Get Played - Dialogue Tree: Character Creation

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Heather, Nick and Matt talk about the Family Guy MMO, if there'd ever be a Presidential Nominee Fortnite Skin and their first impressions of Baldur's Gate 3 before diving into a conversation about character creation in video games. This month's We Play, You Play: Dredge! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod. Check out our premium series Get Anime'd on patreon.com/getplayed or on Stitcher Premium. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And for this process, you are allowed to build your own character. You can create yourself in the image that you see fit and then experience those joys and shortcomings as part of your journey through life. Young Matt Apodaca, what kind of character would you like to be? You know, I, okay, so this is what I would like. I would like, I don't know what the words are for this. I would like it for people to see me and think I'm nice and that I'm having a good time. That's like sort of like the main vibe I want put out there for sure. These traits are granted to you my son you shall enter a room and people will be uplifted

by your charisma and your general sense of well-being and place and now you nick weiber Your body and mind shall be designed by you here in the pre-life. So choose your character. Describe yourself. Your athleticism. Yeah, got it locked and loaded. Default. Hit me with a default. For athleticism, you can be default.

No, I kind of meant just like a blanket default. Just hit me with all the defaults. But this is part of the pleasure of being born, is choosing the corpus that you shall inhabit. So perhaps, how would you like to sound? Would you like a perhaps a twang

in your voice? Or an extremely high or low voice? Right, so like a description of kind of like the tenor of my voice. I think the best word I could use to describe that is default.

Default? My son, I'm concerned about your experience of life. Uh-huh. Would you like perhaps to have a magnetism or a sexual Uh-huh. Would you like, perhaps, to have, um,

a magnetism? Or a sexual charisma? Perhaps you want to be a, um, a lover instead of a fighter. Hey, you know, that actually sounds pretty good. I think I'll take all that stuff at sort of a default level. That'd be awesome. All right, I'm just going to go down the sheet here. Wisdom.

Default. Charisma. Influence. Two words, default. Okay, I'll just default the rest of these. Default. Can I have some of his extra? Yes, you may, my son.

Yes, you may, my son. Yes, you may. We repeatedly hit randomize and customize our genitalia as we discuss character creation in video games. This week on Get Played. សូវាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា� Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to Get Played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger. Oh, that's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Abadaka. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Premiere Video Game Podcast, where, I don't know, maybe

this week, maybe this week we're going to talk about stuff we love. Maybe we're going to talk about stuff we hate, but we'll definitely be talking, and it will probably be about video games. I think it's generally mostly about video games. There's some tangents, but I think that's why we're all here. That's how conversation works, right? You're not just going to ever only talk about one thing forever.

Sometimes you'll be talking about something and that's, you know, through the magic of storytelling through the magic of uh engaging uh with one another somebody might say hey that reminds me of something you know family guy is the perfect uh template for this actually we try to model the show off a family guy wait what this show if you really stop down and listen to it it is like no big family guy energy it's a fan it's definitely a sort of a family guy sort of vibe it's not quite like american dad or the

cleveland show where it's a direct spin-off more like a a brickelberry where it's kind of like a you know i don't i mean like i i literally write for a different cartoon i don't know why we can't I mean, like, I literally write for a different cartoon. I don't know why we can't. Heather, you're sounding like a real Meg right now. Oh, what? The shark? Yeah, Megalodon. Oh, boy.

Oh, God. Okay. I get a lens. Can you even imagine? That reminds me of the time that the Meg bit me. What? And then the Meg is Meg. Yeah.

Oh, no, the Meg. And then he, like like harpoons her. I don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about. Have you not seen a single second of the seminal works of Seth MacFarlane? I literally haven't. You got to watch Family Guy. It's funny. Here's the thing about Family Guy.

I haven't watched it in years. Anytime I'm in a hotel room and I put it on, T minus five minutes, I'm laughing my ass off. It's a funny show. funny people write for it just like almost like near crying like who's your who's your guy i like quagmire quagmire's problematic but he's he's funny i you know what it's basic but i'm a stewie guy stewie fucking gets me every time is that the baby the baby yes that's the baby yeah uh stewie's like he's brain from animaniacs or does he kind of like kind of like brain like him yeah instead of like instead of like trying to destroy the world he wants to to kill his mom, at least in the early. What?

Yeah. His whole thing is that he hates Lois. See, the show is intense. It's good. It's funny. It's funny. He's all goes far to say. And I know we talked about this, I think, on a different show.

I think Stewie is the bender of family guy. Everything he says and does is funny. That's a big, because like Brian is really funny. Oh God, Brian. Brian. Brian is great. I don't know if I'd go that far, because I feel like Bender is so clearly just like throwing haymakers.

You know what I mean? Bender is so clearly just like throwing haymakers. You know what I mean? Bender, yeah, it's true. I don't know if Bender has a direct allegory. He's not analogous to any character in any show because, as I stated, I think on Get Animated, he's the funniest character to ever be created. There's nobody, there's not a single character on television that's funnier than Bender. I almost said K almost said kramer which i don't mean well also not wrong because because if you look like it's really it's a it's kind of a smaller core cast i feel like on

futurama right it's really just like fry leela and bender are kind of the big three and you know zoidberg and you know zap branigan or whoever like pop in there but it's not like they're like as yeah they're not as present you know as those big three are in every storyline but this is how good Bender is uh-huh every single of the other characters that you mentioned

are also so funny they're all good none of them are stinkers I've seen Fut futurama a few times i'm not like a like i haven't seen many episodes i saw the hypno toad episode because somebody was like you have to watch this it's yeah that's the one and so i know i'm i'm more familiar with futuram also i want to point out i said where this week we'll probably talk about video games and you guys immediately launched

into other shit. Animation domination. Yeah. Well, this week's topic, in all fairness, is Family Guy Online, the MMO that was launched in 2012. And you know what?

There are, they have tried and failed to make both of the things we've talked about into video games and they're very bad. Futurama's in Fortnite. Futurama's in Fortnite. Futurama's in Fortnite.

Fortnite is the version of all of these properties that is good. That's true. Is Family Guy in Fortnite? I want a Brian skin immediately. That'd be awesome. I think so. I think Family Guy's in Fortnite, but I'm not sure. That reminds me of the time I was killed by a xenomorph with a sniper rifle.

But even in Fortnite, the mythic weapon that was a couple of weeks ago was Bender's ray gun, which was a constant beam. Yeah. So, Matt, you would have loved it. I would have loved that. constant beam. Yeah. So Matt, you would have loved it. I would have loved that. And while we're on the subject, I think if you haven't seen the episode, Heather, where they go to like a Willy Wonka style, like it's like a Willy Wonka parody episode. I haven't seen it. Do yourself a favor. And as soon as we're done talking today, go watch it. I think it's my favorite episode of the show. It is so funny. There's a specific joke in that episode that I think about

constantly. Okay. Maybe we shouldn't be talking about this at all. Maybe we should remind me of the time Willy Wonka hit the gritty. This is gonna happen in Fortnite. Man, I wish that the way Fortnite worked was that they did mainstream pop culture releases.

Like every month there was a pack and it was like futurama wwe jujutsu kaisen and then they had one esoteric like kafka yeah like one like way outside of the box skin that you'd be like, wow, I just got I just got killed by 1985 Steve Jobs. How many elections do you think it's going to take for there to be a presidential nominee and or electee as a Fortnite skin? electee as a Fortnite skin. I think it'll have, I mean, they've already done sort of, some sort of like more artsy, you know,

museum-y things in Fortnite, right? Yeah. Certainly some concerts. I feel like I feel like probably already we're gonna see, you know, at some point, maybe even this election cycle. You know what? I'll say it. I'll take the under on this election cycle. We will see some campaign event take place in Fortnite. A dark Brandon skin.

Yeah. The problem is that the the layer of geriatric oligarchy is so old now. How old is it? oligarchy is so old now how old is it i i think that i think that if the trend had continued with like obama aged presidential can't uh campaigns that there would have been a fortnight event for sure by now right there was an expectation after obama's like okay well that we're done with like boomer presidents we're done with uh you know silent generation presidents it'll all be gen x but no no we then we got our two oldest presidents in history in sequence yeah i i've become less cynical about the gerontocracy even though their brains are like you know rotting

uh i do think there is something to it's a generation that has not been completely cooked by overstimulation like they were just not on not so online that they can't focus on any particular task, which is like totally anyone our age or younger. So maybe we should just be ruled by old fucks until they all die off. No, no. And then the people that will be mad about it, that would be mad about having a younger president will also be dead. And they will be the old people that are like, it's fine if they're young. Then it's fine. And you know, the world will end

two years after that. It'll be fine for two years. It's funny that like, if you're 65 years old, you have spent your entire, almost your entire life save for Obama, having presidents that are older than you.

Yeah, sure. I want to know who our oldest listener is. Tell us if you're old and it's fine. I just want to know. I'm curious about the data. And tell us where that beach is. And yeah, drop a pin at the beach, at the old beach.

I want to say that Matt respects our oldest listener enough to assume that they are also tech savvy enough to drop us a line. I'll tell you this. My girlfriend's dad is 84 and what he can do with technology has like like pushed other older people ahead in my eyes in a way that i do think that they can just do what he can do that rocks uh so like i i he's he's like uh he's a fucking tech whiz this guy he goes to the apple store anytime there's a new update and learns about how to use the phone.

Man, that's so cool. Because that's like they have those seminars or whatever, and you're always just like, well, who's this for? And it's just like someone's actually taking advantage of it and using it like the way it was supposed to be. That's great. I love that. I very much encourage that.

