Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 198: Dragon Quest XI

Episode Date: February 4, 2019

Every once in a while, we like to focus our attention on (gasp!) modern games to see how well they've stuck to tradition over the passing decades. And there's no series more traditional than Dragon Quest, which still plays pretty close to how it did 30-some years ago. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, and Henry Gilbert as the crew takes a look at how Dragon Quest XI--the newest entry in the series--thoroughly modernizes its many old-school qualities for one of the best installments of the series to date.

This week on Retronauts, more puff-puff than you can stand. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I am your host for this one, Bob. Mackey, and today's topic is Dragon Quest 11. Before I talk more about that, who is here in the room with me today on this lovely Saturday on the eve of Santa Con? I didn't realize it was the Eve. Yeah, it's Santa Con's Eve.

And you got me a gift. Oh, that's fantastic. Yes, I bought you your own sexy Santa. Hi, this is Jeremy King Slime Parish. And who else is here today? Ooh, darling. It's Henry Gilbert, Princey Pooh. Wow.

We got a couple of characters in this room. And yeah, today we're talking about Dragon Quest 11, and in the past, I would say, maybe a year or 18 months of retronauts, we have looked at gas, modern games. People yell at me when I talk about the PlayStation 2 or GameCube, but sometimes we talk about things like Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild. I was on both those. Yeah, yeah. Well, you're a ringer for these, Henry. But yes, today we're talking about Dragon Quest 11, because it is the newest Dragon Quest, and there is no series more traditional than Dragon Quest. I think, just period.

This is the most traditional gaming series ever invented. Maybe the ono series of strategy games. Yes, but I'm not going to play that to find out at all. But yeah, I feel like this is a great topic because Dragon Quest is really, really a series that sticks to tradition more than anything else, as I said before. And this is the most modern version of Dragon Quest to date and is also very, very traditional at the same time. And it's going to be interesting to talk about how those two different philosophies mesh up. Before we begin, though, I want to just have all over qualifications on the table so all the listeners can judge us. What is our Dragon Quest 11 experience to date so far?

And as of this recording, it's still a fairly new game. I have the least experience in that I've only played 90 hours of it. No, actually, you're ahead of me. Oh, I am. Okay. Well, you've actually finished the game. I kind of rushed through, yeah. Yeah, but I only spent 82 hours with it.

Oh, lame. What a couple of losers I got here. I had 125 hours in roll credits on the true ending as well. That's true, yes. So just like with a lot of Japanese games and like previous Dragon Quest games, there is an ending for Normies who only have 100 hours. And then there is a special ending that is the true ending that you get after you play like the 30-hour epilogue. And Henry has achieved that goal.

Have you platinum this game? How many hours more would you have to spend? No. I think it's more like a. 200-hour platinum. I mean, with guides and stuff, it can take you to all of the things. It's a completable one. You just have to set aside all the time.

I could maybe set aside the 40 to 50 hours it would take to platinum it. But by the time I got the second credit, so I was like, I really should play something else now. Yeah. When I started this game, I had plans to get a platinum. Now I'm not so sure about where my life is going. If I just devote that much of it to Dragon Quest 11, it would not be a good, decision. But yeah, today's topic is Dragon Quest 11. Echoes of an elusive age, and

it's a great game. I think we all like it, but before we get into the game itself, I want to talk about some of the more notable people behind it, and these people have not really changed. If you go back to our previous Dragon Quest episodes, you know we've talked about these guys a lot. Just I want to go over them really quickly. It's possible that you have not heard those past Dragon Quest

episodes. And so, the first dude is the Dragon Quest Godfather, Yuji Hori, and he was basically the inventor of two different genres, unofficially, but basically the Japanese adventure game genre and the Japanese RPG,

although there are earlier examples of them, he sort of made the mold for those that everyone has taken off of. And yes, so Portopia was the Japanese adventure game and things like, you know, Dagan Rampa and Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk and things like that. Those are all following in that fashion.

And of course, you know, Dragon Quest. Final Fantasy came next and everything is sort of following in the path of Dragon Quest in terms of Japanese role-playing. games. But yeah, he's a very important creator up there with people like Will Wright, Shigeramiyamoto. And unlike those guys, he's still like super, super hands-on with the individual games. He has sort of risen to management heaven, but based on the talent on these games and who actually directs them, I still feel like he is super, super into the development of making

these games. Yeah, I think he kind of micromanages a lot of the story and a lot of the mechanics and things like that. He's not, you know, like a producer. type who just kind of sits back and is like bring me status reports and I'll give you money but more like somewhere between producer and director where he's not just like involved

day to day you know like calling all the shots but he definitely has veto power and is really you know concerned about the final product and the tone of the game and the nature of the game so I feel all of that you know ultimately he kind of has

the word on you know it's it's the sort of top-down management style in Japan that is very prevalent there. Like, you know, it's not just that he's calling the shots. He's also, like, there and making sure everything is up to his standards. I think Hori is, like, ensconced in management power. Like, he would, he could never lose the job he has if he wants it forever. But he also didn't want to, he didn't move up the ladder at NX, like, say, how Shigeramilamoto moved up the ladder. at Nintendo to just a more

executive level thing. I don't think that's what he was interested in. And it was interesting to me, I didn't realize until I read an interview for this, how Jorge kept the divide between him and Annex for a bit. Like, he had Armour Project, which that was really his company

that was sort of a separate organization for Enix. And they would contract people like Shunsoft and Heartbeat to make the games, yeah. Yeah, but now Armour Project is basically doesn't exist anymore, and it's just internal production on the games. That was a big change from really 10 and then this one.

Yeah, it's, you know, some weird stuff kind of came out about Hori and his, like, the way his company is structured and everything when he, he was like, did an interview when he talked about how he got a divorce from his wife because of some infidelity. I don't know, like, people kind of were like, oh, is that how that company works? It doesn't have anything to do with infidelity or divorce. Just like it's a very, like, small company with only a few employees. So, yeah, I think Armour Project is more like a, like a management corporation, sort of like managing the property. I don't really know for sure.

But, yeah, it was kind of independent. Like, everyone who worked for Enix back in the day was pretty much independent, like all their development talent. So I think this is just a carryover from that. Until they merged with Square, I don't think Enix was ever, like, had their own development. It was always other studios doing it for them, right? They might have had some internal talent, but, yeah, they mostly contracted out. You mentioned Chunsoft. Koichi Nakamura basically was under full-time contract with Enix to do programming and debugging and stuff for them throughout the 80s.

But Henry was saying that Hori didn't climb the ladder. I think he was always at the top of the ladder and the ladder just got bigger under him. Yes, yeah, that's a good way of putting it because Enix got that big because. because he was one of their first guys. They published games with. So he was always on like the top floor and then just the skyscraper kept going up and up under him. Yeah, and he was just a game creator. He was submitting games to magazines magazine contests.

That's really how he was discovered. We talked about that in the first Dragon Quest episode from like 2015 a long time ago. Just a Shonen Jump editor. Yeah. It's so crazy to me. That is great. But yeah, he's making more public appearances in America just because the series is getting bigger in America. He was a Pax when I was there in the Pax vicinity, signing things, meeting people.

It's cool that he is being more public in America now that they're trying to make this a thing in America. I think I'm pretty sure Dragon Quest now is just a thing in America that will just continue to exist. I think this is sort of like... I hope so. It doesn't feel like we're going to have another dry spell like we did after nine. I guess it will depend on how well this game ultimately does. I heard it didn't sell that well. But on the plus side, Nintendo has stepped in to say, oh, we're going to publish.

Dragon Quest Builders too in America. So we'll at least get that one. Yeah. So other people, unfortunately, we've got to name this guy because he sucks. Kauichi Sugiyama, just a terrible mummy and can't make music to save his own life. He wrote some really good music 30 years ago. Yeah, but his brain is now just a pile of mush and it's mostly racism and homophobia. But yeah, I mean, like before, I think even on previous podcasts, I would be like, you know,

this is a man who was like a teenager during the war. and I'm sure that will change your opinions on things. But now I'm just like, put Grandpa in the closet. It's okay. We don't need to hear what he says anymore. Yeah, racist old people are messing everything up for everyone around the world. Yeah, that was recorded at a different time when I was like, you know what? Yeah, difference of opinion.

They're very fine people on both sides. Yes, exactly. But they're stuck with him for life. Until he retires, he has a job for life. Well, I mean, does he have a job? Did he do anything for Dragon Quest 11? Every single track in this game is just a recycled Suvie. Giyama track from a previous game, isn't it?

If his job is just recycling his old compositions, that's technically he didn't even do anything. It's just like they said, well, let's put this on some MIDI and let's go for it. Remember that that great track from Dragon Quest 2? Well, here you go. There is new music in the game. Oh, is there? Yes, but then

when you hear the old music, like, oh, thank God. I mean, the new music is just so, you can tell because it's just like, what would an 88-year-old man compose? Like, I know how to play the scales still. That's how my brain works. And that's all it is. And it's really bad, and so we'll talk more about the music later. I hate to just jump into this now.

But, yeah, the biggest source spot in this game is that the music, not just the compositions are bad, but the instrumentation is just appalling. Yeah, that was the thing that really frustrated me is that with Dragon Quest 8, it had the same kind of musical quality on PS2. And when Square Nix localized it for the U.S., they were like, that ain't going to fly. So let's go out and record full orchestrations for the, the, Mac and Quest 8 soundtrack in the U.S.

