The Press Box - Ep. 235: ‘Achievement Oriented’ on Test-Driving the Switch and Exploring the Sandbox

Episode Date: January 13, 2017

The Ringer's Ben Lindbergh and Jason Concepcion share their hands-on impressions of the Nintendo Switch and 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild' and discuss some big questions surrounding the forthcoming console. Then they bring on the creator of the YouTube channel 'How Big Is the Map?' to explain his incredible, quixotic quest to traverse the map of every open-world game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Achievement-oriented Channel 33's gaming podcast. My name is Ben Lindberg. I'm a writer for The Ringer. And on the other line, he's usually docked next to a TV, but he can operate outside for up to seven hours. It's my colleague, Jason Concepcion. Hey, Jason. Well, up to seven, but if you're running, let's say, the new Zelda, it could be as few as three. Yes, realistically.

But you can also attach me to many. Aftermarket battery packs available. That's right. We just returned from getting our hands on Nintendo Switch for the first time. We went to the big Nintendo event in Manhattan, and we played Zelda, and we played arms, and you destroyed me in arms. I destroyed you. We walked around, and we saw a bunch of Switch games.

We practiced attaching and detaching parts of the Switch. I've got it down now. I feel like by the time I left, I felt like I was like a military person in a movie like stripping down a gun or something. Nothing makes you feel less competent as a human being than needing to be shown how to slide pieces of a joystick in and out of another housing. Only at a Nintendo event when lifelong gamers have to be taught how to operate a new console. But that's Nintendo. So later on in this episode, we have an interview. and I don't want to oversell it, but in the fairly brief history of this podcast, we have had some fascinating guests.

We've had some fun and funny and informative people on the show. I think that we have outdone all of them or our guest on the second half of this episode might just be the best yet. He is the man behind the YouTube channel. How big is the map? and his quest in life is to find out how long it takes to cross the maps of open world games. And he tells us why that is his quest and how he achieves it and whether he will ever actually finish accomplishing it. It's a lot of fun. So stay tuned for that.

But we have to talk about the switch. So all the details are out now, all the important details. We know that it's coming out March 3rd. We know it costs $300. We know that Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild is a launch title. And we have a decent idea of the rest of the launch support or lack thereof in the upcoming titles. We know that the peripherals cost a ton of money. It will cost you something like $80 if you want another controller.

And we've gotten our hands on this thing. So what are your initial impressions based on our time with the system today? Well, I think Zelda was enough for me. Yes. Zelda was enough for me to say that this is worth buying. I'm very interested. I'll be interested to see what happens with kind of third-party stuff. You'd like to see more third-party developer support in terms of titles, announced titles, certainly.

But I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued. Yeah, it's a really interesting piece of hardware. I mean, playing Zelda on the little, on the handheld part of it was great. You're like, wow, this looks, it looks better on the handheld part of it than it does on a large screen television and it looks great on the television. The controller is really fun to use once you get used to it. It's got these tiny little buttons though. That's the only thing.

Like, he's got these almost for these tiny little raccoon hands. And I don't have big hands, but it has these tiny little buttons, like little cross hatch buttons and little tiny little tiny little. Man, it will be interesting to see how people react to it. But overall, I was intrigued and I think it's, I'm going to get one. Are we agreed that we're just going to call these things controllers? Yeah, I'm not going to call it the joycon. I'm not going to be forced to call it the joycon. It brought us some joy.

You can first look at a moderate, moderate amount of joy. Yeah. For sure. So, so yeah, I'm with you. I'm sold. I'm literally sold. I preordered it yesterday. And I know that preordering hardware and software is usually a suckers game.

But if there are two things that we can count on in life, it's that Nintendo only makes good Zelda games, and Nintendo never makes enough consoles at launch. So if I want to play Zelda on launch day, I might have had to pre-order. So I did just in case, and I'm going to trust that this will not break the streak of amazing Zelda games. And that really is kind of all it takes for me, like having a new Zelda and a new 3D Mario, which is also announced, Mario Odyssey, which is coming out this fall, this holiday season. That's kind of the bare minimum

for what you have to do if you're Nintendo making a system, but that's sort of a minimum that the Wii U didn't meet somehow. So I've mentioned earlier in this show's history that I've owned every Nintendo system going back to the NES except for the Wii U, which just never made itself necessary to me. And I missed out on a few good games here and there, but there just wasn't something that I considered a must own, but on day one, there is for the switch. And so I'll be getting it for that reason. Obviously, most people are not necessarily in that same mindset. So if you don't have the time or the money or the interest to devote to multiple systems and you're weighing a single system, then I think there's still a lot of questions that the switch has to answer in order to

convince people in that boat that this is the system that they should get instead of the other systems that are already out there. Yeah, we didn't get to play. There was certain things that I really wanted to play that we didn't get to play, like one-two switch. I didn't get to play, which is kind of like, that's like the party game. Yeah, like the Wii sports. Right, exactly.

