CSB316: Sparda Woke Up To Snowbunnies

Baited.

Everybody got baited.

That's so good.

Ah!

That's so good that we got one second from going live before any of us noticed that we weren't recording the podcast at all and were just sitting around hitting buttons.

Hey, that's called an audio shimmy right there.

Oh, yeah.

Is that

awesome?

Just take the audio throw.

Exactly.

This analogy is already falling apart.

No,

the audience tried to tech and there was no throw.

So we walked back two steps and then we hit a button.

Hello.

Oh, that's good stuff.

Hey, Willie, what's going on with you?

How was your week today?

How was your week today?

How was your week this week?

Doing good.

Doing good.

Had a week.

Did some stuff.

You know, had some fun.

Yeah, let's,

you know, feeling nice and energetic.

I also feel pretty good.

Yeah, this this is like a good movie.

It's not Monday, so that's nice.

No, it certainly is.

And

yeah, I don't know.

I guess

I've been up to some things.

I'm sure you were.

So there's one thing that I would like to know if you were up to, and I don't necessarily mean to talk about it right now.

I just want to hedge my expectations for the remainder of this conversation

as to whether or not you watched that TV show we talked about briefly last week.

Did you watch that TV show we talked about last week?

I'm going to click a button visually over here.

Uh-huh.

Ah, oh, I'm so glad you had that ready.

What a good way to just jump right in it.

And that button says DMC spoiler cast.

So we will jump in when the time is.

So we're going to just start with this.

Are you doing?

Hey, can I?

I would like to put a ground rule on this.

I would like to personally limit

discussion of how Addie Shankar may or may not suck ass

because I think there's plenty to the show to talk about without that.

Well,

I don't know anything about that.

Well, that's perfect, though.

And that has nothing to do with any of what we're talking about with the show.

Yeah.

I think there's plenty in the text.

So

I take it by your energy

that

you want to have your pudding before you eat your meat.

Oh, no.

I actually, I just wanted to know if there was pudding.

Ah,

okay.

All right, so we'll get back to that.

Because

you know when you have a dinner and it's a family dinner and you look over and there's like a big ass gigantic fucking chocolate cake sitting on the counter?

Yes.

You're like,

I know where to portion my fucking guts on this one.

I have watched the entirety of this show.

Did you do it in one go or did you go?

In one sitting.

In one sitting.

All right.

So.

It's only like four hours, right?

It's basically.

It's basically a four-hour movie of sorts.

You know,

add extra time for pausing and rewinding

to check that you read the correct thing or heard the correct thing.

But yeah, we'll get to that in a bit.

First, I'd love to.

Yeah,

let's get to the steak.

Yeah.

Before the pudding.

100%.

And you know,

let these fuckers wait a minute, all right?

We know what you're here for.

You're here for the premium,

the premier Devil May Cry fandom experience.

You need an aperitif and an amuse bouche.

Yes.

Before you get to dessert.

And you tune into this podcast to hear the forefront of Devil May Cry opinions.

So like

saying that?

Is that true?

I think it might be true.

Yes,

the premier opinions such as what does it do in Gunslinger?

And Blorb.

I think about that shit all the time, Wooly.

I legitimately, I love that moment so much.

Okay, you know what?

We're starting now because I have to ask you something.

We're starting.

Never mind.

Can't see.

We're starting now because I have to ask you something.

Yeah.

I did not want to.

Because with that, like, okay, we talk about these games a lot.

We've been talking about

for a long time.

And, you know, whatever.

We can say that we've been talking about them before they really caught on in a larger way.

I have been talking about Devil May Cry and to the point of including it in high school media projects

back when I was in fucking high school.

And so I know,

and you know,

despite

appearances,

you know, you're actually quite humble

in many ways in life,

in some ways.

So I ask you

when

you saw

just follow my thought follow-up wasn't ready for that.

Okay, thank you.

Follow, follow, yeah, sit down, be humble, but follow my thought process.

When you saw that character with the skull bandana, did you have any thoughts?

No, not really.

Okay, because I didn't have too many thoughts either.

And then a big character standing next to him that looked like the the rest of that design appeared.

And then right after that, there was a character on the team that they went, hey, Pat, something, something, something.

And it was the black guy whose name was Pat.

And I was like, oh, hmm, okay, whatever.

That's a stretch.

That's not that at all.

That's a stretch.

That's super random.

Yeah, I'm just like, whatever.

And then a Punisher Skull type thing.

It's off-brand, whatever.

It's a stretch, right?

I feel that might be a fair stretch.

But, but the, and I put that in the recesses of my brain going, Wooly, fucking relax.

You know, what are you feeling?

Big for your britches over here?

Get out of here.

And then apparently, Asmund Gold was the guy on the mic that was literally.

Now that's obvious.

Right?

And so it's like...

Because it's been literally stated aloud.

And confirmed online.

So when I was like, oh,

there are YouTube people here

and that other blondish guy with the goatee that hangs out with ninja that is a little bit maximillion-ish

is a little bit maximillion-ish.

I don't know, and then I was like, maybe, maybe, I don't know.

I don't want to, you know, I don't know, it's a stretch.

I agree.

Do you have

anything like

more than like tummy vibes?

No, no, it's it's the it's I hate connecting fucking string dots.

So trust me, I'm the first person to just toss this whole thing in the garbage.

But I am just saying, like, it entered my brain a little bit, and then I went, nah, and then I saw the Asmund gold thing, and I went, oh,

and then I went, ah, let me ask you what you think.

I didn't, I didn't pick up on that.

All right.

So, then, never mind.

It's a reach.

It's a reach.

Now, let me tell you:

if Dante walked up and said, Whoa, check out these blorbs,

then I would have been like, Hmm, okay.

And then

I noticed

a follow from somebody that was also

somewhat tangential to

this thing.

So then I was like, oh,

that was possible.

Yeah.

Maybe they just were really excited to hear your thoughts about the television program today.

Maybe.

This

thing.

So then I was like, ah, but whatever.

When it's a reach, it's a reach, and I'm the first person to throw out.

Well, you should just ask them.

But I'm the first person.

You should just look like a big boy and just ask them.

I'm just the first person to throw out anything that I think is a reach and be like, nah, probably not.

I don't imagine so, because why would anyone give a fuck about this stupid shit?

So fine.

Ignore that.

I know my tiny baby skeleton is an ultra Kill.

That I do know.

That is confirmed.

Baby skeleton is confirmed to be in my coffin.

No one else would have such a tiny, tiny skeleton.

Shared coffin at that.

Very uncomfortable.

All right.

So, so, so.

I mean, quite frankly, I was kind of waiting to hear a character be like, hey, Dongery, what you doing over there?

You know?

No.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, is that...

Maybe next season.

Yeah.

Hey, is that Mr.

Sun High?

He's a legend.

I hear he's a legend.

Oh, fuck off.

Anyway,

okay, okay, okay.

So, so, yeah,

let's just roll right into it.

So, first I wanted to ask that, okay?

And then second,

let me, let's start with what I enjoyed.

Yes, I think I think I'd like to do that.

That's where I started with when I started talking last week.

Where I'm like, it is definitely better written and better acted and better looking than the 2007 anime.

That is, without a doubt, like the case.

I'll take your word.

Oh, you haven't seen it?

Oh, it's bad.

Oh, yeah, I did.

It's really bad.

I never did.

I straight up never did.

It's quite poor.

That and Bayonetta.

You know.

But

so what was it?

The

first off.

What did I?

Okay, the intro is still cool.

Yeah, I'll agree with that.

That intro is rad.

That's a lot of fun.

And, you know, I don't think I ever internalized as well that the

it's called Roland

Air Raid Bomb or Air Raid Bomber or something like that.

That's why it's extra crazy that it was performed on top of the World Trade Center.

So, air raid, like, I mean,

I don't assume that that as well, in addition to the time frame, is accidental because it's air raid siren.

There we go.

Right, you have the, you have the,

you have the America, and then you have the, the, the move where you DT and you go pew, pew, pew.

So the intro is cool.

When it comes to the music, I do not hate all the remixes.

I think the slow version of the old songs, the plays during the credits, are pretty good.

Yes, that's what I was.

I was just kind of annoyed that they only really happened during the credits.

So that's that.

When I hear Devils Never Cry in the slow version, the cinematic version, I kind of feel like, oh, that's a cool vibe to something that's like, you know, there's a little bit of that nostalgia where you go, like, oh, yeah, if I'm like, if I'm watching a Devil May Cry movie, you you might expect to hear that, you know, or see, or hear it in a trailer or something.

But the main reason why you enjoy that is because I'm like hoping that there's a motif that comes back when a fucking slapping version comes around.

It doesn't have to be.

I'm a fan of a good lei motif, man.

Yeah.

I'm crazy about them.

And it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be like the...

just lifted original one, but like, I want, but a sick-ass version that would come back and hit alongside the original Devil's alongside the softer Devil's

never cry would have been fun but i did enjoy i enjoyed that right um

there's a song that sounds like it was a really nice end to that first episode

definitely um there was a song that sounds like these theme but it wasn't it just kind of had the the cadence of it on the in the chorus da da da da da da there's like a there's a song that pops off somewhere that's kind of has that thing going on um

Okay, so yeah, there was that out.

There's that element to it.

Seeing character designs change drastically, like ladies, for example, is one where you're like, oh, I like what lady wears.

And okay, we're doing something different.

But Captain Commando outfits for everybody is rattish shit.

So I like torn their captain commando.

Because I actually completely agree with you that putting them in

Captain Commando outfits is really cool.

I think

the whole team standing there,

like,

clashes.

I think if it was just lady,

that would be one thing.

But, like, the whole Dark Com Captain Commando gang look like they're from the future.

I think, though, the idea was probably that, like, well, one, you could, when you have a bunch of them standing there in the armor, and you have that one that's got the same shades and hair, you're like, oh, for sure, that's what we're doing.

But also,

well,

if the idea was to not make Captain Commando disgrace his legacy, you know, as a hero of the future,

yeah, but you got a bunch of folks here that

there's the sympathetic ones that get off to, you know, midway through,

and then there's the ones who straight up commit the war crimes, you know.

so overall it's not great when you're like

it's almost like you know evoking the the the captain america kind of imagery and then like doing the most heinous fucking uh uh uh black op shit you know um which i guess you know bucky is to a degree but anyway i would like to make uh a point that I is never mentioned out loud in the TV show, but considering the rules and metaphors they're going under, those demons are not combatants.

They're terrorists, so you can't do war crimes to them.

Ah,

right.

They're also probably not human under the Geneva Convention, right?

So you know.

Hell didn't sign no Geneva Convention.

Which

Dante literally brings up.

Okay, what else

was I fired with?

The, you know what?

Johnny Young Bosch on Dante, I just settled into it.

I just settled into it.

It was deaf.

It still is weird, but I was able to just relax and let it go.

When he got more upset, it certainly started to sound way more Nero.

Yeah,

it does.

And you can't.

He's chilling.

When he's getting mad,

when he's chilling and talking shit, you're like, okay, it's Dante.

And as soon as he starts to get agitated and scream, you're like, I started to hear curiosity.

It's DMC4 nero specifically yeah absolutely um and you just can't you can't get rid of that right so so um yeah just being real about like you know how much i expected that to bother me versus how much it actually did i was expected to be ripped out way more than i than i actually was um

so here's that there's the outfits um

i assume you're gonna talk up the actor behind white rabbit just killing it well actually i was gonna talk up kevin conroy because i think yes i think bane is a very,

he did a great job as a shitty, fucking evil human.

And,

you know,

as many of these games go to show you, humanity is the real demons.

And he's a proper, contemptible son of a bitch.

So,

amazing job to Kevin Conroy.

Rest in peace.

You did it.

You did a good job.

And that's a very hateable vice president.

Of course, the

you know, extreme.

I would like to stop you for a second because I think Left 4 Dead actually solved this discussion like 20 years ago.

In one of the first safe rooms in Left 4 Dead, there's in spray-painted text, we are the real monsters with sharpies underneath it by different people going, no, that's the zombies, idiot.

I think you're stupid.

I hope you are dead now.

Subtext.

Fuck it.

I love it.

I love it.

Oh, that's great.

And you know what?

People in dark comm would say that.

You know, maybe we are the real monsters.

What about that thing?

That's an actual.

Yeah.

What about Cavalier Angelo?

Yeah.

And then, you know, then you get your, well, you're making

modern colonial parallels, and you got your modern American government

up on blast, but at the same time, it's more of a W figure in the seat and a pence in the show.

Oh, it's outrageous to Bush and Cheney.

Like, it's so

Cheney running the show, definitely, but I guess the religious aspect of it

struck me as pencey, you know?

Maybe.

Yeah,

I think, I think.

If he was all business, I would have read that more Cheney.

I think painting Dick Cheney as actually the devil is really funny.

It is.

It is.

When we were just doing that, I was like, okay, this is pretty funny.

But as much as

the I'm running the real show Pence bit, or rather Cheney bit is very clear, but you have to admit that the

religious tilt on it strikes us as very pence, right?

I feel like that's, you know, that's a thing.

Bane seems like the kind of guy to shoot somebody hunting and have them apologize to him, and then say it was God's will, yeah, it was God's will, you survived.

Um,

so, uh, yeah, there was that.

Uh, um, Kevin Conroy killing it there, White Rabbit, fantastic.

He did a good job, but I thought he was like weirdly used.

I had this weird, strange feeling that the only reason, like, that he, like, I feel like they sought him out so that when he says

Mary's name, it sounds like Batman.

I mean, when he literally says Arkham, you go, oh,

every time he says Arkham as the name, you just, I'm like, yeah, right, true.

Her name is Arkham.

That is in fact her name, but oh.

Anyway, you know, you can argue the presidential reference shit, but

regardless, big religion.

Then there's, yeah, White Rabbit, who, again, yucked it up.

And definitely, I feel like, you you know, Addie went to do the thing where it's like, if you're adding an original character, it has to be a good one.

It can't be an annoying, shitty OC

that feels very sued into the situation.

Now, to be fair, he is not an original character.

Do tell.

White Rabbit is from the DMC3 pre-crew manga.

Oh.

However, he is a relatively minor character.

Whoopsie daisy.

Well, there you go.

News to me.

Interesting.

Okay.

Yes.

Here,

I'll get you some photos.

Fake fan exposed.

So

they did a really cool job with

him.

There you go.

His pop-offs.

And

yeah, there you go.

Right on.

His pop-offs and, you know, his motivations and then kind of like underlining the parts where you're like, oh, well, he has a point until he doesn't, you know.

And I want to say it's that speech where he like digs in on Mundus, right, in particular, where he's, where you're like, oh, and he digs, then he digs in on Sparta, you know, where like, you're like, okay, got it.

See where you're coming from.

You know, you, you, and this is where a lot of those tweets about like, oh, yeah, everyone seems to be villains are the hero of their own story type of thing.

A lot of that comes to mind there.

So White Rabbit was cool.

And to that end, as well, when you find out about his backstory alongside ladies, episode 6, the silent episode

is fantastic.

It's a great episode.

It's

like it's so good in so many ways that it made me super pissed off that when we cut back to the demon realm, it didn't use the different art style.

Yeah, yeah.

And

when

having them have two different art styles consistently through the whole show, that would have been really cool.

Well, I was because I was actually wondering if it was like taking,

I was wondering if it was also giving them an out for like not having to show too much of the demon realm if they didn't want to explore it yet.

But that wasn't the case because like later on you do, you know.

But at first I was like, oh, is this a way of kind of like being like, we'll get there later when we design all of that.

But for now, let's simplify for storybook purposes, you know?

But no, narratively, it worked out.

Also, showing the

kind of like the hatching and shading on their hair in particular is a really cool filter.

Uh, when you see Lady and

White Rabbit as kids, um, great, that was, that was super, that was, that was, yeah, that was well done.

And of course, you know, and then when the dialogue does come in, it's like for some awful shit to happen, uh, where you're like, god damn it, lady.

Just

yeah, um, and and and and and you can see too as well where it's like there is, as much as she's being so stubborn and like hateable, like, you can see that it's like

she has a turn, and she has these moments where she's supposed to become like more sympathetic, but like, they happen so much later than like a functioning sympathetic human being would.

They happen like

an hour after anybody else would have caught up to like, oh shit, wait.

So, you know?

I knew this was going to happen because i think talking about lady is like by by far like the most interesting thing in the show and

like i the the bit that you're referring to is like

she gets shown sympathy by the horrible dastardly demons but like even in the moment even in the explicit moment where she has been saved by a normal family she is like shaking and ready to like shoot the baby

on the ground

right away.

Like she's like trying to, oh, and like, and like, you know, if you're going off of the idea of like, well, she's traumatized and upset and she hates them and she's enacting that and whatnot, there's that idea of like, you can have that flash in your brain of like, oh, I want, and then wait, no, what am I doing, right?

That like subconscious, oh, demons, no, wait, what?

But the fact that she's like, no, actually, let's talk about it for a minute, how I'm about to wipe you out.

And then the refugees themselves have to be like we just risked our lives to save you and and like that's the point right you're supposed to feel as credulous about her doing that like that the the the intended emotion that we have in that moment is correct but the reason why this is jarring and this becomes the theme for the rest of it is just because of like knowing at having any attachment to what that character was

wrecks your brain right and a lot of this a lot of the

incredulity of all of this is based on having an attachment to the

material it's based on.

If this is all brand new and you're like, I don't know anything about this lady, you'd just be like, all right, yeah.

Well, wow, she's a fucking asshole.

All right.

Well, that's that.

That's insane.

But knowing that she's not that callous and not that mean and like would have this level of hatred, the first thing she says is she hates fucking demons and she's full of that.

But like to not have that little switch that would go off in most other people's heads, I suppose.

Like, is strange, you know?

I need to.

Especially for a protagonist, I guess.

Like,

the set of like the sequence of events is a little backwards because the episode six flashback is like predates the beginning of the show.

But, like, I went back and watched it to check.

Okay, so we have a, we have a demons in like jump through a portal, and Darkom's there, and her gang is there.

And we're like, oh, no, the demons are coming through.

Ah, and then a big monster shows up, which confirms to them that it was all the trick, right?

The part that gets me, like, by far, and you can go back and watch the scene,

like, when that big monster comes out and starts eating the demons, ladies' team opens up on, like, the women and kids first.

That's exactly.

Exactly.

No, that's where I was going.

First, I was going to say.

Then they make sure they take out almost all of them before she even realizes the big demon's about to cross.

100%.

This is where I was going.

Is like, if you have no context for what you're looking at and you're like, demons are evil and whatever, and then you see someone come through and go,

hey, just talk.

Talk no jutsu, right?

Like, please don't shoot me and my children.

Hold on a minute.

And they're all like this.

And then something else comes and goes, ah, and you're like, I don't know what's going on.

Kill them all.

Starting with the young.

You just get the smallest targets first.

Like, I mean, get the ads, right?

You have to focus on the ads before you focus on the boss.

And then, and then she blows, like, you have the shot of like the grenades going over like a crying six-year-old before it's completely incinerated.

And then Dark Kalm clears out.

And I know it's not there, but I, like, the tone of the scene feels like lady in the gang in the bus going back to base go, whoa, that's crazy.

wow

barely got out

get some

get some

you know and yeah no um

like you you if and the thing is again

let's say we have no attachment to the past right

if you are painting your characters with these flaws

It's very difficult to walk the audience over to their side when they late come to a reluctant agreement on okay I guess

we'll be sympathetic fed right her realization and so and and then connected to this point I guess we jumped we jumped forward a bit but because it's we're just all over the place now like you mentioned last time the idea of like oh demons are kind of like people they're not these big old they're not just these big old freaks or whatever but there's the sympathetic element right yeah some are there's some big demon monsters like that idea is not like inherently incompatible,

but like

it's weird because what you get is just because here's the well, well, here's the thing, right?

But there's a difference between,

let me back up.

In the games, there are demons that you're kind of, that you're cool with and or sympathize with, right?

And there are demons in the extended materials that, at the very least,

are capable of intelligence and speech.

And

like Phantom can talk to you.

He's a giant lava spider.

Exactly.

He's like a

person in his head.

Beowulf is meant to be like, you're like, oh, that's a cool dude, right?

You fought with Sparta and so on.

Griffith, Shadow, and Nightmare are all meant to be like, you know, tragic parts of V, and you're like, oh, it's them, right?

I mean, literally, you can name Trish if you want to.

It's a

special exception, but like, there's that element where you're like, okay, demons tend to

be these big old freak beasts, but you have these like ones where you're like, yeah, there's something to them.

And I feel like what you kind of end up having in a broad categorization sense is like, you have the demons that are like

down for the fight that are like let's go son of Sparta.

We're both going to enjoy this, right?

Beowulf, Belial,

Agni and Rudra.

All leaning, that are just, you know, they're just like, let's lean into it.

And

to that end, when you beat them, there's this thing of like,

well, they are not dead.

They submitted and you're using them as weapons now, right?

Seven.

Yeah.

So there's a little bit of like,

you've conquered them into submission and now you can use them, right?

It's like a Mega Man power.

Serbus is doing his job at the bottom of the Timena Group.

Right?

Raw, right?

Cerberus.

Silence, right?

They're living on in that kind of like, oh, it's that cool thing, right?

There's a really, like, Dante's like that, has that relationship there.

So, um, and, and then, and then there's the true big evil evils that need to go, right?

Yeah, and it's

the final bosses of every single game.

And in most cases, it's a human being getting all demoned up that you're like, yeah, human beings.

Of note is that we are talking about higher order demons, you know, your archangel or whatever equivalent in the demon realm, right?

That can talk and can reason and all these things.

Some, like, I mean, people are pointing out that Agni and Rudra are like nice to you.

Like,

they're friendly, like, genuinely, until they're like, well, we got to guard this door, right?

But at the top, when you have like guys like Mundus, which are just like the incarnation of misery and evil, right?

Okay, sure.

But what's important is that from the medium level down,

we have

freak beasts from a doom level.

We have slobbering monsters that represent 99.9% of all demons.

And so where this gets complicated is because now we go, no, wait, there's just human beings with horns, right?

And barely, man,

it's like a fucking eyebrow implant.

They're Cardassians from fucking Star Trek.

You're gonna say Cardassians.

Right?

They just look like Cardassians.

And the Cardis, yeah, the dirty spoonheads.

Got it.

And then, like, Gene Roddenberry makeup, basically.

Yeah.

And then there's, I'm actually an animal with a large, terrorizing body, and I'm a predator.

Like, just the big.

You're literally just a fucking hell elephant.

Exactly.

Like, I'm not, there's no thought, just eat, like, monster type of thing.

And also, we don't talk of it.

Well, the show never goes into it, but there is a massive subdivision of demons that are just ghosts

of

specters and such.

So then you go, all right, well, Dante is a devil hunter and like, I guess, you know, is not an expert in them since he, like, doesn't really know enough about himself or so which we'll get to in a second but like there's but there's the clear like okay well i'm going after these things and uh uh we can take them out

they're bad but uh they're not blanket bad right

um

and you and then you have where lady's at where it's like he's like wait what like he's like you know half and half and lady's just full-on gestapo as you mentioned just all in exterminate wipe him out

And then you have Virgil, who is the person who I was like,

oh, he's a piece of shit.

He doesn't care about the human casualties of seeking power.

And that is a problem.

And you need to keep that in mind, no matter how cool he is.

And now you're like, he's freeing the innocent people.

He's a gooder guy than anyone else in the show.

Hey, you remember when I said, I don't believe those old tweets?

Yeah, no, Virgil is

heroic.

Like,

in the show, and he's going to be the antagonist, and he is going to be the antagonist with better reasons than any of the predators.

