CSB303: Grundlemaxxing

Good good morning, everyone.

All right.

All right.

I got you.

All right.

Okay.

I got you.

Also, to the video listeners,

watchers, oh, the dog is here.

Yay.

I saw people saying, I'm only here for the dog.

And it's like, well, you've seen him.

You can leave now.

Don't, though.

Don't.

Okay.

let's try this

hey um

i'd like to congratulate uh pat starzat

um

i think it's quite an incredible accomplishment to become one of the premier highest ranking accounts in path of exile

to become one of the world

the world's only highest level 97 was it on on like survival one death and you're gone forever the hardest mode ever oh man that's crazy that's a crazy accomplishment that's really worth like applauding and I want to say kudos incredible job

yeah I tried really hard I had to learn Mandarin I had to

I had to I had to become very

very

comfortable with letting someone else use my account.

It says here that you're playing right now, actually.

How are you accomplishing this?

This is kind of incredible.

So, I don't know.

I don't know.

This is just like our brains have synced up into what we think is funny.

But, like, I spoke about this for like 25 minutes yesterday.

Oh, okay.

Because I think it's the funniest fucking thing in the world.

Well, your staff is only level 52.

That's pretty sad considering that your player level is so much higher.

Yeah, but that's, I mean,

your items, the level on your items is so much lower than the level on your character That's really embarrassing.

Yeah, even though it doesn't work like that.

That's actually minimum level So it doesn't it doesn't mean that doesn't mean anything

Okay, well look at all those maps though.

Surely you know how to use them under the under the file folder pets maps surely you know how to use them to get where you want to why would I label my own map tab with my own name if I was using it

Hey, you know look who does that can you teach me about your looting system?

Because I've realized that you're one by one dragging all of your loot into your inventory

and you're not filtering in any way, shape, or form.

And that's a pretty advanced tactic.

So

hey, listen.

So I will help you with that in a second.

I just need to figure out how to use this mana potion.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

What button is that?

Is that, I know it's the second most important button in the entire game.

The second most important mechanic that, okay.

Yeah, but I just give me just a second.

Okay, whenever you're ready to go.

Did you just walk past the rarest item in the entire game?

I sure did.

I sure did.

Because I don't even need it.

So,

I want to take the same track I took yesterday because now I have somebody to bounce off of.

And it's like

being an insecure little bitch with too much money

is a common profession in these days.

However,

in the method of hoodwinking, we have all sorts of methods, right?

We have the Snoop Dogg, have somebody play the game in a video for you

so you can just blaze so hard that you don't even have to be alive.

Right?

There's that.

That's pretty funny.

Snoop Dogg smoking up and the game keeps playing.

And then we have the all-time MMO classic, which is never show yourself playing ever,

but have the stuff on your account and take screenshots and be like, yeah, look, it's this, blah, blah, blah.

And make sure that the screenshots that you take don't reveal shit like your region is set to China or that the game's interface is in Mandarin or that you have tabs with your name on them like that's a thing a human being would do instead of just having it be the map tab.

But instead, what what we've done is, I'm going to

like put on a suit.

I'm going to put on a clown suit and then pretend I know how to clown in front of a kid's birthday party.

And then, when the kids ask me for a balloon animal, I'm just going to stutter and stammer and shit myself because I don't know how to make a pony out of balloons.

Yeah,

so it's like staggeringly embarrassing how every day, every piece of news, anything that pops up

that Musk is doing is like just somehow getting worse and worse over time.

But when it comes to just needing to get some invisible kudos

while being literally the...

Anyway, the wretches do whatever.

It's crazy because

I think...

The theory is that he showed off his Elden Ring build and got roasted for it.

That, right?

So, Woolly, I'm absolutely,

I have been putting forward this theory in a while.

Like, there was that nonsense where he shit on that guy in Thailand and called him a pedo over nothing.

And that, like, turned like the personal aspect of like, oh, he seems like he might be an asshole.

But when he posted that dog shit Elden Ring build with a nonsense explanation, everyone that played Elden Ring went, wait, this guy's supposedly designing rocket ships and cars?

Oh, fuck.

Oh, shit.

We'll reduce equip load for faster roll if necessary.

Like, yeah,

you know, there's been, again, there's a lot of theories.

Some people say that because of that Elden Ring build roasting, like, the decision to never feel that heat again was the result of now going to what people are.

Apparently, there's words that some of the most airtight NDAs were signed by

the, yeah, the players he has that are like in a,

like, some sort of group of Chinese players that are the best and that are, you know, whatever playing against the players.

Yeah, I mean, if I was a rich

bitch paying people to do things for me, I'd have them sign fucking NDAs.

While he's in the middle of talking in the spaces meeting at the same time or whatever, you know, so there is that.

You know, and yeah, does that line up with the bit like he came out on a Chappelle show and got booed into oblivion and so

decided to seek out applause and people cheering him on as hard as possible as a result?

It could be.

Chat wants me to mention there's something that bothers me the most about

the Musk man, which is he doesn't seem to actually care or like anything.

So I remember some person said, Hey, man, tell me you like Evangelion on Twitter like a year or two ago, and he just like typed out nerve,

like a one-word answer, and just went nerve.

Yes.

Yes.

And it's like, you just googled Evangelion and looked for a proper noun.

Like, you could have just said, yeah.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, like, you, yeah, no, I do.

No, the me.

Like

the meme.

The cringe.

I've also seen what's really funny is that

I have seen Path of Exile players use this as a point for their game against Diablo 4 because he did the same thing in Diablo 4, but didn't get caught

by the fucking developer.

Like, Blizzard didn't ban him.

They let his Diablo 4 shenanigans go off.

Whereas Path of Exile just keeps re-banning him over and over

because they're detecting nonsense on his account.

Concerning.

Unbelievable.

Wow, you knew exactly what topic to bring up to just like pull the sleep out of my eyes.

Yeah, there we go.

I told you.

I said, I got this.

All right.

I said, give me a second.

Don't worry.

I got this.

Oh,

I hate this.

Looking into it.

There we go.

Nice and awake.

And

why settle for

awake when we can supercharge that shit?

Are you ready for your shot?

Yeah, hit me with the

chaser for that matter.

The shot is pathway.

Yeah, that was the shot.

The chaser is,

and well, I suppose this has to be founded or such, but maybe this might be cover.

This embarrassing

pants-shitting

just flail might be

it might be cover for a story that seems to be getting less coverage.

Oh, yeah.

Allegedly, there was

there and there is and there is a photo and there is people that are attesting to some 20 years ago

that he was at a

ABDL baby fur community meetup.

And

there's photo evidence of this.

And

this is sick.

And for those those who don't know that that acronym stands for adult baby diaper lover community hell yeah brother and and that sounds fucking crazy but then it's like well someone who was a part of the community went through 30 000 photos from 20 years ago at a at a brunch meeting they had and there he is sitting in the onesie with so what you're saying is the the baby fur diaper community denounces elon musk

and apparently it's not just that it's not just that he was there.

It's more that everyone remembers that he got kicked out because he was being an asshole.

Oh my god, it's so good.

They were like, yeah, this dude came out and he was being really annoying.

So we kind of like kicked him out from coming out to further munches.

So those who were there, including those who are not part of the community in the part where,

and there's, because that's the thing, is it overlaps because this is the baby fur specific part of it is where the adult baby diaper loving community overlaps with the furries.

And so you have kind of two in one.

And he was being insufferable to the members of that community.

So apparently was then booted for it.

Oh my God.

And that's, I don't know.

That, I don't know.

I don't know, you know?

But I will say that, like,

there was some weirdness about, like, so then what was that weird hidden account where he was pretending to be a kid about?

That was, he's pretending to be his son.

Not the Adrian Diaper.

Oh, you're such a good dad.

Well, no, but that's the thing.

It's not the one where he, no, No, that's, we, people thought it was a

pretty good one.

But then it wasn't like a 10-year-old.

He was pretending to be like a baby, right?

And it's like he wasn't pretending to be his son, and it's not the Dittman account, it's the other one.

And they're like, why are you commenting on like porn and stuff?

That's a weird thing to do if you're a kid.

Unless

20 years ago, you're part of.

Oh, my God.

You know?

So we can add.

So money can't buy love.

And for a long time, it looked like money could buy buy you respect, but that has limits clearly.

And it also can't buy you...

Sometimes, says Joe Hayman.

It can't buy you good attention unless you're the type of person who has ideas in their brain that could get you good attention anyway.

So if you, if all of this shit was true and then it was like, you know what?

I'm going to buy everyone a puppy.

With my rich money.

People will be like, well, I like puppies.

That's good.

But instead, all of it is, I'm going to make myself look so cool.

That doesn't work.

Trying to be cool is so lame, bro.

Yes.

It's so lame.

I mean,

between the like adult diapers and the like

pumping your path of exile account, suddenly it makes a lot of sense why making a jumping X seems like a good idea in your head, but then in execution,

it turns into what it was.

No,

it's so cool.

Don't Don't you get it?

Don't you get it?

Like, that's why you thought that was the sensible bit to do.

Someone in the chat asked, who's the coolest rich person?

The coolest rich person ever is the one you'll never hear of because they just be rich and not cringe at you.

I guess there's that.

I guess.

That's the one you've never heard of and will never see.

Yeah.

Everyone talks about Mansa Musa.

I was about to say, the guy who rolled through and changed the geography by just dropping gold on his way but i'm sure you get you can dig through history to find whatever fucked up details you need to it's tony hawk rich because if so he can do a 900 that's pretty cool yeah

he he he was performing tricks for the last time ever and um

for a while i suppose anyway that i wasn't paying super close attention to that phrase and i had my brain just go he's doing what oh right escape got it

yeah he's like i'm old and i'm gonna die if i keep trying these things, so I'm going to stay.

No, I'm just saying, like, it sounded like when you said that, like, wait, Tony Hawk is, like, hooking for the last time ever.

Oh, oh, oh, yeah.

Oh, no, no, that's not correct.

Not quite.

That's not, no, that's not accurate.

Concerning.

Looking into it.

What did you do?

Let me, I didn't sleep.

That's what I did.

This is a bad sleep.

Well, I think that's what's good.

I just woke you up.

Yeah, you did.

So let's see.

I played Metal Gear Solid 2.

Do you remember that game?

Oh, yeah.

Big Strut, Big Shell.

Let's go.

So that game's awesome, and it plays really well, and yada yada.

After playing a bunch of them in a row,

man, the Big Shell looks just like Zanzibar Land.

Like the interiors of the Big Shell look just like Building 2 and 3 of Zanzibar Land.

It's really crazy.

Like, it's actually more, like, way more.

Despite the fact that MGS2 is explicitly, internally referential to Metal Gear,

it is also wildly externally referential to other older Metal Gears.

That's crazy.

I always felt like 2 was

the departure between 1 and 2 was like...

where that like everything from 2 forward is that sort of clean UI look style and sound It's very clean for the rest of the 3.

So do the edges almost.

And I was touching on it last time, but I'm like, damn, I wish he didn't throw away so much of one from that point forward.

Not that I, you know, dislike

the clean look and stuff, but again, there's something to the sound and a bit of the crunchiness of that, of one that.

Oh, MGS One has

its own aesthetic.

And I really, yeah, I just

would have liked to have seen where that kind of evolved to more than like a completely different one.

And then I think like Snake Eater is an evolution of two, and everything after that kind of continues evolving off of Sons of Liberty.

One of the other takeaways that

I never quite caught, like it was very obvious that Campbell's dialogue is extraordinarily similar to his dialogue in MGS1 for what are later very obvious reasons.

But what I didn't pick up on is that the dialogue that he has that is new is mostly like Mei Ling and Naomi's dialogue from MGS1.

Oh, okay.

Like him explaining the Soliton radar and shit like that.

It's actually like word-for-word other characters' dialogue.

Fed into him.

And other new bits, like genuinely new sentence structures,

sound, and this is probably like an accident, but it sounds like ChatGPT is reading it out.

Interesting.

Okay.

Like there is a certain

like stilted unnaturalness to the sentence progression

that

just like now that we're all used to Microsoft Sam and TikTok voice and all that shit, it just, it's so clear.

It's incredibly clear

that it is a fake person.

I don't remember, but are there

heartfelt moments with him at all?

Or are they all they're all with Rose, right?

All with Rose.

Yeah, okay.

Because I feel like in one, each character you spoke to had their like heart-to-heart moment with you.

Yeah.

Even Miller, you know?

Yeah, even Miller, which is crazy.

Yeah.

But like, I'm not remembering anything with Campbell in two up front.

No.

And like, I even like, even the famous like, I need scissors 61,

like

it didn't, it did, like, that just seemed like a bunch of random bullshit.

Except I'm now realizing that is a line that Snake says from the briefing in MGS1 where he asks Campbell if he needs scissors to cut his hair so he doesn't be confused.

It's like it's, it's all, it's all just like fed into a bad robot.

When he's got the, yeah, the long white hair.

Right, right, right.

God, I remember, oh, you just, I just flashed back to seeing Raiden with the long white hair and then

who, like, my friends or whoever I was talking to at the time, being like, What the?

What is with that look?

And I'm like, motherfucker, go back to the briefing where you see they find Snake in Alaska, and then they actually have to like dye his hair and cut it for him to look the way we recognize him now.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and hey, guess what?

MGS2 is

really great.

Though playing them all these back to back,

I have now, I am now playing the same game the fourth time in a row.

It is

astonishing how like the ask for, hey, let's remake Metal Gear 1 or Metal Gear 2 or Metal Gear Solid 1 is

absurd because all of them are remakes of each other.

And MGS 2 is even an in-universe remake of MGS1.

Foxhound's still the coolest, right?

Dead Cell.

The problem I have with Dead Cell is that they look and sound lame.

Their actual kit is awesome, but like Vamp's design in 2 just sucks.

It's all Dead Cell, man.

Sorry, it's all Foxhound.

Oh yeah, Foxhounds way better.

Foxhound rules.

And like, I'm like, Kojumbo agrees with you, which is why Psychomantis and Revolver Oslot continue on forever.

And

yeah, Y'all Dead Cell is great, but like.

Y'all Dead Cell is awesome.

Y'all Dead Cell almost makes you forget how lame

Vamp's coat looks.

But when you have to take a picture of the squad, you know,

it's that Foxhound shot of all of it.

It's like, it's too good.

I think we can all agree

collectively, together, that the B and Bs are the absolute worst.

Just complete dog shit.

Just awful.

Yeah, by virtue of the fact that I can't fully remember naming all of them.

Well, they can't talk.

Yeah,

there's no person

there.

It's just a story that Drebin drops after the fact.

Yeah, it's like this lady was hot, but she was very sad.

Okay.

I mean, at least goddamn the pain shot fucking bees at you.

I mean, and like, yeah, that's his only character trait is that he's a man that shoots fucking bees, but that's cool.

Um, in the base games, uh, uh,

how, like, what are, how are the groups?

Oh, they're fucking fucking terrible.

They're fucking super dog shit.

There's Ultra Box, who's the four guys who attack you in the goddamn

fucking elevator.

There's shit like

Black Ninja

and Machine Gun Kid and Dirty Duck.

Like, they are straight trash.

They are god-awful.

There's a guy named Running Man, and his fucking ability is that he keeps running.

Like, there's also a lot of like the more just like soldier and machine and tank and object bosses, right?

So, and like some of them are also remade in later games.

Like, I forget the name of the guy,

but um, there's a dude who just hangs out on the ceiling and shoots darts at you with traps everywhere who gets remade into the fear.

Okay, like it's the same fight, just like 15 years apart.

There's a guy named Jungle Evil who used to be called the Predator.

Who's the Predator?

Okay.

It's like that weird shit where, like, remember you fought Spider-Man and Shinobi as a kid, and then they, in re-releases, they're like, well, we can't fucking call him Spider-Man because it's Marvel.

Dude, you fight the Hein D like three times.

Yeah.

In one and two, and Solid.

Okay.

It's crazy.

So let's do it.

Foxhound.

Yeah.

Desperado.

Oh, oh, we're including the wins?

Desperado.

Okay, hold on.

Foxhound's number one.

I'm saying Desperado.

Desperado.

Yeah, yeah.

Desperado's number two.

Then I'm going to say Cobra Unit.

Cobra.

Yeah.

Then I'm going to say Black Chamber.

Who the fuck is that?

Ghost Babel.

Okay, I don't know those guys.

I'm going to say Ghost Babel, Black Chamber.

Yeah, okay.

Then I'm going to say Dead Cell.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then

I'm going to say

Then I'm going to say the Skulls unit, and then I'm going to say the BB.

Okay, I'll take that.

Because at least when the Skull unit appears, it's exciting.

Whereas like two of the four B and B's show up, and you're like,

Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, because no, like,

the skulls intro is like a holy shit moment, you know?

That's a proper, like, what the fuck.

Um,

okay.

Um, and yeah, I mean,

we want to go into pops and fucking no, we don't want to go into poops, we don't want to talk about hot, cold man.

Okay, all right.

So, the only thing we need to talk about from Peacewalker is that uh, boss canonically fought and beat Arathalos

as a a fake AI walker?

No.

No.

The real thing.

Straight up.

He used Mountain Dew and Doritos to get enough health, and then he beat up Arathalos

with a gun.

Okay.

And you know what?

I haven't played the Acid games, so I can't really talk about the Acid characters.

Yeah.

But that didn't happen.

Or did it?

Or didn't it?

I don't know, but that's my list, and I'm sticking to it.

But yeah, no, he fought like a real Rathalos.

He also fought an organic Metal Gear Rex.

Like a Flesh Rex.

Right.

So, wait, so then

Palicos are real and exist.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, okay.

So, so are the Ape Escape monkeys.

That's real.

That's what monkeys look like.

Oh, God.

Flesh Rex.

Have I even seen this?

Yeah, hold on.

Metal Gear Rex, a Peace Walker.

It looks like fucking horrible, dude.

It's gross.

Do you hire me?

Here, look, I've got a screenshot for you.

Just give me a word.

Gear Rex.

I see it.

I see it.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, that's so great.

That's weird.

That's so weird.

It's a monster and it's a metal.

But you know what's funny about that?

It makes Ottacon a massive fucking hack.

You just looked at this creature.

You just found this drawing of an old dinosaur, and then you were like, I'm going to do that.

But also, the name Rex

doesn't imply, like, because Tyrannosaurus, Rex, is what it is.

Oh, Rex means king.

It does.

But when when you first heard Rex, you assumed it was, you know, in reference to the T-Rex.

Because it screams like a fucking dinosaur when you shoot it.

And it turns out, no.

There's an actual

nuclear.

Can we normalize big robots screaming like they're actually animals?

I mean, to be fair.

I think that's pretty cool.

Yes.

And

it adds an extra level of freakiness to not only when Rex is getting destroyed, but when the rays are like being like lizard-like and sneaking around you're like those fucking sneaky monster rays are going

as they're dying.

You're like, ah.

And yes, because Ed209 also died in that horrible fashion.

That's true.

Fucking Ed209.

And I want to say Ed209 put the fear in all of us

with his horrible frame rate.

existence.

It's not just being scary.

It's also being scary and running at a different frame rate from the rest of life.

Yeah, that's awful.

Creepy.

Okay.

So Metal Gear is great.

Shocker.

I'm fucking shocked.

Oh my God.

Still great.

Did you say nerd?

Still, like, I swear to God, that's got to be like a huge part of like people's distaste for Raiden right off the bat.

Like, you got to go to the node, Raiden.

Did you say nerd?

He obviously didn't fucking say nerd.

What are you, stupid?

What are you, dumb?

Is it like one of those Japanese puns where it had me and Paige were talking about this?

It had to be something that sounded like something else.

Nerd and node have to sound way more similar in Japanese.

Yeah, yeah, probably.

Nerd.

Yeah.

Something like that.

Also, also, you know what?

Maybe it's just my history, but like every single time Rose, every time I like, I have to save my game a lot because I'm streaming it.

And what if something happens?

And then Rose talks to me and I'm just like overwhelmed with like,

Rose oh

everything you say is like nails on a chalkboard oh my god shut up that's what it's like to really have a girlfriend Pat you

oh no it's not you thought it was gonna be like Meryl but it's more like Rose

oh my god young Mary

I think that game has like real issues like I genuinely mean real issues because parts of Ryden's story don't make sense because Rose is so repellent.

Look, it's like Kojima, like, straight up was like, We need, like, it's not, you can't just have your sniper wolf and your Meryl kind of like soldier girls that are hanging around as your in-love interests.

You need to have something that is a real romantic adult relationship.

And that's what a real relationship is.

She's not.

She's a fucking spy.

That's what a real relationship is like.

A real relationship is where you find out your wife's terrible secret after she nags you about their anniversary all day.

Kojima watched Titanic

and he liked it.

Fuck.

Is that it?

I mean, Jack and Rose.

You know this.

Oh.

You know this.

You know this.

I did know it, but I forgot.

I forgot again.

And they're on a boat.

It's not a boat, but it is a boat.

God damn it.

Man.

Remember when Snake jumps in the water and swims after the fucking Ray?

Like, what a beast.

Like, he swims, man.

And he catches it.

He catches it.

It's so crazy.

How did you do that shit?

I was so fucking God.

I've been hearing this story a bunch of times about a conversation that you and I had like 15 years ago when Twin Snakes came out.

Where I was like, I think these cutscenes are ridiculous.

And you went, Pat, no, they're just played like cleaner and straighter in the other games.

And you bring up the example that I've used since every time I talk about it, where when the pain attacks Ocelot and Big Boss with bees, Big Boss is able to cut every bee out of the air with a knife.

No.

That's so crazy.

No twin snakes required.

He's actually doing it.

