Castle Super Beast - CSB382: JKR's Moldrise: The Jericho Who Jonkles

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

Download MP3 | Watch Video Episode Full Timestamps: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vSKkGchDQV5RvTwa2uFyOu3z4YHl-n8vPz90khvgMEew2dZ7dzKuGJ8Sf2wZ1-qsPvt3gs5qQ7uYTMJ/pub Watch full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@CastleSuperBeastArchive NEW CASTLE SUPER BEAST "LEGACY" SHIRT & DESKMAT AVAILABLE NOW: https://www.orchideight.com/collections/castle-super-beast Go to http://heroforge.com and use code CASTLE to get 5% off on all orders of physical miniatures. Docket: According to wowhead, reddit and others a game master intervened in a +23 NPX and ported himself into the dungeon to kill some trash for the group who finished the last boss under %. The group is friends with the GM and were in VC at the time and asked for him to do them a solid.  Blizzard fires World of Warcraft game master who insta-killed bosses for friends It will also be "taking action" against the players who were involved. The Fire's Edge, the first new DLC for Darkest Dungeon since 2020, is releasing on August 18th. The Duelist and Runaway, heroes who debuted in Darkest Dungeon II, bring their unique abilities to bear against horrors that lurk beneath the manor.  Disney's Former CEO Seems To Have No Memory Of Approving Kingdom Hearts The US $55 billion leveraged buyout of Electronic Arts (EA) has been approved by the European Commission's competition regulators. Adult Aang concept art quotes "According to ChatGPT" The crew is anti AI and respond UMvC3 Community Edition - Character Reveal Trailer 3

Hello. Hello. Oh, I'm lit differently. Hold on a second. Let me fix that. Yeah, you are lit differently. There we go. All right.

You look less purple than usual. Yeah, I know. I got to fix that. Yeah, there we do. How are you doing, man? What's up? Oh, big week. Big week.

And it's also the last week of this podcast at this specific time slot. This is correct. Yes. If you're catching it live, if you're catching it live at the very least. Um, so I did announce earlier today on, uh, Woolie versus that the new hours, uh, according to baby will be me starting my streams at 1 p.m. Eastern until 5 p.m. Eastern. And that's 10 a.m. for you Pacific folks. Uh, and that applies to the podcast as well. Because yeah, everything in the weekday is going to be shifting up because that is family. That is, that is, that is, that is, that is baby time. That's what it is. Um, so, uh, uh, Again, shouldn't matter if you're catching this in post, but if you happen to be one of those freaks that wants to be here to see the suckling juices as they come out right away,

live dripping from the source, if you want to get that stench, the waft as soon as possible, then you've got to show up a little earlier. You're fucking weird. Yeah, well, you know, this is the fucking podcast that we do. This is the shit that... Oh, no.

This is the streams we do. I would describe what comes. out of us as wafts, you know? I don't like that. Yeah, well, my wife doesn't like it either when I waft all over. Well, that's, that's too bad, but, um... It is. She'll feed me, she'll feed me soup.

And then the soup activates in my tummy. Hmm. And then she's like, stop doing that. And I'm like, but you gave me the soup that activates my tummy. You know what happened. Not a fan of food that activates. The, whatever anything I eat activates, it's not going to be a good time. It unlocks my, my, my colon chakra.

All right. So big week, big things, a lot. I have a lot of ground to cover, and I'm sure you do as well. I have a 24-hour ground to cover. Yeah. Okay, okay. But there is, I absolutely know for a certainty that there's at least one point of overlap, and that we will hide in the middle of the next hour so that people don't know where to skip as easily. So, okay, the things I have, I have a lot of different things to go down. You have one beefy thing. Oh, I have a couple.

Oh, okay. Should I start? Yeah, go for it. By all means. All right. All right. So we'll start like this. Number of things occurred this week.

There's a lot of Fantasia festival stuff going on, a lot of releases, demos, et cetera. It's been a wild scheduling week. Don't worry. This light will stop flickering in a moment. It's just, it's, it's, we're catching onto the Wi-Fi signal. But, uh, let's start like this. Young ladies don't play fighting games. I have heard that that is not even true.

They, in fact, actually do play fighting games in that anime. Not only do they play fighting games in that anime. They play fighting games in general and tend to land top eights in a lot of anime games in particular. It's kind of nuts. I feel like it's almost like young, ladies shouldn't play fighting games, like an almost like, like, uh, pride and prejudiced level of class.

They ought not to. Like Mr. Darcy would look at you with scorn if you tried to talk to him about throw loops. So that is actually why it's called that. That's actually the reason why it's called that is because it's set, it's set in a high school for, um, ladies that are, that are looking to become like, you know, fancy elite, you know, socialite high class. So they oughtn't not to play these fighting games. In fact, this is a genre for the lower classes.

And getting caught playing them might lead to expulsion, right? Proper girls don't do that. And that's the running bit, you know? Like, proper young ladies don't FADC into Ultra One. I feel like this entire concept could just be. applied to like smoking cigarettes. And instead of like lab time, it would just be a long term like, how do I smoke cigarettes in the school bathroom without being caught death note style nonsense.

For sure. Absolute D-Gen shit going down with, uh, that you're not supposed to be up to. They got to hide that. Right. So I've watched the first three episodes that came out. And I was kind of, I didn't read the manga. I didn't watch the live action adaptation. I was kind of waiting for this.

I wanted this version. This format. Yes. So right off the bat, I'll say, missed opportunity with the original title of the show, of the series, because it was originally called Good Games. Thanks. Good games, young ladies don't play fighting games, right?

GGs. Oh, I think the shortened title is actually much better. So it's, it works. The Japanese version is, um, uh, Tayani Deshta and then, you know, the full thing, young ladies don't play fighting games. It does work. I just, I just, I do like the little thing of GGs being like the top of it. But like, Japan has like a deep love for like absolutely ridiculously long titles.

And I do, and I love a good solid title that's an elegant sentence, you know, or an elegant statement. Never seen it or read it or anything. but I do like things like a series of unfortunate events, you know? Right. And things like that. Like, yeah, there's a way to it. But it's either way, it's great. Fuck me.

I goddamn love this show, dude. Oh, yeah. I'm so in. It's so good. Is it activating every neuron you got? And I watched, I sat down knowing it was going to because it's like, hey, look, the thing you already like, dude, it's about that. so you're obviously going to like it.

And I'm like, yes, I know. So I'm walking and knowing that the hook is baited. But still, what are you going to get for me? What am I going to, how am I going to feel about this? Even though I know that it's super tailored to my interest. And the answer is, it's fucking awesome. It's so good, dude. It's just like the exact, everything is exactly what it appears to be on the surface in terms of just like,

you know you're going to get these strong characters. archetypes and you're going to play them off of FGC slang and isms, you know, and the contrast there is going to just sell these characters and how charming they are to you. But I love that it's unapologetic about it and just straight up like, again, because the terms and everything is cross-checked, there's a point at which I'm going, all right, I know that this is the, you know, it's light Uri sort of, you know, showjo romance. and friendship with the theme of fighting games on top of it. But in most cases, you're looking at this going,

it's going to be a digestible version. So we're... It must be. It's mandatory. So we're going to, you know, like, we're going to just drop things down a little bit and make it very... It'll be the opening. It'll be the beginning of your introduction to this.

And I'm sure that sometimes things that resemble, like, what's real to us, have, having played these games for long time, we'll start to shine through. But overall, let's, I'm expecting the appeal to be somewhat dumped down. And the moment the first character starts playing a fighting game in the show, you see them ranked as a high master street fighter six player. Okay. And the thing they're doing is absolutely real, optimized, drive rush, cancel, spend it all

for the kill combos. What you're saying is some fucking nerds on this show. Real shit. It is not dropping down to be like fighting games. It's doing that in the conversational moments. There's pop-ins to explain some of the terms. But what you're watching and what they're doing is real shit. There's a couple of moments where getting super technical, like they do, in gameplay,

there's a couple of decisions that are like, oh, you would know that's, this is a fake string here. You would know how to blow this up if you're this. high, right, right, right. But also, you can go, like, heat of the moment, you might make some wrong decisions, you know, there's these little things where even if you're this strong of a player or whatever the case is, you're fighting against somebody, especially in person, maybe you're nervous about that, and you might make some mistakes here and there. But, like, it is absolutely legit with what you're watching in the matches unfolding, and the level they're starting at, skill-wise, is, like, pretty advanced, you know? You're talking, like, the

characters are people who would make it out of their pools for sure. Yeah. You know? That's interesting because that doesn't leave, like, in my mind anyway, it doesn't leave a whole lot of like ramp up for your story to go if you're already kind of starting near the fucking top. But that's the magic is that the journey is still so long and individual players and their arcs and everything that happens can, there's, there is so much to grow.

You might not feel it, but when you're there, you will look up and go, oh my God, I have so much more to go, you know? The road behind you... To me, to me, like, the ultimate finale of this would be to, like, travel overseas to the United States. Sure. To compete in something. Well, I know that Evo Japan is, like, a prominent part of, like, the intro and some of the stuff you see branded-wise. So I'm like, I know they go to a bracket, to a tournament at some point.

But just to say that, like, it doesn't feel... What you're saying, that feeling of, like, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of way to go. it's a fucking absolute desert heat haze where that's a curved horizon that it stretches far beyond and you won't know until you're standing there how much further you have to go and it looks like this is willing to get into

the nitty gritty on that so right off the bat I just I thought it was really fun that it started there but the characters and just you know all the the little mannerisms like I'm sure you've seen the panels of like the girl standing up going let's fucking go popping off calling people

I also saw a clip of one of the other girls, like, looking at one of the others going, is this girl a scrub? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, no. Is she a scrub? That's real, right? And, um, I mean, I don't, I definitely don't want to give away some of the fun things that happen in the, in the ways that the first three episodes unfold.

It's really funny. But, like, the ways in which young proper ladies who secretly are fucking beasts at Street Fighter kind of keep that in check. And the way that they detect others potentially being into it is hilarious. It's super funny, right? Like, the very, very first one is somebody peeks in and see someone else playing, right? And I'll just, I'll give that one away where like she peeks in and sees another girl playing Street Fighter Six. And the angle she's at, she's playing with her stick and like has a moment of going like,

What the? And then she says, like, Sto Six, which is like the Japanese way of saying like Street Fighter Six. And then later on, there's a moment of like the character, the person who was playing is like, hold on a minute. I know you caught me playing. But when you looked into the room, you did not see the screen. You just saw me playing on an arcade stick.

And I heard you say to yourself, SF6. So you play, right? That means you play, right? You're in here, right? You're one of us, right? And it's like, yeah, because anyone who didn't know walking in would see this arcade stick, hear the sounds of like a drive rush occurring and just be like, what the fuck is happening here? You know, that makes me wonder if you given videos of only people's hands with no sound effects other than stick clacks could determine what. fighting game someone is playing.

Okay. My power level is high, but I don't think I could pair it down to the exact game. What I can probably pair it down to is the series. So if someone's

playing Tekken versus K-O-F versus Street Fighter which fucking guys play fucking Techun. That'd be very easy. You'd be able to tell like very quickly. You'd hear that horrible clicking noise. No, even if coming off the stick. Even with no noises, just looking at hand positioning, right?

Or a certain anime games, you'd be able to look, you'd be able to tell. But yeah, sure, if I'm looking at your hands and I'm looking at you doing inputs and then quickly tapping medium punch and medium kick and tapping forward forward, I know you're playing Street Fighter for. Right? I'd look for something like that. I'd look for a hallmark like that. If I see you hitting heavy and heavy punches and heavy kick, tapping and or, you know, these little, little tells in the universal system, then yes, that'd be a big hint. Someone in the chat points out you'd be able to tell anyone be able to tell if you're playing

virtual fighter because they'd only be using these three fucking fingers. Exactly. Or again, tech and fingers tapping the four buttons, you know? For sure, for sure. So this tells like that, a million percent. But like there's some where you just might not be able to tell. Like, KOF between one or to the other, you might not know which version of a KOF game you're playing, especially seeing a quarterstone.

circle forward, half circle back input. It's like 25 fucking K-O-F games, right? Yeah. So that gets harder, you know, and, and such. But, you know, that's one, that's one bit of it. Or, you know, if you're looking at a guilty gear game, like, yeah, that too, like, if you're seeing someone Roman cancel and then, like, dash forward or, you know, or so, it could, like, you're, you could be looking at strive as opposed to one of the older games, but in any case,

In any case, that is a really fun aspect of the game of the show. And the lingo is, yes, like, certified. And, like, it makes it a million times better to hear the, you know, again, using the words, like, scrubs. Like, they're using cringe a bunch, too. It feels like it was, it feels like the script was written yesterday. But, like, it works for the subject material, like, really, really well. I'm sure they updated some of that. Mm-hmm. For sure, over time.

And when it gets into the little moments of like, you know, when you zoom in on a Jojo fight and it's like, oh, but did you know that when this person does this, the range of their stand will, you know, so you get into those little like, or Hunter Hunter explanation moments, right? So, oh, my God. Hunter Hunter has like entire episodes that are like, come to class. There's like a very specific episode before a tournament where the fucking show just sits you down and goes through like. a PowerPoint presentation about how fucking Nen works and it's completely ridiculous. Yeah, so like they have moments like that in this where

you know, you'll, just again, just because you're meeting other people and you're like, oh shit, you play too and you have that energy

doesn't mean you know how to, it doesn't mean that you're any good at it. So like, yeah, that's true. You know, so there's definitely that like aura into the exposure of getting

revealing how how bad you are at the game. and then when they go into the lab and start talking about what to do and training and stuff and they'll take a second to be like okay so let's work on this problem that you're having and they get into it and make it like a point

for a character and it's just it's really great it's really great it shows you one facet you know of that and then you also get these other things where in the meantime the main characters are just running the set right going fucking first to death on it and the level of intensity is that you almost forget to do winter stays on, you know,

and I'm like, oh yeah, been there before. There's two main characters here tonight, and they want to play and hog the sticks more than anyone else, you know. And you got to make room for other people to play as well. It's all these little fun things that are just lore accurate. And it's just charming as hell. So, yeah, really, really great start. And I'm fucking in.

I'm in. And it, it, like it's it's obvious but it just it makes me feel happy to watch it is it is a joy to watch and go the thing I've oh hey oh oh I liked it yeah Leo right that's it I know it's

I know exactly what it's doing to me and I'm enjoying it as it's doing it it um it's like of how it's made came out with a fucking episode on how to build commuter trains There'd be a significant portion of people that would just be like, those are the two things.

I love those things. Those are the two things. Yeah, straight up. But also, and to be fair, like, the, you know, when the, when the cute girls are doing cool shit and having a good time, like, it doesn't have to be my interest because I also got the fuck into the better parts of Umamusume, because it was just objectively awesome, right? So it's just when I see that I see myself on the operating table, I can see that my brain is cut open and I can see them poking the toast button. You know, as I'm watching the show and I was like, yeah, she's an oh-niner.

And then, you know, we don't know what happened in the Street Fighter 5 era, but it makes sense that she'd be playing that and then playing six now. Oh yeah, you only play online. You've never played it offline. Okay, yeah. and I feel I'm feeling the brain pokes get happening It's nice to be like Completely in on the subject chosen So like there's some horse racing addicts out there

And if they are also into anime And like And princess managers Yeah The idea that like Your decades of mentally ill horse racing knowledge is being surfaced to you in a format

you already like that must have that must have scratched so many inches exactly and even just like the videos where they like I'm going to go ask my old grandpa who was way big into Japanese horse racing you know to guess the characters based on their designs and they show

the old man a couple of umamusume designs and he's like oh yeah Tiamopra oh I remember her you know and then and like and just talking about the writer as well that was involved and all this stuff. It's like, it's pretty impressive, but you scratch that itch and it fucking activates you.

Anyway, so that's really great. Big, big recommend on that. Whether you love or do not care about FGs, give it a shot and see if you like it. This week as well had Keats jump on, get into fighting games. We talked. How is Keith?

doing good. He just created a channel called Game Design Direct, where it's going to be talking about game design. And he put out a video called Balance is Not Real. And it was really good. It was just discussing how you think you know

what balance is, but it's not. And you don't balance games. It's never been real. Never been real, right? You tune for feels and vibes. It's always been fake. And everyone lies to you, the data lies to you and the players lie to you and your own team lies to you and you

lie to yourself. So why are we pretending that the final achieved balanced state of a game is something anyone wants to achieve here? When has the back of a box ever said, perfectly balanced as one is the selling bullet points? So yeah, you hear that? Ari players? Do you hear that? Balance isn't real. Your character is fine. Yeah. Balance must be restored, says Avatar. Must it, though? So it was a really great video discussing all of that. And the opening salvo is really strong because basically he starts out by talking about in League of Legends, Vladimir was a character that got patched because people were complaining and it was, they were in dire need of adjustments.

And so they finally did so and released it. And then everyone was like, oh yeah, it's so much better now. thank God this patch came out they finally did it and then it turns out they didn't release it at all they forgot to put the version out everyone was placebo playing the old version just going oh man it feels so much better

there's a call of duty version of that I believe where a gun was being reported as underpowered and had too long time to kill so they changed the sound effect for the gunshot to have more bass in it

and that's it Oh, you fools. Oh, you've been had. What a ruse. And it's like, yeah, it works. Boom. Oh, that was Medal of Honor. My mistake, if it was.

Boom. But, yeah. Just like, well, because balance leads to intention and intention and perspective affect balance. Right? Yes. Knowing that Sean is the worst. Characian's a bad example. He is the worst character in the game. But like, oh, this character's trash. Like, as a full statement, hey, by the way, this character's trash. affects your ability to play with them right away before you even touch the fucking character.

And the case and point was Yoshi in melee, a game that has never been touched, right? It's in the same frozen state forever. and Yoshi was lower on the tier list near the absolute bottom, bottom four. One player getting good has pushed Yoshi up and up in the tier list, even though the game literally has not changed, you know? And another example that was given was the same thing happened in league again with Riven, who also got buffed and then everyone was like, oh yeah, it feels way better, and then they forgot to push the patch live. So it's just crazy how people gaslight themselves,

and we absolutely can groupthink ourselves into feeling an improvement that that's not there, you know? On the other hand, I was watching Sejay. I'm talking about downplaying the other day. And he and I forget the guest's name. I could look it up, but I'm too lazy. Was it Lord Knight? It was Lord Knight. Yeah, okay, it's great.

Because we're talking about downplaying and biking and stuff like that. But the point that really stood out to me was that the way Capcom balances things, and 2XCO and like a lot of people, certain characters are like visibly more important to the long-term life of the game than others. So the example the Sageam gave is that like, well, Menon can get a Nerf, and that's it, she'll just get a Nerf. But if you Nerf Akuma, he's going to get like complimentary buffs to even him out. Or if you Nerf JP, they'll buff something else on JP because, well, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

So, right. Soul bad guy needs to be the coolest. Ari needs to sell those skins. It's just... Compensation buffs. 100%, right? There, listen, some babies are getting lifted

and swimming and others are waiting at the bottom of the ocean. You know, it's just the way it is. We know the life of these characters when you pick them. And something that came up a bunch of times as well, not to fully derail here, but like Blanca is this insanely weird, hilarious example in Street Fighter 6 in particular because he's so strong, but he still is unused, generally, is very unpopular on the use charts because people are like, yeah, but I don't want to use this weird fucking green freak. And he's ugly and he's not fun and cool, you know? And like, even though the numbers say that, like, statistically he's a very strong character, popularity did not increase.

So, yeah, those two things are not always linked, you know? If there's an unpopular character, you can buff them right up until the point where they're touching the sun before people grab them just because they're strong. Yeah. Like, you have to really, really push it. If I can't do five Fafnears, then what's the point? But either way, the we so, after that, that great video, came out. Keats came on and we just chatted, you know, about

balance and I asked him questions and we just kind of did a little follow up on further things. Just how his takes on, you know, especially since it was a big fighting game week, you know, a lot of things happened this week. So, yeah, that chat is going to be coming out over on Woolly versus.

