Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Our Starfield Plans - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

Parris, Andy, and Greg talk about how they're tackling Bethesda opus in 17 days! Time Stamps - 00:00:00 - Start 00:06:56 - Housekeeping 00:09:27 - Our Starfield Plans 00:46:22 - Baldur’s Gate 3 After a Few Weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All August long, we're doing a Kind of Funny Patreon Pledge Drive and asking you to chip in on patreon.com slash Kind of Funny if you enjoy the shows. For real, we're an 11-person independent operation and we couldn't do it without your financial support on Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny. So thank you. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller, alongside the Hispanic Heartthrob, Texas Treat Latino Heat, clicking heads, ripping them to shreds. The globe trotting, three-point shooting, rootin-tooting. What, you did it?

Glob-trodden, head-shotten. But then you did the basketball thing right there. You did it. You're playing it because you did it. You're right. You wanted me to say head-shotten and you were doing a three-point shoot? You're right. There you go.

There you go. From Twitch.com. Andy, Cortez. Hello, everybody. Hey, Andy. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. Yeah?

I'm going on vacation tomorrow. Oh, yeah. Vacation, right? I'm going home. I'm going to. That's still vacation, right? You're not going to wake me up like a 9-45 every morning to do some stuff I don't want to do.

How long are you gone for? A week, or like six days. Okay. You're dragging PC console. What are you doing? Sometimes you stream when you're back in the other. Taking the Razor laptop. Okay.

Because I want to do at least, I'm just, we'll talk about Ballas Gate 3. The rest of the, like later on the stream. I'm so addicted to it. I got to stream and I got to play it more. Okay. So, yeah, I'm taking my Razor laptop to use that to stream from the old Casa. Now here's the problem.

Again, parents. They just don't understand. Rio Grande Valley? I appreciate you all But man, you all got to up these upload speeds Like, hey, you'll get 20 upload 20 megabits upload Okay, well it's not really 20 then

I'm gonna get 12 maybe Yeah And it's gonna be a bad time It's gonna be constant frame drops I'm gonna have to stream at 15 frames per second At 640p probably Yeah, not looking forward to it Maybe just no stream, you know, chill out hang out

See your family Yeah, the game's too good man Play it! Just play the game! It doesn't always have to be content But that does parlay into what we're talking about But before then, of course, Let's welcome all the way from SoCal, the best voice in the business. Paris, Lily.

Hello. I have a question for the nitro rifle. Yeah, I'm here. Why don't you like Dr. Pepper? It's overrated, Paris. It's overrated. If anything, it's underrated. No, it's overrated.

I'm not even a soda guy. I respect Dr. Pepper. Anytime you bring up Dr. Pepper, everybody, you know, everybody's, you know, creaming their jeans and shit in their pants all over the place. And it's just like, it's just, I've always thought it was overrated. And then like, drinking it today, I'm like, get this shit out of here. Get it out of my vicinity, you know? That's crazy.

It's because I just grew up. My parents were always buying Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Dr. Thunder. And it was always like the diet soda that everybody's like, we're the most accurate to the real taste in soda. Everybody's like, wow, I can't believe this is a real. And like, it was all we had in my house. I just fucking hate it, dude. See, I understand that I hate diet sodas too. I'm not going to sit here in Simp for Diet Dr. Pepper.

But I'll tell you what. in the day, we'd get some Sir Nick's pizza, Dr. Pepper, head over to Michael Bryan's house, play some in... Okay, that sounds cool. That was dope as that. That sounds cool. Here's my problem with though, Paris. A lot of people have been going, Andy. Like, Barrett said, Andy, do you like root beer, though? And I said, yeah, I love Rubert.

And in Barrett's mind, that's the most accurate thing to Dr. Pepper. But on the opposite side of things, some people have also... That's not what I said, though. No, but this is a conversation where Andy's just telling you what you said. Yeah, I'm just telling you said, all right? I didn't say that, well, I mean, you know, you said... Tomato and tomato. In my conversation.

with people, I had just found that there was some weird correlation, except for you, that if one doesn't like Dr. Pepper, for some reason, they also don't like root beer. Okay, I didn't sit. We can agree. Innecessary addition. So that some people also go, some people also go, Annie, don't you like cherry Coke, though? And I go, yeah, and they go, well? I'm like, well, what?

It doesn't taste like Cherry Coke. Cherry sodas doesn't taste like Dr. Pepper. And if it did, then there wouldn't be a cherry Dr. Pepper. Thank you, everybody. Vote for me. That's a good point. Paris, are you a big Dr. Pepper guy?

Yeah, but diet Dr. Pepper and it's funny, he brought up doctors. Because it tastes so much like regular. It's so accurate. Just diet,

Dr. Pepper. Okay, fine, have it your way. And Mr. Pib. That was, see,

that was that we were, that's a Coke brand, right? We were a Coke, we were a Coke high school so that you were having Pib extra that high school. What was the extra?

I don't fucking know. More Pips? I don't know. That's so many Pips Isn't he? Protons, part of a lot. I don't know what's going on.

Paris, thank you so much for joining us. It's rare that we get you outside of a kind of funny ex-cast. I know. Thank you for having me. Oh, please.

I can get away from Gary Whitt. Oh, my God. You want to talk about a wet blanket. I know it's funny. I think Gary and I are, like, building this rivalry

that I didn't know we had because he trolls me on social media constantly. Yeah, that's how Gary shows affection, but it really doesn't go the way he thinks it does, you know?

Does Gary not like me anymore? What's going on? No, I mean he likes you more than ever. You know what I mean? Now you're getting some of Mr. Wittus time. It's valuable time. I'm so sick of seeing this man's back splash and power plugs for his kitchen.

Like we get it. You're renovating. You wrote the book of Eli. Calm down. I think he also, I think he sees the way that you show love and affection on the internet, Paris, and is like,

I want to reciprocate. That must be what it is because I am a troll on the internet. I see Paris trolling, uh, Danny, um, Benia or Paris or just other folks in the internet. I'm like, all right, this, this is,

Paris isn't trolling herself. I'm such a troll. I will turn it on my own feed. I was thinking of the bad cook, my bad. Yeah. And so it's like, this is how Paris shows love and affection. Yeah. You know.

Well, I do have a new rivalry on the internet. Who is it? Who? What's good games? Oh, Brit, sure. Yeah, because I told her I don't like Resident Evil, so we've had a rivalry for the past few months. It's escalating now.

I saw over the weekend, yeah, you put up a photo you with a controller playing one of the Res evils. Yeah. How's that going to? just a troller. I'm not going to play it. Just chat. It's like a time lapse of you buying it, downloading it, and then deleting it without ever opening it. It's like, I don't care. Burn. What do you like about it's evil pairs?

I just, okay, we're really going to go there. I personally think Resident Evil has not evolved enough over the past couple decades. To me, it's just the same old shit every time. So, to me, it, so when I see a new one come out, I don't get excited. I said the only new thing that they've done is the big vampire lady that's it. And they got rid of her so soon. Yeah. You know? And the first act. First act. Don't forget medium was a better game that year.

Medium was better than Reserville Village. I'll say it. A lot of people are afraid. A fellow Dr. Pepper Hater. We're not here to talk about any of that. We're here to talk about our Starfield plans. But before we do, let me remind you that this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every week we get together to talk about all the things we love and sometimes

don't love about video games. If you love that, head over to patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games or Kind of Funny, where, of course, you can get the show ad-free. You can watch it live as we recorded, just like Drago is, Joshi G is, Guitar Hero, Arrow, R. If you're watching live, signed off, of course, in the chat so you can be included in the conversation because I want to know your starfield plans as well. Of course, on Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny. You could also get the show ad-free on-demand as a video as an MP3. And then, of course, you get the bevy of benefits for the other podcasts. watch them live as we record them,

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for a brand spanking new episode. us keeping for you. Jeff Jarrett is torturing me. He has shown up after, of course, compressing my spine. I used to be 6.3. I'm now 6.1. This is a true fact.