Yeah.

And I brought that up a couple days ago, and someone in my chat said, dude, that's just like cutscene stuff.

That doesn't count.

Except MGS3 has you carry injuries out of cutscenes into gameplay and you don't have any fucking bee bee stings on you coming out of that scene, which means he actually used a little knife to kill every bee that attacked him.

I mean, he jumps back to dodge the sniper bullet initially.

The idea that he would then block the

ninja swings with the sword, full-on spike style, and or backflip off the missile.

You know, he's fighting insane mutant freaks and winning.

The fuck, you think he's just standing there shooting people, punching, going,

and then running in circles?

He's also a crazy super soldier.

He's doing dumb shit.

I gotta say, parts of MGS1 just like start to get really strange when you realize what comes afterwards.

And like, you know, the romantic ending with Meryl with Snake.

And it's like, they're going to drive off into the sunset.

And like, I'm sitting there and I'm like, I'm sorry, Meryl.

I have to leave you for a man who pisses his pants.

And she's like, don't worry.

I'm going to end up with a guy who shits your pants.

Yeah, you're just driving that snowmobile off to carry her towards diarrhea, man,

you know, who you also encountered.

Like,

God,

what a, what a wild.

I mean, look, the idea that, hey, you know, we're not going to pair snake up with anyone really, and in the future, Meryl deserves to be happy.

So fine.

Okay, but of all the people, you're like, who's left that we haven't brought back?

Let's get fucking Johnny Turbo Bubbleguts.

Hey, can I ask you, did you play Metal Gear 2, Solid Snake?

No.

Okay, so did you know that there's a boss fight with Dr.

Madnar in that game?

Okay.

Where Madnar gets the drop on you and gets a headlock on you and starts choking you out and he'll kill you.

Unless you throw grenades at the floor and mine the floor to like get him off you.

Snake is totally unable to overpower him.

That's amazing.

That's great.

And then he survives later to build Raiden's body.

And he's that smart.

He's that guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The scientist just, that's great.

That's hilarious.

Fuck yeah.

Oh, these games are so stupid.

Man.

And like, and also like the version of Meryl that you're getting

that's with Johnny later is like when she's back and buff and full-on soldier out.

Yeah.

You know?

Hey, remember when at the NAMGS one, she's like, I don't think I need to be a soldier to live my life.

Fucking JK.

Okay, well, to be fair, the world became war and war has changed.

So, you know,

if I was like, I'm not, fuck this soldier shit.

I'm going to go live a normal life.

And then

a robot with a fucking dinosaur leg mooing like a cow walked past my window.

I'd be like, where do I sign up?

Like, what are we doing here?

You know,

anyway,

cool.

I also put together one little thing.

It's from MGS1, but whatever.

So, and Metal Gear has like a lot of characters that are incredibly similar to one another for thematic purposes.

Like, there are multiple

older black bald men voiced by Greg Eagles, like, in particular, the DARPA chief and Peter Stillman in MGS2.

They're voiced by the same guy.

He's doing the same voice.

Okay.

And he's fulfilling the exact same role.

But one that I did not pick, stop saying the Diaper Chief.

Am I pronouncing that?

Kojima wanted a Murtaugh in the game.

But

the one that didn't jump out to me until somebody pointed out in chat is that

the president of Armsteck, Kenneth Baker, Kenneth Baker, looks and talks a lot

like Sundowner.

Does he?

They both look pretty much the same.

They're older white guys who have shaved their head.

Kenneth Baker is way older, though.

Yeah, but they also talk at length about like the end of the Cold War or the good old days after 9-11 and like how they have to make money with the new

like war economy and all that shit.

I mean, Kenneth Baker is way more like Bush administration old guy, though.

And I feel like Sundowner is like,

yeah,

like he's full-on cowboying it up, yucking it up.

You know, the accent's stronger.

He's clearly much more southern and raw.

I don't know.

I never thought I'd ever see.

A fucking character ever say the good old days after 9-11 until I played Revengeance.

That game's crazy.

That game feels like a bigger step forward than some of the games I'm playing now.

Like, narratively and like thematically, like Revengeance feels like a bigger step forward than MGS1 does.

Yeah, well, because it feels like

by stepping out of the, not out of the timeline, but away from the timeline, he could just chuck in as many contemporary statements about post-9-11 shit and politicians in general, you know, and yeah, the

American two-party system that

the original Metal Gear can like get at, but you still have to go save the world from a nuke exploding at some point.

And here you're just kind of like spending way too long listening to a politician say whatever the fuck he needs to to get you on his side.

So I played the Metal Gear games.

I'll dive in back when I finish the MGS2, which is going to be a trip.

I also played a lot of the new season of the Marvel rivals.

Oh, yes, as have I.

I was just going to say that, like,

when you're talking about Sundowner, I kind of realize that

half of what I'm thinking of with his dialogue are just the lyrics to Red Sun.

Yeah, that counts.

So I'm like,

I'm like, is he the one saying when the wind is slow and the fire is hot and the vultures waiting for him?

Yeah, no, that's definitely.

Yeah, that's him.

That's him.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because I'm like,

that's his eternal self.

Yeah.

That's his inside.

That's his inside voice.

God damn it.

Red Sun over Paradise.

He's saying it.

All right.

Fair.

So you've been playing that new Marvel Rival season.

How are you liking it?

Yeah.

I'll tell you what.

Like, it's pretty.

First of all,

Invisible Woman is a pretty solid drop in there.

I kind of was like,

okay, what you're going to do with her Force Fields and stuff is going to be as busted as it seems.

And she's a really, really good support.

It is.

It is totally going to be as busted as it seems.

Yeah.

Incredible, incredible support character overall.

The Mr.

Fantastic, I like, his kit is a bit weird to me.

Like, I get it, but I don't fully...

Okay.

I've only fought one or two people doing really, really good with him.

And clearly there's moments of like, don't shoot him now.

He's absorbing and going to deflect it back at you.

But like, his ult is really strange.

I like the fact that you can stick his arms out and kind of drag it around for, you know, like physics damage.

But yeah, there's some stuff I just don't kind of get.

So first of all, I cannot believe that I am playing a video game in which I'm like, oh man, I can't wait to play as Mr.

Fantastic.

Mr.

Fantastic.

Holy shit.

He has so much going on.

His shit is so ridiculous.

The left-right grab two people and slab them together as a move is great.

So that's not even the good one.

It's a really cool

thing to add as a move on a kit though.

So I'm not going to go down his whole kit because that's not what we're doing here.

But

he's a flex spot character.

Like he

enables you to go one tank, two healer, like three DPS or something like that.

Because half of the time he's the tank.

He can switch up to

the buff modes.

And the basic deal is that if you hit

the grab and you can then pull them towards you and then do the shield sorry do the dash like the e to dash towards them to bump them and give yourself a shield and then punch them and then do the grab and then punch them and just that

you become big read your big read is is really fucking crazy strong your elasticity maxes out from just that one combo

And then by the time big read is over, all of your cooldowns are back.

So you can just do it again.

Okay, it's time to work together.

Gotcha.

Okay.

So you are just like, you're like, you're poking at people or like throwing your limbs into team fights.

And then when you see an opportunity, you pull someone towards you and then dash towards them.

And then they're like an inch away from you.

And now you're Big Reed.

And Big Reed feels unkillable.

But if you're in trouble on that, he can.

What are people calling it?

Like Fridge Man?

Okay, yeah.

Like Big Shots.

It is the most busted fucking thing in the whole game because like it's like, okay, you take damage and you can't get hurt, right?

And you shoot it back.

Fuck that.

It makes you immune to crowd control.

So Jeff can't eat you if you're fridge read.

Oh, oh, wow.

Iron Man can't kill you with his ult.

If you're fridge read.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a couple of things that can block that.

Those moments.

Yeah, like Iron Fist Parry or Doctor Strange Shield.

Okay, that's pretty fucking good.

And so, like,

I was not paying attention, and I didn't know that the fridge man countered it.

And he is actually immune to Jeff's ult

because Jeff sucked up my whole team and he threw me off the side, but he doesn't throw you hard enough.

And so you can use your E to just dash back to Jeff.

Okay.

So, like, Jeff has to kill himself.

Oh, oh, yeah, no, no, no.

Sometimes, depending on who's in the swallow, if you don't have to kill yourself, you have to kill yourself.

Exactly, right?

If you've been swallowed by Doctor Strange, if you swallowed a Doctor Strange, or if you swallowed an Iron Fist exam, for example, like anyone that can fly in Jefferson, I can just fly right back over.

It doesn't matter, right?

But if you kill yourself, you get them all.

So here's the question: if you're a Jeff player: is you swallow five opponents and like three of your team.

Do you do the sacrifice?

No, you don't have to.

You can can spit out your teammates individually with the right mouse button.

Well, shit.

I didn't know that.

When you swallow like a massive gang, you have two buttons.

One is spit out your team and the other is spit out their team.

Oh, shit.

I didn't even catch that.

Okay.

Well.

Yeah, because otherwise that ult would be fucking terrible.

Okay, okay.

You spit out your team and keep them in.

I didn't know you could do that.

Gotcha.

On top of that, like.

I played like one or two games with him and was just trying to pick him up because I was for healing.

I was mainly using Rocket.

And I was like, let me just try to pick up a couple others just for this.

Went over the balance changes.

They're good.

They're all really good.

They look really small, but they're all pretty good.

Storm's good now.

But more than that,

I sent you an article

right before we started, which is the plan for Marvel Rivals is one character every six weeks.

Yeah.

Forever.

No.

No.

No.

They said

the first bit was a new hero every month and a half to keep everyone excited is currently

the pace they're going with, which is

a lot.

Pretty good.

But there's a previous statement as well where they said future seasons will be substantially smaller than season one, and that

the pace is not going to stay as what it is for now okay so those two are not contradictory season one has four characters in three months it also adds two new game modes

like season one is huge

season one is absolutely massive i think we're disconnecting but that's fine um

and

um

They have Doommatch now, which is just free for all Deathmatch.

Yeah, that was really fun.

Which is awesome.

And it's also like, it's a perfect, like, I would like to practice this character in a situation

that gets real people.

It won't fuck people up.

Although,

if I if I fuck on it, although Doom Match is just kind of like play a melee character,

I've seen

success.

I saw somebody was beating up everybody with Cloak and Dagger.

Oh, word, okay.

In one of my games, the couple I've seen.

What I've discovered is that

mirror matches between

Mr.

Fantastic and Mr.

Fantastic fucking go nowhere

because their skill rotation works out that they are always giving themselves as much shield as the other Mr.

Fantastic can take out.

Okay.

So it just kind of just loops over and over and over.

It's really funny.

So, I mean, if the idea is that there's going to be the characters every month and a half, but the seasons are going to get smaller, I guess there, does that mean there will be character character drops between seasons?

No, what it is is that seasons are currently three months,

and they put a bunch of maps in this one and a new mode, and they're putting four characters.

So, future seasons will have one map,

two characters, etc.

Okay, so the bracketing will change for future seasons, but the pace of dropping will continue.

Okay.

Well, I mean, that's an incredible

amount of content to

promise.

Yeah, the other thing is the Battle Pass came out, and,

you know, I think we talked about this a while ago about Mihoyo, where

if your game makes a billion dollars, it should look like it makes a billion dollars.

And, like, every single element of the interface has changed to fit the Dracula theme.

And they're giving like 10 costumes for like fucking $8 for your Battle Pass.

And the Battle Pass is a joke.

It is so easy to get feels um feels like a halloween event when it's not halloween it feels like there was supposed to be a blade movie coming out or something

it feels like in this three-month span or the next three-month span there was supposed to be a blade movie that existed

but that's not happening yeah and i guess like so considering how they added a bunch of yeah a bunch of new like payload and and like capture stages like how often are those gonna rotate slash change i think they're just gonna keep adding them every season a different stage or something i think they're gonna add like one new level and the the the midtown level is incredible

so is the sanctum centaurus or whatever the fuck you call it the it's great

yeah fucking awesome um i got used to um asgard uh uh with um

with moon knight quite a bit like i have some like favorite points to like pop the uh the ankh where people don't see it initially.

Like the newer stages, I'm like kind of struggling a little bit to find some of those spots.

The Doom match stage with the portals is rough.

It's very

confusing.

You're just meant to get lost.

Yeah.

I had one match where someone picked

Penny and just we were coming out of the base and they were like defending and in the new

Robbie escort stage.

And the Penny just planted bombs and mines right outside the spawn door and webbed it all up.

And then there was a Thor that was basically there.

And between the two, they just kept everyone from coming out of the point.

And because the mines can like four mines or three mines will detonate and kill you in one shot.

And then while those were recovering, the Thor would beat you back into the spawn.

I have seen

a million clips of stuff you can do to people walking out of spawn.

Like I've seen,

I mean, Doctor Strange can just put the portal off the cliff and

you just watch them all kill themselves.

Like how about you motherfuckers open your eyes?

There's a portal.

You're jumping into a pit, dude.

There's also the

Thor railgun.

Where you

Thor has his ult from the prior round, you put the strange portal so that he drops on them as they walk out the spawn.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

The gods.

There's one where

that's pretty crazy.

That's there's one where if you have

if you have one of the maps that has two exits, you can put the strange door on both exits and they can't get out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I also saw one where there's a couple spots in some maps where you can clip the strange door out of bounds and cause people to get trapped and be unable to kill themselves and just run the whole clock.

Oh my god.

Wow.

Until it eventually disappears at the very least.

Yeah, one of the learning things for me is that Penny's little mind layer can be shot.

I did not know that for a long time.

The big web.

Yeah, the biggest thing, you can destroy that.

You have to destroy that.

You must.

Yeah,

the one that I got recently that was like, oh, is that Loki's shift where he heals everyone, they're not just healed, they're actually completely invincible inside his green circles, but you have to shoot the rocks above the circles to destroy it.

Ah, okay, okay.

Yeah.

Um,

no, the uh, uh, it like Leah, learning, learning the maps and, and, and stuff, I feel like, uh, the,

what's the new one where there's, is it, oh, um, I think the Black Panther

capture, point capture one.

Um,

the, like, yeah, there's like, if, like, that, it feels like there's some that are way, way better for, if you're playing, like, a, um, magic or Black Panther or Iron Fist kind of like pick character.

Like, oh, absolutely.

There's some really, really good, like, side paths for, like, sneaking around, grabbing, like, taking out the healer and getting the fuck out of there, harassing the back line and stuff.

Um, and I feel like I suddenly started seeing a lot more Captain America now.

Oh, he got buffed fairly significantly.

Yeah, they changed up a good bit, right?

Because, like, he stands and he holds the front line, yeah, but you know, whereas he wasn't before.

This game,

there's so much shit in this game.

Like, I was dove down this path of watching this guy, like, I forget what his name was on TikTok, but he's just like Adam Warlock fan, 49, some just guy who's always been obsessed with Adam Warlock.

And, like, all right, let me show you.

Did you know if you put melee on your scroll wheel and keep shooting, you can animation cancel every single Adam Warlock shot with a melee attack?

so here's a cob here's a combo if you jump correctly and jump cancel it and he walks up to like mantis and kills her in like fucking 400 frames

just like mar like marvel combos this character and like every day people are figuring out new weird fighting game tech

this game's awesome um

Eventually in ranked, at certain ranks, you get to a point where

you start banning

opposing team characters.

Is it diamond?

That's what I'm like, yeah.

Okay, I was wondering because

I was watching some matches where that was a thing.

And I guess you ban two characters per team or something?

You ban whoever's the most fucked up in the current meta.

Right.

So, like, you were banning Hulk so they didn't have to deal with Iron Man's Hulk synergy.

Yeah, and so this is the league thing, right?

Yeah.

I've never played.

Well, it's a Mober thing.

Generalizing.

Yeah, in general.

In general, yeah.

I've never played anything where I think banning was a part of it.

I feel like I know Smash had stage banning, of course, and stuff.

I hope you play more than three characters.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a clear, when banning is a part of the rule set, that I'm like, oh, you really are not meant to be a specialist at all.

You're meant to be

picking and choosing and switching up.

And I imagine, I guess, in like peak competitive play,

not only are you doing role agnostic like switches and stuff, but I guess like when someone counterpicks to your eye, like a Spider-Man to take out your flyers, then you got to counterpick someone to take out the Spider-Man, right?

And you kind of have that back and forth that that's regularly going.

Yeah,

I'm curious how

the consensus is on how you ban characters across the board and stuff, you know, and what the.

I mean, for a bit, it was like you ban fucking Hella and Hawkeye for sure

because they were just totally dominant.

If you have aim, you're gonna destroy the everybody, yeah.

Interesting, just fuck them

and now they're now they're better, so that works.

So, yeah, having a blast playing Marvel Rivals, it is it.

Oh, it's so good.

Yeah, I'm so happy.

Then I remember this is exactly how I felt when Overwatch came out.

This is exactly the same emotion and level of enjoyment.

So, please, please, God,

don't melt it into sludge.

I can definitely say that

anything is possible, but

for me, I'm enjoying this significantly more than I've enjoyed Overwatch ever.

And a lot of that has to do with the kit character and obviously camera variety, you know, by comparison.

Characters just get to do more.

Yeah, I'm like flyers and web swingers and shit like that.

Like, you have you have a wider variety of kits.

And they're, and that's it.

And they're not, and yeah, they're not afraid to like kind of make a completely different style of character that is not kind of just like a variant on

gun classes, you know?

Um,

I

uh

yeah, I'm I'm I've been I've been working with like Magic as like my kind of like get in and go because like her combo setup is pretty fun.

It's fun, but like I really like Iron Fist's ability to just like get the fuck out, heal, and get back in because essentially if I feel like the healers are not doing a great job,

I mean the choice is either switch to a healer and pick up the slack, which you should do every time.

Or or I mean, or I'll just pick Iron Fist and I'll be like, fuck it.

I'm just going to go harass the back line, get picked up.

Your team is more important than your own personal glory, Wooly.

Come on, pick a healer.

It depends on what's going on, you know?

Depends.

If you have two healers and it's not going great, switching to a third is probably gonna be.

Yeah, you know what's super funny, actually?

Fuck up the.

You know what the fucking meta comp was at least a couple days ago?

It was three tanks and three healers.

Okay, yeah.

Because it's a team, no one can ever die.

Dive comp, as Overwatch used to say.

Yeah, no, I'm.

Depends on what the match is and what's going on and all that.

I'm willing to pick up whatever role I need to.

I've made sure to go and learn

what's necessary.

But in a lot of cases, I feel like I can help a lot better by going in and

fucking up their back line with Iron Fist and getting out than coming in and picking up the heel slack, especially if the DPS isn't really doing that much.

So

you got to make a call.

Please just don't ruin the game.

That's all I want.

You know, like, that's where I'm at.

I'm like, oh, good.

Fun game.

Don't ruin it, please.

Please continue to have it be the same level of quality.

Please, I'm begging you.

And

it'll be fun, too, to see, like, I guess, what the archetypes are going to be.

Because, like, I mean, with...

Fantastic four, things going to be nothing.

Yeah, things going to be, you know,

frontline tank.

I feel like he's going to be what you said last time, which is like the tank's tank.

I mean, he's made out of rocks.

Come on.

Most durability.

And, you know, some weaknesses, I'm sure, to make up for it and such.

Like, you can't just be exactly what Hulk is.

And then, yeah, as a flyer, you know,

is

Human Torch.

I think

his kit.

His kit.

I think Human Torch's kit leaked out.

Fly and beam is what I imagine the deal is going to be.

Let's see.

Launches a fireball that can be split.

Unleashes fire shockwaves to deal damage to nearby enemies.

Turn

flame fields into tornadoes.

Can go faster while flying.

Connects flame shields together and forms a firewall.

Wow.

And

a dive.

So he's like an AoE denial flame person.

Wall.

Okay, interesting.

Huh.

Just fuck up the ground with bullshit.

That's a very interesting kit.

And then, and I guess there's something too to be said about like how fast can this character get back to the point after dying, right?

Man, playing Iron Man for an evening and then playing somebody else is like, oh, yeah, Iron Man

is the biggest example of like, just boost back in, let's go.

And then there's stuff where I'm seeing like with Loki, Loki, like from the spawn, creating as far of a clone as possible and then teleporting into it just to get a little a couple extra steps, you know, is like whatever tech you can, you know?

Oh, people are saying the things kit is also out.

Oh, nice.

Okay.

Oh, here we go.

Even just like with

Moon Knight, grappling the ground straight underneath you, getting a super jump and then

floating forward is like faster than walking speed walk speed.

Okay, here we go.

The things kit.

Furious charge, create a seismic zone by charging forward and moving enemies.

Immunity to knockbacks.

Ultimate is launch lethal force to take down all the enemies in front of you and throw them in the air.

And you can help enemies by giving them and yourself damage reduction.

So it's not a shield.

It's just a straight up like damage, like, you know, help buff.

Allies, you mean?

Yeah, allies.

Okay.

So, yeah, he's about not being able to be moved and moving other people.

So, like, physically pushing them off of the point.

Okay.

Oh, I was going to say earlier with Mr.

Fantastic, yeah, like, I'm surprised his alt is not just

like Luffy

or Merkova.

It kind of is, though, right?

He looks like Bounce Man.

Well, he basically ends up doing what's his name?

Armed and Dangerous.

Again, Winter Soldier.

Winter Soldier does.

He kind of ends up doing what Winter Soldier does, but like less damage, right?

So I figured there is a bit of a goofy trick with Mr.

Fantastic's Bounce Man alt.

Which is it's really, really, really bad if you do it outside.

But if you do it in an area that has like a definitively low ceiling, it becomes unbelievable.

