Castle Super Beast - CSB 237: Anyone In This Room Might Be Secretly Black

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

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МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА You know, Walden? Excuse me. Last week, I said something unfair, legitimately, about Mortal Kombat. I read a comment responding to our podcast that made a really fantastic point and I have to admit, I genuinely have to admit that they were right, which is we were complaining about like the combat pack, like it's $50 and how ridiculous that is.

That includes like six characters and a bunch of cameos. And then they pointed out that the fucking Street Fighter character pack is $40 for four characters. And like that's actually a way worse deal. Yep. It accept for the fact that a street fighter character is worth more than more comic character. I'm sorry. I mean that's just the way it is. So I think what what has kind of become a part of the the the situation is when you look at a

game on the store you see the base game and then you see the full edition that's like a hundred and whatever bucks and then you see the full edition, that's like a hundred in whatever bucks, and that's the real price. The premium, the, yeah. But that's the real price now, right? Yeah. It sucks that it's like, you know,

you're being thought to think, you're being trained to think that like, oh no, this is it, and that's the extra. But it's not, this is the full thing really. But absolutely valid on that. I think DLC prices are and continue to be garbage. It's been that way from the jump. I just know that since we've been at this for years,

there's always that degradation and to the point where I'm sure you can go back to early-ass friend casts where we're like, fucking DLC As a concept, you know, and you just yeah, you're like yeah, you live your life and you watch as you slowly cook the frog You turn the pot you know heat up till you know to the eventual point where like yeah, it hasn't jumped out You know, and I know that's been the case with everything relating to micro transactions with everything relating to Peace-mealing video games. We've just been at this long enough to watch it become normalized, but it's been shit from the jump. I do actually have a serious version of my statement, which is

moral combat. The reason why that $50 DLC pass hits you so much harder in my mind anyway is that Shang Tsung for $10 right out the gate on day one fucking primes you to be pissed off. And then you said the game has no lobbies. Yeah, that was annoying. Like that's not technically part of the DLC discussion, but the fact that it has no lobbies is this like, what the, what am I fucking paying for? And I think the contrast point, right, has been the return to Titanfall shows you again the easiest and best lobbies ever as as as as. Oh my God. It's so. Yeah. I saw a different statement somewhere else where they were talking about the lobbies and Mortal Kombat and how Street Fighter 6 has like ruined

other fighting games for this person because they describe themselves as a guilty gear player like guilty gears their thing right but since Street Fighter 6 came out they don't play strife anymore because they can get in and complete a match of Street Fighter before getting to a match in Strive. Yeah, and Strive took a while for the lobbies to work because they initially didn't, they were there, but they had that issue. The loading, the R code, like bullshit, to the startup delay that took fucking minutes

to the main menu, all of that wild shit just made it more and more frustrating for anybody who just kind of wanted a quick game to be able to play. And you kind of, oh sorry, I'll do it. No, and just you contrast that with not only Arxis and the past having made like some of the, like we liked the lobby system of walking up to the cabinets and stuff.

Like I don't know, I think they started it. I might be wrong on that. Yeah, but I think they started it. I might be wrong on that. But I think they started it. I feel like they did. And you go into accent core and from double clicking, from clicking the play button on steam to just mashing AAA online go, you queue up,

you get into a match within 15 seconds of boot, possibly, and like immediately just get into an end in your rematch and you just go, go, go, go, and you're out and like, you can actually play, you can actually look at your watch and go, I've got about five minutes. Let me get a couple games in and then be like, all right, now I gotta leave, you know, in that actual timeframe, which is something fighting games should allow you to do. You should be able to jump in with the same way you wanna play it,

be like, I wanna play a little quick game of Marvel Snap and then be out of here, you know? Like we had that whole discussion a little while ago about how like, is Baldur's Gate 3 setting unrealistic standards or whatever? But like Street Fighter, I feel like it's reliability and it's net code and it's excellent lobby system and it's a battle hub and all that.

I feel like that is actually like the new standard and now that we, like the net code dream has been reached and we've seen it, now everything that comes out that is not that is like why the fuck isn't it like that? Something has a... Why isn't it good like that? Something that's emerged with Street Fighter 6 for me as well has been... I've been playing ranked and the quality of your matches

changes once you are in master and you kind of... Anyway, they made the update so that you don't just start seeing the same names over and over and over again. You get to find a broader range of people within your skill level, which is really nice. And I've noticed, I'm stuck in platinum, but I've noticed that if I'm platinum four, I am equally likely to get three fours and fives. It's spread out, right? So ever since the Rashid patch, I think, is when they kind of address that. What is also going on too is I would jump into some of the local like discords and be like,

hey, grab some matches with some local players and whatever. But what I did recently was just returning to the Battle Hub actually now that a little bit of time has passed is really interesting because the battle hub experience like on launch was definitely one where 10 out of 10 matches, I'm gonna kind of like just sit down and kind of stop on the person I'm sitting in front of. Oh, yeah. And like, that can be, if that's what you know, that can be your afternoon. That's, hey man, for me, it was like, do I wanna play ranked matches and play a video game

or do I wanna feel really good and go down to the battle hub? And so after a certain point, it's kinda like, okay, well I'm trying to tighten up my mistakes here. So I'm looking for more, right? And so I didn't use battle hub because of that. It was just that it wasn't much of a challenge there. Coming back to it now, seeing where there's people close in your level with a little indicator

next to their name, that's like, hey, this person's around where you're at, you're like, oh shit, let me check. Oh cool, you're a master player, let's sit down and we'll do some sets. And I've been able to go into. You want to do 55 matches in a row? Yeah, really, really learn this fucking matchup.

And so I've been able to just like hit up Rando's walking around the arcade, you know, that are in a similar level and like get some really good long sets out of it. And that's what the feature is for, you know? And like yeah, I think a bunch of players have all kind of returned to that like battle hub, you know, to kind of look for that a little bit,

as well as to like, you're like, hey, I got an ackey I wanna fuck around with. I don't really know what I'm doing. You can just queue up for casual and you get thrown into a random mattress someone else who's looking, but the ability to kind of like be like, hey, you're around the same level.

You wanna, let me see, okay, I can see you play a really good Chun Lee. Let me see what my new ackey is like against your Chun Lee and we both have some decent fundamentals. So let's let's kind of feel it out, you know. And you discover a bunch of bizarre interactions that are fairly rare, but oh really? Thick? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's pretty cool to be able to to walk around the arcade, so to speak and and do that. I know that you were not going to see other games following suit with that level of online availability, but at the bare minimum, a lobby room, right?

That's where you want to start. So since we're discussing Street Fighter, I might as well just segue right into Aki. Yeah. Aki came out and I discovered that what I really needed to improve my game at Street Fighter 6 was for them to include a King of Fighters character on the roster that I could play with that plays kind of like the other characters I play like Wip and Coolula on K-Team.

You like, you're digging Aki. Aki, so not only am I digging Aki and I love playing as Aki, I am also way, way better with Aki than I am with Jamie or Geef. Okay. Like I have been trapped in Platte 2 with those two since the game launched. And I am like coasting up to Platte 5 now over the past day or two on like 10, 15 game win streaks.

Nice, okay. And I'm like, what the, I, there's this is not the type of character I usually play in street fighter. I make no mistake too. Like there's a level of like everyone you're fighting and doing anything up against is seeing it for the first time. You're doing a wild shit. Unless you know what? You know what my favorite thing about playing a brand new DLC character on launch is that when you play another person in a mirror match and both of you doesn't know what the other's doing and you're both doing shit that you're like,

you can do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then by the end of the set, they have stolen the confirm from you and you have stolen the tag trap from that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I saw, I just for just fighting a little bit with her, I was like, okay, her, her, her get out of dodge situation, her, her like, get off of me is just like sliding

out to the other side of the fucking screen as soon as you try to do anything, you know? And I'm like, okay, so not only does that like, let you escape, but it puts you behind me. And like, I'm like, it's really far. You go out of the corner. So whatever you committed to doing, you know, is you might be end of doing it the wrong way, or like, it might just, you might be in a really bad situation if you went for something insanely risky.

And Akki's just like gliding on the ground like a slip and slide. Well, you know. Luckily, throws beat that. Yes, yes. And a number of really good characters can like cover all their bases by like trying to hit you. And then if you start sliding, they can get you, you know.

But it is interesting, because like, did you touch Fong at all for one second? I, I, so this is interesting because like did you touch Fantfang at all for one second? I, I, so this is the fun part. I actually really wanted to like Fong back in the day. I've really like, I looked at him and I'm like, that is a weirdo shit head character. I'm gonna give it a shot, but everything about the way he moved and acted and couldn't cash out the poison and all that shit was just a fucking awkward. So I thought yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The awkwardest fuck. So she is definitely like a not just cooler version in execution. And also you're like, by retro, by by aura, she makes fun cooler because he's now wearing a dark suit and looks less goofy

in the world tour mode, like they've like glowed him up and whatnot. But she also makes the system make more sense by having that double poison cash out thing, right? So for anyone who's unfamiliar, the character that she's based on, Fong could poison you and you just have to kind of slowly watch the life wood low way until it either... And it would go real slow. And it either wears off after time,

or the opponent has to hit you, and then the poison stops. But with Aki, while you're poisoned, she can hit you with poison for a second time. And when that second hit happens, you kind of explode like a grenade of poison blossoms and then that allows you to get juggled in the air for like more damage, you know. I am now realizing that Aki is a reverse Hakkan. Instead of oiling yourself off, you

will you grease them down? You're greasing them up. Okay, okay. Death better moves. Okay. Sure. Yeah. It works. And then you also, uh, yeah, you have the like, eight, it's a killer instinct style system where there's like, there's cash out, you know, after you potentially put the damage on. And in some cases, too, uh, what I've seen some cool things, uh, going on, because like Reggie has been messing around with her too and putting some work in. And he's like, he's seeing the struggle points. You know, he's like, ah, I wanna do the things that, you know, Chun Lee can do that, but she can't.

But something she can do is like, when you knock the opponent down, you can actually like end combos early to put poison on the ground that they have to wake up on top of. Inescapable. Yeah, in the corner, you just put, you spill poison all over the fucking ground and they're getting up that they have to wake up on top. Inescapable. Yeah, in the corner, you just put, you spill poison all over the fucking ground

and they're getting up and they have to get poisoned. And then that makes them extra afraid for that moment of like, oh, am I gonna have to drive impacted or hit Splat the Wall? What am I gonna have to deal with? So she just gets to bully you even more in the corner. Yeah, I think it's super fun as well,

kind of seeing like the her ability to like be a complete nuisance from the mid screen, you know? She's like full screen, she's not, she can't really do much, she can just throw the bubble out. Got the nice slow far ball. Yeah, but like from that, that you get a little bit one step past round start range. And she's like, I'm whipping you, I'm fucking.

What if Dawson had a good jump? And then, yeah, that very specific pocket. And a couple of approaches to just be like, oh, like the, did you, did you start throwing a far ball? I'm gonna go on the ground and then go into her like, canondrill fucking thing that just- Oh, you can do that on a reaction. From full screen.

It's like you can be back-to-back and like read a fireball from all the way over here and just pop, hit them. And when you hit them, like you can get a crumple out of it, which lets you comp, like, that thing is really, really fucking good for a fireball, Wars, you know know. So one of the other things that I like about Akki is that her combos are fucking easy as shit. They're so trivial. Are you doing the the stance cancel in the middle of it? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You have to. Yeah. That's that's like every combo path outside

of like one is her hard kick into the stance cancel into the jazz jam to something whatever you want after that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's cool. Yeah, she can basically like after she lines a big button, she can drop down on the ground into her like snake stance, do two quick hits out of that and then extend to do more shit. extends, do two quick hits out of that, and then extend to do more shit. Very, very, yeah, fun with the poison design, and I'm glad that they came back to it instead of just going like, oh, what a dumb idea, never mind poison forever, you know? Like, it is interesting. I don't think it's the poison is so strong, though, that you're really worried about it,

when it hits you. Oh, dude, it has, like, the poison exists purely to get better combo extensions. It's like, on the receiving end, when I get poisoned, I'm just like, goddamn it, mosquitoes. Yeah, it's annoying. You know, it's just a little, eh. It's not like the deal.

It's like a single medium punch. Two jabs, it's like two jabs, you know. It's not a big deal, but it's just a little irksome. And you are concerned about like eating a big combo if you get poisoned a second time for sure Fun though, and then like we I saw I met her in world tour as well and Got to see that little The way they kind of insert these characters, and yeah, I guess they're keeping it simple by just going like, we'll drop a random NPC into the world somewhere. It's very fucking souls like actually,

in the way you go to in DS1, when you just meet a random NPC that like fucking is like, oh, now you're gonna travel to the past or whatever, right? There's like, here's a person that'll open up a travel portal to Acke World, you know. Okay, China. Yes.

And we can confirm that the poisoned individual on the ground in that trailer cutscene is a bad person. So it's okay. Bad person and also didn't die. So it's totally fine. And she's super duper duper duper duper duper wants to kill everybody, but she's holding back because Fong said so. Yeah.

Yeah, cool stuff going on. I know I have been playing a shit on a street fighter with, uh, with baby in arm. Okay. So like, I feel like, I feel like, I wish it was like the era of the open voice chat of past where I could be like, bro, you can't even beat me. I'm holding like an infant in my arms while doing this fucking ackey shit to you in the corner. I am changing a diaper between rounds, dude.

Yeah. Like I'm calm enough beating you in the corner. I am changing a diaper between rounds dude. Yeah Like I'm calm enough beating you into the dirt that the my arms aren't even jostling my infants son enough to wake him Come on I'll I'll also like tag on the subject there and cuz I beat world tour last week so You know that fucking good job doing nothing. Yeah. So I mean, there's, it is interesting. It is interesting to be like, hey, bad ending, so to speak, right? There's like kind of the stories not done. And also, uh, you, you good job idiot.

You accomplished nothing is the overall vibe. I disagree. I think the funniest thing about the world tour mode is that you don't accomplish nothing You actually accomplish less than nothing because your fit your presence causes the plan to fail It does it does fail. It kind of was destined to fail because he already you know He already knew he knew because you were there to fail because he already knew because you were there. But it's your fault. Right, right. We should have left actual fucking suicide bombing.

That's the way the future villain should have gone out, mind you. But the other thing with it is just like, yeah, so the quest for strength makes no fucking sense idiot It doesn't really end You know, so go figure it out and when you give up go sit under a tree like Ryu and just do coddys And then after all this you're like the OJP can I get some of that psycho power to it looks hot Yeah, he's like fine. Yo Just doling it out who wants a little bit of bison in them? We're giving out free bison.

No, I overall, I look at it and I'm like, okay, the vibe I get from this is the same vibe I got from when MK9 first came out with its story mode, where it was like, holy shit, look at the format of this. They figured out something that other people weren't willing to do, which is like, animate a full story and then let you take over for different characters and different chapters. The story itself being poorly written is clear, but I want to see what world tours ingredients are applied to something that has more compelling content, you know.

I think the format is good. Yeah, but I feel like the actual narrative is awful. Oh, it's nothing. It's absolutely terrible. There's nothing happening. My favorite part was making that fake Gucci bag. Yeah. So the part where, and again, as touched on weeks ago, like hanging out with the characters and the goofy shit they say and do

and seeing the little memories they have is tons of fun and would be great in any fighting game where you're like, yo, I wanna know more about this Duffy weirdo, right? And then you just need, like if you have the actual mainline thing you're doing is be if that were just interesting and if you kind of had more focus on a hydro pizza and fucking pizza sonic boom and pot sonic boom pasta or whatever the thing was and not like the just like kind of

random though the way the random just like kind of random, though the way the random battles are kind of happening, you just kind of get tired of them after a while and you're running past them cause they're tedious towards the end. Like more things that just kind of integrate many games into the inputs as a part of the gameplay would just focus on the parts that were really fun, you know?

