Get Played - Great Part Two’s with Ashley Esqueda

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Matt, Heather and Nick are joined by Ashley Esqueda to talk about her new book The Art of Psychonauts 2, a Disneyland streaker, our favorite “Part Two’s” and more! What we’re playing: Lego Fortnite, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Foamstars and Baldur’s Gate 3. This month's We Play, You Play: Baldur’s Gate 3. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod. Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com. Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com. Check out our Anime watch-along podcast Get Anime'd and our complete Get Played, How Did This Get Played? and Premium DLC back catalogue only on patreon.com/getplayed. 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] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fmSee 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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Just pay $5 shipping. That's BlueChew.com, promo code GETPLAY to receive your first month free. Visit BlueChew.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank Blue Chew for sponsoring the podcast. Hey, Heather and Matt, before we get started, I actually have some pretty exciting personal news. And some career news, to be more precise. And it involves both of you. So I thought you should get the heads up.

Wow, Nick. Yeah, I just signed a deal to publish a book that I'm authoring entitled The Art of Get Played. Check the chat here because I put a link to a pdf this is a proof um so it's watermark so you don't share this with anyone but just yeah you can kind of get a look at at what this is going to look like see i worked really hard on all the the layout and uh you know was picking what images would go in there so we see this first one uh is uh you know kind of giving there's a little bit of a focus on each of us and so this first one is just kind of giving, there's a little bit of a focus on each of us. And so this first one is just kind of giving

some backstory on Matt and his taste as a gamer. And we see this picture of Matt getting into his car from a distance. Yeah, I've never even, I've never seen, I've never seen this photo and I've never even seen myself from like this angle before. It I've never even seen myself from like this angle before it looks like

it's being taken from like behind a tree is this there's some tree in it yeah this was when Matt this was when you were picking up your Kingdom Hearts 3 pre-order yeah and so it's like kind of like oh here's like a little this is this is what it's like when someone receives a you know it picks up a game

that this was you at GameStop and i thought that's like a really cool image uh there was over here here we got some more here um this is uh this is kind of a you know you can tell it's kind of late at night uh and this is uh heather uh entering her apartment again okay so yeah these are um pretty alarming photos nick i Nick. Did you take these photos? You took these? Yeah, you know, there's a bunch of credits for who took whatever photos that are in the back of the index. A bunch of credits? So you have multiple people taking photos of us?

A lot of them are me. A lot of them are you? Okay. They're mostly credited to me, know there's a few other stock images there's only one photo credit he's he has given himself a photo credit for each photo in the book so there is a list of photo credits but every one of these is copyright nick weiger so this is deeply upsetting okay 479 pages in this book what is the rest of this yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of photos here look it's not just photos okay if the photos are upsetting you there's some really

great art no i was gonna say yeah the the drawings are in a way more upsetting than the um than the pictures because of this is a crude sketch nick nick this is a crude sketch of me giving a blow job to foghorn leghorn the fuck does that have to do with the show did you draw this i mean i don't know i have to editorialize by calling it crude i think there's a lot of artistry involved here but photorealistic the content is crude first off yeah kudos to your ability to do this art but absolutely i do not endorse this nor want this published yeah and this is growing penis that's a that's a tough part to be looking at but um another deeply upsetting image in here is me standing next to pregnant waluigi implying that I fathered the son or the child of the pregnant Waluigi

and you look happy about it ecstatic I'm concerned I wish it would reflect how I feel right now which is deeply disturbed because the previous photo is a series of photos of the deed well look I guess we'll just I maybe won't even show you my

favorite photo in the whole thing just i i maybe won't even show you my favorite photo in the whole thing uh they just maybe i won't i don't want to if it's but i don't want to see it it's just it's it's the three of us and if you remember when we all got coffee when we were thinking of the original idea for the show like you know you know five something years ago at this point and we're all just kind of hanging out and having a great time and talking about our shared love of video games. And just kind of thought we'd capture the moment that was the start of it all,

and I thought it'd be a nice, like, little thing. We're all sucking off Foghorn Leghorn? Yeah, we're all sucking off Foghorn Leghorn! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! We reset our skill trees and add a subtitle as we discuss what makes a good video game sequel this week on 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.

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 if you're just joining us for the first time, here's the little onboarding we do. We used to be a podcast about shitty games, and then we became a podcast about shitty and weird games. Then we became a podcast where we talked about video games. And now we're a podcast where we don't talk about anything at all.

That's Get Played. Get ready for 90 minutes of white noise. Yeah. Help you go to sleep if your fan's not working. Nick, don't refer to yourself like that. That's terrible. Yeah, yeah. Oh, two-thirds white noise in the chat.

Let's say, you know, bring some melon into the stream. We have a very exciting guest that we're going to get to in one second. I do want to remind everyone that this month we are doing a We Play, You Play. That is a full episode dedicated to a single game. And that is coming out on Monday, February 26th.

We are finally going to dig into baldur's gate 3 uh so okay the biggest game i the most talked about game of 2023 we finally at the first part of 2024 are going to really dig into this bad boy uh and share all our thoughts at length that's so look forward to that where it seems like you know we're behind the curve on this but the truth is we wanted to give our listeners and ourselves time to really. I mean, you don't you don't assign a a war and peace read through and then the discussion of it the next day or a Brandon Sanderson read through and then discuss it the next day. Guys, you with me? You with me on the Sanderson reference? No, I'm gathering that these are books. I'm more that with the war and peace thing but i guess that's just me

he's he's a he's a writer more tolstoy guy uh you don't you don't assign a an atlas shrugged read through and then talk about it in an hour later okay i think just just so just like in case anybody's listening that maybe doesn't know books, maybe like something else, maybe like a different example. You don't assign a Killers of the Flower Moon. Atlas Shrugged is the one book you should read. Oh, no, I've read Atlas Shrugged. I'm just like, well, other books.

I'm kind of confused. Just kind of like this holistic life philosophy you'll kind of get from there. I mean, it's how I read it every morning, actually. I read a page from it every single morning. One page? Jesus. Yeah. It's because I've read it before.

It's like a thousand days of Atlas Shrugged, one page at a time. You're like, oh, man, look at this. I'm just constantly chewing on the, you know, on the machinations and the thoughts. You know, I'm just always thinking about it. It's another page of describing steel in a railroad no it's my that's my favorite stuff in it too uh we should introduce our guest a writer and host and author of the new book the art of psychonauts 2 ashley escada is back hi ashley thanks so much for being here it's me i'm i've returned yay uh it's been too long i love that it has been a long time

it has been too long i love that um when comparing lengths of things to boulders gate this video game podcast no one used a video game comparison right you know we don't that was the old version of the podcast where we talked about video games now we just talk about nothing i haven't been here since the pivot to talking about nothing i'm so sorry you want to just do a gentle hiss uh yeah perfect great love that for me ashley congrats so much on the book it's it's it's a it's rad that this thing exists it's rad that you made it i'm I mean, can you talk at all about how this came together? Yes, I I bullied John Gibson at IMAPIT into letting me write it. That's how it came together. Literally, I'm not this is not an exaggeration. I basically threatened him with our friendship. So he tweeted in like April of 2022. He's like, hey, journalists like I have

a project secret project that I'm like looking for someone to write. And I DM'd him and I was like, what's the project? And he goes, it's the Art of Psychonauts 2. And I wrote back to him and I said, if you don't let me write this book, I will never speak to you again. Like I will literally, I will never even be in the same room as you. We cannot be friends anymore. I will hate you until the end of time. You cannot possibly let someone else write this book.

I am a preeminent Psychonauts scholar. And I believe I got a Fulbright scholarship for Psychonauts at some point. Yeah, so I was like, you must let me write this book. And there is no other option. I'm telling you that right now. No one in this world could do this book justice better than me. And he said, OK, thank you. Like, thank you for your input. Like, I appreciate that. And he's like, let me just double check with with Double Fine. And so fortunately, they were excited about the prospect of me writing the book. And so a few hours fortunately, uh, they were excited about the prospect of me writing the book. And so a few hours later he was like, okay, like you're going to write the book. And

I cried for like two hours straight because I just was in a, I was in a bad place mentally, like at that time. And, um, and I, I was, uh, and so I just needed that W like so bad. And it was such a big win for me that I was so excited to be able to make this book. And it was really like a weirdly healing. Like, it's so funny. This game is about mental health and like generational trauma and like all these other things. But it was like a genuinely healing process for me as a creative to make it. And so being able to do it was like just one of the just one of the honestly, like as a Double Fine fan, as a Tim Schafer fan, as a Psychonauts fan, as a video game fan,

it's just one of the great like honors of my career to be able to do it. So I'm very glad that I am such an aggressive dick and may have literally strong armed him into letting me write this book. Well, it's so cool. And clearly, like, you're not the only person who's engaged and excited about this franchise, because as you were telling us, this is this podcast that you're on to promote this book. This book is sold out already. I know I felt like such a jerk. I was like, yeah, the map. Like, let's go.

Let's do the podcast. The book's out. And then literally the day we're recording this, like yesterday, it sold out. So sorry to everybody listening, looking to get a copy if you haven't bought one yet. But I promise there will hopefully be a restock at some point. It sounds like a situation for checking on StockX and seeing if you can get the book at a three or four hundred percent markup on the black market. I have some extra copies that I may put up on eBay just for some extra cash. Yeah, just to make the rest of the year look a little nice. Why not?

Yeah, I need some birthday money. So it seems like a good idea. I want to I want to step back for a second because, you know, Psychonauts 2 has obviously been out for a couple of years at this point. It was it was a super well received critically commercially and, you know, by Psychonauts 1 fans, which includes me, which includes you. And I'm curious, like, and maybe this is a weird this is a weird question. I'm thinking more mindset, but like going back to the game's release to when you're finally playing Psychonauts 2, like like was there a moment where you kind of had that feeling of like this is tangible, like this game that's been we've been waiting for for 16 years? Like I'm actually experiencing this, you know? Yeah, well, it was wild because I backed the game like at. Oh, right.

Of course. Yeah. Tim came out and announced that it was going to be a crowdfund. That was at the Game Awards in, I think, December of 2015. And so I had backed it, like, day one. Like, that night, I backed it. And so I... It really... They had gone through so much to make the game.

It was like, you know, if you've seen the Psychotasy documentary, the docuseries about the making of psychonauts 2 it's like this 22 hour magnum opus docu-series um shout out to the folks at two player productions like their in-house documentary team which are amazing they sifted through six years of interview or like interviews meetings like just so much footage to make this massive documentary about the making of a game and it's like you really kind of get a feeling for what they went through. And so to know that now, because that I think has been out for about a year. But to play it, to have it in your hands like that August that the 20, I think it was 2021.

It was really wild to sit down with it and say like, oh, my God god it's it has been 16 years since psychonauts and like it's just such a wild thing to hold this like fully you know this fully realized sequel in your hands that not only was not um you know i think a lot of people were scared that it wasn't going to be able to be as big as psychonauts or it wasn't going to be as you know oh this isn't going to be like a triple a platformerer because Double Fine is mostly like they're publishing now and it'll be a smaller game because it was crowdfunded and they had gone through some like funding issues and everything. And then Microsoft, that Microsoft acquire happened in, I think, 2019.

And so it's like, and then the pandemic happened. So everybody was working remote and it was just like, man, what's going on with psychonauts 2 so it's such a long time uh to get the game and so to yeah have it in your hands not only after 16 years between the first game and the second game but also six years of development time um is was was pretty wild like and and to have it be so good like it was you know because you you get scared when things are in development for so long. Right. Yes. Well, and also as a backer and as a fan, because, you know, there's certainly Heather's experience with Mighty No. 9, which was very much the opposite.

