Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Crimson Desert: Andy's Journey Begins! - Kinda Funny Gamescast Plays Sponsored by 5HE

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

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Cotton candy, five hour energy, the perfectly sweet and possibly nostalgic treat your craving. It's all flavor, no fluff. Order now at five hour energy.com or Amazon. Yo, what's up? Welcome to Gamescast Plays. I'm on your host, Blessing Adioia Jr. and join me is the nitro rifle, Andy Cortez. We're here, baby. We're ready to rock. Bless, I'm happy to see you. I'm happy to you feel better. It's been a while. I'm glad you're feeling better. Yeah, I'm feeling great. Yeah. Half this office was bit by snakes, unfortunately, but we're slowly. coming back. I think we're just waiting for Snowbike Mike. Yes. He's still on the men. He's still on the men. Yeah. Last night, there

were moments where he was like, don't make me laugh, because I don't want to, you know, you put me out a week. You put me out a week if I laugh. If I laugh too hard here. But you know what starts here? Your relationship with five-hour energy. That's right. Shout out to Five Hour Energy for sponsoring this Gamescast plays. Of course, while we're here,

we're promoting three new flavors. We got cotton candy. We got fruit, free rainbow, and we got confetti craze. Of course, you can buy your favorite. from the link in the chat or the description. So shout out five hour energy. And shout out Andy Cortez, because we're jumping into the first hour of Crimson Desert

for this game's cast plays. Of course, you're gonna continue to play more Crimson Desert after this game's cast plays, but you had a great idea before we went live. This was gonna be me and Greg, but you were like, well, I'm gonna be here anyway. I'm starting the game anyway. Let me just start off so that people don't gotta

rewatch the intro again, you know? Because we're going, yeah, we are heading straight of the marathon after that, the Sub-Athon, and I hope you all are down to rock with me until the wee hours of the night. I already told, Roger, I'm down to go until 4 in the morning.

Oh, wow. And if we push further than that, I will try to go home and sleep, and then I will come back. Really? I'm committing to stuff right now. You're committing. Because Saturday I got this fun house thing.

I don't know, James and Eliezer here. We love them. But I'm committing. We're going to do this. Where I don't know, you might regret this. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do this. Like I hear, but here's the thing, right?

Crimson Desert, leading up to it, I always associated it with Andy Cortez, because you're the one who would get to go to the events, see it early, and you would come back and you would preach the gospel. Oh man, Crimson Desert. It's real. It's real. It's the next Elder and Ring plus Legend of Dahl, Brothwood, Wilde combined is going to have a 100 Metacritic. I remember you saying that to Westin'Gast. No, that's none of that.

You said those exact words. I don't think I ever said anything like that, but I did preview it and it was like, Wow, it actually runs. And all those crazy physics simulations and everything that we saw in all those tech tests, they weren't fake. They are doing real stuff in engine. And I played it, so did a lot of other people at Pax West and was, came away super impressed by the performance on it.

And before we made the ultimate executive decision to say, Mike, stay home, get better. You cannot be here. I played about two and a half hours of Crimson Test. Yeah. So I've played through a bit of this intro as well, but as we could see, you know, it's a gorgeous game. We're playing on PC right now.

Beautiful. We're playing on PC with, I think, like, kind of max everything, I'm assuming. I saw some people asking. Dude, I spent so many, probably hours in these menus. I'm not the PC tweak around with my settings person. For this game, the way I just kept going back between different DLSS settings.

It's so nice. Mose or whatever just to see what they all look like. It's so nice. They want me to speak with Unka. Unka. Also, while we hear, shout out to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney to Slomtoin. Which, wait, hold of, they changed this.

What do you mean? This isn't how the intro was. Speaking to Unka? Like, I had to speak to, like, three or three other people first before talking to him. Giles' as sort. Oh. Wait, oh, maybe I'm going to talk to three people after this.

Yeah, but you're going to talk to them still. Gotcha, my bad, my bad. I was like, damn, they're already prepped half and shit. Crazy. You gotta get people game faster. Thank you everybody for hanging out with us. We will be playing this for this Gamescast plays. As Blessing mentioned, you put in about 17-ish hours and we're like, I'm good. Yeah, I'm in love with you.

Yeah, I put it down. It was the thing where I texted Greg, because if you remember, we rewind back a few weeks ago. I was talking on an episode of one of our shows saying that, hey, this Saturday, I'm making it as a gamer Saturday. I'm clearing my plan. I called up Oakland and I was like, hey Oakland. I'm not coming through this Saturday because I'm just going to play games. That was for Crimson Desert. And you were just talking to the dude, like, at the mayor's office.

Like, I don't know. He was like, who are you? I was like, I'm blessed him for kind of funny. Don't worry about it. I come over there all the time. But most of the dollars for Crimson Desert. Like, there's some other games I wanted to play. But really, I was like, if I'm going to play this massive open world game,

I need to, like, I need to invest myself. I need to give my all to it. I need to, like, really clear out the time. You will be missed. During that Saturday, it must have been like toward maybe like 5 p.m., 6 p.m., right? I'm playing this for a while, and I text Greg, the worst thing about playing Crimson Desert is that I want to be playing five other games right now, right? And it was kind of heartbreaking for me to hit that moment where I was like,

it was on your fantasy critics. It was on my favorite game. Like, I had such faith in this thing. And like, granted, I'm saying this knowing that there's going to be a large handful of y'all that are watching and listening that are going to fuck with this game. People are going to fuck heavy with it. We're heading to town and see what everybody fucks heavy with it already. Who haven't even played it?

Yeah, exactly. I am the quickest out. I'm not going to take that way because I think... We can't rest easy till we know what the black bears are up to. We're saying we're impressive during the preview still remain impressive. You know what I mean? Like, it is a gorgeous video game with a gorgeous open world with so many things that you can do, right? So many systems, so many mechanics at your disposal.

