did see that yeah I saw some of that oh it's insane actually wait wait wait how are people angry are these people who didn't play Baldur's Gate 3 then I don't know I don't know I don't know what world they live in. I actually, I don't even think they're real people. I think they're just trolls.

I think they're just, they're just trying to be famous. There are definitely a lot of people that don't like Bethesda from just, just for over the years, you know, there's people who don't like the engine that they use to make their games. There's people who think they haven't innovated it enough. You know, it's. Have you played starfield yet uh pereperian and sips like what do you think no i i i did boulders gate three but

i'm not really interested in i'm playing i'm playing starfield i'm fascinated because you know i've not picked it up yet i'm like it's gonna be on game pass okay imagine why would i buy it it's just imagine it fallout in space and a bit less dreary it's a bit less maybe hostile than you know fallout you fall out the the setting of fallout kind of means that everybody is just sort of a miserable asshole in that game but which is right you know part of the charm or whatever there's a bit less of that in starfield it's a bit more like you know we're on the frontier of human exploration and stuff like that so there's there's a bit more like positivity you know, we're on the frontier of human exploration and stuff like that. So, there's a bit more like positivity, but it is just a big janky Bethesda RPG.

It's expectations. Like, my expectation was, yeah, okay, great. It's another Bethesda game. It's single player. And hopefully, it's just Fallout in space. I hope it's another bethesda game it's single player and hopefully it's just fallout in space i hope it's just goofy and you know more of what i've come to expect and on all those levels i think it delivers i think it's i think it's great does the studio that thing when you talk to people where they sort of turn and look at you and then it zooms in a bit in that weird way yeah i don't know why that oh wait that's such a bethesda i don't know it's just it's it's just a it's just one of those things. But depending on how you catch them or what's going on,

you'll be mid-dialogue and your follower will just climb up on a table and stand right in front of them and stuff. It's the same old stuff. There's bugs from two, three games past that are still apparent. People sinking into the floor while you're talking to them and sometimes like the physics i think the physics are a lot better in this game generally but every once in a while you'll shoot somebody and they'll just rocket into space and stuff and it's it's been fun it has been a lot of fun but again the combat

didn't look very interesting to me it's not it's not there's no vats like in in fallout you know you know in fallout you could like yeah yeah pause time and shoot limbs and you know every once in a while if you got like a really good shot it would show like a slow slow motion action replay of the shot and stuff there's none of that the combat is just really basic but like i saw i saw a fight guy's fighting some guys in a room and they're all just shooting the doorway where he was. Yeah. And they just sort of stand in there and then he just dips in and shoots one and goes back

and they're like, oh, he's over there. Good. And they're just standing around. Is that true? The focus, I don't think the focus is the combat. You know, it's not meant to be a shooter. You're meant to be talking to people and sort of weaving your way through stories and the choices are probably less than boulders gate i think boulders gate seems i mean from i haven't

played it but everybody's just saying it is you should play it i think just the greatest game ever there's you know there's unlimited choices in how you tackle problems and stuff like that that's starfield is not that there's like you know there's there's skills that you can you can invest points in when you level up towards certain things that can help you through tricky dialogue or change the course of things but basically it always boils down to either can i mind control this person and skip combat or fail that and then have to fight them sort of thing it always boils down to well honestly i i think first of all i think your viewers would love to watch you play boulders gate 3 and second of all it's such a good game yeah i've heard it's incredible yeah i will pick

it up some of the scenes of the conversation and the npc interactions and stuff in starfield and when you look at it and then and you've just played Baldur's Gate I mean in a way They're really fucking unlucky with the timing here or they fucked up where they thought that they're gonna be a big deal Baldur's Gate 3 wasn't anything to worry about but equally I don't know how many people are gonna play Baldur's Gate 3 that would have played Starfield I know tons of people who are just obsessed with Bethesda games sure they play fucking Skyrim They played yeah, like that's that I would. Sure. They play fucking Skyrim. They played Fallout, all of it.

Like, that's their thing. I would say if you liked Fallout and Skyrim and, you know, Oblivion and all the Elder Scrolls games and whatever, it's great. It's funny. It's a new environment. It's 20 years later than these original...

You know, I was playing Morrowind and Oblivion when I was, you know, was playing morrowind and oblivion when i was you know in university and these were it was a very it was very immersive interesting experience and it's it's so similar to this experience now like we've got like it feels like gaming hasn't really changed like the formula is still the same well i mean the bethesda rpg formula has not at all changed is there any sex in Starfield? Can you fuck anyone? So far, I have not been able to. I think that might be working against them, because I think that's a big

part of Baldur's Gate 3. I fucked a mind flayer, dude. A mind flayer. In Starfield, there's not even a hint towards any romance or anything yet. So, if I'm like 50 hours in... Baldur's Gate 3 is, let me just say... The horniest game me just say the horniest game. It's the horniest game it really is.

