Castle Super Beast - CSB 292: To Hit Armor Vibe Zero

Episode Date: October 30, 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 http://expressvpn.com/superbeast to get 3 extra months free with a 12-month plan. -- Click this link https://boot.dev/?promo=CASTLESUPERBEAST and use my code CASTLESUPERBEAST to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev.   Promised Consort Radahn: Gay Marriage Casts Meteor Concord’s Secret Level Episode: A Stillbirth Baby Shower Roll 1D20 To Pass The Cringe Check Twin Peaks: 90% Vibes, 10% Answers Cabin Kite Life When You Don’t Want It To End Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition – Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Switch The Vatican has unveiled the official mascot of the Holy Year 2025: Luce (Italian for Light). Archbishop Fisichella says the mascot was inspired by the Church's desire "to live even within the pop culture so beloved by our youth." Blade has been delayed indefinitely, It no longer has a release date Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 annonce un doublage en français ! BREAKING: Sony is shutting down Firewalk Studios, the maker of the recent shooter Concord. ♻️Sushi Ben First Trailer Remix♻️ DMCV x PGR: Collabing means your mobile game dies  

["Sailor Moon Theme"] Alright, and with that we should be back. Hello, hi. Hello. What's going on? With that, we should be back. Hello, hi. Hello. What's going on? Brand new spooky Discord noises. This is a completely new stream and it's definitely not affected by the curse of raw. Brand new spooky Discord noises

bring brand new spooky streaming problems. There we go. Yes. Na sa mana emotep. It's fine. I have returned the slab. The podcast may now begin. All right. Okay. All right. Good. Good. So where was I? Yes. I don't know. I have invented what I believe I have invented some brand new tech that this morning I can't believe I didn't think of earlier. So this is true. Yeah, but at the very least it's it's solved the problem that I had for a while now. So I used to have a pillow that was a super like puffy, youuffy, really, really soft, kind of like, floofy

pillow, the kind that your head really sinks into. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, another time. Yeah. And that was nice for a while, but after a certain point, I was like, I need a little bit more rigidity, right? Yeah, okay. I need something to kind of hold it up, especially because I tuck my dreads sometimes You know into a place where I can kind of rest my head there. So okay. Yeah, it's pretty useful

Actually, like if I have a song before we continue I need to ask you like a really basic question Are you a back sleeper a stomach sleeper or side sleeper? I spin You spin I rotate. Yeah. Oh And this is with crucial to what I've discovered today. So what I eventually switched from being a super duper fluffy kind of like pillow to something still soft but kind of flatter. And that was nice. But I realized the exact height I wanted

was the flatter but still soft pillow, but times two. So I got two of them, and I stacked them. I used to sleep with that. Yeah. For decades. Exactly, right? Two really flat pillows. Yes, that was ultimately exactly what I wanted,

and it was the right distance from my head to my shoulder, so that when I side slept, my head was fully supported, it wasn't tilting too much one way or the other, it was nice and straight. And then when I was on my back, I could like, same thing, right, everything's nice. So two pillows kind of worked, that exact height was really great.

Of course, the biggest problem with pillows a lot of the time is the temperature, right? You never get that consistent temperature. So what I did recently was I took the two pillows and I folded them taco style and I put them vertically next to each other, right? And so what that did is it creates the same length from bed to top, because it's the double, it's a double.

But what happened is I'm rolling on one, I'm on one side, I'm facing like left, and I'm like feeling comfortable. And then last night I rolled over to the right and I had a fresh, cool pillow unwarm by the other. I need a clearer visual description. Okay, gotcha. I'm not, it's not, it's not, I can't see it. A revolution happened in my brain. Okay, so let's actually use numbers, right? Let's say, long time ago, I used a pillow

that had a height of fluffiness of like 20 or so. Yeah, okay. And that was too much, right? What I actually want to feel comfortable is a height of like 20 or so. And that was too much, right? What I actually want to feel comfortable is a height of like 10. So I ended up getting two pillows that are height five, and then I put them on top of each other, and then that was perfect.

Right. The only problem is that your pillow gets hot, and you have to flip it around. Yeah, so you have to put the under one on top and shit like that. And shit like that, right? And I'm like, yeah, flip it around. Put the under one on top and shit like that. And sit like that, right? And I'm like, yeah, flipping it around and stuff, you know, and I get like, you know, I don't enjoy that process.

It's annoying. So what I did was I took the pillows that were stacked on top of each other and I rotated them 90 degrees so that they're like vertical, right? And okay, so you mean like you're sleeping on like a tall L? No, no, no. Like a lowercase L? No, no, no. Take the two pillows on top of each other. Now rotate 90 degrees.

So now they're going, now they're- Okay, so they're facing vertical instead of horizontal. Yeah, now they're vertical. Now they're lengthwise, right? Okay. And then separate them so that they're side by side with each other. Okay.

And then fold them in half in the middle so that now you have the exact same thickness and surface area as the... But how do you keep it from flopping down? It doesn't. The material is... Oh, it's not, you know, they're flat enough that they... The material stays in place, yeah.

So you're sleeping in an ass crack. You've created an ass crack to sleep in. And my head is on one cheek though, it's not the crack. Yeah, okay. And then I rotated to the other side, facing the other way, because I rotate when I sleep. And then the other side was cold immediately, and comfortable immediately. And the temperature doesn't go between the two. And I was like, I have the exact same setup, except now there's a separation, which means

the temperature regulation is fantastic. So I am leaning on the left-ass cheek and I rotate over to the right one. And it's great. And people make fun of me for sleeping in my square. That's fine. But ultimately, the result here is it's the same volume, right? It's the same surface area, except because the division is in the middle instead of horizontal across, now it's vertical, and that means that you essentially have two pillows of the same size you can sleep on and

Because I spin and that's crucial here because if you're a middle sleeper That's on your back the whole time you might not like the groove in the middle, right? But because I go from left to right and then on top and back and forth I've been able to just get a perfect temperature regulation going how long you've been doing this I last night discovered it for the first just last? Because for me, I kind of get it. Like me, when I had the two pillow set up, I would just bring the bottom pillow up on top. But my only real question is, if I'm rolling around, I'm rolling around significantly, are you not worried that you'll just end up with no pillow by sliding between the cheeks?

It didn't happen. And I believe as well that like, I'm probably like 80% side sleeping one way or the other and then 20% on my back, right? So like that 80% is going left and right, sometimes fully one way or the other. But you know, a lot of that, but I spin. I don't stay still. And because I spin, there's a lot of temperature fuckery that happens that feels bad because I'm like, I want it cold.

So I have to do a lot of pillow flipping to stay cool, you know? And this just kind of completely gets rid of that. And I'm pretty psyched, pretty stoked that it took my entire life to figure this out. Yeah. And yes, it does resemble... That's fascinating. Did you sleep better? I did.

It was great. Well then good. Yeah. It does resemble an ass, I suppose, now that we're thinking about it. But... Well, the main thing is, is the open part at the top or the bottom? Top. Oh yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, no, that's a butt cheek.

Yes. Because the bend at the bottom is like, fits nicely into your neck, like, you know, kind of groove. Right? So your head is resting and then you have... you want that little bump to just be right there. You don't want to have the, yeah, the pillowcase opening and all that shit facing you down towards the bottom of the bed. That sucks. You want that little bump to just be right there. You don't want to have the pillowcase opening and all that shit facing you down towards the bottom of the bed, that sucks. So there you go.

Well, I'm more interested in hearing about this next week. Yeah, yeah. Because like, it needs some time. One good night's sleep is like, that's nice, but let's see if no inopportune problems occur. Yes, this is true. It is also the first night returning to my bed after cabin bed, right? So I'm happy to be back in my own bed as well.

I used to have sleep problems. I would have lots of nights where I couldn't sleep. And then me and Paige had this great idea where we took every sleep problem we've ever heard and Transformed it into a person who now contains all of our sleep problems separate from our own bodies Yes Embodied it and cast the spell and just go. Cause now when I'm like, I'm gonna go take a nap in the middle of the day and I put my fucking head down, I'm done, man, gone.

Yeah, no, that sleeper, I mean, I've always been a really heavy sleeper and I've always been like particularly efficient. And so I can sleep standing up, sleep on the bus, sleep on my way to work. I've talked about that. Yeah, you would always be the, whenever we would go anywhere, you would always be the, whenever we would go anywhere,

you would always be the person who was willing to take the hit and be like, guys, I can sleep in anything. If there's literally nowhere left to sleep, I'll take the floor. Literally, yeah. And it was very, like, incredibly magnanimous of you. I just don't take a debuff from it.

I feel okay in the morning. It's like, I'm like, it's fine. But, yeah in the morning. It's like I'm like it's fine, but Yeah, and so and I know that like if I have a day where there's like working out involved or some shit like I am Corpsing the second I sit down in any way she oh yeah, so yeah No, that's um I imagine that baby just has a a fucking field of There's say there'sina's is exuding. There's a really specific aura of having the child, which is like the most exciting thing in the world is going to bed.

Like, like like and And then the child can stop you because every now and then they go through the sleep regression and there It's like 1130 and they're like I'm so awake and you're like, come on man. I can't we can't go to sleep until you're asleep It's I'm off. Come on Yeah, come on They were quite lucky, he rarely does that. Punch Mom had a friend who had a pretty, speaking of tech, a pretty solid thing I've never seen before, but her mom, her friends is a mom and what she has been using is basically a belt with a platform on it And it's just a little rest for the baby to sit on so that you can do things one-handed

While babysit on a shelf attached to you. I've got one of those. Yeah, it's incredible Yeah, I don't have the side one. I have the I have the I had the the one that goes on the front Okay, so like that, you know that like the baby backpack or the baby fan Yeah, it's not a papoose, but it's like a platform like a little yeah for a while. I would I would use that When he was a little smaller But now now that he's a proper toddler There's a better place for him, and that's just right over the shoulder. Okay? Just being hauled like a sack of potatoes.

Yeah, okay. You are an item into the inventory, Hugo. Or like underneath the arm, again, like a sack of potatoes. But yes. So, I did have a week. You did? I did have a week that led up to me

in figuring out this butt pillow tech. Tell me about your week, Woolly, from Woolly Versus. Well, first things first. Promised consort Radon. So, so like all jokes aside, I did that, that, that shit post of like, congrats beating him now. He was harder before. Um, even now it's,

it's definitely the farthest they've ever pushed it. It's crazy. It's crazy. Like we've been saying that. So, okay. I think the first, like there's a moment when these tough super challenges, like the moment it tipped over from like, oh my God, that's a lot and wow, I can't believe how hard it is into, okay, wait, what the fuck is from soft thinking? I think the orphan of cause was that moment. The orphan was the line where everyone was like, you may have gone too far in a few places.

Like actually guys, what are we doing? Right? Yeah. And like there is, I have personally retconned a headcanon for Orphan of Cause that makes me appreciate him more. Which is, I've always, like, what is the deal with Orphan? Why is Orphan so bad? And it's because Orphan does not have a secret stamina bar like every other boss has. There's that. And I was like, oh, that's interesting that this specific enemy does not

follow the correct rules of the world he is placed in, which is appropriate for his character. I would also say that the animations are not logical. You can't follow them the way you follow a big guy with a sword or you know, even like, okay, stuff like Blood Starve Beast and like, and so early on kind of fucked you up by like trying to predict the animations, but the thing itself makes no sense, you know, and Orphan is absolutely a non-intuitive thing in the way it flails

at you. So that too is like fucking you up. Now let's move on to promised consort Radahn who is a very normal character to fight. They're the correct size for a fromslaught antagonist. They have swords, they have some some spells like they are the one-on-one Virgil kind of thing that we talk about and then you hit phase two and then you start fighting a bleach character like

just so every every every conceivable, like the joke about Elden Ring characters holding up their swings for too long to catch your rolls is now embellished in a character, sorry, embodied in a character that will just have phantoms attack you five times in a row as part of their slash. With the fake outs and then there's that,

and then there's the part where almost like, how, you know, like Fume Night, not Fume Night, God, the first like fire nights there in, with the fire gut that like you can't stand close to them or you're taking fire damage in DS2. Oh, Smelter. Smelters, right? The Smelter and the Delta demons.

Well, not Smelter and Skelter or Helter. Nah, Smelter and Delta. Helter Smel we're... Not smelter and skelter? Nah, smelter and delta. Helter smelter. Alright, well anyways. So the idea here now is not only should you be avoiding the swing in the correct direction, but you cannot be anywhere inside of the attack box of the attack, because after it's done, the fucking flashbangs go off, you know?

So I have to ask, did you go back and look at what the visuals on those attacks look like a couple months ago? No. They are, you should go check it out. The beams that would come off his regular strikes and the gigantic AOE and the those those lights had their intensity decreased about like 300%. I heard I heard they were blunt and the one that was really outrageous is that

when he would do the the teleporting like flash enemy version like the Phantom attacks those things would also fire off lights when they did it yeah okay all the that's the thing right this attacking you visually just like with blindness is just insane because that still happens apparently it was worse too on his one blood flame attack right yeah that little bit of Moog that he does like that slash explodes and it lingers in the air so long that the next thing he does is obfuscated. There was one of his, I think it was cross attack. Even if you blocked it perfectly in his old version, there was nothing that had time to swing on him before he hit you with

another, like just all sorts of things that were unfinished. And it, there was an interview with me as Zach, oh sorry, after you. Oh no, I was gonna say, a lot of those attacks, you go like, okay, well, old faithful says what? Step one is pick a cardinal direction and see if you can roll in that direction. And some of those directions end up just being the wrong guess every single time.

And then after that, pick another direction to roll in to avoid the light. And there's a couple of the attacks where I'm kind of like, I have not found the solution, so the answer will be kill him before he does this thing too many times, because it's just going to be a free SIP trade. There was an interview with Miyazaki in which he says that the final boss of Shadow of the Urd Tree is about as far as they can push the game's difficulty with the system they have created. And I'm in large agreement that that is as far as the lock-on and R1, R2 dodge roll system can manage. He is out of control.

Yeah. I mean, when you have sequences of eight swings and each swing has an after effect, so it's ultimately 16 attacks in a row, and your room to get your one attack in is like you get one and then he's immediately into another sequence. You know, it's like, what is the DPS race here? There is no DPS race, you just get one. And then you've taken the factor as well where it's like, alright, so what about doing the plot, right? You can call in Sir Ansbach and Theolier. That's a trap.

And Theolier is so useless that he dies and he makes the life bar go up and he doesn't do enough damage or pull focus long enough to be worth it. So the way that I pulled it out was I was using the biggest sword I could get my hand on. The Krag Blade, that giant triangle rock blade from one of the forges. And I was using the, I forget its name, the blocking tier, the perfect parry tier. The Sekiro tier. The hard tier or so. Yes. Yes. Right. So I was using that and I got I got really really really good at that first phase Because if you if you can perfect Perry deflecting hard tier if you can do the deflecting hard tier on his regular swings

Yeah at the end of a sequence you get a counter attack and if your weapons really big it does like a pretty good amount of damage Yes, I actually same so a phase one I have pretty far I have pretty down pat as well honestly like what I did was I just turned this into the moog boss fight for me right it's I got the exact same vibe out of it where it's like okay how appropriate exactly like phase one is just I know your I know your pattern I know your moves I know everything and I can do this cleanly the only thing that's gonna get me every once in a while is that one roll catch combo where the timing is just off, where it starts up a little too fast and then the second swing

lingers a little too long and the first hit lets you panic long enough to eat the second. But otherwise, yeah, phase one, absolutely clean, you know. And so I got to this place where it's like, so I'm in a phase two and I'm just like, oh my, oh my God, like, holy fucking shit. And throwing down a summon increases his health by like fucking 25%. I don't know. It seems like he is more affected than it than anybody else. It's crazy. It is super crazy how much life he gets each for the 7th. So my plan was and the way that I managed it is I played the whole first phase by myself and then once phase two started to go crazy I would pull pull out Mimic Tier only.

