Castle Super Beast - CSB 290: Game Freak Off

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps  Go to http://shopify.com/superbeast to sign up for a $1-per-month trial period. -- Go to https://hensonshaving.com and enter SUPERBEAST at checkout to get 100 free blades with your purchase. (Note: you must add both the 100-blade pack and the razor for the discount to apply.) -- Go to http://uncommongoods.com/superbeast to get 15% off your next gift.   Silent Hill 2 Remake: Sticking The Landing Vergil Rules, But He's Absolutely a Villain Certified Fire-type, Certified Typhlosion The Disco Elysium Successor Wars Have Begun Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Pokémon Developer Game Freak Reportedly Hacked, Massive Amounts Of Data Allegedly Leaked Pokémon fans are freaking out about Game Freak leaks that reveal unused stories for Typhlosion, Octillery and Slakoth Adi Shankar says Vergil's not a villain but an anti-hero. Adi Shankar defends Vergil while seeing things from the villain's POV. According to him, every villain is the hero of their own story. Steam Now Warns Customers They’re Buying a License, Not a Game Before They Continue to Payment On Disco Elysium’s five-year anniversary, separate studios made up of people who used to work at developer ZA/UM have announced things that sound like spiritual successors to Disco Elysium: Former Disco Elysium devs are working on a spiritual successor at new studio Longdue, though Robert Kurvitz and Aleksander Rostov aren't involved Disco Elysium alumni found Dark Math Games, and have announced XXX Nightshift Summer Eternal, the third studio announced today whose main distinction is that it’s led by two of the original writers on Disco Elysium, Argo Tuulik and Olga Moskvina. It also includes ZA/UM writer Dora Klindžić, who had been working with Tuulik on the direct sequel at that studio up until the mass layoffs earlier this year T

["Sailor Moon Theme"] Hello, welcome to the podcast. Hey, Willie. How are you doing? I'm alright. How about this? I'm going to start out by pointing at the stands. Yeah, what's that? Like Babe Ruth.

Oh yeah? And I'm going to nominate Game Freak-Offz as an early place to start and then we'll see where we go from there. We're just putting soil down and then we'll see where we go from there. We have to put the seed. I don't want to plant those seeds. We've got to water them. I don't want to water them either. We have to see where it goes but we're doing that.

Just a little frame one. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm literally sleepy because of Metaphor. Yeah. The hot new game out now. Yeah. You're looking fashionable and trendy. Thank you man. Hmm. I really like my new jacket that Metaphor sent me. That's... It goes well with my new pop filter that Metaphor sent me and my new bag that metaphor sent me that's it goes well with my new pop filter that metaphor sent me and my new bag that metaphor sent me oh hey look there it is I didn't even notice I was too busy looking at the keychain over there and my substantially inferior to my existing microphone microphone the members there's that yeah so I'm glad glad you're enjoying it oh man so I'm glad glad you're enjoying it. Oh

Man, so I'm enjoying it a lot. This is actually very nice. This you know you know something's good It's when the zipper is high quality. What does this mean? I can't was that I can't read that So that's that's a that's a huge book man. What is that's a huge book. It says utopia is that what it says Yeah, it says utopia Thomas Moore wrote that do you know Thomas Moore's a character in metaphor? Gotcha Understood Okay, that's the one that's available now for Microsoft PC and Xbox right? That's right. Yes. That's where it's available It might be available in other places, but I don't know anything. I don't know anything about that I don't know anything about that would I don't I don't even know what it looks like with other games controller prompts on it

That's I don't even know all I know is That games look pretty cool for the little sliver that I took a look at so how about that? Yeah, I took I took considerably small larger slightly larger sliver over the past couple of days. If that's where you want to start, we can start there. We can start anywhere. Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, you know, eyes on eyes on the time. What was your I guess when you switched over to the full save? Where were you at by this point? Okay, so

There's a really fun thing that happens with atlas games that are persona and now metaphor Which is funny because metaphor is made by the creators of persona three four and five. I don't know if you knew that the same mind using the date system I don't know if you knew that the same mind using the date system Using the date system makes it like really easy to like lock in on like okay What do we can't what can we talk about? Oh? Yeah? You can just you can just say like yeah, September whatever you know right? So right now. I'm in I'm in the middle of July okay, so seven fourteen seven fifteen pretty handy so 14 715 Pretty heavy yeah so the demo runs

Up until like the first three days of free time And you can get about halfway through the the first main story dungeon, and you can get through a optional much tougher dungeon Since then I have put like 20 I have seven parts up I have said I have seven metaphor parts up right now. I don't know what the time is I think it's like 25 hours in total okay, and you know I've got it what I could just look at steam there you go Steam says 19.5 hours plus the demo which was eight and a half okay?

I've got one which is you've got one I've put the one video up and that's so I checked out your thing and you were you're like at the You were like you were hanging out with grius. Yeah, just in the forest a little tutorial like end or Start nah Like end or start? Nah, tutorial goes until you're given free time. Okay, so yeah. So what's strange about that game's tutorial, and it's kind of a really good example of

what's going on with the rest of the game, is the typical main dungeon that'll change and side dungeon that won't change, right? Like Persona 5 kind of thing is gone. There's big important story dungeons and there are minor non-story dungeons. Okay. Interesting. And they're all unique. Yeah. And like some of that uniqueness is in air quotes because a forest or a tomb or the other tomb or a cave have some serious overlap. Okay.

So I mean, I guess in terms of like what my little scraping has been, I unfortunately did not progress far enough to see the cool menus as a... You would have had to have gone about half hour past where you're at. Okay, so yeah. I kind of just got introduced to like a, I saw a couple of portraits basically and had your evoker moment.

But yeah, I mean... You see Ultima called that like three years ago? Had the had your your evoker moment, but mm-hmm Yeah, I mean you see Altima called that like three years ago. Oh, yeah Yeah, he said with the with the with the you On some tweet about persona 5 like in like 21 or 22 He said you know with the way that you're tearing your face off with the persona 5 mask I don't know what the hell they can do next other than literally tearing your heart out of your body Yeah, just like Lasered in on it. It's perfect And uh, if that continues for other characters as well, that's gonna be fucking nuts. So it's a metaphor. Yeah

It is an allegory. Um, it's a it's a metaphor. Um, but um, no, but anyway like so the the nature this, because I know some people were just kind of confused to like, well, just as you're touching on it, I'll touch on it at the same time. Yeah, well, let's touch on it at the same time. Yeah, let's do that. That's... Yeah. Yeah.

Get away from me, Typhlosion. We'll get there, man. Or we won't. I don't know. I have more questions than answers in regards to that. I'm not getting nowhere. All right, that's good, that's cool. We can roll with that, you know?

This is an exercise in a decade of yes ending and if you don't do the freeze tag. Every now and then one of us just goes, nah, nah, this bit's dead. If you don't do the freeze tag, then we're moving on to the next bit. There's no hot tags here. All right, anyway, touch on it. No, no, no.

So just to say that basically we weren't able to stream a session of getting some time in, so we basically had to sit and do what we could after finishing a previous day's stream in offline time, so we did what we could without ridiculous hours. It was difficult, but time constraints plus doubling up and stuff made it so that we ran into a totally different problem where I like I had to so I started the demo and I did the demo stream which Atlas wanted and they paid for it and that's great and I was like yeah I'll do two hours of this demo and then and then we'll just I'll just redo that demo part when the full game comes out yeah it'll be great and then like like I was messing around with it to get footage For the video that I was gonna make and the demo just like kept going and like I ended up getting so much footage that

I didn't even beat the fucking demo. Okay. Yeah, yeah, and I'm like I Can't have the I I can't I fuck I gotta restart this whole shit on Fuck, so that's the that's the problem is that like the thing you have is more than you could possibly use and the ask is for the tiniest sliver, right? Which is also why that video I put out which is way, way, way above what the actual demand was. Oh man, when somebody, I was like, I was asking hey did Woolie's video go up and people in chat were saying hey Woolie's video went up, it's over an hour.

And I'm like, they asked for five minutes. It was way over what they asked for. And that was, it's really like, why is there weird cutting and jumping around in this? And it's like, because we sliced based on the fact that this is actually multiple hours of session condensed into one, you know? Like everything that's like confusing about that,

I'm doing what I was asked to do. So just, that's all's like confusing about that. I'm doing what I was asked to do. So just that's all I can say on that. You know, like I'm delivering more than was asked for and your plate is over full. It's packed with stuff. So hey, listen to everybody out there. This is one of those things. This is probably as bad as it's ever been. We're going probably a good good goddamn amount of a metaphor and I think metaphor is really good I however I literally have metaphor touching my body right now you do so with that and it's also touching my bank account with that I hold up the the hand gesture for the hashtag

Sponsored ass opinions. This is the most Sponsored ass opinion. I think I've done in my whole career Just like do I need to like put this in the shot somewhere just to yeah Yeah, it's well the my bat the bag is sitting on top of my book box. I'm pushing the board back. Alright, so these are some sponsored-ass opinions coming in on this here, um, atlas RPG. That, you know, we've talked about a couple of those over the years. Oh, this bag's really nice, by the way. Did you know that the inside of the bag has the same pattern as the main character's coat?

Oh my god! It's true. The drip continues to the inside, incredible. You could never know that unless I told it to you by getting that bag, literally, the literal bag. Incredible. I love when you meet a character that has a portrait and I'm like that little lady

outside the shop and I was like, oh, your jacket, your cape, your design, all of that. I like that feel of like, okay, I'm going to be spending some time with you in a minute. I think there's something, I think something that really ripped me out of it and just like, okay, this is Atlas's version of fantasy, was like, you go into town, like you come out of the desert and you go into town, and one of the first establishing shots of the town while Galaka is talking is two dudes leaning on a wall hitting their fantasy vapes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're actually vaping. Yeah, exactly. It's like, wait, what the fuck is this? And I did see some interesting feedback too, where some folks were like, like the fantasy setting was actually like bouncing them off of it, because it's like like Persona's modern day obviously, and it's like going to something that's a bit more resembling of like, you know, other fantasy genres is like a less of an interesting setting choice. And you know, like like I get that I'm someone that all that like champions

Originality wherever it you know I just I love that shit whenever I see it and it's when it's a fresh take on something and we've gone on and about The fucking room in Mass Effect right we've talked about the Elcor room But like I don't have time to get like I don't have time to get, like, I don't have time to get to glaze over the generic fantasy feeling when the first thing that happens to the cat boy that shows up is he gets strung up. Like, I'm like, oh, okay, look at this fantasy universe. There's some cat boys.

Holy fuck! These dog people are garbage! Like, immediately! Like, you don't, you know I think I think genuinely like the the game sets its tone Right away not just with that But when you finally have control of your character in the city you can overhear characters in the background But an elder everyone's disgusting everyone is disgusted at you. You know Yeah, yeah, and I'm like I remember-

Who let that out of its hovel? Now, I feel like the bearers, right, in 16, kind of like, you felt it heavy in that intro and in the beginning, especially establishing the world and stuff, but eventually you, you know, you go hide with your own people and stuff and you start to create a little group of tolerance and then you go out with your own people and stuff and you start to create a little group of tolerance and then you go out into these areas closer to the capital of just absolute horrendous war crime. I think 16 kind of like, I mean they're obviously going for different things. Yeah one is like societal

stratification and like a caste system and the other is like That is slavery that is just straight up 100% slavery indentured servitude And no rights. So so the thing is that like 16 version of this with the bearers it yet it creates some wrinkles in it as well where it's like a version of this with the bearers. It creates some wrinkles in it as well where it's like a non-slave can give birth to a slave and vice versa. And so there's like less control over it and it's just this randomized factor that gets thrown into society. And whereas here you're like, no, no, no, what's coming out of your head? You know? So one of the things that like like so metaphor has your nine tribes and

they don't get along by and large and One of the things that the setting like kind of sucker punch me with it's it's It's like it's like a minor No, it's in the tutorial Is that you sorry it's in the demo? So I'm gonna talk about everything that's in the demo, like completely free and clear, because that was weeks ago. You run into somebody who's a halfy from two tribes. Okay, no immutable characteristics. No, they have like a little bit of one and a little bit of the other. Yeah, okay. Right, so they have little tiny wings

and a darker skin tone. And that character weirded me out because the rest of the setting is so overwhelmingly uniracial between each other that I didn't even think that these races could actually intermingle. Okay, OK. So like it's so rare. I think I've only seen two characters in the whole game that are like that.

So this is where I have to point out. Do you know Saga at all? The comic. I must have brought it up to you at some point. Yeah, I know. But it's really good. It's one of my favorites. over the years. But it's really good. It's one of my faves. It's excellent. But it's literally a story where a winged magical people are at war with Elf years, are at war with a horned people. And little do we know that like, oh my God,

they can actually have a baby together and people on both sides are like, ew, you made it with a what? You know, and like the whole story is actually about exactly this in this type of way, but it focuses on the hybrid character as like the child. Would you say that that's a metaphor? I would say that it is, yeah, it's actually allegorical.

Yeah, and you focus on the couple and then the child and that's your main characters. But like, it's so like, the literal knife ears and horns and winged bit is like, those exact traits have been used in this way. One of the first lines of dialogue in the game is Calling the redheaded elf a knife ear and I'm like, oh this is what we're doing We're doing this here and like even if you're like, I don't know the history of what's going on

but you're like also you guys are like backing Griffith and Like that was really really quick like that dude walked and turned his back to the light and gave his staircase monologue Like right away. I Think it's wild how So you're talking about Lewis or Luis as he's pronounced in game no time It's really funny to see like how he is just literally Griffith. He is a one-to-one copy over.