Oh, no. And so many crowdfunded games like have not. And even, you know, like even Broken Age, which is another Double Fine crowdfunded game, like, did not happen the way that people had thought. And I know that there was criticism about, like, oh, well, you've split the game into two parts. And, like, you know, the scope of the game changed based on how much they had crowdfunded. And so it was really, it really was, like, it was a gamble, like, for a lot of people who backed it. And so, you know, i was really happy to be part of the you know the backers i'm in the game like in the hall of brains for psychonauts 2 so you can

find me my cause of death is doom scrolling which still still applies today um so it's uh still applies today my cause of death will forever be doom scrolling in psychonauts 2 but um i'm a brain in a jar but yeah it's uh it was really wild to be able to kind of pick it up and be like, I can't believe I'm back in this universe again. Right. And kind of along those lines and also tying into the art of the game, which is what your book focused on, like the art direction, I'm sure must be such a challenge going from the PS2, Xbox generation and then jumping forward a decade and a half and three console generations and still retaining kind of like what everyone likes about its aesthetic.

Right. Like like Raz's head is like so like such a unique shape, you know, so identifiable in silhouette. And but it's it's it's not just like how you know how much detail do we add to the models it's also like the textures like you don't want the the skin or hair or clothing fibers to to to rub against what we and and i think the game just like really excels at pulling that off visually in a way that like ratchet and clank future another game that also does the same sort of thing it like it looks like a better i think maybe it's just a cleaner way to say all that rambling I just did is like, it looks like how you remember the original game. Yeah, so this is a really interesting thing that I learned while writing the book, which

is they actually have like a phrase for this. It's called Wonk. And so Scott Campbell, the original artist for the first game who designed, he's the character designer as well on this game, on Psychonauts 2. They brought him back. Scott Campbell kind of came up with this based on his art, had kind of come up with this idea. And they had to, for Psychonauts 2, they hired so many new people who hadn't worked on the first game. had to for Psychonauts 2 they hired so many new people who hadn't worked on the first game and it's like how do you kind of teach them how to do this kind of aesthetic um how do you define it and so they defined it and it's Psychonauts wonk is there are no perfect circles there are no

parallel lines and there are no right angles wow and so um and so this is like terribly fascinating to me that they had to sort of like really pare this down to like specific rules. And when you're a programmer used to making things symmetrical, when you're used to making them perfect, that's like a really hard habit to break. Right. And and so this is like a really, you know, Tim Schafer joked about like having to break people of that like wild horses when they originally came on to psychonauts, like for the first one. And so, um, so to have this kind of, uh, this sort of like guideline on how to, how to create things. And, and interestingly, like visually in the real world location. So you have like the mother lobe or the quarry or the questionable area, um, or the old colony in Psychonauts 2, the wonk is more subtle. But then when you get into the mental worlds, the team is, like, encouraged to push the art style even farther so it looks more dreamlike.

And so that was also another thing that was really interesting to, like, be able to see how they did that. And if you look at, like furniture and the mother lobe, it's very mid-century modern. It's like, you know, it's this really cool sort of retro futurism type of aesthetic. And then you get into like the mental worlds

and like that same type of furniture, like a bookcase would be so much more, you know, pronounced. The wonk would be more pronounced. So it's really interesting. Like the Psychonauts wonk is a real thing. so it's really interesting like the the psychonauts wonk is a real thing and it's like you you sort of encapsulated this idea of it being like very unique to the game and also um a thing that i would argue defines it in a lot of ways um and

so to be able to kind of dig into that and sort of see um the evolution of it like for everything like every aspect of the game was like really fascinating. It's also it's also an aesthetic I think that harkens to a time before visual flattening like all of the stuff that has happened in design in the last 16 years has been to remove the personality and presence in art direction and to make it this sort of uniform icon experience. And it feels like playing Psychonauts 2 feels like, oh, it feels like an old way of looking at stuff

and an older way, like Coraline or, you know, like all of that, the stuff that came out in that generation of of work that is now like, oh, we want our UI to be perfect and everything to look like matter. Is that what it is? That the Google stuff is like matter. I don't remember. Yeah, I think so. But it's yeah, you're you're you're right. Like this sort of what's the word they use to describe like when in iOS where they used to have notes in it? Skeuomorphism?

Skeuomorphism, where it's like things look real, things look textured, things look. This game is so bespoke. Yeah. Yes. Like I think that to me is like the thing that makes it so visually interesting is everything. that makes it so visually interesting is everything. One of the lead programmers on the game told me one of the things that is so interesting about psychonauts from a programming standpoint is everyone has a unique skeleton.

So like in like a God of war, like everyone's the humans all have human skeletons. And then you just like, you model over the top of them. You can never confuse a Ford crroller skeleton with, like, a Raz skeleton. Right, sure, yeah. Like, they're all different. Everybody has a different skeleton.

And every mental world is bespoke. Everything is bespoke. There's a mountain of concept art for this game. And because everything is just, like, nothing is really recycled. Because even the sensors your enemies even in different levels they look different like they're presented differently they're in different costumes like it's just you know like in in compton's cook-off some of the sensors are in like little sequined gold jackets like it's just like such a bizarre but it's very

bespoke like everything is looks handcrafted. It has that feeling of being, like, made or handcrafted in a way that, like, we don't. You're right, like, Heather, we don't really see that a lot now. There's a level of, like, polish that is not, or I guess it's, like, to me, it's, like, visually, it's, like, I imagine it's the difference between going to, like, Kim Kardashian's house, where it's just, like me it's like visually it's like i imagine it's the difference between going to like kim kardashian's house where it's just like everything's white and flat and there's like it's very minimalist and that's the trend right now versus going to like rupaul's house which is like just full of color and texture and and maximalism and it's just like it's that sort of bespoke maximalism that really gives the house its personality and as opposed to a blank space that allows people to project their personality

into it and so this game is like very confident in what it is i think i heard a theory about minimalism and millennials which was that the reason the aesthetic took off was because it was a response to chaos and advertising that we are so bombarded by aggressive visual information in our our community spaces. And so we wanted to strip out color and information in our private spaces because we were so overwhelmed by it in public. And that now the scale is tipping back towards these, like bookshelf wealth is like the new curated format on TikTok and is being brought up in the New York Times. And it's a response to millennial minimalism uh bookshelf wealth is like uh imagine living in a cluttered a slightly cluttered attic uh but but where paintings are like leaning up against things and there's a bunch of like bits in your space like yarn statues and books and plants and like this, the return of, yeah, all of

us to some degree are not. We've been living that life. We've been living that life. But really, I'm just a hoarder. Just surrounded by stuff I can't afford to have or throw away. There's bookshelf wealth and then there's like, there's like bookshelf wealth and then there's like hoarder poor, which is what I have. So it's like that's my aesthetic.

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We've done the math. Factor is less expensive than takeout, and every meal is dietitian-approved to be nutritious and delicious. What are you waiting for? Head to factormeals.com slash getplayed50 and use code getplayed50 to get 50% off. That's code getplayed50 at factormeals.com slash getplayed50 to get 50% off. I think there's also something to, in this era, like the still the early 3D era of you know gaming um when there were only so many polygons to work with uh and render the game in a playable state it's like you had like character

designs like i know rayman comes from 2d but like you know like rayman in 3d or like banjo kazooie or like raz or like you know things that kind of were like, how do we add, have some sense of style within our limitations? And then I think like as the technology improves, we got more and more of like representations of just like visual reality. Like that became the goal of like trying to present human beings in real environments.

But I think now there's like a desire for something like Psychonauts 2. They're like, wait, this has an aesthetic. This has a style. This looks distinct. This looks unique. And I think that's a big reason why people responded so positively to this game and are so excited for the book.

Yeah, I mean, I think that aesthetic, it's really interesting. Like Tim, I guess, had gone to an art show of Scott's and was just like, you know, was so enraptured by his art and found it to be so interesting that he was like, you know, have you ever like made a game before? No, like, but it was just like he really wanted that art style. Yeah. Like it was just so interesting. And he's like, well, how do we translate this to a game? to a game and so um i mean kudos to scott campbell for being able to like create these really iconic kind of characters and like these looks and i mean the book is like full of it's like amazing this book is so full of scott's character orthos and like how many times characters changed and

like the the visuals of like what that looks like i mean i people, some people listening are not gonna be able to see it, but it's like these characters just changed and changed and changed. Yeah, you're holding a bunch of just sketches of character designs through various iterations. Just so many iterations. I mean, like I just, the Maligula, the main villain of the game is like,

I think he had something like 40 different sketch, like pages of it, where it's just five or six different versions of the character on each page. So it's just an insane amount of art. And that's one person doing character designs, not counting the people doing color work and the people doing 3D modeling, the people doing texturing, the people doing the environment art. It's just really an incredible...

Double Fine's concept art team is really spectacular the people doing the environment art, the, you know, it's just really an incredible double fines. Concept art team is really spectacular in a way that is, um, just really impressive. And, and it was the, the gravity of how it was very important to me. This letter,

this book is my love letter to them. I didn't want to cut anything. And if it was, it'd be a 600 page book. Um, but it, but it's 400 pages. Uh,'s they are so prolific and they make so many beautiful, weird little doodles and sketches. And I didn't want to lose any of that in favor of only showing the finished product, which like a lot of art books do. It's like very kind of sterile. You have like a white background with like a finished piece piece of art and then you talk about it a little bit and then it's like next page um i wanted this book to feel like it came from the game and so everything was bespoke everything was you know i handpicked

every piece of art in this book uh which took a very that's so interesting that's like that's so cool like i'm really interested in in in that aspect of it so like you're going through everything that they have basically their archive of the art and stuff and like are they is double fine being like say like this or like are you just like given free reign to say whatever you want about like any of it i can't believe how much freedom i had making this book wow um literally like so the process was originally i got like an 80 gigabyte file, and it was like, here's the art that we, here's the art that we, IMAPIC gave that to me.

They were like, this is what we got from Double Fine, so, like, look through it, let us know, like, what is good. Isn't the game smaller than 80 gigs? I know. Exactly so. Yes. That's so many pages like that's that's like uh it's a lot an empire state building's worth of sheets of paper it is a lot of art and so i went through it though and like

it was like pretty like organized it was organized well enough but it wasn't like perfectly organized there was definitely like one artist in particular i'm actually just gonna call him out bagel you know who you are uh he literally just had a folder that just said bagel art it was literally everything he had ever made a double fine for like 20 years and some of them were like untitled.psd untitled one.psd i had to go through every single one of these and figure out what they were, if they were even from Psychonauts 2. Like, it was, that was crazy. That's so funny. He was 40 gigabytes.

No, I'm just kidding. Bagel's 40 gigs, I'm at 80 gigs. But I looked through everything and I was like, there's a lot of stuff missing here. Like, I don't see things that I know exist because I follow Scott Campbell on Instagram. Like, I know he has concept art of Raz from Psychonauts 2 and his outfit change because it's on his highlights. And so I reached out to Double Fine and I was like, hey, I'd see some stuff that's not here. And some of the levels only have like, you know, a handful of pieces of concept art.

Is there anything else that I need to be aware of? And they're like, oh, let us give you access to our digital asset library. And so I got access to that. And that was like, I saw some more stuff in there and I'm like, this is great. But I still, because they had just started using this like platform, there wasn't everything.

