CSB329: Don't Tattoo Me I'll Cum

My favorite part about last week is how absolutely nothing happened.

That was so.

So

I want to give you show credit, like public show credit.

I think you tweaked the format super good for guests.

Thank you.

You did a really good job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That is the guest format debut.

Yeah.

Do you want to talk about stuff that happened this week?

The date says it happened last week, but it really happened this week?

I just threw the big stuff that was sitting there from two weeks ago in, and it's just a pile.

And

there's more than enough to get into, quite frankly.

Our cup runneth over, so, you know.

There's some topics that I think I'll have to put till perhaps maybe next week because it's been pretty busy regardless.

For example,

I have not seen Superman yet.

Have you seen Superman?

Okay.

And I'll talk about that when I go see it.

I don't even know when I'm going to have time to go see it.

But you do have to see it because it's Superman and that's content for you.

Yeah, but I can just wait for it to hit the fucking Netflix, man.

Yeah, but it's right now.

I haven't screamed to go out into a theater for like

since before Corona.

But everyone wants to see you come back on camera and be like, oh no, I liked it.

I am literally looking at an edit

of Dr.

Manhattan on the moon going, it's October 22nd, 2013, and I'm listening to Pat rant about Superman on the Super Best Friendcast.

It's March 29, 2016, etc., etc., etc.

Do the bit.

And people are like, we need a bigger meme template because it just keeps like

factoring today.

Like, I didn't see the movie.

It's not long enough.

Yeah, yeah.

I've heard good things.

I've heard good things.

I've ironically heard really good things.

I've heard great things, and I want to go, I want to go investigate those things.

And I also saw a line that was,

it feels like something that would be used in other places, but in this context, it was

his superpowers are the least interesting thing about him.

And I'm like, yeah, okay, that's what I like to hear.

I don't know if that's been used elsewhere in other superhero movies, but I'm definitely like, oh.

The most interesting thing about Superman is Lex Luther.

I mean, a good Lex, a good Lex can be incredibly compelling.

I'm having people call out of the walls to tell me, yo, Pat, you're going to love this Lex Luther.

I'm like, no,

how petty can we get?

How fucking petty?

We need the most, the most pet,

you know?

And like, I want, I want a Lex Luther that would create a restaurant called Superman's and staff it with bad chefs just to hurt his brand image.

Yeah, I just think that, like, as the world itself gets more pathetic and pettier, our fiction needs to move the needle that much further.

You know,

you need to shock us with things that go beyond what is actually happening in real life.

So

we need to get back to satire being

outlandish.

Satirical?

Perhaps if our satire can be satirical, maybe.

Yeah.

Oh boy.

Well,

Antuca,

we had,

yeah,

I had a week.

Some stuff was going on.

I'll jump in and say that

I have finally finished my little tattoo project.

I saw.

It looks really good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I was, you know, obviously over the course of months, people have been seeing my arm fill up with shit and have been like, what's going on there?

And I'm like, I'll talk about it when it's done.

And now it's done.

And it took, you know, quite a while

over the course of

this year to go, you know, I find somebody that I trusted for the project and to

get all these ideas in place and coordinate them in a way that made sense.

But

yeah, I'm very happy with what happened and the result there.

The finishing touches in particular, I had,

so big shout outs to uh Fabio, uh, tattooer.

Uh, Fabio is uh from France, and I've been working with him for most of uh this year on a lot of the designs and things.

And um, some of the stuff that came in at the uh over the last month was uh Caddo as well, which is just a tattooer that was here for literally like three weeks.

And I just kind of went like, okay, let's do what we can in that time.

And he did the

he did the shivers on one side and the vagabond panels on the opposite side.

And yeah, an incredible job with that.

And then Fabio took care of just the circuit board, the third strike, the Neo Geo circuit board, the patterns of, you know, just the overall geometric stuff.

And then he did Legend of the Galactic Heroes stuff as well.

That was just like...

It's just a big excuse so that you're never too far from a panel or a picture.

So you can go, hey,

hey, what?

I'm showing off my arm.

oh oh what's that what reaching reaching for that over there

oh what's that yeah yeah um

you know there's uh i've i've wanted well you see i've wanted i've wanted tattoos for a long time you know it certainly helps when you're putting up your boxing guard if you can have a little cool little thing going you know or whatever but um no i i do uh this it's been a it's been a long time i've wanted to just have a fucking cooling top vibe um it's been and and i'm like okay cool got that done um

And I was definitely like, I want to get that done before she gets here.

You know, I kind of want to take care of that like side quest,

you know, for me before other major responsibilities arrive.

So that was a part of it too.

And, you know,

there was a, I think I kind of described this a little bit in the past, but like after doing a big, massively meaningful thing on my back, it's kind of like, okay, okay, and now we can let the bullshit gates open a little bit and just put some fun stuff in there that, you know, let's just put some weeb shit all over here.

It's all, it all has,

it's all meaningful to me, and I can sit and talk somebody's ear off if they were interested in what the things are about and why I like them.

But the fact that they're based in fiction automatically puts them a tier down,

a couple tiers down from something based in reality that was the more important first piece I did, you know?

But yeah, that shit's cool.

That's dope.

Now to work on how to grab the shirt and yank it off in one fell swoop, you know?

Well, the trick to that is really you just have to not give a shit about the shirt at all.

And you need to pre-cut it.

Yeah.

The problem is also.

Well, okay, pre-cutting the shirt.

and pulling it off in one fell swoop can be practiced.

What cannot be practiced is

the sense of shame as you blob and as your gut makes a noise.

Everything just expands.

As your gut makes a noise and lands into place as it settles.

You never see Kiryu

having his gut settle.

I'm just thinking of you going to the beach and like doing the move and like some 10-year-old looks at your tits and goes, yo, that recoil is great.

What the fuck is happening there?

yeah you know that it's it's back sure thing no problem i am not getting thug life on my stomach you know i i do i did say i've said many times the secret is rick ross um he just got huge and tatted so hard all over his big body that it doesn't even matter it's just an art piece you know i can't see nothing but a walking canvas yeah yep so uh yeah it's and you know we've we've known you, I've known, we've all known forever.

If you've been big for a long time, like I have, you know that, like, the true secret is to not give a fuck, right?

And you learn the hard way because, you know, at some point when you're younger and like you, you're like, okay,

what are the, how can I approach this pool in a way where you don't want to be shirt kid in the pool, right?

That's horrible.

Don't do that.

You know,

you find out.

Short kid in the pool?

Yeah.

Short kid.

Shirt kid, but it was for a different reason.

And the reason was is this fucking horrible anti-melanin scam ah okay just okay yeah what i like i'm gonna take 40 minutes to fucking

yeah lather my whole self up so it falls off in 10 seconds yep understandable um for the most part shirt kid in the pool is like no we all know what you're doing there and it's it's a rough look and if you you do it and then if you do it once you kind of realize how it's like oh no that makes it look worse don't do that okay fine so then you become shirt kid up until the last second before i jump in the pool right like shirt is coming off as I'm in midair,

right?

You fucking.

Luckily, the refraction in the water holds straps.

I mean, listen, it's rough out here, you know.

The shame is brutal, it's not good.

Learning to let go and not give a fuck is quite difficult.

And the person who's just ultimately like, yeah, it's there, who cares?

Fuck it.

That's my body is living life and enjoying it.

But it takes a while to get there, you know?

I've been, I brought this up

with Reggie before on other recordings, but it's just like, I heard a bit with a comedian that was like,

they're like, you know, the, you know, the big guy untuck your shirt move where you like you pulling your shirt out move that thing like we like when you're fat you do that so often that you could be crossing the street and see a child about to get hit by a car and you will un you will put on your shirt before you save the child

it's like it's crazy you know so knowing how bad that is,

it takes work to

get used to being like, nah, fuck it, but it's brutal.

Yeah.

Just

put the camera behind me, not in front, and we'll be fine.

Anyway, that project is done for the moment.

I have other fun ideas that I'd like to do in other places, but I'm going to let that settle for a little bit.

I have some fun, potentially more painful spots I could target, but we'll get there when the idea strikes.

You learn a lot about meditation and pain, though.

I'll tell you what, you really do get to know yourself.

Oh, just disassociate.

Just go to your trauma zone

and unfocus your eyes and just leave your body.

Yep.

And then just come back later.

Yep, that works.

I can confirm that works.

Getting porked up, getting all hot and bothered, just putting yourself in

some

good old memories,

hidden the Rolodex, that can work too.

Whatever can distract you, I swear to God.

Even a...

What?

I am literally, there's at one point where my body...

There's at one point where my body's in so much pain that I'm like, think of the best moments you've had in in your life.

And I'm literally thinking of great memories of fun times that have happened.

And I'm like, trying to get anywhere away from my mind to not feel the pain.

And that actually helped.

Does that make sense?

Talking about fucking

dating back to your goon memories?

Well, getting a fucking tent.

I'm talking about thinking about good times that have happened to literally try to get your brain going elsewhere when you're feeling the pain at its worst.

Yes, thinking of sex.

That's literally what I'm talking about.

This is why is this was

I'm just this is a really awkward scenario

that I'm concerned.

All right.

I'm dead serious.

Like you're, you're, you're whatever you can.

And at that point, there's a point where that stops working too, right?

There's a point where like you're just kind of like, especially when your body's at maximum tired, right?

I'm just being real.

And there were.

You're just saying what everybody else is too scared to say.

I'm just, I'm just saying, I'm being honest, right?

You thinking of, thinking of, like, disassociating whatever like your fucking memories are.

I had that, right?

I had that.

I had this.

And at one point, and then at certain points, you kind of just do thinking of nothing, right?

You do the just actual meditation, just breathing, thinking about your breath.

And when you think about your breath, you kind of notice that inhaling

actually makes it hurt more than exhaling for some reason, you know?

There's just little, little, little things like that that you get to kind of, and then you can interface with pain in a way where you can go, it feels like you can go under it or over it.

It's, it's a hard to describe thing.

But anyway, the point is, is that

I even at one point kind of relaxed myself into like falling asleep while I was getting inked.

And that's cool.

It was like, that was nice because I was like, oh, this is great.

I mean, I have a really nice endorphin like spot going here.

And I kind of was like, okay, I can almost like nod off and lean into it.

And I did.

And I was like, okay, awesome.

And then I had a little sleep twitch.

And the artist was like, whoa.

And I was like, fuck.

Nothing happened.

It was okay.

But I was like, shit.

What do you mean a hypnagogic jerk?

Like, you know, do you ever get like while you're sleeping?

Falling asleep one?

Yeah, no, no, maybe.

But just sometimes when I'm falling asleep or yeah, not mid-sleep, but like falling asleep, but you're a little, uh, that, yeah, that's called a hypnagogic jerk.

Okay.

it's it's uh you're you're fucking your

it's your body misfiring your nervous system,

probably because you're getting fucking stabbed.

And uh, it it like was a the artist was like, yo, and I was like, oh shit, okay, don't use that technique.

It's good, but if that happens, that's very bad, you know?

Um,

so, and then, yeah, you, you, you know, I, I just, all these, all these different ways of dealing with it.

Um,

I would, I would definitely say the the

tier list is

just

on I think the least effective is like, yeah, just focusing on breath.

And then gooning is like third place.

I'd put second at trauma memory, you know?

Yeah.

Trauma memory is very, very strong.

And if and if, you know, for any reason it's connected to what you're what you're feeling, great, right?

You're, you're, you're above the situation you're in a different you're in a different location entirely um

yeah and then no and then first of course is like if you can zone out to the point of passing out but there's the risk of the jerk you know i have a i have a fifth solution to this

which is what would happen to me if i sat down to get a tattoo where he would put the needle in and i'll go ow that hurts fuck this i'm a pussy bye sorry to waste your time there's there is that there is that.

That's true, too.

What the fuck was I thinking?

Ouchies.

What is nice, though, is that the ouchy parts are mainly the thinner areas.

The pit of your elbow and the back part and stuff.

But the meat.

The meat is fine.

You barely feel the meat when it's getting, you know,

drawn on.

So

anyway,

that was some of it.

And yeah, I want to just give big credit and shout out to, again, that is Fabio

at Fabio Tattoos on Instagram.

You know, huge, huge, awesome

job done by him, Caddo Tattooer as well.

And

Phil Dragash, the artist that helped me with a lot of the composition, putting this together.

Phil also helped me with putting together the art of my sister for the back piece.

So

I've just grown to trust him with putting together a lot of stuff that's on my body at this point.

And he's been incredible for that.

So

huge thanks to him as well.

Yeah, ever since doing thumbnails back in the day

for the old channel, I was just like, okay, your shit is sick.

Let's go.

Let's do it, buddy.

Beyond that, I got to play a couple games.

last week as well before we had

Callie on that I didn't get into because we didn't have as much time for it.

But one of them was Dead as Disco.

Dead as Disco.

I think I saw you play

that very briefly.

Yep.

This is a

this is Woolly Core.

It is a

Mi rhythm-based, amazingly stylish game.

And the direct comparison point is Arkham Combat

on the music, on the beat, to the rhythm.

And I fucking loved it it is a lot of the the aesthetic is like kind of pseudo coded as well some of the characters and uh some of the the the vibe feels pseudo 51 ish it's super super cool um it's only a demo that's out for now so you can just do the tutorial you can do like one oh well that really is arkham combat holy

and um you know the the the preview for what the full game is going to look like is i'm super on board but the most important feature in this demo is the ability to load in your own music, set the BPM, and fight to it.

Oh, that's a cool idea.

It's great.

Definitely worth a quick

peek.

Half an hour or so of content in the game, in the demo right now.

But the proof of concept is extremely powerful between hard move, soft moves,

counters, dodges, light attacks, heavy attacks, couple special moves.

You get a flow that gets going and dodging ranged attacks from a distance and kind of moving the way in close to them.

So, that's Sifu rhythm, you know.

But, um,

obviously, like Sifu, you're just going for maximum like style and

efficiency, you know.

Arkham, uh, you're you have the parts where uh

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what, whoa, what?

What's going on?

What, nothing,

what happened?

Nothing, I'm just laughing.

Okay,

um,

Yeah, it's super good.

And

I

would say too as well that

the fact that it's on the music and on the rhythm where you're waiting for that to act on it.

And of course, you know,

the first time around with Arkham not realizing that hitting...

the wrong buttons in between the prompts and the whole my whole my whole

my whole Arkham struggle you know of of not quite understanding what the combat

was there.

Yeah, in this case, I think with the music and everything like that, I'm like, okay, no, I 100% get this from the jump, and it makes a ton of sense.