And so you're like, the whole thing where it's like, oh, no wonder he's talking about him being misunderstood.

Because in this version, he's a completely different person.

He's literally a completely different person.

The most sympathetic, you know, person here.

And then, like, I mean, not to get into, not even to just like, okay, so we're ignoring the

Neloangelo mind control because you can just become human yes so all right there's no there's no bit there so whatever the consequence being you know him losing or well who knows what he what happened but he serves mundus but the first thing you see of him is like you make him like the hero of the show in one scene in a way that is like it shits on whatever lady's growth was and even dante is just like i don't really know i guess i'm doing this Dante goes through that entire narrative with literally no personal growth whatsoever at all.

I mean, that's like, like, well, the growth is discovery of who he is, and then I that's not growth.

He doesn't integrate it into his personality or change what he's doing.

Like, it isn't, it's nothing about him changing.

It's a super Saiyan.

He gets a super Saiyan.

That's that's there.

That's that's what it is.

He can go, ah, you know, and then do it.

Um, no, it really is so fucking baffling to basically set up the demons in that way because

it just makes your bad guys right and also more justified from everything we know about them.

And so you get to the end, and you're like, White Rabbit actually was thinking about what he was doing.

At least, these two aren't paying attention at all.

And you also speedrun the uh, the colonization of hell, which you can do that in

you can do that in Doom because that's what that's about.

It's weird to see that in Devil May Cry.

Don't want to be an American, idiot.

It's wild.

It is weird to see that in Devil May Cry.

Like, you know, but you speedrun that bit and you're like, okay, so basically, right,

American colonialism, the true evil.

And so no matter what Mundus does or says,

it doesn't matter because the Ebane is way more evil.

He's fighting against the Ebaning Nation.

Like, Mundus is automatically off the hook, man.

Like, if you want to go, like, the war on terror, like, analogy, like, Mundus didn't even do a 9-11 to any, like, he didn't even do it.

No, he's just.

He's just an asshole.

He's, he's, he's, he's Taliban.

He's oppressing his own people.

You know what I mean?

Like, you're like, okay,

and now you're turning the oppressor into the freedom fighters.

Is that that's what we're doing here?

Into this, you know, like, yeah,

so yeah, I want to, I want to backtrack a little bit because I want to talk about uh, Dante, Lady, and Virgil.

Um, and because this is adaptation criticism, this is not like show criticism, this is adaptation criticism, right?

This is why I said that, like, your, you are, your enjoyment of this is inversely proportional to how well you know these characters, right?

Yeah, so I'll take Virgil.

Virgil is like the simplest.

Virgil has like a single defining personality trait over like fucking seven games, and that is he couldn't stop the bad thing happening to him in his life because he was a child.

This traumatized him to get power.

He then later did not have the power to stop bad things from happening to him when Mundus took him over,

which re-traumatizes him to seek out more power.

Like, he is he is a one-note character, and he, the, the games explore that, and but, like, that is his deal.

And his idol is his father, is the most powerful thing ever, right?

The, the bad, the bad in the entire universe, in the entire universe, right?

So, he's setting a goal for himself that is impossibly stratospheric, right?

Virgil saving

anyone

doesn't make any sense at all unless he's going to eat them off screen later or to get more power.

Or Dante goes, You started this shit, you're going to fucking fix it, and I'm dragging you by your ears.

And he's like, Oh, fine, let's go

fucking fix how Nigel shows up in the show, and the first thing he does is give someone else more power.

He's what the fuck, right?

Right.

You know, so, so, I mean, again, we don't know what his relationship with Mundus is

beyond the idea that, like, well, he's.

He's working on the inside.

Maybe, maybe, yeah, but if he's not brain slaved, then, like, yeah, well, we'll have to discover.

But whatever the case is, it's, yeah, it's not at all what we knew.

And instead, it's this inverted thing where you're like, you're just the most justified person here.

And like,

you're the real person.

The humans don't know about the storm that's coming.

Virgil doesn't care.

Why would he ever care?

The Virgil we know, right?

And this is.

The amount of work it took in DMC5 to have him go,

hey, son, look after my book.

Okay, bye.

Fly away.

What's required like millions of lives?

God, shout out to him.

My son means nothing to me.

That boy is my son.

Like,

that's probably a mistake.

It was actually, it was a mistranslation, right?

Because he's going, the word son means nothing to me.

Wait, what?

Yeah.

And you can transfer that over to like Lady and Dante.

Like, Dante is.

brash and crass and non-serious because he doesn't realize how important things are because he's a functionally invincible person and he's sad about his mom and he's sad about these things and then he always learns that things are important, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And that just doesn't happen.

And, like, I could see you could argue that they're setting that up to happen later, but it's kind of strange that that just didn't happen at all in the first one.

And Lady does

have a form of character development, but it's really small, and it is essentially like forced on her by fate.

Like, it's it's she sees the family, right?

And she

she sees the family and she's like, oh,

maybe

not all demons.

And then goes upstairs and starts shooting people in their hospital bed.

Also, every time she has a moment of hesitation and then she gets forced by, like, Bane to do the evil thing, she's about to do it until...

Another giant threat pops up like White Rabbit or whatever else.

There's always that.

And in the ending, she paralyzes Dante because she's about multiple times she she's like i see your point but i still gotta fucking follow orders oh i love this boot and then it goes eviler and badder and she's mid-tonguing the boot going oh

fuck

you know

like she still chooses the wrong path right after she's shown to be like it's other shit is shown to distract but you you see that decision right um so they they've done something with Lady's character in her childhood flashbacks that cause that like, I don't know if you picked up on it, and I'm kind of realizing it now because I'm thinking about her childhood flashbacks pre-episode six, right?

They consistently portray her as a little girl who is like fantasizing

about being a violent cop.

Yeah, she wants, yeah, she wants to be a big gun demon hunter.

Like she's like,

like, this is her like literal childhood dream.

Yeah, yeah, Even before like shoot monsters.

Even before they got attacked, right?

Yeah, like yeah, you know what?

She points the gun at the thing as it's attacked.

Like she has that in her, right?

Fuck it.

Fuck this monster.

And

I will say.

And all that shit is like kind of like kind of like almost a mood point.

Like she was going to end up a dark gong no matter what.

Right.

But like, but like in terms of speedrunning the tragedy with the, with the, with the father and stuff, it's like, like, yeah, that's a fine, again, for the silent episode, I'm like, that's a fine way to speedrun her past.

It feels like

the whole, like, fate took him in the fire when he attacked you as opposed to you pull the trigger.

It feels like you're taking away a big part of,

right, that's.

Well, don't worry, Woolly, because.

I didn't see Arkham's horribly violently charred corpse.

True, true, true, true, right?

So the trigger can still be pulled on that.

The devil trigger.

Okay, okay, Wooly.

Woolly, last week.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I spoiled it a little.

And I said, I don't think people should say game mechanic words out loud in a story.

No.

And, but here, and the thing is, right, is like, especially when you have ways of talking around it, like, ah, I see a devil has awoken in you too, you know?

That's such a cool line.

I just scrolled past that post on the subreddit.

But because it's the episode plot point that's that's like no we need to you to awaken to this thing then there's like just calling it by the mechanic and you're like here and like here's the bit right every time you look at that move list i don't know about you But to me, that's what Dante's calling it in his head as he's going feel impact and he's doing fucking,

you know.

Yes, the moves are what they are calling it in their mind.

Right?

Stinger.

And now that's macabre, bro.

And he's like doing it in his head, being a cool guy.

He's like, I'm so fucking cool.

But you're not calling the devil trigger.

You know, it's the fucking moves list in his brain, man.

As a word has never been uttered by a character in Devil May Cry history ever.

So.

Like, they talk a lot of shit during their moves and, you know, like, whatever.

Like, there's times where they're yelling things out and such.

But yeah,

with moves, you can still make that more acceptable in the sense that if they're trying to style real hard and be cool, they can yell the name out and get away with it.

Oh,

someone's right.

In DMC, Devil Man Cries, Virgil Manga.

Virgil does yell out Devil Trigger.

I have seen that panel.

Hmm.

Okay.

Well, he also yells out, fuck you, you know?

Yeah.

And hey, you got to homage all the

Dadino fuck you's by

getting

the cussing up a storm in this.

I don't look.

The idea of Lady being a big old, a big old swearing fuck, fuck whatever thing is like.

Yeah, if you want to do that, I guess that's fine.

But

what fucks up her scenes.

But it's like, but when she refuses to tell you the story of

Sparta and all that stuff because she's too angry to deliver it.

And like, you can't,

Like, yeah, you're just, you're so...

Character can't handle their own exposition of the children.

You're so angry.

You're so hateful and angry that you can't even get it out.

You know?

And in this world, right?

In the hatred she's showing would make more sense in the world of big freak beasts and nothing else.

Yes.

But instead...

Because like, when she's calling Dante like slurs and being like, he's a devil, I can't trust him.

This is the this, she blew up, like, all those women and kids, like, years ago.

Like, that does she even remember that happening?

That vitriol would be so much more justified for the game world, you know, but instead, hearing the sympathetic one, it's out of control.

Yeah, and no, she barely, she, like, it takes a second, and then she's like, oh, hey, it's the, that's the guy, right?

Um, and and then again, yeah, and then so, so you have, um,

and again, to just go back on the whole, like, uh, just cause bit, right?

Power-obsessed Virgil

is

actively giving away his amulet for what he believes is

the right cause, right?

What?

The right cause is me getting fucking off his shit.

And Dante is like, not in a million years.

Never.

No one's getting this amulet.

They're like, Dante, it'll help save the world.

Just give us.

My mommy.

No, I'm not going to give it to you.

I'll never give it to you.

And you're like, but Dante, you're going to, but the planet needs it.

And he's like, I don't give a fuck.

And Virgil's like, if it's for the better good.

If it's for the...

It's so weird.

And it's like, why?

Like, why?

Like, adaptation problem.

Like, these characters, I like these characters a lot.

These characters at their core, like, fairly simple.

And it's just the exploration of like fairly simple themes through like sincerity.

But like,

all of the characters have been like inverted or

or or like sidestepped like he is essentially somebody in the chat just pointed out by giving his amulet and his blood away he's giving away his father's sword to some guy he lets him rock with the sword like it's the most selfless it's crazy selfless it's so insane yeah um

right essentially and again it's like setting White Rabbit up to be

because it's setting White Rabbit up to be like a Virgil in the season because Virgil's not there.

So he's like, here, you go take my stuff and you be Virgil for me.

And then he literally cuts the thing

in the drop-off scene in the same way, right?

But anyway, so

yeah, attachment to any of the existing shit just

makes that shit hurt more.

The

whole okay, so there's, as you were, you mentioned it, and I was going going to come and say, there's a level of internal consistency with the world that exists, that, like Castlevania, it's like, okay,

this system is what it is.

And, like, you, um, also, shout outs to the, the, uh, the rest of the, the fucking, um,

uh, uh, whatever, the, the, the space marines, you know what I mean?

Like, the, the,

the crew.

I'm like, yeah, right.

Yeah.

The crew's fine.

I, I, I got, I got no problems with them.

Um,

I have one problem with them.

Okay.

We follow them for like five episodes and as they stand around and look badass and then they all get punked out in like fucking 90 seconds.

They do.

They do.

That is true.

And well, and related to that, ladies

going through the raid is like

she gets more kills than Dante.

She gets more play.

She's more efficient.

She beats Dante and more demons to a standstill, as you said, and then again on the rematches and is actively like styling on crowd.

She takes out so many of the bosses.

It's crazy, and you're like, okay, I'm guessing he really likes her and thinks that she should get some play, but like to the point where Dante's like shoved in the back of a truck and or just completely out of commission or stuck in a plane.

Lady gets takes out

plasma and Echidna

while Dante is falling from the sky.

Like, he's kidnapped in the truck and then kidnapped in a plane doing the thing while she's styling hard and

doing and actually playing the game, so to speak, you know?

And I mean, I don't know.

Like, there is...

There's a potential like thing there where it's like, oh, let's give the side character more play.

Let's like, you know what I mean?

And like, let's kind of like subvert it a little bit by going, oh, the super strong strong guy, let's actually make him be weaker or whatever.

If that's what you're going for, it's that he's dumb.

But you can't do that for the whole season.

And you already did it on the freeway.

And then now it's in the second major sequence where all the demons are around again.

And then she kills them.

She kills Echidna.

And she kills fucking, like, like literally, she takes everybody else.

She takes out Plasma who later dies

in the explosion.

But like, she beats two of them.

Is

just way better and way more like, yeah, way like, anyways.

Like we're rolling into the last episode where Dante's like, I have to take this more seriously.

And Lady manages to trap him for like nearly the entire climax.

Yeah, yeah.

Also, I thought the whole bit with like, don't get touched, just a drop of blood, was going to be a like, now you must style, right?

I thought that was going to be a way of kind of implying like

don't never get hit, must style, you know, but that's not exactly what it was, but it kind of

could have been that, and that was an opportunity that was not taken.

So I don't want to throw anyone under the bus because I don't know if this was like a producer,

you know, decision or a

decision

or whatever.

But

how do you like when you look at an adaptation adaptation of a property and you're like, there's plasma, there's Echidna, there's Cavalier Angelo, and they're like one-to-one recreations, and they're really cool.

Rabbit looks cool, ladies' new outfit is all right, et cetera.

And then they're like, you know what it's time for?

It's time to have our own design for a big major villain.

Here comes Arkham Asylum Rabbit, the shittiest looking monster in the fucking show by an order of magnitude.

Just god awful.

Yeah, I'm gonna have a big giant monster arm with the force edge, so it looks like there's a tiny needle at the end of my dick.

Pat,

from 13, from before we even started being on the internet, what is the rule of cool that we have learned from this franchise?

They have to be your size and they have to walk towards you.

What are we doing?

It's so simple.

It's so simple.

And every

game understood this.

Every other game that came afterwards that references understands this point.

Miyazaki understands this point.

The Souls franchise

understands this point.

Bayonetta understands this point.

Everyone understands.

It's a very simple rule of cool.

They must be your size and they must walk slowly towards you.

That's it.

And we're popping off.

We're popping off as soon as we see it.

But no.

We gotta go big old mutant freaks.

Totally.

I'm the ultimate bio-weapon, guys.

Um,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, hey, hold on.

We got we got a comment in the chat that goes to your point.

Didn't the force edge corrupt Arkham or something and turn him into a big blob?

Yes, that's the point.

Arkham is stated out loud by Virgil: this cannot be the final boss, he's too late

like this

and then you fight virgil

um

yeah yeah uh uh what what what the fuck i i was

uh

i don't think showing the devil trigger under hero academia blue skies was the correct decision

yeah

um

though, they did do the wings turn into the coat, which good, great.

No, I look, I don't, we talked about DT designs.

I don't, I don't hate the version in this.

Um,

I hate it during broad daylight, specifically.

It looks way better at the end on the bridge.

Um, I like the bits of Caneco that it takes in there, and um, it mixes in a couple other things with it, you know.

Um,

I guess the implication is that Nello Angelo is Virgil's DT.

It is the implication, isn't it?

Hey.

Which

in a costume on the game, I guess.

I would like to go down a thought experiment with you.

Can we do that?

Okay,

I had other points and I'm losing them as we go.

Don't worry.

You'll remember them.

I want to go down a thought experiment for you.

Okay, so in DMC Devil May Cry,

we are establishing that the average demon is like a normal person who happens to be from a different dimension, right?

They're essentially a neighboring nation that has had its borders closed.

Star Trek aliens.

Right.

Down to Don to the sci-fi.

Okay, so Dante is half devil, half demon, and that gives him powers, etc.

But as we established,

devils and demons that can like talk and reason and be like people are like people,

right?

Like the average devil that you run into is just like, I'm just hiding out in this fucking place to feed my family, yada, yada, right?

So when Dante turns into a devil

and is overwhelmed with hatred and rage and violence from his devil side,

what is

the thematic parallel we're supposed to pull onto normal demons.

Are they actually all secretly bursting with murder under the surface?

Isn't the story like doing everything it can to like reverse that expectation?

So, wait, was Sparta like

super evil and had to fight it?

So, or

is it all deep?

What the fuck?

Hatred and evil is power, except don't look at the Undertale village right over there.

There's there's a little undertale village and little fucking Alphis and crew are running around in it.

Deltarune is happening right over there and just don't look because yes, hatred and evil is power.

Yeah, no, talking about the rage and giving into it and all that, right?

Any sort of, if you want to make it about like

emotional control.

It's like, oh, so they're all

the kids too?

They're all just.

And so then why isn't Lady?

Why isn't Lady popping her fucking?

Did you notice that there was...

Did you notice that there was a

Okay,

in the episode three

of Star Wars review that Red Letter Media put up, they invented the term backtracking in which they described how like ant.

What's that?

That's a term.

Yeah, okay.

I think they invented it, but regardless, they use the term backtracking to describe about how Anakin has been, like, a violent murderer for, like, multiple movies at this point.

So, they have him backtrack and be like, oh, I got to save those droids or whatever, right?

And because it was written later, right?

So, in episode one of this show, Plasma steals a fucking baby.

Like a human child.

Yes, yes.

And then the human child is never seen again.

Never seen again.

Presumed dead.

Yep.

And it presumed.

Oh my God.

Is that baby dead?

Oh, that's fucking terrible.

And then a couple episodes later, Plasma's like, by the way, I can only turn into things if they're still alive.

So, oh, you know what?

Plasma didn't kill that baby.

That's so that's how, you know, because otherwise he wouldn't have been able to pretend to be and plasma's not that evil.

And then the mom is, and then the mom is with the stroller when the big thing is about to bite them.

Yeah.

Right.

So you see her again later.

So yeah, no,

there is that bit.

I do also...

Like, the idea of turning a generic enemy and turning it into, like, that is the plasma.

I'm like, that's kind of cool.

I don't mind that as much.

Sure.

They're not going to put multiple of those guys in.

It's a really weird power set.

Yeah, exactly.

And then that's why, obviously, the whole Virgil bit is played there.

Now, let's get our reaction shot of him flashing his red eyes at the camera.

He's like, that guy's plasma.

Don't forget.

Do you want

to?

I just realized something really stupid.

You know when he turns into Virgil and Dante's like, oh, my brother, that's impossible.

And then later says, oh, yeah, he turned into my brother.

That's not anything what he would look like anyway.

Yeah, that line is weird.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay?

But like, he looks exactly like what he would look like in the final scene.

Yeah.

And the reason I'm realizing he's doing that is because he has met Virgil.

Yes, correct.

Yes.

He literally knows Virgil.

No, because I'm assuming that Virgil met everybody that was in on the plan.

You know, the smorgasbord of demons from all the different games coming together.

And they're like, he's playing off of the person he's met already

because White Rabbit introduced him.

So, but with that whole bit,

the more you think about this fundamental change that you talked about last time, which is Dante just grew up not knowing he was a demon.

Absolutely clueless until he's what, 20?

And it's like, I don't know, I guess I just thought I was like a superhero or something.

And it's like, ha ha, throw away a lion.

And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Pause, pause, pause, wait, go back in time.

You just showed those two kids fighting and throwing couches at each other

and smashing a room up.

As babies.

Right.

And Ava's like, oh, you kids, you know?

and they're go they're fucking dragon ball fighting and you're like how

did that work in this world

with even like the healing factor and like how did he internalize he was just dog

got exploded out to the point where i think your spine was showing and you healed from it in one second and you're like ha ha that's crazy I just he's the whole bit is just I'm just too dumb to figure out or to think about anything about that but also like I'm good at hunting demons, and I know I'm one of the special

people that does that job because

hunting demons is my specialty.

Yeah,

I don't know.

There's also

a Goldstein reference in there, like, making Kalina Ann.

Hey, I got a question for you.

So, Sparta seals off the demon world,

right?

And he uses the amulets to seal it off.

Sorry, the quantum...

The quantum locators or whatever the fuck they're called.

So he uses the amulets to seal it off, right?

Okay.

And so then he empowers the, he empowers the magic.

No, sorry, it's not magic.

He sciences up the quantum entanglement of the

amulet to open up the demon portal that it has to use the two separate sets of blood from his kids that don't exist

at the time that he did it.

Because his genes are split into two?

Because

purple is made up of red and blue.

Yeah.

It is really, really jarring and weird to just have Dante's life explained to him by other people.

Because

it moves every agent to his own character.

And this is all just connection to the source material bits, but you're like, the whole thing with him is actually that he knows too much and he plays up being a different person.

Tony Redgrave rolls into town.

Who am I?

I don't know.

Whatever.

Hey, Enzo, who's great, by the way.

Enzo's great.

I like Enzo.

I think Enzo is a massive highlight.

And

a quick little jab at the Raccoon City job implies a lot of fun things that I'm happy to just keep as a little Easter egg.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, that's that Enzo was was cool.

Um, but the whole thing is uh you know Dante is that um

he's that anime protagonist 90s anime protagonist, your Vash the Stampede or your Spike Speaker.

He's your I'm gonna blow into town.

I'm gonna, I know, I have a whole lot of backstory going on that you don't know about.

I'm gonna solve this small problem, Edward Elric, and then don't worry about it.

My true power comes out for a second to fucking do some cool shit, but then we're gonna go back to it and ah, who's that guy?

How could he do that?

I don't worry about it.

He's crazy.

Nobody knows anything about his past, right?

And then it turns out when you get to episode six or seven and then someone from his past shows up, you know, for example, his fucking brother, then you start to learn about what's going on or whatever.

Like,

it feels like just weird that other regular human beings are telling Dante about who he is and what's going on and what his dad is and all of that.

Everybody knows about Sparta and everybody knows Dante is his kid and everybody knows that he can devil trigger except for Dante.

And

every time we cut back to his childhood, so far that's pretty much lifted straight up, right?

Like

everything about Ava and Virgil.

Background.

Hiding in the closet, right?

All of it.

right except virgil was in the house except outside of the house right sure whatever that's the one difference right But

so then we don't have the same versions of these characters where,

you know,

Dante's biggest weakness is everything about like his mom, and

Virgil is obsessed with his father and the power and the devil side versus the human side.

We're taking that out of the equation with these characters.

But if Sparta was not enough, if they were not aware of Sparta's existence at all, and Ava never really told them and they never really were a thing, that like the photo, the family photo that was on the the wall where they kind of at least knew who he was, and he gave them their swords and whatever, that's not a thing here, right?

Because they don't know anything about him.

So, if you take that part away, what makes Virgil care about demons and power and his dad or any of that shit?

Well, I guess we don't know.

We can learn about it into the next season, perhaps.

But him and Dante would have the same level of attachment to their mom when the trauma happens without their dad being present.

And then we go off and we create whatever Virgil's timeline is now, but Dante gets the one that we get.

But it just makes way less sense if you don't have both parental figures there creating that fork with them in the moment of trauma.

Do you understand what I mean?

Ava doesn't even tell them their father's name.

Like,

she's like six or seven years old, and she has told them literally not a single detail about their father.

What he looks like, if he's a devil, what his job is, what his name is, how they met, like literally.

So nothing.

So nothing.

So it just, Dante goes up to just not have any information, and he's just the one, the guy, he's bumbling around and being told, right, after the fact.

And he's got the connection to his mom where he's like, it's her amulet.

I'm going to hold on to it.

That's it.

But Virgil can't possibly have anything resembling the connection we know to Sparta because he's a mystery, at least until after they get attacked and that trauma thing moment occurs, right?

It can be written so that in the Munda's time, he learns and studies and goes that way or whatever.

But up until the point where they get separated and he thinks that he's dead, he has no connection to his father whatsoever.

And the formative years of that being what causes the trauma will make way more sense for you to become lifelong obsessed than it does for it to become something later on.

