CSB311: Stop Adapting Things

Hey man, what's up?

Yo, yo.

I could have sworn that Genius Kajumbo was over it.

I thought he put the past behind him.

I'm in my new life now.

I never think about her even once.

I never think about her ever.

I'm so happy.

We're thriving.

I've made it to Hollywood.

I've got my

best life.

I'll look at all my new friends.

Totoro-san on the left, Jordan Peel on the right.

You know, Daryl.

Fucking doing it out here, man.

Everyone is succeeding and crushing it, and they love me.

Timothy Chalamay is coming for lunch today.

I have never had a better time not thinking about her.

Hold on, let me just doodle something a little bit.

Hold on, let me just cast an actor in my multi-shit

thing.

I guess never be game over.

Never be game over.

You can't.

You can't say goodbye, even for a little nod, even for a little moment.

If you're not clear on what Woolly is talking about, we're talking about the deaths.

So I think it's really fucking funny that a 10 and a half minute...

like opus trailer comes out and it's the death stranding 2 pre-order trailer that's just so fucking weird it is funny um

But he also loves his favorite part about making games is cutting trailers.

My favorite part, I'm going to tell you, I've enjoyed, I just recently replayed all through the Metal Gear side, one, two, three, and all that.

And I love those games.

They're incredible.

I did not feel a fraction of the excitement playing through them, even on their release day, that I did watching the trailers again, like a week before those fucking games came out.

Hideo Kojima himself could tell me, no, you're making that up, you're lying.

And I would not believe him if he said that he enjoyed anything more than cutting the cinematic trailer.

It feels too much like the whole point of the game is to release this 10-minute moment where people are having monologues and dialogues, and you're having a relationship fall apart, and someone is softly beating on the other one's chest while it's a hug, cry, emotional moment.

You know, that is what he is making the game for, so that he can sync that up to the music of Ludwig Forsal.

The new death trending trailer.

Hey, Ludi, welcome back.

Very glad to see you.

Crushing it.

Hey, shout out.

They got Wood Kid

as one of the indie bands of choice.

Woodkid's great.

And now we just get to watch as this character who's some new cool guy that is like,

you know,

like a character that is being introduced as like, I guess, like a Mexican smuggler kind of thing.

That

seems like a new...

new Italian.

Italian?

Oh,

he was talking about Mexico as like a border that he was crossing.

Yeah.

But the actor in his accent is Italian.

Well,

hey, so if you're wondering, hey, Woolly, Pat, you guys might be exaggerating.

Sure, this gentleman in the new Death Stranding trailer does look the most like Solid Snake any live-action actor has ever looked like in the world and puts on the headband and is in basically snake cosplay.

I'm not even talking about, for me, it's not even the face.

It's just he's he's just a guy.

Oh, yeah, no, no, sure, but like the bandana and the fucking look and the oh, sure, yeah, yeah, you're you're overthinking it.

That's ridiculous.

And sure, there's what is essentially a Death Stranding Metal Gear X later on in the trailer.

And you, I, uh, put the hat on.

It's a coincidence.

But if I went to, say, I don't know, July 2020

to the Genius Kojumbo's Instagram page, I could find the following quote being translated into English: There are many actors that I follow.

Luca Marinelli recently caught my eye after watching The Old Guard and Martin Eden.

He played an impressive villain in They Call Me Jig Robot, and I think he will break out soon and his popularity will increase.

Also, I think if he donned a bandana, he'd be a spinning image of solid snow.

He can't hide it, he can't hide it, it's on his sleeve.

Oh my God.

Fucking sleeve man, Kojima.

I like that.

I like that.

He can't hide it.

It's all right there.

So what, this, what I, my interpretation of this,

this is going to be

stop asking me about Metal Gear.

I'm going to tell you.

Exactly how I feel about Metal Gear.

Oh man.

Yeah.

He literally just, he doesn't have to do it, but he puts the headband on.

They flash it for a second.

And then they come back to it, spend the time showing you the military bit.

It's got the skulls on each side.

And then let's put a Rex hat on this giant god.

And now we're doing, now we're now initiating the drift.

Heart man's back, and he's fucking believing in you.

Can you believe all the bullshit you had to watch going down in that trailer just to think, I can't wait to deliver some parcels?

I'm excited.

I'm very excited for parcel delivery.

Also, that trailer has,

I think genuinely the most interesting part of that whole trailer is

the most heavy-handed metaphor in the world, which is the rope and the stick.

And whereas the first game was

obsessively about the rope and tying people together to the point where the ending broke for me because I didn't understand what the game wanted for me out of the rope.

And I tried to use the stick over and over and over and over.

Strange.

This game in bold big text goes, We should not have connected.

We shouldn't have done it.

It is about the stick now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Check out, yo, servers in the breach.

That's the shot where you're like, oh, we made it to the end of reality and we set up a server room.

Sick.

Awesome.

I don't know how you feel about this,

but

a couple fictional settings do this, and it's one of my favorite.

I think I know where you're going.

I know where you're going.

Like, yes, endings you can do where it's like, dude.

We like there's a big crazy drag.

I'll just use a basic example.

There's a big crazy dragon and oh, we don't know how to do with it.

Hey, the heroes defeated defeated it.

All right, game over.

We did it.

Book end, whatever.

Start of book two, game two.

Okay, so you know the way that you defeated that dragon?

That caused a much larger problem than the dragon ever was.

Okay.

Because you did it wrong.

Okay.

You used a bad solution to a bad problem.

And now your current problem is worse than it ever was.

Yeah, okay.

And that's what I see in Death Stranding.

It's like, we connected and we built, we rebuilt America.

Oh, that's actually way worse than the situation we were in before.

The thing that I like,

which is what I, which is different from what you were saying, but it's a similar context here, is we technologied our way into the Eldritch, into the ethereal, into the unknowable, and oh, fuck, back it up, back it up.

We got to pull back.

Like, we could go further, but we should probably start pulling back because,

you know, we

event horizoned it.

You know,

one of these multiple uh uh numerical configurations we we pressed enter and compiled and then a portal to hell opened up and we went oh shit okay that's what happens when you run that check got it and it makes perfect sense with a death stranding one because death stranding one's overall thematic plot is um humanity was fucking around with weird paranormal bullshit that it really shouldn't have and it totally destroyed the entirety of society and in death stranding one

the president tells you, but what if we fucked with it again?

What if we kept fucking with it, though?

But better this time.

Yes, yes, 100%.

No,

the shambles of society, you know, rebuilding on top of like a cataclysmic event and like rebuilding using the cataclysm as its like, it's

fucking Shin Megami Tensei.

You know,

we're hitting the same energy on that, but it's it's awesome.

Um, and now that I also know watching a trailer like this, that stop, you don't, you don't have to think about what the imagery means, because it doesn't matter in the sense that it's like, it's going to have a thematic relevance the like the reason why you're going to be seeing hands or certain shapes or certain things, certain imagery is relevant to Kojima's like messaging.

But in terms of like, why is this unknowable, weird creature existing here?

You know, the simple, the simple fact that it's like, no, we're, we're looking at extinction space,

we're looking at uh, uh, the, the, the beach, and the concept of that means you, you, you're, none of it ever has to make sense.

It all, it can always be terrifying, it can always be weird, and it can always be new.

Um,

and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes that monster looks like that because it's supposed to fucking make you go, uh-oh,

and I fully expect a whole bunch of this to be about, like,

you know, well,

extinction continues, but there's no MLE

to, you know, to sit there, to govern over it, to call it when it's time.

Now, that being said, Woolly, you have to remember we're talking about the genius code jumbo.

So for every deep, deep thought

and hidden meaning.

behind any particular visual motif, character name, or plot point, there's also the the genuine possibility that the reason why the monsters are all made out of hands is because Kojima saw the Hands Across America thing a while ago and was like, oh, yeah, what if it was ghosts?

Maybe.

Like, genuinely.

Maybe us just impressed him that much.

We'll see if they start playing remixes of I Got Five on It,

which, you know, five fingers, etc.

I

really enjoyed

a hand has five fingers, one for each extinction.

Non-human extinctions.

Each extinction event.

That is a finger.

And yep, there you go.

Fucking.

Oh, I love that fucking event.

And fingers, while they are part of a hand, and when connected, individually, each finger is like a stick.

But if you put all those sticks together, you get a fist

and a fist.

I love

the thing is needed to carry a big stick.

It's, I love the constant balancing act between this is so deep and this is the most hack shit ever.

It's, it's, and it's impossible.

Like, you'll beat the game and you'll be like, I don't know if that was hack shit.

It might have been.

Yeah, it's Schrödinger's depth, man.

You know, it's so good.

Open the box.

Is it deep?

Nah.

Nah.

Surface as fuck.

Okay.

It was a pun.

Oh, man.

All right.

Close the box.

Open it again.

Is it going to be that his heart stops?

Yeah, that's it.

I did it.

Well, no, his heart is going to be now inside of the Rex, which is then going to be inside of the big

Titan, you know?

The Magellan.

Yeah.

And we've got,

you know, our low frame rate puppet,

which is dope.

We've got Doctor.

We've got,

yeah, just, you know,

what's the new.

I think I saw Timothy Chalamet on the deck of the fucking submarine for like a single shot.

Sure, yeah.

But he was unnamed.

I mean, I'm just, I want to look at that new cast and go, okay, which one of you is getting the Oscar this time, right?

Is it, you know, is it going to be the new captain guy?

that they're hanging out with.

It's going to be George Miller.

Will it be, you know, who's it going to be?

Who's getting getting the the full-on breakdown?

Um

You know, might it might even be fucking um

a turgid

turgid fucking

Yeah

Yeah, you're killing it here reptilian

Turgid reptilian yes, it might even be you know so I think I think so far his scenes have been

pretty solid.

He's He's done a good job.

I can see, based on that relationship he's had with the lady he was talking to in the trailer, that our not-solid snake man could potentially have a big emotional breakdown.

It's really interesting that they're going to do Cliff's story again.

You think?

Well, he's got the skeleton soldiers, and he's a warrior, and also he's the one we're getting flashbacks of to the life before the event.

Ah, okay.

Yeah.

But it'll be different.

Lost it all.

Could be.

Could be.

Certainly.

And it'll also be like, well, who's going to be the real rival?

Is it going to be like him or is it going to be Higgs again?

You know?

It's going to be Higgs.

Who's jonkling all over?

And has a Harley Quinn.

Not only is Higgs now jonkling, but Higgs has a Harley.

What the fuck are the words coming out of my mouth?

He's

maximum jonkling overdrive.

He's

jonkling, but it's okay because he's got a Harley.

What is language, man?

I think there is a non-zero chance that the red samurai is piloted by the soul of Amelie.

Like, that is what, like, okay, a non-zero chance.

Red samurai is cyborg ninja rules right absolutely

apply apply all cyborg ninja rules to red samurai you know mysterious returning character absolutely

perhaps in a different form but the spirit is there per absolutely

dude anyone that is anyone from the first game that's gone could be red samurai quite frankly i think that one of the funniest things that's ever happened is i've played through all these metal gear games games, including the old, old, old ones that I didn't.

And yeah, I came to the conclusion, like, okay, he has just remade the same game, like,

10 times in a row, right?

And it's actually really crazy obvious.

And then it's like, well, actually, Phantom Pain was fairly different, right?

But then Death Stranding's actually a lot like Phantom Pain.

And, but it's, but it's different.

And then it's like, well, what's what's Death Stranding 2 again?

Oh, it's Metal Gear again.

It's like,

like, he got all of his ideas out, all of his, like, different, different feelings out.

And then he's like, what if there was a fucking cyborg ninja, man?

But the goal overall is to drop off, you know, transportation parcels versus infiltrate and sneak to the objective and Fulton themselves.

Well, there was something really interesting that I saw in the footage when they were talking about the stick.

Unlike Death Stranding 1,

which all the footage was traversal or maybe non-lethal forms of combat,

you seen Sam shoot a gun a bunch

in that trailer.

There's a bunch of set pieces with big boss moments, too, going on.

So, you know, and then vehicle shit.

And yeah, like

the action is absolutely a part of it.

And I would say, like,

you know,

to the same degree that, like, Phantom Pain as well kind of

became more about that and less about the big boss fight set pieces, which used to define Metal Gear in a way.

It's not to say they didn't happen, but they just don't stand out as much, you know?

I feel like the boss fight with the quiet

felt like an extended,

stronger, regular enemy.

you know

in an area that you go back to and fight regular enemies in by comparison to like fucking Vulcan Raven, which is just this is a whole different video game for this moment, you know?

I fucking love that fight with Vulcan Raven.

It's great.

Yeah.

No, and to that end, I appreciate that, like,

the boss fights in Death Stranding do, again, stand out very differently, you know?

Yeah, so very cool.

That is a, that is a, that is a, that is.

What's the over-under on

teleported Lou growing up to be time-displaced Elle Fanning?

Oh, I don't know.

I don't know.

Possibly.

I want to put that out there right now because I feel like the answer is like nearly 100%.

Wait, what's her name?

What's her name again?

In

the Elle Fanning character?

Yeah.

I don't think she has been given a name.

I think she's been explicitly unnamed.

Tomorrow, right?

Her name's Tomorrow?

Yeah, yeah, then, yeah.

No, no, no.

They did give her a name.

That's a time-displaced baby.

That's Future Lou.

That's Future Lou.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, okay.

Also, hey, don't read the wiki synopsis for the 1959 movie On the Beach.

Oh, okay.

I won't.

If

you care, because, like,

I just did, and I'm like, man, I wonder how much he's going to rip this the fuck off because he's ripping it.

He's ripping it.

I can't wait for a line where Sam looks straight into the camera and goes

today is today

but you're tomalo tomalu

tamalu

oh no oh no

no don't do don't put that out there don't manifest that tomalo if we're if don't do it we we've already got princess beach man it's not coming it's i'm not doing anything that isn't in the rules the rules say that we can do tomalu

yeah

um

according to the according to the rife rine protocol

we can anything is possible um

but yeah no um zip lining packages on the back you know and if and if package delivery ends up being a minimal part of the experience then oh

this all these trailers are a trick most of that game is gonna to be fucking hoofing it.

That was, it was, it was enjoyable.

It was fun teeter-tottering the giant stupid backpack and you know, like, oh, fuck, there's a corpse on top of it, too.

And I got it.

I literally just want a single thing from that game, and that is I would like a more involved highway repair system.

Instead of the degradation of the world, there were two roads

in Death Stranding, right?

There was the road north through the mountains, and there's the road west to the coast.

I want more roads.

I want to fucking build.

I want to build a fucking

highway system.

I mean,

I think Kojima is avoiding having the camera zoom out too far and then essentially just creating a delivery strategy game where you're mousing your multiple pathways of all your robot deliveries.

And Sam is just like...

That's exactly what I want.

Yeah, I know.

Because this is what you're describing.

One satisfactory spaghetti spaghetti road you're describing that but I think he doesn't want Sam to you know

I think he wants Sam boots on the ground, you know I want Sam to lean his arm out the window and if you drive too far north at a certain time of day that sand gets a one-sided tan

oh wow, yeah, okay.

I want I want Sam to get a fucking chiral trucking tan.

Um, you can specify the details on what kind of cushion seat you have under your ass for the long hauls because, you know, the quality of the ass cushion is crucial to your back.

Yeah, that's important.

Mm-hmm.

Good stuff.

Good stuff on this.

You know what's really fucking funny about Dust Training 2?

Mm-hmm.

Comes out one month almost to the day before Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta.

Before.

Before.

I'm not.

Now that's unfortunate.

I'm not thinking about her.

I'm not doing anything.

Fuck her.

That past.

By the way, my party is going to be before.

Like, I know her birthday's coming up, and I don't care.

Anyway, do y'all want to come over to my house on the Tuesday, right before her birthday party on Wednesday?

I'm just

having a random get-together at my place on Tuesday.

You know, so it would be cool if everybody could come over and I could see who's really my friend.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, but, but, but, but.

It's so fucking funny.

Oh, my God.

The real question is, what do

we do with

Fake Snake?

Do we actually beat him?

And does the new protagonist defeat the old?

Oh, yeah, dude.

Like, what's going to happen with Luca and his character is is that you're going to beat him and Sam is going to give a fucking speech.

So, okay, Luca Martinelli is going to be with his back to us and Sam is going to face him so Sam will look like he's talking to you and he'll be like, you have to let go.

That time is over.

Put the bandana down and move on with your life.

You're going to beat him, right?

And it's going to be a thing where you're like, okay, fair enough.

His ideals are falling apart compared to yours.

You have learned and the things that Sam has,

what Sam has learned from Death Stranding 1, he will be able to argue that into

his philosophical but also physical battle with Solid Snake here.

And then Snake will,

in his moment of clarity, do something to save Sam's life.

And then a Husk will take over Snake's body.

And the beach will now be puppeting.

Yeah, yeah, solid snake.

That's it.

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

And you know how it's gonna, it's gonna manifest?

It's gonna manifest in the tar crawling all over his right arm up to the elbow.

And he's gonna be like, what is, oh my god, it's like he's being taken over by that liquid.

He's not, he's not the guy we knew anymore.

He's gone.

No, I would

be absolute cinema.

I'm going to shoot my fucking shot, and he's going to be like,

Man, you have to let go.

It's all behind you now.

You have to take everything and leave it behind.

The pain, the fury, the joy, even the sorrow.

All of them have to leave it behind.

You know,

yeah, yeah,

and then as he dies, he'll be like,

keep on keeping on, boss, and he'll just fade into heaven.

And the tears might flow like liquid,

but our future is solid.

All right, so after going through all those games, do you know what I actually want more than anything?

I want any emotional fucking goodbye, whatever.

And then I want

snake, fuck, I want Sam to leave.

And I want to hear from far off in the distance,

we're not finished yet.

It's not over yet.

And for you to go back in.

Because

I did not remember that that was every time.

That that is every game.

There is this.

It's not finished yet.