A good man. And so now my relationship to what actually who is actually old is different so now brandon it's a fucking spring chicken this guy should we watch the family guy online debut trailer from 11 years ago because it is kind of it is fascinating i don't know if you've ever seen this what is it this is the? This is the failed MMO they tried to make out of Family Guy in like 2012. Okay. Okay, let's watch some of this. All right.

Let's see what you got, Fox. It's Family Guy Online, a new free-to-play game launching soon. Say what? Just use the character creator to customize your own character. So your class is a different Family Guy character. Looks like someone farted in a shoe. Then join your fellow citizens and different Family Guy character. Looks like someone farted in a shoe. Then join your fellow citizens and other Family Guy fans. Whenever you're going to catch me.

To keep the streets of Quahog safe. Yeah, and then you're just walking around. Would you like to come inside for a cupcake and a glass of wine? Oh, no. And this cell shaded. Flush out corruption. Virtual Quahog. This evil monkey lives in my closet. And enforce your own brand of law. It's, um. that's his classic that's a classic line a brian line uh that made me ill to look at

line a brine line uh that made me ill to look at well because they shouldn't be in 3d it's like it's too much it's like simpsons hit and run i think did it pretty well it's but like that that particular like aggressively 2d aesthetic can be pretty uh unnerving they're not quite not quite i almost said hidden valley uh i I got lunch on the brain. Uncanny Valley. But it is like a Nervy. Choking down a bottle of ranch over here, this guy. The South Park games are excellent conversions. Yes. The new ones.

They look exactly like the show, but you can move around in the environment. I thought they were fantastic. I played Stick of Truth. I did not play the other one um but the but stick of truth i was like yeah but it kind of lives in a 2d plane like it's like you're you're moving you know side but but but to your point that's a good way of using that ip and the maybe that's what partly why the family guy mmo uh that didn't work out the fractured butthole yeah is really good. It's really good. I like it better than Stick of Truth. Wow. Okay. Yeah. I first gave AG1 a try because I was tired of taking so many supplements every day and wanted a single solution that supports my entire body by filling in nutrient gaps daily.

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This month, on Monday, August 28th 28th in two weeks we are going to be discussing horror fishing sim dredge which is available on pretty much every modern platform if you want to play along with us uh so check that out on how whatever you use for gaming uh if you want to play or otherwise just join us for discussion but that'll be monday august 28th dredge by the way that's. I think it's currently on sale in the PlayStation Store. I'm not sure if it is on sale on other venues.

But yeah, currently I think 20% off on the PlayStation Store. But right now we got some other games we've been playing. So the question I put to the panel is, what are you playing? What are you playing? Oh shit. Oh? Oh, shit.

Oh, shit. He's back. Oh, shit. What are you playing? You know, okay, I'll start things off because I'll say something, and then I'll see if anyone else wants to go first, because I think this might be a group conversation, because the bulk of my gaming time has been spent with Baldur's Gate 3.

So I have some BG3 to talk about. Matt, I know you've messed around with it a little bit. Yes, I have. Heather, I think you've at least installed it. I'm not sure where you've gotten with it. Yeah, I've played about, I've hit the character creation, created my character, and then played for about an hour.

Okay, got it. So yeah, I'm still in the relatively early game i have my my play time is at seven hours and 30 minutes on my save um my play my play time in steam is at about 11 hours uh and that just speaks to how much time i dicked around in the character creator which we're going to talk about as a topic in a little bit. But why wouldn't zoom in more on the hog? They unfortunately only let you zoom in on the face. You can't zoom in on your customized genitalia.

Trust me, I know. So Baldur's Gate 3 went out of early access last week, and it's from Larian Studios, who made the Divinityinity games which we talked about and i am really enjoying this i this is like exactly scratching the rpg itch that i have at least in as far much as i played of it uh that i didn't feel like i got from final fantasy 16 i mean like again this is a personal taste thing, but like, this is what I want from a role playing game. It's just a lot of opportunities to role play. Endless dialogue trees, just so much conversation. So many NPCs you can interact with in different ways and either alienate or, you know,

or woo. I love that shit. A couple of wonky things. This is like this is this is again a personal taste thing and i'm sure some people it doesn't bother them as much but anytime i have a game that lives in a more isometric perspective and i have to really babysit the camera i'm less into that i kind of want the camera to just take care of itself and honestly i kind of don't i i kind of even like the diablo approach of like a fixed camera where i don't have to worry about my orientation all the time. I understand how this game works. I understand that for a lot of people, they like that about this, especially for the tactical combat that you can move the camera around is is it gives you a little bit more of an advantage there. But for me, I just find it a little bit more difficult to navigate. And I also

find myself worried about I find a little bit less immersive. So, again, it's a it's a it's a hurdle I can get over, but it's a little bit of a hurdle. The other thing is that I'm so I got this this unwieldy, big ass widescreen monitor, this 32 nine monitor. And I love it. It's great, especially for something like podcasting because I don't have to worry about multiple monitors and spreading my real estate everywhere. But so any sort of task where I have a bunch of different windows open, it's great. For gaming, it can sometimes be a little bit annoying because some games don't support it,

or in the case of this game, it does support it. but the way it's supported, I kind of find it a little bit... I honestly prefer playing it in 16.9, which is just a thing that I... And also performance-wise, I think just like this game is... It's got a lot of detail, and you can see a lot of it. And I think that my performance... I got a hefty rig. I got a 30. uh but but my performance was dipping in 32 9 so i went down to 16 by 9 here's the other thing because there's so many like like small cinematics like every time you have a conversation with an npc uh it goes into you know uh it goes into more

cinematic coverage i felt like those shots were just like not framed as well in 32 by nine because they'd been they'd been, you know, designed for for a normal resolution that most people are going to play at. So I felt like they had like a bunch of extra real estate on the sides that was just I found distraction. So distracting. So I like it a little bit more in in using a smaller as using a more compact resolution. in, uh, in, uh, using a smaller, uh, using a more compact resolution. But those are small, these are minor grievances that I just want to get out of the way because I am absolutely loving it. I think it's so great. I think the writing is so strong. I think the characters are really well drawn. And I think the, that like, it really feels like you can role play your character. I'm playing a human paladin. I like playing paladins in these sorts of games. I like the

idea of being someone who is altruistic. I think that's just a fun sort of thing to role play. And it's also like a very straightforward thing to role play of just, I know, you know, there, there, there are certain things that this character will do and will not do.

And, and especially for an initial playthrough, that's, that's kind of like how I like to, to go through it. I think there are some genuine moments where you have to like make strong choices and that's one thing i really like because a lot of these games with a lot of dialogue trees and role playing there's sometimes like a middle

ground option where it's kind of like i'm not really offending someone i'm not really making a choice here i'm kind of staying neutral they really make you like there's a part there's a part relatively early on where they're just like um i'm gonna give you this thing do you swear to use it and it's like yeah and you can be like you can try to defer and if you try to defer you try to not commit uh you're they'll like double down like no you i i want you to swear and so you either have to swear to use this potion uh this poison uh in the event of a certain outcome, or you have to say, like, basically, fuck you. I don't trust you.

And like having to make those hard choices, I think, make it really, really interesting. It's also just like that. I like really. I think the art direction is great. I think the scoring is awesome. And there's so much music. Yes. So I'm really, really enjoying my time with balder's

gate 3 i i like i feel like i want to get into some of your choices that you've made in balder's gate in a larger discussion for this episode sure um and i also don't want to fork our road towards that conversation but i so the only thing I want to say is I think, I think Wizards of the Coast, is that their name? The guys who own? That's the,

yeah, that's the, the company that owns the whole, the D&D property now. They really thought this was going to be the year of Dungeons and Dragons.

Like, I went and saw that movie, and it fucking ruled. It is so fucking good. I love the movie. It is so good. And then they have this major, major game release, right?

Yes. I think that they were like, you know, there's a generation of people who grew up watching the kids in Stranger Things play D&D, and that is demystified D&D for everybody. They grew up? That much time has passed?

It's been like a decade, hasn't it? Those kids have grown up? How long ago did that show come out? I don't know. It first released in 2016. Okay, maybe not quite grown up, but I get your point. These kids that grew up watching Stranger Things

are voting now. Yeah. It's seven years, dude. Okay. That's almost all of high school and college. I guess so. Not if you're Van Wilder.

Anyway, I think that they were like this is our window this is our moment sure and i i think that the ad campaign for dungeons and dragons the movie sucked which is the only reason people didn't go see that film in droves yeah um but i'm really hoping that baldur's gate gives dnd the um the sort of gentle, volley that it needs to keep it aloft? Not that it's a small brand, but I want people... Like, it's crazy to me that LinkedIn uses a level-up system and people aren't all conscious of Dungeons & Dragons, which invented the level-up system.

That's interesting to think about. Yeah, D&D has probably permeated the culture at large in ways that most people just aren't conscious to. Like, I don't know. I've played my fair share of D&D, and getting into this game, I guess I didn't realize that it was that. Because I've never played the game before i mean you know i'm just unfamiliar with what balder's gate is so getting into starting this one i was like oh i like know this stuff so the like what i thought was going to be a tough barrier of entry was actually pretty easy but like the

uh like as far as like picking a class and things like that and like inspecting my character uh but the the problem not problem but like the the the roadblock for me is uh just because i haven't experienced this type of combat in a video game before is navigating that and like, like just knowing how many, um, cause I'm playing on my steam deck. Yeah. So there's a lot of,

um, I just have to remember what buttons do what, like, and what buttons bring up what wheel, you know, like, cause it hit, there's all my commands are on a wheel.

So it'll show me like, okay, like you can, you have these types of actions or this type of uh bonus action uh and they're all in different different wheels i'm just constantly scrolling through wheels uh and i'm always accidentally ending my turn too fast because i think that the end turn button is the button that brings up the wheel and i it's getting me into trouble yeah but um what i'm loving about the game so far is, one, it's playing great on the Steam Deck.