Don't worry. I think that's gonna work for a lead on them. You know, you know. I'm the best man for it. Fucking monging. I'll be back before you know it. But yeah, I hit the point during that Saturday where I was like, man, I'm not enjoying this. But I kept trying to go back to it.

I wanted, I genuinely was like, I want to put in some good hours for this review. But then it just broke me where I was like, man, there's so many other good games right now that I just like, I gave up. I was like, I just got to play these other games. I mean, I can't force myself to play 40 hours or something that I'm just not enjoying as much. And so I ended up not putting as many hours into it as I would have liked. I'm so excited to hear, like, you know, what you have to say about after putting more hours into it, what Mike ends up having to say about it if he ends up getting to it. Because I think a lot of it is that the mission design and, like, the questing is based off of, like, a lot of MMO style mission design and questing.

Black there's an online lineage, you know? And so I think there's something to that where it just didn't vibe with me because I'm in here looking for almost like a Red Dead or like a Witcher style, like, you know, level of like quest design and it doesn't really do that. And you know I'd been saying on Perfect Simon as always. Sit down, dig in. If this could be We're still missing, Brian.

In terms of I didn't give a damn about the Wild story. I suppose that's one less moat to feed it. All the characters and Nintendo characters could make it too much now. Yeah, really fun to talk to, you know. Yeah. But get your ass back out there. I wasn't holding on to every story threat.

I wasn't like, oh, a big story twist. We're just gonna set here, seven. For me, it was like the experience. It was the world. It was just the other business. Seeing the water hit, seeing the firelight, the grass over there. You better fucking pick that.

That's always been kind of my hope for this game. Yeah. You gonna make me. I don't think it's going to hit narrative. Or characters wise. Bloody bastard. For me, necessarily, especially it's got the toughest up so long.

Because I'm right near the end of the Winter 3 and fucking nay. What, uh, what an amazing. an amazing story and the way that missions kind of intermingle with each other. And holy shit, that's just like otherworldly masterpiece type shit. But I want, I really hope that this game can go to the distance and this game hits systems-wise and physics. And I want all that cool sort of stuff to play around in this sort of open world playground. Thank you, Abe Lincoln for getting out 10 subs.

Appreciate it, Jay Blinken. Very, very kind. Yeah, I saw a post the other day that was showing like paintings of Abe Lincoln versus actual photographs of Abe Lincoln. He doesn't look exactly like you think he looks. He looks a little bit off when you see the actual photograph. Oh, really? Yeah. Our land, Paloon once unified.

I'm be on the internet, man. You really got the dead fish in the table. I was going to take this. I'll be on the timeline. They just show me anything. I'm like, all right, sure. I like this segment. The one thing I am hoping,

the moders to immediately get to work. work because I I do not love how orange the fire sequence it like anytime we just near like any sort of fire it's like very it's way more orange than I want it to be and that's just more like you know maybe I could just get a restrade this looks way less orange actually maybe it's just this TV or something but on my monitor it was like any it was like the bluest darkest night sky and all this shit was just like so overtuned and oversaturated red looking yeah so this looks a lot better to me already But yeah, so far, like, I love the production values with these cutscenes and animations are great.

I think this is just a great opening sequence overall. One thing I want to shout out, but then I want to nitpick a thing, right? The combat, top three things in this video. I love the combat this game. I think it's really fun. You're gonna get into it. There's like one thing in the combat, like when you're getting the final hits on enemies, where the screen goes like a little gray, and it almost feels like you're getting hit as opposed to giving the Like there's something about that feedback, you'll do it at some point. That I'm like, as a good thing?

As a bad thing, okay. As a nip-pick, it's not like there's so many other things in the game that I got our actual critiques. That's one of those things around like, if we could like dial that, I don't know, maybe like that right there. I'm like that doesn't feel like I just killed somebody. That feels like somebody just hit me. Gotcha. Yeah. I see what you're saying.

Yeah, I guess turning the black and white kind of odd. That does feel, you know, I think maybe we think of when our characters are supposed to dying in the game. Yeah, things get black and white. defaturated yeah um but that's mean that's me that's been dip-picking that's not like a real real particular again shout out to just like the the camera change the camera zoom changes which is one of my favorite things that i wish more games had that shit kind of ready the ready immediately right wasn't that the guy i was supposed to get wasn't that like the main that looked like the main guy oh like this usually takes me to like section to section

Oh, okay. I've done this like three times. Yeah, I don't think you're supposed to see in there. Oh, I guess no, there's those little dudes that the big bear heads, yeah. Yeah, there's something that's like impactful about a lot here that I really like. I saw somebody, oh, I can get to, I want to say maybe it was IGN that compared combat to dynasty warriors a little bit just as far as how easy it can be, which I think is a good way to kind of like the, um, compare it.

Yeah. Because like you are just mowing people though. Like there was a point where I was like, damn, this combat's really easy, but it's still kind of fun. Yeah, I've seen a lot of different reviews mention, you know, the, that bad guys are almost just like set dressing. You know, they're very easy to take down, but the real challenge is the boss fights. And that sometimes that difficulty spike might be a little too much where you're like,

I've been mowing fools down for the last three hours. And now this boss was like, whoa, I wasn't expecting this second. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, you know, I do love, you know, a challenging boss fight. I mean, it wasn't until a boss fight where I was going to, I'm going to be so bad at clicking in L3 to run. Oh, yes. And keep on crafting. Dude, don't even get me started.

Holy shit. I'm going to keep on doing the guy. You have to think about it like a GTA. You got to think about it like GTA or Red Dead. You got a tap X. I got that running on my left back panel. Whoa. Just like Night Rain.

Just like night rain. I said Cox. Cox Swahman. Yeah. I wonder. It's a word. Maybe I should just do it. That might actually be not good.