And tune in for just a fun hour of us yapping about game design, game balance and, you know, like some of the stuff that went down on Killer Instinct and some of the stuff that historically over the years has like just how bad patch notes have been in the past versus like

how good smash bros having the worst ones um I mean they did the fact that they gave you any notes at all feels like from a Nintendo yeah but the notes would be adjustments have been made oh yeah yeah no same thing Capcom talking about um talking about or the Street Fighter 4 era various adjustments have been made yeah it's it's just crazy and the and the idea behind that being like we don't want to

tell you too much and go discover it yourself. Like all you're doing is frustrating everybody involved, you know, pretending that the internet doesn't exist here. So, yeah, it's a good chat. Go check that out. Okay. So next, beyond the chat with Keats, the Fantasia Film Festival has been going on this week and for about two weeks now.

Lots of stuff has been popping off. Haven't had the chance to go to the usual bunch I like to go to. I often go to like, I grab like 10 tickets sometimes and go. but life is different now, so that's not possible. Life is a little bit different. So instead I picked out a few select faves or things that looked interesting and got those instead. You're getting into the, I mean, you're doing a daycare thing, but you're also like leapfrogging into the era where you're like,

a babysitter is like acceptable to your heart and like your idea of safety, right? Because it's not your tiny, tiny little potato. Like, you can go out and have like a date night and not like just be fucking, ah, sweating the whole time. Yes. And we got someone who's really cool and, you know, she likes to hang out with and is comfy, you know. That's the most important part. She's comfy with them.

Well, no, them being responsible is the most important part. I mean. That's a given. That's a given. One through 99 are like, don't fuck up. And then 100 is, okay, does she? like you though. You know?

So yeah, so that's nice. That's possible. And so in terms of the Fantasia movies, I just wanted to, yeah, I got tickets to, oh, maybe like three or four. So just to point out some of them, there was a movie that is just releasing this year. These are all movies that are like debuting at the festival this summer that are pretty much going to be coming out this year as well. So you'll be seeing announcements and trailers.

for these very soon. Cherry and Virgin is a really cool rom-com anime and it is by Masano Kawajiri who was one of the staffers on the Berserk Golden Age films and

this is a really interesting setting where basically the protagonists, the two protagonists, your love interest, are a an arrow mangaka right

anti artist who's on the apps trying to swipe and find a date and a and a and a

yawi artist you know on the apps trying to find a date and one obviously in a black and white very

dot tone inked style and the other in a very showjo colorful, beautiful, blended style. Right. And each of the characters, the art style that they draw represents them in the movie

so they are in their own world of color in the setting. And they see life and the scenes and backgrounds and everything around them reflect their views on life in their own character art style. It's

amazing. Really, really, really interesting, cool stuff of the two styles blending together. And furthermore, like, these are artists that are also friends with other artists. So other artists show up and their styles of how they see themselves work into the situation. And so you have blending of, like, all these different art styles and artists, you know, and how they see themselves. And it's really, really cool. Obviously, like, just the actual dating and everything going on plot-wise and stuff is,

it's very funny. It's really great. It's full of lots of, you know, talking about references, you know, like, oh, they're talking about who inspired them, talking about things where at one point, you know, the, the, uh, the anti artist is trying to describe, like, what it was like trying to find a style. And he's like, yeah, like, drawing noses is hard. So I went without that. And you kind of see these moments of like, he's drawing a character or like you see a character that's like going through a bunch of different art styles and the subtleties of what that's like. It's just a real visual tree. This sounds like a nightmare to fucking draw.

It's a yes. High flex. sounds like a production fucking disaster. High flex, high flex art style and just gorgeous and brilliant

in how it does it but also not overbearing. Once you get the whole gimmick I'm describing it then just falls into place and then it becomes natural to watch the color world and the black and white world

just kind of you know blend and go and move back and forth as the characters you know go from scene to scene. Um, I got to look at what this means, what actually looks like as you're describing it. Yeah, it's called cherry. Oh, Jesus Christ.

That, that's so hard. It's amazing. It's super cool. Cherry and Virgin is what it's called, as in Cherry Boy and, you know, Virgin Girl. Had a great... That's so hard to draw. Okay. Yeah, take your theory about just, like, printing from your hand, you know, USB.

to your hand and why can't you just scan and just like explode that shit. So next film, uh, grotesque, crotesque with three cues. I saw, so this was weird because it seemed like an interesting anime movie. There was no trailer available at the time, just concept art, but the concept art looked interesting enough that I was like, I'll grab a ticket. Fuck it. World premiere. I don't know. And then a trailer came out like what it was already sold out after the fact. Like they didn't even have

unready at the time. But it's a weird one. So grotesque with three cues by Atsushi Nishigori, who was staff on Gurin Lagan,

Ava 2.0, and your name. Quite the pedigree. And this is, yeah, it was an awesome world premiere where basically never mind the name,

it's just three unrelated stories in an anthology and as the director came up and said, he's like, it's just vibes, turn your brain off, sit back and enjoy, wherever it goes. Okay. I'm like, cool. Got it. We just want to make a bunch of cool shit.

Literally. And they made three cool things and that's it. That's all. They said, yeah, it doesn't just fucking whatever. So it's like you're watching like... I like the honesty of the pitch. Yeah. It's like, it's like you're watching three episodes of like a just a random fucking anthology show, you know?

So the first one is really great. gorgeous. It's this cute setting where you're in Tokyo and you're following Eli Kun, who's an alien, and aliens are immigrating to Earth and starting to live on it

and it's become normal and they're just kind of these little, it's like men in black style, little cute non-hostile aliens just chilling and people are like, yeah, I don't trust him, you know? And then this one alien girl is trying to be an ambassador to be friends with Earth and to, you know, kind of show that they're not that threatening and everything

things fine. It's drawn in a style that's very similar to pro mer, so no black outlines. Everything is, is colored and pastelled, and you notice it. When you don't see black outlines on things, things just feel, it's a different lighter feel to things, and it's gorgeous. Um, overall, this whole grotesque thing, I'll say, it feels like it's a series of wallpapers that they then animated from one into the next. You know, they kind of laid out, they laid out some concept art and made a, a beautiful, wallpaper moment and then said how do we make this move and go and have a start and an ending. So yeah, that's kind of the premise there and overall just a fun, you know, cute tale. The second one is what if Fortnite Battle Royale gameplay was mixed with Harajuku girls as the players,

insane high-tech fashion Harajuku girls? Got it. And what if the gameplay? was insane Sakuga high budget anime fight scene Rockley versus Gara shit every fucking second Then it goes

Like One girl walks up And it's got the sword And it's lasers and flames And doing shit The other one's got bombs The other one's got a big fist And there's a whole bunch of players

And everybody's trying to take everyone out And it's just animation flex nonsense It's beautiful Q2 you know, and there's a plot going on inside there as well, and it touches on some of the anxiety and fucked up nature that idols and idle culture in Japan kind of pushes on people in it, and that shit's weird and sucks. But in the meantime, check out these insane fight scene flexes in a battle royale, you know, type style game.

And like with something like, I don't know, I'll say like solo leveling or so where you're like, you're animating a more high-octane version of what gameplay would look like. That's what you're seeing here, you know? So it's, yeah, so this is the second part of grotesque. And it is, you have a bunch of player killers all fighting each other over here on the streets. And over here, there's a bunch of people in one-on-one dueling and they're all doing it for XP points. And anytime someone new walks on the scene, there's a profile breakdown with their XP, what items they've got and like their overall level and cool shit.

So just a fun, you know, almost pitch flex. for like and hey if you had money we could maybe even program this if you guys wanted just saying and then the third one is a it the setting is planet earth humanity has left and all that's left behind are four girls who are in a polycule and they're also lesbian vampires okay well I mean, you just said four girls in a polycule. I feel like you didn't even need to add the second part to that. Yeah, vampires, I know. Yeah.

I mean, that seems like that seems like the inevitable result of that scenario. Yeah. So it's them in a in a van driving around the world, driving around what's left, and just sightseeing and enjoying the life, them being the last people on planet Earth. And it's a vampire lesbian polycule. and if that doesn't sell you, I don't know what the fuck else to say. It's awesome.

It's really cool. And yeah, they're just, you know, they're just checking out what's left of the world. Beautiful stuff. Great, great series of three movies, of three shorts. Grotesque with three cues is the name of that. All right.

Last on the list of Fantasia movies, there was this little obscure. one it was kind of like a little just indie indie little adaptation

called Sekiro Oh yeah No defeat and that is guess what If you've seen the trailer Which does exist

It's a anime of the Sekiro story It is Which is actually really short and basic So you have a lot of, you have a lot of room to go?

Yeah, very tiny indie game. It is really pretty to look at. There's a lot of really gorgeous things they do with the, they take, they take like big swings with the art style and adapting it. In particular, things like the little prince, Kudo, like his eyelids on his eyes are like, they're almost like this kind of burning,

like the way that they draw eyes in this and the way that they draw some figures is just really... Sometimes it looks like things are off-model, but they're being stylistically done. And it's cool. I like that they kind of got experimental with some of that stuff. There was some awesome adaptation of moments like, you know, obviously, if you know Sekiro,

the big battles with... I was going to say Ginosuke, but... Anyway, with... Genichiro. Gini Chiro. And the owl and all that cool shit is, is there. One of the coolest things I love about Sekiro, my favorite part of the entire thing is the lightning catch and deflect and, you know, all that is done. Decent amount of justice, I'd say.

And that is the end of good things I have to say about Sekira. All right. Okay. Good. Good. In my opinion, unfortunately, mid as fuck. and a big part of this is, and here's what I'll say,

I'm also the person who didn't, I was the person who didn't love everything about the game either. I loved parts of it, but overall my experience, especially when it came to the story, was I found it kind of lacking. There's something to the idea, even though it's not a Souls game,

there is something to the idea of like, when we do play Souls games, so much of that is like you're being an archaeologist, and you know, you're kind of like digging up something that already happened. So it's kind of the coolest parts happened in the past and they're in your head. And here you're watching it unfold in real time

and sometimes it's just not that compelling. So what you end up with here in Securo's case is moment to moment. It's not, it feels more like you're watching a highlight reel of a let's play than it does your following a movie. And there are times where the pacing

just stops telling you, it stops being a movie because gameplay has begun. You know and a little montage of like, oh, that's the part where he goes up the castle. All right. Now he's fighting up the mountain side where the monks are, you know. And it doesn't quite hit in the normal way.

It's really weird with that. And other things about it, just kind of, you know, the feeling of Sekiro's actual story is they're, you know, they kept most of that intact in the sense that one Mcuffin into another Mcuffin into another Mcuffin just keep getting pulled out. From here comes the rice and with the rice. Here's the sword. Did you know there was a second sword?

And then there's the rules of immortality and severing. What are they? I don't know. Okay, well, there's another. All of that. It's just like, okay, man, sure. But they also, while doing this, they took out all the fantasy fantastical elements of the Sekiro world.

So no big ape, no big dragons, no demons, no demons, none of that. It's just the people and then a couple of the magical twists. Right? What? None of the actual, no, no giant beasts and creatures or any of that

stuff. None of it. There's just, there's immortality and then there's fantasy in the powers they have, but all the rest of that shit completely gone. Okay, when you saw a secur, is this like a one-off like film? Yes. Or is this it's a one-off film beginning to end?

Last third of that, That game is going to heaven. No yokai. None of that. So this is where it's so funny because Min, who was also there, love Sekiro. Right? Huge fan of Sekiro. Yeah, it's great.

I'm mid on it. I like aspects of the gameplay. I don't care for the story. The fact that we both walked out disappointed for completely different reasons. Where he's like, I love the game. This pissed me off because they took out all that fantasy shit. is like, that's all the cool parts.

Yep. Yep. So, you know, whether you liked or did not like the game, this will probably disappoint you. Damn, that's, man. Yeah.

Bummer. Um, and like, when they did do the lightning deflect, the thing I wanted was the, like, the part I love is that you got to be in the air. You got to be,

and then you got to, and they just, they don't, that right, you know? So, anyway, that, you know,

bro, that's, that's very visible. Humongous bummer. And it also makes me think that, like, you know how sometimes you go, okay,

you see Adaptate, this is one of the cases where adapting, choosing to be selectively faithful, because what remained, everything they took out, what remained was pretty much what the game told you happened,

but it just, in highlight, let's play form, and then remove, all the fantasy, you're just, what you're left with is just not that compelling. So that sucked. That was a huge bummer.

Who made it? Sekiro No Defeet is the name of the movie. And Studio QZilla. Who are they? Not sure what they did before, but... No defeat seems like a really strange subtitle for like...

Shadows die twice instead. For a guy that like, canonically loses a ton of fights. Yeah. This is true. Like that doesn't that doesn't make any fucking sense.

Doesn't 100% add up. So QZil dot QZil dot L dot LA. It sends you straight to their website. Well, I don't know, but

anyway, that's the issue. A couple of light novels and Isakai things. Yeah. Um, all right. Moving on from that. Okay, a couple of things I've never heard of. Uh, enter the garden. Megami Isakai, tensile.

Yeah, all right. Moving on. Um, the other things this week, I went to a AEW pay-per-view called AEW redemption. Oh, cool. And that was a lot of fun. Uh, that was a good time. Hell yeah. Uh, so it's a,

It's a pay-per-view event, and as it's, like, set in Quebec, the logo, the M is like a fleur-de-lis, and it's like, it's a very, like, made for the air, made for, they know where they're putting the show on, kind of thing. So that happened last night. And, yeah, went out there with, you know, Billy Boo, Kanti, Foxcade, Reggie, and we caught the, I have not been up to date with the AEW storyline. so it was it was nice to kind of get get did someone with you to tell you like did one of those guys they weigh in a w so they'd be like boo this guy will yeah yeah he's bad foxcate and

canty are our big in and they were giving good good perfect so i caught on to what was happening so when you see if i say the words uh cope and cage does that mean anything to you no sir okay what if i said edge and christian i know yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Yeah. So fucking Edge. Wait, what? Edge is wrestling again? Edge and Christian are out there, man. They're doing it. Didn't, didn't Edge's doctor tell him he would die in the ring? I believe he got the Hajima Wipo speech, and here they are still wrestling.

Yeah, they did their shows. They did their, you know, their post wrestling like skits and whatnot on the network. Left the network, joined AEW, and now they're coping cage. So, you know, Christian Cage, there you go, that's the dude. And Christian Cage, Christian was actually there on his own for a while and then Edge joined later and then, you know, now the reunited. That was a whole lot of fun to just watch them, like, do it, you know. And in addition to that, Will Osprey was there. And Osprey is one of the dudes who wasn't in WWE, but from watching him elsewhere in other leagues. he's always been incredible.

I don't know if you remember there was a really insane match with... Okay, remember Prince Puma in... No. Yes. The main character of Lucha Underground. Yeah, what was his name in other wrestling context? Ricochet. Rikishay, that was it.

Right? So that guy. We watched a long time ago a match where he fought against another dude, Osprey, and we called it the Marvel versus Capcom of wrestling matches. I remember that match. He gave air combos, right?

The air combos wrestling match. So the other guy who's not ricochet Prince Puma is Will Osprey. So it was really cool to see him. And he was joining up with the guy who used to be Dean Ambrose, so Moxley, and from the Shield in WWE. And like the whole thing is Osprey is the high-flying air combo dude. And he's hanging out with this faction that is all about submission. and breaking you and going over the top. And he's like, no, I'm a clean, high-flying hero.

I don't want to fall. I don't want to do this dark stuff, you know. And so they had their whole storyline play out. It was a lot of fun. Got to see just, so dude comes out called the pain maker, and he's got a big mask on, and he's got a jacket and a big barbed wire bat. And I'm like, what the fuck are we doing? Like shockmaster energy, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he walks out to the ring and then he pulls the mask off. And it's Chris Jericho in makeup. Oh, okay. And Chris Jericho's like doing his dude love character where once a year or so, he'll just become the pain maker where he just jonkles. And then he's jonkling and then he pulls out like a thumbtack elbow pad or, literally a mirror of glass and is just getting thumbtacks in the brain and playing in it.

Just fucking insane shit where Jericho has to like get his- I thought Jericho was fucking dead, man. Nah. He has a dark side and when he, the Jericho, that joncles comes out and he becomes the pain maker. It was kind of like, oh shit, I didn't expect to see that tonight. Let's go. That was super sick. blood everywhere.

The match was so bloody and gross and fucked up. They pulled out a, just a DeWalt fucking screw driver at one point, a drill. You can't. I'm just like, what do you? I'm like, I'm not even reacting anymore. I'm just like, okay, you're just going to murder in the ring now. We're just going to murder each other, you know? Yeah, there's always a moment sometimes where you're like,

I don't want to be interviewed after this about why I didn't stop like a hostile-style torture murder. in the middle of a wrestling ring and how I just stood there and watched. You know, like a fucking new jack match. Table comes out with barbed wire pre-wrapped around the table. And, uh, but it was insane. Obviously, the match was so bloody that

you just watched and you ever see at like one of those like Chinese restaurants where they just grab the tablecloth and just take it off and there's another layer right underneath after you leave? They just do that with the ring. They just, you know, off it goes.

Take this. bloody rag and feed it to the dogs out back. Straight up. They had a really cool they had some good women's matches as well that went down. Oh yeah. And a dude who was getting major heat

was popping off and everyone loved him called Speedball. And it turns out he's from LaValle. So you're like, okay, well, yeah. Ew. That's a good way to get heat. Yeah. And the

the woman's match yeah really really sick there's this one spider lady called tecla and it's one of those bits where I'm just like oh the intro is powerful so now I'm in where she just had her theme song is just like death metal screaming her name

tecla tecla that's it and I'm like this fucking goes I'm in whatever's happening let's do it Um, it was great. It was great. I really like that. And, uh, they, yeah, just high quality matches. And then, uh, the night ended on Kenny Omega, who fucking came out and I was so happy that Battlecry played. So popped off for Little V there, screaming those lyrics and everything. Such a good song. And, you know, as he's going through it, you're like, okay, do it. Do it all. we got to see it. Do the shot? Yep, he does the shot. Do the V trigger? Does the V trigger. One winged angel? Oh. And I'm, you know, like, I'm practically seeing the, the Alex graphic in my brain. You're like, that's only his level two, man. But it was great. The other thing, too, as well, I'll say, is just like, Kenny Omega and that quality of wrestling match is so much higher than everything else happening in the night. And you can just see the expertise and, um, And experience in how the fight IQ is the way I'll put it.

Because like everyone, wrestling has these, you know, set spots and things you do. You Irish whip, you pick up, et cetera. But the way he does shit is he'll do those things. He'll do them cleaner. He'll do them more dynamically. Or he'll like break out of what you're expecting, you know, when your brain is supposed to say, all right, when I grab you by the hair, what happens next? I pick you up and you follow along as I set up the next move.

and so like he goes to get grabbed by the hair and then he'll like dodge that and then quickly flip up and do a counter where it's like oh wait you're not supposed to counter there the hair grab is invincible you know what I mean you're not allowed to do that but he'll like dynamically break it into a cool spot when your brain is kind of waiting

to just auto complete the animation he's fucking great to watch and so that was really cool yeah Kenny Omega rules man so much fun and because you know that they care about storytelling after the event ended there was another like 20 minutes or so in the ring

of just plot plot and skit and like as character establishing happening off mic you know just silently with people coming in and out and stuff so the lore is being built and they're heavily committed to it so yeah shout out to AEW redemption

great time Good stuff. And, you know, fun to hear the, the, the, the chance and the Quebec versions of things. There's moments where the crowd is chanting, pa gente, pa gente, pa gente, pa gente, and people in the ring are like, what the fuck are they saying? Yeah. Really? Yeah. It's like, one of the running gags.

Not nice. Not nice. Not very nice. Not very nice, you know. That's so weird. It's so weird. I don't know how it started or why, but people. got super confused in the ring by it.

And I'm almost like, if you want to... I'm confused by it. Yeah, they're just, they were yelling not nice, you know. And then at one point, a dude reached in, pulled out a dump, pulled out a hockey stick during the Jericho match. And everyone's like, yeah! Then he pulls out a trash bin, and they're like, yeah! And then out of the trash bin, he pulls out a Boston jersey and puts it on. And everyone's like, oh!

Oh, that's not okay. And then he reaches into the trash and he pulls out UPI, the Montreal Canadiens mascot, and goes, Buh, fuck you. And then he does a backdrop and then a fucking spine buster on the UP doll. On UP? On UP. On UPy! And everyone's like, ah!

