Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Dragon Age: The Veilguard Spoilercast - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

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What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Thursday, November 7th, 2024. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside the Hispanic hardthrobed Texas Street, Latino heat, clicking heads and ripping them to shreds. The globe trotting, head shot, and rooting, tooting, three-point shooting. Nitro rifle from Twitch.com. Christmas sweater designer. Andy Cortez. Welcome in, everybody. I'm prepped. I got my steam deck with my save ready to rock. were panicking. We're like, do you have a steam deck charger?

I was like, yeah, sure. What's going on? It was like a 38% and the times that I have played Dragon Age in my bed, I'm like, oh shit, we're already low, that low? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a battery sucker. Yeah, it's that thing where it's like, I'm getting ready for this New York flight tomorrow. Come hang out with me.

If you're watching life, if you're later, don't come look for me in New York, but if I find New York, Shopify, blah, blah, anyways, uh, and I have the big battery pack charging at home because I'm ready for this flight. It's going to be metaphor, re-fantazzing, right, everybody? We're bringing the fight to these people. unless I get, I'm like, I don't like the combat and I want to play more Tragedy. Maybe I booted it back up, Barrett.

Oh, he was leaving the room, but he's coming back in. Maybe I booted it back up, and then I had to look for a little baby somewhere, and I was like, I don't remember what I was going on. I'm gonna pay Prince of Persons. I got a journal. I'll get back to it one day. Oh, yeah, the baby. A little baby. There's a little baby in the town. A little baby.

Oh, dude, that's the story's about to get so good for you. Oh, no, you know what? I'm looking for this fucking, uh, Hyman, man. You're looking for Hyman? Jaime. High's me. Oh, He's Mait. I'm not there yet.

I'm not there yet. I have a deal of Jaime. Okay. A lot of people think it's Jamie, but it's dyslexia. You got to understand the I and the E or the I and the M are swapped. Oh. J-A-I-M-E is Hyman. J-A-M-I-E is Jamie.

Well, I think thanks to the success of a little movie called Blue Beetle, everybody knows Hyme. Oh, of course. It's a good movie. Come on. That was a good movie. It was a good movie. I can't wait to talk to her about that one day. I digress.

We're not talking about that. Are we master of hype snowback Mike? are we some sort of veil guard? That's all it does. What are we supposed to be some kind of veil guard? How are you doing, Mike? I'm feeling good, Greg. You know, we reviewed this game last week,

and I have just been dying to finally be able to talk about it a little bit more in depth with all of you. I've really loved your special cast with the book reading. It was really cool, Greg, of like, I love just having you go off solo, but I was there at the other side of the screen. I'm just like the rest of the audience going, oh, you did that?

I did that. Oh, I remember that moment. How cool. So great job on that. I'm excited for us to finally kind of dive in and talk a little more in depth about some spoilers and some fun moments in this game. Of course, no back Mike's talking about Kindof Funny.com slash Greg's journal. As you know, I kept a 46-page journal of everything that happened to my rook in Dragon Age. And last week earlier this week. Yeah, earlier this week. God, it's no way. I was last week. I thought it was Friday. Oh, we moved it. It was originally going to be this week. I did a games cast that was all just me, one man showing it, walking through, talking about everything that happened in my rook story. You can get that.

a PDF for free of my entire journal over at kind of funny dot com slash gregg's journal watch it there and get the journal there uh but today is of course the dragon age the veil guard spoiler cast gloves will be taking we're taking off now i still got housekeeping okay but if you haven't beaten dragon age put this one down it'll be here it's like it's not going to be milk it's not going to spoil on you you don't need to be here right in the way this can be a slow burn on the view count as we go to 36,000 is what i'm going to say I don't know where this one tops off. You know what I mean?

Of course it'll be there for you. If you have no plans to ever play Dragon Age, hang out and hear us tell about it and talk about it and all the consequences and decisions and all that jazz. But for right now, let me give you the housekeeping. Of course, this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday on a variety of platforms, we go through the biggest topics in video games, whether it be reviews, previews, spoiler casts or the mystery box. Andy, put your head in the mystery box. What's in the box? I gesture down here.

It was the one shot to me. Put it in. Yeah, there it is. You went in there. You got a prize? Gross. Belly button lit. Collecting it for a year.

I've been saving it for you. Of course, we do all that live on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Twitch.tv. TV slash kind of funny games. And on podcast services around the globe. No matter where you get the show, please like, subscribe, share, leave a review, leave a rating. Really subscribe. Don't just say you're going to subscribe.

Really subscribe. Maybe you're listening to the podcast. Pull the car over. Pull the UPS truck over. over open the YouTube app and subscribe to YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. Of course, if you have Twitch Prime

or if you have Amazon Prime, you have Prime Gaming. I like the better ones, Twitch Prime. You got a free 30-day subscription. We'd love it if he gave it to us. It doesn't auto-renew. So make sure you set a reminder and come give us your five bucks

so Jeff Bezos understands. He can't get away with it. If you really want to be a part of the show and you're watching live, guess what? There's a special job for you. Go to YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. We will be taking your super chats.

I know, of course, we're early on this game. Maybe you haven't beaten it yet, but we will want your questions, comments, and concerns about Dragon Age and what you did in some of the pivotal decisions. Superchat those on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Remember, we are a small business all about live talk shows every day at 10 a.m. You get Kind of Funny Games Daily with the nerdy news need to know about, followed by the games cast, followed by a stream. Today's stream is Pokemon TCG Pocket, but it's a battle for premium passes.

We have three hardcore Pokemon players here. Mike, Tim. And the one and only blessing at Eioia, Jr. We only have two $100 gift cards for the game. So they're going to have to fight each other to decide who gets them. If you're a kind of funny member today, of course, you can get my Gregway, which I do for you each and every day. Because, hey, what is a kind of funny membership?

It's $10 to get all of our content ad-free. Get the ability to watch the afternoon podcast. Like today's in review of Inside Out 2 live as we record it a day early. And, of course, get a daily dose of me in Gregway. Today's is all about me breaking the WWE2K community. Andy is showing off his mass effect armor in Dragon Age As soon as I heard about on Games Daily I ran out there

Download it put my character in it Liked it so much But I then dyed my hair red No way I had it Because I had it bear it or whoever Bear it's still in there I see there's been movement in there

If you can go to my Twitter You'll see my my rook right now Rockin the new Mass Effect armor They just dropped for N7 Day And a little bit of red in her hair Rather than the blue Which I've been doing to match my Crow

My crow look that I had for 60 hours or whatever it is. So right now I'm excited to get back to that. I'm also excited to thank our patron. Our producers Carl Jacobs and Delaney Twine. Look at her. Very good. Look at that. We're rocking it right now. Of course, we're brought to you by phasmophobia and better help.

We'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin the show with topic of the show. Today's topic, of course, is Dragon Age, the Veil Guard spoiler cast. That means it is officially time. if you were just hanging out to see all the shenanigans before we got in there, we're now going to spoil all of Dragon Age. And so really what I want to do is somebody who, again, is lucky enough to have done the journal,

the journal podcast, kind of funny.com slash Greg's journal. Go watch it, please. I want to start with you, Mike. You said, you know, you've been waiting and wanting and champing at the bit to get in here and talk about it. Where would you want to start when I say we can talk about whatever you want to talk about with your little low flow hair? Thank you.

I would first like to start by apologizing to Andy, where I would text him nonstop because I was spoiling the game for him because I was just so excited to share it with you. I know how much you love bioward games and I was enjoyed and I just wanted to talk about it. And I understand. And it's like, I only asked you about Gavin.

He was like some throwaway boss. He wasn't that great, you know what to me? But it was like, I wanted to know him. No, there was two separate things. There was two separate things. There was a, well, what's that with this big ass hydrophite? And I was like, I, well, I'm not there. So chill out.

Don't say, like, I haven't experienced that yet. Stop talking. And he said, well, where are you? How are you not with me? I was like, well, Mike, you've been at home for a fucking week. Right? Yeah, yeah. Sick as a dog.

Just playing this game. And also, I told you I restarted three times because of the character that I had created. And so that was one thing. And then the next day, you know, did you fight so and so? I'm like, dog, stop fucking talking. Stop saying. So if I'd like to start anywhere, I would like to start with the first big decision. I would like to know, did you save Doctown and Minrathus or did you go to Treviso and

side and help the crows? Because I chose to go to Trowell. Treviso and save them because I thought my best friend Andy would go help Nev and save her town. Turns out he didn't do that. So I was very mad at him because I would have helped Nevin's dead. Yeah, that stinks. Yeah. Because during our preview period, you are faced with the choice of hey, one of these cities is going to need a lot of assistance. One of them will likely get really, really changed. And during the preview period, I went to go to Minrathus to help Nev. during the preview.

So this time around, I'm like, well, I want to make the other choice. And also, based on more time playing the game. And we also, I also talked to Greg kind of off camera a bit at times about how so many of these decisions felt so much more meaningful actually playing the game as opposed to in the preview period. Yeah, of course. Just knowing these characters, I think one thing that really, really hurt the decision in terms of like me trying to decide what. what I felt was best was several moments doing missions in Minrathus, which is where my character is from, a shadow dragon, Natrillion Reifla. He's from Minrathus.

That's awesome. That's what you name here? Yeah. That's awesome. Or Natrilius or Nicholian or whatever. But he's from Minnathus, so is Nev, right? Yeah, yeah. You meet many different characters there, and I had just had a couple of moments.

and I think the way it played out for me made it so much more impactful because I talked to a lot of NPCs there. Even extra dialogue moments where Homeboy with the goatee and the hair of the back,

he's the friend of the viper. I'm blaking on it. I didn't like the viper at all, but I know that way. But it's his homie. The, you know, so you have a lot of moments where you both connect over Minrathis.

And he talks about how, he talks about his, family background and how, you know, Minerathas became this home for him. And I knew that decision was coming. And then you get there, it's like, oof, because I spoke to so many people, this decision is a lot harder.

And I think that's awesome. And it is very much your mileage may vary type of game. Yeah, of course. And I firmly believe that everybody who did not love the writing during the reviews, because I've rolled a couple of characters on different classes and have experienced moments where I'm like, oh, I don't like the writing here,

but that's not what I experienced in my first play-through. Yeah. Because I chose a different background. So because of all this stuff, because of everything that I had done in those right moments, it sort of led up perfectly to like, oh, shit, I just had a lot of really good heart-to-heart with the people of Minrathis.

And now the decision is even tougher. Because the way I look at it, Treviso is a super, super, it's a town under occupation. Yep. It's a town that is like just not doing great. And Minrathas, I look at it as a big city. They probably have a lot of security.

But I'm from Minrathas. But I look at Nevin, I have to be like, I'm sorry, baby girl. I'm going to go help Treviso. I trust that you got this shit. And I really loved the fallout from it. I loved the sort of character interactions. I think, you know, I also chose Treviso. I was a crow, you know, my rook character.

and after this we should talk about everyone who we made and all that stuff in this context or whatever. But I was a crow and I already knew that I loved Lucanus as a character from this and I knew that I liked Nev but it wasn't so much, okay, whatever. I didn't feel, this is,

Nev for me is a weak companion throughout this game and I feel like they tell us over and over again how much Docktown means to Nev but she didn't ever seem ingratiated to it. It didn't actually seem like she was a resident of it. Like she's a worker there. She's a detective. People know her,

but I never, that never worked. Whereas, I don't disagree with that. A couple of visits to Treviso. It's like, oh, this is Crow HQ.

