Brain Soda Podcast - Episode 9 - The Legacy of the Burning Ring of Honor

Episode Date: April 1, 2023

Join us this week as we discuss a surprisingly historic Ring of Honor wrestling event, an overview of chili peppers, and a rundown on the new Harry Potter game, Hogwarts Legacy!

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the dark, ever-present Brain Soda Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle, here with my co-hosts and cohorts, Brad and Frog. I'm a wizard, boys. This week, we're going to be talking about Hogwarts Legacy. We are going to be talking about peppers, and we're going to take a little travel and time today, and we're going to talk about November 13th, 2009, in Novi, Michigan. You and I, Brad, if you remember, we went and saw a show from Ring of Honor at the Rock Financial Center. Yes, I recall that. It was quite awesome. So, we're going to talk about this Ring of Honor show today, not only because we saw it,

but when I go through this list of individuals who appeared on it, it to me is amazing where these guys were even 10 years after these shows, but today, I think it's going to be really crazy to see where they were just a few years after that. So, we're going to start off with maybe the saddest story out of all of those. The opening match for what this appeared as on DVD, The House of Truth, versus the Brisco Brothers, and at this point, The House of Truth is a group in Ring of Honor, but it's in its infancy. And the Brisco Brothers, are the Brisco Brothers, are they big now? So, they were day one performers in Ring of Honor. Jay Brisco is on the first Ring of Honor show. I can't remember if he was taking them to or from, but he had his two little girls with him,

and he got in the car accident and died. But real name Jamie Pugh, the guy was like, a well-known member of his community, a family man, and Ring of Honor was bought by A.W. and Tony Khan over the last year as well. They bought it from Sinclair, who doesn't even own the company at this point when we went and saw this show. At this point, they're actually appearing on HDNet, which became Access TV later and had like absolutely no viewership at the time of Ring of Honor being on its network. Were we able to watch it on any of the local shows? I know I watched it with you at home. I watched, no, no, later on you could, when it became Sinclair, you could watch it on Fox 66 from episode one. Okay, because I know I watch it now,

you can see Ring of Honor, maybe they're old ones, but recently, at least in the recent, like, within the last three or four years, should I say. Yeah, so the House of Truth is at this point, just a tag team and Truth Martini. These are all Michigan native indie workers too, Christian Abel and Josh Raymond. But Ring of Honor is not a Michigan based wrestling company? No, not at all. I mean, they did a lot of shows in the Midwest and Dayton and Cleveland and Chicago Ridge, probably more than anywhere else. But like, yeah, they made shows in Detroit every year of their inception, probably two, three times a year. But like, no, they were not a Michigan based company. But they had a lot of guys from Michigan work through their company in varying levels of

prominence. Absolutely. Yeah, good seats. We did. So let me tell you my experience. I just want to can I share my experience really quick with you? Yeah, really quick. Yeah. So I don't really know, you know, wrestling, you know, frog. I did watch wrestling like WWF, you know, before we had the E back with The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin and Undertaker and Mankind, probably when you watched it, right? But, you know, Kyle, you know, has always watched it and continued watching it. So like, you know, I still thought it was cool, obviously. So like, we went down there and we had some like back row seats, but like there was an open area and they let us come up front, like right up to like the gates, you know, like right where you where you see them get thrown against

and everything. And the guard rail is typically what it's called. Yeah. And man, like, way, like, you know, obviously, I know that wrestling like is scripted and things like that. But these people are athletic. Or like, these people are athletes. Exactly. They, you know, the like, the stuff they go through is insane. And to watch it like live and especially like five, 10 feet away from you, or in our case, sometimes like literally in your face, like, like there was a couple of times when people got like thrown at the guard rail, like right in front of us, like, you know, like right in our faces, it was crazy. Yeah, like it's insane to watch. And like, it's got to hurt. In that, in that super personal environment too, because this isn't like

to see it in like a big arena, if you could imagine, go into the savannah, a civic center or something like that and seeing it like that's one thing. And even those front row seats, that's the personal environment. That's where you're spending that money on is because every shot, every chop, every, you know, whip into the barricade type thing is such a big impactful moment when you're that close, even seeing them from further back, it's entertaining, it's exciting, but it doesn't, it doesn't have that feel when you're, you know, you're only 30 feet away from it, seeing it with your eyes. But so we open this show as you could purchase it on DVD, if you're able to find it, with the House of Truce, Josh Raymond, Christian Abel, with Truth Martini in