So we got a completely different soundtrack in America and Europe than they got in Japan. And it was much better. It just sounded great. Same is true of 7 on 3DS. They used the orchestration version. I thought they killed the orchestration in the U.S. version. Boy, I should really remember I played 130 hours of that game. I think they did.

Yeah. Yeah. I think they cut that. But I'm saying with 8, like it was a deliberate localization choice to go and re-record the entire soundtrack with an orchestra. and I get that Dragon Quest is very traditional and the Dragon Quest fans really hate for Dragon Quest to change in any respect and that is why they keep doing these MIDI soundtracks for these high definition gorgeous looking games but it doesn't fit and it doesn't fly in the West where people don't have that like knee-jerk compulsion to be like

it's different I hate it we're just like oh this sounds kind of bad and weird I think what like so this is Sugiyama. He owns the copyright on the music, and I think his intentionality is I want people to buy the orchestrated version or go to see the performances. I don't want you to get that in the video game version. I think that was what his intent was. Is that really, like, has he said that or are you just extrapolating? This is all slander in hearsay, but I believe when I read, as long as we're clear that we're libeling right now. When I read about this, I mean, that's not the worst libel you could say. I can make worse slander than that. challenge me please but um i i believe that when that's come up it's been his directive that has been like no um that's why i was shut down for the for the seven on three ds just like no this is a special version of the music but you know what it's all on youtube go look it up it's all there like i actually want i wanted to see like he doesn't know what youtube of course not people have modded the uh the pc version of dragon quest 11 so that you can download like an orchestration pack and just have like real music with dragon quest 11 on pc that is really

Cool. And I will say the music does sound better orchestrated. The songs are still not great, but, you know, it is, it is midi or meaty. And my problem with that is you can do that, but it's just a like a cheap sounding sound fun. It's not like a Super Nintendo sound fun. It's not even like as good as like a Dragon Quest 8 sound fine. It just just sounds like just the cheapest, most generic off the shelf keyboard. It just, it's grading, it's bad. And if you can at least, you can have like that sort of music, but it doesn't have to sound that bad. And that is just, just, it's just. just that, like, the only real negative spot we will all complain about in this game. And when people, sometimes when you have a different opinion than me or most of the time, because I'm becoming less of a toxic person when it comes to criticism. But it's just like, sometimes I can be like, yes, I can see how you would have that opinion. I don't have that opinion, but I can see how you could have it. When people are online and saying, I don't get what you're saying about the music, it's not that bad. I'm like, no, you are insane.

I also buy into the assumption that it's Sugiyama choosing for it to be the non-orchestral because I can't imagine why they do it for any other reason than a man with a lot of legal sway in Japan is preventing them from doing it. There would be no other reason to not. Yeah. And anyone else playing that game and making decisions be like, this does not fit what this game looks like or how it plays. It just feels, again, you can have an older sounding soundtrack, but it just, it just, it just, sounds bad, but my only... Like I said, it's really incongruous with the rest of the game.

Yeah. Because this is just a beautiful game to look at. The graphics are so nice. And, you know, it's just such a warm, very, very fresh-feeling game. And then this very, very stale-sounding music just kills it. I hate it. Yeah. And I love, you know, the classic Dragon Quest compositions, the town music and the field music and

stuff, but it's done so jarringly badly here. It's frustrating. Yeah. And I think in terms of the composition and orchestration, both are bad, but also just like the amount of music. He is still composing soundtracks as if this was an NES game where it's like, okay, we have a town theme, a castle theme, and an overworld theme. But it's like when the towns are so different in this game, you just want a different sounding town theme. It's like now I'm in the very Japanese town. Oh, it's still the same town music from the first town.

Like, I just, like, the, just the way he went about doing this or the way the company or the developers went about, you know, planning this music, I just feel like it is the one thing that really sticks out as a bad part of this game. I just want more music and better music. Akira Toriyama, of course, we talked a lot about him. You should know who he is if you are a nerd. Of course, he created things like Dragon Ball, Dr. Slump, and he was the artist behind the games like Chrono Trigger, and also he's the main artist behind Dragon Quest. And it's great. I mean, you can see all of his designs here. There's new ones.

There is another person who assists him, and I looked up his name, but he's basically been the art director for Dragon Quest for like two decades. So it's just sort of like a proxy for him. It's also why it's called like Bird Studio. Yeah. It's a lot of the time and not just Toriyama. Imagine that could be one of his assistants from like old manga projects or something like that. I love Akira Toriyama. I have come to love him a lot more in the last year

because I never had read the entire pre-DBZ Dragon Ball stuff until this year. When I read it was like, this man is a genius. He's hilarious. Goku's the best. Everything is funny. The action is great. The characters have some stuff

not aged. Yeah, sure. But it's a really such a great comic. And what was also fun for to read was fun to read it as a Dragon Quest superfan was to see all these moments in it that I was then would later say, oh wait,

that was in a Dragon Quest that came out a year later too. This feels like a reference. There's actually about, I swear, three or four Dragon Ball references in Dragon Quest 11. I will shout out one directly here, which is when you first meet Rob

or when you first meet Rab in the tournament, but you don't know his name, you're being assigned to fight each other in the tournament. He is just standing to the side, wearing a mask, and smiling at you and not doing anything. That is exactly what Goku's grandfather does when he is in the fighting tournament against you, Baba to find out the location of Dragon Balls from her magic ball. It's the exact same posing from the same style of outfit guy. It is a direct reference.

Interesting. Wow. I've not read that far yet. I want to because original Dragon Ball is so good. But, yeah, I think we were a little more cynical about him before, but I think there's like a new love for Dragon Ball Z and just a new love for Kiryat Toryama now that people are sort of rediscovering his stuff again. Fighters Z.

Oh, yeah. Not Fighter Z. Fighters. That, I think, did really reignite a lot of passions for Dragon Ball. It reminded people like, oh, this is why I loved Dragon Ball. And also Dragon Ball Super. Yes. That's gone over pretty well.

It has. and then Toriyama is more popular than ever in a Western front right now. Couldn't have come, a Dragon Quest game couldn't have come at a better time, I think. And in recent memory, things like Dragon Ball Z-Kai

made the original animated series worth watching again, just like cutting out all the fans. Sorry, Jeremy. No, no, it's fine. I mean, I talked about this, I think, a bit on the Dragon Ball game episode, but I recently read through the entirety

of the original Dragon Ball, not just the original, but also Z, and came away really impressed because I had read some of the, older stuff and I was like ah that's great uh but then I was like well the Z stuff is stupid and it's just like angry people with veins screaming in each other and I'd read like the first arc and it just went on forever it was just like all this fighting I can't do this for like 30 volumes no way but I finally read past that first arc and then there's a whole lot of story a whole lot of world building

and it becomes a lot more nuanced and I didn't realize any of that but once I got past that I was like oh okay so occasionally there will be these extremely drawn out fights where everyone is basically like blowing up the planet, but then there's other stuff, too, that I, you know, that I like Toriyama for. So he's really good at kind of mixing, you know, like cheeky humor, warm character design or development, and extremely big stories with high stakes and just very likable characters. Yeah. Well, actually, yeah, even the Puff Puff. That happened in Dragon Ball first. Puff Puff. Oh, yeah. So I think that was. another reference. The last thing I want to say about Toriyama that I learned this time

in prep for this was I had heard the story before that that Hori himself had said about how they, you know, they teamed up because they both worked on Shonen Jump and that that would he joined to help. He was a fan of the detective game. And so he wanted to make designs for his other game, for his next game. But he then, in this new interview he revealed, it was also Also, Toriyama's editor was kind of pushing him to do it to try to get him to hit deadlines better. He's like, well, if you do this, well, you do it. I just read this whole, another Shodun Job series, Bakuman, which a large part of it is about how editors abuse, trick, cajole, and compliment artists just to get their pages in because the deadlines are beastly. I think Toriyama's editor eventually became a character in Dr. Slump, or was drawn into Dr. Slump a lot.

he's got like big poofy hair or well he used to he probably isn't anymore well his editor is a big part of why like the cell saga has like five villains in it because every time the editor is like that's not what an old man with a beard and a fat guy no that's not it like and they

just kept having a new big bad until he finally the editor was satisfied Goku shit like two cool 90s teens in this robot 90s teens last guy I want to talk about is the actual director of the game Takeshi Uchikawa Uh, looking at his credits list, it's a very, very short.

And again, I feel like not to take anything away from this guy. I feel like he was just sort of a proxy for, uh, Hory. Because Horry is like in his 60s and he can't do everything on his own. So I feel like he, this is the guy that's sort of like his second in command that is, you know, uh, you know, in the trenches for the most part. He's doing the 70 hour weeks. Yes, exactly. Um, so he's, his body is still young and pliable and abusable. So, uh, the credits I found for him were just like two.

And maybe there's more. Maybe it wasn't, you know, documented very well. But he had a role in the scenario of Dragon Quest 9 and Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2. So that's basically it. I don't know how old he is or anything like that. But he seems like a fairly new person in the world of game development. Maybe just someone that a hoary trusts a lot or someone he has a lot in common with or just very easy for him to work with or just he listens.