Mostly because you had to like wait in a line and then you had to play it in like this glass booth with this guy and it just seems it was too black mirrorish for me. Yeah. But that was intriguing. there was some like there's a gift going around on the internet of like a man with a control with a joycon let's let's be proper than branding with a joycon up to his mouth like pretending to eat it and that is how you like that is how you eat down this sandwich that's on the screen that you need to eat faster than the person that you're competing against yeah there's a cow a cow milking minigames involved it's very like it's very like I think wario was probably the developer of this game. Yeah, I mean, it's a very interesting piece of hardware, and hopefully the software keeps up with it.

Yeah, and that's the big question. There are really only a handful of titles scheduled for release on launch day, and then there's just a smattering of stuff really over the first year. There's a sequel to Splatoon, which looks a lot like the first Splatoon. There are some ports and updates, you know, Skyrim and Mario Kart 8, Deluxe. Mario Kart 8-Dull-X, we should say that President of Nintendo America, Reggie Filiams, said that it's the definitive version of Maricard, which is, I think, a very bold statement for Nintendo. Like, that is a strong statement. The definitive Mario Kart.

And they were touting the third-party supporter. I think they said something about 50-plus developers and maybe 80-plus games in development. And that's encouraging. And there are some JRPGs that were announced. that people are excited about. No hard release dates for those yet, but a Fire Emblem game and Xenoblade sequel. And I mean, there's good stuff on the way.

It's just, it's hard to say now, I think definitively that Nintendo has solved its problem with third-party developers. They're encouraging signs. And I guess maybe it would have been nice to see a little stronger first-party support in the first year or so. And maybe they're just holding back some announcements. so as to sustain the excitement. But given that there was such a dearth of the games that people really wanted and expected from Nintendo late in the Wii U's life cycle, it would have been nice if they had been using that time to get a head start on the next generation.

But hard to say so far. And there's an online service that is going to be paid eventually, and Nintendo hasn't really demonstrated that they can do online in a way that's worth paying. It's a pretty hefty price tag as well. I think it's $80. But it starts free for the first six months. And then the pricing kicks in. So we'll see about that. Yes.

And as I mentioned, the controllers are super expensive. If you want extra ones, the system is not cheap. And I mean, I think that the design, obviously the hook is that you can play it at home. And then you can just detach the system and take it with you. And that part is very easy. We picked it up very quickly. you can just slide the system in and out of the base, the dock, and it will transfer the picture from the TV to the unit almost instantly.

And it all seems very well made and seamless. And everything locks into place with a nice satisfying click. And all of that is good. And the system itself is very small. Tiny. The controllers are tiny. Tiny. The controllers are just the smallest controllers you've ever used.

and they can be also docked together with sort of a joining center. And then it's basically like a controller, which is pretty comfortable. It doesn't look all that comfortable, but I think it felt pretty good in my hands. And you can also separate them and hold one in your left and one in your right, like the we moat and the nunchuck. So that's sort of familiar. The actual portable part of the system is not small. I mean, it's not huge. It's heavy, I think.

surprisingly heavy for its size, and it's not really pocket size. So it's not like you're going to be slipping it into your pocket like you would with a 3DS or something, but the screen is bigger, obviously, which is the bright side. It's like a, it's about the size of an iPad. It's like smaller than an iPad mini, but bigger than, say, a PlayStation Vita. It's, it's a large screen. The screen is large for a mobile unit, for sure. Yeah, you will have to put this in a bag in a backpack or something if you're taking it with you. And the battery life is a concern. You know, they're, they're saying three to seven hours and maybe with something as intensive as Zelda, it's going to be at the low end of that range. They're very good at not giving you an answer that sounds like

a, like we asked the person when we were playing Zelda. So, you know, like, let's say we're playing Zelda, for instance. How long would it be? And he was like, well, you know, we're not, blah, blah, blah. And then he kind of leaned in conspiratorily. And then, and then, and then, and then gave us the answer that, well, you know, you will be able to power this with many third-party battery packs, which isn't in itself an answer of how long Zelda will run down the battery, which is somewhat concerning. But yeah, I think battery life will be an issue. And one of my concerns about the system as someone who doesn't go outside unless it's to attend a Nintendo event is that, you know, I think there are positives in that. that since Nintendo is uniting its console and handheld units, then in theory there should be more games,

and those two teams won't be roped off anymore, and that could be a good thing. But inevitably, it seems, will lead to some technological compromises. And we were seeing that with Zelda, which looks great, and it looks fantastic when you're playing it on the handheld. And then when you transfer it to the TV, it still looks really good. but you can see that it's it just doesn't scale up quite as nicely. Like you won't see it and think you are playing even like the best looking Xbox One or PS4 game. It just, it has like a salshated look that works very well and there's almost like a