Okay, okay. Because I needed to get through the first phase as fast as possible. Okay. And do as much damage to phase two before I increased his health, because it increases by a percentage. Yeah, Mimic Tier adds just like all the rest do, right? Does that, if you call in the sisters, do they get two for one? No, they can't was one. Okay, so yeah 20 Okay, cut like I on my first couple of tries. I pulled in everybody all at once and I was

Looking at a boss with a hundred and sixty. Oh, it doesn't mimic doesn't add anything Good then well interesting well mimic never lasts to phase two if you summon him in phase one doesn't add anything? Oh. Ooh. Well, good then. Well, interesting. Well, Mimic never lasts to phase two if you summon him in phase one. Okay. Mine, yeah, no, mine died. And then I threw a little scarlet rock pot

in my pockets, you know what I mean? Put a little fuckin' anti-holy blessing and all that shit. Switching my build up to be a spellcaster and a faith incantation caster as well was interesting because now I'm getting Golden Vow and the Lord's like holy resistance in there. Holy resistance is big. But all of this, and then

again, phase one, you know, footwork sliding and punching. But imagine in any of those key moments where you get to the end of his combo and you can get your swing in, I throw my fucking fists out and you punch the gap between his legs because big dumb humans always get whiffed on by punches. It sucks. It fucking sucks that that happens so constantly and fist weapons. Use the biggest weapon ever. That's the solution. Oh my god man. Use the biggest weapon. Fists are finally good. They're finally really really good in this game and anytime a big boss

with dumb legs just fucking just you just you waft ball with at sir ansbach's face that's all you do you know man it bums me out so but I did it anyway because I wanted to you know I needed to return to the old me so I put the fucking the the the spike balls back on and yeah yeah, I mean, it was. I ran through a sequence in which I had phase one down and it was down. Yep. And phase two was annihilating me to bits.

And so I was like, all right, what can I change? What do I have? And I started like, what if this, what if that, What can I change? What do I have? And I started like, what if this, what if that, what if this, what if that, what if this. How quickly do you get there? Because over the years in these games, right, and here's the thing,

you taught me about, there's a moment in the fight where you go, stop, I am not properly equipped. I need to actually, don't just slam your head against this. There's a point where you need to assess what you're actually walking in. Yeah. Right?

Because skill can carry you the whole way through and then hubris will gas you the fuck up. But I think I was about, I was thinking I was at the part where I was I was like getting 80% through phase one, maybe an hour, like consistently, but I wasn't able to clutch out phase one super reliably. And I was like, my attempts are getting weaker, not better. Right. So let's see what I got. I went to go get the fingerprint shield and that helps but I was low on damage and

I went for this and that and this and that and this and that. And after swapping out a bunch of different weapon types, doing redoing my stats, et cetera, I came to the conclusion that after like an hour of trying out different shit, that the thing that was working the best was the thing I fucking started with and so I went back to what I was doing which was using the biggest sword I have and deflecting a heart shield okay deflecting a heart tear okay because I was gonna say that like I've heard that it turns out that of after years and years of from soft boss

fights and like skill rolling and all that shit, we are now at a point where one of the most effective things that apparently you do is just sword and poke, shield and poke rather, just stand there, block everything with. That was that was the the the fingerprint shield was the the one build that went in there, people with the biggest shield in the game. Gustav? And we're like, yeah, he was pretty tough.

Wasn't too bad though. Because they could just block all this shit. You get that Havel shield right before the fight starts. You literally, because you do fucking McKellamania in the room before before and then you get the full set and you're like okay so you can just stand there and block it which you know after years of fucking shield slander it's hilarious that that's the case but yeah no in and so for me what it was the same thing you're like you get into phase two

and you're like oh I'm not even close to having these dodge patterns then because of the lights and some of the attacks. The lights are so bad. So it became about, yeah, master phase one. And then two is just like, put as much holy resistance on as possible, fucking throw a pot, you know, do what you can. And in these moments where like like, he lands a command grab

on someone else or something, fucking cast, like, as many spells as possible, and then just get in and do what you can, you know? So I had, I think, every time there was one of these fights, so to speak, there would always be that, like, okay, this is going to be rough for streaming, probably need to figure out how to do this off stream, and then can compile the best attempts and show people. So that was Moog, and that was millennia, right? And this time around, it was like, okay, well, because I'm trying to get this done before the fucking weekend we're just gonna we're just gonna do the stream the whole thing and it was

Two hours and then five hours of attempts Yeah, so you ran into the exact thing I described whereas if you get there at the middle to end point There's no shot. There's like it just, it's too much. And walking in, so the other part that I learned after the fact was that I walked in with 16 shadow fragments instead of 20. So I did it with 19.

Once you get over like 12, the percentile increases are like way less. Oh, they don't stay consistently like... No, no, no. I can look it up, but it's a very, very like bell curvy... Okay. Interesting. Scaling. Yeah.

It is also interesting that like, you know know the actual setup is one where For anything to happen you got to get command grabbed twice Which I didn't end up doing but I read about it after the fact you know that it's like okay you just eat a really slow avoidable command grab and Let's what do you see here scooby snack? Yeah, I sent you the I sent you the the the the math on it Okay, and you could see that around 12 or 13. There's like a break And then it starts to slow down really because I guess they planned it to like well not everyone's gonna find Okay, all fucking 20. That's hard it okay But yeah, so so that was kind of so in the end it was like, you know what ants back does his job

And if he's doing well enough, he can even help get that crumple in Fiole a is not worth the fucking 20% Fiole a kind of sucks shit. Yeah, and I would also say that like I did an I did a bunch of solo attempts too, and I could see the pathway there. It would take a good bit longer, but I definitely feel like I could have pulled that off as well, it would just have been an obnoxious amount of streaming time, I think, to do so.

But I felt it, you know. In the end, it was like, yeah, it was one of those like, okay, so we always talk about fighting a god in their prime at their peak. All right, here you go. So here's the one. I was thrilled. I was absolutely thrilled because before the DLC came out, I said that that's who I want for the final boss.

Okay, okay. And like, so the whole time I was pointing at Anor Londo in the stands going like, that's what I want. In his prime. Because the base game goes way out of its way in every description to go, man, before Radon got sick, he was easily the strongest of all the demigods. Let's see what fucking, yeah. And like, yeah, no, it's like you always fight somebody who's run down or tired or broken or dead or you know? Whatever and now it's like

bigger better stronger than ever and and with an assist with an assist and here's the other bit as someone who Really like I said my my fucking heart went into. As someone who really, like I said, my fucking heart went into that Moog fight. That, like, I left that going, all right, I fucking love that boss, that was my favorite experience with the game. Even that getting a little bit of recognition here,

where it's like, that's the husk that's being piloted, and as a result, there's that one little blood flame attack, you know, and the rhythm and pace of things are going, are very reminiscent of that fight. It's like, what a fucking, what a fun way to end that. It is, it is a bit, certainly like once it's done, you do get that cut scene and then you're like, well, I don't know why I thought there would be more answers

because I do feel that I'm like, I'm like, yeah, this is a FromSoft, right? You're gonna get your little bits here and there. But what you do get is interesting enough that it recontextualizes and gives you just enough about all of the major players that I felt satisfied by that. The journey was definitely like,

it added enough lore, especially with that village. It added enough lore that you go into that, I imagine the pacing of then leaving the Shadow Realm and going into that final fight being like, oh, you fucking hypocrite. You are both complete stupid pieces of shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's quite interesting, you know.

Your entire order is built on nonsense, lies, hypocrisy, and aliens. And here's the thing, right? If you're looking at it from the McKellar point of view, you're like, you're this naive child that never grew up But your mind never grew up either. You're still child in in your your logic and You're you're actually doing the anime thing of like holding on to childhood promises and treating them as real You know, no matter what how much no matter what?

Radon has to say about the matter after the fact, you're like, nah, though, but remember, we gotta do it my way. And he's looking, obviously, at Marika and everything that she's set up and going like, yeah, that's terrible, we gotta replace this, but his thing is like, and then everyone will be happy because we just take away free will and you just you have to love me And because everyone's never done anything. It's a world of compassion. It's all compassion

And it's like you mean compassion that thing that you fucking discarded on the ground back there I think we saw it. We saw your compassion on the ground Mickey. I think there's a lot of like amazing things going on with the failure of the villains ideals because Like I'm gonna make a perfect world. Yeah, I'm gonna do it. Yeah guys and it's like the instant you weren't forcibly Controlling every single one of your followers. They all engaged in a fucking single one of your followers, they all engaged in a fucking WrestleMania battle to the death. Oh yeah brother.

It was like literally in context like a week later. They couldn't kill each other fast enough. Yeah. No, that's incredible. And I also like the idea too that he was super, and he's not wrong for looking at the golden order and what is there and hating it, right?

Because it sucks and it didn't work. And also he fucking hates outer gods, right? The unalloyed needle, the thing that's like, get these fucking gods out of here, get their influence out of here. Well screw it up my sister, my sister's all gross with super aids because of the outer gods. All of it, right? out of here. Well, screw it up my sister. My sister's all gross with super aids because of the outer gods.

All of it, right? And my brother, Mo, he's all fucked up because of the blood stuff. And he's weeping for Godwin and all these things. He absolutely hates the fact that the outer gods are just coming in and playing and influencing with everybody. Fucking Marika herself getting with the greater will

is also subject to that. like he properly does hate that but like the the replacement of course is we're gonna build our own God with blackjack and hookers and an unbreakable infinite charm that everyone will be forced to love me and then it'll be the green ending and Mass effect everyone can also get like ass and Mass effect everyone can fucking also get like ass To go on from like you know the mogul Esther has been has beaten the allegations Mogul like head the the the Mickel Esther is out here Colesting all over all of his brothers

the mickler Like stop it. Yeah, stop it. Not great. Not great. Like Rodan is an unwilling participant in that fight. So that's the bit is that we don't get enough about his say in the matter. We only hear Mikella. He doesn't have one. But here's what you have context clues of, right? Millennia, who was in on the plan, was sent to go fight him and then whisper in his ear, yo, don't forget about my bro. Come on. And then poison, I got to kill you as part of the plan. And he's like, I'm not dying. I'm not leaving. I saw somebody point out that the M'Kla stuff leads you to wonder whether or not

Millennia ever had free will ever. Yep. Yep. Because like he was charming her in the womb. Born into it. Literally sat there and waited for him to return and had nothing else going on until you know, until- like her motivation just turns off and she becomes like a nothing person without him. And that wasn't even when he left, that was when Mogh just took him in the egg and pieced.

Like, just, he cannot find brother, cannot find Onesan. It obviously changes the context of him being stolen away too because like millennia would have been able to stop Moog. For sure. Yes if she can fight Radan to stand still then that's that's the tier level. No it it's pretty, I think you have enough there to see that Radan not only did not lose, but then fucking held on and just rotted away to the point where all of his disciples are like, man, that dude is so cool,

can one of you put him out of his misery, please? And he's like, my horse though. And so I don't think he was down with the plan. But in the end, you get, and like, so. He was not down with the plan. No, and the promised consort is not the star scourge, you know, forcing that soul into that body. Which also, interesting bit, why Moog, right?

You have one, the fact that Moog is this like, Which also, interesting bit, why Mogg, right? You have one, the fact that Mogg is this dedicated, loyal, brainwashed one, and we don't know where he would have been. Would he have been like Ansbach, or would he have been somewhere in between with that dedication? But either way, unwilling participant. But all the blood stuff is a direct result of

Merica turning the Omen, like, race into a slave, like, genocide race. Like, if she had treated her kids not like shit, Moog wouldn't have gotten all blooded up. Well, there's also the part where the formless mother stepped in, right, and all the outer gods basically do is they find somebody salty enough and go, hey, I can use you. Hey, yeah. So, hey, what do you get to me? Let me show you some cool shit. You want some frenzy flame?

You want some blood flame? You want some Golden Order? Come over here and we fuck with you. I mentioned it, I think, two weeks ago. And I said, like, I didn't I was like oh we're going to get to the DLC I hope we meet some of the other gods like the outer gods. I did not expect to literally encounter all of the outer gods or at the very least they're like most chosen disciple. Yeah the representations at the very least are in there. And I get to the end of that and I'm like, oh, I'm super strongly feeling very good

about my decision to join up with Ronnie and be like, this shit needs to leave. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All of this shit needs to go. No more divine influence, please. That's the thing is like, McKella, when you know he's trying to leave his shackles behind You're like that's a noble thing because Ronnie had similar aspirations, right? Not being chained to your fate is a is a

Destiny and not being chained to destiny something that everybody can find nobility in but then when the answer is Now the path is clear for us to rule Damn it Mickey. All right, well, you gotta go. And no, I was just gonna say that the, with Moog, the fact that he's a fucking omen means that he's graceless, means that his corpse doesn't go back to the urn tree, means that that's the strongest

Body that didn't disappear To put Ridon's body is so available. Yeah, you know and that that lines up so perfectly because Marget would have been a decent choice as well, but absolutely, but he's so how self-hating that he was given grace at the end You know so like even that omen that was around like was like, nah, that went the Ertree way as well. So he had to use the only cold body that he could, which happened to be one that was one of his disciples, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really, really interesting and good lore bits there, you know, not to mention all the America town stuff.

And just in terms of like, you know, from soft visual, shout outs to the big badass knight with the swords that you want to fight, but like, just a like, almost like Buddhist god hanging off the shoulders with the hand up, you know, and then the cape of hair. It's a really cool yeah, he's just like daddy chill, like the whole time. Absolutely, and like here we are, the final boss is gay marriage and we need to defeat it. You know, and if you turn your back on it for too long

and that shit goes to space and comes nuking back down to the ground. I think what's really interesting is that I think I can't remember when this was, but I feel like it was when I was closing in on the north where you're doing like corridor running on invisible platforms after you fall on off the edge. And I feel like this game is every trick they ever learned and every concept they've ever done being remixed and improved and I look at Rodan and Mickela and it is like a direct sequel to the Lothric Princes from Dark Souls 3. I don't know if you remember those guys but the Larry, he was the guy that was on his knees and then his little brother would hang off his neck just like Mickela does but their thing was that they would teleport around. Oh yes yes yes the weak brother and the yes yes yes. Yeah and it's a direct sequel to

that. Right right right. Yeah that's true that's true. I love that fight I think that fight's great. Okay right. Yeah although again just this one Yeah, they're like we got another one in us Yeah This time the brothers kiss this time gay marriage casts meteor Like let's go oh Man and Yeah, I know that's great, and I do like it is pretty nice to that's like okay I'm box in it because it's just like sir Adan get the fuck out of my master's body, what the fuck, it's nice to see you, but come on, you know? And he's everything you wanted Gideon the All-Knowing to be, you know? I'm like, oh, you're the

cool old guy, fuck him, I wanted you to be there at the fucking table. And Theo, you know, for all the like nod help he's adding, he's basically there because like Trina is like, yeah, could you go kill me for me? Thanks. You know, and you're like, okay, fair enough. He's got his reasons to and it's a cool bit because they make it past, you make it past the mickey mania, you know, the mickelomania part and all that. And you just get that nice little like square off with all the NPCs you've met throughout

this thing. I was expecting to fight them, but I was expecting a series of summon one-on-ones. I didn't know it was going to be just the fucking- I don't know what I expected, but I did not expect a massive two-sided fight. Everyone coming in in their right time and place. It's like literally Royal Rumble, like the countdown timer goes brrrr and then Dane! It's Dryleaf Dane coming in! Da da da da da!