Could be. You know, I heard that I read somewhere online that the application process for writing for Dragon Quest was that they asked people to submit a fairy tale, like to write a fairy tale for them. So I feel like this guy must have some sort of natural feel for that sort of, you know, like vignette-style storytelling. And I will say that Dragon Quest 11 does a really interesting job with its kind of like the self-contained narrative arcs

because it carries on that tradition that started really with, I don't know, what, Dragon Quest 6, 7? I think even four with the chapters. Four to a little bit, but I mean, much more so in like six, seven, eight, nine, where you go to a different place and there is a story that takes place like in its entirety within that setting. And they do a good job of kind of twisting your expectations. Like you're like, well, you know, this is a pretty boilerplate story. I know where this is going.

And then it goes in a direction you don't expect. And then, you know, you kind of get used to that, like saying, oh, what's the twist here? and then they just play it straight. So they really do a good job with the writing in Dragon Quest 11 with always kind of, I wouldn't say keeping you on your toes, but everything feels familiar and then you don't necessarily know what the end is going to be. Like how is this going to turn out?

So it keeps what could be very generic and cliche from feeling that way because it always has an outcome that is maybe not what you expect. And I really really appreciate that. So if that is the work of, what was this name? Takeshi Uchikawa. If that's Uchikawa's contribution to the game, then he did a great job. Oh, there was one last name I thought of in this, too, that the series executive producer,

who kind of oversees all Dragon Quest stuff usually is... He gives a lot of interviews, right? Yu Miyaki, yeah. He was in a couple of my Dragon Quest interviews, and he kind of, I think he is just the general planner of not just the number of games, but the many, many spin-off. too and just overseas all of that within the Square Annex family. Talk about the game itself. It came out in Japan in July of 2017 in America in September of 2018.

So just like with every Dragon Quest game of this vintage, it takes about a good year for all the localization stuff that happen because they're adding voice work, they're tweaking stuff, they're adding run button, which is like, how did you play this game without just always jamming on that run button? Well, you know, with like say Pokemon or Final Fantasy. they realized a long time ago we have to be doing localization

concurrently with development but that is a huge resource intensive thing to do. For Dragon Quest it's not worth that kind of thing so they want to ship their game first and then start working on localization. It just

it has to go in the back burner pretty much every time. I was reading interviews with Horry and I don't know if this was a pleasant lie or a real fact but they were asking him you know why doesn't the Japanese version have voice work? And they basically said, well, Mr. Hori likes to have last minute changes the things a lot. So, you know, voice work wouldn't be accommodating for that.

And that could be true. And that also could be why they can't work on localizations simultaneously. But I think in another interview, he has been thinking about, you know, doing localization work while the game is in development. Because of how in this game characters have different names depending on the region. And he kind of now wants that to be, you know, one name across the board. So maybe not a character, a main character named Homer that would not work in an American game. I could see him being so mercurial that he is. It's like, I'm going to change this name.

That dialogue doesn't feel good to me anymore. I know it chips in two weeks, but change that line. I can see that. Yeah, not having voice work gives him that power. So it's like, yeah, we don't have to re-record anything. Just, you know, change what this character says via text. But once the game is finished and out in Japan, of course, they can just. Okay, let's voice act to all of this.

He's not going to make any more changes. It's out. It's a finished game. We've hit Final Cut, though, I mean, he is actually pretty, according to him in interviews, too, which could also be pleasant lies. He is pretty invested in the localization of it compared to, I don't know. I would say, like, I would bet Hadjimae Tabada was pretty invested in the localization of Final Fantasy 15 as well. But Horry seems a lot more invested in them getting, especially the humor right and the tone. own, which a lot of the pre-Drenquest 8 games didn't really get.

There were some funny interviews with him, especially recently. I was reading, they were asking him, you know, why did they translate the old games into their interviewer said old English, and I clucked my tongue and I paid my student loan bill, and I said, it's early modern English. But they basically asked, you know, why did the older games have that antiquated translation? And Horry said, oh, because we didn't have any input on them. So obviously he did not like that That was not the flavor of Dragon Quest That was intended The old games when they were localized

They were just they were very dry They were super dry Now when you play the games And you understand what they're supposed to be like You're like wow they got the tone so so wrong Like thou art the great hero When it's really just a fun goofy anime world Of like silly monsters and poop and boobs

And constant puns Yeah exactly But I want to look at the previous Dragon Quest They say world of poop and boobs Oops, okay. It's all true, people. But previous Dragon Quest really, I feel in a positive way, they were chasing trends in that, so Dragon Quest 9, I love this game. I've said it before, I'll say it again, make an HD remake of this, put it on something else. It's so much fun. They were chasing the Monster Hunter bandwagon to the point where level five basically made what would become fantasy life in a way. They're like, it's going to be an action game now. People did not like that. So they had a nice, I think they struck a nice balance between making it a co-op game and sticking to Dragon Quest, turn-based stuff, by, you know, having drop-in, drop-out co-op play, sharing dungeons, just a lot of fun little features like that. But they were really going after the huge, like, Monster Hunter trend where people were all playing together in the same space. I think it's very important for Jorge for his game to be number one.

He doesn't like, I bet he probably didn't like Monster Hunter becoming the number one game in Japan over Drain. Dragon Quest for about five years there. And so Dragon Quest 10, which we never got here, it was really chasing the MMO trend and the Wii trend. So like two trends at once, I think it struck both of them a little too late. Maybe development took a little too long. But by the time it came out in 2012, I mean, things like World of Warcraft were still making a lot of money, but they weren't making like 2008 money.

And the same can be said about the Wii. The Wii was like in 2012, the Wii who gives a shit. The Wii is, it barely was surviving. And they seem to think that being on the Wii U would be the way. They're like, we'll be early on the Wii use, so that'll pay off. Now Dragon Quest 10 is on everything. It's on 3DS. It's on mobile ports.

It's on 3DS. It's on Steam. It's going to be on Switch. So there's ample opportunity for them to localize it, but they have not. I mean, that's a big localization. It's also like the server, too. The server needs is probably not worth it to them, I would think. Unless Nintendo subsidized it for them, perhaps.

That's the only way we get anything nice is if Nintendo. to subsidizes it. And that was the first internally developed Square ENAX Dragon Quest game, Dragon Quest 10. But yeah, I feel like they had a good intent, but they struck a little too late. I assume they made a ton of money regardless, but I think the one thing they had going for them was this game released

in the wake of Final Fantasy 14, initially just being a terrible, dismal disaster that everybody hated before it was relaunched into a very, very good game. So I feel like they had that going for them at least. Just, you know, people wanted to play an online version of a big Japanese RPG, and this was

the good one, not like Final Fantasy 14. And I look back on it as them doing practice, like, in the Unreal Engine and practice as an internal studio development. Like, it's crazy to think of a massive MMO as a practice game, but it got them ready for a true Final Fantasy quest. I hate, I do, in the same Final Fantasy way, I hate that a numbered one was the MMO. Like, I do not like that. Some MMOs are good, but based on what I've heard about this game,

on podcast like 8-4, people that actually can, you know, read Japanese and play Japanese games. It was a very fun and good game. I've heard that, too. But I don't think we'll ever play it. I feel like nothing ages worse than an MMO. And releasing a, like, a 2012 MMO in like 2019 or 2020, it's not good. Not going to work out for anybody involved. But so now we're at Dragon Quest 11, and I feel like this is the first Dragon Quest in a long time that is not chasing any trends.

I really feels like a throwback to something like Dragon Quest. 8. It feels like a sequel to Dragon Quest 8, in my opinion, where it's like, it's doing all the modern stuff 8 did, but even more in an even more modern context. Yeah, I feel like this is the first true sequel to Dragon Quest 8. Yeah, okay. I'm glad I'm not crazy then. No, no, absolutely. I think it's not a coincidence that your pre-order unlockable costume at the start of the game is the costume of the guy from 8.

That is true, yeah. Yeah, I mean, so like I think of 8 as a very modern game still, but it is 15 years old. almost. And when I think of everything that eight did, a lot of it is very dated in not great in a modern context, but this really just brings everything up to where it should be for the most part. Like it is a super modern game that does things that previous Dragon Quest games would never do. Never ever do. I love how modern it feels while still also being undeniably Dragon Quest game. Like that is, it used to be I would tell people the, if they were to start with the Dragon Quest, I'd tell them five. I'd still say if you want to only

give 40 hours of your life to something, then start with five. But I would now say 11 is the one you should start with because it's just so modern and accessible, though then again, you might then hate every old drag request because of the things that aren't there anymore. One of the things I checked is to see how modern it was. It's like, can I teleport while I'm inside. Oh, I can. Wow.

It felt, I'll be honest, it felt kind of wrong. I didn't bump my head on the ceiling. And you bumped your head on the ceiling. Like, maybe honestly, there will be technical problems like to animate and be. bumping their head, it looks weird. Also, you can open a treasure chest from any side. It's like little things like that that sound just like, yeah, of course you should be able to do that.

But that was not the case in previous Dragon Quest games. You can't open the chest from this side. You can't read this sign from the side. You know, in a lot of the games, they kept the need to use a menu to climb stairs in the Japanese version. But they were like, well, they want that in Japan, but Americans are going to hate it. So let's just streamline it. I think that was an eight. Yeah.