I think karate, that's better. I have now met written a better Street Fighter 6 storyline in my mind in the 10 seconds since you said the words had O pizza Okay, you are there to you are at Haggar Stadium to deliver a set of to deliver a set of hado pizzas to somebody who ordered them, but somebody, some event organizer who is not paying attention, says, hey, you're up next and kicks you out into the fucking arena to get your fucking shit rocked

by a street fighter character. Damn. And you get around in, damn. And then that starts that, hey man, wow, you're pretty good. Where you you've and you start a story from there Yeah, and then you're doing it. Rep in the pizza joint with the shirt on and everything got the stains on you I have to win the tournament because the hot-o pizza is gonna go under if I don't beat akuma perfect

Absolutely, you know the the the quest for the freshest ingredients all the way to Naysal. Um, yeah, I also think as well something that is a awesome moment that only happens like once or twice is you're walking around and you see the dock where Ken's boat is parked, right? And docked and and it's like it's the fucking it's the fucking. But yeah, it's the boat you from from Street Fighter, new generation. And it's and it's also the the dock from Street Fighter two world warrior. And you're like, oh my God, it's it's the stage. It's right here wandering into that is really cool. And it's not the same when you kind of like fly to the stage that it's right here, wandering into that is really cool. And it's not the same

when you kind of like fly to the stage that you fight in and just stand on that one area. You know, it's super lame. In fact, yeah, when you when you fly to that location, it would be so much cooler if they'd like minimized the size of Metro City a bit more and made it so that going to Brazil meant you had a little bit maybe two or three a full, you had like a, what? Brazil town. Yeah, you have like one like street with stuff on it

and then you've got the stage at the end, you know? Why does that mean that like block is just living in like a rainforest cafe, like on the other spots of town? He's inside of like a, like a, an amusement park that you buy tickets to enter. I mean, whatever the case is, just make every area a little bit more for each stage and then, you know, the Coliseum itself could be a place you could run around and do shit in, you know?

And like, yeah, the parts where you can just tap into any one of those old, awesome stages we remember in the past and like, have a, like, oh fuck, there's the boat, you know. Uh, Dalsamr Temple is actually a good one of those two as well. We're like, hey, check it out, it's the temple. But that's, again, it's just isolated into itself, you know. In hindsight, there's something that Mortal Kombat does incredibly well in all of its story modes that is the worst part about StreetF6's World Tour mode.

Hey, Wully, were you really excited when ascended were you finally talked to Ken for the first time in years and talked about him becoming a construction worker? Oh right, that didn't happen. No characters that you gave shit about interacted with each other. At all. Even what? At all. They talk about each other and they show you the screenshots, right?

But there's nothing, and this is it, like for all the goofy shit that goes on, there's those moments you're totally right. When fucking, when Sub-Zero and Scorpion sit down and do a T-seremony, I was like, oh shit, this is interesting. There's a fun little scene, you know, just a little, a little something, a little, you know, a little moment that would otherwise be concept art given to you. You're sitting there, you know going can sub zero clutch out a win even in a different timeline and the answer is Probably no

But but just yeah having those little con can in moments man, you know because You you have to commit like to if you show something like that Then it's like this is how it went down. You're making a statement with this area the stage and whatever But you know, I get it. You don't want to do, you don't, you don't, you don't have to, if you don't want to make, review the main character of the story mode, then that's fine. The, the creative character. You fucking shouldn't. The creative character is a way better way to interact with that world and such. But there's no reason why you can't have, like, those little moments,

you know, of the, the, the, can picking review back up in the headband switch You can have little things like that that you could see, you know like why weren't the street fighter characters like in Attarnement. Yeah, I I mean the I mean, I guess because they're just the best at this point Like they're the veterans that the the OGs that are just like on top of their game, you know and running their side hustles Whatever they may be If Leaf then ends up being a playable character in the full main roster, this is a little bit of that

because you're seeing her with Chun Li a little bit. If she doesn't end up playable at some point. But yeah, and it's also one of those bits where I'm sure. So like, okay, Fong is now just standing around in Metro City, right? He's there he is. Not being murdered for being a terrorist. No, he's hanging out under the bridge.

But like, yeah, when you go to Brazil, you're definitely kind of like, oh man, I wonder what like Sean and Laura are up to, you know, I wonder what, and there's just a little, a little like if you, if you kind of expanded that area just a little bit more, you could tie in some of the previous things

we saw in some of the previous characters and make those locations feel more real for what Street Fighter is. But once again, in all the ways that like Street Fighter has improved, it's single player experience. It is still weak, weak in all the ways that like Tekken and Moracombat are strong. Like Tekken and Mortal Kombat are strong. Like Tekken, their story modes are still kind of weird, but there are so many fucking interactions

and arcade endings in between the characters of them doing stupid shit with each other. That you're okay, I'll let it pass. How broke is Paul this time? To be fair, arcade mode is nothing but the stupid characters interacting with each other Like fucking Marissa trying to chase you for out to get married and then menon is like yo Can I get in on that Marissa's like there's room for everybody Can we go back in time to techin? 3 4 and 5 where every single arcade mode gets you a lavish CG ending.

That never happened. Or that is wildly nonsensical and doesn't happen. Sure. Let's commit to Gond's ending where you just fuck it. Sorry. Jamie and Luke having their violent dicks on the, did I miss something? I mean, dude, I saw that on the corner of my eye. What the fuck? It comes close. There's a lot of moments of Jamie and Luke having those stairdowns and those fights where they're getting real close

to each other, right? There's one in particular where like Jamie's got, he's got the guy liner on like strong. Right. And he's absolutely doing given the come here the rise. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

He's got that smirk and he's got the look that's like, let's go final round and you know what I mean. You know? And it's going to be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's fight horizontally.

No, it's just there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a couple there's a couple of fatter of that. I'm like, yeah, I see what y'all are reading in there. It's a good, this, in conclusion, world tour needs to get its third strike because right now, it's that weird first version that just is like, ugh, I like the idea, but let's get it together. Well, luckily, it's not like World Tour took like 78 years to make. I will say that whenever the DLC comes out, of course, you do get that little... You know that part of what you're getting is that a world tour inclusion as well. And between that one and Rashid's,

it's pretty minor, it's like I'm single. It's a single mission, you know, and I was like, I guess like the, I'm like, okay, we're not gonna go to Akuma's Island, you know, we're probably just gonna see him standing behind an alleyway in the darkness. Yeah, no Akuma will be fucking sitting on a plastic chair, a plastic patio set, eating a

hot-o pizza. But yeah, just take from what people enjoyed the most on that and come back around and you can do this good. You can do this good. But as far as people like having a more fun time with the single player version of like someone who doesn't play fighting games, having more to do in single player, World Tour absolutely did do its job there.

For that first, like a special launch period, a lot of people were just like, yeah, it's cool to be able to just run around and do shit and mess around with my custom character. That's a very strange habit. Customize it in Street Fighter VI, where I go to World Tour and I walk down into the pit and in the pit, there's like 40 people in there and they're all level 100 avatars.

And I'm like, oh, is there some kind of weekly or monthly thing for avatar battles? And then it's like, no. Yeah. I tried it. It's people have actually decided to spend their time fighting maxed out Avatar battles. I didn't touch it until like just recently. I just went on with one of the again to fighting games.

I went down to the pit and fucked around with it now that I'm done with World Tour. And yeah, it's, it's wild and goofy and I mean, shout-outs to some of the amazing, just creative designs I saw. I think it was a Fox Lex created a Professor X that was literally like in the chair with like, and it looked like accurate and he would do the yoga float around. And so it looked like Professor Rex was in the actual trend. All he did was he took a dude in a suit that was bald with a jacket.

He took Rashid's backpack, made it huge, rotated it horizontally, and then took the headphones, made it huge and put it around the front. And together it looks like a Professor-ex-floating chair. It's crazy. It's one of those things where you play armored Core 6, and you look at, like, I made an eyeball in the emblem editor. What are other people doing?

Oh, they're making animated skips out of geometric panel layering? Fuck. What the fuck? Fuck. Yeah, incredible fun stuff You know you got on base right they didn't they didn't strike out you got on base, but just let's Let's take these ideas and and flesh them out with quality now

You've you've made the war gods to prove that the engine works Now you just need to make the best content you can with this system and deliver Mortal Kombat 4. Okay. Anyways. Yeah, Street Fighter's still good, shocking. Cool, cool. What else have you been up to, man?

Okay, well, I assume you played some ackey, so I've just figured out. Yeah, yeah, I touched them ackey. Reggie did more of it, and I kind of focused on just fighting against and figuring out the deal with her. How much of a better fong is she, and the answer is very much a better way better. Yeah. Yeah, a bunch of quick, a bunch of TF2 going on and you know, uh, oh, Team Fortress. Yeah, all the way in. Um, have you heard of Pudus engage? We're not. We're not. We're out. We're out. We're out. We're out. Evandanship inject button. Of the, uh,

Titanfall 2 is what I'm talking about It's it's yeah, this is you know fun to jump in and jump out and get some quick games of that But I actually Yeah, what did I do this week off off camera? I played a couple hours. I fucked around with a game called Fate slash samurai remnant. Have you heard of this? Remnant fate samurai remnant Fate somewhere on steam. Mm-hmm is a on steam is a Edo Japan Grand Grand War wait hold a holy grail war oh no not the holy grail so yeah otherwise known as the moon or the waxing moon ritual so I have to say boy they these okay

I have I don't know anything about this game. It says very positive and you played it. So I'm gonna assume it has a certain benchmark of quality. When I go to the steam page and look at the launch trailer, which is 40 seconds, and there is not a single frame of gameplay in it. It's like, oh wait, there's five seconds. So let me tell you.

But it's like 99% cutscenes of looking at Artoria or whatever fucking name is. No, no, no, let me tell you, right out, right out the gate. That trailer is not doing a disservice to the product that you're purchasing because that first hour is,'s say three fights and perhaps 52 minutes of like cutscene conversation setup and everything going on.

Oh, like a dragon pacing. You're watching and playing out like just the movie, the anime, you know. I guess, I guess so then, yeah. It is, and the other thing too, is like when it drops into like visual novel mode, right, it'll switch between, you know, okay, so like a dragon pacing as you mentioned,

but yeah, it's known for money on, money off, right? Very. Okay. And like, you played Zerah, right? There's also money off, off. Off, off. We're played Zerah, right? There's also money off off off off off We're not even moving anymore, right? So in fate's case because I mean again associating I suppose the brand With the the bankroll when the money goes off

It it's secretly still on and by secretly I mean lavishly because you get a big anime cutscene, 2D, it's gorgeous. Then you get a big cool fight scene. It's gorgeous. Everything is doing all the stuff. And cool animation is happening. The camera is doing the destabilizing bit. No, you know, the steady cam is falling apart. Big flashes are going down. And then when it drops into the visual novel mode, where characters are standing, talking to each other over the shoulder, not only are you getting the characters facing each other and then the dialogue happening, you're getting the Persona-esque RPG portrait that is animated fully with their mouth talking and doing the whole and making the faces and stuff, but the character in the world is actually moving more

than the portrait is, so it's almost like you don't need the fascinating. You're having a full cut scene that's really detailed and they're having all the little, like, oh my God, this, that, whatever, and then on top of that, you're having the little cut ins where the eyes are glaring at you and like, shh,

you know, for a moment or whatever. And all three of these things are happening at the same time over just a random like what should be a bland conversation. And I'm like, oh my god, this thing has money behind it. There's so much cash. I need you to help me because I have just completed skimming over every trailer on the steam page. I watch the whole thing, but skip four, five seconds,

five seconds, five seconds. Looking for, what is this thing? All I see is cutscenes. What are you doing it? What is it? I had no idea. I'm like, you know what?

Let's just click some buttons and? I had I had no idea. I'm like, you know what? Let's just click some buttons and find out I have no idea um, and and again what I have having played a fate gamer to a little bit know hearing shit What I'm like that enough. Let's just let's just I don't know anything. Let's just go in. Let's just open up our arms and embrace whatever's coming here So what you get is like when big fancy anime shit is not going down, you're getting more or less just a mooseau. Okay. Mooseau battle and you're fighting in a arena and then there's gonna be a bunch of grunts that you just slash through a bunch of them and then every once in a while, and then there's gonna be a bunch of grunts that you just slash through a bunch of them.

And then every once in a while, one of them will be more sturdy than the mobs, and you'll have to like dodge their attacks and be a bit more like wary of the lock on with them. And then you might get a one-on-one that involves like you switching over to your summoned, you know, whatever fighter that's gonna do their Musso combos on the on the on the enemy who's gonna have their like moments of

like stagger, big swing, dodge, stagger, sequence, charging up fast fast fast bunch of mobs, you know, so yeah just just a little mooseau, a little bit of, you know, if you played Hyrule Warriors or P5 Strikers. Am I doing stages? Am I going like, I'm going to do a mooseau stage now? And then after the fight ends, you get some cash and then you get a little conversation or something. And then you run back through town,

and then you're running through town and there's a shop to buy some shit. Or you go back to your hideout and you can running through town, and there's a shop to buy some shit, or you go back to your hideout, and you can craft some items, or you go forward in the story, and then you encounter the next storybeat, or whatever. But like, you're just running around town, and then like every once in a while,

you turn into like an opening, an alleyway, or a courtyard, where a bunch of thugs are hanging out, and then you do a little loose-so battle. So is it kind of like a dragon then? So I'm really... So again, I'm early, but I would say like a dragon, and yeah, because the city is like a fully realized, realistic kind of city that is...

Okay. You're fighting in the streets and constantly, like, turning into stores and stuff. And here it's a little more like, it's an old school like, you know, era town. So it's much more like hallway. Here's a fight zone, hallway side quests,

jump up here, go through this thing. Here's another fight zone, shop shop, you know. So yeah, it just, you could like, this looks lavishly, like lovingly produced, and all the little elements that I see are like appear to be very high quality. I am just like in astonishment at how difficult

I'm finding on the game store page to figure out what it actually is. Even the description is so confusing. So, what's the, I mean, it's just reading it. Like, you know, and you can call it an action RPG if you want to, but like you're leveling up things through like, you know, a couple of mashy fights and the RPG element is, you know, you're mousse-oing.

You're beating up a crowd, you know. Traverse the city of Edo and become victorious in the waxing moon ritual. Fight, explore, converse. Many elements are deeply intertwined in this action RPG. Yeah, you can unlock moves and put the move on the button you want, or you can change out the helped for your sword.

You know, you do some stuff. Is this like the strength of like a super IP? I think in that they don't need to show you the game, even if it's really good. They just need to show you that like Archer and Altria are there. This, the strength of the Super IP is when I'm watching the cutscene into the fight into the conversation.

And I've set it up to be like auto, auto read and text on the fastest instant. So twice my controller died turned off while the cutscenes were playing out because I was idle on the controller for as long enough that it turned off. And I was like, wait, it's not what? Oh my God, it's like when the switch would dim itself because you haven't been using it while the cutscene played out Multiple times I've just I'm it's been like what the fuck half an hour went by and we're still going um And you know to uh, and it seems like it's like I

Again, I don't know I I hear things through osmosis, but I'm sure if I repeat any of them. They'll be wrong. So fuck it It feels as if this is also like, hey, do you know what fate is? Then here's a bunch of shit. Do you not know what fate is? Well, here's a bunch of shit, but whatever. This is like, like, in a different setting. Yeah. And fate shit is happening. That I'm like, oh, I've heard about that. And I recognize that thing or maybe that whatever person and thing, but it's all like in a setting that's like, it's brand new anyway. So you may or you may, it's, I guess, I don't know, I hear it's standalone, but also it's clearly tying in if you know

what the deal is. So what the rules in this and that. I obviously don't know that much about the fake series. However, I do know that every time someone says, don't worry, it's standalone, a louder person shows up in the room to tell you that it's not standalone. Yeah, and I think the reality of that ends up being something where it's like, hey, if you just want to care about the brand new character you're playing as, Iori Musashi, the adopted son of Miyamoto Musashi, who is living in Ido, Japan, and he's fighting and

he's got the, you know, Nito Ryo style with the two swords and all that, you can just, you can just focus on that. And then you're, who's this magic person? I don't know, Nito Ryo style with the two swords and all that. You can just focus on that. And then who's this magic person? I don't know, but I got a fight in some kind of big, like, fight to the death tournament thing. Okay, show me it, right? And oh, she happens to be named Saber. Okay, cool.

What's her deal? I don't know. Can she tell us? No, she doesn't know. Give me more details about this thing. Now there's nothing else we just got to fight. Okay, right? But if you're like, she doesn't know. Give me more details about this thing. Now there's nothing else we just gotta fight. Okay, right?

But if you're like, ah, I know that Saber and there's Lancer and then there's the Berserker and in the other series, that means that they're attached to these famous historical figures in Yad Yada, then you can, I suppose, enjoy it more. But if you don't know or care about that I guess the idea is like man, it's not gonna be a huge deal. It's just further reading if you get through this

All right, so Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna paint a picture for you all right I'm sitting there and I'm like you know what man this this samurai remnant fake game looks all right But all I know about fate is the following two things one The the Katy Perry fucking Lil Nas X remix song on that berserker fight against the evil Artoria All-Thuria Altria thing was a cool anime music video that showed up on my TikTok that one time. And two, Astolfo is packing bigger than a monster can. I know that one.

