Castle Super Beast - CSB 238: FIRE BENDING CAN'T MELT STEEL BEAMS

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

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МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА Yeah, so good morning. Good afternoon. Hello, it's afternoon. Sentences need prepositions. They do. They do. They do. Yeah. Yeah. It's very important to dinner. So I sent it. So you know, I We're starting to podcast five minutes late ten minutes late because I sent William message and the message was Give me five. I got a poop disaster So I sent down and I kick on the microphone a couple minutes ago and he says to me, was that you or it's it's no, no, it wasn't me, it wasn't me, I promise. It's important. It's very important. It was not me that had the poop disaster. I promise Um, that is that is not an impossibility as time goes forward

The point in fact, I would say as time goes forward Bees more like the likelihood of it being the baby becomes less and the likelihood of it being you becomes more. I feel like there's a direct straight line. I feel like as I've gotten older, you know the moments where you just barely make it and you're like, you wipe the sweat from your forehead, you're like, oh, thank God. Those have been coming in closer and closer to the buzzer as I've gotten older. When I was like, in my 20s, it was like,

oh, I probably had like a minute to spare. And now I'm like, man, if I had not done that part where I sprinted, I would be done right now. I would be, it would be over. Yeah. I mean, I have not entered that room, but I do know that there's a point you hit where you physically need to use other instruments

of your body. You need to get your hands involved in the closure. You've got to walk awkward, funny step while physically pushing the cheeks together and doing whatever you can do. Yeah. Hey, pooping. I want to remove pooping from my body, but I don't want to strap a bag to my guts.

I, there's no options. There are no options. You can like, like every now and then you're, you're looking at social media and you'll be like, this is the story of how I lost my butthole and you're like, pardon? And they explain that, oh, due to some kind of intestinal issue, my butthole was removed and soared up and you're like, wow! Yeah, just like that! I saw a video of a lady describing how she eats through her heart.

And I was like, what? And it's like there's a nutritious solution that is like liquefied, that then has to be drip fed through an IV directly into the heart and into the bloodstream. And it takes 12 hours to do. And then she does it every day and then after that she can just go about and she doesn't feel hungry and she doesn't eat and it's just like a food through the heart thing. Listen, hey, why? You know what? Let's put this mental image of nightmare aside. I would like to, I would like a, like a vibe check, I guess the kids call

it now. I feel very bad listening to that. Probably more than most people, but I'm not crazy to like, be like, uh, don't like that. That's not, like no one's sitting there going like, yeah, that's fine. Um, no fine um no no no the idea of anything direct into the heart is really scary and obviously like the details of it are like any like every single connection moment needs to be super sterilized because anything oh yeah getting in there is it's your fucking heart you know but I think the like the so not it's not a silver lining but what made it make more sense was like,

they're like, yeah, do you ever, do you like, miss food or, you know, don't you wanna eat? And she's like, fuck no, because every time I eat, it was horrible and my body, oh yeah, because they had some kind of, yeah, she had a case where basically her body rejects, diet, eating food and she gets super sick from it. Oh, that's not a good one.

So, but like every association with normal eating was negative and bad. Therefore it's like for decades. Yeah, so it's like I don't want food. I'm happy without it. Therefore, this is awesome. You know, so like yeah, it's just, you know, strange. But also science. How about that?

Right. Do you do miss Doritos heart lady? Can you put a Dorito into your chest? Thought of like what just I want one one time. No, if you do it once it's over and I just want one one Dorito to the heart It's worth it. Yeah In any case I mean God bless, you know. What's, what's going on?

Good luck with that, I suppose. Yeah, it seems to be everyone with weird tubes going into their butt and or otherwise. Good luck. They're figuring it out. They're getting there. I think we might, it might be cool to get to a point where the like, I don't know, I'm whatever, fast forward this conversation five minutes.

Thank you. I know exactly, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Let's fast forward it. Fast forward the conversation five minutes, enhance robot parts robot parts. That's it Fuck the two right plastic tubing yaddy-yad just robots. All right. There we go cool. All right to be the robot. Please Yeah, yeah, I think um, thank you if the first Cybernetic enhancement you add to your body is to like manage your shitting You add to your body is to like manage your shitting. That's a, that's a, that's a very invasive, but also the, the pluses are, are very high. So I think you can convince people with that.

You can get a cybernetic surgery is gonna be invasive, right? Yeah, but if you're like, get rid of your arm, you're like, oh, okay, my new arm's gonna be cool, but like, damn, what if something goes wrong and I kind of want my old arm, right? cool, but like, damn, what if something goes wrong and I kinda want my old arm, right? Whatever, but you gotta somehow fix the Phantom pain syndrome problem. That's not good.

But like if you're like, hey, robot parts to deal with pooping, then it's like, yeah. That's not bad, that's cool. Net positive, right? You know what would be good? If you like you had a latch and you would go to the bathroom and you would just, like,

like your asshole would be like a port and you would just put the vacuum to the port and hit the button like a garbage disposal and then it would just suck everything out of you and then you would hit the button when it was done and you would be like, that's good, I'm done, goodbye. And then you would go, oh, I'm imagining it would seal off. I'm imagining the entire, like, large intestine, like going, like, you just got, like, from the moment you go from stomach to small intestine, and you just hit, it starts going right

into robot. And then it does a trash compactor kind of effect immediately. And then you, you know what, you know, and you kind of just, you know what, yeah. And then you let's fast forward just this conversation. Okay. Five minutes. Brain in a, brain in a, brain in a, brain in a, in a fucking fridge.

Brain in a fridge, sure, brain in a glass jar. Just drip like, just fucking starchy nutrient water onto my fucking cerebellum and fucking cover me up with like a nice little mask. I was gonna go with like, remember future, I'm a little head in the jar. No, no, not that part, but the little monkey companion fry head that was like, yeah, I remember it. The fuckhead or whatever. Yeah, and whenever it poops, it's like a super fucking energy source. It's like what I imagine. Yeah, so his poop was like a really super dense,

crazy, heavy thing. Nibbler, nibbler's a. Nibbler, that name. There you go. Yeah, so you just imagining the part where it's like, hey, once a month, there's gonna be a hyper compacted like every all of your waste in one little cube. And it's an energy cube.

That is just good out. Okay, I have a question. I have a question. This is a good question that I'm liking. Let's go back way back. Okay, rewinding. All right. Let's just, let's say you could take,

be as you are right now, or only have to go to the bathroom once a year. But it would be a lot. But it takes all day. It takes, it takes like, it takes like, it takes like two full days. Yeah, two out of 365 days are dedicated towards the cleansing. I really shouldn't have scheduled anything on this.

The unmaking, the absolute purge. Worth it, I would do it. Worth it, yeah. Yeah, it is worth it. Super worth it. So then the story becomes like, how many days in a row, do you, are you, can your mentality allow before you're like, no, I'm not doing it?

Like what's the break point on that? Is it like five days? Cause five days a lot. I'm losing a week. Losing a week. I got work week. Just, this is my cycle. I'm sorry.

Yeah. Like can you put me under, can I go to sleep while it's happening? No, no, because you have to push. Can you, and you have to stay awake the two? Yeah, well mostly. Well, because if you're pushing for five days, you're gonna die, like you do live.

Like no, you have to, well no, you'll be fine, don't worry about it, yeah. No, I imagine, I imagine a like you sleep sleep you wake up and then the next 12 hours are just Getting it all out. Yeah. Yeah, but here's the thing. I've done that like in my life. It's just pregnancy That's exactly we're describing pregnancy But I know I've been on the toilet for 12 hours once. I was very ill But like you every time you feel like you're about to be safe to leave, you hear the gurgle

and you're like, I'm not safe. I'm not safe at all. And then, you know, that's also how, how fucking, what you'd call it works. Not pregnancy, the other one there. The other one? The other one? The other one.

They're the one? The other one. The other one. They're the one that's really painful. You know, the calcium. Oh, kidney stones, right? Kidney stones is another version of that. So in both cases, you're charging up one big like spend all your meter a moment, but it's super painful. I find it like like we both say some weird things. I think you referring to kidney stones as the other one

in regards to pregnancy is legitimately completely it's all right here we go. The reason why it's called the other one is because when it comes to the comparison of things that hurt to do Kidney stones and pregnancy are often compared because they're fucking sake. You know what right? You let me give you a piece of advice Do you know who doesn't appreciate that factoid pregnant people? Pregnant people when you'renant people. When you're like, well, you know, kidney stones that not don't want to hear it. You know, don't do it. Yeah, I mean, you know, like, like the

urethra is actually not meant to expand. I am traumatized by the fallout from the last version of this conversation I had. We like like, the birthing can now actually is meant to expand the... You're... Just... Yeah, yeah. Just get lit up. Don't do it.

Fine, don't, fine. I mean, that's okay. Don't just don't, you know. Don't do it. There's a bullet, many of you can dodge in the future. It's called a kidney stone. Because that's what it feels like coming out. You know, I thought I had kidney stones once,

but I guess I didn't. Nothing ever came out of my weiner. You have nothing rock shaped. That's your, you're, that's a blessing, you're lucky and count your, count your stars. If you had a kidney stone. No, I haven't. But I know many people that have,

and every time they do, it's the worst experience they've ever had. It always sounds traumatizing. Every time they do sounds terrible. Okay, because that implies the same people are getting kidney stones repeated. No, no, no, it's more like I've known three people in my life that have had kidney stones,

and they've all fucking sucked to pass Drink more water everyone, you know, and more water and then and then like, you know If you're lucky you can like do things to break it up inside your system before it comes out But if you don't whatever's coming's coming and it's a bullet. You don't want the you don't want to have to do with the umbrella system No, no It's coming and it's a bullet. You don't want the, you don't want to have to do with the umbrella system. Nope. No umbrella system is not great. Use, there's things that can, that can like turn one large bullet into like smaller ones

that are like still gonna cut up and bleed. It's damage that never quite fucking, yeah, anyway. So it's the other one. It anyway so it's the other one it is it is the other one you know all right all right we fulfilled our our mandated meandering nonsense section of the pod as exactly as as segmented. So thus begins week. How did you? How did you week go? Ah, it's fine. I don't really have a whole lot to talk about this week. Lies of pee is incredible. Lies of pee is like legitimately. I'm actually going through the, I'm going to be streaming it tonight, which I don't almost never stream Monday nights because I'm like right at the fuck. I'm

like right there. I'm like right at the fucking end like you know where you're like looking at like the kill of the first lane essentially. Yeah going I could I could bust that out. It's so great. It fixes so many issues that the souls games have fixes like fixes. Like the way weapons come apart, the way enemies react, the enemy variety, it is fascinating. It is way more interesting than, hey man, Pinocchio's gonna go after some puppets. It goes in all sorts of weird, it's bloodborne. It's basically bloodborne.

It's bloodborne, it's, you play bloodborne, you want some more bloodborne, go get some bloodborne. But the thing is, is whenever we've discussed souls likes and the entries that have come along over the last five or maybe a bit longer than that, years, usually you're gonna get your souls game with a remixed idea of like, imagine this aspect to it.

And it's not necessarily like a improvement on what was there, it's more of just a different take on it. I'll be a lot more sure than that. I'll be like, usually what you get is, hey, what if we made a Souls game with this twist? And also, most of it wasn't as good as the last Souls game you played. Got the twist. Got the twist. But the twist. This game is what if we had a Souls game made by a Korean team with Pinocchio and had its own twists,

but it's got its own stuff that's just as good and some things that are better than a Souls game. This game has a one that has two boss fights that are ad fights that are 4v1, 4 bosses versus you, and they're fantastic and not frustrating. Okay. Like, it is a fucking, because you're like, how? How could you? Right, because I was going to say, what's an example of a direct improvement that they've, that they've, that it's true.

Adfights. Adfights. Okay. Uh, I would, I would say like, I don't know if it, I don't know if it counts, but Abyss Watchers is an excellent take on an ad fight. It is, it is, the ad fight in NP is much better than Abyss Watchers. Okay. Um, which is wild. It is, the ad fight in NP is much better than Abyss Watchers.

Okay. Which is wild. Because Abyss Watchers is a weird ad fight because it's actually 2v2 for a lot of it. Right? It's like kind of a free for all? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is one versus four. This is absolutely like you are fighting four individuals with full boss health bars and it is awesome.

Do you consider Advice only when there's a major target with many minor targets coming into bother you or if the same targets in multiple copies of itself show up. That's a really chat quest. Shadows of Yardim, etc. So the usual way that I would define any ad fight is I'm fighting multiple bosses at once and the game is the fucking, the boss is gimmick is that I'm gonna focus on one of these enemies,

and then the other is gonna sneak attack me from a camera angle that I can't see. Or they're basically constantly splitting your attention. It's like, Oranstein and Smog, despite being like 2v1, I don't really consider an ad node, because that boss fights is one unit. Yeah, and it's cool. It feels like there's a, it feels like a much more understandable balance of like where you want to shift your attention. You can choose to take on Ornstein, you can choose to take on Smoke, you can choose to take on both if you're really trying to go fucking wild. But when you fight like a rad authority or something that's like, I'm over

here and these are here to nibble at you, and killing them is really just a slowing down how quickly you're gonna get to me thing. That to me is the ad fight, that's what I hate. I don't mind if there's multiple targets that are all valid, and if you hit them, it's actually depleting the whole, you know? Again, shadows of the Arnhem or the DS2 Gollems

that golf swing at you, I forget. Oh, the fucking Roon Sentinels, right? They're annoying as fuck, but they do represent like three versions of a whole as opposed to like little ads that can come at you forever and never really affect anything. They're just distractions. That's my main gripe with ads.