He fucking attacked UPy, bro, wearing a Boston jersey. It was crazy. And so the pain maker, Chris Jericho. That's a crime. You can't do it. So the pain maker Chris Jericho fucked him up, got blood on that jersey, ripped it off of him,

and then held up UPy, and everyone was like, yeah! And then he pulled out a bag of spikes and hockey pucks with Habs logos on them. And everyone's like, yeah! You know, so there you go. It's always been funny to me how much of wrestling just boils down to

it's great to be here and read the name of the yeah yeah yeah off your hand Springfields Montreal but to be fair apparently Chris Jericho's dad was a hockey player that played in Canada so he has some love for this you know it's not out of nowhere completely

but no it was just like yeah the free free heat when you do that you know and I was I was saying like if you really want to get, just yell into a microphone, speak English, and watch as people

rush the ring. You know. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, what's up? Yeah, me and Reggie had a moment during the breakdown

of the Kettie Omega song where pause, just stare at each other. Are you ready for this? And then get into a fucking rave pop and go. It was sick. Good times.

So, yeah, that was a, That was a fun show. And now I know what's going on with the AEW lore. For now. For now. If you don't follow it, you'll just immediately fall off within two weeks. Yes.

Yes. But the best part about this whole event, no Vince. Yeah, that's not. That's a nice feature of wrestling. No, no AI and no Vince is pretty nice. with your wrestling. I do say it's a good taste. You know, it's a good flavor. All right.

You think when Vince goes, we'll get to see the demon inhabiting him, like, fly down into hell. It might just be like Zod, you know? It might just like just come from within. And yeah, potentially. But I also believe I would not be surprised if Vince had a ballot that he would, was keeping secretly until the moment of his final breath, you know? Mm-hmm.

I could see Vince 100%, just opening up that swarm of dark souls in the portal. You know? Um, anyways. Uh, all right. So that was, that was AEW. And then, and we got, we got a beefy one here. It's the Tocon beta. Oh my god Did you play the Marvel Tocon Bata?

So Avatar came out and I touched it for two seconds Just touched Kiyoshi for like a just wanted to see what was going on Didn't spend much time with it Because it's the Tocon beta and it's a limited time I know that Avatar's out So it'll be fine afterwards Excuse me but this weekend was the only chance to play You know this beta for now so

Let's get in there Before we move on I've been asked like over and over If I was into if I was going to hop on the Avatar game or if I was not going to play the Avatar game now that Mike Z is there or the now that we know. And like, I don't care about that game at all. Okay. I, I, the, from the, from the minute that I saw it to like literally 10 minutes ago, every time I see it, I go, yeah, it looks fine, I guess. A little too much. Like, nothing about it interests me at all. Gotcha. Okay. Like, absolutely. It looks like a flash game with like a level of complexity that I'm not interested in.

Like, I've heard someone else say Flash game before and I was like, it's them making the art style look like the show. And they do smear frames that I think look really good, really solid. Like it's knowing what they're going for, it comes through in the wind poses where you're like, oh, it just turned into the show for a couple seconds. So that's that, you know, I don't, I don't see that at all. But if you don't, it's like sliding like 2D, like. But I, but like I know what they're, again, I think they're going for the way the show looked. So I see that, you know. And the smear frames, I think, look really great in, in how they're applied there. I like the in and out of the full screen visual animation and then into the sprites.

you know, how the sprites, again, feel like you're seeing what the characters in the show looked like. And they don't look like beyond what the show looked like either, you know? Like, I would say like a 60 frame per second, arxis series of avatar characters doing shit would be like, cool, but not what it looked like, you know? So I think it's fine. And you know, especially give it whatever, 30 bucks and stuff, you know. But I also do like the part where it feels like it's a fast-paced, like, hyperfighter, but it's one of the, you know, V1. I think that's really cool too. And then the other thing is the defensive aspects of it make me happy because I think defense can be as fun as offense and I talk about that a lot with characters I enjoy and I feel like I like the idea of a dodge button is something that I've wanted to see in things and this committing to it kind of shows that like blocking and dodging and stuff in a really dynamic way can be fun and cool because people don't like blocking a lot of the time when they start playing these games. But even doing things like what virtual. Fighter Crossroads is going to do where you see dynamic blocking and avoiding of things.

It feels more engaging and fun to play as something where you're like, defense is active as well. You know, so I think that's crucial to like making a fight feel cool. Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. When people are saying, I forget what a flash game looks like. Like, I'm specifically talking about like flat shaded sliding. I understand. No, I understand. Like, like that.

No, vector animation. I know what you're talking about. Like, I've never liked that. I, so I know what you're talking about. It looks better than those things, but there's a similarity to what you're saying. But the flat shaded way that it's animated, because I know what it's going for, I want it to look like the show. So I'm happy with it is, I guess, the difference in the end.

But at the top of the thing, it's like, there's only so many fighting games I can actually learn how to play. and that is... Certainly. No, no, no, certainly. You have to follow your heart on this. When we talk about to talk about Tokon, part of the Tokon conversation is me going, do I stop playing 2XCO entirely? Right, right, right, right.

Very impressed by Tokon. And I will say that, like, when it comes to, like, your heart feel... Like, I feel like the heart desires. I like pressing buttons, and I like the speed and the stuff that's happening in Avatar as well. It scratches a lot of itches I enjoy, so I can feel that there. versus, you know, another game that might not have that, right? If you don't feel the call, then it's very easy to be like, yeah, sure, that's fine, you know. And yeah, I mean, well, whatever, as far as Mike Z is concerned, like him, like, he made the, the ABARE engine, you know, whatever, like, sure, that's there.

Eh, not, not much to, to go on there. but as far as this goes, I spent most of the weekend doing what I could with the time I had because we were out and doing all these things, but I spent a bit of time with Tokon and then tried to really get a feel for what was going on, especially because they did a...

What did they do? They did a pass on everything from the complaints people were having initially, including what we were talking about, to make it feel a lot more, you know, engaging and make the combos. Better. Better. That first one was soulless. Precisely. So I will say that after spending the weekend with it, I have broken my thoughts down, very detailed into three categories, right?

You've spent some time with it as well? I have, yes. I spent a fairly large amount of time with it. Okay. So I have the things I loved. I have the things that seems weird, but it'll probably get better with time. And I have the things I hated. Mm-hmm.

All right. I have one big thought, primarily, which is, welcome back Dragon Ball Fighters now with Marvel characters and better net code. That's my primary thought. There is a lot. This game feels like fucking DBFZ, a lot. There's a bunch of overlap in the way that characters. are like kind of incomplete until you put them all together with what they do

and there's a bit of a sameness to that. A couple other Dragon Ball isms as well are there but not as many as I would expect. Well it's still fundamentally a different game but it's definitely closer to that than it is to Street Fighter.

Definitely to Marvel. It's its own weird thing though. I know what you're talking about and there's even things that are similar to BB tag, like the fact that like dashing with two buttons, irrespect, um, um, five AB independent of which direction you input is like, you know, one of those, right? There's, oh, there's b-taggisms in there as well.

But it's its own thing. It's definitely its own beast. And Arxas wants it to be its own thing, right? Um, okay. So here's what I fucking loved, right? I loved right before I even got my hands on it. I saw Phoenix Cyclops as the, as the first character in the DLC. It's like, oh, cool.

weird pick. That is a goaded choice. That is brilliant because that means anything is possible. It's all on the table. You could do whatever you want. Right? You straight. I just found out like 25 minutes ago that the champion is not like the game's OC. No. No. For crossover reasons that that's actually an existing Marvel. Yeah. I showed you him. We talked about this. I sent you his picture. He has a big receding hairline. You saw. Well, then I forgot because man, that guy looks like an OC. I'm sure if I scroll up. in this chat. There's an ugly dude with a big receding hairline and a ponytail. I'm gonna look. I'm gonna look. It's in there. But yeah, they pulled deep, deep, deep, and they're willing to do so because they got fucking Phoenix Cyclops on the plate to set the tone for what else is gonna come. If you just, let's see, like, I'm just gonna grab Marvel Champion. And you'll see how fucking ugly this dude used to look, dude. Oh, I saw, I looked at my side.

Okay, okay, yeah. Yeah, it looks like goddamn shit. And the promoter, you know. Yeah, so they made him, they improved him and they have him, whatever. There's some weird leaks that you can go, that are, I saw just a second to go. Yeah, I just saw that. But anyway, Cyclops Phoenix is a really sick choice because anything is possible after this. You don't necessarily have to get any expected staples.

Like, yeah, they tease the Fantastic Four, and those are the reasons why it's a 4V4 format in the story. They showed you a little bit of Squirrel Girl, and I'm sure that they could just copy Rivals with their homework because Rivals has been doing great on delivering. Yeah. But the fact that it's like you might get not Reed Richards, but the maker is, that's cool, you know?

Yeah, why not? Make it more interesting. So you got that. I love. I'd way rather have the maker than Reed Richards. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. sure. I could see an interesting

like onslaught over Xavier, you know what I mean, as a thing? Like, there's a couple of ways to do stuff there, I can imagine. But anyways, any version of any weird character and any alternate reality, no matter how obtuse could be possible. Beta Ray Bill instead of Thor would be fun because he's missing right now. Oh, I really would

much rather have Beta Ray Bill than Thor. Hell yeah. Just because... It's a weird... horse guy. It's just a weird horse guy. And make a ton of gags about how Thor is busy. He just couldn't make it, you know? Anyway, the game

has so many voice callouts that are custom and you, and context specific. Yeah, from a presentation perspective, it's pretty unbelievable and immaculate. Like, from when when, uh, sorry, um, round starts

to specific callouts when you tag in to like specific, like, like callouts during super yeah anytime steve I did the spider man super against Wolverine and he goes the eternal battle of thwip versus snick

and here comes another win for thwit a oh and it's like Jesus Christ Black Panther landing her level three on Captain America is goes come spear versus shield and vibranium versus shield and vibranium versus vibranium.

You know? It's really cool. I love that. It's awesome how many there are. I hope you survive this so you can vote for Osborne. Pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of just flavor there. And it's, there's so much downtime. It's just too much downtime with the walkouts and then the loading intro.

I don't know why you need the big walkout to start. It's for the two team names that are not, they're just kind of randomly generated and not that great. Um, but the amount of flavor text does make it a lot more interesting. I just wish it was snappier with it, like, um, like the MK games or the injustice games. Because you have like, you have a, uh, a fucking secondary walkout in the match where they have their, their back and forth. You don't need the first walkout. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's like, it feels like just that bird flying over the fucking shit in guilty gear. Norman being like, I call this the Gwen Stacy special is fucking brutal.

And yes, the team names are not random. They're based on the first and the teams that you pick. But I saw the genius geniuses and I was like, this is not well thought out, you know. Anyway, so that was very That's really funny. Yeah, it's super goofy. Super goofy.

The improvements they made to the assist system are huge in the sense that before, when you're in the middle of a combo, you could only call in an assist to do a single hit and extend the combo and knock them rolling. But now, You can do any of the directional assists at any time. So you get a solid four options, which is great compared to what you used to have.

That opens things up a good bit, and I'm happy they did that. I am a huge fan of this game's OnRamp. So, like, as little baby pat who just didn't know how to play it at all, here's your auto combo. Okay. Here's your second auto combo. Here's your third auto combo. Okay. I then to auto combo into basic assist and then it's auto combo to basic assist

auto combo to basic assist autocombo to basic assist super which is fine and then specific assist and then non-auto combo into basic assist and so on and so forth in terms of like escalating complexity well fair enough that's not on my loved list so I'll get to that in a sec really yeah But with the stuff that was good, the overall, just the character interpretations of these characters are very stylistic. I like some of the stuff they're doing with the non-repro blue line art, you know. Oh yeah, no, the audiovisual presentation, top to bottom, every single thing. The art boards are great, the main theme, and that when you do Blade Super and the beat drops in the club, you know, I'm a samurai, asshole. That's very cool.

Blade and Magic They have interesting kits With his stakes and her teleports I think they're great Yeah I spent a lot more time With Magic than they've played I did more Blade

And then the menus and the quick settings Are all very solid stuff as well So those are the things that were all really Really cool about it The list of things that seem weird But will probably be better with time I guess as you get used to it So run-up throws were really weird to me

when you want to do a throw you auto run and then close the distance and do it and it's not I just I it's just an odd thing that you're committing this this distance to it but I guess they wanted to my thought is they wanted to make this work for people who are not

used to doing throws that were like how do I get that close to the opponent I'm always spaced out they're hitting me with their sword you know so the I thought is someone who just isn't used to using throws in games at least this closes the distance for you right I don't like it, but it is a thing.

I didn't have any problem with it. Okay. And it was actually fairly useful if I was outside of what you would do a normal throw distance. And Maya was like, I could probably get them. And I could. I like the ability to do that myself so that if I'm going to approach you and then do a throw, I could hypothetically dash up, do a fake, you know, jump, make you bait something out. and then come down on top of you or do or something else, you know?

But there's another aspect of that that you can hypothetically do that manually, but there's another aspect that kind of gets in the way, which is like your movement speed. The other thing that was like, we'll have to see how this works out over time, but the alpha counter system when you're on defense, where you kind of like, you don't have a lot of defensive options in this game, but you do. No, you don't.

Damage is high, rounds are short, but it's three out of five. But what you do have is this, yeah, counterstander. system that like it's free doesn't cost you anything you one of your partners jumps in and saves you from blocking and knocks the opponent away uh however if that gets countered um it fails and you get knocked down um or if they perfectly time it they lock out your entire team you disassemble and it is a humongous um disadvantage so the perfect timed counter is very bad and the alpha counter timing is it's like 27 frames I think they said it's pretty slow you can get used to it probably with time right now it's in that range of being kind of like drive impact in street

fighter six so you're like in the middle of the fight if your brain is like overwhelmed it'll you you sneak them in but over but like we'll i'm sure see people and ourselves would you know get used to that with time um and then the other thing that is currently annoying but it'll probably be fine when you get used to it is the constant swapping of the assist position where you... Oh, I have a really good solution to that. Don't ever

tag. Which is my favorite thing about the game. Don't tag to anyone else. Is never tagged to another character. So you can definitely stick to your character. That is my favorite thing about the game is that it is 100% viable to just never tag out. Turns out

there's some bad things that happen when you don't tag out, including Like what? When you're putting pressure on, you don't get to continue the same level of pressure or mix up on your opponent if you don't tag out because you call an assistant and then they'll come in to kind of cover whatever unsafe option you did. Sure. But like the time it takes for you to get back in to put prep to continue is more staggered, there's more gaps in. And it's not as you can't do things like necessarily get a crossup going versus if you tag. They give you a little, between the flash of green and then the soul traveling to the other character, you have a brief moment to puppet an input and then jump over and try to get something going.

So, yeah, that's why I said viable, not optimal. Yeah, yeah. So there's basically the game will reward you in a couple different ways if you do tag. And the other, and I'm going to get into this another a little bit later as well. But like opening people up without tagging feels almost impossible sometimes. It feels like a really tricky thing to do. And that's the stuff that was like weird, but we'll see how this improves over time, right?

Well, so like one of the things is like when I say that I love that I feel like it's viable to just not tag. What I mean is, for example, in 2XCO, if I was like, I want to learn how to play character X, and I just want to play this. just them. Yes. Up until like literally today, I think, that experience would be get ready to not learn how to play them because you'll lose because playing one character is a death sentence. Yeah. In Tokon, like, is it optimal to not use absolutely every single part of the kit?

Yeah, of course. But like, I'm still playing a character with all their moves and all their assists using a shared health box. Yes, 100%. And that, no, no, that is clear. Nothing is stopping you from just maining your one character. And that's what most people did, because it's easier to learn a game that way. It just makes more sense. I'm just basically saying that, like, what was starting to be discovered, it seems, towards the end, is that, like, oh, like, the game will give you these rewards if you choose to use tagging.

But if you don't, you can still play the whole match just fine. And yes, the stuff I was playing when I did stream, and I did go back and play a bit more after. and then I did another session after that as well. So, like, there's a lot I learned in the time frame between when I was first touching it and when we streamed and then when we played after and then about the characters. They're full kits and the pressure and so on. For the stuff I disliked, there's a long list. Really? Yes.

And I was, like, thoroughly, thoroughly, like, overjoyed with my time. Okay. I was having, when it was at its best, there was cool stuff that I was like, this is awesome. When it was at its worst, I was like, I might start my hater arc because I'm getting really, really like, some stuff was getting pretty frustrating. And there's, okay, there's stuff on the, there's, and there's stuff in the nitty gritty of it, and then there's stuff on the, just overall. Well, let's start broader and go more specific. A hundred percent, right? So PSN being down is like one of those things where it's like, okay, the whole thing, just apparently like the, whatever the timing was of that, whether it was server load or anything like that, that kind of sucked for some people for sure.

I got to say, was there something really strange about people going like, oh, I can't wait for the all digital future. And I'm like, PSN being down, would it all, even if you had a retail copy of token wouldn't stop you, it wouldn't allow you to play online on PSN. for like what fucking what a strange mentality obviously the PC issues were numerous and people were talking all weekend about like

the performance that they were having this is the first time I've ever done this and had not even one issue at all okay it ran flawlessly from I got so I the first thing I did was actually I started it up I tried I downloaded it on the steam machine

and then it just wouldn't boot because Easy anti-cheat doesn't work. Oh, no, no, it won't. It won't. So Easy Anti-Cheet does have a Linux version that you can do if the developer wants to turn it on, but in this case, they said no, so the game just doesn't fucking boot on the Steam Machine at all, right? So that's one, that's like, that sucks. The PC version people were, like, when I installed it, I didn't, it was just a quick test, you know,

or so, and then it ended up being more or less fine. I saw some like frame kind of skipping initially, but like I did see people going to go like, yeah, drop it down to a lower requirement, you know, drop the settings down and bake your shaders and all that stuff. So I just, for me, I kind of just like after we were done trying out that PC version, I went back to playing it on PS5. So, you know, so like whatever, I'll just play that, play it there and not have to deal with any of this. Side note, if you're uninstalling it on your PC, note that there's two gigs or so of like app data and program data. that stay installed in your Sony folder. So you want to make sure you go and clear those out too, just in case you didn't,

because it leaves behind some fucking trash or whatever. Okay. What felt really annoying to me overall is that the fact that between last time and now, while they made a lot of improvements, it still feels sticky. It feels like muddy at times, where movement feels like stilted. There are times where things just kind of slow down when I want them to go a bit faster

or things where the game will start and stop a lot. Dashes, runs have a little bit of a, like, almost like Makoto's movement speed, and then there's these like accelerations and then it stops again. Hit stop is long. Wall breaks are longer. There's a lot of pauses that just feel like, hmm, you know? I kind of was getting that feeling. And I really wish it was more fluid about that stuff.

The, when it comes to, I mean, wall breaks and such is a whole other specific thing. I notice there's like a just a huge contingent of people who just hate wall breaks. Yes. Yes. And a subgroup of those people who hate walls.

So the weird part about this is I'm like walls. I like walls. I like walls being in play. But wall breaks being a constant. Like the thing was in stride. the idea of the wall as a choice to give you freedom in exchange for an advantage versus Street Fighter Sixes like brutal wall play. I like that there's two choices out there that exist, right? But like, it's not a required constant in strive as much, but it does happen. Um, whereas Tokon is designed

around these wall breaks. And I, it doesn't feel great that the only stage I want to play on is the X mansion with the Xavier because the stage in the amount of times where I was doing combos and they were cut short because of the wall breaks where I'm like I didn't want to fucking end there it was like oh you know then why did you do the button that does the wall

well so then you spend you can do the OD version to spend the meter to bring it down and get the fuller thing but sometimes you're not close enough to the wall that there's an area where you're not right on the wall but if you still do the light version it'll still cause one character length right so you have to kind of feel

that distance, but, like, in general, I'm like, I just, I didn't want a wall break there. And I had to, that was something that felt like, like, frustrating. So, I'm, I'm already, like, gauging the kind of feel from this discussion, and I'm going to be on one side of this. And I can feel that from what I'm about to say, which is, I like wall breaks because it's really cool when you knock the character through a bunch of cars into a different looking stage. Yes. I think that is...

