CSB322: Mortal Kombat is the Drake of Fighting Games

Okay, your wire's back in.

Okay, because I saw you.

I saw you.

I decided to bag up at the last possible second.

You boost bagged.

This is

under control.

I'm ready to start the podcast with my emotional support dog.

Okay.

Has the unit been secured?

Yeah, man.

This is like, honestly, I feel like I'm this dog's emotional support human.

Because, like, he's just a baby.

There you go.

There you go.

Okay.

Yo.

If ever there was a game that I would say had been faded by the heavens to succeed,

it would be Expedition 33.

Have you seen today's news?

3.3 million.

On what?

Was it PC?

The 33rd day of sales.

Oh,

that's cool.

That's cool.

It has the mandate of French.

Yeah, the mandate of, yes, French.

That's great.

That's fantastic.

I like that a lot.

That makes me feel good.

Cool.

Okay, so here's what I'm thinking, right?

Yeah.

Speaking of threes,

how about we wait?

Unlike the previous weeks, and we hit spoiler cast full speed at the end.

Oh, I haven't beaten it.

Oh,

well, I guess, or act two.

Act two, act two spoiler cast.

Yes, yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Act two is.

If we have an act two spoiler cast, then boy, we have, we're like,

right the fuck there.

It's like, like,

we're standing with our tippy toes on the finish line.

Okay, so we can have an act two spoiler cast, uh, and let's just throw it out.

So we'll have that in the third act of the podcast.

There you go.

And

then we don't have to play the tippy-toe game or whatever.

Yeah, I hate that fucking game.

But also the front-loaded

hour and a half segment of the last couple of weeks, which is just like, oh, fighting game talk, fucking FF-14, whatever.

French.

Ah!

Baguette!

Yeah, okay.

So in that.

Oh, Starm Baguette.

Okay.

Well, I mean, well, okay.

Well, speaking of that,

I don't know if you've caught wind, but I'll bring this to you.

I don't know if you have any opinions.

I have, I will.

I will have one.

Do you have opinions on shawarma?

It's already made its way to me.

Okay, has it?

Good, good, good.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, so Montreal Shawarma is excellent because we have a lot of Lebanese immigrants.

Just straight up.

There's a Lebanese population in Montreal that's quite high.

All right.

Therefore, they make the good shawarma.

Period.

That is like the end of that discussion.

So let us, we begin with the conclusion then.

So, for those who are catching up, this is very important.

This is very crucial, important, important news.

Shit is popping off between Ottawa and Montreal right now.

Ottawa can go fuck itself.

We are at arms, and it's quite simple.

There was a game

that took place, I guess, about a week or so ago in the Professional Women's Hockey League between the

Ottawa Charge and

the Montreal Victoire, Victoire, right?

And

in the stands of said game where tensions were already flying high, people are watching, playing, someone held up a sign from Ottawa, and that sign read the following text: Montreal Shawarma is mid.

Oh, that's so fucking good.

How

fucking dare you holding up a sign at an event with controversial.

Like, you know,

you see wrestling shows that just some guy in the fucking nosebleeds has like FF8 was the best one.

Yeah, yeah.

And that was Ben Starr, probably.

Push rage.

Classic.

And then confusing people.

So someone had the audacity.

Someone had the gumption to hold up a sign that said Montreal Shawarma is mid.

And

we are proud of our bagels.

We are proud of our smoked meat.

But motherfucker, Shawarma here is

fire.

It is amazing.

Right?

It's crazy.

It's It's such a stupid conversation because, like, no matter what region you are in the world, okay, are we talking about a cultural or ethnic food?

Okay, let's just scale the quality alongside the per capita population metrics and just be completely done with it.

But here's what I think.

Like, if you're going to tell me that, like, on like fucking like Alberta has better Chinese food than British Columbia, you're a fucking stupid idiot.

Are you fucking dumb?

Are you an idiot moron?

But here's the interesting part because after this came up and I went, Reggie, you lived in Ottawa for a bit.

What the fuck is this on about?

And he's like,

I don't know.

And I was like, wait, what?

Why are you taking a pause here, right?

And that, so that led to me doing a little bit of investigative journalism, so to speak.

Games and shawarma journalist.

No, no, just games journalism.

Nah, food journalism.

On the beat.

I put my little hat on with the little press ticket and I went and I looked into the situation.

And here's what I found out.

If you're talking about, so that the bit about the population sizes and such, right?

Ottawa is a small little,

it's the capital, but it's one of those places.

It is the capital.

But it's one of those.

It's very pretty.

But it's one of those cities.

The way I describe it is Spider-Man could not swing.

He would not have anywhere to go.

He would be on foot.

It would be rough, right?

It is what it is.

We over here have about twice the Lebanese population size of Ottawa.

And what that has led to is when folks are opening up restaurants here, they're opening up shawarma joints, but they're also opening up traditional Lebanese cuisine places.

And you have a lot of options because you're serving millions of people.

You have a large population and different things to hit on.

But with a smaller group of people, you kind of just got to play the hits.

So sticking to just shawarma in Ottawa is the only real business move because you're like, we're going to go with what most people in a smaller place are going to want to hit, which is that one quick wrap.

It's the kind of the fast food takeaway bit, you know?

But what that means is, even though they're the self-proclaimed Shawarma capital of Canada,

are you fucking self-proclaimed?

Oh my God.

But what that means is, is that they have been standing on just the Shawarma game for a couple decades now.

So they're getting a little bigger for their britches, right?

They're starting to get a little cocky about it because they're like, we've just been working on this one thing, not the rest of it.

And we're claiming, you know, uh greatness and we're claiming to to be the the the peak of it in canada right so there's over 200 shawarma places there apparently um and everybody's coming at it coming hot you're coming in there saying that montreal shawarma is mid as if bustan does not exist right there on screen i i dude taige looks at me like i'm crazy the first thing i do when i go home is fucking ring up DoorDash be like, I gotta get some fucking Bustin.

And then she's like, really?

Bustin?

Again?

And then it comes in.

And then she's like, give me some of that.

So, yes, right?

Get some of that right now.

And some of the

potatoes and the garlic potatoes with the sauce, right?

Right on the side there.

Amazing.

So the thing is, is that now

this has spread out into a ways because you do have that, and they have X abandoned, and they have other Bustans, which, to be fair, are not as good as the original OG place.

The one next to the fucking Geeking Corner.

Yes, exactly.

The Crescent one.

But

everything on Crescent's better than everything else that's not on.

But when you talk about just like tons of random places like opening up as well, there's names like Amir is a place you can go in and get a storm.

And they're usually like, eh, but they've spread out quite a bit.

Basha is another place that's like, eh, but there's a bunch of them.

You know what I mean?

They're around.

But like, if you're going to.

But you could do...

You could do way fucking worse than going to Amir for lunch.

That's what I'm.

Yeah, but it's just, if you're going to get one, and if you're going to talk about what the best in town is to is to offer what we've got there's a couple places around that uh are not the walking into like the the you know the mcdonald's kind of thing off the off the corner that you're gonna get a much better result in for example because i've i've like amir is a kind of place where they might do like here's where you know you fucked up is if you get a shawarma and they put lettuce in it and then they heat the lettuce up

right that's madness that's insanity get the fuck out shut them down go leave

you're not allowed i don't want this right and that has said that has happened before.

But

that's worse than mid.

That's that's a crime.

However, the places that like have since come pop up here, we've got places like Shawarma's with a Z opened up.

There's a Moose,

right?

There's a couple different places that are like newer and have been around for a couple of years and set up shop.

One place that's been crushing it

that is currently being hailed potentially as the new king over here is Shawarma Originale, which I then proceeded to get a couple of

bites of to make sure to remind Reggie where his allegiances lie, right?

And they do it with the thinner, like the Sage bread, so it's not pita and it's crispy, and you got that thick, like you're looking at it, and like the meat to wrap ratio is massive.

The toppings and sauces are on the outside, right?

Doing good stuff, doing good stuff.

And the noises and faces he made were clearly like, you need, you need to remember where you live and where your house is sir

how dare you hesitate talking about ottawa and and and what they got um

so we did a little a little a little of that and uh i had some and it confirmed that this is phenomenal phenomenal shawarma uh from originale but what we then discovered what i then discovered was there's a place that uh ottawa kind of claims as their big top uh uh joint which is dunya is uh shawarma and

they have recently expanded and as of last September, they opened up a Montreal

expansion.

So we're going to have a direct competition.

So now I'm curious.

I'm like, now I might need to go kick a door down

and politely order a shawarma and see how it tastes.

I think there's actually a way more interesting discussion to be had here, which also surfaced its way to me via a certain poll that you took about food locations.

I don't ever take polls.

So when those things happen, that's just chat and and mods doing that.

Oh, that really?

Well, I don't even know.

Is there a certain stance not that the best places in town denote the overall quality of a place of food?

Okay.

So yeah, when the okay, so that was a part of it.

Yeah, because like I'm looking at Chat Arena and like when a poll pops up, it doesn't pop up there.

So I'm like, I don't know.

Yeah, no, I have no idea what the polls say or don't.

You're arguing amongst yourselves, I guess.

But that being said, yes, I disagree on the idea that the median should be called in here.

but it is like the difference between a review of a game versus

a buyer's guide suggestion, right?

Should the price be included?

Is this a decision where you're trying to, if someone wants to find out, should I buy this versus just judging it as the art for what it was, right?

I don't know.

I'm of the opinion that when people go to a town, like most people don't actually do any research whatsoever.

They just wander around to eat things.

I don't know if they do or don't.

I don't know.

Maybe you, I think you do some, but you maybe you do do research into like, let me go check out the activity place like the biodome or something and then you go all right We'll just eat anywhere around it Maybe that's a thing right I like to I definitely care about looking stuff up and seeing what's around and especially if there's places that are worth going to that are like great or like I'm only gonna get one shot at I do check out what the food situation is and I and I want to go there so to me I'm like I don't the median of like oh if you walked in across like off the street to a random place is such a toss-up because you can walk into a horrible place with the worst shit ever with heated lettuce and fucking butt you know what I mean like like what I'm gonna tell you what man there is there is a core difference here depending on the person right I guess so so I used me and Paige used to do like a bunch of food research when we're you know out and about and whatnot and you know what changed that

I'm only gonna walk this stroller two blocks okay Okay, I get that.

Yeah, there's a there's a change to the situation.

Food scenario is the two blocks from my fucking feet right now.

And so like, as I like, as someone who's going to be like, yo, what is the city got going?

I'm going to be like, yeah, let's hit up the spots that you, that, you stand on, you know, that you claim are like why you should come here and what you should check out, you know?

Um,

if it's just, it's, I guess, yeah, I can understand if you're looking for something that you're just like, I never want to plan where I'm going and I just want to walk in and like roll the dice.

I just think that even in a city where like that's a, where the, there's enough good quality places, there's always going to be bad businesses that you can walk into in any populated area that's going to be terrible food, right?

Like, I just feel that like the game of rolling averages in a way is like, you're still experiencing so there's so many chances of just getting something awful that I'm like, I don't even want to play that game, you know?

Why, why even like, like, yeah, I just, I'm just not interested in that whatsoever.

So to me, it's about like, if you say, yo, we got the best slice, you know, if you say, we got the best fucking chowder, you got the whatever, you know,

um,

you hit up bodega sandwiches or whatever.

Every city's got their own things.

I'm just kind of like, what are the names you stand on?

And like, where should I go check these out?

And what's worth visiting?

And so when it comes down to it, if you're going to talk about like Montreal Shawarma versus Ottawa Shawarma, so I'm like, what do you bring into the table, right?

My analogy was the Olympic team that we get together to represent the country is not a bunch of random people.

Like, you don't randomly grab your population and go out and play the game.

You grab.

Bro, that'd be awesome.

Right?

You grab.

That would be be so great.

That would be so awesome.

The American fucking all-star team was crushing it with NBA stars.

You know, like, that's how they do that.

You, you represent your city, your country with the talent, you know?

That would be the, I would, oh, it's.

I would see every hockey game in a season if it was like.

20 random people picked from Moosehead versus 20 random people picked from Hamilton.

So, you know what's funny is that like when it comes to boxing, they have an there's a kind of middle ground on that where Olympic boxers are not meant to be multi-millionaire professionals, but they need to be like the best of the amateur circuit, you know?

So you can be someone that goes through, has a lot of amateur fights and has a lot of experience, but like they generally tend to want to go or they tend to pick like people that are not crossing that threshold into Don King fucking, you know, high-profile crazy numbers, you know?

So losers.

The best of the amateur circuit, so to speak, right?

But anyway, but all this aside like i'm just like if you're right if you're if you're putting those words out there if you're speaking violence into fruition right you better be you better come correct with it and the fucking if you want to put the little garlic sauce on top to this whole little thing when i was asking reggie i was like so what are the places like what do you remember right what's going on in ottawa that they're so getting so you know big about this and he's like there was a really good place that had great shawarma in ottawa i remember them i was like yeah what were they called?

Montreal Shawarma.

That's so fucking funny.

The name of the restaurant.

That is the funniest possible ending to the story.

That is, that is, that is like.

Can you imagine?

This is the kind of punchline that if you wrote it that way would come off like shit because it's so on the nose.

I can't.

It's real.

It's perfect.

I can't believe.

I can't.

Imagine having to say that out loud to somebody as you're defending Ottawa Shawarma and you go to the favorite

pizza joint what's your favorite pizza joint in Chicago?

Oh New York

right

with a straight face you gotta fucking say that shit like

beautiful

I love it

oh God bless

amazing.

I love it.

So yeah, that's what's going on, you know?

you come with your fucking showarma takes.

You best watch the fuck out.

And I'm going to find out what's going on at this

dunya spot and see what's happening.

Give it a fair shake.

But

yeah, just that's more to be continued.

Hey, man.

That's

so fucking funny.

Oh, my God.

Oh.

That conversation is over.

That is a done deal.

But hey,

our nation's capital, though.

They got a a nice lawn i don't want to hear not they don't want to hear nothing from ottawa it's got parliament is very pretty they got a nice building very beautiful nice lawn and their their hockey team is they're they're anyway all right whatever it's about like i think victoria is a little prettier personally that's the capital of uh of bc out here it's on vancouver island it's gorgeous uh

but yeah

ottawa's very pretty and the and the politicians go there.

Well, I was going to say, like, the team is called the senators.

Like, that's

your team is literally, you know.

But yeah, no, it's one of those spots where, guess what?

How many, hey, Americans, how many of you thought Toronto was the capital of Canada?

Be honest.

Just be honest.

Show of hands.

Right?

Because I feel like

that's a common regular mistake that happens because they're like, oh, really?

But that's the city everybody talks about.

That's the one I have.

I don't know, man.

I think that's like genuinely unfair.

I'm going to actually go to bat

for our Yankee brethren here because

D.C.

versus City that matters is so consistently not the capital of wherever

that it's crazy.