So his whole character has to be different as a result.

Dante's biggest moments of self-discovery should be from his fucking twin.

Not, not...

Anyway, all right.

So

all his moments of self-discovery are so like...

fundamental to moving the plot along.

Like, okay, well, we need to set up that you can devil trigger so that you can do it in the last episode.

So, I'm going to just tell you

that you can do it.

Yeah,

look, maybe, maybe he just took his memory, or they'll just make it like, oh, yeah, we just, we wiped his brain or something, you know?

Um, the strangest part about a lot of this is I remember a tweet when Addie was describing the two types of projects he works on, right?

So, yeah, the Addy Shankar bootleg universe, um, Which is stuff like Punisher Dirty Laundry and stuff.

Right.

So there's the company name, the production company, but then like, yeah, you've got Captain Laserhawk and Guardians of Justice.

And the description is the brand known for reimagining and remixing pop culture,

projects that will blend genres and styles, creating a unique alternative take on familiar characters, formats, and settings.

And then the second category is Addie Shankar Animation.

And this brand

focuses on high-quality adaptations of beloved franchises and

established franchises featuring mature themes and complex narratives.

It adopts a sophisticated style that seeks to elevate the source material while paying deep respect to the original work.

Devil May Cry, for some reason, is categorized as the latter and not the former, right?

You have a broad category for remixes and faithful.

adaptation slash retelling and well it's not those words exactly but

when you have have the level of change that this thing goes through, why categorize it?

They'll all be completely new characters.

As the first one and not the second.

I don't, you know, like, because this really does read like a bootleg universe when you break down all these things that we just talked about.

Castlevania,

and this is, again, I feel like, you know,

it's something when you're filling in a lot of the gaps.

Trevor Belmont is from a Ness game from the mid-90s that has no dialogue.

So that fitting into this category, I'm like, sure, I can definitely get that.

And

I can understand as well the base thing where somebody that wants to tell stories is not going to want to just do a retelling of a video game, right?

Like, there's always going to be that, like, where can we find places to put more meaning into

aspects of this lore or this setting that, you know, you can derive something

interesting from, right?

Something you want to say about the world or about the characters and such.

There's certainly enough of a discussion point about trauma, family, and

loss that you can focus on with these characters.

But beyond that,

I can expect that there would be parts where you inject more into the lore of the city, the place, right?

Everything about the government or all that stuff, you know?

But when you're doing so at expense of like the entire identity of everyone recognizable from the original thing, it just strikes so weird that

if it were like it's it's I hate the sentence, but it's like if it were not called Devil May Cry, you'd probably be like, oh, yeah, there's that new animated show.

It's pretty interesting.

It's got some cool stuff.

Dude, that's the one I came away from it.

Yeah, there's that cool show.

The use of the existing characters is the problem.

It's like the biggest problem with the show is that they have like put stickers of these characters' heads on these new characters.

And the reality of, like, well, would you know, would we be talking about it?

Would other people be talking about it as much as an original thing?

Possibly, possibly not.

I don't know, you know, but it is so weird going in with any foreknowledge on it.

It's really strange

to like, yeah, like violently make these these

cuts to

their backstories.

Anyway, can't wait to see what happens with Blaze Blue.

Can't wait to have to see what's Blaze Blue.

Can't wait to see season two

with Arius.

I mean, Blaze Blue Radio already has its animation, but like, wow, Netflix Blaze Blue?

Damn.

I'm ready to hear about the Black Beast and the Grimoire.

Oh, man.

You know?

Yeah.

Hey, I want to ask you something because one of my complaints that

you never addressed yourself was that I was like, I was like fairly unimpressed with the action in this show.

Like, it was fine to good.

I should hold on a second.

I need to elaborate.

There was a tweet.

Addie Shankar just tweeted out the Blaze Blue logo.

Nothing was announced.

That was it.

Here it comes.

Yeah.

You were saying about that.

It was good, but like I wasn't impressed.

Like I was when I watched Castlevania.

Yeah.

Yeah,

it was fine.

It was cool.

It was cool.

I didn't have any real complaints about it, but it definitely didn't have um

humongous pops.

I mean, Lady did some cool shit,

um,

but then there's the stuff where you're like, ah, man, like, this is a good studio.

Studio Wit is talented.

Um,

3D.

I think they just didn't get direction for cool things to put in the fights.

3D is

just, and this is a problem I have with like other shows as well.

Like, we're not getting 3D there yet, man.

Mirror, Scarby, sorry, Studio Mirror, not Wit.

I just, I know that anime is just going to look like this for a lot of the future going forward, and it's a little bit of a like, deal with it.

The medium has changed.

But just kind of like sprites into 3D models had that problem.

I'm just kind of like, yeah,

3D animation in anime, especially when you're doing it for like an affordable episodic release, there's always going to be that strange kind of like frame rate issue to it.

There's always going to be that little, like,

just there's a little bit of stiffness where you don't want it to be.

You can tell when a jacket blowing in the wind on the back of a motorcycle is a stiff 3D model as well.

As opposed to really rough shots on that highway chase.

Yeah, and it can be good, but the average level is not, right?

That's the thing.

I talked about Trigon Stampede and about how cool a lot of that looked.

And, you know, I feel

it's just not the average level for anime 3D is just not there yet.

And it sucks because it's also the only solution for some things.

3D horse is incoming.

But...

I just, every time I see that little

every time I see that, like, that stuttery frame rate, but it's not the Spider-Verse implementation of it, where it feels like they're using

the keyframes to the maximum effect, right?

Then it sucks, man.

Because Spider-Verse has that frame rate thing going, but

you're creating the feeling of like, again, like panels or action in a comic book.

You're having moments of characters sliding and squashing and stretching for maximum impact.

And

in a lot of this kind of stuff on the highway, you're like, oh, we're jumping on the back of that truck.

And Agni and Rudra are kind of doing the thing where they're standing stiff and turning their heads, but their whole bodies aren't turning.

It's just a little bit of a.

And

I genuinely don't understand why Agni and Rudra have heads because I think the reason is so that they're easier to frame so that they don't always have to have the swords in shot

to speak.

Because you'd have to do angles where they just happen to be handing the sword, right?

But it's yeah.

I don't know why they, yeah.

With everyone else, you know, with Echidna and the rest being like more or less the same, it's model rips.

It's very strange for them to be changed to be that way.

Yeah, I don't know.

Especially when you could have the sword talking and being the head if you wanted to do that whole bit.

Like, you could have done it.

Yeah, totally.

Why wouldn't they have heads?

Go play Devil Maker.

Because they don't have heads.

Go play Devil Maker.

Black up Agony and Ruja.

Go play.

Go look at the game that they come from.

So, so,

but just every one thing I noticed is that every time I have this feeling about 3D stuff,

more and more people disagree with me, though.

So, that tells me that it's getting better.

I feel like more people are comfortable with the level that it's at slash have been watching it for enough years now that it feels fairly normal.

But it's just you can always tell when something that's a mixed medium show switches over from one to the other, you know?

Absolutely.

I have a question, and I want you and I guess our live audience to let me know if this is an unreasonable request, because I genuinely don't know.

Like, it feels like it might be, but okay.

So

I'm going to use Castlevania as an example, right?

Castlevania is a storied video game franchise.

It has been around for decades, and it has a lot of extraordinarily classic elements that show up in a bunch of different games.

So when you are watching Castlevania, you would expect the Belmont to have a whip, right?

You might expect him to have a whip upgrade, which you then later see is the Morningstar whip.

You expect him to throw a holy water at guys.

You would expect him to have a cross weapon that he throws that returns to him like a boomerang, you know, things like this.

You would expect Alucard to do like a backstep that kind of looks like a teleport.

I think I know where you are.

You know, these things that are all over the place.

Yeah.

Right.

That are super, super, super like iconic.

Devil May Cry as a franchise is a series that is absolutely defined by an extremely large and

I don't think I'm hyperbolizing, a super iconic moveset.

Absolutely what I mean.

Like a moveset that

people take the name of and apply to other things.

In the way that Shori Yukin DP has been used to describe everything, it has done the same across its

stinger is what you and I call everything that moves harder.

I call Nero's, like,

I forget what it is, shuffle of caliber, whatever.

I call that fucking stinger.

Oh, streak.

Streak.

Streak.

I call streak stinger because my brain goes stinger.

Sure.

Every launcher is a high time.

Especially if you can juggle afterwards with a ranged weapon.

Every helm splitter is a helm splitter, even a helm breaker.

I literally don't know what any other helm splitter in the history of anything is called other than helm splitter.

Helm breaker is a helm splitter.

Okay.

I think it is really strange that a video game adaptation about a video game that is obsessed with its move list to the point where the trailer that changed the series trajectory in history, winning Game Trailer's best trailer of 2003, being the Devil May Cry 3 trailer, just has move names show up on the fucking screen.

Rainstorm!

Fucking teenagers lose their minds.

Does not have transition, transition, transition.

Helmbreaker, round trip.

It doesn't have Rainstorm.

It doesn't have.

It has drives being done by the bad guy, yeah, it has Agni and Ruby and some of their moves.

It doesn't even have

the single most recorded on video Devil May Cry move of all time, a move that shows up in almost every trailer, a move that shows up in almost all of its commercials.

It does not have to some time in which Dante crosses his arm over his shooting arm to shoot to his left or right or behind.

It doesn't have

any of it.

Bitch.

Any of its action scenes.

Bitch.

It's weird.

I will do you one better.

The whole time I was watching, I was waiting for a semblance of a moment of a devil arm.

And outside of grabbing Agni and Rudras' combined sword for a second, there is nothing.

and then he beats a grunt in the last episode and grabs the big fists and uses those as he can't access his sword, and that's it.

Like,

there's a moment of, I can't reach my sword, oh shit, and you're like, okay, cool, he's gonna have to do the thing, you know, no, and

there's none of it.

There's no acquiring a new weapon and going, oh, yeah, fuck yeah, this shit's rules.

Okay, let's go.

You know,

um,

nothing.

He didn't keep anything.

There was nothing.

Any

the one or two demons he did kill, he did not get the weapons out of them.

Yeah.

Right?

He could have kept Agni.

He could have kept it.

I

was really expecting him to pick up and take Agni and Rudra, the swords.

We got a round trip against the humans.

Yeah, people are saying there's a round trip.

He used to.

He's also saying that he may have killed a rabbit with a stinger, but it didn't look like that.

Probably because it was the clash, ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba back and forth thing.

I didn't read it that way, but I did.

There was a round trip against the grunts.

Yeah.

Someone in the chat mentions it, and I don't know how to feel about this because maybe that's me being nitpicky.

I don't think that Dante should have beaten Nalo Calavier with his mind.

I don't think

outthinking him.

Tricked the rival swordsman to death.

Outthinking the knight.

I think that's fucking weird.

I mean, I don't, but the problem is also, I'm like, I don't even know what personality to apply here because I'm like, this was a container for Trish and Lady, you know?

So it's a weird not-demon-demon thing on its own.

But yeah, no, he outsmarted it.

He sure did.

Also, I don't know what the point of making hell being unbreathable is, but it feels like...

I bet it's going to be super annoying in that second season.

Every single character is going to have to wear a fucking suit.

Well, because I'm like, if Dante, like, Dante can't breathe in hell?

What?

Dude, demons can't breathe in hell.

Like,

that doesn't even make any fucking sense.

Yeah.

I just, I'm like, you know who can?

It's Virgil.

Yeah.

It's a strange play,

you know, coming off of he rode his motorcycle into hell

to fucking deal with it, you know?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know what the point of that is, but it feels like the whole holding your breath thing is going to probably be annoying.

yeah.

Um, man, yeah, and then and then we're just doing doom, right?

We're just doing doom, like they have the just doom, yeah.

Like, humanity was able to get in, plant the flag, and set up shop.

Like, they didn't, they, they trend, time, like Mundus and whatever was going on over there didn't track them down, they were able to create wild that they construction no resistance at all.

The, the, the, the scavenging

under talions

are

It really is, isn't it?

Dude.

Like, I just saw fucking

Undine

when little kid White Rabbit is hanging out with them.

I'm like, hey, look, it's Undyne and Alphis.

You know, like, I just, I cannot see it.

The Eldertalians are crawling around and hiding behind every wall, you know, because, like, Burial and the Army of Hell is marching.

Look at them march.

Look at them march.

They're everywhere.

Oh, fuck.

And then the Americans roll in and like

they're like, no, we had time to like contract out like a giant structure and build it.

And we had people coming in and checking, like, is this up to code?

You know, like, like, you know, that gigantic circular superstructure they built?

That's months.

That's what I'm saying.

There were construction workers snapping chalk lines and measuring up the engineering walls to put up the ah, get that, lift that over there.

All right, lunchtime, you know, like while the, while.

And Mundus is just like, yeah, it's fine, I don't even care.

While the king of fire hell is marching around with the banners in the background and we're just like, I guess we're letting it rock.

And then imprisoning everybody.

We got to the point where they actually built it, completed it, then imprisoned everybody.

And

can I ask like the dumbest question possible?

Wait, hold on.

I just thought of something.

And

imprisoned the undertalians who

the Mundus was pretty much stomping underfoot anyways.

And Virgil frees them, who's serving Mundus and goes, you better thank your God Mundus.

Right?

But, like,

and that's, again, that's all happening in the.

Okay, I guess

the opportunity to be like propaganda or whatever, to be like, ah, I was going to stomp on you and fucking oppress you, but now look at these humans are here.

Like, I guess whatever.

They'll play into that in season two.

Yeah, anyway, you had an osha approved structure that was able to be built before you know a single virgil showed up much less the entire armies of hell

i i have a i have a stupid question

um

the vp is like we have to kill every demon everywhere immediately They show them dropping a fucking atom bomb at like on a random patch of dirt.

Yep.

Like there's nothing there.

Like the shot they drop the animal.

It's a fucking empty field.

Yeah.

Well, I assume the thought is like we just have to nuke whatever's right through this portal and set up shop in the fallout.

But okay, so like, ah, every demon must go.

Ah, kill them all.

Ah.

Now, now build a big giant prison and take prisoners to hold.

Why?

Well, maybe we can, you know, exploit them and experiment on them and create slaves or create.

I don't know.

It's just, it doesn't even feel consistent with the fucking.

Yeah, maybe we can create some evil way to make to use them instead of just killing them.

That prison is there so that Virgil has people to rescue.

Yes, but it's also so that it can be called Abu Grape.

Yeah.

Like

Makai Grape.

Like, that's what it is.

It's so that we can have Virgil rescue them, and you're going to have

Nevin standing next to a Makayan on a box like this.

And she's going, ah.

And you're going to have one of those moments where you just see that photo and you're like, oh, yeah, right.

Okay.

That's what we're doing.

That was already there.

Did I miss it?

Yes.

Oh.

Like,

not the specific thing that you're describing.

But yeah, no, there are shots of soldiers taking selfies with corpses.

Oh, yeah, yeah,

in that montage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

I can't wait for Dante to switch out his red coat for a red, white, and blue coat.

Well, he's been captured and frozen, right?

Like, and his weapons have been stored away.

So he is now a

Dante is a project of the U.S.

government.

Yes, American Devil May Cry.

I can't wait for

anyone to start arguing with Virgil and for for him to have the most correct righteous absolutely based and real takes

i think yeah i think i'm i'm i'm getting ready to like

so like

Sometimes you need to learn how to like flex your arm, like your biceps and your triceps in such a way to lock your arm into place so that you don't take your phone and just whip it through your television.

Because I'm expecting like Virgil to give a speech about how bad Sparta sucks.

Class solidarity, Dante, class solidarity,

just like like how Sparta was actually the devil, the evil, and all this shit.

And

just like, why would they have Virtual fucking?

Oh my God.

Might controls everything, and only the will of the people together is truly powerful.

And these American dogs must suffer.

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

I don't know, man.

But it's just, it's, it is 180, and any love for

what you kind of thought the characters were outside of the way they look and the weapons they're holding.

Yeah, not the way they use them.

Appears to be out the window.

You know what?

You know what?

Virgil did use an extremely recognizable move from.

He did.

He did.

He judgment cutted.

He judgment nut ended.

And you know what?

I don't think that should have been the first thing we ever see Virgil do.

I think you kind of blew your load on that.

It's a bit overkill for opening up the prison gates.

It's a bit overkill, you know?

Yeah.

So I saw people saying this before, and I would like to put this out into the ether as a not a prediction, but a fear.

I did not come up with this, but I saw someone say a couple weeks ago that they are genuinely expecting Virgil to activate the Timene Gru underneath the World Trade Center.

And like I thought that was ridiculous We are like sitting here and I'm like man, but we already had a the building already blew up.

We already did it right there is a skyscraper that blows up

But the the WTC is still there.

It is it is but I I thought I thought the analogy with the actual building, you know, was

the heavy-handed one they were going for with the apartment block, you know?

They could do it again.

They could do it again.

But

I read that whole scene of the exploding building as, yeah, close enough.

You got your point across.

I was just going to say, imagine if the roles were reversed, and the first time you see Dante, he shows up and then he sin-devil triggers and then goes into judgment to open up a bunch of doors.

He can't do that because he's emulating when Sparta woke up to justice, which Sparta did not do.

Sparta did not wake up to justice.

Sparta said, man,

man, I hate demons.

I'm going to keep them on this side and go find myself a blonde.

Excuse me.

So in this world, right, when fucking Rabbit is like, he locked us in a prison and then kept himself safe on the other side, fuck that guy.

Sucks so bad.

White Rabbit is completely correct, right?

you can absolutely chastise and bitch out that motherfucker if you reinvent his entire actions if you reinvent crazy how sparta like erected the berlin wall and then went to west germany to get married like if you change everything about what he did then you can absolutely go yeah that was crazy right it's insane to think that he we thought that was heroic because it's not the same guy you know if you're doing the thing you see usually that angle works if you take what we look at as a hero the whole time, or you have an expectation of it, and then you go, oh, well, think about this perspective.

What about someone who, you know, had it from this side, right?

There's...

Metal Gear Solid does a fantastic job of this from game to game.

And particularly

three and then, like I said, I said why I actually still love the ending of Phantom Pain, you know, for what it does and what it represents and where it wraps wraps that story up.

I think as much as that game is remembered poorly in the franchise, what it does to the story is necessary to close it off there.

And it's, I love it.

Fuck, big boss.

What a piece of shit.

No legend.

Only garbage.

Only asshole.

Only liar.

This thing here is like, you can make a hypocrite out of an old hero if you write them to be a hypocrite.

Like, the the the the phrasing of woke up to like we get into almost no detail about Sparta in the games, but like the phrasing implies to me that there was like an active invasion of hell on earth and he literally beat everybody back through the door and then shut the door and then sealed the door and then gave up almost all his powers to seal the door and then went to try and live a normal life and then found the hottest blonde with tig old bitties

and just went to town.

Hey, listen,

there's like part of Sparta's backstory that is so interesting, but it's never spelled out loud.

Sparta sealed the demon realm away 2,000 years ago.

And then,

after like 1,970 years, was like, all right,

it's time to have some kids.

Yep.

Yep.

Couldn't resist a snow bunny, you know?

Just

all that.

All that.

Seen that word a lot lately.

All that busy.

I've seen that one a lot lately.

Oh, it's been around.

That ain't new.

I'm going to blame Marvel Rivals for this specific

astinism.

Me seeing it a lot.

Oh, is that a new word to you?

Because it ain't new to me, buddy.

That word has been a part of my wish.

That word has been a part of my lexicon for a very long time.

Like, I had seen it way back, but I had not seen it like a lot.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, yeah.

No,

that's language over here, buddy.

That's nomenclature.

But Sparta, Bugman, went, yeah, all right, I think it's time.

It's time to settle down.

And then he had kids, and then he's like, I can't.

I'm out.

And then either died on the spot or left.

Okay, here's a line, though, when he's like, you truly are

a child of aristocracy.

I'm like, oh, yeah, right.

Because it's not about the floofy old style clothing from when you were children on a big manor.

It's about the fact that you're young and carefree and just live doing whatever you want.

And you don't have to struggle and fucking actually grind for a living, you know?

And also, because like, even on like the show's internal demon logic even as a half demon dante is a

freak like sparta was a cut above like these guys aren't healing from their heads exploding off their fucking necks

like like dante's regeneration is so

so

so

over the top compared to everybody else he ever deals with.

It's quite extreme.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which, you know,

I don't think we ever see

Dante get beheaded in the game or fucking face bloated, you know.

But the implication that I guess

if you stab him enough times, he'll stay down pretty weak and he'll eventually come back, sure.

But we don't know, we don't know the rules, though.

We don't, we don't know the rules on,

I do know something.

You know, I can tell you one thing:

Beowulf,

as a demon, was able to lose an eye.

His eye didn't

grow back.

Yes, true, true.

That means the demons don't necessarily heal from grievous, like limb loss.

Yeah, and again, like when fighting themselves, when fighting as younger versions of themselves, stabbing Dante enough times, eventually he's like, ah,

and he'll fall asleep.

Sparta woke up the snow bunnies.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate you.

There you go.

Man, yeah, yeah.

It also,

this is maybe, you know, what you want to talk about blowing your wad a little bit too early.

I think the instinct to blow your wad also goes into, okay, so

Echidna's from DMC4

and Agni and Rujo from DMC4.

Yeah, they're probably like the greatest hits from and Cavalier is from the last one.

Plasma's from this one.

But fuck it.

Let's just grab them all.

You know?

Like, you're blowing that wad by picking a who's who of the bosses from all the series because you just couldn't wait.

You know?

You know, you seeing Lucia and fucking Uroboros at this point in the background.

Yeah, sure.

That's coming up.

It's right around the corner.

But everyone besides Plasma, it's like, that could have been

that could have been the DMC1, you know, crew.

We didn't need to,

we didn't have to, you know, well, unless it doesn't come back for another season, I suppose.

There's that idea, but

it is confirmed.

But maybe there's that thought about like, we got to hedge our bets and put in the cool stuff up front because what if we save our time getting to it and then it never comes, you know?

I think one of the reasons that they picked these specific gang is that they have to be vaguely human-sized because they have to fit in hallways and rooms.

Whereas if we do a second season where we're going to have the demon world,

you can do

Griffin because they're big, big, big, gigantic monsters.

I guess so.

I guess so.

But

like, all of them?

Like, we have to have lady five.

I mean, five Devil May Cry bosses simultaneously?

Are you...

What?

I categorize Echidna as giant, though.

Like, when the giant snake is flying through the forest coming at you,

she's humongous, you know?

That's that's the size of Bale and and and the others you notice her size changes in the show

depending on whether she's taking the elevator or or attacking you on a freeway.

Yes, absolutely.

She moves between like 10 and 25 feet tall, depending on the scene.

A million percent, right?

Meanwhile, you're in the air in four, like floating up as she's dragging you around.

Yeah,

yeah.

Anyway, um like Echidna can stay in that elevator.

Like, she's standing in front of a regular elevator and she's like eight feet tall.

So I guess the it's just like, you know, do you just go, do you bring in the is Lucia and and Uroboros like two episodes of an arc?

And then

you go right into, you know, like

Dante's Awakening shit.

Um do you end on a stinger for four with a Nero also voiced by Johnny Youngbosch?

I think I think they should get Ruben Leonard to do

Nero.

Dan Southworth, actually.

Yeah, yeah, Dan Southworth.

Yeah.

I'm not listening.

So before we leave off, I really want to take to task.

Adaptation is my primary issue here.

And it's so deep.

And we talked about why are these characters not like the characters if you're going to use these characters.

But the change to the general setting, the change to Dante knowing about his history, the change to lady's personality, like

they're really corny about it in the games.

