Castle Super Beast - CSB 152: His Swamping Will Not Be Stopped

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Sony Buys Bungie: Acquisition Wars 2022 Pokemon Arceus: Pretty Fun For a PS2 Game "You Think You're John Halo?" "I Can't Help It, I Love Making Poison Swamps" The Loudest Bug Gets The Fix You can watch us record the podcast live on twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to http://hellofresh.com/superbeast16 and use code superbeast16 for up to 16 free meals AND 3 free gifts! Get 25% off and zero delivery fees on their first order of $15 or more, when you download the DoorDash app and enter code CASTLE. Sony is buying Bungie BloodbornePSX: NOW AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD New interview with FROM Software's Hidetaka Miyazaki where he talks about Elden Ring and some other topics as well “But when making the game I rediscovered my love for making poison swamps. I know how people feel about them, but you know, suddenly I realize I'm in the middle of making one and I just can't help myself. It just happens.” It Takes Two will be adapted for film and television. Hazelight Studios teaming up with dj2 Entertainment David Hayter Boards TV Adaptation of EA’s ‘American McGee’s Alice’ Game Halo Why is there a 2001 Chevy Tahoe on another planet 500 years in the future? David Jaffe take https://twitter.com/TroyBakerVA/status/1488151018726510594

Music And so begins the Great Acquisition War of 2022. You know what my favorite part about the Great Acquisition War, besides the fact that Sony was polite enough to actually do it Monday morning before the podcast, genuinely appreciated, like makes up my life a lot easier because I don't get like six days of feeling like an idiot, is that they're snapping up, God, it's Bungie Today, and what was it like? I can't even fucking remember, it was Bethesda way back, and it was a different beat, it was Blizzard, Activision Blizzard, right?

And maybe it's the nature of the corporate world and buyouts, but like every single one of these upon its purchase, I go, yeah, okay, fucking, that place sucks, good for you guys. I mean, it's buying, it's never just buying the place, it's buying the brand, it's buying the games, it's buying the IPs. Right, yeah, yeah, but it's always like, like if, if, if Microsoft put out a press release in 25 minutes that said, motherfuckers, we own Capcom now, well, that's what I'm, that's what we're getting to, that's the thing, yeah. Is like, it would be, it would be the biggest news story in video games since like FF7 went

to the fucking PlayStation. The timing of these acquisitions and announcements for them is, I would just, the word I would use is hostile, these are hostile time announcements. Oh yeah, 100%. Where the news cycle is not even finished going through the last one, when you combo break it to have a report with basically Sony coming in saying, turn about his fair play bitch, and we took your bungee. I think the weirdest one was this morning at around 10 in the morning, I read an article

that was Sony looking to expand and buy new studio in response to Microsoft acquisitions. And I'm like, I wonder when we're going to hear about that. And the answer was 90 minutes from the time I read that article. PlayStation CEO, Jim Ryan, seen speeding down Las Vegas Boulevard, screaming, fuck the world, thug life till I die. You know, it is, it has become a cutthroat environment very, very quickly. And so when the last story was, Sony is talking with Microsoft to make sure that all the honored agreements for call of duty are going to be maintained and you're like, oh, okay, they're

having their little sit down. This is part of that. So for context, Sony bought bungee like 20 minutes ago. And okay, when they're buying up a bunch of shit that has long standing multi platform deals. Okay, this makes a little bit more sense when they're like, oh no, trust me, it's all going to be multi platform. Everybody wants to, you know, actually shoot each other in this standoff and lock everything

down. So the back rooms with low lighting where they actually have the talks are, you know, where they go, hey, like mutually assured destruction here. We want to keep our titles that, you know, people know and you want to keep yours. If you want your halo going that way and we want our call of duty is going this way, let's be nice and amicable with each other. So for now, like we've had, we've had a bunch of these, but that's not getting bought by Microsoft kind of made sense considering they've been like associated with Microsoft for like

ever since like oblivion, like back in 2006, right? And they typically ship on two SKUs that are the Microsoft SKUs and they've had problems with PlayStation stuff in the past. It's like, okay, that makes sense, right? That's like it from software got bought by PlayStation. You're like, ah, that has had for a while. That's had an association. There's a couple exclusives there.

That makes sense. Okay. So that happened. Activision Blizzard just seemed like now's a good time to buy it. It's never going to be cheaper than it is now. But where does take two fit into the situation? Oh, shut up, Jeffy. Where does take two fit in?

There's got to be room. Take two is, is, like, is it not like way too big to be purchased by Sony and Microsoft? Do you, what, they're their own, like, massive acquisition company with all of Rockstar 2K and whatever else they own. Yeah. Like they're there. That's like Ubisoft or like EA or Activision Blizzard, I guess, but the only reason Activision Blizzard had the ability to get scooped up is that they were on the ropes there for a

bit. The PR disaster, the talent drain, the fucking, the way Kodak mined, and I use the word mined, he mined IPs for their value. He like strip mined them as hard and as fast. That deflated the value of those IPs so that they could be purchased, right? So like Activision was in that place, Bungie though, this is the one that is baffling to me, Bungie is a company that I've bitched about a lot because I hate their game that I love because I hate it and it's bad because it's good and they fuck it up.

But the most confusing thing about Bungie is that Bungie starts off as an independent PC developer, gets bought by Microsoft to make the Halo. They started off making Mac games, yeah, sorry, Mac developer, they got bought by Microsoft to make the Halo. Then I believe they make a deal to buy themselves out of Microsoft to go independent so they can go with Activision where they can keep their IP, then they buy themselves out of Activision so they can go independent and keep their own IP and then sell themselves to Sony, which is the other first party developer.

The spike check has extra zeros on it, there's power in the spike buy, there's a little bit of extra oomph coming through and especially when the landscape is like all the tectonic plates are shaking, any decisions that Bungie would have made prior to that to be self-sufficient start to come into question when a major shift like the Blizzard one happens. If you're a person who's followed Destiny's development with happiness or sadness or whatever, you can actually get a really laser eye focus on the exact internal processes at the company that causes this rapid buy out to buy out situation. It's really simple, Bungie doesn't like or the management of Bungie doesn't like to

work under a big corporation that they don't like to work under a publisher. It frustrates them. It frustrates them because publishers have deadlines and milestones and deadlines and milestones suck ass, particularly if your team has maybe some inefficient processes and has a habit of building up technical debt. So then you go and buy yourself out and you get out with your successful thing and you go, alright, we can set our own deadlines, we can do our own shit, fuck this would be a lot easier if we had all that other money, yeah, well, yeah, exactly.

Shit. Okay, what if we cut half the game out? Okay, no. Okay, we're going to need to go get the money again, guys. But the thing too that I consider is that some acquisitions, right, well, all acquisitions are, hey, we want to just get this company to keep doing what they do and you love the games they make and we love the games they make, so we're happy for them to be partners with us, right?

And then what that ends up shaking out into, however, is depending on what, who that person is, who the acquirer is, that is to say, sometimes it's, yeah, go do your thing, we'll talk to you in a bit and give you some cash, I mean, Sony appears to more or less be in that kind of relationship with a lot of the places they own, to some degree. And then there's the, we want your talent, we will fucking suck it out, we will shelf your IPs forever and fuck you, you're doing Star Wars for the next three games. That's the good stuff. And it's like, no, that's not the same as, hey, come over here and do what you were

doing anyways, you know, there's, there's joining, there's, there's joining the catamari and then there's joining the Borg. Yeah. So I went and took a look at Bungie's specific statement as a result of the Sony acquisition. Sony statement says that basically we want Bungie because Bungie's cool and we think they can make us some money. And we're also interested in Bungie's live service experience, which is a nightmare. Everyone should be worried by that, that point of view.

Bungie's however, makes way more sense. They say straight up, we are keeping the IP, we are in charge of the destiny IP. However, the only change you, the player will notice in the near future is we are going to staff up. So they got cut some kind of upfront check or, you know, a staffing costs. And the number one problem they have had for the longest time is if you read their fucking this week at Bungie's where they talk about the future of the game, they just talk over and over and over about how they just don't have enough people to put shit out at the

rate they need to put shit out. And they don't have anybody available to go back and fix old shit, which is what leads to them cutting out the old shit because they just go, well, the technical debt on running these and putting a thing out every three months can't do it. Just remove this whole thing so that we don't have to run fucking maintenance on it anymore. Now based on the way that Sony has approached games coming out of like Insomniac and Santa Monica and all these other studios and I mean even working with FromSoft in this way, like do you think looking at this that it's like the company we're buying is not the Halo company.

It's the destiny company. Absolutely 100%. And and like when they do come over, like, is it likely that they're going to be like, okay, cool. Now, new IP time, the Sony version, destiny, but do it good though. I can only imagine genuinely that either that is the exact case or this is a situation where they're being told to make what is essentially destiny three, if not literally destiny three and just start over.

It's this really weird thing. Destiny is I would call it an arsenal game or a pseudo MMO and people who played it for a long time and fell off, in my opinion, have basically been going like, God, just just fucking started over and fucking do it right this time. I imagine that, you know, the big thing they get asked to do is not necessarily destiny three, but literally new IP, but, you know, destiny three and brackets, you know. So they are working on a new game and the new game is not destiny and they won't talk about what it is.

And they keep saying that they'll continue to support destiny two while the new game comes out. And I don't think anyone fucking believes them for a fucking second. So I'm of the opinion that it's very likely that Sony is buying not even so much the destiny company, but the new IP company, whatever that whatever they're pitching. Let's just call it fates. Fuck it. Fuck it.

Why not? Why the fuck not Marathon space space fates marathon fast marathon three marathon three not come out or marathon Durandal to marathon infinity. Remember that shit back. Somebody says there's a I'm seeing people talk about there's a bungee Q&A right now. If anybody can link me that I would be able to go over it. Okay. So in the middle of yeah, okay, finding it.

We'll get we'll get some some hot news as as we discuss. Yeah. No. War is the the world is going to continue moving into this direction. Make no mistake. It the the pie as it stands is is gonna all meld into, you know, Microsoft Sony, Ubisoft EA 10 cent. Embracer group.

Yeah, I've never heard of that until today, legitimately. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. That name has been around, but they're super background. They're super background. They're not because like everything else listed is like active in front of the games industry as a part of their like brand, whereas Embracer group is just like, no, no, no, we acquire and own things and we're like a holding company practically. But they are a humongous chunk of that pie.

And it's all going to slide in one of these seven directions. You know, it is true that like, I mean, when you look at Ubi's version of this, like all the things that Ubi owns are just like Ubi, very Ubi plus city name. So yeah, well, a lot of that is because like they'll absorb like a fucking dev studio in that city and then rename and rename it Ubi soft, whatever. Exactly, exactly. So it's a different approach. God, and that that 1442 logo stands out like a sore thumb in the middle of their list.

But yeah, this is not this is not by any stretch of the imagination going to slow down, you know, because it also is going to make people with smaller slices of the pie look to each other and go, do we have to like fusion for third place? You know, do we have to start making moves as Nintendo looking at things? They're making Kirby games where he fishes and that's awesome. And Nintendo is not looking at things. No, that this is not the Nintendo way because they would never be able to absorb like a big new company.

No, and convince everyone there to be Nintendo. I think they just want to be in the room, making sure that again, whatever titles they were promised slash whatever titles usually come out in their direction don't suddenly stop, you know. All right, I think I've been able to find the Q&A for Bungie. And by fine, I think I've been linked to it. OK, yeah, here we go. Really, Kirby is the best response to acquisition wars, you know, I support that.

So the vast majority of this Q&A is like, I play this on the Xbox. Can I do you are you deleting my Xbox game? And then people go, No. No, this is it's all just yes. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, every single question here is, can I still play this on my Xbox? Awesome. So investor meeting. Yeah, totally. Yeah, awesome.

Yeah, well, you know, breaking news that will develop as as it goes. But until then, remember, folks, that every acquisition is a useless purchase unless it's part of a take two acquisition. So I think my favorite part of this, hey, shout your fucking mouth. I think my favorite part about this is that. Like, so do you know how long the lead time is on destiny content? I don't.

It's fucking six months. So if you're playing destiny right now and you're frustrated by anything about destiny and you're like, Oh, cool. Maybe that maybe they'll fix it or maybe they'll have more resources to improve whatever, right? Fucking wait till at the absolute fucking earliest being the middle of June to see a single improvement as a result of this deal. Well, I mean, that's what destiny fans are used to anyways, aren't they?

Yeah. So we had there is one interesting question. Excuse me, I'm going to go beat that dog. Don't do that. Don't do that. Thank you. Oh, you take you punch him like this. You go.

No, what I am going to do is let him upstairs. So I'll be right back. OK. No. Hello. Oh, no, I'm blurry. Oh no, I'm really blurry. I don't know why we even went to break.

I literally just walked over to the staircase and and and put a I was I didn't know what was going to happen. I'm blur. I couldn't beat up that dog. You'd kick my ass. No, I don't want on blur. OK, all of my glasses too bad. You know what?

Yeah, there you go. Oh, I fixed it. Considering people have been every single discussion topic has has been just derailed by. OK, but when's your facial hair growing back? I mean, I have like the colors. It's kind of it's coming in. It's coming in just but, you know,

re-blur the camera if you want. Oh, oh, no. I yeah. The the. The the shake out from this stuff is is certainly going to going to take a minute. But oh, right. I was saying there is one interesting thing out of that Q&A where they say one of the questions is,

hey, Bungie's working on a new IP. Are those new IPs going to be PlayStation exclusive? And they say, no, we want the blah, blah, blah to play anywhere. We will be continuing to be self published, creatively independent and continue to drive one unified community. Which is like God bless this era of like a bunch of CEOs going cross play is great and you can see the vein twitching in their foreheads. Yeah, there's too much money to cut off the deals.

You know, we love we love multi platform. Just veins bulging. Um, anyways, there's there's there's docket. But what's what's going on outside of that? Oh, OK, let me think. Let me use my brain and my brain. I mean, go over to my video producer tab and find out what the fuck I fucked with this week. Oh, yeah, there's only really one thing of notes to talk about this week.

And that is the Pokemon Arceus Arceus. Or yeah, see us. Does anyone know how to pronounce that fucking shit? Did you get fucked up by Snorlax? Oh, no, I got fucked up by. Forgot what it was. So it was like a starly starly out or it was like a level two Pidgey alternate. OK, because there's just like I was like, oh, I'm level nine.

And then I walked out and there was like, it's just a level 17. Pokemon walking a boot, kicking my ass. So. The new Pokemon. Is really, really bizarre. It's. How do I put this like legitimately? How do I put this? Have you have you touched it at all?

Our system works. No, but no, that's the I as someone who has been looking to see what the who has been wanting to see what Pokemon would look like when they finally decided to like make it a, you know, update it a bit. I'm going to. But didn't get a chance yet. So. The game has.

Moved forward the formula, probably the most of almost any Pokemon game ever. So it seems. And the number one part of that turns out after all this time was speed. Being able to catch Pokemon pseudo instantly without having to get into fights. Being able to fight Pokemon while moving past the Pokemon. Right, like throughout your Pokemon and they start a fight and as they are fighting and you are selecting moves, you are just like running past the fight. Oh, and you don't care.

And then disengaging afterwards. OK. Like. The speed is so huge. Also, having your character be like a human being that exists in the the world state of a Pokemon battle and has to deal with the fact that Hyper Beam is like a Kamehameha and that you might have to dodge out of the way is great, is fucking great. Um, all of that stuff is good.

Uh, the story is still like. Unbelievably plotting and annoying to actually have to deal with at all. Like. Like it's not that it's for children. It's that it's for dumb children. OK, like, OK, like you'll go talk to a guy and he'll be like, I'm the diamond guy and I think this and then you're the professor will be like, let's go have some food. Oh, so you talk to that diamond guy.

He said, but it's like this literally the same conversation three times in a row with nothing in between. And I'm like, I want to die. How's all that stuff with the like staring out at a breath of the wild shot, but the the lad is flat. OK, and I'm trying to do the I'm trying to do the good. The good part is that it's a fun Pokemon game and it's a genuine improvement to all the stuff that people like about Pokemon.