How ready am I to get in? I mean, my preparation was like, Lancers got an infinite, and that's basically it like again I've and I actually had a friend sit down and explain the the lore of fate to me at one point over Philly subs and I sat and I listened to it and I heard the deal and I heard and the whole thing about you know The the names and the true names and the weaknesses and the tournaments and all that stuff. But I'm just like, ah, fuck it! I'm gonna pretend I don't know our care. Let's see what this does in its own contained package, you know?

So I don't feel so bad. I don't know. I mean, obviously, like, if I go further into this game and then by the middle point, the game is like, here's a million things that are referencing events that are super important to like previous anime and card games that you have to spend money on. Then, yeah, that would be like, oh, this is a continuation of a franchise you don't know shit about, what did you expect. But, I feel if they don't do anything like that, then I guess it's fine, you know, I feel bad because there was a moment long ago in which there was a thing in the back of my head

of maybe I should watch fate, it seems really funny. And it was based off of a lie. It was based off of what I now know to be a code guess. Ah. A screenshot. And also what I now know to be an edit, I thought it was real, where the guy's at the beach and he's holding up a fish,

and it's like, I'm gonna fuck this, no, I will now pleasure myself with this fish. Okay, okay. And I'm like, that seems hilarious, but I'm like, oh, wait, that's not, not only not fate, but it's also not real? Ah, that's way funnier. I mean, you gotta, you gotta realize, of course,

that if you ever get into anything based on that screenshot, that screenshot is the peak of the content, and you're never gonna come anywhere close to the top of that hill, you know, that you're looking at the mountain summit. Oh, fates people die when they're killed. People die when they're killed. Yes. People die when they're killed. Exactly. And also if I make reference to people turning black, then it's a whole of just, for whatever it's worth, you're looking at us. It's so insane how much money, like this thing just floats in on from moment to moment.

It's so insane how much money this floats in on that last week we covered a company that destroyed themselves over trying to get some of it. Unity's runtime is all. Oh, Jesus. Was in some ways you going to be targeted at fake grand orders for this stall? Oh, my God. You did. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna install you. Yeah, one time thing. Madness. Yeah, but there's something though that it is interesting, cause it's like as you're watching it, and as you're doing way more watching than playing, like as you're seeing these fucking crazy ass anime fights play out, and there's shit where it's like brutal and you know

violent-ass fucking kills and wipeouts occur. There's like there's like an exact moment I remember I hit where like you're like just in case like just make sure you know what you're getting into here, right? It's like, it's like you're seeing all that happening. You're seeing the, you know, again, peak, peak anime, Saku guys, the word I'm looking for. And then you get into a fight with a character that is also rocking the two blade style that is also rocking the two blade style swords and you're like, hold on a minute, I recognize that energy, what's going on? And you are having a duel and then ultimately a conversation with the reincarnated Miyamoto Musashi,

who's now a waifu, you know, and she's a plucky cute young version of your father. And technically from an alternate dimension, so not actually your father, but it's... But it's fine. Yeah, it's not your dad coming back. It's more like a different version, but it's the one with tits. So, you know... Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, so the the the the Ba bike in Musashi vibe coming through. Oh, that's who that is in the fucking okay. And and it's just like the game and you kind of just like had a couple of cut scenes of like your of like old Musashi almost like end of vagabond Musashi being the old man that's kind of talking to you. And that guy is now, hey, what's up? Yo, swords, tits, ah, you, you know, you're just like, oh, man, like, this is what, right, right, this is what this is, you know, you just, you hit that wall really hard.

And it's like, you better be in, you better be in on your favorites of anything, whatever historical figure you want or care about or don't, is coming back with tits and get your wife money out, you know. It's, it was, yeah, the energy, I like, I was, that was probably the first just like, oh, right. Yes, true, right, King Arthur, et cetera. And, you know, yeah, yeah, that's, you just, it's the game fun. Did you have fun playing the fake game? I wish the lock on was better for the Muso moments.

When you fight, I feel like the camera spins around kind of loosely and you don't have a ton of, like, you don't have a ton of like You don't get a ton of ability to Like really pick a direction. You kind of just swing the camera in blind directions at times And if you do a combo that like takes out everything in an area It kind of doesn't matter that much because you're just blowing up the crowd anyway. So Yeah, I guess it it you know, and maybe maybe on harder difficulties, like things kind of change up,

but it seems to be a very simple, you know, like, anime combat system of like, you know, XXXX or XXXY or XYY or, you know, and stuff. And it's just, it's pretty basic in terms of gameplay so far, but it is very just wild to observe from the outside how like- Give me a yes no, did you enjoy your time? It was alright, it was fine, it was fine, you know, I didn't have any moments so far that like we're like this is the shit. I didn't pop off, I just kind of was like, oh this is cool. It felt very, it felt like it was all right.

You know, the fights I watched, the cutscenes were very cool. And I'm hoping that it lets you fight in a way that lives up to that eventually. But like, so far, the biggest pop-offs of anything were just like, yeah, the cutscene moments more than the in-game play moments. You know, and the budget is there that it could do it if it wanted to, but I don't know if it's gonna get to that point. But, yeah, just, you know, it's in terms of, but if you're just looking at the way the gameplay is, it's above, and they'd say, it's fine.

Okay. But I also am somebody who, like, from my time with Musso, It's above me, I'd say, it's fine. But I also am somebody who, like from my time with Musso, and this is a disclaimer, I get bored quickly with like Hyrule Warriors and with Striker, and I played a bit of a berserk Musso as well. Like the mob comboing is not my favorite to begin with. I think Hyrule Warriors is still probably the best one out of all of them.

If you're in- I play that anyway. Yeah, like if- And the thing is too is like Hyrule Warriors is probably the one I probably put the most time into and the boss fights are- You know, the boss fights are more always more fun. But there is something where it feels like you're kind of just training dummying every group

of mob fights until, yeah, until like something comes along to pay attention to in a way. So yeah, I mean, I could be like, I like, there's this, there's this, there's this feeling in my chest where I wanna be a condescending pissant fuck. So I'm opening, I'm showing my emotional cards here. But like, I like Devil May Cry

because Devil May Cry is like, I'm thinking of like a Devil May Cry, because Devil May Cry is like, like I'm thinking of like a Devil May Cry 5 boss fight, right? It does live up to what you're describing in your anime cutscene fight, right? If you're doing it right. But that requires like a huge amount of execution. Like that's hard, right? The average person doesn't want to spend all that, it's like fighting games shit.

I don't want to spend all that time to see the cool thing. I just want to hit the XXX and the YYY. Okay, so here's the thing. I don't know if this analogy is correct because I haven't played it. But I think from looking from the outside, it's kind of how decidio is, right? I think decidia looks to me like a game where most of what's happening is, you know, a sequence that is like shiny in cutscene form and in game there's a bunch of shit too that's like pretty cinematic overall, but

you're kind of just XXX and YYY-Y through it. I'm actually gonna stop you there. Is that off? I'm actually Okay, all right. Yeah, I don't know. I'm looking from the I'm from totally the outside. So the city is like combo route shit. Yeah, is is simple, but it it focuses on attack ranges. Okay, like it's it's. It's about footsies. Oh, okay. The city is a game about footsies. Okay, then never mind that.

I then perhaps, to some degree, the early ultimate Ninja Storm games as well kind of had a little bit of that. It's a simple system to it overall. And I think too as well, there's a part of this to where it's like, yeah, there's more than enough money to make sure that everything is stylish to a degree.

But yeah, I so far haven't hit any moments where you felt like you did the things that were happening in the cutscenes. Whenever the fight came to an end or you hit the last point, the thing that it would cut to right afterwards would be way sicker looking than whatever you just did, you know? But yeah, it was definitely a wild departure

to just enter this world. And, you know, again, to its credit, like it does act as if you don't know what fate is, and it kind of explains the premise without giving you any wise. It gives you all the what's. Oh, that's interesting. It tells you all the what's, right?

What is that? What's happening over there, but it will not give you any of the wise. And technically it won't give you the who's either, because I guess the who's either because I guess the who's are kind of like the spoiler that is the big deal because people's identities is a big part of. Gilgamesh! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I would like to imagine that the, you got a preview of like kind of what the main other

summons are going to be like the main the seven Mega Man bosses you've got to fight. You got a preview of what those are going to be like early on and I'm under the impression that I think like those peak moments will be like probably the bets parts of that game that you can just judge it on and everything underneath that will be, you know, tofu and rice and beans, but they might put some some seasoning here and there because they've got the money to do it, you know. Anyway, so yeah, that was a little bit a little bit of that. It's, of course, also as a fan of Vagabond, it's interesting to kind of like imagine the world of that transitioning straight into this one and imagining that character turning

into, you know, this, this boobah waifu. All right, there you go. There you go. I have now unlocked and enabled fate posting. You've ruined the subreddit for a full week. All right, there you go. I have now unlocked and enabled fate posting Congratulations everybody. You're welcome with a week in a smile In and spend speaking of money speaking of budgets speaking of mountain tops I suppose hey, I guess I've hit what they're calling peak Dion Right is that correct how how I suppose, hey, I guess I've hit what they're calling peak Dion. Right?

Is that correct? How did you feel beating Final Fantasy XIV's final coil of Bahamut? All right, so if you're still trying to dodge FF16 spoilers, tap out now, because I'm going to talk about the last third of the game. I haven't beaten it yet but I'm getting towards the end. I suppose over the 60% market at the very least. Yeah, so anyway, it's so far I definitely had I had a moment where I had a moment where I was in space and like going, why? I paused it and I went, how much game is left? Because how do we come down from this?

Right? Okay, no, we'll throw that back on. It's okay. I didn't... Oh, no, I'll disable it. I'll also watch it, because I know when... I know when to turn it back on. Okay, that's okay. I threw it off because the stuff I care about has effectively ended. You don't want me? Therefore it's kind of like, alright, right? And it's interesting. So you get to, um, one, Deon, you get to the family, you get to fucking shit, Prince of

the A, and, ooh, that bitch of a mother, right? Dude. That fucking lady, and you get all of that in this insane, bombastic sequence, and it hits all the things that I wanted it to hit because like, okay, we go to space and we kill it I got tired. That happens, whatever.

That shit's fucking rad. We don't even even it's done that's okay when you're watching like you fucking So Dion's there and you're watching clive lay in on anabelle and Give every single fucking thing she needs to hear and she just fucking thing she needs to hear. And she just hears it, puts the mental helmet on and just shuts it the fuck out and just goes, ugh, my baby.

And I'm like, I've been in the room where I've watched grown-ass adults do that in real life. Oh yeah. And it made my like something inside of me just ripped open. So I need to stop you for a second. I had so first of all, I want to say that sequence is the first time since coming to live in BC that I was like worried my neighbors were going to hear me because I was screaming my ass.

And one of the reasons why that was is that every now and then you become perfectly in sync with the narrative theme. Yeah. Like you encapsulate the character and you're right there. And when she's wailing about her to her baby and I'm screaming at the top of my boss, bitch, look out the window to which point Clyde follows with have you not looked out the window is my that is the peakest moment in that game. It it just it's everything. It's all the righteous fury you have up until that point coming to a fruition and the fact that

She represents not just the human evil and the world of the racism and all that crazy shit going down and the fact like even the little details Like the flower that's being snoofed is fucking It's the poison that's made to tattoo the faces of the branded, it's the same fucking source flower. It's like, that's like literally fucking, that's like King Washington or not even King Wilder, but that's like slave owner royalty, like sniffing cotton. You know what I mean?

And then tossing it to the ground. It's wild, right? Anyway, the fact that you just watched that super real human like I do not acknowledge my fault, I do not acknowledge my blame, I pretend I do not see it, I will continue to be a problem. I don't even like I just Shut out whatever you just said and when it all comes tumbling down, you know what? No responsibility. I'm out of here, right? I don't give a fuck, Mitt.

I'm madly in love with the biggest hater in that game. Like no, no question. Like I would rather kill myself than have to deal with the fallout from this conversation. Unbelievable. I'm like, I literally just don't wanna talk to you, dude. Like, yeah, it's crazy. And like, not only that, and then anything that you're kind of wondering about where you're just like

Like what could possibly like why would you and she's like bloodlines asshole? Oh, I care about his bloodlines. I don't give a f**k about anything else I care about my fucking blood Mike that's it. I'm here for this and when that's over there. I'm here for that What else do you need to understand? I'm really simple and you're like, damn! Thank you for that! Now die! No, damn! Now fucking sit, now just bleed out for it, like just die! Go, like it's, it's amazing! It's such a fucking like, huh! Alright, and then the game's like awesome Now that you've dealt with all the real human problems

Here's God go kill him and I'm like oh Okay, yeah sure fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No problem right. Why does yeah? Why does he want to wipe this out because time immemorial humanity bush, bush-docs, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, whatever, who cares? Yeah, who cares? It's just like, you can't, like, it's so much simpler to stab God in the face than the concept of racism and nepotism and evil fucking human deeds and parents. You can't, you know?

How do you, you can't always stab that. Man, but here you go. Here's Gaff. Gots floating. Go there you go. Go get him. And I'm like, yeah, all right, fine. Let's just ride it out. But effectively everything that I cared about is done and done there. So I remember when people were reviewing the game and the consistency came out is that when the story shifts focus, it kind of loses some of its momentum

because it gets all final fantasy and god shit. I'm like, oh, well, of course it does. And then I got there and I'm like, oh, but I was so invested in this stupid family and their awful bullshit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That fighting god is actually fairly simple by comparison. Right, right, right.

And I did, someone wrote a comment saying that it sucks to think that like all of that Game of Thrones, the political bullshit, the, you know, the machinations behind the scenes were all just like all the same guy manipulating everybody so none of it mattered. And I disagree with that because I think the same level of like background fuckery that Ultima had in Clive's life is about the amount he affected the others, right?

Everyone was still out for their own shit and is moving pieces according to the way they wanted to. But he was in the background being a little voice, pushing you, doing things, but they did what they wanted to do for their evil shitty stupid bullshit reasons. And those things are on that hold. Like Hugo wouldn't have been able to get cucked to death unless he was a participant.

Yes, in this game. But he willingly engaged and then doubled out a second time, you know, after the, I mean, he did get fucking, you know, you got the box and what's in the box? Well, sure, that's gonna play out the way it does. But even, you know, even Barney, who, again, we're still trying to figure out his deal. And in that one little moment of like,

oh, hey, what do you, oh, okay, it's whatever you wanna see, ultimate can just like, hey, I'm showing you what you want. And then who's this goddamn, it's his mom is, and it fuck goddamn, it's his mom. Yeah. You know, and you're like, all right, I think I get enough of your deal, but ultimately you're just like you're in service.

Whereas the others were manipulated unknowingly and unwillingly. Um, it's and it's just and I'm like, yeah, from here on out, we're fine. Wherever this goes, however cool the air combos are going to be the sequence. I mean, I'm sure it'll it'll be bombastic and fresh, but if they weren't aware, then they certainly didn't let it on that you're hitting the game's potential credit point because you're fighting in space and you're punching each other in supernova fashion and you're having again, literal Guren Lagann references going down before reentry.

And 30 minutes ago, we were running around a market looking for a passport to get to the other side of a dirt hill. Yeah, it is, it's starting to get like really, like the downtime and the uptime are getting like further apart. The only thing I want to add to that is that that sequence with Bahamut is like,

I made the goof, but you probably didn't recognize the name. That part is like, you know the whole game P, I've said like, oh wow, that's like FF14. It's like this. That part is like a encounter just lifted. And copy pasted into the new system. All the way to what was once jokingly referred to as quote, fucking golden Bahamut and quote.

Okay. Yeah, I imagine that like if all the stuff that you and others have been talking about with FF14 that's been really good over the course of these years, like I've seen screenshots of FMVs and moments of characters that look like almost characters out of 16 walking around and saying things and racism implications and so on. And so I'm like, yeah, I'm sure a lot of that was echoed in this like microcosm version of it which it was saying thoroughly enjoyable,

but just the real Zeta Flair was the verbal one on the ground afterwards. Fuck you, Mom! Like that. That was so rich. There was so many nutrients in that moment. From here on out, I'm just like into the victory lap. If they start rolling the credits over the rest of the game right now while we did this ultimate session, I have no problem with it.