And there's a run button like in the American. version. Yeah, that sprint, that's why I never wrote a horse. Like, I wrote a horse twice in that game because, like, the sprint is good enough. Yeah, the horse, yeah, and you can ride a horse, which is another modern thing. I feel like they're like, oh, you know, Link does that. Why can't we do that? So, just a lot of ways to speed up travel around the world. And one thing I want to point out is that there is a 3DS version of this game that I think we just kind of forgotten about. It was unreleased in America. I am jealous. It is, it does seem pretty cool. And I think this is the first time I've

ever seen this idea executed. Maybe you guys can help me out. if there's another attempt at this sort of a thing where it's like, yeah, I've seen games where it's like, here's the, here's the worst we version at the same time, or games where it's like, well, here's the PC version, here's the PS3 version, things like that. But this is the identical version, mostly like 99.7% identical version on two very, very different platforms. I don't know if that's been done before. That identical, it's hard to think. I closest examples I can think of is say with Spider-Man games they will make the they would make the current gen version of a Spider-Man game like Ultimate Spider-Man and Moreover of Shadows and then there would be a game called that on a DS or a GBA but it would be a completely different game it would not be the same so there were lesser ports but right or maybe like the PSP version of Spider-Man too that was just a linear non-open world game sorry all my examples of Spider-Man Not Spider-Man examples.

I'm sure there are some edge cases, and please let me know in the comments. But I feel like this was a very, very interesting idea and one that we will never get to experience if you don't read Japanese because it is only in Japanese. When I was playing that game and thinking about how could this be done in 2D a couple of this, like especially around Gallopolis, like this is so tiered and leveled. How would this work in it? I'm really interested to see I kind of want to just pull up a long play of somebody playing the 3DS Japanese version in

just super NES super Famicom mode basically I watch a lot of videos and I feel like there aren't too many differences there are a few very minor ones that make sense given the technology where there is like in the 3DS version that whole finding targets on the overall map

is not a thing like that's not a thing you do in the game at all and there's one major difference in that there is more content in the 3DS version. There's like a secret special area that is a throwback to all of the older Dragon Quest games that has like four super bosses, a bunch of bonus content, and things like that. That's not in the PS4 version. But in the PS4 version, you do get slime slots.

Slimeslots are fun, but I'm more of a poker player anyway, though. And also that target shooting game. I don't like that. No, I don't like it either. Slime slots is like, I just set that up and like walk away. Like, oh, go win for me, slime slots. I'll be back in half an hour. But the poker game, man, I played that until I had.

one liquid metal slime helm and two metal slime swords. You told me like one day you just spent all day playing Dragon Quest poker. Pretty much, yeah. My husband came and he's like, weren't you supposed to beat that dungeon? I was like, ah, but the poker. And so you just boop, boop, boop. So thank you, Dragon Quest for teaching us all how to gamble. Yeah, I've heard rumors that the Switch version of Dragon Quest 11 will include both the 3D version and the 2D version in some capacity.

I don't know if that's true, but that, would be pretty great if you could like switch between viewpoints or something. Yeah, so you brought that up, Jeremy. We didn't mention this. So the 3DS version has like a lesser, you know, graphics in terms of the 3D graphics. But for some reason, in that version of the game, you see all your party members on the map at the same time. But that's not true of the PS4 version, which is odd. But yeah, it looks like a 3DS game with, you know, reduced character models, like little, like they're cheesy models. Very, like, chunky, not chunky, but very thick cell shading. It's a really good-looking 3DS game. I mean, even compared to the PS4 game. But it's a beautiful PS4 and PC game, so it just doesn't compare. Yeah, you really can't compare them.

But there's also 2D mode, which essentially turns the game into a super Famicom game. So it's interesting to see that the same basic game experience can happen between the PS4 level visuals, the 3DS level visuals, and then this faking of a 16-5. bit RPG. As a celebration of the 30th anniversary of Dragon Quest 32nd. Well, I mean, they announced it for the 30th. Like, the 30th anniversary can last as long as they wanted to.

It's the years of Luigi. As a celebration of that, that having those different ways of playing the game make it exist in basically almost every era of Dragon Quest as well. I hope the Switch, I hope the Switch version does

have that since it was on the other Nintendo system that makes it seem more likely. I think I'm just sad about the switch. I hope that could have a worldwide release date the same. But so far, they've only announced it for Japan. I mean, you can assume it's coming eventually, but probably after Japan, I would think. Oh, yeah. Hopefully not in 2020, maybe next year as of this recording date.

But, yeah, I just kind of want to jump around. I mean, we've all played that, like, a lot of this game. And I have some topics I want to talk about just in terms of what the game does compared to older games if we like it or not and we can just jump around in here I do want to talk about just basic mechanics

and things like that like the party like how the party system works and I feel like like we said earlier it is a throwback to eight and earlier games you don't create characters

they're all predefined so it's very different than nine and ten and this time there are more than four in a party that has four slots so you have to you basically decide upon

what your character lineup is in eight there were just four characters in the in the 3DS version of eight they add two more so it's more like this where you have to decide who to swap out. And you can swap kind of on the fly during battles too. Yeah.

You can change your lineup pretty liberally for a Dragon Quest game, which reminds me of, like, Final Fantasy 10. It was something I, like, strategy-wise wasn't used to that, so I didn't think you could. Even if the game told me, I probably just skimmed over, like, well, you can't do that in a Dragon Quest game, so I won't expect it. Once I learned at, like, hour 75, I'm like, this radically changes how. I do these fights now. And I mean, the party, I also, I miss it. I think I love Dragon Quest job system, but this is one of the other year type things

where they're not going to do a job system because nine was all about jobs. But, so instead you have a party that each is a job. And I really just love, I really like just about everybody in the party pretty much, I think. Yeah, except Rob, Rob, Rab. But you like sturdy books. I mean, huh. Okay, well, that's great. Dirty old man jokes, it's funny.

Yeah, like, he seems really redundant, and I think it's telling that once you kind of go to the big plot event where everything changes and you have to reform your party, he's one of the very first characters you get because he's so redundant with the sisters. Yeah. Like, I just never used him until the game forced me to, and then I was like, oh, I guess he's okay.

His role was never super clear to me just because I had two characters like him before. Right, and then after that skip, you end up with one character who's like, does everything that he does and more, so then he goes out of your party again. Rob's a better healer. I guess, but you can get by. Other characters have the ability to heal. You've got healing items. Yeah, a ton of characters can heal in this game.

That's true. I like Rav. I didn't play him a ton until the middle of the game, until the game second. act, let's say, no spoilers on this podcast, but until the game's second act, but then they kind of give him a real boost, they give him really good ability, like

for story points, and I also kind of liked hearing more about him being spanked a lot in his, in the past, was a funny character moment. I was like, oh, I like you more now. I think it was very formative for him. I missed that. Oh.

That was a big thing in one of the towns. You learn about his upbringing and maybe that's why he's such a perv oh yeah well so he was trained by the woman who runs angri-la which is the training ground and they talk about how if you mess up you get paddled and they say that he got paddled more than anybody else ever right and you're like oh does that mean he screwed up but then as you think about it more it's like no he intentionally did badly so this woman would spank him he was into it he was just a skinny lad did no no good from bad so yeah that's the party and like in terms of building characters and stuff like that it's just like eight but much much better

and eight it was like here's skill points here are some categories figure it out we don't know what's going to happen you don't know what's going to happen so you can easily make mistakes here it's like here is a fun skill charts and you know what the things you're unlocking are you don't know what some of them are but it's going to be a cool surprise and also if hey if you mess up or if you want to specialize in a different

weapon you can just pay a little bit of money and then they will just take all those away sorry they'll take all the spend points away give them back to you and you can spend them again so yeah you specialize between different weapon types and I believe I guess each character has a sort of like PEP specialization or whatever they call it or just a sort of like character

specialization. When you can unlock other peps, you can unlock co-op peps more just randomly based on what skills you do. I love the skill tree. I could not get enough of it and re-rolling and also how through story points and character moments the skill trees would

change too which also then kind of forced you to use different things or or start trying out to everything. So I never touch boomerangs because always I think boomerangs and whips suck. I'm not into that. Sorry, I'm a hater. No, you're right.

Like certain story events, I'll be like, oh, I can't do that anymore. That's why I got all these points back. That's really cool. Yeah, I like how that affects the way your party is made up and how you develop your party. But yeah, I really like, I mean, they could not have done it like eight because it would just, no one would have liked it. But I do like how it's like, that's what I want to go for. That last skill there, that's something I want. So you can definitely see, like, here's everything this,

weapon can do with a few surprises along the way. Well, the other character, well, can we talk about Silvando now? Absolutely. Yeah, why not? I forgot his name. How dare you? I think that is Homer in the Japanese version. Darling, how can you forget?

Oh, wait, no, no. I'm sorry, I'm thinking of other dude. Never mind, please. No, Silvando, I love Silvando because he's the fun jester character, which those were the goofballs. You were either the girl in a Playboy Bunny outfit or the goofball jester. A giant clown. Yes.

Which is your pathway to being sage in other Dragon Quest games? Not this one, but that Silvando, I was so worried when he first appeared in this game because a lot of anime has a bad history of homophobic jokes. And even that last year in a game I very much loved Persona 5, it had some very homophobic characters in it. Yeah, he's so effeminate and seems so stereotypical at first that, yeah, I just kind of braced myself. I was like, this is going to be bad.

This is going places. All right. I'm curious if anything changed in the localization. That was my question. I don't want to assume worse of the Japanese writers. I'm not sure how much that was softened or improved in localization. Or in terms of persona, if it was just like, no, no, this, don't change this. This has to be done directly.