Because times change and population.

The city isn't the capital of fucking New York State.

Shut up.

That's a trick.

That's a fucking trick.

It's, yeah, because when the founding of it occurs versus where the people move over time, you know, it tends to change.

But yeah, that's the thing is like, and Ottawa's not even in the top three, you know?

So

there's four cities in this fucking country that matter: fucking Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal.

You can, you can swap them around however you like, depending on what you value.

And then the fucking governments in Ottawa.

Yeah.

Calgary's out there.

Calgary's out there.

Yeah, whatever.

You know,

I'd say that's on the list, but still.

They got steers and hats and shit.

Yeah.

Solid as says Edmonton, spoken like a true fucking Ontario kid.

All right.

No one would ever say that.

We're not going to.

Yeah.

No one in this life.

Does Manitoba exist?

Can you prove it?

Woolly.

Can you?

Prove what Paige and I drove through the prairies.

If had there not been a fucking sign denoting, hey,

this is prairie number one.

This is prairie number two.

Fucking nothing.

Just couldn't be.

Just a Just fucking a thousand kilometers of featureless terrain.

I have nothing against Manitoba, but I also have nothing Manitoba.

For Manitoba.

I learned in school that it exists.

This is true.

It's a nice, clean rectangle.

No, it's not.

That's Saskatchewan.

Manitoba is the one that has the extra on the side because it's attached to Ontario.

Oh, fuck.

Dude, okay, fuck, dude.

Oh, my God.

You thought I was talking about Saskatchewan?

No, no, it's worse.

I fucking forgot Saskatchewan existed entirely.

I thought it went Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, BC.

I just deleted the fucking entire sales from my mind.

Oh, no.

No, that's our Wyoming.

That's the

rectangle.

You know, bro, no one gives a shit.

Oh, boy.

All right.

Yeah.

And

to be fair, my Wyoming opinions are learned from Garfield and friends

years ago.

It's wild because like I'm married to Paige, right?

And she's from the States.

And like, I'll be like, I'll mention a state and she'll have like a really incredibly intense opinion about that state that I don't know literally a single detail about at all.

Yeah.

And I'm like, why do they say skibbity Riz, Ohio?

And she's like, oh, fucking Ohio.

Like, why?

What?

Yeah.

And like,

she can't even like get it out.

It's just this like oppressive vibe.

Like, oh, are you a mass hole?

Are you from Massachusetts?

You call yourself a mass hole?

Yeah,

there's a lot of local shit.

And I feel like the most important information we've learned about states we don't know anything about is when Pornhub put out that search bar.

That's interesting information.

That's fascinating.

Which states are into step and which states are into head tie?

Let's go.

Yeah, man.

crucial all right

hey you ever hey you ever have something happen to you and then it becomes a discussion and then you start to bring it to other people and you have no idea if it's going to be like a big argument like vomiting into a purse or if it's going to be like a two like a two sentence like yeah okay no we yeah we're in agreement that's sure

okay so

something

I'm going to be really brave here and talk about something that happened on one of my recent streams.

And I want to talk to you about a definition of something and see where you fall on it.

I would like to know

what you consider pissing your pants.

Oh.

And what counts and what doesn't count.

Okay, okay, okay, I know.

Let's set the stage.

We can all agree sitting, standing, walking somewhere with your fucking dick in your pants or your pussy in your pants and they're under the underwear.

Yep.

Right.

And you just fucking blast it and it's going down your leg.

That obviously is counted as pissing your fucking pants.

Yes.

Like there's no discussion there.

Yes.

Right.

And we can all agree that if you're at the urinal and there's an unfortunate drop or two of splashback off the fucking thing of the urinal, that that's probably not pissing your pants.

Yes, correct.

That's just an unfortunate reality.

That's that's Now, here's the question.

That's blowback.

Yeah.

That's blowback.

When you go to the bathroom and you forgot about the drawstring of your pajamas existing at all,

and the stream exits your body and exits the pants, but hits the drawstring

and splashes back on you.

Is that pissing your pants?

Did the drawstring?

It's a part of the pants.

You didn't add that yourself.

That's a part of the pant, yeah.

That's pissing on your pants.

That's pissing on your pants.

That is, yes, that is pissing on your pants.

Yes.

You have pissed.

You can add the extra word, but you have pissed on your pants.

This is.

Okay.

All right.

We can agree on this.

I would actually agree with that pretty clearly.

Now, here's the question.

Here's the real

thick of it.

So this happened on on the Deltarune stream.

Clearly.

I was fucking pissed all over the front of my pants.

Oh, yeah.

I fucking forgot the drawstring was there.

And Paige was like, oh, my God, this motherfucker pissed his pants.

And my response was not even, nah.

My response was, ah, it happens.

To which she responds with, what the fuck?

No, it doesn't.

To which...

Chat started to fucking fight as to, nah, man, what the fuck?

Or, yeah, no, it happens.

Wait, she took.

It occurred.

She went for the bit and then you agreed and then reversed positions.

You were supposed to fight back on that, yeah.

Yeah, I was supposed to be like, no, I didn't.

Instead, I was like, nah, man.

It's a little piss happen sometimes.

Okay, this went in a completely different direction from where I thought you were going.

I have to say.

Because I quickly did some math in my brain for a completely different scenario.

Oh, yeah, what was your scenario?

Okay, so here's where I thought you were going, all right?

Yeah, okay.

This is, fuck it.

We're just inventing shit to talk about now.

When you say, as an adult, right, oh, I fucking pissed my pants, right?

Now, there's people, now there's a, there's a qualifier, which is when people get drunk and wasted, you're just like, ah, I don't know where I am.

I'm going to give a free pass to anybody who's blackout drunk for me.

That's just like, okay,

for shitting and pissing.

This almost doesn't apply because it's like, of course, you pissed your pants, whatever.

I'm not drunk.

I pissed my pants.

Listen, man.

Drink less.

If you like are just your pants are up and wouldn't know whether you're going to the bathroom or not, whatever's happening.

If you give a little, a little pulse out yeah right a little pulse out of piss yeah you piss your pants okay as an adult yeah yeah okay i agree okay all right i agree with that okay no no no no oh there's a follow-up

what about

you're you're done with the urinal yeah you're shaking it out yep shaking it out yep maybe if you're at home maybe use like a like a toilet paper just like dab it up make sure you do what you got to do take care of business but then you put it back and then the extra because the pressure got released because of the way you put it back.

And the remainder.

And like that fucking single millimeter remainder that was hiding at the back.

Oh, yeah.

Just falls out.

So first, yeah.

If you pissed your pants then, you still did.

And here's why.

Because you fucked up.

Oh, shit.

You should know.

Because by now, if you are going, if you're creating waistband tension under the dick, then you are cutting off some of the piss.

And that's your fault.

You should know better.

So this is...

Because if you kept creating any tension underneath is going to hold back some, that is going to surprise you when you tuck it back in you need to be loose flowing as it all comes out so that you don't have that situation so this is the funniest thing because in my life is now a circle right because i remember being like i was like i i didn't like using urinals because i like to use a stall to piss because i'd put my fucking pants down to my ankle like feels good man feels good man right and like because there's no fucking there's no fucking mistakes happening here.

Okay.

Right.

All right.

And then butters.

Like, and then it was my older brother who was like, what the fuck?

He's just go to the urinal, right?

And then sometimes that last drop would fucking hit.

I'd be super mad.

And now as an adult, now as an adult, fuck it.

All bathroom activities, completely naked.

There's no need to put your clothes on.

Okay, all right.

So that is an extreme.

That is an extreme that we have taken.

That I am not following you down that road.

I'm quite content to say I've learned how to manipulate the various boxers, shorts, and things.

No risks.

Okay, but the point of establishing that a single pulse, right,

you know, one key goal out little is pissing your pants as an adult is because if you are a child and you go, oh, but stop it, you didn't piss your pants

as a kid.

You got to take it easier on the kids.

Exactly.

And so, what I did in my head when you started introducing this is I gave myself, I said, I said, I like, there is a reverse chart where the age you are has a higher threshold of piss allowed to come into pant before we say you have pissed your pants.

If a three-year-old goes

and a little bit and stops, three-year-olds and nonsense,

you're good.

You're good, right?

You're good.

If you're six,

double that perhaps, right?

Yeah.

And then we go up and up and up to the point where, you know, somewhere in your teenage years or so, it's kind of like, okay, like you shouldn't,

if you, you know, are we getting to that level of like the whole thing is soaked?

Because that as a kid is like, yeah, all right, you did, right?

But, but, like,

but I say, like, man, I remember like I was like eight or nine years old, and I had that fucking horrible dream.

You know, that fucking dream?

The dream where you're going to the bathroom.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then you wake up and you're like, fuck,

that was not a dream.

I just pissed my whole life on.

The whole, it's a fucking disaster.

Now I'm just old enough to feel intense shame as I explain to my mom and dad that I got to wash all these fucking sheets.

Yeah.

So, you know, I just, I'm just, I'm trying to create, like, I don't know what the formula would be, but it's almost just like whether you have to count it by volume or so.

But age, the number of years you have been alive is just an inverse with the amount that's allowed to come out before we call it.

Yeah, you pissed your pants.

All right.

I pissed on my pants a little bit.

On your pants.

Yep, that happened.

Yeah.

On my pants.

And

enough of the people were like, yeah, it happens that I was like, eh, it happens.

Yeah.

But you.

I changed my pants.

But, but all these technicalities.

Jack couldn't smell, you know.

All these technicalities where you're like, oh, you went over the waistband or yeah, extra accessories got in the way.

You didn't shake or whatever.

I'm almost 40.

I'm just going to take all my fucking clothes off.

I don't give a shit.

That is, okay.

Well,

that'll do it.

That'll do it.

Who's going to stop me?

But to anybody else, I say, you know, you got to learn.

the ropes.

You got to learn the tech.

You got to get up to speed with like

what causes a dangerous situation to occur.

You know what's awesome?

You know what's fucking awesome, like genuinely fantastic.

So, like, I have the baby now, right?

He's like almost two.

Now, now that, like, I have to teach him things, every mistake I make, you know what?

That's a learning experience.

I can just, I could just kick down the road so they don't.

So, you know, really,

really,

I recently just pissed all over the front of my pants as a service to my little guy.

So I can remember to tell him to watch out for the waistband.

Sorry, the drawstring.

There you go.

There you go.

Yeah.

That's good parenting.

You know, I would even, I'm even going to extend it and say that, like, if you're, if you're out there, like, you know, pissing in the woods or trying to like write in the snow or something, and you get, and you, and you don't calculate

the fact that A, there's wind.

Yeah, wind's bad.

The elements are in play now.

Yeah, you don't want to.

And B,

the stream drop off,

you know,

you want an abrupt cut, but if it slowly trails off and that shit's coming back on you, that is still your fault, right?

You should be using visual calculus, checking which way we're going, checking the external, and being ready for an abrupt stop to not let that fly back on you.

And if you don't calculate all that shit, you take all the blame.

You take the heat for that.

You pissed on your fucking pants.

And also, you know, there's a follow-up to this, which is

when I posted this story.

I posted this on Blue Sky.

I don't give a fuck anymore.

I don't give a fuck.

I had a couple people be like, what, you don't sit down?

I'm like, I would rather piss on my fucking feet by accident every single day of the rest of my life than sit down and fucking pee.

Maybe that is like old school macho nonsense.

I don't give a shit.

I don't give a fuck.

I would rather fucking drunkenly piss all over the fucking seat and fall down than sit down to pee.

I'm not,

I'm not, we can't listen.

Last time this came up, a lot of people were out there talking about, nah, just sit down though.

And I'm like, go fuck yourself.

I will die.

And we'll just

leave it there.

All right.

I would rather die.

And that's it.

You know that?

That's it.

I'm sorry.

We're not going to agree.

We're not going to agree.

I don't care.

You know that scene in King of the Hill where Hank shakes George Bush's hand and he's got like a limp fucking handshake?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

And he's like,

it just destroys his whole fucking thing.

If I went over to your fucking house and I'm like, oh,

I didn't realize you were in the bathroom and I open up and you're like sitting down to pee and I'd be like, and I close the door and we have an awkward moment, I'd be like, the podcast is over.

I just, I'm not.

I'm just deleting your number out of my fucking phone.

No, sorry.

Not just, it's, it's, you know, I, I, I, look, man,

we don't have to fucking, we don't have to psychoanalyze it.

We don't have to go further, but nothing, no shame, no shame to anybody, you know.

But for me personally, I'm just not.

I, you know, it is, it'd be how it is.

No, man.

On this bitch of an earth.

And you know what?

I'm going to be 90 years old and the fucking gen

B or whatever the fuck they are today.

It's like, can you believe people used to stand up to pee?

And I'm going to be out there on my lawn going, yeah, right now.

I'll do all my lawn.

I'll still stand in.

You can't stay, you fucking kids.

I will always remember, I will always remember in fucking Naruto when Akamaru is spinning around 360ing that shit.

And I was like, damn, look at him go.

That dog is crushing it.

Psycho Crusher while just covering optimal, you know, like,

incredible.

All right.

Cool.

I'm glad we've taken care of that.

I'm glad.

So you know that thing we were talking about right before before we started the podcast?

Yeah.

Like right before?

When we were talking about that, I'm like, man, we got to get all this.

Oh, I thought you had to pay shit growing pants talking.

Oh, it crossed my mind and I just, you know,

I know exactly what you're thinking, 100%.

Don't worry about it.

What's going on?

Oh, okay.

So I'm going to skip over the thing I actually spent most of my time with, which is I played Expedition 33.

Yeah.

We'll save that discussion for later.

Yeah.

I, you know, took a few days because I was working working on some other shit.

I got like, you know, going on, and like, fucking

you blasted through.

I was just started being like, you know what?

I'm just going to fucking start streaming this.

And well, I had this moment.

Did you make a decision to go like hard as fuck?

So I was like, I'm well, because I'm looking at my schedule, right?

And my schedule right now, I'm on day like 19 or 20 of streams in a row.

And I have like 14 more to go.

Okay.

Because it's

X Doom expedition podcast.

Doom expedition podcast.

Delta rune.

Delta rune.

Doom.

Expedition.

Expedition.

Expedition.

Podcast.

Here comes fucking Night Rain.

Okay.

Night Rain is like, it's just like on and on.

Okay.

Okay.

And then the Switch 2.

And then

I was like, okay, is there any possibility that I could possibly, conceivably beat this game

by the time fucking night rain comes out i see i see okay that's

the answer to that question was um

well if i help put the baby to bed and then just go right back to it

i can just fucking blast it

okay uh

and uh that represented a really genuinely hilarious interaction between my wife and i in which she's like honey you're working a lot you're streaming a lot i don't want you to get sick right

It's like, because, you know, this is like 19 days in a row.

And it's like, maybe that's a lot, right?

I don't know, whatever.

And I'm like, okay, I promise I will be in bed

at 1 a.m.