I did mess around with the settings a little bit, and I had to a few times because I was not satisfied with how it looked upon finding, like, my first set of preferred settings. I thought it looked kind of bad, actually. But then I found a set of settings that made it look great uh and i'm i'm i'm loving how it looks uh and so far what to nick's point to just so many dialogue options i i don't feel as if i'm being led a certain way which i think is probably just like genius like game design right because like i feel like some games you know what way you're supposed to go and like what you're supposed to be doing but so far it feels even this early in the game it feels like i could be doing anything anywhere right like i don't know if i'm necessarily following uh what i'm supposed to be doing

but i did have the same encounter as you so maybe you know it's just me tricking me maybe uh but like i did have the encounter about the potion that i have to swear to um but i have a sub goal in uh that's for me uh going to jersey mike's nick i'm going to jersey mike's today. I went up for dinner two days ago. I had a fucking fantastic turkey sub. Did you just put a thumbs up in the chat? Well, my hands... Zoom now can... Zoom does this thing where it can track your hands.

And I had a thumbs up and it traced it. So it's going to do it again. Wow. I had a thumbs up and it traced it, so it's going to do it again. Wow. I want to shout out the Olympic toboggan-like speed of Nick's joke of sub goals. Nick's on fire. I saw Nick do, I did a Doughboys the other day.

Which will be out, your episode with Jacob Wysocki will be out tomorrow in the Doughboys double feed as of this release. Wow. So go check that out. There's a joke not even two minutes into the recording that Nick, it was incredible. It was like if it was like an Olympic event, he would have got the gold. Wow. It was unbelievable, the speed. It was gorgeous, Nick.

Let's jack up those expectations, everyone. Yeah. You're going to get your fucking socks knocked off. Yeah. If you listen to Doughboys, you kind of know what level you're working with there. So of those types of jokes, it was really good. there so of those types of jokes it was really good but so my sub goal in um in balder's gate three is that i'm trying to make every character want to fuck me oh yeah no that's that's like me in every one of these games with his romance options 100 so so so far i'm just like whatever whatever dialogue option i have i have in front of me, I'm always picking

what seems like the horniest one. Yes. Or like the flirtiest one, at least to like maybe just put the implication out to one of the characters just to see what they say. And I was at a camp last, at my camp last night, and both people in my party were sort of like, well, you know, it's kind of this guy's you know yeah what's going on here so it was pretty pretty pretty interesting for me i i like okay so here's the thing and and this is kind of bleeding into our character creation discussion

but like i did kind of i'm trying to to not look at any spoilers or anything i'm not trying to look at any guides i'm just sort of like trying to to play through this thing and discover what i can but like i did i do look at all the when you're when you're making the character they're a bunch of prefab characters you can pick and this is the same way the divinity original sin 2 works at least uh and which is like the characters that are going to be party members you can also choose to be your player character and so i looked at all those and just looked at all their classes and and race combos to sort of be like, okay, I'm going to try to do something distinct

that doesn't overlap with this. And I'm glad I did because one of my favorite party members so far is who I'm kind of going, and inadvertently ended up going down a romance path with is Asterion, the rogue, who I don't know if you encountered him, but he is like a,

he's also like vampiric. And there's a whole interaction where like he, this is super minor spoiler territory. So we're just kind of like, you know, took a few steps into spoiler country here. But like there's an interaction at camp and you can go to camp at any time.

And where I was, I was sleeping at camp and then i wake up and this dude's like fucking feasting on me he's like drinking my blood and i like what i got and you can like it's great because the game gives you the amount of choice where you can like grab a steak and drive it through his heart and kill him and he's just dead you can choose that or you can tell him to back off or you can do what i did and let him feast just a little bit. Tell him just to taste. Keep on sucking.

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they're sort of like, yeah, you can sort of just play this game however you want, but, like, you can, like, you can make them fuck if you want to. You can, yeah. you can do it it's really you know because i think like the comparison it should be in every game i think especially because that you compare this game to because there's i think specifically because of the character creation system this game has been compared to and because it was another big rpg uh cyberpunk in cyberpunk which we all played through and we all enjoyed, the romance options are really limited to your player characters,

gender and sexuality, and then the NPCs have their own determined genders and sexualities, and it's pretty rigid. It's like, you know, this is specifically a female female romance option this is specifically a you know um a male female you know like they're they're all pretty you can't just romance anybody it's determined by by your player character here it seems at least so far as the opposite approach like you can like basically they're just kind of a of a blanket pan sexuality and you can kind of go after anybody. And, you know, I don't know which one is right or wrong necessarily.

But I think this approach is more fun from a role-playing perspective because it just gives you more optionality. Yeah. We have different goals in this game. I, like, almost don't know what else I'm supposed to be doing. game. I like almost don't know what else I'm supposed to be doing. So when I play Dungeons and Dragons, I want to be

a cooperative but mischievous member of whatever the party is, right? Yeah, sure. But what my id is screaming in every one of those games is, what if I just attacked this clearly good person?

Because Dungeons and Dragons is just like it's an every door in front of you is open and you choose the right doors because you want to help the DM. You want it like you want it to be a cooperative experience. You want it to be fun. experience. You want it to be fun. You keep all the boats sailing together. But my God, all I want to do is I'd like to do an initiative check and just like roll and see if I could just jam my dagger into somebody's head. Like for no reason. Yeah. my dagger into somebody's head like for no reason yeah and so with balder's gate since since i don't owe anything to the game i chose criminal and rogue and i am going to go straight down the chaotic middle of like betraying people on a whim hurt like stabbing looting seems fun like just just to be a real

agent of chaos in the world and and sleeping with people is not on my list of things to accomplish man some rogue uh the i i do want to and and i don't want to dwell on this too much because i know heather has just gotten started but i do do want to talk, we should talk about the combat a little bit. I am pointedly playing on their three difficulties and I am pointedly playing and, and unashamedly playing on Explorer, which is the easiest because I played what I played a division of Divinity Original Sin 2.

The combat system is really well developed and certainly using a very similar thing here. Although with, with fifth edition D and D rules, but it is so dense it is so complicated and also like the main reason i play these games is not for the combat so i just wanted a little bit more margin for error in these encounters because also what i remember i don't know if it's the case with balder's gate 3 from again a relatively limited amount of time with divinity original sin 2 is that you can't really over level in the same way that you can for some other and some other games i could be wrong maybe people who put 100 hours in that game can can correct me but like you're you're kind of at

a place where you just have you just try to get to the level you're supposed to be at for an encounter and then you have to figure out how to overcome it it's just got a lot going on and then the tutorials are relatively minimal i'm sure when some people have some YouTube, like, here's some things you might have missed about all the combat in Baldur's Gate three that will be illuminating because a lot of the stuff I'm like, man, I don't know which of these 40 spell options that are available by level two are the right ones to slot in for my mage. I don't know. I don't know which of the I don't have any sense of how to min max this. And also positioning your characters is such a huge part of these. And an area effects are such a huge part of like, you know, if there's grease on the ground, you can ignite it and that can completely fuck things up for one side or the other, that there's just so many strategic and tactical considerations that I just I just decided to make things a little simpler on myself. And I don't regret it so far.

tactical considerations that I just I just decided to make things a little simpler on myself and I don't regret it so far no and I have died like it's it's not on challenging on Explorer so you could still you could still mess up it's not easy it's just like it just gives you a little bit more leeway I so I'm not

familiar with um the language of PC games as much as I am with the language of console games, like in terms of the UI. So for me, a lot of what this game is doing is an extremely steep learning curve of like 100% Heather.

You're absolutely right. It is. I don't like, I could not figure out how to use an item. And that that's a shock like in a in a in a world where i've always been on these menu screens that show you the word item and then you click it and then you choose an item and you execute like it's weird to me to be like, I don't even know where my fucking inventory is. I'm really excited to play it. I've never played a game like this.

So I'm really excited to give it a shot. And I have a lot more space because my what am I playing this week is that I have rolled credits on Final Fantasy 16. Wow. She did it. Not only did I roll credits, but I hit the level cap before I did. And I think it is

I look, my tone on this game has not changed. And I am I'm angry at it now because it is it is fucking ridiculous that you would play a final fantasy game and the level cap would be 50 like part of the joy of these old final fantasy games is you get your guys up to 99 right i was thinking about the the complications of the final fantasy 7

materia system or the junction system in 8 or the fucking gambits in 12 like the sphere grid all of these choices that you have to make in in final fantasy games like in balder's gate your choices are character-based. It's like, how am I going to interact with this person? And what am I going to equip on my dude in order to get him or her to do the thing that I want them to do?

Right? Like, am I going to equip this sword? In Final Fantasy, I feel like the choices are made for you in the story, but your granular level of choice and the way that you implement a role-playing game system in the game is all of the fucking sub menus of all the bullshit you do to your character like all of the materia you level up all of the gambits that you you sequence in order to take down a boss and this

game has nothing like it has fucking nothing and i kept like i'd been told by enough people online that there's going to be something later on in the game that makes it all worth it and i like i was like unless the final fight of this game is Clive breaking the fourth wall of the concept and being like, I need to call on all of the heroes of all the Final Fantasy games. Like if he becomes this like meta being who is then like invoking heroism as an idea in order to beat this thing that he's fighting against and like fucking lightning comes in and like like everybody is like attacking everyone is here yeah like that's not that unless there is some like nostalgia baiting moment at the end of this game, which there wasn't, I'm heartbroken. I'm fucking like, I'm heartbroken. I feel these games come around so infrequently.

