Castle Super Beast - CSB 227: Save The Bear F%&king For Evo

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

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МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА We have power. We have power. Main screen turned on. Now we have power. I got to talk to you about something. Well, it's a vital importance. It's really important. Have you noticed how big Clive's tits are?

They big. Yeah, especially once you see them exposed. They big. Like, thickies. I'm going through the game and like, you know, they're Jill and Jill and Clive are standing next to her. You know they're standing and like it's this consistent like Jill get out of the way.

You're blocking Clive. Yeah. I haven't I don't think I've seen the like outfit that people have drawn fan art of where it's just the Dracula outfit that's on the box. Yeah, maybe I'm just you know maybe I have to get there. I don't think I don't think you have it but like he's basically wearing like a push-up bra on that fucking thing. Yeah so I'm waiting to find out about that but I'm this is all just based on seeing fan art of that shit. So Yeah, no that that games that games going that games going

Right game. I thought it was a fucking big man titty simulator Yeah, I mean it's it's it's uh, I don't know. It's still it's still early enough that I don't really know You know where what to say but everything's sending itself up But I do appreciate the moment. I was like off the rails for a second and it was like Not gonna get any spoilers, but just like yeah, I just appreciated this like how now you can walk around the larger open Mac and like go kill a bunch of things that are standing around. Like the second I got that, I was like, sweet. Now I can really get to like feel the flow of combat, you know?

You know, I have to say it's one of the weirdest games I've ever played due to like in terms of spoilers because like, there are things that the game's premise just like opens to you as like mandatory events. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So like, I like this past week, I fought Bahamut. Is that a spoiler? No, it's mandatory that you had to get to the end of this game and fight Bahamut. I mean, there's... If you did not, that would be an outrageous, outrageous pile of shit.

Well, all I know is the trailer listed off a bunch of icons and dropped their names. And it's like, these are the summons that you've known from all the other games. And now they're gonna be Mega Man bosses. So that's all I know. I have no other expectations. You did Geruda, right?

I did Geruda. It's like wildly Mega Man boss. Mm-hmm. Ask. Like Clive might as well be reaching towards her and go, now I've got your power. That's exactly the line I said when he did that. Is it? Yes. So it's very clear. That's what's going on. At which point, at least for me, I was like, well this is what I came here for, move aside Benedicta, we've been looking at Garuda

the whole time. That's where the hotness is. That's what I'm trying to get that number. You know, so. So I have run into like the strangest like I don't know I'd ludo narrative issue in FF14 where like the drama is happening and the music is happening and oh man what are they gonna how are we gonna do it and I'm sitting there going like I don't care about any of that shit.

Get over here so I can fucking get your move list. Yeah, I mean, it's particularly interesting. Okay, so I guess I'm going to chapter one and chapter two spoilers, right? Beginning of the of the arc to a tune to getting Garuda. We're a couple weeks out. The Garuda bits, I mean, the demo leads into that. Yeah, yeah. I just, I know that like most people playing it at home right now

are probably a million years ahead of where I am, but there are people who are like, I haven't even started yet because I don't want to hear anything or see anything I'm waiting to like get my own copy. So to give those people the thing, I'm going to talk about what happens around getting Geruda and that stuff. All right.

There you go. There's your space. So, it was quite interesting because like as you're going through the game, like you kind of get, you know, Benedicta as like this evil bitch, you know, and you're like, oh, but like, fucking, I know, and you're like, oh, but like fucking uh, I mean there's a much there's a way more evil piece of shit that's like you then the form of mom hanging out wherever she is and you're like, oh, that's just you're the Cersei Lannister, right? Yeah, exactly. And Benedicta does like a more just like struggling kind of fucked up case of, you know, trauma

and then, you know, being unremorseful to some degree with how she just like, want these slaughters people and stuff. And then you're like, at the end, you kind of get this moment that's like, are we going to get like a bit of an anime moment of like the sad swing backstory? And it's like, you kind of do, because you find out at that last second in a way that it's like, oh, she's just in a cycle of trauma

and she's been through some horrible shit and she's kind of seeing that, but none of that excuses. Now get her. The fact that she's a piece of shit regardless. And you're like, so get her. Yeah, so it's like, it's like, oh man, that excuses. Now get her. The fact that she's a piece of shit regardless. And you're like, I'll get her. Yeah, so it's like, it's like, oh man, that sucks.

Well anyway, you know, and then you're like, let me get that fucking sweet ass, the wind snatch please. Snatches in the grab move to pull the enemy in towards you. Of course, that's what I'm referring to. I love Devil May Cry terminology. And, you know, and then you're like, yeah, I'm excited for my new powers. Sorry about your tragic backstory.

Would have been a bit more, I would have been a little less enthusiastic perhaps, had that been, I would have been a little a little less enthusiastic perhaps had that been, I don't know, if the if the balance of judgment of the scales of your, you know, your past to your part, present actions was weighed more in sympathy than perhaps I'd feel a little differently, but I don't because you're still a fucking awful person. So like, she's a really consistent early antagonist as well. You're constantly dealing with her over and over in that whole sequence. And it's interesting too because it's like because you have a Cersei Lattist or right off camera, she can be this flawed floundering, trying to fuck

up person, and she can be someone who you get like, like oh this is where Sid came in and what he meant to her and you can even get the part of it where Like she's completely terrified to exist without Garuda, you know, man. This is this is the fucking juice that I had to to not be a poor person that was trodden upon by society Exactly exactly right. That's all you had and like you know, give me that, you know, new phone, who this calling her up. Um, so it is, it is an interesting thing to introduce that. And I, and I also, it makes me kind of wonder what other people's view of themselves as, uh, dominance is going to be certainly. Although there's of course the fact that you know a couple of us childhood friends are hanging out, but you know I'm yeah, it's it's and that's that feels like okay, that's that's been addicted. That's her deal but

Yeah, don't feel too bad You know you got you got this sick ass new ability and she kind of deserved it. Also, they just really take the time to underline. Like just in case you really didn't take in how catastrophic icon fights are, they're the worst thing to happen to this planet. That you fight in just gone by the end of it. It's absolute man of steel level bullshit.

And you're every time I'm like, oh man, this whole fucking continent is gonna get it by the time we get where we're going. Each one of these Mega Man boss fights is gonna leave a smoldering fucking country in its wake. Like both of the areas that you have fought in have left like mile wide smoking craters remaining of the locations that you were at.

You know, what are you gonna do? Actually all three, because the Porsche of a fought Titan, that whole plane's area is like a blasted hellscape now. And then I mean, even though you got a glimpse of Dianne, and just a little intro cutscene showing off the what icon Kaiju battles are like in war right the strategic usage of it for a second and then back to fucking sip and tea Hey, he's bringing it out. He's bringing okay. You bring yours out. Okay, being bang and a put it away All right put it away put it away and like yeah, best case scenario

It's like light Massive territorial damage in a pre-determined battlefield location and a bunch of soldiers on the side are gonna get wiped out you know it's it's it's really funny because every time that happens like I like like a good 20% up of the the attacking forces get evaporated and then they stop and it's like okay well if we kept the fight going you guys should all just leave No, cuz I need you to stand there and cheer for me as you get excited and hyped that I'm on your side and then in the So in the wind up to swing at the enemy the wind up will wipe you out completely behind me The collateral damage is out of control. So yeah, that's the overall feeling I'm getting of like, oh boy, I, you know, we got to, we got to go in and fix the

politics and save the world, but oh boy. Yeah. But not much time to fuck around with the grudas of Tulsa. Just a little, little bit. I haven't gone back to the lab on it, but I spent my money upgrading my basic materials and mastering them because I want longer stinger. I want better exceed time. But I have, at the very least, kind of gotten used to the idea of the cool down a little bit and switching over and then There's a couple of times where I'm like, okay, so I am already getting a feel for which one of these abilities I'm gonna want to master and pull out of the given icon because I can see myself wanting to switch to a Fucking projectile counter drive at all times because there's

so much of that coming at me. The counter moves are all absolutely unbelievably incredible. Like everybody that has one, it's like the best move on their fucking kit. Garuda's best move is free though. Like the snatch enemies hit half stagger. Yeah. And it like knocks them down from like six, seven, six. You do gouge on that and you knock them down to like 10%.

It's quite, yeah. And then you have a move to drop right on the stagger or half stagger, which is just the flurry of attacks, exactly. I kind of liked using the stagger as an opportunity to run like a style combo. It is suboptible because if it involves jumps and shit, then you're not really getting all the maximum damage you can. But I just like practicing getting my air combos off

and launchers and shit like that. So hey, have you figured out the way the stagger multiplier works? So what I learned was I believe once you, well, each icon is going to do, like, Geruda does more wheel damage than actual damage. Yeah, the stagger is more easily than real damage yet. And then once you are in Stagger State, the combo multiplier adds damage to whatever you're doing. So the higher up the combo you are, the more the next hit's going to hurt. So

you should do a lot of burst combo scaling. So you should do a lot of flurries exactly really early on and then your last hit should be the big ones. Yeah, okay, that's the trick. It's just that took me longer than I might have to try to figure out because I was using the big single hits at the very beginning and then finishing them off

and like, no, no, I should do it in the reverse. Reverse combo scaling is an interesting. Yeah, interesting. Like the combo is getting stronger the more you're doing it I should do it in the reverse. Reverse combo scaling is an interesting. Yeah, interesting. This is like the combo is getting stronger the more you're doing it. Just do it more. And a big, um, yeah, so that means I'm like, okay, switch to Gerudo right away and then switch back over and do your big hits, you know, the, the, the feeling of that game from like one icon to two is fantastic.

And then the feeling of going from two to three feels like, oh, right, now I have the system. So, yeah, there was a moment in that earlier, in that Gruta zone where something I realized, okay, we always talk about loving the duel. I, everyone knows me, I love the duel, the one on one, right? Here's something that excites me just as much,

if not more so. What's that? The two on two? Yeah, the two on two is good. Where I'm like, I don't like me and Pupper and Sid versus the mob is fine and I appreciate the support. He's calling down lightning. He's doing his thing, but Sid you take the dragon. I'll take the Dragoon and We're doing it. It's it's feels good, right? And then you're both, and you're like, this enemy is gonna fully occupy my time. But if I wanted to switch attention, I can,

and we can go that way too. That is awesome. I really like that. The dedicated to on to is fucking fire. I'm in a very strange place with that game. So you've gotten many side quests yet? Yeah, go deliver the browns. Yeah, just what I would.

You know, go fucking get wood. Go go. So I don't know if you read Gene's review, but he complained that the side quests are like really bad. I started skipping them last night. Oh, like walking up to them and people starting to talk. And I hit start and held triangle to skip them. Okay.

It's a really specific thing that I'm not sure if you have experience with, but. So people who refer to them as MMO quests, right? Because they're like overwhelmingly. Here's my sob story. Go to kill five goblins, we'll get five, whatever. Go back, here's the rest of my story, it's so sad, right? The thing is, is that an MMO quest isn't voice acted.

So what do you do? You talk to the person, you see the text, you'll pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, then you go and do it, and you come back and you'll pop, pop, pop then you go and do it and come back you'll pop pop maybe there's a camera change but like it rolls these are like all voice acted not completely though they do the first line and then lead the leave off the second it's no so all side content is completely voice acted but the weird things when you talk to

people at your hideaway, those are insanely weirdly voice acted. I don't know why that's the only thing in the game. It's like that. But so I got to this point where like somebody's like, oh my god, my sister's so, so sad, blah, blah, blah, right? And like I'm like tapping through the dialogue and it took me like two minutes. Wow. And then I went and killed the goblin and then I came back and then I a lame camera pan started happening as I'm tapping through the dialogue and took multiple

minutes again. And I hit the point of like, I'm not emotionally invested in this, but you this, this, this, this side quest given all the space that it wants once once by like 12 minutes of my time. Despite the fact that I fought five goblin. My understanding is that the rewards are immensely worth it in some of those cases. No. Okay. I was I was told the opposite so Some quests reward you extraordinarily so any quest that has a plus as its icon several exclamation point will give you some kind of Upgrade that is like a game altering so like oh your healing items heal you for more

Is is a good example. Something like that. But the ones that are just a plus, they give you about as much XP as two random battles, usually no AP, like a hundred Gil, and a bunch of crafting materials that you already have tens of thousands of. a bunch of crafting materials that you already have tens of thousands of. Okay. And as I'm almost near the level cap now, I'm near the end of the game. I'm level 42, right? The side quests are all numerically balanced on the assumption that this is the first side quest you have done in the game. So like the side quests that are unlocking for me right now, level 42, I'm fighting enemies

that are level like 35. And it is, by the time, this is the difficulty thing again The site content is now so trivial that I am like rotating through my buttons and evaporating like Entire encounters and getting 20 wire right for the trouble Still still like 20 wire right for the trouble. So there was one, though, one that broke me and that caused me to start skipping was a, actually, like, you know, like there's cutscenes

that have voice acting in this game, but then there's cutscenes that have directing as well as voice acting where the camera moves. So there's one of those in which we have to defend a town, boys, but how will we get the townspeople to rise up and help defend that they're so down-truck, you know, that kind of thing? And it's talking with this guy, it's your buddy, and you're talking with the villagers,

and you have to go and talk to the villagers and all this, and it's like a hugely involved thing. And then three enemy waves came in, and I hit two buttons each on the enemy wave, and then I was waiting for the boss to show up And then I held killed the last enemy and it did the slow down that meant the fight was over and then it went into like the Wow, we really look and I'm like what the death it hmm Like the gameplay to fluff ratio on it was like 90% Sorry, it was like 10% Okay And

And the biggest frustration is that the further you go, like the mid all side quests are unlocked by main quest progression But each main quest progression unlocks more side quests So every every time I get to a next main quest progression unlocks more side quests. So every time I get to a next main quest, like first time I was like, oh, two side quests of a lock. Oh, four have unlocked. I'm now at the part where main quest progression unlocks like 10 at once. Mm.

And they're terrible. Right, slow you down. Yeah. And they're terrible. I also had a really strange moment where so you unlock hunts, I think I mentioned that. I don't think you have them unlocked yet. No. But you unlock S rank hunts, which are the game's super bosses.

And at one point, you unlock one and it's like level capped and you unlock it when you're like level 35. And I fought it and I beat it in two tries. And I was then informed by multiple people who have beaten the game like that is absolutely the hardest enemy in the entire game. Yeah, like like bar none like like the remaining dominant fights are like easy peasy comparison and I'm like I just I just staggered it and rotated through my fucking abilities like it's iced it Clive is so strong. I can't even explain to you how strong Clive gets like the version of snatch you have is the best version of snatch that exists It's better than Nero's

So Nero snatch can't stagger enemies. Drag you down at 50%. Yeah. So basically to resume the difficulty conversation from last time, a little bit here, it sounds like, although compelling side quests, I mean, can you get rewards by going through the arcade mode in the at-etstone? I think you just get the XP and AP that you would from those. the arcade mode. In the out-etched zone. I think you just get the XP and AP that you would from those.

Okay. I'm not certain though, I haven't done it. Like, in my game right now, Clive is stronger than Dante has ever been in terms of what he can do in terms of character action. And I'm dealing with like enemies that belong in like a dynasty warrior game. I'm trying to think of like I mean side quests are never good, but you just kind of hope they're inoffensive in a lot of cases and or if you want or if you want to go the the okay not that they're

never good but like in yakka's they're the main point right the side quests are the best part which is pretty side quest right there are games that are built around the idea of the side quest being like more hilarious than the main one there's a lot of games where side quests are very ignorable. And like Final Fantasy 14. Okay, right, Emma. They're so ignorable. Mm-hmm. And I'm thinking about like how I do, I appreciate the way it kind of goes down

in Souls games to some degree, because it's like nothing really feels like a side quest, even though it really clearly is, it's just like, it's a path towards some shit that you can get or just not get if you're interested in the results of this thing, but you have to like do it piece by piece throughout the entire game. So like, it's not like go stat talk to a random person, go kill the mob, come back and get the reward as much as it is like This person you'll encounter as you go on is there on their own timeline and as you save them or whatever

You know and like the the the obscurinous of how people can be killed and die in that case It's sometimes way too fucking brutal and I've we've talked about how the whole Seagmyer stuff goes down and so on. But the idea at the very least of like, I'm not walking up to a random person in need and not being invested in what's going on here versus like, oh, hey, it's you! Hey, what's up? You're on your own thing? At the same time as me, what are you doing out here? Oh, you got your own, okay, cool. Like that sort of parallel journey NPC is what I mean to say, like feels a lot more like, yeah, that's a more engaging

fun way to have side content in your story than it is to just like, you know, go pick up wood and deliver it to the woodsman that can't get the wood, you know. It's, uh, I, I, I'm walking away from the side quests going like, I'm shocked like, like, like, Jean was in my chat when we were talking about it. I'm shocked. He didn't dock the game harder for how bad the side quests are. I think actually everyone like kind of undersold it. And I think maybe the reason I feel that strongly is because I have played FF14 in which I've dealt with these exact side quests before.