You know? It was great. Fantastic ending, really hype finale to a really long piece of DLC. Yeah. Kind of crazy how big that DLC is. Like unreasonably so. And not the- Like it costs $53 so it's a full game, but it is a full game. It's a game You know I would one limb grave

It's one 80 one limb grave sized game Well how when you put it side by side? Land and boss fight to boss fight like pound for pound when you compare it pound for pound with Demon souls What does it bigger than demon souls by how many more than the demons right that's the quite like is it is it 2.5 is it is it 2d yeah you know it's a fucking full game yeah it's it's enormous it It's ridiculous. I don't think as well that should be the standard and I don't think that should be expected every time.

Yeah, so now that you've gotten to the very end, you see that interview where they said, we think the next game is going to be smaller than Elden Ring because we don't think we can do a game that big again. And I like I don't think you can. Nope. You know, you just did Armored Core. No one had any problems with that. That was fine. Just you can do that if you need to. Also, I don't want another game that is this size again. Yeah, and I was kind of describing a little bit how, you know, over the years we've discussed the part where people are like, games have, they ask you for the most unreasonable amount of like assets put into them compared to any other medium. And they ask you for a volume that is just not reasonable at all by any other mediums

comparison metric. But the ask ratio to the price point for the amount of voice acting, the amount of writing, the amount of game design level, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Even for a FromSoft where you're like, well, you guys are on top of the industry and you're doing really well because everyone loves what you make and it sells really well. It's like, yeah, but that should not set a bar nor be considered a reasonable standard. Like this should not be the norm.

It's just too much. Please, please, please scale it back for your own sakes. You have to, because like, if this had been anything other than a slam dunk, oh, I'd be in trouble. And you just, you don't want the Team Cherry problem, you know, which we've discussed ad nauseam at this point, right? There's such a thing where you're like, yeah, I want my game to be able to last me as many

months as it can, especially if I'm like, look, I can only afford to buy one game for a while, I just want to get the most game out of it. And that's very understandable. But it's like, now we're hitting the other end of the threshold where you're like this just doesn't make any kind of sustainable sense. That being said, excellent job. Very good job. Good, good job.

The only problem I have with the DLC now is that I don't think the DLC is particularly well balanced for sprinting to the DLC. In fact, I think it's incredibly poorly balanced for sprinting to the DLC. In fact, I think it's incredibly poorly balanced for sprinting to the DLC. How fast can you kill Mogwen? Yeah, but don't forget the Estus fragments, man. And the fucking Titanite upgrades, to be able to buy that shit. I just did that stuff and it still took me like 15, 20 hours to just get the materials. I would actually prefer the way that, I don't know, you never played Witcher 3, but when those DLCs came out, just in case, they'd be like, do you just want to play the DLC?

And you'd go, yeah. And then you would hit yes and then they would give you a appropriately leveled Geralt with appropriate gear that you could just roll into and just do the DLC. And I kind of want that for Urdtree because I would rather play Urdtree again right now than Elden Ring. Yeah. It's, if you have to draw a line and say, no, it's always a separate section and it can't meet up with the other. Yeah, I think, I mean, the benefits probably worth it,

but starting you not with your own save file is, it doesn't feel good, you know? The ability to load in your own progress and pick up right where you were with your own save file is, it doesn't feel good, you know? The ability to load in your own progress and pick up right where you were with your character is huge, taking that away is not great. I don't know if that would be worth it for most people, but at the very least, I don't think, I think everyone is super down with the title screen,

select your, yeah, select your DLC campaign thing, you know? So there you go, that's that is the second and development I will say though for your own edification and maybe for like a one-minute thing next week Go back and find what that shit looked like. Hmm, or you know, I can just send you a clip on the break Cuz it's it's it's absurd how impossible to see it is. Yeah, I did my little lore recap at the end of the episode too. Like I did a proper like, you know, trust down of like everything we learned and of the effect of things.

And some people were saying like, oh, go back and check out the Vati videos on them just for full clarification. And so, yeah, that might be a good decent time to also check out that stuff too, you know. Indeed. Okay so there was that. Other things going on. Yeah went up to a little cabin. Had a decent weekend Um, grabbed Reggie and Min and, and, uh, Billy and Boo and the crew. Uh, as well as the gang and the gang. Um, uh, punch mom and Momo and, uh, yeah, we all just went and chilled, had some board games, had some good fun.

Um, there was a, a decent opportunity to get some kite flying in. I saw that was nice. That was rejuvenating. I appreciated it. It was very brief because there wasn't enough wind to get a good session going. But just enough to, you know, got a good about half an hour or so in there. So that was nice. Got that Bucky's kite up in the air represented. So that was nice. Got that Bucky's kite up in the air represented. So we stay bucked. That's how we do. Got to... yeah, brought the telescope as well.

But like, it was... unfortunately, we had some nice... we had some good stars but weren't able to get the calibration going. So maybe next time. We... What else? There was... yeah, and then just like in terms of board games had a good bunch of board games that I've been meaning to get to try out and get around. Got some really fun ones in there. So something I bought a while ago was the Red Dragon Inn and I had been recommended that as a board game that is basically you're an RPG party, but you're coming back from the adventure after it's done, and you're having a beer at the local inn, at the tavern.

All right. And your goal is to talk shit about how fucking cool you are and have drinks and be the last one standing. Either don't pass out from too much drinking or don't get kicked out because you can't pay your tab. So okay, that's it. Right. And it's pretty yeah, so that that's the basic premise. You are all you pick your character and your character has a deck and all these cards associated with them. And what you basically do is every turn,

you have a bunch of numbers from like say one to 20. And then your life starts at 20 and your alcohol starts at zero. And as you take damage, your number goes down. But as you drink alcohol, the other number goes up. And if they meet in the middle, then you pass the fuck out. You know, so you pass the fuck out. So you get into bar fights, you hurt yourself, you drink something poisonous, you take damage,

you get lit up with a fucking, a shot, and then you have to take a chaser, and then another chaser, and then you drink some orc ale that's like, only, it's good for orcs, but bad for humans. Content goes up, and then you pass the fuck out, you're out of the game. If you spend, you gamble with each other and then like you have to raise the ante

and then you can play these cards to take control of the round, the gambling and stuff. And when you run out of money, you get kicked out, you know, and so on. What's really awesome is the game is basically set up so that you can play Yu-Gi-OhOh level, but ah, you played your gambling card? So it's a card game. It's a card game.

You're using cards here? It's cards, yeah, exactly. You have seven in your hand and you play counters to each other. So someone's like, ah, I force you to take a drink and tip the bar, you know? So spend some money and take this drink. And then someone says, I don't think so,

I counter that and say, I don't have to do it. then someone says I don't think so I counter that and say I don't have to do it and someone goes. Yeah. Well, I counter that counter and make it so that not only do you have to do it, but now you take some extra damage as well because Um, you know, whatever we're starting around the gambling and you fucking whatever you did something, right? um, and then someone else has their like Okay, I have a card that specifically counters that one specific card that says actually I'm leaving to go on an adventure, I'm busy, I got to go to the bathroom, fuck off. And I ignore the whole thing. And like, it's just this, you know, this crazy game of like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, Jojo-like escalation back and forth until you, yeah, you've activated my trap

card like times 50. Now you're drunk. Um, it's great. It's really, really fun. And the refreshing thing about it too is like every time you play, you can just try a different character and everyone's got like different builds and stuff. So there's a mage that has like, you know, things where they're like, okay, I can antagonize everybody, get a fight started, and then just be like, and I'm ghosting out. You can't, I'm a part of this fight by you know, or obviously like captain of the of the pirate ship can you know tax everybody and Command things by by authority you got a muscle mommy in there that basically just tanks drinks and hurts people and Doesn't do much else, you know, and yeah lots of lots of lots of fun. So it's got like

Maybe like eight expansions now as well each time they they expand the game They add like four new characters too. So they're all compatible with each other. Just a really fun simple game highly recommended Red Dragon in a lot of fun. And if you want to you know, you want to play Hard mode you can take real drinks while have that that seems like the most obvious thing in the world Yeah, doesn't say so but every time you have to take a real drink you can have yeah take a game in game drink you can take a real one too for a little bit of extra fun there was another great game called cockroach poker which I really thought was fun poker very simple. You get a deck of cards with eight cockroaches,

eight rats, eight spiders, scorpions, whatever. A bunch of different. Bad fly, cockroach, toad, rat, scorpion, spider, stink bug. Bunch of little critter crawlers, little creepy crawlies. And you hold a bunch of those cards in your hand and you're all, yeah, everyone's sitting there. The goal of the game is real simple.

Someone takes a card, passes it to someone else face down, and says, this is a rat. That person has a choice to either say, yes, I believe you, it is a rat, and I'll expose it, and believe you, it is a rat, and I'll expose it, and then you have to take it back, or no, you're lying, I'll expose it, and now you have to take it back. And if you're wrong, you get to keep it.

You have to keep it, exactly. And in both cases, it goes down in front of the player. Or a third option is I say nothing, I look at it, and then I pass it to the next player. And I say something else or the same thing. I go, yes, in fact, that was a spider, or no, that was not a rat or whatever. And then I can lie or tell the truth and pass it to pass the buck along to someone else. And if they do the same thing and call me out, then I take the risk on me or vice versa. And then whoever gets four of the same exposed creature in front of them loses and its first person to lose game is over.

There's no winner. There's just one loser. Interesting. Yeah. Really? Yeah. So straight up, it's just, you know, do not lose. It doesn't matter about, it's not about winning.

It's about ganging up on the person who's about to lose. It's great. Real fun. And yeah, like the best kinds of games are the ones like that where you can just grab onto it immediately. Like one round face up slowly and you're just good to fucking, everyone's good to go and just quick to learn.

So Cockroach Poker was the name of that one. And then there was another one too that was also fairly simple and good. It's called a Love Letter. And then there was another one too that was also fairly fairly simple and good. It's called a love letter. And this was like a love letter. Yeah. And it was like a Star Wars edition of love letter. Kind of similar in concept in that there's basically like 10 cards 10 are like Jabba's palace 10 are like Star Wars heroes rebellion characters. They all do something like guess the number guess you're you're all you're holding two cards at a time and you have to either

You have to do one of the actions on the card that'll be like guess the number of one of the players and if you get them if you get it correct they're out or You know force them to die if their number is above this or below this or you know if it little conditions like that, and then you just kind of like play that and this or below this or you know, little conditions like that. And then you just kind of like play that and you try to be the last one standing at the end of the round and whoever has the highest card at the end if you're not the last one standing wins. And that's pretty much it. So just a really simple basic card game, but also very fast and fun. So yeah, just some cool board games there. cool. Some cool board games there. All in all, we're getting any you got anything else to talk about?

Yeah, well, I mean, look, if say it. Twilight. Ah, you dropped the ball, wooly! You were supposed to say vampire. Come on. What? Okay. You know what I am, say it. Oh, oh, oh, well this might lead in, this might lead into the disappointment then, because that was the, that bit seems to have led to an expectation that I'm

gonna go into a big Twilight discussion at this point well I'm sorry for everyone's expectations but no that was on in the background as it was hardly being mostly ignored Reggie got fully in he was going it's not good. Yeah, he was locked he was locked in but no that was that was just that was background noise while I was I was doing anything but but I did catch that there was a I did not know there was a fucking muse See music scene involved where they start playing supermass massive black hole as they're playing baseball And they are forgot and they have to play baseball during a thunderstorm So that nobody else can tell that how hard the ball sounds like they're so strong. They're so strong. Oh

My god, yeah, So that was a thing. Man. Wild shit. And I feel like I heard some Evanescence play in there as well. So probably it was. Yeah, it's like it's not everyone not often is a movie scored like a Zack Snyder movie where it's like I'm thinking in movie trailers and I'm thinking in music videos and I want the actual film to just be that vibe Mcgee, you know is another one Paramore right? Yeah. So

Anyways, yes, that was that was thoroughly that was a background noise while other things were happening, that was a background noise while other things were happening, while I was playing pool and- Bummer, it's so good, it's not. It's not. Yeah. No, I'm sure there's that, kinda like the, does the South Park phenomena happen

where you're like, man, I hated on Twilight when I was younger, but now that I'm older and I watch it again, it's actually unironically super fucking sick. No actually like Twilight, Twilight like completely falls apart unless you are trying to use Bella as your self-insert. Yes. Right if you don't see yourself in Bella, then it just completely fucking falls to pieces. Um, well, what if you didn't want the color grading to just be inverted purple and okay. So this is, I was thinking about, I live in the Pacific Northwest

now, right? Like I don't live, I don't live all that far away from where Twilight takes place like Twilight's very close to the Canadian border and I can tell you like yeah no it is it is like fairly blue tinted out here all the time but not that much come on it's come on The color grading is like CSI. It's wild. It feels like it's halfway between CSI and those porn channels you couldn't watch as a kid, but they were all inverted in blue.

And then the colors, it's basically just right there. Yeah, it's reverse Mexico from Breaking Bad. Yes, exactly. When they're it's exactly when they're in a walk in make when they're in traffic when they're in Mexico and it's all yellow And then they go to Washington and it's blue. It's it's fucking back It's it's crazy. Absolutely insane. This is gloomy And everyone is super duper original CSI not Miami Everyone and everyone is is and they you know, you got to be pale. You got to be pale and almost dying. That's the look. That's chic.

Helps the corpses pop. Always remember that circa the mid-aughts, the most popular baby name for a girl was Isabella. Yes. Because that's, you know. It's also like insanely, insanely popular for girl dogs. Like you ever see a video? I see every now. I follow veterinarians on TikTok and whatnot, do funny little videos. But the one that's interesting is they go up to like every single member of a staff

in a given veterinary clinic and go, what name are you tired of seeing? Bella. Like over and over and over and over and over. Yeah. I mean, it's not that big of a secret, but the most influential pop culture things at a given era are what determine the names. Rachel had a huge spike because of Friends back in the 90s. There's literally a chart you can follow all the way from the 70s when it gives way. It starts as Catholic names and then it goes into rich influential names for people that had the most money and stuff. And then we had Khaleesi for that brief shining moment in time. But like, yeah, but novels and movies have a huge impact on the wave that takes over all the states, you know?

Anyway, so that was all pretty fun. Yeah. Shout outs to some new tech that Billy, aka SirMeowMusic, taught me about. I didn't realize. So you grill some hot dogs, you grill marshmallows on the fire, etc. Cheese curds. You get some fucking poutine cheese curds and you put those over the fire. Fucking immaculate. This is the most kibikwewe fucking pro tip that has ever existed. I don't know if you can get the proper squeaky cheese curds.

I think it's funny because you talk about puts in and Americans and people in West of Ontario, Canada just go, ah, does it have to be cheese curds? And you just go, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it does. it have to be cheese curds? And you just go, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It has to be cheese curds. I think if you don't have access to them, which it's outside of Quebec, I'm not too sure, Halloumi is probably a really great place to go, right?