Did you get to fuck around with the Bahamut's icon at all? I did. I did. I went to the Arets Stone afterwards and started to just mess with it. Um, wow, weird. It's, it's super busted. Defensive position just float dodge to buff your shit and then you make the entire room take damage for the next 30 seconds. Yeah, it definitely it turns the room into a training room as you can build back up whatever other abilities you want. And then yeah, and again, the fact that it's like rewarding you for the dodge as well. And you know, I'm like, this is way more fun too than

the Rama, right? Rama feels like the loser on the set so far. So I felt that way up until, what's it called? It's called Lightning Ball. Lightning Ball. Okay, so the thing that you place. The orb that you hit, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is the best move in the whole game

because all the other lightning rods, sorry, because all the other icon abilities interact with it. So you throw it out and then everything else is going to amplify it. You put it down and then you do like all of the Bahamut shit onto the lightning rod. Okay. And so now it's being like multiplicative. Well, at least you can pull, you can max it out,

pull it off of Ramo and put it wherever you want. Yeah. But in terms of like the slow down and paint, the target's bit. I'm like, I don't want that. I want a parry, I want a grime, I want a snatch, I want a dash, I want to go into a defensive fucking, you know, a room clear.

Like, it just feels like that one is just way underpowered. Bahamut is like, I got to it and I started to use it and it's like, it's probably too good for anyone who can dodge reliably. Mm. Because you get to start every fight with that big AOE. It also shows me as well that like, so I like that I can fight while waiting for my cooldowns to be off to come back. And like the times where you can put the controller down while you wait for the controller or well you wait for the cooldown to come off I'm like ah this is less fun so like I think anything

I'm probably not gonna do all six slots all six giant supers you know I think I'm gonna like do one or two yeah but I but I like the ability to like yeah like switch off to the next thing and then keep fighting, do an air combo, yadda yadda, fill for time, and then do the next big one, you know. It's also gonna be a different rhythm to it as well since taking off Garuda means no more half-stagger pull, you know, so. Yeah, I'm just glad that like, I'm like, okay,

now I think I'm probably gonna roll with Bahamut and and and if for it until proven otherwise, you know But well, well, yeah, but again, I just labbed it for like a little bit, you know, and we'll see where it where it goes from there Did you fight the the S ring notorious monster that unlocks after you do the Bahamut stuff? I don't think so now. I just got just got back to the base and that was it. So that thing when you go and counter it is the hardest fight in the whole game. Okay. Super boss. Like hands down. Okay. Yeah, you mentioned before.

It's the only thing that took me like, I think more than two tries. Okay. Yeah, but just as far as the story goes, it's really interesting to see that play out the way it does. And I suppose. I suppose. I play it out like perfect.

And I'm curious to hear, I mean, let me get to the end first, but I'm curious to hear, I mean, let me, I'll, let me get to the end first, but I'm curious to hear what people who are like classic FF fans that don't like the change so much. If they like that, things swerve towards the traditional as a Genoa saying, or if it kind of is like, um, like, is there, like, for me, it's like like and for what I don't know I'm it might be cool If you make me care in the next couple hours, but For if for most people it's kind of like up and then down You know are there is there anyone where they're kind of like oh god finally I care because I didn't like that so like political for

Border and shit for me who's who I've I've got hands on on literally every single one to some degree. Um, and also all of 14, which is its direct inspiration. Um, there's two things about that. One, no, I kind of wish it had kept going. Uh-huh. Off of that tangent instead of the more traditional thing. Uh-huh. And two is that, um, it's kind of weird how serious the game is.

Like you've seen about 85% of the game so far. It's kind of strange how little there is of goofball stupid shit that Clive and the gang get up to. I know what you mean because it contrasts so largely with FF7r and how nonstop Okay, and yeah, my my reference point is ff7r so I yeah, but ff7r 14 10 12 mm-hmm Like remember in 12 when you're like I go we got to get out of here

We're all wanted men and then you look up and there's a bunch of cactar dancing and shaking their asses. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There is levity in the side quests, but there's not a ton of it, you know? And I think as well, like in some of the characters, like when when fucking Midolphus shows up, literally you may. Might be the worst translated name for a character I've ever seen in my life.

You named her man. Her name is mid. Just the time in. The timing couldn't be better. Yeah, might all get me some, get me some headache medication. When, yeah, when she shows up in most of her quests are just like, God damn it, Winry, what do you want? Yeah, for real. So they've kind of like isolated it into these little, like every time you interact with Goots, it's gonna be a little like, ah, it's Goots. Every time you talk to Karen,

it's probably gonna be like, ah, get off my ass, your old bag, you're great, you know? But for the most part, anything like that's gonna be a red, move the shit forward thing is gonna be, yeah, like dead ass serious and, you know, and Clive is that that energy of a protagonist as well, right? He's these big blue ony, right? So, yeah, I don't know that 14, well, I guess my question is that 14 is so fucking long and big that like doesn't, doesn't, 14 kind of encapsulate all

FF pervitation type of that you would break down as each expansion is its own game because they're all self-contained to some degree. They're all just sequels to one another. But like, there's still just like, tons of stupid, stupid, zany shit at all times. I mean, the relic quest that got going on has the Hilda Brand series where the rigging is constantly breaking and it's just complete slapstick. It's just strange that like there's nothing in 16 that gives Clive the chance to like laugh even once. I mean, it happens, it's just far and few in between. It's just extremely, you know, everything with him and his uncle is kind of goofy, you know, because it's like when uncle is kind of goofy, you know, because

it's like when when I'm called that goofy, I think that's like really sweet and like heartfelt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but like it's just it's a chance for Clive to like take a breather while while his uncle is is is waltzed around fucking becoming king of the underworld and tossing the money around. Sure, but when is Clive gonna walk up to a chocobo lady who's from the future and is selling shit out of her shop to her rock music rendition of, can you ride this chocobo? Hey, it's just, it's not gonna happen.

It's not gonna, it ain't because he's all, like that Josh shit fucked him up, man. You know, dude's traumatized and he didn't get Amnesia over it, you know? Well, not completely, I suppose, but. A little bit, just a little bit. Just enough, just a little bit. Just a little bit of Amnesia.

A little, you know, protagonist Amnesia, yeah. Anyway, that's fun stuff going on over there. And then yeah, only other thing I guess I'll touch on is I went over to the studio where the devs behind checkmate showed out had a little exhibition match and that was the chess fighting game. And yeah, I got to play a little bit more of that. Definitely a game where if you are strong at chess or strong at fighting games, like you can use that to push you pretty far. And if you're kind of bad at both, like good luck, you're good at get, you're gonna get a rough awakening. But it's fun to play this kind of concept of chess.

I touched on it to not some time ago as well, but it's nice because I think as of today, the demo is out on Steam, so you can go get some hands on it. Yeah, it's a chess game, and every pawn plays like a normal pawn on a chess board, but every not pawn is a fighting game character, and when they get into fights with others, so the rook bishop, knight, king and queen, you have a match to determine which piece wins and loses on the board. And then meanwhile the pawn can die in one hit, but can also eat in one hit. So you have to like, set up things where, like if you wanna have a fight between a bishop and a rook, then if you believe

that you can take that fight, then go for it, the rook is like the Potemkin. It's the heavy grappler with a big tackle and a grana and a 720 type move. It's easy inputs by the way though. But if you can make that bishop bishop like bait the rook into fighting, and then the rook dominates and takes your bishop, and then right after the fight now, the pawn that was sitting behind the bishop just eats the rook, while the rook dies in one hit without even fighting, you know?

So there's some setups to it that are real, real chess setups. It's called checkmate showdown once again. And you're gonna, and the other thing too that's interesting is like, okay, so we've talked a bit about like the difficulty of learning more than one fighting game character in recent podcasts with MK1 versus Marvel's Huy and all that. So in this case, everyone's team is the same. Everyone has a Bishop, Brooke Knight, King and Queen. So like for veteran for worse, you're gonna have to fight as your king if you're at some point, you know, if you're before you lose. So you're gonna kind of have to learn a little bit about how each of these characters plays to some degree. And, you know, it's, they're all pretty basic and simple

in that there's an auto combo, there's a Smash Brothers kind of modern control system so you can, you know, special button left, neutral or down to get the three special moves. And then I think beyond that, little things like burst air dash, you know, whatever. Oh, but then, like, and there's one other mechanic where if two pieces are next to each other,

and like if let's say, do you not apply chess? I know how to play chess. Okay, okay. So let's say like, hey, let's stop for a second. Do you think it's weird that that's a question that we started to have to ask? Because when I was in high school, it was a given that literally every single person

I would meet in my life knew how to play chess. As a kid, that was the case for me too, but it's become less of a thing. Therefore, there's a lot of people that don't, it board games in general are not as much of a thing as they used to be. And the board games that are popular are like Kickstarter-based, you know, D&D-based, like that.

That's me that's like that. Not knowing how to read an analog clock. Yeah, yeah, or tying your shoelaces or, you know, shit like that. Or that and just shit in a toilet. I mean, okay, now we're getting a little further off. We're supposed to, by the way, if you don't know. We're getting a little further off base.

But yeah, I think there's a good chance if you went to kindergarten in 1996 or something, you never really necessarily had a chess board put in front of you at any point. Snakes and ladders and checkers perhaps, but that stuff kind of, you know, has gone by the wayside and furthermore, like tablets are around and there's just less and less opportunity to pull out a board game and pieces is plastic and play, you know, I think. I used to play a lot of chess and checkers and that type of shit back when in Grenada when there was less coming on as well, I remember when the Sabbath was approaching, so like got into it that way, and then had a kick on the early chest.com days back in the, like, I don't know, close to early odds or something like that.

So I still have some memories of like, a couple of opening things, but barely, barely, barely. You know? Good for your brain. So, but I'm just like, okay, well, let me just coast on some fundamentals, maybe, and see how this goes. And it's gonna be interesting,

because yeah, I know the folks behind the game are trying to reach out to chess professionals, as well as fighting game professionals, and seeing if they can work together, or seeing what happens when they go against each other. Do you think fighting game players can compete with chess players that are getting fed Dildo-based advice? Well, that's the problem, right? We've entered a new world of tech that I don't think the FGC is ready for.

I don't think they're ready for butt plug based, you know, strats. But if a really, really good chess player can, let's say, dominate with just ponds, then you're kind of probably fucked, you know. I don't know if there's anything like that strategy wise, but like, that would be like one thing that'll let'll even the odds for sure. There's a cool, and yeah, the game does link you straight to chest.com as well, if you want to go make a profile and learn a bit more and stuff. And I think the demo is creating scenarios

where real famous matches that have taken place throughout chess history are now replicated in this version, and you can try to see if you could fight your way out of it using the checkmate showdown system instead of the traditional chess system. But yeah, I don't know. I just, I think it's a fun bit.

And I think like it's the type of shit that I can definitely see being played at tournaments, after the main games and stuff. And if you are, if they're able to get it done, it would be super cool to have an event where you had a pro and a pro on the same team versus a pro and a pro of each thing together and having them fight. There's definitely a lot of the things that you'll recognize

if you've played any anime fighters recently. So, you know, dive kicks, air dashes, and throws, and launchers, and a couple things like that. But yeah, go check it out. It's a fun concept, and I support the team over there. Fun stuff. Once they get a chance to as well, we're going to do again defining games for that. And then anyone out there in the audience that's a fucking Secret Casper of or a Bobby Fisher then come bring it show me what you got Um, I also imagine like this is one of those situations where if you play it like you're gonna want to get a really good king Because if you're a fucking good at king

You can defend yourself against the checkmate and win. You know, a potential game losing moment can just be like you winning over and over again, but you're healing between rounds sucks, you know. So that's the main thing is like multiple people can throw themselves against the king and wear you down until the point where like you just can't fight anymore. Whereas the queen is probably the best character because of course she is.

You know, she can do everything. She can move in any direction. She would be. Yeah, she should, you know. And then there's a fun little detail as well where the King's Super involves attacking you with all his pawns. And the more pawns you have left on the board,

the more damage the Super does. You know, it's smart. So don't just sacrifice your pawns for nothing because then you're gonna be shit out of luck versus if you played well and you had more of them, then you could hurt the opponent a little more, you know, so. Yeah, that's pretty much me. You can check out this week. We're gonna have a bit of a weird schedule because I've got a number of appointments during of the week, but we're going to be jumping back into Balmer cyber funk, we're going to be jumping back into a bit of, well, FF16, we're going to go for some sessions of that, and then I'm going to do a solo session of Armored

Core as well. So yeah, we woolly versus? This should be the gun with the rope, but on Twitch and on YouTube. That came just completely changes once you understand the lock on. Oh boy, it sure does. Full LP, I have a full playthrough up of that

that I do not know how to use the lock on in every single fucking minute of that play. Like fuck. It is. Fuck. It is. That is the biggest blind spot I think I have ever been to. That's a big one.

That's a big one. And it almost hit me. Thankfully it didn't. But it did for up with everything up until Balteas. The game is more fun with the lock on system than you properly. It's a better game. Straight up. That's rough. So I watched two episodes of the One Piece. Hey, okay. That show comes from a different

universe, a different timeline, a timeline where they said, yeah, of course we're making Wolverine yellow. He's yellow. Timeline where they said yeah, of course we're making Wolverine yellow. He's yellow Mm-hmm cuz like I'm like I'm watching and I'm waiting and I'm like all right Helm that was gonna show up and Helmepo looks like a fucking pilot to ugly stupid shit Let's see it the arms. Yeah, that guy looks like a ugly piece of stupid shit Mm-hmm all right all the buggy's boys look like fucking idiots. Oh wow, they look so bad! Hell yeah!

So I want to be really clear. I mentioned this a little while ago, what I'm like, one, I fucking think one piece of art style is like the ugliest thing ever. I remember. But when I'm watching the live action thing, I'm like, oh, let's see how ugly they're- Oh, it's super ugly, that's exactly how it's supposed to be. Oh, it looks so bad. Oh, hell yeah. Okay. That barely looks like a human being. Okay, all right, all right. That's the energy. Like, and I think it's great. I think it's great. Like, like, like, shanks his hair is like so fake.

Like, it's so fake, Red. And it doesn't fit like the guy who's wearing the wig at all. And yeah, of course. I don't know how else you can do an iron jaw on a real person and have him like, like, gutzman style jaw and have him actually articulate words, you know, like like they're gonna do chopper next season and choppers gonna be like a child or like a like a little person in prosthetics and it's not gonna look like a reindeer. It's gonna look like a fucking jank ass robotic muppet.

Yeah, that's what chopper's supposed to look like. He's supposed to look like a fucked up little muppet. Oh, right, yeah, that little team outfit. It's so, yeah, okay. It's so exactly what it needs to be that it makes me look back at like everything that they're like well were modernizing the costume and the look of the characters I mean no fucking don't it can't see the whole time I look like shit forever and been accurate. It would have been way better animatronic little little little

Little reindeer I think is is the hard commit to go for here. I, I don't, like, I don't even know that like, I get CG for the fights or whatever, but for just walking around, because he transforms and changes size. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Um, so like, like, I, I look back at like the X-Men movies and I'm like everyone I you know what one piece has totally sold me Every interview with Brian Singer in which he's like oh, but it wouldn't look realistic like yeah No, it's a man with fucking Metal claws and a magic man and a fucking wheelchair like it was it was an era

It was an era of we need to but adults want to take these comic book characters seriously. So, but it's not serious, right? Like, but it won't, but it won't piece is right, but we won't greenlight it if Wolverine can't wear a black jacket, you know, yeah. Um, also, man, you know, it's the one, so this is the one piece story itself. Boy, it's so nice to deal with something that's so like disgustingly sincere. Like one piece, to those of you who know video games but don't know one piece, it's like a pirate story written by the people who made Ace combat. Right.

Just so straight forward and uncomplex and sincere. Like, I didn't know. You think, why are you gonna do this? Well, cause it's the right thing to do walk walk a rubber man. Oh, you're right Oh, I've melted my heart of heart of iron. I mean, I didn't know that as well It's just like this like one dude on the chopping block Set some shit and then everyone went yo, let's go and the age of pirates began like it's that simple You know it wasn't about a complex world of going Hey guys, I'm the biggest pirate ever. I got so much treasure out there and it's all

one spot go get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it's great. Also the page and I were watching it and we were both like laughing ourselves silly because of the accuracy they're going for with any character that matters. It is like a spotlight is on any character that matters in the background of any shot. It's so funny in the opening scene with Goldie Roger and there's all these normal people and normal pirates going oh man Oh, it was gold Roger gonna really get killed and then it cuts to a bunch of ugly people and wigs and fucking stupid clown costumes Going I'm also a bystander like no, you're not you're a future main character because your wig doesn't match your skin tone Is that thing where the villains grab their wanted poster

and like, oh, is that for the original? No, no, it's not. That's actually added to the show. And it's like incredible. It's like transition every single time. It's like, oh man, they're doing it. Yeah. It's such a small poster.