And I'm like, okay, and COVID and remote work and everybody's like moving files everywhere. Some people have stuff on hard drives. So that was like a process to kind of track down stuff. And then I reached out to Spaff, who is their director of comms. And I'm like, hey, so like, OK, I've looked through all this stuff. I've spent like a month organizing these files in like a recognizable file structure. Learn file structures, kids. You never know when it'll come in handy. And learn how to make an organized file structure on your computers. And so he was like, oh, you know, I think the easiest thing would be to just give you access to our forum. And he gave me access to this like private forum that the team had used for Psychonauts 2 specifically. And I logged in and had to walk away from my desk in like a catatonic state because there was so 80 gigabytes of art.

Like there was so much more art on that forum it was every asset that had been used in the game effectively from the evolution of it in a single thread from start to finish and so wild i was like i am gonna spend the rest of my life organizing these files i had to like center click on them open them full size right click on them save save them, like individually label them. And it was just it was a mountain. It was literally that scene where like Goofy opens up the closet and all of the stuff falls on him. It was that like I was just like, oh, no, this is very daunting. Like this is probably five times the amount of stuff that I had before in the 80 gigabyte

file. OK. And so. Sound like 400 gigs. It sounds like it's it's a huge i'm actually super curious i wonder how big that folder is i should probably figure it out i should go find out how big that folder is now for after saving everything but i had to literally spend then i was like okay like now i gotta like figure out what chapters i want in the book obviously each level has to

have its own chapter if i give 10 pages to each level that's 100 pages of the book and originally this book was only supposed to be like 150 to 250 pages and as soon as i logged into that forum i'm like hey guys this book's gonna be bigger than 250 pages like i can't there's just no way like it's just not that's not possible it was a lot of and they said nobody told me anything by the way nobody said no we don't want that piece of art in there. I don't want that. Like it was, I had carte blanche. This is literally a book that was made like with very little input from anybody else. I got feedback on like some of the text where it was like, oh, hey, this is actually incorrect.

Or, you know, correct this. Corrections. But like no editing, like major edits from anybody where i was like no this doesn't i don't like this piece of art like everybody's just like books beautiful we love it it's great thank you like wow that's amazing big stamps walking around yeah yeah it was wild like that process was crazy and i sat every day with um lost in cult designed this and there's one woman in particular. Her name's Eliza.

I have to shout her out because she is literally an angel that walks among us. This woman logged in every day from the UK at the end of her business day at Lost in Cult to sit with me on Zoom for four to five hours every day laying out art for this book. She would show me the layout and we, I would be like, we, we have to move this. This doesn't belong here. Uh, this is the wrong section or like, can we change the background color here? Can we add this? And literally like we did this

for months, like months for a 400 page book. It was, it was, it, this book is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I have ADHD. A sustained project like this is like impossible for me to even think about finishing. And the fact that I actually finished it is like maybe a miracle. It's so, it's so amazing. I'm just like stunned hearing all this, like just like,

obviously you hear so much about like the, the passion that it takes to like make like a video game at all. In particular, a video game like Psychonauts, like the passion that Double Fine has for making the things that it takes to like make like a video game at all in particular a video game like psychonauts like the passion that double fine has for making the things that they make but then that passion extends to that passion is like met by the fans of their things and they have that same passion so like to hear you a fan of this work get to express that passion in a 400 page book to have other passionate fans buy like like get it and look at it also and then see like the thing that they already love it rocks like the all top to bottom this is really amazing and i know that you probably

already do feel really proud of it uh you should be so proud of this is fucking incredible it's so so cool i am very proud of it and also if if there was any game that like it's very appropriate that the game that this book was was psychonauts 2 because i i now feel like i am so obsessed with it that i belong in a mental institution so i think that there were times where i was like i think i this book's actually gonna drive me crazy i cried a lot about it sure but i i did it but damn it i did it and it's and it's it really is the it's the book i would want to see in the world as a fan right like this is the book i would have wanted as a backer getting an art book this is the one i wanted so I made the book that I thought I would want to see um as a fan so and I think that that's why it's so that's why it's so special is is there anything else in your

life that you are this passionate a fan of that you would be like you would be like I like you know wipe your brow take a break and then dive in is there anything else that that comes close to your passion for psychonauts too that you'd be like ah okay i guess i could do the art book for that also oh final fantasy 7 easy answer easy answer you've got an eric uh this is an old school eric yeah she's she's old school. She's the old school one. Yeah, I've had that. My husband got that for me when we first started dating. And that's why I was like, oh, I'm going to marry you.

You bought me an Aerith statue. Speaking of what's in your backsplash, it looks like you got a Manny Calavera coffee mug. I do. Another Tim Schafer game, Grim Fandango, that I love. I made Tim tell me where he got this mug from so i could have somebody make it for me um it's a it's a handmade ceramic mug that is uh it's very cool i had to stop using it if it's it is no longer in use because i'm scared it's gonna crack like while being washed or something so i just i've left it alone i'm

realizing other people have already made this observation but like from an even earlier era in 3d where again it was like with the limitations of the of what they could do as models just like oh we'll do a game based around skeletons like these skeletal figures and like the the art direction you know it it looks fantastic so simple so elegant it works it works um well congrats again on the book psychonauts 2, by the way, on PC is 30.24 gigs on disk. So yes, you received obviously some assets are comprised, but you got a little bit more than the game itself. We have to talk about some other video games, but I do want to ask you about something completely

off topic, which is that there was a news event that happened. I was like, wait, I think I know what this is. At Disneyland's It's a Small World After All all there was a streaker and you were a firsthand witness yes i was uh i was a victim of the small world streaker um yeah that that was wild uh i've been going to disneyland pretty regularly my entire life since i was like two i like live very close to the parks uh we've had annual passes forever so my mom and my son and i were riding small world oh no and we were like this i'm gonna use like world location we were riding through like south america okay yes and both of us noticed like this guy walking outside of the

ride like in the like uh not the canal part he wasn't in the water he was ride, like in the, like, not the canal part. He wasn't in the water. He was in the, like in the ride part. And we were just like, I kind of looked at him and he walked past us going the opposite direction. And I looked at my mom and we both kind of like, she kind of shrugged at me.

She's like, I don't know. And we thought maybe it was like a maintenance guy. Cause he was wearing a, like a black sweater or a shirt and then like maroon pants. And we were just like, I'm i like did i see i felt like i was going crazy because i'm i don't think i saw a name tag but maybe i missed it like maybe i just was so like taken out of the illusion of small world that like it it was not a thing and so then as we were in the final room uh very close to the exit tunnel we the bride stops

and i looked at my mom immediately and i'm like that guy wasn't supposed to be off the boat like he got out like that guy got out and so we couldn't we were just like oh man like somebody got out and i was like i want and then someone else behind us was like well how long do you think it'll be and i'm like well here's the thing like they have to sweep the whole they have to find him number one and then they have to sweep the whole ride to make sure he doesn't have like friends and this is like a huge ride building like he could be hiding right so then my sister-in-law was outside the ride. She happened to be at Disneyland that day. And she was meeting up with us at Small World at the exit.

And she's like, oh, they just cleared the line out. And I was like, oh, wow. Like I said, oh, there's somebody off the boat. Like somebody got out. I was like, so I assume that's why. She's like, oh, okay. And then I got a picture from her. And it is literally a naked man, just full naked in front of the clock tower, like underneath it.

And she's like, I think I see the problem. And I immediately started scream laughing inside the ride. Yeah. I was like, no! My mom was like, what's going on? She's like, oh, my God. And so I showed her. And of course, my son is four years old. He's like, Mama, I want to see.

And I'm like, nope. Yeah. So I'm showing the people behind me in the ride. We were just howling. I started screaming, it's a streaker at the top of my lungs. And everyone in the boats around us like turned around to look at me i was going absolutely ballistic like this was like brought me so much joy you guys it just feels like the type of thing that because obviously like they're

like everything at disneyland's like pretty buttoned up and like yes they take care of things like that like they take care of like issues pretty quickly so like the fact that that happened and that there was already a photo of it i would be it would it would make my entire life to have seen part of it at all like in in uh you know same in real life yeah and so i immediately tweeted it out and i because i was just like everyone needs to know about this right now like i can't i can't live without sharing this. And the whole time, like, the music was playing. Like, the dolls were moving, the music was playing, and it was the Christmas-themed one. Horrific.

It was my own personal Five Nights at Freddy's. But the real fear came when about 15 minutes had passed. By the way, if you want to know when they shut the music off for a ride when it's broken down, it's 15 minutes because we found that out. It's about 15 minutes. They shut the music off. But another fun fact, they can't turn the dolls off in the ride. They are on even when the park is closed at night. Those dolls are moving.

Wow. Wow. To prevent rust. Oh. So those dolls are all just like clicky clacking and singing absolutely nothing. The horrors of probably 500 small animatronic children clicking at you was very unnerving and very funny but so funny oh my god so sure

and um just like i said it just brought the whole thing was just like so crazy and i was just living for it the drop you never see drama at disneyland like that and i was just like i can't believe this is actually happening to me like to us we are we're not just bystander like it's it is happening and then we actually had a neighbor my literal next door neighbor happened to also be on it's a small world when it happened whoa and and happened to be at the park the same time like it was so weird and um and she they were like yeah we saw him starting to take his clothes off like a few boats back is like when he, I guess, started like taking his clothes off. And then he was like walking around in his boxers in at the Taj Mahal.

Yeah. And he like sat in the he sullied the fake waters of the Taj Mahal. He he assaulted the children. He was grabbing their heads and like moving, you know, moving a little clicky doll heads. children he was grabbing their heads and like moving you know moving a little clicky doll heads and then he just like went full naked and swam out uh from the entrance of the ride he like got in the water and got out and my sister-in-law described it as she's like yeah we're all just standing here and then all of a sudden like a ton of security people just like descended upon the ride and then the cast members just started telling

people to get back get back get back she's like we didn't know what was going on but they really did not want us to see what was happening yeah and then he she goes and then all of a sudden like swamp thing he just like emerged from the water and he just looked so out of it like yeah clearly he was going either going through something or go or on something yeah um i i like to think he was on like acid and just really needed to feel uh it's a small world but yeah like the water must have been really cold so um it was in fact a very small world um but yeah he he yeah so he got out and then they tackled him they wrapped him up in a blanket like yeah carted him off like they hog tied him and like carried him over to the to the gates but yeah that was wild we were stuck in the ride for like 40 minutes and of course the time, the second the ride stops, my son turns to me and he's like,

Mama, I got to poop. And I was like, buddy, as soon as I saw the picture of the naked guy, I was like, buddy, we're going to be here for a while. I will buy you the world's largest Disneyland lollipop if you could just hold it until we're out of here. That'd be so great. And he's like, okay.

And he did hold it and he did get a giant lollipop. So kudos to my four-year-old for... No, it's good that he didn't see the naked guy because then he would just's like, okay, and he did hold it and he did get a giant lollipop. So kudos to my four-year-old for... No, it's good that he didn't see the naked guy because then he would just be like, well, I guess rules don't exist anymore. I'm shitting here. Yeah, well, he asked, he was like, he's very, like, he's very talk, he's very loquacious. So he's like, why are we stopped? And I was like, well, some bozo, some bonehead took all his clothes off in the ride. He broke the rules.

And my kid just thought that was the funniest thing he's laughing he's like what a bozo like why would you do that i was just like man i don't know you got a lot of the same questions i do kid i don't have any answers for you yeah it's like the first time you see somebody run a red light when you're a child and you're like wait nothing nothing happened the the concept is that's all that's keeping things in place like somebody can take off their clothes and it's a small one can just break the rules my kid yells at me when i go over the speed limit because my my i have a tesla and it shows you what the speed limit is and then your speed is right next to it he's like mama you are speeding and

i'm like my buddy i live in la when i can i will like just leave me alone i got the need baby i remember crying uh in our car in our family car when i was six because my dad was drinking a diet pepsi while he was driving and I thought he was drinking and driving. Oh, that's amazing. Oh my God. Fucking idiot. That's so sweet. I love that so much.