But like, because yeah, Halloumi over the fire is incredible too. Like you can make cheesy fries all you want, and that can be fantastic. But I mean, if you wanna fucking make a put-in, it's gotta be fucking cheese curds yeah yeah it's delicious with the smoky fire flavor incredible that's that's good shit okay and then a little bit else I spent some more time poking around at UFO 50 good old UFO 50

in particular just I was trying to get the deal with Barbuta. Barbuta. Barbuta. And finally, after a while, I have I realize what's going on. A lot, a lot is going on in that game. And it's cool. But it's also expressly not what I was in the mood for late at night. Absolutely. And I was like, oh, fuck, this is not what I want to play right now. So I got lucky because Barbuda was the first game I played, because it's number one, right? Yeah. And I started to play that at 2 p.m.. In the afternoon. Yeah

Barbuda is it's the first game in you a life 50. Yeah daylight. It's very cool It's very slow that walk speed is criminal It's it's it's offensive on purpose. Yes. Yes, yes however, there is a there is a bit. There's a thing to the game and upon Starting to see what what's happening with the game it changes and it becomes something very different But the thing that it becomes is something that is even more time-consuming Than just the default game you thought it was.

It becomes fucking Fez. It's the most time-consuming thing in the world, and I'm just like, yeah, I gotta be in the mood. It's wild that that's the first game on the disc. Crazy. Fucking crazy. It's asking so much of you, and it's asking you to basically get a pen and paper out while you do it and I have a UFO 50 story for you. God it is similar The other night I had I was busy all day so I only got to start streaming at 10 p.m. And I was planning to like 10 and midnight or whatever and

I was on game 10 or 11 or whatever and so I landed at like 10 in midnight or whatever. And I was on game 10 or 11 or whatever. And so I landed on Avianos at 10.30 p.m. at night. Yeah. And just sat there. Like that part of the stream is god awful because it's just me going, oh. No.

I have plants. You cannot, you cannot UFO 50 responsibly by going in cold and just letting the game take away. In the nighttime hours. Yep, some games are great for that. Like I said, Quibble Race, pop that shit on, immediate bits, immediate, hey, we're having fun, what's up Twitch, fist bump the screen.

But fucking Avianos and Barbuta, and any game where 90% of the gameplay is silent and it's just staring at these pixels going, what does that mean? It's brave that they put out so many of those with no music. Yeah, because it's old. That's it. And you're supposed to appreciate the fact that, hey,

we got a couple more colors in this game. What's the one where you pick up your flower garden girl? Oh, yeah that one the the Magic yeah, is her shit. Yeah, whatever that one. That's the first one that I'm like. Oh, this is a big upgrade technologically Uh look at all these colors, but holy shit. Don't fuck up once or you're dead, you know advanced snake with jumping and and yeah anyway um magic garden Magic garden. Magic Garden, yeah. Fucking Barbuta, I will be back. Barbuta.

I will be back, but I will be back on my own terms. There's something really funny to me that after the stream was over, I went onto Twitter and I saw, I think it was Haddock, be like, I just tuned into Pat's UFO 50 stream, and he's just staring at the screen, muttering Barbuda under his breath It's like yeah, because that's what that game wanted from me wasn't that also more tall. Yeah, no man just like

Whatever the game is it just say well cuz it has to be a fun name to say right It has to be it has to be like just pleasant on the fucking mouth like more tall Yeah, yeah, okay So that that yeah that I feel like I feel like those games I need to be confronted On their terms and I will be back Speaking of confronting on their terms, of course Fucking sir meow may or may not be tweeting out cryptid wooly photos That's fine. That's That's fine. That's...

That's normal. That's neither here nor there. Okay, and so... That's life. So beyond all of that, yeah, only other things I wanted to touch on here. So through a convoluted series of events over on Versus Wol wolves on the other podcast, I have

now watched the first season of Twin Peaks and I thought that was very relevant. You're right. Twin Peaks is always relevant. Yes. I can say now that with that, I've come to understand something that I don't think I understood in the past about when y'all would talk about it. And I kind of, I felt this having watched and enjoyed Gravity Falls,

but also not enjoying Deadly Premonition. I kind of was like, okay, So not enjoying Deadly Premonition. I kind of was like, okay. Twin Peaks is 90% vibes, 10% answers. So. Season one. What's your plan for the second season? I'm still deciding because the takeaway ultimately is that the

The vibes at their at their like highest are warm and fuzzy and Very like it's got that cozy, you know that cup of coffee. Yeah, right It's got that whole thing to it and it reminds me of how much I enjoyed watching My favorite old TV show, The Wonder Years, right? The Wonder Years is just a cozy watch. It just feels good when it's on. And I get that that's kind of what you're sort of getting here in the middle of a whodunit that's not really

about the who and the doneit. So, but like, I would describe that, like melodrama isn't a strong enough word. So, but like, yeah, I would describe that. Like, melodrama isn't a strong enough word. I think I would characterize the emotional context of that first season as hyper drama. Like, the very first shot is like, you're smash cutting to people across the town, like, crying, and the music is so fucking loud it's

crazy loud I everyone is doing a scene in which they're like I'm having the biggest emotion yes yes and everyone is being a late 80s actor a you know like that it feels of the time it feels feels like, yeah, 1990 on point with that. Especially when you go to high school and you see all these 25 year old high school kids. Yeah, I'm clearly an actor model playing a teenager. Like, yeah, like, like literally like what if we took, God, what's her name?

Anyway, yeah, pinup model from the 50s and said, you're a high school student, go. Got it. You're right off of the artwork on the side of a missile. And like Audrey Hepburn or type of thing, you know? Like, yeah, like it's wild but the overall bit with just the vibes elicited by the the wood cabin the mountains the the fresh air the logs and the you know the old the old factory the old mill everyone's yeah everyone's everyone's cheating

Everyone every oh, it's it's every relationship time TV Like leveled cheating. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm All of that is there and then when Lynch decides to Lynch which I fully expected there to be more of it There was a surprising like it seems almost as if it was like, what if you let me lynch a little bit? And I'm wondering if like after that red room shit, if people went, ooh, and he's like, oh, you like that? Oh, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I turn it up? Can I, can I lean in? The plan seemed to have always been to just, just boil a network television audience in water slowly. Right? Is like turn it up, up, up until they were eventually watching nonsense?

Yeah. But is it emotionally consistent? Yes. Even though the plot may be wild, just complete guard like what's happening? I don't fucking know. And so I think it's, for me, it kind of lands in this place where I do like when those vibes are, again, when they're landing it at their best. But there's also times where I'm like, right, and this is the part where as much as there's those Lynch moments that I love, there's those those Lynch moments that I love

There's also the Lynch stuff that I hate right and oh yeah And why oh yeah wild at heart is emblematic of all the Lynch stuff that I fucking hate What is that is that what James that's though? That's the one with Nick Cage Oh rolling through being is being Nick Cage Just being it's weird because he's a good he can be a good actor sometimes depending on what the role is but in this case it's anyway um fucking oof but like so I if you have an interest in the mechanics of television so season two of Twin Peaks is three times as long yeah

it's like 22 episodes I saw. That's not easy to watch. And it is fascinating from a perspective of the mechanics of putting out a TV show. Because an indeterminate amount of episodes into the second season, David Lynch and Mark Frost walked and the show went on without them, only for them to come back for the last couple of episodes.

Oh my God, okay. This leads to like one of the strangest series of TV seasons ever, because you can see them leave the steering wheel. You can see them get out of the car. Yeah. This is one of the, the term I'm gonna use is like, this is, there are times where something is so heavily

weighted because of the history with like, the channel and stuff that I have never felt more eyeballs in the room with me. Oh yeah, just like, huh? Right? And so I know how heavy the expectation is, especially having from all the years of people asking me to play Deadly Premonition and stuff. So I know how weighted it is when I'm watching this. And I have to say that in the end, I was not grabbed and hooked and pulled in. I was. Oh, I never thought you would be. No, I was not. It has a really incredibly specific aesthetic and vibe and tone that is either in rapturing or merely interesting.

Yeah. I thought, I thought that, yeah, as a relic of its time, it certainly is interesting. That, that cannot be denied. And, um, parts of it are quite fun, and other parts are just like, okay, you know, whatever. But for the most part, I didn't, there was nothing about it that I was like, upset or angry at or so.

Oh, don't worry. If you watch that second season, there are shit in there that is like, abject, awful television. Just terrible. What I will say is that I felt like I was watching a procedural with the sprinkles of Lynch in there for some bits and pieces. Whenever Cooper gets really weird, it's like, okay, we're lynching it up right now.

It's charming. It's idiosyncratic. But there was an element of like, just following the procedural, I don't know that this would have stood out to me any more than any other thing on TV at the time, except for those little weirdisms, right? And like, it doesn't necessarily, if I was just catching it on TV, I wouldn't necessarily have been like, I'm locked in, I I was just catching it on TV, I wouldn't necessarily

have been like, I'm locked in, I'm hooked, I'm coming right back in for it. And to be fair, I've seen random episodes of X-Files and like TNG, where I'm like, what is happening? Well, those were, so here's, so there's a lot about the second season and the third season and the production of Twin Peaks that is totally fascinating and super interesting to talk about that we can't talk about because I don't know whether or not you're going to commit to watching the second season or commit to not watching the second season, like either or, right? But X-Files was built to be monster of the week. X-Files was built to have a 20 episode season. Episodes 1 and 2 are aliens.

Episodes 3 through 18 are vampires, werewolves, golems, trash monsters, etc. And then episodes 19 and 20 are aliens. So that you could run reruns on it. Right? Okay. Twin Peaks was not made that way. Twin Peaks was not made that way Twin Peaks was explicitly made To be a consistent through-line narrative That was about a mystery But the trick is is that Lynch and Frost had no intention of ever solving that mystery at all Right and it was just an excuse to get you into the town Yeah mystery at all. And it was just an excuse to get you into the town and go on these labyrinthine

nonsense side quests with these weirdo characters. Just get some shit on the air. Absolutely. Yeah. And I kind of think like in terms of when I'm like, and I understand too that like because of that and because the vibes are so strong, that develops a very cult following, which then leads to a lot of things that are like influencing or influenced by it, and you get your, yeah, your gravity falls and your deadly premonitions and everything else that comes from it.

And I think there are times where I want those things to go hand in hand and I want the actual premise to also be satisfying. I felt like I enjoyed the characters in the world and all that in Gravity Falls. But another example of something that's like a quirky, quaint kind of thing, but also has a pretty enjoyable, you know, a through line.

It's like Fargo, right? Fargo is super quirky, and the location that they're in is a big part of like the camp and the enjoyment of, you know, what's going on. But like, you're also, but it's also a satisfying watch regardless of the location part of it and such, you know? And yeah, and here it's just, it's very, like I said, it's it's procedural and then there's those bits. So those, and when what's there outside of the, the charm of the town didn't stand out so strongly. I do have curiosity just because of the energy

that is being exhibited by every, like there's a reason why the man, why fucking Swery decided to dedicate his life to making this thing. I mean, we've got Alan Wake, we've got Deadly Permission, we've got Gravity Falls, like everything that takes place in the Pacific Northwest now basically follows from Twin Peaks to some degree, except for Twilight, ironically enough.

Yeah, okay. At Riverdale, yeah, I'm hearing as well, has this kind of element to it too. So there is that curiosity behind ultimately, like reason why things are why this is so beloved But from what I can gather here like I can yeah, I can I can sense that That that fish hook maybe maybe maybe I don't know, you know, but it was wrapped in plastic Yeah, there's there's a there's a branching set of conversations that we can have based off of whether or not you decide to watch the second season or not, or only watch the second season that includes Lynch and Frost's parts. Interesting, okay. Or just watch the second season right up until it had a catastrophic ratings bomb.

Oh wow. There is a moment in that second season that everyone just threw up their hands and stopped giving a shit worldwide. Okay, okay. that everyone just threw up their hands and stopped giving a shit worldwide. Like, OK, there was reportedly, I think it was Nikita Khrushchev was asking Reagan at one of their dinners. Yo, so who killed Laura Palmer? Khrushchev? What?

Russian fucking like it was a worldwide phenomenon Holy shit, okay. Wow well. That's wild what and then something happens, and then the whole world just went Don't care anymore. Well. Well. What'll probably happen is I might I might just like curiosity watch a bit And then see how I feel you, yeah that seems like a reasonable I would say that even if it's not the kind of thing that you personally are like I'm having a great time It's its presence as a TV show that got utterly fucked up and released in the most bizarre way possible is interesting on its own because Twin Peaks ended in 91

and it ends the second season on a cliffhanger and then got canceled. Okay, so. And like you live in a world in which there's a third season. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for most of our lives, people would watch that second season and we're like, I cannot believe this right right right right?

I do remember when all this noise was made about the return some time ago the last little bit I'll say on it is that when it comes to Leaning into like the the absurdism and the the wild elements of it, too to the absurdism and the wild elements of it too. A good example of when I'm way on board for that is Disco Fucking Elysium. Your Inland Empire, right? And also a David Lynch movie.

When you dial it up to that degree, but like, and there's a bunch of this in the book too in Sacred and Terrible Air, when you dial it up to a degree so far that you leave the realm we're currently in to just travel into another dimension. Yeah, that's the third season. That is overtly the third season.

But there's a point and an emotional resonance or some kind of epiphany that you kind of pull out of that, right? Like, like in disco, when those moments happen, like they're like you and the thing is, I know that there's a lot of debate behind the meanings of things and why they land these ways because I've read the full discussion on Mulholland Drive slash dream and like walked away going, okay, that's a lot deeper than my initial watching was and I respect what it's going for despite the fact

that it's like completely incomprehensible without it. If you have the text next to you as you watch the film, you can have a deeper understanding of that. I don't think disco requires that of you, but like when you go on that journey and it spits you back out the other side, the state the character is in and what they feel adds a lot to the moment happening in reality.

And those are the times I'm really on board for the fucking conceptualization through the roof Inland Empire moments. So if it leans into those then that's good But yeah, like the there are essentially there are essentially five seasons of Twin Peaks and it's it's season one first third of season two the middle last third of season two and the third season

And they're all completely different the middle, last third of season two, and the third season. And they're all completely different. And the other bit too is that some of the Lynch that I know is also like, some of the text and subtext you read requires external understanding of what's going on as well to some degree. Like there's moments in Mulholland DR where suddenly the characters are like, basically like just, there's a sudden scene

where these two characters are like having this like, it turns into like soft core porn almost for like a minute and it's like, what happened? And then it switches back out and it's like, well that's the part of the movie that's homaging porn because the movie's homaging a bunch of genres and porn is one of them. Yeah, so hey, you don't have to worry about that

with Twin Peaks because there's no external anything. It's all there. It's all there and if you don't get it, watch it again, shut up. And if you don't understand, the point might have been for you to be confused. Right. Right. Okay. Yes, you see the film is called Mulholland Drive, but it also might be Mulholland Dream. Mulholland DR is the title and you can read it many ways if you get into the... Yeah, yeah, don't be so close-minded. Up your stack. Eraserhead is his most spiritual film. Do you care to elaborate?

No. There was a different interview I saw where he was talking about, I think, the return and people like, people always ask me What this means? I'm like, it's right there. It's in the movie to watch it That's what it means. You are watching the film Yeah, like he has no tolerance for like discussion or deconstruction of his work at all It's like I put it in the movie. What did the duck mean when it walked by the orb and the PlayStation logo? That! It meant PlayStation!

