The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - Bonus! Glorious 25th: Video Game Chat

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, usually read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, bonus nonsense for the Glorious 25th of May as we talk pixels to platformers, in a video game special!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about: Virus, from “Smoke and Mirrors” by Neil Gaiman - Goodreads A tribute to Terry Pratchett | PC Gamer Terry Pratchett - Going by the Book - PC Gamer 1993 interview - PDF 'Help! I've been spotted!' Terry Pratchett on Thief, his favourite video game - Guardian Thief newsgroup (Pratchett’s contributions)Terry Pratchett - Online Radio Interview with the Author - The Author HourThe story behind the Oblivion mod Terry Pratchett worked on | Eurogamer.net Pratchett on video games - some bits we didn’t includeTurning Terry Pratchett's Discworld into Audiobooks [bit about theme music being inspired by Oblivion] - YouTubeThe E-Mail Interview - Terry Pratchett - PC Zone (January 1995) - PDF---Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

Hello and welcome to The Truth Shall Make You Fret, a podcast in which we are usually reading and recapping every one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series one at a time in Cronlod Clawder. But today, you may notice my voice is a little different, and that's because I'm not Joanna at all. I'm Francine because today we're doing a bonus episode for May 25th, if you know you know. And it's about video games, because we talked about that in the first Johnny in the Bomb. No, first Johnny and Maxwell trilogy book, thank you, dude, doing well. I did the first bit, all right, and I wanted to talk about it more. Now, I'm very excited to talk about video games. We can't really talk about anything

more May 25th relevant until next year. Exactly. I'm Francine Carroll. I'm Joanna Hagen. Yes. And that's as far as I can remember the intro. No, that's cool. I'm very impressed. Well I've actually felt a bit jealous watching you do my intro, Francine. I'm sorry, I'll never do it again. I don't know, it's fine. Usually, if I do an intro, it's for the Patreon stuff, so I never go through any of that because people know what the fuck we're listening to. A note on spoilers before we crack on, we're a spoiler light podcast. Obviously, heavy spoilers for video games. Yeah, no. I mean, not really. For the concept of video games, we are going to confirm whether or not they exist. In the book series, the Discworld book

series, we're currently up to Carpe Giaculum, so we won't be spoiling any major future events beyond that. And we will, of course, be saving any nor discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So, you dear listener, come on the journey with us. Lost in an infernal dungeon. From 8-bit pixels through to 160 FPS. Oh, that's much better. Well done. Now we're even. Okay. So, today, to give you a big idea of structure, we are going to eventually talk about video games in general. I'm going to ask Joanna a few questions about video games. I'll chime in every now and then, but Joe, as a budding game developer, is a bit more to say than I do.

And a giant nerd. And she is a giant nerd, yes. So am I in a slightly different direction? We need to go around to that chart. So, first of all, though, I've got a bunch of bookmarks relating to Terry Pratchett and video games that I haven't been able to shove in anywhere else yet. So, I thought I'd just tell you about a couple of fun things. Awesome. First of all, it's not really that it is. Have you played any of the Discworld games? Apparently, there's four. There are four. I haven't played any of them because I wasn't into Discworld when they were coming out a bit young. And then they're very hard to get hold of now. I have been plotting for a while. And I will get to it, setting up an emulator on my computer

and playing a few and doing some sort of stream. Okay. Is there no way to play through Steam or whatever now? No, I don't think so. Yeah. Okay, cool. Good. That answers that question because I thought that might make fun bonus material at some point. And I like the idea of you like Twitch-style streaming it. That's fun. Yes. I'll be there in the chat as making obnoxious comments. Yeah, please do. First thing I found in my little list of bookmarks was Pratchett was interviewed for the very first issue of PC Gamer in 1993. Oh, was it? The archived PDF of that is still available online, if you know where to look. And I found it and saved it. And I will put that somewhere accessible for people. Some of the bits about video games he talked about in there because

I think it preceded one of the video, the Discworld games coming out. I quite like one of the quotes saying like, what kind of games he likes. So this is 93 remember. So I'm not massively up on the landscape of gaming at the time. But so he says, I like Spirit of Destiny. There's something very nice if you're basically a pacifist kind of guy about kicking down the door and spraying a room with bullets in the privacy of your own home. It's good. And just about the type of games he thinks are good, he was kind of getting a bit introspective with it. It's just like, well, the point is, is a game good because it grips you for a week or two. I can, if the game's really got me by the throat, sit there for an afternoon until my eyes are like furry hard boiled eggs.

It's only when I've got to the end that I can stop playing the bloody thing and get on with some work. Just familiar? Yeah, that's a personal attack. Personal attack all the way from 1993. Rude. I was a baby Pratchett. This is very rude of me. Well, now you're bothering him in the afterlife. So I feel like it's even. Yeah, I think we balance out. But yeah, so in that interview, he was talking about some of the games he does like, he said Wing Commander, which I think we mentioned before in the context of that book. Wow, literally like two weeks ago. Fantastic. Oh, Tetris. Not only did I eventually wipe it off

my hard disk, I threw it away and use Norton's utilities to make sure I could never ever use it again. There is something about like block placement, switchy round games that is just so, so super addictive. Brain tickling. Yeah. Like I want, I fancy playing one when I had a couple hours of just not really doing anything the other day and I downloaded it. And then like two weeks later, I suddenly realized how much time I'd lost to it over the last two weeks and I had to delete it off my phone because it was unhealthy. Is it like Candy Crush type thing? Yeah. Yeah. So that, I think it's a whole separate side issue we can't get into, but a particularly interesting one because yeah, you're quite right. And I think there's been studies into it, isn't it? That