Which is not too late, right?

It's late, but it's not too late.

Right.

As long as

I am not doing this highly specific thing the story seems to be leading up to near the end of the second act.

Okay.

So it's 12.55

and I'm doing this highly specific thing.

And then Joel raids me with like 3,000 people.

Thank you, Joel.

That's Varg Skelethor.

And then I get text messages from wife going, keep going, keep going.

Okay, okay.

So listen, raids are a really cool feature that can allow people to check out other people and encourage folks to see new folks, and that's all great.

They are also a gun.

They are a gun.

And there have been a couple of times where

at the end of my battery life, where I'm about to fucking punch out, and you get a raid.

It's like three times your current.

And you're just like, oh.

Because now you also have to be like, hello, welcome, everybody.

I swear to God, I'm not usually this dead.

And you're like, oh, fuck.

And you have to go into the pitch.

Yeah.

It's just,

you know.

First thing I do, bam.

Yeah, hostile.

Hostile raids.

Dog in a bag.

Check this out.

And then it's like, and also, I felt really bad because, like,

to anyone who was in Joel's stream when he raided me,

I was doing some spoiler-ass fucking super fucking spoiler shit

in the dead ass middle of the raid.

There was no way to take it.

There's nothing you can do.

There's nothing you can do about that.

No, I mean,

involuntarily, you know, although I think,

no, the warning is just, the warning before you reclick OK is just about

mature viewers.

You can't be like, oh, spoiler.

It's just like, hey, man, this is dicks or whatever.

Yeah, you know, back to the days of day one, Dark Souls 3, Final Boss,

spoiled on the PlayStation.

That's the worst I've ever seen to date.

Yep, yep, yep.

The game itself.

The game itself.

But, anyways, okay, so yeah, we'll talk about Expedition 33 towards the end of the day.

So yeah, that's been the most of it.

This morning, I

took a look at the tiny build uh indie showcase uh that was a sponsored stream, okay, sponsored.

Uh, uh, which they showed off a couple things.

They showed off a cool dinosaur game called Ferocious, which I played after uh streams very early.

Uh, they play they showed off a game called The King is Watching, which is like a kind of like a loop hero, but like basically your peasants only work the tasks you give them when you're physically looking at them.

Okay, um, and there was another game I played called uh

Drill Core, which is fucking fantastic.

Which is, it's a demo out now, and it's

coming out of early access in a couple, I think a month, where you're basically just running like

automated Mr.

Driller underneath the platform.

But every night you got to pull your little dudes up, and then you play Missile Command.

with bugs coming down.

And so you are having to run

how how much do I upgrade the little dudes digging versus how much am I upgrading the turrets that are protecting my machinery as you are like RTS base building on the center platform.

Okay.

It's really cool.

You said ferocious dinosaurs.

I was like, oh, is that just like a dinosaur simulator?

And then I see a

man with a gun.

Man with a gun survival game.

I got killed by a scorpion.

Gotcha.

That game is very early.

Okay.

So there's that.

And then me and Paige went through the Deltar Rune chapters one and two.

The replay.

Because, hey, you

fucking glad we did that.

Because

turns out I don't, me and Paige didn't remember like anything about chapter two.

Oh, nothing.

With like Queen and Birdo.

Yeah, I know.

We remember Queen and Birdley, right?

But like, we don't, we didn't remember like, and we remember Spampton.

But like the actual sequence of events or like with the Stinger and like the for the next chapter world,

right, right, okay.

For the meta meta plot, like nothing, like absolutely nothing.

Uh, so hey, that, those Toby Fox games, pretty good.

It's also really strange because I remember we did chapter one and two in like single sittings.

We were like just blowing through it, and it's like that was five and seven years ago.

Yeah.

Those were very different pets and pages.

Oh, okay.

That was a different world.

So now we're like, we're like checking the fucking watch and texting a babysitter going, oh, we can we go through it 30 more minutes, mom?

Like, basically.

So the difference from for me here is like, I would, I think I need a recap as well, but I would just sooner click through the old LP and just like get the beats quickly instead of like doing a full run-through again, you know?

So,

yeah,

but no,

like doing it seems like it has more value.

Also, I hate watching myself.

I

hate it.

I fucking hate it.

And it's for two reasons.

One is that it emphasizes to me how much I am a fucking Skinner box in human form.

So like something will happen in the game and then I will say something out loud while watching it and then Pat will say it out loud in the stream.

Okay.

And I'll be like, oh, I'm a fucking input-output machine.

I have, I'm like, you can design scenarios to make me say certain things.

Okay, well, have you ever had the opposite, which is way more terrifying, where you watch something

and then

you respond to something that you see, and then you, in the video, says the complete opposite thing?

Yeah, I hate it.

That's way worse, in my opinion.

Super angry.

Yeah.

I'll take being so stupid.

I'll take the Skinner box over the like, what the fuck?

I've had the complete opposite response.

I don't like it.

Yeah.

Okay.

I don't like it.

Okay.

Fair enough.

What else is going on?

Not a whole lot.

We had the boy very briefly come on stream in audio form only during one of the

streams so he could sing us twinkle twinkle little star and so he could tell everybody uh what daddy's noise was okay

So Paige asks the boy, hey, little man, what's daddy's special noise?

And every single time he goes,

thanks, bud.

So

confirmation that there actually is a baby then.

Because up to now, it could be an elaborate bit.

Oh, I mean,

he beat the wall boss with Rusty in Armored Corps 6

on stream once.

So, you know, so you didn't watch this, but I was streaming and Paige had to go run an errand.

So I grabbed like a little six-month-old guy and I turned the camera off because, you know, of his privacy.

And then I audibly gave him the controller.

Ah.

And said, okay, everybody, the baby is playing.

Ah, yeah.

And then

he beat the wall

with Rusty.

You know who else beat the wall?

Snooped off.

That's true.

While lighting up, actually.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Got it.

And so, you know, there's the proof there.

For sure.

For sure.

Aside from that, not all that much.

Just kind of drooling away at Expedition 33 and

hoping to get my computer fixed.

So I don't know if I talked about that here, but my Intel 13th generation CPU is dead.

It has the rot or the rust.

Is that the living room one?

Yeah, it's the living room one.

Okay.

So Intel 13 gen CPUs were made badly and a little bit of oxidization crept into some of those models,

which meant that over time it will essentially rust out.

And I have been noticing like just

catastrophic stability issues on that PC that have only been getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.

I contacted Intel, they tell my troubleshooting steps and provided my serial number.

And they said,

Yeah, no, you're covered for full warranty replacement.

And they sent me a new CPU.

Oh, that's nice.

So I'm going to get my computer guy to swap it out.

I know.

This week.

Well, was that an extra, or was that just included in service?

That's included in service.

Okay.

Wow.

Cool.

Damn.

The only thing I had to do is I had to pay $25 in shipping so that we would do...

There's two ways you can do it.

You can send them your faulty CPU and they can send you a new one back.

Or...

You can pay $25 and they'll send you the new one first.

And then you ship the faulty one back.

Okay, okay.

Which is a very big difference in terms of a primary computer use.

Yeah, I just

made a decision like maybe fucking 20 years ago when FutureShop was like, Do you want to pay for an extra warranty?

And I was like, No, I don't because these things it never ends up being the case.

And when you do, and you have to go through this, like interrogation.

The RMA process, the interrogation room, you know, returns and shit.

And like, the one time I ever went through like with

the manufacturer warranty was when my Game Boy, I had a Game Boy color back in the day that like I sent back to Nintendo.

And they

they just did, it wasn't a replacement.

They just they cleaned it and then repaired and sent it back.

But like, yeah, but it, it took so long and it was just so not worth it that I was like, fuck this.

I gotta say, Intel's customer service on this has been excellent.

Cool.

The, I got a rep that that would email me every two days with different steps, and they'd be like, can you send us your BIOS information?

I'm like, yeah, here you go.

And then they've sent me, they filled out my customs form for me and said, just print this out and put three copies of it in the box and then use this sticker.

Okay.

And then that's that.

So

that'll be fixed up.

So next week, I'll talk to you about FF14 for the first time in forever.

Because

I tried to like, oh, maybe I'll play half an hour of the game after

the baby's gone to sleep.

Crash, crash, crash, crash.

It's a fun experience because you get to see what games are really vulnerable to a fucky CPU.

And one of those games is FF14.

Baldur's Gate, fucking rock solid.

Never crashes no matter what part of my PC is dying.

F14 crashes every time I alt tab and every 20 minutes.

Strange.

Huh.

Well, I'm glad that you had a decent customer service experience there because I'm very happy with it.

I'll let you know how it is resolved next week.

I'm very reluctant and traumatized from, you know, that I'm just like, I'd rather just skip the whole process.

Fuck that whole thing.

Then again,

well, the different ways, the different use cases for my PC stuff is,

you know,

if I could fucking

preserve it

in a deep, cold,

you know, never moving, All atoms have stopped moving.

Stop cables constantly.

Yeah.

That's not really a viable solution.

No, it is not.

I'll be streaming Expedition 33 and Night Rain this week over at twitch.tv/slash Pat Stares at.

Go look at that.

That's what's going on with Pat.

Has 14

they started their new chapter and stuff.

Like, have they, uh,

how many events past the beginning of the new era are are they on?

Uh, we the 7.0 is the expansion, and then they're 7.1 and 7.2, and today is 7.25.

Okay.

And they always go up to the X, whatever the expansion number is, 0.5.

So we are now halfway through the expansion as of literally today.

So, woke Lamau 0.5.

Is that what Woke Lamau?

2.5.

Okay.

Okay.

Whatever that fucking, whatever happened.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Cool.

All right.

I will

grab the baton,

so to speak.

The only things I...

So, yeah, we talked about Shawarma.

Hey, the Montreal Street Comic Festival happened and went, walked around.

Showing Fox Kate around town a little bit.

And we checked out some of the booths.

And yeah, it had a nice little

time.

The

Ponto kun artist uh

was there and this time around it was like like i like i went in to like get some more uh merch and for those who don't recall ponto kun is the um the construction cone mascot of montreal that is uh

that is around

yeah and you you basically have little cute little construction cone that you see everywhere in the city and uh this one's got eyes on it and it's like having adventures all around town um and and this and like ever since the clip and then other people have seen her at a couple other shows.

And I was like, hey, I heard about you at this podcast.

So she's like, oh, hey, what's up?

You know, and got to be like, yo, like, keep just, this is perfect.

Right.

And like, one of the things I love the most about it is that like the little construction cone is not bitter or angry or anything.

It's like, like delightfully.

enjoying itself and having fun in the most innocent way, which is just like perfect because what the thing is in and of itself is a statement, is the statement.

You know?

So I was and you know, so yeah, I got a little bag and some other stuff and I was like, can I get some of those little eyes?

Because I want the little clear eye stickers so that if you see a cone, you can go just pontos everywhere.

And she's like, well, I can't really sell them because we can't encourage people to go, you know, deface whatever legally or so.

But meh, maybe that give them out sometimes.

Maybe you can, you know, maybe there's other ways we can figure, you know, but I just want those little cute, rare cartoon eyes to just stick on a construction cone around the city, you know, and I don't remember the name, but Ponto Kun has a little buddy, which is like a little pylon that also is a little more, it's like a little but grumpy, a little grumpy pylon as well.

So, you know, the city mascot of construction continues.

It's, it's, it's great.

Um,

I, I, I, I want this to get like so much more big and like established so that it's it's massively hilarious and like innocent, but so clearly embarrassing in its existence, you know, to the city as an exist as

an actual thing, you know.

It'd be wonderful if we could go to

a downtown event or whatever and see someone in a giant construction cone costume just taking photos with the kids or whatever.

Anyway.

Played a bit more of Kill Knight.

And

yeah, not much to say there, except it's exactly what I was describing.

It's a whole lot of fun.

And

there's a just

still standing by recommending that game, really cool.

And the rhythm of when you're getting, when you get better at it and managing all the different

imminent threats is a whole lot of fun.

It has a, when you're, when you're kind of surrounded and you're, you know, surviving and whatever.

And in a lot of cases, I think,

you know, the reverse difficulty curve.

I'm going to hold my hand up.

I reached out to a Lebanese friend of mine

during our Schwarma discussion.

Oh.

So we have a.

I believe I know who.

Hey, we, yeah.

We have

a weigh-in from a Montrealer who is Lebanese.

Ottawa, probably.

Seen here has gone downhill.

So there's a fucking wrench in that fucking conversation.

I will continue to investigate.

I will continue to get to the bottom of this.

All right.

You're going to have to go to Ottawa.

I'm trying to avoid that outcome.

This entire setup.

I would too.

I would too.

This entire setup has been to avoid that outcome, but we'll see where this goes.

What was I saying?

Oh, yeah, no, just

it's it's pretty it's yeah anyway a good game very fun very cool but managing the

hordes coming at you where you have the

reverse difficulty curve of like a gungeon nurse style game where you're like your guns suck at first, so it's harder to survive everything coming at you, but then as you get better and stronger weapons, the things melt away, but then more resilient things start coming as well.

It's pretty cool, and you kind of have

these moments where like the difficult enemies that are in the horde, which is, this is also very doom eternal.

The difficult enemies, once you have the solution to deal with them, you're looking forward to them showing up because you're like that's the one where if i parry it i get a big slowdown that's the armored enemy that's hard to kill but if i kill it with this weapon i get healing back you know and so you kind of are just like surviving and killing through these hordes while looking out for particular types of enemies to like spend your resource is on which you know meleeing a certain thing is a type of resource as well it's it's it's um

yeah it it kind of forces your brain to be playing two games at the same time.

You know, it puts you in the run away from everything and kill the immediate surrounding wave coming at you, is like an autopilot.

And then on a second layer, is like, how am I doing with building up my meter for all these different mechanics and surviving with life?

You know,

does it, um, does it create that thing that

Vampire Survivors does, where you hit a certain

like

you crest the hill, and entire forms of enemies become non-enemies.

They just become visual noise.

Entire forms of enemies become...

Yes, 100%.

That does happen.

But

so now it becomes like picking out the danger from

the chaff.

100%.

The weakest level enemy, by the time you're finishing off the level, you've powered up to such a degree that they just melt when you look in their direction, right?

That, but, but there's enough higher tier enemies coming out by that point in the survival run that it's the challenge is still there, right?

And I would say that like you know there's like these five levels you kind of each one like ramps it up quite a bit um

and like i by the time you hit like the third one i feel like you know you hit that point where you're like oh it's almost over time to send all the bullshit at you like that moment occurs but then it just keeps happening for like the the next half of the level, you know, and you're like, oh, fuck.

Like you really want the player to, you know, die, get some currency, level up, unlock some weapons, and pick a strategy for like coming back in with, you know, perhaps like the the melee weapon that is going to do a full 360 blade around you instead of the one that just cuts three times in front or something, you know?

Cool game, though.