And the other thing is, I think that there is a great story in Final Fantasy 16. I just think it's poorly told. Like all of the lore I love, like digging into those fucking encyclopedias and like reading about the like the background characters like the entry about barnabas's mom like all of this shit that is packed into this game that you that you are rewarded for how much you talk to all of the people in the world how much you uh you go to the fucking tomes and you talk you read his encyclopedia entries and you get all this lore shit like so there's a good story there it's a fucking kind of a cool world but it's fucking

ugly and it is so simple it is so simple it is heartbreakingly simple there is not an optional battle in this game that is fucking impossible the way that all final fantasies seem to have a battle that is optional that is impossible to beat or even in final fantasy 15 there was this optional dungeon that was hidden like in a fucking corner of a map that was baffling like just a baffling dungeon that made a character who you can't really control that well go through significant platforming sections like I, I'm just, like, I don't want to, I know this is stupid to get emotional about a video game, but, like, I love Final Fantasy games so much, and I have loved all of them up till now. And this one, I am just like, I feel like I didn't get to play it.

Like the final boss, you just mindlessly tap the entire time and then it's done. It's almost as if you can. I think it was Final Fantasy VIII where when you summoned somebody, you could press the square button over and over and over again to power up that summon. And that's basically what it feels like you're doing every time you do combat in this game. I'm brokenhearted. I was similarly lukewarm to you as you, Heather, in my 15 hours or so of playtime. As I talked about, I gave up on it at that point.

I'm impressed that you saw it through to the end. I applaud you for giving it that much of a chance. I beat every side quest. It's a bummer. Every single side quest. I hunted every single mark.

I unlocked every treasure in Clive's room. I got the ultimate sword, which doesn't have any... It might as. I got the ultimate sword, which doesn't have any... It might as well not be the ultimate sword. Well, because it's not. To build the official

Ultima weapon, you have to beat it on Final Fantasy. You have to play it in Final Fantasy mode. That's the other thing that sucks. There's a best sword in the main game, but the really best sword is locked behind playing it a second time but all that to say i don't want to make it sound like i don't i didn't love it i i loved it i'm sorry that you didn't like it uh but i i uh i still i still loved it yeah i um i did not love it um i'm sorry it's

okay you didn't make it and the truth is if i was ever faced with the people who made it i'd be like Yeah, I did not love it. I'm sorry. It's okay. You didn't make it. And the truth is, if I was ever faced with the people who made it, I'd be like, what an incredible game, guys. Good job. I would never, ever, ever say to any of them that my emotional experience was lacking when it came to Final Fantasy 16. You know, it's not heartbreaking. I also explored a little bit more of the video game culture here in Amsterdam as part of my journey into being a world warrior. Amsterdam!

And I went to Molly's Arena, which is one of the two... Well, let me first position this by saying that by the time this episode airs, I will have hopefully hosted the very first Get Played Get Together in Europe at Blast Galaxy, which is a different arcade, but there's two major arcades that are in Amsterdam.

And the other is Molly's Arena, which is an arcade, an anime arcade and ramen bar. It is an arcade that takes all of its inspiration from the Instagrammable things about Akihabara and puts them into a single room. So there is a full ramen bar with Naruto references and fucking all these anime references on the menu. Or you can get fluffy pancakes like you see on Instagram, like the jiggly fluffy pancake. I've seen them back.

Yeah. And then they also have a strange mix of games that is adjacent to a Chuck E. Cheese. Like you've got your big driving games and you get your big like simulator game, like, you know, like like a jet fighter game. But then they also have hardcore fighting games. Like they have Ultra Street Fighter 4. They have Tekken. And then they have like 10,000 games in one Astro City style cabinet called, I think, Ultimate Hegemony. Which has just like... Let me make sure that that was...

What a name. Let me make sure that's the name of the. Ultimate Hegemony. Hold on. Let me make sure that's the name of the. Yeah, no, that is it. Ultimate Hegemony. That sounds like an optional Final Fantasy boss.

Yeah. It has like King of Fighters 97, King of Fighters 97, like, balance tweaks. It has 319 pages of video games on this. And I'll hold this up to the camera so that you guys can see, like, what the machine looks like. That's actually a pretty nifty UX there. It's, like, not like just a not like just a main bunch of plain text. That looks pretty stylized. Yeah, it's a pretty machine.

And then the outside of the shop itself has like Naruto. Fuck, that's cool. Yeah, it's a- That fucking rocks. It's a really cool space. We don't have any cool shit here. Why don't we have anything like that in LA? Everything here sucks.

I don't know why. And the tables have turned so hard since the last time I was in Amsterdam. The last time I was here, there's like one place in the entire city that you can get like one Dragon Ball manga. And now because of the rise and ascendancy of otaku culture, there's multiple places you can buy manga

there's a full-blown like on their website they have dudes dressed in cosplay playing video games like as a photo of like just a thing they also sold cosplay gear in the store because there's like a shop in the front so that you can get like a um like a uh a demon slayer robe so that you can wear the robe while you're playing the games um i don't know it's it's it's a cool concept and i was like god if i'd fucking if i lived here and this place existed i would have i would have gone to that place every weekend so rad so yeah arcade culture alive and well in amsterdam unlike los angeles yeah i mean there's you can find arcades in la but it's like it's there's nothing that you know unique and interesting yeah yeah and even like i feel like the barcade has sort of

like had like a a plateau because like i don't think there's like a single barcade here that is like better or different than another one like they're all sort of like oh yeah like they have games and drinks 100 and it's also like kind of like a very much like just like, okay, we're to do American Gen X slash millennial nostalgia. Like that's just our play. It's not like a bunch of weeb culture or anything. And there's not in those spaces. There's there's it's primarily say like you go to button mash in Los Angeles. You're not getting to play modern fighting games.

in Los Angeles, you're not getting to play modern fighting games. So that was part of what was weirdest about this space is that you had modern games. I mean, Ultra Street Fighter 4 is not super modern. There's been, we're already at six. But like to see a full, gorgeous, flat screen cabinet playing, like a huge wide screen cabinet for playing Street Fighter that isn't Street Fighter 2 was kind of incredible yeah

you're not getting any of these barcades you're not getting anything more modern than like a Neo Geo cabinet like that's like kind of where it tails off by the way because you mentioned that sounds awesome, Heather. I'm,

I'm again, I'm, I'm very jealous. I would love to experience that. But I've never crossed an ocean. I'm going to say the, because you mentioned earlier, like you weren't sure how Baldur's Gate three was doing.

I looked it up and it had it's, it's selling like gangbusters two and a half million sales and, and through early access alone and 800 000 concurrent players its first weekend uh so you're really rocketing to the top of the steam charts that's just on pc it's coming out in ps5 in september and we'll see how it does then but i think it is it is a a big old hit that's great that's great yeah i i I hope they have a big year. I hope so, too. You know?

You know, part of why I think people gravitate to games like Baldur's Gate 3 and other sort of role-playing experiences. There would be like the spark of fire right here crackling underneath you as you make this transition. It's because you get to choose who you're going to play as you get to create your own character. And this is a this is a slightly newer format slash segment for us that I'm just going to call because it's just a loose open ended discussion about a topic. I'm going to call our dialogue tree. And today we're going to rest under the dialogue tree and discuss creation character creation that is in the beginning there was a blank slate

in the beginning there was a default character model who looked a lot like me and so i just clicked a until it was done uh i let's let's back it up to like because i i'm curious what everyone's first experiences are in a video game creating a character uh mine goes way back but but but i know that like in console games character creation came a little bit later than it did in in pc pc games though there are some some early like nes rpgs where you get to make a character or make a party but matt how about you remember the first time you created a character yeah that's actually really interesting i i hadn't really considered that because like i nowadays you know for for the most part you can kind of do that in almost any game that isn't like you know telling

the story of a specific character right right but that's like but that is sort of the type of game that i mostly play so uh i think the first time like this can't be true but the first time i probably created a character was probably like tony hawk's Pro Skater 3 like like I think so I think that sounds about I don't know if it's even in that one it might be um but I don't remember really doing it in a game that wasn't that until probably like an RPG later on or something or even like uh well Grand Theft Auto is different because like those are characters I'm trying to wow what games do you even do it in what games have i ever have i ever done this uh i certainly have because i have issues with it like there's like you know you do it in like

there are i guess mass effect's a good example like uh because while it is like a set character you can sort of make your shepherd look however you want 100 even though there is a uh a set shepherd um but i think i think it was probably one of the tony hawk's playstation 2 games because i remember uh making my choices sort of like aspirational i was like right my character is gonna have like a mohawk and like tattoos because i'm 12 and that's what i want to be uh heather how about you i'm racking my brain here because i know there has to be earlier character creation than fallout 4 right for me in my life sure but i can't remember really making a character like could you make a character in skyrim yeah 100 right so i did it in Skyrim um I can't think I don't think there are any PlayStation 3 games or PlayStation

like that's Xbox 360 years is Skyrim so I didn't play original Xbox PlayStation 2 was there anything I made a character in? I don't think so. It seemed to have maybe emerged weirdly late on the console side. Yeah. And there is one that I was thinking of, Matt, that I know is a game you've played, and maybe you don't think of it the same way, but Final Fantasy 1, you make an entire party.