Uh, but yeah, it's, uh, it's great. In particular, like I'm, I'm in doing like the last couple of zones and unlike almost every soul's game, including Elden Ring, the last 10 to 15% of the game. Still really good. Hey, nice. Okay. Like, uh, I don't know what the fuck it is about the way from software develops their games

But there's that part at like the 15% to go mark or 20% to go mark where the game just starts to come really bad And then you forget that that is the the flow because the DLC comes out and then that doesn't become the end, it becomes like the middle. Right? Armor core also is not like that. Armor core is fucking great right to the end. But yeah, Lice Piece, it's great, it's good game.

Any game. Any game that's like mission based can control that better, you know? Yeah, that makes sense. Exactly. If Armored Corps had to have you fly across an entire planet map and make your way to these points of interest, but fill the world with other shit to do, and by the end of it there's not much shit to do, then it would probably suffer the same fate. I got to like the, like, you know that area in front of the fucking fire giant in Elden Ring,

and I'm just like, I don't give a, there's nothing in these fucking dungeons that can offer me anything at this point. I have completed every dungeon in every side quest on fucking 35 fucking square kilometers of road. There's nothing you can offer me that will change anything about my character. I like, I didn't't have I didn't bug

me as much in Elden Ring with the lettowards the end it was more like over the course of the entire thing the same fucking Whatever I was gonna say childless dungeons, but really yes child the same childless dungeons was just a it's a malaise over the Stripped over the entire playthrough as opposed to like, for me, a negative spike at the end. Breaking point, once I could see the fucking, the, the, the capitol. Post capitol.

Yeah, once I could see the, like physically see the kiln where you burn and go, that's the spot. It, it like evaporated a lot of the desire for the side content because 99% of Elden Ring is like the tree. And the tree is so impossibly fucking far away that you're just like, oh, I don't fucking get there one day. But then you get a concrete goal and it's right there.

And you're like, yeah, you know what? I don't really feel like going through 45 more ulcerated tree spirits. Is Liza P a straight line. Yeah, actually, it's one of the weirdest things about it. It is the most linear souls game. Like there is one minor optional area, but most of the game is like a hallway. And it is a very, very curated hallway where they want every enemy to come at you

in a certain way and there's ambush here and ambush there. And it's closer to like devil may cry in that like this is the encounter room. And then you're gonna do it and then you're gonna do it, and then you're gonna go to the next encounter room, and so on and so forth. So you're not really having moments where

you like backtrack through the same area and then like forked left to go to a different zone with a different boss type. So not only do you not do that, but there is a little bit of backtracking, right? Maybe there's an NPC quest or what have you. When you go to the teleport menu in Lies of P, if there's an NPC that has something to talk to you, their icon will show up next to the goddamn bonfire that they're next to. Fuck yeah, that's great.

That's great. Oh, more, will you? You can unlock records to listen to in the hub. Once you've beaten a zone and you didn't get a record, the record symbol will show up next to the bonfire that the record is at. To go collect it. To go get it.

Yeah. Yeah, okay. Quality of life. It's like your shit's over here. It's just like, no, you don't have to do this fucking nonsense But what it does carry forward from the the Souls games is like hey, do you want an absolutely absurdly Asa 9 set of requirements to get the real true ending

Boy do we got one for you. Okay So on is it like absurd because it's difficult or absurd because you would never guess or figure this out? It's absurd because it's a slavish devotion to the game's theme that absolutely makes perfect sense once you get your head into the game. Okay. But maybe you didn't really get your head

into the theme until later. So, for example, you're playing as Pete, aka Pinocchio, who is a puppet, who has the ability to lie, and lies are something that can make people human. So when you lie, it says your gears are shifting, there's something's changing and sometimes lying to people can can ease their pain or make them happy blah blah blah, right? If you do that a lot it changes from your gears are shifting to you feel warm and so on and so forth, but it's not just lying It's also listening to music via the game's in-game record player makes you feel something because why would an autonomous puppet sit around for 25 minutes listening to records unless they felt something?

Okay. Does that message of what it of you feeling something pop up as soon as you start listening? No, at the end of a song. That's so I was I was going into the music player and listening to a song for two minutes and then leaving that's not right. And then people like Pat, you have to finish those records. You have to finish every record in the game. I'm like, what the fuck, why? I don't give a fuck about this music player. That's pretty fucking what you have to. You have to.

Okay, okay. From just from here, from the outside, it sounds like, again, I'm not not sure how the themes are introduced and everything, but it sounds like go to the OST player, sit there for a bit, and then on the menu, once the menu's done, you're gonna get a message that actually affects and game stuff which is like yeah and then you you're like oh well what is the actual things to get the true ending and

lie your ass off as much as you possibly can and listen to all the music so it's actually really simple yeah and I'll preface it because I see some people think that's pretty cool if you're walking around in an environment and there's like a group There's a music player sitting playing somewhere, or someone's playing music somewhere, and you sit down next to them and listen to them, that's an in-game way of having this moment, versus if it's on a menu of an OST soundtrack listing, that doesn't feel the same,

because I don't feel like my character's listening to the music at that point, you know? So that's a bit odd. But again, I'm saying this as like just from, just what it sounds like from what you're describing. Okay. So the idea is that they want to play us to like play the music player and then go do all the stuff

they would do in Firelink Shrine. And then you would, the music would natch, because it's only three minute tracks, right? Okay. So by the time you're finished upgrading your weapons or your whatever, then all of a sudden, you'd be like, oh my God, did listening to the music make me a real boy?

Yes, it's diagetic music, okay, gotcha. Yeah, it is diagetic, and also, I'm not gonna go to Inuit because it's kind of metaphysical, but the ambient music that exists in some stages is also diagetic despite having no clear source of music Okay Like it's it's like a radio waves thing where like the music is like being actually broadcast over the air Hmm

Yeah, the game is fantastic. I like it. It's incredible. Yeah I this is it's also kind of reminding me of like, did you stare at your wife's photo enough? You know, so many of the chat asks a really fantastic question, which we should explain. What does the word diagetic mean? Right. So does the music play in a way where you the player are simply like hearing it as a means of like the the the game producing the sound or does the character in world hear the music as well.

Is it a part of what's happening in scene, you know. So for example, a chai in high five rush is listening to music on his walkman. Yeah, everything you're like the music you hear in high-fi rush Is he's playing it in his ear the characters can hear and respond to it as well versus music that is just happening For the the score of the the moment, but like the characters in world don't hear it at all. Yeah, yeah There it's just for the drama from your god perspective here at all. Yeah, yeah, it's just for the drama from your god perspective. Oh, see, Liza P is super great. What else? Fuck, I can't do it. I can't even remember what I do. I literally have to go to my video producer and be like, Oh, that's right. I got the wife in the vampire survivors. The serve.

Yeah. Did you try the multiplayer mode? Yeah, it's fantastic. Really, it worked. So good. Nice, okay. Okay, so here's how multiplayer mode works in vampire survivors,

because two players, that's super busted, right? No. All the buffs in vampires are multiplicative, right? So all they do is they say, okay, each player gets four. You get, so it's a total of eight weapons and eight buffs, but they're not multiplying by eight times. They're multiplying by four twice. So you're half as powerful,

but together you should be strong enough to fight the stage. You should be stronger. And I think they juice the chest math a little bit. Okay. Yeah, it's great. It's it's great. It works perfectly. It works exactly the way you would expect. Do you both choose? A couple of outlines. You both choose a power up when when one gets one. Okay. It's when you you level up simultaneously and it alternates one than the other. Yeah. Interesting. It's it's great. It's great. and it alternates one than the other. Yeah, interesting.

It's great. It's great. But the reason I mentioned it is because I was playing vampire survivors and every time Paige had seen vampire survivors, she'd be like, I don't know how you can fucking see anything in that shit, because it would always be like the file that I have like 75 hours on, or I have like 170 things unlocked.

And it's just like a complete fucking mess within four minutes. But then we started to play it, and she got like the level ups and the chest music goes off, and then all of a sudden, yeah. Oh no, I hate that I like this. The sounds are so good. That's like, yeah, that's a fucking violently addictive slot machine that is using its horrible like shit for good.

That's good. No, every time the chest pops up and box I've ever seen in my life. Because I've got... Yeah, yeah. I've trained a secondary catch response to when that happens to be like, no, don't fucking put your credit card in. Wait, there is no credit card. Okay, cool.

Yay. In fact, not only is there no credit card, I bought the game in both its DLCs for less price than a subway sandwich man Man, but it but the every time though. Yeah, like I have to like like let let the endorphins hit Also when the when it's a the whatever the coin frenzy Where the fucking screen is just like It's just like, buddy! I'm like, oh! I'm like, oh!

I'm like, oh! All right, what else? Oh, yeah, last but not least, you know what? I found something about FF14 to complain about that I don't think I've ever mentioned on this show. Okay. So the game has player versus player, and the rewards for it are big fancy items.

That's not important. What's important is that there's a gameplay mold code front lines that gives you the largest rewards per day. Right? It's just the best thing you can do once a day. And the front lines has a lot of problems. It's a 72, it's 24 versus 24 versus 24. This is 72 person game.

It has a lot of its own problems, but it has one really big problem. And that is, I think that every game ever made in which it is a free for all between three teams is the stupidest fucking thing ever because you are guaranteeing the average player will lose more than 50% of their games. Hmm. Is there a second place or are there two losers? There is a second place, which is worth nothing. Okay, well, that's your problem.

Second place should be worth something. Yeah, I also have a secondary problem. This seems to be player psychology. I have seen it literally 1 literally 1000 times. I don't understand what it is. I don't understand what is wrong with people's brains. Okay, red is way ahead. Oh man, they're going to win. And blue is a little bit far behind. Blue could take it if they really clutch it out, but yellow, deep and third goes, you know what I should do, I should attack blue to make sure that red wins.

It is, it is absolutely invariable that third place will go after second place. Yeah, and Aaron Crabman, who are already ahead to win. That happened in Tetris 99 when we'd play as well. Although a lot of the times, the default is to watch the whoever's in first is the target and everyone tries to pummel first until it becomes more of a unclear situation. So, I don't know. Oh my God.

I don't know. I guess it depends. I just saw something. I was just messaged the actual answer as to why people do that. And it makes me want to put a gun in my mouth. People are doing that to make the match and faster so they can get the guaranteed rewards

because they don't think they're going to get the winning rewards faster so they can get the guaranteed rewards because they don't think they're going to get the winning rewards. Okay. Okay. And so you have a unique scenario where the reward distribution incentivizes playing not your hardest in some circumstances then, right? Because I'm like, yeah, I'm thinking of when we played like Tetris 99 or other things like that where it's like usually first place becomes

a target and second and third will gang up and then you know to have an uneasy truce for a moment until it becomes like, ah, it gets anybody's game and then it's attack the breakaway winner again. You can see like every possible, every possible variation of like bad player behavior in a game that's three versus everyone. Like you're loading in and you're like, why are six people out of my team of 24 not moving at all or spinning in place? Oh, they queued in just for the reward.

They're literally just AFK, but nudging the stick just enough for the timer to not fucking remove them. So that's that aspect of this particular case in FF14 is definitely affecting the way people are behaving. You'll get weird behavior like that, and like three for all, that's a good term. And in three for all situations, but I think that's more reflective of like when a game is not zero

some, people kind of don't know what to do. I think there's a little bit of like, I understand the basics of what I win, you lose and what you lose and what you win, I lose. But when it becomes a little more complicated than that, long-term, it gets weird, which is also why I think like three versus or four player matches in like a starcraft type situation, we're also kind of hard to deal with, you know. When you had all races on the same map and you had to like fight two enemies on different fronts, those were the hardest matches to learn how to prioritize your targets. The other thing, and this is the part that really matters,

one of the reasons why you see people load in and just not play front lines, is because front lines is terrible. And bizarrely, and this is the part that really is bizarre, there's like four or five different types of PVP in that game, front lines, which is by far the worst one, is the only one that has rewards for doing it every single day. So it's the unfund one that needs you to play it the most

that people have to also play together in a weird way. And also because the numbers of people are so big, it's actually really easy to hide in a corner and just not do anything. Oh my god, it's such a piece of shit. Well, I do it every day. Gives you like a full level on your character. It gives you a full level of experience on your character.

It's ridiculous. That sounds doomed to having like, yeah, the worst participants in that experience. And they ping ponged between like, well, people are AFKing and not doing good. So what we're gonna do is remove all the experience rewards. And what happens then? So few people play it that you can't even get into a match.

Like the mode essentially just dies outright. Yeah. Men was at Tokyo Game Show and he was standing next to Yoshi P. You could have yelled at him about it. Hmm. Yeah. Um, um, men was at Tokyo Gameshow and he was standing next to Yoshi P. You could have yelled at him about it. He should have yelled where's my fucking rival wings, roulette. That's what he should have fucking said. But no.

Um, but that's it for me this week. I'm gonna play Liza P tonight and beat it up. Oh. That's over Twitch.tv slash Pat Stairsat. I have been informed by most of the people watching my show that I have beaten the really hard bosses, which there are some really hard fuck it. Like I talked up Liza P.

That game is hard as fuck. That is on the upper fucking scale that is that is like Sekiro more than it is like a dark souls game Optionals are no okay interesting also. There's there's like nothing that's really optional in that game boss wise It's all mandatory It's hard as fucking fuck. I'm loving it, but fuck. It's hard as shit. Cool. Okay. Over on this side, the... I had a similar thing where I don't know if you... Well, I was going through bomb rough cyber funk and hit like two streams and then I was like, okay, cool, that was dope.

And then basically it was told, it was told like, hey, like the game, you got like your halfway through the game. I was like, okay, well, let's just finish it then. You know, so then yeah, I did another one. But you weren't halfway through the game, were you? No, no, well, I did another session after that. And then as I was wrapping it up, it was like, oh, you've got like 30 minutes left.

And I was like, okay, let's go. Right. We did a long day because I was trying to, um, yeah, I was trying to get as much as I could in that. Cause I, you know, I, I feel like we're making some big strides towards cleaning up the plate, you know. So, um, with that, like extra, how would you believe that actually literally happened to me with lies of Pete also? Okay, yeah. I, hey, you know why I'm fucking doing this stream on fucking Monday?