Cut that out, Barry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're live. Whoa. Ooh. How close? Can I do first person combat? No.

I mean, you must be able to do. No, it does stop there, but. Oh, I didn't realize that. Which kind of makes sense. Yeah. But yeah, well, one thing I wanted to mention to the box fight thing, that's like when I first had a pause and be like, all right, we got to upgrade this.

weapons you know like I wasn't really care about it the same thing yeah yeah I did not care about that until I hit a boss play and I was like all right I'm getting my ass kicked let's reset real quick you know what do I need to do what do we need to upgrade that set me on like a quest not a literal quest but like a um my own personal quest to be like all right how do I upgrade my sword I went and I talked to a blacksmith who then set me on a mission and then I came back and I was like oh I got a pickax let me mines more when we bring that back let's fix this And that was a fun thing to do this. Oh, yeah, we're playing on PC Chai.

I play PC games with the controller. The, uh, I'm gonna be here all night after this on a Sub-a-Conn stream, as long as you all support the street for me to go. And so I want to see the game looking the best it possibly can, and the game looks awesome because it's a really, really attractive engine that runs super well super well and is very, very optimized. Like if you have a good machine, it doesn't require you to have the most crazy spec-out thing

in order to get like 30 frames. You know, yeah, I'm getting, we're getting 60 here. We are locked at 60. I could go further if I wanted to, but this TB only does 60 as it is. This is what I'll say, right? Obviously, these reviews of Christmas Desert have been video game reviews,

a review of the game of Crimson Desert. That's only that you take, man. If you're reviewing the engine, Engine might be like nine out of ten. Wow. Like the engine of this game, I hope more devs are able to license it out. Yeah, license this shit out. Give it to people.

It's a really impressive theme when you're standing around and looking around. Yeah. Yeah. How do we think console will run? I mean, they put off the specs. They said that like, you know, PS5 Pro, I think was doing 4K uprest at 60. Some of the other consoles were doing like 1080p upres at 60 and then I think the series S is like 1080p 30 or 72030 I forget I'm kind of worried about those base consoles I'm at the very least worried about the Xbox series S

give G in my regards I think might turn into a heater yeah the game beat it in credits are not alive and I do love a tragic game and I do love a tragic game ending. It's weird. It's a cool kind of brave take. It's a really enjoyed that. It's just 17 hours because I replayed that. I was legitimately confused at this part. When I was when I first booted it up, I was like, so a flashback sequence? Like what's the, what's the game if I just died?

Jesus Christ walks into the water. Oliver Queen right there with him. Grab my hand. Like I got a Lazarus pit, I can put you in. Zondo says, okay Andy, you're 10 minutes in. Is this game 10 out of 10? of 10 and is Greg a wrong hack? Well, Greg's a wrong hack anyway.

Like, regardless of whatever he thinks about this game. You know what I'm saying? Come on. But yeah, I've already played through a lot of this section already. Like I was mentioning earlier, around two and a half-ish hours, got to walk around the open world, got to do a lot of these MMO fetch quests, you know? Very just like...

I... Go get my fucking goat over there. And you go, you go, you go, and you go, thank you for the goat. Thank you for the goat. And it's like, oh, that's all I was. Exactly how it sounds. I was expecting a little bit something more there. Barnell and Chadd was asking, so like what's the story so far?

The gray manes. The gray man's, you're playing as cliff. You just got into a big fight and you got your throat split and you got a push into, push off the cliff. Yeah. And now you're in the void. Just walk this for the bit right now. Let the bitrate soak. I love a little light dancing off the back of my body.

This ain't even sponsored by NVIDI. sponsored by NVIDIA. This is just five hour energy. Shout out to five hour energy. Shout out five hour energy. Which I legitimately do love the the fruity rainbow. I need to try that one. Yeah. This is this is like that's my my good. I'm gonna need to take some of these home because like I've started. Oh my God clicking in left stick. This is good at every time you see me just do that fucking hit me in the back of the head. See that's gonna be me with the heels and rising you line. Let's see here. Press X to jump and press X while running to jump further. But here in lies my problem.

is that while I'm running, while I'm jogging, it won't land you go. Why? If I'm running, I can't jump. Is that real? I'm holding down the A button. That can be right. And hit X, I can jump.

But if I take my, if I take my finger off the A button, where I'm just like in the, if I'm like in the jog mode or whatever, like that shit works. Oh, I don't remember having that problem. Yeah, like it was really, really fucking with me. You gotta make sure your fingers aren't holding down the aim button the whole time. I see. You have to make sure you're not holding on the button.

Yeah, I think I naturally take my finger off it. Precision jump. And here's what we get into this like cool precision jump system. This is where we get into like, oh, this game has a lot of controls. Yeah. So left bumper chat is kind of like your command thing. You know, you see like a, maybe you see a toaster on the ground and you hover over it with this left trigger or left bumper thing and you're like, oh, there's toast in this toast.

Yeah. Grab that toast, you know. Oh, I thought you fell. Oh, yeah, I almost... I almost shit the bed there. Oh, man. Look at all, like... One of the first thing I noticed was how the wind

just blowing these plants all over the place. It looks so damn good, man. Floyd Frostfield. It's me. There I did that, that, crap's again. Fuck me. Oh my god. But thankfully you can climb.

Cliff. Clifford. Here we go. We're jumper right there. We're jumping from a spot this spot. Come on. Look at that, gamers. It was very fun listening to the review yesterday.

I mentioned this on KHG that like, as I was watching the review, I so badly wanted to be in the conversation. And it was so bad that I super chatted for the first time. I was like, fucking, I'll take out the wallet. Get me off the bench. I'll give you my money card. Like, now I understand why people do this. So towards the wall after jumping to cling to it.

Bam. Man. While clinging, hold up. To move along the wall. I think that this game invented climbing like that. I know. No other games done that. Whatever.