silvery kind of ethereal light to everything in the demo that we played. It's very sunny and everything is glinting and it's pretty. But then there's kind of a contrast where. the cell-shaded parts of the environment and the non-cell-shaded parts of the environment clash a little bit. Like there are some very pixelated spaces that you'll see, you know, like the shrubbery is, is very plain looking and it's kind of in contrast to link himself and some of his surroundings. So that's my worry, I suppose, that developers will have to make compromises in order to get this thing to run on a handheld and that it won't look as good as you're used to. console games looking at their best. And maybe that won't be a big handicap for Nintendo,

since Nintendo always knows how to work around the technical limitations and give their games such a good look that it's not about polygon counts or gigaflops or whatever. But with third-party developers, maybe it will be a bigger challenge for them, which then could discourage them from developing games for the system. So that would be my main fear. Yeah, we'll see what happens with that. Victor of the ringer described the ports of Skyrim and FIFA as kind of like table scrap ports, which I think is a mean way to say it and also pretty accurate in terms of what you're talking

about with the technical limitations. I would say the positive is that the graphical gap, the power gap, does not appear to be as great as it was with the Wii and the Wii with the console generation that it was running with those that they were running in respectively. Right. Unless Scorpio and PS4 Pro lengthen that lead. Right. So you're not going to notice it as much, but it is, it's there, certainly. And yeah, when you scale up Zelda, you can really, you can see it. Although the designers are very adept at making everything that you're focusing on look very, very good. It's just around the edges and the kind of like the background stuff and then and certainly the Pollyon accounts in landscapes and stuff like that. We should also say that Ben and I, along with Chase Serrano, who was on at the event, are kind of like the ringers three like classic people that if you want to text at like 4 a.m. or G-chat with it at 4 a.m. like we're up. So a 9 a.m. event, it was like extremely strenuous for us. And like I was on three hours sleep.

Ben had not slept. We looked like hammered fucking shit at this. And apparently we were being live streamed. Yeah, I thought it was like great. Tweeting my disheveled mess of the hairdo. I was like, texted Ben, like, I'm here. Ben was like, okay, I'm coming up the steps. And then I see Ben and he's just like, this is fucking brutal.

Yeah. Well, it's easier to not get out of bed because I was never in bed, but to go out without having been in bed when you know that Zelda is waiting for you. Yeah. And that was worth it. Like that was when I saw Zelda and I played it, I was like, okay, this is good. This will be good.

This is worth it. And Link basically has a switch in the game. Yeah, Link has a cell phone now. I think that's important for people to, people know they call it a Shamkara Stone or something. I'm like just absolutely destroying whatever they call it in the game. But yeah, Link has a tablet now. Yes. Right.

Well, it's obviously way too soon to pass any sort of judgment. This thing is not even out yet. So based on what we've seen so far, I guess it's safe to say that if you are a hardcore Nintendo person who is not going to want to miss a Zelda game and the Mario game that both look really good, then you'll probably end up getting this system. There's nothing so disconcerting about it that we think you should stay away in that case. But if you're on the fence, if you're worried about it being another Wii U, I guess Nintendo hasn't conclusively shown that that won't be. be the case. So you can wait and see. You can wait for a holiday price drop. You can see how the library builds up over the first year. But I'm happy that we have a new entrant into the console landscape. I agree. And it's a creative entrance at that. All right. We will be right back

with an incredible interview that I hope that you will enjoy as much as we did after a brief word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Bachelor Party. That's right, just like the beloved Bachelor TV show that dominates my Monday nights this time of year, the Ringer Network's companion podcast, Bachelor Party, is back on the Channel 33 podcast feed, and I highly recommend it. Join the Ringer's Juliet Lippman every week for a breakdown of the latest episode and guests from The Ringer and from the Bachelor Universe. You can listen to Bachelor Party on the Channel 33 podcast feed on iTunes by going to iTunes.com

slash the Ringer or by finding it wherever you get podcasts. Okay, so about 11 months ago, a YouTube account was created, called How Big is the Map? And since it was created, about 200 videos have been counted, and close to 80 games have been chronicled. And the point of this account is, like it says in the title, to see how big the map in various open world games is. And the man who makes this account is named Peter. He is from the Netherlands, and he joins us now. Hi, Peter.

Hello. So the obvious question, of course, is how you got this idea to start trying to find out how big the map is. Is this something that you had wanted to do for a while? Were you fascinated by this for years? How did you get the idea to do this unusual exercise? Well, I really loved the GTA games, and I wanted to have more of those games. So I was looking on YouTube some walkthroughs about some open world games to find out if the world in the game was beautiful too, just like in GTA. But all I saw was cinematics in games and walking from one mission to another and doing things.