The doctor confirmed the other day. After compressing my spine with a guitar on a stream last week, available on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, he then crashed PSI Love UXOXO to chase me saying he's going to make my life a living hell for two weeks. And then on Monday's games daily, he did it again.

So you all need to be aware that Jeff Jarrett he's gone rogue all right it's a broken arrow situation we can't control him anymore he's got discord access he's in and out whenever he wants to Barrett's helping when it happens we don't like this we don't support this I put up a cutting promo

I've destroyed this man's career on Twitter Instagram right now I love the idea of Barrett not even knowing how he gets into the discord and just like sir we don't know no no the Eric's got to stick together I don't like this wrestling stable keep your eyes peels for Jeff Jarrett throughout all our content I guess is the promo it could happen at any time.

Thank you to our Patreon producers Jedi Master Deadpool Delaney Twining and Logan Delaney. Today we're brought to you by Liquid Ivy but we'll tell you about that later for now. Let's start with topic of the show. Tots, Tots, Tots, Tots, Tots, Tots. There was, I went as long as I came up.

You threw me in for a curveball, man. I was going to do the PSI love you Tots. By the way, Tim Gettys, your usual host not here. Bip by a snake on the dick. Today's topic of the show, of course, ladies and gentlemen, is as we recorded, it. We are 18 days away from Starfield. Fuck. As of posting, we'll be 17 days away because that's how math works. What I thought it would be fun is I wanted a temperature check, Paris, Andy, on what your plans are for Starfield.

And I know that sounds goofy and it can be interpreted a lot of different ways. And I want us to interpret a lot of different ways. Chat, I want to know your plans for Starfields as you watch a live there on patreon.com slash kind of funny. But I also think we have a very interesting perspective, all three of us. And I have questions for each of you guys about it. of course, plans for Starfield it is our job to review games. You can assume we will be getting Starfield early at some point.

I can tell you we do not have Starfield, so don't get that. But eventually we're going to do an FAQ on the Xcast, kind of funny.com slash Xcast with your questions you'd want answered in an FAQ, obviously non-spoilery stuff,

but the stuff you think you might miss from a review or catch all the reviews whenever they do post and then send them in there and we can do that. You may not have a yet. I'm on my second play through. God damn, son.

Okay, wow. You didn't know that. You're playing outer wild. No, but the perspectives are interesting, right? Paris, Lily, of course, this will be your first official lead reviewer spot for Kind of Funny. You will be coming up to San Francisco. You will be on the Gamescast. You will do the X-Cast FAQ with us. We're very excited for it. Andy, you of course, are working at kind of funny and playing games all the time, but you stream so much at night that I want to know a few questions about that. And then even myself, I think, you know, with a not even two-year-old at home trying to jump into a Bethesda RPG on a deadline is going to be a much different. thing. So I really want to talk about how we're all tackling this and what is going on. In Paris, I'll start with you. Lead reviewer for us. When you get this code, have you prepared your family to never see you again? Are you taking time off from your day job? Because of course, as great as you are at content creation, it is not your full-time job. What is your star field plan?

All the above, actually. It's kind of why I've been absent the past month or so on Xcast and everything because I've been taking care of a lot of things at work. So I can kind of free myself up for a week or two or however long we're going to have the game when we get the review code. So I can focus on that as literally my job, right? Family kind of understands what's going to happen. So I think I'll be fine there. See, that's the beauty of you'll find this out soon enough, Greg.

But this is the beauty of having kids that are teenager above. Feed yourself. I don't have to worry about anything you do. You're fine. So I'll be good on that. I'll have enough time. I'll have enough free time to be able to focus on the game. My plan of attack is, since I'm going to do the lead review, is obviously complete the story,

start to finish, roll credits on that. And then I want to try and make sure that I touch on every, what we would perceive as every major feature in Starfield. So think about the shipbuilding, think about creating the outposts, think about the economy system, think about joining various factions, think about trying to test out as many weapons as I possibly can. I want to at least make sure I'm touching everything that is reasonable in the amount of time that we're going to have to review it

so that I can kind of give an overall look at what the game is versus kind of jumping into a rabbit hole. And I've spent the past two weeks being a space pirate and there's a whole other section of the game that I never see because that's all I'm focused on. Is that how you normally would play the game Paris? No. Okay.

No, it wouldn't be. If I wasn't reviewing it, knowing that this is a Bethesda RPG, just kind of ironically enough, I have been playing some Fallout 3 again, just messing around and just kind of going in the past, thinking about New Vegas and Skyrim and things like that. There's times where I will just veer off

into just one section of the game, and I look up and I've been doing that for 20 hours and not seeing entire sections of a Bethesda type of RPG, and that would kind of be the danger of doing that this time with a limited amount of time being review. So I want to make sure that I'm hitting that main story. There will be some side stuff that I'll do, of course. But yeah, I know me.

And I know that there's certain things that if I'm not careful, I'll just, that'll be my focus. I love this conversation to jump into a different vein almost or thing. Because again, Paris, you know how much I love you first off as a person, love you as a performer. But working with you. What about me? Huh?

What about me? Oh, Andy, it's great that you come into work. Uh, you know, it's, and man, the shirts you make, who, you know, they're great. No, but, uh, Andy, I love you too. Uh, but I meant more for Paris, of course, like, I don't get to work with you in this capacity. Right. So you're talking about this being a review and an official review. So for you, you've obviously done Gamer Tag forever.

You've talked about games forever. If you were reviewing it on any of those shows, would you treat it this way as well in terms of, like you have to see as much as you can, touch as much as you can, you know, see credits. Yeah, to your point about me being the lead reviewer on it. Yeah, I would because I think it's important that I'm, I want to give a very educated opinion about the game. If I'm scoring it, if I'm saying, let's say I'm saying Starfield's a four out of five. There it is.

You heard it here first, Andy. Oh, my God. Call Shrier. Here they come. Watch out. Close your DMs right now. Yeah. But if I'm saying it's a four out of five, I mean,

want to give a very reasoned opinion as to why it's a four out of five because I can say I did I did all of these things that you would expect to do in the game and this is why I feel this way about it versus going yeah I spent 50 hours as a space pirate and I stole a bunch of ships and I built a bunch of ships and I set up a trade route to I don't know. Nibu. Yeah, Nabu. There you go or indoor or something right. No, I want to be able to say that I've at least done everything that you that we know of in the in the in the, game. I'm sure there might be some mystery stuff that we still don't know about so that I have those talking points. Like, this is what it's like to join the Crimson Fleet. This is what it's like to go do

this, et cetera, on down the line. Whereas if I'm just playing the game and it's not my responsibility to say that it's my review and my score, then I'm just, I'm playing it as a gamer more so to speak, right? So I'm not worried so much about, well, the revue, an embargo's coming out. I need to finish the game. And obviously I know that's kind of the format We're kind of funny anyways Where anyone that's not the lead reviewer Isn't necessarily going to finish the game But you can talk about your experience of the game

As a kind of a supplement to the lead reviewer Paris How deep do you get into the character creation And over under Three and a Half How many times will you start And then remake a character from scratch Because an hour in you're like

I never thought of it in cut scenes. Yeah, actually, you know what? Shoulders are a little too high. I didn't realize it. When it's in game, it looks a little bit different. How many times you do that? Because when we did our Baldur's Gate kind of impressions,

I was like, yeah, I have about eight to ten hours in the game, and about two to three of them are me just restarting different characters because I didn't really like the whole vibe of it. Yeah, I would say again, as the lead reviewer on this one, I definitely want to spend some extensive time in it, playing around with the character creator. So I may do a couple different characters

before I decide on a final one. I already know what my character's name's going to be and what I want my character to look like. But I would probably experience. Not. It's going to be a surprise. Cannot because someone will steal it. And they're going to name theirs.

I want to be the first person in the world with this name. So I'm not saying it. They're not reviewed it. They don't have review code. You don't worry. Who's going to pop up over a game spot and steal your name? You'd be surprised. And you know how me Taylor Swift so will be,

but I'll be the first. fine. It's going to be a Caliph joke. No. Actually, it's not. Oh, but he almost did the pivot of like, that's a great idea.

