CSB325: Castle Super Dads

Switzerland, that's spam.

Get out of here, Switzerland.

Get off my phone.

That's crazy.

Oh, seriously?

Switzerland is calling.

That's ridiculous.

That's absolutely insane.

All right, cool.

Anyways, yes.

Do you want to start the podcast now?

Yes, let's start the podcast now.

Hey, man, how's it going?

How?

I'm doing great.

That's good.

I got this stinky dog on my lap.

Happy, happy Father's Day weekend.

It was great.

It was a good weekend.

Yeah.

I was a dad, and I was like, yeah, dad stuff.

That's pretty sick.

In celebration of

Father's Day,

I thought I'd join the club.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

I thought it seemed like a cool idea to perhaps.

We're doing this now?

We might be.

Reiner, are we doing this now?

It's going down.

Hey, we're doing it now.

Okay.

Hey, hey, so yeah,

this is happening.

Break the alarm switch.

Hey, everyone.

Yes,

I am pleased to announce that

at the end of summer, I'm going to be a father.

Yeah.

But by some accounts, you're already a dad.

Yes.

Right?

That was like a comp, That was like the thing we kept going back and forth on the whole time.

Like, the transformation has already started.

It's going.

Yes.

And,

you know, every.

Well, obviously, congratulations, Wooly.

Thank you very much.

Yes.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Good job.

You did it.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I'm very excited.

I am very excited.

Paige and I have been very excited.

Yes.

Very excited.

Yeah, yeah.

Welcome to Castle Super Dads.

It's going down.

The podcast will become intolerable.

Intolerable.

The transformation has already begun.

Fuck yeah.

It's going down.

Yes, yeah, I know.

So this is

obviously, you know, the project has been under NDA for a little bit.

The embargo is now up.

And

I'm surprised you just decided to announce it today.

I thought you were going to be like,

by the way,

baby time.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I absolutely 100%

would have just ran the bit, so to speak, until the kid walks past in the background.

Make no mistake.

I'd have shared this with you.

Is that a 15-year-old?

I'm

super down for that.

However,

this is something that I would like to share alongside the important

hand-in-hand announcement that

with this newfound adventure, I will be taking some time off

from

the main channel and the regular streams are going to take a bit of a break as there will be some new

priorities.

Yes.

Priorities.

Yes.

There's again, a new project is going to be taking up all of my time.

And as we're announcing the release date, you know, like I said, end of summer,

the plan is,

so to just get it, to give some logistics, I suppose,

with this, is that,

yeah, we're going to basically be streaming up until the first of July.

Not first, sorry, the first week of July.

And then starting the second week of July, I'm going to be off of the Wooly vs channel.

Podcast will continue in the meantime.

We have responsibilities to attend to on this podcast.

We certainly do.

So I will continue to be doing Castle Super Beast, and I will continue to do Versus Wolves as well.

You know, once a week and once a month are commitments that

should be doable.

Oh, that's doable, Wolves.

I believe so, yeah.

So that's the deal.

And in the meantime, it's the day-to-day main stuff over on Wooly versus that we'll be taking a break from.

There might be stuff that pops up every now and then, sparingly.

Depends.

Like, you know, I'm going to keep it loose, but for the most part, I just want to let folks know.

And yeah, to that end, of course, like, you know, so when you, when the street, when the schedule changes up and you're like, hey, where's the channel?

What's happening?

For a couple months,

that's, I think it's important to let folks know about that part.

If not for letting subscribers and people know that, you know, hey, this channel is going to, I'm going to be taking a break for a bit, I wouldn't say shit.

Oh, yeah.

I wouldn't say nothing.

You wouldn't do it.

I'm gonna send you a really funny screenshot because I was wondering.

So here's the auto thumbnail of

a sponsored double dragon guided Rise of the Dragons

20-ish months ago.

Yeah.

And that face of me just going, oh,

is because I did that sponsored stream stream while Paige was in labor oh

that one okay okay okay

yeah that's the face hearing yeah what I'm hearing is that you are not going to jet out of the hospital to run sponsored streams and podcasts that is while your wife is in labor not currently the plan

um

but yeah no so in my defense she told me to leave leave.

Okay.

She had the pregnancy

emotions, so I wasn't going to argue with her.

Fair enough.

With that, as we're talking, I just hit the post button on

our little internet, right?

Exactly.

On that live internet.

So, you know, there you go.

That's.

Oh, so this, so this is a...

Oh.

Yeah.

What is that, Instagram?

That is Instagram.

And, you know, I I guess that'll go elsewhere after once I get a second.

But that's all.

I'm sure it's in a bunch of places now.

Let me refresh a page.

Yeah, there it is.

Sick.

That's cool.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

So that's the deal.

And, you know, Punch Mom's doing good.

We're chilling.

We're out here.

You know, we're...

She's doing great.

When we saw her, oh my god, she looked radiant and all that good shit.

Yeah.

No, I'm I'm I'm quite you know happy with all of that.

And for anyone that's been like when I've been talking about how busy I've been, I mean, there's a lot going on, but you don't even know the half of it.

There's so much I'm taking care of in the background.

So, yeah, I've been extraordinarily busy with all of these things, juggling all of that.

And then when I talk about life happening, life is happening, happening, happening, you know, life,

life, life, life, life, literal life.

So I hope some context

can enlighten.

Yeah, obviously, we're super happy with that.

There's all kinds of, you know, there's stuff I'm doing to the place.

I'm putting up barriers and getting ready to paint walls.

And we're doing all kinds of stuff over here, you know.

But

the plan is set, you know, and

we should be meeting her soon.

This is the best thing that could ever happen to the insufferability of this podcast.

How's that?

Because now you cover every base and every topic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Insufferable.

Girl, dad.

Girl, dad.

Insufferable cast.

Oh, man.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

I can't wait.

I cannot wait to talk to Punch Mom and for her to explain to me that you have turned into like a kept bitch because whatever your little girl says she's going to get, you're just like, yes, absolutely.

Oh, as fast as you, oh, no, I have to, oh, oh, I'm so sorry.

I didn't get it for you faster.

I mean, we'll see.

We'll see how it goes, you know?

I'm like, hey, I might get some little mitts.

We'll see.

We'll see.

You're going to hopefully.

I'm optimistic on how it turns out.

You know, I want to get some little mitts, do some little,

you know, like

work the bag a little bit, have some fun.

Yeah, Punch Girl.

Absolutely.

So the really fun myth is when they're like two or three months old and you do that shit and they just look at you and they're like, I don't know.

Just totally fucking clueless.

And you're like, yeah, it's cool.

Just

doing a handstand, like spinning on one of the gloves, you know.

Yeah, no,

I can't wait i can't wait oh man there's gonna be so much poop and so many noises and all of it all of it all of it you know and uh so you know what i've been getting ready i've been i've been mentally preparing i've i've had some time versions of this talk uh in the past couple of months uh but i'll have a version of it right now it's like yeah there's gonna be a lot of poop you're gonna deal with 12 to 16 diapers a day for like a year that's rough but

you're you're like, oh, this is pretty hard.

And then you get into that nice rhythm where you're like, oh, yeah, that's actually, yeah, I got this.

And right when you have that feeling,

they're going to start to move.

As soon as

you're like, I got this.

Yeah.

They're going to start to move.

Yeah.

And then you're going to be like, oh, that first six months a year,

that was cake.

That was the easiest shit ever.

No, I mean, like, the plan plan is to, you know, we're going to set up some lockdown stations and like, you know, we're going to have little change places to make it all happen.

I will prepare for projectile deflection,

you know, whatever, however that may occur.

That may occur.

Oh, man.

Within 20 minutes.

Within 20 minutes of my boy leaving the mom, I had piss in my mouth.

I undid the diaper.

Bam.

Bam.

Well, look, we'll see.

We'll see what the temperament ends up being, you know.

But

right now,

she's kicking.

She's moving.

She's doing her thing.

And yeah, I mean, not much really to report other than like, yo, it's happening, you know.

And yeah, I guess just in the background, there's been just the planning and the process and the thoughts of like how to set it all up and

all of that.

Let me ask you.

Because I've asked you this every time we've spoken about this.

Have you felt the change?

The change?

No.

The change.

No, just the dread.

Just

the dread.

You will experience

a transformation and you won't notice until it's like completed.

And you'll be like, wait, what?

When did I...

Huh, okay.

I'm just different now.

Yeah, no,

there's a single giant empty thought.

It's like the thought bubble, like it's it's massive and the text is very small and it just says, don't fuck it up.

Don't fuck it up.

Don't fuck it up.

Don't fuck it up.

That's it.

That's it.

That's the only one.

Don't fuck it up.

It doesn't leave.

It's there.

It's still there.

Every day.

That is

the only one.

You know?

Oh, I hope this isn't the interaction that causes them to complain to me to the therapist because I didn't give them their milk fast enough.

No, wait, did I give them their milk too fast?

Did I cave too soon?

And now there's video evidence of it.

Hello from the future.

Hey.

Isn't this weird?

It's all strange.

Oh, boy.

Oh, they're not going to give a shit.

No, hopefully not.

Oh, that's dad's cringe.

Hopefully, that's the goal.

That's the goal is for it to be cringe and super garbage and get it away from me.

Oh, my God.

I mean, right now, the idea, of course, is that, like,

you know, things should be, of course, when I do set up and stream and do stuff, like, there might be some sounds, you know.

That's possible.

The setup I have is such that, like, they will be hopefully distant.

You know, we have a couple of barriers between us and where the noises ought to be, but there might be some sounds regardless.

And that's just going to be life.

You know what I mean?

Like, there will be

a decent chance that folks are going to hear stuff in the background from here on out.

You know?

Do you have

the NVIDIA card, right?

I do have an NVIDIA card.

I think the noise canceling on that for your setup will probably work better than it used to at my old setup.

The problem is we pop off too hard.

I can noise cancel, but I kill pop-offs if I do.

So the aggressiveness of that, which I've tested, also makes it so that when we get particularly excited at cool things, we just disappear, you know, and it's like, ah,

yeah, it's a, it's a sacrifice, you know.

Um, yeah, Nvidia, so that Asna points out, but it happens to Paige.

Nvidia Broadcast just hates Paige.

Like, at normal speaking levels, it's just like, no, be quiet.

Yeah, and then again, like, um, so I'm at a certain volume, Reggie's at a certain volume, guests we have, depending on whether they are quiet-spoken, which is most, and or Jimmy Bones, which is, yeah.

You know, there is a specific

exactly.

We got to tweak the knob, and um, you know, there's, and then that also causes problems with, like, okay, well, then at a certain point, like, Reggie just disappears and, you know, and stuff.

So it's tricky.

Um,

but uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think I much prefer the option, which is let's keep our ability to, you know, be heard there.

And you might hear a, a, a, a baby, and that's too bad.

You want a baby?

A baby.

Tiny human.

There is a human.

And

who knows

what that temperament will be, like I said.

But

they're going to be the best for you on temperament because temperament is a dice roll you have no control over.

And like our guy had a temperament that was like not like Paige or I in that he was an angel.

Like as a little tiny baby, just like

super chill, slept through the night kind of thing.

I wasn't fucking like that neither was paige i i was a terror when i was a little baby

i will have

i will have contingency plans for the like

tasmanian devil child you know possibility um

and you know for the most part as well um you know punch bombs also like we're ready for that we got our

we got our placement for the the whole the whole uh um

nursery type setup thing going so Yeah, yeah.

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

Oof, woof, woof, man.

Doesn't feel good to finally get it off your chest.

Well, there it is, right?

Again,

I wish I didn't have to say anything.

I wish, I wish I could not say anything,

but I would feel live in the real world with reality and responsibilities.

But it's not even a responsibility.

It's just my own feeling of, it's my own ethical, moral feeling of bad to be like, hey, the channels, were disappearing.

Bye, you know, I just feel bad.

No reason, yeah, no reason.

And people be like, uh-uh, am I still supped?

What's going on?

Like, I just, I feel bad about that.

Yeah, and that, and I wish I didn't happen, right?

Because if I didn't feel bad about that, I wouldn't say shit.

Because then, you know, what would happen is that you'd be like, okay, bye, guys, and peace out for six weeks or whatever.

And then what would happen is people would flood over to my shit, be like, what's going on?

And I'd have to sit there and go, everything's

I also don't know.

Yes.

And then I'd say everything's okay.

Don't worry.

And then I'd, and then I'd sit here up.

And then once a week, I'd be here like, hey, what's up anyway?

Onto the news.

And it'd just be like, oh,

you know,

today's schedule, this week's schedule, there is no schedule.

Bye.

You know,

what the fuck?

Oh, man.

Is Woolly dying?

Yeah, somebody in the chat was like, is Woolly on the verge of death?

Is he trying to hide his chemo treatments?

I mean, technically, yes, right?

My part of my soul essence has been put elsewhere.

Oh, man, love don't divide.

It multiplies.

I didn't say love.

I said my soul essence.

Oh, your soul?

Yes.

And no, and it's pretty cool, too, because, you know, this is my mom's first grandkid, right?

So

you won?

Mm-hmm.

Oh,

oh, that's good.

Hey.

That's like double firstborn.

Hey,

it's cool.

She's excited.

And, you know,

they might even be watching this, so we don't have to, it doesn't matter.

Listen.

Like, I had my mom's first grandkid, but not my dad's.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, no, it's the first on both sides of on, you know,

on Putch Mom's side and on our side.

So it's, it's very.

Kid better get ready to get fucking

super spoiled.

All the attention.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, Paige reached out.

She says, yeah, our boy is the first grandkid on her mom's side.

Okay.

Yeah.

But yeah, you're first on every side.

Oh, big.

Yeah.

Big, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Big spoiled energy.

Spoil that kid wrong.

For sure.

And I mean, like, I got, I can't and I won't show it, but like, I told you, and I've already shown the telling my mom about that

was just

a gif because we're, it is just, it is her, you know, because she was out of the country at the time and telling her about it.

It was just the shot of the one second delay.

It sinks in and then just camera shake as she runs.

She

Kermit the frogs in circles for like 10 minutes throughout the entire house, you know, just in Grenada.

Just in Grenada running laps.

That's good stuff.

It was super funny.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.

So, yeah, that's it.

That's it.

You know, it's, it's now, you know,

it's the strangest thing because it's like, ah, okay.

So that's, it's actually just a single data point.

It just happens to be the single most important thing going on in my life for the foreseeable

decades plus.

You know, no big deal.

Yeah, no big.

Yeah.

And

because it is no big deal.

It's like actually the least biggest, most common deal there is other than the fact that everything is different now.

And I'm preemptively like warning, you know, friends and folks that are just like, hey, so, yo, guess what?

I'm about to be one of those people that's like, hey, everything out of my mouth is baby, baby, baby now.

So, yeah, I know, I know, I get it, you know, and it's only gonna absorb.

And for the most part, everyone's like,

and for the most part, everyone's like super excited and just like all in and just like, yeah, way, way, like, lots of, lots of love and, and, and a good surrounding energy for that.

You know, there's definitely some friends where you can kind of read their like, okay, well,

you know, sure, that's that's not their thing.

You know, some folks, um, I'm, uh, I'm not only not in the place for that in my life, I'm not in the place for that to understand it being in your life either.

It's just

a couple, there's some friends where you're just kind of like, hey, so

you kind of just kind of like, there's no follow-up questions.

You let them know what's going on and just kind of like, and you're like, oh, shit.

Oh, wow, that's cool.

Okay, yeah.

Okay, so anyway.

Yo,

have you seen sinners?

You know, like, yeah.

Like, I've been busy.

Yeah, okay.

All right, you know, okay, cool.

All right, all right, got it, got it, got it.

Loud and clear, got and clear, yeah.

But, um,

yeah, no, it's not, uh, it's not unknown energy over here anymore, you know, it's um

it's girl dad,

so it's girl dad energy,

which is a completely different thing from what you got going on.

So absolutely, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna compare notes.

We'll see how this goes.

You, you want, you want to be like, I would absolutely be completely different.

Sorry, completely exactly the same, no matter what what my kids are like, whatever.

And then you have to look in the mirror and be like, who are you?

Are you lying to yourself now?

I mean, liar.

I mean,

I am super thrilled.

I think it's super awesome that that's how it's going.

And it is kind of funny, too, because there's definitely like, you know, some, there's some family that's much more kind of traditional about things.

So the, yeah, so, like, there's, there's, uh,

when it was time to kind of guess how it was going to go and things like that, you know, some, there was a lot of guesses that it was going to be like that firstborn son, you know, that, that kind of godfather, may your first child be a masculine child, you know, all of that.

And it's just like, well, what if it's not?

Is that okay?

You know, let's see how this goes.