Dumbass! Fantastic. Okay, and one other thing is just a, this is a direct little seed to plant here. So something else through the convoluted series of events over on Versus Wolves was that I watched Jujutsu Kaisen, and you must have heard of this as the new. Do you mean Sorcerer Battle? Not the one, is that what it translates to?

That is what it translates to. Is that what it translates to? Yeah, that's why everybody calls it JJK, because Sorcerer Battle fucking sucks, isn't it sorcery battle boy That is the that is it's not new because it just wrapped up in manga form, but here's what's up. It's an anime It's a shonen. It's got some protagonists. They do things eventually you meet more of them They have a bit of a tournament and then you meet more and you find out which one's powers you like. And then there's fights, there's seals

that are meant to be broken, and there's all kinds of, there's family bloodline techniques, and there's the trio, you know what I mean? And all that, there's the cool sensei, all the bits and pieces, you know. I just wanna, I think it'd be... There's a very interesting but otherwise recognizable series of anime things happening in the first season of that. And there's enough cool bits to go like, oh, check out that. That's pretty fun. And there's some cool fights. The second season of

Oh, check out that. That's pretty fun. And there's some cool fights. The second season of Jujutsu Kaisen is one of the craziest, most impressive feats of animation I've ever seen. Oh yeah. Looks nice. For the things that it attempts and actually succeeds at doing, it is kind of like, just as on a technical marvel, it is kind of a must watch, yeah.

I think it's just, the things it goes for are so wild, and then it pulls them off, and it's incredibly impressive. So I just wanted to say, consider that, because specifically how hard the second season goes, is just, yeah, it's great. I fully went in holding my expected Shonen Trope bag, and that bag was filled up with tropes that, I'm like, yep, there they all are.

And then while doing it- Look at Gojo, he's the cool one. Yeah, and while being as predictable as possible, it still managed to be rad as shit. Well, that's good. That's some kind of interesting shit. Enough people have talked about how they like it. It's like, and then after that, don't worry about it, whatever.

People are like, we just wrapped up the mega and they feel it goes downhill and stuff, yadda yadda, but at least as far as that thing goes, it's, pardon me, you know, it's one of those moments of like, just, yeah, animation, escalation, whatever you wanna call it, sakuga quality that deserves to be checked out. Anyway, so that's about that. I will be streaming this week. We're gonna pick back up.

Hey, Wooly, now that you've beaten Shadow of the Earth Tree, what are you gonna do next? Well, there's still- You gonna go to Disney World? There's still some Phoenix Wright to do next? Well, they're still gonna go to Disney World. There's still some Phoenix Wright to do and we are going to be continuing that missile the dog was seen missile the dog was used missile the dog is a champion. Dude missile the dog rules and also missile got written into Phoenix Wright and then Shu Takumi got a

dog and then named him missile okay hold on what happened first because I missile is in Phoenix Wright missile is in ghost trick okay and it's all Phoenix right was written in the 90s okay okay so missile the dog in Phoenix right one is first then he gets a Pomeranian and he names him after the dog he wrote in Phoenix Wright. And then Ghost Trick comes out, so he names the Pomeranian in Ghost Trick after his real dog.

Okay, well then I was lied to, because I was told he had a real dog missile and that he put his dog in both games. Got it, okay. Well, the real missile is fucking incredible. It's great. Wow. He's way better than an updated autopsy report.

Incredible, the best, fantastic. What a powerful missile, look at him go. Yeah, so Phoenix Red's gonna continue. I'm gonna get some one-offs in there. I think I'm gonna do some more UFO 50 And a couple other one-offs there's some stuff I've thrown down there that I've been meaning to get around to checking out on the one-off list I mean the I carry warriors are in Metal Slug Tactics now. There's this interesting game looking called I am your beast. There's Mekula Simil Tactics Alpha. So I don't know. I'll play some stuff one-off This week and then

some Phoenix Wright. And then yeah, we're going to come back around. I'm doing the research. I don't want to announce the new LP just yet. I'm still okey dokey still in the research phases, but I'm pretty sure. Can I find out about it? Can you type it into the into the discord and I'll know it and I'll feel real special. I'm, yeah you know what, fuck it. Okay, I'm currently doing the, I'm doing the groundwork on cyberpunk. Okay. I think we're going in that direction and I already have the list of. It's good now, it's very, very good now.

Yeah, and I already have the list of what is What saves time what will shave time what say what side quests are worth doing and not doing and Looks like and big big shout outs to scud Nate as well for helping with that. So there's a there's a probable Streamline here that allows me to cut a good 20 hours off. Oh, yeah, definitely But I'm there's a very extreme Gradients between things that matter and things that don't and

Phoenix right kind of currently being on like what's nearly the last case as well as nice because I'm like Oh, these games are faster than I thought which means I'll be able to like sprinkle some other stuff in place and figure that out. But yeah, but I'm doing the research so I know this is a little preemptive for the drop so you're not gonna see it maybe like immediately immediately but that's what I'm currently thinking about. But this week at the very least so yeah Phoenix Wright some one-offs and then on Saturday we'll be playing Blazing Strike, that 2D fighter that has been on Twitter for years, it finally came out and it looks like one of those Neo Geo gems you would find randomly on that ROM list

that you'd be like, where the fuck did this game come from? It came from UFO 50, it did. It didn't, but yeah, Blazing Strike, we're gonna be checking that out on Saturday. So, that's the week. Woolly vs. on YouTube, and on Twitch. You know what I'm gonna play right now? The bathroom. Seeing how hard I can piss. BRB.

Whatcha eatin'? What's in your mouth? A protein bar. Lit. Protein is important. That's awesome. It is. I had some yogurt this morning. That's good.

That's important too. The... Yes. I just remembered as well that the Slopstream, stream latest wooly versus whatever is also out so go check that Out wooly versus whatever we watched some bullshit. It was dumb. It was great. It was stupid. I bet um I bet we nothing smart ever shows up on those streams. It's fucking it's like every now and then like they send in like a fucking I like it I joined soken in

Lahi by grabbing my own automaton and I played alongside Course you fucking have and I actually synced up with him and I felt I felt so good asshole so the episode name is appropriately slot bringers oh So the episode name is appropriately Slotbringers. Oh hey, I wanna give you a shout out. There's something that you do on your channel that I think is fucking awesome and you deserve props for it.

I absolutely love the way you title episodes in which nothing happens. Yes. Okay. I'm in love with, it showed up on my subscriptions yesterday that it's like, this episode is two hours of fighting the boss and failing. Like, I love it.

It's so straightforward. What it says on the tin. It's what I would click on if I read it and went, oh, I appreciate that, thank you. It's what I would want on if I read it and went, oh, I appreciate that. Thank you. It's what I would want Yep every time You got a real what's going on Oh bunch Let's see this week. I played two sponsored streams. These are paid money sponsored stream

So keep that in mind as I talk about them. I played tower born Yeah, we saw that get shown off at a Microsoft event a little while ago. Yeah, D James is working on that one Oh, yeah, I can tell hmm. You mentioned it last week. Am I oh cool, and then I'm playing it and I'm like, oh, okay So that is a that is a side scrolling beat-em-up that has a loot progression system So you have a bunch of classes you you do beat them up levels, and then you get gear that gives you either new moves or better stats. And I was fucking around with it for a while, and it's very solid. And I recognize a bunch of the very specific weapon attacks and their arcs and where they're coming from. like huh that the sword and shield guys jumping attack looks a lot like one of Kai's

Slashes and I was like ah and then One of the devs was in chat was probably their marketing person was like yes We have some people who are really big fans of fighting games on the staff Yeah, I'm like that's cool And then I use the double daggers special ability at which point your your fighter Zigzags up the screen until they hit the middle and then does a slash down and it has the identical timing as chips super how about that look at that and I'm like

Okay All right, also some of the classes have dodge offset. Okay. Yeah, I saw looking at some of the footage. I saw moments of like almost like a dragon's crown and like guardian heroes style. You know, yeah, absolutely. But like, yeah, it's fighting game **** going on. So, it's an early access but it's solid. It's got juice. It feels good to hit enemies Which is the best I could possibly say a beat-em-up is a free-flowing combo system to really like not get boring after a repetitive

You know you want to be able to get your juggles and style and shit going on shout out San Goku 3 So I then also played a trepang 2 yesterday And I never heard of it until they sponsored it and I played it and it's Fear. Do you remember Fear first encounter assault recon? I think we talked about it last week. We just talked about it. Yeah. As the weird not horror. Well, it's not ghosts, it's monsters. And it is just the loudest guns with the most particles coming off the wall and the enemies and Sprinting and jump kicking dudes. Well like one of your buttons is like dedicated slow motion and

If you kill someone the slow motion extends Okay, and it is just do you want to do a full game of the matrix lobby fight is It tactical at all no man. You're in there, okay? No, well you can shoot out lights and be sneaky But no you hit that you hit that slowdown button and you go in there it reminds me of black Oh, yeah, yeah the realistic game where the bullets do damage Mm-hmm there were they're just like we want the biggest jibs. We want the most bullet effects We want the loudest guns

It's solid. I really like it. I might go back to it on stream later cuz I flew through that shit, but it didn't get really hard So maybe not. Trapang by Trapang Studios and Team17. So I also played a little bit more of metaphor. A little bit. And I've hit the part of metaphor where I can no longer talk to you about playing metaphor. That part of metaphor. Boy, that's good. That's a good game. Yeah, someone said that there is a very, very strong landing stick that occurs. They stick the landing on something in particular

really really there's um that's better than you get to that part yeah and then then you're like mmm yeah all right cool cool cool cool um also um man the character the cast is so strong, the cast is so strong. The cast is so good. It's like their best cast ever. They're so likeable. Personality-wise. And interesting.

Oh yeah. Oh, they're all winners. They are all slam-dunks. And I appreciate as the game goes further and further, you keep running into these situations where it's like it just so happens that this dungeon has multiple enemy spawners right next to each other that you could just stand in this one spot and auto kill enemies as they walked into your in your fist and you could just grind as hard as you fucking wanted you could just just do it if you want.

It's very nice that they give you all these, they're like catch up spots, but then they're also like, do you want to really hit it hard? Yes, I do. I do. Well, the question is, the only way to know if you're going too far is if there's a super boss and you hit it and still struggle. So I thought I was really grinding my ass off and removing challenge from the game. And then one of the bosses that's like a story mandatory like beat my ass for like an hour.

Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. And I've been informed by Gene and others that the final boss is very real And like is it's like it demands that you build your team for it and accordingly So I'm gonna keep going forward with that Yeah metaphor is incredible, okay, it's incredible. I mean I would argue that I don't think I've played us Okay, it's incredible. I mean I would argue that I don't think I've played as

Any any of the shin megami tensei game that has not that's had an easy final boss like they've all been work From rido to fucking four to five to three four five I can't think of anything but that Didn't give me trouble Like they're all they're all very real. So that's metaphor, that's tower born, and then that's... Tra-pang.

Tra-pang 2. It's written Tra-pang squared, but it's Tra-pang 2. It's very confusing. But the other thing that I have to talk about this week is this Yeah, that's pretty Pat is holding up is a pretty red and gold d20 That is you got yourself a little set a little bit It's the silences the sound oh that doesn't go through the noise gates catching it yeah it'll go through on the audio version so so page has been

playing D&D with a group for about a year now And just so happens that two of five people dropped out. They had obligations or something and they dropped out, which torpedoed that campaign, which then her DM and her remaining members are like, we should start a new campaign and open it up to more people. And I figured, you know what, I will give that a shot. But Pat, you hate D&D. So I don't hate D&D. That's the thing.

So I had a very, very bad D&D experience when I was like 19 or 20 in which I've talked about this before but I'll just recap it where basically a group that I knew needed an extra player for their campaign and then rushed me into it and gave me no direction other than just do whatever you think your character would do so I left split the party and killed an important NPC because I didn't like them other than just do whatever you think your character would do. So I left, split the party, and killed an important NPC because I didn't like them, and then couldn't make it the next week, at which point I was informed that they that I

had ruined their campaign. Okay, okay, okay, right. That will sully the experience onboarding. And I was like, oh I guess I shouldn't play D&D with people because I'll just ruin it for them. However, my wife plays D&D now and has been like, that's stupid, you're stupid. Just play the damn game with us, you'll have a good time. So I'm willing to give it another shot. However, I am, I'll be honest, I am sick with anxiety over this.

This is a much safer environment, first of all, right? As opposed to last time. And yeah, a good DM can accommodate for all kinds of uncertainty, wild pulls, left, right, et cetera. You got to roll with the punches to do the job. But that's kind of surprising in the sense that I also kind of always thought that the part that you would have not enjoyed was the creative aspect per se. So that's kind of where it is, is that like, so first of all, today, after today's show, is Session Zero, which is something I did not get 20 years ago. And Session Zero is the discussion, it's where everybody makes their character, or rather, rolls for their character, right? So that everyone can be kept honest.

And where the DM breaks down what is to be the tone of the campaign, how much combat, how little combat, what do you guys want to include with your back stories and how you can fit that in, house rules, you know, what have you. So that's literally in like three hours. Okay, cool. Which is why I have a heart out today. Okay. And you're also not going in with the, what my group went in with just rabid Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman fandom of just basically

making Bastlin Bajor. I'm going in with a little bit of that, I'll be honest. And one of the things that's been going on with my brain, so Paige and I are very similar in a lot of respects, but we are violently opposed in many others. One of which is Paige is so comfortable with the creative aspects of D&D. Right? But her memory isn't the best,

so occasionally she'll forget some obscure ruling. I, on the other hand, am super comfortable with that rule book. comfortable with that rule book. I love that rule book. The rule book tells me what I can do and what I can't do and how to do it and how to interact. Like the rule book to me is a series of buttons to push. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Absolutely. You want the visual novel experience, which is essentially one of three or four decisions at any given time. Yeah. And Paige wants to yes. And enroll free flow. Yeah. Yes. And have conversations, which, yeah, that's the fun part, too. Yeah. OK. So I see people in the chat saying that I'd be a rules lawyer.

No, rules lawyers are killjoys. saying that I'd be a rules lawyer? No. Rules lawyers are killjoys. It's my responsibility to be my own rules lawyer for my sheet, not Jim's sheet or Rebecca's sheet, because that's between them and God. But you need a quick multiple choice decision to make at any given moment. So like a lot of people like I'm gonna so I'm gonna be doing my best because I'm not. This is a very new experience in terms of like role play instead of just because there's there's the distinction between role play as an R O L E and role play which is R-O-L-E and role play which is R-O-L-L. I'm definitely a lot more comfortable with the second one. So I'm kind of building my character backwards in that

I don't have a defined personality yet because I haven't rolled my stats. Yeah, okay. Okay. Like once I've rolled my stats, then I can figure out a personality. That's so interesting. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, I mean, listen, right? You know, I imagine that, you know, Paige knows what she's doing here and that you can't, the thing is with this is you can't make any mistakes, right? Everything. That's not true!

People say that and that's a lie! That is a lie. Well, how about this? How about this? We take the Bob Ross School of Philosophy here, where mistakes can be turned into better moments, into miracles, if the people involved, if the DM and everyone

knows how to roll with it and make it great, you know? So I have been to quell my anxiety over, oh, am I gonna do a good job? I've been reading, I found the RPG Horror Stories Reddit, which is now One of my favorite sub reddits of all time and it is people describing their bad experiences in D&D Okay, and man, there's some miserable fucking shit There are oh my god there are famous clips of people

Dude people losing their minds getting getting into screaming fits, and then shoving everyone out of the way and running out of the room. No! You can't! Yeah. It's like, it's like, holy shit. Oh, that's good. I love it.