They're super, super, super corny.

But like they, they

go to the

absurd lengths to fit a phrase into the story, which is some variation of even a devil may cry when they lose a loved one, which now doesn't make any fucking sense

because

all of these fucks are crying about their loved ones because devils aren't monsters.

They're just people.

Even the big monster ones are just people.

Even a human may cry.

Yeah.

Because they're humans.

They're just people.

Like, are we going to get

a flashback in episode three of the season two of like phantom reading bedtime stories to their phantom babies before Virgil kills them.

Every one of the bats Nevin sends at you is actually someone she has a connection with, you know.

People may cry.

People may cry, man.

Yeah.

I know that this is not 100% this,

but there's at least a little bit of this present, which is, you know, especially, let's say, more than 10 years ago when a licensed thing got adapted to be a movie, and then a writer's room walks in, looks at the video game script, and goes, this is dog shit.

We're starting from scratch.

We have a name and a main character.

Fuck everything else about this, right?

Everything from the Leguazamo Mario Brothers all the way through to where we are today, you know, where the source material is barely a part of what gets adapted to the theater.

It feels like a part of that like, oh, this is dumb.

Throw this out.

No, we're not doing this, right?

It feels like a bunch of that kind of happened,

which is like not the same feeling as,

quote,

elevating the source material while paying deep respect to the original works.

I think we kind of get the worst of all worlds on this.

I think Castlevania was an extremely like good adaptation.

May not have been the most accurate in some ways, but I really liked it.

I feel like DMC Devil May Cry, the TV show,

it feels like if the Bob Hoskins John Lake Wazamo movie was exactly the same,

but looked like the new CG Mario.

Like the plot and dialogue was exactly the same,

but it just happened to look look exactly like Mario.

And you'd be like, this is fucking weird.

I think we're both on the same page here where like, it's like, yeah, if this was not called DMC, you know,

it could have been fine and we could have been on board.

Or if it was a recognizable version of the characters that doesn't feel like it betrays what they are while adding a bunch of other shit to that, then you could be like, all right, I don't like that, you know, like, I'm a fan of the old things and we care a lot about those things.

So you want the things that matter from the old thing to be a part of it.

But if you see someone come along, change stuff, but you end up still getting something pretty good and ultimately faithful out of it, then you can quell that feeling a bit, you know?

Um

that's not what we got here.

That's just not what we got here.

And yeah, that's a bummer.

Because

you're ready to accept some change, but it's gotta fucking hit, you know?

Oh, yay.

Well,

hey, shout outs to,

you know,

Papa Roach and

Evanescence.

Getting paid.

You know?

Good for you guys.

You dropped a

fucking crazy train.

Cray, not crazy train.

Whatever.

Come, Milady, come, come, Milady.

Butterfly.

They got paid.

You know?

Crazy town.

Good for everyone who made money.

Enjoy your money.

You probably worked really hard.

All right, let's take a break.

All right.

Let's take a quick word from our sponsors.

I love sponsor.

This week, Castle Super Beast is

brought to you by

Hero Forge.

Oh, man.

I was just telling Paige about this a couple days ago.

Yeah.

If you're DDing, if you're doing tabletop stuff, if you're,

you know, looking for, if you're playing any games, or if you just want cool collectible miniatures, HeroForge is an awesome site that you go to, which has essentially a character creator that goes really in depth for you to build

whatever type of character you'd like and and print out a little 3D version that is ready to use for a tabletop miniature.

So I've been showing the little example each time, so I'll show it off again if I can get the focus right.

There's little monk woolly.

It's cool, man.

You got the paint applied right on it because it's 3D printed in with the color and details that I selected.

And then the bottom of the base, you can put your own words and naming and whatever details you'd like.

You get to select the base as well.

I picked the dojo floor.

I picked all the little details.

And I even got my hair to be dreads with little blonde tips on them.

So you can really go in depth with it.

And

a recent update that

they've had is the face customizer, which lets you go in for further tweaking on different areas of the scalp, eyebrows, nose, jawline, and more.

So if you really want it to look like you, they have a a lot of preset faces you can pick from, but if you want to fine-tune those details, you can go in as well.

Like any good character creator, right?

You have some broad things.

If you just want to click and quickly make something,

orc.

Hit me with an orc.

You need a bunch of stuff to go, hit it, right?

But if you want to go in and fine-tune your main characters or the, or the, you know, the important characters you want to play as, you can go in as well and take as much time or as little time.

You can do it quickly, or

you can go in depth and spend the time I like to spend on a character creator.

Um, which is much, it's a lot, yeah.

I appreciate the ability to fine-tune, um, but yeah, lots of presets for you to go with as well.

Uh, posable ears, facial hair system, moustaches, and just a whole lot of unparalleled detail as well.

And um, yeah, they've also got the uh the level of detail they're printing out is super duper fine.

Uh, you don't just also have to go with the miniatures as well, they've got acrylic standees

if you want to print out those options as well.

You can choose different types of materials

for optimal ink adhesion,

for resistance.

The standees are a pretty solid, budget-friendly option as well if you want to just print out your character and have them ready to go after designing them on

HeroForge.

Their printing process, the specs for the premium plastic minis are 35 by 30 by 30 microns uh so that means that like if you have a feather on a griffin you can see all the sharp details on the feather you know um

it's awesome super cool microns is small man yeah

um

and this is the type of thing that like these days if you're you know as you're getting into uh these types of There's more and more tabletop options out there for you.

Not just fantasy.

There's sci-fi options as well.

Your character can be kitted and outfitted with all kinds of science fiction accessories.

And just, you know, like, again, a broad, broad category for all types of tabletop games.

So go check them out.

Legit, an awesome service.

You can use code CASTEL at checkout to give 5% off all orders of physical miniatures.

as well.

So,

yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And before I forget too, kit bashing is a feature that pro subscribers can use where you can customize even more.

And basically, with kit bashing, you can add up to 20 items or other objects onto your existing model.

So you can just go all the way in and create a multi-armed whatever demon.

Or if your character has a lot of specific accessories, or if there's something you want to do that's particularly complex and high concept, but requires multiple models all together, or multiple items or accessories all put together, just go with the kit bashing option, and you can really, really fine-tune the detail on that as well.

You know, if you want to have your Athena holding Nike, the goddess of victory, in her hand, you can have your little, you can do that.

So, yeah, the kit bashing mode is a pretty awesome feature as well.

So, visit HeroForge.com to start designing your custom miniature today.

Check back often as well.

New content is added every week.

And don't forget to use code CASTEL to get 5% off all orders of physical miniatures.

Thank you, HeroForge.

Thanks, HeroForge.

This week, the podcast is sponsored by Shopify.

Cha Ching is the sale.

of a sale that you made on Shopify.

Even though you don't have the cool little catch registers anymore, you can still do it on a website.

And in particular, these days, if you're looking to get your own shop off the ground, if you want to figure out how to take a thing that is in front of you or somewhere else and

get that to people,

it has become

more and more cumbersome.

and more and more tricky.

And there's a lot to keep track of as you scale up your business from your first to your millionth sale.

There's a whole lot of figuring out where, who's buying it, how you're getting it to them, what your metrics are, how to integrate them

into social media.

It is a lot, and uh, that's where Shopify comes in handy.

It is an award-winning

uh

implementation of, yeah, basically a checkout that is ready to go on all your social media if you want to implement it that way.

Uh, it is one of the

best world-leading brands behind, uh, um, checkouts behind multiple brands like like Albert, Skims, etc.

And they have award-winning customer support as well to help you out with,

yeah, whatever you might be looking for.

It tracks your data and metrics for your shopping sales and everything like that from

all scaled sizes of your business.

So, if you want to get online and if you want to figure out, like us, how to sell a t-shirt,

Shopify is the easy way to do it.

Lots of available templates as well if you want to create an online store with your own design tastes that match your brand's style.

So check them out.

It's the commerce platform

that is also behind Mattel and Gymshark.

So there you go.

Those are some names.

Turn your business idea

into,

yeah, you can get sales going with Shopify on your side.

Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/slash Superbeast.

That's shopify.com slash Superbeast.

One more time, Shopify.com/slash Superbeast.

Thank you, Shopify.

Thanks, Shopify.

The podcast this week is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

Oh, hey, ExpressVPN.

Hey.

I just tried to listen to the Mad World soundtrack on Spotify, and Spotify told me that I was stupid.

Well,

that's a shame.

That sucks.

Were you trying to

listen from an illegal territory?

I don't think Canada's an illegal territory.

Ask them.

You will never

get to

be ruthless.

Wrong soundtrack.

You should have said you'll never be able to get it up.

Get it up, get it up, get it up.

That's the joke.

Sure, sure, sure.

Going online without Express VPN is like driving without.

Okay, you know what?

Mad World.

Yeah, Mad World and Anarchy Raids kind of bleak together a little bit.

They really do.

If I had not listened to the soundtrack literally yesterday, I would have made the same mistake.

But the problem is I went through my playlist and I just curated all the best parts of the...

Oh, you just did a combination

on my...

So I just had a lineup of all

the Anarchy Reigns bits.

So I'm like, I had those on the brain.

Going online without ExpressVPN is like driving without car insurance.

You might be a...

Don't do that.

You really, really don't do that.

You will get in trouble.

You might be a great driver, but with all the crazy people on the road these days, why would you take that risk?

That's not the main reason, I would say.

That is a good reason, right?

Taking the risk is probably a bad idea, but also it's insanely super duper stupid illegal.

It's illegal in that way that it'll cost you money and you don't like that.

Also, points on your license and a suspension, you know.

It's a whole thing.

It's bad, and it's dumb.

Don't do it.

So

you want to be protected and you want to be safe.

And yeah, that's where Express VPN comes in.

Every time you connect to an unencrypted network online, cafes, hotels, airports, et cetera, your online data is not secure.

Any hacker on the same network can gain access and steal your personal data.

You know what?

I'd even say the word hacker is a misnomer at this point because you're barely hacking.

You can kind of just like find connections on the same hub.

You know, a kid with a 12-year-old with some cheap hardware is all it takes you know and the word hacking implies like a difficult thing it's become so streamlined and easy uh

to just grab data and you can now sell that data up to a thousand dollars per person

um on the dark web in particular so stop hackers from stealing your data create a secure encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet um and yeah express vpn in particular as we just mentioned particularly useful when you are also like i want to listen to this.

And you're like, told that you can't.

And I'm like, well, I disagree.

Oh, my God.

I want to listen.

All you got to do is click the button.

That was a good jump.

Yeah.

That was pretty impressive.

Holy crap.

I've seen Boo struggle.

quite a few times in the few days, you know?

Yeah, no, no.

If he feels like it, he can't.

He can actually get it done.

I have something to talk about that in a second, actually.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, listen,

you know,

you need to get yourself protected.

So, yeah, be sure to check out ExpressVPN and make the leap, like Boost just did,

over to ExpressVPN.

Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com/slash superbeast.

That's exp resvpn.com slash superbeast to find out how you can get up to four extra months for free.

One more time, expressvpn.com slash superbeast.

Just used them

a week ago when I wanted to watch YouTube and it said nah.

So I'm like, all right, I disagree.

Boop.

Problem solved.

Thanks, ExpressVPN.

Thanks, ExpressVPN.

And last but not least, certainly, this week, the podcast is sponsored by HelloFresh.

your solution to

skipping trips to being hungry.

Skip trips to the grocery store, get the food that tastes good, is easy to cook, fun and affordable, right to your door.

Pre-proportioned ingredients, seasonal recipes,

lots of options, and just cut out all the annoying parts of

keeping alive with food.

You know,

food can be be fun, but there's a lot of trouble that comes from the cost, from the shopping, from the

groceries.

Old-fashioned word, groceries.

Tired of figuring out what you're going to do?

Well, then, yeah, check out one of their 50 or so wholesome hassle-free meals you can choose from each week that can be delivered to your door.

Also, there's ready-made meals to go that you can have prepared in just three minutes.

The same high-quality ingredients and restaurant-worthy flavor.

So you've got options there too.

Prep and bake meals are ready to go with minimal mess and five minutes of prep.

There's, yo, if you want three minutes, five minutes, 20 minutes, like you've got all versions of what you have time for here.

And yeah, you've got over 100

add-on items to choose from that you can add to your weekly box, quick breakfasts, packable snacks, beverages, and more.

So

whatever your particular needs are, they've got a lot of options for you to customize.

And again, everything is always delivered fresh.

So

huge fan of the ability to finish a long podcast like, you know, like today, and then get some chicken pesto pasta going

with minimal amount of time because the less energy I have, the less energy I want to put into preparing dinner.

So

I appreciate it.

When it is pre-sorted, you can get up to 10 free meals from

HelloFresh and a free high-protein item for life at hellofresh.com slash superbeast 10FM.

So that's one item per box with active subscription.

Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan.

One more time, that's up to 10 free HelloFresh meals.

Just go to hellofresh.com/slash superbeast10FM.

That's America's number one meal kit.

Thank you, HelloFresh.

Thanks, HelloFresh.

What'd that boost do?

So I think this dog is faking it.

I think the dog is faking it.

The whole thing.

It's a ruse.

Yeah, the whole thing.

I think he's just pretending to be a little baby, so I carry him around.

So, Willie, do you remember when you were at my house?

Next to my breakfast nook that you fixed?

Thank you.

We had the back door that had like a screen door that would go across, you know, for like the nice summer weather, right?

Yesterday, this

fucked up dog

busted that thing off of its hinges and just dove right through.

So I was taking a shit and I just heard Paige go, no, no, boost, no, ah, and I fucking run out, like, you know, you do the fucking, like, oh, fuck, oh, and I, I look out, and the door is off its hinges, like off the sliding track on the top and bottom, and the screens is hanging out, and Boos is just sitting in the sunshine going, ah, ah,

just so you know, anytime I want to,

anytime I want to, you ain't stopping this.

Ridiculous, yeah, and he also, Paige was like on her phone.

She was like, you know, doing, she's doing a text message.

And the dog leapt over her outstretched arms to plop, like in her, on top of her elbows.

I feel like considering the amount of uppies you give, Boos is absolutely.

I'll give him some ups.

You give so many uppies that Boos is like, yeah, fuck it, carry me.

I ain't saying shit.

The ruse is absolutely on.

And,

you know, faking it.

He's spoiled for it.

why wouldn't you why wouldn't you maybe i spoiled him a little a little bit little bit maybe just

a little bit

um anyway

all right um

so

so aside from watching the double main cry anime yeah sorry cartoon

couple of animation

animation addi shankar animation

um couple other things you can definitely tell it's his style

A couple other things

for me this week.

One,

yeah, Reggie told me about there's a screening of an old movie that I've always been told to go watch.

And thanks to him, he got some tickets.

Me and

another friend and Foxcade

went to go check out La Hain,

which is

French for

the hate.

1995 France film starring Vincent Casselle.

Vincent Casale, which is

Mr.

Chevalier Victor from Tekken 8.

So cool sword knife gun guy from Tekken 8

back when he was a young actor.

Back before the disastrous patch.

Back before the patch, he was a crooked-nosed street punk.

And

it was all about, yeah, basically, this

Life in the Projects, police brutality

in France, you know, mid-90s.

And it's filmed all in black and white, very, very taxi driver, very, very train spotting.

Just

rough, you know, rough life on the streets and

the boot marching down on people trying to survive in the hood in France in the 90s.

And very, very good, excellently shot movie with some beautiful cinematography, especially again, anytime something's done in black and white and it's done well, you have to just consider like the extra attention to detail put towards contrast and use of gray tones and such.

Like, as we described, Akira Kurosawa with like a masterful use of blacks whites highs and lows and mids um same thing here um some really impressive just uh uh panning shots and camera work and and overall a gritty um pretty awesome movie really old classic lahain uh i definitely recommend it if you are somebody who you know likes the vibes of again taxi driver train spotting

You know, things like that with an old grit to it.

It's just especially kind of, there's this one bit that's, it holds up well, but there's one bit that's so funny and interesting, which is just, um,

you know, there's that skid about how Ruguy Richie movies are just like extremely low stakes for a very, very small amount of money.

Yes.

And the feeling here of like a bunch of kids getting mistreated and abused by cops and just getting their, getting roughed up and stuff.

Like, I've also heard people kind of say, like, oh, if you enjoyed The Wire and you want to what that kind of parallel is in a European context, you can watch this too.

That's, and I'd say there's a little bit of that there.

Wire is obviously much more fucking, you know, camera on the street reel with it, but um, but here, it's just so funny because one of the major conflicts of this great movie is

like the location of one gun is missing.

Yeah, okay.

And it's like, oh my god, did you hear that a gun is missing?

You know, know?

And it's so much higher, like, urgency.

And I can't believe it.

It is a firearm.

Wow.

Out here in these European streets.

You want to know where your gun is, man.

And boy.

It's just not the same thing in North America, is it?

You know?

America in particular.

It is just not the same level.

Anytime I see videos where it's like, you know, when you see those videos of like someone going nuts and then the cops show up, and then they have like the little like bet

extended man catcher that pins you to the ground and you're like, oh shit, Japan, what is that?

You have some tech for like, you know, safely stopping somebody from a distance that doesn't involve just blowing them away.

That's pretty impressive, you know.

It's the yeah, you're getting there's a little bit of just like

whew, you know, if only I like I wish the stakes could be this low nowadays yeah when watching this old movie you know like it's it's great but man those stakes are low by comparison to today

so

uh uh pretty good um and shout outs to seeing this like

like what is essentially like imagine like kuno plus like a couple years

And right, is what Vincent Cassell plays.

And then that aged into this distinguished beard and just the ultimate

silver fox that hits you with heat engagers.

And replaces Noctis in Tekken 8.

It's wild to see such a dignified person in a role where you're just fucking street urchin,

you know, scumming it up.

So yeah, go check out La Ain.

Very, very cool.

And yes, hate is feminé, enfrancé.

That's what, yeah, Fox was asking about that.

He's just like, wait, so is everything gender?

It's like, yeah, everything's everything.

Everything's gendered.

Everything.

That table has a gender.

That's correct.

And hatred has a gender.

And it is female.

I

also was playing some cyberpunk, got a little bit further into Phantom Liberty.

And so now I feel like I've met a lot of the major players, maybe all of them.

Maybe not, but at the very least, I've been introduced to a solid cast of characters.

And it is awesome.

It's really cool.

It's definitely like I can feel how it's DLC, so you can feel the quality improvements.

You can feel the, you know, the bits and pieces where,

yeah, things are kind of happening a lot tighter narratively.

And everyone that's been introduced so far in this DLC has been awesome, super fantastic.

And it's a little bit like now that I've also played, you know, I've played a good bunch of

the game on its own.

And then off camera, I've played a good bit as well.

I have a feeling for like the skeletons and the bones of, you know, what it is running around this open world.

And

yeah, I guess what you're getting out of like Phantom Liberty, since since it was made, you know, like as again, a quality later-on thing, feels a bit, I guess, a bit more of like maybe a Cyberpunk 2 would

be like this, you know?

That is how I remember people talking about

Project Liberty.

Yeah, it feels like a Cyberpunk -

that's wrong.

Phantom Liberty.

It feels like,

yeah, it feels like a slice of what Cyberpunk 2 would be, you know?

And I mean, hopefully, right?

There's a whole long intro on Rails that is fantastic.

And then you get out and then it opens up and it opens up in a really cool way.

And then it recloses off again.

And then it reopens up even bigger.

And it's even better when it opens up again.

And it feels great.

Feels great.

And yeah, people warned me that coming back out of this into the main game is going to be extra jarring.

And I'm ready for that.

I understand, you know, but I just want to 100% underline the quality difference and how much I'm enjoying it.

Ran into fucking Susie.

God.

I don't know what the expectation was with Susie's implementation, but between Susie and like Jesse Cox and some of these other people popping up, man,

everyone is just the dumbest, absolute stupidest cameos ever.

Susie's in particular is, I don't know if you've, have you seen like what it is?

I have seen about a hundred videos of her running people over with her car but not much else okay so it has not happened to me uh i managed to avoid well yes because everyone talks about how susie runs you over with her car but no but i didn't know i did i i it wasn't even something i like the way it happens is an unexpected thing if you happen to like do the wrong thing in this scenario if you just if you're a little too hasty it can get you yeah all you have to do is is walk forward into the left in front of the car and then she's she's gone there you go whatever that might be but um

but how how you meet up with her and start talking is

hilarious.

And

I just remember seeing that shot from like, it was like, I think it was art of the render of her face in the trailer or so, or in one of the, I think one series maybe tweeted about it.

And I was like, oh, cool.

Look at that.

That's awesome.

But it does not convey the level of goof that the actual mission brings.

You know, you kind of see her like standing there being like, oh, yeah, that's a, that's a character.

Okay.

And then in context, it's some dumb shit, so it's very funny.

Um,

and uh, yeah, gonna continue

chipping away at that, uh, this week, and uh, I believe as well, the 2xko alpha lab is uh

opening up this weekend, so oh, is that

yeah, that should be coming.

Do we should I have a fucking mail about that?

Check your email.

I

oh man, I believe so.

You gotta last one.

Well, I know I got mine, so if it's like last time and they give the extra, then yeah, just, you know, you can just

appreciate that.

Yeah, sure thing.

Um, I don't have an

and uh

maybe.

Oh,

I mean, I didn't I didn't piss anyone off just yet.

Not yet, you you haven't.

We are in the clear.

Oh boy.

No, but anyway, so yeah, probably going to take a look at that later this week as well.

So,

yeah, Woolly versus on YouTube and on

Twitch.

And check my socials for the schedule as well.

Got a couple other updates

too, and there's some stuff that's not confirmed yet.

So

I think that's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anything else for you?

Let's see.

Well

Have you heard so?

I played a ton of games this past week little quick looks at them

There's one in particular I would like to talk to you about have you heard of Blue Prince?

I have now

Okay, I did uh yeah, I did appreciate the code by the way.

I did install that haven't taken a look at it yet so

Blueprints is a

super,

super cool game that I had like a last second change of heart on.

Oh, yeah.

And it's, it's, and it's,

it's,

it's weird.

So, Blueprints.

You get it, it's like Blueprints.

Yeah, well, that's immediately upon saying it out loud, so I was like, oh, yeah, okay.

But I don't know if it's a game.

It's like

a House of leaves

style video game, which basically means that

it is about a house and exploring that house and a house that has an impossible internal layout.

Basically,

it is missed,

but a roguelike.

Okay.

And impossible architecture?

So basically, you walk into the front door and you have three doors in the foyer.

And door number one goes to the left, door number two goes ahead of you, and door number three goes to your right.

And the goal is ostensibly to make it to the final room of the mansion, which is all the way at the back, right?

And when you walk up to door number one and open it, it gives you three rooms that it could be when you open the door.

And so you'll pick like the lavatory and you'll open it up and, oh, it's the bathroom.

Or you'll open it up and it's the billiard room.

Random every time have you

different every single time.

Like pulling, pull it.

It is the room equivalent of loading into a room in Hades and walking up to a power-up.

Okay.

Like, don't know what it's going to be, right?

So,

the billiard room has a puzzle in it, and that puzzle in it will give you maybe some items or maybe some information.

And then you use those items or that information to continue and solve various puzzles throughout the rooms and make your way through it.

In the first 14 hours of me playing that game, I was absolutely, completely enthralled.

I have a massive list of notes

using the Steam notepad function of what is in every single room.

There's a notepad function on Steam?

If you hit, if you go, if you bring up the

If you bring up the steam overlay, there's a but one of the options is notes and it is a per game notepad dude I have fucking pages of Lorelei and the laser's eye notes still

that is

four

five six

six pages What the fuck?

