CSB326: IN TOO DEEP: Fake Son, Fake Dog, Real Consequences

Hey, there we are.

Hey, new dad Woolly.

How are you doing?

Doing all right.

Doing good.

There's people

now know, and there are two pieces of fan art, and that's cool.

I like the one of our kids playing Street Fighter or whatever.

It's adorable.

Christina, you do good work.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Obviously, Punch Moms loving it.

That's super cute.

Thank you so much.

It's wild for someone to have fan art before they exist.

It is pretty crazy.

That's crazy.

Isn't that crazy?

That is a not normal occurrence.

Wow.

What a we yeah.

All right.

Let's see whatever that means.

I don't know.

But yeah, no, that was very.

It's nice to see everybody happy for for you.

Yes.

And Drawers on Blue Sky, who also did a little

family pic with a fun little glasses kid.

So

good stuff.

That's a lot of fun.

That's really crazy because, like, well, this is what people thought you were going to look like in cartoon form.

Sure.

Like, way back.

Like, way like, like, when you were still,

not quite a zygote.

Yeah.

But a fetus.

You are, you were in that that

phase that people are legally arguing about.

Yeah, no, you're in the goo form.

That one where we can still confuse you for a dolphin or a person.

Yeah,

as we work through all of our evolutionary processes, just like the predator told us.

Did he?

I think I might have gotten my sci-fi a little confused there for a second.

Okay.

No, I think you're thinking of the black goop.

I am thinking of the black goop.

I read your mind.

Yeah, I read your mind.

Yeah, I got that.

That's damn.

Totally.

That's good.

Speaking.

That was spot on.

Speaking of black goop.

All right.

Okay.

I'm going to hold it.

I'm going to hold it back for a second.

All right.

Let's go.

You're okay.

Listen.

What are we actually talking about?

Brain works a little too fast there.

Hold on a minute.

Okay.

You see, the problem is that the longer I stall this, the worse it gets, right?

The problem is...

I put my brain on hold.

Yeah, okay.

I'm using the same part of my brain to put this on hold that I use to turn off the baby's songs when they're playing in the living room.

Okay, okay, good, good.

Because this race to the punchline ass mentality is not going to be good for us in the long run.

No, I'm going to hold on this.

All right.

Speaking of Black Goop,

the film, The Thing.

I saw that the other day, and I talked about how much I enjoyed it.

That's right.

One of the best movies ever made.

Yes.

Special effects anyway.

Like, holy fuck.

So

at Cinema de Parque here in Montreal, they were playing Escape from New York.

And Reggie was like, yo, you want to

do that thing?

Exactly.

A prequel, actually.

But

do you want to go

catch that?

And I was like, yeah.

So, you know, grabbed Min and Shane, and we all went and checked it out.

And like, that's one of the ones that I feel like I've seen in bits and pieces on TV a little bit, broken up, but not quite sitting down, doing it to completion.

I think you have maybe seen the entirety of Escape from New York in pieces throughout the media.

You've seen it.

I mean, it's kind of impossible.

It's the whole thing.

It's kind of impossible.

Every part of the Escape from New York Buffalo.

Yes,

including South Park.

South Park is a very crucial element.

You can't just rely on Kojima to tell you the story of Snake Pliskin.

Because I don't know if you remember much about Escape from New York, but I remember the parts from Cyberpunk and Metal Gear.

Okay.

Yeah, it's great, right?

It's great.

I know I've heard a lot about how LA doesn't hold up and that it super jumps the shark and that there's like

surfing involved and all kinds of nonsense.

So who knows?

But I will say that like, as far as this goes, it's like, yeah, like watching another John Carpenter film and stuff.

And

I didn't quite, I don't think I knew that, you know, that it was him.

Watching that, it was like, okay, let's see how this kind of holds up and what it was like.

It's really cool.

There's a lot of fun in the simplicity of like, it opens up and immediately the only thing you need to know is the crime rate in 1988 has gone up by 400%.

Manhattan is now a prison.

That's your backstory.

Shut the fuck up.

You know, there is no time.

Like, something like Escape from New York and a lot of movies from the era, like the early 90s, it's this really fascinating snapshot.

I'm totally obsessed with like the dangerous future of each era and like what's going to get us, right?

And we had like, you know, in the aughts, it was like meteors.

were going to come get us and things from outside the world.

And it's like, yeah, in the 80s, it was like, man, crime's out of control.

This shit's nuts.

What if it just keeps

like, what if the line for crime just keeps going up like infinitely?

And it's like, actually, we banned lead and gasoline.

So

it's going to crash in like three, four years.

Give it a minute.

No, but

the parts where you're kind of like, you're getting in on that premise, right?

And then they establish that it's like, once you get in, there's no getting out.

And then, oh no, are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?

You know, uh,

the whole premise definitely relies on your brain to do a lot of the heavy lifting, you know, and to be fair, like great, great movies do, I mean, alien, you're, I know, anything where Jaws, anything where you're the thing's off screen, your brain has to do a lot of the heavy lifting here, right?

But the idea of like the whole island of Manhattan has been abandoned and it is just absolute chaos and hell inside is like, oh fuck, okay, that's crazy.

And

upon going into it, you're like, well, it's kind of rough, I guess, but people are still sitting around.

You know,

they're watching little live musical shows and having a good time.

And that cab driver guys seems to be enjoying himself, you know.

And it's a bit of a like a goofy little world where like Snake Pliskin is like the most dangerous and angry and like serious about the whole situation.

But things are like kind of just a goofy beat-em-up 70s world.

It's it's a strange movie, and now that I think about the predilection of like

crime,

right?

I'm thinking of like how

Escape from New York is portraying New York as like the most insane place that's ever.

Oh my god, it's out of control.

But like parts of Escape from New York are less actively hostile than The Warriors, which takes place in non-fantasy real New York.

Okay, so The Warriors is one comparison point there.

I was going to go to another, which is like

the example of the abandoned city left for, you know, the apocalypse in the arc Batman No Man's Land, right?

Gotham is like, there's bombs on the bridges, it's all isolated, and it is just a free-for-all purge-ass hellscape in between.

And reading Batman No Man's Land is way scarier than Escape from New York, you know?

Like all the, all the, the, the, the rogues gallery of villains all basically cut up sections of the city into their own areas and like their like their craziness is what determines the the you know the danger and and how nuts it is in each borough and stuff but overall like that is like you're you're that's doing what your brain is expecting of like how scary it is to be in this kind of cutoff environment.

And here you're just kind of like, you're like, yeah, Yeah, all right, you know, it seems to be kind of messy and goofy, but like, you know,

it ain't the worst thing.

And they're like, Nah, dude, it's all about the Duke, the Duke of New York, no one crosses the Duke, you know.

And I don't know if do you remember who the villain is?

In

the villain pulls up, and the door opens, and it's this big camera, like car caravan, and fucking Isaac Hayes with a cowboy hat steps out,

and you're just like,

What?

Okay,

like, what, chef?

You know, like, you're not scary at all.

He's kind of got a, he's kind of got a little jovial funk attitude to it, you know?

And you're just like, this is the worst possible casting for a bad guy ever.

It's, it's like, you, you have to remember what was when did when did Escape from New York come out?

Um, 78.

81, right?

You have to, you have to remember, like, what

character would

scare non-New York adults in the year 1981?

I guess.

And when you put Isaac Hayes in as a bald black man, you're like halfway there for that audience.

Once again, I'm like, you could have, it would have been more intimidating to get show enough,

you know, as

the main bad guy.

Oh, it should have been shownough.

It should have been shown up

Right, it's just kind of goofy because Isaac Hayes does not carry that threatening energy whatsoever and I did recall afterwards I was like, oh, yeah, I feel like I've heard discussions before about he's like the most miscast element of the movie because Kurt Russell is doing a great job being

at the peak of his of his like 80s manliness.

Yeah, and he's like leather jacket grumbling his way through the movie.

He's he's snaking it as you do and you know um everybody knows him by reputation like you you're alive aren't you dead i heard about you you know and he's doing the whole thing he's great he's excellent you know what you know what i love about something like escape from new york and like you know evangelian and like whatever anything that was like wow this was like a like incredibly peak

like evocative thing at the time is like you re-watch it in your current age right and you just go wow they stole this shit Wow, that's crazy.

The name, the iPad, shameless.

Shameless.

But you know what?

You know what?

After the credits rolled, I was like, well, fuck, I would want to make a video game based on that too, actually.

Like, I you could pitch a really cool game for break into New York City prison with the wall around it and break out with the president.

That's totally a really cool game idea, right?

Also, fucking Lee Van Cleef

being awesome, right

that is uh uh uh he you know you're just like okay you want your ocelot you got your ocelot he's excellent right then and that's one of the i think like out besides the good bad and the ugly i think that's the only other role i think i know him from so he's in uh a few dollars more okay um which is really strange because he plays an incredibly similar character in a few dollars more who meets blondie and is just a totally different guy

that's despite being almost the same guy, well, so that's why it's the trilogy, but not really a trilogy, right?

They're just like,

I made three movies in a row.

They're all basically.

There you go.

But no, yeah, he's excellent in this.

And like, you totally see them sitting in front of each other.

And he's hiring him for the mission.

And he's all like, ah, and he's, he's literally loading up a revolver, you know, while he's talking to him.

And

you got to rescue the president.

And the snake's like, the president of what?

You know, and you're like, ah, look at them go.

and you're like yeah let's let's get more of that that's cash money you know um

but it's just it's just kind of wild where like he the world is not selling it as much as he the character is you know like specifically snake pliskin um

and and to that to that end i'll say like it's still pretty fun and like ultimately a like a you know it's a it's a good romp um that theme song is an absolute all-time banger the escape from new york theme song is incredible.

It is, it is.

Bill Carpenter knows how to make

an incredible, like, iconic track.

Sure does, right?

When it's him as well composing, yeah.

I mean, it's powerful.

Um, but it is interesting to kind of see, like, okay, here's the same director, same, like, all that competence and, like, everything, but like, it has these little goofy flaws, and then you just fast forward a couple years, and then you're like, oh, no, he had to build up to the thing, and the thing is just perfect.

There is nothing to be said about it.

It is just, it's just a perfect film, right?

I would call the thing like a triumph.

Yeah, it's a perfect film.

It's just unbelievable.

There's no part of it.

Like, I'm talking about the goofy parts that aged here.

And I'm like, there's nothing to be said about that after seeing it.

Where I'm like, nope,

time is irrelevant to it.

I would say

that like the thing.

I don't even talk about the acting.

I mean, like, the production of the thing literally could not be made today at the same quality because the experts in the field of the best practical effects to ever exist are all dead now.

Stan Winston is gone.

There is no certified fucking VFX genius that can build the thing rigs anymore.

I mean, they are, but they're not necessarily getting hired, right?

They're kind of doing it for the love of the game and not.

Stan wasn't just like the best.

He was the best who was working every day for like 20, 30 years on being the best.

So what I will say is you can convert that effort into other things.

Like, for example, the folks behind Kubo and the two strings.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like, you want to talk about just respect for the old craft.

They're doing it on another level with like stop motion and things like that.

There's, there's still, there's still pockets of this incredible like level of dedication.

But

one of the sad things to find out, I didn't realize, I didn't know, is that

like, like, even though, yeah, Carpenter and the thing, you're kind of associating that with like some of the most incredible practical effects to the point where there was an auction, I think, happening, like, last month, where they had, like, memorabilia, and they had the head from the thing with the like extended, like, tendrils and stuff for like 70 grand or so.

And it's like, if you want to just get that original, you can.

And, uh, you know, to which a friend was like, hey, yo, got to borrow 70K.

What, you know, what for?

And it's just like, that.

I'm like, oh yeah, sure, you know, and then, you know, when the kid turns college age, it's just like, here's your tuition.

Toss the head.

You know?

But

what was sad was to find out that like Carpenter didn't necessarily

then go on to be like, yeah, practical effects champ because like he embraced like really shitty CG, you know, into the late 80s into 90s.

And so Escape from LA apparently has a bunch of awful CG in it, as do a couple other things he worked on.

So, you know, that was

kind of unfortunate.

But regardless, I will say that like going back to...

John Carpenter is like the most normal guy to ever do it.

Like, he's just like, all I want to do is smoke weed and play Xbox games.

Nice.

And then people are like, hey, do you ever want to direct another Halloween?

And he goes, yeah, sure, if they paid me.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, they did a bunch without him, right?

And then they went, okay, that shit never happened.

He's coming back.

Which is kind of...

And like, he also has gone on, like, he's, I remember reading an interview where he was talking about how fucking much he hates going to film, filmmakers, like retreats and filmmakers,

like seminars,

where he's just like, walk in, and there's always some new guy and just waxing poetic about the right way to make a movie, and everyone's just hanging on to their every word, and it's all just a bunch of fucking shit they can hide and go to the buffet.

No, it's just, you just, you need more of that like Anthony Hopkins energy of just like, what the fuck are you talking about?

It's a script.