their corner versus the Brisco Brothers. And the Brisco Brothers win. And it was, it was a good match. But this is a point and ring of honor where everything is not go all out and steal the show for every single match. This is about building to a card. This is about making it all kind of have an ebb and flow for a show and pacing and things like that. This is the Adam Pierce era, which is right after the game. Sapolsky era, the next match we would have seen. And remind me if you know any of these guys, a guy named Tyler Black and a guy named Claudio Castignoli have a match. Now, I don't think I remember any of those guys. I remember the beginning. Well, what if I, what if I referred to them? What was that frog? I don't really know Ring of Honor roster, to be honest.

Well, what if I refer to them in some other names they've wrestled as? What about Seth Rollins? Have you heard of that guy? Oh, yeah, Seth. Seth. Well, that's Tyler Black. And this, I won't lie, man. This is, this was my guy. This was the guy I was waiting to win the Ring of Honor World Heavyweight Championship. Tyler Black was my favorite guy once he started to break away from the age of the fall and actually being in the age of the fall in 2008 is what made me gravitate towards that guy. Claudio Castignoli, who he's now wrestling as again in ROH and AEW. That was Cesaro. Do you remember Cesaro and all frog? Okay. Well, that was that was Claudio. Where was Rollins wrestling at? Or where is he currently

wrestling out of? He's still in WWE. Oh, he's in WWE. Seth Rollins. Yeah. He's not he's not a part of that team with Roman Shield. No. Yeah, the shield. And when I'll never forget when the shield came out, I know who Ambrose was and I'd watched a couple of John Moxley matches and a couple matches of him as Dean Ambrose. But like, I knew, I knew they were both in developmental. I knew that they had both had a really big match with Leaki, who is Roman Reigns in developmental with them at the time. And like, they were getting, I wanted to say mainstream, but it was nerds like me on the internet talking about professional wrestling, right? But they were getting buzz. And then they show up as the shield and I was hype. That was so like, I can't stand Seth Rollins. If I'm going to

be, I mean, but that's the point. That's what being a heel is. But no, it's not, it's not even that. I've never even really watched him wrestle. It's my seven year old who understands that my favorite wrestler is Kane and wants to come out of his bedroom every two minutes saying, guess who just chokes Sam Kane? Oh, man. So he's always, always, always on you about him. So that's kind of, well, let's move on to something a little bit more irritating than Seth Rollins. What about sexual misconduct? It's Joey Ryan and Eric Stevens as the embassy versus Super Smash Brothers who later become the dark order in AEW. Although when we saw the Super Smash Brothers, they were obviously kind of imitating the little boo ghosts from Mario with their masks. They recently split up in AEW

when Stu Grayson, player Dose, left to go back to the Indies. So hold on a second. Like, or is at least one person or group of people from the matches that we watched in that place now like famous like in AEW or WWE or some type of like professional wrestling? They actually are pretty much for the most part. And that's why I wanted to cover this because not only was it a birthday gift to myself, not only was it something that I'm so excited to see and like, I'll be honest, I started watching Ring of Honor more regularly because I wasn't going to watch WWE anymore. So I became like a big Ring of Honor fan. That's where I poured my efforts and my energies when it came to this hobby or interest, whatever. But regardless, my wrestling interests went into

Ring of Honor and it had been there, I would say for a good portion of time. Yeah. And then also, like, I mean, I feel like amateur, well, not amateur, but you know, like semi-professional indie wrestling. Indie wrestling. I feel like independent. Yeah, independent professional wrestling. It's a little different. It's a little more raw, you know, it's a little more backyard wrestling. Indie wrestling strictly means we are not a company larger than a couple guys maybe putting in together to make a show happen. Or it could be we are the underbelly of professional wrestling where our guys are going to be in WWE's developmental within six months to two and a half years. In Ring of Honor, that's exactly what they were. To be clear, Ring of Honor is an independent company