But I never felt the atmosphere of the game world. And that's what I like about games, the atmosphere, the graphics. And I always wanted to see that in those YouTube videos, but I never found it. So I was thinking, there has to be somebody who is walking from one end to the other. And there were some YouTubers already made those videos, but not that much as I really would like to watch. So you wanted to do it. a more systematic way and yes so so you started with Midtown Madness which is a racing game from 1999 so how did you decide that that was where you wanted to start

yeah I really started with it's true the thing you just said but I was really starting to experience I started with the first Godfather to find out if it was working the recording and all that and then I I really started with Midtown Mattis because I was thinking that was the first open world game and now I know it's not the first open world game. So I'm planning, yeah, that's why I did a daggerfall after that, some month after that. But I wanted to make it in a chronological order. So I wanted to start with an old game and then do all the videos about that year

and then make videos about the next year and so on and so on. But sometimes I was thinking, well, I want to have more viewers, so I need to do some newer games too. So sometimes I put some newer games between all the older games. And I'm now in 2012. My last video is about Risen 2. So that's 2012. And yeah, I want to do all the old.

open world games of that year and then 2013 then 2014 but in the meanwhile I'm also doing games like ghost recon wildlands when it's coming out and games all the new games that is that are coming out I want to do that too so I'm very busy yeah I can see you're you're posting very frequently and this takes quite a while sometimes yeah there are there are some there There are a lot of people want to know how big some old games are, but they haven't found me yet, I guess. And besides that, there are a lot of people who don't have the time to watch the whole video. I don't matter. But some people want to watch the speed-up version, like time-lapses.

But I am not doing time-lapse videos because you cannot feel the atmosphere of the games that way. You cannot hear the sounds of the birds, so to speak. Yeah, you're a purist when it comes to finding out how big the map really is. So are there only certain genres that you want to do this with? Like you say open world games, but I guess that is kind of a loose definition. So what sort of game qualifies for this and what wouldn't? or how do you decide whether it meets the criteria that you want? Well, I prefer first and third person games.

So the top-down few games, I haven't started that type of games. Maybe I will do in the future. But for now on, it's just the first and third-person games. Uh-huh, I see. By the way, I did Pac-Man. I did that one and some other old games just for fun. But those maps are not very big. No.

Say, you know, you walk across some of these maps and you're liable to run into wildlife or come across side missions or what's been the most fun thing that you've encountered walking across a map? A naked lady and daggerful. Yeah, because. you don't expect that. It's so boring sometimes to walk across that map. But then suddenly there was a naked lady all of a sudden.

And also almost a naked lady in the city somewhere in Deggerfall. So that was nice. Did that delay your progress or did you stay true to your mission and keep walking? Well, that's always hard because I see a lot of beautiful things when I walk the map or funny things. in games like watchdogs too. And then I want to stay there. Or I see a house. I want to go in there.

But sometimes I run in the house and then I go outside very fast. And then I walk like nothing happened. But I really have to stay strong to walk the line because, yeah, otherwise it's the answer of how big the map is of the game is not true anymore. Right. So that's sometimes I have to play the game again. but I have no time to do that because I have to walk another map. Yeah, how has this affected your actual video gameplay if you're spending hours walking across

maps? Do you have time to play games anymore? No, it's over. It's all over. My favorite hobby is just gone. I don't have the time to do that anymore, but I like this, I really like to walk. It's like walking in nature. I have a very stressful job and I like my job but it's stressful so it's very nice

and peaceful to walk across a map. It seems to me certain games like Far Cry is a good example the latest Far Cry Prime or even Far Cry 2 you have to level up to a certain level before you can unlock parts of the map. So does

this I would assume becomes an obstacle to central goal which is simply to walk the map like how do you so how do you get around this i really start to hate missions in games i have the time to do those missions i'm sick of cinematics and missions because i just want to be dropped in the in the map and go for a walk that's it but i'm now doing uh sleeping dogs and i just have to uh run after somebody and jump And I think, go on. And I'm so happy when I can skip a cinematic. And if I complete a mission and then you can start in the map,

I'm so happy when that happened. What about loading times? If you have to have a loading screen or some sort of buffering to have the entire map show up, is that just part of the official time or the count that you include? Well, I don't have loading screens when I walk a map when I think about it. It's just you start in the map and I begin at one corner of the map and then I walk to the other corner. And I never have loading screens. Yeah, there are some games who don't have one map, but some hops, more maps, levels.

And then I name them map one, map two, map three. Uh-huh, I see, so you do them separately. Yes, yes. And so you mentioned that you do this because you like the atmosphere. So what is the most atmospheric game that you have done this with? Or which game is just the most enjoyable to walk through because of the sights or the sounds or whatever it is? Well, it's a good question. I got a long list here.

Oh, yes, Gatic Tree. That was a nice game. What made it atmospheric? I think the houses where you can go in, a pub where you can drink, it's just like the Witcher one. It's also so nice. You really got the feeling you were in that time, yeah, that you really are walking in the forest. And you hear the birds. I don't know.