Oh my god, what button

you you go to the steam overlay and it's one of your default options there son of a bitch

And you can also use the Steam Overlay to look at all the screenshots you've taken for this particular game.

So I have taken copious screenshots of every document in the game, every out-of-place item, puzzle solution I couldn't figure out, etc.

And so the basic idea is that you are working your way through these rooms and all these rooms have, you know, a lot of them have puzzles or they have characteristics.

So like there's a room called the gym, and what the gym does is nothing,

but when you walk into it, it takes more of your character's steps, which is essentially your health.

Okay.

Because you only have 50 steps to go.

Walking into the gym takes more steps away from you.

But the gym is a T intersection, so it's really good to use to navigate around because you guarantee yourself to get two doors, right?

So you're moving around, you're drafting rooms, you're trying to figure out a way to go to the end, but you can never be sure what's going to load in.

So, you're trying not to dead end yourself.

But if you do dead end yourself,

there's probably something in one of these dead ends that will give you more context or a clue to a puzzle or a hint as to some kind of meta-progression that you can do.

So, exploration is a possible permanent upgrade.

Okay, okay.

Right.

And so, and you're,

are you mapping your path or is there a map that you get for your path as you move through?

So you hit R2 and you see the map and it's like a five by nine grid.

Okay.

But every single day when you run out of steps or hit all dead ends, you restart the day over, start completely over, and then the layout is different completely.

Okay.

Right.

Oh, I see.

And so you'll get into situations where you're like, well, listen, I did dead end myself completely.

Right.

Like, you know, the

path forward in this room leads to the wall of a different room.

So I'm now dead-ended.

I can't continue.

But

I did find

a breaker box that taught me how to

manipulate the power level in different rooms, you know?

And now I know that, oh, I could turn the power back on in a different room if I run into that the out of power room and the breaker box.

And that means that I could go turn that on and then go back to the earlier room and and do the puzzle there right so it's all like little metaprogressions and figuring out what rooms have puzzle solutions to connect to each other and which ones have meta progression to connect to each other and there's also

like bonus

like lore that require puzzles to solve but require significantly more like not external knowledge but like pieces from different places and it's super super interesting this sounds a lot like uh loreline the laser eyes actually that i was describing yeah So it is it is how

it is

I think it's called Betrayal on the House on the Hill, the board game.

Okay.

I believe you've played that.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

That game's great.

That is how you put rooms down.

Oh, that game rules.

Okay.

Like that exact situation.

That's sick.

Right.

Combined with mist.

So it's kind of like Obra Din or like Outer Wilds, in which like knowledge is the most important thing.

Like you get items and the items are stuff like,

you know, you can, you don't need a key to open up a chest, you can just smash the lock.

Interesting, or you get a magnifying glass that lets you examine,

you know, pieces of parts of text more accurately, right?

Stuff like that.

But it's primarily about like gaining knowledge and recording knowledge and figuring out puzzle solutions.

Um, and what they do do, something really interesting is: say, there's like um

uh, there's a

I'm gonna obfuscate this.

There is a puzzle in the billiard room that you can solve every single time.

Right?

That once you understand the logic behind the puzzle in the billiard room, you can just solve it every single time.

And to fight that,

every single time you do that puzzle, the next time you encounter it, it upgrades to a harder version of that puzzle.

Okay.

So

that room used to be a gimme for me.

And now that I've done it like 15 times, that puzzle is now fairly difficult.

And there is a

rules.

And there's a death state.

The death state is running out of steps.

Every time you cross into a new room, you use one step.

Okay, okay.

Yeah.

Because in a lot of cases, so backtracking costs a lot of steps.

In a lot of cases, there's no death state.

There's just solve the puzzle or you're stuck.

But in this case, you have a limit.

And you know, you can find bananas or apples and those give you extra steps.

Or, you know, you can find a kitchen and you can spend money to buy extra food.

And there's all these little tiny things that are really, really interesting.

I'm, you know, you're finding out details from photos that help you examine areas outside the house to get meta progression.

Like there's permanent upgrades, and they're all really powerful, but they're very hard to get.

There's mechanics to upgrade a room into a better version of that room that either has a stronger bonus or like more doors or, you know, stuff like that.

and I was like absolutely completely enraptured

and then I had

I ran into the game's singular flaw

which is the same flaw every single negative review on Steam talks about

and that is I have a number of puzzle solutions that I have 100% completely solved but i cannot get the rooms to manifest

so like there is a puzzle in a room that i have definitively solved but it requires a specific room to spawn next to it to turn the puzzle on and the rng is not working out won't allow them to happen gotcha And it is making me crazy.

Okay.

Okay.

It's the absolute.

It is absolutely.

And because

I've been talking about this and I've been trying to figure out why it's making me so nuts.

And it's because when I'm playing Hades and I get the most dog shit powers ever, I still get to play Hades and fight and give my shot against it.

But the gameplay of Blueprints is correlating information and solving puzzles.

And I am like nine gameplay days in a row of no new information and no new puzzle solutions because I can't get any of the new rooms to spawn or any of the right rooms to spawn next to each other and it sucks it is so

violently infuriating because

I am being actively blocked from playing the game by the game.

Does it for do you have to just like is there a certain number of like steps or days before you know

an infinite series of days?

Okay.

You just keep playing for you know a year.

It doesn't matter.

So you don't have to kill yourself and go, ah, try again, try again, type of thing.

Right.

Okay.

But it's like

there

I

you know and

how many room variations are there

like how many room variations are there that you would there are over a hundred rooms okay so you're and you can only you can only spawn in 45 because the way the grid is built

and

some rooms are rarer than others

And part of the problem is that some of the rare rooms have puzzles in them.

and then the the the solutions to those puzzles are found in more common rooms

but i can't get back to the rare rooms to solve their puzzles

someone and like there is an internal logic about where to place rooms as you go through

to like manipulate the rng Right.

So, for example, I found a document in a room that said, hey, this color of room tends to spawn exclusively along the edges of the house.

Right?

So, I'm like, oh, okay, if I want to find a specific type of room, I have better luck going along the edges and hopefully running into it, right?

But finding that piece of information was also RNG.

Okay.

And

I have spoken to somebody who has worked with the game, and they have informed me that there is a document that has the information I need to manipulate the RNG to get the rooms I want.

Someone said, but I can't find it because it's RNG.

Someone said this is a problem that solves itself if you keep going, but I guess you have to RNG that solution to then get rid of it.

I went for like four hours a night ago and achieved no progress.

It was so frustrating.

Yeah, okay.

I had that happen to me a bit in

terms of long session, no progress.

I had that happen to me in Mortal.

Yeah.

No, wait, not Mortal.

Barb.

Barbuta, the first one, where it just takes a while to even figure out what the puzzles are, and you can just walk in circles forever.

That sucks if it's fun otherwise.

And the problem is, is like, okay, I have played Gungeon a lot.

I have played Hades a lot.

And I have had

a full day of playing Gungeon and made no progress.

Right?

I didn't do any of the quests that I set out to do.

I made very little currency to unlock guns.

I didn't beat any.

I didn't kill any of the pass.

I didn't get any of the unique items, I didn't unlock anything, right?

But when I was doing that in Gungeon,

I was still playing Gunjan and getting better at playing the action portion of Gunjan.

When I'm playing Blue Prince and I'm doing like nine days in a row of drafting the house and trying to go, come on, lab,

come on, lab, as I like go through, and it's like it's it's super frustrating.

And

I can even understand

that there is an argument to be made that what I am not doing is trying to understand the underlying logic of the drafting and where things go and how to blow dead ends here, here, here, and here to hopefully get more hallways later and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But that type of meta-knowledge is not a puzzle like a dartboard puzzle or a lie puzzle or a math puzzle.

That is something I am really, really fucking bad at when I play like Slay the Spire or something like that.

Figuring out the logistics of the war, of the secrets that you have to uncover by thinking it out.

And like the game seems to like

know this

because there are

like a lot of puzzle solutions.

There's the hint, then there's the bigger hint, and then if you play long enough, here's the document that just tells you how to do it.

Okay, like eventually, like there are like there's a pump room puzzle that has like a diagram on the wall to figure out, but later there is also like a fucking manual that you can just read and just it just tells you how to run the fucking pump room.

It's really interesting, right?

This reminds me a bit of what I was talking about a thousand times resist and how moment-to-moment gameplay in a different genre can cover over slumps,

but like, But like in this case, that's not the genre, therefore you just.

But I don't have moment-to-moment gameplay.

You just feel the slump.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm thinking of too, of like in Barbuta's case, it's like, it is a test of patience to like,

how willing are you to just move slow?

Yeah.

So how willing are you to just slowly push yourself up against every surface until you get something or notice something or, you know, something catches your eye.

It's it's really, really subtle, huh?

I'm curious to know if like finding the solution to this RNG problem will like switch it back around to being fun again, you know.

So

I came to

like a very strange conclusion,

and this is my gut feeling.

Um,

I feel like there are people that are just like,

this is like one of the greatest games of all time.

And I can feel it in there.

You know what I mean?

Like, I can feel it.

Like, when I played Oprah Din,

I was like, oh, this is, oh, this is really, I'm dumb.

Oh, shit, I'm dumb.

Like, I'm too dumb to get to the greatest game of all time playing Oprah Din.

Okay.

I didn't, I, and I felt that with Outer Wilds.

Outer Wilds is one of the greatest games of all time.

Easy.

And I was smart enough to do everything in Outer Wilds.

Can you open up notes on Steam Deck too?

Yeah.

I'm part of the Steam Overlay.

Okay.

That's sick.

Seems like it's an update from last year.

I'm seeing.

It's been around for a bit.

Okay.

So also, I'm realizing that the moment I opened up some games that doxed me by showing my address when I clicked on Steam Overlay, I turned Steam Overlay off and try to keep that off as much as possible.

Does that fuck up controller support?

For some games, it does, and for some games, it doesn't.

So I do it on a case-by-case basis, but there's situations where if I leave Steam Overlay on, playing and hitting the wrong button, we'll fucking dox me.

So that's a reason why I don't see a lot of Steam features.

Yeah.

With Blueprints, I feel like there is a variation between this is maybe the greatest game ever, or this game is brilliant but extremely flawed from people that I've seen beat it or given up on it.

And I feel like,

remember, everyone, this is me talking about my feelings.

This is not objective.

I feel like the determining factor is whether or not the RNG went easy on you.

Is there a did you

get the rooms you needed when you had the information you had?

Or did you just run into like conclusive cock blocks over and over and over and over?

Well, you implied that there's almost like a pity system, right?

Where if you can't figure things out, eventually the hints get bigger and bigger and give way.

So, here's the thing: the better hints are in rarer rooms.

Okay.

So, like, there's a room called the office.

The office, I have seen once, and in the office, there are documents that just tell you how to solve some of the puzzles, right?

Now, I had already solved all those puzzles, so this wasn't the biggest deal, right?

But if I had been struggling, struggling, struggling, and then had a good run and got to the office, hey,

I would have,

you know, managed to, you know, get solutions, then I'd be able to go back, blah, blah, blah, right?

And I know

today,

without a shadow of a doubt, that the developers acknowledge that this is a problem because they patched the rates of rarer rooms appearing today.

Oh.

Oh.

A patch went out this morning that increased the likelihood of rarer rooms appearing.

Now, it's not any of the rooms that I need,

but still.

Um,

yeah, I guess

I guess you just have to roll the fucking dice then like that.

That's that's the thing.

Yeah, that sucks.

Is that it's like, I

you know, games can incentivize you with a carrot or with a stick.

I have finished my carrots,

and I just keep going back into the house for more carrots.

And you're getting And I am hungry for carrot.

And it is a very serious problem

because

the gameplay of the game is thinking.

Right?

There's no action component of any kind.

There is only brain.

But like, I need...

I need more information to...

Or I need more levers to pull.

I need, right?

I need something to actually interact with and and what's there is what I and what you are seeing is compelling when you discover it

super compelling okay, okay, super compelling

like

I I'm I'm at like 10 hours or no, I'm at like 12 13 hours and

like

I found

I found the freezer.

There's a room that's the freezer.

It's like a fucking walk-in freezer.

I saw it for the first time two nights ago.

And there is like a series of puzzles in there that I have no idea how to solve.

And

my first thought entering was not, oh, cool, what a cool puzzle.

My first thought was, I better figure this shit out as good as I can now because I don't know when the next time I'm ever going to see this fucking room is because I've seen it once.

Like the room that I need to solve other rooms' puzzles, I have seen once ever.

And I solved it on stream, and I solved the internal puzzle there,

but it needs to connect to other rooms to solve their puzzles, and I have never seen it again.

When you're playing a game like this, right?

Or like Baba, for example, do you have a

like the pace is all on your brain?

So, do you have a method of like

thinking for stream?

Because I've noticed for with myself, I have a there's a moment of like I go through it at a regular pace, and then I have a repeat, and then I'll have a silent stop and go.

And then there's a point where I'm like panicking because I'm like, oh, nothing is happening, and this is not going to move forward until you figure it out.

And like, you just have to like navigate or

narrate your thought process to exhaustion.

And that starts burning me out way quicker.

So the game actually does really well on this respect.

So I played this game for about,

I don't know, I want to say like six, seven hours on stream.

Like I play a lot of it.

And

what I, the, the, the core thing that I ended up doing, it was the same thing that I've been playing at home.

was, okay, brand new room.

All right.

Let's take screenshots of every single piece of text.

Let's take a screenshot of everything goofy in the room that could be possibly a puzzle solution.

Let's attempt to solve all the puzzles that exist within.

Let's remember its layout.

And there's a list.

Once you encounter a room, it goes to a list so you can look at it later.

Okay, let's see.

Let's go over my notes and see if that this, any information here reintegrates with other things that I know.

Right,

let's type those notes out

and we're done whether or not we solved the thing in here or not.

Like, can I figure it out?

No.

Do I have what I need to figure it out?

No.

Do I have the item that I need to figure it out?

No.

Etc.

Right.

Okay.

Well, I'm going to move on and hopefully I'll encounter a new room that has a new piece of information.

And as long as in a single run, you get one new piece of information, it feels like it's worth it.

Even if it's a single detail,

like, you know, hey, red rooms are act all like this, or green rooms, I'll act like this, that kind of thing, right?

And

the version, the thing that I'm dealing with has been like hours and hours.

But

on my VOD, there is a version of this problem that was not hours and hours.

It was maybe, maybe been an hour.

And it was, I have solved a puzzle conclusively,

but in order to get the number I need, need,

I need to be able to turn power on to a different room and I need to acquire a magnifying glass.

And chat got to sit with me as I went through like eight runs of, oh, I got the room with the power and the room.

No magnifying glass.

Oh, I got the room and the magnifying glass?

No power.

Oh, I got the magnifying glass and the ability to turn the power on.

No room.

Just like over and over and over and over.

And I'm well aware that like there might have been other things I could have picked up and I was kind of tunneling because I wanted the solution.

Yeah.

But I have the solution in my hand and in my head.

So I'm just not allowed to attempt it.

So this is where sometimes RNG gets balanced and tweaked for like game progression purposes and games.

Like is this a game where

if you know how to use those three things together and they're in your mind, but you're not able to get them in this run, is there perhaps a different combination of things that has been made?

No, this thing has one solution.

No, no, no.

What I mean is, is there a completely different thing that's like, actually, you should be grabbing a different item for a different room.

Oh, yeah, no, there's tons of much more available.

And it's basically saying, forget about power and magnifying glasses for now.

There's another thing here that's easier that you should be focusing on.

Well, not necessarily focusing on, but then if you can't get the thing that you know how to solve, your next goal should be just find a room you haven't seen.

So, like, if you're building a ballotro run with a certain deck and you just can't get the Joker that you need for the perfect synergy, you got to go, all right, we're three rounds in and I'm not finding that Joker.

What else can I do here?

Maybe I can turn this run into something else, you know?

And the problem is, fairly simply, that the further you get into the game,

the more likely it is that you have seen and solved all the rooms you encounter on a run.

Right?

When I started out and I got stuck on like this puzzle or that puzzle, well, most of the new rooms I encountered were either new or I couldn't solve them.

So, like, whatever.

I have tons to correlate.

I have tons to write down.

I have tons to take screenshots of.

But, like,

now,

like, I can do the parlor and

parlor and billiard puzzles, no problem.

I know how all the hallways fit together.

I know

when I should use the astronomy office or not.

I know how to deal with the security room, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So these don't become thinking puzzles.

These become like placement

like tasks.

And I can get in a situation.

I had like multiple runs the other night where

I did not encounter a single new room at all.

So i had no new information to to take but i also didn't encounter enough of the rooms that would allow me to solve any of the puzzles i already had solved what's to stop you from just like doing a no-solve just exploration step re

run where you just move and recount your and uh regain steps and like keep uh nothing it's really hard to regain steps okay Like it's quite difficult to regain steps.

But like every single run is kind of that, is try and get as far as you can can and try and see as much as you can

um

and it's it's just like

and there's like multiple like very large things that are outside the core progression that i can see and i'm working my way towards but i haven't quite gotten there yet

okay um and i just i feel like

stuck stuck and it's

and it's not stuck because I don't have the information and I'm not stuck because I was too dumb to solve the puzzle I'm stuck because I can't show up for the puzzle to show up in front of me and that is insanely frustrating and so and this is where I go back to saying like in most cases a game will say if you have the solution but you can't um if you have the solution or you you have to wait for the RNG to work out in your favor and neither is working out there is a different thing that, you know, you could do, but you just have to like not tunnel vision and kind of like walk towards that other thing, right?

Even like

fear and hunger,

weird

where to place to compare it to, but I feel like

I kind of already understand what you're going for.

Fear and hunger, you'll load up and be like, okay, I'm either going to fight to win something, or I'm going to just get information.

And the information runs are based on like you're expecting to die but you want to uncover as much fog of war as possible to be like okay now i kind of know what's going around after i exit this hallway and turn the corner so i'll be aware of that or at the very least you're you're you're seeking out you know in this rng example you know knowledge versus like conquering the puzzle you know um

and if the game does take pity on you in a way where it's like you know you're not getting what you've learned already

I'm hoping that it's just like going to reward you for pivoting and going towards what it is showing you, you know?

I'm going to go back to it in like a couple of days when I'm not so frustrated.

But like,

it is a level of frustration that I have like kind of never encountered in a game of this type.

Usually the frustration is, fuck, I feel stupid.

Damn, I can't figure this shit out at all.

And I felt that a lot in Outer Wilds because there were a lot of things I was like, man, I can fuck them up.

Right, right.

Yeah.

And here, I get to have that, but then I also get to have, hey, I am smart.

Fuck, but I can't, oh, I can't,

can't get a hold of it.

Yeah.

Strange, but I mean, if you're saying that other people have also like negatively reviewed the game, it is like the,

you go to the store page, it's at very positive, or it was mostly positive.

Every single negative review is saying,

I got stuck because I couldn't get the things I already knew how to solve.

Okay.

And it's like, I like, the game is immaculate and cool, and the vibes are great, and it looks incredible, and it's super slick, and the puzzles are great, and the taking notes and trying to figure out the mystery and figure out how to run the house oh it's so awesome like i remember right up until the game's rng kind of fucks on you i'm kind of reminded of how like you know when i finally got the uh

that i learned about the combo of like hades where you grab the spear and then you got the lightning rezap on it you know or so um

and

uh or like the archer the arrow that and then you can fire double with the daedoless hammer and stuff and i'm like okay let's go let's get let's get the let's look for um Zeus once we get the spear and then game's like okay you got Athena okay you got Hermes and no Zeus and no Zeus and no Zeus and then you're just like well and then here's fucking Aphrodite and I'm like ah I guess I'll do the heart boon whatever you know but um you and then eventually you kind of go like oh well

Okay, I can't use the heart with the spear, but I can use the charm for my dash or whatever.

And then you start working into builds around using that or so you know so i'm just i'm i'm like i'm just i'm thinking that you know the game might have somewhere that it it it

pities you while not yeah so like hades is such a good example so even in that run

even if everything is like oh you know because i tried to do those challenges right it's like get all of the zeus uh you know yeah it's like it can get really frustrating but then at the end of the day i can still go fight hades and see if i can beat him you can still do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And get the rewards off of that.

Whereas here, it's like, no, you didn't get to play this run.

And it's like,

fuck.

Are there any solutions that you just stab in the dark and just fucking pull off through winging it?

No.

Okay.

No.

Okay.

No.

It also has something that's like really

wildly frustrating, which is

being able to go through a room and manage to get like what's a permanent upgrade,

but then not being able to find the room that lets you cash in the permanent upgrade and you just lose it.

Hmm.

And it's like fucking real frustrating.

It's

because they're rare.

Okay.

Yeah, interesting, though.

Interesting sell.

It's a super cool game.

Curiosity is painful.

And

like

I, it feels like that fucking psyop meme of gamblers about to hit the diamond.

Right?

Like

the 90% of gamblers quit right before they're going to be able to get right before they hit it big.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, they're digging through and they don't hit the diamonds yet because they're turning away.

It feels like that every run,

but I've done like nine days in a row, and I'm just like,

fuck.

Like, it's, it's, it's, it's as, it's as frustrating as I've been with a game in like a year.

Like, I can't remember the last time I've been this frustrated at something, but the highs were so high, and I want those highs back.

I want to go back to examining and figuring out shit in the house.

Please just spawn the fucking boiler room.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

My hope truly is that like we know we don't get games with true random, but actually just give me fake game random, which is mostly random, but then skewed for fun, you know, especially after a certain number of like failed things or things like don't not showing up after a while increase the likelihood of something else popping, you know.

Chaos gates showing up after a while if you fucking, you know, if you don't get take any or so.

Yeah.

Interesting.

I think like the most upsetting thing

about me getting stuck like this is I've seen like two or three people in the chat right now going, that happened to me.

Don't give up.

The game's great.

Just cheat engine 99 of the room re-roll item so that you can just re-roll it over and over and over to get what you want.

And I'm like, this should not even be a solution that someone conceives,

right?

This shouldn't be

change it to you.

That sucks.

That it's a suggestion that I went, oh, I guess that would fix it.

That's not intended game design.

No.

Okay.

Like,

I feel like it literally needs a singular extra way to influence the RNG.

Like anything.

Whatever this

RNG solution is.

And apparently, there is.

I just haven't found it yet, because finding it is RNG.

Okay.

I am curious, though, duly noted on this, and everyone, and some people saying potential game of the year.

It might be game of the year.

It might be.

Potential Gaudi is on the

eyebrow raise.

I was like 100%

on the Game of the Year, like bandwagon, absolutely,

up until a couple of nights ago.

What, like, oh,

the game of the year is inside Blueprints,

whether or not it wants to let you play, you just got to roll for it.

Yeah, all right.

Uh, did you do anything else?

Uh,

yeah, but I got to take a piss really bad right now, so I'm going to go for a second.

All right, BRB.

All right.

Hey, did I talk

did I talk about Hollow Knight at all last week?

Yeah, you mentioned that you were restarting.

We talked about

the save data stuff, which

I do have to say that there were

two points on that that

I didn't

think of at the time that came up afterwards.

Oh, yeah.

When

the one thing was when sometimes, like if you're playing like a game, like a Souls game or something, and DLC comes out, and it's useful to be able to pop it in and go load that DLC up if you have to go find it.

That is a completely different scenario, though.

And with Souls games, we have learned our lesson many times.

And I'm remembering one time that

I went to hang out with Schmup God Pat at his place, and he loaded up on, he was showing me the SMT series, and he loaded up saves from like DDS from particular moments to like sell stuff he was talking about.

And like, he showed me cool shit.

Absolutely.