Bless was hiding in the chat too. I was in the chat. Like here's the problem where for some, for me as somebody who's been on plenty of our shows, like when somebody else is in the chat, like when I see Paris is in the chat or whatever, it can get like a little bit distracting because I know like, because I can tell he had something to say, right?

So it's almost like I'm talking to somebody who's on the show even though he's at home or whatever. Yeah. I knew I was being that in the chat where I'm like, I hope I'm not in annoying the guys by like putting my opinions in here, because I just got stuff to stay. His portal got that bitrate update today.

Yeah, Tim was going to be about it. Yeah, he's going nuts about it. Hold LB and RB for blinding flash. You go Pugh-choo, sword, shing. You grab it from that thing, there we go. Reflect light with your sword to disrupt enemies' vision. Spot enemy weak points and find special items hidden throughout Paiwell using the blinding

flash. Paiwell just kind of reminds you like the word Pirel, but it's like doing the little ooh-woo baby talk. William and Paiwell. For some reason, I want to pronounce the W as a V. Like Pival? I like, I did like that.

LB, R.B. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Okay. LBRB. We got the Lair right. And then while maintaining it with R.B. Move aim to, remove the right stick to aim your target.

Then press LB to begin concentrating your beam. And then hold until the device activates. I don't think I did this after this moment. Man, look at that. Somebody in the comments, like, you know, after you will get their hands on the game, we're going to be like, blessed, this is how you get into chapter two.

I had no idea. Like, damn, I didn't play the game. Look at this water. It's as hell, dude. It's insane. That's why I'm like, this engine. We gotta get this engine in the hands of people. Because this game looks like a 10-9-10 game.

Yeah, no, no, no, it does. Like, this game looks like a masterpiece. The lantern is a useful tool for illuminated dark areas. One thing I really did enjoy was kind of, I love a good quick swap, you know, weapon wheel, item wheel. Even though it can become very overwhelming at times, but there are moments very, very early on where you get a helmet that you need to use quickly. So I love that I don't have to go to start. Go to equipment. Where's my fucking hat?

Hey, let me equip that. Yeah, it's a very kind of quick thing and I really do appreciate that. In certain situations, hold LB to shine the lantern and may reveal hidden locations. Hold left on the D pad. And we hit A there and then on or auto. I guess auto is just whenever it's dark, it turns on,

but it's on right now. Hold LB with your lantern. and your weapon she. Coco Monster in chat is asking, is Andy still doing the marathon stream of this? Yeah. Well, not tomorrow. I mean, if it pushes, who knows, man?

You're starting today. Who knows? We're starting right after this. You're starting practically right now. Right after this is the official start to the marathon screen. Right now, we're in the middle of Gamescast plays, our show where we take an editorial look into games while we play them. See that?

I feel that. That was beautiful. Put that on the box. Look at just the light bouncing all over the play. great ray tracing, awesome, awesome engine. And again, the reason why everybody is so high on this engine and why things made a lot more sense when they were explaining all this shit

is like this stuff's really expensive to do, expensive and taxing for your machine, for normal machines, right? Yeah. It's really hard to make all these computations and calculations and stuff for a lot of other engines because you get an engine like Unreal or Unity, and then you want to add,

a tree system and you may download a program called SpeedTree to get trees. And that's an added plugin that adds a certain amount of like CPU weight. And then you get another thing, you get a physics thing here to do physics computations. And that's going to add more and more. And you're getting a lot of these, you know, whenever you start up a game chat and there's always like a screen with a bunch of the fucking logos, those are usually the plug-in things that have been licensed out. And that equates to a lot of like bloat at times, right?

But this engine, the Black Space engine, which is owned by them and created all in-house, the proprietary engine, everything you're seeing is all just running in the engine. They weren't licensing out a bunch of different things and programs in order to make the game look and operate the way it does. And so you're able to do that a lot more efficiently when it's just the engine doing stuff as opposed to requiring a lot of other outside tools. And that rocks. Like, shout out to them. No, I didn't see the A.J. Brown rumors.

What's going on? What's happening with the A.J. Brown? Oh, we're coming back. He's rising. Jesus Christ. Are we loving the visual quality chat? How's it looking? Let me know how that bit rate's looking and singing.

There we are. The world. Welcome to the world of Paiwell. Gray main. Gray main. Gray main? Lost in thought again. I'm Gucci-Main.

Why don't we go inside? Well, before you go inside, Andy, I want to tell the audience to go to kindof-frey.com slash patreon. Damn it, patreon.com.com's kind of funny. I mean, both work. YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, or you can go and get the kind of funny membership, which allows you to get shows ad-free.

And speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors. Come one, come all, step into a world of wonder, full of laughs and sweetness. Enjoy summer's brightest moments and experience a circus of flavor with a new cotton candy flavor of five-hour energy shot. Astound and amaze your taste buds with sweet, fruity clouds, and a hint of vanilla. Plus, B vitamins, nutrients, and caffeine, you'll be ready to see the sights and ride the rides. Try cotton candy five-hour energy today. Order now at five-hourenergy.com or Amazon.com.

This podcast is brought to you by Rula. I know I'm the strongest person you know, but even I, Greg Miller, struggle with mental health and know how important it is to talk to someone when you're going through it. That's where Rula comes in. Rula makes therapy simple, affordable, and fast. They work with most major insurance plans, and the average session co-pay is just $15. That's $15. That's basically the cost of lunch.

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And we're back with more croons in desert with the one or only the deep... I'll just see the way Barrett's running this show. I don't know. Barrett's going crazy right now in a good way. Can you do a pan? People got to see. I mean... This is what I kept...