And then, yeah, beyond that,

Expedition later, we are

in the wrap.

We're wrapping up Cyberpunk

and

the

right now just like spending a lot more time doing Johnny quests, hanging out with Keanu Reeves.

And

what a great.

I've been mentioning it beforehand, you know, but like, what a great sidekick to have in this game because it's the, it's the most not Kim

K

like, like,

like in in Disco Elysium, Kim is the reliable friend that is there to catch you and remind you that no, Johnny sucks ass.

He's so flawed and fucking,

but like, Kim is there to like catch you and you can rely on him and he's your bro and he like makes it okay for you you to fuck up.

And Johnny is actively trying to make you worse,

you know?

And like you spend enough time being like, will you shut the fuck up?

You know, but you still like, like, but there's a part of it where you're like, okay, and like, but we're all kind of flawed and fucked up.

And he has his insane shit.

And you have to still go with him to a degree.

And like you're connecting on some levels, but his flaws are just so apparent and

horrendous, you know?

But I have a hard time picking out other characters from other games that are like him, that have had this experience.

I don't know if perhaps in other Western RPGs there's been characters like this, but I feel like the spectrum of like, you know, reliable

and then like, fuck you, I hate you.

And then there's like flawed,

super fucked up on the in the side of like, I can't rely on you, but actually there's charm in that, you know, is like a weird in-between space or so.

You know, if I think across the cast of characters you hang out with in Mass Effect or Kotor,

you know, in any bio wares or such, and the little beginning of the Wild Baldur's Gate 3 that I played too, I kind of am like, there's a you're okay, get in, or I can't get away from you fast enough vibe that you kind of slot everybody into, you know?

He's he's a different person.

I think both of those are a great vibe for Johnny because he's stuck with you and you can't fucking get rid of him.

And the story is about how you can't fucking get rid of him.

So, like, I kind of love Johnny, but I also want him to go fuck himself.

Like, he's such a stupid asshole.

Yeah, like HK-47 is made the way he's made, right?

He's like a baby girl, man.

I can't blame HK for being HK.

It's just the way it is.

I make a fan cam of HK.

Yeah, like HK-47.

HK-47 is

like consistent and real about what he's about, but he's not petty about it.

He's like,

he's a true believer, you know?

And like, Johnny gets fucking petty, man, you know?

It's, it's, oh, God, it's, it's great.

It's great.

Um,

he's, um,

he's a, he is a kind of Jimmy.

Oh,

there's a thought.

Is he

a true believer in a cause that doesn't actually exist?

And he's, he runs from responsibility, but but like you expose him for it and he kind of mopes, you know?

Like it's just, yeah, I don't know.

He's, it's, it's just, it's, it's a whole bag, you know, it's, it's something interesting to talk about.

One of the most interesting things, you know.

Um

and your comparison point for the other people you're hanging out with in that game, you know, just got, you got Jackie, who's a good guy.

And, you know, you've got like Takamura, who you're like, well, all the, all the, the homies, all the main questline homies are like, okay, you know, you're hard around the edges for your backstory, but you're generally a pretty noble person and you're you're looking out for you know um um best outcomes here you know and you just hear and like there's a lot of npcs where you're like oh this could go either way because i'm trying to get a read on what you are in night city um

but then you know you get your like river style characters which is like this cop you hang out with where you're like

uh

you're

Like you're fine, but you're kind of a Karth, you know, a little bit.

And you're just like, ah, yeah.

and then there's the romance element where you're like ah i think it's so amazing that karth has become like a fucking noun and an adjective

you never really know you know exactly what i mean that's it um

but that's it you know and so yeah i i find johnny's a nice standout and and um

getting keanu in to play like just a kind of a random bro would have been a big waste, but here he's playing something, something quite interesting, you know.

a quest line in particular that we just had was like, you know, him coming across, uh, or we in the game, you come across like another anarchist messaging you, and you're going on this fetch quest, and you're like, it kind of sounds like, like bullshit, but you're kind of not sure where it's going or what's happening.

And he immediately hates the idea of some other anarchist just kind of like chirp it up, you know, and then you're like, wait, but is it, is it because it's just the words or whatever?

And it's just this funny kind of thing.

though but no but me though but then it but then the other person is just full of shit and then it is a whole gag and there's a great payoff for it you know where you can kind of you're questioning it because you're like this is a bullshit thing where the the the the other anarchist is just saying the the words that would get the people going without having any meaning behind it but when you see johnny getting jealous or angry initially you have the you can believe that he's actually just like no but me though like you you second guess that feeling in him because he's so full of shame

that he would be like that a hundred percent you know so it could have gone either way it's it's a great one um

fun stuff there so so yeah we'll we'll we'll check back in a bit later um

yeah so the the cyberpunk will will continue uh today uh tomorrow and on thursday as well

And then on Saturday,

hey, as announced online, I'm going to fucking jump on that internet.

Are you ready to triple team the Duke's Dear Freya?

I am so ready.

Man, I had a great experience where they put that trailer out and they were like, oh, look, honey, it's the Duke's Dear Freya.

And Paige just looked at me like I was insane.

And I was like, you fought that.

And she's like, no, I didn't.

And I'm like, no, you beat that.

You beat that up.

She's like, no, I didn't.

I'm like, it's the spider with the two heads.

She did.

She's like, no.

She didn't?

No.

And I'm like, okay,

okay, here's footage of you killing his ass.

Yeah, she's like,

huh, crazy.

Oh, is it just because a spider boss is so is kind of a forgettable concept?

Unless it's no, it's because if Paige gets like two years away from a game,

oh, okay,

okay, damn.

So she was like, I don't know if I can play Nightreim, and it seems pretty tough.

And I'm like, Paige, you actually beat like 80 of these bosses already

she's like i did i'm like you absolutely did 100

definitely by the way night rain comes out on thursday

yeah they just announced that oh okay it's not it's not friday it lied well it's thursday we are playing on saturday so yeah it just means that we'll have a little extra time to to juice our boys up with uh whatever the fuck the permanent progression shit is in there um have you have you seen the new classes and stuff

I saw that they put a Sekiro Katana user in there.

Oh, fucking game.

Okay, so here's what's about to happen.

All right.

That Sekiro Katana night fuck is about to get everybody wiped.

Because

how many people are going to pick this parry

katana user and get everyone killed trying to do cool stuff?

Welcome to the worst guy on your team.

The worst.

I feel it.

Like, unless that parry window is a huge counter window, that sword fucker is getting everyone killed trying to be cool.

Solo game.

There's something really great about from software games because you can always see the little piece that they took from something else

to use as part of the buffalo.

So I'm sure you used the, what was it called?

The deflecting hard tier

at some point in

Shadow of the Earth Tree.

And it was like, wow, wow,

that is the Sekiro system.

being transplanted into Elden Ring for five minutes because Elden Ring is is not goddamn Sekiro, and so it's like actually crazy powerful.

And that's what I use to beat the final boss of Shadow of the Earth Tree, right?

And so I look at this, and like, I'm looking at this fucking character that is built out of the deflecting hard tier,

right?

It is like, it is that upgrade made manifest into a full character archetype.

Yeah.

And like, it's a little circle.

And it's just funny the design is like a, it's a Western knight, but it's just holding as Kitanic as fuck off.

And it turns into a wolfman.

Yeah.

Everyone,

you're either going to be three of that guy all running in three different directions, or it's going to, or you're going to be one, and it's going to be Leroy Jenkins the whole time.

Yeah.

My desire is like, well, if I'm going to play solo,

that would be a great character to play and practice with.

If I'm going to hop on with the gang, maybe, I don't know, the Archer Archer or the Guardian or something that has more team synergy than none

might be a better choice.

Okay.

I am looking at that motherfucker that pops a wall out of the ground like an Earthbender.

The Earthbender looks like a radio.

I'm going to take a hit and then headbutt you to death.

Yeah, the Earthbender looks pretty red.

So, you know what I love about Night Rain is that

a very deep feeling that they're lying to us massively about what's actually in that game.

I mean, because

what is there to lie about after they've shown Dark Souls bosses?

So they've shown Dark Souls bosses and they're like, ah, there's a bunch of stages.

But the thing that gets me is that the menu for picking your character has eight characters on it.

And they fill up exactly half of the selection screen.

Okay.

There is like a perfect amount for 16 characters on that screen.

But here's the thing.

It's not hard to just mix and match all the equipment, weapons, items, and builds.

And give them one ability.

You know,

you can have a humongous character select screen there, right?

And we said it last time, but if they figured out, like, whatever the so

every time they make a game, it's with the different publishers, right?

But like

Souls is, Dark Souls is Bandai, right?

So yeah, Bamco gave the okay for their bosses, so why not their characters, right?

Like you can definitely imagine seeing that screen fill up, and it would not be hard, man.

Two moves and a super, that's it?

I'm extremely excited to play Dark Souls Arcade.

Dark Souls Arcade, man.

Straight up.

We called it Elden Ring, but it really wasn't.

But also the Elden Ring fucking NPCs throughout that game, too.

Like, at some point, the question has to be: are we going to sell you the ability to play as some of the cool cast members from the game, right?

Blythe comes in.

Hold on.

Have you been, how much have you been following the game's coverage?

Because they're doing that.

Oh, shit.

Like, in the last Night Rain thing, they said, by the way, you're going to be able to get unlockable skins

for the archetypes.

Skins of NPCs.

Yeah.

So, like,

the end will be Soler.

Okay.

Okay.

okay, okay.

They showed up a ton of them.

Okay.

Yeah, that's, I kind of meant fully playable, you know.

That's that's cool.

That's cool.

I just started to type in Dark Souls Night Rain.

Dark Souls.

Then

the marketing has worked.

Mission accomplished.

That's really funny.

That's fucking great.

That's the launch trailer overview.

I'll pull up the fucking screenshots.

It's a bit like Smash in the sense that i want the characters moves as well in lines not just the costume absolutely but that's smash yeah yeah skin skin is skin is cool actual playable character would be phenomenal you know

um

and i think to be fair too like i've talked to enough people and i've gotten a very i've gotten people that are like um excited for what they're seeing and i've also gotten people that are like on the fence you know which understandably it's like yeah let me get my hands on it oh shit yeah there you go That's uh Dark Souls 2-Man.

Yeah, that's Dark Souls 2-Man.

That's the guy on the left is from Dark Souls 3, and then there's Solaire, straight up.

Yep, okay.

They know what they're doing.

Yeah, they know what they're doing.

Let's fucking cash in.

I think

it is from Software Smash Brothers.

So, so, so, the bit here where like people are kind of like, yeah, I'm not sure if the gameplay is what I'm looking for.

So, like, you can win some over by just putting some all-stars in that fucking cast, you know, absolutely.

And yeah, you've got four games worth of them to pick from.

You know, and

obviously we're not going to see anything owned by Sony or by Sega, but regardless, you know,

there's a ton.

Cool.

Yeah, we're going to jump on Night Rain.

And I'm going to hook up a second PS5.

You can be me, you and Reggie.

We're all going to have our own setups.

Yeah, I'm going to put a second PS5 up over here and we'll look at that.

And they did an interview recently where they're like, oh, yeah, we didn't realize how many people would want duos.

I'm like, you're fucking insane.

That's like the the number one form of go-op cross-play would be nice they don't do it but it would be nice if if it were ever a thing the only problem i imagine though is that like they can't get around that pc cheating shit right like nah dark souls games souls games and pc cheats are just like yeah crossing that into like butter and the butter it'd be so nice as a feature to have but that part you know is you don't want to have people getting their entire saves corrupted on a fucking console even worse, you know, as a result of that.

So, I mean, I'm going to be blunt.

I'm going to play 99.9% of this game completely solo.

Um, because it's like, do I have, do I have two people that I know ready to go right now?

No, okay, I'm going to launch in and solo.

Like,

I can see myself going solo to learn the map and flows, and then going online for like, you know, real runs, so to speak.

For four runs, and then you're going to go, oh my God, I got so much further by myself, these motherfuckers.

Holy shit.

Sure.

So somebody in the chat says, hope it balances for solo.

We actually saw this happen when I was at your place and we played the Night Rain beta.

Is that when two people dropped and I was the only person in a match, all the damage and aggression

math just scaled down.

Like enemies became less aggressive, health values changed.

Like it's, it's fine.

Which is incredibly

impressive considering, like, back in the day, it would have been like, well, it loaded in the three-player version and they died, so now you're fucked.

You know, so fucking get good.

Yeah, being dynamic about it is dope.

Someone in the chat asks me a really good question.

Why do I think all randoms are bad at video games?

Because I play games online sometimes.

I think you're, I think you, you have a, there's chance, sometimes you get good, sometimes you get bad.

But my overall experience, solo queuing, I've done, I haven't spent an insane amount of time doing it, so I don't have like, you know, whatever, thousands of hours to my name on things.

But I can say that like the bad experiences have been pretty abysmal.

The mid ones are there, whatever, but like queuing up with people, you know, always good.

No, no, don't leave it up to the, don't leave it up to the air.

Why walk into a random restaurant when you can do, you can look it up in advance and go to a place that you've, you know i mean i've played i've i've played a number of mmos i've played like 10 different call of duties i've played apex legends i've played titanfall i have played etc etc etc etc etc etc and things that require teamwork that use non-specific tasks uh yeah no players that don't

it's it's fucking bad it's not

no and uh played league of legends don't tell me that why do i think people are bad at games?

I've played League of Legends and Monster Hunter and fucking like.

Yeah, so like when I went back into Titanfall 2, like for,

I was playing it for a while there last year.

And like going back on that, for example, you can like

just go crush it on your own and help your team and be fine.

Like you can go jump around.

Like I like playing that game in such a way where I like to be a good teammate.

So I'll grab batteries and jump on

our partner's shoulders and I'll reload people who are low on batteries.

I'm comfortable enough on foot outside of a Titan that, you know, I'm down to just go do that busy work while also getting kills and shit.

But you can completely contribute to the team by not paying attention to any of that if you want to or so as well.

And so it's not as big a deal.

The game there is not punishing you for the teamwork falling apart, so to speak.

But it's a fucking deathmatch shooter, right?

I think folks are mentioning hell divers are making a good point.

I think hell divers is designed so that people who go off on their own can get things done on their own in a very significant way.

Like, if I had to be really specific, it's not about individual player skill, it's about the reality of team-based play and cooperation in general that makes me a little annoyed.

And I always used Apex Legends as the all-time peak of my hatred of this, where loading into a three-man match with Apex Legends, my choices are to

go on my own, despite the fact that we're a team, or chase after

one of the team members the entire time because they are playing a solo game in a team and they're just going to go their own way as fast as they possibly can.

So, my team experience is actually chasing someone down for 20 minutes to provide backup for their bad choices.

Yeah, I've had versions of that, but I guess the difference for me is that, like, I had it, it's not so like binary.

I've had fine games where I've loaded in with randoms and

enjoyed it.