That I was like, I am interested seeing that, you know, at a time when

that was meant a long time ago, admittedly.

Now you can just YouTube, admittedly.

Now you just use YouTube.

So

I saw a comment somewhere that had responded to that.

It was like, well, I mean, sometimes I want to keep those save files so that I can like,

you know, go into a game that I've completed and, you know, wander around and like, you know,

have my memories to which my response would be that my memories are for my memories.

And that if I don't remember anything,

then I might as well play it again because I don't remember anything.

I think the pick part of the fundamental disagreement here is just that like the default state of affairs is doing nothing means the save exists, and you have to actively take a step to remove it from existence.

That's true.

So that's the part where I'm like, why take the step?

Just leave reality where it is.

But anyway, go on.

My only thoughts on Hollow Knight is like, hey, you know what?

Yeah, still, still the best to ever do it.

Holy shit.

Oh, wow.

Just holds the fuck up.

Holy fuck.

Oh, my God.

I also played like a huge amount of embargoed games last week.

Like a weirdly gigantic amount of embargoed games.

That I'm going to do a really quick dash through.

Into the Dead, Darkest Days, that zombie game that's in 2D.

It's this war of mine, but zombies.

It's pretty cool.

Okay.

That's a good way to just...

Yeah, okay.

Monaco 2 is Monaco 2.

And it's cool, like Monaco was.

Okay, I don't.

I've heard a lot about Monaco, but I don't actually know what Monaco is.

Monaco's a

sneaking/slash heist game that was represented by little pixel dudes.

And it was really charming.

And Monaco 2 is similarly charming and looks nicer and has a little bit more depth.

And it's really cool.

Okay.

Monaco 2 remains also cool.

I hopped into the...

Amplitude sent me and put me into the Endless Legend 2 preview program.

So I got a good early look at Endless Legend 2, which is

Amplitude's 4X civilization-style games.

They've done Endless Legend.

They've done also Endless Space, which which is their Space 4X.

Endless Legend 2 is super cool.

It has a lot of really interesting things that change it from the Civ formula, particularly a focus on questing

and a more in-depth combat system that actually is good this time.

But both of the runs that I did on stream ended because a bunch of fucking angry unicorns killed my ass and just completely killed all of my armies.

So maybe I should focus on military next time.

Um, I took a look at a game called Peppered,

which is a platformer in which

you usually get like

one basically a huge amount of branching paths.

Uh, very irreverent writing, really charming.

I'd recommend it, it's really cool.

Okay, uh, and I also took a look at the early access game called Stygian Outer Gods, which is

very early

Cthulhu game,

much like all Cthulhu games, is perpetually blue-green and really mean, difficulty-wise, and kind of jank, but pretty cool.

It's like a first-person, almost like a Deus Ex style game, but Cthulhu

Insmith type shit.

What's that?

Insmith-type shit.

Yes, very much.

It's Kingsport.

Okay.

Not Insmuth, but yeah, no, absolutely.

Fish people.

But I also played Rematch, the soccer game by the Sifu Sifu gang.

Yes, Fifu.

Fifu.

Fifu.

A title so good,

I never want to call it Rematch ever again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Perfect.

So we have talked a lot about how I'm really nice.

Soccer absorption.

If sports games were good,

that'd be cool.

Well, sports games are good when you have a turbo button.

Yeah.

So

Fifu

is really

great.

Is really,

really great.

Nice.

So there's two things.

No, three things.

Number one is the focus is on playing soccer or footy, depending on where you live, as a team.

When you load into Fifu, You are not playing a cursor that takes mind control of different players as they gain the ball.

You are entering into 4v4 or 5v5 multiplayer matches in which you are playing one guy on the team.

Yes.

Man,

the dream back in the day was to play a game of Madden with everybody on controller playing the position

and just going hard as your one job.

You're blocking, you're blocking.

I'm a lineman.

That's what I do.

The second part is, so well, before I move on, it's like the fact that you're playing multiplayer means that sometimes you don't get the ball.

Sometimes you're just running defense on like the east side of the field and blocking the other guy so that the goalie doesn't

shoot it towards him.

What this means is that you are just like

second to second playing the game at like like you are constantly juking in front of other people and jockeying for position.

Ball or not,

you have a nice little mini map in the bottom right to tell you where the ball is where all the other players are the tricky part about this type of setup of course is that like what does playing without the ball feel like and how fun is it positioning and doing a lot of the work because games like particularly games like football and uh basketball are like the difference between like like not knowing what you're doing and like great players is what you're doing when you don't have the ball you know And how

engaging is bad in this case.

So here come the controls.

The second great thing is the controls.

It controls really well.

Your character has just enough weight on them, like turn radius, like you have a, you have a, you have jogging, you have sprinting, and then you have really fucking sprinting.

Like sprinting for real.

Turbo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when you do have the ball, you have pass, you have shoot.

Shooting is fascinating.

It gives you a cursor to the center of the screen wherever you happen to be when you hold the right trigger.

And then you, the length of time you hold that right trigger

how strong it is.

And then you use the left stick to determine the spin on the ball when it hits.

Oh.

So like when you go to shoot your shot, you're like locking your angle into place and then shooting your shot like a billiards game.

Okay, so you point the camera with the right stick, then you lock in your angle and then hit the spin on it for a little bit.

And then you're using your spin and your power.

Cool.

So what you can do with that is that

you can aim it up and then spin it down to go over people's heads.

You can go around people.

Like, it's a lot of control.

You also have

the X button will quickly pass to yourself.

in any direction you hit the pad.

So if somebody's coming at you to slide, you can immediately pass to yourself to the right and dodge around them.

There's a button to volley the ball up to yourself to essentially do like an NBA street like style juke.

Crossover.

But you're just like kicking it up over yourself and over the defender.

Ah, one of those moves that makes a bunch of like European kids go, ah!

And if someone passes

the ball to you,

you can get your kick ready so that it fires off the kick as soon as the ball reaches you.

The part where it really, really genuinely, like all of a sudden I was like, oh shit, this is uh-oh, was that clicking in on the right stick, a button that you'll have always active because you're always turning the camera, is, hey, dude, I'm open.

Your character will yell, yo, I'm open, or give me the ball.

And when you do that,

the person with the ball will see in a red line the angle to that person, even if they're out of sight or off your camera.

So I have been blocked by defenders,

and

I'll hear, hey, I'm open, and a line will go to like my, my eight o'clock,

and I can pass along that line, and it will go to the teammate who said, hey, I'm open, but it will go to where they were when they called it out.

Okay.

So if they keep running, I will actually pass behind them.

Do you have to aim the pass or is it an automatic?

Yeah, you have to aim the pass.

Okay.

Oh, wow.

Ooh, that is skilled.

Okay.

Yeah.

And

as a result, with all of these things, it just plays and controls really well.

You're not like doing crazy styles and dunks, but like genuinely in terms of game feel, NBA Street is the closest I could compare it to.

So that's genuine.

So that's interesting because it's rethinking a sports game from the ground up, I guess, because a lot of sports games, admittedly, each genre has like had a take at it at this point, and there's a solidified way that it goes, right?

You passing to yourself, you know, you take control of whoever actively has the ball.

You don't have to aim the pass.

It's just, it's like whoever's nearest and the most open, you know, and then a couple of like, essentially having the game mostly resemble what the players and AI would look like, but having you control that a little bit so that it feels like it's the sport.

But this sounds like it's way more manual.

so here's here's where um here's where the controls like get even more interesting so you have your

like not it's called tackle it's not a tackle it's you putting your foot out to like knock the yeah so well soccer soccer tackle yeah that's that's what that means if you're running it's a slide yes right that that that is what tackle means in in right soccer context yeah um

and the defense against that as a defender sorry the defense against that as the guy with the ball is to pass to yourself, right?

So you see somebody coming in for the slide, pass it to the right, and your character will like hop over the slide and you'll keep it, right?

This is more interesting because the fastest way to run is to not have control of the ball.

When you have control of the ball, your character is slower than everyone else because you have to maintain control of the ball.

So the fastest way to get down the field is to pass it ahead of yourself and lose control of the ball and then catch up to it.

Which is what a breakaway actually looks like in real life.

But it makes it easier for people to just grab it because they don't have to remove it from your control.

Mm-hmm.

So they, so it's...

It's really cool and it feels really good.

Yeah, so you're saying that it's like street-like, but it's also taking very simulation-esque, you know, decisions with the controls there.

Yeah.

That's cool.

Yeah, and the last thing is that

that's realistic.

Looks impeccable.

So

it looks like you're playing in a real soccer field, but if you get close enough to the edges, you discover that you're actually playing in a gigantic TV rectangle because when you score a goal,

the screens that are covering every single surface change into a completely new environment.

So,

goal, you know, the start of the match, you're playing in a classic soccer stadium.

Somebody gets a goal, now you're playing in like the Lion King's version of Africa.

You get another goal, now you're playing underwater.

And it's just, it's pure visual.

Like, it has no bearing,

but it looks a lot fucking more interesting than playing on a fucking soccer field for 40 minutes.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, I was going to ask, like, are there, while you're playing, are there ultras in the stands performing blood sacrifices as they hold up their burning fucking flares?

It just looks pretty.

And do

the country.

It just looks pretty.

It just looks really good.

Okay.

And yeah, I played a couple matches and I got a couple of goals and I was super excited and it was really great.

So I've except

for one match

in which I encountered your friend and mine

bad rollback.

Ah.

In which

the ball's location did not match the ball's actual location.

And the match just completely fucking fell apart and made no sense at all.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Netcode.

You know, I mean, look, Sifu didn't have to deal with it.

Absolver did.

So, you know, they do have experience.

Slow cop does have experience with that.

But

yeah, I'm always, it is interesting because I don't find,

I don't think it happens too often that like, well, again, not really fully paying attention to a lot of sports games, obviously, neither of us, but that you go back to

the ground level and like reinvent how the video game version of a sport is played.

Because

when you play a soccer game,

the same soccer game you played on the Ness, we're playing evolved versions of that all the way through to today in a lot of cases, you you know.

Tennis games are just evolved versions of the same thing from way back in the day, but just you know, more realistic, more better, better features and quality of life things and all that.

Um, a lot of boxing games were the same thing, and then Fight Night 3 was like, yo, let's try some crazy shit, let's put the gestures on the stick, you know, and lean and move and dodge and put the swings with the arc of your arms.

And I was like, Ooh, okay, you said let's throw out the video game version of this and like say, what if we had to dodge and swing from the ground up, you know?

And

yeah, this is a respectable thing for sure.

Is overall the, I guess, the pacing of this, while it's being more realistic and simulatory about soccer, because what you're describing is just fucking, that's real soccer, is there an arcade-y element to like the size of the field or how fast the games go?

There's no fouls, and the field size is small.

Okay, and it's and it's teams of four, right?

Four or five.

Yeah, okay.

So

it is a more arcade.

It looks like indoor soccer.

Faster paced version.

Awesome.

Which is way more exciting.

Yeah, yeah.

That's better paced for more exciting.

There's no more free.

There's no cards.

Solid.

Good call.

Yep.

I'm sure, like, and I remember having this discussion with,

who was I talking to?

I think.

Anyway,

Leon Massey, actually.

We were talking about, you know, soccer and everything.

And, and, like, there is a, like, the pacing, kind of like baseball today, has become the tradition, has become part of it.

The large field, the low scoring game, a lot of that is now just baked into tradition.

Uh, even though I'm super an advocate for, like, fucking indoor soccer, smaller field, more, more fun, more engagement, more game.

Um,

it's it like at this point, people are fans of more than just those things.

They're attached to the history of it so if they did have it like a simulatory mode of this game i'm sure that would do really well with with people that were like looking for that experience as well um sounds like something they could do but if the main experience is about like you know um um just yeah jump online and fucking you know get some games in and have fun in a short period of time then they they picked the right the right idea for them yeah it's i i was incredibly impressed I was I was super impressed.

I had a great time and

I am eagerly awaiting its full release.

Because I think part of the reason the net code was bad is a very limited

alpha test

that is only for content creators.

So,

the distances I'm probably dealing with in an eight-man game is probably fairly extreme.

Okay.

It would be really nice

if, after all these decades, someone made

one good soccer game.

Well,

I mean, Rocket League's fine.

Oh, that's a car game.

That's for cars.

I hope that Rocket League inspires a lot of

game makers to go back to sports and think about them in a completely different way.

That would be interesting if they did that.

I would think it would be actually even better if people who play and watch soccer understand what fun is like.

Sorry, I can't.

I'm pushing it too far.

I will always love the Mario Strikers 1 art style.

And I played some Mega Man soccer back in the day.

And ISS, International Superstar Soccer.

Yeah.

Anyway.

But yeah, no, that game's fucking great.

That game's super great.

I worry, though, because

it requires like 4v4 at minimum,

I worry that if the game doesn't do really well, that it will immediately die.

Yeah, well, that's that's their last online attempt, right?

Like, the whole bit with Absolver was like, This is this game lives and dies based on the online community and people making their own dojos and being engaged enough with the idea of the game to play it actively often.

And then Sifu was like, How about we just make a really good action game and we don't

make a fucking killer action game

and don't let the population of its online fan base have to determine whether it lives or dies you know but the gamble is with an online game is again rocket league you fucking succeed with that and you have a massive platform for your company to move forward and become a much bigger like it's everything right if you blow up with this kind of game

you can go this game is soccer the wide appeal on it is everyone but the us literally everyone everywhere it's it's you know so yeah it's a smart it is a smart play to go for this as opposed to the third-person fighting game where you can do focus attacks, parries, and dodges, which I think is rad, but the rest of planet Earth is not exactly locked in on, you know?

So good for them.

I'm glad this is fun.

I also watched the Marathon Gameplay Reveal event.

That's

on the documentation.

That's news?

Yeah, that's news.

Good.

So, yeah,

I'll talk about that when we get there.

Okay, as for me this week,

I'm going to stream slightly less, but Paige is going to be streaming slightly more.

Paige is going to be streaming tonight.

That's

April 15th.

But mainly I'm doing like, I'm dicking around in Monster Hunter.

I'm dicking around in Hollow Knight.

I've been doing like late night Hollow Knight streams.

Like

it's 10 p.m.

and the baby and Paige are in bed and I've taken the dog out to pee.

And I'm like, I'm just going to play play games until 2 a.m.

anyway.

So

fuck it.

Let's go back to Hallow Nest.

Right?

I'm just dicking around with some of these old classics because next week,

Expedition 33 comes out.

And that is going to be what's going on on my show from that week onwards for a while.

Because that is a French RPG with

the Daredevil and

the Ben Star and the Jen English in it.

Yeah, that thing looks really cool.

Ah, fuck, the schedule.

Oh, also, baby update.

The baby can now give props.

Nice.

Hell yeah.

We also encountered a completely developmentally appropriate

series of situations, which are heartwarming and good, but also hurt your heart a little bit.

My little man was at the park and he saw a car he liked drive by and then the car drove by and drove away and he lost his fucking mind.

Oh.

Because he liked that car.

Oh.

And then the car left.

I don't suppose you caught the make of it.

No.

Okay.

The other thing, I can, he'll high-five the dog now, which is awesome.

I'll hold the dog up and I'll be like,

give Boos a high five.

And he goes, yeah, on the dog's fucked up little paw.

Nice.

Which is awesome.

All right.

Props are in play.

But

the other day, he did something that was really important, and I'm proud of him, even though it made me want to cry.

You know, I got up in the morning, and I, you know, I changed his diaper and I got him dressed, and I got him his breakfast, and I got him his early milk, right?

He wants his milk in the morning.

He goes, meh, meh, meh, right?

And then I'm like, all right, buddy.

Good, you know, all right.

And, you know, all that.

I'm like, can you give dad a hug?

And he went, no.

And I went,

and I'm like, are you sure you don't want to give dad a hug?

He went, no.

And then he took his milk and he went in the living room.

And I'm like, that is super important.

He's not even two.

He knows if he doesn't want a hug, he doesn't have to hug people.

Okay.

And he's gaining bodily autonomy.

Okay.

But I almost fucking cried.

But fuck you.

Each shit old man.

I said that to Paige when Paige came downstairs.

and she's like, Oh, oh, wow, that's really good.

That's okay, that's good.

That's that's that's appropriate, and that's good.

And then she's like, Hey, can mama get a hug?

And he went, No,

and then ran away.

And then she went, Oh,

like,

like it's so intense.

Oh, violence.

It's so like violence,

damn, damn.

Okay, all right, all right, yeah.

And he did that for one day, and now that's over.

Like, like that did, that was like two, three days ago, and now, like, it's right back to normal.

Yeah, like, give dad a hug.

Important lessons.

There you go.

Okay.

Important lessons.

But

that's why when you have your toddler,

you get yourself a fucked up little dog.

Yes.

So that when

your baby is like, I don't want hugs.

You snuggle the dog.

Okay, buddy.

Do you want hugs?

You don't get a say in the matter.

No, you don't.

No, you don't.

Oh, hugs on doggy.

There you go.

And

I believe I saw a study recently that said something to the effect of

dogs will choose humans over other dogs

in most situations when it comes down to it.

It is locked in.

The dog got like fucking eye boogers on my fucking beard.

That's disgusting.

You're disgusting.

I love you.

They're cooked.

That is it.

Fuck another dog.

So I now look back on me being like, mom, why are you like hugging the dog so tight?

And she's like, when I was like 10, it's like, because you won't hug me.

Just you're a big child.

You're too cool to hug your mom.

And I was like, whatever.

That's weirdo.

That's what that's for.

Yeah.

Oh, dude, he's the best.

He's so smart.

Oh,

sidebar, I didn't mention it, but yo, Venom is very cool in Guilty Gear Strive.

You know what?

I don't mean to be dismissive, like, genuinely, and I mean this with all the positive love in my heart.

Yeah, no shit, Venom's cool.

Yeah, guess what?

Venom's cool as fuck.

Pool character play in pool.

It is what it is.

Did Leon call you on the phone to like scream about Venom's jump arcs?

No.

But the simplification of the character, it's interesting because

they took some tools away and they simplified his formations and stuff.

But at the same time, it's like, yeah, you better get ready for ball physics.

He's such a freak.

You could take half of his shit away and he'd still be fucked up.

Get ready for set play, you know, get ready for just

the what's always what I love about Guilty Gear is when you've got a character that is fighting you, but they're paying attention to their own game, and you are like, you're in the way while Venom is trying to play pool.

You know, just like how Asuka, it's like you're in the way while he's playing his own game of Yu-Gi-Oh!

You know, he's playing cards, and you just need to fucking just stay over there while I fucking go through my deck.

And like, yeah, he's like, I'm setting up my formations, and you need to leave me alone.

All right, now break.

Uh-huh.

They, uh, yeah, they're just the shit.

Yeah, I'm gonna set up my bullshit, and you're gonna to have to guess right.

And I'm just going to keep doing my bullshit until you break out of this nonsense.

It's like when Tupac got stuck in that side that Glass Dodecahedron, that whack-ass crystal prison.

Mm-hmm.

Yes, and.

No, I did not make that up.

Okay.

Well.

I mean, is that like when Buster Rhymes got stuck in the cheese grater?

I don't know.

I'm not familiar with that one.

Because if you zoom in on the inside of a cheese grater and you light it from the outside, it looks like the background of various hip-hop videos.

Fuck.

Like, it looks exactly like,

I mean, it's shiny.

It's got the silver coming through the light.

It's incredible.

You should see zoomed-in cheese graters.

They look like fucking hip-hop sets.

They're amazing.

Oh, my God.

You know what's super fucked up?

Like, insanely fucked up and ourobarose shit?

I typed in the phrase whack ass crystal prison into into Google so I could send you a link that's the video of Tupac in the whack ass crystal prison.

And what do I find?

A thread from the best friends play subreddit going, hey, here's that whack ass crystal prison pat mentioned on stream from over a year ago.

Okay.

Oh, okay, I see here.

We have a screenshot of what game is this?

Not a real game.

Not a real game.

It was obviously not a real game at all.

Oh, the gun is not from something?

Okay, all right.

Thanks.

That's probably from Counter-Strike.

Thanks, Gilliam Jaeger, for allowing me to show people this bullshit.

Gotcha.

It's a 14-year-old post?

That's really funny.

See,

I was going to hail Mary that there was a chance you were talking about just like hologram Tupac, you know?

No, no, no.

He could never be trapped.

That's true.

He has no physical dimensions.

But this is, I'm like, okay, this is actually just, yeah, all right, got it.

Anyway,

what's going on?

Well, speaking of balls and setting them up.

Nice.

I saw a fucking Reddit post the other day with a video of Halo Infinite and somebody asking, why do people keep twerking on me after they've killed me in Halo?

And I wanted to kill myself.

Because

they're the the children think that that's dwerking instead of dipping your balls into their mouth.

They don't know that it's a tea bag.

They don't know that it's the balls in the mouth.

They think they're shaking the ass.

No, Venom shakes his ass.

Everybody else is shaking.

He literally, he really does.

Yo, throws it the fuck back, by the way.

But not the right Venom.

It should be Guilty Gear Venom.

2025.

Every time he passes by a shadowy doorway, he goes, Zato?

Oh, my God.

And then just starts going for it.

2025 can only handle so much.

He's got some hot buns for you because he works at a bakery.

There you go.

Yeah, he makes a clap.

You know that drop it low kind of edit that every character gets, like Vegeta and Luigi and stuff?

The one with Broly?

Broly?

Broly drops it low too?

Yeah, exactly.

I definitely could see that for Venom, 100%.

And Zato's not trying not to look.

You ever be so internet-brain rotted that you say something out loud and someone hears you, and then you have to try and work back the sequence of events and they just look at you like you're an insane person.

I saw an edit of that drop-it-low like sprite,

but it was a character I didn't recognize.

And I went, Why is Broly's ass on the screen?

And Paige looked at me and went, What the fuck are you?

What the what are you what, Broly?

It's OmniMan.

And I, I, it's OmniMan,

I couldn't figure out how to get the dots back because I don't even remember.

Well, anyway, speaking of setting up balls, we got some steel ones.

And this is not like they've been confirmed and they've been announced, but finally we got.

Confirmed it like three times.

Exactly.

So this is a bit of a reboot-reboot type situation where it's like we have announced this is for the fourth time that steel ball run is happening, but this was on JoJo Day.

They showed us a key visual.

So it's not exactly.

Wow, a key visual.

Not exactly a confirmation.

We already had that.

Not exactly a trailer.

There's no footage, but there's a visual.

And we get to see what the characters are going to look like.

And they have been simplified for sanity because who the fuck is going to animate a bunch of stars and details on those pants?

So

I super duper get it.

And that's okay.

100%.

But I feel no ire in my heart.

But those motherfuckers have yet to show us a moving horse.

And until they do, I'm...

Wooly.

so this does show me because I

remember how I brought it up to you.

Like, could they just replace all of the motorcycles?

And you had to think about it for like a second.

Maybe penny farthings to keep the error.

So, what I would like, I would like is that every time they're riding a horse, the camera just pans up, and there's just like the horse's e-cell.

That's what we were saying last time: is like, yeah, just keep the legs off screen and have it be like that, you know.

Honestly, like, okay, make sure that the 3D horses are are good and not bad because

as we've noted, there is bad 3D and there's good 3D, and I hope it's the good kind.

And folks are telling me that if I watch more anime, I'd see a lot more of the good stuff.

So I'm like, cool.

I'm glad that he is more good.

That

is like the insane cope ramblings of people too bought in.

Like, yes, if I eat more food, I'm more likely to have good food.

I'm also more likely to have really bad food.

I know that it, like, if it's 2D, we are probably never going to see the end of the show.