Because I was told by people to pull people. Dude, you got, you can bang a satin on stream no problem. Yeah. So then I do a seven hour stream. And people were like, oh yeah, you got like three hours left for sure. But you fucking lied.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so first of all, and that's the, okay, so I mean, people will absolutely lie about whatever the time left is on the thing, because they have no memory of that whatsoever. They're just cutting out in their brain. The person I spoke to literally said, oh, I forgot the whole last zone of the game. Exactly, exactly.

What the fuck? This has happened constantly. God bless, solidists, your real one, whatever the numbers come out from solidists, they're accurate. I feel like over the years, I've just seen like, oh, you're right there, there's not my, whatever. And it's like, there are like six hours left.

What the fuck are you talking about? I've gotten so mad so many times. God, yeah, it's not great. So yeah, knowing exactly that, and then that's often to be like, it'll be like, okay, pause. What exactly does that mean? Like, is there this? And then, okay, cool.

All right. So anyways, so, you know, didn't hit up the finale of that. One, so in talking about the improvements over the predecessor, the Jetset radio and future both had Janky-ass finales for sure. Awesome music, but like what they were going for felt rough because like the skate around the circle and then like hit the boss target point stuff was the the jankot in the way. Here they kind of always at that thing where from what my tiny amount of time with bomb rush is at that time where the game is aesthetic and all that is carrying it and it's not asking

you to do anything too strenuous. But then it asks you to do something really strenuous with mechanics that can't really bridge that gap. So that happened in theetset radio, right? Yeah, that's why I'm referring to it. Yeah, they asked you to do things that were exactly way too difficult for what the system was kind of designed to do.

And you'd be skating over a pit and like you'd have these very specific jumps to make to then get up to the boss, but like it's moving at a pace that you don't have the best control over you or your camera. And you know, so anyway, all that to say that throughout this game, there's a number of like again, like Mirrors Edge, like time trial style, floating in the sky, make these jumps, make it through to the end type of moments. Right.

And this blast kind of challenge presents something kind of like that, except they give you not just like the one or two paths you have to take and if you'd fuck it up, like too bad, keep dying. There's a ton of different rails surrounding this big final boss, then there's a ton of different targets. So you're kind of working on like a very large stage with a bunch of targets to work on. And it just, it feels great.

And when you fuck up a jump, you have different landing points to try and salvage it. Oh, I can save it. Yes. And the higher up you are, the more opportunities you have. And then the camera snaps in a way that makes it like simpler to kind of like commit to a direction and then go that way. So it was like a really effective boss fight for that system. There was a boss fight before that, which again, like it struggled a bit because the there's the lock on. There's no real lock on. And I think the game would benefit heavily from that.

And yeah, in conclusion, I would say like the the maps and the lock on or the combat system overall, just like an overhaul with that would be necessary. And there is like a, there is a little bit of like opening up a new area, presenting some challenges. And you kind of like are, it's very open. And there's some areas that are that are that you find that are optional that are also really big. And I feel like there should be more like to do in these areas besides just like kind of like, hit up these tag spots. Here's a couple of secrets over here. It'd be really great if you could do things. A little too victory lap for your liking. It would be great if they could just fill up these large areas with a bit more content.

That's optional while giving you the ability to mainline. I definitely felt there was some moments of lagging while looking for where the next mainline objective was. Admittedly, playing in a last session mentality, we were trying to go faster, you know, but when I would see something optional, be like, oh, this would be cool to check out later, but I don't have the time for it right now. We would open up some new larger areas where like,

there was a lot of, there's an empty space where nothing was going on and then like, there was something way over here. Whereas I feel like the first levels were a lot more densely packed with like little bits and pieces, you know. That being said though, still very cool in terms of again, the aesthetic music, all that's firing on all cylinders. How cool is it to be physically transplanted into the game yourself? Yes, shout out to Quiet Viking who got the mod set up to have. He's so

Quiet Viking made a model of me and Reggie for a Jet Set radio video we did a while ago and just converted that into the modding. Oh, is that how that happened? Yeah, because we took a look. So VR chat had a Jet Set radio festival event that a number of Jetetsa radio fans put together. And it was a really cool way to just play through VR chat and enjoy that vibe. And so we did that quite a Viking put together those models and then you can drop them right over

because the modding in Balmra cyber fun has become pretty simple. And like people are modding that game into Melmultiplayer player I missed it, but I got a message about modding in the map things the problems I have like there's a whenever whenever you are getting chased by the cops You can go to a a porta potty change your outfit and then the heat dies down Yeah, that's yeah, but about in the game, but they're not marked on the map So you have to memorize where those porta potty's are right And they also have cooldowns if you use them like back to back. So you just you I wish you can mark them yourself or they're indicated on the map because the map tells you a bunch of other stuff. So that's a big thing.

But yeah, you can mod that in, you can mod in all kinds of other shit. And it's and it's really like, there's an initial, like step of like, wait, none of the, there's initial step of like, I don't understand how to get the mods going that like, I needed some help with, but once that you do, there's a browser that you kind of just like scroll through,

through a mod manager and just be like, hey, look, it's gum from Jetset Radio. Let's add her to the group, you know. Oh, cool. Bathroom tags, yeah, no problem. Custom spray as well, you know, that shit's all set up. So yeah, it's nice that that's happening. I would like it to see officially happen for sure,

but I could definitely envision a version of this game where like a patch comes through the line for the consoles later that just grabs a bunch of the most popular PC mods and then drops them into the switch. Very good. Yeah, but really cool with that. There's a story that's wildly like the intro level proposes lots of body horror and the game just way more than I was expecting that. Yeah, yeah.

And the game just steers all the way in that direction aggressively, so it's kind of wild with it because I was not expecting these like Robocop remake-esque discomforts to occur constantly. I still don't understand the core concept of like, oh, we replaced your head like you're a completely different person. It's it's why it doesn't make it exact. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and it goes way further than that, but Yeah, it's fine. It's the cyber future. The flesh prince will figure it out. You don't got to think too hard about it.

But yeah, so wrapped that up. Yeah, I talked about finishing World Tour before as well, so that's clear. And then with 16, I have what hopefully is maybe another two streams to the end, so we're just gonna try to- Try to another two streams to the end. So we're just gonna try to add exactly right this second just got Just got what you're gonna call it Shiva Okay

So you're starting to get the really busted shit now. So Yeah, I'm not gonna go into well, well, okay, some people are, okay, spoiler alert, I suppose, for anything else going into late FF16 if you haven't played it yet, this is the alert. So, yeah, no, the only thing I'm going to say is like, how many streams you have left is going to vary dramatically depending on how much of the side content you want to do. Yes. And I'm doing the most of the side content off camera. I'm doing the good ones on camera.

So FF 16's like the most horrible placing problem is that, so if you notice that every time you unlock side quests, you unlock more of them. Like that moment that they're like, you could go fight the final boss right now, Clive, is the moment where like 17 of them all on. Okay. And like two of them are worth it.

And I did all of them and it took me like an entire, it took me like a stream and a half. And I was like very resentful. I was I was very mad about it blackthorn is depressed part four I was I it like annihilated the fucking pacing coming off of like the the big events that it had occurred Yeah, and I was skipping dialogue too, and it still took me okay It took me like six to eight hours to do all that. It was, it's like a full game of the games were a shittiest content. It's wild.

Yeah, a lot of that I'm just doing off-cam, and then like... That is a much better idea than what I did. On-cam, good side quests, and the dialogue options that are... When you go back to the base and people have asked about the newest thing that happened. I'm hitting up all the NPCs for their current thoughts on the matter, and then we're just hitting the next red. Yeah, so it is interesting, I suppose,

like getting these new baseline abilities where I was like, oh, Bahamut, that's cool. You get to dodge and build up this thing that's going to be really useful. But something I'm starting to very, I'm feeling a lot, is there are really strong abilities that let you play the game and there are really strong abilities that don't. And I, as much as the Baja Mutt payoff is fun and you get that sick dodge out of it, the fact that you cannot really fight except for shooting the funnels while floating around is a passive thing that I don't want to do, you know. So I'd much rather put on Shiva and have an active dodge, you know. I want to play with it.

I would say that all three of the last ones have the same problem in that respect and that their abilities are focused on not playing the game because Shiva's dodge itself is I'm gonna turn the enemy off. Right, right? I'm gonna make the enemy go from an action enemy that I'm gonna fight to a training dummy for like go from action enemy that I'm gonna fight to a training dummy for like 10 fucking seconds. And any stagger on them, you can pop the freeze bomb so that they come out to re-stagger. Are you seeing, like you're starting to see the bits and pieces that I put together? It's like, and it's like they're de facto like non-active. Like the last one is like, it's the worst one in this respect, but it's also the strongest

one. Okay. So, you feel like I'm really handicapping myself by not using this thing. Right, yeah. But, oh my. I did. I had a sequence that was basically just like, yeah, drop the Lightning, the Judgment Bolt, whatever the little lightning rod.

Lightning rod, and then Kamehameha, and like, oh, yeah, I'm like, okay, I see, I see. But yeah, I think the way it feels best right now to me, and this is interesting, because, you know, we're not strangers to like, there are busted things you can do so Play to the amount that the challenge you want Me matches, you know like Self-nerf if you want to or whatever the case is for me what I like is fighting in

whatever the case is. For me, what I like is fighting in up close and then staggering through like all the main direct abilities. And then in the stagger now, unload all the bombs, right? That's where you can cutscene it the fuck up. But I wouldn't want to replace that like race to stagger moment. I don't think I really, I'm excited to talk to you next week because I've been wanting to talk to you from an action game perspective, how you feel about the final batch of abilities that you all lock. Okay.

Because I think they are so fun to the point where they are poorly designed. Like they are poorly designed. Like they are character action abilities designed by somebody going, man, what would be the most fun thing you could possibly do with this? Delete. And then they did it.

And then you're like, oh, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm already self-regulating I think on some of those abilities but cool stuff. And you know, and we'll see what you know, Barbie has to say and are Barney for that matter and everyone's everyone's they're doing their thing. It's post-human evil, therefore, write it out, whatever. And then yeah, only other thing is I read the post-avatar, the last airbender animated series graphic novels. So there is, I read two of the three. So there is the promise, which is a, like, pretty much like a season. Really, it's a full, like, art. They take place immediately after the show ends. So they effectively are the first show. Yes. and these are effectively a final season of the show, if not a three final

arcs. Are these like we wanted to get one and then we couldn't get one, so we wrote books, or is this just happens to be the way that they are? Well, from reading the, so there's the promise, the search, and then I haven't read the last one, the rift, but at least the first two, the promise in the search, they were great. I really like them. They felt like they could be a like, yeah, a, a, another season. Are they contracted out? I don't, I don't know. I don't know if they're written by the writers or not But they felt can they felt pretty alright man. I liked them and I felt like what was happening Besides there were some things where they kind of set up um They set up some stuff that they're written by the same writers. Okay, perfect Oh, there you go. Yeah, there's some moments that are like oh here's a little thing that ties into Kora

Here's a little thing that ties into you know something that might happen in the future that we hint at or whatever. But for the most part, um, no, they were really cool arcs that I think, uh, also, you know, wrapped up some, some good questions about the world that, um, I mean, I didn't finish Korra, but from two seasons, there's definitely a bunch of stuff that I'm like, hey, all the characters you loved and all the things like what, not only what happened to them, but how did the world go from here to there, you know? There's things like, you know, whatever happened to Azula, right? And yeah, I think it was pretty solid. So the first one, the promise is basically just a setup where, okay, Avatar, you know, so Ang has defeated the Fire Lord and now we've got ostensibly a situation where peace should

be like possible, right? Yay! Zuko can fire Lord it up and make it so that the Fire Nation is not so shitty and all that. So let's start like trying to, you know, govern and fix these problems. That's gotta be such a fuck up fucking ass. Hey you guys, you're all about conquest and war for like your whole life. All right, new management. Yeah. No more of that. Peace time, right? Peace time.

Literally, yeah, literally the, the, you know, harmony movement, right? I wonder if there's a different, you know, a historical anecdote in the real world that has, like a basis. So get that. So get this, right? So get this, right? So get this, right? So the Fire Nation, as it's been fucking rampaging

and colonizing for the last fucking century, plus has a bunch of colonies all over the map and many of them are in the earth nation. And it's like, so the earth nation's like, yo, give us our land back right and The fire nation is like no We don't want to and then Zuko's like hey well peace now, right? So here's what we got to do we got to go in and you know Like figure that out make sure that they get that they get all that back and we get rid of the colonies and stuff and

You kind of and it's interesting interesting because I guess with newer colonies, it's like one thing, but what you get there, and it's like here's a colony of people that are earth and firebenders that have been living together for a century. Harmoniously. And well, but literally, roots are tied together. There are like families that are both in...

So what you're telling me Is that all it all hang which the fuck someone helped me is it all or hang hang Okay, hang hang in the gang go down and they find the warf is there and the the prison colony Of the Romulans and the the Klingons have actually created a new society and they have Romulan and Klingon mixed children. And they don't, but now they don't know what to do. Because they think that out of the pro, no. They're, they're, they're, reproduction are compatible with each other. Yeah, okay.

Okay, just don't worry about that in Star Trek. Okay, okay, okay. But yeah, no exactly, right? So just like, all right, split this shit up. You guys get out of here, you guys, you stay here. And it's like, okay, but now there's a bunch of mixed kids that are like, what? I don't know where I can, I don't find a problem.

And it's like, oh no, this is not a Nickelodeon problem. You know, so I was like, ah, that's interesting, right? And then, you know, it's like, it's not just Zuko, and then like, angst like, no, we gotta, you know, you gotta fucking, we gotta separate everything, make it peaceful. And then it's like, but do you, yeah, and he's like, shit, I don't know. And then it's like, hey, if we go, let's go ask previous avatars, what do you guys think? And it's like, yeah, I'm from the old school, so I'm just racism all the time, really. And I think that's a great solution.