But they weren't voice acted, so I got through them way faster. Right? Like I got through them way faster in 14. Yeah, I, I, I mean, the word that's been used to the lot for the last couple of weeks, I guess, is just busy work. And I'm never going to like busy work in any video game I play. I just, I'm just, I'm never going to enjoy it because it's going to feel like the time that the design has decided we need to slow things down. I might have, I might have hit the most frustrating thing I've ever heard streaming a game

Which is like okay, you know what guys? I'm done. I'm not gonna do the side quests on camera anymore. Alright, we're gonna skip all the remainder only to be told Yeah, Pat actually the last batch of side quests all have to do with the main characters of the game And they're all they're all money acted and are they're the good ones. Right, right, right. The last ones. The only ones I haven't done, the ones I was gonna scale.

I'm like, oh cool. I guess I'll just do them all anyway. That's the other thing I kind of heard was that, hey, it might help to just like, here's a list of the ones that matter and here's a list of the ones that don't you know so yeah But the ones that matter are at the end of chains You gotta get to them I will say one thing there's a there's a there's a Bloody palace like trial thing in the game

You might have already found one, depending, one for each icon. It's like you can only use that icon and you have to fight like waves of enemies under a timer. Yeah, cool. It's the best thing in the whole game. Nice. It's like because they force you to use certain skills. They go, you're like the Phoenix one, they're like, you're walking into this one with the uppercut and heat wave. And that's what you're going to have to use for these enemies. And you get graded by like how much time you have left and certain moves at more time. It's the best thing in the whole game. Stop challenges. Yeah. If you do them, the day unlock. Ah, don't wait.

OK. Because your level counts inside them. So things scale? No, they don't. So like, as I got stronger, the ones that I found were comparatively easier. And the pattern continues. Like the most fun I've had in this game is fighting

an optional boss at 15 levels below what I'm supposed to be at with the weakest gear I have. Well, I mean, all I can say, I guess is based on the the the feedback from from last time, the difficulty discussion came up. It seems like not a lot of people are finding or rather a lot of people are finding it's challenging enough without the I guess character act or experience and some that do have character action experience are also like I don't know I struggled a couple times so you know so like it seems to be landing in a place that is like challenging most people. So I was talking, there was a great threat last week when we talked about it, there was a fantastic threat on some Reddit about it.

And I think it brought up some fantastic points. And the two that really stand out to me is Clive is a character with S tier solutions to see tier problems? Yeah. Like his defensive abilities are wildly, wildly overpowered for anything that actually exists in the game. Like they be overpowered,

I mean this uneironically, some of the things you get as Clive would be overpowered in Devil May Cry 5. Right, right, right. If you had harder challenges, yeah. But the other thing is like the game offers like such a wide variety of accessibility options to help you with the difficulty

and has a really impressive exhaustive training mode function that I'm like, the expectation is that there'll be stuff that goes the other direction. It comes at you. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Right, and like, or is it? The expectation is that there'll be stuff that goes the other direction. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, right? And like, or isn't. Or like the opposite of, or that there would be comprehensive anti-accessibility in the form of adding difficulty. Right, yeah.

Right, we need to push, we need to push anti-accessibility not to say that there shouldn't be accessibility, but there should be extra modifiers to make your life a living hell. And like the game does have harder difficulties. You beat the gaming unlock Final Fantasy mode, and then hidden in arcade mode. There's a third harder difficulty. That's only available in your arcade mode. And they do things like turn enemy aggressiveness up. And I'm like, I should

have been. It feels like the conversation we had when DMC five came out, it's like, we should have been able to pick some of Sparta. Right out of the game. Get go. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I guess we'll see once you hit the new game plus, but Anyway, I don't think I'm gonna do new game plus on this one The the way that the way that you like it's vital fantasy mode You know how you know how new game plus is supposed to be like oh we increased the enemy difficulty, right? But you got to keep all your stuff Like, oh, we increased the enemy difficulty, right? But you got to keep all your stuff.

Uh-huh. Uh, as a result, apparently it's like not harder at all because you have all your busted shit from the get-go. Okay, yeah. Yeah, there's a part that I, uh, uh, like early devil may cry, you, like, I feel like I've forgotten, like, the fact that, like, oh, you don't have your moveset You're miss you know like they're I remember like at the start of like many times would be like oh, yeah

Like I just cannot do shit. I cannot do combos at all, you know for many like oh that brings a challenge in where yeah right now I want to fucking you know I want a trick to this guy but I can't I can't really can't yeah so okay I think you know what your example has is fantastic because Clive Clive's first button is trick right like like Like the Phoenix Dash, it's starting, it's like starting to make Cry 3 with the full Dante moveset. And then you just keep getting more on top of it.

Like, then moves out of trick or amplified. Like it makes me like super sad because like man, you could throw crazy stuff at this character and they'd be able to deal with it But they won't I could see there being a a I could see there being a DLC that's like go fuck yourself difficulty You know again there is there is the the third Evil difficulty which turns it like kind of into an action game, but it's hidden in the arcade mode.

You can't actually play the game like it. It's only replaying the arcade stages, and you have to re-unlock all the stages in Final Fantasy mode. So in order to play the game on the hardest difficulty, you have to beat it. In Final Fantasy mode, I see. Yeah, you have to beat the whole thing again

in Final Fantasy mode. I see you have to beat the whole thing again in Final Fantasy mode. Okay Anything else For this week. Oh for me. Yeah me and Paige sat down We watched the fucking Dungeons and Dragons movie with the with the Chris Pine Have you seen that I have not but Red you brought it up the other day and I shut it the shit down Why you shut it shit down? I don't know. It was just the funny thing to do at the time. No reason but Yeah, I don't know I just I saw the trailer I guess and I was like oh, okay, they're doing that and then I think I saw one or two people going

Wait a minute that was actually kind of fun so saw one or two people going, wait a minute, that was actually kind of fun. So, everyone, so this is gonna sense range. Everyone who has said anything about this movie was correct. It is Chris Pine as the bard. It's got Michelle Rodriguez as the barbarian. It's got that guy who was in the quarry as the sorcerer, I don't know who his name is. Whatever, they got some other actors in it, right? And it is a way better movie than the old D&D.

No Marlon Williams. No, no, Marlon Williams. So I saw somebody in the chat to say it's a perfect three out of five stars movie. I disagree. I disagree. I Disagree it is both a one out of five star movie and a five out of five star movie a page And I were sitting there and talking about it. It might be the most wildly inconsistent watch I have ever seen Because it feels they really really really really nailed the feeling of a D&D campaign in which the cool events and scenarios that your DM pulled out of the adventure module are super cool.

Like running around and having to run away from a fat dragon in the under dark while a bunch of evil dudes are after you, what a great fucking fun sequence, right? But then when it's time for one of the players to open up about their character's fucking backstory and you're just like, I can't get fucking out of here fast enough. So every part of the movie that is like a set piece or an action scene or like a fun

romp or like a zany situation is super cool and really interesting. And every time a character looks at another character and says, I'm gonna talk about the story or my feelings, it is the worst piece of shit I've ever seen. Nice. It is so fucking inconsistent. It feels like Chris Pine is reading his own fanfiction at the fucking screen Oh my god see I just I like I'm like if they had balls though

They would have just made this a hard sequel to the 2000 movie and and get your I mean look man Jeremy Irons fucking overdoing it and Jeremy Irons fucking overdoing it, going hard as the villain and all that shit or whatever, like, you know, you just, I don't know, I actually remember fucking watching that and going, dear God, dear God, D&D is trying. They're trying to get something going real hard and they don't have the buddy for it

So like there was one thing that happened throughout the film. Oh, there was a sequel I didn't even know there was something that kept happening throughout the film that made me in page like constantly go Okay, when is it gonna happen? So everyone is is a very classic class, right? Everybody is like, this is the sorcerer of the barbarian. I don't remember the character's fucking names. I remember that there was the sorcerer of the barbarian, the druid, et cetera, right?

Chris Pine plays the bard, right? He's got a loot on his back, he's dressed a little foppy, right? And he never did anything in the whole movie. I cannot possibly explain to you how weird it was that the main character of the movie didn't do anything. They didn't fight anyone. They didn't use a spell once. They didn't charm their way out of a

situation. Were they just main character in their way through the scenes? Like if if this was a if this was a game I'm like I don't think Chris Pine's character rolled once. Yeah okay. Like it was you know what? It was the strangest fucking thing. I can see that. I can see the party where there's this guy in the armor with the sword that's dashing stands around while the rest of the party fills the the purposes and does their roles and actually saves the day.

So somebody in the chat says he did that illusion, right? And no, that was not. That was the sorcerer. Every time you're like, he did that illusion, right? And no, that was not. That was the sorcerer. Every time you're like, oh, he did this right now, actually, that was a different character. And all the way to the end of like, they released like character sheets for this movie, for the cast.

And they released a character sheet with him that he's like a standard bard with like spells That he didn't cast ever Never not even a once So people are saying oh he's more of a rogue than bar He didn't he hit one person with the fucking glunt once it was weird It's strange the The man character stands around and the other cast does things. I... I've said it before, but my idea of a cool bard is the one from Darkest Dungeon. I like, I like... Yeah, okay.

The one the... The gesture looking guy. Exactly, who's like, I'm buffing everybody, I'm managing, I'm healing, I'm destressing, and then every once in a while, I'm playing a song of death, and then dropping to the background. That's it's sick. So yeah, overall, like fun movie, I will never watch it again. I would have probably gotten just as much out of it watching the good bits on YouTube.

Fair enough, okay. At the very least, the apparent consensus is everyone agrees that this is something you're worth seeing. Oh yeah, totally. It's fascinating as fuck. It is it is. Oh, you know what? You know what? That part, the the everything to do. Okay, you know what's a really great example of how this this movie nailed like a D&D session. The first bit in the movie is they are up for parole and they're waiting for a guy who they think will hear their case correctly. And this is a bird man named Jonathan.

The subtitles listed as J-H-A-R-A-Thin, right? Jonathan. And my wife and I are sitting there going oh my God That is the perfect name for a fucking stupid one-off D&D character because They will oh what's the character's name Jonathan well that doesn't sound right right right right right yes, yeah, so Jarnathin So definitely made better by being familiar with what a campaign is like in all the all the tropes and And you know they they throw down the map of fair run and they make sure to point out well

Here's water here's a water deep and here's Baldur's Gate and we got a walk through Icewind Dale and The they throw down a map at some point that is just a stolen like art Version of like the players handbook maps and sure players handbook sure and You know there's a nice bit with the gelatinous cube which is my favorite Dungeons and Dragons monster Because he's a fucking is a fucking gelatinous cube. It's fucking stupid not the beholder Yeah, I don't I think this I mean the beholder showed up in this movie It would look at them and then they would all just die. It's the end of that. Yeah, this is But it's also like quintessential you know, yeah

But it's also like quintessential, you know. Yeah. So, yeah, tons of fun. And if you're a T&D, Dweeb, there's lots of stuff in there for you. And just the part where they want to do a movie, instead of a cartoon, it's really bad. Like when Chris Pine starts talking about his dead wife or some shit, I'm just like, Oh, shut the fuck up. I don't care.

The fucking rotoscope, Tana Barbarra cartoon as well. I've always forget there was another D&D thing too. And like that was weird because I discovered that cartoon when they decided to re-arrit on Fox kids as a new show. It's like coming to soon to the whatever cartoon afternoon was the D&D and it's like from the 70s and I was like what the fuck is this? Yeah, that was a wild one. I just saw an incredible comment in our chat right now, which is a guy in all caps going, wait, Baldur's Gate is a Dungeons & Dragons thing?

There you go. Yeah, dude, it existed before the game. It's a location in the Forgotten Realms paint setting. And the cartoon character is gonna cameo in the movie. I see, that's pretty cool. Yeah, they do. That's fun. That's fun. Nice. So yeah, cameo in the movie. I see that's pretty cool. Yeah, they do that's fun. That's fun Nice

So yeah, it's a fun movie. Is it a good movie? No But it was a fun movie and actually I want to give a shout out they used a lot of puppets They like all the all the zombie man's and skeletons are fucking puppets There's a lot of like bird dudes and hobgoblins walking around in full-body prosthetic Right Like like there's a really good looking bird man puppet that like even if the movie was trash my wife and I go that's a good bird man puppet Love it. I mean, like, there's no reason for this to ever exist in any world ever. But I wish I could like make, I like, if there were to take money and like make something D&D product related with it, I wish I could have a shadows over a Shadows over Mastara animated OVA by O'Barry specifically.

Like this is I wanted O'Barry art style Shadows over Mastara OVA that had a VHS tape or two and that's how I want to watch it. And like it just in the fucking back of a video store shit, Street Fighter 2 Vera style. You know. God damn that would make me so hype. In the fucking back of a video store shit Street Fighter 2 V era style, you know God damn that would make me so hype That's the idea I want and this movie is like part of the reason that I watched it is because I heard from people that like It was better than you would expect and I will admit it's much better than I would expect like overall good time watching it But also, what with

Baldur's Gate coming out, it is very interesting to see because this movie was the first part of Hasbro going, we're gonna push D&D. D&D is gonna be the biggest fucking thing in the world. We're gonna make a big fucking movie and ever is gonna know about Dungeons and Dragons. And walking away from it, I can't help but think that like if you don't know anything about D&D this is a weird fucking movie. Like it is very much trading on the cachet of the setting a lot. Like why are those panthers have magic tentacles like because they're displacer be here's a question There's so there's there's the D&D cartoon

There's the D&D fucking Marlon Wayans movie and then sequels apparently and then there's this one now years later Which means that like at any time you see that it's like it's kind of like Like you can tell someone has the rights of this and they're trying you know There's some there's every what there's always these little things Where it's like okay someone someone's someone's got this and they really want it to be they want it to catch on They're gonna try another movie sometime if you wait 10 years um How come there hasn't been and maybe there has been but I haven't heard of it But how come there hasn't been a magic the gathering

Movie attempt at some point a magic the gathering movie attempt at some point. Oh, I bet. I bet you anything. If I fucking type in magic the gathering cartoon or some shit, magic for gathering TV series. Okay. I was first reported being production in June of 2019. Because it planned to release on Netflix in 2022.

Okay. There we go. Okay, because I mean, I'm sure there are like, yeah, I'm sure there are probably like small projects that we that we don't know of that would like, you know, little animation things are in there. But I'm like, has there ever been an attempt at a big Hollywood magic, the gathering production, you know? Apparently, it's already been completely made and may not be released because we're supposed to come out last year.

So I see. Okay. Okay. Let's see what else, what else. I also, I took a look on the recommendation of one Casey explosion. I took a look at a game called Stasis Bone Totem. That is a mouthful.

It sure is, Wally. I think I described it last week as like a horror undersea disco allisium as an extremely reductive way to talk about that game. Mm-hmm. Still very reductive way to talk about that game. Mm-hmm. Um, still very reductive. That's a, as close as I'm gonna get to describe it. Okay. It is a, it, uh, alternatively, I could, I could describe it as

under the ocean. Wow. Nightmare Maniac Mansion. Wow. This, this, yeah, okay, okay, the I mean the isometric view certainly the horror the shadows the dialogue the Thing that makes me feel disco is like the way you are actually walking around yeah the walking around looks very disco Which you know just isometric RPG is

Supposedly a three- person game out of South Africa. Which I believe is the first game I've ever played from South Africa. This is gorgeous though. Yeah, oh it is. The lighting is beautiful. So it is, it is absolutely gorgeous. It is bone totem. Yeah.

It is very interesting. It takes place in some kind of, apparently it's like the, this studio setting, which is like a, like a corporatist, a horrible nightmare future. And it is, it is actually like pretty close to like a, a point and click adventure game.

Like you're getting items and you are combining the items and you're using them on things and you're going through. Man. But it is nightmarish. This UI is doing a lot of heavy lifting too. It sure is. And it does a lot of really smart things. So you're playing as three characters.

And one character can like take things apart. One character can put things together and one character can hack computers. And as you're roaming around doing puzzle things, things apart, one character can put things together, and one character can hack computers. And as you're roaming around doing puzzle things, you're almost always completely split up. The game just decided it would be more fun to just be able to teleport items into each other's inventories. No having to send in the dumb waiter,

no having to do anything, just no fuck it. You have the key card now. Okay. And like one of the puzzles that I had to fix was I had to use some medical piece of shit to fix artificial lungs to fix a machine, right? And when I hooked it up, it's like, select the brand of lung that this is. So I'm like, I don't know what the fuck brand it is. It's so, there's the character that pulled it out,

which was the girl, right? And I moused over it and she said, wow, that's an artificial long blah, blah, blah. And then I moved it to the third character and they looked at it like, this is a gross pile of meat, right, as the mouse over description. And then I sent it to the guy

who was far away from both areas and he looks at it in his old text as, oh, I used to have one of these. I would know a bio-fix organ anywhere. And so I go, okay. And then I switch back to the third character, loaded in and like brand type is bio-fix. And then be able to fix the, like, you know, just fun little things of switching the items like that. About how much of it did you play?