I like that when you play a stage, you're actually playing on five stages. Right. And so I like that idea on paper, but I think what happens after many, many, many hours of playing the game is you just, a lot of these kind of aesthetics sort of just become like a pause that you don't really appreciate as much over time. I think like stuff like that can be cool but made short and sweet so that it's not as it doesn't feel like as much of a hiccup while still being dynamic, right? Oh, I also like the pause. Okay.

I like to have a mental neutral break after a little encounter. So like when I get a long super that doesn't, that isn't going to kill in a game, it allows me to go like, right. Okay. Apologies.

And I think slowing down the fight is a goal of some of the other things they do design-wise. I play grapplers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So let me just, and here's the thing, right, like, while I'm going down this, just for, let me, I'll fast forward to the end and say that my conclusion here is the things they're doing are not necessarily for people like me that like the things I like, and that's okay. So I don't want anyone to get defensive and mad about the fact that I'm pointing these things out that I had friction with because at the end of the day, it's okay.

that it's not for me in these ways. They're allowed to try different things and they're allowed to try out different styles of fighting game and different feelings of what should be new versus if you have OG mentality on these things. I'm totally okay with that. It's just a difference between what causes a moment of hype versus what causes a moment of frustration

and when I feel like I'm fighting against the systems versus when they feel harmonious with my desires, you know? So I think You're So there's an FF14 example that I have for this Which is FF14 has spent a couple of years Hardcore Raiders

Which represent 5 to 20% of the population Depending you know It varies right We want more raids, harder raids Better rewards ultimate raids Like UMAD and stuff like that And as a result like what I believe to be a disproportionate amount of the game's energy

has been added for content that is for the top 10% of players only and let the people in that medium 50% kind of fall off and drown. And when you're describing like these little hiccups in the tone and, sorry, the hiccups in the match and the neutral and these, the movement being in such a way, I feel like they're just straight up not making it for you. They're making it for a person who goes,

oh yeah, Ironman, kicked him through the car. Yes, yes. And it's basically like an injustice or even an evil zone that was made by like competent developers for like a normal person. And it's totally okay to have different goals and audiences in your approach.

Because Arxist, this is the Arxist that also like, I mean, it's not the same team, but just thinking about how they toned down strive and like really pulled back on the whole game, it feels like they're taking an approach here, which is just like, okay, we don't want to do Marvel. We don't want to do other things that, you know, we want to take some stuff from previous tag games, but they want to do their own thing, which is a little bit slower, a little bit safer, has more pauses. and creates, and is less about like fast and fluid and is more about like system governance,

the system kind of being recognizable and I guess easy to pick up. And what I would, what I always think is awesome is when you have something that is easy to pick up and allows a lot of these systems to be in place, but then also allows you to go beyond it, right? So auto combos being in there, auto combos have their absolute place, you know, in games these days. I like that in Street Fighter 6, you have modern mode as a choice to pick, to go with that.

I like that in 2XCO, you can choose Pulse. Whereas here, it's just baked into what you're doing. And in Persona and in Dragon Ball, kind of got used to things overall with how the auto-combo's like served a utility.

But here, because of the restrictions of the way the combo system works, and now we're getting into the weeds a little bit, it didn't feel as welcome because it ends up like kind of, you know, stopping things a lot more.

aggressively, but then you have freedom to do other combos that don't involve auto combos, right? So this is all to say that you still have the choices, right? But something about, that's getting a little more into the offense side. On defense, I was talking about how you don't have a lot of options. And, you know, so it does feel pretty lopsided in the sense that, okay, you can do that alpha counter, right, that can get locked out. I didn't really see any real dragon punches as far as I'm aware. It felt like the DPs were partial invulnerability in the middle of it, but like not right at the start.

I could be wrong about that. But you definitely couldn't do things like, you know, like they designed it to be like no push blocking, no retreating guard, no burst, et cetera, which that's okay. You know, I like having those options. I like having more than the one option. But like mostly they have you like you either just got a block or do that one counter. So overall, it felt, you know, not as engaging as it could be when you're on defense. And but weirdly, on offense, some of the things that I was struggling with was, I talked about how I felt it was a little bit hard to open up people doing those pressure strings. And then similarly, when you cross up opponents, it's felt like, crossups also felt a little bit tricky to land.

and I believe what the part of the reason why is because there's someone said that there's there's seven frames of cross-up protection so basically if you block in one direction you're automatically going to block

the opposite way within I did not have any trouble crossing anybody else I don't know if that if you see yes if you wait you put a little gap in between it it'll be okay but like there's buttons that are seven frame buttons so essentially if you do a really really tight like schmixie kind of thing

it stops it from happening, you know? If you kind of like create a gap and then try to hit them in between it, you have to wait a little bit longer before it doesn't auto block for them, right? The, yeah, there's, there's, and so that was a little bit of something that was like, okay,

maybe some more time will kind of show like what the openings will be because I did see that like doing something like getting pressure and then tagging into, let's say, Ghost Rider or Miss Marvel, who do have a lunging overhead or, or low is a way that you can get a high, low mix going. But not everybody has that kind of tool right away. So it's sort of, they don't want you to go crazy on the mix when the person's blocking in a way.

I think that like Avatar and this coming out so close to each other is absolutely fascinating. Isn't it crazy? Because they, like I like one a lot and won't even touch the other. and it's part of this thing of like, I think too many fighting games are built by fighting game fans who are degenerate freaks

for degenerate freaks. I think 2XCO actually definitely had that problem right at the beginning where they had like a bunch of pro- Marvel players create a bunch of pro-Marvel characters in a free-to-play game.

There is room at the table for everybody to come eat so we should offer different kinds of meals. Yeah. I, like I said, I always prefer when game design makes it so that the things you're describing are not zero-sum with the things I'm describing. I like when what you're looking for is an offering that is compatible with what I'm looking for to.

So as a really specific example, I think Marlon Pie does incredible work. creating characters and that he's a genius. But you're not going to do that shit. I think he's holding a gun to new players. Right, right, right, right. Like, and I know. And I know. And I know when looking at a character like that,

I'm like, yeah, that's not for me. I can feel that right away. I know that for sure. But, yeah, I just, I just, I want, I like it when these things are, don't have to be mutually exclusive. That's kind of what it comes down to, right? Um, something that kept happening for me is when people wake up off the ground, the

invulnerate, the amount of time that they're invulnerable felt so long. And I kept like missing the throw or missing the meaty button. And they just wanted more invincibility, right? So they added some. And it's, it's out of step with like every other fighter in terms of the amount of invincibility you're getting waking up. I mean, maybe with some exceptions that I'm not thinking of, I don't know, smash or something. But the wake. But the wake. It's, it's out of the way. And it's, up feels really, really weirdly timed. And again, that can be deliberate. It can be to give you more breathing room.

But I just, it was a friction point that made me frustrated how often I tried to continue the pressure that, and then I couldn't because it was just like, no, they're still invincible right now, you know? I felt a lot of frustration with how trying to do a Dragon Punch input didn't work a ton of the time. Oh, I never did a single. motion input at all. You did the shortcut buttons.

I don't know why people asked for those when the non-motion inputs can still do every single move on the roster. Because there is still a damage difference between them. There's a damage difference?

Correct. It's negligible but you do less damage for doing the auto-combo version of stuff or for doing the shortcut input of stuff. But like that was the case even before they added them in? Because like the first version didn't have the shortcuts at all. No shortcuts were there in the first version.

Yeah. Oh, they were. It was an extra button that was there. So it's a tiny damage difference, but it's there. And you could do them. And in fact, to make some combos work and be a little more practical, you kind of have to. But I wouldn't, like, okay, what I'm describing would not be an issue. I love when you have the choice. I love when you can do the shortcut or not.

And I would have no issue here. if the DP input worked, but it doesn't. It's a weird thing where it's the weirdest, strictest I've ever noticed, where you can't do the normal kind of, what a lot of, what a lot of sort of dragon and punch muscle memory

turns out to be, in a lot of cases, you'll do like forward, fireball, right? Forward, quarter circle, forward for, in a lot of cases, will just be like a dragon, a working dragon punch.

And that's worked forever. But it doesn't work here. and that's like, oh, God, you know. And so you have to stop at the diagonal and hold it at three on the, the, the, the number chart for it to work. If you don't end at three, the move's not coming out. And that fucks with me so much, you know, and at a certain point, I was like, okay, I'm just doing the auto, the auto input, because I just, it just doesn't do the buffer that every

other game does, right? And then down, down as an input, had some of the same issue. where sometimes comboing into down down didn't feel it felt like it had a different input reader or different input buffer from the other inputs in the game and I was like what so you can't do six two three six that's the thing that says work

it's third go back to third strike go back to every game but in this it just won't work you know you got to hold that down forward and I'm like oh man because some combos really you need to do those moves but fuck you know so yeah

that was a part of it you know I was talking about the oky timing wake up inval vulnerability that's one of those things um the auto damage auto combo damage like I said it's it's it's it's it's it's it's less if you do it but it's still high enough that it's almost like well why not just go for it right like the there's the oh I ended up a bunch I ended a ton of matches with the auto combo mm-hmm so it's like the damage is high enough that you

might as well go for it and again that's a design choice where they're like yeah you can flex and get a little bit of extra if you want to but it's not a humongous amount so they kind of are basically going like, yeah, we want to push you to use this, you know? And I think that, like, there's a, I know that this is just going to be a matter of like more experimenting with the system, but there's definitely points where you, this is Dragon Ball like as well, you want to like extend a combo in a certain way, but like, um, the best thing you can do to stabilize the person's height is do the auto combo because it actually drops

them into place and locks them in position. Yeah, yeah. You know, whereas your normal buttons don't. kind of do that. So I'm going to have to just, you're going to have to figure out with time how to, you know, properly just be nice with those inputs. So this is what I meant by like, like, it feels like there's an on ramp where like there is, I've, you know, I was doing crazy suboptimal shit. I was doing like auto combo into tag into auto combo into tag and shit like that. And it was working fairly well with me along with like general assist play. Right. Um, but there's like an on ramp from that to, you know, you know, you. using specific assists in combos to non-auto combo, but then you'd use the auto combo to lock them in a place in like that nice way to get the super.

Instead of like, when I started to learn 2XCO, there was really like basic baby shit, don't do anything that matters and watch YouTube videos and TikToks of combos and then learn the combo and then go play real matches. Like it was like this big, big, big fucking gap. And I will say that, like, you know, as someone that enjoys labbing, like, that's on me to be like, yeah, I want to go in there and spend some time and figure out the intricacies and this is that. But if you're definitely, like, not necessarily looking for that experience, then this is conducive to that, right?

These are, this is a clear thing that makes that work if you're not looking to do a bunch of that. But I get it. The thing that really haunted me throughout this is, is, you're haunted. So I'm trying to, I was trying to not do auto combos where I could to like get better combos when I was trying to learn them, right? Sure. You know, and in some cases I'm like, I'm fine to end with it here. I'm fine to end with it there. It's not a big deal at all.

I'm just knowing that like, I'm like, when I want to do or play a little bit better, I'm going to try to get the realer version of this. But in the meantime, this is more than acceptable, right? Especially by the end. when you do special moves there's a period of time where before it you can call an assist but then you cannot call an assist

for a certain period of time and then after a certain point of time in the move you can call the assist again and there are these... Yeah, I noticed that. And there are these moments where assists are just not allowed to come out and it drives me fucking crazy because it's just an invisible

restrictor and I'm like So the only way to get They want you to be calling assists During your normals So what they what they do What happens is The end result is

You will end up You have to end up mashing assist To get them at the fastest possible time But the fact that you cannot get them At certain times In what feels sometimes arbitrary Like you don't quite know Why yet

Or at least during what duration point of the move I just kind of go like Oh that's not a good feeling I don't want to have to like Be relying on It's not working it's not working, it's not working, there they are. You know, that was a very

sticking pain point for me. And that's something that I know they're doing their own thing. Other games do assists in their own way, but no one else has done this. No one else has done this where it's like, you just can't use them here, and now you can again. I feel like the mentality behind that is that when you're doing normals, they want

you to do a special move, whether or not that special move is yours or the assists. Yeah, but... They don't want overlapping special moves. But it's not the what they want you to do so much as it's the what they're taking away from you, right? Because putting it in there, like, I can see that. But like, what they're taking away from you is trying to set up something interesting

with your timing, you know, something you can explore with your... Now that you gave me four different things to do, you know, during a combo, I'm happy I have more choices. But the fact that there's moments where... where I'm calling them and they're not coming out. That's the raw feel, you know? And I'm sure that they have a design logic for why they don't want it to overwhelm the player or what they want to simplify.

But the end result is there's moments where I press the assist button and it does nothing, and that feels bad. It's just, it's a, you know. Yeah, and you and me are on genuine, like, opposite sides on this. And part of that is that you are much better than I am at tag games. I wanted to love Marvel so much But all of the things that you're describing as downsides that were not present in Marvel Made me fucking hate playing Marvel

I found doing combos in Marvel Miserable I hated the super super super super fast timing of everything I felt like I would go in and I would just get lightning snipped out from like a fucking anti-air, like, assist that, like, I never at any point learned to see

what was happening in Marvel despite, like, many hours at it. Like, 2XCO is, like, slower. But it's still really crowded. Yeah, it's still really crowded and nuts at times, though. Like, there are moments of chaos. Tocon, it's like, oh, this

feels like a more comfortable pace. So what, for my grappler brain, I guess. So what you're describing with like spending time and playing a bit more of it is like, and that makes sense. But again, there's differences

between slowing something down and just stopping you from doing it entirely. I have a really good example of that. Well, I have a thought, right? Like there are moments when you call assists out and then it'll be like unavailable, unavailable, okay, now they're back, right? That's kind of the standard in these games. If you're playing, when you get

used to and when you play a bit more of like you know, let's say Marvel versus Capcom or any of these tag fighters. You come to see assists almost as like, like, really, it's almost like a really good button, right? And when they first made Marvel versus Capcom 2, they went from the six button layout to like light heavy, light heavy, assist one, assist two. And it was like your heavy button was just someone's Captain Commando jumping in and going, bah, right? So you have a button that's a part of your kit in neutral play. and that's how you're thinking about it when you get used to the games

and so it feels like here there are times where your heavy punch doesn't work or there are times where your heavy kick is unavailable and it feels like you're cutting a limb off or taking a button away temporarily and I there's that doesn't that that's a point you're always going to go ah every time it happens you know so it's funny that you mention that because with the juggernaut buffs

they've given to 2XCO I am probably never going to play that game in tag form ever again. I gladly cut I gladly cut that hand off. Right, right, right. I played juggernaut so exclusively for months when that game came out until it became obviously

so suboptimal I couldn't make it work. Yeah. But like, yeah, I like, maybe this is guy going to like a Mexican restaurant and ordering sushi. And then you're like, why did you even go to the Mexican restaurant?

It's like, no, I want to, like, I want to play Marvel Superheroes. I don't want to play Marvel versus Capcom, and I don't want to really play a tag game. I play the tag games that exist because they're really cool and have cool stuff in it. Yeah. But like, I don't fucking like it. Yeah. And for me, I'm just like, hey, look, I'm not, I have, I'm not being a hater for no reason. I can articulate in very precise detail exactly what these tension points are that I'm having.

But also respect that they're going for. for a different style, a different audience, a different thing, you know? But I just, for people who are looking for or used to what I'm feeling, they're recognizing this. And I've kind of seen some people echoing that sentiment, you're right? There's a lot, a sentiment I kind of saw echoed was that it feels like you're fighting against the battle system. And the characters themselves are interesting and fine, but the system itself is a governor that's like holding you back. and like as a result it feels like you know you can work and get those creative

cool things going but it's just not being encouraged effectively and like I kind of I get that because it's like those little moments of like yeah I know this like magic with her teleports you can set up some really cool shit and there's all kinds of little things I'm like oh I'm like my brain wants to like lab in my head to like think about like what you can do there

but I just I think that's the difference between you me is that any fighting game I've ever played, there is no point in the entire time I'm playing where I'm like, ooh, what can I do here? It's I'm going to go to the book and find out what I should

be doing. Right, okay, okay. And then do it. So every single part of the process that's in between me starting to play and being good is homework only. Right. I don't want to do it. If I can get away with not doing it, I don't want to.

So what I, imagine that you popped in Sonic 4 for the first time and Sonic 4 looked and sounded like a dream it was the coolest looking Sonic ever and it was the best sounding ever and then you hit that jump button and you...

That is what happened. And you go, oh! Right? And you want it to not feel that way because everything else is working but you did Because Sonic 4 didn't, Jonathan 4 looked fine. It wasn't like an animation miracle masterpiece, right?

But I'm just, I'm using this to say that like, you know, that little kind of moment of just like, okay, like, that little, throughout the rounds,

as I'm going like, hmm. So I, not only do I completely agree with you and understand exactly what you mean, the example doesn't even need to go past Tokon. That's how I felt. with the first tocon beta.

I didn't even get out of the goddamn tutorial where I was like, something about this game just feels off. And everything about it felt off. And I didn't have the language or the specificity. But this has been a significant improvement from that. It has. And we talked about the specificity of why it felt that way, right? Like we got into like the parts of it that felt clunky and just not like open enough, right?

it felt like it was railroading you aggressively. And then through enough feedback, they went, okay, we'll pull the chains back a little bit. We'll stop restricting you. We'll open it up. But we still don't want to open it up too much. There's a clear design incentive that they want to be like, you know,

they want to keep the keep you down a bit on it. And basically what ends up happening is, yeah, like I end up feeling it throughout most of the match and a lot of the movement and pacing and a lot of these things. and they kind of add up to an experience that's like, I'm going to check in. I give every fighting game a more than honest shot because I fucking love them.

And I'm always going to learn how to play a team. I'm always going to make sure I'm ready to play, to mess around press buttons, fucking enter a bracket, do whatever. So, you know, and I want to know what the fuck is coming alongside those characters.

So like, yes, fucking Phoenix Cyclops and whatever else is coming. I want to know. I'm going to keep my eyes on this game and I'm looking out for it. But knowing, that it's doing its own new thing and that not everything needs to be for me or designed for OG

players, I just, like, I'm just going to say, hey, it's pulling away from the thing that makes me love these games a little bit. And as a result, I'm going to not be driven to boot it up as often and stay in there, you know? So, my gut on this is like, wow, this is a really great fighting game that I can play casually, which is no other fighting game. It can be played casually. Like, I learned, I learned my Thresh and Timo combos, and I'm

going to have those until they change them. And if they change them too significantly, I might drop those characters because I'm not going to sit down to learn them again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Part of the, part of the, sorry, no, just, part of the discussion I was having with Keats ended with like, okay, so Dragon Ball on the way out the door, does the Kusoge patch in the,

makes itself go nuts. My happy medium is I'm down for a game to shake it up and go crazy as long as I don't have to relearn my combos. Fuck you. You know, 100%. I'm right there with you. And one of the things that I actually like about Tokon a lot is that it constantly breaks

you back into neutral. Like, yeah, you can optimize your basic stuff like more and more. Yeah. I really like being reset to neutral a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's my favorite, my favorite part of the game. is getting in on neutral and getting the opening and the combo is just cash out. They want...

Again, I play grapples. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. I don't care about this combo shit. Yeah, they want to return you to neutral many times. They want you to have to touch and have many interactions. And so those are the times where I'm like... When you're designing for constantly returning to neutral and getting many interactions, then that's where I'm like...

well, that's where I want the freedom to really express and go nuts with things in neutral. You know, like call my assist out while I'm approaching you. And I, fuck. You know? So it's both at the same time. Returning to neutral, but then in neutral, I can't do what I'm looking for. So that I'm like, crap. Now, I keep saying this stuff and people keep saying, oh, like Avatar.