Good. The stuff that's made about it is the stuff that's always been made about it. But the promise of looking up has has has been fulfilled. Kind of kind of. It is. Without a doubt, the ugliest Nintendo game I think I have ever seen in my life. Oh, boy. And by that, I mean published by Nintendo.

And relative to the generation, it's relative to its its era. So I remember thinking that and saying it when I saw it, like when I was playing it and I'm like, that can't possibly be true. You know, when you say something hyperbolic and you're like, no, it can't. And then I'm like, what kind of qualifiers can you put on this? Like like published by Nintendo? Like I can't like I like. Like first party or I guess this would be second party Nintendo game.

Like I cannot think of like a single thing that is. Like even close to how fucking ugly it is. I'm seeing people say like, man, it looks like a fucking GameCube game. It it fucking wishes it looked like a GameCube game. Fucking Wind Waker came out on the GameCube. OK, like it it it looks like a fucking 3DS game. That is being blown up to run on the switch. Because actually, no, because I've seen Sun and Moon emulated.

And they look way better. Hmm. I because of course there's there's like this. There's the quality of the assets, you know, respective to, again, whatever generation. And then there's like how you place them, how you like them, what's happening as a whole when it comes to like an overworld. And I mean, I don't know how many other times

Nintendo has done this, like besides that, like again, Breath of the Wild Shot, but, you know, Mario Odyssey looked like a look. There's big levels in that that were like, oh, yeah, that's a Mario game. It's not, you know, out of place with what would be expected for what what what what the game is trying to do with its art style. Like what what in particular is it like those forest shots? Is it is so OK. So all right, let's let.

OK, what's the easiest way to compare this? Give me give me a second. So the number one thing that stands out is that it doesn't look finished at all. And by that, it means it looks like it doesn't have like a post process pass on it at all. And the lighting looks like it's the fucking default baked in lighting from the not unreal engine. Engine that you would use on the 360 before you put it up on the Xbox Live

Marketplace. Let me I'm trying to find a quiet shy had just the absolute. There it is. Here we go. Here you can just look. You just look at this. Here are some screenshots from Pokemon Arceus that compare it and Breath of the Wild and oblivion.

And like it has it has that like like it has no lighting. I guess is what I in some sort of in some cases it looks to be completely and utterly absent. Yes. And like a good example of the trees is like the shading on the trees is like baked in. So no matter how far away you are from the trees, they're still going to have all the shadows in the same spots like on the underside of the branches at like maximum distances.

And it it God damn it. And the other thing is that like the draw distance for the land is pretty far, but the draw distance for the trees and any aspects is like maybe 60 feet. So like there's always half phased in trees on the horizon, like always, always. Like the screenshot for the top one where you can see a lot of the water. Like it looks like somebody took. Oh, God, what was fucking Terran Mill from 2004's original World of Warcraft and just desaturated all the colors and removed all the effects.

Yeah, that like that tiny, you know, the tiny water texture that. Yeah, no, this look like a exactly. Yeah, this is Xbox live indie water. Like this is this is this is absolute like a Xeno clash, you know, shit where they're just like, look, the 3D does what it does, but ignore that. We got some gameplay things for you to check out. Like it is it is a very fun game. And every time I'm playing it, I can't stop like whoever I'm talking to,

either it be page or somebody on Discord or somebody, you know, DMs later. Like it is ferociously hideous. It's it's it's unbelievably ugly. Oh, and the fights are always taking place in that world. So there's no like transition into like a. Yeah, no, the lack of the lack of battle transition actually. It's like, wow, that's a huge step up and it runs better than Sword and Shield. So that's cool, but like it.

Like this needed like a year or more and like. This is a handheld developer that just. Like if you want to people who were not like alive or were not like even in their teens and don't understand what people talk about when we say that like during the three sixteen, the PS3 era, a lot of Japanese developers had difficulty transitioning to the HD era. Like you can just look at it. Just look at Pokemon because it's that whole fucking process 15 years later.

Well, what I'm surprised by is that like when, you know, for years, it's been it's been the discussion like, OK, when are you going to like update Pokemon? And sleep now, are you serious, buddy? And now this is happening. It's surprising because I guess I would have expected that they would have been like, let's work with somebody who's done this and who's used to making these kinds of games and then like we can, you know, collaborate to ensure that it does everything we want it to do while, you know, feeling good as an open world large game.

But here this is Game Freak doing it themselves. And this is the first time they've ever attempted anything like this. If I remember correctly, I don't know what previous games they would have been. Well, Sword and Shield was the camera was behind your head. Like like you could look up. Yeah, but it's still more or less was like, you know, the same thing that like is similar to X and Y, right? Yeah, the Pokemon that we're wandering around on the field with like

instigate like classic style random battles. So they were just like, you know, the fight points or I don't know what to call it. This is this you don't leave aside from actually physically leaving the open world, you are consistently in it and interacting with it. And that's cool. But it's just like. Like it's it might be God, it might be like the first game in. Like a decade, I can't even think of the last game I felt this way where I'm

playing it and I'm not like, oh, the performance and that's like detracting from the experience because performance is like tangible, right? I'm just like actually going like, wow, I'm having fun, but it's so ugly, though. All they had to do was just hire that man and just drop an unreal engine forest and then not think twice about it. Like the switch is a little underpowered. Yeah, sure. But Breath of the Wild shows you can get some shit out of it.

And it's this it's this it's this fucking tough situation where like Breath of the Wild is is both the fairest and most unfair comparison possible simultaneously where Breath of the Wild, it looks incredible even now. But it had five years of development time, but that was on a different console. And it was a launch title. So like, I don't know. I don't know, like, where that what do you mean by a different console? It's a Wii U game.

Oh, when it was in development and then Breath of the Wild was did most of its development as a Wii U game and then jump across to the switch as a launch title, right? So like, I don't fucking know. I mean, ultimately, I just think the approach is simple. It's like if you're if you're tackling like you've they've had if you've had years of like Pokemon mechanics and Pokemon gameplay under your belt, then that's not what you're too worried about the open world aspect of it.

And this is just based on what you're saying and based on observation, because again, I haven't touched it yet myself to see. But like with that aspect of the open world and how that looks, it makes me think like, yeah, you just there's tons of companies. There's tons of other studios that have a bit of experience with this thing. And talking to one of them possibly for help on such a large undertaking wouldn't be the worst idea. Admittedly, you then have to like, you know, hire them and get involved and

you don't get all the money to yourself. Spend money. Exactly. It becomes a question of like, do you want to cut into your profits there? And if Nintendo was able to spend those five years to figure out how to make a large game like that and actually nail it, then why can't we do the same? But in less time, you know, way less time. Yeah. Well, like how much time do they get on iteration on a on a series of projects that can only take 18 months to come out?

Or like the same to almost like are like the same time frame between regular Pokemon intervals, except now do this huge world revision. You know, yeah. Now, of course, the obvious refrain is the Pokemon is the most profitable, profitable thing to ever exist. And that's true, but the games aren't the merches. It's all in the merchandising. The games are just part of the TV and the and the fucking cards

and all the other fucking shit. Oh, hold on. Did Monolith Soft help them with this? This is true. I know I know Monolith Soft made Xenoblade Chronicles on the switch, which your A.H.D. or whatever. And that looked a bit that way better than this. OK, so if Monolith Soft helped them on this, then that means. That. Oh, Monolith helped with Breath of the Wild.

OK, hold on a second. I literally just found an article that says fan hypothesis. Monolith Soft is was helping work on Pokemon. Arktis. No, that's a fantasy. Fan, fan hypothesis, fan theory. And the article is actually talking about debunking it. So let's just assume that that's bullshit until proven otherwise. Yeah, I'm finding like rumors from a guy.

OK, well, never mind. Fuck that, because because like I think the last thing anyone would want who likes Pokemon is the idea that Monolith Soft helped make Arceus because that would mean that the only reason the game can boot at all is because of Monolith Developers. Like that's that's the like, wow, you should have seen this fucking shit before Jimmy Monolith got ahold of it. But if there was a company to pick that Nintendo is familiar with already

that have made a large world, right, that would be another one. That that being said, like Xenoblade, like one looks like it's like, I'm telling you, it is doing all of the same shit. Arceus or whatever our Pokemon is. Like it it functionally acts in the same manner with the open spaces and the way combat works. And it it looks multiple generations past this. So how's active combat way?

How's active combat? That's not that. It's not. I wouldn't say it's like active. It is still turn based. But it's just way faster. And turns out that's like a lot of what the formula needed was just that is just make it go big faster. OK, and you can get to and you get you get out of the way. And when you toss out like a Pokemon and there are like multiple

wild Pokemon around, you have to just fight wild Pokemon. OK, sorry. You have to fight all of them at once. Yeah. And that's cool. Sounds sounds pretty much like what what it needed to be. Shame about shame about the looks. But yeah, all right. I'm I'm I'm going to take a quote.

I'm going to take a look for sure to at least it's good. It's just it's. Fucking absolutely hideous. It's God damn it. How much time you put in? Ah, eight hours, I'd say. It does kind of work more like God, what's is it? Final Fantasy 10 where you can get if you went fast, you could take more

than one turn. OK. OK. But like the the travel from one village to another. Like how large is the world scale? It's pretty big. It is like each of the little zones that exist are like an MMO style zone. Oh, really?

Like like a couple kilometers wide. And there's at least a few. OK. So like it's it's pretty large. Interesting. And then you got, you know, shit like, you know, mega Snorlax walking around ready to murder you who is 50 levels higher than you. Well, on the plus side, the visuals will improve in short time.

Once the motors get a crack at it. What are you talking about? People were emulating it before it came out. Oh, my God. Oh, I didn't even hear about that. Oh, no, it's there's a there's a really weird thing that is starting to happen with Nintendo games on the switch where like like Metroid like Metroid. We're like the day before the games come out.

Yeah. People who are running it on emulators are running it at like 4K 60 with like texture shit, and it's like this is a weird fucking situation. Yeah. This is bizarre. It's it's it's like on the day of it's especially bad. And then you see the and then there's like stuff where I saw a shout outs hitchhiker was just like, yeah, so if you wanted to fucking be in Devil Trigger

the whole time, here you go. Here you go. You know, like just yeah, cracking that shit open right away. But whereas Metroid is a game that was, you know, ultimately fine in terms of like how that looked. Metroid looks good and performs excellently. Yeah. In a game like this where it is lacking, I imagine the desire for fans to step in

and start fucking with the lighting, fucking with the textures, you know, doing whatever they can. I'll tell you what, though, unlike Metroid, this game, when you kick it up to 4K 60, you're like, yeah, resolution and frame rate were ironically enough, not this game's problems. A screenshot can capture the issue. Like congrats, you've now made it look like the hottest PC game of 2003 right next to Dungeon Siege.

Okay. Well, for the refresh to the formula, that's still something I'm going to copy just to find out. I look at it and I see not its own success. I see the next game that is this, that is the one where they figured out they didn't improve any of the systems at all. They just spent more time on the world run and look OK. Oh my God, I just saw somebody say that it looks like Monster Hunter 1 and they're

right. Oh yeah. Oh man, it actually straight up looks like Monster Hunter 1. That's, oh, that's cringe. Is there any PvP aspect to it? No, nothing. So that's the other weird thing. The other weird thing is depending on your region, I don't know what the fuck

decision this was, your rival has a Pikachu, right? Dawn from the hat has a Pikachu. Dude, I'm looking at some screenshots of Monster Hunter 1 and some of them look better. Wow. It's not open world, really. I'm like not even, I was expecting some old bullshit and like no, some of these are, fuck it, hell.

OK, anyway. Pikachu looks at you after your little fight with Pikachu and says biga. He doesn't say pika P or anything like that. OK, in English, he just, he just says biga every time. And it's like, are you even the real Pokemon? That's why are you like this? That's weird. Also, you know how this is the most minor of complaint.

But I have to bring it up because they point it out. It's an isekai, first of all, like straight up the isekai. Pokemon God steals you from your room when you're on your smartphone and bans you to Pokemon hell for playing gotcha games on your phone or some shit. Yeah, why feed the internet with a Pikachu that says biga? Why feed it anyway? I don't know, dude. It threw me.

Let me just tell you, it threw me good. But you get down there and you're like, a professor shows up and is like, do you know where you are? And you go, no. Do you know where you are going to sleep? And your character's like, no, am I homeless? Right. And so on and so forth. And so you're like, OK, we're setting up that you're a fucking isekai protagonist in this wild world.

And then the professor goes, do you know anything about Pokemon? And one of the you have two options. You can go, nah, or you can go, yeah, of course I do. Like he's an idiot. OK, so I go, yeah, of course I do. And then he decides to explain what Pokemon are to me for 15 minutes anyway. And I'm like, I just told you you're a moron for even asking me the question. Why are you doubling down by is it because you didn't want to write two tutorial prompts where I can just start playing it?

I streamed it for about five ish hours, dude. It's like 90 minutes before you're actually doing the thing. Well, it might be mom's first Pokemon game. And yeah, she's heard of Pokemon. So normally I wouldn't bring it up because it could be mom or the child's or whatever first Pokemon game, except they straight up ask you, hey, do you know what the deal with Pokemans is? And you have the option of saying, yeah, dumbass, I do. Also, the game has an in game type chart. And it is straight up the shittiest thing I've ever seen in my life.

It's embarrassing. The only way to view the type chart is to go into the tutorial. And in the like the, you know, like the Hunter's Notes equivalent encyclopedia thing and you scroll down to types. And in the types thing, it has the explanation for what types are and a screenshot of the type chart, which is one third of the total screen. And like nothing like it's just the symbols like none of them are labeled. No, no legend. Yeah, like and I'm like, and it's like, yeah, this is you can't use it. It's not.

Hell yeah. Fuck you. No booklets because that's what like back in the day you had a little fucking booklet with the cool survival guide texture on it. And you'd find that page and you'd keep that open on your lap as you fucking played. Absolutely. Awesome. And last but not least, it has the absolute stupidest change to Pokemon of all time. Hey, Willie, what happens when you throw a Pokeball out of Pokemon?

It hits it and then it goes inside and then it'll how it floats and opens up and then the Pokemon converts into energy and goes into the middle. Yeah. So the ball converts the Pokemon energy and then it lives in there, right? Yeah. Yeah. No. So did you know that all Pokemon can become like one one hundredth of their size? They all have the natural magical ability to shrink to tiny, tiny perversions of themselves.

And when you hit them with the Pokeball, they decide to get really small and then get in the ball and then maybe decide to be trapped. No, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Didn't they? Wasn't it always a thing where you like, no, but that size changing energy thing was always kind of what a fucking Pokeball was, wasn't it? Like, isn't that? No.

I know what you're thinking. What you're thinking of is when they tell you that Pokeballs shrink Pokemon. Yeah, because the ball itself gets smaller when it goes on your belt. No, it's the Pokemon decides to get in the ball. I don't know about this. I've been told otherwise for years. It's like and that's why you're you're transferring your Pokemon on your PC, right? Because they're like energy like when they're in the data, right?

No, they just when they when they get when they get hit by the ball, they go and turn small. And it's because the game takes place in the past. And so the balls can't be magic. They can't be technological. They have to be. Oh, there's no computers in this setting. No, it's it's just it's dude. It's literally I think the balls made out of wood.

Okay. Well, so it's it's like I'm just gonna, you know, Pokeballs never made too much sense and you just don't think too hard about them. So we'll just leave it alone. I'm fine to just leave that alone. They really should have left alone. Pokeball does what a Pokeball does and you know what it does. Like it's don't.

It's like by by attempting to fix it and retcon it. It just becomes like outrageously stupid. It's just like infuriating that a wild Pokemon that wants to kill you just sees the Pokeball and goes, oh yeah, dude, it looks comfy in there. I'm gonna get in. And then once they're in, just start screaming and fighting to get out with so much strength that like the ball is shooting up 10 feet in the air. I mean, you do transfer and pull Pokemon out of a PC, so they do become data because they're

yeah, but they're also like willingly like there was something about I don't remember, but there was something about like, you know, they do willingly go inside the ball and and some something. And now and now everyone in his brain is like, wait, how does a Pokemon get hit by anything? They can they can shrink instantaneously on command to one one thousandth of their size. They're basically an entire race of monster ant-mans. How could they possibly ever ever get hit by like a punch in the manga? You can see them inside of the ball in just a mini collectible shape.