It's just it's suboptimal to playing with people I know, but it's it's not enough to get in the way of it.

So for Night Reigns purposes, like each of those runs that I did throughout that weekend,

yeah,

I had great co-op runs.

I had some terrible like quitters, you know, it was just a mixed ass bag.

And

at the point where I'm still like, well, whatever.

I'm learning the game.

So I'm not too concerned about those outcomes.

And I'm fine to just kind of go explore the map a bit and figure it out.

But when a run turns sour and you're kind of like, okay, well, I'm not going to beat this one.

You just kind of switch your priorities up a little bit.

But yeah, it doesn't ruin the idea of the entire game for me, though.

You know, I'm still down for it.

I recently watched two videos that kind of delved into this topic.

One was by Dan Olson over at Folding Ideas called Why It's Rude to Be Bad at World of Warcraft.

Shout outs to Dan.

He's a mountain boy with me,

which is about an hour and 30 minutes of academic breakdown of the realities of

instrumental tasks in World of Warcraft.

It's applicable to all MMOs and all team-based games, but it's specific to

WoW.

And basically goes into the reality of

how this is the way things are done has completely ruined World of Warcraft.

instrumental practices about how things are supposed to be done become so enshrined that they then eventually become automated.

And if you're not

automating them with like

call outs that are like robots for you, you're ruining it and just ruined it.

Oh, that's a, yeah, that, what you just described is my understanding of all MMOs.

Yeah, no, that's not.

That's World of Warcraft.

Okay.

But is that

allowed add-on culture to break its core mechanics because so many people use add-ons that tell you where to stand and where to go that they had to design encounters with the assumption that you had

the mods were on.

Which then means you have to use those add-ons.

Okay.

Yeah.

Most,

nearly all other MMOs draw a line in the sand somewhere

that is before that.

So I would, the, the weird thing about that is that, like, why wouldn't Blizzard have eventually just incorporated those as quality of life features into the game eventually, right?

Well, the add-on that tells you where to stand to break every single boss fight.

Oh, like that.

Oh, I thought you meant.

Okay, because when my old roommate used to play like WoW and stuff, there was a lot of like HUD organizing.

Yeah, no,

now we're in the HUD nightmare in which like it'll overlay where all the bosses' attacks are going to land and call out to individual characters

what spot to jump in.

Jesus.

And it's like you're basically

a business that a robot tells you.

No, no, no, that's not what I meant.

Okay, that's crazy.

What FF-14 FF14 does, for example, is they look at what's the most popular add-ons that people aren't supposed to use, ban the people they catch using them, and then roll them into the next patch.

Because you're not supposed to use add-ons in FF14.

It's against the TOS.

Okay.

But that doesn't mean the devs don't know what add-ons are being used because they're popular.

Yeah, I think

the okay.

The

part where

the I was thinking of when you when you were describing how like the with 14 the the bit where you're like you have a role to play and like this is how you fulfill that role and if you are subpar at that like this is a problem like you are a problem and yeah because like there's a straight expected line of performance and you just and then the the the way that a game like 14 gets around it is that like you have multiple orders of difficulty And it's like, if you're doing a normal or easy difficulty thing, then it doesn't matter.

You're going to, you're going to, you're going to fucking beat it.

Like, you could be the shittiest motherfucker in the world.

You could be, you'd be playing with one hand.

It doesn't matter.

Right.

But once you hit certain, like, it would essentially be be a challenge difficulty.

It's like, why are you even coming into the challenge difficulty if you're not here for challenging content?

Right.

Yeah.

Why did you join up with me at the Super Battle Opera 3v3 tournament if you don't know how to play Street Fighter?

Like, what the fuck are you doing?

Well, so what it actually sounds like to me is like playing rock band where you're like, oh, the person on bass is like hold, is dragging the score down, but everybody else just has to play up perfect.

And, you know, if someone fucks up one note, everybody's that much closer to game over or whatever right um

but there is

there is a thing to that admittedly where um

playing that in a room with playing rock band in a room with other people and you're all like like hanging on and whatever are different difficulties is like there's a tension and fun to that but if i had to queue up with like 30 people and everybody had to play their instrument perfectly that would just feel unfun and angry and frustrating right there that that's that's the difference between the two there you know and then i watched a uh I watched about an hour of a different 90-minute video by Nakey Jakey, who put out a video called How Counter-Strike Took Over My Life.

And he basically goes into detail about the reality of

queuing up and the way Elo works in Counter-Strike and describing how he won his 10 placement matches required to put himself into the Elo

3700 of 30,000 and loads into his first real match.

And he's excited to do it.

And there are two guys on on his team that are sniping people through fucking walls and flying around and shit.

And he's like, what, God, God damn it, what the fuck?

Yes.

That sucks.

And he won, of course.

Yeah, well, yeah, yeah.

No.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Well, so yeah, online multiplayer is a grapsuit.

I mean, if you're, if you're in a situation like this where, again, like, it's the point of what they're going for with Night Rain.

And, you know,

the

experience of having two people just shit out and disconnect on you because they grief and be like, fuck you.

I don't want to play with you or whatever.

And then the game scales down to be like, okay, enjoy yourself alone.

That's good.

Right.

Because if you have someone being a bit a piss baby and then being like, fuck this, then you can still enjoy and play and have the game scale appropriately and enjoy yourself doing that run regardless, you know?

So, um,

but uh, the times where you make it to like day three or whatever, and something like that happens, like it becomes way, way, way worse and much more closer to a waste of time, you know, for sure.

Um,

in any case, we'll see how it goes.

But I like, I don't mind the idea of this Dark Souls arcade bit, especially seeing as we all know that truly this is fromsoft in their like uh refractory period, you know.

Yeah, allow them some downtime to make some quick bucks with some, you know, little online-only experiences, and it'll be fine.

I'm sure they'll drop a insane multi-year narrative at some point again in the future, but hopefully not anything like what they just did because we don't need it.

Yeah, Night Rain this Saturday.

Okay, let's take a quick break.

Yeah, let's do it.

BRB.

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Okay.

Where do we go?

A couple stories this week.

There's some fun ones.

A lot of them.

A lot of the stories

have your shot and your chaser, you know?

So there's a part two to a lot of these.

Hey.

How about this one, for example?

Addie Shankar sat down for a podcast with Kenny Omega.

Yeah, I've seen this.

And they got to talking about Devil May Cry.

And

in the conversation,

we had a moment that,

you know, it's kind of like I just saw the clip and I was like, oh, I think I know.

I think I understand all of it.

I think I can zoom out.

He throws the game away.

He gives up the grift.

I think I can zoom out and just orbital view the situation in its entirety.

Absolutely.

So

in the podcast, he says that he was unhappy when Devil May Cry 5 was announced because it took Spotlight away from the Netflix series.

He thought the franchise was dead.

I thought I was bringing it back.

Right.

Yeah, he didn't know that Devil May Cry had 5, that that was even happening.

And so,

in the quick clip, you kind of can get a gist of the idea that originally he thought this was a niche thing that was dead long after four.

He was going to say, and this was going to bring it back into the spotlight.

And so, now that it was coming back with five, which was a big triple-A thing, it was like not as he was, he was like upset at the idea that, like, oh, he thought he was bringing it back, you know?

Well, Woolly, if he had known DMC5 was coming out, he should have instead

gone with Street Fighter, right?

Which

also

has a game.

There's also movies and Street Fighter adaptations that have been happening for a while.

I should have just done Street Fighter so I could save Street Fighter.

Street Fighter VI is out right now.

Yeah.

You don't even know that.

But there's, but, but, so and then there's like, human, there's a mention of like, oh, like Dino Crisis or something.

And like, you kind of start to think about like, oh, right.

When you see like a tweet with like Blazblue kind of thing, you go, it's the thought that, and I, and I, here's what I suspect, because there's, because there's a, there's the follow-up here, right?

But it's the thought that, um,

I imagine if you're like, you know, in the Hollywood world and like with talking to producers and you're, that's how you're around and stuff, when you say a name like Blaz Blue, a bunch of people around you are going to be like, what the fuck even is that?

That's crazy.

That's the deepest cut in the world, you know?

And if you are somebody that likes these IPs or franchises or attach them at all and you've been following them, you're kind of just like, what?

Yeah.

No, that's here it is.

It's been here.

That's a thing.

We care, you know?

But I think in a world where, like, oh, you're going to make a video game-based movie?

Well, is it Minecraft?

Is it Call of Duty?

Then why even bother?

says Hollywood, you know, you kind of have this, this, this shift in perspective on it.

Um,

the follow-up was then after enough people like saw that and went, what the fuck?

You are mad at the idea of like one of the sickest entries coming out and saving the, you know, was already successful.

Shit.

Oh, fuck.

I needed to be the savior.

So there was a clarify, there was a clarifying series of tweets that he put out to basically elaborate and explain

that.

Let's see.

That effectively, the idea is that if he wants to get involved with bringing a franchise back, he doesn't want to grab the ones that don't need the help.

If something is already popular, then it's not, it doesn't, it doesn't need a spotlight on it versus

versus something that is more quietly forgotten for a while that might need to be put in the spotlight

if he meant that he wouldn't have said then he would have done street fighter instead

so you know and and then again there's the there's the dino crisis like you like mentioned there um in reiterating it too he says um

uh when i saw dmc was thriving again at the time i wondered if maybe my energy would have been better spent resurrecting a property from capcom that needed my help like dino crisis darkstalkers or god hand uh worlds I love that have been ignored for too long, right?

I wanted to give the spotlight to worlds that need a boost.

Like Street Fighter.

You can't, you, there's.

He also like blocked and deleted a bunch of shit over the fact that people were like, but you said this.

When I joked.

Here's a video of you saying it.

When I joked that I should have done Street Fighter, I didn't mean I regret making DMC.

I meant that if I were choosing between AAA, Mega IP, I might as well go after the biggest.

But that's not who I am.

I routinely turn down giant giant titles to focus on stuff that I care about.

Don't believe that for a second.

I don't believe that

for a second.

I think

that initial, like

if

that were explained initially in the clip, I think this would have been taken a lot differently, certainly.

But I would say that like in that conversation, just kind of going like, I got mad when Devil May Cry 5 came back because I wasn't the savior of it.

That is a a petty ass vibe to throw on top of things, man.

And, like,

that the wording of it.

Anyway, the clarification afterwards, it's different energy, and that's a more understandable version of it.

But if you believe it.

I think.

Well,

so the thing is, is that this would also be, I think, different too if we were looking at an adaptation that was like

that faithful or cared about the source material in a way that didn't

really trample over things.

You can't have a lot of resentment on DMC5 watching it because it was like

supposed to be here.

So this is what it comes down to, I suppose, right?

Like, again, if I'm thinking anywhere in a cold, like, you know, if I'm coming at this with no outside influence on it whatsoever, and you kind of are making a judgment call one way or the other, the idea of like these being the worlds that you kind of care about and stuff like that would mean like being

you don't have to be slavishly faithful, but you would be more respectful to the source material than the DMC anime was.

And yeah,

if you're mentioning that you are, these are worlds that you care about in this way, but like these are the things that you're discarding, and people that do care about these worlds are not recognizing the characters that you have on screen there.

It doesn't really lend credence to the idea that you care about these worlds in this way.

Therefore, you don't get the goodwill on it when the clarification comes out where people are going to necessarily buy into that, unfortunately.

Yeah, and also, like, he, he, he wants more, he, like,

like remember Addie Shankar's Castlevania

so one it point it put it puts

like it puts it puts fucking Warren Ellis

well why Castlevania oh because I can save Castlevania well what did you actually do on Castlevania Addie were you a producer or did you just kick in some money at the end so you could get a producer credit

yeah um

I

that was one of those ones where like initially I've been going around kind of just thinking like, oh yeah, that was the name that was associated.

And it's like, no, no, no, Warren Ellis, that was, that was, he did that.

And there was a whole bunch of other people as well sort of involved.

It's not quite as

cut and dry as this is Addie Shankara's Castlevania, you know?

And that was like, oh shit, huh.

I, I, I, you know,

I, I, I just bought into

the marketing drop of that, you know.

Um,

which I will tell you one thing.

I want to be the guy who saves it, or else I'd rather not do it or have it happen, is very big.

Capcom.

Capcom has dealt with this energy before.

Capcom has dealt with at least two guys

that it'd be like, I would rather kill this fucking

than it have this, my name on it.

Oh, my God.

They've had this before, dude.

And I know everyone here knows at least about one of those guys.

Oh, man.

But there's been two.

Oh, man.

That's super true.

It's me or nothing is a fucking problem they've had.

God damn.

Okay.

Everybody knows who those two guys are.

I mean, look,

in addition to this, again, Street Fighter has been getting its adaptations and will continue to as we are finding out that Roman Reigns is slated to play Akuma.

Sure.

Sure.

All right.

You know what?

Okay.

I'll see it.

You know what?

Who knows?

I think that I have been like.

I think I've just, I've been, I'm too deflated on live-action Street Fighter to ever care about it, even when the good ones happen.

Because it's like, okay, you have the...

Yeah, which ones are those?

So, well, that's the problem, right?

Because it's like, hey, Rawl Julia was cool, but lol, but then you make a ton of money.

And then you have Kristen Kruk, which is fucking, yeah, that happened.

And then now there's like, no, but then there's the ones that a cool stunt team made, right?

There's the like the shorts are like Assassin's Fist, or and I'm kind of like, yeah, I at this point, I'm just, I've been, I've been beaten up too much, man.

I can't even, I can't even tune in.

I would like a Street Fighter live action

that treats the material

with one percent more respect than Street Overlord.

And if we can't get that,

then I don't want it.

And I'm still waiting for it.

I'm still waiting for it.

You know, it's just, we don't.

It can exist.

It cannot exist.

It's fine.

It's there.

You know, it's just, I think they're just, I think the ship has sailed is kind of what I'm getting at.

Because for everyone that's told me that like Assassin's Fist is actually pretty good for a web series, you know, know, I'm like, yeah, I guess.

And that's where that'll go.

It'll be a web series that had a cool Street Fighter thing, I suppose.

And, you know,

okay.

It's not like a film thing that like even, well, no, well, whatever.

I don't want to get into the whole like.

Films don't need to exist to elevate things that don't need to be, whatever.

You know, like the Street Fighter 6 is there.

It's fine.

We're good.

It's, you know, when I, so when I hear like, oh, Roman Reigns is going to play a Kumba, I'm just like, all right, yeah, okay.

You know.

I

was last excited for Street Fighter story content with Udon

doing their run of like some of those comics.

You know, those comics are great.

There were some really fun Udon takes on some stuff.

And I think

I'm not a big comic book guy.

I don't read a lot of comics, but those Udon comics have my very favorite single panel in the entirety of anything I've ever read, which is Cami opening the door and see see and Chun Lee.

No, Chun Li opens a door and sees Cammy in a room, and then you turn the page, and it is her tackling Cammy out of like an eighth story.