type of game. They're designed to be addictive and to, they're designed to be addictive and to kind of push you into spending money. Yeah. And it's that put on top of Tetris, basically, which is like, again, a really studied addictive game. I mean, not with such an nefarious intent, I assume. But I mean, they're people talking about dreaming about it for weeks afterwards, aren't they? Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's a really good little Neil Gaiman short, creepy short story poem-y thing in one of his collections. Before the episode is over, I'll see if I can find what it's called that's about that sort of getting stuck dreaming on an addictive game thing. Oh, awesome. Cool. Yeah, we'll link that. Nice. And then something I've never played,

but this might mean something to you. He managed to finish Prince of Persia, which is apparently not easy. No, it's not. Then moving on to slightly more sophisticated video games in early 2000s to mid 2000s, thief two, he was apparently very into. He was like super active in the like forums and fan boards and stuff. Yes, exactly. So, so there's a Guardian article, which I'll link to, which collated some of the coolest comments from that one. And I will also link to his comments in the same way that I do to the alt-top fan or perhaps some things. It's just quite nice reading through just him being in a good mood on the internet. It's not him like,

techily answering criticisms. It's him like, so I keep getting spotted on this level. He mentioned in there that he quite liked Far Cry. And I also saw him be persuaded into buying Oblivion, which takes us on to the next point, which was a beautiful article, really nicely written. I'll link to it and do read this one, listeners. On Eurogamer, which is the story behind the Oblivion mod that he practically worked on. So, he, I'll start off by saying, okay, there was an interview with the author hour where he talked about mods in general. And he says, I just enjoy the fact that in this world that's rather controlled by commerce, there's this inner world of people giving up their time and effort to perfect some

little detail about a computer game for the delectation of others. I told this to my wife and I said, how good the weather was in the game, you know, it's immersive, you feel like you're there. And she said, are there rainbows? And I said, I don't think so, but I'll check. And yes, someone's taken the trouble to mod for the Oblivion game, rainbows. So if you're standing in exactly the right place in the game, between the sun and the rain, you will see a rainbow in the sky. Here is a game with dragons, well, no dragons, but with demons and vampires and bandits. And there are rainbows. And there's a gardening mod. You can plant your own garden and grow your own vegetables or their sailing mods. And some of them are most of them. Oh, sorry. And some of them

are, well, most of them add to the enjoyment. There's whole websites full of it. And I think there's a craft in itself and some wonderful stuff is produced and I salute the people that take time to do this for no other reason that they want to exercise their skills and hand it to a community. And I tend to write little notes saying, that boy, that was really good. I really enjoyed this. Or sometimes, you know, that didn't work on that particular bit. But it takes something which is in a sense kind of passive and makes it sort of more real. I mean, we want to do some modding. I've been looking a lot at modding. Oh, that seems like something you should do. No, it's good. It's a good thing to do for the portfolio. And there are like big mod teams

now. There's something I'm looking at. There's a group of people who are basically creating a huge Skyrim mod, which is they're putting Morrowind, I think, into Skyrim. I'm not familiar with like all the Elder Scrolls lore and stuff. But they're like hiring. It's all volunteer based, but they're taking on like writers and things for it. So, but I need to read up on the lore a bit, because like I've watched other people play Skyrim a bit. And that's it. Oh, you've not played, have you? I saw how into it all my friends were getting. And I know what my personality is like. And I knew that if I downloaded Skyrim, I would do nothing else for like 10 years. Yeah, I would suggest playing it before trying to write for a mod. I will play some for that purpose. Oh, right.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But then you want some back, backlog of lore. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so the oblivion mod itself specifically, he contributed to Villier, I think that's how it's pronounced, V-I-L-J-A, which is a companion mod made by Modder Emma. He became enamored with the character, because it was just really well written. He liked how it reacted if you like go for a gift of strawberries, things like that. And so he reached out to express his appreciation. And later, after having a bit of conversation with the modder, added some suggestions and eventually became a bit of a collaborator. So from the article, together with Charles, the three worked on the Pack Donkeys mod, which allowed players to purchase up to four Pack Donkeys from the Troll Stables.

Pratchett delighted in the fact that his donkey, Shiko, kept stealing carrots and getting him and Villier into trouble with the Imperial Guard. And he wrote a lot of the dialogue to the point where his writing was used in the Skyrim version of the mod in the lore of Villier's great-great granddaughter. And one extra bit that I didn't realise until I reread this, I must have missed it the first time around, he specifically requested one of the important functions of Villier, which is the lead the way function. So this allows the companion to lead the player out of the dungeon they're in. And that helped him continue to play as his Alzheimer's worsened. Oh, wow. Yeah. So if you like lost track of, because I do that all the fucking time anyway,

if you're dealing with Alzheimer's, you lose track of where you're at in a dungeon and you just have the I'm lost function and Villier will lead you out again. Oh, amazing. Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah. And that's all the bits and pieces I had, but well, there's not quite all the bits and pieces I have bookmarked. It's the ones I can justify going on about in this one. But I'll link to all of that and some other interesting bits. Yeah. There's some like audio and video interviews of Pratchett about video games they'll link to as well. But obviously, it's harder to put across in a yes. Yeah. I just sort of take great joy in knowing that my favourite author also really