Yeah. So they're not just sitting data inside of the ball. So like, I don't have a problem with like magical thinking or like silly like contrivances. I do have a problem with stuff that is obviously magical thinking or a silicon dry fence and then they try and sell it. Right. So like, if there was a kid, like, there's a good example that that Mike Staclasa brings up on red letter media when he's talking about Star Wars and Star Trek, right on Star Wars

or on Star Trek, the warp engine is a complicated and well defined piece of machinery that there are like literally 40 or 50 or 60 Star Trek episodes devoted to talking about how the warp engine works and all sorts of stupid shit you can do with the warp engine. Right. So everybody knows how the warp engine works. And okay, fine. In Star Wars, the warp engine is called the hyperdrive. And the reason why the hyperdrive works is that it goes really fast.

Right. And that's totally fine. There's no problem with that right up until somebody in a Star Wars thing starts explaining why they can't do something because the hyperdrive needs the bath mode dad from the thing and can't do this with that. Tachyons and that and that explains everything. Yeah. And then that conflicts with earlier stuff.

You're just like what the fucking why? Why? Like why? Why? It's just a fucking magic box that makes the ship go fast. According to Bulbapedia, when a Pokeball hits the Pokemon as long as it's not deflected, the Pokeball will open, convert the Pokemon to a form of energy, pull it into its center and close.

The Pokemon in that state is given a chance to struggle to attempt to break free from the ball and escape being instantly reconverted from energy into matter. Should a Pokemon escape a Pokeball, the device will be destroyed or will return to the trainer if it's the anime. The phrasing on that is so bizarre. It's given a chance to struggle. Yeah, the ball will give the Pokemon a chance to struggle. It is ethical to allow the Pokemon to escape if it wishes, providing that it struggles

enough. See, okay, but that's fucked because if that's true, then everyone beating on wild Pokemon so they go in the ball is like an ethical loophole to the instructions that come with the Pokeball. Well, yes. The instructions with the Pokeball say if the Pocket Monster struggles enough that it leaves, the Pokeball destroys so don't catch that Pokemon and everyone went, okay, well, what if we just went out and just beat the piss out of every Pokemon before we hit them

with the ball, then they wouldn't have the strength to escape. Correct. They would be broken in like horses would and they would submit. We've been doing this. We know this is the game. Does that mean the Master Ball is like a fucking animal crime? It gives no ethical chance for the escape. No, there's no chance for escape.

Nope. But it can't be a crime if like the property which the crime is being inflicted upon is, you know, it doesn't don't have their own rights. So all's fair. It's legit. It's it's one of those things that like every attempt to add a single detail about Pokemon to Pokemon makes Pokemon increasingly confusing and bizarre. Weakened Pokemon instinctively curl up in an attempt to heal themselves, an action that

the environment in the Pokeball encourages. Furthermore, while it's not while it is not known how caught Pokemon perceive time inside the ball, the device is said to replicate a Pokemon friendly environment that is designed for comfort. This is what I remember now. Yes. There is an enjoyable like world inside the Pokeball so that it's comfortable while it's while it's stuck inside.

Power World seems like a legitimately more like cohesive universe than Pokemon. Well, it's just upfront about the suffering, which it's inflicting on the on the pals. Oh, that reminds me. So friend of the show. Get Gianni was actually to stream a few days ago that I caught. Yes. The Vod for of Kraft Topia meme that meme voice actor extraordinaire. And I took a look at that.

And I don't know why he made like his character look like a nightmarish fucking we fit trainer like Gray person. Like, you know, that kind of freak. Okay. But he really, really enjoyed his time with Kraft Topia. And like I looked at it and like it's it's very jank. But it's also really impressive. And it's also like a astonishing ripoff of Breath of the Wild.

Like, like, there's like the Sheikah temples, like the designs the same. It's just red. And like that's all fine and good for Kraft Topia. But that made me think like, oh, wait, will pal world actually be like good? Like, it'll be so like, did it? It'll be jank of shit. But like, did it? Could it be good?

Was the goal for it to be a like someone wanted to make their own breath of the wild first and then secondary came the taking the piss out of the concept and. No, what it appears to be for Kraft Topia is that they wanted to make like every game that was popular simultaneously. Okay. Like Breath of the Wild look cool. So they took like its entire interface and a lot of its look and they wanted to be like a crafting survival game also and an automation game and an adventure game.

And like it just it feels like one of those games that as it's being made, they're like just throw that in there. Just just throw it in there. But I'm very confused to see like people really liking it and having like very positive reviews. Though I did look back and saw that it's one of those games that has like very positive reviews and like extremely negative reviews and then very positive reviews again. So it appears that it's one of those things where like certain builds or patches just wreck the fall apart. And then bring it back later.

Yeah. Now we only scratch the surface on the descriptor of how pokeballs work and how conflicting information over the years through different episodes and manga pages have contradicted and challenged each other with what exactly the Pokemon can perceive while inside the pokeball. We don't need to detour completely over into this direction but rest assured there is a dragonite sitting inside of a pokeball in the anime looking kind of sad with nothing around it. I have a hypothetical question. Let's say I'm a you know I'm a Pokemon trainer right and I got my Bulbasaur

and it's in my pokeball right he's not hanging out he's in the ball on my hip right. And let's say I'm going to the Zubat cave and I twist my ankle a little bit you know you step on a rock weird and I fall off the path and fall into a ditch and dying a ditch. And then there's heavy snowfall and then my body gets covered in the ditch right. And then what's that experience like for the Bulbasaur over the years in which it is not found. Well Pokemon appear to be conscious while inside their pokeballs. That's what I wanted to know. Sometimes there have been depictions of the pokeball jumping and rolling around at high speeds

with the Pokemon inside of it communicating with the pokedex as well. So that is possible. However there have been depictions where several Pokemon have shown the ability to leave the pokeball at will. Jesse's Wabafet, Misty's Psyduck and various others have a bunch of bulls that have tended to jump out of the Pokemon out of their pokeballs without the trainer instructions. Thank you darling. That reminds me of I forget I think me page read it in the same place or it's listed that like fucking Meowth is the only canonically evil Pokemon.

Because he's the only one that's acquired language? No, it's because he's the only one that understands and can commit crimes with the understanding that they're crimes. Yeah, okay. It's like the Catholic age of reason. You are sinful. And you've decided to do evil? Yes. The moment you are aware you are now sinful.

Meowth flew too close to the sun. Absolutely. Okay. Pokemon is so stupid. Powell world is at the very least more straightforward about it. You know, I appreciate that honesty. Cool. Where can people check that out?

You can check that over at twitch.tv. And this week that I'm going to be streaming is actually a huge big week. I will have to go check the schedule because I'm streaming like most days, genuinely. Tomorrow is Dead Cells. I'm going back to it. I'm going to do the chat powers. Wednesday is going to be Lost in Vivo with Peach Saliva? Yeah.

Then on Thursday I'm going to do Monster Hunter Rise with Peach and Plague. Then on Friday I'm going to be doing a sponsored stream of Path of Exile. They got the new expansion out called Siege of Atlas. And on Saturday I'm going to be streaming Dying Light 2 assuming that game comes out on Friday and everyone doesn't tell me that it's like the shittiest game that's ever existed. Which I doubt that'll happen. And I'm also working on a secret project in the background that I'm happy with. But that'll be like weeks or months away.

Okay. Yeah, I grabbed Rise on PC and I'm going to crack that open once I get a chance. Oh, it runs so good dude. Yeah, I'm going to ditch the Switch attempt and see what happens. Hey, you know what's a game that came out on Switch before Pokemon Arcus? Fucking Monster Hunter Rise. Yeah. And only one of those two games is currently getting hot ass Soon He Legend gifts.

That's right. I saw the insect glaive one earlier this morning. Goddamn dude. Yeah. I'm going to be pretty busy with some other stuff though. Yeah, over here, pretty simple with the week. Not much to talk about. One started Everhood, which is that Undertale-like game that is more musical.

And to call it a rhythm game would be a little inaccurate because you're not playing a rhythm game. You're fighting a rhythm game that's coming at you. A bit like Audiosurf. You have to dodge the notes that are coming down the note chart because those are attacks. Okay. I was like, what distinction are you making? It's like, no, you're trying to avoid the rhythm game. Exactly.

The rhythm game is happening and those are damage, you know? And your goal is to stay in the empty lanes and jump over them and dodge them and not take too much sustained damage over time or otherwise you die. Oh my God. And the music is fucking fantastic so far. Well, it better be, Goddamn. It has to be. Exactly. Mission one is make good music to, you know, fight to and they did that.

That is accomplished. Two is be Undertale-like in your energy and beef and that much is happening very clearly. Same font, same style. Really same font? Same font, same style of characters and you literally walk into a room and Gaster is standing there. Oh, okay. So it's not just like- That's more on the nose than I would have expected.

Exactly. Right? I was feeling away about like, oh, I hope that, you know, you understand that it's not just that this is very, very, very similar energy. It's like, no, it's so on the nose that an Undertale character is standing in a room, you know? So when you say Gaster, do you mean like G Blaster or do you mean fucking Gaster? I mean Gaster with his fucked up gray face is standing there and then you talk to him and he fades away. What's up with the fucking- did Toby just be like, yeah, whatever? Or did they just do it?

I don't know but I'm assuming that because it's the character that's between dimensions anyway that it's kind of acceptable to just fucking do it. It might be like a bad situation, you know, where he just shows up. I don't know. Yeah, I guess. But anyway, as far as I got in the first little bit of that game, literally just Undertale characters are present. Did they kiss? They did not kiss.

Oh, they don't kiss. The rest of that is also very, very like the narratively confusing in a way that makes me think the game is made to be played on the big screen at Magfest as people are dancing. Okay. It feels like when you go through some of these moments like you will die and then wake up in a drug trip and do like a boss rush before you come back to life. And that like five minute sequence or six or seven minute sequence is really just the visuals for a live show at Magfest. It really feels that way. The feeling that you are like either intended to be or you're possibly simulating a drug trip, be that LSD mushrooms or fucking DMT, whatever it is, is very, very strong. The drug vibe is very strong in this game.

You know, let me go look at it and I'm going to judge whether or not it has a drug vibe based off of let's say the first screenshot I encounter. Because like not that I'm the arbiter on that, but just if I can tell off of like instantly, you said everhood? Everhood. Yeah. Oh, from the steam thumbnail. Wait, I own everhood. Perhaps. I guess I do.

Yeah. No. Like the moment you press start, the moment you press start a big hazy fractal graphic starts spiraling and then the undertale text starts talking to you. And it's like, yeah, no, you you had a sip of the molly water. Here we go. Yeah. Get ready for it. Yeah.

So yeah, but so far, you know, the the like I said, the music's been good and that's that's all fun. Many games here and there with like racing and like dodging fiery fucking like a really hard overworld puzzle that battle boss battle rather that like you're doing bullet hell dodging in some sequences. So the rhythm game attacking you doesn't just come in one form of note chart. There's a couple other versions of it. I've seen so far. And yeah, it's pretty interesting. We'll see if like the story does anything or goes anywhere. But so far, it's just, you know, a bunch of like silly jokes and cute characters doing their thing.

There's there's Nosferatu, who's Nosferatu, but he sneezes all the time. And that's shut up. And that's his bit. That's stupid. But that's that's literally it. That's the whole thing. Right. You know, or OK, now I'm on board.

Or like there's a part where you are you burst into a house and then like get pulled into a tabletop adventure. And then like the rules of the game change because a DM is now dictating how the RPG plays, you know, and then just all kinds of all kinds of stuff. So we're a couple episodes into that and we'll be continuing to play it. I believe it's a pretty short game, but the music should want to continue. If you want to continue the the indie RPG drug nightmare train, you should check out Hylix to. H-Y-L-I-X H-Y-L-I-C-S. OK. And then the number two that shit is.

Oh, that is a weird main character. It's that that's like the fucking RPG version of the fucking cruelty squad. What is happening? Like in terms of like just here you here you go. OK. Weird lighting. Yeah. Trying to be very fucking strange.

OK. It is to. OK. I'm reminded of like some of Swarys are rather suit as lighting choices from time to some of this. Interesting. You know what? You know, it's interesting. I got confused while you were just talking and you started to say I got reminded of Swarys lighting choices and my brain went, that's what Pokemon looks like.

Pokemon Arceus looks like deadly premonition. OK. OK. That's what the lighting looks like. OK. Where it's doing its best and it's landing there and no. No. No.

I refuse the contention that deadly premonition or Pokemon Arceus were doing their best in regards to their lighting. I think deadly premonition deliberately didn't give a fuck. I think Pokemon. I think the second game didn't, but I think the first game they might have tried a little. OK. Fair enough. You'd know better. The the that is a that is a decent comparison as well because it also shows a time of like it for the era.

What the fuck are you doing? Is the energy that that deadly premonition had, you know? OK. So anyway, I think, you know, when I think back to DP one, you know what stands out the most to me out of all its technical shit. Is the terrible audio quality on every single line of dialogue in the entire game? Like the graphics fade. But like audio has been like a fucking like people know what fucking good audio sounds like since like 95. It says Metal Gear Solid.

Let's just say Metal Gear Solid 98, right? And like the audio in fucking DP just sounds like it was recorded in the shittiest booth with the shittiest microphones and just not mixed at all. God, what was that one fighting game where someone was using a laptop mic for one character? I forgot what the fuck it was. But oh, there was one fighting game. It was a 3D one. And there's one character whose voice was clearly recorded in a room with a laptop mic. And everyone else's was separate.

That rules. Yeah. Anyway, so we took a look at that. And then beyond that, there's just, no, not Donk Donk. Not that, that's all gags the whole way through. Donk Donk's audio sounded pretty good. Yeah, no, no, no, nothing that silly and obvious. Like, no, no, this was a like a guy, a game that was doing its thing.

Fuck me. Anyway, it was a medieval themed. I guess if we're getting into it, I think it was medieval themed. It's 3D and like God just super easily forgotten. Anyway, whatever. It's gone. Forget it. Never mind this.

What's a fighting game? Guilty Gear Strive is and Vikings in it now. And good. Yay. I enjoyed that. I'm, yeah, I've been, I've been taking a look to see how she's doing and, and, and all the, the changes and stuff they, they, they made in an application. It's a whole lot of fun.

It's kind of wild seeing the, there's the, the, the, we described the, the, the tethering system. Right. So now when you tether yourself to somebody, if you get hit, the tether stays connected. So every character in the game has unique combos where biking fucked up and tethered herself and is now getting hit and can't be knocked away. It's hilarious. God damn it.

There are some great clips of like Potemkin doing a heavenly potbuster and then throwing bike and off, but because she's tethered, he can just kick her back up into the air and do a second one and she's dead. Oh man. You know, um, there's some great shots of there's a, there's an attack where chip can run up the wall, attacking you sideways until you splat on the wall and then breaks it. But now because of the tether, he just bounces her and she falls and whenever she should stray, whenever she's supposed to fall out of range, she can't.

So he just shoots her all the way up the side of the screen until he's, until she's gone. You know, um, I mean, people are getting creative and silly because, um, the mechanics on the tether are such that like one, you can't exceed a certain range. And two, if you have enough momentum, it elastics you all the way back together. Right. So, uh, for example. Chip, uh, has a super where he does like a big, like maximum spider style attack from all angles and then he flies up into the air and comes down.

Um, while you're tethered, that attack means that he's going to do his final slash where he drops to the bottom of the screen, but bike is all the way up in the air and the tether is pulled to maximum tension. So she shoots violently back down to the earth as he can continue the combo afterwards. Like it's, it's absolutely masochistic when you fuck up. It's hilarious. So what, so what you're saying is as a bike and player and you tether them to fucking don't drop it.

Don't you dare fuck up. If you don't fuck up, you're fine because the best time to tether is when you land a counter hit, then you get a couple of seconds to just do something crazy, big damage. And then the tether breaks and everyone's fine. But if you fuck up, oh man, uh, the game was like not made for these combos to, to like basically shit that like is, is broken. A lot of fighting games will go. Well, the reason why this is going to be saved is because it'll push you back too far.