Sick, hell yeah.

Absolutely no lead up at all.

Just, ah!

I

respect the fuck out of that entire series for the page one,

issue one, is Charlie getting killed,

and then Charlie gets resurrected as shadow and dies again and fucking has and get and you know gets beaten and then comes back from the like he has his multiple nonsense deaths make be a part of the story in a way that's like oh yeah why did Charlie Charlie show up in alpha and then alpha two and then a three and did Kyle meet him did he not it has it all work in the nonsense of all of that they had to really try pretty hard on that you know um

fucking wild and and then uh yeah and then other other little fun things where you're like, oh, here's Omar Dogan doing his run on like a little Ibuki comic.

You want to see Ibuki being the ninja schoolgirl having fun?

Hell yeah, let's do it.

Let's have fun.

You know, so yeah, I legit enjoyed that.

Plus, the Udon backstory comic for Akuma was

actually like pretty fun.

You know, like they go, but they go into like young Akuma in a way that I was like, yeah, this is, this is, this is good.

This doesn't destroy the character or do anything too embarrassing or, you know, Chinese ghost on it.

Anything that ever happen to Akuma would be more embarrassing than everyone he's ever killed survived.

I mean, incoming actual BFFs with Elena, right?

You know, in the story mode, they properly set it up so that in World Tour, he's like, hey, he's not even that evil to begin with.

And now the meme is real.

He truly does just hang out with Elena.

You know, and

further reading into that is like, her power is being friends with everybody, and she's really good with nature.

Therefore, right, if someone is like a beast, then it makes sense to

me is a wild animal, and she can talk to wild animals too.

There you go, done,

done.

Um,

anyway, so there was that part.

Um, and then that was not the only foot in mouth, as last week we were discussing uh

Randy talking.

Randy, shut the fuck up.

So

Larian

steps in

as we get the quote here.

I think that's Larry

making BG3 and then getting to win big game of the year and then using that platform to tell everyone to shut the fuck up is like my favorite, favorite possible outcome.

So the first to recap for anybody, the last time

Randy was talking about the $80 pricing of games going getting more expensive, and then Mario Kart World and all the Switch stuff, all these increasing game prices over

the new generation.

And he said, if you're a real fan, you'll find a way to make it happen.

And then everyone was like, dude, fucking come on, right?

Just crazy Ken back from the dead.

Just a lot.

Just

a tone-deaf ass fucking thing to say in a situation where people are struggling.

And

the

yeah, Michael Douse of Larian basically said

to that effect in response,

real fans are people who love and understand what you do and will keep track of and engage with your shit regardless of how much they spend.

And then they asked him if you know, Baldur's Great, Baldur's Gate 3 would ever have like an $80 price or something to that effect.

And he said,

Even if it did, we would not probably suggest people do whatever they can to buy it, lest they not be real fans.

Right?

Absolutely ridiculous.

Because the second part of it was after Randy said that it's like, also, the the publishing arm and other people will decide the price.

So it's not even like it's up to those individuals or something.

That should have been your first answer, dumb shit.

But fuck it.

I don't set the price.

The publisher sets the price.

And now that that's established,

hey, too tough shit.

I don't disagree with that price, maybe.

It's a wild way to fucking go with it.

You know?

Like, I don't set the price, but if I did set the price,

everybody who works with customers.

Learns that when the when the customer is really mad at you

and they're like, this is fucking bullshit, you look at them and go, I know it's bullshit, but my fucking boss,

he, you know, he wants to hit these, you know, I'm doing the best I can.

And every single person in the world goes, yeah, you know what?

You're right.

It is your fucking asshole, boss.

It's not.

You get, you get the out.

You decided to go, no, it's me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's me.

You get the out of being able to be like, yeah, we don't decide that shit, unfortunately.

it's just the other teams or whatever but instead yeah no you're like fucking defend the corporations you know back off right the fucking just like insane wild like why are you going to die on this hill why are you going to stand in front of that and be like no actually the pricing is fucking

is not a bad thing deal with it be a real fan um

i am uh

yes and then the end of that was also uh Dows continuing.

Inflation exists.

We give inflation bumps to employees, for example, to our employees.

Price increases make sense.

He replied on social media.

But saying that real fans will find a way is gross because it assumes your game is more important during a cost of living crisis than, say, making it day to day.

Right?

That's it.

That's it.

That's all.

It's just, it's not that hard to fucking

click these two things together and go, it's the worst it's been.

Trivial.

Don't be like, yeah, prices go up.

Tough shit, you know?

It's so, you know, like,

you know, to be fair to Randy Pitchford, he does have like a long history in game development.

And prior to game development, he worked in a lot of like Renaissance type like prop work,

which is really interesting.

So if you'd want like a better idea of like how he got to where he is right now, you can look on google for randy pitchford medieval times

and then you will you'll get like a decent history of like the type of things that he used to be up to hmm

i see

or you could just go back to episode two of this podcast

i that was so fucking funny when we were looking at the archive channel and it was like oh wow right at the beginning right at the beginning

thanks for thanks for sending this boat off, Randy.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, it's just there's a weird part of it where this is kind of like you're not supposed to say this quiet part out loud here, but hey, also, I know that we love and play these video games.

They are not actually that important.

This might be,

this might be a wild take here, but don't say that.

They're actually not that important.

You know what's more important?

Food,

rent,

and babies.

You know, and people will

make

not the best decisions sometimes to get something that they really care about

in a video game or something sometimes.

And like, dad, that sucks.

That fucking sucks.

That's not a good thing when that happens.

That's not like, oh, wow, you're so fucking hardcore.

Wow, look at you.

You know,

it's a bit of that like orphan crushing machine mentality, you know?

If you tell me how much you have to sacrifice to buy the fucking premium edition $120 version of your favorite franchise game.

All right.

Foots continuing in mouths.

Just, you can't stop sucking on those toes.

Getting in between.

I don't like that, what you're saying to me, Minoko.

I don't, I don't.

I want you to stop.

We're getting in between the toes on this one.

Um,

I, I, I mean, I actually like the wording of it because to follow up on the marathon story, um, the latest Forbes article from Paul Tassie, who we talked about last time, the, the, the title is Marathon Isn't Cancelled, but it's bad we even have to ask that.

Oh, man.

Yeah, so the advertisement, somebody's pulling advertising for it for the entire rest of the year.

It's very, very

it's here, okay, On a stage,

on the scale of like released to die to canceled, released to die has been removed.

And now the lowest we are starting at is definitely delayed.

Right.

Yeah.

So

it's either Sony saying we're not going to throw good money after bad with the advertising or it's delayed.

Yeah.

And now, as far as confirmation goes, what was it?

So yeah, Colin Moriarty says, I was told by someone familiar with the marketing plans in a key overseas market that

there are now no plans to do paid marketing for Marathon at all.

I don't know if those plans were affected by what has recently happened or if that was always the plan or whatever, but it is considered a fairly unusual move for a game of this high profile.

Yeah, it's fucking weird.

And so it is basically

almost certainly delayed.

We don't know about cancellation, but

that news that recently hit in it.

And if it was like everyone was like

glowing with their discussion of the gameplay about it, that'd be one thing.

It would be different, that'd be one thing.

But it was already rough going, and then you had this massive, like the entire game's aesthetic, the one thing that was the saving grace, in my opinion, that I'm hearing, is stolen from somebody else.

And like, the person themselves doesn't have the energy to sue you over this, but it's enough that everyone's talking about it.

Company is like, oh my god, what the, oh, geez, you know?

Also, what's...

Here's what happens, right?

I think whether or not the game is canceled or not is going to depend.

Like, like, we'll be able to intuit based off of like one factor.

And that factor is how many days do we go after the plagiarism scandal before we see the game running in any way whatsoever at all?

Because if it goes like a month and we literally haven't seen the game at all, it's like, oh, they stole so many assets that they have to fucking rebuild like the whole fucking goddamn game.

Right.

Like that it's, it's blastered on and everything.

The entire thought about the last stream where they had the art director on and they weren't showing footage at all.

If the idea is that we don't want to show it, because what if we show anything that is going to be, that was stolen?

You now have like

such an unmitigated disaster of how you fix this on your hands that you're, yeah, if you don't delay, like what, at what point does the cost just become not worth it?

You know, and whatever you replace it with, I guess like you can do things that remove the artist's name and actual tag and shit from the game, but do you then just replace it with like other generic, bright-colored versions of that?

Because now it has to be

like significantly different.

You know what this makes me think of?

Like, like, really strongly, this makes me think of my favorite question I have ever heard a reporter ask in my life, which is: Mr.

Trudeau,

how many more of these photos are going to surface?

To which he said,

I don't know.

And the follow-up question.

I don't remember the follow-up.

Mr.

Trudeau, can you round it up to the nearest five?

Is that it?

Is that it?

Oh.

So,

like, there probably, I am going to have the assumption that someone at Sony went and spoke to somebody at Bungie and was like, okay, how

much

of your assets are tainted by plagiarism?

And someone said, I don't know.

I'm guessing actually that

a number of the folks are like, okay, look, it's not that bad.

We have a couple textures here and there.

We can deal with that.

And then the legal team is looking and they're going, plus

the person said they're not going to sue us.

So whatever.

And the legal team is going,

and they're freaking out and running in circles, going, it doesn't matter if they say they're not going to, you can't actually have anything here

right now.

You don't know.

You count for five years.

It is a right.

Oh, is it making money?

How's it doing?

All right.

Gangbusters, wonderful.

Or not, like the liability of having a sword of Damocles over your head that is, we are selling thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of copies of a stolen asset fucking game, right?

Oh, by the way, I have to tell you, remember, Bungie doesn't have.

Oh, right, right, right.

The team that's gone.

So it would be

Sony's lawyers.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

And the folks who were involved the last couple of times they stole shit.

Right, right, right, right.

So Sony's lawyers are saying, how much of this stuff is stolen?

And they go,

I don't know, like 10 things.

And they go, what do you mean?

You don't know.

And if the person that did this is in fact gone, they might not actually know at all, which means it all has to be done over.

The whole thing.

Okay, so the question I have is this.

How long until,

if not have it, or has it, has this already happened internally, someone goes, you know, we can just stick these textures into Mid Journey and just go make them a little different.

You know what?

And then get the output spit

and just drop the output right back into place where they were.

I wouldn't even be surprised.

If that conversation has not already happened,

how soon until

somebody looks at the bank account, they look at the numbers and they go

drag that whole folder.

Drag that whole folder.

Take the current...

Okay, the problem with the plagiarism is that it was targeted to one person.

What we need to do is omni-plagiarize in all directions to muddle.

To,

you know, to let's muddle the situation.

I think that if a lawyer has gotten involved and you are explaining to them that you getting in trouble because you cut corners and you're going to solve the problem by cutting corners harder, they're going to look at you with that look that lawyers give you.

That look that means that they explain to you what their billable hours are.

Right.

However, we are currently, as you just described, cutting to a legal team of empty chairs.

Perhaps a stuffed plush.

So it would be a different company's legal team in which Sony's legal team is about, hey, I want to insulate Sony from legal liability.

I would like to imagine the legal team is a stuffed plushie of the Arbiter.

Just propped up, you know, with a little, with maybe some glasses, you know, to look smart.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

All right.

Moved from human plagiarism to the plagiarism machine.

I hope everyone's happy with this.

It's not good.

One might argue it's bad.

But, hey, listen.

That solution that we might see, I don't know if we're going to see it coming down the pipe for Marathon, you know, but this is clearly working its way

in other industries.

Because have you heard about

thus spoke Kishihibe Rohan, the live-action Jojo?

I have not.

Okay, so the Rohan TV drama series

is

they've got some movies,

and uh, it turns out that those are, there's two of them that are out, and um,

the

uh

yes, the composer of the films came out and proudly announced that

AI was used for the entire soundtrack of

the films.

And then they even go on to elaborate, not partially or a little bit, but entirely.

And they were used for the Rock, Paper, Scissors Kid,

for the episode RPS Kid, and Rohan at the Louvre, right?

And it's it's like, man.

Process on something involved with Erici seems so outrageous and so offensive.

So this is why

this is the bit, right?

Because

what?

The proud nature of the composer coming out to be like, yeah, no, totally.

It was awesome.

We totally did it.

It was, it was not partially, but entirely AI generated, right?

You're like, cool.

So why do you exist again?

What's the point of your job?

Just wondering, you know, whatever.

But

Rohan in particular, not Jojo, right?

Not even the Arachi at bit.

In, you know, Oingo Boingo?

Yeah.

So the, the Oingo Boingo Brothers Adventure, like they have their little like comic book where like shit's happening.

In that little, in that book, right?

Rohan initially likes.

the artwork being uh that's showing up that like oigo boingo is doing and is like this is he's impressed with the work as like as a mangaka and then he finds out that it's not him doing it, but it's the stand that draws it, and he fucking hates it afterwards.

And he switches to being like, oh, fuck this thing.

This is garbage.

Rohan in Jojo did, like, go switches over to hating the work when he finds out the stand is the artist, not the individual.

What the fuck are we doing, man?

It couldn't be more thematically on point.

Oh,

God.

Yeah, no.

That's great.

It's great.

This took place in the Oingo Boingo Brothers Adventure book.

It's just, like, of all the works to do this to, the one about the artist is crazy.

Anyways,

hey.

Beyond that, not much else.

You know,

Mortal Kombat 1.

We hear the player's player's request for continued game support, but

no.

Do you?

There will be ballast adjustments and fixes, but there will be no longer any DLC or story chapters released from this point on.

Yeah.

Okay.

And we want to focus on the next project and shift things order.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

Oh, I can't wait for Injustice 3.

Oh, man.

Oh, yeah.

I just, you know, I had a conversation with Reggie, you know, not too long ago, and it's just one of these bits where I'm like,

I get upset around MK announcement time.

You know, we're looking at things going like, okay, like, there's the part where you're like, yeah, this is a game, this franchise, it's gone popular, and there's been examples of them having a game that's fun to play.

It's possible to make a Mortal Kombat game that is fun and has stuff going on.

Yeah, no, they did that a couple times in the 90s.

But there's a deep just anger and frustration that comes out of me.

And he was like, what's the deal?

Right.

And I remember it was over, I think we were flying back from somewhere.

And I was explaining.

I was just like, it's because they always

get everyone's attention.

They do the job that other games struggle to do in terms of how many people tune in to see the new announcement because of what fatalities are and what that represents to the genre and the whole thing of the legacy of the title, right?

It gets more attention in one day than fucking Street Fighter, the king of the genre gets over the course of a year, right?

And every time it gets all these people to show up, it does absolutely nothing with them.

It does nothing for it.

It just sucks because it has such a good opportunity, you know, to win over hearts and minds.

And they never do because they just don't give a fuck.

You know, here's a $13 fucking Christmas fatality.

Now get out.

I just don't.

I like, who cares when you're showing me how many people should watch that trailer on day one when this is what happens every time?