was started on the premises of being more similar to cold like Japanese wrestling where it's just two competitors who are noteworthy for the way that they wrestle and they're going to go in and do it hopefully vying to be either the best man who walks out of the ring or next in title contention or whatever it may be, right? But a lot of times that was followed through by sportsmanship, the code of honor, somebody shaking the other's hand. Later on, it became the biggest independent professional wrestling promotion is really what it was at the end of the day. Gotcha. So who got first with wrestling? Was Ring of Honor before? Ring of Honor started in 2002. And so the thing that really actually kind of sucks about it is, yeah, it was well, but the thing is, is that like

when you look at today's professional wrestling and modern professional wrestling, it is the birthplace. It almost seems like there was like this kind of conglomeration of like the big like mainstream media wrestling in that time period of WCW and ECW into into WWF and then now WWE, obviously. Yeah. And at least from what you're kind of telling me is that ROH was kind of like the beginning of like the alternative, the new alternative, which is now like, well, so that's getting into that. Like it is it is really mostly Ring of Honor. That was the background for the original all in show that became the the birthright for AEW as a company. But okay, but back to the show. So I buried the lead. Now in 2020, there was a hashtag speaking out movement. During that

speaking out movement, Joey Ryan is accused by like 18 women of sexual misconduct and abuse. And that pretty much ends his career. Oh man. Eric Stevens a few years later would pretty much quit the business and came back in 2019. Now the intermission main event, which was Katsuhiko Kojima vs Kenny Omega. He's the first guy we're going to talk about tonight who is an EVP of AEW. And this is the guy who has become like a large part of fulcrum of that company because of his time in Japan that he would have really blown up a number of years after this. So he's a big part of AEW now then. He is. And I mean, I wouldn't say it comes without warrant. So what about the rest of the matches? So you have Kenny King and Rhett Titus vs Colt Cabana

and Delirious. Delirious will go on and be the booker, the main creative force going forward after this era of Ring of Honor after Adam Pearce's ousted from booking in like maybe a year. You got Roderick Strong and Chris Hero who are two well-beloved independent wrestlers for an entire decade. Roderick Strong is kind of nowhere to be found on WWE television right now. Unfortunately, Chris Hero, I don't even know if he wrestles anymore. And then you have the Young Bucks vs Kevin Steen and El Generico. And this is one I really want to highlight because the Bucks are indeed the other big set of EVPs from AEW that are very noteworthy. And at this point, an executive vice president. So the other side of the ring here

though is where I want to bring focus because the thing that I find to be most interesting is when you talk about Kevin Steen and El Generico who at this point are years away before they ever hit developmental. Now at this point, Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens have been big mainstream stars for WWE for years. And over the last number of months, they've had some of their most exciting works with the bloodline, with them feuding with each other, surrounding that bloodline feud. And it's really interesting that this is recorded before we really know what's going to happen with them at WrestleMania to see where it's going to go. So I really wanted to kind of highlight that. Yeah, it's just crazy to me that like all these people were just like, you know,

just starting out their careers. What was that 14 years ago now? It's the same thing about that. But the thing is, is that a lot of these guys weren't just starting out their careers before they made a big sorry, because they obviously weren't making money. Like, no, they weren't, they weren't making a whole lot of money. I don't think so. When we were going, it didn't seem like there was, you know, but to be fair, these guys were good enough that they were traveling around the world wrestling for people and wrestling on DVDs. And I think like a lot of professional wrestlers, when you look at what they should have made at being as like, in my opinion, the company is only as good as the roster. Oh, sure. And like, right. Yeah. Like I feel like

WWE, that's a little different sometimes because you're going to see the whole show and like the Miz is not good enough to be the whole reason you buy a pay-per-view, but he might be the reason you start watching professional wrestling. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. And like you see the, yeah, you know, I'm not saying that their performances were subpar. Like that's, this is the, the crazy thing is that these guys, like it just blows my mind that like pretty much everybody we saw there are professionals now. And because like it was a professional show, it was crazy to think that we were that close to what, you know, future professionals, you know, is what, what I'm trying to get at, I guess. Oh yeah. I mean, I would say almost the