Because you just go bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bang.

It happens faster.

Oh, shit.

Yeah.

Once you hit the roof,

you come back down immediately.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Ah, Luffy Gear 4.

What is that?

That's Bounce Man.

I see.

Okay.

Got it.

It's pretty clear that Reed Richards has been watching anime.

Ah,

okay, okay.

I was thinking of a different Luffy attack.

So, yeah, the

okay, so having a ceiling makes a difference there.

Okay, interesting.

Yeah, Winter Soldier is

another one that's like fucking pretty solid.

I feel like when I feel like I see him.

Oh, it's great.

It's the best.

Getting good picks.

It's also great when you're like, oh, I died.

I have to get back to the point.

And I start hearing, again,

again,

again.

And whether or not that's like a big smile or a huge frown depends on what side that that's on

but every time you hear again you're like either oh fucking sick or oh god damn it come on oh

no

um

yeah what else what else I got up to um oh did you see that um

because of the way the camera over the shoulder position is is set, you're better off aiming melee attacks and dashing forward things or any, or mostly.

You are better off than to the left.

Aiming anything that's not hit scan.

To the right.

A little bit to the right.

Yeah.

Because

the attacks are coming out of your character.

Fucking.

And your character's offset to the left.

Yeah, yeah.

That was huge because I want to, because like with Magic in particular, her dash forward uppercut, you know, was like...

Yeah, it'll hit if you're a little bit to the, it'll miss if you're a little bit to the left.

A little bit to the left.

But if you're a little bit to the right, it'll pick up, you know?

And it's just the camera's perspective.

So, interesting.

It's fascinating.

These pro tips for Marvel Rivals.

Oh, my God.

What else?

The only other thing I did this week,

aside from

we got, oh man.

So.

Baby's beating me up at night, so I'm a little sleepy, but

his like toddler development, he's in that fast mode where every every day there's like a new thing like the word list is going up literally every single day but we also got him like this gigantic spider-man doll

like it's bigger than the baby okay

um and we'll be like okay little man go get spider-man and he'll like he'll like run his ass over and grab his giant spider-man doll and hug the spider-man goes Spider-Man and so fucking cute.

Okay, so are the, is the, that character design is just doing what it's meant to do, right?

Yeah.

That Spider-Man's character design is just meant to reach in to Kid Brain and be like, this is the coolest fucking thing you've ever seen.

Well, the thing, the thing is, is that I was like shocked by is not that he knows that he loves his Spider-Man doll, it's that Spider-Man is a three-syllable word.

So I'm in the kitchen and I'm like, can you go get Spider-Man?

And he will go into the living room to go get Spider-Man.

Right.

They're like, can you give Spider-Man a kiss?

And he goes, nah.

It's adorable.

He's also at the point where he hugs the dog and kisses the dog.

And it's so sweet.

It's the cutest thing.

It's the cutest thing.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

That is all.

Spider-Man, Optimus Prime, Superman.

You know, just

the predominant red and blue.

He's also got a Sonic doll that's like gigantic.

Doesn't give a shit about Sonic.

Not enough red on it.

It's a Spider-Man, Spider-Man situation.

Also, like,

I feel like when you, especially like when you get a bit older, too, like, the Spider-Man's kind of like swinging, traveling, getting around thing is a funner, like...

Oh, it's cool as shit.

It's a funner thing to imagine.

It's even, I'd say it's like funner than flying, you know?

Yeah,

it's way more funny.

Because you're just like, you're like roller coastering around town.

It's great.

Cool.

The only other thing that I did this week is that I did another round of Classic WoW with Ashley Roboto.

Once again, wonderful lady.

I had a great time hanging out with her.

Don't know if we're going to be able to do a stream next week or the week after, but we'll plan something.

And I got controller support working for Classic WoW.

Okay.

There's an add-on called Console Port,

which just completely retrofits the interface and control system to have real controller support.

Now, it is an add-on, it's not official, but it's better than what I had going with Guild Wars 2, so that's impressive.

But fucking around with Guild Wars 2 and Classic Wow, I am reminded of something I kind of forgot about, which is that there's a part of MMOs that have kind of changed in the past decade and it sucks.

And it's that I am playing a massively multiplayer online game to play

with other people, right?

In a large, disconnected community, right?

When I play FF14,

nobody talks in that game.

You're all talking with your buddies in Discord that you met to do a raid that one time.

But like general chat in FF14 is dead.

It is empty.

Apparently, I was talking to people.

Apparently, retail WoW is similar.

It's not very, not very chatty.

But when I was playing Guild Wars and WoW Classic,

I'm like, oh, hey, where is this thing?

Because you're spending a lot of time in the open area instead of instanced zones.

There's people in there.

Okay.

And they talk.

Well, if people aren't chatting with you in FF14, you could always stalk them.

And then we'll talk about that in a little bit.

You can always show up.

We'll talk about that in a bit.

I don't know if that's news.

Yeah, that's what I'm referring to.

That's what I'm getting at.

But

it's like one of those things.

And it's like, anybody who played World of Warcraft on the Horde side from 2004 to 2008 or 9 remembers something called the Barons chat,

which was

the worst chat room you've ever seen in your entire life.

It was one of those things that was accidentally designed to be the worst thing you've ever seen, in which horde players were corralled into one zone called the Barons from level 10 to 30, which is crazy.

That's an enormous amount of the leveling experience.

And

there were very few flight paths, which is the game's like transit hub kind of thing.

So you were having to run all over the place to various disconnected parts of the zone all the time.

So you were spending 10, 15, 20, 25 minutes just moving around from place to place for hours all night, which meant that since half the horde population was in there,

it was like 4chan just tunneled into a live chat.

Okay, it was beat.

It was dog shit.

It was the most toxic, mean, Chuck Norris fucking pile of shit.

Wait, and so Alliance didn't have this?

They did not have it.

Their zones were more split up.

They didn't have a unified 10 to 30 zone.

You usually have a five-level zone or an eight-level zone.

But because there was the North Barons and the South Barons, but they were all the same zone, you spent so goddamn long in there.

You spent like a week, two weeks in there.

Okay.

And

having this incessant pile of shit just running on the side of your screen while you were vibing to the music was awesome.

Okay.

It was great.

Okay.

It was way,

way,

way preferable

to

the general chat in any given Final Fantasy zone, which is nothing.

Which is like literally

nothing.

This is all very strange because my impression, given how I've seen not only my old roommates and stuff play WoW and stuff, but even just me touching Ragnarok online for a second or going back to Grawl in the day, general chat is just a thing to be ignored completely as it runs, is the impression I thought most people were under.

Like, you're not going to participate in that.

You're going to go do the thing you're trying to do or meet the people you're trying to meet, but that's a fucking nightmare in all games at all times, no?

So it depends because the main issue is that WoW has a very large open space to exist in.

Right?

Like

it takes a minute or two to run somewhere.

Like there's just a lot of map that you're constantly traversing.

And so your absolute dog shit, Chuck Norris meme chat, combined with actually seeing people playing the game alongside you and having the opportunity to ask them for help or offer to help them creates that MMO feel

of

you're playing a game with other people as like a disconnected, like simultaneous whole.

Huh.

Okay.

I, I, yeah, I'm just thinking I'm like, those,

again, like, my reference points are these, these random ones, but like I, Ragnarok, you get into that main area and it's just like, this doesn't, like, fuck that.

I'm not,

it's just I couldn't speak to Ragnarok.

Everybody's trying to sell some shit.

Everyone's idling around the big middle and it's just, it's just nonsense.

It's complete nonsense.

You're insane to stand around and try to parse information out of that.

Yeah, when I was playing

a little less populated and maybe, you know, you'll have an experience.

When I was playing Guild Wars 2 earlier in the week, it was similar, that people in there were chatting

in Map Chat, which is their general chat,

and they would announce if a certain boss was up.

And I asked a question in chat, and it got answered, which is wild.

I don't think I've ever like I have spoken to more individual persons about the game or whatever in WoW and Guild Wars 2 over the past week than I did for the entirety of Endwalker.

Like the two-year period in Endwalker, because, like, why would I talk?

I mean, we're going to run an instance.

We're going to run a dungeon.

Don't talk.

Why would you talk?

Shut up.

Just run the dungeon as fast as you can.

So, you know, I would say that the

battle hub in six, right, in Street Fighter 6.

Yeah, it definitely has that.

It's that.

Yeah.

It's just that.

Non-people coming out, getting salty, talking shit to each other.

You're like, wow, what happened there?

That's

anyway.

I am not interacting with it.

But you just glance and it out.

You're completely right.

Yeah.

It is just like fighting games.

Okay.

Because the battle hub is like dramatically improved by that chat scroll going by.

Someone's real salty.

Yeah, because it creates that situation.

Because going to play, like, let's say I wanted to go play Shadows of Mistara at the arcade, right?

It is more fun to play Shadows of Mistara at the arcade by yourself in a full arcade than it is an empty arcade.

Sure.

The vibe is just better.

Maybe, maybe someone will be like, can I hop on this with you?

Right.

And then, you know, you also occasionally see messages of just like,

oh shit, like, how do you block that setup?

You know, or some shit or whatever.

And like, people actually be helpful.

And it's like, oh, that's nice too.

You know.

You know,

but I do,

yeah, every time I'm just thinking back to my roommates with like any of the bigger games and stuff, it was just there was no interacting with that.

You just stood around, waited for people to meet up, and then you went off.

Well, that's because, you know, that's because

they were in the

part of an MMO that caused me to stop playing FF-14.

Catching up is more fun than being current.

Because being current is scheduling for people to hang out and doing hard content and all that stuff.

Whereas

getting, like catching up to the front is hanging out, doing things,

chilling, vibing.

That's

for

that's not a hard, fast rule, though.

Because while you obviously that depends on any particular person's level of enjoyment.

Because you fall into the category of MMO player that is like...

again,

like on the cutting edge of the content and

what's going on and like also doing stuff with your guild.

I think I know more people that are social FF14 players than grinders.

Yeah, I know.

I know more people that just meet up and chat and hang out.

Is that I talked to some of my FF14 people about this and like the social FF14 players are also like disconnected.

From the rest of the game.

Like everything in 14 is like segmented.

People are in their own groups with their own friends hanging out.

They're either in their own groups or they're in like designated locations.

Right?

Like, I mean, do you want to do you want to do like, you want to fucking cyber with a cat boy in the middle of town?

Well, you're going to go to Limsa.

That's where you're going to go.

So I personally, because of my tastes, I don't hate the idea of a game that is like asymmetrical single-player, you know?

Oh, absolutely.

But if you want that group feeling, yeah, you're going to have to have these town square kind of moments.

Yeah, and it's just, it's really interesting because I've played a bunch of MMOs now to some degree.

And

it's that vibe of being a person in a big community space, even if you're not talking to them, even if you're not interacting with them.

Like is is something that I always knew was something that was kind of missing from 14 but like it's really put a pin on it

Playing Guild Wars and and WoW.

And it kind of makes me like, I would like a new MMO to come out in WoW style that is not WoW.

Can we do that?

Can that Net Ease Warhammer thing exist and be good?

Can we do that, please?

Well, that would be nice.

But I think for the same reasons you describe

solo queuing in like Apex or any of these other games being hell,

people want to tang with their friends more than they want what you're describing.

Oh, absolutely.

But here's the thing.

The friends that I have in FF14 that have become since then, like, good friends of mine, because I've known them for eight or nine years and we've been hanging out every single fucking week and I've hung out with them like in the States and whatnot,

is because I needed people to run an alliance raid.

So I went into looking for group or I went into general or I went into whatever.

I was like, does anybody want to run this fucking thing and queue up instead of just using the auto duty finder right

but i don't think that that kind of social situation is like significantly kneecapped by an automated system that you just punch in and get to the content really fast i do i do have a hard time imagining like a design team being like oh look at this bullshit scrolling nonsense toxic chat let's fucking go we want that let's put the you know i don't know street fighter seemed to to know what the fuck they were doing i i i feel it like i imagine their thing the idea is that in their head it'd be like, oh, it'd be a helpful, you know, nice place where people can suddenly make friends where they didn't know they could and, you know, kind of encourage something that doesn't actually reflect what the player-based vibes are like.

You know,

huh?

Well, okay.

It's, it's fascinating.

It's just like, it's, it's this, it's this straight.

I'm totally in love with discovering or like feeling the vibes of like different social environments in different games.

Yeah.

That have like large multiplayer components.

They're so different.

Street Fighter VI's Battle Hub feels like an arcade.

Yeah,

the shit talk and the discussion is

very accurate to an arcade.

Well, an American arcade.

Minus the part where you go outside and people are smoking and having a, you know.

Okay, so here's the thing:

you know, they're smoking.

They're just allowed to smoke in the arcade now.

Yeah, I guess so.

But you got to have that, you know, that out front, like chilling and talking shit kind of corner, you

Would you like to buy some drugs?

No, thank you.

I'm good.

Someone, you know, someone snuck a couple PBRs in their backpack.

Dude, I was talking to a page about this, about like, you know, places the kids hang out.

Because we got a boy.

He'll go hang out in places we don't want him to, right?

And I'm just like, man, my parents were totally right.

That arcades that I wanted to go hang out were absolute shitholes.

And people absolutely tried to sell me drugs.

And when I would come home, be be like, no, no, it was just, no, I just played, no, like, oh, no, mom and dad were 100% on the ball with that.

Yeah, I mean, you're thinking of, and you're thinking of that, that one up by Shadduge, right near the bridge.

Oh, yeah, dude, that place was.

I know, I know the one near me.

It was grimier and shittier than you would expect for being in a suburb.

I mean, the one near me had its moments.

There absolutely, like I said, there was the dogs that pulled up and the,

you know, trying to sniff around for the package drop that was nearby.

But I feel as if it was kind of offset because there was an arcade, but then there were also

a microplay and a comic store, which were also

like, you could go hang out there and play games for half an hour there, too.

Yeah, the arcade in Shadow Gay was attached to a bar.

It was directly underneath a bar.

Yeah, yeah, 222.

Which is like, well, this is obviously going to cause trouble.

It did, and it was awesome.

Yeah, no,

when your clientele is kids after school and drunken adults going upstairs to be like, no, I'm going going to play some NBA jams.

Teenagers with good fake IDs.

There you go as well.

That then go back down to the arcade to get super pissed about king throws.

Yeah.

No, we had a little rotation of like microplay, arcade, and then comic book shop.

And like people would kind of just bounce around between all three, you know, get a puts in, and then like head back over and play a bit or go back to the Foos Ball and one or the other.

So you kind of spent, like, it was like a block where you just kind of moved around the block after school.

I also have a wider topic on this where it's like,

so you know, the trap of it was better in my day nonsense?

Except it never was.

Except it never was.

Yeah,

the Norman Rockwell trap.

I do feel there is something that has been lost from literally all social video games because of the creation of Discord.

It has made it really, really easy to do voice chat, like like for for raids or for

comms.

You don't have to get a Team Speak server or anything like that.

But it has also enabled the absolute most dog shit scenario of, hey, how do I find out information on this topic?

Join the Discord.

By the way, we deleted that shit.

It's gone.

Like, can you just have a website?

No, fuck.

Can you have a web forum?

Can you have a web forum that this shit will stay up, please?

Yeah, I have to say, no,

of the, all, all the indie games I've booted up where it says join the Discord to stay up to date, I've like never clicked that button.

I don't want to permanently add a clutter to my Discord side that I'm never really going to check and get pinged on here.

Everybody, you know, that's not great.

That's not great.

A website you can at least go to, take a look at, and, you know,

yeah.

Also, the...

I'm remembering the time when we were laughing because Splatoon had no voice chat and then when they eventually said, okay, get your phone and have it in your laps

and and then why not just use discord and then pair the thing that your pair your head facet while you're playing it was crazy you know it's because nintendo's not going to shell out money for the servers or whatever right uh now you're like yeah discord completely deletes the need for all of that and then it all it also like it's it's inherently insular and like i love talking with my friends and i'm so glad that when i talk to my friends i don't have to deal with the like the worst dog shit opinion I've ever heard in my life.

Just go, whoa, right underneath.

But sometimes there's value to that.

Because Cause, like, I still think about

how the first interaction I ever had with Ultra David was him being like, the training stage has to stay.

It's good for the players.

And I'm like, that sucks, David.

No one likes that.

And like, if I was just chilling in my fucking disc,

he's super fucking lost.

Lawyer, smart man, smarter than me.

Yeah, right.

Fuck the training stage.

Love you, Ultra David.

You're great.

But

if I was just chilling.

He laughed at my pulls, Pat.

He laughed at my pulls.

I was trying to get Makoto, and I got Get Agent, and he laughed.

You pull like shit.

You pull like shit, loser.

But if I had just been hanging out in my Discord, I would have just grabbed a tweet and shown it to my friends and be like, yo, check out this dog shit take by fucking Ultra David.

And there would have been no interaction there.

Yeah, I guess so.

I guess so.

I do think as well, though, that with the the rise, well, one, the fact that Discord drops right over your game also makes it extra easy.

I don't use that shit.

Oh, yeah.

I hate it.

I hate it.

I've used it a couple of times

and found it to be useful.

Like, when I did, like, yeah, you know, like, I think like, what was it like, Phasmophobia or like Among Us and shit like that.

But I'm also, I here's, and I guess here's the ultimate thing is, like, we are on diverging paths because

you are leaning into like you know

social tweet tweeting and

chatting with people and keeping up and stuff.

And I'm leaning away.

Yeah, which is which considering our personality types is maybe the funniest thing that's ever happened.

I am leaning away aggressively to improve my day-to-day happiness.

And it's working.

So yeah.

Well, what helps me is when I see everyone else be like dog shit and and stupid, I'm like, hey, you know what?

I'm doing all right.

Okay.

Okay.

I just, yeah, I'm just kind of like, I'm, I'm enjoying life outside of this whole thing, you know, and

yeah.

I felt what it was like to be too locked into it and

on all on all forms, on all accounts, you know, keep up with what I got to, but for the most part.

Oh, one other thing that I want to say about Discord is that certain games

are like their balance has been actively ruined by Discord.

How so?

And the number one that I can think of, easy, is Dead by Daylight.

So Dead by Daylight has no voice chat or in-game communication of any kind during matches.

Because even if you play with your friends, you're supposed to not be able to talk to each other.

Because proxy.

And the game is based around that.

And when you play with friends and you have a four stack and you are all in Discord, the killer in DBD does not have a fucking chance in hell.

Right, right, right.

They are so fucked.

Yeah.

I mean, the difference between the

my only real experience with this, like I said, was Overwatch and Apex queuing.

But the difference between queuing in a group versus queuing in, like getting matched up against like a group of people where there's like a bunch of solos and like two people together is insane just you know we're talking calling out what we see everywhere pinging is unnecessary because you're literally just like up behind us you know um here comes star-lord whatever you're just the whole the level of communication and the improvement to the movement overall is impeccable and like i have seen teams coordinate on rivals sometimes in a way where i wonder if they're queuing together

so if you're queuing with together you can only other five people who are queuing together.

Yeah, that's what that's usually the deal.

That's what it's just if you are coming in with a six

star can be matched around six stacks.

A hundred percent.

That's what it ought to be.

But I've had a couple games where the coordination was just impeccable, and I guess they were just like on top of it, but it felt like they were, you know, communicating outside almost, you know.

Oh, you know what?

There is a great post in our chat right now, and they point out League of Legends.

So, League of Legends and Dota, I believe, have in-game voice chat

that no one will use.

No one's sane.

Okay.

It's a lot more effective to use in-game voice chat in a MOBA.

But

don't.

Don't ever let them talk to you.

Ever, ever, never, ever.

Don't let anyone in league talk to you with their voice.

Are you insane?

Yes, it's open night, open mic night at the minstrel show.

I'm assuming I turned off voice chat.

I'm assuming that's what happened because no one ever talks and I hear nothing.

And I forget if I actually went and did that myself or if that's just because the way it's the way I believe that Marvel Rivals does have voice chat and I also turned it off in a second.

It was the first option I fucked on.

Okay, yeah.

So it could be those games where just people using voice chat to communicate with each other.

And

you set it to push to talk,

and then you unbind the keybind,

and then you drag that shit to zero volume, and you're like, yeah, now.

Yeah, anyway, but that's a very different experience of queuing together versus solo for sure.

Yeah, never talk to anyone in League of Legends.

Don't do it.

Just don't talk to them at all.

How about never talk to anybody ever under any circumstances?

Oh, sometimes it's nice.

Nah, I'm good.

Oh, man.

Did you see

there's a thread on the subreddit, and it was about how the new season of League has made the game even more toxic?

Why is that?

Because there is now a first blood achievement that gives the person who gets the first kill an even bigger bonus than usual.

So if you are the first person to die, the incentive for your team to go nuts on you is super high now.

Even more than normal.

God.

Just

man.

What a fucking crash course.

Here's a list of reasons why I don't play video games.

You know, like I get this.

That's crazy.

That's great.

Cool.

Cool.

Very cool.

Yeah, that's it for my week this week.

If you want to see more of my crap this week, you can go down to twitch.tv slash patstares at.

Tomorrow we're going to be playing Marvel Rivals and Smite 2.

That's going to be a sponsored stream.

And the remainder of the week is going to be Metal Gear Solid 2.

We're going to try and beat it.

If

the Nintendo Switch 2 has a direct

on Thursday, then I will move shit around to accommodate that.

But who knows?

I'm surprised, speaking of banning characters, that there hasn't been a game where the team could just vote to kick the

person on the team off the team.

Oh, there's a lot of games you can do that.

Can you?

Can you just go like everyone votes, get rid of this person?

Yeah.