Like, the commitment to 2D drawing of them every week is batshit.

I don't want that for them.

I don't want David Production to have to go through that.

I want an elegant solution that is sane for them, and I hope that we just have the good 3D.

I mean, you could just, like, replace all the horses with

the chicks from Pretty Derby and just not acknowledge it even once.

Okay, okay.

And they don't talk at all or anything.

They just make horse noises.

They just hit the nay.

No, nay.

We could even use some My Little Ponies if you'd like.

Dude, whatever.

Yeah, okay.

Just animate them like South Park.

I don't give a shit.

You know what?

Yeah, animate them like South Park.

Animate the horses like South Park.

Everybody else is Jojo animation, and the fucking horses are just going like

like like left

it fleff like invert left right left right left like terrence and phillips

um but more important than the horses

most important

they need to go back to weekly releases yes absolutely 100 i still haven't finished part six because of that it's great and it's yeah i just i hope they really netflix is now not fully committed to drops the way they used to there's more and more stuff that comes out episodically.

You know, obviously, like Crunchyroll is more used to going through it on a simultaneous simple cast thing, but Netflix has been more willing to go like one by one.

And I fucking wish they do that here because this is Peak Jojo.

My favorite part incoming.

You know,

I'll leave it there.

I mean, best part, but

you know, we can have that debate.

But I, God, do I not want all of of that to be just spoiled by having the binge drop you know this is just the the the journey that everybody goes on on a week-to-week basis with jojo needs to be episodically dropped man god totally agree 100

um

yeah and uh

you know i i i I hope everybody, well, I mean, there's still some time before it fucking drops, but like,

there's so many, there's so much here that I

want to pop off about

moment by moment and not in, you know, in summary.

So,

shout outs to that.

And JoJo Day, which is a thing.

Other exciting announcements, too.

New Ghost in the Shell anime by Science Saru.

Oh, cool.

Who did Devilman Cryberry and Cryberry, God, Crybaby and Dan to to Dan.

Crybaby still fucks me up every once in a while.

I just think about that show and I go,

ooh, yep, okay.

And

the most important detail is when you look at the major, it's the fucking manga, dude.

It is the original manga style.

Not that

the adaptations have not been

awesome but and i and i feel like to the the the movie as well like uh the original uh uh animated animated movie was um

a super badass version of that character that like lives on in most people's heads because when you saw that key visual go up people were going like god damn it this sucks more anime uh um looking more uh um childish bullshit when are we gonna get a mature looking ghost in the shell again and it's like you motherfuckers this is the source you know?

Um,

so

not knowing what Masamune Shiro's art style looks like is a fucking tragedy, but what are you gonna do?

But either way, it's so sick that they're going back to that.

Um, prior to that, the PS1 games cutscenes were like the closest thing that kind of pseudo-scratched on that a little bit.

Um, what's weird, I guess, though, is the like, like going to that art style, fucking hype, super sick.

Um, uh, that's dope.

Is it going to also be faithful to the books as well?

That's a huge question.

And if so, holy shit.

Those books are weird and tonally dissonant and crazy, even by Ghost in the Shell standards, you know?

And

that's what I'm wondering.

Like, do you go faithful on the material and the look or just the look?

You know?

But it also is like, there's something that kind of like, I guess kind of makes sense to a little bit because, you know, know this is the first series that's happening uh after um the voice actor uh passed away right so the major's voice for years um you know uh like died recently and so it's there's a bit of a like yeah if we're gonna go back and move on without her then going back to the roots kind of like feels appropriate you know

um

I think it was on the friendcast when I think I read the sequel and like talked about it.

It's been so long that I don't fully remember, but I just remember, I don't remember the details of how or why, but I remember being extremely confused and coming back and talking about Ghost in the Shell 2, the manga, and how just fucking crazy that thing goes.

It loses...

Anyway, like the thing that you kind of think of, which is like Togusa and Bato and, you know, the whole

section and Saru and everybody doing these cool missions.

And, you know, there's going to be a a philosophical villain that makes everybody think about the lines.

What if I was a robot, but not really a robot?

Transhumanism, though.

Yeah, whether it's your puppet master or your laughing man,

you know, or whatever the case is, there's going to be some fun azimuth food for thought, and then Bato is going to like pet his dog, and everything's going to be like, fuck all that shit.

I'm going to pet my dog.

And you're like, no, but the fact that you pet your dog is why that shit's so important.

What if your mom ran on batteries?

Your mom.

Black Burr is back too.

Yeah.

Love me.

Love Ghost in the Shell.

Love Sound Alone Complex and all that shit.

But yeah, let's go back to the source material and see how this goes, you know?

And maybe they'll even animate the big old lesbian board orgy to keep it true and real.

I don't know if they'll do that.

Tamasumune Shiro.

I think if you see, like, if we get the major

that is making goofy faces and, like, sticking her tongue out behind Satu's back and shit, like, going, boo,

bee, you know, like, being like, um, right, you're under arrest or, or Dominion tank police type of thing, Pat Labar.

Like, if you're being that type of goofball ass, like, like, you know,

pro tag, um, then I assume all the rest is going to come with it.

Um, that, that cyber lesbian boat orgy is crucial to the plot.

It might be.

I don't know.

I haven't read it.

Is it?

Mm-hmm.

I don't believe you.

I'll leave you.

All right.

What else is going on?

Well,

Oblivion leaked.

This is the stupidest fucking thing.

This is a thing.

Oblivion.

Hey, I can literally.

Okay, so Oblivion's coming back, and it's coming back soon, and it kind of looks like shit, and that's funny.

They've probably just

updated the graphics to more look like Skyrim, and apparently they've updated the

systems in it to look like and play like Skyrim, which is, that makes sense.

It's

so do you remember?

You remember when Fallout came out, the TV show?

I

don't know if I mentioned it, but I was saying that like the reason that that Fallout 4 patch came out and fucked up everybody's mods was because Microsoft was really,

really mad that Bethesda did not have a game

to go alongside the Fallout TV show, which is insane

because

those games take like six years to make.

And

Oblivion Remake that is not made by Bethesda at all says to me that Elder Scrolls VI

is way over there, man.

Holy shit is that thing not coming out forever.

We got to have one of Elder Scrolls games out, guy.

Can you guys do it?

No?

All right.

Get somebody else to do one of the old ones again, I guess.

Is there a reason why you think they chose this and not Morrowind?

Yes.

Why is that?

Because Morrowind would require way more work and be way more interesting and cool.

Oh.

I see.

Morrowind is dramatically larger and more ambitious than Oblivion is.

It just plays like shit.

Oblivion is just way worse Skyrim

in scope and and and technology.

So you could just

like transmit all of Skyrim's gameplay improvements and general look to Oblivion and it'd be easy.

You would have to do a lot more to do this tomorrow.

Morrowind is bigger than those two?

Morrowind is is

bigger in scope.

Ah,

I always thought that like that was like a like almost like a trilogy of development.

That just what we built on it and then we built on it and then we built on it.

Oh, yeah, okay, interesting.

So, like, when I say Morrowind is larger in scope, people are yelling at me that the game map isn't quite as large.

That's not what I mean.

What I mean is, in Morrowind, you can make a bunch of potions to

let yourself jump infinitely.

Okay, you can

do

like

you can do more or weirder stuff

in Morrowind.

Oblivion is very streamlined.

Did it or any of them feel like basically taking old Elder Scrolls into the third dimension and keeping the rest more or less the way it was?

No, because

even Dagger Fall, which is in 2D, is actually in the third dimension, and it's like the size of England.

The country.

Wow, okay.

Daggerfall is like the largest game world ever.

I believe it is literally the size of the country of England.

Jesus.

Okay.

But

it also sucks.

Well, how much of that is like empty forest, I guess, is always my question.

A bunch, but like they have like these enormous like multiple square kilometer towns made of identical houses.

Okay.

Because I remember when we were like testing like Just Cause 2 back in the day, and it's like, yo, look, it's Cuba.

And you're like, is it?

Like, no, but it's big.

Yeah.

Does it feel big?

Yes.

Okay.

That's what she said, anyway.

So,

and so to that,

also, it's easy to remaster Oblivion to look nicer because Oblivion might be the shittiest, most poorly aged game in terms of visuals of all time.

Don't well,

you know what?

I don't know, but I feel like

they all look ugly to me.

Oh, but yeah, when's the last time you saw?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Oblivion looks special ugly.

Like, I feel like

they all kind of look pretty ugly.

Oblivion, you know, this might not hit for you, but it'll hit for at least one person in the audience.

Oblivion looks like the game that Abby is trying to figure out where the secret to the Marines murderer is on NCIS.

Oh, the fake video.

The game in the game, yeah, the game on the TV show, the game in the movies.

And I mean, NCIS specifically.

Low budget, but your mom and dad still watch it for some reason because they really like Jethro Gibbs.

And Abby's cool, and Ducky had that song from the 70s.

Anyway,

yeah, Oblivion looks like super shit.

Like, super, super garbage.

Um,

man.

Um,

okay.

Here, here's a fucking screenshot for you, Wooly.

This is a perfect example.

Here you go.

Well, I guess I always think, though, I'm like, did did modders then modd it into being less ugly, like, aggressively?

No, there's nothing to be done.

Okay.

Okay.

No, it's, it's fucked.

I mean, they tried, but

there's only so much you can shine a turd.

Wow.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, dude, it looks like a fake fucking video game.

Like, legit.

It is unique in its awfulness.

And one of the things about Oblivion that makes it look super, super god-awful shit is that they went for the single most generic possible setting possible, like they've ever done.

So, Ceradil in lore is supposed to be like this incredibly dense forest that is like, like, temperate and tropical uh but then instead they made it like like off-brand roam with just rolling hills and like boreal forests and it looks like nothing okay um

there's like nothing unique about the the the entire setting until you get to the expansion

um when you talk about games that they play on TV or in the movies, like that's definitely one of them.

And then the others that immediately come to mind are, like, EverQuest is a game that is played by TV characters.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And, like, I don't know, maybe like Kingsfield, you know, a little bit.

Well, here's the thing.

I'm of the belief, specifically with you, that Oblivion looks like what you think EverQuest looked like.

EverQuest did a lot of damage to my early

game cycle.

I was like, I always go to EverQuest.

I really specific because I hated it so much oh dude you're right it made me so angry it made me so angry

looks way worse

man I just grew up

Quest II is maybe like the ugliest MMO ever yeah I just I just grew up despising things that looked like that and I just like just no sauce and it was and it's the it's it was the peak prime western ass like I just big weea boo fucking energy coming off of just like

Japanese games don't look like that.

No, they don't.

You know, everyone looks cooler and does cooler shit.

Come on.

Where's the sauce?

Yeah, I, you know, anyway.

And I mean, look, we got there, but like, to some degree, it's still more or less real.

The ramifications, the damage is, is, the shadow remains cast.

Anyways, so speaking of buggy shit,

we talked about that Tekken N8

situation.

There has been some updates.

Apparently there's going to be emergency patch.

Well they still, yeah.

So they announced an emergency patch beforehand and they elaborated a little bit more on what it'll include.

So at first they just mentioned fixing Paul and Jack with these particular things they were doing.

In this case

They're saying overall there was an announcement that was basically just going hey guys Look we know yeah, we completely agree This is not what we said we were gonna do we fucked up.

And we're going to adjust the game and continue looking at different things.

And they're not undoing and rolling back and taking away the changes.

They're going to adjust them.

And it's going to take some time to do so.

In the meantime, they've increased life so that you can take more mix-ups instead of two.

You'll take three now.

I guess, you know?

And people are like, guys, what the fuck?

We're like, oh, like some people read that and went, oh, I guess we're out.

Like, we're cooked, cooked.

It's done, you know?

dude so i don't know what the tipping point for everybody was and i know we talked about it for like 40 minutes to an hour but like when i was scrolling down my youtube subscriptions and i saw that sajam has a fucking hour and 12 minute interview discussing the disastrous tech and eight season two patch with phi dx yeah i'm like holy fucking shit i have never seen him talk about a patch for more than like 25 fucking minutes and holy fuck and fee goes into detail like he really breaks it down, like, for anyone, just like, if you're coming at this from an outsider or like from a street fighter player's perspective and stuff, you know, yeah, he does it.

And so Fidix, like, he's been, he's been, like, talking the most about this, honestly.

I feel like he's in the spotlight for it.

But it's so interesting because

it goes further.

Because one, Harada also

spoke, he broke radio silence where somebody kind of said, like, hey, this unwarranted shit is, you know, like a backlash or whatever.

you know those people are being loud but don't worry thank you for the game and thank you for speaking up and da da da and harata quote tweeted the person and went and he went no no no this is warranted the backlash is justified

oh yeah stop dick riding me get off it straight up and i love that and you know what like This is and it's true like he has when people have gotten upset enough at the game like with the stages beforehand and the season pass and stuff like I said he has been like okay Yeah, no, we're gonna try we're gonna we're gonna fix that we're gonna we fucked up Um, he's he's admitted that before.

And I, the, when you think about it, it's like, Tekken is his life's work, right?

Yes, it is literally his and his life's work.

It's his legacy.

So I get him being like, yeah, let me actually come out and say, like, don't even try, you know, to be like, no, I'm going to position myself against that and stuff.

It's unfortunate that, like, it sounds like there's some shit going on with like other devs.

And, you know, there's been some blocks, and I'm not too sure exactly what's happening.

Like, people have been talking about like Michael Murray blocking them.

and, you know, then Aris's stream.

There's all kinds of shenanigans going up and around, and so on.

But overall,

it sounds like he's like, yeah, nope, this is a warranted backlash, and we're going to fix it.

But undoing it completely, I guess, is just not in the cards.

So it's going to have to be a slow adjustment of like

taking the move.

They specifically acknowledge the moves that are

selfish, you know, the tracking 50-50 really high-risk, really low-risk, really high-reward moves are going to get adjusted, you know, and I guess they're kind of committing to this decision instead of like fully pulling back out of it.

But what's happened since then, the game has, people have started finding other shit.

And so it's like now it's not just about like the new aggressive moves.

There's these bugs, one of which is when Anna slaps you

and you try to and then you input a like a counter slap,

her move list becomes yours, and now we're seeing people doing anna combos in swapping movesets, and it's this confusing, like, why the fuck is this happening?

People without rocket launchers are doing rocket launcher moves, and it just became like the most busted-looking insane shit, right?

Like, literally, your character starts taking on the wrong moveset entirely.

The insane tweets and

videos of that make it look like a complete mess.

And someone recently, like in the last couple of days, went into the code and found the exact problem.

And it's

inter the actual reason why this happens is super fascinating, in my opinion.

I love it that we're in the era of people can dive in and go, yeah, I found it.

I found the problem.

Somebody fucked this up and they point at it.

But it's fucked up in a way because

of the creativity of what they were going for.

So when Anna does a back two, I think, like as the input, like slap, right?

What happens, or what's supposed to happen, is

the game checks to see if the person getting slapped is female.

And then if you input a back to counter,

you tech the slap and slap them back.

So you're supposed there's a system of essentially there being you like if she smacks you a girl on the cast will slap you back and you have a slapping match

as a return thing.

That's really funny.

Right?

And so it does, it does a gender check on the character that's getting slapped, but that breaks.

And then what it does is as well is there are characters that have the way that they respond to getting hit

is not baked into the

it's baked into the character that's doing the move, right?

So

if Paul does like, you know, his godfist to you and like you get hit a certain way, the way you respond to that is a part of Paul, not a part of the character getting hit.

So getting slapped and then slapping back is a part of Anna's moveset, not the specific character who's getting slapped.

So when it transfers her moveset onto the slapping, onto the character that's slapping back,

it bugs out.

and checks the wrong thing and it basically like instead of checking to see who's getting slapped, it checks Anna to see if she's there, and she's always there, and then drops her move list for the slap back, but then you don't get your own move set back.

So that's what the game is doing, because there's supposed to be a slap you and then no slap you system to that move, right?

And that's what the coder figured out.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

You know who would never do this?

Virtua Fighter would never put out a batch like this.

Well, no, because Virtua Fighter wouldn't put out anything.

No, no.

Virtua Fighter.

No, no.

It would put out nothing, actually.

No.

Or it might put out a patch that has racist net code.

I mean, it's like.

It's hard to improve on perfection.

Yeah.

Yes.

The location that you live in chooses how good your net your online will be.

Yeah, they'll release a game and then pretend it wasn't released and then try again.

So, you know.

Listen, listen.

I find the why behind this bug so interesting.

I love that shit.

That's so interesting, right?

And then I guess simultaneous to this, uh, some folks have been, you know, returning to Tekken 7, returning to Tekken 6.

Some motherfuckers booted up Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and put it to 1v1 mode and started going in on that.

Oh, man.

Some modders have removed heat from Tekken 8 and just put the footage out.

And people are like crying.

Like, you know that, you ever see that picture from a manga with the bear that's just got tears in its eyes?

Or like, or like, you know, it's always sunny with Frank just being like, I understand.

I get it now.

I get it now.

Like, it is like, oh,

oh, it's beautiful.

This is what I wanted, you know?

So instead, what we have is the manga panel of that dude in the theater going, this shit is so ass.

I mean, it's funny because like you, like, there are moments without heat where

they still have heat engager moves.

And so the reaction to those is like, like, not set properly.

But overall, people are like, I will fucking, I will suck your dick.

Please give me this mod.

Like, please, just, we want to play this, you know?

And, uh, um,

and and then also what's been happened, what's happened with season two's patch is there's a change that has involved

in order to avoid certain situations when you're getting comboed off the wall, when you get dropped to the ground, sometimes you automatically tech backwards, right?

Like before you just have the control to pick your direction and stuff.

But to avoid,

it's yeah, a way to avoid certain like really aggressive situations, they put this thing to be like, no, you'll always tech backwards and such.

Forcing that means there are ways to do a combo to somebody where you hit them into the wall and then they bounce onto the ground and always tech backwards towards you with their back towards you so they can't escape your setup.

So you can actually do a touch of death now.

And like there's someone using Law there's real touch of deaths because of that.

So I know it's not the case in like fighting games, but in a lot of competitive games, if they had to release a patch that was this hated, they would roll it all

until they had a better solution.

It is weird that they have not rolled rolled it all the way back until they have a better

solution.

Well,

there's a saving face element to this that I think is present.

I don't know that they've ever said, cancel, undo, never mind, right?

Undo the update live.

I don't think that's ever happened.

I think there's a bit of a,

we made a decision.

We're going to, we're going to stand by it and continue tweaking to fix things that were unintended, but we're moving in this direction as opposed to we fucked up the course.

We're not going that way at all.

You know,

I think it would be better in this situation, and I think it would probably be way, you know,

for this level of vitriol and anger, it would be a much better call, but there's something about just like not wanting to look like

some people in chat have said that they can't do it without removing Anna and people paid for Anna.

Well, so because Anna exists in a new system.

No, but but I mean, it would have to basically be like we're rolling back everything but the character, right?

Yeah.

So you would be like every other change we're undoing, and it would just be this wild like hybrid live, you know.

But

in any case, yeah, there's a thing with that, which is like, I bet you there's a bit of a face thing and a bit of a like, you know, bad leadership looking thing, and just kind of like, we don't, we stand the core, we stay the course and we fix as we go.

We don't control Z, you know?

That is a really bad attitude for a live game that

people have to play for it to exist.

Yeah, competitively at that, you know.

I agree.

But it would, in this case, it would also be the simplest way, right?

Because there are more things people hate about what's new than

about what's old.

You know, they're lamenting for that old version where they're like, oh, man.

Back when it was like, oh, fucking Dragonov, what an annoying character to fight.

It's like yearning for those days, you know?

So, I don't know.

And obviously,

the idea of like rolling back the changes, realistically, what that looks like is not actually rolling back the game, but making a new version where those changes don't exist in the balance.

It's still a new versioned

thing with Anna present, but the move changes and details and stuff that they did, like those things you then start adjusting from scratch on.

Right.

Okay, so that's what's going on with Tekken 8.

Just before we went live as well, just a little bit, there's some tweets that have gone out, but Capcom Fighting Collection 2,

the version that the game that has

CVS 2 and Rival Schools, Project Justice,

Star Gladiator, all the good shit.

Yeah, so that's going to be coming soon.

There's some footage where

who was it?

Tyrant was playing CVS2 and noticed that the standard version is

easy operation,

CVS2EO version, which means that's the version of the game that has no role cancelling.

And

if you're an old fighting game player that remembers Capcom vs.

SNK2, you know how insane those words are because the game exists.

and is a competitive thing and did not die sooner because of role cancelling.

It's a bug that competitively saved the game, and they are officially not allowing, putting out that version that has it.

And this is like, we've done this before, and it's so baffling that they're doing this again.

This happened with Third Strike when they fixed, quote unquote, the bugs and things like

Aegis Reflector, and everyone hated that.

They're like, no, no, no, we've been used to this competitive version of the game.

That's what we want to play.

Don't take those quote-unquote bugs out because they're part of the meta now, right?

No, we're fixing the bugs, we fixed the bugs, it's better now.

And then they did that to Marvel 2, and Marvel 2 as well has a bunch of stuff that they're like, these are part of the meta.

There's some, there's bugs that are actually like game-breaking, like freeze, stupid shit that are a problem, but there's stuff that is part of the meta as well.

And then they change that stuff, and the competitive players are like, well, fuck this.

I don't want to play this version of the game.

This is not what I've, this is not the game I love, you know?

And so same thing here in CVS2's case.

And it's like, this is really crazy because, like, I mean, when you go look up, like, anything, let's say you're someone who was like, I want to learn how to play this old game and I want to get into it, you know?

Um, you start with the basics and what's there, and then you start getting into like, you know, like Super Combo is like a wiki online, for example, where they get into tech for characters and these old, old classics.

And like, this bug, role canceling, is so

intrinsically

part of the identity of the game that it's it factors into every character's discussion.

It factors into the tier list of who's strong and who's weak it's like it's just been the whole game it's it's crazy to think that they'd be like yeah throw all that out here no just not this you know and be like yeah you're gonna play a different version of it now and it's not at all the thing that people love and um

what everyone especially those who you're selling this to love is the version that has this as part of the meta you know i i it's it's it's so crazy um

I'm baffled because you would think that when you're releasing games like this on this collection, especially because I'm like, it's nice to have a way to play them.

That you'd have somebody that's like on the team that is like super duper the right version, guys.

Yes, they know what people want.

They know what people care about.

And they're like, yeah, the audience that you're trying to win over, you want to show new people, you know, these old games and you want to introduce a new audience, but you want to basically win over people that are playing Fight Cade, right?

You want to win over people that are fans that never stopped from back in the day that love these old games.

It's crazy that they do this.

Hey, man.

It's all just a ploy to make people

crave CVS3.

Yeah.

I mean,

like I said, I feel like this is a harder time to release a new game and it's probable, it's like seasons of guest characters feel like, you know, the the way to not fuck up your your bag um instead of telling people to go buy a new thing but the one

copium uh gas uh huff i'll take here is they also just announced a massive update to the um

marvel vs capcom collection which included some big changes to multiple games in that and they had a they put a trailer out because it's like a whole bunch of yeah includes version select exactly and that might mean for this game that the same thing, they might release the original versions of this included.

Because if it's just easy operation for ranked, that's the problem.

And if they let you pick the previous versions of CVS2, then all's well, you know?

Problem solved.

Put the older versions of the game in there, not the GameCube one, please.

So we'll see.

But like, it's always possible that they can just release that bigger update that lets you do version select as well.

Woo, you're getting blessed by

praise the sun.

Okay.

Hey, I got to take a break and take this dog out and feed him.

BRB?

Because I'm half hour over

his food time.

Okay.