I've done one main story quest in Starfield in 50 hours so. So yeah I think the lead dev said you can spend like 60 to 80 hours just fucking wandering around doing shit. Oh my god yeah it's vast there's a lot of I mean a lot of it is like some of it is really fun and interesting and then some of it is like, go to this facility and kill everyone for 3000 credits. You know, like the procedural and the facility is exactly the same as the one that you saw before. So here's a question for you. Loads of people were complaining about the fact that you can't just get in your ship and free fly around.

Yeah. Right. Well, yeah. But my question is, is that really the most fun part of those games literally just holding down w and fucking there's plenty of space sims out there that do that you can play no man's sky you can play elite dangerous those are all games where you have to in real time travel to your destination and it takes a long time but if you love that aspect of it i'd say yeah those games do it

really well you know maybe i don't i've never played star citizen but i think star citizen is like space city kind of stuff and then there's like your your x4s and whatever like the really hardcore ones i think those all do it better i don't think Starfield is meant to be that. People say, oh, it's a loading screen and fast travel simulator. But for me personally, I don't want to play a space sim in that game. I just want to jump around. Well, no. Did you play The Outer Worlds? I did, yeah. No, I never did, actually. No, I didn't play it. It was decent. It was okay. The way it looked was really nice and i liked the concept it was clever but obviously i mean for a long rpg style game that didn't really didn't really fit did it like it was more of a story puzzle yeah space right yeah um oh

by the way so talking of star citizen the total funding that that game has received if you don't know have a guess how much do you think the total? Oh, like hundreds of millions now. 600 million. Yeah, no, it's insane. 600 million. Where does this money come from? People. It's still being, it's still kickstarting. I think they had some investors come in that were interested that that dump some money into it as well.

But yeah, it's insane. I want to ask you guys a question about it. Do you think because this is my opinion i'd like to know if i'm off base star citizen star citizen is the only fans of games oh my god people are obsessed with it it's almost like a parasocial relationship they think they're a part of the dev team and there are people whales out there who are dumping thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars i think it is i think it's a sunk cost fallacy as well like they've spent so much on it as well they're like well it has

it has to be good i think some people genuinely just want it to be this perfect game which is kind of what it's setting out to do right it just wants to be it it wants to stand on its own as just the ultimate game which is but that's what what we had with Cyberpunk before that came out, and Starfield just two weeks ago. People had no one had played Starfield, you know, not even review copies that had really gone out until two weeks ago. And, you know, it was... Everyone was hyped out. No one really knew what to expect. It was so much hype, so much like, this is going to be the greatest game ever, blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, look, we've been here before. You know, we we all know that it's gonna be a game that runs on a ps5 right have you seen uh have you seen the starfield how good can it be the guy who filled his ship with potatoes yeah fuck me man that's so funny he opened the door and then just fucking a million potatoes come spilling out it's so funny i mean the the effects and the way it looks yeah it's very pretty it's great yeah i love the uh i love the aesthetic i love the the not it feels like not too future space you know no man's sky felt like way too future space everything just looked too fucking weird and i really like the uh i really like the aesthetic i like the like the the starcraft terran aesthetic you know the chunky almost like space cowboys sort of stuff you know

like it's everything just uh firefly kind of i guess so yeah i've never watched it i i know what it is but i've never i've never watched it but it like, it's almost like feels like near future space, you know, like the inside of all the ships. Here's a game I like that's like, it feels like a spacey game. And I've yet to find a space game that really has this feeling was Subnautica, the original Subnautica. Yeah. I felt when I was exploring in that game, genuine amazement and claustrophobia and discovery.

Yeah. Like when you go through a tunnel and you come out and there's a vast the first time you really find one of those big underground caves yeah and you sort of set your marker and go back up because you're running out of shit yeah and then you straight back down there and you're exploring you find any things i i really felt a sense of discovery and exploration that when i played no man's sky i think the whole nature of you've got endless worlds it's like yeah but that means there's no attention to detail in them there's no well it's just yeah they are all going to be the same they're just rocks in space

every planet in no man's sky is colored like baby shit as well for some reason well part of the problem is that when you have a procedural generation that's generated by basically a pattern generator yeah humans are very good at recognizing patterns and everything seems immediately very boring well give it a few years and we'll have gpt whatever doing it i think the game plus stuff in starfield is like that you when you land on a planet you can land on this completely what looks like a barren planet. You'll see there's little settlements all over the place, but they're all just little mini dungeons, you know, kind of like, you know, kind of like Skyrim, how you had, you know, you'd walk by a cave and you'd be like, oh, I wonder what cave this is. Right.

And you'd go into it and it would just be the same cave you'd been in a million times with like a big white at the end of it. And then a huge chest once you kill them that has some gear in it yeah and then there's like a nice fast escape route out the back but you never go to that cave again it has nothing to do with the story it's nothing to do with anything it's just a little tiny mini dungeon for you to pass time in to get some supplies or whatever there's loads of that in starfield like uh but the stuff that's interesting, that's handcrafted is usually marked on the map.

You can see it. Well, I think it tends to be side quest stuff or additional content. I think with Baldur's Gate, apparently like 500 people have completed it in the first two days, you know, of it coming out. And I think it's a similar thing with Starfield and Cyberpunk. If you stick to the main quest, you can do it.