The

end I loaded up

six Black Heaven guns from the Guilty Gear soundtrack, and just kind of that vibe was

immaculate.

Every game that I've ever played that it's like, put your own music in, right?

I always have this like fucking massive hole in my gut where you're like, okay, I'm going to pick like a song I like, but maybe it's not like, I don't know, the most common or has a simple BPN.

Am I always like worried that I'm going to put it in?

It's like, oh, cool.

The song that I picked plays like shit.

It, it, my ran in playing audio surf all that time.

Yeah.

It might.

It might.

The game is dead as disco.

It might happen.

But fortunately, because you can load things on, you just pick another song, I guess, you know, get the right BPM going and see what fits.

Not everything will, but there's a couple of moments in, you know, like Six Black Heaven Guns where, like,

as you're getting to the breakdown, you know,

and you're hitting and kicking and punching on the beat with every part.

It feels amazing, you know?

I'm super excited for the final product on this.

And

yeah, like, the, I guess the only other thing I'd say is like when we played it, some of the music was so good, but it was covering real music.

Like there's an amazing cover of She's a Maniac, you know, and I was like, oh no, please don't let this get flagged.

Please be streamer safe.

And I think it was in the end, but I don't know if everyone's going to put in the amount of work that Hi-Fi Rush did to make sure that the amazing soundtrack that you play stream safe is also as good, you know?

Supposedly, Tony Hawk 3 and 4 just came out with a full soundtrack for streamer mode.

Wow, okay.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

That being said, even like one of the things that's really frustrating to me is it'll say streamer mode.

And so, look, we have a bunch of non-copyright songs.

I'm like, yeah, but that didn't stop some fake Russian persona company for claiming all of them anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or whoever, a different YouTuber who just got to the cutscene first.

I think my brain is ruined in the sense that even if I'm playing offline for myself and I hear something really, really licensed, I'm going to have a panic reaction first.

Oh,

that is dark.

So I just gave the fuck up.

Like, I've been playing Death Stranding and

it flags copyrighted music on Twitch so often.

Twitch no longer auto-publishes my VODs.

It's just like, fucking stop it.

And I'm like, no, I'm not going to fucking stop it.

I'm going to put it up on YouTube where Sony is going to eat the fucking profits off the ads that run on it.

Yeah.

But like, just fuck it.

Just leave just leave me a version up on an upload somewhere that isn't muted.

That's all I need at this point.

Yeah.

I don't know if the um

if the

James Stephanie Sterling tech of putting so many conflicting flagged things in the into the video that none of them can be claimed still works.

Well, no, it'll still claim them and and and uh Sterling was never able to get m revenue, but the the point is that they're all fighting each other so that nobody gets the revenue.

I believe, right?

But sometimes things go into the auto-split even before they go into the denial.

I mean, shit, even for things that are currently sponsored, where I'm like, you sponsored me.

Why are we fighting?

I got to tell you that, man.

It's really funny.

It's really funny because I've been uploading the Death Stranding parts within like 10 minutes of the streams finishing.

Like, immediately.

Like,

here's the part.

Here's the part.

Here's the part.

And like the other night, I finished at like two in the morning and I saw a fucking skeet at me at like four in the morning going why aren't the VODs up and I'm like are you fucking serious are you serious motherfucker

really

fucking go to bed go to bed god damn it holy shit yeah it's different um

i'm i'm

taking the the extra steps to like cut this up into episodes and and you know um separate it so that our my voice is separate from the game means hey whatever i can put clown fart music to replace whatever gets claimed if need be.

You know?

Anyways, though, Dead is Disco was really, really cool.

I highly recommend everyone check that out.

Art is also immediately on fire.

Character designs are fantastic.

The other thing I played was,

did I talk about Might Rhea?

I feel like I did talk about Might Ray.

Okay, okay, yeah.

That was really, that was good.

And then, yeah, Mecha Break, of course.

We did

the sponsored streams for that.

But

I like how that game is.

Just, yeah, I like how it's shaping up and how it's turning out.

I like how there's

a good,

original, like,

yeah, just online Zoe vibe thing that you can jump into.

And

I

would like

to see

them them cross the line and get in some like guest robots.

Absolutely not.

I think it would be cool.

I would completely disagree with you.

I think it would be cool.

But you hear why I'm saying it like this: because once there is a

there is, yes, there is a point where you're like, you open up the floodgates and oh no, it just gets taken over and it becomes the new Super Robot War style thing.

You know, I, I, I, but I, I, skins, yes, like, like put to put ramba raw's special goof oh that's fine that's oh yeah yeah skins is fine like not not like bespoke robots i think that would be a fucking terrible idea skins is totally fine i just kind of

have that little thing it's just that like oh the things i love doing cool shit is there and i'm kind of like yeah you know you can get enough customization going on these robots to make them look like the things you want to look like anyway you can get pretty fucked up you can get very close with that Panther, but it would just be fun to have some, to hear, you know, Kamina yelling from the cockpit while I'm unleashing Panther's drill.

I'm like super torn on that because like, on the one hand, I think that, yes, that is cool.

And on the other hand, I look at something like Dead by Daylight, which has become like totally dominated by license skins.

I don't, and that's, this is why I'm, this is why I'm not so fully yelling about go do it.

That's why I'm like, I can understand how it can go too far and just become about this, you know, when it's like this month, tune in for the specific Gundam series of things.

And, you know, they're limited.

And it's now, yeah, it's all about the guest

content as opposed to the original content, you know, especially if it's a new game.

And these robots are by some of the designers of these legendary series, right?

Xenoblade.

I feel like they're halfway there already.

Yeah, no,

the designers here are famous for

these incredible robot designs we love anyway.

So the originals are amazing and absolutely

deserve that spotlight and their flowers as well.

I don't want any of that taken away.

It's just, yeah, little fun cosmetic skins would definitely.

And you know what, too?

Let's be real.

It turns heads.

If you do get your fucking

goof

color or if you get your, you know,

even just the

whatever the, whatever the, the, I don't know if you, I guess you could talk to licensing to get like, uh, the, the, the plane, uh, I forgot the jet one, but like Takara Transformers licensing, you know, or something.

Like, you can.

Yeah, no, you're thinking of Falcon, and it's like, that is Starscret.

That's what I'm saying.

You can literally

publish Japanese Transformers content, you know, and like you could, you could reach out and get one, one or two of those little cosmetic skins going if you wanted to, you know.

Anyway, it could be fun.

I was really, really impressed, and I mean, really impressed with the full release of Mecha Break, where

I put some time in all three modes, and all three of them were fully unique, excellent modes.

Like, Team Deathmatch and Objective were both really good.

And that weird-ass Mash Mac mode is so much better and more interesting than I was expecting, considering it's the extraction game type that is now going to be everywhere and suck ass.

This is a really, really good extraction game type.

Yeah, it looks like, you know, from last year, they figured out the 6v6.

They got that balanced and going, and, you know, they kind of went, okay, let's do the 3v3.

And then they just spent a bunch of time on this other thing, and that kind of replaces your single player in a way, you know?

They also didn't, there's a little bit of that demo where you could walk around the ship, and I don't know how much that's going to be, but they did hint at like a shooting gallery where you could aim and just manually

do pilot-based activities.

That makes me think: if you're just watching your little dude jump in the robot, you want to talk about fucking cosmetics.

Oh, get every single pilot from every single series to just be the

jump in the fucking robot.

Creating a lady character versus creating a man character in in that game.

Oh, oh, you mean

so fucking funny, dude.

You mean which plugsuit girl you can set up as an Ava alternate

character versus like the cosmetics on the dudes are so bad.

They don't, like, if you put the hat on, it overwrites your fucking hair and your facial hair into a default.

Why are you making a man, idiot?

Obviously, this is for the jiggle.

So

I talked about this and I was like, maybe it's just me, but like,

I'm not, like, desperate to goon while I'm playing my robot game.

Yeah, well, that's you.

I guess it is me.

I want to play with my robot toy.

I mean, it's just.

I don't want to have to move my controller to get around my fucking throbbing erection when I'm trying to win in Mash Max.

From the dawn of time when the major Kusanagi was straddling that Tachikoma, ass up.

There were robots and there was booty and people had feelings about those things.

Yes, I'm well aware that people have feelings.

Okay.

Just so you know.

Yeah, no,

it is not even funny how much they clearly don't give a shit

if you're not making a girl character.

It's dancing on it.

Like the defaults are existing Evangelion characters, which is the funniest.

Yeah, and you and you also and then also you see the the the special outfit you put on is essentially like it's a it's a like zaft not zaft uniform it's like a federation earth federation you know uh uh white uniform with the with the beret on the side and everything and you're kind of just like yeah they also know that you you're the next thing you want to look like is part of the space army you know you want to be in your space military thing and

I imagine more of those types of abilities and outfits.

All the plug suit colors and stuff are there.

Second is you get those, you know, and then third, you can get some of that kind of like, you know, I kind of like the macross pilot look where you look kind of like Air Force.

You've got like some of the straps and a bit more of a retro style helmet.

Yeah, I could see a lot of fun

with the dress up on that, but the priorities

have never been more clear.

If you offered me a button that just said delete all pilots, I would just hit it.

I don't give a shit.

I'm here for robots, man.

Just throw it, throw a fucking

game.

The only reason I have buckets in that game is for secondary customization sales.

Mm-hmm.

That's it.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, I spent some time.

I took the look.

I was like, yeah,

I'm going to stare at this person as they get into the robot.

And every time they do a little taunt, you know, they do a little, ha ha, I killed you thing.

You're like, yeah, it's part of the cosmetic.

So whatever, you know.

It's never going to be like Titanfall again, you know, where like the two things matter because they're a part of you and you're seeing them all the time, you know?

Yeah.

Also,

the custom characters aren't as interesting as bespoke characters.

If you were picking like,

I would rather have a bespoke character for every robot.

So

I think that's cool too.

Yes.

I actually, if you make a and you could customize that.

Yes, yes.

If you 100%, if you have a character design for that is the pilot of the welcome, you know, that would be really cool.

I would love that too.

Um, and they do do that, it's just it costs $50.

Oh,

I didn't see

that.

There's like there's bespoke pilots with bespoke skins for the certain robots.

There's one for Falcon, uh, and it's like 50 bucks.

Okay, okay, because I'm thinking of like Tech Romancer, where it's like, here comes Wise Duck.

It's the big American military suit, and there's three army dudes inside, like, yeah,

army, you know, and then there's your, your, your, um,

you know, uh, Koji Kabuto analog who's jumping around in his like super robot as well with spiky hair and he's full of burning hot vigor, you know.

And I'm kind of like, yeah, I could see the fun of like having a set character that you love that's a part of this too.

Um, not to mention, I don't, I mean, just the ability to like, it's, it's crazy, I'd imagine, but aesthetics are thing moments where you could have the pilot like hop out and taunt, you know, as part of the gameplay would be fucking sick, besides the wind pose.

Anyways, fun stuff with Mecha Break.

And yeah, I played a card game that was pretty fun.

And it was one of those ones where

there's a board game, there's like board game bars that we have, and one of them is Randolph's.

It's pretty sick.

You can go and sit down, have some drinks.

I've talked about it from time to time, and I've found that when I go there, oftentimes I walk away going, oh shit, I think I want an Amazon.

I think I just want to buy that that one and in this case I got one it's called red flags uh really fun no not yu-gio I talked about Yu-Gi-Oh we we got in there vanquished souls is cool um but this time around i'm talking about just a actual card game as in just normal you know whatever um

sitting around having a beer antics uh red flags is a really fun game it's following the um cards against humanity formula that is basically two funny things putting them together You know,

it's funny because like Apples to Apples should really get the credit for that.

That was the first game I ever saw that did it, but they just weren't raunchy or as

the Cards Against Humanity was.

Yeah.

Let me just confirm.

Is anyone gonna put Door?

Okay, hold on.

Sorry.

Oh, no.

Door's getting.

Okey-doky.

Nope.

No, Dora's answered.

Never mind.

We're good.

And in this case.

Yeah, it's like, I look, I invented this game.

And then someone else came along and said,

what if I invented the same game, but instead said, oh, no, I shit out a lot of cum.

I win.

Yeah.

You just make rent.

Exactly.

You just add cards talking about taints and Rush Limbaugh's shitty soft body.

And all of a sudden, billion dollars.

That was the problem.

And furthermore, games are now coming out now that are clean, but then they add the raunchy add-on DLC pack, you know, where you go get the extra cards that are

naughty.

Um, it, it's, it's, it was, it was, it was, it was a great idea, and uh, in this case, what you're basically doing is one person is trying to date the other people around the table, and you eat and you have to pitch your best qualities.

So you have a bunch of cards that are green flags, essentially, the good things about you.

And you get handed,

you know, a bunch of things that are, some are tame, you got your patience,

reliable, you can be courteous, you know, and then there's stuff that's like, I got a card that says I'm a famous writer, or it says, I'm blind to all your faults, you know.

There are cards that are said that say, you can,

I believe you're the most attractive person in the world.

Or I'm a pilot, or I know all the words to your favorite theme songs.

And that's a really strong one to have on the green card side.

You're like, damn, that's cool.

I'm a pilot is a red flag, dude.

Those guys are disgusting sluts.

That's a terrible flag.

Maybe if you're attracted to pilots, it could be a green flag for you.

I mean, there's also green flags in the list that say, like, I'm a CEO.

And I'm like, okay, fuck that.

So whatever.

Oh, there's a red flag.

Well, that's what I'm saying, right?

Oh, Oh, you mean a sociopath, right?

Yes.

Gotcha.

No.

You eat orphans.

Oh, yeah.

A mecha pilot.

How about that?

Right?

Oh, they got damaged.

They got mental brain damage.

I think when we were playing.

Sorry.

There's pilots in the chat.

They feel targeted.

Well, fuck.

Punchbomb, while we were playing, got a card that was like

a female professional wrestler, you know, and I was like, that's awesome, right?

But then, while you're pitching, the people next to you, their job is to then go, okay, hold on a minute, though, before you say you might date this person, have you considered that while they are reliable and while they do believe you're the most attractive person in the world,

they also can only eat out of someone else's hand,

Right?

Oh, I hate it so much more than I thought I would when you said it.

And you've got it now.

Oh, I hate it.

As the person who just got that red card slapped on top of them, you've got to continue selling yourself.

And you've got to pitch why that's not so bad, you know?

Sure, I'm a famous writer, and I know all the words to your favorite theme songs.

Sure.

But what if I refuse to cover my face while I'm sneezing?

Would you take that date?

So this is the it.

It's bad.

The people talk about

because I got the ick off this, bro.

Right?

Someone slaps that card down and you go, fuck.