And it's like, I think one of the funniest things about Avatar the Last Airbender is that we're supposed to look at like, hey, hang, how are you gonna do it? You know what, you contact your past lives, they'll help you. And the every, and like, he contacts like a multitude of past lives in Sodus Korra.

And the shit they tell them is universally unhelpful and usually directly harmful. Yeah, no, some in the ghost of a fucking pounding fathers. And it's like, yes, no, here's exactly what we meant meant by a well-armed militia. No, we didn't mean this. And it's like, well, thank you. Awesome we meant by a well-armed militia. Well, we didn't mean this, and it's like, well, thank you. Awesome.

And with that well-armed militia, you can have your slaves take care of all the cleaning of the guns and make sure that everything's up. Oh, wow, yeah. Thank you, founding father. All right. Gotta go, bye. Oh, boy, this wind dispute. Kiyoshi says, kill everyone who disagrees with you.

How is, don't stop until you're done? How is this? Thanks Avatar Kiyoshi right appreciate that and it's like cool. Who else is saying that the previous fire Lord? Literally so yeah, it's exactly that right? They're like what's the what's the fire guy right before? Ozai No, no, no, no before before the fucking avatar the the fire dickhead what the fuck was his name? Roku oh Roku Hey, what should I do guy who directly allowed every problem in the series to happen?

Yeah, it's it's really I did asking him for advice is so outrageous It's literally his fault all of it the whole thing So so that's kind of what is happening is Angus sitting there going hey, man You got any past wisdom for me and he's like yeah, I sure do here's the way things are and here's the way they've been Let's go run it that way and Ang's like, fuck this man, like thanks grandpa, all right. And then it's like literally just like, okay, time to never talk to that ghost again.

Like it's, you know, so it's really, okay, well, you can solve an ethnically diverse, highly tentious land argument. And the only two ghosts you can talk to are Hitler and Neville Chamberlain. They're the only three. You got the previous avatars. No, so that's exactly it.

It's just like everyone that came before you is like, dude, I don't know. A part-eyed works, man. And you're like, dude, I don't know. A part-eyed works, man. And you're like, fuck me. You're like, yeah, it did up until then. Right? Sure. Worked. quote unquote. So it's a bunch of children trying to solve fucking relic, like non-child problems, race relations, apartheid borders, because a bunch of power children have to lead nations. What the fuck are we talking about here? You know, um, it's it's quite it's I was like I thought that was a very cool way to like immediately solve the you killed the bat

or you didn't kill it. Sorry you beat the bad guy. Um, yay, everyone good good wins and good triumphs. Now what, you know? So yeah, it's, it was, I'm a big fan of like the hero solving the problem and then the method in which they solve the problem leaves them a much more difficult problem to solve that they can't punch. Right. And, and of course, like they have points and the people that are protesting have their points and then the friends themselves that are all on the side of justice are like

Seeing different things and being like yeah, but you know What about this side or that side and and and of course like with all of this you also have what I like Which is of course the the buildup that'll foreshadow for the future? So you know what and you know the eventual solution is annex them and to turn them into their own fucking country that ignores all of this shit. But like it's, but it does stuff like it's so it's like, you know, Ang is like looking at a, a, a, a fire nation dude, mayor and like a, earth nation lady that are like a couple and being like yeah we gotta split them up man We gotta get them apart from each other we gotta give them back at the fire nation now

We gotta do that yeah, right? This crazy. That's wild separate them anyways Katara you hot Water nation lady get over here and kiss my air nation mouth. Let's make some fucking mixed pain. Right. And have super powers. Exactly. And it's a coin flip as to what kids get.

What fucking superpower? Because that's what I'm doing. You can't have get those two nations apart, but these two nations are. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's different, man. I got to spread the seed because of the air nation, right? We all got, it's my, it's my duty. And, and exactly, you know, and then like, Katara's like, dude, that's just, that's literally just

us. What the fuck do you do? You know, no, man, it's totally different. So it's different because I had orcs in the fire and earth nations where tons of people in the government tried to kill me. So I have a weird Hang up on that. So it's so it's interesting because it's almost like if you if you take the trajectory of the original Animated series you could almost be like so apartheid good right like Four nations of different powers and then the evil one needs to be defeated so that we can return to harmony, and everyone stays on their own sides

like Time Cube has predicted. And I think that never shall they mix. What kills me about this is that what it makes my brain auto correct to is like the core theme of Naruto is the only way you can stop a bad guy with eugenics is a good guy with you. Yes, yes, exactly. Eugenics from love is opposed to eugenics from science. Like oh no, eugenics is really powerful. How are we going to oh, you know what? We got, we can Eugenics it too, but we can Eugenics it even better.

Hard work, shut up. Arrange these good characters to make super babies. Instead of cutting out people and removing, you know, the bad, just take your power kid and find that other power kid and just shove them in on a thing together. And he's not gonna, he's not gonna perform as good as the other power kid. You know what you do?

Perhort, performance enhancing drugs, aka, insert a Fox demon there. Baby, just juice it up. Juice the baby. Juice the baby. With Captain America ninja super serum. Now we're talking, right? Reminds me, I remember hearing that Captain America

was like specifically disincentivized and like I think was the 70s and 80s because people pointed out like, this is a superhero whose superpower is doing steroids. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like during the steroids scandals,

it's like Captain America is a man-made superhuman that just a bunch of drugs in the war. It got really big. Yeah. But I mean, I, I, I, I, I, and like, but it's also why one of those bits where it's like, you know, red skull is like, you are the perfect Aryan. What are you doing? You know, like, there's a little bit of that.

Like, yeah, you are artificial, but what do you do with it? And, you know, and also we can never, ever do it again unless we need a dramatic moment and, and 13 years later. But anyway, no, so I enjoyed that as a problem that the children had to face. And then... Hey Nickelodeon kids, can you solve the Israeli Palestine?

Can you? You wanna give it a shot? Go ahead. No? Yeah. It's hard. It's hard huh? What you gonna blow a little wind bubble at it? You're gonna tell everyone to just feel their feelings is as opa gonna fly over Gaza and figure it out it out. Not quite man, not quite. So, God, I don't think your trusty boomerang will save us from this one. Mr. Boomerang will not solve the problem. I don't think. Yeah. so anyways, you get that, right? You get that as the setup for the immediate post bad guy defeated crisis, which again, you know, the destruction of the air temple was an inside job, right?

And who's funding, who's funding the fire nation? and and who's who's funding who's funding the fire nation is there the lizard people yeah okay okay got it got it are there ties from um all right look so All right, look. So I don't know, man, ang flies a hang glider and I saw a hang glider this weekend and I don't know what the fuck is going on. But just just wait, hold on, you just saw a hang glider this weekend?

Never mind. The point is this is that we're, we love it with the bit, it's almost like yeah, the superhero that is great at fighting and beating the bad guy, but he's terrible at being We love it with the bit. It's almost like, yeah, the superhero that is great at fighting and beating the bad guy, but he's terrible at being a parent. He's terrible at ruling. He's terrible at figuring anything else out. And this, I thought it was really great

how fucking we had the bit in Korra where they're like, yeah, ang socked as a dad. Terrible, dog shit. So that's a, yeah, that's a nice like, like, first issue to take on there. And also there's a bit of that, like, you know, as we've talked about with Clive, it's like, Hey, man, can you, how are you going to, what, what do you stab in the face to make all that bearer mother not be like, Oh, fuck my own baby, that thing sucks, get it out of me. Right? How do you fix that problem?

Huh? By stepping a god in the face. You can't. Here's where media and some forms of history paint a really disturbing solution, where in many stories, the solution was, you know, you wouldn't have this problem if you had gotten everybody.

Like that was the mistake, right? I don't feel comfortable may even having this discussion, media. And then the media says, no, no, think about it. Yeah. If there's no one left to take revenge, just avoid it, just avoid it. Right, right, right, right, think about it. Yeah. If there's no one left to take revenge, there's no one left to take revenge. Right, right, right, right, exactly, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, so it, and for what it's worth, it's interesting because it's like you're setting up like a very difficult solution, a very difficult problem without clear solutions, but it does manage to stick a landing that I think makes sense for the world of Avatar that is like, okay, um, yeah kids, you do have to effectively find new ways to solve this

that can't just be about ancient wisdom because sometimes the ancient wisdom of the past was fucking garbage. It was great for the problems they had at their time, but solving the way the world works when things change, when dynamics change, and when, you know, the people that are victims here are not the same circumstances as the people who are the ancient wisdom applies to. They can't fathom the intricacies of what you're looking at. So you got to figure it out in a new context. You can't just look to the past and always expect it'll be forever wisdom, you know, which is awesome because yeah, old paper is only so useful up to a point as, you know,

we'd see every single fucking day. Now, I just realized that the whole spiel I did about, you gotta get all of them. I accidentally described the plot of Yakuza 2, where that's the game's core theme, which is, should you have gotten rid of all of them, or was that more evil than letting them stay to do secret Korean shit? Like there are characters that will look each other in the eyes and going, should you have killed every Korean?

And he goes, I don't know. Maybe, maybe I should have. I see. Do we have that game is crazy. We have a strenuous piece, but it was really just a fake piece while plotting or revenge is being plotted in the background because you didn't get You just you actually yeah, no that that's yeah, no exact like literally exactly Mm-hmm, and then you get to the end and you're like I don't know I don't know what carry you even thanks Yeah, are you even think?

Yeah. Are you in tight? Yeah, and it is a very interesting question. I mean, this was a subject of like one of the, the mecha graphic novel I was never fucking made, but just like the, like, oh yeah, it is, isn't it? Are you entitled to revenge? And if so, to what degree and when does it stop? Does it ever stop? Or do you always have a justified, you know, means to carry out what was injustice at the time?

If I remember correctly, the way that broke down was, do you keep getting to have revenge now? Yeah. What about now? Yeah, I hate to. What about it now? How about now? Okay, all right, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's just, yeah, okay, you know what? Grab the timeline and just throw it. Just go as far as you, okay, how about now?

Is revenge still good to, mm-hmm. Okay, gotcha, right? And so it's like, like that, the agony agony of that exactly. It's, it's, it's incredibly, incredibly fascinating and fucking uneasy, you know, so it's a subject matter that I, I love. Now, the second series book is the search, which much more simplified, hey, where where Zuko's mom That's a good question. That's it. So let's go find out what happened there, you know And that's much more suited for Nickelodeon kid adventures Let's just get the gang back together and go find mom cuz All of that you you know, whoo, all right. And so yeah,

and that's so much more straightforward. And it also leads into stuff that like, you know, the stuff that comes out of there is like, it's like Avatar introduced like spirit stuff a little bit sparingly and then had these but there was some major stuff around it and then Corrigor was like Hard into the spirits, you know that a little bit too much I think And so what they kind of did here is like I guess bring more of that aspect in seeing as the spirit realm is gonna tie into the future in a more significant way It starts to tie into Avatar in a more significant way to answer some of those questions. So yeah, you know, it I felt again, I felt it felt like a I watched the season, you know, or an arc of the story. And I have I have words to say about that second season of Avatar with the Korra.

Wait, hold on. How much of the Korra did you watch? Two of four. Two of four? Yeah. Okay, that's enough. Yo, Korra, you're fucking a dog on this one, man. You really fucked it all up.

Yeah, so, you know, again, we kind of, we touched on this a bit when I first brought up finishing that second season. And again, I feel like I'm in the minority opinion on this. I didn't have the amount of hatred for what I saw in that second season so far compared to everyone else. And I get, and that's fine, you fine. The main factor was the breaking down, like the equivalent of the wills and the midi-chlorians and how they work. And shit like that, how the magic works, so to speak. I thought that was interesting to see. I didn't mind finding out the exact anatomy of the Avatar state. I thought it was cool. But again, I get it. I haven't finished it.

There's more to learn and to figure out and I'm sure there might be details that change. But from the midpoint at the very least, it didn't seem to be that bad. But. Hey, I'll tell you what, season three has a lot of fucking weird ass, cool ass action shit in it. Yeah.

But that third season has a lot of the wipeouts. Yeah, wipeouts happening. But I'm just like, the last time I brought this up, it was weeks of like fucking Korra takes and drown shit come like, all right, I'm not trying to find any battles. You know, if you hated it, that's fine. I just, I didn't think it was.

It was really fascinating to me to see what characters people like. Like I've, like, okay, over the course of my internet's notoriety, I have discovered that people care a lot about many things. And sometimes they take the things that you say personal, and it kind of hurts their feelings. In that context, it's really interesting to see what specific characters or things people get just really, really attached to. Like I've seen people defend Kora like she's a real person.

She's not. She's a written character that the writers wrote. Whenever you complain about Sakura from Naruto, you're actually complaining about Kishimoto, right? You're not, you're not, like Sakura is not a real person that has feelings that you can hurt. You're complaining about the writer. If I complain about Jill's portrayal in F16, I'm complaining about the writer and the director not giving her enough to do or you know whatever. I don't like, you know, but Korra, man, people like it's their daughter or their sister or something. Just like, how could you talk to Miss Bucquardt? like, could you fucking kill me of carnation for a whole planet?

Holy shit! You botched it, lady! I also have... Well, perhaps it's passed at this point since I haven't finished and I haven't gone back to it, which, you know, I would need to do with Punch Mom. But the... there was definitely a honeymoon phase of like, I think it's just awesome to see the setting continue. And like, that thing I love of like, you know, the setting plus time is a, it's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, like a buff, a glaze that I enjoy of like seeing that glaze.