I think I did about half of it did you play? I think I did about half of it in one stream. Okay. There's five chapters, and they're not all the same length, but I got pretty deep into the third chapter. Um, pretty dope as well. It's the developer is called the Brotherhood. Yeah. That's cool.

It's super cool. It's just really, really fucking cool. Oh, the other thing I wanted to say. I was like, oh, after you. No, I was just going to say that, like, given the length of it as well. Like this feels like a nice little, if you hit SIGNALIS recently, and you wanted a little bit more of that feeling as well, I'm getting a SIGNALIS vibe

from some of the walking around here. A little bit. So if you look at the trailer footage, you can see that there's like an interface where there's blue lines coming off the character. Yeah. And there's lots of green dots everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the game solves one of the biggest point and click problems ever. All points of interest. You right click, and when you right click, a pulse goes out, and every green dot is with you mouse over it, text will show up describing it. Dear God, man. Right. Oh, wow. All blue dots are things you can walk up to and interact with.

But you could just observe from a distance or go interact. Right. Fuck, yeah. Just mouse over and you'll read the little text and you'll say, oh, this is a gross monster corpse, blah, blah, blah. But the blue dots, you go, okay, and then you double click on it and your character will run over and they'll interact with it and you go, okay,

so when you're going through, you right click and you go, okay, there's only three green, there's only three blue dots in this room. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. I love when somebody has played a genre and knows how to solve quality of life, things that I didn't know I wanted. Like that is how, that is a improvement aggressively to point of clicks that I didn't even know

was the thing I wanted to see. Yeah, amazing. Did you play 999? Yeah. So in 999, they did something really similar. If you remember, when you click the stylus, every interactable on the backdrop highlights in yellow. And you just go, oh, these are all the interactables

on the screen. Yeah, all you're doing is just making the process of going through this a little bit faster and a little less tedious You know as a result. Hey, guess what? I actually do like point and click adventure games pixel hunting is not fun I just I just lose my mind with pixel hunting. It's not a fun thing to do. Yeah And so far as somebody who is like not very good at point and click adventure games the solutions say for a couple There was like one that really fucked me, like bad and I got stuck on for a while.

They've been like pretty straight forward. Like my brain is going, okay, this seems like a thing that I could do. I did, I do it. Oh, it did, yay. There was only one that really fucked me and it was one of those things where you walk up to something and your character has a little cutscene examining it, but then you have to actually click on it, even though your character just exists.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's fine. That's why, like, no, the fact that there's a distinguishing point between the blue dots and the green dots means you still have to approach things because yeah, the game would disappear if you could stand at the beginning, at the door and then interact with everything and then turn around and leave, like that'd be silly, you know, you gotta have some tension.

Yeah, no, it's great. I'm really surprised. That's also a wild name that you're gonna, like either struggle to remember or you're gonna burn it in You know stasis bone totem. Those are words that don't usually go together I don't know why it's called bone totem yet, but I think kind of funny But I appreciate it as opposed to in the darkness of the undersea labyrinth You know or some other forgettable shit

The timing of it is really good because as we all know, we should not go into the ocean. Right, right. And this is a game about how you should not go into the ocean. I, yeah, I... What was it the other day during the Nintendo Direct maybe? Oh, the trails games, they Nintendo Direct maybe oh the trails games they announced the new the trails There's a new trails thing. I want to say that on the news because that thing is fucked up No, no trails into referee. It was it was just it wasn't even that It's just that like when it comes up and they and it's like legend of the heroes the legend of heroes And I'm like, man, someone really went with that name, huh?

Like legend of the legend of heroes. And I mean, look, my least favorite thing about legend of the Galactic Heroes is the fact that that's what it's called, because it's such a forgettable name, you know? I like that when you see that kind of thing, like dear God, yeah, just throw bone totem. Fuck it. That's fine Yeah, by the way put those words together

You said trails is not on the on the news this week Trails into reverie. Yeah, yeah, is that not on the news this week? Yeah, I mean, okay, because like I just want to say they I mean, okay, because like I just want to say they fucked up the translation in that game so bad Mm-hmm that a bunch of the characters in that game are Completely broken because their attacks were misspelled and just load up as link attack and their attacks don't work Like you go to a character and you go, what's their eight link attacks? And it's just the phrase link attack eight times in a row

and none of the buttons work. Oh no. So I don't know if you know, but like there was a huge, huge kerfuffle about the trail series in which like people had like trans, you know fans had translated some of the older games and then Nisa said no, we're gonna delay all the new games from coming out in English and we're gonna hire the old translators to put out like trails and zero and all that in English and then it'll be like Well, you'll we'll be all caught up, but you know, new games will take four years

to come out in English, and then there's the first new game to come out in English, and the translation is scuffed, is just like fucked. That's unfortunate. Damn. Um... Ha-ha! I'm not sure if you're a mom

and yes sorry if you're a fucking long time fan enjoy different language I always feel like you like shit like that when it's old enough is certainly there's always just like there's always a fan translation out there that's either better or too edgy You know What was it in ff6 when it came to the world of ruin? There's like the the fan translation was like everyone went up to the cliff of suicide and fucking died

Or is it gonna some shit like that. It's just like all right. We get it Suicide clip it was so oh the ruin. Oh Sorry, I have a correction in here from Dante and Namaz Namakaz says they didn't even hire them They bought the Fran translation that was already done and it still took them forever to release the game when the work had already all been done. Okay, so that's fun. Yikes. But that's mostly for my week. I'm gonna be going over to twitch.tv slash pat stares at and doing more

Final Fantasy. Gonna try and beat it this week and more stasis bone totem. Oh, I did forget. I've also been hanging out with Paige on her channel. We were going through LA noir which LA noir is still a fun game and it's an interesting story. I will say one thing LA noir came out in 2013 it is now 2023 No came out in 2011 I think and Now 2023, no, it came out in 2011, I think. And remember how you were like, wow, this is the most incredible faces that I've ever seen.

They're still pretty impressive, but you can see every face in the game trying to crawl off the person's head Like time has allowed you to see like the staples of where they stapled The the fancy face texture onto the 3d model Okay, everyone is wearing a very emotive mask and it is uncanny as fucking shit Um You you're playing which version the PC for me. Okay

Interesting Interesting. What about you, man? What else have you been up to? I've been playing Street Fighter and I'm just waiting for Rashid. Just waiting for Rashid now. Rashid? Rashid? When did the remaster come out? A couple of years ago. It's a Playstation 4 Xbox One game. Yeah, okay. I was just trying to remember what you're, yeah, okay, 2017. Anyway, yeah, so no, exactly Street Fighter. I'll take it up from there. Had a good, had a good week

with that. So we did a stream with R.D.T. aka Snafu, the local Dalsamson player He's a beast he always runs. I So weird cuz I saw your stream and was like learning the dolls and match up And then I loaded the stream up and it was Chun Lee versus Marissa. Yeah, fuck it's this. Well, that was me That was because me and Reggie having fought in a bit So I was like, yeah, we'll run the set for a little bit, you know, so we just read the fucking Dalson matchup Well, we had hours to cover and we got to it So we just started with a little bit of a match that we want to get get done Did a little you know, it was fun

And then yeah, we got to see so Dawson of course just the least the rarest character on the cast the least picked character but He's a problem if you don't know where to stand and what to do when you're standing there, you know, and the definition of a knowledge check because any, I mean, again, I say it with Axel, any character that is like my whole job is to stand at the back of the screen and push you away is like, well, now you automatically have to learn

the game plan of your opponent. You can just try to wing it, but you're probably not going to get very far. But you're also not going to have to worry about facing them because there's early on in, there's not a lot of people using Delson in the beginning levels or so. Definitely. He's the least popular character of all time, right? Like across the cross the cast, but he's just like nobody wants to play with dolls and except for the freaks. But when you get to that point where you're running into them, it's a problem you have to learn how to

solve, you know? So, um, yeah, the, the, and I remember the way R.D.T. was describing it was like, if you, he's like, so he remembers like some of the people around locally that got like got demolished initially and then came back and did way better against him. And the process of doing that means you have to basically become a Dalson player in terms of knowledge. You know, you have to learn the character inside out the way someone using him would and then you need then you're gonna know where to be and what to do. We kind of, but like, yeah, we'll be a Dalzum farm. Well, then lose to him every time he shows up, you know, like it's just, which is never?

Yeah, that's it. I play ranked matches every day. I am not even seeing a Dalzum once a day. I'm running into him a little more often now at higher level. And in fact, I mean, I had like, I ran it like three the other night, you know? And it's like you need to know.

You need to know what to do, because this is now a, he's gonna show up, the higher you get, he's gonna show up the higher you get He's gonna show up more often. That's what it is. You know You're gonna you're gonna run through an army of Ken's and and juries and And then you're gonna start to see some dice some character diversity At the other end of it. You know what? Absolutely suck shit about Ken being really good in a Street Fighter game It means there's no rank you can escape him. You can't escape him

You can't notice people that don't even know why he's good are just gonna pick him because he's Ken because he's always been the The one and now people who do know why he's good are gonna fucking corner carry you off of anything anywhere at all times Yeah, yeah, it's kind of incredible then. That motherfucker can whiff, you can back dash his throw and he's like, cool, I get to try again though. Like there's nothing for nothing for nothing. I saw a really upsetting video. So I'm subscribed to a gentleman named Rufelmanger. Oh yeah, Rufel. Yeah, yeah. Actually, yeah, we recorded together at the Capcom event. He's from Ontario. A couple days ago, he put up a video that was just like a knife to my heart, which is our Zangief and Lily, really the worst characters in Street Fighter 6, and goes over for like 20 minutes, like just how bad Geef is.

And it's like putting words to my emotions that I haven't been able to... Because I've been like, why is this part so hard? I can't figure out why, and then Rufle Manger goes, because then Geef sucks at this. And I'm just like, no. No, why is got to be like this I mean you can get really far with the tools that the game gives you but there's always No I don't want to, I want the character to be good so I'll have to work as hard And that was putting the same time in a can I'd be in fucking diamonds right now

And this is the shot era, you know, welcome to the character struggle. Welcome to the whole thing, right? How much work versus how much reward and how much character carry versus how much, you know, carries it for you. I'll give you all character carry. I don't give a shit. I mean, I'll tell you right now that like, Lily, the lilies I'm fighting are like really fucking good and like they're presenting problems that I did not have answers to and I went back and I did some studying and I figured out what they were and it's still ultimately comes down to like a little RPS situation, but I thought some lilies that were really good at just backing up staying the the fuck out, and then like exploding in, taking damage, and running away with it. And I was like, ooh, I don't know how to deal with that, you know.

So there's always that play style with a character that's higher or lower that it still can be their optimal way to play. You know, I'm again reminded of like a blanka back in the day when it was like, okay, most of my blocked balls are going to be punishable immediately in front of you. So I've just got to take the life lead and run away for the match and hop around like an idiot. But yeah, no, this is what it is, man. Sometimes the dice rolls out like this

Until I watch that video that Zangief's burnout is for some reason the only one that's longer than anyone else is in the game Is it like it's three full seconds longer than everyone else's no kidding. Yeah, it sucks. Huh? It's so sucks. It's so sucks, man. The only thing that makes me feel any better is that when I'm playing Geef, I'm looking over and like, for fuck's sake, thank God, I'm not playing Lily. K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k- because I don't, I don't know what planet they live on that they want to give somebody a command grab that does like a thousand damage and then puts you at full screen.

Well, I mean, it's the one where the one where you've got to get that thousand damage in twice or so and you're and you're good, you know, but, um, yeah, I know I'm, I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hop on to Rashid when she come out that's cool I mean yo Rashid's got like he's got a double jump and It seems like it costs some bar to do it. So I'm a okay with that Yeah, he did it he it was OD when he flipped out when he did a double jump in mid-air mixed up his jump trajectory So okay, the fact that like you it seems like we haven't seen a wall a wall jump anymore means like hey cool some of his most insane bullshit is probably gone or if he can still do it it's gonna be at the cost of drive. And that's the deal is like anytime I see a trailer for a character drop. I'm expecting to see Wacky insane what the fuck is that bullshit, but I want to see him flashing yellow when he does it anytime

I see something game-breakingly nonsense, but they're flashing yellow. I'm like great Spence people are saying that he also has a meter of a stubble joke. Oh great. Okay. Well, uh. Well, and is it where in the trailer was that? Was that, and I think it was in the PlayStation blog post. And do you get to change the direct, the trajectory of which way you're going? I'm not certain. Okay. Because what used to be a problem back in the day,

there were a lot of things. But what used to be a problem was he had two wall jumps. He had the normal Chun Lee style. Yeah, he had a normal Chun Lee style wall jump and then he had a fast wall jump that was down straight. And so he could basically do an instant mix up while you were in the corner and 50, 50 you and then hop off the wall again and then land on top of, and you had no way of knowing what side, and he would just keep doing it over and over, and it was nonsense, because he had the fall buttons from two angles,

and a dive kick. So you know the DJ situation I was describing, how it used to be where you could jump and change your jump arc with DJ. He can jump and then he could press a command normal in mid-air and either land, cross up or land in front of you with a knee. He, Rashid, could just keep doing that forever in the corner, you know.

So yeah, no. All of that was nuts. There's a couple of things we also, we haven't seen his crouching fears, which was used to be the do the wave. Hey, you know, he hasn't, we haven't seen that button yet. And they just kind of like, yeah, they amplified the spinning mixer, they amplified the wind, the, of course, his, his out is now is, is level two. So all that speed shit, all that command run shit, you know, as I expected it to be, he's

going to be fast, he's going to be annoying. You're going to need to just chase him down for sure. Don't know if this counts as news or if this is part of us talking about Rashid, but they're gonna let Rashid in it, even. Yeah, I was gonna I was gonna make this so that that was a docket segment to get into, but yeah Rashid's tech is all there and then they announced that he's gonna be tournamently with legality, though, which is fucking insane. I saw people go, why is that a big deal? And I'm like, you don't even know. It's the fucking it's because closest to character has come.

So they did it at the end of of capcom cup, a CPT events towards the end of street fighter. They had characters that were around for only like a week or two before they were legal. So there's a precedent to this. But generally speaking, in tournaments, when a character comes out within two weeks of the event, they usually say that character is not tournament legal, because two weeks is not enough time to really learn what's going on to how to deal with the character or how

to use them or whatever the case is. It's just like it's brand new. And it's just like, they're like, okay, the whole year has been studying this one game or whatever is in the cases. And it's too much of a variable. In this case, it's too bad, learn it fast. Yeah. And this is basically just based on the idea of like,

nah, let's make it more exciting and hype by putting a random variable in the mix. And also, it doesn't financially hurt them in any way to be like LOL everyone by the character to compete if you want to keep up you know. It's funny because like does this mean receipts are going to win EVO? Absolutely not. Does this mean that a bunch of receipts are going to escape pools people they're fighting don't know what the fuck is happening.

It's never, it's never that the new character is gonna win the event. It's gonna, it's always that the new character is going to blow up people that would have won if not for this unknown dice roll in the way, you know? Yeah. And it kind of amounts to a smash brothers-esque level of like, not items are tripping, but it's just like, you are learning a fixed scenario and you're trying to unleash your attack against others and prepare for all such situations.

But there's just micro interactions that you cannot prepare for and you might run into someone who labs the fuck out of a receipt for two weeks hard, you know. So we'll see. I get the financial incentive especially, because there's a certain point where people can go, like, well, if he's not gonna be in, I won't pick him up until later or whatever versus a bunch of people that are like, well, you you have to compete so you have to be ready for it.