This is one of those things where

Paige and I, I remember talking to her about this ages ago, ages ago,

like way before any of this.

we were talking about, like, ah, what would it be like if Woolly had it'll be a girl?

Like, we both put our feet down and was like, oh, yeah, no, it's gonna be a girl.

I felt it because it's your fate to be girl dad.

I felt it a long time ago.

I, I feel like, uh,

in the moments where I've had like dreams about this kind of thing, that's, that's been there.

That's been a part of it for sure.

I don't know.

Um,

yeah, I, I, you can, you know, like you can go back.

I've had conversations, you know, with Punch Bomb and stuff from a while ago, but like, yeah, I kind of just was like, this is probably how it's going.

And sure enough, it did.

You can't escape from Crossing Fate.

So, yeah, we'll see.

We'll see, you know?

And it's also fun to get the little

lasagna scans, as we've been calling them, you know, because you get

the classic different views from the side, the stuff you're used to seeing, the head turn, and then the San's undertail eye, you know, crazy one.

And then they can do the 3D ones, and then the 3D ones, they kind of start to look like a thing, but they also just attach into a sheet of like orangish, fleshy goop, and you're just like, oh, it's a lasagna.

The 3D ultrasounds we got were god-awful.

They were nightmare shit.

They were terrible.

Yeah.

It's because the guy, he just, he wanted to stretch out in the spot that's the worst for the 3D ultrasound.

Okay.

His head was at the back, or I forget what it was, but he was like, nah, I don't want to.

Oh, come on, man.

I mean, I saw some cool services that come like in the later weeks, you know, like after 30, I've seen like you can get some pretty detailed-looking ones.

So, you know, I'm going to see if that's a possibility.

Right.

Yes.

You need, it depends on a lot of the.

The details, which I'm intimately familiar with now.

In relation to the placenta.

How big is exactly in the space and the how high up?

There's a million little things to it.

But yeah, we're going to give it a shot and see how that looks, you know.

But in the meantime,

dude, yeah.

Because like you, you've you've probably learned more stuff

in the past six months than you had in the multiple years prior.

It's crazy.

It's you have no idea.

It's so thick and dead.

Like, my brain is doing the

it is it is mega minding.

It is just pulsing with all this knowledge.

And

yeah, and like about 40% of it is just like poop,

you know?

And no, no, there's a million little details, of course, with the actual process when the actual day comes and all that stuff

we're going to be figuring out.

But

what was I going to say?

Yeah, no, anyway, it's...

It's it's

it's I'm not sure exactly what the

date will be for the return, so to speak, of the regular schedule.

However,

the reason why I was racing to get through Cyberpunk and now to start and get to the Act 1 point of Expedition 33 and not necessarily announce a commitment beyond, I hope, is also more reasonable and understandable.

The, yeah, yeah.

I have a schedule-based question that I think

is the most interesting thing that could have happened.

Do you plan,

after your break comes back, to play Death Stranding?

I would like to.

Are you going to look at and/or play Death Stranding before you come back, or is that after in the future?

I guess it depends on how torturous it would be for you to discuss and or not discuss it over here.

Oh, no, that's don't worry about that.

I'm just like death stranding the aka the strap the baby to your chest video game

has an extremely different emotional context

pre and post baby.

Oh, yeah.

Dude I'm watching fucking Donkey Kong bonanza trailers and I'm seeing Donkey Kong rolling around with little Pauline on his shoulder and I'm like, that's me.

Everything, everything is that now, you know, a hundred percent, yes, death stranding for sure, but I'm like, I'm kind of just like, no, it's gonna be, it's gonna be all versions of that.

Um,

I'm, I'm, I'm probably, I'm probably gonna take a look.

It's the same thing today, but it instead it was banana.

Ah, and it was like, because you have, you have that moment, like, you know what?

There's no guarantee the kid will like video games.

They may think that's cringe dead behavior.

No one cares, right?

Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, listen, like, you know, I, there's a lot of talk about, like, you know, again, what you engage, like, when your kids are obviously watching you engage with stuff that and you're locked in with them at the same time,

that's good for them, no matter what the activity is, you know, and we happen to be passionate about this thing, throwing rocks straight up in the air, even if it is, right?

And, you know, like, like, kiting is not something I'm out there doing every single day, and nor is boxing, you know, per se.

So, uh, there are some things things that I have,

you know, passion for that,

I feel like, yeah, showing and sharing that, that,

that gaming kind of part of your life in a way that is not, as we discussed, over-stimulating is going to be particularly fun.

I'm excited for that.

You know what?

You know what?

Go ahead and delete Hades and Vampire Survivors off.

I'm curating the list.

I'm curating the list.

It's, it's listen, listen.

I'm like, Balatro will work if the combo gets really high.

No, no, no, no, just play Balatro on your phone.

Just play it.

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

No, I think that can work.

I think that can work.

But also, fortunately, the past has a lot to work with too.

You know, and there's that moment.

I remember that time where I was like, oh, like, do you do that thing where you go, hey, you start out at an older generation and move up?

It's like, no, no, no, you don't.

That's, you don't need to do that.

However, and I have been having this discussion for three years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Three years now.

And, and

you can, because old shit's low stem.

Yeah.

Like the one page always goes to is FF4.

FF4 is simple, and the language is simple, and it's not fucking flashing emotions.

The discussion for that has always been like, oh, so that they learn the history of

whatever, right?

No, it's about no, it's about, it's just low stim.

That's it.

That's it.

You know, it's a much more,

like a kid can watch that without having their brain melted.

I was like 10 years old.

My dad's like, hey, let's watch the Maltese Falcon.

It's old.

It's good.

I'm like, okay.

But I was like 10.

Right.

so I can, oh, it's old, blah, blah, blah.

One of the things that we talked about is like, say, there's something more modern, but one of the things you can do, because we want the kid to have, like, if they're playing a video game, they have to learn a skill at some point.

And that, that skill can be reading because reading's good.

Turn the voice acting on.

Yep.

Yep.

Just turn the, just go to the voice, turn it all the way down.

If you're going to understand what's going on, it's because you're going to have to read it with your eyes.

Yep.

I've heard lots of little tips about things like that, you know, with

parents using games in certain ways.

And yeah, that's certainly one of them, right?

Okay, you can play what you can play RPGs.

You can play whatever you want here, but you got to read what you're playing, you know?

Little things like that sound like a fun idea.

But that's so, that's, we'll get there.

We'll figure that out one step at a time.

You know, yeah, no, you're going to enter into the part where you're like, I'm going to watch TV because this thing's asleep and it's a potato.

And this is just, I could, you're going to learn how many things you can do in your life with one hand.

And guess what?

It's actually a huge, it's a crazy amount of things that you don't need both your arms for.

Yeah.

No,

I'm definitely getting ready.

I see these cool little strap belt things where there's like a little surface shelf next to you as well.

I had one of those.

But no.

And then

you get to throw that away.

Or put it away and replace it with my favorite, which just is the potato sack over your shoulder.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is just like, no, we're going.

Exactly.

Yeah.

100%.

No, you can't have it.

No.

You know, but like, again, all of these things in due time.

You know,

in the meantime, for now, the next step is to just catch the football.

You know, like, let's just

make sure we

secure that, lock it in.

And,

you know, I think as well, too, like, the...

Well, you know, I just, again, all things considered, you know, Punch Mom's killing it.

Right.

She's crushing it.

It's it's kind of sick.

So

yeah, more, I suppose, as there is, as it comes.

But in the meantime, everyone,

big things.

Hey, big things.

I don't know if I'm the person you want to hear this from, but I'm going to say it regardless.

There is probably going to be a moment.

Real early, like really, really, really, really early when Punch Mom's like taking a shower or something, and you're like by yourself with the kid, and the fucking terror just

starts to increase.

And you're like, you're looking at this perfect human, and you're like, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

Oh, oh, I don't know.

Oh, I'm an idiot.

Ah, shit.

If you want, call me, call somebody else.

That feeling will happen.

It's going to be so intense.

The thousand-yard stare phone call.

Yeah.

Just like, I don't know.

Because like when me and Paige left the hospital,

I had this overwhelming feeling of like well who's gonna take care oh it's me i it's me i'm dad it's i'm gonna you are you are it is it is i don't think i'm wearing i'm i'm wearing matching socks and and and shoes today because paige told me what socks and shoes to wear yeah no i think i think the thing like she's probably gonna hear for a while just like me just staring going what the fuck dude like what is oh

what the fuck like that's gonna be the first thing she's heard for a minute So,

it's time to lean forward and lock in for at least 15 more years.

And then, I don't know, you could go figure it out.

Minimum 15.

They're a person by that point.

Yeah.

You know, then you can, then you can hit the old dusty trail and start your own adventure.

No,

we are locked.

We are locked as locked can be.

So, yeah, that's been part of it.

I'm so happy for you guys.

This is going to be so great.

There's also going to be those other parts, but it's going to be mostly great.

Yeah, no,

I look forward to all the

new twists and turns that the times

will bring as parenting becomes a different beast altogether.

And as well, like, you know, the like my mom's, my mom's, you know, like knowledge that what she brings and what my stepfolks bring and all of that, all of that kind of just swelling and swirling into this

French, Acadian, West Indian, Jamaican, Grenadian, French, Canadian

whatever,

this catamary of things.

You're going to get something really awesome.

And I don't know if it's universal, but it definitely happened to me, which is like, when, okay, you have a baby, you're a parent, you're part of the club,

your mom or dad will start telling you the real versions of events that happened.

Not the story that they would tell the kids.

The truth.

Yes.

Okay, no, here's what actually happened.

And you're like, oh, what?

That's what the fuck?

How much whiskey did I get as a baby?

S-Link 11, right?

Absolutely.

The final one that couldn't happen until years later.

Well, you had colic, so, you know, what?

That's not what I want to hear, ma.

There are no guarantees in this world, but there is one that

I can lock in right here and now.

Her hair is going to be so fucking cool, you have no idea.

It's going to be the coolest.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

Big, giant,

that's crazy because, like, Riley Boondocks, just, you know, or huge, like, just that.

It's not big.

For sure, is it?

I mean, we'll see.

We'll see, but big open.

It could take after mom's hair.

It could, it could, but there's a, there's a, there's like, there's a, there's a nice gamut.

There's different hair numbers that you can associate with the curl intensity.

But whatever it is, it's going to be like

just big, wild.

I love, I love like wild kid fro, you know?

I think that looks so fun.

And I can't wait.

What I'm going to do is stop saying this out loud because by putting this into the air,

you are inciting hair rebellion in the ether of your future child.

Well, I mean,

they'll know.

They'll know the hair that you want them to have and be like, nah, I want the opposite.

Well, there's a, you know, they like, they go through it.

I'm sure there'll be a lot of styles and switch-ups and we'll, we'll, we'll, you know, it'll be all around the place.

But

yeah, we'll see how it goes.

We'll see how it goes.

Because, like, we were shocked.

My kid ended up with stick straight hair, and I have like the curliest hair

anyone in my entire family.

It's like, nah, got Paige's hair.

Crazy.

I thought curly hair just beat straight hair on genetics.

Like it was just a one-to-one, but I guess not.

It's not 100%.

There's a lot that's still up to dice roll, you know?

But in the meantime, you know,

like, it's pretty cool because like Punch Bomb has been like, you know, like helping me with like twists and stuff like that, just like tightening up from time to time.

And she's kind of been learning more about essentially like working with black hair.

That's you got to know, right?

Working with black hair is a thing, you know, like it's different, it's not the same.

And so, she's like learning about that.

And, you know, it's like, yeah, that's fun to kind of, you know,

have these new experiences that otherwise you just wouldn't think about, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Can't wait till

she's old enough and we can just torment with torment Punch Bomb with just like, so you get to say it?

There's two of us now.

You got to say it?

it's gonna be fun uh good times

the house is gonna be the house is gonna be a fun time y'all

you gotta be careful wolves you gotta be careful you gotta be careful well because listen

you and your girl can obviously make fun of mom based on one division but at the end of the day, you're outnumbered in your own house.

Oh, I'm super outnumbered for sure.

Yeah, oh, no, make no mistake.

I got to take the dubs where I can get them.

I realize what's going on.

They're going to get you, buddy.

All right.

So, this seems crazy to say, but

let's see what else is going on.

There's, yeah, there's some other stuff.

So,

more updates in the future.

Other cool stuff happened, though.

Um,

so for me, remember when I talked about this on the podcast, I felt everything else I said on the podcast seemed so stupid and trite and pointless.

It's gray and fading into opacity zero.

It really, every other subject is fading into nothing, you know.

Yeah, sure.

Have you seen any good restaurants lately?

Yeah, you know, F1 weekend came around, took the fam out, had some, had some fun, you know.

No, well, something I've been working on this other project, which has been me getting my ink done and stuff.

And, you know, I want to wait until it's all proper touched up and everything till I'm going to, you know, like show off what's going on.

But I did basically sit and get this whole thing done over here.

For those of you who are on the audio version, Wooly is showing off his cool shoulder.

Is a shoulder to mid-forearm

rendition of Shivers from Disco because

I fucking love Shivers more than anything.

It rules.

So that's happening.

And I'm coming in on the other side with some other stuff as well.

So I'm working on the project.

I'll show stuff off as there's more and as it heals to as well.

You want to kind of wait for that.

How you feel?

Yeah, it's good.

It's fine.

Healing, going through.

I'm used to the motions of the healing process at this point, you know.

And it is interesting to kind of have the experience of sitting somewhere for many hours and focusing on like you're feeling pain and then you kind of like mentally like meditate, you know, you kind of learn to meditate to deal and stuff like that.

And I've learned a lot about just like being able to essentially just like raw dog the entire session, just sitting there locking into my own head.

Just fully disassociate.

Just exactly.

I can do that now.

Fully leave my body and look down on it from above.

While sustained pain is happening.

And then you can kind of interact with it in different ways where you can go into it or go above it.

And then you can feel when the endorphins kick in to kind of like give you a bit of a breather.

And you go, hey,

going to the dentist.

Thanks, body.

You know, you learn a lot about yourself in the process.

It's a lot of fun.

It's not a lot of fun, but it's cool to learn about that stuff.

I should say, to specify.

What else happened?

I went on a game show

called That's My Streamer.

It was so weird that you were like a human being in the cartoon world.

I went on Jabroni Mike's That's My Streamer game show

where I was joined by Quite and Vexoria, who are VTubers, and I was a flesh tuber in the middle.

And, you know, while it certainly was possible for me to get the old rig out and blow the dust off and hop back in, it would have been horribly false advertising towards people who were, you know, seeing me for the first time, especially considering.

Come to your show later, they'd be like, What the fuck is this?

Exactly, right?

You as a cartoon.

You know, this is one of those, this is one of those things where, like, every, these are all different, different streamers coming together with different followings.

And, you know, you're going to be a whole lot of people are going to be seeing me for the first time.

And if they saw a VTuber and then went to my channel and saw flesh tubing,

imagine how gross that would be, right?

Bro, I hate this word.

So I didn't want to disappoint them by revealing my meat, and and so uh, I decided to just go with the camera instead.

Um, it was a fun time, we jumped on there, and it basically consisted of more or less like some wheel of fortune style stuff, some improv, improv, whose line is it anyway, trivia, all over the place with it.

But, uh, it was, it was a ton of fun.

Um, but and uh, yeah, no, shout outs to Jabroni Mike and and um

the whole, you know, met him through Vinny and Red Vox and all that stuff.

So, cool, folks.

A lot of fun over there.

Go to check out on his channel the full That's My Streamer episode now.

And I've been clipping and throwing up a couple of moments

from the episode on to Woolly versus the Algorithm.

So if you wanted to catch any highlights from that as well,

there's some fun ones that are already out there.

Whole lot of practice, you know, doing some.

When I spend over a decade improving about shaving your balls and

breaking into your house to make sure that they're smooth,

you bet your ass that that will lead to an ability to shill any other products that I have seconds to put together a pitch for.

Yes and there you go.

Yes and bend over.

So we did that.

And yeah, beyond that as well, we've been continuing through Expedition 33.

It's been a lot of fun watching as the light bulbs go off with Reggie.

And then the second tier of light bulbs

for you.

Yeah.

You know, and I'm like, I'm like, I'm absolutely containing the pop, but like shit

that comes in for that second playthrough is so phenomenal.

It's a lot of fun.

It's really cool that there's not just tele, it's not just telegraphed, but it's new information for

the second time player.

And

yeah,

the connecting pieces and learning how the system works.

The end of each session has been pretty great for picking up a picto or two that opens up an idea.

pathway towards what's possible with the builds, you know?

So those are great.