You just read the words on the page.

Like, what is this method bullshit?

Ah, the method.

You know?

It's like, no, you read it, and then you act, and then you go home.

Like, what, you know?

But yeah, no, it's.

Anthony Hopkins is so amazing for that because he's one of the best actors ever.

And he gets to be in the position to tell you that the way you're doing it is stupid.

Because, well, I didn't have to do that.

What?

You had to pretend to be a whole personal thing to read your lines?

What are you?

Just a shitty actor what you have to become the human and you know and he hasn't he has a sir as he's been he's been knighted and he's talking shit to you you're being you're being shit talked to by a knight um

anyway uh uh it is it is quite like it is quite clear that like yeah Kojima like is

you know we we've already we already knew this but you're like it is it is beyond

reproach how lifted everything is but it's still fun and it's still great.

And I still enjoy that.

I'm playing like a PlayStation 1 game has cutscenes of real nuclear waste, you know, and we learned about muff, you know, it's it's important,

it's still good.

Um,

there was, I think, what's really funny is

that some of the lifting was like so ridiculous.

There was a guy in like Metal Gear one or two that was like just the predator,

like, literally, he was just predator.

And I think there was another one that was also just Spider-Man.

And, like, those were so close they had to be changed.

It was just like, fuck it.

I mean, some of the portraits as well on the codec calls, right?

Oh, they're traced over photos from like James Bulletin.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Like, until Yoji Shinkawa came around and started doing his shit.

Like, they're just like, grab a photo of an 80s action hero and just trace that shit.

That's so fucking funny, dude.

Yeah.

But But again, he was like making these Japanese, like, you know, spy games for obscure consoles.

Who the fuck?

The world was not supposed to know.

I hope this

doesn't become really important.

Right?

Of course not.

Also, it was the style at the time, right?

You wear your fucking orange on your belt or your onion on your belt, and then you make a Contra game with Sylvester Stallone and fucking Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover, you know?

You get Wizards and Warriors, and you put fucking Fabio with a sword on the cover.

Like, this is what we did.

This is what video games were.

It was just,

you know, everything was aping something else.

But yeah, it was fun to go back to it.

Hey, guys,

lethal weapon,

but in space.

Think about it.

Damn.

What if instead of police, they were police knots?

That's crazy.

Oh, dude.

Oh, he almost bangs his daughter also.

What?

Don't forget about the Frozones

and the,

what was it?

The defrosters or whatever the fuck.

What the fuck were they called?

They, yeah, they like

they froze nut and then they undefrosted the nut.

And then you're you're the product of defrosted nut and now that's a slur.

What the what was it?

There's someone in the chat.

It was something.

De-icers.

Frozeners.

Frozoners.

Frozone.

Frozeners.

Frozeners, sure.

Yeah.

Hey, get the fuck out of my bar, Frostoid.

Yeah.

But then you had an amazing theme song as well, which is also very Carpenter, you know?

I want to believe that Kojima reached out at some point many times over the years to John Carpenter, you know, and got no reply whatsoever because the clap wasn't where it was today.

I would like to go with a hot take that'll take about 15 years to percolate.

I think that we are going to see a dramatic decrease in the quality of all ideas going into big budget video games over the next 10 to 15 years, as there are not the fucking glut of cool ass movies to steal from like there were in the 80s and 90s.

I will see that and combine, I will double down on that take from the opposite side.

Okay.

So that's one reason.

And by our powers combined, the other reason, Yoko Taro said it this week.

Fucking what?

Not enough weird people in games development, right?

That's it.

We'll take that.

That's it.

We'll get early docking on that.

Yoko Taro says there's not enough weird game developers and that's why and that sucks.

And they're using the screenshot of like the Drakengard like a true ending with the weird statue and the tongue sticking out right before fucking the open the portal opens up to create the franchise.

Yeah, so that's a function of global economics more than anything.

And it's like, listen, back in the 80s, man, man, we missed it.

It's bullshit.

But back in the 80s, you could be a fucking artist and you could be like an okay artist, like a painter or a sculptor and sell to like a couple rich people and you could just afford your car payments and your studio apartment.

It was called a studio apartment because that's what was for artists.

And yeah, you'd make men's meat and that's fine.

But now, unless you're working for Pixar doing 400 hours a second, like, nah, you got to get your roommates to fucking pitch in to get the new toilet.

Well, kind of flying off that shit.

You're going kind of, yeah, you're going a bit ham.

But no, but listen, there is, you can still go get a product

made and you can still get your script read by A24.

And if it's quirky enough, they'll put the quirky budget behind it and make a little trailer that puts all the link things that says, like,

you know, this thing did gangbusters at Can, you know, so you're going to love it.

It's quirky, and it's, it's coming this summer.

And, you know, we can get someone attached to it.

So, sure, you can still make those movies, but it'll transform into something else.

It's a singular, independent, cheaply made genre of movie that still makes money to make.

And then, in the gaming equivalent, you kind of just go, yeah, I'm going to do Pixel Art and make it with like five of my buddies and throw it up on.

You know what I'm gonna do?

All right, you know how?

Okay, I pitched it.

It's our new friend slop.

It's got survival elements,

and you play it with your friends, and it's got proximity chat.

Can I get this pitched?

Yes, okay, good.

Sick, I did it.

Theme, I don't know what's on the asset store.

What are we doing?

Space,

uh, no, uh, Vike, Vikings, okay, no, um, fruits.

We got a bunch of fruits, Fruits.

Yeah.

All right.

There we go.

Yeah, you know,

it is very possible to be that quirky weirdo

creator and just kind of get the thing made, you know, as a weird little indie thing on the

much earlier or so.

But in terms of weirdos helming the ship, right?

Yeah.

There are very there are very few weirdos helming the fucking freighter class, you know, ship with tons of people underneath them going, sir, yes, sir,

right away,

whatever your weird commands are.

It's a really good day to talk about this because as of right now, you can play Death Stranding 2 by the genius Kojumbles.

New variation.

And Kojima has Kojima is like the Superman of video games.

And I say that because his name has gotten so much cachet.

It has freed him from the the worldly concerns of having to make a game that people like or will make any money.

Because people will, and it will.

Pretty much no matter the fuck what.

And it reminds me, I was talking about how I was excited to play Death Stranding 2 this week.

And a guy responded with, I can't fucking believe people like these games where you just fucking walk around all day and throw piss at ghosts.

What the fuck?

And they're completely right.

Yeah.

Completely right.

But the way that that cachet was built, right, is that in the industry, in video games, it's become humongous.

You can't ignore it.

And I'm sure that

the type of person we were describing that Anthony Hopkins hates, right, just now, those conversations that John Carpenter wants to get away from, clawing.

Yeah, that's Kojima.

Kojima is all that.

And Kojima.

If you can get him in a room with anyone in Hollywood, he will just spout all of that till their ears fall off, right?

There is, there is, and

they'll, and they'll be like, okay, yes, sure, absolutely.

The creative genius of, you know, it's all coming to, yeah, absolutely, just the power of the art and the moving tears and the sea, all of it.

They'll be right on board.

And then, you know, all of the folks that you get, you got like Jordan Peel and everyone that are standing there and Totoro-san.

And they're all probably just like, I don't fucking get what he's talking about, but I'm here for it, right?

I get this distinct vibe of like, we don't understand him, but it i think the best one is uh uh recently um the guy playing

oh god i can't remember his name the the italian guy who's playing um the new

guy that looks like solid snake yes uh luca luca uh babada boopy um i don't know but he recently talked about how when he went into

um went into do the recording

Kojima had to explain to him that he was not playing Solid Snake.

And he he was like, I thought I was playing Solid Snake.

And he's like, no, no, you're not.

And I read that and I go,

there's definitely more to that conversation that's not in the interview, which is like, are you fucking serious?

It's like, no, not really.

You're pretty much playing Solid Snake, I bet.

It's just illegal stuffed shit.

Right?

Right.

I like, just, you can just imagine in your mind's eye, you know, like Mads walks out of the room with the conversation after having the conversation and just looks at Norman Reedus.

And Norman's like, right?

No, no, no.

You know, like, what the fuck?

Nicholson wouldn't do that.

He would use, he's got that, he's got that, like, stoic, like, icy look.

So he, like,

Norman would be trying to ask him questions, and he would just be smoking and go, it's incredible.

Yeah, sure, sure.

It's amazing.

But do you understand it, though?

Like, God knows.

And I would extend that to all the director friends and everybody as well.

But he's just,

there's nothing else like it.

There's no one else like it.

So you need more of that.

You definitely need more Yoko Tarot rolling around on the ground and your Suda 51s and your Toby Foxes.

You need these odd flavors of

like,

I guess the term was auteur, right?

Yeah, but like

people need to eat food and make money.

They do.

They like we wouldn't

be getting Delta Roon if Undertale hadn't blown up beyond all expectation.

And

banking your lunch and your children's lunches on the weirdness.

Like, that's, I'm not going to tell you to make that gamble.

Like, 100%, you know?

What's, oh, my God, what's that fucking game?

Oh, that.

Oh, shit.

I can't remember.

It's alt.

Is it Altissa?

What the fuck game am I thinking of?

There's some fucking...

I played it on Backlog.

Okay.

And it's this N64 looking

N64 looking

at Metroidvania game with a goat girl that has a gigantic ass.

Okay.

And like this is clearly

at Atlas.

Sure.

Sure.

And it was excellent.

And all I could think of when we're having this conversation is like, you you got to be willing.

No, no, you guys are thinking of a different game.

Okay.

This is a different game by a furry pervert.

I'm thinking of Pseudo Regalia.

Okay.

Ah, yes, yes, yes.

I remember that.

And like, you got to be willing to like bet your life

on enough people being out there that'll go like, I would love,

I would love an N64-style Metroidvania for perverts.

And like, guess what?

There are tons of those people.

Absolutely, right?

And that game's great.

Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

But like,

that's a fucking dice roll, man.

Or that other one with the robot with the big ass, right?

There's a couple of things with the big ass games.

So that could be anything.

Oh, no.

Okay, not that.

Not.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Not the stellar blade or neurotomata.

Not the human-looking robot with the big ass.

I mean the robot robot with the big ass.

That's.

Yeah, they know.

They know.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I wouldn't have said, I wouldn't have said, no, when I say,

when I say the robot with the big ass, you know, yeah, you know exactly what I mean.

It's, it's, there, there's a real, there's a real genuine like truth to like the type of people that are willing to to risk it and try new things are like completely incorrigible perverts that just need to get that thought into the world out there so people can see it.

And like,

that's really brave.

Well, listen, one can have a thought, and that thought is, damn, that robot has a fat ass.

But then the second thought can be, but what are they feeling?

And they're feeling like their clothes are too tight, their ass is too fat.

And, you know, and are there, and are those feelings valid?

And should we, as their creators, you know, invalidate that humanity that we have artificially created?

So we say all this with the idea of the goofy creator and stuff, but don't forget, like not a few months ago, we were also just having conversations about how, you know, with hi-fi rush and

John Johannes, the whole like, you could have a successful game that play, you can play it safe if you want to and not be guaranteed success.

You could do a great job on all on all fronts and have all the word of mouth and hype and plow.

Some pencil pusher didn't like this number in this column.

And it still doesn't matter.

So if it's going to come down to a fucking dice roll anyways, then like, why not be super weird about it?

You know, sure, sure.

I don't know if you have it in the news, but the Lies of P developers,

they recently

informed that Lies of P sold better than projected.

And Overture is also doing well.

So everybody got like

7,500 USD in cash.

a switch to and two extra weeks of vacation.

Dub.

That's great.

That's awesome.

That's That's the end of being fired.

Yep.

That's nice.

Which is what's happening to the folks over at Minds Eye, I believe.

Yep.

Now, of course,

the larger the studio, the less any of that matters whatsoever.

The more it's just, you know, in and out the grinder, so to speak.

But,

you know, I think too as well, like, would you say, so I'm just from the outside, would you say that Lies of P is a proper double A experience?

No.

I'd say it's excellent.

Well, that's not.

That's not like

that.

Those are not mutually exclusive

details.

Double A and a half?

I don't know.

It fits in a weird spot.

It's

more.

It's almost triple A.

It's Korean AAA.

Korean triple-A.

Okay, okay.

All right, fair enough.

Because I was just

thinking about, you know,

that type of success and looking at, like, obviously, we've been talking about Expedition 33 and how well that's been doing.

And, you know, that

prescient ass quote from the Larian director.

right upon accept

upon accepting their awards basically going i know what game of the year is going to be for the next three years and it's going to be a game with a bunch of people that that actually care about what they're making, that were allowed to make it, that weren't, you know, and he just goes down the list and weren't given deadlines and weren't fucking

having their pay docked and threatened with being fired over not hitting certain quotas or metacritic ratings and given the freedom to, and all the little things about the people that are enjoying making a cool thing, having a chance to make the thing cool, you know?

And so I'm kind of going, like, is this just another simple case of like, hey, a team that didn't have to be overbloated, was able to make something and were not given heavy, stupid

deadlines, restrictions, and crunch time.