It's how the graphics look like in combination with the sound. Just like Oblivion, very nice game to walk through. And of course, I also like the... GTA games. GTA 5 is very nice to walk across. Very beautiful when I started at the beach and everybody was training

outside and that was nice and some beautiful ladies walked by. Then later in the game you leave the city and then the night came in and I was walking over a train track at night and then you hear

the cricket. And it's, well, it's, most of the time it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's shining. I don't know, it's just like you're on vacation. Those, those games, they're beautiful. Yeah, a good day, night cycle or, or, or a weather engine, those things really add that atmosphere, I guess, if you feel like there's time passing and it's a real world. Do you like photo realistic graphics or a world? that really looks like real life or do you prefer one that is sort of stylized or cartoony or it doesn't necessarily look like real life but it has a distinctive look? I like the first one

because I was also walking the maps of barterlands and that's that cartoonish, how do you call it? Yeah, it's like self-shaded. Yes, yes, I don't like that. I don't like the atmosphere. I don't have the feeling I really walk there. No. What's been the most dangerous map?

Yes, it's the division. Not because of the monsters or something, because there are no monsters. But it just, I, maybe I needed to complete all the missions in that game and then started my walk because then you're bigger and stronger. but I don't have the patient to do all those missions so I just start to walk as soon as I was dropping on the map and well they are shooting at you and you're so dead you're going to die so fast

so I have to do that I had to do that in four videos and at the end of every video I die but yeah it's I don't want to do that game ever again because it's too hard and I don't want to do the mission because it takes a lot of time. And another scary video, scary

walk was Colette. I don't know if you don't know if you know that game. Colette. Hmm. No, no. No. No. It's like those

day Z games. Oh, like a zombie type. It's scary. So, yeah. Walking. that map you don't know I didn't know anything about the game I just start my walk and was you you don't expect any scary things you didn't know anything about it at all you just start you just hear that it's open world that's it oh yes I'm on the map I can walk and then I start walking and

really scary things happened at that walk that you uh yeah but I have to I had to move that is that's like the authentic post-apocalyptic experience that's what happens in every actual zombie movie or show you're just walking around a regular world you don't know anything is wrong and then suddenly you see a bunch of people staggering around well what happened in colat like could you describe some of the things that i see here that Sean Bean is one of the voices ghost a ghost that is that starts start talking to me and uh yeah Yeah, and when you are, the scariest thing about making those videos is you can die. And then you have to start your walk all over again. Oh, yeah. Then there's a ghost in front of you. And I was thinking, okay, if I go further, maybe I die. So I need to listen to him.

And yeah, well, that is going to take some time. So after sort of such a situation, I go run for a couple of meters to make. the time right again. Yeah, I was going to say, can you, if you die, you wouldn't go all the way back to the edge of the map and restart, right? Or could you just start walking again from where you died and then add the videos to go? I have to do it all over again. It's getting very stressful when you're almost at the end.

When I walked the map of Just Cause 1, it was terrible. It's eight hours. And I was enjoying it till the sixth hour. Then I was having fun. But then I was thinking, uh-oh, what if something go wrong now? Because I had to say to my family, my wife and my kids, yeah, I'm not here today. I don't have time for you today. I have to walk this map.

Okay, okay. And then I start my walk. and it would be so terrible if I have to do that all over again, then I have to ask another day, another free day of. Yeah, what does your family think of this hobby? Well, yeah, proud. Yeah? Yes, my wife likes all my videos.

My two children also are liking my videos, so they are always three thumb-ups on every video of, persons I know, the rest is all persons I don't know, but yeah, I have to do things with them and I like to do things with them to

not make them angry about it. They're not going to be angry, I have to say, disappointed about it. Because yeah, it takes a lot of time and but I have to manage my time. I also do work, I work four days

in a week. and yeah I'm going to bed late I have to admit yeah well that's cool you've kind of created your own suspense and your own missions like you're not actually playing the games you're just walking across the map which seems like it would have no

stakes but once you get to the edge of the map if you've already invested a lot of time then suddenly it's like it's like any mission where you care that you succeed and you don't want to fail So that's interesting. You're not really playing the games as intended, but you're still playing the game in a different way. Yes.

And yeah, I was looking for a walk through of Just Cross 2 back in the days. I wanted to know how big that map was. And then I found a video of, I don't know, they call me Connor or it was 8-bit bastard. It. Those two channels were already making these kind of videos, but then in time lapse. Oh, I see. Cheating. No, yeah, well, they are walking the map.

Yeah. There are only two persons who are doing that also that they call me Connor. We know each other now, thanks to YouTube. And 8-bit bastards, they are walking a map, only of the big new games, most of the time. And they know people don't want to watch the whole video because it takes a lot of time. So they do time-lapse videos.