But yeah, there are going to be Rashid stealing some fucking spots for sure. Do you dedicate that two weeks to just this one character right before you start after spending a month working on everybody else. Use Rashid to escape pools and then switch back to Ken. Yeah, and here's the thing as well. Like, as a competitor, I can see how fucking frustrating it is just to have that, again, dice roll thrown into the equation because nobody wants to have a fucking smash brothers stage select going on, you know, but I also, I'm aware of like, to the event, the moment someone on the character

select screen loses, goes to change characters and picks Rashid, the crowd pop off for like, oh my god, what are we gonna see is like, yeah, there's that. That's kind of what they're trying to An answer like I don't know. Yeah, yeah It's it's it's the it's an X factor is is what it is. It's not it's not the same as Again like all the smash disadvantage things. I'm just I'm just introducing the idea of like the X factor that you cannot tame you know, so We'll see it. It made me, hey, listen, Rashid players out there don't think of the community. Don't tell anyone that thing you found,

don't tell anybody. Find it on a rental ticket. Use it, wait a couple minutes. Use a rental ticket, play Rashid for an hour and beat evo with it. a rental ticket, play Rashid for an hour and beat EVO and win EVO with it. Um, yeah, it was, but whoever found out that that, that, you know, hey, did you know if you hold these buttons in the corner, you just can't, oh, yeah, yeah, the directional assistance. Yeah, right. And it's like, uh, you should shut the fuck up. Just use that

back, but I think you really good. That could have been well, so there, there'd be, at some point, it'd be at some point, it'd be like you can check the replays and see the inputs and go like what the fuck's going on there. So that wouldn't stay secret for long. Not at locals. You can not at Evo, right? Uh, they do save the important. Are they? Uh, I think they do have saved they have saved footage of every every station, but the matches are are are logged to the station as well. So if there were anything, they could, but it's a lot of work to go back to that station, pull that match up through that. I'm just really good. Yeah. Throw taking. No, but I mean, what I mean to say is like, even

before hand, if you saw that, like, unless that person was just not playing online at all, but even then, there's a lot, okay, there's a lot of top players who are currently not doing ranked. They're just playing like in rooms, but you still, like replays are still available, profiles are there. Like people would find your input weirdness and be like, what is that?

They would at some point, there'd be like, something's happening there, right? And I bet you, especially when we're talking about millions on the line for, you know, like this season that's coming up, people are looking at each other's inputs on their replays for especially the top players, anyone who was in the invetational Kumite, anyone who's like a top player, sir at CEO, people are looking at those replays and looking at those inputs and looking for anything that they can figure out. So it wouldn't stay secret for long. But yes, it was a bug that allowed you to instantly tack any throw.

Pretty much the matter. Apparently that already got patched just to be agreed. It's not gone. It's partially, it's a partial fix, but the partial fix makes it not work like 90% of the time. Oh, great. Yeah. They are going to apparently fix it in the next patch. Yeah. Man, it really shows just how fucked up that thing was that like a fighting game patch was like, oh, no, no, don't worry guys, we toned it the fuck down.

The thing is going away. Yeah, don't do it. It will, it like again, there's things that are broken good in fighting games and things that are broken bad. And if you don't have a bird's eye view of the situation, it can be hard to distinguish which one is which. This is broken, like, the game does not work anymore. If you no longer have them, a throw mix up, available ever, right? I'm gonna pick Gambit and Marvel too. And I'm going to glitch the character

off the screen so that I win via timeout. Yeah. That bug sucks. Yeah. Yeah. If you know the game's never going to get patched, then you just have to go like, okay, you can't do that then. Or the self-regulating ones. I always talk about El Forte's run stop fierce because it's he just gets to run and hits you Nine times in a row with a standing fierce, but it's so hard to do It's very hard to do that you like no one ever gets it and if you can you get all nine in like you kind of earned it Fair enough and it just becomes yeah fair enough You know all right that's good. And then it stops.

So anyway, yeah, I think Rashida looks cool as well. Some of the design changes are fun, the flowing cloth and stuff to emphasize the wind. The hair exposed thing is like, it's like I was not expecting that, but it does make the secondary animation of his movement like more dynamic you know he loses the dragon ball scouter and he gets a he-man chest I think I think my favorite thing about Rashid's personality is you meet him and what's it Nashon what's it's a nation? Nashall? Nashall you meet him in Nashall you're like hey Rashid and Rashid's like running around and doing flips

Oh wait, he's you met him already really? Oh no, but in the trailer He's clearly a nice all like I know that spot. Oh, okay, okay, so that's where he's gonna be placed Right and he's just like running and doing flips in this like in this like children's park in front of you Just like oh look at me. I. I can run on the thing. I did a flip and it's like, you were just stupid loser, Racine. They made him so much goofier. Yeah, they amplified the goofiness of his character

and that trailer as well. And he's an influencer. And like, he's loading up the stream. Yeah, and I saw a thumbnail that someone made of a mock-up of like a typical Rashid video and it's him going, ah! Shocked face in the video is called another wind user.

And then the thumbnail is him beating up Lily and it's like, That's great. Both the woman and the kid, oh no, like I fight a woman and the kid like because those are his dislikes you know yeah it's hilarious oh man yeah so yeah well I'm looking forward to to getting insanely mixed the fuck up by by his left rights and his nonsense and then then in burnout, you just chase him down, do your best.

Good luck. But for those of you who didn't experience competitive fucking Rashid and Street Fighter V, that character was a problem. He was really good. He was good the whole lifetime of the game, which is, which is like strange. Apparently he got to live in like, like, not the best, but pretty good, like, the whole time. When you move at like, night, unreactable speeds, and you have changing the jump angles, constantly, that'll never not be good. Yeah, I guess you're right. Right. The whole thing that

makes- The whole thing that makes fighting game win kicks and those little win kicks are cool. The whole thing that makes fighting game like fighting game matchups learnable is that there's predictable limits to the amount of information that you have to learn. And like when a character jumps, it's like, okay, I know when you're gonna land and where you're gonna land and I know what's gonna go on. But if you're like, I have a dive kick, you're like, oh shit. Ah, yeah, I can do two things and I can't predict it anymore. Can I just take a second? So I'm playing Jamie also and can I can I please ask someone to please improve what I believe is the worst dive kick I've ever seen in any game. I mean Jamie's dive

kick is so bad I've seen the hitbox on it. It's like all green surrounded by red dot dude dude If you use it properly It's fantastic and a huge longest problem. All right, so the two things about it that are fucking Like rough to deal with are when you try to chain, when you one, use it, when you connect with it, you try to connect as low as possible on the person's body, right? So, it's- I'll do it on this.

Yeah, so the lower you connect, the safer you're gonna be. If they block it higher, then you get more punished, right? That's your tip if you're connecting, but the best thing that you can do with it is fake a jump and then dive down to cancel it and then someone commits to an anti-air action and they completely now they're fucked, right? I've had, I've seen and had happened to me attempts at anti-airing, Jamie jumping in, where he just goes, nope, I'm back on the ground and you're like, well, now my level three is coming out.

You know. So what you're saying is that instead of using it as a dive kick, I should be using it as like an air crouch. It's a bait tool and a plus frame tool. Okay, so I will reiterate, his dive kick is one of the worst dive kicks I've ever seen in the game in terms of dive kicking at people Like a dive kick, but that's what okay, but what I described is what all dive kicks end up being most useful as That's their application. I don't remember young coming at me with faints

I remember young dive kicking the shit out of me and complying me off as dive kick. But if you blocked a young dive kick high enough, you're supposed to punish it, right? They're all about this, that utility case I'm talking about. And like, especially if you're really unsafe after you, I've, like, basically you have to, what you do to adjust to it is walk forward and force yourself to force it to happen. So you block it higher, you know, and then you have to be a little bit smarter about your placement of it. But dive kick, the joke of the game dive kick is like is based around the idea

that characters with dive kicks are incredible because they always are. Then eight, the ability to just change your jump arc and then be kind of safe at the tip is the thing to do, you know, it's kind of like a slide where like slides are always really strong, but you want to make sure you learn how to use it at the tip, right? So that's the application. You can't just jump in with it. You can't just jump in with it. You can't jump in with it.

You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it.

You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in. You can't jump in with it. You can't jump in. You can't jump in. You can't jump in. and a different part of your brain says no, don't. And then a third part of your brain says no, actually, go for it. Yeah. That just happened with me as I started to open my mouth and go, dive kick should beat anti-airs. Dive kick. Dive kick. Right.

What if I dive kick and they hit a button, I should win. win and also here's another factor as well when you're thinking about third straight right you'd have young jumping in on you and doing Wild shit so then young jumps in to do the dive kick right and you're like fuck you young I'm sure you can you and young's like hi I didn't dive kick shit air-pare fucking whatever is going on you know like whatever is going on bullshit You can you can you can just do nothing in some cases and elicit nothing and use like dive kicks are Unbelievable because they change your trajectory. Yeah, and in Rufus. Remember what Rufus was all about I do Like this being the ugliest character ever in Street Fighter watch your toes Hey, so I will actually say like pulling back from my inner scrub Though there's a one specific interaction with Jamie's dive kick that makes me like go crazy because it looks so stupid

and that is like Forget who's not I think is one of Jury's normals or like I'll dive kick to hit someone's feet and then Jury will throw out like a low medium kick and our toes will touch and I will lose and I'm like that feels like bullshit. So Jury has like some privileges as well as one of the best characters for sure. But like something that you that is also important to know is that every air action in the in the game that you can do when you get hit

out of it, not air normals, but air special moves, you get put into a forced knockdown is what it's called. And that's essentially the juggle state that means you can get comboed into or whatever if someone knows it's coming. So the trade-off for a lot of people that can do air shit, like Dawson can float and teleport and do bunch of drills and all the things at you, but if you ever hit him,

then you can get a juggle out of it, like almost tech-in style, you know So this is one method of balancing how good it is to have a dive kick You know Yeah, man, what's an interesting discussion that keeps seeing Like you know a lot everybody agrees that like Ken's really good I think that's a like a fucking universal really good. I think that's like a fucking universal. And everybody and everybody agrees that Zangief and Lily are not great. They might not be the worst, but they're definitely

not good, right? Jerry's good and Cammy's good, you know, etc. I'm seeing like I've got to the street fighter Reddit and I'm seeing like the the angriest arguments I have ever seen about a street fighter game where people are saying Jamie is good versus Jamie is bad Yeah, and just getting like real aggro like real mad. I it's it's it's it's such a hard thing because people like man like there are points where a Character can be good or bad, but it doesn't matter to you because you're

not there. Like the skill level is not there yet. Like you can run away with matches, with lily, geef, at this point, depending on, like, it depends on where you're at online. But to people who are fighting with each other, if someone's coming at it from a point of you, like, like actually I have Like I'm we're using all the tools and all the answers and Someone else is like oh well. I don't fight in a way that uses all the tools and all the answers and that's why

The results are stacked the way they are you know Again, I might the point to bring up is like Jamie's Jamie has a ton of incredible shit That if you don't know how to deal with it if you don't know where you just to put a button out you're gonna just get rocked by it. Drive rush fucking stand punch. Buh-buh-buh. It's so unstoppable. It's so good. It's so good. It's so great. Yeah, you got, yeah, you're 1, 2, 3. It's right, it's a drive rush so you get the extra 4 frames on it. And then you try and drive it. You just blow it through your armor. You just have to hold it, you know what I mean.

And like there's like a lot of things like that where you're just like, oh, what is, what am I even trying to do here? How do I shut this down? And like if you, but that even applies to like Ken as well where like you might be- Everything applies to Ken. Everything applies to Ken, right?

So like there's some, but there's like crucial pieces of information where it's like, if you're not using this as a part of your matchup, your assessment of this is not, it's incomplete, right? So, when Ken does, what he does, what is it? His, Genri kicks, right? There's a point where you can, you can basically, if it's the light version, where he does the little low at the end.

Oh, dude, that's the most frustrating fucking thing in the world. Oh my God. Right. So there's a point where, if he does the light version, the first, the first kick into the into that is an airtight situation. And if he does the, the medium or the heavy, there's a gap in between where you can drive impact and it'll always work.

Right. So what you're, what you kind of do in this little situation is he does the first kick. You see it happen. you start matching drive impact, right? And then if there's a gap, it'll go through and blow and beat up his medium or heavy version, or if he's doing the light version, it won't come out because the light version is airtight. And then you stop matching drive impact as soon as the light version happens. All right, all right. And then you block it and then you can punish that, right?

So like there's little moments like that where you have to do a one second, like, oh, all right. And then you block it and then you can punish that, right? So like there's little moments like that where you have to do a one second, like, oh, blow up, nope, stop. And like this is a crucial way to like finding out how good this character can be or not, because how many situations like that are in the matchup. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start playing the new character that's really fast

so that I can learn stupid bullshit that people don't know how to deal with and then rise up into diamond and then go look I'm good at street fighter and then quit the game forever. I'm stoppable. Yeah. No one has time to learn how to block this mix up. I'm trying to make it to master. I think I can do it. But I'm certainly... Is it Diamond the Master? Yeah, exactly. So I'm currently a Diamond 3. And it's getting real real at a certain point, though.

Like I just, I currently am looking at though a general upward trajectory. So it feels like it's gonna happen within, you know, within reach, but there's little things like where I'm like, okay, I can't just look at the five cans I just fought in a row and go run the anti-flow chart because this is not early Street Fighter 4 Ken flow chart sure you this is not that in this kind of wild how there's still a Ken flow chart and I'm see I have I'm played some diamond

cans and like they're still flow charting they there is there is still like but there is a like just because I know the flow charge there doesn't mean that it's easy to beat. Oh, it's awesome actually. It's a good flow chart. Yeah. Um, so here, let me bring something up all around the topic. Uh, so there is a really great video, um, by Brian F. Uh, shout out to Brian F, because he makes a lot of great finding him content.

And this is a video called your rank is accurate And this was made this was made two years ago. This is made in Street Fighter 5 and he was basically and he's basically describing how When you are Watching a player who you're like this is a good player or you're like I'm a solid player. I know how to like Well, we're out of that. And then someone just starts going crazy and doing bullshit on you. And you're like, you're like, fuck me. I why did I lose to that bullshit, right?

That's one of the most frustrating feelings when you're playing against people online is, I know that I'm more solid than you. Why can't I handle the crazy shit you're doing? And it's a really great way of kind of like breaking down the idea that like, well, the person who you're losing to right there is actually they know how to do combos and they learn they not do things with their character. The problem is that they're just going all in on the gamble every single time. They're not good at playing cards. They're they're betting all in

every chance they get and every time you take it every time you try to play a little bit of push and pull, they're gonna steamroll. But that person in other matches that are not against you is losing just as badly because they're leaving the whole game up to what the dealer has dealt them, right? So if you just wanna play blind blackjack or blind poker and go, I don't know. I don't care

I'm going all in and then let's see what happens You're gonna get that win and loss ratio reflective of whatever the cards were you were dealt Which means I didn't go all in you know and yeah And and if you like to go all in you're gonna get the the ratio that is like well luck will be in your favor or not You're gonna get steamrolled and you're gonna do steamrolling because it just works out that way sometimes. But like the consistent quote unquote player, that's the more well-wanted player, like they're going to lose way more often because they haven't put as much into their offense stat. If you were to put a little, you know, like, whatever, uh, uh, like octagon chart of skills, you know,

like they, they didn't put as much into their offense. That is that Ken fucking did who's a spike there, but has nothing else. Has no defense, has no, uh, uh, uh, uh, attacking ability whatsoever. Whatever, whatever. You're lower. You're more well-rounded. That's a basis that you can build off of that in the long term. As you improve, you will be a more solid player until you become very good. And you have all of your bases covered, but the person who spikes in in that one

direction is going to ride that wave and hit a wall. And that's beat that'll be the end of it because they're not varying what they're doing and people that know how to deal with that will no longer be threatened by it. Right. So I'm going to play Rashid and I'm going to go fast. I gave, I gave another example of this in the form of the Sage Amp story about the wrestler that he, that knew that one move, that beat everybody in the first year. And then Sage Amp was like, I don't know what to do.

I can't beat that one move. And he lost constantly. And that this one guy did the one move, carried him through the whole first year, what all his matches hit second year wrestling. And everyone knew how to handle that shit. guy did the one move, carried him through the hole for his year, what all his matches, hit second year wrestling, and everyone knew how to handle that shit. He couldn't win anymore, you know, versus someone who had the basis for strength that could then build on top of it.

So like you're gonna, that strength of the player that is doing just a crazy show or you can just not all stop, not day. Like that is what the ranking is, it reflects the luck they've been given, and that's an accurate thing. But and the player who's losing more often but trying to be more solid is just you're looking at a seed that can grow into something really, really strong, but it has to get there if you know, you're going to keep that trajectory going. But going all in all the time is a product of, you know, doing whatever

the fucking Vegas gods have determined your day is going to be like, you kind of are missing one factor, which is the act of getting good at a fighting game is there's always odds because I never know fully 100% what you're about to do and you never know what I'm about to do. But it's the act of bending those odds in my favor more often. And if you're not doing that, there's a hard limit to how good you can get. Hey, you know, the old thing of like, I didn't buy this game to block,

like mentality, right? Like, I will admit, I will absolutely fall into in like uncomfortable, neutral spaces. Like I did not pick this character so I could stand around and not push buttons. Right, right. I wanna push a button. If I'm not pushing a button, I'm thinking about pushing a button.