Yeah, you'll cane through it. Usually it's a little bit challenging because you don't have the levels or the gear or stuff but if you do all the side quests then you come back to the main quest you have the opposite problem of everything's just trivialized so yeah but i i get the whole idea of people wanting to complete the story and be following things and get this sense of completion and do all the achievements you know like elven ring i remember yeah that was something where i looked at the achievements like i could do all these let's finish them i mean i play i play fallout and skyrim and now starfield the same way i play stardew valley i just want to collect everything i want all the mugs i want all it's impressive to

me how much fucking stamina you've got for that i don't it's crazy i don't i want to collect all the armors i want to collect all the followers and house them and stuff you know like it's it's crazy i don't i want to collect all the armors i want to collect all the followers and house them and stuff you know like it's it's the dumbest most mundane shit but i love it it's not but it's like it's part it's tapped into something about us you know it gives you this sense of achievement like beyond the sort of arbitrary story yeah you know that that's being forced down our throat kind of thing you know that you have to follow along with and you can't modify and you can't change. Baldur's Gate apparently has like a thousand endings, right? Or some bullshit.

But I mean, of course it doesn't. It's obviously that many endings, I guess you could figure out by how many followers you've killed along the way and other crap. I mean, there's lots of characters that sort of you do something in act one and then you see them in act two or act three.

And, you know, it does have loads of different, like someone might die, but someone else might live live so in terms of combinations and also what class you are what decisions you made along the way like it does all add up to different are all the followers like um uniquely like voice acted they all look different they have backstories and stuff and then what you pick and choose which ones you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A hundred times better than in Starfield. Apparently the followers in Starfield are really bad. Well, I found one so far. I played for 50 hours.

I have, oh no, sorry. I hired another guy, but he just sits in my ship. He's like some, he's an- He's a hireling. He doesn't come. He's an alcoholic. You can hire those in Baller State as well. The only reason I have a follower right now,

because I guess because I haven't done the main quest, is because at the start start you can pick these perks that sort of change the whole game in some small way. And one of the perks that I picked was, it's not really perk, it feels like a curse most of the time, is this, it's called the adoring fan. So, I was on my own for a while and then all of a sudden this really keen guy comes running up to me at the starport. And he's just like, oh my God, I love you so much and all this stuff. I have a tiny penis. Yeah. And then basically you get him on board and now he follows me around everywhere.

But some of his voice lines are really funny. You know, like you'll land on a planet and you'll be like another perfect landing and stuff like it's just it's so it's it's really fucking good actually it's great but that's the only guy i have i have no other followers so i don't like i couldn't tell you if the other ones are good or bad there's this there's apparently like four or five main followers and then like some additional ones all right but but in um boulders gate you can customize their class you know you can so they can fit in your party. You can really pick the kind of people that you want to play with.

Because some people, there's this vampire follower, right? Who very early in the game, you get him like immediately. And within the first couple of hours, you wake up with him like leaning over you, sort of going to suck your blood, right? And you can, you have so many options you know you can literally stake him right there or and then he's dead forever or you can like let him suck on you for a bit and you can actually let him suck on you so long that you actually die um it's mental like all these choices that's crazy you know you can kind of a lot a lot of people have been playing it multiple times because... Yeah, I guess the replayability is insane, right?

Like, you can do it with different party compositions. Yeah, there are quite a few game over screens because of decisions you've made. So, yeah, it's pretty crazy. Yes, it is, which is good, honestly. And also, I like the idea of not playing it 100% completion. Like, being like, I'm just going to go and do this bit now and then this bit now, and then I'm going to go to act two.

I'm not going to do everything because maybe the second time I play it, I'll go back and do the things I missed or I'll go to other places and it'll be more refreshing. Because otherwise you feel like you have to completely explore everything on the map before you move on to the next zone. You know what I mean? Yeah. But because of the nature, because I know I'm already missing time and voices and story with companions that I've killed or if forgotten or ignored or whatever i know that there's going to be more interesting

stuff to see if i if i do it a second time which is unusual for me in a game like this you know i think as well with boulders gate 3 is um i know i know a lot of people for some reason been hating on act 3 i really enjoyed act 3 myself it's interesting because first of all every fight seems different um because of the terrain you're on or what they what spells the enemy has how they fight or they all feel different and none of them feel like a grind i never felt if i had to play this through again i'd be like oh this section you know what i mean like where there's it just doesn't feel that way it's just talking to you guys about it because we played divinity original sin 2 which is obviously

heavily based this game is the same engine. It's similar, yeah, yeah. It's the same fucking everything basically, right? But yeah, Baldur's Gate is more polished and stuff. And I didn't really like Baldur's Gate when it was on the Nexus a couple of years ago. And I didn't rate it at all. And it sort of has exploded relatively recently. And I think that's maybe why it got sort of, it side swiped everyone a little bit.