And

I would say that like in terms of going through it in french um the the first wrinkle has occurred i would say the quality of the quality of voice acting in french has been you know quite strong it's been great you would expect it so the one thing is andy sercus replacement is not as strong as andy sercus is this was the issue that i foresaw because

like

okay

so you know this thing that happens when voice actors are like you what you think I look like my character?

And you look at like the fucking team that did Baldur's Gate 3 and like their characters are all modeled after their fucking heads?

Hold on a second.

Hold on a second.

Reggie's in chat like an asshole.

So now we're putting everything into emote mode so that nobody fucking ruins anything.

Reggie.

Get the fuck out of here, Reggie.

Or if you're not going to get out of here, then fine.

Everybody show up.

You know, like you've seen like Devorah Wilde be like, I don't think I look like Lay's L.

And she's got her hair the same fucking way.

And she's got like a similarly angular face.

And Jen English looks like like Shadow Heart, shit like that, right?

Like, Shadow Heart looks like Mael

because of Jen English.

Okay, okay.

Um, and then you get to

Uno, and you're looking at Andy Serkis, and it's like, that's just Andy Serkis.

I haven't seen it, it's just Andy Serkis off the fucking step set the set of Andor.

So, I don't know what old man Circus looks like now.

I still have the younger Gollum era version of him in my brain.

Are you serious?

I haven't seen him recently.

It's ridiculous.

It always is cool when, like, yeah, you have a performance capture, and then you have the model, and then

the full-on look.

But,

yeah, all this to say, though, that I would say.

It looks like this.

Oh, there you are.

Yeah, okay, okay, okay.

It's just the same fucking guy in the game.

I mean, you know, perhaps a little more old and distinguished, you know.

But

I can see some of that energy for sure.

That's kind of an important character to not.

No, no, it's and the thing is that it's just it's it's good, it's fine, but it's not the like oomph, you know, and the delivery of it, the thespian energy and weight that Andy Circus brings in English is definitely much better there.

So

it's the first moment I've felt of like, you know,

disparity.

I would say that like, you know,

there's a couple of like emotional moments that if you are,

I think, depending on if you're used to hearing it in a certain language or not, if you're more of a speaker, like you'll catch more.

There's, you know, there's like a little bit up, a little bit down, you can say for a couple of moments between all the main, all the other main characters.

But nothing I would say is particularly

a big issue or so.

Although I will say that, like, yeah, old man, Andy Serkis,

that's a dip, you know?

Oh, by the way, I've been informed that Reggie has left.

Okay.

Okay.

Left the chat.

Oh, is he gone?

Okay.

He messaged me saying that he left.

Okay, okay, okay.

It's not safe here.

It's not safe during this highly specific portion.

No, you can come back now.

But yeah,

that's the deal.

And

everything else has been pretty sick.

I'm

going to.

Before you go on, do you see that

Sandfall said that they're planning to add more to the game?

Oh, shit.

Okay.

I mean, that patch.

That's not specific.

Oh, I didn't see that.

They said there's some tweaks and some updates and some new stuff they're thinking about because the game has done unexpectedly well.

Ah, yeah, and got Kojima's blessing.

That's really cool.

No, the little patch that capped the damage at different numbers was pretty much everything we were talking about.

We talked about it here, and then I had on my stream, I like sat with my chat for like 15 minutes, hashing out, okay, what do they need to do to the damage cap to this game to make it work?

That.

Then they took that conversation and they took the description of the enemy HP mod off of Nexus mods and they included both of them and went here.

Here, just

fix it.

Like, only other thing I can think of of is just like, yeah, boss rush, you know, that would be, that'd be fun if you wanted to just jump in and,

you know, go straight to the meat on some of that.

But beyond that, I mean, and cleaning up the UI for Picto management for sure.

Anyway, so that is that is

continuing.

And yeah,

as foretold, we will continue until Act 1, at which point we will stop.

And then,

you know,

I will leave that on a little break.

So I'm really glad that

the people that are enjoying your E33 now know that that is not like a, oh, no, no, let's see what'll happen.

And in fact, it's actually like, oh, no, I'm going to take a break.

Yeah.

No, that's.

Because things are very different.

Exactly.

And, and, you know, there's a certain, even from the moment we like wrapped up the last LP before Cyberpunk,

I forgot what we were alternating between.

Was it Madden Finn?

Yeah, Phoenix Wright, right?

And, like, once I completed Phoenix Wright, I'm like, cyberpunk is a massive game, and I need to lock in and do as many sessions as possible, no matter what that's going to do, you know, for the diversity of the channel, because we got to get going.

Oh, your channel's diverse enough.

You know, we got to go, but we got to move, you know?

And so, and that, that's why

I didn't start a second thing immediately, and I lost, and I just stayed on cyberpunk.

And then this is like one at a time only of controllable things, you know?

Um,

anyway, though, that'll continue, and uh, yeah, we, I'm by my calculations, we should be well and clear, uh, able to complete act one.

Um, you know, I think E33 is actually really easy to plan around if you, if you've beaten it, like some games are, some games aren't.

This one is like, no, there's this, this, this, this, this.

And you've been seeing Wooly, and you've been seeing Reggie's progress.

So, you know, if he's going to get stuck, he's not going to get stuck.

He's not.

Exactly.

No.

And

yeah, you know, and I'm not, I'm not.

Anyway, we don't have to discuss like when and where that act will go or so on, but we're on track, you know?

And so, yeah, beyond that,

this week, we're going to,

we got that session in.

On Friday, I'm going to have a sponsored stream.

I'm going to do a Switch 2 stream of Yakuza Zero.

So

that will be an official look at the new version.

Gonna pop in back to that game for a minute.

Fortunately, very, very familiar already.

So, yeah, we're gonna try it out and

see what's new.

See how I didn't play it last time.

We can go with an English dub on that.

We got some options, but I'm gonna be trying it out on the Switch too.

um

and uh yeah that is uh sponsored by sega so more details incoming on that um

no other game you're i'm i said sponsored right someone came to me and asked if the if the other one that you want to see is they got a if they bring it if the other company brings the other game you're asking about then yeah sure i i looked into that one myself and i can't even get a i can't get an email back They don't seem interested in that.

If the other company you'd like to, with the other game you're talking about brings that, then sure.

But in terms of what I'm describing, I'm describing the one that was brought to me.

What do you want me to do about it?

Let me go check my emails.

That's what we got in here.

What the fuck?

And

that will continue as well as on Saturday,

yeah, we're going to have another special get into fighting games.

We're going to do Street Fighter Alpha 3.

Street Fighter Alpha 3.

We're going to hop on.

It's a good one.

And I've been waiting to do that as well with somebody who knows that game well.

And we're going to get Tenmu Jin, aka Tony,

an old school tournament alpha 3 player who's going to jump on and show us the ropes.

And we're going to have a lot of fun going through that.

Everything you know about this game is stupid.

Yep.

Yep.

Here's everything to learn about what's busted, which isms are insane.

And here is

a meditation on everything wrong with Ingrid.

Please look forward to the Ingrid hate session that is incoming.

Oh man, some people are getting fucking.

I can hear the twisted panties.

But

no, we're going to jump into Alpha 3, which I've, yeah, a couple of these classic old screen fighters I've wanted to do with somebody who fucking knows, you know?

And that'll be this Saturday as well.

So, yeah, that's pretty much my week.

Past, and present and future.

How's it going over there?

Uh, I'm in a kind of like a, I don't know what to call it.

I'm just holding pattern period

after my 30-day

sprint.

Could have been 33.

It could have been.

It could have been, but I wasn't playing 33 at the time.

So,

right.

Had a good time playing Race Wars with you and Reggie and Paige and Gene.

Once that video went up, it became a lot clearer why so much of the dialogue in that stream was Race War adjacent.

Because you're sitting there going, haha, I'm going to put the Race Wars intro.

That's literally,

it's the bit.

It's the whole bit.

And then you pointed out that like, oh, the three teams were divided that way.

And it was like, well, I guess.

It just happened to work that way.

The theme has been decided.

Like,

that was the bit.

And we all won together, right?

Yeah, good.

Excellent.

We all finished at the same time.

Oh, just like the kindergarten poster showed me.

What else?

I went back to Helldivers.

So speaking of Mario Kart, during Mario Kart,

I was like, oh, Helldivers is available worldwide again.

And you guys were like, who gives a shit?

Which Reggie actually reached out to me and was like, hey, sorry if I hurt your feelings

because he's so sweet

well I I do I do remember oh dude you don't have to worry about that shit I do I do remember you were like oh and I and in my head I also was like oh well I know the super earth stuff is going on and that does look pretty exciting but it was a dunk opportunity and who am I to deny a dunk opportunity I just care about the people around the world who didn't get to have Helldivers.

But actually the actual underneath part, for real, was that Helldivers was really popping.

You remember when it came out?

It was like everybody was talking about it, and like everybody was invested in the meta-narrative.

And then Sony did that account stuff, then banned like fucking the world-something countries.

And the vibes just tanked.

Yep.

Yep.

It killed that game's vibe.

Every time it came up, subject-wise, it was just like, that's some stupid shit.

It sucks.

It's not their fault necessarily, but it ruined a lot of the fun people were having with it, for sure.

And so I went back to it, you know, in honor or whatever of everybody but North Koreans and Vietnamese people being able to play it again.

And the North, you say.

What's that?

Yeah, North Korea is not allowed.

Ah.

There's like seven countries still off the list.

Gotcha.

Okay.

North Korea, Vietnam.

I can't remember the other five.

But

going back to a live service game like Helldivers after

390 days away, which I know because I logged in and said, here's your reward from 390 days ago.

That's funny.

Is fucking crazy.

Just like

tutorial

explosions and fucking feature

yelling at you.

So this is the question I'm wondering now, right?

It's like, is it like a mobile game, like loading back into Gacha after a year passes?

Like, which is the worst example?

Like, I need, that's an investigative feature.

That's a video right there.

I have the investigative report for you right now.

Which game is the worst upon return after.

Oh, the game in general?

Which, including Gatcha, including mobile.

I know which one it is.

Which is the most obnoxious

and used an answer that I've used many times.

Uh-huh.

The worst game you could ever come back to after a long period of time was Destiny 2.

Word again with the fucking Destiny.

Okay, okay, all right.

Not even some iOS trash.

By real.

There's no questions.

All right.

Absolutely no question.

Hit me.

Walk me through it.

Okay, so you played Destiny 2 at release, and you did

the first two mini expansions, and then you did the Forsaken expansion.

Then

you took some time off, and you're like, oh, wait.

When you come back to Destiny two years later, every part of the game you've ever played has been removed, and then you load in to a tower that's running seasonal events that are that half of them have disappeared, and the game just says, Go do whatever.

Just go do whatever.

Okay, okay, every gun you ever had

had been sunset in the background, so none of them can scale upwards, and you have to re-get all of your equipment.

Okay,

so when I say worst, I was originally thinking which had the most

obnoxious obnoxious menu things of

fucking collect your

for like you got to go through 15 minutes of this but straight up you're describing everything you played is gone everything you had is now you're not allowed to access it it's all been taken away from you it's like if i was playing final fantasy 14 and

I took a break in between like Heaven's Word and Shadowbringers and I come back and they're like, Shadowbringers is the new start and all your equipment from before is gone.

Figure it out.

And you're like, what?

What do you fucking?

What?

What the fuck are you talking about?

What do you mean it's fucking gone and my equipment is shit?

What the fuck?

There's literally not.

It might as well be two games, but you're using the same account

and you remembered that that other game used to exist.

It's the weirdest fucking thing.

Live service was a mistake.

So.

We can put this into the context of Helldivers.

In Helldivers, nothing ever goes away,

and their battle passes are fake.

Remember, you buy them and they just last forever, and then they're always available.

So, when you load into Helldivers, all you get, you get every reward for every major operation that ever happened since the day you started playing.

So, when you log in for the first time,

it just says, here's your rewards from

290 days ago.

Here's your rewards from 325 days ago.

Here's your rewards from 285 days ago.

Here's like 30 capes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I got a bunch of capes and I got some fucking armor and

I got the killzone collaboration shit just dropped into my fucking inventory.

And I immediately hit the metal cap.

Because

I just accrued metals from operations.

Okay, okay, okay.

So when I came back, I was able to just go, oh, I'll take the demolition warbomb that I already had, and I'll just cash it all in, and I just got the whole fucking warbon.

Well, that's nice.

Which is a great feeling to come back to.

That's good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But what else you come back to

is you go into a mission, and you're like, what happened to that planet?

Oh, that planet became a black hole.

That planet's

changed.

Okay.

All right.

Well, the bugs are attacking.

Let's go fight the bugs.

Okay, well, the bugs have a new mechanic that didn't exist when I played called the Predator Strain, which is the little invisible guys that would chase you, the stalkers uh they don't turn invisible now they just move twice as fast and kill you in one hit

oh and this is just a modifier on the

certain missions okay

and so i load down and

okay what's happening oh there's a bunch of new ordinances like people driving cars around that we got cars now okay

And I load into a mission and it's like,

you need to decide where you want to put your points in the orbital

station which is the the orbiting station that the player base chooses a planet to go put on and and get random buffs for a planet and as i'm trying to figure that out i'm walking through the bug island i go what's that gigantic bug tower in the distance and then fucking bats attack us because the bugs have flying enemies now okay they fly now They fly now.

And then one of the guys on my team has a flag.

It calls down a stratagem, and it's just a super Earth flag.

Nice.

And they're running around with the flag and, like, stabbing bugs with it.

And I ask the chat, hey, what's the flag do?

And they say nothing.

It doesn't do any flags.

It's just a bad melee weapon.

Use that stratagem.

Yeah.

I did see some of the super Earth mission stuff where, yeah, I saw like what looked like Warthog style

driving around as well, which,

you know, hopefully it rolls around as shitty and as jankily as you would need it to.

It's a little janky.

Good, good.

You know?

Yeah.

And then, like, oh, let's do a mission against the Illuminate.

So then we discover that there's city levels now.

They're like, you know, towns and cities, like skyscrapers.

And we load into what I now know was an Illuminate mission that had like a challenge

modifier on it.

So you load in and you fight the squids.

as they are called.

And they are not like fighting the bots and they are not like fighting the bugs.

It feels like fighting like alien helldivers because they have fucking fighter jets like your eagles strafing you.

And

they have their own super carriers in the sky that can lock onto you and hit you with artillery from like 10 miles away.

Nice.

It's like dropping into aliens and becoming fucking Private Hudson.

No,

the prospect of like fighting the monsters is one kind of vibe, you know, fighting the robots is certainly another.

The Terminators.

Yeah, but then like having that Terran versus Terran sort of style fight.

Oh, yeah, it's like an enemy army instead of the other two.

It is like an enemy armed force with air support and vehicles and shit.

Nice.

Okay.

Interesting.

It's crazy.

And then I get back to base and they're like, by the way, primaries can now be upgraded and have weapon customization.

So all the primary weapons can now have a wide variety of accessories that you cash in your points on.

Okay.

They couldn't before?

Nope.

You get a primary, and the primary was just like

exactly how it is.

Okay.

So, hey, do you want to put a different scope on, or do you want to have a larger magazine?

Or do you want to change this or that or whatever?

Okay, so they've been doing it in the meantime.

Dude, that game's great.

That game's incredible.

Like, just just top to bottom.

They also added a new fucking difficulty for freaks called Super Hell Dive, which is difficulty 10.

Which I didn't even further to look at.

Well, because, yeah, 9 was just drop and die.

Yeah, well, for the people who thought that shit was for pussies, here comes Difficulty 10.

Okay.

I mean,

I imagine...

There's no...

You cannot random cue

with that and expect any kind of result.

You have to be coordinating with people.

You can do it with one person, apparently.

I'm just, I can't.

God sucks shit.

There's always somebody out there.

Okay.

Yeah, okay.

If you dedicate

the time to becoming a freak beat.

Pat playing difficulty six and going nuts, and it's like me going over like a child's hill.

And I'm like, I haven't played in

90 days.

Yeah, I saw the little SpongeBob meme, like just going over the bump.

Difficulty.

it's been almost 400 days

nah bro just don't lose crush it um

uh so yeah hey helldivers 2 now for everybody and hey guess what it's still incredible and i didn't have a single fomo not one isn't that nice

isn't that great it's very nice of the people who made the game to not like predate on your inner fears of content being missed and going away.

Speaking of, I actually re-canceled my FF-14 subscription.

Did you now?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

All right.

Okay.

On again, on again, off again.

Yeah.

All right.

There was a thread on the subreddit that was like, hey, do you think Pat's ever going to go back to Warframe?

And in that thread, there was a gentleman who said, I don't know, man.

Pat's like an FF14 lifer.

I don't know if he has time for that in Warframe.