And I'm getting impatient, because I wanna hit a button. So I've seen all kinds of players come into the scene and some of them start that way and then go a certain amount or they are used to playing online. So that's how they're that's how they fight everyone. And then you realize at a certain point, oh, there's a limit to this, right? And then you have a choice to make and you go, do I want to work through that? Or do I want to avoid it? And I've seen both happen where some people will be like, okay, let me go back to the drawing board a little bit. And like, I can choose when to turn on the wild mode and when to turn it off and see if that helps. Or I've seen players that are like, no, I'm just going to stay that way. And their win rate stayed the same. And

like nothing. I would like to improve my own gamentals, please. Well, um, gamentals do require you to make some reads, you know, to pay attention to what the opponent's doing. But if you treat, but like the situation I'm describing is one where you treat your opponent like a combo dummy, where you just completely disregard whatever they're doing because your game plan is the only one that matters. It's a one-player game. I think I think I if I'm gonna be totally honest, I would rather

Instead of me getting good, I would rather everyone else just get worse. Yeah, yeah, I get that. I get that I would like to hit a button and just move some IQ points off everybody else. Well, you know, unfortunately men people are Fucking good and they have better reactions and they have better reads, you know, and for me Especially I know that I'm like, okay, all right Honda. I know what you're about I know what you're doing. I'm not afraid of it. Let's get it over with this is exhausting I'm gonna sit here and watch you head, but all day, and I'm gonna just shut them down. And then like within about, you know,

first 20 seconds, maybe, I'm like, oh, oh, you're not doing that, you're playing, okay. Let's have a match. And I can start walking forward and we can have a set, you know? But like, if I sit back and I, and I literally had a match two days ago where the entire full set was just headbutt, headbutt, headbutt, and you're like,

you really, you just, you're either like, you're playing the one player game right now, or like you got your result after your placement You got here and then you're trying to hold on to that But you're not too sure what else to do right now. So you're you know what I mean you're like you're just I'm a I'm a do what got me through my placements And I know hope for the best you know But yeah, it's like when there is nothing but a headbutt coming out, you're like, okay, got it.

There's, there's zero plan B. Um, what does that person do when you're around down and a half? You've done headbutts, you've lost all of the exchanges. Maybe I should get back up and headbutt again. I just saw somebody in the chat say playing blocker rules because you get to press four buttons and figure out whether or not your opponent even knows the matchup at all. Dude, I mean, it is a thing. It is a thing to be like, there's so many moments with Blanca where you're like, does he know? Oh, he doesn't know Like they're just like the jungle we're going in

To it for mama and like but then the moment the match starts it's like does he know fuck he knows Coward crouch get away he knows In in a world in which I cannot make other people worse rather than getting better. I will now switch to a character that people deal with more badly than the character I play now, thus emulating them getting worse. Whatever your journey of growth is, it is valid. As long as it is a decision to not stay in the same place. Yeah, that's that's all it is, you know. But yeah, man, so we we did learn the Dalsam matchup and we did learn how to handle it.

And I learned some really solid tips for fighting Dalsam that helped me when I fought them again online. Some, you know, find a nice, fast, heavy button and try to trade with him his limbs that they're coming in and then drive rush in and blow his zaz up. You know, make sure you're throwing those out because once he sees that, he's going to be afraid of that and he'll start off switching to riskier stretchy limbs, you know. There's like big, there's like low-risk stretchy limbs that can be canceled out of, and then there's high-risk ones.

But once you start checking the low-risk ones, you'll be like, oh, I gotta mix it up more with the high-risk ones, and then those ones you can jump in on and shit like that. It's a good video. Okay, keep an eye out for it. We're gonna have drive sessions coming out with, yeah, two videos featuring our DT in World Tour mode. All I gotta say is

pan-cration was originally meant to be performed in naked So if you've met Marissa, then you're deep into the absolute height of how stupid that mode gets, which is deep into the absolute height of how stupid that mode gets, which is, you gotta get us that bag back. All right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna travel the world to build my own fake Gucci. Yep. And, and I'm gonna help you, I'm gonna help you with your counterfeit jewelry with, with, I'm by making my own artisanal counterfeit, because I believe in your fists, even though you wanna make fake easies. I believe there's justice at the end of those fake easies, so I'm gonna help you.

Whatever, man, we are all the way in, and I'm just, I'm happy to see that Marissa is just as wild and fucking out there and mad thirsty as We are to her and at the same time. There's a little cat. There's a little fan right next to her That's just sitting there going oh man. I want to lick those abs and Capcom new to place the all the energy of the audience in this just simple girl standing right by going, oh, it's great. And they, yeah, I can also see it from the way things are going that they're not

wasting too much time introducing you to, you know, like, hey, you want to go hang out with your buddies? All right, you know, go find your Street Fighter main. We don't want to hold back too long before like, Hey, you want to go hang out with your buddies? All right. You know, go find your sheet fighter main. We don't want to hold back too long before you can choose who you want to spend time with and get in text from. Zangie's really late and it pissed me off really bad. Okay. My guess was Honda was going to be late, you know, but yes, it's anybody's guess really. But so far, they started throwing them at me.

I hope you don't, uh, hope you don't want to play JP. Yeah, well, villain, right? That makes sense. That's even once in the world tour mode. That that makes sense. That, you know, um, though it's kind of nuts that you can like go study under Lily and then immediately just get extra range because you're using her fighting style, no matter what your size already was

I don't know the fighters fucking do this just pick up a pick up some sticks, bro I really don't like the limitation on move overlaps because of it's water that sucks cuz now you really can't Do you can't do anything you're you are limited to not overlap, you know, and I'm like ah So like I at the end of world tour I was like overwhelmed by like yeah, this is a cool mode not overlap, you know? And I'm like, ah! So like, at the end of World Tour, I was like overwhelmed. But like, yeah, this is a cool mode. And it's, you know, it's a good single-player mode for a fighting game. But at the end of the day, I was frustrated

because like, no matter how much time I put into my created character, like they always felt like shit compared to the bespoke real characters. Yeah, well, it's like because as well, like any moves that are unique inputs have the benefit of being free, you know? So like if you got it down, down,

or a flash kick motion, well, why the fuck not, you know, like throw something in there, but all the quarter circles and quarterbacks that you want are, you have to pick between the water too, you know, so I mean I I I I understand if there was a self-balancing thing for it but I kind of assumed it was like well this is balls to the wall fuck that you know Yeah in any case That's a good time

Yeah, and so you know this week we're going to resume with all that and the World Tour play through continues sponsored by Snackbox. Oh yeah, I got a raffle going on my Twitter right now if you want to win a chance at one of those Snackboxes. So take a look there. But we're going to be continuing with World Tour, FF16, and I have a special, we're doing a sponsored stream this Thursday for Double Dragon Guiden, and I'm also going to take a look at Crash Team Rumble.

So we're going to do a double. Is that an old game or a new game? That's a new game that's a new game is that crash team racing was the older game crash team rumble is the one that just came out wait is that a racing game no it's a team based thing oh didn't that like fucking horribly bomb and die right away I don't know what's going on I saw it like launched and had like 12 viewers on Twitch for like its entire first day Did it yeah?

Ooh Hmm it's a mober is it? Okay, I got a mober. You know what hair. Let me let me do some research. Let me do some more research. Let me figure out what's going on Let me take a look at the situation and see what's happening behind the scenes and I'll I'll update you guys on oh I'm sorry. Did you say it was sponsored? Oh yeah, it's it's fine. You know whatever. Um oh no, no that game looks great Yeah, it's fine. You know whatever. Oh, no, no, that game looks great We'll see we'll see what that game looks awesome you should do it and

Uh Yeah, I'm excited Yeah, so we're gonna take a look at some stuff on Thursday And then I think I'm waiting on a confirmation of an event, but if it's not happening, then we'll be doing another Wally versus whatever on the weekend. So come hang out. It'll be a good time. All right, let's take a quick break.

I'm excited. I'm going to be playing Double Dragon Guided. We're going to have a game. We're going to play some Double Dragon Gu dragon guided and we'll see what's up. And anything else on the schedule, we'll just, I don't know, we'll see. I'll keep posted to my Twitter where we'll find out what the schedule will be like as well as who's gonna win that snack box. That's what you should do. Yeah.

Would it be outrageous if you were like, Reggie won the snack box. Isn't that crazy? There was, so of the random draws, the one I did on the Reddit, there was some of them were like, there's like the grand prize and there's like the discounts. And one of the codes did like get randomly picked by,

I think it was Manita. and I was like yo random draw You got one you what could I say you know random But what that's it. I'm like yeah, I have I have the entire fucking Video of the random select and the pulling of the you can it's all there like they know Ain't no they know I know I know people that are like, yo, any employee discounts, I'm like, sorry man, it is what it is. Beat the odds, you know? But, um,

or let's say, let's say quick break, I'm gonna piss myself. Excuse me. All right. Quick word for my sponsors. Did you change microphones? Hmm? This is louder.

Oh, maybe, maybe this is me. I'll just turn you down a bit. I'm weird. Okay, nevermind. Anyway, quick word from our sponsors. This week... What do we got? What do we got?

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So it lets her avoid the horrible noise of this podcast. It's not something you want in your life every week willingly. Dabination be upon those who do. Thanks, Raycon. Thank you, Raycon. OK. Yo, do you want to talk about the enhanced games, enhanced. He's the fastest man in the world. Oh, yeah, I want to. He has broken Usain Bolt's 100 meter record, but the world isn't ready

for him. The Olympics hate him. Come and watch him compete at the 2024 enhanced games. So the dark Olympics rises. So this is a this is a drug Olympics. That they're going to have supposedly and they're going to see just how fast human beings can go. And I was really excited. I was really excited until I actually clicked, I went to their Twitter page and I looked them up and they have a website and I looked up, you know,

hey, the poster you're talking about, this man is so fast. It's a picture of a guy with his fucking face covered. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then like you go in, you click through the net thread and you find the most bizarre back and forth from whoever's running the Dark Olympics Twitter account because everyone's like who the fuck are you talking about? Who is this?

Why are you lying? And they go, well, we're protecting, we're protecting their anonymity so that they're not ostracized by world sporting events, organizations, and then the responses, but they're gonna compete in your event in public, right? Like, everyone's fucking no. And they're like, and then like, it's just back and forth over and over and over.

And it makes me think this whole thing is a massive racket wrong because we've already solved this problem. Clearly this unknown mysterious racer, this hero, this dark horse of the dark Olympics, can wear a goddamn char, zex-markies mule of ragamask racer x mask and mask his identity while competing we've already been over this anime has taught us about runner x and and the truth that can be hidden from those who can't handle it and if you're thinking oh okay hold on, fuck you,

woolly, we know that's your stupid anime, that's your stupid Gundams and your speed racers. Well, yeah, you're forgetting about the masked magician who came on Fox to broadcast the truth behind magic, magic exposed back in the day. And there was a magician who he had to hide his identity the truth behind magic, magic exposed back in the day. And there was a magician who he had to hide his identity because he was being threatened by the magicians

that were unhappy that he was gonna reveal their tricks. And he would go out to explain every trick and then show you the truth behind the trick back in the day. And it was, it's basically like, what in the day and it was it's basically like what if the pen and teller fool us a bit didn't have an ounce of fucking class about how they were handling the situation but he kept his identity masked until he didn't and he revealed who he was you know what he thought the the when he thought it was time to show the world the truth. So you know, we can do this. We can get the costumes

ready and hide the identity of our racers at any athlete that wants to compete in these Dark Olympics while they juice themselves up to fucking shit. I feel like let's say this, I feel like let's say the Dark Olympics go forward. First of all, I'm all for it. Do it. I feel like I'm going to watch it and I'm going to be disappointed that they are not juiced. Not enough, not enough. Right.

Right. Like I want, I want people that are visibly suffering from the negative effects of steroid abuse, just like, like being wheeled out to the track before they burst off in a flash or speed. I mean, look, I'm saying that as long as you find whatever corner of the world where the medical profession will give it the okay to run your NFL blitz league or whatever the fuck you're basically doing here. Just commit to it, right? And commit

to if the identity wants to be hidden, I allow that to be the bit. So for example, if I were to ask you, do you know know are you familiar with? Rod smart You know who that is no, okay? Perhaps you might know him as his other name he hate me I've heard of that you remember he hate me that's super familiar, but it's ringing a bell He hate me from the XFL the name of his on his jersey was he hate me and Everyone remembers he hate me, right? I remember I do The end you you'll never forget you don't know who Rod Smart is

This is what we can do build the character Build the character get the K-fabe going Lean all the way in I want to see I Want to see like, Freakazoids, like, I want to see somewhere. You know what? If it's the Dark Olympics, I want shades of like, UUHK shows Dark Tournament. Okay. I want to see like, Togro Hanma. like to grow Hanma. What? Walking out with too many bones.

You can't. And I need, I need, I want them to be yelling at each other that they don't have to drug test so that they, they need the urine to escape the twisted podrahedron. You can take the signing of the waiver and make that an in the ring event like the side the contract signing You can list the terms of all the things they're agreeing to forfeit the rights to Of their fucking safety and survival and you can turn that into a goddamn spectacle and you know what?

It might be time. It might be time It might be what the world needs right now. A little bit of distraction. A little bit of dark Olympics to brighten your day. Okay, so there's something here that you might not be aware of. Well, are you aware that in the special Olympics, there are jumpers and some very specific types of sprinters in track and field that actually beat like regular athlete times. That's crazy.

I didn't know that. It's the guys with below knee amputations. They use those, they use the sprinting legs that are like a big semi-circle. Okay. Yeah, the curve. Yeah, I've seen it. And boy, you can fucking bust on those. You can call.

Amazing. But now I'm thinking of like, what if we had like, like, like a human muscle, but then they have their freak legs, and then they have the semi, the blade legs, just attached to their feet. I see. So they're like 11 feet tall.

So it's not, this is not a, it's necessarily the special Olympics as much as is. I've elected to enhance, I've handsered myself into a faster runner. I want to see the end of the combination of technology and genetic experimentation. Well, the number one reply under the introductory

tweet of the enhanced games is enhanced disable games. Do that one too, right? And wait, so like the Paralympics, but also no rules, but also enhanced. I mean, the sky is the limit the Sky we can go anywhere we want to once we've decided to throw ethics and morality out the fucking window We can go anywhere, baby. Let's hook up a V6 to your wheelchair, sir We can get fucking let's get the IV

Prepacked onto you and just remember remember in Starcraft You'd click the button and you just get shhh, ah yeah get that Stimpak going oh yeah You get the Stimpak you can just have that right and if you're in last place you need a Stim baby You can have someone on the side that just remotely controls that shit activate It just right in and crank it. You know, you can have pit stops effectively without needing pit stops in the middle of a race. You can bane yourself to first place.

You know what I want? So like I'm thinking of Toe Grow, I'm thinking of like, you know, Bucky, right? But what I want in this competition, I want that moment where like somebody gets a hold of Bane's venom dial and my fucking breaks it off. Right? And he starts becoming like a human muscle and like contorting into himself. I want to see that guy throw a shot put. I want to see I normalization of the athlete that scores is just walking

out of the end zone or past the finish line with just stains of brown and yellow all over their pants because the process of amplifying and juicing themselves that hard meant they had to release everything. And it's just, and it's that, that just becomes the norm because the human body can't handle it. It's gonna get fucking weird. It's the only way to win. How bad did you want it? Man, the enhanced games guys. The enhanced games, guys. Fuck performance enhancing drugs and everything about,

the, we're gonna look at Barry Bonds and Lance Armstrong. And we're gonna be like, okay, but remember how hype it was when everyone was in on it, though, remember when everyone was just, I'm just thinking of the cybernetic muscle freak showing up and then like, you know, you said the signing of the waiver is part of it. And then the event start and was like, what the athletes don't know is a dependent paper

for you to sign that waiver was coated with a special concoction of angel dust and methenphetamine Let's see how they like it. Here comes the shop put Yeah, absolutely not man. Just DMT triple jump, you know Like you specifically have to be confirmed in the middle of your trip to do your to get your triple jump going We are we're we're approaching welcome to the cocaine triathlon We are yeah, yeah, so Stay tuned

Keep your eyes out out on the enhanced games. There will be no more announced plans, but so far they're starting out with track and lifting gymnastics combat sports. Hmm. Combat sports. 2024 will be the year we make contact. I feel I feel like the combat sports is the part where because there's going to be a moment where they're saying, this is the Olympics with no rules. And then somebody goes really no rules. And then they do something and they're like okay, maybe some rules Megalo box just walks into the ring

Yeah, yeah, all right. I'm boxing sir. You are head to toe in full plate armor. Yeah, I'm boxing Kableau God and it's just like we've learned We've learned the hard way many a time that like, mother fuckers are down to die to get that fucking dub. They'll do it. You know, like the regulation is not based on the idea that like, they're not gonna do it. And, you know, people are gonna be saying about this. No, given the chance, fucking all in, you know, so yep There you go

Exciting we will we will find out soon. We'll find out very exciting All right in the meantime On the other side of things, as we basically enter modern Olympic Coliseo gladiatorial games, hey, would you like to fuck a bear? No, well, the question is whether or not I'd like them to bear it a fuck me. Well here now, would you like to be a bear and do the fucking? I don't know This is a tough question. Why do you bring it up, woolly? Well because the answer can be found in the heart of Baldur's Gate 3 We saw a demo this week that showed off some of the the

Druid romance options and the the various things you can do. One scene of which involved the ability to and apparently this is it's it's gated out by a couple of checks. So you know you have to really opt in if you want to go this road. Yeah, so did you actually watch the demo? It's not the full demo. No, I just saw the moment. I guess it's like, it's really funny. So what happens is you're like, I'm about to have some gay sex with this elf man, right? And elf man gets all like, and he fucking just turns in, we're bare, just straight up.