You know, I don't know the history of what's going on with Lies of P outside of it just being like, this came out of nowhere and is an incredible assoul slave.

They worked on it and then they put it out and then it sold well.

That's the history.

That's it.

That's all you got.

Yeah, I guess I'd be curious to see about like the team size and some of the other stuff and deets, but

I'd love for there to be more examples like Sandfall, you know?

Yeah.

So the Eliza Lies P is really interesting because it reminds me of a conversation I remember seeing a long time ago around when Lords of the Fallen, the very first Lords of the Fallen came out, in which

I think it came out around Dark Souls 3.

And it's a Souls game and it's an unabashed Souls game.

And people were saying that, like, well, you know, it's not fair to compare Lords of the Fallen to Dark Souls 3 because Dark Souls 3 is the fourth of those games that from Software has made.

Whereas Lords of the Fallen is like the first one that this team has made.

And the reply to that was, like, well, yeah, because

From Software keeps the same people and they just keep making the same game over and over and just working on it and getting really, really, really, really good at it.

They get a chance to do that.

The opportunity is provided.

And now they're, now they're really, like, we got guys working on Elden Ring, Shadow of the Yurtree that were working on fucking Demon Souls back in 2008.

No, and the thing about that, which comes up often enough, which is like, oh, that's an unfair comparison.

Look at the size, support, scope, et cetera, is like...

My wallet does not take your excuses into account.

Well, no, no, no, no.

Let's put that aside, right?

Let's put that aside.

You're like, okay, let's get some fair comparisons.

And I think like, you know, Claire Obscure is one of them, where you can be like, that's a brand new team that got that together.

And, you know, learning about it, I mean, they...

like from

the Guillaume Brioche's like initial versions and stuff like that.

There was a couple of versions that went through, but essentially it was a seven-year-old.

I got to stop you.

I keep calling him Guillaume Brioche as well because it's really funny, but apparently his name is Guillaume Broche.

Brush, excuse me.

Excuse more, excuse me.

Because I keep calling him Guillaume Breadman.

I thought that's what that's what it was.

Okay, Brush.

Yeah, so the, but that was what, that was a seven-year development, it turns out, right?

Um,

and, and, uh,

the,

the, that's not fair sort of comparisons, I think.

It's like, well, that doesn't necessarily apply here because here you have folks that like left a larger company and got it together through forums.

And,

you know, there's ways to make this happen that I think you can, you can compare anything that had more money going into it, more publisher power and

or like a better head start

should be able to be compared to that outcome.

I think I think comparison is hilarious and really fun.

But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, there's a certain cruel aspect to it because, like,

in the context of this conversation,

my brain just goes like,

well, Toby Fox built Undertale by himself.

How come your shit isn't as good as Undertale?

Yeah, yeah, that, and this is like how fucking mean that is

to anyone?

It's super mean.

It's very mean.

It's very nuts.

And also, it's the second coming of the cave story discussion.

Because 10 years ago, it was, Pixel did it.

Why can't you?

That's the voice.

Because I'm not Toby Fox or Pixel.

Yeah, and you know what?

That yelling voice is actually me and Josh yelling at ourselves in our own brains, going, why can't we do that?

And every other creator that's going, fucking Pixel did it.

Why can't I?

You know, so

I can tell you why for Toby Fox.

I actually have the data.

And the data is you don't have

a lavish music background as well as binders upon binders upon binders of OCs you've been writing in since you were in grade school.

I mean, there's a million reasons, and also the practice to be like amazing at all of the, not just the art, not just the gameplay, not just the programming, the story, also the, you know, like just top to bottom, every single element you've dedicated your time to it.

I said 10 years ago, the game obviously Cave Story is obviously 20 plus for sure, but I mean, but Cave Story was not influential until time passed, until it became a thing where people were around the like

a couple generations in going, oh fuck, the one-man army that can build the game.

So I'm talking about the influence, which was after that release period.

All that to say, you know, the like, fucking this person did it alone.

Why can't you?

Is it's super toxic and horrible.

And it's the voice that's already in our heads, man.

You can't do that.

You can't do that to people.

There's a follow-up reason to that in in a lot of cases like x studio was able to build this for x money in y time

right how come you guys can't do it and for many people in the games industry the answer is is because person asking the question wasn't breathing down those people's necks there's that there is that i didn't have the boss man

just fucking fuming with a fucking spreadsheet in his hand behind me every time i wanted to build a new character design Also, it was unreasonable how far Toby took Game Maker engine.

Like, that is an you're not supposed to do that level of work with it, but someone being completely unreasonable about the project they're working on can pull this shit off sometimes, right?

Um, you ever play uh Lisa the Joyful or the Painful?

A little bit, yeah.

Okay, those are amazing games that are like way too much for the thing they're built on, you know, clearly pushing it to the fucking limits.

Like they're, they're higher.

Yeah, by the, by the, the third attempt or so of those games, you're just like, oh, you need another platform.

This is crazy what you're doing here.

No.

You know?

To be fair, I've, we've spent a good portion of the past conversation shitting on businessman and producer man.

However,

we have like a riot game story this week.

Okay.

And we've had multiple EA game stories over the past couple of years in which the producer just goes, yeah, do whatever you want.

It'll come out.

Don't worry about it.

And then the fucking thing just languishes for like 10 years.

Oh, of course.

Because,

you know, like what better place than this podcast

to underline the idea that, hey, the extremes are funny, but obviously there's examples going the opposite way.

Skong, skong, skong.

Just yell the word skong and then a producer.

Infinite creative freedom to not put a game out.

every time you yell the word skong a producer gets a job like it just materializes into a seat you know yes a hundred percent you know also do i have some bias from like being in the studio watching as like what i perceive to be very little is being done by someone who's taking a lot of credit for fucking rounding up emails yeah sure

right did i watch people who were not very capable uh use milk and honey words to get themselves into positions of power?

Uh-huh.

Absolutely.

You know?

So, you know, and are those going to be the people that are the first on the chopping block when it's time to, no, they're never, never are, you know?

So because they smoothed it.

But absolutely, absolutely, there does need to be the shut.

Okay, we need to fucking ship it.

Shut the fuck up.

Don't let me.

This is crazy.

That needs to exist.

It's requiring all of our dad phrases, right?

It's like, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Of good.

And, and, you know, like, um,

don't, don't let your illness stop you from getting that homemade project out the door, you know, like, just the, the, you ever hear about, like, uh, outsider art?

Yeah, I've heard about it.

I've made outsider art.

Okay.

I make outsider art every day.

Oh, oh, wow.

Okay.

Cool.

In my toilet.

Damn, that's sick, dude.

I didn't know.

There's a

futility of human existence.

Here it goes.

You can go into and like look up this whole, the whole Wikipedia article about like, you know, people that were like incredible artists that were just like nowhere near anything professional and nobody knew about them.

And like there's one in particular that was like, he just was in his apartment, I think, in New York, and just like, he just died and nobody knew that he did anything.

But like, they just found his walls and like covered, like, ceilings and doors covered in amazing work but he was just like yeah he just lived and did it himself and that was that you know

like this reminds me

of uh page reading fan fictions and finding like the the the terror of the fan fiction reader is

i got like oh yeah i wrote 122 chapters yeah i'm done I'm just gonna I'm gonna end it halfway through.

I'm gonna be Game of Thrones man over here, right?

and she described like

finding a person who had written like the best one she'd ever read and being like, Oh man, when are you going to continue it?

And she's like, Oh, I don't know.

She's like, You should just change the names off on this and sell it and be like, you know,

Stephanie Meyer and get your shades of gray money.

Like, nah, I'm just doing it for fun.

And there's like an entire underbelly of amazing artists everywhere that are making their art for them only

for funsies

with no intention

of ever

commercializing it or anything yeah right um i believe that like a mano started that way i want to say like like self-taught like no real formal training of any kind and i don't know i don't remember the full story of it but i feel dude i feel like i like i learned that like a moto was not really meant to show up and be part of any game project.

I love Yoshitaka Amano.

First of all, I think he's a great artist.

Second of all,

I think that Yoshitaka Amano getting to be like a big deal art due to Final Fantasy is the funniest thing in the world because they're like, all right, Amano, we need concept art for this thing.

You have 15 pixels to work with.

And what does he give you?

He gives you the most unworkable, gigantic fucking painting that doesn't even even keep the colors you told him to use.

And you just go, okay, fuck it.

I guess we'll just drill it down.

Like, have you ever seen his concept art for VV for FF9?

It's ridiculous.

Unusable.

All the details.

Like, 100%.

But he's like, that's not my fucking problem.

You go make your stupid little boopity boops.

So I'm going to draw.

You want me to draw?

I'll draw.

And you figure out the beeps and bops.

You know, like,

that's your fucking issue.

You know, skill issue, actually, says Amano.

Yeah, 100%.

And like, what are you going to say, man?

You're going to show up to fucking Araki's door and ask him to commission a piece for your subway, and then you want him to dumb it down and simplify it?

You're going to get this weird subway art boy thing with a million weird other things happening in the background and nobody taking the subway is going to understand what the fuck they're looking at.

But then why'd you show up and ask him?

That's what we that's what we asked for, I guess.

And and fucking, you know, like,

who is like a mono?

No one.

That's one of a kind.

You would never associate.

You wouldn't think that was even connected to video games, you know, years ago.

So, incredible.

Anyway, so Escape from New York was pretty good.

Fun tangent.

Beyond that,

yeah, you know,

not a ton much else.

Just did a couple things this week.

The Yakuza Zero Director's Cut came out and did a little hashtag sponsored stream for that.

There's a lot of really cool new stuff they did for that game.

The dub is really good, I have to say.

Like, I was waiting to see how that's going to sound.

And

Kuze is excellent.

You know, hearing the generals and stuff is like, you want to make sure they nail it.

And they definitely did a great job with that.

David Hayter coming in as Kashiwagi, of course, perfect, right?

Nails it, does it.

And he's doing a more stern, obviously cop-sounding type of dude.

He's not graveling it and staking it for, you know, he's got range.

And then, yeah, also the new mode,

you know, Red Light Raid is literally just playable all the bosses,

all the characters, playable everybody.

60 characters you can pick and just go through online four players versus rooms of enemies and waves.

You know, that's a fun addition as well that I wouldn't have expected per se.

So it's nice to be able to come back around just after beating this game not long ago in the original format and seeing a couple of these things here.

I've heard wind of some other changes.

I've heard wind of some plot details with some new cutscenes.

I think that the way that

the

RGG team made their Yakuza Zero director's

is the most RGG way they could have possibly done anything.

Because when I heard, oh, there was going to be new cutscenes, what I thought that meant was they were going to take the cutscenes that were still images with text for 10, 15 minutes and turn those into real cutscenes.

But no, no, fuck that and fuck that.

That's too much.

No, that's too much work.

Instead, what they're going to do is add new cutscenes to bring dead characters back to life.

Therefore, we can use them again in the future.

No, so that Ichiban can hang out with them later.

It's so fucking weird.

Why else would you do that if not for Ichiban?

That has to be it, right?

That's the only reason you do that.

It's so, it's, it's fucking, it's fucking like Star Wars

absolutely.

Releases a million percent.

Stupid.

A million percent Star Wars.

We're saving that character down the line.

You don't worry about it.

So dumb, man.

You know, so you're getting that, right?

And adding a fucking cutscene of Kuze crawling out of the fucking Sarlaq pit.

And I'm like, yeah, it's Kuze.

A hundred.

A hundred percent.

Um, but then also didn't have to go this far.

I was very pleasantly surprised when you hit up karaoke, they translated the songs.

Oh, that's, yeah.

Um,

Bakami Tai,

I'm Just a Fool, you know?

You get the actual like.

Well, that's already been, uh, that's already been a thing

for a while.

The English versions of the karaoke songs.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Okay, because that in judgment.

Ah, okay.

It's fun to sing those songs in English.

That's fun.

I enjoyed that.

Okay, Seven has been doing it.

So, yeah, no, that was a little, that was a little, little,

fun, little revisit to the world.

Unfortunately, didn't get a chance to hear Majima or do any English cabaret, but

I imagine that must be a hoot and a holler.

And

yeah, took a look at Alpha 3 with Temujin, the aka Tony, Montreal Alpha 3 player, competitive back in the day.

That's just a fun game to just fly around the cast and do stuff, man.

You know, you got a million.

Like, it was the...

the uh

game yeah you know like it was a time when you know capcom would make a game and then they'd experiment with a bunch of ideas when they made the next version or the sequel and then somewhere around the the um

the end you would have the final version where they just marvel versus capcom 2 style throw everyone and everything in the kitchen sink at it you know and alpha 3 is just one of those great games where you're just like yeah let's just fucking pick anybody and anything and go nuts you know here is sodom if you pick him in Exism mode instead of Kunai or instead of Size, he has Katanas.

Because back in Final Fight,

his name was Katana and he had like different versions from that game in here.