But he is also a one-to-one copy over of your friend and mine, Louis Cypher, from the Shin Megami Tensei series. Are we even going to, like, yes, we're going to change the last name. It's the same dude again, man. It's a metaphor. Literally his name is Louis, yes. And there's a little bit of Legend of the Galactic Heroes in there with Reinhardt as well, the man who wants to seize the universe.

But yeah, a big dreamer, you know, a big dreamer that's the inside of this coats even nicer. Oh my god, it's all the archetypes. He's he's reaching high, you know, he's he's he's aiming for big things. Yeah, it's it's quite funny because you know, a lot of the time when I'm especially like aware of this because over the years when I when I actually analogize things and and compare things to things I know and stuff and there'll be times where it's like don't trivialize this new thing by just making it feel like it's the copy of the old thing or whatever the case is and right you know you want to like give it its own space and respect and stuff and here they're like nah, man Don't even remotely fucking give us its own space. Okay, so

This is this is this is a Is a gut feeling I have nothing to back this up other than my own gut I Have a strong suspicion that Atlas was worried that this game would not do the numbers that it's doing now. It's doing extremely well. It's doing very well. Because it did not say the words persona or Shin Megami Tensei on the box anywhere. It didn't. Because they went really very hard with their sponsorships and social media outreach.

And they're like, I want you to fucking say the words persona over and over and over again. You know, you got like literally like P3 reload just dropped. You got your blue haired main tag pro tag with the thing going. And he. Oh, what about your what about your gray haired guy with the yellow coat? Yeah, he hasn't talked about protein, but it's fine. He's cool You know and like you were hanging out your transformation. Oh, you're hanging out with you We have another tall foreign sounding redhead your your the literally the year your starter Transformation has like the shoulder joints and hips, you know, of we're gonna hang out with a weird dude in the blue room and he's gonna tell

us all sorts of mysterious shit and help us use our archetypes. Yeah, like, nah, dude, you know what this is. You love it already. Shut up. Yeah, I do. So what I can say now that I got my whole leg in it, those characters, superficial similarities to existing ones, fade away.

And the cast of Metaphor so far is in the running for one of the best casts that Atlas has done. I have not run into a party member that I did anything less than love so far. That's awesome. All of the bonds, they're called bonds, they're not S-links, they're not confidants, they're just bonds, are great. They're fucking awesome. And they're shorter. They're fucking awesome and They're shorter

They're significantly shorter. There's eight instead of ten now. Nice. Okay That Like on a tone basis Like it is it very quickly grows into its own very weird very different thing Yeah, um, I mean all jokes aside though personality-wise with these characters, I'm especially aware and have developed a somewhat hypersensitivity to seeing a character hairstyle and not necessarily just going, oh, this thing, because again, somewhere between the Three Houses video and making a crack at sasuke hair showing up on Noctis. I don't want to have that happen anymore. But I'm sure within a number of interactions these characters come into their own. I'm curious what the crew size is going to end

up being though? I could tell you right now what the crew size is going to be. It's going to be one person of every tribe. Ah. Okay. Like as you go along it becomes incredibly obvious that that's how it's going to play out. Okay. We got to unite together to defeat the racism. To stop discrimination. I can't wait for the part where you have to stop the discrimination in the hearts of the people by kind of giving into it a little bit. Just a little bit. So you did not get to the part where you got to see your five royal virtues. No, I didn't.

So if we're going to talk about metaphor, metaphor is a fantasy version of persona. Let's just skip like 30 minutes of conversation and just say it's persona six, but it's in a fantasy setting. Yep. Sounds good. So you have your five royal attributes, which are academics and courage and shit like that. Courage and wisdom are pretty self-explanatory. Eloquence is pretty self-explanatory.

Imagination, okay, that's something a ruler would need. But then the third one is tolerance. Yeah, right, right, right. You start off the game intolerant. You are listed as inflexible so these stats and the basis of this like is all set up because besides just being fantasy persona six there's a like race for the throne element to yes so the the core world the core of the game's call to adventure is that with the king dead, the king decided to make fancy little magic spell that would force a snap election for the new king

under threat of magic. Can't mess with the election and as a result everybody from the guy who wants to abolish taxes to the lady who's just trying to join the election to shill her family, to the lady who's just trying to join the election to shill her family workshop, to the guy who thinks ugly people should be executed, are all in the running for I'm gonna be the fucking new king. Yeah. So, your stats start based and you have to invest to become cringe, is that what? Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. You have to level up your wokeness, I swear to God. Invest in cringe. And the way you do that, the way you become tolerant is exclusively through hanging out with some of the lesser shittier tribes. Oh, okay, okay. Like you hang out with the Mastari or the Parippus,

the dog people or the people with the cages on their head, and you hang out with them, and your character's like, I don't feel like barfing so much anymore when I'm around them. That is quite a- That's my personal- Okay. I'm like, from they'll take a mortal blow for you to like, they will not throw up in their mouth at your sight.

And you hit, the way that those stats primarily work is the number one thing that those stats do is that you hit walls on your bonds and Basically, it's like well You don't know what the right thing to say is because you don't have a good imagination Or you don't know you wouldn't know how to navigate this Conversation because you're not eloquent. You don't have enough charisma to talk to her and so Then you get to bonds which are the equivalent of social links in

three and four. Confidants just didn't catch on, did it? It never caught on. Everybody still thinks of social links. Bonds is good because bonds is shorter. Yeah. Yeah. It's way shorter. Yeah. S-link, confidant. There's three syllables to two. Yeah, 100%. Bonds are a massive step up from all of those systems. So here's what happens. You know, you go hang out with, let's say you go hang out with Leon, you hang out with Stroll, right? And you're like, Stroll, it's really sad about your hometown, blah, blah, blah, blah. What do you want to do? You're noble, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, Stroll, it's really sad about your hometown, blah, blah, blah, blah. What do you want to do? You're noble, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And you have your little dialogue choices that you choose to make, Stroll, like you more or less, right? So when you pick the right one, traditionally you would get little points up and that would increase the likelihood of getting his rank up the next time you talk to him, right? And you would have to bring in the right persona, the persona that would be like chariot, right, for for a stroll, right, to make sure that you get the most amount of points, right? So you don't have to bring in anything of note. And if you are hanging out with someone, the bond is guaranteed. There are literally no filler hangouts ever. Oh, okay ever, okay?

So if you're like if you're like Galaka is ready to hang out I'm gonna go hang out with Galaka you are going to level that up Every single time so I think that persona games because the calendar has to follow a school year And you have to have things that people know like Festivals and summer mats and I got a spread a little bit Yeah You have to have things that people know like festivals and summer mats. You kind of got to spread it a little bit. Yeah. You're going to switch to your winter uniform.

The calendar has to dictate the pace to some degree. Whereas, yeah, here you're just doing whatever the fuck you want for whenever you need to. So that's good. That's a smart thing. So you hit the D-pad and you go, does anyone want to hang out? Is anybody willing to hang out? And you go, yeah, these people. You need to go talk to them.

Bond up. Also, the Bond upgrades are all really good like eventually you can unlock the ability to see what everyone's bond upgrade is gonna be in advance okay and I went down all the ones that I had and every single one I'm like ooh these are really good these are all excellent so far I have not encountered anyone that would be like the reporter from p5 where I can't even remember her fucking name Where you talk to her and all of her upgrades are dogshit because they're all about like Minimizing the fucking alert level in a dungeon. Oh, yeah. Her name was oh, yeah, okay

So Oh yeah? Her name was Oh yeah. Okay. So instead what they do is they give you shorter time limits to deal with. Because travel time to reach locations is now a factor. So the basic deal is that it works. So I'm at the second town right now and I was given a 17, was it 17? I was given two weeks to get ready for the dungeon of Note, right? And so things that I did was I went and hung out with non-party members and then I went, okay, rank up, rank up, rank up, rank up, rank up. And then I'm like, oh, instead of having like mementos off to the side as like the persistent dungeon

that you would go through every time you had downtime, now I got four different quests to four different locations that are like, you gotta clean out these goblins, there's a fucking ring you need to get out of, this skeleton-infested shithole tomb. You need to take out this gigantic worm in these caves that's been attacking people. And going to each of these locations takes a day of travel. Okay.

Does it continue the design element where it's like we expect you're going to work on clearing out these dungeons and multiple like like multiple steps at a time as Opposed to just like going for it. I have one day to every single thing Okay, cuz that's how I played p persona games as well But like it's there's a lot of like oh you could go rest now you're out of MP. That's okay And you're like well No, that's a waste of time because we're wasting days that precious precious days that we need to so the the so like for example, I've, uh,

I've been getting ready for the second major dungeon and I've done all the combat quests and I've done everything that I could do that is like a side quest to do beforehand. I now have three days to do. Okay. The proper dungeon, but you have to solve it before calendar date. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so a lot of the smaller side quest areas, they're like a one floor forest. They're not like a fucking palace or like 10 floors of memento.

They're like a one floor forest or like a two, three floor cave or something like that. They're small and they're meant to be taken out in one go on normal. There is a lot going on to help you beat these things in one go. So you didn't get there, but you remember when you were playing as a, your first archetype is the Seeker and you would attack people and you would, you do your, your three hit combo and then you would do the squad attack and Leon would also attack with you. So Leon attacking with you is the Seeker special ability is that the other party members will all gang up on the monster you're fighting in the action combat as well. Okay. All the other weapon types that you could equip all have different mechanics and they

have different attacks. So if you were to pick like a fucking white mage essentially, or what's it called? It's called just called healer. You're hitting people with a mace. Right. And you're doing blunt damage and you're healing the party when you stun them, right? Yeah, and last time you mentioned there is a way to get back MP as well Yeah, the the mage line when you stun enemies on the overworld or kill enemies

You get an MP back for the whole party And Someone in the chat says it's one MP per so it's really not that effective. Ah That's why there are two other factors that go in. If you are three levels above an enemy, you don't even fight them. You auto kill them on the fucking field. And I have had some of the smaller dungeons turn into Dynasty Warriors style action levels as a result. Because I came in three levels higher than literally every single enemy in the dungeon. So I am just fighting them like an action game.

Hunt the gods, re-spawn, re- replenish your MP. Yeah. And if you go through some of the larger dungeons, what you can find is there are enemy generators. Oh, wow. Yeah, okay. And there are like crystals that will just spawn the lowest level enemy on the floor. Okay. Infinitely. Last story. And the game's like, you should really destroy that to stop enemies from spawning.

And what I hear is, I should stand in this and in the circle yeah for like five minutes yeah yeah yeah and and just spam the AOE on wizard and get my entire party's MP back to full I think I think last story was the most blatant version of that I recall where it was just a fountain of grunts popping up before the boss door and you just you're stabbing things that are sticking their head out and Get in leveling up and going like okay now open that door, you know, like you later unlock a You later unlock the merchant class and the merchant archetypes deal Is that when you stun or kill enemies on the overworld you get?

double What you were gonna win out of the fight for cash. Okay. Wow. So right now, I'm running around in a dungeon and auto killing people by hitting them with my abacus because I'm too high a level and I'm getting 700 gold, oh sorry, 700 Reev every single time I do it.

And so I ran two circuits of that. Now I have like 250,000 Reeve I can buy anything I want So I heard as well so that like you going down does not mean the game is over No, the main character can totally go down now are the other party members Comparable to you at all or are you still just an absolute beast God? comparable to you at all or are you still just an absolute beast god? So this is this is this is something that's really fun. So when you get a new party member, so I got the fourth party member yesterday. So you've been leveling

up your archetypes, and you've been leveling up your character, right? And when a new party member starts, they start with a couple levels in their, their personal archetype. Right? But so like I rolled in with, um, with Will, uh, Will, Will metaphor, that's his name in English. Um, and he was maxed out on merchants and he had like 15 levels of seeker and 15 levels of healer and all this shit, right and Then I got the fourth party member and they started with four levels in their archetype and that's it so they were way behind like they were they were like a dozen hours behind and a dozen hours behind.

And the solution that Metaphor has is that I've maxed out Merchant on Will and I maxed out Warrior on, what's his name, on Leon Stroll, right? When you hit cap on an archetype, you still gain XP. But every time you get 1, 1000 XP and would gain a level, you instead get a item that is worth 1000 archetype XP put in your inventory. And you can use that on team members? You can use it on anyone.

Oh, interesting. Okay, because. So, like the fourth party member starts way behind, I go well, I have I have my three party members that are maxed out on Merchant Warrior and Knight I'm just gonna not move them off those and now I'm dumping 400% experience into the fourth party member and now I fucked up now They are way ahead of the rest of the cast Because I just dumped all those items into them. Interesting. That's an interesting, that's a smart way to do it. In SMT 5, you get like XP items that are only usable on the protag and those that are only

usable on demons, right? So there's a distinguishing between you and your party members, but here like the stuff from you is compatible with them is big. Yeah, it also creates these situations where like, let's take Knight. The upgrade to Knight is Magic Knight. And that, unlike most of the other archetypes, requires 20 in Knight and 10 in Mage. It needs them from a totally different discipline, right? Well my Knight didn't have any levels in Mage, but I had fucking Heroes Leaps, so I just switched them over, gave them five of them, and now you're level 10 Mage and we can switch you right over to Magic Knight like that.