Lucanus is the demon. He just got back. His grandmother's there. She's been kidnapped slash killed. Like, oh, wow, this is really cool. I felt such more of a connection to it.

So I did the same thing and played it out that way. That city is going to need the most help. But I have put into assets over here at the 1210 mark. We can actually all see together. What happens to Treviso? Cool. We're going to play that clip of his.

it's ready over there. See, everything gets blighted. Oh, cool. You lose all the purple here. By the way, this is a YouTube channel

I'm pulling for, this is North Alex. Thanks for letting you shoot up there. But again, blight everywhere. No more of those amazing purples we saw, right? This really sandy,

dune like red all over the top of this. Damn, that's wild looking. Yeah, yeah. And again, as this plays, this is,

I understand people, I love this game, Dragon Age of the Vail Guard. I had a great time with it. I'm done with it. You know, we've been rolling nicks. I've rolled credits on it. I am trying to platinum here and there.

We, of course, did a Nick character. We've been enjoying that on stream and stuff like that. But I'm not drawn again to go replay it, like, all the way through. The Nick thing's content that's just making things, right? Whereas like, oh, man, a Dianno of Themyscarra Wonder Woman would have been cool to do here. But I don't think there's enough big decisions like that in the game. And I think that for me is not the Achilles heel to, man, this game isn't good. I just think it's a, for me, you know, we'll see when I platinum it.

But to roll credits, a 50 hour or 60, I forgot it was, 50 hours, I think, one and done. And I'm fine with that, a 50 hour experience I had a great time with, right? And then more to go and more to platinum. Whereas I think so many people wanted to replay and see the permutations and do this, it's the fact that that decision, this first major one of Minrathos or Treviso make the choice, then okay, you come out of that. People are hardened. It's going to be different.

Everyone's going to act differently, right? Not everyone, but either never, whatever. whatever, you know, Lucanus will write. Lecona, I'm looking, I'm going to be using IGN's choices and consequences Wiki quite a bit. If you don't, maybe you didn't play this and you're just here to hang out, characters will become hardened after this, right? For Lucanus, that means if you didn't save Treviso.

Lucanus no longer uses support abilities, but damage abilities are more effective. His skill tree is reset to reflect this. Your relationship with him progresses slower. Leconis will be unavailable to join the party for several missions and will not present at the lighthouse. Obviously, I know that from Neves perspective. it's the exact same situation of no support, all this different stuff, but I wanted more of those.

I need two or three more of those. I completely agree with the fact that I think, here's the thing. I don't think that the hardened feature for me was not super well thought out. I thought it was. I don't think that there were enough character effects for everybody else.

I wish that if I saw more and more, I wish that if I pissed somebody off enough with enough disapprovals from so-and-so character that they would get a hardened status without, like I wanted more of that and I wanted more, I mean, on the opposite aside of things, I'd love to have seen

a different status effect of this person's your homie, now they have an extra heel support or whatever. They, you know, yeah, they have a, regardless of their gear, they have a revive charge. Yeah, Nevis hardened, so-and-so stoked, you know, and they're just happy to kind of be around you or whatever.

But I totally agree, and I think if I could wave my magic wand and get a billion trillion dollars I would give myself I would give myself a whole lot of money first off and then I would have given Byware a lot of money and said like take two more years because

I would have also loved to have seen another big massive moment like that where you are making a gigantic decision and I also completely understand it because this massive decision takes place in the first third of the game. If this is something that they saved for the very end, for the final act, or maybe even at the end of Act 2 or something like that,

that would have made a lot sense because you don't have to worry about the fallout from those decisions for... You'd only have to worry about the fallout. You'd only have to worry about those decisions for 10 to 15 hours as opposed to 30 to 40 or whatever. Yeah, 100%. So I completely understand why they didn't.

Would I have loved them to have had more time and more budget? Absolutely. And I think that they would have easily pulled off something cool like that. I think I'm more interested to hear some behind-the-scenes stuff from these devs to hear stuff that may have been left on the cutting room floor, stuff that they had at the end of the game where they go, oh, shit, we were also going to have this other moment, but we just, it was out-scoped from what the budget and what the game we had to deliver on time, you know? Or was their view of, hey, at the very end, when you start making decisions on who's

fighting where and where do they go? Was that enough, right, for them to be like, hey, well, you technically have this. And it's like, yeah, but as the player, we wanted more. But do they look at it and go, at the end, you did start making some decisions, right? And that did bite me in the ass at the end there where I wish I was like, uh, would like to replay that one, my badge, you know? So there was at least some decision making at the end, which was nice for sure. Yeah, traditional mass effect, though, right?

Traditional bio-ware in that instance. And again, I think when they introduced a hero of the veil guard, right, of like, okay, let's max these loyalty quests out. Then they're going to get that little V next to name. Oh, okay, I need to do this for everybody to ensure they survive, which definitely affected how I played out and who lived or died in my ending or whatever, but we can get to that later. For now, Michael, tell me about your rook.

Yeah, my rook was based off a chapel roan at the MTV Music Awards. Of course, he came out in that stunning medieval armor. I had a great showcasing there. And, you know, Greg had made Chapel Rone and Diablo earlier. It inspired me to do that. And so I was like, I'm going to make. chaperone in the awesome armor. And so I try to find, you know, when they have the preview sets, I was trying to find the

biggest bulkiest. So I went with the Grey Wardens. Really didn't care about the story of like what was going on with them or anything. It was just strictly, how do I put this character model in the biggest chunkiest armor right off the bat? And that's where I'm going with. So I was with the Grey Wardens, which turned out to be like, hey, I liked that because there is some decision making with the Grey Wardens on my side that I got to experience

with the captain of like, yo, you're a dick. I need you to kind of see the future here of like what's happening and you're not listening to me. I liked that, right? And I did like the friendship that I built with Davron because, you know, he had, he was a gray ward and he was working with the griffins. I liked that. And then he became my dude. So it's like, yeah, I had a lot of fun with the gray warden side of things at the end.

Too like mine individuals. Yeah, just strictly, hey, I just want a big armor. That's all I want. Yeah. So I think I'd be more interested to hear from you about. those little, because that's the stuff that I really just love and get stoked about is seeing these different cutscenes and the different permutations based on what characters you choose.

Because I went, Shadow Dragon, I'm from Enrathis, freed a bunch of slaves, super sick, right? A little bit too woke, some people might say for freeing slaves, but I think it was a great decision. Cool. Let's see what the ballot numbers are coming up. I stand by that. I stand by it. But we, when I rolled a new character, I had initially tried out

Veil Jumper. And this is going to be one that I wanted to maybe play on stream or something like that, and I tried out Veil Jumper. And one of the most interesting thing happened to me was you start the game, I'm a Veil Jumper, and you hop into

Arlethon Forest. And you meet up with those initial two NPCs, the ones that are kind of like the main people from Arlethon Forest. They come running through, they've got the deal that explodes. Yeah,

it's like one of the big first cutscenes you see after you've already kind of done all the intro stuff. And they were always the homies to me in that first sort of play-through. Okay. And in this playthrough, based on your backstory,

you know, if I picked Shadow Dragon at my first playthrough and I talked to Verick, and Verick's like, you've always been awesome, Rook. You know, remember that time you freed all the saves

despite all the odds. And it's like shit, man, I was pretty badass back then. And then you go veil jumper. You go veil jumper and they talked to you about how, like that time I helped you save the treasure or, you know, whatever the hell. And your backstory was you were trying to take a big treasure map and steal this treasure map. But your squad was about to die and your squad needed help. So you then let go of the treasure map and ended up like losing it in the process of time. trying to help all these people survive.

Oh. Which, like, you know, you lost a big picture, but you saved all your squad mates or whatever. And that's, like, one of your backstory things. And you walk, I walk into Arth and Forrest, and these two MPCs who were always the homies to me on my first character, they, they know what happened with Solis, and they have that first interaction where it's like, where you can respond, yeah, but we stopped Solis from tearing down the veil, so we kind of won, right? Yeah, yeah.

And it's, it, it is such a different conversation this time around. because this dude is so antagonistic to you and he's like oh so let me guess you also fucked up opening the veil just like you fucked up when you dropped that treasure map and you have to respond like

I was saving our squad and he's like but you lost sight of the big picture it's like oh you're kind of an asshole now and it's so wild how that changed my viewpoint of it yeah I never liked him I didn't get any of this style I never liked these two not only changed my viewpoint of it

but it also made the conversation really awkward and not good writing wise because it goes from this big sort of like confrontation and you're arguing with this dude and then it cuts to the woman in that in that squad and she's like okay anyway so did you stop solas and I could totally and in that moment I'm like

I could totally see the gear shift I could totally see why people you know had issues based on different things because there are different permutations of characters and backgrounds that lead to different dialogue choices and that can lead to less good writing in my opinion and my friend first play through, I feel like I had maybe

some of the best experiences with all of that. Just based on random or whatever. But this time around, seeing a different backstory, it's like, I don't like any, I kind of like the confrontation, but then it plays out very awkwardly. Of course, correct. To get back on track to be like, but we stopped the veil or whatever. And it just felt really, really not good.

It felt very, very forced. I was telling you that in my first early hours and I told Greg, he's like, I don't like the writing in this because I was going nothing but stern answers. and I was a gray warden. And it's like it never felt right. It felt jumbled. It felt like we're throwing things at a wall,

but then we've got to get right back to where we needed to be. So it always turned positive. There was never a confrontation. It was like, I'm being mean. They don't care. Just we got to get you through. Well, the problem is, well, the problem, I think, for that and the problem for people who were looking for the pure renegator paragon system

was that Stern is rarely mean. Yeah. Right? That was, I think for me playing and again, like how my rook she was a crow right she of course helped these people when she shouldn't have helped them the crows put her on the bench chip on her shoulder turns out that uh vera's one of the people she helped from that thing so he takes her and they go and do their mission or whatever blah like i thought in erika is she is my uh voice actress it the performance from erika was so good

that i didn't use stern for a long time thinking it was going to be renegator it was going to be ah fucking go fuck your but when i finally started exploring it and doing it and doing it it, I was interested to find that the stern wasn't ever, like, go fuck yourself. It was just like, ah, eh, like, you know what I mean? But the performance never went.

I'm fucking really angry and mean, which I like, because I think for us now using, I have a very limited scope, but Erica and then the two male voice actors we've done on the stream, I think she's head and shoulders better than the two guys.