And then he pulls it back and he's like, hey, sorry man, when a, you know, when a guest's fucking excited, you know, when it gets fucking Excited, you know the bear shit comes out. You hit with a dialogue tree, which is like It has the four options one of which is like Yeah, yeah, okay do it and then option two is like, you know what? No, let's fine. Let's just do it the normal way. Right. And then the third one is like back out, like of the whole encounter. Before I forget what was right.

And so he then sets next step. He explains, well listen, it could be like really intense and large. And number one on that dialogue tree is large is what I'm here for. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha you're seeing what the bear will just walk and all it up. And, you know, a missionary seems to be the way we're going to start this. Yeah, they cut the they cut hard cut of that cut scene for for the stream. Hard cut to a chipmunk dropping its acorn chipmunk squirrel dropping its acorn. And and that's that's the possibilities that await you in Baldur's gate.

So, um, so I'm'm gonna tell you one thing. That has increased this game's list on my priority of things to check out. Baldur's Gate was already a curiosity from when we first talked about how awesome those dialogue options were from way back went in the early access. I always wrote it down and it was like that sounds fucking amazing. But this is now way up on the list of curiosities. So that was part of what they called it,

the panel from hell, which was like what a bunch of fucking dorks. Like, they, all the devs on that panel, they did like a four hour panel, they all dressed up like their D&D characters to do the panel. And what, like, what a cute thing to do, what a massive mistake in terms of presenting a panel massive mistake in terms of presenting a panel because the main presenter

was wearing full plate and his fucking pin was lapel oh Jesus every time he like slightly moved you would hear like clank clank of plate Didn't think it through I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it.

I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I kind of shit that you can expect in the full game. And so they showed off, there's controller support, they showed off actually wandering around, Baldur's Gate, they showed off a bunch of miscellaneous features. And then the big one, the one that's everybody's talking

about with the bare fucking is they showed off the romantic options in the game. And they made the claim that it's like the deepest, most interesting romantic options that's ever been in a game. And they specifically had a, I don't know what to call it, like if it was on Twitter, it would be a sub-tweet, but just like a side-eye dig at Mass Effect, or even Baldur's Gate

1 and 2, and so they were saying like, just because you do the quest doesn't mean you get to have sex with the character. Because love is more than that. And they basically describe how you'd be interacting with those characters over the entire game and dealing with their approval and what not. Going out on fucking dates. I like that. I also heard about the, there's an in-game newspaper that reacts to your choices, but you can break into the office and control the press.

Why not? That's definitely a thing. I know. They also showed off just a ton of shit. Game looks super, super, super, super impressive. And they also talked about what's actually in it. Like they describe that they've planned for reactivity for bizarre race class combos like race class combos that are weird and uncommon okay uh all sorts of mechanical shit that

I'm not even a bother into going into um then I talked about like how big the game is um and um it's like you know the every now and then the RPGs tend to have like the prestige RPGs so like you'll have your Skyrim come out and then your Witcher 3 will come out. They're definitely aiming for this one because the game is being estimated by their internal playtesters at 75 to 100 hours at main story. God damn. And they say for completionists that would run around 200, but let's ignore the completionist number because that's always for psychos. Mm-hmm. Let's drill that down to 150.

And for your personal context, woolly. Do you know what game doing all the side quests is approximately 150 hours long? To Final Fantasy 16. The Mass Effect Trilogy. Ah. All of them. Okay.

They appear to be attempting to make a fucking trilogy of games. Now, I thought the one. Now, if I'm not mistaken, there was a feature as well that I believe I heard about here. I believe Baldur's Gate 3 features a split-screen co-op, does it not? It does.

Absolutely feature-splitzing co-op. That's interesting. I wonder how so features the online co-op. I wonder how the dialogue choices and story and stuff are handled by those types of I can tell you Who activated the dialogue problem? Ah, is how is that works? Okay, okay. Right. Yeah. The way that it generally works is that one person, so like say you were to start a game, right? This is the Wally Steam account, right?

Game, right? When you're on split screen co-op, what you do is you go into formation and you select player two controls this character or this character or this character or these two or these three Right and then you divvy up who is actually controlling what but who is actually running the who is actually running the the the show is gonna be Almost entirely defined by who actually walks up to and talks to the NPC by who actually walks up to and talks to the NPC across the boundary threshold. So characters can move independently of each other

and they can also break each other's proximity with a split screen. And in that case, events will occur to whoever touches them. It works the same way as Divinity II, original sin, sorry, Divinity original sent to did but but progress is marked by whichever of the two brings it to that point that then the then for both of you it's locked in Yeah, so the way that Divinity original sent to worked you do all sorts of stupid zany shit where player one would get into a

Conversation and then PC and be talking but player one would get into a conversation and then PC and be talking, but player two would exist outside that conversation box and could pick pocket people because their view was in one direction, or like Alpha Strike, the people talking with a fireball, because they were locked into a set position. All sorts of stupid shit like that. like a fireball because they were locked into a set position. All sorts of stupid shit like that. Hell areas.

Yeah, okay, that's something. That's something. They also showed off, so the way that it worked in Divinity is kind of similar how they're working here is that the first six or seven party members are called origin characters. And what that is is like six or seven party members are called origin characters. And what that is is like, will he listen? Maybe you have no creativity in your brain at all.

And you're like, I will never be able to make a cool character with a cool backstory in the character creator. I would rather play one of the characters on the box. Mm-hmm. And if you play one of the characters on the box, instead of their side quests being a thing you would do, they would become your character's main quest.

Whoa! And interactions between you and a side character would then become like voiced. You become that person. So like the bear fucking scene is between a party member and a party member But in that scene the elf guy is Being controlled by the player character because they chose that as the right you get to be an NPC if you oh wow That's really interesting so huh they realized well that kind of means that a completely Custom character is missing out yeah, right because they don't have fully realized things with their back. So what they did is they made a

race and class agnostic background Which is called the dark urge which is the other big thing that they showed off So the bear fucking thing is the thing that got all the play, but the Dark Urge is much more interesting. So the Dark Urge is a backstory you can apply to anybody and it turns your creative character into an origin character that has their own backstory, their own storyline, blah, blah, and the Dark Urge is, you don't know what your backstory is, but you will be constantly, constantly prompted in dialogue

to attack everyone around you and murder them and be in their blood. Jesus Christ, okay. So, they had a demonstration where when you meet the wizard and act one, he's got his arm out of a portal and he's going, ah, help me out here. And what you do is you go up to him and you pull him out of the portal and then the wizard joins your party, right? The dark urge character gets multiple new options for that interaction

The first of which is daydream about chopping the arm off and drinking the blood Jesus Christ. And your vision faded to red and And they picked it and your vision faded to red and When you snapped out of it you had in fact done that in front of the party and then gained the item wizard arm Shit damn, okay, it is it is a canonical murder hobo background You know the murder hobo trope of D&D characters sure, yes, and by extension really just the way that gamer plays the player character Yeah, and you can also reject all of the Nightmare murder urges and also

I don't know how to explain this to people because they're treating it like a secret But it's the worst secret I've ever seen. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 dealt exclusively with the progeny of Ball, the Lord of Murder in D&D. All the evil sigils they show around the Dark Urge trailer are the symbol of Ball. Got it. And so it is the thematic Character sequel to BG 1 and 2 where you're still dealing with Balls evilness and whatnot. I guess the only question is like, you know Does any given NPC like are the stories kind of like equivalent to how interesting they are to each other or you know? I mean, I wouldn't

be able to tell you until the game is actually. That's really cool though. That's an incredible way to go about things and yeah, I looking at how insane that those quests are, looking at how much things are like able to be broken or how you could interrupt with things and it's not another one of those games where in the D&D-ness of it, you can fuck over a quest line, kill somebody, whatever the consequences are gonna interrupt you. Like, you kind of just have to be like, yeah, so don't play for completion, certainly. Play for the run you get, and that's what you get, you know, that would be the obvious kind of way to go to it. Um, what will be unto you, you two ye who are like, uh, I hope will he never ever looks at this game because, uh, sorry, I'm interested. Too late, mother, I've seen everything. And yeah, you did. It is a, it is a fucking, it is a, it is a, is

a incredibly like, uh, okay, you know, do you know anything about what you're to?'s kind of a pull but I'll get there the things you've said over the years Okay, so in which or two you did act one and at the end of act one you made a choice and what happened was is that like a full 30% of the game the act to would be in a completely different area with completely different characters is completely different everything right and it's probably the biggest amount of like money spent on reactivity ever. So one of the things that they were talking about in the demo is they were showing a very small bit of Act 2, which

is not in the Early Access Build. And they said, OK, so there are a lot of ways to get to Act 2. So for example, what we could have done is we could have travel to this location via the underdark, which is a famous location and in D&D, it's the underneath with all the drought. Okay. Or if we really wanted to, we could have taken a Rocky Mountain pass that has a lot of tough enemies in it. And many people have trouble getting through that. wanted to, we could have taken a Rocky Mountain pass that has a lot of tough enemies in it,

and many people have trouble getting through that. And those are mutually exclusive ways to the act 2 location. And they've described that there's a bunch of that in the game as well, where there are like one off mutually exclusive sequences or areas or encounters. So they're building it for like max, max replayability. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's exactly it. I, the full disclosure, I saw a discussion where people were like, oh, the indecision of how I want to go about completing everything in the first run would make this like a horrible unwatchable

mess. And I'm like, no, if the game is all about the consequences, you would have to just stop and accept that you're doing a wild run where you don't get to see everything. And that's exactly it, you know, you can't really accept it. And realistically speaking, given the nature of like the games I do want to get back to and play and everything like that, I think what I'd probably do is just take a quick look at this for a couple sessions and see how it goes and see what's up. Let me just get my hands on this, take a look, see how fun it is, and get a feel for how it's going. And then, yeah, just try to experience some of what that's about. So, woolly, do you wanna hear some?

So I'm gonna stream this game, right? And so because I'm gonna be streaming this game, I decided to do some mathematics on the game, based on my personal, so I have a lot of experience with Baldur's Gate one and two, right? And for the record, the hour counts we're dealing with is Baldur's Gate three is the equivalent of Baldur's Gate 1 plus 2. Okay. The whole thing. So I ran, I'd like, I know how long my streams are, I know how long I tend

to do Tau Chatton in gameplay and I know how many times I stream week. So I ran the math on it and came to the rough equivalent of a pseudo, you know, main story plus side quest thing would take approximately 35 to 40 separate streams. And that's, and that, and this is really important. That's me by myself chatting with nobody. Right, right. That's me by myself. Yeah chatting with nobody right right just any player to is He's up to 50 60 and and let's add another five for woolly number so I wore like 65 streams and you're and your habit as well as to like Excuse me your habit as well as to like you punch through some dialogue and skip through like blurbs, right? Well, so the way that it the way that it tends to work is that when dialogue is voiced, I'll let it rock and I will read the my dialogue choice I don't read I don't read six dialogue choices. Mm-hmm. That's that's that's oh that's a lot of time

Yeah, so I'll look at the dialogue and I'll make the choice and then I will voice act to the dialogue choice that I'm going with Mm-hmm. I did that for disco and it worked pretty well. Okay But the reason I did the math is like I really want to stream Baldur's Gate 3 and I'm like how long is this gonna? How long am I dealing with and I'm like? Maybe I could clutch it out by December Maybe I and I'm like, maybe I could clutch it out by December. Maybe. I mean, what I, they know that's, it's the, I mean, that's what Baldur's Gate supposed to be, right?

Like just a ridiculously long throw yourself into it forever kind of game. Like when the one and two existed, there were all that the friends I knew that got into them were talking about for a while. Like they were the omnifucking game. So Baldur's Gate 2, as a game that came out in 2000, I cannot. So I'm sure there's people listening to this who played and beat Baldur's Gate 2.

It is impossible to explain to somebody who has not played that game. How much is actually in Baldur's Gate 2 even for a game that came out in 2000. It is the most, like, it was the biggest, most content-filled game up until I think, like, which are three came out, like 20 years later. It is absolutely absurdly huge. And the easiest way that I can explain it is that every single class in Baldur's Gate 2 has their own stronghold side quest in which they either gain access to

and repair the mag the major sanctum. They start running a small town. You become a local paladin and become part of the local paladin cloister. You start up and run the local thieves. Every single class has a gigantic side thing that could be as long as that is just for them. gigantic side thing that could be as long as it that is just for them and That's the kind of thing that you look at in old games from like the odds are earlier You're like I you'd never be able to do that now right takes too takes too much resources is too ridiculous

And then Baldur's gay three is coming in we're gonna do that We're gonna do that in the modern game like context. Yeah. Yeah, that's incredible. Like the trailer they showed off with all the characters smoochin and kissing. Like that's cool. What's more interesting is that every single angle of shot in that trailer is a different type of location. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a bunch of different environments as well. yeah, that I've been so seeing. That's a lot, that's hard. No, I mean, bear fucking aside, like the first thing you told me about the dialogue options way back in the early access was what really

sounded the most incredible, it was just like how varied and how awesome that is. Like, I'm hugely interested in games that offer like massive dialogue variety where the outcome actually changes how things go in a way, you know? And if not that at the very least, you learn more about the world and the lore and all that.

Like so that's, yeah, that's definitely the just a fucking aside bear fucking aside In a big interest a a wildly impressive like smegagame, you know those the cone every now and then So I need to I need to reiterate there's something that I've always said about CRPGs Which I've usually used as good advice, but there's a very strong caveat for this one. I've talked to you, Wully, about Pillars of Eternity, I've talked to you about Baldur's Gate, I've talked to you about Wrath of the Righteous, I've talked to you about Pathfinder, Kingmaker, etc. And every time I talk to you about those, and Witcher, and Cyberpunk, I go, yeah, these games are so impressive, and boy, they're incredible, and they're probably my favorite. But don't play them until two or three years after they come out because they will be getting patches every single.

Early access. Yep. Yep, right. And here's the thing though, and this is the really important thing. That does not apply to Larry in specifically. So Larry and his people made Divinity, original, original, one and Divinity, original,

so to. Okay. Now Baldur's Gate three. The reason why it doesn't apply to them very specifically is they update so hard and for so long that by the time you're ready to play the game, the next one is almost here. So I waited like two years

to play Divinity Original Sin 2. And I, okay, all the patches are done. Okay, I'm getting through it. I'm like halfway through Act 2. And I'm in a Goddamn, people who played that game with the I'm in the dun the dwarven dungeon in act two where they split the party up and I'm on discord and a friend of mine goes yo dude they just announced divinity original sin to enhanced addition. They're going to completely redo all the AI and rewrite the entire fourth act of the game and add 400 changes and improve everything.

And it went, oh, okay. And then I stopped playing it to make the enhanced addition. Yeah, I have never gone back. It's a like, they actually just never stop. I, right. So just play it on launch. And then one, the enhanced addition and 45 extra patches. never stop. I, right. So just play it on launch. Mm-hmm. And then one to enhance the addition

and 45 extra patches and the DLC come out in four years. Fuck and just play it again then. I mean, I just, I, when you, like, I keep saying it, but like, I was interested from, when you first talked about the early access and then it was like, I don't wanna get early access as I have, so I'll wait. And I have waited, and now it's gonna be out.

They've been tried to accommodate for that. Wow, the save saving. No, the saves won't carry over, but they said that there is approximately 30% of that first act is changed or enlarged. Oh, so you don't get the same experience? So it will be a different experience. That's cool.

The pre-events said. That's cool. It's obviously the same bones. It's still the same acting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every five to ten minutes, you encountered a room that had been re-de- Oh, man. I would feel so much better about that. You know, if it was like, Oh, no, no, here we

it is. You did it already, but now it's actually a little different. I'd be like, that's cool. All right. Yeah. That's why they stopped patching the early access version, I think. Gotcha. Okay. They stopped patching that version like nine months ago. Okay. And I think that's because so that they would have stuff. Yeah available. Well look. I mean, you know, I know that like It doesn't feel good that every time I go hey, what's that interesting thing over there? The end the answer immediately is you'll take five years to beat it woolly shut up. That's that's in feel good I don't like that stop for a second. Hey this one this one. Yes You people are like I'm looking at myself in a mirror.