No, that's another question I have and I know this is a silly one, but like Andy, do you expect to role play in this game? I think, you know, especially coming off of Baldur's Gate, which I know we want to talk about in the back half of the show, some updated stuff. When I was playing Baldur's Gate, it felt a little bit more like,

oh, I can get into the nitty gritty here and actually feel like I'm this character. Before when I play a Bethesda RPG, a role playing game, but a Bethesda RPG, I am very much like, all right, I'm going to be the good guy, or I'm going to do the thing, or I'm going to like, I don't feel like, I didn't feel like I was playing

a, oh, this is my backstory and this is my class, so this is what it should. With Starfield, I really do feel like I might end up doing that. And I think it's similar to the opposite side of what Paris is saying, where Paris wants to touch everything and do everything and play not the necessarily the normal

way he would, but more of a comprehensive way. Whereas I've had this joke, but I'm going to try it for a little bit of like, how long can I stay on the opening planet? Like, can I just run around here and like, make my home here? Yeah, exactly. What if I never want? What if I sell my ship right away? What if I screw around?

And like, as I start making those kind of decisions, it feels to me more than, oh, I'm going to be in the moment, do the thing. I'm going to be like, I need to come up with a backstory for who I am and what I'm doing here. I guess it all depends on what the character, how the character creator sort of puts you in different lanes. of like, all right, you come from a background, you're a spacer, or you, I'm thinking of just like the way Mass Effect does it.

Sure. You're a survivor. You survived that big war and you saved all of your pals, or you're just a ruthless asshole. Like, that's kind of the, you know, I guess step one for this character creator and how I would role play as it. I don't really come up with a whole lot of backstories for myself unless I'm maybe doing content with friends or something like that.

like how we've been doing here at work with Baldur's Gate. But I usually, when it comes to role playing in these games, when it comes to making decisions, I usually don't try to go 100% paragon. I usually try to, well, if this person being a true dick, then they're going to see the butt end of my gun, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So I guess it depends.

It depends on how comprehensive the character creator is going to be when it comes to like giving me back stories and where I would take that back story and what I feel would make sense for my character's arc in a way right like if I came from this sort of background how could I in my mind affect that story later on and say like well now I used to not like that race of aliens but now guess what like you know I totally see where they're coming from because of whatever reasons and whatever should I get into in the game yeah Harris, what about you? Would you normally do that? Or is that going to be something you think of in a different context as a reviewer?

It'll be different. And I'll give you this example. Even during our Todd Howard interview, I asked them this. I go, what would happen if you went to New Atlantis? Because they scan your ship. And I did have contraband on it. And he goes, you'll have to find out when you play the game. Well, guess what? I'm going to find out when I play the game. But that may not necessarily be the playthrough that I want.

I may like literally save right there just to see what the hell would happen. No, boo! Go back. Boo that, boo that, you Baldersgate people on the stream, changing choices. You make the choice you live with it. That's the game. No, but I like seeing what the game can do. Right.

So I can talk about it. They may, because I talked about this on X-Cats. I have a feeling the way I play it pre-review, like for the review. Yeah. I'm probably going to start completely over after that and play a completely different way. You know what I mean? So I just want to try different things just to see what happens during the review, but that wouldn't be the way I would normally play. And that's another thing, yeah, you know, it falls into the role playing thing, but also then what I want to do, but then also does that affect it, right?

Where for me, as we look right now, bears doing a great job showing the Starfield direct and looking on your ship. I've been talking a lot about this of like, usually I don't like dog fighting. Like, that was a turnoff for me, like no man's guy when I was in there. I really didn't like that. So I found myself wanting to stay on planet more. I wonder as we get in here and get our hands on the sticks and see our keyboard, if you're a weirdo. and see what's going on with it. Why is that weird?

Huh? Why is that weird? Oh, look at me. I'm controlling something. You don't talk like that. You do. You do. You really do.

I'm super. I don't mean to hold up a mirror. But I keep thinking about like, wow, am I going to build a ship then that is just defense and speed and get that, get out? Like, do I have to fight everybody? Can I just dodge, fly, and be gone? That's a question I have of really how much can you go through and do in this game. I think you're going to have so much investment in what your ship looks like.

and how it performs that you're going to kind of like no, this is my shit and I want to see how it performs in space. Like in No Man Sky, I feel like initially, right? I'm talking about like, you know, in the first

when the game launched, you were just kind of like buying random ship X, Y, and Z, right? You were turning in pretty quick if you wanted. Yeah, and I don't feel like I had a whole lot of ownership of that. And I know later on, the customization got way more expanded

in the, the other no man's guy sort of what they're at like expansion 35 now or something it's crazy um but i feel like i i'm kind of like you i don't really care a whole lot for dogfighting but i think i'll have so much ownership in what my ship looks like and how it performs and the name of it even you know what i mean like i i want to see what i mean i'm already kind of role playing around like i want to see what this girl can do in space you know what i mean like i want to be that cool space outlaw sort of do that doesn't play about the rules great I got a western accent.

Oh, wow. Yeah. In space. That's who I am. Yeah, Texas space. So then, Andy, a question I have for you then is, and this is a bit more inside baseball about you streaming, right? So you love to go home. You love to stream.

You treat it like a part-time job, but also just more of a creative outlet. Have you, like, is your plan when we get Starfield and like you're doing it? Are you winding down? Obviously, you can't stream while it's embargoed. Or are you? I've done that before sometimes by accident. Yeah, one time. It was a long time ago, Bethes if you're watching,

it was a different game. It was a different game. It was a different era, all right? Independent developer, they caught you. Like, what are you doing? Why are you doing? Like, what? I thought it was up, no.

But, like, for this, are you going to, like, still try to stream other games at night? Are you going to, because Starfield's so big? But then again, back to the, how do we review you and me versus how does Paris review or how do you want to treat your review? Is your life stopping for this, or how are you doing it? When, if I'm not assigned lead reviewer on a game,

usually I will play a good amount in the embargoed period. Yeah. But usually try to not beat it because I like having those surprise moments for stream moments. Sure. Whenever bigger things happen. Or I might play in a way that I necessarily didn't in, depending on the game type, with Starfield because of being so massive, I might play a certain way during the embargo period. And then when embargo is up, make a new character do something else, like maybe not do the exact same role.

and yeah I do think that I struggle with games that are this kind of open yeah I struggle concentrating on what I because my ADHD is just all over the place and it's hard to kind of keep track of what this mission is and and what thing I'm leveling up while also trying to entertain in that in that form yeah so it does get a little bit weird like that with larger games but I think this game will be so large and it's I'm not going to want to just save this for offstream. Like it's really tough to just say like, well, I'm going to play something else

and I'm going to play Starfield offstream. Like those are valuable hours in my evening. So that's likely going to go towards some sort of Starfield content. Whether I'm, I likely won't do a full play through much like I did with Tears of the Kingdom where that game was just so massive and I played so much of it offstream.

But I tried to save some of the larger moments that I knew were going to be more. I try to save like the boss fights. for stream because there's a lot of people that are like, hey, we don't have a switch or I'm not planning on playing Zelda,

but I want to experience it through you. And I also just like having that stuff documented. Sure. Like to kind of just look back through the years of all the stuff that I've played, you know. So a question for both of you,

but I'll start with you, Paris. And I know we're talking about something intangible, right? It is, hey, let's talk about Starfield, even though we don't have it, we haven't started playing it. We don't know about it. But you mentioned doing this

comprehensive review and then doing your own playthrough after the fact. is there concern? Like do you like playing games over? Are you thinking that this game should be so big and is so varied that you could pick a million different things and not see the same stuff again? No, I'm fine with playing games like this over again

and I'm just kind of going down to Bethesda lineage of games. I think about Fallout 3. I think about New Vegas. I think about Oblivion, Skyrim. I've had multiple playthroughs of that where again, I will try different things. I will go down different paths, join different fashions, things like that. So I'm kind of looking at it that way where, yeah, I might try and be a jack of all trades during the review period.