That's not, not no knock to their work, just a personal preference thing. But like, I like Erica's performance so much and her voice is my rook so much that then having it in there and having these three choices

worked for me again for what they're telling which is a open but linear adventure of where we're going and the fact that you can't piss people off and you can't push away companions you can't do this that was okay for me

whereas I'm with you of or I'm with all the conversations we're having of when you told me we had our first two days with it or whatever we finally caught up and you're like yeah the writing sucks and I don't like and I was like

fuck really I'm writing down quotes and I'm really enjoying this going and playing on stream with the other voices. Like, oh, if I didn't vibe, if the voices didn't work for me and I was committed, I think it calls out more of the problems in terms of both performance and writing. Yeah.

Did you use your specialty, like, speech option often? The Grey Wardens popped up very rarely, I would say, in the giant picture of it also. I didn't get to use it that often. But I didn't find, especially because it was on a different menu as well, I didn't use it that often. It would mostly be like, I would see the normal menu, and then it would be like, oh, go down here.

We're glowing gold. You can find out more. Use your gray warden. I was like, yeah, I'm not using that. Oh, I loved it. I loved it, especially when I'm in Minrathus, just because I wanted to hear more of, my rook is from here.

And if somebody says something about the city, or if somebody is talking shit about the city, I feel like I use it around maybe 10 times. I feel like, I don't know, 40 hours. As a crow, I feel like I've barely ever used it. And there must have been something in Treviso, but I didn't remember it being a big option. I mean, it's not even, like, it's not even just based to, based on where you're at.

A lot of it could just be somebody's talking about, um, Treviso and the occupation. And then you would have had the option to have responded like, well, if I know anything about where I'm from, you know, like there's a lot of little context like that. Yeah, yeah, it got plenty. I loved it. I like your veil jumpers because I had, I'm sure you've met them, but the cute little couple of gray wardens that were investigating the, the, um, what's the bad? had the blight.

Yeah, the blight. They were investigating the blight all the time. And you were like, are y'all a couple? And they were like, yeah, the mega warden, he sucks. But like, you know, we'll work together on the side. We won't tell him about that. Question you guys knock his ass out. The major one.

Hell, yeah. Fuck that guy. Hell, yeah. That was my whole thing. I was like, man, I already don't like Davern. But you want to sour me on the entire Grey Warden, like, thing? I'm like, this fucking guy's in charge too. I'm never rolling a Grey Warden.

Fuck off. I'm so shocked that you didn't like Davern. No, no, it just didn't work for me. Man, the idea that he had the only Griffin left or like he was working with the only Griffins alive and then they stole the Griffins. I was like, oh, man, I'm all in, you know what I mean? And I wish it was more prevalent on the screen, seeing the Griffin fly around. He's not on there all the time.

And like, you'll see him occasionally up in the sky mainly with his moves. But I do wish he was a little more like a pet behind you all the time when you were walking. My biggest issue with using Daverin was that any time you called your Griffin in to do a move or whatever because of performance or whatever it was limited frame rate wise so he would drop in at like 30 frames per second when everything else was like at 100

something frames per second and I feel like that was maybe like an oversight that they're like oh shit we forgot to let this frame rate be unleashed whenever you are running on a high machine or whatever but I mean I love the Grey Warden conversations of Daverin just mentioning becoming a gray warden for us is like

when you have really nowhere else to go when you've been dealt to bad hands it's a lot of like just it sounds kind of like a suicide squad honestly it's just a bunch of dudes like I loved Daverin's I love Daverin's story in addition to Daverins

for my story his death um whoa it was fucking awesome um Walk me through it. Did not die in my game. You did not die in my game.

You have the moment early on where Lucanus misses the shot. And I wanted more of those back and forths, and that's a conversation that we'll probably get to later. But like, when Lucanis is trying to kill Gillingain and he's like, just give me this one shot. It's like, that shit was so high. I had just goosebumps all over the place.

You're fighting this, this hydro monster Gileney decides to step in and it really I love the different planes of action whenever movies or media can do that well and execute that shit where it's like you're watching and you're like oh shit is this squad gonna survive and then it shows Lukana's running you're like oh shit and it cuts back to the squad

you're like oh but Lukas is still running somewhere what's gonna happen? I thought this was actually done both in the first fight there and at the end where it was we used to give the assignments and then you see it all happening you get to watch it play out rather than just being another arena battle. I like that I hated the boss fight itself, but I did like the cut scene for it. The boss fight was way too repetitive for three acts and the first

two acts he does the exact same moves. And then the third act, he just adds like a little fireball spray. You're like, all right, come on now. Like, yeah, this is such a big mind. Nobody can do a hydro well done, I think is what it is. It's like, hydraud is just tough. I don't disagree with that. Yeah, I, I mean, I didn't hate the fight though, but I was just

like, this is just kind of whatever. I just, I don't feel super engaged with it. I feel like it got its most, it became more difficult whenever he would spawn the random ads or whatever. The issue is like Greg brought up with the dragons is we got into this weird flow if you had these awesome mega monsters, but then the attack patterns are just so samey. And it's like that was a really cool fight that didn't feel fresh during that.

And then the dragons, if you fought all dragons like I did, it's like, oh, every single one of you do the same move. Like that sucks. That running charge. Yeah. Oh, it's going to kick you. I want to do all this, but we're getting way off where Randy was driving. Reminds you like the Eldon Ring thing where it's like you could change their look,

but they're always going to have the sort of same attack patterns. But so the siege of Weissout, a lot of destruction, a lot of people die, and essentially Daverin is really, really sad that he feels like his destiny was, I was supposed to die there. Yeah. And like, you took my chance for me or whatever.

And I like that. And that was great. That was a great little, like, moment, right? But then in the final moments of the game where you are directing what squad mates to go where and essentially Davern is like shoved off of a ledge

and is falling like to his death. I believe he stabbed to the fucking chest. Stabbed by Gillenane or the other fuck Ben, the other fuck's name. Elgar Elginon. And people are going to say like

oh wow, this game must be so memorable and he can't remember the names. If you watch any of media you know I don't remember anything but Elginon stabs the shit out of him through the stomach yeah fall and he's falling and his Griffin follows him into this like hole or whatever and it was all in slow-mo and it's cutting to your character like yeah like dude it was done so and I I think that's a lot of those moments at the end of the game are what elevated the game like even higher for me and they executed those what would have been just stereotypical cliche action moments they I think hit them a 100

percent of how good and how satisfying this moment could have been. And I had chills. And I wish my camera was on because I was like, oh my fuck, this is crazy. And then the dialogue after that was also really, really damn good, having your characters be like

this, like, he fought doing what he wanted. Like, this is the way he wanted to go out. And we have to like honor that. Like, ah, it was so good, man. And for me, that was Harding. Yeah, for me it was Harding. I sent Harding on that part of the mission, right? Because it was this idea of you get that choice.

They were both heroes of the veil guard. I was like, okay, cool. Who do I want to send? I'm like, I trust Harding. I love Harding. She's one of my favorite characters. And I very foolishly was like, not foolishly, I guess. It's storytelling for what they're doing here.

But I like the idea of they're here as the veil guard. They're safe. When I got to the end here and I started making these decisions, it all centers around. I didn't have Neves hero of the veil guard done yet. I had done her entire thing and got to where there should have been the epilogue quest, but I hadn't done all of the Docktown stuff for the faction to actually get that. I did it last night and got her trophy.

So I was like, all right, I will build around her and constantly make sure she's as protected as possible. Never send her on a mission. Yeah. So I sent Harding in there, be like, I love Harding. Davron sucks. Go, da, and it is one of those that worked so well. Where if I would have sent Davern, right, I don't like him that much. I would have been like, oh, that was cool in the Griffin.

But the fact of like Harding get it. Like, look, I mean, like, you can see I stop my game, right? and I write holy fucking shit Harding. No, I even drew the little doodle of her getting stabbed, right? And then for them to come out of that right and start doing the quote of whatever it takes. Which is like fucking straight out of Avengers already. But like I loved Harding so much. Like I thought she was such a great character and companion and I loved her missions and I loved her, you know, the song of the rock or whatever.

Like, or song of stone. Everything was so good about her that this was so impactful. And it's one of the things I talk about in the journal and I've talked about in the piece, right, of like, it's one of the reasons I am so bummed. There isn't a post-credits thing. It's because I would much rather, even though it doesn't make sense for the narrative, go and do the cleanup with her dead and be playing that thing where it is. Because right now, even jumping in and doing it again, immediately feels like, okay, well, to get this platinum and do these things, I'm going to unwrite my own story. And I don't like that. Like, I mean,

I think I said, I've played again for one of the choices. And so it's like, I'll choose her again because I want that to be the canonical ending for my rook or whatever. But it worked so well here that was like, oh, fuck, that nailed it for me. So that's a guaranteed death then. Apparently, yeah, yeah. Hardin died for me.

And I was rocking Daverin the whole time. So I wasn't going to let him leave my side because he was part of my crew. But it would have been more impactful for me to have him die because I liked him way more. It felt like throw away to me when Harding died. I was like, eh,

didn't really care for that character. See you later, you know. So that one didn't hit for me at all. But I am a little disappointed because I thought, can I save all these people? That was the big one for me. When she went down, it was like, oh, man, could I have chosen differently and would they have stayed alive? Sounds like they're going to down no matter what.

And that was my armchair quarterbacking of like, so if I saw, was this a soldier mission? Would Daverin have been able to pull it off? Apparently not, right? You have to have somebody. But I like that, right? They need somebody to avenge or whatever. That works. I like that.

Yeah. I'm personally about that. I see here from The Gamer says if every faction has two stars or more, they are a hero the veil guard. They will make it through alive. With all the decisions, you should get the ones. Oh, they're talking about more like trophies or whatever. Yeah, the end. But you can't have an ending where everybody lives.

But can you? I mean, are we for sure about that? Or is that just like, you can have an ending where everybody we sent off on the real mission lives? I don't know. We don't know. This is a fun part of us. I see what you're saying,

because that wasn't necessarily the final, final moment. That wasn't when we actually assigned everybody into groups and stuff like that. Like, I would imagine somebody has to die there, chat, if you know. But that was, anyway, I really love that. And I'm looking through my stats right here. on my steamed deck. Is that the Ola? Yeah.

And the only ones that I, I didn't get everybody Veil Guard leveled or whatever. So I got Tosh, Bellara, and Harding. And so that's completing their quest.

Tash Belara and Harding were the only three that I got full Vailgard status. Oh, wow. Everybody else was like maybe a mission or two away. How about your map?

Because like the map plays into it is like, hey, you got to strengthen everybody out here so they can give you their best factions and the best forces. So like on your map, there's six of them that you could do side missions for. Did you get into one star, two star, three stars, what it looked like. Treviso is the only, is two star and a fucking Arlith and Forrest is three star.

Okay. And everything else is one star. Okay, yeah, yeah. So that was the big side quest. It's like the more you do, those get stronger and stronger. So like I was doing all of those, just eating it up. Nothing changed. Exactly.

That's my thing. It's a big difference maker. When I got one, so for me, you know, running on. up on this review embargo, right? I do all the stuff and I get everybody except Nev and I'm like trying to figure out why Nev won't pop and I DM somebody who was like, I think you need this. And like, okay, cool. And I was like, fine, I'll just roll the dice and I enter that final mission.