See, this is the part where like my, my soul wants to pull out and be like, it's too far, but it's like, but that's exactly where Kojima lives.

Wooly, right?

We know this.

Kojima is too much and too far is never enough.

Never enough.

Never far enough.

It's never enough.

It really isn't.

Yeah.

Yep.

They might, he might even throw the word delta somewhere in there.

Why not?

You know?

Delta has a Latin meaning that they're using four Metal Gear Delta.

Did you know that?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Did you know that the triangle is actually a symbol of lies and deceit?

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

Okay, because Delta.

Delta is like a Latin thing for like a fourth or a difference between two things.

But a Delta is also a type of like river tributary.

It is a landform with yes on the river.

It is absolutely

what

it's a land.

Yes.

It's a landform that is triangular, created by the deposition of sediments.

When you look at a map, you can see the deltas going inland into an ocean.

100%.

100%.

This delta will never flow to the beach.

It keeps happening.

Oh, man.

Oh, fuck.

God damn it.

This podcast exists just to do this.

This is the only point of the show.

Oh, yeah.

No, it's been a real long con.

It's been a real long con

to just stare at Kojima's bullshit, fucking pull out that magnifying glass and go, I see what you're doing.

You fuck.

Oh.

Sandy.

Man.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

I got to tell you, man, waiting for a Kojima game is probably more fun than playing a Kojima game.

And I'm not saying they're not fun.

They're incredible.

But I'm like,

this is where it's at for me.

The fact that he didn't let go.

The fact that he put the headband on.

And you know, there's almost a part, right?

There's that part of me where I'm like, hey, man, I can relate to that.

If anyone comes up to Kojima and goes, oh, yo, Metal Metal Gear, right?

I'm like, yeah, let him work on his new stuff.

Come on, right?

We know, obviously, it's when someone's like, oh, yo, best friends, love your shit, hate your new stuff, but your old stuff's great.

And we're like, oh,

bummer, right?

So I know that there's that feeling of like, I can understand

the person wanting to work on their new thing and be like, yeah, but I'm doing this too.

And then just for that to be like, nah, put the fucking headband on, man.

Yeah, come on.

Snake.

How close?

Hey, hey, lawyer.

How close can I get?

What can I call him?

Can I call him...

Can I call him shotgun caribou?

Is that like derivative?

Is it like, come on?

Is the chiral or is the black, the goop, gonna swirl around him like the snake in the water, you know, when you see it wrapping around tattoo-wise?

Like, is it, what, what,

a snake is a type of strand if you think about it, and it can be a snake is nature's rope, it is a rope

stupid, that's stupid.

What I just said, holy shit, and and and it bites,

and you know,

it it when it bites, it can it can be a type of connection, and then it leaves its mark,

venom.

I'm looking through snake in other languages to see if I can see something that jumps out.

Man.

Wow, in Creo, it's actually a snack.

That's really funny.

Snack, yeah.

It can constrict you, right?

It can wrap you up.

It can squeeze you to death.

Just like love.

Don't touch me.

Get your hands off of me.

The compressions, you know, it can rattle.

Every time you hug me, it feels like a giant snake stifling my freedom, says the ex-girlfriend.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Okay, snake in Italian

is serpente.

Serpente, okay.

Yeah.

All Latin languages, it's serpent of some nature.

Labischia.

Is that a type of snake?

Serpagi.

Serpergiati.

Hmm.

Okay.

All right.

We gotta.

We gotta keep this fucker on a short leash.

God, I'm so excited for this.

Because a leash is also a type of rope.

Well, hey, I'm gonna tell you right now, you gotta clear your schedule and you gotta schedule your shit in a way that's because like I'm gonna stream it the way I usually stream it and I can't deal with like four weeks of just like vibrating in my chair

it's just

uh well yeah well

we'll see we'll see how we'll see how things shake out you know um

I it's just it's never gonna change I said it I think

some I think the first no this the first time we got the big cinematic release trailer with a bunch of crazy shit going on with Death Stranding, I think is what I said.

I can't believe we're going to be doing this forever.

This thing

is going to be happening forever.

This fucking Koji lore drop bullshit.

You know, he's cutting trailers like he's still showing them at E3 to fuck up traffic.

In fact, is there a hold on?

Is there a PAX or a convention or a trade show happening right now?

There is something

because I saw Kojima post like a

SXSW.

Okay, and then

South by Southwest.

Okay.

And what is that?

That's South by Southwest?

It's a bunch of like

Austin.

It's Austin, yeah.

So it's films called culture festival so I saw Kojima post a photo of the show floor before it opened and I didn't know what it was

and I bet you anything there is a death stranding 2 booth that is showing the new trailer to a floor.

Oh, I'm sure.

And anytime you can recognize like you see the actors and you're like, oh yeah, I know.

Whoa, holy shit.

I mean, for a million percent.

Yes.

He's got to find new Hollywood to become friends with and take

fake smoking photos with,

you know?

The connections only go so far, right?

I don't know.

He's he's I feel like he's at the place where he's I think I said it the other day.

He's like video games Andy Borhal.

It's like, hey, this is this is my friend.

He's he's like, he makes really avant-garde video games.

Oh, yeah.

And then like they show

so-and-so clips of Death Stranding on their phone, and it's incomprehensible.

And they go, Wow,

wow, that's really deep.

I'll be in that.

Um,

yeah,

as long as you never have to explain it too hard.

Um,

also,

um, a sidestep from Hollywood is like we can go into Mad TV/slash SNL world

with Deborah Wilson on the cast.

Deborah Wilson's all over the place, and that's great because she's awesome.

She had two right hands?

What is that?

I didn't even know.

She holds up her hands and like a doctor and she has two right hands.

What the fuck?

Yeah, okay.

All right.

I don't know.

I don't know what that means something.

That is a detail that you would never, ever, ever put into anything unless it was on purpose.

Well, I mean,

you say that in terms of like saying when someone's uncoordinated, it's like you got two, two left feet, or you know,

that means she's a really good doctor.

That means she's a really good doctor.

We got somebody in the chat saying, by the way, the new snake actor guy says he's a big Metal Gear Solid fan.

Yeah, no shit.

Huh.

No shit, huh?

That must have been a really fast conversation.

I mean, if he, I tell you what, if he was not a fan in 2020, I imagine he quickly became one between now and then.

Yeah.

Magellan, best known for being from Portugal, and explored,

discovered the Strait of Magellan.

leading to the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe.

Well, of course, dude, because

we're trying to expand the UCA outwards to Canada and Mexico.

We need to circumnavigate the new world.

And, you know,

a straight is also a body of water.

That's true, it is.

But a stick is also straight.

Yeah.

So is this straight the stick

to wield against the beach?

A beach as a body of water can go into all kinds of paths.

It can become anything.

An ocean, I feel a fjord.

Every time I think we're pushing it too far and it's too stupid, I think about

Amali

and I get super mad.

And like, if anything, we aren't, we aren't

at, we aren't being blunt enough.

That's my, but that's my point, right?

When I go to Malu

and you go, fuck off, and I go, Amelika.

No, I didn't, no, no, no, no, no, I didn't say, fuck off because I thought you were wrong.

I said, fuck off because I feel like you're manifesting that.

Like you're making it real.

Right?

It's just that simple.

Amelika?

It fucking, like,

yeah.

Right?

If we can figure out, here's what it is.

Elfanny, if we can figure out what, like, Tama on its own means

in ancient Egyptian or so, and then the loo part comes after, then it's all there, right?

If you take the ro out of tomorrow and you just get to ma

tomo,

what is tomo?

Is there anything tomo in history historically?

Apparently, in Spanish,

friend tomodachi tomo lou tomorrow

toma in Spanish means to take

hold on

tomo in Japanese can mean friend or companion or pal

yeah tomo lou

lou my companion tomorrow

in Latin say toma means to have a drink

or to take

or get one one deserves or take someone sexually

I hate this I hate this

this is crazy we could just do it all day because of course

you just go right back to the Japanese reference but you're always gonna get there

Tomolu

Tomorrow

don't I want so you know what my favorite thing about these podcasts is.

I'm going to fuck it around.

One of the things that we have said today is going to be

so on the nose that people are going to be like, oh, they were playing the game.

Three of them.

Not one.

Three things.

This is my stand at work right now.

This is bring me to life.

I'm telling you.

Right?

If Amelie Ka is the level that we're operating at, Princess Beach is the level we're operating at,

take the fucking name of the mystery character and flip some L's and R's around, flip some B's and V's around.

No.

Take what's left over and put it through.

You can't be this culture.

Put what's left through the culture filter.

And then tell me that there's a second meaning for Tomo and we're in there.

Yeah, all right.

If she, if, if, if,

if tomorrow or

if that character has like a little cat called like dachi or something

then like everybody can just off

right if there's like a little something that that that tomorrow that has that's called dachi

that right is there a little cat is there a cat is a cat okay all right bt cat

Well,

if she has a little side thing called

Dachi, then you have Tomo Dachi and you have Tomorrow.

We've got somebody in the chat with another one.

Conundra says, one thing I thought of during the trailer.

Dollman equals Durumanu equals Dorman equals porter.

Dorman porter.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

Dorumanu.

Yeah, sure.

Sure.

I'll take it.

Fuck.

Doraimon.

If you want to.

Yeah, all right.

No bad ideas here.

Everything's acceptable.

We're taking everything.

Everything is just as valid as everything else.

Daruma, Daruma, Daru, Daruman,

Daruma.

Mm-hmm.

Ancient meditating monk that atrophies his limbs.

Good fortune.

I still can't get over.

Amelie is the one that had me actually like scream at my television for the first time in like 10 years.

The pun doesn't even work because it uses multiple languages to do the pun.

I hate it.

I hate it.

You absolutely take a doll,

a Daruma doll,

and put them around

your shop or so as a sign of good luck.

Yeah.

A Daruma doll.

Dollman's good luck, man.

But like, a Daruma doll is what it's called.

So

dollman

is Daruma is doll Daruma doll.

Yeah, and they'll be like, I have to go along for luck.

And that's what you got to put him in his little seatbelt.

Put him in his little thing.

Perseverance.

A popular gift of encouragement.

Good luck, man.

I do think buckling little doll man into a seatbelt is incredibly endearing.

Yeah.

I love that.

Got to keep him safe.

I think

I honestly, one of the coolest things we saw was

like

actual baby Lou, like just being a baby.

You know, like squatting, looking around.

That little baby squat.

You know, you're like, fuck, that's a kid.

I got a little jump scared, I'll be honest.

I got a little jump scared because it's like, it's not exact, but I'm like, man.

Yeah.

That looks a good deal like my white baby that's weird i like the way the way that lou's moving around that that you know uh uh with that detail is like and and i think it's

it's i feel like it's a harder challenge animation and detail wise right because like baby bb in the thing can just kind of be a baby that floats around and has to you know it has to move and bump and stuff and basically look what like what your brain thinks of with that but like a kid who's like really small but can crawl around, there's a lot of like that now hits the uncanny valley.

Yeah, that hits the uncanny valley much harder, you know, than like a, a, a, the, the zooming in on on Lou giving you the thumbs up in the womb in that um Sonic Generation shot,

which unfortunately, every time I see traveling down the Birthing Canal.

Wait, what did you just say?

Yeah, you heard me.

Did you say the Sonic Generations shot?

That's correct.

Is that what you you meant to say?

I meant to say Sonic Dreams Collection.

This is better, I think.

Every time it shows going through the birthing canal and zooming in on Lou, and then it has either the chiral tears or the thumbs up going on or whatever is happening, I get immediately ripped back to Sonic Dream Collection going through the fucking Big the Cat moment.

You're right.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're right.

You know what else I liked about that trailer?

I'm looking over a little bits and pieces of it.

They're really selling us on

the events of Death Stranding and the chiral expansion or whatever the fuck it's called are way more cataclysmic than Death Stranding even implied.

Because they have this shot of like

space exploding in the sky.

Yeah.

There's a big the moon is impossibly large.

Yes.

And it's like, oh, all causality everywhere has been fucked up.

Yeah, the tides must be batshit insane if the moon is that level.

Again, extinction continues, but it doesn't occur.

It seems to be the line, right?

Extinction continues forever, right?

A slow death that just keeps going.

That shot of the sky and then like the nebula form thing

felt very elden ring

like i feel panning up to the sky to skybox to see some crazy shit going down you know is uh is what that makes me feel now um i can't believe how how hard troy baker is jonkling in this fucking shit i can't believe it's it's so ridiculous

That means,

I just, I'm looking at this photo of him with the tears and shit.

They're not trying too hard to make him not jonkle, you know.

What does slow permanent extinction mean?

Is it just entropy forever?

Are we just floating on Isolas, separating forever?

I need to, I need to, I said this when we first saw Higgs, and I'm going to say it again.

On March 9th, 2015, at 7.30 p.m., Drill posted.

The judge orders me to take off my anonymous V mask, and I'm wearing the Joker makeup underneath it.

Everyone in the courtroom groans at my shit.

What if, what if, what if Higgs turns to Lou

and says, I'm the Joker, baby.

I'll see myself out.

All right.

Can we get a move on?

Yeah, let's get a move on.

What's been up with you, man?

All right, please.

We need to get a move on.

Yeah, let's see what's going on with me.

Did a sponsored hashtag sponsored stream for Mecha Break.

Thus, my opinions are monetized.

How are your monetized opinions?

I really like how that game feels like high-speed robot action in a single-player context, but it's dropped into a multiplayer context.

That's the best thing it's got going is it feels like you're Armored Core, Zone of the Enders, you know,

like just fast-paced, insane

mecha action game, but you're fighting against other people that can do it too.

Yeah, it kind of feels like

usually when you'd play a multiplayer game that has some kind of

fantasy of how you would want this to control, they kind of have to tone it down for like feasibility concerns and multiplayer contexts.

And in this case, not only did they not do that, but they even have like, you can take out someone and then do an execution, you know, like a flourish on them.

And when you're doing that execution kill, like Titanfall style, like time slows down for you and the person being executed, but not for the rest of the game.

Great.

That's a time dilation bubble that some of the Max, I think Max Pane 3 had for like multiplayer.

I mean, it's just the animation, more or less, you know, but you're locked into it.

Right.

Yeah.

Are you invincible?

Uh, I believe you are.

Yeah, yeah, I believe you are.

It doesn't seem like you can be touched, at least while it's playing out.

I'm glad we've like fallen, we've like games have made the decision that you have, if you want your players to literally ever use the cool kill animations, you have to be invincible.

Yeah, you'd have to.

You have to be, or else no one's ever going to use it ever.

Well, it would be, well, it would become a liability, right?

Oh, people are saying that you're not invincible.

Oh, no?

Oh, okay.

Well,

because that's what happened with, um,

that's what happened with uh, Hulk, right?

In Rivals, is Hulk's super when he hulks up and goes savage and then grabs you.

Like, you can kill him while he's doing that animation that takes too long to do all that damage to one person, so you might as well just use all the other abilities while alting because that animation is not invincible, you know?

Um, hmm, okay.

How was the progression stuff?

So

I really, this time around, I kind of streamlined it to just check out the new features.

So what I saw, it's hard to say because they gave you a bunch of currency to unlock a bunch of shit right away and test it out, you know?

And so

why, sorry, why is everyone confused about invincible?

I have no idea.

Don't don't look at them.

They're deaf and stupid.

Okay, ignoring.

The main thing I noticed right off the bat here is that, like, before you do a little onboarding tutorial, kind of like a single-player mission, and it definitely felt like, again, almost like a little encore, a little armored core bit.

You're like, here's a single-player, you know, part, and you go into like a boss fight, and you have this whole like re-entry sequence and everything.

And then

you

get dropped this time, instead instead of just

into your garage, essentially, you know, you get dropped into your

on foot walking around your base as your created character

bit.

And

that was kind of like,

what was it called?

Deus Ex

not Machina, but what was it called?

Not Deus Ex, shit.

What was the robot game on Switch called?

Oh, a Demon X Machina.

Thank you.

A Demon X Machina.

It was a bit like that, where

you get dropped into the base where you can look up at your robot and then walk around and do other stuff.

So it seems as if, like, part of this beta wanted to introduce that you can do stuff on foot.

And

one of the devs mentioned that you can go to a training room, pick up a gun, and like start doing gun training as well.

So they might be doing some out-of-robot pilot gameplay potentially.

By the way, I'm watching your footage.

It looks a lot better and smoother than the beta that I played a couple of months ago.

Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't remember too many hiccups last time around, but um, it was smooth, certainly.

It kept like the test is when you do the super fast boosting, the assault boost, you know, and you're zipping left and right, and the screen is full of shit, and you're picking one of those like Star Scream-style, you know, macros mechs where you're flipping from jet mode into mecha mode.

Is it keeping up, you know, and And it seems so.

I did put on

V-Sync.

And initially, at first it was off and

shit was ripping.

But I threw it on and

it stabilized.

But yeah,

overall, I think that's the big appeal here is like...

It has got mechs that are reminiscent of the styles of mechs you might like.

I mean, I'm watching you roll around with the fucking Epion in this footage.

I like

to call it whatever the fuck they want.

That's the fucking Epion.

I mean, there's two things I enjoy, and I said them.

I'm like, I like my arms heavy.

I enjoy it when my arms happen to be very, very weighty.

And

sure enough, you unlock Tricera and you just grab your Gatling guns and fucking brrrr.

And I'm like, yeah, call me Yang.

You know, call me fucking Troa Barton.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm Gatling.

I'm DACA-ing my way through this.

And then you

shot more.

And then it has siege mode so that you can shoot more yeah and then the transition into siege mode the first frames of switching into siege mode are a parry great so if someone's meleeing you you go

and then they get staggered as you just

you know um and then you have a little like a healing drone as well next to you so you can just hunker down um and then the second thing i was mainly going with was the uh panther which is a

like yeah that's the the one where there it's it's you got a sword in one hand that can switch to a shield with one of your shoulder buttons, and a drill in the other.