It fucking...

ugh man.

It is not fair.

It is the Drake of fighting games.

Oh my god.

It is bringing in a whole bunch of people.

Oh no.

It's bringing in a different group of people as an audience that are showing up that are like, yo, we're here for it.

And then what do you do with it?

And then what?

You know?

And

anyone here want to check out any of this other shit?

No?

All right.

Well, well,

at least Mortal Kombat says that it's for adults on the box.

All right.

I'm going to put you on Mortal Kombat timeout for that one.

We're putting up the fucking hourglass on that.

All right.

And beyond that,

just another fun thing.

But you've been keeping keeping an eye on this Punishing Grey Raven shit.

You've been keeping an eye on Virgil.

Virgil will be your little girl wife.

I've been squinting.

I've been squinting and looking at this thing because really and truly, it looks like the people who make Punishing Grey Raven have immense amounts of love and respect for the source material and are doing

the most incredibly faithful job of bringing these characters to life and doing them justice.

And in particular, you're seeing like, oh, here's him sitting on the plastic chair.

Here's all this artwork.

Here's all this little fun bits and shit.

And then just seeing the conversations that the characters are having that are like important canon material taking place outside of the games.

You could have them talk to each other.

You could have your little Virgil dating scene where he talks about, you know, the power of your heart and so on.

But one interaction in particular that was fucking choice is Dante talking to him, going,

So, who is that person?

Virgil goes, what?

And he goes, come on, you know, that woman, Nero's mother.

And he goes, I'm very, I'm very curious about what kind of woman can win Virgil's heart.

Maybe we can, when we see Nero again, we can have a big old family dinner.

Ha!

Right?

And then

Virgil,

not too much happy about that, replies,

where was it?

Oh, fuck.

Sorry.

God damn it.

I just lost it.

Ah,

I can't read this.

Get in there.

Oh, yeah.

And

what about you?

What about those women around you?

What are you going to do with them?

And Dante goes, I take back my question.

That's great.

That's great.

Perfect.

Yep.

He can dish, but he can't take.

Nope.

What about them hoes, Dante?

What about them hoes?

I don't want to talk about it.

They're all fucking wrong.

You shut up.

I don't want to talk about it.

Never mind.

All right.

We

have

letters.

We have letters.

Let's do it.

Send it a letter to CastleSuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Make it a good letter.

You got to wonder if Virgil has some inner fucking like burn salve he's applying ever since I'm not your mommy V.

Like, he's got to be extra pissy at Tricks.

You know what I bet the cope is on that?

Like the met, like the massive super cope?

Well, that wasn't even me.

Nah.

What?

That didn't.

That happened to V.

That doesn't count.

Yeah, that guy.

You know, good taste in poetry, but embarrassing for him.

That was a totally different guy.

Couldn't be me.

Nah.

Also,

the other discussion being that, like, how many STDs does Virgil now have from getting plugged into the Clyphod blood machine and having

zero?

But everyone's blood all filters back into

the roots, into him.

So now he has taken, he has cancers and diseases.

He has every blood-borne disease you can possibly have, you know,

inside his demon blood.

You know, he's fine.

Maybe, you know, does demon blood heal you from blood diseases or does it amplify them?

All right.

I don't know, man.

He's either he's probably completely fine or he has all of them and they don't do anything.

Uh, okay, let's take one over here.

Libro says, hello, Caboose and Papoose.

Hmm.

You currently got a Papua.

So, I mean, I can take that for the dump truck, whatever we want to do.

That's fine.

A few days ago, while talking to my brother about how I mentioned a dead game, like Heroes of the Storm, is pretty balanced, actually, since it gets about two patches a year.

Players had time to figure out viable ways to play almost every hero.

So, my question is: balance or innovation?

Do you think that it's better to push for new tech and improve bad characters or wait for changes to come and fix them maybe a little bit of both from libro i think uh i think league patches way too often i always forget how often and then someone in the chat mentions how often league patches and i go oh my god that's way too often i think it's like six weeks yeah um a lot of like like i've seen many players get upset at like fighting games to patch themselves every month or so like shit that's too much right so here's the thing Okay, league patches every two weeks.

Okay.

That's fucking ridiculous.

Yeah.

No, people who like people who play like these games a lot, like it gets when you, when, when you, when you learn a lot and then it's all irrelevant in 30 days, that fuck, what's the point, right?

It's a really shitty feeling to have.

Now, we have also had the alternative, which is you get a balance patch maybe

before you die.

Sure, yes.

And it's called by the game again.

It says super next to it.

Yeah.

And this is what games used to be, certainly.

There was arcade versions of things that then got replaced for a while, but then stopped when a port happened.

And that was that.

So my old soul, I remember and kind of do want the dust to have time to settle.

That is true.

But I also know that like games are different now.

In fact, media is different, right?

Ongoing excitement that is paralleled online is just changed what these things are and how we enjoy them.

It's, I don't, I can't say that I think it's out and out better, but it is just different, right?

And so you have to stay on top of things more frequently than we used to, but it can't be more than once a month or even once a month.

That's too much already, right?

Um, and to take this into another medium, I would almost say that it reminds me of how JoJo Part 6 getting dumped onto Netflix sucked because

people kind of want that weekly journey through the series and absolutely.

And the communal and or like progressive experience of going through it is much more enjoyable than just the binge.

Things are just not the way they used to be.

And you can't just dump and forget it now.

I think once a year or twice a year is probably the best, personally.

That works.

That works.

I think when you add a new character, of course, there's always things where people have to do little tweaks to fix bugs and whatever.

But like, yeah, the major patches being like, okay, new season.

All right, fine.

I'm okay with that.

Okay, we got one over here from Joe who says, Uh, what's up, man?

Dear, dear female, Corpo V and female Corpo V,

I want to hear your Cyberpunk 2077 gang tier lists.

Um, I barely know a goddamn thing anymore.

It's been like a year and a half since I played it.

Okay, I got some quick answers because there's a whole bunch of them.

You got the Sixth Street Patriots and Al Docatos and all Tiger Claws, and all of them, right?

It's Wraiths, etc.

Uh, I have the ones that stand out to me are:

one,

I say the voodoo boys are sick because that's the pitsi Aiti, the Haitian hackers that are like

getting into that deep, deep old web shit.

They're basically going from the

voodoo boys, you know, in like the real world of like dealing with the occult and magic and dark, scary things.

The equivalent in the cyberpunk world is dealing with the black wall and

evil AI is out to murder people.

So they're dealing with the cyber equivalent of voodoo, which is awesome.

I love them.

I think they're great.

VDB's up top.

Animals are they're just like about getting ripped and fucking pumping iron and just punching shit.

And they want big gladiator arenas to do it in.

So cool.

I admire the purity.

And

the mocks are also pretty cool because it's like, yo, what if all the sex workers and street girls just went, how about we fucking chrome up and kill the pimps though?

And now we're a gang.

And you're like, oh, okay, yeah.

Okay.

Cool.

Got it.

Done.

That's top three.

And then just on sheer aesthetic,

shout outs to Maelstrom.

They look like doom cyber demons and they fully lean into the aesthetic of, yeah, we're basically monster freaks.

Like, we're living in this cyber world looking like what you think a bad guy would look like.

They commit to the bit so Maelstrom can get it.

They're all on board.

And similarly, Valentino's on just the chromed-out fucking shiny aesthetic, gold all over the place.

They are embracing the future and becoming as cyberpunk as possible.

I think both of them are not cowards about it.

And I respect that.

Scabs on site.

That's it.

I don't remember a single one of those.

That's, yeah,

not any single one.

There you go.

Owen asks, hey there, beasts of the castle.

My favorite part of apocalyptic media is the beginning.

News reports, debating with neighbors, loss of power, unexplained disappearances, etc.

But what is the best way to explain, to maintain that awesome feeling of dread so that it doesn't just turn into an action flick?

I have no idea.

I can think of like World War Z, the film with Brad Pitt, is like really, really fucking mid, except it actually shows the exact

second that the world goes from totally normal to completely fucked

um the thing with that is though the opening the opening uh um montage of everything slowly falling apart is so it's sped through and i'm like over a muse song you know unsustainable which is great but like those are the parts you actually want to slow down to see the turning happen you know um i feel like there's different ways to go about it because on the one hand, like if it's all in the competence of the director in making the threat that continues into the apocalypse seem like

ongoing, right?

So the road is a great example of holy fuck, depressing.

It's all awful.

And every time you, another person might exist, you are terrified, right?

Yeah.

And a lot of that has to do with how helpless your main character is against the threat versus whether they have the competence to fucking John wick their way around the apocalypse, you know?

So

I'm thinking of there's examples where

these are, okay, these are not the

Sterling examples of good horror, but

whenever the threat can only be escaped from and you can't really fight against it, like, that's a kind of easy way, I imagine, to, you know, maintain that feeling, but that's not enough to make it a good movie.

Like, Birdbox.

I'm not a big fan of that.

Birdbox.

I'm not a big fan of the invincible threat.

I was about to say,

the movie where you can't look at the monsters, right?

Bird box.

Yeah, like with

the blindfolds or whatever, is like an example of like, they're so unstoppably strong, there's nothing to be done about this, right?

You're just fucked in a way.

And that's, yeah, there's no, it's, it kind of breaks the entire bit because you're like, there's, there's nothing, it's, there's too much there, right?

Um, you, you definitely want a little bit of push and pull.

I think A Quiet place does a better job of that where you're like this is super busted op but like learning the game a little bit you can start to move it in your favor but you have to you have to you have to balance that well you know and write a good fucking movie um i mean there's also the annihilation way which i you know like

i i don't need to get into the whole thing because i didn't i fucking didn't like it but like a lot of people did but i will say one thing about that where you're going into an unknowable weird dome of who knows what psychological shit's going to happen to you there's still a like you can't really fight back against this, right?

Is kind of the overall vibe.

Um, but yeah, no, I think, I think the road is like, yeah, there's other humans out there, actually, post-fall.

Um, run you are

terrified of the other humans, run from them exclusively.

Just that's you can, you can do it well.

You know, the child is not doing fucking gun reload combos.

Um, cool.

All right.

All right.

Well, that's the end of emails, which means we're going to segue segue into a short segment of spoiler cast for Expedition 33's Act 2 ending.

Spoilers start.

Not now.

No.

Well, you know what?

Kind of.

A little bit, DMC spoiler cast.

A little bit of a DMC spoiler cast.

A little bit.

Not quite exactly.

Yes.

Expedition trendrois.

There we go.

All right.

Starting now.

So

let's just focus up.

Exactly, exactly where are you at in Expedition 33?

I have completed Act 2.

I have begun Act 3.

And I have started doing activities around the world.

I have done a couple of personal dungeon questions.

I've done a personal dungeon quest for one of the team members.

Is that the Reacher?

I did Lune's personal quest.

You did Lune's?

Okay.

And then I fought a couple of the new

super chromas around the world.

Some of them are fucking no.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's kind of, and that's kind of the deal.

So I know what's going on.

We know what's going on and why we're here.

And

it's...

We know what the deal is now.

Now you're just in, now you're just in, yeah, in this end game, rolling it through.

And if I can say, right, okay, so one.

The wild thing about act two of this game, to me, we were kind of hidden in talking about it before, but it feels like

as soon as act two begins, Guillaume leans in to the player and basically all DMC players, and he leans in and he goes, Hail Hydra.

It is a Hail Hydra moment for Devil May Cry fans, right?

I also want to say that Gustav is my favorite.

I alluded to this earlier, but it wasn't like super specific.

Gustav's fake skills on his fucking skill tree is my favorite use of the interface as an anti-spoiler I have ever seen in my entire life.

I'm looking at those unlocked, those locked skills like,

oh man, I guess he's going to get like a near

power up on his arm.

Isn't that insane that they showed you a bunch of shit that wasn't like that?

That's next level on it, right?

It's so amazing.

It's so perfect.

Okay, so

I have, so we're, you know, without doing them or whatever, I'm looking at some of these bits and there's still mysteries I don't have, but I'm, there's some of them I'm scratching on.

You've got the gist.

You've got the gist of it now.

Yeah.

Like I'm looking at Monoko and I'm like, I know exactly who you fucking are, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He goes, ow, wow, ow.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, you love feet, do you?

You mean you're insanely loyal companion that carries his fucking stick everywhere?

You love fighting and you're super down to like you, you're obsessed with feet and then you run into this side room and we don't know much about the fucking pupper.

God damn it.

It's I'm like, of course it is.

Who else would that be in that family, right?

Good stuff there.

You know that the Lost Odyssey vibes are immaculate when the battle theme I'm humming in my brain sounds like it's from a sequel to that game that doesn't exist.

Yeah.

Unbelievable through and through.

And

I, you know, I might have had a word or two to say, but Siren

was

just.

Siren's great.

I love it.

Siren's great.

I just fucking loved it.

I'll tell you what, though, I'm very happy.

So I did Visage first, and Visage is really cool.

Me too.

I did Visage first as well.

Yeah.

And I ran into a problem with the game.

So the game, there's two types of ways to do multiplication in your game.

If you have a 30% damage boost and then a 25% damage boost, you could either have the character's attack be 100 and have the first number multiply by base attack, and then the second number multiplied by base attack separately.

So you have a total damage of 150% or whatever.

Expedition 33 says, no, no, no, no, no.

We're just going to multiply everything by everything, by everything, by everything, by everything.

So, what happened was, is Visage got to attack me once.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, yeah.

And you also weaken it by doing the side stuff, right?

And so, yeah,

I crushed it as well.

I pulled all my gear off.

I pulled all of it off.

And I'm like, because if I don't,

I'm not going to get to see this boss at all.

And lucky me, I didn't.

And so, but the thing is, is we all want ballotro numbers.

Ballotro numbers feel good, right?

And that's why it's so exciting when you get to the Painters and Renoir and like stage two, and the game goes,

I am just assuming you are going to hit these guys at damage cap on every hit.

Yes.

That is the assumption.

The progression knows that by the end of Act 2,

they're thinking that you're swinging for 9999 on each hit and allows the fight to balance itself around that speed.

So even taking out Renoir handily, when he comes in and does shit like makes one of your team members vanish, right?

Or you have the the Paintress who like you struggle even hitting damage cap on her because of the way the phase works.

It's well thought out, right?

And then they give you the power of breaking the cap that you can turn on and off at will, which is important because Woolly,

when you go to the top of the reacher, when you go to the flying manor, you put that painted power in the trash for a second because we are talking about the difference between a damage cap number of 10 000 and a damage my highest right now is my hit somebody for 2.4 million okay i hit it's like

yeah millions yeah i i hit for a million uh i hit for a million on something and i saw i'm like oh okay i was because because basically what happens right is the the the cap comes off and the game says we get it you're used to it now go out there and re-examine everything you've got because you never found out the real numbers right yeah when something says five hits, medium damage, or two hits, high damage, you don't know what those actually mean.