I enter it and they're like, hey, here are the Vail Guard and factions. And I was like, I do not have fucking time for factions. And I was, I want to say maybe one three and then many ones and maybe a few twos. Like, you know, I mean, I was mainly doing the faction stuff to get the cool stuff out of the store. And so I was like, oh, wow, is this really going to play into... See, but I think it played into the second one. The second possible death.

That's where I'm worried. I'm reading right here real quick. Chapter 12 choices. The distraction team, you choose Davern or Harding. Whoever you choose will die every time. There's no way around this choice. One of these characters will die. You choose Davern as Harding will guarantee success in a later choice.

and in the wards team, you choose Belara or Nev. Whoever you choose will be lost temporarily. There's no way around this choice. I let Nev go because she was the veteran. I didn't want Belar to go, even though Nev was more my style of like she could be on my team. And I fell in love with Nev with the romance style. But I sent Nev because it's like you're the veteran, go handle this. She's a rookie.

Like, let's go. And then, of course, she gets blighted. She gets taken off the map for X amount of time. But thankfully, you come back and save everyone. Which is dope. I sent Belar and I was like, because she was Vailgard, like, you know, fucking she was approved and she got a notary. She got a notary. Like everything was so official.

But, yeah, her getting lost was crazy. I was like, oh my God, I didn't know that meant that she was dying. And I thought she was dead. Yeah. Because you go when you're stuck in the video. Oh, you think she's dead. Like not only did I see Davern, who I know got stabbed to the goddamn chest and his whole chest is just obliterated. But then you also have the status.

you of Bilar and I was like oh my god I also killed Bolaara what the fuck so having that rescue moment later on was awesome as hell loved it I was hoping again like when I was thought we're hurtling towards a post credits play through I was hoping they would keep her in the red eyes and like the right she couldn't get out of blighted but she's she deserves she's see and then and he's going to build towards the factions which is how I took it was the very big finale of like yo we got to guard the door there's a giant gollum out there or something like that jug or not and it's like who are you going to send they should send somebody's strong. And at that point it was like, well, Tosh and Davern are my people. I'm not

letting them go. So I got to send somebody and it was like either Ballara or freaking Emric. And I was like, oh. See, so my notes here, right, I have, uh, for what you're talking about, working with the veil jumpers, right, on magic things. I sent Emric. Uh, I would have sent Nev there. But again, she wasn't here of the veil guards. So like, fuck, you stay with me. Then for, uh, who goes with the crows after the mage? I sent Lucanus. I'm like, roll with the crows. Of course, do your thing. And then for the gray wardens, the juggernaut, I sent Tosh, because I was like, Tosh is my fucking heavy and someone I'm heavy in love with.

But, you know, I was with that idea. So then, but then it's funny because then I got left with David Dabran. I was like, I don't even like you guys. Come on. We got to go do this. So did you lose a second person? Because I lost Emrick in the second fight. Emric died to the giant guardian statue because he drops a building on him. Or no, a giant hammer.

Somebody tries to hit him with a hammer. He's not strong enough to lift it up and he dies. And I'm like, oh, well, first. First off, you're the litch king, so you shouldn't have died. Like, you're the lits king, big dog. Like, you're forever alive. How did he die? That's a question we have to talk about later on.

A bunch of shit just, like, fell on him for me. Really? Yeah. And then it, like, as you're running away, like, you're looking back and it just showed, like, a bunch of debris all over the place with his wand and his hand, I believe. So this is fighting the juggernaut? You sent? The big ass gone.

The big statue, massive statue. Yeah. Emmer died there for me. See, for me, that's where I sent Tosh. Everybody died for me. I'll just say it. Holy shit. You had the bad choices, bad choices.

Everyone's dead. Not one person lived. That's insane. That's impossible. So, that's crazy. I obviously made a lot of wrong choices, sending people to the right places. And I, even though I had people veil guard status, it. You still got, it's just like Mass Effect too, where it's like, I remember coming into IGN and talking to people.

I lost so much. Wow. How did you lose it? it. Why didn't you think that Solis would do this and Jack would be good for the... Like, for me, it's like arithmetic where when they were like, who's going to go do the math? Like I write magic things. I'm like, all right, well, it's got to be never Emric.

And even Emric, I was fishy on it, but I was like, I got nobody else get in there. And then for it to, who's going to go with the crows? Well, Lucanus goes with the crows. And then who's going to fight the giant thing? I'm like, all Tosh does is fight giant things. Like, I had a great moment for me where, of course, and I'd be interested to see how it plays out otherwise because maybe I'm projecting

what my relationship was with Tosh, right? Paulton says, Andy Waussela? No, no, no, no. I died. No! Everybody's dead. That's crazy. Everybody died. Holy shit.

Yeah, we gotta know about your ending. Oh, yeah, well, let me get there. Let me just get my stupid thing out and then I want to hear all about this. Actually, we'll do this and then I'll do ads and then I want to hear all about this. No, for me it was like, I sent everybody in every's just fucking killing it again running around and like, you know, fucking crozier. This is awesome. And then it was, yeah, Tosh and Koo ran out to fight the juggernaut or whatever. And I, uh, rooks running, running, running.

and about to go into a door but stops and looks back and holds to see what's going on with Tasha's crew. Yes. And there's this moment of, are we going to find out, are we not? And then we see Tash like destroy the thing

and she goes, and my Rook goes, and then runs inside. And I don't know if that's for anybody. That's where my MREC died. Okay, okay. Yep. It's probably for anybody,

but my read with them being in a relationship, right? We're in Thalemuk or whatever. We're like, we love each other, right? Period. You use the right, like, term for... I did. Why, I mean, when you write it down? Greg's been studying the Cune

I'll do anything I'll do any for them all right I'm retosh I'll change my religion anyways uh yeah like that's what I read and I was like oh that's a really cool moment for me in my character they look back no matter what

so yeah it doesn't matter but but yeah that's cool I love that you have a moment like that it's right I mean for me and Nev we reconnect at the end which is cool you know we have that scene afterwards of everything which is awesome I hate how good the fucking OLED looks

you know what I mean is somebody with my dingy ass original Steam deck It's crazy because I lost Emric because I chose wrong. I should have chose Tosh because she was stronger to have that moment. I'm really excited about Andy because for me, I had my factions three-threes, three-two. So they were all super strong. You, on the other hand, that's where I'm excited about. I think that played a factor.

We're going to hear all about that in one second. But first, I'm going to remind you that this is the kind of funny games cast each and every weekday. We come at you with all the topics in the video game world, whether they be reviews, previews, or spoiler cast under the sun. Of course, if you like that, pick up a kind of funny membership. $10 keeps our small business alive so we can tell you about cool things.

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Let gratitude flow with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Kind of Funny today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Kind of Funny. Andy, I got to hear about everyone, including you dying. So really quick, just said the tone. I lost two. You've lost how many? I only, I lost the one that I had to lose

You lost, I just lost Harding So I lost two. Damn! Everybody survived except for Hartwood? Andy lost everyone. Who did you lose? I lost Emrick and I lost Harding. Okay, okay. Yeah.

Look, I saw Secahob saying in the chat like, man, you have to really try it. Yeah, everybody gets late at night. Kobe! He's just airball! I was on like 15 hours to sleep for about three days like total. Here we go. Here I mean. In the super chats, Chocolate Fox 9 says, I took the week off and beat this game in 73 hours. I love that for you.

Hell yeah. Yeah, I was so near the end of it. So obviously Daverin is I think the first to die. Daverin's the first to die. That's the fire. That choice right there has to.

That prior mission. When we get to all the, where are you going to send everybody? It was so chaotic. Like I don't, you know, there was a lot of stuff. You gotta listen. Magic.

I'm going to send the magic person. And I read it all. I was like, yeah, that makes sense for Tos to go there. And that makes sense for, you know, Bilar to go, whatever the hell, right?

Belar already got blighted, so she's, like, disappeared by this point or whatever. But then you end up rescuing her, and then you have her for the final mission or whatever. But she's not selectable, because she's kind of just, like, running near you. And, like, Balaura, at the, like, the final mission, you can't really send her anywhere because she's... Yeah, because she comes back or doing, like, her own thing or whatever. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, homeboy, Emmerich, who I love, by the way. Emmerich's story was, like, so endearing, and I just loved to...

I loved his demeanor. I loved just his vibes. I'm excited to hear what you did with Emrick. Nobody's going to fucking select this, dude. And then I just really, really enjoyed a lot of the companion missions. I never got to the final companion missions. He never got to the final command of his parents. We were lighting candles in the graveyard.

It was so good. And then I'm excited because me and Greg finished it. And I want to know where Greg went, but I want to talk about where Greg. It's just a lovely human being. So I'm also excited to hear how a lot of these characters stories end up going. Because, again, I only fully finished three of the companion quest. So Emrik dies, a big. Gollum statue kills him, right?

He's under a bunch of debris. He's dead. Yeah. And as we are continuing the mission, Harding is, I believe I sent Harding to the place that I should have sent Tosh for protecting the veil jumpers. And Harding sees a...

She sees somebody in danger. She runs to go, like, help them. And she's like... It's that she gets, like, axed in the back. Okay. It gets murdered. And, like, your character's, and it's just like, oh, my God, no way. Holy shit.

Like, Parting's dead. This is bad. This is bad. This is bad. This is bad. This is real bad. Tash, uh, uh, I, but Tosh got killed somehow. I forgot how.

You know, they got murdered. How was something cool? They went to use their fire breath, but somebody blew it back in there. I think it had to do with fire breath, honestly. I don't quite remember. But, uh, there was a, yeah, there was a sort of like, oh, Damn. There goes, Tosh, Harding's already gone. This is not good. And then my final squad mates, to me, Lucanus, and Neff.

And neither of them are fully stacked up to veil guard status. Belar's doing her own thing. Belar's... Yeah, she's blighted. She's freaking. But she's like, she tries to sit in that throne. She's doing like, she's trying to, you know, put the magic away or whatever. Put the blight. She's mind control and the blight. Yeah, that was cool. That was cool. super sick. And I'm fighting Elginon

and cool boss fight. I like the patterns. I kind of enjoyed the way the adax you had to avoid and all that stuff. And then in those final moments he stabs your bitch ass. Like he...

Elginon? Elginon stabs you. And he thinks he's won. But also he got stabbed as well. So his blood. is also on the dagger. And you look and like try to fight him or whatever? Can I stop here right here?

Go ahead. Would you like to watch it? Yeah. I kick this over here to bear it. We're looking at a power picks one, of course. Your guide for trophies, we love it so much. But you see it getting in here, and I think, yeah, in a second we get to where you're caught up to, right?

Dragon got sucked into a black hole. Fuck that dragon, right? Oh, yeah, that was his guardian or whatever, yeah. Shot it to Power Picks. Everybody used them. I use the trophy guides all the time. Oh, I was saying Elgren. I meant Solis.

Why was I saying Elgren, That's what I was asking you about. Well, you do fight with the guy. Yeah, no, you fight all that. I'm in Seoul. It's my bad. This is the confrontation, right, picking up the blade here. Yeah, that was a bad time.