Right.

And the red flags, they range, you know, there's those ones.

There's one that was like, a red flag is like, live streams your first date.

Right.

Immediately.

Or

and then there's the ones that's just like, is a literal serial killer?

You know, and you're just like, yeah, right.

It says CEO.

I know.

Got it.

You know,

but you have to then, and so it's your job to, as the person who doesn't know what red flag is going to get slapped on you, to be like, hey, hey, listen, all right.

Sometimes it feels good to sneeze out

violently in everyone's face out loud to not suppress it.

That's a good thing.

You should try it sometimes.

Let's go out.

I don't know.

So God gave me that sneeze for a while.

Yeah,

I can't even devil's advocate it.

I don't even know how to pretend that's remotely acceptable but you find a way to pitch it you know oh yeah no you can pitch it it's really easy you just invake a invent a fake story uh where you covered your sneeze but it wasn't as effective and then so you got like beat up and you have trauma over it

now unless unless you don't cover your nose you have a panic attack and shit yourself okay okay well no that's actually another card you know so yeah you're gentle hands yeah you're thinking of like um every every time you nut, you shit your pants, you know?

That's bad.

That's a bad one.

That's not good.

That's a really, that's, ooh, that's quite warm.

That is,

you know, is lifestyle altering.

Yeah, yeah.

You know?

You gotta, you got, there is logistics that need to be figured out.

And, and you need to get a, you need to get a bag for that.

You need to get security in the form of more than just a bag my friend um no no i mean i mean like a like a a a fucking intestinal bag oh well i was no colossal no you see i was just thinking a diaper that had no like the no yeah no a diaper with perhaps some snow it's not good enough it's i don't

unless unless you're planning to nut directly into the diaper it's not going to work no but that's the point well you're going to cut a hole in the front of the diaper that's what that's the problem is that's why i'm saying like i fucking hate this podcast no oh my god this is like the worst one in a long time.

It's not, it's not good, it's not good, it's not good.

I think, I think a diaper is bad.

Uh, I think you'd have to figure out a way to

facilitate the front.

This sucks.

We need to get away from this.

This sucks.

I don't want this anymore.

Hey, Hololive listeners, how you doing?

Welcome to Castle Super Beast.

I want out, man.

I'm just saying that before, listen, a colostomy bag requires like massive

body alterations.

And a diaper

sucks, but if you can figure out the front,

then you can improvise the rest, you know?

And you also, you got to be with someone that loves you.

That really loves you.

Yeah.

And is.

True love prevails.

You know?

They've got to be down with all of

the rest, you know?

Or, or

you literally just don't pick that person for that round and you pick someone else, you know?

You just go, and for that reason, sharks, I'm out, you know, like it's done.

Um, I believe that some of those red flags are completely unwinnable, uh, you know.

Yeah, it's it's kind of a search in the list of like, okay, what flag red flag can I actually deal with?

Yeah, like genuinely.

Yeah, no, like there's, there was nuclear flags flags that we kind of were just like, if you were that we were holding on to, where you're just like, okay, if I need you to not win this round because you're getting close in points, I need to just drop the card that says, yeah, you've got all these good traits, but you are literally six years old.

And it's just like, yeah, like, oh, yeah, yeah, no, you're out.

Scoop, fold, fold the cards, you know?

No, we're done.

I need you to not win and save you in this.

Yeah, it was, it was.

And then you put that card down, you look around the table, and you just.

that's an instant disqualifier, right?

That's uh, eyes bugging.

Um, nah, listen, red flags was fun.

Um,

and uh, yeah, I got a copy because I was like, yeah, that's that's a that's that's that's a fun time to just, and it's also quick to

understand, you know?

You just kind of open it, throw everybody a bunch of cards, and then throw a bad one, and they go, oh, no, and you get how to play right away.

So

anyway,

that's pretty much that.

So,

yeah,

tune into Wooly vs

on Twitch for nothing.

That's crazy.

But tune into Wooly vs on YouTube, where Expedition 33 continues, as well as some of the research-sponsored streams are going to be published as soon as we get the approval to do so.

And yeah, I'm going to be

doing life in the meantime.

That's what's up.

Very, very important life stuff.

What's going on?

I'm going back over my stuff, and like, pretty much, I played two things this week.

One of which is I dove a little bit deeper into Uma Musamai.

The

horse girl racing gang.

Okay, okay.

So Paige streamed it and said Uma Musamai.

Like, I don't know if she was joking or her accent came out, but ever since she did, I literally can't stop thinking about Uma Musamai.

All right.

Like some fucking Appalachian

fucking horse girl.

Like me, yeah.

Did you graduate some horses?

Nah, man.

So I was talking to.

so you get to find out who in your circle is horribly addicted to horse race gambling.

And for me, it's like a lot of people I know.

Like a lot.

And you also discover just how fast Foxcade will respond to a DM if you put your horse code in it.

Yeah.

Which is really fast.

Really fast.

Shane is fucking in there.

Really fast.

Oh, shit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's on the meta.

But

as I've gone through it,

it's a pretty enjoyable, charming roguelike.

And the variability in the actual horsey racing thing, even if you're just watching it, is pretty exciting.

The other thing is that,

man, they are doing a really, really bad job incentivizing me to buy anything, which I really like.

Because you're getting a lot of good stuff.

Well, they're, they're, so, well, I don't know, is Persona 5X's story on the docket this week?

Uh, no, I didn't, uh, I didn't catch anything.

Okay, so Persona 5X and Uma Musumai came out nearly day and date, right, in America.

And they're both on accelerated schedules because they're way behind the Chinese or Japanese releases, right?

Yes.

So the Uma Musume thing is they got to catch up like four years.

So like when you go to career mode, they're like, career mode will give you double rewards for like 200 more days.

Okay.

And every single fucking day, the login bonuses have exploded.

And

there's overlapping fucking banana.

And basically, they're just

throwing shit at you.

Are you getting that Rune Terra thing where you're like, oh, I don't even need to do anything?

Kind of.

I've actually saved all of my horse girl carrots because I re-rolled like a psychopath until I got Super Creek off the one free voucher.

Okay.

But that's not important.

Okay.

But basically, yeah, I've got like 14,000 carrots just sitting there.

So the basic deal is that they're like, if they're on an accelerated schedule, they're also accelerating the free rewards.

Right?

Okay.

Which makes sense.

Because if banners are coming out faster, then you need more resources.

Yes, to get to get through them.

Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Persona 5X

was made by a Chinese company, and then Atlas is handling the rollout in

America and Japan.

And

their solution to running the gatch at an accelerated pace is that Sega and Atlas have slashed the free rewards

by how fast they have

increased the pace compared to the

previous release?

Yeah, so like people are at 30% of the resources that people on the Chinese are.

Oh, that just feels bad for no reason.

That's so like the Persona 3 collaboration is coming even earlier than it should on the schedule.

And people on the subreddit are like, I'm a free-to-play player.

And under the game's normal schedule, I would have had like years to build up to the P3 collab.

And now I think I'm going to have to spend money in order to get any of the things that I want.

And it's causing the game to just get fucking shit on.

I'm just

very bad.

There's a part of me that's going, I can't believe that we're comparing the rollout for FOMO-based gacha

systems when they're like...

The whole, yeah, I hate the whole idea, but if you're going to be like cool about it, at least not have, at least don't make it so that direct earlier version someone else has somewhere else is getting more, and you can look and go, what the fuck?

Why are we not?

Why are you FOMOing me

from the Chinese on FOMO-based gaming?

Yeah.

And like the fucking Chinese dev had to come out and be like, that's not us.

That's Atlas.

Stop complaining to us, please.

Which is dire.

That's dire shit.

Publisher's decision.

Because Sega just runs these games into the ground over and over and over and over with this shit.

They just, they're too stingy.

The other thing that I've been learning about playing the Uma Musamai

and talking to Fox Cade and mom, who is very smart and very helpful,

is that there's like almost no FOMO in the horse game because all limited banner characters just get dumped into the pool when their banner is over.

Oh, and they get

they don't go away.

They just get dumped into the pool.

They're obtainable.

Same thing with the cards.

Do their percentages change?

Yeah, they get the base percentage.

Okay.

And then

the other thing is that the events always roll back also.

Like the special week event that happened in the first three weeks.

That's just going to come back in like a couple months.

Does Zenless do that?

No, nobody fucking does that.

Okay.

Nobody dumps their limited banner characters into the pool.

Oh,

I thought that Zenless had a way.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

Okay.

Well, shit.

Oh,

Nikke does it.

Nikke does it.

Okay.

Oh, you know why?

Because side games.

Ah.

Okay.

But the other thing, and this is the fun part, is that,

so, you know, in fucking Higenshin or whatever, you roll 90 times and you're guaranteed at least a pity.

No, but sure.

Okay.

You roll 90 times.

The way we've had this conversation before.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've seen that in other games.

Yes, I've seen it in Zenlist.

I've seen it in 90 times.

You get the pity, even.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about.

And the pity is a 50-50 between the banner character and any other character of that

thing.

And if you fail the banner character pity, then the next time you get a pity, it'll guarantee be the banner character.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So this leads to people going, like, well, if I absolutely, I know

so-and-so is coming up in X amount of months.

This means I need to build up 180 roles to absolutely guarantee

the character I want, which can be a lot.

That's like a year of currency.

That can be like a lot.

I'm flashing back to this conversation in Zenlist as well, actually.

Yeah.

And then in the Umamusume, the pity is

if you fucking roll 200 times, they just give you a voucher to pick whoever you want.

But if you roll 199 times and don't,

at the end of the banner, they just turn all those resources into shop items and just let you buy things from the shop and it doesn't roll over.

Okay, so nothing will ever go away.

But if you absolutely motherfucking must have this horse, never back down.

Get ready to save up for 200.

Keep going.

Don't stop.

Which is 30k carrots.

It'll pay off if you never stop.

Yeah.

Okay.

I see.

The.

I will say that, like, you know, for however deep you're going,

just always remember that

you can take solace until we show up and then you're talking about how the anime seasons are going.

Because that's the ultimate catch-up, right?

Like, once you've done all there is to do,

you can dive into that Umamusume anime.

Well, there's, there's definitely way too.

So,

I'm playing this game on the toilet.

That's where the horse racing game lives.

It lives during my shits,

which I think is appropriate because horses.

There's way too much to do in this fucking game.

There's way too much.

Like the idea of like, oh, when I've burned out all the fucking content in this, like, no.

But I can see that.

I haven't even won the fucking...

I haven't even beaten Haru's campaign.

And I shouldn't have picked her first, apparently, because she's apparently the hardest of the base characters to win.

But I think it's a little more subtle than that.

I think it's more direct.

I think it's like, hey, I want to see a little bit more special week.

Where can I do that?

Oh, here she is.

Let's tune into the show and see what's going on.

Let's hang out with our girls, you know?

Damn, man, there's a lot of dialogue in those campaigns.

Okay, well, there's a crazy amount of fucking dialogue.

We'll see.

No, the real question is: I want to see where that animated GIF is from, where vodka is racing so hard that the entire character is just a smear that's like 10 feet long.

Oh, are they doing the

Sakuga speed line like new blorb melts?

absolutely it's like because it's a racing it's it's fucking um it's uh what's it called

it's stock car racing but with animals right it's a fucking oval so when you animize it you got to put your speed lines and your sparks and your smears and shit

i would love to see um

well yeah matriculated was it the uh the aeon flux like um matrix running style but just with the umusume girls, just like

muscles flexing.

Outrunning the art itself.

That being said, Wooly, if I want to watch that anime, it's not because I need more of these characters.

It's because I want to see how dramatic you could possibly make running in a circle.

Oh, you can make that very dramatic, I'm sure.

That's you know, I watched, dude, I watched Days of Thunder a million years ago, and like I couldn't figure out why I was supposed to be excited about any of the things that were happening.

He's rubbing on me.

He's rubbing on me.

Yeah, fucking so what?

Race your car.

Yeah,

okay.

You got Days of Thunder, but then on the other side of the spectrum, you've got Red Line and the Speed Racer movie.

Yeah, that's true, but those are not stock car races or horsey races.

They have tracks.

Yeah, I, I.

I mean, it's, it's, it's the emotional push of the, of the, what the characters, you know, able to think and do as they're running and when they're deciding to unleash it all, even if it's a straight line or a curve or whatever the case is.

Were you a part of the

Donovan Bailey versus Michael Johnson

mania when Canada versus the U.S.

years ago in the Olympics?

Nah, okay.

Because that was a big thing in my house and in my neighborhood.

And

you'd be surprised.

You'd be surprised how it's just like, yo, we're just running in a straight line, but that shit's it's exciting you know or hussein bolt with the you know with the flex and all that stuff anyways there it was a time

um

what was the second i remember donovin bailey but i don't remember so michael johnson was the american record holder for the relay and he was part of the relay run um

and

uh Donovan Bailey was the fastest man in the world at the time, and he beat

the record for the 100.

And so the idea was that if you take Michael Johnson's record for the full 400 meter relay and divide it by four, technically his numbers are faster than Donovan's 100.

That's not how that works.

That's not how that works.

But that's what they were saying at the time.

That's so stupid.

It was crazy.

That's the stupidest thought.

That's what I'm saying, right?

That is not how.

Isn't that insane?

Dude, now you're there.

Now you're, let me, now, congratulations.

I brought you there immediately.

We were losing our minds.

This is like 20 years ago, and it was insane.

And America was like, nah, but if you divide it in four, though.

If that's how

you just have him run the 100 meters and just saw and just.

So eventually, because of all that shit and chirping, they're like, fine, 1v1 on the track.

Let's go.

And they were like, what?

How far are we going to run?

And they're like, oh, can we do it at

100?

Because that's what this is started over.

And they're like, no, no,

because our guy's used to the longer thing and it needs to not be that.

And then they're like, but you started this whole thing talking about dividing by four.

So why not?

You know, and so it went back and forth.

And I think they eventually settled on 200.

I think they just settled on

150.

I'm on the 150.

Okay, yeah.

There you go.

It's right.

It completely won after Johnson allegedly injured his hamstring.

And so you watch the step.

There's a whole buildup, a whole big spectacle.

Everyone's there They get on the starting line the thing the gun fires and Donovan takes the fuck off and like it's that start that has like the sparks on it.

It's such an insanely you know and immediate the lead is so immediate that Michael Johnson just goes ah my leg I pulled up I pulled up, you know, and he's like and he go and he goes down and he's like, yeah, no, pulled up, pulled a muscle, you know, whatever.

And then Donovan just like, he grabs the mic afterwards and just calls him a coward or whatever.

He's like, you're a chicken.