enjoyed this as a thing to do. Yeah, for sure. It is, it is delightful reading him talking, reading or listening to him talking about a hobby. Yeah. Because while his, his output kind of is our hobby, obviously for him, it was a, you know, there's all the sawny issues of copyright and people criticising and, and him always having to field even quite nice mail or whatever. It's not it's like the don't monetise your hobbies thing. I mean, obviously, this was always a career for him, but you're never going to enjoy it in the same way that you do. Something that you do purely for fun. Yeah. So you've got some questions. Some questions. Yes. What's the first video game you remember playing? Definitely Tomb Raider 2. Well, okay. So because I talked about Tomb Raider

on the podcast. Definitely. But Tomb Raider 2 is the first video game where I remember playing apart from this goes back to was just talking about Tetris. My mum had a very, I say very old, I think it was 80s, like knock off texture Tetris handheld thing called brick game. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I played that pretty obsessively. But yeah, we got Tomb Raider 2, like kind of free with our computer. And my mum, my sister and I got really obsessed with it. Oh, all three of you. Yeah, like, my mum would sit playing. My sister and I would take turns reading from the strategy guide. Sometimes my sister would have a go. But for some reason, I was also super freaked out for it and wouldn't play anything other than like,

the level like the assault course at home by myself, I'd get super panicky as soon as something came jumped out and started attacking me. How old are you? Like probably six or seven. All right. And I still get like really stressed out when I play that game. So there's a level like the spider, the spiders do not look even slightly realistic in it. And actually, spiders in video games normally don't bother me at all because they're one removed. I don't know why that because they I can't deal with them in films and stuff. Like I have no idea what She-Lob looks like in Lord of the Rings films. I've never had my eyes open. You don't need to. Pretty much what you think. Yeah. But the spiders in Tomb Raider 2 freaked me out because they

freaked me out when I was a kid. And there's a level with giant spiders near the end. And the first time I played it on my own was like as an adult looking ones. Yep. Yeah. As an adult, I tried playing it on my own. And I genuinely couldn't do the level with giant spiders in it. Not a lie. That looks fairly realistic for the time. It is realistic for the time. By the time I was playing it as an adult by myself, it was not realistic for the time. All right. Fine. Yes. I have since managed to get past the giant spiders in the penultimate level and I have completed the game by myself. I sympathize not with the spider thing particularly. I'm sure I'd be the same with the wasps. It just made me vomit. But I'm a controller dropper.

I flinch. I'm a very nervy player of games, like fallout, whatever, if a deathcore jumps out at me, I've dropped the controller on the floor. Yeah, like I strict. I do not play. Very funny. I do not play like horror games because even like especially first person games, they freaked me out. Like Bioshock, I struggle with. Have you ever done any kind of VR like even tried it? Sorry, I'm just hopping way ahead now. No, no, it's cool. Yeah, a couple of times. So one of the few horror games I played a little bit of my friend, kind of our friend, American Anthony got it when it was still vaguely new for PlayStation. How are we there? There was like a horror roller coaster game we all took a turn on.

And that was very weird because you're playing in VR it genuinely feels like you're on a roller coaster and like you feel yourself move up and down because I guess it does something to your brain. And then yeah, giant dead pigs and zombies and stuff flying out at you in VR that freaked me out. Yeah, I think I opted out of that bit. I think I had to go at one of the other ones. I was at a friend's I haven't played much VR because like I'm not going to spend the money on it for myself. I know I won't play it enough. Gaming for me is a sitting down and relaxing thing not a getting stressed to that level thing. I do get very stressed by some games. But I was at a friend's and we were playing this. It's like a bomb defusal game and one

person's wearing the VR headset. Yeah, is that good? It's so fun. I love playing it when you're one of the people who's not wearing the VR headset and so you're solving the puzzle and telling them what to do. Right. But I got so stressed out when I had the headset on that I was just like, no, I've got to stop. I can't do this because I'm self conscious. I'm in front of a group of people and I'm wearing this silly headset and I can't see what's going on around me. And yeah, I found it really stressful. That surprises me. Just because you're usually a bit better than most people I know performing under pressure. I don't know. I think it was the like sensory deprivation thing of it. The fact that I can

hear people around me, but I don't know what's going on in the room around me and I can't see the room. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah, you don't have all the info. Which games do make you stress them that you do play? I am the sort of person who will get really ragey when I can't win a fight or something in a game like boss fights and stuff. So I just finished Horizon, Fibon and West and there were a couple of big fights that I did manage eventually, but it took me a few goes. And the way some of the difficulty and levels of damage and stuff you take had changed from the first game as well. I ended up tweaking the difficulty, which is something I absolutely never judge people for doing. And I think it's weird when people get judgmental on it.

Yeah, absolutely. Do you generally start like middle when you play a game? See how that goes and then tweak? Yeah, I generally start normal. I really hate difficulty based trophies because I haven't platinumed that many games, but I have platinumed a few. But when you have to complete a game on the nightmare version to get all the trophies, that irks me because I don't necessarily enjoy it. But I wanted, so Dragon Age is my comfort game that I go back and replay a bunch. So I'm replaying Dragon Age inquisition again. I thought, okay, now I should try it on nightmare because I've played it so many times before and I'll actually get the trophy. And that was really stressful for like five levels, but now I'm really enjoying it.