But in the Solvando, I played in the North American release, I really love him. He is just so positive, so supportive. he's just like oh honey we'll figure this out hey is that right princey pooh like he's just he's very effeminate but fun and nobody ever makes fun of him there's no joke where like easily they could have done a scene where eric's like i don't want to yeah with that guy or whatever his feminine qualities don't make him weak or a joke or anything like that no i mean everyone thinks he's like the amazing sylvando he's like revered for his combat skills he makes everyone happy too yeah and that he is one of the great like

Like, one of the coolest things I like is in his background, you find out in his night training that he was a better knight than Hendrick in training and beat Hendrik. That's right. So they're saying, like, as a knight, the most powerful one in the world of his generation was the super effeminate dorko who wanted to join the circus and make people, makes the world happy. Good hair too and eyelashes. Yeah, but yeah, they do like the, the quest line specifically centered around him. the second act of the game, which involves a lot of people prancing in carnival outfits, a lot of men prancing in carnival outfits. I was like, whoa, this is not what I want to see in a video game, but it didn't go wrong.

No, it was just fun. Nobody made fun of the guys who were very feminine. When they're dancing around the town, the other town folks are like, this is fun. Yeah. Wow, these guys have got good news. We've come a long way since the honeybee in. And it ultimately culminates in. what I feel is like a, you know, a metaphor for acceptance and coming to terms with someone

following a life path or, you know, like expressing themselves in a way that the parents didn't necessarily expect. But it has a great resolution. And yeah, like at every step, the Silvando plot lines and just the character really surprised me, especially, honestly, coming from this series, I really didn't expect that. Me too. I, I did. expect him to be explicitly gay or to have a boyfriend or anything, though that's also like, it's very rare anyone has a relationship in a Dragon Quest game. They definitely like, they are very much stuck in the 80s of their love of cheeky girls in bunny costumes. Yeah, the only love is just like breast being pushing your face off screen. That's basically all it amounts to.

That is the true love. Yeah, but that does culminate in the, uh, the, the, the amazing puff, puff, puff joke in the minds. So to me, that, that all kind of pays off. I like that one a lot. Yeah. There's a lot of good puff-puff callbacks, too. There's at least two classic puff-puff scenes. Which I'm glad they fully embrace Puff-Puff. And, like, sometimes they had to, I think Nintendo was a little more restrictive on Puff-Buff jokes. It will be a powder-puff massage, sir. These days, Nintendo is the least restrictive on that kind of thing.

That's true. All their games are so horny now. Yeah. That's because Sony's like, no horniness. We'll have all the horniness. Every PS4 Pro comes with Salt Peter. And there'll be more horniness to come after the break. If you like my show, you're going to love Rob has a podcast on Podcast 1.

Join the biggest reality TV podcast around as Survivors Rob Sister Nino covers the current season of celebrity Big Brother and more. Download Rob has a podcast every week on podcast one or wherever you get your favorite podcast. And caller number nine for $1 million. Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of... Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer. Life is like a box of chocolate.

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Switching makes it easy to save. Hello, we are back, and we're going to be talking about more Dragon Quest Love and stuff, and we have not really covered the battle system yet. And it works roughly the same as it did in past games, though there's a very big difference that you might not notice unless you're paying attention, in that in previous games you would choose all the characters' actions, and then they would do their actions based on on a number of different factors. Now their turns just come up organically.

Of course, they're based on certain factors, but now their turns just come up and you decide what they do and then they do it. And I like that a lot because it actually makes the game a little bit easier because sometimes with your healer like, oh boy, I should probably heal now because there could be a big attack from this enemy, but I won't really know until the enemy acts.

But now you can sort of react on the fly. I think it's, it feels a lot better. It does feel very more modern, but it's something I didn't really notice until I thought about it because usually every RPG works like that. Dragon Quest was the one that just sort of fell behind in terms of like the way turns worked. Etrie and Odyssey still does

the act as a team thing. So it's still out there but like that that series is very deliberately retrofacing. So it's meant to be dated. Whereas Dragon Quest I don't think is so much. So it's good that it updated. I kind of like the challenge of planning when you picked as a group because you're like, boy, I hope

this character isn't dead when I'm doing heel. I'm picking heel on them. or I hope this enemy is still alive when I do attack because otherwise I'm just going to miss. You're not going, your character will be too stupid to know to attack somebody who's alive. They'll be like, no, I decided to attack the person who's dead now. Whoops. Yeah, I mean.

They did cut that out pretty early, didn't they? Sort of. I feel like they would just shift your attack to something else. Yeah. It still would not be ideal. Right. But that's not my complaint with the actors of group system. It's more like it was kind of.

hard to know exactly when a character would act. So if you were trying to plan consecutive active actions with your team, you couldn't be sure that they would fire off in the order you needed them to. So that was frustrating. Like, I feel with Etrin Odyssey, there is a very clear, like, action hierarchy, like speed, you know, statistic. So you can know, like, this character is always going to act third unless I use this ability that causes them to act first in the turn, in which case they'll go first. and that'll shift everyone's order.

But Dragon Quest didn't really have that. Yeah, it was kind of a crapshoot as to whether or not a character would act first. You could easily goose it by putting, you know, different equipment on them to increase their speed, but it often wouldn't work the way you wanted it to. But, yeah, I think on the downside, it does make the game a lot easier. I feel like this is the easiest Dragon Quest game I've ever played. Not like a cakewalk, but I feel like there are no real surprises in battle anymore. Yeah, I didn't turn on any of the difficulty features.

Drakon quest? Yes, the Dachronian Quest. Yeah, which is nice. Like, you can tune it to be as difficult as you want. I didn't turn any of those on. And while I didn't fight the final, final boss because I needed to do some serious leveling up before the, like, taking that on, I did pretty much everything else in the game. And I only saw a game over once. And that was to a battle that I just absolutely did not expect.

It's like a boss fight that you take on and you're like, whoa, where the hell did that come from? Yeah, I think I know the one you're talking about. It's in a very cold place. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that was my one loss because my party was walking around ragged like having gotten beaten up in a few battles

and I was like, oh, I'm okay, I can survive a few more fights like this, I don't need to heal up. And then that guy showed up and I was like, well, I'm dead. I had one big mistake with that on the difficulty thing, which was, speaking of ease, like you can restart from three places. You can restart from an auto save.

You can restart old style of the nearest town. when you were in and lose half your stuff, or he can restart from a hard save. And I was in a golden palace dungeon, and I died in it after, like, I had gone through, I was like, well, I'm not going to die here. And this final boss can't be that hard. I get murdered by it.

And so then I think, like, hmm, I bet it auto saved right before I went into this boss room. It did not. So when I went back to my auto save, it was when I entered the dungeon and I lost every single thing I had in there which was a lot of stuff because I took forever

to go to every item in that dungeon which there are a lot of them in that one especially I really regretted that. So another thing you can do in the game in the battles rather and I like that it's there even though it's pointless you can run around

and I just kind of stopped doing it after the first I don't know five hours but it's just like you're not doing anything just run around it's fine like where you are doesn't matter. It's just something for your hands to do while turns are playing out. And you can actually, then you can see like monsters from different angles. Just like make the battles more dynamic visually by having characters run around that you're controlling. And it is, it is pretty

cool. Did either of you guys go to the camera setting that was like traditional? Yeah, I just did that right away. Oh, yeah. No, I stuck with the newer camera angle behind each person the whole, the whole game. I really like, well, the free camera, but begins stationed behind the person. What is the traditional camera like. Oh, it goes like in 8. Like you don't like Dragon Quest 8. Okay. You'll see the camera faces the person who's going to attack and then they make their

attack and then you see it hit the enemy. Yeah, I felt that was just snappier and less trouble. So I just went with that. I think it looks really good even though because of how the enemies were designed some of them, you know, they were designed as 2D enemies first. They're not always designed to be viewed from other angles. That's what I love. Yeah, but I like how they make them all work.

They somehow make them all work. I love the goofy goobers. who like just looks so strange. The slugs. Like their slugs always have their heads turned towards you. So when you walk around them, it's just like, wow, that's a weird design. Or the kind of o-fish boar men who have the club over your shoulder. Yeah, they're like posed like looking at you.

Yeah. Cyclops? Yeah, oh, the cyclops, yeah. Or just always in mid-stomp pose. Like, that's what I really like to. And the enemy models, I mean, this game is, okay, we've said it before. This is a really good looking game. And I just assumed, well, yeah, I played builder.

I played heroes. They're just going to dump all of those models into this game. No, that's not true at all. They are, like, new models with, like, better textures. They easily could have taken shortcuts. They have all those resources. They made those games. But they made new models.

They tweaked the models. Just, like, amazing-looking stuff in this game, for sure. They all look so good. The fight, the action animations always look great, too, like, not just the attacks, but also. Yeah. When you defeat an enemy, Hori makes a point in interviews. of like you don't kill them, you defeat them. You're not killing people.

That's, we're not that mean. But when you defeat them, if you, sometimes if you do it with a big strike, they fall backwards. They have a cool, like, animation of dropping their item or whatever. Yeah. And then other times, if you were to zap them with fire or whatever, they then collapse forward. Like, it's not repeated. They vary that, too, which is really cool. Yeah, I really love the battle system in this game because it is very much a super old school

traditional RPG battle system, but I really feel like they maximize what you can do with that. There are so many little variations to things, like you said, not just the animations, which are great, but just the way battles can flow. I mean, in a lot of RPGs, it's just like you fight the same formations over and over again. I feel like in this game, I mean, you do see some of the same formations multiple times, but within each area, like they tend to shift around, like mix up the mix of enemies that you face, And if I'm not mistaken, like, the enemies that you see in the field can sometimes combine and you'll end up with multiple battles, you know, like multiple battle groups.