But all you really need to see is how long the video is, right? Like, I mean, you can watch it if you want, but the question is how long it will take you to get there. So if you just see that the video is a certain length, then that's the answer to the question. Yes, it is. But you also want to do. know what the game looks like, I guess.

Right. It's about the journey, not the destination. Yes. And about, like I said before, the atmosphere. And in a time lapse with a musical, it's very nice. You don't have a lot of time, but you cannot feel the atmosphere. I've noticed that you've, it's mainly all single player games. I would imagine something like Rust or Daisy would just be two real people controlling, you know, video game. characters, it'd be simply too dangerous.

You couldn't do it. I would assume. Yes, I think I will die very soon. Then I'm going to curse on the internet, I guess, and giving them names. I don't know if I want to do that. But I'm thinking about, because I did all the Elder Scroll games, I think I need, I think I'm really going to do Elder Scrolls online very soon. Oh, wow.

Now, do you include Skyrim? Do you consider that part of the Elder Scrolls series? So what's your favorite one to walk across out of all the Elder Scrolls one? Oblivion. It's very peaceful, yes. But Skyrim is also very beautiful. It was almost like I was really walking through the forest when I did that one. Would you consider, I guess, taking some sort of shortcut, like if you could program your character to walk

without you actually pressing the button or moving the joystick? Is that acceptable or would that be cheating? Would you ever consider doing that? Just setting the game, having the character walk, and you step away and come back? You mean putting a heavy thing on the forward key? Yes. Well, no.

When I was doing just-cost one, just-cost one, It was the biggest map to walk across I was thinking. So I took my bucket in front of me to do, you know what. And also a lot of food and drinks. My wife brought me some cup of coffee. So it was, yeah, I don't cheat. You can. Do you not even, you don't even pause.

No, no. And it's not possible. It's not possible either. Oh my God. This is incredible. There are trees. So if I did that, if I should do that, then I would walk into a tree and then you stop walking. And then I would go somewhere and I could come back and I could start all over again.

So I don't do that. And in Dergafall, there was 69 hours. Nice. I did it in parts of four hours most of the time. two times I did it in six hours. And the last video I made about Daggerfall to make the whole thing complete was about seven hours. And I couldn't walk away because there are monsters who are trying to kill you. And then I had to start the whole thing all over again.

And I was not about taking that risk. Wait, so the Daggerfall took over 60 hours to work. walk across and you have it in like 14 different videos so wait are you saying that you did that all in one go or you did each video in one session but you broke up the sessions or no no no i didn't do it in one uh in one session 69 hours non-stop would be very proud of myself yeah but at this point i wouldn't be surprised if you told me that no that's too too much but um and i i i I walked four hours nonstop or six hours nonstop and one time seven hours nonstop because I had to do, I have to tell you it wasn't in 14 videos. It was exactly in 15 videos because when I did part one, I really thought I was starting at the corner of the map.

So I was walking that one and then I stopped and then I started the next day I started part two. And then somebody gave comments on YouTube saying you didn't start at the corner. And that's true. I found out. It was a mistake, my mistake, because when you bring up the map in Daggerfall and you go to the right corner. But when you start in the corner, you don't are really in the corner because there are two narrows. You have to push. And then you are really in the corner.

And so I had to admit to everybody. And what I did is I kept on walking all these 14 videos until I reached the sea, the end of the map. And then I called it part zero. I started my journey from the really corner. When I start in the corner, you can't go any further. There was an invisible wall in the mountains. So I really knew I was really at the end. And then I start my walk till I reached the point I was starting at the start of part one.

And I thought, well, I'm going to do that this evening. We'll take three hours, I guess. So I started at 10 o'clock and at four or five o'clock at night. I finished I finished the part zero So how do you decide at what speed to traverse the map

Because you have walking, you have sprinting, some characters have unlimited sprint and some do not You can drive, you can fly Do you do it in different At different speeds or do you pick One, how do you make up your mind? I always start my

Walk Across video Of a game And then I I do the same map again. A lot of times I start in a other, in a different corner. And then I do my run across. And if you can drive in the game, I also do my drive across. And if you can fly in the game.

So sometimes I took a plane and I flew to the other end. But most of the time I walk, run or drive. And I also did sometimes, I did, once I crouched across the map. there was godfather two and in godfather two your team is following you all the time and they are crouching two but i had to crouch because

you cannot walk in that game and i really wanted to to walk across that map so i had to crouch how long did that take and i also swinged across the map in a bad man right how long did crouching across the godfather map take? Well, Godfather 2 is about three maps and they're not so big. That's lucky, lucky for you, I guess. Well, no, no, but the crouching is not going that slow in that game.