This is the thing I kept doing while playing the game, where I was like, damn, am I wrong? Do I like this? Do I like it or I like looking at it? I mean, it certainly makes... Am I out of touch? It certainly makes things a lot more appealing to want to stick with it

when something looks this damn good. Talking about, like, you know, the Raychase reflections and, you know, the distance, the draw distance and all that. Everything looks frigging fantastic. But right now I got to follow my dude over here. We have a super chat from BAM, who says, sorry, bless my first super chat spelled wrong. And then Ryan Downing with the $5,000, says, we got snacks for tonight?

Oh, there will be snacks tonight. Oh, yeah. And good chance I also do a little order of food tonight in honor of still like Mike. Wait, what was the first super chat that can spell out? Bless, have you heard about the SF6 Alex story? I don't know what would have. Oh, they spelled your name Bliss. Oh.

Oh, really. SF6, Alex's story. No, I'm not familiar, sorry. I'm gonna give you like the Sparkoose. Remember Sparkn't? Oh, I do remember this. Yeah, just wouldn't read. Blessing, I got the scoop for you. What's us from two days ago. Very well. If you're heading into Tower,

who married his step-sister and second cousin, Patricia. I love that. Oh, here. Okay, Alex. If there's any information to be found, you'll find it there. I don't know. Actually, I do know. I don't like it. I'll take care of this

Look, I already paid you we're here for the interest. What interest? I Kid come here just if you could just we're not asking we're telling we'll beat the interests out of you or make your maths go up in flake your choice. What you goking at? No Today will be your last. So there are, you'll notice there are, I love how when you pause it does that slow then. I do like that. So there are cutscenes of a we've experienced already really high quality stuff. And this is why for people out there, you may go, huh, this game seems to be doing a lot of like narrative heavy stuff.

This isn't just an open world survival. You're not going to talk to anybody ever. It gives you a lot of NPCs, just like a lot of old. open world games do. And so that, you know, take that for what it is because there's, you know, a lot of conjecture of, well, they're not trying to do

a kind of like narrative story game. So, well, first time, you don't fucking know, you haven't played it. Oh, you're talking about the people complaining. Yeah. Okay. I see, I see. You know, there's, we've already seen several cutscenes in this game already. It's like, it's like they're presenting you with a story that where we have to... That they're emphasizing, you know?

Yeah. You know, they're not just... It doesn't just feel like background notes. Now maybe it'll feel background noise when I walk in the mountain for seven hours and don't talk to anybody. Yeah. It may feel like background noise then, but... This is what I'll say to that. They're trying to really, like, do something narratively here at the beginning. Because the thing that I'll challenge for people is even for those open worlds that we view is like,

oh, but you're here for the gameplay, but oh, you don't really care about story or whatever. I would say, let's take that further and like, let's really dive into those games that we say. Because people will cite Eldon Ring, which I would say, hey, let's pause. they're not trying to do anything like that. Like, narrative. But also, like, an Elder Ring does have a narrative and characters and stuff that people care about. Oh, it does.

Because you don't care about it, doesn't mean that, like, other people, like, doesn't mean that nobody cares. Yeah, the Elder Ring comparison one is the one that I just kind of like immediately dismissed because it's like, well, you, that's a really bad argument. I feel like I'm arguing with a five-year-old man.

Yeah. You know, like. But I still, I feel, but like, the brother of the wild one is more. You don't understand if a game doesn't have cut scenes all of the time. It's not focusing on stories. Yeah.

But people also bring up Breath of the Wild, and that's what I disagree with too. Not in the sense of like, I'm not gonna say here and say Breath of the Wild deserve story of the year, but Breath of Lot has characters that I care about a lot. It does have characters and the world is a character as well

and all that stuff, but I, my argument was more about like, you know, so far, this is doing narrative stuff just like when I started Witcher 3 for the first time. I'm talking to people, I'm seeing stuff. Yeah, I'm seeing stuff. You know, and it presents. Yeah, like it's presenting like it's trying to do that.

So when it, when something is presenting itself to try to do something and maybe if it doesn't live up to the expectations of what it's trying to present, then you go, I'm not feeling this part of it, right? Now, if the game started off and it's this, you know, meditative, solitary character who's just like, on the limb on his own. Yeah, like, then I don't have expectations for this. You know what I mean? For sure. It all depends on how you present yourself. Yeah. But I still fight against the idea of like Breath of Wild's story being like not existent or

I guess not even story. For me it's the writing where when I'm when Link is talking to characters I'm invested in what those characters are saying because the writing is charming. Me too. I'm into it right. Me too but I wasn't like the reason I brought up that game was like I wasn't. Yeah, that's not a game that I go to and go holy shit. Yeah.

Yeah, but you gotta get to this, to this story beat, and that's where things really put. Like, that wasn't my experience with Brother of the Wild, and it's still one of the best of all time for me. Yeah. And Elder Ring, it's like, well, if they wanted to do cut scenes and have all these sorts of, like, character... Like traditional interactions, but that's not what they were even trying to go for us, but... Anyway, I just had to kind of bring that up, because I... It does seem like a big talking point today, the Elder Ring and Brother of the Wild stuff. But you all love those games, so why not this?

It's like, well, you know, but... One of the things I wanted to bring up, if I was on the Barovina yesterday, because I think those comparisons come up and then also the Witcher 3 and the Red Dead redemption comparisons come up. And I think it really isn't that place where you kind of can't win,

because if you try to compare it to like a Witcher or Red Dead, people would be like, well, it's trying to be brought to Loud or Alden Ring, but if you compare it to Elden Ring or Brooklyn, people are like, well, it's trying to be like, Witcher and Red Dead. And I think the problem, And part of what makes me not engage with,

not make me as invested to engage in the game as strong as I'd like to, is that it isn't a weird place of trying to do both things, but not really like leaning far enough at the either for me. We're nearly there. There are so many systems. They got the glide in the rest of the wild. Like the game kind of wants you to explore a bit and I'm like, a horse would make traveling a lot easier.