Because it's hugely, hugely popular. But I do think a big part of it is the fucking nerds, the horny nerds. You can have all of the companions are what are called player sexual. If you're a pansexual gnome with blue beard, they will

all still fuck you. Well, you say that but hang on. I tried to fuck Shadowheart. I tried to fuck Karlakack neither of them was into it every dude in the game was horny for me all right and eventually i was like fuck it fine like astarian tried to hunt me gail told me he loved me i'd never even really done much with gail he was like i love you what can i say will tried to fuck me he was like come dance with me i was like no dude i'm straight i'm not into it i'm. He was like, come to answer me. I was like, no, dude, I'm straight. I'm not into it. I'm sorry.

He was like, got it. And then eventually the fucking mind flayers like, do you want to get it? Get on with it? I was like, yeah, fuck it, mate. Fuck it. The women won't fuck me. It's only dudes want to fuck me. I'm going to fuck a fucking tentacle creature. Let's go. It was unbelievable. I did everything.

Shadowheart was like, I said to her, how am I doing? She goes, I can't believe you need to ask you the most remarkable person. I was like, cool, let's have sex she was like no nothing maybe she doesn't believe in in sex before marriage everybody's fucking shadow heart or carla oh my god this is this sounds like my current dating situation how's it going no it's fine i've so i've been working on jingle jam a really hard lady for the last couple of weeks i haven't really i haven't really used anything for the for the last month yeah um i i guess we have learned jingle jam is like only positive right and even though i get a lot of

rejection there's a lot of positivity in that you know i'm dealing with nice people who are being nice you know we had a charity meetup this week where we all the charities came down and everyone was so so goddamn nice um had really interesting things to say and we you know great great stories about their what their charity does and all the great work it does you know all these people really really interesting and jiggle jam is just so positive the whole the whole process is so positive right people get a load of really good games for for next to nothing uh they get a load of really good context we make a load of stuff all of us get a really great time you know being social and seeing everyone and having fun and doing these weird events and the poker and all sorts of stuff right it's so good jingle jam is good for everyone whereas online dating feels like the opposite of that

like every part of the process of like of like making your profile and looking at other people's profiles getting insights into their awful lives you know because a lot of them are you see a lot of awful people on there um and then finally trying to talk to someone and then either being ghosted or being rejected or or dealing with that or then maybe meeting someone that isn't like their pictures and then you have to reject them after they're really into you like the whole process is like there's no i know at the end of it you're supposed to have have a relationship with someone and that makes up for it and i'm sure these moments are um i haven't had any but i'm sure this moment's special when you finally get them. Do you think, Lewis, that because it has elements of a video game like Tinder, essentially, it feels like a mobile game almost.

Do you think that at its core, it's about getting people to meet and there is a chance that they get along? Not a great chance, but there's a chance. And essentially, it's just a way of getting through the barrier of just walking up to strangers and saying, do you want to go to date with me? This is just like a way of saying we are all, everyone here has agreed that we want to date. But much like if you went up and just said to someone in the street, which it does work

occasionally, do you, you know, you're very attractive. Would you like to get a coffee or whatever? The point is it overcomes that. It gamifies it. So it feels like a mobile game your tinder is a mobile game blah blah blah blah but the odds of you meeting someone that you get along with and want to see again are just as slim as they are in the real world it's just that this is an avenue to meet people but do you think that the pressure you put on yourself is because it

feels more like a game that you should be winning and you're not well i think okay there's two aspects this one is that games have become more like jobs i like factorio and these games and the satisfactory sips my god the amount of time you put into satisfactory lately like you it was like a full-time job for you building this stuff i love it though and the stuff i do on jingle jam is i go through all these people i try and find their content information i send them nice messages where i say oh do you want to give you do you interested in maybe going out for a drink it's blending together in my mind no not really but it's um it's it is it is very similar right and i guess the second

aspect of it is yes and no like it feels like a game that is stacked against me and i feel like in a sense like it's kind of um it's kind of like it's kind of like rigged okay because i'm playing i'm playing poker at the table where there's just professional poker players right you know but so that's my point is that you're seeing it again as a game but i'm not being funny but the argument and i've been thinking about this a bit because we've spoken about it before the tinder is sort of rigged and it's just all these guys at the top and blah blah blah but how is that not just true in real life it is true right so tinder cannot remove or replace what is essentially people's way of judging other people and you reveal more of yourself through desperation to get noticed on tinder either with your bio by the way when i say you i mean one not you no it's

true um one one one puts this bio out there and photos they're trying to put on your best face all of this people trying to game it and or do this do that do the other but essentially people are still going to go for the people they would have gone for anyway so i think the argument that tinder has somehow made it harder to meet these beautiful woman of your dreams or man of your dreams uh and they go for these other people instead that that's true in life like it's it's true in life you see beautiful women and they've got a good looking bloke you think lucky bastard you know and that's life so i don't know why tinder is the focus of that frustration i'm not saying that that it's not hard for women as well like it is it's just as difficult on the other

end you know because i know women that use tinder and a lot of the time first of all they're more successful but that's true in real life as well like if women go out and are available in like a club or a pub they'll have lads all over like it's just the way it is it's much it is much easier if you're a woman to pull than if you're a bloke i am 100 on board There's a danger element that women need to be much more careful than men. It's a different conversation. There's a whole bunch of things that we don't really appreciate when it comes to

their side of dating. When people talk about Tinder as being rigged in favour of women or rigged in favour of a handful of men, I'm just saying, how is that different

from real life? Dating is, yeah, is the other way around. Well, it's partly a cultural thing, but I don't think that's necessary. I think there is that, I don't know, everyone I've spoken to about Baldur's Gate 3 has fucking talked about

who they've been having sex with and how, or how they've, you know, some of the things they've done. It's literally almost the first thing that they've said. And this was how it was back in the day with the Bioware games, with Mass Effect. People would look back on Mass Effect as this great game. And The Witcher. Actually, at the time, The Witcher, yeah, of course.