Sure. And actually, it's almost a beauty of the second playthrough because doing a jack of all trades where I'm going to try and touch a lot of different things, there's probably going to be something. And I'm like, man, I really like that. All right. When I go back to the next playthrough, I'm going to focus on that. Kind of Andy was joking around about the shipbuilding and you're going to want. that your special baby and take her out, I guarantee you there's just going to be so many lost hours

just in shipbuilding and tuning and trying to figure out what works best for what you want to do. Again, when I talk about the space pirate aspect of it, the smuggling, things like that, those are avenues I want to go down. Like there may be a particular faction that I want to just join this faction and that's the only one I'm going to be a part of. Let's see what happened.

So there's definitely a lot of merit in doing not only a second play-th but maybe in a third and the fourth, depending on just to your point, Greg, how big this game truly is. I mean, we've obviously heard rumbles about how big it is, but, you know, we'll see in practice, you know, once we get hands on. Is that the ship that took out the Orion Spacers?

This is her in the flesh. What do you want to know about her? Can you do one more take on that, please? Is that, fuck, am I? We're on strike, voice. This will be the most interesting, no, the voice actors aren't. That'll be for me personally with that,

Like as you show the ship building there, and we talk about the customization of it, that's going to be the interesting, again, how complex can I get with some stuff? How simple can I get with others? Because for me with the ship, like, I look at the stuff we just watched of them piecing it together

and oh, this has this many crew stations and this minute. And I'm like, no, that's too much for me. I don't, I don't, I want to just, I want the, I'll take it off the lot. I'll take what's the factory model. Let's do that and let's make that.

And I say that now, again, not having played, not having gotten into the weeds. Maybe I'll get in. And again, we're probably looking at hours and hours and hours into the game. What does it look like in the beginning to get you going, get your wheels? But I think of Fallout 4 and I think of base building. And I think of what a turnoff that was for me.

And even No Man Sky where I was always like, I got to do this. No Man Sky liked more, especially with the updates. I had more fun doing that and it made more sense. But Fallout 4 was always like the, oh, just throw up some walls. Oh, they don't connect the right way. Who cares? Let's get out of here. Same thing with Fall of 76, too, which was a huge turnout for me.

It's possible to be. I'm sorry, but I was going to say that's actually one of my worries going into this game, not the shipbuilding so much, but the outposts to that point of Fallout 4 because I just did not enjoy it in Fallout 4. So I just wonder how they're going to improve that and make it worth my while to want to do it in Starfield. So I mean, we'll see. I mean, like you said, we're, we've only seen the direct.

We're looking at from the outside looking in. I guarantee there's going to be things once we go hands on that. Oh, for sure. I'm just not going to like. I'm like, yeah, this is not for. me and I'm going to want to move on to something else. And that'll be the big test, right, of can we do that?

Yeah. They make it sound like you can. And even fallout four, not liking the base building and even fallout 76, not liking base stuff. Like, it never felt like, okay, well, I can't play the game anymore. It was, I'm going to throw up four walls and not care that the shack looks like a shack, whereas other people got so into it and so much stuff to it. It's possible there may be some sort of what the equivalent to like auto-leveling

of friendly NPCs. would be, you know. I think it'd be really cool, although it's going to, it would be really hard to kind of dictate it of like, hey, everybody, it kind of funny. Paris, you're going to go this class with this sort of outcome. Greg, you're going to go this and you're going to do that. And like, if we all sort of chose wildly different paths to see how different things really can get, because I know that that's where, that's where the sort of doubt creeped in about how open cyberpunk 277 actually really was where yeah once you get past that initial sort of prologue

your corpo street kid or corpro and all that stuff didn't really differentiate a whole lot of you may have some different responses but that's about it and that's very much one of those things that like back to the question of are we role playing in this game or not like that is one of the things that I find depressing when I stop

and I think back to V in cyberpunk when I do think of my fall at four character even my fall at three character is that I don't feel like those were defined people. That was just, you know, it's almost like how some people talk about like French fries being a conduit to a sauce. You know what I mean? The sauce was what I was getting in the world who I was interacting with. It could be what it could be, I'm not saying this the right way to do it. But like rather than dip a wing into the sauce, you're dipping a carrot or a celery,

you're still getting the ranch strut. You know what I mean? Like it's like, I don't know, I don't want that. I want that to feel like a meal. I want the base to be something that I'm really enjoying as well. And I think again, what my read on it is that it's going to be so complex that, yeah, it's actually going to matter that I want to be super stealthy and I want to be super, you know, hacking or whatever, but I'll use a machine gun, but you're going to use a shotgun and you're going to do this. I think a lot of mass effect where- sniper bro, come on. I know, I know. I'm just, but I know, I think a lot about mass effect and how, like, when I remember being at IGN playing those and coming in and talking to people and like,

the way people were investing into like the power that would shoot you up to, them. You could punch them and then use shotguns. It was like they were playing it. It sounded like they were playing a different game than mine from staying back with an assault rifle and shooting and trying to stay from a range. Yeah. What do you got the giggles about? What do you giggle on about? We were playing Mass Effect too right now.

We played it today for Nick Scarpino's full renegade play-through. There's a moment when we are going to go find Grunt, who is one of the NPCs that you run into. And there's a dude who's like bleeding out. He's like, please don't kill us. of and then

Shepard says something and Shepard's like you may be able to find some shade while, uh, you may be able to find some shade in case you want to be comfortable while you bleed out.

And he just kind of walks away and he's like, and then Jack is with us and Jack goes, huh, good one. Shepherd, Shepard goes, I thought so. It was just like the cheesiest sort of shit that I would love to see

if Starfield really gets in the weeds with that, with the responses. How does our character sound? how do those responses are there multiple voices are is it non-voice do we know that so much of the

so much of the hilarity in a renegade playthrough in Mass Effect was was Mark Mear just delivering those lines in such a funny way and your star field character won't have a voice

won't have a voice oh it's perfect for my voice acting auditions Greg oh man um yeah that's that's awesome as hell And I want to see, like, again, when I, when, you know, don't ever shame us for, for save scumming, okay? We need to change that term. Whenever I hit, whenever I hit save before a big decision, I do that because I'm just, I like to peer behind the scenes and see, like, what is this game actually capable of?

Is it just going to give me the same ending that I would have run into anyway? You do that by talking to people and looking at other playthrues. You commit to your water. Drink your doctor pepper. I will drink my doctor. Dr. Pepper, sir. Enjoy the video game. I mean, enjoy it how you want to.

Yeah. For me, though, I like it the opposite where you make that choice and the thing branches. And it was, like, I died and think he was going to die. It matters to me. Paris, what do you got? Yeah, I do have another thing. I want to make sure I touch on from the technical standpoint. I for sure want to try and touch every platform that's available on.

So I'm going to play on the X. I'm going to play on the S PC. And I'm going to cloud stream it as well. Nice to see the differences. and because obviously from a console standpoint, we know it's locked at 30, but I'm very curious to see with them being partnered with AMD how my Nvidia GPU performs with Starfield on PC

and what the frame rate looks like and all that good stuff. So it'll be good. Just overall gambit of the game itself, technical aspects. Obviously, we know the reputation, Bethes has had over the years with bugs. Let's see how bug-free it's going to be. Another big question. I can't wait to see. I think we're at the point, though, where we are more willing to accept sort of silly bugs if they're not game-breaking, if the game is as extensive as it is.

Much like another game would be talking about soon, Balders Gate 3. By no means a polished product. Like tons of weird quirks and pop in and characters doing weird shit and like things that just don't look right. but the game is still so good that you're willing to look past all that stuff that's what I'm hoping for I accept that this game is going to be so massive and it is going to be

it would have been such a tough task for all of these people working in QA to try to find and fix every little issue with every possible outcome and if you walk in there you're probably fine but if you're wearing this suit it might be affected different.