I'm like, I've seen the fucking Avatar gameplay and the combos on, I don't want to do those. I just straight up don't want to do them. And this is what's crazy, too, is like the fact that this is happening simultaneously to that drop, avatar drops, to XKO does its big RE patch. Yasmin's about to come into Street Fighter 6, and we're all waiting on Red Drive Rush, you know, whatever the fuck happens there. I don't know. Because it's interesting because Street Fighter 6 is in a place where the game is fine,

but it's just people are kind of bored with the fact that it's just fine. They want something to shake it up, you know, which is a whole other discussion, mind you. But I get to feel this thing with Tokon's beta, and then Avatar, like, is doing a bunch of shit that's, like, the complete opposite philosophically of what I'm describing. They're polar opposites. They're strong in the aspect that the other one is weak and weak and the other, and strong. And, like... And, like, this is just to my veins, man, the fucking... The way... The way... Everything about, like, how free and flowing that... that goes and how much defense and offense are like this fucking dance with each other. I just like, I feel so engaged by that. So I'm like, there's a pull where if Avatar didn't exist and if like ToXs here didn't

exist, then Tocon's what it is, then I'm like, yeah, I'm in there. You know, I have these, I have these, these points of it, but I'm still in there. But it just so happens to be dropping while philosophical complete opposites are also dropping. So I kind of know, you know. where gravity goes. Like at the end of the day, like for all new fighting games, like I basically just want to play

Street Fighter and Virtual Fighter. I want to play like highly grounded, fundamentally simple games. And on the, and like I said, on the, um, on the very just like aesthetic basic,

like cool factor level, the, I find that Virtual Fighter and Avatar have that similar thing where, like I said, blocking feels cool, you know, dodging and defense and, and Steve Foxing things feels cool.

Don't, don't, don't compare this fucking, this fucking baby tie-in game. What are you talking about? They both have awesome defense and dodging. That's real. And in fact, I find blocking to be something that, like, it's something that new players hate doing, understandably, because it's a boring thing that should be made more interesting. And, like, Virtual Fighter is finally doing something to make it cool, and as is Avatar.

That's real. virtual fighter has always been cool yes but it's making it even cooler it's great it's a super cool thing because defense is half of the game but there's a half of the game that people actively don't they didn't pay $60 to block or $30 to block you know when you are fucking dodging shit and you get to feel

you want to feel like Sakuga you want to feel like that again that Rockley versus Gauram moment you want to feel like the Dragon Ball battle you want to feel like the cool fight in the thing and when you're doing it yourself it's awesome. You're so engaged and locked in, right? I remember that moment. We were playing,

I was playing K-O-F with, I believe it was you and some of our older friends. And like, in the middle of fighting, I was using, I was using Vanessa and our friend was playing Joe Higashi. And I did Vanessa's duck in. I did a bunch of stuff on block. And then I blocked and then they did Joe Higashi strings.

And then he did a lunch kick at the exact same time that I did Vanessa's backwards dodge. And we both traveled from one side of the screen to the other matching each other's rhythm. And it was fucking heaven. It was so cool to have a moment of like, uh-uh, uh, dodge, uh, you know? So like a game that like works around that and brings that into the forefront is something that like we should have done a long time ago. You know, and we're finally starting to see games do that shit. It's super hype. what does it have to do with Avatar

when you flow with Avatar and people are attacking you your character dodges and goes low and flips around and avoids the attacks and then you're not doing it

you're just hitting a button but you are because there's the there's the neutral dodge but then you could do lows or highs to then aim it and counter the person in a particular way

you are flowing around them it's a part of the defense of the game. Okay. Yeah. It's very cool. And if you get grabbed during that, then you get fucking blown up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You die. Yeah. So that's, that's what it is, you know? But this is interesting, though, because I'm like,

um, like, coming, coming, walking away from this with like two completely separate things, with two completely separate goals in mind. At the end of the day,

I want a bigger table with more food on it. That is what I want, you know? So that, long-winded, very in-depth technical bit is my takeaway. But man, Blade is fucking cool, and I'm glad he exists again. Just to head this off of the past, a lot of people just keep asking what my hate point for Avatar is,

is that I don't dislike that game at all. I just don't understand why people keep building it up, because it doesn't seem cool to me at all. Like, that's it. It's not like, oh, I hate this fucking game. It's just like, okay. Like, sure. Just with specific examples, do you think it's cool that, like, when Ozzy burns Zuko,

he's the only one that takes Chi damage because he burns him in the same way? All that little, like, cannon-specific, like, interactible stuff is super cool. There's a clip. There's a clip of Azula's charging up a lightning bolt. And then right before it, Saka does his super where he gets a kiss. And then he does the worm under the lightning bolt, dodges it, and then throws his boomerang to kill her. Similarly, I think that Azula having like two character stances by default is like super cool. That's on losing state.

And I said that and somebody went, then put hands on it. And it's like, I don't have to. It doesn't look fun to play. Yeah. I don't have to. You don't have to commit to anything you don't enjoy. This is one of those things that makes me absolutely nuts. No, no, no.

As, hey, here try this food. I don't really feel like it looks unappealing. Yeah. And then people get like really insanely agro. No, no, no, no, no, no. Like, like, anybody who's listening to this, if you're asking Pat to do what I just did and make a fucking 30-point dissertation on what he doesn't like about it, fuck off.

That's not necessary. No, my, my, I don't want to. I don't want to. Are usually, it didn't look good. Yeah, I don't want to. Good or. And guess what? That represents everybody.

That was... What you just said is what most people are going to feel when they don't like something, not what I just did. There was an interesting discussion where somebody in the chat was like, I'm passing on Avatar because of Mike Z. And somebody responded with what? You're just going to throw away all the hard work everybody else did on the game. And it's like, you don't owe anyone shit. Nobody owes anyone. anyone anything. That's like, hey, I found out something bad about the game. You have to buy it now.

It's your responsibility. What? No, that's fucking bullshit. Yeah. You have to do nothing because of nothing. No, you look at it and you feel a certain way about it. And then this is why, what you're describing is exactly why when I talk about like, when someone goes, hey, I like, I like the idea of fighting games, but I don't know where to start. Right. And often I'll be like, what do you think looks cool, right? Because that person could be saying that where they think that Tekken is the coolest shit ever because they just saw, you know, Leroy. Or they could be looking at it because they just saw Ruby do some crazy shit. And they're like, oh, I love Ruby. That's dope as fuck, right? We just last week talked about the Tifa walking into Street Fighter 6 with Ludwig promoting it.

So all this to say, just to finish the thought, is go. follow what you think looks cool. If you think that looks cool, that's the best starting point. And similarly, if you don't feel a thing that's drawing you towards something, you don't have to. But you don't owe anybody anything. There was a time in my life where I thought Tekken was the absolute

coolest shit. And that was like the three weeks after Tekken 5 came out. Because, whoa, that was a good game. And then after that, I think I just slipped back to Third Strike. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a cozy one to slip back to, I'll tell you,

what. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, yeah. That's more or less the deal. Obviously, you know, we can yap and we did, and this is a big one. And, you know, we'll see what comes from the feedback this time around, but of course. I'm really interested in to see if, like, anything changes between now on the full release. I was about to say it's too soon.

I was about to say it's too soon. So I think what'll happen is not anything on the full release, but maybe the first patch after that. But maybe not, right? Maybe they, because they showed early on that they're like, we have a, we have a vision and we want to follow this.

And then people went, no, we're not fucking with your vision. And they went, okay, hold on. And then they adjusted it a bit. But now maybe they draw the line here,

or maybe they continue to move it, right? I know, though, that like, um, it's hard to say, but I feel like, you know, community-wise, there's a circle of, like,

there's a Venn diagram of, like, you know, people that love it and people that don't, and then in the middle, or almost like Avatar desire players and then Tokon players, and then in the middle are some people that are, it's like, fuck it, play both, it's fun, it's fine, go with what you got.

But I think the, when you kind of talk about, you know, there's these lots of articles and discussions about, like, people that play with their heart or their brain, and what drives you to play these games, why you come to play them at all. And I think when those motivations get like paired down to their core, core, core qualities,

like you can really, really design things that attract or repulse. Yeah. So like for me personally, I play fighting games because I want to see a cool thing happen and also win. Yeah. Those are the two things that I want. Yeah. I mean, I think I want those things too,

but how we go about those things is very, different. I want to see a cool thing happen and I want to win for sure. Like, you know, you know that old that's, that's, it's it's the how we get there that, that changes us. Why can't I remember his name? We had him on the show. Does incredible fighting game

Gerald? Gerald. Gerald? Correct. Gerald. Yeah. Gerald of Corrie Gaming described the game that had the win button. Right? And I'm like every game that I play that's a fighter, I, I fucking push a character as far

close to playing the win button game as I can. Where most games I play the guy who, if I hit the win button four times, I win. So there's a question that I asked when I was watching that Keith's video, and we brought it back, because it was a fun one. But talking about balance and all that, what is the most bored you've ever been while winning in a game? That's a great question. Right?

Think about that. Because that says a lot about that game's design. What's the most you've ever been disengaged while you are winning the game? For me, it would probably be when you're in a set and you're winning against an opponent that absolutely can't do anything to you for like a long length of time. Is there a particular game that you think of where it pushes that to the most extreme? No, it's all games. The game or opponent can't push back on me at all. Right?

I want to win, and I want to win, like, not like the skin of my teeth every single time, though that's really cool. But, like, I want something to push back on me. I don't want it to just be a complete, like, dog and pony show. And I don't want it to rubber band back to, at the last second to be like, no, it was actually a close fight, you idiot. So like a really good example that I was like, no it wasn't. Is, um, is racing games. Yep, rubber banding. Right.

Uh, there are a bunch of racing games that either had really crazy rubber banding or you got out in front and boy, you just got further and further ahead and it was the most like there are a bunch of need for speed games where you would play it back on the PlayStation 1. And if you got far enough ahead, you were just playing a fucking time trial at that point. You weren't even playing a race. Right? Miserable. Because, right?

Because that, because the, because the, because the, because the. reality is that like the closer you get to a win button, there are circumstances where you might look at it and go, I don't even feel like pressing that, you know, in the right situation with the right type of character, you know, on the wrong day, you're almost just like, well, fuck this. You know, this isn't, that's why I play an MMO because you get rewards for playing. Yeah. You know, the, there's an example. It has a reward structure that enables you to enjoy boring content. because it gets you a shiny hat at the end.

I mean, we laugh about this constantly, but it's a real thing where I've seen a Marvel tournament where it was, you know, do or die, survive, fight, fight, round starts, first touch, hit, pause, do, do, do, character select screen. Do, do da, do da, do da, do da, do it do. Okay, one zero, next, you know? and it was just the person who took the hit spiritually did not have it in themselves to go through the motions.

They're like, no, no, it's over, you know. So anyways, let's let's call the tocon discussion there. I got to do a break. The dog ran away, which means he's hungry. So I got to feed him or else he'll beat me up. Be right back. All right. I had one more thing, but let's just take a quick word from our.

sponsors since we fucking... Who we love, I love our sponsors. If they were a person, I would kiss them on the mouth and be real wet with it. Yeah, we toked it up a bit too hard today, so... Do you think they know that, like, Marvel Tocon, like, hits? Like, yeah, bro. Every single fighting game name has been just absolute clown shoes for this exact purpose, right? you know the two xKOs came up with they they put out the article about like you know why that's news

you want to talk about that yeah sure sure sure sure yeah all right sponsor uh this week the pod is sponsored well i mean tell you tell you what if you're going to make out with any of these sponsors uh you should you should big big make out with hero forge oh man hero forges awesome i could put the entirety of a hero forge I could put the entirety of a hero-forged item in my mouth. Don't do it. It's definitely against the rules, and I'm sure there's a legal thing you have to sign to not do that. But I could put the whole thing in there.

Nom-nom-nom, num, num, num, num, num, num, num, no. You shouldn't, but I can see why you'd want to. I once again get out the Prawn Zone-built super-cool miniature figure of me and Pat doing a cool thing. You see, I'm doing a cool kick, and Pat's blocking it with a powery. Kick looks really familiar. Because it's a third strike, Evo Moment 37 thing. Oh, it is.

I like how I have to reach up super high to parry it. You wouldn't even have hit me. You would have actually caught over my head. But it's more stylish because you're defending in a cool way. And here is the Reggie and me business mode, little miniature as well. These are the types of little things you can make over at Hero Forge, which is honestly just like an awesome real cool place to go if you want to make miniatures for your tabletop games.

You get to use a character creator on their website to build out your main characters, your monsters, anything you need for all your tabletop gaming. You can do custom dice as well. You can print out custom D20s. And you don't have to print them as well. You can just build the character, get the 3D model, and you can use the 3D model

with your own 3D printing. or for whatever, you know, by just using it off of downloading from their website. So, yeah, it's got the options to get color plastic, acrylic standees, bronze, just a lot of options. And the customization is adding new parts every week as well, different species and custom poses on a regular basis. They're all expanding. If you want to go crazy as well, you've got some really cool options with the pro-subscription

where you can do kit bashing, photo booths. the community library, and the kit bashing in particular lets you add tons of extra parts to create things like the me and Pat kicking each other, like that's a model that you get from using the pro subscription with kit bashing. So if you want to get more elaborate and make cool designs as well, yeah, you can get into the pro subscriptions. Start at $3.99 per month and Pro Plus at $14.99 per month if you want to get all the way in. And, yeah, in general, you can just go check him out. I was able to, without spending a ton of time,

make a very basic but still pretty cool version of Monk Woolley, which was printed a lot smaller way earlier on, but then Praunzone came out and blew my ass out of the water with the quality of what he did. So we just show those from now. But you can use Codecastle to get 5% off on all orders and physical miniatures, not combinable with other sales or promotions.

Visit heroforge.com to start designing your own custom miniature and dice today and check back often because new content is added every week. Thank you, Hero Forge. Thanks, Hero Forge. Am I blurry? No, man. I'm okay? Yeah.

Yeah, you look good. A Joe Guns miniature would go fucking hard. That would go crazy. That would be pretty nice. You should take a look and see what you can get going. Hey, Praunzone, you out there? you still listening or did you just do a did you post and ghost i don't know but that sounds interesting no they're working on it right now it's completed it's printing damn that's being shipped

that's sick wait what solidus just said they're actually working on it officially get the fuck out of here we'll have to dig into that later don't lie to me all right um so the last thing i wanted to touch on was one more thing at Fantasia. The, uh, there was a cool little event that wasn't quite just a movie screening. It was like a presentation. Don Hertzfeldt. Does that name ring a bell to you? Sure does.

Rejected. History of the animation guy. Very funny guy. My spoon is too big. My spoon's too big. My anus is bleeding. Um, it was. Well, uh, yeah, Don Hertzfeld came to Montreal and came to do.

a chat about his career and what he's been animating and stuff and then put on a presentation and I don't know if you remember it as well but Fantasia would often have these things called DJXL5s like Zap and Party and stuff like that where they'd be just it would be like two to three hours

of just a bunch of crazy clips all smash cut together with music and stuff real fun part of the festival that would be there every year party environment it's encouraged to go outside grab snacks come back in stand up chat talk whatever It's a vibe. So that DJXL5, the guy who did those, interviewed Don Hertzfeld. What is, what is, what has Don Hortzvold built up to since he's done rejected?

The short stick figure cartoon that if you see it and you see the banana and the Big Spoon, you probably might recognize his work. He's just been indie chilling in the back, making his shit the whole time. And you pretty much don't see it in theaters because he hasn't directed any feature films. He just stays working on his indie shorts. And every once in a while, someone big will come a lot. long like The Simpsons and be like, hey, do you want to do a couch gag for us? And he's like, yeah, sure.

And he does like one of the best couch gags they've ever done. And then just goes back to like making shorts for film festivals and pretty much just chilling. You can go keep up with what he's up to more or less on his site. But that's like the only way you'll cross his path. But I was like, I didn't know what was doing, what was going on because after he made the original rejected, he did the animation show, which was like a collection he did with, I think like Bill Plimpton and I think Mike Judge stuff was good.

part of that as well. I was back in the animation club at the Sijep. I remember I was one of the first people to get that screened in Canada. I requested it to be one of the things we could air at Conrads at Conrods at school, you know? So yeah, I'm just like, oh shit, this is fucking bringing me back. Um, yeah. So since then, and since he did a really great Simpsons couch gag, which is just this, it's this awesome thing. of like what if the Simpsons goes into the future and never fucking stops in the year like fucking $2 billion in Blorp

you know and he's continued to do these really incredible shorts is the answer that are also hilarious and like poignant and fucking deep cutting because he still uses stick figures and traditional

animation style but he did some stuff since then such as a short called I'm so proud of you. It's such a beautiful day, world of tomorrow, on memory. And these are all things where, like, one of them is like a trilogy of movies that are

about somebody who is, like, is going through Alzheimer's and is losing their memory and is nearing end of life and just reflecting back on those times and moments. And, like, you're seeing scenes that are, like, all playing simultaneously as moments and time all come at you at the same time and overwhelm you and you're not sure what to look at or pay attention to and he just does like that kind of stuff and you know but it's still again

still hilarious and kind of nuts but also like has you sitting there like fuck you know it's really really good masterpiece animation stuff so yeah I just in case anyone knows or doesn't Don Hertzfeldt he's been still up to some really great shit and his latest does good stuff and so

when he showed up he did a selection of like a couple of, we didn't know what he was going to play, he picked like, I think like six or seven films that he was going to just play that nobody knew what they were going to be and they were all amazing including the thing that he just just finished this month called paper trails, which is just

I can't give it away, but like it's just something that takes you a second to figure out what's going on and then once you do it's fucking phenomenal but it just, it gives you, it's one of those things that you just, you got to take a second with and be like, what are you all? And it's great. It's great. It's great. It's great.

So, yeah, Don Hurtsville's cool. Anyway, that's it. This week is going to be weird schedule-wise. We're going to be playing FF14 on Thursday. That's correct. And that's pretty much it. Oh, really? Yeah, I'm going to be very busy for the rest of the week.

And lots of different things going on. So that'll be that. But I'll see you guys on the flip side in August with a, a new schedule starting at 1 p.m. New schedule. I hope you do. You have fun doing all that stuff you got to do this week. Yeah, no, I got two days of a lot of work going up,

and then I'm going to be going up to Quebec City with the fam. Oh, that's cute. I'm going to have a little trip and, you know, see. She's going to see some of her first big countryside sites. Oh, cool. Yeah. souls will continue when we when we get back so i did a 24 hour stream again got real rough at the end there started to get real real sleepy did but managed it though

managed but was it the good sleepy did the did the demons no the loopy demons no it was not good it was it was it was I was falling asleep I probably fell asleep a couple times okay okay Like the full-on... You had a pretty solid preparation regimen last time. I did. I don't know what happened this time. I genuinely don't know what it was. I slept well.

Maybe Tokon took it out of me more than usual. It requires your brain. I did Tokon, which is... Deeds nits niggas. That's great, buddy. That's great. Can you tell I believed in it when I said it? Not really.

Okay. Not really? It just seemed like, it seems like you just wanted to say certain parts of the sentence at me. We got through the whole discussion, but we didn't do any title bait. So, you know. Well, that's not title bait either. It's not quite, not quite. You're not putting that in there.

You fucking lost your fucking mind. And then I did a bunch of to-com. and which was fun. And then Peach came over. My darling, Paige came over and her great idea is that we would play Super Seducer on

the show. And Paige saw like a couple of clips of it. I was like, that was great. And then we sat down and I'm like, wait, do you know what this game even is? She's like, no. Great. Let's do it.

So we got about two hours in a super seduce. and it's awful it's it's fucking terrible dude let's go it's it's so fucking like it's

wait they made three of them yeah the third one is is banned off Twitch what can't play it on that I didn't know there I didn't hear about the fucking trilogy oh shit yeah yeah you cannot chew that blanket okay buddy you can't chew it

It's not good for chew. Okay, thank you. It's just... For those uninformed, this is super seducer, how to talk to girls. It's a pickup event. Pickup artist. PUA. Choose your own adventure.

And it's so uncomfortable. And so like, you expect all the weird, like, where's... Where's my mystery hat? I got to put my big fuzzy hat on and start ignoring you. And then let me... You expect the poet tips. Right. and all that. And that's like actually fine.

And like some of the advice is like really actually good. Like don't walk up to a girl and try and touch her face. You'll get arrested. Solid. Solid bit there. Solid advice. Right? Yeah. But the problem is that it's filled with joke answers that are like,

hey, you're trying to hit on two girls at a bar. Ask them if they make out sometimes. and you expect it to be like he says something rude and then they go, ew, gross and walk away and that's that. But when you pick the bad joke options, like the negative

scenario plays out for like multiple minutes. Yeah. Yeah. And it's and like, Disco Elysium that shit. It follows like the whole path down to like them walking away and like trying to maybe

think about calling like the authority. to get you kicked out of somewhere. It's so fucking uncomfortable and awful. By the way, I couldn't. It's pretty brave of you to come out here wearing those shoes. Wow. Aren't you going to ask me about my mysterious accessory? It was, it was bad.