cream of the crop of the business. I mean, when you really break it down, like most of these guys are now multiple time world champions and, or EVPs of a company and, or some of the most recognized characters on any given wrestling show that's put out however many times a week between Ross, Mack Down, Dynamite, etc. Exactly. So now we have our main event, Davey Richards versus Austin Aries. And I really do find it funny though that like out of everybody we've listed and talked about, you feel like I would, I would say two names that like, you'd be like, oh yeah, I see him every week here, or my little nephew brings him up whenever he talks about professional wrestling. And like, they're not. Austin Aries is a guy who like hasn't been blackballed from the business,

but you really don't see work anywhere of prominence because of his attitude, apparently. Here he's in his second run as Ring of Honor world champion, and Davey Richards left and came back just recently within the last year. It's, yeah, it's so strange. That is crazy to think though, but like, but well, were they older though? Because like you just said, some of those people are betting a Ring of Honor. I think they're all about the same age at this point. I mean, Aries, Aries had maybe been working there a little bit longer than Roderick, but not, but not Jay Briscoe. And they're all like mid forties at the latest probably. Anybody on this show probably mid forties max. You know, you might have said this already, but

where is ROH now? So unfortunately, I feel like the biggest story of Ring of Honor is a company up until its sale to Tony Khan now is raid because that's all anybody ever did to them after a certain point. So yeah, I think I mentioned before, I think in the compost episode that I'm a very avid gardener and peppers are a big thing. I like peppers a lot. And I don't go so crazy now, but a few years back, I grew like over 70 different varieties. You know, like my whole entire garden was just filled with just different types of peppers and everything was insane. So yeah, I just want to talk about a little bit. Do you guys know like about like where peppers started at all or anything? Not entirely. Do you know like what part of the world at all? Or

I would guess central America. Yeah, I was going to say south and central America. They are a new world crop. Yeah. So like they started, they believe it in like Brazil around, they've been used for like over 6,000 years, but they're around for millions of years, but humans started using them around 6,000 years ago. Okay. And it was almost one of the first crops actually used by the Americans along with corn. You know, it was one of the most widespread plant foods around there. It predates pottery actually in the Americas. What? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like that's why they've been using peppers like for a while, pretty much since they got like, because peppers are delicious, you know, but yeah, so like, you

know, you think of like peppers used in so many different dishes and like Chinese cuisine and you know, Mediterranean cuisine and all that like, that was not around before 1492, you know, like actually peppers were one of the first things that Columbus brought back. That is amazing. Yeah. So like, I mean, and peppers, they're crazy, like they keep food from spoiling, you know, they can, they're packed full of flavor obviously, you know, like there's different flavors and stuff, we'll get into that later. But also like they contain more vitamin C than oranges do. So like when you think of like oranges, you know, like that's the vitamin C fruit, right? Peppers contain more than that. So if you eat a bunch of peppers, you'd be fine.

That's wild. Yeah, you know, like, there's so many ways to cook them, you know, you get fresh pickled, you know, you can salt and ferment them, you know, you can dry them and make them into powders like paprika and cayenne and all that. There's just, there's so many ways. I just love peppers. But so do you guys know what the thing that makes it hot is called? Have you heard of what, like what that chemical is? So actually, I think I am familiar with it because of scarlet and violet. There's a Pokemon involved in gen nine called capsicid. Is it capsaicin? It is, yes. Yeah, or capsinoids. Yes, capsaicin is the main one. Yes, for sure. Yeah. And that is actually what like is the heat, you know, what gives the heat to peppers, you know, and it is,

it's not actually a taste. It's not a taste. It's actually, it binds to your temperature receptors on your tongue and on your body, you know, your skin and everything like that. And that makes your body think that there's something hot, you know, when there's actually nothing there, you know, so it's kind of, it's not a taste. Right. One thing is that you do not want to drink water when you're like, if you're mouth, you know, if you're eating peppers and eating something hot, you want to drink something with fats in it, you know, because capsaicin is fat soluble. So you want to drink something like milk or ice cream or even like yogurt or something like that. It's really like actually dairy has something that casein binds to the capsaicin.