You know, you'll get hit with a couple of things and then the last hit of this will just knock you too far away so that they can continue. They can't continue hitting you. And the tether just says, nah, keep it going. Whatever you want. Freestyle mode. Have fun. It's like a, like a one player happy birthday.

It really is. It's, it's, it's hilarious to see. And it's, it's easily the funnest and goofiest thing about her inclusion in the game. Um, everything else. So upsetting when that must have started to happen and people are like, oh no. Yeah. Oh, I didn't think this mechanic would work this way at all. It's, it's great.

It's, it's great. You know, I have no problems with that type of like bullshit. It's exciting and stupid and creates like hilarious hype moments when it goes wrong. Kind of like gunman and all the other things. So as long as the DLC continues to be like at least this interesting and not just like, Hey, new character with some cool moves and that's it. You know, it's much more exciting to talk about the wacky bullshit of like, I can't believe, uh, you know, you can, I can't believe there's new combos for everybody because

they, they, they, they're, they're now Yappa pie strapped together. You know, um, there's the, or what's the other one? Is it a West side story where they're tied by the wrist and they both have knives and doing a knife fight in a circle where you can't separate. I just have what might be the stupidest image I've contained in my mind in a while of like fucking ultimate warrior, but his hair is pink and he's only got one arm and he's just going, you take that plane into a nose dive. So bad guy.

What do you hit him with the strap, brother? It's just, that's what it is, you know, and like the two ways you can land it are one is just you land a normal throw and the other way is to just throw it out there and whether it's blocked or hit, it'll attach and if you throw it out there and they're just standing and they block it, time to die idiot. Why would you do this? It's always, it's always an interesting thing when games give people not a real suicide button, but what might as well be a suicide button.

Yeah. Yeah. Just getting, if you get, just get a little too excited, you know, and that's the end of that. So, but everything else is fine, you know, Vikings got our cool old stuff and the parry is really fun and it's one frame. So that means that like it comes out like insanely fast and will, you know, do a bunch of stuff, but none of that, like the technical, if you want to watch, you know, me getting

into biking and learning the character and all that stuff, check out the, get into fighting games for this week and, you know, we can avoid like, we don't have to get into the nitty gritty on that. She's good. I like what she's doing, but the strap, the strap is the funniest part and that's where all the best little tweets and clips are going to come from easily. One way or the other. Yeah.

I mean, even like, even the matches, it's funny though, because I'm thinking for the matches where people are like, get the fuck away from me, like an axle player is like, stay over there. Don't touch me. Don't touch me. And I'm like, in that situation, I'm like, okay, but what if I strap myself to you so that you, I can't, I can't, like you can't escape and then Axel starts doing his spin. Yes.

And you're like, no, well, it's not even the spin. It's the, um, the Axel bomber, the uppercut that he does in the air. Yeah. Like that thing is really good. And you know, it's saving grace as it knocks you the fuck away from him, but now you just come rubber banding back so he can do it again and again and again and again. I'm just waiting. I'm assuming there's like combo videos of just like grand viper into grand viper.

Yes. Into grand viper. Yes. Yes. That's exactly the type of shit. That's so, you know, don't. You're sitting there going like, why did I do this to myself? What?

Oh, well, the trade off is because, um, like when you're on the ground and you're getting and you're like, say we're tethered together and you're getting up. If I do like a backwards jump, the, the physics of my jump will be modified in a weird way by the tether and it means I'll snap back towards your direction and you don't know whether it's going to be left or right. You know, so I just mixed myself up. You can, I can basically, there's a lot of situations where using the tethers elasticity, the player doesn't know which side the attack is going to be on.

So, you know, the best mixups are the ones that I don't know myself. Uh, anyway, uh, guilty gear, fun. Um, second thing, and this is really worth, um, pointing out, and it's, it's flying under the radar by comparison to the, the bike and announcement, but the combo recipe, um, feature that they've included with this update is big. It's a huge deal and is amazing for the game as well. This is another, what now? So it's a, they had combo recipes ever since excerpt where when you go into training mode,

you can do a combo and the game will automatically create a list that looks like a mission challenge. Right. And it'll know how to, and it'll let you, it'll, it'll let you save that and be like, Hey, I've made my own combo. I have a list of my, you know, stuff and it'll, it'll look as if it were one of the challenge missions. Right. Okay.

So that was in training mode before and you could, um, essentially like save your favorites and practice. So you could make your own combo and then the game would notarize it for you. Exactly. Now, the next step for that system that they just unveiled is, uh, sharing your combos online in a large database with other players that, uh, can let other people try to complete their combo challenges. You can sort, you can search by character.

You can search by, by, uh, position. You can search by damage. You can search by, oh, that's going to end up with just like the Mario maker of combo shit. It's, it's amazing because it has two functions. One, there's the like in game tool that will help someone new just go look at what their character can do. Right.

Right. So here a game makes missions for each character and says, here, there's 10 examples of chat combo challenges. They never show you what is optimal or what's best because they don't want to like bring you to the end state. They want you to discover on your own to some degree. Yeah. And also some of those could be like terrifying.

Yes. Um, really intimidating as well. But that's the thing is like in not trying to give you two and not trying to push you too hard in, in, in a direction without your own exploration, they will limit that stuff. I don't always agree with the choice, but either way, it's what they do now because it's the community, the things that you would go watching a tournament footage for or go looking at like dust loop for, you can find in the game, just hit the do combo button with the do combo button.

So I grabbed bike in and I played her in training mode for a little bit and I was like, okay, so what does she got? And I went to the combo mode and it was like, um, there's a recommended button right off the bat or you can go searching for individual ones. You hit recommended and it'll just grab the top five most liked, um, and most relevant combos for this character that people are currently trying, right? So it just downloads those, puts them on your thing and then goes, here you go. Here's five.

Give them a shot. Um, then you have, uh, five tries to do it. And if you get it three out of five times, then it's like check mark. You've succeeded this combo. That's great. Yeah. Um, instant practice, you know, to just tighten up to see what's what, press a button to see, um, an automatic sample so that you can see how the computer would do it.

And then, you know, if you want to go back into search and go like, okay, I want a combo that is a wall break, uh, not counter hit, you know, and like it doesn't have to be maximum damage. It just needs to be, um, easy for me to do so I can, you know, practice like, I want, I want a reliable thing that I don't have to worry about fucking up the execution of cool. All of that you can just filter search and then you'll see a bunch of examples and some of them will be like, Oh, like to buy a lot of people.

Let's go try this one out. And then you, now you have information on how to play your character, you know, um, now tell me about the meme shit. Well, so the second would be, um, the combo challenge starts with bike and doing her strapped to you. Now find a way to do something insane while biking is strapped to you, you know, I want to see like a combo notation and it's like, good luck with this. And it's just people just, what, how do you even get the first two hits?

What it's a puzzle situation, right? Yeah. It's like Mario maker became like a nightmare creation tool. Absolutely. Um, you know, or you're, uh, like you're, you're, you're, you're old desk style combos of like, okay, put an ages reflector behind you, have Ken throw a fireball out, you know, every, every Ryu combo ever that's like, do Shinkuhidokan on the same frame that somebody's light punch hits you so that you can dash forward and then hit them with the combo as

they're being knocked over by the Shinkuhidokan because you got knocked out of the fucking recovery animation on your super interrupt your super and then do another one idiot. Figure it out. Yeah. Stupid shit. Another application, you know, is, uh, fight like goofball stuff and, and I, I'm excited to see where that goes because I've only seen a couple of only seen like one or two like silly challenge combos, but it's, it's only a couple days old, you know, um, and those

are going to be liked and upvoted as well. But overall it's basically like a combo Mario maker mode that lets you find useful, fun, practical combos, stylish combos for just showing off and then goofy challenges and it's fantastic. That's really nice. Yeah. That's definitely a lot better than Tekken selling their frame data. It sure is, you know, and, and it's a, it's a very, uh, on a, on a simple level, it's

also a really fun single player way to engage with the game, you know, while getting better and while improving with, uh, um, you know, your matchups, you can like just play these, this combo challenge system and see what other people are creating and, you know, the, and again, like the community will always come up with better shit than the, the in-game recommended missions. So, uh, finally we have it. It's very, it's very cool to see that it's done. Uh, yeah.

So guilty gear stride. That seems really nice for stride. Yeah. Go, go, go update it. And, um, if you are playing and you are on PC, uh, reminder to, uh, use to Totsugeki, which is, um, uh, an EXE you can grab off of GitHub that launches strive and cuts out all the network bullshit so that you can start the game faster. It trims a solid minute and a half off of the fucking press start screen.

Okay. So we got rollbacks. Next step. Why does men you fucking take too long? Come on. Yeah. Cause it's trying to, it's trying to ping the server 120 some odd times. No, don't, no, come on.

So go grab your Totsugeki to cut that, that time down to a very reasonable, normal time. Come on. That's silly. Yep. Um, okay. So everhood continues on Willy versus, uh, also going to be, of course, coming back for another round of, of bike in, um, shout outs to everyone who came in good games to you guys.

And, uh, yeah, I'm going to be back next week as well, because, you know, I want to, I'm not expecting to get her to like Naga Ryuki proficiency, but I just want to feel comfortable. You know, um, so I'm going to keep practicing with her for a bit. Um, and since we have the open slot and it's not February 20th yet, I think we can fit some more little short games in, uh, and I'm probably going to mix up the everhood LP with, uh, what looks to be hot off the fucking presses. Why not dive into some blood-borne PSXD make? Yeah, that just came out like just now, like just now.

I've been so fucking excited for this thing. So, uh, we're going to crack that shit open later this week for sure. Um, Does anybody know, do you know how much of the game that actually is? I believe it's the first level plus a bit extra. Confirmed cleric beast and gas coin, um, I don't know if it goes much further beyond that. Huh.

It might, it might just be, um, like, I know first level, uh, it might just be first level and then gas coin and then perhaps like one or two other, like, you know, extra unique things. Um, but, uh, that is a, uh, very exciting drop that I've been waiting on. I am seeing as well some freezes and some crashes. So it's not in a super perfect state yet, but, uh, we've talked about this before. It's a blood-borne PlayStation one style D make. It's not actually running on PlayStation one hardware, but it's a blood-borne, but go fucking

look at it. Um, I do feel weird because this is going to be Reggie's first exposure to it. But eh, whatever, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. And I don't care. Cool. Shut up. So, um, it looks like it looks so much like nightmare creatures that's like, it's weird

me out because I remember we played nightmare creatures on the shitstorm, uh, either the last year or the second or last year. And there was this overwhelming thing of like, this is just like a blood-borne D make. It has the, and well, nightmare creatures, like from what I saw, I mean, that that style of low fidelity has the ability to still be really scary if executed properly, you know? So, well, I mean, fuck, I just played Silent Hill, so. Why don't you just tell Reggie that this is the original version of blood-borne? This is, yeah, this is where it started.

And then later on you're going to play where what came, yeah, exactly. Totally. Um, I hope that as long as there's no like, um, you know, you beat Gas Coin and then like fucking Moon Presence shows up because it's just a fan, uh, uh, moment. Yeah, fan tribute, you know, but either way, um, we're doing it. So please look forward to that. Uh, that'll probably be done within short order as well. So we're just going to keep throwing.

That's probably like a single single session, I imagine. Yeah. So we're just going to keep filling, filling the gaps with small, fun things. And, um, that'll be it. That'll be it. Uh, for if you're, if you're out there in Tepinland and you're running that, uh, that alligator meta, uh, fuck you, but also, um, one of us, I've, I've joined and it's the only way to crack top thousand currently.

Uh, it's kind of fucked up, but anyway, that's just for the Tepin people out there. I just got hit with the hottest news. What's going on? Did you see the world of Warcraft news? No. So world of Warcraft originally released, and I want to say November of 2004 has just announced that they are going to be doing cross-faction dungeons, raids, and PVP. The Horde and the Alliance will no longer be split after 18 or 19 years.

That feels like capitulation. I don't know much about that. So I, I know what you do know about. You do know about that time we were in Future Shop 16 years ago. And a guy said, oh, you play WoW and I went, yeah. And he's like, oh, yeah, I've been having a lot of fun playing Alliance. I'm like, Alliance, bitch. And then we walked away and he was like, oh, and you were like, what the fuck?

Like all of Warcraft's faction thing has been the absolute defining thing for not just that game, but also it's franchise like Warcraft. Them giving up on it just seems insane to me. So what's it going to be now? You'll be able to just raid and play dungeons and do whatever with anybody. Okay. And you'll probably be able to talk to each other. I thought your hot news was going to be that Whirlal has been

purchased by the New York Times. Yeah, get ready for New York Times to ruin Whirlal. Please don't. I got to say I'm real down on Whirlal right now. I lost my 14 game streak last night with the most bullshit word I have seen ever. A word that had like 10 different letters possible. Yeah, one spot. I, so I, okay, so I cleared it in four.

I cleared it in four. My, my, my current technique, because I showed Reggie Whirlal on stream and we did a little segment on it. And my current technique is kind of like airtight. It's, it's crushing it in three to four tops. Last night's word in particular. I was looking at it and it could have been a lot of things, but I've noticed that the trend has been towards, with that one exception, commonly used words.

Right. So if it's getting into something that's a little too obscure with that one exception, I go, it's the most common version of these letters coming together. And that paid off today's was all common words. So every, every single variation of today's word possible is a word I use in my day to day life. That is a cheat word. Streaks.

I refuse. Streaks still go on. Streaks still going. I have to restart my fucking streak. I've also, I've also, the two days before I noticed that like with this, with the strat, it was within like the first two, three minutes even. It was a super fast clear. I was like, damn.

So anyway, New York times, please don't fuck up portal. Um, if they're going to fuck it up, they said it'll be free and stay the same for now. But then you have to subscribe and become a member. You know, it's funny. I, I, I literally, uh, updated my Sony Vegas purchase today. Uh, my video editor, I went from 17 to 19. Uh, and I'm, I have to actually admit, I'm very surprised that it's actually

genuine improvement. Like it runs a lot better and it handles larger, uh, larger letters. And it handles larger, larger file sizes of videos a lot better than 17 did. Uh, but the, when it, when it asked me to upgrade was like, Hey, you want to upgrade Vegas and it brought me to like a fucking subscription page. Yes. And I was like, fuck this. I'm going to go whatever.

And then off, off an abundance of caution before I went off to quote unquote fucking whatever, man, I don't know. I decided to go to the product page and decide and discovered, Oh, no, wait. They do sell it like a normal fucking thing. Still, they're just not pushing it. They just, they just want you to get that subscription real bad. No, the, the, the subscription thing. I mean, Adobe started this, but like, well, they didn't start the whole thing,

but they, they're the, one of the biggest companies pushing it. It's the gross annoying thing that you're going to be seeing from all of these software, uh, staples in various fields. But like a lot of the time you can just, there's a really tiny, no thanks button that you should go look for and see if you can find like here under students and, and poor crumb bums. Yeah. The, the, the garbage dirt I'm smelly plan.

Are you sure you want that one? It's, it's one of those things that it's like when, uh, something moves to a subscription, like a service or like a tool goes, we subscribe now. My brain just goes, yeah, I'm not going to do that. I'm, I'm just not going to do that. So you have, I, I'm going to try and find the non fucked up version of this on your website. And if not, I'm going to go find a alternative.

Well, ultimately an older version of the software is what you, what you want to find, you know, that's, that's nice. So if, if the updates make things annoying, all right, I can go back in time. That's no problem with me. So, um, but anyways, uh, yeah. Over on Willie versus we're continuing with everhood. We are continuing with, uh, bike in town and we're going to jump into the Bloodborne PSX D make this week.

So, uh, come hang out and, uh, yeah, there might be some other prizes in store if we, if we end up, uh, coming through Bloodborne pretty quickly, we can pop some other stuff in. So it should be fun. Um, all right, I got a P real bad. I got to make some coffee. Okay. So, uh, let's hit a break button and then come back.