Oh my God, it's adorable. Meanwhile, my dad had a radar detector when I was growing up and explained to me the minimal amount of speeding that you, the minimal amount of speeding that you, the maximum amount of speeding that you could do that would minimize your likelihood of getting a,

a speeding ticket and also how you always wanted to find a lead car so that somebody else was getting caught in the traps. So you kept a certain distance from somebody who was your lead car. And I was like, Oh, okay and my dad yeah my dad instructed me i'm rule breaking which has had no effect on me as an adult have you gotten any speeding tickets none huh i have there you go mission accomplished there you go yeah i've never gotten a speeding mission accomplished it has had an effect on you holy shit i've never gotten a speeding ticket either but it's because i followed the rule yeah what's up no drinking and driving for you yeah he says visually Visually sweating. The driest mouth behind the road, yeah.

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the resident evil merchant i'm asking you the question. Nick Weiger, what are you playing? I'm glad you kept it tight there. I was really kind of embarrassed on our behalf that you're going to show up in front of our guest. I wasn't quite sure what you were going to do. So thank you for just getting right to the point there. I can answer this question. No, it's actually the opposite.

It was a prompt. It was like, I was just expressing gratitude. You didn't need to fill time? Is that what you're asking? No. No, we're good on time. All right, well, what if I talked about a game show idea I had? Is that what you're looking for?

It's really not at all. I mean, I guess you could, at this point now, I'm just curious, like, grimly curious. It's called How Much Would It Take now I'm just curious like grimly curious it's called how much would it take I'm horrified already just sounding dystopian that sounds bad I thought there was going to be more I thought there would be more to that sentence what you do is you present

somebody with it's like okay you got this stranger and then you've got like a board of categories okay so like like you one of the categories is spaghetti one of the categories is uh books one of the category name a category uh history history right and so it's like how much how much what pickles pickles great pickles is perfect i'm just seeing what could be a category i guess it could be anything they're either subjects or food stuff how much would it take so so like it's like you got this guy and it's like okay how many pickles would it for you to kill this man oh yeah yeah no that's this is a bad game because i don't know one the

answer the answer is there's a limit yeah we'd have to get there though and that's tough that's a lot there are there that i mean for me i can say just that part of the flaw of this game if i was a contestant i would just say the number of pickles on this earth are not enough pickles for me to take yeah but you named history so for you it would be like how many places in history would you get to experience firsthand in exchange for this man's life oh so they're all for to kill a man individualized a little more abstract but How much would it take? Well, Nick was already at January 6th, so that sort of does...

limit the... Yeah, but so... So the answer for him is one. The answer for him is one event. He just wants to relive that one over and over. Yeah, I want to be there again, baby. Anyway, is that enough time? Did I fill for you?

Yeah, that was good. Yeah, no, that was great. You did that in a minute. What are you playing? I'll answer real quick, which is that last week we talked about Pal World, and we were talking survival games generally. Oh, no, Nick, no. Are you still stuck in Pal World?

Not Pikachu? No, I escaped from pal world okay i i have uninstalled uh i've uninstalled pal world um i freed up some space on my hard drive because i have booted up the epic game store and i played some lego fortnight which is you were both kind of evangelizing this game, thinking it would be for me, even though like regular Fortnite, I'm not as much of a Battle Royale sort of gamer, but this sort of, you know,

the survival games are for me. And I will say that Legos of Fortnite is a very satisfying and polished execution of the survival game formula. The aesthetic is gorgeous. I mean, it just looks, it just looks so great. You know, I got this widescreen monitor. It's running at this super high frame rate because it's one of those things where it's just got an incredible art direction but it's not like enormously technically taxing on

my video card and they they do a thing where the where the player character and npcs your allies like all animate very smoothly uh but the enemies seem to be animating like in fours, like they're very like, you know, it, it looks like the Lego movie. It's really stylized. Uh, and I don't know that, that all, all sits in really well. Um, there's a thing they have for building structures, which is blueprints, which let you kind of go through step through, uh, like you're doing a Lego kit, like you're following all the steps in terms of actually constructing it step by step. And that's really satisfying.

And that feels really like unique to this specific execution, the survival formula, and also just, you know, ties in with the IP. So yeah, I thought it was super duper fun. Now look, I gotta be careful with these sorts of games because I'll just play them endlessly. And I got things to do, like my second playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3.

But I but I am I do absolutely see the appeal of this in the same way I saw the appeal of Power World and just overall kind of impressed by the by the design in the presentation. So that's my answer. Lego Fortnite. Can I can I show a thing to camera that happened because sort of indirectly, but also directly because of LEGO Fortnite? Heather just stepped away. We didn't even answer.

I'm waiting for her to show up in one of your frames, and it's like running at the top speed. And all of a sudden she just shows up in Nick's shot. Whoa! Wow. I built the Lego museum. Look at that. And it's huge.

Gorgeous. And it's inside. It's because you can take, because Lego, I don't know how much you guys are into Legos, but I built this. I used to be very into it.

I built this with my mom when she was in town and it's enormous. It's so big and each room is detailed. And each room has exhibits in it. And you can take the... I'm terrified to put it down and it will fall apart.

But you can take the... It unsnaps itself so that you can examine each floor. Right? Oh. So this is just the top floor, which you can... Hold on. I got to put it down without breaking anything. And then you can see all of the exhibits on the inside.

Wow. So there's like a dinosaur skeleton. There's like an art room, a gift shop, et cetera. But like a straight up Brontosaurus Lego skeleton. That's impressive. Hidden inside of the museum. Lego skeleton. That's impressive. Hidden inside of the museum. So I would say that Lego Fortnite reignited my passion for actual tangible Legos. How many, do you know roughly how many pieces that is and how long did it take you to assemble

with your mom? I have no idea how many pieces it is. It was a pretty large kit. I also have Titanic waiting for me, but I have nowhere to put Titanic because Lego Titanic is their biggest kit and it is, I don't have a shelf that would allow me to put Titanic somewhere. I would say this took about a week,

but I also didn't, I wasn't doing it every day. I looked it up. This is the Lego Natural History Museum. It is a 4000 piece. Wow. There you go. The big boy.

How many pieces is Titanic out of curiosity? Let me look it up. Are you actually were you ever into Legos? Are you into Legos? Nope. That answers that. are you Ashley were you ever into Legos are you into Legos ADHD can't do it I have a half finished Lego set I literally have a Lego set

a friend of mine bought for the glorious and indomitable Michael J Hobbs which Heather knows bought me a Lego set of really cool like and indomitable Michael J. Hobbs, which Heather knows, bought me a Lego set of really cool, like... Guys, this is embarrassing. It's literally like Lego posters.

They are mostly flat. And there's four of them. And I cannot even open the box. Like, it's just so bad. I'm so bad about Legos. I want to be into Legos. I'm a person who sees it and I'm like, man, that looks really cool. And I would be super into that.

But then it's like I open the box and then I just get distracted by something. And I'm just like six months later, I'm like, oh, yeah, those Legos. I lost like five pieces and I'll never finish it now. It's terrible. It's terrible. Well, then the Lego Titanic is not for you because it is 9 000 pieces 9 000 that's twice as many and so is it the whole boat or is it like it's the whole boat the whole it looks like the whole boat and it also snaps in half and you can sink it yeah that's really great it was partially it does snap in

half and you can see all of the floors and the like the boiler room and stuff a foggy window in a little carriage perhaps as well yeah with a hand print on it yeah uh anyway that's what i've been playing uh matt what are you playing i'll go fast too because I'm still playing Final Fantasy VII Remake. Actually, I had only completed the original Final Fantasy VII very recently. And so in anticipation of Rebirth coming out later this month. And so I was going to play Remake, decided to do original. And I know I said this before.

As a fan of Final Fantasy VII, heather is as ashley uh is it's great that you went to this game and played it now like you went back to final fantasy 7 a game that you were too young for at the time that you returned to this game with an open mind and played through it in 2024 2023 that's great i i really loved it um you know i did play with the modern like exploits turned on it made it enjoyable to me because i i like if i get annoyed by like random encounters i will just stop i just will stop playing yeah um but i was enjoying i was enjoying that uh enjoyed that but i'm now i have a i have a i don't i've not really been paying attention to rebirth like uh the trailers or anything like that there was a just yesterday

there was a state of play that i guess spoiled very spoilery very don't watch and so i'm not so i'm not done with remake i'm at the part where... I know Cloud's getting close to putting on his beautiful dress. And I'm so excited to see that. I'm excited for you to see that. I'm excited to see Cloud look gorgeous. But that's where I'm at in the game. I am going to finish it before Rebirth comes out. I've pre-ordered it already.

I'm very excited. I've also installed the demo that was released just in case I do finish it with enough lead time to mess around with it a little bit. There was a part in the remake that I'll shout out where you have to go to

this massage lady and I paid for the expensive massage naturally sure and like I was like is Cloud gonna nut like he was like

so like damn it he was so like she was all touching his hands and stuff and he was he was making some he was making some his hands and stuff And he was making some He was making some noises And so That's what I've been playing

I was kind of surprised Everyone loves a good massage That's also the only part of that game I enjoy I was just surprised How many massages Heather would it take Oh no I'm the Resident Evil merchant Oh sorry yeah yeah Resident Evil merchant How many massages, Heather, would it take? Oh, no, I'm the Resident Evil merchant. Oh, sorry, yeah, yeah, Resident Evil merchant. How many massages?

To kill a man? Every time I get a massage, I hope they kill me. Is there like a... I mean, okay, that's a tough question, because I want everyone to know they're valued. Like, I don't want a guy to hear right before he gets shot in the head, zero massages. Like, I don't want, like, that would suck. Well, because the massages isn't going to kill him.

It's going to be the gun to the head. So I would set it at 10, you know, so that he knew his own value. Sure. Solid 10. And then afterwards you're, so that he knew his own value. Sure. Solid 10. And then afterwards you're like, no, that was my reward. Yeah, privately it would be, you know, one, maybe two is all it would take. Hey, Matt. Ashley is a fan of.

What? I was just going to ask her. I'll follow up real quick. As a fan of Final Fantasy 7, the original, how did you react to remake? I love it. I really like, I like that it's different. I like that they have done something a little bit different. I have so many therapy appointments scheduled in March because of Rebirth.

I was, I like, honestly, like the emotional try was a very impressionable 16 year old when that game came out and i played it and i literally cried so hard for like days like i was i was despondent um after eric died and um and so i am not ready for that in high fidelity. Like I hope, it's like, it's weird because it's like, if they don't do it, then it's like, then you've kind of, you kind of erase, you kind of retcon what came before it is such a cultural zeitgeist at the time. Like, I don't know that you can,

they are in such a hard position. And it's just like, I know that they're just telling the story that they want to tell this time around. And I'm super excited for it. And I'm glad that they're just telling the story that they want to tell this time around and i i'm super excited for it and i'm glad that they're they feel really confident about it um because like hamaguchi-san and katase-san and nomura-san even like talking them talking about the game like amps me up and um and it makes me excited to see like what they built um but yeah i just like there's some emotional beats in that game like that is a definitive like final fan that's a definitive beats in that game. Like that is a definitive like Final Fantasy.