It's established. Like this person's such a smart way to establish, like this person's the bad guy. Bad person. And here's how tough of a bad person they are in money dollar. It's like, it's really, really smart. But the one that cracked me the fuck up is, double dollars a season. Is like you, you, you, I have this sea of fucking like extras

and bystanders. And then you cut to a fucking like reaction shot of mother fucking Dracula with his fucking yellow eyes and his fucking pointed beards and like I wonder who that's gonna fucking be yeah you know if not the era of Netflix this would have been a show on the sci-fi channel. You know, like this easily could have been in that era of, I say it, but like MK Conquest and fucking Relic Hunter, you know. But you had to have bad cowboy bebop before this to then have the version where the creator is standing behind everybody with a blender bus to their backs. You know, you had to have that before we get to this. It's it's it's really, really, it's really, really great. Like it's the one piece live it, especially I need that. He insects would never learn otherwise. They would

keep thinking they could get away with it. And then that jet is a black male this because I described one piece as unadaptable on this podcast and everyone's saying it's good So I got to see how they adapt it. What the fuck is Marvel's excuse with 400 shit-zillion dollars that miss Marvel can't fucking use stretchy arms? No, these effects look great No, I it can, it can't be weird. It's gotta be cool, don't make it weird. Like he looks great. Like he should look like shit.

Like the Marvel sin, like, you know what else? Because if we want to make, like, it's, again, it's probably coming from the energy of like, if we want you to like have a superhero that you wanna be like and you wanna kinda be, it's like, if you wanna be like a pretty relatable girl that other girls are gonna be like, oh, you can be like her,

then stretching into a weird goofy, might not sell the- Oh, that's out shit. goofy, blah, might not sell the- Oh, that's bullshit. You know, there might not be a marketing angle that they're gonna hate with that type of thing. So let's do something a little more aesthetic in the form of powers or some shit, you know? You know what else?

I have a doubt. I have something to compliment and also shit on for something else. This is, okay, this is only for people who watch a lot of media. So people who watch this podcast, I guess, because we all watch too much TV shows and anime. I've heard this complaint for years, and I agreed with it. But it wasn't until I watched the Netflix, the Netflix,

the Netflix live-action one piece that I was so overwhelmed at just how bad the color grading is on every single MCU film. I don't know where they decided that everything has to be fucking mixed down to fucking grays and blues, but when I'm watching Luffy on the ocean in a little boat and it's this bright, bombastic, yellow, orange, backlit, color-graded, nice thing, the Civil War Airport is like the ugliest big event I've ever seen in the theater. Some of it is definitely like the residue

of like leather X-men where caps outfit is not going to be bright blue, it's going to be military blue, and things like that. I will say that there are some exceptions, like Love and Thunder, and Ragnarok decidedly went for brighter colors. And to some degree guardians, I feel like as well, but those are the exceptions. Like, Luffy is, okay, the little tussle in the first episode in the Marine camp where it's like a, like a little

fort and it's, and they're all wearing just bright, bright colors on a bright blue sky in the middle of the day. And they all look like stupid cartoons and AXHAN Morgan looks like a side show freak at the carnival. And I mean, I can see somebody going, well, that doesn't look like real life. Like good, because it's not. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, I think I stupid ass romantic pirate shit. I think that's supposed to look like real life. I think, I think DCU isn't even starker contrast if anything, right? Because those ones go for like high contrast blacks and every scene in all of the movies across the power across the board. But yeah, no, it is, it is and that does continue because you know it has something called joy in it. There's a bit, there's joy in it. The second episode is

where does it end again? Buggie. Buggie. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Because there's only one thing I'm really like disappointed by strongly about the one piece Netflix live action. And that is I skimmed through the episode list because I'm like, well, these episodes are an hour long, that's cool. So I wonder how far they're gonna get, and the answer is not fucking far. Oh, I couldn't imagine, right? A thousand episodes.

Yeah, but like, like it... There's so much! It's so much that they're not gonna get to. It's so much that they're not gonna get to Either either it I imagine your two approaches are you start like compartmentalizing time and making The significant moments happen at breakneck speed so like you get to There's there's too much or you just forgo it

You know and you kind of be like, we'll, we'll summarize these arcs as best we can in one or two episodes tops. I didn't even get to laugh, I'm not even get to laugh at Captain Chaser. Sure. Someone will get that. And they're gonna think it's really funny. I don't. Someone will get that and they're gonna think it's really funny. I know. The question too is it's more like what's the right approach because filming a million scenes just ain't gonna happen.

Like season 10 is not gonna, you know, be the way they go about this. If you know that at maximum success, they have like five or six seasons in the bank before this wraps up, right? What approach do you take to getting what matters in and then an ending? Do you just have multiple time jumps forward where a bunch of shit that you know off camera from the manga and anime happens, but we're moving to what matters. I would actually sit here and tell you

that I can't think of anything of significance that they would cut. Okay. Right, I went all the way up to Skypia and I would not cut, like there's like a couple shit hole islands at like before chopper that where they fight a dinosaur or some shit. But, uh, it's like from that. No, man. Like imagine turning Frieza into two episodes, right? Like imagine you had to go half an episode for Namek and then half an episode for the fucking perhaps Gidu Force into Frieza and then all

his transformations to the end with a Stinger first for future trunks in the second episode and you're out like, yeah, but instead instead like one piece is like the situation where you're like season six and one piece is coming out what's it gonna be our Abasta and crocodile and you're like what else and you're like no that's the whole season. Okay now it's gonna be our Abasta and crocodile. at some point, they kind of zoom out on a map, and there's a bunch of named islands that I assume are content for the future. Yes, being shown to you, right?

That is, yeah. Yeah, so I assume whatever you see on that map is to be expected. At the bare minimum, that's the promise they make, right? Maybe, maybe. Like, I had a really strange emotion where in the first episode, we have a bunch of, they have a bunch of wanted posters and on one of those wanted posters

is a guy named Bellamy. And I went, oh man, are we gonna get to Bellamy? No, my kid's gonna be in high school before I see live action Bellamy. Like, oh, weird. That's a weird emotion. Would you, and would you take a trade off of not seeing another?

No. Yeah, to see him sooner, yeah, okay. No, I would not. Maybe some of the Baroque works losers, but there's one character that I, the only, that means like the only other thing I know about one piece that I like I would like to see that looks cool is a Ace Portgas is it?

Yeah, yeah, it looks cool. I'm like, oh, let me see what that guy looks like. How are you gonna? What he looks like he looks like he's gonna ruin a bunch of women's lives. Oh shit. I want to see what the live action, you know, like what hot, he's gonna look hot. What's super Chad, right? What's super Chad, Brazilian? Are they gonna get to just roll in their chest out? He never wears a shirt. You know, it's not allowed. Yeah, I want to see how that's going to look. That should, that should be cool. It's going to look wet. It's going to be always sweaty. Like the man's going to have a permanent sheen. Very, I only saw him in action figure form. And I went, when the fuck did Luffy and their members like that's not Luffy and I was like hey, I

I have a question that's I guess a small spoiler for myself because you've watched the Netflix live action right with the entirety or Yes So with my wait wait wait wait wait wait, did I finish it? Fuck me did I get through wait, did I finish it? Fuck me, did I get through half or did I finish it? That's kind of a weird thing to not know. No, I think I got through half, sorry. But yeah, I was planning to, and then I, yeah, I was planning to when I didn't, yeah, I was planning to what I didn't.

I think I just got through half, yeah. Okay. So, um, then I guess I'm asking the universe. With my adoration of its slavish devotion to accuracy, no matter how ridiculous the character looks, like I've seen what live action Mehawk looks like, and it's like, wow, that is an incredible cosplayer given a studio budget to cosplay as Mihock, a plus perfect. Is white beard visibly depicted in the show even once? Because He's very big. No, okay. Because like the... He's big. I assume that some of the bosses, or at least the, again, the Steel Jaw guy,

I feel like the anime version of a character that looks like that must be like five times taller than Luffy in anime form. So no, that's pretty accurate to Morgan, but when I say like, like, like, like, white beard is big. I mean, he is like more than twice as large in every direction. Okay. And every other character.

Okay, okay. Huh. Yeah. And like, and like, I remember asking somebody, like, why is he so big? And the response was, cause he got big. Pfft. Like, there's a character later on called Big Mom, asking somebody like why is he so big and the response was cuz he got big Like there's a character later on called big mom who is just physically large

She's just big They'll figure it out they'll figure it out So I would like to see what white beard looks like, because I want them to just make him really big and have no explanation. Don't even have characters remark on it. Why would they? Everybody knows that white beard is very large. So I mean, I know it's an older reference point, but like grabbing for what I can, I'm just reminded of Trigon, where like the Nebraska family and a couple of villains show up in that that are just giants, like Titan-sized giants for no reason. You know, like someone just gave birth to a humongous colossus and it's a person, but whatever,

that's part of this world, you know, shut up. Also, here's the watch to poster. Some people being confused. I should mention, back in the day, I actually watched the first 250 episodes of One Piece, but I died because of the horrible pacing of the uncut down anime. Oh, you've seen a good bit of it. Okay, okay. So all the way, that's why I say, all the way up to Skype here, and the fight with NL.

And then I was like, you know what, I'm done for now. And then for now turned into multiple years. Okay. Cool. Let's see what else. So I beat Act Two on the Baldur's Gate three. That's a full trilogy of games. In one. That is a, that is a fully self-contained set of three games back to back to back.

I have never played a game that feels like this. It is so crazy. It is it is so nuts How it is three games in a row? Like it it is mass effect one two and three back to back to back From spending a little bit more time with it. Um Okami okami okami Okami Okami Okami. Now Okami overstays it's welcome.

So we got to, you know, keep an eye on this one. I have a sneaking suspicion that Baldur's Gate 4 is the best one. And that Baldder's Gate three is the second best one. And that Balder's Gate five is the least best one. Gotcha, okay, okay. I will say this that like the stuff I liked in Mass Effect in terms of conversing with that the crew and getting to know them and shit, like from just fucking around a little bit more on my own,

like, it's crazy how much more of that there is, because every mission in Mass Effect, you run around the ship trying to get a little bit more dialogue and a conversation out of somebody. And you know, there's usually a couple people have some things, but you know, a bunch will not everywhere. And you just squeeze a little bit out of them or here and there, you know.

And then you've got, oh yeah, oh, if you're a Paragon Shepherd, you get a little extra talk with this. And if you take this person on this mission, you're going to get that. And this game seems to have that, of course. If you have the right person in the right cutscene, you know, they're gonna give you the right little flavors But instead of every mission being the moment you go back and get more. It's every night Right, it's every single interaction with almost every single character of note. Okay But just in a but just like in addition to this

I I'm assuming every mission, progression point, all the things you would expect from the way a massive I game would go with the dialogue, just having a rest into camp, where a whole bunch of fucking relationship things go to. Like a miniature little set of Dell every day. Every day, and it's a lot.

You know what I'm saying? Oh wow, what a awesome burden through those. There's only so many of these interactions per long rest. But that's a really cool way to do it. And of course, I'm thinking of, you know, when I Fred played my friends D&D campaign, how like at camp, you know, we talk in Bicker and do some shit and then you set up watch and that's pretty much it

and you prep your spells and then you go to bed and then see if you get ambushed or whatever but like the amount that goes on at camp here is like a whole fucking just all the relationships forming and all the you know, it's it's it's wild every single day You just have that ability to just drop into your content relationship zone and then drop out of it, you know, it's wild. Every single day, you just have that ability to just drop into your content relationship zone and then drop out of it, you know? So Paige will, is playing her campaign on this

alongside mine. And so like, I'll be like fussing with the baby or something and she'll be hanging out and doing act two stuff. And the amount of shit, so I'm playing the game on camera and I'm trying to scrape everything and I have a chat many of whom have beaten the game as well. I mean like, hey, maybe you missed something in there and you missed something in there.

And she opens up her inventory. I'm like, where the fuck did you get that? So I picked it up over here. Where did you get that? Oh, I picked over here. She recently switched over to a sorcerer and like is encountering variations of events that I was never privy to. So there is a sequence somewhere in the game in which you want to convince a bad man to give you a lantern to protect yourself. Right? You can try, you usually end up fighting him for it and killing him. Yadda Yadda. Because Paige was a sorcerer, she was able to not only convince him to just give her the lantern, but then he's like, but I'm not protected. She gets a sorcerer deception role unique to her that goes, yeah, you wave your hands and say

and do some sparkles and go, okay, you guys are protected. Wow. And you pass that deception and then they just walk out of the lanterns light and fucking die. Wow, wow, wow, that's cool. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, cool. So, have you, you're playing with your controller, right? Yes, I am. Have you played with mouse and keyboard at all?

A little. Okay. I tried that for a second, and it feels like a completely different game. It is? It's wild. The HUD change right off the bat is. It's wild. The HUD change right off the bat is like, oh my god, I see now what you're actually designing this game to be. And it encourages you to one, just like you walk to whatever spot and then every option is just like you walk to whatever spot. And then every option is just like a quick instant click away.

Um, yeah. That like when you're on the controller, pulling up the time stop frequently to be like, okay, wait, which one am I grabbing here? Oh, I don't time stop anything ever. Okay, I, there's a couple of times where I needed to do that because I was like, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, a lot. But like, on having everything just laid out with the mouse shit is like, just a very different version of that game, pulling up an item quickly, training something or dropping something here, giving something else to somebody, sending it to the right place, a wrong place,

is just a, you know, it goes way faster. And you can see it was designed to have a bunch of windows floating around and then closed quickly. But something else that's interesting is, and maybe I'm missing a keyboard button somewhere or something, but with just at least the mouse and moving around and stuff, it feels like on-game-pad,

you're encouraged to search more thoroughly because of that orb of like, what's around you. Whereas on a mouse, you're gonna have to like manually go through every cupboard and everything in a way that is much more tedious to the point where like you might not look through everything, you know. So they both have their pluses and minuses.

It was very obviously designed for mouse and keyboard. However, it's really strange that the WASD doesn't move your character at all. And just I don't I think that the scroll look and stuff like that isn't as good as it could be. So I just want to catch it. Okay, sorry, I just want to catch everybody in the chat to saying, press the alt button. The alt button highlights all the objects for selected. This is what I was about to say. But it's not the same as the orb.

Yeah. So alt highlights everything. However, the area search feature, which you get by holding down X or A on your controller, is unique to a controller, and is more reliable than the highlight button, because it actually picks up items that don't highlight when you hit highlight. You can also highlight on controller by clicking in the right stick.

So the general gist of it is that moving your character feels a lot better on controller because you're controlling a character. Yeah. Using a lot of your skills is generally feels better on Mass and Keyboard because you're just clicking and using spell levels and whatnot. And I find that managing your inventory, it's a plus or a minus, like I think that the ability to highlight a shit ton of items on controller is fantastic. They had to add that second to the mouse and keyboard.

And you can click and hold to walk in the direction that your mouse is pointing. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of that. For me, the weirdest thing by far is that they added a really good feature to the area search in BG3 and controller where if you pulse the big circle area, it'll show you what baskets and chests are empty. Yes, yes.

There's no way to do that on mouse and keyboard, which is weird. If you hit alt, it should say basket empty. It doesn't. But it doesn't. Oh, but when you check them. But when you loot somebody and there's nothing left on them, it does say without the search area. Oh, it does now.

It does say empty in brackets. When you do search, oh, when you move over the map once you're done looking, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did have it on the map. But overall, no, I find just the ability to like, do a giant search of the area, get everything, and then you see a bunch of red shit, and then you see a bunch of not red shit,

and then you go over to those and you press X, and you can inspect or peek inside, and then be like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, and it's just way more thorough. It feels as if- Hold on. People are saying that it does that after you've checked it. or peek inside and then be like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Yeah, I think that's what it's been for me. Yeah. But either way, it's just even holding alt is not the same thing. It's a way. It's this one really weird thing. Well, the Mousen Keyboard is probably,

like the direct control thing is to taste. I think controlling your character with an analog stick in a game like this is a lot, it feels a lot better than mouse clicking. Most of the rest of the stuff is easier to do on mouse and keyboard, but it's weird that the area search only exists on controller.