It's just like walking in another game. Do you have any personal feelings about horses, about riding a horse or riding, if you mean Far Cry primal, you can ride a saber-tooth tiger or a bear? do you if you have various types of vehicles and or mounts do you do you also ride them or do you just ride one i think there's my limit you finally found it i don't uh no i'm not going to uh ride on animals in games i think uh no maybe in that's what you draw the line that's it yeah i don't know i don't know why i maybe when i do i will uh sunday i will do uh...

the Assassin's Greet games and I guess I will take a horse then but for now on no it's it's I don't want to make too much videos about one game because I think uh right will think yeah a dead game again so yeah I have to put a line and if you're driving or or even if you're walking I mean how much planning of your route do you do you do? do? Like, do you do much navigation? Do you look at the map and say, I'm going to go this way? And if I can't walk straight across, I'm going to navigate around this or I'm going to take this street or that street. Like, does it get that detailed? Or do you just sort of go and figure it out as you're walking? Well, no, I just start my walk. And that's, most of the time, that's the most beautiful

walk. I just start my walk. Like, I never been there. And it's true. I never been. And it's in that map so it's new for me too and i start my walk but only if i find out that it's not the shortest way or i i went the wrong way then i stop my video and then i do it all over again but most of the time the maps yeah you just can walk through everything through woods uh streets but sometimes like metal gear solid five there are a lot of mountains so i had to uh do that game a couple of, I had to do that walk a couple of times over because, that's a great horse game too, by the way. If you ever, if you ever want to try it, you know, change it up. Yes, that's true. But I also knew that there were two maps. So I had to do

two maps about it and walk, run, and then you have four videos. Yeah, I possibly could do that, but I don't know. I don't like horses, I guess. Do you do, did you go with the dog? Did you use the dog in that one? I didn't know if there's a dog because I played the first missions. I think yeah. I walked and ran the, Ah, that's right.

Yeah, you have to find it. You have to find it. That's right. So you did try no man sky, which seems like the ultimate challenge. So tell us what happened when you attempted that. Yes, I was walking. I thought I can walk around a planet. Yeah.

And I start my walk. And I was really enjoyed. enjoying the graphics because you can say what you want to say about the game, but you really get the feeling that you're out there when you walk a couple of hours. So I was enjoying it, but then after, I don't know, four hours, six hours, I don't know, three hours, I don't know exactly anymore. But then my character starts tolling around and it's like you are sucked by your spaceship again, a back. to your spaceship like they are saying no that's the line you cannot go any further but if you walk backwards you can go further yes interesting stupid so walk backwards across the map i'm not going to do that that's another line i have to uh you draw the line there yes yes i have to draw so um the character

was stalling around and i was like no man you cannot even go around a planet. I was starting it. The last 20 minutes of the video I am trying to walk further, but it's just not possible, not that time. Then somebody on internet had the same problem and somebody told me that if you saved or load a couple of times or do things like that, then it's it is possible. And I think there's also a patch that you, a few weeks ago, a month ago, had to I think they dropped a patch with also that

buck solved I think because I tried it another time when I was less angry about it and then I finished it but it's really weird how to counter

what you see on the counter because the first quarter of the walk around the planet the timer is going up like one hour away from your spaceship, then two hours away from your spaceship. But then it's going down again. So one hour of your spaceship, 20 minutes away from a spaceship,

and then you think you are there. And I was looking around and I couldn't find my spaceship. So another, I was really thinking again, it's just not possible to do this. But then I walked further in my part two of that walk around the planet. and then the counter is at zero, you don't see your spaceship. But then if you go further, the timer is going up again. And then after the third quarter, it's going down again. And then you're finally at your spaceship again.

And I was so happy when I saw my spaceship again. So it is possible to walk around a planet in no man sky. This reminds me, I don't know if you're aware of the guy who's been walking to the end of Minecraft. He's been doing it for a number of years now. I think he's estimated that it's probably going to take, I don't know, more than 10 years or something like that to walk to the end of the map. But he's, but the farther you get from where you spawn in, you know, the stranger things get because the, you know, the algorithms get glitchy and the map artifacts get glitchy. Do you find that as you travel to the edges of these maps that, you know, ostensibly parts of maps that maybe the developers are thinking,

no one's really going to come out here. Do you see anything weird out there? Yeah, no, not like in Norman Sky or Minecraft. And Norma Sky is, that was just that time. But no, sometimes I, Mafia Tree, I was walking and then I fell off the map almost. Yeah, something like that. When I wanted to walk through some bushes. But it was just not, yeah, I have to.

I walked back and I took another, a different pet. Well, do not try flying across the No Man Sky universe at sublight speeds. That would be probably the rest of your life. I think so, yes. Is No Man Sky, the first time you attempted it, is that the only time that you have failed to complete you? Yes. Okay, it is. And is Daggerfall the biggest that you've encountered, the biggest map?