Yeah, this is this is the mech I'm watching you use that I'm referring to as the Epion.

And you hold down the drill button, and the drill starts revving.

And when you are ready to let it go, row, row, fight the power.

I'm flying across the map, and anything in front of me is coming with.

And a nice big

Reinhardt pin, you know, to get off the point.

And

cut, cut, cut takes you out.

What kind of modes was available here?

Because I think it was just TDM and Deathmatch in the first beta.

So the new mode,

there's 6v6 is the default, and there's a couple different 6v6 maps.

There's some that are point capture.

There's some that are escort the payload.

Then there's also 3v3,

which is, you know, if you want to go smaller teams, and I didn't get to try out any of the smaller 3v3 maps to see what that was like.

Because the third feature is MashMac mode.

And Mashmac is the name of the location that you're dropping into.

And MashMac is a giant map that you drop into with three people, and it's PVPVE.

Okay.

And so your team of three will drop onto the far side of a huge, huge map.

There'll be people on other teams dropping all around as well.

And all across the map are multiple levels of enemies, from grunts to timed major threats to huge bosses.

And each time you take them out, you pick up a bunch of scrap, some junk, some weapons, some

loadout plans and upgrades and currency.

And every 10 minutes, there's an escape pod that you can jump on to escape out.

or keep going as the circle closes.

Now, when you escape, what do you get?

You get everything that's in your pockets with you.

Oh, that's Tarkov.

That's extraction.

It's that, but also you can put down rockets to rocket away some of your resources early while you stay in the map.

And you can call down weapons on a dropship that come down and give you two extra guns or two big missiles or whatever.

So you're Tarkovving while you fortnite and you also explore and

hell dive.

That map seems like that mode seems like it's got fucking potential.

That seems like they're

we can be the next big fucking thing

if we get this going.

So Tarkov, you're dropping alone, right?

Or do you do teams?

Yeah.

I believe you drop alone, but you might be able to do teams.

So you're Tarkovving, but you're also hell diving with your team of three and

getting weapon drops on a timer.

But you're also battle royaleing because there's the.

The circle circle closing in, and well, it's not close.

It's more like circles are expanding outward at random spots.

Okay.

And while there's other players.

And so you can go and try to take out bosses and loot their corpses, or you can take out other players and loot theirs.

And you can get out in 10 minutes if you find what you want, or you can try to stay in and build more.

And overall, it seems to be like the main mode for getting currency and plans and weapons and all the stuff to unlock.

So that'll probably be the main mode.

and then it's like, man, I just want to do some fucking deathmatch.

It's also there.

Yeah.

Which is quite ambitious, I would say, because that is a huge,

like,

that's a whole game in itself.

If you wanted to make a whole game designed around that, right?

So

it's a real interesting thing to be like, yeah, play some deathmatch when you want to, and when you want to just unlock more shit, here's a completely different way to do it.

And of course, you know, you still unlock stuff by doing regular deathmatches and whatnot, but like a loot-specific mode

is there.

And it also is something that would be more inviting to someone who was like, I'm getting crushed on all these deathmatches.

I can't keep up with all the really good players.

I want to do me and my friends versus the computer helping.

So I know

you didn't spend a ton of time with any of the battle royales, but hey, I'm not super confident in 1v1s, so I want to chill out and explore the map and gear up

before engaging in, you know, in shooting contests.

That's really satisfying as a loop.

It's really chill.

But as you're doing it, maybe there's people around.

Now, granted, in a fucking high-speed mecha robot action, I don't think many people are hiding inside buildings with their robot.

Well, but here's what I noticed is like I was one game,

you know, we ran into another team and they were like, ah, they're hostile.

Fuck it.

They're coming for us.

And so we had some big fights.

And then another, other times it's like, they're doing their own thing.

We're doing our own thing, whatever.

Right.

So it all depends on who, on what your experience is like.

And if someone takes you out,

you can choose to extract out of the game or your team member can, Helldiver style, call you back in.

You know?

So you have that whole extra, that whole loop going on its own.

And what I noticed in that Mash Mac mode was that you also, a lot of the loot I was picking up was, there were like paint colors and cosmetic stuff, you know?

So there's weapon blueprints, there was cosmetic colors and shit, and then just like miscellaneous modifiers for tweaking your stats.

So again, if your main reward is, I want to paint my mechs and play a PVE version of this game.

Fucking get in there.

There you go.

So yeah,

that's a pretty cool addition as well.

So

overall, pretty fun game.

Feels good.

The mechs control

simply, but really well.

It definitely is not the amount of refined control that an armored core game has, where you are tweaking every little aspect and then the performance changes accordingly.

Nah, these mechs are pre-built.

They're pre-built.

You're changing the aesthetics.

You're tweaking

smaller percentages.

Like

you can definitely fine-tune, right?

You can get a little thing that says damage on your

blade goes up, but your boost speed speed goes down a little bit down.

And you can that goes really, really in depth.

But um,

it's definitely like, yo, you hold that sword button and then you go flying towards the nearest thing.

And until your stamina is out, you're slashing like a motherfucker.

And it moves and looks cool, you know.

You kind of just gave it away just now.

You're not, you're not like tuning your fucking, you know, your gear shift parameters.

You're hitting the sword button.

Yes.

Yes.

And the mods are, you know, slight percentages up and down, but they're the kind of mods that I don't really care that much about, per se, because they can't fuck the balance up too much.

It's a hero shooter.

Yeah.

You know, Armored Core is a game that's priding itself on you customizing your robot to the nines.

And

this is a hero shooter.

You're picking a character and slightly tweaking things, you know.

But yeah, very, very cool.

And

the variety, I would say, as well, of types of robots it covers

lead to, you know, a good hero shooter type variety of like fast, heavies, big,

you know,

support.

You've got, like I said, the

one type that is like, it puts the box down and traps you in the box and then has an axe to just go in on you.

I love the box.

Yeah.

That's Thresh's box.

So, um, yeah, mecha break is coming along quite nicely, and I enjoyed that quick look.

It's out now over on Wooly Versus.

Uh, we played for

an hour and checked out some of the new modes.

Okay.

Can I go with a.

It's not a criticism.

It's just really funny.

So I just went to the Steam page for Mecha Break because I was like, well, I wonder if this has a release date yet, right?

Does it?

Or is it just later when it's done?

I mean, there's stuff that's not announced yet.

That's currently.

But for now, the open beta is available and anyone can go jump on that.

So there is a

there is a

you know, you scroll down, there's animated GIFs for the different features, and uh, you look down, and it's fully customizable paint jobs on the robots.

And, like, they, it is, it is an animated GIF of them, like, recreating a Gundam,

like down to the chin.

And then you scroll down, and it says, become an ace pilot, and it is a ass-level shot of the girl pilots in plug suits walking forward as Diva and Asuka.

Oh, I was about to say, I, I, like, you, that point you just said, I, you cut off.

I was about to say, um, Mike, shout outs to my created character, uh, barely fitting into the cockpit because the plug suit was just too thick.

And rest assured that everyone on the map heard the sound of my ass cheeks clapping.

Uh, boy,

are you just

you?

You are gonna make a robot thing?

We'll have we have to appeal to the to the gooner the gooner people

and it looks like they're doing a good job appealing.

Yeah, your your character is like

it is like a toothpaste tube squeezed into a condom

and air sealed.

It is oh my god.

It is it is that is a repulsive description.

That is disgusting.

Tight.

There is no room for error.

And,

you know, with that,

hopefully we see some dread options and some character creation stuff that, you know, is up there.

But

there's some stuff that you could do that you can kind of grow and change the hairstyles.

And aesthetically, I'm like, here's an outfit of like, here's your like space

army

outfit with a beret and then the big shoulders and the

whatnot.

Yep.

And then you've got the, here's your, your monocle.

And you can just, I'm like, oh, you can just be Lady Un, right?

You can just immediately

Lady Un.

You can become an alliance officer.

You can become Zaft if you want to.

Like, it's there, you know.

And one of the, yeah, I think the second, the second selectable, like, create a character type that you customize is like

blue Asca.

Like, it's just, you know.

Yeah.

Um,

there's, look, there's two ways to market market games like this, right?

You can cool robot

or

uh, yeah, well, there's the city of heroes way, which is please don't, please don't make anything or anyone stop it.

We will ban you if you do.

Don't do it.

We know what you want to do, and we're not, we're not okay with that.

And then there's, yeah, fucking go

play,

play the, the, the, play the fucking char theme song as you paint this shit red.

You know, like they love it.

And we are legally distinct and we don't care.

So

that was fun.

Can we...

doesn't have a date, but

how long is that beta running?

Anyway, the open

open-ended for now.

Open beta is open for now, and if you want to get your hands on it, play it now.

I'll add it to my live RB.

At some point, it will

be out fully, but for now, they're just saying go check out the open beta that is currently.

This feels like the kind of thing that they would just reset everyone's progress and just roll into the final release.

Anything's possible.

I'm not going to assume the beta is going to stay up forever.

But, you know, there was a brief window beforehand.

Now there's a much larger one.

I think all that info is needed to, you know, make sure you have a good team shooter that feels good and can, you know, hammer out all the clunks.

But

yeah, play it while it's around, is what I'll say.

Okay.

Can we have

a

metaphor pseudo-spoiler cast?

Yeah.

I've been ready for months.

Okay.

I'm so ready.

Now describe pseudo-spoiler for yourself.

I am.

For me, actually.

I am currently in the end game

and

I have not yet beaten the game, but I am certainly.

I would save it.

I would save it.

Okay.

I would save it for one week.

Okay.

Fair enough.

Because I have some thoughts and observations, for sure.

And then I'm going to...

I'll keep those thoughts and observations, but so much happens that is going to maybe recontextualize.

Fair enough.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

There's some

fun bits and so on.

But okay, I'll save it for next week.

Yeah, right, yeah.

World brands, right?

Write them down.

Write them down.

I have.

I did.

I have a list.

Good.

Excellent.

I have a list.

Here's one thing I will say that is

not spoilers then.

You've been mentioning that, like, hey, don't worry, you've got a lot of time at the end to get it all done.

By any chance, were you optimizing or playing somewhat guided?

No.

Okay.

There was literally only one thing that I did that was guided.

Okay.

And that was

people were telling me to

people, like when you're crossing the

river, sorry, when you're crossing the ocean in between

the two cities, people were like, oh, you should really fish here because this fish is actually like fairly unique to this.

And like it takes time later.

Aside from that, literally, I just...

Lord of the Lake takes a minute.

Yeah, I just did everything as it came up.

Okay.

But I did everything in one day.

Okay.

Every single thing I did in one day.

Yes, so same here.

Every dungeon I've done in one day.

And otherwise, I've spent every day either pushing forward a relationship or

getting my royal virtues high enough to clear the thresholds that I need.

to

continue

leveling up the S-Links.

So I feel like I've had a very tight schedule, you know, like no, no wasted dungeon days.

And I've even gone through

once or twice when I was in the mood, when I finished a dungeon and I was like, I'm down to play more, I would switch to mage, get my MP back up, and then continue dungeoning for a bit, right?

Once or twice, I pushed it like way past, you know, where I were otherwise would be able to by just,

you know, hitting the spawning enemies and

getting back enough resources to keep going, right?

But

type me a response to my questions just so we know exactly what we're talking about here.

Sure thing.

Spoil the chat.

Yeah, yeah.

I am at this date

right now.

And I am awaiting this.

Right?

Oh, yeah.

You.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

no, you you have plenty.

Okay.

Yeah, you have plenty of fucking time.

Okay, so so this thing

is

I'm assuming that you you you kind of are you're mentioning the amount of time you have when I look at what the calendar is showing me right I'm seeing about

24 or 25

days or so

and I'm calculating every relationship left to level up and

every relationship left to level up and every

one of those final dungeons that you get the ability to go do as a day.

And I'm like, when I add those all up, there's like 23 of them.

So I have like 23.

Are you splitting the difference between night and day?

Some relationships are night only, I know, but like,

not necessarily no.

But I am saying that like, I know that when you go to, when you go to a dungeon, you can't do anything else, obviously, whereas some days you can double up with a daytime relationship and a nighttime relationship.

Also, on the way to the dungeon, you can get stuff done too, right?

But in general, there's about 24 days left with 23 things left to do.

So I'm like, hmm.

I don't know that I'm going to have an abundance of time, but I suppose I'll have a little bit extra.

Someone would have to go check for me, but I ended the game with

14 days or 15 days of just go to sleep

interesting just go to sleep on both days interesting okay because because the game won't let you skip forward and I'm so I mean and well here's the other bit too I'm like I'm looking at the amount of days and I'm looking at the amount of things and I'm also thinking about like how I'm like oh for some of those like I'm a bit mad.

I'm getting to that mag starved moment where I'm like, I'm going to need some more Magla if I want to unlock some of these higher up.

Oh, Magla's crazy.

Magla is absolutely fucking nuts as a requirement in some of those things.

And so I've been

pushing forward with the builds I like, not thinking too hard about meta.

And as I'm thinking, like, okay, well, I suppose if I really want to do this, I'm going to need to take some time to get four merchants going and just quad merchant fucking mag suck, you know?

I think the worst thing possible in that game is that you can turn mag into money, but you can't turn money into backwards, exactly.

I wish you really could.

Yeah.

So this is, this is what it is, right?

I'm like, so I'm looking at the amount of time left.

I'm like, that lines up so that I don't have that much spare time, actually.

And if I also want to go and get some of these archetypes, I'm really going to be tight on time.

So for me, just going through it the way I have, winging it and, you know, having a fairly, the way I've played all persona games, which is never waste time, you know, always do with dungeons in one day and make sure that your, your, each day that you can is spent either leveling up an important stat or a relationship.

Um, that's what I find myself with, you know?

The um,

there's probably one detail.

I don't know if you, if you picked up on this, but so first of all, there's there's relationships you can only build on the gauntlet runner, on the gauntlet runner, yeah, on the way, so there's that, but that's a few days off for sure.

Uh, the biggest thing for me in terms of like time management was

you hit walls on a lot of the relationships over the game's progression.

And it's like, well, you know, you can't progress it any further.

Yeah.

And that's the good time to go do all your shit.

But the other thing is, is the number one feature is you can never level up a relationship twice in a row.

No, you have to alternate.

Always has to be, you always have to have a day off in between.

So

the internal desire to grab your

team and just max their shit out immediately gets forced very badly.

But it makes it actually go a million times faster and way less wasted time if the whole gang builds up kind of along the same

route.

I think only stroll was the only like just like there was nothing to do but hang out with stroll for some of the mid-game stuff.

Okay.

And so I maxed out stroll like super early.

I also noticed that um,

I also noticed that like when I apply archetypes to the characters the based on just like what I kind of like, um,

I, for some of them, I nailed it and got it where it should be.

But they're like, yeah, that is how you're supposed to build that guy.

Yeah.

Right.

But for some of them, it's like, oh, you wasted some time and we actually want you to build up a completely different thing here, right?

Yeah, actually, remember how we said you could do anything?

Well, guess what?

Well, the royal archetype requires fuck you exactly right so you know I'm like nailing it on stroll 100% right nailing it on

some of the other characters but then Hulkenberg it's like oh oh you weren't making her a mage damn well

you're stupid I guess

I'm like come on you know so yeah that one that one really just was like ah fuck okay shit

But

I did guess correctly for quite a few of those and I like how there are moments of like, there are hints, we'll get to it in the spoiler cast, but there are hints that are like, you have chosen the correct archetype for the correct person, good job, you know?

There's little, little, little bits where they're like, yeah, okay, you got this one right, you nailed it, you know?

So anyway,

more on that when I come back through the end of it, but I'm a little bit worried about the time as I eye my calendar, you know?

I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Okay.

What I would do, though, is I would save the game right now in a different slot so that if you do go to the finale.

Actually, no, you know what?

Hey, you want a pro tip about the game's archetypes and mag and leveling?

You want to know where the best grinding spot in the entire game is?

Is it the final spot?

Right, right at the end.

Of course it is.

Right at the end.

Of course it is.

And you will have the ability to regenerate your shit

to full.

Yeah.

Like, no problem.

Yeah, okay.

So if you like, the game says, listen, you made it here, but you're not gonna go any further.

Here's a spot you can use to just fuck this thing up.

Uh-huh, okay.

Well, at least that means you can hit credits in the state you want to, even if there's not a lot to do with those final stated

archetypes, you know?

You got them where you want to, and you have a now you just go beat, just go beat it.

Fair enough.

All right, that's fine.

Good stuff.

So, yeah, we'll come back with a full spoiler cast on that.

But, uh,

very, very cool.

Um,

yeah, so I mean, I guess it will, yeah, so if we're not going to go into the metaphor stuff, then you know, but that's that's pretty much it.

Um, cyberpunk is continuing, and um,

you know, not like uh

again, not much to say just yet besides like

goddamn Johnny being flawed is the coolest thing.

I love

I love the unreliable narrator that we're getting here, or unreliable guide, for that matter.

And

I think

I'm giving him shit because of him being a shit.

But I think some people are

thinking that I'm way more hostile to that than I actually am.

I love it.

I love it.

I love rules that he sucks.

I love

how

self-centered he is.

And you go into those memories and see him making these bad decisions.

And some of them are questionably like the worst, you know?

And

that makes it so much more interesting than just like, oh, here's a, you know,

a second protagonist type of thing.

It's very...

I actually have a situation extremely similar to that to talk to when we get to my week.

Yeah, it's just different from expectation on that.

And like, yeah, I guess going into his whole backstory and a bunch of stuff about the character Alt, you know, is pretty cool.

I mean,

once we're all said and done there, you know, I'll definitely have more to say on it.

But

it's shaping up nicely.

The three characters that you get to be friends with are pretty cool.

It's quite clear as well that like

they are your real friends and then

there's the others.

You know, the quality and the mileage may vary on them.

But no, I'm enjoying that.

And

yeah, I guess I'll...

I really do wish though that like

hacking was not so

cordoned off.

to your build.