Nice, nice. Yeah, because I remember the discussion about XP share in Pokemon and stuff from back in the day, and that could be an imbalancer, but like the need for it is something that they're trying to address. But how do you make that more, how do you work that kind of thing out? And I think something like this is quite nice. Where it's like, hey, you get refunds, you get change,

and you can just use it as at will elsewhere after you've hit the requirements for something. Like giving you the freedom for how you wanna spend that, as opposed to like just automatically doing it, for something, like giving you the freedom for how you want to spend that as opposed to just automatically doing it, for example, is a lot more customization to that. I think that's pretty sick. The other thing about enemies that you auto kill on the field give you basically no experience at all. They give you a tiny amount of experience compared to what they normally would have.

So what ends up happening is I got way out ahead in terms of levels on this section. And so most of the little micro dungeons I fought, I would auto kill the generic mobs. But the tougher mobs floating around didn't auto kill those and those were still threats. Those were still like very real threats. And I was way over leveled for the first major dungeon. And what ended up happening is that I slept through the first half. And then I

got to the second half of that dungeon. And all of a sudden the enemies had been kicked up two levels. So I could not, I could not auto kill them anymore. And because I had essentially earned nothing off that first half of the dungeon because everything was getting auto killed, the dungeon like slid into the difficulty quotient that it was supposed to be. And levels take escalating amounts of experience so that your party will eventually like, I started, you know, this guy started at a higher level, this guy started at a lower level, but over time because of the way their math works, they all just kinda even out to more or less the same.

So a lot of time you spend in Persona as well is obviously like Demon Fusion and going back to the room. There's no Demon Fusion. There's no Demon Fusion here, right? So this is where it's like, okay, so playing with archetypes, playing with jobs and levels and stuff has to kind of replace that.

In SMT, you also spend a lot of time shopping for yourself. You're upgrading your own personal abilities. It's not as in-depth as Demon Fusion can get, of course, but there is an amount of time you can spend locking in on that. Does this system compare at all to like? Absolutely. Yeah?

So there are the two main things that happen is you can change archetypes at any time on your main menu. Right. So if you're like, I want to be a gunner for this next section, fucking switch it over. The other thing that affects like, why would you mix and match all of these things? Like, where's the depth there?

The depth there is that you can inherit skills from anything. So you can level up merchant to maximum, and then you can put consumables are 20% stronger as your passive effect on warrior. And all of a sudden, your warrior, who has no healing spells is actually a passive a passable healer with just like medicines Mm-hmm. Yeah, like so I so I remember when yeah again we following up from last week's discussion on this and kind of

Looking at it here. It's like it sounds almost like you know a job system sphere grid kind of thing, right? Yeah, it's a job system. It's closest analogy that I can think of is Final Fantasy Tactics. Do you want to level thief so with like, are all your like, cause when you're fusing demons, that's where you're getting your like your Zeos and your Boofus and your Aggies, et cetera. Are all of these classes like sharing enough,

like, you know, sort of middle abilities or are you kind of getting stuff from them? No, they're all very unique. Okay. So like, for example, this is a pro tip. Blizz, the spell Blizz, is like, fucking half of all enemies are weak to Blizz for like the first 20 hours of the game.

Like it is, it's so much better than the fire or lightning equivalent. But Blizz requires mage level two. And that's the only place you can get it so what does that mean it means I took every single fucking character in my roster and made sure they got to mage level two at least so that everybody put blizz on them just in case especially the melee fighters that are like all physical attacks because you run into a lot of enemies

that are just completely immune to physical attacks. Okay. And if you get an attack blocked or repelled, all your turns just evaporate. And as you're changing archetypes too, like is equipment mattering in the sense that like, you know, in other, again, in a Persona game, you just kind of just enter, you just go from one gun to another, one weapon

to another. So that was a bit strong. Equipment matters a lot. But here you have a team of people that you're like, oh, if I have like multiple mages and I don't have enough staves that... So the way that I have managed that is by never having two classes of the same type at the same time. Okay, so everyone can pick up a...

Because when you switch to them, it goes, I would like to equip all the strongest equipment available right now. Though there is a third wrinkle to this system, and it's called a synthesis attack, different combinations of archetypes can do dual techs. And they are unique between all the different ones and they do allow for weird weird combinations there is a triple tech that requires three mages. Hell yeah nice. And you can do it as soon as you have three mages and it's like a it's a severe fire attack. Okay. So, they

incentivize you going for specific builds as well. That might yeah. Might seem weird. So, like I really love Merchant, right? But my merchant doesn't have any of I don't I have merchant unlocked. I don't have any of the archetypes, not even one that interact with merchants. So, Merchant never has any dual techs. Okay. And the other thing, the way that synthesis attacks work is really, really, really smart.

The way it works is to go, hey, I am a seeker and I would like to do a move with the knight, right? So I'm gonna hit synthesis attack and it's gonna say, hey, the knight over here is going to give me their turn to perform this attack But if it hits a weakness it will count as if we both hit that weakness So it's a double press turn so we you will get a double press turn off it That's the good feeling and it will use a neuron activation it will use MP from both from both okay okay so you can have you can

have like a knight and warrior that don't use a lot of mp but you can use them as fuel for synthesis attacks for the others but if one of the two has already acted then you can't do it it. You need enough spare turns. Oh. And neither of them can be affected by status effects that would slow it down. So even if one of the two has already acted but you have enough spare turns, you can still ... Okay, wow. That's very generous.

It works really well. It works really, really well. There's a lot going on. You unlock a new archetype and you go down its list. And the first thing you see is like, oh, I could put media, I could put media on anybody I wanted.

I could have a whole team of people with media if I leveled up healer on everybody a little bit. Or you see things like passive abilities. So skill inheritance, the way it works, hey, do you want Blizzard on your guy? 500 mag. Okay, that's pretty normal Do you want the ability that increases your crit rate by 10%?

8,000 Meg And once you've unlocked it you can slot it in on that character in any way you want but the passive abilities They're way stronger 10% is a way way stronger for crit rate They're way stronger. 10% is a really high number for crit rate. That's crazy. Yeah, but there's other things you can do to increase your crit rate. So you can get up to like 30, 40%.

Jesus Christ. And in a system that you get extra turns for doing crits, it's really strong. Like, Wizard has a fucking ability. It's the last ability that they unlock, which is regenerate MP every turn. Yeah, okay. And I see that, and I'm like, what is that gonna be like fucking 20,000 mag to unlock Cuz I'm gonna do it. It'll be worth it

Yeah, so you have to you have to hem and haw because like higher tier classes like say you have warrior right and then there's the upgrade to warrior The warrior cost 500 mag to unlock the upgrade to warrior cost 70 to 100 mag to unlock and Then the third upgrade to warrior Probably cost like 15,000 to unlock okay, and so you're like do I want to increase the value of my guys Do I want to have the good skill inherent? Dragon's dogma right? It Dogma, right? It's super cheap to unlock the first step in all things. And the last trick of the archetype system is that if you cap an archetype, it gives you two of its primary stat to that character forever. So if you cap mage, you get two magic on that character forever. If you cap warrior, you get two strength forever.

So it very much strongly incentivizes you to max these things out. Cool. Yeah, that sounds pretty in-depth for not having... You know, people chatter saying it's like FF5? It is totally like FF5, actually. I have no reference there, but okay. The system's super exciting to use. It's just really good.

It's really fun. Demon Fusion has gone from being a chore to being a pleasure when there's enough quality of life in what it's made fun to do. That is literally just how early or how late in the franchise are you playing it. I would say Demon Fusion in particular more than I guess Persona Fusion. The amount of shit you can do in Five was like, oh, you can really, really fine tune and get in there. I never want to go back to Demon Fusion.

This system is so much easier to control. Yeah, it's going for a different thing with your monsters, but ultimately by the time we got to five, I was on the complete opposite side. Whereas I remember in three, in pre-three, it was like, this is the worst ever. I'm just going in and out and in and out and in and out until I can get the exact move list I want. And by five, it's a pleasure to kind of go do it, you know, but um Yeah building up your characters and just having a

Free form time spent like individually customizing is that yeah, I'm like that sounds interesting. Okay, cool The the system I thought the system was really good when I you run with three characters for a long time And then I got a fourth character and I'm like, oh man, this is like one of my favorite battle systems in RPG I've fucking ever done. Also, if you beat enemies without getting hit, you get a 50% experience bonus. Oh, what's the word? Unscathed.

Unscathed victory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you fight enemies during really bad weather You get another 50% experience boon bonus but Press turn no longer works in your favor Okay, it only works against you interesting okay, so it is much more difficult Okay Yeah Interesting. Okay. So it is much more difficult. Okay.

Yeah. Fucking interesting, man. It's very cool. And with this thing being selling quite well and stuff and like, okay, so now we've started out this franchise, are we looking at an Injustice MK situation? Do you alternate your Metaphor and Persona or SMT releases? Well, Metaphor doesn't seem like it would be a franchise. It seems like Metaphor is more like, we're gonna do weird stuff sometimes.

I would not write out the idea of anything successful not becoming a franchise in this day and age. That seems insane. I like it a lot. I think it's really cool. I think changing the way the stats and the confidants work to, yeah, it always succeeds. Like, yeah, you have way less time. The calendar's like four months. Like, you have way less time. The calendar's like four months. Like you have way less time.

But it's a dance that matters. But every single thing you do always succeeds. So there's no hemming and hawing. It's like, I would like to go hang out with Maria to level up the healer archetype. I'm gonna go. Okay, I leveled up the healer archetype. Done. No failed steps. Yeah. Cool. archetype yeah I'm gonna go okay I leveled up the healer archetype done no failed steps mm-hmm yeah cool hey I gotta take a quick break and help something I'll be right back and I mean right back like two minutes

okay um also the music is like the best. Esperanto. Got you speaking it? It's the best. Off that refantasio pack. These elder ruts. These disgusting elder. I also really like this twist of Galika is your Mona equivalent and instead of telling you to go to bed She's like hey wake up. Yeah, I have a conversation with you no night. Hey wake up Yeah, she's alright you little you got a little um cuz I'm like okay if you're gonna walk around with a pixie

My my previous comparison point was the the again the SMT 5-1 My previous comparison point was the SMT-51. I can't even, super long Japanese name. Yeah, that girl. Yeah. Hey, hey, hey! This isn't her. This is Pixie.

And I'm like, you didn't actually have to do the Navi bit, you know? But yeah, Pixie is cool. There you go. Amano Zako. Oh, you want some? Ah, fuck off. Do ya? Anyway, anything else? Yeah, I beat the Silent Hill 2 Remake. So that's in the bag. So of note, because I have a strong computer, I was able to push a lot of buttons. You know what, I'm just gonna explain it.

So Silent Hill 2 Remake on the personal computer and otherwise has a extremely strong traversal stuttering problem in which the game will kind of stutter so hard it looks like it freezes for a second. It's very annoying, It's very bad. Well, if you go to the Steam Configuration community page and put in a bunch of engine hacks into the engine.ini in its file folder and then fucking force and force the game to render out in DirectX 11 Vulcan instead of DirectX 12, you can significantly improve that stuttering.

You know, there's some stuff that's gone away. I haven't had to make a batch file in a long time, but opening up an I&I and futzing around in there it's done okay so I got I got the game running smooth so I can now say that the performance problems are still really bad but I was able to fix them for me Me. Going through it, they do a lot of cool shit in that remake. They do, so the game is massively expanded. In some places, that's not as great.

I think the hospital is too long. The hospital is like four and a half hours long It it's the longest part of the whole game what percent Increase would you say it is like twice as long twice like twice as big, okay? and in other cases they have expanded areas that had very little and It is a big improvement. There is a lot more going on in the Labyrinth in Silent Hill 2 Remake than there is in the original and when I was looking up certain things for the labyrinth and to like room numbers and stuff like this.

I found people theory crafting about that shit in the original game on Game Facts in 2008 and realized that Bloober took those like little pieces that were implied and expanded them out and they're still implied but now there's just more to bite into now Okay, I don't remember how long I spent going through the labyrinth It's pretty short. Okay, it's mainly like a straight line and then you go to the basement and do a little loop with with Pyramid head got the new exit out. It's been turned into a proper zone in the remake. Every area is larger, and I think mostly it works well. I think the hospital might be too long. I did not understand this until I was watching it, but there are genuinely

completely new scenes between the characters. Cut scenes. Yeah. And they hit. They hit really well. In particular, there is a new cut scene with Angela in between the hospital and the prison that is really effective and does a better job of setting up her arc. The Labyrinth boss fight against the bed monster has been expanded into the best sequence in the entire game from a mechanical and narrative perspective.

I was talking to Gene about it and I read his review and I totally agree in which there's one chase scene in the game that is totally ruined by the new camera, the elevator chase in the hospital. Okay. Is like the new camera just, it doesn't, it it can't it can't do the same things that the other one was doing. But the when you when he the hallway that he's he's coming down. Yeah, because it was fixed and was really awkward.

Yeah. And now it's just like they try to emulate it and it doesn't work at all. It's like it's like a much worse much worse version. But all the Angela stuff in the Labyrinth, on the other hand, is way better and has a lot more going on and is like a much better version I would give the letter reading a B plus. Okay. There's like literally one line read in the letter that I'm like, this is worse than the original.