Okay.

And but what happens is that you end up reporting somebody who is bad at the game.

Oh, oh, sorry.

For fear.

I don't mean for abuse.

I don't mean reporting.

I mean, as a game feature, remove this team member from the team.

I don't.

I mean any game that has a server, you can kick them off the server.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm specifically talking about as a intended game feature and not as a report for toxicity or bullshit.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's that's an incredibly common feature that is in hundreds of games.

Oh, really?

Okay, then I have not escaped.

Yeah, if you're in my party, get the fuck out of here.

Gotcha.

Okay.

You know what this whole conversation makes me think of?

How fucking Dark Souls.

Oh, no, that's not the name of that game.

Elden Ring Nightfall

is a solo or three-player game.

Like, I remember seeing those trailers and seeing people talk about it.

I was like, oh, please don't be fucking mandatory.

Don't make it Dark Souls Apex Legends.

Please.

It's like, no, you can play it solo.

Night, it's Night Rain, not Nightfall.

Oh, my God.

There's too many.

Okay, looks like it's a standard feature.

And in most cases, you are kicking people instead of reporting them.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

Like, the number one reason I would kick people in FF14 out of my party is they disconnected.

Right.

And it's like,

I need to replace you.

By

huh.

Online video games.

What a novelty.

It's so strange.

It's so strange to have this talk with you.

No, hold on.

That's not true.

Okay.

All right.

You don't even believe that when you say it because online video games includes fighting games.

Of course, of course, of course.

I don't care about communicating with the other people.

I care about just jumping in and playing against them.

That's kind of what I mean.

You just want to fight against hyper-intelligent robots.

The entire discussion around the communication aspect of this more or less falls on like a, yeah, I'm not trying to look for that when I want to play a game online with other people.

I kind of just want to play.

You know,

it's just, I don't know.

I get it,

but

that's why I'm not going to know about that feature.

I don't know what to tell you.

Well, I'll keep filtering in information about this genre into the podcast for at least a couple more weeks, probably.

Gotcha.

Until I get tired.

Okay.

Yeah.

What's going on with Woolly over

in Versus Land?

Not a ton.

No, it's just we like it reset the clock.

Wooly's an alien, you know?

Wooly,

this is a strange discussion because usually I'm the alien.

Like in most scenarios,

I'm talking to my wife, or my parents, or you, or any of my friends, are like, Pat, why are you like this?

You're so weird.

But it's very straightforward in that it's just like, what I want out of video games is

at sometimes in diametric opposition to what the majority of others are looking for.

The experience I'm seeking is sometimes completely the opposite of what everybody's looking for.

Well, there isn't that.

And I'm used to those.

I'm like, I got to go, okay, right.

It's me.

It's a me.

There is a genuine reason for this I could anticipate, which is

you are extraordinarily comfortable

exploring a third space in meat space.

So you have your three spaces, which is

work or education.

And then Starbucks.

And then either Starbucks or the ball

or the club or a bookstore, whatever.

Sure.

And you are very, very comfortable going out into strange and new meat space third spaces, such as the Fighting Game Meetup.

Oh, boy.

Right.

And in the Fighting Game Community Meetup, with everyone's meet there,

you are engaging in this behavior.

You're just face-to-face.

Sure.

Yeah.

Whereas I don't want to deal with people's physical proximity, smell, or eyesight.

I just want them to be comfortable little text boxes.

And so I find it much easier and much like more comfortable to engage in that third space via via a chat window?

Uh, yeah, I guess so.

Um, stop saying meet, meet.

I think as well, like, whatever the game is, because, like, even if I'm playing a match locally at a meetup of some kind, and if someone was like bugging me,

you know, while that was happening, I'd be like, okay, I'm trying to play.

I don't want to, you know,

and that kind of

too.

Yeah.

Like, because, like, listen, if someone's, if someone is, is,

is being a stupid shithead in your favorite online game, your options are leave, ban, block, mute, right?

But you're missing the best option of all, which is standing up, turning around, going, yo, shut the fuck up.

Right, right, right, right.

And making everything kind of weird, and everyone stares at you and the person, and the incentive for them to shut up is really high.

Yeah, okay, okay.

And then,

that pause

has to play out pregnant as it is for a minute.

Yeah.

And then everyone goes, ooh, ooh.

All right, back to this.

And then that person's either going to escalate or calm down.

I mean, chances are not escalate, but then everyone else goes, yo, what the fuck with that dude?

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

He kept Z-targeting my colostomy bag.

And I don't like that.

I want my colostomy bag to be left alone.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I guess the nature of the conversation as well also highlights that

a new experience or new online thing will come out and

the social aspect of it will be what you're going to seek out for some people.

Like I mentioned, some of my friends are social FF-14 players that are going to hear about a new

online experience where the social element is worked into everything.

and they're like, Cool, I'm looking for that out of the game.

And for me, there's also a second part to that, which is the social element in a brand new game is always a dice roll, and it is always fascinating to see how

it rolls out.

And one of the things that, like, Marvel Rivals has shown is that Marvel Rivals is a free-to-play game that appeals to the lowest common denominator of Marvel fans that you can play on Steam, where you can change your name to anything.

So it has the worst usernames of any game I have ever seen.

And that is awesome.

Just the absolute worst fucking usernames I've ever seen in my life.

It's incredible.

I guess if I was.

Yeah.

And

you have to pay a ticket cost to rename yourself or whatever.

Anyway, whatever.

Not much less.

I love it.

But I guess I'm just thinking, like, if I was like, you know, I don't know, playing me some devil may cry.

And then I had to, the only way to do do so was to be like in a chat room with people kind of like with text scrolling by the side.

Yeah.

And then like other people are like part of the experience, but not really.

Like they're like the like the co-ops levels and stuff.

I'd be like, okay, well, I'm here to play the game.

And

I have to admit that

element of it is kind of like,

it's not adding.

I can just play and enjoy it on my own, but it can detract depending on how bad that gets.

I mean, I have to tell you, though, there is something that I forgot about during this conversation, and that is level of patience and level of tolerance.

Because you and I,

actually,

regardless of our personal preference and what games we want to play, do spend a significant amount of our time playing games with an absolutely piece of shit text scroll to the side of the screen.

Just the worst, just the dumbest shit you've ever seen.

And unlike these other situations, the ability to not interact with that is not available.

You just, you just,

oh my God.

You've never been more right.

I'm oversaturated with it.

Yeah, you get it all the time.

This is not special to me.

This is not unique.

I'm oversaturated with it.

My experience is not a default one.

That makes, yeah, you're super right, dude.

It's completely, that's a huge part of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If I was not getting that in any other way, there would be something very different.

But because it's the regular, it's not at all.

Yeah.

Because, like, I'm at this place now

where there are certain people.

There are certain people that I recognize from my chat, and I'm seeing them, like their name pop up.

And I'm like, I am so ready for the worst opinion I have ever seen.

Okay.

Like, I'm like so excited.

Like, this is the same mentality that me and Paige both have, where we're like, oh, man, tell me about your cult, please.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

The Earth.

Oh,

the Ice Wall.

Absolutely.

You're hearing my opinions on gaming and all that stuff are filtered because of the experience I have, which involves usually there being a scroll of opinions.

That's 100%.

It's like, why would I play a game where I can enjoy the peanut gallery, where

I'm being forced to hang out with the peanut gallery for fucking 18 hours a week?

I mean, you should like, yo, cyberpunk, I'm playing and I'm doing all the offline,

you know, missions and shit.

And I'm like, yeah, I'm just chilling.

I'm running around having a decent time in that, you know.

There's the on time and then the off time.

And it's a different experience, you know?

And like, yeah, Cyberpunk is so perfect for this because you can just be like, well, this is a mandatory ad for your eyes.

Is this fucking tech scroll?

It has to just go.

It's like, you got your eyes discount.

And

this is the price you pay.

I mean, there were some real like hilarious moments.

So I'll just take the baton here and switch it over.

But

playing Cyberpunk

this last session,

I was kind of just like Roland.

And then Reggie was the one who stepped in and went, what the fuck?

And just started going ham on people because it was like, okay, there's overall an understanding of like main missions and then

like some fixer gigs,

side jobs, but like overall, there's a priority list of what's worth doing and what's not worth doing.

And there's just a whole lot to it.

oh yeah it's a whole thing but there was like you know in particular there's like a moment where it's like okay leaving the apartment it's like oh shit stop there's a side mission that oh there's so much that you can only get with your neighbor right now that might be gone if you wait too long and it's like uh okay

what are we doing does it have to be right now yeah okay all right it has to be right now it has to be right now and then you go in and then you start it up and you talk to some cops and then you go and then it's like all right which door that i took a second i couldn't i wasn't sure which door it's like okay the one they're in front of all right let's go to to that one.

And then went in and like, great.

Talked to, tried to talk to some guy.

All right, cool.

Nothing.

Come back later.

And it was like, okay, come back later, but not too much later.

Because if you wait too long, then it's going to be God.

So you have to just, you know, like, okay, all right.

So, you know, came back later enough in the time to like get an answer.

Went in, had a cool conversation with the character.

Seemed like a pretty good side mission.

And then walking out, it was like, all right, well, um, the logical thing was after talking to him, the cops that told me to send him to go speak, they're over there.

So let's go finish off the quest.

And I went and started talking to them, and it was like, No, no, no, no, no, don't go talk to them.

You're supposed to go somewhere else, and you're supposed to find another path before because otherwise that might make a bad ending for the quest.

And it's like, oh, it didn't do that.

And it's like, oh, because you're supposed to highlight the quest in the map to make sure that you know that there's an alternate path to go instead of just going to the direct quest giver waiting outside the door.

There is a okay.

Well,

this is this is the threat.

This is the threat.

And

I really feel, I felt really bad

for anybody who streamed Undertale, not at release,

like anything other

than the day it came out or the week it came out.

Because I remember when Matt and Liam were playing it

and like they killed Toriel and the fucking backlash on that was like the most outrageous fucking shit ever to the point where they had to start over.

And like awful.

And I remember when Paige streamed Undertale,

she was handling that.

And I just took this box right here and I put it over here.

And I'm like, I'm going to handle that.

Oh, yeah.

Because the level of

backseat nightmare was

like, even from like well-meaning, like chill people

was so intense.

Undertale is particularly insane because of like the fact that RPGs are about fighting bosses and beating them.

Not this one, dumb idiot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And also,

it's a lightning rod, you know, stream slash LP where it's like, you killed my comfort character.

And the people

and I care more than the average viewer.

And also, I might, I'm someone who doesn't actually regularly show up.

I just show up because of this thing.

So I don't really care about your shit.

I'm just here and I have these strong opinions opinions and I'm, you know, and you're just out of place ultimately.

And you're like, right, I'm like, right, okay, like, you, you,

it's, it's the, it's the worst version of it, unfortunately.

This, um, this is, so there were a lot of reasons I stopped playing BG3 in Act 3.

One was that LP took so much longer than I thought it was going to,

but

the, the tipping point, like the final, final tipping point was

going into uh Baller's Gate, the city itself, and dealing with

the most incessant,

no, you have to bring this character to this room because they have a special interaction.

Like every single 10 feet was like, no, no, no, no, you got to swap out a star.

No, no, no, you got to have Shadow Heart.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's what Spin got in your playthrough because you were using those characters.

I was spending like more time talking to chat and like figuring out who I was going to roll forward the next 10 feet with in my party and then retrofitting the party and then getting them up to gear

than I was like listening to people talk.

And I was like, Jesus Christ.

And I mean, you know, the result in this particular instance I'm describing was one where like the,

you know, the back room, so to speak, the, the war room, rightfully were just like, all right, chats doesn't know what they're talking about.

You know, just the emote only.

And I was like, hold on, hold on.

What is actually happening right now?

And I said, hold on, let me see.

Like, no, turn it back on.

And it was like, you've started the conversation, but walk away.

And I was like, go back and talk to them.

And maybe there's a way to save the fact that it's already started down this bad path.

And then it was like, no, you couldn't.

And it was like, okay, so they were correct for just going, you guys are problem.

Like, there's people that are like, I'm remembering the game before 2.0 happened and are making things

based on the wrong unupdated version of the game.

That's my favorite.

It's a lot.

It is a lot, you know?

And like, so there was overall a thing of like I kind of walked away from that going like okay, so

you know there are

moments where

like don't go too fast through some of these quests, right?

But the whole thing is that this game is so long that you do have to choose

how to progress and make calls.

And you can't

and you can't take too long on your calls.

You got to move, right?

In fact, not moving quickly enough is also what results in Jesse Cox getting killed because I do the side quest where you got to drive him because his balls are on fire.

And I'm pulling up to the stop, and I swerved a bit too slow.

And the, you know, it was a mission with an invisible timer.

Didn't know.

And yeah, he's gone.

And it was like, oh, try to save NPCs.

And it's like, well,

I'm going to do what I can.

It's okay.

As I play the game.

It's all good, man.

And

anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it was just, it was like a wild kind of like, go fast, but not too fast.

Slow down here, but not too slow.

Know when to go, roll hold him, know when to fold him.

I'm sorry his dick burned off.

Yeah, it's like, hey, man, we're just the one that when, especially with that apartment one, the neighbor.

I didn't think the Jesse Cox beef was going to end up with you letting his dick burn down, but I mean, here we are.

Yeah, well, he made fun of my revenge

lightning sword decoration that one time.

Oh, he did?

I did.

On Co-optional, I had the Revengeance pre-order sword with the Lightning

Tesla Zap thing.

Yeah.

And he's just like, you got like a Lightning dildo back there behind you?

I was like, now it's fine.

Now your dick's on fire, bro.

No, it's a Revengeance pre-order merch.

God damn it.

Don't make fun of my anime wall scroll, right?

Please, come on.

But anyway, no.

Yeah, but it was particularly funny because I kind of am like, okay,

there are going to be great quests, great quests that

it's got you juggling hoops because like your neighbor, that's a pretty cool quest with the guy.

But it's like, yeah, and bad outcomes are just going to be like, they're just going to happen, you know?

And it's been made, and like...

Sometimes it doesn't, you're not going to have a rhyme or reason to it.

Sometimes it'll be like, oh, stop, pay attention, make sure you don't miss the obvious cue.

And then other times it's like, well, at this point it's been made evidently clear just by the amount it's like did you send the body back to vic damn that sucks you're gonna miss out on a cool thing

because if you didn't do that then you would have gotten the cool thing but it's like yeah i guess i just didn't think sending the bullet-riddled body back to the family and dropping it on his mom's front lawn would be the best move maybe vic could do do something there, but it's like, nah, it doesn't matter.

I don't know what different families want with bodies.

It doesn't matter.

Bad decision, bad content.

Here we go.

You know?

And it's like, why aren't you any good at cyberpunk, you stupid idiots?

You can't, you can't go blind.

You can't go blind and have that experience where you get it all.

You just can't.

You know?

Yeah.

And

I will say that, like, admittedly, you know, imagine double-blind

souls for the first time, right like you're gonna be like

overwhelmed probably and relying on outside information to to

make sense of everything unless you've you've you know been intimately familiar with the genre before um

but uh it was it was particularly funny to have just this instance of like you know the the the quest end giver right there that felt like a logical thing to do was actually too comfortable of a turn to make.

that was the and and and you know what, man, you know, these

handfuls of decisions that are that are just like, yep,

they seem normal in the time, but they're actually the heaviest decisions ever.

You know what, man?

It's all worth it.

You know what it's all worth it for?

That moment that someone tells you something that's just like completely wrong, and then you click a button, and then the description of that thing is like in big text on the screen in a way that's impossible to not read.

And you're like, is it?

Is it?

Like, every time I go to the Battle Pass and Marvel Rivals on stream, someone goes, You just need to unlock the costume.

Just unlock the costume now.

And I just like slowly read out.

You must unlock all items on this page before unlocking the costume.

Yeah.

It's so worth it.

Because it's like, oh, I get up in the morning for this shit.

Because it turns out some pages you can just buy the costume, but other people can't.

Yeah, the ones with the costume at the top.

Yeah, yeah, you can.

So this, but I mean, I've had that same moment of like going, oh, how come I can't?

Weird.

Um, yeah.

Anyway, it's a, it's a back and forth.

It's a back and forth.

Uh,

shit, what was I gonna say?

Uh, anyway, you know, there's

fuck me, something else about cyberpunk, but I think it's gone.

Um,

yeah, it'll come back.

You're playing a bunch of that game.

Um, pretty, pretty cool.

Uh, um, yeah, the

ability to just kind of like

pare down the information and get it has helped a good bit.

Now that the game is rolling full speed.

Yeah,

I...

Oh, that's what I was going to say.

Right, it just came back.

So

I'm definitely aware too, just and look kind of like overall feedback in general with

LP stuff has been that like one of my one of one of the biggest issues I think a lot of people have is just like my pace and that I that should improve

by whatever means and so in some cases I'm kind of looking at it going like

okay objectively if I'm playing like

Phoenix right

I don't know how much faster that could have gone except for zero banter and answering everything right away.

And it's like, yeah, no, be smart on every puzzle prompt ever.

Yeah.

So let's,

the stopping to think about literally how to solve the puzzle has to add some time.

And a couple jokes and a couple of banter moments have to add some time as well.

But otherwise, I'm like, we're just going straight through.

So like barring mashing through the dialogue as well without trying to read it out.

That adds time.

I mean, it's a visual novel.

Don't do that.

Exactly.

Right.

But I'm just kind of putting together, I'm like, why is it, even in a best case scenario when time is of the essence, I'm still trying to go forward, how that still affects it?

Because I'm like, at the end of the day, that was a 52-episode LP or so.

And, you know, each one is about 45 minutes in the end.

So that's still way more hours than 22, which people usually play things right in.

And it's like,

well, the lag there is on

thinking, occasional banter.

We didn't have a ton of banter, a little bit of banter every now and then, mostly reading, and then voice acting.

There's not much that could be done that doesn't overall make it a worse thing, a worse experience to LP.

But with something like Cyberpunk, so that it's so open-ended, I've kind of decided I'm just like, okay, it's also very systems dense.

It's very systems dense.

And so what I'm kind of doing, I'm like, okay, well, I know that there's no, sometimes there's just going to be no way for someone who expects something to go faster based on their memories of that to actually get that experience.

And I'm not going to mash through things to go at the speed that you do by yourself.

So

what I am doing is kind of going, well, what are my goals for the session?

And let's see if that's a realistic amount of things to accomplish.

So the heist is a giant mission that

could take one or two.

I wanted it to happen in one.

And we did, you know, and I'm kind of just going and going like, all right, at the very least, every couple episodes, you'll hear me saying, my goal for the next couple sessions is, or for this session, is to do this many missions, perhaps, this types of things.

And so you can see more or less, like, this is what I think can fit in the timeframe we have.

And I hope that while that doesn't change change the speed at which things are going to go, it makes it make more sense why it takes as long as it does.

Because I think as a matter of perspective, like my own lag on it, like

has a certain amount of an effect.

But looking at it like straight up breaking it down, I'm like.

There's a lot more time there that literally cannot be shaved unless you're not getting an LP at all.

You know?

Yeah.

I would, if I were you, I would not change anything at all.

And you should do things at your own comfort.

And part part of that is that you should do you and the other part is that I play a fun little game when you start new LPs in which I try and mark down the date that you will finish them okay um

and

uh sometimes I'm right and I think that's really fun okay interesting um I had the disco one down to the week

and it was like fucking yes

I mean, what I will say is that like, yeah, I think it might help to just set expectations a little bit better.

I'm not, it doesn't, again, the pace doesn't necessarily change that much, but for enough people that have said, oh, I've stopped watching what he's doing because it takes too long, hopefully.

They're liars, first of all.

Well,

I've seen it enough.

I've seen it enough that I'm taking it into consideration.

Oh, they lie.

But for all of that, I am like saying, hopefully,

like setting expectations will at least make it so that it doesn't will so that it it feels a bit better knowing, hey, we tried to do two main quests, a side quest and a fixer gig today.

We got all those things done.

That's about as much time as I think we could get done in a five-hour stream.

Being realistic, right?

And if it falls short of that, then you know, oh, I'm probably wasting too much time and or this mission was particularly long.

But I think a lot of it has to do with expectations as opposed to like, practically, what would Phoenix Wright have looked like if I tried to make it a 22-hour absolutely

like Woolly?

You have to make certain decisions.

Like, if you want to keep that motorcycle because you really like that motorcycle, you can't use that fast travel.

You got to drive there yourself.

Yes.

Well,

you want to immerse, immerse yourself.

That's such a good clip.

You want to immerse yourself sometimes in the world of Night City and then in the sewer water.

Oh, that's such an incredible clip.

As you go flying off the side of the water, you know.

You couldn't have done that better if it was on purpose.

Hell yeah.

And so that's it.

That's it.

You know, I think I'm imagining a, although with a game like Disco Elysium, for example, like you literally cannot possibly know what that game's formula is going to be or where it's going to lead you.

You know, if I go, all right, so today we're going to walk in this church and see what the fuck's going on here.

You know, see if we can get out by the end of the session.

Oh, yeah.

Excuse me, what?

Did you think you could predict where this was going?

No, you cannot.

So, this only works for gay or like a Phoenix Wright.

Like, oh, yeah, the last case.

Let's see if we can finish this in one or two sessions.

No.

Call it a day.

By the number of times.

The last case of a Phoenix Wright game is 30% of the whole game.

I'll do you one fucking better.

The episode count was 52 for the LP in total.

24 episodes.

1 to 24 were cases 1 to 4.

Yeah, absolutely.

There were more episodes of case five than the entire rest of Phoenix Reich.

Absolutely.