I wish that you could be,

as we're RPG-ing, I wish that you could be a bit of a fighter mage, you know?

I wish that you could like at your own difficulty.

If you can, you could just be bad at both.

At your own difficulty.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, if you want to swing a sword around and cast low-level spells and not be the strongest, but kind of be a little more tactical,

you can.

Okay.

You can.

You're just mid at both.

Well, I guess what I'm not really feeling or able to distinguish right now is

when you...

okay okay i guess what i'm thinking of is like because your main os or your main choices are berserk sandy hacking yeah and it's like yeah no you can still shoot guns and do all that you just lose the incredibly super powerful

you lose these are these are two right hacks are in exchange for these other two supers

right and you can play without those supers and then get your hacks going yeah i guess i guess so i guess so yeah yeah yeah i was thinking about it as a like

i would like to compromise those things and get like

some lower hacks for some lower sandy ability or lower hacks for lower berserk or something more melee focused.

But perhaps

the whole point is, yeah, just turn those abilities off and then get your hacks back.

So

that is...

And

it would be cool as well if there were

broader categories for that, I suppose.

Right now, it seems like those are the main three.

But anyway, it's very cool.

And we are also right on the cusp of finishing a thousand times resist.

And

the

closing hours of that game get really good.

Okay.

Super solid.

You know, we're not done yet, but the last section I did in,

you know, chapters

like

I did chapter like seven and eight of 10.

Very, very, very cool stuff going on.

And,

you know, this is all, of course, caveatted with like

just it's it is still

a visual novel that you're still just walking and talking to people.

You know, if you're looking for anything besides having conversations with,

you know, characters then you're not really going to get anything else there um and some of the early game pacing with the way the map is set up is slowed down but um when it starts going hard um on all that turning red automata shit i'm talking about uh it does it does it it does it nicely we had a couple moments of going back to like watch our we had some 13 sentinels moments okay okay that's what i'm saying yeah all right there's a nice shorthand for that yes yes um

13 Sentinels feelings have started to occur as of last session, and I enjoyed those moments.

They're going to be really funny to watch on YouTube.

And

I look forward to seeing how that goes.

Because look, not every LP is going to call for a shut it down, let's stop and talk about what is happening right now.

But this had one of those moments.

And,

you know, like, if, you know,

you can always skip forward if you need to.

But, like, we definitely have a solid get, close the game and talk about what is going on to parse it, you know, discussion, mid-LP.

And I love it.

It was great.

It was a lot of fun.

So, yeah, we're going to be continuing with both of those as well as getting to fighting games this weekend.

A new slop stream.

is just about ready to drop.

So Wooly vs.

Whatever will be coming out this week as well over on Woolly vs.

on Twitch and on YouTube.

Yeah.

That's about it.

Do you mind if I take a pee-pee break?

Let's take a pee-pee.

Let us take a quick word from our sponsors.

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This week, the podcast is sponsored by Hero Forge.

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Alrighty, how's it going?

All right.

Well, a couple things have happened with me this week, but I'll start with the one that is the most unexpected by far.

So, back to playing DD after

a break, back with Jimmy and the wife, and the paladin and the fighter.

And

I was my Yimby sticker is up forever.

It's up there.

So,

I had a migraine

a couple weeks ago, so I was not able to return to DD because I was.

So, like, we were getting ready to go, and

Paige

asked, like, hey, can you do, can you read the boy a storybook while we get ready, right?

I'm like, okay.

And so I'm reading the kid the book, like,

and then the pokey puppy went over the, because anything louder would make me like, my eyes bug out of my head and like throw up on the ground, like level migraine.

And then she's like, you're not going anywhere.

I'm like, no.

So Paige went by herself.

And that what they did is they ballooned me, in which they just assumed my character was there.

Yeah.

Just wasn't talking.

Yeah.

And

she was the obsessive note-taker.

Good DM should be able to do that.

So she just, so she just, you know, brought back her obsessive note-taking and got me all caught up to speed.

And it was, it was no problem, right?

So I went back last week and we sat down and we were having a good session.

And

Jimmy started to

do his shit,

which the number one thing was talking over people and interrupting people, and

constantly, constantly, constantly needing to make it about himself.

And this was something that like came up a long time ago.

I thought this was addressed.

Yeah, I thought, I thought and like now, now it's now

just back,

now it's worse.

Now it's actually worse than it was before to the point of in character

tantrums or whatever, we're screaming at the table.

And by screaming, I mean Paige and I are literally putting our hands over our ears because our ears hurt.

Screaming.

In character.

In character.

So it's

and

it sounds like perhaps when they got a talking to, they were not getting what they wanted to out of it.

So, here's the thing:

when I wasn't there,

it was actually a much better session, and the session before that that I was there was a much better session.

Um,

so don't know what the fuck happened at this one, but it was like much worse.

Like, and so I walked away from that, and I was talking to Paige, and I'm like,

I am,

I have one session left in me.

I have, I have, we're coming up on like what essentially is like a first major encounter.

And I'm like, I'm going to tell the DM

to plan

that if I want to hit the ripcord to just fucking kill my ass in this upcoming encounter, and I am going to just leave

because

I am

like paying a babysitter so I can go to play DD and get mad and come home pissed off.

Sidebar,

do you know if anyone else is echoing these feelings at the point of page is because she's like, this is a fucking motherfucker.

But I haven't spoken to the Paladin or the fighter about this.

So I was like, all right.

Get killed off in the early season.

I'm so ready to leave.

I've put up with this for multiple months, right?

So I'll talk to the DM about setting up a possible ripcord.

It's like, yeah, just kill my ass in this encounter.

What if a helicopter comes and picks you up and lifts you out of the story and drops you in a new campaign?

Yeah, maybe.

And

then this kind of puts Paige in a different awkward position because if she also wants to pull the rip cord, that's like 40% of the group,

right?

And so that would essentially kill the group, right?

But I'm like, I like, at the very least, I'll just watch the baby on Tuesday nights, like, whatever, right?

And we're Hemming and Han, and we're discussing about like, what if we just be like, hey, Jimmy, shut the fuck up the next time he goes off.

Just like

the waters of, hey, can you just shut your fucking mouth

and see where we get with that?

And as we are discussing this,

and I'm streaming late one night, Paige texts me,

Jimmy left the D D campaign on his own.

Huh.

Out of nowhere.

No warning.

Just peace out.

Bye.

Huh.

And

we're like, what the fuck?

Turns out

Jimmy was really unhappy with how we were running the game.

So, for context, let's go back to session zero, right?

In session zero,

the part of session zero is everybody puts forth what they want to do and what they're cool with and what they're not cool with, right?

Me, the paladin, page, and the fighter, and the DM

all went, we're good with anything.

Don't

give a shit.

Whatever.

Jimmy then makes the completely reasonable request that he's good with almost everything, but he's not a big fan of graphic depictions of gore in D ⁇ D

and graphic depictions of like sex in D ⁇ D because he thinks that's like weird at the table, right?

Okay, sure.

And we all went,

yeah,

okay.

That's no problem.

Absolutely no problem.

And

I'm afraid of the relevance here.

Okay.

So, no, no, no, we'll get there.

Don't worry about it.

And for context, I want to put out that this is the same session zero in which I said my only request for this entire game is that I play a unique class.

And everyone went, okay.

And Jimmy lied about his class, lied about his race, and showed up with pre-rolled stats.

Yep, yep, yep.

Which is,

come on,

right?

Come on.

So we go forth, and I mentioned that the Paladin is like a really the guy playing the paladin is super chill, but he's playing the paladin as super aggro and is hitting on every single female character that we encounter and constantly making like sex jokes.

Okay.

And when Jimmy brought to attention, oh, oh, I really don't like his behavior making me so uncomfortable.

The DM was like,

that is not a depiction of graphic sex or gore.

You agreed that this was all fine, and we've done like 15 sessions in which you haven't had a problem.

Is it just like he's like, he's basically just being like a playboy?

Kind of catching up.

He's basically like, hey, girl.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Holler at me.

Come on.

Let's have a baby.

Let's get pregnant.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

And so, yeah, that's it.

That was, that was a good point.

All right.

Gone.

Poof.

So.

And not

an invisible detection of the fact that y'all were getting fed up.

No, so you would think you would think that me and Paige going

at every at like being interrupted like five times in a row.

I watch but the ability to detect that

interrupted five times in a row on one sentence and you know what paige looks like when she gets interrupted

you would have to be fucking oblivious to fucking like miss that shit.

But the person who's unaware of how much they're doing that does not have the detector to notice what other people are doing, right?

The skills that cause the interruption are also the lack of detection for the room, you know?

That's pretty incredible.

That's ultimately very fortunate that everything wrapped itself up in a nice little bow.

I'm now super excited to play DD again.

But like the idea that everything calmed down

and then came back around and

you were like on that final week like yeah okay

um like right before

I is I right before I probably crashed the campaign by leaving

Jimmy left and everyone's like yeah let's let's keep going and I know this is I know you know but like obviously as someone who's like you like you haven't really done any table topping or D and D ing before like you know everyone who has wants you to have a nice experience with this so you can see how fun it can be.

Absolutely.

But you definitely are aware that, like, this type of experience is extremely atypical.

And actually, I totally disagree.

This experience is bordering universal over time.

I've spoken to a lot of tabletop nerds.

Okay.

They have been like, you will, you will encounter this.

Okay, okay.

Let me correct.

I, though, the vibes are rancid.

Yes.

And

I

played with friends and people that I knew or at worst were acquaintances of people that I knew.

I have not done blind stranger campaigns.

Yeah.

Well, we know the DM, but that's mainly the only

point of contact.

I can't speak towards joining an anonymous group of strangers.

I can only speak towards playing with people that you know and friends of friends, you know, a couple degrees of separation, and you're at the very least like, okay, you know,

you pass muster.

Everyone here is kind of chill.

So that just kind of like magically worked itself out.

Though there were two points of annoyance for me, just sorry, last thought on that is I feel like it might be the difference between solo queuing and queuing with friends in Discord.

A little bit.

A little bit.

It's kind of like that, right?

A little bit.

There's two points of annoyance here

that, I mean, this is overall like a massive positive.

Point of annoyance one is

it's one of those things where like when the person who is driving you completely insane with their bad behavior goes, I can't handle you guys.

Essentially, like, what, but, but you,

but you, though,

right?

Self-awareness.

Uh, but the other thing is that, like, okay,

so here's here's the sequence of events.

I want to make a warlock, and I build out my character out to five levels, and I'm like super excited to play a warlock.

Jimmy lies about what his class is, and then does the exact same warlock with the exact same spells.

I go through a massive discussion with the DM and then completely retrofit my character into being a cleric, and then play the cleric for multiple months.

Then Jimmy leaves, and now there is a warlock-shaped hole with all of the skills that I would have had in the campaign empty

because now I'm a cleric.

Yeah, was there ever any kind of like

what?

It's just a coincidence kind of justification, or

no,

you just never addressed it.

Just never addressed it.

Okay, okay.

Because when I ended up changing over to cleric, I had never cast a spell.

So, which meant there was absolutely no continuity issues.

Okay.

Because, you know, you always would just, you can just love, you can just imagine

if someone else did the exact same thing to you.

Think about the level of tantrum that you would throw.

Right.

But we don't live in that world where the hypocrisy means anything to you.

Because, again, if you had any self-awareness, we wouldn't be here to begin with.

Like, the problems that this is

many steps in to

the original domino that is failing, which is your ability to to just read the room, pick up, you know, your behavior, and just, you know, also, I think, like,

even in character, like, I've seen people perform and, you know, RP, like, go all in on that.

Anything that might elicit a noise complaint is, like, completely unnecessary, just, just by virtue of the way you play these games.

Oh, yeah, I left with a headache.

Right?

So

ridiculous.

So, obviously, you're getting really upset and using the in character to mask that

because you don't have emotional regulation.

But like

that on its own should be reason enough for the room, DM, or everyone to be like, yo, can we not take it to that volume level, please?

That's insane.

So hey, everything just works itself out.

Worked itself out in a way that was unexpected.

And very excited to play D ⁇ D, which was scheduled for for tonight, except our babysitter got sick.

So, DD is now postponed for multiple weeks.

Okay.

Well,

but hey,

which is the way it goes.

Sounds like he took responsibility.

Interesting.

Interesting.

Which is, that's the most DD shit ever.

Scheduling adults is extremely difficult.

It's very tough.

Couldn't believe the feeling of like, oh, wow, I just, oh, okay.

Oh, you know what?

People are right.

Jimmy did fix it.

Yeah, he said he would get a fix, he said he'd fix it, and then he did.

He fixed it.

He took responsibility.

He did.

All right.

So, what else has been going on?

So, I have decided to embark on.

I remember when I played Wilds and I came away from that conflicted, and I was like, I fucked around with Monster Hunter GU a little bit.

Yeah, you were going back to compare it to the peak.

So, I'm playing Monster hunter gu

like at length so that game is about 10 years old give or take on what

on the switch okay

it's a it's an up port of a 3ds game

um

and

that is the that is the culmination of all the old monster hunter shit

yeah that's that's smash ultimate right yeah smash ultimate of old monster hunter

and

it is everything that Monster Hunter is.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of boring-ass go-kill small monsters or go fucking farm mushrooms and shit.

Just tedious, absolute fucking garbage.

And the wild streamlining has definitely lost a lot of that stuff.

So, one of the things that old Monster Hunter games love to do that new monster hunter games don't because they don't bother is they would send you on some bullshit quest like, go get 10 unique mushrooms.

And it's really just an excuse to have you gathering all over the map.

But then the 10 unique mushroom quest drops in a monster that you're absolutely not prepared for at all.

Okay.

Like, hey, can you go get 10 unique mushrooms?

Okay, here comes Astalos

to fucking harass you and try and murder you while you try and do that.

And then you go, oh, fuck, I don't know what that is.

That's an Astalos Jesus.

But more than that, I've been playing the Gathering Hub in multiplayer with Chad.

I've been streaming it.

And I noticed something really, really interesting about the division between your older games and the newer ones.

So the time to kill

on monsters is about the same between the old games and the new ones.

It is about three to five minutes of a dedicated team beating the monster's ass for a while before they, you know, they bow out.

The difference is

that monsters are faster and more aggressive

in GU in the older games.

They don't flinch as easy.

They are much, they're like much faster.

They're just harder overall.

Are you describing more threatening?

They're more aggressive.

No, are you describing like the

onboarding beginning difficulty?

Oh, yeah.

So

I have carded more times in low-rank multiplayer in GU than I did the entirety of Playing Wilds.

Okay.

Is this also one of those cases where because you're playing the final version of like the final chapter, that it's like already tuned for experts?

No, no.

Low rank in GU is the same as it was in Gen and is equivalent to the way it was in 4 and the way it was in Tri and all that.

That's just how monsters used to work.

And

there's something else going on, and I think I have figured out why monsters seem much less aggressive in wilds.

And that is.

You've given every weapon in Monster Hunter tons of new moves.

Like, your moveset in GU is significantly curtailed compared to how it is in World or Rise or Wilds, right?

You would never, ever, ever get a great sword true charge slash out on something in GU because they move around too much and they're too fast.

And I went and checked, and when monsters got moved to world,

their speed and their turning radius and their overall like fastness was turned down.

And I believe what's happening is you need to slow the monsters down so that people can use the whole cool moveset.

Okay, you couldn't, you had those moves, but you just could never pull them off.

If you transplanted like the rise moveset into GU, you would never finish anything because the monster would move or spin or attack or whatever.

Is any part of this also like

DMC4 had guard flying, you know, type of thing?

It absolutely is.

So in GU, they added all these styles.

And one of those styles is called Valor style.

And it is the basis for all of the world movesets.

So like it has lots of parrying and lots of like like shrug off type of mechanics.

And

that game, those monsters cannot deal with it.

Like, you can see the prototype world moveset, and you can see how certain monsters just can't handle it.

Like,

originally, there were only four styles in generations, which was Guild, Striker,

Ariel, and Adept.

And then Ultimate added Alchemy and Valor.

And Valor is just one of those things that just like a lot of them just can't deal with it.

This is

a modifier independent of your weapon choice?

Yeah, so you pick your weapon and then you'd pick one of six styles and then

on top of that, you pick hunter arts, which are little super moves.

So even though you're going back to a smaller moveset overall, you have like six grooves essentially from CVS2 to fuck around with.

So you can play Greatsword the whole game and just every hunt move the fucking style around and it's a very, very, very different gameplay experience.

Is it like the same core moves, but then the attributes change?

No.

No.

Guild style is normal, is your normal moveset.

Then you have striker style, which is a diminished moveset, but more super moves.

Then you have aerial, which changes your role into a jump, and so you're constantly jumping straight up into the air to do aerial attacks.

Then Adept is a...

If you dodge and an enemy hitbox hits you while your body is off the ground, you go into like a roadie run and you get moves out of the roady run.

And then valor is royal guard.

Okay.

And if you royal guard enough, you get a second better moveset that drains over time.

For every weapon.

Wow.

And then Alchemy has the smallest moveset of all, but you are constantly building a ticker in the background that just lets you make free items as like a support role.

Okay.

And so was this one of those features that was like, okay, as of try, they introduced a couple styles.

No, it was just for generations and ultimate.

Huh, okay.

And you play through them, and I'm playing through with a bunch of different weapons and trying them out a bunch of different styles.

And I go, okay,

Valor style became the world

longsword style.

And Valor style became the Wild's dual swords.

And then Striker style became

World's Sword and Shield.

And you can basically see that these are all like prototypes and what moves were popular and what moves felt good

going forward.

Yeah, that's a that's a lot.

So if you were it's a lot 14 weapons times six, yeah, yeah, because I was about to say, like, you know, the weapon counts have seemed to always been around the however many like low-teen numbers, right?

Um, but then you have modifiers like that, where well, I mean, I guess a lot of this does really sound like, hey, alpha 3 double upper.

That is exactly what G is.