I really enjoy, I got very into Fallout 4's hardcore mode, whatever that's called. I think it's just called hardcore. The main changes being you can't save and yes, you find somewhere specific to sleep. And like with a big open world game, that's quite a challenge sometimes. So you end up, it makes it a bit more immersive because I ended up like making a little base in a house by the river, which was reasonably safe as long as I cleared out the enemies every now and then. It makes you feel more like you're in like a sci-fi, post-apocalyptic situation. Yeah, you can go back to it and get rest. And yeah, I like that. I don't think high difficulty is necessarily good or bad.

But no, no, it is without moral judgment, isn't it? That's the thing. If you enjoy it, you enjoy it. If you don't, you don't. It's not, yeah. My husband is very into video games. There's similarly non-judgmental. He will quite happily play through all the difficulties to get all the different trophies. I mean, you think you're a completionist with games. He is fucking, it takes forever. I'll watch him for weeks sometimes. I'm like, you don't enjoy this game anymore. He's like, no, I'm going to finish it. Especially when games have got collectibles. Like I was really glad with Horizon Forbidden West. It's not a spoiler. There's lots and lots of collectibles, but you do not need to do all of them to get all the trophies. And so my plan was

like, oh, I'll go finish off those last bits and tidy up the game. Once I finished the whole story and then once I'd finished the story, I was like, I will go and do the bare minimum I need because there's like two trophies I don't have. And then that's it. I'm not going to go around and then get all of the collectibles I've missed because life is very short. Oh, sorry. Do you have any particular levels or bosses that stand out in your memories being particularly awful? The second time you have to fight the sorceress in Spyro Year of the Dragon because for a bunch of it, you're on like this awkward little UFO thing that's really difficult to control when you've been like land-based for most of it. So yeah, that stressed me out a lot.

That's interesting. Spyro the Dragon, that was PlayStation 1, right? Yeah. Do you do most of your gaming console, have you always? Yeah, apart from like I said, we had Tomb Raider on the PC growing up because that came with it, but then I got bought a PlayStation 1 when I was still a kid. And from that, I was pretty much a console because it was kind of easier to get console games than PC games a lot of the time. And you were more likely to find them on sale. I freed up the computer for other things because generally it was a one computer per household back then. It was a family computer. Like I didn't have my own one.

What were you like childhood favourites then apart from Tomb Raider? So completely obsessed with Spyro Year of the Dragon because it was like the first one I got on my PlayStation. And I had a Game Boy colour as well, so Pokémon obviously. Oh yeah, same. Which colour? It was purple? Yeah, it was purple. Oh, I mean the Pokémon game. Oh, oh yeah. No, I had Pokémon yellow. Ah, I got yellow eventually. I started off with blue. I think one of my friends

ended up with like an extra yellow for a birthday present game, that as well. So I was very pleased. I've still got my yellow Game Boy colour upstairs. No games for it. I don't know what happened to all the games, but I managed to hold on to that. I got it when I was 9 or 10. Me and Charlie saved up money and like bought it together and mum paid for half of it. I don't remember what happened to my first Game Boy. I think eventually I got a Game Boy advance and I gave the Game Boy away to someone with the games. But then I can't remember if I ever told you this story. When I was in like sixth form, I had this really lovely friend who knew I used to get really bad January blues. He made me like a January advent calendar,

like a random little gift every day in January. And the gift for the 31st of January was like he'd somehow managed to get hold of a yellow Game Boy colour and a copy of Pokémon yellow. And that was my, it was in that weird time before they were vintage enough to be super expensive and difficult to get again. So for all I know it was like his old one or something, but it still worked. And I sat and played all of Pokémon yellow again. It made me really happy. Oh, that's so nice. Did you ever have like, did you ever do all the cheats and that for the Pokémon games? Like the missing go, wasn't there? I never did the cheats for Pokémon games. But again, Tomb Raider, we looked up all the

cheats and do all of them because we thought it would be really fun. But I never really got into like cheat codes and stuff. I knew they existed. Yeah. Well, you've had to, of course, this is all pretty easy internet access. You had to get them through word of mouth or through these manuals that you would pick up in game shops. Yeah. It would be like the complete game guide to whatever game, and it cost nearly as much of the game again. Yeah. And it would strategy guides and they'd often come with cheats and things like that. And sometimes you get them in like the game of magazines and Easter eggs and stuff as well. Like I'd never know to look for Easter eggs in games if I hadn't read about it

in a magazine. Yeah. I feel like cheats, they're quite fun. Like again, no moral judgment on this at all. But it's kind of a, it almost seems to have a bit of a moral lesson in there somewhere because it very quickly makes the game less fun. Yeah. Because when you can get everything. Yeah. Age of Empires 2, for instance, is really, was it Age of Empires 1? Even I don't remember. But really fun for a while when you work out, you can like cheat code, you went into infinite resources and a motor car. Yeah. But then you're like, oh, well, this isn't really a game anymore. The only one that I feel like cheat codes were part of the gameplay experience was The Sims. Oh, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. But The Sims is a weird one because I never had it at home,

but I had a friend who had it. So we'd play it whenever I was at her house. She had two PC games I was obsessed with. We'd play The Sims a bunch and build these ridiculous houses, which is where I learned the cheat codes. And she had like a Barbie horse show jumping game that for some reason, I was super obsessed with doing the dressage thing. That I've never even heard of that one. But yeah, Sims I had Sims. I or Becky had, which it really didn't matter because we were around each other's houses constantly. Yeah. And then I've still got, well, I own a digital copy of The Sims 3. I think. Yeah. Which I've played for a while. But every now and then I'll bring it out and get

very obsessed for like two days. Yeah, this is another one that like, I don't own as an adult because I know it's something that will be a time drain for me. Like I'm more conscious of what is a massive time drain and what isn't and I'm more careful about what games I buy because of that. How do you navigate that in general with games then? Like, do you feel like you're wasting time if you play games for too long? Or is it more you want to be able to control when you stop? It's I want to be able to control when I stop. Because I don't know between compulsive tendencies and general control for you know, so I tend to plan my days out to a certain extent. And video games are very much like a thing I can do for a couple of hours in the evening to relax. Yes.