Yeah. Walk me through the post-game press conference. Looking at the footage right now. So, you know, watching the footage and watching the tape back. I didn't like how our defense played out there. We were a little lax on offense as well. But essentially, uh, Solz is about to open up the, he's about to open up the veil. He's about to do his old evil shit, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And you've already been stabbed. And, oh, it's cool seeing Emmerich here. But your two homies are just like really incapacited. They're just messed up beyond all belief. Yeah. Elginon or Solis stops you in mid-air as you're trying to attack him with the dagger.

Because that's the whole thing. We have to kill him with the dagger, right? Yeah. Okay. And Solis freezes you. Solis is going to do the rest of the job. Uh-huh. And my squad mates run after.

through him and he looks at them, he turns them both into stone. God. And he just gives them a glance, because they're trying to, like, go at him, right? And in my scene, here it's Emmerich and I believe Valar. In my scene, it's Nev and... Whoa! Yeah, in my scene, it's Nev and Lucanis trying to fight him. Turns them both to stone.

You tackle him, you tackle Solis, you're sort of... I have a little boxing match. Just a little back alley brawl, Greg. Yeah, here it is. And you're doing some sick asses. Flips? I don't remember that flip, but again, I was tired. You're tired. Pulls you back, stabs you with the damn thing. And it's like, oh my God, dagger in my belly.

This is not good. I've been in better situations. And he's like, you know, he's talking shit to you. But also, his blood is also on the dagger. And he doesn't understand that. So you grab his bitch ass. And you suck him into the void.

You both get sucked into the void. Yeah, closing it up. Oh. And then... I'd like to bear it one, because I assume we get a Verrick rundown here right at the end of like, well, they sure fuck this up.

Everybody's dead. There's no rundown. What? Cuts the black? No. You get a screen that pops up. It's like, what? This player dumb fucked up.

No shit. Let it play, let it play, let it play, let it play. I gotta see what that looks like. It's just, it's a text pop up. There's no Verick, there's nothing. It was just like, I was just sitting there like, oh, man, I made a lot of wrong decision. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think that's fucking awesome. Like, Hell yeah. I loved Morgan's his done at a far too high. Oh, yeah, it's Morgan talking. Yeah, more, you don't get the Verrick outro. Wow.

Wow. And then you get a text pop up that tells you like, this player idiot. That would make sense too because full like spoilers with the whole Verrick thing, right? If you're dead.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We gotta get back to that. The last of the Evanurus were defeated, the final blight and the worst of blights was over. So what's fascinating about, the Vailgard paid the deal. deepest price for victory where they'd fallen,

a monument was built. That's cool. What I, what it's crazy about that is I never even thought about this being a choice. You didn't trick them. Yeah, you didn't have the fake dagger? I don't remember that thing popping up.

I don't think it popped up for me. I had the fake dagger, so they're like, do you want to trick or fight him? And I said trick. Yeah. And so I tricked him. Where he does the thing where he freezes me,

Rook, takes the dagger from you, right, but it's the fake dagger, and then walks over and starts his thing, and then it flips out and it sucks him in and pins him up against it. You never have a real tired.

Like, I had the fake dagger. I remember that plot beat. And that whole scene, you don't even get the choice of the fake dagger, which is weird. Because, like, when you're laying down- I think we're way past, I think it's before them.

No, I think he catches it. When he catches it and you're laying on it, that's when you flip, and you would chuck it to him. They're like this guy's an idiot. He'll never pick that. He pulled him there, grabbed the dagger out of his hand and stabbed him.

That's where the switch was. Like, I switched. He sucked it and I just gave it to him. Like, I, I sat there just kind of like a disbelief but also happy that I didn't then get another screen Mass Effect 3 style that I was like

your Rook's journey can continue on in the battle pass whatever the fuck you know like I there was a part of me that even though this is the worst outcome possible I was like fuck yeah you that's awesome you stuck to it you didn't try to sugarcoat it you messed up a monument was built

but like you fucked up as a player and that's okay and the credits hit and I was like damn I really like that you're not gonna try to say are you sure you don't want to reload a save and go back? I don't know there's something about

I enjoy the finality of it I really must have missed it because I remember the whole I mean the whole fake dagger plot line is like a massive part of like we have this fucking fake that we built we can trigger you know and I remember that whole thing

and I remember why is this not why did that not pay off and that's, I had no idea that that even happens near the end now that you all are telling me about this fake dagger. Like, duh, that should happen. Why didn't it happen to me? I have no idea. I'd definitely probably miss a problem.

You know, I'm going to play through it right now. That's crazy. And then Mike, so you did the same thing I did? Yeah, you and I had the exact same ending that means. You give him with the fake dagger, he goes up to the wall. It blows up in his hand and he gets sucked into the vortex. Okay. You win, yeah.

So I know that there isn't a third choice down eventually, that you have to do a whole bunch of stuff. for. That'll be like what many people think is the true ending where you can try to turn Solis back. You can try to convince him to come back to the lights. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm reading from PC Gamer, right?

The best ending is to tell Solis, you don't have to do this, which is only available if you collected Mythel's essence. Your second dialogue choice doesn't seem to have any bearing on that ending, so pick as you please. This will summon the Inquisitor, Morgan, and Mythol to talk to him into doing the right thing.

This is definitely the most emotional and satisfying ending you can choose for solace. That's sick. But I think when I platinum it, I'm going to do all, obviously, have all that in there, and I'll go through and do it. I love that. I like to see where you get that. I wonder where that's at, the methyl essence.

Where is that from? How do you get that? How do you obtain that? Mithels, isn't it the, um... Mythal, right? I mean, I'm saying it stupid, but... Myth is like his ex-girlfriend. Yeah, the statues, right?

Isn't it the statues that you go around and do the thing for, no? So you collect every wolf statue? Or how to obtain mythos is that? The easiest way to obtain... Mithel's Essend is completing Balarah's full personal quest first. Oh, you can tell Mithel, I want your help, and then we must stop the gods, and finally we stopped

NARS to instantly win her favor without completing the rest of the conversation. So the crossroads quest. This is getting help from somebody. The chat is saying it's from the Crossroads quest. So in the Crossroads, you have two options. You have the Essence stuff where you fight the bosses, which I really enjoyed. And then there was the Find the Solis

messages or notes or something like that. And I was like, I'm not doing those. I'm here. a fight and that's all I did was dude the soulless regrets I really like those I really like those you find the statues or whatever you go in they get painted on the wall of the lighthouse and they're just there

they're voiced and then you get the got it's like are you afraid of the dark then it's everybody all the whole companion crew sitting around talking about what they just saw that's fucking rag yeah that's cool did you fight the final boss then and that because there's two big moments that I want to know if you guys got to on the side quest sides

oh no I didn't do that no yeah so like did you kill all of the dragons, there's 10 of them, right? And like, one of the dragons was very cool because you get it from the underworld mission where they're like, yo, somebody's whispering in all these things, you got to go find them. And it's different forms of bosses that you would fight working all the way up into the formless dragon. Okay. Did you fight that one? No, no. I have time for that. Yeah. Yeah, that was like one of those level like, I was 32, 35. It was 40 or 50. And it's like, oh my God, that's crazy. But I loved all the dragons. There was 10 of them that you could fight. Is it a good payoff? I mean, it's the same

The issue is it's the same dragon fight. Sure. See, that's one of the things it was a turnoff. The payoff sucks after you fight that dragon. It's like, nothing matters. It's like, oh, that was a boring. Yesterday when I was at my desk and I was tinkering to kill time before whatever it was like, I ran off and it was like, okay, cool, now I'll go fight the lightning dragon. I'm like, I don't want to fight

a dragon right now. These are never that enjoyable. Yeah, I appreciate the lightning dragon at least adding a new element to it of like, oh, we're going to light the water on fire and you got to stay on the sand. That's cool. Every other fight was the exact same in the arena. And then the other one was collecting all of the essences and fighting those bosses.

I thought was really cool because... Unlocking the new doors. Yeah, man, every single boss looks so cool in that one of like, you found the one that looked like the World Warcraft Lits King on the throne with the giant sword waiting for you to come through and then it would hop off the sword and fight you. It's like, oh, that's so cool, man.

But yeah, those are some of my standout, like side quests. I was like, oh, man, did these guys do it? I fell off on the side quest in Tasha's area because that area becomes just a treasure hunt pirate quest and it just got boring. I was like, go to these areas and digging the sand, and then you're going to fight some skeletons. I'm like, I'm not here for a treasure hunt.

No offense. I'm going to play New World if I want that shit. Boring story on that one, so I ditched out on that. We're going to talk about how Verrick was dead the whole fucking time? I have that in here, yeah, my notes, of course, right? Where it's like I have my whatever it takes from Harding. Now, Marlara was taken, but is she dead? Question mark?

And then all caps. My writing just turns into scribbling of a madman. Wait, are they six sensing me? Verick was dead all along? Holy shit, that makes so much sense. I never saw it coming. And I put, now Solis must die. because I was on Solis aside.

I was a Soul of Sympathizer where I was like, you know what? We did fuck this up. You know, you were gonna... A lot of people were gonna die but clearly way more have died this way. You were right, Solis. And then he killed...

It turns out, Verrick died in this thing. Fuck you. I was pissed. And one thing I thought... Here's the thing. I don't think that they did enough to make you convinced of that

with a replay. Based on any of the cutscenes we've seen... And our Nick thing, I haven't noticing of like, oh, that is interesting. No one's talking to Verick. and he says something and I... Well, I mean, that's just something

that I love, right? I love that, oh, yeah, duh. Nobody looked at Bruce Willis the whole time. He was dead the whole time because nobody saw him. But what I... Spoilers for die-heart. Here's what I...

Here's what I would have loved. When you wake up out of the coma, you talk to Verick, either Harding or Nev walk in based on whoever you, you know, chose to help you out or whatever, and they're all fucked and they're like,

I'm looking for some Elfruit. What I would have loved is just like them walking in and being a lot more solemn. And you as the player, don't need to take that as, wait, is Verrick dead old? You would have never assumed that. In that moment, you could have been like,

oh, they're just really sad that things really went to shit. And they're fucked up. And they're scared. And like, I wanted more moments of like, we lost so much. And that's like all I needed. Yeah. I needed some tears of it. But that's, looking back on it, it's like there was not enough sadness there for,

from Harding, you know. But I do love, as we did our, have been doing the play-through with Nick the dwarf and when you first go to the fade and you're first sucked in there and you're talking to Solis and you have a reply that could be something along the lens of Solis, look, Verick said you were always really

hard-headed or whatever, like that's not the exact line or whatever, and then Solis replies with, Verick is very hard to convince as well. Which makes so much sense at the end when Solis is like, oh, and I kind of played along, I played along and fucked with you. Yeah, he put a spell on you to make you think that Verrick was alive.