There's so many different things that could happen that I'm more willing to forgive those issues if the game is still really, really great, and if those aren't, like, insanely game-breaking, you know? Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, we can't do this show without your support over on patreon.com slash kind of funny. Of course, there you can get each and every episode

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But guess what? You're not on patreon.com slash kind of funny. So here's a word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Liquid Ivy. Y'all know how much I love to stay hydrated. And Liquid IV makes it easier and better than ever to ensure that I'm always living my best, most hydrated life. And you can too. Liquid IV, the number one powered hydration brand in America is now available in sugar-free with three times the electrolytes. of the leading sports drink. Plus eight vitamins and nutrients for everyday wellness. Liquid IV hydrates two times faster than water alone. And you can keep your daily routine exciting with three new flavors.

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Grab your liquid IV hydration. and multiplayer sugar-free in bulk nationwide at Costco or get 20% off when you go to Liquidiv.com and use code Kind of Funny at checkout. That's 20% off anything you order when you use promo code Kind of Funny at Liquidiv.com. So for me, it's interesting because this weekend went to breakfast with Jen.

In the morning, it's Sunday. She's like, you know what? Let's have a chill day at home. What did you get? I was like, that's a great idea. This one, I got a breakfast sandwich at. Got a breakfast sandwich out there. a cup of coffee.

You know what I mean? Her and Ben had bagels. Wow. The day before we went to like a sit-down diner and I got my traditional two-eggs, sunny side of bacon, toast. When you walk in a guy. They do like, hey, Gregi. They do. Yeah.

I love that. They got the hash browns there. They do them with cheddar and jalapeno. Oh my God. Good ass. So good. Yeah. The first time I discovered it because we'd been going there a while and I finally

looked at the menu and saw they did that. I was like, well, this can't be an every time thing. And every week. I do it every week. I was like, well, I can't do this every time I come to the restaurant. I do it every time I go. That's me with the fries and the potato wedges. I proposition chicken.

Every once in a while, I'm not going to get them bullshit in it. Yeah, you're getting them. Yeah. Anyway, so we went out for that for a nice, you know, Jen's like,

you know, and then we went on a seven kilometer hike. And like, we were up there and I'm in jeans. I'm, they're like painted to my, and we're pushing the stroller, and I got the converse on.

And like, we were like to, kilometer six, maybe five when Jen finally, like kind of was a voice that she realized that this was a bigger hike that she thought it was going to be. And yet I'm like,

I'm fine with this, but you, of course, need to remember that Starfield review code's going to come in. So there's going to be a weekend where I need to be selfish. Yeah. Where I just need to go in the basement. Ben can jump on the trampoline we got down there.

I love that. You're kind of prepping for that sort of thing. It's rare. I replied to her tweet. I forgot absolutely nightmares behavior. If you're an audio list or yeah, Jen tweeted me to Greg this morning. Let's have a chill day in the neighborhood.

Also me two hours later. Let's go on a surprise eight kilometer walk. And then Andy responds, absolute nightmare. And so, yeah, it was like, I'm not one. I mean, obviously, you know, it's a relationship. And yeah, yeah, but I'm not one to ever call out like, hey, I'm being pretty good right now. But like on the, on the eve, I feel like of, hey, I'd like to be really fucking bad.

It's to the point that like I, of course, now I'm a father as everybody knows because I bring it up all time. Love of my life. Jen and Ben. But I, that also means that like there's the best intentions of gaming to midnight. And I make it most of the time. But there's plenty of times where I'm down there nodding off playing a game at 10.15. So I'm also going to get a book, I think some cold brew coffees. That way when I get home, hit those around 536 so I can keep coasting, hopefully a little

bit of energy. Yeah, trained to Boussanda, right, to make sure I'm getting as much time as I can on this. Because like, you know, anytime I block out my schedule here to play games, like today, I had it blocked out for a different game, different review. I had it from like 11. I didn't put 1.30. I finally started to play in that fucking game. Yeah.

So much other shit to do here all the time. So it's like I need to make sure I'm getting those hours in Paris. I can only imagine for you too as you sit there like I got to fit all this stuff. The teenager thing is a great idea. I like that. I should have been earlier. No, no, no. They have attitudes and they talk back.

And they need lots of money because you don't want that. Sure, sure. Yeah, this weekend, it was one of the first times where Ben was playing by himself. And like we were trusting enough of him doing that in the living room while we were like tearing apart the kitchen and doing other stuff. Trying to get platinum and valor or something? Nah, he's just playing with little trains.

Oh, okay. You know what I'm just playing with some trains. Not there. I did show him trend on PlayStation. You like that one a lot. The dreams game because he loves the model trains. You know what I mean? So yeah,

we'll see if you like Starfield. Anyways, though, yeah, it's gonna be just trying to fit all of that in there. It's gonna be just to see, you know, I don't, yeah, I'm not trying to, I respect that Paris and I, if I was lead reviewer,

I would probably want to see the end of the story in the credits too. But I still feel like for me getting to whenever we get to review it for however long we've had it. If I can have 20, 30, hopefully more hours under my belt, right?

Even if I didn't roll credits and it is that I'm just like a level whatever and I've been doing all this thing and I'm part of this faction. Like for me, what I, you know, Tim a long time ago asked a great question when we were on the precipice of Fallout 4. He asked me and Colin when we were there and he said like,

what do you think would make this game a failure or a disappointment? And I was like, a disappointment to me would be that it is just fallout 3. It is just what we expect in a modern sense or whatever. And I really do feel like that's what Fallout 4 kind of was, where I didn't surpass Fallout 3 in these great jumps

where I sat there. And granted, maybe since Fall 3 is my first Bethesda RPG, my first kind of open World Western RPG that way. Maybe it would never be captured that way again. But I don't buy it because things like The Witcher have had great quests that I remember. Whereas Fall Out 4,

I don't remember that. My hope here is that the choices I'm making in Starfield matter, the NPCs I'm meeting matter. The things they're setting me off on are great little tidbits and stories that I want to do that aren't just, I need three space mushrooms. All right. Oh, thanks. Here's your XP and here's your thing and go on your own thing. Is that unreasonable to ask for, Andy?

No, I don't think so at all because that's kind of what I've been hoping for. And that's, I've been saying that I don't necessarily need Starfield story to deliver in a 10 out of 10 way. Yeah. It'd be great if it did. But to me, the adventure and the journey is going to be. the NPCs you meet along the way. It's going to be those moments that we can talk about in hopes that we have some sort of like

spoiler cast without like without us being required to beat the game because this is going to be a very, very much a water cooler type game where just like Tears of the Kingdom was. Just like Breath of the Wild was one of my favorite games of all time, even though I didn't care a whole lot about the story.

It was all about, you know, coming across this little camp and not knowing what to do there and suddenly you realize that this piece connects to that. Like, it's those moments that I'm hoping, you know, sort of really exceed my expectations. If the story is great, lovely. But I'm just hoping for those moments that feel like the shit that happens when you're just in your everyday life of like, oh my God, dude, some guy ran across my car when I was in traffic. Like, I want to hear stuff about that in Starfield. What are the Starfield equivalents of those cool stories? Paris? Yeah, I was just going to say, I think it's Mike Tyson that said it.

He goes, everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. I have this plan of what I want to do. Who the frick knows? I may get in there, get on the sticks, and just start going down this path of like, oh, my God, I didn't know the game could do this. And then it turns into this entire different adventure that I was not expecting from a story standpoint, from a gameplay standpoint, all of that. So we'll see.

This is my plan going in, but I may be sitting at that table, you know, in a few weeks going, well, I finished it. It's a X out of X. And man, here's the adventure I went on while I played it. That's kind of the beauty of an open world game like this, thousand planets, all the whole thing. So we'll see. But that's my plan going in.

But maybe there's a happy surprise waiting for me when I play it. So we'll see. That's another thing to Andy, you talked about, you know, water cooler moments. I'll be interested to see how this, especially with the timing of the release, trickles out into kind of funny content. You know, one of the things a lot of people, not a lot of people, commenters I saw were like, man, I wish they would do the Zelda spoiler cast. I wish they would talk more about Zelda.