Or not depending on how stressful the boss fight is. Yeah. Sorry. And sometimes I'll like allow for like a lazy day of the weekend where I just play games for a few hours, because sometimes it's really satisfying to have like a six hour session. Yeah. But yeah, so I pick games that I really want to play or like it's like with Dragon Age, it's like rereading a favorite book over and over again. I like the story and I like the different stuff you can do with the story. Dragon Age he played a whole bunch. I played I'm not sure what this is only like the fifth playthrough, which if you compare to like how often I reread a book I really love isn't a lot, but for a game it is a lot to read. And that's just in position like I played the

first and second one a bunch as well. So I mean, that kind of answers my what's your favorite game now question. It's a favorite in that like it's comforting for me, I will always really love like that series because it's like really good lore and world building. And it's fun and the more you learn of the lore and world building the more you pick up on in the game and those are really exciting. Yeah, but it's I think it's still tied with like Horizon Zero Dawn for favorite because Horizon Zero Dawn is just so good. Such a good game. It's such an amazing bit of storytelling. I'm gonna my own issue with time wasting in quotes and video games is that I just feel it's been years since I really got into one because I sit there feeling guilty about it the

entire time. Yeah, I don't, Jack sits there and plays for hours and hours and I don't feel that way towards him. I don't feel judgy towards him. It's just when I'm doing I'm like I should be achieving. I feel like maybe when I've achieved things in life I will feel less that way. But at the moment I'm like I should be achieving someone I don't fucking sit there doing other shit instead. But I don't know. I don't know why games in particular kind of set that off in my brain. That's why I kind of specifically have it as like an evening relax one down time like so I will, depending on how obsessed with my own product productivity on any given week, I will feel guilty if I start playing games before nine o'clock in the evening. Right. I will feel guilty

if I play any later than 11 o'clock in the evening. I think this is why I've not kept up with handheld games. I quite like the idea of a switch but I don't need something I can take upstairs with me. Yeah, I feel like I just kind of think, Oh, well, pick it up for a bit and maybe play like while I'm watching TV. Exactly. The phone's bad enough. I don't need something like designed to be that fun absorbing. Yeah. I do. I did love Nintendo stuff. So Nintendo 64 was my first console and like Pokemon stadium and I never had one but my cousin had one. So we'd go over and play it obsessively whenever we were there and I was like super jealous that I couldn't get a game to game cube. But I did I got one

still come around and play it. I know we keep saying we need to have like a little game cube night. I've got Smash Bros. I've got Mario Kart. We will have a Mario Kart night. Do you like Smash Bros? I love Smash Bros. I love Smash Bros. Come play Smash Bros. I usually play Pikachu but I'm willing to be flexible. No, you can play Pikachu. It's fine. Thank you. Sorry, I'm chewing him in now. Sorry. Yeah, it was weird. So my friend got me because I played I tried Guild Wars when I was like 14 and kind of got into it but it didn't run very well on my computer. So now as an adult my friend is super obsessed with Guild Wars too and he's like oh you need to play it. Let's download it.

So when I first put it on my laptop, it didn't run very well. My laptop's not really built for that sort of thing. Yeah. But it was very weird because it's like oh I can sit in game on my laptop while having TV on in the background and somehow that feels more productive than just sitting and playing games. So obviously. Maybe I'll try that. I could take my laptop through to the living room. It's almost always static here hooked up to the screen and the keyboard and everything. But I've taken it off my laptop now because I've got like a nice fancy computer where it looks gorgeous and runs really smoothly. But I hardly ever play it because I don't feel like I can sit down and relax for an evening in this room because this is the room I do my work things in.

Yeah. Maybe when you start modding you can combine them better. Yes, probably. Things like sim games not just the sims. Did you ever get into things like like Monopoly Tycoon or like SimCity or any of that? No. I never really got super into those occasionally. I don't mean Monopoly Tycoon. Rollercoaster Tycoon. Yeah. There were more games that my friends had and I'd play when I was at their houses in games I ever had. And whenever I started playing when I would get super into it and then I wouldn't want to play it again as soon as I'd stopped, if you know what I mean, like I wasn't desperate to have a copy of it. Yeah, because you weren't like waiting for the next bit of the story or whatever. No, I think it's also

because I started on things like Spyro and Crash Bandicoot as well as Tomb Raider. I was more into some like platformers and actiony things and that's kind of stuck with me. Yeah. I feel like now this is where I need your expertise. The kind of line to me between like a story-driven game and a platformer seems to have blurred more. And I don't know if that's just because I've seen more of them where... I think it's always blurred. Being blurred, I don't think they're mutually exclusive. And then you have RPG as well, but then some RPGs are a bit platformish. Like I would say like Horizon, the Horizon games are like a blend of RPG and platformer. Because there's a lot of climbing and movement-based stuff that you've got to be doing,