That's a definitive moment in gaming for me. Like just Final Fantasy 7. I played like 132 hours of an entire PlayStation 1 memory card dedicated to only Final Fantasy saves. And so, yeah, like I very much I'm like I'm not my my heart is not prepared for Rebirth, but I really liked Remake and I thought it was awesome that they blew it out into like a big, you know, standalone game in Midgar

and then now they're going to have this new thing and then they're going to have a part three. It's like, what an embarrassment of riches. We're all so fortunate to be able to like have this thing. Like it's so cool that we get to have this thing. I have a theory

that a party member is going to die and it won't be eric i do i i'm wondering if that's the case too i'm wondering if they're gonna pull it like if it's gonna be like tifa like or i mean which people would riot like i know some people who take tifa very seriously like who would be very upset but i, okay, well now you get to experience the pain that I felt in 1997. But then who's going to do the pull-up contest? What if, what if, because they've made such a meal of the, I spent too much time doing the pull-up contest.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most logged hours in the entire game in the pull-up contest. That's his own trophy. Yeah. As opposed to the, the the the massage contest yeah that's matt's matt's trophy look i haven't left the parlor

what if they because they've made such a meal of the like bond that like party bombs what if you effectively choose i'm very? I'm very curious about that too. That would be so fascinating. I mean, the narrative structure of that, I don't know how you build off from that. Like when you do the third game, like how do you, because you'd have to effectively make a story

that changes depending on each party character. But if it was even just the choice between like one to three characters that would be terribly fascinating um but yeah i don't i i don't know i feel like i don't know man it's like i love eric but i also feel like she kind of has to die to serve the story yeah she's the last one she's the last of the it's like so yeah i don't know i'm i'm i'm not ready i ready i'm gonna cry so hard it's gonna be so hard for me like this game is real close to the like it's really deep in there like it's just it's man yeah like i said i final fantasy 7 is like my favorite probably one of my favorite games

of all time so uh that moment when i played it back in the day on playstation one i i just heard that and another final fantasy final fantasy 3 slash 6 on super nintendo both had moments where my reaction was less like uh emotional as as may surprise some people uh but was more like just like i can't believe that a game could do that same like when they get to the world world of ruin in final fantasy 6 i just like like yeah what i have not seen this anywhere not just any game in any piece of media it really defined for me like i played a lot of video games as a kid but then like that final fantasy 7 to me like for me was the game that was like showed me what games could be like and and and what they could do with like storytelling like and it just

it really like changed me and like cemented my love for the entire industry of games like just games in general as an art form like that was the game that was like this game changed me fundamentally and like made me really believe in the power of storytelling through games like that was like such a big deal for me. What if they just blow it with Rebirth? It just sucks. They rise of Skywalker it and we're like, no, no, no. Somehow.

Somehow Aerith has survived. She survived. Since I brought something on the camera for Nick's thing, I'll bring something on a camera for this yay they're stepping away again she brings eric into frame and kills her and just yeah right now just so heartbreaking so sad well as you guys know um as you guys know uh there was you know i was doing chemotherapy and so there was a huge huge likelihood that I was going to lose all my hair. And I did a freezing cap treatment to mitigate that. And I was very, very, very, very fucking lucky because it worked 100 percent for me, which was.

That's amazing. I mean, they didn't give me a hope of that happening. And so I've been really grateful for that. a hope of that happening. And so I've been really grateful for that. But at the beginning of treatment, they were like, so you might want to consider some wig options or hats or whatever. And I was like, well, I'm not going to fucking just wear a wig. Like I'm there's no way I'm going to go to work in a regular wig. So I got a cloud. Oh, my God. So I got a cloud wig so i got a a cloud oh my god so i got a cloud wig uh which is like just a perfect uh that's literally the greatest thing i've ever seen in my life a perfect a perfect cloud wig that's incredible uh and the and i communicated with the um. I was like, look, because they were like, you know, what event do you need it by?

And I was like, well, I'm not going to be cosplaying. I'm not going to a convention. And I explained everything. And they were like, oh, girl, we've got you. We've got you. We will have this ready for you by midway through your treatment. So I now have this perfect cloud wig and I have to figure out where and when to wear it.

But I think all my answer is all just whenever you want. I think that's the time. I think there was a world where you put that on, showed up to a recording, didn't say anything about it. And then Nick and I don't say anything about it and then nick and i don't say anything about it cool just like cool cool hair we would take it in stride feels normal it was like editing um ashley what are you playing these days oh man um well foam stars just came out on ps plus and that's really fun uh it's it's really fun actually um as a person who used to

do splatoon casting and like played a lot of that game, I know there was a lot of like, oh, it's Splatoon. It really isn't. It's so different. And it's so cool. And it's so, I don't know. It's just a really fun game. So if you have PS Plus, it's worth a download.

And then I've also been picking my way through Alan Wake 2 again. Which, like, so I am my husband's personal twitch streamer like he doesn't actually play video like he doesn't play video games he just likes to watch me play them so he can see the story and uh and so i've been working my way through alan wake 2 again um so that he could see it uh but it's uh it's so god i really i mean what a game what a game yeah i'm obsessed with that game it's so good that's another i'd come back for it i do an art book for alan wake too oh man wow matt's the one of us who's who's played through alan wake too i know matt i think it's like such an achievement and i think about playing it again even though um

i was scared um every second that i was playing it let me tell you that retirement home overlap i can't yeah that's a tough one that one was tough i don't like it look it sucks because it's such a trope right like it's like such an obvious like scary trope scary retirement reason it's a trope for a reason it works it works a hundred percent of the. A scary old person is the most frightening thing on earth. Possessed old people are terrifying. Old people with superhuman, supernatural

speed and strength is very upsetting. It's very upsetting. That's a goal right there. That's a goal we should all have is to be super fast when we're old. I don't like it. No.

It's like watching a baby run at top speed. It's upsetting. It should not be. It's unnatural. I don't like it. I do walk around a lot in the house, though, and I scare Jimmy sometimes because he'll walk around the corner and I'm like, wake. I do that all Yeah, that sucks. It's so mean.

I said this before the show, but my fiance was watching me play the game a little bit and just like looking at my face and was like, you don't look like you're having any fun at all. And I was like, I'm not. I'm miserable. But I am. I'm miserable. But it's so good. It's compelling storytelling. Very, very good.

I'm obsessed uh i'm obsessed with i'm obsessed with sam lake now uh i think he's um he's he's i didn't know that like you could be like hideo kojima but like a different guy like he's kind of like no it's like horror hideo kojima it's like yeah like david lynch the david lynch of hideo kojima is that what we're calling him yeah he's the david lynch of hideo kojima is that what we're calling him yeah he's the david lynch of hideo kojima's for sure that's 100 you nailed it that's perfect i'm gonna quote that and i'm gonna literally send it to him on on the next today i'm sure he'll he'll laugh he's huge i bet you he'd be like this is exactly it thank you like 100 i like i got to talk to him at like the press preview event and i was like it was so fun to talk to him at the press preview event. And I was like, it was so fun to talk to him about the juxtaposition of light and dark.

Because it's such a good, and there's so many things going on with Saga story versus Alan's. It's just really great. And I just had so much fun talking to him about it. And I had played the game. So full disclosure, i consulted on the game so i'm part of the hell yeah i'm in the credits like which is really cool it's my my very first game credit is on alan wick too that's rad um but i i got to play it before it came out so i knew that all of the game secrets when i went to that press event in september it was like a few

weeks before the game came i was like a month before the game came out. And so I had to be the last person to like interview with him so that all the rest of the press had left so I could talk to him about like the spoilers of the game.

Yeah. And like what, what had happened. And like, and also like We Sing was a thing that like no one knew about. And I was just like,

I just need, I have so many questions. Yes. Like I have so, so, so many questions. But it was really fun to talk to him about. Like that interview is to be in Lock-On, the newest issue of Lock-On, which has some like really gorgeous Final Fantasy art. It's Lock-On 6.

Wow. And I think Ben Starr, the lead Clive in Final Fantasy 16, did like a write up about what Final Fantasy means to him. And it's a really good issue. I don't know if it's still i think their crowdfunding is closed but um but i'm sure they'll sell it at some point but it's uh yeah it's gonna come out soonish so look for that but it's uh but yeah it was really fun to talk to him about that and then some of the environment direction and stuff like i love um noir york which is alan's dark place it's just so cool and like man the use of like like the use

of live action it's just so good i love control too so i like i this was like very exciting for me um to have to see all the interconnective tissue of like control and alan wake and i'm just so exciting to me like i love that hell yeah that's become our resident remedy yeah i played through all i played through alan wake control and and then out straight into alan wake too you did the thing you really you really dove in yeah i uh i got i got remedy pilled big time and i i do i'm gonna play i i plan to play quantum break at some point or i guess watch quantum break um which i know that people don't necessarily love but i'm i'm interested to to get all of the to get all the information just to get just because i love i love info uh but heather did you say what you were playing i have not um but i can say what

i'm playing um i'm, of course, playing Fortnite. The Ninja Turtles collaboration dropped today, and I can't wait to give it a swing. I bought my Donatello skin because myself and my squad all called out who we thought we were. And everybody named a different turtle. And I was like, that's why we make a good squad. That never happens this is incredible wild yeah so um so yeah can't wait to uh to try out that new collab and see what the quests are uh and then beyond that i'm playing our uh we play you play forging ahead despite

our discords uh demands that i restart without having accidentally slayed half of the map. And there have been some story things that have happened that I wonder if you guys have seen, because, you know, I know that, for example, Nick had to look up what how like he had to look up because I was like one of the npcs attacked me on site like one of our party members attacked me on site because of the stuff that i had carlack uh yeah carlack attacked me on site and i had to kill her uh so i didn't have a chance there's no i didn't even know who the fuck she was fan favorite car that's my that's my girl yeah that's my that's my girl um so i i'm pretty sure

i'm down a narrative path that maybe you guys haven't seen because i'm also not playing like with dark urge like there's no like story compelling story issues that i'm i'm unlocking i'm just doing it as a criminal thief so i get rewarded when I steal from people. And then additionally, when I, you know, go into places I shouldn't be. But I had something happen at my camp and I'm looking forward to discussing it because I'm like, did you guys do this? And maybe you did and maybe you didn't. Who knows? But those are the two games I'm playing. I don't really have excess free time i had to stop playing god of war ragnarok so that i could focus on uh bg3 um but um really takes up all your time you know it's just a big it's such a big game it it is and i'm also one of the things that i've decided to do where i am in my

playthrough is that i'm generally a hoarder. Like I'll keep everything in my inventory. I won't like, I won't use weapons or ammo or spells when I play other games. And I'm like, given that I am robbing everywhere, I have so much shit that now I'm like free, freely using scrolls in combat. And it is so nice to just be like,

ah, fucking, this seems overpowered for this moment. Sure enough, it is. And I'm constantly surprised by the AI of the adversaries who like, if you create an area that's going to damage them, they don't just walk into it. And that's, you know, something we haven't talked about on the podcast before, but it's so satisfying

because you don't want characters to be so stupid that they walk into knives or walk onto ice like you want them to be like responding to their environment and they do which is great um too bad that we'll talk about often that is a civilian um I did get an inspiration point that was, congratulations, you've killed an innocent. And I was like, holy shit. Who did that inspire? Me. Or did that inspire your character? Yeah, my character was inspired.