Me and Paige started to get really uncomfortable. So we switched to something else, which is like I would, it's, we switched to something called mold rise. Mold Rize. I don't know if you've seen Mold Rise. Go ahead and go ahead and gab that up on the steam. Go look that up.

I don't want to. Yeah, do it. Do it, you pussy. Moldrise is actively disgusting. And it is incredible. I would describe it as the stylistic baby of the style of a mouthwashing and the gameplay of an outer wilds. Okay. Nothing in these screenshots seem.

to be as horrible as I was anticipating. Well, so mold rise is very simple. You play a young gentleman. J.K. Rowling. Who lives in an apartment. What? Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Go on. Continue. You play a young gentleman who has some mold on his foot and is being absolutely compelled to get to the, roof of his apartment building. And you are managing three meters, food, drink, and mold level. And if any of those cap out, you will die instantly. So you are doing, and it is a, it's a single extraordinarily tall staircase of about 29 floors.

And you are going down and talking to everybody in their apartments and trying to see if they've got any anti-firm. fungal cream for your foot so you can stave off the infection and then going down and trying to figure out what items you can scrounge out of the garbage to sell for coins to use the elevator, which require certain coins. And I describe it as Outer Wilds because your trips through will lead to inevitable failure over and over and over and you'll have to restart, but you will restart with the key piece of information that will allow you to skip past something or solve something instantaneously. Question.

Does the mold either have a voice or something that does to you that is beneficial in any way, shape, or form? The mold does have a voice. When your mold level is high, character dialogue will start getting replaced by the mold's voice, and it will replace NPC dialogue with up. You have to go up. There's only one way, but up. Interesting. Okay, cool, cool, cool.

And as the mold goes higher, your footsteps become actively squishier and grosser. There are no objective perks to the mold. You want to keep mold low. And you get to the top of the roof, and that's the end of the game. And there's a bunch of achievements that include interacting with the game in unique ways, such as, I don't know, it took me two and a half hours to beat it. beat the game in five minutes. Okay.

For example. Okay. Or beat the game without talking to a single person. You know, things like that. Very, very, very interesting. It unfortunately took out my wife. Took her right out. We got about an hour and so in.

And she's like, hey, can we take a break? I'm not feeling so good. Visuals or ideas. Took her back to the house. We're not really sure what did it. Okay. But my darling wife lost everything. every lunch and breakfast of that day.

It did not come back. Okay. For the rest of the stream. I can relate. I'm at almost, that I will let Paige be my canary in the cold mine on that. It also almost got me. I almost barfed straight into this monitor playing it. For a very simple reason.

So I have a pretty strong fucking stomach. I have a pretty strong stomach all things considered. Until I got to the vending machine at the bottom of mold rise, broke, and went to check the coin slot to see if there were extra coins. And my character took damage from the mystery syringe that someone had left inside the coin slot. Which is, if you're not aware of anybody listening to this, that is like legitimate. my ultimate nightmare

is to go get a quarter from like a change machine and there's a syringe in there. I mean, I think your stomach is fine, but I think you just vomit mentally when certain things happen. Well, I started to heave and Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was... Correct. It was coming.

Great game. Requires a pretty strong stomach. Visually fascinating, narratively interesting. Is it short? Is the disgusting stuff, the ideas, is it what it's showing you? It doesn't really show you a lot of actually

disgusting stuff. Like there's like a dirty water fountain. Okay. It describes how dirty the water fountain. Yeah. Okay. Okay. When you walk, it makes a big gross noise and everything's clearly filthy. But it's like a PS1 style aesthetic, so it's not super or like maybe like a 19, 99

PC game. Because I can get through a text description game of how awful and gross something is while still being like in it. But like the thing that takes me out like fuck this, I'm turning this off is the visual, you know? Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, a, it's, a, it's, a, I'm, a, I, I, I, I would give it, like a, a, 10 out of 10. I think it's incredible. I think it's fantastic. Um, and then, I went on, and, uh, me and some of the

gals, Heena couldn't make it, uh, watched the Final Fantasy 14 Berlin Fanfest presentation. Which was at one in the goddamn morning Pacific. And this was the end of the 24 hours. No, this is about 70% through.

Okay. Um, which they announced a lot of cool shit. I don't know if you, I don't know if any of it got to you. One thing. But I think there's two things that probably got to you. One thing. Right.

Cool art of a person with two shields crouched over, ready for action. Mm-hmm. Looks really cool. Will anything in gameplay actually look a fraction of as cool as that art does? Oh, yeah, no. Let me get, uh... Right? Let me get...

Because they put... That art is great, but you got to translate that and keep that spirit, right? They had it far enough along that they actually were able to put out a, video of what a bunch of the skills look like. Because when I think about like you go, that's what it looks like, that's cool. And without seeing the footage, I go, okay, but now you have to universalize it for every single race and every shape and size. So it might just end up being armor with two shields on the arms.

And that's it. As opposed to the build of that character in the art is this fucking blastoys, bad posture, little fucking armor. So I sent you the trailer and what's going to end up happening is that, The stance and the thickness and the general idea are just going to be placed onto skinnier characters, but it's going to be the same idea. Okay. This is a tank that its primary aesthetic gameplay is punching motherfuckers with big hands and then swapping the shields around to shoot a bunch of guns. Okay.

This is a monster hunter weapon, if there ever was one. Yeah, sure. Sure. I can see that. It is it's Bastion. It's like, it's a wall. It is the new main tank to go alongside with Paladin. It is one of the coolest

aesthetic looking classes they have ever made. It is also one of the only classes they're ever going to put out. All new classes are only evolved mode, which is the new gameplay mode. It won't have an old version because it didn't exist back under the old gameplay version. Super

cool. It is going to be my new main. class, whenever Cole comes out. So this, two questions. One, this looks very cool. And when something like this happens, where obviously everybody wants to try it, how does the rest of the game continue to work? So, this is a really funny example. So every time they put out an expansion, it always comes at new classes. And the classes always have different roles. So it used to be, in Heaven's Word, they put out one. of each role, which was very ambitious, right? They put out a tank, a healer, and a DPS. And then after that, they put out two DPS, and then they put out a tank and a DPS, and then they put out a DPS, and then they put out a DPS and a healer, and now we're back to tank and DPS. And what happens is for the first fucking four-month period after the new classes come out, whatever the popular one is, that role will become nightmarishly flooded.

So tanks always get Q preference because tanks and healers always get Q preference because people would rather play a DPS than play a tank or a healer. The way the population works out. When a cool new tank comes out, all of a sudden, it takes a really long time to Q as a tank. Because there's a million people that are like, oh, that class is so cool. maybe I'll be a tank. Yeah. Okay. And when DPSQs, which are already bad,

two new DPS come out, guess what? The DPSQ goes from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. Okay. So, yes, the game where the role you play relies on the economy of everyone else playing different characters does suffer. Preference economy. It does suffer. Yeah.

Second. So, like, right now tanks and healers, oh, it's so easy. You hit the Q button, your instant's immediate. DPS have to wait five, 10 minutes. When this motherfucker comes out, tanks are going to be up to like a 10 minute queue because there's going to be so many people switching over. And here's the thing. The reason why it only takes four months is because people switch over to the new role because it's cool and then go, wait a second, I fucking hate tank. Wait, I forgot this sucks. Yeah, yeah. Or I fucking hate healing. Shit. And then they go back.

But you want to flip the shields around and do a couple of these for a minute to see what's up. Yeah, man. Yeah, it does look rad. Very important question here. Crucial, critical. In fact, the most important question I've ever asked about FF14 as far as I'm concerned. This trailer you just showed me for the new Bastion class, which is coming out with Final Fantasy 14 Evercold. Oh, I know. Features a little, an enemy that is being punched and comboed, and it is flinching and getting hit and reacting to the getting hit part of the, the combos. Yeah. Why? What is that?

They all do that. Okay. So... That one's a little more exaggerated than usual. So read my mind and make it make sense, please. All enemies flinch in the game. Okay. You just don't notice or it's a little too subtle.

Okay. So it's not quite... Like literally every single enemy in the game flinch is when you hit them. Okay. It's just, I guess, when you're one person... as opposed to the group When you're one person and the enemy is big, it's very easy to see.

When you're one person and the enemy is person sized, it's a little subtle. And when you're 20, so if you're 8 to 24 people and the person is big, what you will notice is that they're actually kind of in a permanent state of wiggle

due to the flinching. Gotcha. Okay. That being said, every expansion has more hit effect. It doesn't actually stop them from doing anything. No, it's just a visual indicator. Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Okay. This is a tank that will be starting at level 90. New classes always start 20 levels underneath, whatever the new cap is going to be. Because they don't want you to go, I'm going to play Bastion and start at level one and have to spend like two and a half fucking months. you have to keep rising the cat.

Kicking that thing up to fucking 100. That's miserable. And there's always a quest associated in a story to follow through on as well. Yeah, they always have a little job quest. And you'll be able to get it at an early starting area. So if you massively overlevel,

you can get it much earlier than you otherwise would be. Okay. Right? So like, well, you're level 44 or something and you're like not even halfway through a Rorm Report. No, you're more than halfway through Rarmreborn. But you'll be able to get samurai, which people used to be able to,

to get after they beat all the patches and got to heaven's word before the beginning end of a Rome reborn. So if you kept on that accelerated pace, you'd be the kind of person who could pick up like the fucking ever-cold tank in like goddamn stormblood or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. This thing, like you said, this thing looking cool depends entirely on whether you got that fucking

hunched down bunker posture. So that's going to be the stance for every. but everyone's going to have that stance. It's obviously going to make different use of people's body proportions. Ironically enough, the little potato guys are probably going to look really cool

as this class. Because they're going to look like a ball. Yeah, yeah, a little ball with shield sticking out. I can see it. And it has a swap between a melee and arranged stance, and I have to say, both of the stances are cool.

It is essentially a pile bunker cannoneer. Yeah. Like, it is, it is so cool, but also I was like, kind of like laughing. It's so, like, specifically to your exact aesthetic that I could not believe it. I was very surprised. Yeah, it's a pilebucker shield night. It's fucking rad.

Yeah. They did not announce the second class. They said that it would be arranged DPS. And what that means is not magic, but like barred machinist. Somebody that uses a, like, a gun, essentially. But they kept it hush, hush. Except for all the stuff that they fucked up and leaked out and hinted at. And so now people pretty much know what the range DPS is.

So in the trailer, there's a weird robot bird that appears for a second. There was a bug with earlier classes when 7.5 came out where the class holds what appears to be a rifle or a crossbow in its animations when they jump. as well as the Bastion name actually leaked out months ago alongside a class name called Zephyr. So it is probably going to be a falconier, like a crossbow using character that throws birds at people. Does that not overlap with anything that already exists? No, it does not.

Bards use big great bows and strum the harp to sing. machinists use robots and shoot guns and uh dancers dance so this will probably be a crossbow using bird person uh so that's very cool if you can but unannounced maybe you can dress up your bird like pet shop you might have multiple birds it's it's not clear um they also showed off a bunch of new areas, which don't mean anything to anybody who's not already up to date. And if you're up to date, then you've already watched it. Um, they did announce that they, do you remember a lot? I've told you this three times, but maybe you forgot because it, because it's fucking nitty gritty. Do you remember I told you about a scenario called Raubon's Wall? It was very long ago.

That name rings about. It was, I've heard that, I've heard that name before. So when Stormblood came out, everybody had to do the same main quest in the same order. And one of those main quests jumped you into an instant zone. Well, since every single person tried to get into the instance zone, got caught at the second space. They got just fucking slammed. Yeah, I remember now. So they have designed the game around avoiding that scenario. So now when you get to Shadowbringers, when you get to End Walker, etc.

And Don Trail, what happens is that you start off and they send you around two. zones for a while. So they split the player base into two different areas and then they reintegrate at a middle point. They are expanding on that and forever cold they're actually going to be giving

three full branching paths that you can take the main story on in any direction. So that way you're not going to have everybody on the same instance trying to hit that one spot. But including dungeons. Okay, but if only, but if one path is way cooler than the other two, then... You'll still have to do all three.

Okay. You'll just be picking the order in which you do them. And on top of that, they've said that since everyone's going to be doing these at weird levels, because usually it is, there's a 91 dungeon, a 93 dungeon, a 95 dungeon, a 97 dungeon, a 99 dungeon. And that's, that's the list. That's just how it goes. But now you're going to have dungeons that you could get to at 93, sorry, 101 or 105 or 108. Right. You could be doing it at any given order.

So what they're implementing is a system where the dungeon and its rewards will scale to the level that you got there at. So did you enter the dungeon A at 105? You'll get 105 level balancing and 105 level rewards. Did you go in at 109? You'll get similar. And this is a system they said they want to apply back to the rest of the game. which implies what they want to do is that you will always be able to play

your character at their peak level where they have all of their buttons and that level sync shit goes away because the level sync shit sucks it does they're doing they're doing step one to level sync which is everybody gets their whole kit by level 50 so when you go through heavens were or most of their kit so heavens word storm blood shadow bringers

and walker regardless you'll still have a appreciable version of your character Yeah. But this looks like it would go further to, you don't need to have an appreciable version of your character if you get a level 54 dungeon. You will just roll in with your character and it will just juke your stats in whatever direction it needs to.

Yeah, because sometimes like we go far and away with no fighting happening. And when we eventually do get into one, I can't even use all the cool toys I got. You lose 17 levels worth of fucking moves. And it's almost like, well, what's the point of getting that big new number so high if every time you go somewhere to fight, it says, no, but we're going to pretend you're not that number, though.

You know. Yeah. So this is one of the, so it's, 14's a weird game because when they announce a system, you can always see what the, what the system is the stepping stone to, right?

This is clearly a stepping stone to changing the way level sync works in the whole game. And they're going to start at the end and then work their way backwards. And I guess through current content. That would apply to fates too. That's actually a different thing, but yes, they've said that it will apply to all the open oral content as well.

Okay. But in Evercold. Yeah. Right. And then at some patch they'll be like, by the way,

we've implemented it for Dawn Trail. And then they'll do a patch and we've implemented it for and Walker. Yeah, I can see how... Since most of the player bases

at the end, you don't want to do it forward out. You want to do it backwards. Yeah. No, working backwards across the scaffolding in a game like this

is nightmarish and I don't fault them for... It seems really hard. Not doing it. Yeah. Uh, uh, shit, I was gonna... Nope, it's gone. It's gone.

Oh, the... Is it gone? No, it's not. It's back. Um, so previously, when they announced this, uh, expansion and Ava and, uh, the new control system and all the stuff you talked about. That's all for the upcoming big expansion in next year, right? Yeah. So this is a second event to describe more things about that same event.

Yeah, and they'll have a third event in November, sorry, October. For more detail. describe further details. Wow. Wow. And they also came out and said, listen, everybody wants to know how their class is going to change because every job is going to change and be a new version of the class.

They didn't announce a date, but they said we are going to do a four or five hour live stream at some point in the future before the expansion comes out where we just sit down and be like, this is what Paladin is, this is what Warrior is, this is what Dark Knight is, this is what Gunbreaker is, this is what White Mage is, is, this is what Scholar is, etc., etc., etc.,

and just go down every single single class and be like, this is how it's going to go. And this is normal that new expansions get like this year. Yeah, they get the three fan fest lead up. And then they get a media tour at the end. The media tour, which is what happens if you are a prominent FF14 streamer who streams FF14 at least once a week and get good numbers doing FF14, you can apply to the media tour, at which point you will be shuffled secretly, usually to L.A. or San Francisco.

and then you will be allowed to play a preview build of the game long before anybody else at which point you will write down your thoughts, get your footage, do a interview with YoshiP, and then sit on it for three weeks. Okay, okay. So it's really important if you want to do the media tour that you have a multiple month head start of doing FF14, one, maybe multiple times a week and getting good numbers about that. And that you also get the correct email for the person to talk. talked to from an industry contact that you met earlier.

Very important. Crucial, actually. Got it. It's highly important. Huh. What rank was that again? As of right now, you're number five. Okay.

And you are... It's not bad. It's not bad. I think I'm number two. Oh, what's interesting. He goes, Shempai, Shempai, me, Hina, Volpixie, and you. That's psychotic, by the way.

That's completely unhinged and fucked up and insane. I can't believe you've told me that. Jesus. Yeah. So I... Okay. The only other thing, so the only other thing I heard is that... FF14...

Oh, and Doja Cat. Ah. Okay. But she streams it on just chatting, so her metrics aren't... Oh, not the same thing. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. No, I was going to...

The only other thing I heard was that they also announced FF14 Universes Beyond. Yes, but we'll get there. We'll get there. I have a big old list here. So they also went into what's called character action skins, which is very simply, as characters have gotten changed, they've lost animations. They've lost moves.

Every class has tons of moves that they've lost over the years. And they announced like, hey, so what, what we're going to be doing is we're going to offer a new type of reward for huge portions of the game, both job stuff and normal stuff, where you can swap in your animation. So they showed off teleporting. Teleporting, the one that you've been doing where you hold your hand in front of your face and float, that has been the same animation for 13 years. They showed off two new ones where you, like, spin around with a huge amount of light

or, like, get totally consumed by darkness. And it's just another type of cosmetic that can be added to your character and also offered up as a reward. They also said, hey, we're going to work on it every patch. Old animations that you miss will be given back to you to swap in for stuff. I play Dark Night and I played Dark Night since the day it came out. I have lost over half of my animations over the years. Wow. Okay. More than half are gone. and I want some of them back

I mean I never would have thought about that but like the idea of putting some customization and opportunity to release skins and things to that particular bit is like yeah sure why not do a Mega Man zip out of there or fucking San Devastan activation glitching and you know

why not as long as it functions identically there's no reason not to do it I would like a Terminator reappearing in the timeline sphere. I would like a snap and then a portal and then you walk into the portal. That's fun too. That's cool too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yamato. Yeah, and it's like, okay, so the floor is open. Now there's a new type of thing to look forward to every patch. Right. Cut open a portal, walk back and say thank you,

Nero. They announced a bunch of little cosmetic things for all the races. Like you can swap different types of horns depending on the face. You can remove the face paint off of Makode. Very minor, but like some people have been asking for that for a while. They then announced the creation of Woolly Mode. This is Woolley Mode. This was designed for you. Sounds like a mode I might

not like. It's a mode you'll like. So Woolley Mode you enable it and it points a gigantic, sparkly line to the next person in the quest chain. And if you so desire, you hit a button and your character will auto

walk over to it. People are calling it yellow paint mode. This is the week after we had the conversation. This is the week after. And they said, we got to help this guy. We got to do it.

Come the fuck on. They said that there's a lot of mobile game players or people who are not used to playing games as much that have trouble navigating the environment. so we want to save everybody a bunch of their time. I'll take my monster hunter fireflies, thank you. I'll take them.

So here's the thing that's really funny. I think this quest is also going to go into Evercold and then come back in reverse, which is actually the opposite of how they should do it because you're saying new players have to get all the way to level 100 before they get like the accessibility. At which point I don't need it anymore. Yeah, no, it should be the opposite.

God damn it. But they said it'll take them. very long time to do. Yada yada. So girls and Yoshi P are watching. Yeah. They announced they went in a slightly more detail

into the middle raid difficulty which is very simply they said that there will be the middle rate difficulty will be medium and it will be for mid-core players that don't have the time to blow 15 hours on Savage a week and that there'll be a gear up process

that'll help you get ready for Savage if you feel like and everyone will yeah that's nice. Well look that like this objectively addresses my single strong as frustration point. So that's, that's pretty, that's pretty cool. Uh,

they also, and this is actually also one week afterwards, they announced that they are going to completely redo the entire chokebo system. Hmm. Uh, they are going to have a way more detail and control over commanding your chokobo and the various classes that they can be and adding a bunch to it. So that you can go into a,

dungeon with two people and two chokobos. Ah, okay. They are, so there's the trust mode, which is like, you know, you playing with the AI and by yourself, if you want to play a single player game. The chokobo thing is going to be the game's essential, like, co-op mode. You and one person and your chokopos going through all the dungeons. They have not updated the chokobo system in like nine years. I like that they're finally doing something with it.