So we're back. Uh, something I just remembered, uh, that, uh, I just had a little bit of a, a grumble this week because, um, Pudgebomb's been playing, uh, FF seven remake. Tell me your grumble. The grumble was just, um, knowing, going into that, that it would be, you know, a strange experience as somebody knew who is seeing a lot of this for the first time, that like it would be a really immersive fun game with lots of cool stuff in it, but there would be like little things that would obviously not make a

ton of sense. And of course, when Kate Sith popped up and she's like, what the fuck was that? And I was like, okay, okay, that's what I've always wanted to know. Oh yeah. I'm like, this is the new player sitting down in this world for the first time. It's like, what the absolute fuck was that little creature getting sad? I was like, yep, okay, this is where we get to explain what that is and why that's weird and why, you know, this is not going to be a perfect introduction.

It's going to be a pretty good game that you will enjoy for what it's doing. But like one, that still reads as odd and then two, um, and we talked about this when the game first came out, but the reminder that it's like, unfortunately, it's just not, it can't serve as both the like introduction to this series and the revisit for, uh, existing fans. No, that'd be impossible. It would be impossible. And, um, the attempt to do so, but then softening the most impactful

blow, which is the plate fall, the softening of the plate fall and the loss of Jesse Biggs and wedge in the remake and makes me just go, God damn it. Like, so when we worked, when like, you know, I was getting updates of like where punch mom's at and how it goes. It was like, yeah, that part was like a holy shit sequence, but in the end, it was like, okay, well, it seems like a lot of the people made it out. Okay. And, you know, now they're going to do the next thing where you go help

some of them and stuff. Oh yeah. And somehow like it seemed as if Biggs and wedge and Jesse were hitting their final moments, but then they're managed to kind of be okay. And you're like, right, like these little things they did, um, kind of made what originally was, oh my God, they just did it. This is fucking horrifying. With then motivation to go like, fuck Shinra.

Let's, let's take step two. Let's find out what to do. How do you, how do you, where do you go from here? They dropped a plate on everybody. And the version of this where it's like, well, most people escaped. It's kind of hit some people and a lot of that stuff. I was like, oh, right. I forgot that that happened.

You know, um, so it's a longer game with more time spent there and it's not going to have the journey you're going to get by going through discs two and three, so you've ultimately resolved the entire thing. And it, it doesn't just have a huge tragedy and then hit your credits two seconds later, but still I am bugged by that as its own thing. I mean, it's a weird game because it's like explicitly not designed to be its own thing. Like it kind of lives and dies as a sequel only.

Hmm. If that makes any sense, because there is like the, the, the plate drop was like a, like a, a brutal nightmare. Like it was like, oh wow, we actually, oh Jesus Lord. Um, and that obviously was softened and you're completely right, but it's now replaced with an uncertain vision of the future that depending on your personal taste and choice of people you care about could be much, much worse than the original could be like, I would, I would kick someone back

into the grave with both feet every day in order to keep someone out of it. Right. I, my hopes though, in the attempt to make this, like you said, self, um, like self isolated, like, you know, sequel remake thing, um, my hopes are that like it wouldn't affect the, some of the emotional beats, so to speak. There's an obvious one that is going to be fucked with no question. We know that one way or the other, they could even do the same thing, but, but fake you out and make you think it's not going to happen.

And then it happens completely differently later, right? I'm, I'm, I'm fully expecting the biggest one to go to take a wild left at Albuquerque, but, um, I'm, but in terms of like moments, like something like, like, well, at least for, for Midgar, the plate drop is your holy fuck moment of that game. It's the first, like sober the fuck up, like this is a huge deal. This is tragedy. And you, it changes a lot of the context of like the, the evil corporate

devious villain, you know, the context upgrade from like the implication of evil boardroom to like kill them all. You can't kill them hard enough. Um, and also the, uh, we talked about the Turks getting there, like, well, our noble reasons for doing this kind of excuse. And you go like, yeah, I just wish that this revisit, even in, in trying to change the, um, the, the, the elements with the, the ghosts and whatever the things, whatever the new things become, I just wish that some of those

huge impactful moments were not like a fucking pillow footed, you know? Yeah. Uh, there's another thing that I'm not sure if this is an attention or this is just my own head, but there is something to be said with the same moments being narratively softened on paper, but maybe feeling like they would even out with their presentation. So the one that sticks out to me the most is Hojo. Hojo is a scumbag, right?

Dude's a dirtbag, right? But he was limited in his repulsiveness by the context of a PlayStation one. In the FF seven remake, you get to spend a lot more time with the camera a lot closer to Hojo and see how much he is fawning over the fucking dank scumbag shit he wants to get up to. And he comes off like, so Hojo didn't change at all. Like not a single event associated with him was altered. No, the camera just lowers and shows you.

He comes off like a million times worse. How bad that seven are. He wants his, his fucking dogen fantasies to come true. Right. And like, like even the scene where he talks about like, well, if we breed them, they'll last longer, right? In the original, that's there, right? But because the camera can't show like the active repugnancy of his

fellow war criminals, like it just, it hits so much. Harder in the new one. And I think that's kind of one of the ways they feel like they're going to get away with it, where like, we soften this and we soften this and this stayed the same, but we're going to zoom in on this zoom way in. Yeah. But, but, but the difference between the two is that like, I mean, obviously my preference is not for softening overall, but the hard.

Yes. The difference between kind of like Hojo. The difference between the two is that what you're describing with Hojo is essentially doubling down and elaborating on something that he already was. Yeah. And the softening of the plate literally turns that from like gasping, holding your mouth. Oh, my God.

Moment. Yeah. Into a, well, that explosion, Michael Bay cutscene sequence was pretty exciting. Good thing a lot of people were saved anyway, moving on. Like you don't, it doesn't stay with you. And like in talking to a punch mom about it, like she had that kind of like, yeah, it happened. And then we went and we helped the people and it didn't, it doesn't resonate

in the same way as no, they just flattened and pancaked an entire second. I assume part of that is supposed to be like hardened by the, the active escape from the plate. Like, you know, that little sequence where you're playing, you're picking up that you're saving the kids and like everyone's screaming and going nuts. And like, oh, we're all going to die and stuff like that. Like in the original, it was just like, yeah, I think it's going to fall. There it went.

Everybody dead. And people, people still died in this case, of course. Oh, yeah, totally. Um, but I, I, I feel like the impression that I had and then the impression that she had as well, like revisiting it now was that like it, you're kind of, it's, it's, you feel it's only the amount of people or like the tragedy that happens is comparable to like Godzilla and or Superman battle tragedy where it's like, don't worry, you know, it's happening.

You know, there's people in those skyscrapers, but it's implied. But what's active in front of your face is how many people are, are, are, you know, getting out of there because that's the overall feeling is kind of like, yeah, we kind of did it like we didn't completely do it, but we mostly did it. You know, I have to, the more that I'm thinking about it, I kind of disagree. Okay. Um, because they did set up something prior that was of significance to reintegrate how awful it was.

And that was going to hang out with Jesse's parents on top of the place. Yes. Yes. Yes. Because everyone on the top side of the plate is fucking dead for sure. Yes. It's just our fellow poors on the underneath. Some of them got away.

Yeah, you know, that, that is, that is fair. Like it's, I guess I'm just thinking of like the complete shock of the, of the tragedy the first time in its brevity leaves. It leaves it all to like, there's not like, it leaves it all to interpretation by leaving nothing to interpretation, you know, it's like there's plate what, there's the plate, there's the people under it by. And so what you wanted was a bunch of Shinra goons sifting through like arms and legs on top of the plate.

No, no, no, um, I like changes are like, like I said, like I'm not down on every kind of change, certainly. Um, although the, again, the Turks getting some righteousness out of their decision is a, is a fucking weird one. Um, you know, like if we don't do it, someone else will. We have to be the ones to fall on the sword. Like, all right, guys. I mean, that's a, that felt fine to me because that's totally the justification

that those types of dudes in that line of work tell themselves to go to work. It is what they tell themselves, but it also allows, and I, and I say this as like, yeah, the cool dudes in the suits. I'm one of those people too. And it's like, it allows you to be like, yeah, they're still cool and noble though. And you're like, yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of like, um, remember what's his name, um, uh, pretty boy outside of Don's mansion, the new Leslie with the hat, who's like, Hey girls, I wouldn't go in there if I were you.

Right. You know, that's, that's bad stuff in there. You should get out of here if you know what's good for you. And then it's like, Hey, I'm kind of willing to be a little bit of a, an upsetter that'll like, you know, help you guys out a little bit if you're going against the dawn, but I still totally traffic woman here every night. Like that is the day job. I mean, yeah.

Yeah. That's, we're not going to fuck with the, with the, not you stack. No, no, I'm making that paper. Like I'm, I'm fucking, you know, I got trafficking bills to pay. So you best, Hey, I have a question. Um, but, but what do you, what do you think the, the likelihood of us getting to calm in FF seven remake and like the first scene is like us settling in. And Tifa's like, who wants spaghetti?

Like, is that like a non zero chance? I'm going to go ahead and say that like it's currently a zero chance unless the square Enix social media manager makes just, if they just tweet out an Italian flag, right? If the square Enix social media just tweets out an Italian flag, it's a non zero chance, but until that happens, not, no way, not, not even, not even, not at all. Um, but just to, just to finalize the, the, the thought, um, because like it's,

it's what I'm trying to, I guess, let me look if you, if you wouldn't mind me taking a second to figure this out. What I'm getting at is not like more horrible murder, please. Yay. Um, of that moment, it's more like it hit me so hard the first time and it doesn't hit that hard this time. What is the difference between the two and what is the change in that impact? And now that I've seen it hit someone seeing it for the first time in that

same softened way, I'm revisiting it because I'm like, it wasn't just me now. Someone else who just got exposed to that also was like, Oh yeah, I didn't get that impression that you did from the first time. There's, there's a, there's a fairly obvious problem with that form of comparison. Uh, because you asked like what, what was different now and like for one, you're not in elementary school. Certainly. Like I'm aware that we're talking about a punch mom's experience with it,

but like you, we can't know how she would have reacted if she had played it in elementary school, right? Like the span of a similar type of plot detail or event on your, your own feeling. Decades apart. Like, I don't know. Also, nine 11 happened. Yeah.

Yeah. Like it, it, like the, like it actually happened. Yeah. So like, I don't think I could ever react to a fictional nine 11 the same way I did as before. Okay. Um, I mean, I will say that like in discussing the difference between the two with punch mom, seeing this for the first time, um, she did, I seem to like

she did understand the aspect where it was like, Oh yeah, what you're describing sounds way more just like impactful and like, holy fuck, you know, like it would hit, she, like the original description of that like would hit harder or would have hit harder. Um, I mean, I guess it's, it's almost as if we were to, like you, there's certain things where you're like nostalgia is nostalgia, the age you were at the time experiencing this for the first time is going to lend a certain lens to it. Um, but the change does bring something different to it.

Uh, I, I still think like the, the wildest is the one you brought up first, which is a Kai Shee, like running out to be like, no, and like you never hear from him ever again. Yeah, fucking game. That's just for anyone who knows what's going on is like, Oh my God. Um, but could you, could you imagine, and this might not be. Hmm. Could you imagine like, um, we're doing a Luca blight scene, except we are now

making it so that it in the end, everyone is just kind of embarrassed and feels bad about the situation. But what do you mean? Like with, with people, like Luca blight, but like people make it out. Okay. They survive. Oh, I thought, I thought when you said embarrassing, I thought you meant like it's Luca blight, but like the characters are standing around going like,

Luca, you're cringe, like this is, this is, this is, this is cringe, bro. No, just like, you know, just like, um, I mean, the, the, the, the, the impact of like, um, of just a horrible, brutal fucking murderous moment. Um, yeah. And the motivations you that, and like, and then the, the effect that has on the world and then how you feel about the villains afterwards, um, sets up, I guess like, you know, your attitude for, at least to me, like it sets up like your attitude towards themes that are going to come about in the, the remit, the

remainder of the game. Um, and, um, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, uh, uh, if it, if it, uh, if, if what I'm trying to say doesn't make a ton of sense, then whatever, that's just, no, it makes sense. It's just like, I feel like we need to reserve, um, judgment until we see the second one because like, okay. Here's a really good example.

You remember finding Lucrezia in the cave in the original. She's just herself in a cave and she's like, yeah, that's that for off shit. The whole Joe, that was my, that's my bad. Right. And she's just kind of hanging out. What if she's like, just all fucked up and like, kill me or whatever, like just, you know, they can do anything. And that, that would be primarily just presentation.

That being said, uh, for as, even if it does a bunch of stupid shit wrong, uh, it does just enough right in that, God, it's so stupid. It is, it is literally less than one second, maybe two seconds of the entirety of Final Fantasy seven remake. And it's the moment that I think of every time I think about why I love it. And it's fucking Tifa and Aerith and red looking at a TV monitor to try and find out where Barrett and cloud are in the Shinra building. And they see a fucking surveillance camera of cloud and Barrett trying to kick

open the largest door in the universe. Do you remember that? As they don't know what the fuck to like, like it is a 50 foot thick door, this giant gear and they're just, they're just like kind of kicking it and like lazily hitting it with their sword. And yeah, I'm like, God damn it. It's just converting moments like that to reality and just like, yeah, like, is this literally what the men are doing?

Like, as soon as the girls leave the party, the boys are just fucking evaporation man. Open. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, that was good. But yeah, no, that's what always stood out to me is like all those little moments of that you could never really accurately give us before.

But I, but like so, but just to, and like last little thing, I suppose, because, you know, whatever I've explained to some degree, but when you mentioned like Hojo and the Hojo-ness increases because we get to get zoom in on it a little bit, the end result of that is you go Hojo, you motherfucker, boy, do I still hate you. You're a piece of shit. Right. And I, you just also, and you, and like, hopefully wherever this goes, those feelings towards these characters don't change as a result of the changes.

Um, I had a thought and it's the thought about a Hojo scene that we're assuredly going to see in the next game. And it's the most like incongruous moment probably in like the resort game. The resort is the resort where he's hanging out with the girls. And like, I just had this moment of like, you can do a type of scene with that, with him on the beach that you just couldn't do back on the PlayStation one. Like it'd be functionally impossible. And it's so easy.

You just do the same exact scene, but at one point he puts his hand on one of their arms and the facial capture has the girl go like, oh, before snapping back to like smiling and happy. Right. Right. And like, all of a sudden that whole scene. Keep the whole thing together. Something completely different, but plays out exactly the same.

It's like, oh, they don't want to be there, but they're either being forced to or paid to be there. I know, and I've had discussions with people that have been like, yeah, Sephiroth's always been a fucking weirdo, but like the new version of him that just like wants to sniff Cloud's hair. I don't know about that. Yeah, the new version. And I'm like, no, people talking about like, no, no, no.

Like that's the type of thing where I'm taking what was there before and absolutely like see like, I'm just like, no, I think that builds. I think that builds on the same weirdness of this dude that we that's been there. And it's like you said, it's it's rendering in a higher definition, something that was just limited by the the console at the time. You know, like, like Sephiroth has been like a freak for decades. And in the original, his like, let me give me a kiss.

Cloud was not as as like, it wasn't as strong, but it's one of those things. In the closet, fucking courtroom. It's it's it's like his portrayal and his attitude over decades influences this. It's like every crossover that has ever been has always been like, hey, Cloud, it's me, Cloud. I'm alive again, Cloud. Hey, buddy. And like to ignore that is ridiculous.

Yeah, yeah, but also it even fits his character perfectly. I'm the perfect being. I'm a God. I'm excellent. And you're just a weird little reject and you beat me. You you beat me in my own game. You beat me twice in Dissidia. You beat me multiple times in Kingdom Hearts.

Like you keep beating me. I love you. Like, yeah, I just I hope I hope we get more of that like, you know, HD rendering of of feelings you've already had towards these people and less of like context changes and situation. Oh, and children, you know. Yeah, of course, AC. Yeah, yeah, just straight up 100 percent.

I'll never be a memory because I'm too busy being a wet dream. I would I would want it to like I'll never see it. But I want it to go like super pathetic. Just like you stand in there with the girls and he's like, no. Like, come on, come on. Just a little. Just all the music stops, all the fire simmers for a minute, and you just get an awkward zoom in on the lips as he persists.

I'm like, just a little you know, you come on. Come on, I want it. I won't even I won't even summon meteor this time. Come on. Yeah, yeah. So that's it. That's it. This direction, you know, let's go that way with it. Anyways, whatever.