And also there are a lot of enemies who can change the dynamic of the battle by summoning reinforcements or by combining or doing some weird things that actually change up the dynamic of a battle kind of on the fly. And so what I found is that even though you're fighting like the same mix of, I don't know, five or six different monsters in a dungeon, those encounters always feel different and always feel kind of vital, even though it's just like, it could be just, you know, a turn-based battle slog against the same enemies over and over again. But that never happens, or at least it didn't in my experience, and I, you know, I played for 80-plus hours. I just feel like they did a really great job of thinking, how can we make little tweaks and little changes and just do little things that are going to keep players on their toes and keep the battles. systems, you know, constantly churning and constantly changing. It also helps that, you know, as we've mentioned before, the party makeup changes a lot

over the course of the game and the abilities that characters have sometimes changes. Like, there are some pretty dramatic changes to who you can use at different times and even, like, the nature of how a character approaches battle. And so you can't just rely on, like, the same group. You can switch to a group for, like, you know, 10 hours, but then something's going to happen. And you're going to be like, well, I can't just use the same comfortable strategies and tactics that I've been using. I have to rethink how I approach battle. So they just, I really feel like they've taken the sort of platonic concept, you know, just like the cliché, JRP, combat, turn-based battle system and said, let's ring every possible bit of value out of this.

And it's just a great, great battle system. And if you get new skills from a level up, then I'll want to use them differently. Like I wasn't using Eric as much, and then I unlocked his dual blade ability, a dual-wield ability. And so he then moved to one of my regulars or same. And then he kind of fell back. And then I learned to steal with him. I was like, well, I got to have him and more stuff too. And I think, too, having the monsters on the field map made random battle, well, not random, but made battles so much more fun for me.

I was choosing to start them because oftentimes I was like, I haven't fought that enemy in this area yet. I want to try it and maybe I'll even get a good drop. It inspired me more than just taking 10 steps and having a battle start. And then going, oh, come on. I want to get to the town. Yeah, and I love the way the game uses the sort of character models on the field to kind of give you the ability to say, well, I'm going to customize my experience. Like, I don't think I can fight this guy. He looks really intimidating.

or, you know, fairly early on you go into a forest area and there's like kind of layers of the forest and you can see paths down below that you're not going to be able to get to for like 20 hours. And you can see some like kind of high level monsters down there and you're not going to fight them. But at the same time, it serves as a reminder like, you know, there are some things out there that I'm going to have to get really strong to face.

There's some scary stuff in this world. And so it kind of gives you this little taste of what's ahead. So, yeah, it just, yeah, I, I, I really can't say enough good things about how the combat system has been integrated into Dragon Quest 11. One thing that we're going to be able to do. One thing that we mentioned earlier but didn't really define or talk about too much is the Pepsi. system. I love PEP.

It's way better. So it sort of reminds me of the tension building in Dragon Quest A, but it's a much better version of that. So an 8, you had the, I believe the command was psych up, an 8, and you basically, there were four levels of it. Ideally, you want to reach the last one and go super sane and have really strong attacks. But to do that, every time you would do the psych up command, you would use a turn, and

then enemies would have this skill that would, like, wipe your psych out. Like, every boss had that skill. So just like, it was like a real crapshoot. is like, will, how long can I actually get to the maximum, you know, tension? How long will let me stay in maximum tension? In this game, you will drop into a pep mode based on certain factors I'm not completely aware of. But it happens. Damage is one of them.

Okay, I figured it was damage you take, like sort of like limit breaks in Final Fantasy 7, something like that. Uh-huh. But you don't see a meter or anything like that, as far as I know. But basically what happens when you're in pep mode is you are stronger and you take. take less damage and also you can do powerful pep attacks either by yourself or with other characters and they really remind me of Chrono Trigger

this game totally even though it can be a hard state to get into and it goes away pretty fast so you're going to end up unless you focus on getting into pep mode a lot skill-wise or certain passive abilities that make you drop into pep mode more often you're going to miss a lot of these combo attacks

but there are some that use three and even four characters there's quad slash fucking rules and I did it three times in the entire game because to have four people and one of them is the lead character pepped at the same time is almost impossible just timing wise yeah and when you can do it you do like uh through two that over 2,000 damage a pro tip for our friends at home if you're trying to do the uh the quest or like do this pep attack or do this combo attack what I do is like I get the one character pepped up and then they rotate them out of my party and I say and then I get the other character pepped up and then I put the other character back in my party and then I do the attack. You have to really plan things out ahead of time

if you want to get those quests on. They can be tricky quests. If you're just waiting for it to happen naturally, it will take a long time to sort of have that sync up in the way you want to. So clever. Yeah, you have to cheat the system. So that is my pep strategy for you.

But yeah, it's really cool. I wish it was more evident as to when it would happen. But I guess it's more of a fun surprise when it does happen. My favorite character to see pepped would be Veronica because she's just so tiny and so when she would go super saying and just go

it was just so funny and all of the animations I mean they're sort of like Final Fantasy summons in a way they're just a flyer mean you can skip them but they're a very flashy cool animations you have your characters doing really cool attacks

and firing lasers and fireballs and dancing and things like that just a very fun flashy thing that does a lot of damage but again you can skip those so I want to talk about the overall a bit it is a big change and in some ways it's very much like eight. So one thing I really like, okay, so there are no random battles.

And you can easily run from one corner of the map to the other and avoid all the enemies. It's not hard to just explore the map. And like an eight, it's not a seamless world, but it is to scale. So, you know, when you leave the world, you're not like running into a town icon the size of your character. You can see like the gates of the town and things like that. But one thing I really hope for 12 is that they might have been restricted

by wanting to make this sort of on part of the 3DS version. But I really would love to see this as like a Final Fantasy 15 style open world game where it's like, I go to the town and there's no loading screen. I just walk into the town and I'm there. We have the technology people. But then you wouldn't get your gameplay tips. That is true. How are you going to learn how to play the game if you don't have loading screens, damn it?

They need to remind me what the run button is every eight hours. But I feel like that is the one thing I really would love to see them change. It's the one thing that makes it feel like a little too old fashion that like tied to older technology. I just kind of want to, I don't want to go as far as like I'm going to get in my car and drive around a Dragon Quest World, but I still want to just, oh, there's a town, I'll walk into the town, I'm in the town, and I'm doing stuff in the town. Yeah, I would like not having battle transitions, too. Yeah. Because this game pretty much gives you battles where they take place. If you look at the world map when you're fighting, it's like a slightly simplified model of the exact location you're at.

And I wonder if that's a technical limitation, if there really is a technical limitation there. or if it was just like a, well, there's always battle transitions to Dragon Quest, so we've got to keep the battle transitions. We don't want to change things too much. I guess at least there aren't load times or anything like that for battles. Yeah, it goes really quickly. It's very seamless. There are some long load times in the game, especially when you're loading a town or whatever.

I do really like that aspect of going from Overworld two battles, especially like in dungeons. I recall one dungeon where I got in a fight. I was like, but I wanted to look over at what Wolver was over there. And then I turned the camera and I was like, oh, there it is over there. There's a treasure chest. Cool, I'm going to go over there. It helped me plan out how I was going to explore things thanks to that easy transition.

I kind of did like the, I liked that it loaded between worlds or, well, I didn't like loading. But I liked that there was a clear wall between outer world and cities only because there was a really good point that Super Eye Patch Wolf made in his video about how much he did not like, Final Fantasy 15, which I agree with. I like 15 a lot. But one of the things he didn't like was that he felt it lacked realism that you lived in this world where there were giant monsters everywhere, but nobody had

walled off cities or anything. They're just like, and meanwhile, Dragon Quest 11 does look like they built a city that they're like, well, we got to keep these monsters out of here. So there's a big gates. There's a cyclops out there and his whole family, and I don't want them to kill us. Exactly. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy

15, they're like, There's a gas station. I'll just spell this gas station. I know Baham it's over there, but we'll be fine. This chain link fence will protect us. They're used to it. Other things on this map that are new for Dragon Quest game are they have resource points, sort of like Monster Hunter. I love those.

Very, very modern thing to do in a video game. Maybe some people don't like them, but it's just a fun way to get resources, a really easy way to get resources. I mean, that was in Dragon Quest 9 also. I was going to ask. Yeah, you had the whole alchemy system in Dragon Quest 9. And, oh, God, so much of my game was just spent. running around gathering resources, like I would just travel through the world. And then, you know, by the time I got to the other end of the world, everything would have responded. So I'd make

another pass through it. So there were resource points. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn't remember. Lots of, like, little sparkling points that you could run over and you'd get stuff and then you could forge stuff in the alchemy lab. Okay. Yeah, Monster didn't invent those, but I feel like they were definitely copying that in a fun way. Yeah, I mean, well, Dragon Quest 9, as you said, was like, let's be monster hunter. So that is where that came from. But I'm glad. they carried it through because that and the alchemy system here feel like refined versions of what you had

in Dragon Quest 9. The alchemy system I love in this game. It was super addictive in 9. We will talk about that. I have one more thing that go over with the map. My apologies. It's okay because crafting is next on my list. So the one thing I don't like about the map. So in Dragon Quest 8 it's a very big world

and the map is terrible. It's a bad 2D map. It's easy to get lost and you're always at least in the non-3DS version you're always running into random battles in the PS2 version. you're doing that. In this game, what I don't like is, as soon as you get to an area, it's like, oh, here's the entire map. Oh, here's everything on the map.