Yeah, of seeing like not only that setting continue, but like seeing it continue with characters that are aged up from the original as well. And, you know, so I always I'm going to love the fact that they did that and went in that direction with it. And then I guess it's just going to come down to, you know, what are the things these characters do and what are the, what are the, what decisions does she going to make and, and, you know,

how justifiable are not justifiable will they be? But I think, I think that I think that I think that I so far didn't mind it. I think it at Avatar as a series discovered Like a like I'm gonna say like a writing trap for people in terms of dealing with characters and that is I don't know if you remember but like in the lead-up to the Korra like when they're explaining who Korra is They said well, Ang was an emotionally mature child, right? He was smart, he was bright. He didn't start that way,

but you got to watch him figure out how to become a more emotionally mature. Right, but specifically what he needed to learn is how the fucking do avatar shit, right? As a person, the writers viewed him as like a bright and smart person that was like emotionally mature, regardless of him being a child, right? I'm describing an interview that I read

before the thing came out. Then they takeora and they said that Kora is emotionally immature, but can do all of the avatar stuff. She can fight like crazy, but she is hotheaded, she is reckless, etc. She is hotheaded and reckless in a way that is more aggressive than Aang's kind of like more carefree nature, but Aang was also emotionally kind of like more carefree nature. But Ang was also emotionally, it took, he was, he would also fly off

and not be sure how to handle his feelings. And he'd have these moments where he would like, you know, crack. And a big part of the struggles he had was, don't enter the avatar state when you're not in a calm state of mind, right? He had to learn how to enter it from a good place and not from a place where you're all wound up because then the actions you do are awful ones.

But what I mean is as an 11 year old, Ang was a lot more put together emotionally and spiritually than Kora is an 18 year old, like comparison to their ages. Yes, yes, yes. Right. For the age difference. Yes, absolutely. That's the point that this interview was making with one of the writers.

And what you discover is that Ang, when he acted like, you know, a kid, or emotionally mature, it was appropriate for his age. For his age, yeah. Right. And so he's learning how to fight. You go to Korra is a character who knows how to fight into all the magic shit, but because she's, how had it reckless and emotionally immature, she makes mistakes.

The viewer says, but Ang wouldn't have made those mistakes. And then they get angry. Do you see what I'm saying here? Right, right, right. Yeah. It's frustrating because despite, you know, they're different characters of the series. The emotional maturity starts to go down. Yeah. Now, of course, there are people that are four times core is age that are four times shittier. You know what I mean? So like it you would hope that you learn

to be a bit more mature about things and handle problems that have people's lives at stake in a manner that is, yeah, not completely just like, well, this is what I feel and that's what's gonna determine the outcome end of story. But yeah, all this, but yes, of course, however you choose to write her is, I'm sure, well, I feel like a lot of stories, they'll start with a template and then kind of like write

themselves in up to a place where they have an idea of where they wanna go, but you'll figure it out on the fly, right? So anything that she does that has consequences might not have been thought outside of like, the end state needs to be this is the new villain, this is the new conflict we're going to deal with in this season. I also think that the one of the weirder things like is there how much like

avatar of the first the first show made a big deal of like the should I kill people or not and like moving on even to the the books you're reading. Like I remember this was coming out alongside Steven Universe and was really strange to have all this media going like, I bet you, like, here's hoping the villains just kill themselves because I'm not gonna do anything about it. Now, something to bring it back to what I was talking about,

the, with the comics, something interesting in the search, of course, is like, okay, so Azula sucks. And- Azula has to go, right? The idea that you said, here's what happens to Azula, as in applying that it's not just put her in the dirt. Oh shit, dude. And this is the wild part is like it's like okay

So Nickelodeon kids right the whole struggle exactly should you kill the bad guy? He's an evil man. He's a full grown-ass evil man. All right now. There's an evil child Should do you just fuck your early life out? You're only making a guilty children. Do you just wipe out the guilty children? And it is like, it's interesting, because I'm like, yeah. If your premise is that you gotta give them a shot, right? Then let me see you stretch this premise to its conclusion.

And in the search, right, you kinda get, so you see, so it's like, Azul is here, and you're like, oh my God, okay, we're gonna try, we're gonna try to deal with this. What is the right thing to do with someone that fucking shitty? And if it's not offing them then what, right? And there's like, the Zuko's like, hey man, I was pretty shitty too.

And you watched me figure it out. Let's work that shitty Zuko. But let's give it a second, you know? And then Zool is like He's like okay, and they're like And then the crew is like dude, I don't know man It's gonna know she's my sister dude. No, okay, let's go, you know, and then she's like Like he's like okay, okay, okay, and they're like dude. I don't like

They're like it's one of these things where he's like give her another chance And then she freaks the fuck out and they're like dude no and she's like don't give her another and like it keeps happening Yeah, and you're just like oh she's just like she's broken broken broken, you know, and then there's there's a really there's a huge Issue There's a really, there's a huge issue. This is like that. I forget who termed it, or if I'm just inventing this in my mind, but I think of it in my own head is the X-Men problem, where you're like, who is the X-Men supposed to be? The X-Men are supposed to be a representation of societies

like underclass or visible minority, or on the outskirts of society, right? And they're the recipients of prejudice, right? But Wolverine has fucking claws and his hand you can't take away from him. No, you can't do it. And fucking Fucking cyclops has a fucking like cannon strap to his eyeballs So making the making the fucking comparison, being like, man, the X-Men are fighting for their right to exist. It's just like gay people. No, it's not.

Gay people don't have guns in their arms from birth. That's not a thing. And Azul is the same way. Like, oh, can you rehabilitate a really damaged 14-year-old? Not one that's a human gun. I can start by taking her human gun away and see what you get from that. Yes, but that bitch would stab a baby. If the baby said Google Gaga water temple, like that bitch is crazy.

Yes, no, a gay person with the ability to rewrite reality, with the ability to control the concept of ice, which is the absence of heat, which is actually work and force, which is energy, which is how all life, like fucking flourishes, which is the second law of thermodynamics. You can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, Florishes, which is the second law of thermodynamics. It's the ability to fuck with that Yeah, it's not the same. No, no, no If we lived in the world of X-Men, yeah people be fucking terrified of mutants

Yeah, you get a little you get a little angst at anxiety in your tummy when you see a guy at the store open carrying a revolver on his hip What about mr. Ibeams? Or Mr. Can we call the metal attack you? Now, so for the purposes of the story, right? Azula's like, and she's throwing lightning bolts, and Zuko's like, uh, fuck, goddammit, I can catch your lightning idiot stop it. Anyways, you know, and it's this great thing where like, like you're pushing the level of reasonable patience

to its extreme limits beyond the point where anyone would accept, you know, and you're dealing with kids, right? That's the main through line here. And you just kinda, you hit a point where it's like, okay, it doesn't matter how many of these redemption style moments because I mean, again, Zuko, while having not done anything as bad as she did, had what was great about his story is, and then what we always remember is, it's not just the road to redemption, right? It's the key, key, key part to me at the very least was when you were almost there

and then you had a chance to take everything you ever wanted by throwing out the road that you were just on. By abandoning this path to redemption, you have an opportunity to take everything you ever wanted right here offered to you and you're like, ah fuck me, I still want it. Something deep inside me still wants it and I'm gonna switch back over, right? And you want it. And that moment where Eros shuts down on him, like that's the real, real.

That's what made me go, this show is fucking amazing. Because the simple path back that's un, you know, that's not, no, no winding turns and where you don't actually get a chance at a better outcome for yourself is easy because you're like, well, I want this path back not only because I feel bad about what I did, but probably because it'll, you know,

I'll feel better of the guilt in my head, whatever the case is. But if you have the chance to abandon it for the fucking temptations of beforehand and then some, I think the approach your character. The meaning here is perfect because the struggle that you see in Zuko. And even though he fucks it up, like he fucks it up for a whole season, right? He makes the wrong choice, but you see the struggle in the back and forth. It like, it like humanizes him and makes you go, okay, you know what?

He just needs to be put in the right place and the right circumstances. Azula has no struggle. So she doesn't even want the other stuff. So again, this is just going further into like how busted she is, right? In the comic, it goes into these moments. And then after like the fourth time or so, that everyone is like,

I swear to God, kid. Like if she weren't your sister, like, right? And he's like, he's trying to like, walk it back in a way. You cut over to like, see what she sees from her perspective. And it's like, she had no chance. Right? She's, yeah.

She's like legitimately like, not even fucking experiencing reality in the same way that, like, other people do. Like, she's cool. So I have a very important question because it will color the entirety of every discussion about Azula here. When they're trying, when Zuko's like, I can fix her, or I can improve her, or whatever, right? We can do something here. In between the first attempt and anything, is there one fatality that can be ascribed

to Azula? Because during the treatment or fixing her process, if this results in a fatality, the whole thing becomes totally moot. Exactly, right? There isn't. Ah, because it would be really simple. Because it would be so simple. If she, if what, if one person goes,

this child is erased from existence. We're done. We're done. That's it. There's no struggle here. You've clarified the situation. You've almost made it easier for us to do what we need to do, right? But there isn't.

And it's like, you gotta fight so that you fight along this shitty ass path, right? And then you go inside and you go how broken, you go completely broken, right? Not only to have the conversation of like, can you watch her every minute of the day? We get exactly. And then you're like, you're like, not only are you basically dealing with a child that in addition to being raised evil and having no moral compass whatsoever,

she's paranoid schizophrenic, right? There's just nothing, it's like you're like fuck. There was no other outcome here, you know? So I'm torn because I don't think that the world of Avatar, the last airbender, has a lot going on in terms of psychotherapy or psychophomorology. They do have some of that spirit shit. So, but once again, right, the second, so this follow-up like story, which is again simpler enough in that it's like, hey, let's go search for mom,

is presenting another aspect, which is far beyond Nickelodeon children's ability to handle necessarily. Now, it's not a major, it's not like fixazula is the plot point per se, but it's happening in the background. Just like the B plot, I guess. It's a B plot, it's a strong B plot. And like there's other details coming out about, you know,

like the whatever, the Fire Nation history and yet, and so on. But at the end of the day, it's just kind of like Yosuko, you're staring at yourself, but way worse and also like unfixable now what, you know? And I could be saved. You were never this bad. Like even even even you walking around with like your fucking child abuse burn ass face were never as fucked up as this bitch. Can I find yeah and I mean obviously like he's like trying to compensate and he became became that asshole as a result of like you know always being seen as like not hard enough, whereas she was just like always above and beyond and rewarded for that level of cruelty. But anyway, so yeah, it is another interesting aspect

to this world that I was like, huh, okay, because if you're gonna take on the idea of like, she's a shit child and nobody dies in this world no matter what they do or whatever, you're gonna need to back that up or at the very least show me how you stretch this, this rationale to its conclusions. And so just like they stretch the apartheid discussion out for the first one here, you're stretching out this concept of like the redemption that Zuko can have, how much of that applies further to other characters, you know, and at what point do you write it off or what point do you don't? So I don't know what the third arc goes into with the Rift, I'm gonna need to read that. But again, if you like Avatar, these little bridging post

stories are a fun read for that. While also doing things that, you know set up the the world of Korra. I have a I have kind of a stupid question but it's like a it's like a nomenclature question. You refer to them as books. Yes. Are they books or they comics? So I'm going to hold up a physical hard graphic novel. This is a Korra art book in particular but it's the same size, same type of book and it's collecting a number of individual trade issues that were loose and then into one bound book. It's a graphic novel. Okay, I find the I find the actual terminology about this is actually like really really terribly unclear. Okay. I'm not super big in a comics

Yeah, it's a it's but like graphic novel has always been like a shitty term. I felt like it's trying too hard to be- No, no, no, no, no. I disagree because it's like, so Bondessi Nays, like BDs would exist and they would describe like things like Tante and stuff and you kind of were like, but it's really just saying comic book with a different country's words.

Right. So like anime is fucking a French loan word. Yeah, and you know, I mean, you know, whatever manga is describing not just the medium, but like the place and the style within it, right? So the graphic novel is just, it's a Western comic book collected into a hard or sometimes soft cover, but it's just a bound-ficker book, you know. And in some cases, like, it is, in some cases, it's written as a, there are no issues. It's just a long read. Yeah, you know, but sometimes it's an omnibus, right? The collection of each part. So I just want to be clear. It's like, and this is not to shit on you specifically,

will you? Because you are definitely not the only person I've talked to. But I have run into a situation in which people go, oh, I'm loving this new book I'm reading. And then I find out that it is a picture book. Okay, right. And that's not what I think of what I think of a book. I think of a book as having a picture.

Gotcha. Okay. Uh, that, I, I, yes, I would say comic book. I suppose I'm assuming that probably people in the audience are familiar with Avatar and might have heard that there were Avatar comics. So I just kind of said that as a shorthand. But yes, it is a, it is a comic book that is collected into three hardcover or so. Yeah. So I was like this whole time we've been talking.

You thought it was like a novel. Really surprised that there was enough material to write like four to 600 pages of novella three times. Got you got something in like Wheel of Time book. Right, no, no, no. I meant, I meant. And I'm like, that's a, wow, that's more than the original seasons would have contained

No, no, I definitely I meant comic book. Yeah sure so That's that's the I can go for a hundred pages of I don't know if we should fucking kill Azula It's yeah, so I I want to I want to get I want to track down the the rift and see what it's about But it's fun to see that and you know, it's fun to see Toff just fucking being Toff and being awesome she rules And it's like yeah also a bad parent But like but like Toff is like wait that fucking wild ass Freaky, Gremlin,

taught people how to bed metal, really? How, how did she become a teacher? And the answer here is very, very poorly. Yeah. You know? Like very poorly. Very, very, very, Totally.

Toss, like, teaching style is just do it pussy. Yeah. Do it harder. Straight up, straight up, actually. You know, to which goofy ass saga shows up and is like, okay, I'm an asshole too, but like I think I can help here maybe, you know, let's figure this out.

But you, yeah, you get to see top being an awful teacher at the same time, which makes sense because why the fuck would she not be? You know, God, she's the best. Um, so yeah, and then just like, Hey, I'm the greatest ever. Why aren't you fucking do it? You know, I was the greatest ever at like eight years old. You're like a adult.