And it'll be like a Pokemon or something. You can control. It'll be like a Pokemon. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Smart. They went on to go over the Evangelion raid. Nothing really other than the director of 3.0 and 3.0 plus 4.0 is going to be the director of the series. This is not like a support staff kind of thing. Like, no, it's a my hero Maida who is a super. long-term industry veteran who will be directing it. It's canon and it takes place during instrumentality. Yep, that's shockingly

obvious. That wasn't a question, it was a statement. Yeah, no, that's, I, you're completely right. Yes, correct. Just like all those Evangelian mugs and t-shirts are canon. So too will this. Damn, instrumentality is fucking profitable, bro. then they announced the

eight-man raid series will also be a crossover and it will be titled Beyond the Lifestream and it will be featuring Universes Beyond Your friend and mine Cloudstrive and Sephiroth which I don't remember

if you remember last week It was a long time ago But I do believe the words verbatim were if Sephiroth named showed up that would suck ass I was a really long time ago I'm having a hard time

It was a really oh yeah That was a full six days ago It's a little hazy on that one Yeah So I am not the only person Who feels that way And there has been like a long discussion From a lot of people

Like wait Why is this different There is an FF11 raid There is a Final Fantasy Tactics raid Goalbez is in the game Kefka is a boss in the game Chaos is a boss in the game And why is this suddenly different

And to your credit Like when you said that about Magic the Gathering A lot of people said You are echoing the feelings of many magic players Many, yes For in the last couple of years Yeah So I've been thinking long and hard

About like why it seems to feel different And I think it's like basically Because I care about it? No, I think it's because the FF7 cast has like an enormous amount of extra media and voice acting and characterization. When Golbez

from Final Fantasy 4 shows up in FF14, for one, he has more dialogue in like one cut scene with you in 14 than he does in all of FF4. Right, right. Kepka. He is also Kefka.

So Govaz, for example, like he's a fundamentally different character than he was in in four he is the he is a FF14 character that looks and acts like Goldbez but actually is a completely different

story attached to him Kefka fans are starving Kefka shows up as like a fucking tournament arc fucking look I brought Kefka through the portal and then you kick his ass and he leaves same thing with X death same thing with Neo X death same thing with chaos

etc right it's kind of weird that it's going to be cloud and sepheroff of like 10 different games and series coming in to hang out as they are in a version of their own canon. And I think that's really disappointing from a, like an interesting new thing that could happen in FF14 perspective. But, I play Dark Knight

so one of the raid weapons is going to be the Buster Sword so it's great actually Mm-hmm Yeah, end of story No, I think... Pretty much. Yeah, I... Okay, there absolutely is something

to like the character's overexposure affecting how people feel about it I mean, if you ever dive into the rabbit hole that is the Batman who laughs or the Batman who Junkles. There's a character. The Batman Who Junkles being like the end-all villain of Fortnite is just like the worst thing.

But it's one of these things where I'm like, it's like what is the reason? Where does the animosity truly come from? And it wasn't the first creation of it so much as it was the buildup and overexposure and then the fact that everything constantly led back to being this one. unstoppable villain coming from another reality.

And it just, over exposure. There's a bit of oversaturation. Over exposure made everybody not care about them showing up. And like, to their credit, I didn't like the last 24 man and the last raid that took place entirely when the FF14. I did not like pandemonium. I did not like Myths of the Realm.

I did like Evalice and I did like FF11. So I guess fuck me because I'm, I guess I can't even back up my own opinion because I actually like the crossover raids more. But, but, okay, um, FF7 feels like a different property from Final Fantasy. Yeah. And for our, oh, man. Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, you're sorry. I understand exactly what you mean.

Right? I understand exactly what you mean. It feels like a different property for our entire lives. It feels like its own thing. It feels like its own thing. And it's been this crazy thing that's been the number one most requested remake, whatever thing the whole time. It's just this beast. And then now it's starting to get a whole bunch of media.

So it went from never being seen again to being seen more than you ever imagined. And there was a time when you were like, oh, man, Cloud and Sephiroth are in. Kingdom Hearts, holy shit. I can't believe I get to see them again. You know, into like, now it's a whole other thing. And like that train is running separate from the, the. the naval Final Fantasy and every other character on that list, you know? So I can see how it feels different to include this one for that purpose.

So I think the funniest thing about all of this is that there was like a like, oh, it wasn't a new thing, it's actually an old thing for the FF7 thing. But though most people are extremely excited. And I'm not going to lie, I think it's really cool. I just kind of wish it was a brand new thing that made me as happy as this did. Yeah, sure, sure. No, I don't want to be basic. The hypocrisy is baked in and real, but it's simple to understand.

And when people were talking about Magic the Gathering, two things that I saw that made it kind of cement and make a little bit of sense, because we're continuing the discussion about people not liking characters from all over getting introduced, right? And it was the idea that, like, in some cases, a piece of content will drop into a game that is not from a thing you want or that you care about. And you don't have to engage with it. but in magic, it's something that's done to you. You have to fight against that player's deck

when they bring Doctor Who, no matter how much you hate Doctor Who. And, yeah, and so, like, the part where you have to engage with it and makes it feel worse. And I guess, I guess the, like, the other bit being, like, if it's all of the things you love, then you'll be fine with it, but it'll never be that. And it's making money and it's working, so there's no reason to slow it down. It's not a rare case.

It's something that's going to speed up, overtime. One of the things that people are talking about, which I need to dispel because it's completely wrong, is the idea that they're breaking the glass. That's why FF7's coming back to 14. They need the FF7 rate in Evang Kellyan to save Evercold or whatever. It's like, it's the opposite. Collaboration things are go to FF14 because the things they want to show off want the

advertisement. So like FF12, the Zodiac age came out alongside the fucking tactic the tactics rates, right? The near re-release came out alongside the near stuff. Evangelion's got a new fucking movie or TV show

coming out. FF7 Revelations is going to be coming out like alongside the first one within like a couple of months. Media tie in obviously every time. Yeah. Also, all that feeling and then they announced that they're going to be putting in an FF7 typing game into the gold saucer.

Oh yeah. They're going to be putting typing of the dead into the gold saucer. I've sent you a screenshot. How the fuck do you play this on your controller? You plug in a keyboard. That's how. Oh.

And the rewards are Tifa's outfit, Barrett's outfits, and the guard score. Orpian mount. Off to Midgar, we go. Yeah, okay. It's like straight up Tifa's outfit has like the largest chest in the game of any female outfit.

So it's going to be paired with the tuby pants, which have the largest butt in the game. And or the plug suit outfits from the upcoming Evangelion raid. God, we're typing. So we're, we're about to enter the. the Goomer Apocalypse. Oh, yeah, no. Now is when you start running the game on your phone so that you can use the Apple keyboard with smart swipe to type faster.

Oh, boy. They know what they're doing. And that's pretty much all they announced. People wanted a lot more details about like, hey, what are you guys going to do to my job? Or like how some of the nitty gritty works, but that's the most of it. Is Gumer when you goon and coon? I misspoke, but yeah, sure. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. So this is looking very promising. Could have gone with a little more detail, but they're going to be doing a lot more for Japan Fan Fest. They also announced that the Switch version is coming out the first week of August, I think it is. So next week. Did you see, sorry, did you see Avatar running on the Switch one?

I did not. What? The switch? What? It can? No, but it's a released product. Oh, my. Okay, so backgrounds, what are those? Frame rate?

What's that? Also, here's a clip of the CPU starts attacking you before the fight starts, because the timing is so off that it can't say balance must be restored quickly enough for the fight to not start. but you can't move but the computer can it is an unplayable embarrassing fucking mess it's insane that it's for sale

but there is a switch one port and it's crazy it's crazy that that's released and Nintendo has no fucking refund system so eat shit wow is that a bad

fucking port oh there it goes yeah yeah don't why even a announce it. Just stop. Just don't do it.

Anyway. But yeah, that's the fan fest stuff. Good fan fest. I'm glad that they heard your complaints, Wally, about navigation. tuned right the fucking, damn. They know about Joe Guns. I started, dude, I started, like, laughing my shit off when I saw that.

That's really funny. Because it's, I mean, I believe I all but said directly give me a crazy taxi arrow. Yep. You know? They also said, Nope, it's gone. Oh, no, Lucky Ban Show, which is the group of guys that do some polling data, basically said that the ever-cold hype cycle has brought like hundreds of thousands of people back into subscriptions,

and that it's back over a million. Oh, okay. But it bears repeating, though, that it is really dumb that that woolly mode you've described is meant for upon, for maxing out your character. We'll see where it's going to be implemented first. Seems pretty silly in that regard, but yeah. We'll see. Because if they implement it for Aram Reborn, you'll be out of Aram Reborn by the time they implement it.

If they implement it Forever Cold, then who the fuck's going to need this kind of fucking feature for Ever Cold? You're like, you're 109 levels into the fucking game. You can't figure out how to read a map. But when you say a feature gets introduced for that thing, Like, when you say like for a Realm Reborn, for example, is it not just something that exists outside of the versions

that you just go talk to somebody and then get? No, because they have to program in the pathing for every single quest in the game. So you can't make somebody go stand in the middle of town that offers you a feature that's released into the game even if you're not in that version? So most features when they come into the game applies to everything.

Yeah. Right? But this feature has to be programmed in and set up per quest. right? Because they need to map out the pathing. Oh, manual.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, okay, okay. The actual Google Maps has to go back and fucking do the thing. Yeah, they have to build a mapping system and then they have to apply it to every single thing in the game, which could take a bit.

It could take a bit. Or they could have it try to like auto figure out its pathways but then rely on getting led in the wrong direction and all kinds of problems. So, yeah, I see. Okay.

Oh, yeah. I'm very happy with that. That's going to be cool. Aside from that, I didn't do all that much. It was mainly mold-rise super seducer, tocon, and the F-14 stuff. Okay. Speaking of which, this week, I'm going to be playing F-14 with you on Thursday. I'm going to be playing 14 with the gals at 7 p.m. Pacific on today, Monday, and Wednesday.

Friday is Pal World and on Saturday I'm going to check out the new Zeno Blade Chronicles 2 release because Kai asked me to Yes I saw something along the lines of like the rights are now back with the right

right holders something about Zeno Blade Oh basically Momo from Zeno Saga is basically in the game as like a little bonus. And that's weird because Momo from Zeno Saga is a copyrighted character owned by Dip Panda and Amco.

So it might signal that Monolith has, Monolith Soft has gotten back the Zeno Saga rights, but who knows. What does that mean for Zeno Gears? It means shit all. The Square owns it. That's that. And they'll never let it go. Someone asks, am I going to be on grinding gears?

The answer to grinding gears is no, I'm not going to be on grinding gears this week. I'm probably going to be on grinding gears next week. And also, I might have to reschedule some F-14 stuff with you, Willie, because I'm going to be coaching Garrett through DMC-5 next week. Okay. He has not touched it. He has not touched it since Devil May Cry 3 on its original release.

So I have been working to get a double stream layout thing set up, where we swap between our perspectives and a whole thing. Nice. Because we were doing the grinding gear thing, and he's like, oh, I'm thinking about playing DMC5. Do you know anything about it? Mm-hmm. A little bit.

Mm-hmm. It's a little. You've touched on my hyperfixation. A little bit, yeah. Yeah, all right. Sure. that's it oh by the way though

that's not it peach saliva is continuing on to Mass Effect 2 and this Wednesday this Wednesday at what time she's starting

this Wednesday at July 29th noon Pacific she is going to be doing the IFF the getting the Reaper IFF and possibly going

straight into the end of the game Oh. So if you have, if you are not up to date with pages, M.E2 stream, yes, that's what I've been doing, but I've been trying to keep it on the down low,

because that IFF is pretty fucking good. Hold the line page. Yeah, yeah. She, she's clean right now. She's out running errands, she can't hear us.

But I'm just trying to, let's, yeah, oh, I'm, I, I, block her from everything. Ooh,

I, I really want to know how some of that goes. you know, I just, I'd like the the contrast and compare of some of these moments. And of course the question is then going to be um, who does she kiss, Garris or Thane?

Let's all be honest. I mean, Thane putting up a big argument right there. I mean, there'd be, wow. I don't care for Thane. Yeah, I don't care for Thame. He's a little edgy for my taste. Um, and he's a deadbeat. He's a fucking deadbeat though, also. I it, like,

you're telling, like, the fact that a Garas body pillow does not already exist in your house prior to this LP starting shocks me. Do you know why that is? Well, there, hold on. We do have this. Well, there you go. We actually picked this up at like, like, like, almost 10 years ago. Hmm.

When she saw this little plushy and she's like, who's this cool little alien guy? That's Garis. Yeah. Like Garris. Just make out with it. Yep. Make out with a little bit. But here's the problem.

You can't even look. up Mass Effect merch when you're in the middle of the Mass Effect playthrough. You can't even type that shit into a searchbook. You can't do nothing. You have to pretend it's not even real. Yeah, you need, you need, you need chirpas.

Okay. And that's over at twitch.tv slash peaches live and YouTube.com slash peachesliva. All right. That was a big, beefy set of weeks. In fact, that was the vast majority of the podcast. So let's do it. but we can with the time we've got left, but there's some news.

Well, I included, like, a bunch of news on my... Of course, yeah, we touch on... And that is always a... a... tactical decision. Hey, also, shout out to the 2XCO devs for showing their big, sad pussies. So, the... Okay.

And crying about the name change. So the article was basically, uh, 2XCO naming things as hard. And it was about what the... why they came to that conclusion and what the deal is. And essentially it was just, these are the criteria. Here's what it was. And I think it was just to address it once and for all because everyone was asking.

They definitely could have just not. They took a shot at Unile for no reason in there. With the way too many. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot with the fake name that was used, but it was like. Or no, it was Melty Blood? Was it Meltyblood?

No, I thought it was an EXC latest kind of gig. Yeah. Where was it? Anyway, whatever. The point is, I mean, that's a goofy-ass fucking name regardless. But the deal is just to, I guess, to address once and for all and to never have to go back to it. What the either, why they didn't go with like League of Fighters or Fighting Legends or any of that other stuff. And they gave some examples of worst things that were on the drawing board.

including, So here's the problem. Dare to be and my name. That one's got awful. Here's the problem, right? So you're the type of guy that has fallen into this, this trap before, which is if I just keep explaining, people will come around.

And the problem with their explanation was that they said, here's a bunch of names, aren't they terrible? But some of the names they mentioned in that post are way better. They're way better. Roon Terra Rumble and Lethal Tempo are legitimately way better names. I don't like... Rune Terra Rumble, I kind of hate because it's really boring.

But lethal tempo sounds sick. Lethal tempo is awesome. Lethal tempo sounds sick as hell. I completely agree on that one. You know what? I'm going to start calling you. Lethal tempo. I will say that I didn't get...

When I read it, I thought it was going to be like, yes, wooly.exe, keep explaining. But it struck me more along the lines of, yeah, it's weird. We know, but that's why we did it. And this is it. They described them going over the name for weeks and weeks. And I'm like, oh, I've been in a version of that. Everyone's been in that conversation in their life, where it has to be perfect. Yeah.

But you start to like build on your own assumptions for so long that you just break from all objective reality and you're just shadow boxing a bunch of fucking ghosts. No, you can, yeah. It's how like X bone happens. Yeah, you know, you can stew in a pot for way too long and echo chamber yourself in creativity till you completely lose, lose it though. And it ends with the long live Tuko Taco Tuxedo 2XCO bit. But the last thing in it is I'll die on. the hill that lethal tempo was not it though and it's like the day what is it dude he was this was the like the whole thing falls away and like oh that's like legitimately way better it's such a cool dave

it damn i want i want whoever whoever's final say was that no to lethal tempo here's my voice and like bro you are wrong you are incorrect LT. It rips. L.T. Lethal tempo. It's kind of sick, man. Yeah, no, that's it. So the weird part here,

and I don't know if this is secret, not secret, I don't know what the deal is. I automatically assumed that 2X-KO being called 2-X for short was a reference to Street Fighter 2X, aka ST, Super Turbo in Japan. No, no way.

Because the cannon were such big fans of now you're over cooking yourself I know but I thought that was a thing I thought like because I thought the cat is being ST fans specifically were like two X is reminiscent of that

you know okay well um no that's that's that's that's Huff cope so so I feel like this is not coming out of nowhere I know this sounds weird and I but I really don't think

it's coming out of nowhere. I feel like somewhere between conversant. My brain is hitting me with, but like, because inside fucking FGC player baseball shit, whatever, 2X was what Japanese players called ST, and them coming from that. There was something where at 2X is related to that thought. So, yeah, I promise you.

No, it's because there's two characters. Sure. Yes, yes. Anyway, anyway, I'm not making this... Well, you have to stop cooking. I think you're getting carbon monoxide poisoning. I think... I didn't invent this thought, is what I'm saying.

But I don't have the memory. Did someone... Did someone plant it in your mind, like a seed waiting to grow? Hmm. All right. Well, in any case, it's not something we'd know here, but the 2X is a taken term in fighting games. Yeah.

Um, lethal tempo's so much, I can't get over it. And lethal tempo is a fucking league term. Is it? It's an existing term. It's a power up. Oh, really? I didn't know that. It makes you, hold on, let me look up the exact effects.

Lethal tempo league. Lethal tempo. Um, basic attacks against enemy champions grant a stack, refreshing on subsequent. It's basically a fucking buff that allows you to just attack faster and faster

and be more aggressive. Okay. So it's about aggressive play. It's lethal tempo. Okay. Like a fucking fighting game. So that wasn't just out of nowhere. It was an actual... No. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

Spider, you're fucking from here. You know, yes, 2X, ST, yes. Okay, all right, thank you. Just, holy shit. Losing my mind over here. This is confirmed. Hold on, I'm gonna ban this guy. No, yeah!

You leave Alex alone. You sit in silent when you could back me up, you asshole. You sit in silent making me look crazy when you can back me up. You son of a bitch, maybe you should ban him. Fucking piece of shit. You could have stepped in, but you wanted. Watch me get rocked. If me and Willie are arguing and someone comes to help him, I'm just going to quietly ban that.

With facts. With facts and logic, God damn. All right. So what else happened? There was a really, speaking of MMOs, so Ever Cold and all this news is happening on the 14th side. What's happening with World of Warcraft? What is happening with World of Warcraft? Well, I'll tell you what's happening.

According to Reddit, Wowhead, and a number of other sources. Oh, right. There was a GM intervened in a high-level mythic dungeon and was instant killing mobs to help a friend that was streaming get a limited-time title. This is a classic. This has always been a problem. This has happened before. Oh, it's happened hundreds of times.

Wow. Okay. But usually. it's not caught on the dash cam right that's funny usually you do this in private where no one can see you so that who's gonna know right

who's gonna know well in this case it was a big streamer friend and apparently in addition to the killing of the trash mobs it allowed them to complete the last boss under the like a record percentage or so For anyone who knows what it means, it said it was a plus 23 NPC. So, yeah, I saw someone basically saying...

Oh, wait, they weren't streaming. They got caught because the pickup group tank was logging the run. Oh, that's extra funny. Okay. So logging is when you record, depending on what game you're playing, it's against the rules or not. Like, in 14, it's against the rules. But you log like your clear times. Okay.

And then you post them. they can go into like a statistical breakdown of like hey are you what did you do in the top 1% and there's there's times that are impossible right there are there are there are times that just can't happen and you're like you beat the final boss in two seconds what because blizzard had an employee that showed up and helped you do it if you're gonna cheat everybody has to be in on it God, like, come on. Like, come on. Um, so I believe

the backlash was that GM was fired. Yeah. And, uh, they're taking action against the players involved. Oh, they're, they're, they're probably banned. Bare minimum, they're going to lose all that shit. But I would

probably, I would ban them. That's nuts, man. Wow. That, that, that's how, um, FF14 had something like that. where um palace of the dead came out palace of the dead had items that you could equip on your character that you'd use them and they'd like cut an enemy's health in half or like debuff them or whatever right um and people figured out a way to leave the palace of the dead with the items on their character so then they started to go into normal content and they were doing shit like melting raid bosses in like fucking 30 seconds

and eventually the statistical reality got back to square. I'm like, what? How the fuck are people taking out Zervin and 45 fucking set? What the fuck is going on here? And they eventually tracked down people doing it and everybody who had that shit on their inventory got banned. Wasn't there also a like poison or like an epidemic of some kind that like... Oh, you're thinking of the blood.