Little fun bits and stuff.

It's great.

I really like Alpha 3.

The only thing that kind of makes me sad is that they did so many wild, fun versions of that game that are not the like all-time definitive in a way.

Because, okay, okay you had upper where it was like all the the uh playstation characters and the new warriors and guile and stuff got added back into the game but then you had the version like double upper and stuff where you got like yun and mackie and eagle and ingrid and so on um world tour mode getting tons of updates as well and the one that i always remember you must too is what we played back in the day at college hyper street fighter alpha 3 that had marvel versus capcom ism mode and Darkstalkers ism mode and like you could literally just do whatever.

Just do whatever.

Every single character with like you could pick a third strike-ish mode with parries in it.

They went crazy on the choices there.

Yeah, just a big celebration of everything.

And it's unfortunate that that version, you know, all that work kind of got lost and didn't get preserved going forward.

But

still, like.

It reminds me of some of the talk I see about Street Fighter VI where people are like, how come Street Fighter VI isn't changing in the same dramatic ways that Street Fighter V did?

It was like, well, Street Fighter V had to change because it fucking sucked and people didn't like it.

Yep.

Street Fighter VI came out like solid and people are happy.

There were system problems.

Also, both 4 and 5, when they released, they

said in interviews on release that they didn't want to intimidate people by having them pick a character and then go into a bunch of choices.

So they wanted you to just pick the character and then go.

And like, in the end, I think that's like, whatever.

Like, you're not, like, that's your, that's one of those conversations where it's just like, are you, are you actually scaring anyone away?

Or are you just like artificially kind of kneecapping some fun choices that could be there?

Whatever the case is,

in six, I'll say that you pick the character, you go in, and then you can do a bunch of shit with that drive meter regardless.

You know, it's just up to you which one of these five or six things you want to do.

I think Street Fighter has like had a long history of that problem, and I think it started really, really, really fucking early, and I don't think they ever got over it.

Because I love isms, and I love grooves, and I love

third strike.

But at the end of the day, the thing that stands out most to me over the entire history of Street Fighter is like, well, why would you pick Sagat and Super Turbo instead of old Sagat?

Old Sagat's the one you want to play.

And how every

almost every single game has had a fucking version of that.

Like, well, oh, this is the optimal best version or whatever.

Why would you pick this fucking super?

Why would you play

Jun without Ganagian?

What are you fucking stupid?

And to be perfectly honest, I feel like this is a problem that applies to the weird Venn diagram person who is not very good or experienced with the genre, but also cares a lot about meta in other games.

So if you're a brand new to this game,

that is not a weird person.

That is like a wild.

That is a huge, that is a crazy huge amount of people.

So the issue, I guess, that I would say is if you are coming in going like, I care about tier lists before I really know anything else about the game, the priorities are not where they ought to be.

And you're going to have a weird time going up about it, like trying to, trying to pay attention to what Daigo is doing as opposed to just,

you know?

So we're okay at fighting games.

I say we're okay, right?

And I've been okay at other games, but like

I feel like you're underselling just how many people walk into a game and go,

who's good?

Yeah.

100%.

Someone just feeds them the tier list

and then they go, okay.

And that's it.

That's it.

That's it.

And that's fine, right?

But if you're getting into what you're talking about with like, oh, why would you ever pick Osagott?

Someone that's not Osagat, are you crazy?

And that kind of conversation, i guess it's just like

are you are we

what what level like what are we kind of playing are we playing for fun here are we playing casually are you entering a bracket like where are we going with this if we're just kind of pressing buttons and having fun with it i think the whole point of ultimately like why i do get into fighting games the way i do is to just be like yeah pop the game and press some buttons have some fun i guess i i don't don't attributed more brain thought than most of these people

i i think like well i think there's two different conversations right I think there's two conversations, and I don't want to get them conflated because I don't want this to be one of those moments where it's like, you fucking alien, here we go, right?

But

is you saying that, or is I saying that?

The hypothetical straw man that I'm creating over here that is currently typing into the chat.

The straw man that is here at the keyboard, actually, that exists.

No,

all this, all I'm trying to say, all I'm trying to say is that, like,

with any game,

if I'm learning the ropes, but i'm also like

trying to focus on and like get in like handle details that are way too intimidating like you're you're you're you're just getting into like a character action game and you're only focused on how to fucking uh um distorted real impact and then guard fly and get your you know what i'm never mind triple singing anything never mind being stylish like you're trying you know what i mean you're trying to work on these like like it's like well we got to start somewhere and that place should usually be having some fun right that's it that's it so if

that's not a thing, or if other people, if some people approach things in different ways, or they're like, I've never learned anything about the games I play besides just what is meta, and like you stick to that and you go all in, and that's how you play it.

I will say that with fighting games, it's going to be probably a little more tricky if you only focus on the really, really, really difficult elements, but ignore all the most simple things that come before that, you know?

Bro,

I'm thinking about Gene when we were playing Night Rain and how he just cut forth to the ultimate truth of the world.

It feels good when you win and it sucks when you lose.

This game is the best when you win, and this game sucks ass when you lose.

Yes.

And I feel like the problem

happens with that with

fighting games is that when you're like, well, is it about having fun?

And to most people, winning and having fun are literally the same thing.

I just want to like,

walking out of here, I just want to say that in that hypothetical, the person who's picking Sagat

is not who I'm talking to.

That person is playing their game and doing their thing and go nuts, have fun, play, let's, let's enjoy it.

The person who's standing there going, why would you ever pick that version of Sagat?

You're picking the wrong one.

Fuck that guy.

You're an asshole.

You suck.

You're a problem.

I hate that.

That's the problem.

Right?

That's the problem.

That's the person that I'm putting shade on.

Do you remember?

Okay, I know that guy.

We've all met that guy.

The problem with that guy is that for a

good amount of time, they're going to beat you because they know just a little bit more.

And that's where their shithead personality comes from.

Okay, well, whatever, man.

Like, that's cool.

Yeah, sometimes, sometimes there are villains.

Sometimes not every FGC player is an upstanding dude.

What?

It's crazy.

I thought everybody.

The talent and the,

there is, you know, it is not a one-to-one correlation.

You would be surprised.

There are some villains out there.

However, however, if you're like, if we're talking to the person that's just picking to fucking have some fun and you're getting on their case over

what they're picking or whatever, and this is like the least, you know what I mean?

This is just a very like not competitive circumstance or environment.

What the fuck are you doing?

Shut up.

Let's have fun.

You know?

I can't wait to play Street Fighter with my son and him being like, oh, can I win?

And me just go, no.

Why'd you pick 12?

You know 12 sucks.

And so the other,

right.

And so the other part of this is I can only imagine that like the experience of, let's say, a fucking Warzone lobby, right?

Yeah.

It's like you jump in and if you're on a team or you're grabbing the wrong loadout or you're, you know, you know what I mean?

You're

back in the day, the noob tubes or whatever the fuck it is.

Bro.

and

the the grand innovation of the battle royale is that it lets like 60 or 70 percent of players in a 100 person match feel like they won to some degree okay like that that that is like the genius of battle royale is that like it it it disseminates the feeling of winning across a huge variety of players.

So there's that part of it.

And then I guess there's the part of it where it's like from the jump, you are meant to internalize and get used to the level of toxic bile that will always be there and just learn to float on it, right?

That's kind of what you sort of have to do in those situations.

I mean, you know, in a situation like this, what we're describing, where it's not half the lobby going nuts over what you're doing or what weapon you're picking or how you're playing or whatever the normal case is, but it's one asshole in the room who you can tell to fuck off.

It's pretty easy to solve that problem, you know?

I have never heard or seen anyone speak in a Battle Royale game, but I can feel their toxic vibes through the screen with their soul just permeate.

Like you could just, you could fucking feel it.

Similarly, I have never spoken

with my voice to somebody in League of Legends.

And even if they're not typing, you could you can feel it.

You can feel

they're just like sewage just radiating off their body.

Yeah, I would, it would, I mean, rage quitting and there's like, you know, griefers and shit that definitely that you encounter online and when you go on playing fighting games online and stuff.

But if we're talking about a situation where you're like, yeah, you're going to be in a lobby where a bunch of people are just going to call you the worst things on planet Earth every time you log in.

And it's like, you you just ignore that and you play regardless.

But then enough people will win that you'll feel good about the outcomes and it won't really matter that much in the end.

You know, it's like,

oh, you have to deaden something a little bit inside there, I guess.

You've played a bunch of multiplayer games over your life.

A couple.

What do you, this is gonna,

this is kind of a granular, like focused-in question.

What

group of players

do you feel are the angriest you've ever played with like like in a game like

marvel people or mortal kombat people or halo or like just like you can feel

just white hot rage coming off them even if they don't speak like just moving their character you're just like for me it's it has to be dead by daylight Dead by Daylight is like the angriest I've ever seen players move around an environment, even though I can't hear them.

Even though I can't, it's crazy.

I think

the most toxicity I've ever felt in a public sort of open situation, because I really haven't put myself in that type of situation often.

Maybe Overwatch 1.

Oh, yeah.

Overwatch

original was get off my pick.

Absolutely

when I

because I got I got used to playing it with the black gift folks and had some good times playing with the group.

And then a couple times I'd be like, damn, I need to work on my aim.

I got to get better.

And so let me just queue up when no, you know, other people are not around.

So I did some solo queuing.

And I think Overwatch Original is where it felt the worst.

Yeah.

That was so toxic, man.

No, it was,

it was, it was literally every single game.

Every single game, every single person.

It was unbelievable.

It was unbelievable.

Without fail.

But at the same time, I mean, again, I wasn't, I didn't jump into a Modern Warfare 2 lobby, you know, back in the 360 era.

Like, I don't,

I've heard tale.

I've heard legends, you know.

I think what like really upset for Dead by Daylight is that it's 4v1, right?

And then you can only speak at the very end.

You can only speak, you know, after the match is over.

And like, sometimes people are mad at you.

It's like I primarily play killer, right?

And people say, oh, you fucking asshole.

You, you tunneled me, which means like following one person consistently.

But like, more often than not, it would be like the team of survivors just throwing blame on each other for losing, just

crabs eating themselves in the bucket, which is so sad.

Like, like the people who are talking shit to you from the opposing team, you know, is one.

That's one layer of just like, all right, man, whatever you have to do to get through your day, but the ones who are on your team

who are just like, holy fuck,

you're, I can't believe this Zarya is so garbage.

Why?

Like, bro.

Oh, my God.

Just.

Oh.

Yeah.

I'm trying.

I'm trying to shield properly.

I'm sorry.

I'm.

Can I?

Yeah.

There's only so much labbing I can do on my own before I have to take it into a live environment and get some real practice in, guys.

I will say, League of Legends and Dead by Daylight are the only games I've played in which people will take their ball and just sit at home.

Or like they will get so mad at what's going on and they will get so like unwilling to quit because they don't want the rage penalties that they will just idle their character

in like a dangerous spot.

And that's where feeding comes from.

Right, right, right.

Feeding.

I'm going to feed if you don't fucking.

You know what?

I'm going to just feed the fucking other team.

Yeah, you can.

Or I'm just going to, I'm going to just run straight towards the killer and just have them take me out of the fucking game right now.

So this brings us to today where I don't know if this is actually the case or not, but if you were to tell me on paper that there is going to be a team-based multiple people connect together and play footy soccer online together,

I would say that rematch by Slowcap Clap has the potential to be the most toxic possible environment on planet Earth.

Just by nature of what the activity is and how many people are on it.

But I don't know if that's actually the case.

So here's the thing: as we all know,

soccer/slash footy fans

are

very well-adjusted, sober people

who don't cause trouble.

Totally not Asbos.

None of them.

It would be expected

for the people playing digital soccer/slash digital footy to be well-behaved and

sober.

And I have been checking out the

reviews for rematch.

I'm sorry.

Is antisocial behavior not a thing that's used anymore?

Is that old school?

Is that a okay?

I am not aware.

I am not aware.

Excuse me.

Reviews for rematch are this game is incredible.

Only play it with a pre-made group.

The fucking mouth-breathing idiots, people that it will match you up to are so stupid they will ruin your game, right?

Awful, right?

And

I guess nature playing pick up any game, okay, like in

space.

Uh, did you so you jumped on?

No, I am not.

Okay, because I need to know if there's an open mic lobby, and I need to know if there are people yelling, and I need to know if you can understand what they're saying.

And is it every language of all of the world,

right?

Are we hearing the strongest Italian cusses and the biggest, strongest Ingerlins and all of the Germans and all of the Brazilians going full speed at each other?

Right?

Because I kind of imagine that game has the potential.

It's a fucking soccer game where you only control your one player.

You know, that can get infinite toxicity going.

People are saying, yeah, that you can open your mic and people from other countries.

Okay, so you can get hit with Carallo in one ear and Sikyablat in the other.

Good.

At the same time from both sides, and you're on the same team.

I'm thinking maybe if soccer wasn't so boring, people wouldn't get so drunk watching it because they'd actually get to be excited.