What is your excuse? And the problem is like there is no counter argument. The son of a bitch is right. She's absolutely right. I wasn't taught by blind moles in a cave. She's the fucking best. Now what? You jerk.

Yeah. So good stuff. I really enjoyed that. And yeah, can I try track that down? Shout out to Min recommended. What do we do with the Zool? That speaks to me so much more than the colony plot because it's so unsolvable.

No, yeah, I don't wanna overstate that part of it. I know, it is a B plot, but I liked that it kept coming back up and every time it happened, like Zuko looks back to the group of kids that are just like, Foooo! Oh! Oh!

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that was good. All right, let's take a quick break. It's time for piss! So we'll be right back. This week, the podcast is sponsored by Stitch Fix. Let's take a quick break. It's time for piss. It'll be right back. This week, the podcast is sponsored by StitchFix. Are you wearing clothes right now?

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and use the code birthday to get 20 to 40% off site wide. Once again, that's code birthday at buy raycon.com slash super beast. And you're going to get 20 to 40% off by raycon.com slash super beast. Thank you, Raycon. Thanks, Raycon. All right. What is going on this week? Well, John Riccatello is out. Tell you what, tell you what. Yeah, layoffs and lawsuits appears to be the entirety of the events of the week. And we can start.

Video games, fuck that, get fired. And starting with the breaking news, yeah. John Riccatello stepping down a CEO and president of Unity. That just happened right now. Not much other details besides that. It's of course, important to remember that there's a board of assholes behind him. That you know, Woolie? That are still was, I was really upset about the unity changes and how they try to fuck over or everybody, but then they walked those changes back

and the person who was 100% responsible for every single part of those changes, John Riccatello is now gone. So I can go back to trusting unity. Oh, thank goodness. Now the only person responsible, the CEO, is gone. So everything is backed to being normal. And I don't have to worry about taking my game off unity anymore.

The Fire Lord was defeated. There are no longer any problems left to solve. Someone in that company thinks the scenario I just described is reality. Yeah. scenario I just described is reality. Yeah, if I'm not mistaken that that's someone's is Tomor Barziv and Shlomo Dorvat or Duffa. I didn't think you were gonna have names. Those are the someone's you're talking about. Oh man. So you And so, you know, more as it develops, but hey, you fucking annihilated all goodwill and trust within 24 hours.

And then the walk back has been just even, like even though people at the end of the day kind of land somewhere where your planned outrage expected them to. Doesn't matter. You know, man, I'm excited to welcome John Riccatello as the new, whatever the fuck it's Sony, the that guy just left. Oh fuck, he's gonna replace Ryan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just left oh fuck he's gonna replace Ryan. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh Boy John walks in the gorilla walks in the door Slaps down the resume just takes the seat still warm. I used to run E.A. Till they fired me then I ran singa till they fired me then I ran unity till they fired me. You're hired Get out in here. I have some friends the work under Zenga during the Brickettello era and they could just yell for hours yeah you know what you know what somebody's experience is so negative that you're like, well, what was it like and you don't get any information because they're too angry to tell you The it's just all emotional and it's

Sounds yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's, I mean, again, the worst days in the worst moments of QA where people just snapped and kind of just turned into that. For sure. Cool. That's, that's so,

I'm thinking of Todd Patrick, it's saying, my mistake. My mistake. Oh, Todd Patrick also sucks, though. So you know what, there's plenty of blame to go around. That's fine. Okay. Yeah, I would love to see I would look at the very least would be it would be fun to see the the brain Storming session that John Riccatello at Sony would would have it in one meeting, you know like we've got a new handheld

device that Can't be used really as a handheld device. What if you could play games on it separate from the console, but they had to be NFTs. So you know my favorite part about that PlayStation Vita Wii U gamepad pilot shit is that I and you and everybody who looked at that went that's the most worthless pile of shit ever Failed to account for people outside of ourselves That thing has actually sold incredibly well despite not being out because we forgot about something And that's the Sony sells video game shit to Japan, which has internet

that makes that thing totally feasible and works really well because the Wi-Fi speeds in Japan are incredible. So it's doing has sold out in Japan. No kidding. Yeah. Wow. How about that? Okay. Yeah, smaller living spaces and better internet make that thing work way better. On pre-order, at the very least, I guess.

Yeah. Okay. Well, that still doesn't necessarily say anything about the battery life, how it's going to run or any of that shit that was announced about the specs about it. But the utility of it for a small Japanese space is proving to be popular. Interesting. Okay, that's fair. That's fair.

We'll see. Is it all scalpers. We'll see. Is it all scalpers? Ah, we'll see. Yeah. I don't think I don't think I'm always all be all scalp. If it's sold out entire well, I mean, the fucking video cards were like the video, like you were not talking to a human being at any point that had one of those like, yeah. Um, well, anyway, interesting, interesting counterpoint for that situation. Much like all of our fucking rollback woes and everything else. It's

like yeah, when you're in a different, when you're in a situation where the internet actually does what it's supposed to nationwide, you can offer different things, but what uses that can serve over here remains to be seen. I still don't fucking, I can't imagine with garbage internet across North America. I'm still kind of mad about street pass. Would you believe that? Like, why? Why is the word street pass being uttered in 2020?

Because that was a feature that was made exclusively for a region of the world that didn't really apply elsewhere. Right? Cause they would describe, hey man, you can use street pass, you'll take it to school and then you'll come home and you'll have like 30 street passes on your thing. And I'm like, that is not how that's gonna happen at all. Street pass is for one thing and one thing only in North America.

And that's going to a convention Yeah, that's literally it Do you remember when people hacked it and we're making like pirate radio street pass in order to get shit in certain games Were they figured out how to like broadcast the street pass signal in their own home equipment? That's crazy I did not hear about that street pass signal in their own home equipment. That's crazy. I did not hear about that. Yes, that was wild. Tournaments and cons are the environment for street pass. That's pretty much it.

Okay, anyway. So yes, the first of the layoffs, John Richitello, a Riccatello. And everything. You know what? It's fine. Johnny R.

That makes me think of something else. All right. So then there was another story. It's like, okay, well, lawsuits and layoffs, the entire team that was working on QA for Dragon Age Stred Wolf, that unionized and were Canada's first union team that we talked about, I don't want to say maybe a year or two ago. They've all been laid off. Oh, yeah. Ooh. So, you know, if I were to keep coming out and going guys,

we promise the next game that we're making, definitely coming out. We promise. And then every single thing you hear about their project is, hey, we fired more people. So, the details on this in particular or the QA team was actually outsourced from Keywords, which is a name that I recognize because they bought out the QA company I used to test for.

What did they? Yes. And so once I see that, I'm like, oh, okay. Oh, yeah, they clenched. They came through with an absolute butcher knife and just like decapitated entire fucking departments, no question. They used to do that seasonally.

But yeah, in this case, that was everyone that was on the unionized team amongst more as well. So I think it was a team of like 16 but 50 total were all let go. And second detail with that one in particular was a number of them were kind of given some kind of like harried shitty severance packages Which then everyone kind of compared notes afterwards and went this is bullshit So there's a bunch of bullshit I bet so a number buyer-aware employees are suing for adequate severance.

Good. In many cases, so the lawyer that's representing the group of employees, more or less was saying that like everyone that was let go, like had to consider their short term. And so they just took the low-end offer because they didn't have it. Hey, I just lost my job out of nowhere. I need to make fucking rent exactly

So if you don't have time or energy to you know to or figure out a decent solution because you're in a desperate situation That's what's gonna happen and that happened to a whole group of them So they all kind of realized that they got fucked afterwards and are now trying to come after that To pursue legal rights. Yeah. And then it also goes on to specify that in Alberta, a number of recently laid off employees were awarded at least a month of severance per year of service with benefits included. And that was, and that amount is way, way more than BioWare offered the people question.

So, yes. They're gonna hit up the lawsuits and figure out what's going on there. So there's a sentiment that's happening, a couple of people have mentioned it in chat, but I feel like the need to mention it because of the way BioWare has culturally developed their games.

Baldur's Gate 3 is inexorably tied with BioWare. Like BioWare made Baldur's Gate 3 is like inexorably tied with BioWare. Like BioWare made Baldur's Gate, right? And Larry in Studios is a far away studio in Belgium that is a totally different context. But like how did Larry develop their game over a really long time, over minimal crunch according to them, and early access with tons of feedback, right?

BioWare for the past decade, 20 years, has been functioning on increasing super crunch and BioWare magic. And just like dumping games and not paying attention to them, I remember a while ago, like a year ago, just like dumping games and not paying attention to them. I remember a while ago, like a year ago, I remember mentioning it, I would not be surprised if a Bioware game never, ever came out ever again.

And I look at specifically BG3 and what I know of the way BioWare Studios work internally and how they redo things and throw things away and start over that looking at this game, the one that we're both playing, could have a disincentive to continue along Dragon Age's current path, but they're too far along to give up. I don't know. It's a whole, like I would love to talk to somebody who works there, how they feel about how Dread Wolf is coming along.

Okay. So if you're talking about for years and years and years and years and years. If they're doing something that kind of resembles what Dragon Age always was and then a Baldur's Gate 3 experience shows you what the evolution of that natural genre should look like. Well, it's like. Halfway through development. Dragon Age, that first Dragon Age game is absolutely like a stepping stone in between like the old Baldur's Gate games and the new one.

And that's when they EAed and were like, we have to make it harder, faster, better shooter. Like, you know, I mean, you play through the microcosm of that company from Mass Effect one to two to three, right? Right. Um, and Cotor's with the way they handled that, those things too. Yeah, but and then you look at like, well, this is the game you guys would have been able to make.

Like, there's no reason that Baldur's Gate three couldn't have come out from BioWare back in like the 360 era. Like, there's nothing so outrageous about that game's design and it's writing that that company couldn't have made it with the people. It's still had at the time before they left or got fired. Perhaps the scale? I feel like the scale would not have been so here's the thing. If they had allowed themselves the time to make it instead of restarting development over and over or forcibly being limited to 18 months. Yeah, I bet they could have. I'll counterpoint though, like they're

also benefiting from an early access structure, which didn't exist at the time. Yeah, which apparently is a great idea for this genre. It works really well. When you get a lot of people hands on early enough to see what people are doing with it and so on. Yeah, Xbox 360 and beyond era were like just closed development. Here's what you get done and done. So yeah, I think that did a lot for them as well as the early access. I am absolutely certain that mass effects will come out. But like I have not heard anything about dread wolf other than staff problems or

redone development or delays. Like I don't think they've officially even released a fucking single screen shot of the game. And again, though, we're talking about like a third version of BioWare. Like it's now it's one bioware. It's this. We're all the studios work together or some shit. But it's the ship of double feces. It's like it's like it's one.

It's what all the replacement planks have been replaced. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, so that's happening with all those layoffs. That can, that rolls right around and continues as well into telltale, who also let

go a bunch of employees. And basically, we're like saying that wolf among us too is still still being worked on. It's not canceled or anything, but due to marketing conditions they let go a bunch of their staff. And so it will not be canceled for at least another 70 days. Well, whatever the case may be based on the news from a week or two ago, the wolf among us to can absolutely come out. It just might be made by a bunch of fans who then legally have the rights to publish it because, uh, Fables is now publicly out. I think that like discovering the nature that the quarter has in regards to every single thing

I care about in terms of media might have been like the most disastrous piece of forbidden knowledge ever. Why the fuck are all these games coming out? Oh, it's only the last week of March. Like, oh, yeah. That's weird. Why this game came out all fucked up on March 29th. Quarter is bro. Gotta learn what Q2 means. Yeah, telltale. And then, of course, CD Projekt Red. Oh, this is great. Right. After multiple rounds of layoffs in three months, the devs have unionized.

And all the crunch resulting from Witcher or two onwards That came out of nowhere which is the best way to unionize Well, this is there was not one inkling or word on the street or nothing. It was just like CD Projekt unionized Yeah, now I don't know what the Polish Union recognition Yeah. Now, I don't know what the Polish Union recognition laws are, but assuming that it's similar to the ones we're familiar with, where it's just like, do a majority of the employees want to do it? It's happening. Right. I bet unions are pretty strong in countries that used to be part of the former Soviet bloc. You think so? I bet. Yeah. You think there's a, perhaps a propensity for the concept of a worker co-op to do. Yeah, I do.

Interesting. I think there might be some cultural fucking cachet behind that idea. Definitely more than the US anyway. It's like, okay. Okay, so when an employee walks in to the office with a hammer and a sickle in hand, the moment they strike the two together is the official moment that the union is officially on.

Oh, you're Polish. Feel free to write in to let us know about the realities of this because I'm actually pretty interesting. No, yeah, we talk about what's happening with Canada and North America a bunch, but definitely not familiar with how it's going internationally. Europe has like more than five countries in it. The fuck you talking about. It does. What do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what is English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

That's it. So for video games, there are really only five countries in Europe. Yeah. One time we got a project thing that said eFigs dppi and it was like, what the fuck is this gibberish? Delete that email. That's crazy. What are you looking for? What? I bury in Spanish. Please, you know, I maybe maybe you get a kick out of it more than I do because you've done a lot of test And I've done literally none But when I load up a game and I hit the language menu and not only do I see e-figs I see both forms of Chinese I see Japanese I see Korean I see Polish I see Brazilian Portuguese I'm like, wow somebody here gives a shit.

Yep, the full acronym is quite a few more letters. Also, it was wild because depending on the company that had the budget for it, like a Pixar game, you would get like, I remember that on, it wasn't just different versions, it was different actual discs. So we would get the same game, like each version had a different skew for its own language it was wild it was like cars

or something you know unheard of but yeah no the world is made up of e-figs that's it you live in an e-figs world everybody I'm sorry. Pick a flag, my flag's not there, pick a fucking flag. Um, alright. Uh, yeah, so no, they, uh, they, they, uh, unionized after, uh, rounds of layoffs and, uh, hey good for them, that, that company has crunched them in a fucking dirt for like 12 years now. And, and far bunch of them. I'd be fucking mad as fuck after the way Cyberpunk came out after the fucking studio heads were like, no, no, it's fine.