I was going to say say that that's the thing like even though you're not customizing each character it was like oh i'm i'm picking the custom the the composition of my party i'm like do i do i take a black belt or a thief do i do i take a white mage or red mage you get to make those decisions you get to name all those characters so it always felt like i was making those that part these are these are my guys my guys are different than your guys yeah these are my guys pee poo ass and butt yeah uh my guys are fucker dumbass uh shit and and but so i guess we have one of the same guys yeah great black mage uh yeah that that's what i think of on the console side and then also there was a there

was a port of ultima 4 uh that you you create a character although there it's really just kind of picking your class but it's still like that was an nes one but my first experience is on the pc side which was the bard's tale uh which is i think a game that's kind of been it's a franchise it's kind of been memory hold um there was a reboot but like it that was for a time that was like one of the big art like pc rpg series along with like wizardry and ultima and might and magic and so bard's tale one like me and my brother would like go through and you get you'd roll all your characters you make it a whole party you get to name them and it was like that was like a crazy thing that like i enjoyed that more than actually playing the game as a kid i just had a flash of a memory of uh making a character in like a wrestling video game when i was playing like that with my uncle oh sure and uh like i just remember

being a kid and being like i'm gonna make the most fucked up guy like i'm just gonna make like a fucking freak because like that's all all you uh you know that's all you can think to do when you're a kid it's like oh like my guy's gonna have like and now it's like the the craziest thing i can think of is like a normal adult now is like my guy's gonna have blue hair he's just gonna be have blue hair he's just gonna be like a cool guy i i remembered one just now yeah uh which was final fantasy 11 sure final fantasy online um had a pretty robust character creation or at least a ton of visual options uh as well as i'll put it in this in this uh uh chat that we have um but there were one two three four five six seven eight different there's like human male human female elven male elven female tar tar male tar tar female mithra gulka and then like a ton of

toggles for each of those races and classes so i guess maybe that was my first i'm trying to think of it if yeah that that probably i think timeline exactly that came out. PlayStation 2. Yeah. That's 2003, I think. Maybe 2004. I also like what I'm thinking of with these games is like, because you mentioned Final Fantasy 11. And there are like, there are differing degrees of granularity in terms of how you customize these characters and like that makes me think of world of warcraft where world of warcraft at least i haven't played it in in a decade uh i revisited wow classic a little bit but you know i don't know what the modern game is like but the the character creation of world of warcraft at least at first was based on just getting you into the game quickly and it's a a very different approach than like a FromSoft game where it's like,

hey, you know what? You can spend a lot of time here really just deciding like just exactly how pronounced your brow ridge is. In World of Warcraft, it's like pick your race, pick your class, pick your gender. And then like here's a handful of faces. And then you're going to have a lot fewer decisions to make to get you into the game. And the way you're going to customize your characters by actually playing this thing because we don't want you living in the character creation screen. I really like getting to do a lot of shit in a character creation system, but I do admire

that approach. I do kind of appreciate the idea of, like, let's just get people invested quickly. I like when you can customize a character within parameters. So, for example, Disco Elysium. Yes. Hey, that's a great one. That's not on my list here, but that is a great one. Oh, are we doing a tier list?

No, no, no. I was going to do a tier list. It's just discussion. I'm just saying. Disco Elysium though, S tier. It's a great one. It's a great system because you're making a guy, but you're choosing your guy. Yeah, you're choosing your guy.

So he is some version of what you want to experience in that world. But he is still fundamentally himself also. Like he is. Right. Like you can play a smart version of him or a dumb version of him, but he is himself, which is great. Yes.

And the, and that is a gate. That is a system that completely having played through the whole game twice with two different Harry's, it completely affects how you, you play what your, your first stats are, what your build is,

which is what you want from one of these systems. Yeah. In Elden Ring, right? Like you, like, you can make a little freak. Yeah, you can make a little nasty guy, yeah. But, like, that, to me, like, it's different in, like, a game where, like, in Tony Hawk, for example, you can make, like, a guy, like, look however you want,

and, like, that's not breaking immersion for me too much because you're just skateboarding, but, but like in something like Elden Ring where there are freaks and you make like an even bigger freak than the freaks that are in the game yes I'm sort of like okay like this is now we're just being a little silly aren't we yeah I'm trying to take this pretty I'm trying to take this seriously I think I always think it's fun when someone's like hey I made uh I made the undertaker you know in in elden like it's fun to see or or even like let me solo her has an iconic look it's just the uh like the little diaper that you right or like that that you know that mcelroy's youtube uh which is like a monster

factory where they just make like the most freakish abominations you can using various games like character creations. Like that's interesting just to see how these systems can be extended. But like, yeah, I always want to try to make a character that's aesthetically pleasing. Well, good. Even if they're they're not like gorgeous. Good luck doing that in Street Fighter six. Yeah.

Yeah. I can't. I tried so hard to make a character that looked kind of street fightery and they just they did not look like the rest of the people in that world and i've seen you know like you like you said nick i've seen like youtube videos of like look at this fucking beast that i made in the Street Fighter 6 character creation where it's like their neck is too long. Like, there's a lot of things you can manipulate in that system. Yeah.

I guess the me is a character creation system. Oh, yeah. That's a great one. S tier. That's S tier. I think Disco is my favorite. I like Elden Ring's character creation system because I do feel like it is affecting how I play the game forever. game forever like forever in my playthrough if i'm making somebody who's gonna have to not wear any armor in order to move around that that's it like that's it forever but i like too

that like i like in games when you can create a character uh that you can change it at any time even though that might sort of seem like it's like breaking immersion a little bit because you can't necessarily change how you look completely all the time. But in Elden Ring, you can go back to the character screen, for example, if you go into a mirror and change your entire face and body. But sometimes you start you're locked into the choice that you make early on and then maybe

you know halfway through your playthrough you're like kind of just wish I looked like not a freak I'm not always making freaks I think that's a relatively modern thing of just a relatively recent thing of hey I can respec my build and also completely change my appearance like me game.

Like it used to be a little bit more locked in. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned Fallout earlier, Heather. I always said the Fallout character creations are really fun. I like how simple like the stats are. It's just like a one through ten. It's really easy to wrap your head around. simple like the stats are it's just like a one through ten it's really easy to wrap your head around you're not worrying about like you know i like like it's not some like kind of like semi

arbitrary uh metric where you have a hard time figuring out like what a 36 rating is um and um and i like that you've like i like the perks, I think, like add a lot of like character to the game and just like that always. I always felt like that was those were really fun and great ways to start off those those games and part of the immersion because like aesthetically it matched what the kind of like nastiness of the world. I also like I mean, going back to i i like i really like balder's gate threes but i like balder's gate one and two as well like those those systems were just like again you could spend a lot of time there and it was really fun to make your dude and it felt like you had a lot of specificity in terms of how you could build them god yeah i mean we've already talked about it but how fucking crazy it is the amount of detail that you can change in the cyberpunk character creation setup only to never see them.

Yeah, 100% to be a person. It's insane. Truly insane. At that point, too, not, you know, there's a lot of options, but there are, but they exist sort of within a binary that doesn't quite add up for the future world that it's in right like and i think that's sort of um the the downside of uh of many character um creations in video games like they've gotten better over time but like in its earliest iteration there was probably like like for example like three skin colors uh which doesn't cover the base for everyone's like because like even like for me someone who's like you know i have i'm

mexican puerto rican so i have like brown skin but it's not like very dark brown skin so like sometimes the option presented to me is like well like i don't really look like that's not me i guess i'll pick the white character like and that sucks that's a bad feeling so you're not really representing yourself either but you're like well i'll just go the other way instead which sucks uh but like the game's easier but i mean yeah yeah yeah oh everybody loves me in this game i'm getting treated so kindly um all that to say too there's been a lot of strides made like even in um in balder's gate 3 you can have you know a male a female or a non-binary character which is very cool um but a lot but that's like that and that's great and there's obviously a

variety of uh like skin colors and tones because some of the uh people in the game are like dragons or what or demons or whatever right but then also on the people scale there's like many different uh on the human scale there's many different skin colors and skin tones but the complaint that i see a lot from a lot of people and a lot of my friends as well is that in regards to character creation uh for for black people the hair options are always bad and they are mad at it because it's like they're like you couldn't hire you obviously didn't hire a black person to help make the hair because it always feels like how like white people think black people's hair looks and that sucks

uh and that doesn't feel good for uh like those players so like the ones that get it right i feel like i see celebrated a lot which is great and it's changing. So hopefully in the next couple of years, it's universally good and not just like, I guess I'll pick this hair. Yeah, I've definitely a criticism. I think anyone who's playing games has encountered and I hopefully it is getting better. And but it is like, yeah, for the longest time, it was just developers were like, well, this is what I look like. So, you know, like I felt like there wasn't any more consideration beyond that because I think there is a

human instinct to want to make not not that I do this with every game but I think a lot of people want to just make themselves and like I want to just be in the game and if those options aren't presented for you I'm sure that's that's super frustrating going to be maybe I'm maybe I'm misremembering but I feel like there was going to be a camera peripheral for the N64 that would allow you to map your own head onto basketball players or maybe done that with some.

Yeah, there have been games that have tried that. And it's all it's looked like shit because they've just taken a photograph a 2d photograph and just like wrapped it over someone's face they haven't figured that out yet but i'm sure at a certain point they will figure out how to to model that in three dimensions based i've done that in a few games like I have like a pretty big head. And it always makes me feel bad when I scan it and it fucking doesn't fit on the fucking model. It sucks. Have you guys ever?