He didn't pull up.

No, he said track had fucking more

diving.

Oh, yeah.

He dove.

Oh, he dove.

He took a dive right away because he could, he didn't get the boost start.

He took a dive immediately.

And then Donovan was like, get the fuck out of here, bro.

You know, and then that was, that was, that was it.

This is, I'm watching it right now.

It's so funny.

This pull the handstring shit is not

Yeah.

Oh, my legs.

I pulled up.

I pulled up.

I pulled up, guys.

It was.

Yeah.

Fuck, this is the most embarrassing cope I've ever.

Holy shit, that is terrible.

That is fucking crazy.

I'm so glad I brought you here all these years later.

This was it.

It was nuts, dude.

Also, if you wanted to make it fair, you'd run a 100-meter, you'd run a 200-meter, then you'd run 150 meter as a tiebreaker.

You know, after.

Bam, bam, done.

And this is also leaving out that the night before, uh, Michael Johnson was on, he was on the tonight show with Jay Leno, and he was yapping, he was talking all that shit.

You know, dude was going off and just like, whatever.

And, and, and Jay Leno, I believe at the time, introduced him as the fastest man in the world, you know, and you're like, if you divided by four,

well, I mean, listen, this is this, no, so upsetting, so stupid.

Guys, viewers, listeners, I love you guys, but it's so tiring.

I'm the fastest man in the world.

I'm the best spider in the world.

I'm the world heavyweight champion of the United States.

Like,

every time.

It's so frustrating.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, even down to sports entertainment is the world heavyweight wrestling champion of the WWE.

Like, really?

It's like a roster of like 99% American.

Dude, I, you know, I love me

a good old Evo grand finals.

And even then, when they put on the Evo thing world championships, and I'm like, if you can make it to Las Vegas, you know, come on.

It's the biggest event.

The only way to make that.

fair, fair, fair would be to have like multiple events and then feed the winners of those into a all expenses paid.

trip to the final location.

Yes.

And so that's what these like events like, you know, Tech and World Tour and Capcom Cup end up being:

okay, make your points internationally, and then we send you to the final location.

Because, yeah, if you can't make it to Vegas, then you can't get to the World Finals.

That's not the World Finals, man.

Anyway, but yeah,

that whole way of talking about it, right,

has always been just like, okay,

the World Series, right?

You know,

it's the World Series.

Dude, so I don't follow baseball and I don't play baseball.

I would fucking kill

to see the World Series just include

Japanese players.

I would kill.

Right?

Right?

Yeah.

Because I'll tell you, I think Japan loves it more now.

I think they love it more now.

I don't think that's a question.

i i think that's confirmed yeah no

um

at this and you know what

of course if we're gonna do america versus japan on this i would like all of central america to make their own teams also

i mean the fact that they're sending scouts out to Japan to get your your Japanese players uh to come back this way and then same thing for China and basketball as well and you know what I mean like Like, it's quite clear that, no, no, no, there is a globe here.

But yeah, baseball in particular with Japan is like,

I would love to see that.

Indeed, Shohei Ho Tani is who I was thinking of.

So

what?

What else?

No, I was going to say, like, what is your, who's your, what's the word for Oshi for your, your, your Uma?

Oh, it's Haru Urumura.

Okay, okay.

She tries her best.

Urahara, whatever her fucking name is.

Fail horse.

Okay, okay.

You see, I...

Fail horse that got so much specialty fancy grass.

Because everyone's supporting her now.

Website went down.

That's amazing.

Everyone's giving her all the grass in her retirement.

And you know what?

That horse hates pickles, and I hate pickles too.

Okay, but I think it's a coin flip.

I could have seen you going either way on that.

I could have seen you also being like, nah, losing means you shouldn't have tried.

That fail horse deserves nothing for failing the whole time.

You know, like.

Nah, man, she's a precious cinnamon bun.

The horse, too.

The horse is adorable.

The bit could have gone either way.

But I do love the idea of the real horse just getting tons of grass, not knowing why.

And the most unshocking twist of all, my wife's Oshi horse is Gold Ship.

Ah.

Which one was Gold Ship?

Let me see.

Oh, the crazy one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the nut.

Biting people's hats off and shit.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Unshocking.

Dropkicker.

That Umamusume is pretty good.

I'm going to use all my carrots on trying to get Kitasan black.

And if I don't get it, I'm going to go, okay.

I mean.

I mean, now that I've gotten Rudolph, I'm like,

yeah, you got to.

I mean, what's next?

You know, like, so I have, so here's the here he rolled it and and when i re-rolled um my my horsies so i could get super creek the card

um

hey man no sorry no i just i made a joke for absolutely

i made a joke for absolutely no one anyways go go on oh i hate that

like did you make the joke for no one and you looked at the chat and you're like oh shit it was for no you didn't even hear it we're moving on it's fine oh

um

i didn't actually roll on any horsies

i only have the five starter horsies oh

okay so somebody get those cards first and then we'll see okay

it's it's really really strange how disincentivized rolling on a horse in that gacha game is it's fucking weird

why

uh because a horse the change of any particular horse is their the what races they're good at and their personality during their story mode.

Whereas the cards are the actual gameplay altering mechanics.

Oh,

the support cards.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

And so since all the horses just feed into the gigantic pool of horses and you don't know if you like them before you get them, like you pull for the cards you want and then with your leftover shit, you go, ah, I'll roll on a horse.

Okay, okay.

I also want to see the part that Shane was talking about with

like some people can be good at racing, but bad at performing.

You know, I want to know what that means.

I don't know what that means.

That's really interesting.

How's the Kojumbo Gumbo?

I have passed.

So it has an incredibly similar...

Okay, before we even start, have you played Death Stranding 2?

I didn't crack it in open yet.

No.

Great.

Okay.

Just that helps me with where to go with this um

uh i have hit the turning point the game has like the exact same sorry pause exact same we are talking about death stranding 2 i just

we let in with oh you didn't we didn't say it no i said i said some stupid shit you said it when i asked you yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah okay all right yes

talking about the package simulator death stranding 2 uh the game has the identical structure as the first game like in like normal area plains, rockier mountain, rockier mountain, mountain,

right?

As a progression.

So I'm on mountain zone now.

And I have had a character literally look me in Sam's face and go, you are 75% done.

Oh, yeah, okay.

Blinking up the network.

Okay, okay.

So I'm pretty, I'm pretty, I'm, I'm, I'm trucking, right?

And

I've been thinking a lot about how I'm enjoying the game and how I feel about it.

And this is the least interesting game Kojima has ever made.

Least.

By far.

Like, not even close.

You're throwing.

I would say it's not.

I would not say it's the worst game he's ever made because I actually really strongly dislike Metal Gear Solid 4.

Okay.

You're throwing in.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is super interesting.

You're throwing in Metal Gear originals.

Oh, absolutely.

And I just played Metal Gear.

Yeah, that's what that's why I'm saying that.

And Boktai,

I haven't played Boktai, okay?

But Boktai is weird, Boktai is super weird.

Um, the main main thing that I'm dealing with is that it's a safe sequel.

Um,

obviously, this is personal opinion.

Um,

not like a huge amount of Death Stranding's uh gameplay

loop was carried by the level of confusion and

um obtuseness and

strangeness of its setting.

Right?

So I think about the Death Stranding trailer where you see the five figures off in the sky.

Yes.

And just this feeling of like, what the fuck?

Yeah.

Ominous dread.

Learning about BTs and learning about voidouts and repatriates and shit like that.

It can't do that again.

Nope.

Because you already played Death Stranded.

Yes.

Nothing in Death Stranding 2 can even approach being as weird or interesting as even the same thing was in Death Stranding 1

because in Death Stranding 1, it was brand new.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

As a result, a lot of the stuff in this game feels really safe.

And on top of that, some of the stuff feels so safe as to almost be parody.

The Luka Baba Da Boopy sections where you fight the soldiers

are literally just three or four more cliff levels.

Like, they're exactly the same.

Okay.

And the way that you get like flashbacks to Luca's stuff while you hook in the BB pod,

it's Luca instead of Cliff.

Like it's.

They're not twisting.

Sorry, Neil instead of Cliff.

They're not twisting it in any obvious way.

It's exactly the same.

Okay, okay, okay.

It's exactly the same.

And it's kind of weird.

The other thing is that.

so it's one of the this was a really interesting situation where I was talking to a couple of people and I was describing how I don't like how easy it is to drive everywhere.

You can just drive, you can skyrim your way up a mountain with a trike.

Once you get the roads clear?

No.

No.

Just right away.

Oh.

And the truck is a lot easier to maneuver as well.

Like you can't, you can just drive through a bunch of rivers with them.

And I was doing back and forth with people and the consensus seems to be that trucks and trikes and movement is just easier and more powerful.

But

part of that is because I already played through Death Stranding 1, and so I know how to use ladders, I know how to use the trucks, I know how to use the climbing ropes, I know how to, you know, all of these parts of the gameplay loop I already know, right?

And so, what the game is supposed to put towards me is like new types of challenges that test that or different types, right?

It's the same challenges with stronger tools.

Okay, okay, okay.

It's like

I got to climb a mountain, but all of my tools are stronger, and I have a bunch of new tools that are even stronger than the old ones.

And you've already gotten proficient at the old way.

And I'm already good at destroying walls.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And as a result, I end up falling into this really, really weird trap where, you know, you chart out your route or you chart out, I'm going to go fight the mules or whatever.

And then you go, okay, what tools am I going to bring with me?

And I have tons of different tools.

I have a bunch of different climbing things.

I have a cargo launcher.

I have multiple vehicles.

I have a third specialty vehicle, which is super weird, which I won't talk about.

And on almost every single thing, I bring a generalized loadout of like the machine gun, two blood grenades,

a stun bomb,

some

blood packs, one climbing rope, one ladder, and my fists.

And

the most effective way to fight human enemies in this game is to sprint at them and drop kick them.

It will knock out every human enemy in the game in a single hit.

Let's go.

And it's like,

yeah, yeah, before even grabbing your other weapons.

So, like, yeah, you've been given like 10 times as many ways to solve the same problems, but the first things you get to solve those problems are the best things to solve those problems.

Okay.

It's really, really weird.

So,

I kind of have a theory I want to posit because I feel like when we go

play,

when we play guests with Kojima, the expectation is typically that we're going to get baffling narratives,

but the gameplay will be recognizable, right?

And

in this case,

could it be that, like,

almost in a way, like,

you can go baffling with the narrative, and there's a lot of different ways you can try to confuse people, but the setting has already been established for how weird it is and what's going on.

If you are no longer using Konami's money, but your own studios that your sequel decisions need to be a certain way

right you need to make money for koji pro to to be able to do this for years and that might in turn you know influence how nutty we're gonna get i don't know per se but i would expect like

I would expect that like, yeah, there's some element of Kojima wanting to keep you on your toes.

Even that interview the other day from Woodkid being about, like, yeah, he said it was too safe in the playtests, you know?

So I don't know what the hell that was talking about because, like, one of the big, one of the big things is, like, environmental effects, right?

So now rivers can flood, and brush fires can happen, and avalanches and rock slides can happen, and there's also earthquakes, right?

And you're supposed to be able to, there's like a weather system to see if these are likely to happen, and you get alerts for earthquakes they don't um

matter at all oh yeah okay weather they don't matter at all um i've encountered avalanches and rock slides which i moved to the left

and stood next to the the wall and they missed me i did a brush fire that i just walked through Without and you can drive through the flames apparently the sandstorm happens all the time and you just you plot your your course on your map and just drive through the sandstorm.

And river flooding, all of the vehicles can just roll right through a flooded river.

Okay.

And

it's just like,

it's not

enough of an obstacle.

And I'm getting tons of cool toys, and I'm really, really enjoying building up the larger infrastructure.

But I'm enjoying that because I just like to see it all.

I'm building my fucking model train set.

If I had to say, like, what the core of it is, is vehicles vehicles are too strong and you get them right away.

You get them in like the first 10% of the game

and they remain excellent for the whole game.

I drove up the side of the mountain on a trike.

Okay.

Is perhaps I was going to say like maybe is the geography changing in a way this time around that is like presenting new challenges?

No.

Okay.

In fact, the geography has changed in a way that has removed old challenges.

If I could put my thumb into the game and like turn something off and make a single design change, you get the zip line

like 25% into the game.

You get the zip line super, super, super early.

In Destiny 1, zipline was like one of the dead last upgrades you got.

It was like almost all the way at the end.

And so it caused a really fucking weird situation situation where I'm climbing through the mountains and doing my mountain stuff on foot because I actually have to.

And I

unlock the network.

And then they go, actually go over the mountain to the other side because that's right, that kind of thing.

Flip-flopping.

And what I ended up doing is climbing to the absolute tip-top of the mountain

and

lining it up to the edge of the network and putting it down in advance so I could actually link it up to the place I was just at.

And then when I do unlock that part of the network, I only have to place like two more back up the mountain.

And now I've already zip-lined the whole area.

And now I've like automated the trip to this location.

And so I'm actually only taking the trip to new spots.

Once.

I'm never even taking the trip back.

Okay, okay.

You're just going through

entirely.

Okay.

Like, I am not even done with the mountain section, and I have almost totally ziplined it up to completion.

And I'm like, part of this is design, but most of it is that I still know how to do this from Death Stranding 1.

And

like, I was expecting with all of these environmental things and the larger map and stuff like that, that I would be dealing with more complicated delivery routes or more obstacles or whatever.

This feels in terms of difficulty, this feels like the first game, and

the first game would be the second game in terms of because you have less to

be harder.

Yeah, yeah, the challenge is increased.

Okay, and this is also like, you know, with no, without the deterioration as much, you said there was like roads to or whatever, right?

Like, yeah,

I built a road at the very first road in the game, and it's been deteriorating over time.

And over 55 hours, it's gone from 100% to 60%.

So I'm really not fucking worried about it.

So, I mean, this has been a discussion for years in video games, but like sequels do have this thing, right?

Like there's the

that the how do you raise the challenge, not present the exact same thing, keep it exciting, even though a lot of the surprise is gone.

And

you don't, but you also want to, you know,

there's a gulf between, again, Flame Lurker and Consort Radon, you know, that

we have to close here.

The other thing is that like the story is

the the story is better told and worse

like the story is cleaner quicker more present more consistent more understandable and much less interesting

because

it's not an explosion in constant confusion and where you're learning about what the fuck the world of the death stranding is like it's a endless barrage of character character vignettes that are all very interesting, but it's like it's the same structure as before, even down to like the way you get Heartman is like the same.

You go through the same scene with Heartman when you run into Heartman.