And I saw that and was like, hey, I haven't played FF14 in like two weeks.

This guy's right.

I should just go and cancel my sub.

So I went and canceled my sub.

Okay.

Well,

the makeup sex is worth it, though, right?

So here's the issue.

The issue is really, really, really simple.

Yeah.

We put the baby, you know, I do my chores during the day.

I do a stream.

I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, dad stuff.

Hey, you know when I play games?

11 p.m.

Pacific.

That's 2 a.m.

Eastern.

Do you know what that sucks for?

Meeting up with everyone else that you want to play with.

Yeah, if you suck.

If you're trying to coordinate with friends, that's not going to work.

All of my friends are asleep.

Everybody on every server is asleep.

It just doesn't work.

It just doesn't work.

And I'm under the impression that there's no enjoying the game for you without queuing up with other people.

There's no like just jumping on yourself and doing stuff.

No, that is an MMO.

That is a massively multiplayer online video game, right?

Like I can helldive at Midnight Pacific.

I can climb up to Master Rank with Elena at Midnight Pacific, right?

I can play

Age of Calamity on my Switch 2 whenever the fuck.

But

214 is a social game.

But like actually, though,

all kidding aside, I, I applaud your decision to switch the button on and off because I've long for years talked about how when you are paying for a subscription service, you feel indebted.

Yeah, you feel indebted to your time on it.

All right.

And like, it's not just the FOMO idea, but it's the, god damn it, I've been

for nothing.

I better get on there before the month is done.

What, you know, you're, and like, I don't even really want to, but now I feel obligated, right?

So that feeling, just going like, no, I'm going to turn it off and I'll come back.

And my data's not going anywhere, right?

I'll come back in four years.

Yeah.

Your data's not going anywhere, right?

There's a, there's a

14 is there's no exactly right.

So you don't have to worry about that.

Yeah.

So then that's it.

You turn that button off, you don't think about it.

And you're good.

Yeah, I respect that because it would certainly bother me to just feel like I'm subscribed to something that I'm not using.

And then, you know, I'm like feeling obligated to go log in on it you know yeah um i can barely

i'll come back probably you know i'll be honest i'm probably gonna go back to ff14 on like a regular basis when that baby is in kindergarten

i mean just just straight up like i can i can barely get like when i i remember when exclusive costumes were was coming were coming to five street fighter five back in the day and now with some of these stuff as well you get like oh here's the third strike if you want to get like the if you want to get the um

the the versus screen for like third strike or all these little things and you kind kind of got to go pop on it.

You're fucking time for that?

Yeah, you got to jump on and seasonally keep up with things.

And I'm like, oh, you're putting a time limit on me.

The moment you put a time limit on me, I'm like, I know it's supposed to push me, but like, I can just as easily compartmentalize that out of my brain.

I can't remember where I read it, and I can't remember

the numbers on it.

But basically, I remember reading up that like that kind of FOMO time-limited thing works incredibly well to retain super players, like power power users

until they miss one

and once once the player misses one the spell is broken it's broken forever because then the ability to have all of it is gone they're free yeah

and and i and i i always remember feeling that from way back years ago when min was telling me about guild wars 2 and describing how he's like, yeah, no subscription required, right?

Just jump online and play.

And I was was like, fuck, I wish everything in this genre

could do this.

Yeah, that's such a cool idea.

And then you're like, oh, expansion?

Okay,

that's where you gotta, you know, support, spend the money, buy that, you know?

So here's the functionality.

I'm sure there's a scale that doesn't work at anymore sustainably.

I imagine.

Do you know what scale that is?

FF-14.

That's the scale of Guild Wars 2.

That's the scale that doesn't work at.

Oh, shit.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

That game has almost gone under like four times.

Failed experiment.

Because they can't actually count on any money coming in.

Yeah.

Okay.

As a business model,

the new...

I guess the idea becomes you must do more frequent seasonal updates than like would be natural.

I could see a

reason to have like, instead of these like big, you know, like whatever, 14.5 or these kind of like massive things, much more small ones to be like, hey, we need some money.

Hey, we need some money.

Hey, we need some money.

And with a little bit of content here.

That's not how that audience works.

The audience works in two ways.

Either a big bundle of content, so expansion only, right?

Or a monthly fee that helps incentivize, you know, bi-monthly content drops.

So was there a secondary way to spend money on the game besides these big?

yeah, it was the in-game cash shop,

which was cosmetics and conveniences and stuff like that, but that's not reliable.

Okay, okay, right.

Yeah, I get, I'm not a fucking video game economist.

I couldn't tell you, but I, I, there has to be a better way, you know?

I can tell you that the subscription model, if you get a certain critical mass, allows you to plan out your expansions and plan out your content and roll it out and say, look, you pay us a monthly sub, this is the kind of stuff you get.

FF14 has that down to a production pipeline so extreme that people can tell you when

patches are going to drop within a five-day period because everybody knows their production timeline, right?

That's probably too extreme.

World of Warcraft would put out an expansion like every, God, it was every year, every 18 months at one point, and but like nothing would come out in between that.

Like all the content was in the expansion.

That was the stuff.

Does anyone do a thing where like there's a monthly subscription, but like there's a free version where you can do way less shit?

But it's still tons, tons of games.

Yeah.

Tons and tons and tons of games.

Every free-to-play MMO is actually still a subscription MMO.

Just the free-to-play version sucks.

Right, right.

Okay.

So KOTOR, Star Wars, the Old Republic, it's like that.

Okay.

Where you can totally play it free-to-play play if you don't want to have any friends or inventory or sidekick or whatever.

But if you're enjoying yourself, this is a shitty way to play.

You want the subscription.

Yeah.

No problem.

Interesting.

Well, yeah.

No.

So hit that off.

Helldivers just ignores this whole thing and remains a game that I'm like, hey, if I want to play Helldivers today once or for two solid weeks in four months, Helldivers is there

and remains solid.

The only thing that I'd miss out on is like, well, I didn't help defend Super Earth, right?

Right.

I was busy.

Sorry, fellow democracies.

I was busy doing stuff.

And that's a game where you can have fun playing solo or queuing up randomly.

Absolutely.

100%.

Yeah.

Like, worst-case scenario, you kick the difficulty down one,

right?

From what you're comfortable with with a group.

Oh, I missed out on a cape.

Oh, well, I don't give a shit.

I also went and beat Lies of P Overture, the DLC for Lies of P.

Well, how would you say that?

How large is it by comparison?

The base game has 11 chapters.

The expansion has five.

So it's like half the game of the year.

It is like 45% the size of Lies of P.

That's a Shadows of the Earth Tree scale expansion.

No, it's an old hunters scale expansion.

Okay.

If you want to compare Lies of P to something,

just skip like 10 steps and just compare it to Bloodborne.

Every time.

Always, every time.

Just every time.

Bloodborne is its core

inspiration.

And the main thing is that it does a lot, and I mean a lot,

way better than Bloodborne.

Like, it is mechanically and

mechanically more consistent than Bloodborne.

It just, it wasn't first.

It's coming out.

It's a decade of P was

almost a decade later, I would hope.

Yeah, if Lies of P had come out before Bloodborne, we would be looking at Bloodborne and going, wow, we have Lies of P at home, huh?

It is excellent.

Like, it is a fantastic game.

And

it's

that?

Best of the clones.

I would put it.

If you were going to ask me, hey, what's the best from Software Games, I would put Lies of P into that list.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Like, it is, like, you can argue as to what Dark Souls games it's better than.

Gotcha.

It is excellent.

It is absolutely fantastic.

And its DLC is also uniformly excellent.

Its DLC is also like extraordinarily similar to the old hunters in a lot of very interesting ways in that it takes place in the past before the events of the game.

It recontextualizes huge portions of the game.

It has zanier weapons than the base game.

They understood the assignment.

Absolutely.

It has a

really,

really incredible final boss

that has a very strange difficulty.

I would so the Liza Peace core defensive mechanic is just defending.

If you guard, you take a little damage to your guard and you take stamina damage, but you have like regain like blood warrants, you can get your health back if you attack quickly.

But if you parry within, I don't know, 10 frames of whatever there's something hitting you, you'll take no damage, you'll take no stamina damage.

Are those the same buttons?

Yeah, so you want to parry like Sekiro, basically, right?

Uh, the final boss in Lies of P Overture,

if I had to compare it to any encounter I've ever fought in any game, I would compare it to sans

in that the first attack, like you fight the boss, the very first attack is the strongest,

and it's just like survive this.

Okay, okay.

And if you survive this shit,

now we get to have a boss fight.

Oh, yeah, okay.

I see what you mean.

I see what you mean.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like the

first 10 seconds of the fight, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is it, right?

If you can even get there, yeah, yeah, totally.

Cool, cool, cool.

And then when you get the boss down to 20%,

here it comes again.

Yeah.

And it's like, because there's resources you can burn to force your way through mechanics, but there aren't enough resources to burn to force your way through the same mechanic twice.

So you must learn how to do it there's a must yeah i i like that's a fun way to do it because it's it the traditional way to do it is a bit more like you know we won't no specifics on it but the super boss in expedition 33 right presents you with a challenge and then a little bit more of a challenge and then an insurmountable holy fuck then it pulls the table out from under you and kicks you down a pit yeah right it just the whole the escalation goes you go up up up up up and then i can't what the fuck do you mean right um

A lot of bosses in Expedition 33 function on breaking the rules of

the battle system.

But a sand style set up here where it's just like, die, die, die.

Okay, you can breathe, you know?

And you can barely breathe.

Like, you're not out of the woods.

Oh, it's not free.

Like, it's not free by any means.

But I'm thinking about that moment where the intro to Megalovania, like, you know, finishes and then you're in it.

And you're like, okay, fuck.

These are going to be the worst, but I can kind of skate by, you know?

or yeah you you can't tank the full run a second time i i like that i like that that's cool okay um um

yeah eliza p as it is now um is uh fucking incredible they have updated it in a bunch of ways like alongside the dlc came difficulty modes

and

boss rematching

So when you when you get in there, you can now rematch any boss you fought.

Nice.

And you can rematch them alongside

easy mode, normal mode, new game plus, new game plus plus, and new game plus plus plus difficulties.

Okay.

Is it like for rewards?

Like, is it like burning in a setting?

If you beat the new game...

Easy?

Normal.

If you beat the new game plus plus plus versions of the bosses, you get a handy-dandy cute little sticker that you can put on P's bag while you play the rest of the game, and it will show that you really beat up that boss really good.

Good for you.

You earned it.

Okay.

It's a gold star.

It is literally a nice sticker for you.

Because here's the thing.

If you beat the bosses on Difficulty 5, there's no reward that could ever mean anything to you.

Yeah, you're doing it.

You're fucking Ryu.

The victory means nothing.

The fight is everything.

Is there a Spirit Ash style or summon style system in this game where you can fight bosses with others to mitigate them

thing going on in this game in any way?

Are you doing...

Let me.

Okay.

I see that.

No, no, no.

No, no.

I'm not trying to avoid saying something.

I don't know.

Okay.

Is there a system you don't use that is deliberately a difficulty modifier?

There is like a glowing thing next to boss doors that I think uses a currency to summon people.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

I didn't use it.

You don't engage with it?

I did not use it.

Okay.

There's a system that is there that you have not been using, but it does allow some sort of

cooperative

or so.

Okay.

And

that'll drag aggro around.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

The game's hard as fuck.

I mean, considering you haven't used it, I assume you never have to use it for any plot-based reasons.

There

is.

If you do use it for plot.

No, no, you never have to use it for plot-based reasons.

Okay.

Though there might be one or two you should.

Like,

think of Egon and Bale.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Where it's like the payoff is great.

Yeah, but yeah.

No, because that's the thing is, like, you know, Souls games are obviously this whole living, breathing, dynamic difficulty thing of bringing in other players or bringing in NPCs or bringing in your mimic tier or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's it.

But like, this, this feels more like Sekiro in that response of like, no, you're going to go in there and you're going to fight your little puppet ass off.

But like, there's that feeling in the Souls games of like, even if you're somebody who's like, no, I want to go in and experience the brunt of these fights, the game is like, yeah, but if you want to push this plot forward, you should bring this buddy with you.

And it kind of is like encouraging you to take

happens once.

Take the handouts.

And it is like unavoidable to know that the game is like telling you to do it.

Okay.

It's very, very, very, very, very, very obvious.

So, yeah, no, Liza P overture and Liza P are fucking great.

They're fucking great.

They're fantastic.

I remember early on in, I think, when we were doing Souls 2 or so, and I thought, and I first learned about that system, and I thought that the person in the room had to survive the boss fight with you.

Oh, thank God.

And it was like, that is the most obnoxious fucking bullshit design I've ever like.

I thought it was that insane.

You know?

Yeah, okay.

Cool.

Yeah, can't glaze Lies of P enough.

It's excellent.

It definitely not without some varnish on that wood.

Yeah.

Well, it's more like ceramic.

It creates a nice glaze.

The cockpits are more like ceramic.

Okay, but it creates a nice glaze nonetheless.

That is the kind of finish you want.

Let's see.

What else?

I've been playing a lot of Age of Calamity on the Switch 2.

Ah.

Which

it's wild that Nintendo hid this good-ass Zelda game underneath the Switch 1.

It's crazy.

The Hyrule Warriors evolution has clearly stepped up quite a bit.

Those games have started looking less like Muso and more like full-on Zelda guidance.

I've noticed.

Yeah, no, Age of Calamity is fantastic.

And like...

I went to check on my Switch 1, and it is what I thought.

Like, you and I have a decent eye for frame rate, and the lower the frame rate gets, the more accurate you can be, right?

Um, so yeah, when you load into the very first battle in Age of Calamity on the Switch one, it's running at fucking 13 frames a second,

it's running

sub-15 FPS, classic switch, and then when you do, um,

when you get all the spirit clones as Impa, and you do her super, the game drops to

a negative FPS.

Oh, I believe we're calling that Mind's Eye FPS.

Yeah,

it becomes

like one frame every two seconds.

And I'm like, this is actually like unplayable.

This is actually like ruinous.

Like, it's terrible.

And then you play this on the Switch 2.

Echo location.

Yeah.

And then you play it on the Switch 2, and it's a lock 30 the whole time.

It evolves back into literature.

Yeah, I saw that.

That's pretty good.

Oh, man.

I play it on the Switch 2 at a lock 30, and I'm just like, and I'm playing in a handheld mode so the child can't get his brain ruined.

And I'm like, oh, wow, there's a lot of like really great, like different characters in this that all play like really, despite the fact that it's just the xxx and the yyy like wow they actually play like really differently and character upgrades in this game are like really interesting and uh the the mission types are are are interesting and finding the the little koroks in the missions is fun and then i unlocked hestu as a fucking warriors character the fucking maracashaking big korok

is a playable character and i'm like wow that's crazy so so i feel like the age of calamity or the high rule warriors agenda is Nintendo being like, leave us the fuck alone for people who want us to change the formula.

We're not going to do it.

And here, we're going to do it over here.

We already changed the formula a lot with Breath of the Wild.

But anyone who's like, we want the game where you're going to be Zelda up front, I mean, they did,

you know,

they did have the, whatchamacallit,

the one they announced where you are playing a Zelda, right?

But like, the idea of turning the whole formula on its head when the mainline games, they're like, no, but over here, go look at this.

You want 30 playable characters and doing all this stuff?

Then fine.

You can do this, you know?

Echoes of wisdom.

Yeah.

There's a resistance for the mainline, you know, to

swerve too hard, but you can throw all that wild shit into this Muso thing.

Oh, that's cool.

It's...

It's fucking great.

It's a great game.

And it's a really great game to play handheld, like, for short periods.

And it's like, it's.

the switch one version is so fucked up that I feel like oh, yeah, if I came out with this, it's a switch 2 launch game.

Like, it I oh, they finally released it out of the game.

I mean, but that's all you've we've felt this before, right?

The thing that came out late in the last Nintendo Generation cycle, and you're like, this is not even out yet, this is made for the next thing.

Yeah, um, I've also been playing a good amount of um Tears of the Kingdom on the Switch 2,

and And

yeah, running that game at 4K60 is transformative.

That is.

And also, more than that, using Ultra Hand and the building mechanics without the game going,

stop, is incredible.

I mean, anytime you have a system that can, you can populate a form with like tons of extra assets, I'm sure that game can be chugged by building the most complex possible things.

Well, the main thing is that when you used Ultra Hand in Tears of the Kingdom,

putting two objects together,

you would see the game go, oh, I don't like it.

It's like

primary mechanic.

This is ridiculous.

Is there any part of it that got easier to do through like, I don't know, the switch over to the mouse mode or anything like that?

Oh, I haven't really fucked with that.