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some other stuff. We touched on the acquisition, the Sony Buying Bungie. We already talked about Bloodborne, the Demake, PSX available now. So why don't we talk about some of the other news in relation to Sony and FromSoft. A new interview with Mr. Miyazaki where he talks about a couple of things going on.

And at first I was like, is there much to discuss here? And then it's like, yeah, there's at least one. Yeah, yeah. So I was like, okay, so a couple of a couple clip of bulls. And it's like, there's some fun stuff. Like one, he really liked playing It Takes Two with his friends. He enjoyed that.

That was fun. So yay. Nice to see that, you know, two good games are two good creators are like bigging each other up. That's nice. They're friends. Also, in terms of like, would he work with another creator or collaborate again in the way that he did with Georgia R

Martin? And he says yes, but he would definitely want to do it with someone outside of gaming because the interview question kind of is more direct. Like, is there someone that you can name that you absolutely want to work with? And he's like, I'd be hard to pick an individual, but if someone was really killing it as in music or in, you know,

another genre entirely where they can bring in that thing that we don't do, then they'd love to work with them. So sure. The third noteworthy thing was for the, you know, entieth time, his take on the difficulty of their games. And yeah, nothing super new to add except for just the quote that is, we don't want players to feel like the game is unfairly punishing, but rather that there's a chance to win

a difficult encounter and make progress. We understand souls like games are regularly associated with impossible levels of difficulty and high barriers to entry, but we try to design the games to make the cycle of repeatedly trying to overcome these challenges enjoyable in itself. So that's essentially the core idea is like, you know, for anyone who wants to talk about changing the design

by including this, putting that in, is it time for from soft to all that it's like the design they're going for is one where the repetitive process is enjoyable and they're hoping that'll work out for most audiences. It's enjoyable to a certain amount of people. Some people are just pissed that they'd have to redo anything. And to those folks, then there's a lot of things that are going to make them pissed.

Honestly, the difficulty thing, I'm very interested in seeing how Elden Ring works out because I feel like it's going to be the easiest by far solely because of the ability to have so much more non mandatory parts of the game to go and get beefy on. Okay. I thought you were going to say because you can do a focus attack crumple on everything.

No, okay. I mean, because like if you played the network test or some people do the network test, the mandatory area in the network test was the equivalent of like three bonfires and maybe like 90 minutes of stuff. Ending with a boss, whereas there was like 12 hours worth of content in that. And the difference between going straight there

and going everywhere else was night and day. So how fucking insane will the struggle be though if you mainline it towards multi limb men? Probably fucked. It's probably going to be fucked. Hyper insane, super fucked. I almost say. Yeah.

So the wall that that would present would absolutely be if there's not an in game message with the lady telling you, hey, maybe you should go explore other areas for a while and then come back. I would, you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see something like along those lines, you know, because if it's only three or four to the main line, you still need a certain amount of fucking XP behind your ass

before you get through that wall. You know, about the, what you were talking earlier about Miyazaki wanting to maybe work with somebody else that's not in gaming. Have you seen, I forget where it was, it might have been some convention, but it's Brandon Sanderson and a colleague talking about George R. Martin being asked to do the writing for Elden Ring.

No, Brandon Sanderson is a prolific fantasy writer and he's also the gentleman who finished the wheel of time. So he's up there. Like if not for the Game of Thrones TV show, he'd probably be like right up there with George, right? And his colleague or friend, I don't know who it is, but starts talking about how like they asked George and it's weird because they're all writers, I guess,

because they just refer to him as George, nothing else to do the stuff for Elden Ring when he's like, he doesn't even know what a video game is. Meanwhile, Brandon over here has played all of their games and lists them as his favorite games of all time and constantly talks about the writing in those games. And like Sanderson is very polite and he's in no way dismissive. And I think his answer is something along the lines of like,

well, they asked who they asked and you know, good for them and I hope they weren't. But he looks like visibly miserable. Like he looks like he's doing his best to be polite, but he clearly looks slighted and I feel bad. Because dude's like top of the fantasy writing world and then George comes along and George isn't going to finish. But like when I typed in Brandon Sanderson

to make sure I was saying his name correctly, I found like multiple finished book series. But George is hot. He's in the stormlight archive, the Mistborn box set, etc. The Wheel of Time. Oh man, like would he have been the guy that would show up to the like the brunch like pitch meeting with a giant fucking

folder that he already had written full of ideas. You know, maybe working on this for for six years. Hey, you don't gotta, you know, it's no big deal. Like there is an on ironic possibility that Sanderson will actually also finish Game of Thrones. Yeah, like I would like we have I mean, again, you want to assume George has been in talks with somebody. But anyways, what are you going to say though?

Like the name Grim right now is it that in and of itself is a hot button ticket. Like even if it results like on a purely like functional level, I'm the way they describe the relationship where he provided the setting and the mythos and the characters and then they, you know, did the legwork themselves and such is one where, you know, it's beneficial and what we're going to see is probably pretty cool because of it.

But from the outside on just a like headline money cash grab perspective, being able to say the Game of Thrones guy is involved with this new. It's like that on its own is a marketing tool like it. It's too huge to resist. One of the things I'm most excited about Elden Ring is this meta thing of like staring at its characters and its dialogue and its plot and just like attempting to figure out like is

the deal to just put his name on the box. Like like legitimately like how much George is in here. Yeah. Well, so in this interview, something that kind of touches on that is the part where they describe the that Sekiro was a bit more of a straightforward narrative and very much was and that they're bringing that straightforwardness into Elden Ring story.

But with George RR Martin's guidance, you know, so for all the ups and downs, you know, I just had this idea of the of the process where they show him a piece of art of like four babies stapled together with a golden halo and and he and George goes, who's that? And the art guy goes, it's called the unknown child and he goes, OK, but who is it? And then the guy goes, it's a mystery and George goes, no,

no, stop it. Who what? Yeah. But no, they kind of they they they they kind of mentioned that they're going for something a little more straightforward in this like kind of like with Sekiro and straightforward can come back to bite you in the ass if the straightforward isn't great.

So if the straightforwardness that is referred to is that is that we look at is George's stuff and George stuff is good, then hey, because, you know, I mean, I don't think it's too controversial to say that some of Sekiro's stuff was kind of you know, so anyway, I think I like the part where the old man got birthed out of the guy's neck. That part was cool. I like when the samurai pulled out the gun.

You know what? I couldn't believe about that as that he pops out of the neck, but he's still old. Yeah, he doesn't look young and cool. He's still an old man. I really thought it was going to be the young man version in his peak. And like the implications like now his peak was 10 minutes

ago, right before he died of tuberculosis or whatever the fuck he got. Yeah, no, so, you know, we'll see what happens and hopefully the Elden Ring version of talking to the rice kid for an hour will will be will be good. And George will do some cool shit. I'm going to make I'm going to make I'm going to make a bold not claim.

What am I prediction? Elden Rings side quest situation with its endings will be an astonishment in comparison to their earlier works. I foresee this game being a game in which around the date of February of March 1st, Twitter threads and game facts boards will start filling up with what the fuck. Why did I get that ending? What the fuck is this only to be responded with?

Did you go to the pool of the ancients in the hidden undersea Valley on the third day of the moon and talk to the patches and he'd give you the rice? Sorry, bro. You you stared at Angela's knife too long. Like like I they have like in the in the fucking network test, they already found like a weird fucking world state that may or may not be like an ending thing like it's going to be the

worst about this. Like I thought Dark Souls 3 was the limit which was don't stab this statue to miss out on your secret ending nonsense and then Sekiro happened which was teleport between these locations six times to feed this child enough rice. Do the fucking rice mission idiot shut the fuck up and feed the rice. Like try doing even something half as complicated with that on

a landmass the size of Skyrim like there's also upload your save and get it and back it up on a USB and all you can't do that anymore. Okay, well, upload your save and then turn off save uploads and then make sure you pull it down when you've gotten what you want so that you like write your shit in a game that's going to be like like 180 to 100 hours and all that shit. I genuinely foresee because of the auto save a situation in

which the vast majority of people are going to do something they can't take back that seems like the most natural thing in the world. Like, oh, did you sit down at that that bonfire? Too bad or oh, did you kill that boss without using a fire attack? Oh, oh, locked yourself out of three of the seven endings. But one to three will still be a choice.

Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Like I foresee. Oh, I don't see this part that this frustrating ending choice part of the from soft game is one that they feel it feels like they're committed to that they enjoy that process and you can't take it away from them.

They they they every game they do it. They want it to be that people who discover it on their own feel like it's a miracle and people just drive down harder into looking at online and they make it harder every time. And no matter how much you might not want it, they don't care if they enjoy it and to hammer that point home. Let's get to the next part of the interview where Miyazaki says when making the game, I rediscovered my love for making

poison swamps. I know how people feel about them, but you know, I suddenly realize I'm in the middle of making one and I just can't help myself. It just happens. You mother fucker, you son of a bitch to just say it so non salantly so casually. There is absolutely going to be a God per biome God like per

per continent per, you know, whatever you want to call it. This one like kills your health. This one breaks your equipment. This one's just toxic blood arts. He can't stop. I can't think of like a maligned zone type that a developer has so actively fought to include in every game and remixed every time.

Man, like literally I'm saying like you're going to get your variety. You're going to get your strip your armor off and run naked through the corrosive swamp. Damage. But if you put anything on your fucked, you know, I like the one part that's like the nightmare here is like since we have a mount now, the poison swamp has the luxury of being

allowed to be functionally massive. Hmm. So he literally even said the name. He's right. He's like he's like there's something called scarlet riot and it's a little bit of something that is separate from poison or toxicity. But I hope you look forward to it.

Like he's like in terms of Elden Ring, there's something horrible that exists and persists in the world. It's called it's called scarlet riot and it's it's worse than toxic. So look forward. He says he's fucking enjoying. He's enjoying this process. Man.

So yeah, um, put up a dump points into adaptability or what? What are we doing? No, I don't just I don't think that's that even exists. Well, you know, the stupid resistance stat. Scarlet rot. Excuse me. Not riot scarlet rot.

Yeah, it's it's it's kind of it's it's it's it's wild and belligerent. But it's like it explains so much of what we've seen in every other game up until now where they're like someone's pulling on his arm trying to get and he's he's moving the mouse and they're literally trying to force his hand back and he's like, No, you can't. No, I'm going to I'm making it and they're like like

making the chair away and he and he's still squatting keeping it going. No matter what happens of changes that have been made to these games to make them a little bit more accessible or a little less ridiculous or like there's the the quote about from Miyazaki right after Dark Souls one came out where you go. We're talking about the archers on on and remember that

where he goes. Yeah. Okay. Maybe we over did it. Right. Just like everyone's telling him not to do it. And so he's just Miyazaki's in the bathroom staring at himself in the mirror going to that guy to that guy.

Fight. Keep the swaps in the game. They'll never take it from you. So go on. So right. They told they may like, OK, maybe went too far with the Anor Londo archers right this that it's like you have to remember like regardless of those feelings afterwards this

is still the same person who went what if these enemies breathed on you and knocked your health down 25% unless you found an NPC to cure it. This is the same guy who like was running play tests on 14 FPS Blight town and going. Yeah. Yeah. This is good.

Yeah. Yeah. This is the same. This is the same person. That five years after six years after apologizing for the Dark Souls one archery shenanigans when they make a sequel to that area where you're climbing up the same part of the same parapet in Anor Londo they added like seven or eight

of the same archers to shoot at you the whole time. Like, you know, like let's get creative. What kind of has there been a bleed swamp? No. How do we create a bleed swamp? How do we has been a bleed swamp? Oh, like the spikes on the ground kind of it. No, the bleed swamp is nightmare of menses.

It's just the swamp is of the vision cone from the tower. Right. Because bleeds as a status is build build build up pop pop. Yeah. And so the nightmare of menses when you're you're going through that area it's it's a horizontal swamp instead of a vertical one in which you're instead of standing on land you're hiding behind barriers.

So yes, they've absolutely yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just reviewing levels and finding new places to swampify never stop swamping. Somebody pointed out they've also done a curse swamp Irithyll Dungeon in Dark Souls 3 has enemies that look at you

and your health just the bar drains instead of your health. Yeah. Yeah, that counts. All of that counts. Just like ailment zones. The world is a fuck mode. If you want to get real creative you could say that Shrine of Amana is a projectile swamp.

It can be considered. It can be considered. And just going this effect is just getting hit by projectiles and like going back to Demon's Souls remake and one of the new items just being a ring that lets you walk in the in the back and not be slowed down. And it's like, guys, we made this without his permission. If you shut the fuck up, we'll ship the game with it.

Yeah. You know, we got it out behind his back. Anyways, yeah, that's that's that's his thing. And speaking of it takes two and that being a game he enjoys, we've gotten word today that it takes two will be adapted for film and television. Hazelight is teaming up with DJ to entertainment. And then I was like, hold on a second, who are these people?

And then you go look at the website for DJ to entertainment and it shows a number of properties. Sonic the Hedgehog apparently one of their projects that they they got off the ground and then it shows you all the other live action video game deals that they're currently working on starting from Hawken 2012, Skulls of the Shogun 2015, Sonic the Hedgehog, Rival Peak, Oz, Echo, Ruiner, Sleeping Dogs, Little Nightmares, my friend Pedro, Disco Elysium.

Good, good luck with that shit. Disco Elysium live action project adaptation in the works. Tomb Raider, Life is Strange, Teddy Ruxpin. So OK, so all those Ruiner. Yeah, you can do Ruiner. I mean, no problem. But the point is, is that it appears to be that the company's whole gig is reaching out to IP and scooping up options for live

action exactly so they can sell it to everybody else who will actually make the movie. That's the whole deal from from what I can see here. It's see what people do with the NFTs and their apes now is what people used to do with movie rights. You know, like you want your worms NFT motherfucker. So yeah, OK, like just the the weekly updates are what they are and they're tiring to go over.

So yes, the Troy back down and yes, the worms and with the worms one you get to see as the team 17 employees are like, yo, we don't know what the fuck this is about. This came from the highest, highest levels and no one here knew about it slash the ones who did and tried to tell them not to do what they did it anyway. So the team 17 one bear special mention because it feels like to me anyway, a turning point on this whole thing this morning.

I saw a tweet that was quote retweeting the backlash to the worms NFT announcement, describing that this is the first time that the backlash news had reached them before the announcement because like the backlash is so strong and so instantaneous that it's getting out there before you even hear about the project. And that's how I found out about it about somebody talking about how fast the backlash to the stupid announcement got to

them to the point where I didn't fully understand whether or not this was an old thing or a new thing and upon looking it up like like let's say I was a normal person and didn't already like know all this crap like would be so primed to be pissed off at this stupid crap already. And then like the second thing I found out was that like half the people who work on worms is like the fuck is this bullshit. I didn't sign off on this and then wow and then one dude was

like this is why worms is better than every game on Xbox. Yeah, the last thing I was going to just say with the fucking acquisitions and options with the movie shit was that disco adapting itself to not a book is just probably a bad idea. The only adaptation I want is for disco leaves him to be turned into a book and that would be it. If you must, you know, it's already a book. Well, exactly.

So just print that. So I have a problem with that. Well, you have I'm going to assume that you at some point and I assume many people listening to this have thought this at some point have held a triple Lord of the Rings book in their hand like the fellowship, the two towers and return of the king in their hand. That thing's a fucking square.

Right? Like it's barely a rectangle. It's a fucking motherfucker. It's many pages. That is approximately 576,000 words. Yeah. Turning disco Elysium, which is a million plus in a book seems tough. Well, that's why what I'm asking is for them to take the existing

thing, which it is a book. It's it's the fucking it is just and I'm just printed. And yeah, but give me an English version of that. Just script. Just print the script. Just print it and put a fucking cover on it. That's it. And that's what I'm secretly just asking for a script print.

Yeah. Can I get eight books? How about that? What about eight books? I bet if you book a fight like the video game story of disco Elysium, it would be like unreadable because it would be like a tangent that lasts like eight eleven pages unless you committed to a choose your own adventure format.