Yeah. It gets bad. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh, but the one part of the character backstory that I have decided with, which Paige and I came up with simultaneously, I mean, me and Paige are a married couple, and we're very in love,

so wouldn't it be fun to play characters that are viciously divorced? Just very antagonistically divorced. Dang, let's go, that's fun. So today at session zero, that's fucking fun. Part of the character creation will be to show to the group that we are married and we do like each other so that when we get into it in character,

people aren't tugging their collars going, Oh Jesus fucking Christ. Am I watching a real fight? I mean, divorced protagonist energy is some of the strongest there is. That's fantastic. That's really good. Yeah. Immediately someone, especially if you have a like an otherwise capable, somewhat charming character, but there's someone who's right there that's familiar and so sick of their shit. You know, that's great for any setting. That's fantastic. So here's hoping that goes well. I'm not locked in for the campaign.

I'm on a trial series of sessions. If after three or four sessions I either hate it or vice versa, I will show up for a session to die and then exit out. But I'm not too worried about that. If you roll your dice and it crumples to dust, you have an app. That'd be bad. This is a metal dice, so that would be impressive. Also, I got this home. Wildest things

have happened in the clown dimension. I, I, I don't know if you got a point. I got this home and I rolled it to test, like you have to test your dice even I am familiar with the superstitious nature of your dice and The very first roll that I ever took with this that page was wild like page watched me do it wasn't that 20 And I'm like, okay

you You are okay. Ohodes well, bodes all right. Yeah, it was a 20, a 14, a 10, a three, a four, and a 12. And I'm like, oh, that's a nice, good bell curve. All right. And just hear the Baldur's Gate narrator in your head every time. Amelia Tyler? Well, well no it would be our

DM now. Oh, yes, who is the only person in this group? I know Other than the wife, okay But I mean the DM would be the person to know right okay? Yeah, well That Yeah, well, that story makes sense as to why that experience is sullied and it also is also why like things that are so D and D adjacent in video games are like super. I adore it. I love that shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing that, you know, I always I forgot. So because I was in the story, I forgot the details of that story were not obvious from my telling.

I forgot to explain that, like the people I was playing with were theater kids. They were Dawson theater kids. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Club. This was club space. It was adjacent. Yeah. The other adjacent. Yeah. And so like there's a lot like I now that I'm Yeah, the other Jason. Yeah, and So like there's a lot like I now that I'm going to parting out I

Was going to you know now that I'm going to be playing D&D for at least a little while I've now put my foot directly into the discourse Which has only gotten more intense since we were kids in the 90, D&D was a fucking video game on paper. It was, let's hit that dungeon, let's hit the adventure module, et cetera. At some point, probably because of Critical Role, or at least helped it along, D&D has now been positioned as, it's a collaborative storytelling adventure with you and your friends. And sometimes you roll dice. And the very strong opposition from both ends of that spectrum are fascinating

because the group that I played with in 2009, whatever the fuck it was, was a fucking make-believe masturbation session with a bunch of people fucking spouting off about their OCs. Yeah, no, there is a little bit of like, okay, if half of this, if your character was already made and waiting on DeviantArt and you're in a room with five Jack Blacks standing up, can you see he's a man? Let me hear you applaud he's more than, you know, like I get that that is not what you're looking for. Um, my, my D and D sessions have been with my group of high school friends that were basically just the same group of people we knew except now we're playing, you know, whatever characters, but it was all, we were all extremely familiar.

Yeah. And our history teacher, the cool history teacher was the DM, you know. So yeah, it is, you do roll the dice, so to speak, going with random people that you don't know as well. Well, here's the thing. They're not random people because my wife knows them. Okay. they're vetted. Yeah they are vetted. But I'm sure a couple of them are a little cringe but we're playing D&D and I'm almost 40 so who am I to fucking point that stick at? Yeah. But no, and I think it also becomes quickly and immediately apparent whenever somebody joins a group that is just like, fails the vibe check, right?

Yeah. Yeah, fails the fucking what is what would that the the thavo. The thavo? No! To hit armor vibe zero Yeah, that's really good. You should feel good about that. That's important. That's important But yeah, sounds good. Hell yeah, so we're also gonna be playing a campaign that is so I'm really throwing my ass into the shit I'm not comfortable with because the the campaign that we're rolling into Is an adventure module that is designed to be

completable without combat Like there will probably be some combat right But it is completable without combat, which is the part that I am just the most comfy with by far. So I'm building a character that is focusing up on a lot of non-combat oriented skills and spells and whatnot. So I'm going to have to do the talkie roleplay shit. And so hopefully this pit in my stomach leaves at some point. And then your charisma is a nine. And then you have a fucking uphill battle.

Oh no, I'm playing an orc warlock, so my charisma will be high. If nothing else is high. But I'm planning to go for low end. I want to play a charming dumb person. Yeah, alright. I'm like putting it through the fucking Weiss and Hickman filter. You want to tasselhoff a little bit. No, fuck that little shit no fuck that little shit He's fucked that little shit. He's he's got some charm to his dumb Yeah, so I'm gonna be going Orc warlock and Paige is gonna be a hex blood sorcerer probably wild magic

Because Paige likes to roll the dice and have weird shit happen And we're going to be viciously divorced and We'll see how that works out. We also spoke between ourselves. And I'm the type of person in this scenario where if there's a cursed item that looks like it could give me something, I'm going to touch it. And I'm gonna touch it and I'm cool with the rest of the table having to violently stop me and hurt like attack and almost murder my character you're gonna stop me you're gonna be fine it's gonna be great you're gonna be a okay I want the orb no one can can stop me. I want it. I don't know what it does.

It's probably bad, but I want it. When it's your turn, it's your turn. So yeah, here's hoping that goes well. Okay. I'll be reporting back next week with vibes, because there's no playing tonight it's character creation and whatnot. An actual sheet on fire somehow.

Oh you know what there is something else I want to talk about. So the D&D Beyond app, so we're playing fifth edition right? No we're playing 2024 fifth edition. Of course there'd be apps now. I don't know if I even thought of that. So I don't know what other systems have the app or an app but fifth 5.5 or D and a player, you know 20 24, whatever you call it has an app called D&D Beyond and It's cool as fuck

It's streamlines. I imagine it's real as fuck. It's... Streamlined, I imagine. It's real slick. So the first thing that happens is you load it up and any book that you want to buy digitally, you can just read through the app. So I have the Player's Handbook 2024 on the app, and I read the entire Player's Handbook on the app. Oh my god, a control-F function on the goddamn... yeah. So here's library, and here's shit that I own. Searchable content control a function on the goddamn. Yeah, so Here's Here is listings where you can search classes magic items equipment monster species, etc

And just wow control. I none of this modern Yeah, none of this dawned on me till now, but right we're in the age of fucking smartphones and yeah the other thing is that, so everybody in the group, but Paige uses the app and Paige prefers pen and paper. Like she is old fashioned that way. She wants her notebook, she wants her notes, she wants a piece of fucking paper. But the DM put the campaign up on the app, and I joined the campaign through the app, and now he turned sharing on, and the DM owns every book,

and now I have every book because he turned sharing on. Oh. So the way that that works is when you build a campaign, all players that join, you can set to, they can read every book you own. Okay. Can you? And here's where the app really like, I was like, oh, that's really cool. Because reading it and searching for it.

But there's a character builder on the app through like you hit character and you can make a sheet and the Character Builder has drop-down menus for every choice you could possibly have and it fills in by what's been shared with you. Yes. Okay. Okay Nice. So when I go to races, it says player 2024 core races 5th edition core races Xanathar's guide to everything races, Tasha's Cauldron races, and it's all on a massive list. And I click it and it shows me my racial. It asks me what proficiency I want. I'm on the I have this open and I'm like I can choose all my cantrips from a fucking drop down menu.

Once the sheet is made, or do does it do you use it mid-campaign as well? Once the sheet is made, it changes into a character sheet that is like your smartphone and there's a character sheet. And it has the full sheet and then it has your basic stats and your proficiencies. And if you need to roll them, you touch strength and it will roll a strength check for you. Fuck. And you touch arcana and it will roll

your arcana roll for you. Damn, okay. And you click your spell slots and go, I used the spell slot and it will deplete it. And you hit a button for long rest and it will regenerate all your shit on your sheet Yeah, okay now. I'm gonna still roll this fucking dice. Yes Yes, because I want to roll the dice, but keeping track of shit like my spell slots is my HP and

That okay, I'm gonna use the fucking app for that Yeah, and you could and you can of course roll manually and then update it to whatever the fuck you need to right? Yeah, absolutely Yeah, so this all this So this, all this, all this has come along as good as it should have since it's been however many fucking decades. Yeah. That's it's very impressive. Solid. Okay. It's, it's super, super impressive. But the other thing is that like, so since all of our sheets are in the app, the DM on his app can just go through our sheets. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and like even on the on the campaign screen

It's mathed out all of our characters and says here's what the passive perception of every character is Here's the passive Investigation of every character. Here's the armor classes. So he has that all on like a fucking list To throw shit at us and now you don't have have to argue when someone doesn't remember what happened three sessions ago properly at a specific event, or worse, if the DM themselves misremember. Oh, we don't have to worry about that. Paige is the stereotype of the note taker. Paige has exhaustive notes of every session and everything and every NPC

and every item and every event okay yeah yeah I mean that's basically what you do to then write a book you know that's how you get those those campaigns converted nice okay so yeah no this this this app is fucking super cool. Like, it has made getting into this and creating a character, like, much easier. Because instead of me going, okay, Tom of War, Pact of the Tome Warlock, I get three cantrips from any school,

and I go, oh man, and then I have to flip through the book to this, to this, to this. It's on a fucking drop-down menu No, here's the ones that count the ours the ones that don't the art of like lightly writing your HP number in pencil and lightly Erasing because you by the end that's gonna yeah instead. I just hit HP and then go Change it from 32 to 28 That shit was a huge of those massively annoying. Okay, cool But yeah, no definitely gonna roll these dice for sure Z's cuz they're heavy and I want to roll dice but also

Having the physical dice and rolling in myself gives me the illusion of control over the dice roll. Right? Cause a digital dice roll is going to be fair. No, you didn't do your ritual. Therefore that, that didn't count. You know, I didn't blow on the digital dice. So it did. That's why I rolled that. Also clicking once and watching a number just suddenly turn into something is like violent. Oh, oh, like to the app's credit, when you click the number or click the roll,

a dice rolls onto your sheet. Okay, yeah. And then it gives you the number. I've talked about how when you go to Vegas and you're like playing casino games, one of the worst feelings in the world is when you're playing war and war is just you draw a card, the dealer draws a card, and the higher one wins. You can play that in a casino? Yeah. That's crazy. And if you draw like the same

number, then you just you have to do like one, two, three, four, five or something like that, whatever. It's like, it's a very basic, it's literally just bop bop. And you put 10 bucks down, you put 20 bucks down, bop bop, 20 bucks gone. Bop bop, 20 bucks gone. And it's so violent. Because it's one input, there's no obfuscation, there's no game, there's no like blackjack, pass, hit, split, check the number, oh, soft 17.

There's no illusion. No game, there, hit, split, check the number. Oh, soft 17. There's no illusion. No game. There's just two numbers and you feel so robbed. Nobody plays it. It sucks, you know? And it's the same bullshit. Like you're gonna lose your money over there anyway. But this way it's just one and done

and you're like, ah, I hate this. So yeah, you have to have the little ritual. You gotta have the little extra step. Otherwise you can't fucking enjoy anything The other thing is that I mean you said you played D&D back with your friends in high school or later But I was not familiar with this so in picking out a set of dice to use so Audio listeners at home can't see this but Paige got a new metal dice Which is just black metal with pure white because her eyes are terrible and D&D is usually played in low light

so this is easy to see but I'm looking at dice and I'm going to my local shop and Buying this and fucking with it feels exactly the same as buying an arcade stick. I don't need Yeah, like it is the same as buying an arcade stick I don't need. Yeah. Like it is the same. Oh, but it's nice though. Ooh. Yeah, I bought like I walked with a pair of dice in my bag for the longest while long after I'd ever stopped like long after I stopped playing the game. I always kind of just wanted one. I'm like, you never know when you might need it or something. And then I was just like, no, they're just fun little trinkets to have and play with. I just like the trinket on my purse That's it And you just kind of want to have it around sometimes and the noise it makes is satisfying

And there's a weight to it too and you go then you see a fancy one at like a fucking dealer or something and like yeah It's just a little little toy, you know, so I dove a little deep on this man. There's some Fancy dice. Oh Yeah. Oh, no, there's conventions where they have like super fucking Primo is elite, you know, you want some high-end resin liquid core dice Mm-hmm, and they're somehow still balanced accurately To to not be rigged one way or another it's crazy

And then and again, you have pretty expensive too. You can get way up there Yeah, I've seen some really fucking fancy You cut moonrock into dice if you're willing to pay you know what I mean like yeah I was looking on Etsy right and it's like do you want? cats I D20s and I was looking on Etsy right and it's like do you want cat's eye d20s and Then they're like you can't roll this on a regular table because they'll chip and explode, but they're nice a Fucking a d12 made of dinosaur bone a zebra bone or dinosaur bone

Yeah, absolutely, and they all have the thing of light well. It's it's bone so like Yeah, absolutely. And they all have the thing of like, well, it's bone, so like, roll it on a cloth because it'll break. Also, like a D4, holding the top of the little pyramid and just like doing that. Oh yeah, so I have- It's like a fun little thing. It's different from the roll and let go. It's a little like, woo. So which D4 are you talking about? You're talking about the triangle? The triangle. The new one. Yeah, I don't know what the new one looks like. I know about the pyramid.

The new one looks like a weird like Mobius strip oval. It's very strange looking. Okay. Oh, but yeah, so I went and got sharp dice instead of rounded dice. Oh, the corners are because they Because they're fairer. Because your rounded dice without super sharp edges, well, they can roll an extra time. You see, like casino dice, casino dice are sharp dice, so it's fairer. But metal dice, I just like it. It's gold and red. I like it.

It's pretty. Nice. Okay. So, that's what's going on with me. This week, Paige and I are also going to be streaming the casting of Frank Stone, the adventure game from the Dead by Daylight people and the Until Dawn people. Apparently that thing sucks, so we're really excited. So that's going to be on Halloween the day before Halloween, so the 30th to 31st. And Friday I'll be playing the Monster Hunter beta, which apparently is great. You see the arachnophobia mode?

I saw the arachnophobia mode. It turns them into little slugs. So here's what's weird, Woolly. There are going to be large spider monsters in that game. And the arachnophobia mode may not count them. No. No, the fear is the small ones, the big ones. you just got to fucking deal with it. I don't know. That's that's crazy. Because as somebody that's really not as someone who properly dislikes giant fucking I don't have arachnophobia, but I don't like the being. Yeah, I've talked about it before, you know, the getting stuck underneath the legs, you know, like, yeah, no, I don't like that. No, that's normal. No one like that. I, you know, I want to say there was

a game that just took the legs away and made them kind of float, you know, as one thing. Oh, you're thinking of grounded. Okay. There was like a bunch of different settings, like it like basically take legs away or fuzz them up and like the final level was it just turned them into like like like a fuzzy orb with googly eyes on them I mean again the look what you call it not as a bad company whatever the the co-op game there you it turns it into the word spider okay it's just a 3d word spider that's just like walking around. I think the goop for Monster Hunter is a pretty good solution. I think that's pretty fun.