Yeah, it seems most of the people in question are from the serious team. Okay, that'd be what the serious team. Oh, okay, that'd be the what, the Witcher 1? They said the project, yeah, the Witcher project is code name serious. I bet those people don't wanna go through another Witcher development cycle. Have you seen the photos of what like the CEO of that company looks like in Witcher 1's

down in the Dineries? And what he looks like now? I ones do. Yeah, I've heard. And what he looks like now. I've heard, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fully melts into Doc Brown. Can you just like, it's like due to just thinking about the days when we can go back to cracking prod, cracking games and putting out a fucking text with some ASCII art and the hardest decision to make was what's the cool chiptunes song we're gonna play when you open up the crack?

What? No, dude! No, that's not... It's way crazier than that. They're like, oh, I want to go back to the days in which we were broadcasting video games over the local radio. Oh my gosh.

For people to fire it over the air radio. Oh my gosh. For people to fire it over the airways. Oh my god. Fuck on your audio cassette medium. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can't remember what fucking, was it the Mandovox Odyssey? MSX.

MSX could load save files from an audio cassette. Yeah, so what you would do is you would fucking, you could use a goddamn cassette tape to play the sound. As a disc drive. And you would broadcast a whole fucking video game as a fucking piece of music. And you just tape it on your dape deck

and then put it in your fucking thing and it would work. Yes, everyone who's going, that's disco, disco, like, is basing that on real life. That did exist. So tell of you at home. Yeah. You absolutely had audio cassettes used for more than just listening. Fucking crazy. I mean, at the end of the- Fucking stop this piracy, bitches. Like, come on. In theory, if you got like a large enough device to read it you could take a God what's it called? the

You know that you know you you spin the wheel and then it plays like a little theme a little tune and it's like a metal Sphere a metal cylinder with the notes on it. Oh Fucking music box a music box. Yeah, but there's a name for the actual thing. Anyway. The mechanical aspect of it, precisely. The mechanism. Why am I frinching on this one word? You can use that to transmit data,

because it's just, it's points of information that, you know. Yeah, so that's fucking crazy anyway uh CD project as well and then of course layoffs and lawsuits would not be complete without uh some good old sexual harassment and assault. So five former Ubisoft employees, the ones that were fired in 2020, when that big-ass investigation went down. Basically, they're just following up and they are now being charged in France officially officially with a 50 former and current employees, testimonies collected to put them through the legal system and not just the video game system. I am so astonished that any of these people were arrested.

Well, that's usually the bit is like, hey, a bunch of assholes were found out in the corporate structure, and the punishment is they're fired. Alright, moving on. And then in some cases, re-hired by the same company at different studios. Or, you know, if they're trying to lay low, they'll fucking... they'll do the hitman head bob with the hat on, and switch... switch a... Hey, you know what, you get to go work on? trying to lay low, they'll do the hitman head bob with the hat on and switch switch.

Hey, you know what you get to go work on? That fucking pirate game that'll never come out. Off the Singapore we do. Sure, sure. Yeah, if you want to. Or you can switch industries entirely, whatever, at the end of the case. But yeah, no. In this particular instance, it seems like there's actual legal action being followed

up afterwards. That's wild. Yeah, that's That's what's happened in there Hey, I have a piece of news that didn't go through you know how epic's buying up a ton of shit all over the place and everyone's like this sucks Do you know they bought band camp? Oh? Didn't they buy band camp a long time ago actually yeah, no that's that's not news Bandcamp a long time ago? Actually, yeah, no, that's that's not news. In fact a long time ago I don't think it of uh, no, the news was bandcamp is Wait, what did I read about that? Hold on, let me pull it up. Yeah, there's layoffs Wait, they sold they sold yeah, they acquired Bandcamp a while ago. They sold Bandcamp.

That was not the, Fuck! The news is actually that they're getting rid of it amongst all the other things. So that was not a redirecting of funds. It was a liquidation. Oh my God. I need to go.

Because I remember, I'm gonna go have to find this, this fucking article. There's something that they bought specifically to use in a lawsuit against Google. My brain told me it was band camp. Okay. But I can't remember.

I will now go find this. Okay, well, they're selling it after 18 months later from their acquisition of it. And yeah, I don't know what other acquisition there was, but the editorial design support and engineering staff teams unionized, scrolling, anyway, whatever. The, the, yeah, I didn't hear anything else with that particular aspect of it, but hey, it seems as if the spark of the idea of a bunch of employees being like, hey, don't treat us like shit is actually picking up. Here it is. They bought Bandcamp back in 2022

specifically so that they could use it in their anti-Google lawsuit that they were having at the time with Fortnite in which they were saying that Bandcamp having to switch their payment method would have bankrupted it. And so they bought it to use against them in that lawsuit and then that lawsuit didn't go their way so they sold it. I see. Okay. They bought it strategic acquisition. Yeah. Then they lost and then they sold it. Yeah, okay, okay, so that that fucking company was like a pure bargain Spite. Yeah, spite by Man Tim Sweeney is the dumbest motherfucker in the world. Oh my god

Well, I mean again like I think when the opening salvo is a giant public fucking in-game content Like battle that is like a real legal thing that's happening that should probably be with lawyers in quiet Border rooms, but instead you're trying to galvanize the user-based that are getting fucked by both sides to join your team for some reason because Fortnight's popular and if we can convince everybody in fort to be like, ah fuck Apple, that'll somehow sway public opinion, you know? Anyway. Oh hey, you know what? And before we go in, somebody in the chat asks a really great, great, great question. Nicely done.

Are we gonna get to the Gollum apology? Yeah, you know what? Sure, fuck it. You remember that Gollum game that was a fucking pile of shit? And then released an apology that was like like we're very sorry that we did bad Gollum game that apology was written with chat GPT and no one on the staff knew about it I didn't see this I did not see this Okay, so the devs apologized for the game's underwhelming experience

back in May and What's this now? I mean, so this has been happening more and more because what the fuck was it? There's that effort. Dude, that ball player. Pete Rose? No, no, no, no, was it Jalen hurts no anyway, I for I for dude got in trouble for brandishing a gun and like

And then he just and he keeps getting in trouble for doing stupid shit like that or whatever and basically like you Apologize to the NBA by any like the apology was like chat GPT fucking completely structured Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, John Marant. There you go. He like like like like like this It was just one of these things when they just straight up were just like oh god word for word this was you found the exact you found the exact prompt You know, so this is becoming it's becoming a thing dude Nicely fucking done. I am sorry. Words cannot be to describe. Anyways, so fun, fun stuff going on that way.

Not much else really except for a couple of announcements beyond that type of horse shit. for the first time in 20 years John Wu has woken up from a coffin and doves flew out of it and he had two guns crossed like this and he said I'm gonna go back to America and he jumped through a burning window in slow motion and then landed on a plane and did it Yeah, he's making a movie so it's it's called silent night and it is a dialogue-free action film that is basically just Big old John Wu John Wick revenge ass fucking revenge It's called silent night of course because not only is it a holiday movie, but when the protagonist gets his family Frank Castle,

uh-huh, he loses the ability to speak. I see. And so he then goes on a Punisher-esque quest of revenge. So is this in any way related to the horror film series Silent Night Deadly Night? I don't think it is. I don't know if you know this, but Silent Night Deadly Night as it features a rampage of a man yelling at the garbage day. Garbage day? I know that. I thought that movie was called Garbage Day. That is a Christmas horror movie. If you asked me, hey, you ever seen the movie Garbage Day?

I would have been like, no, but I know it garbage day. Well, it should have been called garbage day. It really should have. But no, it's about Christmas. Okay. Okay. Now, John was back and he's doing it. The trailer looked like, again, it's sent from the producers of John Wick. So, you know, they're following in that, that, that style. Um, I just kind of, I saw no, I saw no doves in that trailer. Um, also in terms of films that people are making, I have to say somebody who knows the his filmography better than me would be able to answer this. Has Miyazaki made more final movies than he has made movies? Because his final movie just came out

like a week or two ago, and I'm already seeing him go, I am now going to make one last final movie. Okay, okay, okay, okay. I might be wrong, but I believe Ponyo was the first of the final movies. Maybe.

I think Ponyo was the beginning of the, have the finals and everything that came post 2008 is the final season part three. Attack on Titan, yeah, exactly. Maybe, for real this time though, for reals. It's so, so weird. Well, maybe he hangs it up and then realizes he has a little bit of spiked left in

that he didn't know it was there. You know, it's like it's like the residue at the bottom of the cup and he's finding ways to scrape at it and get it out there before he really hangs it up. You will have to retire and hug and talk to your son. One more movie. Here we go.

I will die in the fucking directors, yeah. To be fair, so did Kojima, right? Snake Eater was supposed to be the end. No, it wasn't. He said, I'm just too. Oh, who's to be?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dodo, three was when, right, right? Three. Well, yes. Every Metal Gear Solid game, other than the first one, is the final Metal Gear Solid game. Three, the trailer for three was when he did the director's chair bit in the beginning to be like,

oh, he's coming out of retirement to direct MGS3 back when no one knew anything about this weird dude and thought like he like he's acted as if everyone knew he was retired at that point when it's like, oh, why would the fuck would he be retired? He made two games that we've heard of, you know? And again, not a huge popularity spike for going back to the old-empt metal gears at that time either. It is, so you remember reading articles where Koji was like this definitely the last one.

I'm saying everything I ever need to say with this. And then like at the end, at like around four or five, there's like an element of like, I, he was saying out loud, I really want to make something that's not metal gear. Right, right, right. Right. And then you're like, okay, here comes Death Stranding. And you know what? Death Stranding is not metal gear. And it is a whole different thing. Neither was P.D. It's a whole thing. And I'm really glad that you can get out of there and do a whole here comes death training too Okay, so you have a problem you you are full of shit and

Once you get a good idea that you like you actually do just want to keep doing it over and over Actually, I think it was quite simply that He was like I didn't parlay myself into the movie scene enough I wanted to get into Hollywood and I need a couple more of these so fan and pain forward It was all about further extending that hand into the Hollywood situation, you know That he he bridged it finally that's ranting got him in and now he's just doing the movie thing But it was it was it was an attempt to reach Hollywood that fell short constantly. I mean, he fucking, his opening salvo was yo, Kurt Russell guys, right? Like, well, like,

come on, it's always been there. A lot of people may not know that, but like fucking Metal Gear one is like, wow, do you guys like that guy from the Terminator? one is like, wow, do you guys like that guy from the Terminator? Yeah, he was cool. And then Metal Gear Solid's like, what if he was Kurt Russell instead? Like that shit's been there the whole time. He didn't get key for Southernland as key for Southernland for Snake.

So we had to upgrade to Norman Reedus as Norman Reedus as Sam. So we had to upgrade to Norman Reedus as Norman Reedus as Sam. I'm looking forward to somewhere in the game, someone will give an impassioned speech and death stranding to about why video games should be considered for Oscars. And how, how short, how much of a short, you know, coming it is and how short-sighted it is, that, you know, we really draw these artificial lines between these mediums when we should be bridging the gaps together. It's all just art, man. Yeah, you know, I dream of a day.

You know what that's going to be like surfaced by? It's going to be fucking talking to heart man about movies, cause movies used to happen and he watches them. Got a whole collection of the Oscars. And then he's gonna be like, can you believe back in the day they made a distinction between interactive and non-interactive medium? How crazy is that?

There were a bunch of video games that should have won Oscars that there were way better and then they're gonna name drop real movies came out in the years that Metal Gear Solid Games released so what what what fucking what was best picture in 1998 it was Titanic he's gonna say can you believe Titanic one best picture? There were many video games that came out that year that were much more emotionally resident than Titanic and facts Interesting views about the future of nuclear disarmament. In fact, there were better game There were better games that featured protagonists Jack and Rose There were better games that featured protagonists, Jack and Rose. I'm throwing you, but it's still pretty close.

Oh. Oh, fuck. Is that why their name, Jack and Rose? Oh, come on. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, God damn it. Oh really? You learned something. Really? Every day.

Hey. You did it now. You didn't know about the Cajunbo genius? I did, there's a lot of the Titans. I did, it's a movie. Between the two of us, you and I know a lot of Cajunbo genius, but there's always more. God damn it, there's always more.

God damn it. I feel, you know what I feel like the most like up his own ass he ever got was Metal Gear Solid 3 talking to paramedic were paramedics just like here's a bunch of movies Kojima likes God fuck that yeah no paramedic can kick rocks fuck her that's bullshit that is a complete ass fucking I just wanted to be a codec character to talk to you about my movies and we found a way a million percent God damn it Okay, look so all that happened

Okay, look, so all that happened. That game, the, the, the, the, L-Drich boat, Dredge. Dredge! It's getting DLC. Good, that game's incredible. Coming next month, November 16th, the pale reach. I don't know what's, how that's gonna work, because that game's ending is tight and definitive.

It is described as a new area with new kinds of fish. Good. That's whatever the fuck that means. There are 11 new fish and crab species. Fuck yeah, as well as an additional fish type. So I take it. that's a big deal. It is. Okay.

It is. Disco Elysium's going on PlayStation Plus. Ooh. Now there's no excuse. By the way, if you're out there using Netflix on your Vita, the app is going to be discontinued. Oh, is that true? That's a bummer. So anyone who had a smart TV without a Netflix app on it, that's a pretty practical use

case. So just in case you were one of those, there you go. All right, that's pretty much it. There was a cool trailer for a game called Little Goody Two Shoes. I don't see that. I want to see that. Yeah, it's interesting.