And so this brings me to a place where I'm not sure what they want in the design of the game here, but you can scrape or you cannot scrape, but I feel like the amount of shit there is to scrape in any given area is more than feasible in some cases and in others it's just the right amount versus... A lot of those containers are there for set dressing.

Yeah, and like I look at some spoons in a plate. Do you care? No, Okay. You want to sell some? Yeah. All right. Fine. Whatever. Oh, you're overburdened. Yeah. Yeah. I was definitely like grabbing everything at a point. And then I was like, no, this is, I have, what do I need rotten eggs for? Fuck this. Right? Well, no. No. No. You, you, you, you, you, you, you mentally figure out what has value. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. And then a certain point to I kind of like, okay, I checked most of these cupboards, those are fine. And then there's like, oh, you check one carbon,

you're like, wait, that's a really good thing in there. Ah, fuck, damn it, you know? So I'm just kind of curious if like, when you're playing with mouse and keyboard, like, are you still kind of squirre- Well, clicking. Yeah, you're just, are you just doing it the slow way, but you're doing it thoroughly still?

Or do you kind of like, imagine, you're just doing it the slow way, but you're doing it thoroughly still, or do you kind of like imagine that you're kind of like letting it go. You walked into the room, you eyeballed it. Oh, no, Pete, no, everyone's scraping everything. You're scraping, okay, okay. Yeah, so like here's the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the that like you see, you're holding all to pick up all the potions that happen to be in a room, you know, like on a table or whatever.

And you're having to move the mouse and click on every single little highlighted text because you're holding all right. I found it a million times easier to just hold the area search and then everything comes up in a list. Yep. And then hit X and then your character walks over and picks area search and then everything comes up in a list. Yep. And then hit X and then your character walks over and picks it up and then hit down and then you walk over to the next one and pick it up and then down and so on and so forth. It's very strange how this one part of the interface is much faster and reliable with

controller. The only I'm always going gonna play this game with the controller because I'm playing on a couch while holding a child or over here where I prefer it anyway, or split screen where the only way to play split screen is with two controllers. The only downside I'd say is like every once in a while you'll walk up to like something like a barrel

and it'll be like, oh, that doesn't open, so now you have a barrel in your inventory. Fuck. Yeah, well, you want that barrel. Okay. I never picked up a barrel that I was upset about getting because I want every barrel. Okay.

You want every barrel. If you want to commit a 9-11 against those goblins, okay. You need to get every barrel. Fine. Faradah. And what was the other thing? against those goblins, you need to get every barrel. Fine, far enough. And what was the other thing? There was...

Picking up the barrels, whatever. There's something else too with the inventory stuff, that was a bit odd. Oh, do corpses have a weight? Yes. Because I put like a mind-flayer corpse in my pocket and I was just just out of curiosity and it seemed fine for a surprising amount of time and maybe I just wasn't like looking at the right place on it. But I was like, why am I not super encumbered

right place on it, but I was like, why am I not super encumbered with a mind flayer in my pocket. It was very strange. Yeah, they have weight and people pick up dead bodies and carry them around so that they can have bodies to spawn zombies out of. Okay, yeah, that's because I remember that bit too. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, it is interesting switching between the two.

And ultimately, I think I prefer controller as well, but casting spells does just like, it's kind of so more to go through that menu. I do a lot of inventory management and like menu management in games, because I really like to make it nice and pretty. And it took me a little while to figure out how to do that in Baldur's Gate 3 with the radio menus. And the answer is pretty simple. You go into the interface and you turn off Auto Add of every single fucking thing.

So that you have more control. And then you take your regular attacks and your weapon attacks and you organize them the way you want, you take the spells that will always be on your character, permanently learn spells, you know, like, what were you playing, Warlock? Um, monk? Yeah, monk, yeah. Okay, so you take like, Flurry of Blows and put that into a spot because Flurry of Blows will never go away, right? And then you leave, like so for Gale, I have 14 spell slots across various things.

Then I leave 14 slots open in the radio where all my prepared spells would go. And then they, those line up in spell order and spell list. Okay. And so on and so forth. Yeah, I'm already just dreading the like the or inventory fucking pack folder system that need that I'm going to, you know, to create it as at a point, because if you're not marking things as where as you grab them, then that can waste a lot of time, I feel. Well, I have good news for you, Willie.

Money doesn't mean anything in Baldur's Gate 3. You can just barter, right? No. What you can do is druids, some clerics, wizards, and some sorcerers can get a spell called feyne death. And what that does is it knocks out a party member so that they won't be attacked, right? It's kind of a niche use spell.

Well, if you give a shopkeeper all your money, then they'll be your friend. And that means they gain the Ally Tag. And since they have the Ally Tag, you can cast Fane Death on them, which will knock them out, which makes them impossible to check you for pickpocketing attempts.

Jesus Christ. Okay. So you give the shopkeeper a thousand gold Then you knock them out and put them to sleep and then you just steal from them for a couple minutes And they can't stop you including the gold that you paid them what about line of sight for with anybody else what about it? They're knocked out other people oh well Luckily all the shopkeepers that you would do this to are actually weirdly

out of line of sight. Okay. Other people. There's that one first one, but I feel like there's like walking around, there's usually in some cases, if you fuck around with something, there's at least one other person standing around them might be like, hey, what do you want to do? Well, like there's a, there's a, there's a goblin merchant, right? And if you attack the goblins, then the goblin merchant attacks you, which is kind of a bummer because you would miss out on his wares. Unless you turn non-lethal mode on, because if you non-lethaly knock out a shopkeeper, you can take every single thing out of their goddamn inventory.

Okay. Oh, question about that. When you click non-lethal, can you then do any attack and it will be non-lethal? No! Okay, because I- I- that is not correctly explained. I thought that's what it was and that's not the outcome that occurred. Shust, melee hits. Okay. Yeah.

Because I thought that too. I thought some people that were mind controlled and I was like, I'm going to non-lethally shoot them with arrows. And it, hmm, why make it a toggle then? Why not just make it a like non-lethal attack button? I don't know. It's the same amount of inputs you might as button. I don't know. It's the same amount of inputs you might as well. I don't know. Is there any other type of non-lethal attack besides melee?

So just make it, yeah, just make it a non-lethal attack. So make it like hit him with your blackjack. Weird. You know what I have you. Weird. I understand though, you can't exactly non-lethal somebody I understand though you can't exactly non-lethaly somebody of fireball. Yeah sure, like yeah that makes sense. Right. Non-lethal poison, etc. But, um, so, uh, yeah, so I beat the second act and the second act is a fucking, like, it's a fucking better ending than the fucking Mass Effect 2, despite only being the second act of a different game. Fucking incredible, incredible set of dungeons and encounters.

And it's, it's so goddamn good. It's, it's just so goddamn good all the time. I can't believe it. I was talking to people and I'm like, I feel like once I beat the game, I'm just gonna hit the new game. And that's, that's apparently pretty common. Just go right the fuck back in.

Have you grabbed any of those, like, withers fucking bonus characters, the... The hirelings, no? Yeah, the rival schools, extra creator, creative fighters there. Yeah. Okay. Because I'm just looking, I'm wondering,

like, do they get even an ounce of conversation? No, they exist for... They exist to solve game design problems if you make some really extreme decisions. Okay. Like, if you need a certain class. That's certainly you with no party. Okay.

Gotcha. Like, you are able to piss off every single member of the gang hard enough to the point where they will just get up and leave. And while beating the game with one character is probably possible, it would be really hard. Okay. So, freedom is yours, but if you take that, then here you go. Here's some buddy ghosts, you're gonna need a healer. Mm-hmm, okay. Or you could like, you know,

I think there's some weird fish guys that wanna kill one of your party members for a buff and you could just bring one of the fucking losers with you and just sacrifice them, I guess. Cause, yeah, it definitely reminds me of the sole caliber three three like create a characters with names, you know, the alt picks and all that shit, but they did have like a paragraph of sort of backstory.

So it's like, I wonder if any of those are actually content or just no, I don't think they are. Okay. Also, is it important to read books sometimes? Okay. Notes? There's at least one encounter that I was only able to solve by reading books in the nearby area. Okay. There is one book that is very strange.

I found a book that was like diary of so-and-so that just told me what the whole plot of the game was. Oh, wow, okay. Like, this is what the evil plan is. This is how it works. This is who's involved. And I was like, oh, oh, but the game, it's such, it's so wild and out of place because I can't act on it. Interesting, okay.

Because I definitely like, you know, as someone, like the way I play through games, especially when on camera, as I come across lore across lore and I'm usually gonna read it in a lot of cases But in this it there's libraries you're rolling past and it's like at a certain point I'm like, okay, I don't think we can sit and read every two page three page spread we come across When there's a ton of them in a given area otherwise we're stun locked for the rest of this fucking hour, you know, so yeah No, I I skim them. There's only two types of books that I found to be important at all. One is all the books inside the wizard's tower, because, mm-hmm.

Sure. And then there's a kind of like, disc, like alien disc fucking thing. Do you read that are Githyunky? Um, what do you call that are Githyunky? What do you call it? Githyunky, like text. And like a lot of that has like, like, the important shit in it. Okay.

But yeah, no, games, games A plus, Probb, I mean, I'm heading into Act Three, which is apparently, like, still 40% of the cake. Oh, Jesus. So I'll let you know, but so far, this is probably one of the best games I've ever played my entire life. Like they actually have lived up to the legacy

of like BG one and two, which seems bordering on impossible. What else? Oh, I played more Cyberpunk. Yes, Cyberpunk's good. Cyberpunk's really good. It's nice that they finished that game. It is pretty nice that they finished it. Yeah, all I wanna talk about with Cyberpunk

is how unbelievable the fucking ray tracing is. Like, I was doing like, you know, generic side quests, you know, the ones that don't have necessarily story content with it. And I chose to walk on foot instead of using my car. That is the only game I have ever done that in in my life did did I that's I mean a little bit of that energy and in death stranding sometimes but the Is that I see correctly that there's a trailer where ager's elbow ends with saying the game is fixed? Yeah

That's amazing. That's really strong. That's the fuckest, strongest thing I've ever seen marketing related for a video game like all year by far. That's wild. The game is fixed. Uh, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Ah, ah, ah. Ah, ah.

Ah, he fixed it. No, they actually really did. Nicely done. It is, um, I don't know how to explain how different it just feels moment to moment because all fairly subtle. Like you read the 2.0 change list. And it's like skill tree changes and this and that. And it's like, from 1.0 to 2.0, it feels like a completely different fucking game.

I think I said like a year ago, I hope we enter a future where suddenly this just takes the time to do the things that Witcher did and all the stuff I've been hearing about with how the quality of life improved so that when we just like hit a point where you're like, hey, Cyberpunk is awesome. There's a lot of cool shit, and the setting is very cool, and there's nothing to just no caveats to it. We're now here. That's great.

We've hit that point I was talking about. I sent you a tweet that I had made where I took a screenshot of a fucking river next to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, it's running like a regular video game in addition to having perfect reflections off of absolutely everything. So I saw the other thing with the door,

this that opened. I saw that clip. I saw that clip. That was wild. I walked up to a sliding glass door and opened it and got really confused. The geometry of the room I was walking into was not what I expected

because the reflection was so intense, I was actually looking at the room I was walking into was not what I expected, because the reflection was so intense, I was actually looking at the room I was entering from. It seemed as if there's a hallway curving to the right, and then it just wasn't that at all. Like, it's pretty, it's remarkable. It's the first game in like a really, really long time that I'm sitting here going fuck! That looks really good! Like, every time I sit down with it.

Yeah, I'm wondering, I mean, I have it on PC, but I'm wondering, yeah, I got me, it's like, should I get a new video card, or should I, like, because I've been kind of just going for- You should not get a new video card for a video game. No, you get a new video card if you want to make some bad decisions. Well, it's it's more along the lines of like, you know, I've been, I, I'm still like ever since what like I think it's a, it's a 3080. I have, I think I have a 3080.

So it's been fine, you know, but I just don't like push my system that hard that often. Yeah, the bad thing about the graphics that I'm describing with the Cyberpunk is that like a bunch of the games like graphical features are like made for the 4,000 series cards, which very few people have. And then a lot of like, I think there's one, I think like frame generation is like just straight up,

not available on anything but a 4,000 series card. Okay. And I also feel like when I loaded up Demon Souls PS5, I kind of was like, oh shit, I can swerve over to this too and have a really gorgeous experience depending on the game, you know? so I'm willing to jump back and forth between both, you know, pretty liberally.

Mm-hmm. Cool. But yeah, no, it's boy, it's the prettiest game I ever done seen. It's astonishing. And I'm going to be continuing it this week. I was like, should I? And the answer is, yeah, you know what? Fuck it. That's a good game with weird robot shit in it. I will continue that on camera. Okay. Get fucking weird mantis arms.

All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be our big. Oh, before we do. Like that, so you know how I wanna become like a toilet? Not necessarily. It's like any robot. Yeah. I walked into a cyber doc store in that. And there was a gigantic, like floor of a ceiling poster of a man pulling his face off and revealing a skeleton with the giant

text on it. Do you hate your meat? giant text on it, do you hate your meat? And I'm like, yeah, what's the dystopia part of this universe? I don't even, yeah, yeah, cron me up, man. I mean, like, if this were Deus X We could have a conversation But it is a one-to-one suffering rate of Night City fucking get into Get into enhance and and and and chroma up and You're gonna fucking it's gonna end badly. Like I feel like the moment,

no, that's for Pussies, it ends badly for Pussies. I think, I think, I'm built different. Just get, I'm built to start again. Like I think it's not even the moment you, replace all this, all it. I would say like the moment you participate in the system, but it's like no, the moment you look at and start browsing through the website,

it's gonna end badly for you. They didn't want it hard enough, just all of this. Just go right, get all of it. I can keep, no, no, don't even keep the skeleton. Fuck it, you can give me, I can buy a better skeleton in a store. Damn, the Santa Devas Santa is fucking sick. Titanium Zic. Yeah, yeah.

Um. Damn the sand devastating I can't get sick. Yeah, yeah Again, you tried just not going cyber psycho but like what if The lead up to the fucking explosion is so sick, though? Right? What if the shit you're doing right before you just pop is awesome. Like quadruple S rank, you know, there's some, you can, there's a conversation to be had. There's some you can there's a conversation to be had

There's a you know that's again you can I feel like you can negotiate with night city to at least be like all right Can we can we end it in a fucking sick way? Yeah, okay, let's do that the house always wins But I can't even pick what kind of arm. I want a blaze of glory I love the ability to go to the store and just like you know what I want the I want the big arms now No, I want the slicey arms now. I want the ability to go to the store and just like you know what I want the I want the big arms now No, I want the slicey arms. No, I want the arms with the gun That's great It's like switching out your headphones, but it's your arms Does in in gameplay wise can you fuck around you without cost in the same way you can with like armor core? Like is it?

Refunds no no, okay, no it refunds? No, no, no. Okay, no, it's expensive. Yeah, okay, yeah. But all you got to do is go kill more people and steal their guns and you sell their guns and then you get more body parts. Yeah, okay, there you go. Fair enough.

Cool, all right. Be Arby, I'm gonna go piss. I just, I just scrolled for a second briefly and I saw a post this warning, woolly has played a fate. What have you done? Oh no. Fate posting is now relevant.

It's over. It's over even. Might even be joking. You know, I actually just got a really fantastic explanation because I was talking with folks in chat while we were gone about like, I don't think Cyber Psychosis makes any sense because we live in a world where people have robot hands

and robot legs and pacemakers and artificial organs. Yeah. And those people aren't going Cyber Psycho, to which point someone reached out to tell me that Mike Ponsmith the creator explain that medical cyberware Doesn't lower your humanity or empathy because you are using it to make yourself whole For example, I was not born with mantis arms. Mm-hmm To which I say well, I should have been This is bullshit Mike Ponsmith is wrong to which I say, well, I should have been,

this is bullshit, Mike Ponsmith is wrong. Replacing something that you're missing versus adding to what you have is where your brain starts to break down. Yeah, I got it. That being said, even from the short amount of the Cyber Psycho Quest that I've done, it is kind of implied to be a fake illness in game. It is implied to be a general catch all term that people are blaming actual undiagnosed mental illness as all it was the implants that made them crazy. So you get to ignore poster orchestras, you get to ignore it, you get to ignore poster extras,

you get to ignore schizophrenia, you get to ignore drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and blame it on all that went crazy because of the fucking robot. I can't say anything. Yeah, okay, edge runners came second. Yeah, it does it you know It's

It has its own opinion on that on that sentiment I think If that opinion is different from the one that is wrong I don't I don't know. I mean, is it, is it, is it, is our, you know, a Star Wars expanded universe, alternate universe kind of situation, secondary content? Oh, God, I hope not. That is the most confusing thing ever. Yeah.