Well, it looks like it belongs. Not only that, but it doesn't ruin the design, but it's also cute. I think it's a cute slime. And it slimes on top of you when you're on the ground and stuff. That's great. Yeah, Satisfactory, you know that factory game? It turns them into JPEGs of one of the devs cats. Right, the cat JPEG. No, Leafa Company, that was the game. I think I would, even though the smaller spiders might not be an issue,

I would turn it on because I like slime goo things. Yeah. Those are cute and fun. I'll probably turn it on and off. And fighting a big dynamic slime monster Roaring and then spitting webs out. Mm-hmm. Hell yeah Cool, okay. Uh, yeah, that's pretty much it for me Metaphor will be back on Saturday and you can go down to twitch.tv slash Pat stairs it for all of that shit All right, let's take a quick word from our sponsors. I love those sponsors, especially these sponsors This week the podcast is sponsored by Shopify

That is the number one cart that you can possibly get out there. Love you, Shopify. So it doesn't matter what you're getting into. At some point, if you're thinking about getting your business up and running off the ground, you're going to need to figure out how to sell to people online, how to ship, how to get it from wherever you're shipping it from across the world into whatever location your buyers are going to be in and Shopify is the best at doing that.

That's the number one checkout on the planet. We as you may or may not know, I mean you wouldn't think it by looking or listening but we are podcasters. I'm doing a podcast. It took a long time to even be able to say, hey, that is what I do. But that implies that we know nothing about selling anything. So when it was time to sell a t-shirt, yeah, that's where Shopify came in handy because we don't know anything about that and they are set up to help with getting that first one and all the way up to what we didn't

sell a million t-shirts. But if we did, Shopify would be... Maybe one day. ...would be right on board for that as well. They've got... Yeah, up to... ShopPay is a particularly useful app that I use for a lot of other things whenever I order online as well.

It's a really convenient way to track what's shipping to me from a bunch of different places and as somebody who has a lot of, you know, random packages, not knowing when something has arrived or where it's at and stuff from all over the place, you can get, some of them can get lost in the weeds and it's really convenient to just check in one place and go, oh, these two are arriving today. Awesome. It's a particularly useful thing. And like that is, as such, it boosts conversions up to 50%. If you're on the selling side of that, they've got your platform of choice is. It's the commerce platform that helps a bunch of brands like Allo, Offbirds, Skims, and a number of other very successful online businesses. So yeah, consider checking out Shopify and upgrade your business today. If you want to grow, grow with Shopify, upgrade your business, and get the same checkout

that we used for our t-shirts. Sign up and you can get your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash SuperBeast, all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash SuperBeast to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash SuperBeast. Thank you, Shopify. I love you, Shopify. I love you Shopify. This week the podcast is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Hey ExpressVPN. You know going online without ExpressVPN is like

leaving your kids with the nearest stranger when you go to the bathroom. Bro, what the hell? They're probably not a kidnapper or a serial killer, but why would you ever take that risk? I think the biggest risk is they just be irresponsible and just walk away. So yeah, with that energy in the air. No, you gotta take your kids into the bathroom with you, with that energy in the air, now you've got to take your kids into the bathroom

with you with ExpressVPN. You don't need to take any of those dumb risks. Every time you connect to an unencrypted network, you're putting your online data out there and any hacker on the same network can gain access and steal your data. That's your password, bank login, credit card details, all of that. You're not safe on the cafe, hotel or airport Wi-Fi. Soterios Johnson Definitely not. Soterios Johnson And it's real easy to do as well. A 12-year-old with cheap hardware can do it. You know it, you've seen them. They're staring at you

with their little Amazon fire. Soterios Johnson Their little Wi-Fi eyes. Soterios Johnson Lookin' lookin' Soterios Johnson Wi-Fis. Soter Fi's mm-hmm, mm-hmm and They can make up to a thousand dollars per person selling personal info on the dark web as well So you want to protect your data protect your info and as an added bonus be able to Teleport your location to different places that might have access to media shows or games that you

otherwise wouldn't be able to get from whatever patch of dirt you're on. That is very cool and an added benefit. So yeah, VPNs are really particularly helpful with a lot of different aspects and ExpressVPN in particular is rated number one by tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge super me yes it would take a hacker a billion years with a supercomputer to get past the encryption and it's real simple it works on your phones laptops tablets and more all so you can stay secure on the go easy to use just fire it up and click one button to get protected. So yeah, it is absolutely been very handy to use as well. You can use it on the router level.

You can get all your devices covered too. ExpressVPN is gonna... It's like taking your kid into the bathroom with you. You're just being safe and you're being secure and you're not leaving them out there with who knows what, with a dangerous 12-year-old with bad intentions. Right? Yeah, I'm not leaving my kid outside the bathroom and I'm not leaving my internet without ExpressVPN. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash superbeast. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash superbeast and you can get an extra three months for free.

Expressvpn.com slash superbeast. Thank you ExpressVPN. Love you ExpressVPN. SVP. This week, the podcast is sponsored by boot.dev. Hey, boot.dev. What's up? I'm dumb. Can you help me? Yes. You thank God. It's gonna it's gonna take a little bit from you though. You're gonna have to you're gonna have to commit to having some fun in an online RPG like environment. Oh, dude, I hate fun. That's not true. I like fun. Fun's fun. Fun's fun. If you're trying to learn how to program you if you've been thinking about it, that would make sense because that is a particularly lucrative career choice to get into. Yeah, there have been, according to Stack Overflow, the median salary for backend developers

in the US in 2023 was over $100,000. So makes sense if you want to get into programming and you want to learn how to code. However, I can tell you from personal experience that as someone who wanted to make my own video games and failed to do so, it's hard. It's really hard. And a part of the difficulty is also that it's boring. Yeah, doing things of value is quite difficult. That's why we do this. There you go. Flipping through thick textbooks was just not

working and I struggled and eventually failed out of that. But if you want to learn Python or Go programming languages, there's new ways to do so. And according to... Yeah, and by today's standards, you don't have to just sit there and read through those books. You can do it in a much more fun way with boot.dev. It is a game environment where you learn how to program by... Earn XP, you level up, you earn achievements, you complete quests, you get the top spot on a global leaderboard, you go through what is essentially an RPG-like environment as

you go through different challenges that teach you about little programming tasks. Putting this on a leaderboard is diabolical. Yeah. You get to see where you stack up against other people as you're learning to get better at programming. No, it's great. get to see where you stack up against other people is you're learning to get better at programming. No, it's great. And they've also, in addition to helping you learn, get better at your future career

and having fun on the way, they've got a free demo for every course and its interactive features so you can go check that out and see what it's like. They've got a 30-day NOAA questions asked refund policy as well and a super active community in their Discord online to help you if you ever get stuck in any of the coding challenges. So yeah, there's really just a lot of openness and access for you to go try it out.

Not everyone can afford a membership, so all boot.dev content is free to read and watch in guest mode. A paid membership unlocks hands-on coding, and yeah, and progress tracking, gamification. Yeah, lots that makes the content immersive. So you can also check out the solutions available on every challenge on the site if you ever get completely stuck or you just want to see how the instructor wrote the code to begin

with. So you can, yeah, You can check that out. Click the link in our description below and use the code castle superbeast to get 25% off your first month or even your entire first year if you choose the annual plan. That is boot.dev question mark promo promo equals Castle Super Beast. And if you use the code castle super beast, you're gonna get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev. Thank you, boot.dev.

Thanks boot.dev, I love you. All right, so in the news. Concord is over Concord has yet to begin So yes, I guess it never did here I understand Sony is shutting down Firewalk Studios the maker of Concord however the secret level episode of Concord will only air after not only the game, but

the developer are gone. Is that not the most insane fucking time? Has this ever happened? Has anything like this ever happened? No, the marketing comes out after the thing's death. After the thing's death things death no wow it's like sending out invites to your baby shower after the stillbirth I mean yeah that's one way to put it we still we still have the registry up so you know for sale baby shoes never used yeah I guess holy fuck man it's crazy and like what if here's the thing what if that episode

is really good then that's extra funny what if it's a really good episode where you're like holy shit? I kind of like that. I mean yeah, this is just not surprising I guess because there were signs because the lead You know left and then a couple of people were let go leading up to this and then so yeah right before we started Jason Schreier's break broke that they're just gonna shut down Firewalk Studios in general of more note than that so first of all all those people are out of jobs that sucks of course we reset however so Kotaku is reporting about the numbers that went into Concord. And the first number is that the initial budget for Concord was $200 million.

Remember we talked about the $400 million stat and everyone was like, that can't possibly be real. Yeah. Well, $200 million was the initial budget, and then they ran out of money. So that 200 million does not cover the whole dev or Sony buying Concord's IP or the studio. So now that number increases to the cost

of the entire studio transaction. So this thing put like a third to half a billion dollars into the air. Bad character design and just horrible timing. There's a lot of factors that you could go that like someone's building up their thesis statement on why Encord failed and doing their like PhD on it but yeah I think you can actually point to like the bad character designs as like 50% of what killed that game. There are going to be a plethora of invisible reasons,

but the ones that we see that stand out certainly start there is just the first thing is the looking. Just like you look at it, I don't like that. Yeah, and then somewhere in second place would probably be the toxic positivity bit. The mistakes can't be pointed out. The timing couldn't have been worse for gas. Direct competitors just absolutely crushing it while being

delayed and doubled down on and in cost and bloat. I will say though I hope everyone working on that Horizon live service game is super excited for people to not trust that game to even exist. Because Sony just showed their willingness to let you buy a game and then kill it. I'm like, yeah, you'll get a refund. But like, I mean, the thought is like, the way to save the most money in the long run is to kill it now. To the long run is to kill it Now to kill it then to let it linger Yeah, at least Rumbleverse was fun and good and is in your head is like damn that thing went

But like we really enjoyed it while it was here you know, we're starting we're starting to enter into like I Didn't think this is gonna be one of the things that leads to like a minor video game crash is Like the games take too long to fail They take too long to fail Right Concord took like what six seven eight years to trip I Do they should have canceled that six years ago.

Um, just because of the way history has gone, it's not like there have been numerous video game crashes. So it feels like that's the way you line it up for the next one. But like the things have changed so much that I think it's more accurate to probably expect or call it a triple A video video game crash, right? Yeah, it's a triple-A. Liubisov is gonna go away. Video games are going to be fine. There are many things that are considered video games these days. Triple-A is

absolutely in trouble more than it's ever been. You can't make these types of More than it's ever been You can't make these types of The bet the the bet gets bigger and the time gets longer and the world moves by the thing that you're making Like that happened with Suicide Squad 2 Suicide Squad came out

years late for itself and The thing that cost infinitely less that was made infinitely quicker is it becomes a huge hit and Blows everything else out of the fucking water and is just what everyone spends their time playing Yeah, so Well, let's not forget let's not forget by the way That everyone that I've been able to track down that played Concord was like, it was not very good. Like at the very end of the road, it wasn't good enough to work on word of mouth or whatever. It was just kind of bad.

I mean, just all I had to go on was just looking at the footage of like, you know, some powers being cast and it was like, yeah hero shooting stuff That's reload animations are really nice bouncing off the wall super jumping all that stuff seems seems fine, you know, but Yeah So so, you know, there's that It can join Mahershala Ali's blade reboot join Mahershala Ali's Blade reboot. As of today, we've learned that Blade has been delayed

indefinitely. It has been removed from the Marvel release date calendar. And somehow, Wesley Snipes has never been more right than with his line, There will only be one blade There could only be white blade I need someone everyone within the reach of my voice Find a reason for what the fuck is going on What the fuck is going on? What the fuck is going on? It's always possible that it's like,

Mahershala Ali could be busy, but that doesn't explain four delays. It explains maybe one. Perhaps two. There's only one thing I can think of that pops into my mind, is that they won't let the movie be R rated And then that just like it puts like a cup like they write it and they're like this is shit and it's like

Yeah, cuz you can't because I can't violently murder people in my blade movie. It's kind of important I mean the timeline is that in 2011 they regained the rights Marvel really gained the lights the rights from Lionsgate and New Line. They confirmed Blade is back at Marvel in 2013. They tease it bringing it to the MCU in 2017. They announce it in 2019. 2020. He's they announced that it's actually a TV series.

Twenty twenty. They're looking for other writers. They hire different writers over twenty twenty one. It gets pushed back in twenty twenty one. They hire a new director to take over. Yeah, none of this really gets at like any specific bits, but they just there's things like oh the Eternals gets cuts a blade cameo in it because that ends up stinking. Oh, he was there? I didn't know that. One of the Eternals producer Nate Moore revealed one version of the post-credit scene was gonna show Ali as blade

And then and then the other they cut it His voice ended up being there Oh Man, so a guy in the chat Rota Brutsom, just said, so Blade got the Overwatch 2 treatment. Like yeah, absolutely. Every time Blade comes up, well,

he just gets the story removed. Oh, I was like, because they're half, I mean, the Blade, the Blade, the Overwatch 2 treatment would be taking Wesley Snipes and just like editing it slightly and re-releasing it and calling it like new blade yeah I guess you're right uh anyway yeah so there you go that is um that is that is that is indefinitely uh uh delayed um I think what we need to do, maybe it'll come back if we pray hard enough to the anime mascot that the Vatican has revealed. Luce is the official mascot of the holy year 2025.

And if you have not seen it, I will send you over here a photo. The Catholic Church has officially unveiled an anime mascot character. It's got a little crucifix, it's got a little stick, you know, some boots and Yeah, I don't know that little kind of like walking stick thing probably could be used to, you know, inquire as to how faithful one might be. I gotta say, I'm gonna be really blunt, the photo of the article that you have sent me with this creepy old priest reaching out to this tiny anime girl, it looks like shit. It looks like shit.

It couldn't be more unfortunate. I swear to God I Look forward to oh That's the Pope. Oh Jesus It's a archbishop fish fish Ella says the mascot was inspired by the desire to live even within pop culture So beloved by our youth Bro you you guys, guys, what they need to do is put out a fucking Catholic anime, like just a straight up.

I mean, we're closer than we've ever been. Yeah, I think it's called Berserk. I think it's called the Falcon of the New Millennium Empire chapter. I think Mozgus and his tower are what you're talking about there. Yeah, this is cringe, guys. This is cringe. Hard cut to all Protestants just doing the thing with the guy taking the headset off. Oh, yeah. Protestants just doing the thing with the guy taking the headset off

Can we get can we can we get all organized religions to get like their anime characters out and just see which one's the coolest Well now now we now that's the only way to save it right the the the church I bet the Mormons would have the best one. I'm gonna be honest Man John Smith's own Miku. Fuck. With the golden tablets ready to go. Yeah. Okay. But hold on though. What about Scientology anime protagonist though? Clear. That would just be Stan Marsh, wouldn't it? Clear with no Theetons Clear. Well that would just be Stan Marsh, wouldn't it? Clear with no thetans. Ready to take on the new?

Not even one thetan? Not even one. Clear. O.T. Kun. Dude, who the fuck is this shit supposed to work on? Like... I mean, you know, they've been going through the new era. It's the cool pope.

People have been hanging out and they've been getting in there with the youth more than ever. There have been bands and they're doing the youth outreach. It's reaching out to everybody listening to this right now. I don't know, man. Luce-kun. You've got to make people afraid that they're going to go to hell or something. You've got to get them scared.