You're a psychopath. Yeah. Nice. yeah my character was inspired you're a psychopath I feel like my character is walking into every town and opening with there's been a misunderstanding

because that is that is the avalanche that I'm riding towards endgame you're roleplaying Leslie Nielsen it's like the Leslie Nielsen play I like it that's the Leslie Nielsen playthrough I like itsen it's like the leslie nielsen play i like it that's the leslie nielsen playthrough i like it yeah but uh it's been wonderful uh we'll we'll talk about it at length in a few weeks but

right now i i thought we'd dig in a little bit since we're talking about psychonauts 2 uh since we were earlier uh maybe just spend a little bit of time talking about what like great part twos like when we've had there's been a sequel when there's been a number two in the title of a game uh either literally or or figuratively uh this is the second entry and it's absolutely clicked like when those times were uh in the times that we've been playing games and i i did want to touch on before we get into this obviously it's not out yet but actually we talked last time you're on about the the wolf among us uh you know i think both of our favorite telltale games and it's a uh the wolf among us 2 has been you know long in development

long delayed it has a 2024 release date we'll see if we if it makes that at all but like is like are you excited for a wolf of a potential wolf among us, too? I am so excited. And I also am so wild. It's so wild to me that Bill like just was like, I like I'm just going to make fables open source. Like, it's just like public domain now. Here you go. Like that, that I can't I just lose my mind about that. But yeah, I, I am very excited for Wolf Among Us 2. I mean, anytime I can go back to that universe, anytime I can go back to that world, like I'm in, like, I want to, I just want to like exist in it.

I still argue that there should be a Fables, I mean, I don't think we'll ever see it now because it's public domain, but like there should have been a great procedural fables television show, which I like a like a, you know, cool prestige procedural, a procedural. But like that would have been so amazing and like it would have been really awesome to like be in that world and and have this really like dark fairy tale procedural with, you know. have this really like dark fairy tale procedural with, you know, with, with big B and like, I just,

I thought it would have been awesome. Like I'm really, I'm more than that, but I'm very excited for Wolf Among Us 2. So many good like part twos, right? Like in games, like there's so many good ones.

It's a thing where, and, and you know, I, it's a, it's a weird, I had someone made this, had this observation years ago I remember reading it where it's like so often in in like film like the the the sequel is usually inferior there are

notable exceptions like a spider-man 2 an empire strikes back you know a godfather part 2 whatever these are these are all well-known first first examples anyone thinks of but like in general the number two is usually like a like like it's it's not as good and it's it's just uh it's like a cheaper version the first one but oftentimes with games the second entry is an improvement because they've iterated on like oh we figured out what works about the first one uh and we've iterated upon it uh and uh and expanded upon it and like you end up with a thing like the first game that i think of uh is a game i've talked about probably too much on this podcast but diablo 2 where they had diablo 1 feels like a prototype versus diablo 2 feels like here is the product here we've finished we figured out

exactly how to expand this formula into a game that's not just like a a single dungeon crawler but is like a whole world uh and is uh and amazingly fully realized, but it's still the same core concept. That's so true. I mean, yeah, you think about games like Silent Hill 2. I mean, that's another one where it's like, we know what clicked, and now we're going to make this thing

that's just gangbusters good. It's just so good, because we put in all the things that were amazing, and then we polished all the things that weren't amazing. Now it's just pure amazing. It's like so good. So fucking good. It's so good.

It really is. So good. It really is. It's just pinnacle. It's just so peak. Like, so good. So good. And yet not in my top 10 games of all time.

But so good. Oh, yeah. None of us really. Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't be in mine uh because it um horrified me uh beyond belief um but that was such a such a great game uh i'm thinking um of i'm thinking of a few as well metal gear solid 2 comes to mind in particular great great pull great pull it takes what's good about um metal gear solid one and like makes it good like because like not

that metal gear solid one is bad but like it like it it's harder it's harder to play like it was obviously uh of the time like it it had to be played that way because it was made that way but just the 3d camera in uh in metal gear solid 2 it just helps it out so much more you know well it was a little it was a little cruder it was a previous console generation and they were there you know they're figuring out both how that how stealth worked in 3d and also just 3d gaming in general but like it's interesting you say that because that is a pin that is an opinion that was would have been semi-heretical at the time because that was not a well-received sequel by the fan base it was like in hit oh like it would given the long view of history we're able to say

like oh wait this is like a masterpiece but there were a lot of people who like kind of honestly like the the annoying reaction to the last of us part two right was like a lot of the fan base was split a lot of people were like this changed what i liked about the original or this the story just put is so off-putting that I can't even enjoy this. It's cool that people have always been like this. Some things never change. There's also like there's magazine, there's fanzine, you know, scans from around the release of Empire Strikes Back where people are like, I can no longer call myself a Star Wars fan. So true.

And we're discontinuing the publishing of this fanzine because the series has moved in a direction that we cannot accept or endorse. So it's always, you know, like... Always that. It's always... I wonder if those people are still like... They were like that with one movie?

God. No, I'll tell you what happens to those people is those people like act like they never had those opinions. Yes. Like over time, once the tides shift, they're kind of like, oh yeah, I always liked that one. That was one of the people who always liked it. This is only somewhere related,

but I had a roommate in college. His dad saw Empire Strikes Back in theaters opening weekend. And he said, when Darth Vader had the line no I am your father one guy in the theater went no shit like it was just so novel of an idea that's pretty interesting actually

man wow I guess dudes rock that's awesome I can think of a couple sequels that uh that maybe don't have so like mario kart 64 is such a step up from uh mario kart and the super nes it wasn't a part two but it was the sequel to mar Kart. And for a generation of gamers, people were like, I mean, it was the,

it was such the party game that to go to, that people will still sometimes have at a party, a retro corner where Mario Kart 64 is, is running. Oh yeah. Yeah. This game. Yeah. Four players and you know,

the, as opposed to two and then actual three an actual 3d engine as opposed to the mode 7 kind of cheat of the uh of the original yeah that's that's a good call and then we're in that mario vein like mario galaxy 2 also like yep peak platforming wow so good unbelievably good um and then i also was thinking about, oh, please don't lose your place, Heather. Well, this game. So I didn't care for the first one at all. So when Street Fighter 2 comes out, it felt like a part one to a huge section of gamers.

But was actually a sequel to a fighting game. So like, what are you smiling about, Nick? No, I just, you know who else didn't like street fighter one yeah but it's interesting that they could like pivot so hard like fix it yeah yeah no that they fixed it you're absolutely right it was like the recovery 100 i have high hopes for death stranding 2 because of a kojima tweet where he was talking about how successful sequels totally reinvent the genre of the thing. And he cited like aliens and he said like a few other films where he's like, this works because you take a game or an environment, a story, whatever, and then you put it in a different genre. And so I'm looking forward to the idea that maybe death stranding 2 isn't a

delivery game but maybe it's a combat game maybe it's who knows what it's going to end up being or maybe he just tweeted that when he was like oh this game's gonna be a failure oh no i've made the same game again alan wake 2 does this like alan wake 2 is way more. I mean, it's like a it's a survival horror game. And the first one has elements of that in it. But I wouldn't say it's like the most like definitive thing about it. It's almost like a, you know, Twin Peaks action adventure game. But this Alan Wake 2, Alan Wake 1 is creepy. Alan Wake 2 is fucking scary as hell it's like

so scary it's yeah it's a horror game I mean it's definitely a horror game and they do redefine like they've redefined that genre using the technology available especially with the light and the dark and like

shifting realities, rewriting reality. Like in the first game, you could you just like that was a thing that happened, but it wasn't a thing you were actively doing. Like it's like they use the technology to make it possible. And I think like to that point, I mean, to do another like sequel, Tears of the Kingdom like also kind of does this where it's like, oh, sure it literally redefined the game before it that redefined what it meant like it's just that game redefined everything and so it's like it redefined itself which is insane like how do you

do that yeah it's also a thing that nintendo doesn't do all that often which is like basically a direct sequel like without like kind of like you know overhauling everything yeah and you already mentioned mario galaxy 2 and that was that's that's another one um i i actually had on my list and this is maybe being a little stinker but it's true yoshi's island is super mario world 2 that's a great i'll buy that nick you're such a stinker i'm actually getting so mad you're such a stinker i can't believe you do something something like that, you stinker. I have a few more on my list. I mean, Mass Effect 2, I think that's another obvious one.

Portal 2, I mean, Portal is already... Portal 2 is great. Portal, to me, already a perfect game. I'd actually prefer Portal 1, but Portal 2 is such a great follow-up. But coming from valve half-life two as opposed to half-life one is like such an amazing that's on my list uh you know yeah such an amazing step up and especially the you know like physics was like a novelty you

know and and that era and that one just used physics so well uh for gameplay specifically um but uh those those that's one i remember just like absolutely like completely exceeding my expectations having really enjoyed the first game yeah i have a question about a sequel which is is dark souls a sequel to Demon's Souls? Is Dark Souls technically Demon's Souls 2? Or is it a new game? Because if you played Demon's Souls and then you played Dark Souls, you were not, there was nothing in it. Like it's Estus Flasks and all,

like it's all the same stuff. So is it a sequel? I think you can argue it's the second game in the same series then it's i think it's on the list because dark souls is so fucking great like it's a it's a near perfect game i'll buy it that sounds i mean that's good i like my one of the ones on my list was um castlevania 2 oh oh sure like that that's a really because like the first one is like very good it's like a good solid little game and then like you get into the second one and it's like you've got like riddles and you have to like collect it's like it just really blew out the

world in a way that i think like even now like i look at it i'm just like wow like that was really ambitious for it for its time and it's and it's kind of like a lot closer to what a modern castlevania like metroidvania is where it's like castlevania one is just you know a set of linear levels yeah exactly this one you can go back you can explore everywhere it's it really kind of like set the template for everything that came after it which i think is really awesome that's the first time i ever got a bad ending in a game another thing i was like wow there's multiple endings i got the bad one i gotta do this again to get the good one i just remember like my mom i was so little when she played through that game like the first time i saw somebody play through it was when i was

probably like between three and five wow and i remember seeing her kneeling with the garlic like for the boat guy. And I just remember thinking my mom was like a genius. Like I couldn't I was like, I don't like I was like she I was like, whoa, she's so good at video games. Like I couldn't it just blew my mind that she and she found like the invisible. There's like an invisible mansion in that one. in that one and so she had like discovered that as well and i just thought my mom was like the most the smartest person alive like because of that which was just you know it was it was really cool and like that so yeah that game always comes to mind for me when it's like sequels that kind of redefine their own genre it's like that one for me is like a big one for me pokemon gold uh like pokemon gold silver generation that was like the first time i like oh sure yeah right had a game that was like a part two i think and i was like right there ready for it when it was like coming out because i had played uh the original so i was excited for for more of that i was like i'm done playing these other ones give me give me the new one and then the fact that you

can go back to the the the kanto region at the end when you're done with the game and you can go see the places you saw in the first game is like i wish i wish every pokemon game did that or you could just go back to the previous place and be like hey this was going on here now uh i that that was a that's a huge one to me and obviously like kingdom hearts 2 i've talked about uh forever that's my favorite game um just takes everything that's good about uh kingdom hearts 1 and just makes it more confusing and weird uh but the gameplay is uh so much better yeah uh the uh but going back to the nes era uh like Castlevania 2, Mega Man 2 also of that era was one where it's just like, I love Mega Man 1, but Mega Man 2 is like is like much more cohesive. And just every element is just better.

Like the art is improved. The music is better. There's more bosses, more robot masters you're fighting. And yeah, it just really feels like it. And there's a password system, which the first game doesn't have. The first game, I think it's all like, you turn it off, you got to start over. In my memory, I could be wrong. But it's just like such a more fully formed version of a formula that would obviously be iterated on a bunch.