Dude, the Phoenix Reich games, like, if every case is bigger than the last one,

then you get to the last one.

It's like 40, 50% of the whole game.

It's crazy.

And again, not wasting too much time, you know?

So it's bigger than the entire thing.

Unbelievable.

Truly a

turnabout shadow tree.

So, yeah,

Cyberpunk is good.

And Thousand X Resist, we got a little further.

Gonna be continuing that.

Oh, hey, before we get off that, I gotta say, I wanted to do the Metal Gear series for this reason.

And boy, was I right.

Because January is a little slow, and I'm kind of tired from the holidays and all that shit.

So I wanted to play a series that I'm like, you know what?

I want to just put my fucking feet up and just chill the fuck out while the game does its own thing for a while.

And Metal Gear Solid is the opposite of the whole conversation we have been having because that game has decided how long it is going to take.

And it's going to go and I'm going to sit there and that's how long it's going to be.

I mean, you're not skipping codec conversations, right?

Nope.

So

yeah, Rose, tell me about the room.

Yeah.

You can't.

That's it.

You're not doing extra calls, I assume.

I'm doing a couple, but like.

Okay.

And I'm dying on more bosses than I did last time because I was a child and and played metal gear all the time but like yeah okay you know what campbell

tell me what jim housman the secretary of defense has to say jim housman's back

and just pet my dog for 15 minutes this is jim

god damn it uh out of curiosity when you play a game with like a you know rpg or visual novel kind of like text box um are you pressing x at your reading speed or are you kind of going at auto speed It depends.

Is there voice acting?

Yes or no?

If it's voice acting, I wait for all the voice acting to conclude.

Nope.

If there's no voice acting and I'm reading it, I am in fact doing it at my reading speed.

Okay.

And I looked back at some of those videos and my reading speed is

so fast that I'm skipping over shit to get through it faster and kind of unintelligible mumbling.

And are you speaking the lines out so that people who are minimizing it still know what's going on?

No, I'm just reading it.

Okay.

Okay.

I should be better.

Okay.

I should be better about it.

Well, there's no way to do it.

I don't do, I don't do as good of a job as I should.

Gotcha.

Okay, that'll save some time.

Speaking dialogue, speaking text out loud for people who are currently listening only and not watching the video will add time.

I think the fastest I ever went, I saw somebody mention it, is Yakuza 4, in which I read that so fast that I would just, just, and I was familiar, I beaten Yakuza 4 like three, four times.

So I just started to paraphrase every single line of dialogue to get through it as fast as possible.

So I was reading these lines not as they scrolled, but they would come up in one big block.

And I'd be like, this is what, this is what they said.

And then this, then this, to just go as fast as possible.

I mean, listen, I will say that like the

whole like voice acting the lines out bit that we do came from speaking the lines out loud so that people could hear it when minimized or whatever, because initially that was the only reason why we read stuff out regularly.

Like I would, I would always be like, oh yeah, like I remember, God,

it was years ago.

It was back from like,

I want to say ultra despair girls was where I first learned about people being going like, I actually sometimes just listen to the LP instead of watching.

Yeah.

And it helped.

Now, luckily, there weren't that many people on that LP.

No, luckily there were not.

But that's where I first remember hearing about that.

And then it came back up a couple times throughout the years in a couple different games.

Sometimes just kind of reading through and pressing would elicit some people going like, oh, like I prefer when you speak it out because I can follow along or so.

It was like, oh, okay, cool.

And so because of that.

KOTOR, it also came up, right?

Yeah, it did come up with KOTOR.

Thanks, Notepad guy.

Yes, it came up in KOTOR.

And so

with those kind of moments, I kind of internalized that as like a shit, okay, right, this is something that we got to do for games that are text-heavy.

And carrying that forward then led to like, well, if I'm going to play fucking Goombela,

then I might as well give it a shot.

And then it turned into what we do now.

So it's a happy accident that it's become a fun thing to do.

But there's a secondary goal that was initially in mind.

I have decided to solve this problem.

by looking up what games have full voice acting and which ones don't.

And if they don't, I just completely ignore them.

Yeah.

That's my solution to this problem.

Yeah.

And then meanwhile, I trained on reading a fucking book.

Yeah.

It's really interesting.

I saw a GDC talk by

Josh Sawyer about Pillars of Faternity 2 and how

they had to turn into doing full voice acting when they hadn't originally planned for it

and how hard that was.

And one of the biggest things they said was for a big RPG, having full voice acting is is vital because if it doesn't, streamers don't even bother looking at it.

And that is a big part of marketing now, and it's a big part of their advertising.

And that if you can't get anyone to stream the game because it doesn't have full voice acting, it sucks.

Yes, that is real.

And I'll tell you right now, if I was not a streamer, I would look at that and go, well, that's dog shit because a good game shouldn't have to have to spend extra money.

It doesn't need to if that's not part of the budget.

Absolutely.

Like Pentiment, a game I won't play on stream because I feel like having my voice for the rest of the day.

A game made by Josh Sawyer with a lower budget that is apparently incredible that I will never play on stream because I'll be tired.

Yeah.

I mean, we've talked about Launch Disco enough times, you know.

And then the other part of it certainly is now it's almost like the extra, the, the, the, when games have the, the music cues that are like licensed music and then you can't fucking get around that guardians of the galaxy type shit, you know.

Cyberpunk is presenting a particularly weird one because we have the nudity off because Twitch Twitch doesn't care.

I also turned the nudity off.

Because there's a bunch.

Yeah, Twitch doesn't care, but YouTube does.

And then we're like, okay, well, nudity's off.

That's fine.

But boy, are they going to throw around like the C-word, you know?

Like,

that's dropping heavy and YouTube hates that.

But what about this?

But what about that ad where the Dominatrix is stepping on this dude's back and he's naked and you don't see anything, but underneath him, there's a puddle on the ground.

And you're like, oh, that's fine.

That's cool.

That's fine.

No, it's not.

YouTube hated it.

YouTube hated it.

We had to go in and edit that.

It's okay.

The naked guy with his parts hidden, but the pool underneath him was like, YouTube was like, stop it.

That means it's a good ad.

Yeah, it worked.

But like, they're not censoring that when you take the nudity off or whatever, because there is no nudity.

Anyway, wild shit.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So the context filters are alive and well on YouTube, you know?

Oh, the other thing that Josh talked about in that that talk was the

Divinity Original Sin 2 by Larian

created the expectation for full voice acting in all RPGs going forward.

Was that

Divinity Original Sin 2 was a huge, huge RPG from them?

And I believe it was the first one to be like every single line of dialogue from every single incidental character is voiced.

Well, what about like Bioware, though?

Not everybody.

And like the Bioware, the Mass Effect games were like much smaller scope.

I'm thinking of Mass Effect and KOTOR.

Yeah.

Yeah.

KOTOR was definitely not all fucking voice acted.

There was a million guys that go Mukushakapaka

and Kachi.

Yeah, alien lines.

Alien lines, yeah.

But like with humans, were there non- No, no, when you talk to people,

but the amount of dialogue in Mass Effect is trivial compared to like a Baldur's Gate or a Divinity.

There's enough aliens you meet that like they can minimize the recording effort there.

And And now with Baldur's Gate 3, that expectation is now fucking staked in the earth of the expectation of voice acting.

And not just that, but like good voice acting.

Yeah.

Oh, speaking of DeMark 100 million downloads of Baldur's Gate 3.

Nice.

They have released the Withers Big Natural mod for consoles.

Sorry, Big Naturals

mod

for consoles.

Hey, man, we'll get to my Shruanui later.

Anyways, so

yeah, beyond all.

Also, 100 million.

Holy shit.

Beyond all that,

just a quick shout-out, but we played some fighting games, one of which I had been following for a long time was Core Upt.

Did you play fighting games?

I played some fighting games.

That's fucking crazy.

Years ago at Evo,

I was walking around and checking out the indie fighting booths.

And

yeah, there was one booth in particular where there was a game called Black Salt Corruption.

And it was kind of like an anime fighter sort of angle

with much more

techie looking characters.

And it was really early.

It was kind of like just an initial, kind of like alpha build.

It was pretty rough.

But,

you know, I had been walking through and checking that game out over the years.

And the yeah, the developer Jesse, a cool guy, you know, we chatted a little bit here and there.

It was, I was watching as like that game slowly evolved and kind of switched it up, and then at one point got renamed to a different, a different thing called Core-Upt, which was

in collaboration with Ark Forged, the folks who made Sonic SmackDown,

Head to Head, and

Origin of Storms.

So So, these basically these fun indie fighters that were just full of Marvel bullshit.

And so, they got their hands on this and started getting to work.

And overall, the end result is a disgusting, absolutely filthy,

kind of like Power Rangers.

Like, just, it's not Marvel, but you bet your ass there's going to be mix-ups, left-right teleporting, nonsense, fucking, oh, it's like Marvel Rivals?

Disgusting, disgusting.

Yes, Marvel Rivals, exactly.

And

it was just a whole lot of fun.

We played a little bit, messed around with the cast, found some of the dirtiest characters ever, and then just did a nice long set where shit became anime.

Because when both characters can teleport all over the screen, and both characters,

everyone's got a dive kick, everyone's got a threat, everyone's got an instant overhead, everyone's got

a judgment cut, and just bullshit.

And you just go to the maximum.

You get a really fun, You get a really fun nonsense set out of it.

So, yeah, be sure to check out

the Get Into Fighting games of Core Upt.

And the game's available now.

And then, yeah, we also took a look at a game called Knockout, which is a difficult name for SEO purposes, unfortunately.

But essentially, it's a bunch of stick figures with

character attributes on them.

So here's a stick figure, but he's got boxing gloves and a mustache, and he tells you that you have no dignity.

Okay.

Got it?

Okay, I understand that.

I understand that.

Right.

Here's another one with big gauntlets, and he punches the ground and grabs you and tosses you around and, you know, whatever.

And like, yeah, it's just, it's like a homie fighter where you just get all your homies and you put all your friends from school in one game, except like it's just legally distinct

character versions of all your favorite fighting game characters and a big old crazy mashup game.

It was fun.

It was cool.

So check that out as well.

Knockout is going to be coming out

on the channel.

And yeah, this week, you know, more Thousand X Resist, more Cyberpunk, and some more fighting games.

I need to make a quick correction.

It is not 100 million downloads of Baldur's Gate 3.

It is 100 million downloads of mods for Baldur's Gate 3.

That is very different.

Important.

Extremely different.

Yes.

And yeah, and just also to give a heads up to everybody.

So next week is going to be a very

pretty much non-existent schedule.

So I'm going to be traveling to MAGFest.

If you are out there, come say what's up.

We're going to be, I'm going to be there for

the weekend and doing a couple of events.

So there's going to be, yes, I'm like, I'm going to do a signing versus wolves panel.

I'm going to be doing commentary over

as Sonic Fox fights the world in Mortal Kombat 1,

which should be particularly hilarious.

I should probably go watch some Mortal Kombat 1 footage to learn how that game works so that I can.

No, you don't.

You don't need to do that.

Yeah, I'm already just going.

In my end, I'm just like, I'll just be like, yeah, I don't even play this game.

That combo was crazy.

Damn, Sonic.

You know?

Wow, is that the guy from Scream?

Wow.

Crazy.

Anyway, so we're going to be doing some stuff.

So yeah, if you're there, come hang out.

And we're going to be obviously off next week for the most part, except for we're gonna do the podcast regular.

So, yeah, more details then.

All righty, BRB.

So, what do you do watching Mortal Kombat one?

Get out of fucking

I'm gonna watch at least one stream to know what's going on.

Well, yeah, you'll find the one guy streaming it and you'll check out what they got going on.

You know, I think,

yeah,

I think I need to

I need to be able to

I need to be able to quickly acknowledge what's happening on stream on screen while also talking about the cost of fatality Halloween

DLC, you know.

So I'll do some homework.

All right, a quick break.

Yeah, let's do a quick break.

BRB.

All right.

Let's take a quick word from our sponsors.

Oh, I love our sponsors.

All right.

This week, we've got a new sponsor.

This week, the podcast is sponsored by HeroForge.

HeroForge, huh?

HeroForge custom miniatures.

Oh, man.

You've been playing

some of them tabletop.

I have been playing some tabletops.

Yes.

So.

I don't have a mini.

I only have this dice.

So yeah,

HeroForge is a pretty cool way to just

go and make a custom miniature for

yeah, whatever you're for your tabletop needs.

They've got

a Hero Forge face customizer where you can go in with an extensive selection of little editable areas.

You can change the scalp, eyebrows, nose, and jawline of your figures.

There is a kit bash option.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, we're getting there.

We're getting there.

So

you've basically got a 3D character creator tool to go in and customize whatever you want to create your character and then

have it printed and the plastic miniature sent so that you can play your games with them.

There's a ton of presets, sliders, control pads so you can fine-tune every aspect of their looks, their faces, the expressions.

There's a ton of different races to pick from, different ear types, different texturing details if you want to have

hair, fur, or spots, whatever the races are.

And down to like teeth and hair selection as well.

It really, really has a ton of detail on that.

You can don't just have to print them out in like a, you can print in a set color as well, but they have like premium plastic minis and they have like a color printing system as well, where you can have essentially the basic colors put on so that if you're gonna paint over them, it comes more or less like pre-set for you to go in with extra detail if you'd want.

Um,

yeah, they have like again different levels and scales and sizes you can work with.

Um,

the printing process, you can get specs

for premium plastic minis at a 35 by 30 by 30 microns.

So that means microns?

Yes.

So if you've got your Noble Griffin mount and you've got feather detail on it, the feathers will look sharper than ever.

So you can get to that level of detail.

And color standees as well.

Acrylic standees are possible with more detail than they've ever had.

And you can get

extra texture and detail on those.

Put your name on the bottom.

Custom label it as well.

And

oh, yeah, and you can have

standies printed if you're looking for a more budget-friendly option as well, where you kind of have the flat

printed figure that stands up that you can use as a piece as well.

So

the options are incredible.

I went through it and I made myself a little woolly, you know, mini.

And I was kind of looking and deciding, and yes, there are multiple dread options available.

I was very happy to see that.

And yeah, between putting myself in, like, I was kind of deciding between wearing a suit or going all the way in with my class.

And I kind of went for a monk build because I'm like, yeah, that's probably what would end up happening.

So I was able to, yeah, that is probably what would end up happening.

So I was able to make a woolly, you know, fig.

I got the face details in.

I got the hair, the dreads going.

I was able to put the little ombre, like, yellow, like, you know, die at the tips.

I put myself in the barbarian outfit and had the post, the posture doing like a punch so i could get my like boxing kind of monk fighting position going on the bottom of the figure as well um i had woolly versus you know spelled out underneath and i set the colors and everything so uh yeah it was a pretty straightforward honestly it was just like making a character and to create a character it was pretty awesome um

and uh i'm looking forward to when that arrives so i'll check out and i'll yeah you guys can can take a look um it's not here yet but um

it was a really straightforward cool process to just go through this character creator and make a mini.

So if you're getting your tabletop stuff set up, check them out.

Yeah, so.

This is so cool.

It's really cool.

They have guns.

I put guns on my dude.

It's not just fantasy setting stuff.

There's tons of detail for like modern-day setting stuff, futuristic

as well.

And yes, the kit bashing option is a new feature for pro subscribers that lets you customize to a way crazy detail where essentially you can add up to 20 items onto your mini in addition to the the the regular options as well so you can just take extra figures and add the details so that if anything in the main simple options is not cutting it for you you can kit bash to add more pieces weapons whatever it is um um to get your character exactly right so um

yeah

go check those out as well um there's also digital minis and 2d tokens uh that you can sell too.

So if you want to buy like just the file of kind of what you've rendered out to, like they've even got those available.

It's it's a really cool system.

So visitor, this is so powerful.

Wow.

Yeah, and given what you're you're currently getting back into tabletop, you know,

take a look.

Could be perfect for what you're doing.

Visit HeroForge.com to start your designing your custom miniature today and check back often.

New content is added every week.

So, yeah, you want to go to heroforge.com and use the code CASTEL to get 5% off all orders of physical miniatures.

Once again, that is heroforge.com and use the code CASTEL and you'll get 5% off all orders of physical miniatures.

Thank you, HeroForged.

Thanks, HeroForged.

All right, this week the podcast is sponsored by Shopify.

Hey, Shopify, what's going on?

Hey, so yes.

If you got a business, if you're going into this year and you're getting

your entrepreneurial legs off the ground.

You might know a thing or two about shopping and selling online.

You might not.

I certainly didn't, and I kind of still don't.

I also still don't.

But

Shopify is perfect for stepping in and helping you out from the ground up.

So if you want to figure out how to get your store up and running, they've got you covered.

No coding or design skills needed.

Everything you need is drag and drop.

They've got tons of, thousands of customizable templates to get your store built.

And it lets you connect it to whatever channels you're posting on, whatever sites you work with, whatever you need integration, social media,

streaming, video, et cetera, et cetera.

They can

have it up and running and connected to your page so that people can find your business.

And as it grows, it's tracking all the info you need.

It's helping with details on shipping and taxes, payments.

Everything is followed in a single dashboard.

So, yeah, you don't have to get too caught up in that busy stuff while you're focusing on just actually growing the business.

And yeah,

they have award-winning support and all the metrics to help you track from your first to your millionth sale.

So they certainly were very helpful with us getting a t-shirt out

from

podcasting and YouTube and whatever to figuring out how to ship somebody a cool shirt internationally, wherever you might be.

Shopify is very useful for that.

And of course, I talk a lot about how I really like the shop app, using it every day for expecting packages and tracking what's coming in across different sites online as well.

It just kind of keeps it all in one place and is very useful.

So,

established in 2025 has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

You can sign up for a $1 per month trial at shopify.com/slash superbeast, all lowercase.

Go to shopify.com/slash superbeast to start selling with Shopify today.

One more time, that's shopify.com/slash superbeast.

Thank you, Shopify.

Thanks, Shopify.

This week,

the podcast is sponsored by

where are we?

There we are, rocketmoney.com.

That is

a particularly useful service.

If you've got a bunch of unknown, forgotten-about garbage subscriptions

to tons of different services,

this is a really useful way to find it and track it down and make sure that you're not paying extra on things that you're not actually using.

There's a ton, a ton of extra payments that you could be ignoring or not know about.

Stuff that's like deceitful.

I've seen and had that go across my accounts for a while now, and it has been,

yeah, it's been pretty scummy seeing the different ways that they take advantage of you on

forgotten subscriptions.

And yeah, rocking my every single month, like my bank takes money out of my account for like my house.

It's like, it's my house.

What are you doing?

Terrible.

The, the,

so, yeah, I assume they're not going to stop and cancel your mortgage.

Yeah.

But they can show you all your subscriptions in one place so you can know exactly where your money is going.

And for anything you don't want anymore, they can help you cancel them.

You can check out their dashboard and it gives you a clear view of

all the expenses that are, you know, you might have

not kept track of and get alerts for if anything changes in price, if there's unusual spending activity.

You know, if you're setting a budget goal and it's close to going over that as well, it can keep track of those.

Yeah, just taking a look very quickly, seeing a bunch of stuff that was hooked up to my accounts, and I definitely did see stuff that I was like, wait, what is that?

Why is that called that?

Where is that going to?

And you can see what's going on from your accounts or from your PayPal or whatever the case is.

I had one particularly

egregious example where there was an app that was like, I signed up to use the service once and then to unsubscribe.

You couldn't do so inside the app.

No.

It created like a random different name for like a subscription that's a recurring payment.

And then you go to, it basically says you have to go to the website to do it.

So you go to the website and sign in on the website.

And then it sends you an email with a time-limited link.

And for the next five minutes, you can then go on to that emailed link and unsubscribe from that.

It was so garbage.

It was crazy how many layers of obfuscation and bullshit they put you through.

So

like that's going to annoy most people.

So the ability to track that down and just kill it right away, super useful.

Am I still subscribed to Crave?

How did that even happen?

Yeah.

No, it was it was wild.

The the three steps of obfuscation from an unsubscription took me for a loop.

The the level of

you know, just annoyance-based marketing.

Anyway, so yeah, cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.

Go to rocketmoney.com slash superbeast.

Today, that's rocketmoney.com slash superbeast.

One more time, rocketmoney.com slash superbeast.

Screw those

hidden garbage subs.

No, you want to sub to what you want to sub to.

The bank is taking.

Oh, yeah, right.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, right.

Perfect.

Nailed it.

This week, the podcast is also sponsored by Mando.

That is.

Yes, Mando.

Is that that British thing?

No, that is

deodorant and

the the

ability to smell good.

Oh, thank God.

Lord knows the people listening to this podcast could use a hand.

Yeah.

So

straight up,

you're talking about

the ability to get your hands on

control of your body order.

I guess the best way to just put it.

You need to take control.

Body odor can get pretty bad.

And I've played Dungeons and Dragons, let me tell you.

You know the deal.

Oh no, rude, stinky, bad.

Don't do it.

Nobody wants to be the guy who goes, yo, who smells in here?

Right?

Especially if you're doing some sort of, you know, offline meetup in real life.

Yeah, where you're shaking hands.

And

whatever function you might be attending, you want to make sure that you smell your best, right?

Do, do, do, do yourself the favor.

Thing is, of course, is that I've learned over the years that there's times where, you know, when you get to be

a certain girth, right?

When you get to be a certain heft,

you kind of are like, oh, there's new folds that were not there

a couple years ago.

And so the tech with Mando that's particularly impressive is

whole body deodorant,

right?

So you've got the like deodorant that you can apply and put straight on, and you've got deodorant cream as well that you can apply where you need to, liberally.

You need to add it to the danger zones.