So it actually is like doubles it, you know, so actually drinking milk and stuff like that and just hold it in your mouth if you have to, you know, but water, water just spreads it around, you know, so you don't want to drink water for sure. You can drink alcohol too. Alcohol will strip it away as well. I'm going to be honest. I just stay right away from it because when it comes to spicy foods, I'm what they call a little. I love it. Really? I always figured you were big on spicy food. No. Okay. I don't like purposeful pain. I'm not going to purposely set my mouth on fire for entertainment. Yeah. I dig it sometimes. Well, I mean, it's a tolerance. Okay. So like you build it up, you know, you don't just go and eat

and like ghost peppers right away, you know, you want to like slowly build yourself up to the, to the, like, build your tolerance up. And like, I usually, you know, what I eat daily is like sriracha. I'm not sitting there eating like Carolina Reapers chewing on them every day. And honestly, I'm only growing habaneros. That's the hottest thing I'm growing. I'm growing up in peppers, but habaneros are the hottest thing we're growing this year. So, but I do like spicy though. Obviously, I love peppers, but and that spiciness actually is measured in skull bills. So skull bills was invented by a guy named William Scoville in 1912. And what he did was he diluted pep like capsaicin. He diluted it down in alcohol. And then he like had people taste it. And then he

he diluted it until they couldn't taste the heat anymore or feel the heat anymore. And that was zero skull bills, right? And then it worked his way up from there. Yeah, it's not really the best scientific way they do measure it. Now you can like send it to a lab and measure it on a LCMS and stuff like that. It's pretty, you know, you can do it scientifically, but originally was that like that. And for the longest time, the hottest pepper was the Naga Bujolaki, or, you know, what most people know as the ghost pepper. And that was like around a million skull bills, right? That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it was like, it was, it's really hot. I've grown ghost peppers. They're insane. Like you eat a sliver of it and just it's an instant fire, you know, the hottest pepper before

that was the red Savina. But like this was like around it was around like the early 2000s when like people started going crazy with like, oh, let's see if we can grow the hottest pepper, you know, right? There's always been hot peppers, hot peppers, but like people wanted to like, when they started breeding them to be hot, you know. So after that, you know, like so the ghost pepper held it held the record for like three years until like 2010 when the Naga Viper beat it with like 1.36 million skull bills. Then after that, it was the Trinidad Morroga Scorpion with two million skull bills. And then finally, you know, is the Carolina Reaper, which everybody's heard of, which comes in around like 2.2 million skull bills. And this like,

the Reaper is just insane. Like there's no point. Like I don't understand people that eat reapers. It's just there's no I saw that garden when you were growing an absurd amount of peppers. Like does it even look all that cool? The Reaper? Yeah. Oh yeah, it's the one of the coolest looking peppers. Like I mean, if you're just growing up for looks, yeah, it's probably one of the coolest peppers. Because it's like all like, it's all wrinkled and has this like crazy spike coming out the bottom like a tail almost. It's really cool. This guy named Ed Curry was when I grew it. What a funny name. Yeah, related to Tim Curry. I don't think so. But yeah. Some people say that he might have like just bred like a different pepper. Well,

obviously bred like some peppers, but like they just say it's like a different seven pot strain, which is also a very hot pepper that I grew. But I think I remember that one too. Yeah, that one actually, I think was hotter than the Reaper that I grew, at least, you know, in my case, you know, because it changes, you know, and all the times I growing conditions and everything. Okay, yeah, that's true. Yeah. But he he also has these two Curry does he has these two peppers, the pepper X and the Apollo pepper that there's like hot sauces made out of, but they're not available to grow. So he says they're hotter, but you know, there's no proof of that. So anyways, like, I want to get into like the different species of peppers, just kind of overviews of the

different types, you know, there's there's like five domesticated varieties, but there's over 30 different species of the capsicum genus, which is what is, you know, what peppers are. The rest of them grow wild, like they grow wild down in South America all the time, like perennials, you know, it's insane of bushes of these crazy wild peppers growing. It's crazy looking like berries we have around here, you know, it looks like that peppers, you know. Yeah. So the first one is see a new one. And that's the one that like the most common pepper you see is like jalapenos, cayenne, serranos, you know, things like that tie bell peppers, you know, those probably evolved in Mexico or South or Central America. And they're from the

word anus, which is spelled A-N-N, two Ns, U-S, which means year or annual, because they're usually growing like as annual crop, even in the South, you know, they can be perennials in the warmer climate. So like I said, but yeah, they tend to they tend to be ripen as red or yellow, and they have like off white or purple flowers, and they have like slim to tapered ends, and they can grow large like bell peppers, but you know, they're not usually like the super hot ones, you know. And they're like I said, they're jalapenos, they're bell peppers, the tie peppers, shishitos, which are one of my favorites, you know, those are the tie-in, like though, yeah, those are the ones you see a lot of, you know. So the next one, which I think is one of my favorite is the