but they're also very based around the story and engaging in the role of the main character and deciding what you would do as that character. And combati. And combati, yeah. So a storyline very important to you in a game. Yeah, I mean, that's the main reason I play games. It's a lot like reading a book or watching a film for me, but more interactive. Yeah. Does like the presence of meaningful choices as a character important to you then? Can you just sit back and enjoy the story knowing it's going to happen whichever way or is it quite... Because I know Dragon Age is very... It makes a lot of difference, doesn't it? Yeah. I mean, Dragon Age and like Mass Effect as well. So they're both by aware of the same company. Like lots of people joke,

like Mass Effect is Space Dragon Age or Dragon Age is Fantasy Mass Effect. And they're both... There are massive choices you can make that like affect the whole world and they carry over from game to game. Like Dragon Age has this whole thing, you can go online and set up all your choices. It's so cool. You can set up all your choices from the first few games to create like this world to then play out the third game in. But I don't mind stories that are more linear and don't have all these different branching narratives and choices if they're good stories. Yeah. Okay. And so things like dialogue, do you pay a lot of attention to that as well as like the, you know, the overall storyline?

Yeah, because I feel like dialogue is where a lot of games can get a bit let down. Because it's obviously dealing with a lot more mechanics than say writing dialogue for screen or for in a book or something. Because the dialogue has to work, but you also need to be able to do the cinematic and program it. And so it can sometimes fall by the wayside and get a bit clunky. Or if you've got like a main character trying to sort of monologue a bit, it can get very cheesy. Yes. Yes, it can. I just remembered another quote from that 1993 Pratchett article, which I thought you might find amusing, which fits in here. So the question being, adventure games are very often described as interactive fiction. The idea that being that

the player is shaping the narrative in his role as the central character is that description justified. Pratchett says, I've always thought that idea was a bit suspect, because there's a limit to what you can really do. You can only have a certain number of limited choices and a number of those choices are going to bring you back into one particular thread. You can't really branch out into some huge decision tree. I'm not sure the truly interactive game has yet been invented. Following on to how do you see the computer gameplay, gameplay and medium evolving in the future? Well, first of all, let's take virtual reality. I don't believe in it. The trouble with VR is that while you're clonking around in your dating gloves with your headset on, there's a billion

bugs out there in the real world who are metaphorically going to be putting your car up or bricks and ripping the tires off. I must confess that I don't see the future of gaming going too much further. Some things really do go as far as they can go like the bicycle. You get to the point where all you can do with a bicycle is find slightly different ways of producing it. There is an awful lot of difference between the fastest racing bike now and the vickers bicycle of the 30s. So, slightly non-fricy and fratted in 93 here. I mean, he's not totally wrong. Gaming has got a lot bigger in that games themselves are bigger, the narratives can be a lot bigger. Obviously, they're much prettier and shinier.

But from 93, we're talking here. So things like sandbox games went to think. No, very true. I don't know about the future of VR myself. I'm biased because it's not something I've gotten into. I think it is a novelty that will never replace gaming the way people game now. Yeah. I think it's like another thing you can do. I don't think it's ever going to become the thing that you do. I quite fancy getting one, like one of the compact ones, just play like those music hit the with your lightsaber game. But that's very expensive. Oh, I fancy trying that. Exactly. But yeah. Characters, when it comes to like character writing for a game,

do you think that gets kind of put by the wayside a bit as well? Do you think does character writing mean like, like especially for your own character, there's kind of two ways you can do it, isn't there? There's like, this is pretty much a blank personality project yourself onto it. And then there's a like, more like Horizon Zero Dawn where you've got, this is your character. You are this person who has these personality traits. I like with Horizon Zero Dawn that you can also do like slightly different emotional reactions. It's not a branching narrative thing. It doesn't change the story long term, but it gives you a feeling of control over that character. But yeah, I don't think there's

anything wrong with, I'm not a big fan of the blank slate character. I think it's fine to have a character that has their own wants and needs is written like that. And as you're playing the game, you're not completely in that character said, you're seeing what their wants and needs are, because you are again, it's like a story. It's your role playing, it's a story. Maybe it's more of a first person thing. I really enjoyed black, this is fakie related black and white on the PC. And black and white too, we play as a God, you are this hand of God, moving stuff around. And depending on the decisions you make, your hand becomes like more or less evil looking. I've never played it, but I've seen lots of play videos of it.

It's good fun. Black and white too, I got at one point, but my computer at the time was too shit to run it properly and you did that frustration, you were just saying about it, the skipping and the lagging and so it just put me off the whole thing. Maybe I'll get it again one day if it's still on steam. Yeah, do you have like a favorite character then from a video game? Like is it a playable character or is it just any? Either. First playable character, that was a playable character. I will just forever love Lara Croft. I know it sounds like I'm only talking about three video games. I swear I have played more. I know you have.