Okay, so the world because they have to re-explain that he's Heartman.

The world is already explained, so now we're just spending time on the specific character stories and arcs that they're going through.

The beats.

Also, Higgs is like the worst character ever.

Good worst or bad worst.

No, bad.

Bad.

Like,

he will probably rotate around to being so bad.

I love him.

But right now, he is the worst.

He is so dumb and stupid.

I'm not sold by what you're saying, though.

He

feels like Troy Baker trying to get another shot at Kai Leng.

Oh, come on.

Don't invoke Kai Ling, bro.

Yeah, I'll invoke it.

That's low.

Kojima's above Kai Leng.

That's brutal.

That's fucking brutal.

The other thing, and I will not name, you know what?

Hold on, let's just.

Let's just

turn that off

to emote only.

Okay.

I will not name the character.

Okay.

I have encountered the stupidest, like, I don't mean like badly written.

I mean the objectively dumbest character Kojima has ever written, ever, by an order, by multiple orders of magnitude.

In

which,

like, I have learned this character's backstory and it has made me hate them in a way that every time they talk from now on, all I can go is, you're stupid.

You're a stupid person.

Okay.

You are the dumbest motherfucker that has ever lived.

Okay.

Because it's everything is your fault type of thing.

Like, it's yeah, okay, okay.

All right.

No, like, you are an objectively dumb person.

Okay.

Okay.

In a way that, like, ruined your life.

And it's crazy.

Okay.

It's, it's, it's fucking bananas.

I cannot think of one that is dumber ever.

I mean, I'm racing, but okay.

Yeah.

Like, just bad, dumb decision man,

as it were.

So I'm nearly to the end, so I'm going to keep trucking.

I have to see where this is going.

It's just, it's a super, it's a super safe sequel to the super weird, not safe game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And that is very disappointing.

I mean,

do you literally just reinvent

the wheel and the world for Death Stranding 2?

Well, here's the thing.

Maybe you just go to a different place entirely.

Maybe you don't do a sequel, right?

Maybe you make a brand new game that's just not the thing.

But also,

there's always that, like, hit the credits and see what happens, right?

There's always that little.

Yeah, absolutely.

I um

i it's

it's just this thing where

when coachumbo was like oh i can't wait to spread my wings and do weird stuff i was like oh death stranding that's super weird what are you gonna do for death stranding two the same thing

again the death stranding one and death stranding two are way more similar than any two metal gear games okay Yeah, I get you.

I get you.

And he has remade those Metal Gear games into each other over and over and over.

And Death Stranding is more Death Stranding 1 than it is anything else.

There's also something to be said for the team is familiar with the flow and can,

you know, do the thing they've done better this time around in a more time-efficient way as well for a studio.

But I...

I thought that something like OD, for example, the new project, like, I thought that that was going to be Kojima's, like, Koji Pro's Pro's way of going about games.

It's going to be like big

Hollywood original entries

self-contained to them, to each one, you know?

So

I, yeah, even announcing the sequel and kind of being like, we're going to build up a franchise here was not what I expected, you know?

So I also, I spoke to two friends of mine who both are insane.

And after beating Death Stranding 2, both went, hey, I'm going to go through the director's cut of one again right now.

And both came away going, oh, yeah, no, DS1 is significantly better.

And I was like, I can't believe you two are so fucking crazy that you went for it just to know.

But then again, I can respect that.

It's safer.

Interesting.

It's so safe.

Interesting.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And And that's what's going on with me this week.

Oh my God.

This week I have so much fucking going on.

Let's see.

I need to go look at my own schedule

on my own broadcast thing to even tell you what's going on over at twitch.tv slash pat stares at.

Today's the podcast.

Tomorrow, I'll be watching

a streamer contest show called Next, brought to you by Progressive as a sponsored, hashtag, sorry, hashtag sponsored watch party.

Then there's Death Stranding, then there's a

sponsored look at Fretless, and Donkey Kong is coming out, then more Death Stranding, and then TenoCon on Saturday.

Ah,

the latest with Warframe.

Yeah, so basically, I was talking up Rebecca Ford.

Wonderful cinnamon bun lady.

And I was like, Reb, you're doing a great job.

You should feel good.

And she was like, oh, yeah, thank you.

That's great.

How's the baby?

And we did that back and forth.

And then she was like, oh, 10OCon's going to be really good.

I'm like, okay.

I believe her.

Okay.

That's it.

Was

Soul Frame like.

Was there more going on with that?

There is going to be a Soul Frame thing on.

There is going to be a Soul Frame thing on on uh on the at TannoCon it's a part of it, okay,

but it's not gonna be the the Tenno live, which is the part that I'm gonna be tuning in for.

Okay,

all right,

uh

so with that, let's uh

also I've played uh I've played the the um the alpha of Soul Frame

that shit's far away,

far away.

Mira, I'm recalling last time that, yeah, I'm remembering it wasn't super an exciting conversation when you brought it up last time.

Yeah.

Oh, there's a lot of Steve in that game.

And if you know, you know.

And if you don't, you don't.

The main thing is, like, man, the hatred towards vacuum continues.

Very, very weird, very intense hatred of vacuum.

I don't know what Steve's deal is.

I hear the deep cuts, and uh,

okay, you know what, we're gonna do this.

Fuck it.

You don't have to, you don't have to.

There could be a documentary written on the skill of vacuum in Warframe, and all it is is that the radius that stuff gets sucked into your character in Warframe is too small.

Oh,

yes, yes, yes, it could be like five feet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so then eventually, a mod called Vacuum came out.

And the mod basically, you could attach it to like a certain type of little sidekick, and it would increase that to like 30 meters.

So it became the single most popular mod the game had ever used.

And by the way, by the way, when I say mod, I mean inside the game item,

not a modification of the game.

I mean like the items you equip are called mods in Warframe.

Okay, okay.

And then there was basically a back and forth for like fucking 10 years as to whether or not vacuum should be universal, and then, oh, okay, you can have vacuum on these types of carriers, and then you have vacuum and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then it finally in 2024, they buffed it to universal, right?

And then I played Soul Frame, and Soul Frames like walk over to items and pick them up with a button.

And I'm like,

Steve, you're crazy.

You went backwards.

Okay, like you're so mad about fucking vacuum now.

Yeah, that you,

there's no vacuum extra steps, actually.

that's that's fucking nuts dude man okay i mean i can't it's scott ah whatever i i can't i can't talk about it from the the context of this type of game i just know that when i'm playing a um

you know a

platformer like uh gungeon or or um isaac or you know any any one of those kind of like simple 2d games the idea of having a stat or so that increases your vacuuming range,

I hate that it's not automatically just massive to begin with.

I don't like...

I mean,

you've played Vampire Survivors.

Exactly, right?

But I'm like...

Attract Orb?

Yes.

I was playing Vampire Survivors.

I was like, Attract Orb is the single best upgrade in the entire game.

And every single person in chat was like, yes, absolutely.

It absolutely is.

But like,

it's a feeling of...

There's a, you know, there's a feeling of like getting a really good power of like, I didn't have this, but now I have it.

And then there's a feeling of, I deserve this.

Why did you take it from me?

I'm of the opinion that items should always just suck up in your face.

But that's what I'm saying.

Every single game.

Souls.

Souls come from

the other side of that map and get into your body.

Right.

No matter how far away.

I feel like you have taken away my ability to get everything that is rightfully mine and making me earn that back slowly doesn't feel good.

It's like, god damn it, hurry up.

It's extra, super crazy in Warframe because whenever you hit an enemy, they just explode

into a million items.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you like, there's, there's warframes that like, will just generate a death field around them that's like 50 meters long.

It's like, okay, well, I need, I need vacuum

so that I can pick up anything.

Yes, man.

Yes.

Okay.

Maximum vacuum, right, should be the way the game works, except, not when I say the game, like the feeling in games in general.

I want that maximum vacuum feeling, except if I'm opening a box with a thing in it.

Sure.

Then make a,

yeah, I got the cool thing, you know?

But that's, that's the distinction.

Open a box or vacuum for free.

And anything less is actually a bad feeling you're giving me, the player.

Yeah, all right.

There we go.

We solved that.

Okay, quick break.

And we we will.

Yeah, I got a piss, man.

Oh, damn, BRB.

Hey, let me ask you: if I, if I, hey,

would it distract you from the pain if you were sitting there

getting tattooed and you were just full to bursting with piss?

And you're like, oh fuck, I got a piss so bad.

Would that distract you, do you think?

I mean, only if that excites you, I suppose.

Okay,

don't tattoo me, I'll come

Or piss.

All right.

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All right.

Nothing happened.

Nothing

happened.

And if anything did happen, I suggest that you use AI

to reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with nothing happening.

I've got your emotional and cognitive load right here, motherfucker.

Oh, boy.

You know, I think it's kind of like if we charge up a story about layoffs for long enough, the number gets bigger and bigger.

It's kind of like a spirit bomb, you know?

If we just hold our hands up and hold our hands up for enough weeks in a row, the number will get bigger and bigger until we finally drop it and it will be incomprehensible.

Not to mention, it's not just the layoff story.

It's all the cloud makeup that gets applied

as it lands.

Microsoft, as of two weeks ago, laid off 9,000 people coming from the Xbox business.

But hey, that's 10% of King.

That's 3% of the company of Microsoft.

But Phil Spencer says that, you know, the gaming business has never looked stronger.

And

this is.

These are difficult choices.

We have to blah, blah, blah, blah.

Sure.

But

let's not forget.

That's the shot, but let's not forget the chaser,

which is that

they also had a record performance in 2024.

Yeah, they did.

Delivering $245 billion in annual revenue, up 16%

year over year, and over $109 billion in operating income, which is up 24%.

You don't say, look at that.

Business is booming.

Things are

growing

and they'll never stop growing.

There's multiple pieces of follow-up to this.

The first of which is this was alongside

an order from on high,

which is like, stop not using AI in your work.

AI is now mandatory for your work.

Correct.

You have to use it.

We told, so that story we covered two weeks ago,

in which we discussed the, you know, the mandated,

you will be followed by a robot.

Oh, yeah, we'll get there.

We'll get there.

You just, he just posted a photo at me.

The, the, you will be followed by a little R2D2, and

that will, don't worry about it.

You must use the robot, you must use the AI and feed it exactly what your tasks are every day, and uh, it'll be fine.

Shut the fuck up, it's mandatory.

Um, on top of that, uh, so

so you're you're your yeah, so shot, chaser, and then I guess what would this be your lime and salt lick?

Well, the the the middle of the shot is also like the MMO that they canceled that was like seven years in development that Phil Spencer liked so much that every time he played it, other people would have to be like, Dude, we have a meeting.

He's like, Oh man, what a great game!

Oh,

just canceled that.

Loved it that much, huh?

Yeah, just can't just killed that.

That's sick.

Seven years of dev on an MMO.

Apparently, it was wrapping up, and they're like, Nah, kill it.

Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

The Zenimax people are like, You have stolen.

There was a story today where the quote is, You have stolen our future.

Yeah.

I was talking to people over at Zenimax during the layoffs.

Like, I mean, like, simultaneous to the layoffs.

And

it was, I have been locked out of my Slack account.

I don't know if I have a job.

No one on my floor knows if they're fired.

Let me just back it up a second because we read through these things and there's not oftentimes an underlining moment per se, but we'll tell a story like, hey, 60 people got laid off here, 30 people got laid off there, 300 people got laid off over here at this big company the number i said at this beginning of the story was 9 000

that is what

900 indie teams

90 gigantic teams how you want to count comprehensible you want to count how many projects that is like what the fuck like

Yeah, no, no,

you know, but hey, whatever.

Money's, money's, money's, money's got line go up.

That's good.

That's good.

So, so, so what.

I have a feeling we're really building up to a really big line go down.

Because if you don't sell anything,

you can't make any money.

Well, well, listen, listen.

What matters most, right, is the advice that came from Matt Turnbull, the executive producer at Xbox Game Studio Publishing.

This is a...

crucial time, right?

It's very, very important to make sure that, you know, when a when a big downturn like this occurs, you want everybody to land and feel comfortable.

And the most human piece of advice you can give

came.

And I quote, these are really challenging times.

And if you're navigating a layoff or even quietly preparing for one, you're not alone and you don't have to go it alone.

I know these types of tools engender strong feelings in people, but I'd be remiss in not trying to offer the best advice I can under the circumstances.

I've been experimenting with ways to use LLM AI tools like ChatGPT or Copilot to help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss.

Here are some prompt ideas and use cases that might help you if you're feeling overwhelmed.

Career planning prompts.

Act as a career coach.

Quote, I've been laid off from a role

in the gaming industry.

Help me build a 30-day plan to regroup, research, new roles, and start applying without burning out.

What kind of game industry jobs could I pivot to with experience in production, narrative, live ops, etc.?

Resume and LinkedIn help.

Here's my current resume.

Help me give me three tailored versions: one for AAA, one for platform publishing roles, or for startup small studio leadership.

Rewrite this in bullet points to highlight impact and metrics.

Draft a new LinkedIn about me section that focuses on my leadership style,

shift titles, and version vision for game development.

Networking and outreach, you know, you write a warm message about reaching out to somebody at a studio about a job posting or sending old core workers a message to let them know I'm exploring new opportunities.

And of course, emotional clarity and confidence.

I'm struggling with imposter syndrome after being laid off.

AI, can you help me reframe this experience in a way that reminds me what I'm good at?

No AI tool is a replacement for your voice or your lived experience, but at a time when mental energy is scarce, these tools can help get you unstuck faster, calmer, and with more clarity.

If this helps, feel free to share with others in your network.

Stay kind, stay smart, and stay connected.

Okay, so we should just get the elephant out of the room right now.

He did not write that, he told the bro.

I didn't even, I didn't even think about the part where the thing itself.

It's very clear.

I didn't even think about that part.

I didn't even think about that part.

It's fairly clear.

Because despite its terrible content, it's like it's formulaic.

The bullet point list.

Bullet points.

Bold, using lots of dashes.

Okay, so let's just start there.

Let's just start there.

Sure, right?

Sure.

Second of all,

it really goes to show how little that this

the C-suite cares about you is that they're delegating even like you used to delegate this to like your secretary or you know your your receptionist or something, right?

Um

have and then you'd sign it.

But let's keep let's keep going.

Sure, sure, sure.

Yeah.

On top of that, it's so disconnected.

Like the C-suite is so disconnected from the realities of humanity that the idea of talking to your family, coworkers, or loved ones for emotional support does not even apply

it never even occurs anywhere in the fucking terminal linkedin brain CEO why don't I just talk to I don't know all of my also fired coworkers and we can get together a labor solution oh we know terminal

LinkedIn fucking brain doesn't even occur to speak to a human being at any part of this process never mind why the process is occurring to begin with

Also,

and

this is slightly outside the video games wheelhouse and more into the

social media landscape, like public health thing.