Bactam species, which those evolved like probably in Bolivia, like the original species of peppers. And they, some of them, you know, they can get pretty hot, like up to 150,000 Scoville, but a lot of them are like lower, you know, 1,600, which like for reference jalapeno is like, you know, five to 8,000 Scoville's, habaneros like 300 to 500,000-ish, and like I said, ghost peppers like a million, carobiner's reefers like, you know, 2.2. So yeah, these ones though, these are more like citrusy or fruity flavors. A lot of the ahi peppers, which are like big in South America, and like Bishops Crown, which are Mad Hatter, it's called also, that's also a Bactam, or Lemon Drop, Sugar Rush Peach, these are like, they're just really fruity and they're

like, they're my favorite of all the different peppers. I'm probably going to grow more of those. I think some of the Bactam, you'd like, they're very low, some of them have very low heat, but they're very tasty, and like when you cook them, you barely even taste the heat, but you taste the flavor, you know. Ones you won't like, Brogd though, are the Chinens, and that's the super-hots, you know, that's your Carolina Reapers, your habaneros, your ghosts, and stuff like that. Those are used a lot in the Caribbean's, and they do have a lot of good flavors though, they have a lot of unique flavors, a lot of fruity, some of them are smoky flavors, it's crazy though, but I grew up a good bit of those, and a lot of them are good, yeah, I don't know, they're just,

they're too hot for me though. Another one that I haven't grew too many of, but are still good, and they kind of get lumped in with annual, I think sometimes, are the fruticens, and that's like, those are things like Tabasco, or African bird's-eye chili, or Piri Piri chilies and stuff like that, like a lot of those are used in Africa, and you know, Tabasco obviously, are you guys like, obviously you know what Tabasco sauce is, but do you know how it's made? No. So it's actually fermented in old whiskey barrels, so they take the peppers, and they just ferment it with salt in whiskey barrels, and they just let it age, and then they, you know, that makes them do a salt, and oh man, like I tried to ferment some stuff, I made one

batch that was good, but it's hard, because you got to make sure you don't mold the stuff. Hang on real quick, with your favorite pepper that you were talking about, what types of dishes were you using those in? So a lot of times I make hot sauces, I'll make a lot of hot sauces, but even just cutting it up, eating it on tacos, or like any type of like pasta dishes, anything tomato-based is good, you know, you can make, you can dry them out, and make like flakes, you know, I sprinkle that on pizza, you know, like, or sprinkle it in chili, put it in chilies, and stuff like that, like there's all sorts of different things you can do with peppers, you know, the sweet ones, obviously,

you can make it salads and all that, you know, but like I said, I don't like the super, super hot ones, but there's a lot of good like mid-heat ones, like Habanero to me is a mid-heat one, you get used to the heat after a while, and it's not that hot compared to like, you know, the ghosts and stuff, but like there's, there is one, and the last one I'm going to talk about here is pubicents, and I thought when I grew those, I was so excited for these, because they were so weird, and I was excited to try them, but I understand why they're not popular, because they're not that tasty, and yeah, yeah, and these ones, they grow in like the Andes, you know, and like, they're the oldest of the domesticated peppers, like they're like, they're different too,

they have black seeds, and like, they're called pubicents, because they're hairy, like their stems are hairy, and everything like that, unlike normal pepper plants, where they don't have, yeah, you can't, you can't cross-breed them with other peppers and stuff like that, and they grow in like a little apple-shaped, you know, and they have a cool like, blue to purple flowers, and like, they're a cool plant, but they just, they don't have much flavor, you know, but yeah, like, they're called like, brocoto is the one I grow, and that, or grew, and it was cool to grow, and they are a little bit cold tolerant too, unlike most peppers, but you know, yeah, yeah, but you know, I don't know, I just, I wasn't a big fan of them, but I wonder if there's

a cold tolerant spell though, on the new Harry Potter game, is there one like that, Frog? I wouldn't say cold tolerant, but there's a freezing spell. Okay, tell me about this game. Hogwarts Legacy, it's probably the best game I've ever played in my entire life. Really? Okay. I just, I haven't stopped playing it since I got it. I find myself wanting to play it at work, I find myself wanting to play it in my sleep. I think most of that derives from my Harry Potter fandom, you know what I mean?