But it then also kind of has like the linearity of mission design of a rock star game or a witcher game that has me like, ah, like, are we doing A or are we doing B? Am I supposed to explore and kind of like make my own fun out of it? Or do you want me to be in the missions? Because when I'm in the missions, I'm like, ah, but these missions are kind of really basic and the story's not really grabbing me. And when I'm in the world, I'm like, ah, you're kind of pointing me back to these missions that feel linear. And like, I don't feel as, you know, I don't feel as motivated to like be like, oh, man, okay, we got four big things. I just gotta make my way to the four big things.

You know what I mean? I don't know. It's in a weird in between space that doesn't really blend in like a strong place from there. Right. That's sort of a master of none. But I did love seeing this and going, oh, chapter one.

This is nice. Yeah. I like this. You know, give me sort of a structure that I can place myself in time with the game rather than, you know, some other games, you might just wander around from and go like, am I making progress?

Am I doing anything? Am I doing what the game kind of wants me to be doing? But I think the game does, you know, a good job of saying, like, here's this now, now go do this, now go do that, or whatever. Temporary logic. Did you mess with the system at all? No, not at all. Because in those cutscenes, or not sorry, not in the cutscenes,

but in those videos that they were putting out before the game came out, one of them was dedicated to, here's a lot of different systems you might see. We got fishing, we got all sorts of shit. One of them was this sort of camp. Animal Crossing style, not mini-game, but just system, where I can put a camp lodging here, and I can have whatever here, and I can rotate my bed. You know what's funny? I was talking to Joey about this after KHD, because she was asking about Crimson Desert,

and she was like, so is it like a survival game? And I was like, no. And she was like, but it seems like it has a lot of things that would probably make for a good survival game. And I was like, you know what? Yeah. You're actually kind of right. If they made like a survival game mode of this game, the way that that would hit so hard. Now, I just, I love this shit.

Like, I just love larger than life NPCs. Oh, yeah. This shit is so sick. No, you want to hear it from back? Yeah. The shield, you see like the five markings on the shield? Uh-huh. Do you know what they'll stand for?

No. Five-hour energy. Oh, wow! Shout out to our sponsor for this episode. Wow! Cast plays. We're promoting three new flavors of five-hour energy today. I really got buried.

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It was really Andy's reaction, like, dumbfounded face of how... We forgot how good of a host you are. When I'm gone for a little bit, and I come back and I got the energy. You miss, you miss, yeah. The five-hire energy. Currently playing on PS5 Pro,

so I'll let you all know, says nice flight. Hell, yeah, let us know. It's tense. Wow, we. I'm walking first person in this zone, yeah. Look around Hernand Tavern. Now, can I tell you one of the things I, weirdly enough, love the most in the game, even though it was one of my main complaints when I was writing, when I wrote in the Blurprey,

is the knowledge system. The knowledge system is so interesting. Because basically, what they did is, they got like basically a glossary of terms in the game, and they gamified the glossary to where, where when Cliff sees something, when he witnesses something, you'll get a meter in like the top left of the screen that's like learning in progress. And when he learns, it takes like two seconds.

When it fills, it's like knowledge gained. And you learn things about that thing. And you get to go into the knowledge menu and it's basically a big glossary. I think it's very fascinating because when it works, it's super cool. But then there are sometimes right thing is very, excuse me, I think it's dumb.

Starting with the pool though, I got into a boss fight and this boss was like... Hold on, I'm being... I can't... There's like... I can't go in here? They can't let me in here.

They're like, you don't... Not like that. You look like shit. You look bummy. What the fuck? That's bullshit. Okay, sorry. Get your drip up, bro.

Damn, okay. What the fuck you wearing? Sorry to interrupt. This guy threw me up. Is that the castle? Are you trying to get into the castle wearing that? Flashback to 6th Street and be like,

not not with those shoes, man. Oh, you mean, fresh, bro. Yeah, no. What can get you... There's some cross trainers. Get your money up, All right. Fuck you, dude.

But I'm finding a boss, and the boss starts, like, dodge rolling as I'm trying to attack him. And I see, like, the knowledge meter, like, start to fill a little bit. And then he dodge rolls, like, two more times. And then it's, like, knowledge gained. And now I can dodge roll. Oh, now you know that. That's, like, now you know how to do that mechanic. That, to me, is, like, such a cool fucking thing.

Because if you go into your skill tree, I'm pretty sure it'll tell you, like, hey, you can unlock this with skill points, or you can just learn it. Like, watch somebody do it, and you'll, are you about to throw that thing? Give this guy a fucking piece of my mind right here, buzzing. Yeah. Kicking me out of the spot. Oh, shit. When a crime occurs, the search area will appear around the scene.

You must quickly leave the area and hide from witnesses. This is going to be a good game of the stream. This is going to be a good game. I didn't think you're walling out like this and start off. Let's go. When you played the game, did you get past that door? No, no. I didn't even walk up to the door.

You'll eventually go back there. No, I like, I walked through like all of this. That's like mainline. I'm just gonna fight him, fuck it. Do it. Can we like, can, can I block myself out of the game immediately? I mean, I wasn't on that energy because I was like, I wanna make sure

I have a good relationship with everybody, so I didn't even try all this. Oh my God, oh, they're strong. Yeah, they're. Oh my God, they're everywhere. Oh my God, I wanna parry one of them. Fuck you, wait, what the fuck. Oh yeah, they do that.

Oh shit. They'll attack. Oh! If you if you feel that, they'll throw you out. Oh! Fuck you! Damn! It's crazy.