It seems to be like a, I think it's like a subtly, there's a horror theme to the game, but it is emulating the art style and aesthetic of lunar silver star story. Completely incredibly, incredibly accurate and specific. Yeah. So it looks like they're going for that type of vibe with it. Very retro style anime and then very retro style like pixel art as well from an exact like ps1 error or error thing but um let's do more grandea for me but i get what you're saying sure sure 90's anime look going on um and yeah and they're uh there are apparently like some some horror elements to it that uh folks were

kind of talking about that are going to be more background to it but it seems like a cool like would have been a Kickstarter fan project for if you want a game that emulates that era. Goody two shoes, it's called, check it out. Yeah, all right, let's take some letters. Hey, if you want to send in a letter, make it short and good, don't send a bad one, send it to Castle Super Beast Mail at gmail.com.

That's Castle Super Beast Mail at Gmail.com. That's Castle Super Beast Mail at Gmail.com. All right, here's one coming in from D. Says, dear Madden Starrzat and Boivin Versus. I follow across a number of platforms, video essayists and documentarians. Owing to that, even when discussing subjects of very different matters, like movies or Netflix or the history of dollar stores, smaller material will pop up. In these examples I gave, the concept of redining, I'm guessing, redefining, was discussed and incredibly, I came up often elsewhere.

Whenever a creator brings up his subject, they usually have to treat it as if their viewers have never heard of it. Being told the very basics of a theme a half a dozen times gets frustrating, doubly so when you have to leave out extremely important details for the sake of brevity. So have you had the experience where with a broad media diet, it's diminished year enjoyment of something, even if the thing itself is actually very good? Oh, oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We had this exact thing happen on the podcast

with Don't Look Up. Where I knew every single thing the movie wanted to tell me before I sat down and watch it. Right, okay. And thus I felt like condescended to like the movie thought I was fucking stupid the whole time. The place my brain goes with that is coming at it from another side of it or more like every time I talk about something relating to fighting games.

Early on, I would just talk about it from the place I was at. And now having caught enough flack over people going, I don't know what you're talking about. I now have to dumb that down to a much simpler thing to not get to in depth with anything with it. So it kind of like, yeah, it's like, it's it's it's, I have to put everything through a bit of a filter and then filter it again and then drop it down to its most basic form whenever something's fighting game or subject related comes up for sure.

I will say there is the opposite version of this where the dumb down version of something starts to get explained to you and I get really excited. So like when I'm playing a game and it has to happen that many but it's happened more times than you would think and a character goes have you ever heard of the Philadelphia experiment? I go oh this story is going to get really stupid soon. and you would think, and a character goes, have you ever heard of the Philadelphia experiment? I go, oh, this story's gonna get really stupid soon, yay! Okay.

I feel like, conversely though, I've heard, I've seen and heard where anytime someone references like things like the Milgram experiment or like Rat Park and stuff like that. It's like stuff like that has become mainstream to catch to a point where people who are studying this stuff are like, those are like some of the worst examples now because they're often massively misunderstood, misquoted, and like used to imply a conclusion that was not originally implied. And like, they, but they're, they're,

their attention grabber stories. So like the sensationalized version is the one that everyone wants to reference in their media, you know? Do you, do you, this is a bit slightly off out of, out of fucking, um, this is slightly out of, out of the topic, but, um, I don't think I've ever been physically assaulted by a movie trailer, but one came pretty close. And that was the 2014 film Lucy starring the Scarlett Johansson. She takes a bunch of super drugs and starts to unlock more than 10% of her brain. Did you know that the human mind only uses 10% It's the closest I've come to being given a brain aneurysm by anything I've ever seen in my fucking life

I was I was in I was in theaters on that one. I saw it in theaters. Oh my god. Oh my god. Fuck. I felt it in my chest. And I'm like, are you telling me former the Motoko Kusun, I can't remember fucking me? Scarcho, fresh off being an Asian woman,

comes at you using more than 10% of her brain, the full brain power even. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The entire premise. John Travolta in phenomenon was more respectful of this dumb ass idea back in the mid 90s. Yeah, I remember that fucking movie.

He broke the window and then the whole plot went off the rails. It was after the movie where he pretended to be an angel. Okay. Yeah. Oh, Michael? Yeah, Michael, Michael, I want to say yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing when you just you're your entire premise. I mean, fucking the amount of like, I remember there was a review of like geologists watch and review the core. You know, like a couple of geologists and an engineer or two review the movie The Core where they have to drill to the core of the earth to save it. Try not to die impossible.

It's always fun. Okay, here we go. Question for Pat. Gary says, hey, they fun. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay, here we go. Question for Pat. Gary says, hey, they're Pat and Woolly. Gary with a question for Pat. Is this Gary Gary or a different Gary? I don't know. Just let me know later.

Just says Gary. Pat always talks about 1998 being the best of year for video games. With how many great games came out this year, would you call 2023 the new 1998? Best wishes for me. Oh yeah, maybe maybe let's get to the end of the year But definitely possibility for real It's been fucking unbelievable I'm still thinking about fucking high-fi rush now. Mm-hmm Get that soundtrack going

Right Yeah, let's take one over here from... Act Professor X says, hey there, fans of goofy ass comic book colors. Last week, you mentioned that Marvel movie color grading and Zack's that are movie color palettes suck. And you didn't know why people did that. Besides not wanting to be seen as goofy comic bookie bullshit

Well, there's another potentially really dumb idea. It's a film theory called desaturation theory which says desaturation theory suggests that by desaturing even to the point of omitting chromatic colors altogether We can entice the viewer to participate in the event rather to look into it rather than merely at it. Such desaturation is especially successful when we need to reveal or intensely an in-scape or an internal event. Black and white video commercials are a direct application of desaturation theory. Totally saturation renders the event low definition, which forces the viewer into psychological involvement, quote unquote. And this is from site sound motion applied media aesthetics.

What's really funny about this is that there's a psychology paper from the late 1900s, early 2000s that flat-out states, none of the interaction supported that theory. This, that is to say, the responses to monochrome clips were not more powerful than any of the content categories except for neural valence images so uh... it's one of the top five google results for desaturation theory it's highly probable that the uh... decades of film and tv have been ruined by film theory for people who have to own far its roots and bullshit and got colleges to push it into aspiring directors and cinematographers.

I hope that makes your appreciation of brightly colored costumes make a bit more. And since I've been- I'm gonna transition this into a slight adendum about the word theory. Theory does not mean the same as it does in the arts as it does in the sciences. Film theory means I invented this concept

and pulled it straight from my ass with absolutely no backing in the real world. Now sometimes that can be good. Sometimes like color theory, I was about to say, for years and years and years from the world of art, from the world of art color theory is both art but also science and it's based on how you perceive color.

Yeah. Because what do you do? You get your idea and then you test it over, well color theory, fuck, like thousands and thousands of years, right? Film theory, film is brand new. Film is brand new. So if you go, hey, I have film theory. Here's film theory.

And then you go, what is the basis for film theory? And the basis for this film theory is a director set it in the 60s. And then you go, what else? And they go, boo, then you go, what else? And they go, boo. Then you have created film ideas on the several same level as chiropractic. Like you have, you have based like real decisions on the ideas of ghosts. Nice, nice speech, Senator, you got a source on that. Nice sources. I made it the fuck up.

Again, I will just, I will be the asterisk, the boring bit asterisk over here to say that color theory as applied to, you know, again, the study of how your perception of colors and the mixing of them and the emotions they have open stuff is something that you can then throw into other mediums including film so you can drop a color you can drop color theory into film you can drop it into whatever different medium and as a baseline thing it can interconnect but the idea that a bunch of people Google the search result and something in the top five was

going, hey, desaturate your movies to get the people to care more about the scenes they're watching feels very plausible for a bunch of rewriters that are looking to get their names on credits by fixing things that aren't even broken, you know. Now I'm going to head off something at the past because somebody described that I should take a media literacy class, which is very rude. I'm gonna head off something at the past because somebody described that I should take a media literacy class, which is very rude. I'm not saying film theory is de facto incorrect or nonsense.

I'm saying film theory with no realistic basis in anything other than the fact that someone wrote it down is nonsense. Like every idea that is based in nothing but what some guy wrote down. Like as we just described, as we'll he just read from the email, when you actually test it,

yeah, it's nothing. It's like fucking, oh my God, Nolan fucking, I would fight Christopher Nolan right now. It's great. Why? Why? Because he ruined audio in TV and film. Oh, okay.

Because Nolan said you shouldn't, he has said verbatim. You should not be able to hear all of the dialogue because that's not like real life. Oh man. It's more realistic to not be able to hear what everyone is saying. So he purposely mixed his audio really bad, like bad on purpose for the Batman movies. And then for fucking done, done Kirk is apparently unwatchable without subtitles. Okay. and then for fucking done, done Kirk is apparently unwatchable without subtitles. Okay, this became popular, so now, because we have a- we are a generation who group watching a lot of foreign language shit,

and also want to hear things, now subtitles are assumed. I can't watch anything without subtitles anymore, because I can't hear anything, because the fucking sound mixing is so bad. Blame Phil Spector and his wall of sound. This is the true culprit behind the scenes when you pull the mask off. Annihulating like, Chris no, oh, fucking Chris no, and fucking actively ruined the audio.

That's hilarious. To bet. Well, here's the thing though. And like that, the mixing level of that bullshit is when it's the single, when it's the inception note, the moments like that are strong and defining for what they are. But yeah, when you can't hear shit,

or when like Spider-Verse has to tell every theater to go, oh, tell the viewers, to go tell the theater to turn up the mixing because people can't make out what's being said. So a lot of people have watched Inception and that's not a bad man movie, so it works really well for this. Inception's audio mix was explicitly designed

for IMAX theaters only. Mm-hmm. That, that, that, blah noise that is 10 times louder than everything else explicitly designed for iMac's theaters only. That, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that,

that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, have situations where Netflix is kicking your stereo TV down 5.1 Dolby, because that's what the studio sent them. So the dialogue channel, which is in the middle, is getting split out to your speakers and is massively fucked up. Yeah, again. No sense. Also, Crunchyroll got caught got caught, fucking put up machine translated fucking translations this week. Of course. Two lays at a pay, even one translator, the

shitty wages they were paying them prior, they jumped straight ahead to machine translating anime. I'm pulling this out of my ass completely, but I would not be surprised if there were a direct link from that concept you're describing to again, Phil Specter's Wall of Sound, which is a recording method back in the day. That was one of the first things from the 60s, which was a way of making recording music and then playing it back where you were annihilated with sound, where you couldn't really hear the crisp, like separation of instruments, you were just blasted with all of it at an even like overwhelming level. And it, a lot of pop hits and a lot of things

that blew up and a lot of artists that recorded with them at the time did so in a way where we just, we mixed everything even higher and recorded over the same instruments to create something that just sounded louder than every other song you were hearing on the radio at the time. Fucking noise coming at you, gets your attention and it works. Hey, I'm gonna point out just to my earlier point if you want to look it up.

It is episode one of the Yuzuki Families 4 Sons. And if you want to take a look at even like four or five screenshots of any fucking text on this thing, you too can tell that this is obviously machine translated. No one would ever fucking translate this shit for real in this manner. And it appears to be translated from English, sorry, from Japanese into Chinese in English,

because of the way some of the words have been found. Oh, on the subtitle thing, okay. Yeah. What did I just see? I just saw a story where what was it? There was a company that banned, was it, was it not Kickstarter someone banned a.i. art including something for board games a

Story popped up with that as well anyway, it was a ban it it was something While we were while we were talking while we were while we were talking. Um, um, was this? Yes, yes, chat to, to, yes, that's great. Fucking do Wang coming back. Um, okay, anyway, there you go. There's your, there's your, your email. Uh, yeah.

I, I really do, I really do believe a lot of weird bullshit that happens in movies, and in games, and things like that can be solved by just googling something, and finding out that the top result is fucking bullshit. You know, I bet you, you can answer a lot of David Cage problems by just googling a stupid-ass thing and Clicking the top result and seeing what it says or not even the top result But the down arrow that just gives you an answer right there on the page You know if you can just reverse engineer someone's fucking searches I bet you you can piece together horseshit writing constantly. I am like, I am trapped in my own mind right now

because all I can think of is like Chris Nolan sitting there going, I'm a fucking genius, I'm a fucking Hollywood director as he's telling, what's the fucking, the guy who played Bane, the, the, the, the, the hardy? The man. What's that, sir? That hardyane, 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, 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, way you're going to be a really imposing villain because no one will know what the fuck you're talking about.

And then you're going to turn to talk to Christian Bale who I have made to do the shittiest, most unintelligible Batman voice ever. And you guys are going to have scenes together in what you're growling at each other. And no one knows what the fuck's up. Oh, well, well, well, well. I mean, the meme is unstoppable for what it's worth. Bane's voice, till the end of time, you know, that is power. It stands the fuck out. Like, you're looking at the fucking,

they're fighting on the steps. It's got them, you can't understand me. And no one's going like, oh, the masterpiece. Oh, this right here. Like, for you. Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, what? I just, I need to distort his voice also.

I need to know. From the shit, oh my god. I need to go watch Teddit so I can find out why people are like getting sick of Nolan's bullshit. Like, I'm not sick of it Like I'm not sick of it. I'm not sick of it. I still like Nolan shit. I have seen one part.

I want to, I need to find out why the world is turning on Nolan. I need to know. God damn it. Somebody in the chat points out that though both of those voices were the choices of the actors and you're right and it's the director's job That when they see the actors do garbage to say no, I'm the director do it good That is why the director is there they direct the actors to do a good job instead of their stupid bullshit and Some are more lucherconian than others and we'll like for fuck sake if I was fucking looking at that scene

I'd want to mix the audio so bad you couldn't hear it either Okay, um and and and speaking of tenets and and I suppose things Ending the way they begin. I'm I've got a Avoid a bathroom. You got a food disaster. I've got to avoid a bathroom. You got a poop disaster? I got a potential disaster, Bruins.

All right, great. Perfect. Let's cut it there. You go fight your battles, sir. Goodbye. you