You know, like every single character in a History Fighter Alpha History, and then they all have four isms to pick from.

And yeah, this is what this mode is getting, but we're never going to bring all this forward.

It's an engineer.

The Generations Ultimate has 14 weapons with six styles each and has a returning monster cast of 93 large monsters,

which is by far the largest roster.

So So if one weapon had one style that was particularly garbage and didn't work well for it, pick another one.

Yeah, and you didn't get to ever use this moveset, no big deal, because whatever, there's a ton.

Yeah.

But now when we have one weapon having one moveset,

it becomes much more like streamlined, but also you have to make sure that each of those movesets feels like they pick and choose like all the all the little parts that they liked to carry forward into the base moveset and they did the same thing with rise rise had wire bug moves and then they picked and chose the the ones that people really liked and carried those forward into wilds so like for an example uh sword and shield in

uh

gu as normal it has some slashes and then it has like the the horizontal splashes and has the shield bash

And you can jump backwards and jump forward and do a big slash.

And that's it.

That's the total moveset.

But the hunter arts, which are essentially supers, have the Shoryukin, which got added to the moveset later.

It has the and it has the series of powerful slashes, which got added to the core moveset later.

Yeah, I think no matter what genre you're describing, like the core principles are going to be the same where

the less content and options the player has, the tighter everything has to be, the the more rigid it has to be, and the more, like, ultimately, like, you know, balanced against itself.

Versus

is wildly versus exactly, right?

And it doesn't matter if it's unbalanced because there's so much.

So it's just, it's a buffet.

It's not a, it's not a curated plate.

You can go grab any weapon and then pick a style and then go fight one of a billion monsters.

And it's like, again, a smorgasbord of, you know, content.

So unbalanced is fine.

You're never going to get bored with the permutations.

And

so GU also has the.

So by the way, GU is on sale right now.

It's like 75% off on Switch.

So that's cool.

But since GU is an old-style monster hunter game and doesn't give a fuck about onboarding you, low rank is a real game.

And high rank is more real game.

And G rank is more real game.

So it's 93 monsters across three difficulty modes

for something like

250-ish

fights of value, plus all the event quests, like turning your Palico into Isabel and all sorts of stupid shit.

It is the Marvel vs.

Capcom 2 of Monster Hunter.

It is just bursting with shit.

It's ridiculous.

And it's great.

I thought going back would be tougher.

I thought going back to the old pre-convenience stuff would be much harder than it is.

There's only one

thing

that

is brutal.

And I mean brutal going back.

There are no weapon trees when you go to forge weapons in GU.

Okay.

The way that it works is you pick a weapon and you go to upgrade and it goes, you can upgrade it into this or this.

And there's no way to like plan out where it would go at all.

So you have to load up Kiraniko.

I don't think I remember what you're describing about worlds.

Well, no, because you never saw it.

Oh, so then I don't know what you're talking about.

So then I don't know what you're talking about.

You would go to like, you what, you what, you use charge blade?

I use chargeblade, yeah.

So in Monterey World, you go to chart, you'd go to Forge Chargeblade, and it would show you this massive list.

It'd go Bareth Chargeblade, Puke Chargeblade, and, you know, it would show the list, and then it would show little branching trees, and most of them would be question marks, right?

Because you didn't get the parts, but you'd be like, oh, if I want to get a water charge blade, I should fight Juratotis and because that's the start of this tree, right?

And, or, oh, I want the Tigrex charge blade.

The Tigrex one is here, and then I can work backwards, but, bup, buck, but, oh, I should make the golem one, then I should make this one, then I should make this one, and then I can make a Tigrex one, right?

GU doesn't have that.

GU has, do you want to make the weapon?

Okay, you made the weapon.

Do you want to know what it goes into?

Fucking make every single one, every permutation of every single thing because the trees are all hidden.

Oh, you cannot see what goes into it.

You can't see it.

So what you do is go to Kiraniko.com and click on Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate and click on Chargeblade.

Yeah, okay, okay, okay.

And then you look at the tree that Kiraniko has made for you.

It's old demon fusion.

Because

everything before world was, well, you're going to go buy this at the Yodobashi camera and you're going to pick up the guide right next to it

as part of your purchase

because you need the guide to play Professor Hunter.

And World, one of the things they westernized was like to decrease the necessity.

of using a guide by actually putting some of that information in the game.

I'm curious

what the onboard kind of looks like, you know, going backwards to the pre-GU

games and stuff.

What onboard?

Well,

that's the question, right?

Because there's a clear reset in the franchise, and hey here, we're starting over.

Everybody, great time to get into this new thing that is, you know, like a completely different direction.

And

yeah, like, what does the onboarding look like for Ultra Street Fighter 4 as opposed to now with six World Tour, Modern Mode, et cetera?

You know,

there's always these.

Generations U is really built.

Like, you know what to do.

Get in there.

You know how it works.

Fucking do it.

So

it's not surprising how things turned out the way they did, you know, ultimately.

Like, companies do always kind of have this, not always, but tend to have this.

Like

the franchise has become like highly specialized for experts and people that are that want to get in either already have or have a buddy that can explain it to them.

But somebody who wants to jump into the party with no guidance has no hips to

grab onto.

So.

For you had onboarding.

4U had a tutorial quest and like an introduction and an opening cutscene and all sorts of shit.

When you start Generations Ultimate,

you hit start

and you finish your character creator and it just drops you into the village and says, go fucking do a quest now.

It has the least setup of any game ever in the Monster Hunter franchise.

It has no setup at all.

And then you walk over to the quest counter and the first seven quests are pick berries

and capture bugs.

Okay.

And you fight the first monster in your two-star quest after like five hours of learning how to fucking pick berries.

So the onboarding in that game is get materials, get items, figure out the controls.

Now maybe fight something.

And that was like, that was the era of, dude, just power through.

Just power through.

Once you get to 10 hours and you're fighting lots of monsters every time it's it's fucking peak and that's true that is true but i

it took me just as long to fight a low rank rathalos in gu from nothing as it did for me to beat the final boss in wilds' campaign

It took you just as long.

It took about 15 hours to go from nothing to Wrathalos as it did for me to beat the entirety of Wilds' campaign.

Okay.

But when you did start the fights, you're also saying the fight lengths themselves in multiplayer lasted about

the same.

But they were just harder.

Yeah, the thing with the, yeah, the monsters are much more aggressive.

The other thing is that

I spent like an entire stream.

with chat trying to get parts for Nargakuka armor.

Whole fucking stream.

Just like it wouldn't drop any cut wings.

Wouldn't drop a goddamn fucking cut wing over and over and over and over and over.

Wouldn't drop it.

So just kept doing it.

Took, I don't know, like 10 hunts.

Meanwhile, when I was playing Wilds,

I was making full sets out of like three hunts.

So, like, part of the whole reason people play Monster Hunter is I would like to fight a bunch of monsters and grind out a set and get really good at fighting Narkakuga or Youngaruga or Wrathalos or Diablos or whatever.

And when I was playing through the low rank in Wilds, I just didn't have to do that because I got all the materials so fast.

I guess the whole time comparison thing was like

the

new monsters are easier, but they have more life?

I guess they do have more life.

I don't think they have enough because it feels like in the older games, it felt like there's a back and forth between the monster and you.

Like, the monster is going to do its things, and you have to dodge them, and you have to sneak in

like your bullshit on it.

And then, if it flinches, you get free reign to do what you want for five seconds.

And when the monster lands, you have to be careful of wind pressure, and when the monster stomps, you have to be careful of tremor pressure

and all these things.

Whereas, in

um

like wilds, I felt like I'm bullying the monster and the monster is fighting back against me.

But you also, right.

And so,

but at high rank in the new game, like it gets hard again.

And the challenge just comes back.

But like, I would say people in the chat were noticing that I fought something called a Yankaruga.

No, a Yan, a Yankaku.

I remember that.

And

it was more aggressive in the low-rank two-star quest in GU

than it is in high-rank in Wilds.

Like, the monsters are just more aggressive.

And

they're a little less aggressive in World, and they're a little more aggressive in Rise, and they're much less aggressive in Wilds.

It's kind of a ping-pong between the hypergames.

Okay.

Different chicken.

Never mind.

What's the one that holds the egg?

That's

Kulu Yaku.

Kulu Yaku.

That's it.

You say.

He's cool.

Yan Kaku?

Yeah.

Okay.

He's cool.

I like him.

I tried.

It's tough.

Gojo fights Jogo.

The long and short of it is that

GU is fucking awesome.

And it's totally viable to play now.

You just need like a couple of tips.

And for early quests, you need to know the the key quests so you don't waste your time.

Absolutely still incredible game.

Still great.

I still miss the sound effect you get when you pick up items.

Like all the new games don't have it.

I love it.

It's a great sound effect.

And I also found out doing this that there is a community patch for Iceborne.

I did not know that people were so unhappy with parts of World's Iceborne expansion that they decided to rebalance it themselves.

And that thing is called the Iceborne Community Enhancement Patch.

And I'm going to try that out when I'm done with this because that looks great.

Okay, cool.

Now, the most important question to me is,

how

cool is that game's version of Proof of a Hero?

Oh, they're all cool, man.

Okay.

They're all great.

Because

as someone who's not into the franchise, I've grown to really like that song because of Marvel.

I'll tell you what, though.

When you fight the final boss in Wilds, Proof of a Hero doesn't play.

And I disagree with that.

I see.

I don't think that's good.

I think that's...

I think that's wrong to do.

Hmm.

I got it.

I mean, I feel like if I

my interest point still strongest is drawn to probably towards Rise just because of the dogs, you know,

if I ever wanted to

see what was up.

But yeah, interesting, interesting little experiment there.

Also,

I beat Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 last week.

That game is great.

That game is absolutely excellent.

What an incredible game.

However,

you

start to notice around the 60-70% mark in KCD 1

that

it looks like that picture of a horse that is super detailed on one side and then starts to get more stick figurey as you go.

Game of Thrones season five.

No.

So

The game's main quest is really quite excellent.

And then you get to the monastery.

And there's a quest you have to infiltrate a Benedictine monastery and assassinate somebody inside it so you can ingratiate yourself to some thieves.

And the game starts to

rapidly fall to pieces as soon as you start this quest.

You go through a lengthy initiate thing where you become a novice at the monastery.

And then you're trying to find out which of the other novices is the guy you're looking for.

And

then you have a guy show you off to every single room.

And be like, this is where we pray, this is where we eat, and you can't talk while we're eating.

And then a bunch of quests about monastery life start to pop up about, like, hey, you got to go do the gardening at this time.

And you're supposed to be living the monastery life and doing all these little quests while talking to everybody and trying to figure out

who's the who's the new novice that who's actually a thief in his prior life and and what are you going to do with them?

Are you going to kill him or try and get him out?

And then I they they finish the tour,

and um

the first dialogue option is, hey, I have to confess, I'm not here to be a monk, I am actually looking for a thief.

And the guy goes, Wow, that's crazy.

And then on the following dialogue prompt is you going i know it's you

and you click on it he goes you got me

and you you auto fail like 15 quests

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

And I was just like,

I couldn't fucking believe it.

I couldn't fucking believe it.

Is that

nothing?

Isn't that no information?

Oh, that's the Skyrim game design principle, isn't it?

Oh, well, this is literally just how the trees were

built out.

So what you're supposed to do is leave that conversation and then go through everybody and then eventually figure out him and then use that dialogue, but it's there right away.

And it's the same thing.

It's right there right away in the first conversation.

And it's the guy who's teaching teaching you wow

jesus and uh you i so i killed him and then i walked out the door next to him which leads to the courtyard and i left and i did the i did the quest okay and then okay okay wait

and then for multiple hours after it I was getting quest updates for the monastery life quests that failed running in the background according to the time of day they were happening.

Okay, okay.

So this is a really interesting case where game design can fail or rule based on perspective and how you make the player feel about the same thing.

If what you just described came across the same way as, Yo Saren, blow your fucking brains out, you piece of shit.

Right.

That would have been awesome.

Right if you made it feel like you cut through the bullshit because your character has all the right info and you built up to this amazing foil

and then you got rewarded for crushing it that hard.

And yes, you didn't get to do all these, but instead we made it feel real good because you've earned this awesome instant shutdown of a mission.

Totally.

You can make that moment great.

You can make it feel super good.

I walked into a room.

I walked into a locked room murder mystery and walked up to the first guy and said, is it you?

And he went, yeah.

You know, like that's you make the player feel like they earned something there and get rewarded for it while everything else gets shut down.

And you bypass it because essentially you're skipping.

You're doing a fucking level skip.

And you would think that, oh, is that because I snuck around the monastery and read this or learned that or whatever?

No, no.

It is a, it's not even a bug.

It is a design oversight in allowing the player to accuse them on the first conversation.

Okay, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, just plan for that shit.

Make it feel good, you know.

So from that moment on, the game's seams started to really

show themselves.

Ever since that happened,

characters would load it.

Every character would load into a cutscene A-posing, but then snap into the correct place.

Okay.

Pop in across the game got much worse overall.

Yep, yep, yep.

Load times became longer, just like the like you could feel the game going, oh, they didn't work as hard on the

last third of the game.

The directors are chasing a carrot with a Star Wars movie contract over here.

They can't be too busy focused on finishing off what they've got in front of them.

Now, to be fair, this is a Kickstarter game that was made by a group of complete amateurs.

So it's actually astonishing that it is the way it is.

Was there a Starbucks Cup anywhere in the final chapter?

I know.

But here's what happened.

I got to the end of the game.

Yes, season ever.

And I got through all the ape posing and I got through

the seams and I got to the end and I beat the game and the ending started to play.

And

in the ending, you have a dream sequence.

in which you talk to a character that's passed away and it's a very, you know, emotional thing after you've gone through this whole journey.

And

the subtitles completely broke, and

instead started to play the subtitles for

the opening DLC scene of a DLC that never activated on my file.

So if anybody knows the Johanka part of Woman's Lot where they're trying to burn her at the stake, that was the subtitle stuff that was popping off in the game's final dream sequence.

Oh, somebody else got that bug also.

And I was not able to unlock that DLC.

So I guess it just

fun, dumb QA funsies are not fun when it's the ending.

And then I, then I, my character woke up from that dream.

I walked outside and was immediately arrested for no crime.

Okay.

From being asleep.

Okay.

Okay.

Oh, boy.

All right.

So we kickstarted and then

we sputtered across the finish line.

We had to meet those deadlines.

The pressure was.

And this is after six years of patches.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Damn.

Okay.

So

I got out of jail and then went to do the epilogue.

And this game has

the weirdest, coolest epilogue I have ever seen in a game.

You

go, hey, you beat the game, and you did it.

You solved all the problems here.

All right.

I want you to go attend a meeting.

And in this meeting, you're going to sit there as historical figures, because these are all based on historical figures,

sit around and discuss the geopolitics of 1403 Bohemian

fucking monarchist

ascension for like 20 minutes.

Okay.

Real shit.

Like, like, like, straight up, like, this is what's going on with the king.

This is what's going on with the army.

This is how the League of Lords is handling it.

Just like straight up, like, like, history textbook geopolitics lecture.

Interesting.

Okay.

And then they go, Hey, Henry,

would you like to play Kingdom Come Deliverance 2?

And Henry goes, I would love to do that.

And they go, Okay, Henry, we need you to go to this other location that is not on this map so you can have a sequel to this game.

Can you go do that?

And Henry goes, Absolutely.

I would love to have a sequel to this game.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get on the boat to the sequel.

You say that.

And so you and your boy Hans walk down to the stables and get on your horses and slow walk like five kilometers to the edge of the map while they shoot the shit the whole time.

And I don't mean like a cutscene.

Yeah.

I mean, you literally get on your horse and slow walk the entire breadth of the map to the edge.

Huh.

As you guys gab

about where you're going and what's up with you guys and how things turned out.

Does it hit like the God of War climbed down the mountain?

Oh, it's super long.

It's super long.

Is it good?

Yeah, it's great.

Okay.

It's fucking great.

I like that.

I like a good deadyuma.

That's cool.

Okay.

And then you make a little camp and he goes, are you ready to go?

And you go, yeah.

And then credits roll.

And the game, and you literally like crest a hill into the sunset.

And then the devs went on social media and went, we're going to make a second one.

So I started playing the second one, which literally cuts to you cresting that hill into the fucking sunset.

Okay, okay, okay.

And then seconds later.

Like,

it is a, it's not even a different scene.

It is a cut.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It is a cut within the same thing.

It is taking place one second

after the end of KCD-1.

That doesn't happen often, but that's really cool.

Hell yeah.

So playing KCD 2.

And

this is a quantum leap forward.

This is a

Devil May Cry to Devil May Cry 3 level sequel jump.

Someone in the chat called it Oblivion 3.

And that's exactly how it feels.

It looks better.

It runs better.

It looks and runs better than the first game.

In which it looks and runs incredibly.

Every interface is adorned with gorgeous moving physical objects as well as historical period piece arts from the 15th century.

It is gorgeous top to bottom.

The controls have been dramatically improved, etc.

And it's just like, it's just screaming fucking

quality.

We fixed it.

We fixed it.

Like we know how to make a video game now.

And we put it all into this.

This is what I hear about things like fear and hunger and

these things where you experience their first foibles into...

like, well, okay, we released it, but it barely got out the door and now we know what to do.

Yeah, okay.

It has a proper fighting tutorial, very beginning.

It has a proper sneaking tutorial.

Um, and

like the first little while of that game is you and your boy Hans just getting into fucking mishaps and

you know, uh, losing all of your shit and being Metroided.

Like, you start that game at level 15 of 30,

and then Henry gets so dramatically injured that it kicks your ass back down to peasantry.

And you get full-on Metroid.

Like you lose your fucking abilities.

Same engine and asset quality of

no, okay.

It's the same engine.

It is cry engine.

It is a dramatically higher asset quality.

Okay.

When I say it looks better, I mean it is a next-gen leap up from the first game that also runs like 30% faster.