Oh, man.

Yeah, well, you know, you get used to 0-0, I guess.

And, you know, you get used to things.

Wow, you really, you really gave it your all out there, boys.

Zero.

Good job.

The pitch is large, you know?

And

we got to sell these these

non-injuries.

Anyways,

okay, well,

beyond all that,

play a little bit of that Hunter-Hunter Net Impact game.

And

anyway, there's a bunch of new tag fighters coming, and that's going to be crazy.

And we'll talk about those in a minute.

Boy, wow, so many choices.

so many so many games there's a lot of those games just like all of a sudden just bam yep

um

i feel bad because everyone was like it's gonna be us there's no one to compete against us yeah

that that hunter-hunter game i think is in trouble man i think oh yeah dude it's in trouble i don't know the rollback is is gonna be a nice offering but and 8ing is a company that works hard and makes good fighting games you know they deserve a dub but

bad timing and like, you know, not enough resources to give this

the polish and love it needs.

I think it's,

you know,

we'll see.

We'll see.

I can't believe you're even bringing it up at all.

Yeah, well, you know, just to see.

Marvel Tokan season.

I mean, we're going to get into a couple more.

But anyways,

this week, we're going to jump back on,

yeah, Expedition 33.

I'm going to get, excuse me, I think at least one session in.

Perhaps two, depends, but like, I'll post a schedule.

Gonna be a little bit reduced.

And

I'll announce other stuff a little bit later.

But yeah, stay tuned to Wooly Wools on my socials for the schedule.

By the way, do you like Fall?

It's all right.

New Fall place.

I'm not like, if I'm like, if people are like, you want to go out for Fauba?

Yeah, let's get some Faub, but

I'm not going to sit here and go, oh, man.

Okay.

Because there's a new Faux place that opened up called Faux Envu, which is right down by like Atwater, you know?

And it's pretty, pretty good soup.

I mean, you know, Reggie recommended it.

And like, after going, it was, it was quite tasty.

But like looking at the menu, there was like the item was like the faux bowl that had a giant like

like

bone broth rib of meat in it.

And it was like, oh, that looks incredible.

Can I get one of those?

And they're like, man,

there's like 10 of these things every day in the morning.

And you got to be here when we open if you want one.

Ah, I see.

And you're like, you got to line up to get

at damn.

You know what I mean?

And that's, and you know what?

That line makes it taste better, I bet.

Oh, I'm like, I don't see the anticipation.

Wake up in the morning pre-order line for the soup, dude.

That's oh man, soup Nazi style.

I'm talking about that, like that's new.

That's a that's a regular thing.

No,

I know, I know, and like, depending on how hungry I am, I'll do the line in the middle of the day or whatever.

There's, there's some great places around that I'm lining up regularly, for sure.

But, like, the wake up in the morning line is an extra variable there.

That's an that's an extra layer of, like, I don't know if that I want my stomach full with pho first, first thing, you know, crack at dawn, but that's you don't deserve deserve it but that's it man but this is the only way to consume it because you can't if you buy it and wait till you actually feel like pho later in the day

that ain't fresh anymore right so you you can only eat the best flavor version of this thing right in the morning when it's available i'm like ah this is you know there's a there's a conflict here unfortunately um

anyway It's good shit, though.

Foan Vu was solid if you're in Montreal.

Go check it out.

Solid stuff.

What's going on?

I played some games, but before that, I would like to read a very small Reddit thread that showed up on our subreddit the other day, about 13 days ago.

I forgot to talk about it last week.

Are you sure?

Are you sure you want to read a Reddit thread?

Oh, I'm extraordinarily sure because I want you to weigh in on this.

There was a thread made by one Violet Myers

who says,

I made up a fake son to get out of work early, and now every time someone asks me about him, I just tell him a story Pat told on the podcast.

Now, what do I do?

And he goes on in the thread that the next day people were asking him lots of questions.

Oh,

what you do is you cue the fucking

curb your enthusiasm music

because Jesus Christ, did you pick the worst possible out for the

oh my god?

Okay, I never mind that like story in a way.

It's almost like what else in your life did you choose as a solution to problems that were so so minor that you decided to go nuclear on the outcome without thinking two minutes into the future.

Hold that thought.

Someone in the comments responds: Slowly switch from Pat's story about his son to Pat's stories about Zengef and Caboose.

Adopt a dog, and then reveal that you were talking about the dog the whole time, right?

Because you say, Oh, my son, right?

My son, my internet son.

OP replies,

Okay, so here's the thing:

I'm a compulsive liar, and I've already started to tell stories about my made-up dog with two broken legs.

Okay, okay, okay, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, okay, all right, all right.

Um, they go on, yeah, and basically, people are like, You're gonna have to get a new job because this is gonna

blow up in your face.

And they say, I think that's my only choice, but the economy sucks.

I don't know if I can get a new job like this one.

And that's the last thing they ever posted.

Okay, I go to their economy.

Okay.

That's the last

thing that I've ever seen.

No, so, well, what we have, like, stop all advice because, like, once you go, once you say, yeah, the problem is actually I'm a compulsive liar.

It's like, oh, life is going to be difficult.

Like,

everything,

whatever solutions you can find need to be things that you can apply to every other facet of your life socially as things continue to blow up around you because when people discover you're lying, they're going to go, well, that's super weird.

And everything that cascades from it will happen continuously.

Oh, no.

Okay, so listen.

Everybody has

four grandparents that can pass away when you need a day off, right?

That everybody, you know, you just cycle through and you keep track, right?

If you keep track.

Inventing a fake child, you know what?

I can respect that.

You grab a stock photo off the internet that kind of looks like you.

Sure.

You just have to make sure that you never, ever, ever intend to ever hang out with these people outside of work ever again.

I mean, also, you can go through the holiday Rolodex and be like, yeah, sorry, it's a Sukkot coming up.

And,

you know, my,

my mom was, you know, half Jewish, so I got to go that way.

Or you got something else.

You know, you just, you, you select as you need to.

Absolutely.

And, you know,

you can be like, oh, the wife, I'm sorry, my ex-wife, custody.

I never get to see them.

Blah, blah, blah.

You know, blah, blah, blah.

You do all sorts of shit, right?

When you have invented a fake dog with a wildly specific disability that people are going to,

somebody pointed out in the thread, the fake dog is going to fuck you up really bad because every dog owner carries around 100 photos of their dog, especially their disabled dog.

Yeah, okay.

That's where you're flying way too close to the Sun because people are going to want to see photos and videos of your fucking dog with broken legs, dude.

Oh, is that flying too close to the Sun and

not the part where anyone who might happen to listen to this podcast would immediately expose

a trick question.

Listen, like actually,

actually though, especially because you're just grabbing everything from one source and pretending it's your life, you need to just tell everyone, hey, sorry, I'm a compulsive liar.

It's weird.

I apologize.

It's a thing.

You can't do that.

You gotta just go.

If it's not gonna cost you your job,

you gotta just come clean.

You gotta come clean.

Wooly, you're crazy.

No.

This will go down.

The hole will dig forever and ever and ever, right?

And now it is your now your burden to dig it.

It's too late.

It's too late.

What are the stakes?

Is it just that people will think you're weird, or will it actually cost you the job?

So I've given you all the information present in that thread.

But if you are, Wooly, if you work somewhere and someone comes to you and goes, like, by the way, I've been faking a fake family, a fake dog.

And you know what?

Fuck it.

I've been faking my cancer diagnosis too.

Well, hold on.

But is my, am I lying about being a compulsive liar?

Or is that real?

Because if that's real.

You've gone too far because

even if you don't get fired, like, they'll make you leave.

The social

lie more.

It depends on the job, I guess, right?

Some places it's like, okay, whatever.

There's a bunch of people here.

You might get socially weird, you know, but it's not going to be a huge impact.

Or if you're in a small office where everything's a super tight family and a such, then that might have a larger impact.

So yeah, I don't know if it's if the situation calls for it, but I feel like, I feel like this is a corner and this is delaying problems that are, you're going to have to face them.

And there are a lot of people I know whose only means of dealing with

anxieties and stresses are to kick the can down the road.

And just

indefinitely kick the cans.

And it's just like, you can't do that.

Or you can, but then you can't be surprised when it explodes.

You can't be.

No, I'm every it willie.

Every person I've ever known that kicks the can down the road every time is always like fucking astonished when it blows up in their face.

And you're always just like, This was obviously, oh my goodness, like, like, wow, it's the consequences of my own actions.

I just that being said, Wooly, uh, no one ever got out of compulsive lying by telling the truth.

It's too late.

Once you've already compulsively lied enough, there's no, there's no saving you.

So, what I'm a podcast person who is probably

listening to this podcast

because they're stealing bits and pieces of my life for their own benefit, I have a piece of advice for you.

There's only one way to come up back off this compulsive lying because you're going to get caught.

And that is

to lie more.

Specifically, be honest that you're a compulsive liar,

but say that you're a compulsive liar to

cover up your fake substance abuse problem, which you will then get over,

thus resetting you

to zero.

Is it good advice?

You're a drug addict or an alcoholic

or whatever, but

you're getting help and you're going down the steps and you're trying to do better and you're you're sorry about that.

You were just making those stories up because you were actually strung out and

you were embarrassed.

Is it good advice?

No.

Is it funnier?

Yes.

Damn.

Tough choice here.

You're telling me that's not going to cost him his job?

You're telling me that the fucking truth is the problem, but saying that I'm a strung out drug addict as the real truth is not.

You're saying an actual substance abuse problem is not going to cost him his job while the truth might.

What the fuck are we talking about?

Well, lady, so no, see, you're blowing it up because what I'm trying to engineer here is I'm trying to engineer the issue in which this guy lies about being a drug addict to get out of the trouble for being a liar and then aces a drug test in which they're like, aren't you supposed to be a drug addict?

And he goes, uh, yeah, I just do

shit.

Assuming they give him the if you're no, if you're gonna get fired for being a liar, just weirding the vibe, there's not gonna be a test over you being an addict or something like that.

That's even more severe on how they'll treat you.

Any place that's cool with you being an addict will probably not fire you for being a liar.

You know what?

Willie, you're right.

I will addend.

I will add

my solution to this person.

This is uh

this is uh who's this Violet Myers.

There is a solution.

In order to sell the fact that you are an addict and that's why you're a compulsive liar,

you should

consider becoming addicted to alcohol temporarily.

Temporarily, temporarily.

So that you can beat it.

Okay, okay.

And then you have a victory story.

And then you'll have your coin.

You'll have your sobriety coin that you can get from Alcoholics Anonymous.

And then

you can be like, hey, hey i'm better now pat

this soul

the outcome of this soul is actually on you because you now have to tell stories about your life knowing that they will be x copied into the water cooler office discussion tomorrow and you have to choose the correct stories for this person

you can correct the narrative but it's all on you now

they don't have a choice in the matter they all are just gonna respout whatever you say.

Tell your stories responsibly.

I got to respond to a comment that I just saw, which is like, oh man, Pat's kid is so fucked for advice.

No, listen.

Listen.

This is not the advice I would give my child.

This is the advice I give guy who steals my life story and dog story so that he can skip work, bro.

I have no loyalty here to have good advice.

The thing, so, but, but it's not, like if it was, if it was just to skip work, like, we're talking about a

okay, you're you're lying about why you're calling out, and that's now that's an issue that your boss is going to get on your ass about, or whatever, if they find that there's a consequence to your lie, right?

You, you have lied for a purpose, but if you've already sowed the seeds of lying about your dog for no reason, but simply just to do so.

So, actually,

that becomes like that.

I remember talking to Paige about this.

I'm like, talking about the disabled dog part, that's the part that will...

Because if people are like, listen, Wooly, you're working at the office.

You're working back in QA and some guy invents a fake kid to get out of work.

Yeah, almost.

Oh, I worked with a few fucking egregious.

I have a fake son that I use to get out of work things.

I don't know about you, but I'd be like, ah, it's pretty funny.

Like, ah, you got him.

I wouldn't feel any ill will or animosity.

But like, ah, well, you know, everybody's got hustle, right?

But the fake dog is specifically to engender like an emotional response from co-workers.

100%

me, that will cause hatred.

Anybody who finds out that you don't have a dog with broken legs is going to hate you

because you manipulated them for nothing

for absolutely nothing, 100%, you know.

And I mean, look, there's the variants on this that I'm already familiar with.

I know there's the guy who,

it's not lying about having a kid and going that far with it for whatever those excuses are.

It's more like you're a deadbeat that's not in their life, but they do exist and you can prove it via photo with them.

Oh, yeah, I met a bunch of those people.

So you just milk that aspect of it instead, right?

100!

You run into them and you're like, I try to get him to spend time with the kids all the time, and he doesn't give a shit.

You haven't seen them in a year.

What are you talking about?

You know, like, that's

that's a real person, you know, a hundred.

But like, yeah, I uh, if if you're already not lying for gain, but just to get

to it, oh, oh, you're in deep.