Overall, it actually really does like a good job. But the one line read that they don't nail is the last line read of the letter. Ah, you made me happy. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And you're like, oh. Overall, I would say that aside from the performance, the game is pretty excellent. I think the best thing that I can say about it is that it has every right to exist.

I still wish the original was much more widely available. But this game's got stuff, and a lot of that stuff is really good. I think it might be too long. But then I say it might be too long, but then I think about, well, some of the stuff they added was actually really good. I did not encounter anything that I went, oh, man, oh, come on. Right, right. Which is like what I was kind of expecting like the whole time.

And if someone were to have this as their only experience, they're getting like... They would come away strong. It would come away real, real strong. It's conveying enough of what it originally did. Oh, absolutely. And not losing enough that it hampers it Mm-hmm, okay, I

Think it's uh, I think it's pretty great. It's a million times better than I expected. I expected it to be Interesting That's what I expected I expected to see like a clumsy attempt with flashes of good ideas. And instead what I got was a bunch of good ideas with flashes of clumsiness. Did the endings show anything new or like expand? No because there are two new endings Because again, there are two new endings. There are two new endings. Okay So we're up to eight endings on a game. That's like 25 hours long

So I would probably advise people to just YouTube them if if you've had your fill of the game and the circumstances around getting them are interesting. All the new ones are in New Game Plus. Okay, okay, just go around again. Wow, cool, okay. Good outcome. Yes, good outcome. I really, really liked it.

That's kind of it, honestly. I was kind of looking at Silent Hill 2 Remake upcoming. It's like, man, I'm going to get to complain about this for like five fucking years. I can, oh man, I'm so ready. And it's like, no, I finished it. And I'm like, you know, it's pretty great. So just actually give Bloober team a hello fresh instruction card And just yeah, so here here so they we've gone I'm following I've gone from like active derision in a lot of people's minds like just like a blooper to Well, they can color inside the lines real good If you give them crayons and a and a and a sheet they can they inside the lines real good. If you give them crayons and a sheet, they can make a real pretty picture.

So I would say that they should start working on Silent Hill 4 right now instead of doing a new thing. And jump to the room? Yes. Because Silent Hill 2 in the room can exist outside of the context. Whereas 3 needs 1 to exist in a modern form. Also 4 is like the most interesting.

And I really like the gameplay stuff they did in Silent Hill 2 Remake. And I would like them to just transplant the skeleton of Silent Hill 2 Remake and I would like them to just transplant the skeleton of Silent Hill 2 Remake just directly on top of Silent Hill 4. Okay, okay. Well, what like 3, what Resident Evil did, right? Mm-hmm. Okay.

So yeah, where Resident Evil skipped 3. I mean, they didn't skip three. They didn't skip three. That's not what I heard. Okay, so yeah, they can basically, if they're making money, they can become a Blue Point style company. Yeah. Interesting.

Uh, what else did I do? I mean, man, I played metaphor. That's what's going on. I Fucking played metaphor. Okay I'm looking at my video producer tab. This is metaphor metaphor metaphor metaphor Silent Hill Silent Hill metaphor metaphor metaphor It's good, it's really good imagine a world where there are no where there are no elder or horned or alfieard people, but it's the future and everyone is born without magic and everything is fair and everything is equal.

Where the fuck is that metaphor? Because that ain't here. So I gotta be super real with you because every time. Where the fuck are you describing? You showing me a city? Are you out of your mind? You reading the, you reading another page of the utopia book, they show you like a, you know, that, that, that parchment like sketch. Yeah. Uh, and you, you always, when you get a new party member, you read a page with them. You're like, Oh,

can I see your book? Right. And like every time it comes up like it starts to kind of sound like maybe like Our our neck of the woods and like every page you read is like oh, oh you wish Man Like oh you're fucking kidding me with this shit, right? Well, it's just it's the hilarity because it's like in the background the fake world We created is the metaphor of the fucking horrendous shit in real life So it's a metaphor it's a metaphor there were you're watching the fantasy metaphor and then in the fantasy metaphor for real-life Fucking racism they're reading a book about what might be our world

But it's everything is great and fair and you top it so good You know it's against the law to discriminate by place of birth or creed. Oh, man. There's like a really strange takeaway, like in a very early discussion, I think you saw it when you hang out with Stroll and you're about to go up to the fort. One of the options is like, he's like, oh, you're reading this book, It's like a fantasy, and he's like yeah, and you go Yeah, it's a world without tribes, and he goes oh that must be great And I'm like what are you guys actually saying because it sounds like you're saying if there was only one try

Everything would be solved. No. No the book is not about the planet Earth the book is actually just about Japan That's that's the utopia. Well, I mean, if you look real carefully in the game's intro, it's actually really, really, really clear it's about Japan. Yeah, you see the vending machines and like, I'm pretty sure I saw a Lawson in the painterly shadows of that one screenshot. Oh, fuck, yeah, don't worry about the other shit. We're talking about here.

Oh man, all right. Hey, I gotta help with dinner for a second. I gotta help transfer something to an oven. So I will be right back, excuse me. You just mumbling, it's a metaphor to yourself. Yeah, I've been saying it a lot. It's really funny to me. I think it's really humorous to just tell things that they're metaphors.

The problem for me is I keep trying to get, I only get to three. I get to simile allegory metaphor and then I run out of words. Yeah, that's pretty much it. Those are the ones. So it's more like Meta 3, really. Eesh. Okay, over here. What are we doing?

Yeah, I had a pretty short week as well, like fairly busy and lots going on. But in terms of games and other things, went to them hinterlands in Shadow of the Earth Tree. So just that- A hinterland? Yeah, it's just that little area top right where you basically go to the second finger like graveyard area kind of thing. And that other area that I'm being informed you did not find.

Okay. There was a falling star beast which was like, hey,'s up, buddy? Haven't seen you in a minute And I guess part of that was also the wrapping up of the little church which leads to thinking mommy Mm-hmm. Sorry about that last week man. I Apologize. Yeah, it was cool Yo, that thing's gross. Yeah, What a nice, like it didn't need to exist, but I do like when a character or boss shows up that is like, well, this brings a lot of the lore together, right?

And it's like, oh, all of these are from this and this is awful. Yep. And this is connected here. And this is just a, yeah, it's, it's's um, it's a nice little like uh, uh point to tie all your Your string to on your pepe silvia board, right? Yeah, if you were if you were unclear that the the all the fingers and all that shit was from fucking space Here's the crater That this one landed and here's the crater that the other one landed more importantly

I would say is the like here is the radio system that explains The direct how and why the great not why but how the greater will? passes its will on and Yeah, this is the antenna is the antenna and here's how the antenna breaks down into these fingers And here's how these fingers spread out to these places And then these people interpret what these fingers say and do you know and so on like it's like okay it all directly comes straight from that that connection point

There's a real there's a real feeling of like you go you find Trina and you find all that shit at the bottom and you find finger mom and you find Midra, the Lord of the Frenzied Flame. And you're like, man, Ronnie knew what the fuck she was talking about, that all this shit needs to go. The whole thing. It's all the whole. Yeah. Daddy concept needs to fuck off.

And the idea that again, like any concept that you're born with, you can literally carve that shit off and throw it on the ground. You know, why not, man? Like yeah, like fight for your freedom however you can, you know? Of course, to do so, you have to like impose your will over the world and replace the order with some kind of new order You know Because letting chaos take the world it was the one thing that everyone's afraid of but like really Chaos is just kind of like nah burn it all but it's like nah

I like is fun man, but like real chaos would just be like anything goes but this this chaos is Yeah, like I like to set things on fire and have like a creepy son head house doesn't have to always be crazy fire pyro you know chaos can kill chaos and in Shin Megami tensei and chaos in to a degree like if you're using Lewis as the fucking Lucifer stand in Lucifer's platform, sorry, Lewis's platform fucking rules in metaphor. His platform is a radical anti-racial meritocracy.

Ah, here we go, yeah, yeah, yeah. And if not for the fact that he was a violent, treacherous murderer, he would have the best platform of any of the candidates. You know I can think of a certain white hawk who's also anti-racial and who also wants to unite all kinds of people and beings and creatures under the same banner. With talent and ability and skill being the only determiners. Absolutely. You fight alongside these fucking freak demon beasts

and your merit is all that I care about. The most important part is that no matter what race you are, no matter where you're born or what you believe in, you belong to me. You are my thing. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, we'll, you know, more on that. But the, what

was I going to say? Oh, yeah, no, just the element that you're like, oh, this is all fucked up, it has to go is quite interesting. And then there's a little piece of, when you get the soul of the matter of the mother of fingers you look at the weapons you can create from it and one of them is her like staff you know and then the other is like the big bonking finger that's what I took I took the big bonker yeah and you see the the weapon art on that right cow towers resentment and I was like oh that's interesting I'm just gonna bullshit some headcanon here and go like what if the description on that is implying

Something of the of what the mother of fingers felt, you know and it's the idea of like you are subservient to this greater will and you have no say in the matter and the finger can only Bend and like it gives a couple sentences kind of describing like the only like the subservient thing. It hates the fact that all it can do is serve another being, you know? And so I thought that was a pretty interesting thing. But at the same time, it's not 100% because there is the idea as well on the other spell or on the other item you get that says it waited for more orders but they never came, essentially.

So, there's a lot of like... Every time we pick up some lore and we fucking spit the bullshit around with it, yeah, I like things like this that are new that you can drop into the old and improve some of those connections and stuff. Also running around that little void and I'm like, where's Rom? He's way over there in the distance. There's a vacuous spider chilling out. There's a feeling of like, in know an Elden Ring you eventually discover Oh wait, these are these are fucking space aliens. Holy shit and But like for a lot of it, they don't really come off like fucking space aliens, right?

Like they come off as fantasy creatures and the DLC does not have that fucking problem the DLC is like Moldered beyond this shit, telling you about the Finger Alien. I mean, I mean, you know, the the albinorix, like, clue you in pretty heavy. And I would say as well that like, we're also primed because of the moon presence, you know, to that whole idea of like, all right, swords and dragons and shields and kings and then unknowable horrors and creatures and cities and darkness and wolves and then fucking space.

It was normal and then space happened and now it is fucked. Yeah. So that was a particularly cool boss. I like that one. I've also... I hate the arena. The arena is horrible the endless void The endless void with the fucking tubes man. I like died and then like came back in and it was like where are my souls? Oh my god, they're like a football field away. I

Didn't realize you know like it well, I mean pretty much almost where you're fighting the Elden Beast, right? But yeah, that was fun. We have begun what is, I guess, called 1-4 and we've crossed in Phoenix Wright the the Kansai Mason-Dixon line. Yes. And we've met a lot of heart and you know not much to say so far just she's cool. She's from America right? Well no she can't be from America you're in America. Yeah that that southern Osaka bend drawl you know know, the hospitality, it's clear. No, she's fun. And not much to say about that because we're literally in the middle of that story.

That's a good case. In the original Phoenix Wright, that was the last case. There's one more after this, I've been informed. And someone was like, hey, maybe save that for the end of the trilogy after you do the rest. And it's just like, that's ridiculous. You're implying a lot with that? Also, nah, that's crazy. That's ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I can, I'm sure there's some chronological something to that, but no. No, it isn't. It's just the quest, the case is pretty, it's pretty tough. Also isn't. It's just the quest, the cases, it's pretty tough.

Also very long. It's very long. Yeah, I heard very long. They all get way longer so far. Anyway, so far so good with that. And then, yeah, I guess this week, for me personally, I have returned to the church basement and I started doing some combos. So I went back to the boxing gym under the church and yeah, just, you know, gonna be getting back in there. Did two 10 round sessions and it was fun to kind of see some old faces, see the old coach,

get in there, hit the bags, do the thing, you know? And I'm like, yeah, this is cool. I kind of missed this vibe. I'm feeling it. Everything like, all right, let's go. Let's put the gloves on. Let's put the hand wrap up. You know? All right, I feel it. Step one, pick up your fucking skipping rope. Oh God, oh God, how do you do it? I can't do it. I can't do it, it's gone. And then I'm like wheezing and it's like,

okay, next round, go start your box jumps. And I'm like, fuck, and just like, it's rough, man. Cause I've been trying to do my own, you know, like, again, and just like, it's rough, man, because I've been trying to do my own, you know, like, again, hitting the gym, my own walking and doing stuff and keeping that cardio up, but like the amount required to do boxing related things and to throw punches and to keep it going and moving is just so next level by comparison to any regular cardio workouts you do. It's insane. So I feel like that feeling is me anytime I return to any task I stopped for longer

than five or six days in my whole life. And like if like on the times I've taken trips or haven't streamed for a week, like because I've been ill or whatever, I come back and I sit down to this chair and I'm like, oh my oh what the How do I even turn this shit on? What the fuck am I doing every single game that I play when I sit back down the next week? I have to go wait. How do I play again? You know, and if God forbid a week has passed extra on it, I'm cooked. I'm done

Like I just I cannot do it. I can retain what is in front of me for a couple hours at best until it's completely evaporated. So even as much as I can say, like, oh yeah, some of the movements and stuff started to come back a little bit by the end and I did two of them and that's what I could fit in with the week schedule and stuff. Holy shit, man, is my body paying for it. My legs are currently still on fire, like days later, and you know. Well, conditioning just leaves, like right away.