Everyone's talking about the boobs and the partner, right? It's a big incentive for people to play these games. maybe it's not um maybe i'm making more of it than it should no i mean it's in the game and you're right it is the number one thing i've seen people talking about apart from look what happens when you you know accept the hags offer or look what happens when you put on the mask in the hags dungeon or something

which are two random shorts have popped up i I knew what happened in both cases, but it was interesting to see. People love to find out the unusual endings or results of things. But people also it's just fun because you spend hours with these people and they either make you laugh or you really like them or you really don't like them. Sometimes the companions are kind of annoying. Sometimes you think they're fantastic. And I think it's it's weird that it draws you more into the game.

People can see it as a gimmick, but essentially having these relationships makes the game feel more real world. And I think that's drawn people into the characters more and made them more beloved because they don't just feel like, like sips is a companion in Starfield, who's just a lump. It's just basically, it's basically a Twitch chat following me around in right which is funny it's good but he doesn't he doesn't know no don't know no don't know so yeah no he does actually every once in a while he's like i found something that you might be interested in but it's always

something stupid like you think like oh shit he's gonna give me like some ammo or something he just gives you like you know a juice box with whiskey in it or something like that. Right, right, right. Before we continue, Lewis has a word about our sponsor this week. Lewis? That's right, Pyrrion. How do you think big tech companies make all their money? I don't know, Lewis.

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like I'll be watching YouTube vid, I'll turn it on and it doesn't stop. The only speed drops he's noticed are the ones he's, the speed he's delivering now that he can do secure transactions using his VPN and not get caught, am I right? You are correct. No, it's great. I really like it. So if you don't like big tech tracking you and selling your personal data for profit, it's time to fight back with ExpressVPN. You can visit expressvpn.com slash triforce right now protect your online freedom and privacy it's expressvpn.com slash triforce on with the show so i read this week that starfield people do sink hours into these games

and there was a couple playing starfield late late into the night and apparently it like saved them from death um they were binging starfield and there was like a deadly fire in their apartment. It was like an explosion. The fire spread really, really fast. Well, they didn't notice? And no. So they were there up at like three in the morning. Oh.

And he heard this explosion, looked out the window and there was like fire coming up his stairway into his apartment. And he and his wife grabbed the cat and apparently went straight out. Only got minor burns. But if they'd, minor burns but if they'd you know if they'd been asleep they'd be dead yeah they could have that's wild yeah yeah that is insane so starfield literally literally saving people from death due to them staying up all night it's really weird with starfield it feels like um it feels like there's more people than i expected that that dislike it um but again like i'll'll just reiterate, I think if you liked Fallout 3 and 4 and Skyrim and stuff, it's a very safe game in that sense.

They haven't changed much of that formula. It didn't feel like as much. Whether that is a good or a bad thing for you. But I mean, my expectations were that it would be that so for me my expectations have been met so i'm i'm quite happy just you know meandering through it i don't think it's the greatest game of all time but it's been fun to play like if don't like if something if something amazing came out tomorrow i would probably just play that but you know what i mean is it so do you think it's like an exciting

new IP? Because I feel like the Fallout world, even though Fallout wasn't a game I put a huge number of hours into, I played it, and I did enjoy it. I mean, it got very depressing after a while. I love the Fallout world as well. I love the nuclear pumps. That look is so unique.

I look at all the Starfield stuff, and I think it feels very vanilla. It's almost like it's low risk. I look at all the Starfield stuff and I think it feels very vanilla. It feels... It's almost like it's low risk. Yeah, it is. I think everything about it is pretty low risk, though. It is very low. You're right. And that's what the Outer Worlds tried to break away from with their sort of zany, punky

looking... You know, there was always like rocket punky kind of vibe. It felt like goblins in space, really. Yeah. The sort of level of i mean the thing is the like the game to get it early access it's an expensive game you know to get the digital premium or or whatever version but the fact that you can just play it on game pass if you if you've already got game pass now that it's released because it came out yesterday is you know what i mean

like i i feel like it's a no-brainer i mean if you if you played enough fallout and skyrim and other bethesda games yeah it's a good chance that you'll like this one as well but i don't think it's it's not going to change the world it's not going to blow your mind in any way but it's it's a fun enough game to play through but then again i think that's what people are after a lot of the time yeah do you think like i mean obviously people have like the ability to suspend their disbelief when it comes to watching television and romantic things and you know people watch romantic movies or bridgerton or whatever you know with everyone or love island you know yeah people all fucking each other it doesn't mean that they want to necessarily do that it's

escaping like it is a very escapist like sexual encounters in paul to skate i mean it's like it's kind of got everything you know you could be a psychopath and murder a a family yeah and you can also i like how open it sounds because like one one thing that um you know i like i like that there's that there's like you know sex and sex sexuality in the game and stuff But it does seem like such an obvious thing to go for in any game, right? Especially considering gamers. And I'm glad there's like more to it than just that, you know, like. I don't want to just play a game where the whole thing is like, fucking, fucking someone.