How many years later did it come out?

Six and a half.

Okay.

It looks incredible and it feels way better.

And because they knew that almost nobody was going to go back and play the first game, the

beginning hours result in Henry getting injured horribly to get Metroid.

But also, as you're injured and stumbling around, you have vivid, vivid hallucinations of every major event from Kingdom Come Deliverance 1.

And then you sit down with your boy Hans

and go, Hey, remember all that shit that happened in Kingdom Come Deliverance 1?

And he goes, Yeah, this is what happened in Kingdom Come Deliverance 1.

In case you're starting at 2.

So, yeah, you can totally start at two.

It's not a problem.

It's no issue.

Okay.

Well,

and

right away, the game is just bleeding quality all over the place.

It teaches you how to do alchemy, which is important because that's the only way to create save points.

You have to make yourself potions.

The alchemy minigame in this is improved, but it's also super involved.

It is in first person, so you are like grabbing, like you're grabbing herbs and throwing them into a cauldron.

via player action and then having to force the boil and then you're using an hourglass to time how long you're boiling it

like it's a super in-depth, really cool alchemy system.

Um,

were those visions you're describing like straight up meant to be like

watch these, don't play the first one?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, so they even show you like cutscenes from the first game with a really strong, like, blood filter on them to obfuscate the fact they look terrible.

Okay, so literally, hey, zone of the enders, who the fuck is Leo?

Shut up and watch this.

Okay, cool.

Got it.

Like, if you're playing KCD1 and you're enjoying KCD1 by absolutely all measure, just keep playing KCD1, but there's absolutely no reason for you to feel like you have to play the first one to play the second one.

Well, I think what they should do is...

They catch you right up.

They should fix all the problems with Kingdom Come Deliverance 1, and then they did.

They released the solution to those problems in KCD 2.

No, no, they should do it in the first game, and then they should do it specifically in the first game so that it feels good the whole way through.

And they should call it Extreme Kingdom Come Deliverance.

Yeah, except then they would introduce new problems

like

Kawami.

Well, no,

because then

the game could be called XKCD.

Thank you.

There's a little math joke in there for you.

That's good, Willie.

That's high-quality stuff.

That's why they pay me the big bucks.

So

you start KCD2, like, broke and peasant once again.

And

you start off losing literally every single piece of gear other than like a burlap sack.

And then the game goes, well, fucking figure it out.

Go.

So I ended up picking a lot of flowers and learning how to make chamomile tea that I could sell for cash.

And then I used that cash to buy enough food to travel north in order to get a job as a blacksmith.

At which point I encountered a super in-depth blacksmithing mini-game that requires you to heat up pieces of metal evenly and then put it on the smith on a on an anvil and then use right trigger to essentially attack the different parts of the blade that you're making and go along like the whole edge and then flip it to go along the whole edge again and reheat it if necessary.

Now, it sounds like the first game,

you know, despite the the fact that like it was, there was jank and stuff improved, you were enjoying up until a point, and then it fell apart.

Oh, I was still enjoying it.

I was just worried that it was going to actually fall apart and die before I got to the end.

So, there's no guarantees that this new version will keep it up all the way through either, even though it is a market improvement over.

You're totally right, which is why I checked.

And people were telling me that, oh, yeah, definitely the same thing happens.

It starts the further you get in, the more it starts.

Because I'm like,

nothing you're describing is a guarantee against that.

It's a better game so far, but hold on.

It definitely has like a fucking stability trajectory that's the same as the first game, but it starts off more stable and it stays more stable.

Okay.

Like the basic thing isn't as hard.

By the end of the game, it never gets as unstable as the first game was when you started.

Like the whole graph is so far above that it's like, even at its worst,

it's not as bad as KCD was as at its best.

Okay, okay.

Also, one of the reasons that I waited to beat KCD one and start playing now is that the game is

receiving its gigantic.

We are cleaning the fucking game up and adding a bunch of features in to it on Thursday.

I see.

Okay.

So I played about five hours of it, which is not enough for anything untoward or fucky to happen.

And the cleanup patch is coming on Thursday.

Are you planning to pack-to-back it?

Or was it just to see?

No, no, no.

I'm going.

Okay.

I'm fucking going.

It's...

It's wild how much...

It's really almost heartwarming

to see how much this game improved improved over the first one,

I'm shocked as a Kickstarter game that the first one managed to maintain its stability at all, considering how large of a game it is.

Like, we're talking about games the size of Oblivion and Skyrim, made by a small team who just right up didn't know what they were doing.

Did you hit the

accidental thing that I showed you?

Or is that

no, no, no, okay, that's uh, that's later, okay,

But yeah, no, you get to have a lot of fun little interactions right at the beginning of the game where you try and convince your boy Hans, who's a noble, for like 10 minutes, hey, can you help me work because we're poor?

And he's like, no,

no, I'm not going to fucking do that.

Hans is very much like a Johnny character.

Like you described, it's so awesome that Johnny sucks.

Hans K-Pon

sucks.

He is a drunk, womanizing, do-nothing, shithead noble,

but he's also your best bro.

Right.

So he's like constantly nagging you and talking down to you because you're not a noble and just not helping you.

But

he does have your back when it actually, actually, really matters.

And you can have long walks to the edge of the map having a good conversation with him.

Basically, yeah.

Okay.

Like you're like hey man we're broke and we can't pay for our food can you help me drag these sacks from the cart over to the cellar so we they don't beat us

oh and he starts going off about the three states of man according to the catholic church in 15th century and now he is a protectoris and he doesn't do low labor he doesn't do labor because that would that would that would decrease the value of the nobility in the peasants' eyes and social order would collapse and you're like fucking help me carry the fucking sacks, Hans.

Are we going to start talking about the four humors?

Yes.

Yes, we are.

Blood, bile, phlegm.

Like, absolutely.

Oh, man.

Okay.

All right.

So, yeah, this, this game is, it's, it's super cool.

It's, it's so slick and it's so fucking interesting.

Um, and it's so dedicated to its time period and like, like,

like trying to render that accurately, it's so, so fucking cool.

And as I'm playing it, I'm like, oh, man, Elder Scrolls is so fucking cooked.

I don't know, like,

like, Bethesda's games have been getting worse.

Skyrim.

But, like, the comparison is like Kickstarter Project to like big following versus

industry.

Okay.

KCD2 is a proper game made with proper resources.

But I guess my impression from the outside has been that

Elder Scrolls release is an industry event.

Absolutely.

I don't know that Kingdom Come is that.

It sold a couple million copies within a day.

It is that game.

It is absolutely

a big money deal.

And it feels like

its history as the first game being a Kickstarter game is immaterial.

This is a proper, big, gigantic, super

wide RPG with tons of mechanical depth.

I think,

so this is going to sound hyperbolic.

I think its most direct comparison in terms of scope and shocking quality is probably Balter's Gate.

That's what I was kind of imagining as the most recent Western RPG.

Like,

not from a team that you expected to do the biggest, coolest RPG, but it's like gorgeous, plays well, super interesting, mechanically fascinating, etc.

Okay, cool.

Pardon me.

So you want to try it?

You can try it.

Well, so actually, what I was going to say is, like, this is also with, having just talked about avowed, right?

Oh, what

you just took a look at avowed not too long ago.

And,

I mean, man, who even cares?

I was going to say that.

Are we even holding a candle anymore?

No, absolutely not.

Like,

KCD2 has absolutely eaten Avowed's lunch 100 times over.

And it's interesting because, like,

Kingdom Come is so mundane and what you would call boring because it takes place in a realistic, like, old setting and Avow takes place in a fantastical one.

But the actual mechanical interaction with the game is so much more interesting in KCD2 than it is in Avowd.

Wait a minute.

When did

Kingdom Come 2 come out?

2?

It was a couple of weeks ago.

Okay, okay.

So they're in their.

February 4th.

Yeah, okay.

So they're released into the same competing space.

It's not.

Because I was just like, oh, has it been a minute?

And

anyway, yeah, the lunch eating is apt as they're both being released in the same window.

Yeah, I would point out, hold on a second.

I see somebody who really likes

avowed say, that's a terrible take.

My take is that I don't care anymore.

My take is not that avowed is bad.

My take is that I am much more interested in this other thing than I am in that other thing.

That's it.

My interest does not denote quality, which is, I wish it would, because that'd be awesome as fuck.

Maybe

if they've rolled out like furry wrecks,

then you know, maybe avowed can get us back on.

Maybe, maybe, Maybe.

You know what?

Maybe you're right.

Maybe you're fucking right.

As a comparison point, I have spent more time smithing horseshoes in KCD2 than I have playing Avoued.

Nice mushroom, Shepherd.

Wait.

Oh, right.

I thought you meant like cock.

I thought you were, I thought.

no, just the mushrooms growing out of your head in a vowed.

Because that might also appeal to a lot of people.

Well, anyway.

Cool.

Okay.

All right.

Right on.

Right on.

That's been it for me this week.

If you want to go check out more Monster Hunter GU and Kingdom Come Deliverance, too, go down to twitch.tv slash Pat Serzet.

Okey-doke.

While you have been talking,

hot off the presses, they have been screaming.

And so I did

double eyeball.

But yes, yes, a Devil May Cry 3, a Devil May Cry Netflix trailer has

you were correct.

And so I took a look, and hey, there's some cool stuff happening in that trailer.

Looks pretty cool.

You know what?

I need to get some water and piss.

I'm just going to go piss and get some water and then watch that trailer and then we'll come back and talk about that trailer.

Sure.

All right.

I see some good shit.

Yep.

BRB.

Yeah.

I am.

Yeah, that looks like shit.

Nah, I'm on board.

I'm down.

I'm down.

First of all, last resort.

Okay,

the music is still doing it.

There's a very clear era that we're locking into place and chaining to the franchise.

I'm very down.

Yeah, I don't know.

Let's see.

No.

I don't hate what I saw saw there.

Let's see what happens.

What's going to be weird forever?

They're split down the middle.

I don't hate anything I saw there.

I'm curious to see how it plays out.

The weird part is always just going to be Johnny Young Bosch and I guess the new not Dan Southworth.

That is a...

On the ear, that's a Kiefer Sutherland snake moment.

You know, you're just going to be like, ah, I'm so used to this.

I know Agni and Rudra have heads.

Yeah, that's true too.

But

this could be one of those things where, kind of like Castlevania, like, you know, you watch it through and you're like, yo, that was fun.

That was charming.

I enjoyed it.

That's a fun take on

the franchise, you know.

Admittedly, I went into Castlevania with

not a ton of, you know, I guess, brand loyalty there.

But I did.

Castlevania fucking killed it right off the bat.

But

again, we're just going off of trailer there.

I'm like, yeah, that could still end up being a cool, a cool series.

That could end up being fine.

Let's see.

I'm going to watch it, but I don't have strong hopes.

I think

there's always worry about an adaptation for sure when the thing like Devil May Cry, where you're like, it's, it's so, the, the, you know, it's so loose, and people are here for, like, the, the depth and the shallowness are, are forever an argument as to, like, what it should be or what it ought to be, how seriously to take filling your dark soul with light.

Um, so I'm not, I'm not too sure, but, um,

if it was a dumpster fire, I feel like I would have seen like a much clearer dumpster fire indication up to this point but so far i'm like okay everything i've seen is for me agni and rudra looking at um dante and going he's so cool while they then cut to a terrible 3d model of echidna just sitting on a truck bed who was like

maybe he rips their heads off and then the swords are there and then then they're headless and they fight for each other spilled water all over my pants.

Maybe he has to decapitate them and hold their sword heads before they become the headless versions of themselves.

Who knows?

I don't know.

Anyway, yeah.

I'm optimistic.

We'll see.

They didn't piss my pants.

I dropped water on them.

That's different.

I just want everyone to know.

It's very different.

The water came from this B cup.

The cup with the B on it.

Foolishness, Pat.

Foolishness.

Damn, baby.

Speaking of

pissing and shitting and rancid vibes,

what's going on with Ubisoft?

Well,

let's detour

past the thing I forgot to mention at the end of

your Monster Hunter chat.

but yo, the monster hunter modding community needs to chill the fuck out.

Oh, you don't even know, dude.

You don't even know.

They don't even know.

To chill the fuck out.

Nah, bro.

I'm

oh boy.

Oh boy.

I just saw one bit and I'm like, word?

You saw the Kongalala thing, huh?

What's Kongalala?

Is that the monkey?

Yeah.

Yeah, I saw the monkey with the replaced model.

oh, man.

If the people want to see it, they're going to do it.

Can we pump the brakes until we figure out what the fuck is going on?

No, man.

They know exactly what's going on.

You don't know what's going on.

Maybe the PC release was a mistake.

Maybe we needed to stay on the Switch, actually.

I think Nintendo had a point.

I don't think Nintendo knows what anyone wants.

Turns out you can mod human beings into the monkey

animation and replace the giant monkey with a person.

So

this was always a thing.

It's just

to be associated with a gross cutscene.

Yeah.

So

was it Gemma?

Is that her name?

Yeah, it's Gemma.

Or Little Misforged.

Yeah,

seems to be the replacement of choice for the cutscene where the big monkey attacks you by turning around and just fart shitting all over the place.

Yeah, that's Kongalala, man.

That's the stench.

all over the stench of the party

um

you know if it were if it were like a hazy green

like nah it's poop man it's poopy pooping if it were a hazy green effect that would certainly get the point across

and

and um all the harley quinn comic collectors out there uh you know could get what they needed nah he's pooping on you man

kongalala's always pooped on you see you don't know because you didn't play GU.

No, you're right.

I don't.

I don't know.

I don't know.

But

I do know that whatever's happening right now, I don't want a part of it at all.

I don't want any piece of this.

And,

you know, if you're drawing lines in the sand,

you can stay on the brown

gross side over there.

Yeah, Volvadon does it too, man.

Volvadon doesn't do it out of his ass, though.

He does it out of his fucking skin.

It's even weirder there.

See, yeah, but like you can't have that be a one-to-one.

Like,

anyway,

anyway,

monster hunter monsters that inflict stench because it's just like

Kongalala, Volvadon, Elmerled Kongalala, and Forokurukuru, which I don't know what the fuck that is.

What are you from?

G genuine.

Go fuck yourself.

That's not real.

I just, I'm imagining, I imagine that there are some snoofers out there who saw that and went, that's further than even I wanted it to go.

No, you know, you know, that's because

there are some.

Here's the key art for Emerald Kongalala, by the way.

Because, because,

let's see, what are we talking about here?

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Big farts, big farts.

It's blasting shits.

Because

there are snoofers who are like, you know, in the realm of

feet and armpits and all of that.

All green gases, you know?

You're playing with fire here, man.

And then there are those who are looking for the solids.

And that is a cut above.

And listen.

And you can't pretend that it's not a cut above.

Don't fuck on the doo-doo gang.

They got no shame.

No, none.

None whatsoever.

Right?

You want fucking ultimate extreme GU.

You want the ultimate generations?

That's your fucking...

That's your G-rank right there.

That's your...

Oof.

All right.

Yeah.

Damn.

What happened to just green...

Green...

Are you kidding me?

What happened to just...

Whoa!

It's not the same, dude.

Dude, Kangalala is from fucking Monster Hunter 2.

He's been shitting in your mouth for years.

Yeah, no, I just...

It's the modding, you see.

It's the modding.

Yeah, that's your problem.

Well,

what they ought to do, how about this?

Yeah.

Maybe instead of modding in Gemma, they should mod in

some former Ubisoft executives.

Oh, yeah.

So that it can be a little bit more accurate given what we're discovering, which is it really discovering is it or is it just waiting on the reveal?

You know, is it not just like, are we not just playing a game of family feud going, and what are Ubisoft up to today?

And then behind sex crimes.

The answer is sex crimes.

Ding behind the fucking thing.

100 out of 100 recipients surveys said that Ubisoft is guilty of sex crimes.

Allegedly.

I kind of expected, I suppose, that

on the way out here, we would mostly be covering just

the company issues as it

possibly gets sold, as license and ownership shit is happening, and as the state of various projects is in

disarray.

But what we have here today is:

what's the headline from France24?

Three former Ubisoft employees, three former Ubisoft executives will be tried for sexist and sexual harassment, racism, homophobia.

They tied up an employee, sexually assaulted several others, posted bacon on a Muslim employee's computer, and broadcast porn.

Classy.

Classy.

That is, that's where we're at.

That's where we're at.

That's where we're at.

So, yeah, perhaps modding those folks into the monkey's place, seeing as that was what's the difference between the level of treatment.

I think these things are actually all related because did you know that it's actually fairly hard to do a good job at work if you're worried about your boss sexually assaulting you or harassing you religiously or

broadcasting porn on your fucking workspace when you're trying to fucking code something.

Yeah, if your boss is cartoonishly evil, it might be difficult to get shit done, perhaps.

Hey, can you not touch me?

I'm trying to make this game not shit.

I prefer if you didn't tie me up

and draw on my face while I'm trying to work, actually.

Hey, do you want to know one of the factors that

I'm using to figure out whether or not a game is something you should be excited for?

So, you know, the thing that, like, you know, maybe you've heard something that's exciting about a game, or maybe you've had, heard nothing exciting about a game?

Let's assume you've heard nothing about a game at all.

And you're scrolling on your TikTok because you need dank memes.

And in between the guy who's working out just the one lat and creating like a William Birkin-style shoulder deformity and you can't look away, and the guy who's spraying dog medicine on his hands to make them tougher.

And he's on day 400 and he's tearing concrete apart with his hands.

He's fists of the dog medicine, one of my my favorite channels.

You're losing me, but in between those two things, there's nothing to lose.

It's exactly as I described.

I'm just waiting for the comma.

In between those, you scroll up and you see a targeted ad for Assassin's Creed Shadows, which is

video footage of influencers you've never heard of going, whoa, the kills are so amazing.

I can't believe this game.

It's so cool.

And I'm like, oh, Shadows is cooked.

Oh, right.

Shadows is so fucking cooked.