Sonic 2 as well. Oh, yeah. Sonic 2, really big. Another really big one. I love Sonic 2 so much. Oh, yeah. Sonic 2, really big. Another really big one. I love Sonic 2 so much. That one is in Heather's top 10, right? Yeah, it is. It definitely is.

I love Sonic 2 more than any other Sonic game. It's so fucking good. The music is so good. It's so good. Still rips. It's still fucking... It's just good. Yep.

Just across the board on every level. Yep. It's so good. When you do a corkscrew run in Sonic 2 on a 16-bit system, your mind was like, how can this be? How can it be that you can make this work? Because you can't. I couldn't draw that when I was a child like I couldn't draw a corkscrew on a piece of paper and have it make visual sense so like to see it moving and you get to control it

was crazy um I the the introduction of tails as well I think it's just like such a huge thing and he's such like a he's like people think of sonic and Tails as a as like an entity but it's like Tails has no presence in the first Sonic the Hedgehog game it's like to put this in terms that I know Matt can understand it's like how in Austin Powers 1 there's no mini me it's not till Austin Powers 2 where mini me's on the scene and now you think of the Austin Powers

franchise you can't imagine it without me it's kind of hard to go back and even watch the first Austin Powers because you're like where's mini me he's not in that one here is is just there's no mini I want to know if there is a game

that was worth it I helped right what I'd like what I'd like to know is is there a game that like Psychonauts, uh, that you wish had a sequel that if you could like imagine,

no matter how much time has come, has passed that you're like, man, if a, and it cannot, it cannot be a game that already has sequels that suck. Like you can't be like, well,

I wish they'd make a good, and this is gonna be controversial because because some people really like chrono cross but i would say chrono cross like you can't i wish there was a good chrono cross chrono cross does not live up to chrono trigger i can say it okay it's like it's yeah well this is the first game phew dodge that bullet uh but yeah is there a game that you're like man i wish this game had a part two? I have an answer right away. Oh, and we'll see.

This will be one. We'll see if anyone agrees with me that this is even eligible. Please go. We're talking Final Fantasy earlier. They've done this before with the franchise. They've done a part two to an individual entry. And I would like to see them take a crack at Final Fantasy 8-2. What would that look like?

Wow. That would be interesting, right? It's the worst game. It's one of the worst ones. So it feels like, yeah, why not? How dare you? I get in fights with people about Final Fantasy 8. Well, I will happily get in that fight with you and lose because I do like that game. It's fine.

No, I completely understand why it's polarizing. It's a very flawed game that I have a lot of affection for, but I think they could do like the equivalent of a 10-2, you know, for Final Fantasy 8. It'd be really interesting to see what that's like. Or honestly, give it the remake treatment obvious which is an enormous amount of labor but like just what that would that would be a game where like hey let's do the let's do the remaster and kind of fix what's kind of wonky about it i'd be into that i'd give that a shot they did say uh for well first off there would there's not enough of a fan base of Final Fantasy VIII to justify the cost of doing a remake.

But one of the developers or one of the producers on Final Fantasy VIII said that if they did a remake, they would completely redo the combat system. And that was like in an interview recently. You know, the interview or the battle system is so much a part of why people are really hot cold on Final Fantasy VIII. Because before you engage an enemy, you have to suck all of their spells out of them, which I think might be why Nick likes it so much. likes it so much i'm so glad i came to that i i have i i'm lucky because i have like like basic taste so i feel like a lot of the games that i have played and loved over the years like have sequels um there's like not one that i can even think of off the top of my head that i'm like gosh i wish that was coming because it either is or it exists um i'm like i right like even like a like a dormant franchise like a like a jack and daxter sly cooper yeah like had sequels back in the day so it's not like they're just one-offs uh i wouldn't mind a

sequel and this is gonna sound nuts i was just talking about this game last week i wouldn't mind another entry in the pokemon legends um uh like franchise because it's not in the same world as the um as the mainline games uh i wouldn't mind another game like that like a pokemon legends arceus but if it's like a different thing i guess i i loved that's probably like all of the recent entries of the switch entries it's my favorite uh pokemon game certainly um but i i i would like to see more of that because it felt it felt it just felt great I loved it it's pretty solid answer that's a good one I would go with God Hand I would love a sequel to God Hand

I'd love God Hand 2 that would be fucking awesome again for the like God Hands for the 30 or 40 of us who've played that game and love it so much we'd be really excited about that sequel um game and love it so much um we'd be really excited about that sequel um

but that's the only one that comes to mind as like a singular experience that never got a sequel like even katamari has sequels you know like most games that have any market penetration end up getting at least a mobile spinoff, you know? So it's hard to find or to remember those. Contact is another one for the Nintendo DS. I would love a sequel to Contact. That probably would never happen. I've got some ideas too uh let's let's dip into the tim schafer well obviously brutal legend needs a sequel i think we can all agree brutal legend definitely needs a two why not um we just gotta have eddie back uh and then also uh

grim fandango i want a sequel to Grim Fandango forever. Yeah. I will always want more Grim Fandango in my life. But the game that if I were the president of video games and I could just choose any game that could be remade for a modern era as a sequel, it's a sports game. But it's a great sports game, which is Jerry Glanville's Pigskin Football. Wow. And I will fight for this game until the end of time because are any of you familiar with this game? No.

No. I know Jerry Glanville was like not even like the most famous coach. No. He was like the Atlanta Falcons coach, right? He's like the Wish.com version of a famous coach. But like, so there was this game on Sega Genesis. I highly encourage everyone to go look at like gameplay of this on YouTube. Because so I used to play this game at LAN parties and it was so much fun. I've never had more fun playing a sports game in my life.

Set in medieval times. Everybody, pigskin football is, it's's football but everybody is like medieval so there's like people in armor and there's like people with like maces and shit and like you have to like you're basically is this chaos and whoever is down the most at halftime uh they go unleash the troll and you get a fucking troll that joins your team that beats the shit out of everybody. It's and there's like trap doors on the play field. This game so rightfully deserves like to be brought back, resurrected, whatever. Like I will do everything in my power to continue to spread the good word of Jerry Glanville's pigskin football. And I just want it to come back someday because it would make such a good online multiplayer

game it would be like it would be like adjacent but also uh like opposite programming of like a fifa game it's just like hey like if you want to play a sports game and have fun with your friends but you hate sports that's here's the game but like but it's such a weird game what i love about this is that it's like it when the arcades i'm looking this up right now um and i don't remember this game i do remember mutant league football which was a much better known i think version of this kind of formula uh but this one i i like that it's specifically medieval but in in the arcade it was known at by a different title it was called like uh 600 i was called pigskin 621 ad so when they poured it to genesis they were like you know what's gonna sell this thing get this this thing

moving off of shelves jerry glanville the title splash screen is literally him in sunglasses he's not a medieval man he's not a troll he's he's he's probably the cheapest uh person related to pro football they could license the likeness of yeah couldn't tell you don't know his signature is on the game it's so bizarre but yeah like i played that game so much on sega genesis it was so funny and like man it's just such a great like it's such a great multiplayer game like a party game and so to me i'm like man that's like a game i would love to see like get a get like a sequel or remake or remaster or whatever and just have somebody like really just pick it up and like run with it because we got dodgeball

yeah like super dodgeball we actually got like a updated remake of it and that was really fun and like we and we even got like a game like knockout city which is not a direct like sequel but it was still very similar so yeah i think that like i mean some people might say like super mario rpg deserves a sequel like that's another one i would say i would i'd play a sequel to super mario rpg i was uh i was i was kind of amazed they even remastered it so yeah i mean it's i guess it's i guess it's possible it could happen. Final Fantasy Tactics? Where's that sequel? That's the Final Fantasy I need a sequel for.

I love Final Fantasy Tactics. I love that too. Heather, I think, is a big Final Fantasy Tactics Advance fan. Maybe that qualifies in your eyes, Heather. Does that qualify?

Do you think it does? Tactics Advance had a sequel. Tactics Advance 2, which was for the DS and was based in Ivalice and the world of Final Fantasy 12, Ivalice. But Final

Fantasy Tactics, I wouldn't call Tactics Advance a sequel to Tactics. Same genre. Same gameplay mechanics. But also, but not yeah not the same world like so i feel like tactics like deserves a like i want that i just want to remake them honestly i'll just take a remake i'll take anything any final fantasy tactics please i i would like to say a

thing that just popped up on my uh on like you know you get news pop-ups and generally speaking they're tailored to you and this is seems to be a massive piece of gaming news that just happened whoa breaking news which is that as of i think i know what you're gonna say okay great so walt disney just announced that they are purchasing a 10% stake in Epic Games and they are creating a Walt Disney permanent collaboration entertainment universe in Fortnite. Wow. Like that's there. There are tons of Disney collabs already in the game, like Marvel stuff and Star Wars stuff. And, you know, a lot of Fox properties are which I always interpreted as like Disney's hand in Fortnite because you'll get like Terminator or aliens stuff that like pops up in in fortnight but this is a a multi-billion dollar deal that was just announced i guess moments ago where disney is like a permanent partner with fortnight uh and they're going to create like viewing experiences shopping experiences and gameplay

experiences well i think i really think they're're fucking, they're right on the edge of making the metaverse in Fortnite. Like, I think that there's going to be a permanent social tab in Fortnite where you will go as your chosen avatar and fucking watch TV or whatever. That seems like a very easy, like, get like get like leap of logic for me like based seen seeing what they've built already and what they're capable of it really does feel like that's a place that you know that is going to be that for like i think a lot about my kid i'm just like how will he experience things like games and everything like a lot of it is going to be

virtually like he's going to have a little avatar. He's going to, like, walk around. It's going to be, like, people always make comparisons to Snow Crash, but it's like, yeah, like, that's the thing. We already do that just in individual games, right? Like, we play Baldur's Gate. We have our tabs. And it's like, that's your avatar.