Yeah, no, extreme damage means extreme damage.

So it's time to pull everything off and re-examine all your skills.

And that's where I'm now like, this is what's weird.

As the game having making me go through it to find what the real numbers are on things, it feels like also, because we just fucking killed the Painters and the whole thing went down.

You're like, this is New Game Plus, right?

It's like they took New Game Plus and made it part of New Game.

So it's really strange because I did, there's a, there's, you know, the big scaffold

tower on the northwest Bloody Palace?

No, no, no, the scaffold.

The one that's made out of sticks and twigs and shit.

Okay.

The one at the bottom is something called the Crows.

Oh, the Crows.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

I did the Crows.

So that thing's called the Reacher.

Yeah, okay.

Right?

That is, that is, that is the personal dungeon for Mael.

Okay.

You go there and you do Miles' personal dungeon, right?

Yep.

That thing,

I must assume that at one point the game had some of these things as part of its critical path because that thing assumes you're doing 10,000 damage per hit.

Okay.

Yeah.

I put on auto death bomb and nothing could have a fight with me until I hit the boss.

And then if I had hit the boss with painted power on, I would have smoked it with a million damage and I wouldn't have fought it at all.

Lune's

dungeon, her boss didn't swing.

It didn't go.

No.

Her boss just didn't.

I just evaporated the fucking thing.

Because even if you're not doing enough damage in that first hit, you're also stealing turns because you have fucking pictos that let you do that, right?

And you have cheater.

You have cheater.

Like, I have.

Oh, my God.

I can't use cheater.

I have it on, and I have Verso doing three turns in a row.

Like, I'm getting to S and then immediately just fucking troubleshooting.

I have have Verso right now on a build where he doesn't use his skills at all.

I have Verso on a basic attack build where he just stacks infinite amounts of burn.

And infinite amounts of burn with a damage cap removed is like a million burn damage a turn.

Yeah, okay.

The hilarity of seeing that skill that's like you power up your next attack.

No, it's a skill that gets boosted and damaged by how many shots you took up to 10.

Yeah.

And you're like, you take 10 shots and use the skill and watch as like all these elaborate big animations to go like, oh, 500,000 damage.

And then this one thing is like, fuck, a million.

Like, it's such a simple hit and the numbers go flying, you know?

It's a real wild second or third act to this game.

And yeah, you're, you're, you're, you also know the deal, so you feel differently about the world.

It really does just feel like a new game plus epilogue.

The context of the world has dramatically changed.

It's like it's gone from a society crumbling to like the stakes are different in every stage of the game and they're all about grief.

Sophie's gone.

I have to make sure that it was worth it.

Gustav is gone.

I have to make sure it was worth it.

They're all gone.

And none of them were real.

I have to make it worth it.

Isn't it such an interesting, like, ethical bit where you're like, okay,

so how are you going to choose to look at this?

Because I can see where some people playing this are going to be like, oh, yeah, well, who cares?

They're not real, right?

And like, you can do that, but it's like, these are clearly.

It's gone on for too long.

It doesn't matter anymore if they're not real or not.

The elaborate, the power of what a canvas is, is to create a world.

I don't care how petty it is to you from the outside or if you're you're like almost like looking at a robot and kicking it around like it's not real.

These are real people with real lives over generations.

It's crazy, you know?

Also, the fact that I think this game can be fairly accurately summed up.

I did not come up with this.

I've seen people say it and it's so dead on.

Okay.

The middle child, Daryl, passed away in a tragic fire.

Mom and dad are fist fighting every day over whether or not to delete his Minecraft server.

Like, like, like that, like, it actually does have

an actual real-life analog.

Yeah, that's

just sits around and plays Minecraft on Veriso's server all day, and she's getting sick, and she's and dad's like, we need to turn this off.

And the whole family, the whole fucking family is screaming and fighting and coming to fucking blows.

And she's just locked in there, you know.

And you want to talk about those like Mo's, like attack on Titan world shape learning the reasoning moments because I'm like I always wonder I'm like what is the aesthetic of how you've chosen to depict the paintress and how you've chosen to depict Lagomage and The idea of like she is just sad and telling everyone how much time you have left because it's all I can do is Fucking phenomenal, right?

Because I'm holding him back over here.

I'm sorry

that's all I got right um there's still some questions I have and I want some clarification So the role that Klea is playing is interesting and seeing how how she works into the situation.

So, she says it

very directly

in the flashback in Paris.

Yeah.

Which is Paris.

Yeah, it's real Paris.

Yeah.

And

tells you what the sequel is going to be.

So, that's like, oh, the writer's

guild.

The writer's guild.

Yeah.

So, that's where I was like, oh, other expeditions?

That's a dumb way to waste of a sequel.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, let's do art.

The fucking writers are out there.

What are they up to?

Oh, the musicians, you say, huh?

What are they up to?

But now we get she says, like, flat out, mom and dad are fighting, and mom is always going to win because she's a better painter.

But I figured out a way to stop chroma from getting to her.

I fucked with XP Share.

Which is like,

you can, like, it says more, it's said a little more explicitly later, but like, there's enough that I was, me and Shadow were able to figure it out then.

Oh, yeah.

Chroma gets eaten up by Nevron, So it can't go back.

Okay.

So, yeah,

there's a moment where you get to get a further part two of that.

Like, you go to a location and you get some more context from her.

Well, they just tell you.

This is like, she made the Nevron.

The Nevrons are what are keeping the Chroma from going.

And that, by hand.

Which is why they're all different art styles.

Like all the different enemy types in the game.

Clashing with different art styles.

And the stupid little total difference between how the sad, morning, serious people of Lumiere and the goofy little fucking gestrals doing cartwheels.

Those are painted by a child.

And fucking SKA is your invisible best strength.

It's my superhero.

It's so good.

I'm like, of course he makes no sense.

A child made him.

He's the strongest character in the world.

And he doesn't afraid of nothing.

He can fly.

And child Superman.

He's always there when I'm sad and he gives me a big hug.

And child Superman is also involved in the saddest, most tragic

moment with CL.

Ciel and you're like this is insane like it's so good

I the escalation of the story becoming this solid while enjoying the game is fucking just oh yeah I did not need the story to be as great as it is I've seen some folks say that they're not a big fan of how the focus goes from

the the people the lumerians to verso

to the family the family okay the chase right and it's like but the the the the the people in the mere were not the focus gustave and mael and their grief over their lives was the focus then it was verso's grief over a life that he doesn't even live that's it and then it was mael's grief over her her whole family just completely falling apart and just dragging up all these little minecraft characters in with them gustave is about to give up 10 minutes in

just over being overwhelmed with loss and remember he's hot off of Sophie just getting fucking whooshed, right?

Like, like the green, that's it.

That's the main character.

That's the focal point.

You're following that around.

And when it shifts perspective, and what it does to Mayel's understanding of the world is super fascinating as well, right?

Because you know that feeling of like, God damn it, Verso, you asshole.

You're not answering stuff, but we know you're not, but uh, right?

And because you're the worst and you're a massive liar and a complete piece of shit and a traitor.

The thing where, in in a lot of settings you go, you knew the whole truth all along and

your way of dealing with it was like to dance around and kind of like push people in the right direction, but not quite give them enough context, right?

Yeah, because he guards truth with lies.

And now you're kind of like, what is the conversation going to look like when you tell a bunch of people that they're quote unquote not real?

Right?

Yeah, no, they don't like it.

And then you do that, and they come back from death, and CL and Lune are like, yeah, I don't give a fuck.

You should have told us, asshole.

You should have.

Okay, one, you should have told us.

Two, if we're not real and you can do anything, then it's time for you to start doing anything right now.

I mean, wow.

If I don't have to abide by the fucking rules of death, then you're going to bring my fucking parents back.

You're going to bring back my fucking husband.

You're going to fucking do that shit.

Like, okay.

Like, literally, I, like, it's almost like, and

what, like, what do you want me to do?

Like, okay, so what?

Like, who fucking, like, at this point, who the fuck cares?

You know, what a great response to, like, oh, oh, you're actually,

you know, like, it's just like, no, no, no, no, no.

My favorite things about the game.

My feelings are real.

I'm here.

My memories are there.

I don't give a shit, man.

I'm not there yet.

I beat the reacher, so I'm a little farther.

But one of the themes going on over and over and over between Renoir and Real Renoir and Versus.

That's the confusion for us I have.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Mael and Alicia and Alicia, who is Mael, and Aline and Clay, and all of them, is all of them talk up how why they're doing what they're doing and why it's for the right reasons and why they had to do what they do.

And every single one of them is a hypocrite liar.

Every single person is doing the thing that they want to do now for them.

Versus.

And then they justify it after.

Every single one.

Is it someone saying it to Versa, or is he the one that says,

you're doing this for Gustave?

I'm doing, like, like, there's a line that kind of implies that people only care about their, well, you know, the relative point of view they have.

Like, you care about who who you care about.

And I'm doing it for my mom.

I'm doing it for me.

Yeah, I'm doing it for my personality.

And Mom is not even your mom, actually.

So like that, there's a line that

comes out of someone's mouth that just straight up says that.

And like the argument between Renoir and Verso, I'm like, and like, Renoir isn't real.

Like, Renoir, the villain for most of the game, was made to be that way.

So this is where the confusion that I need more context.

And well, I guess we'll find out later has is the fake Renoir versus the real one.

And the idea of the mean one is how she thought of him, but he was still acting, you know, it is against her interest.

Like, the trick is, is that like the Clea and the mom are like, this is an unflattering portrait of Renoir.

It's not.

Like, you would think that the only thing she did was she completely copied Renoir exactly his his soul, his mind, how he would do everything.

The only thing she changed is his situation.

She took him from over here and put him over here.

And the insane, destructive drive that I have to protect my family no matter what is which family?

Is it the real family out in the real world?

Or is it the real family in the fake world that's not real?

I didn't get that vibe from when we met him there.

But like more, I feel like context will come from

furthering that conversation.

Like Renoir, like painted Renoir is I have to protect my family.

I will do literally anything to protect my family.

Yes, he keeps talking about that.

Yes.

Including killing everything.

Everything.

Everything.

It doesn't matter.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Right.

Real Renoir is I will do anything that it can do to protect my family, including killing everyone in the setting,

including you, Verso.

Because you're painted also.

And so the thought is that, like, because this is where that line comes in, where it's where he's like, he missed, he wants his wife and child back, right?

Yeah.

And

I feel like there's an unsaid, but perhaps part of this conversation is he doesn't consider any of this to be real.

No, it's nonsense.

It's fake.

Exactly.

And

that is the big disagreement point where it's like, for those that look at this as a channel for grief and none of it matters, who cares?

Shut the server up.

Shut the server down.

Shut the fucking Minecraft server down.

I don't give a shit.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Because I lived it and I literally have two memories of this moment, you know, that are equal.

They're fighting each other in their importance.

It's like, oh, the power of this thing can't be overstated.

Because if you can come out of that as a painter and be like, I care just as much for what's in here, that is real, you know?

The other thing that's it's not clear, it's really not clear, but like

Aline and Hanoi and Clea

and Alicia, outside the painting, don't age.

It is unknown to me how much time is taking place there and how much time is taking place here.

I mean, when they talk about hundreds of years or thousands or whatever, and it's like that's in the painting.

Yeah, I go paint time is different.

That's what I'm assuming, right?

It has to be.

Yeah, of course, right?

You can't sit there and not eat forever and just go, oh, right.

So yeah, we'll find out and all that.

But

no, and Cleia's like kind of like the hard ass sort of nature of things, being super practical about it.

You're like, you're, and you can just, you're like, okay, you're being pragmatic, but that's not what the situation calls for.

And the fact that when you talk to her at the fucking tower and you're just like, oh,

oh, you're,

you're like, there's a point early on where you're kind of like, I hear what you're saying, but you can be a little more sympathetic.

And now you're like, nah, fuck you.

Like, I've turned.

I'm not careful about that.

You know, yeah.

So we'll see where this goes.

But then we'll leave it there for now.

Act

three

on its way.

I will say, it does feel development-wise that the game was built in a certain way that, like most of Act 3, either didn't exist or was...

Either it didn't exist at all, and you were just going to go right from Act Two right into Old Amir and fight with Noir, or a lot of this shit was mainline, like Critical Path.

Like, Reacher is the most critical path thing ever.

It should be the location you go to right after act two.

I can't believe it's optional, but it ends up feeling like the world of ruin.

It ends up feeling like they ended up with a lot more time to make a lot more game.

And we're like, okay, here's a battle tower.

Here's this extra dungeon.

Here's this dungeon.

Here's Renar's drafts.

Which is

go wander around and find.

Yeah.

I'm waiting to find out the deal about Verso and what actually went down to see.

It's like, why is she treating

Alicia like such a piece of shit?

What did she do?

How bad was it?

How bad was it?

Right?

That is that.

Because it really feels, it really feels like it's like.

Because you talked to Mayelle and she asked the most important question of the game, which is like, why did mom draw me scarred up from the fire still?

Okay.

Yeah.

Everybody else gets to be their best selves except for me.

You know, and I'm kind of in the dark on that right now.

So yeah, we'll have to go learn.

But the impression is you're like, she's being fucking insufferable to her.

Family fucking song.

Family is complicated.

And they created an entire Matrix universe of people.

Incredible.

Dump their trauma on

forever.

Also, we have magical, godlike, deific powers as artists.

Now, I want to play piano, though.

But, but you're from the knack.

It really shows off.

You know, Hey, why?

Like, because the world is so strange.

Tiger Mall.

It's so slapdash and so broken apart and all that.

And it's like, oh,

it's an amateur.

This is what an amateur would paint.

Man.

This is like a 12-year-old shot.

And like, you see what mom paints.

You see what dad paints.

You see what Claya paints.

And you're like, oh.

Yeah.

Barrisso didn't know what the fuck he was doing.

No, like, you know,

you got the Father and the Holy Spirit being all up in the business of creation.

And then JC is like, man, I want to go DJ, actually.

Fuck all this.

One of the manor doors you can find leads to a dial.

It says unknown, but it's Renoir talking, right?

One of his little audios.

Oh, yeah, I found that one.

I found it.

And he starts talking about how

art is.

There's an order in the world and everything means something.

And they all just stand around talking about how Renoir is that kind of asshole who does not understand that you could paint just just to do it, just to make happy little trees and a nice sunset.

Everything has to mean something and it all has to be so fucking deep.

And the characters are all like, oh.

And you learn that Elene is actually the talented one and that she taught him.

Yeah.

He doesn't even, he's not even that guy.

It's her.

It's not a spoiler to tell you, but like Lenoir is like a joke compared to fighting Elene.

Like even with the damage cap still on, like he's not his wife.

It's so funny.

It's so funny.

She taught him and he's all waxing poetic, you know.

Wonderful so far.

We'll see where we go from here.

All right.

Spoiler cast over.

Take it easy, everybody.