When I see a video game ad on TikTok, my brain goes, oh, it's fucked.

It's done.

It's fucking donezo.

I didn't see that, but I was.

My tattoo artist told me about that,

seeing that campaign you're describing, actually, and how that was going.

That's fucking hilarious.

Yeah.

All right.

Well,

I mean, we're basically just in, and again, Vince McMahon territory at this point.

There's not much to say here, but like.

yeah,

I look forward to hearing about where these

executives get moved to, perhaps, you know, the

as the as the known punishment for any of these things.

Additionally, you would hope they get moved to jail, right?

But according to company policy, they're typically to be moved to another

studio location.

Yeah,

there's a couple different offices they can move to, you know, but the full-on

Vatican effect is in play here.

So, you know,

let's see what happens, right?

The company will investigate itself.

We don't really need legal to step in here.

By the way, shout out to what's really important, which is

Fist of the Dog medicines on day 400.

His recent thing is he's he's punching ballistic dummies' heads off.

I love that channel so much.

Okay, I love it.

Speaking of punching heads off, TikTok is like a dead society, but it's our society, and I don't know what that means, but I'm here for it.

I'm not.

Speaking of punching heads off,

you know what?

Here's a weird one:

that really dead,

flat,

kind of

non-dynamic netherrem animation style

actually

works perfectly for the T-1000.

Oh, absolutely.

Because it's not a real person.

It's pretending you animate like that.

The T-1000 trailer dropped, and it's he, and, you know,

it's exactly what that specific character needs is to not look like a human being.

Robert Patrick,

looking

and

voice, they got his voice too, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like, you know what?

Sure.

Like the way

it's very bland and boring when you take a lot of other characters with dynamic things and translate it here.

But the way the liquid metal works, the way he kind of stiffly

throws his limbs out and blobs and then blades at you all of that, I'm like, yeah, that's actually that's actually the t1000 and more than anything watching that trailer I'm like damn terminator 2 is fucking good yeah it's a good movie what a good movie holy shit like it just yeah I'm like all right I got I got no complaints here this is the kind of character that works for the limitations

um

Not much else to it.

And I literally only remember Mortal Kombat exists when they show off a DLC character, and then I immediately go back to forgetting that it exists.

It's interesting because, like, I saw some comments where people were like, You have a character that can turn into anything, and you have them just doing these boring blob and spike moves.

Why not do something more dynamic and interesting?

The T1000 does boring blob and spike moves.

That's not what the T1000 does.

The T1000 is actually incredibly

uncreative.

It actually just makes knives and stabbing weapons.

For all the infinity things it could do, it doesn't do.

It just shapeshifts blades and hookhands you and then occasionally blobs it up.

You know, that's it.

Anything too complex is, yeah, it's not going to work, right?

Yeah, I'm just, what's there is exactly the way it is.

Anything historically that like animates weirdly, like I feel like they would pull off a really, like, a fine ED209.

I don't know if

absolutely, right?

You saw a thing, they would have it animate at a correct frame rate, and you'd be like, oh, this is dogs.

Well, because it doesn't it come in for Robocops Fatalities?

Like, I believe he has a, I'm not certain, I believe it comes in for RoboCops Fatality and Fatal Blow, right?

Like, it feels like those are the things that work best with Netherrealm's limitations.

So,

yeah, Glacius from KI, way too dynamic,

you know, for doing the exact same moveset.

Yeah, solid.

There you go.

Speaking of

stiff things

that have been forgotten,

I imagine you've watched the

canceled live-action Powerpuff adaptation.

Yeah, they were right to cancel that shit.

Throw that in the garbage, man.

Yeah,

looks pretty bad.

Looks pretty cringe.

Not great.

Just as bad as that script leak

said it would be.

One thing that I haven't seen anyone bring up, because it's like, yeah, it's rough.

And poor Donald Faison Turk is, you know,

you're meant for better things.

It's unfortunate.

I mean, he signed the papers.

He did.

Nobody held a gun to his head.

And I don't know how work is going otherwise.

So, you know, eh.

But

something that I see

not being mentioned there is this is one of those cases where

I think 99 times out of 100, this live-action Powerpuff Girls adaptation is just a terrible idea.

I would say, yeah, that's accurate.

I say that's the case.

A lot of the time, you're imagining various versions, anything from a Dragon Ball evolution like what the fuck is that, to a we tried to make it accurate, but it just got weirder the more on point it was because it was never meant to be like this.

You get to that jump force, you know, style attempt.

But this in particular, like Riverdale has taken off as a big WB Archie show and whatnot.

And some of that I think works because there's a, there's,

Archie is much older and less connected to the current generation than I would say Powerpuff is.

but even then, Powerpuff is still pretty old by standards, just not anywhere near as old as Archie.

The fact that it says written by Diablo Cody is something that I think not a lot of people necessarily registered what that is, but what that is.

I don't know who that is, so register with me.

And for me, I'm like, this explains the whole thing.

Because Diablo Cody is scriptwriter of and

scriptwriter of Judo, which is that sort of edge, that like, you know,

hamburger phone, teenager, edgy edgy golf girl not golf girl edgy mall girl attitude

20 years ago though yeah and here's the thing I love judo right I'm a fan of judo I enjoyed that movie but that

that per the person who wrote that when they're taking on a script it's because somebody is giving them the IP to turn it into their version of things right it's like it's like handing Gendi

the the keys to your thing.

With that Velma show.

Amindy Kaling.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

So she was given the Scooby-Doo license and she just turned it into her own weird thing.

So some people are like going to grab the thing and adapt it into, you know, whatever based on them trying to be like, hey, let's keep it faithful or whatever.

So Robert Rodriguez gets the keys to Sin City and says, I want to make this a frame-for-frame

panel by panel shot of the book, but just with people.

Okay, cool.

Right.

Can I get the right people?

Yes.

Yeah.

All right, good.

but here you don't get a name like diablo cody attached unless you're doing what diablo cody does and getting her version of any ip you know so it never stood a chance because there was never going to be that one out of a hundred potential possibility and well knowing knowing what knowing what the name means when it's when it's attached to a script it explains exactly why that trailer plays out the way it does i'm gonna have an ex i don't know You ever like start building a take in your head and you're like, you can't figure out if it's a hot take or a cold take?

Like, you, you just, like,

I've like, I have no idea where it is.

You have a take.

Stop adapting things.

Just, period.

Cook.

Cook.

Just stop.

Yeah, cook.

The failure rate is out of control.

Okay.

Nope.

It's like 99 times out of 100.

It's a disaster.

I'm following you.

I'm I'm following you because my version of this was a long time ago.

We had a thing on the podcast when we were talking about, like, oh, but who should adapt Vagabond and how best would it work as an anime?

No one.

And maybe there could be a and then and right.

And then, oh, video games need to become movies because there's a higher, there's a hierarchy of important mediums, and these ones are down here, but these ones are the big ones.

And your medium doesn't matter until you're on the big screen and everyone can see it, right?

It doesn't matter if you're a book or a manga or a movie or a comic or a fucking stage play.

It doesn't matter because it has to become a movie that Hollywood sees for it to matter, right?

The messages have to.

No, no, no, absolutely not.

Things can just be what they are, 100%.

I am super, I get it, right?

It can work sometimes.

It often doesn't, but I think that like in many cases, like even when it does work out, even when you get the weird cases, you get your one piece, which, you know, I enjoyed that live action.

Wow, slam dunk on that.

Right?

But

I feel like

the fact that there's a hierarchy of adaptation in media means that there's a weird disrespect for source material that often happens that sucks.

I mean, it's very clear why One Piece is good is because Oda had the kill switch on it and he could kibosh the whole project if he was like, I don't like it.

Versus Shinichi Watanabe walking away from Cowboy Bebop, right?

Or, you know, who knows what's going on with the avatar bits, but we know that the original team were like, yeah, we're not involved on this anymore.

Creative differences.

There's always that moment.

And here's the thing, too, right?

I can understand what is the steelman argument here.

Okay, well, not everybody is going to go back and check out the original War of the Worlds.

Not everybody.

Can I respond to that?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, sure.

But who gives a shit what you're going to go check out or not?

So

there's that feeling of like, oh, there's gold in this source material that needs to be brought to everyone.

And if it's done really well, then there can be a whole new market for this thing and a whole new audience, and it can be relevant again.

Let's see, Lord of the Rings.

Peter Jackson brings that from this legendary book series

into a legendary film series.

Terrible.

Oh, my God.

That could have been the worst.

It could have been the Hobbit series,

you know?

But

like

after

an extremely, insanely high effort and budget and everything over the years, one of these massive projects, it's like, oh, yeah, okay, they brought Lord of the Rings into the forefront and now it's this massive thing.

So if you're the license holder, IP holder, franchise holder, then you want that to happen, right?

You want to turn your, you know, million dollar franchise into a billion dollar franchise.

So that's always going to be the driving factor here.

But

aside from that, I guess just as people who are like fans of the things or consumers of it in a way,

I just, that miss rate is so high.

That's real fucking high.

And again, the weird disrespect that comes from like, oh, this thing doesn't matter until it becomes that fucking sucks.

And I wish that would go away.

So by the way, I want to raise up my hand here as something really clear.

Somebody pointed out Fallout, which I actually actually really like the Fallout TV show, and we all know Paige loves the Fallout TV show.

Stuff like the Fallout TV show is not an adaptation, it's a TV show that takes place in an existing fiction.

Right.

When I say stop adapting things, I mean shit like fucking Game of Thrones.

Is everyone happy how that fucking turned out?

Is everyone having a great fucking time with how Game of Thrones turned out?

And ultimately, here's the thing:

it works out sometimes, and sometimes it works out great.

The the um how many berserk fucking shows do we need?

Arf barf,

you know, bark.

However, then there's um that episode one episode of um last of us that fucking won every award because it's incredible, yeah, right?

That can happen sometimes, too.

It's not that last of us is such a great example because, like, hey, these games that want to be movies became movies,

they did it.

The the stepping stone to what you actually wanted to do in the first place is complete.

Congrats.

And, you know, if Game of Thrones didn't fucking get shit

shit up by DD, and if they didn't get distracted by the, you know, riding high on their own supply, getting famous, and your hairphone plugged out.

I'm going to, there we go, you're back.

If they didn't get all like, oh, we got...

Darn plugs.

We got Disney waiting to give us a bunch of Star Wars trilogies to work on.

We barely care about Game of Thrones anymore.

And we have, what the fuck was it called?

Confederate to work on.

Then,

you know, perhaps if they gave it their fullest and they had

the same process going through the end of that series, it would have been good to the end.

Adaptations don't always suck, certainly.

And there are great examples of when it can go well.

It's like the worst fail rate of anything I've ever seen in my life.

It's like, if I went to a restaurant that made me food with the quality-like hit rate that adapting a comic or a TV show to a different meaning or whatever, I would never fucking eat there again.

I'd, I would get sick and fucking die.

I just, yeah, I think there's just times and places where you gotta just like re-examine that.

You don't have to always fucking turn it into

some, uh, like there's the attempt to reintroduce to remarket is always shitty.

We know as well, I remember there was a

a large comic book girl 19 a while ago had a video where she was describing how like there's extremely minimal,

the way new movies get made and stuff is like, I think like

three on 30 major blockbusters are new, and then the yeah, the remaining 27 are all previous proven properties and all that, right?

The risks are high, etc.

Fuck me, I had a point I was about to make and then I left.

You find that point, I need to go for a second.

Gotta help.

Oh, shit, okay.

PRB.

Okay.

I remembered my point.

Yeah.

Okay.

So

your take was

stop making adaptations and stop.

And mine was adaptations aren't necessary.

And I think you're absolutely cooking there because I'm thinking of the times where in a best case scenario, I talk to somebody, anytime I talk to somebody about the departed, we go, damn, that was a really good movie.

He killed it.

What a good job.

And then the end of the conversation is, hey, you know what else is good?

Infernal Affairs.

That's a good movie.

You should go watch it.

Go watch it.

There's a whole trilogy.

They're fucking solid, right?

And then, in the worst case scenario, you have the shit that pisses me the fuck off, which is...

Spike Lee presents Old Boy, where it's the same medium.

It's the exact same thing that already exists.

And the only reason it's being adapted is because audiences are being weird about subtitles and too many Korean people, I guess.

It's just fucking, you know, like, it's a completely, completely unnecessary

re-release.

I can do you one better as worst case scenario.

Worst case scenario is going to the movie.

and watching your movie and going, oh my God, that's terrible.

Why do people even like The Last Airbender?

Oh my god.

I guess there's that.

This is

bad.

This is the thing.

This makes you look down on the original derision.

This is the thing that everyone's been telling me has been so great all this time?

Holy shit, this is fucking terrible.

Yeah.

It's just fucking annoying, man.

When I saw Death Note, oh, that movie's god-awful.

I mean, I'm still more annoyed by my example because it's one-to-one.

It's not even a different different medium.

You just made it for no reason.

You know, like, whatever.

Time has moved on, and we've hit a point where, you know, things like Parasite and shit have blown up and the audiences are much more like Netflix-oriented.

So people aren't afraid of subtitles and they're not diving for cover when words pop up at the bottom of the screen.

But that fucking Spike Lee shit is just the stupidest, man.

Anyway, so yeah, I understand.

And I have my, I completely have had that thought, you know, adjacent and I'm right there.

You know, I always wondered what the deal with Americans and subtitles is, genuinely.

I was like, why are subtitles and foreign films so like wildly hated?

Like, what the fuck is up there?

Reading a lot and not looking at the thing is.

No, it's it's that 50% of Americans can't read.

That's what I'm saying.

Reading.

Yes.

It's can't.

Reading's hard.

It's distracting.

It's taking away from the talking and the easier things.

No, no, no, no, no.

Can't.

I don't mean distracting.

I don't mean is not good.

I mean, like, can't.

I've heard this before, and I've heard this before, and it's like,

it is just, it's a struggle to take the time to quickly go through that.

You can, but you don't have the time to by the time the next line pops up.

That's what I'm telling you.

This is a dogs can't talk situation.

I'm talking functional illiteracy is like 45%.

I don't believe you.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

In 2023, approximately 28% of U.S.

adults scored at the lowest levels of literacy.

54% of adults have

literacy skills below a sixth grade level.

So 54% are functionally

literate.

Below sixth grade.

It's a level, right?

It's not the same as jumped over the fence.

But yes.

It's bad.

It's not a good skill.

How am I supposed to read those old boy subtitles?

They don't even have a cute dog in there.

Thank you, Spikely.

Thank you for allowing me to watch Old Boy.

Anyway,

what is going on?

Okay, well, a couple other things.

Let's touch on before we dip out of here.

I don't really know what's going on.

We don't really have all the details, but

wherever you go, there you are.

Skull Girls is in trouble because Hidden Variable and Autumn Games are having a legal dispute of some kind.

I don't know what this one's about.

I can't

figure it out.

I don't think there's anything to figure out.

I just think the two companies are having a legal dispute over finances or other details.

I think Skull Girls should stop adapting itself to being alive.

To existing.

It seems so cursed.

I mean, what I'll say at the very least is like, hey, that game's had a long life cycle.

It's had a lot of content come out.

Unexpectedly, it continued when Autumn Games and Hidden Variable pushed past

the natural life cycle end and resurrected it, working on a bunch of stuff for the mobile game and then retroactively making that content new for the main game was more than anyone that's a fan of Skullgirls expected.

So I think they also likely were aware.

They're like, there's not really going to be a Skullgirls 2.

So if we have any ideas or anything we want to do, we got to do it here and now while it exists, because this is a, you know,

this is a one-time thing.

And

yeah, so that's likely how that, you know, kind of continued for a bit there.

But in any case, Hidden Variable put out a statement saying that they're not working on Skullgirls anymore.

It seemed like they had more plans for more stuff, and they have to sort out legal troubles with Autumn Games.

And we

see someone in the chat saying that Hidden Variable was essentially working for free for months, and they're owed money.

They're owed money.

Okay.

Yeah, there's again, I don't know if there's any other sources or people inside either company that have spoken out or given details, but if that's what it is, then

Rip Skullgirls, once again.

Long live Skullgirls.

Rip Skullgirls.

Launch party every day, even as we lower you into the grave.

You know.

That thing lasted, man.

I don't think anyone can complain, you know?

That thing lasted longer than anyone else.

Most games like this just come out and then they're out.

And they don't have like

fucking years of

legal nonsense.

True, but they also don't have tail ends of development that last this long either.

They literally, they wrap the fuck up in year one, maybe two, and they call it a day.

This has been insanely long development and content updates by comparison to the.

I'm just going to ask you a stupid question because I can't remember.

Is Skull Girls Battle for the Airport or whatever?

Is that real?

skull skull girls deadly airport is that real i can't remember if it's real or not it is real and i don't know that it's it's real anymore but it was real for a period of time skull girls to deadly airport was available for download on the the the google was like that real real or was that like bullshit i mean someone tried to make it real okay okay thank you that's that's what we want thank you Someone uploaded a build of something

to the

fucking Google Play Store and it was

never forget the deadly airport.

And you know what the deadly airport was?

What?

It was the airport from KOF 99.

Because the screenshot had them fighting in the background from 99.

It's, yeah.

I'm gonna look at that right now.

Skullgirls Deadly Airport.

Oh, there it is.

Never forget

the first time you met K-Dash.

All right, well,

that's not the only legal trouble that

we can talk about today

because

we can't talk about Long Dew's new trailer for Hopetown

without also talking about what's going on behind the scenes.

Any chance you took a look at the new Kickstarter trailer for

someone sent me the trailer for

Long Hope.

Long Dew's Hopetown?

Hopetown.

And I clicked on it with the sound off.

Oh.

Scrolled through the whole thing and didn't see a single moment of gameplay and went, why would I give a fuck about this?

Oh.

Okay, okay.

Okay.

Did you turn the sound on after?

No.

There was no, it's a Kickstarter pitch for a game with no gameplay.