But it is my opinion, as

me,

that anyone who is offering a AI chat bot to you,

if you are in a tumultuous time in your life, if you are depressed, if you are suffering from any

form of mental illness or medical issue or just a general bad time, anyone who is offering that to you as a solution is doing you concrete physical harm

because these LLMs tend to just repeat whatever you like to hear or feed into them.

And there have been like a dozen cases of people getting delusions of grandeur or

exacerbating depressive episodes or schizophrenic tendencies and leading to people's deaths.

And not just the people using the machine, I mean other people's deaths as well when the AI pushes them towards the messiah complex that was hiding in there.

Like, it is a legitimate public health danger, and anyone offering that to you is attempting to harm you.

I would call Matt Turnbull ghoulish,

but that word implies that he used to be human at some point.

That's true.

So that would be a misnomer, if anything.

This is the single most out-of-touch thing I have ever seen in my entire career.

Oh, I don't know.

I bet I could pull one out

in like

a couple seconds, but it's a bit outside of our purview.

Yeah, I there's always a lot of

people.

Okay, well, okay, no, well, hold on, hold on.

Because to be fair, how much could a banana cost, Michael?

$5

because, like, the only other place my brain goes is to the sexual criminal activity of farting bosses at Ubisoft.

Like, I don't know what, you know, strapping you to a chair and farting in your face is not like that's all we're at another level of just like, yeah, you're my slave.

You're not my employee.

I'm like, you know, without getting into a judge banging a gavel in front of you, just the level of you're not a person here anymore

you don't know where you work

did you ever go to high school with anybody who was like wildly out of touch with the reality of everyone else in their in the world

did you ever like run into like some white girl who would ask you where your family goes skiing during the summer

I mean, no, but

I run into a couple and I'm just like, motherfucker, I got no money.

What are you talking about?

No, you know, when you hear the word summering for the first time.

we went to Lake Meacham in the U.S.

because my grandparents are out there.

Yeah, um, I well, first of all, like, they're not going to your high school, and if they are, then, like, something went wrong.

I'm talking about when we went to Seja.

Ah, yes, yes, yes.

True, true, true.

That's when you come down from the mountain to fraternize with the lowborn.

Yeah.

Oh, you guys have to, you guys have to take public transit.

Oh, I just have my dad dad drive me from Westmount.

It's like a five-minute trip.

What, in your BMW?

Yeah, okay, cool.

Sick.

That's awesome.

Wow.

That must be.

Oh, getting up early must be tough for you, bitch.

Fuck you.

I mean, not only do I remember those people, but more so, those people were over there.

I remember the person who was trying to get in with those people.

Oh, they're so disgusting.

As badly as he could.

Oh, I hate them.

It was.

They're so gross.

Oh, yo, yo, like, like, my skin peeled.

It just peeled.

Oh, the fucking hangers on.

Oh, it feels off of my body.

I start molting.

Oh.

Um, yeah, so, so, I, I don't really know what more you do here, you know,

but um,

literally

everybody joined the union.

That's that's the answer.

That's the actual judgment.

Because Zenimax is in a weird place where a lot of the people who've had their projects canceled canceled and left with nothing can't be fired unilaterally because they're in the fucking union.

So they're in this weird fuck-ass limbo.

God, I want to see the prompt so bad that's like, hey, I just fired nearly 10,000 people.

What do I say to seem like a good person?

And then the AI was like, oh, you should give them some tips about using AI to help them feel bad.

Dial it back.

Accidentally put some compassion in there.

Cut out the part where it goes, sure, I can help you with that.

You know, like, just

wow, man.

Wow.

Like, like, how many seconds total were spent before you pasted that?

God.

Yeah.

While we were watching, like, the U.S.

video game industry just completely kill itself.

Like, it's crazy.

I can't wait.

Like, this is a Canadian podcast.

It's not, like, super overt, right?

But we both happen to live in Canada and have been for the whole time.

So it's like, I can't wait until we're like reading like a fucking Kotaku or like fucking Forbes article about the video game industry is crashing.

And then in the footnote, it goes, Well, except for Europe and Canada and Japan and Brazil and China and Korea.

I mean, here's to 9,000 potential

employees of small studios doing cool shit.

Possibly.

Who knows?

I really, really hope that

we start seeing

like that's so many people.

That's so many projects.

That's so, like, it's incomprehensible.

I really hope that we start seeing shit picking up steam.

Yeah.

Just the absolute out of touchness doesn't stop there, folks.

It continues.

Boosie.

It's fucking crazy.

Boose.

It's crazy, dude.

Don't you get it?

like so so check this out right

if that dog

wanted to

join up and sign up to be part of the xbox graphics department yes yes

uh

would you suggest that uh perhaps uh attracting people to said department

should uh show off some artwork that people working in said department might generate

themselves to perhaps.

It's interesting because

there was an ad put out amongst all this, you know, Microsoft shit that's been going down that it says Xbox Graphics is hiring.

There's a new development lead

at its graphics department that's putting out a LinkedIn post for job opportunities.

And the ad advertising for people to join the team is generated using AI.

And it is a.

And it's obviously generated using AI.

Like,

there's a computer monitor with the fucking screen on the back of the fucking monitor.

It's dead ass.

The person.

There's an Xbox.

It's one of the worst examples because not only is it schlop,

but it's schlop that the person who generated it couldn't even bother looking at it once.

Not even once.

Negative fucks.

Like, I'm sure there's a insert the brand logo to make sure that it is,

you know, not breaking any brand platform guidelines.

So that Xbox logo was inserted correctly.

It was likely added afterwards.

But yes, yes, this is a graphic of a girl in a green shirt staring at a monitor, and the back of the monitor has the actual text and screen on it.

Joy!

You know what?

It's almost, it's almost brilliant if you're kind of like, we don't know what we're doing.

We need help.

Please help us.

We need help.

Right?

It's a cry for help more than anything.

Dude, I don't know.

And job security.

I feel like if you're in Microsoft right now, or if you're in a company that's like super pushing

AI really, really, really hard and you're like a technical person or an artist or something like that, you need to start thinking about getting out and finding something that is not doing this because we are going.

So, AI is eventually going to crash once it becomes obvious that they're just chasing like a fucking investment pile of shit that doesn't actually do anything.

We're already seeing in a bunch of industries having to hire back people that AI was supposed to replace.

There's a great article I was reading two days ago about there's a new cottage industry

of people who work on AI.

So, do you remember during COVID?

There were a lot of places, particularly in the States, that cut nursing staff.

They're like, ah, we're going to save money.

We don't need that many nurses.

But then COVID happens, and it turns out you do need those nurses.

So you hire back the same people as travel nurses at five times the cost because it's emergency hours.

Right.

And there became this large industry of travel nurses that are like, I'm making way more money than I ever did as a nurse because I'm on permanent emergency call.

right?

That is happening to AI now, where there is a cottage industry of people whose job it is to come in at like $200 an hour and fix your shitty press release that the AI sent out or fix the logo treatment or the art that the AI shit out.

And it's costing like 10 times more than it would to just have the guy do it.

But regardless, when this thing eventually crashes, people that are in like Microsoft graphics department are gonna have this fucking block of their fucking work history go okay did you do that or did the AI do it did you do the good parts or did the AI do the good parts did you did you do the shitty parts how hard did you fight AI implementation at your job he show me like Show me your work.

Oh, you can't because it's it's it's under lock and key to a

corporate NDA.

So I'm just gonna have to like it's fucking messed.

Yeah, I think what we're kind of seeing is essentially the last couple of years have been, you know, companies slowly flirting with the idea a little bit more and a little bit more, waiting for things to get a little bit better and so on.

And of course, external pressure from investors to be like, hey, the trend, the hot word, it's going now.

Why don't you hurry the fuck up?

Right?

Get these people out of here.

What are we doing?

And I feel like, yeah, this is, you know, every like a lot of these companies, again, for their own preservation, have flirted, but like, this is Microsoft taking the full plunge, you know, and going one-to-one,

all humans out, those who are here, feed the AI what your job is so that it can replace you, and then also just using it on the back end for this type of thing and for the message we just described and such.

They're diving hardest and fastest into this, and they're also in the most trouble in this generation.

So they're the most desperate.

So like,

is just, are we just looking at the first flails of like them getting the fuck out of this entire corner of the industry?

I don't know.

Um, I don't think there's ever going to be another Xbox platform ever again.

I think they're going to just

add Game Pass support to different shit.

Pat, this is an Xbox.

Yeah, sure, whatever.

I don't.

Fuck that.

I don't even have the energy for it.

I don't even have the energy for it.

I think that, I think the inversion of power and

the implementation of AI stuff is

particularly nuts because I want to quote the.

I'm pretty sure,

I'm pretty sure this was Chris Wolfhart talking about it, which is the goofiest thing about all of this is that the single position most likely to be effectively replaced by AI decision-making is the C-suite.

Because the C-suite don't actually use any objective data in any of their decisions at all.

It's all based off of vibes and personal philosophies that they've invented for themselves based off of nothing.

So, any objective criteria being added to these business decisions would be an improvement.

But the Sele Dominoes don't know that yet.

Like, a fucking Google search with Boolean would probably have better fucking results at picking winners and losers in the games industry.

Like, it's one of the weirdest things about people who follow games, like me and you being enthusiast content creators, and people listening to this or watching this being enthusiast members of the hobby, is like

I could pick a random person in this chat and ask them if a game was going to bomb or succeed and I think they would have a better chance of getting it right than the head of Microsoft.

Yeah, no, that's not even weird.

They're so disconnected.

I mean,

that's just obvious.

Like, it's Monday.

Like, I mean, yes, of course.

That's not even...

There's no question to that.

It's because you're talking about people who also like leave this industry and jump into like, I don't know, literally any business is just a concept.

They could jump into fucking nail production.

They can jump into

post packaging.

Like it doesn't matter.

I'm just, I'm just a professional

sit on top of the business and spout words at it person, you know?

So the idea that you're actually in touch with what you're making or the people that are, you know, like pouring a lot of their energy and like fucking soul into what they're making is insane.

That's not, obviously, you're looking for a

bottom-line profit maker, you know, that

again, investors, et cetera.

It's the same kind of conversation we've had forever.

But

it is like to some degree, like more specifically the U.S., because in the U.S., you could be sued for not providing your shareholders adequate value, which is not a fucking thing.

Sure.

But

every single one of these C-suite members, like the day after they join said suite, Suite, then has to go get their Xbox controller or Switch or PlayStation for the first time and be like, we're now a console family, and look how we're excited we are to play a video game for the first time.

You know, in the same way that you're like, oh yeah, if I'm now in, in, in the C-suite at Tupperware, I've look at my, my whole family's using it now.

Like, it's, what are we talking about?

These people have no investment in any of this shit long term.

They're the most transient shit.

Well, I mean, a lot of them don't have investment in their own lives or families either, but that's a whole different thing.

Yeah.

What they do have is fucking points on the back end, is what they have.

So,

anyway, again, I don't want to let the second part of that story be ignored, which is that

the numbers have gone up.

To those of you

who are off,

stay mad and

organize.

Yeah.

Talk to each other about the nature of capital.

It sucks.

It sucks, though.

That's the nature of capital.

Also, make cool indies and then

make single

and

I saw some folks talking about that.

And that is the obvious, like, well, I mean, the big company laid you off.

Why don't you go make a new company?

And it's like, the problem is, it's like,

you need money.

You do.

This is, of course,

to live on.

Every time, this is absolutely a real, real issue.

Yes.

And it's just the people that are, it's just the people that are the money lender, so to speak, in these situations, the scale and the and the groups need to be much smaller with people that are more in touch with the industry that understand and care about what the fuck they're funding or making.

Like, do you give a shit

is a mandatory question question behind where that money is coming from.

You know, that's that's like um

oh, it's gone.

Okay.

No,

is it?

All right.

Uh uh make a new indie game is tough because you need the money to live on.

And it makes me think of the people who worked in Rhode Island for that fuckhead baseball man.

Who the fuck?

Curtis Schilling?

Kurt Schilling,

who got everyone to fucking roll double mortgages on fucking two properties, and then the company goes under, and they're stuck in fucking Rhode Island with two mortgages.

Like,

those people are fucked over 38 Studio.

Like, fucked, fucked.

And they made a sick combat juggle system that they burnt on his shit in the reckoning.

I think the best piece of advice I've seen from game devs talking about this recently is: don't, don't move

to somewhere that you would need to sell your house if things go get a new opportunity

like don't

don't physical relocation sell your house or buy a house upon the move to your new place because you're probably gonna get laid off in 24 months to 36 months um start posting on on french production forums for indie groups get together put your soundcloud shit out there get on soundcloud i mean shit um

yeah

and

you know uh in the meantime uh while that's happening

um

hey

how about a how about a uh

a simple wrap-up on this one the ongoing story that is stop killing games

Okay.

Stop it.

Stop it?

Don't do it.

Stop.

Stop

killing them.

Are you about to kill a game?

You look like you're about to put the game down.

Hey.

I don't think my criticisms are that strong of Death Stranding.

Video Games Europe lobby.

I see you.

You're about to kill a game.

Stop it.

Put it down.

Unfortunately, that lobby consists of everybody.

Last I checked?

Everybody?

Everybody in Europe?

I think.

Probably.

No, I think we're talking everyone.

Let me pull up the.

Yeah, videogameseurope.eu.

The lobby that's against Stop Killing Games includes Activision, Blizzard, Netflix, Microsoft, Sega, Roblox, Riot Games,

Niant,

T2, WB, Zenimax, all of it, Esquarinix, etc.

So if I remember correctly, this was born out of Ubisoft taking the crew crew offline for like and disabling

people who owned it from playing it for no reason.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, and so the story, it seems like it got pretty complex, but overall, Accursed Farms is the YouTuber behind this campaign and basically has been pushing for an

EU and for a UK-specific parliamentary recognition of essentially just making sure that when a game gets purchased by the consumer,

if the security of feature on the game, if the game has a call home feature, that the developer should provide an easy way for them to keep playing if the call home feature or server gets switched off.

So if there's any sort of thing where it has an offline mode and the game is

going offline from live service, but you've bought it,

the game being taken away from you after you've spent your fucking money on it.

Pretty simple concept.

Yeah,

one of the things things about it was that the crew had a fully functional single-player mode that didn't require online authentication at all.

But Ubisoft was like, nah, no more crew for anybody.