That's exactly it, right?

Because, you know, sometimes you take your shower, you come out, you're getting ready, you put it all on, and then you put your

deodorant, and you think, oh, let me cover my underarms, and that should be good, right?

Yeah.

Wrong.

You don't know, but you're creating an ecosystem down there.

There are danger zones, as you said, that need to be covered.

So

there are places with armpit-like climate

that need equal amounts of attention.

Mando was created by a doctor who saw firsthand how normal B.O.

was misdiagnosed and mistreated.

Like when they went into his office and he was like, bro, you stick.

Yeah, I think that's that.

Sounds so good.

I got to do something about this.

Oh, my God.

Sounds about right.

Clinically proven to block odor all day and control your odor for up to 72 hours.

So yeah, you know, the solid deodorant stick is working

the way you'd expect and stops the odor before it starts.

You've got sprayed deodorant as well, if that's your preference.

Aluminum-free, ideal for hard-to-reach places.

And then, yeah, in particular, the whole body deodorant I found great.

That was very, very useful for just getting everywhere.

Getting everywhere that it needs to be.

Don't mix diagnose the stinky.

Indeed, it controls your odor better than just soap alone.

So,

oh, okay, hold on.

We got a stat here.

12 hours.

Oh, yeah,

12 hours after a shower, the average man's Grundel odor was leveled.

There's no way.

There's no way that says Grundel.

The average Grundel odor with Mando is a zero out of 10.

This is a statistic.

Grundle odor.

There you go.

Man, the people writing this copy are getting like super good.

Like, they're with it.

Nailing it.

Because the audience understands if their Grundle needs to take a tumble, okay?

You need to start Grundle maxing, and you need to start doing it now.

Mando starter pack is perfect for new customers.

It comes with a solid stick deodorant, cream tube deodorant, two free products of your choice, like mini body wash or deodorant wipes, which are also pretty solid.

Can I say firsthand?

Deodorant wipes have been pretty good.

Liked those.

Very tactical.

And free shipping.

As a special offer for our listeners, new customers can get $5 off a starter pack with our exclusive code that equates to over 40% off your starter pack.

Oh, that's great.

So use code beast at shopmando.com.

So that's S-H-O-P-M-A-N-D-O.com.

Yeah, support our show, tell them we sent you.

Smell fresher and stay drier.

Boost your confidence from head to toe with Mando.

Thanks, Mando.

Yep.

You like that?

You know what the worst part is?

That the boost confidence part is like dead on, but the people who need that the most don't gain more confidence because they were confident before because they didn't know what the fuck was going on.

Ignorance, right?

Bliss.

Like,

starts with confidence, then you have to hit them with shame.

Shame is mandatory, and then they can regain the confidence.

Absolutely.

Speaking of which,

everybody,

yo,

uninstall, honey.

That shit's garbage.

They are literally robbing everyone.

Absolute criminals.

Scumbag fucking company.

Can I say actually allegedly robbing everyone?

But Legal Eagle is going to sue them.

So we'll see how that goes.

Let's see how that goes.

But if you are hearing this and you listened to any copy or ad that we ran in the past where we were talking about it, don't install that shit.

Uninstall that shit.

Get it off your computer.

Don't fucking use it.

They're the worst.

And needless to say, we shan't shan't be working with them in any capacity ever in the future.

And

yeah,

just do, if you did install it, don't.

If you yeah,

get out of there.

That's it.

That was

something from, yeah, like we it was basically

it was something that you would install and it would

run promo codes to yeah, it turns out it would steal promo codes.

That's what it would do.

It would take your our promo codes and delete the reference

and whoever else is that was running at the time.

So

there you go.

That's no good.

Can we blame the bees for this?

If by the bees you mean PayPal, then yes.

But I have to use PayPal.

Yes.

And Canadians don't have really cash apps or Venmos, you know.

so

we got what we got.

We do have e-transfers, though, which I mean.

E-transfer rules, man.

Americans don't have kick-transfers.

So there is that.

It's super good.

100%.

But yeah, no, that's it.

Pretty straightforward on that.

Hope that's clear.

Fuck them.

All right.

And now that we're done looking down there,

eyes up here.

Hey, Mai is going to come out, and Mai looks really cool.

Okay.

The Mai trailer dropped.

And

every time a character comes out for Street Fighter VI, I believe we're going to see the discourse around the way their face looks in the first preview trailer.

There's going to be an ugly face discourse for every single character that comes out, right?

But

can you feel

it's not just that they nailed Mai looking really good.

She's doing her Shinkiro smile from CVS.

Yeah, it's not just that.

It's that, like, people were going to jump out of windows if they failed here.

Like, I don't know if you...

I can feel the pressure in how good she looks in the trailer that it was like

sweat down someone's back if this failed.

This isn't Marvel Infinite.

Okay.

This is Street Fighter VI.

And Terry is

a big old, wacky pizza boy.

You're from Florida, man.

And he's supposed to look cool, but he can be kind of goofy.

He's supposed to also be kind of lame.

But you cannot fuck up my,

the...

Okay, well, you can't say the first lady of fighting games, but you can say, I guess the queen of fighting games.

She's that really hot chick from King of Fighters that looked like she was going to kiss Chun Li that one time.

Yeah, and she's probably the

second most popular fighting game girl of all time, period.

Probably, yeah.

You just, yeah.

So

you can't fuck that up, and I feel like the pressure was clear, and they didn't fuck it up.

They probably went through.

I could see double ditch, like I could see like 20 or 30 different faces, you know, I imagine tweaking until they're like, that one from every angle.

It can't look wonky from any angle whatsoever.

Terry, Terry's got no job.

He can look weird.

And then the second thing I'll say that this does,

which is kind of wild because now she's debuting in

Street Fighter instead of in Fatal Fury or KOF.

Weird.

Super weird.

But the City of the Wolves outfit, her main default, the biker my

look,

it looks awesome.

And

some folks are complaining about it over in City of the Wolves, but I'm like, I thought it was great in both cases.

I like the look.

I think the only problem with it is that when she does her little spin-fire thing without the tail, it looks like she's just farting flames.

Yes.

Yes.

But you know what?

You know what?

Apparently, people like that now.

Not a problem for everybody.

Yeah, that's fun.

You're going to collect your Harley Quinn limited edition covers?

No, no, I'm not.

The Fartacular?

No, I'm good.

Okay.

Because, you know, the Harley Quinn Fartacular comics are comic.

Oh, trust me, dude.

I'm well aware.

Yeah.

It's hilarious, the joke.

It's really funny, though.

It's really funny.

It's super funny when you buy all three limited edition covers.

Yeah.

Isn't it funny?

Isn't everyone laughing?

It's really funny.

You should show all your friends and insist on how funny it is.

Look how funny it is.

It's a joke.

It's a joke, isn't it?

It's for laughs.

So

my

like in the biker look now, like, I feel as if

like,

this sells that costume even better.

It shows absolutely it, it looks great.

It looks great.

I, um,

I liked her, her, like, kind of Falcoon alt maximum impact kind of look for a bit.

And, you know, I never expected that, like, necessarily we'd see that.

It'd be nice to get it as a third costume here.

But, um, that's radish shit.

Nothing much on that.

Uh, obviously, Capcom marketing team knows exactly what they're doing.

And, you know, much like Invisible Woman, much like Sue Storm

coming

straight to Marvel Rivals and Gooner equipped, I feel as if Mai is like, hey, this is literally what her character is.

This is what she's been.

I think, just to go to Rivals for a second, I think the fact that I have had no trouble seeing double support in every single game I have played since Sue Storm came out is the funniest.

Like, using gooning to balance your fucking game population is unbelievable.

But also, is it not the oldest, most reliable

trick?

It's not even a trick in the book.

It's literally why you open up shop and get into business.

Yeah.

The entire Dead or Alive franchise would not exist.

That's true.

Yeah, so, you know, you can go check out the breakdown on how, on the details of the character and just kind of watch the description just be like hawkers, sweater mittens, big old

fucking titties.

Look at them.

Tatas.

Tig ol bitties, even.

Um,

yeah.

The, uh, the, the, uh,

the kit looks like an army is incoming.

Um, I see a DP.

Oh, there's a lot of saney fucking shit in her abilities.

So the stuff I was looking for is not there, but instead we got uh uh some

stuff that works for a Six's system, right?

So

she's got her big old DP,

and that's right off the bat, you're like, great, reversal.

Got it.

Her fireball, Kachosan, she throws out the fan.

The simple uncharged version can be punched or blocked or hit, destroyed with a fireball.

So it's particularly weak.

But if you charge it for a little bit, it'll bounce up and then come back down on top of you.

And and hit exactly um and uh oh and now you've got a mix going um

uh uh uh i'm trying to think of uh is it i think it's is it basara in samurai showdown that has like projectiles that bounce up and do that kind of thing but either way bouncing projectiles that create a second hit afterwards is really really tricky because she can mix you up while it's coming down um

and then

Furthermore, you can...

The deal there is because it's a little bit trickier for her to to like spend time charging up your fireballs, you got to find ways to hide it and mask it.

Because you're not going to beat someone like Luke just sandblasting your face, you know, super quickly.

Angie, there you go, Angie Mito, butterfly.

That's what I was thinking of.

You can then do her level one, right?

The Kagero no Mai.

And that like...

does the full flame thing and she has five she has flame stocks that she can install and

she can then do fire

fans fans, and fire-charged fans will have like way more hits.

Clearly, like they hit up to three times, which will break a drive impact.

And then you can get double fans out and do a crazy, like, high or low mix while the bounce is coming.

So, she can get really oppressive if you let her.

That level one flame attack, like, she used to have that as a normal move in, like, Real Bout and then, like, in CVS 1.

I always thought that was dope, but like, here in this case, they kind of like made it to super.

So it's like, fair enough, she's got a reversal.

She also, in KOF 11, I used to really love her air control because she had like three dive kicks and wall jumps, right?

You could do charge like

down for two seconds, up and punch, and then she would jump off the wall and then could fly at you with the normal dive kick, with her butt dive kick, which is a different angle, a knee dive kick, which is an even different angle.

That's a straight drop down.

And it was disgusting how you could mix people up.

But now, all of a sudden.

She's never going to have that air control in Street Fighter.

No, she doesn't.

She just gets a simple dive kick, and then, like, I think a target combo version of it for

simplicity.

And, like, that's all fine.

A lot of that would be insane.

And jump trajectory changing in Street Fighter makes it really, really hard to anti-air people.

Like, it's really strong if you can jump at somebody, make them do the wrong move and then just drop straight down you know someone tries to do a big shoriyukin and you're like nope i'm not there anymore um but to make up for that you get these fire stocks which not just improve her fireballs but it seems like everything gets ignited on fire as well you know the the yeah um ryu and boo like the big flaming spin as you mentioned uh the the the elbow uh the rush elbow as well a lot of that stuff looks like pretty strong when it's enhanced and uh i guess the other thing notable is her level two, which is like the big flaming elbow, is like

full corner carry?

Almost.

Yeah, that's good.

That's good stuff.

Like Marissa takes you straight to the wall with her level three every time.

Shy of that move, this might be the move that carries you the furthest across.

I mean, it's a KOF character, so sure.

To the wall.

Yeah, it feels like, you know, in the screen in Street Fighter Scrolls, at least, you know, maybe two screen lengths when you walk left or right.

It goes a full screen distance.

So if you're within

a little bit of the wall or so, you're just getting put right on it.

Fucking, that looks really good as well.

Yeah.

You know, I guess we'll have to see how

she holds up with

her buttons and she's got an overhead and whether or not she's got a lot of safe things and good pressure.

But it definitely seems as if when you get the fire stocks going,

she can mix you the fuck up.

I think, though, that like

stocks are particular, they are kind of hard for people to start using because kind of like drinks, you have to find a way to get them charged up, you know.

So, her ability to kind of keep those higher is going to determine whether she lives or dies.

But she also seems to be reminiscent of jury in that the fan is like a slow fireball, and then she like can she can rush in afterwards, but you almost don't have to because the bouncing fan kind of creates a mix-up, you know.

Yeah, I think she gets five stocks of fire

is what they said.

So

looks cool.

This looks

like I so this looks like way more fun than any version of Mai I've ever played

because I don't typically like Mai's kit at all in any King of Fighters game.

I just I'm not into it.

But what I see going on here looks really interesting.

But also more than that I look at my and you know what I think about I think about wow those are some really excellent king of fighter style flame effects

on her character they do look that no one else in Street Fighter has they do look like different fire they do

I would also say like Terry's power geysers as well kind of look unique to him from and the buster wolf too you know it would be really cool if there was another character later that got to use those flame effects.

Well, but let's be real: the way these games are made, they're not recycling that stuff.

They're making unique guest character assets.

Well, no, it would be cool if they were purple.

Sure,

you could,

but, you know,

I mean,

yeah.

Um,

Yori showing up.

Hmm.

Everyone say it it out loud.

Now it's all obvious.

As long as Kyo gets ignored again.

I see.

You know what?

It's funny.

I thought about Kyo, and then I was like,

no.

But I just, but like, more to the point, though, like, I feel like the days of, like, oh, look at that flame effect.

That could get recycled elsewhere.

Those are gone.

Like, that was Sprites back in the day with Fighter VIII.

Oh, sure.

Just make a CVS3.

That's all I want to say.

Just

every season have one SNK character.

And then just by the end of Street Fighter VI's life, there's like six.

Ash Crimson, got it.

Confirmed.

No, I didn't say that.

You said Ash Crimson.

You said Ash Crimson.

He's coming.

You are a liar.

He's coming.

Ash's moveset would be so fucking toxic in Street Fighter VI.

It'd be so infuriating.

That Ash Moore guile.

His ass would be so immaculately modeled.

You can't even believe it.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

yeah.

I'm thinking, I'm thinking

that,

yeah,

she's probably gonna

live and die, like I said, like on her ability to install that stuff.

But

there's one little thing

I caught there where it looks like when she does her drive rush, it sounds like she says

locked in.

I don't know if that's just like,

did you just go super current?

Is Maya Zoomer?

Sometimes you gotta lock in, man.

Is Maya Zoomer saying lock in?

Is that a Zoomer?

Well, it's pretty current.

I'd say something.

I feel like I heard that years and years ago.

Locking in

has

not in the same parlance, you know?

Lock the fuck in.

Lock in is a particular current thing.

In the same way that like crashing out is also a current thing.

Yeah, crashing out just showed up all of a sudden.

You know, and like the first time I saw crash Out was when you crash in F Zero and die.

The screen says...

That's not what people are doing.

No, that's not where it comes from.

But when you die in F Zero, the game says crash out.

You know?

But yeah, this is just shit that you kind of might have heard that, you know.

Are the kids in the F Zero?

But you know what, though?

Chances are it was from somewhere more obtuse and then comes back around again.

Because like I said, my brother in Christ was like 20 years ago.

Oh, absolutely.

And then it stopped, and now it's back again.

And it was like, I don't know where

I found it.

You know, Jesus remains relevant.

Every day.

Every day.

Always.

Oh, it looks like I got to go.

I'm being summoned.

Oh, shit.

Okay, BRB.

You'll excuse me.

The last thing I was going to say about Mai is that in the trailer, they showed her and Chun Li having a dynamic intro where they both

drive impact each other.

And between round one and fight, and they go blasting back to the back of the screen.

I'm assuming that's going to be a special fight in arcade mode or a world tour event.

Because if every time you have those two fight each other, they get round started at the back of the screen, that would be really weird.

So far, I don't think the trailers of Street Fighter VI have shown off unique things only for the trailer that that are not part of the game whatsoever.

They usually take a clip from some feature.

So I don't think that was made just for the trailer.

I think that might have been perhaps, you know, it could be just editing, but I'm expecting that to be like either a world tour moment in her story or something from the arcade mode, you know?

I think they should have that shit with every fight.

I think everybody should have a unique intro.

I don't give a shit.

I miss that stuff.

Well,

I've got a game for you, my friend.

You should check out Guilty Gear.

No, I want it to be Street Fighter Kirk.

Guilty Gear not only had custom intros between all these characters, they had them where they did damage.

Yeah, that was so fucking crazy.

And then you started in the wrong place and you were hurt.

It was so insane, man.

Yeah.

No, but the, of course, like, you know, all the way from the, like, from the Dragon Ball clashes to, like, round start positions and stuff.

I think that shit's hot as hell.

But, like, if they're not going to start back in the like the kind of the normal position or so, um

do set it up so that you can, you know, but I yeah, unique intros are a casualty of new fighting game intros being like character load, character, load, fight.

And I will say, for all the shit I

don't give about Mortal Kombat, Netherrealm gets those intros right.

Yep.

Those characters bantering with each other is the funnest part of that game.

Well, I mean, if you make a game no one wants to play, you should at least make one that people want to look at.

These things are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, they're complementary.

And quite frankly, mission accomplished.

Mortal Kombat sold, did its thing.

They're out.

And now

they're on to the next.

And now when I look in my phone, I can look up Injustice intro compilation to see the only part of injustice 2 i would ever want to see which is the different dialogue for when different characters meet each other did you see when when shao kahn and conan were talking and shao kahn is like ah the lamentations of the woman here are your enemies you know like he starts and conan's like yeah they they they they get along

o'brien yes conan o'brien Team Coco.

Who the fuck are you talking about?

Team Coco, Conan O'Brien in Mortal Kombat, talking to Shao Kahn.

You should see how they modeled his coff.

It's quite impressive.

Mortal.

We've got time.

Oh, Conan!

Oh!

I didn't know he was in the game.

Yes.

The barbarian with the sword.

Yes.

The adventurer.

Wait, you expect me to know what characters are in Mortal Kombat 1?

With his mighty sword protecting the mightiest of warriors, is he

star metal.

I would watch Conan the Barbarian.

That'd be pretty funny.

He's got to vanquish their leader, the cruel wizard Arathamon.

Anyway.

wild how that got turned into a kids' cartoon.

But then again, so did Toxic Adventure.

It was a really good kids' cartoon.

It was fantastic.

And so did Toxic Adventure, right?

That one's like extra wild for me.

Because that shit's fucking.

The original on that is fucking stupid.

Ninja Turtles opened up the door, I think, to any film franchise being like, yo, we can make money if we just made some stupid kids' show.

I think the fact that there was a Robocop cartoon and a RoboCop live-action television show is the wildest one.

Rambo is wild.

Rambo, the kid's hero.

Yeah.

Anyway.

So, yeah, we'll see what comes of that.

But

we've got some great news

coming in today.

Diamond Distributors has filed for bankruptcy.

Fucking 30 years too late on that one.

Who is that?

All right.

I'm glad you asked.

Diamond Distributors is the monopoly company that has been responsible for shipping all comic books and most toys

out to any big or small

comic book shops.

for pretty much your entire lifetime.

Okay.

And they, if you just were to hang out, if you ever hung out at your comic book shop locally and spoke to any of the people that worked there or ever talked to anybody that's in that industry and stuff, they would have endless nightmares about this fucking dog shit garbage company.

And they were the only ones in town.

People started kind of like breaking off to make their own.

for a while, but like they only place a lot of Marvel, DC, image, IDW, whatever for the entire time.

It would always be diamond distributing.

And they were awful to everyone they worked with.

They

were responsible for basically like,

I mean, comic books, obviously, like a lot of small stores, you could imagine over time started closing because business fades.

Online comics becomes more of a thing.

Direct ordering straight to your door becomes more of a thing.

So it's a much more niche and novelty market.

But even without all of that, they would simply like fast forward that process Because let's say you went down to your local shop and you were like, hey, I'd like to order the upcoming, you know, whatever, a couple issues of this coming out, and then a few issues of that.

And like, oh, when Saga comes in, I'll buy Saga and the latest Berserk, let's say.

Okay, cool, great.

We'll let you know.

And then you know the dates that those things are supposed to drop.

And then Diamond would just be like, yeah,

fuck all these small stores.

They're not, they don't matter to us.

The ones that are in,

that are part of the click, that are, that we prioritize, you guys are going to get the shipments actually.

And we'll just never ship out what you've ordered over here.

Even though it's been received and like the whole thing has been paid up and the money is there, and they would literally ignore that type of shit.

Or you'd get it destroyed, crushed, like wrecked in a horrible condition, like from the delivery truck right off the bat.

They would

like just ignore orders entirely.

And again, the only place in town, no other alternatives in some cases to ordering stuff.

And so, yeah, you would always have these personal nightmare stories that they would tell.

One in particular that stands out I told not too long ago was if you happen to remember Devil May Cry 1 when they was they had a line of toys that came out and there was a Dante figure and it also and like because it was DMC one, not much lore existed around the time or so they didn't bother

yeah they didn't bother making anyone else or any other characters.

They made one Dante, and then they made like four or five different puppet characters for him to fight.

And they would ship the cases with Dante being one per case with 19 puppets in a box.

And if you wanted to sell this, or if anyone was interested in ordering it, and they said, yeah, order me a Dante, right?

You had one you'd get, and then the box would arrive, and 19 puppets would fill the store up that no one would fucking buy buy because why would you?

And now you just had all this shit littered everywhere and you couldn't get rid of it.

And that's how they decided to sell shit.

Because when it comes to limited collector's edition stuff, making it one per case is how you force more shipments of those boxes.

I have a

what is probably an incredibly stupid question because I don't know anything about comics distributing.

Could

people not use

other forms of freight or delivery or transit for their comic books other than Diamond Comics?

Like every other company in the entire world does?

Not when the publishing

company that you started with, however many years ago, signs exclusivity rights and makes it so that you

are contractually obligated to exclusively work.

Well, then what's the incentive to improve the the service?

Nothing.

Nothing.

Zero.