Conditioning leaves and age fills the space. Mm. No. Yeah, yeah. So I've decided to work out by lifting a 25 pound object that's increasing it onto my shoulders and over my head about a thousand times a day. There you go. And it you know it gets heavier every day. It does. It does. It's an ever-growing kettlebell. It's pretty impressive.

Then once you start getting those swings... Oh, man. Yeah. So anyway, that's just a fun, painful reminder. Anyways, what's your schedule looking like this week? My schedule looks like this week over at twitch.tv slash Pat Stairs at. Tomorrow evening I'm going to be checking out UFO 50. And then Wednesday is metaphor. And then Thursday is Wizard of Legend 2, which

is a sponsored stream and more UFO 50. And then Friday is metaphor. And it's probably going to continue between UFO 50 and metaphor for a bit. Okay. Cause those are both real juicy. They are, they are. If you haven't yet cracked it open with the, I have not. With UFO 50, I would say,

it depends on, you don't like, if you like, if you feel it, lock it. But yeah, if I don't feel it, move on, move on. Yeah, keep it light. And then if something grabs you, stick with it. And also, some of them are real, but still a lot. Like there is at least two silent turn-based strategy games in there that you can just be sitting and making decisions on your turn and there will be no noise on the stream. Oh, that's awesome.

A silent stream will be occurring as you're staring at us. That's great. I love that. That's awful. So just be warned about that too. That's good stuff. Is something wrong? Is it broken?

Nah. Anyway. Yes, I will be having... So on Tuesday, going to be doing some Elden Ring and then yeah we're gonna come back in with some more Phoenix Wright on I think Friday actually so I'll post the schedule on Wooly versus on Twitch and on Twitter and And yeah, over on YouTube as well, if you haven't checked it out, you can check out the metaphor video that went up.

It's only on YouTube. It's not on the Twitch mods at all. So catch that there if you can. And yeah, some highlights over on Wooly versus the algorithm as well. All right, let's take a quick word from our sponsors. I love sponsor. This week, the podcast is sponsored by Loading Time.

Hmm. Oh, cool. Oh yeah, I did a slop stream. We watched- How was the slop? We watched some good slop, we watched some bad slop, we watched some great shit like Kurt Russell and John Carpenter just laughing at a commentary track watching the thing. That was great. Had a good time going over it. And then we

got to the core of ADHD editing. And you know. What's his name? You know, when you start watching like a replay video of some games highlights and then like the first... What's his name? The first thing that happens. Forget his name. There's a guy.

There's a guy who does the ADHD editing. There's a lot. Has a million graphics a second. There's a lot of them. Maxor. Okay. I don't know that I could put a specific name, but I've seen more than enough that have popped up and have that... It's usually that one or those two screaming clips that

are deep fried and they make your ears hurt. Yeah. Yeah. We asked the real card, quit hitting questions, and we get to the core of it, and Reggie has to look deep into his soul a bit on that because it truly is like at the end of the day, does louder truly equal funnier? I fucking hope so. One brave man says yes. Oh, I fucking hope so, brother, because I all. Loud equals funny. And that's the only, that's all you need to know.

All right. This week the podcast is sponsored by Shopify. Hey Shopify, what's hanging? A great cart for your business or your website is hanging. That's awesome, man. The kids love it. If you are, yeah, if you've got a business and you're trying to figure out how to take that to the next step, if you want to figure out how to sell things online and make it

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superbeast. Thank you, Henson Shaving. Thanks Henson Shaving. Vin g.com slash super beast and use the code super beast Thank You Hanson shaving Thanks engine shaving And this week We are sponsored by Uncommon Goods Hey Uncommon Goods haven't seen you guys in a while. You doing well? I have bigged up Uncommon Goods quite a bit and it's legitimately a super dope spot. If you are, if you're good at gift giving, you can usually, you know, kind of figure

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Uncommon Goods, we're all out of the ordinary. See, I see what they did there. Yeah, that sees it. It's almost like a metaphor. Almost. Thank you Uncommon Goods. Thanks Uncommon Goods. Okay. It's a metaphor. Alright. Would someone like to explain what's happening with Pokemon? Alright, so here's what's going on.

I've got some details, I've got some bullet points, but the more I try to get my head around the whole thing, the less I actually feel like I know. Alright, alright, alright. So here's what's going on. You ready? whole thing, the less I actually feel like I know. All right, all right, all right. So here's what's going on. You ready? So at some point, somehow, someone got access to Game Freak's shit. Yeah. And like a terabyte of fucking nonsense is just out there now.

Including employee personal information, which always makes me think, okay, someone was doing the ransomware gig, right? Someone was looking to steal the data, force them to pay up. If they didn't, then they would release all the information. This has happened to Capcom. This has happened to a bunch of companies recently. So the following pieces of information are out there. A bunch of shit where they're like basically like transcripts of discussions between staff

where they're like, I want this character to look like Jennifer Lopez and have big boobs. And people are going, oh my God, it's scandalous. And it's like, how do you fucking think they designed characters? Now, this is like data going back from before even the first game came out, right? It's like literally everything across the entire franchise's history. Right. And then you've got stuff like the Switch 2 code name is in there. And the Switch 2 code name or development name or prototype name or whatever the fuck

is ounces. Interesting. Which to me says that the Switch 2 is going to be really light. Because it's not measured in pounds, it's measured in ounces. I mean the current one is already quite small compared to like the Steam deck But well, what if they made it lighter made it lighter? and then we have Like development details about like them talking about where they want to put the camera and how they're gonna handle it

You know all that stuff, but the thing that people are latching on to is what people are characterizing as is what people are characterizing as gooner-ass pervert Pokemon pregnant fucking kidnap fan fiction. And so it turns out amongst the leaks from Game Freak there's stories origin stories and unused stories for Typhlosion Octolary, Slak, and a bunch of these involve like just like

weird human Pokemon hybrids, underage kids and murder and fucking... It's a bunch of dank shit. Yeah We might need To put the the not like us dots on a couple Pokemon caves so the but the core of this is that these are all pretty much just like What if we took like the Greek myth of this or this yokai myth? Where a kappa stole the and just applied it to Pokemon So that's so that's yeah So what I've seen is there's there's the the stories and then the people freaking out about what's in the stories and then the

summaries they're in of you know, Typhlosion Killed a dude and Banged an underage girl and gave her a half human half Pokemon and banged an underage girl and gave her a half human, half Pokemon baby and all that. And then what I've seen is the third round of people explaining that what these are are folktales and mythology that are reflecting the creation myths like in the real world. And it's not unlike the Brothers Grimm or other really dark Yeah, so what you're seeing what you're seeing is a punch of creatives like spitball a punch of bullshit And then go we're not gonna put that in there that's weird and People taking like I can't fucking believe

Shut up the child-friendly franchise eventually, uh, that was landed on, I guess, was- There was a time when there was spitballing making it much darker. Um, and I guess that's why over the years I've heard about these, like, things where they're like, Oh, there actually was a Pokémon God that gave birth to all life, and- Like, every one of those little things that like I heard about Later on that were all creation myths and weird deific things and you know the also there's already been characters that have like married Pokemon Yeah, they're weird. Well the links between humanity and Pokemon and humans being a type or whatever I'm like, oh that makes a lot of sense given that like from the jump

There was already this kind of yeah bit like Yokai creation myth exactly So Is it Arceus is God right? That's the bit? Yeah, Arceus is God. We're all descended from Arceus. Okay. All right So yeah, like I guess there's Pokemon impregnations and kidnapping lore and bits that are there. We knew this was going on. If you followed the money, you'd know this was already happening. If you followed the money, yeah. Yeah. Um, it's so again, I just like, I'm like, it is the either definitely are I remember

like these kind of storylines you'd hear about like, again, the grim fairy tales versions of, you know, every, like, childhood thing, or the gashly crumb tinies were like, you know, the things were to be like, oh Oh the children did good and they lived happily ever after or they did bad and they died You know, and I remember being young and being like, ooh, what the fuck? Oh, that's dark people didn't die in the other pop-up books. I was reading and And I do feel that like a lot of the time too as well when I when you hear about Yeah, like like Japanese creation myths too,

they definitely get into. They get fucking weird. Yeah, with like, long names that get referenced as the final form of your persona. Careful, there's a demon that'll pull your soul out through your asshole. It's now an Elden Ring, it's called the

the crazed caca consumer. The butt eyeball thing. Yeah, yeah, and they make for some great like Yukio-e style, you know views of Mount Fuji, Hokusai painting style things that look great on woodblock And I imagine that if ever there were bits of this that were referenced in any way, shape or form, it would be like in cave drawings on the wall inside of some mysterious ancient place or something, you know? But yeah, yeah, that seems to be part of it. And now there's also like terabytes and terabytes of other like things. So it's like the more I was looking like that's one element, but there's like literally just like also leaks about like future plans and I want to say that like at least two games

source code as well. Yeah, apparently modders are like super excited because Pokemon rom hacks are about to get like super good. Yeah Nah, man, the it's the same thing every time with these which is just like Fucking people's passports and addresses. Yeah, that's part of it and that's fucked up I feel like there's like a real we're living in a like a dead society. That's only crumbling further as I feel like there's like a real, we're living in a like a dead society that's only crumbling further as instead of people going, I can't believe these people got their personal shit hacked. People are going, I can't believe someone drew what if Typhlosion had sex with a girl

on a napkin. like and now certain and yeah like like this like the three in particular of all the Pokemon Typhlosion, Octolary and Slakoth are the ones that are taking the most heat. People say they're in the crosshairs Kendrick has to come for Typhlosion. Yeah Typhlosion like like all joking aside and all seriousness aside No one will ever look at typhlosion the same way again. I Literally just scrolled past a fucking screenshot of like 10 typhlosion standing around a Pokemon trainer like not ten minutes ago Yeah, so I I mean I thought reshiram was the beginning of this and then somewhere in the middle was the Smasher Pass. Reshiram was not the beginning. Reshiram was the beginning for you.

Well, well, well, Smasher Pass, you don't get a say with Typhlosion. So Typhlosion will decide whether it wants to, whether the smashing or passing is going to occur. Anyway. Whether it wants this whether the smashing or passing or is going to occur Anyway Yeah, and whatever that whatever that that what's that what's the the crocodile lizard one that like looks all like seductive the one with the eyes I Don't Yeah, so I'm like I'm like really afraid that you're just describing a regular crocodile looking one and you're like look at how seductive they are There's that's just like a crocodile googly eyes. There's one that everyone in the Smasher Pass

Everyone in the Smasher Pass gets to that one and goes yo, what's with that? What's with those eyes though? Oh, yeah, what is with those eyes? What's up with that? Exactly what's with that? What's with those eyes though? Oh, yeah, what is with those eyes? Exactly what's going on there? Oh man, all right Well anyway, hey before we uh before we go to a different news. I forgot something from my week Oh, it was really important. Okay, it was so important Me and Paige went and played bingo. We went to a charity bingo.

In a bingo hall? In a bingo hall? Yeah. With the olds. There were old people there. Oh my God. And there were people our age there and there were young people there.

Wow. And let me tell you, let me tell you something, let me tell you something. Wow. First of all, I want a bingo Hey, I'm super good at bingo skill and to You know what you know what they don't tell you about bingo and why bingo kicks ass

Like dabbing your little dots and keeping up with the bingo collar fucking rules When you've already had two drinks. Ah. Okay. Like that's what they don't tell you. That it fucking rules. Well as a- because you have your little drinky drinks and then you're like a man calls the number and you're like that's my number. Yeah. As a recent croc and old and petonk enjoyer, I have nothing to say about embracing these old man games and activities.

We had to Uber home. Yeah, you did. We were. I won the bingo and then me and my wife stumbled out did you shove it in Agnes's face? Did you go suck it Ethel no But there was a nice there was a nice old lady who was sitting next to us was like am I gonna see you next Time we're like maybe this was fun Okay, yeah, I mean like she didn't win a

bingo though she's not as good as I am no no it's all dude the skill it's undeniable hey like there you got that I know so Reggie goes hard on trivia night stuff he's big on trivia bits loves that used to like train for it you know so these yeah I get it what'd you win though I won eleven dollars no wait ten dollars I want a very small amount of I don't know did you claim your prize I a man came to me and said sign this and I signed it and then he gave me an amount of money that I then handed to the beer man That's a racket that's a good racket they got Though

I'm sure you as you noted there's other young people around like mm-hmm. There is a there's definitely a like No, it's not hipstery, but there is a there is a discovery of old things that no one else of your age is attending that is that. Yeah, there were a couple kids there playing bingo. Yeah, but they were they were bingo maxing bingo maxing. Okay. Yeah, because the kids they had their tablets up. And I could see them like scrolling on TikTok between any moment that was free. So they had the dabber and they had the tablet and they're like one hand on the TikTok just going as fast as they can and just bam bam bam bam bam with the bingo thing. Turns out it's a lot more fun when the numbers don't involve David Cage-isms.

That's true. That's the last time we played bingo. Anyway, so are we going to... Is Typhlosion getting locked up or what? What are we doing here? Typhlosion is not real I don't mean to I don't mean to break it to anyone okay, but We need to we need to move back into the situation in which your Disgust or outrage needs to be appropriately pointed at the fact that this isn't real. Okay. Nonetheless, Nurse Jenny is gonna lock up some of these types based on

sight. Just look at it. Yeah, well that's always been the case. Yeah, I mean you can just you can just look at certain ones and you know. All right. Was I not giving you what you needed off on the on the on the Jenny Roach racial profiling angle? No, no, no, we're good. We're good. And it was less about racial profiling and more about locking up the the the predators and you know, throwing away the key. Yeah. Anyway, Pokemon so fucking stupid.