No, it's not like that. Yeah, I'm glad it's not. That's clearly only a small part of it, but it's certainly exaggerated. But then again, you do see it like, it kind of can't help itself. You open the inventory screen and you're putting someone's armour on and you notice they're having, like, an underpants slot. Yeah. And you, like, mouse over it and it's, like, got...

Oh, yes, no. You know, every character has some special underwear, right? Right. Which has got some, you know... And you can take it off and you can swap their underwears around. Do you know what I mean? So here is one thing about it though that i think is is what separates it from what sips was saying is i don't want it to just be a fucking hump fest like i get it

is it essentially it does bind you through the game to these characters and sometimes you know you get a relation with them and they're like oh i love you you're fantastic but for most of the characters that are certainly the the ones i've played with so far you have to make some fucking hard decisions regarding those people so it adds another layer of concern about oh shit is this the right decision for them like you actually start like i was really like oh shit what do i do like really big decisions about their future and sometimes you just have to listen to them and say yep if that's your decision fair enough sometimes you want to try and talk them out of it. And it's like,

it is interesting. I think by adding that element of attachment and bonding that you get through those relationships with the characters, it makes the decisions you have to make about their future much more impactful than they would have been. Yeah. Plus you've leveled them up and you've had them fight with you for a long time and you've learned how to,

to use them. And they're quite an integral part of your battle system and the battling isn't easy no it's hard you know is it like divinity like yeah like one small fight with crabs takes like three hours it's it can be like that it's not as frustrating i think the few things they changed was the movement is much better i found divinity punishing in terms of the range of things right yeah felt very low i feel like this is more dynamic and you get all kinds of spells and items that help you that was fun to play when We played it together though. It was quite fun Wasn't it cuz I'm in fun in the end we had kind of we had a bit of a flow

I know it was chaotic, but we all have as K. That's roles, right? I remember playing we me and you played the first one didn't we Lewis didn't we play through the first one we talked about this a lot and I think my recollection of it is that this was almost something that broke our friendship up

we stopped recording did we anything together other than Triforce because of one particular episode of Divinity 2

where you're in a village and we were sneaking around and there was like one way that you could go in one way You shouldn't and I went the wrong way right and that was it fucking bedlam. We all started shouting We never played it again after that We have not recorded anything other than this. No, we played some hard for sure. No, we stopped I'm 99% sure we stopped so should we like this get the gang together again and play through Baldur's Gate? I have been asked so much about this. Like when are you going to do a double dragon? I'll do it with you. Okay. I haven't played it. So you guys can be my you can be my Sherpas through the game. I haven't played it at all. You can you can show me the way. People are going to be so hyped. If we don't do this, we're going to get

asked about it even more. When are you going to do it? You said you were going to do it. When are you going to do it? You said you were going to do it. If you guys want to do this, we actually have to do it. We could stream it, though, if you wanted, Sips, on yours. Well, if you guys want to stream it, we can do it. Yeah, I don't mind.

People want to see it on YouTube. We'll put it on YouTube after. Alright. Fucking hell, you guys are committing to just... But then people want to see it on YouTube. Yeah. I don't put it back on YouTube after. Yeah. All right. All right. Let's find out. You guys are committing to just. Is it, is it a long game?

Like, will it take us a long time? 60 hours. That's just, that's the play through it in a, in a pretty steady, steady clip. Right.

Okay. Is there a lot of, is there a lot of sidetracking and stuff to do? So is it a vast game? It's not open world. Right. Okay. Like it's basically corridors in the world. So you just, it funnels you through to the next area. Yeah. And game it's not open world right okay like it's basically corridors in the world so you

just it funnels you through to the next area and then it's like each area is kind of like a puzzle to solve i guess right yeah like like every area is unique sure um there'll be you know there's different bits you you can just go wandering off you can and there'll be a little encounter there and stuff the fights are hard right now this was my issue that I had, my number one issue, and this was Lewis's fault, all right? With the Divinity 2 playthrough, number one issue was the obsession with not reloading.

This game, I reloaded every few fucking minutes, it felt like, at some points. There's a lot of reloading in Baldur's Gate, and Lewis was like, no, don't reload. And you were like, no, no, don't reload. It's like, lads, we can't do this. We're going to lose. Yeah, no, don't reload. And you were like, no, no, don't reload. It's like, lads, we can't do this. Like, we're going to lose. Yeah, no, I get it.