Complete mental blank and they're just the ones that are always like more forefront. Yeah. But like every version of Lara Croft, even when it's like weirdly sexualized or when it's been kind of redone and like the newer Tomb Raider games really well written, I would just put it back into it. Yeah, fire a daughter. I'm not just saying they're well written because Rihanna Pratchett wrote them, but they only worked on all of them. I will always have such a fondness for her because it's such an iconic character, it's existed for so long and because it was a female hero before I got to really see female heroes and stuff. I wasn't like a comics reader apart from the Beano, so I was aware of Lara Croft way before I was aware of Captain

Marvel. Yeah. And also it was like much needed representation for polygon tits. Yeah, before that all we really had was Madonna and the Cone Bra. Which was probably a contemporary actually. Oh dear. How about like side characters and things then? Oh, I'm now trying to think. I had a very weird not a crush crush on and I now can't remember his name, but the hunter, the cheetah that like follows you around and shows you how to do stuff in Spyro because he was like a cool dude bro cheetah. Nice, yeah. Friend crush. Yeah. Like it wasn't a natural crush. I feel like I really need to clarify that I'm not a furry now. No, I think a lot of children have that kind of, you know, you've got a bit of a crush on the

personality. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, like he was a cool, cool dude bro that showed you how to skateboard. So I was super into that. But also he was a cat. And what more can you ask for? Oh, and literally any character voiced by Claudia Black because she's voiced a lot of video game characters and I do love her. She is she's done Bioware characters. She was one of the main ones in Dragon Age. She's been in Mass Effect. Which one I watched you play in Dragon Age? Morrigan, the witchy one. Okay, yeah. But she's also in Farscape. Oh, I've seen some of that. I can't remember the character's name now, but the dark haired like kind of romantic love interest. Yeah. Very cool. I just really love her. Very nice. So with other aspects of the game then,

do you like things like puzzles within a game? I do, but I am absolutely not above googling them if it takes me more than like five minutes to work out. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm never going to sit and want to play a game that's like all puzzles. Yes. Say like puzzle as part of the quest is fine, but not as a yeah, not if that's the whole entire theme. Because you like puzzles as themselves, don't you? You're very good at crosswords and things. I do. I think there's something about the mindset I'm in if I'm gaming because it's like, right, I have two hours of this enjoyment to get through this bit of game and then I will go to bed. So if I have to do a puzzle and I've got to stop for like 10 minutes and sit and work it out and I'm not doing anything

else while I'm doing that, I'm annoyed and I just want to get on with playing the game. So that's fair. That's fair. Coming towards the end then, because at some point my shopping is going to turn up and I'm all right with that. I've deliberately stayed away from most of the serious topics around in gaming because who the fuck wants to talk about that right now? But what are your general and they can be nice positive ones if you like your general thoughts on video games influence like as regarding social changes, do you think things like representation within video game characters are useful? Have they been useful to you? Yeah, absolutely. I think they're kind of underrated as art form, like as a form of

entertainment for how much of an effect they can have. I don't think it really occurs to people who complain about too much representation, what that representation means to someone who isn't used to seeing themselves, things like the opportunity for your character to be queer or not, or just not having like an enforced hetero romance in there. That's something like especially with the Final Fantasy games, I know a lot of people have talked about, but things like just having characters of color of not necessarily having race exist the way it works in our world if it's set in a completely different world. Those things are just important in games as they are in film and television. And I am optimistic that the industry itself

is getting a lot more diverse and games are becoming more diverse as a result. And do you think the kind of, I hesitate, you use such a noble term as naysayers, do you think the twats who complain about that are going to just be dragged along with it eventually? Yeah, I don't see us really backsliding on it. Again, looking at what's happened in the film and TV industry, it don't get me wrong, we're still not there, a lot of work to be done. But I don't think a couple of people saying I'm not going to play this game, it's too woke, is really going to stop. Because I don't think a game has ever really been hurt by the wokeness sales. No, no, you'd get that idea, wouldn't you, if you're in certain subreddits? But in

reality, has that ever translated? Like the fury at the last of us two focusing on a female protagonist and apparently that's too muscular. Yes, no, how dare they? How dare they? Yes. Yes. Have you, I know you've not really had a lot of time recently, but have you got like a little list of indie games you want to end up playing? I have a bunch. I really want to play Hades, I keep hearing really good things about it. Pretty much anything that comes up on like the PlayStation Plus freebie games for the month, I stick in my library to play when I get around to them. Oh smart, yeah. And then I'm constantly getting friends recommending me stuff on Steam, so I've got like a little wish list for when I want to sit down on PC game for a bit. Nice.

Cool, right. Did we have some listener, what's it? Oh, did we? I didn't even check. Oh yeah, sorry. I only I noticed the emails come in yesterday. I assumed you asked for listeners I did. I forgot to check if they did. This is leading because I've seen one here. This is quite leading because I've seen one I really want to answer. Hold on. I'm just opening Patreon. Here we go. Okay. So PD Dolong asks, the obvious question is video game storytelling as valid for one to the best word as traditional books or all stories or plays? So this is the one I was looking forward to answer. I've got two answers for this. The first one is the very short one, which is yes, of course it is. What a silly question. I don't mean that. I know

that sounds very harsh. The longer answer, I'm not going to do my massive tirade about what isn't valid as an art form. You can hold things up as classics that some things are trashy, pop things and they are all equally valid because it's a weird nebulous concept. But the biggest storytelling in games, it's just as valid. It's just as hard work. It's just as creative writing and obviously I'm very biased because it's literally the job I'm trying to get. But you are biased and from an educated edition, I'd say, because you have also written the rest of that stuff. I mean, it's not an entire book, but you've written plays. I've written plays, I've written poetry and plenty of prose. It's absolutely as valid. It's different. It's harder