So speaking of villains, bad things. Addie Shankar has been on line. And he's working on the new Devil May Cry series, the anime that's going to be coming to Netflix. And some people noted in some of the conversation about the trailer and some of the stuff we're seeing, oh, interesting note, there's some, like looking at the screenshots in the trailer, Dante's wearing three different shirts under his jacket. So it seems like there's different eras of Dante that are going to be covered there because you got the black shirt, you got the covered there because you got the black shirt you got the white shirt you got the no shirt

so we'll see what they're going but yeah Adi Shekhar he replied to a couple people's tweets about Virgil as a villain saying actually someone said Virgil is the coolest villain in the history of gaming and he said correction anti-hero. He's not he's a absolute villain and then like 100% and then the person said he's a villain when he's motivated with gaining more power and Adi Shankar said disagree his pursuit of power is rooted in logic he understands the core nature of the universe he's not a villain he's just smart and then what the fuck is this nonsense and then a second tweet because people are going whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa had him tweeting

out every villain is the hero of their own story and yeah, that the idea being that everything that he's done is because of, you know, it was to protect the people around him and such. And I'm total nonsense. And I'm just like, no one he wants to protect around him. He has no one in his life. He attacks his own son. Do you remember? Do you remember after we beat it?

I remember this conversation so vividly and I'm ready to go right back into it. And I sat down and I had a like, okay, we need to talk about Virgil moment, we need to talk about this character that I think is awesome and is very cool and a huge fucking one of my favorites. That is, he's a piece of shit.

He's awful. He is a piece of shit. Just so, this was a couple years ago, so you might have missed it. But in case you missed it, at the end of Devil May Cry 5, after all the actions were said and done, and we got that like, kind of the bromance going between the bros and everything is jackpot. There's a bit in there where I'm like, yeah, it's easy for with the fan base especially to kind of like Whitewash and kind of forget the crimes and horrendous shit that he's responsible for. Listen Ada Wong is very morally gray but like

legitimately By going like no no it was Urizen to blame. It's like no no no by going like, no, no, it was Urizen to blame. It's like, no, no, no, before all of that, when he raised the Teben-Negru in three, knowing that he would be unleashing the demon world on Earth, he was totally okay with that as a means of getting to Sparta's power. And-

Hey, so you say that, and it's like, I don't remember that being in the game, but you know what it is in? It's in the DMC3 manga that this anime is taking characters directly from in which he's like Yeah, I'm gonna raise this tower. What about all the people who live there? Aren't they gonna get attacked by demons and he's like that's their fault for being pussies Yeah If it know if things like Tony Redgrave and Morrison and all that stuff is all part of the canon as well

like Tony Redgrave and Morrison and all that stuff is all part of the canon as well. It's like he straight up raised the tower, knowing the threats and kind of being like, yeah, my goal is not to cause this suffering, but I don't care because what I'm after is in there and that's more important to me. Maybe if they didn't want to get eaten by demons, they should be stronger because that's what I'm doing. I don't want to get eaten by demons, they should be stronger, because that's what I'm doing. I don't want to get eaten by demons, so I'm going to get stronger. And Dante's like, those are the demons that killed our mom, idiot!

He's like, yeah, I'm getting stronger, so they don't kill me. What is hard to understand here? So until then later, right, when it's like, after all these losses, after, you know, eventually, after fucking eating shit, he's like, I've got to cut out the human from the demon, you know, and you get your Urizen. It's like, even if the Urizen that gets created is the one to blame, that's still him pushing

that domino over to create that effect. Yeah, so like, okay, is Virgil responsible for the actions of Urizen? Okay, let's break this down. Is V responsible for the actions of? No, V is not responsible. However, is Virgil? Yes, Virgil is as guilty of what Urizen does as a drunk driver is

for causing a car accident. He said, I'm gonna do this, and I don't really care what's gonna happen because I really wanna do it. And then a bunch of shit happened, Virgil. You knew it could? You knew you were playing with fire. The Klyphod annihilating a city

is not number one on the list, nor is it even the main goal, but it sure is just a thing that happens to bystanders while I'm on my way to this fruit, right? And then, you know, V coming back together at the right moment was ultimately like, it was a part of a plan of desperation because he knew he didn't have long left either, you know

and You know you can this this is where you can kind of get into like was the plan to always stay Back as a full demon. Well, what about I think well that Virgil had no plan at all Because when he's defeated as a demon only and that wasn't good enough even after having the fruit clearly right there must have been some regret to that and V gets over there at the right time and maybe he changed his mind But whatever the case is like the motivation to do all that was fucking evil, dude

It was horrible. Also before he did that he like tore his own son's arm off Yeah, he's like, but but I want it though. Well, it's mine You know and it's like we don't know the full full bit but like the fact that it popped out in that way to begin with like Anyway, it's like, you know, you know that there's like a scene somewhere on a napkin of In between the ending of DMC 5 and before the post credits where he's sitting around and going man That apple made out of a million humans was delicious

You know like oh I'm so good. Good glad you reason ate that apple. Oh my god. I can remember it tasted delicious man I'm so good. Good. Glad you reason ate that apple. Oh my god. I can remember it tasted delicious man God that sure was a long time ago. I guess you two were young once You know, yeah There's all kinds of headcatted about like who is fortuna lady Is she someone that was just like that dude is literally a walking incarnation of my god get in my bed Is it just that simple?

You know, we we don't know but Whatever whatever the case is man like virgil absolutely cool You know monster drinking sitting on the plastic truck chair, etc. That's all fine. Meme it to death. The motherfucker is evil, dude He's a villain. That's crazy. And wanting the main thing to be, nah, but it's about beating my brother though, as opposed to like world domination or anything. It doesn't mean that like you can't just go, oh, thus you're an anti-hero. You don't get to write all those fucking bodies off, man. Antihero does not mean villain that has a relatable goal.

Antihero means a someone with a heroic goal or internal heroic motive that acts antithetical to the common tropes of heroics. They are rude, they are crass, they are cold, they are uncaring, whatever. They are not actively villainous. Stone Cold Steve Austin did not burn down an orphanage to get at Mr. McMahon. Motherfucker lost twice, three times Ethan, and refused to accept it. Which, okay, there's some grit, right? You don't wanna die, fine.

But the fact that, like, you're willing to, like, you go fuck the consequences, I didn't lose, you didn't win, and then you, like, you're, I'm gonna take on Mundus. You can't, idiot! Nah, though. Right? You, and, like, throw your, become a Mundus pawn. Get out of that, and still continue down this fucking you have no plan B You know in most of the games Dante is an antihero He's rude. He's crass. He does not explain what is happening

He lets bad things happen because he's not paying attention Like you know and the shoots the Pope in fortuna and doesn't tell anybody. The beginning of four. The beginning of four he looks super duper evil because you don't have the context. But he has an internally heroic goal, which is stop demons. Yeah. Um, just absolutely wild at that. Like the best villains have motivations and like guiding principles

and things that are consistent and make sense from their own perspective. When you can see it from their side and go like, Oh, I get why you're, you're, you're, you're moving the way you are. Um, you know, I've, I, without seeing it, I just, I always go back to that really, really great thing I've learned about the Wakfu villain that was kind of just like well, I don't know whatever spoilers for that if you are but the other I remember hearing about there's that there's a villain who's like doing horrendous things But the idea is like if you he by going back in time I can fix it and make it all good He just wants to get his family back. And that if you just stop trying to resist him

and let him win, he'll fix it all. But the worse and worse it gets is because you keep trying to stop him. He's like, okay, that's great. That's a really, really good example of like, oh yeah, in his head, as long as he wins in the end, it's all gonna be okay, you know? Incredible. But it doesn't mean you can write off the things that are happening on the way to that

journey, you know? So it's wild to kind of look at it this way, and I guess we'll have to take it when we see the anime, like, is Virgil gonna get kind of like Hand-waved for being a chill guy, you know, is he is it like yeah, but in the end He just wants to fight with his bro. So it's cool You know like he has that that war that ending of like and then they fought forever and stopped all the demons in hell Hang it out. You're right. And you're like, yeah, but he opened it So, you know like he created the problem and now he's like, well, I guess we gotta get down there and solve it. You know? I was workshopping, I was workshopping a metaphor

in my head for Virgil's anti-hero-ness and why it doesn't work. And I'm thinking of, there's a child crying in front of a destroyed house that Virgil walks by and he's like, I don't care about that shit. Antihero. There's a child crying in front of a destroyed house that Virgil destroyed. And he goes, I don't care about that shit.

And as I was saying this, this is the same conversation that people argued about for like a decade about Kratos in which Kratos has a goal and his goal is not heroic. His goal is just straight up revenge. And as Kratos goes through those games, he is just causing larger and larger problems and going, it's the gods' fault. And people were arguing as to whether or not he was an antihero or a villain all the way up until the release of God At War 2018 where he just has a whole speech. We're like I was a bad person Mm-hmm Yeah, I you know much to some chagrin to like it to upsetting degrees to me in the original games It was uh, you got to be clear about that. And I think in this

case just some of the, some of the, the chuckling old boomer Virgil memes might kind of make people forget. I, I remind me, there's an ancient tweet that is like Kratos looking out over the destroyed Greece going, I can't believe Zeus did this. And it makes me think of Virgil on top of the klyphot looking down at like annihilated Red Grave cities like I can't believe Yuri-zen did this. I mean, so that's the wild part is like when you make when you make fun of so that there's that Naruto video where Mr. Me seeks is just pain going

Well, it's not my fault. He made me do it and he points to fucking Madara and he's like Well, it's not my fault. He made me do it. He points to Obito. It's not my fault He made me do it and it's fucking the little whatever the the true darkness It's like it's not my fault. She made me do it and then the moon fucking And it's all these just like yeah, okay. All right sure everyone's no one's to blame everyone's on the swing set We got eight swing sets in a row and the real evil came from the moon all right sure but Virgil It's all just it's just him pointing it himself. You did this you split yourself into Created fucking massacres came back together. I went what the fuck happened

Oh, that's crazy, man. Who shot Hannibal? That's wild hey Dante you see all this shit will happen. Oh Well the portals open and we better get down there someone's got to fix this There's a real there's a real good feeling where we have all this arguing and all this shit and it's never explicitly stated or gone into it all, but there's a genuine feeling for me that that ending in DMC5 only works

under the explicit condition that Virgil is just going to stay in hell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dante is staying with him to make sure he stays in hell. Yeah. I'm not let gonna watch to make sure to watch over yeah you're actually fine as long as we quarantine you over here where you will never interact with another person ever again I'm not letting you die even though you really fucking deserve it you piece of shit more than anyone in this series you totally totally do but I'm gonna try to be the bigger man but holy fuck do you deserve it,

but fine, I'm not letting you die. God damn it, dude. Ugh, what an asshole. He's a fucking asshole. Yeah, it's crazy, it's crazy. I'm like, I'm reading that, and I'm like, as the guy with the big fucking Virgil number one finger over here Nah, dude. Fuck that guy. He's not an anti-hero. Fuck that guy He sucks. I mean he rules but he sucks. Don't don't get it twisted

Anyway, he's like like he's the fucking firewood Nero and then he's like oh my son oh cool that boy is my son yes huh that's crazy wild really wow no shit wow really oh yeah you capping you cappin', you cappin' bro. Oh. Cap. Really? That ain't my son. Dante, I thought that was, no not me?

Really? Oh, crazy. Ugh. And it's because he can fucking beat him up. Cause he can fight, you know? I acknowledge you. What, my existence or my strength, you know my or my strength like little anyway I

Don't have I don't have a son until he kicks me in the balls and fucking DT's on my ass Until I get busted into the ground. I just saw It's weird seeing on Twitter people listening to the podcast in real time But I saw a headache just like what has Virgil ever done That's heroic ever has he done one heroic act in the history of his character jackpotted He jackpotted with that's not heroic that was that was pragmatic Like has Virgil given a hand to anyone in his entire life Like has Virgil given a hand to anyone in his entire life? He took out the bigger threat at the time so that they could make the real fight about

them too. That's, that's it. That's personal. That's personal. That's it. He tried to take on Mundus because you know daddy, daddy, daddy went down like that but also he could prove how powerful he is by becoming strong. You know, I really got to hand it because there's a real problem

with a lot of villains that you fight constantly. So like, Dawn Trail has this problem, Final Fantasy XIV Dawn Trail, where the big villain of that expansion, you never feel like you can't take him. There's never a moment in that whole expansion where you're like, Oh man, this guy looks pretty tough. No, the whole time you're like, well I could just take him right now. I just, I just take them out right now. Like, like that, like no problem. But Virgil who loses like every fight he's ever been in on camera is still like, yo, that dude's so cool and so strong. Oh

shit, it's Virgil. Like it's nonstop fucking losses for Virgil. The most heroic thing Virgil's ever done was bust a fat nut. That was, that was a heroic nut. That, that needed to happen. The rest is fucking, you know, does he get credit for these actions? I don't know. Like, yeah, like at all. Not to mention the part where if you really want to go back and examine it, it's like you were outside. She was inside.