Okay.

But yeah, no, hey, no, that Switch 2.

Also, I've been using the Switch 2 in general.

Super slick.

The game card thing, switching between accounts and consoles and shit like that, super cool.

Really easy to use.

Virtual card.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a fake digital card.

So, okay.

I wanted for years for the return of the

whatever it was called, the share play feature from the DS, you know?

Yeah.

Where you can just like, hey, you pull your DS out, download, and we can just play it even though you don't have the game.

And

this is one way to do that, right?

It's not the same thing, but ultimately, like, it makes sense, it works.

Games actually have that exact feature.

Um, um, we just it was Donkey Kong that I, or we were just seeing, right?

It's like you can have a switch that is like that, you're not sharing Donkey Kong Bonanza with it, it's just gonna download and be a second player, and that can be a switch one or switch two, exactly.

I'm like, that's a great feature to pull back and give to people.

Like, like, you know, more games need to do that for sure.

It's, it's really, uh, um, we used it a lot back in the day at work and everything like that.

Like, that was a particularly fun one.

Oh, I need to clarify something.

When I'm talking about the game card switching over, I'm talking about the virtual game cards because people in the chat are saying, lick it.

I don't own a single

switch one or switch two game cartridge.

Physically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I don't.

The virtual one.

Now, I'm talking about switching the virtual game card between different systems and accounts.

I bought one or two physical ones because the storage I found to be insufficient.

Now that you can get those terabyte things, it's like that's a bit nicer.

But

yeah, there's games where I'm just like, I don't want to have to install this on the very limited space on this thing.

Yeah.

So.

But yeah, no, it works extremely well.

Like when you, I have the work switch, which is right there, and I have the house switch.

And so I had Mario Kart on this.

And then I wanted to play Mario Kart at the house.

And it said, hey, could you want to take your virtual game card out from one to the other?

And I went, yeah.

And it goes, okay, it has a little animation.

And now my virtual game card is in the house Switch.

And then Paige has her account, which doesn't own Mario Kart, on the house Switch.

And it goes, well, of course you can play that game on this Switch because the card is in the Switch.

It basically takes digital games and treats them under the same physical rules as a regular cart would.

Right.

Yes.

Yeah.

That whole graphic is to put that idea in your head.

Did you get an SD micro SD at EX

as well?

Or you got one?

Yeah, I got a 256 gig micro SD.

So now my Switch 2 has 512.

Okay.

Yeah.

Which is more than enough.

Yeah.

Every single Switch game on there, plus Mario Kart and Tears of the Kingdom and shit like that.

They're not on, they're, they're, I was looking, like, they're not on shelves available.

Like, it's a very particular, it's a rare, it seems like it's a rare.

Yeah, I guess that's the way now, right?

Yeah, because like just looking around in person, I didn't see any.

And I'm wondering if there's like a one terabyte to just have to never think about it again, you know?

Okay, cool.

But yeah, no, hey, Switch 2, very, very good console to fuck around with.

I am enjoying it very much to play.

Excited to play Donkey Kong on that shit.

Looks very cool.

We'll get into that in a bit.

That's pretty much it.

On my show this week, what am I doing this week?

I'm going to to be playing, I'm going to be doing some backlog stuff.

PageMay Cry is back on Friday.

We're finally going back to DMC3.

Hell yeah.

Thursday, I'll be playing Mario Kart World with the chat

and so on and so forth and so on.

But you can go down to twitch.tv/slash patstairs at

4 p.m.

Pacific usually.

And I'll be streaming over there.

All right.

Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.

Ookie dookie.

Okay.

Let's pay some bills.

Quick word from our sponsors.

And I'll tell you what, I love them more than ever.

Love them.

More than ever.

Let's take a look

and see what we got over here.

This week, the podcast is sponsored by Hero Forge.

Oh, Hero Forge.

Custom miniatures.

And

as is becoming tradition,

I gotta focus up the camera lens over here.

Oh, this is gonna be tough.

Oh, the camera doesn't want to focus on it.

You can do it.

There it is.

Yeah.

So you got these miniatures that are pretty cool that you can make that are ready to go for whatever your let me unblur myself.

Excuse me.

There we go.

That you can customize and have ready to go for any tabletop adventures that you're setting out on.

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We'll take a quick break and we'll be back soon.

Alrighty.

In the news, what's going on?

Lots,

lots, lots of new releases.

First off, actually,

quick plug.

Shout out to friends of the show.

Sheena over at Albino Moose Games just released a demo for the new FPS Galvanized.

The game that she's been working on over there.

It's an old school

action FPS with some grappling, some chain pulling and hooking, and some of that.

I just discovered I don't know how to spell galvanized.

G-A-L-V-A-N-I-Z-E-D.

Yeah, that was the issue that I made.

There you go.

So, if you are looking for that boomer shooter quality aesthetic with

some grapple hooking and some weapons and swinging and all that fun traversal going on.

Oh, this is boomer shooting.

Big boomer shooting vibes coming off of it.

Check it out.

Yeah, the demo's out for

episode one

from Albino Moose Games.

So, yeah, up to cool things over there.

After the, and for those who are new, that's of

Spooky's Jub Scare Mansion

fame.

Alright.

So, what else did we see?

We saw Donkey Kong Bonanza Direct,

and that game looks really fucking cool.

It looks great, yeah.

Um, the simplest thing, I think, is just the like, yeah, red, red fraction gorilla as a bit, but like, no, really, just destroy the world.

And I don't get, I don't know that you're gonna be there, must be a limit to how deep you can go into any stage, you know?

But yeah, absolutely, but like, it seems like from looking at it, like, there's a whole set that is like each layer of going deeper and deeper into the core is kind of how you're you're progressing through the world as opposed to just like surface covering too.

So

yeah,

I just think it just looks like a classic Nintendo platforming, you know, adventure with good-ass music, fun, probably Odyssey style vibes of, you know,

vocal tracks kicking in and all that stuff.

And

that's Donkey Kong's Odyssey.

And he's godfucking Super Saiyan now.

Like, they're Super Saiyan Donkey Kong.

What the fuck?

What is there to complain about?

I really feel like this Switz, this direct really did a number on me.

One, it looks fantastic.

And Pauline is there.

Oh, cute.

Right?

But it also exposed to me a new type of dumb person.

Which is, oh my god, Pauline's like a little kid, but Cranky Kong is there.

What does this mean for how old's Donkey Kong?

The timeline, like a genuine new type of stupid person

who is

like worrying about the timeline of events of the Donkey Kong monkey people.

How is Maggie still a baby after 30 plus years and seasons?

It's crazy.

Cranky,

Cranky represents an idea of an octogenarian

ass monkey.

All right, it's a concept.

And also, they show you Cranky Kong hanging out with Ramby, right?

And then they make a point to go, that's an old motherfucker, but look at these plot old ancients right over here.

And you see, like the

ostrich and the and the zebra and the monkey with like the real cracking face.

Like, no, that's old.

Never mind the like you gotta got a beard and glasses bit, you know.

The real old fuckers are right over there, and they're gonna give you Super Saiyan DK triggers.

Um, Yeah, looks fun.

Definitely loving the, yeah, all the memes of like, you know, the

Kong of Us or Wreck-It Ralph.

Yeah, the sad dad

memes have now reached Donkey Kong.

Dad of Boy, and then Wreck-It Ralph energy as well, you know, but essentially just like, yeah, little kid hanging out, attached for the ride.

Don't fall off, you know, is uh, that's a fun vab vibe.

And then it looks like

the,

yeah, there's gonna be like music power stuff going on as well, which is sick because you know, she's after singing on in the new Donk City themes and everything in

the last round with Mario and stuff.

You're like, okay,

Pauline is back, and her whole bit is like music, you know, and stuff.

So that's cool.

We've come a long way from Donkey Kong kidnapping Mario's girlfriend and

crawling up the city block.

Like, it makes Mario look like an insane person.

Because, like, wait, Donkey Kong and Pauline have been friends for decades?

Bro, they're just hanging out.

Chill.

Like, that's the, I guess, the bit is, like, is there somewhere where you actually have him, like, just hanging out, crawling up the scaffolding, and Mario's this asshole that wants to fucking get in the way and just

dude, chill, man.

Yeah.

They've been friends since like 10 years ago.

Which really is, if anything, now we're just heading right back to King Kong.

We're just going to the source material on it where, you know.

It was beauty that killed the beast.

Yeah, Mario's a fucking piece of shit.

You know, and I want Mario to be the fucking final boss of Donkey Kong Bonanza.

Wait, wasn't Jack Black also.

Yeah, Jack Black was in King Kong and

in Super Mario.

So it really is.

He is that asshole.

Dude, I want Mario to be the final boss of this game so bad.

that's it.

And for him to just show up and just go

and like, and then everyone's like, what the fuck is he saying?

I don't understand his shit at all.

And

you're like, he's a horrible, he's trying to break up the friendship and you're trying to protect her.

And he's like, no, I'll save you.

The true horror of Mario getting in the way.

Okay.

Chris Pratt, notwithstanding, I guess my issue is not with Chris Pratt.

I don't think Mario should be speaking any known form of human language.

I think Mario should sound like he does in the Game Boy Advance RPGs where he just says a bunch of nonsense Italian bops.

Totally.

In fact, in Mario vs.

DK,

on the advance as well, there's a whole bunch of that, just gibberish Charles Martinet noise-making.

I agreed.

That was the best way for him, you know, because he's, yes, he's a plumber, and yes, you could argue that he's human-shaped, but he really

is not much more of a person than Sonic or Crash Bandicoot or any other mascot character.

He's fucking weird, and not all mascot characters talk, you know.

Some are just kind of expressive, noise-making things that, yeah, that's all you need, you just need an emotion and a vibe.

Um,

yeah, whatever you'd call it, he's human-shaped.

In any case, that looks pretty cool.

And I can't believe they're fucking whipping out the like the whole the thing, too, is like the

amiibos are coming around once again.

I'm like, oh my god, I'm I forgot.

I forgot.

I made a little bag where I shoved them up there, and then I whipped them out for Metroid Dread.

And now you're making, you're just being like, no, go find them again.

And like, none of the little elemental balls dropping in are anything I'd particularly care about.

But I was wondering, I'm like, oh, are they going to give her the new Donk City outfit?

And it's like, yes, if you buy that amiibo.

And I'm like, you assholes.

Bro,

I think this game has

part of like, I don't know if amiibo fatigue or whatever on the part of the developers.

Because look, every amiibo can get you a

singularly colored throwable sphere.

Yeah.

What the

who gives a shit go blow the dust off exactly you know compare that to the like drop this on the star fox on your bayonetta and you can get a star fox costume and guns and weapon you know

absolutely um

but anyway that that that that that aside um

cool for Donkey Kong getting like full proper big-ass adventure game that that's been you know kind of uh yeah the feeling is that I guess that's been coming for a minute now because you know the the

amazing platformers and side-scrollers and and tropical freeze and all that stuff that's been going on

have definitely you know been great but I've I guess everyone's kind of wondered is there gonna be a full giant open 3d game again you know yes

beyond that

You know, you want to talk about sort of returning to old school console era vibes.

Donkey Kong is one of those.

And fucking Shuhei Yoshida talking about Nintendo teleported me to 15 years ago.

It's insane.

He did an interview recently where he basically expressed that he has huge respect for Nintendo, but hopes that Nintendo fans might eventually graduate to more mature systems like PlayStation.

I would really like to point out that

this is a...

They've they've said this over and over from sony for years and years and years and years and it's like yes i've graduated to a more mature system the switch 2 one which contains games i can play with my child because i'm older now

and he so there was there was basically him anticipating the response to this the this type of statement in a way where he's like that yeah he kind of gets

the gist of it but but like overall between this and there's another interview where he basically said that Sony doesn't consider Nintendo as competition per se.

And the quote there is: Sony see Microsoft being the competition because Xbox is very similar in performance and in hardware,

like a high-end console,

but Nintendo

high-end console with mature games and such, but Nintendo is very, very different.

They're family-friendly.

Their games are for everyone.

It's not about technology.

It's more about having fun with friends and family and having multiple controllers bundled with the hardware.

Inside Sony, even when they do business analysis, Nintendo doesn't show up.

So there's a competition market share between PlayStation and Xbox.

They don't include Nintendo.

Not that they're ignoring them, but they don't feel that they're in competition because it's a very different audience.

And then to elaborate a little more,

In Japan, Nintendo is hugely strong and Xbox almost doesn't exist.

I should be careful.

I get many hate messages.

It's very hard to see where Xbox is, even though PC gaming is becoming a bit more popular in Japan.

But it's all about Nintendo versus Sony, I guess, in Japan.

With PlayStation, people are working in Japan,

see Nintendo as competition, but outside Japan, they mainly just see Xbox as primary competition.

It's really, it's really kind of funny to see that perspective because I feel like, again, old console wars vibes from, you know,

we're veterans of them.

Does he even still work at Sony anymore?

uh

i mean

wasn't there an announcement that he left some time ago yeah i thought he right left so yeah former former executies he left and he's just talking about the industry on on podcasts and doing interviews and stuff um it's it's it's an interesting perspective though just because it's like it feels like a dated view on things and um

the

like

If anything, I would say that the image is definitely, of course, out there because of like what Nintendo knows, where their bread is buttered of course but when you see the same titles getting ported over on all these multiple platforms and everything it's mainly just marketing right nintendo markets themselves towards families and younger audiences but like it absolutely especially with switch 2 at this point when you're looking at things that are uh um games that are going to be releasing in parody with you know not necessarily performance wise but in terms of like generationally with each other um

console's a console is a console at this point you know deltar runes coming out you grab it on pc grab it over here grab it on that play Street Fighter VI where you want to, whatever.

Like, Nintendo knows that their brand and their first-party things that they make are all family-oriented and such, but don't mistake the, I guess, hardware overall for that per se.

But, you know, if they're mainly, they've also pulled back on PC, of course, as a secondary advertising platform as well.

He didn't really mention it much in this, but the thing that's clear is that, like, I'm sure looking internally, for however the perspective seems or whatever the case is

dollars to dollars business wise they go Xbox is the main thing that takes money out of our pocket focusing on on on uh beating them is effort more that is that's more worth it than focusing on beating any other platform at any given time

you know I'm starting to think I'm starting to understand what he means by like grow up and mature and move to PlayStation and it's like it makes sense because you look at Last of Us which is a game that came out in 2013 and 2014,

and then 2020, and then

2022, and then 2023, and then 2024, and then 2025.

And what they're doing is they're making sure that no matter what age you are, eventually you'll grow up to being an adult and you can play Sony games

because the same game comes out every year or two.

Eventually, over time.

Yeah, you might have skipped a year there.

I think I skipped one.

You might have, you might have, yeah.

But, like, see, as long as we keep

putting out the same adult games back to back to back to back to back to back to back, eventually you'll become old enough that you can go, oh, you don't need that baby Nintendo shit.

Here's Last of Us 2, the remake port of the sequel.

Now,

the funny part.

One of the things, though, that is definitely the case is that

when

uh

over the years, I feel like my cousin and nephew and niece barometer for the console generations and what they mean and what they kind of represent to like a bunch of kids and a bunch of people that are a bit older than me, just out there kind of very, very casually.

Nintendo continues to mainly be the like, yeah, this is for my kids, or this is for you know, it's it's a family box per se, it's not the first thought when it comes to getting the latest, you know, whatever, like FPS or whatever major AAA has just come out or so.

But

like that,

I would say that I've seen the biggest shift with that with Switch, you know.

It definitely like did convince, or I like have some of those, you know, and this is just anecdotal, but like family and friends and people, whatever, like there was an eventual point where they started getting stuff to just play on that as they were using it and were like, yeah, you know, being able to use this on the main, the same

console is handy.

Not as many of those friends have like a big tricked-out PC with a video card option for buying games.

So

for them, it was like, hey, if I have a Switch and

I don't have a PC option for this, then why not just go for it here?

It made sense for some more

mainstream purchases that happened to be on multi-platform.

It has changed more so in this generation than in previous ones.

I feel really torn on this discussion because I think the core of the discussion is like genuinely stupid.

Because I remember the only time in my life I cared about

games being mature is when I was a child.

And I feel like this entire discussion is us listening to 14-year-olds tell us how cool an adult they are for playing Call of Duty because it has guns and murder in it, and how much of a pussy you are, 35-year-old man, for playing Zelda, because that shit's gay and stupid.

But that 14-year-old

thing is just so fucking stupid.

But that 14-year-old was a former exec of the company that makes PlayStation.

You know what I mean?

Like, that is like, you want to talk about like internally being told at the highest levels that, yeah, they literally don't even bring them up when they're when, you know, in the comparison point sheets, right?