They were a monopoly.

They took over.

They crushed every independent attempt for other publishing and distribution services

to rise up.

People are started getting their own, like, out of sheer, like, friend, like, like, they eventually started getting like some smaller labels when we were doing stuff.

But for the most part, it is a complete takeover.

And if you worked with them,

there were exclusivity contracts.

Absolute dog shit.

The worst.

They were like a blight on that industry that was already pretty much dying, you know, to begin with.

But even at the height of its popularity when comics were doing fine and everything was going well, they were awful.

So they have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Again, 30 years too late.

But hey,

at least they're fucking dead.

And,

you know, comics continue to exist.

There's a lot of, again, there's online and there's like people shipping direct to you, but there's still shops around and, you know people can go and get their orders in it's pretty much kind of like a voluntary i'm going to keep this service going as my preferred method of buying comics like going down to the shop and buying it that way is a like a habit thing you know and you're kind of just like keeping like the local watering hole going sort of so to speak you know but um yeah

fucking finally dude like

that's good yeah they are nightmarishly horrible and no one could do anything about it it.

And like you said, the quality of the service was pretty much

in the garbage for decades now.

And there was no chance or incentive or anything to improve it, to do any better.

People who got burnt by that because they just went to their shop and then were like, I can't get what I want ordered from here.

I'm going to stop going here.

That shop shuts down.

And if that person just goes, yeah, fuck this.

I'm just going to go online.

No one can blame them.

Because the only way to get the...

Like, brick and mortar is struggling in general, as you'd imagine.

And then on top of that, you've got this garbage fucking company involved that's the only one in town.

So fuck Diamond Distributing.

Rest in piss.

Good on

them fucking rotting.

Being dead.

Yep.

Or being dying.

Being dying.

Good, good stuff on that.

I mean, literally, like,

go walk into any comic shop around you if you still have any and ask them how they feel about this news.

And you'll get some good stories, guaranteed.

I remember, I mean,

this isn't related to Diamond Publishing, but

I do remember one particular shipping situation that I got eyes on that was very unique.

I walked into the future shop that used to exist on St.

Catherine across from Game Buzz.

And it was the day that Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver came out.

Yep.

And the manager, I got to see him open the palette.

It was a palette of fucking diamond and gold, heart gold, and soul silver.

So it was like hundreds of copies.

And he opened them up, and every single one of them was in French

because it was the Quebec store, right?

But it was downtown Montreal.

And I saw him get on the phone and just start screaming

just as loud as he could, right in the middle of the floor.

Why the fuck did you say in French accented English?

Why the fuck did you send me French copies?

Like, just totally losing it on what I assume was his GM.

That is anyone walking in day one for their like immediate copy,

180, go to

the game, the game that was across.

Right around the store, just go around the corner and just buy a copy there.

Yep.

Straight up.

I've never seen anyone lose it like that.

It's like, because Montreal, Francophones want to play Pokemon in English.

Like, man.

There's no market there.

That in-between era, it was 360.

I want to say like not early 360, but like middle 360 where

game booklets stopped being like,

basically they started packing in the French booklet.

And the game booklets were still in color.

But the French ones were always black and white, always terrible

quality.

And they'd be too big to fit inside the case.

So you just got handed this stupid booklet that was way too big that you can't even slide inside the fucking thing.

Just get this away from me.

What am I supposed to do with this ugly black and white thing?

Fuck off.

It was so stupid.

Anyway,

good times.

Yeah, good old rest and piss to them.

Man, freight and shipping is fascinating.

So much that goes into it.

Mm-hmm.

You got to get stuff from over there to over there.

This was annoying.

You got to get all these copies of E.T.

into the desert hole.

Yeah, someone had to put those in a truck and move that shit up.

You had to load that shit up.

That's

cost agnostic.

And then labor to unload it.

Took work.

All right.

So,

on that note,

where the fuck did that that go?

Okay, yeah, so

some some some noise, some popping up, some shit, you know, occurred

where I was like, what's going on with Final Fantasy XIV?

And a couple of people explained something.

This fucking shit is for real.

This is for real.

That, like, yeah, basically, stalking has been unlocked.

And I was like, what does that mean?

Um,

and it it's it's it seems like it goes pretty deep here.

So obviously, you're equipped to cover this.

But essentially,

the headline is: Final Fantasy 14

communities panic.

As it turns out, change to blacklisting meant to help reduce stalking also lets players use mods to track their alts.

So, all right, let's get into the long and short of this.

So, a couple of things have been occurring.

So, e-stalking is an MMO thing across all games.

I have seen it in Final Fantasy XIV.

And so,

they have finally, as of Dawn Trail, been like, okay, you know what, we should probably do something about bad actors and whatnot.

So, the first thing they did is they made some housing changes that you could put people on a housing blacklist so that they couldn't enter into the periphery of your player house.

Like, they would just be auto-rejected from the space if they tried to enter it.

And that was like, okay, it's something.

Further on, they said, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to do a blacklist.

blacklist.

So if you put

a person on a blacklist,

they will immediately disappear from your world.

It will be like that person doesn't exist.

The physical view of their character will be deleted from your view.

So will anything that they talk, it will just never appear for you.

It will be like they died and stopped playing the game.

Now, there's a problem here.

The first problem is that, well, how does that deal with group content?

Well, they have to be visible in group content if you do duty find into a thing with them, right?

Like, they have to, you have to be able to fucking see them if they're doing mechanics.

But in that situation, they still won't be able to talk to you.

Or it'll say band player and then whatever, right?

So, this is still not the greatest.

The second thing is that what people actually wanted is for you to disappear from the stalkers' world.

Yeah, like what I actually want is for them to not see me.

And so, it turns out that this is not a two-way process, and that just because you block somebody does not mean that they're completely remotely

gone.

I believe that the blacklist has like a cap.

I'm not sure how high it is, but it has a cap.

So this is like a weak solution to an existing problem.

However, the long and short of it is that

when they instituted this change, they decided to make

the blacklist system store itself client-side instead of server side.

And since it's client side, that means if you're willing to do some technical doohickery, that means that you can access it.

And what one gentleman decided to do and thought this was a good idea was he invented a plug-in that you could install, which would scrape the blacklist data from everyone on your screen,

which would include their account and like their account name, not their player name, their account name, which is otherwise unsurfaceable.

Account ID was something that, yeah, that they're specifying got script.

And that was not something that always existed.

Account ID.

You can never see somebody's account ID.

So this surfaces the account ID, which means that now if you have their account ID, you can track their current character through any instance.

You can retroactively look what instances they've been, which means what people they've hung out with.

You can track their alts, which are totally different names and are, for all purposes, unique characters, but it's the same account ID.

So

if someone was following you or stalking you across wherever the case is, now if you made alts to get away from the worst harassment, they have like a laser focus on you forever.

And this would scrape everyone on your screen.

So if you went to a highly populated area, you would just instantly scrape like hundreds of people's characters immediately, forever.

Can I just say that the whiplash of discovering the existence of a concept called MMO stalking immediately followed by this problem was wild?

Oh, Willie,

I had

a situation, and I wouldn't call it stalking, but I would start up my streams when I did F-14 streams in increasingly obscure locations, and I would time how long it would be before people just happened to stroll by that were in the chat at the time.

And I'd be like, ah, it took you a while this time.

But yeah, no, it's a total thing.

Stocking is,

I mean, if you're going to, people who stock people stock them everywhere, regardless of whether or not that's digital or not.

So the last that I checked this story,

the only way to get yourself removed from this

data pool to e-stalk you was put forth by the mod creator where they made a Discord where you could go and ask for yourself to be removed off the list.

And the way that you would do that is you would provide your real name and your account information and the stuff that they would need to make sure that you aren't on the list.

So now

legitimately, people are supposed to go and, for their own security, start talking to God knows who this person is and their mod setup for their own protection.

And as you would expect, the people that were populating that Discord were like complete dog shit who were like, well, it's your fault for getting stalked if you don't have the technical expertise to prevent the stalking.

Like, what are you stupid?

Like this kind of

attitude.

So we've also talked a bit about like, you've mentioned how like modding has worked with 14 before.

And

yeah, it seems like the system in place is a don't be stupid, I guess, kind of system where some people are like whenever things are happening in a modded environment or you're modding anything, it's happening locally on your machine.

It's not happening on anything that's like going live on a server, of course.

Yeah, so you're not supposed to mod in FF14.

And I would recommend to everyone to never mod in FF14 because it is very,

very against the terms of use.

If you get caught, you're gone.

Right.

But if you were the type of person to do this, the first thing would be don't stream yourself using mods like everybody who does World First.

Don't publicly talk about using mods.

Don't broadcast that your mods are infringing on the potentially criminal.

Nope.

Fucking don't.

Yeah.

You fucking idiot.

And,

you know,

again,

from knowing that like the

14 like intimacy and

whatever mods go pretty in depth, right?

There's a, there's a whole suite of, you know, if you're going to inflate player characters and and whatnot on your screen.

Yeah, don't put it on a billboard, Phil.

Don't advertise.

Don't go advertising.

Yes.

I have a follow-up.

It's a detail that I've been reminded of that's incredibly important.

The creator of this mod did so for a specific goal, and that was to find the player location and name of a person who was undercutting his sales on the market board.

Right.

Yes, there was something about that.

Basically, what you just repost the same item, one gill, underneath

what the person's selling it, and that drives people crazy.

So,

this entire technical endeavor was so he could get a hold of that guy.

Someone was showing up to always undercut wherever they set up shopping.

Which is just the way the market board works in that game.

Oh, man.

So, the last that I heard is that GitHub itself pulled it down.

Yes.

so in the end the yeah it seems as if the um the the whole it was called player scope and uh it was pulled down exactly so um

in theory that should not enable anybody to get access to an account id and therefore things should be fine um

I don't know if this then means that officially they're going to take a stream

because people who have already used it can still continue to still use it.

Right.

True.

But I mean, I don't know if this results in a stricter stance on mods across the board being, you know, happens after this.

Like if this

probably, but they can't get much stricter than if we ever catch you or see you, you're done.

Okay.

Right.

So I saw a description of like,

what was the analogy?

It was like, if you're using one

to, I think it said like DPS, you can't actually see that number

ever.

Ever.

No.

But if you have a, but you can get a mod that will show it.

And if you see that, that's not going to be an issue.

But if you grief someone over the fact that theirs is too low, they can report you and get you banned because so yeah, that's that's the basic thing.

And that is the use case.

And the use case is if you use something called ACT to figure out what your DPS is, you can also see everybody else in your party's DPS.

And if you're using that for personal use and you shut your fucking mouth,

what would even be the problem?

How would anyone know?

But

the specific reason a DPS meter is not built into the game is so you cannot grief people about their DPS.

That is the, like, they have said it out loud with their voice in live letters and shit like that.

And

they're right.

Because even

though it's against the rules, you still see people shit talking people in groups.

Yo, your fucking DPS is solo.

How do you know that?

Just, I just know.

I'm watching.

Can you see it through all the flashing and explosions?

Can you tell?

Yeah, I just, I just vibes.

I just know.

Can I tell that you're not doing your rotation as efficiently as you ought to be?

Yeah.

So

the long and short of it, they have to fix the blacklist system

to not be client-side.

to fix this because then the mod can always be recreated put on a different code depository it can whatever

um

This is a technical error in Final Fantasy 14 that is being exploited.

Client-side, anything is always, of course, a liability

with this type of thing.

Yeah, and of course,

well, I mean,

yeah, I assume that that would be the simplest way.

But of course, if people's account IDs are exposed and it's out there and you have them, and whatever changes they make, that account ID continues to be associated with whatever whatever accounts.

It's still too late for those people.

So it would have to be a massive overhaul of the account system as well.

Well, that's not going to happen.

That's just not going to happen.

You don't think that.

Somebody in the chat points out.

This is ultimately a data security issue.

Exactly, but that's kind of what I was going to ask.

So like the biggest MMO having a massive security failure is not going to take all the money they've been making over all these years and use it to address a problem this way.

I think the larger issue is that it's going to take like three or four months for this to get patched out because

their patch cycle is like quite rigid.

I mean, for all the like, you know, praises that have been heaped on this game for decades now is it's been, you know, like, well, okay, maybe not, but for years and

decades.

Yeah,

but it feels like it

from the outside.

But for years and years and years, this has been a huge game and people have been praising it for like how good it's been with a lot of stuff.

Here, you have a major security issue that could be continuously exploited.

It would be really shitty if they didn't take this to the utmost.

Okay.

So

you made a very understandable yet factual error that will change the context of this discussion.

So you technically used to work for Square Enix at a time.

At a time.

And

one of the things that you might remember from Square Enix

is

the fact that you said that FF14 makes a lot of money in a conversation about anything to do with FF14

is a bit of a misstep because the amount of money that FF14 makes has nothing to do with the amount of money that 14 gets.

Gotcha.

FF14 paid for foam stars.

Yep, true.

It is what they can hedge all their risks against because it's the most reliable part of their portfolio.

I would say that just as a flagship online title, it seems as if it would need to receive the utmost priority for things like this going badly.

If I was in charge, I would do a hot fix to completely disable the blacklist system entirely.

Well, there's that.

But also.

Rather than let it keep going until they fix it.

But less from a budget, money, whatever perspective, more just from a we know the way that audiences work perspective,

negatives burn through goodwill exponentially faster

than positive releases do.

If you fuck up something like this and continue to leave it unfixed for

however long, and you have to rely on people checking in every 30 days to see if they still want to give you money,

that's a really dangerous game to play if someone is currently being like, I'm one of the people being harassed.

Fuck this.

There's also an issue with FF-14 that

has never been confirmed.

And it's one of those things you just kind of feel in your gut.

And the longer I've played, the more I start to believe it.

English problems don't rate as highly as Japanese language worded problems.

Is that confirmed, or is that just a feeling?

Okay, so I said at the very beginning.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're right, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, you're right.

But your complaints in English consistently feel less seen than complaints that are spoken aloud in Japanese.

Hey, guess what?

This isn't the only genre where that's a thing.

Oh, I know, I know.

Oh,

so

we get into a very strange situation when these types of things happen with FF14, in which the best thing for this problem is that stalking is also a Japanese problem.

Right, right, right.

Okay.

So

it is more likely to be addressed more quickly.

Okay.

So yeah.

People, wherever you're

wherever your groups are, you got to reach out to the Tokyo partners and have them start logging in and being complete insufferable assholes on Japanese FF-14

until the problem gets fixed then.

Accelerationism is what you're saying.

Well, the issue is that Japan doesn't have as many people using mods.

Well, they're unofficial.

Yeah.

Why would you ever look at anything unofficial?

I think my favorite story ever

was

like, hey, dude, they're going to find those characters in Street Fighter Cross Tekken's disc.

They're going to find them.

They're going to find them in like a day.

How would they find them?

You're not allowed to look on what's on the disc.

You're stupid.

Speaking of the clear and obvious fact that that which is unofficial can therefore never exist.

That's right.

It can't.

It can't exist.

Nintendo has been sending lawyers

to

Genki's CES.

Man, this is so awesome.

The story rules.

And Genki is a company that makes accessories.

I talked the other day about how they basically just revealed the shape and look of a Switch 2 in one of their

and then

they have essentially fashioned a mock-up Switch 2 based on looking at the real thing

and it's not the switch 2 but it's just a it's a like a

extremely similar mock-up it's a plastic mock-up that looks pretty much identical is measured identical and they use it for designing their accessories um

and so they showed the mock-up that they made with these like you know i guess leaked images, but they're not the, it's not the actual Switch 2.

And they're at CES.

So like people have seen like people saw the interaction at the booth.

And

Genki is basically like, we didn't sign any NDAs.

So we didn't sign shit.

Go feed ourselves.

Give a fuck.

We have nothing to worry about here.

We are, we're not on the ground.

We don't even work with you.

We don't even, like,

we don't have any, yeah.

Um,

you know, we don't have any deal here, so whatever.

And the most, the, the most telling part is essentially that Nintendo's replies and whatnot have all been to essentially say that these images are unofficial.

These are not, these are images and videos you're seeing.

These leaks are not official Nintendo content.

And it's like,

so

I think,

are they,

are they not real or they not official?

I think there's a real so obviously

Nintendo's playing this really strange game where they can't announce the Switch 2 before the holiday season.

In fact, it's in their best interest to not only not do it during the holiday season, but do it just after the return period for the holiday season so that little Jimmy can't give his Switch back.

But they can't do it.

It's also like the most obvious open secret in the business

that the Switch 2 2 is coming and like relatively soon.

This is the worst I've ever seen in the entire video game industry.

I think it's the worst.

This is the worst

scene.

I've never seen it this bad.

Job listings, descriptions of games, the skew, the look, the feature.

Like, it's ridiculous.

Any sane company by now would have just cut their losses and went, yeah, all right.

Word leaked out.

Here it is.

But we're talking about fucking Nintendo.

And you would at least say, hey, this was ahead of schedule, but you're not going to hear anything for now.

But yep, it's coming.

Right.

But no.

They just reflected.

We know that Nvidia has made a custom fit, like, downscaling option for them for the fucking.

We saw the motherboard.

Yeah.

It's so, it's so busted open.

And it part of it definitely feels like they're like, we need to make the announcer, the investor announcement at the right time.

We can't pop that cherry too soon.

It has to be, you know, part of the everything is this

plan that we're going, you know, that can be.

Yeah, so the announcements in the first fiscal quarter of this year, and then the fucking release is going to be during the second fiscal quarter of this year.

People will have their hands on it and will be playing the latest Zelda, and they will be like, these are not official.

Stop it.

Stop.

These are not.

These images and videos are not approved.

These are not official.

It's insane.

It's the, it's, it's been the entire last year.

It's been nothing but leaks.

This would be less insane if the Switch 2 had not already technically been announced.

Right?

They said there is a new Switch console and we will talk about it later.

They didn't keep that secret, right?

They confirmed that it exists

and will exist.

Okay, I forgot.

I forgot that they could.

Yeah, they did.

It was some investor thing.

And we're not going to talk about it this year, which was last last year.

So what was the interaction at the booth?

Supposedly, people saw Nintendo lawyer go up to the people at the CES booth and have a discussion.

Was he yelling while not close enough to listen to the discussion, but.

Was he yelling while the translator next to them just went, he's very upset.

He's very upset.

He's not happy.

He says to change the head.

He says he wants you to change the head.

Oh my God.

Crazy.

Absolute batshit.

Never change, guys.

So, like, supposedly

they're going to do a direct on Thursday for this purpose.

Just about the kit, not any of the games.

Oh, you know what?

Let's get ahead of the story.

That's a pretty good idea.

Let's head them off at the pass.

I bet that was always the date.

Nintendo doesn't move things due to reality.

They better announce a fucking snoof feature.

They're not going to snoof it, man.

Stop it.

At this rate.

Okay.

Usually,

I wouldn't really want to even bother here, but

three

credible leakers are apparently saying that Devil May Cry will be coming to Fortnite soon.

Oh, Fortnite leakers are super legit, dude.

That's the deal.

So basically, there's two initial leakers that were kind of legit, and then a third one who's super trusted.

Oh, no, Fortnite leaks.

It's one of those things like Mihoyo games where you go to the fucking subreddit for leaks, and you see people dragging pictures out of somewhere.

Uh-huh.

So,

Dante from the Fortnite series.

That's right.

Perhaps even others.

You know, we'll see how this looks.

Capcom has already worked with them, so it's believable to think that that might, and you know, that that would be a thing eventually.

The question I have is just like, is there going to be, is it just going to be a skin, or will there be like, you know, character stuff you can do?

Because sometimes they do that, right?

I mean, there's not fucking Spider-Man.

No, no, but can you, like, high time somebody?

You know,

is picking up Rebellion going to like be like picking up Rebellion would be a black, uh, would be a back bling.

Back bling.

Yes.

Something you can carry on your back as a.

It's not a backpack, because it's not always a backpack.

Okay.

It's a back bling.

Because I know that like the Infinity Gauntlet and the

omnidirectional gear and stuff allowed for actual modes dedicated to stuff, and this is nowhere near that level for sure.

Well, that's pretty cool.

We'll see how it looks as they get Fortniteified.

Yeah.

I sure hope that if they add a Dante or a Virgil to Fortnite, that they look,

well, at least decent or

faithful.

I'm sure they'll look good.

The Resident Eagle characters look fine.

Well, but here's the thing: their direct comparison is there's another mobile game that just announced a DMC crossover.

I forgot what it's called.

Punishing Grey Raven.

Was it PGR?

Yeah, it's PGR.

Okay.

And the artwork looks incredible for that.

Like, there's a 2D Dante and a 2D Virgil that look fucking phenomenal

for just that.

So hopefully, hopefully they don't.

It doesn't look too weird when we see them Fortniteified.

Anyway.

Beyond this,

only other bits.

So Wooly vs.

Fortnite incoming?

Where are we dropping, man?

I mean,

nothing.

Are we dropping?

Nothing else convinced me until now.

I'll say that.

Where are we dropping?

Nothing else convinced me until now.

I've resisted a lot of woolly bait in Fortnite.

A lot.

I'm putting my fucking hand out.

Where are we dropping?

I've resisted a lot of woolly bait in Fortnite.

We'll see what the future holds.

honestly um if you can do more than just look like the character that's always a like oh shit i want to you know i mean they got they got keitanas in the game right now yeah yeah yeah yeah but i think i i would like to see the virgil uh sitting on that fucking plastic chair as an emote

i would like official confirmation that that's actually what happened on top of uh

whatever the fuck that stage is called yeah but but no the secret is that like simply showing me um a character is one thing.