Like, I feel like there is not a huge incentive to explore in this game. I'm just sort of like using the map that I already have in front of me. I'm not like, what's around this corner. I'm like, I know what's around this corner. It's on my map. Well, yes. But when I see those maps, I also miss the real sense of discovery, though. On some dungeons, they do, like, gray out areas.

Yeah. But, yeah. I want just. Well, and you don't see the location of, like, gathering points or treasures. If you see something's a dead end, then that makes me want to go there sooner because I'm like, well, then that's where the treasure is. That is true. Actually, you have to unlock the locations of those things on your map by finding them, but I kind of just wanted, and this is not like a very Dragon Questy thing. I just kind of wanted the map to gradually unlock as I explored, you know, just to have it, like, draw in the map, which is a thing a lot of games do.

And I feel like there would have been more surprises, but yeah, there is some stuff to be found on the map on your, own. And one of the things you can also do in the game is certain monsters you can ride on them. And that is one of the ways where you can't explore because there are certain areas you can only get to when you're on the back of a giant bee, perhaps, or a flying dragon that's only in like three caves in the entire game. No, I think, too, speaking of the world map, one thing that maybe it's just because the last one I played before this was seven, but that has such a monstrously huge.

world map that this one feels small by comparison even though it's not I would not call it actually a small world map but it just feels smaller than seven so I think each area is very well defined seven is just like a just huge landmass with not a lot of interesting features so we talked about crafting earlier I want to bring it up again because yeah it's a big part of this game I feel like every game since eight has gotten just even better at this Jeremy we all played nine a lot but I think you reviewed it right I did In nine, was there an alchemy pot where you waited for things or was it instant? No, eight was where you waited. Yeah. Nine was where you just did stuff. But the thing about nine is it had like this extremely complex tier system where you would have to create an item and then you would use that item and another item that you created to create a third item. And you would use that with another item that you created to create a fourth item.

And so there was a whole lot of like gathering up very like basic level resources and putting them together to create like a higher tier thing and then those would you know be applied toward things so it was it was like this this ladder that you had to climb and it was very addictive but at the same time i'm glad 11 sort of stepped away from that and simplified things a whole lot yeah because it was much more satisfying to to make the challenge more about the execution as opposed to the go out in the world and find you know 20 clumps of manure uh it's much much more streamlined but still at the same time, like there is this sort of volatility to it and you're rewarded for performing well and you have a lot of limitations. So you have to kind of be mindful of how you

approach it. It's a very thoughtful and strategic kind of crafting system. And I think it's really effective. Yeah, the crafting in nine was very much like old Monster Hunter. It was very baroque. There were like way too many items. Even Monster Hunter did a much better job of fixing that in world. But I do like how if you want to find the ingredients, they're not impossible to find. And you don't need to go through those different tiers of refining things to make new ingredients for the most part. And the way crafting works is it's a little mini-game system. And basically, you're given a certain amount of points to spend.

And you're given the shape of the item. And you basically have to think, how do I spend these points in the most effective way to craft, to fill all these little bars in this little diagram of the item? And it's very fun. And they don't punish you too much for screwing up. You can spend a few of these pretty negligible items to redo your item. I love those perfectionist pearls. Yeah, this is some of my favorite craft.

I think I've ever had in a game I liked how simple it was the only time they started actually introducing the stuff Jeremy was just talking about of craft with an item that you've already crafted is so late in the game like those are some of the last recipes I got and it also

just made you know the finding recipe system made another cool thing to search the map for and check every single freaking item for because like have I smashed every pot in this town no this one still got a recipe in it or oh there's a red book I haven't pulled off the shelf like I did the same thing in every town I wouldn't talk to anyone first I would go into every house smash every pot check every bookshelf every barrel and then it's like I would do my rounds then it's like now I can talk to everybody like I wanted to get that out of the way first first we loot then we socialize hey they're fine with it and I like the leveling system to it too because you know the game the crafting would get easier as you level up because you get new skills and more action points

but it never became super easy if you wanted to still keep crafting the best items. Yeah, and the items that you would craft in terms of how you would actually craft them in the actions you input, they would become more complicated, they would have different shapes that would be more difficult to work with, things like that. So it's a very fun little game that, again, like Jeremy said, it's more about the execution than just the legwork of finding all the things. And as soon as I could purchase perfectionist pearls, that's when I would make sure no one walks around, with anything less than a plus two and really all plus three. Where could you buy

perfectionist pearls? Oh, from Le Mizonde de Vittal, the metal, the mini metal place. The mini metal school. Yeah. I'm at the, boy, you guys are missing out.

No, I did a bunch of trading there. I just didn't realize you could buy perfectionist pearls. I must have missed that. I didn't run out of them yet. I assume you could buy them from that little merchant that's always at your camp.

Oh, I never talked to him. I just bought it from the mini metal place. He sells different things every time. Yeah, but he also sells a lot of the basic to medium crafting things you need. So if you need, like, a plant or like, I don't know, bronze or whatever, you can talk to him. But at the mini metal school, right next to the person who sells who you can rent a room from at the inn,

they is a woman who sells perfectionist pearls. And so you can, they're actually pretty affordable, a hundred gold for one. Oh, that's easy. So let's talk about, let's talk about the story really quick. It's very much in the Dragon Quest tradition. It's a pickeresque adventure. You solve a series of dilemmas caused by a villain. You don't meet until much, much, much later in the game.

I kind of like that about Dragon Quest. It's like, who's doing all this? It's like a bunch of bad things are happening. You're solving all the problems. And they're all loosely connected to one thing. And then eventually you meet the thing. And it's a surprise. Like, oh, that's the thing?

Oh, geez. It was, that's what made it like a big moment at hour 30-ish when they said the name of the big bad out loud. I was like, oh, he has a name. Wow. Oh, now we're getting somewhere. Soron. Amazing. And as I said before, as usual, the hero is pretty boring.

We talked about Silvando. It's a pretty great cast. I like this cast a lot. There's a great mix of personalities. There's all kinds of different body types, I feel, too, represented in this game. You've got bodacious in the jade, and you've got importantly in rap. Any kind of wifu you want, hands off the smaller wifu. Yeah, avoid the smaller wifu.

Well, but Bob, she's been aged down by magic. Oh, stop it. No, I know. That makes it even worse. No, I don't think there's anybody I don't like in the group because I say I like Rob. I mean, at first. Yeah, Rob is kind of like the dead weight for me. Sorry.

At first, Serena seems boring, but she in Acts 2 gets a lot more interesting as well. And also in the cast and just all the characters in the story, this is something that really gets underrated in Dragon Quest. but there is like a kind of multiculturalism to it too because you go to other towns and every people just start they say something in French first or they speak in haiku or in haiku and you know it's supposed to be Japan and or you'll go to a version of Italy you'll go to a version of Spain you'll go to a version of of the Netherlands like it's it's a very they embrace the euroness of the of the tropes they're borrowing from by just sending you all across the European Union basically.

Yeah, it's, I mean, well, and then you get the sort of Asian continent areas. It's a very, like, you know, British colonial approach to the world. Yes, yeah. You're all fun characters. Well, you do have a guy with kind of an American accent in this case. Eric is, like, British trying to be American, which is... He's got like a Tommy Wiseo accent. Yeah, it's new.

It's like something Dragon Quest hasn't done before. Where is this American place that you're from? Well, when you find out his background, it makes sense why he just has like no real accent or background too like he's well but he's a man of the world yeah he's just a vagabond he just goes around man and he's uh he is so much more interesting than the main character i call him blue chrono and he is the actual main character of the game well but he disappears for a while in act too it's true but it's like when you finally get that dragon quest 11 title card he's just he's there he's he's there it's like this is

this is the true hero of the game ignore this guy with good hair yeah no features and um The side people you meet around the world are great, too. I mean, the best is, to me, of the one-off characters is Michelle the mermaid. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Oh, there's Hawaii in this game, too. There's also, well, just Apalinesian island in general. And that one, Lona Lulu and the story of Michelle is so, like, pretty and heartfelt and just very real.

like I when they did it in the game I was like are they going there with this and then they went and they went there baby

but they did it's pretty surprising but yeah that's a great story in the game um I we talked about there's an act too

again no spoilers or anything there is a sort of twist in the game I don't know if even telling you there's a twist is a spoiler

but I guess too bad you can yell at me if you want I don't know but I already spoiled it okay

but I do feel my only issue with this like it feels derivative of another Dragon Quest game the twist in that game

and also it also feels very derivative of another RPG, but I can't say what they are. A very famous RPG, too, that when it happens. Shut up, shut up. We can't say anything else. All right. That was rude of me. I apologize. But I don't want to get more death threats, is what I'm saying.

But yeah, I feel like not to go too far into it, but it's cool. It's cool. I like it. But I have seen it before. Yeah, I like how you sort of come to, come to sort of consciousness after the big, plot twist, and you find yourself very, very out of sorts, shall we say, and you have to adjust to things being entirely new from like every perspective. That element that I won't say what it is, is a very Toriyama touch, I think.

I love that moment. I love that moment, yes. Yeah. Well, you need some whimsy at that point in the game, I think. Well, also the ending, I'm going to spoil it right now. No. But I do, so I'm used to in a Dragon Quest and other games like it, where they have the ending and then the true ending, like say in Persona 4, when they give you an ending, they make it clear enough of like, well, but you know this isn't the real ending. Come on. Keep going. Like, but in this game, when they give you the first credits roll, I am fully satisfied by that ending. You're like, oh, okay, cool. And I'm like, yeah, this is good. This is a good ending. And it leaves you in an interesting place that I'm not used to. the Dragon Quest leaving me as well, like, emotionally.