I get it. But I do like winging it. And I do like coming out of a situation not ideally, you know, but still coming out of it. You know what I mean? Unfortunately, there's a lot of bits in these games where you'll literally open a door, an orb of fire will come out and annihilate your entire team. Yeah, and you're like, two people are dead, and you have to use all your fucking healing stuff. Yeah, it's like, well, that's a reload.

But if we're going to be resistant to that shit, this is going to be so fucking frustrating. No, it's fine. There'll be free reloads. Free refills. Free refills on all of your Pepsi purchases, or Coca-Cola. I promise.

And also, let's talk about loot. What about it chris you don't need everything you never know when you might need some trust me because i played through and i collected a lot of shit right there's a lot of stuff you do not need is there any and is there like a base or anything where your followers can chill out and you can leave a little camp yeah and you can send stuff to camp. And can you decorate your camp? No. I think you can. You can put boxes

around and stuff, can't you? Yeah, I don't think it's really... You can't stash all the junk that you pick up or anything? No. The only crafting thing, thank God, is alchemy. Like, you can collect herbs and you can do potions. Right, right. But there's no sort of like, oh, you can make a shitty plus one plate armor.

And honestly, selling stuff isn't that big a deal. Right. Because a lot of the time, like, there's no way to just sell stuff at camp. You have to load it onto your guy, go find a trader, sell stuff. And then, you know, and also there's an encumbrance system and all the rest of it. So in terms of like goblin style looting, it's out the window. You just can't do it. Most stuff you just don't need. And I ended the game with tons of it. So in terms of like, Goblin style looting, it's out the window, you just can't do it most stuff you just don't need. And I ended the game with tons of money. I was like, I didn't need half this money. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, old habits die hard sometimes. So you'll

I know, you'll just have to call me up on it. Yeah, see, let's see how it goes. I'm, I'm down for this. What class are you gonna play? Um, I like I like sneaking around, you know, I like I like a rogue or something. Rogue is good. I like that sort of know I like I like a rogue or something rogue is good I like that sort of thing play through first time I played it I did a rogue run all the way through right and you can end up with some really nice builds I recommend double hand crossbow you end up with some very pogwins in the game right and you can fucking blink people from miles away and you do tons of damage pretty good Lewis there you go I'll be um i'll be a lewis you're always a magician you need i think you need to be some sort of wizard a mage i i was i was like a warlock

playthrough but i'm happy to do a paladin playthrough or something like that paladin most popular class apparently so i wanted to just do a raw fighter but yeah paladin's the number one class really is it yeah so if we do it as three we're only going to have one companion that's going to be a big decision oh yeah so we'll have so it's all you only have a team of four yeah it's four well you know we could just make our own companion though we don't even have to use one of the standard ones but then we don't have any of the story elements of the companions we just have to fuck each other oh my god we need to get one companion we all fuck them oh my god all at once jesus so how did how does the the dialogue choice stuff work then it's one one person like the master i think it would be you yeah so where do

you vote i mean me and lewis have played it me and lewis have played it so with your companions essentially right okay so you'll have to play it, and we'll just, hands off. We won't say anything about the story. We'll just let you do what you want. You'll just let me experience it with living companions at my side. Yeah. Okay. But I haven't played all of it. I've only done Act 1.

So, I finished it. It's amazing. I don't know if you like Starfield, Lewis. I honestly don't know. I feel like you might, but I don't know. It's, I I don't know if you like Starfield Lewis I honestly don't know I feel like you might but I Don't know. It's I guess well, it's on game pass. So just give it a try but I will post stuff is kind of fun I just don't know. I just don't have because I'm doing jingle jam stuff. I just don't I do have to say honorable mention in Starfield to the shipbuilding is really really neat

It's cool, and you can make some wh really neat it's cool and you can make some whoppers as well fuck you can make some really big ships and uh like people have made like millennium falcons and like star destroyers and like all sorts of stuff like they don't look like amazing but there's lots of parts there's lots of cool i like that you can do that that's cool yeah but you can't fly around in them it's just combat right well there's combat and then every like when you when you fast travel anywhere you land on a planet stuff there's always little cut scenes so you get to see your ship quite a lot but you get to see it cinematically which is kind of nice too you know um so yeah it's not bad and the and the the builder is is neat too sign this we're gonna have to tell this podcast an entire podcast about Baldur's Gate 3 and

Starfield To be fair we don't talk about games that often They just come out and you guys have played a ton of Baldur's Gate and I've played a ton of Starfield So but also also how often do we just talk games on the podcast? Yeah, we are all gamers This is the first episode in probably a good couple of years, but we've just talked about games Yeah, sometimes it's got to happen. It's what we do for a living. We all love games.

City Skylines 2 is coming out soon as well. I played that a bit at that event. And so far, what I've seen is really nice. I did a video with Lewis and Shadow and Tom. Yeah. It was fun. It was fun. Before we wrap up, let me just say we went on a mini vacation right before.