So it's like you would just walk around with that, you know. It's just, it's a more open thing where it's like cross cross brand. It's not necessarily cross platform, but it's cross branding and like all that stuff. So, yeah, that's like super. That's so interesting. article, the press release for this thing that was attached to the news item. And one of them is like a world map. That's like a hub world for like a Fortnite Walt Disney hub world. And it's wild seeing an ESPN area of Fortnite. Cause what are you going to like go watch live sports in Fortnite? Yeah. There's an ESPN area. There's a espn area there's a marvel area there's a lucas film area there's a disney plus area and this is this is crazy if you like if you take the image and full screen it and zoom in uh you can see a little naked guy running around so it's wild uh crazy uh crazy news uh well hopefully that that that works out well you know

i i will say that as a as i one thing about the lego fortnite is that there are for most of the models there is a lego version of the character model um and there isn't one for peter griffin so i'm really hoping that gets fixed and maybe maybe this investment like possible holy crap lois i'm really hoping that gets fixed and maybe maybe this investment like possible holy crap lois i'm lego all right we should take some questions uh it's time for the question block all right these are all from our listeners over in our Discord, discord.gg slash getplayed. Here we go. This first one is from Dirk Lalonde,

and Dirk writes, what's the first game you pulled in all-nighter playing? Alternatively, what's the first game you either went to a midnight release for or downloaded the second it went online? Okay, I'm going to have to look up the name of the first one but i can say because i mentioned earlier i did pull an all-nighter playing final fantasy 8 when i was towards the end game and i remember finishing that game at like 4 30 a.m and uh

i had my roommate here like who was sleeping here hearing the end credits music playing uh and and coming in to see what was going on. But yeah, that's one I remember. There was an NES game that was the first time I stayed up all night playing a game, and that was at a sleepover. I'm going to look that up if anyone else has an answer. I don't know if it counts. It doesn't count as an all-nighter, but the day that Animal Crossing came to the Switch,

that was just like a day that i lost like completely like because it was right you know the pandemic was new right uh and i didn't have anywhere to go or anything else to do but i just the second i woke up downloaded animal crossing and played it until it was crossing and played it until it was basically the next day and on my um that year they did the um it might have been i don't know if it's the first year they did this was definitely the first year i interacted with this where they did the um uh your your year in review for nintendo and that the day that it came out was like the most i gamed all year and it was like it was it was insane it was just um just bad just bad like just horrific to be confronted with what you've done uh the reality of what yeah uh but i have no regrets because that was the day i met my very best friend dom

the sheep and uh you know i i love him um the game i was thinking of was which I played Asleep over with my with my friend Dane was Was was the Ascianax The NES port which is Insane that we play that all night because that game sucks It's unplayable but We were just making progress and got So addicted to just trying to blaze all the way

Through it I played Final Fantasy 11 When I lived in Amsterdam. And there were so few, I imported my PS2 and the game wasn't yet released for European region. So I was only able to really party up on US time. So I would get home from a show at 1030 or 11 p.m. at night and play on U.S. time until like six in the morning, sleep all day long and then go do shows at night. So for like

the first month of release of Final Fantasy 11, I was doing like night shifts to be able to play the game. So that's my, that's the first answer that I can think of, which was such an intense addiction. Wow, that's wild. Yeah, for me, I, Mario, Super Mario RPG was the game that I played like all night with my brother and my cousin. I just remember that summer we were just so into that game and we would just spend, I mean, cause we didn't have school. So we would just, we were up all night long. We would just stay up until five in the morning just playing and like having fun. And I remember that last, that last run of the game,

like fighting Culex was like such a thing because we just kept kept going back you know trying our best to to do it and it took days for us to do it and uh finally we we beat culex and then we we rolled i remember rolling credits on that game and seeing a little parade at like six in the morning or something like that i mean we just like played all night long like all summer we played that game like we just couldn't get enough of it. As a kid, as a as a teenager slash early adult, like a teenager, it was LAN parties on New Year's Eve with my group of friends where I had to bring my little CRT television. And we would hook up a million Xboxes and we would play Halo and Halo. We play like lan halo um just and and uh like burnout i remember we played burnout um which was very fun and we would play pigskin football we just have

all these games set up and it was so much fun every new year's eve for like probably five years that was a thing and then as an adult the last game i played all night long was, I was so compelled by Horizon Zero Dawn. And I got to a place where I was like, this must be the end game. And I was like, I just am going to finish it. And then I would play an extra hour. And the story just hooked me so bad at the end that I was like I have to finish this game and so I finished it at like 7 a.m. and I remember my husband coming out like getting ready for work and he's like are he's like and I was like I had tears rolling down my face I was so

like moved by the whole thing experience and he's like are you okay like have you been up all night and I was like this game is just so it's so beautiful like i was just crying and like credits were rolling sun's coming up like it was just so like embarrassing but also like it just i mean it really got its hooks in me uh once you get to like that final like once you get to like that sort of like final bit of the story in act three where it's like you realize what everything is and why it is it was just man i had i had to finish it like i couldn't i couldn't exist for another minute without knowing what the store the rest of the story was and that was like so exciting it's amazing thanks dirk for that for that first question there this next one's from thanks dirk from mikey wombat and mikeyat writes, what piece of game physical gaming hardware is the most satisfying to interact with?

Examples might be the click of a SNES power button or clicking the lid shut on the original PlayStation. Now, that's interesting. Oh, we're talking the physical console, not like a controller or accessory. That's an interesting question. I am going to say the eject button or the the lid button on a nintendo gamecube or something that is very very satisfying how that pops up oh that's a good answer yeah nice and tactile i think for me it would be pressing like pushing down and hearing the springs on the cartridge of an nes console oh sure yeah and hoping it works uh i really love the sound of

a game boy game going in like you i don't the the analog pocket doesn't fully simulate this because it doesn't go as far in as uh the other ones do but like the sort of the sliding plastic into the click is is really something i think that's a really good one there's also a really good yeah confirming a really good hinge click on the final 3ds like the the most polished most like the fun like nintendo saying goodbye to the idea of a dedicated handheld and they put everything they could into the to the idea of a dedicated handheld and they put everything they could into the just the tactile hardware of the 3ds that when i open it up i'm like man this this feels like almost like an apple product like it is so like dense pristine solid and clicky and the hinge click is so good it's uh

it's a that's a nice feeling i miss buttons there what are you there are buttons i know buttons i know buttons silly but you know it's like it's like i feel like everything now it's just like so clean it's just like a black cube you've got you know like i want like something like sticks out or like something i could push in you know not like like like a like a button with like a little bit more give not just like a gentle touch oh you mean like like my like on my ps5 oh yeah you mean like a like a yeah not the controller i mean on the on the hardware on the console yeah that's that is something we've lost sight of isn't it the the like a power like a mechanical aspect of like an analog button it has springs in it gosh Gosh. Great question. Really great question. Um,

and, and, and finally we'll, we'll leave it off with this. This one's, this one's from swear wolf. It's where wolf writes. If VR technology ever got good enough, what is your dream app?

I'd like to pod race. Wow. That's like, that'd be a great answer. If you can not get, if you can not get motion sick pod racing, that would be very fun. I have my dream app. It's in my head. It's ready to go. Here it is. A company should create a three-dimensional 360 camera that records in all all over the world so that you can work in live environments

uh that are not at your fucking desk so if you want like they like on the apple vision pro or on the meta quest they have environments but they are looped environments that are like the best day ever at Mount Hood or like the best, most beautiful version of the sky. What I want is I pay for it because it would have to be a subscription service in order to maintain the cameras. But I would pay money to be at some fucking cafe in Paris while working here in the United States or pay like to be on a campground and know that it was like that day that moment that environment would

be really fucking cool I think that's a great answer I think there should be like I think there should be like a like a thing that is like required by law where you should be able to like hat to sit in on a vr session of like congress like you can just sit anywhere and just observe everything that's happening in the body like c-span but like you're inside c-span it would

be like the boringest shit ever but it'd be just like one of those little bits of good governance transparency where you could actually just like sort of like look around and see what someone's you know what paper someone's shuffling in their desk or investigate some sort of like off the floor conversation that's happening you could just kind of like take in absolutely everything that's happening uh i don't know i i feel like that would be an interesting boring thing uh that no one would pay attention to but it'd be extra exciting for you too because you already have a lay of the land from January 6th. So you kind of already know where everything is, you know? That's the desk I

stood on when I dropped Trow. That's it. Gosh. Ashley, are you much of a VR user? I like VR. It it's there's a lot of escapism um it's nice uh in that way uh it's weird because it's like you know there's the idiot part of me is like bring back playstation home like which is just the dumbest possible answer anybody could give um but yeah i like i think it's probably similar to something heather like i mean i think for me it's like it

would have to be a thing that i just couldn't experience like myself in person so it feels like for me like the thing i would really want is like the those types of cameras but in places like in the galaxy that i will never visit oh so it's like that's for me like i want to be able to you know like sit at a desk on mars and like just hang out like like dr fucking manhattan by myself there's nothing except my desk and i'm like i'm tired of these people their lives like i just that's, that's the existence. I want to live sometimes in VR. I just want to be left alone.

But yeah, I feel like for me, it's the, it's the, it's a combination of like what Heather and Nick are saying. It's like, I'll never be able to afford 50 yard line seats at the Superbowl. Right. So like a virtual ticket that enables me to be there, like it live would be very cool. But yeah, like things like that, where it's just like these sort of like once in a lifetime experiences

that you can't necessarily afford to go to in person, it would be really amazing to give people the opportunity to experience that at least a little bit in virtual reality. I think that would be pretty, pretty awesome. Because there are a lot of people just like, I mean, I know that gets a little like Ready Player One where we're all living in our little junked up trailers, like going places and stuff like that's kind of depressing. But I like you know there's some there's something to be said for that being an equalizer for different classes to like actually be able to you know experience something they may not get to otherwise like being able to experience

you know the the v like vienna orchestra like in like most people never experience that in their lives because it's cost prohibitive and also because people have stuff going on you know and it's like that's really cool that vr gives people that opportunity so for me it's that yeah that i mean that's that that's like that would be the that that'd be like the ideal but i feel like uh with our reality instead they'll find a way to like charge for those experiences to like make it like a premium upgrade. Some insane. Yeah. Yeah. Or you see it in person and they figured out a way to just put ads in your field of view.

You know, that's how they're using VR now. That'll definitely be a thing. I have seen, the one thing I thought was really interesting about using VR is I have seen that a lot of, there are some gains in therapy, like for children, especially who are victims of abuse, where they to make them feel more comfortable. Things like virtual reality have been used to give them a view of like, for example, like a stuffed animal instead of a therapist or like a like making them more comfortable in that space and being able to sort of like share their trauma a little bit easier. And so and also exposure therapy is like another thing I've seen people use virtual reality for. So I think like the application of therapy is a really interesting avenue

that hasn't been explored enough. And I think it could be a really rich well of really helpful types of ways to use it. So that's something that's like very fascinating. Yeah. Hey, that's this week's Get Played. Our producer is Rochelle Chen, yard underscore underscore sard. Our music is by Ben Prunty. So that's something that's like very fascinating. Yeah. Hey, that's this week's get played. Uh, our producers, Rochelle Chen yard,

underscore, underscore sard. Our music is by Ben Prunty, Ben Prunty, music.com. And our art is by duck brigade design, duck brigade.com. Also check out our paywalled show,

get animated where we are wrapping up Pluto. Yeah. So we're watching. If you, if you like anime and also if you don't like anime, uh, you can check out our Get Animated Sister podcast. It's us three bozos in a different location conceptually, but probably the same location physically.

We're watching the Netflix series Pluto, where this week we are covering the finale, episode eight of the Netflix series. Well, when this comes out, it'll finale episode eight of uh the netflix series uh well when this comes out it'll be episode six that's coming out jesus what are you wrapping i almost said it before we got there but i was like we're coming it up towards the back end of the arc we're approaching the end of the season keep this in so you can understand a little behind the curtain of how these guys fuck me over week after week. I know, Heather's already has so much going on, we'd trick her with these releases.

We're watching Pluto episode six this week, and you can find that at patreon.com slash getplayed. That's patreon.com slash getplayed. Wow. Ashley Skato, what a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here. The book is The Artist Psychonauts 2. People should hopefully check it out if they were able to get their hands on it.

Hopefully there'll be a second printing. But congratulations on the book. And if there's anything you'd like to plug, please, please take the time to do so. I mean, yeah, I'd plug the book, but it sold out, so I'm sorry. I feel really bad about that. God damn it. Yeah, just, I'd plug the book, but it sold out, so I'm sorry. I feel really bad about that. God damn it.

Yeah, just, I don't know. I'm on the internet. I'm not on Twitter as much anymore. I kind of like, I'm trying to like extricate myself from that. So I'm on Instagram a bunch. So if you want to see some dank memes that elder millennials post, you probably have already seen them if you're on tiktok you can come to instagram awesome thanks so much for being here this was so fun please come

back always yeah thank you ashley love it it's good to have you and hey you know what uh because you've been such an awesome guest i'm gonna say matt it was you who got played okay okay i'll that's fine um it's tough to hear but it's fine and massaged all right now i'm listening that was a hate gum podcast