No. Cyber psychosis is extremely real and relevant and is based and the world of edge runners at the very least is heavily dependent on that concept. Like the whole story actually. But yeah, I don't know. Yeah, someone says it takes liberties, others say it's the right, I don't know, I don't know. I don't, I don't know the source material, there's only one person that can answer this. Is this just, this is a really strange setting to have this discussion on

because originally wasn't the setting Cyberpunk 2020? Was that the original title, yeah? I believe it was, and it's like, I mean, hey, every Mega Man game took place in 2000 and X, right? Yeah, 2009. So it's like, we have robot people now, right? And they're not cyber-psychoing anything.

Well, so this is, I guess, a little bit of a ghost in the shell question, too, right? But are we talking about, like, are these interfacing implants automatically hooking up to your brain? Or is it just a mechanical replacement for the thing underneath your kneecap, you know? Some are. The hand ones attached to your nervous system, the really high end ones. So yeah, anything that attaches to your nervous system and allows you to feel is going to automatically feed into the brain and have a back door to fuck you up or,

you know, enhance you, whatever the case is going to be. All the good shit, all the quality should I imagine. There must probably be people out there, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a side quest with somebody that is like, you know, got fucking peg legs and then, you know, like a waramp kind of just fucking armor placement and whatever. But obviously the shit that's gonna, you know, affect you is the shit that is good and quality and actually makes it feel like you have a better arm than the one you had. How else are you gonna rock that Magnum Dong, you know? I don't think replacing your body with robot shit makes you go crazy.

The goods. And I'm willing to test that out. There you go, there you go. Yeah, the good shit, the good shit that needs to, you know, interface properly. Anyway, the good shit that needs to, you know, interface properly. Um, anyway, let's take a quick word from our sponsors. Why are you loading so slow? I was about to say, are you okay there, Wully? It's taking a sweet time.

Taking a second? What you doing, website? Come on. Dude, the beginning of Cyberpunk has you run into the maelstrom, which are guys that have gone fully 100% cyborg, and it's supposed to be like wow look how Out of control this shit can get and I'm sitting there going this is the cool Yeah Does like

Well, I'm okay. Do you how do you feel about like Faraday like just looking at him? I think I think Faraday I think Faraday picked out his enhancements along with his suit. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, it's a it's a complete look, right? And it's definitely it's that of like, I don't want to talk to you for very long. Just everything that your brain fucking hates seeing from the corner of its eyes is actually happening there and it's always like, ugh, I'm gonna look down now. That's a power move. I think, you know, I'm halfway through,

I'm halfway through Edrunners, but I only got to see Faraday once. Okay. And I'm in love, I'm in love with Faraday. I think having the fixer that tells you you don't need to know anything, being named after a cage that prevents information from escaping is really,

really good. Pretty good. Pretty good name. And also, I just feel like that, the I implant, that look, that little taste of intentional discomfort, that is not like a visor, I'm sure whatever, look that little taste of intentional discomfort, right? That is not like a visor, I'm sure whatever that's providing information, it's providing them with and all that could be presented in a more aesthetically

pleasing way, but it's just maximum visual discomfort and like non-humanity in that specific decision is a great design element. Excuse me. Okay, here we go. Sponsors time. It is a great design element. Excuse me. Okay, here we go. Sponsors time. This week the podcast is sponsored by Green Chef.

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And this week, the podcast is sponsored by Babel. That is the language learning app. What do you call a person that speaks three languages? Tri-lingual. Someone who speaks two is bilingual. Someone who speaks one, American. Wap, wap, wap, wap. Is that in the, that's the hey, I'm just, I'm just, hey, I'm saying what I was told to say, y'all.

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.com slash super beast. Rules and restrictions may apply. Thanks, Bebble. Thanks, Bebble. All right, this week in the news, everybody's fired. Everybody is fired! Redundancies. That's the British word. Hey, listen, if you got fired, I'm sorry that you got fired. You probably shouldn't have gotten fired. these, that's the British word.

Hey, listen, from the outside, I'm sorry, that you got fired. You probably shouldn't have gotten fired. Yeah, so the number is 16% of Epic's workforce has been cut 870 jobs as Fortnite has not grown at the rate it was expected to. And you know, when asked for comment, CEO Tim Sweeney says that the layoffs will enable Epic to get to the other side of profitability and become the leading metaverse company. So hey hold on.

Hey, talking about Tim dumbass, Sweeney who got fucking iced the fuck out by David Samansky the other day on Twitter for saying that American capitalism isn't a political idea. And then when he got asked, Hey, how come you don't put up on real gold again? He just fucking disappeared off the app. And then went and fired a bunch of people like later that day. You know, also that same day, also that same day, an increase to the cost of V-bucks.

So. Outfortonate as well. Somebody pointed out, as a result of this, that Epic seems to be in a really weird place where they're doing that, the company has to grow infinitely, thing, which is impossible, because Fortnite can't get any bigger.

It's already the biggest, so it can't be more the biggest. Well, it did more the biggest before when be more the biggest. Well, it did more the biggest before when it was the biggest. So even more, more the biggest. I guess it did, but it can't more, more the biggest. Right. And so what happens is,

well, they need to show growth, right? On their platform. And I was pointed out that it's like, you know, it would really show a lot of growth and a lot of extra users. If you were to like, use your Fortnite money to buy a popular online game, and then force everybody to play on your platform

like Rocket League or Fall Guys. That would show growth, because look at all these new people coming to our online service. Wow, there's so many. Yeah, but then the next quarter, you have to do it again. So there's a lot of doing every quarter.

A lot of this stuff is having widespread echoes. And in particular, QA departments are getting targeted aggressively in a lot of these cuts as well. This, of course, third party QA situations where technically even though you've been working on this game's, this company's games for years and years and years, you're under an umbrella of a third party company. So, you know, if you get released from that, or if that project gets pulled, it's not technically a layoff. That's a big part of how the industry

has been going. There's shit like with Team 17, for example, where a ton of job losses happened for example, where a ton of job losses happened there as well. But I think the difference in this story is that alongside all of the firings, the CEO is also being let go. And that's interesting because that never fucking happens. Usually when there's a ton of layoffs, it does, there's no fucking, and then you fall on your sword, and then you, Tim, and then, and then you, two, no. Tim, Tim. Hey, Tim, dumbass, Sweeney, you wanna give it a shot?

How about you? You, no, no, okay, of course not, never. So, try again next time and see how many lives you can fucking roast in the process. Yeah, it's kind of a wild one like the season of layoffs occurs and you just kind of see this like inhale moment across the industry.

I forget who it was, but somebody who I follow described that, you know, for an industry that makes more money than every other entertainment medium combined, I don't understand why it's impossible for anyone to keep a job for more than five years. I mean, it like if you follow the the base rule of like make a small make a small studio, make a thing, people like it get acquired, join the giant thing, get pushed into the into the the orb, uh, into the mass blob of wherever the jobs are, gets your team split apart. And then when the time comes, the ax comes and out the door, you go, um, yeah, that trajectory gets split apart. And then when the time comes, the ax comes and out the door you go, yeah, that trajectory gets a bunch of people paid on the way

so you can't really slow it down. Unless the person that started it is like, basically gonna resist that by-out moment. But, you know, profitability and infinite growth as you mentioned, as an incentive, mean that there's a fucking conveyor belt to that situation. So, as long as the decision makers don't change over the course of 10, 15 years, so we watch this happen over and over and over and over and over and it's like, okay, well, we

can, we're gonna, we're gonna force growth by acquisition. You can't do that forever. So now you're gonna force growth by cutting, right? But then you hit the moment where you can't cut anymore. And then you force growth by just charging more for everything. Yeah, I said you said the V-buck, the cost of V-bucks went up already. The same day, same day that the mouse occurred. Yeah, oh, wow, so they just skipped right to the end.

Same, same the moment. That was the meeting to decide who was gone, was also a meeting to confirm the price hike on the, yeah. So, yeah, and it's interesting, and I did see more than one person like talking or theorizing that like the whispers of unionization might have something to do with it, but I wouldn't be surprised. I'd be curious to see if there were places where that type of axe dropped while emails

were being floated around. You know, the timing would be interesting. Of course, there's no proof certainly, but yeah, if McDonald's is willing to, or Walmart are willing to raise a building to the ground, the moment two people start talking to each other, I don't see why larger business video game industry companies wouldn't do the exact same shit.

So, yeah. would do the exact same shit. So. Yeah. What a bunch of fucking stupid assholes. I the part that hurts the most is this is gonna make us agile in the metaverse space. That's like, oh cool. I got fired so you could burn money in a toilet. The decisions you made that led here Are gonna be now you now we can now we can double down on those decisions actually the good ones

Yeah Anyway, just yeah, I just I point out the team 17 situations because it's like that that is a the highly unusual outcome Whatever this type of shit happens if you're a part of anyone that obviously got fucking laid off for this shit, that sucks. And yeah, time is a flat circle. Good job industry. Um, was there another company that here? I thought I... No, okay, anyway.

You remember when Tim Sweeney was like the Epic Store is going to be a haven for NFT and crypto games because Steam is so stupid they won't allow them on their platform? That was like six months ago. I mean, I remember when they were making the buyouts for exclusivity that small publishers like literally were like, we have to take this deal. You know, the offer you cannot refuse. Anyway, alongside that, hey, Devil May Cry though. So, very, very, very brief, two second look at Devil May Cry anime on Netflix. I thought this project was kind of dead.

I also thought that. I was very surprised to see that it's still happening. Not only is it though, originally it was supposed to be I think a live action project when Adi Shankar was first doing interviews about it. And I think at some point it turned into not that. But yeah, Capcom Studio, Mirror, Adi Shankarar Netflix. We see Dante. We see Dante with a couple of like Design elements that look like every Dante fused into one. They've been cherry picked from every version of every Dante He's got the DMC don't deno don't Dino amulet. He's got the hair and jacket and he's got the back of the jacket from five shoulder pads, all that jazz. So yeah, we'll see. And I think confirmed no Rubin Langdon because he originally

replied in the to a tweet saying, Hey, he didn't get contacted about it. So that might be the end of his Dante. And then it got deleted. So new new new new Dante voice. We don't know who though. Oh yeah, it's probably Chris Pratt. Not enough to go on based on what we've seen. Though I will say again, I wonder maybe is now the time for me to go back and watch the original anime? Because I never did. I never did. Oh, it's, it's, it is a, I watched it. It is a massive waste of your time.

If you want to waste your time, yeah, no, go watch it. But it is wildly pointless Was was Bayonetta the one that was better? I Don't know I can tell you that the DMC one is bad Because I ever it's really bad. I remember one was was received as like eh, it's okay No, all right, well never mind Eh, it's okay No, all right, well never mind

You are better off watching fake music videos than watching that goddamn devil made cry anime Damn you will be more satisfied. Can I just go watch gun grave again? Yeah, no, no, you can't Because I don't want to hear you talk about how you don't like the cool part and you want the stupid mafia shit again. I can't handle that conversation again. No, man, I want my dumb cowboy. I want it. Okay, you want the dumb cow. I want my dumb cowboy.

I do. All right, then. Yeah, go watch Gungrave. Yeah, you know, not much to say until we actually get a real look at it, but We shall see I don't know what's happening, but like okay, so the co-tore remake trailer. Oh, man. This is such a lie Got deleted. And then PlayStation deleted the tweet that was announcing it. And everyone's like, that's not good. Why would you delete the announcement

of the project, not even saying you're going to delay it or anything. And so Steven Tutilo asked Disney what was up and Sony basically came in and replied, as part of normal business, we de-list assets with licensed music when the license expires. Now, you're right, you know, there's a lot of upcoming projects that have their licensed music inspired as part of a license deal. And then you delete all mention of them ever existing.

That happens all the time. Man, that's so weird. It's just a lie. They're not ready to have the press release to announce that it's dead. Like, what's the benefit? I just- What's the benefit to the lie. I don't know. I Bet you I bet you fucking anything

They want to ride it out to the end of the quarter before they they cancel it. How did Cotor get Super double cursed in the span of two weeks. Oh, you think that's fucking funny, woolly Do you remember the Cotor one remake? It was announced like within 10 minutes of the fucking Black Sun game with fucking Heavy heavy didn't didn't go rate help David Cage company Quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum quantum dream Quantum quantum quantum dream David cage that star wars game

That that is also super not gonna happen. Oh, yeah for sure, but that was that was foretold and prophesied by dickbutt Like that was never never meant to be, you know, but, but, but, and my chest and, and throat. Thank you for that. But, um, could the co-tour shit in one fell swoop? Man. You know, if you dared to have hope, like I suppose I did for a second. Like I suppose I did for a second. I think there was a quote from somebody it's not necessarily related, but like Sony saw what they had and said it's not cinematic enough. Yeah, I just... You don't want them. You'd like when you say a coto remake Like, I'm pretty sure, like, if they're thinking of a complete and utter fucking reimagining the FF7R style thing,

like you're out of your fucking mind. You're not gonna, you're not funding that. That's not what you're going for. A, A, A, Gussied up thing of assets are prettier, but we're basically doing the exact same camera shots and fixing the bugs is more or less all people would expect. No, there's two ways to do it now. There's turn it into an action RPG like Mass Effect with lightsaber or make it a turn based over the, you know, isometric game that is basically just a Baldur's Gate 3 knockoff. Cause, cause,

Co-Tor is a fucking D&D game. I know. I just, I just, I just, I just, I just think that's reaching, that's, you're just reaching too high. You're reaching for the sun on that even. Like, Which one? The, the one where you like, you go,

oh, Baldur's Gate 3, maybe we can't like, it's- That's actually closer to its original than the first option I offered. Like if they like, if they like re-made Cotor 1 with like a new high budget, Gadiada, it would be a fucking Dungeons and in Star Wars game from an isometric perspective Quartz R3's never happening. It's just oh no infinitely. It's infinitely doubt alternatively it already happened the older public Shut the fuck up doctors. You're lying piece of shit I saw the tie-in stuff. It was there.

That's okay. Can we just hear? Let's turn our attention to something great. So um great black otaku aka breadin Williams aka uh the the uh of the show. Yes. Of better wooly fame. Um released free from the WWE contract him and manzor have been getting into it talking about their adventures behind the scenes about what's been happening with how things were over at the company and they've been fucking Randy Orton They've been, they've been on Twitch and shout-outs to them. Go, go, go fucking check out, you know,

Brad and go check out Jibbo and and great black otaku on Twitch and everything they're doing it. Just told a great story that says, yeah, it's just so they're like, they're telling about how backstage Red Deer and came up to them was like, hey, you guys like video games, right? And they're like, oh yeah, totally. And it's like, yeah. Not video games, Randy Orton. And Red Deer and it's like, oh yeah, like, you guys know that one there the Elden ring you seen that you know everybody loves Elden ring from soft we're super in big great game and he's like yeah man yeah that game so fucking hard though hey and yeah it's pretty hard he's like yeah I couldn't deal with that shit so I just paid some guy a thousand bucks to go get

me all the runes so that I could just max out my character and now I'm going through it and it's awesome it's great what a good game yeah apex predator baby legend killer absolutely that's how you get to the top You pay some kid a thousand bucks Dude that is like a worthwhile thousand dollars that is like whoever Whoever offered to do Very good very good deal God Man shoot yourself into a work back into a shoot. That's so good. I love that

behind the scenes off camera. That's good. That's good shit, man. Hustler scam. I mean, look, I told the story about the kid that was at my arcade back in the day that for 20 bucks would max out your gauntlet legends character, you know. So he that kid got paid. There were worth it, man. Yeah, there were many people that didn't want to do it. And the machine was stuck in this arcade that you could only go to for whatever, you know, after school or something. And he just was on it all day.