That was not supposed to expand as far and wide as it did. You could watch an hour long YouTube documentary about the blood. The blood is the most interesting thing that's ever happened in a video game. Yeah. It is a base model for pandemic research.

The long and short of it, I'm going to give you a very, very fast Cliff Snow's version is that the corrupted blood was a debuff that you would get in a raid boss that would propagate to other players and kill them.

Right? well people figured out how to leave the instance with the blood on their person and then they went to populated areas and it just fucking killed everybody and the lower level you were the more likely you were cooked and oh yeah you had to bring it out on your pet that's right and so people started to stay away from all settlements

in game because anybody that you ran into their crowd. It was a risk. And they would kill you just by being near you. But then people would create alts, give the alts, the blood, and then log off the alts until it cleared up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Back into the series.

Like, I was going to say, because wasn't there a part where like it was, if you died, it was fine, but then people found ways to persist and keep it going and wanted it to spread. It had, I think it ended up with like a server rollback. Like, it was the only way to actually. get it off. It's so interesting. They couldn't track down everybody that had it on them, so they had to rewind time.

Yeah, a fucking MMO plague actually happened. Like, that's so interesting. It's probably the single most interesting social event to ever occur in a game under any cons. Like... Right, okay. So... Super interesting. Same game, yeah, I've heard about that. Apparently it happened again last month.

but I don't know if that was like a neutered like intended version. Oh, well, I mean, game design wise, you would never make something like that again, or you would tighten up the leaving the instance possibilities to make that impossible, right? Like you'd have to go extra hard. Or the War the Warcraft's like functional like gameplay restrictions allowed people to do all sorts of crazy gang shit. Like at one point they discovered that a world boss had no return to it had, you could leash it. Right? You could leash its agro so it would chase after you. But it didn't have an outer range to how long it would chase you.

Oh. So people dragged this motherfucker all the way into like a major city and all that would happen is somebody in there would go, oh, I'm attacking, which would cause it to attack that person, which would cause other people to attack it, which would cause like the agro to suddenly leashed on everything in the city. In the middle of a starting zone in a city. when you're just walking in for the first time. And now you have Godzilla attacking Tokyo. And it's like, yeah, no, these are obviously mistakes, right? Like, that is a design mistake. But it's still, and it's miserable if you get your, hey, I only have Sunday night to play.

And Doom Lord Kazak is just running a muck in Stormwind and I can't release. But like, it's really cool, actually, when stuff like this happens. I mean, that's why I love, whatever something like this, goes down in Eve, we usually talk about it because it's, it's way more fascinating than what's happening 99% of the time. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, all right. Uh, we also saw, I mean, this one was like an up and down bit, but like, so this, they had a, uh, um, comic con this weekend, budget shit going down. Apparently our, um, uh, big cash doomsday discussion was poignant given how things played out.

But they also showed off some concept art from the new Avatar Ang movie. And on it were some notes talking about the influences they used for designing adult Ang. And at one point it says, according to Chat GPT, beards are not a thing in East Asia, right? Supposedly, that is a different group hired by the studio. So the, yes. It sounds like that studio is just,

always trying to fuck over the Avatar people. I mean, everyone has been like, yo, fucking, like Paramount is another antagonistic force in everything going on with Avatar right now. But, um, I yeah, the update was just

simply, because it was like, I saw that and it was like, can you just not talk to some East Asian employees do you guys have or is that? No, we don't have any of it. It was gross. Jeez. And then apparently we got an update where the crew and the people that worked on the movies and such basically came out and said, Yeah, we don't know who made those slides Fuck that shit

That is not us I saw some people saying that was a fake slide I don't believe that's true It's not a fake slide It's not Photoshop it's a real slide It was a real thing that happened But the people that worked on the movies Said that every member of the crew

On the team that made it was against AI And none of them had anything to do With the slides or the discussion That was being had at the panel I would like to How much of horror have you seen Two seasons Okay that's enough

Um, so, Cora gets a lot of flack for ruining things in her, in her story. And there's like a huge contingent of Avatar people that hate Cora for like, I remember what she's done to the narrative,

to the setting. And, um, they're showing off the new avatar season. And it's like, hey, Apocalypse. I saw that. I saw that. The world, the world is ruined.

Yeah. I'm like, oh my God. I saw that. And I was like, well, fuck. Because that trailer for the new Avatar show looks pretty cool. And that's nice. And the animation is very cool as well. But they 100% canonically went.

Nah, blame Cora though. And I was like, huh? She did what now? Oh, man. Avatar 7 Havens. expressly canonically anti-Cora. That's really funny, dude. That's really funny.

I guess I'll find out, but that, yeah. It's really funny for, like, a bunch of creatives to make a character that they love, but the reception is, like, less than positive. And then for them to turn around, go, yeah. I mean, yeah. Like, I'm not an idiot. Well, I am, but not in some ways. But between Nightmare Cora existing as a character in that game,

and that little shot in the trailer, I think I can piece a thing or two together. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But either way, it's like, I guess it's, I don't know how much they're going to say about it in the show, but at least a number of the fan base is now validated in their opinions.

Or you can just ask Chash GPT to see how they feel about Cora. It's just like getting kicked in the horror, on the head by a horse every single day. We also got a... Actually, pretty cool. Just a little announcement, but if you're somebody that likes Darkest Dungeon

or Darkest Dungeon 2, as I do, or maybe you're somebody who is like, I don't fuck with that second one, but I like the first one. They're patching the first one to release the characters from the second game back into the first game. Very cool. Very cool.

The duelist and the runaway are getting updated into Darkest Dungeon 1. Super cool. Very cool. Also cool announcements. Ultimate Marvel versus Capcom 3 Community Edition. Just put out a new trailer for another swath of original characters. They're adding to the game.

And that includes Sean Matsuda, Oni. Get out. Yep. Yep. Eight Ball, who's just a fucking, that's a random Marvel pull. Prouler, Juggernaut. magma dragoon and hideo and

Keoko from rival schools so cool shit coming there uh shoutouts heafnoff and everyone else working on that stuff it's awesome that that's awesome oh he's working on that yeah yeah yeah hef is actively that guy beat me up a bunch with reason he's fucking in there

um and uh somebody asked eisner if he remembered a Proving Kingdom Hearts, and he straight up does not. Well, no, nothing's going on with it for like a decade or whatever. That shit's never going to happen.

There was an interview with the managing director, Shuji Utsumi back and then, and he was handling Disney's Asia Pacific Division. They were doing, there's the whole story of how Kingdom Hearts happened, right, with the studios next to each other, the elevator ride and all that stuff, right? That's the story I've heard. But the other part of this was to then take the idea to Eisner and get him to approve it. And they said that when they ran, the fateful day when they ran Kingdom Hearts by Eisner,

he had over a hundred members of management with him. And he characterized the demeanor as that of an ancient Chinese emperor. That's pretty good, man. he walked into the king's court and a hundred fucking courtesans and and you know nobleman sat surrounding him

and eventually when they got the pitch going his response was all right keep at it and do it right but he currently has no recollection of any of this whatsoever that sounds like the kind of thing where it's like I just don't don't come don't I don't want anyone to come

up to me and be like, what the fuck about Kingdom Hearts? Right? Anything better than that is fine. Also, he's really old, you know, so that's fair too. But yes, the idea of just like, if a hundred people around me are all giving me the thumbs up and saying, yeah, looks good. Then very well, you know, maybe even just a hand gesture and then put a big hat on with Disney ears.

An ancient Chinese emperor, Eisner. I see it. I see it. Oh, shit. Anyway. And, uh,

yeah, there was, um, a couple other things beyond the, uh, beyond the, the avatar.

Ang stuff. We got some union activity from Rockstars developer union as well as the game theorist union. Looks like stuff is starting to come together. Yeah, that then firing those people to prevent the union really worked so well, didn't it?

Well, I was about to say the timing is fucking apt because, hey, the $55 billion leverage buyout of EA has been approved by the European Commission. So, guess what? Get ready for another bloody swath

and a million firings. What's the number going to be this time? Who the fuck knows? But count it down. Because that's what this is, right? Yeah. I remember, like, once upon a time,

the idea of your company getting acquired of an acquisition occurring kind of went hand in hand with like, ah, now you're going to sell your shares and buy a new house. And then Don Draper is going to like, your lucky strike cigarette as you smoke outside and celebrate. Well, that's always been true even now for the owners of the company.

The difference being the employee. The only people that hold any share or stake in it. Employees getting smaller and smaller as a group, whatever that word might mean, C-suite, actually. I remember a very good video a long time ago by a YouTuber who doesn't do anything anymore called Mr. B-tong. And it was about it was about BioWare being bought by EA

And he described the tone at the top And how BioWare was a company In its infancy Designed by people who wanted to make games More than they wanted to make money With their medical technology practice Literally switched their entire goal as a company Right

And And Buying, getting bought by EA And then even if EA says keep doing whatever, it has fundamentally changed the relationship between the people making the game and the game itself,

because who used to be the big cheese and the only guy you had to answer to, the doctors over at BioWare, the guys who are obsessed with quality, is no longer the top of the chain. Because now they have to worry about making their boss happy. Yep.

And you know what their boss wants? infinite fucking dollars. And so even if they're like we want to make the best game possible, they still have the specter of changes, of firings, of mismanagement, of pushes over their head, if they do anything but crank that number higher and higher. Right. And now we're seeing it go from BioWare to EA and now EA to the Saudis. I mean, You can go this long-winded way of describing that, or you can just point to any franchise burger joint after it gets managed into oblivion and the quality of the food goes down because now there's expansion and franchise and quality and costs and things that have to drop down.

There's a restaurant analogy for this, and it's very simple. If you get to the point of running your restaurant where you have to cut staff, you are running an undead restaurant. In the wrong direction. Then will die. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because if you cut staff, service quality will go down. And when service quality goes down, customer retention and spending will go down.

So then you will have to cut staff. And you've killed yourself. And so we're watching that happen with games, because games take a really long time to come out. It's in super slow motion. to say nothing of the quality of the food you're serving. Yeah. So, all of that. I remember, it's funny because when you talk about that one with BioWare,

I always remember that, and I remember the other weird, fun factoid was that Sony doesn't make most of its money from PlayStation. It makes it from life insurance. Yes, it does. And, like, there's a thought that, like, whatever, that cute video game division is up to doesn't really matter in the long run

because profit is coming from their life insurance branch. Yeah, because they diversified. But that's why you have different parts of your big corporate beast, right? And that's why Microsoft is in the

place that they are now. And by Microsoft, I mean Xbox. Xbox was a division that, yeah, they didn't turn to super good profit, but they were making inroads in a specific space and there was potential for growth there. And then they spent 80 billion fucking dollars of daddy's money.

Right? So what used to be like the Microsoft Xbox Game Division looked like a rounding error on the Microsoft big checkbook is suddenly like bitch you spent 80 billion fucking dollars.

You must be cruising and through piles of money and pussy, right? No? Why not? Once upon a time, it would take at least a couple years before the impacts of this shit would come to fruition. And now it's faster than ever. Like, by the same time next year, we're going to be on Act 5 of this. And if anyone's... If your buddy asked you for 20 grand to bet on the ponies next week, you best believe Monday,

morning, you'd be like, all right, bud, how the ponies go? Sidebar. Like, you know? Yeah. No, as I can say sidebar, for anyone who was question marking that statement, go look up Sony life insurance and the profitability

of their different divisions. There's some wild fucking factoids out there, and one of them is that PlayStation does not matter to Sony as much as you think it does. All righty. Let's take some letters. before we do need to remind people that

not only is Paige doing the IFF on Wednesday but on August 2nd which is the Sunday over at Peach Lava she's starting up Road to Empress Nice If any of you are familiar with that Be excited

Alright Let's take some letters Castle Super Beast mail at gmail.com That's the email Yes, that's the, by the way, for those of you who don't know, that's the Chinese Wu Shu era, girl boss, epic. Yes, I believe you slid that across my desk at one point. All right.

Jacob from Wisconsin says, Dear dad of boy and dad of girl, what's a piece of that's one of the best ones in a long time. Pretty straightforward. No goofy name, extremely clear. A plus start to the email, Jacob. What's a piece of media where you love one aspect of it, but have no interest in engaging with the rest of it? For example, I love the music and Guilty Gear, but I've never played the games. I have that relationship with Ace Combat, and it's not because I don't think I would love Ace Combat.

I just simply haven't gone in and played them, but fuck me that music is a, like, that music holds my soul hostage. It's so good. It's so insanely good I really like Miho's design work but I can't I physically cannot play their games for any length of time

they make me go completely insane Like they're they're damaging to my life and health Was I mean I know I think um Like did you feel that the most with Zenless? Yeah dude Zenless fucking rips Like

Like the fucking aesthetic of Zenless is fucking unbelievable and I can't play it because it'll make me go crazy. That sucks. Yeah, I guess this is, this is sidestepping it a little bit because it's not like

I'm refusing and I hate that stuff or that you're or so, but like it's for other reasons that we're not getting into that component. There was a RPG that just came out. There it is. Dragon Sword Awakening. Do you know what Dragon Sword Awakening is?

No, but is that Ninja Guidon related? That's what I think of. No, Dragon Sword Awakening is a goddamn Genshin Impact clone that has been released like a normal video game.

Oh, degachified? That's funny. That's funny. Offline gacha. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. And I'm like, that by default makes me go, hmm.

That's, another, another answer to this question is, you know, I don't have to get into it every single time, but I've talked about, um,

the world ends with you enough on this subject before. So, yeah. Um, and one, wow, there's so much, there's so much cool stuff and a world ends with you.

The world ends with you. Very cool stuff. Looks cool, sounds cool. Cool concept. Cool story. Yeah. You try and touch it.

Your body just makes that noise. At least that one version. It's like, it's like, it's like, uh, like you pick up the, the, the, the DS. And you just utter like a guttural like GBA level Pokemon noise. And I did hear it calling. That game was calling to me. It was calling. God damn it.

Yeah, I don't know how I nailed that noise, by the way. My throat did something there. I can never do again. Yeah, no, I think you're, because you sound a little hoarse. I am a little hoarse, so it worked. It worked for that. Yeah. All right.

Dear Real Great Pat and Master Grade Woolley, pilots of Castle Super Beast. This, yeah, as I gathered Intel on the latest bullshit Japanese multi-layered puns, this time it comes from the Gundam franchise. As you might know, there was a recent announcement of a new Gundam project from Bandai. I saw this. There's a new anime called Mobile Suit Gundam R-G-X-A-R-X-Zero. And that is supposed to be a prequel to a recently announced game Rogue Orbit from 100 years before. The pun comes from the name of the series, titular Mobile Suit.

X-A-R-X-Zero is pronounced officially Alex Zero. The first X is silent because reasons. The second layer of the pun comes from the later part of the name RX0 might be a reference to unicorn Gundam as its serial number is RX0. And the cloaked MS on the trailer seems to have a shoulder designed very similar to the psycho frame. I gathered this all from Twitter and Reddit. Hope you have a wonderful week with your loved ones. What the fuck, Japan? I'm going to just hold up my hand here and just say that puns,

that require like an editing note that's more than three words long are not puns. They're not puns. They're not wordplay. Right?

Wordplay and puns rely on shared knowledge of a language, homophones, idioms, etioms, et cetera. Just swapping letters around and saying,

by the way, don't say this one and then it technically works, I guess. It's nonsense. I also yeah it's G-Cucks I don't care

what it's supposed to be fucking pronounced yeah yeah yeah well so there's that and it's Dicco I um I read this as uh like Zarks and assumed that there was something

uh exoxu that there was there was going to be some sort of like I said that to myself a couple times to be like is there an Englishism here E-X-X-U you know I couldn't get it Yeah but language barrier

puns or wordplans or wordploid You shouldn't be engaging in wordplay In a language you fundamentally don't understand No matter what that language is Because you're gonna make something That just doesn't make any fucking sense If we went for one of those like Oh, that's how you read this person's name

Manga jokes that they make all the time In Japanese not fucking understanding it That shit would come across super weird sounding For sure to a native speaker They announced Kamen Rider M-Y-T-H and it's like, I'm like,

me, it's myth, it's myth, but is it really myth? It's never going to be just myth. It's not Kamen Rider myth. Mice, my, me sir, mice, mice. It's fucking mice, dude.

M-Y-T-H, myth, Camin-Rider myth, is actually Kamen-Rider, mice. That's not, that's a lie. I swear to God. This isn't, this isn't a pun, this isn't funny.

You're just a, lie. Like Gundam just, we're talking about the Gundam series, but fucking common writer Mice Maizu just announced itself. It's crazy. That's the worst one I've heard in a while. It's out of control, dude. They don't care. But how are you supposed to get it when it doesn't make any sense? It's not even remotely close to what it should be because again, it's how it would be pronounced if you were a Japanese speaker reading English. And, and, and, then you would have to take the passing... But it's in...

But then you would have to take the passing familiarity and compare it to another word that sounds off. So... Why use Romagogy... Myth becomes... Myth becomes missu, but it's not close enough. So, mice,

and we don't say mice, we say mice, therefore you get the joke when you see the helmet that kind of looks like a mouse. This reminds me. me, this reminds me of a longstanding thing that I have seen in person, been told in person, and read and watched from Asian language instructors for Asian language fluency, which is you're not saying it racist enough.

Oh, my God. Like, like. So, okay, okay. Like Westerners, I know, yeah. We'll try and hit it. And it's like, no, you have to just, you need, you actually. need to crank it up a little for people to understand what you're saying.

I know what you're talking about and this is a thing that is taught in language lessons from speakers who will say in whatever language the last, one of the strongest steps to sounding convincing or sounding like you're speaking correctly is to take the accent you would say in English

in your brain, turn that on and then speak the language and that applies to French and crank it up. Yeah. Just like really? Yeah. You know if you speak French and tranglons your ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h, then you can... Yeah, you sound better. You will speak more...

...than, like, Americans trying to, like, kind of be respectful and speak French, it's like, no, you kick it up. Your Paris-en, you know, your French will actually sound more Paris-en, if you turn on the ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. And if you're speaking Quebec-a-a-ha- You're going to... Well, just put a cigarette in your mouth. You know, like, just... You will sound more accurate about it, 100%.

So, yes, if you do... learn some Japanese and you fucking you know sometimes it's you got a rife rine and then that'll be sometimes you got to say air conditiono right no no the the book I'm in class and the book is literally going

helicopter yeah right and it's like this is how you say it yes it's an English loan word yes obviously helicopter might not land but helicopter is actually what is understood so that's correct anyways before we get out of here.

But then when you switch back to your language, turn it back down. Don't like don't get stuck. No, no, you're stuck in the loop. No, no, don't. Like, you've got to toggle it off, right? You got like, ooh. Man, it's so interesting listening. I think I was talking about this when Jam came out.

That is Kurad Doberi Jam. Yeah. Because when you listen to her speak in. Literally. figured this out like a couple of months ago. When you listen to her speak in earlier games, like you're hearing her speak Japanese as a Chinese native speaker. So like she has an accent and pronunciations don't sound 100% like the other characters do

because she's speaking as somebody who is Chinese that learns Japanese after the fact. Yeah, and me as an English person didn't have a shot in hell. Oh, Cloudberry? Oh. Yeah. What? Really? Yeah. It's not cranberry. Just before we get out of here, hold up. Hold up. Something arrived.

Oh, no. Oh, we? Oh, uh? Uh? Okay. I forgot. I thought you were going to go further. I thought you were going to go further away. No, no, no. No, I forgot earlier, but hey, check this shit out. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That thing's big as fuck.

Yeah, it's a desk mat. It's ready to go. I'm going to have to pick up like all these lights and my monitor and shit to get that under the other thing. And it's got all the no-no words. And let's see where our eyes land today. Jork my Peanets and Rage Compilation. That's good. I like that.

We'll see you next week. Coming to Max's channel soon.