True. How many open-world role-playing games like this would you play beforehand? Like what, besides like a Skyrim, which I'm not trying to compare to directly. So, I think going down that road, Fable, was probably right there, you know, I was obsessed with Fable. A game, a game, a similar to that you were really into, right, yeah. Yeah, it was an open-world RPG. Fable was great, yeah.

I loved Fable. So, it's kind of like that, though? It's similar. I mean, you got your open, so, I mean, the possibilities are endless, and I think one of my favorite things about this game is the way they have your HUD setup, your spell layouts, how you can manipulate the controls, everything like that, it's real simple, and just real, once you get the hang of it, it's everything so quick and easy to do, like, you can just, you hold L1 and press circle, you can jump on your broom and fly away,

or you can hold L1 instead of your broom, you can hop on, you can hop on your Hippogriff and fly off, or you can flue powder all over the map, you know, it's, there's so many different things you can do. So, just the way like the combination of controls and everything is just very intuitive? Yeah, how you can pick up, because you get four spells, so you hold R2, R2 and triangle, R2 and circle, R2 and X, those are all your spells, well, if you press right on the D pad, it pulls up all your spells, so you can switch all those out real quick, whatever you want to do, back to your four, so, I mean, it's just so simple, and with Fable, you could go two different routes,

you could be evil, you could be good. Right. And this, you can make decisions that aren't necessarily good, but you don't have a bad outlook. Right, correct. So, I mean, you can really just be who you want to be without getting a label. Right, I mean, in the mechanics, obviously, over time for things like that have matured and progressed so much that it couldn't be a one-to-one comparison with Fable, but yeah, what you're saying, that karma scale still exists, but it's got the modern conventions of there's elements of

gray, but at the end of the day, if you're working towards good things, you get good results, right? Like, yeah, because like I've used evil spells on dark witches and trolls and stuff like that, and it doesn't really like, oh, it doesn't, like. No, you're an evil. Like, Fable, I think you started to grow horns, you started to. Yeah, you, yeah. Trench around you, all different kinds of things like that. You don't really, it just keeps you your same character in Hogwarts legacy.

Okay, so there's no good, because even like in, let's say, Red Dev Redemption 2, you know, you can be go, you know, like there's a lot of games like that, but that's cool. Like, man, do you like progress through the years? Do you start as like a freshman and then as a senior or? So you actually start as a fifth year student. Yeah, I'm 79% through the game, a level 35, which I think you stop at 40. Okay. Which I think it's going to do something kind of like, I was going to say,

do you think DLC is going to come out and you're going to get another batch of levels? You may be able to obtain. Yeah, I think they want a good chunk of people to get to 40 before they start dropping more levels and stuff like that. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's the MO for most games now, which that's what Pokemon Goat, they almost waited. But I mean, still though, it's, I mean, it's hours and hours of gameplay though, right? Like it's like hundreds of hours of gameplay.

I mean, I, I'm pretty much, I'll be at 100% with this game, probably in the next couple of weeks. Okay. So I mean it about a month, two months, you can fully complete every little type of detail in the game. That's awesome. Oh yeah, yeah. And I'll tell you what, I'm one of those people who, if I'm looking to buy a game or looking into it to see if it's a worthwhile investment, no matter it's on sale or not,

you know, I'll search it into Google or whatever and see what the full 100% gameplay run times out at this usually just to beat the story. It's this. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's one of those things you got to take into account if you're going to spend that money in my opinion. I would have beat the story a while ago, but I stopped at like 70% and started doing like they have these things called Merlin Trials where you throw some mallow leaves,

a little challenge will pop up, you beat it and then you go on. So there's little interactive things like that. You go through the game and like I said, I stopped at 70% and just started doing all that because I want to complete this game. If a multiplayer section does come out for this game, I want one character that has completely everything done. Yeah, you ought to be ready to go. Yeah.