Why would I pay a second of time to it even at all?

Because there's some bad feelings to be had a little bit if you turn the sound on.

Okay.

I'm going to turn it on now.

Okay, what about it?

It's just that

Len Vol Brown is over there working on the side.

Oh, he's the disco narrator.

Man, he looks exactly what I thought he was going to look like.

He is exactly who I thought the disco narrator would look like.

So it's just one of those bits where I'm like, damn, I really like the disco narrator.

Len Vol Brown did a really awesome job and

you know if there's weirdness about this project that we need to keep an eye on that that's one of those things where I'm like I really like him and the job he did and I you know

yeah that's it

so

okay well if it's gonna be a Kickstarter show me a prototype yeah no none of those aren't that like a mandatory requirement of Kickstarter now it's not

it's not but look, I'm just saying.

That's my mandatory requirement.

I'm saying because you said I started it muted, I was like, oh, that's funny.

That means you didn't hear the narrator, which when I heard it, I was like, ah, fuck, he's so good.

Damn.

You know?

And that's it.

That's all I'm trying to say.

So

it's not much to that.

But anyway,

so yeah,

there's a whole lot of up in the air with a lot of the Disco Elysium successors.

And quite frankly,

we've only seen gameplay off of Night Shift Triple X, I believe, right?

Yeah, that's the only one.

The rest have just been ranging from ideas to concepts to manifestos,

burning on fire,

hammer and sickle.

No Kickstarters will ever get a single second look from Pat until Silk Song releases.

Interesting.

That is a line in the sand to draw.

That is just a line in the sand I am drawing now.

That is, that is,

that is not unreasonable.

However, I would stipulate it to video games.

Oh, yeah, no.

Because there are non-unrelated Kickstarters for other unrelated things.

But sure.

You know, that's fair.

That's fair.

I wish we threw that in place back in the ghost song era.

Oh, wouldn't that have been nice?

Anyway.

That would have been nice.

But yes, so no, it's just that, you know, if we always, for your reference point, always go back to the disco Elysium successor meme,

where everything exploded from Za'um into the five various

factions,

the Kender revivalists, the Za'um extants, the disco apostles, the Kurvitz loyalists, and the New Elysians.

I mean, I got to be blunt.

If we're going to continue on like the schism of Marxism fucking political analogy here, none of these games are going to come out.

And people are just going to go, man, disco was so great, wasn't it?

It's a special thing.

It went out the way it lived.

It went out disco.

Blaze of glory.

I don't think we'll ever get anything like it, but I think we're going to see stuff that attempts.

And

I think something will release, but I think it's not going to be five things.

And I think what we do get won't hold that full torch.

I think one of these five will release,

and it'll be as you describe.

It'll be like, wow, that was pretty good.

What's interesting is fucking good as disgusting.

Well, what's interesting is that the speed of prototyping is

perhaps up to like, well, did the programmers go over to dark math?

Well, then they have their night shift build up and running faster than the writers at Summer Eternal or the moneylenders at Zaoum, you know?

But in any case, though,

all that to say that, like, yeah,

there's the Kickstarter project.

And I remember that because I do remember when I was also hearing similar a little bit before this about how Argo Tulik was one of the writers on the original Disco Elysium and

was being

sued

because

there were legal threats coming from from Zaoum

and Longdu about stopping him from working at all on anything due to non-compete

overreaching contracts and shit like that.

There's a whole complex thing to it.

I know that at some point it seemed like

shit was getting pretty dire, but the explosion into all these different companies and projects has led to a very hard-to-follow

series of factions.

My understanding is that Zaoum is basically anyone that was creative, that was,

you know,

instrumental in what disco became, is no longer there.

It's just the license holder of the disco franchise, which will then be, you know, given out to whatever Amazon shows or whatever they want to do with that IP because they have it.

That's where it goes.

And then the one of the,

I guess what they would disco would describe as the money lenders, one of the producer financial folks that came in that weren't

involved creatively,

I believe is from Longdew that is then trying to shut down

legally

the writers and some of the folks that are working over at Dark Math

and

let me get the other and Summer Eternal.

Do you know how I feel right now?

I feel like that guy

sitting

underneath that person's wall of text, going, Man, I'm not going to read all that.

So, good for you.

And or I'm sorry that happened.

I totally

that's where I'm at with the division of the Zao legal shenanigans, where I'm just like, I'm fucking.

But here also, I am hyper-glossing and summarizing from the farthest zoom out ever on this.

I am not going nitty-gritty on it because I've seen the people going into the nitty-gritty and I'm like, oh my God, I can't follow up.

It's ridiculous.

It's

ridiculous.

But I'm just bringing this up because the trailer dropped before we started

recording today.

And all I know is, is,

you know,

there's the five, there's Zaum.

No one that's left there is anyone that was creative on disco.

There's Triple X Night Shift from Dark Math,

part of the

Za'um team involved there, not 100% sure on the creative involvement side or so.

Longdew, as I just explained, currently suing some former Disco staff.

Fucking sucks.

Then Summer Eternal are the ones who wrote that insane, burning, powerful manifesto that is words on a screen.

And I think that as long as what they put out is words on a screen, screen then they are ready

like all i can like my fucking

the feeling in my fucking chest every time this comes up is like wow that's crazy yeah

look i mean listen um

as someone who has

over these uh uh decade plus um

years working doing the shit we do

i've talked about it with every time we watch an award show i've talked about it with reacting to trailers and with anything.

I don't want to be cynical irony pilled.

I don't want to be just fucking dead.

Oh, it sucks out here.

It's not great.

And I don't, I refuse to live my life that way.

So

until proven otherwise, hey, man, I hope Devil May Cry is cool.

But also, the problem with cynical irony pilled, right, is that the way I became cynical irony pilled is that I used to be actively hopeful all the time,

which leads to getting burned constantly.

That's That's bad.

That's bad.

No, don't do that.

And

I think there, you know, is there a difference between being optimistic and huffing copium?

Who knows?

Events will later bear out whether or not you were optimistic or coping.

I suppose so.

And you know what?

Someone who's irony poisoned can say that you're huffing copium, right?

And irony pill shithead over here, I can huff copium too.

Sometimes I want the cope.

Yeah, for sure.

You know, Virtual Fighter VI, game of the year, all year, every year.

Shut up.

That's not cope.

That's reality.

I'll need to huff cope on VF6.

But here's what I do know, right?

I just have opinions on

things that happen.

But if I have to look at everything and have that fucking just

cynical irony poisoned energy about it and everything in this industry, I don't want to do this job anymore.

I literally don't want to record.

I don't want to.

This is the point.

Yeah, I don't want to sit here and talk about video games.

I will leave.

So

you will look at video games.

You will go, goodbye.

At the very least, in front of a microphone, you know?

So, like, I keep my attitude that allows me to keep doing this.

It's literally...

on or off for me.

Oh, totally.

I think this situation is somewhat different, though, because this situation is five separate teams going, I'm going to do it.

And you go, okay, so do it then.

And they go, I'm going.

No, no, no.

I'm starting to zoomed out on my own brain here to say that.

I know that I could be super wrong on what I'm calling out.

And do what exactly?

Look to the skies.

Look for my fucking drone shows.

But no, the point is, the point is, is that

in looking at that Disco Elysium, which is to me one of the most important games I've ever played, like

the energy

by all of this mess, the only thing that I look at in all of this that I go,

I'm interested there, that I raise an eyebrow, is the way the Summer Eternal Manifesto reads.

That reads like real passion.

But as we all know, passion on its own doesn't lead to anything.

And even Kurvitz and Zaum, the original Fortress Occident people,

couldn't put anything out because they didn't have anyone practical to be like fucking shipped assholes.

It takes a bunch of people to put a game together.

Right.

If you need information on how troublesome game development can be, need I remind you of Fortress Occident, the entire storyline within Disco Elysium about how they almost bankrupted their entire lives trying to put out a game that was too big to make.

Having an

Estonian cultural revolution and then realizing you can't put bread on your table and getting fucking depressed about it while writing shit like Sacred and Terrible Air and designing this whole tabletop campaign that's incredible, but now what?

What do we do with it?

You know, and at one point, your grandkid or one of your sellers goes, like, have you looked at video games?

You know, like, it's just, it's this whole insane.

Go ahead.

I think there's like kind of a perfect encapsulation of how silly and perfect the whole situation is genuinely.

Because in the decrying of like,

like, disco is like an overtly capitalist and communist and like left-leaning piece of work, right?

Um,

and it has incredible critiques of like pretty much everything, right?

And they, these are guys that made huge mistakes with their business prior and didn't ship a game, and then they barely shipped disco, and then it took the success of disco to put out a final version of disco, and then everybody splits up to do their own thing, and there's like a real Marxist energy to like a lot of disco there.

And what is by far the funniest thing is light bending rich guy is playing the direct one-to-one role of Engels being,

hey, you guys are doing that crazy game about the politics.

Ha ha, that's cool, man.

Here's all the money you need to make it.

Because I think that'd be cool, just like it was for fucking Marx.

And now that they don't have that guy

to just bankroll their shit, what do we get is manifesto after manifesto after pitch after pitch after pitch.

And like, we're the true successors of the fucking legacy.

And it's like, well, fucking do it.

There is, um,

yeah, there, there is a, there's a, uh, Sacred and Terrible Error has an even more on-point angles character reference.

And I would also argue

through him, they bring out the thesis statement of the entire like disco universe, really.

It's quite interesting.

And if you ever get a chance at Sacred and Terrible Air,

it's fucking cool.

Though, you know, it might come across as impenetrable at times.

But all this to say, I feel as if

this is a case with Disco Elysium where you get to just say, don't be sad because it's gone, be happy that it happened, right?

Yeah.

It was, in and of itself, too real to exist

into the future.

It had to implode.

It couldn't ever continue as it was.

And

when you get that real, and you get, especially in the conditions it was made in,

there's no way that anyone who has never seen success like that gets a whiff of that and then doesn't just let it go to their brains.

It's always going to get corrupted and destroyed.

But

while the Summer eternal words are the only things here that like inspire some some real passion you can tell that they were typed with single digit fingers you can tell that they were all caps right they were forcefully

writing and bleeding as i write um none of that means it's gonna exist But the energy and passion is there, and it seems to be coming from the place that when disco was at its most angry, and one could argue, self-righteous,

it sounded like the Summer Eternal Manifesto.

Yeah, absolutely.

And to that end, if that manifests into anything, I will be most interested in seeing what and how.

You know what it's going to manifest into?

A visual novel with no graphics whatsoever.

It's going to manifest into

a series of dev updates, each containing a manifesto that will eventually not come out.

And then someone on the team will then give an interview about,

man,

it was going to be something really special.

And you can really feel how special it was going to be if you go and read our manifestos.

And maybe we'll find out how someone else on the team felt about race.

And then things would start to get muddled.

And oh no,

nah, man.

I, I, this fucking mess is just,

it had to go down this way, right?

It just had to happen.

Um, disco was once, disco was, it's forever its own thing.

And nothing in time,

hopefully, can take that away as long as our digital ownership doesn't get revoked and uh all traces don't get deleted.

If it does, I'm I'm sure that uh that'll be fine.

But for that time and place, for this game, for that moment,

it's eternal.

it's it's it will always be what it was and I don't know that it can ever be anything but

um

furthermore

even in the in the best not best case scenario but even in the case scenario I suppose where you know you have a RPG come out with some stats and some cool narration and stories and everything kind of lines up and does well

I mean

you know it's not just the clicking on people's conversations with good voice acting and, you know, rolling a die to find out if you red check or not that makes a disco, you know?

It's not just the idea of stats that talk to you, and it certainly isn't just the gags and

the picking up of items and internalizing thought cabinets.

You know, it's a tone.

It's a whole.

It's a Gassant Schwitzer.

It's a total work of art where every single piece of the puzzle forms a greater whole.

Firing on all cylinders at all times, 100%.

Yep.

That's a new word for me, but that sounds pretty apt.

That sounds like what I want to get at.

I will continue to have this energy as we find out more about the Disco Elysium succession.

And

optimism, I suppose.

Let's see see what happens.

I don't even think it's necessarily a case for optimism or cynicism.

It's just they just keep saying that it's going to be great and it's going to happen, but no one's shown like anything other than the

what was it called?

The XXXX X Night Shift, yeah.

Yeah, that one showed off something.

So, like, I mean, I'm interested in that on the pure basis that it currently exists in some form.

Yeah.

Like, it's probably going to be pretty cool, but, like, you know, people, all we know is people who made a really good thing are interested in making other things, and they also are aware of making those other things can lead to them making some money and also getting their stories out there.

And hopefully, reality can come together, and we can find out what some of those things are.

I think they should stop fighting and kiss.

Everyone comes back together, Zaoom 2, Disco Elysium 2.

I think I would fucking vomit in my mouth and just die.

Yeah.

If it was like, now it's actually, no, everything, and it's just Disco Elysium 2.

It's literally called that.

And now it's in 3D.

And now it's got a

threat.

Now it's a cover shooter.

So which do you think is

funnier?

And every time Harry is waiting for someone to finish talking, he does a little like lean to the side and flexes his hands and has a little idle waiting for conversation moment.

Which do you think is funnier?

And I know I know it's Za Um 2 and Disco Elysium 2.

I think that's way funnier, but I still want to put it out there.

That or Hasbro, after they fired everyone that worked with Larian, going, guys, we're going to make Baldur's Gate 4 and it's going to be just as good.

And we're going to hire a brand new team to do it.

And you'll see.

Do you remember that?

Do you remember that fucking thing they put out?

How fucking funny that was?

No,

but I certainly do know that energy because i will always forever ever reference bobby kodick talking about how guitar hero the original franchise is being encroached upon by these imposters by rock band these imposters making a game called rock band but they can't hold a candle to the original franchise you do it moneylender that's so funny bend that light

funny bend that light bobby bend it

all right let's read an email i gotta get out of here all right all right all right all right

By the way, the Xbox handheld is coming in 2025, potentially later this year and 2027 for a new Xbox thing.

And it's going to be a game pass box, probably.

Whatever, man, the Nintendo Switch 2 is going to come out this year.

I don't know who the fuck Microsoft thinks they're competing with.

They're going to beat Nintendo at a fucking handheld.

Are they insane?

Also, Western Digital is getting out of the SSD market and handing it all off to Sandisk.

Oh.

Yeah.

Weird, right?

I have.

Western Digital has been around for our entire lives as far as a fucking

as a brand name goes for hard drives.

Yeah.

Very, very unexpected, surprising change.

Sandisk is.

That's the most shocking piece of news today.

Yep.

Sandisk is taking over all NAND operations.

And Western Digital, a brand on SSDs, is probably going to start disappearing, but they're going to still make

regular hard drives, you know, certainly.

I need hard drives.

Yep.

All right.

Let's take a letter over here.

You send in an email, castle superfeastmail, gmail.com.

Wooly might read it, and he might judge you harshly.

Hello, Pat and Woolley.

My son is six, and sooner or later, wrestling is going to cross his path.

My question is, do I let him believe it's 100% real until he figures it out for himself?

Or do I peel the curtain back and let the Kayfabe in a a little bit?

Oh, no, you have to get him in yourself and you have to teach him that it's real.

Okay, okay, okay.

Problem.

What about the moments where you hurt yourself and others by trying to do that shit?

Those are trained professionals.

Yeah, okay.

Okay.

Also, hey, little Billy, you're not an undead wizard.

You can't shrug off four stone cold stunners.

There you go.

Okay, All right.

Right.

It's real.

Believe the magic, but don't try it at home.

WWE.

Billy, do you think you could take the fiend in a fight?

The problem is...

But here's the, you know, but here's layer two of the problem.

It only gets really fun when you learn it's fake because then you can start doing the fake moves.

But you can do them in real life because you know how to do them without hurting anybody.

So well the reason i say you have to get the kid in and believing it now is six is pretty close to the age where the kid's going to start to figure it out by themselves because around six seven eight nine they're going to see like somebody just no sell some bullshit or you know yeah get hit by a car and die and be fine next week and they're going to be like what the that's weird

hopefully you know kid might be a little slow but yeah but i know that if i didn't know wrestling was fake early on in I wouldn't have known how to sell that pool choke slam or do the power bomb or do a lot of that shit where you know how to make it work.

A good super kick, a good super kick is perfection.

Are you told that wrestling was fake or did you figure it out?

I don't remember.

I think I figured it out, but it was so long ago that I probably can't nail the moment.

I think I just, I think I figured it out.

I think you see a couple botches, and I think you also, yeah, yeah, because I'm having like memories.

I

around six, seven, eight, and you're like, what the fuck?

Yeah, but also, also, the, the whole, the whole bit where it's like a slow story being told over people getting tired in about five seconds.

Like, the match starts, we start doing punches, and then after about a minute, we're like

because we have to slowly move from place to place and tell the story.

You know, being gassed is crucial to wrestling.

Yeah.

All right.

And last one over here.

Hello, Doohickey and Thingamabob.

Hey, man.

Do you guys have media that you never actually played, watched, or read, but think is neat?

However, from a distance, for example, I think a lot of Simpsons memes are super funny, but you'll never catch me watching an episode.

Not really.

If I think it's neat, I'll probably

aim towards it at some point.

I have no qualms about getting into something eventually, but I can say from a distance I admire Warhammer's cool shit, knowing that it's going to take some time before I can penetrate the impenetrable.

I think I enjoy

city management games and large-scale RTS games more in my mind than I do in actuality of playing them.

Okay.

Yeah.

And while we're on the way out here, allow me to set the record straight.

I have heard the word doohickey before.

I had never heard it in that context.

And that's the problem.

It's the combination of silly, silly word with hyper-serious historical event that just

kicks it right down the road.

I was unable to breathe, and I couldn't finish properly saying, I have never heard that word used to refer to the assassination weapon that murdered a man.

That's fucking crazy.

That's that's I, that's what it is.

It's coming at you with a contraption, wolves.

Yes, so there we go.