And so we've talked a bunch about, I think, over the years, these games where people get them back online through, you know, whether it's Halo or Titanfall, and they just get home servers going.

Metal Gear Solid 3 subsistence, like, you know, online mode.

Yeah.

Crazy shit.

Because, yeah, that sucks if you've paid money for a thing and then they said, fuck you and turn the servers off.

So

my understanding too, though, is that like some of the complication of getting this to be

actually actionable is that in at least I think the UK proposition or so, after a certain number of signatures, it doesn't guarantee that action will be taken.

It just means that people in parliament will discuss it.

They're forced to acknowledge.

It's forced to be acknowledged and discussed openly.

And in some cases, they just kind of like, you know, kind of go, oh, we don't care about this or whatever.

So that's what, that's, that's unfortunately, I think, the downside of like, um,

you know, the nature of just getting signatures doesn't necessarily mean something action will happen.

It's going into the UK parliament.

You can only hope that it gets in on a sober day.

Yeah.

I think for the EU, it's a little bit different.

And it seems like the latest news story there is that they got the vice president of the European Parliament to back the campaign.

So the quote was: a game once sold belongs to the customer.

So, cool.

That's promising.

Again, this being turned from an idea into something actually actionable seems like a far way to go, but it would be cool if the thing that you paid your money for was not then taken away from you when the company said, fuck you.

I think the strangest thing about this being a news story by far is that this seems like such an obvious, universally positive thing for literally everyone that you would have to be a crazy person to take any stance against this whatsoever.

Like, who, if this went through and all that, like, who could it possibly harm at all?

So, Video Games Europe,

the lobby that has all the companies I mentioned,

is one person, certainly.

There could be others.

But for the lobby that large, their whole deal is basically:

we don't want you to have to force extra potential costs, legal liabilities,

and take away developer choice in the process of how they want to take the thing that the customer paid for away from them.

Yeah, I'm jorking it through my diaper with this.

Well, you figured it out.

You can pull it out over the top.

Yes, no.

Essentially, the Video Games Europe argument is that the creator of the game reserves the right to perpetually fuck over the purchaser of the game.

And if you stop that from happening, then you will, that that takes, that restricts the developer's freedom

to fuck over the player.

This is like the same kind of logic.

It was like, it costs more to not dump it in the river.

But it's faster.

It's right there.

The river's right there.

Yeah.

So

Woolly,

there's something.

So there's something in content creation that's so funny, which is

there's always this attitude of like, well, I'm going to be...

part of the game development sphere one day.

So I desperately want to make sure that I don't talk too much shit about this person or that person and speak too loudly about this or

talk about any mechanics that would hurt my future sales on my thing in the future.

It's a bit too late for that

infuriating things.

And we've run into like this podcast of people like that.

By doing this podcast here with me for the last

doors are closed.

It's a bit too late.

Oh, yeah.

They're oh man.

Listen, man.

My opinions are mine alone.

Look, the problem with the aforementioned diarrhea that I was just quoting is that,

okay, so Europe is a different place from

North America.

Very true.

And being a different place means that they have different attitudes towards things.

They are potentially more willing to go, hey, fuck you, when when it comes to things like you know, the Fortnite dark patterns, for example.

Yeah, we've also seen Australia get on top of uh bullshit.

We've seen literally China be like, Hey, if you're gonna do gacha, you've got to show the percentages because get the fuck out of here,

right?

Yeah, so different places have different attitudes towards that.

Uh, like you load up Horse Game, and every single time you click on it, it goes, Hey, if you're a miner,

fucking

chill, maybe um, the list of companies that I described that are part of the video games Europe Union

is extensive

and there is

like

negative chance that America could ever could even fathom

could begin to think of a dream of a hope.

This is the fun part where the Europe is a large enough region with enough people in it that represents like a large enough market share for this kind of consumer action, is that decisions made over there would in some way, even if not directly, affect us and our American buddies down south and people in Japan.

Because, specifically for this, for stop killing games,

if you ascertain that the consumer has a legal right to a game if they've purchased it and it has to stop phoning home, then that means that that version of the game has to be provided to Europeans, and there's nothing stopping non-Europeans from having that version of the game also.

Yeah.

Well, the interesting trick here in a lot of these things is that if one

significant enough market is forced to do something, then it becomes more cost effective to provide that everywhere on a single SKU than to divvy it up.

Yeah.

Right.

And so the hope is that like if enough places are forcing this through, then places like America, it just just becomes cost-effective to not make a fuck over you for living their version of it.

That's the hope.

One of the reasons we have Steam refunds is because Australia mandated refunds.

And Australia isn't that large of a country in population.

But what it did cause, my assumption, is that Steam was like, well, we're going to have to do a full refund program in Australia.

It's going to look really fucking bad if we only offer that shit in Australia.

We're going to look like the biggest motherfuckers in the world.

And I assume that is part of the reason why that refund process rolled out to the rest of the world.

Yeah.

I just know that when you look at this list of companies that are against the idea and you see literally the 30 biggest video game companies in the world all there, it's like...

I don't want to pay it.

Well, the power behind that is.

Shareholders.

You know, nothing to fucking shake a stick at.

I mean, that is an uphill battle.

But, hey, yeah, no, it would be nice.

It would be nice if

you didn't.

Put the game down.

Don't kill it.

Stop it.

Just stop it.

What an easy thing to get behind.

What a crazy, crazy, easy way to get behind.

Would it be batshit nuts to just

to swerve on that and find a reason?

Oh my god, you'd have to be fucking bananas, just a total buffoon.

And yet,

somehow.

Let's see how it goes.

What else is going on over here?

I think the

I don't know if you've seen it, probably not, but on the off chance that you haven't, I'm going to just show you a picture.

They have announced a new Camon Rider, Camen Rider Zets,

and

just look at it.

I just want you to.

All right, I will look at it.

Just look at it.

Yo, that's cool.

Yeah, it's cool.

I like it.

All right?

That's really good, dude.

That's a really good Cameron.

That's it.

I just want you to look at it.

I just want you to look at it.

Oh, I love it.

Don't lose your dream.

That is such a good Cameron Rider design.

Mizamero.

That's it.

I just, I did.

They announced the new one, and I just want you to look at him.

Oh, that's super good.

I love that.

That's super slick, but also classic.

It's the classic colors.

And it's the belt over.

The belt is as a chest strap.

The design is so sick, dude.

And you know what else is fun is that this is going to be premiering September 2025 in Japan.

Oh, cool.

That's soon.

And America.

And Canada.

Oh.

And Hong Kong.

And Korea.

And Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, et cetera.

It is going to be an international Camon Ryder premiere.

Bro.

Bro, I'm going to have my little baby watch Camon Ryder and learn that he kicks he kicks evil.

Get the fuck in.

That's so cool.

That's really cool.

It's an international finally debut with the thing, you know.

They've been, of course, there's been the translation efforts before, but in terms of debuting a new series at the same time, they had all right.

This is this is cool.

Uh,

yeah,

I just, I just wanted you to look at, just look at that boy.

I think that's great.

God damn it.

I think that's just super.

Um,

in the meantime, Gav is hot.

Beyond that,

what else?

There's a little bit of that.

Remember Inti Creates?

They made Mega Man Zero, Mega Man Zero X Advent.

Yeah, they're all right.

And then they made Gunvolt.

They're making a new game.

They announced it.

It's called Majogami.

And

it looks pretty.

It looks kind of cool.

I I see lots of paper platform slashing things happening.

It looks all right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you know what?

Like, okay, I did not like Gunvolt.

I enjoyed the previous games they made.

I have room in my heart for Inti Creates to do what they do

once again.

And let's see.

Let's see how this goes.

But I like the style of what we're seeing here with

a witch doing lots of cool, pretty casting textures and things flying all over the place.

There's never been a problem with the feeling of an Inti Creates platformer.

My issues have always been strictly mechanical.

So I'm hoping for the best with this new game, Machogami, coming to Switch 2 and all the rest.

And beyond that,

did you see Ken?

I saw a screenshot of Ken.

He looks dirty.

So Ken is

coming to City of the Wolves, and his beard is too pronounced.

That's my only thing.

I think the rest of his scrungy, dirty-ass Ken look is totally on point.

They got him looking as he should, but the beard should be more

faded and scraggled.

It's too colored in and loud, you know?

And yeah, sure enough, just like that ending, as predicted in the

SF6

Terry story,

Terry Bogart walks up and picks Ken up off the ground.

You know, just sitting in the dirt, putzing around.

And Ken gives Terry a look that's basically like,

she took the kids, Terry.

You know.

We'll see how Ken works with no crouching medium kick.

Think about that.

Isn't that weird?

That's really fucking strange.

Yeah.

They've done it in the other crossover things before a little bit, but he's got his Jinrai.

He'll probably be fine.

Cool.

Shall we take

a letter or two?

Before that, there was part of my week that I forgot to talk about.

Let's go.

Very shortly.

But you might have noticed that I talked about streaming a lot this week, and Paige has also been streaming a lot more recently.

She's uh, I think she might be streaming later tonight as well as on Sunday.

Uh, but part of that is because we have made the decision as a couple to quit Dungeons and Dragons in our current campaign.

Ah,

time

has been reclaimed.

Time is back, okay.

Um,

okay, the long and short of it, like the really, really simple,

we really like the group that we're in, like now.

Um, and we like where it was going back and forth with some things.

Both of us being in the campaign is the problem because that means that there is a babysitter cost per DD,

and the babysitter cost over a month is like

way

too

high for something that I get excited sometimes being canceled.

Okay, okay, right.

Okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah, fair.

Oh, because like it was one of those things where we talked about it on our respective channels, and we talked, like, oh, we have a really good babysitter that we really like, and she's like $25 an hour.

And people like, people who don't have kids go, oh my God, that's crazy.

And people who do have kids go, wow, that's really good, actually.

Right?

Can the child learn to roll a D20?

No, man.

You can't even give the child a D20.

Can the child...

The child will eat the D20.

Can the child learn to not copy your character sheet?

No, man.

We're working on ABCs.

Because

I think

you can get further

than...

No.

Well, all right.

But yeah, the long and short of it is like, we're like, sometimes I'd be like, sometimes DD would get canceled by one of the other people because it was like, you know, they got busier, they got work stuff.

And me and Paige would go, oh, sick, one of us can stream or let's go out to dinner.

Like, it's, it's just like

for the thing that is representing like the number one cost of babysitter dollars in our household, for it to being a thing that I usually enjoy pretty much instead of being the most fun thing we do all month,

it just didn't.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It just doesn't fucking work.

But you have now, like,

had a tabletop experience.

Oh, absolutely.

And granted, huge proportions of that experience were wildly stereotypical.

Like, crazily, insanely stereotypical.

And we had lots of adventures in learning social dynamics of D ⁇ D people.

Yeah, yeah.

And the basic reality is that, like, I have a, I have some buddies of mine over over Discord that do DD campaigns, and I've put my hat in the ring for when they start a new campaign in six months to a year.

But until that kid's going to school, me and Paige probably have to split.

If we play DD, we probably just can't be in the same fucking campaign because it just kills time.

Yeah, no, that's a very, very

disappointingly reasonable reason.

Super reasonable.

As opposed to, you know, the bit epilogue part four, you know.

The biggest thing for me, like, Paige is very bummed out about it because she was enjoying it, but she agrees with me that this is just probably for the best.

My biggest bummer is that I was about to hit level five and I never got to cast Fireball on the party by accident.

Ah,

uh, the big old, the big, the clock, by accident.

I never, I never got to be like, how big is this room?

And then go, fuck it.

I don't care.

well um

yeah no i uh it's tabletopping tabletopping is a is a fun thing in in the right context and yeah hopefully that can y'all can figure that out in a different way um and you know i mean there's there's d and d but then there's stuff that's not dnd you know there's there if you ever oh yeah branched out into other things you could always find some fun stuff um you could you could you could jump in in a fucking robot you know so i mean there's there's all kinds of places you could go

Yeah, that's what's going on with that.

So, the schedule is freed up once again.

Let's take

some a break because I think that dog is asking you to go out.

Do it.

Okay.

Let's take some letters.

Um, castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com is that's where you would send your letter.

Gabe says,

Hey, Pat and Woolly, re-watching the Tech and 8 streams, realized just how many games have you fighten your own dad in a cinematic boss battle.

Press F to fight your dad in the rain.

What's your favorite dad fight?

This is a spoilerific conversation, potentially, because some games are going to be like...

I have one that's like relatively recent.

I got one.

Yeah.

Well, I got two, actually.

Yeah.

Two good ones.

I think my two favorite are probably

the owl from Sekiro.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's your dad.

Yeah.

And fucking Hades.

Yeah, Hades.

That's your dad.

I have two.

Fight your mom

in Metal Gear Solid 3.

Not the same question, but that's a good answer, too.

that's the best fight your dad in metal gear solid two

yeah

and fight your dad in devil may cry

yeah

yeah

i mean for sure fight your dad yeah question mark in metroid

It's the thing with the Devil May Cry, it's like, of course, it's the best fight your dad, but it's not the dad I want to fight.

We did that, and it was lame,

which was kind of funny, actually.

Right?

No, but you want the good version, you know?

Just do it, but make it good.

I know.

Yeah, yeah, no.

The owl was a really fun one, and I remember putting it through the like grind motions to be like, okay, I have to learn the startup to the startup of your animations.

And in particular, the, what was it?

And yeah, he does the Makiri counter to you.

Which is awesome.

Oh!

Death Stranding.

One.

For the record.

Yeah, thematically, more than mechanically, but you know, it was cool.

It was cool.

All right, let's take one over here from

that movie about fighting your dad, though, is Hot Rod.

Okay, I can't do movies because now we're gonna, yeah, this is we're gonna be here forever.

I just want to say, Fighting Your Dad and Hot Rod is awesome.

Um, what about Bam Margera?

God damn it.

I hate Bam Margera.

I know so much.

I almost blew up a sponsored stream over how much I hated him.

Yeah, that's a good thing.

I almost said, fuck it.

I don't even care.

And went nuts.

But I was like,

Jesus Christ, Bam.

Getting crazy over here.

All right.

Here's one.

No name given.

Hey, mom and dad.

I'm the mom.

What are some games or hobbies you feel like you've fallen out of love with?

If you can't think of any, then give us a good kite story or else chat will call you a poser.

Love your son, K.

Thanks.

Bye.

Wow.

Oh, that's really cool.

Wow.

Well, for...

My heart is broken when I think about FF-14 and how I don't have any desire to play it at all.

Can I just say for the record, sorry, that

Punch Mom and I drove up to an open area on a windy day up north and flew that whale around.