Oh, man.

Um, no, and if you have the awareness, if you have the awareness to already know you're a compulsive liar and like identify that part, like kudos.

That's a, that's a, that you have, that's a first step of recognition.

But man, there's a lot of pillars around besides this job that must also be on fire and collapsing.

And you need some solutions for getting ready for that in your life.

But I gotta say,

it's actually kind of sad because, like, you and I knew a guy

who had had it the worst I've ever seen in my life.

And

like, but like, it's, it's like, it's, it's like sad because it's like

every single thing, every detail, every event, every story, every, all of it.

It's like, don't you lose your

sense of self after a certain little while?

Well, it was just more like this is, I always, I love, I always talk about how much I love Shutter Island, the movie, because

it's a really good movie.

But I just, I'm like, isn't there a point where like you crash into reality and like

something has to break?

Like, what happens when you say something and as you're saying it right in front of you, it's like reality is the opposite and everyone's watching it happen.

Like, what then?

You know, I just, I need to know because how do you function?

How did you get this far?

It's crazy.

And it turns out in a lot of cases, everyone just kind of politely goes, yeah,

okay.

And just kind of dips that way.

You know?

Anyway, that's a rough one.

There's no easy answers there.

Yeah.

I wish there was an L in there.

Vio at Myers, please, please post an update.

I am so riveted.

Now, of course, there's the possibility that this thread is in of itself a repulsive lie.

Of course.

But it's a good one.

Sure.

If it is.

Well, the good news is I have the update.

Yeah.

What else happened with your week?

Oh, right.

Right.

Okay.

Baby's great.

He's the best little guy.

We're at the stage.

Hey,

Myers, are you listening?

He's at the stage where he's now throwing he's now full on uh milk please

and and and coloring please okay

just like full-on please and thank yous uh and today i got hit with please milk please oh yeah all right okay

it's getting through okay hold on you froze on a really funny frame now you're back Always.

Good.

All right, that's great.

Damn, I wanted to screen.

All right, there we go.

Got that pro-social behavior.

It's

feeling good.

But that's it on baby news.

Sorry, man.

Don't have a crazy story for you this week.

Please and thank you.

I mean,

right.

Okay.

Yes.

But

I played a couple games.

The only one I really want to talk about at length is The Alters.

Okay.

So I got this game for free.

They

sent me a code.

So we, you probably saw a

like maybe a 30-second, one-minute trailer of the alters during one of the game shows and probably didn't pay it all that much mind because the trailer wasn't very good.

No, but I do remember a bunch of clearly what looked like mocapped or facial captured people

that looked like real people.

So the alters is fantastic, and it is a really fascinating

sci-fi premise that it works very, very strongly, and everything kind of forms like this really nice cohesive whole

of like just everything works together and gels together really well because the game has a lot of disparate elements.

So the long and short of it

is that you are playing Jan,

what is it, Jan Dolsky,

and you are out in the far reaches of space doing space working man shit on some shithole planet,

and everyone but you dies,

and the sun rising on this planet will incinerate you.

So you have to move your base.

Okay.

You're only one man.

You can't possibly and you have no real skills.

So you have to find more people to crew your base.

So corporate tells you to just start branching yourself.

And the purpose of branching is that you look over the entire history of Yan's life and you look over all the major decisions, which are all written out and how he felt about all of them.

Things like

turning a blind eye to crime in his neighborhood when he was like 14, to

leaving home to go to college and not being home in time

to help his mom pass away, or what job he got after college, and whether or or not that led to stresses in his marriage, and stuff like that.

And you get to pick one of those and go, What if I did the other thing?

And then you get a completely new life path, all of the events written down and narrated.

Interesting

path, you have the different version of yourself that would have gone on the mission.

And then you take that parallel possibility and you clone it into a person

and bring them online in your base.

Interesting.

And they go, What am I doing here?

How did I get here?

And the part that really sells it is the back and forth dialogue with character

dialogue choices of you explaining what you have actually done to them and the scenario you have put them in.

Whoa.

That's a wild premise.

Because some of them come out going, oh, why do you look like me?

And getting super pissed off that they've been ripped from their possibility quantum in their life.

Yeah, yeah.

To be dragged in.

I mean, there's the, I'm like, I'm thinking of like, there's like multiple men, and then like in

Invincible, you have like the Mahler twins, but like, that's a pretty fucking cool premise right off the bat.

Now, the genre is survival, it says the genre is, is, it has many genre.

Okay.

So

your primary gameplay is going to be wandering around a hostile environment and mining resources, putting down mining expedition, like, you know, like, and, and then, like, connecting

mining outposts to the base with survey poles, kind of like

a base building, very satisfactory light, right?

But it also involves exploring and

checking, like dealing with stalker-type spatial anomalies, that kind of thing, right?

But as you're doing that, your base needs constant maintenance and you need people to make things.

You need to grow food.

And your alters all have different likes and dislikes and things that they actually want.

So, like, technician alter.

So they become you're Jan Dolsky, but and they all become Yon and then their title, which is Jan Technician or Yan Doctor or Yon Scientist.

And they all want different things.

So like one of the first things that happens is Yon technician is like, hey, I'm eating mush and I don't have a bed.

And I'm fucking mad about it.

I'm not going to repair shit here until I have a bed and I have food.

So then it becomes about managing the resources resources in order to build a dormitory.

Yeah.

Build a greenhouse.

So now that I have a greenhouse, I need somebody to staff that greenhouse.

So I need to get Yan Botanist.

And Yan Botanist doesn't like being alive on the ship at all.

They hate it

and resent you for their creation.

Yeah, that is a way more interesting

take on multiverse versions of characters because we've seen a lot of, obviously, with you know, recent movies and stuff, like open up a portal, here comes another version of you, yada, yada.

But the actual, like, no, there never was that alternate version, it was just simulated and birth

is fucking that's really compelling.

Um, okay, you have to like, they have a variety of different types of questions, and one of them is like, well, where's my wife?

And you're like, ah,

she's at home on Earth.

So you can say,

yeah,

your wife never existed.

yeah right right right right and then how that affects things okay that premise is so strong that like i'm almost a little bummed about it being the by that genre you're mentioning in the sense that i guess like the so most of what you're doing is base building survival exploration resource management no it's it's split down the middle um because i want the full narrative of what you just described that sounds really really cool because the narrative it so it it you're you're going back and forth back and forth back and forth you're exploring, you're managing resources, you're trying to find the resources you need, then you're going back to the base to actually manage those into like the materials that you need.

But the materials you need are often the things these guys are asking for.

And then you'll be out exploring and you'll find like

you'll find a rubber ducky.

that came crashing down with your luggage.

And you don't have any strong feelings towards the rubber ducky at all.

But scientist Jan

tells you about how the rubber ducky is who he would read his thesis to on various drafts

in the version of him that

existed in his perspective.

And he starts to lament that

he wishes you could have technologies that he invented on the ship, but they're from a quantum timeline that

you have to get and that technology doesn't even exist.

Yes.

And that technology has never existed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that opens up research trees to have him recreate his old technology.

That was from elsewhere.

Right.

No, that's that's super interesting.

And I guess, so the process of like, you know, doing these management tasks leads to your next story bits.

Yeah.

And so like the

best example is the one I already used, which is like, okay, technician Jan wants food.

Okay, I have mush made out of organics.

That's not really food.

How do I get a cooked meal?

I get a cooked meal by making raw food in the greenhouse.

Okay, I've made the greenhouse.

I don't have anyone to staff the greenhouse.

So, what do I do?

I go back into my quantum computer and I look at the timeline of my life.

And that moment where my wife wanted to leave town to get a bigger job and a better job, and I said, No, I'm going to keep my job.

And then I lost my job in the economic collapse.

This time, we're going to go with her.

And she's going to make senior partner at that law firm.

And I am not going to lose my job.

And we're going to be fine.

And I'm going to stay at home gardening all day and I will become Jan the botanist.

Okay, you have to find.

And so you're pulling house husband out of a potential reality to make raw food for you on this shithole space station that he doesn't want to be on.

You have to find the version that

has a skill relevant to your need based on your life's decisions, basically.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

And every branch gives you the full life story of that version of yourself.

Awesome.

And the most interesting part of that is that,

so

you have your primary branch, which is just Jan Dolsky.

And then, so, oh, I branched about leaving home or going to college, right?

That's how you get technician Jan, right?

But it's not all branching off of the primary path.

There are branches off of technician Jan's life.

Oh, shit.

There are branches off of Dr.

Jan.

Oh, forks.

You're describing forks now.

Okay, because

like if we're using like game build technology where you're like you make a branch to this this project you fork at a point and have a completely separate thing that goes down its own pathway.

That's wild.

So it becomes okay.

What if I stayed in university and didn't take that corporate job?

And then later it's what if I fucking caved in my morals and faked some results or not.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, this is insanely interesting.

Also, I think this is the fastest that the technology has been inherently fucking evil from the jump.

There is no version.

There's no version of this conversation that is ethical with your altar is wildly depressing and very aggressive.

And it is very clear that you have crossed a line that you should maybe not have crossed.

And it is very bad.

Immediately.

It is a bad technology.

Yeah, you can't, you cannot make this ethical in any way, shape, or form.

It's bad technology.

Even if it was making you yourself over and over again, you know?

Holy shit.

Okay.

And this is one of those things where you were like, the, the, the genre is kind of a bummer to you because you're not big on survival.

There, the, it is constantly going back and forth, informing each one about like your gameplay decisions into the narrative decisions.

And by far, the most interesting thing about the game's gameplay versus its narrative is that, so, technician Jan repairs the base 50% faster.

Botanist Jan

grows food in the greenhouse 100% faster.

You know, these types of buffs.

Scientist Jan is the only one that can unlock research on your base.

Stuff like that, right?

Jan Dolsky, the player you actually control outside of the base, is the only person with no buffs.

This means that the real Jan Dolsky is the worst version of himself across all potential realities.

He is the only one who doesn't know how to do anything any better than anyone ever.

He's the worst.

Interesting.

He's the worst version of himself, and he's the one in charge of making new versions of himself.

I imagine, well, I'd say hit credits and see what happens there, you know, if that, but that's an interesting premise.

It's like, you need to start with vanilla ass tofu to start

to add spice to it.

Dealing with you're calling corporate, and corporate is the slimiest pieces of motherfucking assholes ever.

And you get to argue with corporate for like long periods.

And one of the most interesting questions you get to ask the head of mining is, What's going to happen to these guys when we go back to Earth?

Oh, get the fuck out of you.

And he goes, I don't know.

This is a brand new thing.

I have no idea, actually.

Yeah, like, I'm not even asking the questions like, oh, what's the expiration date?

Or what's the limitation?

Or, you know, like, duh, yeah, no, obviously.

We know how this goes, you know.

That is, that can go a lot of places.

That's interesting, but definitely

that is the most, like, yeah, refreshing take on multiverse type shit.

Yeah, it's super cool, man.

It's super, super cool.

I kind of love it.

It's weird that it came out so recently because it is...

I don't know if you've seen any footage of it.

It looks just like Death Stranding.

Yeah, I know.

I've seen a bit there.

The blasted nightmare landscape and the backpacking man hoofing it through that shit.

It looks like Death Stranding.

Yeah, also, like, there's something cool about the genre that is just like abandoned astronaut, you know, whether it's like Moon or

the shoot, the

Martian.

Well, the Martian, but I was also going to say the game

with the fucking generating,

goddammit.

Brain is soft.

Whatever.

Anyway, a returnal.

Returnal.

Yeah.

You know what?

It feels like

I actually said this verbatim when I was playing it.

This game feels like it has the gravitas of the story that Returnal thought it did.

Okay.

Okay.

I see what you mean.

Yeah.

And, you know, I mean, there's a couple of, there's a,

there's a couple of movies and shows and things that have been coming out that also feel like we cross into a little of this territory.

So,

yeah, fun stuff.

Um, fucking, yeah, it's also, it has a lot of Soma vibes on it.

Sure, like, you know, you, you're basically running through a conversation of a day of like, so am I real?

And you're like, ah, uh,

yeah, yeah,

thousand times resist, you know, folks saying good things about severance.

I mean, fucking, there's, there's a lot.

There's a lot of things going in this place, but yeah, that's a fun, cool idea.

All right.

The alters is what it's called.

Yeah, the alters.

It's really cool.

It's, it's super rad.

I'm going to go back to it next week, but this week is all Death Stranding all the time.

I'm actually going to be streaming Death Stranding today

at twitch.tv slash Pat Stairs at about 4 p.m.

Pacific.

That's in two hours if you're listening to it live.

Okay.

It actually comes out

on

Thursday?

Is it?

So here's the thing about Death Stranding that's so confusing to me.

One is the story.

But the second thing is

this is a real show-off of how much older I've gotten in that Death Stranding literally snuck up on me.

And I would look online.

I'm like,

when's the release date?

Oh, it's the 26th.

Like, okay, so I marked in my calendar.

Okay, good.