The problem with Zelda was, of course, that the way, we only got one review code for Bless. Then we did a follow up, you know, after the first weekend with it, with all of us. But then it was hit after hit of review after review on games cast and every other show, it seems. And we don't have a dedicated Nintendo podcast. So I think it'll be interesting. And I also think that to some degree is of course, Zelda review. Bear, it's got Zelda review. I'm not taking away from that.

Well, you know, people still ask for it. People still ask for the Zelda as spoiler cast. We've got 50 minutes of, you know, spoiler-filled content. Exactly. Over in a Zelda and review part two. But, you know, I think for me with Zelda, the way I still play Zelda. Oh, I love this layout. This is a nice one.

That's the first time I saw that one. The way I've been consuming Zelda is, you know, okay, cool. I'm on a flight. I'm in front of the TV or something with Jen. And it is that turn on and what do I see on the horizon and move towards it in terms of usually it's a shrine. It's one of the big towers. I don't like combat. So I'm, you know, avoiding that for the most part until I really need to do stuff for the story, which I'm not even trying to touch.

I love that. But I don't think, in my personal opinion, it makes for great content to be like, oh, I did shrine where I did the thing, but I did it this way. Like, I guess there's that conversation. How did you do it? But then even then it would be like, if it wasn't my shrine, did I get to it, thinking about it, blah, blah, blah. Whereas I do feel like, I hope at least, with Starfield, whether we're talking about, the main story, which I wouldn't think we would, but it would be those little things of,

oh, I went into this bar. I met this guy. He got in a fight. We went off and did the thing. Like that's... Oh, you punched him? I gave him a drink and then now I became co-CEOs with him or something. Oh, co-CEO, the bar.

Turns out he owned a corporation or whatever. the hell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are the awesome moments. Yeah. I'm really, really hoping to have those interactions with because that's what Balders Gate has been this whole time. I was going to say, this is a nice little bridge to bring more Baldur's Gate in there and just start talking about it because I know you want to, right? Like, that is what I was wowed by with our impressions we did, where it was the first, I played the first, you know, six hours for the review embargo, but it wasn't by no means our review. It was that idea of like, oh man, like, even from that very beginning, there's so many

permutations of did you save this person? Did you do that thing? Wait, you got, you didn't fight out of the goblin prison or whatever because you didn't get that guy. I went and got that, you know what I mean? Like, it felt like that's all over the place in Balderscape 3.

Dude, yeah. How many hours in are you now? Oh, God. Well, many, two play-throughs that we're, that I'm maining now. We have the playthrough

that we're doing on the Kind of Funny Channel. So everybody go watches a playlist up that has me, Roger, and Snowback Mike doing our play-through there. We are the fellowship, uh, fella, F-E-L-L-L-A.

Got it. Got it. And it's a great time, right? We're experiencing so many cool things together, and we're all role-playing and doing our characters. But then I decided, like, we don't, we're not going to stream this enough at work, maybe once, maybe twice a week, right, if we're lucky.

So I'm going to just continue my own thing. So I think I'm around like 70 hours in, in total. Gotcha, gosh, I've gotten, you know, several hours of that was me making just different characters. So it's, yeah, it's a great time. and I love seeing people like Cameron Kennedy in my chat saying, damn, this went real different on my play-through.

Yeah. Like, oh shit, that little kid stole that thing from that dude and I guess, you know, things can go a certain way, but on mine, the little kid stole this amulet from a dude and the dude's like, I'm going to hit you a little kid or whatever. And then you're like, hey, man, give him back to amulet. We know you stole it. And the kid gives it back and he's like,

like it reminded me of my mom's okay and the kid like leaves crying because obviously the kids something happened to the kid's mom and the guy's like damn actually you can keep it. I gotta kill that kid. No he's like actually you keep it kid and he's like poor kid man like damn and like

to see just the different permutations for all of these things just the branches it's the most impressive RPG and I feel like all of all of Twitter's been talking about man devs are

so scared. Deves are angry. That shit's been so overblown. That was one thing I feel like everybody's been dunking on, right? I feel like that. Yeah, I'm so annoyed by this take that's like taking over all those social media that the devs like I swear it gets more and more extreme every time there's a new

person talking about it on TikTok. It started off as like, devs are shitting and pissing themselves. Debs want to fight these. Dev want to fight them in the streets about this. It's like, dude, chill the fuck out. Like, what it is is devs are going, oh man

we could probably made that game if we had six plus years with 400 employees right yeah yeah yeah but there's a good chance we won't

so people need to be realistic right like this game is so impressive with what it's doing with the again the stuff that you can miss

the stuff that I love talking about in the FromSoft games the side quests that are so easily missable the characters that are can completely change

your whole vibe and feeling of a game and if you didn't go see them, you wouldn't have experienced any of that. Meeting this lady who was just a little potion seller, and it turns out she's not just a little potion seller. If you go, there's these dudes harassing her, and she's like, oh, help me, these men are harassing me. And I killed those fucking two dudes.

I was like, hey, back off. She's just an old lady, and they wanted to fight me, so I killed them. And it turns out she's up to some real bad shit, and those guys were in the right to, like, want to be mad at her. And you dive deeper into the store. Oh man, this lady's really fucked up, dude. And I just like... Did you save scummy little pervert?

No, absolutely not. I went through with it and like I felt bad about killing those two dudes. While you did it? Like you knew it. After the fact when she was like, oh, thank you. I was like, something feels real off about this. And then even my little NPCs with me were like, man, something about her isn't right. I was like, you're totally right about this.

I don't like this. You're like, I agree, but I said I'd kill these guys. I feel so bad that I killed these dudes because they were mad for a reason. But it's like the game just such a. great job of like doing the Game of Thrones style like hey you hated this person now but now you're seeing them in a different light

do you hate them so much now and then you're like actually no you're right I don't do I actually am I actually on their side no there's no way because of how they feel and what they've said like the game does such a great job with characters I think it's like one of the best written games when it comes to different NPCs you encounter the NPCs backstories are so deep

they're so rich like it being with these characters and going on these adventures this is like the type of role playing thing that you've been talking about so I want to full stop you I want to full stop you and then bring it back to Starfield on that do you think Starfield has a chance of touching that no yeah do you think then that makes

Ballers Gate 3 and I know I'm between these two do you think it's RPG of the year I think it would be RPG of the year at that point but if I enjoy Starfield's gameplay more Right? Like I've definitely come around. That's the number one question I'm getting. Talk to me about this because in the impressions, all of us were like, we're enjoying ourselves, we don't like the combat,

we don't like the strategic. That's the number one question I've been getting. Are you feeling more comfortable with the combat? Are you enjoying it more and more? And I would still prefer other types of combat, but as I'm getting more familiar with it and understanding it more, I am definitely enjoying it a lot more. And the freedom that there is in it,

there's so much that you can do in this game that isn't, it's not just turn-based, I'm going to do this attack, I'm going to heal, I'm going to do this attack, I'm going to heal them. Like, it is so much more open and so much more free than you really know because I am not somebody who ever really plays Dungeons and Dragon. Sure.

And all the people in my chat that talk about their experiences with D&D, they know the freedom that's there when they're doing a campaign or a mission. And they know that all of those freedoms are put into this game as well. Like there is a almost direct translation of, well, I wonder if you could light that thing on fire. I wonder if you could put out that fire

and then would it then cause a chain reaction over here? Like, there's so much of that stuff that I would say with Baldur's Gate, don't go into it thinking it's just strength versus strength and attacks versus attacks. It goes so much deeper. It is so impressive. I've loved the TikTok stuff

and like social media memes of just push. Push them off the left, push him into each other, push him into the fire, push them into the fire, don't fight, don't do any of your moves. Push is great, these strategies that people are having where, well, if you have a backpack and you fill it with a bunch of explosive stuff, the backpack will break if it falls from far enough of a height.

And when it breaks, all those explosives explode, and all those bad guys will just get shot to hell. There's so many cool different causes and effects in Ballas Gate that I'm just constantly impressed by. Again, the character work is great. the amount of butterfly effect type stuff that if I just did this one thing

this lady wanted her husband back and I happened to have a wand that I found from a mission and this lady was like I just want my husband back please I'm so sad and I use this wand and the husband came back and he's still zomified

and she was like what the fuck I thought you said he'd be back monkey's paw. Exactly. And I was like, I didn't say how he'd be bad. And I had so many options. I could break this wand before bringing him back.