He notices what's happening, right, and he continues on with it. And I love little touches like that. But I do wish everybody was a bit more sad in the earlier parts. And you as the player just go, oh, people are sad because this is a really bad situation. And you would have not been hinted towards, you know, a character being a ghost the whole time. Or not even a ghost. It's just soulless projecting him to make you think that he's alive, you know. Which I think is, I was really blown.

away by that. Like the reveal of it, the way it sort of ends up with you going back to the moment that it all happened and they're dragging away his body. And I'm watching this and I'm just kind of like, wait, they're not gonna. And then him going, you killed

Verrick. I was like, oh my God, dude. This is so... And I think those moments are so easy to mess up in a lot of media and all of those big moments that are supposed to give you chills and goosebumps and go, holy fuck, to me they nailed like nine out of ten of them.

And it was such a great thing because I remember playing the game and talking to Mike too. I'm like, when Verick's still in bed? Like get up and help us. What the fuck? And it was like, I told Roger about it. He was like, oh, dude, that's awesome. Because I heard Greg be like, this guy just won't get out of bed. What the hell, man? He's like, he's going to strap off the knee brakes and come and save the day at the very end.

And the whole time it's like, oh, Greg, so right, it's going to happen here. It's right. It was a nice little trick up on that. I loved it. I was really, I was a big fan of that. and a big fan of how all of the big cinematic moments that are supposed to make you feel that they made me feel. Yeah. You know, again, we talk about Belar's side quest, and I enjoyed that it wasn't just a one to two thing.

I love that each companion had a four to eight missions chain. They were about seven plus missions. Yeah, I think Belar's was awesome. The little brother running, or the brother, the big brother? Gentlemen, I'd rather you not spoil what I'd call a podcast within a podcast. Andy hit the song. Oh! Here are the companions that we love.

Here are the companions that we love. What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Raghu Copa, the podcast with the podcast where the rad guys rank the companions. Love that. We have, of course, a little tier maker.com list going S-tier to F-tier to talk about our companions from Dragon Age, the Veil Guard. I would want to start with shocking some, I would imagine,

Balarra, who I did not like in the preview. Yeah. I did not like at the start of this game. And then when we went on that one quest where she finally opens up on the balcony about her brother, and then we went down, I was like, damn. And by the end of that, as I talked about in my one man spoiler cast, right, when he, at least in my game. I don't know how it'll change that.

But like, he's dying in her arms. And he's like, can you just stay with me a while, right? I was like, it hit me so hard. And I talked about it my one man thing of like, it gave me so many pangs of being a father and like also be, having been a kid and like when it is all going wrong, you just don't want to be alone. You know what I mean?

Like Ben right now is a toddler, but you my own remember, it's like, oh my God, this shit hits so fucking hard. And so I would put Belara right up in an S tier. I agree. Belar was an S tier for me.

I was the same way. I did not like her the first time around. and a lot of that was maybe the writing choices, but I do like how, like, I enjoy her aloofness. Of course, she's just so, normally so kind of like spacey, but happy go lucky and quirky, right? And I just didn't love that initially on, I was like, I'm never going to talk to this character.

And that side quest not only silified her, I think being my favorite MPC, but the acting. chops. Yes, we've talked about this performance. Those emotional moments, I believe it's

G. Young Han, those performance in those emotional moments and I was like, oh, this is a different level of acting. This isn't, I'm playing your quirky character

and we're just doing this. And there was so many great moments of like heartbreaking line delivery. I was like, oh, you can act. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, I'm not saying that these other actors

can't act. Like, this is like a different level of me. Also given a bunch of material. Yeah. And so like, The Lara's S tier for me. I know Mike didn't love her because I've seen Chris Anka be like, fucking Mike, dude, Billar kicks ass.

Big is the-Blarah hater here. That's funny you want to rank them because I have ranking all of the companions' final missions where I wrote down step by step what happened with their missions for the big payoff. And yeah, Balar for me, the whole play-through, I did not enjoy. I was not a fan of it. I did not like the quirkiness. I did not like the, I'm the young. I'm kind of misled.

I don't know what's happening on the team type of vibe. And I think that's also one of those of like when you don't like the whole elf thing, though? Like she keeps discovering like her gods are evil and then there's all these changes. And then one of the soulless regrets is like, oh my God, the elves made them, they were wisps that made them. Like there's all this great shit in there. Yeah. Yeah, no, didn't vibe with any of that. I think that also goes to like when you start to really dig in and start picking two people and you don't rotate them out enough, you're not getting enough of that vibe of like falling in love with these characters.

So I will give you guys the S because I am the biggest. No, no, no, no, no. You don't give a shit. We have the votes. Yeah. You don't have the votes. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm not going to weigh it down.

by saying it's an F tier, so then you'd have to meet me in the B-Zone. We would not. We're not. It's not how this works. This isn't fucked up stupid in review. This isn't dumb ass in review. Just letting you know. Well, two of you put your hands up and two of you didn't. So the majority wins. What does that fucking mean?

What does that mean? Damn. Her brother with the dumb mask and it's like, oh, he's got a bad-looking mascot. Oh, fuck you. Barrett, put Balar up as an S-rank. She's the second character in. I know you're not familiar.

Thank you. You're a good person over there, Barrett. Mike, why don't you kick it off? Throw something in the board to talk to me. Let's talk about Emrick because I think Emric is a very interesting character, especially at first. I think people are either going to be hot or ice cold on Emric and I

was ice cold at the very beginning of him. I think his quests all the way through are very slow. They are cool in the underworld but it is a lot of hey, let's go to these gravestones. Let's talk about death. Let's talk about life. Let's light these candles. Let's go collect flowers and you're like, hey bro,

I'm here to swing an axe. Like this shit sucks. And by the end, I fell in love with him. Dude, I love him. You have to make a very big choice with him. Talk to him about it. Very interesting of like, I love the story of, oh, his homie, back at the school has gone rogue. She's

evil now and she wants to go complete it and she wants to be bad. She wants to become a litch but in the wrong way. And I liked that story. And then of course you get the choice. Hey, the cute little skeleton guy is now sacrificing his life for Emrick and the crew here.

Are you going to go back and save Emrick or, I mean, are you going to save Manfred, or are you going to let Emrick follow his dreams and become a litch? October 26th, damn, yeah, he was sick. That's fucking fire. 24 years. 24 years after the launch of PlayStation 2, never forget. My notes say, oh, fuck, bring back Manfred or become a lich.

Toughest choice yet. And then I write, no man, parentheses Fred left behind, bring him back. That's crazy you brought him back. He comes back. He's starting to develop a voice before he dies. eyes. So now you bring him back, but like what at what capacity, right? Like, is he talking full time? Is he actually fun to be around in the world? Because he's, the hawk in him. So you didn't do it? No, of

course not. I wanted him to become a litch. The litch is the coolest looking like image in the video game. One of the coolest looking top three guaranteed. I wouldn't fucking know because I'm going to ride or die for Manfred, all right? Man, bro. This guy becomes a litch. And then they all have the moment where they're like, are you going to stay in skeleton form all the time? And he can go back and forth because he doesn't want to scare them and they're like, no, bro, like, become a skeleton and he fucking transforms

and it's the coolest scenes around when he's in skeleton form. So, yeah, of course, no, no. I know. Yeah, I saved Manfred. That's why I was surprised when he died in mine. It's like, well, technically you can't die because like you become immortal forever. So like, what do you mean he's dead? I thought that was a really weird of like, I think because you can put so

many different characters in there. There's probably some bullshit that we, I don't know. Yeah, he's debris. Debris. Yeah, whatever. So anyways, yeah, when you bring Manfred back, right, you make the choice. You're there, of course, obviously, Emmerich turns it over to you. Choose bring Manfred back. You do it.

Manfred pops up. He's super excited. But then his thing goes on and it's like, no, he's talking, he's learning to talk full sentences and everything else. He decides to become a necromancer apprentice. So he's the apprentice to Emric, and now he starts wearing clothes. Oh, that's cool. So he's wearing a jacket and he's wearing gloves and shit. He's fucking awesome.

And it's amazing, like, you know what I mean? He makes weird noises. We have all these conversations. Well, no, he's starting to talk talks. Oh. Yeah, no, he says, I'm having conversations. But there's, you know, we talk so much about the choices in these games and how I'm always in this area of like, well, fuck. Spoilers for last of us, spoilers for life is strange.

You know, no, Joel's the bad guy, right? Ellie would have wanted this. But Ellie never really says that, you know what I mean? And then it's also like, oh, no, fuck Arcadia Bay. Save Chloe. You know what I mean? Well, blah, blah, blah. Like, you get the moment with, and I'd be used to see if you have anything similar with Emric, where it's like, how you're something along the lines of like,

So are you upset about not being the Litch King? And he's like, listen, like, do I have moments where I think about it, of course, but I wouldn't trade this for anything in the world. And even when you bring him back, right, like one of the choices for bringing back is he, Manfred loved you. And so when Manfred pops back up and they embrace, I was like, oh, so cool. And so to get confirmation from the character of like, I would have done this for anything, do you get, do you have a, do you regret making his choice?

Do you miss Manfred? No, he's very happy because that was always his overall goal. You know, he was afraid of dying. So, no, he's very, he's very much of, like, Emrick was there. I appreciate Emric, but I've moved on and, like, this is where. He kind of becomes very cold and icy because, like, he's, he's gotten what he wants, so he's not the same. I also remember when we rank these, tell me if you fall in love with them,

because I'd like to know, like, the love sequences with some of these kids. Real quick in the YouTube chat, Roon Mahariel says, for me, Emmerich's whole theme of being a necromancer with a fear of dying and having to choose between his, quote, unquote, son, and immortality. And his reaction to man for just being happy is so good. I also really Again I didn't finish that whole quest I didn't see what y'all was talking about I'm stoked to see

it happen but even those tiny moments of I think really well written dialogue of him saying like wow you're a necromancing and like and him being I'm I'm afraid of death I don't know what's waiting for it's like damn that's awesome

I just love the way they handle his character so we have to play it as it lies here because they have Manfred and Emrick on here oh so let's start with Emric, what ranking between S and F would you give Emric? I would give A because I didn't finish it. I'm pretty sure if I finished it

would probably be S or higher or something like that. S plus plus. I'm an A, B window area right now. I'll give him a B because I think it was fine. The Litch King is very cool, but it's very minimal at the end. So here's what I would do playing as it lies on this thing. I'm with you. I would put Emric

as a B. I think he does start slow and it is a lot of wall. And I think the Necropolis is so cool. But it is like, I get got a bit more of a lot. And then as we get cooking and go to the grave and find out and then get to this ending, I think it gets up there. But I'd give him a B, I'd give Manfred an A. Oh, yeah.

Because Manfred was always a joy, always a joy to be around, always comic relief. And then for him to actually have, because like they made such a quote unquote big deal like Matt Mercer's Manfred. It was like, oh, fuck, that's cool. And you get the game. It is just like, all right, well, fucking anybody could. But then to have it become, he can start to talk and then he wants to be the apprentice and yada, yada, yada.