Oh, that's cool.

And,

you know, it wasn't a perfect windy day, but we did the best we could with the situation.

Got some fun photos out of it.

And that's for me, not for the internet.

Go fuck yourself.

I have a private life.

Wait, kite memories are private?

Some of them, you know.

Dude, okay.

So I, yesterday, literally yesterday at 5 p.m., I'm like, hey, little man, you, you need to nap.

You have not napped.

And he goes, no.

And I go, no, we're going to go upstairs.

We're going to go nap.

And he goes, okay.

And then he asks for specific books.

So I read him the specific books and I look at my perfect little guy, right?

And he's like getting sleepy.

And I'm like, man, I'm going to think back on this and I'm an old man and I'm going to be like, this was like maybe one of the best moments of my life.

And then he looks at me and he slapped my tummy and went

for as long as he could.

For as long as he could, for like a minute.

Oh, the sustained duration.

Crucial.

Yeah.

Crucial to the bit.

Oh, man.

Too bad.

And now it's really locked in.

Now that memory's forever.

That's great.

That's great.

The kids are going to be all right.

Yeah.

In terms of hobbies, I have fallen out of love with.

See, there's hobbies that drop off, but not because I'm like turning against them per se.

Yeah, but there is one thing that I can say.

Like, it's unfortunately just been long enough, and life has changed in such a way that it's not a thing.

It's, I unfort, I feel this is going to hurt some people.

I know, like, if Mellow.

games, isn't it?

No,

no, no, hey, no.

The trick is to do it professionally so that you can never truly be divorced from the hobby.

No, I'm then.

I feel like I'm going to break some people's hearts, like Mello, if he hears this, but

seeking out new music is just something I have not done in

forever.

And I have been relying on people I know to just send me their tastes and I check and I fuck with the shit they send me.

But for me myself, it's been so long that it would count as an answer to this question.

Yeah, no, so that makes perfect sense.

There's a real-time expenditure to seeking it out yourself.

But also, that happens to a lot of guys our age, Wooly.

You turn on the oldies channel and you go, you know what?

This is good enough.

This has got all the things I like on it.

You just fucking settle it.

That's only a half joke.

Yeah.

No, you settle into what you're comfortable with.

You know, that's it.

That's it.

You know?

I mean, shit.

It's one thing when your loading screen music is restricted to be video game-y, to be video game because it's YouTube safe.

But then once that comes off and all of Spotify is at your leisure, and then I'm like,

I don't know.

Free Phoenix right turnabout.

Hey, man, you know what?

I can fucking listen to

33 soundtracks.

Yeah, Spotify,

five hours.

And then let's, you know what?

And then right after that, let's just hit up New Jabes and loop right back around to Ace Combat.

You know?

That reminds me.

Piece of news that we didn't cover.

Did you see the ghost of Yote fucking 20 minutes presentation?

Oh, I thought that was happening later.

Did it already happen?

I don't know how that happened.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, there's a bunch of shit in there.

Whatever.

I'm going to skip past all of it.

There's one thing specific to you for there.

Kurosawa mode will now be, I think, higher contrast and more wind.

So it looks more like Kurosawa.

Actually, black and white.

They are also adding Mikke mode,

which is closer camera and more blood and mud.

Takashi.

And they are adding Watanabe mode.

Where the soundtrack will be replaced with a lo-fi samurai image.

and it's called that specifically.

It is called Watanabe mode.

Oh my god.

Okay.

Kurosawa, Mika, and Watanabe is a pretty fucking hard filter.

That's hot.

That's

it.

That's sick.

I might actually do that.

That's kind of incredible.

We're going.

Okay, so one arc, we shampoo.

Another arc, we seven samurai.

Yeah.

Okay.

Ooh.

Ooh.

That's...

Do I even want to play the base game?

JJ, so I, I.

You know,

I hate these types of things.

Like, who the fuck's going to go through Resident Evil 5 with the fucking yellow filter or green or whatever?

And then I look at this and I go, hmm.

I actually, I think I liked Wadanabe's music better than the Ghost of Spirit.

The original score.

I think that might just be a direct upgrade.

This is a, yeah, this is a this is a strange proposition in which you're providing content that is for bonus playthrough that I might just make my default.

That's incredible.

And then you can play the bonus playthrough with the original score and be like, oh, this is cool.

That was cool.

That was cool.

Yeah, that was all right.

You know,

nice.

Okay.

Yeah, there was a

where, yeah, that was it.

It was a half an hour presentation with some other stuff.

Okay, shit.

I gotta, yeah, gotta check that out.

I thought that was it showed a lot of shit in that.

There's a lot like when you do the samurai uh uh uh confrontation, oh, yeah, like the dog will also join up with it.

So, you're doing like multiple opponents at once, and the dog is also doing like the samurai draw, but with dog mouth.

Oh,

man,

Tsushima was fun.

Yeah, I'm down, I'm down.

That's hot.

all right i gotta go watch that then

we

um

man

yeah i uh uh uh uh uh we'll be back next week uh

sorry no no okay oh did we run out of good emails uh

after the one here we go here we go here we go it's on you max

Okay, says, hey, Pat and Woolly.

What's up?

Just finished Expedition 33 the other day, and I had a blast with it, but I encountered balance issues that seem to haunt a similar number of RPGs.

The difficulty drop that comes when fighting the final boss versus the super boss.

Absolutely.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

It's like the worst.

It's like that game's single glaring flaw is that the difficulty just starts to fly to pieces at about the 70% mark in both directions.

I later learned of a few things I could have done to solve that for E33 specifically, but my question is more of a general problem for other RPGs that have this problem.

I feel like most people put the game down after reaching credits, so they'd want to do everything first before.

One game I can think of that massively has this issue is SMT5.

One of the endings is locked behind beating a super boss before you even get to the last zone.

I mean, that just sounds like that sounds ridiculous.

The

question for you guys is, what are some of the possible solutions a studio could do to prevent the ending fight from feeling lackluster or a cakewalk compared to something earlier?

Make two instances of the final boss with different stats.

Have a limit to your damage output.

Much love to both of your families from Max.

Thank you.

Okay,

so

I would like to hear your thoughts on this because I have been thinking about this a lot and I have a definitive series of thoughts.

Yeah.

Ready to go.

I mean,

I think about how obviously Expedition 33 was an insane experience with scaling and they had to patch the game to allow you to handle it and capping you and even that's like that is a genuine bad problem

you shouldn't we shouldn't have to be self-capping on the fucking fly yeah self-capping at nine nine nine nine or you know each digit up from that is a solution but it's not the most elegant one as as much as i love expedition 33 and its gameplay i think that they could have solved a lot of their gameplay issues and scaling problems if the multiplications on those stats were additive instead of multiplicative.

Just calm it down a little bit.

I think the game would be a lot more fun gameplay wise if the strongest your attack could go is like 250%

above your base attack.

Instead of ballotry.

Instead of a trillion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or make a like, make a thing so that it's like you can do that multiplicative addition on spending three points to, you know, whatever, build up a super turn or something.

But I get what you mean by that.

Expedition Expedition 33 is such an odd, specific duck, though, you know, with all its weird Picto systems that let you overjuice your offense and have zero defense, which other RPGs are not going to necessarily support.

The thing is, is when I think about other games with the Super Boss thing, you know, my reference point is limited to the games I've played.

But when I think about like Metaphor, for example, I had no problem with that because while I was really, really strong by the end of that game, by beating the super boss, you're ready to just, you know, cakewalk all the way through to the finale

it's crazy i kind of am like i like the idea that the super boss is um

good optional lore that adds to the story but is that remains optional it should it shouldn't ever feel like completely completely mandatory but it should supplement the story in a good way um

i kind of yeah i i don't know i i think like

the the maybe you can implement something kind of how the um

uh sort of Souls game version of like you're going to another place that has a specific scaling system for it, you know, in a way.

Right.

Like if you made that fight have something unique about how your power level were scaled that didn't apply to the rest of the game.

So that could potentially solve it.

I'm playing through the Horizon DLC right now.

And do you remember when I played Horizon, I beat Horizon?

I said my biggest complaint is that fights become solved.

Like every enemy has like sequence that you get

You get to the DLC and you encounter what's called a scorched version of most enemies.

And the first thing they do is massively jack up all their elemental resistances.

Okay.

And so fighting them is actually much more difficult.

But also, enemies that are scorched are almost always placed around these towers.

And the towers do two things.

They pulse out massive bursts of energy that heal all the enemies.

So you have to not just beat them, but beat them fast.

And the best armor set in the game for horizon is the only game that has like a halo shield like a energy shield on it and when the pulse hits you it turns it off okay it fucks up the technology in the suit and turns off and it does a really good job of like balancing that out by like having an in-universe reason to turn off one of your strongest abilities but not one that's like player controlled just defensive and also juicing the stats of the other things for um expedition 33 i think you could fix that game like this by having uh a certain picto be split into two.

Sure.

The picto that unlocks the damage cap should have actually been part one and part two, and it should have been unlocks the damage cap from 10,000 to a hundred thousand, 100k, yeah, and 100k to a million.

And then when you beat the final boss, you should get the second part of it, which is fully unlocks the damage cap.

Yep.

And I think that the best game to ever do it is Star Ocean 2.

Star Ocean 2 has the final dungeon, and then it has the super dungeon.

If you put one, if you unlock unlock and take a step into the super dungeon, the final dungeon reorients itself to the assumption that you beat the super dungeon.

Ooh,

that's elegant.

That's real nice.

That's work.

The final boss is built for you hitting like level 90 unless you walk into the super dungeon.

And if you walk into the super dungeon, the final boss reorients for you being a level 200.

Go fuck yourself.

You did it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, okay.

I like that.

That takes work, but that's a real nice way to do that.

There's a problem, though.

If you're Pat and you go to the super dungeon at 10 years old and go, wow, this looks really hard.

I'm leaving.

And then you sit over your file

and then get to the final boss.

It's like 10 times stronger than you.

You start the whole game over.

Well, or you go back to the super dungeon and then you just run around the first floor of it it and then leave when you're, you know, strong enough.

But yeah, that's true.

Yeah, that was that feature was hidden.

That was interesting.

Yeah, I also, there's also stuff where it kind of challenges that turn the fight into like a puzzle as well as the boss fight.

So the second dragon in metaphor is like

it's it has the the whole bit where like your HP drops to like one and you have to basically like fight around a low HP build, and it becomes a more tactical fight than a just, you know, how much can I hit and how much can I heal?

You know,

fights like that that kind of like are

sort of like, I don't care what your level is, you have to solve this unique problem could also be interesting, but they also like that you can trivialize it once you learn it once and make it too much of a puzzle.

So it's hard to balance that together.

I like that one you mentioned, though.

Like right now, right this second,

there is a essentially play order I could recommend for Expedition 33 that would be, in my amateur opinion, a fix to the game's scaling problems, which is

you get the damage uncap

at the end of Act Two, and then the game mandates that you go to the Reacher and the Flying Manor

as part of the main story

and then sends you to the final boss area.

I think the reacher and the flying manor being optional is crazy in that game.

Yeah, that is like maybe the most important story content that has been optional in a game I have ever played.

Those are huge story beats that,

yeah, I think, because I think the feeling of just kind of like, because it's essentially that, that, that act of,

when do you want to wrap this up?

It's up to you, right?

Scrape if you like scraping, but when you feel like you're done, ready and done, which a lot of people in some cases don't forget the persona problem, right?

Don't forget the feeling of, um, this is where we say farewell, but we've got five more months to hang out, you know?

So letting somebody be like, I'm ready to walk through that door, being up to you, I respect that choice for sure.

But yeah,

those two you mentioned, it's not even what comes to mind when I think optional.

I'm specifically thinking of Simon, right?

I'm thinking of like that.

If you beat Simon, the fucking final boss of Expedition 33 should fucking gain a thousand times.

Just

not even the dungeon, just the fight.

Yeah, just give it the...

Yeah.

No, yeah, no.

It would be fine if it was just the fight.

You did this?

Well, here you go.

You can do that now.

You can do that with the manual settings, but

they should put out a fucking difficulty mode.

Don't call it.

Okay, there's three difficulties modes, right?

Right now, there's casual, expeditioner, and expert, right?

They should put out a fourth difficulty mode that introduces these changes and tweaks the level scaling to be harder.

And the difficulty mode should be called Expedition 60.

With some new costumes, perhaps?

Sure.

Add some new costumes.

No,

no, you can't can't do that.

But that's the joke.

All right.

That'll do.

Well, dude, you could do a bunch of them.

There's the fucking one of the other expeditions that doesn't have pictos, so it's just make a version that limits you to three pictos.

No Lumina converter.

Play it on

Expeditioner Difficulty, but no Lumina Converter.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, okay, there's one I have, but I'm not going to.

Anyway,

I don't want to get into the details.

But yeah, yeah, yeah.

There is a...

there is a really potentially awesome Game of the Year edition version of that game, you know.

So they have talked about it.

They are working on updates and more content.

There's no plans for new content.

Okay.

No plans at all.

Okay.

It is all

upgrades and fixing what's happening.

The one game that's actually allowed to make make a game of the decade edition.

You're allowed.

If you want to do an expedition, we will allow it.

I would expect that the very next patch they put out will be have loadouts

that you can say,

which will take that game from a low 10 to a high 10.

Oh my god, dude.

10.1 to 10.9.

I curse those menus.

I curse them.

Yeah.

uh loadouts and i mean

well anyway the favorite with a loadout comes a favorite overhaul as well you know i the with that whole thing

all righty you don't even need dude give me three loadouts give me three

like that's it

give me three fucking loadouts per character i'm done i know that's all i need

um i also

It would be like the upgrade system, it's a much, it's very minor, but like minor upgrade

things for weapons at a certain point, they're just junk,

you know?

Um, oh, yeah, which, you know, I mean, I guess you kind of run into that issue in a lot.

It would be nice to like convert 30 junk things into one big stone or some such.

It's

it's time, it's all just time spent, you know.

There's only so many slabs in that game, too.

There's plenty, but there's only so many.

That's the thing is, if I if you liked this weapon and then you got that one a little later and you didn't know that one was coming, then you're like, ah, you committed.

And, you know, you put a ring on that weapon.

So now you better fucking stick to that build if you don't want to, unless you're okay with sitting at your weapon level at 32 the whole game.

I did.

I did.

You just settled for it, but it feels bad.

You know where I, you know, when I put my 33rd upgrade into those weapons?

The 10 feet in front of Simon.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Just like, listen, okay, I've made my decision.

I just need more juice.

That is the place to do it.

All right, everybody.

We'll see you next week.

Bye-bye.