But we still have plenty to talk about, so I guess we'll go long today.

I'll be right back.

Okay.

So yeah, let's.

God has retreated from my camera.

Only other things to touch on were

yeah, so the marathon gameplay reveal happened.

I'm sure, I know, yeah, so you took a look, I know that there's the extended gameplay reveal, and then there's the short trailer, right?

Yeah,

um, so I watched the short trailer, I didn't watch the full thing.

Um,

and

as an outsider, uh,

just watching that trailer, I was like, that seems like a cool thing.

I don't know the source material.

I don't know Durandal, you know, and stuff like that, but I'm like, the art style looks cool.

I like the use of color.

I do like the art style.

I think it looks kind of like a futuristic mirror's edge kind of thing.

Yeah, I enjoy what they're doing

with the use of color and the design on the various characters and the world and the buildings and stuff.

And

I guess a team extraction

shooter type game is what the deal is.

I don't have, so like we talked about with Devil May Cry before, I don't have attachment to the source material.

So I kind of just saw something that I thought was like, oh, that looks cool.

That looks interesting.

And that's the end of thought, head empty.

All right.

So my exposure to Marathon is exclusively watching the Mandalore's retrospective on those game stories.

Like, I have absolutely no, no,

I don't know shit about shit when it comes to marathon.

Oh, okay.

I know that it's the thing they made before Halo.

And it's got the cool logo with the circle and then the other smaller circle.

Yeah, I like the logo.

So

I got contacted by Bungie like two months ago asking me to please co-stream that event.

And then they sent me

a package of dudads.

That I have not shown on stream because they're not that cool.

And

they want that, if I did, I would have to put hashtag ad in it.

They're all just sitting in the box.

The thing of value

send me more doodads, says Pat.

I don't care about dudeads.

The thing of value in there was basically

a metal plate with the website that I had to go to to join their Discord,

which was like

way too many steps

to just join the creator Discord.

What's in the Discord?

And the reason for joining the Discord was so that if you co-streamed the event, you would get alpha codes to give away to your audience.

Okay.

So I co-streamed the event, and then I gave the alpha codes away to my audience.

And the alpha is going to be like the 23rd or 24th or something.

It's going to be a couple weeks.

And

then I watched the event.

And

I have some experience with Destiny 2.

And I've also played them Halo games.

And Bungie makes really incredible shooters.

Any Tarkov?

Did you play any Tarkov?

No, sir.

Okay.

The Bungie makes incredible games where you shoot guns.

Like, shooting is

fantastic.

And I would say that their particular skill set is way better suited to a full-scale multiplayer extraction shooter than it is to a live service MMO.

Like, it is, it's just, it's more focused on getting into a map and shooting people than it is to long-term content delivery plans and shit like that.

I guess the thought is PvE stuff they've done for the Halo single-player stuff has also been pretty good.

Yeah, they've also for the raids and Destiny Destiny and stuff like that.

And

all the problems with Destiny was always about how it was run as a live service game.

Playing Destiny fucking kicked ass.

It was just all the

large-scale decisions were always god-awful.

And that's why people still play Destiny now is because playing Destiny rules.

Playing Destiny regularly sucks if that distinction hits.

Keeping up with it.

Right.

So

that little short trailer.

When you say the short trailer that you saw, you're talking about like the filmic tone trailer that's like CG'd and all the different robots.

Not the first, first reveal.

The one that the gameplay overview, where there's a narrator breaking down the planet, the mode, the character, the stuff that's going on, and how

the game works as a team.

So

talking about Marathon is kind of linked to talking about the event in which they showed Marathon because the Marathon live event was super weird.

It was really fucking weird.

So

it was on a stage inside, I believe, like Bungie's studio or like a place that Bungie rented.

And the the first half hour of the pre-show was them

putting a camera on a robot that would then walk around their offices.

And like, look, you're like in the Bungie office.

And it was super strange.

And then the robot, like near the end, like rolled up to the stage.

And there was like, like, kind of like they had their own E3 presentation just for themselves.

And the first thing that they showed off was the live studio audience made entirely of bungee developers that were all there to sit in and cheer when trailers went up and when the devs said funny jokes.

And it was fucking super weird, like right off the bat.

Okay.

Just fucking strange.

If you need a little

perspective on that type of thing in development, that's normal for studios to do internally if they have like a studio room or a presentation room.

Well, just internally, what'll happen is there'll be presentations where they'll show off stuff, and then like the whole studio will be the audience watching

the compiled footage of what everybody has worked on together and seeing the final implementation, you know.

But typically, that's not what gets filmed and put out as promotion, certainly.

Or working on that.

The strangest part was that, like, you have all these devs who are essentially watching their bosses put on a presentation

to clap for them?

Like it felt it felt really

odd.

So then they showed the gameplay overview

and stuff like that.

Sorry, when it's not for

showing people who

the audience

internally, but for that to go external is odd for people to learn about.

Because it's in front of the audience so that when they show it off and everyone's like, what?

As opposed to

a real audience, yes.

Like, that's not the real audience.

That's the people working on the game.

That's them.

And then they did the gameplay overview.

And then they did some interviews, you know, back and forth, questions and answers with a bunch of the leads.

And then they showed some more gameplay.

And

there was an incredibly strange tone.

to them talking about the game that I will blame the setup.

And maybe you, but maybe what you said earlier is like this is more normal for internal use only rather than showing it off to everybody.

You had three devs talking, and like one guy interviewing them, and like they kept talking about the game and the characters in it, and the experience they were having

like the game was out, and the audience already knew and was familiar with like the classes and the characters

because the audience in the room was familiar with the characters.

That is, that's a flub.

I've seen that before with like E3 stuff as well.

I can't think of specific examples, but I've seen that before in promotion where like the people talking about it are two inside making cracks about like, oh, well, there's this person.

Like, almost like there's a, there's like one point somebody's like, ah, there any glitch mains in here?

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

And I'm like, I don't know what glitch is.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's a mis.

Don't do that.

That's bad uh was it for honor i forget but i feel like there was a game that kind of had a bit of that the the like the treehouse style discussion where you're but it's just between treehouse members you know super internal um

and i was like people who are more familiar with bungie's presentations is like actually bungie presents a lot of this stuff in this in this way fairly often i didn't know that um

uh but it was like a lot of a lot of weird in-house like like inside baseball talking in between gameplay presentations uh And Marathon is a bungee shooter, first-person shooter extraction game.

Then they showed off a couple of the classes, and playing the game looks pretty good.

Yeah.

I have no doubt that it will play well and all that.

But there were a couple of details that came out that were like,

no.

And there were a couple of details that they like very intentionally did not put out that were also like, oh.

So the first thing that happens is they go, we're going to bring you

characters and progression and faction, you know, the spiel, right?

And one of the things that they mentioned was seasonal storytelling, which for me just sucked every

ounce of wind out of me and just completely killed any desire I will literally have to play this game ever.

Isn't that just live service like storytelling like Destiny and games like that?

So, Destiny has the worst seasonal thing of any game, which is they will build levels and encounters and gear out to last 90 days and then delete them after that 90 days is over.

Delete them.

So, you know how Destiny vaults content?

Yeah.

So, what absolutely killed my love of destiny was not just the sunsetting of the guns.

There was what called the season of the worthy, which was focused around saving a very famous character in Destiny called Saint 14.

And what you had to do was dive into an area called the Infinite Forest.

And you would, you know, you would do these, these, these randomized dungeons, and you would go on quests, and you would earn gear, and then you would eventually essentially travel back in in time to save Saint 14, and then he would appear in the live game, and then he had quests for you.

Right?

And it was really good.

It was a really good quest line that was genuinely excellent.

And after the season of the worthy, all of those quests disappeared, and now Saint 14 is just in the hub.

And the idea is like, hey, how'd Saint 14 come back to life?

Isn't he dead?

And the answer was supposed to be,

you had to be be there

and then you would go oh i guess i should really really follow the seasons more closely and it's the worst

fomo based like plot progression

um

so uh

uh uh uh shit what was the thing and so when i hear that marathon will have seasonal storytelling my stomach just went

like just terrible i guess the second of which well the other thought i guess is just the um so a game like helldivers that can have

events occur, but there's not much story.

I mean, the

Terminator here.

Yeah.

You know, they're here.

I would imagine that, like, well, okay, Marathon used to be a single-player, full-on adventure, you know, story, first-person, you know, thing.

There are two of them.

So

switching it up to a live-service extraction shooter means that like story will be minimal, but I guess exist for like little who knows.

But

I imagine the move here is like you kind of sprinkle references to things that people might know or like from the previous games, but overall,

the narrative is not the main reason you're jumping in because it's a live PvP shooter, you know?

So somebody in the chat, thanks Monkey Weed, points out that Guild Wars 2 did this style of seasonal content, and it was such a hated disaster that after five seasons of it, they actually retrofitted it as DLC and then made all storyline shit onwards permanent.

Like, it's the only game I've ever seen, like, go, nah, fuck it, go back.

And they went back to the old model of just we put it out and it's out.

So that seasonal content thing, ooh, not very good.

So is this kind of second?

Is this kind of like with rivals where there's just like, oh, now we're doing the New York City, the Baxter Building and the Dracula.

Okay, well, now we're moving on to the Hellfire gallery.

Like that.

But imagine it was like, for Destiny, imagine it was like imports and levels and activities.

Because missing out on

a rival's event is not a big deal.

It's just a cool thing with some costumes and some lore bits and pages.

But overall,

I guess it's not like an ongoing,

you fucking missed out and you don't understand what you're looking at type of thing.

Right.

So

they did that.

And then the next thing they said is like, hey guys, this is a three-man game, so you'll queue up as a team.

And don't worry, for you tough guys out there, you can queue solo if you want

into

the

mode where everyone else is teams of three.

Yeah, I saw that in the trailer.

Which is like,

no, that's not what.

Why the fuck is this such a fucking focus for you and Apex?

Why is this so fucking important?

Why can't I just fucking play a version of the game that's free for all?

Like, why?

Why does it have to be fucking

3v3?

Like, god damn it.

Not looking into that feature, I kind of was wondering, I'm like, if you go in solo, do you get like better rewards?

Or is there like a

balance around that?

No, you get shit.

Okay.

I don't get it.

I don't get it.

Even fucking.

Fortnite has fucking solo only.

Why aren't you as good as Fortnite?

Oh, where everybody else is solo.

That's a mode, you mean?

Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's what I mean.

When I think of, when I say solo queue, I'm like, why can I, like, why, why are you?

It's, it's, it's, it's, the, it's the, okay, someone who's listening to this, go back to a podcast where me and Wooly complained about Apex and just listen to that 30-minute rant and just transplant the word marathon onto it because it's the same exact discussion, it's the same discussion.

Um,

and then

something happened that did not give give me a lot of really good faith in this game.

So

the way that they wanted to give out the alpha codes was that they wanted to have one guy at Bungie

check to see if you were co-streaming the game and then send you the codes on Discord.

But they invited too many people to do it.

And the event ended before most of those codes had gone out.

So

that guy had to then then bust his ass and like go through bots and shit.

And then I got an email at a later date after asking for it that was

the Excel spreadsheet copy-pasted into an email.

Okay.

Okay.

And I was like, man, is this not a good sign for this live service game?

Okay, so the event itself was a fucking mess, right?

It sounds like.

And

I guess the doodads and thingamabobs,

you know, not much to them.

But, I mean, yeah, I guess gameplay-wise, if you are somebody that is a fan of the franchise that's wanted a sequel to that for a long time, I can imagine that.

Then there is nothing here for you.

I can imagine the immense disappointment at being like, fuck.

You're using the name, but we're not getting, you know, Marathon.

I'm going to send you a screenshot of that email, and you're going to see what I mean.

Like, this was, this was, I see, no, I see.

Just drop

a fucking XLS file.

He's just hurrying his ass off to get those fucking codes out.

That is, that is raw.

But, uh, yeah, I, I, but just again, as a, as a, as an, you know, an unaware black outsider, just kind of looking at it, I was like, oh, that looks like it could be a fun like team thing that in particular.

Yeah, totally.

And in particular, like, I have to say that i'm somebody where like you know you'll draw me in with your aesthetic i'll i'll i'll stick my head around and just be like oh what's going on with this because like the style looks cool and then it's like are there other things that i find cool about that is there other any other fun that i could have with it you know um and i i did enjoy

detail i did enjoy some some apex for a period of time

So there's a detail that they strongly neglected to mention and then also neglected to mention afterwards when people were asking them, which is, hey, so this game's free to play, right?

No,

Bungie's a premium title, and

we feel that the price will reflect that, which then got reported to be a full price game.

Bungie will be it'll be a full price game.

I saw that part, yeah, yeah.

Which they then responded with, we didn't say it was full price, we just said it was premium, and it's $40.

And

I would like to point out: I'm not an English teacher.

The word premium has come to me.

It literally means the top of the expected price range.

That literally means full price or higher.

Connotatively, connotatively, we've come to use it as full price.

That's what that means.

Premium gas is the expensive gas.

Premium cheese is the expensive cheese.

Premium means full price or more.

Bad word.

It feels like they wanted to say, this is going to be so much value.

It's like such a good game.

Oh, you'd be begging to pay us more when it's like $40.

But instead, everyone took the word to what it fucking means, which is full price.

I think it is crazy this game is not free.

I think it is nuts

that this game is not going to be free.

Has Bungie ever done free-to-play?

Yeah.

Destiny 2 is free to play right now.

And it's the shittiest version of the game you could ever imagine.

Hmm.

Was it on launch?

No.

No.

No.

There was that.

There was the.

Because I remember there was the talk about the

Taken King?

Yeah, that was Destiny 1.

DLC, that was like a thing on release for when 2 came out.

And I remember there would be discussions about paid stuff for it.

Yeah, okay.

So let me just give you a short history of how fucked up the free-to-play thing for Destiny was.

Destiny 1 comes out, and they put out regular expansions.

And then the game has a really good final expansion.

That's that.

Destiny 2 comes out and has the Red War campaign and then it has two expansions and then it has a bigger expansion.

And then I think there's another one after that.

And then they start vaulting content.

And then at some point it goes free to play

and they vault more content.

And now that it's free to play and I've paid for a bunch of the game, I paid for like $120 worth of the game.

Most of the stuff that I paid for in the non-free to play version no longer exists.

It's gone.

So now free-to-play Destiny exists, but you can still buy seasons and campaigns and DLCs, but some of them are gone and you can't play them anymore.

And it's, and when you load into Destiny 2 at the free-to-play version, or, you know, any version, you load into the Destiny 1 starting mission

instead of the Destiny 2 one.

And then you get to the hub and it just goes, do whatever, because there's no main story anymore.

It's miserable.

It's so bad.

So Bungie has chosen Concord's Gambit.

Yeah, a little bit.

Is what's happening here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, Tarkov is free as well, right?

I don't know.

Like, if most of your competitors in this space are free to play, it feels like.

You You know what?

I'm going to say no.

Is it not?

Okay.

Escape from Tarkov

is

purchase.

There's a purchase thing.

Okay.

No?

Okay.

So, like, because I'm like, oh, how many of its direct competitors are free to play?

$35.

Tarkov is $40, $35?

Yeah, okay.

So around the same price as that.

Apex is free.

Not the same exact genre, but

are there direct competitors in this first-person shooter space that are

there's Tarkov and there's Hunt Showdown that are free and

no, they're not free.

They're all extraction shooters that are the big, big boys or you pay like 40 bucks.

Okay.

So there's nothing that is like dominating the genre right now that is free to play.

No.

So then in that case, they're coming into

that then it makes more sense then.

They're coming into compete at the same level.

Yeah, so then so then I think that that makes a bit more sense if that's what the controls are.

A lot of people are saying that Warzone 6 is free.

Call of Duty.

Warzone Extraction?

Hmm.

But Warzone's Battle Royale.

Yeah, okay, whatever.

Interesting.

Also,

Hunt Showdown also mandates three-person teams.

And I'm like, why is this such a fixation of this genre now?

Why is this so important that it is a mandatory thing?

Can't you just always have a solo?

I don't get it.

I don't fucking.

Balance for solo.

How about just don't balance it for solo at all?

Just fucking take two people away.

Okay,

I don't know why this is so complicated because Chad's doing that.

Hunt doesn't mandate three-person teams to start, but you can't queue in by yourself into a version of Oh, you can solo against solos and hunt?

Oh, then it's extra stupid that you can't.

Oh, I'll start playing Hunt Showdown.

Fuck this.

Oh, okay.

I'm going to start fucking playing Hunt Showdown.

Thank you for informing me.

Wow, that's extra.

Now I'm extra stupid pissed off about Marathon.

Hunt Shodown's doing it.

You should do it.

Yeah, that is it.

That is the end of the discussion.

I don't have this gripe, but I get it.

You know, I just

legends.

Well, so that's the thing is like doing it.

When I did it solo queuing with randoms, I was like, yeah, this is abysmal.

And I'm not.

You know, I'm not down for this experience.

So I just like, I'm like, okay,

I'm never playing it that way again.

You know, and I just kind of was like, all right, got to talk to people and

get friends on the line.

I'm going to fucking play Hunt Showdown.

I'm fucking buying it right now.

No, but options, you know, yeah, for sure.

That's always, that's way better for it.

Anyway.

Recent reviews mixed.

Cheaters.

Also, just, and I guess as a side note,

I feel like

it's nice when I can see

a nice kind of art design thing come through just on a...

you know, on a game's like visual presentation and kind of thing.

And I'm like, I want to flip through an art book for this game.

You know, I'm imagining there's a lot of cool concept art for like how it plays with the colors and shit.

I'd love to see that reminds me very important detail about Bungie putting out a shooter like this.

In Destiny cheating in the

marquee PvP mode, the trials of Osiris is rampant.

And in Tarkov as well.

Yep.

Well,

fucking bully.

And apparently, it's according to the Steam reviews, in Hunt.

Because

you're going into these games, losing everything if you fuck up.

So the incentive to cheat is very high.

Loss aversion, extremely high, yes.

A high concentration of shit is that.

And that also means that if you get killed by a cheater and lose all your shit, you're just like, oh, I'm done with this fucking game forever.

Or like constant losses in a row where you're just constantly like losing all your resources and

you know starting from scratch and having nothing to yeah that that can a steamroll of bad feelings makes you quit a game for sure so yeah uh there's a alpha that i'm gonna play on uh on marathon uh looking forward to that but uh well we'll see we'll see well maybe this is where some friends would carry you right

i don't want to be carried

um

Okay, beyond this, there's a quick thing.

They just announced that the PS5 price is going to rise in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand today.

What a bunch of fucking bullshit.

Guess what?

It's not just Nintendo.

Hey, so stuff's happening.

Australians pointed out that the PS5 is now $200 more after like five years than it was when it came out.

It is happening industry-wide.

It'll be everything.

What a bunch of fucking bullshit.

Give it a minute for everybody to

go back and come back and announce price increases across the board.

And the fun thing about price increases is they always come back down when the economy changes, right?

They always move and, you know, like, oh, yeah, we can lighten up now.

And last thing, and this is just, you know, if this is an if you know, you know,

type bit,

but some folks might remember, but back in the day on the Fredcast, I used to use some cool break music from some places.

One of those break songs I used was from a fucking awesome game called The Speedrunners.

I do know this, yes.

And it's it's a pretty it feels like it was kind of under the table under the radar as a release but dark horse super fun multiplayer game the speedrunners 2 has been fucking announced and a trailer for it came out this week and it did the thing that I that's exactly what I want in specific which is showing off the new version of the game which is like a proper pretty new 3d version of it it was a sprite-based racing around the track it was a it was okay remember versus mode mode for in sonic 2 or sonic and knuckles right where you're like split screening except you're doing that on one screen together and you're racing around the track with power-ups and mario kart style things and grappling hooks and shit on foot it's super fun love it um

they they had the new trailer play and then right away the theme this that song fucking kicks in and it's a remix of it and then it builds up to a choir vocal, you know, where there's like a whole like voice track kicking in and it's a more epic, bombastic version of the song that I love in a game that I love.

And it's exactly what you want for a simple game sequel trailer like that.

Fuck yeah, Speedrunners is back and it rules.

Simple, awesome, and amazing music.

Lots of fun.

I wish that was more of a thing because

there's only the only games like it that I know And I kind of there's one of the one of the game design ideas I remember having was a thing like this where it was like an on-foot racing through an environment, kind of split-screen,

competitive game.

Never going to happen, so whatever.

But

this game, and there was a game on the Xbox Live Arcade

on the 360 called Rascals, which was also a whole lot of fun, you know.

And

these are the only two games of its type that I can think of besides Versus Mode in Sonic and Knuckles, you know.

Oh, man.

Awesome shit.

There's a blast from a past.

Yeah.

That's it.

That's all I got, you know?

PvP N.

I mean, that was more about.

I didn't do any racing versions of that.

I did more, it was more like survival tracks.

I've played PvP and that, but

or like getting to the thing.

But I'm thinking of like a momentum through a race track, you know, that I thought was a lot of fun.

Anyway,

Speedrunners 2.

King of Speed.

Alright, let's take some letters.

Hold on, I have two pieces of very quick news.

What's up?

Baldur's Gate 3 patch is finally here, and the game is done.

Baldur's Gate 3 is done.

The final patch is out?

Yes, they have literally titled it the final patch.

Oh my god.

I don't believe it.

12 subclasses, photo mode, and cross-play.

But what if they decide there should be more?

There might be some bug fixes, but no, this is the final patch.

Okay.

I fucked around with it.

It's cool.

Also,

Square Square Enix completely re-translated Front Mission 2 and patched it.

How's about that?

All is not lost.

Okay.

Yeah.

Front Mission 3.

You can believe a little bit.

Add some camera shake on that shit.

You can believe you can dream again.

Dare to dream once more.

It seems they're committed to having these games be good

instead of not.

I mean,

that mecha week episode, just one of the best first impressions of a video game.

I ever had.

It was, I couldn't believe how sick that was.

Holy shit.

And then you're like, by the way, this game, like 170 hours.

Yeah, no, it's an Elden Ring.

I know.

I know.

But

wow.

Wow, was that cool?

All right.

If you've got a letter,

send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's castle superbeastmail at gmail.com.

Okay.

Let's take one over here.

We're going to take one email.

All right.

Because I have to go.

Okay.

Hey, Woolsworth and Petan.

Buddy and I were planning to drive to Vegas for our first Evo Sierra.

Super hype to see folks from all walks of life around the globe coming together, especially since our town doesn't have a local scene.

However, to say the U.S.

is shifting its

shitting its pants right now would be an understatement of the century.

Likely things will only get worse as we go forward.

Are you planning on attending any U.S.

events, or will you be looking at attending stuff maybe in Canada or elsewhere, etc.?

Yes.

So

I was planning to go to CEO.

I was planning to go to Combo Breaker.

I was planning to go to Evo as I usually do.

And I have gone to CEO or I have gone to Combo Breaker, and I loved it, and I haven't done proper CEO.

I've only done

anime,

you know, but

I don't think that's going to happen this year.

It sucks.

I just

wanted to go.

I seem really busy also.

Yeah, I wanted to go to a bunch of tournaments this year, and I don't think that's going to be happening.

So

just I'll say that from now.

You know, seems extremely unlikely.

Just get real close to your screen when we're streaming and just take a good whiff.

Just

imagine.

Oh, oh, oh, okay.

I mean,

but like of us or of the event?

Yeah, dude.

Oh, of, okay.

Okay, so like if I like,

if I hold up my armpit and just like get it.

Yeah, yeah, get a real, get that snoof on.

Just get it all up in there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There you go.

Yep, all right, snoof, breathe deep.

Have a good week, everybody.