And then I find out

that if you buy the special boy edition for $10 extra dollars, the game actually came out last night at 9 o'clock.

Early release.

And I was like, you know what?

That's fine.

That's totally fine.

You know, know, I'll just wait for it.

And then Ludi won Ludwig Forsold.

Hey, was like, yo, Pat, I got that code you asked for.

And he sent me the email from SIE that was like, here's your death stranding code.

You can stream it right now.

I'm like, okay, well, schedule's changing now.

Fuck it.

Yeah.

So now it's death stranding time now.

Thanks, Ludi.

I love you, buddy.

And Ludwig will be joining me tomorrow.

Tomorrow evening as a guest, we're going to talk about Death Stranding as we play Death Stranding.

Hell yeah.

Let's look forward to that.

I care.

It's really funny when he sent me that email because, like, so composing is like a big boy job.

Like, that is

a genuine,

like, intelligent, professional career in the arts.

Right.

And

so you're like, oh, you know, it's this big boy composer here talking to me, and I'm just some dirtbag streamer shithead, right?

And then he sends me the email that has the you know the embargo details on it.

I'm like, bro, you sent me it.

This thing has no embargo.

And he's just like, I don't know.

I don't understand those forms.

You deal with that stuff all the time.

I don't know what that is.

I don't know what that says.

Can you ask him a question for me?

Yeah, sure.

Ask him when he's on

how he feels about Lorien Testard,

the Expedition

33.

I can tell you right now.

The out of nowhere fucking first project ever.

He was in some of the streams I did for

Expedition.

Hell yeah.

Okay.

He's like, this shit is great.

There was something more specific he said.

Something about the

I forget what it was, and I don't want to misquote him, right?

But the amount of music that L'Orien put out

had like it feels like he was he was just given free reign and or like a lack of version control or something to just go nuts and make sure which music he wanted.

Okay, so what I discovered is that he had been,

so besides this obscure forum where the SoundCloud posting stuff happened.

More like a Claire obscure

fucking.

All right, I'm done.

I'm sorry.

Prior to that, when Lorier found the post for this project, he was working on for his, just out of, just for the fuck of it, he was making a song per week.

And he, and in one year, he made 50 tracks.

Just come on, right?

So, he would, he put a, uh, just a self-imposed seven days to make a full song pressure on himself, and did it for a straight year and created this incredible fucking library.

And then that's what Guillaume saw, you know?

Um,

so like, yeah, the ability to make that in that level of soundtrack where he's got like 150 tracks or whatever, you're just like, he's already done this.

He's like, apparently, you know, over 300 tracks.

It's insane.

It's insane.

And they're so fucking good.

Yeah, anyway, so I just want to hear Ludwig just like fucking go on about that crazy shit for a minute.

Cool.

That's awesome.

That's pretty much it for me.

I'm going to be,

you know, trucking and walking.

I plan

on having the single most accurate and real-to-life death stranding stream of anyone to ever exist as I am a relatively new dad.

Yep.

Lou in that game looks about

almost the age of my guy.

And also, I will be, to my knowledge anyway, the only one streaming Death Stranding with a baby strapped to my chest the entire time.

There is that.

Now, granted, the baby will be my

disabled pug caboose here.

Yes.

He's joining us for today's podcast.

Give me kiss me.

Not floating in the liquid.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, this is

this pouch is kind of like my uterus, my womb.

Although Lou's actually out now, so you know.

Yeah, but yeah.

Well, he's out too.

So look at him as a little baby.

Now, this dog is real.

So,

Myers, if you want to tell people to check out your Death Stranding 2 streams where you strap your dog to your chest, I highly suggest you don't give them the link because that'll just blow up in your face.

Who the fuck is Myers?

Oh, is that the name?

Was it Vio?

Violet?

Vioette?

Violet.

Okay, all right, all right.

Yeah, yeah.

That's cool.

And then

I guess whenever you play Pragmata, you can find a way to do it with over the shoulder instead.

Yeah, maybe.

That'd be tough.

You know what?

That kid is fucking Mega Man, bro.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's cool.

That kid is Mega Man.

There's a buster arm.

Watch that kid.

She just puts like a Mega Man helmet on at the end and goes

Dr.

Yaiwi.

There's E-Tanks.

Like, there's fucking...

Yeah, it's, you know, come on.

Anyway.

Immediately, Dr.

Waiwee.

But yeah, that's pretty much all that's going on with me.

I'll talk to you about Death Stranding next week.

Probably a little bit.

Okay.

I can't wait to understand none of it and simultaneously all of it.

So

I don't think that's going to be a problem

because I don't think I'm even going to bother talking to you about the story next week because that just seems like a fool's errand.

I think the conversation we're going to have next week is you're going to be like, how do you like the story?

And I'll be like, it's good.

Spent the past three days building a highway to Mexico.

Sure did.

Also, DNA is still a thing.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Let's take a quick break.

Yeah, I need to piss.

Let's do that, please.

Beer beer.

Alrighty.

Quick word from our sponsors.

I love you, sponsor.

I'd give you a big kiss.

Let's pay some bills.

Excuse me.

Part of me expecting you to go, oh, never mind.

We don't have any sponsors.

No,

no, we've got a couple.

Sponsors.

Sponsors are beloved by this show.

This week, the podcast is sponsored by HelloFresh.

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This week, the podcast is sponsored by Turtle Beach,

and that's just the high-quality, good-ass headphone that feels good on the ear.

You got the soft, comforting material on it in particular.

Yeah.

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I love the memory foam ear cushions because memory foam is like, you can get that on your bed to like, you know, conform to the shapes and curves of your body, and it's very, very soft.

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This week, the podcast is sponsored by Boot.dev.

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I don't know how to code, and I'm also dumb.

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And this week, the show is sponsored by Mando.

Yo, what up?

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All right.

We got a couple of things.

Let's get into them right off the bat.

I'll tell you what, quickly, you saying flaps made me realize that the kid makes fun of me for flapping now.

Because I farted and the kid laughed at me and I said, sorry,

daddy's butt was flapping.

And now every time I fucking fart, the kid runs around flapping his arms like a bird, going flap, flap, flap, flap, flap.

Damn.

So be careful what you say.

I see.

I see.

Yeah, I'm a little more, you know, I'm a little more.

I have a little more compassion about it.

I'm a little graceful about the dropping the bombs.

We've had this discussion before.

I tend to be selective.

I'll remove myself from the situation.

I'll find an area where I'll do the least amount of harm.

I can't think that, yeah, you are like that now, but then you'll have a two-year-old and you'll be like, hey, hey, bud, check this out.

Oh, oh, oh, oh.

No, because

it is a sheathed sword.

It is sheathed.

And

I'm keeping it in its

hilt is strong, right?

I will whip it out when the time is ready.

When you want to go to war, you will feel this blade, and it does not return until it tastes blood.

Okay?

What are you?

Are you shitting your pants?

I am saying that if you if you attack me with the with smells and odors and I drop a nuclear fart on your ass, it is going to ruin your day.

So I'm being shit your pants.

I am being kind.

I am being kind by sparing the family from the violence.

All right.

I don't start the fart battle.

I fucking end it.

So until then,

we're being nice.

Just if you have to do it, just fart in your shirt so it doesn't get everywhere.

I just, I don't know how to go light.

There is no, there is no, you know, there is no little squeak, ha ha.

Bombs.

Bombs.

This is terrible.

This is terrible.

I've got more than I, I got more than I expected.

Well, you started.

I did.

I literally did.

And just like that,

and I end it.

Yeah.

All right.

What do we got this week?

Surprise announcement.

This was fucking unexpected and cool.

Shout outs to Arkforged.

The homies over there, good people working on some fighting games behind the scenes.

They made,

they have Origin of Storms, an original fighting game they're working on.

They made Sonic SmackDown, and then they got behind the scenes on Corrupt.

They got behind the scenes on

Head to Head.

And

now they've announced announced Sonic SmackDown

the update ultimate Sonic SmackDown the free Sonic fighting game that basically is Marvel style and the main difference here is a 3v3 update to the game

brand new

yeah new tag fighter coming out entering the fucking fray because there aren't enough of them so um

Yeah, basically the

Sonic SmackDown, we had a lot of fun with with that, playing it over on Get into Fighting Games a couple times, and it led to insane levels of pop-offs because you can Virgil with your shadow and do all kinds of nonsense dirt cross-ups.

And Sega's cool with Sonic fan games, so they're way down to, you know, support and just, or let that kind of thing rock.

The announcement that there's a...

How many characters does it have?

Perhaps more than 10.

That's fucking crazy.

How could you put a fighting game out with more than 10 10 characters?

That's impossible.

So, in this tag slop era, Arc Forge has entered the situation and went, Yeah, we got one too.

We've been working on.

And I can confirm that, like, having played a bunch of Sonic SmackDown, it's fucking sick as hell.

It's very fun.

They know how to keep things like saucy and fast and crazy.

So, uh, this is great.

It's way like, imagine if Sonic the Fighters was actually really fun and good, you know?

I don't understand that even concept, right?

That's ridiculous.

So yeah, um,

no, go, go check them out for sure.

Um, shout outs to Arcforged.

And, um, and, you know, and I'm looking forward to, um, yeah, whatever, the other projects they got cooking.

It's kind of like, they're like the aiding or dimps of indie fighters because

there were a couple indie fighters that were kind of like, you know, they had earlier builds.

They were kind of like struggling a little bit more.

And

in some cases, you know, you're not, you're not quite getting that the bones to feel just right.

And then you get into the new build and you're like, oh my god, there's a launcher into a dirty cross-up, into an OTG, and a left-right.

And you're like, yeah, okay, I know who got behind the wheels of this.

I see who took over here.

Yes, Ultimate Sonic SmackDown.

Can't wait for that shit.

And, you know, again, I just like that Sega has a policy of being like, yeah, do what you want.

Go nuts.

That, of course, not being the only one.

We also got got an announcement.

No video or trailer, but screenshots.

2v2 tag team fighting game Saturday a.m.

battle manga.

Wait, are you serious?

Yes.

Another one?

Another one.

It's kind of endless at this point.

Sat empty for too long.

Too long.

Everyone had the same thought at the same time and said, this summer, this summer we're going for it.

Jesus Christ.

Right.

At first, there were just, you know,

there was the North going for it, and then you had

Casterly Rock, and now you've got some Targaryens, and you've got the Ironborn are marching, and like all the season five motherfuckers coming through.

Everybody wants the throne, dude.

It's nuts.

And, you know, I think if you had to like swear allegiance and bend the knee, most folks would look over at fucking Tokan and go like, look at at that fucking thing.

There's no coming back.

You know?

Which there's a goddamn Arc System Works direct.

They're fucking weak.

Exactly.

And they're about to announce a new game as well.

What the fuck?

We don't know what it is, but assuming that they're not talking about Tokan, Daisuke has been working on another game.

It's fucking ARC Systemworks versus Capcom.

There you go.

And the thing is, is they're making money, right?

If they had the ability to get Strides,

support it this long, get an anime going moving into the Marvel space like Arxis is fucking they're built they're building themselves much up much bigger than they previously have before so um yeah getting into a new original thing that's from them or so like that's nuts also um I don't know that we've ever seen them like

running three four games simultaneously, you know, with teams or so.

Typically, you kind of expect two.

And like, oh, is there something that Team Blue is working on?

BlazBlue teams on this.

We got this going over here with Team Red.

Um, yeah, Arxis is fucking going going big with it.

Um, Saturday more, Saturday AM

is a

comic

publishing arm, and uh, I, yeah, I didn't quite recognize any of the names listed here.

It seems like it's kind of like an indie uh uh um publisher, but there's a big two there's a 2v2 tag fighter coming from and like and it's got cell shading and you you know, sure, let's see what they've got to add to the situation.

So, um,

the

yeah, the flop, the tag flop is just getting started.

Uh, tag flop, excuse me,

hey, Willie, quickly before we go on, do you have uh the Monster Hunter Wilds thing on the docket this week?

Uh, no, so Monster Hunter Wilds on Steam has hit overwhelmingly negative reviews,

word,

and you're so you want to know why you want to have a hazard a guess, Just a random guess?

I mean, did they update and fuck up some sort of balance or

like char micro?

Close.

Close.

Charging for G rank?

So you worked in QA, right?

Mm-hmm.

So what would happen if your game that already performs like complete shit updated and the performance got way, way?

Oh, go fuck yourself.

That's that is.

And then they put out the guide that I just sent you, which is the manual steps they want players to go through to delete their shader cacher, which includes going to global settings and going into disk management settings in Windows.

Oh, no.

Can't hold on a minute, though.

But like, when you got to do.

They just force a recompile.

That's what I'm saying.

When you boot up Street Fighter.

They won't.

They won't.

When you boot up Street Fighter and something changes, it just forces a recompile.

Exactly.

The update they put out fucked up the shader cache bad enough that

they are telling you to do it yourself.

Okay.

So that's something pushed live that shouldn't have gone live, basically.