It's like, okay, so the perspective is that we, we just don't think about it.

There is no, there is no concern.

Also, Astrobot was the best game Sony put out last year, and that, that might as well be a fucking Mario Club.

Absolutely.

Absolutely, you know.

And the big deal around anytime something related to

a lot of those Sony first-party games that are basically like Nintendo in target audience, you know, it's about time and everything banjo, not banjo, everything

crash-related.

A lot of that shit overlaps heavily, massively, you know?

Not that, again, so like, you know,

young people and young adults need to grow up and realize that sometimes at the end of the day, you know, revenge being pointless or being a better dad or a better role model or whatever is not inherently more mature than the fact that sometimes you just got to destroy Ganon.

You do.

You do.

No matter what age, no matter when,

the objectives marker at the top of your screen doesn't say be better.

It says kill Ganon.

And you got to.

It's just, and this is something where too, like, depending on how this kind of discussion happens, like, I can see the framing of, again, of more just like, it's not that this is not our competition.

It's just that this makes more sense for us to focus on because this is a much more direct, you know, analog.

And if you go here, you're not going, you're not going to us, right?

So if like Second Cup is talking about like, hey, every moment we make taking down Starbucks is the best use of our time

as opposed to going after whatever, the McDonald's around the corner, then I can get that, even though McDonald's has coffee as well.

And absolutely, and people go there for coffee as a preference, you know, or whatever.

But if you're like, no, we're coming specifically after that.

I should have said Tim Hortons, but whatever.

Point remains, you know, if you just frame it as like, no, it's because Microsoft, money spent on Microsoft is money removed from our pockets, effectively, you know.

Because again, PC ends up being this side promotional platform that you are in competition with, but you're not being that hostile towards it because you can also use it to promote, you know?

Also,

Toshuhei Yoshida, if

I bet you would like people to grow up and move on to a PlayStation, because one of the news things we have this week is Nintendo Switch 2 sells the most consoles of anything ever in its launch period and sold like 4 million fucking units.

So like, hey, maybe you should actually be more like Nintendo.

It's moving.

Truck full of them got jacked.

Yeah, I think...

You know, between the price stuff and tariff stuff and everything in advance, there was definitely a thought like, ooh,

this might fucking land and dud or at least take a minute.

There's only one factor ever

that stipulates how many units you'll sell in a launch console, and that is, are they available to buy?

That is it.

Video game retail has been fucked up since like 89, and there's never, ever, ever, ever been enough units for anything to buy, with the sole exception of like the Virtual Boy and the Saturn and the 3DO.

Do you think that the importance of the attach rate is now diminished?

Do you think the shelf mover, you know, the launch game that is meant to bring you over that you can't get anywhere else?

I mean, everybody bought the fucking Mario Kart.

Mario Kart's Mario Kart.

Of that fucking thing.

Mario Kart is Mario Kart.

I was not going to, and then through fucking peer pressure

contributed and went and got one.

I don't mean to be rude to you here, but you have like in the time period of the Switch 2's release, you are going to play a Mario Kart in your home for a very specific, tiny, baby-shaped reason.

I mean, you know, like I said, the Yakuza thing was coming around the pipe anyway.

And I was gonna, but like, yeah, I just was considering like, eh, at some point, especially because, like, with the last Mario Kart, I really just

got it played that one time, and that was it, you know.

Um,

but no, uh, uh, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold 68.2 million copies.

The thought has always been that, like, you know, what's that one system-selling game that is going to make people fucking Mario Kart, dude?

Yeah.

So

that

sorry, I lost my my place over there.

Yes, that's a lot of money.

That that that is a lot of money.

Um

you know what else is a lot of money?

Tell me what's a lot of money.

The $69 billion it costs.

Hold on a second.

Nope.

The cost of shelving marathon indefinitely

is a lot of money.

It definitely is a fun number.

It sure is.

That word does imply

that we don't know when, right?

It does imply that.

It implies that we are not, we are, it is indeterminate when it will return, but it has officially been delayed beyond September 23rd.

And

they basically said, yeah, they did a presentation for investors this week where they showed off marathon to Sony investors.

And it seems like four days later, they then went, actually, yeah, no.

But so that might have been for legal reasons to not, I don't know whatever was going on with that.

Well, we can't show this to the public because of the plagiarism shit.

So the cost of scraping everything out and canceling all your marketing and replacing it with new things and then also addressing the parts where people were not having fun with it.

Is it just a wash?

Or do you

think they can't?

It has to come out.

It has to come out.

Listen, Sony spent $3.4 billion

on Bungie so that Bungie could tell them how to run their live service division.

And the pinnacle of that was going to be Marathon,

which,

like

so I mentioned

I mentioned 69 billion earlier because the quote was

we believe that Bungie can give us way more than the $69 billion acquisition of Activision.

And that's before considering

the r the relative vague

value of that particular transaction.

So

like a billion of those dollars so they can just add proximity chat.

Fucking, dude, like, so there's a statement that Bungie themselves put out that was like, we're going to, you know, I have it here, actually.

It's in my, I'm in the marathon Discord.

I don't know how they haven't kicked me out of this fucking thing.

But, um,

blah, blah, blah.

The passionate feedback around the Reveal and Alpha Playtest, comments, and real-time conversations.

Your voice has been strong and clear we've they're acting like it's fan feedback that's caused this and not Sony saying it from on high which by the way the bungie developers found out that it was delayed through this announcement from Sony like they most of them except for the senior staff didn't know that they were getting delayed indefinitely

So they're going to focus on blah blah blah upping the survival game with more challenging and engaging AI encounters, more rewarding

runs with new types of loot and dynamic events, making combat more tense and strategic.

Doubling down on the marathon universe with increased visual fidelity, aka

have to do new textures anyway, because

we stole it.

More narrative, environmental storytelling to discover a darker tone that delivers on the themes of the original trilogy,

having more social experiences, a better player experience for solos and duos, and proximity chat.

How have you not been kicked out by now?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm in there.

All right.

Well, also,

can we take a side path here about a type of person I would like to complain about?

There is a type of person.

You're in the Capcom Creators Discord, right?

Okay.

So I'm in the Capcom Creators Discord.

I'm in the Namco Bandai Creators Discord.

And I'm in the Marathon Discord.

I did a couple of the other ones.

I didn't sign up for it, but I think I got signed up for it without signing up for it.

And

there's like a type of person

in that Discord that is just so happy to be there that every time a dev note or an announcement comes down, they're just going, oh my God, I can't wait.

It's going to be so amazing.

It's going to be the greatest fucking thing.

I'm so happy to be here.

Like, dude, shut up.

Have some fucking class and fucking act like an adult.

No, you got your foot in the door.

It's your first time getting your foot in the door.

Jesus Christ.

You're very excited excited about the fact that you are here in official contact in an official manner for the first time ever.

And this is a make or break moment.

It's all about this.

There was some announcement like a long time ago.

It was the Elden Ring.

It was the Elden Ring preview event.

For Namkai Banda, Namkai,

Namco Bandai, where they wanted everyone to be in a group chat to go over the NDA and all the

things.

And I remember they were like, Do you have any questions?

And like, it was like 10 questions about how awesome the game would be and how sick it was and how, oh, so sick.

And then me and Yanners were like, how do we record footage for live streams?

What's the process on that?

Like, like actual, like real questions?

The classic softball into slurp noises question.

Right?

Love that kind of press conference.

We usually do live streams.

How do we get this preview stuff on live stuff?

And then they answered us,

and then we left.

Yep.

It's just this thing.

Hey, company.

Oh, my God.

Hey, company.

I have a question.

Who does your hair?

I mean, God.

You know, I'm going to just fucking.

I'm just going to go into the fucking

soch thing thing and just fucking

oh It's just it's non-stop fucking glazing.

This is so cringe.

Oh my god

Fucking un oh I don't know why they haven't kicked me out of that shit anyway anyway I mean look we'll we'll see like keep an eye on it as we go on merch over in the other room that I don't want to put on camera because I don't give a shit about it and it sucks well is that merch is that merch showing off textures by another artist that were stolen It might be, actually, it fucking might be.

You know, the merch that was printed?

Oh, my.

You're like, fuck.

Yeah.

This shit's so fucking cringe.

I can't believe this is a real quote.

$69 billion.

Like, anyway.

That's got to be for...

No, talking about Activision.

So, okay, we know Activision extremely well.

When you look at the $69 billion for Activision compared to the $3.6 billion for Bungie, we believe that Bungie can give us way more than a $69 billion acquisition of Activision.

That's stupid.

Jim Ryan.

That's a stupid quote from a stupid person.

Like,

what are numbers?

Yeah, I don't have a fucking business degree.

It's still fucking stupid as shit.

You guys have lost more on Bungie than the last Call of Duty made in a single day.

And like, again, the thought that it's one thing if it was like, okay, so people were not having fun with it and some design elements were poorly thought out or so.

But it's like, the fucking textures were all stolen and now you can't even see it legally

is like, that's so brutal.

You're not allowed to look at all the assets.

God.

Because they can't be sure.

Like, okay, they say the guy who did that shit is gone.

So what?

They're going to have to go through the change log and be like, okay, what's every single piece of the game he touched?

Throw all of that shit out.

It's fucking nonsense.

But when we start talking about that level of money, right?

When we were going into

Anti-Real was the name of the artist.

When we were going into like Anti-Real's art getting stolen.

And I was saying, does it make more sense when I'm like, yo, just cut the check?

Like, just cut the check.

No, because that's admitting liability, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And if they miss one or whatever the fuck.

Because they still have to have an accounting of all the items.

Right, but cutting the check comes with a thick ass contract that stipulates, you know, okay usage for whatever fucking legal terms.

There's no way they would ever admit liability.

The game's not out.

The game has never received any money.

They don't have to pay anything, anybody.

Like, the fact that the artist in particular is just like, I'm tired, boss.

Like, it's just, you know, like,

so there's a great quote that Dad Asna sent me from Josh Sawyer talking about how shitty game development is.

And

basically, Josh Sawyer was talking about

Dragon Age the Vailguard.

and the dev background of his work on RPGs and how what can lead to fucked up shit.

So

he describes basically that

there are games that get, you know, eight months of delays, but those eight months of delays are

one month at a time delays.

And so everybody's made a bunch of bad decisions, but they're like, well, we don't have time to fix it because it would take two, three months to fix it.

And then they delay it a month and they're like, maybe we can clean up around the problem.

And then they delay it a month, and then they clean up around the problem.

And then you get to the end of like, you've actually delayed the game by like a year and you could have actually fixed everything.

But because you didn't know that you had enough time, you had to just staple shitty solutions to bad problems you would never would have had if you knew you had an extra year.

The act of kicking the can down the road doesn't feel too bad because you're never booting it into the next fucking neighborhood, right?

Like, yeah, that's that's real.

Because a Vailguard had basically that happened to it.

That there were just,

here's a quote from Bloomberg.

The strict deadline became a recurring problem.

The dev team would make decisions believing they had less than a year to release the game, which would limit the stories they could tell and the world they could build.

Then the title would inevitably be delayed by a couple of months, at which point they'd get stuck with those old decisions with no chance and stop to re-evaluate what was working.

And whatever major changes or whatever is going on, there, there's a little period at the end where when you submit things or when you're going through that process,

each time there's a major submission failure or major issue that is like holding the game up and it has to go back for another round, they're cramming, they're prioritizing remaining issues and stuff that can be fixed while these major compliance issues are being fixed and cramming those in as priority as well, right?

So like basically there's like a polish and repolish phase where

stuff that you've determined from a while ago, like if we have time, we'll get around to this, you know.

Um, but it it can't ever be something that is like massively changing the direction or can have too many cascading effects that you know cause another failure of sorts, right?

It has to be something that is like very, very easy to squeeze in at the end there that you still have time to like reliably QA or so.

Um, so like multiple chips with this,

multiple slow, multiple slow delays do feel a lot less committal and scary compared to a big one.

And also, it's easier to tell people that are spending shareholders and investors and all those folks.

It's a lot easier to report smaller delays than it is massive ones, right?

Big, big missing the quarter delays are always

a problem.

Let's take Bungie for this, right?

It's like, okay, so most of the team didn't know the game was getting delayed.

So they obviously don't know how when it's getting delayed to.

So at some point, the discussion has to happen.

How long is it going to take to get all this fucking stolen shit out?

And for a while, that answer was, I don't know.

So how much time do you guys have to work on proximity chat or duos or

the fucking narrative elements?

How much time?

You guys got six months?

You guys got a year?

Well, let's use another metric.

Will it cost more than $400 million?

Maybe.

Fuck it.

Because that's the Concorde metric.

Yeah.

They threw that shit in the trash.

So this is where I ask, is it a loss?

Is it a write-off?

Do we, or if we go, no, it has to come out, you're like, okay, at what cost?

At what point?

I don't understand how.

I don't understand how anyone looking at this is like, like we can turn this shit around in a year or something like that.

Like,

I didn't think it was gonna, like, I played that alpha and was like, this sucks and would need like more than a year of work to fucking tune up and add shit.

And that was before

they have to spend however X many fucking months pulling shit out and double checking it for plagiarism.

How much of that project has to be completely done over because they can't tell what is and isn't actually original?

I mean, I would assume just about every texture, like, I almost, you know?

And if and like, you can't also just go take Anti-Real's name off of it because you're still stealing.

It needs to have its own identity.

Like, and that can be proven in court to not be

fucking

crushing killing the vibes.

And also

Arc Raiders, which is going to be out before them, which is like the same fucking game, but more impressive looking in every way.

So yeah, there you go.

Marathon delayed indefinitely.

We'll see what that means.

I bet you this game's going to come out in 18 months and be like a polished up version of what it is like right now with like almost no significant changes.

And we're all going to go, what the fuck did they even do?

I mean, if it is a legally airtight version where they look and they say, We can argue in court that we're allowed to use these textures you're seeing, if you're allowed to look at it, then all right,

it passed some sort of muster, you know what I mean?

I played like a Destiny game that was in development, which was Destiny 2, and like Bungie's production pipeline fucking sucks.

Like, it takes them fucking forever to do anything.

And definitely double forever to fix any existing problems.

I would imagine that, like, whatever nebulous changes, you know, eventually come out, you don't want to leave it in such a place where if Anti-Real decides, actually, nah, fuck this, I am going to try to legally pursue damages.

That that problem would be something that they could go like, well, Your Honor, look, we can show you here that clearly it's this different.

Like, if they only make it a little bit different and still leave room for that potential lawsuit, those lawyers are not doing their job.

That legal team is not doing their job, right?

So

that's a significant enough change.

I would like to say that.

God damn it.

I keep forgetting.

I keep forgetting.

I keep forgetting.

I keep forgetting.

I keep forgetting.

Ah!

They laid them off.

Oh,

God.

They keep talking about lawyers like there are lawyers.

I just, I'm sorry.

I just, I thought I saw Lionel Hutz for a minute.

My bad.

They haven't even paid off the people they said they would pay off for the last plagiarism scandal.

I keep, I just, because it's just there, they are in arrears for a former plagiarism scandal.

My bad.

You know, I, uh, yeah.

I just assumed that, you know, you see a car, you pop the hood, you might see an engine in there.

I just, I assume that the company, yeah, all right, all right.

The only way that I can see this game coming out and being of value to the consumer or the game player is if Sony goes in there and kills the suite, the C-suite and replaces them with,

like,

people who know how to ship products from other parts of SCEA or SEC.

Potentially, I suppose, if you're trying to preserve

whatever Bungie is to some degree.

But

did

apparently

Bungie's problem has always been that top level of management, like going back all the way to Halo.

Okay.

The folks that made Concorde didn't get that.

basically.

The C-suite got killed, but then so did everyone beneath it.

Yeah, that turn dropped and was out of the toilet, though.

Like, there was no saving it.

It already hit the floor.

All you could do is scoop it back up and throw it away.

It was too late.

All right.

Well,

you know,

there is something to be said about,

you know, know,

the challenges that cause you to go back to the drawing board and

avoid getting

your ass blown out because of your team and thieves.

A much better reason to go back to the drawing board and change things up is if people play your game

and you think that too many people are enjoying it and having too much fun and they think it's too good.

This game is really good.

This game's game's really, really good.

I think I've screwed up somewhere.

God damn it, says Kojima.

I hate that the playtesters are enjoying Death Stranding 2 so much.

I gotta go change some stuff because it needs to be more polarizing.

I fucking love that.

I just, it's the most, it's this, oh, I love it.

Just when you, you, it's the same, it's the same fucker every time, every time.

So in a recent discussion, uh Wood Kid, who

works with Kojima on the music,

has been, you know, working on a lot of projects together,

said there's a key moment where we had a discussion halfway through doing the game where he came in he came and said we have a problem I'm gonna be very honest.