And he's like, if you, if you want it, I'll do it for 20 bucks and people fucking did it. That's a hustle. He did it, man. I have no hate. That's a hustle. He did it, man. I have no hate. Good times. That takes like an afternoon. I mean, so I imagine, yeah, so I imagine for the for the for Orton, it was just like connect drop off items and piece out you know like but

anyways um let's take some letters oh wait before that before that shit eight hours ago Before that shit, eight hours ago, Syrgey Gell-Yonkin, who's leaving the Epic Games, wrote a bunch of stupid bullshit about them leaving, but had this to say in there, quote, now Epic Games is on its way to transforming from a game developer, engine creator, and publisher into a platform, Epic 5.0.

I am not a good fit for this new version of Epic. It requires people of a different kind, end quote. Is that a- Oh, this shit's about to suck so much ass. Is that a meta platform? Oh, I don't know But whatever they're about to do it's gonna fucking suck How can you with a straight face say that you're gonna direct everything towards meta when you

Out by the way and also like drinking the aid, but also like didn't Didn't they like literally just announced that like not long a couple months ago that like that change cost Facebook like a All the money in the world destroyed It just that Facebook used to be like more money than God like competitive Google and they're no longer in that Evaporated most of their value because it's so awful and no one wants it Damn hey man. What if what if you could pretend you're at the grocery store? It like but on in the VR and all it's like I don't even want to go to the fucking grocery store for real Why would the fuck would I want to go to the fucking grocery store? I'm not in the fucking computer But maybe you can just will it into existence if you're stubborn enough with magical thinking, you know grocery store for real. Why would the fuck would I want to go to the fucking grocery store? I'm not in the fucking computer.

But maybe you can just will it into existence if you're stubborn enough with magical thinking, you know? Like, it's so funny how like, Metaverse came like the push to Metaverse was like, right next to VRChat becoming this huge fucking thing. But VR chat is a toxic nightmare pornography shit hole that is awesome as fuck. But like cookie crisp doesn't wanna fucking advertise in your hand-tie porn room. So the zuck can't make it work.

Also, a lot of those decisions were made on the start of quarantine among us pop off isolation version of the internet, which is not the situation anymore. Hey, listen, VR and the metaverse, all they need is a situation in which people are locked inside their homes with nothing to do and other forms of digital entertainment are unable to be purchased for years at a time and in that situation where there's no competition and there are captive audience that's where meta and VR can shine except it didn't and the pandemic combined with all video games not being purchased as a bowl will never happen again we'll never happen again. Fucking. We'll never happen again. Did you just pot yourself down?

I know, I fucking, I'm not fucking. Oh, you knocked out a wooden. Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah. We'll never happen again. Oh, fuck. And like it, they were, if it can't happen under that circumstance, it will never happen.

I think there was a report from like Forbes or something a couple months ago where they clocked the daily metaverse users at like 40. Total. total worldwide That's fucking Wow, I think the average user spending a day was zero Oh, it was lower it was lower Jesus Christ, man. That's basically fucking Babylon's fall numbers.

Like, you're talking about. All right. I got to take a quick break before we head over to emails. I'm going to help the dog have some piss. Be our be. All right. Yes. And just before we move out as a footnote, well, appropriately enough, hey, Jim Ryan's

on the way out. And get blocked, Dickhead. You know, after the announcement, not too long ago, that's actually PlayStation's going to play is going to do a bit more single player narrative driven games Maybe this gas thing Maybe it's maybe people are getting a little bit nervous about it Yeah, Jim Ryan who was aggressively pushing for that over

that over the last little bit is out and maybe with the free time he'll be able to catch up on all those PlayStation 1 and 2 titles that nobody wants to play. Dude, I feel so fucking old when I when I like think about this. It's like do you remember I sure we brought up a million times that like wow every game's trying to be like Call of Duty. Wow every game's trying to be like World of Warcraft. Wow every game's trying to be like the funniest one of me is every game's trying to be like Call of Duty. Wow, every game's trying to be like World of Warcraft. Wow, every game's trying to be like, the funniest one to me is every game's trying to be like Destiny, but like Destiny wasn't even trying to be like Destiny. What? What?

It's like, I think it was Mr. Fields at Chris Wolfhardt on Twitter that was like, boy, yeah, people are real sick of gas. Hope you're not four years in with 60-year-dev cycle. Yeah, you're right. Fucking 10 was six year Depth Yeah, right Fucking ten projects or whatever that shit was back. Yeah, squad is the fucking all the fucking sacrifice upon the altar of gas Well, no, no the sacrifice upon the altar is the ones that are canceled before you ever get a chance to see them Like what a god didn't last of us No, no not that um

It was a news article that I forgot to make like Oh god didn't last of us. No, no, not that. It was a news article that I forgot to make like Sega canceled something called hyenas. Okay, no, I didn't see that. Hyenas, okay. What was it? Okay, so hyenas was announced a while ago. I think it's like a fucking shooter. It's six years.

Six years. Oh, no. It got canceled at the finish line. Oh, Jesus Christ. Gas means games as a service if for anyone who's unfamiliar. It got canceled at the finish line. It had a closed beta.

And like, I didn't hear anybody talk about it. But like, bra, yeah. So, so there was some sort of last of us type online only experience that was like shelved somewhere. I know exactly what that would have been. It would have been factions. The DLC that they kept delaying and delaying and delaying. Last of us chose to have multiplayer.

Okay, okay, okay. And they said we're working on something special and then that just never materialized. Right, right. Which sucks, because I know you're not like super into like third person, like shooter multiplayer. Last of us ones multiplayer is fucking phenomenal. I like third person shooter more than first person shooter

in most cases, you know, but that was part of the big gas push though, apparently. Yeah. Uh... Woof. Yeah, Haini is dead. Dead, something like 95% completion. The game was like in polish phase.

And they're like, no. Die. Oh yeah, and then bungee. There was like a bid, right? Something with that anyway. It does. Oh wow. So many in the chat just summed it up so perfectly. This is from the nameless library. You're not just trying to get people to play your game.

You're trying to get them to leave the game that they're already playing. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It's taking over a slot of how you kill your time. It's, yeah, you're not, you're not, it's not about the, I wanna know what's going on in this game, let me get through the narrative, whatever the case is. It's like, this is what I do from this point to this point.

Yeah, you wanna, you wanna steal Fortnite users? Be better than Fortnite. That's tough. Send us proof that you've unsubscribed from FF14 for bonus skins. That doesn't even work. People unsubscribe and re-subscribe to that game specifically.

Specifically all the time, yeah? Yeah. Damn. I've let my subscription laughs in 14 a bunch of times. You just come back when the patch drops. Which is tough. Well, okay. Damn.

Something more predatory than. In any case, here, let's take some letters. If you got one, you can send it into castle super beast mail at gmail.com. That's castle super beast mail at gmail.com. Yeah, I saw that big ad for Counter Strike 2 when I went, what? Is that real? Yeah, so, and then I clicked on it and it's it's it's it's an overwatch two situation. It seems to me. No counter strike go is gone It's this is overwatched to again, right? Like I'm like I'm like I'm like this looking around

I'm like I don't know anything about anything, but are we are we doing this again? Are we just dropping the two and the difference is the difference is is that people like Counter Strike hmm? But it's you know, it's really funny. I went to I saw kind of strike two and I'm like You know, it's been a lot of play Counter Strike and then I clicked on it and it's like that's mostly positive very positive reviews Except for all the people on my friends list. You know your your people on your friends list, their reviews of the game show up first. And it's like all the people on my friends list that are like kind of my age are like horribly unintuitive, insanely punishing, don't have the time to learn this kind of game anymore. And like, dude, I barely have the time to learn Counter-Strike back in 1999.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, because again, outside are looking in here. I seem to recall a time when a new Counter-Strike came out and then it was an engine switch, which led to a bunch of features being gone and things are moving different in a way that everybody hated. So the main thing is that not happening again? I don't think you've personally been like super attached

to a game that had an engine switch like this. But like I played a little bit of Counter Strike and I played a little bit of Data Feet. And what they do is they switch to the new engine which they say is better. But it actually sucks because you're not used to it and you want the game to play like it did forever. So that's what happened when day to defeat and counter strikes

switched to source where you went, wow, this graphics lot better. Oh, it doesn't feel exactly the same. And I've been playing this game for years and it felt exauln. So I don't know if from go to two is people are having that same experience. Okay. Does it feel different? And people hate it? Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, it's a,

I want it to be better, but I want it to stay exactly the same as it was in 1999. Is that so much to ask? Turtles in time, resheld? No. Okay. Well, fucking Counter Strike came out.

We were playing Counter Strike before most of the people listening, this fucking podcast were even born. But the thing is too, it's not just the feeling because I also caught that there's features that are missing whenever they do the interview. Oh, yeah, really, yeah. What kind of feature? I don't know, but there's stuff that was available.

Hey, Chad, what features are missing in Counter Strike 2 that T.S. go ahead? Someone will say something, I'm sure. Game modes. They move because of the game modes that no one ever played. Okay Maps gambling all right map specific factions are gone. Yeah, I got it funny hats Okay, I don't want to talk about We got one coming in from We got one coming in from...

Cap says, gentlemen, I saw people arguing about Bruce Wayne's age today and came to the realization that there are fewer questions that I care about less than how old is Bruce Wayne. What is a question in media that you don't care about the answer and you think anyone looking for it is dumb and wrong? That is a really good example. you don't care about the answer and you think anyone looking for it is dumb and wrong? That is a really good one. That's a great one. It's a really good example. In comic book characters, this exists on a dumb ass sliding scale.

Yeah, so I was about to say, like, I think you've nailed it with that answer. And I think this is just a good excuse to bring up the 13 year sliding scale in comics where the age of any character you like doesn't matter because the earliest possible event in that timeline occurred somewhere around 13 years prior. And you just keep moving forward on that. And I don't know if that has changed in recent years, but the, well, I remember being introduced to this concept some time ago, where you just kind of lock it

within that decade and you go anything that happened, can't have happened more than 13 years ago. Hey, you wanna have a fun mental exercise here, Wully? I am 37, which means you're probably 36 or coming up on 37. I'm 37. Oh, you're probably 36 or I'm 37. I'm 37. Oh, you're 37? Fuck, I get this wrong every time.

Regardless. You know how old Homer Simpson is. Oh, God. Yeah, I heard something like this. He's 34. There you go. There you go. Okay.

But Homer's still like 35, 36. So now he didn't grow up in the fucking 70s. He grew up in the fucking 90s, like we did. And they've changed his flashbacks. Every flashback, yeah, like the shit he's doing and listening to and the music and how he's dressed and what's going on keeps updating in that sliding scale.

That's fucking weird. Yeah, it's the kid. Also, you know what the funniest part about Homer Simpson is? In 1990, whatever, when the Simpson's came out, Homer was a middle manager at the local power plant, AKA factory, and he owned a fucking three bedroom house on a nice street, but it was kind of run down

and it wasn't as nice as the neighbor's house, right? And it was like, man, if only homework could make more of my heat to have a nicer house. And the kids, oh, the kids really fucked up all their finances, right? Now, now that's what that house is insane. their finances, right? Mm-hmm. Now! Yep. Now that's what that house is insane.

Yeah, yep. Absolutely. With the garage, everything, the cars we doing this? And the two cars, single, single income, what the fuck? Like you want to see how fucking out of touch the fuck your parents, most of your parents are with like the realities of what shit costs. Go fucking look at the Simpsons and watch how poor

margin homer are in that first season. Like the season finale of season one is they're too poor to get Christmas presents so they get the dog, right? But they own a house to cars. But at bare minimum, you've got this land and a giant house on it. Yes, exactly. It's the fucking, no, it's the old man in battle network that's like, I'm 30 years old. Anyway, there you go. You answered your own question, excellent. Yeah, no, you have the best one.

Like, yeah. You know, oh, I have one. I have one. You know what's a really annoying question? Yo, what's the deal with the angels in Evangelion? Where are they from? Yeah. Who cares? Who cares? I mean, I've read, I've read like extensive fucking things about like literally the origin planets and

Adam and Eve and the nine origin like all that. Where you got that information from the fucking shitty PS2 game where they jam like all that where you got that information from uh-huh the fucking shitty PS2 game Where they jammed all that information? Showrunners didn't give a fuck They're the progenitor race Because on oh thought the name angel was cool sure sure that like There's but there's an actual super in-depth like timeline. Yeah, they come from the fucking black moon and the crashing of of Lillith It's of an alien life form and like fucking whatever the humans that are representing the descendants of them all of that shit is

Fucking weakest fuck to the fact that your dad won't hug you. You want to snipe a tetrahedron bro? Yeah, yeah, dude. Yeah, you got to keep playing on record six, by the way, I'm saying. No relation to this conversation. All right, here. We've got one coming in from, no name to tag with. So not even a name. Dara Stereas and other guy in the past, past, repissently,

shout on Netherrealm games for being horrendously unbalanced and bullshit. When talking about Marvel, he says, who gives a shit, give him everything. Don't worry about it. His favorite was two where everyone was in and they didn't even try to make it coherent. Please try to make this make sense. If Pat replies with a room for balance, if Pat replies with, here's the difference. Netherrealm games suck and Marvel doesn't. I invite Willie to nod and go, yep, well, you know and move on. I don't remember ever mocking another round games for balance problems. I think Shang Tsung doing fireballs to you for like 10 straight minutes is pretty funny. I was going to make fun of them this week for player one advantage,

but they actually fixed that during the podcast. That's nice. That's nice. That's, that's quick. That's quick. That's quick. Um, injustice. Oh yeah, no, yeah, I make fun of injustice. Yeah, because that isn't fun. Dumpster advantage and locking people down in the corner with Batman projectiles.

Isn't the same as, hey motherfucker, you want to learn how to do a fucking infinite? Yeah, well, you know The shit that I make fun of in another realm game is like what if we had a whole roster of people abusing guiles Leave the stage glitch in MVC 2 which is so lame. It's banned even though most of the other fucking bugs are left in. Alright, here we go, let's take one. Over here, from Professor X says, Hey Men who revealed secret Koreans and secret robots and woolly Big update from the anime trenches. Oh, no band dynamico has decided to follow in rgg's footsteps to introduce their own secret race

Characters in their video game tie-in anime Singuality noir. They got they got clever with it by introducing three pale robo ladies with white hair, and then revealing that one of the three was a secret black chick at the end of the season. The character that had been black from before the show even started, but she got amnesia so bad she lost to a robo melanin until she got her memories back. Presumably it's related to the game that keeps getting delayed. There's a 50% chance that one of the other pale robo ladies is also a secret black chick. This rules.

Does this, does this mean anything to you? Do these words mean anything? They didn't even mention a name. By the way, of this show or game, is there a name in there? Singuality Noir. That seems fake. Is the duality the Noirness? I mean, is that what Noir, is that the double meaning? Okay, hold on a minute. What are we talking about?

Humanity has to seek refuge deep underground due to unprecedented calamity known as the Tears of the New Moon. Watch it now. 12 episodes. This just seems like nonsense. Damn. That's the man I may happen in right there. Well, shit.

Really feel like it's impossible to explain to people just how insane Yakuza 2 and Yakuza 6 are with secret Koreans and secret Chinese people. I mean, I got introduced to the concept slightly with the arrows out of nowhere from the sinister buildings that just got that guy at one time. And then also a little bit of zero introduced a touch of Koreans as well, I want to say. It is impossible to overstate how crazy and incoherent it is.

Like you have people sitting around just going anyone at this table could be Korean. What? I don't know. What if? And guess what? One of them was. One of them was. But he was a good seeker Korean.

God damn it. Like, oh man, it, oh fuck. That plot is so nuts. The secret Krami and I met in real life was the best. Fucking showed us where to eat some good beef. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna assume that I'm guessing that in a fake

one of the biggest reveals in in in in Yakuza 6 is that a character happens to be Chinese like it's like the fun. It is like the end of the world. I'm you find out that this guy is Chinese. I'm going to go ahead and guess that this sensuality nor shit is probably in line with the fate shit where it's like some power up forms involve your skin getting darker and that's probably that this person is referring to. All right, that's that's that's satisfactory there.

The like a dragon games are so incredible. They're so nuts. Yeah, but like now that it's in America, are we going to have a boardroom see? Oh yeah, someone at this table might secretly be black. No, no. And then what if it was? What you're going to what you're going to run into,

what you're going to run into is like, into, what you're gonna run into is like, wow, it's crazy, it's crazy. How many white and Hispanic people in Hawaii can speak Japanese? Oh shit. Like they're native, like, oh, it's crazy. Whoa. Amazing.

All right, out.