Death has found you returned to your past. Remember when we were saying the enemies are easy? It feels like Dynasty Warriors? Respon in prison. That doesn't count as the authority. That doesn't apply to the authorities. It's like they're all individual bosses. They're teaching us a lesson right here of like you're not supposed to be fighting these guys right now, so

we're gonna make it real hard for you. That was cool, the little quick time thing. time thing yeah so those a different area I actually did do that in and basically when I failed the quick time versus they like tied me up and threw me or they didn't tie me up they grabbed me and threw literally threw me out there oh nice yeah oh that I got like out on bail nice yeah got to talk to my parole officer it's been like five months yeah he's got a got a giant job line up for me a jiffy lub got a little uh we're gonna be back out there we're back in society now

Oh, I'm still kind of in the same zone though. Okay. That's cool. Um, what was I talking about? I was talking about the knowledge thing. So yeah, that learning how to dodge will through just watching somebody super cool. I love the knowledge system for that. The one that I mentioned during games cast that I wrote in with was yeah, give us money. Oh, don't have any. Oh my god. I probably had to pay bail. I'm bad bro. I came out of jail. I had to pay bail. Oh, look at that little puppy. Oh, I can't go first person for that. That's bullshit. Oh, here, there you go. There you go. Oh my goodness. Oh my god. Uh, it- it- Jindo is his name, Knowledge Acquired.

Oh wow, Jindo. Hello, Jindo. My actions are appreciated, says the dog. Come on. But yeah, the one that annoyed me was I went to a store and it's a grocery store, so they have all these different produce items I can buy. And they all had question marks on them, but you can see the pictures and I'm like, oh, what? And then I like hover over them all, like individually, and it takes two seconds for the Knowledge Beater to fill up of being like, oh, this is a fish.

Oh, this is an egg. Oh, this is a... And I'm like, why does Cliff not know what these bases are? You drowned, bro. Like, yeah. Why does Cliff not have basic knowledge of what an egg is, bro? Your memory went with the water. Why are we wasted my time having to, like, sit and learn what all these things are?

That didn't make sense to me. Hey, am I supposed to talk to you? Good day and all that. Oh, you're just saying hi. Okay. Age hasn't told my strength one did. Dude, it's just frame-mogging me right there. Look around Hernan power. Hello.

How's your fuck you going? Yeah, yeah, what do you want? I'm here to try arm wrestling. I'm guessing you're the arm wrestler. Fine day. Oh, the L butt, the left bumper. There we go. Left bumper, if you want a games cast, games tip,

left bumper is your friend. Whenever you're like, what am I supposed to be doing? Who am I talking to? Hit that L1. Games cast me. Let's have that. Oh. It's like, what's going on?

Yeah, he had to take it. He's got an intro. Armrestes is a concept of strength and timing. Press X to fill the gauge red and win it. The gauge turns completely wide. You'll lose your man. Okay, all right. Yeah, immersion fragrances in chat says,

can you play the whole game in first person? It seems like most of it, but combat you weren't able to do first person. Yeah, I wasn't able to pet the dog in first person, so I'm pretty sure. Oh, I have to start the game at the same. I'll snap your wrist. All right, shit talking already. Oh, I thought I was like, why?

Come on. Have that thing. Ooh. Have that thing, Martin. I was a weird thing to say. Yeah, I mean, you had that great five hour engine line earlier and I was awesome, but then you got a little, that was a bit of a heat check. That was a heat check. You know, I'll break it down.

You made here right now, I'm gonna bring it down in here. You made three, three points in a row, you shot after that. I just did my best. All right, well, we beat down like game out of Iowa. That's a reference, come on. 80 points, one game. Damn My pa always said

True strength lies in humility It's a good dad I suppose you meant folk like you Well Thanks for the compliment That was fun Yeah It's a

I had swag I think the one thing that I agree with Every reviewer about that is not super high On story or characters or anything It's like it should have been a creative character Oh yeah I should have just been able to create my

person called the cliff, you know, or whatever. I don't know. The cliff? The greenie? Yeah, you're the fucking cliff, right? You know, like, I just, it just seems like there's not a whole lot to be like, oh, the Commander Shepherd or, you know, that's,

he's just a dude. He's just like a blank sling, you know. Boy, what you got for sale? You got any deos? I got a left, wait. I'll be a left bumper. Breed. Hello.

Celebrating anything in particular. Oh, it's that blue crystal that's making so much light. I was like, man, why is all this blue in the screen? But something's light up right there. So she has a Dalia. Yeah, rest your bones. This is a haven for those with stories to tell. They may not be the best stories, though, but the gameplay is fantastic.

Oh, well, I don't have anything with her. Bye, so he's going to leave. Whoa, purple crystals. She's a crystal lady. I want to do a crystal lady. Yeah. We all have met a crystal lady on Bumble or change before. Oh, man.

Crystal lady, I'll never forget. Give a coin to the beggar. Give a coin to your beggar. The world is filled with pain. Dude, my favorite thing about the Witcher NPCs, though, is that they all, like, have just the funniest lines as you're walking around, like, this one line that always makes you have this one guy who goes,

I'll never know true love. He's just like a random NBC. He's like he'll pop up every doubt. They're like GTA. There's so many unhinged, like, little lines. You made me want to, like, go back and actually finish the Witcher. I got to Nova grad. It's on the old.

I was big over guy chilling. Oh my god. I've got used to the indifference. That's nothing anyone should grow accustomed to. Here, I hope this can be available. Good guy. Good guy, Cliff. How?

Kind of you. A benevolent hand has finally reached me. Please, take place. I'm sure you will find a use for it. What, what is this? Virtue. paves the path to wisdom, which shall bring us together once more. Never forget.

When the time comes, the key ye shall guide you. Damn, dude. There's some kind of riddle. Wait, what did you mean? He's a magic, man. Yeah. Damn, he's a genie. He's a genie, chap.

He'll got to be more surprised with Alcliffe. Investigating the suit. He'd be like, do you disappear? You all see that shit? He walked over there and fucking evaporated. And said, go in the gate on the ground below me. Answer the sewer. Left bumper. Here we go.