No, because neither of you really played Final Fantasy 15. There was a multiplayer sub game. Shout out to Jersey Mike's Jersey Mike's. Oh, yeah. That was called comrades I don't know if it's still functioning in the in the Final Fantasy 15 like I don't know if people are still playing it

but there was a pretty significant character creation system in comrades but it was really hard to make your character ugly like it was possible but it was like it was such like if you if you search ff xv comrades characters you'll just see like

row after row of just the most beautiful people, like all who look kind of different, but all of whom look like Final Fantasy characters, like, you know, pre-16. And it's really, it's a funny, I don't remember how they fenced in that character creation system um but so many of the men and women were gorgeous that that system would create yeah it's uh i that's just that's kind of a final fantasy thing though right like has ever been like an ugly final fantasy character They're all kind of very attractive. I mean, there were

ugly, you could make them in Comrades, but like your default settings and stuff were fucking gorgeous. I'm trying to think if there's

anything we missed. I mean, Matt touched on Mass Effect. That is like a really great balanced i'm trying to think if there's anything we missed i mean the the you know we did matt touch matt touched on mass effect those are that is like a really great balanced like it it hits that balance if you get to customize your character as much as you want but also you can choose a prefab build and just be ready to go and have the time of your life uh and then and just be like that shepherd i've heard a lot of things of the uh i haven't played uh the dragon ages but like i've heard that the dragon ages have really good systems um among more more contemporary games uh oh you know diablo diablo 4 i think kind of hit a nice balance of just you get to customize your character but you can't like you they they they really limited what the parameters were so you can make a character

that like looks how you want, but you're not going to get completely lost in the weeds there. I thought that one was well done. I think... I like parameters, so what I'm about to say is going to sound counter to that. Okay. But in Cyberpunk,

Penis 1, Penis 2, Boobs 1, Boobs 2. cyberpunk penis one penis two boobs one boobs two penis one penis two vagina and off i think your options in cyberpunk give me a slider that's it yeah okay so here's here's give me a slider here's the thing i think i think the the cause general customization is a thing in, in the cyberpunk and Baldur's gate three in cyberpunk. To me, it feels like kind of like, like edge Lord kind of like,

and I like that game a lot, but it's like, it's kind of like, like look what we did. You can customize your hog. How about that? Give me a robot hog too. Who cares?

Give him a, give him a, give him a cyber. Why? Why not? Of course. Yes. Yeah. I can't believe we talked about the game a year and a half ago and I just got to

cyber hog like yeah why not or like make it weird yes I saw the ripper doc and he like split it in two I don't know yeah I've got a forked one so what I'm saying is like I think that i think it's cyberpunk it almost feels like

a joke and it's also like doesn't have much utility in the game itself in balder's gate three and i haven't gotten to anything you know super explicit in terms of the game but like it feels like it i i had the attitude of to your point earlier about like it. I, I had the attitude of, to your point earlier about like, it feels inclusive in Baldur's Gate three. It's kind of like almost like, and, and I feel like when you're, when you're choosing your generals,

like to me, it felt like more clinical, less like lascivious of that. I don't know quite how they were able to balance that, but I think by drawing less attention to it, it just kind of feels like, okay, I can,

I can have the generals of this character match their body type and and role play that you know and i think that's the difference because and i'm just talking hogs for a second i think cycling cycling through cycling through the different classes and you know i had to i just had to see what the hogs looked like i had to see i had to see what everybody looked like i definitely had hide clothes on a half orc just to see what he was working with they all have different hogs like they all have class appropriate hogs yes it's like that feels like that's like okay like that because everybody sort of has like a different one you know and there's like two body types like per class or whatever like you know you can be

sort of like small or big i like body type i didn't i didn't even see so everybody has a proportional hog what's that i didn't see that this was an option when creating my character i think it's under general it's and it's kind of hidden because like you know your character will have a default general option that you just choose not to choose just to go along with whatever they decide i never saw the genitals of my character well yeah you have to toggle the clothes off yeah i know i mean like i never even saw like what are you was there a toggle yeah 100 no yeah it's this whole like section of character creation I didn't see in Baldur's Gate. It doesn't call a lot of attention to it. I think that's partly by design.

Nick and I were looking for it. Yeah. I wonder, but I'm also playing a beta. But you can choose to ignore it. I'm playing an early access version because I'm playing on Mac. Oh, yeah. And maybe I missed it. Maybe I didn't.

But. Yeah, maybe it's not there yet. Maybe it's. That's the last thing they added. Yeah. They're like. Yeah. Hey, guys.

That's what they're working on. I have spent the last six months. I created a genital system. Nobody wanted this. Just put it in the game. Vulva 2 is crashing M2 chips. We got to do something. I had a, there was a, I wanted to step back in time

because I feel like this is a thing that's kind of disappeared from character creation systems and I think it's a good thing, which is dice rolls. And I love that there's a lot of dice rolling like in the game itself of Baldur's Gate 3. I love that in Disco Elysium, but actually rolling dice and character creation systems uh i don't know if y'all have ever experienced that but i remember doing that a lot with a gig and you know the the old school

baldur's gate or other rpg or other rpgs based on the dnd licenses back in the day or the one i think i sunk way too much time in was the wizardry series uh like wizardry seven crusaders of the dark savant and you could just keep re-rolling your character endlessly and every time you re-rolled a character you might get like shitty stats but the way the system was you couldn't roll a new character until you created that character so you had to go through the whole character creation process and be like well shit i'm gonna make this whole like fucking i'm gonna make this bard now and then just delete it and then make a new character re-rolling it that way um i i don't know like i think the randomness it also disrupts the balance because then you can just roll like a super character and then all of a sudden the game's

like easy for you so i i like that that has been i'm sure there's some some purists that like uh dice rolling is an element of it but i like that it's been completely dispensed and nowadays it's usually have some prefab stats you can move around i i played this is this is a sort of side note but on the same tip right okay so i played a tabletop like what we what you were saying reminds me of like all the times i've played tabletop rpgs and you roll for your character and you're like oh fuck my guy's so dumb uh i played a uh tabletop rpg with uh it was a i think this system was called scream but i'm not sure or maybe it was called Darkness. But it was a horror tabletop game. And you had to create yourself in the game in order to play.

Because you were role playing yourself. Like, what if this happened to you? And the way you would do it in a group is that you would sit around the table and somebody would be like, who thinks they're probably the fastest person here? And then that person would be like, I think it's probably me. And it'd be like, how fast are you on a scale of one to 10? And they'd be like, I'm like an eight or seven. And then everybody else would be ranked below that. So if that person had an initiative of seven, then the slowest person in the room would have an initiative of one. And you would do that for all of the stats in order to create your version of yourself in the game. But it was all comparative.

Like it wasn't like you couldn't say. I mean, at some point, you're probably the best at blank in the room, right? Sure. But then you would be like, the truth is, though, I'm not that smart. Maybe I'm the smartest person in the room, but I'm not that smart. So I'm like a five. And then everybody would go, oh, come on, because most of the people in the room at zero yeah um i wish that there was a i i don't even know how you would do it but like a a synthesis engine

that would allow you to literally like you were saying earlier not only create what you look like, but also your basis stats as a person. Yeah. Because it would be funny to see myself get just decimated by those first imps in Baldur's Gate. Because if I was in that room, I would die. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I can't handle like three imps they're gonna fucking tear me apart with their

claws like i couldn't i'm not even sure that i could if i wanted to not i think i could take one no i i don't think i could take any of them if i had like boots on i think it'd probably take one just because they'd have enough like oh yeah you got your shit kickers on absolutely boots because I'm I'm bigger than them so I think like if I reach out with my hands they're gonna rip my arms apart but if I've got like boots I can like kick them I think if I were to roll my actual stats they're all coming in at like, if it's a scale of one to 10, I think I'm like, maybe like five across the board, maybe four across the board,

like slightly below average. Cause I don't think I'm that smart, but I'm not an idiot either. You know what I mean? Like I understand stuff. It's also funny to think like Olympians are the ones who have tens in physicality, right? Yeah.

And like, I'm not even half an Olympian. Oh, yeah. So like- No, I'm a one to like LeBron James or something. You know what I mean? So like, if you think about like somebody who's maxed out their levels in like a real world scenario and how much, how many of our skills are one, like if I go up against a physicist and intelligence or wisdom

i'm a one it's gonna be a one it's all comparative i guess yeah that's that's that is interesting we are all level one yeah 100 is because like i don't know there's we all in our day-to-day sort of make choices as our characters right like in real life like we all dress this same way we all have an outfit there's an element of character creation obviously in real life do you ever think like because sometimes i'll see clothes yeah and be like i could probably wear that but then don't do it because like that's not what i normally wear right sure like i'll see like a clothes it's like a little maybe load out yeah exactly i'm like oh like that's like if i if i start dressing this way i gotta be like a

completely different guy anytime i've done that i get compliments which also makes me feel bad because i'm like i would like i can't pull this sweatshirt off and then to wear it and be like really nice sweatshirt i was like oh why does that make you feel should i be this guy i because i sort of know what nick's talking about because i'm like well then my normal choices my normal instincts are wrong i should be like i should be like a different guy because people like that guy yeah yeah it's uh no they like you in clothes that are a little bit more chic got it i also just like i hate the i hate clothes like i hate shopping for clothes i don't like it and that's just like a different thing like i don't know like I don't know I don't know anybody who's like I love the way clothes fit

on my body like I don't think that anybody like that I know is like this is good for me I like to buy clothes because I always look good in clothes yeah so it's a fucking always a struggle mental nightmare every time that I go buy clothes but that's why I kind of keep to the same stuff that I know I don't hate as much have you guys ever gone

to a department store and tried on something that is so far outside of your price range to see how it makes you look? No. I've gone to, like when I was, say, wedding shopping or when, like, when I'm, for whatever reason, if I'm like at a fancy department store, I'll try on something that's like.

I don't even know the names of the brands. Like. What is St. Say, Lauren, right? Is that how you said that? Say that. I don't know. I don't know.

But like if you put on clothes that are for rich people they make you look so good so infuriating you feel bad that you're not rich it's also like oh rich people don't look good they're just wearing really expensive clothes that are just well made and cut and that's why they look good and and and it's they're just they look just like me otherwise that's why it's funny when like these like fucking rich dorks look like shit all the time like you could look good you can look good i tried on what are you doing i was uh i was going there's one department store in Amsterdam called De Buyenkorf. And I went to the, the store cause I needed a shirt to wear in order to perform in a show.