Yeah, it's really the biggest. Some people think arena is bigger, but arena is a game map you cannot walk across. I wanted to do that, of course. And I started in the corner. I chose the city in the corner and I started my walk there. But if you walk, I was walking and you still are in the same city. It's still, I was starting in Arjun and after two hours I was still in Arjun. And you see the same trees all over again and the same house all over again.

You just see the same thing. So it's impossible because you never will reach the next town. It goes on and on forever, I guess. Maybe I will try it again in the future. But I am already convinced that it's impossible. It just goes on and on and on. And so you have to fast travel to go across the map. Are there any releases you're looking forward to?

I know that, let's see, Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2 is coming out next year. There's some others. It's any particular open world game that you're anxious to try, whether it's new or old. Or those Rican Wildlands is the one I'm looking forward. Yeah. That one seems dangerous. Maybe I can cheat, but God mode. but newer games don't have god modes anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. Very terrible. Yeah. The name of the channel and everything is how big is the map, but really the question you're answering is how much time does the map take to cross? Have you thought of actually trying to calculate the size? Like sometimes you'll see a developer will say, you know, the game is this many square

miles or square kilometers in size, but you are. less interested in that than the time it takes? No, it's because I don't think a lot of times that really is true what they say. Because about Daggerfall, they was saying it was the half of Great Britain. I hear some people say, but yeah, you don't have to go across the half of Great Britain in 69 hours. I don't think that's possible. No, probably not. Yeah.

So I don't know. it's yeah maybe i'm going to do that but i don't know how to calculate that yeah so maybe i will do that in the future but i don't think it's it's always right what they say and while you're doing this like are you multitasking while you're walking like if you get a phone call or if you get an email from work or something no no no it's just do you listen to music or a podcast or something or No, no, I just walk and try to enjoy the scenery, but, and most of the time I really enjoy the walk. So only with Daggerfall, I was, there was a book next to me. But that wasn't my, it wasn't my purpose because I just want to walk, but it was kind of boring because the trees disappear in the video number eight, I,

think. No more trees, just walking and only see brown ground. And it goes on and on. Also in video number nine. And then I was thinking, man, I have to take a book somewhere. So I stood up, still with my finger on the forward button. And I picked a book out of the cupboard and started to read because, yes, I couldn't take it anymore. One time. Yeah. Could I ask about your setup? Do you wear headphones? And what do you game on?

Like how big is the monitor? Like how much immersion are you really looking to do? I always play on PC. I don't have PlayStation 4 or Xbox 1. Maybe I have to buy those consoles because, yeah, most of the time games are first on those consoles. And then after a few months, once they're on the PC, so I'm late. But on the PC, with the Nvidia video card.

So, yeah, that's about it. And I use the Nvidia Shadow Play. That's your graphics card. I guess the last question is how many games are on your list, or will you ever finish? Will you ever catch up to the video game makers? Or is this an endless pursuit? I think it's endless.

This. Like I said, I am now in 2012. Do you want to hear some names of games? Sure. Yes. Okay. Well, I'm going to do sleeping dogs. Then Bartolands 2. Euro Truck Simulator 2. Need for Speed most wanted. Farquire 3. Saints Row 4. Dead Rising 3. Code simulator. New Kids, Nitro Razor. Also a ridiculous game. Watchdogs, Rise and Tree, Shadow of Murder, Borderlands pre-sequel, Dragon Age Inquisition, Assessus Creed Unity, Farquire 4, The Crew, Dying Light. Oh, I already did that one. Dying Light. Cross it off the list.

A lot of games are on the list. Also some games with not one map, but more maps like Hops. I want to do that one, those one too. So there are a lot of games on. the list also the newer games I want to do all the new games too of course that are coming out yeah well when I saw this YouTube channel I thought it was fascinating and you did not disappoint I think it's I'm even more fascinated now that I was before so everyone should follow this channel on YouTube how big is the map you can find it on Twitter too also at how big is the map there's a website how big is the map.com How big is the map?

So this is one of my favorite things on the internet. So I'm glad that you're out there doing this. It's nice to think at any point in time that you might just be walking across a map very peacefully somewhere. I'll think about this. Yeah, about this gotten worse. Thanks, thanks, thanks. All right. Thank you very much, Peter.

Okay, thank you. Goodbye. All right, I don't know how we're going to top that. I think we should all chip in to get Peter a Wii U so that he can tell us how big Breath of the Wild math is. I'm going to go walking aimlessly through my neighborhood until I come up to the edge of the environment. He's just such a, I don't know whether he's like a philosopher or he's just found an interesting way to meditate or whether there's something deep-seated driving this need. I particularly enjoyed that he had a very strong, like, moral. code about how he will walk through this landscape.

All right. I really enjoyed that. We'll have to have him on for an update at some point in the future. So we will end there. We will be back next week. Same time, same place. Talk to you then. Bye.