I don't know. Like just think about like think about hanging out with the drunks. Like don't call Abigail and like and those guys like how many pages that would take up and how much of like how not connected to anything it is. I mean, honestly, like if they like if it was a choose your own adventure madness shifting back and forth through the

through different pages to get to sections that wouldn't be off brand. You know, now imagine. Okay. Hold that. Imagine it's choose your own adventure and they put the voices and the people that say put the voices in the margins which is a really good idea.

Okay. And then you make an audio book version of it. Right. And so in the audio book, you're still choosing your own adventure and then you can make pictures to go along with the scenes. Uh-huh. And you can you can play your audio book with a controller.

Oh, or a mouse even. Yeah. Dude, I don't know. Disco Elysium seems to in its current state seems to revel in its video game interactivity. Oh, yes. I would not want it any other way. Here's here's well, here's what you here's what will be the

proof positive. Right. Um, a terrible sacred air is becoming a game. Right. So the existing book will be turned into a game in short order. That way you will see how this translation how this adaptation process works. And then you could do the same thing going in reverse.

If you wanted to work like that. You could at least compare. Because they're probably because they're going back to the same world and they're going to, you know, they're going to go back to the, the, the, the prequel and that's going to become the next project. So by the way, did you check out the DLC they put out? Uh, what dropped for disco?

They put out a DLC called Jim Evue, which cleaned up a few things and added some rare interactions that were not prior, not previously possible in the game. And they even described them as like, these are difficult to get interactions for people that have already like seen everything. And the, the showpiece interaction is you can get Kim to wear the jacket.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, which is like, I can't even imagine how to actually get Kim to wear. Okay. Okay. Nothing about your, yeah, about cocaine skull or open in the

door. That's, that's all I saw. All right. Fun. That's like, just one little, one little bonus thing for the people that have, you know, gotten everything they could get out of it. I'm so excited for a completely different cast of characters

somewhere else in the world, telling their own story. Um, yeah, I'm excited for anything that dev puts out. Is that their first game? Well, I mean, technically, if you don't want to count, um, Fortress Occident, which you shouldn't because it didn't come out then. Yeah, that's, that's, that's all they've done. Hey, shout out to God. What is it?

He's like a Croatian or Polish fucking businessman. The, the fucking capitalist, you know, the high net worth individual, um, in the game. Um, um, yeah, the fucking light bending, the space time. Yeah. Light bending hyper ultra, ultra millionaire. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you know who that is? No. That's their primary financial backer. Oh really? That's actually a dude. Yeah. Wow. It's some fucking European businessman, capitalist who just

like, Hey, here's a bunch of money. Angel investor make this game. That's hilarious. I had no idea. And they're like, we're going to fucking take the piss out of you. You realize and he's like, yeah, cool. We're going to talk mad shit about you. Yeah.

Cool. Do it. I love it. It's bordering on a one man Kickstarter. That's amazing. Okay. Wow. I did not, I did not know that.

Fuck yeah, man. Disco. Um, so yeah, live action adaptation of that. I mean, it takes two is practically a kid, like a little bit short to be a feature to begin with rather. So that shouldn't be too hard, but I don't want to see what disco turns into. I don't want to see, you know, like someone like, like Harry

casted and Jared Leto as Harry, you know, and Kim and I just, I don't, I don't want to, I really cowboy bebop stars. No, as, as Kim. Anyways, um, thanks DJ to entertainment. Other TV stuff going on. David Hader is show running American McGee's Alice. Okay. That seems like an obvious fit.

Good. Um, I have to admit that after the X men stuff, I didn't really, I wasn't aware of anything more recently that he was up to in terms of scripts. Um, yeah, me either. Uh, but apparently he did something for Netflix called warrior none. No idea what that is.

Um, that sounds quality. Well, X men, X men too. Watchman, scorpion king, warrior none. Yeah, David Hader. Hey, hey, hey, hey, David Hader is cool. He's got a cool voice. Hey man, don't be hating. No, never.

Never. He's the best. Yeah. American McGee's Alice. Never finished that game, but I did, uh, did play it a bunch back. Hey, do you know what I remember about that game? Hmm?

Yo, check out Alice's hair. Yeah. It was the first game that had dedicated hair technology. Yeah. Um, wasn't there, am I correct? Like, wasn't there like a Todd McFarlane toyline too that they made for it? Yeah, maybe something like that.

Anyway, maybe, um, but that's not all the TV news. Oh, give me some more. Who's ready for the halo? Hey, get in your 2001 Chevy Tahoe and drive on down to the halo so you can meet your fleshy Cortana. Cortana. I want to point out that this is the, the most craziest near miss of anything I have ever seen.

This is as close as anything has ever gotten to a bullseye and simultaneously missed the point by a mile. Cortana in the live action halo. That is doing a bunch of things that is great. It is Cortana for real. It is the actress who plays Cortana who Cortana is modeled after. So she looks like Cortana.

So wow. Thumbs up on that obvious perfect choices. But why ain't she blue though? It's like the easiest thing in the fucking world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, also in similar energy, um, uh, uh, Ron Perlman literally

just doing, uh, uh, what is it, uh, uh, Admiral, Admiral Hood. Yeah. Yeah. Like perfect. You got the guy. He's doing the thing. Why not? Um, he brought Perlman talking about Hellboy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm fucking a million years old, but we owe the fans. So somebody's like, Hey, are you excited to be Hellboy again? He's snow. I'm old, but I owe it to you guys. But I'm like in my seventies, dudes.

Yeah. Yeah. But no, like basically yo, Ron, put this fucking Admiral outfit on and stand around here and grumble for a while. I was like, yeah, I can do that. So sure. War, war never changed. No, Ron.

No. Um, I, I, I imagine based on the trailer that the, the shoot banging is going to shoot bang. You know, I bet it, it looks like it's going to, it's going to shoot and then it will bang. And then there will be cool reveals for all the weapons that you love. And then there's going to be like pauses for audience claps, you know, when, when I, when certain, when certain things show up.

But, um, if you can just enjoy the suit, the soldier shoot banging and ignore the, the Chevy Tahoe, um, I might be fine. It might be fine. I can't wait for the scene where master chief and Cortana are like, and then it shows just an outside shot of like the armor. Vibrating flashing around his dick area. And they're going to, they're going to canonize the cert, the suit jerking them off. Pat, you, you, you've been around this fucking industry for a minute.

So you should know better. I've been around. You should know better. You should know that there's going to be a scene where someone's going to go, Hey master chief, I heard those suits. Uh, is it true what they say? And he's going to be like, no. And then he's going to be like, yeah, okay.

All right. Just asking. And then they're going to be like, aha, we acknowledged that page. And now we got the reference in there. You know, and then later on in like one of the episodes, he can be like, Hey master chief, ah, and he does a little jerk off motion. Hey, hey, master in something else over there. And then so normally, normally I wouldn't think that like this joke would even be

conceivable. It's the kind of joke I would make myself, but and we'd all go, ha, ha, ha. It's like, yeah, that never happened right up until I saw that piece, that, that clip of peacemaker, somebody sent me yesterday with John Cena, just like waxing poetic about how Superman has a shit fetish and everyone around him is like, you're, that's bullshit. He's like, yeah, he loves. And like, I'm like, did I write this?

Did this, did someone steal this out of my fucking brain? You know, you know, maybe there's maybe there's a middle ground victory here where master chief goes, nah, my suit doesn't do that. But that other Spartans does. And then one of those other Spartans whose faces we saw in the trailer is just like, yeah, you know what, you know what I want? You know what I fucking want? It's my auto blow is always on.

I want like in the final episode or like some shit where they're talking about, wow, man, you really did it, master chief. And they're like looking at his number, John 117 and some like jerk off just go, look at this motherfucker. It's like a John Halo. That's what I want. I want the phrase John Halo. They might.

Yeah, I want it. Yeah. And then master chief goes, huh? And then he pulls out his phone and starts texting sans. I would imagine he undertale. No. Well, okay. But before he's text sans, he has to swipe away from his daily Bible verse app.

I'm glad I was drinking from a can. That's a legit spit take. Oh boy. Don't worry about it. Halo is going to be fine. Like all of of of of John Halo's dialogue is like sneaky like Bible. Totally. Absolutely.

You know, it's like, wow, master chief. I heard you're strong. But did you really carry me all the way? That's why there's only one set of footprints in the sand kid. Oh, man. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I can't wait.

I'm down. I'm just I'm down. I'm down. I'm like, it'd be easier to get this award hog through a needle that through the eye of the guy of a needle that have your dipshit CEO treat you with respect. It's like a CEO like that to get this camera through the eye. Yeah. Yeah.

It's good. It's good. Mm hmm. Yeah. I feel like what the hell is wild? What the hell is the brass doing? Hey, forgive them. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

You know, I like Halo is so wild to me because like I played through multiple games before somebody said, oh yeah, like Jesus and I went what? Mm hmm. And then I like it all just hit me like a brick simultaneously because it's so on the nose. I didn't even realize like like the Christian shit and Halo is so wild. I thought it was just stupid sci-fi shit. The ship is crash landed.

This is an unknown territory on the map, but I heard they call it the valley of the shadow of death. Suit up boys. All day. All day. Mm hmm. I can't wait to watch this shit and be like, uh, no. Right?

Like just if this shit is so wild. I can't wait to watch this shit and be like, uh, no. I can't wait to watch this shit and be like, uh, no. Right? Like just if the shoot bangs does the banging. Yeah. If at any point you get the shield grenade crouch to stop some ordinance, you know, if the hammer comes out and, you know, the covenants in there doing their thing.

So that way you already have that confirmed. Plus you're going to have eight versions of to have as their own personal Wilhelm scream in the show. There's a bunch of stupid Halo shit that I'd love to see. I would love. I would love to see like some action scene in which like two guys run to get in a warthog, make it about three feet and instantly flip it. Mm hmm.

Just like like off the ground with their own. Yeah. And all you got to do to make that all you have to do to make that like not like a stupid joke is just have like some gruff captain go God damn it. These fucking recruit, you know, just yeah. Yeah. Just remark on how strong tough they are. And then you can have a bit where John Halo comes and flips it for them, right?

He goes, Oh, here you go. Just show how strong John Halo is. Yep. I think probably the smartest thing announced alongside this, this trailer and stuff is by the way, unique TV universe, absolutely no bearing on any other canon anywhere. Okay. Good smart. You know how you know what I'm excited for.

Mm hmm. Keith David. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm really excited for. Mm hmm. Keith David in makeup. That was I was hoping that I was hoping you were about to say just CG for the whole for

the covenant. Keith David in fucking an outfit with the rubber mask on doing it. Hell yeah. Yeah. And it's and it's just Keith David. Absolutely. I see some people going like prosthetic like no, no, no, like, like makeup. Like the only way I'm doing this gig is if you get me in makeup.

I'm not doing it as no CG voice. That is a terrible Keith David. Well, thank you. Like I'm not going to tell you that I'm going to do any better, but that is legitimately awful. Awesome. Just completely, completely have him standing around the rest of the covenant with the dumb armor on and the legs and arms that make no sense, but it's just his face with paint

on it. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. And then and then he just has a little line on his chin. Instead of the fucking instead of the split face line. All right. Hello.

Let's see what you got like ever since actually before this, but like you remember seeing we saw death proof and planet terror. Was that the grind house in theaters? Yeah. We saw grind house and theater together and prior to that, I had always fantasized about the movie that just tells the audience to go fuck itself and changes it itself into a different movie. It doesn't give a shit.

Yes. And planet terror is real close to that. Like the missing real bit is real close to that. But I'm just thinking in my fantasy land of like a really accurate, super serious halo thing that every episode gets one more thing just completely wrong and ends with like Keith David as the arbiter and it's it's Keith David in like sweat pants and route is rowdy rowdy Piper alive. I assume not.

Let's say he is and he's and he's just there and he doesn't have any lines. He's just there sitting in the back with the sunglasses on. Oh, he's dead. Okay. Have a skeleton in the back with the sunglasses on Chevy Tahoe man. Why do you keep saying Chevy Tahoe because I feel like I'm missing something. Okay. Here.

Here. Here. Real simple. Wait, is the warthog a fucking Chevy Tahoe? There's a link I'm going to send to you and you may click on it. It's real simple. All right. I'm going to look at it.

I'm going to look at it soon as you send it. There it is. Wait. Okay. What? Why is there a 2001 Chevy Tahoe? Oh my God. It's just a Chevy Tahoe.

Why? There's a fucking car in the background of a shot on a planet 500 years in the future. It's just a regular ass car. There's a car. It's a car. It's just right there. John Halo is fucking up a covenant alien and then there's a car. Was that a brute?

Yeah, this is a car. Wow. That's fucking. Oh, I got high hopes for this shit. Yeah. Nah, dude. This is where we're at. This is where we're at.

Set expectations accordingly. Oh, yeah. And that is not a Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones. That is placed in frame clearly. It's highly, yes, good. With what looks to be like a body sliced in half on the ground right next to it lit. So Chevy Tahoe, it's more durable than an alien invasion or some shit. It can survive the, all right, yeah.

The flood and the final war between mendicant bias and the other AI, they're just grabbing a whole bunch of licensed cars and fleeing them at each other. Oh, that's good. I like that. The giant fucking, the giant Ford war and the logos are always fucking framed perfectly on screen. All right. Let's take some letters, please.

Hey, if you want to send a letter in to this email, so this, this fuck, hey, if you want to ask us anything or tell us anything cool, you can send that to Castle Super Beast Mail at gmail.com. That's Castle Super Beast Mail at gmail.com. All right. So Jad writes in to correct some Iceland anecdotes. Good day, Mr. Super and Castle Beast. I hope this follows you well, writing to you as a long time listener and as a native citizen

of Iceland, I wanted to say, late, congratulations on the wedding. Really glad you enjoyed vacationing over here, spending your hard earned money. Now, I want to address what Pat talked about, specifically the incest and all that jazz. Yeah, I knew it was going to be about that. Yeah, so Pat's playing wrong in this supposed incest app. What he's referring to is an old project that some university students did using our extensive open ancestral database. You can accurately track every single ancestors of yours to around 1700.

There's no need to prevent incest here because it's not an issue. In fact, multiple genetic, genetic studies have been done and they showed that Iceland is on average just as diverse as most of Europe genetically. And that Southern England is much more inbred than Iceland. Damn, he's throwing shade in the middle of the explanation. Yeah, but I mean, he's throwing shade at Southern England, which no one's going to fight. Fair enough. On the way we name ourselves, Pat's sort of right, last names do not exist in Icelandic

culture. They do abroad. What we have are patronims, which are where you take your father's name and add son or daughter afterwards. It's not an issue with the less related family because generally you already know your extended family mostly. No need for the app and it isn't functional anymore. Nope.

There you go. So they made sure that they don't know because incest is not a problem. Well, if on average, the if on average, dude, I just got the fucking dirtiest look in the world from Peach just looking because she can't hear you. Don't worry about it, honey. It's all it's about the it's about the Swedes. Don't worry about it. Look, if on average, the genetic diversity is just like everywhere else, then they're

fine. I see no reason why we can't follow jazz lead over here and just use it as an opportunity to throw further shade at Southern England for their higher rate of incest. So yeah, good, good, good deflection, Jed. Why do you think the British are so incestuous? Well, the royal tea and the royal blood and the queen, you know, they learned it from their social betters. I mean, when you got a king that gets married like eight times and chops off like five of

their heads or whatever the fuck, at some point, you assume that he kind of just anyway, you know, I don't know. I don't know. Shit's weird back then. But I'm not the expert on the topic. I'll tell you that much. Fear the old bloods. Good, good rule of thumb.

Suck it, England. You guys, the Swedes says you guys are big incest. What are you going to do about it? Kiss each other? You're going to say they're not going to write in to defend it. They're too busy making out. Oh, that son of a bitch will fucking get him as soon as we're done over here. Yeah, I know he's from Iceland.

I'm calling him a sweet for funsies. All right, we got whenever I talk to Eli, I constantly get a state wrong drives him crazy. Got one over here coming in from biz who says dear or been large. The guy who found the Dark Souls RCE tried and failed to notify the the devs and that reminded me of a similar individual who was named Delphi with Team Fortress 2. He constantly finds exploits. Delphi. Yep.

That's so on the nose. I can't believe it. I don't get it. The Oracle. The Oracle at Delphi. The Greek Oracle. Yes. Okay.