I mean, I think it's a missed opportunity to, if they're embracing anime, they easily could have just embraced Sonic. Because the overlap is already there. Fuck. And if they made Sonic the official mascot. Fuck. Of the holy year 2025.

Oh, shit. This would have been on fucking fire. Oh, you're super right. It's just a missed opportunity as far as I'm concerned Oh my god, they oh man marketing well no wait that doesn't make any sense cuz like Those those Sonic kids are already in yeah, but now it's official recognition And Sega license it

Sega licenses out Sonic Confirmed Sega license it until Sega licenses out sonic Happen confirmed You know they're already the kids are already there and they're allowed so Yeah good times Also, let's be blunt this character is like if they got, they got no sauce. They got nothing going on. This character wouldn't even rate in Hetalia. Speaking of having no sauce, Devil May Cry, Peak of Combat is shutting down.

Is it only shutting down in like one region? Is it staying open in North America? Hmm. Well here's what I've learned is that every time something collaborates with Punishing Grey Raven, it dies. The main thing, it dies. So Nier Automata hooked up with Punishing Grey Raven at which point they immediately announced the closure of Nier Reincarnation. reincarnation and then there was the blazing sumilacrum event after which point Black Rock

Shooter Fragment announced the end of its service and Devil May Cry 5 is now collaborating with KTR. Oh, it's shutting down in China which is like, oh that's only one country. It's the biggest market. It's the market it comes from, is it not? It's the original market? So I think what's happening happening actually willy is that people have decided that they're gonna kill the game and then they they go to Punishing gray raven. I think I think the cause and effect on that are reversed Let's go to the popular thing because we don't have to push our own marketing over here anymore

And then we'll announce the thing and then when everyone's excited about the thing then we'll close our thing Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I can't see a world where these where the source region goes down and then the Second one doesn't follow shortly after how excited can you be about a game like that? That doesn't even ship in the country that you live in Right, that's weird Yeah, so I don't know. There's some cool artwork that is associated with that game. That is kind of trapped there.

But hey, there have been copious amounts of fan editing to remove the word peak of combat from the wallpapers. So that you can just enjoy it for the devil may cry art that it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's nice. Anyway, speaking of-

Sorry, Dante. Speaking of being freed from jail, you know where this is going. Do I? Xenoblade Chronicles X, definitive edition has been announced for the Switch. So this marks the end, by the way. The final game. This is the final game of note on the Wii U that is is moving on and I think we can assume that the Switch 2 will be backwards compatible so like the

we can just all fucking pretend the Wii U didn't even happen. We are all free now Oh, uh, uh, uh. That's it. That's it. I'm super interested in playing that game because that's one of the only games that I played on the Wii U that mandated the Wii U gamepad. Oh, really? It was like, you must play with the gamepad. OK. And I said, no, I'm not going to.

And it said, too bad. What did it do? Like half of your menu and inventory stuff was just on the gamepad. Oh, it wasn't like gyro stuff It was just no no it was like, you know, you have to control your party the only place you can see your map Shit like that was all on the gamepad. I was like, I don't want to fuck off. That's an easy fix Yeah Yeah, okay well you know I don't want to. Fuck off. That's an easy fix. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, you know, it's nice that it took a while, but eventually happened. Nintendo easily could have just been like,

fuck all of you forever, because they have no fucks given about things being. No, they love Monolithsoft now. Monolithsoft's their little baby friend. But they also love disallowing people from ever playing games ever again. That's true, that they do hate that. They get huge boners.

They get porked up every time. You're never allowed to play a game again. Anyway, it's free. Yeah, and then, last little bits here, but there was some cool shit that got announced. In particular, we heard a little bit about Claire Obscure, Expedition 33. It's short and it's cheap! Or Expedition 33.

They've announced the French casting with a big old French trailer and with that French trailer you see the French ass costumes and People are they literally have Berets striped shirts and baguettes. That's great. That's great Incredible and you know what this game looks fucking cool, man I'm getting really strong Lost Odyssey vibes. Oh yeah, that's, oh you're super right. From the trailer, right? I'm getting the like realistic high action,

high octane RPGing, you know? The cast is doing, they're doing wild shit, but it's all got numbers popping out. Fucking looks great. And the dub cast, in French in particular, like it's an all-star French cast. I think I might play this game in French. Like, it feels like it might be the way.

I might have agreed with you if not for French. But also If not for French But also Parisians but also Like I don't want a role I don't want to play a role-playing game in which in the back of my mind I'm like imagining like where they're all pissing in the street off camera whenever the camera's not looking at them. But also I'm crazy about the English dubcast. I like, you know, Ben Starr and Jennifer English.

Yeah, no, to be fair, they've got winners. It's one of those bits, it's like playing the Japanese game in Japanese a bit here. And I feel as if a bunch of dumb Victor Chevalier bits are primed to go, especially if Reggie's sitting there throwing the accent on as strong as possible. You're just fucking getting, going full Leon the Professional with it. You know, going full Amélie Poulain. This game looks fucking cool. Check out the latest trailer for Clare Obscure, Expedition 33.

It is the Frenchest thing I've ever seen and it looks very, very nice. It's very francais. It is the French's thing I've ever seen and it looks very fancy also The the new studio there Sandfall interactive Pretty impressive for a Like first game effort

Mm-hmm. We don't have a ton of detail. I know it's got like the former Ubi people and it's got some funding from I forgot who the other producers were. But yeah, shit looks tip top. And I'm ready for this, a nice, clean Lost Odyssey-like closed RPG. And another game that just dropped a trailer. And this was fun because I always like when I'm following these Twitter games that pop up as little GIFs and I'm like, when is it going to be real?

And the answer can often be never. But a trailer for Sushi-Ben has popped up. And Sushi-Ben is a game I've seen on Twitter a bunch. By yeah, D-Mod Dev. It is got the vibes of Mega Man Legends in its art style. Everything pops up with Mega Panels and it's got just a really clean, fun kind of design. Lots of flavor

flair, lots of style. Ooh, there's an Akira slide. Yep. And I recognize this because there was a thread that devs were talking about how hard it is to animate a character walking upstairs. And then the girl in this trailer is showing- Oh, that's what that was. Yeah, she's stepping on her servant men as they're kneeling at the stairs. So she never has to actually go up.

She just kind of keeps walking forward as they, it's like a hack to get around the difficulty of stair animation. But as a result, she's just like, they're literally there, she's stepping on them the whole time and then there's a helicopter made out of them. Very like, it's again, I want to say the Mega Man Legends kind of like awesome cell shading art style, a bit of that kill the kill kind of humor going on with it.

Immediately charming. Written by the creator of Hatoful Boyfriend. Yeah. It is a fishing game that is just full of charm. And it's a VR game, but it's also got a not-VR mode. So, looks just up my alley as hell. It looks cute. It looks like it's carrying forward the tradition of Mega Man Legends, which is nice, because nothing else is!

Nope. Not enough games in life with this art style to just make us happy while we play it. The bluest of blue skies and the flattest cell shaded characters. Clean. Yeah, Sushi Ben, check that out as well. It's pretty much the deal. Yeah, up on Steam. You know, would I dust off the VR headset just to see?

I don't know where it is. I kept it. It's sealed in its box. I know where it is. It's somewhere. It's somewhere in some boxes over there. I bet but there are proper warnings about like You know keeping them out of sunlight. Otherwise the lens is fucked. I wouldn't be surprised if you have a who leaves like them like indirect sunlight just out on like a table or whatever I Would not be surprised if if shit was fucked at this point But I might blow the dust off just to give it a quick a quick try Anyway, 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

Oh, we're gonna get D&D questions now. Well, now that you've put that out into the ether. How cool is my character? Let me tell you the story about something really cool happened while I was playing at a campaign with my friends. Yes. No, the cool make-believe thing happened and it was cool. I know, but come on. Like yeah, you gotta, you gotta,

okay, to be fair, I've been around when people have told me cool stories of things that have happened in campaigns, and contextually, that can be done in a way that, that can work. You know what I wanna hear, though? I wanna hear bad things that happen in campaigns. But a lot of the time, it just, it kind of, it bombs. I just have to put it

out there. It just, a lot of the time it bombs. It doesn't always bomb, but it's a difficult thing to do in a way where like it's actually, it's like telling people about your dreams, you know? Like most of the time you're like, yeah, and then this crazy... It's like, yeah, it's a dream. I mean, yes, crazy shit happened. Every once in a while they nail it, but most of the time... Anyway. Let's see. We got one coming in.

From... The Wanderer. Hello. Hey, The Wanderer. Hey, Beastie Boys. I have a major problem recently. The Wanderer, hello. Hey, The Wanderer. Hey, Beastie Boys. I have a major problem recently. Getting through most of the way in a game and then, especially with story-driven games

and stopping right before the end happens with games I'm absolutely loving and I enjoy to play. I think it's because I have a kind of fear of goodbyes and good things ending and I know I can just play through it again. It won't be the first time. So I don't want to start playing some new games sometimes because I know that if I love it and the characters, then eventually it'll have to reach an end. Have you experienced anything like this and what advice would you have for getting around

this? I'm married to this. I think I, yes, I do get it. I know what you mean. And I think that's why games like P4 have that extended goodbye sequence. I think it's why Undertale has the victory lap. Games that do that are pretty solid for letting you go back and say goodbye to everybody and get to fully appreciate what the game's world was about and stuff. I think that's really good in those cases. are pretty solid for letting you go back and say goodbye to everybody and get to fully appreciate what the game's world was about and stuff. I think that's really good in those cases. I don't know that this is gonna work for you,

but I think what might be helpful, what might be cool is actually, as you're approaching that point where you know the game that you're enjoying is gonna end and you're kind of finding yourself reluctant to go back in and do it, start a new thing, and get a little bit into that thing in a way where once you end this one,

you kind of are still looking forward to the other thing that you're just getting started on. So you don't have to wait to hit the credits to start the new game, maybe even start a little bit earlier to get yourself kind of invested, and then when you wrap it up with the current one, it's not as like, ah, fuck, you know, but you've already got this other thing. You're like, okay, well, this is starting

on the way up. It never kind of hits that zero. So I'm seeing some folks in the chat point out like I never finished Lost Judgment. But this isn't what's going on when I don't finish a game. I get distracted. I get distracted by a new thing and then just fall off the other one. I am absolutely married to this type of person Paige and I Paige was like, oh you never saw Will and Grace. I never saw Will and Grace So we started watching Will and Grace one of my wife's favorite shows from her younger days and that shows great and Then we got to I shit you not one episode from the finale and did not finish watching that show for like a year because Paige had never seen the

finale and could ever be like, oh, so we're going to finish watching it? It's like, ah, just like Hemmed and Haught. And so my advice to anyone in this situation, she didn't finish Breaking Bad. I think she's one episode from the end of Breaking Bad. Wow. Yeah, like she just does that. She got really into a show called Justified because's the cowboy cool man. Yeah, big big And she was like rabid in it and then she got to like the last season Oh my god, and then just stopped watching it entirely. Oh my god

So the way the way to the way to do that is The way to get over that is to have your loved one also watch the show or play the game with you and then just escalate the annoyance more and more and more and more right until it's about to become like a weird problem and then you'll be like, fine. And then why? And then you'll play like fine and then why and then you'll play it or finish it and enjoy grudgingly like break the glass and then you'll be like ah yes that was good actually okay I suggest my thing but yeah you can try that too

thanks dude drives me drives me crazy there a, you know what? You know what else drives me crazy? I showed this off on stream the other day. We were eating pizza and Paige was like, can I have a bite of your pizza? And I said, no, because you're going to eat to have a bite of this pizza and then tell me it's gross and go, and. And I'm like, no, I'm not. She's like, no, I'm not. And then she took a bite and she's like, ugh, gross, it's got pineapple, now my mouth's all itchy, awful.

Like, stop, stop taking my food to tell me it's bad! Why did you ask? Stop doing that! That's one less bite. I coulda had that and I would have enjoyed it. Also, you're allergic to pineapple. What? See, the bite is not wasted. If the bite is always enjoyed, no matter which direction it's going in.

But when the bite is not enjoyed now, we're down a bite Every day is an adventure in clown world. I think I'm well prepared for D&D actually come to think of it And one last one from Tom who says dear gladiator and dictator Long time fan and fellow Street Fighter nerd here I have a theory about Sakura that, and I think she was designed to perhaps be the Ken to Akuma's Ryu. And I figured I'd run it by you

to see what your thoughts are. Just like Ryu and Ken have opposing characteristics and mostly similar mechanics, there's some differences. I feel like Sakura was designed to oppose Akuma. Character wise, Akuma's an angry old man with Sakura as the inverse being a happy young girl. Mechanically, they're both Shodos.

One has a command jump, does a normal DP, Fireball and Hurricane Kick formula. Most of all, they're Fireballs. Both can charge their Fireballs and one can fire them diagonally downward in the air while the other can go diagonally upwards from the ground. I feel like Capcom designed Sakura with Akuma in mind and their connection is when they gave her the Shungoku Satsu as an Easter egg in some of the Versus games.

I'd love to hear what you think. No, they wanted to put a high school girl in the game. Yeah, the answer is what if cute girl? Actually. What if cute girl though? What if cute Girl did the thing that the main character has been doing. That's cool. Not the first time, we've seen it before,

from Kyoko in KOF all the way up to Lily, who's currently doing T-Hawks moves. Fucking Noriko in Gun Buster. It's just What If a Cute Girl did the thing. What If there was a cute girl there? Did the thing. Also, I mean, look, yes, that is a stretch. Going with the directions of the fireballs too is a bit much. That is, that does have some meat to it.

But like- That part, absolutely. But at some point, Ryu's storyline is linear, can only go in one direction. It's about fighting, it's about masters, and it's about students. So at some point he was going to have to get a disciple of some kind. And I know that the bit here is actually... Here's where you actually are close in the sense that Ackerman designed Sakura because he thought that there were too many cool characters that were all like cool edge being designed for Alpha 2

and not enough like outside of that spectrum characters or not enough weirdos either. For example, like he wanted Honda in that and he knew that they would reject the characters like that and that they would reject her as well. And sure enough, when he pitched her, they did. Because Alpha 2 was when they were on that kick because Guy and Rose and fucking Charlie, you know,

were like the coolest fucking edge characters showing up. That's a cool cast, man. Yeah. And they're like the girl in the Sailor Moon I like kind of reference character. No, that's not going to cut it. But then eventually the director was like, oh, that is cool, actually.

That's different. That's not gonna cut it. But then eventually the director was like, oh that is cool. Actually, I don't know. That's different. That's interesting, you know, and There was also a bit where Bengis really enjoyed the fact that it was not just Ryu and Ken again who he had to kind of Stick by what existed. He had a brand new Shoto to work from scratch with and really liked drawing her as well. So She was created to be the anti-edge in a way, but the weird part is that Sacher is cool. But just not cool in the same sense of like stylish kind of cool with hair, Jojo hair, which is what they were doing at the time. Yeah.

Unfortunately, Tom, you did not cook, but you know. The diagonal fireball thing was alright But yeah, we know why she exists When you hit forward on medium kick you can see her underwear. It's the it's the flower. It's a bloom Bloom kick or so yeah, you know in any case bring back Sean he deserves better No So yeah, in any case, bring back Sean. He deserves better. No. Sean deserves shit. But that's, but neither did Dan, but now look at him.

Yeah, I like Dan though. Exactly. That's my point. ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] Thanks for watching!