There were demons. No one abandoned you. They just couldn't get to you because of the demons you fucking jerk You stupid idiot oh Yeah, all right, yeah right Virgil's so dumb. I love him. I love him so much Hey, I'm gonna need a I'm gonna need a second. I'll be right back. Yeah, man.

I'm just thinking about how no attack in that game did more damage than catching the line I'm not your mommy V. Just... Like when he fused back together, that of damage stayed that never went away. That's it there Trish won the scene man Dante's not the only one getting impaled in every game, dude V-Gok fucking lit up Yeah anyways Okay, so

Disco Elysium's five-year anniversary passed yes, and on that day Everybody got up and had something to say so do we got? on the same fucking day three separate studios all Announced their own disco Elysium Spiritual successors we are the successor to disco of four of Successors we are the successor to disco of four of Former Za'um employees, so I saw some people say four I saw some people say five I can confirm the three

That's and when looking at it after the fact because people were saying four and five and I was like wait Okay, I can only see I can only see the three new studios that are popping up that made their announcements. I see five here. Okay, so I'll talk about the ones that I've gotten. First was Long Do, which was, it's a studio, none of the studios have Kervitz or Rostov. But there's a number of ex-Disco Elysium Zaum devs working at Long Do and they've announced they're trying, they're making a new narrative-led RPG. They didn't show anything of it. They didn't show any names or so, and they haven't gotten

into the full list as well, but they basically said that they're looking to not replicate but to innovate in Trailblaze, and the studio has former Bungie and Rockstar people on the team as well. Well, that's eclectic. So this is Long Do Studio. Not too long after, immediately, as if hitting the button in response to the fucking race, Dark Math Games came out and announced triple x night shift And they are a studio of 20 people half from Za'am again. No Curvets or Rostov and They showed a trailer

Which basically showed off? Kind of like the intro wake the waking scene in Disco where you're waking up. It was like a different character with a different set of internal stat voices. Yeah, there's footage and screenshots for this. Seems like there's a whole like, well, yeah, similar to like the limbic system scene, you know, but you kind of have these different, I think it showed off the full branch of like maybe

20 of them or so I I don't remember but play a through three-dimensional human being combine 20 traces across four categories and that sounds pretty familiar and the story Is yes, you will be playing a detective on holiday at an Antarctic ski resort in the year 2086. Triple X night shift from Dark Math Games. Then third came Summer Eternal, a studio that they didn't show off any projects, they just came out, they showed the list of people who were there including two of the original writers, Argo Tuluk and Olga Moskvina and some other writers as well from Disco Elysium, and they did not put out footage, but they put out a manifesto.

This fucking thing, Summer Eternal, if I may. On this day, the 11th of October 2024, we announce Summer Eternal. We recognize we are writing the opening words of our story at a time of apocalyptic material conditions for game creators across the world. Our art has been dressed down into an industry and this industry has been pilfered by corrupt executives, by the vulgar profiteering of corporate bodies moving like leviathans in the dark, burning human fuel in their insatiable lust for money. It is not pencil pushers and money lenders who make games. It is the relentless passion of the workers that create an art form capable of saying something true. As creators and game makers, we have too long been led away from the truth, away from the

right to define ourselves as artists, in service of the definitive art form of the future, one that has made us dream since we were children. Instead, the disposability culture operating at ruthless core of this industry wants us to think ourselves as cogs in the machine, rudimentary craftsmen, disposable career workers, inert producers of made-to-order, marketing-driven content, empty calories leaving the soul hungry. The profiteer knows that by keeping your dignity low, he will keep you crawling on the treadmill of passion until he lays you off for the sake of the red number in his book.

We make games because we have to. It is our calling. Because we have no choice but to see the transformative potential of this youngest medium of human interaction. You can't turn away once you've seen the light, or it will always feel like everyone else in the world is doing something without you. There in the light, you try to abandon, but can't. Because oh, the horror, it comes from inside you. All artist communication, dialogue across time, space and thought, in its rawest, it is one mind's ability to provoke emotion in another. Large language models, simulacra, cold comfort, real doll pocket pussy, cyberspace freezer of abandonment IM chat, which are today passed off for artificial intelligence, will never

ever be able to offer a dialogue with the vision of another human being. Machine generated works will never satisfy or substitute the human desire for art, as our desire for art in its core is a desire for communication with another, with a talent who speaks to us across worlds and ages to remind us of our all-encompassing human universality. There is no one to connect to in a large language model. The phone line is open, but there's no one on the other side. The peddlers who aim to get rich quick from this scheme

will always play the fool to any ethical or artistic argument. This is why we must push back against big techs encroachment on the territory of our art, against increasing corporatization and alienation of game creators from their work, against the robbery of rights from workers, performers, artists, and all contributors of this complicated and multifaceted medium.

Our mission is to unite world-class artists and creatives in a truly independent game studio, which will always prioritize artistic integrity over personal comfort, profit margin, short-term interests, or big tech profit bubbles. There we will be able to embark on that treacherous road of building a cultural mega-project, a role-playing game, with complexity and ambition worthy to rival our wretched and wonderful world. In this we are committed to pursue the highest caliber of literary quality.

Here we stand, bound by our love for games and devotion to our craft, ready to bleed and weep and ride the cavalry into machine-gun fire once more. For this we will need all the support and help from you, our readers, colleagues, and future visionaries. Come walk the desert with us. We will not take any of your support for granted. We have seen the suffering wrought by the hunger for power, the terror and greed and envy, the complicity of the averted eye. We've also seen the triumph of the human spirit of solidarity and of striving, of making something never before seen in its miracle unfolding to the world. We have

seen poverty and we have seen plenty. We will make mistakes, we will win and we will fail, but we will never forget what we are doing this for. Yours in every season, Summer Eternal. Yeah, that game's not coming now. It's not gonna fucking come out. Well, I'll say this. Of all the announced projects, one certainly sounds like the voice of Disco more than the others. There's one that did not get announced on the 11th.

There's one that got announced last two years ago and it was Red Info LTD, the company that Curvitz and Rostov did go and make and have since been radio silent. They're working under Neddes. And then the fifth is Za'um's continued shambling corpse. Ah, okay, we're counting Za'um. Yes. Okay, there you go. That makes sense. Fair enough. So these three were announced simultaneously and then there's the prior. And then there's the fourth that was a little bit bad and then there's the obvious original. Yes. So here there are words and there are people writing them Yeah, I don't know that that means there are visuals or

Anything else that it takes to make a game, but at the very least there is a burning spirit and desire to make that happen Hey, let's be blunt dark math has put a trailer out for a game that has had people work on it They have put out a trailer. Like, out of all of these, that's the only one. That you can watch right now. Um, but I will say this. I will say this. That there is definitely a...

There's a moment in reading this where you're like, okay, you can... There's a part of your brain that goes pompous, self-serving, verbose, a little bit fart smelly, perhaps, but I believe that- Definitely. They believe what they're writing here. Oh, that's the best part. And I believe that the thing that I love about disco is how much disco means it.

And that is something absolutely worth looking at and holding onto. Because I don't know that any of these games, I don't know that they, like they're gonna have the text on the side, they're gonna have cool voices, they're gonna have narration and awesome things going on on and they'll probably be some pretty fun RPGs But I don't know that they're all gonna have something to say

Do you know what I think I think the most important thing? That any of them could say is that one of the largest takeaways of disco Elysium as its core theme would be that communism is for losers. And to move from that to five different groups going, we're the real people who really know what disco really means. We're the successors. We're gonna do it the right way this time.

Without any of those fat cats wearing us down! We're gonna do the real true version. We get it. We know the difference this time. We're gonna make it happen. It's time! It's the road itself. The most disco ending and the most disco disillusion into spiritual successors. Yes. And like three of these will fail.

Maybe four. And two of them will release in a way that the developers are going to go, you know, we tried, we tried, we tried, but you know, the economics of capitalism made sure we couldn't really bring out our true vision. Triple X Night Shift is probably coming out. It's probably going to be the best one just because they've made some of it. It's happening and it's there and they proved that it's happening. Like if these were kickstarters, that one showed you that there's a game happening. Yeah This is this is a wild fucking just I mean I was I so here's what's up like

personally, I Definitely cemented in my I'm like I Disco Elysium being a one-off in Moment in history that was just like it couldn't possibly continue You know too much blood too much blood was on that on that that keyboard And they had to they had to fail Like and bankrupt themselves making a completely different type of game to get the chutzpah to fucking make disco. And I was ready to accept a timeline where that's all that ever was. It was a fucking

blip that shouldn't have existed, that came out of nowhere and was unbelievable. Like legit. Oh yeah. When I finished it, I had this feeling of like, oh, there's never going to be anything like this ever again. No. And I mean, also, like, I put extra emphasis as well because being an adult, being somewhat more jaded and cynical to some degree now because I've played games for my whole life and stuff,

like, the impact, something being impactful now means so much more. And like, you know, there's a lot of games that we can look at in our childhoods and go, yeah, that was life-changing. But like, to make something that you can consider life-changing like now is almost impossible, you know? So I'm like, that was a weird thing

that shouldn't have happened. And now to have any of this occur, like, I am very curious to see who carries some of this flame forward and what it looks like. Because, yeah, Disco was not made by just one person or two people. There was a whole team, you know? It'll be very interesting to see what pieces of disco branch out into each particular project being stronger or weaker or more focused on or less focused on. Because I'm like, okay, so here is a fucking manifesto that I can hear the narrator going

and having that moment. I know what your game is going to sound like. And then here's another where the portraits are the lines instead of an actual panterly face of some kind. And it's giving an ethereal kind of tone as you're a woman waking up in a big bed. And it's kind of hazy and ASMR and druggie. So it's got that kind of psychedelic quality to it. But you know, that's one piece of disco, the psychedelic quality, right?

The marching fire and the and the riding of horses into machine guns is another one, you know, and will they all just become like the these these transformations, these Voltron, you know, parts together where, like, one of these is going to be just the comedy, the goofiness, the fucking the cop adventure, I don't know, whatever the absurdities are, you know. It's interesting because just like, like yeah of all these companies like they're They're they're not the none of these three have those two names at them, but They're clearly announcing at the exact same time because there's an arms race to take the mantle of Disco Elysium's like success background Rostov and Kervitz and their boys are working on

some something Something now are they are they like drinking and smoking the day away and there's literally nothing to show for it fucking maybe Fucking maybe who knows Did eternal summer write that the night the same night? They saw the two get announced and just fucking took a shot Put the keyboard down and went You know like I think so I think they just they posted that on a red background and slapped that shit online and said we exist You know, but um

It's about to get really interesting for Disco Elysium fans, I guess. We'll see what happens. And then we'll see what Za'um themselves actually put out and what that looks like. Which might be fucking nothing. The way this letter is written, excuse me, this manifesto is penned, makes it sound like what you can expect from Za'um might be heavily AI dependent, you know? That'd be bad. But like who else but light bending money

would embrace that, you know? Why do you guys keep talking to me about writers? Just have the chat GPT write it. I would not imagine those words were included here for no reason You know That would also be the most disco thing ever. It really would like Joyce forever disco, baby. Oh Man yeah, yeah this this story just keeps, it keeps like...

The vibe? It's a vibe nuke is what it is. Disco Elysium was a vibe nuke on video games and then the fallout continues. And then it was killed and then it's fucking head split like the Hydra. It's too late. You can't kill it. It's already out there. We've already seen it, we've heard it, we've played it.

And most importantly, it was voice acted. These are all going to be smaller scale projects It makes me wonder if the best one of these games Is the not voice acted yeah, that's what's gonna. Yeah Yeah You know that's gonna happen oh Yeah, yeah Yeah, they all okay, can they all Just hire the same narrator Lenvol Brown was showed on

Part of the I think he's part of these the the summer eternal team I think the screenshot showed him on that team so he is He's been pulled this so eternal Summer got him in the divorce then? I think so. Ooh, that's a get. Let me double check it. Get. But I think they got him, you know?

Yeah. I mean, hey man, Baldur's Gate narrator is getting her flowers. Oh, she's great. She's great. She's got a tone to her too that is appreciable. Anyway. That's Amelia Tyler, I want to say. I think they're the only ones that showed off the staff, but the voice acting is going

to be the question. Oh, well, and then of course, Night Shift also showed off the voice acting too. The voice acting is going to be a deal breaker, not for you or I, but for you and I's channels. Correct. But I also put the original disco on a shelf because of that reason. For this exact purpose. Yeah. But here I am playing Phoenix Wright.

And you know what? It's going pretty good. Phoenix Wright has like in its totality like one eighth of Disco's voice dial- like I I looked up the numbers by the way. You did? Yes, so If you want your comparison points Alright, let's do it. Sacred and Terrible Air, air the book that I read has 87,000 words Phoenix Wright has to one ace attorney has 220,000 words. Yeah, that's about right

so order of magnitude indifference, but I know what I'm messing with and And if you want to go disco Elysium word count you get one million words Not all viewable on every path, but sure sure let's say you cut out 20% maybe 30 because you can still Exhaust and then pick one right Cut cut cut down a third, maybe. Sure.

Still, yes, orders of magnitude. Fucking crazy. That's a lot of words. That's a lot of words. That's a lot of words. Yeah, so there we go. All right. That's pretty much what I thought was interesting this week.