Right. Okay. All right. Yeah. Close enough. Close enough. So the in Team Fortress 2, they found exploits constantly and new bugs with every update, how to get behind walls, how to get into the enemy spawn, et cetera, et cetera.

And every time he uploads the videos to YouTube, he explains how it's done. A lot of the TF2 community hated him because he claimed he was ruining the game and that he should bug report to let Val fix it privately instead of showing lots of people how to grief. So he took them up on this and he began reporting all of his findings in private, going completely silent on YouTube for over a year, and Valve didn't fix a single thing he reported. Of course not. It turns out the only thing that motivated them was the entire player base screaming at Valve after a huge chunk got a hold of the game breaking bugs at once, and it always

got them to fix it over the weekend. 100%. It's one of those things like, I mean, well, you have much more direct experience with this. But I'm going to use an example that I have before you use your better example. I'm going to take Destiny. There are bugs that when I stopped playing Destiny that had been in the game its entire lifetime, and people knew about them and were annoyed by them and were like, I fucking

can't believe they haven't fixed this fucking thing. Ugh. Right? However, exploits like the legendary loot cave, I don't know if you remember that, would get fixed within like a day, right? And the number one determining factor was always going to be, can it affect other players, yes or no, how many people know about it, and how many people are using it right now? If something blows up real big, even if it's kind of harmless, it's probably going to go.

Even the famous warframe example of like, what was it called, skiing or whatever the fuck that led to bullet jumping, right? The reason that became bullet jumping was because it was so common that everybody was doing it, regardless of whether or not it was a plus or a minus. Yeah, it's obvious it doesn't take too much elaboration here that the pressure of the community being upset is what will catch everyone's attention and make a giant email thread go around to all the right people so that eventually someone on a QA team somewhere goes and reports whatever the big issue is.

If it's, there have been times when I remember certain projects would ask a QA team to literally jump online, go into communities and see what issues they're talking about, and come back and report those bugs, right? It's been a rare thing, but there's been a couple of times where there's been some project where they're like, yeah, literally go find stuff that the internet is talking about and so on. The pipeline for one person privately reporting one issue to a generic company email not in touch with anybody, and they're going to get that email, probably read it weeks, if not

months later, and then when they do, it's a low priority email that goes from the marketing team person that's reading it over to a social team, and that social team is going to be like, maybe you talked ahead of QA about this, but it'll be low priority, and 15 people in the way, and it's never an important thing because there's always something else going. Why would that dude's message even reach someone on the QA team that would really earnestly care about that issue, finding it and reporting it? Why would it even reach him at that point, right? No, it's when everything's on fire that a larger producer steps in, someone with bigger

decision making power in the hierarchy will make a huge thread with all above people linked in going, get to the bottom of this, CC me when it's fixed. It's a different energy entirely. You were in the QA industry for a time, and I'd like to ask you about a scenario that I can foresee in which somebody in QA, or maybe multiple people in QA, file their reports, do their job, fix it all nice, and there's a time before the game comes out, and you go, not you, the royal you, right? Someone goes, man, people are going to find this fucking bug.

You probably should fix it. People are going to find it and just fucking clown all over your shit. And somebody says, nah, it's fine. And then QA goes, nah, you should really fix it. They're going to find it. Well, here's the conversation. It's actually quite straightforward. Hey, found a bug.

It's pretty bad. It's 100% reproducible and a decent likelihood of people running into it. The user path is not like a bizarre situation. The user path is plausible. It's a B. It's coming in pretty frequently. Okay, cool. Will this fail compliance? Nope.

No. Will this slow down submission for any reason? Nope. Nah. Then why are you talking to me? WNF. You know, it's interesting because I remember there was one, what was it, was it Anthem? I forget who it was, but like, I spoke to somebody who worked QA.

It was on either Anthem or Faw 76. And like QA was like explicitly told to focus on reporting bugs that would cause memes making fun of me. Like, like the fucking, the order from on high came down and says, I don't want to see memes making fun of the game being buggy anymore. Oh yeah. Our save file gets corrupted. Fuck that.

You can make that old lady- That was Bioware? You can make that old lady behave like a horse. That is a higher priority bug than your save corruption. Oh, that's amazing. Hold on. It was Anthem. There's a quote from one of the devs of quote, we have made the unmemable game. Now here's the thing, right, is a lot of programmers will sit there and be the first

to tell you that it's like, okay, so here's the issue. You've got a database. You've got a couple thousand bugs in that database. Look at you, strong guy. It's not so much my strength, so much as her inability to open the pickles. Well, okay. Man not strong, girl weak. Just banging on the door with Cloud and Barrett.

We'll get in there. So a lot of devs will be able to tell you, like, you're looking at a database. It has a couple thousand issues in it. And you have to sit down and go, look, man, that's always the thing that most people don't realize because I've never gotten a look at a database myself, but you describe it every time as there are always, always thousands of issues. Depends on the size of the game. There are games that are tiny and it comes down to a matter of hundreds.

And you know, if your shit is really clean, you know, that regression list becomes very manageable over the course of a couple of days. But when we're talking about a big release, a lot, yeah, you're looking at a database of thousands and you have to have a conversation which always occurs where the people in charge of the various departments are going to sit down and go, okay, how much fixed time do we have and what can it be applied to? Like something has to cut. There's things that we have to ignore.

There is not enough time to fix all the issues that are reported. It's simply math. It's just, it's no, it's an impossibility, right? And at that point, you're like, well, yes, everyone doing their job properly means we're going to do the best we can with a fuck situation where you just, you can't clean it up as much as you need to. But at that point is where the decision to go, how, okay, we might need to get a little bit more time to clean things up.

We might need extra polish time is the publisher willing to give the game what it needs to fix more, because clearly you release as is, you take the hit, you're going to get memed, it's going to be a joke and shit's going to look stupid, or you can give it more time and that has its costs, certainly. You might get bumped into the next, yeah, because you're going to get, you might get bumped into the next quarter and then that's going to be a problem for the investors and the whole knock on financial aspect of things is going to create a problem. But everyone beneath that decision level is like, well, I'm giving, I'm handed a fuck

situation. What are we going to do? Take 75% of these and just mark them will not fix. You know? Yeah. So then we come all the way around to Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 and Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne, where the RCE exploit gets discovered and it is a, apparently very fringe, very difficult exploit, like only one guy found it after all this time

and he submits it and it gets no traction and the reason why it gets no traction is because it's probably already in the fucking database and it's, and it's left over from the development of Dark Souls 3 and it becomes, yeah, we don't really have to fix this because it's like nobody's going to figure this shit out. And even if they see one person, it eventually gets them like, ah, whatever. And it becomes a thing when that gentleman blows it up and it becomes a well-known thing and suddenly that jumps to the front of the queue and it's like, well, no, it has to be fixed, which means there's some bug or two bugs or three bugs or a little thing that

could be polished a little bit better that now will not be for Elden Ring's February 25th release date. Because this bugs everything to fuck up. Those were C bugs or whatever, or Bs even. But this one jumped from, ah, it's super rare, no one will find it to, you know, A code exploit on people's computers. So, you know, the like laughing at the will not fix database and the embarrassing state that it's in is like, make no mistake, like nine times out of ten, the person who's marking

those is like, yeah, I know, it fucking sucks that I'm not getting the time and resources to get this cleaner, to get the game up to shape, you know, and no one's going to help that. But I still remember talking to somebody where I was playing a game that I know they had tested and I played it for ten minutes and was like, why'd you leave this shit in there? And like I thought they were going to stab me, like why'd you fuck up and leave, I found this in like a second and they were so mad, it's just that, because this unnamed person I'm describing, well because, because the one out of the ten is that individual who's

going to sit there and like make snarky comments in the bug fucking regression chain and then later on on their smoke break, they're going to be yelling about the fact that your stupid testers are breaking my game, your stupid testers are ruining it, you know, and it's like, yeah, it's time for you to go home. You've completely lost perspective of what this job is, it's time for you to go home, you're having a nervous breakdown, you know, they're ruining it, they're taking your code and they're injecting malicious code themselves into it, recompiling the build and then reporting those bugs, how dare they?

It's rough because under pressure I can understand that that relationship is like kind of like inherently antagonistic, you paint a pretty picture and somebody walks by and goes, yeah you missed a spot, bitch, yeah, and it's like, but it's beautiful, but her eyes wonky, that's what, that day one was when, was the, literally James Small giving me the fucking, the introduction, you know, to the whole thing, it's like, yeah, it's the Mona Lisa, but her eyes wonky, and no one wants to be told that they're masterpiece as a wonky eye, but it's your job to point out regardless, you know, like, that's exactly what it is, you know, and, and then here's the thing, sometimes the person on the other end of that is gonna get, let's say a bad

tester comes in and files a bug and reports a bug and then they go, hold on a minute, wait a second, did you load in a save file from the last build into the new build? No, no, did you not wipe your kit completely so that you're loading up old data with new incompatible data? Did you fucking create an emergency that's not a real one and everyone panicked and it turns out you just didn't do your fucking job properly, you tester, and it's like, yeah, sometimes that happens and that's a nightmare because you fucked up, dude, you did not clear your kit is an invalid bug that you know this story and I don't know if you're the one who

told it to me second hand or if it was a mutual acquaintance, but hey, if you kill this boss in under 30 seconds, the game crashes 100% reproduction rate, right? So other testers go down and start trying to reproduce it, but cannot get to kill the boss in under like 90 seconds at all. And so they eventually go to the original tester and go, how the fuck did you manage to do this bug? No one else can reproduce it and he goes, look, I'll show you and he's got all the fucking debugs on.

Yeah. He's got fucking infinite health and super damage and shit and he's like, look, look, it fucking crashes when you kill this boss in under 30 seconds. Yeah. And just like that's not a real and that's not a real environment. The player like the fuck off like, yes, absolutely. Um, yeah, that happens. Fuck that.

And like you hit the alarm and everyone's running in a panic because, oh my God. And then you fucking trace it back to someone fucked up their, their, their, their new build. You know, someone didn't do their job properly or worse, uh, worse is, um, you regressed the bug on the wrong build. Like you, you grabbed literally the one where it wasn't fixed and it already is. And then now it just, you know, like all the, like, like there are times when it fucks up on the other end and it's embarrassing and brutal. And then the, when dev loses their mind on, on that tester, it's like, yeah, you know,

everyone kind of like suited up and like it's, it's, it's like the fire fires get to the house and there's no fire, you know what I mean? Like everyone fucking wasted their time and there's huge problems that needed their attention otherwise. No, I'm sorry. It was my casserole was a little smoky. So, um, that's horrifying and I don't envy anyone that that has happened to, uh, couldn't be me.

I'll tell you what, couldn't be me. I was damn good at my job. All right. Uh, we'll leave it there, folks. You know, Willie, I gotta say, all the, all the, all the, the stories you tell about your time in QA, when you got to run compliance, it sounds like you had the most satisfying job in QA because you were one of the only people who couldn't be just hand waved and ignored because you could tell people, no, this will fucking fail compliance.

The game's not going to shit, dude, dude, like, just because usually, you know, you go have a conversation and they go, how important is this really? And you're like, it's pretty bad. And they're like, yeah, but is it really important? And they'll be like, I, I mean, I think so, and they'll be like, get the fuck out of my office. And that's that. Right.

Yeah. And then you get this version of the job and then they're like, get the fuck out of my office. And you're like, hold on a minute, five point two point one over here states explicitly that this message will mean your game doesn't ship. So I can get the fuck out of your office, but this game will not ship if you don't listen to what I have to say. So I don't give a fuck how you treat me.

I'm saving your project, you know, it is very, very clear. And it also is fun because when you have the number point number point number that you can rattle off the top of your head to be like, shut the fuck up. Everything you say is not more important than this, which is what literally Sony had to say about this or Microsoft or Nintendo. And no, that's like, none of your arguing with you, none of your arguing with Nintendo. I'm bringing you the fucking word of God right now. You can't take it up with me.

I don't care how you feel about me. This your product, your product project isn't going to ship if you don't fucking, you know, so all that ego that they have and everything of that, it gets fucking humbled by compliance. It's very satisfying. Absolutely. You know, and with that energy, you don't have to swing it around. You don't have to get into any screaming matches. You don't have to get into any like, because sometimes the tester who gets like booted out

will then have to like go get a couple of other people to be like, guys, can you find any other issues that are related to this bug that make it worse so that we can show them a larger cascade exactly. And then a bunch of good functionality testers will be like, Oh yeah, no. We found a huge problem that comes from this one. So if you don't, if you ignore this, we have more issues spreading out from them than they go, ah, you motherfucker, and they'll hate you, but you have that antagonistic relationship. And here it's just like, bro, copy paste Nintendo's lot check, read this shit, get the fuck back

to me. You know, like it's, it's great. Let me ask, let me ask you a question. Have you ever told somebody that it was going to fail compliance? And they were like, nah. And then it failed compliance. Oh, absolutely. Oh, fucking.

Oh, absolutely. Hell yeah. And then there's nothing better because like, you have the thread where it's the same email chain where they go, I hear what you're saying, but I say we push it through anyway. And I'm like, and I'm, and I, and the last thing in the email third is me going, I don't sign off on this. Yeah. Point.

I don't sign off on this. And then they go, okay, well, we're doing it anyway. And then the fucking check comes back and it gets real quiet, you know, but what else you got to say? There's nothing else to say at that point. It's like, you get the email, you see a couple of, like you can, you can read it because it's a big fucking, like a PDF kind of thing and you, you scroll, scroll, scroll, you find the issue, you see it noted, and then you get to look over your computer at the other

person who's at their desk reading through it and just wait for the shoulders to slump from behind. I'm just, and you just, I read it through quickly and you just lean over and you look and you just see the shoulders go, oh, no. And it's like, yeah, guess who didn't sign off on it? You know, you know, this, this reminds me of a, this corporate lawyer guy, follow on tiktok who fucking hates his job. He hates being a corporate lawyer.

So he will reenact these types of situations, you know, with his own thing in this kit. And the one that just stabbed me in the heart, despite being totally divorced from this kind of life is one of his clients being like, well, you know, the company's in trouble, but we can all just agree that it's because we had bad legal representation. And like dude is in the room as the lawyer and goes, I told you not to do it to which the response is placing blame isn't going to help fix the problem. So there's no point in doing that now. Just like, yeah, like, like, you fuck those people, fuck those people to the end.

So here's the here's the here's the the what's delicious to and what's the it's the best part of the whole thing, because all of this is like, oh, yeah, like rub your face in it, right, bullshit. But what actually matters is after the shoulder slump, right? What you see then is that person who's above you in the QA chain is now going to be bypassed by the producer and tester who are just going to be straight up coming to your desk to be like, hey, man, yeah, we got an issue. Can you can we because done and done, right?

We've seen. Yeah, what happens? We see the results ignored this problem and now they cut them out of they cut them out of the equation entirely and two or three of them will be like, hey, come over, we got an issue and then you're now doing more helpful work direct to the people that you can speak to without that bullshit filter in the way that's just trying to get the. You don't need to rub it in their face when they get to watch their boss walk past them and talk to you ignore them exactly.

And in the end, that helps the project, you know, it's happened multiple times. And then like you got to do the thing where it's like, oh, hey, got to block my kit. I'll be back. I have a meeting with the producers over here on this issue that's going down. Apparently, they just want me on it. You can stay tight, you know, like it happens, dude. And it's the it's it's the result of when you're fucking hubris gets in the way of, like, you know, literally threatening the game's release.

It's like, are you sure you want to put that all on yourself? It fucking it's good. It's not going to go away, you know. No, it's fine. Nintendo let it slip. They're chill about compliance, right? They fucking hide it, dude. They'll find things, not report them.

They'll find 10 things. They'll report five. And then they'll see if you fix the other five in the next submission, just to make sure you're, you know, just to make sure you're on your toes, you know. And if you didn't, then they're like, ah, well, you know, here's another five. I mean, guys, I don't know, like horrible. And also American Europe won't talk to each other. And they'll have their different standards.

It's kind of amazing. Anyways, those were the good old days. But now I get to sit on Twitch and get yelled at for garbage takes in gameplay, so wouldn't change a thing for the world. You're doing God's work, buddy. I really am.