Like, if I know they've said they won't. But if we were going to get DLC, I would want it to be. fucking Manfred pack. Like, where are we going? Let's go do some shit with Manfred. And that, his final areas are very cool because of the colors and all that. Of course. A lot of their missions are very cool at the end. Andy, tossing me on the border with me here. Talk about somebody. Let's see here. I mean,

did I end up not fully loving my romantic choice? I don't even know who you choose. I chose Neve. You did chose Neve. Because she's the baddest. Okay. With that deep V. would that deep be and I definitely was just very shallow there because I just think she's like man

What a baddie what a bad But I And I had already kind of like Pre-picked her in my mind But watching trailers and watching all the promotional footage And I I think the story stuff was great I never loved the voice acting from Nev

The delivery was always just like Off in some spots and sometimes it'd be good And sometimes it was just like kind of like That one didn't quite land for me. And I agree with you with all of the Doctown stuff. I didn't finish her quest, but I near the end of it was like, all right, I can only finish a couple of companion quests because I'm running out of time. And I'm not super loving the direction of where, or sort of like Nev's story stuff right now.

Yeah. And I felt that way with the ones that I had completed, where maybe the first, the end of like the first third of their companion. quest, you're like, oh, this is cool. I like where this is going. Nev, never quite compelled me that way. It was that thing whereas I made a joke about it yesterday, you weren't on the stream, but I did the quest that then sets up Nev's

bigger thing where you get the Verick, like, yeah, but Nev didn't know there was some fuck faces. And they show the woman and I'm like, I don't, chat, I don't even remember who this is. Somebody in Docktown that we got to fight eventually, but I don't, like, everybody else I can tell you like, oh, they're building up to the vampire lady. Oh, they're doing this, they're doing, this one's like, yeah, whatever.

The person Nev had a fight. But I did love her becoming hardened and her being, like, especially because I picked Shadow Dragons and me turning my back and going to help Treviso instead of Minrath. I'd her being like, you really, like, this is your home. And I loved those moments a lot.

And I thought those are the moments where not only the performance and the writing, I think, like, stood out really well. So I, aside from that, I think it was kind of middling. Otherwise, I'd give her a D or C. I don't know. Okay. I would go D.

I did romance, Nev. Did you have the sex scene? Oh, yeah. Yeah, hell yeah. We shut out. Yeah. Yeah. I actually,

she used her magic spell to shut the door. Yeah. Yeah. Trouble. You're always trouble. And then like, oh yeah,

all the trouble stuff. Oh my God. And then of course at the end. You don't know about the trouble stuff. Oh my God. So like, you have these conversations with her where there's a push in a pool.

Yeah, and as you keep on giving her the romantic sort of florty stuff, she is very like non-committal early on because she's like, you're trouble, rook. And it's like,

oh, this is sexy because it feels, dangerous, Greg, you know? I love it when it's dangerous. I am trouble. And then once it becomes solidified that we are a couple, they're pretty much

for the rest of the game, she's like, um, you did great work out there at trouble or like, she should talk, I fucking loved that. Um, but, uh, yeah, about three minutes into the sex cutscene, like it was just cut to black and yeah,

it felt very weak. You heard my character be like, oh, this never happens. Like I swear. No. No. Too real. Too real.

Uh, I liked Nev's story and dog where she had to team up with the rival gang to take it back from the our favorite people that kept on. The Venetory. Mike texted me early on five different texts of Venetori.

I'm like, what, is your phone bugging on? He's like, no, why do they keep on saying the fucking word venetori? I'm tired of them saying Benetori. Drive it home late. And I was like, well, Mike, it's because they don't want you to get on camera and say, yeah, the venosaurs. Well, turn out of the Venetory weren't that special at the end of the day. They were just the random human bodyguards

that we had to just throw in front of people. A bunch of little freaks, yeah. Nobody's special for the Vettatory. I like that she had to team up in Dogtown with the rival gang to take back the city. I thought that was very cool for compromising, right? She didn't want to do that. She was like, oh, man, like this is the right thing to do to save my city, you know? So, yeah, I like Nev.

I don't really like her move set. Didn't enjoy that. Oh, yeah, I'm not even thinking about magic moves. Yeah, we haven't talked about the movesets of a lot of these characters. But, you know. But Laura was my favorite because of that move that I've talked about, like, where she sucks you towards the center. She sucks all enemies towards it, and then you could just have everybody go to town. She's a veteran.

I'm going to give her a B. She's an A, B window for me. One of the better out of the group, I think. Well, again, you know of the vote. So she is going in as a D because we make a voting system that makes sense here. Raghu Copa. Let's move on and toss in. Let's get Harding in there.

For me, Harding, again, like the song of the stone thing. Oh, I'm sorry. Can we get Manfred at A2, the skeleton there, Barrett? Harding enjoyable meant a lot to me, a solid team player. I think I would give Harding though like a B. Like I think it was like I enjoyed everything we were doing and I enjoyed the rocks and I enjoyed. But I wasn't like super high or super low ever and I thought her ending is so good for me, at least dying and how much I cared about her. I have a fun one for Harding for Greg.

Okay. Because Greg romances Tosh. I do. But he doesn't know that Harding and Tosh will get together at the end of the game if you don't romance Tosh. It's funny then you morons don't know that you got in the way of Lucannev. No shit. Oh, well, there is that moment where That's awesome. She mentions like,

oh, he's also attractive or she said some shit like that. So with my rook turned back like, what? Yeah, my rook was like, go by Harding a bow. I was like, yeah, that's fucking weird. You walk into Tasha's room and Tosh's like, so like, Harding, what's her story? And you're like, are you interested in her?

You know, you have this kind of cool thing. And you're like, no, give her something that she likes or whatever. And then... See, I had that with Lucanus. Oh, okay. is like, hey, what is going on with Neve or whatever? You like, you like her? Oh, my God. Yeah, and Tosha's like, all right, well, this

fucks up, but you're going to hear about this. And then I never got a follow up on that, so I don't know. Oh, really? Yeah. Like, oh, no. They, for me, Lucanus, and now full on become a couple and do the whole. It's probably because I skipped the rest of it and everybody died. And Tosh was not happy when Harding died.

Oh, that war on that. Man, yeah. Harding for me, I did not like, I don't like that. All of a sudden, we are the one dwarf with the magic. but then at the same time, I have the exact same magic as her with the dagger. I thought that was just ridiculous there. But, like, that's gameplay choices because I can't have her with me all the time.

I didn't really vibe with parting at all, to be honest with you. This was one of my ballara choices of, like, don't care, moving on. I think she's just a strong character. I think she's a big stuff. Yeah, B. Yeah, I think once we got towards the end of her sort of storyline and all of, like, I loved seeing, you know, the, the, hometown and seeing all these like giant like the big blue crystals or yeah that was such

cool vistas i wanted to put that on the back wall and i was like i don't know if that's like a spoiler or not yeah yeah i put up a screenshot of it where i was like i don't know if i'm violating but i think if you just looked at you want to know i i really enjoyed it i also uh that that gets like a a b for me yeah i would say uh then let's toss harding the archer there barrett number two uh yeah there you go up to b thank you so much uh daverin i'll tell you straight up, I'd F them. Put it right at F tier. Dumb Grey Warden, didn't love the performance,

never connected with the character, but I know you guys had different feelings. I think my biggest thing is maybe the performance as well, because it wasn't badly acted. I wanted it to be a different voice. Oh, interesting. I wanted, and that's just me constantly looking for another Garris for Carras for Cairing

or another Thane Creos from Mass Effect, where I just, I wanted him to be this, you know, I don't give a fuck. about anything right now you know like but it it almost it was like less endearing you know how like you're sometimes uh there's that dude in field de mistria who treats you like shit and that's like everybody that everybody's horny for because they're like oh man he's the bad boy maybe i could make him love me or whatever yeah i wish daverin had a bit more characterization because it all felt a little too noble to want to care about kind of reminds you of like uh how i don't love aloy

because I'm just like, she's just kind of like down the middle. Like, I don't know. I wanted more extreme either asshole or like nice guy from him. But I loved the whole backstory. I love the whole Griffin stuff. And his death for me was real, like, I know that I cared about Davern when I like have the, you know, teary eyes. Like, God damn, that was really well done.

So where do you boys want to put him? Yeah, Davin's part of my big three, which we're going to talk about here. The big three I think are the best. Daverin, I really loved. He had the Griffin. He took us to very cool spots. I talked with Greg. Of course, when you get to go to the blighted area

and see where she's keeping all of the other Griffin's was really cool. I like this story of like, yo, why am I different? Why did I not die there? I'm supposed to sacrifice myself. What the heck?

And you got to kind of talk him down. I'm like, yo, bro, it's all right. Like, we'll get another chance. And that's not meant for you. And also learning about his backstory of leaving his group. He wasn't right for his group

and had to leave him behind. I like this guy. I love his, I like his movesets a lot. I think he's one of the strong. ones for me and my group, so I'll go with B for Andy. Okay. Me would be. That's an F, but I lose the votes because I believe in democracy, unlike Tim. Oh, no, that's Lucanus. If you could bring Lucanus back down and then Daverns's number two

there. Thank you very much. Now while we're here, of course, we'll talk about as Griffin, a son. Really quick. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, with the Griffins, did you bring the griffons to the forest or did you bring them to the Grey Wards? I don't know how much clear I could be. Fucked the Grey Wardens. These guys suck. Yeah, of course. I said go to the forest. Go out there. So cool. Great Ordens had their fucking time. Yeah, I love that they're in the force, and you get the check in on them. That's really cool. Like, man, yeah, give me a little prolog with that.

I want to know all about that. Asan the Griffin, I would also put on the Manfred level. Just always brighten my, always brighten my gameplay. I was always happy to see this. Pet them? Yeah. Oh, yeah, hug them. You know what I mean?

There's different animation. It's not just like one singular pet. There is a hug. There is a little, a lot of different embraces. And I think that was one of the, I like, at the end, I think. Right after that choice, right around that choice when it's all done. And you can, like, embrace the Griffin, Asson, or whatever. And I did that.

That was nice. Let's go to Lucanus there in The Crow. We all know. Oh, I'm sorry. Can we get the Griffin there, the bird to A? Thank you very much for it. Lucanus, the crow, the demon of Treviso, right? The sexy assassin.

He was sexy. I have a whole section of my notes where I'm like, am I going to fuck Lucanus? Holy shit, this is amazing. Loves coffee. Had a demon again. I loved demon. I loved him having spite inside of him.

I wish they did more with it. I wish we had more conversations. Saar were a part of. I wish there were a few more times. Even in battle, if it was like, he spited out and became spite and we're like, oh, Spite's fighting with me now. Okay, whatever. If it was like a random kind of occurrence or something like that. They could have done some cool stuff. But overall, I adored my time with Lucanus. I think Treviso is an amazing place in general. Like, for me, Lucanus is an S-tier. Even though I think the companion quest for Lucanus, like, and they make a joke, a reference to it later on of like, early on, it's like, oh,

clearly that your cousin is a bad guy. He's the guy, right? And they're like, yeah, whatever. We're going to keep playing along with it to figure out more. It was like, you're so cool, the setting's so cool. A bunch of Batman and assassins is so cool. Like, I vibe with it. And then the grandma and saving her and then everybody,

the cheers. They all cheers. Yeah, naked blood lady. Yeah, naked blood lady. Did you, um, did you save, did you spare him or did you kill him? Because that has the effect on the little kid at the end. I didn't finish the quest. Oh, really?