There you go. Left bumper open. Yeah, what's that other unhinged Witcher 3 lines? One of them, like, you're trying to wet your whistle, like when you're around like the red light district? You know? The ladies of the night are just around there. They all have hilarious lines.

It's kind of like you're quoting. homeboy from all the Chris Van Nola movies Alfred. Are you trying to wet your wish? Yeah. Investigate the sewer. Oh, damn.

Remember that we gotta do your precision jumps, everybody. You know the buttons. Or you just freak it. Or I'm just crazy. Come on. Oh, my God. Left bumper.

Untie. When in doubt. L1. Who are you? Please. You have to help me. Quickly. Dude, I didn't see this is the beggar.

I just helped. Oh, my God. He turns around like, I tricked you. Stabs you. Can you walk? He was right about you. Here. You'll need this.

Careful those. Everybody evaporates. It's not trying to do anything narratively, though. They're not trying to, they're not trying to do a story. They're not trying to do a story, guys. You can skip all this. They're not trying to do any of this. Yeah.

Yeah. Speak with the child's is now the command. The child. This is actually one of the complaints Greg gave that I agree with is like you'll finish an objective. They'll give you the next objective and you'll be like, what do you mean speak with the child? What child? And it's like, oh, it's on the map, okay. It's on the map, but why, but why am I speaking to a child right now?

Did the lady tell me to go speak to a specific child? I will read the letter chat after a word from our sponsors. Not just kidding, we already did that. Let me raid the la'a. A letter a seal it's a key item a letter from a series one sealed by mystical power Can't be can be read joke's on you jokes on all of us speak with the child Like why would not? You walk up to the are you the child I'm supposed to speak to it's me again the beggar

The entire game just keep running into this one Left bumper What something wrong But you just won't come down before anyone notices. The chief's going to be really upset. How can you help me get him down? Gigi, get down here this instant. Hurry!

You're going to get us both in trouble. The chief gets scary when he's mad. Who's the chief? Hopefully we get to meet him soon. Oh, he just did that. Yeah, I was saying, this being cliffy climbing. I didn't even do that. He just did it.

fucking can't over here you guys that's a quest right there go on there it is quest right there that's quest design baby this is this is why Jake Baldino was like it first eight hours are kind of rough yeah yeah that brought me back to Skyward story oh yeah like one of the first missions you get in Skyward's maybe it's a reference come say hi sure if I have time I'll reward you for your help today I think I think You'd love it. That's so true, not the lies that. This would have been a four-hour side quest

in The Witcher. It's so true. Man, when I was looking for fucking Dandelion, I'm like, man, I've been looking for goddamn nine hours, Dandelion. Daneiline is where I dropped off Witcher. Wait. But everything was so awesome on the way.

It's just like a, when the writing's so good, and children and beggars and ladies aren't disappearing. I knew Woodhury was fired, because when you came back and said you were playing the Witcher 3, and you mentioned the bloody I got excited. I was like, why am I excited right now? I'm not playing this game since 2017.

Stab. What am I? Oh, I just stab on the ground. When you crouch. Oh, oh, got you, got you. Very big, like, Shadow Colossus. I forget to crouch. Chris, Hank, I see you in the chat. Don't forget about it.

The other day I walked into, um, hopped into the Discord and Kevin Asak's like, what's up, man, you didn't read my resub yesterday, man. I've been a fan of years for a long time. He's like giving me shit. And I was like, I didn't see it. And Chris was like,

Yeah, there are times where I chat and I noticed you don't, and I was like, Chris, there's so many times that I will watch back Avod and then go, damn, they were in my chat? Dude, I had no idea. I had no idea. Like, I'll read the, like, I'll only, like, see the chat right below the person that, like, or the message that Chris wrote. I'm like, dude, I don't know. It's so funny. My brain just, like, see certain shit. I'll watch back Avod and see certain chats come up and I'm like.

I don't know you're there. I don't remember anybody saying that. Yeah. Yeah, come on, let's look at this world again. Help the distressed villagers. Yeah, the cat told you about them. Ah, shit, that's right. Look at this risk.

Wowie. Andy, we gotta wind down this game's cast plays, because we're gonna wind up your adventure, your marathon adventure. My pie world. Into the world of Paiso, featuring Paivel. We gotta do that now.

We're just gonna call it that. Starring Cliff and the cat. And come on. Like, take a stop right here. It's gonna be a, It's gonna be a big adventure, chat. This, I mean, honestly, this is, this is Bilbo right here, Tats.

We're going on an adventure! I'm very, very excited for this, for the rest of what the marathon stream will be after this. Yes, this feels like the Vault 101 you're coming out, like you're coming out of the vault moment, you know what I mean? We look around and you have the whole world in front of you. Oh, Jesus Christ.

Oh, that's right, that's right. I don't think you're supposed to be standing there when he does that. You're supposed to be walking from the ground. That's hilarious. I thought I just scared him. I thought you know the same thing you have I remembered. I do remember like, yeah, that's the whole point of this side goes.

And it's so funny that I didn't. I only saw it from up there. That's so funny. Cat, that is a scripted thing that happened. Can't even handle cleaning a bloody chimney. Some husband you turned out to be. Anyway, she's like, clean my chimney. I'm like, your husband's right, did you want him to watch?

And she's like, no, my actual chimney up there. God, dang. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Marathon stream after this chat, sub-athon stream. Thank you so much for watching. This episode of the Gamescast plays.

But before we go, I want to remind you about our sponsor. Shout out and thank you to Five Hour Energy for sponsoring this GameCats plays. We're promoting three new flavors. We got Cotton Candy, Fruitie Rainbow, and Confetti Craze. I only tell you a little bit about confetti craze. Eating cake on the go is hard. Grab a confetti crazed five hour energy shot instead.

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Shut it. But chat, stay tuned because the angel is going to keep playing Crimson Desert on the marathon stream right after this. For now, for those watching Gamescast plays, it's been our pleasure to serve you.