We've been testing the game with players and the results are too good.

They like it too much.

That means something is wrong.

We have to change something.

And then he changed stuff in the script and the way that some crucial stuff happens in the game because he thought his work was not polarizing and not triggering enough emotions.

According to Kojima, he needs more emotions.

If everyone likes your work, it means it's mainstream, it's conventional, it's pre-digested for people to like it.

I don't want that.

I want people to end up liking things they didn't even like when they first encountered it because that's where you really end up loving something.

And

he's completely right.

But when you does that not make perfect sense when you go, I fucking, I was trucking and having fun.

I never would have thought that was an enjoyable experience, right?

You were being a Teamster, you were porting and walking up mountains and doing a bunch of bullshit and death stranding that nobody while holding a baby on your chest.

Who the fuck?

Who the fuck would have thought that would have been so fun?

And it was.

I saw people going, This is stupid.

He's so right.

And all I can think of, all I can think of is like, how many more decades of arguing about Raiden do you guys want to do?

Like, for real.

Like, how, like, are you like, really?

How many, how many, how many more years of arguing about whether or not Ryden sucked do we want to go through before you realize that that fucking game is absolute fucking peak?

Too many people were enjoying it.

I need to go fuck shit up.

I need to go change it and make someone mad.

You know, if someone's not walking out going, what the fuck, bro, then I failed.

You know what?

I

there is

a

really,

really good example of a game that is built in a way that will cause many people to argue that would not even be close to as emotionally moving or genius if it wasn't built in a way to cause people to argue.

And that is,

it's, I don't want to even talk about it.

It's that game that we were talking about a couple weeks ago.

Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, right, yeah, yeah, sure.

Right?

Yeah.

Which is like,

if that game had a really straightforward, good-ass, happy-feeling ending, I'd be like, oh, cool, I guess.

But But like now that now that it's like, I want to fight someone over that fucking ending, I want to argue.

But like, you remember that clip of the dude seeing playing DMC5 and seeing Dante dancing and going, bro, I don't understand this fucking game, bro.

And he throws the controller down, right?

Kojima is watching that and like flicking his glasses up to get the perfect reflection.

Like, hmm.

This is the reaction I'm looking for.

He wants.

I'll take a much older example.

I'll take a much older older example.

All right.

Do you think any of us would still be talking about Last of Us at all if the ending

did not cause many people to feel very different things very strongly?

No.

You'd be like, wow, great game.

Cool.

But there'd be no long-term discussion if people weren't arguing over whether or not Joel was right or wrong.

Divisiveness creates interesting discussion, especially when you're on, like, yeah, moral tightropes, for sure.

And ethical tightropes.

Cause people to actually think about what was going on in that story rather than just go, and then Joel beat up all the bad guys.

The end.

Yes.

Yeah.

No, it is, it is a very fun discussion to like enjoy the video game, but then come out the other end of it going, like, oh, was that right?

Was that, you know what I mean?

Like, would do you, would, do you think that was the,

and then, yeah, especially with the, with the example from Briar as well.

I also want to say, like, this is the difference between somebody like Kojumbo and Druckman, in which Druckman recently came out and went, Yeah, by the way, Joel was wrong.

They could have totally done a cure.

And it's like, Shut up, you idiot.

You just ruined it.

Why would you ever, ever put a definitive, correct answer to that, you fucking buffoon?

Um,

if I remember correctly,

if I remember correctly, like, people would not stop hounding

David Chase

about

Sopranos.

Yeah.

And eventually, a billion years later, there was a sort of half-acknowledgement about it.

He screwed up talking about it in an interview.

It wasn't, yeah, there was an interview and it was a half-acknowledgement about it, right?

But it was one of those things where he really, really tried to just be like, can you just leave it alone?

And like, no one would.

No one would accept it.

Like some people, some people like definitely were like, the ambiguity is good.

And some people are like, yes, it's ambiguous, but I feel confident leaning one way or so.

But there's a lot of, there's an, there were enough people, and it was an influential enough show that, that, like, they were just mad at the openness of it and never got over it for decades.

It reminds me of, so Kojumbo's in good, in good company here because it makes me think about

the late, great David Lynch.

Whenever anyone asked him to explain literally anything, he'd just be like, nah, nope.

Watch it again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then, and I think about when

people would ask John Carpenter, so who was the thing at the end of the thing?

It's like, shut up.

That's the movie.

That's the, what are you stupid for?

You need, you need, that's the thing.

The second half is once it's out and everybody's going, you need the wherewithal to just be like, eat my ass, fuck you, no, hard no forever, and and hold that till you die.

You need to lynch it up, you know?

It also reminds me of Tarantino with

Pulp Fiction, in which he's like, I'm, I, he, he regret, like, of that movie, there's one part of that movie he fucking hates, and he regrets it, where they put a light bulb inside the briefcase.

Ah,

yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

The whole thing decades long.

What's in the briefcase?

He's like, it doesn't, I don't give a shit what's in the fucking briefcase.

nothing's in the briefcase it's a movie problem no there's a light there's a light that was it that was it

yeah the human brain cannot accept that the human brain needs to know yeah no I see the quote going up there uh eraser head is my most spiritual film how so

no I won't no could you explain that no nope refuses to elaborate anyway fucking Kojima amazing incredible you'll love to hear it um and yeah it certainly definitely could be and is likely what we're describing.

Where, like, characters making decisions that are, you know,

ambiguous or defensible in certain, you know what I mean?

Like, is probably what we're talking about.

But, like, you look at a character act and you go, oh, well, that was reasonable.

Okay, move on.

You never think about it.

But I just, I love that idea of him just looking at everyone walking out satisfied and going, fuck, I needed someone to get mad.

I need someone to be really pissed off right now.

Oh, shit.

Incredible.

So, Kojumbo believes that friction is where you get sparks.

Yes, yes.

And like Death Stranding is like taking that idea to the extreme.

Like parts of Death Stranding are like miserable and fucking boring.

Yeah, when you die and your save file gets deleted in Kojima's future dream game, some people will get mad at the lost time and progress and others will be like, ah, yes, the experience.

I truly will sit with that memory forever.

It was special because it only existed once.

And he'll be like, yes, you did like it.

You get it.

You understand.

It is divisive.

This is what I want.

So

I think the best example of this ever, ever, by far,

was in No More Heroes 2.

So No More Heroes 2, you're climbing up the rankings to become the extra big, cool assassin, and you're going to go after Alice Moonlight.

Sorry, Margaret Moonlight.

Margaret Moonlight.

And so you go to a supermarket parking lot.

And in that supermarket parking lot, you fight like 400 guys.

And they just pull up in cars and get out and fight you.

And then you kill all of them and more cars pull up and they get out and fight you.

And it's it's like 15 fucking minutes long.

It's ridiculous.

It's absolutely ridiculous.

And it never changes.

And the fights don't get any harder.

And it's just super fucking padded and pointless, and shit.

And by the end of it, you're really, really bored by fighting all these dudes, and the fighting has no excitement left for you, and it just sucks, and it's totally pointless.

And then they put the biggest, most

cool, and like, they put the biggest, like, custom music boss fight of the entire game right after that.

So, if you ever want to do the Margaret fight ever again, you have to go through the dog shit fucking parking lot war.

And I saw an interview a couple weeks after the game came out where they were like, Suda, why'd you have that gigantic super long fight in front of the Margaret Moonlight fight?

It's like, oh, because I wanted the player to get tired of fighting and to realize that fighting in this video game is totally pointless and it actually sucks.

And then you put a cool thing at the end and then it makes you wonder if you ever want to do it again.

And the player goes, it's not worth it.

Imagine.

That's fucking amazing.

Like,

imagine, because here's the thing.

Other mediums, definitely, there are times where it's like, oh, you turn the page and it is blank.

And it is blank for many pages.

The movie goes silent and nothing happens on frame.

Right.

For a certain amount of time.

Or whatever.

Like, different mediums have different ways of having that.

Like, we're disengaging with you and we're going meta with it movies that have like a still shot with no change for like multiple minutes is like how how long are you willing to tolerate this before getting up and leaving but that and that or the book again or the song that like you know goes blank or fuck you know whatever the case is the medium that decides to to go antagonistic with the the the the audience right hey we're gonna have a we're gonna have these two characters stand in an elevator with absolutely no animation for as long as you can stand in that's exactly what I was thinking of, right?

But video games are the only one that will reach out of the screen and kick you in the balls and ruin your hands and make your wrists hurt and make you uncomfortable and like physically ail

in order to cause that discomfort.

Of all these mediums, it's the one that's going to actually punish you and make it hurt to get this fucking point across.

I will give

a gold star to David Cage

because in heavy rain, when you are at the junkyard and you have your

gun trained on that gigantic, scary black man who's going to eat you, it looks like, and you have to take your drugs, the controls that they want you to

pin right on the controller where you have to claw your hands around, and it's legitimately really uncomfortable and hard to do, and tons of people fuck it up.

And it actually does a really good job of

putting you in the character's shoes of, like, oh, I can't, I gotta hold the gun, and I got, oh, fuck.

How many soldiers did Zach take down at his last end?

A lot.

A lot.

How long did that go for?

A while.

Yeah.

You prove, you make your point, you know, and this is, this is the medium, this is the medium that can do that.

That it's, it's very, it's just, it's a thing that video games can do that is, that is, man, that is phenomenal.

You know what?

You know who the best to ever do it is?

The best to ever do it is God of War 3 at the very end when you're just hitting left, right, left trigger, right trigger to punch Zeus's dead body.

Right, right, right.

I remember seeing the meat's black.

I remember seeing like game facts message board threads of like, how do I beat this?

I've been doing it for like an hour.

And like, and it's like, no, you have to stop.

Like, you're at the end of a three-game, four-game revenge trilogy.

Yeah.

And like, the only way to beat it is you have to stop.

You have to stop.

You have to stop.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's like, and that, like, that's, that's, that's fantastic.

Um,

shout out to video games.

Video games are cool.

And sometimes when they suck a little bit, they're cooler.

Now,

let's be careful.

Death Stranding 2 might suck shit, and he might have gone too far.

Probably not.

Well, but who knows?

Hey, if something comes out and it sucks, no worries.

You can just rely on the modders.

Are you sure about that?

Or can you?

I don't like this news story.

I do not like this news story.

There is not enough.

Here's the funny part.

There's not enough to really say

it's all vibes.

Okay.

So the story is real simple.

Nexus Mods, after 24 years of being run,

the owner is burnt out and has decided to sell the site.

And it seems like we have,

he wasn't saying at first who it was.

And now it's come out that it's been acquired by Chosen, a company focused on growth and monetization of gaming startups.

And there's nothing else to really go on there except for the words I said, which immediately just sound like, yeah.

I don't like it.

It's...

It's cooked.

We don't know that it's cooked, but it's cooked.

And it might not be.

And hey, and if it's not, then that's great.

And that's cool.

Hooray.

But it's cooked.

And I guess if there's any mods that you want to get, get them now.

You know, make sure that your favorites are available.

If you've got any particularly amazing combos going in any of those BioWare games or,

you know, any of their CD Prox or whatever it is, just figure your shit out because this is going to switch hands and who knows what the fuck will happen.

You know?

So

nothing has happened yet.

Nothing's happened yet.

No reason to panic.

Nothing is saying anything is going to happen necessarily.

By every legal and ethical and moral space, the owner of Nexus Mods, who has done a great job over the years, has every right

to sell their website for cash money and get there, all that stuff.

Especially when they give the reasons, like, it's not like

it's on, they're like, I'm at my limit, right?

There's a big talk on that, and they're like, yeah, I just personally am burnt out.

I can't do this, right?

However,

however,

there's a wrinkle here.

Back in 2010,

in October,

after New Vegas came out, I gave Nexus Mods $200 Canadian dollars.

The reason I did this was so that I could purchase a lifetime premium membership that was advertised as being good forever.

Lifetime and forever

mean

forever.

Uh-huh.

Not

until you sell it.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

It means

until the end of my life.

So no policy changes have been, you know, we don't know anything.

Do we not know that that's going to be an issue for any reason reason or whatever yet, right?

Nothing has been announced, so you don't know.

I

don't believe any of those types of services anytime you hear about them, simply because that's just not the way it feels like the world works.

At some point, there's always going to be something, however long it takes, before they go, nah, that was crazy, that was insane.

Even when it comes to, I believe, the example that comes to mind is Mark Cuban bought a

flight pass that lets him fly anywhere on American Airlines.

It was some crazy, amazing flight pass, right?

And it was like

supposed to be for life.

And they,

he and like one other person got this incredible thing because it was so expensive at the time.

And the, and yeah, it was like an infinite ticket.

And then sure enough, through abuse and like a decade plus of it just being

used in ways where they're like weren't intending or whatever, the terms eventually changed, and they had to limit it in a certain way.

And there was a legal, there's a legal way that they squeezed in a limit to it, you know?

So, lawyers will always find a way.

So, if you like, I just, that was a long time ago, but like, believing that you're gonna get anything as is for life is no, like, there's no way that would, that happens.

I just refuse that on principle.

Welcome back, Pat.

Your current plan in billing lifetime premium member forever.

Says it right there.

Yeah.

Until the lawyers say otherwise.

You know?

Also, I'd like to point out every time I bring up the fact that I bought a lifetime subscription to Nexus Mods, I bought it 15 years ago.

And every time people go, man, you got scammed.

I've had a premium

Nexus mods account for 15 fucking years and I use it all the time.

Okay.

Like, how is that a fucking rip?

I didn't know that.

I didn't know that was a service.

Yeah, I didn't remember that.

It stopped being one in like 2012.

Okay.

Because the one thing I did read about in the story was that there was a point where there was

a service that was kind of like find a way to donate to modders.

And like, there was kind of like, there was a monetary aspect that was involved with like, you know, certain popular modders can, you know, you can tip them for whatever, something to that effect.

And so they became a, uh, they were payment processing for some stuff like that.

But

overall, this whole thing just became the default

main archive and platform of all modding stuff.

Like Mod DB, I think, was obviously another big website that I remember getting directed to over the years for stuff.

But yeah, Nexus has been the gargantuan beast.

It's hard to imagine that anyone acquiring this would not somehow, in some way, fuck it up.

The owner says...

How many lifetime plans are there?

Because if it's like 400 people, yeah, they would leave that shit alone, right?

Well, okay.

There's like a million people that have lifetime subscriptions.

But there's a lot of other ways they can fuck this up beyond your lifetime subscription, right?

Like, you know, there's

everything that

fucking

what's the wiki fucking company called?

Anyway,

the people, the, the, the, the, uh, fandom, fandom, right?

There's everything that can go wrong in that direction.

So,

yeah,

Dark One,

the original owner, basically was describing that he's taking a lot of careful about who he's selling it to and

making sure that it's going to be in good hands and all that stuff.

And it's like, okay, you know, sure.

And

hopefully that's true and whatever the case may be.

But there's just this kind of

cooked kind of feeling that I think everyone has because you're like, Yeah,

the description of this new group of people definitely sounds like the kind of folks that'll roll in and start doing all the shit that you'd hate to see.

Um, and there's also a period of time where

they were aggressively stopping people from like archiving mods, I believe, that when they were trying to take them elsewhere because they didn't want like um like essentially like mod stealing to become a thing.

Uh, so it gets it gets weird and complicated when it comes to

having alternate resources for

particular modding communities, you know?

So I went and checked.

They actually removed lifetime memberships fairly recently.

They removed it in 2021.

Well, how's about that?

They found legal grounds to find a way around.

They just stopped offering it.

They didn't remove it.

They just stopped offering it to new people.

Oh, to new people.

I see.

Okay.

Okay.

The cutoff date was looking like in August of 21.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, it just, I, I just, I'm like, I feel like any time, any, whatever, anytime, I feel like I don't believe the word lifetime out of any company mouth.

I just feel like that's, you can't control the future.

You can't tell me you're going to exist, you know.

But if you've gotten 15 years of worth out of it so far and it's been worth it, then

hell yeah, great.

Great.

Like, here's the thing.

Could I, would I actually get mad that I feel like I got ripped off?

No, I definitely got my money's worth on a fucking Nexus mods lifetime premium membership.

Oh, definitely.

But it's annoying because it says forever.

It says forever.

Forever.

Now, the other solution to this problem is that developers can just step up.

No.

And they can do.

You're a fool.

Hold on.

Sound like an insane person.

Hold on.

Let me get there.

All right.

Developers can step up and say

things

like over at Stellarblade,

where the director says

modders

still

modders of Stellar Blade, their firepower is still weak.

What?

Up until now, the official content is still better.