I know. Going, it'll take me half a year to beat it. I know. I know, right? But I'm just saying, like, that's literally anytime I go, hey, what's that? Buh, right? Every time.

It doesn't feel good to literally live my life like that moment to moment with anything. Anytime I drop a title of something, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the eyes roll and the scoffing commences. So whatever, it's just a cynical fucking wall that is always there. That's at the very least where I'm like, well, this is where me taking a look at something for a brief period of time to see how it feels for a chapter or two and, you know, mixing it up and seeing how it goes and stuff would just be like, at least I can get a feel for it

and see how the stuff that is interesting to me is gonna shape up and that way it doesn't have to be like, oh, 2025, you'll hit the credits or whatever, we can just take a look and see how it goes. Can I offer, if you, I mean, you're obviously gonna take a look at it, you seem excited. Yeah. One piece of advice for you.

One, one really, and this is video game, but also stream advice, I would highly suggest to you, one, woolly madden of woolly verses, to prior to your show, spend multiple hours staring at the options in the character creator, because there is a lot in there, and you could easily blow a whole day, just making picking through options. I've definitely taken the opportunity. Yeah, so in recent things, I've taken the opportunity to character create off camera,

you know, and make a recipe. Yeah, so in recent things, I've taken the opportunity to character create off camera, you know, and make a recipe. Yeah, sounds good. Page, when I came over, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, no, uh, it wasn't today, but, um, uh, a couple days ago, I went to take the dog for a walk and Page was like, oh, hey, you mind if I fuck with, uh, Baldur's Gay 3 on your steam? I'm like, yeah, sure. So that she wanted to make a character and just, you know, press buttons, right? I got back from walking the dog and she hadn't even pressed one choice on the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Like like she was on a human character and was looking at the classes, but she hadn't

picked a human character. She just wanted to move the dial over to look at the classes. Episode zero, disco elisium. The whole thing is character creation is the name of the episode it would be that for sure Yeah, yeah, oh also. I don't know if you know this but balsch sk3 has twitch support. Oh Integration. Yeah, switch integration like minor our major Let me let me double track Like are you affecting I believe it is actually fairly simple, similar to the disco elis. Oh, voting choices. Okay.

Nice. Let me take a look. Involve viewers making big decisions, viewers can vote on dialogue choices. In addition, they can interact with your overlay to check out your character stats, inventory, and other critical information without constantly pestering the streamer to check their bags or character sheets. Okay. That's good.

That's the one, right? It's just like, what do I do? What do we do? Decide for me. Yeah, ignore that. Exactly. Well, that's what I was about to say is as much as the fucking the Democratic vote is leading towards the laws, you as a collective

group would never be making as interesting a decision as Red Shepherd would make. You could never dream of being that wild. So fuck you. All the y'all. That's, that's good. Okay. Okay. It good to know, man. Yeah. Yeah. Also, the game is coming coming out so it's coming out like Way early on PC a month early, yeah, so over no here's thing over a month early I didn't know this because anybody who owns the early access gets auto upgraded to Deluxe Edition Which oh, that's a nice thing. That's nice The Deluxe Edition Has the first full act out three days early.

So the game's actually coming out on July 31st. Whoa. Oh wow. Wow. Act coming out in like in two Mondays. Jesus, okay. Yeah. And it's going gonna hit on the console

on the September 6th or whatever, which means that it is now the, oh, not anymore, has that changed, bummer? It has now become the basis of the saddest console war shit ever, as it will only be coming out on the PlayStation and the Starfield on the September 6th is only coming out on the Xbox even though they're both on PC. Well, Master Ace I guess. So the difference is you know what

the funny thing is is they absolutely want to put it on Xbox but the Xbox series S can't handle the split screen. Even with a bad frame rate, it specifically starts to fall apart when characters move just far enough apart that the screen actually splits. And it's the CPU calculations. It's like way too many.

Did you play with the controller? There's no controller support now. Okay. But I did play Divinity original sin 2 with a controller. And it's the way Divinity original sin 2 works, is that it works really, really well. Really, really well. I assume you're lost. You still keep your hot bar, right? Yeah. And with Divina, you just hit like triangle or why, and then you just move around on your hot bar and select things.

I assume the launch will have controller support. Oh, it will. Yeah, it will. It absolutely will. Because I mean, the console version's coming out a little later. Also, there's always controller profiles as well, for even a game that doesn't support it,

someone might have it. Well, absolutely, officially support control. You can see the music and controller in the most recent trailer. And they were using a controller to work the game in the panel they did. Perfect, OK. Like there's a view that's like kind of mass effectie,

like behind the character's shoulders. They show off in the recent trailer that's clearly the controller support. What's, I don't know if it's going to be in there, but like Divinity, original Sintu had the best solution to this problem. So you know, these CRPGs, they have like a million tiny items, like they have like, oh, a shovel here, an apple here, and all this shit and all over the place. And like moving your character and like slightly nudging them in the right direction to highlight these things as massive pain in

Original sin 2 what you did is you held down a or X and a big fucking circle would expand around your character And then when you let it go it gave you an inventory list of everything in your proximity I Need to scroll down and click I, I wanna go to the crate. I wanna get the apple. Nice, that's it. Yeah, that's a similar thing to what we're just describing with bone fucking.

Yeah, very similar. So there, I see folks in the chat saying, hey, I would like to check out Baldur's Gate one or two. Play, okay, either play that game on easy or look up how to make an advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2.0 character in Baldur's Gate because boy, you can make a really, really fucking terrible D&D 2.0 character. Really easy. You've already, you've already said that the, this game is great for jumping in, doesn't matter

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. It's 120 years later. But any references will be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But just on, but just side of the curiosity, like any recommends on a like, here's what happens in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, like video or something like that. You could look that up in like five minutes. Yeah, okay. I could act like Baldur's ball had a bunch of kids and the kids were gonna grow up to be Lord of Murder and the kids all killed each other and then your character killed them all and there was big war and they won. The end. Because I remember when I was like, I was like, oh yeah, Diablo.

Like, let me see what happened in Diablo one just before I even look into this other one and it's the Diablo ones like fucking nothing happened. Like what happened? Diablo one just before I even look into this other one and it's the Diablo ones like Fuckin nothing happens like The warrior the warrior went to the bottom of the dungeon and kill Diablo and put the this the rock in their head They are okay, okay, and bad at the time in summer camp when that one kid was really excitedly telling me about Diablo It sounded like it was an epic for the ages. You know, yeah. I'm remembering how I experienced Diablo through a really excited hyper kid at Summer Camp,

telling me all about it going nuts on. He specifically just went ham on that and mystic quest where the only two things he would just fucking go in on and And then at the time sitting at summer camp in the woods it sounds like again like the most creative Unbelievable journey you could go on Interesting, okay So yeah, Baldur's Gate 3. Yeah, it kind of kind of slowly crept up and Then bear fucking was the lightning strike that made everybody look at it and go wow There's a lot of shit here. They saved it. They saved that shit for Evo

So the best part about the bear fucking there's two things one is it absolutely got the Larry and fucking band off Tik Tok Which is super funny. They were like live streaming it on TikTok and they got fucking banned And then the second one was if they're showing off bear fucking what other weird weird shit Are they hiding that's it? That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah, you guys I'm just you got you got the title. That's that's correct Okay, so speaking of I guess world building and such so EA has announced a single player black Panther game coming out from a new studio and It's like okay. That's cool

Immediately I go um, immediately I go, can you just sell me the Wakanda art book and concept designs for all the locations and what that is? Because I would, I would, I kind of want to just sit and watch the Wakanda concept meetings and planning more than I want to play the Black Panther adventure game. Like I legit just want to see that or a single player action game. Oh, I feel like I feel like the time has passed. Yeah, I mean, well, you know, you had adventures and then you had Guardians of the Galaxy and those were different studios that Took a crack. This is a new one that's doing it. The studio is called cliffhanger games So you know, there's there's

There's all that and yes, of course there's the black Panther comic books yes I know that I just I like what I'm I'm I like I'm sorry I kind of zoned out are you saying black Panther has comic books that's kind of wild I know from the like they they they adapted they adapted the movie character into a comic book that's cool's cool. They should do that. I think there's a lot of Marvel movie characters that might people might actually like comic books about. Do you think, uh, how would you feel if we brought out the white Panther? Would you?

So, will this question sucks? Because if you had a fucking article that said new comic coming out white Panther we would be both like super excited I would love to see that shit No, no white wolf white wolf not white Panther No white wolf white wolf not white Panther White Panther would be just like it would just it would hit a little bit more hilarious But unfortunately, it's just white wolf But anyway

Yeah, no That's a new studio. We'll see what's up Again based on the fact that they guardians worked out and Avengers didn't, I could see them continuing to take a crack at this every once in a while back in the day too. Though, remember, it's like, oh, that one Wolverine game was pretty good. Where the fuck did that come from? You know, like, that, I think, oh, God, I want to say that was a Wolverine game that was already in development. And with the movie beforehand, yeah.

Turned into the movie game. I remember there was like, there's nothing to do with that movie at all. And it's polished way more than other tie-ins ever or should be, yeah. So yeah, we'll see. Here's one that, okay, maybe you can, maybe you can break this one down. Maybe. Yeah. So legendary speedrunner Piedox has resurfaced after years of silence to reclaim the throne, a top Kugane tower. Streamer spends months of training to beat a Final Fantasy 14 world record only for his

rival to come out of years long retirement and destroy it in one day. Okay, so what happened here is that you can if you were to YouTube cook on a tower jumping puzzle Well, they basically the long and short of it is that there is a physical building in one of the towns that came out in the storm blood expansion That has a lot of very precariously spaced beams all over it that makes for a very engaging jumping puzzle So when you're waiting for bullshit people would just try to get to the top of the tower, right? It's pretty hard. I've gotten up there a couple times but it's for it's for real it's pretty hard right and pretty early some guy put out a video going like yes the world record for if I fucking did get to the top and he did like he did real fast like really fast and that record has stood on unbeaten for years and years, right?

So this guy comes along and goes, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fucking, I'm gonna beat that record. Uh, any trains, any trains, any trains, and he does it. And within one day of him posting proof, the original guy comes back, goes, goes nah beat it again Done even faster this time back into the ether amazing L.O.L.a. Mal and away. I ain't shit Fuck

It takes me like an hour to get on top of the tower and these guys are doing it like 40 seconds. Oh wow Okay, that's the that's what we're talking about. It is it is really really really hard platforming in a game that is not meant for platforming. It is it is it is hard. Yeah, I just I read that that title and it it seemed like there's big spite energy coming out of the story. Oh yeah, so that's that gets a click from me. Oh yeah, I do I was going to touch on this right after we talked about Rashid, but alongside that Street Fighter 6, 2 million in sales in 5 weeks, sounds like it's going pretty good, pretty good on the track record, and maybe just maybe one day, they will approach the mountain top to find mortal combat waiting for them there, but we are not there yet. You know what the funniest part about that is, man? I was somebody put out a video going like, yo man, Johnny Cage's hype combos are crazy.

Look at this. And they showed like a combo that Johnny Cage is doing with his hype meter from one of the preview events from MK1 and like that game looks fucking terrible like it looks like injustice like it looks like injustice the the the the numbers that the I mean again the the it's, again, it's more, it's more to combat, more to combat. It's gonna be the, the another realm thing, you know,

if you can, if you can, if you enjoy what you enjoy about it, you enjoy it despite the jankiness and you, and we move past it, but otherwise whatever. Yeah, and stabbed the other man, look who is, I bell thaw, whoo, yay. But at the, at the at the the sales fucking mountain like there is the tech and street fighter realm of like the 50 million Plot around range and then mortal combat and smash are in the 80s

Completely on their own with a with a fucking power gap before anyone catches up. And it's kind of like just in case anyone forgets like the appeal of some gore and fucking Mario, you know, that is how you sell. That's how you sell the fighting games. That's it. You got to get a keyblade or bloody titties. Yeah, I mean, there's there's there's two types of audiences there and and those games appeal to it perfectly. One is adults who want to play a video game and the other is adults. The one to play a video game made for children, which is the people buying Mortal Kombat. He switched it. He switched it around. You thought for babies.

I'm not going to challenge Sonic Fox though. That's stupid. Don't do that. Get called the bot. Yeah. But no, considering Street Fighter V's like, yeah, it was under a million in the first six weeks or so. And the tail for Street Fighter 5 is really bad.

Like the long tail. It went on to do seven million, but. Yeah, but that was after the new versions. After the new versions came out, and yeah, they're like overall for six, they're looking for 10s. So a good start and there you go. Modern mode from now on, quality of life from now on, everybody take note or somebody in the chat's asking, wasn't there a part two of the Sonic Fox challenge? Yes, there is apex. No, Sonic Fox has offered a runback, but in order to qualify, the guy has to change

his Twitter profile to the duck. To the duck? Oh man. That's way more generous than I would have been. I would have been like, you have to put the outfit on. You have to put the, at least, you have to put the beak on and that has to be your profile picture. You gotta crack.

You gotta crack for it. Quack and, quack out the words, run that shit back. Right? Put the, put the beak on and quack out the words, run that shit back and I will put 20k on the line Man damn Yeah, all right See and this is this is the fun of video games folks

This is why we this is how this is the enjoyment we can have out of video games, folks. This is why we, this is how this is the enjoyment we can have out of video games. So when, uh, when President Emmanuel Macron decides to blame them for the, the troubles occurring in France, you know, not that anyone getting fucking murdered has anything to do with that. But when video games are to blame for the troubles. They were already riding for like a year before that happened. Yeah, so you know, that was right in the middle of like fucking play in, well, I think we're playing like World Tour or whatever. And Reggie's just like, oh my god, fucking Macrom will shut up. And I'm like, what's going on? And it's like he's just blaze like oh it's the y'all It's the youth and their TikTok and their video games and we're like we're doing this

We're still doing this and I'm just like bro That's a whole lot of high-horsing you're really preaching down from the pulpit for someone who's entire fucking marriage Is based on them banging a teacher at fucking 14 and getting enough and having an affair. Like real, real high morality coming down on video games for whatever the fuck is going on in your private life, sir. Excuse me, excuse me, I'm sorry. My mistake, bro.

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, you know what? I think we have a we got some good comments today in the chat. Really good. We got ZZZZZZ saying quote France famously never rioted before video games and quote. That's true. That's real true. Like like there has been a number of folks that have been kind of like, they've always got a little bit of that, like in their blood, still ready to prove, you know, they're just like, yeah, that's at the surface. We were down to like fucking keep, to keep them in check, historically, as we know. Yeah, but no, go on, go go on a manual go on with your shit

Let us let us know Anyways When it's all said and done Microsoft wins the FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard FTC versus Microsoft is over and the judge has decided to deny the FTC's preliminary injunction request So there's a lot of details to this that are really fun first of all the FTC still has the ability to appeal this ruling Second of which this is a ruling on the injunction they still got to go to court later for the real case about the merger. Dude, like, okay.

So there's a bunch of times where updates to the story come and go, and to be perfectly honest, I just completely ignore them, because it's a fake update, not, you know what I mean? Like there's, or not even fake update, but it's just like, it's not what it sounds like

because the legal process is very long and complex. The assumption is that because of this, and it's a reasonable assumption that it will go through and they will merge. Yeah, however, there are still some little bits and pieces that could get in the way, but yes, very likely we are going to see Microsoft merge with the Activision. Yeah, that is now the expected conclusion.

The amount of clickbait updates to this story has been fucking annoying though to cover and follow. At the end of the day, man, I was like, okay, well, I look forward to the giant catamari game corp that we are rolling towards. And I certainly do hope that they will not mistreat us with their omniconsol and single subscription service. It is, it is very, so I, you know, I'm on the opinion that this is going to go through and that seems to be the legal opinion from internet lawyers. I am now shifting my source of humor over to

how is Microsoft going to run like call of duty into the ground? Like, Microsoft, will you have been in this business forever, right? Microsoft has been doing this thing since they started, which is they buy company, they put out a couple games, then they ruin the company, then the company dies, and then the IP dies. Yeah, I mean, they did it to Halo for fuck's sake. The EA, the EA life cycle. I know what they're aiming for is a Disney style just like tentacle fucking takeover, but

because you get you get something at that high level and you there are so many little fucking tendrils going out into the industry everywhere, but I just I don't know like I think that there's a distinct possibility that running something that big into the ground is such a low and slumbering process, that it might kind of just be what it is, except now you see a number of Xbox-favored preference for certain big titles to try and compete and get themselves back on the saddle when they're losing to Sony wherever possible. I expect as well the PC to continue to be the side thing, because the direct competition between the two is the main thing they're concerned on.