Right. And I didn't bring, I brought like t-shirts with me. So I had to get like a nice button up, but I went to one of their floors and they had like all the like high-end designer stuff. And I tried on a jacket that was like $3,500, like a jacket. Oh my God. And I looked so fucking good. Yeah, I bet. That rocked.

Yeah. And still at the store, but it was pretty fun. We should do what you were talking about earlier of like just like making us. We should do an episode. Wherever we're back in the same room, we should get a GURPS rulebook or something like that and just roll our characters.

Okay. I mean- I don't know. See what happens. That sounds like a way to hurt ourselves. Yeah. We get a DM to help us somehow. Oh, that's a fun idea. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, really what you should- Yeah. What get like a DM to help us. Oh, that's a fun idea.

Yeah. I mean, really what you should, what we would, if you were to do this, like if you were to create a game show where this was a concept or like a core element of it, then part of that character creation would be your best friend would be there. Because they'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Nick is so good at cooking. He's so good at cooking. Like, you know, or whatever. Oh, yeah. Right.

Just to gas you up. And then you'd also, I think the producers would have to also find somebody who hates you. Yes. Right. So that you could get like a proper spectrum of your skills and attributes. Right. I don't know what the game show is, but that feels like a reality show segment in a character creation game show.

That's ours. If that gets made, you have to pay us a fee. Maybe the game could be, oh, here's what it is. Here's the game show. You know somebody who's great. And the game show is trying to find the world's best person. Okay?

This has made me so nervous already. So, like, you're like, oh, fuck, I know somebody who's really good at a lot of stuff. And you bring them onto the game show and you tell their story. And then they have, like, athletic like intelligence tests and like a section where they're like doing musical talent or whatever. And it's like they eventually get a score and then they're ranked on a board of all the people who've ever been on the game show. of all the people who've ever been on the game show. And if you're ranked number one, you and your best friend get $50 million each.

Wow. So this is like a top human. Yeah. It's basically what we're trying to quantify. World's top human. I think that's great. You got to do a full world search, though. You got to make it international.

Because there are people out there who are like all of it. Athletic, musically talented, charming. They're like all the stuff. Generous. We're looking for overall. Right. Yeah, not just accomplishments, but also personality. Yeah, like sweet, kind. Like you have like, oh, here's a news article from when they were a kid

and they had a bake sale for a kid down the street who was sick. Like, you just like find the world's best human. This person is perfect in every way except weird mold

under their shoulder blade. And you know what? Bumps them down just enough. But here's what you do. Actually, here's... So it's not... You don't start... You do one of these shows in every country that way you get the winner of each country and

then for the world one you get them all competing together that's how you do it that's great because that also gets jingoistic yes um which always it's also interesting because you would learn about natural, the sort of natural handicaps of the lottery of birth. Like, I'm pretty sure that like the kindest person in Norway may be kinder than anybody ever raised in America. Just because of the like philosophical differences of like being indoctrinated as like a socialist versus being indoctrinated in a world where it's like look kid you gotta you've got you've only got yourself and everybody is out to get you and if you aren't pushing 24 7 you will get run over by this country also i don't know anything really about norway so it's just out of my hat. Well, also part of the competition would be like just a fist fight. I think America would do pretty well in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, if it comes to throwing hands, we got it. Yeah. Alright, we should answer some questions because we've gone way too long. Yeah. Yeah, go on. No, I was going to say, you can do it. I was just going to say, it's time for the question block.

Okay. Thank you, Resident Evil Merchant. These are all from our Discord, discord.gg slash getplayed. This one's from Waffles. Hi, Waffles. Hi, Waffles. Last month, an ongoing manga had a plot beat that caused several of us in the manga channel to take a break from it after 123 chapters of reading.

Has there ever been a creative work, manga, TV, books, et cetera, that you were really into and suddenly dropped when it went somewhere you didn't like slash couldn't stomach? I have a straight up answer about this.

Wow. Which is that I loved Walking Dead. This was my answer. Wow. And I felt like I thought I was tough as a person. And then after a certain episode of the show, I was like, I guess I'm not. I never. So like when I watch a horror movie, I'm just like, oh, look at those guys doing that stuff.

Or like when I play a horror game, I'm like, ha ha. Look at that. Look at this scary stuff that's happening. When I read a book, I'm like, I can get emotional reading a book like I fucking sobbed during a little life. But like generally speaking, I feel like a detachment when i'm consuming fiction and this one episode of walking dead like fucking made me feel sick and i was just like i wonder if you made it further than me because i think there was like a story beat that wasn't necessarily like i couldn't handle it i was just sort of like i don't like this anymore i'm done and then i i stopped watching

it mine was and i don't want to spoil a show that's been running for forever that honestly i still have nothing but respect for like like full respect like i would love to get back into it like i i have nothing bad to say about the show other than there was a threshold that the show crossed that i could not join it and and yeah i miss i miss it yeah i've never watched i've never watched i mean i've seen the pilot it's good pilot but i never i just like i can't buy it to this it's gonna be too long uh the my my answer on the tv side is game of thrones i think this is probably a lot of people but like i really wasn't it was in on that show in the early going and the the final two seasons or final season that was split into whatever the fuck it was i was like this is so off the rails they have so

gotten away from what's cool about the show clearly they are lost without the books as source material and they've also just sort of violated the rule their own like they've established they spent so much time establishing like how long it takes to traverse the king's road and now we're just at a point where i get any character can be anywhere at any point we have just like we'll just assume that like basically air travel exists uh and that completely kind of ruined the suspension of disbelief and also just like characters were behaving contrary to how they'd been established i'm'm trying to think of it. So Game of Thrones is my big recent answer. I'm trying to think of a video game where that's happened.

I mean, there's certainly been like, hey, this latest entry is not as good. I'm trying to think of one that's not Final Fantasy 16. But I get, you know what? Banjo-Tooie kind of lost me. Banjo-Kazooie I really liked. Banjo-Tooie was just sort of like, this game is so overstuffed. This is the most bloated collect-a-thon.

This is the point, this and Donkey Kong 64 were both the points where I kind of tapped out of that N64 platform or format of just like, I just don't want to get all this shit. I am not going to 100% this game. In fact, you know, Banjo-Tooie I didn't even finish. Donkey Kong 64 I finished, but I was just like i just don't want to get all this shit i am not gonna 100 this game in fact you know i think banjo 2a didn't even finish dunkin 64 i finished but i was like this is fucking too much i feel like when it comes to like not with games because i'm obviously always putting games down and like starting different games and like not finishing them but like with

books and tv and movies i am kind of a completionist like i watched all of dexter like to the end wow and uh like even though for like maybe four like like uh how many seasons were there ultimately like seven in the original run and then there was an extra season uh last year for like three of the original uh seasons i was like, this is a bad show. 96 episodes have been made. Yeah, and I watched all of it. I don't know. I dropped off of...

My girlfriend's better about stopping. We watched the first season of Westworld, and I loved it. I thought the first season of Westworld was so great. Oh, I had the same. I popped off of Westworld, and I loved it. I thought the first season of Westworld was so great. Oh, I had the same. I popped off of Westworld, too. Same thing. I was about to start season two, episode one, and my girlfriend is just like,

I can already tell it's getting too complicated. There's just too much going on. I can't watch this anymore. And I was like, okay. And I just never went back to it. But as a one-season show, Westworld's great great and I think it works as a yeah one season thing you can sort of like see it you know going you can imply you can infer what's gonna happen uh later on and and not be disappointed by you know ultimately what what goes on and now you can't watch it if you want to you can't it's

not available to screen uh so I. So I missed the boat completely. But yeah, with games, I fall off all the time. I just want to say one more time in case my answer was construed in a negative way. I didn't... I respected the choice

that the show made, but I couldn't handle it. Which is not like... I think that's fine. It's not like when, in X-Files, when Mulder and Scully fucked, and I was like, this sucks. Like, that was a choice where I'm like,

I'm not into... That's not what I want to see from this show. Right? Like, there are character thresholds, but this was like a plot threshold that I was like oh man this is this is too much for me even though i completely buy that this is a thing that would happen um i'm going to find out what the moment was after yep um this next one is from uh dva with

a handgun it's been almost four years since Death Stranding came out. How do you feel it still impacts the way you view games, the world, media, et cetera? This is a great question. First off, four years, Jesus Christ. I mean, like for me, I just, I am so dialed into traversal now. And I should shout out my buddy who is a game developer I used to share an office with when I was in the industry.

And he recently got into Death Stranding play is a what a game developer i used to share an office with when i was in the industry and he recently got into death stranding and it took him a while but he's like he's like holy shit i'm all in now he's completely into the you know just that gameplay loop and can really appreciate how it's constructed so for me it's like for me it's just like it is like how how fun is it to traverse this world how fun is it just walk around i? How fun is it to just walk around? I think that's a big part of what I appreciated about Tears of the Kingdom, even though I bumped off of it for a bit because it's just overwhelming. It's just like great running around, great walking around, great getting on mounts,

great building stuff that lets you get places. It's just more than the combat. This game is about movement and i really did appreciate that that's an interesting thing because like comparing the last big game that i played which was final fantasy 16 if you're comparing the traversal in that game versus death stranding it clearly sucks like it's like that's like a bad part of the game also not yeah also a much more linear game yeah like it's just you're just kind of running down tunnels for a lot of it uh it's um yeah i uh i i guess yeah i like i i don't want to just mention

big games but i i think like playing elden Ring, I was like, you know what? This environmental design, this open world is really well constructed in terms of how you can navigate it, the points where it feels like you can find a shortcut or a dead end. All that sort of shit is very Death Stranding in terms of, okay, I'm kind of cul-de-sac here. Oh, I can't get directly from here to here. I got to figure out how to go around. And yeah, I guess just navigating open spaces is a thing I'm more conscious of now

post-Death Stranding. I would say that I still think about Death Stranding enough that when the Gresham Blake Death Stranding collaboration came out, I considered selling something from my collection of stuff so that I could get a $300 tracksuit.