Like, I could have been like, no, this isn't right. We're going to break this wand. It's God. Nobody can use it. Or I could give her the one and be like, well, you figure this out. Or I could just keep the one. In this case, she was like,

fuck you, you're not going to do anything else. You're just going to leave him that way. She ran away all sad. And the zombie guy was just still there. Just standing there. I was like, all right. See you later, brother. See you later.

Connor was his name. So, like, they're so, like, this is definitely the most impressive thing that I've experienced that when it comes to just variety of outcomes and variety of things that can happen, variety of people that you can meet, and the cause and effects, honestly, it's letting that one animal go that you were going to kill. And then it pops up eight hours later in the gameplay and you're like, oh, shit, you're still alive and you're over here now. What the fuck you do in here?

Oh, I can free you. and if I free you'll go back to my camp and then I can talk to animals that's one of my abilities and the animal like the two animals that I met are now for, oh man, it's just the coolest shit dude it is so fucking impressive. Paris, have you touched Ballers Gate 3?

No, I have not and it's kind of been on purpose because it wasn't originally on my radar and I've seen all the hype and everything that Andy's talking about it definitely is something I would want to play the next few months are just going to be fucking chaos.

I need a break. It's crazy. And that's what I mentioned last week, Paris. It's like this game came so out of nowhere for me that even a lot of people in our comments and a lot of people in our community have been, have been mentioning, man, kind of funny seemed so far away from getting into this game. And it was like just at the snap of your fingers, now everybody's into it. And it came out of nowhere.

Like, it's just this gigantic game that I did not expect to be on my horizon right now because I was so into Remnant 2. I was so into Dave the Diver and I haven't touched those games in so long because all I'm doing is Baldur's Gate. It's so damn good. Well, let me ask you this actually, because this was my thinking for not playing it

with Starfield on the Horizon. Do you think being invested in a game because you said, what, 70 plus hours already, that you can now jump into another game that's probably been another 70 to 100 hours? I'm really struggling with knowing how I'm going to manage my time in that. You know, when we eventually get these Starfield codes,

I'm worried about, like, is it going to hurt my Starfield experience? Not because, like, oh, this game is not Baldur's Gate, but just like, do I want to put down Baldos Gate right now? I'm still really, really into it. I mean, that's like the, you know, back to Monkey's Paw, right? Or the smallest violin about our job. Yeah. is when a new game drops that you are going to review or you need to be in the conversation about and switching to it and be like, I'm enjoying this, but I'm way more in the mood for playing.

Like, it's been for me, the specter of Diablo 4, right? Where it's like there's so little free time in my life that when I do get there, I'm like, I really should play this game for a reviewer. I'd love to talk about something new on PS I love you. So I should touch this into or do this thing. So many games I start get that feeling of like, it's not for me right now. And I don't know if it would get there. and I've only gotten another 45 minutes of me. So I'm going to stop and go play Diablo.

And I feel like I'm letting the game down because I'm doing that. But like our job is on our passion. Our jobs are led by our passion. So hopefully, you know, you get drug through it that way. I don't get Liza P before that as well. I mean, like,

don't we start. Right? Because it's like I wrote down, what are you playing? Or after? Talking about Starfield. I, but we can put it everywhere, right?

In Starfield, I'm putting both two weeks out from release and like three weeks after and talking about the games you're hitting, right? But it's like, playing Starfield is like, what is your plan for? playing other games because for me like it's like see a stars immortals wrestle quest spider man

alan wake assassins creed like there's all this stuff happening in there that isn't like same date but close enough around it that i get really fascinated by what it is and i get into this weird thing of i wonder i think starfield is such an unknown quantity where i think balder's gate did such a great job of building hype where it was like early access all the c rpg nerds knew it was great and loved it and where they were enjoying it despite the bugs. They went, went, went, went. Then they did the thing where they did the final dev stream, flew all the journals out to Belgium, did the thing, you can fuck a bear.

And suddenly the game was like, everyone was like, wait, this game looks rat as hell. This looks fucking rat as hell. And I was like, oh shit, we did a PSI love you about it, all this different stuff. And that's mainly me being ignorant about Larian Studios and not really being into Divinity Original Sin and all of the. But I mean, I don't even think it's you being ignorant about it. You knew Divinity was a great game. It just wasn't something for you, necessarily.

And they did a great job here of being like, listen, this game could be for a lot more people if you do it. And they have this big moment. And they've had this big moment. And being the underdog, I think, is such an easier success story. Now you turn your eyes to Bethesda to where it was like for so long building up to that direct Paris. We were like, is it going to be good. What is it going to be? Then we had that direct. It was like, holy shit, this is awesome. And that was, you know, summer game fest. And now it's quiet again as we prepare for the onslaught of Starfield. But it still is that one that I was with. more confident in Baldersgate 3 being a great game this far out from review than I am Starfield. Not that I'm doubting Starfield, but so much is being carried by the direct was great and I really like Todd Howard games usually. But I do wonder if we're going to get it and it's going to be that thing for me of as a weird PlayStation guy who did Ballers Gate for the six hours leading up to the embargo and then I was like, I'm going to put it down and get back to it one day on PlayStation because I prefer to play there. I wonder if I'm going to play Starfield, if I'm going to have an enjoyable enough time with it, but we get to review.

I've played this amount of hours. I enjoyed it or I didn't enjoy what it is. And then I start playing Ballard's Gate 3 on PlayStation 5. Or if Starfield is so good, I am the whole way on it. Like, Paris, do you worry about the quality of Starfield? Do you worry about Starfield living up to our expectations? I think you have no choice but to. You have to because there's so many high expectations for that game.

And fair or not, this is coming off the heels of another Bethesda game that was a complete letdown with Redfern. So I think it's perfectly valid to come in somewhat skeptical. I think that direct did a lot to save the goodwill for Starfield because I think it exceeded my expectations going into that direct. 100%. I thought that was amazing. Yeah, yeah.

So I'm very excited to play it. And then when I think about this is a Todd Howard game and then you see the love and the attention and the detail, like everything that they're putting into it, seems like something I'll 100% will be on board for. But I will look, shameless plug. Phil Spencer was on X-Cast. He said it himself,

don't believe anything I say until you have the controller in your hand. And I'm kind of living by that mantra of, I'm not going to overhype this game until I played for myself. Because you just don't know. And you think about cyberpunk three years ago and other games that we're super excited for that just didn't live up to what we thought they were going to be. So I think it's valid to be skeptical, but everything that we've seen tells me this is going to be a great game. But there is a little room for doubt.

And what comes back to it for me, right, of like still being so excited for Starfield and then comparing it to Baldr's Gate is, I think even sitting there, and especially, you know, blessing is a turncoat and started playing. He went from his steam deck to mouse and keyboard on PC and be like, oh, my God, this made it so much, not easier, but more comprehensible. And I'm enjoying this more. I will never do that. All right. It's so true. I'll put both of my hands and some kind of saw before I pick up a mouse and keyboard to play a game, right?

It's so true though, Greg. Like I... Wood chipper. That's what I was looking for. Saw works, but it's like, you know... It's like one of these saws. I'm like, how do I do this? I mean, I played controller on Balders Gate

when we all had that review. Like, I was playing on PC, but I was using controller because I'm... I've never been a fan of like the click-to-walk games. You know what I mean? Like I, but it is, I eventually made the switchover because selecting things on controller is kind of really tedious and not great. All the radio menus.

Well, well, not even the radio menus. Oh, you just mean clicking in the world. Yeah, click the amount of times I stole something by accident. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, once I switched over to mouse and keyboard, it became a lot easier. Now I'm just totally like, I have no issues with it whatsoever. So I understand blessing being on the right side of history.

here. I don't like that one bit. Not a fan of that. But yeah, it'll be interested to see what it does for it. But back to where I was going is like, just the Bethesda first person,

third person just is how I like playing games. Like I prefer that perspective and that kind of moment to moment combat. So when we see, you know, you being an astronaut with a machine gun, I'm like, that's pretty cool.