I want mods that expand the user's play experience.

Stellar Blade is called the modders Week.

Well, that's because they have Denuvo on it.

There's only so much you can do.

Oh, man.

But also,

I saw a really stupid

article that was like 40-ish%

of the mods for Stellar Blade are goon mods for cooking.

And I'm like, I don't know if you've ever been to the mod database or the fucking Nexus mods for any RPG,

literally ever.

But it's all creepy sex mods, all the way at the course.

Now, here's the thing: I didn't realize, I guess, or maybe I wasn't, it was just maybe I didn't piece together or know this, but uh, when you're like, who the fuck is this director?

That's crazy, right?

What a wild gauntlet to throw out to

call out the mods of your game and be like, nah, the officials are still killing it.

And then I see the name Hyung Take Him, and I go, oh,

oh, it's you, it's Goon Lord, It's Goon Lord Supreme.

The artist behind.

You're like daring people to make hardcore pornography.

The shiniest asses you have ever seen for the last two fucking decades on the internet.

Ah, this is where you have been.

Young Tae Kim Sensei, you know, like, just, I get it now.

I see, right?

Not sensei, he's Korean, excuse me.

But that, I didn't know, I didn't know that he was the one in charge, right?

This, he's the goon lord, and he can say that and pull it off because there's a, there is a, uh, an empire built on, on shiny thighs and, and, and greased up butts.

Um,

yeah,

no,

check the resume, it makes perfect sense.

It's really funny because, like, I played a good amount of Stellar Blade, and uh,

you can't, like, every single second of you playing Stellar Blade, you're being gooned at,

right?

And it's it feels like a guy sits next to you on the bus and starts beating it and then starts elbowing you and go, When are you gonna start taking it?

Hey, come on,

but aside,

like, but like the game's pretty solid overall, like, in addition to that, that's what's important.

Like, it is a pretty solid game,

yeah, very important that the game actually be good.

Um,

Yeah.

And, you know, if

you're familiar with the

Magna Carta art style,

then it makes.

Oh, the plastic human art style?

The plastic human art style.

Then you, then you get it.

You get it.

Anyway, I just love that.

I love.

I love.

Yeah.

I love the developer looking out over at the fucking, you know, the wild body community and being like, nah, y'all ain't got shit.

Come at us, bro.

Yeah.

And

beyond that,

I

saw one other thing that seemed interesting, but also a little bit like, this is cool, but also not cool.

So

in the same vein of X-Men 97,

Marvel has announced Spider-Man 94,

continuing where the animated series left off, Radioactive Spider-Blood,

but it's a comic run.

And I'm like, ah,

damn, right?

I don't think we need even that because the X-Men 97 just goes, yeah, you found her.

Well,

sure.

But just given how good X-Men 97 was.

you know, it would be really cool to consider like, oh, shit, you can go back to Radioactive Spider Blood and do that too.

Like, that would be interesting.

And the other part, too, is like, I'm a bit confused because I feel like the last time I talked about the end of that show, and now we're off to find the real Mary Jane.

And I want to say, like, someone or some folks told me, like, there was something that never aired or like that ended up on that you can go watch on YouTube.

Like, there was some sort of conclusion of sorts.

So, like, the cliffhanger that everyone remembers, like, there was something that came out.

I'm confused, you know, because it's like, yeah, this comic is supposed to pick up where I remember the final episode being, which was the Madam Webb, you know,

walk into the fucking distance off.

That was a bunch of stupid nonsense right now.

After the spider carnage arc, you know?

But it is funny to look at the comic and see, like, that one cartoon Venom with the big lip,

you know, like he has big lips and then

the teeth out.

I'm like, yeah, no Venom looks like old 94 Venom.

Like, that's a particular one.

Spider-Man, you can see him in a couple different places and you can potentially, you know.

I know what Spider-Man looks like.

But that Venom doesn't look like any other Venom, you know?

Yeah, that's, that's, I, I, I, I dig the idea.

I do wish it was animated, though.

That would have been nice.

Anyway, fun stuff.

Um,

yeah, let's take some letters.

All right.

If you want to send in a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Okay.

We got one coming in here.

Igniz says, dear Zippy and Burgle,

you know the saying you wait ages for one and then three come along at once?

Uh,

okay.

I've never heard that before in my entire life.

Have you?

I haven't, but I can imagine it.

I get it.

They're talking about triplets.

Aren't tag fighters eating good right now?

Net Impact, 2XKO, Marvel, 4v4, and Invincible Versus all coming out in the space of a year.

Who knows?

Maybe even an Injustice game will come out with tag action.

Isn't that nice for them?

Where are the weapon fighters?

Fighting games in general are having a renaissance with all sorts coming out, not just the aforementioned tag fighters, but other sub-genres as well.

Even 3D fighters having a mini resurgence with the new VF coming, but no one is taking a stab at the weapon genre.

Why?

Where's the Soul Calibur or even Last Bronxes?

In an era when people are looking at the retro PSX games, making all sorts of game seeking to bring back the feel of bygone times, but these just seem to be missing.

You want an Advanced Wars clone?

Here's 10 of them.

You want an old 90s FPS?

It's a genre now.

Battle Network, someone made that.

Panzer Dragoon Saga?

A groundbreaking RPG most most haven't played that.

Where's Panzer Dragoon Saga?

A groundbreaking RPG that most haven't played and no one has tried on.

Bunch of FPS RPGs like Kingsfield, there's a whole bunch now.

Fire Emblem, you're eating good.

But

now

I now answer the question, or where's the thing I like is a popular one, but the real question is, what is a game or genre that to this day seems to be ignored and no one's making an effort to bring it back?

Okay, so there was no weapon fighting genre.

There was Soul Caliber.

Like, there were other games that had you fight with weapons, but those were Soul Calibur claims.

Hitting

like shit.

Hitting Last Bronx as a secondary on that is a really far steep drop.

That is wild.

I never thought I would hear the word Last Bronx today.

However, I will say, no, we can jump in and say Bushido Blade.

Like, I can catch him on this one, right?

Oh, Bushido Blade's like its own fucking weird thing.

It's a more, it's a, it's a one-strike hit.

style game, but it's not always one-strike.

It's not always necessarily, you know, but it is a weapon fighter, and the weapon usage and the matchup of that is a primary part of that game and what you're doing, right?

Samshow is a 2D fighter that has weapons.

It's an SNK game, but

it's not the same elements per se, but you're arguing a lot of people with disjointed hitboxes at the very least.

Yeah, there's a lot of like a complete, absolute dog shit early access 3D weapon fighters all over Steam if you want to play that complete garbage.

There's Deadliest Warrior, which is a true weapon fighter, which actually is fun for some dumb reason, right?

That fucking show, that Spike TV show fighting game, turned out to be a pretty fun game.

And

it's a real, like, I would put that in the category of like 3D Soul Calibur style games.

You know, Hellish Quartz is one that's around there.

Ferrana is...

It's doing a lot too differently.

I wouldn't put it in that same space.

It's not scratching the same itch, but it is true that like not just a game where and not just a 2D fighter where everyone has weapons, but like a 3D game where like the

weapon, the weapon matchup is big, the positioning and the spacing and all that stuff is predominantly what the game is about.

It's true.

There aren't many things doing it like this.

Someone might be working on one, you know, but I just feel like

if there was examples of like others beyond that taking off, you know,

it probably would have had a resurgence, but it just doesn't seem to be like the most popular thing that people want to see coming back out of out of fighting games.

When Soul Calibur does come around, there is definitely a hardcore community, especially in France.

It's a huge, there's a huge competitive following over there.

you know, Kayane and shout out to like all those, all those folks in Paris that are like the old, the old Soul Cal heads.

But yeah, I don't, but like outside of those kind of like exceptions, it just doesn't seem to be something that is like in super duper high demand.

And the last game in particular, it was cool, it had some cool stuff, it was around for a little bit, but kind of like

that big tweet that Harada broke down describing the difference between Team Tekken and Team Soul, Project Soul, and like why those things went the way they did.

You know, they Soul Calibur as a team didn't have a single person kind of like fighting to keep it alive with that same thing that Tekken kind of had in a way.

They didn't didn't have that resistance, even though there were competitors inside of Bandy Namco, so that it eventually kind of dissolved.

I can think of a genre that I have not seen in like literally 20 years, and it's one of my favorite genres, and I don't know why I'm not allowed to play it.

So

I had a Sega Genesis, and I really liked Shining Force 1 and 2.

And Shining Force 1 and 2, and then later 3 are strategy, and there's also a Game VR game, but whatever.

That's not what I'm talking about.

There are strategy RPGs that look like Fire Emblem, right?

You go, you move your little dudes around on a grid, and you kill enemies, and then you go to shops and you equip items.

Very similar to Fire Emblem, right?

And the thing that was different about Shining Force

was that in between the strategy RPG battles that were extremely similar to Fire Emblem,

you had a main character that moved around on a realistic world map like Final Fantasy or Phantasy Star.

And you went to towns and talked to townspeople and went to shops instead of outside of a menu.

You just went to the shop and it was like a regular fucking RPG.

It's just that when you got into battles, it was a strategy RPG.

Okay.

And I think there's one Fire Emblem game that uses this format.

Someone in the chat will fill me in on what that is.

But like, that's it.

Strategy RPGs only exist in the you have a couple of menus and then some story and then you get a random, you get a grid-based battle.

Disguise like that.

13 Sentinels is like that.

Every fire emblem is like that.

Oh, Tactics Ogre is like that.

Unicorn Overlord is like that.

Like, every fucking thing.

Like, by far the closest to this is Unicorn Overlord.

But you still can't go into fucking towns with that.

It's super fucking weird.

I don't get it.

It's super cool.

I like strategy RPGs.

It's really cool to be able to walk around a fucking town in a strategy RPG.

Extraordinary high effort to,

unless you go like super retro style, you know, with it.

But yeah, no, that would be cool.

It is cool.

I don't know why it doesn't exist.

I'm going to say sports games with turbo buttons.

I would say sports games with

playing.

Can we say that?

Can we just skip this part?

I suppose you could.

But I just feel disingenuous saying that because I'm not paying attention, right?

That's the thing.

But like midway-style sports games with turbo buttons,

you know, are.

And like, and, you know, extending that, like, not just obviously into NBA Jam, but like, yeah, everything going into the street games.

You know,

cool stuff.

Rematch, rematch.

Yeah.

Fifu?

Was that what we were calling it?

Fifu, yeah.

Fifu?

Yeah.

And I guess, like, you know, there was a period of time when we were also like, yo, what the fuck?

Why is no one copying Monday Night Combat?

People copy Monday Night Combat.

I feel like eventually that

might have become a moment.

Monday Night Combat is just a MOBA.

Well,

once you see third-person camera stuff coming around, like Deadlock, and I guess like, what, Paladins?

Was it?

Right?

Like, you start to get a little bit closer.

There was a news story we didn't cover a little while ago how high-res studios laid off a shit ton of their C-suite so they didn't have to lay off like their developers

so they could keep Smite 2 running.

How about that?

And people were like,

yeah,

yeah, that's great.

Okay.

But

people weren't paying attention.

The reason they did that is that

a few months ago, they had laid off a bunch of their developers also.

They can't lay off more developers.

They would have no developers.

Oh, they just already did that part then.

So the only thing left to cut is the C-suite.

I see.

It's a two-part story.

There we go.

Yes, that makes sense.

Yeah, also the first Ubisoft union in North America, Ubisoft Workers of Canada, Halifax, was a thing that happened as well this week.

That's cool.

Good stuff.

You know, I hope that they can negotiate for wages and conditions that

involve

getting fucking creepy hands away from them while they try to work.

Oh, you know what?

We didn't cover this on the news, but I'm going to steal this spot to cover it.

Did you see the interview about Final Fantasy Tactics, the Evil East Chronicles?

Oh, yes.

The new content from the War of the Lions is not going to be included in the remake.

Not that part.

Not that part.

Okay.

Because, yeah, whatever.

No, the part that's of interest to me is they're like, so why did this game take so long to come out?

And they're like, well,

we threw all that shit away.

We didn't have any of it.

And then he then goes on to

spending a full paragraph of text defending what I assume used to be his boss, going,

well, you know, it was just normal not to keep that stuff back in the day.

So, you know,

it wasn't to be expected to keep those types of records.

So, you know, we had to really work hard to go back and find how to reverse engineer it.

But yeah, no, all that stuff was thrown away and destroyed.

Yeah.

So that's what happened with Final Fantasy Tactics.

That's why it's taken so long for this to come out, is they threw it in the trash.

They threw it away.

I love we lost the build.

I love that.

That's forever, man.

You know,

every time we talk about this kind of thing, I always bring it up and we, and, and, like, there's always somebody new who hasn't heard it.

It's like,

I know for a fact that people have witnessed Japanese companies shredding every file in the filing cabinet and snapping disks and deleting entire hard drives.

The Neo Geo64.

Destroy it.

Destroy all of it.

The Neo Geo64 games were removed from existence, never backed up, and fucking annihilated.

All code, all builds, all memories.

Yeah,

this developer says lost.

That is not true.

These things were not lost.

They were actively destroyed as soon as the games shipped.

Man.

Dude, like, we lost a couple of videos back in the day on the old channel, and I

hate that shit.

I stress about it.

It's so annoying you know i couldn't imagine i couldn't imagine dude it killed brawl

oh we lost that last one which was i was it kirby uh was it kirby airride

uh we we lost one there was one oh oh oh kirby airride okay okay okay yeah yeah way way killed all momentum to do that scene that shit ever again god because we kept hemming and hawing as to whether or not we should just record another one the next day but we all felt like shit because it was destroyed.

And well, and you know, and you welcome to the beginning of me, the backup guy who has a backup audio, a backup video.

I will never lose my footage again.

Oh, did Twitch go down?

Oh, that's cool.

I'm going to keep playing.

Oh, did my fucking hard drive explode?

Oh, that's cool.

I'm going to keep streaming.

You will never stop me again.

God,

yes, yes, 100%.

Okay.

Another quick one over here.

Alright.

I'm watching Shining Force 3 videos in the background here, man.

This game looks like shit.

It's aged badly.

Dear, you two have too many alternate titles, and I refuse to contribute.

Hell yeah, dude.

Favorite fictional super weapon, sci-fi fantasy, whatever.

Anything goes as long as it's a piece of personal piece of fiction.

My favorite is the tongue-eater from the Mage Errant series.

It's a super weapon developed by a curl expansionist empire that uses it as a tool for conquest.

It devours the language of the people it was used on with horrific consequences, as you can imagine.

People who only speak one language went completely feral.

People

who spoke several became less intelligent and more docile.

The customs, histories, and entire cultures of people it was used on would just fall apart rapidly.

Ooh, that's fun food for thought.

That's a skull face.

That's a vocal cord parasite right there.

Yeah, but going conceptual.

That's a really fun thing.

I know what mine is.

I got one.

Yeah, it's the vector cannon.

Okay, yeah, that's, you know.

Just firing that thing is a fucking, it's a narrative.

It's a experience.

It's just, it's just a massive cool vibe.

Nothing to go wrong with that.

I, I, yes, for fucking sick ass hype points, you're, you're, that's peak.

Um, for the idea of it, though, I still hold on to from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the point of view gun.

Oh, yeah, that's a good one.

I'm, it's a favorite.

I fucking love it.

It's a gun you point at somebody and shoot, and for a few seconds, they completely understand where you're coming from.

Just for a couple seconds, and they go, Oh, God, I get it.

Okay, I'm sorry.

The point of view gun's really interesting from a narrative perspective, but it fails to account

for people like myself who are stubborn.

Right.

Because I can imagine, because I've had scenarios in which people have like brought me around to their point of view.

Yeah.

And they go, wow, that's crazy.

I completely understand how you feel.

I don't care, though.

I'm still going to go.

Which is, I'm me, though.

But that's how the gun works.

it fades off and you go back to being you but you just have that little memory of going like oh okay okay i get it i get it i'm still fucking here and i'm not moving but i get it you know i find that lovely i find that wonderful it particular it scratches all the itches that i have in the back of my head you know and like in in the movie when uh marvin uses it you know and like a big wave of ennui just hits all the bad guys and they're just like oh what's the fucking point you know it's like yeah that shit's great i love the point of view gun it's fun stuff so i have a i have a i have a baby story to we can close out the podcast with

uh

so uh the the little man was asking to see me hey bud so the podcast went on uh and when the podcast went on my little man pointed at you

and started going we

because your name's too hard to say oh

cut out the

you are we now

just cut to the chase you get the first letter and the last letter in there close enough

we

adorable

i like it oh i hated it for a console but i love it for me yeah isn't it cute that's great that's good all right later

have a good week everybody