But yeah, it's much easier to run a tiny little Peter Mollenew company into the ground than it is to run act-of-fucking-blesser, right? Like, oh, I don't know Bobby Bobby No Bobby Bobby held on for a while while the fires rose You know there's a little bit of a like there's a little bit of a like just a giant fucking cruise line can just like Stay the course to some degree, you know, and then you're like, oh, that's a nice bird coming up and

I stay the course to some degree, you know, and then you're like, oh, that's a nice bird coming up and I don't know. It's hard to say. It's hard to say whether or not you're going to see the running into the ground of everything underneath the umbrella. I don't suspect as much, but I think you're going to see a series of embarrassing, like, decisions made that are going to make people upset in the process of trying to leverage this purchase. I think they're in a really strange and stupid position because so Microsoft bought Minecraft, Microsoft owns Minecraft, and Minecraft comes out on everything. And the reason why Minecraft continues to come out on everything is because it makes more money on non-Microsoft platforms than it does on Microsoft platforms.

And I think they're going to run into that problem with like Call of Duty where someone's going to go, all right, Call of Duty, exclusive to Xbox and somebody will go, dude, that's like 30% of our sales, like, no, you have no. You must continue to put it out on PlayStation. I'm just always, and maybe, you know, to a fault. Like, I'm always aware of like, how I used to have, like, I feel like there's always blind spots for like, people who follow the industry,

like we do on a weekly, a week to week basis, and people who are engaging directly and hearing about the updates to whatever's happening, And then the products that they're offering to a an enormous amount of people that don't know or give a fuck about what's happening. And how like that is just self-sustaining practically. Like minecraft's biggest update of Steve showed up and smashed to a bunch of people. And then anything else changing on that front unless it affects the way that the kid jumps on and from the day to day on whatever not Xbox platform he's playing it on,

they're just gonna not care, because Minecraft just makes its own money. It's doing its own thing, you know? There's a whole lot of like what stupid decisions like seem to spell doom for someone that's really close to following these stories, where you're like, oh, this fades off real quick and hits a giant group of people that don't give a fuck about it. So you're overestimating the impact of this little dumb thing here. I'm

always kind of overthinking that, you know. Activision Blizzard is fucking video games. You know what I mean? That's like, that's just, and it's not just video games, you know what I mean? That's like that's just and it's not just video games. It's like a humongous amount of just casual every day. I jump on and I get my my my my whatever. I get my break from the the the wife and baby the noise kind of video gaming, you know what I mean? It's not like devolver or something. We're like, here's a bunch of niche, weird specific things that we're, you know, we have an umbrella over. So yeah, I think at the end that you might end up seeing like a bunch of shit that we who follow,

the news are gonna be like, well look at this stupid stupid shit they're doing. But for that broader impact to actually affect the day to day casual, active vision blizzard gamer, like I think it would, that's gonna be a much harder thing. I'm sitting here, and I look at Call of Duty, and I look at Microsoft, and I go, this is the fucking company that like, botched like, three Halo games in a row Like fuck like

Like less than zero faith Hmm And not like fucking Activision was doing a great job of Call of Duty lately anyway. Mm-hmm I do think and as someone who doesn't play Call of Duty I feel as if even when Call of Duty fucks up and does shit that everyone hates It's still Call of Duty and then it goes back to being Call of Duty. It's gun football. So at its worst it makes everyone upset And then you give it a minute and then it's Call of Duty again People I said that and people are like,

don't forget about Gears of War, and I actually did forget about Gears of War. Oh, yeah, okay, well, when it's actually, when it's actively dead, that's a different thing. Um, but like, yeah, but the stuff that's annualized and or more or less treated like, you know, like Madden or so, Yeah, yeah, it just carries itself. Well, anything that is like, I think I think the the the the in some ways like if

you're looking at gears is like, gears is always narrative and multiplayer shit going on and um What what am I trying to say like Gears 3 was like a like a halo game coming out That was like that was it was crazy massive massive and but then like when they announced the new gears with the kids Everyone was like what the fuck are they doing? um fucking What are they doing? Um, Halo 4, fucking, and it's a bigger time. Right, and it's a bigger, sword steer off and everyone's like,

Oh, God, you're moving this whole thing in a weird direction and what the fuck are you doing versus when a call of duty missteps, it's like, well, whatever. Yeah, next year. Yeah, can't win them all. You know, give it 12. We'll see how it goes.

And that's it, you know, so yeah, it just, it hits different. We'll see how it goes. And that's it, you know, so yeah, it just hits different. Well, try again next year. Anyways. All right, let's take some letters. Hey, if you wanna send in a letter, send an email letter, an electronic letter, electronic mail over to castlesuperbestmail at gmail.com.

That's castlesuperbestmail at gmail.com. Only send the good letters Do Do um All right, let's take one over here Simple question from Sean who says there will he and Pat has playing games for a living affected your ability to use them for relaxation or personal enjoyment Yes, mm-hmm. Enormously. Mm-hmm.

Enormously. I would say so. The main thing that comes to mind for me is that when I... There's two things. One, when I play a game, and I start really enjoying it, I go, hmm, should I save this for a stream? Instead of just playing it for fun?

I'm not putting my hands and pointing at my camera because you're saying it for me. Because I have to stop and second guess my enjoyment and my leisure time and go, maybe I should not enjoy myself too much because this might be some good, things I'm gonna get to stream later, you know? So then you kind of are like, well, maybe in my time I can spend my time with games that are

Fine, but not so much fun that it would be a story. I don't know whatever you kind of figure that out Like it is a constant. Hey, what's this new thing? Oh, this is really cool. Wow. This is really cool I have to stop. Oh, it's too cool. I might It's too cool. Yeah, yeah, so like I I've had dishonor too installed on my computer for like four years. Just, well, yeah, man, yeah, I really want to play dishonor, but I should, I should stream it though. I don't want to stream it now. Maybe I'll stream it later, but okay, well, I could put, no, no, I'll save it. And then, um, that's also where I'm like, I start to lean into stuff where I'm like, okay, well I really love this, but like it's low stakes and it doesn't matter when if I ever decide to jump

into Dark Is Dungeon 2, because or, or, Hades, for example, or anything like that, because like starting fresh is a, is a new run, it's rogue-like in its nature, so you can kind of just always jump in in the middle of me on my progression point. So it's low stakes and I can enjoy that, and then you can jump in, and it will be a problem if I ever do decide this stream. So I start having a heavy preference towards things like that, you know?

One of the reasons that I've been, like I love Street Fighter 6, I think it's incredible. One of the reasons that I wake been, like I love Street Fighter 6, I think it's incredible. One of the reasons that I wake up and like play Street Fighter 6 as soon as I wake up for like an hour is because I don't have to think about any of this at all.

Anything at all. I just go, hey, I'd like to play Street Fighter, okay. Yeah. I played Street Fighter, cool. I didn't screw up my stream later. No, content brain, it sucks. It sucks to have everything filtered through content brain and I'm ever conscious of of that stuff and as I have less and less time for my own self to play games and stuff as well

I am being even more selective about like all of that because That time is evaporating and I'm sure you're in the process of finding out. I'm having a little bit of an existential crisis. It's not bad, but I'm sitting here and I'm like, this is the last, like I'm enjoying the last moments of my life for another 10 years where I'm going to be able to sit in a room by myself. Like at all. Right? I mean so that's great in

a way but like yeah no that version of me is immediately going to leave. Well you could always be like you know I can always just leave but I'm not gonna do that. That's wrong don't do that. Well now listen hey now hold on a minute. It might be really funny. It's like a goof. It's kind it's a pretty strong bit I mean look I'll tell you right now as someone on the receiving end. That's a pretty strong bit It's a good bit good Good buddy all these years later, huh man? What a bit we We still talk about it, how crazy, you know. And then you get, and then you get, you get the halfway steps where you can just be like,

hey, what time is it? Like 5'30, it's bedtime kid. Go to bed, but it's literally still, yeah, 5'30, bedtime. I need my me time now. And then it's like, oh, hey school, a school's out for summer. Yeah, I get to be home for summer. No, you don't.

You're going to fucking summer camp. Get the fuck out of here. Literally anything I can do to get away from you so I could reclaim my own life back, which is some bullshit, but people do it. You know, from quite soon until until Pat junior goes to school. It is gonna be baby time most of the time Right and that's the reality and then the kids are gonna go to school And I'm gonna be like, oh thank God and the kids gonna be gone for five minutes, and I'm gonna be like

Yeah, you shouldn't have to go to school. Yeah. Um, not man. Band in your family for the bit. That's, that's, that's what it is. It's worth it. But yeah, no, has, has content creation affected our ability to enjoy things, like, like you wouldn't believe. There's an old

adage of do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. There's a new version of that adage which is do what you love and you will work every day of your life. Yeah. I will sit at the computer for like two hours just scrolling through steam entries not doing anything going Is that interesting enough for one show? No Maybe? Yeah, no Next

Yeah No, it's uh it's it's I wouldn't I don't wish it upon any of you guys, you know the ability to Transform the thing you love into a different form of what it used to be like like you know what you know It hit me like really hard woolly So I played through 13 sentinels and I told you woolly you shouldn't stream 13 sentinels? That would be a terrible idea. That game's crazy, everybody gonna spoil you. And you nodded and you said thanks Pat. And then your brain said, fuck that shit,

I'm a stream 13 sentinels. And you had a very successful stream of 13 sentinels. And while that was going, I was finishing the game up and was overpowered by the feeling of, I should have fucking stream 13 set no one of my sitting in the join myself oh I can't monetize my fun like and like it tasted the game god damn

That's that's fucked up that's so fucked up oh Yeah, it's busted man. It's busted forever Like you know why I watched the Dungeons & Dragons movie? Mm-hmm. Oh, I should have a movie to talk about. I should have something to talk about on the podcast. Yeah! Absolutely. I haven't talked about movies that I've seen on podcasts.

Exactly, exactly. And the thing is, is this is a slightly more tolerable version of what's happening when you're not a video game content creator, so you're just a life influencer, which means the phone has to come out for every meal, or every little random moment, and a little, you have to just like, the content bit thing, at least in this form,

it's relegated to the room you're sitting in, and that's where it happens. But if you were a just general life influencer, or influencer You are content bidding content braining moments of day-to-day life and it's fucking horrifying All right kids We're running a van life show. We got to pick another shit whole town to visit and we got to be there in six hours For the for the daily cutoff on the views come on

Let's go getting your single bunk bed make your fucking thumbnail face Billy Billy make your thumbnail face right now Yeah, tell everyone how happy you are to live with your four siblings in a converted bunk bed room of this van now It's good for the money Those people are not that shit is the most insane like what was the one now? I got a kid on the way. I'm like how the fuck you fucking drag a kid around in the van life What was the one with the kid cry for you Billy? There was the kid that was crying and it was like Like what happened

Like the mom was like okay now try again no no like to like say say more about how you're feeling and he's like and God it was just like I think you like like lost his dog or something fucked up dude and and it was just like dog or something fucked up dude and it was just like The mom was recording it and she's like he's like good good. Yeah, like no act more sad He's like but I am sad And it was like he was crying about like I think I think he lost his dog and it was just the most sociopathic fucking woman recording him Like dude, I'm sitting here and me and Paige are having back and forth about this like there's a serious consideration that every photo of the baby that will ever exist will have my face

Photoshopped on top of the baby Jesus Christ. Yeah, that is a serious discussion. Yeah That's a serious discussion. Yeah. That's a good one. That, that, that, that shitty, that shitty face that I have that I slap on my thumbnails, the, every single one out with baby and it's just two versions of me just going, yeah. No, that's a real talk. That's a real talk you got to sit down and figure out for sure.

Because there's different ways to go about it. Yeah, no, that's a real talk. That's a real talk. You got to sit down and figure out for sure because There's different ways to go about it, but I'm not doing this fucking shit Yeah, and you know whatever like and when the person becomes a person they have the right to fucking Call you out on that shit, you know Now there were adults. You wanna have like an adult conversation about adult stuff and responsibility. I feel like there's a whole generation

of like five year olds right now that are gonna become teenagers and gonna be like, hey mom, did you really have to put every single embarrassing moment in my entire life on fucking Instagram? I really don't appreciate that now that I'm in high school. Yeah. Every piece of shit kid I'm at school with can look up me

like shitting my pants when I'm four years old. And that's really just like normal social media. That's not even like the high volume, high profile, you know, S-O-E generated shit, right? If you're talking about like The like a child actors all a lot of stories about fucked up child actors who are like, yep I hated it. It sucked you know didn't get much say in the matter and then my parents stole all my money or whatever There's always that thing where like they can kind of disappear to some degree and be like all right

Well McCulloch in piece the fuck out and and then showed back, and then showed back up when he felt like it, right? And hung out with like Kevin Smith and shit, and was like, hey, what's up, I'm back, you know? But like, they get to do that, but if you are in a like constant, like influencer, whatever spotlight type of thing, there is no backing down to your own private space.

It's just, you know, so. Anyway, anyway, anyway. Like, you know, like, okay, I was a small child once. It's true. And like, I remember I went to like a soccer game, like, you know, a child soccer game, right? But like, I was nervous to talk to other kids So I was like three and a half so I like cried. I was like now on my mommy, right?

Like my dad owned a video camera at that time He did not have it with him, but he did right? The idea that my dad could have video tape that and be like, haha Look my kid throwing a tantrum and put that on Facebook. And then people like 10 years later could have pulled up me crying in a soccer game and be like, wow look at you, you were a huge baby when you were a child.

That's a fucking nightmare. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I'm uncomfortable just thinking about it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There's also this like, there's a very particular Weirdness to like the way

So the way that like yeah, Nichol So the way that Nickelodeon and Disney kids Get treated is Galodian and Disney kids get treated is fucking weird because they're kind of like you were a cartoon character even though you were a real person, but you were a cartoon character to me. And so there's a whole like weird way of them growing into adulthood that like just fucking,

I don't know what it is about the way America, like the way like everything they do and get scrutinized for and their entire lives are just in this insane fucking lens where they just there's it's impossible to ever be normal because you were a TV kid or whatever like it sucks for almost all of them it fucking sucks, you know Um, there's only one reason to take embarrassing photos of your kids And that's so that when your kid brings their girlfriend or boyfriend over to meet mom and dad, they can crack open that fucking family album

and show you that picture of you jamming your hand in the toilet. Mm-hmm. Which my mom absolutely did the first time she met Paige. She was like, hey, you want to see the album? And she's bitch, yeah. Here it is. And that's a bonding experience. That is the reason.

I found that photo and I destroyed it. Oh, you did? You found like the photo of you that was like an embarrassing child. Oh, you destroyed it? Oh, I'm not. not no there is no there is no circumstance ever I don't care how cute you think I don't care what you think how funny you think that is that is gone You kill you just wrote you found it. How did you get it? I knew I saw where it was going through the album and I I knew I saw where it was going through the album and I

And the memory unlocked of the moment mom was like oh, that's so cute Ha ha and took the photo and I fucking saw it and I'm and when I found it in the album I'm like this is I have there is no evidence this never happened. You're insane. What's it? I? I just read it Yeah, but like no, but I risked it up and I threw it out But like no, but I risked it up and I threw it out Well, you didn't burn the piece. I just I'm not fucking getting like dramatic like that But I fucking threw that in the trash. No, this the fucking what was it? No, you're not gonna tell now I tell you but it's embarrassing childhood photo and I killed the fucking past Hell no

Because I ain't bringing it up with our context. Ha ha ha ha! She thought it would end to this day. Like I don't, she probably, I don't even know she, I don't even know she, I don't think she knows. I don't even know she remembers it. But I saw it and I remember when she took it. And I was like, why does this exist?

Oh, this is just to pull out for the gag if that scenario ever occurred We will never let the scenario occur and this is the end of all evidence of that holy shit No, it's the funniest stories. No, no No, no, no, I control the timeline. I control the narrative. No, you don't I control the timeline. I control the narrative. No, you don't. That was amazing. So you don't know, like it's never come up,

there's a photo missing and you don't know. I don't, I mean, the bag of photos is a giant pile. It's a huge mess. It's no organized album. So we're just flipping through shit and it's like, oh, there's the old Disney trip. There's Grenada, there's whatever, and just one of those random photos is just not there in the pile Whatever move on to the next one. Hey look. Oh see that that's lucky cuz like like my mom has like a fucking album

So if I did that there'd be like a fucking gap right and it'd be a really obvious gap like we were this photo Go nobody touches this photo album Oh my god, that's the funniest fucking thing ever. I'm in No, we control the narrative You you have done what like like literally millions of people have fantasized Like you got one over that no one gets to get like there is not even a second of hesitation The moment you see it and go this exists What the fucking shit is this doing existing in reality? No, no this does not exist Yeah

Hey, you well there you go much appreciated It's important. All right, have a good week, everybody. Take it easy. you