work. It's more like writing theatre or writing for screen than it is writing straight up prose. More technical challenges. There's more technical challenges. You need to have a big awareness of things like background and lore and thinking about- You've stepped in 70 Else's universe a lot of the time, aren't you? Exactly. And similar with board games and stuff, I just played through Massive Darkness 2, which is a massive role-playing board game. My friend and I did a whole campaign over the weekend and we played lots of the one-shot ones as well. And that's really good. Like Solid, there is a story running through all of these

board game campaigns you're playing where you end up fighting the Archangel Got Michael. So yes, it's absolutely as valid. It takes just as much talent and skill. And I have experienced stories in video games that are just as likely to make me have an emotional reaction. I'm not actually going to say cry because obviously I don't do that ever. No. We're always joking when we talk about how easily we cry. Exactly. I don't actually ever cry. It's a scar-stricken face here. You can't see it. There have genuinely been moments in video games that have made me sob just as much as reading a particularly well done and sad book. And I mean, that's not really been the case for me,

but that doesn't mean they're less valid. I think a lot of people mix up valid and what I enjoy personally. Yeah, that's the other thing. Smash that together. It's like you hear people speaking out against fiction as a concept for goodness sake. Yeah. I mean, we've obviously talked on the podcast about how like some people treat fantasy as its own weird sub, not as important thing as literary fiction. And then obviously your mileage may vary. I play video games very much motivated by what I enjoy in a story of a video game that like my brother-in-law couldn't really give a fuck about story. Yeah. So he wants to go and play Red Dead Redemption 2 where he can just run around having fun being a cowboy.

That's true. I didn't even ask you about like your favourite combat mechanics in games. I actually just replayed and logged into my friend's PlayStation now, which is like Netflix, but for video games. And it was that crappy game I was trying to remember the name of when you guys are over at New Year's Wet, which has got a really fun, you're playing like an assassin who's also a hot girl with red hair voiced by Eliza Dushku, who was faith in Buffy. Okay. But the combat's really fun because it's things like press at this button and you'll slo-mo slide across the floor on your knees while shooting everyone in range. Oh, that sounds fun. It is really satisfying. The actual game is terrible, but that's fun.

Good. Well, and then we have another question from Danielle. I unfortunately cannot follow or play video games, but many of my friends and loved ones are gamers. How do I ask questions that make them feel like I care even though I understand nothing? It really depends on what kind of games they're into. Like it varies hugely. There are some people who are big MMO gamers who are excited about a new area they get to explore or changes in their stats, a character they've managed to build up from nothing, possibly over quite a long time if it's like a World of Warcraft thing or something. Or if they're into more like me, they're into the big narrative heavy games, ask about it the way you'd ask about a book someone's reading, what's it about? Is it fun?

Yeah. And I mean, you can always, if you literally don't know where to start from, just say, what do you like about that game? Yeah. Nick, some of the questions I've asked Joanna today. Yeah, do that. Tell me about your favorite ones as a kid. Go from there. Tap into nostalgia. Nostalgia is always fun to tap into. And now I want to go play Spyro again. Well, you can do that if you like. That's up to you. It's the evening now. No, I'm making a little 2D platformer side scroll thing. I'm doing a game jam. But I was going to do a choose your own adventure text based thing. And then I had this huge stumbling. I cannot write anything when I started trying to work on it today. So

I'm learning how to make a 2D platformer to see if some different inspiration strikes. Cool. Yeah. I want to see a video of that when it gets over. I will. I will send you a video. It's quite fun so far. I'm not surprised you didn't get like too far with the writing a bit. If you're knackered, then trying to try to, it's not just the writing either, is it? If it's like choose your own adventure game, it's writing and keeping a million threads in your head at the same time. I'm always fine with that. Once I'm started, I'm good, but I would have had to start today and I couldn't get over that very first hurdle. And there are times where it's really not worth forcing it. And that goes for all writing.

Yes. I quite enjoyed our little rant this morning. I'll cut off at some point. Not going to publicly talk about me ranting about fan fiction. Yeah. Cool. All right. Do you reckon that's a wrap? Do you have anything else I haven't covered that you would like to talk about? Probably, but I'm incredibly sleep deprived and can't think about it right now. I'll just do an addendum. Listeners, if you have thoughts on this or if you've got any more questions about it, you want to address those in a follow-up episodes, get in touch because I do really like talking about video games. And recommend me video games, especially fun little indie ones I can acquire on Steam because I really should

stop just playing Dragon Age over and over again. Yeah, you should. I've been saying over and over again, no judgements for various things. Slightly judging you on the Dragon Age thing, Joanna. I just wanted to not start anything new. I know, I know, but it's such a long one. Oh, God, I know. I'm like 50 hours in. I'm like two thirds of the way through the story. I'm not even like doing all the completionist shit this time. Terrible. Okay. Thank you very much for listening to this silly bonus episode of The True Shall Make You Threat. I don't have an episode plan up, so I can't remember where to find us, but in various places, and honestly, if you've got this far, you probably know.

If you would like to email us though, you can do that true shall make you threat pod at gmail.com and send us your cheat codes, your albatrosses and your, I don't know, small bouncy hedgehogs. If you want to follow us, follow us, pay us. If you want to give us money, you go to patreon.com slash The True Shall Make You Threat. That's the only social media of ours I have open on my browser at the moment. There you can exchange your hard-earned pennies for some bonus nonsense, like hopefully at some point me streaming the Discworld games. More importantly, if you send me money, I can buy other games and Francine won't have to listen to me talk about Dragon Age again. Until next time, dear listener.