I mean, kids are back to school, Flax. I guess yours are too. Yeah, they're both at big school today. They're both at big school. Wow. Okay. But my son started big school, which he's getting on with okay. And then my, well, the baby hasn't got, isn't at school yet.

Yeah. My middle one has just started year three, which she seems fine with. Yeah. We did a mini vacation. We went to london for two nights right and the the idea was that we were going to take the baby to see in the night garden live which where was it where was it though in bromley well this is what i was actually going to say was so i saw someone talking about this well someone's talking about the other day and

they were saying how in the night garden is that works for babies because it's familiar. It's soothing. It's something they know already. It's repetitive. And it's just like Starfield. Yes, exactly. Yes. Very soothing for big man babies.

It's very, it's very sweet. It's very, very sweet. It is sweet. It's long standing. Yeah. And, and all of my kids have, have loved watching it at various points in their lives. The baby as well, but the baby loved it we went we made it there found our way there and stuff uh went and then when it was done we took the train back to uh victoria station central london and then we had

hours to just walk around central london which we'd never done with the kids before so we're walking around looking at we like we we took them to see buckingham palace and we walked down the mall and went to trafalgar square and i just did like you know just walked around everywhere looking with the baby in a push chair yeah yeah the baby was sleeping in her push chair was pretty good and uh my daughter was just kind of like you know after a while she was just like i'm so tired can we can we go home now and we're like yeah yeah we'll just go like see one more thing so we do all this we get to the end of the end of it and i turn to my son i say what'd you think of london then like you know you got to see big ben you got to see everything like what do you think he's like it's really weird why and he's like why are there so

many statues of naked babies and i was like what the fuck and then i thought about it's like yeah there are lots of statues of naked babies like there's just little naked babies everywhere in london so next time you're in london see if you can spot loads of statues of naked babies yeah there's fucking tons of them it turns out so there you go i went down to bournemouth last weekend i hadn't been down home in a while hadn't been out in bournemouth in years uh went down there to see a friend of mine and, well, a group of them, but him in particular because he's not well. So we all wanted to go down and cheer him up. And we went out to a bar in Bournemouth town centre called The Post,

which is like a German, themed around a German bar. But in the evenings, they just put banging tunes on and everybody gets on the tables and dances. Oh, that's nice. So we drank a load watching the football at my mate's house. Then we went into town and drank a load in the bar and got really pissed and then some of us went on to a club uh which i hadn't been to a club in years called canvas which is up the hill and we went there and we were fucking battered by the end of it it was great but i fell off the table to dancing uh post and i really fucked my arm it's all purple my whole forearm

is purple holy shit on a big knot on it I mean it didn't feel I didn't notice it until I got home and I had like an egg shaped bump on my arm I must have just fucking slammed it into the table that's the worst when you're drunk and you hurt yourself and you don't realise till the next day that you've actually really injured

yourself but it's like I haven't done that in years I felt young again getting wounded on a night out not in a bad way but coming back with those little war wounds from your night out it felt good it felt yeah that's good yeah it's nice man you re you're so i like how sips his son is like noticing stuff you know it's with that new that new eyes that fresh look at the world and you're like trying to recapture but it was fun it was really fun we did we didn't feel too out of place i mean a lot of the people there were much younger um but there were a lot of people around our age um and several people tried to guess my age i don't know why they were trying to do it nobody had me at above 40

not one person no i felt good about it but then i worked the next morning yeah but then i realized young people don't know what people in their 40s look like they think if you're 40 you look like you're 60 yeah that's the thing they just don't know no so they were like 38 it's like nice but you are out by a decade like what are you thinking but they just don't know it's quite sweet the the first job that i got when i was in jersey i was working for like a small company and the guy who hired me, I went to the interview and, you know, like it was fine or whatever. But I thought I was like 23 at the time. And I thought this guy was like easily 60. And so, I got the job and a couple of weeks in, like we were just talking or whatever. And he's like, and he mentioned his

age. I was like, wait, how old are you? And he's like, oh, I'm whatever and he's like and he mentioned his age i was like wait how old are you and he's like oh i'm 31 it's like what in my mind you are 60 like how are you only 31 that's crazy seven years old yeah yeah yeah yeah but i think you can act a lot older than you are as well right yeah that's a big thing and equally you can act a lot younger than you are too and i think that helps oh the hair yeah for sure you know yeah absolutely so so i i think you see it all the time on on dating sites as well right like someone's first picture you'll be like oh they look about 23 and you scroll down and they're like 43 what filters they got filters how does this happen that's how everybody uses filters yeah and and the other way too, too. Sometimes you'll say, God, this woman looks like she's 43,

and you'll scroll down, and she'll be 23, and you'll be like, how? Smoking. Smoking. Smoking. Very weird. Anyway.

Anyway. Thanks, everyone. We'll be back. We will be back. Be good to each other. Play games. Oh, yeah. Go for it.

Kiss your companion for me. Kiss your companion for you. Yeah, yes. Say hi to Shadowheart. Kiss your companion for you. Yeah, yes. Say hi to Shadowheart. Tell her I said hi. Tell her I still resent it, but it was nice to see you. All right, we love you.

Bye. Peace.