So that way, whenever I go to level up farther, whatever the case may be, because once I finish this guy, I'm going to go create a couple of different ones in different houses. And because I'm sure there's trophies for different houses and different stuff like that. Oh, I'm sure. And I'm, I'm still stuck in the last gen. So I got to wait till April before I, if I want to buy the game to even get it. Yeah. This game was the whole reason I bought a PlayStation five.

Really? Like, man, I usually don't even buy new games at all. Like, you know, being in the previous gen, even still, and I think I might, this might be the first new game I buy in a while, because it sounds pretty awesome. And some of the detail and some of the rooms in the castle, it's just, wow. Do you have like classes? Do you go to classes and stuff? Or so you do.

And what happens is you go to a class, you talk to the professor, and then it'll go to a cut scene of where like, oh, they're in class, they're doing stuff like this. And then you kind of do the little spell assignment or whatever afterwards. Right now, I just want to get through this game, get trophies, max out a character, and then I'll start learning more. So narratively with this game, does it like kind of mirror the experiences that you have against death eaters? I haven't made any death eaters yet.

Well, not death eaters themselves. What I'm saying, like you've said, you've fought evil wizards. Is that what it is? There's one centralized evil wizard at the head of a group, or are they just a cod room, you know, a cabal of them or what? They're called dark witches. And then there's like different breeds of them, I guess you would say. And that's the tears kind of.

Because you, so what you can go all across the map, go into the Forbidden Forest, go to like a spider layer and take on like 10 different spiders. Or you can go to a bandit camp where there's a mix of dark, dark wizards and goblins. You'll fight them, take over the camp, find whatever loots there. So in some of the fight scenes are actually pretty, pretty cool. Like I remember when I first got this game, I went into the Forbidden Forest like as a level 10 and just started fighting people and just exploring. And I was like, dude, this game has so much to offer.

But it is still a smaller game, I think, overall. The map or? Well, I think in general, there's not like, they could have put a hundred question here, you know what I mean? But I think there's like 25, 30 main story quests. And then whatever other side, little side. I'd rather have a polished game than, you know, a polished game with a few good quests than, you know, unpolished.

That is one of the things, yeah. I do agree with that. But I feel like, like I said, I feel like you can go through this really quickly. Yeah. Like, do you think there's things omitted from what you're able to play at base level right now? Because it's behind the DLC paywall. I didn't think about that before, but I think that probably holds a lot of water. Yeah.

As far as in, you know, like, let's, let's get people involved. And then if we, if this game really catch it, well, because they, I mean, I'm sure they probably, what was first, the development of this game or J.K. Rowling controversy? Controversy. So I will say this, I, I recently heard someone cover this game that was, was actually complaining about the fact that anybody's complained about it at all. He says it's one of the most trans-inclusive games he's ever seen. As far as like your character creation, the, the proprietor of Hogsmeade, right?

Or not Hogsmeade. It's, it's the bar in Hogsmeade, right? Yeah. One of the Serona. Yeah. But either, either way, I mean, they are a hero. They are not a trope. They are a member of the community and the, of NPCs in that game.

Like he really does say like, and, and, and to be fair, those developers had washed their hands of Rowling. She didn't have. She's not even involved in it at all. No. And, and, and they pretty much didn't want her to have creative input in it beyond, you know, the license. That's, it just sounds a really cool game though, Frog.

I definitely want to play it. I'm, they want to buy it. I think it convinced me finally. Oh, it's fantastic. Yeah. It's even coming out for Switch. All right. Probably.

Thank you, Amanda. I think I'm going to have a new game on my list. Kyle, you want to take us out here? Well, with that, ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to thank you for joining us here as always for Brad, for Frog. I'm Kyle and we hope to see you again here soon on the Brain Soda Podcast. See ya. Later.

Hey everybody, it's Kyle here from the Brain Soda Podcast, reminding you to find us on Facebook. Listen on Spotify, Google, Amazon, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Ah, Brain Soda.