I fucking iced him. No, you did. Yeah, I did. So I spared him. What was his name? Idalia or... Blanking on his name. Something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I did love that twist, even though I knew it was coming. I wish they didn't let you on... I wish they didn't kind of hinted that because, like, they... The only real reason you get hinted at it is because a dialogue choice is, I don't trust your cousin. And it's like, ah, man, I wish that choice wasn't an option. Otherwise, I would not have, like, really seen it coming. Interesting.

Spared him, which then influences the kid for his later stuff, which was very cool. Set the tone. Yeah, I'm trying to find it. I had a note there, but I was like, what am I going to go? Let this guy out and then he's going to come after me again or keep fucking around my family? Fuck off. Get out of here. You're done.

So, Lucanis, I would put, basically, we're doing companions and also their quest line, right? And their abilities and stuff. So much. Lucanus, I would do S. I thought it was cool as shit the entire fucking time. I think the team wrote Lucan, is to be one of the top tier characters.

So yeah, I think it's an ass is right. I'm sure if I finished the full quest and I would have been a bit more happy with it. But I still really enjoyed him and I enjoyed any time I would voluntarily put him in my party often because I always had Belara as the main character and then I would swap off whoever depending on what sort of enemies

we were fighting. Yeah, I'd say Lucanus, I'd probably put him like at A but I'm on voted. We have the votes. Can we send Lucanus up to the S tier bear? you so much. And then, although I said earlier played as it lies, our final one, Tosh. We're not ranking Verick. We're not ranking a fucking ghost. Absolutely. Lade in bed the entire time, F tier. Died on the first mission. Get the fuck out of here. I liked your V-O, but not, it's not worth it.

Tosh, the one I romanced. This was my romance. I was very surprised, I guess, because early on, I was like, you can follow the journal, like, kondofluny.com slash Greg's journal of me being like, Lucanus is the fucking guy. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to fuck this guy. You're like, oh, this is going to be great, yada, yada. And then Tosh pops up on the scene and it's so good. And I thought... And such a baddie. God damn.

A great baddie. This story of them discovering what it means to be non-binary and all that was so good. And Bear, I sent it into assets. This is going to be picture and picture of us watching ourselves or whatever. Because the clip I couldn't find in assets because I must have given to you on the thumb drive. But we're talking about the romance scenes. When you actually finally knock boots with Tosh, right? And, you know, it's a similar thing of, you know, you move off and you have a conversation with, I think, them lying on top of you or maybe it's vice versa or whatever, and you're nudie, but you don't see it.

Is it going to feel like watching a sex thing with your parents in the room? Yeah. Maybe. I want to show you the moment where I got a boner. It's hot, but where Tosh is like, hey, are we in or out? Can we show that? Do we see her? Perfect.

Thank you, Beret. Sounds like your mother was hard on you. Nah. I think your fingers are just perfect. Yeah. So are you trying to have sex with me? Boner. Jesus.

And watch this. But maybe. Quick. Think about us having sex. That's fucking hot. You reacting. You're reacting. No, we need to figure out if it's cash lock or Tomlock.

And those are. Cashlock's just flirting. You look and make jokes and maybe think about him for fun. Tomlock. is serious. Like you want to grab that and taste its neck right by the collarbone. Bird, you got a boner right now?

You can't ask if that at work. Let us know. And so you can stop at there. You can ask me that at home. You can get it here. We ask this or we do this. But that was like such, I thought, like such a well done hot moment. And it's the TikTok thing of like pushing them up against the wall.

I was like, damn. But here's, I'm surprised that they were that forward about it because they, I feel like, you know, the demeanor is always very like, kind of like, will they, won't they? What does this mean? Well, I think just the way Tosh was always around was just the dialogue was very like kind of deadpanned. And I love that. I love that there was always like, eh, whatever, I don't give a shit. And I kind of enjoyed that.

And I do too. But what I also appreciate about Tosh is how they just barrel through conversations and say what they're thinking. Where there's a moment, too, that was in there. it might have been even around that in my one-man show where it is there's a just you're fighting people and like when rook knocks somebody out tosh just goes nice job or it's something nice rook or no nice guys she's also a good kisser like it was just like you know like there's no filter for what it is so i thought it was so perfect of like hey we're clearly this is happening and rather than process it like most people would tosh is just going to go what's going on what are we

doing i i feel like it's they are very matter of fact in what they do now on like However, on the flip side of things, I was going to say there are ways that the playthrough can be played out in ways that are less compelling and less satisfying to the player of the viewer. And Mike told me what he experienced. Yeah, yeah. You want to tell him? Yeah, I had a tough time with Tash at the very beginning because I missed the one companion quest because if you go too far, you will miss the initial companion quest where we do start to talk about gender identity and how Tash is feeling in that moment. So you have no idea about any of this And you come right after the big first battle

And everybody is licking their wounds Talking about, yeah, talking about Hey man, I missed my, it's Lucanus and Daverin I missed my shot man, I should be better Neve's over there, or not Nev yet But like another group was like man we really fucked that up We're gonna die and then you show up and it's Tasha Nev And she goes, wow, you wear that

And she's like, what do you mean by that? And she's like I would never wear that Like my mother and I We would never wear something so showing. And she's like, are you comfortable being a her? And then that's when we started like, no, I feel like I'm a they. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, pump the brakes for a second. We were just talking about how we miss Gillingate. Like, what do you mean we're doing this right now? And so for me, it was like, I had an initial hard left turn of like, oh, I didn't know this

character was going to talk about sexual identity right now in this. I'm interested in this. Let's talk about that. But it's also horrible timing for PC. What a bad time. So like, now I'm like, I'm like, what the fuck is this? I'm not into this. But then through the character and through the side quest, it's like, oh, this is really cool that we're going to have this conversation. And I think in the middle of it to the end, it's very well done. I'm like, oh, I like this.

Like, let's talk about this. Dude, those final moments were amazing also. But yeah, that's a perfect moment. With their mom? Yeah. Because that toss is one of the characters that I did all the side quests for. And, but yeah, that moment right there with Mike is a moment of your mileage may vary. If you do stuff out of order, things may not happen in ways that maybe the developers would be like, oh, that's like the least good scenario that we want people to experience this order in or whatever.

Because for me, I had not done the Siege of Wyshop yet. I had not done any of the sort of Ghillane, Hydra, any of that, not happened. So it happened for me in a very natural moment where I'm just kind of talking all these random NPCs doing my thing, you know, checking in on everybody. It was totally fine for me. But when Mike told me about that, I was like, yeah, that does suck. It's like, fuck, well, my, and it's the highest, most dramatic moment. Tensions are at all time high.

Daverin and Lucanus are arguing with each other. It's like, fine, and you walk in and it's like, oh, man, like, I don't know what sexuality I identify. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that makes a lot of sense that that would feel really awkward in my place. Well, I think, like, again, my heart belongs to Tosh. I loved their journey throughout. I didn't love their side quest in terms of going after the Dragon King.

And so for me, when we're putting the, them on the board here in ranking overall, I would put Tash at an A. I think the personal journey, S-tier, amazing, my romance, S-tier, amazing. But the whole thing of the Dragon King is another one, you know, and then this happened,

then the Dragon King shows up. And it's like, all right, and the Dragon King steals the mom, it does it. And it's just like, all of this felt like I didn't even need him in the picture. Like, I don't feel like he as an antagonist added anything to this journey. I actually really enjoyed it because I love the idea that

it's really, really rare for a Qadari to be able to breathe fire. And it's like a once in a, you know, whatever, Generation 300, yeah, whatever. They got a fire tablet and stuff. It never happens, right? So I love the idea that this dude who's obsessed with this shit locates one. Yeah. Because of a moment where they had to breathe fire and like save whatever the hell.

And I love the idea that this dude is now like, oh, we know where they're at. We know, like, we got to go after what they care about them. And like, that I thought was really. kind of awesome. Kind of reminded me of Harding with like the song of Stone or whatever. But I just, I liked the idea. And of course that big dramatic moment of the mom dying

and the no, like that was like, I thought really well done. And the setting, man. Going into the giant shark mouth rock. That was so cool. So were you guys voting? I would still say A. Okay. Oh. Yeah. Well, Tosh's S for me. Right. Tosh was my rider die. I had them and Daverin the whole

entire time. And I loved how they evolved, right? Of like talking about hunting, dragons and then you being a gray warden they would go back and forth and the conversation, especially if you ride with somebody for 30 hours, it's like, are they going to say the same things? No, it's surprisingly evolved every single time and the back and forth between

the two of them evolved, which I was like, oh, that's really well done. Like, I like that. Same thing for me, it was Tosh and Luchanis. And Tosh, it turns out, grew up obsessed with crows, the crows. And so Tosh has a million questions. Is it like, is it sure you can dislocate your arms and put yourself in? And like, he

eventually like three or four and like, why do you ask all these questions? Oh, my mom would tell me story. And then hours later, like, oh, well, you know, she stopped telling stories when I put on a towel as a cape and jumped off and hurt my. And then at the very end, when you do it, there's a note that unlocks that is something like Tosh's thoughts on crows or what Tosh believed about it. And it's every, like, little thing and things that didn't even talk about. And I was like, that's really cool.

Yeah. And that's why I've been just really annoyed by the typical, like, grifters posting scenes that are super, like, out of context and just saying like look at what this game is it's just a person just saying that they're trans or whatever Except they're like likely misgendering them or whatever But like it's that that's the only scene that they'll show and it's like well that's not what the mission's about That's it's it's It's supplemental to also a person who is a Kunari that didn't really grow up around around a lot of Kunari that grew up in Ravain a different city So they're stuck between two

Lifestyles and they don't really know where they belong and have having a mother who's also very, very strict. Yep. And all of that is also supplemental to this other side part of it that is completely optional, so you don't need to experience. But, like, it's there if you want it. And I loved that, I just love the development of it all. And the way that the sort of directors and, like, camera people really had those shots

looking great in those final cutscenes was really satisfying for me. So the final run of Raghu Copa goes like this. Can you send Tash up to A for me? Barrett, thank you so much. S tier is Balara and Lucanus. A tier is Manfred of... What's the... Anas? Anis?

No, that's not right. The Griffin. I forgot. Assan. Asson. Yeah. Tosh. And then B tier is Emric, Harding, and Daverin.

And then D tier is Nev. And then we did not rank Verick, because that's silly to put Verrick on there or whatever. But that... But little did the Gamescast crew know that... They'd be, I don't know, playing ballers' G-D-3. Ladies, gentlemen, and NB's, that's another episode of the kind of funny games cast in the tank. What were your favorite decisions and what did you do differently in your Dragon Age the Veilgard play-through?

Let us know in the comments below in this YouTube video. Whenever you got here, and as always, I'd like to know when you got here, so you need to tweet Blue Sky or Threads Game Over Greggie with the simple phrase, Mike likes soda pop and that'll be the one that I'll know

oh in February 2025 they watched this that's when they watched the school cast I like this guy and threads too yeah check that I'm all over the place who knows in February

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