Yeah, it was kind of slow this week, huh? The only other bit was just, it's what we know, but Steam put up a warning message now to let customers know you're buying a license, not actually buying the game. And we all knew this you know but yeah that was known but now this is just a like legally we're recovering our asses to say that no when you buy a digital copy of a game you're not buying the game and then GOG swoops in and it's like hey man you totally own it. This is these these trends are always gonna go against the consumer.

It's just the way you know like this is gonna get worse and worse over time and the fact that listen if I buy it with my money but I don't own it that means if I pirate it with my no money that means I'm not stealing it hmm hmm you can't steal things that are impossible to own hmm if you're um God what was the fucking when you make purchases on like stadia and shit like you can get your metadata transfer to you like no wonder thank you cool that's actually what I'm glad you exported and saved that. Nice. Let's take some letters. Hey if you want to send in a letter send it to castle super beast mail at gmail.com that's castle super beast mail at gmail.com. Alright we got one coming in.

Owning things is like a metaphor. It's like an allegory. In that it's not real and you don't. Not even the means of production? I still think back to a long time ago where I wanted to make a communism joke and I wanted to yell out, seize the means of production, but instead I fucked up and yelled out, destroy the means of production.

And then I thought about it and I'm like, yeah, actually yes. Yes. No, that's how that is. How that goes. Destroy them in the process of seizing them. You're correct, actually. You were more right than you knew. Oh, fuck. Yep. You're not gonna 5G me, motherfucker. Yeah, you are.

Give me my 5Gs, please. We'll build our own nuclear energy. Yeah, how hard can it be? Get a couple boys around, you know, and enrich some uranium. This rock's hot, right? So I just need to get it to boil water? Okay, fine, whatever. Oh, man.

Yeah, Reggie's like, I thought it was a party. It was a good time. Oh man. Yeah, Reggie's like, I thought it was a party. I just, it was a good time. Put the lamp shade on the head, you know? Woo. Hey. Wee. Oh my God, dude.

And just Krasmazov gets so much more in sacred and terrible air. Oh yeah? Like, the depths of failure, dude. It's wild. The moments they build on for, it's incredible. It's so fucking good. Get owned, Kraz.

Like, the echo of the gunshot of the bullet that you put in your own mouth being used in a moment of like time-crossing beat-dropping rhythm so that you can use that sound and its echoes to drop the ultimate fucking EDM beat. I'm like, it's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, I Went back in time to use the sound effect of him blowing his brains out Hit the dance floor no, I don't want to all right Make sure to read a really good email. Oh

No, hold on Oh, man. All right there Willie and Pat learn here. No witty nicknames for now I was I was watching Sakurai's recent video about the importance of developing games that respect people's time And while I was very wellurai's recent video about the importance of developing games that respect people's time. And while it was very insightful, one thing I appreciate is that while he's talking, he immediately apologizes to fans for wasting so much of their time on Smash. It was silly, but I find it kind of sweet how considerate he was being with people's time. What little things do you think you appreciate like that from devs? And what are games that you've played that have respected and disrespected your time? respectively

One of the things that really stands out to me is Miyazaki doesn't play his own games. That's hilarious That's crazy like like like mr. Mr. From soft Elden ring Dark Souls just like does not know that shit's too hard I believe and yeah, and like that's why so much shit in there is so fucking weird and non-intuitive, it's because it's being made by somebody who's never going to encounter it. I feel like I just, I moment stand out where I'm like, I don't mind if you disrespect my time respectfully. Like, I'm one of those that liked sailing, so I enjoy riding my boat, and I feel like in Black Flag, that was the full embodiment

of what I started to feel playing Wind Waker. What I started to feel playing Wind Waker, Black Flag fully brought that out, you know? But like, Triforce pieces obviously can go fuck themselves forever, because it doesn't matter what method you're using to get to that thing, that's garbage. I've talked about Metroid Prime 2's disrespecting of your time by going back to get those final little puzzle bits towards the end.

But even things where I'm like, I'm not a fan of crafting, for example. I don't generally enjoy it that much. And in a lot of cases, tweaking things and stuff depends. But in many games, I don't really enjoy it. It's really silly. But something that I still remember is in Last of Us 1, like when you're modifying your weapons and doing shit and tweaking it and just having the fact that

it was all laid out on the table. Yeah. It was nice. I just, just that little detail made me enjoy something that I otherwise would not enjoy doing because of the feeling of like survival whittling, you know, and that you're doing and such. Like I actually can find myself enjoying mundane things if you make it feel like it's part of the experience. You know, I play a lot of open world games and I've like, I've had my spiels where I complain about Rockstar, about how it takes ten years to

skin a fucking deer, because you've got to have this lavish deer skinning animation and load it up on your horse and all that. But we've entered into this world in which, is there an animation for picking something up off the fucking ground or not? because If there is if you're dead still and you hit the button and you character like kind of lean down pick something up But otherwise it'll just show it's shooting your inventory. Mm-hmm fine but if every time you fucking like I'm gonna I'm gonna pick up an item and your characters like oh

Let me go pick up that item. I'm gonna to pick up an item and your character's like, oh, let me go pick up that item. I'm going to freak out. I fucking hate it. It means nothing to anyone. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

If the thing you're picking up is also ore that dropped on the ground from a picking animation that was already slow because part of the process is making you watch that picking, then yes, let it just drop into your fucking pockets. Like Monster Hunter, as people are pointing out, is like the absolute ultimate. Like I complain about Red Dead and shit like that, but Monster Hunter, there's the, oh my fucking God, dude. Oh my God.

Oh my God. Every single goddamn animation was this long, laborious thing that could fail. Fuck off, my pickaxe broke. Go to hell. Shout outs to people handing you an invisible object off camera and then your character receiving it. I'm a huge fan of that. Putting it in the back pocket. I love that.

Oh, here's that dog you wanted. Oh, oh, thank you. I'm also, this is obviously developers wasting my time Somebody in the chat mentioned Pokemon. There's a ton of games doing this Your text needs to be faster Oh I need to be I need to be able to I need to be able to kick up the speed of the text to my reading speed Because holy shit. Do you remember Final Fantasy Tactics and like

the phrase little money in the opening text crawl that goes L-I-T-T-L-E, space and then it types money. It's weird, I hate it. Show the text instantly or current it to the voice acting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the same speed. Or tap, tap, tap. Okay.

We got one in here from JR Bear says, hello 3D horse boys. Long time listener, Jojo fan also pondered Uh, Jare Bear says, hello 3D horse boys. Long time listener, Jojo fan also pondered how they were going to get horses to work in part seven. I believe a proof of concept has shown itself. Elusive Samurai has a lot of horse combat scenes and though there's some wizardry, and through some kind of wizardry they're looking good and not jarring at all.

Check it out to see, because this tech could be used for steel ball run. Also on the side, okay. You're my... I'm trying to look for it right now. My retired non-video game playing mother's favorite podcast. Oh, thank you. She affectionately refers to YouTube's... That horse looked fine. That's very nice of her. Thank you. That's sweet. Okay, elusive samurai. Okay, they're 3d models. That's happening. But they're being shaded really appropriately.

Let me see. And the horse. Yeah, they're 3d models and they have a really good run cycle. That is well put together. And like I'm seeing different I'm seeing different shots of the horse in elusive samurai and the horse has the same run cycle in all the shots Okay, the run cycle is really good, and they're just shading it really really flat. It's flat. Yeah, okay I see a really flat shaded horse right now in screenshots Is there move here? I'll just I'll just I'll get you a fucking shot here. I found the video

Here you go Share Share, start at 144. Poop. Okay. Here you go. So you'll see what I'm talking about. Wait, did I? You'll see what I'm talking about. I have to open it in an out loud way for a stream. but like the horse has like one run animation and The run animation is solid and the horse is just shaded so flat That it's not clear. It's a 3d model. Oh god, but it's 3d model. This is only gonna hold on a second This is only gonna open in a way. That's loud. Oh No All right

Let me figure this out give me a second. Sorry. Yeah, they're basically painting over the 3Dness. We always knew it was gonna be 3D horsies The question is Wooly do do the horses and steel ball run did they do anything other than run yeah, they do I mean do stuff they run in really cool crazy non-standard ways sometimes. They do things. They do. They run, but boy they're, you know, they fucking go! Um, they're and like there's moments of like musculature detail and emphasis that are like Yeah, you know what they can do they can just whenever that happens. They can just cut to a like a landscape shot and then cut back to the characters and in

Gyros like holy shit your horse did that it was so crazy read the manga True believers yeah, I mean they literally replace the characters like feet like our judge you know during fights at time Yeah, I guess Alright elusive samurai No, you know what they need no no no no no I did it just Just not don't animate the horses at all Just have them be stone still Standing straight up like doing the horse equivalent of an a pose and just have them slide around Flat panels with the 3d characters on top of them. Hmm. Yeah, okay. Yeah

All right. We got one here from Cole who says, hey, Patrick and Woolsworth, what's a feature or mechanic that was unique to a game that you're disappointed you haven't seen it ripped off or reiterated on more? For example, Mount and Blade has the best medieval melee combat system of the time, of all time, but to my knowledge it has only been copied by Fat Shark's fantastic but short-lived War of the Roses. Curious to hear your thoughts.

I think a lot of quality of life stuff that, you know, we've seen popping up is mainly my concern quality of life over everything you were just we're just talking about like text and games then I think of how 999 lets you skip past all the text that you've already read to get to the new stuff on subsequent playthroughs oh that's insanely common that's like one of the most common visual novel ever existed at the time that I played it that was the first time I had ever seen it. Oh no, that's like standard.

Okay. Well, awesome. Great. Good to know. Back then, that was the first time for me. And I love the idea of, for example, P3 with the ability to go back earlier in the day on your saves, stuff like that as well It's just really oh, yeah, that's nice like save rotation being baked in to the moment that you you actually pick

You know I'm seeing a lot of people in chat save the nemesis system. It's fucking criminal We never got the nemesis system in anything other than those goddamn Lord of the Rings games This is patented now can't go anywhere. But like they didn't even use it for like Batman. Like they could have made a Batman game with a Nemesis system. That would have worked. I'm gonna dominate the zapping system. The zapping scenario system where the game changes depending on who you beat the game with first. I think that's cool.

Yeah. Yeah, other cool stuff that's probably used in other things I have I don't know. So that. We got one coming in that says, hey, on your phone charger not working properly, there's lint or dust in the charging port. Get a safety pin and scrape it out And your charger will work perfectly again Thank you. I've literally never had a problem with my phone charger in my entire life

I had those but that's gonna talk about the wiggling of the Yeah, the only time I've ever had a problem with the phone charger I held up the phone charger and the charger itself had been completely destroyed by an animal or like dramatic accident. And it's like well these pins are like a bordering on being broken off. There's no way I can use this. I would suggest maybe not using a metal thing, maybe like a toothpick or something that wouldn't necessarily electrocute you potentially by sticking it in an outlet or a socket or port. What do you do? Do you rotate? Do you rotate?

Do you like replace your phones often enough that? I replace my phone every like three or four years. Okay. I'm sometimes less frequent than that even. So all right. And let's take one last one here. Rotten Butter writes, Dear something clever. I'm clever. Yay. Thank you for saying that we're clever.

Wanted to share with you something I learned about the US government today that I can only describe as some anime bullshit. Uh huh. So, the governor of states have the power to veto bills and in Wisconsin, they also have the power to veto parts of a bill, meaning that they can let most of a bill pass but delete parts they don't agree with. Oh, that's crazy actually. Clearly when they made this power, they didn't think about how far this could be pushed until

in 1990 when they made a Vanna White Law that prevents governors from taking out words and sentences to make Frankenstein bills that are completely different from their original intent. All you have to do is black out the word not. Exactly. But this hasn't stopped the current governor from saying that numbers and punctuation are still fair game. Oh my god, dude So taking a bill that would increase school budgets every year from

2024 2025 and making it into one that would increase budgets every year until 2450 no question. Just thought you'd get a kick out of the Wisconsin governor using a veto power like Bullshit That is funny. It's mainly funny because we don't live in Wisconsin. That's insane to just like, okay, let's use these letters and fucking just construct another bill by deleting. And like the logic of the words has to remain true. The rules say I can do it. So every bill just puts every letter at the beginning and at the end and then whoever gets in

can just fucking, whoop, whoop, whoop. Yeah, that's incredible, that's wild. Talk about fucking with the founding fathers interpretations of things, man. Wisconsin, you crazy. That's incredible. That's wild. Talk about fucking with the founding fathers interpretations of things, man. Wisconsin, you crazy. All right. Why is it called a Vanna White law? Because of the, I'm assuming Wheel of Fortune letters appearing.

Oh, oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. You know, people who annoy you. South Park. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna decline to solve. Oh, you, for all the money? I'm gonna decline to solve. For all the money, are you sure you don't wanna solve? You know what?

For all the cash. I'm pretty, I'm certain. Pat Sajak says there's a lot of money on the line. I mean, it's yours to solve if you want it. I don't know. I don't. That might be like the... Ha ha ha ha ha!

Oh, that might be the funniest. No, the second funniest South Park Joe. I think the good the best has got to be token. Oh, the base. Yeah. And and changing tokens named a Tolkien and then rewriting the subs on 20 years of episodes. Yeah.

Yeah. To gaslight people. That is that is the most powerful bit All right, let me know when you're good to sink go ahead and Five four three two one 2, 1, 6