And yeah, the game runs like way worse now, and it ran terrible before.

This should never happen.

Oh, man.

And is this one of those things where someone goes like, oh, yeah, go to this INI file, delete this line, the whole thing runs fine?

You know?

You have to go into the shader cache folder and delete it manually, but the steps they give you include like using Windows disk cleanup

shader cache

from guys.

The fucking

like

fucking piles.

And here's the thing.

Someone in the chat was like, oh, when are they going to put

when are people going to remove those reviews?

Like, most people don't know that this advice is ever going to happen.

Most people are just going to go, the game runs like shit now, and it's always going to run like shit now

i mean not on console force the update they have to force the update if if you know if you're not on if you're if you're on console probably not but like yeah that's that sucks man yeah absolute buffoonery that the game with bad performance is getting way way worse performance now

and like wasn't wasn't the switch original switch thing uh rye of rise like also getting got grief over how fucking

oh it

return to your original form.

Okay, the last good performing Monster Hunter game was Monster Hunter 4U on the new 3DS.

Okay, beyond that, they dropped trailer for...

Oh, yeah.

Do you have any interest in Never Winter Nights 2?

Yes, I do.

Yeah, Enhanced Edition.

I remember.

So I didn't play.

I always talk about games that run like shit, man.

Yeah.

Never Winter Nights 2 just ran ran like ass on everything.

On everything.

So, this is one of those games where I, yeah, I didn't play, but my brother did.

And I remember watching him, you know, going through it.

And yeah, our computer was not the strongest, you know, but this pushed it for me.

No, it was made bad.

Like, the game was made bad.

That's why it ran like shit.

Also, that game's super cool, but like, almost no one played it because

it hit the weirdest time of modernizing 3D graphics with those third edition systems.

And just like, I fucking

success.

Fortunately, this re-release or this enhanced release has cross-play co-op.

That's crazy.

That's really, really cool.

And that's a great way to, yeah, encourage, if anyone's picking this up anywhere, the ability to not have to worry about what platform you're on is great.

I just, I want to give that flowers.

Every time I see cross-play

has partial controller support, are you fucking kidding me, dude?

Anytime I see cross-play

as a feature on things, I want want to give some flowers out for that.

That's fucking great.

Encourage that shit everywhere, all the time.

Yeah.

Coming out

July 15th.

Cool.

Yeah, just don't, who cares?

Get it on whatever you want.

Is just

sweat off everyone's fucking game.

Fine camera, polished mechanics, enhanced textures, full controller support with a new controller UI.

Yeah, dog.

Pad play.

Pad play for this old ass.

Oh, that's so good for these old games.

Steam Deck.

Yeah.

Thanks, Steam Deck.

Net Ease announced a giant AAA,

you know, one of those.

It's kind of interesting because

this game is called Blood Message.

Let me see here.

Yeah.

Big cinematic trailer.

And it's one of those games where like the trailer is for Blood Message.

It's so cinematic that like I'm like, so when I can the camera's over the shoulder, but you're kind of just like what genre are we gonna land on here?

Are we gonna lean towards souls?

Are we gonna go towards you know, what kind of combat?

Because it's just it's all set-piece cinematic moments and like there's a

there's a brief moment where it looks like

you're kind of doing um whatchamacallit uh forehoner style combat you see a couple swings that are like over the shoulder, a little bit slow and like, you know, a little bit of clunk to it.

So it doesn't seem like it's necessarily full-on souls or full-on Wukong or any of that stuff.

Um,

but it just feels weird to watch like a lot of the um,

you know, the new sort of like uh uh

these trailers that come out and you're kind of like, I can't tell what genre of video game this is until

we get two of my hands.

Well, yeah, because you're like, you get two seconds of the person swinging, and where the camera is, and the speed of the swing, and how it hits the enemy, might give you some information, but this might as well just be a full cutscene that we're watching type of thing.

Yeah, Hellblade also comes to mind with a little bit of a, you know, slower-paced thing.

But

yeah, let's see what's up.

China's got another action game coming out.

No release date yet.

And I think,

well, did I see box art for Lost Soul Aside?

I think?

Maybe.

Yeah.

Anyway,

there's that.

And then there's the

Silent Hill porn parody screenshot.

It is so crazy.

Return to Silent Hill.

The Silent Hill resurgence stuff is to push this movie.

Is it?

Is that the reason why?

Yeah, dude.

That's crazy.

And the first thing we see of it just looks like fucking god-awful trash.

So a screenshot of the new Silent Hill movie was released, and it is,

yeah, Return to Silent Hill is the name of the film.

And it's James and Maria.

And the outfit and the, it's just,

what, like, again, people are calling it the porn parody screenshot because you're like, what the fuck are you doing?

Like, this is so weird.

The costume and the casting choices are super off.

That wig is crazy, dude.

Like,

what are we doing with that wig

in theaters?

January 23rd.

Yeah, that'll be great.

That'll be great.

So,

the previous two Silent Hill movies,

like, so bad.

Like,

um,

the previous two Silent Hill movies were all Harry?

No, Harry didn't exist.

Oh, wait, we talked about this.

Harry, no, Harry was replaced with

Rose

because

the writer

thought that a man looking for his child was too feminine.

Okay, okay, it's coming back.

It's coming back.

We had a discussion about it before.

Yeah, okay.

All right.

Well, um

that's crazy to do a really good remake of an old game in order to promote a really bad like like film adaptation

that's that's nuts dude but i guess it stands to make a ton of money because they always do like a film of a version of anything can just sit there and and you know

on streamers is the equivalent of like sells sales at Walmart you know um ever since we learned that like the fucking Street Fighter movie made infinite dollars for Capcom.

That's really funny.

You're like, yeah, the effort meant it was worth it, I guess.

Anyway.

Well, the director of the movie who said that is directing Return to Silent Hill.

So it wasn't the writer, Roger Avery, then, then it was Christophe Gunns from Brother HoloWolf.

Ah.

And so, wait, even like Silent Hill F and all these other things, like these new games that might be really good?

Absolutely.

They're pushed the movie, just fucking fluff on the side.

Crazy.

Because when they when they announced all these things, they announced the movie, and then they kept talking about the movie, and then they said, Also, there's these games, and these games will help get excitement for the movie.

God, Konami, Silent Hill is back in movie form.

I mean, you know, look, we were seeing

this return effort that Konami's putting into like acknowledging their games again and stuff.

And God bless, it's better than them being dead, you know, but like it still does just that, go, it's always got to be fucking about, it's always about a fucking movie, it's always about something else, you know?

Here's the weird one: the one, the one that makes me so confused.

We have

six seasons

of a Castlevania TV show.

We have Castlevania in Dead Cells, we have Castlevania in Vampire Survivors, we have Castlevania in Dead by Daylight,

And you would expect me to say that that was building up to a new Castlevania game, but it's not.

No.

We have re-releases of the Dominus Collection.

We have re-releases of Portrait of Ruin.

We have re-released.

There's a re-release of fucking

Lords of Shadow right now.

How games.

How are they supposed to troll your reactions to a bloodstained game live on stream if they actually release in real Castlevania?

There's also a Castlevania expansion for V

Rising as well.

Why don't you just take your heart and just put it into the thing over here, Bloodstained, where it exists and it's coming out?

Bro, I felt like such an asshole when they showed off the Bloodstained sequel thing.

I saw.

Oh, you actually saw that.

I saw that clip.

Yeah, yeah.

Because I'm like, no fucking way.

No fucking way.

I'm excited.

Yeah.

And then as soon as, like, oh, it's not Dracula.

Oh, I don't care anymore.

Oh.

No shot.

He was correct.

There was no shot.

All right.

Let's take some letters.

If you want to send in a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Let's take one.

Don't tell me to shut up about Dracula.

I love Dracula.

All right.

That's cool.

All right.

so we got one over here from Commando Joe says, I realize we have a lot more terms for new games than in a series now.

Remakes,

MGS3 Delta, Ivilus Chronicles, remasters, Last of Us, Last of Us 2, Last of Us Again, reboots, DMC Devil May Cry, re-release, pretty much everything digitally ported, remake will, a remake that's also a sequel, like

remake, like FF7, you know.

With these various types of re-games, if you could pick one for each slot, what would you pick?

I'd love to see all the Mega Man Legends games in it, get a full remake now that Capcom has around 20 years of third-person action games under their belts.

Hmm.

I mean, Mega Man Legends is a pretty good place to go.

That deserves some treatment there.

I like Mega Man Legends.

I think the remake will, like, we don't, like, Ava did it.

FF7 did it.

I think anything else doing it in not a particularly clever way is just not going to work work as well

Evangelion did it and

no one has done it as good as Evangelion

it's just like not even not even clear you just that's it right like like I'll give a I'll give a passing mention to the Star Trek movie that was like yeah alternate reality version thing okay cool that's that's I think that's an interesting thing it was never at the time it was never done you know the reason why Ava got away with it is because it took like you 10 years to figure it out

In FF7, people had it figured from the trailer.

It was clear.

But there's also that part of me that goes, as much as I would love Mega Man Legends to get picked up off the ground and have the dust blown off of it, I would love just a new one that like...

Without Inifune?

Yeah, I know, right?

God, that would be, whoa.

Could you imagine the game actually existing and coming out and being good?

Like, wow.

No.

I just don't.

Yeah, I I can't necessarily say that I'm like, I need to see that remade or requilled or whatever, instead of just like a new game that picks up where we left off and uses the previous lore to like establish things and go forward into a new direction, you know?

New things good.

I'd be more than happy to just

have a cleaned up, re-released version of the entire Legacy of Kane series.

The voice acting, not just Saul Reaver wanted to.

What about voice acting, though?

No, when I say cleaned up, I literally mean like new sprites for Blood Omen

and a playable version of Defiance.

So

I don't, I mean like re-release.

Re-release.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, again, as long as you can get everyone like, you know, paid for using the soul.

That might be tough.

That might be tough.

You can throw, talk to the estates.

I think maybe half of those people are dead.

Talk to the estates, you know, in question and see what's up.

But

yeah, those are legendary performances.

What are you supposed to do?

Or I guess recast, which is, you know, that's the idea.

No, no, I would rather they

scorch the shit from my mind.

And that's the thing: until you hear a really good person do the recast, you kind of want to fight that forever.

No one will ever be Tony J ever again.

He's goaded, man.

He's goaded

forever in your brain.

All right, let's take one over here.

Asking, hello, short dad and tall dad.

I've recently been letting my six-year-old son play video games on my Switch.

At first, I was worried which games he would play, but he's been supervised by me choosing Harvest Moon 64.

It's the only game he cares about.

Do you have any recommendations for low stim?

So we were talking about this a little bit.

Actually, I would actually just say

use your eyes, right?

So when I got my nephew a switch a long time ago he was like seven and uh i got a breath of the wild for it because breath of the wild is slow as shit and wandering and meandering

um that's yeah i can see uh i mean it has its moments certainly but like i can see uh yeah i mentioned ballatro a little bit before because like ooh during the rewards it's going crazy but for the most part you're fine um ufo 50 has probably got a like

tons a ton of good things on that animal crossing is going to be great um

yeah i'm I'm thinking about this little collection of low-stim games myself, you know?

You're kind of like safe to a degree on like a wide variety of Nintendo games.

Yeah.

I wouldn't say Mario Wonder because wonders about explosions and shit like that.

But like, I give him fucking Mario Odyssey.

Most of that.

Most of that, most of that will go fine, I imagine.

You know, yeah, I could see like a fucking Star Fox game maybe going a little bit like, wah, you know, but the main thing isn't going to be...

Remember, I only have a barely two, like, he's not even two, right?

So, but the way me and Paige are going to play it by ear

is

every individual kid's reaction to levels of stimulus is going to be different.

Wooly, I'm, I am 100% certain that you knew kids in elementary school and high school that if their mom and dad let them watch wrestling even once, they would go crazy and fight kids the next day.

Yes.

Yes.

I fought those kids.

Yeah.

So like every

individual kid's like tolerance and resilience is going to be different.

So, like, you give them, give them, like, uh, Mario Odyssey, right?

And if your kid starts to go nuts and do, and be like, oh, I don't want to do anything but Mario Odyssey, like, you need to cut, you need to cold turkey that shit for like a year.

Uh, if they're, if they're happily playing Harvest Moon and you're like, you want to go outside?

And they're like, yeah, cool.

Great.

And fortunately, I can say Kirby has a lot of places to go, you know, as well.

Kirby games are pretty solid all around on that.

Yeah, but I imagine the low-stim playlist will come back in short form very quickly as we figure out what she's into.

All right, that'll do it for us.

Call it.

All right.

I'm playing Death Stranding in an hour live.

Go to the thing.

Also, everyone else, have a good week.

Good week.

No, I mean, everyone should have a good week.

I'm implying that I don't want the people who are going to come to my show to have a good week.

Everyone, everybody.

Especially that one person who's going to to have the exact same week as you.

That's crazy.

That's crazy.

No follow-up questions.

No follow-up questions.