But at the same time, there is a lot that the game leaves unresolved at that first ending. So, like, if you've been paying any attention at all, there's stuff you're wondering, like, what's that about? I mean, those little, I will say, those little ghost guys in the very intro of the game, those are not explained until after you beat the game. I have an hour, yeah, at hour 90, I was screaming like, what the fuck are these? You still haven't told me. What are these crazy Mononokeys running around? Right. So, you know, so, like, those things aren't explained at all through the course of the game. And you see them everywhere. Yeah. They're everywhere. And they're clearly doing something and you're like, what the hell? What is going on? So, like, if you care at all about this world, like, you will continue to keep playing because you're just like, I got to know what's up with, you know, the Kodoma over there or whatever.

I felt the, I felt the true ending was almost too fan servicey compared to the other ending. I guess that's who it's for, though, if you're willing to sink that much time into it. It's absolutely, yeah. I mean, and you, I will say that to pursue the real ending, you have to make a very difficult decision, like emotionally difficult. Like, there's something that about it where you're just like, I kind of don't want to do this. I like where things are now. It's not perfect, but I'm happy here. But to get like that true resolution, you have to kind of make a deep cut.

And I appreciate the fact that it does that to you. It's like, oh, everything's great. You've found your resolution. now it's time to break your heart. We have to wrap up soon. Before we go, though, I want to ask you guys, what do you not like in this game that's traditional and what do you want from Dragon Quest 12?

I think I've articulated my points pretty well throughout this. Again, Sugiyama put him in the corner, give him a little play school piano, tell him he's making a game, and, you know, he'll work it out, and then just hire somebody that's good at music and is not racist or homophobic or anything like that. like that. So yeah, get rid of him, number one. Number two, it would be great if it was a seamless

game, you know, no loading screens or anything like that. But I feel like, yes, keep things, keep tradition, but still keep modernizing. Because again, when I played eight, I'm like, well, they can't go anywhere from here. This is like the most modern experience ever. But now eight feels super dated compared to this. And I feel like they can keep changing with the time. So I'm excited about 12. It will come out when I'm like 70 years old, probably at the rate they're making these games. But yeah, I feel like they're headed in the right direction. I just wish the music was better. How about you guys? What don't you like about the tradition in the series and what do you want to see in 12? I mean, aside from the tinny music quality, there's really

nothing in 11 that I don't like. But at the same time, I wouldn't mind seeing 12 go more in the direction of nine, sort of like a, you know, play at your own way with your own avatar. I'd like that too. Job-based systems and things like that, more open-ended. I really enjoy that and I'd love to see that explored in this sort of high-speck approach. I think it's boring when Dragon Quest is just the same thing every time. So I like for them to kind of mix things up. And now that they've really found such a great expression of the concept that was, you know, sort of the foundation of Dragon Quest 8, I would like for them to go to the next game and say,

like, how can we do 9 but make it even fresher, more modern, better looking, you know, more refined, more playable, adds more quality of life to it. That would make me very happy. I am one of those very traditionalist Dragon Quest fans who was also very pleased by this game. But I think I kind of never want a Dragon Quest game to be not turn-based. I want them always to be turn-based. Like that is just, that's like Mario is a platformer. This is a turn-based action game.

We've got builders now as the action RPG. We don't need to do that in the mainline series. Now we have a Dragon Quest action RPG. It's all good. So, yeah, I hope that never changes. And I mean, yeah, just it's more. more about just like further streamlining things and updating by by the time a 12 comes out it's like 2024 and what even our games then what is it what is the world even uh but i also hope you know actually one thing i didn't mention that i love so much about this game is that drag quest is never the prettiest game on a console like every time before this it's never maybe eight was really good looking but this was such a gorgeous game it is unreal four as hell but it's like just shiny

like every the polished veneer of every like texture I was just like I love how gorgeous it is I do wish that the environmental design were more in line

with the character design where it feels like you've got fairly realistic looking environments and then very Toriyama looking characters I wouldn't mind

a bit more cartoon appeal to the environmental design but that's a I guess a minor well that's why they turned up the realism slightly on the design

just so it wouldn't And the bloom lighting and the cell shading and stuff to kind of bring it together. But I still feel like, you know, the texture work and the design work just need a little more. Like, look at how a Breath of the Wild handles it. That's a game that has a very consistent art style between characters and world and everything. I wish that Dragon Quest 12 or 11 were a little more like that. I kind of, honestly, I kind of like the dysfunction of those visual styles. I liked that a gorgeous, shiny, unreal for Brick was used to make ridiculous-looking Toriamic characters

or that how metal slimes now have this, like, realistic chrome to them. I really like that a lot. And, yeah, I think it's just, it's now about just like polishing the brass, basically, on this beautiful ship called Dragon Quest for me. Like, I don't think it needs a major change anytime soon. This was the update it needed. I hope they did have one of those press releases about how well it's sold. They said, like, it's sold now 4 million copies. But this was a worldwide pronouncement.

So it's just like, well, does that mean only sold like 800,000 in America or whatever? Probably. That's still, I think I read that it's the best-selling Dragon Quest in America of all time. Okay. Well, that's, well, because I know, I believe it was nine past a million. I think they could get nine past a million. Okay. So maybe it's up there.

But, you know, it was a multi-platform release, so that's going to help. Yeah, no, the PC, it being the first one on PC, I think, really opened some doors, too. Oh, for sure. What a major moment that is for Japan in the last five years for major publishers, like Square, Capcom, Konami, to realize we could sell this on Steam and make money. Like Sega publishing Valkyria Chronicles, I don't think we'd have a Valkyria Chronicles for, if they hadn't published it on Steam and saw people actually buy it. Yeah, Sega's putting everything on Steam, like Vanquiv. and Bayonetta, things like that. It's great. Great, great for everybody.

Didn't Residence of Fate just come out on? Yes, it did. You must be so happy. Oh, my God. People can finally play the game now. Forget about Dragon Quest 11. Actually, I like Resonance of Fate more, but that's another podcast. Wow.

I just betray this entire podcast. I'm sorry, but I'm so sorry, everyone. I didn't mean for the last minute backstab. But I guess that's very Dragon Quest also. Oh, I was actually the villain here the whole time, and you didn't realize. Enough of these mechanics that are easy to understand. I'm going to play Residence of Fate. Yeah, but thanks for joining us, folks, for this episode of Retronauts.

If you want to help support the show and get some cool stuff, go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. And for $3 a month, you can get every episode of this podcast a week ahead of time and at free. And at a higher bit rate, it's the ideal way to listen to Retronaut. It's not a lot of money, and it helps support our show. All that money goes to us producing the show. And it's a great little, we offer great incentives for you to give. And we really appreciate anything you can give.

in at higher levels there are more awards physical awards things like that so yes even if you can only give a dollar a month we really would appreciate it we need every penny we can get to keep this going into the future we have to cover dragon quest 12 when it comes out yeah we have to still be around for that uh everybody else please let us know where we can find you okay i'm jeremy parish and you can find me on twitter as game spite although as you can hear this episode i'm hardly spiteful about video games at all um and i also have a separate patreon that i might as well promote. It's for Retronauts. It's my video Chronicles, Patreon

NES works, Game Boy Works, Super NES works, and Virtual Boy Works by God. And I'm tracking the chronology of all these platforms. I kind of alternate between systems. Virtual Boy is going to be done in its entirety because it's only 20 games. And so you can

look forward to that. That's patreon.com slash gamesbite. Otherwise you can find me at Retronauts.com and also I'm doing stuff with greenlit content these days. and so you'll find me there doing stuff with their properties. Some of the stuff you won't even see because it's secret. Ooh.

What's happening? What's happening? And I'm H-E-N-E-R-E-G on Twitter. You can follow me there for all my thoughts on games. Like, boy, it was a tough week for me when Spider-Man and Dragon Quest came out at the same time. That was not a fun. That was my birthday week. But anyway, yeah, you can find me out there talking about video games.

But if you love hearing me on podcasts like this one, talking to people like Bob Mackey. Me! You should follow my podcasts we do together. Wait, now they're your podcast, Henry. Well, wait a minute. There are podcasts. You should follow our podcast.

Thank you. Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon. We go through every episode of The Simpsons in chronological order with tons of cool guests. We're entering season nine. So it's like an NES works, but for cartoons? It's true. There's a series of lawsuits happening at once you.

And what a cartoon is we do. the same for a different animated series each week, like gargoyles, Batman the animated series, Stephen Universe, even anime like Cowboy Bebub. You should listen to all those and support us on our Patreon, patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Thank you so much for listening, folks. We'll see you soon for another brand new episode of Retronauts. Thanks for listening. And call her number nine for one million dollars, Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of... Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer.

It's like a box of chocolate. Oh, sorry. That's not what we were looking for. On to caller number 10. Bad network got you glitched out of luck. Switch to Boost Mobile, super reliable, super fast nationwide network, and get four lines, each with unlimited gigs for just $100 a month. Plus get four free phones.

Boost makes it easy to switch. Switching makes it easy to save. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will. be out of town. I guess from what I understand that will be totally up to the Attorney General.

Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving a President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it.

It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.