Yeah. When I think about being a sneaking astronaut and seeing them out of pick pockets and all that jazz and being stealthy and hacking terminals and stuff, like that gets me going. I'd be a, I mean,

I would be way more down and optimistic about my own time if this game was coming out in November or something. You know, like, that would be the ideal scenario because of everything that is... The only issue with this game right now is that it's coming out too soon from Baldur's Gate. And, like, that's...

That's the only negative that I have, aside from, like, I feel like the public sort of... You're right about Larian suit as being, like, the underdog in the situation. And we put that in, like, extreme quotes, because that game was under development for so long. I had a massive budget. But right now, you're looking at Bethesda, and I feel like public sentiment is,

don't fuck this up. You better not fuck this up. And it's so hard to kind of come out with a game that when people's, you know, are already feeling that way about you and your studio. Paris, you had that point? No, I was just going to say, and this isn't directly related to Starfield. And Greg kind of alluded to this already,

But I look at Tober and it was a 10-day stretch. Now it's 15 because Assassin's Creed moved up. But there's like this 14 to 15-day stretch that's just unprecedented of game releases, like these huge AAA games that I want to play all of them, but it is literally impossible. You know, boo-hoo play the violin for us. But it is impossible for me to have enough time to try and play all the games that are going to come out in that window. Like I just think about October 20th specifically, what the hell am I going to do? Spider-Man 2 Mario.

It's like both of those are like at the top of my list of games I would want to play. But there's just simply not going to be enough time. And then you throw in if Starfield really is the hit that we're thinking it's going to be. And you're going to invest hundreds of hours of time into it. Cyberpunk Phantom Liberties come now. You know, there's Mortal Kombat. There's NBA 2K-24 as well. You start stacking all this stuff on just in September going in October.

It's insane. It's a good problem to have, obviously, but I don't think, in my decades now of playing video games, I don't think I've ever seen this before. That's because you're living the best year of gaming. Yeah, absolutely. I think the biggest issue, like, our game of the year conversations are going to be so diverse.

And it's going to be like, yeah, I played three of those big ass titles, but I didn't have time for those two other big titles. So those just weren't even in my top 10 because I didn't fucking play them. Like, that's going to be really interesting, you know? Do you think Balders Gave 3 has superseded Zelda, in your opinion, for a game of the year?

No. Okay. But like... Everything beneath me, I'm with you. Don't know. But I think it's possibly exceeded Final Final 5016. Wow. Like Final Fantasy 16 made me feel so much shit

while I was playing it. Like I was like crying of emotion and sadness and crying of hype and just tears of my eyes and crying. Smiling from ear to ear. You're cutting onions. Dude like as so many moments of Final Fantasy 16 like brought, when a game can bring those emotions out of you, I think like that's like a testament to how special it is. But I am more impressed by like just as somebody who was in game development for a couple

years. Like, I am more impressed by what Baldersgate 3 is doing gameplay-wise, for sure. Wow. Yeah. Tim's gonna be so mad at me. Tim's got to play Ballard's Gate 3. Let's have them make a half-orke or something. What's he into? They're like spirits. Probably not orcs. Yeah, you're right. You can't make a ghost. Yeah.

Sorry, Tim, you can't be fucking Link in this game. You can't be Samis in Ballers Gate 3. Maybe you can. I don't know. open. There's some creative builds out there. You get, you know, something to mimic in the canon issue. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. Well, it's happening. Star feels close. Oh, man. Like I said, of course,

it's out on September 1st for early access, September 6 for everybody else. So 17 days until early access begins. I'm very excited. It's, it's a weird one.

It's exciting to have Paris coming up, obviously, but it's one of those games where I feel like so many of us are going to be playing it all at once, which,

happens often, but then also this year hasn't, because of the cadence of releases. You know, all you guys take Final Fantasy. I'm moving to this review, so I'm not with you on that thing. Okay, bless, we only get one Zelda code. You review it and we all play it later and then figure it out, but there's other games. This is one where it feels like all hands on deck for one review. Yeah, I agree. Did you want to, I know at one point you had floated the idea of,

I'd love to get everybody's first hour with it. Yeah, we had talked about Charlie. That's the whole thing. I want to experiment with what you can call and deal with Fallout 4 back in the day. Did we do that? Yeah, I think he had his first hour. You had your first hour. Got it, got it, got it, got it.

It was kind of like a full frontal. Salt, full frontal assault. Is that the, yeah. Yeah, I do want to do that. Yeah, we've talked about that. You know, we're doing the review. We're doing the X-Cast as the FAQ. Blessing wants to lead producing on TikToks and stuff to try to talk to everybody

about doing cool stuff and finding cool things they made. And then, yeah, I think it would make a lot of sense for everybody who's here to your first hour, go into the bays and record little things and do that. when it, if the, you know, possibly arises. I'll be halfway done with the character, character creator.

Yeah, I know. That's right. Maybe it is the first hour once you create your character. Right. Maybe we somebody should. Edit that down. We'll let Paris go.

Yeah, I guess we could do it that way. You could just edit past it. Raj. Yeah, that's a good idea. We should do that. Nicholas Prasatis,

I keep forgetting Jedi Survivor came out this year. Let me tell you. God damn. This new PC that NtXT sent me, Greg? Yeah. Jedi Survivor runs like a dream. It only took a $4,000

PC, but it runs like a dream. Let me tell you, man. Like, I'm getting in that main little zone in that main little town where you're a little rabbit hoppy animals are kind of hopping around that you rescue. Yeah. I'm pushing like 65 friends.

Wow. That was the big part where it dropped real bad. Yeah, everywhere else I'm getting like, you know, 180 or whatever. But in that area, over 60, fantastic. Yeah, you talk about the game of the year and getting there in our top tens and da-da-da-da. Like the amount of times people were like, what have you played? I was at dinner the other day and Yusef was like, oh, man, like, yeah, like, hasn't been a big Greg Gear has it. I'm like, no, there's been a lot of great stuff. I didn't even name Jedi.

I totally forgot about Jedi. I was like at the car ride home. I'm like, fuck. Yeah. Cal Cestis. I'm sorry. I did you dirty. Dude, R.E4 remade. Dead space remade by the end of the year, you know. Is he still like at the front of your mind, Barrett, with all the games you've been playing? What, Cal Cestis? Yeah. I mean, he's thinking about Cal Cases on the daily, man. I mean, like, we've had our conversations on the review and the spoiler cast. I wasn't as high on Survivor as you were. Yeah. So it's one of those, like, it'll end up probably in my top. Is it going to be high on my top 10?

Probably not. Like, I still don't like it as much as I did the first game. So, and that's mainly story stuff. It's still an impressive, like, sequel in terms of gameplay and design and all that. But, yeah, the story stuff kind of not let me down, but just wasn't as impressive, wasn't as in the front of my mind as the first game. So, yeah. I need to beat that before game of the year. You should.

I think you would enjoy it in. I mean, I enjoyed what I played for sure. I definitely had a good time with it. And then in October, spooky time. I got a final, the RE4 remake. And then there's good luck with that, Andy, with Spider-Man 2 and everything. Like, oh, my God. It's good.

Alan Wake, man. Alan Wake, oh, my God. Spokiness. Speaking of which, like, you're trying to figure out Spider-Man and Mario, what do you do? I think you prioritize Spider-Man. Because you know fucking spoilers are just going to come out with people start playing it and all that stuff. Or it's like Mario's like, oh, fuck. someone posted he turned into an elephant

oh no, like that's huge man gotta watch that it's in the trailer he's a giraffe now ladies and gentlemen this has been the kind of funny games cast

Paris I can't wait to welcome you up to San Francisco to record yeah I'm excited looking forward to it Andy I can't wait to see you tomorrow at work

I won't be here God fucking damn going back on bad internet there probably should good download speeds out I tell you guys ladies gentlemen

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