Showing me Doom doing a dive kick or like actually being able to

attack on Titan, zip through the air, gameplay affecting things is like, oh, shit, that's actually, you're changing how the

game plays.

That's a different game, you know?

So, I think what we should actually get is like fucking Dante and Virgil and Marvel rivals and just do Marvel versus Capcom the other way.

The other way around?

Slowly drawing.

Just do it the other way.

Oh, man.

God damn it, dude.

Shit.

I mean, with, I mean, I can.

Every time I look at that Iron Fist where he's got the skin with the headband on, I'm like, yeah, I can see it.

I can just pretend that's a karate man.

That can be my Akira Ryu and/or other.

Anyway.

Yeah, only other bits here.

One,

just a random piece of shitty news.

Donkey Kong Country returns HD.

Retro Studios staff has been removed from the end credits.

Oh, that's because Nintendo made that game.

That's some stupid dumb bullshit.

That's a Nintendo game by Nintendo.

Nintendo made it.

It's such a, like...

Eh.

Like, that's the...

It's a Stegosaurus move.

It's a dinosaur move, right?

This old bit.

The Nintendo hiding the company thing.

This This just happened with

Mario and Luigi, right?

Brothership.

When that was announced for a while, people were like, we don't know who's making this.

What's going on?

Nintendo's making it, you dumb shitheads.

And it took a while.

I think it was by the third announcement or so, they finally said, like, the studio.

Or people dug it up from LinkedIn or something like that.

I forget, but that's fucking stupid.

And

Konami apparently has been up to this with like Bamani for a while as as well.

I mean, that's not all that surprising.

Yeah.

Konami.

So like with the Bemani music group stuff, like artists and people that have worked with them and like worked on their music over the different DDRs and everything, like just not getting credited and getting all wrapped up and grouped and called Bemani

dev team or whatever.

And you get no individual credit for any of the work you contribute.

You know what the worst one ever actually is?

Somebody in the chat mentioned it and it reminded me of like the most outrageous moment when Pete Hines got up and said the 20 years of Doom history with Bethesda.

Because Bethesda made Doom.

So, I don't know if you remember this, but Bethesda bought its software and then since then has been pretending that Bethesda invented it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's the most fucking ridiculous shit ever.

We all know,

says Bobby Koddick, that the legacy of Guitar Hero started here.

The Guitar Hero legacy starts here at Activision.

And the other guys, these imitators, rock band, I think they're calling it,

they're trying to just, you know.

Steal our thunder.

They're trying to steal our thunder and encroach on

the name, but they'll never be anything but a pale imitation of the original.

It's so disgusting, you kind of have to hand it to them.

Oh, man, you're saying it with a straight face.

Incredible.

It's incredible.

You can get through that.

And then, you know what?

This one's just for the shits of it.

But,

hey, there's been a trailer revealed for a game.

And

you want to take a crack at pronouncing this?

Yeah, hit me.

All right.

All right, let's see what we got here.

Okay, well, that's going to be really tough.

Do you want to?

What do you.

How do you.

This game has been announced.

Oh, fuck.

You want to pronounce that?

How do you want to take a stab at that?

Dynasty

cross.

No, no, no, no, no.

You're trying to put letters in blank spaces and figure out

there's no letters.

Pronounce block, block, block, block, block, space, block, block, space, block, X,

block, block, block, block, block, block, block.

Okay.

I'm going to go

cross.

Ah, I see, yes.

Missing block

for the font on your system, that square, when you, um,

that square when you you use a symbol that a font doesn't support

a bunch of those in a row

reveal trailer that's good that's really good

um

god damn it that was a bad thing to do with my mouth

hold on

all right

uh so It can make a little bit more sense when you take a look and you see that Sword of Symphony is one of those indie games which I've mentioned is the musical one.

It's the, you know, I talk about the Twitter games, the Twitter indie games.

Whoa, hey, that's too loud.

Stop it.

Stop it.

Oh, luckily, I didn't hear anything.

I'm safe.

Whoopsie doodle.

I don't know why that was so loud.

God damn it.

The

Sword of Symphony has been like, it's a game that looked like an action game where the main character kind of fights musically with a little conductor's wand and

does everything to the beat and does air combos and launches and all kind of stuff.

And it's been worked on for a while.

It's been a couple years now that

the creator has been promoting it on different platforms and stuff.

It looks pretty cool.

There's a development

side story that this project is, and it looks pretty cool too.

It's just kind of like, I guess, like full of artistic, like missing assets and placeholder bits and pieces that are like narratively being used.

So when you hit things, words kind of explode out of them.

Attacking percentages, stamina.

You know, there's a bunch of cool effects that

kind of hit as you're looking at like sketches and kind of like super hot visuals

as well.

But I just don't know what the fuck to call it.

And this is one of the craziest decisions ever for the title of a game project ever.

But it's symbols cross symbols.

Good.

We'll see what comes of it.

But it's the other game that's not sort of Symphony.

This is a really like this is really similar to what's going on with Virtual Fighter, and it's a YouTube channel, and how they keep misspelling the titles of their videos.

VF5 Ultimate Showdown, version 2, Developer Restrospective.

Oh, no.

But that means that they're not giving the franchise the attention it deserves.

No, that means they're giving it the exact attention it deserves because they're not bothering with any of this stupid shit like spelling because they're too busy making Virtua Fighter.

Oh, the typo is a good thing.

Yeah, it's good.

That's some real good arcade energy.

Okay.

I will...

You know what?

Fine.

I will accept your bullshit under the premise that...

That's not bullshit.

That's the truth.

No, no.

If your fighting game is full of typos and shit, it's because the Japanese team themselves did all the English.

Absolutely.

That's exactly true.

Right?

Terry Bogart and everything he said back in the day were the direct result of, yeah, we're going to do the English ourselves.

No, we're not going to check with the native speaker.

Fuck you.

How about that?

Hey, now listen.

Listen, everyone.

I see people in the chat saying cope, and I could see Woolly saying it in his mind.

And let me just, let's just skip ahead.

With Virtual Fighter, I am becoming a Cope singularity, okay?

there's no fucking there's no it's never gonna be worse than it is now, okay?

Okay, it's it's forever, and y'all need to just fucking get on this fucking spaceship to cope cope planet or fucking leave me alone.

It's been a lifetime ride.

Like I, this moment happens but once per decade, if ever.

I don't know if we'll ever have another one of these, you know?

Um

for your sake, I truly.

Do you know why?

Because the Virtual Fighter cope that I've carried within my heart for this many years

manifested into something real.

It happened.

It happened.

You just have to cope hard enough.

You have to cope long enough.

I've always said you just wait long enough and the things will come out.

I've always said that.

I continue to say that.

Yeah, but

you weren't manifesting.

You were just waiting around.

I was manifesting.

I like Virtual Fighter enough.

You know,

it's fine.

No, no, no.

I have positive memories of running sets with you and running sets with James Small back in the day as the only two people I knew who gave a fuck.

And then going into the arcade and popping a couple quarters into Virtual Fighter 2 as a kid.

That was good.

However,

fighting games are healthier than they have been in a long time, and I do fear for its place in this,

you know, Mortal Kombat 1 on the Evo mainstage economy.

I don't know, man.

I think it's going to be

pretty easy to

get up past MK for entrance.

I know, but what if it doesn't?

But what if

they

doublely?

I was able to pull more people trying to play Virtual Fighter V Revo in my stream than Evo was.

What if, no, I'm saying, what if Evo puts MK1 up again?

Then Evo's like a worthless old fucking relic run by shitheads.

And fighting games have lost all legitimacy in this world.

Hey, man.

I just did an interview over there.

They called me a pro.

Yeah, no, listen.

They know what they're doing.

But even if that's true, then we're just going to have to go watch Japanese tournaments because you know they're going to put virtual fighter in there.

They really are.

Yeah, actually, just like that's that's mandatory.

Just watch Fudo from now on.

All right.

Let's take some letters.

Hey, if you want to send in a letter,

send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

You could ask Wooly versus the professional.

Maybe when they have questions, they'll reach out to a pro for some advice.

Maybe they will.

While you cope into oblivion, they could ask me, hey, what do you think?

Should we throw some special moves in here?

Maybe we should put an extra button.

Listen, man, I'm not a corncob.

I'm high fructose corn syrup.

And I'll be like, yeah, why not throw another button in there?

Sure.

I could see a meter showing up.

Why not?

It's really funny that we saw a meter and then the next time we saw it, we're like, fuck, the meter's coming up.

Yeah.

That's really funny.

Yeah.

You know, I'll just be like, hey, you know what, guys?

Listen up.

As a professional here, I'll tell you what, I really love Samurai Showdown.

And I think Virtual Fighter could learn a thing or two from Samurai Fighter.

I could see the Shepherd's crook leaning towards your neck, ready to pull you off the stage.

Is it a crook or is it a decapitation

waiting to occur?

And then when I get pulled off screen, it says out of bounds.

Out of bounds.

Here we got one coming in from Luke who says, Howdy, Mr.

Short and Mr.

Sweet.

What's up?

Yeah.

I work two jobs.

When I only get to play games for a few hours a night at most, I have to be choosy.

Recently, I tend to choose massive RPGs that remove choice paralysis, and I come home knowing what I'll play, but this leads me to a problem with voice acting in particular.

I can read faster than I can listen, so often side content in big games, I'll listen to the voice acting fully for a bit until I get a vibe for the character and then just read the captions as I skip and when they go through.

Recently playing bigger new JRPGs like FF16 or FF7R, I found the cutscene pacing is infuriating because the need for unskippable voice-acted cutscenes

pops up, so I yearn for the simplicity of a fucking silent text box and character portrait.

I love FF-16, but its side quests were the worst offenders.

Canned cutscene animations you're forced to watch, and the gaps between dialogue can mean my two hours of playtime and a half is taken up by dead air and worthless animation.

I would rather no voice acting at all than watch Clive cross and uncross his arms for a full minute between lines.

Yeah.

Okay, so

this this guy is really, really on the ball.

As people who play tons and tons of games, and we were just talking about like the voice acting/slash/not voice acting thing earlier in the podcast,

I have also begun to be wildly infuriated by games that have specific cutscenes in which every line of dialogue gets an extra sent every extra second.

It does not need to to line space out the next line of dialogue.

Every single line of dialogue has sentence, pause, camera shift, sentence, pause, and it's like, none of you are having a conversation like real people.

I want it to be faster, just a little bit, just a little faster.

Yeah, I think,

so, well, to finish off here,

you can try to skip the dialogue and they force you to watch the animation.

I'm unconvinced these green quests would feel a lot more like red if the content occurred through text boxes instead of canned cutscenes.

What's a quality of life or good game design feature that can ruin an experience for you?

Okay, so I would say that like anytime you feel like you're rushed or pressed for time while trying to enjoy something is going to ruin that experience kind of almost no matter what.

Like it's just a shitty, sucky feeling.

I hate it.

And

I'm more mindful of it now because we had that whole conversation earlier in this episode where I talked about me thinking about how long it takes to do things and stuff and realizing in some situations there's nothing I can do to make this go faster without like completely throwing it out the water, out the window.

But even in my own time, I do think about stuff like that because I'm like now a little bit extra sensitive and paranoid about it.

If you're skipping something, you should be able to just blow past it entirely, right?

You should definitely be able to not have a just skip line button, but fast forward and have the whole scene play out

gone.

In Cyberpunk, when you tap the skip button, it literally you can choose between line by line or

fast forwarding the whole thing.

And yes, that's great.

When it's not for hiding loading and stuff like that, forcing so you'd have to watch something because it's very pretty and expensive is some bullshit.

Like anything should be skippable, assuming that the person's playing this for the nth time forever, right?

if it's your first time through

and like that is a little like thing that's chasing you i don't know man i i don't

like

that's the more that maybe your choice of game is too stressful for the amount of time you have no i totally disagree i know exactly what he's talking about and i've had this situation when i play games on my own time where i'm reading so much faster than the dialogue i let people finish the first line like you know when you get like a line a text box, it's like, Geralt is going to say three lines of dialogue here.

I let him finish the first one because I don't want to cut him off and fuck up the pacing.

But

I'm done with the text box.

I'm done with it.

Like,

I'm just waiting for you to sit around.

And

a lot of games support that.

Like, the characters will continue to talk.

And until you click a button and they will go to the next line, and it works.

16 is like specifically annoying with that.

It does feel, though, like it's a very simple quality of life issue that

should be simple enough in any dialogue game where mash X and move to the next thing and don't have too much staggering.

But yeah, overall, the ability to just kind of completely move to the next option to interaction point

would be the winning way to do any of these types of choices.

Like, just completely blip past all of it and then pick the option and then blip past the rest.

I think the irony is that, like, the Yakuza series or like the Dragon series actually has like the best of all worlds on these because

sometimes you just get text boxes,

sometimes you get text boxes that are being read aloud, but they're read at a good clip,

and then you get directed cutscenes in which you just fucking sit back and it's a proper directed scene in which you don't want to skip ahead because

people are moving around the scene and

a it's a dynamic event

um you're playing yakuza games dubbed yes i i switched to dub as soon as i could uh because it is so much easier for the audience yeah okay it is it is a million times easier for the audience okay

um

was there anything japanese that you played like with uh or you that you chose to play in japanese uh voice acting wise not for a while because um it's tougher for the audience.

Gotcha.

Okay.

I remember the last game I played in Japanese voice acting.

Audience aside, though, out of preference, would you ever?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

But

I'm streaming every dragon game that comes out.

Okay.

Because yeah, there's something, because I'm just curious, because I feel like something I've talked with Reggie a good bit about is that we will listen to the Japanese voice acting, you know, and like you can hear when it's really good, you know, and like when the voice acting and when the when the voice actor is like a perfect fit, you know, like for whatever character, in some cases it feels like, oh yeah, I'd kind of rather listen to it that way.

But a lot of that is also a holdover from

anime watching, you know, from an era when watching something dubbed was almost always inferior, you know, prior to the adult swim and quality dubs of stuff kind of coming out.

Back when you have to just get a pioneer DVD and it was fucking, I don't know, is Johnny Young Bosch on this?

No?

Oof.

Then I'm afraid, you know?

Like now,

now I'm in a place where it's like, it doesn't even matter because Kaiji Tang is Ichiban for me.

So I'm not going to go back on that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know what?

Matt Mercer isn't as good as Majima's Japanese voice actor, but he's pretty good.

I think Kiryu was like the only real sore spot.

Otherwise, the dubs are fantastic on the Like a Dragon series.

Okay, fair enough.

Now, Kiryu in my brain is everything from Yakuza Zero.

Like,

that's my experience.

So, it feels like any change to that is going to be weird.

You know, I don't know, but I guess we'll just have to see.

Although,

it'll never be weirder for me than Naruto because

in my brain, it's all the original, you know,

Japanese anime voices, and then for everyone else who's watching, it's all the dubbed stuff.

All right, and let's take one

last one here.

Jake says, hey, Pat and Woolley, as people nominally familiar with shooter games, you've probably heard of the distinction between a clip and a magazine when it comes to guns.

Yes, in fact, Apex Legends literally has Bangalore say, a clip is what you put in your hair.

This is a magazine, right?

A very short recap: is the clip holds the ammo that's going to be inserted into the magazine, while the magazine is what loads the ammo directly into the firing mechanism.

If you've heard of someone use the phrase detachable box magazine in reference to a gun, that's why.

However, yeah, it's that big old crate you jam on a machine gun, like a big ol' box.

What you might not know is that the difference between the two is used as a form of hazing in gun circles.

People new to firearms

publicly are castigated in front of others for mixing the terms up,

usually with the exercise that it's to educate them or to stop them from looking foolish.

It might not seem like a big deal, but firearms are lethal weapons, and creating this sort of stress on people new

to their use creates an unsafe environment for everyone.

The people who perpetuate this are often insecure about the lack of knowledge or experience and take it out on the next guy.

And basically, they were wondering about how how this applies and if we've seen examples of this in other communities as well.

I mean, have you ever thought about how hazing weeds out people who are fucking pussies, man?

Like, think about it.

Like, this is.

It's weird, though, in the sense that, like, if that making, if getting made fun of for that makes you more crazy and violent and turn into the when do we get the freaking guns guy, then maybe you shouldn't be here.

You know, like, there's a bit of that involved.

We're like, wait, what?

So you're now more dangerous because someone made fun of you for the Clip magazine bit?

Yeah, I assume that this is always kind of the case because,

you know, you've heard of the tactical

people, right?

You can imagine.

I've heard of them.

Yes, tactical is like, you know, it's essentially your military otaku, but like for the West of sorts, it's anyone who's like

pretending to be an operator, but is not at all in any way, shape, or form, but knows everything about it.

And like, yeah, for those people, it's this weird,

you know,

it's this weird thing of

dick measuring and waving around your knowledge and, you know,

actuallying people into oblivion.

But

nonetheless, I just, I think that it's kind of nuts to think that, oh,

someone who would go flying off the handle at the result of one of those things,

Therefore, that shouldn't be the case.

It's like, yeah, you kind of need a filter to make sure when do we get to the freaking gun sky is not part of the deal.

So

I'm going to put my hand up here, Wolves.

I believe what they're actually trying to say is that when somebody's loading a firearm,

yelling in their shit that they're fucking up by telling them a bunch of academic bullshit between the types has the increase in likelihood, not that they become, ah, I'm going to shoot people, but that they literally fail to load the gun correctly and or discharge it by accident because you're fucking with their shit and making them so nervous.

Okay, in a live-fire environment.

Yeah.

When you should be not like you're making, you're making people anxious

on a range.

Yeah.

Okay.

And ideally, you don't want to be anxious handling a firearm.

That being said, hazing discussion is of great interest to me because hazing is really interesting as a psychological phenomenon because hazing works.

That's the shittiest part about hazing.

Hazing fucking super works at the goal of hazing.

Now, most people who haze other people don't actually know why they're doing it.

They just do it as a form of initiation to the new in-group.

However, the basic deal is that camaraderie and in-group mentality is directly facilitated by a couple of things, one of which is is periods in close proximity, and another of which is shared hardship.

Griping or enduring hardship as part of a group creates camaraderie.

Militaries, police organizations,

frats,

anything that's in-group, some religions introduce hazing as a way to short-circuit your way towards in-group mentality because yes, we did have to stand out all night in front of the quad and hold these buckets while the guys stood up on the roof and pelted eggs at us, but oh, we did it together, right?

And it creates

this very consistent,

like, immediate

burst of, like, oh, we're all in this together.

Anyone who works a job where you see fucked up shit or stuff like that, you know, you hear about gallows humor and things like that where people are able to get together.

And

this extends past group hazing into

new guy hazing, which is super common and often hilarious.

And I'm not talking about you have to stand out there and get your ass beat or whatever.

I'm talking about

if you start working as a contractor in construction, your boss will send you to the store to buy something that doesn't exist.

It's going to happen.

They're going to a fucking two-way ladder or a fucking, like people are going to flood, a metric hammer.

Yeah, people are going to flood the chat with all sorts of fucking stupid shit that they get sent out for.

And the purpose of that is to

fuck on the apprentices.

Headlight fluid.

Headlight fluid.

Left-handed hammer.

And then they go, oh, and it kind of kicks them down a notch.

But then it becomes, well, we've all been through this.

And so you have, banned, you have short-circuited trauma bonding

to create a form of camaraderie.

Right.

So the people who act like this

may be insecure, particularly the ones that go really, really crazy with it.

And people die during hazing rituals because people go nuts on it.

And it is inherently abusive and probably wrong when you're dealing with anything that would result in physical harm or like we're talking about guns.

life-threatening right-like, you know, we're dealing with shit.

Like, if you're doing the firefighters exam and you're coming down the side of the fucking ladder, you don't expect the boys to be pelting you with eggs, right?

Because you could fall and fucking hurt yourself.

But yeah, no, the problem with hazing and the reason hazing doesn't go away is that it works.

It is immediately effective at its stated goal, even if nobody knows what that goal actually is.

I mean, it sounds like the entirety of like buds training and like, you know, becoming a SEAL is like 95% impossible.

Oh, absolutely.

They beat your ass to 5% learning.

And, you know, 5% is learning the thing and 95% is just getting hazed as you do the insanely impossible task.

You ever talk to somebody in the military about their brothers and coming up in BASIC?

I have a cousin.

Yeah,

they sound like almost religiously indoctrinated.

That's because they went through trauma bonding.

Um,

yeah.

And as you mentioned, in particularly, like with that type of trading, there literally are people who don't die in the trading as well.

Oh, yeah.

Um, and that increases the effectiveness of the trauma bond of the survivors.

Interesting.

Where'd you learn that?

I don't remember.

I read it.

Fascinating lesson.

Somewhere.

It's either 15, 20 years ago or two weeks ago.

Mm-hmm.

Because I go through this shit all the time, but I don't fucking know.

Oh.

Ah, you know, we'll get into that another time.

I just remembered, like, you were talking about a subject from another point ago where I saw like a paper on something.

Anyway, I made it up.

Next year.

Our writers wrote that one.

Jonathan Friggs.

Yeah.

Hey there.

I look forward to the next firearms expert writing in to tell us why everything that this firearms expert said was wrong and how they

can talk about

we can skip that step Woolly we can skip it right now

You're going to be using your firearms in a possible life or death situation where you are going to be anxious in the moment.

You need to be able to perform well under pressure.

And what better place to practice that than in a safe environment with your fellow gun enthusiasts and an instructor present?

See, we just skipped it.

Yeah, yeah.

It's coming.

They're coming for sure.

And then round three.

Do not point this end at anything you are not willing to destroy.

Every gun is always loaded.

All right.

I'm looking forward to it.

See you next week.

Have a good week, everybody.