Because I was like, man, it would be pretty hype to have that fucking tracksuit. I don't know where I would wear it. I don't know why I would wear it, but I could sell like, I could probably sell a couple of like pokemon games and just get this tracksuit for free so i still just stranding i'll buy them huh i'll buy them sell them to me i'll buy them stranding still still is in my head a lot. I also think about how well it handled a batshit story.

Oh, yeah. Great point. When I think about comparing it to the most recent game I finished, Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy 16, like, Final Fantasy 16 is not really wild, comparatively. Like, one of my complaints about the game when we covered it, Final Fantasy 16, was that it wasn't weird enough, right? Like, I think about how Final Fantasy 7 has a giant talking red cat in the party. Mm-hmm. has a giant talking red cat in the party. But like stranding is exclusively weird stuff.

It is only the talking cat in the party. And I don't feel like I was ever alienated by the way that story was told. I was like, what is happening? Okay. Like that first time that sam looks up and sees the the giant ghastly towering thing i still think about texting you guys when i saw that thing holy shit this game is incredible yeah it's a good game man fucking i i also have been following kojima on twitter and now x following kojima on x boy god damn it um and there's there have been stories about how he had to rewrite sections of death Stranding 2 because of the pandemic.

And I think about that a lot too. I'm like, what? What does that mean? Yeah, that's interesting. This next one's from Music Man Hills. Hey, Music Man. And they write, I'm in the biggest video game rut i've ever experienced wow i get home from a hard day of work and play the exact same meaningless sports game over and over again

on my ps5 with no interest in seemingly every new game being an open world rpg what would you recommend playing that is both relaxing and rewarding while still feeling meaningful and have you ever been in a video game rut where nothing seemed to interest you yes 100 and honestly if it wasn't for this podcast i probably would have had over the past few years because i've always had kind of fallow periods i probably would have had some some longer stretches where i just wasn't playing games and was was doing but i mean that that's that's a i'll let everyone answer that while we think of recommendations, because not knowing your taste beyond that you regularly play a sports game, it's maybe a little tough to give you any specific guidance.

Yeah, I'd say sometime in the PS3 and even PS4 era, I had a pretty big rut. I feel like I've been doing the most gaming I've ever done in this console generation like just playing games non-stop but I don't know I feel like

anybody could play Vampire Survivor oh that's a great rock and get something out of it I know Heather didn't like it that much but like I totally see your point I think it's a know Heather didn't like it that much, but like... But even then, I totally see your point. I think it's a great point. Yeah. Like, because it's like, it's just an easy, like, pick it up and feel like you did something

kind of game. Maybe Hades is a little more challenging, but like, that to me is like a pretty rewarding game for what you can do in it and feels like a good use of time. Those would be my two biggest recommendations vampire survivors is a great call i i i'm looking at game pass right now and it did you mentioned playstation so i i don't know if you have an xbox but or a game pc but um sometimes when stuff turns up on xbox or on game pass it means it's also on deep sail on other platforms so a short hike is one like that's like a super relaxing game that's also short and so you could be like all right i'm gonna play this game it's it's two to three hours of play

time or however long it is and i i can just i'll play this i'll commit to this i can get through this and maybe that'll kind of shake me out of my another game that i really like is celeste that game's a little bit more challenging i mean that game i'd say is is a challenging platformer but it's aesthetically really uh calming and cool and has a great story has a great great look to it so that could be a that could be something to try or maybe fucking try death stranding i don't know yeah i i would even say go back to a classic doesn't have to be a new game like something you've even played before i feel like i've i've done that or like you know in the last couple years i played through some of the kingdom hearts games again and maybe i was in a

rut then and i needed to get pulled out of it by experiencing Kingdom Hearts again. And I'm glad I did that. Maybe I'll also throw Fortnite into this list. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you're a competitive gamer, but the people who've listened to me, you know, preach about,

to extol the virtues of Fortnite and have joined us on the Battle Bus on Discord have all been like, I never expected to have this much fun in a game. And if it is the kind of game that you would find fun, there's so many ways

to have fun in the game. So I'd put my token in for Fortnite. Maybe you could take a step back. That for fortnite maybe you could take a step back there's a good answer and take a step back also and be like what am i what do i why do i play this sports game and why do i feel bad or unsatisfied when i'm playing it because if there's an element of i feel guilty because i should be experiencing other big games, but I actually enjoyed this game. I think that's maybe more of a thing of like, well, you know what? If you're having fun doing this, you don't have to get to feel like you're you're using your hobby time productively.

Like that's an illusion. You know, there there is no there isn't anything particularly productive about getting all the achievements of the big new release. particularly productive about getting all the achievements of the big new release. So if you're enjoying yourself now, maybe that's more just like a thing you need a thing to work on and figure out. But that said, if you're not enjoying yourself, if you feel like you're just habituated to unwinding in this particular method and you want to try something else, yeah, just shake it up. This last one is from Ryan T. Hi, Ryan. Ryan T. Hi, Ryan. Ryan T. it up this last one is from ryan t hi ryan ryan t ryan ryan ryan t how do you manage your feelings

about a game that is announced but never updating the du jour example right now feels like hollow night silk song is it disappointing each time a direct or game con comes through with no news or have you gotten more zen over time i no longer give a shit because I'm just like, it's going to come out when it comes out. I've got so much to play that like, what's the rush when they, what was the game? There was a game they delayed.

What was it? Elden ring. I can't remember what it was, but there was a game they delayed substantially. And then it finally came out and it went and it delivered. But I think like everyone was just sort of like yeah fucking whatever i got other shit to play cyberpunk was delayed and uh yep that one could have used another delay again we like that game yeah uh no yeah i think that's a that's good I would actually like them to stop,

just stop making games for a year. I don't think we need any updates. Full shutdown. Full shutdown. Let me just catch up. Let me have some time, you know, get back to, just get back to basics. What do we like?

What are we doing? What's going on? You know, touch like what are we doing what's going on uh you know uh touch grass a little see what see what's see what's out there and then come back to some games later uh like okay look yeah like uh there's i didn't play you know i didn't ever go back to the ghost of tsushima uh dlc let's go see what's going on there sure uh and that kind of stuff i don't know if i need uh new games to be happening all the time anymore i'm excited for new games but i don't um yeah i don't i don't i'm not following like a particular game's release because you only open your you only

open your heart for disappointment in in that regard because Because, yeah. Am I excited to eventually play the Prince of Persia Sands of Time remake, remaster, whatever they're calling it? Yeah. Do I ever think it's coming out? No. There's no way it's coming out. Yes. They'll never make that. I felt that way.

I know you guys know that I would text you about pokemon sleep for like a couple of years i texted about pokemon sleep and how excited i was and it fell off the radar and never it seemingly was never going to come back and then it did and i was so bummed out by the execution that i that i i wish i had never given any of my hype to Pokemon Sleep. There was another Nintendo game that was announced and then disappeared. And it had a finger sensor on it. And it was going to be for the Wii where you could,

it was like going to test your blood pressure or something while you played the game. And it was announced. And I was like, oh, shit. I love metrics. I love peripherals. This is going to be for me. And then it never, ever, ever came back. And I was like, oh, well, but but I wanted to see what they were going to do with that thing.

So, yeah, my they knew people were going to do with that thing. So, yeah. They knew people were going to put it somewhere else. My advice is to never get excited about anything. Yes, wait for it to come out. And also, I think the other thing is that the opposite of the hype cycle is the game that comes out of nowhere and was on no one's radar. And you're like, oh, shit, this is great. I like that more.

That's bad. I love that. Just so just wait for that. And that's it for the question block this week, everybody. Thanks for writing in. Wow. That's this week's get played. Our engineering is by Alex Gonzalez.

Dead air Alex G on Twitter and Instagram. Also, check out our paywalled show. Get animated. Heather, we're making our way through the melancholy of harui suzumiya i think the episodes that are about to air we're we're watching six seven and eight of n of the endless eight arc uh and the boys have had a good time it's been a fun adventure come and join us on on uh patreon.com slash getplayed where we talk about anime on Get Animated. I have a small plug.

Oh. It's actually not a small plug. It's a nice thing. I worked on, I produced this show with our pal Jacob Wysocki called Expo Expose and it's a podcast where we went to four different expos in Southern California and it's a podcast where we went to four different expos in Southern California and it's a

limited run podcast we interviewed people there and it's a comedy podcast but it's like it's more sincere than anything that I've ever made that I think we've ever made and it's on the Earwolf Presents feed

so you just search that you can find Expo Exp made. And it's on the Earwolf Presents feed. So you just search that. You can find Expo Expose there. It's the first one dropped Friday, August 11th, as of this recording. So go back and you can hear it. And they'll be coming out for the next couple of weeks. And I worked really hard on it. And Jacob's great on it.

And I think you should check it out because I think it's a lot of fun. Yeah, definitely check that out. It's a really cool thing y'all have done. I was trying to find it in a podcast app. I think if you just search for Earwolf in whatever your app of choice is, it will come up with a few. But there is a feed just called Earwolf Presents. Exactly.

And there's a bunch of different stuff in there. But that's where your show will live over the next four weeks exactly go check it out we went to a um we went to a reptile expo an anime expo a boat expo and a tattoo one and it was they're all they're all strange it was a really it was a great time uh. Thank you. I hope people check that out. Yeah, me too. Thanks. And I hope people listening to this are aware that they got played. Oh, shit. Heck yeah.

Heck yeah.